#veterans against maga

[chuck-glisson]

1m

Marjorie Taylor Greene, as per the 14th Ammendment, is INELIGIBLE to serve in office. Should Veterans fall back on our "Oath" to REMOVE HER? Asking for a friend.

[poliscijunkee5555]

Biden said he's "righting a historic wrong."

Let’s not loop forget that President Biden as vice president called for support of marriage quality the balance and President Obama went on the record in support of it.

The other hand, tRUMP who said famously to the gay community “what do you have to lose” has done nothing but harm to LGBTQ plus individuals. Supreme Court nominees are about to reverse marriage equality, they don’t care about precedent as we have learned when they overturned Roe versus Wade and The White of women to have terminated unwanted pregnancies, even by those who have raped them.. Alito, yes, flag guy, has said in one of his said in one of his latest rulings that he is in favor of reversing the right of gays to adopt looking at bringing back the side of laws.

What do you have to lose?

Our freedoms

[socialjusticeinamerica]

*Spoilers in the linked article.*

I caught an early screening last night. It wasn’t well attended. The film is more like a Blumhouse horror movie on steroids than anything you may have conceived ahead of time. It is very dark, gritty, and oppressive. It reminds me of of seeing Platoon and leaving the theater tired as if I had been in the battle.

The film doesn’t really play off of current politics but rather fictional plot lines so as not to offend the current right and left wings in America. Despite this it is an intensely realistic war film and edge of your seat thriller. The main characters are war correspondents and their personal detachment from the frightening scenes of violence, near indifference in some scenes, becomes a subplot.

Civil War depicts the chaos, fear, violence, deprivation, depravity, and sheer terror one can only experience by having been in a war zone. Nick Offerman, as the President, is only in a few brief scenes and though the film stays away from real life connections his character is in his “third term” and has disbanded the FBI. Clearly this is Trumpian but subtle enough to fly over the heads of MAGAts. Rogue militia men, not much different than we see in Red States, armed with AR-15’s are present throughout the film and generate tension and sheer terror at some points. The acts of graphically realistic barbarity are hard to process.

The film is a cautionary tale of an America plunged into an utterly chaotic and brutal Civil War where no prisoners are taken, literally on the screen. There are no good guys or bad guys and very little context or background is given. The closing photo on screen during the end credits speaks volumes. This is not just what is highly likely to happen if the right-wing doesn’t get their way but what the cost will be to society. Chaos, disruption, breakdown in the supply chain, the resulting lack of food and fuel, breakdown of the power grid, collapse of law and order, domestic terrorism, anarchy, devaluation of currency, humanitarian crises, destruction of infrastructure, and a constant state of fear.

Ok, begin rant here:

Sadly about a third of the country wants this to happen and has not only been preparing for it but actually trying to provoke it. In the eighties and nineties we saw hopeless young marginalized people in rural join gangs and be willing to toss their lives away because their situation was near hopeless. They expected to die young and didn’t care if they did or what harm they caused along the way. They lacked educational opportunities or any meaningful employment. Now in the two thousands we see rural southern and western white youth with the same mindset. Red state Republican governance and corporate plundering has left them poorly educated with no chance at socio-economic advancement. The difference between the two groups being that the poor rural whites have been brainwashed into supporting their oppressors. Further they are armed with military assault rifles and own a plethora of combat tactical gear.

This stems in part from the unholy alliance of the NRA and the GOP (Republicans). However more to the point it stems from the desensitization that two decades of forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused. This was courtesy of grifter war criminals Bush/Cheney. Our streets are now flooded with hundreds of thousands of traumatized, disillusioned, and disgruntled veterans and their tales fascinate MAGAs to the point where they form militias. The Republicans, who vote against veterans aid consistently, have claimed the military and falsely profess admiration for it with empty lip service. Poor and poorly educated Republicans now worship the military like they are warriors on the Klingon home world. Nothing against active or retired military just the Republican pretenders. While Joe MAGA himself doesn’t serve, he feels the need to play pretend soldier and would in a heartbeat turn his life inside out and our nation inside out for a sense of belonging, ie the MAGA cult mentality. They want that post apocalyptic gun slinger world where they believe life is simple as long as you are carrying a gun. They have been conditioned not to think things through and see no other escape from a society that has become too complicated for them to navigate.

That’s the crux of my story, rural Republicans feel hopeless and have been radicalized by demagogues to the point they will wage war on the rest of the country. Republican politicians and their corporate/oligarch masters want to gorge themselves off of a civil war they believe they will win. See the movie Civil War and see what the ordinary MAGAt is hoping to do to the rest of us.

The movie, although brutal and not for the faint of heart, is a cautionary tale that we need to be aware of.

[gusty-wind]

Mindy Robinson@AmericanAFMindy

2h·

We have a corrupt, dementia patient for "president" that no one's allowed to question the "election" of that:

• Refuses to close the border to illegals, child sex traffickers, and gang bangers.

