Saturday, November 09, 2024

Paul Rudnick, please start using THREADS

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "MAGA Confused." and "Manly Barron" went up Thursday.


beauty barron


Paul Rudnick.  I'm afraid I'm not going to be noting him anymore.  He's done nothing wrong.  I love his Tweets.  But we are stepping away from Twitter.  That will either be a long piece at THIRD or C.I. will explain that in Monday's snapshot.  This goes beyond what made some give up their Tesla (I didn't own one). We're done with Musk.  


I'm fine with that.  I am not fine that I might not be able to highlight Paul anymore.  I thought I was doing something wrong when I was trying to find him on Threads.  I wasn't.  He's on Instagram, that's where the link in my first paragraph goes.  But he's not reposting Tweets there the way I was hoping he would on a Threads account.  

On some of the worst days of this year, Paul kept me laughing.  I don't think I've met him.  C.I. knows him, of course, she knows everyone.  I might have met him at a party something but I don't think I did.  I read SOCIAL DISEASE when it came out (C.I. gifted her immediate circle of friends with it -- she also included an interview he did with the copies she gave out -- I think it was ROLLING STONE -- knowing that some of us -- like me -- would think, "Oh, yea.  I'll get to this book" and then set it aside.  The interview, which was hilarious -- he talked about the word "moist" and laughed at Patti Davis and her co-writer -- was quick to read and made me go ahead and read the book immediately.


So don't think I have anything against Paul.  I've included his Tweets in my posts -- usually every one of them -- for over a year now.  I would love to continue to do so but no more Twitter.  Of anyone.


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, November 8, 2024.  As the election gets analyzed, are we not supposed to notice that Black women aren't getting a seat at the table?


A lot of opinions flying around.  A lot of nonsense going down.

When I was in high school, there was a boy a class ahead of me.  Seemed nice enough.  But then people began picking on him because he was gay.  And he was gay.  Not someone who reads gay but isn't.  Not a Jon Cryer mistaken for gay but actually gay.  And his daily life suddenly became miserable.  And if you looked at what was going on, it was obvious -- or it was obvious to me -- that a guy named David, a quarterback, had started and was leading the attack on Charles.  And if you paid attention, it should have been obvious that David might not read gay because he didn't fit someone's stereotype but he was gay and had been screwing around with Charles.  Fear or whatever drew him deeper into the clost and he now attacked Charles constantly.

I went to David and told him it needed to stop.  And to stop now.

He justified picking on Charles as just having fun -- it wasn't fun for Charles.

I told him I knew they'd been having sex and that he could end the abuse of Charles or I could end him.

He didn't think he could be taken down -- call him Trump-like in his stupidity.  

But it only took a week and half and I destroyed him.  

And I'd do it again.

I have said repeatedly here than I am not a nice person.

I didn't destroy him by outing him.  I destroyed him by destroying everything he thought he had -- standing, sex appeal, wealth, go down the list.  

And he tried to kill himself-- well he staged a drama I don't think you inject some medicine for cows into yourself if you're really determined to kill yourself.


I didn't -- and don't -- feel bad.

And his attempt to garner sympathy only made him a bigger joke -- and led to others mocking him in the halls with "MOO!" whenever they'd see him.

He was supposed to be all that.  Good looking.  Sone of a banker blah blah blah.

And he didn't realize that he wasn't untouchable.

Now I bring that up to note, obviously, that Trump's not untouchable and it can be an interesting four years.

But I also bring it up because that's really the first political cause for me.  One that required leaving my own bubble and seeing others in need that didn't look like me or weren't like me in some way.  Our only bond was that he was hurting and I felt for him.

If you want to count the work I do for autism, that predates that but I had a member of the family who was autistic. 

Before Charles, I never knew anyone who was gay.  Never even thought about it.  

But seeing this nice kid crying every day as he couldn't get down the hall without facing the mockery David had created -- to hide his own sexuality -- that was probably my adult realization of a number of things.

I have a good life today because I have had an enthusiastic following and a good number of those are gay men.  

I say all of that to explain that I'm not walking out on them.  I'm not silencing myself while they get attacked.  

Right now, a large number of us are figuring out where we stand going forward.  

The LGBTQ+ community has my support and I will loudly defend them.  

Others? Some of you are probably going to be on your own -- because you brought it on yourselves.  If some beggar media type gets tossed in jail, I don't know that I care.  If you trashed Kamala, I don't know that I care about you.

But that's what I'm going to be figuring out.  For me.

And that's what the rest of us are going to have to figure out.

I posted Chris Hayes' video last night or this morning.  I like Chris.  I don't have a problem with what he said.  And I get that people want to feel hopeful.

But I also get "For me."

I can be decided for me.  And others can and should decide for themselves.

But MSNBC really isn't recognizing that.  Chris would be a great person to do some roundtables with Black women.  

