#getting banned when Trump takes office

[profomega]

Tap to get your TikTok Shop coupon https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTYmHtVbr/

[anexperimentallife]

Project 2025 would ban anything the far right considers pornography. The far right considers anything queer-positive to be pornography, and they WILL encode that into law if given just a TINY bit more power.

Have queer fanfic (or trad published literature) or pics of your transition, or of two men kissing, saved to your hard drive? If the GOP get their way, you'd be guilty of possession of pornography. Did you share any of it? You'd be guilty of distribution of pornography. Have a sweet coming of age story with a queer protagonist? That'd be child pornography.

Even now, states are trying to make it a crime to be openly queer in public (by, among other things, classifying dressing as the "wrong gender" anyplace kids might see as a sex crime against children). Oh, and Florida tried (and thankfully failed) to impose the death penalty for the above.

This is just one example of the horrors awaiting us if the project comes to fruition.

And the far right is already screaming that any adult who mentions around kids that queer people exist is "grooming" children. Wear your Pride shirt past a playground? You're now a child groomer. Think they won't put that into law if allowed? You're naive.

The GOP currently controls the Supreme Court (which is how they overturned Roe v. Wade) and has a majority in one branch of congress. Imagine what will happen nationwide with the GOP controlling every branch of government, including supermajoroties in both houses of Congress.

Oh, and top GOP officials have also announced their desire to NUKE Gaza, so don't come at me with, "but I can't vote blue because Biden..." Or tell me how you think Gaza would somehow be better off with Trump and the GOP.

In France, the left and center joined together--even though they disagree vehemently on many issues (get two leftists together and they'll have three positions on any issue)--to stop the far right from totally taking over, because the one thing they ALL agree on is that fascists dictatorships are BAD.

Much the same with the UK finally kicking out their own neo-fascist party, the Torries, to install 400 Labour MPs. Not everyone loves Labour's policies, but virtually everyone with a brain cell recognizes that the Torries are fascists, and that FASCISM BAD.

"Every election, they tell us this is the most important election if our lives!" Yeah, because each election over the past several decades has been more important than the one before, until we are now at a tipping point between remaining a fucked up oligarchy with SOME resemblance to freedom, and an outright neo-fascist military dictatorship.

Trump has literally stated publicly his intent to criminalize dissent, use US armed forces against protesters (Kent State, but multiply it by thousands), purge all agencies and stuff them with those personally loyal to him, and use the DOJ to go after anyone he perceives as a threat to his political power, among other things.

And remember the things he did in office, like pulling the teeth of federal workplace protections for queer folks (which Biden reatored).

I don't care if you don't like Biden or Harris. Neither do I. But the alternative is Trump, and anyone telling you not to vote in 2024, or to vote third party, is rooting for Trump, and for Project 2025. Anyone telling you not to vote does not give one single solitary flying fuck about vulnerable populations in the US or anywhere else in the world.

"You're just being an alarmist!" Right. Like I was being alarmist when I predicted the failed Jan 6 coup attempt. Like I was being alarmist when I said the GOP would try to use control over SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fucking vote.

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #29

July 26-August 2 2024

President Biden announced his plan to reform the Supreme Court and make sure no President is above the law. The conservative majority on the court ruled that Trump has "absolute immunity" from any prosecution for "official acts" while he was President. In response President Biden is calling for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that Presidents aren't above the law and don't have immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. In response to a wide ranging corruption scandal involving Justice Clarence Thomas, President Biden called on Congress to pass a legally binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court. The code would force Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political actions, and force them to recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have conflicts of interest. President Biden also endorsed the idea of term limits for the Justices.

The Biden Administration sent out an email to everyone who has a federal student loan informing them of upcoming debt relief. The debt relief plan will bring the total number of a borrowers who've gotten relief from the Biden-Harris Administration to 30 million. The plan is due to be finalized this fall, and the Department of Education wanted to alert people early to allow them to be ready to quickly take advantage of it when it was in place and get relief as soon as possible.

President Biden announced that the federal government would step in and protect the pension of 600,000 Teamsters. Under the American Rescue Plan, passed by President Biden and the Democrats with no Republican votes, the government was empowered to bail out Union retirement funds which in recent years have faced devastating cut of up to 75% in some cases, leaving retired union workers in desperate situations. The Teamster union is just the latest in a number of such pension protections the President has done in office.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris oversaw the dramatic release of American hostages from Russia. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former Marine Paul Whelan held since 2018, Russian-American reporter for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Alsu Kurmasheva convicted of criticizing the Russian Military, were all released from captivity and returned to the US at around midnight August 2nd. They were greeted on the tarmac by the President and Vice-President and their waiting families. The deal also secured the release of German medical worker Rico Krieger sentenced to death in Belarus, Russian-British opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, and 11 Russians convicted of opposing the war against Ukraine or being involved in Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption organization. Early drafts of the hostage deal were meant to include Navalny before his death in Russian custody early this year.

A new Biden Administration rule banning discrimination against LGBT students takes effect, but faces major Republican resistance. The new rule declares that Title IX protects Queer students from discrimination in public schools and any college that takes federal funds. The new rule also expands protections for victims of sexual misconduct and pregnant or parenting students. However Republican resistance means the rule can't take effect nation wide. Lawsuits from Republican controlled states, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, means the new protections won't come into effect those states till the case is ruled on likely in a Supreme Court ruling. The Biden administration crafted these Title IX rules to reflect the Supreme Court's 2020 Bostock case.

The Biden administration awarded $2 billion to black and minority farmers who were the victims of historic discrimination. Historically black farmers have been denied important loans from the USDA, or given smaller amounts than white farmers. This massive investment will grant 23,000 minority farmers between $10,000 and $500,000 each and a further 20,000 people who wanted to start farms by were improperly denied the loans they needed between $3,500-$6,000 to get started. Most payments went to farmers in Mississippi and Alabama.

The Biden Administration took an important step to stop the criminalization of poverty by changing child safety guidelines so that poverty alone isn't grounds for taking a child into foster care. Studies show that children able to stay with parents or other family have much better outcomes then those separated. Many states have already removed poverty from their guidelines when it comes to removing children from the home, and the HHS guidelines push the remaining states to do the same.