• Is actively funding this invasion using our tax money to do it.

• Won't stop inappropriately touching and sniffing children.

• Can't walk up or down stairs.

• Is appearing at political rally's where the general public isn't allowed anywhere near him.

• Can't speak or form a coherent sentence.

• Has a crackhead son he laundered money through.

• Who was installed by a Deep State that got caught censoring private companies to skew an election to his favor.

• Set up election protestors on J6 with federal informants they refuse to prosecute, a pipe bomber they refuse to look for, all while arresting veterans and MAGA grandmas that walked through an open door.

• Was installed with the help of a corrupt FBI that lied about the incriminating laptop being real.

• Is STILL protecting the elite pedophiles on Epstein's list.

• Blew up a pipe line that they bragged about before it happened, while simultaneously bitching to us about the environment.

• Allowed Chinese spy balloons to cross this country multiple times.

• Refuses to prosecute Fauci for the crimes against humanity he committed with Big Pharma.

• Left trillions in military gear and weapons to Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan.

• Whose administration accidentally drone bombed little kids, that no one even got reprimanded for.

• Is desperately trying to start a new world war to distract from everything his controllers have done.

• Is still employing mail-in ballots for a reason that no longer exists, on riggable machines they refuse to address.

• Is constantly pushing for abortion as a "right" when it's not, while actively trying to strip honest Americans of their 2A constitutional rights.

• Keeps lying about how great "Bidenomics" is like we don't have fucking eyes.

• Keeps pushing transgenderism, drag queens, and the sexual butchering of children for profit in the name of wokeness.

• Allows a corrupt FDA to continue to allow poisoned and carcinogenic additives and chemicals throughout our food supply.

• Hired 87,000 IRS agents to nickel and dime tax payers while allowing Congress to inside trade and profit off of bribes from lobbyists, corporations, and PACs.

• Won't stop sending money to be laundered to Ukraine.

• Refuses to help Hawaiians or Ohioans with their (not so natural) disasters.

• and now he's been caught flying around illegals to station all around the country for some kind of replacement or attack...

Am I missing anything?

Is anybody going to stop this crazy train and do something about this insane bullshit?

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Susan B. Glasser

“Guilty.” Donald Trump had avoided the word for so long that it was understandable to think he might never face it. When he was finally hit with a criminal conviction, soon after 5 p.m. on a sunny late-May afternoon, he had to sit and listen inside a New York courtroom as the label he so dreaded was directed at him again and again—thirty-four guilties, one for each of the thirty-four felony counts against him. Too bad the television cameras weren’t able to record this historic moment. We the people will be left to imagine what it looked like when the only former American President to go on trial became the only ex-President to bear the title of “convicted felon.”

Trump himself seemed a bit stunned—deflated, even. Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, he offered a lacklustre rant, a sort of mashup of his greatest hits: “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial”; “I’m a very innocent man.” Soon, he was complaining about “millions and millions of people pouring into our country right now, from prisons and from mental institutions.” Was his standard-issue inflammatory anti-immigration diatribe related to his falsifying of business records in a 2016 hush-money payoff to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels? Trump didn’t care. “We have a country that’s in big trouble,” he said, before returning to the matter at hand. “This is long from over.” Then he turned his back and left.

What Trump lacked in truly incandescent rage, however, was soon supplied, in excess, by his followers—a backlash that unfolded as a carefully choreographed and truly unprecedented assault on the legitimacy of the American legal system. It struck me as no less threatening for having obviously been planned largely in advance. “Kangaroo court. Banana republic,” one social-media post from the Trump White House veteran Nick Ayers read—a pithy summation of much of the maga response. Senator Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, called the verdict “the most egregious miscarriage of justice in our nation’s history,” proving both that he does not know our nation’s history and that hyperbole in defense of their leader is considered the most forgivable of G.O.P. sins.

Rewriting history—and, at times, even outright inverting it—is one of the signatures of Trumpism, as it is of so many authoritarian political movements. In Washington on Thursday morning, hours before the verdict, Senator Marco Rubio posted on social media an old newsreel video of revolutionary justice being meted out in front of thousands of spectators at a sports palace in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. “The public spectacle of political show trials has come to America,” he wrote. A day earlier, in another social-media post, he had compared Trump’s hush-money case to “the kind of sham trial used against political opponents of the regime in the old Soviet Union.”

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, surely knows better: Trump will not be summarily executed, as so many hundreds of thousands were in the Soviet purges. He won’t even have to wear an orange uniform if he does, in fact, end up serving time—inmates in New York are actually banned from doing so. After the verdict came out, on Thursday evening, Rubio complained again about “a political show trial.” Like Trump himself and many of his followers, and with no apologies to Woody Allen, he blamed Joe Biden for the whole travesty of a mockery of a sham.

