#power hungry Republicans

[socialjusticeinamerica]

Traitor and domestic terrorist. Republicans and their rich benefactors hate you.

Republicans would crash the economy and impoverish millions just for a chance to regain power. Republicans and their oligarch billionaire masters are largely immune to economic downturns that could leave the rest of us homeless and hungry.

[echoequinox]

Me in 2012: god lelouche just like me fr

Me, restarting episode 1 in 2023: jesus i was kind of an edgy little shitty in high school for relating so hard to lelouche huh

Me, finishing season 1 in 2023: GOD, LELOUCHE JUST LIKE ME FR

[robertreich]

Does the Constitution Ban Trump from Running Again? 

Donald Trump should not be allowed on the ballot.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits anyone who has held public office and taken an oath to protect the Constitution from holding office again if they “have engaged in insurrection” against the United States.

This key provision was enacted after the Civil War to prevent those who rose up against our democracy from ever being allowed to hold office again.

This applies to Donald Trump. He cannot again be entrusted with public office. He led an insurrection!

He refused to concede the results of the 2020 election, claiming it was stolen, even when many in his inner circle, including his own attorney general, told him it was not.

Trump then pushed state officials to change vote counts, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to pressure his vice president into refusing to certify the Electoral College votes, had his allies seek access to voting-machine data, and summoned his supporters to attack the capitol on January 6th to disrupt the formal recognition of the presidential election results.

And then he waited HOURS, reportedly watching the violence on TV, before telling his supporters to go home — despite pleas from his staff, Republican lawmakers, and even Fox News.

If this isn’t the behavior of an insurrectionist, I don’t know what is.

Can there be any doubt that Trump will again try to do whatever it takes to regain power, even if it’s illegal and unconstitutional?

If anything, given all the MAGA election deniers in Congress and in the states, Trump is less constrained than he was in 2020. And more power hungry.

Trump could face criminal charges for inciting an insurrection, but that’s not necessary to bar him from the ballot.

Secretaries of State and other chief election officers across the country have the power to determine whether candidates meet the qualifications for office. They have a constitutional duty to keep Trump off the ballot — based on the clear text of the U.S. Constitution.

Some might argue that voters should be able to decide whether candidates are fit for office, even if they’re dangerous. But the Constitution sets the bar for what disqualifies someone from being president. Candidates must be at least 35 years old and a natural-born U.S. citizen. And they must also not have engaged in insurrection after they previously took an oath of office to defend the Constitution.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has already been used to disqualify an insurrectionist from continuing to hold public office in New Mexico, with the state’s Supreme Court upholding the ruling.

This is not about partisanship. If a Democrat attempts to overthrow the government, they should not be allowed on ballots either.

Election officials must keep Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024. 

Democracy cannot survive if insurrectionists hold power in our government.

[mariacallous]

In their 2024 national convention, Democrats reclaimed the mantle of freedom.

It’s about time.

The first indication was Vice President Harris’s choice of Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” as her campaign anthem. It has been playing at her rallies and it played at the end of the film before her entrance onto the stage. In addition to placards that said, “Thank you Joe” or “Vote” or “Coach Walz,” the DNC had thousands of placards printed for the delegates to wave that simply read, “Freedom.” Many of the convention speeches invoked the term in some way. Governor Walz’s acceptance speech for the vice presidency was especially heavy on it:

“Freedom. When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations—free to pollute your air and water. And banks—free to take advantage of customers.

“But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.”

Freedom was an especially welcome theme in this convention because, in recent political history, Democrats ceded freedom to the Republicans. This was wrong. Nothing is as central to America’s cultural DNA as freedom. After all, we as a nation were born out of a desire for freedom from King George.

One of the seminal speeches of the 20th century was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address. In it, he announced what he called the “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—principles that were incorporated into the war aims of the Allied Powers, and eventually into the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

A generation later, the Civil Rights Movement marched for freedom from the oppression of segregation and unequal citizenship, goals that the modern Democratic Party embraced. After the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down in 1973, Democrats defended women’s freedom to choose against conservative attempts to restrict access to abortion, and even to prohibit it nationwide.

Since the 1980s, however, Republicans claimed freedom for themselves; starting with the presidency of Republican Ronald Reagan, they narrowed it to mean free markets and limited government. This redefinition rested on the argument that government represented the main threat to freedom, which is at best a half-truth. Yes, government can become oppressive. But weak government can also pose a threat to freedom. Citizens cannot live free from fear unless government minimizes threats to the security of persons and property as citizens act within the structure of law. They cannot enjoy freedom from want unless government protects markets from force, fraud, and threats to competition, and unless it protects individuals from economic privation. In his 1944 State of the Union, FDR declared: “Necessitous men are not free men. Men who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”

Despite the power of such arguments, modern Democrats have found it difficult to persuade the electorate that they were the true champions of freedom. And then in 2022, the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and jeopardized women’s freedom of choice across the nation. The reaction has been striking; with one decision, the government was suddenly in the middle of the most personal decisions women and men could make.