Vice-President Harris announced the Biden Administration's agreement to a plan by North Carolina to forgive the state's medical debt. The plan by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper would forgive the medical debt of 2 million people in the state. North Carolina has the 3rd highest rate of medical debt in the nation. Vice-President Harris applauded the plan, pointing out that the Biden Administration has forgiven $650 million dollars worth of medical debt so far with plans to forgive up to $7 billion by 2026. The Vice-President unveiled plans to exclude medical debt from credit scores and issued a call for states and local governments to forgive debt, like North Carolina is, last month.

The Department of Transportation put forward a new rule to bank junk fees for family air travel. The new rule forces airlines to seat parents next to their children, with no extra cost. Currently parents are forced to pay extra to assure they are seated next to their children, no matter what age, if they don't they run the risk of being separated on a long flight. Airlines would be required to seat children age 13 and under with their parent or accompanying adult at no extra charge.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it is giving $3.5 billion to combat homelessness. This represents the single largest one year investment in fighting homelessness in HUD's history. The money will be distributed by grants to local organizations and programs. HUD has a special focus on survivors of domestic violence, youth homeless, and people experiencing the unique challenges of homelessness in rural areas.

The Treasury Department announced that Pennsylvania and New Mexico would be joining the IRS' direct file program for 2025. The program was tested as a pilot in a number of states in 2024, saving 140,000 tax payers $5.6 million in filing charges and getting tax returns of $90 million. The program, paid for by President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, will be available to all 50 states, but Republicans strong object. Pennsylvania and New Mexico join Oregon and New Jersey in being new states to join.

Bonus: President Biden with the families of the released hostages calling their loved ones on the plane out of Russia

[thefunkfactory]

The Orders

Wyatt and his boyfriend Tate were watching the 2020 election results on TV as they cuddled together on the couch. They both believed that the election would be a landslide for the Democrats but after they had dozed off they had heard a loud announcement from the news anchor waking them both up, “It’s official! Donald Trump will continue serving this country as President of the United States of America!”. A sense of dread came over the two, “How could this have happened?” Wyatt sorrowfully asked, Tate just sat there in silence and held Wyatt closer.

Over the next few months life stayed practically the same even though Trump was acting like a dictator, all news channels were banned minus FoxNews and other right wing stations, Trump forcibly created the 28th Amendment which repealed the 22nd Amendment making it so that term limits vanished, and he had somehow managed to make it so that one of his children would take the Presidency if he ever stepped down or died. One day as the boyfriends were making dinner together the TV, which was playing the news for some background noise, ran a segment that sent chills down their backs. “Trump just declared that homosexuality is now criminalized in the United States of America. All homosexuals must go to their nearest police station and turn themselves in, immediately”. Hearing this they knew that they had to flee the country as soon as they could. Running to the bedroom Wyatt began packing up a suitcase for both him and Tate. While his boyfriend was rushing to pack in the bedroom Tate heard a knock at the door, he looked through the peephole and saw police officers standing on the other side of the door. “wyatt! what do we do? there are police at our front door!” Tate whispered to Wyatt after he ran to the bedroom. “ummm uhhhh I dont know!” Wyatt said fearfully as he heard a louder and more aggressive knock at their door. The two boys decided to hide in their own apartment and wait until the police hopefully leave.

The knocking continued until eventually they heard an officer yell at the other police officers “Alright thats it!” Thinking this meant the coast was clear Tate got out from under the bed even though Wyatt begged him not to. “Babe it’s fine they are leaving, didn’t you hear them?” Tate said to calm down his worried boyfriend. Tate walked out of the bedroom and into the living room when suddenly the front door was kicked in, “OH SHIT” Tate yelled out. Tate tried to flee but he heard a voice from the front door yell “THERE’S ONE! GET HIM!”. Before Tate could take more than two steps, 3 police officers ran in and took him down to the ground. Two held down his arms flat on the ground and one officer who was especially buff held down Tates legs. Tate heard someone slowly stepping into the apartment. He watched as this big, masculine police officer, obviously the leader of this mission, stepped over Tate’s restrained body. “What do you wan-?” Tate was cut off as the officer began to monologue, “Know what I hate? I’ll tell you what I hate, I hate people who bring down this beautiful country we have. It’s a shame that you were able to be such a stain on this great nation for so long, but now that Trump has given the orders, you and your…friendsss” the officer made a disgusted face as he said that last part “Well you all won't be a problem anymore”. “FUCK YOU!” Tate proclaimed with fire in his eyes. “Hahah awwww it’s cute when they have this much fire in ‘em it makes it so much more fun to see it drainnnnnn out” The 3 other police officers all laughed in sync, the same monotone laugh. The officer standing over Tate looked annoyed “We’re still working out their old personalities, these ones were fixed early this morning as soon as we got the order. Whoever made them “better” didn’t do the procedure right so we had to wipe their minds and start fresh.” The officer rolled his eyes. Tate was puzzled and asked “What do you mean “fixed”?”. “Huhuhuh oh buddy you really don’t know do ya? Police and Military across the nation have been given these” The officer held up a baggie with a bunch of red pills that looked like M&M’s and shook it, “to get rid of the gayness plaguing this nation. Some of my officers gave them to your “friends” this morning but they came out…wrong” As he said that he placed his right palm down on one the officer’s head who was holding down Tate’s arm. “This dumbass and the idiot behind me used to be a gross married couple. Good thing my men got to them before they could indoctrinate some kid or something” Said the officer standing above Tate. “No…no what did you do to them?!” Tate cried, “Oh don’t worry my dumb little gay boy, you’ll see”

Wyatt, with his hands clasped around his mouth, watched as the officer above Tate pulled a little red pill out of the baggie he held up earlier. He squatted down and pulled apart Tate’s clenched mouth and forced him to swallow the red pill. Wyatt watched as his boyfriend began to seize on the floor as the 3 other officers continued to hold him down. Wyatt was forced to watch as his boyfriend’s hair became shorter, thinner, and lighter, his fluffy brown hair had just dissolved into the dirty blonde mop now on his head. Wyatt watched as his boyfriend’s face gained some softer features, a rounded nose, a soft round jaw, but his brow bone became more prominent and his lips grew thinner. His boyfriend stopped shaking and calmed down but was now making animalistic grunts every few seconds. It was obvious he was trying to resist whatever was going on in his head. The officer looked down at Tate and saw that no progress had been made past his head, “Tsk I hate having to do this, you should just give into the right side”. The officer untied his boot and took it off, he gave it a whiff and recoiled his head “Oooof huhuh you’re in for it now!” the officer swatted over Tate and placed the boot right over his nose and mouth. Wyatt heard his boyfriend’s animalistic grunts get louder as the boot approached but as soon as it covered his face the grunts died down, becoming sparser than they were before the boot was lowered. This is when the real changes happened, Tate’s arms began to bulk up and his already hairless armpits stayed that way but still being able to proudly pump out pungent B.O., his chest grew two soft pillows as his pecs exploded with muscle. Tate’s stomach stayed lean while gaining some muscle and his thighs began to get girthier and girthier. Tate began to grunt loudly as he tried to push off the mindless officers holding him down, the officer who had been in charge of all of this removed the shoe and mockingly said “Awww you were doing soooo good.” He grabbed another red pill and forced it down Tate’s throat.

