#election day December 6

[queenvlion]

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[charlesoberonn]

A quick alternate history scenario I made for the r/AlternateHistory subreddit:

In 1796, George Washington reluctantly runs for a third term as president to prevent Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans from taking hold of government. His third and final term is more rocky than the first two, with the south being especially unhappy with some of his reforms, though they associate them with his vice-president John Adams and Secretary of State Alexander Hamilton. On December 14th, 1799, George Washington dies in office. The nation is in turmoil and mourning. The Democratic-Republicans call for a special election, but vice-president John Adams is declared president instead. On Christmas 1799 a protest march on DC turns violent when federal forces clash with protestors and revolutionary war veterans. Jefferson declares Adams an illegitimate usurper. Adams calls off next year's election. Several state legislatures , especially in the South, declare Jefferson as a provisional emergency leader for the purpose of ousting the Federalist regime. The American Civil War has begun. On January 15, with DC about to be overtaken, an internal vote within the Federalist war cabinet decide to oust Adams and appoint his vice president and war hero Alexander Hamilton as president instead. The tide of the war turns, with the Federalist forces able to protect the north and much of their territory, but it is short lived. The Federalist are forced to abandon DC on April and retreat to New York City as a provisional capital. Hamilton himself refuses to go. He is captured by the Democratic-Republicans along with Adams. Jefferson is appointed president on April 19th. In July, Senator Gouverneur Morris is appointed as temporary leader of the Federalist forces in New York. The war stalls for several months as the Democratic-Republican forces fail to make inroads into the north. Meanwhile Jefferson's administration is poorly received and he is compared poorly to the Reign of Terror in France, especially after the public executions of Adams and Hamilton, and after the French Revolutionary government acknowledges him as the legitimate president. The British back Morris and the Federalists and provide military assistance in return for territorial concessions out west. Despite the Democratic-Republicans trying to paint Morris as a traitor for his British support, the public hates Jefferson more, compounded by a series of military defeats. On December 14th, during a public memorial service for the 1 year anniversary of Washington's death, Jefferson presents himself as the true heir to the venerated general. This creates outrage and leads to a 6 days siege of the White House, at the end of which Jefferson is dragged out and beaten to death by the public and some of his own soldiers. The Democratic-Republican forces subsequently surrender and the capital is captured by Federalist and British forces. Morris is appointed president and his first act is to call in a new Constitutional Convention in order to draft a new constitution, one with the primary aim of preventing another civil war.

[bigjbonk]

How we feeling about a new phandom event, everyone?

I have elected to try my hand at a small week-long annual event, running through the second week of December, to show our boy Wes some love!

This year, the event will be held a bit later to make up for the short notice, running from December 10th to December 16th! Though, of course, there are no hard deadlines. The goal is to have fun here!

Following the lead of other phandom events, each day will have two prompts to choose from, or mix, however you see fit! Plus, Saturday will be a free day where you can create whatever you like! Art, writing, music, stop motion, the medium doesn't matter! Go buck wild with any prompts or days you like!

Prompts will be under the cut. Please make sure to tag posts as #wecember 2023!

Happy creating, everyone!

PROMPTS LIST

Day 1: Cryptid Hunting, Reflection

Day 2: Stars, Petals

Day 3: Werewolf, Vampire

Day 4: Shadows, Exposed

Day 5: Good End, Bad End

Day 6: 2004, 2023

Day 7: Free Day!

(Details of future Wecember events are subject to change as feedback is received.)

[cranberrymoons]

have a cup(cake) of cheer

prompt: cooking together (@steddieholidaydrabbles) rated: t word count: 668 tags: future fic, rockstar eddie/teacher steve, evil pta moms notes: this one is part of the future fic series! it stands alone, but just for context, corroded coffin exists and is very successful! steve is a teacher and they have four kids 🥰

welcome to Day 6 of the fic advent calendar – bite-sized fics posting every day during the month of december. enjoy!

“Give me the –” Steve says, gesturing at the pastry bag on the counter. “The that.”

He pushes his glasses up the end of his nose with the back of his wrist and shakes his hair out of his eyes, frustrated and sticky and – Eddie glances up from where he’s diligently adding glitter sprinkle snow to the top of the iced cupcakes. He makes a face.

“You realize we could’ve just bought these,” he says under his breath as he hands it over. “No one would have even known.”

Steve lets out a hollow laugh. “You clearly haven’t met Jackie from the PTA.” He squeezes out a dollop of chocolate icing. “Sorry, Jaqueliiiine , even though everyone knows she’s not actually French. She’s from Texas.” He ices another cupcake. “Jackie from Texas who’s out to get me.”

“Baby, come on,” Eddie says. “I doubt she’s harboring some secret vendetta against you. You just don’t like her because she put you on ticket-taking duty at the start of year picnic.”

“She told me to buy the cupcakes,” Steve says. He widens his eyes. “Because she was – how did she put it – ‘just so concerned about how difficult it must be to manage a family and a career with a partner who’s always leaving on tour’.”

Eddie snorts. “I take it back,” he says. “She sucks.”

Steve looks up from his cupcakes. “Right? Thank you. Robin said I was overreacting.” 

He squeezes the pastry bag again with more force than necessary, and the icing comes out faster than he means for it to, drooping down over the sides of the cupcake.

“Does she realize who she’s dealing with?” Eddie asks, shooting Steve a sideways glance. “I mean, you’re not being nice to her, are you?”

“No, but I’m biding my time,” Steve says. He finishes with the tray he’s working on and sits back in his chair, watching Eddie work. “I just need to figure out how to hit her where it hurts.”

Eddie lets out a laugh as he pulls Steve’s tray of cupcakes toward himself to start adding sprinkles. 

“Run against her in the next board election,” he says. “That’d show her.”

And he sort of sounds like he’s joking, but Steve frowns as he turns it over in his mind, staring out the darkened window at the shadowy shape of the lemon tree in the backyard. He doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it first.

“That might actually work,” he says after a moment.

“I know,” Eddie says. He glances up, flashing a smile. “That’s why I said it.”

Steve gives his ankle a little kick under the table. “Don’t be a dick.” He squints. “Do you think I’d win?”

“You’re the only hot dad on the PTA, and you have a very famous rockstar for a husband,” Eddie says. “Just tell them you’ll get Coldplay to do the winter carnival next year or something. They’ll vote you in for sure.”

“Isn’t that kind of cheating?” And then, maybe more importantly because he doesn’t actually really care about being fair, “Can you actually get them to play?”

“Please,” Eddie scoffs. “They owe me a favor after that thing at the VMAs last year. This is worth cashing in for.”

“I love you,” Steve says. He hooks his foot around the back of Eddie’s ankle. “So fucking much.”