Since then, not a month has passed without some horror story making national news about a woman denied abortion care that could save her life and/or her fertility. On stage at the Democratic convention, some of these women told their heartbreaking stories. Since then, abortion has been on the ballot in seven states—many of which, like Kansas and Kentucky, are conservative, deep red states. And in every single instance, the pro-choice position won. Since then, abortion has played a major role in the Virginia legislative elections, the congressional midterm elections, and many special elections. In 2024, abortion referendums will be on the ballot in eight states, two of which, Arizona and Nevada, are swing states and where the issue may very well bring out young Democratic voters. 

Against this backdrop, it’s not surprising that Harris’s speech spent more time on abortion than any other single policy issue. Her unique ability to prosecute this issue was evident back when she was a senator from California who asked then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh if he could think of a law that controlled men’s bodies. In addition to warning the country about Republican plans to take away reproductive freedom by enacting a national abortion ban and installing a national anti-abortion coordinator in the White House, Harris expanded on threats to freedoms.

“In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence—in our schools, communities, and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others. The freedom to vote.”

Beyond the articulation of a freedom agenda, the speech had other tasks, which Harris crisply carried out. She introduced herself to the country as a child of a middle-class family and declared that building a strong middle class would be one of the defining purposes of her administration. To that end, she advanced her vision of an “opportunity economy” where everyone would have a chance to compete and where success for some need not mean failure for others. 

Harris took on inflation and immigration, two areas of potential vulnerability for her campaign. She promised to bring down prices of everyday goods and services and to attack the nation’s housing crisis. On immigration, she sought to turn the tables on Donald Trump, reminding her audience that he had subverted a bipartisan reform bill that would have helped secure the border.

Surprising some observers, Harris laid out a tough agenda on defense and foreign policy, promising to maintain the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, retain our leading position in NATO, defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, stand up against Iran and North Korea, and take democracy’s side in the struggle with tyranny. She articulated a firm pro-Israel stance while mentioning the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants and endorsing Palestinians’ right to dignity and self-determination.

Taken as a whole, Harris’s acceptance speech positioned her as a center-left Democrat in the mold of Joe Biden rather than Bernie Sanders. It embraced what she termed the pride and privilege of being an American. And as if to show that Republicans have not cornered the market on patriotism and American exceptionalism, she told her audience that together, they had the opportunity to write the next chapter of the most extraordinary story ever told. She ended her speech in the most traditional way imaginable, by asking God to bless the United States of America.

Harris’s speech, which the convention received with unfeigned enthusiasm, did nothing to interrupt the momentum of one of the most explosive campaign launches in American history.

[psychoticallytrans]

The general way I think about US politics is this: as a whole, political parties are filled with power-hungry assholes who want to stay in power. Sometimes, especially at lower levels, people who actually care can get in power and provide help. But upper levels? That's pretty much all rich people and rich people's lapdogs.

But the way that Democrats and Republicans want to maintain power is different. Republicans want things to stay the same, forever, or go backwards, to the "good old days" where the power of the policies they prefer was unquestionable. They want to drag everything back and keep it there, because that's how they want to secure their power. That's why they appeal to much of the rich and to a lot of people interested in benefiting from entrenched power structures. They will stagnate everything they can using all the power they can get their hands on, at any cost. That is how they think their power can be secured. Democrats look ahead. They look for the growing trends of what is being supported, and they want to ride that wave to sustained power. They are still, notably, rich, power-hungry assholes, by and large. But when you look at opinion polls with an eye to the future, you see the desire for policies that benefit people, that limit bigotry, that let people continue to sustain their lives and build families without fear. They want to capture that future's goodwill, and build their power on it. This means that they appeal to those that benefit from progress- which is also why rich people whose careers and corporations benefit from progress often back a party not as overtly friendly to the rich.

I don't vote Democrat in federal and state elections because I like them. I vote Democrat in federal and state elections because their method of building and retaining power is more agreeable to me than the alternative, and there is, at that scale, only one alternative.

[blackroseguzzi]

I really hope you guys like this one! I’d love your thoughts in the comments 🥰

Honey kisses 🍯 💋

Summery: You are Kai Anderson’s Muse.

Warnings: language, mentions of death, mentions of sexual acts.

He remembers the first time he locked eyes with her. She was showering in the downstairs bathroom of his home. He didn’t know how she got in there, or why, but he was happy she was. He stood in front of the shower in a trance. Their eyes burning into each others as if reading the minds of one another.

He watched as she slowly rubbed the soap into her skin. He wasn’t even tempted to watch her hands glide over her perfect velvet breasts and dripping wet pussy, her eyes fixated on him was erotic enough.

