Thursday, December 11, 2024. We know so very little when we don't know
our history and we can fall for a lot of lies as a result. The next
four years will be rough and tough but what's awful on the Dem side is
the liars who want to push the party to the right and lie to people to
try to get them to go along with a rightward push. All that and Aaron
Mate finally gets the attention he's earned.
Once upon a time, politicians refrained from using slurs to describe
members of minority groups. Instead, they expressed their hatred through
euphemism and impersonal fearmongering, lest they be deemed
uncivilized. For public officials, it seemed like enough to pass
discriminatory laws and promote negative stereotypes—they didn’t need to
name-call too.
That era is over. Last
week, a group of trans-rights activists staged a sit-in at the Capitol
to protest a resolution, proposed by South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace,
that would prohibit transgender women from using women’s restrooms in
the building. After a few of them were arrested for protesting, Mace
herself headed down to the offices of the U.S. Capitol Police to make a video at the scene.
Here’s
how Mace explained the situation: “Some tr—y protesters showed up at
the Capitol today to protest my bathroom bill.” To make sure no viewers
would miss the slur, Mace posted it with subtitles.
Mace
read it like a throwaway line, but it was clearly calculated. Her
Republican peers in the House have already made a practice of calling
transgender people—including their soon-to-be colleague, incoming
transgender Rep. Sarah McBride—by the wrong pronouns
and names. If Mace wanted to be the national face of keeping trans
people out of bathrooms, she had to go further. So she used a slur.
Later that day, she did it again.
Her escalation marks a new stage of U.S. anti-transgender politics. When
the current backlash against trans visibility began, about five years
ago, right-wing politicians limited their rhetoric mostly to fantasies
of protection: protecting trans children from medical therapies,
protecting cisgender children from being beaten in sports, and
protecting all children from malicious abusers in bathrooms.
Conservatives have since expanded their pearl-clutching to transgender
adults—but often, it’s still under that same guise of protection.
Medicaid shouldn’t pay for gender-affirming care for anyone, they
said—unless patients jump through a series of arduous and time-consuming
hoops—because it protects against future regret.
However disingenuous all this was, it still suggested that most
right-wing politicians considered it politically smart to refrain from
trashing trans people in extreme ways.
Her escalation marks a new stage of U.S. anti-transgender politics. When
the current backlash against trans visibility began, about five years
ago, right-wing politicians limited their rhetoric mostly to fantasies
of protection: protecting trans children from medical therapies,
protecting cisgender children from being beaten in sports, and
protecting all children from malicious abusers in bathrooms.
Conservatives have since expanded their pearl-clutching to transgender
adults—but often, it’s still under that same guise of protection.
Medicaid shouldn’t pay for gender-affirming care for anyone, they
said—unless patients jump through a series of arduous and time-consuming
hoops—because it protects against future regret.
However disingenuous all this was, it still suggested that most
right-wing politicians considered it politically smart to refrain from
trashing trans people in extreme ways.
Nancy Mace and her kind are disgusting.
As Ruth notes, we're in for "A world of hurt"
on January 20th. And we're there for a number of reasons including the
racism and sexism in the media (including Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW!
and Katrina vanden Heuvel's THE NATION).
48 and 49%.
What's that?
AP's
current toll for the US presidential election. Kamala's at 48% and
Satan's at 49%. There are a few more votes still to be counted. When
we repeatedly note that here, it's not saying, "She can still win!" We
don't elect the president by popular vote. We need to. We need to do
away with the electoral college. But we haven't. We've made no move on
-- even when Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 but lost the
presidency.
You want to increase voter turnout? Make voting matter.
It
doesn't matter with the electoral college. I voted knowing Kamala
would carry my state. When you know that, your vote doesn't really
matter. If every vote mattered in the US presidential elections, you
would probably get a higher turnout. Instead, we're left with the
reality that we know our state will go this or that way -- know that in
many states -- so why bother voting? Life's busy, life's tough, we all
are short on enjoyment time, why vote if you already know the outcome.
So
that's us in California, that's Texas that will go GOP, that's this
state and that state. Only in the swing states does your vote really
matter. Popular vote determining the president would most likely
increase voter turnout across the country.
But the reason we note those totals over and over since the election is because it's reality.
As opposed to what the media told you immediately after the election and continues to attempt to lie about.
And
they do that for a number of reasons including the right-wing tilt of
the media. It's not a left wing tilt. It used to be a centrist tilt
but it's gone on over to the right-wing.
Trump has no mandate. He has no landslide.
Now if most Americans grasped that -- especially Democratic voters -- it would harm a lot of people.
Like?
US House Rep Seth Moulton for one. Senator Mark Warner for another -- see Rebecca's "old man mark warner needs to retire already."
People like that -- lazy fat asses who would just as soon sell their
own mothers to get a vote -- who want to lie because they don't want to
have to fight to defend women's rights, or LGBTQ+ rights, or Civil
Rights, or human life for that matter. They're cowards and they're
liars. And they will destroy the Democratic Party given the chance.
Simon Rosenberg. E-mails come in insisting that I have him all wrong.
No, I don't.
He may be a progressive today or pose as one. I have no idea.
When
I bring him up, I'm talking about what he did in 2004 and 2005 right
after that election. That's when he insulted Black women, that's when
he was pushing for Dems to stop supporting ROE V WADE and abortion
rights, that's when he rallied against LGBTQ+ rights.
