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This Explains A Lot

Published by digby on January 24, 2024

They were all high

I had heard that the White House doctor Ronny Jackson was a Dr. Feelgood and this seems to confirm it:

White House pharmacists reportedly distributed uppers and downers like candy to Trump administration officials during his time in office, according to a new report from the Department of Defense Inspector General. 

The 80-page document, which was released on Jan. 8, found that “all phases of the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations had severe and systemic problems due to the unit’s reliance on ineffective internal controls to ensure compliance with pharmacy safety standards.” 

The investigation, which began in 2018 after the Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG) received complaints about improper medical practices within the White House Medical Unit, found a slew of compliance issues and improper safety standards. The medical unit’s operations fall under the jurisdiction of the White House Military Office. The report covers a period between 2009 and 2018, with a majority of its findings coalescing around 2017- 2019, during the height of the Trump administration. 

That was Jackson’s tenure. He is now a Texas congressman and is also known to be a very heavy drinker. He’s also a major Trump supporter.

I wrote this about Jackson back in 2018, the White House party years:

Everyone understands by now that President Trump doesn’t hire people so much as he casts them. His cabinet has all been chosen the way he chose contestants for “The Apprentice.” So when it was reported that he had finally followed through on the rumored firing of the secretary of Veterans Affairs, David Shulkin, and replaced him with the White House doctor, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson — on the basis of the press conference where Jackson pronounced the president to be svelte, fit and genetically superior — it wasn’t a surprise. After all, Jackson had delivered quite a performance, without breaking character even once.

It’s easy to see why Trump would want to give Jackson a bigger role in the show. He demonstrated real talent for giving Trump administration press conferences. Nonetheless, it is a little weird that the president would “reward” Jackson with the job of running a sprawling and perpetually troubled bureaucracy when he’s spent his entire military career as a doctor. Apparently, being an admiral, a doctor and a talented performer tells Trump that the man is capable of anything. After all, he himself is the heir to a fortune who lost millions, turned himself into a celebrity brand name and became president. He is completely unqualified by normal standards and yet he’s in the White House. Clearly, “running things” is a snap.

But that doesn’t seem to be the only or even the biggest reason why he chose Jackson to head up the VA. The man who trained Jackson, Brig. Gen. Dr. Richard Tubb, said in a letter that the doctor had been attached like “Velcro” to Trump since Inauguration Day. Tubb explained that Jackson’s office is “one of only a very few in the White House Residence proper,” located directly across the hall from the president’s private elevator. He said that “on any given day ‘physician’s office,’ as it is known, is generally the first and last to see the President.”

Apparently, this is all perfectly normal. At least it explains why the president would give him a big promotion.  You see, Trump sees himself as more of a beloved monarch than a man of the people.

Does anyone think that Dr. Ronny wasn’t “helping” Trump with a little pick-me-up?

Nightmare

Published by digby on January 24, 2024

We are living in an antediluvian hellscape.

I can hardly believe this is America. Well, actually, I do believe it and it’s profoundly distressing:

More than 64,500 pregnancies have resulted from rape in the 14 states that banned abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned, with the vast majority occurring in states that don’t make exceptions for rape, researchers estimated today in a leading medical journal.

The big picture: The projection in JAMA Internal Medicine aims to shed light on the frequency of these pregnancies at a time when exceptions for rape loom large in abortion debates.

Researchers, led by the medical director at Planned Parenthood of Montana, say even states with bans that have exceptions for rape impose other requirements that make it difficult to access the procedure.

Rape victims have few options other than self-managed abortions, including by illegal methods or via pills obtained through the mail, or traveling out of state to where abortion is legal. As a result, many have to carry a pregnancy to term, the researchers wrote.

What they found: Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the FBI, researchers estimated that 519,981 rapes occurred in states with bans from July 2022 — in the immediate aftermath of Roe being overturned — through Jan. 1, 2024.

-Adjusting for the fraction of female victims ages 15 to 45 and the cases likely to result in a pregnancy, they projected 64,565 pregnancies resulted from rape during the four to 18 months various state bans were in effect.

-Nine out of 10 pregnancies were in states with no exceptions for rape victims, with 45% of those (26,313) in Texas. Missouri was next highest with 5,825.

-Idaho and Mississippi had the most pregnancies among the five states with exceptions for rape, with about 1,400 each.

