#republicans pounce

[arcticdementor]

The discourse about antisemitism on US college campuses has arrived at an unlikely place. As Jewish students speak out about a rise in antisemitic sentiment amid Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Republicans have placed the blame on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs.  According to conservative lawmakers, who have now held several hearings on antisemitism, these initiatives — meant to create welcoming learning environments for students from marginalized communities — are one reason some Jewish students feel fearful and unprotected on campus.

…

The peculiar connection being drawn between DEI and antisemitism is concerning, Jewish studies and DEI experts told Vox — although some agreed that DEI could do more to address the needs of Jewish students. “There’s been a very strong simmering war of attrition against DEI for some time in universities. And somehow these two things started to merge together to the point where we got these congressional hearings,” said Rabbi Shaul Magid, who teaches Jewish studies at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. “It seemed to me that the issue [at the December 5 hearing] was antisemitism and also not antisemitism. It seemed like it was about DEI and [Rep.] Elise Stefanik’s interest in attacking it, rather than the rise of antisemitism on campus.”

…

Many Republicans want every institution stripped of DEI, in a fashion that would risk squandering the opportunity to thoughtfully reexamine it. “DEI has its problems,” said Eddie S. Glaude Jr., the McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. He cites the need for institutions to return to the value of diversity itself instead of focusing on checking off a diversity compliance list. “They’ve made a caricature of DEI in this context, and DEI is not the issue here.”  But addressing antisemitism should require more attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion — not less. “There’s no question that DEI programs have not included Jewish community concerns. It’s been evident for a long time and needs to be addressed,” said Stacy Burdett, an independent antisemitism expert who works with the Cohen Institute for Leadership and Public Service at the University of Maine and testified at a recent hearing on antisemitism. “But dismantling a system that protects marginalized minorities has nothing to do with the interest or fears of Jews who want to just live without harassment and antisemitism.”

…

Much like the conservative arguments against affirmative action and critical race theory, Republicans have argued that DEI amounts to “reverse discrimination” against white people. Conservative think tanks such as the Claremont Instituteand the Manhattan Institute and conservative culture warriors such as Chris Rufoargue that DEI should be abolished because it is “radical” and only makes students “see racism where none exists.” As a result, these groups see aspirational “colorblind” policies, which have been proven to hurt diversity, and an imagined meritocracy, which has never existed in America, as the way forward.

…

Now right-wing lawmakers and pundits say DEI should be abolished because it breeds antisemitism on campuses by refusing to see Jewish students as an “oppressed group.” The turn has brought new life to a movement that lumps together “critical race theory, cultural Marxism, identity politics, and multiculturalism” as threats to “the Enlightenment ideal of knowledge.”

(@mitigatedchaos)

[cottoncandyswisherz]

birthday gyal

dom!matt x fwb!reader

warnings: unprotected sex, swearing, choking, love confession

-

the only thing worse than having your 21st birthday during the spring semester, was having your 21st birthday be on a wednesday during the spring semester.

as of may 8th 2024, y/n was officially of legal drinking age and she couldn't even go get shit-faced because she had a lecture the next morning. so instead of partying with her besties, she was at home in her robe, reading 'the mastery of love', while drinking her first legal acholic beverage, twisted tea. 

obviously it wasn't what she wanted to be doing, but she knew that waiting until friday to go out was her best option because she knew she would need 2 days to recover from all the debauchery she intended to partake in. 

so there she was, sulking, reading, sipping. whichever one you prefer honestly. 

that didn't last long though. 

matt <3

happy birthday sweetheart

thanks matt

come get your gifts

HOL AWWNNN YOU GOT ME A GIFT FR??

what kind of friend would i be if i didnt get you a birthday gift?

IM FINNA GET THAT GDAY DICKKKKK

youre insane.

and this is why y/n loved matt. he gave her girlfriend treatment without forcing her to be his girlfriend. 

they were basically dating. they took each other out, they only fucked each each other, the slept at the others house often. 

but the title. the title of girlfriend and boyfriend is what fucked them up. it came with so much pressure. and these two fools hated pressure as much as republicans hate the BLM movement. so they did things the way they wanted. 

according to y/n and matt, they were friends. who fucked on a consistent basis.

it's not weird unless you make it weird. 

slipping on her black bralette, sweats, shoes and jewelry y/n made her way out of her apartment and into her car. on her way to the triplets house, she wondered what matt had in store for her. 

she got her answer as soon as she opened the door to his house.

in no way, shape, or form was matt a grand gestures type of guy. but when he did do something extensive, he believed the glory was in the little things so he made it a point to remember y/n current song obsessions, forming a playlist that played lightly through the house. there was purple rose petals sprinkled in a trail from the front door to matts bedroom door.

when she opened said door, her eyes fluttered shut at the sight before her. matt stood with in front of his bed with a bottle of tequila blanco. (AND THAT DAMN DON JULIO MAKE ME A FOOL FOR YEEEWWW) behind him, on his bed was an assortment of gift bags and amazon packages. 