He's done a 180, you say? I doubt that very seriously. WIKIPEDIA:
Simon Rosenberg (born October 23, 1963) is a Democratic political strategist and blogger. He was the founder of New Democrat Network (NDN), a centrist think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.[1]
According to the 2015 book How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley, Rosenberg and NDN were instrumental in shifting control of the Democratic Party away from labor unions and toward Silicon Valley businesses.[2] Rosenberg
said in 1999, "Our problem as a party is that the biggest source of our
venture capital now comes from labor, which is a group that's becoming
less and less important, and representing less and less of a percentage
of American voters. [...] We have to replace labor's investment in the
party with investment from another source, and hopefully from a source
that's growing."[2]
That's
who you're wasting your time defending. NDN was the DLC made over. It
was a right-leaning, Joe Lieberman hand-holding group of trash.
He
waited until March of this year to shut it down. Now I felt sorry for
him in 2004. He seemed gay and he was publicly gay hating, so I felt
sorry for him. Closet cases can be so pathetic. But even that bit of
sympathy didn't stop me from calling him out.
Rachel Maddow called him out as well. I'm not remembering a lot of others calling him out.
Simon
was running for DNC chair (he would drop out of the race in February
2005 and tell his few supporters to back Howard Dean).
We see the same garbage over and over.
REUTERS notes, "The job of DNC chair is largely administrative and involves logistics
and fundraising. But focus on who will next fill the role has grown
given the breadth of the Democrats' losses and urgent calls from some party members
for a complete reset." The first sentence is about the duties of the
chair. Again, we need to make sure the person going in has the skills
required. That's all the jobs about.
After the
2004 election, Simon went around insisting Dems needed to move further
to the right and you might have thought this would result in his being
called out. Very few bothered to call him out. We did. And after John
Kerry lost to Bully Boy Bush, people lied to get what they wanted --
they wanted to push the Democratic Party further to the right.
And
that's what the continued nonsense of 'oh, we lost the voters!' is
about. It was a close election. We needed better turnout. Turnout was
depressed and suppressed by all the attack pieces posted at THE NATION,
all the segments trashing Kamala at DEMOCRACY NOW!, not one article
praising Kamala by THE PROGRESSIVE or IN THESE TIMES. These are outlets
that beg us for money and they used their space to tear down Kamala
Harris. Nothing she did was good enough. Donald Trump was elected
because of that.
No one should be giving a
dime to DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES and
so many other crap-ass outlets. A friend at THE NATION begged this week
for an article on trans issues to be highlighted here. I replied,
"Sure, and you can go back in a time machine and remove all those attack
pieces on Kamala, right? Including the interns editorial that Kamala
didn't deserve anyone's vote?"
What
we need to focus on is turnout for 2028. What we need to focus on is
how to respond -- and respond rapidly -- to attacks on our candidate --
especially when these attacks come from outlets that depend upon our
money to stay afloat. Always begging us to send money. Only a damn
fool would send money to Amy Goodman or THE NATION et al right now.
Only a damn fool.
There were plenty of damn
fools on the 'left' who attacked Kamala non-stop. She wasn't supporting
Lina Khan! That's what the whores would say. And then they'd tell you
that even JD Vance supports Lina Kahn! And attack Kamala and build up
Trump. They did it -- from the 'left.'
POST-LEFT WATCH wonders:
They lied and they lie. And they think we're going to forget. We're not forgetting anymore than we're forgiving.
They built up Satan and they built up grifter Jill Stein. Where is Jill these days?
Exactly. She's a grifter, she's a fake ass.
We'll go out with an example of another fake ass.
For now, I pray that we survive the next four years.
The
world of liars today who keep trying to water down the Democratic Party
instead of strengthening it, they also fail to impart some basic
wisdom.
If we do make it to 2028, the Democrats are very likely to win regardless of whom they nominated.
When the GOP embraces hate, America grows tired of them very quickly.
They wear out their welcome.
They
preach hate and they pursue programs and policies that the American
people are against -- even if it takes them a while to figure that out.
And
if you'll watch, even though the new Congress isn't sworn in yet nor is
Satan, you can see the signs as to why the American people are going to
turn against the GOP. For example? Aliss Higham (NEWSWEEK) reports:
Republican Congressman Mark Alford has touted raising the retirement age to help cut federal government costs.
"I think there's a
way, when people are living longer, they're retiring later, then on the
front end, we can move that retirement age back a little bit," Alford
said. The current full retirement age is 67 for those born in 1960 or
later, and is the earliest age at which workers can begin getting Social
Security benefits without any financial penalty for claiming early.
Alford
said the "$36 trillion" national debt and its interest payments is
"unsustainable," with a whittling down of government spending required
to "right the ship."
So to deliver even more tax cuts for the obscenely rich, the GOP is gearing up to raise the retirement age. Or take this from Jeff Schogol (TASK & PURPOSE):
A growing chorus is calling for cuts to Veteran Affairs disability
benefits as a way to save federal dollars — a move that ignores the very
real costs of two decades of war, and could cause irreparable harm to
generations of veterans, experts warn.
The most recent call for cuts is a widely criticized opinion article in The Economist
on Nov. 28 that described veterans’ disability benefits as “absurdly
generous.” Experts told Task & Purpose that the essay is
representative of widespread public misperceptions that threaten to
reduce veterans’ compensation for service-connected health conditions.
The Economist piece echoes an argument made by the Washington Post’s editorial board last year that limiting disability payments to veterans would help get America’s financial house in order.
These arguments may now have a real chance of becoming law.
