#but don’t blame the people whose families were murdered by democrats

[gayvampyr]

really, really don’t like this country

[mariacallous]

Restrictions on the opposition, attacks on free media and the arts, inciting hatred towards the LGBTQ+ community, intimidating journalists – the Slovak government has declared open war on a pluralistic society.

The brutal murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova in 2018 and the horrifying terrorist attack targeting the LGBTQ+ community in front of a bar in Bratislava in 2022 – two harrowing incidents from Slovakia’s recent past that seem to have been all but forgotten by the current administration, whose own trauma from an assassination attempt on the prime minister in May seems to have overtaken all others.

In the aftermath of the attempt on his life, Prime Minister Robert Fico continues to put a collective blame for it on a large and diverse group – ranging from opposition MPs and journalists to queer people and artists – that he openly derides as “the progressives”.

In September, Fico finalised his beef with the leader of the opposition Progressive Slovakia party, Michal Simecka, who also held the position of deputy of the parliament, traditionally assigned to the opposition at the Slovak National Assembly. Fico blamed Simecka for organising anti-government protests that criticised his ministers of culture and justice, and began a campaign to have him removed from his post.

Fico argued Simecka had a conflict of interest because the latter’s partner, professional dancer Sona Feriencikova, as well as his mother Marta Simeckova had both received numerous grants from state funds in the past for their projects. He also attacked the Milan Simecka Foundation, an independent human rights NGO named after Michal Simecka’s late grandfather, a dissident philosopher and writer during Communism, as well as Martin M. Simecka, the politician’s father and a well-known writer and journalist.

“The reason for withdrawing Mr Simecka from the deputy post is that his family has been sucking on the grant schemes for at least the past four years,” Fico said at a press conference on September 3. “The second reason is that he is abusing public protests; he is inviting people and sending them out against the ministers of culture or justice, just because these are the honeypots where Simecka’s family are losing their footing.”

“I don’t think there has ever been such gross abuse of democratic institutions before,” added Fico.

Simecka called it pure political revenge. “It is a well-known fact that I come from a family that’s been politically active for a long time. Yes, they are publicly active, but not just for the past three years, but ever since the 19th century,” he said in parliament on September 17, adding that organisations led by his relatives have received various public grants and funds for years before he even entered politics.

All information about them is public and no controls have ever found any problems with these grants, he said.

“Feel free to continue the attacks on me, on my family, go ahead. They have survived prison, the STB [secret Communist police], [former prime minister Vladimir] Meciar’s persecution; they will survive you and your amateur director of the secret service. We will handle it,” he said in the assembly before the vote was held in a rather quick session, which ended with Simecka being ejected from his post.

Following the vote, Fico crowed: “They are the freeloaders of Slovakia, and we will not stand for that. No one is arresting him, no one is kicking his door down, although he was clapping with joy when they were doing it to us.”

Fico asserted “a standard tool in the National Assembly” had been used to oust Simecka, but Milan Majersky, leader of KDH party said: “The fact that this vote even happened is outrageous. We haven’t seen anything like that in 34 years.”

Branislav Grohling, leader of another opposition SaS party, called it “a completely made-up case made to attack democracy.”

Journalists under fire

Over the autumn, politicians from Fico’s ruling Smer party have continued their unrestrained attacks on the free media and investigative journalists in particular.

Earlier in October, Fico filed a suit against the editor-in-chief of Aktuality.sk, Peter Bardy, for using his photo on the cover of a book about Fico, demanding 100,000 euros in damages from the journalist and a further 100,000 euros from his publisher. “If they wanted to intimidate me with this lawsuit and force me to censor myself, they were gravely mistaken,” Bardy responded in a statement.

That same week, Erik Kalinak, an MEP, and Juraj Gedra, head of the Government Office, both members of the Smer party, turned up at the Bratislava office of the Stop Corruption Foundation and tried to intimidate the investigative journalist Xenia Makarova, who had written a story about the government office carrying out a renovation project worth 5 million euros with a construction company linked to Norbert Bodor, a notorious oligarch linked to Smer who has been charged with corruption.

The politicians published a video of the visit, in which they can be heard calling the story a “dirty political campaign directed by progressive NGOs”. While the Smer party got 1,800 shares for the video on Facebook alone, the investigative journalist received death threats.

On October 8, Fico attacked the media at a press conference again, saying they were “possessed by the devil” in trying to do their hardest to damage his government. “You want to do harm at any cost! That’s what’s creating this atmosphere! Why was I shot in the abdomen?” he barked, adding that the media will be surprised by the results of the investigation into his assassination attempt, though omitting to explain how he would know about an ongoing police investigation.

“Stop it already! Because a reaction is coming,” he warned.

The form of the government’s reaction was hinted at by the leader of the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS), Andrej Danko, at the same briefing. “We will set up a National Media Administration, we’ll talk about media trade union organisations, about rules, because some of you think that you can throw dirt on us, disparage us, without having any accountability,” Danko said.

Journalists have expressed their concern about politicians in power directing such hatred towards the media and journalists. “First of all, if there is anyone who’s inciting violence, hate and hostility it’s Robert Fico,” Matus Kostolny, editor of the Dennik N newspaper, said during a public debate on how to save democracy on October 8.

“[Members of the government] have security, they are protected all day long, while they incite violence and hate against journalists, stand-up comedians, people who are completely unprotected. And that is so reprehensible and disgusting that if he doesn’t stop, it will end up really badly,” he added.

Pulling up the seedbeds of ‘progressive propaganda’

Cultural institutions as well as music or night clubs in Bratislava are generally viewed as beacons of freedom, tolerance and diversity. That is one of the reasons why the Teplaren bar was targeted by a young, radicalised terrorist two years ago, and that seems to be the reason behind various troubles these entities are facing now.

In August and September, two well-known cultural centres and clubs in Bratislava, Kacecko and Wax2, were subjected to extensive police raids. Patrons were surprised by the arrival of masked policemen with dogs in the middle of the night, who forced them to stand with their hands above their heads by the wall for hours, according to witness reports in the Slovak media and on social networks. One report even alleged sexual harassment of a female patron by the policemen, but that has not so far been verified.

The police said the main purpose of the raids was to deal with possible financial irregularities at the clubs and drug criminality. However, according to the police, the only things they actually found in the raids, beside the bars not issuing some receipts to customers, were a couple of small bags of “dried plant” or “white powder”, and four or five patrons at each of the clubs were charged as a result.

Although the official information doesn’t mention any shocking criminal activity uncovered during the raids on the clubs, the police refuse to acknowledge whether there was any political motive behind the raids and have expressed their satisfaction with the results.

However, the Smer regional party office in Pezinok has hinted at a wider story. “Some businesses in Bratislava have become seedbeds of drugs and progressive propaganda in the past few years,” the party office said in a now-deleted post on Facebook. “They have created a state within the state in the Vallostan and the clubs are on par with the Muslim mosques where the youth is stirred up, takes drugs and is being RADICALISED!”

“This is what it would look like if the liberals were in power. Drugs, tax frauds, nepotism… And we would be ruled by Roma boxers, plagiarisers and rainbow extremists,“ added Lubos Blaha, a Smer deputy and MEP, on social media.

The raids have been criticised by the cultural community, opposition politicians, as well as the independent mayor of Bratislava, Matus Vallo.

“The statement of the regional Smer organisation is horrible,” Vallo tells BIRN.

“It’s simply not true and words like these can have serious consequences regarding the atmosphere and overall life in this city, they bring us back to the infamous 90s,” he adds, referencing the violent era marked by organised crime and political persecutions in Slovakia.

“Some people might like the idea that a hundred young people, who had done nothing wrong and just came to a club to have fun, could be seriously traumatised after a rough police raid, but this kind of thinking really doesn’t belong in this century anymore. Especially when they [the police] know that drug criminality happens in totally different places,” the mayor says.

After the widely respected directors of the Slovak National Gallery, Slovak National Theatre and Bibiana children’s museum were fired by the minister of culture earlier this year, the national theatre has now blocked a planned play about the lives of LGBTQ+ people called Moon Stone, part of an international Drama Queer Festival, which was to have been performed by the Prague-based Studio hrdinu theatre group.

“I personally see it as censorship, it looks like discrimination, and what is worse it is also an international scandal that a Czech theatre can’t be presented at the SND [Slovak National Theatre],” Robret Pakan, director of the Drama Queer Festival, was quoted in Dennik N as saying.

Actors and artists who started a cultural strike in September have been regularly criticised by Culture Minister Martina Simkovicova, who said in October that “people should come to the theatre to be entertained, not deal with political activism.”

But what people choose to see or hear should not be down to the government, say critics. And that is not a ‘progressive’ view, just a simple democratic one.

[puttingherinhistory]

“PORTLAND, Oregon—Outfitted in a flak jacket and fighting gloves, Enrique Tarrio was one of dozens of black, Latino, and Asian men who marched alongside white supremacists in Portland on Aug. 4.

Tarrio, who identifies as Afro-Cuban, is president of the Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, who call themselves “Western chauvinists,” and “regularly spout white-nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Last month, prior to the Patriot Prayer rally he attended in Portland, Tarrio was pictured with other far-right activists making a hand sign that started as a hoax but has become an in-joke. Last year, Tarrio said traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Right rally that ended with a neo-Nazi allegedly killing an anti-fascist protester. (The Proud Boys said any members who went to the event were kicked out.)

Tarrio and other people of color at the far-right rallies claim institutional racism no longer exists in America. In their view, blacks are to blame for any lingering inequality because they are dependent on welfare, lack strong leadership, and believe Democrats who tell them “You’re always going to be broke. You’re not going to make it in society because of institutional racism,” as one mixed-race man put it. 

If racism doesn’t exist, I ask Tarrio, how would he explain the disproportionate killing of young black men by police? “Hip-hop culture,” he says. It “glorifies that lifestyle… of selling drugs, shooting up.” Because of that, “Obviously you’re going to have higher crime rates. Obviously you’re going to have more police presence and more confrontations.” (Police kill black males aged 15 to 34 at nine times the rate of the general population.) 

Elysa Sanchez, who is black and Puerto Rican, attended the “Liberty or Death Rally Against Left-Wing Violence” in Seattle on Aug. 18, joining about 20 militiamen open-carrying handguns and semi-automatic rifles. 

Sanchez says, “If black people are committing more murders, more robberies, more thefts, more violent crime, that’s why you would see more black men having encounters with the police.” 

Also in Seattle, Franky Price, who said he is  “black and white,”wore a T-shirt reading, “It’s okay to be white.” 

They are among nearly a dozen black, Latino, and Asian participants at far-right rallies on the West Coast interviewed by The Daily Beast recently. They represent the new face of the far right that some scholars term “multiracial white supremacy.” 

The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, which overlap, embrace an America-first nationalism that is less pro-white than it is anti-Muslim, anti-illegal immigrant, and anti-Black Lives Matter. “Proud Boys is multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide,” a lawyer for the group’s leader, Gavin McInnis, said in a statement. “The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best.” 

Daniel Martinez HoSang, associate professor at Yale University, co-author of the forthcoming Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, says “Multiculturalism has become a norm in society” and has spread from corporations and consumer culture to conservatism and the far-right. 

Indeed, Patriot Prayer’s leader is Joey Gibson, who is half-Japanese and claims Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a hero. But his agenda is the opposite of King’s. Gibson’s rallies have attracted neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis. 

His right-hand man is Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, a 345-pound Samoan American who calls himself “a brown brother for Donald Trump” and is notorious for brawling. By bringing diversity to what is at heart a white-supremacist movement, people of color give it legitimacy to challenge state power and commit violence against their enemies. 

David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, says, “The ranks of people of color who show up to these right-wing events are totally dominated by males.” He says the alt-right targets white males between the ages of 15 and 30 with a message of male resentment, which ends up attracting black, Latino, and Asian men as well.

Neiwert says many young men of color in the far-right grew up on conservative traditions common in minority communities. Their journey to the far-right has been enabled by the ease of recruitment in the internet age and the endorsement of extremism by Trump. 

Entry points to the far-right include male-dominated video-game culture, the anti-feminist gamergate, troll havens on 4chan and 8chan, and the conspiracism that flourishes on websites like Infowars. Libertarianism is another gateway. 

“A lot of these young guys,” Neiwert says, “especially from the software world, who are being sucked into white nationalism, start out being worked up about Ayn Rand in high school.” 

Andrew Zhao, 25, a software engineer, says his parents, physicists who emigrated from mainland China, “are Trump fans.” He found out about the Seattle rally from Reddit and Facebook and said, “We need more patriotism. A lot of liberals don’t like America.” 

Daniel HoSang says some people of color are drawn to the far-right because they “identify with the military, with nationalism, with patriotism, with conservatism.” 

Wearing a Proud Boys hat, David Nopal, 23, came to the Seattle rally alone, like others. Nopal, whose parents crossed illegally from Mexico, said, “I’m very patriotic. The U.S. isn’t perfect, but we are a hell of a lot better than other countries.” 

Sanchez comes from a military family. “They all love America. It’s a big part of the reason I’m a patriot.” 

Similarly, Tarrio attributes his anti-socialist politics to his grandfather’s experience in Cuba under Fidel Castro. 

They proudly identify as “American” without modifiers. In their America they’ve never experienced racism. They eagerly talk politics, but evidence of their America is scant beyond the internet. Institutional racism has been ended by affirmative action, “black privilege,” and equal protection under the law. Any remaining black inequality is caused by social welfare and liberal policies. In any case, it was Democrats who started the Klan. 

People of color within the far-right play a role that “excuses white racism and bears witness to the failure of people of color,” HoSang says, adding that they make “white supremacy a more durable force.” 

HoSang said the far-right is trying to broaden its appeal from a whites-only movement in a multiracial America, so it is “laying claim to the ideas of anti-racism, racial uplift, and civil-rights progress.” 

HoSang says, “It’s hard for people to wrap their head around how Dr. King and civil-rights language are being used to legitimate positions approaching fascism and violence to restore hierarchy and order. But they are.”

[blakelywintersfield]

As a victim of gun violence myself, I will be keeping my guns, thanks. Fear mongering? Maybe a little bit the fact is politicians absolutely “hell yes I want to take your AR15, your AK47”. They’ve said it often and loudly that they would like you to be disarmed. If you feel no one in your home is mentally stable enough for a gun, great, but you have zero right to tell others they should do the same.