"happy birthday y/n." matt said, walking up to her and wrapping her in a comforting hug. 

y/n shed a few thug tears as she hugged him back and planted a fat smooch on his lips. "thank you so much MWAH" she planted another kiss on his lips and began to open her gifts. 

jewelry with her sun, moon and rising signs. a melanie tee and a lana poster for her room

by the time y/n was done opening her gifts, she was just one giant smile. all her toofs were on display and she wasn't even embarrassed because she was utterly happy.

she pounced on matt and gave him a hug with all the strength her body could muster. she kissed all over his face and thanked him like he'd just bought her dream car rather than a few birthday gifts.

"okay okay okay! i love you too but i need air to breathe!" he said in attempt to get her to calm down.

y/n reluctantly released the boy and hopped off the bed to grab the bottle and pour the two of them a shot. they toasted to her birthday and downed the shot.

sitting back down, y/n leaned her head on the headboard and placed her feet on matts lap because he was across from her on the mattress.

"do i get a birthday lap dance now?" y/n asked, cackling at the look on matts face.

after letting out a few dry laughs, matt answered her question. "no, but i do have one more gift for you." he pulled her closer to him by her ankles, causing her head to hit the pillows.

y/n's pant magically disappear along with her panties.

matt moves one to beside her head and leans down to trap her mouth with his. as she leans forward, the tip of his cock pushes against he entrance.

with his other hand, he circles the front of her neck. "i'll never hurt you, y/n." he kisses her cheek. "but i'll choke you a little. if that's what you want."

y/n's eyes widen and her lips part. matt feels her not before she does. and then he squeezes, knowing exactly where to press. y/n's eyes flutter shut.

her body shifts under him. her hips try to lift to take him inside him. but he doesn't let her. he just squeezes a little harder. her eyes open and her hands reach up to grab at his arm, not to push him away but to cling to him.

she looks up at him with those beautiful eyes and her body twitches. once.

matts leaking all over her slit. so fucking ready to bust. but he needs her with him. he needs her to feel as feral as he does.

but when her fingers dig into his arm and she twitches a second time, he releases his hold on her neck and slams his entire length inside her.

y/n's orgasm is instant. an implosion. her arms wrap around matt, clutching him.

and he's lost. he's surrounded by her heat, and he's fucking lost in it. he ruts her into the mattress, slamming his hips into hers as she whines and whimpers beneath him. feeling her pussy grip to keep him inside her each time he moves. feeling her breath on his neck with each thrust forward.

to him, she's everything.

he pulls free from her body, grabbing her by her hips. he flips her into her stomach.

he doesn't give her time to catch her breath. he rips her bralette, yanks her hips up, and shoves into her from behind.

her orgasm is still trembling through her body, but it's not enough.

reaching forward, he grips the front of her neck again and pulls her until she's upright on he knees before him.

her tits bounce every time his hips slam against her ass and its the best fucking thing he's ever seen.

he tightens his hold on her neck again, a little tighter than last time. because this time, he's closer.

he's so much closer to filling her with his seed, and he needs her to milk it out of him.

he places his mouth at her ear and slides his other hand down to belly to her slick clit.

"i'n gonna cum inside you, y/n. i'm gonna cum so deep inside you it'll be dripping out of you for fucking days." he rubs his fingers in circles around her bundle of nerves. "but i need you to cum first. so grab those titties for me. show me that you love it."

y/n doesn't even hesitate. her hands fly up to her chest and her fingers pinch and pull at her nipples.

her pussy starts to clench around matt, who tries to control his movements.

in. out. in. out.

but then her eyes start to roll back and he presses harder against her clit. and she cums.

he releases her throat and the sound of her ragged inhale is the last push he needs before his balls squeeze and he's unloading inside her.

he groans her name as he fills her with his release. "i love you. so fucking much. i fucking love you."

for the final pulse of his cock, he shoves himself as deep as he can get, the thrust tipping them forward.

he rolls off her and they lie there, silent. the only sounds heard, were the sounds of their heavy breathing.

he said he loves her. he knows he did. she knows he did.

did he mean it? or was that a post nut confession that he didn't mean to say?

but y/n came to the conclusion that whether he meant it or not, she loved him. and she wasn't scared to say it.

so she reaches over to where matt was laying with his hand behind his head and grabbed his face so he was looking at her.