Kai Anderson was anything but soft. He was manipulative, aggressive, over-critical, and slightly disturbed- but not around her. To him, she was his goddess. He melted into a puddle of desire when he was around her, but not just for her body; he craved her mind just as much.

As a political science major at Winter’s college, you were a very important part in Kai’s master plan. You were knowledgeable in his quest for world domination through power of social justice and his strong republican beliefs.

You also smelled like fresh cut roses and tasted like honey.

You were a whiskey on the rocks, and Kai was an alcoholic.

You- the drug, and he wanted to be high. All. The. Time.

He never showed the others that she was favored. She didn’t mind him railing Meadow, actually you had told him to. Meadow needed to feel wanted, and she knew if Kai made her feel that way that she could forever be loyal to him.

He always just pictured that it was you. He would fuck Meadow senseless, images of you naked and laying on a bed of flowers beneath him as he did it.

He loved his sister, and she was the only one he trusted to know who Kai Anderson really was. Winter was the only one to know him in and out…until You came along. He had been vulnerable with you, and so thankful she didn’t bat an eye when he introduced her to his parents or when he had told her about his plans for his growing cult. You was his perfect little “Tesoro”.

Some might fear Kai Anderson, and the wrath of his followers, but to some, nothing was more terrifying than YOU - because Kai was a leech, feeding off of you, trying to make the world a better one.. for YOU.

He watches you sleep, the way your body moves as you breath. He sometimes wonders why something so mundane as a human breathing could look so perfect when you do it. Kai felt as though you sometimes could read his mind. He loved girls who slept naked, and there you were, every night, your bare skin curled in his sheets. Or When he would come home hungry, you were always there with dinner ready.

Oh, and how could he forget - He loved the way you woke him up with your head under the sheets. His morning erection was always taken care of.

He never asked much of you, because you had just always done whatever it was he dreamed a girl would do for him.

Don’t get him wrong, you were your own entity. You loved Kai, but he didn’t own you like he did the rest of his cult. You never questioned the moves he made, or the people he targeted. You did however give him insight to only make him stronger. You were his little precious battery pack.

If anyone was to ever touch you, hurt you, make you angry in any way - You’d be dealt with more brutal than those who had not.

He thinks of the first time you kissed often. It was like an orgasm to his lips. He felt the addiction brew deeper in that moment. Your tongue felt as though it was searching around for his darkest secrets. Your kisses tasted so good. You were utterly addicting.

The way your body fit his like a glove during your intimate earth shaking love making sessions was when he realized you were made for him. He didn’t believe in soulmates much because of what he had seen in his parents, but damn he believed if souls were made up of something - yours and his were the same recipe.

You liked to link your pinky with his. You had stated that according to Chakra or Energy Healing, the little finger is associated with the heart meridian and the water element. As such, the pink is symbolic of feelings and emotions, happiness in particular.

He would always feel the power of your soul when he was pinky linked to you. Sometimes they would fall asleep that way, and kai would kiss your forehead and stroke your hair while you slept-The image of fucking you nice and slow while you were in nothing but your black Thursday Boots flooding his mind.

He had tried so hard to protect his queen. He knew that people around him would be able to tear down his walls if they used you against him. He knew the agonizing pain it would cause him if you were to bleed at the hands of his actions. Of course, no matter the harrowing efforts he made to keep you out of harms way- your death was loyal, furore, and for the sect of what you both had made.

So, when it was his turn, he was thankful that in the afterlife he would be greeted by you and your honey kisses.

[contemplatingoutlander]

ACT.TV (Aug. 21, 2020): #TheyKnew who Trump Really Was All Along. Conservatives in their own words.

All These Conservatives Knew Who Trump Really Was All Along: Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pompeo, Glenn Beck, Rick Perry, Susan Collins THEY CALLED HIM THESE THINGS... liar, narcissist, race baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot, mean spiritedness, con artist, orange faced windbag, kook, unfit for office, AND MORE...

I thought I would repost this old video as a reminder that most prominent Republicans have KNOWN for years that Trump is corrupt.

Despite what they have known about Trump, now that Trump has been indicted by the DOJ, once again many prominent Republicans are choosing to defend Trump and to mislead Americans about the righteousness of the DOJ classified documents case against him.

This hypocritical GOP defense of Trump is particularly galling given the reality that:

If enough Republicans had voted to convict Trump during at least one of his impeachment trials, we as a nation would have been rid of him.

Consequently, it is the hypocritical, power-hungry, corrupt Republican Party that is to blame for Trump's continued destructive influence on our nation.

And THEY will be to blame if we have to suffer through another four years of Trump in the White House.

[edited]

[spiderlegsmusic]

The republicans have no morals. They’re so power hungry they are supporting a convicted felon dumbass wannabe dictator bent on revenge if he wins.

If the democratic candidate was a convicted felon dumbass wannabe dictator bent on revenge I’d vote for someone else.

This is what a cult does. Unconditional support for a criminal. They’d shoot themselves in the dick if he told them to. Weak minded, power hungry cultists.

If trump wins, I refer you to look up the Night of the Long Knives. And you’ve ever said anything bad about trump online, delete that shit if he wins or you’re going to wind up in a camp…

It’s all about retribution and revenge if trump wins. Day 1 dick-tater. Democracy dies and we are fucked for the rest of our lives. They say it every 4 years, but this time it’s true: this is by far the most important election in our lifetimes.

[yeahiwasintheshit]

Wow!

Some much needed great news!

So somewhat recently, georgia republicans passed a law, for the first time in Georgia’s hundreds of years history, that the legislature can remove any prosecutor they want. Why would Georgia republicans all of a sudden decide that now, hundreds of years after it was founded, they would want to enact this clear abuse of power? Do you think it could be because one of the state’s prosecutors have indicted donald trump?

You’re goddamn right that’s the reason!

And they passed the law and that piece of shit governor, kemp, signed it. Of course it was immediately challenged in the states court system and finally made its way to the states supreme courtx, and last week, the night before thanksgiving the supreme court of Georgia ruled that that law was unconstitutional!!!!

So yaay! That’s the good news!

Bad news is that in their ruling they said that they can’t and won’t approve it “until lawmakers overhaul the measure” which means that the fucking republicans will in all likelihood try to rewrite it so that it can be passed. It’s to be seen whether the republicans actually decide to do anything... but they are shameless and power hungry, so it’s a good bet they will.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

There needs to be a national level discussion about eviction and not one with millionaire politicians putting their two cents in. I’m not justifying some gun nut shooting it out with law enforcement by any means but if this were handled differently lives could have been saved. Forcibly making someone homeless is one of the top ten most traumatic things that can happen and people are going to resist it. If it was indeed just unpaid taxes then other less severe measures could have been taken. Community leaders, social workers, and activists could step in and help plan a course of action. Sending armed officers in to every conceivable social situation needs to stop. The guy probably owed thousands while billionaires who owe hundreds of millions never have law enforcement sent after them.

Further, the push by Republicans to evict everyone immediately needs to stop as does their relentless drive to criminalize the unhoused. Nobody wants to be homeless. Decades of tough guy bully talk from right wing Fox News, conservative talk radio, Neo-confederate racist Republican politicians, and oligarch controlled social media has turned this nation into a cruel heartless place with no compassion for the vulnerable.

Red state legislatures are turning their privatized penal systems into debtors prisons. Being poor shouldn’t be a crime, nor should homelessness. We need solutions to lift everyone up not trickle down schemes to keep transferring wealth to the billionaire class.

Finally you can no longer be a Christian and a conservative. The term “Christian conservative” has become a contradiction in terms. Conservatism once meant low taxes, military preparedness, and a robust foreign policy that protected our allies and our trade. Now it has degenerated into being hateful animals consumed with rage, petty jealousy, contempt for the vulnerable, and hatred to everyone not in the MAGA camp. It is an abomination. A vengeful mob of ignorant degenerates led by media savvy Neo-Nazi oligarchs and power hungry Republican demagogues. Demagogues who preach literal Nazism, often openly quoting Hitler himself, to a mob that thinks wrong is right, hate is right, and corruption is good.

We have become the French Revolution in reverse. The angry mob is propping up the oligarchy that oppresses them while tearing down American democracy which seeks to level the playing field and treat everyone with equality, decency, and respect.

[theygotlost]

Annotations for le Vimes playlist

hi. read this if you care

YOUTUBE VERSION if you want to listen without spotify

1. The Fool / Neutral Milk Hotel

A little instrumental preamble before the playlist proper. musically, I think it captures the state of Vimes at the beginning of Guards! Guards!. It sounds like a processional fanfare fit for a guard, but cacophonous and lilting, as if the band were stumbling drunk.

2. Wasted on the Senate Floor / Emperor X

Another Guards! Song, though the frantic energy reflects the chaotic excitement of the watch series and Discworld as a whole (and the excitement I get from reading it heehee). The title/refrain is pretty straightforward, just replace “senate floor” with “oblong office”. 

Some other pertinent lyrics:

That feels million to one [a million to one chance??? perhaps???]

Republican watchman from Virginia wraps his fist in a flag To punch our lights out

We've got bloody eyes but we're feeling good Causing confusion in the neighborhood

3. We Live in a Dump / They Might be Giants

I have to put a TMBG song in my discworld playlist, I simply must! Pretty much all the lyrics to this one are relevant, but the pre-chorus specifically fits well with the rank trying to get Vimes out of his drunken stupor and Vimes being dismissed from the watch, both of which happen in Guards! And Men at Arms.