Eddie grins at him. “As if I’d let King Steve go down to Jackie from Texas without a fight.”

Steve laughs and reaches over to snag the over-iced cupcake. He peels off the paper and breaks it in two, taking a bite as he passes the other half to Eddie. 

“Jackie can suck it,” he says. “She doesn’t even know how to make her own cupcakes. Did you know she brought store bought ones to the Thanksgiving bake sale?”

Eddie looks genuinely scandalized as he takes a bite of his own cupcake half. “She didn’t.”

“She did,” Steve says. “And they weren’t even good ones.”

[also on ao3]

[mariacallous]

Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail.

So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress, to try to get the documents to then-Vice President Mike Pence while he presided over the Electoral College certification.

The operatives even considered chartering a jet to ensure the files reached Washington, DC, in time for the January 6, 2021, proceeding, according to emails and recordings obtained by CNN.

The new details provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the chaotic last-minute effort to keep Donald Trump in office. The fake electors scheme features prominently in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal indictment against the former president, and some of the officials who were involved have spoken to Smith’s investigators.

The emails and recordings also indicate that a top Trump campaign lawyer was part of 11th-hour discussions about delivering the fake elector certificates to Pence, potentially undercutting his testimony to the House select committee that investigated January 6 that he had passed off responsibility and didn’t want to put the former vice president in a difficult spot.

These details largely come from pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who was an architect of the fake electors plot and is now a key cooperator in several state probes into the scheme. Chesebro pleaded guilty in October to a felony conspiracy charge in Georgia in connection with the electors’ plan, and has met with prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, who are investigating the sham GOP electors in their own states.

Chesebro is an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal election interference indictment against Trump.

CNN has obtained audio of Chesebro’s recent interview with Michigan investigators, and exclusively reported earlier this month that he also told them about a December 2020 Oval Office meeting where he briefed Trump about the fake electors plan and how it ties into January 6.

An attorney for Chesebro declined to comment. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office did not reply to a request for comment for this story.

‘A high-level decision’

Emails obtained by CNN corroborate what Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors: He communicated with the top Trump campaign lawyer, Matt Morgan, and another campaign official, Mike Roman, to ferry the documents to Washington on January 5.

From there, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and a Pennsylvania congressman assisted in the effort to get the documents into Pence’s hands.

“This is a high-level decision to get the Michigan and Wisconsin votes there,” Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors. “And they had to enlist, you know, a US senator to try to expedite it, to get it to Pence in time.”

Chesebro also discussed the episode with Wisconsin investigators last week when he sat for an interview with the attorney general’s office as part of a separate state probe into the fake electors plot, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Wisconsin prosecutors asked about the episode “extensively,” the source said, noting Chesebro discussed how a Wisconsin GOP staffer flew the certificate from Milwaukee to Washington and then handed it off to Chesebro.

The firsthand account from Chesebro’s perspective helps fill in the narrative behind the effort to hand-deliver elector slates to Pence, which is vaguely referenced in Smith’s federal indictment.

Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include conspiring with Chesebro and others to obstruct the January 6 certification proceeding. Before Chesebro’s guilty plea in Georgia, his attorneys reached out to Smith’s team. As of this week, he has not heard back from federal prosecutors, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Federal investigators have spoken with several individuals involved in the scramble with the phony elector certificates, according to a source familiar with the matter. This includes interviews with Trump staffers who were tapped to fly the papers to DC, and some fake electors who knew of the planning.

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not reply to a request for comment.

Asked about the episode, a spokesperson for Johnson pointed to his previous comments, where he said, “my involvement in that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds,” and that, “in the end, those electors were not delivered.”

‘Day-by-day’ coordination

According to the recordings of Chesebro’s sit-down with Michigan prosecutors, he explained how a legal memo he wrote for Wisconsin transformed into a nationwide operation, where Trump lawyers were “day-by-day coordinating the efforts of more than a dozen people with the GOP and with the Trump campaign.”

On January 4, 2021, Morgan sent an email to Chesebro and Roman asking for confirmation that all of the Trump elector slates had been received by Congress, according to the documents obtained by CNN.

Roman responded that the Michigan certificate had been mailed on December 15 but was still “in transit” at a US Postal Service facility in DC. Wisconsin’s certificate also had apparently not arrived.

Chesebro told prosecutors that Morgan was “freaked out” when the campaign realized the phony certificates from Michiganwere still in the mail.

That same day, Morgan weighed in over email asking Chesebro and Roman to rethink how they would deliver the certificates to Pence.

“As I thought about this more, a courier will not be able to access the Capitol to deliver a sealed package,” Morgan wrote on January 4, according to emails obtained by CNN “You will probably need to enlist the help of a legislator who can deliver to the appropriate place(s). I strongly recommend you guys discuss a revised delivery plan with Rudy (Giuliani) to make sure this gets done the way he wants.”

‘Can we charter a flight?’

Roman was concerned the Wisconsin documents wouldn’t reach Washington in time.

“Can we charter a flight? The only available commercial from MKE (Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport) to DCA (Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) arrives at 2130 tomorrow night,” Roman wrote to Chesebro on January 4 at 11:24 p.m.

The job of physically flying the elector documents to Washington fell to two people: A Trump campaign staffer and a Wisconsin GOP official, according to the emails and what Chesebro told prosecutors.

The Wisconsin GOP official who had that state’s elector documents landed after 10 a.m. on January 5 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, according to the emails.

Trump campaign aide Michael Brown flew with the Michigan certificates to Washington National Airport with a scheduled arrival around 1 p.m., according to emails obtained by CNN.  A source familiar with the matter told CNN that Brown flew to DC from Atlanta, because the Trump staffers who had custody of the Michigan ballots were in Georgia for the Senate runoffs.

The campaign booked and paid for Brown’s flight on Southwest Airlines, the source said. Federal campaign finance records indicate that a pro-Trump super PAC paid the airline on the day of Brown’s flight for travel related to election “recount” efforts.

Trump Hotel meetup

The emails show that Brown and the Wisconsin GOP official were instructed to meet Chesebro at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington to hand off the fake elector certificates. Chesebro said in an email that he’d keep the ballots in his hotel room safe until it was time to pass them along.

Wisconsin Republican Party officials were annoyed at the request to courier the fake elector certificates to Washington. “Freaking trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President,” a Wisconsin GOP official wrote to then-state party chairman Andrew Hitt on January 4, according to the January 6 committee report.

Hitt – who has provided information to federal investigators about the efforts to get the fake elector certificates to Washington, according to a source familiar with the matter – told the January 6 committee that the couriering ended up being overkill, because the original documents that the state party had mailed to Washington actually made it in time.

Getting the certificates inside the Capitol

The documents still had to be hand-delivered to Pence’s Senate office in the Capitol.