When Tabitha does a new video (TABITHA SPEAKS), I'm right there.  And I love what she says.  And she'll figure out for herself what she wants to do going forward.  She doesn't need a White man telling her what to do.  To be clear, that's not a reference to Chris Hayes -- whose biggest 'crime' would be trying to give us all hope.  And that's why I would argue Chris could do these needed roundtable.


I don't want to talk about Howard Dean -- we hate each other and he tried to throw me under the bus in the first Barack Obama administration.  So let's not really focus on his garbage other than to note that in 2008 he stood back while sexism was targeted non-stop at Hillary Clinton.  And he was the DNC chair.  So right there, grasp that no one needs to hear Howard The Scream Dean.

But there are a number of others that we could talk about.  They're making idiotic and stupid analysis and trying to impose it on us.

Let's deal wit the Jill Stein freaks.

They offer the poplar vote that Jill got nationwide and insist that it wouldn't have made a difference to Kamala.  But we don't elect by the popular vote.  Our president depends upon who won the electoral college.  They also want to lie that Jill didn't steal any votes from Kamala.

Despite the many lies Jill told, she always knew that she wasn't going to win.  Even she isn't stupid enough to think she would have won.

Her role was not to garner votes and I'll try to come back to a sub-set there but I want to make this point very clear.

Jill got support from Donald Trump and his MAGA attorneys because she was supposed to suppress turnout.  No one thought she'd garner votes.

But what she could do was suppress votes. 

And that's what she did.

She attacked Kamala from the left.  She ripped into her daily.

She and Beggar Media did everything to attack Kamala.  (Beggar media, if you're a drive-by, is DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, etc.  Useless liars who turn their tricks without ever satisfying a customer which is why they get the cash upfront.  Gaza Freaks refers not to people defending Palestinians nor to the Palestinians themselves.  It refers to the useless idiots who do nothing to actually help the people of Gaza or to end a genocide.  If you wanted to end a genocide, you wouldn't have worked so hard to elect Donald Trump.)

Let's do a quick walk through.  Will use racist Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW!  

For the sake of this argument, we can make you a man or a woman but we can't make you a Black woman because Black women didn't fall for it.

People in every other grouping did.

So you're Zac and you're 21 and in college and you tuned it to DEMOCRACY NOW! maybe once a week, maybe five days a week.  And you don't know Goody Whore's history of how she subverted past elections and how she lied and you don't know all the stunts she's pulled before -- including getting rich by bankrupting PACIFICA RADIO thanks to closet case Leslie Cagan (I believe Leslie's out as a lesbian, I'm referring to her being a Communist yet, at a PACIFICA board meeting refusing to admit that -- this was a PACIFICA board meeting -- not a McCarthy hearing).  You think she's smart and caring.

So already, you're an idiot.

But you're watching her show and, from August 1st until October 30th, all you hear is guests and Amy telling you how bad Kamala is.  They usually talk up Jill Stein during this and, of course, Amy did that awful soft ball lying interview with Jill.

That was Jill's purpose and role in the 2024 election.

To be held up as something wonderful -- she's not, her own sons didn't vote for her and didn't want her to run -- as opposed to the awful Kamala.

That was to depress turnout -- intentionally.  

And it was intentional on the part of Beggar Media from the start but they really dug in as it went along and Ava and I may cover that at THIRD.

So Zac wants to do the right thing, he wants to be a social justice warrior and make the world better.  He knows he's not voting for Trump.  He'd thought about voting for Kamala.

But day after day, DEMOCRACY NOW! (and THE PROGRESSIVE and IN THESE TIMES and THE NATION) are telling him how awful Kamala is?

Well he can't vote for that.

And this impacted Rosa.  She's got an office job that requires she work nine to five.  She's got three kids she's raising as a single mother -- so forget PTO.  That's gone just on her kids' doctors visits and illnesses.  Vote before work -- during early voting or regular voting?  She has to drop the kids off.  After work?  She's got to get to day care or risk paying a penalty for each minute after six o'clock that she's late.

Rosa really wants to keep Trump out of the White House.  But the radio programs and the online sites of various pathetic magazines tell her over and over that Kamala's awful.

So you really think Rosa is going to out of her way to try to vote?

No.

This was Jill Stein's role.  And that's why these outlets never offered you the truth about Jill.  How she makes money every time a bomb drops on Gaza -- due to her stock portfolio.  How she's never accomplished anything.  How she is selective in her public outrage over what Arab is being bombed.  Her defense of Putin and other War Criminals.  

They give her a pass on that and pretend like she's smart -- smart people don't lose every race for office they run for.  They pretend like she cares -- people who care don't raise over six million dollars for a 2016 recount only to not spend it on that.  They don't then say that they'll be donating the millions unused to a charity and then, years later, are still unable to tell you where that money went.