Tate quieted down quickly as his body continued transforming. Tate felt his ass twitch and tingle when suddenly it ballooned up like a life raft and was now a nice soft cushion. His legs grew a nice layer of hair that spread to his newly minted ass cheeks. Lastly Tate’s feet began to expand, “Ooooo this is the best part!” the officer in charge proclaimed. Tate’s feet grew bigger and meatier, a soft wafting stink began to float off of them which quickly evolved into a rotten smell of pungent cheese. Wyatt watched as his sweet sensitive boyfriend was left a sweaty and smelly mess on the ground. The officer said to himself, “Time to clear out his block, gotta make sure we get all that homo stuff out”. The officer bent down and placed his hand into his own armpit and then proceeded to place his hand right under Tate’s car, “Yea…smell that manly stink. Thats what you smell like now. You are a stinky, straight jock; nothing more, nothing less.” Tate began to grunt even more animalistic now but it wasn’t him trying to escape…Tate was moaning… Tate was thrusting the air and flip flopping between moaning and grunting as the officer continued his speech about Tate’s new form. Tate kept going and going until a wet spot appeared in the sweatpants Tate was wearing.

He was gone, sweet, innocent Tate, the guy who would always go along with the love of his life, Wyatt, the guy who accepted everyone, the guy who was a proud gay guy, all of that was now just a damp stain in his sweatpants, right in the crotch region. The officers turned the TV station to an obscure channel no-one would flop to on their own, it was just a looping video of a hypnotic spiral. It taught important truths about how evil gay people are and how much better it is to be straight as an arrow, and now Tate’s mushy, brain-drained mind was being forced to watch it. The officers stayed in the apartment for an hour as Tate was indoctrinated into the Republican party, the entire time Wyatt kept hidden under the bed. Once the officers left, Wyatt emerged and saw Tate still staring at the spiral and drooling, the officers had left him to sit through the spiral even longer than he needed to. As drool dribbled down his chin, Wyatt couldn’t help but feel awful for the smelly himbo that used to be his boyfriend. He grabbed a tissue and went up to the brainless giant to wipe away the drool when suddenly Tate looked at his and said “What do you think YOU are doing GAY BOY?!” his breath reeked something awful and Wyatt tried to back away. “Nah come here bro!” Tate lifted his armpit and grabbed Wyatts head and forced him deep into his noxious B.O. factory…

To Be Continued…

[starseedpatriot]

For those who have not figured out Trump’s affiliation with Epstein, allow me to explain.

Trump is the one who exposed Epstein in 2008, hence why all of DC fears him. Trump is Epstein’s #1 enemy.

Epstein was running a blackmail operation. He was seeking out the most powerful people on Earth, to compromise and control them. He tried to get Trump, but Trump did not bite.

Trump banned Epstein from his properties in 2008, for hitting on the teenage daughter of a club member at Mar-a-Lago. Then a couple months later, Epstein pled guilty to State criminal charges in Florida, for paying for sexual services from a 14 year old girl.

See the timeline? Epstein, tried to get close to Trump to compromise him, Trump found out Epstein was a sicko, then Trump helped turn him in to local police. But eventually the Clinton-controlled FBI intervened, and Epstein was let off the hook.

The Deep State have been coming after Trump ever since. Why? Because if Epstein is exposed, then all of DC goes down due to the blackmail Epstein possessed on the top players in DC. Hence why Clinton barged into Vanity Fair and threatened them not to write stories about Epstein. The Clintons told the MSM to bury the story.

Then when Trump got into office, he dedicated his administration to stopping human-trafficking WORLDWIDE via multiple executive orders, seized Epstein’s island, and then arrested Epstein and his accomplices in 2019.

Executive Order 13773 (see attached), is an EO literally dedicated to taking out Epstein’s international child sex-trafficking operation. “Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking”. February 9th, 2017.

HELLOOOOO that’s literally Epstein’s

entire operation. Trump used Executive Power to stop Epstein, only A MONTH into his presidency. It was one of the first things Trump did.

So for those of you that were hoping to see Trump implicated in Epstein’s criminality, you will remain disappointed. Because not only is Trump NOT one of Epstein’s clients, he is the main individual who exposed the entire thing.

Trump is Epstein’s #1 enemy, and you all were brainwashed to hate him for that very reason.

[reasonsforhope]

"“Always ask yourself: Why is this lying bastard lying to me?” Perhaps these blunt words of advice for journalists interviewing politicians, attributed to the late foreign correspondent Louis Heren, have endured because they are seen as self-evidently true. That politicians lie is viewed as established fact. 

Public confidence in lawmakers plunged to a record low last year in the wake of Partygate and other scandals: only 9% of British adults polled by Ipsos said that they trust politicians to tell the truth. Without trust, says Jennifer Nadel of the thinktank Compassion in Politics, faith in democracy is undermined. “If we can’t trust what politicians are saying, how can we decide who to vote for? We need to be able to rely on our politicians to tell the truth,” she explains. 

Compassion in Politics has long been campaigning to introduce criminal penalties for political lying, with a petition launched in 2019 attracting more than 200,000 signatures. In a surprise move two days before the UK’s general election, the Welsh government committed to passing legislation that would make lying illegal for Senedd members and candidates, having previously opposed the measure. Under the plans, those found guilty of deliberate deception by an independent judicial process would be disqualified from office. 

“We’re excited and optimistic,” Nadel says. “It’s unprecedented that the government has agreed to take this measure forward.” Although some countries have limited penalties for politicians who lie during election campaigning or when giving evidence to committees, Wales is the first in the world to propose legislation that would apply more broadly to lawmakers and candidates. 

Compassion in Politics’ next challenge is to persuade Westminster to follow suit by banning MPs and parliamentary candidates from lying.  

