#donald f ii

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Keith Edwards at No Lies Detected:

Fascism doesn’t come for every generation, but it has come for ours.  This is not a fight on the beaches of Normandy, but in our own country. This article begins a series on what opposing Donald Trump and his movement can look like. I hope you will join me as these progress.

[...]

Do not leave. Faced with the might of the United States government aligned against you, you might consider resigning preemptively to avoid the humiliation of inevitable termination. This is counterproductive for at least two reasons: If you leave, you save Trump Administration officials the time and effort of identifying you, which otherwise could have taken months or years. Second, your principled stand would likely only result in your replacement by an unprincipled Trump loyalist. By staying on, you may find yourself helping to implement policies you find hateful, but by refusing to leave, you can ensure that you have some influence on those policies, because then you can...

Delay. Delay. Delay. Waiting out the enemy until he moves on, gives up, or forgets is a time-honored strategy not just among civil servants but also history’s best generals. That email about a proposed rule change to healthcare protections? Bury it in everyone’s inbox by sending it late. A meeting on reviewing the U.S. government’s foreign aid commitments to a region you oversee? Oops, you’ll be out that day! That agency conference your political-appointee boss requested you arrange? Next month didn’t fit everyone’s schedule, so you had to push it to after the new year! Slow-walking is the classic tool in any bureaucrat’s toolbox, and in the next Trump Administration, you can use it in defense of the Constitution.

Be intentionally incompetent. As a career employee, you likely have always had the advantage of knowing your workplace better than your politically appointed overlords. This is perhaps your most potent weapon against Trump. Draft rules unlikely to survive judicial review. Favor lengthy rulemaking or review processes over expedited ones. Complete tasks sequentially rather than in parallel to draw out timelines. Add complexity, stakeholders, and process wherever possible. In short, exploit the knowledge gap you hold over your bosses to diminish, defuse, and defeat their plans.

Leak. Federal employees have the right to report what they believe to be illegal or abusive of authority to their agency’s inspector general (IG) without fear of retaliation. Trump however has singled out IGs for replacement after one played a pivotal role in his first impeachment, so the availability of this option may depend on how politically prominent your agency is. Fortunately, you can anonymously tip prominent news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post, which boast extensive investigative units and employ rigorous safeguards to protect sources’ identities. You can also seek out sympathetic elected officials, such as Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee, whose main function is investigation of the federal government. (If you choose disclosure, be sure that the information is not classified, the unauthorized disclosure of which carries stiff federal penalties.)

Disregard and refuse. When you have exhausted all other options, you may want selectively to resort to riskier behaviors. These include going behind political appointees’ backs to subvert their activities, say by picking up the phone and countermanding their directions. In extreme cases, you may have outright to refuse direct orders to the appointee’s face. Though such actions seem like a fasttrack to termination, you may still be protected by the fact that overwhelmed political appointees might hesitate to go through the onerous process of finding a politically reliable replacement. Remember, the longer you stay in, the harder you make it for Trump to do what he wants. Know your rights. If the worst happens and your agency moves to terminate you, you can still fight back. There are multiple avenues an employee designated for dismissal can pursue to delay, reduce, or reverse agency penalties against them.1 The beauty of these options is that they can take months or even years to resolve and may be appealed to higher bodies, further extending the process. All the while, you are collecting a salary and occupying a full-time equivalent (FTE) position that your agency can’t fill until you finally depart. (This is not legal advice. If you find yourself in this situation, please seek a lawyer.)

Keith Edwards writes in his No Lies Detected Substack on how civil servants can show resistance to the tyrannical Trump 2.0 Regime from within.

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H I N G

I've watched these movies a thousand times. They never get old.

I cried after watching part one when doc wakes up.

[odinsblog]

“Every time I talk to people, they talk about the economy. But I'm like, man, since World War II, the economy has always done better under a Democrat president. That's just a fact.

It's always been Democrats. There's been 11 recessions in this country. Ten of them have been Republicans.

So I don't know how they've hijacked that narrative. But I think the other thing that you just got to chock it up to is just good old fashioned racism. And I think in the case of Vice President Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton 2016, sexism.

I just really do, like it's still America at the end of the day. There are people in this country who are still just holding on to old ideologies. They don't want to see America be a great American melting pot where all of these different people from all of these different walks of life can live.

They like that racist, sexist, bigoted rhetoric that Trump spews.

Why is it so hard for her to say that?

I think because for whatever reason, like, you know, you hate these elected officials even when you say, is America a racist country? OK, you can't say America is a racist country, but you can say that, you know, there's systemic racism in America. I think that is a fair thing to say.

Like, I watched her on Fox News the other night, and I loved how she handled Bret Baer. When Bret Baer tried to push her, Bret Baer was like, are you saying the American people are stupid? I can't remember how he worded it, but she was like, ‘No, I would never say that because I don't want to disparage the American people. But my opponent has no problem doing that.’

And I understand that approach, you know, but I think that it is perfectly fine to acknowledge that those things exist because guess what? As a Black man, as a Black woman, you feel that.

As a woman, you feel that sexism. As a Jewish person, you think you don't feel all the antisemitism that's happening right here in our country. Like as a gay person, you think you don't feel the homophobia.

So you can speak to what people are feeling because you see it.”

There was an amazing moment in the interview where someone comes along and brings up the F word, fascism.

Kamala Harris: It's two very different visions for our nation. One mind that is about taking us forward and progress and investing the American people, investing in their ambitions, dealing with their challenges. And the other, Donald Trump, is about taking us backward

Charlamagne: The other is about fascism. Why can't we just say it?

Kamala Harris: Yes, we can say that.

Tell me about what transpired there and how you felt about it.

“Well, it was the same thing that we just said, right? Like, you know, she was saying what she's about, and then she was saying what he's about.

And I was just like, yo, just say it.

Like, he's a fascist. You just had General Mark Milley just said he's a fascist to the core, like a danger to the country. So for me, it's like the American people will never understand the threat that Donald Trump is if people aren't spelling it out.

They didn't treat him like he's a threat to democracy. They kept saying that he's a threat democracy. They kept saying that he's a threat to democracy, but Merrick Garland should have locked Trump up after the coup. Right?

I was literally watching something yesterday and there was a person talking and the person was like, if Donald Trump, you know, really let an attempted coup of this country, why didn't they arrest him? They did. They did charge him.

But there's so many people who don't even know because he's not treated like that. We know we live in a society that knows how to demonize people when they want to. Right?

You can look at it, and I'm just going to use this as an example. Not saying that it's not warranted that it's happening, but look at somebody like Diddy. Front page of every newspaper, all over the news.

You hear about every charge. Like you see it, you see it, you see it over and over. They don't villainize and demonize Trump in that way.

You've never seen Trump in handcuffs. You saw one Trump mugshot. Like they don't treat it like.

The media has continuously treated Donald Trump and his whole candidacy like it's normal, which is mind boggling to me.”

What do we have to... Not to be defensive, but jumping up and down, what do we have to do? I mean, how many different ways can you say it?

“You know why it doesn't penetrate? Because Americans are spoiled and we don't think it can happen here because it's never happened here.

Like if you talk to older people who were closer to that, who can remember things like, ‘Oh my God, he's doing a rally at Madison Square Garden.’

That's what happened in the 30s with the Nazis.

If you can talk to people who understand that, they get it. This generation doesn’t.

If you have a sense of history and you've read things like The Fall of The Third Reich, things like that, you can see the patterns that lead to somebody like Trump becoming a dictator. I just don't think people think dictatorship is possible in America, but it is, because our democracy is very fragile.”

—Charlamagne tha God, on election 2024

[mariacallous]

Americans on November 5 will be electing a wartime president. This isn’t a prediction. It’s reality.

Neither candidate has yet spoken plainly enough to the American people about the perils represented by the growing geopolitical and defense industrial collaboration among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This axis of aggressors may be unprecedented in the potential peril it represents.

Neither candidate has outlined the sort of generational strategy that will be required by the United States to address this challenge. Irrespective of whether former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris is elected, this will be the unavoidable context of their presidency. One will become commander-in-chief at the most perilous geopolitical moment since the Cold War—and perhaps since World War II.

In that spirit, Washington Post columnist George F. Will this week compared the 2024 US elections to the 1940 US elections, when the United States hadn’t yet formally declared war on Imperial Japan, Hitler’s Germany, or Mussolini’s Italy.