"i love you."

and just like that, matt's world stopped.

he grabbed her hand and held it in his. "be my girlfriend." he spoke out. "i wanna tell everyone that breathes in my direction that y/n y/l/n is my girlfriend. i want everyone to know i'm yours. because i am. yours. so be mine."

she let out a laugh and leaned over, kissing his jaw. "matt. i was yours the first time we kissed."

niyah speaks this is for lilly bae.

remember that if no one loves you, mommy loves you (and by mommy i mean me)

taglist: @mattslolita @muwapsturniolo @mattssluttygf @zniyadgaf

[contemplatingoutlander]

The Washington Post drew heavy criticism Tuesday for its fact check of the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Democrats attacked Republican nominee Donald Trump throughout the evening, but many critics argued Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler tried to draw a false equivalency between the former president's lies and some of the statements made by speakers during Monday's event. "Wow," said journalist Judd Legum. "The Washington Post 'fact check' of night 1 of the DNC is embarrassing." Kessler rounded up 12 claims made from the stage in Chicago that he felt lacked context, but many readers felt that he focused too narrowly on specific words Trump had used and the implied meaning of those statements, as characterized by Democrats. "This kind of 'fact-checking' is an artifact of the collision between Trump's politics of lying and elite media's business-model-driven bothsidesism," said Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall. "The two things are obviously categorically different. But the need to jam them into one model creates nonsense like this."

I'm so glad that others in the media noticed this. It was frustrating reading the WaPo's "fact check" of the first night of the DNC.

In his attempt to get more readers for The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos hired William Lewis (from Murdoch's WSJ) as CEO. As a result, the once great newspaper that produced the Watergate investigation, is now reduced to giving its readers mediocre, if not misleading "fact checks."

[mariacallous]

In the North Philadelphia neighbourhood of Fairhill, signs of Puerto Rico are never far off. The US island territory's red, white and blue flag adorns homes and businesses, and the sounds of salsa and reggaetón boom from passing cars and restaurants selling fried plantains and spit-roasted pork.

The area is the beating heart of Philadelphia's more than 90,000-strong Puerto Rican population and forms a key part of Pennsylvania's Latino community, which both the Democrats and Republicans have sought to woo ahead of the 5 November election.

But on Monday morning, many locals were left seething at a joke made at Donald Trump's rally the night before in New York, in which comic Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as an "island of garbage".

The joke, some said, could come back to haunt the Republicans in a key swing state that Democrats won by a narrow margin of 1.17% - about 82,000 votes - in 2020.

"The campaign just hurt itself, so much. It's crazy to me," said Ivonne Torres Miranda, a local resident who said she remains disillusioned by both candidates - Republican Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris - with just eight days to go in the campaign.

"Even if he [Mr Hinchcliffe ] was joking - you don't joke like that.

"We're Puerto Ricans. We have dignity, and we have pride," she told the BBC, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish with a strong Puerto Rican accent.

"You've got to think before saying things."

In the aftermath, the Trump campaign was quick to distance itself from Mr Hinchcliffe's joke, with a spokesman saying the remark "does not reflect the views" of Trump or his campaign.

The Harris campaign pounced on the joke, with the vice-president pointing to the comment as a sign that Trump is "fanning the fuel of trying to divide" Americans.

Her views were echoed by Puerto Rican celebrities Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez, who both endorsed Harris on Sunday.

A campaign official told CBS, the BBC's US partner, that the controversy was a political gift to the Democrats.

Some Puerto Rican residents agree with that assessment.

"[The joke] just put it in the bag for us. He literally just gave us the win," said Jessie Ramos, a Harris supporter. "He has no idea how hard the Latino community is going to come out and support Kamala Harris."

Residents of Puerto Rico - a US island territory in the Caribbean - are unable to vote in presidential elections, but the large diaspora in the US can.

Across Pennsylvania, about 600,000 eligible voters are Latino.

More than 470,000 of them are Puerto Ricans - one of the largest concentrations in the country and a potential deciding factor in a state where polls show Harris and Trump in an extremely tight race.

North Philadelphia in particular has been a target for Harris, who on Sunday made a campaign stop at Freddy & Tony's, a Puerto Rican restaurant and community hub in Fairhill.

The same day, Harris unveiled a new policy platform for Puerto Rico, promising economic development and improved disaster relief and accusing Trump of having "abandoned and insulted" the island during Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Whether or not this will sway Puerto Rican voters remains to be seen.

Freddy & Tony's owner, Dalma Santiago, told the BBC that she is not sure whether the joke will make a difference but that she believed that it was heard "loud and clear" in Fairhill and other Puerto Rican communities.