Policies laid out in Project 2025,
touted as a blueprint for a second Donald Trump term, would revamp the
Department of Veterans of Affairs with proposals to increase
privatization, narrow the eligibility criteria for health benefits and
replace civil service-style employees with political appointees in its
ranks. Produced by the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington,
D.C., the policy guide states that a growing number of health conditions
that qualify for VA disability are “tenuously related or wholly
unrelated to military service.”
In mid-November, President-elect
Donald Trump has tappedRussell T. Vought, one of the key players in
Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a powerful
federal post that oversees government spending.
And then there are the efforts to repaint insurrectionists as heroes.
You've got Public Citizen noting:
Washington, D.C. — Today, President-elect Donald J. Trump declared on his social media platform
that, “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in
the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals
and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental
approvals.”
Tyson Slocum, Energy Program Director at Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:
“The President has no authority
whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based
upon a dollar value of capital investment. Trump’s claim deserves
ridicule for being so outlandishly illegal and wrong, and it will not
come to pass, no matter what Trump fantasizes.
“However, the statement does
highlight Trump’s utter disregard for protecting the environment or
human health and the imminent peril that he and his cronies will push
policies that jeopardize health, safety and planetary well-being.
“Of special importance, Public Citizen has noted Trump’s efforts to use national security designations to force bailouts of coal power plants
during his firm term — which Trump may seek to expand to all domestic
oil and gas production, transportation, and export, especially with
Trump’s declaration that his Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum
would have a seat on the National Security Council.
“This, along with other moves the
administration is likely to take starting January 20, offers a more
realistic and insidious Trump scheme to allow Big Oil to sidestep an
array of environmental laws by designating domestic fossil fuel
production and export as essential for national security.”
These are not things you can support and then run easily for re-election.
Let's
get some humor in here. Trashy FOX "NEWS" and the gutter rats on it
did an insulting segment on First Lady Jill Biden where they insisted
that Jill was attracted to Satan Trump. No woman is attracted to Satan
Trump which is why his current wife got a redo on the prenup. From
Marcia's "Top 10 reasons Jill Biden would never be interested in Trump:"
1) She's never been a chubby chaser, let alone someone to run after the morbidly obese.
2)
While Trump's never minded sporting lipstick on his collar, Jill knows
damn well that orange foundation Trump wears will burn a hole through
fabric.
3) His halitosis.
4) He farts with each step he takes.
5) She believes in marriage.
6) Hooking up with a rapist has never been on her bingo card.
7) She believes in and supports education.
8)
Long ago, as a teenager, she made the decision to never couple with a
man whose boobs were bigger than her own. As David Bautista has noted, Trump "has jugs, like
Dolly Parton."
9) While she enjoys primates and animal documentaries, she has no desire to mate with an orangutang.
10) A bad boy might be intriguing but a traitor is a buzz kill.
Let's not another fake ass poser. Aaron Mate of Mate-Taibi-Halper-and-Scum.
At long last, Aaron Mate is finally getting the attention he's always craved. Speaking of I Need Attention Benjamin . . .
Susan
Benjamin who goes by the stage name Medea. Actors have stage names and
we all know that there's nothing real about Susan. There she is with
registered sex offender, convicted pedophile Scott Ritter. You stand
with Ritter, you stand with trash.
Here's the
backstory on Susan's current problems. CODEPINK represents as a
women's group. Don't dig too deep into those roots. Jodi who is the
money behindf the project -- which is why she was able to marshal the
group against John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and others seeking the 2008
Democratic Party presidential nomination (Jodi supported Barack and was,
in fact, a bundler for Barack -- a detail that proved most embarrassing
for Jodi when discovered in the summer of 2008 after she had deployed
CODEPINK to bird dog Barack's opponents) -- Anyway, Jodi's the money of
the group and she's gotten rather tired of Susan Benjamin's cozying up
to Scott Ritter. It's bad for donations and it's bad for the brand.
And when Susan announced she would be speaking at the faux Rage Against
the War Machine, it appalled members of CODEPINK because they don't
understand why anyone would be part of event featuring a convicted
pedophile. So, faced with a huge rebellion within the ranks, Jodi had
to tell Susan "NO!" Now, a few years later, Susan's taken the stage
with Ritter and it's causing Jodi more problems. Things were so much
easier for Jodi when she was just bungling her duties working for
then-Governor Jerry Brown. So Susan's being told, yet again, to pipe
down or find her way to the exit door.
It's
Jodi's own fault for letting 72 year old Susan Benjamin remain the face
of the group. I can remember as far back as 2005 when CODEPINK was
facing criticism for being all White and all middle aged. They're still
basically all White and Susa is still holding the mike.
Do you eat at Cracker
Barrel? I don't. It's always struck me as a racist place. I walked in
once with a friend, looked around and said, "Oh, no, no, no." Well they are in the news:
A general manager and two other employees were dismissed from a Cracker Barrel in Waldorf, Maryland after the restaurant sparked outrage over its treatment of special education students who were visiting on a field trip.
Charles County Public Schools District Superintendent
Maria Navarro said in a statement last week that a group of 11 students
and seven staff members were "refused service" at Cracker Barrel. The
group was told the restaurant couldn't accommodate them and was asked to
remove the location from an approved list of places for such field
trips, special education teacher Katie Schneider told parents in an
email.
Senior
Cracker Barrel executives on Monday met with district leadership,
teachers and parents to discuss how the group was treated at the
restaurant, a company spokesperson told USA TODAY.
The
students, who attend Dr. James Craik Elementary School, belong to the
district's ACHIEVE program, for students with "significant cognitive
disabilities" and the SOAR program, for students with autism.