Few Republicans dared to dissent from this instant new orthodoxy. Their lockstep statements made one long for the old bipartisan clichés about the sanctity of the courts and the wisdom of a jury made up of one’s peers. Indeed, when one prominent Republican, the former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, who is now running for Senate, ventured to offer the formerly standard comforting mush about respecting the verdict and reaffirming the rule of law that “made this nation great,” the reaction from other Republicans was swift and stunning. “I don’t respect this verdict,” the Utah Senator Mike Lee posted, in response to Hogan’s tweet. “Nor should anyone.” Chris LaCivita, one of Trump’s top campaign advisers, was so offended by Hogan’s defense of the American justice system that he appeared to publicly threaten his Senate bid. “You just ended your campaign,” LaCivita wrote to Hogan on X.

The blunt language set off all my post-2020 alarm bells—the Party that calls on its followers not to respect the courts is one that has already shown it can next order them to the streets. If this is how they are talking now, what will they do if the presiding judge in the trial, Juan Merchan, orders Trump imprisoned? The sentencing is currently set to take place on July 11th, just four days before the opening of the Republican National Convention. Is it fanciful, alarmist, or shrill to envision angry Trumpists storming the Manhattan courthouse? No, of course not. They have already shown what they’re capable of.

I found one of the statements reacting to the verdict especially chilling. It came from House Speaker Mike Johnson. There was nothing particularly notable about what Johnson said—he used the same buzzwords about “the weaponization of our justice system” and the “absurd verdict” that so many of his Republican colleagues did. The difference was that Johnson, unlike many of the empty suits who bluster around Washington, has already taken actions to rewrite history to suit Trump’s version of events—a project that will be crucial in determining whether Trump can overcome the stigma of a criminal conviction to win back the Presidency in November.

Just last week, in fact, Johnson’s House Republican majority went so far as to literally decree the fact of Trump’s trial off-limits. The episode, which did not get much attention at the time, is worth recounting in a bit of detail, because it hardly seems believable. And because it may be a preview of things to come.

The fight began a week ago Wednesday, when Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts representative who, for years, has been the decidedly unflashy top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, began debate on a procedural motion by criticizing the do-nothing 118th Congress, which is on track to be the least productive in recent memory. The session has been, McGovern concluded, “a stunning indictment of their ability to get anything done.” The matter would have ended there had McGovern not had a few more things to say on the topic of indictments—and, more specifically, Trump’s four pending ones. Perhaps, McGovern theorized, House Republicans were offering lame measures to debate on the floor “to distract from the fact that their candidate for President has been indicted more times than he’s been elected,” or that “the leader of their party is on trial for covering up hush-money payments to a porn star for political gain.”

This language earned him an admonition from the Republican congressman presiding, who told McGovern to “refrain from engaging in personalities towards presumed nominees for the office of the President.” Incredulous, McGovern pointed out the hypocrisy of reprimanding him for stating the simple fact of the charges against Trump, while Republicans regularly take to the House floor to inveigh against the “sham” legal proceedings. Eventually, he picked up a well-thumbed copy of Jefferson’s “Manual,” the original parliamentary bible for the U.S. Congress, drawn from centuries of British tradition. He noted its prohibition on speaking “irreverently or seditiously against the King,” and added, “Is that what this is about?”

When McGovern then had the temerity to enumerate all Trump’s various criminal cases, a Republican congresswoman from Indiana jumped in, demanding that McGovern’s words be “taken down”—that is, struck from the official record. And sure enough, when the ruling came back, the archaic prohibition on trashing the kings of yore was indeed cited, and McGovern’s words were officially deleted on the grounds that he had accused Trump of “illegal activities”—as if McGovern were somehow just slinging charges on his own rather than referring to actual cases in courts of law. Trump is no sovereign, regal or otherwise—not yet, anyway. But, in the House overseen by his party, unpleasant events concerning him can officially be written out of history with the bang of a gavel.

Now that Trump has become the first former President in American history to be convicted of a crime, will the MAGA Congress ban that information, too? What happens when McGovern, or one of his Democratic colleagues, goes to the floor to read out Thursday’s stunning news, all thirty-four counts of it? The jury’s word may have been “guilty,” but it is far from the last one we’ll hear.

[mariacallous]

Senate Republicans voted Thursday to block a bill put forward by Democrats that would guarantee access to in vitro fertilization nationwide.

The legislation failed to advance in a procedural vote by a tally of 48-47. It needed 60 votes to advance. Republicans criticized the Democrat-led legislation as unnecessary overreach and a political show vote.

“Why should we vote for a bill that fixes a non-existent problem? There’s not a problem. There’s no restrictions on IVF, nor should there be,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, told reporters.