The electors plot – as envisioned by Chesebro and other Trump allies – was that Pence could reject Biden’s legitimate electors and recognize Trump’s “alternate electors” on January 6, while lawmakers tallied the electoral votes from each state. Per federal law, the certificates need to be physically presented on the floor of Congress during the joint session, while lawmakers tally the electoral votes.

Chesebro told investigators that Roman connected him with an aide for a Pennsylvania GOP lawmaker that he believed was Rep. Scott Perry to turn over the documents. Chesebro wasn’t certain which congressman the staffer worked for – and the January 6 report says a staffer for a different Pennsylvania Republican, Rep. Mike Kelly, helped shuttle the documents that day.

“I had the Wisconsin stuff. [Trump campaign aide] Mike Brown had the Michigan stuff. We walked to the Longworth Office Building, and the guy with Perry, or whatever his name is, and some other fellow, that were like staff members of the House, took them and said, ‘We’re going to walk them over to the Senate and give it to a Senate staffer,’” Chesebro told Michigan prosecutors, according to the audio obtained by CNN.

“I don’t know why logistically we didn’t take it directly to Johnson. But that’s how we did it,” he added.

Kelly and Perry’s offices did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Brown did not comment for this story. CNN previously reported that he testified in June to Smith’s grand jury in the Trump election subversion probe.

CNN previously reported that Roman sat for a proffer interview with Smith’s team before Trump was indicted.  He was also indicted in the sweeping Georgia election racketeering case, in connection with the fake electors scheme, and has pleaded not guilty.

Roman’s attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The details from Chesebro put a finer point on how members of Congress, including a sitting US senator, were involved in making sure the electoral certificates for Trump ended up in Pence’s hands.

The January 6 committee first revealed last year Johnson’s involvement in trying unsuccessfully to deliver the fake elector certificates to Pence, who announced on the morning of the joint session that it would be unconstitutional to do what Trump wanted and unilaterally overturn the election results.

The committee revealed text messages during their hearings last year that Johnson aide Sean Riley sent to Pence aide Chris Hodgson, saying that Johnson “needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise.”

“What is it?” Hodgson asked.

“Alternate slates of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them,” Riley responded.

“Do not give that to him,” Hodgson said.

‘F**k these guys’

In his Michigan interview, Chesebro also dished on some of the internal disagreements among the Trump lawyers, campaign officials and other allies, who clashed over the purpose of the electors’ plan and how far to take things on January 6.

Chesebro has maintained – then, and now – that the plan was a lawful move to preserve Trump’s legal rights.

Even before the Trump electors met in their state capitals on December 14, 2020, to cast their fake ballots and sign the certificates, Chesebro heard about concerns from some of the electors about possible legal jeopardy, according to emails and text messages reported by the Detroit News and obtained by CNN.

Chesebro added hedging language for the faux certificates from Pennsylvania and New Mexico in response to those concerns. He proposed to Roman and Morgan that they add the contingency caveats to the paperwork for all seven states in the plan. But Roman rejected the idea, according to the emails.

“F**k these guys,” Roman texted Chesebro on December 12, 2020.

By this time, the Trump campaign had essentially cleaved in two. Top officials who had managed day-to-day activity for Trump up to the election, including in court, say they ceded responsibility to Rudy Giuliani and others, such as Chesebro, according to congressional testimony transcripts. Roman effectively switched teams to work under Giuliani’s structure, according to the testimony from Morgan and others.

A spokesperson for Giuliani did not reply to a request for comment.

‘It really went south on me’

Chesebro told Michigan investigators that his own emails show that Morgan remained deeply involved, including in the final hours before January 6, to ensure that the certificates reached DC.

“I don’t have a really warm feeling toward, at least, the top Trump lawyers that did this, hid from me what they were doing and then lied to Congress about me. So, it’s been really difficult,” Chesebro said.

In his congressional testimony, Morgan said he knew of the elector plan but wanted to distance himself from the effort, delegating the work to others, including those under Giuliani.

Morgan told the January 6 committee last year that he initially believed the electors were only meant to be used as a contingency. The electors, he believed, should meet in their state capitals and cast their electoral votes but “not necessarily submit” the certificates to Congress unless “we prevailed” in court.

Morgan told the committee that the plan changed in December, saying it morphed from a “cast-and-hold” operation and had “shifted to cast-and-send.” And that’s when Morgan told the committee that he backed out, testifying that he directed an aide to “email Mr. Chesebro politely to say, ‘this is your task. You are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward.’”

“This was my way of taking that responsibility to zero,” Morgan told the committee, later adding that he “moved on” after that email was sent.

Morgan explained that he was concerned that the new plan to try to count the fake electors on January 6 “would make the Vice President’s life harder, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.”

“Mr. Morgan stands by his congressional testimony,” his defense attorneys told CNN in response to his emails and Chesebro’s statements to investigators.

Ultimately, on the eve of the joint session of Congress, Morgan helped get the ballots in place, according to the emails and according to Chesebro, who blamed his legal troubles squarely on the Trump campaign’s legal team.

“I could have avoided all this,” Chesebro vented to Michigan prosecutors. “It’s been a real lesson in not working with people that you don’t know and are not sure you can trust, because it really went south on me.”

[mydaddywiki]

David Perdue

Physique: Average Build Height: 6′3″

David Alfred Perdue Jr. (born December 10, 1949 -) is an American politician and business executive who served as a United States senator from Georgia from 2015 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, Perdue was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Georgia in 2022. The Macon, Georgia native was a former globe-trotting management consultant and CEO of a sneaker manufacturer Reebok and a discount-store chain Dollar General.

Perdue first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014, later losing his reelection bid in 2020. He later supported a lawsuit by Trump allies seeking to overturn the election results, and falsely claimed during his 2022 gubernatorial election campaign that his 2020 Senate election was "stolen."

Handsome with a nice looking ass, Perdue has developed the ability to bulge in just about every pic he's in. Perdue was linked to the 2020 congressional insider trading scandal for allegations of STOCK Act violations, but unless that is somehow going to result in him doing nude photo-shoots and porno's on Older4Me then I don't have much of an opinion. He's a politician, of course he's corrupt.

Of course he's married with with children. What politician now days isn't. What politician now days isn't. Anyway, he had quickly become one of my favorite politicians. And if you've seen some of his bulge shots, he'd be one of your favorite politicians too. Also, he's a first cousin of Sonny Perdue, former Governor of Georgia and United States Secretary of Agriculture, who I'd also take a deep dicking from.