1. If you're a victim of gun violence then the NRA gives absolutely NO fucks about you. You're not a victim of gun violence in their eyes, you're a victim of a criminal who happened to have a gun. Calling it "gun violence" is liberal propaganda to blame the gun, instead of the person. The gun didn't create the violence, the person did. That's their shitbrained logic and that's how they would respond to you if you told them (without disclosing if you're a gun owner or not) "I was a victim of gun violence." Because just like your dumb ass, they're not responsible gun owners, they're reactionary gun owners, and if you're reactionary as opposed to rational, you shouldn't have dangerous weapons, and your "you can't tell me what to do" 5-year-old attitude towards that would not hold up in a myriad of other scenarios. By your logic, suspending the driver's license of an elderly individual with dementia is unconstitutional. Not allowing someone with chronic seizures to drive is unconstitutional. Not allowing people to sell food without meeting safety and sanitation standards is unconstitutional. "You can't tell me what to do 'cause muh freedumb" isn't a fucking part of the constitution, you're just a chronic nationalist boot deep-throater whose mommy told him that the world owed him everything.

2. Where did I say guns should be taken away from you, or anyone else in my tags. Where? Here, I'll post the fucking screenshot of it and you can highlight it:

Please show me where I said "people should have their guns taken away" you reactionary cowardly fuck. I'll wait.

3. Politicians stating "no one needs a stockpile of AK47s" is not synonymous with "we want to take your guns". Gun buy-back programs that are VOLUNTARY are not the same as threatening to "take your guns". What benefit would you, as one person, gain from owning 5 semi-automatic weapons in the argument of "self-defense"? Are you going to wield one in each hand, one with each foot, and one with the mouth you can't seem to fucking shut? Do you think any of these weapons would protect you against government militia (which is what the second amendment is FOR, for one, and which the NRA does NOT condone if it's conservative sanctioned militia takeover) breaking into your property with a force of 10 people in bulletproof gear and military-grade weapons that could probably blow your fucking empty head off your body in one shot? Or do you like owning all of these shiny scary-looking toys for intimidation, thinking it'll protect you from future violence, like a fucking Halloween house made to scare away children? If that's your reasoning, then you definitely need therapy because that's textbook maladaptive coping with trauma -- I'd know because I have my own array of self-defense weapons that I got in response to my traumatic event, including a knife that could fatally gut an adult man with one stab. That's not a reasonable response to trauma!! But at least I can admit it! Your pisswad ass on the other hand can't, and views anyone saying "the NRA is a shit organization that doesn't support responsible gun ownership or the responsibility of gun owners and their actions, and is essentially a domestic terrorist grooming organization" as an attack on you as an individual, because you can't stomach the idea that maybe, just fucking maybe, you may be on that list of people who shouldn't have a gun because you're too mentally fucked up to be trusted with something like that, like people who are chronically suicidal (in other words, the MAJORITY OF GUN RELATED DEATHS), people with psychotic tendencies that can lead to hurting themselves or others (not because people with psychosis are "scary evil people", but because those moments of psychosis literally keep a person from making rational observations and decisions, and these individuals are already advised to have possible harmful tools locked up or just not in the house for their own safety), people like incels that believe if their entitlement is denied that they have the right to murder, etc. Honestly, you do sound like someone who shouldn't have guns, because your unstable ass probably read up to the second tag and skimmed the rest in a blind rage before sending an ask two days after I made that post, and seemed to conveniently miss the end:

What's your reasoning for the NRA keeping silent about responsible black gun owners being gunned down by police because the cops know they're legally registered gun owners (Jason Washington, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, whom the NRA defended being murdered by police while pulled over for a traffic violation, in his car with his wife and CHILD, and verbally informed the cop like a responsible gun owner that he had a conceal and carry permit, and was reaching for his wallet in plain view of his family and the fucking pig)? What's your reasoning behind them callously dismissing police violence against black people who are unarmed or have a history of supporting gun control (Botham Jean, Clementa Pinckney, fucking JAMES SHAW JR., WHO STOPPED A MASS SHOOTING WHILE UNARMED HIMSELF), as though that makes it their fault they were murdered, injured, or otherwise victimized? What's your reasoning behind them only piping up about "muh guns" whenever politicians say "there's a gun problem" after the 29th public shooting that month, but not tackling the issue of gun control disproportionately impacting people of color while letting crazy little white kids run loose with a multitude of firearms? What's your reasoning behind them siding with idiot fascist Trump's temper tantrum over the NFL's protests on police violence -- something they, once again, consistently respond to with "they should've been armed" if the black person wasn't, and give complete fucking radio static to if the black person was armed (even if legally armed)? They're so against gun control, but never seem to care when it affects black and brown people -- only when Jack Incelson, age 16, who posts on 4chan about how he wants to cut women's heads off and fuck their dead bodies, is at risk of not being allowed to keep his AR15. If people of color are killed while armed, it's justified because "they had a gun"; if people of color are killed while unarmed, it's their fault because "they should've had a gun" -- this is something the NRA is notorious for, because they don't give a flying fuck about people who should have the right to arm themselves.

4. On that point: I fully support the Socialist Rifle Association, even as someone who does not want to own guns -- because, as stated in the post you're shitting your diaper over -- I support organizations that vouch for responsible gun owners. The SRA holds irresponsible gun owners accountable. They actually support people's right to bear arms to defend themselves against tyrannical government forces. They are active in disaster aid, in environmental defense, in protecting people of color. I do not like guns but I 100% support the SRA, because they fight for people who do need to arm themselves to have that right, and I support that sentiment. I believe people of color should be able to arm themselves. I believe queer people should be able to arm themselves. I believe poor people should be able to arm themselves. But the NRA doesn't actively fight for any of those groups' rights -- the SRA does.

But you know what the SRA doesn't do? Send out unsolicited letters begging lower-middle-class white people for money so they can "fight the gun-hating liberals" from "taking away our guns n freedumb" and offering "i <3 guns" bumper stickers and shit in return. They don't view any political party as their friend because they know that Republicans and Democrats alike do not actually want you to be able to defend yourself against the government. They don't send fear-mongering letters full of hyperbolic bullshit to scare people into thinking that Biden or Obama or whatever Democrat is in the office is going to break into your house with police, beat your wife and children, and steal your guns while cackling maniacally over you as you sob "why mister president? why would you do this to your loyal and patriotic citizens?" The SRA opposes gun control laws that unfairly target demographics that are at the highest risk of police violence. The NRA does not, and, in fact, has a very heavily documented history of siding with conservatism, including making statements about things that don't even involve guns -- stating that American men are being turned into "second-rate women", outcried banning anti-queer discrimination and compared the ban to slavery, made a call to imprison people protesting against Trump's Cabinet picks, called the Women's March anti-American. These are all recent you shithead, so you must be purposely ignoring all of this to feel justified in defending this domestic terrorist organization, or you're probably a self-victimizing white man who can't handle being told no. Or maybe both. I don't know and I don't fucking care.

Don't fucking message me again. Unfollow me if you were previously following me and haven't already. Get some fucking therapy instead of crawling through strangers' blogs trying to find a reason to justify your irrational anger at them. And while you're at it, do me a huge favor, you cowardly fucking cunt: go to your nearest sex shop, buy 5 gallons of lube, pour them over your guns, and shove each and every one of them, fully loaded, up your ass. That way you can keep a close eye on them since your head is obviously already lodged up there.

Alternatively, you can eat shit and die.

[lastsonlost]

I’m not sure if people have completely wrapped their minds around this, but we have an entire political party that has converted into an authoritarian—albeit Americanized version—style of politics that cares nothing about U.S. democracy or anyone who is not white.

With the exception of a few dissenting Republican senators who aren’t up for reelection until 2024 or 2026 (only Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is on the ballot in 2022) or are retiring, the GOP not only acquitted Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection that he clearly incited, but they told Republican voters that the lies Trump told them were true: The election was stolen and you have a right to be angry about that.

And it’s working.

During the impeachment trial last week, his defense lawyers reinforced those lies, and Republicans basically sat by and said nothing to counter them. They, in effect, are a party of turncoats. What makes their behavior so terrifying is that Democrats, who hold control of the Senate by only Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, are left with no choice but to negotiate with the very people whose leading members encouraged the coup and instigated supporters to undermine American institutions.

Pam Keith, a U.S. Navy veteran who ran out of Florida’s 18th Congressional District as the Democratic nominee, told The Root that Democrats should give up on working with Republicans as if they are operating in good faith and have shown that they will be as corrupt and obstructionist as Trump.

“What they’re saying is we don’t care that he broke the law,” said Keith, who also hosts the politics show But What It Really Means. “He’s our guy and we’re with our guy and there’s nothing you can say to make us turn on our guy. He’s above the law. He’s above the Constitution. He is above the well-being of the United States because he’s our mechanism to retaining power. That is the absolute definition of totalitarian dictatorship. We don’t care what he does—especially if what he does hurts you,” she said.

“You cannot live in a diverse country when the paradigm is oppressed or be oppressed. That’s what’s going on in South Sudan right now. There’s only one way: bloody conflict. The only way a country like ours survives is through mutual agreement to set a standard. That’s what the Constitution is. That’s what the rule of law is. If you don’t have that, then there’s no incentive to peacefully allow the other sides to exercise power.”

Kyle Bibby, national campaign manager at Common Defense and a former Marine Corps Infantry officer, told The Root that had a foreign entity engaged in an attack similar to the Jan. 6 coup attempt or rallied the support of the main culprit thereafter, the U.S. military would have responded with an offensive strike or at the minimum stiff economic penalties. But he added that the militias and Trump supporters who were there are ultimately not so much the issue as is the Republican Party that empowers them.

When asked about the violent insurrectionists, Bibby said, “If they were in Afghanistan, we would’ve hit them. Either a raid, drop a bomb on them, whatever it is.” He continued, “But the organizations that are funding this and who are backing this that are creating the political movement behind this are organizations like Fox News, Breitbart, One America News Network, and the Republican Party. If these organizations existed in another country, we would be sanctioning them. We would be seizing their assets for inciting terroristic threats against an American ally or against U.S. interests.”

Mind you, Republicans lead a meaningless investigation into the Benghazi attack, accusing Democrats of being soft on terrorism. They forced Susan Rice to withdraw her name from consideration for Obama’s secretary of state because of their unfounded claims that she did not react appropriately to the 2012 attacks on the American consulate in Libya. They drilled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in very bad faith, for hours over her management of the tragedy during a hearing in 2015. Meanwhile, when it comes to the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Republican Congress members called for the nation to move on and acquitted the man responsible for inciting it.

“The bottom line is that this kind of white nationalist violence was never taken seriously,” Pam Campos-Palma, director of Peace & Security at the Working Families Party, told The Root, “because it is inherent to the GOP, policing and national security institutions.”

In addition to terrorism against their fellow citizens and authoritarian behavior, Republicans also traffic in conspiracy theories. Newly sworn member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) has become Trump’s loudest disseminator of conspiracy theories and lies about the 2020 election, according to CNN:

Greene also peddled in 2017 the debunked “Clinton Kill List” or “Clinton Body Count” conspiracy, which alleges the Clintons have assassinated their associates. She spread false conspiracies the Clintons were involved in sextrafficking and peddled the cruel conspiracy that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was not killed during an attempted robbery but murdered by Democratic actors.

CNN’s KFile previously reported that Greene in 2017 peddled the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, a debunked conspiracy alleging that Clinton and other Democratic Party leaders were running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring out of a pizzeria in Washington, DC. In a blog post, she suggested that the White supremacist rally held in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, that killed one woman was an “inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites.” Greene also endorsed 9/11 trutherism conspiracies and falsely claimed there was no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon, according to reporting from Media Matters.

She was stripped of her committee assignments, but the GOP leadership still supported her.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is blaming wind turbines and the Green New Deal for power outages across his state—which are lies. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spent more than seven minutes debunking right-wing media lies about the outages, but Republicans in Congress aren’t doing much to quell them. In fact, they are spreading them. Much of why they are doing this is because they feel their power is being threatened and the only way to galvanize support for their causes is through lying and scaring people so intensely that they will see lies as truth. Those people are the ideal type of supporters Republicans can groom into ill-informed and lethal insurrectionists and white supremacists who will help you maintain power—even if it destroys the country, so long as enough of the “enemy”—Black folks and people of color—suffer and/or die as a result.

Malcolm Nance, a national security expert and author of the upcoming book, They Want to Kill Americans: The Armed Militias, The Fanatical Terrorists, and The Deranged Ideology of the Coming Trump Insurgency, told The Root that not only is the Republican Party behaving like a terror group, he predicted soon after the Charlottesville, Va., attacks in 2017 that Trump’s use of insurrectionist language—“stand down and stand by”—essentially would become a white supremacist call to arms akin to kind of terrorist extremism he saw as a military intelligence officer.

“If Trump wins, these unofficial paramilitaries, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boys, the state militias, all these other groups, are essentially going to become semi-official Brownshirts [the original paramilitary of Germany’s Nazi Party] of the Trump campaign,” he said. “If Trump loses, these people are going to become the Iraq insurgents. They’re going to go underground. They’re going to be furious and, over time, with the Trump campaign leading as the political wing of this insurgency. With a president in exile, those people will resort to armed violence, political standoffs, and terrorism.”

He said the reason why these threats aren’t taken seriously is because white people do not take white terrorism seriously. He brought up a post-election appearance on Bill Maher where he was a guest with an expert from George Washington University who said his analysis was over the top.

“She’s all, ‘Tone it down. Kumbaya,’ and I’m telling her what I’ve seen for the last six months, which is, the alt-right has transformed itself into the paramilitary arm of the Trump campaign,” he said. “Now that Trump has lost that election, they are going to be the Iraq insurgents. The Republican Party will view themselves as Sinn Fein and the Republican base will view themselves as the white Catholics who think they’ve got to support the IRA.”

Nance added: “Black evidence is never believed until a white person confirms it.”

Democrats introduced a resolution calling for an investigation into white supremacy earlier this month. This week, the NAACP, civil rights law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss) are suing Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and two white nationalist groups over the coup. While these are promising steps, Democrats have few options to get to the heart of white terrorism because their Republican colleagues in Congress benefit from it politically. We have to view the GOP as enemy combatants because, for years, they have proven that Democrats are theirs.

As far as Keith is concerned, Democrats have to go hard. That means going as far as pressuring any Democrat who supports the filibuster into changing their mind or face a primary challenge. The days of compromise are dead. Obama should have taught us that much. The GOP went to war with him for eight years and Democrats, along with much of America, suffered.

We don’t want to be as gangsta as they are,” Keith said of Democrats in Congress. “We still have this delusion of bipartisanship. There’s no fucking bipartisanship. Get off that ship. It does not work. It’s sinking. It’s done. It’s at the bottom of the ocean. It’s the fucking Titanic. It’s down in the water. Let it go.”