The vote is part of a broader push by Senate Democrats to draw a contrast with Republicans over reproductive health care in the run up to the November elections. Democrats are highlighting the issue this month, which marks the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed Republicans who voted against the bill, saying that they are being “pushed by the MAGA hard right.”

“These are the very same people who pushed to get rid of Roe in the Dobbs decision,” Schumer told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront” Thursday evening, referring to the blockbuster 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned a constitutional right to abortion. “We know what they’re up to. They want to get rid of IVF, they’re afraid to say it.”

Biden attacked Senate Republicans after the vote.

“Once again, Senate Republicans refused to protect access to fertility treatments for women who are desperately trying to get pregnant,” Biden said in a written statement. “And just last week, Senate Republicans blocked nationwide protections for birth control. The disregard for a woman’s right to make these decisions for herself and her family is outrageous and unacceptable.”

Republicans have criticized the Democrat-led legislation as unnecessary overreach and a political show vote.

The legislation the Senate will take up – the Right to IVF Act – would enshrine into federal law a right for individuals to receive IVF treatment as well as for doctors to provide treatment, which would override any attempt at the state level to restrict access.

The bill seeks to make IVF treatment more affordable by mandating coverage for fertility treatments under employer-sponsored insurance and certain public insurance plans. It would also expand coverage of fertility treatments, including IVF, under US military service members and veterans’ health care.

The IVF legislative package was introduced by Democratic Sens. Patty Murray of Washington state, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

The vote comes after Alabama’s Supreme Court said, in a first-of-its-kind ruling earlier this year, that frozen embryos are children and those who destroy them can be held liable for wrongful death – a decision that reproductive rights advocates warned could have a chilling effect on infertility treatments.

While the state’s legislature took action aimed at protecting IVF in the wake of the ruling, Democrats argue that this is only one example of how access to reproductive health care is under threat across the nation.

Southern Baptist delegates, for instance, expressed alarm Wednesday over the way in vitro fertilization is routinely being practiced, approving a resolution lamenting that the creation of surplus frozen embryos often results in “destruction of embryonic human life.”

The IVF vote is the latest move by Democrats to bring up a bill expected to be blocked by Republicans. Last week, Senate Republicans voted to block a Democrat-led bill that would guarantee access to contraception.

Most Republicans dismissed the effort as a political messaging vote that was unnecessary and overly broad, though GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine crossed over to vote with Democrats in favor of advancing the bill.

Republicans have introduced their own bills on IVF and contraception. GOP Sens. Katie Britt of Alabama and Ted Cruz of Texas have introduced a bill called the IVF Protection Act and Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa has put forward a separate bill to promote access to contraception.

Cruz and Britt attempted to pass their IVF legislation on the Senate floor Wednesday through a unanimous consent request, but Democrats blocked the effort.

Murray, who objected to the request, criticized the GOP bill, arguing that states could “enact burdensome and unnecessary requirements and create the kind of legal uncertainty and risk that would force clinics to once again close their doors.”

Under the IVF bill from Britt and Cruz, states would not be eligible for Medicaid funding if they prohibit access to IVF, but the legislation “permits states to implement health and safety standards regarding the practice of IVF,” according to a press release.

[stupittmoran]

DC_DRAINO “Why do you MAGA Republicans want the gov’t to shut down?” Because our gov’t has been weaponized against 75+ million Americans They raided President Trump’s house & indicted him 4x They imprison peaceful J6 protestors They censor our speech They overtax us and send it overseas Their spending is causing record inflation They target soccer moms as domestic terrorists They kill our Veterans in FBI raids They flood our country with illegals They RIG OUR ELECTIONS They force experimental injections into our bodies They are the single greatest threat to our liberties and it’s not even close The real question is, why would you want this gov’t to stay open? Note: I'm not a MAGA Republican or any kind of Republican but I do like this list. --Stu Pitt Moran

[tomorrowusa]

There was a special election on Tuesday to fill the vacancy in an Ohio US House district due to the resignation of Republican Bill Johnson in OH-06.

It's not a major surprise that Republican Michael Rulli won. His GOP predecessor Bill Johnson took the district in 2022 by 67.7% to 32.3% for Democrat Louis G. Lyras. Donald Trump won the district by about 29% in 2020.

But it was noteworthy to see Rulli, a state senator, win by just 9.3% over a little-known bartender named Michael Kripchak.

The Republican candidate won, and that’s no surprise. But political observers are frankly shocked that the race was far closer than expected. [ ... ] Ohio continues to surprise us. The statewide votes last year, first to prevent Republicans from raising the threshold to pass constitutional amendments to 60 percent, and second to preserve the right to abortion in the state, showed that Ohio voters are ready to draw the line when it comes to extremist religious or anti-democratic measures. [ ... ] [T]he Democratic challenger was a first-time, unknown candidate named Michael Kripchak, who quit his day job to run against GOP state senator, Michael Rulli. Kripchak is a veteran who spent only around $25K to Rulli’s $700,000, a nearly 30 to 1 cash advantage for the Republican.