I'd SO like to spend a weekend of vigorous fucking with the two of them. For now, I can fantasize about David and how good of a fuck he is.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Today’s GOP controlled Supreme Court is nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party focused on imposing their right-wing agenda upon us--from ending fundamental rights like abortion and marriage equality to undermining voting rights and more.  That is why we must work to win control of the Supreme Court the same way we work to win control of the House, Senate and White House. That means going forward every Democratic presidential candidate must commit to “winning the court” (aka “reform of the Supreme Court”) or we should not support that person. The latest example of this grotesquely partisan court came Thursday in the oral argument of Donald Trump’s appeal that he has absolute immunity to commit all the crimes he wants as President. The six GOP Justices—who were all active in Republican politics or administrations before being picked by GOP presidents to serve—showed zero concern that Trump was charged with crimes for attempting to wage a coup to remain in power despite losing.  Instead, it was clear that the Republican justices are focused on protecting Trump by delaying his Jan 6 trial beyond Election Day.

If these justices were truly concerned with protecting our Republic, they would have agreed to hear this case in December 2023 when Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the court to fast track Trump’s appeal of the trial judge’s decision denying him immunity in the Jan 6 case.  But that was rejected by the GOP controlled court to help Trump delay his trial. And in the end, the Republican justices may render a decision that makes it all but impossible to prosecute Trump for his crimes in the Jan 6 case. In reality, no one should be surprised that the Republican justices would protect the presidential nominee of their party in an election year. That is especially true given that three of those justices were appointed by Trump. [...]

And the GOP Supreme Court is helping Republicans impose these women killing abortion bans. We saw this on Wednesday when the court considered a challenge from Idaho Republicans to a federal law that mandates doctors to provide an abortion to a woman who is faced with an medical emergency.  It’s clear from the oral argument that GOP justices support the Idaho state law that makes it illegal for doctor to perform an abortion--even if a woman is suffering horribly or could suffer permanent injuries. Only if a woman is literally on the doorstep of death after suffering extensively and begging for help would these Republican justices allow an abortion. This is barbarism—and it’s also the mainstream GOP position. The GOP controlled court has also repeatedly chipped away at the wall between church and state to pave the way for a theocracy consistent with their right-wing religious views. For example, in 2023, the GOP justices rolled back anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ community in the name of “religious freedom.”

In addition, these same GOP justices weakened the Voting Rights Act and greatly restricted the ability of the EPA to address climate change. And in a case that will literally result in more Americans being killed by gun violence, these same six Justices struck down in 2022 a century old New York state law that limited who can carry a concealed weapon.  Justice Thomas—in between lavish gifts from his billionaire benefactor—wrote in that case that modern gun control laws must be “consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.” This decision has resulted in courts striking down a wide range of modern gun laws—including prohibitions on guns in mass transit, guns in post offices, guns with obliterated serial numbers and gun possession by certain felons. Whatever the GOP wants, this court will deliver. That means—as Justice Thomas has vowed—the court will, when given a chance, limit access to forms of birth control that right wing theocrats oppose, roll back marriage equality and more. The reason the GOP Supreme Court is so acutely dangerous to our freedoms and rights is that there are no checks on their power. These justices don’t answer to the voters. There is no way to directly defeat them in an election. (We can’t even force Thomas to recuse himself from Jan 6 cases despite his obvious conflict of interest!)

[...] That is why Democrats going forward must make reforming this court a priority. That could mean—by way of a federal law--expanding the court to say 13 justices to match the number of federal court of appeals. It could mean rotating judges from Supreme Court to lower federal courts after a set number of years. Reform can also mean “term limits” for justices—which polls show is supported by 67 percent of Americans. There is no greater threat to our freedoms, rights and democratic Republic than today’s corruptly partisan Supreme Court. That is why every Democratic presidential candidate and those seeking a House or Senate seat must make “reforming the court” a priority. It’s time to transform the US Supreme Court from an arm of the GOP back to a real a court!

Dean Obeidallah nails it: The Supreme Court must be expanded and reformed to counter the ill-gotten GOP edge on the court.

[zoe-oneesama]

I know you said you're not doing time travel-related episodes in the SLau, but I was wondering where they'd fit into the timeline? Like, which seasons/which episode numbers they'd be using your organisation? Purely out of curiosity, since you're not doing the rabbit miraculous/time travel, and there's no pressure for an answer, just wondering where you'd place them in the timeline

Alright, you asked for it. This is an alternate universe where the Pandemic didn't happen btw, for my own sanity:

September 2019:

Origins part 1: Mon, Sept 2 (First Day of School)

Origins part 2: Tues, Sept 3

Stormy Weather: Sat, Sept 14

Bubbler: Mon, Sept 16 (SL Adrien's Bday!) and Tues, Sept 17

Lady Wifi: Thurs, Sept 26-Sat, Sept 28 (all 3 days)

October 2019:

Copycat: Wed, Oct 2 and Thursday, Oct 3

Mr. Pigeon: Mon, Oct 7

The Pharaoh: Fri, Oct 16

Horrificator: Sat, Oct 26 and Sun, Oct 27 (over "Fall Break")

November 2019:

Rogercop: Fri, Nov 4 (after "Fall Break" ends)

Darkblade: Tues, Nov 11 and Wed, Nov 12 (biggest inaccuracy since this isn't when mayoral elections would take place)

Gamer: Thurs, Nov 14 and Fri, Nov 15

Reflekta: Mon, Nov 25

December 2019 (Where I start keeping a physical planner because my digital one kept deleting notes):

Timebreaker: Sat, Dec 7 (SL Alix's Bday!)

Simon Says: Sun, Dec 8 and the next Sun, Dec 15

Volpina: Wed, Dec 18

Collector: Wed, Dec 18, Thurs, Dec 19, and Fri, Dec 20

Befana: Fri, Dec 20 and Tues, Dec 24 (SL Marinette's Bday!) (During "Christmas Winter Break")

January 2020:

Kung Food: Fri, Jan 3 (End "Christmas Winter Break")

Evillustrator: Mon, Jan 6 (SL Nathaniel's Bday!), Tues, Jan 7

Vanisher: Mon, Jan 13 - Wed, Jan 15 (all 3 days)

Riposte: Fri, Jan 17 and Mon, Jan 20

Captain Hardrock: Sat, Jan 25

February 2020:

Syren: Sat, Feb 1

Dark Cupid: Fri, Feb 14

Interlude 1: Mon, Feb 17

Animan: Fri, Feb 21, and Sat, Feb 22

Puppeteer: Mon, Feb 24, and Tues, Feb 25 (during "Winter Break")

March 2020:

Pixelator: Fri, March 13

Guitar Villain: Sat, March 14-Mon, March 16 (all 3 days)

Princess Fragrance: Fri, March 27

Despair Bear: Mon, March 30

April 2020 (Things get weird here thanks to reordering some episodes):

Sapotis: Fri, April 3 and Sat, April 4

Anansi: Mon, April 20 (during "Spring Break")

Troublemaker: Sat, April 25-Mon, April 27 (technically "spring break" should still be going but we'll pretend it's done)

[Silencer Montague Sequence starts from Fri, April 17, since the contest is for the bands to make something in 2 weeks]

May 2020:

Silencer (the main episode): Fri, May 1 and Sat, May 2

Desperada: Sun, May 3

Ikari Gozen: Fri, May 15 and Sat, May 16

Crocoduel: Thrus, May 21 and Sat, May 23 (SL Luka and Juleka's Bday!)