"Everybody has their own opinion," she told the BBC. "But nobody will be forgetting that one."

Similarly, Moses Santana, a 13-year US Army veteran who works at a harm reduction facility in Fairhill, said he is unsure of the joke's impact.

In an interview with the BBC on a Fairhill street corner, Mr Santana said the area is traditionally wary of politicians of all kinds, with many believing that both parties have failed to address socio-economic issues, crime and drug abuse there.

"Folks around here tend not to get what they ask for," he added. "Even when they vote."

On Tuesday, Trump will campaign in Allentown, a town of about 125,000 in central Pennsylvania where about 33,000 people identify as Puerto Rican.

But even among Trump supporters in Pennsylvania's wider Latino community, the joke was poorly received.

That included Republican voter Jessenia Anderson, a Puerto Rican resident from the town of Johnstown about 240 miles (386 km) west of Philadelphia.

Ms Anderson, a military veteran who was born in New York's heavily Puerto Rican Lower East Side, is a frequent attendee of Trump rallies in Pennsylvania.

She described the joke as "deeply offensive" and said the routine felt "wildly out of place" - and implored her fellow Republicans to engage in "thoughtful and respectful conversations".

But Ms Anderson has no plan to switch her vote.

"My belief in the party's potential to make a positive impact remains strong," she said.

"I hope they will approach Latino voters with the respect they deserve."

[lets-steal-an-archive]

The annual Kansas Speaks survey from the Docking Institute at Fort Hays State University showed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris a mere five points behind Republican candidate Donald Trump. Given that the survey covers traditionally conservative Kansas, political pundits pounced.

“BREAKING: Trump only winning by 5 In KANSAS,” wrote legal commentator Tristan Snell.

“If Harris is only down 5 to Trump in Kansas – election night is going to be very good for Democrats,” added Obama campaign and administration alumnus Tim Fullerton.

“…holy sh*t?” exclaimed journalist and lawyer Seth Abramson.

Let’s step back from excited progressive reactions for a moment and actually talk about the poll, what it means and whether Harris has a shot in Kansas. (Spoiler alert, she almost certainly does not). We found a great person to help us break things down: Brett Zollinger, director of the Docking Institute. He sat down with Kansas Reflector staff on Tuesday afternoon to give background on those surprising results.

First off, we should understand that the data presented comes from a survey, not a poll. Kansas Speaks primarily tracks public opinion on issues rather than candidates. It gathers a representative panel of Kansans and collects information from them via a carefully designed online form.

“The presidential election is a very minor focus for us in Kansas Speaks,” he said. “We are far more focused on policies, issues that are going to be relevant to Kansans, likely to come up in the legislative session, that sort of thing. But every four years, we get this unique opportunity to see what our survey methodology bears out in terms of some actual voter decisions in the state in the presidential election. So in 2020, we were within 0.2% actually, in the spread between Trump and Biden with our survey panel methodology.”

For reference, in 2020 Trump finished at 56.2% in Kansas, while President Joe Biden reached 41.6%, a 14.6 percentage point gap. The 2020 Kansas Speaks survey found 52% support for Trump and 37.6% for Biden, a 14.4 percentage point gap.

[malebodyexhibit]

A Master and his Toys (a Next Door Boy tale)

Possession is the typical service provided by NDB, but that’s for people with no imagination. You have access to dozens of straight, fit, young men and you don’t want to be their masters? Sure you can take over someone’s body and fuck twinks ’til your cock and balls are dry. Or, you can rent 3 dumb, blond, straight jocks and have the agency adjust their behavior.

This 19-year-old twunk is a business major from Texas. I call him Rosebud. He’s your standard Republican trust fund baby who couldn’t hack it in university and got cut off from his parents. He drifted from girlfriend to girlfriend, mooching off them and cheating behind their backs. Eventually, he ended up as talent for NDB. He didn’t want to be possessed by some gay guy, but he was up for a minor reprogramming via his implant. I told him it was an obedience mod and pleasure mod. The pleasure mod being a love for gay sex. Now he loves showing off his body. I often kiss his neck when he’s being a good boy. He loves when I buy him a new jock strap. He can be a bit too much sometimes. For example, when I’m trying to watch the game, he crawls beside me and grinds himself against me. I sometimes just decide to give him a quick fuck. He doesn’t mind if he doesn’t cum, as long as he gets to feel me explode in him, but sometimes I just turn off his mods so he returns to his straight jock mind. He gets so embarrassed and tries to cover himself up, but a kiss from me and his love for attention kicks back into gear. When I’m at work, I have the other guys top him so he doesn’t get too lonely.