Every county in this district had a swing to the Democrats. Two counties were actually carried by Democrat Kripchak; Democrats carried no counties in OH-06 in 2022.

Democrats have overperformed in almost every special House election since the start of 2023.

But we still hear the pundits and pollsters droning on about Democrats allegedly being in big trouble this year. Fox News has even dusted off a dormant conspiracy theory that Biden is going to step down and be replaced by Michelle Obama. Fox News doesn't miss a chance to juice up its racist and misogynistic viewers by hinting a white male would be replaced by a black female.

Democratic voters in OH-06 turned out thanks to Democratic volunteers spreading the word. Persistence, enthusiasm, and hard work produce results. To use a Latin phrase: Vincit qui laborat.

Anybody who is not an outright MAGA supporter is a potential swing voter and should be regarded by us as such. The stakes are too high this year to revert to the slackerism of 2016.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michael Kruse at Politico Magazine:

WEST PALM BEACH — Susie Wiles, the people who know her the best believe, is a force more sensed than seen. Her influence on political events, to many who know what they’re watching, is as obvious as it is invisible. The prints leave not so much as a smudge. It’s a shock when she shows up in pictures. Even then it is almost always in the background. She speaks on the record hardly ever, and she speaks about herself even less. Last month, though, on the afternoon of the day of the Republican primary in Florida, here Wiles was — sitting outside a Starbucks, at a table with an umbrella she picked for protection from the glare, wearing sensible flats and a cream-colored top and the sunglasses she likes with the lenses like mirrors, not far from the campaign headquarters of Donald J. Trump.

Wiles is not just one of Trump’s senior advisers. She’s his most important adviser. She’s his de facto campaign manager. She has been in essence his chief of staff for the last more than three years. She’s one of the reasons Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee and Ron DeSantis is not. She’s one of the reasons Trump’s current operation has been getting credit for being more professional than its fractious, seat-of-the-pants antecedents. And she’s a leading reason Trump has every chance to get elected again — even after his loss of 2020, the insurrection of 2021, his party’s defeats in the midterms of 2022, the criminal indictments of 2023 and the trial (or trials) of 2024. The former president is potentially a future president. And that’s because of him. But it’s also because of her. Trump, of course, is Trump — he can be irritable, he can be impulsive — and this campaign is facing unprecedented stressors and snags. It’s a long six-plus months till Election Day. For now, though, nobody around him is so influential, and nobody around him has been so influential for so long. “There is nobody, I think, that has the wealth of information that she does. Nobody in our orbit. Nobody,” top Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio told me. “She touches everything.” “Certainly,” said former Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, “she’s one of the most consequential people in American politics right now.” “And nobody,” said veteran Florida lobbyist Ronnie Book, “even knows who she is.”

She’s a mother. She’s a grandmother — she turns 67 next month. She’s worked in politics for more than 40 years — for presidents, for mayors, for governors, for members of Congress. She’s a soft-spoken Episcopalian. She’s a self-described moderate. Over the last few months, I’ve talked about Wiles with more than 100 people, people who have worked with her, around her, for her and against her, and there is a surprisingly bipartisan consensus: She’s good at what she does. She’s a savvy operator, a capable manager, a spotter and cultivator of up-and-coming talent, a maker and keeper of relationships with reporters, and a sly, subtle shaper of stories that help frame the political currents that can determine the difference between a win and a loss. She’s helmed signature statewide campaigns in 2010, 2016, 2018 and 2020 — Rick Scott, Trump, DeSantis, Trump again — all of which could have been defeats but were not. “She was already the most successful, well-respected Republican operative in Florida by a long mile, and she’s now cementing that brand,” said Ashley Walker, a Democratic strategist who twice ran Barack Obama’s Florida campaigns and has worked in lobbying with Wiles. “She is,” said Joe Gruters, a former chair of the Florida Republican Party, current state senator and longtime Trump ally, “the most valuable political adviser in the country.”

But coursing, too, through my conversations were not just questions I had for these scores of people but questions these people had for me — earnest inquiries from types who are perhaps not so accustomed to such doubt. Why is she working for him? And why does it seem to be working so well? Republicans and Democrats alike who know her and respect her and respect her work — they struggle to explain it. People who have considered themselves confidants and friends — they talk and they text, not so much with her as with each other, perplexed. In her usually calm disposition, in what most of them consider her general good sense, some of them find some small solace — at least he, they say, is listening to her. For others, though, it’s that placid mien and level head that’s in some sense precisely the source of the confusion. Liberals and even anti-Trump conservatives sketch analogies to the most odious authoritarians and see Wiles therefore by extension as the kind of associate who’s smart enough and sane enough to know better — and without whom any would-be dictator would be unable to get or wield such potentially destructive power. They see her as an accomplice.