Robostus: Mon, May 25

Prime Queen: Fri, May 29

June 2020:

Zombizou: Tues, June 2 (SL Caline's Bday!), and Wed, June 3

The Mime: Fri, June 5

Gorizilla: Sat, June 6

Sandboy: Mon, June 8

Reverser: Tues, June 9 - Fri, June 12 (all 4 days)

Party Crasher (all dates after this point are loose guesses): Sat, June 13

Frozer: Between Mon, June 15-Friday, June 19

Frightningale: Sat, June 20

Malediktator: Fri, June 26

Style Queen: Sat, June 27

Queen Wasp: Sat, June 27 and Sun, June 28

July 2020:

Catalyst/Mayura: Fri, July 3 (Last Day of School)

[queenvlion]

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[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 4 December 2011, Brazilian footballer, medical doctor and activist Sócrates died in São Paulo aged 57. Widely considered to be one of the greatest midfielders of all time, he scored 22 goals for the Brazilian national team, captaining the side during the 1982 world cup. While playing for Corinthians, Sócrates helped organise Corinthians' Democracy: both a body through which the players collectively took control of management of the team, and also a powerful protest against the right-wing military dictatorship governing Brazil. Sócrates later gave the regime an ultimatum, saying he would go to play in Italy if they refused to hold elections. They did not pass a proposed constitutional amendment granting elections, so he moved to Fiorentina. When he arrived he was asked which Italian player he respected most, Rivera or Mazzola. He replied "Never heard of them. I'm here to read Gramsci in the original language and to study the history of the Italian working class." Antonio Gramsci was a prominent Italian Marxist who died in captivity under Mussolini's dictatorship. On the day of Sócrates' death, Corinthians had a match against Palmeiras, and before kick-off, the team marked his passing with Sócrates' classic celebration: a raised fist. They held out to a 0-0 draw, winning them one point which ensured their victory in the Campeonato Brasileiro for the first time in 6 years. Learn more about the intersection of football and radical politics in these books: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/football https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2151721605012978/?type=3

[saturniandevil]

December 2023 Important Dates

AKA my notes on The Astrology Podcast's December forecast, hosted by Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock. As you can see from the calendar, this is quite the busy month. I've put the recap at the end again for those interested in mundane astrology. Generally, it's about the October 28th lunar eclipse in Taurus.

We're entering the month off a Mars-Saturn square on November 25th, and Mercury has already entered his pre-retrograde shadow (during the rx he will go back to about 22 degrees of Sagittarius). There's been a Mars-Saturn square making motion grind to a halt, and though it present frustrations and delayed gratification, Mars-Saturn can also indicate perseverance and relentlessness.

December 1st - Mercury enters Capricorn The next day he sextiles Saturn, further activating that Saturn-Mars square. He'll retrograde back into Sagittarius later. Mercury will trine Jupiter in Taurus around the 7th-8th, and sextile Venus when she enters Scorpio, bringing us some helpful communication in the first half of the month. The second half will be very different, though, as he retrogrades and conjoins Mars--think explosive arguments or disrupted communication like in late October-early November. Do your careful planning and mapping while Mercury is constructive in Capricorn, as his regress into Sagittarius will bring have us acting recklessly out of necessity.

December 2nd & 3rd - Auspicious Elections (not pictured)

The charts are both around 1:35AM local time and takes advantage of Mercury's application to a trine with Jupiter, before the chaos of retrograde & contacting Mars. It also takes advantage of the last bit of Venus in Libra.

On December 2nd, the chart has Libra rising with Venus in domicile in the first (whole sign) house. The Moon is in Leo, either applying to or just separating from a square with Jupiter, and trine the Sun in Sagittarius in the 11th house. This is a good Venus-related chart, for things that need to appeal aesthetically to others or unify people. As this is a night chart, Venus is also the sect benefic, and is especially equipped to help things build up and grow (plus she's in a position of strength in the first house). Venus elections are also good for design, getting back in touch with people & other social activities, and working together. Venus in Libra is especially good for bringing together two things that are at odds, whether it's disagreeing friends or disparate business endeavors. Although the degree of Venus isn't too important in timing this, Chris recommends trying to get the Midheaven around 5-6 degrees of Cancer, so that it sextiles Jupiter in the eighth house. The Moon rules the 10th house and is in the 11th house of friends, making this a good election for friends, groups, and social movements.

The 2nd is the primary election, but the 3rd has most of the same benefits. The Moon is later in Leo, now applying directly to a sextile with Venus, emphasizing her themes of unity and reconciliation as well as tying in the 11th house of groups & alliances even more strongly.

December 4th - Venus enters Scorpio Though in detriment here, Venus is opposite Jupiter in her sign (exact December 9th-10th, especially activated by a conjunction from the Moon), and this reception & contact bring forth more helpful qualities. She will also overtake slowing Mercury by sextile around December 10th-11th, bringing some reconciliation to our communications. However, the New Moon conjunct Mars will pose some challenges.

December 6th - Neptune stations direct

December 12th - New Moon in Sagittarius

A close square to (newly direct) Neptune adds some nebulousness to the picture, and a loose conjunction from Mars to the lights, with Mercury stationing soon after, mean things may not go as planned. Mercury's configurations to the benefics seem hopeful, but we should expect some misalignment and miscommunication over the following weeks. Additionally, Mars's proximity to the Sun means he'll be coloring the next few nations with martial qualities. This New Moon sort of resets things for the month.

December 13th - Mercury stations retrograde The Moon enters Capricorn and conjoins Mercury soon after his station, which will further trigger or activate general Mercury retrograde significations.

December 21st - Sun enters Capricorn

December 22nd - Retrograde Mercury conjoins Sun (Cazimi) This occurs in at zero degrees of Capricorn and marks the halfway/turning point in the retrograde. Normally we'd expect to start figuring out what's wrong and begin heading out of the woods, but once in Sagittarius Mercury approaches a conjunction with Mars, changing the layout of our path. Sometimes looking to the past for actions will bring up old conflicts, or further investigation into a problem reveals that we have to rethink our entire approach.

December 23rd - Retrograde Mercury enters Sagittarius Discussed above.