Why be realistic? Don't wake me from my dream I was individualistic They kicked me off the team

4. Grace Cathedral Hill / The Decemberists

How Vimes experiences Ankh-Morpork. There’s a tenderness and melancholy to this song, since Vimes does have a sort of affection for the city despite how terrible it is.

All dust and stone and moribund

The air, it stunk of fish and beer

The suggestion of CMOT dibbler: 

We were both a little hungry So we went to get a hot dog

The pilgrims, pills, and tourists here Will sink fifty-three bucks to buy A brand new halo

This could be Sibyl, who knows!!

Sweet on a green-eyed girl All fiery Irish clip and curl All brine and piss and vinegar

I know “piss and vinegar” is an expression describing her personality (Vimes is really more the one full of piss and vinegar), but taken literally it would also accurately describe the smell of the city.

5. Dirty Old Town / Ewan Maccoll

A continuation of the themes from the previous song. I originally had the cover by the Pogues in here for the longest time, but I decided to replace it with the original from 1949 because it brings a more interesting color (the clarinet!!).

6. Precinct 41 Major Crime Unit / Sea Power

Another instrumental interlude, this time from the Disco Elysium soundtrack. Discworld and Disco Elysium are so closely linked in my mind, Vimes absolutely has Harry’s skillset inside his brain and you CANNOT convince me otherwise. As the title suggests this song is the theme for Harry’s police precinct, and I totally imagine it playing during an intense moment with the Watch.

7. Hurricane Drunk / Florence + the Machine

Yeah yeah I know it’s sooo easy to fill my playlist with songs about alcoholism. Well if the boot fits! Plus:

No walls can keep me protected No sleep, nothing in between me and the rain

Pretty good imagery here of Vimes’ night patrols and/or passing out in the gutter.

8. Down by the Water / The Decemberists

The river Ankh, if we’re using a generous definition of the term “water”.

9. Cap in Hand / The Proclaimers

FUUUCK the nobility!!!

10. Average Working Man / Panicland

FUCK the nobility… 2!!! He's God's message to the high class folk!!!! This is a perfect song for encapsulating Vimes’ RAGEEE

11. This Night / Black Lab

This one’s about the Summoning Dark/”The Beast”:

There are things, I have done There's a place, I have gone There's a beast and I let it run Now it's running my way

And then there’s this: 

So take this night And wrap it around me like a sheet I know I'm not forgiven But I need a place to sleep So take this night And lay me down on the street I know I'm not forgiven but I hope That I'll be given some peace

From Jingo:

He was, temporarily, a happy man. He was cold, wet and alone, trying to keep out of the worst of the weather at three o’clock on a ferocious morning. He’d spent some of the best nights of his life like this. At such times you could just…sort of hunch your shoulders like this and let your head pull in like this and you became a little hutch of warmth and peace, the rain banging on your helmet, the mind just ticking over, sorting out the world…

12. Get Better / Frank Turner

Vimes’ character is all about learning from mistakes and making an effort to become a better person. All the lyrics are relevant, but here’s the chorus:

I'm trying to get better 'cause I haven't been my best She took a plain black marker, started writing on my chest She drew a line across the middle of my broken heart And said "Come on now, let's fix this mess" We could get better because we're not dead yet

ILY SYBIL!!!!!

13. Damn These Vampires / The Mountain Goats

In terms of the song order of this playlist, this is the calm before the storm, the darkness before the dawn; Just one last quick interlude before the main event.

Crawl 'til dawn On my hands and knees Goddamn these vampires For what they've done to me

I admit this whole song is a little bit of a stretch, but the refrain is a nod to Vimes’ attitude toward vampires that’s addressed in Thud!. He spends some time crawling around like a beast in that book too.

14. Blossoms / The Amazing Devil

The crown jewel, the piece de resistance of this playlist! The Night Watch song of all time!!! I don’t feel like I need to break down the lyrics here since I already made this piece illustrating all the relevant lyrics. ✌ Ugh the emotional intensity of this one is really the important part. Leave it to the amazing devil to write Epic Music. 

15. Caesar / The Oh Hellos

This song also has a very Epic feeling to it so I have it riding on the high of Blossoms, but it’s less energetic so I think of it as a cooldown. I always thought the title referred to Julius Caesar, but Genius lyrics is telling me it’s actually about Jesus. whatevarrrr. Because I thought it was about the assassination of a monarch, I connected it with Old Stoneface. Compare:

Hear on the wind how the pendulum swings Feel how the winter succumbs to the spring Over the palisade morning will break Rise up to meet it, oh sleeper awake

With Jingo:

He had always wondered how Old Stoneface had felt, that frosty morning when he picked up the axe that had no legal blessing because the King wouldn’t recognize a court even if a jury could be found, that frosty morning when he prepared to sever what people thought was a link between men and deity

16. Untitled / The Long Winters

Just a lil silly one to take us out on a cheerful note! I admit this one doesn’t make much sense because it’s about living in a rural area and not an urban center like Ankh-Morpork but… I gotta get back to my shanty town!! And I’ve put a lot of folk music on this playlist bc even though he’s not a country boy VImes has some very folksy salt-of-the-earth sensibilities. Just let me have this one

[ahaura]

(Nov. 14)

@Marxozoic: What a prefect distillation of Zionism.

@NikkiMcR: John Hagee, who suggested the Holocaust was God's punishment against disobedient Jews and has said the anti-christ will be "partially Jewish, as was Adolf Hitler" takes the stage at the March for Israel

[Nov. 14] @prem_thakker: “The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous,” said Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at the March for Israel, prompting the crowd to chant “no ceasefire.” Johnson was flanked by Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, House Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Republican Senator Join Ernst.

[Nov. 14] @BenLorber8: Many signs in the crowd championing belligerent bombardment, collective punishment of civilians in Gaza

[Nov. 14] @BenLorber8: The most powerful antisemite in America, Christian Zionist leader Pastor John Hagee, channels his triumphalist, war-hungry imperial theology before a massive crowd of Jews whom he views as cannon fodder for the End Times. Truly chilling moment

& from yesterday: totally unrelated, totally not concerning events recorded in Atlanta:

(Nov. 13)

@Roots_Action: RIOT COPS ARE OUT! Police in Atlanta have formed a line to block protestors from moving forward. All eyes on Atlanta! #StopCopCity #BlockCopCity

[Nov. 13] @Roots_Action: ATLANTA COPS RIOTING!! TEAR GAS LAUNCHED

[Nov. 13] @antiracistsouth: Selma was an illegal march. #Atlanta

@ribunchreports: DeKalb police warning out of a cruiser that “this is an illegal protest, you guys need to disperse or you will be arrested.” #atlpol #copcity

[Nov. 13] @micahinATL: this is one of those pictures that really speaks for itself. this is why cop city cannot be allowed to be built. these are also the cops that train with the IDF. it’s all connected.

[pinxilla]

The on-going conflict in Palestine should not be a part of your decision this November.

Ok, I usually avoid posting about politics because 1. I am very busy and would rather engage with media that brings me joy and 2. online politics is.... But in light of both the debate and the recent reveal of the overruling of Chevron, pretty much every platform has been overloaded with everyone's thoughts on the matter and now I'm jumping in! Yay!

Now, first thing to clarify: I hold firm in my belief that Palestine has every right to be its own independent state, as it had been for thousands of years prior to the 1940s. The UN and pretty much every nation of significant standing in the global field has failed in protecting Palestinians and upholding international law. Israel has been freely committing atrocities on the U.S' dime and it is disgusting. Frankly, I am ashamed to be a part of the nation that has enabled it. If you are able, please continue donating to vetted charities and continue to speak your mind on the matter. Visibility can be as vital to motion on an issue as finance. However, you should not use your stance on Palestine as a deciding factor in the 2024 presidential election.

The Democratic party has failed on many fronts in upholding the views of its constituents. Despite the thousands of protests around the country to withhold funds and arms from Israel, Biden and Congress have maintained their alliance with a merciless and power-hungry foreign country that has consumed the lives of more than 40,000 people. And Trump and the Republican party would have done the exact same thing. Both candidates support Israel, both are far past their prime and experiencing rapid mental decline, neither are ideal candidates and neither will promote significant progress. But, one of these candidates will allow the same conservative views that fueled the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Chevron v. Natural Resources to turn into federal legislation. And that candidate is not Joe Biden.

I understand that he and the Democratic party's performance the past eight or so years has been incredibly frustrating, but trust me that in not voting or giving your vote to Trump, you will be making it worse.

I have seen several posts circulating with the rough sentiment of "well this was overturned under Biden" "this was passed under Biden" "this/that/the other happened under Biden's administration" etc. and I must emphasize that the President is actually one of the least powerful forces when it comes to the creation, passage, and introduction of legislation. A President can not directly introduce legislation. A President does not have any say on a bill until it reaches their desk, in which case they can pass or veto-- and even if they veto it, Congress can override it. When it comes to Supreme Court rulings, a President literally has no say whatsoever. That's the entire point. Joe Biden is not responsible for the overturning of Roe or Chevron. Those decisions were made by the 6 conservative justices who were notably, not appointed by Joe Biden. One of which, however, was appointed by former President and 34-count felon Donald Trump.

A President's power resides almost entirely through influence and image. And even if it is getting rather hard to tell, having a Democrat in office is still better than having a Republican when it comes to social and economic progress.