The
visit was a part of the school's community-based instruction, which
allows students to perform practical skills and socialize with the
public, outside of the classroom.
Parents
have organized a protest at the restaurant, set to occur this weekend,
and the Waldorf Cracker Barrel has been flooded with negative reviews on
Yelp. Individuals from across the country have also taken to social
media to share their support for affected parents, with some expressing
plans to "boycott" the franchise.
They
really are disgusting. It's dining in the age of MAGA. How dare they
treat those children like that. It really goes to how our country has
been degraded by The Orange Menace. There are so many menaces like
Brazil's bottom boi Glenneth Greenwald. Do you think that, in 2025, the
fake ass could focus on the country he elected to live in and stay out
of our business? Better yet, how about he runs like a chicken to Russia
where he can dry hump Eddie Snowden.
Wednesday, December 11, 2024. MAGA crazy -- can it propel a cult member into an "intelligence" job?
Let's
start with Trashy Garbage. This is the weirdo that Satan Trump wants
to be the new Director of National Intelligence -- a development that,
for the first time, brought the name Tulsi Gabbard and the term
intelligence into the same sentence. Nick Grube (HONULULU CIVIL BEAT via RAW STORY) reports on the latest news:
A former member of a secretive Hawaiʻi religious sect is warning members
of Congress about the potential dangers of confirming Tulsi Gabbard as
President-elect Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence.
Anita van Duyn says she spent 15 years inside the Science of Identity
Foundation, a fringe offshoot of Hare Krishna that was formed in the
1970s and has been described by defectors as a cult.
Van Duyn has
sent letters to Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth,
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, detailing
Gabbard’s deep ties to the organization and its reclusive founder, Chris
Butler, who still resides in a multimillion-dollar beachfront home in
Kailua.
[. . .]
The van Duyn letters outline what she says are Butler’s long-standing
political ambitions and the ways he groomed and supported his disciples
in their pursuit of public office while promoting his own ideologies,
which include a long history of espousing anti-gay rhetoric.
Van
Duyn says she worries that Gabbard is still under Butler’s influence,
which could compromise national security, noting in her letter that she
suspects that any sensitive intelligence Gabbard is privy to will be
“communicated to her guru.”
I also learned that Gabbard, then in her mid-30s, had grown up in, and appeared to remain socially and politically immersed
in, Science of Identity, whose devotees worship a man named Chris
Butler (born Kris, with no middle name). Although today she typically
dodges questions about Butler, Gabbard had publicly celebrated him
as her “guru dev” at a 2015 gathering of the International Society for
Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, or Hare Krishna). And she has never
disavowed him or spoken critically of him. I also came across pictures
and video clips posted by Butler followers on social media that placed Gabbard at more recent, private Science of Identity events
in Windward Oahu. Most Gabbard congressional staffers were also
followers of Butler, as are her parents, sister, ex-husband, current
husband, mother-in-law, and others close to her.
Early in my research, Science of Identity struck me as just another
benign ISKCON copycat sect. As an L.A. teen in the ‘90s, I’d become
familiar with the Hare Krishnas through their Venice Beach and LAX
presences. I attended maybe 10 events at their Culver City temple for
its free vegetarian food. The community seemed kind, but didn’t appeal
to me beyond its diet. So, initially, I didn’t find it newsworthy that
Gabbard was tied to Science of Identity. Yet there were red flags: its
expressed homophobia was virulent, its finances suspect, and its guru
politically power-hungry. Despite this, Gabbard’s ties to the group
appeared staunch.
Perusing decades of Hawaii news archives,
I learned Butler had been claiming guru status in Hawaii since his late
teens, in the 1960s, under a multitude of names. He told the Honolulu Advertiser
in 1977 that he was expelled from Kailua High School. (One clue as to
possibly why: As he wrote in his 1970 self-published booklet, “Sai
Speaks,” he was “very familiar with mind-expanding chemicals.”) I also
learned he is the son of the late Dr. Willis P. Butler, Jr.,
a Hawaii plantation doctor and Communist-leaning non-interventionist.
Dr. Butler wrote in his 2006 book about his late wife, “Barbara: Memoir
of a Love Affair,” that Chris declined to attend his mother’s funeral
because he “would not care for any event at which he was not the center
of attention.”
In July 1970, Honolulu Advertiser religion writer Janice Wolf interviewed Butler,
then 22, and two female followers—“Boni,” 21, and “Tulsi,” 18. Wolf
reported that Boni and Tulsi said they did everything Butler told them
to do. They told Wolf they would kill themselves if Butler said to, and
“they would kill anyone who tried to attack” him. Wolf described Butler
as the group’s “spiritual leader—and dictator.” She reported that
several followers “seemed completely hypnotized.” Wolf was careful to
differentiate Butler’s budding group from ISKCON. Later, in 1970, Wolf
reported that ISKCON’s founder had denounced Butler as a fraud. Butler
then briefly joined and split from ISKCON, after being accused of selling a temple and pocketing the money. He was at that time known as Siddha-svarupa.
In a 1977 series, Advertiser
investigative reporter Walter Wright exposed Butler’s grooming of about
a dozen early followers to run for local political office with their
new party, Independents for Godly Government. In 1992, Honolulu Weeklyrevealed that then-Hawaii State Sen. Rick Reed was a Butler devotee and that Honolulu Magazine
journalists had been stalked and threatened while reporting on Butler
and Reed. Butler also reportedly spent a lot of time unsuccessfully
suing Hawaii news media.