[...] She worked in the 1990s and 2000s for a pair of two-term, generally centrist mayors of Jacksonville — first John Delaney, then John Peyton. She was by then certainly no novice. She’d been on Capitol Hill as an entry-level staffer for Jack Kemp, on the campaign and in the White House as a scheduler for Ronald Reagan, and in Northeast Florida as the district director for congressmember Tillie Fowler — after she’d gotten married to Reagan advance man Lanny Wiles and they’d moved south to Ponte Vedra Beach. She was Delaney’s director of communications and intergovernmental affairs, then his deputy chief of staff, then his chief of staff — the city’s very first female chief of staff. Delaney at the time called her “essential to what we are doing.” He described her as “a soulmate.” Peyton, for his part, hired her as his chief of special initiatives and communications — even after she worked for an opponent of his in the primary. It was a sign of respect, but something like unease as well — it was safer, he decided, to have her inside and not outside City Hall, working for him and not against him.

[...] It took nearly two years, though, before her next big post in politics. In 2008, she was the Duval County co-chair for John McCain’s presidential campaign. In 2009, she was a regular panelist on a local talk show on Jacksonville TV. In 2010, in March, she gave $500 to establishment GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum — five and a half weeks before she signed on to manage the longshot campaign of a businessperson and political outsider. Rick Scott stuck in his bid to a catch phrase — “Let’s get to work” — and steadfastly refused to meet with editorial boards at newspapers around the state. “Why?” he was asked. “I’ll have to ask Susie,” he answered.

In 2011, instead of joining Scott in Tallahassee, Wiles joined lobbyist Brian Ballard’s Florida-based firm to open an office in Jacksonville. “I really needed somebody in Jacksonville,” Ballard told me, “and she had great reach across the board.” She was a brief, ill-fated campaign manager for Jon Huntsman’s brief, ill-fated presidential campaign — a faltering, frustrating few months that spring, others involved remember, in which she clashed with the chief strategist and cried in the office. As an ex-head of an in-cycle campaign, she was for reporters on the presidential beat an at-the-ready quote — criticizing businessperson Herman Cain (“the possibility that he is a philanderer and an abuser”), praising in the National Journal more moderate New Jersey governor Chris Christie (“the best foil” for Barack Obama) and eventually endorsing former Massachusetts governor and private equity investor Mitt Romney (“the stability, intellect and integrity that Republicans are looking for in their standard bearer,” she said). In 2012, she advised one of the losing candidates in a seven-candidate congressional primary running from Jacksonville down toward Daytona Beach — the winner of which was a newcomer named DeSantis. In 2014, she gave money to then-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. And in 2015 — in August, a month in which she gave money to Jeb Bush — she went to New York, to Trump Tower, to meet with Donald Trump.

She came home and told Delaney she was impressed. She told Ballard she “saw something” in him. She told her friend Rick Mullaney, an adviser to Delaney and Peyton, she thought he was going to be the next president. And she told her friend Paul McCormick, a longtime Jacksonville political consultant and P.R. man, a story. “She said she went in to sit for her interview,” McCormick told me. She said the chair that had been set up for her was some 20 feet from where Trump was, and Trump started talking, and Wiles found it awkward. “And long story short, wherever she was sitting, and exactly how many feet away, she moved,” said McCormick, “right up next to where he was.” [...]

Her father was Pat Summerall. A native of rural Lake City, Florida, he endured a brutal childhood, as he recounts in his memoir — a club foot a doctor was able to somewhat miraculously fix, abandoned by his parents, a stepfather who beat him with a rubber hose. He played professional football, for the Lions, Cardinals and most notably the Giants in New York, an end and a kicker who booted with what had been his deformed foot one of the most important field goals in National Football League history. He got rich and he got famous, though, as a broadcaster. With a relentless work ethic and a smooth, spare speaking style, Summerall was the mellifluous voice of the Masters of golf, the U.S. Open of tennis but first and foremost the NFL — “the voice,” in the words of his longtime partner John Madden, “of football.” He was also, because of his drinking, a mostly absent parent. His daughter was born in 1957. She was followed quickly by two brothers. He had an affair for 17 years before his wife divorced him and he married his mistress. “My children grew up without me,” he wrote. “I failed them as a father.” Her mother was the former Katharine Jacobs. Also from Lake City, she was, according to her daughter, “a fantastic gardener,” “a beautiful seamstress” and “the best cook there ever was.” She made all the meals. She set all the appointments. She bought all the Christmas gifts, one of her brothers once wrote on Facebook. She so often had to do so much on her own. And every evening around 5, in the big, tidy house in Saddle River, New Jersey, she went upstairs and took a warm bath. She coped, her observant daughter thought, with courage and with grace.