She's a whore and she's a grifter.

And she was protected by Amy Goodman and others because her role was never to win or even to win some votes.  She was supposed to be the saint to Kamala's whore because dualities is all most Americans have been trained to handle -- the either/or.

Naomi Wolf is a joke.  But it's a real shame she couldn't have waited a few more years to become a joke.  Unlike non-feminist Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf -- were her brain functioning -- could have done a blistering take down of the tropes used throughout as the left -- Beggar Media -- worked to destroy Kamala.  Naomi Klein is a politically active woman.  Too many people mistake that for feminism. It is not feminism and Naomi may have held a laughable chair but she never did anything for feminism.  And, in fact, there are interviews she hopes no one ever sees or remembers from before she became a brand where she was knocking feminism and feminists in that post-90s manner.

That was Jill's role, to destroy enthusiasm for Kamala's campaign in order to depress turnout.

And that's why you saw the never ending efforts to kill joy over Kamala's run.  

Tabitha has spoken about the attempts to kill joy over and over on her YOUTUBE program.

You won't see her on DEMOCRACY NOW! or platformed elsewhere because no one wants to acknowledge the effort to kill Kamala's campaign on the part of the left.

But we can't move forward without an honest discussion of what went down.

And that's why Black women need to be front and center right now.  

Everyone else fell for the propaganda to one degree or another.  

If you're Anglo White or Anglo Latina and you didn't, great job.  But you were few and far between.  

Black women didn't fall for it.  

Black women are also a huge constituency for the Democratic Party.

Which is why is is so laughable and horrifying to watch these White men like James Carville and Howard Dean and others go around with their stupidity thinking we need to hear from them.

James Carville.  "It's the economy, stupid."  Famous for that as he backed Bill Clinton with the neoliberal campaign that was nothing more than a War On The Poor.

So James is back and saying this was an economy election.  And it was to a large degree.  He then wants to lie and attack various groups -- the Identity Politics rant that Roland Martin and others have rightly called out.

What did you do, James?  I know what I did.  I realized that the economy was going to be a loser for the Democrats and advocated at the start of 2023 for some form of stimulus.  And I was laughed at and had my head patted by various figures in the DNC party structure.

The economy is better.  Joe Biden deserves credit for saving the economy (that's not the only thing he deserves credit for).  But people weren't feeling it. 

A number were remembering that trifle of a stimulus check they got under Trump.  Nancy Pelosi is still whining about Trump's signature on it.

And that has no bearing on anything.  She destroyed her own reputation on that issue.  There was no stimulus for those we called "heroes" during the pandemic.  Her House couldn't deliver.  

And the prevailing opinion was that Trump wanted to do a second stimulus and Nancy opposed it.

James, you didn't do s**t on any of that and it got back to me that you were mocking me for suggesting this tiny stimulus check.  

A check would have been appreciated.  A check could have made an impact on American's lives.

But James thought it was nonsense as did other fools.

So don't come to me now and whine about the economy stupid when, STUPID, you were among those who did nothing to mitigate the issue.

Perceptions are not changed overnight.  That's why you need to be smart in your demands at any time.  

I didn't write here about it because I didn't want to give ammunition to the GOP.

Dems seemed to think that they could educate people on the economy.  

You can't educate someone with statements that are contrary to what they experienced.

Yes, Joe saved the economy and those of us who know about the economy realize that.

Most people don't know economics.  

And so James' nonsense this week is bulls**t and he just needs to honestly die.  Die and take his lies with him.

He's outlived his purpose and he is no use.

People like him are also trying to blame trans people for the election.  I think we addressed Allred's nonsense in yesterday's snapshot.

LGBTQ NATION has a good article and maybe I'll try to write about it Saturday.

But, notice no links here, we are suffering.  And I've told everyone in the community -- whether they're writing for one of our newsletters or at their own site -- take time for you.  

We need to heal.  

And so it's not really me throwing all my time away right now.  It's me trying to heal.

And that's what so many of us are trying to do right now.

You ignored us during the general election and you ignore us now.  If you continue to do so, you're going to have a huge problem because we are the base -- the real base -- the ones who show up election after election.

And we're busy.  We're all Rosa.  We all have eight million other things that have to be done -- HAVE TO BE DONE -- every day.  But we get out and vote every time.

And our thanks for that?  You destroy the first Black woman to run for president on a major party.

And you want to act like it didn't happen, you want to gaslight us.  

No.

I'm here to speak for me and the community.  And we'll chart our way forward as best we can based on what we're able to do.  

And that's true for others.  Tabitha, Olay, Danielle, so many others.  They need to heal and they need to know where they stand in this party and how this party, in 2024, could do what they did to Kamala.

Some of your causes really aren't that important to us.