Family Ties
Gabbard’s
father, Mike, is a Hawaii State Senator. Her mother, Carol, is a former
Hawaii State School Board Member. Both have been extreme Butler loyalists
since the early 1980s, when Tulsi was born. They ran a Science of
Identity (then “Identity Institute”) school on Oahu called Ponomauloa
School. Per its former students, the Gabbards taught children, among
other things, to worship Butler, hate homosexuals, and fear Muslims.
(Ponomauloa School is still listed in Mike’s bio on his website, under professional experience,
the only tie to Butler he hasn’t yet whitewashed.) Mike was also
Butler’s personal secretary for years, and Carol was president of
Science of Identity’s Arizona branch, according to documents and local
reporting.
Mike and Carol reportedly home-schooled Tulsi and sent her for two years
to one or more Science of Identity girls’ boarding schools in the
Philippines, where the Butler followers are also active. I located five
ex-Science of Identity sources, two quite vocal online, all of whom said
their Butler-devoted parents sent them to a similar boys’ boarding school in Baguio, the Philippines.
They provided overwhelming evidence that their parents were Butler
followers, and they all said that, while in the Philippines, they were
isolated and heavily indoctrinated to serve Butler. Some also attended
the Gabbards’ school.
I wasn’t the only journalist digging into this at the time. My sources told me The New Yorker’s
Kelefa Sanneh was also contacting them. In his October 2017 profile of
Tulsi Gabbard, Sanneh, the only journalist Butler has agreed to speak
with in recent decades, assessed that, “Gabbard’s life would be
unrecognizable without Butler’s influence.” Butler told Sanneh he was
not Hindu, but he encouraged Gabbard to use the term for political
expediency. Butler and Gabbard both told Sanneh that Science of Identity
is not a religious organization, but it is in fact registered as a
501(c)(3) tax-exempt church, which arranges religious visas for non-U.S.
citizens to travel to Kailua to serve on Butler’s extensive kitchen and laundry teams.
Home
schooled. That makes so much sense. First off, it is where the
bigotry is being taught in the US. Second, she cant say "Islamist"
correctly. There a lot of words she mispronounces -- with an undue
confidence so many of the extremely ignorant possess.
Local activists had demanded that Gabbard hold the open meeting,
since she’d been evasive with constituents and journalists on almost
everything, particularly the controversial Syria trip. Once seated, I
recognized nearly half of the town hall attendees as followers of Chris
Butler, the once charismatic, now reclusive leader of Science of
Identity.
Gabbard's husband Abraham Williams, who, like Gabbard,
was a second-generation Butler follower, weaved through the crowd with
high-end video equipment, filming his wife and the crowd. Another man
born into the Science of Identity group, Prahlad Strickland, was his
soundman. Gabbard’s chief of staff, Kainoa Penaroza, whose father
William chaired Butler’s political party in the 1970s, controlled the
mic. As Gabbard talked, Butler’s followers applauded her, as if on cue.
Anytime someone critically questioned her, her fans hissed in
disapproval and at times shouted over them. Meanwhile, John Bishop, a
Butler devotee since the '70s and husband of Science of Identity
President Jeannie Bishop, seemed to be there to surveil Gabbard critics.
The man was not subtle about it, zooming in on the faces of
constituents asking tough questions, including me. He ignored Gabbard’s
fans.
"Cult-staged, cult surveilled," I thought.
When I
got up to use the bathroom, Bishop blatantly followed me. Another
constituent inadvertently caught Bishop’s chilling behavior in an
hour-long video (which I still have). I was later told by a highly
reliable ex-Science of Identity source that Butler had also assigned
Bishop and others as “undercover photographers” at Honolulu gay pride
parades. As I explained yesterday in Part One, and had previously reported, Butler’s messaging was blatantly anti-LGBTQ.
Gabbard
was questioned about her odd Syria sojourn, to which she responded with
regime propaganda absolving it of war crimes (which had been thoroughly
documented). Eventually, though, she begrudgingly opened the town hall to critical questions about her trip.
Tempers
flared. A near physical fight broke out between a Gabbard loyalist and a
constituent concerned by Gabbard’s frequent appearances on Fox News,
which was then heavily parroting Trump’s stolen election falsehoods. I
took the opportunity to politely demand the mic.
I questioned Gabbard about the people who set up and escorted
her to her meeting with Assad in Damascus. They were Ohio-based members
of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. I cited a 1987 article
from the Atlantic Monthly magazine about the party's terrorist history,
including its role in the 1986 TWA bombing over Scotland. A video taken
by another attendee shows I was exceedingly civil to Gabbard as I stood
up and addressed her, yet her staff accused me of "disrupting the town
hall” when I asked, "Did you vet these men before you allowed them to
arrange your trip to Syria?"
Gabbard did not answer the question. The moment was featured on local TV news programs that night.
The next afternoon, Feb.26, as I left my Kailua home to walk my dog, I
found myself within approximately 20 feet of a man I knew from my
research to be deeply affiliated with Science of Identity, Gabbard, and
her husband. He was parked immediately outside my home, sitting behind
the driver’s wheel of a white pick-up truck. A man I didn’t recognize
was in the passenger seat. The driver appeared extremely tired. When he
saw me, I heard him say to his partner, “Ok. Now what?” I scowled at
them, my big dog barked, and off they sped. I reported this and
subsequent incidents via email to the police.
That turned out to
be the opening chapter in well over a year of stalker-like surveillance,
defamation, cyberattacks, false police reports, false arrests,
manufactured restraining orders, and legal harassment by members of
Butler’s cult. Science of Identity was using the same attorneys as
Scientology to try to silence journalists and former members.