POLITICO Magazine has a detailed report on GOP political operative Susie Wiles, who is the daughter of the late sports announcer Pat Summerall.

[1americanconservative]

@DC_Draino

“Why do you MAGA Republicans want the gov’t to shut down?”

Because our gov’t has been weaponized against 75+ million Americans

They raided President Trump’s house & indicted him 4x

They imprison peaceful J6 protestors

They censor our speech

They overtax us and send it overseas

Their spending is causing record inflation

They target soccer moms as domestic terrorists

They kill our Veterans in FBI raids

They flood our country with illegals

They RIG OUR ELECTIONS They force experimental injections into our bodies

They are the single greatest threat to our liberties and it’s not even close

The real question is, why would you want this gov’t to stay open?

[chuck-glisson]

So I end up having to REPEATEDLY make "New Accounts" due being Banned, as the result of getting Flagged by TRIGGERED & BUTT HURT MAGA MAGGOTS!

This video is basically the "Current State Of Events", until I come up with a "Clever Work-A-Round", to be explained, in the "Next" video!

[awesomecooperlove]

‼️🛑‼️🛑‼️FOLLOW ⏫️⏫️⏫️⏫️⏫️

🦠🦠🦠

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The New Yorker

* * * * *

“Trying to steal history.”

January 9, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

On Monday, President Biden delivered a stirring and spirited speech at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In June 2015, members of the congregation at the church invited a stranger to join them for services. The stranger killed nine members of the church in the worst church-related shooting (to that point)—a mass killing that was racially motivated. President Obama delivered a eulogy for Pastor Clementa Pinckney of Mother Emmanuel AME Church that included his rendition of Amazing Grace a cappella.

[The video is here, Joe Biden speaks at Charleston church (start at the 26:00 minute mark), and the full text of the speech is here: Remarks by President Biden at a Political Event | Charleston, SC.]

Against the backdrop of the 2015 racially motivated mass shooting, President Biden addressed Trump's use of the “lost cause” of white supremacy to bolster his hate-fueled campaign. Biden said, in part,

On June 17th, 2015, the [nine] beautiful souls and five survivors invited a stranger into this church to pray with them. The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate and rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison — a poison that’s for too long haunted this nation. What is that poison? White supremacy. Oh, it is; it’s a poison. Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart. This has no place in America. Not today, tomorrow, or ever. Now — now we’re living in an era of a second lost cause. Once again, there are some in this country trying — trying to turn a loss into a lie — a lie, which if allowed to live, will once again bring terrible damage to this country. This time, the lie is about the 2020 election, the election which you made your voices heard and your power known.

Biden tied the lost cause of white supremacy to Trump's 2020 loss, identifying both of as existential threats to the nation. He then pivoted to Trump's insurrection on January 6 and Trump's threat to continue that assault on democracy if he is elected to a second term in 2024.

Biden said, Just two days ago, we marked the third anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history: January the 6th. The day in which insurrectionists stormed the United States Capitol, trying for the first time in American history to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the country. We all saw with our own eyes the truth of what happened. That violent mob was whipped up by lies from a defeated former President . . . . We saw something on January 6th we’d never seen before, even during the Civil War. Insurrectionists waving Confederate flags inside the halls of Congress built by enslaved Americans. A mob attacked and called Black officers, Black veterans defending the nation those vile of racist names. And yet, an extreme movement of America, the MAGA Republicans, led by a defeated President, is trying to steal history now. They tried to steal an election. Now they’re trying to steal history, telling us that violent mob was, and I quote, “a peaceful protest.” The lies that led to January 6th are part of a broader attack on the truth America today that we all have seen before. The same movement that, throughout the mob at the United States Capitol, isn’t just trying to rewrite history of January 6th, they’re trying to determine to erase history and your future: banning books; denying your right to vote and have it counted; destroying diversity, equality, inclusion all across America; harboring hate and replacing hope with anger and resentment and a dangerous view of America.

Powerful words delivered with passion and dignity befitting the hallowed ground and the proximity to January 6. As Trump's speeches are becoming more unhinged and hateful, Biden’s are becoming more forceful and direct in challenging Trump. If you can spare twenty minutes, watch the video linked above, beginning at the 26:00-minute mark. Your confidence will be renewed.

But I can’t leave this story without commenting on the media coverage. Biden delivered a truly inspirational and important speech on race and democracy. For sixty seconds during Biden’s speech, a protestor stood up and demanded that Biden call for a cease-fire in Israel. Biden handled the protestor with skill and grace. As the protestor was escorted from the church, Biden said,

It's alright. I understand their passion. I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza.

That sixty-second incident of an otherwise historic speech dominated virtually every headline describing the speech. See, e.g., NYTimes, Protesters Calling for Gaza Cease-Fire Interrupt Biden Speech; The Hill, Biden address in Charleston church interrupted by protesters; and NPR, Protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza interrupted Biden's campaign speech.