The campaign sprung from concern at the rapid normalisation of lies in politics. “We are slipping at an alarming speed into a post-truth era,” says Nadel. “We only have to look at what is happening in the United States.”

Fact-checkers at the Washington Post found that Donald Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidency, averaging about 21 a day. “America is a warning of what can happen if this problem is allowed to go unchecked,” Nadel believes. “[Our proposals] are designed to stop [the UK] from getting to that stage.” 

Polling shows wide public approval for the measure, with 72% backing criminal penalties for politicians found guilty of deliberate lying in an Opinium survey conducted for Compassion in Politics in May. Though it is not yet clear whether Wales would make lying a criminal offence, Nadel says: “If the same goal of disqualifying politicians who deliberately misrepresent the facts can be achieved through using the civil law, then we’re happy.” 

A private member’s bill to ban lying in Westminster, introduced by Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts in 2022, had cross-party support. “We will be looking to build [on that] and win the support of the Labour government to introduce the measure,” Nadel says... 

“I think it’s important to signal a different set of norms, and try to arrest a slide towards the acceptability of attempts to deceive in public life.” 

For Compassion in Politics, another challenge is persuading doubters that banning lying in politics is even possible. “There’s this belief that it’s too complex to stop,” says Nadel, who qualified as a barrister. “But the law prevents fraudulent misrepresentation in other walks of life. This is something that courts adjudicate on all the time. Why shouldn’t it apply to politicians?”"

-via Positive.News, July 26, 2024

[kcinpa]

TL;DR Project 2025

Project 2025 has crossed my dash several times, so maybe tumblr is already informed about the hellish 900-page takeover plan if Trump wins office again. But even the articles covering Project 2025 can be a LOT of reading. So I'm trying to get it down to simple bulleted lists…

Navigator Research (a progressive polling outfit) found that 7 in 10 Americans are unfamiliar with Project 2025. But the more they learn about it, the more they don't like or want it. When asked about a series of policy plans taken directly from Project 2025, the bipartisan survey group responded most negatively to the following:

Allowing employers to stop paying hourly workers overtime

Allowing the government to monitor people’s pregnancies to potentially prosecute them if they miscarry

Removing health care protections for people with pre-existing conditions

Eliminating the National Weather Service, which is currently responsible for preparing for extreme weather events like heat waves, floods, and wildfires

Eliminating the Head Start program, ending preschool education for the children of low-income families

Putting a new tax on health insurance for millions of people who get insurance through their employer

Banning Medicare from negotiating for lower prescription drug costs and eliminating the $35 monthly cap on the price of insulin for seniors

Cutting Social Security benefits by raising the retirement age

Allowing employers to deny workers access to birth control

Laurie Garrett looked at the roughly 50 pages within Project 2025 that deal with Health and Human Services (HHS) and other health agencies, and summarized them on Twitter/X in a series of replies. I've shortened even more here:

HHS must "respect for the sacred rights of conscience" for Federal workers & healthcare providers and workers broadly who object to abortions, contraception, gender reassignment & other issues - ie. allow them to deny services based on religious beliefs

HHS should promote "stable and flourishing married families."

Require all welfare programs to "promote father involvement" – or terminate their funding for mothers and children.

Prioritize adoptions via faith-based organizations.

Redefine sex, eliminating all forms of gender "confusion" regarding identity and orientation.

Eliminate the Head Start program for children, entirely

Ban all funding of Planned Parenthood

Ban birth control services that are "egregious attacks on many Americans' religious & moral beliefs"

Deny pregnancy termination pills, "mail-order abortions."

Eliminate Office of Refugee Resettlement; move all refugee matters to the Department of Homeland Security

Healthcare should be "market-based"

Ban all mask and vaccine requirements.

Closely regulate the NIH w/citizen ethics panels, ensuring that no research involves fetal tissue, leads to development of new forms of Abortions or brings profits to the researchers.

Redirect the Office of Global Affairs to promoting "moral conscience" & full compliance w/the Mexico City policy

The CDC should have no role in medical policies.

"Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism," HHS should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence & by what method.

I'm still looking for a good short summary of the environmental horrors that Project 2025 would bring if it comes to fruition…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conservatives are fringe outliers - and leftists could learn from them

The Republican Party, a coalition between Big Business farmers and turkeys who’ll vote for Christmas (Red Scare obsessed cowards, apocalyptic white nationalists, religious fanatics, etc) has fallen to its bizarre, violent, noisy radical wing, who are obsessed with policies that are completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.

As Oliver Willis writes, the views of the radical right — which are also the policies of the GOP — are wildly out of step with the US political view:

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans

The press likes to frame American politics as “narrowly divided,” but the reality is that Republicans’ electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and Electoral College, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes since 1988 was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).

But, as Willis says, Dems “act like it is 1984 and that they are outliers in a nation of Reagan voters,” echoing a stilted media narrative. The GOP’s platform just isn’t popular. Take the groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.

Every one of the GOP’s tentpole issues is wildly unpopular: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, etc. This is true all the way up to the GOP’s coalescing support for Trump as their 2024 candidate. Trump has lost every popular vote he’s ever stood for, and owes his term in the Oval Office to the antimajoritarian Electoral College system, gerrymandering, and massive voter suppression.

Willis correctly points out that Dem leaders are basically “normal” center-right politicians, not radicals. And, unlike their GOP counterparts, politicians like Clinton, Obama and Biden don’t hide their disdain for the radical wing of their party. Even never-Trumper Republicans are afraid of their base. Romney declared himself “severely conservative” and McCain “put scare quotes around ‘health of the mother’ provisions for abortion rights.”

The GOP fringe imposes incredible discipline on their leaders. Take all the nonsense about “woke capitalism”: on the one hand, it’s absurd to call union-busting, tax-dodging, worker-screwing companies “woke” (even if they sell Pride flags for a couple of weeks every year).

But on the other hand? The GOP leadership have actually declared war on the biggest corporations in America, to the point that the WSJ says that “Republicans and Big Business broke up”:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-corporations-donations-pacs-9b5b202b

But America is a two-party system and there are plenty of people who’ll pull the lever for any Republican. This means that when the GOP comes under the control of its swivel-eyed loon wing, the swivel-eyed loons wield power far beyond the number of people who agree with them.

There’s an important lesson there for Dems, whose establishment is volubly proud of its independence from its voters. The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this “independence.” The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointments to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.

That’s how you get incredible appointments like Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureat — the progressive wing of the party bargained for these key appointments and then played their cards very well, getting incredible, hard-charging, hyper-competent fighters in those roles.