To the most recent overruling: Chevron was a landmark in ensuring federal agencies can enforce environmental, workplace, public health, and consumer protections. By overruling its president, the Supreme Courts has justified thousands of cases of the federal government stepping in to *protect your rights*. In the future, it will be much, much harder for federal protection agencies to adequately justify their control over the practices of corporations. Simply put, we are fucked. This is on top of the overruling of Roe v. Wade, which has already put a significant dent in the protection of women's access to health care, as well as damage to every American's right to privacy and autonomy.

Without these cases protecting us, it is incredibly dangerous to have a Republican-- especially one of Trump's... fervor-- back in office. Unfortunately, we are rapidly losing the privilege to vote based on our government's actions abroad. Again: continue donating to families in Palestine, continue speaking out, continue protesting, I will be there with you, but please vote blue in November.

[mariacallous]

The humble school meal is having a moment. With the nomination of Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, as Kamala Harris’s running mate, many voters and pundits are suddenly talking about school meals. And that’s good, because the stakes are high for the national school lunch and school breakfast programs since the campaigns and their parties have very different records and plans.

Since Walz became the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, an image of him has frequently circulated. In the photograph, he’s surrounded by smiling children hugging him after he signed a 2023 bill making school meals universally free for all Minnesota children. His was the fourth state to commit to feeding all children at school; now nine states have done so, and more are considering similar measures. No more forms to fill out to prove your income, which busy parents can forget or that get crumpled in a backpack. No more penalizing children when their parents fall behind on lunch accounts. Every kid gets fed, powering them up for their day’s work learning and growing.

By most measures, the Minnesota program has been successful and popular. Participation in the meals program soared, increasing 15% at lunch and 37% at breakfast compared with the previous year. Due to those increases, the economies of scale improved, and some districts have been able to invest more in scratch cooking with ingredients from local farmers. It turns out that relieving cafeteria staff of the duty to go after parents who fall behind on lunch payments leaves them more time to focus on food quality.

Minnesota’s registered voters are overwhelmingly happy with the program, too. A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll showed that 72% agreed with the legislation, including 90% of liberals and 57% of conservatives. Even 59% of Trump voters in 2020 agreed. In online forums, Minnesota commenters tend to be remarkably supportive of feeding all children, even if they don’t have any themselves or if they think the food could be better. Parents rave about the convenience and savings.

Minnesota’s success isn’t an outlier, but a consistent feature of free meals for all. A 2022 study of the national Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which provides universally free meals nationwide in districts that have a poverty rate of 25% or more, found that more kids eat when the meal is free. That’s true even among kids who were already eligible for free or reduced-price meals, suggesting that stigma is keeping many from accepting assistance. Even more helpful, families with children in schools that provide meals tend to spend less at the grocery store while still improving the quality of their diets. And, perhaps most important, research consistently shows that school meals improve students’ academic performance, behavior and health outcomes.

It’s not assured that a Harris-Walz administration would push such legislation nationally. Harris has mentioned school meal programs at least twice, once in a 2017 Facebook post deploring lunch shaming and recently on X, when she touted Walz’s school lunch program as a sign of support for the middle class. But if the Democratic ticket does put the issue on its platform or list of priorities, school meals would at least have a knowledgable champion in Walz. He has seen it work on the ground, and he knows the benefits that it brings to the vast majority of families with children in his state.

Meanwhile, Minnesota Republican lawmakers have criticized the free meals program. State representative Kristin Robbins’s complaint is typical: “All the low-income students who need – and we want to provide, make sure no one goes hungry – they were getting [meals] through the free and reduced lunch program. This [new legislation] gave free lunch to all the wealthy families … Is that really a priority?” Walz’s reply to this argument dripped with irony: “Isn’t that rich? Our Republican colleagues were concerned this would be a tax cut for the wealthiest.” The year before, the Minnesota GOP proposed a $3.5bn tax cut that largely would have benefited the wealthiest 20%. Feeding all the state’s schoolchildren, even after going over budget because it was so popular, costs only about one-seventh of that.

Republicans at the national level, too, disdain expanding access to free meals and improving nutrition standards. In March, the Republican Study Committee, a caucus to which roughly three-quarters of all Republican House members belong, released its 2025 budget proposal. It called for ending the CEP for high-poverty districts. Doing so would snatch school meals from millions of children currently receiving them, shifting that cost back to their families. It would also probably increase the bureaucracy for schools, though Republicans claim that this administrative system is rife with “fraud and abuse”. While there have been high-profile cases of fraud in the school meals programs (for instance, a Chicago area nutrition director was recently convicted of stealing $1.5m, largely in chicken wings), most identified “abuse” entails clerical errors like giving wrongly categorized meals (free or reduced-price) to kids very near the income cutoffs or ringing up a meal without one of the required components on the tray, like enough vegetables. I would also point out that, if all children got the meals free, there would be no “fraud” in giving a hungry child a school meal, and we could save the labor and cost of all that paperwork.