The nonsense of an official, for example.  That's something you worry about after you elect Kamala.  You say, hey, we support ____ and want her to remain.

Instead, you nut jobs came up daily with one reason after another not to vote for Kamala, one reason or another to attack her in public.  

You didn't want to address her housing plan, you didn't want to address her Medicare plan and a number of you White bitches wrote articles attacking her over Black women's health issues.

She had never spoken of it!

She had never done this or that!

White bitches, heel.  

All you did was yet again sport your racism.

ESSENCE had the interview with Kamala addressing that topic.  But you're too White to read ESSENCE and that didn't surprise me which is why we reproduced that part of the interview in a snapshot here.

But, hey, in all your Whiteness why should you be required to actually do some work before you penned your columns claiming she never addressed a topic that she had just spoken to ESSENCE about.

You live in a really White world.  And that's how you ignore reality.

And you're doing it again with all these White idiots -- include Bernie Sanders on that list, Roland is right -- who keep having conversations with everyone but Black women.

Black don't crack.  We've all heard that.  Let me expand on it: Black don't crack cameras either.

So what's your excuse for still denying Black women a seat at the table while pretending to explore what went wrong in this election?

There are outlets that deserve praise and we've linked to them throughout the last months.  MOTHER JONES gets a B.  They played into some of the nonsense but not all of it.  Higher grades would go to THE NEW REPUBLIC and RAW STORY.  And my apologies to AMERICAN PROSPECT.  I didn't know they were still around.  Someone with TAP contacted me when I was first calling out THE NATION -- called me, we're friends -- and that's when I found out TAP was still around.  After that we did highlight them.  My apologies that we didn't highlight them more.  I would also give COMMON DREAMS an A.  They started out running with the pack.  They were the only ones we called out who actually course corrected.  I don't expect perfection, I do expect fairness.  So praise for COMMON DREAMS.

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "MAGA Confused." and "Manly Barron" went up last night.  The following sites updated:




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Friday, November 08, 2024

Poor little Junior

Poor little Junior, the limp dicked Kennedy.  Lawrence Hurley (NBC NEWS) reports:



The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an attempt by Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to protect doctors being investigated in Washington state for allegedly spreading misinformation about the Covid-19 virus.
The emergency application was denied by Justice Elena Kagan on behalf of the court.

Little Junior comes up short every time.  How sad for him.  



Junior is so stupid.  He honestly thinks that he can get away with insulting Trump behind his back.  

He underestimates both Donald's vanity and his ability to be petty.


Katherine Kreuger is a racist.  She writes for publications like THE NATION.  That's a teaser for tomorrow morning. 


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, November 21, 2024.  Satan's cabinet picks remain a sorry lot.


Turf wars.  That's what DC has always been about.  Nothing ever changes and only the idiots -- like Great Satan Trump -- refuse to adjust to the system.  The Constitution gives the Senate approval on all cabinet level nominees.  Not listening to their advice portion of advice & consent is not going to get him off on the right foot.  Attempting to bypass them will only make things more difficult for him in the future.

He's a lame duck.  And I did not see the photos from his last week of campaigning or photos from this weekend until late last night.  Is he going to leave the Oval Office in a coffin?  He looks dead.  If that's why he smears that orange make up on his face . . .  At any rate, he won't have another term.  He is a lame duck president whose health is giving out.  He hasn't even been sworn in and already the lie that he has a mandate has been corrected.  Applause for Lawrence O'Donnell who led on that and made the point  night after night on his MSNBC program.


Loathe THE NATION and what it's become under racist Katrina vanden Heuvel but Joan Walsh and John Nichols did play fair -- maybe that's why they didn't get the play that all the attack Kamala articles did on THE NATION's website? -- but Nichols points out:


Let’s put this in perspective: Trump is winning a lower percent of the popular vote this year than Biden did in 2020 (51.3), Obama in 2012 (51.1), Obama in 2008 (52.9), George W. Bush in 2004 (50.7), George H.W. Bush in 1988 (53.2), Ronald Reagan in 1984 (58.8), Reagan in 1980 (50.7), or Jimmy Carter in 1976 (50.1). And, of course, Trump numbers are way below the presidents who won what could reasonably be described as “unprecedented and powerful” mandates, such as Richard Nixon’s 60.7 percent in 1972, Lyndon Johnson’s 61.1 percent in 1964, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 60.8 percent. As Trump’s percentage continues to slide, he’ll fall below the thresholds achieved by most presidents in the past century.

Harris, on the other hand, is looking like a much stronger finisher than she did on election night. In fact, the Democrat now has a higher percentage of the popular vote than Presidents Trump in 2016 (46.1), Bush in 2000 (47.9), Clinton in 1992 (43), or Nixon in 1968 (43.4). She has also performed significantly better than recent major-party nominees such as Trump in 2020 (46.8), Trump in 2016 (48.2), Mitt Romney in 2012 (47.2), John McCain in 2008 (45.7), George W. Bush in 2000 (47.9), Bob Dole in 1996 (40.7), George H.W. Bush in 1992 (37.4), Michael Dukakis in 1988 (45.6), Walter Mondale (40.6), Carter in 1980 (41), or Gerald Ford in 1976 (48).