December 26th - Full Moon in Cancer

Mercury at 25 Sagittarius and Mars at 23 bring even more heightened emotions than usual to this Full Moon (think tense communications). Neptune squaring Mercury and Mars adds further muddies the waters; expect a mix of hostility and misunderstanding. Meanwhile, the Moon is in domicile and both lights form soft aspects to Jupiter, which Austin compares to a nice country breakfast. It's like getting an idyllic Christmas postcard along with some poisoned arrows. Being home for the holidays is comforting and familiar, but we may also fight with our relatives, perhaps over politics. A Neptune-Venus trine brings a dreamy, escapist quality to the lunation as well. This lunation will hit different people very differently. (Those with emphasis on the lights, Jupiter, or cardinal signs will do well, while those with strong mutable placements may feel strife, etc.)

December 27th - Retrograde Mercury conjoins Mars This is the second of three Mercury-Mars conjunctions, the first having been around the October eclipse in Scorpio, and the next one occurring in Capricorn during late January. Mercury will station direct at 22 degrees of Sagittarius on the first couple days of the New Year, and will be slowly chasing Mars for most of January.

December 29th - Venus enters Sagittarius This is a fairly big shift, as she immediately squares Saturn, dumping a bucket of ice water on our attempts to come together on New Year's Eve gatherings.

December 30th - Jupiter stations direct This station can be a positive turning point for anyone with important Taurus placements nearby. Austin points out that Jupiter's usually retrograde for about ⅓ of the year (he entered Taurus in May and stationed retrograde in September), giving us time to reevaluate things and see whether we've failed or succeeded. It's like a shock absorber as we traverse this bumpy road. We can try to stabilize things in the midst of a destructive world. The rapid growth and expansion we were feeling this summer may start to come back, visible in the part of your life corresponding to the house Taurus occupies in your chart. Strike while the Iron's hot, as we've got until May before Jupiter enters Gemini. Uranus is copresent in the sign and may remind us of previous Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions: unexpected growth, innovation, and benefits from out of the blue.

November Recap:

The last forecast was recorded days before a lunar eclipse in Taurus on October 28th, which heralded several world events not discussed in the November forecast. In Palestine this coincided with the beginning of ground invasion and telecom blackout (Mercury-Mars involvement=severing of communication). Last month our hosts predicted the Venus-Mercury sextile would indicate brief diplomacy in this situation, and we saw the beginning of "humanitarian pauses" as well as negotiations around prisoner exchange. Chris wants to emphasize that more civilians have died in these two months in Gaza than in the entire Ukraine war, and predicts that larger geopolitical tensions are likely to rise as world leaders split with each other and their constituents over these events. He sees upcoming eclipses in 2025 as well as Uranus in Gemini (USA return) heralding possibility of larger global conflicts. Austin reiterates from last month that the North Node near Mars (as was the cast 10/28) indicates, in combat, using force madly beyond what is necessary or proportionate.

In US politics, Joe Biden has the Moon in early Taurus and thus the last eclipse cycle has been getting closer and closer to his natal moon, with 10/28 being the closest. Because it's in the 6th house our hosts had speculated about his health, but in this case it seems to have affected his work more (another 6th house topic), as his prospects for reelection have been plummeting. In early October the US House fired the Speaker of the House right on the last stretch of the US Pluto return, and eventually Mike Johnson was elected speaker on the 25th--born on a lunar eclipse and appointed to this office 3 days before another. This fits with Chris's findings lately that a person born on an eclipse will have other life events occur on them as well. Chris's concerns around the breakdown of US democracy with its Pluto return events seem well-founded, as Johnson had a significant part in trying to overturn Biden's election and is now third in line for the presidency, as well as in a critical role for the 2024 election.

Other eclipse stories: Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX infamy was found guilty of one of the largest US fraud operations during a Taurus (signifying money) eclipse. Matthew Perry of Friends fame passed away, who was born under and published his autobiography near a lunar eclipse as well.

On November 17th-18th there was an exact Sun-Mars conjunction (cazimi) in Scorpio, and in tech news the board of OpenAI fired the CEO/founder, described among business and tech circles as "closest thing to a boardroom assassination" they'd ever seen. Chris predicts Pluto reentering Aquarius in two months will indicate major developments in the use of AI technology. Pluto was in Aquarius earlier this year for a couple months, giving us a preview of the next 20 years (aside from a brief 2-month dip back into Capricorn next fall before leaving for good).

[kp777]

By Tom Phillips

The Guardian

Aug. 8, 2023

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has vowed to haul the Amazon out of centuries of violence, economic “plundering” and environmental devastation and into “a new Amazon dream”, at the start of a major regional summit on the world’s largest rainforest.

Addressing South American leaders gathered in the Brazilian city of Belém, Lula offered a bold blueprint for the future of the Amazon, a 6.7m sq km region that is home to nearly 50 million people spread across eight countries and one territory.

The Brazilian leftist promised to repair his country’s environmental and international reputation after four “disastrous” years under his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, during which the rainforest and Indigenous communities came under growing attack. “Thankfully … we have managed to turn this sad page in our history,” said Lula, who took power in January after thwarting Bolsonaro’s re-election plans.

Lula pledged to promote an ambitious model for the rainforest region – 60% of which lies within Brazil – in which environmental protection was accompanied by desperately needed social inclusion, economic growth and technological innovation.

“The rainforest is neither a void that needs occupying nor a treasure trove to be looted. It is a flowerbed of possibilities that must be cultivated,” Lula told the audience, which included the presidents of fellow Amazon nations Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, as well as the prime minister of Guyana and Venezuela’s vice-president.

Pledging to achieve zero deforestation by 2030, Lula said: “The Amazon can be whatever we want it to be: an Amazon with greener cities, with cleaner air, with mercury-free rivers and forests that are left standing; an Amazon with food on the table, dignified jobs and public services that are available to all; an Amazon with healthier children, well-received migrants [and] Indigenous people who are respected … This is our Amazon dream.”

Indigenous communities demand greater change as Amazon rainforest summit begins – video

The comments came at the start of a rare two-day meeting of the eight-member Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (Acto), which Lula called as part of efforts to reposition Brazil on the world stage as a key player in the fight against the climate crisis.

Among the issues being discussed at Acto’s first such meeting in 14 years were a possible deal to halt deforestation by 2030 and joint efforts to fight rampant illegal mining and organised crime groups that are tightening their grip on the rainforest region. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has been pushing for an end to oil and gas exploration in the Amazon, although Brazilian moves to develop an oilfield near the mouth of the Amazon River complicate those efforts.

Petro used his intervention to call for the creation of “an Amazonian Nato” under which regional military would join forces to protect the jungle, about 6% of which lies within Colombia’s borders.

“You defend life with reason – but also with weapons,” he said, also proposing a “Marshall Plan” to pump resources into Amazon protection and a specialised Amazonian court to punish crimes against the biome.