What was different then was that one of the two candidates, incumbent President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, sensed he was about to become a wartime president and was acting like it. FDR, wrote Will, “was nudging a mostly isolationist nation toward involvement in a global conflict” with his 1937 “quarantine speech” on aggressor nations and through his subsequent military buildup.

FDR’s opponent was Republican businessman Wendell Willkie, who like FDR was more internationalist than isolationist, in the tradition of his party’s elites of that time. “In three weeks,” Will writes, “Americans will not have a comparably reassuring choice when they select the president who will determine the nation’s conduct during World War III, which has begun.”

The point is that just as World War II began with “a cascade of crises,” initiated by the coalescing axis of Japan, Germany, and Italy, so today there is a similar axis—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Will reckons our current global crisis began no later than Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea.

This isn’t the first time that I have quoted diplomat-historian Philip Zelikow in this column. Writing in Texas National Security Review this summer, Zelikow reckoned that the next president has a 20-30 percent chance of being involved in worldwide warfare, which he differentiates from a world war in that not all parties will be involved in every aspect or region.

Zelikow, who recently expanded on these ideas among experts at the Atlantic Council, reckons that the next three years mark a moment of maximum danger. Should the United States navigate this period successfully, alongside global allies and partners, the underlying strengths of the American economy, defense industry, tech, and society should kick in and show their edge over those of the authoritarians.

The problem in the short term is that the United States is facing challengers in Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who may see a window of opportunity in the United States’ domestic distractions, a defense sector not yet adequate for emerging challenges, and an electorate that questions the value and necessity of US international engagement. Both leaders might calculate that acting more forcefully against Ukraine and Taiwan now could produce a greater chance of success than a few years in the future.

Wrote George Will: “From Russia’s western border to the waters where China is aggressively encroaching on Philippine sovereignty, the theater of today’s wars and almost-war episodes spans six of the globe’s 24 time zones.” He says this is what “the gathering storm” of world war looks like, borrowing the title of the first volume of Winston Churchill’s World War II memoirs.

Will charges the two presidential candidates with “reckless disregard” for failing to provide voters “any evidence of awareness, let alone serious thinking about, the growing global conflagration.”

If that sounds like hyperbole to you, it’s worth reading FDR’s third inaugural address in January 1941, almost a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which prompted Congress to declare war on Japan the following day.

“To us there has come a time,” said Roosevelt, “in the midst of swift happenings, to pause for a moment and take stock—to recall what our place in history has been, and to rediscover what we are and what we may be. If we do not, we risk the real peril of isolation, the real peril of inaction. Lives of nations are determined not by the count of years, but by the lifetime of the human spirit.”

War isn’t inevitable now any more than it was then. When disregarded, however, gathering storms of the sort we’re navigating gain strength.

“In the face of great perils never before encountered,” Roosevelt concluded, “our strong purpose is to protect and to perpetuate the integrity of democracy. For this we muster the spirit of America, and the faith of America.”

[thatstormygeek]

So for the next couple months, we are essentially Schrödinger’s Electorate. There is no uncertainty about Trump’s ambitions....But there is real uncertainty about his capacity to execute.

We won’t know until at least January just how dark things are about to get. There is a version of Trump’s second term where he talks a lot about mass deportation, but actually deports comparatively few people. He gestures at massive tariffs, but mostly as a negotiating tactic. The most dangerous parts of Project 2025 languish because they require more attention to detail than he cares to give. (Plus they would be unpopular. And Trump likes to feel popular.) This would be a Trump II that kind of resembles Trump I, when he talked a whole lot about “building the wall,” but lacked the will and skill to actually put the plan into practice. This is not a good future, mind you. But it’s the best possible of all the bad futures. Its one where we suffer through several years of mid-level corruption and a ceaseless barrage of Trump intrigue and incompetence. It’s a future that still yields a couple hundred more Trump judges with lifetime appointments to the federal bench, ensuring that no future administration can accomplish its goals. It’s also a future that sets us back at least four years on climate commitments, all while handing the plutocrats more money and power that they will ruthlessly work to defend. It’s, y’know, still really bad. But the other version of Trump II is the one where he deputizes and mobilizes a deportation force that removes tens of millions of people from their homes. Some will be sent back to their home countries. But most will be rounded up and sent to makeshift camps. And that’s a future where he also uses Schedule F to replace all federal workers with Trump ideologues, reducing the federal government to a cutout front for the Trump organization. It’s one where he shuts down all progressive organizations under the cover of fighting “extremism,” rendering the Democratic Party network incapable of competing in future in elections. One where his political opponents go into hiding, and the military is deployed against protestors, and press critics quickly learn that their constitutional protections are not self-enforcing. This would be much, much worse.

I’ve heard a cold-comfort, rally-the-troops message in some progressive circles: “we’ve been here before. We know how to mobilize against him!” I hate to be a downer, but… no. If your strategic plan for Trump II relies on a repeat of the conditions of Trump I, that is a very bad strategic plan. When Donald Trump assumed the Presidency in 2017, we had (1) a mainstream media that was eager to play a watchdog role, (2) a Republican Party that had not been entirely cleansed of Trump critics, (3) a judicial branch with zero Trump appointees, and (4) Trump and his team lacking even the vaguest sense of how to run the executive branch. We had, in other words, a huge attack surface. ... It’s also going to be harder to tie him up in the courts than it was in the first term. Trump appointed 234 federal judges, including three Supreme Court Justices. These Trump judges have shown no deference to precedent. Many are naked partisans, with no incentive to hide it. (Hell, a Trump judge just struck down Biden’s overtime pay Executive Order yesterday.) The Supreme Court has also gotten very comfortable using its shadow docket to speed up and slow down cases to Trump’s benefit. ... Here’s a rough outline of what I think might work. The basic assignment is simple: run out the clock. There are 102 weeks until the 2026 midterm election. There are 206 weeks until the 2028 Presidential. That’s a lot of time to be playing prevent defense against an opponent who controls all the structural power levers at the federal level. This will hardly be easy. But Donald Trump is not some strategic genius, enacting a meticulously-crafted long-term plan. He has grown older, but no wiser. He is as likely to focus on deporting 20 million people as he is to get into a weeklong Twitter spat with Mark Cuban. He is a ridiculous person, and tremendously vulnerable to ridicule. His administration will be staffed by devoted ideologues, not skilled operators. Rudy Giuliani was a devoted Trump supporter. So was John Eastman. Both were comically inept, and are now disbarred as a result. The benchwarmers suiting up now that they are off the playing field have no great excess of skill.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Billboard project

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 6, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 07, 2024

One of the things that came to light on Wednesday, in the paperwork the Justice Department unveiled to explain its seizure of 32 internet domains being used by Russian agents in foreign malign influence campaigns, was that the six right-wing U.S. influencers mentioned in the indictments of the Russian operatives are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Since at least 2022, three Russian companies working with the Kremlin have been trying to change foreign politics in a campaign they called “Doppelganger,” covertly spreading Russian government propaganda. “[F]irst and foremost,” notes from a meeting with Russian officials about targeting Germany read, “we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain, and NATO.” Through fake social media profiles, their operatives posed as Americans or other non-Russians, seeding public conversations with Russian propaganda.

In August 2023 they launched the “Good Old USA Project” to target swing-state residents, online gamers, American Jews, and “US citizens of Hispanic descent” to reelect Donald Trump. ​​"They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the ‘American dream,’” one of the propagandists wrote. “It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Using targeted ads on Facebook, they could see how their material was landing and use bots and trolls to push their narrative in comment sections. 

“In order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information,” the propagandists told their staff. “At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.”

According to the documents, one of the three companies, Social Design Agency (SDA), monitors and collects information about media organizations and social media influencers. It collected a list of 1,900 “anti-influencers,” whose accounts posted material SDA workers thought operated against Russian interests. About 26% of those accounts were based in the U.S. 

SDA also identified as pro-Russian influencers more than 2,800 people in 81 countries operating on various social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram. Those influencers included “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians.” About 21% of those influencers were in the U.S. 

YouTube took down the Tenet Media Channels associated with the Justice Department’s indictments, and last night, Tenet Media abruptly shut down. In The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last noted that the Tenet influencers maintain they were dupes, although they must have been aware that their paychecks were crazy high for the numbers of viewers they had. He asks if, knowing now that their gains are ill-gotten, they are going to give them to charity. 