I call this one Jack-O. He’s a 28-year-old personal trainer from Colorado. He’s pretty easy going unlike Rosebud. He wanted to work for NBD but not have anyone else in control of his mind and body. He consented to a pleasure mod though. I told him it would just work on his drive for working out. He’d still be in his body, controlling his decisions. That much was true, but I had him have a strong lust for my  workout musk. After a tough workout, I toss him my sweat-soaked gear so he can lick it clean. I had to tie his arms up because he kept pulling my socks and underwear off. I spent a few days in my house completely naked ‘cause he just strips me and slobbers on my clothes. If I don’t shower quickly enough, he pounces on me and gives me a tongue bath. Because this is so closely tied to sex, he drips precum around the house and I have to be careful where I step. He’s almost always erect, but I had him unable to ejaculate until I stroked him myself. Otherwise, he’d just be spraying the house in his spunk. Jack-O has a fiancé, but he agreed to a no-contact during his contract duration. Yet that seemed heartless of me, so I sometimes have Rosebud wear his fiancé’s perfume then have Jack-O mount him to workout his sexual frustrations. I have, of course, turned off Jack-O’s mods so I could see his confusion as he’s sniffing my used underwear and his horror at his tied up body and his erect, dripping cock.

Spot is his name. This 33-year-old mechanic from Colorado joined NDB for easy money like everyone else. He highly values his body and mind, so he also chose to not be possessed. He’s a straight bachelor who used to bring home a woman. He’d treat her right and flirt for a week, but he’d cut them loose after things get too comfortable. I asked him about mods, and he didn’t have a problem with it. He just wanted to make sure he didn’t do gay shit. So I gave him a perception mod. He believes me, Rosebud, and Jack-O are women. I also tweaked with his pleasure mod and and obedience mod. Spot does all the chores in the house. He sweeps (hence, ‘you missed a spot’), mops up Jack-O’s happy trail on the floor, spots the other two during their workout to keep their rock hard bodies. He also tops them so he can keep himself happy. He loves to eat out their pussy (really it’s their cocks) and pound their pussy (their ass) and fondle their breasts (pecs). If I didn’t tape his mouth, he’d just ramble on and on since he just wants to prove how smart he is. With Spot, I never turn off his mod, but I do find myself blowing him. He thinks I’m one of his many female conquests, so it’s sweet to have him wrap his arms around me, but even sweeter to have him on all fours sweeping dirt from under the couch.

So that’s my collection. I’m not overly malicious. Everything was written out in the fine print. If they read carefully, they’d know what each mod entailed. NDB fully requires consent. At the end of their service (like one month), they’ll be returned to their normal mental state. But in the past, many prefer their new simpler lives.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

Previously unreleased video from Jan. 6, 2021, shows that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly identified Donald Trump as the force behind the violent attack on the Capitol. The video was turned over to the Republican-led House Committee on Administration by Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, a filmmaker who was there to document the Electoral College vote count.

The video shows that within hours of the insurrection, Pelosi identified Trump as "a domestic enemy."  “I just feel sick about what he did to the Capitol and the country today,” Pelosi said while slumped in the back of an SUV in the early morning hours of Jan. 7. “He’s got to pay a price for that.” The video also shows the speaker’s reluctance about being removed from the House chamber by security forces, even as Trump’s rioters entered the building, because she knew exactly what was at stake.  “If they stop the proceedings,” Pelosi says in the video, “they will have succeeded in stopping the validation of the presidency of the United States." The video showing the focus on Trump's instigation of events comes as special counsel Jack Smith has filed a superseding indictment in the case against Donald Trump for his role in Jan. 6.

[...] "We take an oath to protect our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic," Pelsoi told those around her in the hours following the attack. "There is a domestic enemy in the White House. And let's not mince words about this." Pelosi also seemed to doubt that congressional leaders were being removed for their own protection, rather than as part of the scheme to halt the counting of electoral votes.  The Republican-led House Committee on Administration is sure to play up a portion of the just-released video in which Pelosi blames herself for not giving the National Guard sufficient warning of just how bad events on Jan. 6 might become. "Why weren't the National Guard there to begin with?" Pelosi asks at one point as she is being escorted out of the Capitol. "They clearly didn't know, and I take responsibility for not having them just prepared for more.” Republicans are likely to pounce on this statement as confirmation of Trump’s false claims that Pelsoi “took full responsibility” for the security of the Capitol. However, Pelosi did not have the authority to call in the National Guard. Previously released footage shows Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer desperately trying to get someone to bring in the Guard, only to meet with little response.

Previously unreleased video from January 6th, 2021 revealed that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) rightly labeled insurrection-inciter Donald Trump as a “domestic enemy.”