Likewise, Jared Bernstein, finally confirmed as Council of Economic Advisers chair after an interminable wrangle:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-16-team-biden/

And Julie Su, acting labor secretary, who just delivered a six-year contract to west coast dockworkers with 8–10% raises in the first year, paid retroactively for the year they worked without a contract:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/14/statement-from-president-biden-on-labor-agreement-at-west-coast-ports/

But the Biden admin’s unwillingness to side with one wing of the party also produces catastrophic failures, like the martyrdom of Gigi Sohn, who was subjected to years of vicious personal attacks while awaiting confirmation to the FCC, undefended by the Biden admin, left to twist in the wind until she gave it up as a bad job:

https://doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband-4ce1ffb16dc5

It’s how we get key roles filled by do-nothing seatwarmers like Pete Buttigieg, who has the same sweeping powers that Lina Khan is wielding so deftly at the FTC, but who lacks either the will or the skill to wield those same powers at the Department of Transport:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

By refusing to stand for anything except a fair division of powers among different Democratic Party blocs, the Biden admin ends up undercutting itself. Take right to repair, a centerpiece of the administration’s agenda, subject of a historic executive order and FTC regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Right to Repair fights have been carried out at the state level for years, with the biggest victory coming in Massachusetts, where an automotive R2R ballot initiative won overwhelming support in 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r

But despite the massive support for automotive right to repair in the Bay State, Big Car has managed to delay the implementation of the new law for years, tying up the state in expensive, time-consuming litigation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r

But eventually, even the most expensive delaying tactic fails. Car manufacturers were set to come under the state right to repair rule this month, but they got a last minute reprieve, from Biden’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who sent urgent letters to every major car manufacturer, telling them to ignore the Massachusetts repair law:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bbkv/biden-administration-tells-car-companies-to-ignore-right-to-repair-law-people-overwhelmingly-voted-for

The NHTSA repeats the car lobby’s own scare stories about “cybersecurity” that they blitzed to Massachusetts voters in the runup to the ballot initiative:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

The idea that cybersecurity is best maintained by letting powerful corporations gouge you on service and parts is belied by independent experts, like SecuRepairs, who do important work countering the FUD thrown off by the industry (and parroted by Biden’s NHTSA):

https://securepairs.org/

Independent security experts are clear that letting owners of high-tech devices decide who fixes them, what software they run, etc, makes us safer:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

But here we are: the Biden admin is sabotaging the Biden admin, because the Biden admin isn’t an administration, it’s a system for ensuring proportional representation of different parts of the Democratic Party coalition.

This isn’t just bad for policy, it’s bad politics, too. It presumes that if some Democratic voters want pizza, and others want hamburgers, that you can please everyone by serving up pizzaburgers. No one wants a pizzaburger:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/narrative-warfare/#giridharadas

The failure to deliver a coherent, muscular vision for a climate-ready, anti-Gilded Age America has left the Democrats vulnerable. Because while the radical proposals of the GOP fringe may not enjoy much support, there are large majorities of Americans who have lost faith in the status quo and are totally uninterested in the Pizzaburger Party.

Nowhere is this better explained than in Naomi Klein’s superb long-form article on RFK Jr’s presidential bid in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option

Don’t get me wrong, RFK Jr is a Very Bad Politician, for all the reasons that Klein lays out. He’s an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracist, and his support for ending American military aggression, defending human rights, and addressing the climate emergency is laughably thin.

But as Klein points out, RFK Jr is not peddling pizzaburgers. He is tapping into a legitimate rage:

a great many voters are hurting and rightfully angry: about powerful corporations controlling their democracy and profiting off disease and poverty. About endless wars draining national coffers and maiming their kids. About stagnating wages and soaring costs. This is the world — inflamed on every level — that the two-party duopoly has knowingly created.

RFK Jr is campaigning against “the corrupt merger between state and corporate power,” against drug monopolies setting our national health agenda, and polluters capturing environmental regulators.

As Klein says, despite RFK Jr’s willing to say the unsayable, and tap into the yearning among the majority of American voters for something different, he’s not running a campaign rooted in finally telling the American public “the truth.” Rather, “public discourse filled with unsayable and unspeakable subjects is fertile territory for all manner of hucksters positioning themselves as uniquely courageous truth tellers.”

We’ve been here before. Remember Trump campaigning against a “rigged system” and promising to “make America great again?” Remember Clinton’s rejoinder that “America was already great?” It’s hard to imagine a worse response to legitimate outrage — over corporate capture, declining wages and living conditions; and spiraling health, education and shelter costs.

Sure, it was obvious that Trump was a beneficiary of the rigged system, and that he would rig it further, but at least he admitted it was rigged, not “already great.”

The Democratic Party is not in thrall to labor unions, or racial equality activists, or people who care about gender justice or the climate emergency. Unlike the GOP, the Dem establishment has figured out how to keep a grip on power within their own party — at the expense of exercising power in America, even when they hold office.

But unlike culture war nonsense, shared prosperity, fairness, care, and sound environmental policies are very popular in America. Some people have been poisoned against politics altogether and sunk into nihilism, while others have been duped into thinking that America can’t afford to look after its people.

In this regard, winning the American electorate is a macrocosm for the way labor activists win union majorities in the workplaces they organize. In her memoir A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey describes how union organizers contend with everything that progressive politicians must overcome. A union drive takes place in the teeth of unfair laws, on a tilted playing field that allows bosses to gerrymander some workers’ votes and suppress others’ altogether. These bosses have far more resources than the workers, and they spend millions on disinformation campaigns, forcing workers to attend long propaganda sessions on pain of dismissal.

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

But despite all this, labor organizers win union elections and strike votes, and they do so with stupendous majorities — 95% or higher. This is how the most important labor victories of our day were won: the 2019 LA teachers’ strike won everything. Not just higher wages, but consellors in schools, mandatory greenspace for every school in LA, an end to ICE shakedowns of immigrant parents at the school-gate, and immigration law help for students and their families. What’s more, the teachers used their unity, their connection to the community, and their numbers to get out the vote in the next election, winning the marginal seats that delivered 2020’s Democratic Congressional majority.

As I wrote in my review of MacAlevey’s book:

For McAlevey, saving America is just a scaled up version of the union organizer’s day-job. First, we fix the corrupt union, firing its sellout leaders and replacing them with fighters. Then, we organize supermajorities, person-to-person, in a methodical, organized fashion. Then we win votes, using those supermajorities to overpower the dirty tricks that rig the elections against us. Then we stay activated, because winning the vote is just the start of the fight.