Update: 2/19/2012, 5:23 p.m. ET: A quote by Kyle Bibby was clarified to reflect that he meant that the insurrectionists would be bombed not the GOP.

[antoine-roquentin]

In 2015, Ukraine’s president signed a law whose critics say stifles debate on the historical record of World War II and whitewashes local perpetrators of the Holocaust.

Law 2538-1 criminalized any rhetoric insulting to the memory of anti-communist partisans. And it celebrates the legacy of such combatants – ostensibly including the ones who murdered countless Jewish and Polish citizens while collaborating with Nazi Germany.

The law generated some backlash, including an open letter by more than 70 historians who said it “contradicts the right to freedom of speech,” ignores complicity in the Holocaust and would “damage Ukraine’s national security.”

But as with similar measures in Europe’s ex-communist nations, the Ukraine law generated little opposition or even attention internationally — especially when compared to the loud objections to a similar measure in Poland that was signed into law on Tuesday by the president. The law had passed both houses of parliament in recent days. The United States and Israel joined historians and Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust authority in decrying the bill.

“The Ukrainian and Polish laws are similar, but in Ukraine’s case we didn’t see anything even close” to the avalanche of condemnations that Poland received, said Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee and a longtime campaigner against Holocaust revision in Ukraine. “I wish we had; maybe this law could have been stopped in Ukraine.”

To activists like Dolinsky, the singling out of Poland reflects the ongoing politicization of the debate on Eastern Europe’s bloody World War II history. They say the conversation is distorted by geopolitical tensions involving Russia, populism, ignorance and unresolved national traumas.

There are clear similarities between the Ukrainian and Polish laws, according to Alex Ryvchin, a Kiev-born Australian-Jewish journalist and author who has written about the politics of memory in Eastern Europe.

“Both seek to use the legitimacy and force of law to enshrine an official narrative of victimhood, heroism and righteousness while criminalizing public discussion of historical truths that contradict or undermine these narratives,” he said. Yet, he noted, “The reaction to the Polish law has indeed dwarfed the response to persistent state revisionism elsewhere in Europe in spite of the fact that the rate of collaboration was generally lower in Poland than in Ukraine and Latvia.”

The Baltic nations of Lithuania and Latvia were pioneers in nationalist legislation that limits discourse about the Holocaust in their territories. Critics say these laws also shift the blame for the murder of Jews, which was done with local helpers, to Nazi Germany alone. They also seem to equate the Nazi genocide with political repression by the Soviet Union – which many in the former Soviet Union blame on Jewish communists.

In 2010 Lithuania — a country where Nazi collaborators virtually wiped out a Jewish community of 250,000 — amended its criminal code, prescribing up to two years in jail to anyone who “denies or grossly underestimates” the crime of genocide or “other crimes against humanity or war crimes committed by the USSR or Nazi Germany against Lithuanian residents.”

Similar legislation in Latvia from 2014 imposes up to five years in jail for those who deny the role of “the foreign powers that have perpetrated crimes against Latvia and the Latvian nation,” without mentioning the involvement of Latvian SS volunteers in murdering nearly all of the country’s 70,000 Jews.

The denial of local culpability during the Holocaust is at the root of opposition to Poland’s law, which sets a maximum of six years in jail for “whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation or the Polish state of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich” or ”grossly diminishes the responsibility of the actual perpetrators.” On Tuesday, President Andrzej Duda said he would sign the laws (which he did later in the day), finalizing them, but also refer them for review by Poland’s highest court.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in the past has been criticized for not calling out his country’s Eastern European allies on these issues, called the Polish legislation “baseless” and said Israel opposed it. The U.S. State Department in a statement suggested it could have “repercussions” for bilateral relations with Poland.

Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s scheduled visit to Poland this week was canceled after he criticized the law, which Israel’s embassy in Poland said was generating anti-Semitic hate speech in the media.

Back in Israel, the Polish Embassy condemned what it called ignorant remarks by Yair Lapid, a prominent opposition leader. Citing his credentials as the son of a Holocaust survivor, Lapid said the Polish law is designed to hide how Poland was “a partner in the Holocaust.”

Jewish organizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said for their part that they understand the Polish frustration with terms like “Polish death camps,” which seem to shift the blame for Nazi war crimes to Poland – one of the few Nazi-occupied countries where the Nazis did not allow any measure of self-rule or integrate locals into the genocide.

And the term is especially offensive in Poland, where the Nazis killed at least 1.9 million non-Jews in addition to at least 3 million Jews.

But, many Jewish groups added, the legislation in Poland ignores how many Poles betrayed or killed Jews and is therefore detrimental to the preservation of historical record and free speech.

Dolinsky in Ukraine isn’t a fan of the Polish legislation, either.

“But I don’t quite understand why it and only it provoked such a strong reaction,” he added. “We needed that strong reaction two years ago in Ukraine. This fight needs to apply to all these cases. For the pressure to be effective, it shouldn’t be selective.”

Dolinsky believes that Ukraine — which, unlike Poland, shares a border with Russia — is getting a free pass from the West because it is subjected to hostility from Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine amid ongoing psychological warfare against the Baltic nations, often involving the deployment of Russia’s mighty army around those countries in blunt loudspeaker diplomacy.

“There is a lot of Russophobic sentiment worldwide and it means international silence on countries with a conflict with Russia,” said Joseph Koren, chairman of the Latvia Without Nazism group.

“Poland and Hungary are in a different category,” agreed Dovid Katz, a scholar of Yiddish in Lithuania and longtime campaigner against Holocaust distortion there. The singling out of Poland and Hungary, he said, is “not least because the issues of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and restrictions on democratic expression in these countries have never been perceived primarily through the same binary lens of pro-and anti-Putin.”

Under that alleged cover of silence, in Ukraine and the Baltic countries there is a rapid lifting on taboos that had been in place for decades on the honoring of war criminals, even including SS volunteers who enthusiastically participated in the mass killings of Jews and Poles.

Largely ignored by the international media, Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis last week gave the final approval for a law that offers financial benefits to all World War II veterans – including SS volunteers who murdered Jews. Latvia is the only country in the world known to have an annual march by SS veterans, which takes place with the approval of authorities’ on the country’s national day in the center of its capital, sometimes with mainstream politicians in attendance.

Last year, the municipality of Kalush near Lviv in Ukraine decided to name a street for Dmytro Paliiv, a commander of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the 1st Galician.

Ukraine’s state television observed a moment of silence for the first time last year for Symon Petliura, a nationalist killed by a Jewish communist for Petliura’s role in the murder of 35,000 to 50,000 Jews in a series of pogroms between 1918 and 1921, when Petliura was head of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.

“There is less willingness to speak out on Ukraine in media, in the scientific community and in Western governments, so it seems,” Dolinsky said.

But this alleged turning of a blind eye, he added, is a disservice. “Ukraine needs to join Europe as a civilized member of that family of nations. And for that to happen, it needs to speak honestly and openly about its history,” he said.

To Ryvchin, the Australian author, the “particularly forceful reaction to the Polish law is likely because Poland is seen as the epicenter of the Holocaust,” he said. The Germans built extermination camps only in Poland, according to Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff.

“Any attempt to distort or disguise what happened in Poland is seen as a particularly egregious attack on the history of the Holocaust and the memories of the dead,” Ryvchin said.

Ironically, Poland is perhaps singled out for criticism because of the country’s vocal civil society and the lively debate it is generating over the politics of memory, Katz suggested.

Even today, he said, Poland and Hungary “have robust liberal movements that themselves counter official government policy on many issues — unlike the Baltics, where dissent is often quashed using the full force of the law.”

[ruminativerabbi]

Hatred, Fear, Hope

Like most Jewish Americans, I was caught off-guard back in 2017 by the sight of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, and carrying aloft the flags of the Confederate States of America and Nazi Germany. (That they were also carrying the so-called Gadsden Flag that was originally used by the Continental Marines during the American Revolution—the one designed back in 1775 by Christopher Gadsden featuring the words “Don’t Tread on Me” beneath a coiled-up, scary-looking rattlesnake—struck me primarily as a sign of how little these people know about the values upon which the nation was founded in the first place.) The sight of those flags being held aloft proudly and defiantly was beyond upsetting, but not particularly confusing. But what was confusing—to me and I suspect to most—was the chant “Jews will not replace us,” which I hadn’t ever heard before and which I now realize I misunderstood, taking it to mean something entirely different than what it apparently does mean.

Taking the slogan at what I thought was face value, I understood the marchers to be declaring their determination not to allow themselves to be replaced by Jews eager to take over their jobs and leave them without work and eventually destitute.  In other words, I imagined this somehow to be tied to the marchers’ skittishness about the job market and their need to find someone to blame in advance for losing jobs they fear they only haven’t lost yet and in which they fear they will eventually, to use their own word, be “replaced.” It hardly seems like a rational fear, but that’s what it felt like it had to mean, and so I ended up taking it as just so much craziness rooted not in anything corresponding to actual reality but in the malign fantasy that, left unchecked, we Jewish people will somehow take over the world and install our own people in whatever jobs we wish without regard to where such a move would leave the people currently holding them. And that is what I sense most Jewish people—and maybe even most Americans—hearing this chant took it to mean.

But now that I’ve read more, I see that that is specifically not what “Jews will not replace us” means and that the slogan specifically is not about Jews replacing Christians at work at all. Instead, the chant encapsulates the marchers’ fear that we Jews are working not to take over their jobs ourselves but to replace them at work with third-party others chosen specifically to deprive them of their livelihoods and their places in society. And who might these other people be? That, it turns out, is where anti-Semitism and racism meet: the hordes of jobseekers the marchers fear turn out not to be Jews at all, but hordes of dark-skinned immigrants feared already to be pouring over our borders and insinuating themselves into an already-tight job market. And it is those people who, because they are presumed ready to work at even the most menial jobs for mere pennies, are imagined to be threatening the white (i.e., non-immigrant) people who currently hold those jobs and who earn the American-sized salaries they use to support themselves and their families.

To say this is crazy stuff is really to say nothing at all. Yes, we have a huge and so-far-unresolved issue in this country with illegal aliens living in our midst and I’m sure that those people do take jobs that legal residents might otherwise have. And lots of non-crazy people, myself definitely included, are eager to find a way out of this morass that we ourselves have created by failing to police our borders adequately and by allowing the number of undocumented illegals in our midst to grow from a mere 760,000 or so in 1975 to something like 12.5 million today with no obvious solution in sight.

So wanting a reasonable solution to be found—one that is fully grounded both in settled U.S. law and in our national inclination to be just, fair, kind, and generous, and one that doesn’t make after-the-fact chumps out of all those countless millions of people who followed all the rules and immigrated here fully legally—is not crazy at all. What is crazy is the fantasy that Jewish Americans somehow possess the secret power to order Walmart’s and Costco and every other American business to fire specific employees and replace them with pre-selected others regardless of whether those others are or are not here legally. Crazier still is the contention that American Jews somehow control American immigration policy, and that we are somehow able imperiously to issue instructions that must be obeyed both to Democratic and Republican administrations. But craziest of all is the belief that, precisely because American Jews are so supremely powerful, we must be attacked violently before we order the administration to let even more immigrants into our nation. That, after all, was the specific reason the Pittsburgh shooter gave for his savagery in a comment posted online just before the attack: to give the officers of HIAS pause for thought before they work to bring in any more “invaders [to] kill our people.” My post-Pittsburgh proposal is that we stop dismissing that line of thinking as aberrant looniness that no normal person could actually embrace and start taking it far more seriously.

It feels natural to consider the various kinds of prejudice that characterize our society as variations on a common theme. And in a certain sense, I suppose, that is true. But these pernicious attitudes are also distinct and different, both in terms of their root causes and the specific way they manifest themselves in the world: misogyny, racism, and homophobia, for example, are similar in certain cosmetic ways, but differ dramatically in terms of the specific malign fantasies that inspire them and thus should (and even probably must) be addressed in different ways as well. And we should also bring that line of thinking to bear in considering anti-Jewish prejudice: similar in some ways to other forms of prejudice, anti-Semitism also has unique aspects that it specifically does not share with other forms of bigotry. Indeed, the fact that the anti-Semitism put on public display in Charlottesville was rooted in the haters’ groundless yet powerful fantasy about the almost limitless power imagined somehow to have wound up in the hands of the hated is all by itself enough to distinguish anti-Semitism from other kinds of prejudice. And not at all irrelevant is that it appears not to matter at all how impossible it feels to square that fantasy about Jewish powerfulness with the degree to which powerless Jews have suffered at the hands of their foes over the centuries, and particularly in the last one. In that regard, I would like to recommend a very interesting essay by Scott A. Shay, the author and Jewish activist, that was published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a few days after the shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue and which readers viewing this electronically can access by clicking here.

Nor is this a problem solely of one extreme end of the political spectrum. In the wake of Pittsburgh, the spotlight is on the anti-Semitism that characterizes the extreme right, but the same light could be shone just as brightly on the anti-Semitism of the extreme left…and particularly when it promotes hostility toward Israel’s very right to exist and to defend itself against its enemies. Indeed, the assumption that Israel—instead of being perceived as an outpost of democracy smaller than New Jersey trying to survive in a region in which it must deal with nations and political terror groups that openly express their hope to see Israel and its Jewish population annihilated—is perceived as an all-powerful Goliath seeking to eradicate its innocent opponents militarily rather than to negotiate fairly or justly with them, is part and parcel of this fantasy regarding the power of the Jewish people. Coming the week after Hamas fired over five hundred missiles at civilian targets in Israel, each capable of killing countless civilian souls on the ground, the image of Israel as the aggressor in its ongoing conflict with Hamas sounds laughable and naïve. But maybe we should stop laughing long enough to ask ourselves how this myth of Jewish power—whether focused on American Jews imagined to be in control of American foreign policy or Israeli Jews imagined to be intent on crushing their innocent victims for no rational reason at all—perhaps we should ask ourselves how we might address, not this or that symptom of the disease, but the disease itself.

Distinct (at least in my mind) from theological anti-Semitism rooted in the supersessionist worldview promoted for so long by so many different Christian denominations, this specific variety of anti-Semitism seems rooted not in messianic fervor but in fear. And that, I think, is probably how to go about addressing it the most effectively: by pulling that fear out into the light and exposing it as a fantasy no less malign than inane. By forcing young people drawn to the alt-right to look at pictures of the innocents murdered in Pittsburgh and to ask themselves if they truly have it in them to believe that U.S. government policy was until two weeks ago being dictated by 97-year-old Rose Mallinger or by Cecil or David Rosenthal, both gentle, disabled types whose lives were built around service to their house of worship. By forcing young people poisoned with irrational hatred of Israel to look at the portraits of the 1,343 civilians murdered by Palestinian terrorists since 2000 and to see, not predators or fiends, but innocent victims of mindless violence. By insisting that young people drawn to fear Jews and Judaism be exposed to the stories of Shoah victims—and, if possible, to surviving survivors themselves—and through that experience to understand where groundless prejudice can lead if left unchecked and unaddressed.