This is not Hinduism, which Science of Identity purports to teach. It’s the practice of a psychologically abusive cult.
Satan Trump wants to staff his
administration with the stupid and the stupider. That includes Dr. Oz.
Senator Elizabeth Warren's office issued the following:
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Jeff Merkley
(D-Ore.), and Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) sent a letter to
Dr. Mehmet Oz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Centers
for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), raising stark concerns about
his advocacy to eliminate Traditional Medicare and his deep financial
ties to the private health insurers that would benefit from that move.
In June 2022, ahead of his campaign for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania,
Dr. Oz outlined his vision for the Medicare program, in which he
advocated to eliminate Traditional Medicare and instead lean on private
insurers that run Medicare Advantage, a private health care program that
drastically overcharges for care. Non-partisan estimates project that
these insurers overcharged CMS $88 billion in 2024 alone, especially
through the practice of “upcoding,” in which private insurers
exaggerate the health conditions of their enrollees on paper to secure
higher payments from CMS – even if enrollees receive no treatment for
those conditions.
Notably, Dr. Oz has at least $550,000 invested in UnitedHealth Group,
the largest private insurer in Medicare Advantage. Under Dr. Oz’s plan,
UnitedHealth Group’s revenue from Medicare Advantage would roughly
double to $274 billion annually – a glaring conflict of interest.
“As CMS Administrator, you would be tasked with overseeing Medicare
and ensuring that the tens of millions of seniors that rely on the
program receive the care they deserve, including cracking down on abuses
by private insurers in Medicare Advantage,” wrote the lawmakers.
“The consequences of failure on your part would be grave. Billions of
federal health care dollars – and millions of lives – are at stake.”
“Given your financial ties to private insurers, combined with your
view that the traditional Medicare program is “highly dysfunctional” and
your advocacy for eliminating it entirely, it is not clear that you are
qualified for this critical job,” concluded the lawmakers.
Senator Warren is a leading voice on reining in abuses in Medicare Advantage and protecting patients:
In May 2024, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent
a letter to Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the Administrator of the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), responding to the agency’s
request for information (RFI) on Medicare Advantage (MA) data and
raising concerns that CMS does not collect adequate data to determine
when vertically integrated insurance companies in MA may be using
anti-competitive tactics to raise health care costs and pocket extra
profits.
In May 2024, at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Warren called out private insurers in Medicare Advantage for accelerating the rural hospital crisis.
In March 2024, Senators Warren and Brown led their colleagues in a letter to HHS and CMS that urged the agencies to protect seniors by holding insurance companies accountable for abuses in Medicare Advantage.
In December 2023, Senators Warren, Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) sent a letter to
the CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, raising concerns about
shortfalls in CMS’s data collection and reporting practices for MA
plans, and urging CMS to close data gaps to strengthen oversight of MA
plans and improve care for Medicare beneficiaries.
In November 2023, Senators Warren, Cortez Masto, Cassidy, and Blackburn introduced bipartisan legislation to
improve transparency of MA plans and ensure these plans are best
serving the health care needs of America’s seniors. The Encounter Data
Enhancement Act would require Medicare Advantage plans to report
important information about how much they are actually paying for
patient services and how much patients are responsible for paying
out-of-pocket.
In November 2023, Senators Warren and Braun urged the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General to
determine if vertically-integrated health care companies are hiking
prescription drug costs, evading federal regulations.
In November 2023, at a Senate Finance Committee markup of the Better
Mental Health Care, Lower-Cost Drugs, and Extenders Act, Senator
Warren highlighted the
need to do more to prioritize hearing health for seniors and strengthen
transparency in Medicare Advantage, and secured commitments from Senate
Finance Committee leadership to prioritize these proposals in future
packages.
In October 2023, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren called out giant
MA insurers for using deceptive marketing tactics to lure seniors into
the wrong plans and drown out competition from smaller insurers that may
offer better coverage. Senator Warren called on CMS to act within the
fullest extent of its authority to crack down on MA insurers that game
the system to overcharge the government and to ensure insurers publish
accurate data on patient care and out-of-pocket costs.
In May 2023, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren highlighted the prevalence of ghost networks in Medicare Advantage plans and called for stronger oversight of the program.
In March 2023, Senator Warren sounded the alarm on
a new analysis by policy experts showing that all Medicare
beneficiaries – including those enrolled in Traditional Medicare – are
paying higher premiums due to overpayments in MA. She sent a letter to
CMS and called on the agency to finalize its proposed rule to ensure
payments to MA plans accurately reflect the cost of care.
In March 2023, U.S. Senators Warren and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) sent letters
to the top seven MA insurers – Humana, Centene, UnitedHealthcare,
CVS/Aetna, Molina, Elevance Health, and Cigna – regarding their
questionable claims that CMS’s 2024 proposed Medicare Advantage payment
rules would hurt beneficiaries.
In March 2023, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren defended CMS’s
proposed adjustments to the Calendar Year 2024 MA payment rates,
pushing back against giant insurance companies and their lobbyists who
are peddling misinformation to protect their billions in profits and
scare beneficiaries into opposing the rule.
In April 2022, Senator Warren and Representatives Katie Porter (D-Calif.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) led their
colleagues in sending a letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita
Brooks-LaSure highlighting concerns about overpayments to Medicare
Advantage plans that line the pockets of big insurance companies.
In February 2022, chairing a hearing of the Senate Finance
Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth, Senator
Warren delivered remarks about
strengthening Medicare and cracking down on pharmaceutical and
insurance companies’ corporate greed to pay for expanded coverage.
President-elect Donald Trump's proposed new arrangement for any company looking to expand in America garnered immediate suspicion and criticism Tuesday on social media.
In
a post to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, Trump said: "Any person
or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States
of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits,
including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET
READY TO ROCK!!!"
This idea drew scorn and doubt from some commenters, who saw it — along with Trump's billionaire-run blue ribbon committee to advise on how to slash government programs — as the surrender of America to an oligarchy.
[. . .]
The reception on rival platform Bluesky was similar.
"A
government of oligarchs that will exist to solely serve the interests
of oligarchs while distracting working people with culture wars," wrote former GOP adviser turned anti-Trump strategist Ron Filipkowski.
"A government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires," wrote history professor Aviel Roshwald.
Tacky Trump and his tag sales on America. The corruption gets paired with the gluttony.
Over
60% of respondents on a recent poll of X owner Elon Musk favored
"deleting" the funding of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The poll
came after remarks from Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, who
urged Congress to release $20 billion in withheld IRS funding, warning
that without it, the agency may face operational challenges. Adeyemo
said, "The IRS is going to potentially have to make dramatic decisions
about stopping hiring and starting to budget for a world which they
don't have $20 billion which will stop a lot of their progress."
Do
away with oversight. Haven't we seen this? Season ten, episode 21 of
FAMILY GUY -- "Tea Peter." "Freedom" from government leads Peter and
the gang to learn that oversight and regulation are actually required
and that without oversight and regulation, corporations will rip
everyone off and destroy our world.
We have now learned, belatedly,
that billionaire Elon Musk spent at least $250 million to help
billionaire Donald Trump win the White House. One key part of that
spending came in the form of the $20 million Musk dumped into a brazen
pro-Trump propaganda campaign. The move highlights with new urgency what
you might call the “information gap” -- the deficit Democrats face in
the info wars, which the next Democratic National Committee chair must
have a comprehensive plan to address.
Musk
lavished that $20 million on a shadowy outfit called the RBG PAC, named
after the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The
PAC’s mission was to soften Trump’s position on abortion by absurdly
suggesting it’s akin to RBG’s. How many low-information voters this
reached is unknown. But it’s another sign that Musk -- who also
transformed X/Twitter into a sprawling right-wing disinformation machine
-- and the pro-Trump forces have found potent new ways to swamp the
system with propaganda and communicate compellingly with politically
unengaged Americans, helping cost Democrats the election and leaving
them badly disarmed going forward.
So
what do the candidates for DNC chair have to say about this disastrous
situation? I put the question to three leading hopefuls: Wisconsin state
party Chair Ben Wikler, Minnesota state Chair Ken Martin, and former
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.
And
this is the sort of thing we need to know. Greg's done a great job,
use the link and read in full, because it's not really about what your
hot button issue -- the DNC chair. It is about how you're going to
address elections -- that's messaging, that's voter turnout.
As
I said last week, if you agree with me on every political issue, that's
great. But that's not what you'll be overseeing as DNC chair and we
need to be sure that we're not falling for spin and p.r. but are instead
focused on is the person qualified to chair and does the person have
clear and concise answers addressing what need to do to move forward.
Too often, in the past, we've been deceived by what we thought we saw
from a campaign. Greg's laying down markers and he and the three
hopefuls are getting at what they could do and what they need to do. As
I said last week, I'm not endorsing anyone in the race.
And
I am not endorsing garbage passed off as news. Meaning? I don't give a
s**t -- nor should you -- what Jon Stewart did with this one in the
running or how they chuckled or -- That's not what the position is
about.
I'm looking one
person in particular -- the one who in 2004 tried to seel us on DLC
Simon Rosenberg for DNC chair. And now, twenty years later, the same
idiot has learned nothing and now wants to act as though a breezy
interview on THE DAILY SHOW means you're qualified to lead as DNC chair.
As
bad as things get, some refuse to even try to rise to the moment.
Instead they present garbage and pretend they've imparted wisdom.
Republicans
in Congress have hijacked a bill authorizing national defense spending
for the coming year by forcing a ban on any medical treatment for
“gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for those under 18
under the military’s health insurance plan, TriCare. The provision
could prevent military members from getting safe, effective transitional
care for their transgender children.
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is
an annual act published by Congress that regulates how the military
budget is spent; it also regulates additional military facets beyond the
budget. The GOP added a provision in this year’s NDAA that regulated
any gender-affirming care for minors. However, in a bipartisan
compromise meeting, the aforementioned provision against
gender-affirming care was revealed instead.
This
version awaits a vote from the House and Senate, and will go to
President Joe Biden’s desk, where he may veto or pass it. If he passes
it, this would be the first federal statute restricting the LGBTQ+
community since the infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the
1990’s which heavily restricted LGBTQ+ people’s membership in the
military.
Chuckle boys say what? Nothing -- at least nothing of value.
But on Sunday, US House Rep Adam Smith released the following:
Representative
Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services
Committee, issued the following statement regarding the release of the
text of the final negotiated language for the Fiscal Year 2025 National
Defense Authorization Act (FY25 NDAA).
“For the 64th consecutive
year, House and Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats and
Republicans worked across the aisle to craft a defense bill that invests
in the greatest sources of America’s strength: service members and
their families, science and technology, modernization, and a commitment
to allies and partners.
“Rooted in the work of the bipartisan
Quality of Life Panel, the bill delivers a 14.5 percent pay raise for
junior enlisted service members and 4.5 percent pay raise for all other
service members. It includes improvements for housing, health care,
childcare, and spousal support. House Armed Services Democrats were
successful in blocking many harmful provisions that attacked DEI
programs, the LGBTQ community, and women’s access to reproductive health
care. It also included provisions that required bipartisan compromise.
And had it remained as such, it would easily pass both chambers in a
bipartisan vote.
“However, the final text includes a provision
prohibiting medical treatment for military dependents under the age of
18 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Blanketly denying health
care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion
against transgender people, is wrong. This provision injected a level of
partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills. Speaker Johnson
is pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he
retains his speakership. In doing so, he has upended what had been a
bipartisan process.
“I urge the Speaker to abandon this current
effort and let the House bring forward a bill—reflective of the
traditional bipartisan process—that supports our troops and their
families, invests in innovation and modernization, and doesn’t attack
the transgender community.”
Click here to view a summary of the FY25 NDAA final text compiled by House Armed Services Committee Democrats.
Congressman
Ro Khanna, a Democrat representing California and a fellow member of
the House Armed Services Committee, confirmed that he would also vote no
on the measure in a statement to journalist Erin Reed’s newsletter Erin In The Morning.
“This
year’s NDAA also includes harmful provisions that would attack the
dignity and well-being of trans people by prohibiting coverage of
medically necessary healthcare,” Khanna said. “At the same time,
Congress has failed to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) for
active-duty military members and their families. We must do better to
support all military families and reject these harmful policies.”
“As
governor, I have vetoed numerous anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice bills, yet I
still beat Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate last fall,” Beshear said.
In a December 9 statement,
Mike Zamore, the ACLU’s national director of policy and government
affairs, described the provision as “a dangerous affront to the dignity
and well-being of young people whose parents have dedicated their lives
to this country’s armed forces.”
“Medical
care should stay between families and their doctors, but this provision
would baselessly and recklessly inject politics into the health care
military families receive,” Zamore said. “Nobody should have to choose
between serving the country and ensuring their child has the health care
they need to live and thrive.”
Trans
people are being scapegoated by the ignorant. People like Naomi Wolf,
for example, who has no ethics and took a Phd that she didn't deserve.
Her research got everything wrong. (Which is why the publishers pulped
the book she tried to turn her dissertation into.) Oxford just wants to
forget the whole thing -- because she didn't just get it wrong, so did
the dissertation committee that ignorantly signed off on her made up
research. When you're that stupid, you need someone else to hate, you
need it really badly.
And
that's why former feminist Naomi Wolf now attacks trans people -- it's
also why she got on board the MAGA bus. And it's why she Tweets idiotic
things like this:
Beng
trapped RIGHT NOW in a NYC subway car underground full of women, men
and and at least one toddler while a meth addict is heedlessly
masturbating, is one more reason if we need one that I don’t want men in
women’s bathrooms.
Huh?
What type of bathrooms does that nut job go into?
She's
in a subway car with men and women (! oh, the horror, Naomi) and
there's a toddler (pre-op, Naomi, is that what has you in a panic) and
there's a meth addict present (Naomi's husband) who is "heedlessly"
masturbating. Is that really the term you meant to use, Naomi? It's
kind of a weak and non-descriptive term to hook up with masturbating.
We'd ask her more questions but having become Just Another Pig for
MAGA, she appears to have the 'meth addict' in a chokehold.
How
does she know the person is a meth addict. And are we just supposed to
stereotype the person she accuses of being a meth addict and of
masturbating as a man?
Times like this make you wish Camille Paglia had punched the s**t out of Naomi in the 90s.
Punched the s**t out of her heedlessly?
Hey,
remember, if you can locate a copy of Naomi's laughable PROMESCUITIES,
you can read all about how in college, she was hanging at the frat and,
next morning, eating breakfast and she'd heard the rape and heard about
it but Naomi was such a tramp she didn't go to campus security but
instead just laughed and started at the 'Cinderella slipper' the rape
survivor left behind -- no, Naomi didn't call it that because she's a
really bad writer. Maybe she can re-edit the bad book and add
"Cinderella slipper"? And if you want to really experience her racism,
read Naomi's FIRE WITH FIRE and pay close attention to how she describes
Black women. She was always a racist and always defending men who were
accused of rape. She was never really a feminist and that's why, when
she attempted to take down Harold Bloom, so many refused to stand with
her.
But for the biggest laugh of all, just look at her picture below.
Even
at her best, she was gruesome. Not unlike Tara Reade, in fact.
Although I'm not sure Tara Reade has Naomi's facial hair problem. When
we started calling Naomi out years ago, people didn't realize what she
was. They do now. And her grifting off the actual academic work of
Judith N. Shklar is now widely known.
Speaking of trash, how is this considered ethical or, for that matter, legal:
MAGA
Republicans often threaten members of their party with primary
challenges if they stand up to the president-elect. And far-right MAGA
attorney Mike Davis, during an interview for Politico's Playbook column, threatened non-compliant Senate Republicans with another tactic: hiring private investigators to probe their backgrounds.
Politico's Adam Wren, in a Playbook column published on December 8,
reports that Davis is "mobilizing his Article III Project to become the
tip of the spear in building pressure from the base on Republican
senators to confirm" former Fox News host Pete Hegseth (Trump's pick for
defense secretary).
You
are going to research someone? No problem there. But you're going to
use the information to blackmail -- and that is the term -- a sitting
member of Congress to vote the way you want them to vote?
That would be blackmail.
Which is a crime and the MAGA nut has confessed publicly to his intent.