It’s a far cry from the Democratic Party consultant’s “data-driven” microtargeting strategy based on eking out tiny, fragile majorities with Facebook ads. That’s a strategy that fails in the face of even a small and disorganized voter-suppression campaign — it it’s doomed in today’s all-out assault on fair elections.

What’s more, the consultants’ microtargeting strategy treats people as if the only thing they have to contribute is casting a ballot every couple years. A sleeping electorate will never win the fights that matter — the fight to save our planet, and to abolish billionaires.

If only the Democratic Party was as scared of its base as the Republicans are of their own.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

[Image ID: The title page of Richard Hofstadter's 'Paranoid Style in American Politics' from the November, 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine. A John Birch Society pin reading 'This is REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY: let's keep it that way' sits atop the page, obscuring the introductory paragraph.]

[creepypastalover97]

Stop Project 2025 | American Civil Liberties Union

Everyone! If you are over the age of 18 and you live in the US please Go to this site and sign this petition. Please! Our entire way of life can be destroyed if we don't do something now. If there isn't a recount or a revote by the end of December then we are all screwed when Trump gets in office. Regardless if project 2025 is real or just was a fear mongering, there is literally a chance that this is real and everything we know might be gone next year. So please. Go sign the petition, so if things go down hill we at least have a fighting chance to at least put up a fight! Please! Sign like you have a gay friend, coworker or family member! Sign if you have a trans friend , coworker or family member! Sign if you have a friend, coworker or family member who is a person of color! Sign if you have a friend, coworker or family member who is a immigrant! Sign if you have female friends , co workers or family members! Every signature counts! Please. There is currently only 56,811 signatures right now. We need at least 75,000 for this to have a fighting chance to stop this! So please go sign like your life depends on it. Please don't take a chance of project 2025 happening. Regardless if it doesn't happen. Isn't it better to be safer than sorry? Do you really want to take the risk? Please.

PS. Banning Fanfic sites are part of project 2025's agenda too. Just adding that regardless if it's at the bottom of the list of things we should be worried about.

[aashiqeddiediaz]

you know, after watching day 3 of the democratic national convention, i need to say something, especially to other muslims like me.

most of the muslim communities that i'm a part of have chosen to vote uncommitted, or independent, or sometimes, even trump. they refuse to give their vote to kamala harris and tim walz, because of the way the us has handled the war in gaza, and how they have been careless with acknowledging palestinian lives lost, how it was american bombs and american tax money that went towards funding this genocide. it's fucked up, and it's wrong, and there shouldn't be any debate on that.

and i am 100% in support of that anger. i am 100% in support of forcing america to stop funding this genocide. no one wants to keep seeing palestinian lives suffer. no one is free until we're all free, and i believe that to my very core.

my only concern is that where this anger is being placed, from 1 year to 11 weeks before the presidential election, is so scary. because the reality of the situation is that america has a bipartisan outlook. whoever gets the presidency is either democrat or republican. and every vote that doesn't go towards democracy (i.e. voting for kamala harris) inadvertently goes towards trump's big plan of project 2025, which is basically dictatorship. Even voting uncommitted, even voting independent. we cannot afford to elect trump for a second term, and voting anything other than democrat draws that line way too close, especially in swing states like michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, georgia.

yes, there are many issues that we wish joe biden would handle better. there are many ways that the democratic party has fucked up beyond repair. there are many ways the democratic party has refused to acknowledge the pain of people affected by their military people throughout the years, and we've been seeing it for years. this is not a new thing. this did not start on october 7th. we see it during pretty much every administration.

however, voting for your candidate should never be based on a singular issue. no political candidate is ever going to check every single box. and its so unfortunate that we have to always take the "lesser of two evils" approach when nominating our president, but that's the reality of the situation at this very moment. there are many other rights to be considered that are at stake this election, all of which trump is trying to remove. abortion bans, women's rights, healthcare, social security, climate change, to name a few.

(and, somehow, there's a belief that trump will lead to a ceasefire deal where biden-harris didn't? let me tell you that is never going to happen.)

does this mean we just stop protesting or pressuring? absolutely not. you NEVER stop, because if our votes are the ones that put the candidate in their position of power, then we expect results. we expect them to work towards what they promised. and we can't let up on reaching out to our local county offices and our state governors and escalating these issues further until someone takes notice and does something about them. we don't elect them and just leave them to do what they want. we keep them accountable. use that anger i was talking about.

but it also means not having tunnel vision. the election in november could very well mean the end of democracy if kamala harris doesn't win. this post is not me all giggly-happy over the democratic party, because trust me, i have my fair share of issues with them as well. this post isn't to tell you what to do, because i can't force you to vote blue. i can't force the community i'm in to change their minds about toss-up votes. but what i can do is put down plainly what's at stake this election. and that is, very simply, our right to choose everything.

so if you are eligible to vote and haven't registered, please do. if you haven't voted before because "what's the point", please see above what the point is. a handful of votes is enough to flip the outcome of an election, especially with the electoral college.

and if you're still on the fence on whether to vote for kamala or trump, hopefully this post gives a little bit more perspective in the most streamlined way i could manage without bogging you down with statistics and numbers.

the choice is yours.

[thesaltyace]

Link to original video in replies.

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

stitched creator: keep Palestinians' names out of your mouth when you're trying to defend your decision for voting for Kamala--

bigzaiire: I'm starting to see a lot of these videos coming out and I feel like someone really really has to speak on it, so I'm going to. And I'm gonna tell this with all my due respect -- Palestine is not the only country that's dealing with genocide right now.

I am from Congo in case you cannot tell, I'm from Congo, okay? We are also dealing with genocide in Congo. In fact, the genocide in Congo has been going for way longer than the genocide in Palestine. The genocide in Congo has made 8 millions of victims. 8 millions.

And you might wonder, why am I making this video? Well, I am making this video because I'm going to support Vice President Kamala. 100% I'm going to. And I'm going to tell you why I'm going to support Vice President Kamala.

Listen to me. This is one of the Congolese genocide enabler. His name is Dan Getler. This guy is an Israeli billionaire who owns mines in Congo. This guy was sanctioned in 2017 by President Barack Obama for corrupt and illegal mining.

Listen very carefully. He was sanctioned by Obama. Obama is a Democrat. Okay?