To hope that no one is drawn to extremism is entirely rational, but it really can’t be enough. Just as young people who seem drawn to a racist worldview should be forced—by their parents and their teachers in school, or by society itself—to look into the eyes of those poor souls gunned down in the Emanuel A.M.E. church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, after welcoming their murderer into their midst for an hour of Bible study, so should society itself rescue young people from themselves once they are perceived to be embracing the kind of anti-Semitism that led directly to Pittsburgh…and be forced to confront the bleak hatred that has taken  root in their hearts and to see it for what it is: a fantasy rooted in fear that can be overcome and eradicated by anyone truly willing to try.

[patriotsnet]

Are Republicans Trying To Cut Social Security

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-republicans-trying-to-cut-social-security/

Are Republicans Trying To Cut Social Security

The Republican Record On Social Security

Huff Post Reporter: Biden’s documented history of trying to cut social security

1935: Almost all Republicans in Congress oppose the creation of Social Security.

1939: 75 percent of Republicans in Senate try to kill legislation providing Social Security benefits to dependents and survivors as well as retired workers.

1950: 79 percent of House and 89 percent of Senate Republicans vote against disability insurance to defeat it.

1956: 86 percent of Republicans in Senate oppose disability insurance; program approved nonetheless.

1964: Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and future president Ronald Reagan both suggest that Social Security be made voluntary.

1965: 93 percent of Republicans in House and 62 percent in Senate vote to kill Medicare.

1977: 58 percent of Senate votes against amendment to provide semiannual increases.

1977: 88 percent of Republicans in House and 63 percent in Senate vote against an increase in Social Security payroll tax needed to keep the system solvent.

1981: President Reagan proposes $35 billion in Social Security cuts over the next 5 years. The cuts would have included the elimination of student benefits, lump-sum death benefits, and a retroactive elimination of the $122 minimum benefit for three million recipients.

1981: Reagan administration begins a wholesale review of the Social Security Disability rolls, resulting in over 560,000 eligibility investigations in 1982 360,000 more than the year before. Ultimately, at least 106,000 families were removed from the rolls.

Republicans Aren’t Going To Take Away Social Security

Without beating around the bush, the Republican Party is often associated as being the party of the well-to-do — and the rich typically aren’t reliant in any way on Social Security income. There’s, therefore, been a long-running belief that Republicans would aim to do away with Social Security sometime in the future. This is nothing more than another in a long line of pervasive Social Security myths.

Both Democrat and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have an understanding of the importance that Social Security plays in keeping some 22 million people currently receiving benefits above the federal poverty line. Though both parties may have suggested tweaking how revenue is generated for the program, neither party would remove or replace any of the three funding sources: the payroll tax on earned income, the taxation of benefits, and interest income on the program’s asset reserves.

In other words, no Republican is going to advocate scraping Social Security. And even if they did, the idea would have no chance of gaining traction in Congress.

The Average Retired Worker Benefit Could Be Cut By More Than $4300 In Less Than 15 Years

The good news, if there’s a silver lining to pull out of this mess for seniors and future retirees, is that Social Security won’t be bankrupt, even if Congress fails to act. Two of Social Security’s three sources of funding — the 12.4% payroll tax on earned income and the taxation of benefits — are recurring sources of revenue. As long as the American public continues to work, money will be flowing into the Social Security program for disbursement to eligible beneficiaries.

On the other hand, no money left in asset reserves would mean that the existing payout schedule, inclusive of cost-of-living adjustments, would no longer be sustainable. Translation: Benefit cuts would be necessary to maintain Social Security’s solvency for decades to come.

According to the latest Trustees report, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust would only be able to pay 76% of scheduled benefits once its coffers are cleaned out. Put another way, it means retired workers and survivors could face an across-the-board benefit cut of 24% by 2035.

Now, think about this for a moment. In May 2020, the Social Security Administration published data showing that the average retired worker was bringing home $1,512.63 a month. That’s $18,151.56 a year for the typical retiree. A 24% benefit cut would, in May 2020 dollars, equate to a benefit cut of $4,356 a year. That’s terrifying when you consider that 62% of retired workers rely on their monthly payout to account for at least half of their income.

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The Average Retired Worker Could Be Taking Home A Lot Less From Social Security In 15 Years

This has been a challenging year in so many respects for the American public. The COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed the way we interact with one another, and its displaced more than 20 million workers. If youre an investor, you were also taken on a wild ride, with the stock market packing about 10 years worth of volatility into a period of four months. And dont even get me started about the murder hornets.

But one of the few solaces working Americans have always been able to take is the idea that, if they earn 40 lifetime work credits, a Social Security benefit will be waiting for them when they retire.

The Social Security program has navigated through 13 recessions prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite some obviously grim outlooks during those previous recessions, youll note that Social Security is still here, and its been paying continuous retired-worker benefits for more than 80 years. This is why its often referred to as Americas most successful social program.

But just because its been a historically successful program doesnt mean its necessarily in great shape to service future generations of retirees.

What You Should Know About The Gop And Social Security

Who’s to blame for this mess? Well, some Americans would point their fingers specifically at Republicans in Congress. While they absolutely do take some of the blame, the inaction by Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill makes them equally culpable in exacerbating Social Security’s problems.

When it comes to Republicans and Social Security, here are the four things you absolutely need to know.

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With A Potential Debt Ceiling Increase Afoot Liberals Brace For Obama To Once Again Push For Social Security Cuts

Paul Ryans Wednesday Wall Street Journalop-ed was perhaps the starkest sign of a striking shift: a government shutdown and debt ceiling showdown pitched by Tea Party members to be about blocking Obamacare is being framed by GOP leaders as a push towards entitlement reform. In Wednesday interviews, leaders of liberal groups commended the presidents consistent insistence on not offering new budget concessions in exchange for reopening the government or averting debt default. But they pledged an all-out effort to defeat Social Security or Medicare cuts if Obama offers them once again after the default threat is delayed. GOP leaders push for a six-week debt ceiling increase suggests that moment could come very soon.

Charles Chamberlain, who directs the Dean campaign offshoot Democracy For America, told Salon that it would be a huge mistake for Obama to once again push the Social Security cut called chained CPI, and the president would face a gigantic amount of opposition from progressives nationwide if he did. Still, said Chamberlain, he put her on the table once before. I dont think hes going to take it off.

Meanwhile, the presidents support appears to have tempered opposition to Social Security cuts within the Democratic Caucus. A work-in-progress whip count from Social Security Works so far counts a dozen Democrats in the Senate and 46 in the House whose statements suggest they would oppose any deal including chained CPI .

They Haven’t Taken A Dime From The Social Security Program That Isn’t Accounted For

Another misconception is that the Republican Party stole money from the Social Security Trust and used it to fund wars. More specifically, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush have come under intense scrutiny for borrowing from Social Security and “not putting the money back.”

However, the truth of the matter is that Congress has been able to “borrow” Social Security’s excess cash for five decades, and it’s happened under every single president over that stretch. In fact, the Social Security Administration is required by law to purchase special-issue bonds and certificates of indebtedness with this excess cash. Please note the emphasis on “required by law” that I’ve added above. The federal government isn’t simply going to sit on this excess cash it borrows from Social Security. It’s spending this cash on various line items, which may be wars and the defense budget, as well as education, healthcare, and pretty much any other expenditure you can think of.

This setup is actually a win-win for both parties. The federal government has a relatively liquid source of borrowing with the Social Security Trust, and the Trust is able to generate significant annual income from the interest it earns on its loans. Last year, $85.1 billion of the $996.6 billion that was generated by the program came from interest income.

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Trump Keeps Proposing Entitlement Cuts And Then Denying That He Did So

In 2015 and 16, Trump differentiated himself from the rest of the Republican presidential hopefuls by campaigning on a vow to not cut entitlements.

Im not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and Im not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid, Trump told the Daily Signal, a conservative publication affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, in 2015.

As his budget proposals indicate, this promise was an empty one. Trump, however, seems to realize that cutting entitlements is a political loser for him, and as a result has continued to make assertions about preserving them that are at odds with reality.

All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they dont, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!

Donald J. Trump

Last month, however, Trump seemed to have a moment of radical honesty when he told CNBC during an interview conducted in Davos that at some point entitlement cuts will be on the table.

CNBC: Will entitlements ever be on your plate ?TRUMP: “At some point they will be”CNBC: But you said you wouldn’t do that in the pastTRUMP: “We also have assets that we never had”

Aaron Rupar

Those comments created a negative stir, so the very next day Trump tried to walk them back.

Democrats are going to destroy your Social Security. I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it!

Donald J. Trump

Democrats Have Already Signaled Trumps Budget Is Going Nowhere

Trump Vows To Protect Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid

While Trump tries to have it both ways by proposing entitlement cuts while claiming hes not really doing that, Treasury Department spokesperson Monica Crowley was somewhat more straightforward during a Monday morning appearance on Fox Business.

Asked by host Stuart Varney if she agrees that the new budget hits the safety net, Crowley said the president understands that Washingtons habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped.

Treasury Secretary Assistant Sec. Monica Crowley defends cuts to entitlements in Trumps new 2021 budget proposal: The president also understands that Washingtons habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped.

Aaron Rupar

But for Trump, not all spending is bad. While his budget cuts non-defense spending by 5 percent, he actually slates defense spending for an increase to $740.5 billion for fiscal year 2021.

Budget proposals are just that proposals. And while Trump insists that Republicans are the ones trying to save entitlements from destruction, the irony is that the truth is exactly the opposite: Entitlement cuts are dead on arrival as long as Democrats control a chamber of Congress.

Related

House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth alluded to this reality in a statement he released on Sunday blasting Trump for proposing deep cuts to critical programs that help American families.

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Is The Gop Really Trying To Do Away With Social Security

Social Security is unquestionably the nation’s most important social program, with more than three out of five current retired workers leaning on it to account for at least half of their monthly income. Yet, this crucial program is on shaky ground, with the latest annual report from the Social Security Board of Trustees painting a grim intermediate- and long-term picture for the program.

According to the report, Social Security is facing an inflection point this year. For the first time since 1982, aggregate expenditures, which almost entirely includes benefits, but also takes into account administrative expenses and Railroad Retirement exchange contributions, will exceed revenue generated. Although the net cash outflow is only estimated at $1.7 billion, which is relative peanuts when compared to the $2.89 trillion currently in asset reserves, it’s a conclusive sign that the existing payout schedule isn’t sustainable.

Things begin to get really dicey in 2020 and beyond. Beginning at the turn of the decade, ongoing demographic shifts are expected to cause the net cash outflow to balloon. By 2034, following 16 years of outflows, the $2.89 trillion in excess cash is expected to be completely gone. Should this happen, Social Security would survive, but payouts to then-current and future retirees could be cut by up to 21%. That’s not a pleasant forecast given the noted reliance of seniors on the program.

Meet The New Gop Plan To End Medicare Same As The Old Gop Plan To End Medicare

We here in the Democratic Whip Press shop will give Republicans credit for their transparency. They are not even trying to hide the fact that their Cut, Cap and End Medicare bill would end the programs guarantee.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said yesterday the plan basically mirrors the budget proposal that the House passed this year.

That would be the same Republican budget proposal that ends the Medicare guarantee and more than doubles heath care costs for seniors, all while preserving tax breaks for the wealthy.

And the Republican Cut, Cap and End Medicare plan is no different.

But dont just take our word for it. According to theCenter on Budget and Policy Priorities, the measure:

stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades.

The legislation would inexorably subject Social Security and Medicare to deep reductions.

In addition, the extreme and draconian Republican proposal would reverse decades of precedent that exempt cuts to basic services for the most vulnerable among us. More from the CBPP:

Since the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law of 1985, all such laws have exempted the core basic assistance programs for the poorest Americans from such across-the-board cuts. Cut, Cap, and Balance, by contrast, specifically subjects all such programs to across-the-board cuts if its spending caps would be exceeded.

Recommended Reading: Did Any Republicans Own Slaves In 1860

Republicans Will Cut Social Security And Medicare After Tax Plan Passes Says Marco Rubio

Update | Florida Senator Marco Rubio admits that the Republican tax cut plan, which benefits corporations and the wealthy, will require cuts to Social Security and Medicare to pay for it.

To address the federal deficit, which will grow by at least $1 trillion if the tax plan passes, Congress will need to cut entitlement programs such as Social Security, Rubio told reporters this week. Advocates for the elderly and the poor have warned that entitlement programs would be on the chopping block, but this is the first time a prominent Republican has backed their claims.

Expect all the guests on the Sunday shows to be Republicans explaining how they now have no choice but to slash Social Security & Medicare because the deficit has suddenly and mysteriously gotten much worse.

Bruce “Snarking and Barking” Bartlett

“You have got to generate economic growth because growth generates revenue,” Rubio said at a Politico conference. “But you also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt. The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries.”

Rubio’s talk of structural change is vague but will likely include changing the rate and age of Social Security and Medicare payouts.

So where does that money come from?

Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch said Thursday that “liberal programs” for the poor were wasting Americans’ money.

The Political Outlook For Social Security Reforms

But the Biden administration and its Congressional allies are instead focused on threading the political needle for an ambitious $3.5 trillion infrastructure spending package, while also dealing with the fallout from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Leading Republican legislators have called for so-called entitlement reform , but that’s a tough sell in the current ;Democratically controlled Congress.

“Does the report mean the timetable argues for real concrete action on Social Security? Probably not. Will it revive the rhetoric that the sky is falling? Sure,” says Robert Blancato, national coordinator of the Elder Justice Coalition advocacy group, president of Matz Blancato and Associates and a 2016 Next Avenue Influencer in Aging.

The issue over how best to restore financial solvency to Social Security isn’t going away. That’s because the program is fundamental to the economic security of retired Americans. Social Security currently pays benefits to 49 million retired workers and dependents of retired workers .

However, the tenor of the longer-term solvency discussion has significantly changed in recent years.

To be sure, a number of leading Republicans still want to cut Social Security retirement benefits to reduce the impending shortfall. Their latest maneuver is what’s known as The TRUST Act, sponsored by Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.

Read Also: Did Any Republicans Vote To Impeach Trump

Democrats Urged To Reject Latest Gop Attempt To Hold Social Security ‘hostage’

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday said he would be willing to vote to raise the federal debt ceiling in exchange for a policy that could result in cuts to Social Security and Medicare, a proposed trade-off that progressive advocacy groups implored Democrats to reject.

“Fortunately, Democrats can protect Social Security and Medicare by raising the debt ceiling in the forthcoming reconciliation package.”Alex Lawson, Social Security Works

With members of Congress staring down an to increase the debt limitthe amount of money the federal government is legally permitted to borrow to meet its financial obligationsGraham toldBloomberg that he could bring himself to vote yes on a debt ceiling hike if Democrats agree to legislation establishing commissions tasked with crafting Social Security and Medicare “reforms.”

But Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy organization, was quick to warn that Graham’s offer is a thinly veiled trap.

“Lindsey Graham and his fellow Republicans will stop at nothing to cut the American people’s earned Social Security and Medicare benefits,” Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said in a statement. “Graham has now telegraphed his party’s intention to demand a commission to cut Social Security and Medicare as the price for raising the debt ceiling.”

Social Security Works and other groups warned at the time that the proposal was nothing more than “a plot to gut Social Security behind closed doors.”

[breakingmllc]

Women Veterans Back The Blue I've Got Your Six Colorful T Shirt

Hand In Hand with Strength of Our Economy May Now Action Begets Action over the past Few Months We Learn What Essential Rising to the Challenge Not to Leave Learned Who Is Essential to Just the Wealthiest among Us President Who Fights His Fellow Americans Rather Than Fight the Virus Killing in Our Economy It’s the People Who Put Their Own Health Risk to Care for the Rest of Us Day at MVPs and Nurses and Doctors Utility Workers Truck Drivers and Grocery Clerks Childcare Workers the Parent Teachers and Mail Carriers Autoworkers so Many of These Essential Workers Lost Their Lives to Come Nearly Always and Healthcare Workers by the 170 000 People across America Including Five year old Girl Named Skyler from Detroit Guzman Is a Women Veterans Back The Blue I've Got Your Six Colorful T Shirt Police Officer Is a Firefighter Generation after Generation Nation Has Been Defined by What We Can Learn What We Fail to Do so for Skyler for Her Parents in the Memory of All Those We’ve Lost but His Heel As One Nation Let Us Find Strength to Do the Work Nodding Then Israel Will Remember Every. Me know and I will blame it will on the you know about anyone and invite friends data had a bad evil conflict items asked mashed and maybe a will kind of felt like that will be the can and 80 minus the ditzy to not to headings keep needs using expensive. And that’s important because life testing being done is not as they being done number one of the covert 19 virus number two in saliva or respiratory fluids and thirdly the virus dies the quickest in the presence of direct sunlight under these conditions and when you look better look at the aerosol as you breathe it put it in a room 7075 20 many low humidity last half life is about an hour yet outside cussed down woman and half very significant difference when he gets it with UV rays to present while are many unknown links in the covert 19 transmission chain we believe these trends can support practical decision making to lower the risks associated with the virus if I have my while I

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All things kinematic think he’s gonna make you the vice president by will be doing the lid to a Women Veterans Back The Blue I've Got Your Six Colorful T Shirt media is until Thursday he’s taken for this campaign needs to let you know I you can run indisputable whatever the hell is you could run that the Democrats he got the fake is being used upon and yet they correct their own pot and then you have the rhinos in the rhinos have the van and a cigar rhinos that I’ve eaten so badly over the age of the rhinos of people to do the every one of those guys just about IP because they all represented a client in the primaries and is saying he did a good job is a smart guy like you but every one of those guys take God not smart people but he wants to terminate religious liberty destroy the suburbs of the strike and saving the suburbs I’m getting right of the right I’m getting rid of the regulation project see a beautiful house congratulations you like having a nice project next year has set up a cell and with it comes plenty of crime that’s why they keep saying we only think he’s. Ross also goes to stark industriesand purchases some sonic add ins to help against the hulk regattas some less heavy news that she’ll agent whose colson’s friend melinda may starts datingand when she marries this dude called andrew garner’s now heroesand weird more crazy stuff has been happening for a while so she’ll start up the idea of the avengers initiative this program is designed to bring together a group of remarkable people so when humanity has to face a threat that’s too intense for regular old shield in the military they can help defend the planet experiencing this up as the director of shieldand so is getting eyesand people of potential interest for starting with bruce banner he goes in undercoverand finds banner in a bar somewhere which to me doesn’t seem the patient should be if you’re trying to stay calm but whateverand since into shield agents with the most generic names possible petersonand johnson to get the context banner but it goes a little sidewaysand better hoax outand runs away meanwhile back at youand century afterlife human young child called catcher can control her powersand is causing a lot of damage she runs awayand ends up in the middle east were filled colsonand the women they are simply shield to take her down is forced to kill small child to save the day which is obviously a little upsetting so she retires from fieldworkand takes a desk joband also causes her marriage to kinda fall apart now there’s this fun michael keaton type guy called adrian toombs living a good life for the wifeand little daughter called lives family is everything to tombs to support his family he starts the tomb salvage company which cleans up messes left behind by big incidents which seems like a pretty good idea as the world is getting moreand more superhero eand where their superheroes there are classic cities okay this time I start to get a little muddled here I know there’s a bit of a debate over which year the original aromatics basin but for a number of reasons that don’t really want to get into company in 2009 some people say it’s only like movies released some people since 2010 I personally think it makes no sense if it’s in 2009 especially in relation to iron man twoand other future films I meant to his sickness afterwardsand it features the stark expo 2010 so anyway you should matter that much but it is worth mentioning is still being a billionaire playboy at one point he gets into a bar fight get some assistance from his best friend james rhodes rhody a little later he was in order for something but what I status get it for him because he’s too busy sleeping with reportersand you know doing tony start things despite his playboy in us he also has something of a relationship some kind of flirtatious thing going on with his assistant pepper potts also he’s got a bodyguard called happy to see you know to start industries is still in this morally great business of selling weaponsand tony doesn’t really care because billionaire life but no but I saying the strategies the company for less than legal means he starts equally sign weapons to a terrorist organization called the 10 rings inand also pays the 10 rings to kill tony when he goes to afghanistan because I know but I can when the company tony free however they only kidnap tony once they realize who he isand manny build them weapons to use in the whole process tony is mortally wounded but his life is saved by fellow captive hellionsand mental health ins inputs electromagnet in his chest which keeps the shrapnel in there from killing in which tony benson turns into his dental pet project the arc reactor 10 rings also demand more my for staying because of who they had to kidnap vocalsand sent by shield to go talk to stijnand lindsay is back to shield offers to god himselfand save stark button cure for whatever reason tells them not to start building the weapons that the terrace demanded over three months stark with the help against them as a weapon I suit of armor that he can use to escape which is powered by that arc reactorand is just over this time start also earns a bit more humanity while this is happening natasha romanoff now a great agent of shield is sent out on a mission to escort a scientist in a run hydra sends out the winter soldier to kill the scientist he does so by shooting through them enough after those few months stark uses the armored suit to bust out of prisonand kill some terrorists escapes but yes it is killed along the way start crashand the desertand picked up by the militaryand taken home tony’s a changed man now so people stuck industries on the weapons business which obadiah is pretty pissed about thatand also you know tony is not dead then he is running the company yet tony also get closer to pepper spray a new art directorand start continue to refine his armor make you much slicker matter more weaponsand doing a little hot rod written there eventually he turns into what becomes known as the iron man suit this does take a few months so while all this is happening a woman called colleen wing who is pretty proficient in martial arts comes to america from japan she needs the crew to one of those ancient hat membersand gets recruited as a member of the hand but she’s under the impression that the hand is a good organizationand doesn’t know about all the mass murder of kellyand now the sweet mullet is putting a takeover of the world the first he’s got to get this extreme misting perfectand he needs firebreathing henchmen so he finds a bunch of army veterans who suffered serious injuries to be his test subjects injects them with extremistsand some are successful they grow back last lensand their super grateful some are not successful thoughand explode in a very painful way also at some point here in asgard double click a guy called in near tries to overthrow dennis king but he stopped by thor just a typical day for those guys now back on earth the 10 rings find stocks first armor suit that he escaped with lying around in the desertand they start piecing it back together stijn shows upand sees itand thinks back use thisand so start building his own giant iron man suit all of this is happening continues to make a suit way better now can flyand she repulsed blasts in STUFF he also gets a fancy ad about the systemand into jarvis after his dental butler theory is still quite intrigued by the sole tony stark character solutions vocalsand into talk to stark about this whole situation but stuck ambos moss tony also finds out that some of his companies weapons are still terrorists in afghanistan certifiesand kills a bunch of them because he can is a little brush up in the militaryand canada has revealed his buddy rhody that yeah he’s ironman pepperand finds out that stijn’s been working with terrorists sustains like well that everyone knows a bag I now let us look at tony myself yells exceeds by tony so live closeand goes with pepper to discover stains own iron man suit turning it back to full strength puts in a suitand instead have a consistency punch up stark winsand stained eyes the next day at a big press conference stuck supposed to tell the world that iron man is some kind of robot bodyguard they built but he goes a little off script I am guessing is more in touch with shield while stark is getting this press conference at the manco that guy how stark screwed over all those years ago who is now out of prison dies while watching it is on I think of us take revenge on the stark familyand in a surprisingly short time uses his dad’s old art director blueprints to make his own arc reactorand uses that to make an even cooler iron man suit just kidding he makes some electric lips after the press conference nick fury approach to stark himself this time about the avengers initiative is a guy with a super high tech suit could be useful the time is like air now thanks as he’s leaving starks house cure and tells them don’t need natasha romanoff or this one goesand also helps train this random guy called hendrix to be an agent of shield unimportant detail but it happened all this time jesse don’t forget bruce banner still running the military ultimately ends up in rioand start working at a soda bottle factory all the while stirring to contact a scientist called samuel stearns was trying to find a cure for this whole whole thing is to keep a low profileand figure out how to return to a normal life so she was getting mighty busy these days not only to have the soul avengers thing planned but they also start a project tahiti shield still has that creek corpse just lying aroundand after testing it they discover some of its bodily fluids have a healing effect they can bring someone back from the dead fury orders this project we started with phil colson in charge to extract some these fluids in the event that an avenger is killed in action needs to be brought back to some of the sun dying shield employees but it doesn’t go super well because they start going insaneand drawing maps about underground cree city cyclesand like well this program sucks let’s shut it downand so they do stark stone during the life of being a billionaireand also superheroand starts helping establish world peace as iron man going aroundand being a terrorists he also tries to have a relationship with a woman called lena as you know playboy however the 10 rings find out about thisand kidnap lena’s son afterwards blackmailing her in his dealings ireland blueprints for them however to find out about this because of the situation thenand saves her sonand then stop seeing each other is like how you come back from that stark is like seeing his assistant pepper potts does well peace mission continues as he stops group of 10 rings dudesand hackers from selling as weapons in italy also recovered some stolen paintings because why not messages continues to fight the 10 rings especially in afghanistan as he doing this serializes the corpus arc reactor is slowly poisoning him so he start searching for a cure over in brazil bruce banner is working at soda bottle factoryand one day he asked because his hand so some of his super blood goes in one of the soda bottlesand kill stanley which gets the governmentand military write on the sent now back over to hydra they’re working on yet another super soldier program because that seems to be all they can do after rascal serumand making roma peopleand after their attention to making a superpowered army by combining the super soldier serum with gamma radiationand some of that sweet extremist tech that they somehow got their hands on basically taking every superpower giving thing the mcu entering it in a big melting pot it’s called the centipede program that’s led by john garrett from before you must use it for his own purposes since even with the parts his health is failing also with the program you can plan your either let’s hide or see everything you doand also can kill you if you start doing something wrong another very kinsman like almonds lena starts running the stark expo 2010 to shove a budget attackand relationsand whatnot shows up in the flash to really be the tony that the world knowsand loves my cousin all great for tonio as he also has to govern the senate some of whom are members of hydra is there like the government you have your suit because it’s really dangerousand tony’s like hello claims that no one is close to kings techand he’s created well peace so the government should shut up testifying against him is the somehow smug or induce your tony stark justin hammer is rival in the tech world get out of thereand make up about the ceo stark industries okay nothing start to get a bit more complicated because the three different plot lines all happening at once so hang on lake erie sends natasha romanoff to go undercoverand keep an eye on tony understand the 10 rings are pretty sick of our menacing at their livesand so they get anton blanco was completed his arc reactor based whips away into the monaco grand prix which tony will be attending back in brazil the army’s tract number spends locationand attacksand where he lives the command of a mobile on ski first comes the hulkand runs away waking up in guatemala the next morningand deciding he should go back to his old university to look for more data on finding a whole cure because he just can’t take this anymore roadie who is now also that she needs a strike in the study to work with the governmentand starting to get mildly heated between them romanoff arrives at tony’s place is of the pill in a woman’s coffee unstuck steam so she starts throwing up so natasha can deliver some files to stark yourself to natureand acts exactly how you inspect them to tell youand goes to the monaco grand prix as promisedand stripper places a guy in the race is a guess you do that when your superhero is having a fun time driving when ivan manco shows upand these car in half luckily tony’s gotten on the go armor with himand he defends himself later tongue the bank on prisonand getting really nothing out of it this public display of other art directors being out there though but the government even moreand tony’s ass justin hammer sees thisand breaks I got of prison when him to make iron man like machines for hammer tech so he can upstage tony stark thank you goes along with this but really dispels bunch drones so he can later on post some sweet sweet revenge tony starting poison buys arc reactor in the publics against in the government on his backand himand his best friend are on great terms tony’s life sucks right now is this it was a big drunken birthday party for himself which ultimately ends with himand roadie getting the students who fight roadie not being told the drunk guys off of the suitand gives it to justin hammer unaware of what hammers actually doing behind the scenes meanwhile agent jasper said well she’ll agentand another undercover hydrogen is ordered to keep track of bruce banner one exterior goes to help start with his are correct poisoning also there are big disturbances in the atmosphere on this time in the southwest us caused by some commotion away in asgard which will get you that this concerns some people including astrophysicist jane foster she get in touch with another astrophysicist called xl bigand go to new mexico to check it out she’ll discovers this is happeningand keeps an eye on them now way back across the universe in asgard authorities finally of the age where he gets to be the new king even though he’s areaand a spoiled bratand locus jealous but hay is getting corrugated it’s his big day but it gets interrupted by the frost giant sneakingand owns vaultand trying to take away that casket of ancient winters point is that was really upset that his days ruinedand also that the frost I spokeand we know so that is bossy consisting of f than the warriors interchangeable coffee oppenheim to fight the frost giants for what they did this is specifically against oden’s instructions but again thor is dumband arrogant a fight starts but only comes aroundand breaks it up is pretty mad at the door so takes away all his godly powersand his powerful hammer mule near creekside note the owner was made from the core of a dying starand helps to control his lighting powersand also only be lifted by whoever’s worthy of it store down to earth new mexico specifically is harold’s land somewhere nearby as well as activity theory since vocalsand down to new mexico to check out all the business on his way their closest oxen armed robbery at a convenience store because he’s just not good back to start tony’s hang on a big doughnutand has a talk with a fury who wants to help them also natasha romanoff reveals himself as black widow to them justin hammer starts upgrading the armor really gave themand changes it from this to this while that’s happening tony discovers a map of the old stark expo at secret formula for making a new element that his dad left him all of those years ago which is also the perfect replacement for his arc reactor somewhat conveniently so yeah that’s fixed tony’s no longer dying now you just worry about the crazy russianand the smarmy businessmen at this point bruce banner is also gone back to the old university hang out with an old friend of his now justin hammer showing off his ivan banker design drones at the stark expo but vanco goes for zone motives of killing starkand hijacks the dronesand sends them after tony also hijacks the war machine armor with roadieand it is chase during which tony says a little kid is a fan of his called peter parker come in to play more later eventually ready to control the soup back in himand tony team up to destroy all the drones while black widowand tony’s bodyguard happy fightsand I got henchmen eventually tonyand 35 vancoand a giant iron man type suitand blowing them upand killing him by combining the repulsive powers hammer gets arrested gets a kissand really gets the armor kind of soup from not okay when the question meanwhile back in new mexico jane foster xl bigand jane’s friend darcy find thor all powerless like in the desert daysand then set into the hospital she also started asking thor’s hammer mule near owner realizes how big business in the situation could be so also sends clint barton to help closeand with it the escape from the hospital using his asgard trainingand meets up with janeand they start having a little bit of a romance back in asgard loki discovers that he is not shielding sonand I frost giant which makes them pretty upsetand falls into a deep sleep that has to take once in a while called oden sleepand locus is playing a treacherous plan to get owns approval back which involves the frost giants to attack inand then saving his dad’s life is adopted that not his real dad back with banner bruce meets up with bettyand they get back together however in the process the military figure out he’s thereand have for the locationand the loss gets injected with a version of the super soldier serum things to ross tobin take on the whole which means he can survive this sort of thing seeing gen. Help ourselves otherwise all the chocolates would just end up sitting in his cupboards for a year and he wasn’t about to get kids year old suites come next Halloween we basically had the jackpot thinking we could just rinse the old fellow of the suites and make up for the paltry amount we collected over what had been an unusually fruitless trick or treating session only he said there was one small problem since he was getting on in years and then get out much his oldest grown up son had come by to drop off all the suites along with his usual weekly shopping then without having thought it through his son and put all the suites in the top cupboard of his back pantry one that was way too high for him to reach without doing is back in if a couple of us were willing to help them reach the cupboards and take a few tens of supreme in the process suites were ours all of them 90 you’re thinking God’s name is daft enough to just wander into a complete stranger’s house in the middle the night apparently we were and See Other related products: I Don't Understand Your Specific Kind Of Stupid But I Do Admire Your Total Commitment To It T-Shirt

[go-redgirl]

By Clarence McKeeFriday, 17 July 2020 12:45 PMCurrent | Bio | Archive

The blaring July 13 headline in the New York Post said it all, "ENOUGH."

It was referring to the murder of one-year-old Davell Gardner when shooters opened fire on a group of people attending a barbecue in Brooklyn, New York.

Referencing the "Black Lives Matter" movement, the boy’s grandmother told the paper that black lives don’t matter because black people are "trying to kill other black people. It needs to stop."

The boy’s father pleaded, "Stop the gun violence."

The silence of black political and civil rights leaders and many millionaire black athletes and entertainers on the slaughter of black children in our major cities is deafening and shameful.

Where are the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Congressional Black Caucus, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Association of Black Journalists, LeBron James, Oprah Winfield, and countless others?

They are mostly nowhere to be found.

To the best of my knowledge, they have not echoed Davell’s father and grandmother's message.

It's much more comfortable and politically correct for them to blame the bloodshed on President Donald J. Trump, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and "systemic racism," and not the criminality of those who take the lives of precious black children.

They also have political laryngitis when it comes to demands to defund or abolish the police, the results of which will harm poor law-abiding residents in communities who need more police protection — not less.

At one time, black and white progressive politicians demanded more blacks on police departments.

No more!

They look the other way when black and white privileged anarchists target black police officers for particular verbal and physical abuse. In doing so, they give a nod and a wink of approval to such conduct.

While they and much of the white Democratic — and Republican — political establishments, remain silent, few are speaking up for the victims and their families.

That would not be the case if these children were not black!

Does anyone believe that other ethnic and/or minority political establishments in New York, and other cities, would be silent if their little children were being massacred daily?

Radical left-wing black and white groups, such as Antifa and the police hating "Black Lives Matter" movement — whose founders were self-described "trained Marxists" —have co-opted much of the black and civil rights leadership.

Why don’t they say that "All Black Lives Matter" not just black lives taken by whites?

They are afraid to condemn the violence because most of the murders occur in cities controlled by liberal black and white Democrats.

If Republicans controlled them, they would be leading "stop the violence" protests.

Instead of supporting the rule of law and public safety, they — including former Vice President Joseph Biden — join in the left’s chorus that systemic racism pervades our country.

Yes, racism does exist in many forms and various degrees in many institutions in our nation. However, the U.S. is certainly not the South Africa of apartheid or the old American South of segregation.

If that were so, how do they explain the election and re-election of Barack Obama as president? If this country is so racist, why do so many black immigrants come to our country?

For example, according to the Migration Policy Institute, between 2010 and 2018, the population coming to the United States from sub-Saharan countries increased by 525, with over two million immigrants in 2018.

Somalia, the country from which Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., fled, is one of the top five countries providing such immigrants.

Yet, she accuses America of having a "system of oppression" which must be dismantled.

If Rep. Omar thinks that America is so oppressive and racist, she may wish to consider relocating elsewhere.

She's more than welcome to take some of her like-minded colleagues with her.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. during a press conference outside the Midtown Global Market on May 30, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Black Leadership's Shameful Silence on Violence Is Deafening

By Clarence McKeeFriday, 17 July 2020 12:45 PMCurrent | Bio | Archive

The blaring July 13 headline in the New York Post said it all, "ENOUGH."

It was referring to the murder of one-year-old Davell Gardner when shooters opened fire on a group of people attending a barbecue in Brooklyn, New York.

Referencing the "Black Lives Matter" movement, the boy’s grandmother told the paper that black lives don’t matter because black people are "trying to kill other black people. It needs to stop."

The boy’s father pleaded, "Stop the gun violence."

The silence of black political and civil rights leaders and many millionaire black athletes and entertainers on the slaughter of black children in our major cities is deafening and shameful.

Where are the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Congressional Black Caucus, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Association of Black Journalists, LeBron James, Oprah Winfield, and countless others?

They are mostly nowhere to be found.

To the best of my knowledge, they have not echoed Davell’s father and grandmother's message.

It's much more comfortable and politically correct for them to blame the bloodshed on President Donald J. Trump, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and "systemic racism," and not the criminality of those who take the lives of precious black children.

They also have political laryngitis when it comes to demands to defund or abolish the police, the results of which will harm poor law-abiding residents in communities who need more police protection — not less.

At one time, black and white progressive politicians demanded more blacks on police departments.

No more!

They look the other way when black and white privileged anarchists target black police officers for particular verbal and physical abuse. In doing so, they give a nod and a wink of approval to such conduct.

While they and much of the white Democratic — and Republican — political establishments, remain silent, few are speaking up for the victims and their families.

That would not be the case if these children were not black!

Does anyone believe that other ethnic and/or minority political establishments in New York, and other cities, would be silent if their little children were being massacred daily?

Radical left-wing black and white groups, such as Antifa and the police hating "Black Lives Matter" movement — whose founders were self-described "trained Marxists" —have co-opted much of the black and civil rights leadership.

Why don’t they say that "All Black Lives Matter" not just black lives taken by whites?

They are afraid to condemn the violence because most of the murders occur in cities controlled by liberal black and white Democrats.

If Republicans controlled them, they would be leading "stop the violence" protests.

Instead of supporting the rule of law and public safety, they — including former Vice President Joseph Biden — join in the left’s chorus that systemic racism pervades our country.

Yes, racism does exist in many forms and various degrees in many institutions in our nation. However, the U.S. is certainly not the South Africa of apartheid or the old American South of segregation.

If that were so, how do they explain the election and re-election of Barack Obama as president? If this country is so racist, why do so many black immigrants come to our country?

For example, according to the Migration Policy Institute, between 2010 and 2018, the population coming to the United States from sub-Saharan countries increased by 525, with over two million immigrants in 2018.

Somalia, the country from which Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., fled, is one of the top five countries providing such immigrants.

Yet, she accuses America of having a "system of oppression" which must be dismantled.

If Rep. Omar thinks that America is so oppressive and racist, she may wish to consider relocating elsewhere.

She's more than welcome to take some of her like-minded colleagues with her.

[ageofgeek]

Cap already apologized to tony? I don't understand the hate cap got from civil war he did what he thought was right just as tony did 👀not to mention his motivation for half the movie was to stop a bunch of super soldiers getting set free that pretty legit Like I get the parent thing is messed up but tony did try to murder his best friend which is also pretty messed up so tony isn't innocent in this scenario and then cap was the bigger man and reached out to tony and gave him a phone so

Ohhhh boy, alright, here we go.

First of all, his “apology” was bullshit.  You know when somebody hurts you, and they say “sorry you got hurt” but not “I’m sorry I hurt you”? THAT is Cap’s letter to Tony, in a nutshell.  Let’s go through the whole text:

I’m glad you’re back at the compound, I don’t like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself. We all need family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine. [The Avengers are clearly not “Tony’s”, since most of them sided with Cap]. I’ve been on my own since I was 18. I never really fit in anywhere – even in the Army. [Talking about himself and his own problems to try to get sympathy in a letter that should be an APOLOGY] My faith is in people, I guess. Individuals. [But not the democratically elected governments of those individuals?  What about Charlie Spencer, who was killed in Sokovia and whose mother, Miriam, wanted someone to be held accountable?  What about the thousands and thousands of civil servants and gov’t officials who worked on the Accords over the span of 2 years and the 150+ countries who approved them?] And I’m happy to say for the most part, they haven’t let me down. Which is why I can’t let them down either. [He refused to even consider the Accords which, again, were wanted by most people] Locks can be replaced, but – maybe they shouldn’t. [This doesn’t even make sense in this context.  Steve’s actions didn’t break any locks. The Accords still got passed, just without his approval, which means nothing in a legal context] I know I hurt you Tony. I guess I thought – by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you, but… I can see now I was really sparing myself. I’m sorry. [This is the one good point in this letter, but then it is followed by…] Hopefully one day you can understand. [One day you can understand???? Understand WHAT? That Steve selfishly and hypocritically kept the BIGGEST SECRET of Tony’s life from him? For more than a year??] I wish we agreed on the Accords, I really do. I know you were only doing what you believe in [this makes it seem like this is all Tony’s fault. Steve was only doing what he believed in too - that doesn’t make him right], and that’s all any of us can do, it’s all any of us should.  [No, because sometimes, there’s this thing called compromise, and obviously, Steve has never heard of it].So no matter what, I promise if you — if you need us. If you need me, I’ll be there.

But moving on.  Steve’s position about the Accords in CACW is so problematic, but, since you didn’t really mention the Accords, I assume you understand that.  But I’ll talk about it a little more (because it infuriates me).

Steve does not understand modern-day politics.  That is through no fault of his own - there’s a whole lot of nuance, and he did sleep through 70 years of it.  5 years is not enough to catch up on almost a century of developments in regulation, globalization, and international diplomacy.  Tony, on the other hand, DOES understand modern-day politics.  He has juggled the American government and the military in every single Iron Man movie (Iron Man 2 especially), and he clearly understood and read the Accords in CACW.  Tony may not trust the American government or Ross (just like Steve), but he DOES trust the international community and the UN (which, for some reason, Steve does not?).

Steve thinks that the Avengers - a predominantly American based, PRIVATE militant organization - should be able to go into any foreign country they want to, to do anything they want, because the Avengers judge it to be right.  That is an extremely imperialist point of view, and it is downright disrespectful to other nations.  So 150+ nations agreed that they wanted the Avengers to work for them, to serve the WORLD, not just America, and Steve just…doesn’t agree with that.  And, I’m sorry, but Steve’s whole excuse about “people have agendas”? Yeah. Of course people have agendas. But, call me an optimist, usually people who work at the UN have agendas which benefit their own people.  If 150+ countries agreed on the Accords at the UN, you can bet that their agenda was PROTECTING THEIR OWN PEOPLE.

But anyway. I’m digressing.

The biggest problem with Steve’s defense of Bucky in CACW is that it is completely flawed.

He finds Bucky in Bucharest - where he has just been living his life - and forces him into the spotlight.  I don’t know if Bucky would have come quietly if Steve hadn’t been there and escalated the situation, but it’s certainly possible.  Then, even though Steve says that a kill-order was put out against Bucky, the soldiers take him in WITHOUT KILLING HIM.  Sure, the conditions he’s held in aren’t great, but, at the time, he was a suspected terrorist.  By the time Bucky and Steve arrive at the airport with the rest of Team Cap, THEY BOTH KNOW about the other winter soldier threats.  Tony comes and TALKS TO THEM, gives them a chance to come in.  And here’s the part that really matters.

Steve does not - and has never - trusted Tony.

If this threat was really as dire as Steve believed, then why didn’t he tell Tony?  Why didn’t he TRUST Tony enough to ask him for help?  Clearly Steve thought that Tony was in cahoots with Ross or something, which shows how little Steve knows about Tony’s character.  As evidenced by Tony’s later actions in the movie, he was completely willing to fuck Ross and come to Cap’s aid in the face of such a threat.  Why didn’t Steve know this?  Because he does not trust Tony.  Not since Ultron (which was not solely Tony’s fault.  For some reason, Steve doesn’t blame Wanda (who put the thoughts into Tony’s head), or Bruce (who had just as much to do with Ultron as Tony) for that incident).

This is also why Steve did not trust Tony enough to tell him about his parents.  Tony is a reasonable man.  Imagine if Steve had set Tony aside one day - FAR AWAY FROM BUCKY, AND THE VIDEO TAPE - and told him gently, as a friend, what had happened to Howard and Maria.  Tony would have been upset - he would have been sad, and angry, and maybe even violent - but his friend would have been there to calm him down and get him help and support.  Bucky would have been safe, Tony would have the help he needed, and Steve would have acted like a good friend to both of them.

Instead, Tony was given this information at the worst possible time.  He not only had to find out that his parents were murdered - he had to WATCH.  With the killer (mind control or not) less than 5 feet away.  Do you know how traumatizing that must have been?  Of COURSE Tony lashed out.  He’s a man with severe PTSD, a guilt complex, and anxiety and depression.  OF COURSE he fucking attacked Bucky.  Who would be thinking in their right mind in that moment??? But instead of just trying to defend Bucky and calm Tony down, Steve ACTIVELY tried to harm Tony - culminating in him slamming his shield down on Tony’s arc reactor, his MOST VULNERABLE PLACE (which undoubtedly caused even more trauma) and then LEFT HIM ALONE IN SIBERIA.

I’m not saying that Tony was perfect in CACW.  He should have actively distanced himself from Ross as much as possible, especially in front of hte other Avengers.  He should have communicated with the Avengers more, and he shouldn’t have brought Peter to Germany.

But Steve’s entire reasoning in that movie was objectively wrong and harmful.  And the fact that he still does not understand that (as evidenced by his “apology letter”) is very concerning.

[day0one]

What Top Conservatives Are Saying About George Floyd and Police Brutality

In her typical appearances on Fox News, Jeanine Pirro, a former Republican district attorney, reserves her highest dudgeon for castigating liberals and lamenting the demise of law and order.

But on Friday’s “Fox & Friends,” Ms. Pirro’s voice nearly broke as she described the agonizing final moments of George Floyd, the black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer ignored his pleas and pinned him to the ground during a routine stop.

“George Floyd was begging, saying he couldn’t breathe, saying please, please,” Ms. Pirro told viewers. “This man who put his knee on the neck of George Floyd does not deserve to be free in this country.”

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Even right-wing stars like Rush Limbaugh hedged their assessments early on, as the officer’s lethal force drew more condemnation in some corners of the right than the ensuing riots and the burning of a police precinct. “I can’t find a way to justify it,’’ Mr. Limbaugh said of the officer’s actions.

The chilling circumstances of Mr. Floyd’s death — particularly the graphic, indisputable video of his arrest — have, at least for now, posed a political quandary among some conservative politicians, media stars and President Trump, whose usual instinct is to focus on blaming liberals for promoting lawlessness.

The ongoing protests in Minneapolis and around the country may still alter conservative views. On Fox News on Friday night, Tucker Carlson began his show with a graphic calling the Minnesota protesters “Criminal Mobs,” and wondered aloud why Republicans were not reacting more intensely against the violence in Minneapolis. Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham condemned the demonstrators for, in Mr. Hannity’s words, “exploiting” Mr. Floyd’s death.

The law enforcement community is one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal constituencies, and he and his allies are in uncharted territory as they weigh expressions of solidarity with the nation’s police forces against grappling with the horror of Mr. Floyd’s death.

Initially, Mr. Trump issued a brutal law-and-order message early Friday morning, tweeting, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” His implication that protesters should be shot by law enforcement drew enormous blowback from Democratic leaders and other critics; some 14 hours later, he said his tweet had been misinterpreted, and later talked about the “good people” who were demonstrating in Mr. Floyd’s honor.

“They were protesting for the right reasons,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday evening, in relatively subdued remarks for a president best-known for bluster and vitriol. “They were protesting in honor of a man, George Floyd, where something happened that shouldn’t have happened.”

Aides to Mr. Trump said on Friday they saw little advantage in further inflaming a situation that had already turned violent across several cities. They were mindful, too, of avoiding any further alienation of African-American voters, ahead of an election where even marginal shifts in support could help him eke out a victory in November.

By Saturday morning, however, Mr. Trump had shifted tone again, writing in a tweet that any “protesters” — he put the word in quotes — who behaved out of line at the White House would face a “hard” response by Secret Service and “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.”

Casting itself as the upholder of law-and-order has been a perennial Republican Party strategy in times of racial disharmony and social unrest, from the 1967 riots in Detroit and Newark to Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.

But the stark footage of a white police officer kneeling on the neck of Mr. Floyd as he pleaded and moaned “I can’t breathe” produced an unusual moment when those on either side of the nation’s split-screen politics were, publicly at least, evincing a common cause.

The moment may be fleeting.

In an appearance on Fox News on Friday evening, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas faced tough questions from Mr. Carlson — one of Mr. Trump’s favorite anchors — about why the senator was quick to denounce Mr. Floyd’s death as “a horrific act of police brutality.”

“In this instance, we have a video of the incident,” Mr. Cruz said. “What we saw was wrong.”

Mr. Carlson pushed back, asking Mr. Cruz if he believed it was fair to bring a murder charge against the officer who arrested Mr. Floyd.

“Why doesn’t anybody stand up for the rest of us, for civilization?” Mr. Carlson asked.

The exchange, between two pillars of the conservative establishment, threw into relief the tensions that had played out on cable TV and talk-radio this week.

On his syndicated radio show on Thursday, Mr. Limbaugh expressed dismay at the actions of the police. “Look, you people in law enforcement know I’m at the top of the list of people who support you and understand how hard your jobs are,” he told listeners. “I still — given all of that, do not … I cannot find a way to explain that. I can’t find a way to justify it. I don’t care what the guy did.”

But Mr. Limbaugh also mocked the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, who had made a tearful plea for unity.

“This is a blue state where this happened; this is a state run by Democrats; this is a state run by leftists,” Mr. Limbaugh told listeners. “Don’t forget, these are the people who have been promising their African-American voters this stuff’s gonna stop for 50 years. They don’t fix anything.”

Senator John Kennedy, the Louisiana Republican, appearing on Fox News on Friday, called Mr. Floyd’s death a “murder,” but he also said “the people who are trying to burn down Minneapolis should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

J. McCauley Brown, the Republican Party chairman in Kentucky, said in an interview that “it’s unfortunate there are some people who are getting violent.” But he called Mr. Floyd’s death “tragic,” adding, “I can understand totally why people are protesting.”

Among some conservatives, condemnation of the Minnesota police officers was often entwined with disdain for perennial targets of the right: big city Democratic politicians, the media, the Black Lives Matter movement and others who conservatives have blamed for helping stoke the violence. On Friday, the Drudge Report blared a headline in capital letters: “Unrest Spreads in U.S.A.”

The president’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, seized on the backlash to Mr. Trump’s “looting” tweet to attack “the media, Joe Biden, and the Democrats,” ticking off a triumvirate of Republican boogeymen.

In a campaign statement, Mr. Parscale wrote that Minneapolis was “in chaos” and, without evidence, accused Democrats and the media of capitalizing on the tragedy as “a political opportunity and a chance to make money” — both offenses that Mr. Trump and Mr. Parscale himself are often accused of.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, wrote on Twitter that “what happened to George Floyd was disgusting.” But he quickly added: “There’s never an excuse for the type of violent riots unfolding now. No American should ever have to watch their own community burn to the ground.”

For years now, some Republicans have sought to turn the issue of racial inequality and injustice to their political advantage. The president — who famously courted African-Americans to take a chance on him in 2016 by asking “What the hell do you have to lose?” — has long believed that he could appeal to black voters by blaming Democrats for chronic problems in predominantly black communities like poverty, crime and poor schools.

The president’s decision to call the Floyd family and express his condolences suggested that he did not view this episode as the kind of racially fraught cultural battlefront he would otherwise barrel into.

And with the nation on edge, the gravity of the situation had not been lost on Mr. Trump’s team. At a Friday morning meeting, two White House aides, Brook Rollins and Ja’Ron Smith, argued it would be tone-deaf for Mr. Trump to roll out new initiatives, even those related to the coronavirus, in the next few days that did not pertain to the fallout from Mr. Floyd’s death.

All that could change, especially if the situation continues to deteriorate in cities like Minneapolis, and if cable news — closely monitored by Mr. Trump — is filled with images of violence and carnage.

“Give it 24 or 48 hours,” Charlie Sykes, a longtime conservative radio star who now opposes Mr. Trump, said in an interview. “This is the president who ran as the law and order president. It is almost irresistible.”

Mr. Sykes said it was inevitable that the conservative media outrage machine would ramp up as the right-wing playbook reasserts itself, after the short-term caution in the aftermath of a horrific murder caught on tape.

Indeed, by Friday evening, Mr. Hannity was warning viewers about “radical rioters exploiting this death of Mr. Floyd, committing crimes, justifying crimes, threatening more violence.” To analyze the protests, Ms. Ingraham brought on a provocative guest: Mark Fuhrman, the former Los Angeles police detective infamous for his role in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

For now, Republican officials continue to see two problems at hand, each of which they believe is serious and urgent. “I understand the protesters are frustrated and they want swift justice, and I feel that for them,” Laura Cox, Republican Party chairwoman in Michigan, said in an interview.

But, Ms. Cox added, “When it starts to be about breaking into police precincts, that’s problematic.”

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: November 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of November 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

In the mind of proven liar Boris Johnson it was a competition between him and David Cameron to see who could give less of a shit about various parts of the UK being flooded, and of course Johnson “won” that contest by not deigning to pay it the slightest bit of attention for over a week, comfortably beating Cameron’s previous record of not caring by a couple of days

It appears that Jeanine Áñez Chávez believes the 1970s was the height of South American politics considering her policies are a grab bag of every dictator of the decade, from American interests installing her as president over the democratically-elected head of state in much the same way that Pinochet became Chilean leader, while her outright demonising of the indigenous people almost identical to Stroessner’s policies in Paraguay during the same period

There’s a very good reason why the advisors of Prince Andrew expressly told him to not do any TV interviews about the links between him and Jeffrey Epstein, that reason being that when he ignored their advice and thought he could handle a TV interview about his links to Jeffrey Epstein it was a complete train wreck for everyone but the Woking branch of Pizza Express, which in turn caused his advisors to quit

Not only did proven liar Boris Johnson duck out of Channel 4′s live debate on climate change - just like he ducked out of Channel 4′s leaders debate earlier that same week - but he dispatched a camera-crew toting Michael Gove and his fucking father to debate on his behalf, both of whom were promptly told to bugger off by Channel 4 as neither are the Tory leader.  So of course, the immediate response to this was to threaten to pull Channel 4′s broadcasting license

...and the following day Stanley Johnson appeared on Victoria Derbyshire to call the British public illiterate, because in his mind telling the public they can’t even spell Pinocchio means they cannot compare his son to the character

Says a lot that the Conservatives stooped to doctoring footage of an interview with Keir Starmer on the very first day of the election campaign, trying to convince people that Labour’s position on Britait is difficult to understand, and this clip was shared by MPs such as Matt Hancock to establish that lying through their teeth is the first card they intend to play 

...although this didn’t look so clever when James Cleverly ran and hid rather than face questions about this from Sky News the following day, having previously had his backside handed to him on Good Morning Britain of all shows earlier that morning, receiving the empty chair treatment as a result.  He had no issues scuttling off to his LBC safe space where Julia Halfwit-Brewer would pander to his ever lie an hour later (and not, as Tory cheerleaders try and claim, at the same time Kay Burley was lying about him being at Sky News’ studio)

...and it wasn’t long before the BBC turned their hand to doctoring footage, though, when they took it upon themselves to edit out proven liar Boris Johnson laying a wreath at the cenotaph the wrong way up and replace it with a clip from 2016, and when called out for it claimed it was a “production error” as if it’s a perfectly normal mistake to remove a clip from footage shot by the BBC and replace it with a clip shot by the BBC three years ago that would have obviously been readily available in the edit bay as news editor Rob Burley accused anyone noticing the obvious bollocksness of the official line as “conspiracy theorists”

...and it wasn't the last time Rob Burley bullshat the public that week, either, as his response to the BBC using the caption “Broadband ‘Communism’” when discussing Labour’s play to make broadband free he took to Twitter to try and shout down anyone suggesting the BBC were outragiously biased in their framing of the story by saying the BBC weren’t doing the framing in spite of the caption “Broadband ‘Communism’” being added to BBC footage by a BBC editor at the BBC studio

...and yet the BBC weren't done with their Pravda approach to broadcast journalism, given how proven liar Boris Johnson’s claim during the leader’s debate that the public can trust him drew actual laughter from the audience, yet in every instance where the BBC have replayed that clip since the laughter has been edited out

Tory sociopathy continued unabated when Jacob Rees-Mogg stated in an interview that the responsibility for those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire didn’t lie with the landlords covering the building with highly-flammable cladding, but entirely at the feet of those who died for lacking common sense.  The only bright spot of the interview (or between his ears) is he neglected to follow up with the blatant attempt to shift the blame onto the fire brigade instead of those who just so happen to have slashed the number of firefighters and fire stations since 2010

...but don’t worry, in rushed Laura Kuenssberg to describe the comments as a “gaffe” as opposed to, say, a deeply-crass piece of victim blaming that is only possible if you see those of a lower social class than you as being sub-human

Nothing sums up the Tories better than the Tory Press Office changing its Twitter handle to “FactCheckUK” ahead of the first leader’s debate in a blatant attempt to mislead the public - and the fact that Dominic Raab tried to defend their doing this by saying nobody cares about social media only serves to beg the question why, if nobody cares about social media, why the Tories would stoop to using social media in a clear attempt to mislead the public

...yet that isn't the most charmless thing Dominic Raab did that particular week: that would be slapping the parents of Harry Dunn with legal costs fas if they’d actually done a single damn thing about Anne Sacoolas fleeing back to US soil after killing their son in a hit and run incident, and because he hadn’t punched down quite enough he promptly made sure Dunn’s family were locked out of a local hustings so they couldn’t give him both barrels 

...nor was it the last time the Tory Press Office was caught flooding the internet with misinformation, as they launched a website purporting to be the Labour election manifesto which was just a long list of outright lies and smears 

Nobody appears to have told Michael Gove that campaigning was suspended in the wake of the London Bridge attack, given he showed up to a campaign rally in Cobham that evening - sort of like he did in the wake of Jo Cox’s murder in 2016

The good news for WWE is their most recent biannual show in Saudi Arabia wasn’t the in-ring trainwreck the previous three have been.  The bad news is they found a new way to be at the centre of a PR shitstorm when the majority of the wrestlers for the show were stranded in Saudi Arabia and having to pay for their own flights home while management plus a handful of preferred wrestlers flew home without them, and only made the situation worse by issuing the usual passive aggressive ass-covering statement 

Not only has Matt Hancock spent the entire month being nothing more than an ersatz James Cleverly, whose role is to keep pumping outright lies and fabrications into the Twittersphere, but he also demonstrated the Tory debating tactics perfectly at a hustings where he kept repeating his repeatedly-debunked lie about nursing numbers until the audience were outright laughing at him, at which point he played the “Layber anteesemmatizm” card...at which point the crowd utterly tore into him for using such an obvious tactic

As if Jo Swinson wasn’t already farting deluded gibberish out of her face, it suddenly occurred to her that she’s a victim of oppression given she threatened legal action against ITV for not inviting the leader of the fourth-largest political party in the UK to the leader’s debates, and if that wasn’t all she constantly whined about Jeremy Corbyn and proven liar Boris Johnson being white men under the impression she doesn’t fulfill 50% of the victim complex she insists on whinging about

Good to see that the BBC are keeping their viewers educated, informed and entertained with their election coverage by pretending that proven liar Boris Johnson’s visit to Addenbrooke’s hospital didn’t happen as showing any footage of his visit would mean broadcasting the jeers he received from staff and patients alike, but they did find the time and effort to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of politicising the NHS - because as we all know, proven liar Boris Johnson has never used the NHS as a pawn in his political games

Somebody should probably tell the Liberal Democrats that telling the Labour  candidate for Portsmouth South to step aside so they can win the seat and bluster about how if they don’t will had the Tories the victory is not the smartest strategy to adopt when the Labour candidate is the sitting MP and they’re basing their assumptions off a solitary opinion poll

...equally telling is how the Liberal Democrats responded to Tim Walker stepping aside in Canterbury, which is another marginal held by a pro-Remain Labour MP: they immediately responded by saying they would field another candidate in the constituency and saying they would stand against Labour in every seat - which is interesting, because they sure as hell aren’t standing against the Tories in every seat... 

Not only did Kwasi Kwarteng pull a figure of £1.2tr out of his backside to describe Labour spending plans, both believing it would be spent in one lump sum while neglecting to mention his made-up figure is still significantly lower than the nine years of Tory-incurred debt, but then he claimed he wouldn’t bandy about figures when asked what the Tory spending budget was costed at

I’m sure Michael Gove thought he was being oh-so-clever when making as much as he could about Jeremy Corbyn being heckled for being a terrorist sympathiser by a church minister.  However, all he actually did was signal boost the fact that Richard Cameron had a history of Islamophobic and homophobic tweets, which saw him promptly suspended by the Church of Scotland

At first it looked as if Heidi Allen had coined a smart idea with the Remain Alliance...until a more cursory glance revealed that the basis of this alliance consisted of the Lib Dems standing aside for the Greens in seats where Labour had majorities of 5000+ at the last election while the Greens stand aside in Labour marginals, at which point the Greens started announcing they would stand aside in the seats they were designated to support Labour

Of course Ian Austin slithered out of the woodwork to rant about Jeremy Corbyn and telling all Labour supporters to vote Tory - and equally unsurprising was how it was the BBC giving him a free platform to do so while neglecting to mention that Austin has been working as a Tory-appointed trade envoy for six months, thus making his endorsement more than a little bit questionable 

Who knew that Richard Spencer was a racist piece of shit?  Well...anyone who actually paid attention for the last three years, rather than call him the dapper face of the right while ignoring what he was saying at any point

I’m sure in the mind of Jo Swinson it was a “win” when she took the SNP to court over their claims she was given a bung by a fracking company when in fact she was given a bung by the boss of a fracking company...but in the mind of everyone else what she did was clarify that the bung exists, that she accepted it, and by taking the matter to court she brought it to the forefront

The Lib Dems’ priorities became clear when Sam Gyimah outright lied and blamed the Labour candidate for Kensington for the Grenfell fire yet drew no comment from the party whatsoever, just like the Liberal Democrats posting election pamphlets riddled with one lie after another through people’s doors draws no comment from the party whatsoever...yet when a satirical article suggested that Jo Swinson kills squirrels for sport the party went off the deep end to issue one denial after another in record time

Smirking halfwit Priti Patel had an interesting take on the drastic increase in poverty that’s happened in the last nine years of Tory rule: it’s definitely not the fault of the Tory government and entirely the fault of the local councils - and of course, you’d be a fool or a communist to point out that local councils have had their funding cut for the past nine years by...well look at that, it would appear the Tory government are the ones who have spent the past nine years cutting the budgets of local councils

It says all you need to know about Michael Gove that, when confronted with evidence that the Tories have built approximately 200,000 less social houses than the 200,000 they pledged to build, the only response he could think of was “But Jeremy Corbyn...” as if that’s a valid defence for the Fyre Festival doing a better job of providing accommodation than the Tories have

It seems the Lib Dems forgot to lock Ed Davey in a cupboard for the duration of the election campaign as every time he popped up he justified the term “Yellow Tories” first by saying that he hoped that austerity would continue, and then by saying the Lib Dems would gladly go into coalition with the Tories if a second referendum was dangled in front of their noses

It’s obvious that Israel Folau has decided he may as well be an alt-right troll at this point, considering he used the bushfires that have left at least six dead as an excuse for a little gay-bashing on Twitter

It was dickheaded enough that Gideon Bull would resort to calling a Jewish councillor “Shylock” - but to try and cover his backside by claiming he didn't know that the character Shylock was Jewish only served to hand several dozen feet more rope to him before it dawned on him that stepping down was what he should’ve done in the first place 

As there weren’t enough subjects for Dinesh D’Souza to be pig ignorant about, he decided to wade into the debate about climate change and say there is no need to be afraid because fifty years ago fearmongers were afraid of nuclear winter and that hasn’t happened, seemingly under the impression that nuclear winter is related to the weather and not something minor like global thermonuclear war...

At some point Billy Corgan needs to accept that Jim Cornette is only doing damage to his relaunched NWA brand, especially after an episode of NWA Power had to be pulled and swiftly re-edited as they had to remove a joke Cornette made about the Ethiopian famine from the show’s commentary

Somebody at FC Den Bosch thought it was a good idea to try and claim that it wasn’t racist abuse that Ahmad Mendes Moreira heard from Den Bosch fans but “crow sounds.”  Funnily enough, Den Bosch were quick to say that, actually, that’s exactly what Moreira heard - presumably around the same time whoever thought the “crow sounds” defence was hearing the door slam shut behind them having been sacked by the club for general bellendedness

Indie wrestling nobody Matt Wade made sure he’ll stay a nobody by refusing to wrestle an opponent because they are black, outright stating that to the promoter this before being booted out of the show and blackballed from the promotion

The eldritch corruption known as Disney made an obvious mis-step when unleashing their nuclear option on all popular culture they don't own that is Disney+ by deciding that classic episodes of The Simpsons would be blown up into fullscreen even though fullscreen didn’t exist when they were made - which only served to crop out large parts of each and every scene, taking various visual gags with it

Footballers can thank Harry Arter for perpetuating the belief that they’re all thick after he took to Twitter to say he wouldn’t be voting Labour at the next election because of how Jeremy Corbyn lied when campaigning for Leave about how much the NHS would receive after the UK left the European Union.  That sentence would make a lot of sense if you changed the name “Jeremy Corbyn” for “Boris Johnson”, but rather than admit the flub instead Arter deleted his Twitter

Attention-seeking nonentity Rachel Riley really should consider her choice of attire, because when your attire features a image of Jeremy Corbyn on an anti-apartheid march doctored to say he's racist it not only makes you look like you have an unhealthy obsession with shrieking at people in the hope that they agree with you, but it also makes you look like somebody who thinks that the South African apartheid is something you can joke about

So nice of Stan Collymore to state that, when Andre Gomes was lying on the pitch in clear distress during Everton’s game with Tottenham, the one thing which concerned him was how Son Heung-min and Serge Aurier were showing remorse, going so far as to suggest they were faking it for the camera.  That doesn’t make him sound like someone who lacks empathy, does it?

And of course, a month simply cannot go by without Donald Trump doing something dickheaded, for example his repeated claims he is paying no attention whatsoever to the impeachment hearings...and then livetweeting as he watches the impeachment hearings live on TV.  But somehow that classified as normal behaviour compared to him Photoshopping his face onto Rocky Balboa’s body for...reasons

[thisdaynews]

Trump's strain with Pentagon inspires talk of more departures

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/trumps-strain-with-pentagon-inspires-talk-of-more-departures/

Trump's strain with Pentagon inspires talk of more departures

Spencer quit under pressure Sunday after Defense Secretary Mark Esper faulted him for a clumsy, underhanded attempt to finesse Trump’s demands that the Navy cancel a disciplinary proceeding for Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a SEAL who had been convicted of posing with the body of a deceased militant in Iraq. Trump had railed for days on Twitter about the Navy’s treatment ofGallagher, whose trial on war-crimes charges had drawn support from many of the president’s conservative backers.

Yet the incident was just the latest collision between Trump and the Pentagon leaders, following incidents in which the president ignored or overruled their advice not to withdraw troopsfrom Syria, ban transgender people from serving or redirect military forces and funding to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has also weighed in publicly on individual military procurement projects — such as criticizing a potential $10 billion Pentagon contract for Amazon, whichEsper subsequently awarded to Microsoft — and demanded that the Navy switch back to old-fashioned steam catapults for its next generation of aircraft carriers.

His military leaders have also had to play cleanup on political flaps involving the president, including an episode in which the White House may have sought to conceal the name of the destroyer USS John S. McCain when Trump was visiting Japan last spring.

Spencer launched a fresh broadside against the president on Monday evening for intervening in the Gallagher case. “What message does that send to the troops? That you can get away with this,” he told CBS. “We have to have good order and discipline. It is the backbone of what we do.

“I don’t think he really understands the full definition of a warfighter,” he added, referring to Trump. “A warfighter is a profession of arms and a profession of arms has standards, that they have to be held to and they hold themselves to.”

Trump’s commanders have found various ways to cope with his missives, which he’s often delivered via tweet — most dramatically in the case of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned in December after the president ordered a total pullout from Syria. Now Pentagon-watchers are curious about the fate of Rear Adm. Collin Green, the commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command overseeing the elite SEALs, to see if he will follow Spencer out the door.

Like Spencer, Green had supported a planned disciplinary review that could have led to the Navy ousting Gallagher from the SEALs — a process that Esper canceled after Trump intervened.

Gallagher “will retire from active duty,” according to Navy spokesperson Cmdr. Clay Doss. “We will not provide additional details due to privacy concerns.”

Green, meanwhile, “remains focused on his job as the commander of Naval Special Warfare,” WARCOM spokesperson Capt. Tamara Lawrence told POLITICO.

“I don’t know that Rear Admiral Green will be an effective SEAL commander”now, said Kelly Magsamen, a former assistant secretary of defense who is now at the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress. “I am watching to see if he will resign.”

Another potential breaking point could involve the Army’s upcoming decision on whether to restore the special-forces status of Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, whom Trump has pardoned of charges that he murdered a civilian in Afghanistan. The Army has not indicated which way it’s leaning in that case.

Hours before he stepped down under pressure, Spencer acknowledged to POLITICO that Trump and his military leaders had disagreed on a host of issues in recent months — though he sought to tamp down the notion that the two sides were on a collision course.

“At the end of the day he is the president,” Spencer said during an interview at last weekend’s Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia. “He gets to make up his own mind.”

The next day, though, Spencer sounded a much different tone in a scorching resignation letter to Trump, writing that the two had reached a rupture over “the key principle of good order and discipline.”

“I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he wrote, appearing to refer to Trump’s insistence that Gallagher remain a SEAL.

Trump defended his intervention in the cases of the elite troops, telling reporters Monday that he is protecting America’s warriors against “very unfair” proceedings.

“There’s never been a president that’s going to stick up for them, and has, like I have,” Trump saidin the Oval Office.

Esper on Monday took responsibility for the final decision to let Gallagher retain his SEAL’s Trident pin, while hinting at the strain the Pentagon chief is under. “If folks want to criticize anyone at this point about reaching down into the administrative processes, then simply blame me,” Esper told reporters. “I’m responsible at this point. It’s not where I prefer to be, but I’ll own it.”

Trump’s relationship with the Pentagon is a far cry from the early days of his administration, when military leaders credited him with giving his generals greater power to make decisions on their own authority, compared with the heavier-handed management of former President Barack Obama and his staff. That included allowing Mattis to take the White House out of the loop on moves such as launching operations against ISIS and al-Qaida targets in the Middle East.

But the president’s meddling in military minutiae has been steadily on the rise — first at home, and more recently abroad.

“Under Obama, we’d bitch because it was this long, involved process. Now we bitch because Trump makes quick, unexpected decisions that aren’t well synchronized,” said a former senior military officer who served under Trump until earlier this year. “Now we’re back much more into the details where you wouldn’t necessarily expect that the president would have to step in.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Nagata agreed that the frustrations are real.

“The president and his senior leaders just seem to have little regard for the feedback of the practitioners in the field,”said Nagata, who helped oversee the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and recently stepped down as director of strategic plans at the National Counterterrorism Center.

In 2017 and 2018, missives from Trump sent the Pentagon spinning on one issue after another.Those included a promise to kick transgender personnel out of the military and an order to establish a Space Force, as well as Trump’s demand for a military parade in Washington, D.C., and the deployment of thousands of active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of the midterm elections.

He has repeatedly clashed with the generals over the number of troops in Syria, where he has overruled Pentagon leaders and commanders who have insisted that an abrupt pullout wouldempower ISIS. (American troops have remained in Syria, on what Trump describes as a mission to protect the oil.) In Afghanistan, he has threatened to abruptly withdraw despite the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Now, some who have served in the chain of command fear the divide will widen after the Gallagher case.

“President Trump has always kept his own counsel and to some degree gone around the Department of Defense, but it’s escalating, and I expect it will continue to escalate, especially in light of political developments like the impeachment,” said former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who served as secretary of defense under Obama. “My guess is that he will continue to tighten down his grip on the Pentagon as we’ve seen him do over the past year.”

Others said Trump’s meddling in the Gallagher case may be only the beginning.

“How do you square an established process like a UCMJ proceeding or a Trident review board with decisions by emotion and direction by tweet?” said a senior defense official who was not authorized to speak publicly, referring to the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. “You’re trying to place traditional logic over things that can’t be made logical.”

Dave Brown contributed to this report.

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