The bias against Biden is just unbelievable. I wonder if the headline writers or journalists who wrote the articles even bothered to read or listen to the substance of Biden’s speech. I doubt it. Shame on them!

Meanwhile, Trump hopes the economy crashes before he is re-elected.

As Biden continued to call for the preservation of democracy and mourned the tragedies of January 6 and the AME shootings, Trump was telling an interviewer he hoped the economy would crash during Biden’s remaining time in office. See The Hill, Trump says he hopes economy crashes in next 12 months: ‘I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover’.

Trump said,

We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did. It’s just running off the fumes. And when there’s a crash — I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.

Ha! Trump remembered as Herbert Hoover? He should be so lucky! He will be remembered as Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Jefferson Davis, and Aldrich Ames—combined!

And, in case you think I am resorting to hyperbole, Trump refused to sign a traditional pledge in Illinois in which presidential candidates pledge not to overthrow the US government. See The Guardian, Donald Trump did not sign Illinois pledge not to overthrow government. Trump signed the pledge in 2016 and 2020, but not in 2024. Hmm . . . it’s almost like he’s planning ahead to overthrow the US government!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[collapsedsquid]

As he campaigns for a second White House term, Trump has been asking policy advisersfor a range of military options aimed at taking on Mexican drug cartels, including strikes that are not sanctioned by Mexico’s government, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

“‘Attacking Mexico,’ or whatever you’d like to call it, is something that President Trump has said he wants ‘battle plans’ drawn for,” says one of the sources. “He’s complained about missed opportunities of his first term, and there are a lot of people around him who want fewer missed opportunities in a second Trump presidency.”

Trump lieutenants have briefed him on several options that include unilateral military strikes and troop deployments on a sovereign U.S. partner and neighbor, the sources say. One such proposal that Trump has been briefed on this year is an October white paper from the Center for Renewing America, an increasingly influential think tank staffed largely by Trumpist wonks, MAGA loyalists, and veterans of his administration.

See you all in hell or a FEMA camp

[geezerwench]

At this point we just need democrats and those against America like you to wear some kind of yellow badge when they are in public so we can identify them and treat them like the traitors to America they are.

Like the yellow Star of David? Hmmmm?

I'm not Jewish. Not all Jews are Democrats, and not all Democrats are Jews.

Yellow triangles? Octagons? Trapezoids?

Oooo! Yellow ribbons! Pretty yellow pentagrams!

I know! Canary yellow ball caps! Sorry, but that would match the stripe up Kevin McCarthy's, Josh Hawley's, and Bunker Boy Trump's backs.

Traitor?

Because I think Veterans should be cared for after they finish their active service to the US?

Because I think children should be fed and learn to read and write?

Because people who worked their whole lives and paid into Social Security should get their money back when they retire? Because housewives who worked their whole life managing the home and raising the children should receive their spouse's Social Security if their spouse dies before they do? Ya know there's no actual paycheck for managing a home, raising children, being the chauffeur and requisition officer, bookkeeper, secretary, personal assistant when you're a "housewife" or "homemaker."

Because I believe citizens shouldn't go bankrupt and lose everything because their spouse got sick and spent months in the hospital? Or that families shouldn't be destitute because a single parent or their child got cancer?

Because I think children and teachers should not be gunned down at school, and people shouldn't be slaughtered at the grocery store, movie theater, dance club, concert, church, temple, any public place?

Because I think people should have some kind of roof over their heads and food?

Because people should have drinkable water and breathable air?

Because I think it should be easier to vote and shouldn't be made harder?

Because I think billionaires and millionaires should have the same tax rate as the carpenter, the accountant, the nurse, the fast food worker?

Because I believe in the separation of church and state?

Because I believe people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Because I think our government should establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare of its country and peoples?

Okay, anonymous, chickenshit maga. Democrats don't need a yellow badge. All you have to do is look for the people who are not wearing AR-15 lapel pins, red hats, or anything with trump on it.

[freeverse9]

So, I don't mix politics at work. Today a confederate flag and a Maga hat walks in my store. I just watched the funeral of a friend.. he was a 26 yr retail veteran District manager.. a Black man, and a great leader..

With those emotions on my mind, I still assist the people even though I instantly know where I land in their hierarchy. I let my assistant deal with them. So after they leave I say. Glad you were here because I am not sure they would worked with me. Then my assistant a 30 something white male says, I don't really talk politics but I am definitely voting for Trump.. his rational reason was.... it is too much emphasis on marginalized people, and he is tired of the attention to any minority group.

So it seems Diversity, Equality & inclusion is democratic thing.

White man burden huh? We are the wretched of the earth.

He will vote against his best interests to put another group down. This is America 🇺🇸 😑