suspending blog

I was really looking forward to a Kamala Harris presidency, but the Orange Menace somehow ended up on top. The joy is gone, replaced by nothing but dread. I'm too old now to dive into this newfound muck and retain my sanity. Cannot watch any news broadcast because it's all about Trump, all the time. He is already pulling illegal shit, but the Democrats are likely to do nothing about it. Several races this time around were very close, but there is no hint of fighting or recounts. Hell, Kamala puts out a picture of her laughing playing with her nieces. That's all well and good, but isn't it a little early to send a message that you are over the election and let's get back to "normal?"

There is no more "normal" with Donald Trump in the White House. I don't even want to list all the ways he is looking to destroy this country. It's too depressing. All that excitement with Kamala, all those rallies, she took the lead in most polls, Trump's own campaign was admitting that he was going to lose. And he sweeps EVERY swing state? GOP now has 53 Senate seats and they took the House. Not to mention the thoroughly corrupt Supreme Court, who conveniently granted him immunity from just about everything, just before he steals the election.

It's too much. I don't know what we are going to do, but I want to get the hell out of Texas and move to a blue state. But I don't think we'd be safe even there. And my wife has deep family ties to this area of Texas and does not want to move. 

This situation is about as ugly as it gets, and yet millions of Americans voted for this habitual liar and cheater. 

The only thing I can think of at this point is to suspend the blog once again. Maybe I will start it back up IF America returns to a semblance of normalcy.

Good luck everyone, we are going to need it.

26,000!

Since the corrupt Supreme Court of the United States overturned the right of a woman to seek an abortion in the Dobbs case in June of 2022, Texas has led the nation in the number of rapes that resulted in pregnancy: over 26,000 rapes resulting in a pregnancy!  And since the Texas law has no exception for pregnancy resulting from a rape, one has to wonder: How many Texas women, since Dobbs was overturned, have given birth to their rapist's baby? Surely SOME of those rape victims, especially the rich ones, went out of state to get an abortion, but how many? There are no stats available on that, and the GOP hypocrites will never admit it unless exposed.

Before Dobbs was overturned, if a woman in Texas was raped and got pregnant from it, she had the right to terminate that pregnancy. I suppose most women did get abortions after getting pregnant from a rape. Would you, as a woman, after suffering a rape, want to carry that baby to term and give birth? Would you, as a mother, want your daughter to be forced to carry that child resulting from rape? 

And think of the numbers: 26,000 pregnancies from rape over a period of about 30 months, in Texas alone. At an average of 30 days in each month, that's 900 days since Dobbs. So, on the average, almost 30 women PER DAY are being raped and impregnated in Texas.  Surely not every rape results in pregnancy, but 26,000 DID. 30 women per day in Texas. Those numbers really wreck me. I never came anywhere near to raping any woman, and neither have any of my friends. I'm just guessing here, but these 26,000 rapists probably would not vote for women to have more rights. They seem like the kind of guy who can only think of dominating women, to the point of forcing them to have sex. Fucking scum.

And I am reminded of Texas Gov Abbott, who, when signing the no exceptions Texas anti-abortion bill into law, said that "goal number one in the state of Texas is to eliminate rape so that no woman, no person, will be a victim of rape."

How's that working out, Governor? Not very fucking well is it, you overpromising douchebag fucking partisan hack.

Greg Abbott Said He'd "Eliminate Rape" to Justify an Abortion Ban. He's Failed Miserably.

Thanks to his ban, Texas leads the nation: 26,300 estimated pregnancies as a result of rape.

JULIANNE MCSHANE

News & Engagement Writer 

Mother Jones

After passing what was, at the time, the strictest abortion ban in the country, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sought to fend off critics by pledging to work to “eliminate rape” in the state. But a new study published yesterday shows the extent to which Abbott has failed to do so—even after a stricter abortion ban took effect in the state—and just how many Texans have likely been impacted. 