[darkmaga-returns]

It’s been truly remarkable to watch Kamala Harris’ closing unity message get royally derailed by President Joe Biden’s Freudian slip about “garbage” just one week before the 2024 election wraps up. It’s been even more amazing to watch the regime’s foot soldiers lie so vociferously about the statement anyone with working ears could hear clearly on video — amazing because the CYA mission won’t work.

After insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe joked about Puerto Rico being a floating pile of trash at a recent Trump rally — among a zillion other indiscriminate zings — Democrats tried unsuccessfully to gin up a controversy about Republican racism. But that plan epically backfired when Joe Biden talked about Puerto Rico on a Zoom call and ended up calling half of Americans garbage instead.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is [Trump’s] supporters.”

October surprise, baby! It seems like poetic justice that Biden, who was knifed in the back by his own party to undemocratically install Kamala Harris as the Democrat nominee, was the one to deliver what could be the fatal blow to Harris’ seemingly faltering campaign. 

The White House and accomplice media immediately launched into spin mode. Joe Biden’s X account said he was talking not about people, but about “hateful rhetoric.” His press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “clarified” that when Biden said Trump supporters are garbage, “He was not calling Trump supporters garbage.” Got it. Taxpayer-funded NPR thought the most important part of POTUS demonizing half the country was that “Republicans pounce[d],” and the network’s media correspondent tried really hard to hear whether Biden called Trumpers trash but concluded Robert Hur-style that the president is just “an octogenarian with a stutter.” CBS News (of election interference infamy) and The Washington Post couldn’t quite sus out the mysterious meaning of “supporters.”

[vomitdodger]

Hilarious. Once you see the “republicans pounce” you’ll never unseen it. Granted this one is obvious. But the leftist media always attacks the GOP response to the actual nefarious act.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Donald Trump rushed to distance himself from the Republicans’ highly controversial Project 2025 Friday, calling parts of it “ridiculous and abysmal.”

The ex-president used his Truth Social platform to disavow the platform, drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, which offers a 900-page preview of how the most powerful think-tank in the conservative movement wants him to govern. He acted three days after the man who drew it up told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Among Project 2025’s most controversial–and potentially electorally costly–plans are restricting access to contraception; using the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for heightened “abortion surveillance”; and revoking a Department of Defense policy funding travel for abortion. It calls the line-up of policies “Restoring the Family as the Centerpiece of American Life.”

But Trump posted on his platform, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

The move suggests that Trump’s aides are concerned that Democrats have been able to insert Project 2025 into the public mind and associate Trump with its most radical ideas, at a time when the Republican Party should be on the front foot. Trump has had a poll boost from the crisis in Joe Biden’s presidency caused by his stumbling debate performance, but there are concerns in his campaign that a focus on abortion policy would give Democrats a potent weapon.

Democrats pounced on Trump’s statement on Friday, using it as an opportunity to continue to try and tie the two together.

“Donald Trump and Project 2025 are one big MAGA operation, coordinating on an extreme blueprint to rip away freedoms and undermine democracy — and they’ve made it clear themselves,” a DNC spokesperson said, adding: “Trump can’t hide his ties to the dangerous, unhinged MAGA loyalists at Project 2025, and the American people will stop them at the ballot box in November.”

The Heritage Foundation tried to pre-empt any Republican fallout from Trump’s disavowal, saying in a statement on Friday the group doesn’t speak for any presidential candidate.

“We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy & personnel recommendations for the next conservative president,” the group’s Project 2025 X account posted. “But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”

Trying to throw Project 2025 overboard matches recent rhetoric from Trump on abortion, where he has attempted to navigate between his base’s fundamentalist anti-abortion position and the reality that there is wide popular support for pro-choice policies. Notably, on Tuesday, the Trump campaign released a version of its plans for the party platform at the Republican National Convention this month without making any mention of abortion. At the same time, Trump has tried to claim that “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade overturned and abortion policy returned to the states. And his promise of a clear abortion policy has been coming for many months; it was, for example, due “on Monday morning” according to a Sunday April 8 post on Truth Social.

Project 2025 was created by Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation’s president, who was lambasted this week as “a coward” by MSNBC’s Joe Reid for his veiled threat of bloodshed. “He’ll be at a country club somewhere, golfing, while the real violent people, the armed people, the Proud Boys types, do the actual dirty work,” she said on her show, The Reid Out.

Other aspects of Project 2025 include making it possible for Trump and his aides to fire tens of thousands of government workers by ending their protection from political interference. The idea is based on claims that a “deep state” is trying to prevent Republicans enacting their policies, but it would then allow Trumpworld to stuff their followers into government positions.