Reducing access to free school meals is also a priority of the now-infamous Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the next administration. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but his ties to it are indisputable and a second Trump White House would probably be well populated with its adherents.

Regarding school meals, Project 2025 repeats the willful deception that the federal lunch and breakfast programs are “specifically for children in poverty”. In truth, from their beginnings, these programs were meant for all children. But they always made allowances for impoverished children’s access – not only poor children, but inclusive of poor children. The authors of Project 2025 argue that any expansion of free meals is against the “original intent” and creates “an entitlement for students from middle- and upper-income homes”. (I wonder what they think of all those wealthy children getting free textbooks?) Their stated policy goals are to “work with lawmakers to eliminate CEP” and to “reject efforts to create universal free school meals”.

While Trump himself may know little about school meals policy (I have never found an instance of him directly talking about it), his first administration set out immediately to relax nutrition standards set under President Obama. The very first policy announcement from Sonny Perdue, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, was that his department would seek to bring back higher-fat chocolate milk, reduce whole grain requirements and stop sodium reductions. And despite the US Department of Agriculture’s own research findings that Obama-era rules had made school meals significantly healthier and debunking claims that plate waste was increasing, one of the last acts of the Trump USDA was to propose a further weakening of nutrition standards to require fewer fruits and allow yet more usually high-salt items such as pizza and hash browns. But the clock ran out on that proposal, and the Biden-Harris administration then increased school meals’ nutrition standards.

Given the Republicans’ legislative goals and the direction of one of the GOP’s leading thinktanks, a second Trump administration would almost surely unravel access to school meals and gut hard-won, incremental gains that have made them healthier. All this despite nationwide polls that indicate a majority of US voters agree that all kids should get universally free school meals.

[kp777]

By Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

July 11, 2024

"If Congress does not act, long-standing regulations that have protected consumers, workers, our environment, and public health and safety for years, even decades, could be newly challenged by corporations," said one advocate.

Recognizing the threat posed by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling handed down by the right-wing justices earlier this month, a pair of U.S. House Democrats on Thursday introduced the Corner Post Reversal Act.

Proposed by House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Subcommittee on Administrative Law, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Ranking Member Lou Correa (D-Calif.), the bill would reverse the 6-3 decision in Corner Post Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

The high court's conservative supermajority decided that the Administrative Procedures Act's (APA) statute of limitations period does not begin until a plaintiff is adversely affected by a regulation—making it much easier for corporations to sue government agencies.

"The Corner Post decision was an erroneous and power-hungry move by the MAGA majority on the court, that was intentionally dismissive of the will of Congress expressed in the Administrative Procedure Act," Nadler said in a statement. "The court has opened the floodgates to allow big corporations and private interests to object and challenge commonsense rules that protect our air, water, land, environment, food, medicines, labor, and children."

Correa similarly called out the high court for taking aim at the APA's statute of limitations, which "opened the door to unlimited challenges that may overburden our judicial system while harming Americans and small businesses."

"This piece of legislation is an important and essential step in reestablishing the certainty that comes from the finality that the six-year limitation provided," he added.

Specifically, as the congressmen's offices detailed, their bill:

Reestablishes the statute of limitations found within Section 702 of the APA;

Clarifies congressional intent that agency rules must be challenged within six years after being finalized;

Codifies that the right to seek judicial review accrues under the APA when the agency finalizes the rule;

Protects well-developed and scientifically based agency actions from attacks by private interests, thereby assuring protections for consumers, the workforce, and our environment; and

Assures that our courts are not flooded or strained by claims by actions commenced after the six years following the agency action.

"This bill, in conjunction with the Stop Corporate Capture Act," said Nadler, "addresses the need to protect longstanding and long-working rules established by administrative agencies and protect our federal system from arbitrary and frivolous attacks that would have been welcomed under the Corner Post holding."

The Stop Corporate Capture Act was introduced last year by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. She is also backing the bill introduced Thursday alongside Reps. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), and Nikema Williams (D-Ga.).

"Public agencies exist to create rules and implement laws that protect the American people and their families from unsafe working conditions, dangerous food and drug products, and polluted water and air," said Jayapal. "It is imperative that our public agencies are able to enact measures to keep all Americans safe and healthy without being subject to constant lawsuits from bad actors."

The legislation—which is unlikely to get through the Republican-controlled House—is also supported by the Small Business Majority along with the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, an alliance that includes the Center for American Progress, Earthjustice, and Public Citizen.

Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of Public Citizen, stressed in a statement Thursday that "the Supreme Court's Corner Post decision makes Americans less safe" and argued the new bill "would prevent the disruptive impact" of the recent ruling.

"If Congress does not act," she added, "long-standing regulations that have protected consumers, workers, our environment, and public health and safety for years, even decades, could be newly challenged by corporations that want to boost their profits at the public's expense."