In September 2021, when Abbott passed SB 8, the law that banned abortion after six weeks of pregnancy—effectively a total ban, since that’s before most people know they’re pregnant—and allowed any private citizen to sue abortion providers and people who “aid and abet” anyone who tries to obtain an abortion, it was the strictest anti-abortion law on the books nationwide. Predictably, he faced criticism, including from a reporter who asked why he was forcing victims of rape or incest to carry their pregnancies to term under the new law. The governor falsely claimed that the law wouldn’t actually force rape and incest victims to give birth, “because it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion,” and promised he’d prioritize working to “eliminate rape” in Texas. 

“Rape is a crime and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets. So goal number one in the state of Texas is to eliminate rape so that no woman, no person, will be a victim of rape,” Abbott said at the time. (Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki quickly shut down his comments: “If Gov. Abbott has a means of eliminating all rapists or all rape from the United States, then there would be bipartisan support for that,” she said at a briefing.) 

Since then, Texas’ abortion law has only gotten more extreme: abortion is now entirely illegal in the state due to a trigger ban that took effect in August 2022, two months after the Dobbs decision, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. And now we have a sense of just how many people have likely been impacted: there have been an estimated 26,300 pregnancies as a result of rape in Texas, the highest of any state with a total abortion ban, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine. 

Since there isn’t one reliable source on how many rapes occur in each state, researchers used multiple data sources—including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2016–2017 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, and FBI data showing rapes reported to law enforcement—to estimate how many rapes resulted in pregnancy in the 14 states that implemented abortion bans post-Dobbs. Overall, they estimate there were more than 64,500 rape-related pregnancies in these states; about 5,500 of those occurred in the five states whose abortion bans have rape exceptions. (Other research has shown that rape exceptions are seldom granted in practice: data published in October by the nonprofit Society of Family Planning found that an average of fewer than ten abortions were performed per month in states with rape exceptions in the first year after Dobbs.) 

So Texas accounted for nearly half—45 percent—of total estimated rape-related pregnancies. In other words: Abbott appears to have failed spectacularly to “eliminate rape.” And unwanted pregnancies as a result of rape will likely continue to rise in Texas in light of the abortion ban, study co-author Kari White, executive and scientific director at the Austin-based Resound Research for Reproductive Health collaborative, told the Houston Chronicle. 

Abbott’s office didn’t immediately respond to our questions about their response to the study’s findings in light of the governor’s prior comments and what new efforts, if any, they have implemented to tackle rape in Texas since the total abortion ban took effect there in August 2022. 

Jennifer Wagman, assistant professor of public health at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose research focuses on sexual violence, told me she wasn’t surprised by the study’s findings, and called Abbott’s initial pledge to “eliminate rape” by arresting people “absurd”—in part because sexual violence is notoriously underreported to law enforcement, with more than two out of three sexual assaults going unreported, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. 

“There are so many different facets that need to be addressed if you’re going to really, legitimately, and sincerely commit to doing [rape] prevention—you can’t just arrest people and put them in jail and expect that to solve the problem,” said Wagman, who was not involved with the study. 

The JAMA paper alludes to this underreporting of rape as a limitation of the study, noting that “such highly stigmatized experiences are difficult to measure accurately in surveys.” But still, the paper helps fill an important gap in research, Wagman said: “We don’t know as much as we need to about the associations between sexual violence and abortion.”

Rose Luna, the CEO of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, which acts as the state’s federally recognized coalition and resource hub for sexual assault prevention providers, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones that the organization is “profoundly disheartened that our state fails to afford a woman her fundamental right to make personal health care decisions, especially in the aftermath of a sexual assault.”

"A survivor of sexual assault already has experienced the ultimate violation of their body; they are left to endure the lasting effects, both physically and emotionally, of this violent crime,” Luna added. “Options are vital to healing.”

The study doesn’t indicate how many people pregnant as a result of rape could have obtained abortions in spite of Texas’ ban. Pregnant Texans who can travel can obtain abortions in the nearby states of Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas, where it’s still legal, and as my colleague Abby Vesoulis has reported, some pregnant Texans seeking abortions have obtained them in Mexico. While abortion pills also remain available and can be ordered online, the financial and logistical barriers to crossing state lines for procedural abortions put the option out of reach for many—meaning that, as the study notes, many are left “without a practical alternative to carrying the pregnancy to term.” 

Original.

Same as 2020?

New info....apparently there are still about 10% of votes not yet counted out west. If true, once all votes are tabulated, the vote totals could be close to the 2020 totals.