Trump’s claim that “I know nothing” of the people drawing up Project 2025 echoes his long history of denying that he knows people with whom an association might be damaging. Among those he has denied knowledge of are white supremacist David Duke; the Proud Boys; never-Trumper George Conway whose wife Kellyanne was his campaign manager; jailed 2016 campaign aide George Papadopoulos, whom he had previously called “excellent”; and most expensively of all, E. Jean Carroll. Despite being adjudicated to have sexually assaulted her by a New York jury, he has continued to claim not to know the former advice columnist, to whom he has been ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages for defaming on top of $5 million for the sexual assault.

[meret118]

The Kamala Harris campaign seized on a comment earlier this week from Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance deriding efforts to retool a Michigan auto plant as mere “table scraps.”

“Apparently 650 families’ livelihood is just ‘table scraps’ there,” said Gene Sperling, an economic advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris, in a video conference call with reporters on Thursday.

[bighermie]

Republicans Pounce After Kamala Harris Calls for "Assault Weapons" Ban of "Weapons of War" After Unarmed Israelis Massacred by Hamas | The Gateway Pundit | by Kristinn Taylor

[dchan87]

The process of removing Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate can’t exactly be said to have worked well, but it worked. And now it’s time for Americans to turn the same self-regulatory instincts to Biden’s 78-year-old former rival. Trump’s campaign is already falling apart – most recently with the shameful attempt to use a ceremony at Arlington Cemetery as an electioneering platform. But there are deeper reasons to inspect Trump’s political credibility now. Because cognitively speaking, Trump is beginning to make Biden look like Oscar Wilde. Events move so fast, the news cycle is so accelerated, that the most telling signs of Trump’s decline pass without commentary. It might be illuminating to dwell a little on one of them. About two weeks ago, Trump seemed to denigrate the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award for military valour in combat. Speaking at his New Jersey golf club, he was praising Miriam Adelson, the Israeli-American widow of the late Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, when he recalled how he once gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Miriam, I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian, it’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better, because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor that’s soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal.”

The liberal press, now comfortably primed to respond with moral outrage to every outrageous thing Trump says, pounced. Here he was, once again, spewing contempt for the military. However, few, if any, people pointed out that it is not the “Congressional Medal of Honor” but the “Medal of Honor”. Had Biden made that mistake, an outcry would have ensued. And Trump’s patterns of thinking here indicate a cognitive decline in the way he apprehends and makes sense of reality that goes beyond mere propriety or morality. It is, of course, wholly deficient in empathy to justify the lesser value of the Medal of Honor by citing the fact that the soldiers who receive it have “been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead”. But it is not simply, as people have suggested, that Trump, who despises “losers”, considers a “loser” anyone who has been wounded in battle, or taken prisoner in combat.

It is that, first, he does not seem to recognise the moral significance of bodies and minds in pain. And, second, he is not aware of the importance, social and moral, of pretending he does recognise another’s pain even if he doesn’t. Then there is the language itself. It suddenly swerves into the incoherent. Trump says that “everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor that’s soldiers”. (He could also mean: “everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor – that’s soldiers.”) The words verge on nonsense. Either he is saying that every soldier gets the Medal of Honor, which is absurdly untrue. Or he is saying that only soldiers get the Medal of Honor, but that every soldier gets it – which is similarly absurd – but with a twist. If Biden had spoken in such a way a year ago, he would have been pushed aside all the sooner.

Trump’s extreme rhetoric is still routinely dismissed as him “just being Trump” – the usual hyperbole and bluster. Yet it is hardly mere bluster or hyperbole for Trump to claim, as he has recently, that “you can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot, you get mugged, you get raped, you get whatever it may be.” Perhaps the most alarming part of that sentence is the disturbingly disconnected “whatever it may be”. And it is not merely vulgar for Trump to republish a post claiming that Kamala Harris has achieved political success thanks to dispensing oral sex. The claim is not just appalling; it is crazy to make it in public. That post appeared with several others: a photo of Harris in an orange prison jumpsuit, a photo of Barack Obama with a caption asking Trump supporters if they wanted Obama to be tried before a military tribunal, and photos of Trump with AI-created lions. Most people do not lack inhibition to this degree. But Trump’s repetition of such lunacy has made it routine. Call it the banality of madness. Trump’s assertion, made in deadly earnest in an interview last Tuesday with Dr Phil McGraw, that God had spared him from being assassinated in order to save America, and possibly the world, barely raised an eyebrow.