Yes, some of those historic results were influenced by the presence of strong third-party contenders. But most were not. And the bottom line is that the gap between Trump and Harris is narrower than the difference between major-party contenders in the vast majority of American presidential races.

Why make note of all the presidents who ran better than Trump? Why discuss the narrowness of his advantage over Harris? Why consider, in addition, that the Republican majorities in the House and Senate will be among the narrowest in modern American history? Because it puts the 2024 election results in perspective—and, in doing so, gives members of both parties an understanding of how to respond when Trump claims that an unappealing nominee or policy should be accepted out of deference to his “powerful” mandate.





Despite repeated claims from GOP corners that the United States gave Donald Trump a "mandate" on Election Day, the president-elect has still not secured a majority of the popular vote. 
According to the Cook Political Report, Trump has netted 76.8 million votes to Kamala Harris' 74.2 million votes. Trump's share of the ballots is good for 49.89% of the current tallied vote total. If the current margin of roughly 2.4 million votes holds, it will be the closest margin of victory since the contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000. 

Trump's current lead in the popular vote count is smaller than the one Hillary Clinton put up on him in 2016. Clinton gained 2.8 million more votes than Trump in her electoral loss. 




Yes, Donald Trump won the election. He will be the next president. There’s no question about that. But it’s also one of the narrowest popular vote wins in U.S. history. He got less than half the votes cast, winning a plurality but not a majority of the popular vote.

Trump won by about 2.5 million votes out of more than 150 million cast. That means his lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in the popular vote is down to about 1.6%. In fact, when comparing Trump’s margin of victory to every presidential election going back to 2000, the president-elect boasts the smallest margin of anyone who’s actually won their election and the popular vote. 

[. . .]

So take a step back and keep all of this in mind when you hear Trump and his supporters suggest that the election was this enormous wave in which a transformation swept across the country, in which Americans were just begging for a MAGA makeover.

That is the line Republicans are selling — and lots in the mainstream media are granting it in various ways — but it’s just plainly not true. And we’ve gone through this all before. Just compare all the postmortems in the past two weeks about “what the American people really wanted” when Trump won by 1.6 points nationally to the postmortems we got in 2016, after Clinton beat him by 2.1% nationally, but lost in the Electoral College. It’s all the same stuff.



Donald has no mandate.  And US senators have their own turf and, honestly, are not dependent upon the good graces of a president.  Dems in the Oval Office usually grasp that.  Donald still can't.  And he chooses one huge mistake after another as a nominee.  Steven T. Dennis, Jamie Tarabay, Daniel Flatley and María Paula Mijares Torres (BLOOMBERG NEWS) report:

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to skip over FBI vetting of his nominees, upending more than 60 years of precedent and putting him on a collision course with members of his own party as he tries to power his controversial cabinet picks through the Senate.

Republican senators have balked at Trump potentially forgoing the routine FBI background checks to install former Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general as well as other controversial nominees like Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon and Tulsi Gabbard, another former House member, to run national intelligence.

Trump’s transition team hasn’t signed an agreement with the Justice Department and FBI that would allow the bureau to vet nominees, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not be identified discussing internal deliberations. The agreement is typically an initial step to begin the process of vetting.



The nominees are a joke -- again,  -- and they spell doom for the country if approved and doom for the already struggling Satan if they're not approved. 

Take the deeply unqualified Pete Hegseth who thinks he can transition from talk show host to Secretary of Defense.  Rhian Lubin and Katie Hawkinson (INDEPENDENT) explain:


Donald Trump’s transition team is said to be “upset” with Pete Hegseth because he “hasn’t been honest” about the sexual misconduct allegation from his past – prompting insiders to consider other options to lead the Pentagon.

Hegseth was tapped last week to become Trump’s defense secretary but now those in the president-elect’s inner circle are “quietly preparing a list of alternative” candidates, Vanity Fair reported.


“It’s becoming a real possibility,” a source told the outlet’s special correspondent Gabriel Sherman.

The source said that the Trump team was taken by surprise after a serious sexual assault allegation against Hegseth came to light, which led Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles to question the former Fox News host on a call last week. Hegseth was never charged with a crime and denies the allegations.

“People are upset about the distraction. The general feeling is Pete hasn’t been honest,” a second source told Vanity Fair.

A “prominent Republican” close to the Trump transition team told the outlet that some are also unhappy with the president-elect’s choice due to Hegseth’s lack of qualifications to lead the nation’s defense.

“There are Republicans with a background in the Defense Department who are privately saying, ‘I’m not working for this guy,’” the source said.

 


He has no executive experience and serving in the military doesn't mean knowing all the many issues.  We went over this in Tuesday's snapshot and noted that any Republican serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee would be a better choice and know the issues involved.


Then there's plastic surgery junkie and alleged sex trafficker Matt Gaetz whom Satan has nominated for Attorney General.  They're trying to keep hidden both the Justice Dept's report on their investigation into Gaetz on charges of assaulting underage females and the House Ethics Committee's findings as well. Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) reports:




The Florida Republican resigned last week as soon as Trump announced his nomination, which complicates the release of that panel's findings, but former ethics chairman Charlie Dent published an op-ed for MSNBC arguing that Gaetz's exit from Congress should not prevent the public from learning what lawmakers found.

"Ordinarily, nominees for Cabinet positions are thoroughly vetted to identify any potential obstacles to confirmation," wrote Dent, a Republican former congressman from Pennsylvania. "Trump has eschewed any pretense of a normal vetting process and instead has sought an attorney general nominee prepared to torch the very department he would lead. Not to quibble about Gaetz’s qualifications, but he has scant experience as a lawyer and was the subject of a lengthy sex crimes investigation by the Justice Department that resulted in no charges filed against him."
[. . . ]

"Gaetz thought his resignation could block the report’s release and avoid having disturbing details from the report going public," Dent added. "Well, not so fast."


There's no House rule prohibiting the committee from releasing a report on a departed member, and Dent cites several examples of that happening in the past, when the panel issued a report on teen sex allegations against Rep. Don Lukens (R-OH) in 1990, misuse of campaign funds allegations against Rep. Bill Boner (D-TN) in 1987, and sexual misconduct allegations against Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) in 2006.

"The precedent of post-resignation disclosure is particularly stronger surrounding sexual misconduct by members," Dent wrote.

As it should be.  He didn't slink off the way most disgraced people would.  He wants to be Attorney General.  The American people have the right to know everything in that report.  As Marcia noted last night:


So let's review a few things.  We pay for the work members of Congress do.  They are working for us.  Remember that.  Matt Gaetz resigned from Congress last week to stop the release of an ethics report on him -- it would have been released last Friday.  By resigning, he was no longer a member of Congress and killed the report's release.  Riley Beggin (USA Today) explains:


The House Ethics Committee had an ongoing investigation into similar allegations. That panel planned to vote on whether to release a report on its findings just two days after Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress. Lawyers for two women who spoke with the committee have said they testified that they witnessed Gaetz under the influence of drugs and sexually assaulting a minor in 2017. Gaetz has denied the allegations.

Trump also tapped Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be defense secretary. A woman alleged Hegseth raped her in 2017. He has denied the allegation, and police never pressed charges against him. Hegseth admitted to paying the woman a settlement amount, saying he feared he would lose his job at Fox over the accusation.

In a previous political era, the claims against Gaetz and Hegseth would likely be the death knell for a Cabinet nomination.


He is nominated by Donald Trump to be the next Attorney General of the United States.  And where's the report?  He's accused of assaulting underage women.  So where's the report?  We paid for it.  He's trying to become the next Attorney General of the United States.  Where's the report?




Republican Senator Kevin Cramer has publicly rejected the possibility of a recess appointment for controversial Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, calling the move "unwise."

Cramer made the remarks during a CNN interview on Monday, a week after Gaetz was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be attorney general.
[. . .]

Amid the controversial pick, Trump has faced scrutiny from some Republican lawmakers, like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who have expressed dismay at Gaetz's nomination. Half of Senate Republicans, including some in senior leadership positions, privately saying they don't see a path for Gaetz to be confirmed by the Senate, NBC News reported.




 
There's the awful Linda McMahon -- see Rebecca's "the immensely unqualified linda mcmahon" -- proposed for Secretary of (Mis)Education.   There's terrorist Tulsi who members of the unit she served in complained about, who belongs to a cult and who does not have the experience or skill set to be the Director of Traffic let alone the Director of National Intelligence -- the post that, believe it or not, Satanic Trump has nominated her for.  And there's always the failure that is Junior.  Little man pumps all the steroids into his veins he can and still comes up short -- see Elaine's "Only tin foil hat wearing Lisa Pease is impressed with Junior."  Rachel Roubein and Dan Diamond (WASHINGTON POST) report:


Republican senators are poised to decide whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becomes the nation’s next health secretary. But in interviews this week, a half-dozen GOP lawmakers said they had questions or outright concerns about his nomination, with several citing his vaccine skepticism, as they weighed whether to vote for him.

“Look, I believe in vaccines. I think they’ve saved millions of lives,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) said in an interview. “If he has a different point of view, then he’ll have to explain them to us.”

President-elect Donald Trump last week selected Kennedy to run the Department of Health and Human Services, the nearly $2 trillion agency that oversees federal health insurance programs, medical regulations and vaccine approvals. The selection has alarmed federal health leaders and medical groups, who say Kennedy should be nowhere near the nation’s public health infrastructure given that he has repeated debunked claims about vaccines and made other false or questionable assertions.

The pick has also scrambled Capitol Hill, with Republicans trying to decide whether to vote for a former Democrat who has supported abortion, attacked the pharmaceutical industry and wants to change U.S. agriculture policies, among other positions that challenge GOP orthodoxy.


Junior, of course, brings along his thyroid challenged wife, an 'actress' of no merit or talent whose 'career' is several rungs below that of Mary Jane Croft.  

So, as the second Trump administration looms and her husband is poised to “go wild on health,” in Trump's words, pushing to change vaccine requirements, remove fluoride from water, and more if his nomination to appointed secretary of health and human services is approved, Hines is in the increasingly rare position of being a woman with choices.

One option: Hines could divorce Kennedy. She can point to the Nuzzi situation, which was reportedly consensual, if generally icky. (A third-party investigation into Nuzzi's work at New York found no evidence of journalistic bias in her work, but reporter and publication “agreed that the best course forward is to part ways” nonetheless.) A former babysitter has also made credible allegations of sexual assault, as reported by Vanity Fair (Kennedy responded in other outlets by saying he is “not a church boy”). The animal stuff is disturbing, and the anti-vaccine stance and false claims that stir up hysteria and dangerous medical situations that can result in entirely preventable deaths is not ideal either. Hines’ home state of California does still have no-fault divorce—but maybe not for much longer, if the Republicans have anything to say about it.

She could stay married to him and order up the Melania Trump Starter Pack: Dark, oversized sunglasses and a tight-lipped grimace pair gorgeously with legally wedded resentment and a sprinkling of “no comment” responses. Hell, Melania isn’t even planning to move into the White House this time around, sources say. Maybe she and Hines could hang out in Florida (Hines’ state of origin), get some brunch, and not talk about the havoc their husbands are wreaking on the country. You can be legally married and quiet, as both women have demonstrated. Last Thursday, Hines was spotted on Kennedy's arm at a Mar-a-Lago party, yukking it up with Team MAGA, Trump himself reportedly included. Maybe this is the sacrifice she's willing make in the name of plentiful shrimp cocktail.

A third option would be for Hines to take her own philosophy about improv to heart: Commit, 100 percent, and lie in the bed she’s made. The apparent path of willful ignorance and silence Hines has taken so far, as if not acknowledging Kennedy's campaign and controversial views would make it so that they might as well not exist, is no longer one she can walk, given the announcement of Kennedy's nomination and seeming inevitability of his continuing presence in the political arena.

Welcome to Washington, Cheryl. What'll it be?


Poor Cheryl, so pathetic.  And I'm finding it hard to believe -- well, maybe not -- that I know who he snuck off with last Sunday and Cheryl doesn't.  But Cheryl, you keep playing doormat -- it's the only role you've ever pulled off convincingly. 




President-elect Donald Trump’s flurry of announcements about his picks for government (and extra-governmental) positions seems obviously unburdened by consideration of how popular those choices might be. It is not common for a president-elect to identify a number of people with so little experience to fill high-level government positions, certainly. Nor is it common for a president-elect to be so uncertain about the confirmation of those intended nominees — by a Senate his own party controls, mind you — as to approach his inauguration with a plan in place to sidestep the Senate confirmation process.


It should not be surprising, then, that the people Trump has tapped are viewed with little enthusiasm among Americans more broadly.


These are the nominees we  get when 'independent' media like THE NATION, DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES, et al fail us by spending three months leading into a presidential election attacking not Donald Trump but instead attacking Kamala Harris -- and doing so on a daily basis.


As Steve Nicks asks, "What shall I say this time?" ("Straight Back").


My kindness is pretty much shot for the year.


So I wish so many of you writers would just stop bothering me.  


This morning it's a guy who wants his COMMON DREAMS column highlighted.  And I've told him not before.  He's one of the ones who attacked Kamala constantly.  Now he's going to be our answer?  F**k you.  You're part of the reason that Trump will be sworn in.


And now you think we should just forgive you and ignore what you did?  Your actions have consequences that probably won't effect you -- you're a White, straight male of a certain age.  But it will impact and destroy the lives of the many of the rest of us.


He wants me to know that he actually wrote some supportive columns about Kamala but COMMON DREAMS didn't run those.


Really?


Is that the truth?  Because if it is (a) you waited to share that until after it no longer matter and (b) don't share it with me, week after week, Ava and I documented how the 'independent' media was destroying Kamala's campaign with one attack after another.


I'm not your priest and I'm not going to absolve you.


If you want to share what COMMON DREAMS did, share it in a column.


But you won't.  


You'll just whisper it because whether it's Mika and Joe or some non-corporate lefty, you're all about protecting yourselves and the circle jerk you try to pass off as an 'independent' media.  


Your new column?  Weak sauce.  And the points you barely make should have been made during the election.  Cry to someone else because I don't feel sorry for you.  You're guilty and you're responsible.  And I'll feel bad for the way you destroyed hope for so many Americans, but I don't -- and won't -- feel sorry for you.


Senator Patty Murray's office issued the following:


Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reintroduced their legislation to clarify that victims of discrimination can seek damages for emotional harm under federal law—after the Supreme Court curtailed their ability to do so in its devastating April 2022 ruling in Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller. The senators’ Clarifying Civil Rights Remedies Act of 2024 ensures that people who suffer emotional harm because of discrimination they experienced are able to seek restitution under federal anti-discrimination statutes—recognizing that while discrimination may not cause a financial loss, it can and often does cause lasting emotional distress.

“Our legislation recognizes the plain truth that people who are discriminated against often suffer lasting emotional harm and should have the ability to seek justice in our courts, including restitution — even if the discrimination they experienced did not have a financial impact,” said Senator Murray. “The Supreme Court’s failure in Cummings to recognize and account for the humiliation and distress a person can experience after being discriminated against in a classroom, a doctor’s office, or other settings was a profound mistake — our legislation would right this wrong and ensure victims of discrimination can seek the appropriate damages they deserve.”

“Discrimination can leave a lasting mental impact on those who experience it. That’s why the Supreme Court’s decision in Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller is so harmful. It prevents those who have suffered emotional distress due to discrimination from seeking damages,” said Senator Durbin. “I’m joining Senator Murry in introducing the Clarifying Civil Rights Remedies Act to clarify that damages for emotional harm are available to victims of discrimination. No one who faces discrimination should be denied justice in court.”

In April 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts that victims of discrimination cannot sue under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 or the Affordable Care Act to recover damages for emotional distress caused by illegal discrimination. The decision denies many victims of discrimination an appropriate remedy for the harms they have suffered.

The Clarifying Civil Rights Remedies Act of 2024 makes explicit that remedies available for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act include compensatory damages, including for emotional harm. The legislation ensures that victims have recourse and that incentives exist to encourage recipients of federal funds to comply with our federal civil rights laws.

“As advocates for women and girls, including LGBTQI+ individuals and survivors of sexual violence, we’ve seen the range of harms that can follow after experiencing discrimination, including harassment and assault. The Clarifying Civil Rights Remedies Act of 2024 is critical for victims to receive remedies they are entitled to under our civil rights laws,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, Vice President for Education & Workplace Justice at the National Women’s Law Center. “Justice was impaired when the Supreme Court limited remedies for emotional distress in its decision in Cummings, but we are grateful for Senator Murray’s leadership in ensuring that victims of harassment have explicit rights to remedies for emotional harm.”

“Discrimination can devastate a person’s well-being. It can lead to anxiety, depression, and even substance abuse. Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Cummings, students across the country have been denied a financial remedy for the emotional harm that discrimination has caused them,” said Adele Kimmel, Public Justice’s Students’ Civil Rights Project Director. “The Clarifying Civil Rights Remedies Act is an important first step in restoring the availability of this crucial remedy.”

“Access to our nation’s courts is critical to make real the promise of our nation’s civil rights laws,” said Megan Schuller, Legal Director of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “When the Supreme Court failed to recognize the intent of vitally important civil rights statutes and erected yet another barrier to vindicating those rights, it placed Americans with disabilities and others at greater risk of experiencing discrimination in schools, hospitals, workplaces, state and local government programs, and other settings with no meaningful recourse. We are grateful to Senator Murray for reintroducing the Clarifying Civil Rights Remedies Act, which will correct the Court’s flawed interpretation and restore to people with disabilities and others the ability to access justice.”

In addition to Senators Murray and Durbin, the legislation is cosponsored by Senators Baldwin, Blumenthal, Booker, Casey, Duckworth, Helmy, Kaine, Sanders, Van Hollen, Welch, and Whitehouse.

The legislation is endorsed by the National Women’s Law Center, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Public Justice, American Association for Justice, Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the Arc of the United States, National Disability Rights Network (NDRN), National Black Justice Coalition, The Trevor Project, American Atheists, National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity, National Alliance to End Sexual Violence, Know Your IX, and Just Solutions.

A one-pager on the legislation is available HERE.

Read the full text of the Clarifying Civil Rights Remedies Act of 2024 HERE.

###


That's something to focus on.  Some pathetic and cowardly writer who helped put Donald back into the White House?  You're on your own.  


The following sites updated:







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