So there is no "drop off" from 2020, but there is also no gains from 2020. Maybe the missing millions of Dems DID vote. 

I've heard from a few different sources that a lot of Dems were so sure that Harris was going to win that they either didn't vote, or voted 3rd party as a form of protest.

Was there cheating? Did millions of Americans decide that a woman, a woman of color, no less, should not occupy the highest office in the land? How many sexist bigots are there in this country?

America blew it. Bigly.

and she didn't

All that enthusiasm for Harris, all of Trump's wandering, rambling "answers" to questions, Trump's dwindling crowds, signs all over that Kamala is going to take it, and boom, Trump wins?

How is it that 10 million fewer Democrats showed up for Harris this time than voted for Biden in 2020, especially considering the stakes? Did they suddenly decide not to vote? 

Were some purged from the voting rolls? Did they have trouble getting to a polling site? I have to say that I still don't trust our elections in this country. I rather believe that a clever algorithm inserted in some machines could swing the election. 

Anyway, everything is still too raw to write much with coherence. I am repressing the rage and confusion somehow.

Seems this timeline has really taken a dark turn.

 

Yes She Can

...and she WILL!

women's rights

I found the graphic above on Facebook recently. It is truly amazing to see the progress that women have made over the last 100 years. It was a long, long time coming, but I am sure that many present-day, old-fashioned males still cannot handle it, thinking that change has come too fast. Women used to be under their control, it says so in the Bible!!, and now we have all these "independent" women working, driving cars, running companies, and heaven forbid VOTING! 

"Childress cat ladies," Shady Vance calls them. (Oh, and just this afternoon, Vance called Kamala Harris "trash" that needed to be hauled out of the White House.) Classy.

I guess no one told Vance that being openly sexist wasn't going to attract many women's votes. Maybe he thinks there are enough Neanderthal men still around that he'll get elected. Not gonna happen, Shady. The only way you will be vice-president is if we allow Trump to steal this election, and that is NOT going to happen.

The Marsh Family

The Marsh family is a British musical group. This is a very well-done parody of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Well, with the polls so tight a week out, we decided to revisit US Election politics one last time, and ambitiously to have a stab at building a parody around one of the greatest songs ever written, Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” which was the inimitable mock opera lead single from their album “A Night at the Opera” released in 1975. It was a monstrous production, created across eight generations of 24-track tape and with hundreds of overdubs, complex layered harmonies, subsections, innovations. And at its core, the spectacular vocals of Freddie Mercury – one of the finest singers ever, on top form. It has been parodied so many times already, including an iconic version by the Muppets (which the kids loved and grew up with), and it’s been twisted to fit subjects from the menopause to coronavirus. But our chosen subject is the willingness of so many decent people to hold their nose and - likely - vote for Donald Trump in the forthcoming US Presidential Election. We know we’ve sung about it already twice, and we don’t live or vote in the USA. But the whole world has a stake in this election – and it’s a free world. At least, for now. We chose not to riff off the many daft claims, stories, or issues (the cat ladies and cats and dogs have been cut up plenty), but just to try to cut to the fundamentals, and think about behaviours, facts, values, and history. Some of the footage is from the US Congress hearings.

deceptive ads

In the relatively short life of political ads airing on television (back to the '60's?) we have seen some pretty deceptive ads. But often it was a shading of the truth. There would be a situation presented and the opponents position would be incomplete or misrepresented. But there would be a grain of truth in there. 

Nowadays, the Trump campaign has dropped all pretense and is just going for broke. A recent Trump ad I saw said that average incomes are down across the board (not true) but the thing that struck me was that immediately after saying that, the ad cuts to Kamala laughing, cackling, as if she is laughing about people having a hard time. The same ad presents about three different scenarios, all negative, all suggesting that people are REALLY struggling economically, and each is followed by Kamala laughing again. They try to make it look like she doesn't give a shit about people struggling, which is not only far from the truth, but really deceptive when they splice two different clips together. 

This is the character of the Trump campaign. Do anything, say anything, create totally bullshit ads, all to gain advantage. They are not interested in truth, just fomenting resentment and hatred. And this is what a 2nd Trump presidency would be like. 

Here is a story on CNN from a few days ago, examining the different ways the Trump team lies. It's just fucking disgraceful, but we know Trump and his minions have no shame. It's like a nest of vipers, doing anything and everything no matter how despicable. I'm sure most Americans would not want to be associated with such tactics.

Fact Check: How Trump's TV ads deceive viewers with misleadingly edited quotes.

by Daniel Dale - CNN

Oct 25, 2024

Washington (CNN) 

Former President Donald Trump’s late-campaign television ads are littered with deceptively edited and misleadingly described quotations.

Multiple Trump ads omit critical words from quotes by and about Vice President Kamala Harris on the subject of tax policy. One Trump ad misleadingly depicts comments about fracking from Trump’s campaign and administration as if they were comments from independent news organizations.

Another Trump ad takes an immigration-related quote from a 6-year-old news article way out of context, wrongly depicting it as a comment about the Biden-Harris administration. Another ad changes a word from the headline of an economic news story. And another ad wrongly describes a quote from the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Asked for comment on CNN’s findings, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt chose not to defend any of the specifics. Instead, she said Friday: “President Trump has the hardest-hitting, most well produced ads in the business.” She credited them for damaging Harris’ campaign.

All of the ads discussed in this article are among the 20 most-aired ads from Trump and his outside allies in the last two weeks, according to data provided by AdImpact. Here is a fact check.

Tactic: Cutting out key words

One Trump ad deletes critical words from two separate quotes on Harris’ tax policies.

The ad twice shows a video clip of Harris saying this: “Taxes are gonna have to go up.” But the ad removes key words from the beginning and end of her sentence.


What Harris actually said — at an event in 2019, during her previous presidential campaign — was that “estate taxes are gonna have to go up for the richest Americans.”

The same ad also features the following on-screen text the ad attributed to an article in The New York Times: “Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes.” But as the Times itself has noted, this, too, is a misleading snip. What the Times article actually said was this: “Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.”

At least two other Trump ads employ similar deception on the same topic.
Those ads feature on-screen text saying “Harris would raise taxes,” attributing those words to a CBS News article. But that CBS News article actually said this: “To pay for her plan, Harris would raise taxes on high-income earners.”

Tactic: Depicting claims from the Trump camp as statements from news entities

One Trump ad, attacking Harris over her past support for a ban on fracking (which she now says she no longer supports), shows the logo of the Reuters news agency beside the words “KAMALA’S SCHEME: ‘KILL JOBS,’” making it seem like that was something Reuters had declared. But the Reuters article the ad cites in small print actually used the phrase “kill jobs” only in reporting a claim from Trump’s own 2020 campaign.

The article – which was about comments made by Joe Biden, not Harris – said: “The Trump campaign had already pounced on his remarks, saying they were evidence that Biden’s energy stance would kill jobs in states like Pennsylvania.”

The same ad features the words “KAMALA’S SCHEME: ‘RAISE GAS PRICES,’” attributing them to a 2021 article in the environmental and energy publication E&E News. But that 2021 article used the phrase “raise gas prices” only in describing a claim from the Trump administration. The article said that, in a report released days before Trump left office, “outgoing Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said a fracking ban would cost millions of jobs, raise gas prices at the pump and cause electricity bills to spike.”

Tactic: Citing a ‘source’ that is unrelated to the ad’s claims

A Trump ad criticizing the record of the Biden-Harris administration says, “Their weakness invited wars. Welfare for illegals.” The ad flashes on-screen text that says “welfare for illegal immigrants” and attributes those words to an NBC News article from 2018.

But that NBC News article did not even mention Biden or Harris, whose administration did not begin until 2021. And the article used the phrase “welfare for illegal immigrants” only in passing – in a totally different context than the Trump ad uses it.

The article criticized occupational licensing rules that were preventing immigrants enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program from working in certain jobs. It said: “It’s a complete travesty that otherwise qualified individuals can’t get the government’s permission to cut hair. Regardless of one’s position on welfare for illegal immigrants, a license is clearly different from food stamps and other government safety nets.”

Tactic: Making a quote more dramatic

One Trump ad has on-screen text saying, “Massive Layoffs Hit Michigan.” The ad, criticizing Harris for her support for electric vehicles, attributes those words to a March 28 article in Newsweek.

But that Newsweek article actually referred not to “massive” layoffs but to “mass” layoffs, at least a slightly less dramatic word; it was talking about layoffs totaling under 1,400 people at two auto plants. And the ad didn’t mention the number of people employed in auto manufacturing in Michigan has increased by about 15% under the Biden-Harris administration; it is now at its highest level since 2007, though the number of people employed in auto parts manufacturing in the state has fallen about 6%.

Tactic: Wrongly describing a quote

One Trump ad features a narrator saying the “Biden-Harris administration just admitted that they released thousands of illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes.” A quote shown on the screen, from the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), appears to support the claim; the text says, “Released Illegal Immigrants: ‘435,719 ARE CONVICTED CRIMINALS.’”

But as CNN and others have noted, this ICE letter did not say that all of these immigrants with criminal convictions were released under the Biden-Harris administration. The data is about people who entered the country over the course of decades, including during Trump’s own administration, and the letter did not offer any administration-by-administration breakdown.

The ICE letter also did not say all of these people were “released” – many are still in prisons and jails serving their criminal sentences – or that they are all “illegal immigrants.” The list includes both people who entered the country illegally and people who entered legally and then committed crimes.

Original.

Here's another story by Politifact.

And another one from MSNBC.

And another one on FactCheck.org.

There is just no end to the lies, and no bottom too low to go for the Trump campaign. 

next con

The clock is ticking. The election is next week. Much of America is on edge and will be until Donald Trump is soundly defeated. Yes, he will probably claim he won as soon as he can on Election Night, and there will be no evidence. At this point, he is like the boy who cried wolf. He has lied so often about everything that no one takes him seriously anymore. I wonder if his own worshippers even take him seriously. I don't think they care. They are entertained by him, and his racism, anger and bile matches their own. 

Sad to think there are so many bullies in America, but bullying has been with us as long as I have been conscious, and I'm sure it predated my time on Earth. I have faith that America is going to do the right thing and put Kamala in the White House. Will that include a Dem Senate and House? It would sure make things a bit easier, eh?

Trump's Biggest Con: Pretending he's on the Side of Working Men and Women

by Paul Krugman, New York Times

Oct 28, 2024

Donald Trump has always been a con man. As a businessman, he left behind a trail of investors who lost money in failed ventures even as he profited, students who paid thousands for worthless courses, unpaid contractors and more. Even amid his current presidential campaign he has been hawking overpriced gold sneakers and Trump Bibles printed in China.

But Trump’s biggest, potentially most consequential con has been political: portraying himself as a different kind of Republican, an ally of working Americans. This self-portrait has been successful so far, notably in gaining Trump significant support among working-class people of color — although the carnival of racism at his Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, in which a comedian opened the event by describing Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage” and made a watermelon joke in reference to a Black man, may dent that support in the campaign’s closing days.

The truth is that to the extent that Trump’s policy plans — or, in some cases, concepts of plans — differ from G.O.P. orthodoxy, it’s because they are even more antilabor and pro-plutocrat than his party’s previous norm.

Background: Since the 1970s our two main political parties have diverged sharply on economic ideology. In general, Democrats favor higher taxes on the rich and a stronger social safety net; Republicans favor lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy paid for in part by cutting social programs.

Kamala Harris is, in this sense, a normal Democrat, calling for tax hikes that would primarily affect high-income Americans while expanding tax credits for families with children; she has also proposed expanding Medicare to cover home health care for seniors, which would be a big deal for millions of families.

An aside: I really don’t understand people who claim that Harris hasn’t supplied enough policy detail. All I can think is that they’re looking for something to complain about so they can sound evenhanded.

Has Trump deviated from Republican norms? While he was president, not really. His 2017 tax cut strongly favored high-income Americans. Now he wants to make that tax cut, many of whose provisions will expire in 2025, permanent. He has also floated the idea of a further large cut in corporate taxes (much of which could, by the way, ultimately benefit foreign investors).

As president, Trump tried to push through deep cuts in Medicaid, although he didn’t succeed. And while he says that he won’t cut Social Security and Medicare, his policy proposals would undermine these programs’ financial foundations.

Trump has also made some tax proposals that may sound pro-worker but aren’t, such as ending taxes on tips; many tipped workers don’t make enough to pay income taxes, and those who do are mostly in a low tax bracket.

If Trump has broken with standard G.O.P. economic policy, he has done so by intensifying efforts to redistribute income upward. For he is proposing higher taxes on the working class in the form of a large national sales tax — which is essentially what his tariffswould be. And this tax would be highly regressive — a large burden on middle- and lower-income families, a trivial hit to the 1 percent.

If you put reasonable estimates of the effects of the Harris and Trump tax plans on the same chart, they’re more or less mirror images. Trump would raise taxes on most Americans, with only the top few percent coming out ahead; Harris would do the reverse.

So, no, Trump isn’t a friend to working-class Americans; quite the opposite. Why, then, do millions of people believe otherwise?

Some of it probably reflects racial tension: White men without college degrees have lost ground relative to other groups since 1980, and some of them, alas, surely feel an affinity for the racism and misogyny we saw at Madison Square Garden. But as I said, some Latino and Black Americans also appear to have bought into Trump’s spiel. Why?

Well, Americans correctly remember Trump’s prepandemic economy as an era of strong job growth and rising wages — largely, I’d argue, because Republicans in Congress opened the fiscal spigots after austerity during the Obama years slowed recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. Many also implicitly discount or memory-hole the high unemployment of Trump’s final year in office. And they’re still frustrated about higher prices, the consequence of the inflation surge of 2021-22 — even though this surge was a global pandemic phenomenon, and wages adjusted for inflation are now higher than they were right before the Covid-19 pandemic.

What relatively few people realize, I believe, is that if he wins next week, Trump’s anti-worker agenda will be much broader than anything he managed to do in 2017-21. Back then, he raised average tariffs on Chinese goods by about 20 percentage points, but China accounts for only about 15 percent of U.S. imports; now he’s talking about imposing similar tariffs across the board, and 60 percent on imports from China. Overall, we’re talking about a sales tax roughly 10 times as large as his last venture.

Trump, then, is anything but pro-working-class Americans. If many believe otherwise, well, they aren’t the first victims of his lifelong career as a con man.

Original.

Kamala in Houston

I was glad to hear that Kamala would be holding a rally in Houston. Word was that Beyoncé might make an appearance, which certainly brought out the crowds. Before the rally, I also heard that Willie Nelson would be making an appearance, along with several women who had experienced the mindless brutality of Texas' anti-abortion laws. Some call Texas "ground zero" in the abortion battle, and the Texas laws are certainly draconian. 

Written mostly by men with no medical training, the Texas laws threaten to jail doctors FOR LIFE if they assist a patient in getting an abortion. What kind of fucked-up....words begin to fail when the bile starts rising. There are allegedly some exceptions to the NO abortions law, but the law is so badly worded that doctors are unsure what is allowed and what is not, and many are choosing to not assist. The Texas law even allows for any Texas citizen to collect a BOUNTY if they turn in someone who is trying to obtain an abortion. Turning Texas citizens against themselves? That's Republicans for you!

As a result of these laws, the infant mortality rate in Texas is up over 50%! Way to go, assholes!

Texas has been ruled by Republicans for decades now. There has not been a Democrat elected to a statewide office in Texas since 1994, and both houses of the state legislature are continually dominated by Republicans. Extreme gerrymandering engineered by Republicans have cemented Republican rule. The Texas Constitution prohibits citizen referendums, and so the only constitutional amendments allowed to reach the ballot (like adding abortion to the constitution as many other states are doing, or legalizing cannabis, for instance) are crafted by the state legislature. 

I found the Friday rally in Houston on C-SPAN and joined as an army of doctors were on-stage talking about how OB-GYN's in this state were now afraid to practice their specialty for fear of being tossed in jail. Many are choosing to leave the state entirely, reducing Texas women's options even further. Medical schools are reporting reduced numbers of new students choosing to go into Obstetrics, dimming the future in Texas even further.

Republicans used to talk about the dangers of "Big Brother" government telling you what to do and how to run your life, and now they are doing exactly that when it comes to women's reproductive freedom. Many Republicans want to abolish CONTRACEPTIVES entirely and IVF!! It won't work, but I am afraid it's going to get even uglier for women in Texas. Republicans are so zealous (and stupid) they cannot see that they are overstepping their boundaries. They cannot see the resentment building up in Texas women, and men. The callous insensitivity of their abortion laws is epic and ridiculous.

We will prevail. We shall not forever remain under the boot heel of the regressive Republicans. Change is coming. California used to be deep red until the Republicans tried to pass Prop 187, which angered the large Latino population so much, the state turned blue rather quickly. Did you know that Latinos now make up the largest segment of the Texas population? Over 40% of Texas is now Hispanic or Latino. White folks now represent 39% of the Texas population. So you go ahead and clamp down HARD on immigration bullshit, GOP. See where it gets you.

Anyway, Kamala Harris' campaign was brilliant, IMHO, in coming to Houston and talking almost exclusively about women's reproductive freedom. It doesn't get much worse than in Texas. Doctors, women who have been victimized and damaged by the stupid laws, Jessica Alba, Kelly Rowland, Beyoncé, and Kamala all gave eloquent speeches about the insanity of these laws and the need to elect Kamala. 

Here is Kelly and Beyoncé's speeches.

And here is Kamala's speech in Houston. It gives me a special thrill to see Houston come out in big numbers for Kamala and to feel the energy and excitement in the crowd. I know there are many, many great people living in Houston, and this might be the year we finally overcome the Republicans and turn Texas blue. It's coming.

turn the page

Take a walk with The Rude Pundit.  The election is getting close. This is a very stressful time, and I'm sure MAGA snickers at that. Trump, MAGA, and Russia, maybe China too, are flooding the zone with bullshit meant to depress and confuse "our" side. Don't let the bastards get you down. If I could get really simplistic, I'd say the forces of goodness and light (us) will win, beating back the forces of evil and darkness (them). But, just in case, I have my firearms clean and ready for the barbarians.

We Need to Be Done With Donald Trump

by The Rude Pundit

Oct 25, 2024

One of the most stunning things about the last near-decade now is how much the country has been contorted by one man. We're in this fucked beyond fucked moment, teetering on the brink of totally and irrevocably fucked, because of Donald Trump. Yes, it's also everyone who voted for him, everyone who elevated him, everyone who kowtowed to him, and everyone who wipes his ass so that he keeps going. But, in the end, it comes down to one goddamned man. It's perfect example of what happens when your nice little democracy relies too much on basic human decency and when the decent ignore or elide the acts of the indecent.

The seeds for Donald Trump's ascendancy were planted over 40 years ago, with the rise of the Moral Majority and Reagan's openness to a portion of the craziest motherfuckers on the right, allowing the evangelicals and the John Birch Society leftovers a place at the political table. It continued, with the odious Pat Buchanan's nativist campaign, openly saying shit that Republicans had been implying for years. I'm not going to summarize the entire history of the ascension of the modern bugfuck insane conservative movement (besides, Geoffrey Kabaservice has done it far better than I could), but it's a straight line from the 2000 election fuckery to the enforced patriotism of the post-9/11 era to the Imperial Presidency idea of Dick fuckin' Cheney to the Tea Party to Trump, with lots of other events and ideas in-between. 

Trump is the vessel this evolving right-wing oligarchical threat was waiting for. Imperfect, for sure, but a populist who ran for office with a built-in audience that would sustain any efforts he made? That just makes the whole effort that much easier. If you get a skilled carnival barker to get the rubes to drop their hard-earned cash so they can enter the tent, that's half the battle. The other half is convincing them to suspend all reason and logic so that they'll believe it when a woman is sawed in half or rabbit appears out of a hat. They won't believe it's a trick at all, no matter how much someone tries to convince them it was sleight of hand or forced perspective. A skillful barker will get the rubes to not only believe in magic, but to insist that anyone who tells them it isn't magic is a fool: "Goddamnit, that woman levitated, and you can't tell me she didn't."

Metaphors aside, we find ourselves in this extraordinarily dangerous moment, yes, because of that entire history, but primarily because of Donald Trump. Without him, this effort to completely undermine the electoral process of the United States wouldn't have gotten any momentum. How do I know that? Because it didn't get any momentum after 2000, when George W. Bush actually lost but no one did a goddamn thing, and after 2004, when there were allegations of shenanigans involving voting machines in Ohio. No one exploited that to discredit voting all around the country. Hell, John Kerry didn't even challenge the results. 

But Trump challenged results even when he won in 2016 because his fragile little ego couldn't handle that he lost the popular vote. He insisted that he lost California only because of non-citizens voting, which was absolute hogshit. It didn't happen. It's never happened that more than a statistically insignificant number of non-citizens has voted and virtually all of those were mistakes, not malice. Instead of accepting victory with some measure of decency and perhaps humility because of the popular vote loss, Trump barreled ahead with the brazen assertion that he really won the popular vote and anyone who said otherwise was lying. 

And it fucking worked. It became an article of faith among his MAGA idiot hordes that Trump was robbed of full victory. It's magic, and the reality of the trick didn't matter. That set the stage for the 2020 election and all the violence and violent rhetoric that came from one man's refusal to accept the outcome. You might have forgotten or suppressed it, but between Election Day 2020 and January 6, 2021, it was one long howl of false outrage and lies, including unnecessary recounts, dozens of failed court cases, and, finally, attacks on the people who take on the job of making sure our democracy functions like a democracy when it comes to voting. Trump called any election officials or state officials who dared to say he lost "enemies of the people" and he and his goons ruined the lives of ordinary Americans earning a paycheck. (Although some have gotten gratifying revenge on these abject cockmites.) The kick in the nuts of the whole pathetic exercise is how many millions of people believed and still believe him. It's like mass fucking hypnosis. 

To put it simply, Donald Trump had no problem completely undermining one of the foundations of this country, and he had no issues with making a significant number of Americans lose faith in how their states and the nation run elections. It didn't matter that the 2020 election was a goddamn miracle because it took place in the middle of a fucking pandemic and should have been one of the great moments of communal triumph in our history. No, we couldn't have that because Trump, who was expected to lose, lost. And now just 28% of Republicans are confident that the votes in the 2024 election will be accurately counted. It's fucking madness, and one man is responsible for that plunge from 55% in 2016. 

It's not that big a leap to say that if Trump can so easily throw aside the integrity of our elections which, 2000 aside, has been pretty fucking decent for a couple of generations, for his own ends, then he can just as easily throw out even more norms and foundational aspects and, well, fuck, laws. He'll keep plodding along, with a Supreme Court decision that lets him basically do whatever the fuck he wants, until none of us recognize the country anymore. It's already fading away in the MAGA haze that can't be penetrated, in a fog of racism and hatred and a desire for the blood of perceived enemies to be spilled. It's not that it can't happen here. It's that it is very much already happening. 

If you feel like I do, like we're existing in a panic attack wrapped in a fever dream covered in a secret sauce of anxiety, then understand this: the only way it ends is to be done with Donald Trump. We need it to fucking stop, so he needs to lose and then we need to go through whatever avalanche of bullshit Trump is going to subject us to as he flails about in his last gasps of electoral relevance, aided by Elon Musk's billions and supported by the MAGA drones who would lay down their lives for their right to continue to be racist and dunk on the libs and beat up trans kids and tear apart migrant families. We need to go through it and come out the other side and see what's left and build it back to some kind of normal again. 

I don't think all of this (gestures at everything) continues as it is once we're done with Trump. There is no one who scratches the celebrity itch and gets the stupidest people to vote. All those wannabe successors are worthless, and even the famous MAGA suck-ups don't have Trump's P.T. Barnum-like ability to corral the rubes and get them to give their money and their freedom to protect him. Unless Trump himself anoints a successor, which he would only do if he won this election. Otherwise, he'll try to insist that he can run again in 2028, and that'll just be sad. 

We can be done. Really. This can be over. Think about how that would feel, how we wouldn't have to hear his slurring, sloppy voice or read his idiot brain droppings and pretend that they matter. Think of the feeling of liberation and the sense that maybe there is a future where we make things better. We need this. 

It's one fucking guy. For fuck's sake, we should be able to step over his ass and move ahead.

Original.