Incredibly, in America, where just about everything goes – Trump, for example – there is a tacit prohibition against discussing Trump’s obvious mental incapacity in public. The taboo was imposed in February 2017, just over a year after Trump’s inauguration. That was when the New York Times published a short letter, signed by “33 psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers”. Noting Trump’s “inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions”, and his pattern of distorting reality to suit his own “psychological state”, the letter reasoned that “[i]n a powerful leader, these attacks are likely to increase, as his personal myth of greatness appears to be confirmed”. The signatories concluded that Trump’s “speech and actions make him incapable of serving safely as president”. Trump’s continuing refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election makes the letter prescient.

The response to the letter was more than passing strange. Other mental health professionals rose to denounce the letter and its signatories. One was Allen Frances, the prestigious chairman of the task force that wrote the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV”, considered psychiatry’s diagnostic bible. Frances had two problems with the letter. The first was, he said, that Trump was too successful to be mentally ill – a bizarre argument that sounded like one Trump would make himself. “Mr Trump,” Frances intoned, “causes severe distress rather than experiencing it and has been richly rewarded, rather than punished, for his grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of empathy.” Therefore Trump could not possibly be mentally ill, Frances concluded, apparently unaware of erratic politicians in world history who have achieved success in the exact terms defined by their insanity. Frances added, with an apparently unintentional touch of humour, that pronouncing Trump mentally ill was an insult to the mentally ill.

Reacting to the negative backlash, the NY Times then published an article about the controversy by Richard Friedman, a psychiatrist. Friedman referred to what is known in American psychiatry as the Goldwater rule. This was the American Psychiatric Association (APA)’s official prohibition against mental health professionals making a public diagnosis of a politician’s mental health. That edict itself was a response to mental health professionals participating, in 1964, in a public survey and judging the then Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater, mentally unfit to be president. Siding with the APA, Friedman finished by declaring that clinically judging Trump to be mentally ill would let him “off the moral hook”. And from that point on, liberal attacks on Trump were unfailingly moral, a tactic that soon degenerated into a grossly ineffectual torrent of moral hubris, virtue-mongering and sanctimony.

There are, of course, sound reasons to resist declaring Trump mentally unsound. At this late moment in American civilisation, the concept of mental illness is nearly impossible to clarify. When I wrote, in 2017, about the dust-up over whether Trump should be publicly diagnosed, my very own therapist at the time paused in the middle of one of our sessions to scold me for doing so. The weapon of psychological stigma can be used, like impeachment, against any rival or adversary. In 2011, a psychologist named Drew Westen enraged people by publishing, again in the Times, a lengthy essay arguing, in effect, that Obama did not have the “character” to be president (a “deep-seated aversion to conflict”; “tic-like gestures of compromise”).

It could be that the debate over whether it’s acceptable to call Trump mentally unfit to be president is at the heart of the weird debate over who is more weird, the Democrats or the Republicans. America is becoming unrecognisable, so fast, in so many ways, to so many different types of people, that the words “weird” and “sick” are being anxiously domesticated into neutral terms of description. Yet, in the end, the unclarity is all the more reason to be vigilant about truly aberrant figures slipping into leadership of the country under the cover of a revolution of norms. Trump is truly aberrant. Everyone knows it, his supporters as much as his detractors. No one talks like this man. No one abuses other people like this man. No one misrepresents reality like this man. And he is not lying. He is describing what he perceives, which is not what is actually there.

Biden’s relational skills, his empathy, his moral perception of reality were never the issue. He had been, by all appearances and accounts, a mentally stable man all his life. That is why his cognitive decline became so apparent, once his entourage stopped shielding him. It is harder to discern Trump’s cognitive decline, because his behaviour, ironically, serves the same purpose as Biden’s entourage, obscuring the decline it is a symptom of. But anyone watching him abruptly change subjects in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, anyone who listened to that speech and watched him disappear into the rabbit hole of his own mind, can see that he is even further along in his deterioration than Biden.

The liberal media cried wolf in 2016, and now they are afraid to ring the alarm bells when it is vital to ring them. After 6 January and the spectacle of watching the effects of Trump’s “personal myth of greatness” being challenged, now is the time to apply the same scrutiny of Trump’s mental condition that was applied to Biden – the appearance of throwing stones from glass houses be damned. Having been criticised for questioning Trump’s sanity in 2017, and despite the daily evidence that Trump’s faculties are degenerating, the ferociously partisan liberal press wishes to present itself as dignified and above the fray. Yet what was good for the octogenarian gander with declining faculties but an intact moral centre should be equally good for the septuagenarian gander with declining faculties and a pathologically absent moral centre. The great blessing in life, and the great curse, is that people can get used to just about anything. That inborn tendency is now, with regard to Trump’s unstable mind, a curse.

[landrysg]

From Politico: A classic of its genre.

Republicans always pounce ...