Those poor people, many of them likely young girls.

Misogyny R Us. There can be no doubt about it.

Trump Wins New Hampshire And Loses His Mind

Published by digby on January 24, 2024

After his win in the Iowa caucuses last week Donald Trump came to the microphone and gave an uncharacteristically gracious victory speech. It was actually standard stuff, exactly what you’d expect from any candidate except him. In these situations, the job is to try to soothe the hurt and disappointment of voters who opposed you in order to bring their followers to your side as you go through the process. Trump actually tried to do that, prompting the usual round of “he’s pivoting!” from the talking heads. But, as usual, that little burst of decency was short-lived as he proved last night in New Hampshire, giving one of the most boorish victory speeches anyone has ever given.

He is obviously extremely angry at Nikki Haley for not losing bigger, dropping out of the race instantly and begging for the privilege of endorsing him for president. And he made no bones about it. Apparently, he believes that it’s even inappropriate for her to appear before her supporters and pledge to continue the race, even though that’s what candidates always do:

Then he seemed to threaten her, making the robotic sycophants standing behind him laugh like a pack of hyenas as he cast out crude innuendo, weirdly claiming that if she won she would end up under investigation for “little stuff she doesn’t want to talk about.”

He even attacked her clothing.

The real low point was when he made Senator Tim Scott humiliate himself and figuratively lick his boots on stage by pointing out that he was the Senator from Haley’s state and she had had appointed him, making it clear that Scott stabbed his former benefactor in the back for Trump’s benefit. He said “you must really hate her” at which point Scott eagerly wagged his tail at the attention and came to the microphone to proclaim, “I just love YOU!” It was simply nauseating to watch

It’s pretty clear Scott is auditioning for the Mike Pence love-struck lackey award in Trumpworld and he did a good job. Someone, probably Trump himself, even told him that if he wanted to be considered for the job of dutiful doormat he needed to get himself a lady stat, and he got that done right away. Whether Trump ultimately chooses him remains to be seen but no one can say that he didn’t give it all he’s got.

Jeff Sharlet on twitter expressed what I suspect was many people’s feeling of revulsion at the display:

“I hold Tim Scott in contempt, but the depth of self-abasement here is hard to look at. All the more so for understanding how Trump’s supporters see it, a racist innoculation against charges of racism that in turn “permits” more racism.”

As for the speech itself, I think Republican strategist Mike Murphy said it best:

He’s more than just sick and needy, however. He’s also truly showing real signs of mental degradation. He’s saying things in his speeches that are just incomprehensible and he’s doing it a lot. For instance, after noting that Haley said South Carolina is next on the calendar, he noted that Nevada is actually next and then weirdly proclaimed, “I’m pleased to announce we just won Nevada!”

Now it’s true that Nevada has a bizarre system with the state requiring a state-run primary instead of a caucus but the GOP there holding a caucus anyway. But it’s not taking place next month and Haley was never participating in it anyway. What’s he talking about?

It’s been a while since the country has seen Trump in all his glory but he’s back and he is much less coherent than he used to be. His “jokes” are obscure and mystifying and he doesn’t seem able to communicate his thoughts with clarity. For example, this sort of thing is common:

This is becoming a major campaign problem for him. He’s always had a mercurial temperament and he remains astonishingly ignorant about government, history, economics etc. even though he’s done a full term as president. And there were instances as president when he appeared to have developed an odd verbal glitch, as if he couldn’t grasp the right word and said the wrong one instead, repeatedly:

This past week he did something similar but much worse, when he blamed Nikki Haley for failing to protect the capitol on January 6th. He was obviously lying again about Nancy Pelosi but he said Haley’s name repeatedly in a way that was very odd, seemingly unable to stop saying it. I don’t know what kind of medical problem that might be, but it’s clearly something. And it’s happening a lot.

As journalist Jonathan Karl said on “Good Morning America” ,

“Donald Trump is truly confused about who Nikki Haley is, thinks somehow that she was in charge of security at the Capitol on January 6th. We’ve seen him confuse Joe Biden with Barack Obama, he thinks that he beat Obama. We saw at one point, he talked about how Biden was going to get us into World War II… There have been several moments on the campaign trail where he has seemed, quite frankly, out of it.”