Earlier this week, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his X show, where Cooper not only suggested that the death of more than six million Jews was an accidental result of poor planning, but also argued that British prime minister Winston Churchill, who stood firm against the expansion of fascist Germany in World War II, was the true villain of the war.

Cooper’s argument puts him squarely on the side of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who insist that democracy undermines society. During the recent summer Olympics, Cooper posted on social media an image of Hitler in Paris alongside another of drag queens representing Greek gods at the Olympic opening ceremonies, an image some on the right thought made fun of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. “This may be putting it too crudely for some,” Cooper wrote, “but the picture [of Hitler in Paris] was infinitely preferable in virtually every way than the one on the right.” 

The idea that Churchill, not Hitler, is the villain of World War II means denying the fact of the Holocaust and defending the Nazis. It lands Carlson and Cooper in the same camp as those autocrats journalist Anne Applebaum notes are “making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.” Elon Musk promoted the interview, saying it was “very interesting,” and “worth watching,” before the backlash made him delete his post. The video has been viewed nearly 30 million times. 

Carlson told Lauren Irwin of The Hill that the Biden administration is made up of “warmonger freaks” who have “used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history.” Carlson is on a 16-day speaking tour, on which he will interview Trump allies, including Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. 

Trump today continued his effort to undermine the democratic American legal system in a “news conference” of more than 45 minutes, in which he took no questions. Although Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the election interference case in which a jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts, decided today to delay sentencing until November 26 to avoid any appearance that the court was trying to affect the 2024 election, Trump nonetheless launched an attack on the U.S. legal system and suggested the lawsuits against him were election interference. 

He spoke after he and his legal team were in court today to try to overturn a jury’s conclusion that he had sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll, a decision that brought his judgments in the two cases she brought to around $90 million. He began with an attack on what he said was a new “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax, and promised he had not “spoken to anybody from Russia in years.”

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded what amounted to close to an hour of attacks on the American Justice Department and the laws of the country, and also on American women (he not only attacked Carroll, he brought up others of the roughly two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault). He attempted to retry the Carroll case in the media, refuting the evidence the jury considered and suggesting that the photo of him and Carroll together was generated by AI, although it was published in 2019.

Attacking women was an interesting decision in light of the fact that he will need the votes of suburban women if he is to make up the ground he has lost to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

For her part, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) appears to see this moment for what it is. Although a staunch Republican herself, she is urging conservative women to admit they’ve had enough. Referring to both Trump and Vance in a conversation sponsored by the Texas Tribune, she said: “This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs.” She assured listeners, quite accurately, that Trump “is not a conservative.” “Women around this country…we’ve had enough.” “These are not people that we can entrust with power again.” 

Her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, agreed that Trump “can never be trusted with power again” and announced today that he will be voting for Harris. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said. Eighty-eight business leaders also endorsed Harris today, including James Murdoch, an heir to the Murdoch family media empire. Citing Harris’s “policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment,” they said in a public letter, “the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy” is by electing Harris president.​​

Meanwhile, at his event with Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel yesterday, Trump embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that “personnel is policy” and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office. Trump has tried hard to distance himself from Project 2025, but last night he said the way to run the government is to “get the right people. You put the right person and the right group of people at the heads of these massive agencies, you’re going to have tremendous success, and I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody would know them.”       

One of those people appears to be X owner Elon Musk, whom Trump has promised to put at the head of an “efficiency” commission to audit the U.S. government. 

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that the arguments against democracy and in favor of a few people dominating the rest were always the same. In his era, it was enslavers saying some people were better than others. But, he said, those were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 

In our era, Indiana Jones said it best in The Last Crusade: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[princesssarisa]

Who was the US president when each Disney Animated Canon movie was released

That video I watched today about who was president when each president was born has stirred up my autistic list-making instinct.

So now I'm applying it to the Disney Animated Canon, just to put each movie in its historical context.

Franklin D. Roosevelt:

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Pinocchio

Fantasia

Dumbo

Bambi

Saludos Amigos

The Three Caballeros

Harry S. Truman:

Make Mine Music

Fun and Fancy Free

Melody Time

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

Cinderella

Alice in Wonderland

Dwight D. Eisenhower:

Peter Pan

Lady and the Tramp

Sleeping Beauty

John F. Kennedy:

101 Dalmatians

Lyndon B. Johnson:

The Sword in the Stone

The Jungle Book

Richard Nixon:

The Aristocats

Robin Hood

Gerald Ford:

None

Jimmy Carter:

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

The Rescuers

Ronald Reagan:

The Fox and the Hound

The Black Cauldron

The Great Mouse Detective

Oliver and Company

George H.W. Bush:

The Little Mermaid

The Rescuers Down Under

Beauty and the Beast

Aladdin

Bill Clinton

The Lion King

Pocahontas

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Hercules

Mulan

Tarzan

Fantasia 2000

Dinosaur

The Emperor's New Groove

George W. Bush:

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Lilo and Stitch

Treasure Planet

Brother Bear

Home on the Range

Chicken Little

Meet the Robinsons

Bolt

Barack Obama:

The Princess and the Frog

Tangled

Winnie the Pooh

Wreck-It Ralph

Frozen

Big Hero 6

Zootopia

Moana

Donald Trump:

Ralph Breaks the Internet

Frozen II

Joe Biden:

Raya and the Last Dragon

Encanto

Strange World

Wish

Just for the heck of it, I also looked up who was president when each of the six American Disney theme parks opened. As it turns out, each park opened under a different president!

Disneyland opened during Eisenhower's presidency, Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom during Nixon's, EPCOT during Reagan's, Disney MGM Studios (now Disney Hollywood Studios) during Bush Sr.'s, Animal Kingdom during Clinton's, and California Adventure during Bush Jr.'s

[deadpresidents]

which president met the most popes-john paul 2?

Yes, it's Pope John Paul II.

The first incumbent President to meet a Pope was Woodrow Wilson, who met Pope Benedict XV at the Vatican in 1919, so Presidents have really only been meeting with Popes for the past 100 years. So Pope John Paul II basically reigned as Pope for a quarter of the time (26+ years) that Presidents have been meeting with them.

But despite the length of John Paul II's reign, he didn't meet with significantly more Presidents than some of the other Popes. John Paul II met with five incumbent Presidents during his reign: Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush (he also met future President Joe Biden when Biden was a U.S. Senator). Pope Paul VI, who was Pope from 1963-1978, met with four incumbent Presidents: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. John Paul II would have probably met more Presidents if not for the fact that Reagan and Clinton were both re-elected and served the full eight years in office (Bush 43 was also re-elected, but John Paul II died just a few months into his second term).

Here's a full list of which incumbent Presidents met with which Popes:

•Pope Benedict XV [1]: Woodrow Wilson (1919) •Pope John XXIII [1]: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1959) •Pope Paul VI [4]: John F. Kennedy (1963); Lyndon B. Johnson (1965 & 1967--a meeting which featured one of my favorite Presidential stories ever); Richard Nixon (1969 & 1970); Gerald Ford (1975) •Pope John Paul II [5]: Jimmy Carter (1979 & 1980); Ronald Reagan (1982, 1984, & 1987); George H.W. Bush (1989 & 1991); Bill Clinton (1993, 1994, 1995, & 1999); George W. Bush (2001, 2002, & 2004) [John Paul II also met future Presidents George H.W. Bush during Bush's Vice Presidency and Joe Biden while Biden was a Senator.] •Pope Benedict XVI [2]: George W. Bush (2007 & 2008); Barack Obama (2009) [Benedict XVI also met future President Joe Biden during his Vice Presidency.] •Pope Francis [3]: Barack Obama (2014 & 2015); Donald Trump (2017); Joe Biden (2021) [Francis also met future President Biden on three occasions during Biden's Vice Presidency.]

Interestingly, Pope Pius IX, who reigned from 1846-1878 -- long before the United States formally established permanent diplomatic relations with the Holy See -- also met four Presidents during his reign (more than any Pope other than John Paul II), but they were all either former or future Presidents. Pius IX met former Presidents Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore in 1855 when they visited Rome (separately) and former President Franklin Pierce when he visited Rome in November 1857. And Pius IX met future President Theodore Roosevelt in December 1869 when Roosevelt's family visited the Vatican. Theodore Roosevelt is actually the only person who served as President known to have kissed the ring of a Pope -- even though Roosevelt wasn't Catholic and was only 11 years old. Former President Ulysses S. Grant met Pope Leo XIII in 1878 when visiting the Vatican during his post-Presidential world tour.