This dude got reinstated. Someone gave him his money back. Someone gave him his money back. Do you know who did that?

Donald Trump.

Donald Trump gave him [Israeli billionaire Dan Getler] his money back. It was one of the very last thing he did as a president was to give this guy his money back.

And do you know who sanctioned this guy again?

President Biden.

President Biden sanctioned him again. So currently, this person [Israeli billionaire Dan Getler] does not have his money. All the money, all the illegal money he made in Congo -- he does not have it right now. Because of President Biden.

So one thing I know for sure, one thing I know for sure: Vice President Kamala, she's not going to let this guy get his money back. And another thing that I know for sure is that if Trump gets back in office, Trump is going to reinstate this guy. Trump is going to give him his money back.

How do you think Israel is getting all the money? Because of this guy. He's one of the people who are giving money is Israel. So if you want to stop this guy -- hmm? -- from getting his money back and potentially giving that money to Israel, make sure that Trump does not make it.

Now let's be real for a second. Because I feel like a lot of people don't take this part in consideration. Listen.

A lot of people have lost their jobs for supporting Palestine.

A lot of content creators got their account banned for supporting Palestine.

A lot of people got hurt physically for protesting for Palestine.

A lot of people have ruined their relations with their families and friends simply because they were on the side of Palestine.

So if you're going to tell all these people who have sacrificed so much for your cause that they are wrong for choosing a candidate who's going to preserve their rights in their own country, then I'm sorry to tell you this, but you are being both ungrateful and disingenuous.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

[noonesgaylikegatson]

Here's the thing: Republicans are the party of the rich, but policies that help the rich fuck everyone else up, so they are inherently unpopular. Republicans hitch their wagons to white supremacists and religious fanatics who will gladly vote for them in hopes of bringing their own agenda. Rich people believe that their money is able to keep them unaffected by their social policies that harm mostly minorities.

Present day: Religious Fanatics and White Supremacists have gone too far. Their plans are so corrosive that they will actually affect the rich; Not to mention, there are a lot of nouveau rich who are also these fanatics.

So now, these rich people, "never-trumpers" want to join the democratic party and make it into a party for them. They are anti-progressive because they don't want to pay more taxes and they don't want more regulations. They want a milquetoast white democrat leader, and not one like Joe Biden who has embraced progressive policies and is now further left than 2008.

They don't want Kamala or Pete Buttigieg or Corey Booker or that skater boi from texas. They were to the left of Biden when they ran in the 2019 primary. They want someone to the right of Biden. A more corporate friendly democrat.

And keep in mind, these republicans have always been racist. And have always been white supremacist for them. This departure from the republican party is not a moral one. It's because the oppression that these Trump Republicans want isn't profitable.

These republicans were fine with rounding up Black people on bullshit charges and sending them to prison to do make them money on prison labor. (Biden ended the use of private prisons on a Federal Level fyi). They're not fine with rounding up 20 million undocumented people and putting them in internment camps and deporting them, that would cost so much money that would be better spent giving to them via tax cuts. (I bet you they'll get on board when someone touts the idea of using the undocumented people for unpaid labor)

They're okay with banning abortions or just limiting. They're not okay with stripping all of woman's freedoms (because many of them are women and like to spend the money they have) because women going back into the homes, means the spending power of the economy shrinks.

Less Women and Men of color going to college means less student loan payments. Not to mention, the policies that Trump will enact with Project 2025, would just wreck the economy. Government workers would lose their jobs. Facilities and infrastructure would crumble. The middle class would all but disappear, the gap between the poor and rich would grow, to the point where there is just no more money to extract from anyone in the lower classes. The money would have to come from them.

If trump gets in office by 2028 there will be so many evictions, its impossible to keep up. The rich would have to bribe police officers (made legal by the supreme court btw) to get people evicted. Not all rich people are rich equally. Those who can afford to bribe will be new upper class, those who can't will be suckers.

FDIC will be gone. So imagine you're one of those rich suckers, and the bank you have your money goes belly up cause the new upper class used it to fund their next yacht?

You can't be a tech mogul in a country with poor infrastructure. All that AI requires massive amount of electricity. How can you have any developments if your company shuts off the power every few weeks and there is no policy in place to keep it going, to fix it. Look at texas? Every hurricane gets rid of the power for weeks. Imagine when Project 2025 gets in and there really is no regulation at all.

What is the point of all this? Biden is the correct choice. He is the incumbent, he won the primary, and the election is less than four months away. This talk about replacing him is a bunch of rich assholes trying to take over the democratic party and making it into the new republican party. The literal worst night mare: socially liberal, financially conservative. They are antagonist towards the democrat's base: Black voters, because black voting population support centralized government, regulations, higher taxes, and a robust social safety network (because its literally the best way to govern)

Focus on getting people to vote for Biden or just not vote for Trump.

[anexperimentallife]

So you want leftist candidates? Here's how you get them:

First off, you have to understand that the far right didn't just wake up one day and say, "We should fuck up the country!" They have been OPENLY working for decades to fill literally every elected or appointed government position they could with Christian Dominionists and other right-wingers, and these folks show up to the polls EVERY SINGLE TIME.

When I was a kid in a far right church in the 1960s, they openly discussed how important is was to get their people into office who would help pass legislation to persecute/imprison/kill anyone who didn't follow their religion. If there's no one sufficiently right-wing running, they'll vote for whomever is closest, even if it gags them. And I cannot emphasize enough that they have long term goals that they are willing to take--and HAVE taken--generations to achieve.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, for example, is a DIRECT RESULT of the decades-long effort by the far right to boost the most far-right-leaning candidates they could find. They've been talking for decades SPECIFICALLY about getting enough far right judges in SCOTUS to overturn Roe v. Wade. And these SCOTUS appointments are for LIFE, so these judges get to set policy for your GRANDCHILDREN.

So yes, the overturning of Roe v. Wade was only made possible because Trump was able to appoint three SCOTUS judges, in addition to all the other federal judges he appointed. Amd they're talking about going after same-sex marriage, minority rights, etc.

(Hell, the judge in charge of his secret documents case is one that he appointed--she has indefinitely postponed that case,by the way.)

And you don't think local school board elections are important? Have you not seen the news about all the anti-queer policies, and all the book-bannings? This, also, has a generational effect.

Meanwhile the left refuses to turn up to the polls because none of the candidates are pure enough. So guess why things are getting worse?