He’s been doing this for a while and people are only now starting to notice because he’s much more present on television. Here’s a glaring example from last September in South Carolina:

When I came here everyone thought that [Jeb] Bush was gonna win. And then they took a poll and found out trump was up by about 50 points. Everyone said “what going on?” They thought Bush because Bush supposedly was a military person. Great. You know what he was — he got us into the middle east, how did that work out, right?”

He has said at different times that he ran against George W. Bush and Barack Obama and beat them. This isn’t just normal slips of the tongue. There’s something very weird about how he is mixing people up like this all the time and speaking in incomprehensible fragments.

I think he knows something is wrong because he keeps talking about how he aced the “cognitive test” which he also claims he has taken more than once. And he’s talking about it constantly:

That’s not quite the brag he thinks it is.

I wrote about this some months ago and noted that he’s terrified of losing his mental faculties because his own father had Alzheimer’s disease. He knows what it looks like and I suspect that when he gazes in the mirror to put on his make-up in the morning he recognizes what’s looking back at him. And it’s getting worse.

Salon

Find Another Gear

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 24, 2024

Think outside the box

A friend in high state office told a large crowd at a party event over the weekend that this is the most important election of our lifetime. Yes, the last election was too. But really, we mean it this time. (I’m riffing here.)

What’s infuriating about that hoary admonition is that it provokes Democrats into adopting a defensive posture when offense is required. Time and again, Democrats play defense. Their idea of finding a new gear is doing the same thing they’ve always done, the way they’ve always done it, just more of it. When it’s the most important election of your lifetime you don’t take chances, don’t experiment. Also, you don’t change, don’t grow. Worried about taking risks? That’s a huge one.

“Most important election of our lifetime” makes me grind my teeth almost as much as “voting against their best interests” and the jokey “vote early, vote often.” For Democrats of a certain age, they are unfortunate verbal tics.

Democrats may be the party of the left, but thinking outside the box is often in short supply.

That’s why I found this clip Heather Cox Richardson posted inspirational.

“Democracy is just more fun and inviting when you take it into your own hands.” She’s right.

Sofia Ongele’s full November 2023 Ted talk is here. She’s with Gen-Z for Change.

Losing Their Religion

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 24, 2024

Republican voters come to the light

Republican Nikki Haley protest voter: “My father fought in World War II to defeat fascism, I want it to remain defeated.”

To no one’s surprise, Donald “91 Counts” Trump handily defeated Gov. Nikki Haley in the New Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday. The surprise was results were closer than a late poll showing Trump polling ahead of Haley by 18 points among likely voters. The final spread was 11 points. But the Washington Post-Monmouth University poll was taken before Florida Gov, Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race. Haley may have picked up votes there. “Undeclared” voters are allowed to vote in the Republican primary.

Exit polls suggest tepid support for Haley. Aaron Blake notes, “Nearly 3 in 10 expressed some reservations about her, and 4 in 10 said their vote was mostly about dislike for the other candidates — or, more aptly, candidate.” Trump. It is significant “that so many voters who felt so meh about Haley turned out to register what amounted to protest votes.”

Watch that space this November. Trump has been a net plus in elections for Democrats ever since he took office. Even in 2022 when he had left office after fomenting a violent insurrection.

Haley herself made that point to supporters Tuesday night:

New Hampshire exit polls and results seem to confirm what Politico reported Tuesday: “There’s a whole swath of the Republican electorate and a good chunk of independents who appear firmly committed to not voting for [Trump] in November if he becomes the nominee.”

“Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are.” — Michelle Obama

An NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of Iowa voters showed “that fully 43 percent of Nikki Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump,” Politico reports. That sentiment has carried over to New Hampshire:

“I can’t vote for Trump. He’s a crook. He’s too corrupt,” said Scott Simeone, 64, an independent voter from Amherst, who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020. “I voted for him, and I didn’t realize he’s as corrupt as he is.”

[…]

“I liked him. But he just scares me now. Everybody that has ever worked for him is not any more,” said Lisa Tracy, of Salem. If it came down to Biden versus Trump, she said, “I would go with Biden.”

There are plenty of Trump cultists who will never stop believing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. But for other previous Trump voters, Trump’s presidency has revealed who he is. Better late….

This New Hampshire Republican (below) is not an Iowa Republican, but she’s seen Trump revealed. She’s done with him:

Politico found a young independent, 34, planning to vote for Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), but she was a sidebar to Politico’s principal finding:

Curtis Thornbrugh, 81, an independent from Rindge, had voted for Barry Goldwater, Bob Dole, and both Bushes before casting his ballot for Obama twice and Biden in 2020 (he did not say how he voted in 2016). He was open to backing Haley in 2024 but couldn’t see himself supporting Trump.

“I can’t find anything good to say and I try,” he explained. “He’s dangerous and the people around him are, too.”

Forbes Farmer, 79, a fellow independent from Rindge, also went to view Haley in person at that event. He said he’d lean towards supporting her if she ran against Biden in November.

Could he back Trump should he prevail?

“No, never,” Farmer said. “I absolutely hate Trump.”

It is significant that the “come to the light” former Trump supporters Politico found all seem to be seniors. They form the reliable GOP voter base. Lose them and Republicans up and down the ballot lose in November.

John Harwood reacted to the Politico report with the prediction that “we’re in early stages of massive analytic shift from ‘Biden’s in big trouble’ to ‘Trump’s in big trouble.'”

How’s that for your daily dose of Hopium?

Maybe We Should Do This Too?

Published by digby on January 23, 2024

German normies took to the streets last weekend. And for good reason. Their right wing is planning mass deportation of immigrants. So is Donald Trump:

Over the weekend, it seemed a nation’s conscience had stirred into action. In cities across Germany, anti-fascist demonstrators took to the streets, protesting against the country’s far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. The spark to the demonstrations came in the form of an investigate report published earlier this month that revealed how AfD members had participated in a November meeting with far-right extremists where they discussed plans to conduct mass deportations should they come to power.

That’s not the wholly fictive scenario it once used to be. The surging AfD is polling at 22 percent — a level of support greater than what each of the three centrist and center-left parties in the country’s ruling coalition currently command. It seems poised to break the “cordon sanitaire” erected around it by Germany’s more mainstream parties that have so far refused to entertain coalition talks with the far-right faction and possibly shoulder its way into power in state elections later this year.

That AfD officials were openly entertaining the idea of forced repatriation of migrants and even some German nationals of foreign origin horrified many in a country with a deep memory of its dark past. By some accounts, more than a million people participated in the anti-AfD protests.

“In Hamburg and Munich, rallies had to be dispersed because significantly more people than expected attended. Aerial images from across the country showed masses of people braving bitter January temperatures to fill city squares and avenues,” reported my colleague Kate Brady. “According to police figures, in Berlin on Sunday, about 100,000 people gathered on the lawns of the Reichstag, which houses Germany’s lower house of parliament.”

An estimated 1.4 million people across Germany gathered over the weekend to protest the far-right Alternative for Germany party. (Video: Naomi Schanen/The Washington Post)

Signs and slogans at the rallies made clear what many Germans believe is at stake. Banners warned of the return of “Nazis” — and marchers summoned the legacy of the 1930s, when Adolf Hitler and his allies seized control via the ballot box. “Everyone, together, against fascism” was the chant in Berlin.

The investigative report by nonprofit research institute Correctiv detailed the extensive private discussions had between AfD members and a coterie of influential right-wing extremists and wealthy business executives at a November meeting in a hotel in Potsdam, outside of Berlin. This included talk of a “remigration” plan that would deport asylum seekers, non-Germans with residency rights and even “non-assimilated” German citizens.

Martin Sellner, a far-right extremist and leader of the Austrian “Identitarian Movement,” attended the gathering and floated a “master plan” that could even see these deportees sent to an imagined “model state” in North Africa. Whatever the unviability of the proposals, it echoed Nazi deliberations in 1940 to forcibly relocate millions of Jews to Madagascar. Sellner once maintained correspondence with Brenton Tarrant, the white nationalist gunmen who carried out the hideous 2019 killing spree at a set of mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

We are on the verge of this happening here too. Ben-Ghiat says that protests like Germany’s are far more effective when they happen before the actions are taken than after. So….

Not Ready For The Big Leagues

Published by digby on January 23, 2024

Is Steve Garvey California’s Herschel Walker?

There was a Senate debate last night in California. It didn’t go well for the aging baseball player whom the Republicans believe will electrify the voters here. The 75 year old Garvey first played with the Dodgers in 1969, moved over to the Padres in the 80s and retired from there in 1987. How many people even remember who he is?

Steve Garvey was less a heavy hitter on Monday night’s Senate debate stage and more often a punchline.

Garvey, a Republican and former Dodgers star, rocketed to the top three in the polls to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein soon after entering the race in October. But his first public debate was a rough showing.

Over the course of the 90-minute debate at the University of Southern California, Garvey struggled to provide details of his policy ideas, was repeatedly laughed at by people in the audience and saw himself ganged up on by his Democratic rivals: Democratic Reps. Katie Porter, Barbara Lee and Adam Schiff.

One of the tensest exchanges of the night came when the three Democrats all pressed Garvey to say whether he’ll vote for former President Donald Trump a third time.

Garvey repeatedly refused to answer, saying he would decide before election day. “At that time, I will make my choice.”

Porter retorted with a zinger: “What they say is true: Once a Dodger, always a Dodger,” she said as the audience howled. “This is not the minor leagues. Who will you vote for?”

Another brutal moment came as Garvey responded to a question about his plan to address the state’s worsening homelessness crisis. Garvey, a first-time candidate, described how he approached unhoused people and “touched them and listened to them.”

He suggested he was the only candidate to approach the issue that way because his opponents are “career politicians” who’ve done nothing to solve the crisis.

Lee, who was unhoused decades ago after she left an abusive relationship as a young single mother, called Garvey’s comment about meeting and touching homeless people belittling. “I’ve just gotta say, as someone who’s been unsheltered, I cannot believe how he described his walk and touching,” she said. The audience burst into laughter.

Schiff couldn’t resist piling on: “This will be my one and only baseball analogy for the evening: Mr. Garvey, that was a total swing and a miss — that was a total whiff of an answer.”

There were also Garvey’s puzzling answers to policy questions. When moderator and POLITICO reporter Melanie Mason asked Garvey to explain why he’s running if he doesn’t have many policy positions, he gave a vague answer.

“I knew I needed to explore California. I needed to talk to the people,” Garvey said. “Policy for me is a position. I’ve taken strong positions.”

He then rattled off a host of general views: “Let’s get back to energy.” “Let’s close the border.” “Let’s enforce crime, crime on the streets. Let’s fund the police.”

It’s pathetic but I would guess it’s the best they can do. California is deep blue and the Democrats have three excellent candidates for Senate, any of whom will be great. Even with our kooky jungle primary I don’t think he’ll make the top two. And if he does, he won’t be elected. California isn’t going to elect their version of Tommy Tuberville.

Daily Shot Of Hopium

Published by digby on January 23, 2024

It’s a good one

It may just be that a meaningful faction of Republicans have permanently soured on Trump:

Donald Trump has a problem no matter what happens in New Hampshire on Tuesday night: There’s a whole swath of the Republican electorate and a good chunk of independents who appear firmly committed to not voting for him in November if he becomes the nominee.

It’s an issue that became starkly apparent in polling ahead of the Iowa caucuses, when an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll of voters in that state found that fully 43 percent of Nikki Haley supporters said they would back President Joe Biden over Trump. And it’s a dynamic that has been on vivid display as the campaign shifted this week to New Hampshire.

“I can’t vote for Trump. He’s a crook. He’s too corrupt,” said Scott Simeone, 64, an independent voter from Amherst, who backed Trump in 2016 and 2020. “I voted for him, and I didn’t realize he’s as corrupt as he is.”

Primary elections can create intra-party divisions that, in the moment, seem impossible to heal. In 2008, a bloc of Hillary Clinton supporters started the PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) movement as a threat to never back Barack Obama after that bruising primary. Bernie Sanders’ supporters vowed to never support Clinton eight years later. In 2016, Trump himself faced pushback to his nomination all the way up to the convention floor.

But 2024 is different. Trump is not making his pitch to voters as a first time candidate. He is a known quantity who is being judged by the electorate not for the conduct of his current campaign so much as his time in office. And that, political veterans warn, makes it much harder for him to win back the people he’s alienated, including those once willing to vote Republican.

The data supports the idea that there are problems ahead for the former president. Even before the Iowa survey, a New York Times/Siena College poll found that — including independents who say they lean toward one party over the other — Biden had slightly more support among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (91 percent) than Trump did among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (86 percent).

That’s far from a majority of Republicans preparing to pass on Trump in November. But in a close election, it could be enough to tip the scales for Democrats. At a minimum, it is a major liability for the GOP should the party, as expected, push Trump through as its nominee.

“It would be a massively difficult hill to climb, without a doubt,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Haley endorser, told reporters of the party’s chances of winning New Hampshire in the general election with Trump on top of the ticket, when asked by POLITICO. “And he’s already proven that. He’s lost before and according to the polls he will lose even bigger this time.”

Sean Van Anglen, a prominent and early Trump supporter in the state who now plans to vote for Haley on Tuesday, said if Trump becomes the nominee, he might have to blank that line on his November ballot.

“I don’t think I can vote for Trump,” he said. “I vote in every election, I’ve never left a box blank. And I might have to this time.”

That sentiment was not uncommon among Republicans here this week, especially among voters who came out to see Haley, the former U.N. ambassador.

“I liked him. But he just scares me now. Everybody that has ever worked for him is not any more,” said Lisa Tracy, of Salem. If it came down to Biden versus Trump, she said, “I would go with Biden.”

These problems are not entirely unique to Republicans. Biden himself is grappling with a Democratic Party where a portion of voters have soured on him and are either leaning towards or threatening to vote for a third party candidate or stay home in November.

“We need to keep showing that it can’t just be two parties that no one fully agrees with,” said Michelle Greene, a 34-year-old registered independent from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who saw Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who is challenging the president in a primary, in Hampton on Sunday.

Greene said it’s “definitely a concern” that a third-party candidate might siphon off votes from Biden in November. But she also wasn’t sure if she’d vote for Biden again, after backing him in 2020, in a head-to-head Biden-Trump rematch, adding that she “morally can’t support the lesser of two evils.”

How big a universe these groups of disaffected voters are could go a long way in determining the next president. But there are signs that, among independents at least, Trump is bleeding.

In the New York Times/Siena College poll last month, Biden led Trump among all independents in the poll, 50 percent to 38 percent.

At a brief press scrum on Saturday before Trump took the stage at a rally, the former president’s top adviser Chris LaCivita downplayed the numbers out of Iowa. A campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

But at events across the Granite state over the past week, surrogates for Trump have stressed the need for Republican reconciliation, depicting Biden’s presidency as an existential threat.

Sununu, for his part, said he was ready to back Trump should he end up being the party’s standard-bearer. While Biden is a “decent person,” Sununu said, “his team is so bad.”

But what was notable about his argument was that it was delivered under duress. Sununu was speaking to a voter who had cornered him while he wiped snow from his car in a parking lot outside a Haley rally. That voter had wanted to know how he could possibly turn around and cast a vote for Trump after being so openly critical of his governance. Others who attended the event agreed.

This makes me very hopeful and it has nothing to do with the election or Joe Biden’s chances in it. Who knows how that’s going to go? It makes me hopeful because it means that a fairly substantial number of Republicans haven’t completely lost their minds. We live among these people. It would be nice to know that not every one of them is now a member of a death cult.

Fingers crossed that Trump doesn’t somehow lure them back in. He’s got a talent for snake oil. And there’s always a chance that events will intrude and who knows what happens then. But right now, I’m just happy to hear that they aren’t all cracked. It’s not much but it’s all we’ve got.

Catapulting The Propaganda

Published by digby on January 23, 2024

It’s coming from inside the house (and the Senate)

That’s a US Senator passing on Fox News lies on twitter. It happens every day on every issue. In fairness, Blackburn may not know any better. She’s very dim.

Maybe you have already seen this, but I hadn’t until yesterday. It’s Taylor Swift telling her father that she’s going to speak out against Blackburn.

Did I mention that Blackburn is dim?

The Death Cult

Published by digby on January 23, 2024

South Carolina …

It’s true, by the way:

South Carolina Republican lawmakers are considering a bill that would make a person who has an abortion eligible for the death penalty.

The bill, titled the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023, would change the state’s criminal code and redefine “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception.

According to the bill, the change would “ensure that an unborn child who is a victim of homicide is afforded equal protection under the homicide laws of the state.” Under South Carolina law, that includes the death penalty.

The bill provides exceptions for pregnant people who had an abortion if they were “compelled to do so by the threat of imminent death or great bodily injury” and also provides an exception if the abortion was done to save the life of the mother. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

Big of them to allow an exception to save the life of the mother. Anyone else should be killed.

This is what they believe. These throwbacks are just saying it out loud. Kill women. That’s what we’re talking about.