Dina Boluarte, the president of Peru, home to about 11% of the Amazon, also urged action to preserve a rainforest that “isn’t just the lungs of the world – it’s the heart of the world”.

“We must act now. There is no time to lose,” said Boluarte, who was making her first trip abroad since Peru was gripped by protests after she took power last December.

After hours of talks, a joint Acto communique, called the Belém Declaration, was published, calling for increased police and intelligence collaboration to fight illegal activities and environmental crime as well as human rights violations against Indigenous people and activists. It said a law enforcement centre would be opened in the Brazilian city of Manaus to promote cooperation among regional police forces.

The 113-point text also urged greater efforts to slash deforestation and promote sustainable development in the region. However, the document fell short of many expectations for failing to include a common goal of zero deforestation by 2030.

Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory group, said he had mixed feelings about a declaration that was weaker than many environmentalists had hoped for.

“It’s a first step. It was important for [these leaders] to come together but there isn’t much concrete in there. It’s a list of very generic promises. It was lacking something more forceful,” Astrini said.

“We’re living in a world which is melting. We are breaking temperature records all the time. How can it be that in a 22-page declaration the presidents of eight Amazon countries can’t clearly state that deforestation needs to stop?”

Read more.

[ridenwithbiden]

HERE COMES THE JUDGE "When Judge Tanya Chutkan presides over the new criminal case against Donald Trump, it won’t be her first time tangling with the former president and his lawyers.

In fact, the U.S. district court judge already dealt the ex-president one of the most significant legal blows of his lifetime, triggering perhaps the greatest deluge of evidence about his bid to subvert the 2020 election — a scheme for which he now stands charged with serious crimes.

The Obama-appointed jurist ruled in fall 2021 that the House Jan. 6 select committee could access reams of Trump’s White House files — a ruling that was subsequently upheld by an appeals court and left undisturbed by the Supreme Court. That evidence — call logs, memos, internal strategy papers and more from the desks of Trump’s most trusted advisers — became the backbone of the committee’s evidence and shaped much of the public’s understanding of his effort to seize a second term he didn’t win.

Much of that evidence resurfaced Tuesday in special counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Trump, which referenced call logs and White House records that were already familiar to Americans who tracked the Jan. 6 committee proceedings. Chutkan was randomly selected Tuesday to preside over Trump’s latest criminal case, his third in the last four months.

“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Chutkan wrote in her 2-year-old ruling, a rebuke that is sure to echo as she prepares to preside over the newest criminal case against the current GOP frontrunner for the presidential nomination in 2024.

Chutkan, 61, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and came to the U.S. for college as a teenager, attending George Washington University and then law school at the University of Pennsylvania. She spent more than a decade as a public defender in Washington, D.C. She later worked for the law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner before being confirmed as a federal trial judge in Washington in 2014.

Chutkan has avoided some of the most pointed criticisms of Trump that some of her colleagues on the federal bench in D.C. have delivered as they’ve sentenced defendants who participated in the Jan. 6 mob that attacked the Capitol as part of Trump’s bid to remain in power. Judge Reggie Walton has called Trump a “charlatan.” Judge Amit Mehta has said Jan. 6 defendants were “pawns” of Trump and his allies. Judge Amy Berman Jackson has chastised Republicans for refusing to level with Trump about the 2020 election.

“It is not patriotism, it is not standing up for America to stand up for one man — who knows full well that he lost — instead of the Constitution he was trying to subvert,” Jackson said at a sentencing last year.

But Chutkan has delivered some of the harshest sentences to Jan. 6 defendants and made her disgust and horror over the attack clear, lamenting the prospect of renewed political violence in 2024 and noting that no one accused of orchestrating the effort to subvert the election had been held accountable.

“You have made a very good point,” she told Jan. 6 rioter Robert Palmer at his December 2021 sentencing, “that the people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged.”

“The issue of who has or has not been charged is not before me. I don’t have any influence on that,” she said. “I have my opinions, but they are not relevant.”

But Chutkan also said that reality wasn’t a reason to go easy on those who bought into the election lies and acted upon that belief.

“The people who planned this and funded it and encouraged it haven’t been charged, but that’s not a reason for you to get a lower sentence,” she said. “I have to make it clear that the actions you engaged in cannot happen again. Every day we’re hearing about reports of antidemocratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024.”

Chutkan has alluded more specifically to Trump in other Jan. 6 sentences, including her first — to misdemeanor defendant Carl Mazzocco, who Chutkan said “went to the Capitol in support of one man, not in support of our country.”

During those early months of the Jan. 6 investigation, Chutkan also staked out territory that some of her colleagues were reluctant to tread: She pointedly rejected the equivalence some defendants were drawing between violence adjacent to Black Lives Matter protests and the riot at the Capitol.

One Trump-appointed judge, Trevor McFadden, had raised sharp questions about whether Jan. 6 defendants were being treated more harshly than people accused of similar conduct during the summertime violence of 2020.

“I think the U.S. attorney would have more credibility if it was even-handed in its concern about riots and mobs in this city,” McFadden said at the time.

Chutkan, while sentencing a defendant in a different case, appeared to allude to her colleague’s remark, before saying she “flatly” disagreed.

“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said of the protests and rioting that followed George Floyd’s death. “But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

Arvydas Anušauskas Born: September 29, 1963, Vilnius, Lithuania Physique: Average Build Height: 6’

Arvydas Anušauskas is a Lithuanian politician and historian. He focuses on the history of the interwar Lithuanian secret services, KGB actions in Lithuania, and Soviet repressions in Lithuania. As a member of the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats, he was elected to the Seimas (parliament) in 2008 and reelected in 2012, 2016 and 2020. On 7 December 2020, he was approved to be the Minister of National Defence in the Šimonytė Cabinet.

Handsome, silver haired daddy who looks like he'd be a champion fucker in bed. Of course he's married, to a 27 year old who recently had his baby. I want his life... I want his cock. So I want to be his wife or better yet, his husband. 

What? 

I'm not a 27 year old having his baby. But he could nut in me all day and we can adopt. Same difference.

[eretzyisrael]

by Daniel Greenfield

In reality, Eaton supported Hamas.

On December 6, Seven Days, a local news outlet known for breaking stories about local politics, revealed that Eaton had tweeted, “the notion that Hamas is ‘evil’ for defending their state from occupation is absurd. They are owed a state. Pay up.”

Responding to an article about a proposed ceasefire, he wrote, “What if someone occupied your country? Wouldn’t you fight them?”

Local politicians were aware of this which is why in December a Burlington City Council resolution from Councilman Ali Dieng, an African Muslim immigrant currently running for mayor, trying to tie the shootings to an attack on Israel failed, and so did a resolution pushing the false claim that the students had been targeted because of their identity.