If the Left turned out for the most left-leaning candidate at EVERY SINGLE ELECTION, whether local or state or whatever, including primaries, we'd start seeing more leftist candidates. Yes, that means that if there's a choice between two extreme right wing candidates, you vote for the least extreme one.

I know I keep emphasizing that this is not just about POTUS, but POTUS does figure in, of course (among other things, who do you think appoints judges for congress to approve?).

So swallow this pill: Anything shitty Biden is doing, the shitgibbon will do MORE of.

"Not gonna vote Biden because he supports genocide, so I'd rather the guy win who ALSO supports genocide, wants Russia to invade more countries, thinks it's fine if China retakes Taiwan, wants a nationwide abortion ban, removal of civil rights for minorities, wants to overturn same-sex marriage (which the right-leaning majority in SCOTUS are already talking about), to cut back the role of congress in checking executive actions (including workarounds to avoid the need for congressional confirmation for presidential appointees), to remove federal employee protections so federal personnel can be replaced with Trump loyalists, and so on! That'll teach those Dems a lesson! THEN they'll be sorry. And fuck everyone the bad guys hurt, because I'll still be PURE. So what if top GOP officials want to actually NUKE Gaza?"

That's fucking kindergartner thinking.

Yes, Biden is a piece of shit, but I am not waxing at all hyperbolic when I say that a second orange shitgibbon term, with a far-right-majority SCOTUS--especially if the GOP manages majorities in both houses of congress--may be the end of what little is left of Democracy in the US. Not gonna argue about it, because I don't waste my time with petulant children.

Look at the GOP's plans for a Republican administration, and tell me you think it sounds better than another term of Biden. Hell, they've even set up online trainings and loyalty tests to narrow down potential federal hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question.

I repeat: If you want more leftist candidates, if you want more worker power, if you want billionaires taxed, if you want to protect minorities and the queer community, you have to adopt the strategy that the right has used, educate yourself about what candidates stand for, and show up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Again, that includes primaries.

So many of us on the left would rather sit in the basement dreaming of some magical revolution that's going to fix everything, giving ourselves and others purity tests, and proudly announcing that we're... boycotting democracy by not voting(?), "because none of the candidates are a good choice."

Yeah, the left refusing to vote--or only voting in presidential elections--while the right turns up every time is exactly how we got here.

And you have to support the most left-leaning candidate even if it makes you gag, and even if "most left-leaning" means "not as openly fascist." This is the ONLY way you can be assured of candidates getting further to the left in the future. (Note that this means learning about your local candidates.)

"But voting won't fix--" I never said it was going to fix everything. There's no rule that if you vote, you can't volunteer with Food Not Bombs, or run for school board, or demonstrate, or circulate petitions. It takes more than voting, but voting has to be PART of our strategy.

You also have to accept that it may take decades to change course, and that you're not going to like every candidate you have to vote for.

The right didn't just magically get the orange shitgibbon into office overnight. It took decades of work. And if we want decent human beings in charge, we have to be willing to do the same.

[batboyblog]

Strange feeling,

9 years ago I started knocking doors with two goals in mind. I wanted to elect America's first woman President, a candidate I believed in deeply who inspired me and who was amazingly qualified to take on the hardest most complex job in the world. The other goal was equally clear, our future and our progress was at risk if a Republican took office, the Supreme Court was on the line, Republican Party was fixated on getting rid of Obamacare, attacking Social Security and Medicare, rolling back our new wins for LGBT rights, and of course banning abortion. In the Summer and Fall of 2015 it became more and more clear that the Republicans would pick Donald Trump and so the goal became even more clear and important, Stop Trump.

9 years of knocking doors across 5 elections I've come right back to where I started, the doors are different, I'm older, grayer, this Election Day I was not up at 5am doing lit drops (and god bless all the early birds who did that today). But I'm again voting for, and supporting an amazing, smart, qualified woman candidate who inspires me, and I'm voting to Stop Trump.

9 long years ends today, Today we finally finally FINALLY get to turn the page and put an end to Trump. How good will it feel to go weeks, even months, and years, without having to think about Donald Trump, talk about Donald Trump? 9 years is a long time to be stuck in a national abusive relationship, and no it won't fix everything, but damn it'll feel good.

9 years ago, one of the things that inspired me to work as hard as I did for Hillary Clinton was my grandma. She turned 90 in 2015, and would have turned 99 a few days ago. She was whip smart, with a razor wit, she read two books a week every week. She was a feminist before it was cool, always had her own job and her own money and her own car, in the 1950s when married mothers weren't supposed to do any of that. She seemed like she'd go on forever but I was realistic, I knew 2016 could be her last Presidential election, and I wanted her to see a woman President before the end. She passed away in 2019, and I miss her a great deal. She used to refer to Trump as "That shit" the final word said in a hiss of disgust. So I'm carrying her with me as I head to vote, and I'm voting for every tough, smart, witty woman who never got a shot because they were born in the wrong time, and for every little girl who's ever been told "no that's a boy job!" I've fought for 9 goddamn years to break this highest and hardest of glass ceilings and today is the fucking day.

[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

[nezuscribe]

Kamala pledged to be tougher on the border than trump, wouldn’t ban fracking, pledged allegiance to israel, and gave no strong support to trans people. But yes, blame the marginalised communities who didn't vote for her instead of the white woman and men who overwhelmingly voted for Trump

The racists always reveal themselves...

hi! so no! before you call me a racist, take some fucking time to understand who i am. i am a iranain woman, of which has seen the immense harm the Democratic Party has done to my people by funding the islamic regime. and i don’t blame only the marginalized communities, i blame everybody of which had the ignorance and stupidity to believe that donald trump or jill stein would have been the solution to all of our problems.

why i bring up minorities is because i have seen first hand from my own family the selfish tendencies they put first when voting for trump. No matter how much i argued, brought up the facts, the history of what he has done, they still don’t listen.

and while you listen to me from up on your high horse, hear this. i never once said kamala would have been our knight in shining armor. she would and could have done things that i don’t fundamentally agree with. but i can promise you that had she been in office, the betterment of the american people wouldn’t have been at stake. me, a minority person, wouldn’t have to live through the same fear I lived in when trump was president.

You want to argue about racism? I have been called an Arabic Prince, a camel owner, an oil salesman and more. You think this all came from nowhere? Trumps rhetoric and cult following increased these things. And so you wonder why i focus on the minority? Because they see these things, they hear them, and still vote for a man who perpetuates it.

You want to argue more? Get off of anon and argue like a fucking person