[misfitwashere]

September 6, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 07, 2024

One of the things that came to light on Wednesday, in the paperwork the Justice Department unveiled to explain its seizure of 32 internet domains being used by Russian agents in foreign malign influence campaigns, was that the six right-wing U.S. influencers mentioned in the indictments of the Russian operatives are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Since at least 2022, three Russian companies working with the Kremlin have been trying to change foreign politics in a campaign they called “Doppelganger,” covertly spreading Russian government propaganda. “[F]irst and foremost,” notes from a meeting with Russian officials about targeting Germany read, “we need to discredit the USA, Great Britain, and NATO.” Through fake social media profiles, their operatives posed as Americans or other non-Russians, seeding public conversations with Russian propaganda.

In August 2023 they launched the “Good Old USA Project” to target swing-state residents, online gamers, American Jews, and “US citizens of Hispanic descent” to reelect Donald Trump. ​​"They are afraid of losing the American way of life and the ‘American dream,’” one of the propagandists wrote. “It is these sentiments that should be exploited in the course of an information campaign in/for the United States.” Using targeted ads on Facebook, they could see how their material was landing and use bots and trolls to push their narrative in comment sections. 

“In order for this work to be effective, you need to use a minimum of fake news and a maximum of realistic information,” the propagandists told their staff. “At the same time, you should continuously repeat that this is what is really happening, but the official media will never tell you about it or show it to you.”

According to the documents, one of the three companies, Social Design Agency (SDA), monitors and collects information about media organizations and social media influencers. It collected a list of 1,900 “anti-influencers,” whose accounts posted material SDA workers thought operated against Russian interests. About 26% of those accounts were based in the U.S. 

SDA also identified as pro-Russian influencers more than 2,800 people in 81 countries operating on various social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram. Those influencers included “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians.” About 21% of those influencers were in the U.S. 

YouTube took down the Tenet Media Channels associated with the Justice Department’s indictments, and last night, Tenet Media abruptly shut down. In The Bulwark, Jonathan V. Last noted that the Tenet influencers maintain they were dupes, although they must have been aware that their paychecks were crazy high for the numbers of viewers they had. He asks if, knowing now that their gains are ill-gotten, they are going to give them to charity. 

Earlier this week, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his X show, where Cooper not only suggested that the death of more than six million Jews was an accidental result of poor planning, but also argued that British prime minister Winston Churchill, who stood firm against the expansion of fascist Germany in World War II, was the true villain of the war.

Cooper’s argument puts him squarely on the side of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who insist that democracy undermines society. During the recent summer Olympics, Cooper posted on social media an image of Hitler in Paris alongside another of drag queens representing Greek gods at the Olympic opening ceremonies, an image some on the right thought made fun of the Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples. “This may be putting it too crudely for some,” Cooper wrote, “but the picture [of Hitler in Paris] was infinitely preferable in virtually every way than the one on the right.” 

The idea that Churchill, not Hitler, is the villain of World War II means denying the fact of the Holocaust and defending the Nazis. It lands Carlson and Cooper in the same camp as those autocrats journalist Anne Applebaum notes are “making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world.” Elon Musk promoted the interview, saying it was “very interesting,” and “worth watching,” before the backlash made him delete his post. The video has been viewed nearly 30 million times. 

Carlson told Lauren Irwin of The Hill that the Biden administration is made up of “warmonger freaks” who have “used the Churchill myth to bring our country closer to nuclear war than at any moment in history.” Carlson is on a 16-day speaking tour, on which he will interview Trump allies, including Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. 

Trump today continued his effort to undermine the democratic American legal system in a “news conference” of more than 45 minutes, in which he took no questions. Although Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the election interference case in which a jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts, decided today to delay sentencing until November 26 to avoid any appearance that the court was trying to affect the 2024 election, Trump nonetheless launched an attack on the U.S. legal system and suggested the lawsuits against him were election interference. 

He spoke after he and his legal team were in court today to try to overturn a jury’s conclusion that he had sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll, a decision that brought his judgments in the two cases she brought to around $90 million. He began with an attack on what he said was a new “Russia, Russia, Russia” hoax, and promised he had not “spoken to anybody from Russia in years.”

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded what amounted to close to an hour of attacks on the American Justice Department and the laws of the country, and also on American women (he not only attacked Carroll, he brought up others of the roughly two dozen women who have accused him of sexual assault). He attempted to retry the Carroll case in the media, refuting the evidence the jury considered and suggesting that the photo of him and Carroll together was generated by AI, although it was published in 2019.

Attacking women was an interesting decision in light of the fact that he will need the votes of suburban women if he is to make up the ground he has lost to Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and vice presidential nominee Tim Walz.

For her part, former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) appears to see this moment for what it is. Although a staunch Republican herself, she is urging conservative women to admit they’ve had enough. Referring to both Trump and Vance in a conversation sponsored by the Texas Tribune, she said: “This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs.” She assured listeners, quite accurately, that Trump “is not a conservative.” “Women around this country…we’ve had enough.” “These are not people that we can entrust with power again.” 

Her father, former vice president Dick Cheney, agreed that Trump “can never be trusted with power again” and announced today that he will be voting for Harris. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” he said. Eighty-eight business leaders also endorsed Harris today, including James Murdoch, an heir to the Murdoch family media empire. Citing Harris’s “policies that support the rule of law, stability, and a sound business environment,” they said in a public letter, “the best way to support the continued strength, security, and reliability of our democracy and economy” is by electing Harris president.​​

Meanwhile, at his event with Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel yesterday, Trump embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that “personnel is policy” and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office. Trump has tried hard to distance himself from Project 2025, but last night he said the way to run the government is to “get the right people. You put the right person and the right group of people at the heads of these massive agencies, you’re going to have tremendous success, and I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody would know them.”       

One of those people appears to be X owner Elon Musk, whom Trump has promised to put at the head of an “efficiency” commission to audit the U.S. government. 

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that the arguments against democracy and in favor of a few people dominating the rest were always the same. In his era, it was enslavers saying some people were better than others. But, he said, those were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” 

In our era, Indiana Jones said it best in The Last Crusade: “Nazis. I hate these guys.” 

—

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Master Xehanort & His Many Incarnations

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Kingdom Hearts is probably one of my favorite series ever made. It is a unique blend of Square’s JRPG goodness and the magical whimsy of Disney in one of the most baffling and unlikely crossovers of all time, and manages to deliver a wild (and occasionally convoluted) story about light, darkness, and the power of friendship that keeps you engaged even when things stop making any fucking sense—a frequent occurrence, especially in the later games.

Ah, but what is a Square JRPG without some hammy villain out to destroy the world? Enter Master Xehanort, the evil old man. A scheming Keyblade master who desires to rewrite reality to balance darkness and light, he is the ultimate enemy Sora, Donald, Goofy, and the rest of the Mouseketeers must gather up their strength to fight. Truly he is a Square villain through and through.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

You didn’t think this was going to be so simple, did you? Master Xehanort could give Lord Voldemort a run for his money in the soul-splitting department, because grandpa here is able to make an entire Organization XIII with nothing but himself by Kingdom Hearts III. While some of his Xehanorted followers like Marluxia, Luxord, Larxene, and Xigbar are not going to be discussed here (we’ll be saving them for the inevitable Organization XIII Psycho Analysis somewhere down the line), we will be going over the original game’s villain Ansem, Seeker of Darkness; Xemnas, the leader of Organization XIII from Kingdom Hearts II; Young Xehanort, the time traveling bastard version of Master Xehanort; and Terra-Xehanort, the ‘nort who is responsible for the creation of those first two guys.

Also, full disclosure here: I never finished Birth By Sleep and I didn’t play the twelve quadrillion spinoffs between II and III so my knowledge on some of these guys is down to simply reading plot summaries, watching cutscenes, and so on. Still, I can’t let the voters down, so lets dive to the heart of the matter and talk about the convoluted villain from the most convoluted JRPG franchise around.

Motivation/Goals: Somehow Xehanort’s plans are both incredibly simple and also extremely confusing at the same time.

Thanks to Kingdom Hearts being a relatively simple black-and-white conflict where “light = good, dark = bad,” Master Xehanort’s schemes are a lot less confusing than they initially appear. It goes like this: Master Xehanort saw there was too much light everywhere and decided that the universe needed an equal amount of dark and light. To this end he sought out Kingdom Hearts to utilize its limitless power to reshape reality, but as his plan went further along he became corrupted and consumed by darkness, leading to his council of clone nonsense and all the Heartless, Nobodies, and schemes throughout the series as he now sought to end the world and reshape it for seemingly his own amusement.

Real simple, right? WRONG. At the end of the third game he’s confusingly revealed to be a well-intentioned extremist all along, and he just wanted to bring balance after all! Never mind all the fucked up evil shit he did, never mind how obviously sinister the dude is, never mind how his younger self is the most soulless bastard around, just ignore all that because Grandpa was really just trying to help in his own messed up way. And, yeah, this was how he started before every game after showed him going to even more fucked up extremes to achieve his goal, so... yeah. It doesn’t help that the last game tells us he thought the darkness in everyone’s heart was the issue, as opposed to the previously-established “tyranny of light.”

Performance: As if this man wasn’t convoluted enough, his voice actor situation is nothing short of pure insanity.

Ansem, Seeker of Darkness was initially voiced by Billy Zane in Kingdom Hearts. Out of all the ridiculous stunt casting going on in that game, Zane was probably the best actor aside from Hayley Joel Osment and Hayden Panettiere (and certainly a better and more fitting choice than Lance Bass as Sephiroth). Unfortunately, he was one of the big names who was tossed aside when the sequel came out in 2005, which stings really bad considering his career was obliterated a year later for starring in the film Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, a Turkish film that showed the ugly side of the American occupation of Iraq (and also featured Gary Busey as an antisemitic caricature) during the height of the patriotic fervor surrounding the War on Terror. His career has yet to recover to this day, and it’s sad he didn’t have an iconic video game villain role to fall back on.

Of course, it’s not all bad; his replacement, Richard Epcar (Old Man Joseph in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, the title character of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, and Myotismon and Etemon from the first season of Digimon) certainly tore into the role with gusto, hamming it up as Ansem and delivering the sort of magnificent villain performance you would expect from a man who played an evil Elvis monkey. He’s so good in his role they even gave him Terra-Xehanort to play as well! Twice the Richard Epcar for the price of one! Young Xehanort is decidedly less messy, but still changed from David Gallagher in Birth By Sleep to Ben Diskin going forward. Diskin, of course, is most well known for playing Numbuh One in Codename: Kids Next Door and Young Joseph Joestar in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Kinda funny how both Josephs are playing essentially the same guy at different points in his life.

Master Xehanort’s VA situation is, without a doubt, the biggest tangled mess of them all. When he first appeared in Birth By Sleep, he was portrayed by none other than Leonard Nimoy, a man who needs no introduction and who spent his time going up against the dude voiced by Mark Hamill. Finally we get to see the ultimate battle, Spock vs. Luke Skywalker! 

Alas, Leonard Nimoy sadly passed away in 2015, leaving Master Xehanort in an awkward spot. Thankfully, they had an excellent backup in mind for when Kingdom Hearts III finally rolled out: Rutger Hauer, a man who needs no introduction (Ok, maybe he needs one a bit more than Nimoy; he was Roy Batty in Blade Runner and the eponymous character in Hobo with a Shotgun). Unfortunately, his performance wasn’t quite as good as Nimoy’s, though not bad. The fact he was able to carry the burden of voicing a character previously portrayed by a universally beloved actor to a solid finish is an impressive feat only matched by Greg Baldwin wrapping up Iroh and Aku in Mako’s honor. Truly a decent note to go out on!

...Except there was DLC, which featured an appearance from Xehanort. And wouldn’t you know it, Rutger Hauer sadly passed away in 2019, leaving Xehanort voiceless once more. Who could possibly fill the shoes of two incredible sci-fi actors who starred in some of the greatest film and television roles of all time? I’ll tell you who: The guy who voiced Mr. Clipboard in Foodfight, baby!!!

Motherfucking Christopher Lloyd of all  goddamn people is now Master Xehanort, and honestly? It’s just perfect. Xehanort looks like he would have that sinister snarl Lloyd gives villains like Rasputin and the aforementioned CGI abomination. This is truly a match made in heaven! Let’s just hope he doesn’t sadly pass away right before he needs to record more lines too.

The only one of these dudes with a consistent VA was Xemnas, who had Paul St. Peter from beginning to end. He previously appeared in a Psycho Analysis when I talked about the Pillar Men, as he voiced the best one (Wammu); it seems playing the best Xehanort squad member was practice for playing the best massive Aztec vampire. You might also know him from Digimon, where he’s played characters such as Wormmon and Leomon. The man has incredible range and never turns in a dull role.

Final Fate: This is one of the most contentious aspects of the guy. All of the incarnations get a pretty interesting sendoff in the third game as most of them come to some sort of epiphany in regards to their lot in life, with Ansem and Xemnas both getting rather tragic farewells where the heroes feel a bit of sympathy for them and Young Xehanort going out gloating to Sora and being an absolute bastard. But Master Xehanort, the big bad who has tortured and enslaved and destroyed and caused untold chaos and devastation in his quest to create a world that fits his idea of balance? He… peacefully goes into the afterlife with his best friend. Needless to say, gamers were pissed this dude had a peaceful ending despite all of the shit he did, especially when he didn’t really meaningfully redeem himself to earn it.

Best Scene: These are the bad guys in an action RPG series, what do you think their best scene is? Their boss fights, duh! Ansem, Seeker of Darkness has his massive marathon boss fight at the end of the first game, where he summons a Darkside and turns into a giant Heartless ship, and if you’d like to count his time possessing Riku there’s that ball-bustingly difficult battle in Hollow Bastion too; Xemnas has his super hard bonus boss fight in the Final Mix of the first game and then his action-packed final battle in the second one, which features you fighting him while jumping down a skyscraper, slashing buildings in half, and a whole lot of lasers; Young Xehanort has his bonus battle in Birth By Sleep and main story fight in Dream Drop Distance; and then all of them get great final duels in the third game, which culminates in the awesome final battle against Master Xehanort himself. The man is incapable of dropping the ball when it comes to boss battles, no matter which incarnation you’re facing. Plus, you get to live out this memetic SpongeBob quote every single game you beat him up in:

Outside of the fights, I think Young Xehanort takes the cake out of the incarnations with the scene where he is verbally flayed alive by Woody of all fucking characters.

Final Thoughts & Score: Let’s go one by one, shall we?

Ansem, Seeker of Darkness

The first Xehanort we encounter, and honestly it’s hard not to feel a little nostalgic about him. This was our first Kingdom Hearts villain! He’s the one who got us all stuck for hours in Hollow Bastion as kids because Ansem-Riku was an ungodly pain in the ass! And Billy Zane’s fantastic performance led to an unending avalanche of memes, with basically every single line of dialogue Ansem said becoming a meme; Hell, the reason I didn’t bother with a “Best Quote” segment up there is because I would have just been rambling off quote after quote from this guy. And Richard Epcar was obviously no slouch when he took up the role, keeping this original baddie as cool as ever up until his genuinely sad demise in the third game. He’s essentially your average generic JRPG villain elevated by a great vocal performance, cool design, and interesting twists, and for that I think he deserves a nice, fat 8.5/10. The only downside to him I can really think of is that he is overshadowed by Maleficent (who is a way cooler villain), but being overshadowed by Maleficent is a fate all Disney villains must accept.

Xemnas

Kingdom Hearts II is the best game in the series, and Xemnas is the best Xehanort incarnation of them all. It’s not even particularly close, really. Chronologically your first encounter is that sick bonus boss fight in the first game, and from there he goes into the second game as the big bad and gets the most fucking awesome boss fights imaginable, putting the final battles from the first game to shame. Dude can make lightsabers pop out of his hands, how is he not the best Xehanort? Organization XIII were really cool, and Nobody did it better than Xemnas… which is what I would say if so many of the others didn’t have a lot more personality than him. Yes, he’s a great final boss and he’s super badass and he fits into the big Xehanort scheme, but if I’m being honest he never really felt as compelling as a lot of the other Nobodies. Luxord, Xigbar, Axel, they all felt a little more fleshed out and interesting, y’know? Again, though: Lightsaber hands. You can be as vague a villain as you’d like if you have lightsaber hands. Sometimes a simple and fun villain can be great, and a 9.5/10 is a good score for Mr. Mansex here.

Young Xehanort

There is an inherent tragedy to the other Xehanorts. They lack a heart, they lack emotion, and in their final moments they become aware of their own limitations and reflect on their nature, gaining understanding before dissolving away. But not so with Young Xehanort! Homeboy straight up doesn’t give two shits when he’s beaten, because he knows when he dies he’s just gonna go back to his own time and grow up to be the big bad of the series! If you didn’t get the picture in his final moments, let me spell it out for you: Young Xehanort is an unrepentant cunt, and I love him for it. His unique time powers, the voice performance by Ben Diskin, and the infamous verbal beatdown Woody gives him all help make him one of the more memorable incarnations of Xehanort, and I think that warrants an 8/10 at least.

Terra-Xehanort

This guy is the greater-scope villain for the first few games as he is the source of both Xemnas and Ansem, one of the most hideously powerful incarnations of Xehanort due to being a combo of, well, Terra and Xehanort, and nearly singlehandedly kills all the heroes; Donald has to pull out the God-tier magic of Zettaflare to beat him back. The thing is, as I never played Birth By Sleep all the way through, I don’t really fully grasp the sheer scope of his existence beyond knowing he’s a nasty piece of work. I don’t know if I can fairly rate him without all that context; I think, tentatively he deserves an 8/10 if only for the impact he had on the rest of the series.

Master Xehanort

Finally, we get to the big boss. As I’ve said, I never finished Birth By Sleep, but I did play through the third game and Dream Drop Distance, so that counts for something, right? I don’t hate Master Xehanort or anything—it would be hard to since he’s voiced by three of my favorite actors—and he has excellent boss fights, but I can’t just rank a villain entirely on how fun it is to beat the shit out of them. I think his motivations are stupid and messy and he ends up feeling really nonsensical at the end, with his redemption being so rushed it almost feels like what internet weirdos think Steven Universe is. Without him, none of the assholes above would even exist, and yet he gets to go peacefully into the great beyond while Sora yet again gets cockblocked and tossed into a different dimension. Going into this review, I was certain I’d rate him lower because of how bad his ending was, but… nah. He’s too much fun to beat up and just an enjoyable evil overlord character with one of the most convoluted apocalyptic schemes I’ve ever seen, so while he may be hard for me to love, he’s even harder for me to hate. 7.5/10.

Overall, I’m not sure if I’d necessarily call Xehanort one of the all-time greatest JRPG villains—he doesn’t quite measure up to Square’s iconic enemies like Sephiroth or Kefka—but it is pretty inarguable that he is a great, memorable, and iconic antagonist. Maybe it’s just my nostalgia talking, but kicking the shit out of this dude again and again and again across fifty different bodies he’s jacked for his wacky schemes has been fun from day one. I kind of wish the focus on him didn’t eventually overtake and overshadow the Disney villains like Maleficent and Pete, but for what he is, he’s a fun foe. He doesn’t really keep things simple and clean, but the way he’s making me feel tonight makes it hard to let him go.

[hayquetenerpatience]

The Garden has hosted both Democratic and Republican National Conventions since the 1800s, and in 1939, thousands joined back-to-back pro-Nazi and Communist Party rallies in the lead-up to World War II. Marilyn Monroe took the stage in 1962 to sing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy, adding to the lore surrounding what the New York Knicks announcer calls “the world’s most famous arena!”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo:

During his interview with Time Magazine, which once again named him “Person of the Year,” Donald Trump unsurprisingly said many startling things between his usual ramblings. Today I want to focus on one of them in particular: vaccines. Trump declared he is “going to do what’s good for the country.” When asked whether that includes getting rid of some vaccinations, Trump responded, “It could if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial,” but then added, “I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end.” This is a stark departure from earlier assurances by anti-vax nut job RFK, Jr., who promised earlier that he would not take vaccines away from anyone who wants them. Now it seems the team he hopes to gather at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will propose a review of vaccine safety and, depending on the results, could possibly pull some critical ones from the market.

But could and would they really do something so crazy as ban life-saving shots like the Hepatitis B, measles mumps and rubella, and polio vaccines? Trump’s interview set off alarms among health experts, especially epidemiologists. And it raises many questions, not the least of which is exactly how vaccines might be reviewed by the government to confirm if they are “dangerous” or “not beneficial,” if and when RFK, Jr. is confirmed as head of HHS. Adding fuel to this dumpster fire is a report out this morning by the New York Times that RFK, Jr.’s lawyer, Aaron Siri, is an anti-vax crusader who has previously petitioned the FDA to revoke approval for polio and other vaccines. Trump’s statements imply that he really meant what he said on the campaign trail about letting RFK, Jr. go “wild on health.” And with zealots like Siri helping to shape national health policy, we are dangerously close to returning to an era where childhood diseases, once considered largely eradicated, could make a deadly comeback.

[...]

Anyone familiar with the way anti-vax groups regularly challenge FDA approvals, Covid mandates, scientists and drug manufacturers likely feels a rock in their gut reading this. First, it appears that Trump has taken up a dangerous and false claim that purports to link childhood vaccinations to autism. That theory has been widely debunked, but it has managed to produce mass hysteria for two decades. And now it has the bully pulpit of the Oval Office behind it. The fact that the president-elect agrees with this discredited theory, and is appointing someone to head HHS who actively pushes it, is troubling in the extreme.

[...]

An anti-vax zealot gets his shot

Aaron Siri probably can’t believe his good fortune. He has made his legal career out of representing anti-vax clients, including a group called the Informed Consent Action Network, an organization whose founder is also a close Kennedy ally. In that capacity, as the Times reports, as recently as 2022 Siri petitioned the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine. That’s right, he wants to see the polio vaccine withdrawn, even though it has saved countless children from death or lifetime disability. Siri has gone after 13 other vaccines, too, including the Hepatitis B vaccine, and has crusaded around the country to lift Covid mandates. His tactic is to impugn the integrity of the scientists responsible for developing the vaccines and poke as many holes as he can into their product development, safety studies and approvals. He does this by playing on the preconceptions and fears of the conspiracy-minded, making otherwise harmless errors or oversights appear as massive and even intentional frauds upon the public. One critic of Siri’s crusades is Dr. Stanley Plotkin, the inventor of the vaccine that eliminated rubella in the 1960s. Before the vaccine, it was a disease that killed thousands of newborns. Siri deposed Plotkin in a lawsuit Siri had brought. After spending nine hours being grilled by Siri, Dr. Plotkin believes that putting Siri in any position of influence “would be a disaster.” Dr. Plotkin added, “I find him laughable in many ways — except, of course, that he’s a danger to public health.”

Siri still managed to put a target on Dr. Plotkin, however, by publishing snippets of that deposition online, along with those of one Dr. Kathryn Edwards, another noted inventor of vaccines. Siri had the help of an anti-vax documentary maker and podcaster, Del Bigtree—who is also RFK, Jr.’s former campaign communications director and founder of the Informed Consent Action Network. As a result, Drs. Plotkin and Edwards have been vilified by anti-vaxxers instead of celebrated for their stunning accomplishments.

“You’re taking the leaders in vaccinology,” Dr. Edwards told the Times, “the people that have spent their whole lives studying these vaccines and seeing their impact, you’re marginalizing and making them look like they are prostitutes of pharma.” Of great concern is how Siri is now working with RFK, Jr. to actively vet candidates for top positions at HHS. According to the Times, Siri has asked candidates about their view on vaccines, potentially setting up HHS to have a uniformly anti-vax agenda. RFK, Jr. and his advisors, like Siri and Bigtree, could succeed in having vaccines actually pulled from the market based on the “studies” they are demanding, the conclusions of which we can assume are pre-ordained. But even short of actually yanking important vaccines, the platforming of anti-vax conspiracies and disinformation will create widespread vaccine hesitancy, which could result in serious and deadly outbreaks.

History could repeat on a huge scale

We need only look at what RFK, Jr. did in Samoa to understand the extent of the damage and even death his views can cause. In 2019, the small island nation experienced a deadly outbreak of measles, with 5,700 infections out of a population of 200,000. Hospitals were full, and the country was in a state of emergency. In the end, 83 people died, most of them young children. But what had caused this outbreak? Childhood measles vaccinations rates plummeted from 90 percent in 2013 to just a third of all infants by 2019 due to a health scandal where nurses had improperly mixed the measles vaccine with the wrong liquid, resulting in two deaths. That incident opened the floodgates for vaccine misinformation driven by RFK, Jr. and his anti-vaccine non-profit, the Children’s Health Defense. At one point RFK, Jr. even sent the Samoan prime minister a letter suggesting the measles vaccine itself may have caused the outbreak. He falsely asserted that it had “failed to produce antibodies” in mothers sufficient to provide infants with immunity, that it perhaps provoked “the evolution of more virulent measles strains” and even that children who received the vaccine may have inadvertently spread the virus to other children.

[...]

There is still an opportunity to stop RFK’s confirmation, if the GOP-controlled Senate finds enough backbone and common sense. But time is running out to change minds and stand up to Trump. Meanwhile, RFK Jr.’s allies in the anti-vax movement, like Siri and Bigtree, are gearing up to unleash a true nightmare upon our health system.

This is very disturbing: the anti-vaxxer extremist movement is on the prowl, as both Donald Trump and RFK Jr. are making moves to potentially yank some vaccines off the market-- including the polio-- and champion the debunked lie that vaccines “cause” autism.

See Also:

Daily Kos: We got rid of polio with vaccines. RFK's lawyer wants to bring it back

[moviebracket]

One group of polls will go up each day and polls will be a week long! Submissions will remain open through the end of the first round, and I'll add some more first round groups depending on submission numbers! Apologies for the brief absence, I had some personal stuff going on.

Movies that lose by smaller margins may have a chance to return to the bracket at the end of Round 1.

Round 1 Group A

Lilo & Stitch (78%) vs Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (22%)

Pan's Labyrinth (53%) vs Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (47%)

Legally Blonde (96%) vs The Last Temptation of Christ (4%)

Brother Bear (59%) vs Kubo and the Two Strings (41%)

Round 1 Group B

Stardust (47%) vs Heathers (53%)

The Batman (2022) (47%) vs Moulin Rouge! (53%)

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (58%) vs Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (42%)

Now You See Me (78%) vs Morbius (22%)

Round 1 Group C

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (29%) vs The Prince of Egypt (71%)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (32%) vs The Princess Bride (68%)

Rogue One (33%) vs Spirited Away (67%)

Goncharov (90%) vs Love Actually (10%)

Round 1 Group D

A Silent Voice (38%) vs Princess Mononoke (62%)

How to Train Your Dragon (65%) vs The Sound of Music (35%)

Knives Out (43%) vs Howl's Moving Castle (57%)

Little Miss Sunshine (42%) vs The Little Mermaid (1989) (58%)

Round 1 Group E

A Quiet Place (45%) vs Zombieland (55%)

10 Things I Hate About You (72%) vs Lemonade Mouth (28%)

Juno (21%) vs The Addams Family (1991) (79%)

The Parent Trap (1998) (54%) vs Bend It Like Beckham (46%)

Round 1 Goup F

Rent (48%) vs West Side Story (2021) (52%)

Elf (39%) vs The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (61%)

Hairspray (2007) (43%) vs Mamma Mia! (57%)

Clueless (51%) vs Miss Congeniality (49%)

Round 1 Group G

Forrest Gump (50%) vs Kingsman: The Secret Service (50%)

Enchanted (69%) vs Ferris Bueller's Day Off (31%)

Battle Royale (45%) vs High School Musical (55%)

Matilda (1996) (60%) vs Chicago (40%)

Round 1 Group H

Mean Girls (54%) vs School of Rock (46%)

The Hitman's Bodyguard (25%) vs Grease (75%)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (51%) vs Parasite (49%)

The Wizard of Oz (46%) vs Star Wars: A New Hope (54%)

Round 1 Group I

Populaire (13%) vs Labyrinth (87%)

Matilda (2022) (17%) vs Kung Fu Panda (83%)

Superman (1978) (44%) vs The Sixth Sense (56%)

The Martian (65%) vs Trainspotting (35%)

Round 1 Group J

Dune (37%) vs Back to the Future (63%)

Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension (44%) vs The Return of the King (56%)

Home Alone (63%) vs Frozen (37%)

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (59%) vs Meet the Robinsons (41%)

Round 1 Group K

Crazy Rich Asians (68%) vs The Phantom of the Opera (2004) (32%)

Alien (75%) vs Mulholland Drive (25%)

The Imitation Game (39%) vs The Simpsons Movie (61%)

Castle of Cagliostro (59%) vs Once Upon a Time in the West (41%)

Round 1 Group L

North by Northwest (22%) vs Arrietty (78%)

Scream (53%) vs War and Peace (1966/1967) (47%)

Arrival (18%) vs The Rocky Horror Picture Show (82%)

Little Shop of Horrors (1986) (55%) vs Night at the Museum (45%)

Round 1 Group M

Steven Universe: The Movie vs Atlantis: The Lost Empire

Everything Everywhere All at Once vs Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Rise of the Guardians vs She's the Man

Pacific Rim vs Treasure Planet (2002)

Round 1 Group N

Deadpool vs Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Pitch Perfect vs Get Out

The Perks of Being a Wallflower vs Mad Max: Fury Road

Inception vs The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Round 1 Group O

The Princess Diaries vs Paddington

Pride vs Velvet Goldmine

Shrek 2 vs The Devil Wears Prada

Saw vs But I'm a Cheerleader

Round 1 Group P

Evil Dead 2 vs Nope

Whip It vs I Love You Phillip Morris

Jennifer's Body vs Ginger Snaps

Bodies Bodies Bodies vs The Social Network

Round 1 Group Q

The Mummy (1999) vs The Silence of the Lambs

Fight Club vs The History of Future Folk

Cyrano vs Beetlejuice

Die Hard vs While You Were Sleeping

Round 1 Group R

Cocaine Bear vs Boy Meets Girl

Clue vs Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

Coco vs Wendell & Wild

The Lost Boys vs Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Robert De Niro on Trump Being “So F**king Stupid,” Being at the Oscars & New Movie Ezra

Robert De Niro talks about attending the Oscars, his win for The Godfather Part II, being called out by Donald Trump on social media through the years, he gives his unfiltered thoughts about our former President, and he shares a first look at the trailer for his new movie Ezra...

P.S. Unfortunately, it's true: Donald Trump is stupid..., but even bigger idiots are those who push this obnoxious guy into the presidency! After Trump's election, American big business will suffer catastrophic financial losses in international markets...

[mariacallous]

The possibility of another Donald Trump presidency has sparked profound anxiety in the U.S. intelligence community—and especially the CIA. It is not just the recent talk among Trump advisors of giving the bear-bothering conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. an “oversight” role over the agency. Trump has also vowed to destroy what he and his supporters call the “deep state,” an alleged cabal of unelected officials—largely in the intelligence services—who want to keep him out of the White House and thereby thwart the democratic will of the people.

Yet the deep state theory is nothing new. It partly has roots in the Watergate era, when associates of President Richard Nixon claimed that he was the victim of a CIA effort to frame him. The Nixon loyalist and political provocateur Roger Stone helped carry the notion of a silent coup by shadowy state actors into the 21st century. In recent tweets and videos, Stone has even linked the attempted assassination of Trump in July to Watergate.

Of course, the deep state is not the only conspiracy theory to have featured the CIA. Others have alleged that the agency—a foreign intelligence unit expressly forbidden from domestic operations—turned its secret powers on the U.S. anti-Vietnam War movement and even assassinated John Lennon; that it carried out “mind control” experiments that resulted in other killings on U.S. soil, including that of RFK Jr.’s father and those carried out by Charles Manson’s “family”; and that during the 1980s it trafficked crack cocaine in U.S. inner cities with the intention of decimating Black communities.

Above all, there is the mother of modern American conspiracy theories: the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Over the years, JFK buffs have named many suspects, but the CIA has always been near the top of the list. Some accounts emphasize Kennedy’s refusal to provide military back-up for the agency’s abortive 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs as a possible motive. Others point to his supposed intention to clip the wings of the military-intelligence complex by withdrawing from Vietnam. Those are only the two most common theories, and many more abound.

All this begs the question: Why have CIA conspiracy theories been so numerous and persistent?

One reason is that the United States has always been prone to conspiracy theory—what historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics.” Once, Americans believed that it was outsider groups undermining the republic: Catholics, Mormons, Jews, or communists. In the years after World War II, however, when much of the modern national security establishment was created—the CIA, for example, was founded in 1947—conspiracy theories began to focus on covert compartments of the government itself.

This homegrown impulse was exacerbated by foreign influence. In the 1960s, the KGB, the Soviet intelligence service, probably planted stories about the JFK assassination in the European press that then worked their way back to the United States. Peace protestors needed little encouragement to believe the misinformation, as they were already listening to so-called Third World leaders—such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro—who claimed (accurately) that the CIA was conspiring against them. In this sense, post-World War II conspiracism was a boomerang effect of U.S. interventionism overseas. More recently, during the Trump presidency, Russian operatives launched campaigns to spread the deep state theory online.

Finally, the CIA itself is to blame. For one thing, the agency’s historic tendency to overclassify its records and reluctance to comply with freedom of information laws has encouraged U.S. citizens to imagine that it protects even greater secrets than it really does. Even an inside-office joke report from 1974 about a plot by the “Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge” to sabotage a “courier flight of the Government of the North Pole” was marked confidential and not declassified until 1999.

For another, the CIA really has engaged in unethical and illegal activities within the United States. During the 1950s, in an operation codenamed MKULTRA, it sponsored research into interrogation methods using psychotropic drugs and traumatizing behavioral techniques that involved unwitting human subjects. In one experiment, it set up safe houses in New York and San Francisco to observe what happened when prostitutes spiked their clients’ drinks with LSD.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the CIA spied on U.S. peace protestors and Black activists in a program called MHCHAOS, acting on instructions from Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, who suspected a foreign hand in the era’s anti-war movement. And during the 1980s, it worked with anticommunist drug smugglers who helped supply the Contra rebels fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government while trafficking cocaine in U.S. cities such as Los Angeles.

When journalists or whistleblowers tried to expose such activities, media friendly to the CIA dismissed them as either foreign agents or “pathological” conspiracy theorists. During the 1980s, the conservative Washington Times denigrated investigations of the Contra affair. Even the Washington Post joined with several other leading newspapers in assailing Gary Webb, the Bay Area reporter who exposed the CIA connections of Contra-linked drug smugglers.

These twin behaviors—excessive secrecy and operational overreach—were particularly evident in the JFK era. During the early 1960s, the CIA (acting, ironically, at the direction of the Kennedy administration) carried out increasingly reckless attempts to eliminate Castro—involving not just Cubans but, as viewers of the Paramount Plus docuseries Mafia Spies will already know, American mobsters as well. The Warren Commission, appointed by the Johnson administration to investigate the assassination, disregarded these operations and their possible relevance to JFK’s death, leaving holes in its final report that invited skeptical readers to form their own conspiracy theories.

This does not mean that those theories were right. Despite the best efforts of thousands of JFK researchers, no proof has ever emerged conclusively tying the CIA to the president’s assassination. Other theories, such as those implicating the agency in Lennon’s death or the Manson murders, will probably never be proven because there is very little likelihood that they are true.

The CIA has not taken such allegations lying down. During the 1960s, it worked behind the scenes to combat skepticism about the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in JFK’s assassination. In the wake of the damaging “Family Jewels” leak of 1974 and the high-profile congressional investigations that followed in 1975, the CIA launched a public relations effort to mend its image led by the craggily handsome retired intelligence officer David Atlee Phillips. And, since the 1990s, it has routinely reached out to Hollywood to assist productions that show it in a good light, such as the 2012 movie portrayal of its hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty. In 2022, the CIA even launched a podcast, The Langley Files, depicting its headquarters as a place of quiet professionalism, diversity, and mindfulness. One episode even featured an interview with the agency’s chief wellbeing officer.

But it is far from clear how much good these PR campaigns have done the CIA. The Langley Files has attracted conservative allegations of “wokeness”; revelations about the agency’s involvement in the making of Zero Dark Thirty added to the negative publicity surrounding its use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on suspected terrorists such as waterboarding; and Phillips’ high public profile in the late 1970s led to his becoming a prime suspect in JFK conspiracy theories, an experience he privately likened to the ordeal of a character in a Franz Kafka novel.

As long as the CIA carries out covert operations that impinge on the U.S. domestic sphere and conceals its activities in impenetrable layers of official secrecy, members of the American public will suspect the worst.

Moving forward, the CIA must make greater efforts to comply with freedom of information laws governing declassification. In addition to helping dispel the state of enforced public ignorance in which conspiracy theory thrives, such a move would improve information-sharing with other government agencies and disincentivize data leaks by disaffected employees.

At same time, the CIA must avoid taking on the questionable covert operations that helped give rise to conspiracy theories in the first place, focusing instead on its original mission: intelligence analysis. Much like the Cold War, the so-called war on terror encouraged mission creep in the realm of covert action, as successive presidents resorted to using the CIA’s secret powers to detain, interrogate, and kill terrorists. With that conflict winding down, there are encouraging signs that the agency is indeed refocusing. In 2021, for instance, it created two new mission centers, one devoted to China and the other to emerging technologies, the climate, and global health. Furthermore, the agency’s correct prediction of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, strategically declassified by the Biden administration, has boosted public confidence in its intelligence capabilities.

Whether such steps will be enough to prevent the further spread of deep-state-style conspiracy theories is far from certain. Defusing suspicion of the CIA (and the other 17 intelligence agencies) in a society historically suspicious of secret powers may be an impossible task. But the attempt must be made. In the era of Trump, the agency’s survival could depend on it.

[fanficfish]

My T&F Human Ranch AU, but they have social media accounts

Did I do this already? Probably ,but whatever

main post

Thomas, Toby, and Percy have a shared YouTube channel. It's mostly just random short videos they take of each other, usually of the dumbest (and most out-of-context) things possible. It also features appearances from the others that work a lot with them, like Mavis and Henrietta. Top videos include Toby's video of Mavis getting trapped in a pen full of sheep, Percy scaring Thomas into thinking that Percy was a ghost, and a video that Percy got from Gordon from when Thomas went crashing into an old mineshaft because he ignored a Danger! sign (that last one was revenge for Thomas sneaking a whoopee cushion under Percy's seat at dinner the night before)

Toby also has a TikTok series called "Life Advice with Toby" and it's him giving random life lessons, with some vague connection to arguments Thomas and Percy are having in the background. Topics range from "How to get a good night's rest when your neighbors are being noisy" (Thomas and Percy were in the next room over arguing over a video Percy wanted to post), "How to milk a cow" (Thomas and Percy in the background insulting each other from the rafters of the barn), and "How to make the perfect hard-boiled egg" (it escalated from Percy and Thomas calmly painting Easter eggs while Toby did the intro to Percy and Thomas threatening egg-ly harm to each other as Toby concluded the video).

Henry has a secret blog where he posts photos of the various animals around the ranch. He's done a pretty bad job of hiding that it's him though, and most people on Sodor know that it's Henry behind the sole documentation of what was attacking the chickens.

Gordon has social media for three reasons; so he can debunk imposter accounts, to keep an eye on what Scott's up to (because that boy loves his internet), and so he can raost James with Instagram memes.

James has a makeup turorial/review beauty channel. No one knows just how he fits all of those cosmetic products into his room, but he does. Most of the ranch lets him be, since he's stil getting his work done and he seems happy with it.

Duck has an Instagram blog for posting the various things he whips up for the ranchers. He's also very active n the Reddit spaces of the Great Western Ranch's heritage sector.

Oliver stays off social media, but occasionally reads over Duck's shoulder.

Donald and Douglas will occasionally post themselves singing various tunes onto YouTube. Complete with bagpipes, to the dismay of anyone in the proximity with a headache (usually Henry or Gordon).

Duncan has a roast channel, curtesy of Rusty and Sir Handel.

Peter Sam does book reviews on Tumblr. And occassionally laments that someone introduced Duncan to the internet.

Daisy, like James, has a beauty channel, but she doesn't post very often- she's usually too lazy to edit.

Edward finds joy in making little videos about the ranch (with input from Sir Topham Hatt II), and usually with assistance from Toby, Thomas, or Trevor)

that's it for now. I'll take questions on the details.