The latest Islamophobia hoax had fallen apart in Vermont, but still lingered nationally.

Media outlets which had rushed to spread the false claims never retracted or modified them. After a month of pushing the lie that the shootings were a response to Israel’s campaign against Hamas or to the ‘Muslim’ or ‘Palestinian’ identities of the three men, the new information was not reported, acknowledged or in any way addressed by politicians and media reporters.

NBC News, which had run an entire ‘live blog’ about the shootings, pushing anti-Israel and Islamophobia narratives, did not provide an update that would have contradicted its narrative.

Even in December, NBC News still continued running articles falsely linking the shootings to the Hamas war and attacking Israel. A Dec 5 article quoted one of the men shot as spreading anti-Israel propaganda and claiming that “this is happening to Palestinians across the country and, more importantly, in Gaza. We’re mad at the system that’s allowing not three of us to be injured but thousands and thousands and millions of us to be displaced and injured and killed.”

PBS ran a similar article in December quoting an uncle of one of the men as contending that “even in this country, even in this town — that many of the risks that exist for my nephew and his friends in Palestine exist for them here.”

This torrent of anti-Israel and pro-terrorist propaganda was based on absolutely nothing.

There was never a single shred of evidence that the men had been targeted. And the only basis for this claim that was ever cited was that two of the men were wearing ‘keffiyehs’ and speaking English and Arabic when they were shot. This entirely circumstantial information was amplified with feverish claims and rushed statements by elected officials, prosecutors and police.

The reality that has emerged is that Eaton was mentally unstable, left-leaning, opposed to America and supportive of Islamic terrorists. He was neither Jewish nor pro-Israel.

He had actually publicly stated his support for Hamas.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 5, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JAN 6, 2024

President Joe Biden launched his reelection campaign today with a speech at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He spoke after a visit to nearby Valley Forge, where General George Washington quartered his troops from December 1777 to June 1778 during the Revolutionary War in which the former colonies sought to establish their independence from Great Britain.

Biden began the speech by outlining what the soldiers in the Continental Army quartered at Valley Forge had fought for. “America made a vow,” Biden said. “Never again would we bow down to a king.”

A “ragtag army made up of ordinary people” fought for what Washington called “a sacred cause,” he said: “Freedom, liberty, democracy. American democracy.” Valley Forge, he said, “tells the story of the pain and the suffering and the true patriotism it took to make America.”

Three years ago, he said, when insurrectionists tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power on January 6, 2021, “we nearly…lost it all.”

“Today, we’re here to answer the most important of questions,” Biden said. “Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?... This is not rhetorical, academic or hypothetical. Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time.”

“And it’s what the 2024 election is all about.”

Biden described Trump’s attack on American democracy and warned that “Donald Trump’s campaign is about him, not America, not you.” Biden remembered the “smashing windows, shattering doors, attacking the police” of January 6. He recalled the rioters erecting a gallows while the crowd chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” hunting for then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and injuring more than 140 police officers. 

Like the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, Biden emphasized that while the whole world was watching the attack in horror and disbelief, and even as staff, family members, and Republican leaders pleaded with Trump to do something, the former president watched events unfold on the television in a little room off the Oval Office and “did nothing.”

Biden repeated the condemnation of former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) when he called that refusal to act “among the worst derelictions of duty by a president in American history.”

The president went on to explain how Trump continued to lie that he had won the 2020 presidential election despite losing recounts and 60 court cases. For those lies, Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was ordered last month to pay $148 million to election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss for defamation, and the Fox News Corporation agreed to pay $787 million to Dominion Voting Systems for lying that their machines had switched votes from Trump to Biden.

Then, when he had exhausted all his legal options, Trump urged his supporters to assault the Capitol. Since then, more than 1,200 people have been charged with crimes related to the events of that day; nearly 900 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted. 

Trump has called those insurrectionists “patriots” and has promised to pardon them if he is returned to office. But normalizing violence as part of our political system destroys the reasonable debate and peaceful transition of power that is at the heart of democracy. Biden identified this danger, warning: “Political violence is never, ever acceptable in the United States political system—never, never, never. It has no place in a democracy. None. You can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American.” 

Biden noted that Trump has promised to continue to assault democracy, threatening “a full-scale campaign of ‘revenge’ and ‘retribution’...for some years to come.” Trump has said he “would be a dictator on day one,” called for the “termination of all the rules, regulation, and articles, even those found in the U.S. Constitution,” and echoed the language used in Nazi Germany by calling those who oppose him “vermin” and talking about the blood of Americans being poisoned by immigrants. 

“There’s no confusion about who Trump is and what he intends to do,” Biden said. 

Immediately after January 6, 2021, “even Republican members of Congress and Fox News commentators publicly and privately condemned the attack,” he said. “But now…those same people have changed their tune…. [P]olitics, fear, money, all have intervened. And now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump on January 6th have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy.”

“They made their choice,” Biden said. “Now the rest of us—Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans—we have to make our choice. I know mine. And I believe I know America’s. We will defend the truth, not give in to the Big Lie. We’ll embrace the Constitution and the Declaration, not abandon it. We’ll honor the sacred cause of democracy, not walk away from it.”

“Today, I make this sacred pledge to you,” he said. “The defense, protection, and preservation of American democracy will remain, as it has been, the central cause of my presidency.” 

“America, as we begin this election year, we must be clear,” Biden said. “Democracy is on the ballot. Your freedom is on the ballot.” “The alternative to democracy is dictatorship—the rule of one, not the rule of ‘We the People.’”  

“Together, we can keep proving that America is still a country that believes in decency, dignity, honesty, honor, truth,” he said. “We still believe that no one, not even the President, is above the law…. [T]he vast majority of us still believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at making it. We’re still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor…. We still believe in ‘We the People,’ and that includes all of us, not some of us.” 

In “that cold winter of 1777,” Biden said, referring back to the soldiers at Valley Forge, “George Washington and his American troops…waged a battle on behalf of a revolutionary idea that everyday people—like where I come from and the vast majority of you—…that everyday people can govern themselves without a king or a dictator.”

Americans “take charge of our destiny,” Biden said. “We get our job done with…the help of the people we find in America, who find their place in the changing world and dream and build a future that not only they but all people deserve a shot at.” 

“This is the first national election since [the] January 6th insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy,” Biden said. “We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is: Who are we? That’s what’s at stake. Who are we?” 

And then he answered his own question, concluding with his characteristic faith in the American people. “After all we’ve been through in our history, from independence to Civil War to two world wars to a pandemic to insurrection,” he said, “I refuse to believe that, in 2024, we Americans will choose to walk away from what’s made us the greatest nation in the history of the world: freedom, liberty.”

“Democracy,” he said, “is still a sacred cause.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON