Conservatives love him. Liberals disdain him. For residents of Maine town, it’s more complicated

https://apnews.com/article/leonard-leo-desert-island-maine-supreme-court-42c43a9da87fbde92170f06601519ce7

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NORTHEAST HARBOR, Maine (AP) — When Donald Trump was elected president earlier this month, Caroline Pryor’s mind turned immediately to the man who lives down the road — Leonard Leo.

Few people in America have done more to advance conservative causes than Leo. Years ago, the then-unknown conservative lawyer began executing a plan that has helped reshape the U.S. courts and Republican politics, an effort that culminated in Trump’s first term with the appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices.

The success moved Leo out of the shadows, turning him into a hero to conservatives and a villain to liberals. But for his neighbors on a sparsely populated island off the coast of Maine, the equation is more complicated. Leo and his family moved to Mount Desert Island in 2020, seeking a relatively anonymous life among its unpretentious year-round residents. A refuge it has not turned out to be.

The conservative’s presence — despite significant charitable giving to local nonprofits and big spending locally — has generated fissures in a place known for tranquility. That anxiety has only spiked since Trump’s victory.

“It feels very personal,” said Pryor, a 65-year-old who has lived on the island for four decades. “He comes to a small quiet community in the very northeast corner of the country and does this evil, far-reaching work that is going to affect so many millions of people, but he wants to just live this anonymous, quiet life.”

Leo draws protesters

Those feelings were on display on a brisk morning in October, just two weeks before November’s election. With sunlight flickering through the yellowing leaves, Pryor and a dozen other people — mostly women — gathered outside Leo’s estate to protest during the island’s annual marathon.

They came armed with a cartoonish life-sized puppet of Leo, a rainbow arch for runners to pass through and blue and pink chalk with which they scribbled slogans — “You Are Amazing, Leonard Leo Is Not” — across the road. They rang cowbells as a boombox blasted Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift and Queen.

“We are making people on the island aware of who he is, and they might question taking his money,” Mary Jane Schepers, one of the protesters, said as she urged runners to flip off Leo’s home. “They are taking dirty money.”

Leo, in response to a series of written questions, said he “had never really thought about” whether his move to the island would spur opposition.

“While I disagree with them and with what some of them do and say, they are people created by God with dignity and worth and their presence has been an invitation to pray for them,” Leo wrote. He declined an interview request.

Money sparks controversy

Leo, 59, and his family for decades have vacationed on Mount Desert Island, an idyllic island known for its rocky beauty, windswept beaches and the famed Acadia National Park.

In 2018, he purchased a $3.3 million, 8,000-square-foot Tudor-style estate in Northeast Harbor, one of Mount Desert Island’s wealthiest towns. Some of the country’s most influential and wealthy people — scions like John D. Rockefeller Jr., billionaires like Mitchell Rales and celebrities such as Martha Stewart — have sought privacy and anonymity on the island. Backlash swiftly followed Leo’s arrival. The next year, protesters descended on his home as he hosted a fundraiser for Republican Sen. Susan Collins. He soon drew more protests when he was invited to introduce the then-president of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, at a nearby college, leading the institution to rescind the invitation.

The protests grew near the end of Trump’s first term and spiked after the conservative-dominated Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

The activist’s initial goal was lofty: Convince Leo to leave. When that failed, they turned their focus to informing residents about the man in the Tudor-style mansion.

“He felt he could come here, and it would be a place to get away” from the negative attention he gets for his politics, said Murray Ngoima, a regular protester. “We have managed to draw attention to what he is doing. And that is a problem for him.”

The protests have compelled Leo to step up security at his estate. A protester was arrested in 2022, a confrontation with police that led to a lawsuit and $62,500 settlement over First Amendment violations.

Amid the protests, Leo has stepped up his charitable giving, telling The Associated Press that the activists have “strengthened our conviction to be as active as possible in helping various institutions on the island.” That has meant tens of thousands of dollars to local nonprofits.

He and his wife, Sally, gave over $50,000 in 2020 to the Island Housing Trust, an organization seeking to boost the amount of affordable housing on the island, according to the trust’s annual giving report that also listed Leo as a member of the group’s leadership committee. They made similar donations over the next three years, trustrecordsshow, consistently ranking them among the group’s top donors. Leo and his wife were also listed as donors to the Mount Desert Island Hospital. The Leos have also been listed as regulardonorsto theNortheast Harbor Library.

Some residents are suspicious of Leo’s donations

Those donations have raised suspicion, with protesters urging the groups to return the money and comparing the donations to the way Leo has used the money to influence Republican politics.

“He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Susan Covino Buell, an island resident. “We can’t just act like he is a regular person in our community.”

Buell, 75, resigned her position on the housing nonprofit’s campaign committee when Leo got involved with the charity. She had tried to convince the nonprofit to reject the money “because I just felt it was so tainted,” Buell said.

The trust’s executive director did not respond to the AP’s request for comment.

A group of anti-Leo activists also penned an open letter urging the hospital to return the donation because of Leo’s role in ending federal abortion protections.

Mariah Cormier, a hospital spokesperson, said the institution accepts “charitable donations that aid in strengthening the health and vibrancy of our community.”

Leo dismissed the idea his donations were aimed at buying acceptance from a skeptical community, saying people “can judge for themselves why I do what I do.”

It isn’t just Leo’s philanthropy that is controversial. His business at local establishments presents a quandary for shop owners and service workers. Many said they oppose Leo’s political positions, but they need his money to sustain their enterprises, allowing shops and restaurants that once closed during frigid winters to stay open longer.

Leo is such a sensitive topic that multiple shop owners declined to be interviewed about the wealthy conservative lawyer, explaining they did not want to damage their relationship with him by discussing how his views conflicted with their own and the internal conflict his business causes.

Leo, a devout Roman Catholic, has also used money to influence the island’s Catholic churches.

Sacred Spaces Foundation, a nonprofit that counts Leo as its president and sole member, purchased St. Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Church in Northeast Harbor for $2.65 million in 2023 from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland, according to records obtained from the county government. The church now holds one service a week during the summer, when Northeast Harbor is busiest.

Leo is a regular at another parish, Holy Redeemer, a large stone sanctuary in Bar Harbor where his wife is the head of the music ministry. His presence has driven off some longtime congregants, residents said.

Lindy Stretch, an 80-year-old who converted to Catholicism at Holy Redeemer over a decade ago, left the congregation because of what she said was Leo’s growing influence in the church. “I just couldn’t stand to watch that,” Stretch said.

Asked about people leaving the island church, Leo wrote he was “thankful for every person who takes the time to come to Holy Redeemer and is striving to be in union with the church and Christ, regardless of what they do or believe in their private lives.”

’He isn’t going anywhere’

Not everyone is upset about Leo’s Maine move. Though the island’s population is liberal — over 70% of residents voted against Trump in 2024 — Republicans in the state have come to Leo’s defense.

House Republican Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, who represents a district just off the island, excoriated the protesters in an op-ed and heralded Leo in an interview for “sticking to his beliefs and donating to the causes he believes in.”

Since 2020, Leo’s network has funneled over $1 million to conservative causes in the state, including around $800,000 to a policy institute that funds a conservative website and over $300,000 to a conservative state representative’s political network.

Those donations have only deepened the opposition to Leo among his most frequent protesters, they said.

Most who gathered in October to protest during the marathon have lost count of how often they have met outside Leo’s estate. They have come so frequently they have a routine — each standing in the same place, chanting the same slogans and waving the same signs.

Though energized, they have come to accept they may never drive Leo from the island.

 

“He is succeeding,” admitted Bo Greene, a 63-year-old who lives in Bar Harbor, citing the way nonprofits have taken his money. “We are making him uncomfortable, and he hates us,” she said. “But he is still here.”

After the last marathoner had plodded by, the women collected their trash and packed away their puppet and signs before heading home.

A few hours later, it was like they had never even been there.

Not even their chalk slogans on the road remained: Someone had washed them away.

___

AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

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Merica is an investigative reporter in Washington, covering the intersection of politics and artificial intelligence.

I am so frustrated

I got up at 4 am.   All day I have been setting up posts and helping Ron make a grand TDay dinner.   But as I went out to help him, I came back to find my blogging computer had restarted.  No problem, as I have a setting that simply reloads the pages from the last 3 days.   But … No.  For some reason I can not explain everything I had done for the last 3 days was wiped out.  I can’t explain it.  If it happens again I will have to dump the computer.  But really I can not think of anything that could have caused it.   But I will try to resurrect the important anti trans post I was writing.   Hugs

Peace & Justice for 11/28

November 28, 1891

Early IBEW delegates
The National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (now International, the IBEW) was founded when 10 men met at Stolley’s Dance Hall in St. Louis, Missouri. Their goal: the joining together of electricians in a common organization to make a better life for all.
The original logo adopted at the First Convention.
Read more 
November 28, 1905

The political party Sinn Fein (meaning “we ourselves” in Gaelic) was founded in Dublin by Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith. Its objective was to end British rule in Ireland and seek national self-determination as a sovereign state.

Sinn Fein’s story of its origins 
November 28, 1991
The U.S. Congress passed the Comprehensive Threat Reduction Act (the Nunn-Lugar legislation), which provided up to $400 million to assist with the destruction of Soviet nuclear and chemical warheads.
The legislation was initiated by Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana).

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november28

Peace & Justice History for 11/26

November 26, 1968
U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution against capital punishment following an official report which said, “Examination of the number of murders before and after the abolition of the death penalty does not support the theory that capital punishment has a unique deterrent effect.”
More on capital punishment and homicide 
November 26, 1970
American Indian activists marked Thanksgiving with a National Day of Mourning for Native Americans by occupying Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, the alleged landing spot of the Pilgrims’ arrival in Massachusetts colony. Led by Wamsutta Frank James, an Aquinnah Wampanoag elder and music teacher, over 200 Indians seized the Mayflower II and painted Plymouth Rock red.

Day of Mourning demo in downtown Plymouth
James had refused to speak at a state dinner the night before commemorating the 350th anniversary of the landing, and went on to organize United American Indians of New England.
Wamsutta Frank James’ suppressed speech 
video footage 2022 National Day of Mourning
November 26, 1983
President Ronald Reagan ordered military assistance to Iraq in the war Saddam Hussein had begun by invading Iran. To prevent an Iraqi military collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia.
National Security Decision Directive 114, signed on that day, stated that the United States would do “whatever was necessary and legal” to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran. It called for heightened regional military cooperation to defend oil facilities, and measures to improve U.S. military capabilities in the Persian Gulf.
The assistance was granted despite frequent and consistent reports of Iraqi use of chemical weapons, a clear violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Mustard gas had been used against Iranian troops and against “human wave” attacks by thousands of Basij (Popular Mobilization Army or People’s Army) volunteers.

The full story on U.S.-Iraq relations at that time 
The Geneva Protocol 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november26

Hatiest Hate Preacher Vs The Priesthood Of All Believers

Rev. Ed understands his position well.  It is about serving his people so that they won’t need him when he is gone.  It is not about ruling them.  In this video he talks about hate preacher Steven Anderson who glories in his hate for some people and take supreme joy in causing harm to other humans.  I know I have posted a lot of him and to tell the truth I may post a lot more.  I have 20 cued up as I reload the finial programs in the computers.   Finally everything is working as I desire it to.   By tomorrow morning or even tonight I should be back to full steam.  Hugs

Side note, the link to Owen’s channel is at the YouTube site of this video.  I will not link it here.  Years ago, maybe 6 to 8 years ago … maybe more, the atheist community fractured badly.  That was when trans kids became an issue.  Some supported kids understanding their gender as they understand who they are attracted to romantically / sexually at a young age.  Others were adamant that kids had no way to understand their gender until they were nearly adults.  Maybe around 17 or 18.  Owen was one of those that was staunchly anti – trans refusing to listen to anyone on what they had to say from their personal experience.  He also admitted he did not understand it and had reservations about the entire issue.    Granted that was a long time ago and his views could have changed.  His backstory is he was raised in the cult of Jehovah Witnesses.  His history as I remember it he got a girl pregnant and there were big issues between him and her family.    I know several of those I originally refused to watch did come around, it took them time and talking to people.  I just don’t know if he did.  Is he still anti-trans I don’t know?  But on the chance he is, I won’t post his blog link here.   Hugs

Gaetz Drops AG Bid & Nancy Mace Wages Transphobic Attack on Sarah McBride | The Daily Show

Desi Lydic unpacks the latest Capitol Hill news: Matt Gaetz withdraws as Trump’s pick for Attorney General, and Nancy Mace targets Congresswoman Sarah McBride with an anti-trans bathroom ban. 

What the host did not point out is that Nancy Mace is a total publicity hound.  She seeks the spotlight at all times.  She demands her staff book her on some media at least once a week.  She demands they video her like you see in the clips above so she can post them on X or other social media.  She is like Marge Greene in that being famous and a celebrity is more important to them than governing.  Being an influencer is more important than forming a more perfect union for everyone.   Making a spectacle and being in the center of what everyone is talking about is what gives them the greatest joy.   As you can see once defending trans people’s rights gave her clicks and views so she was all in for it.  Then her cult switched to fear and hate regardless of the real truth and the denial of science in favor of religion.  In a book written over thousands of years, edited and changed countless times, translated from language to language often by people with no idea how to speak the language they are translating, and then selectively edited by political leaders as to what should be in it and what should be removed … that book says god created them male and female.  So that was written by people who did not understand germs or to wash their hands to prevent sickness, who believed different colored sticks would cause different colored livestock, and had no concept of modern science makes a claim that modern humans in 2024 place more authority in than all the education and medical science of all history.   How is that rational?  Yet these people are elected to the highest offices to run a country that once was respected as striving for enlightenment and civil rights for all, is now being drive to regress to a theocracy where our highest information will be limited to what people in the Bronze Age understood.  We have seen this happen in other countries and we were aghast at it.  Look at Afghanistan?  Look at the Arab countries that turned their backs on science and instead used their holy writings as the way things must always be.  That thinking allows no growth and a supreme denial of reality.  Hugs

US Rep. Jasmine Crockett

So good. (It may take you to the page. I’m not on Insta, and it worked fine for me. It’s a very worthy click.)

Peace & Justice History for 11/21:

November 21, 1945
200,000 members of the United Auto Workers went on strike against General Motors, the first major strike following World War II. The UAW’s demand for a 30% wage increase was based on the increase in the cost of living during the war (28% according to the Department of Labor), the wartime freeze on wages, and the cut in the average workweek with the disappearance of overtime pay in manufacturing.

But the UAW also considered profits and prices a subject for negotiation, a position rejected by GM. The union did not merely say that labor was entitled to enough wages to live on. It also said that labor was entitled to share in the wealth produced by industry. “… Unless we get a more realistic distribution of America’s wealth, we won’t get enough to keep this machine going.”–Walter Reuther, UAW President
More about the strike 
November 21, 1973
President Richard Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the subpoenaed White House tape recordings of Watergate conversations made by President Richard Nixon in the days after the Watergate break-in.The erasure was blamed on an accident by Nixon’s private secretary, Rose Mary Woods, but scientific analysis determined the erasures to be deliberate. White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig later attributed the gap to “sinister forces.”

Rose Mary Woods, demonstrating how she might have created the Watergate tape gap
More about Rose Mary Woods 
November 21, 1974
Both Houses of Congress voted to override President Gerald Ford’s veto of updates to the Freedom of Information Act. Originally passed in 1966, it required federal agencies to release information upon request to citizens and journalists.The amendments put an end to governmental resistance to compliance, including excessive fees, bureaucratic delays, and the need to sometimes resort to expensive litigation to force the government to share copies of documents.
Ford advisors Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Dick Cheney, and government lawyer Antonin Scalia advised him to veto it.


Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, President Gerald Ford
and Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Cheney April 28, 1975
What was the dispute? 
November 21, 1975
The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, led by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), issued a report charging U.S. government officials were behind assassination plots against two foreign leaders – Fidel Castro (Cuba) and Patrice Lumumba (Congo), and were heavily involved in at least three other plots: Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Ngo Dinh Diem (Vietnam), Rene Schneider (Chile).

Senator Frank Church, left, chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee,
displays a poison dart gun as co-chairman Senator John Tower (R-TX) watches.

The committee, a precursor to the Senate Intelligence Committee, was established to look into misuse of and abuse by intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and FBI, some of which had been revealed by the Watergate investigations.
  
Fidel Castro / Patrice Lumumba / Rafael Trujillo / Ngo Dinh Diem / Rene Schneider
Read more  
November 21, 1981
More than 350,000 demonstrated in Amsterdam against U.S. nuclear-armed cruise missiles on European soil.
November 21, 1985
A full-scale summit conference, the first of five between the President Ronald Reagan of the U.S. and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union concluded. There was optimism over beginning a more productive and cooperative relationship between the two countries, each of which had thousands of nuclear warheads targeted at the other.The U.S. had proposed building a space-based anti-ballistic missile system, commonly known as “Star Wars,” which the Soviets had strongly opposed as an escalation of the nuclear arms race.In an unofficial meeting the previous evening, President Reagan had noted that he and Gorbachev were meeting for the first time at this level and had little practice. Nevertheless, having read the history of previous summit meetings, he had concluded that those earlier leaders had not accomplished very much. Therefore, he suggested that he and Gorbachev say, “To hell with the past, we’ll do it our way and get something done.” Gorbachev concurred.
Reagan and Gorbachev at their first summit
November 21, 1986
National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, began shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran in an attempt to free hostages, and the diversion of the proceeds to an insurgent Nicaraguan group known as the contras.
Fawn Hall
Oliver North
More on Fawn Hall 
November 21, 1995
China officially charged well-known human rights activist and political dissident Wei Jingsheng with trying to “overthrow the government.” Wei had not been seen for a year and a half after disappearing into police custody after meeting with a U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs.“If the people allow the power holders, in the peoples’ name, to violate and ignore the rights of some of the people then, at the same time, they are giving the power holders the power to violate the rights of all the people.”
“ Most people wait until others are standing to make their move, very few are willing to stand up first or to stand alone. That’s why my friends call me a fool! But I don’t have any regrets.” 
– Wei Jingsheng

Wei Jingsheng
He had been imprisoned previously for his involvement with the Democracy Wall movement, including years in solitary confinement. He had also spoken out on behalf of the Tibetans.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november21

sanewashing and wishcasting: how the press continues to fail us

by Jeff Tiedrich

if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay Read on Substack (Language NSFW, as always with Jeff Tiedrich’s writing)

the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media utterly failed us during the 2024 campaign season.

New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn came right out and said it: defending democracy is a ‘partisan act,’ and we won’t do it — and, fuck us all, the press kept their word, and didn’t do it. they enthusiastically put their fingers on the scale for Donny Convict.

arguably, the media’s worst transgression was the sanewashing — the cleaning-up of Donny’s incomprehensible blitherings, to hide his obvious cognitive disintegration and make him sound coherent.

a minutes-long disjointed word-salad about how tariffs on Chinese goods were going to lower the cost of childcare became “a major economic speech.”

Donny’s inability to keep his increasingly-demented mind on the topic at hand — his crazypants pinballing from they’re eating the dawgs to Hannibal Lecter wants to have you for dinner to would you rather be eaten by a shark or electrocuted — was explained away by Donny as his brilliant “weave.”

that explanation, to The New York Times, “did all sort of seem to make sense.”


post-election, the media has mostly moved on from sanewashing, and has now jumped feet-first into wishcasting.

what’s wishcasting? over to you, Wiktionary.

[Wishcasting is] the act of interpreting information or a situation in a way that casts it as favorable or desired, despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a conclusion; a wishful forecast.

sure enough, the media has now gone into overdrive, churning out piece after piece in which they promise us that if we all click our heels together three times, everything will be okay.

not twelve hours after the election had been called for Donny, the Times wasted no time in assuring us that the election of a vindictive fascist is an amazing opportunity for vindictive fascism not to happen.

as I wrote three days ago,

the New York Times can fuck all the way off.

what kind of magical, everybody-gets-a-pony thinking is this? just fucking stop it.

did Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat both experience some kind of recent head trauma that has caused them to forget the years 2017 through 2020? Donny’s first presidency was a dumpster fire of corruption, mismanagement and mass death — but somehow now, given a second chance to fuck shit up worse, Donny’s going to bring us an “American renewal”?

anything’s possible, right? overnight, Donny Convict could magically become a wise and fair statesman — also, technicolor pigs could fly out of my ass.

oh my god, the media never stops imagining that Donny is going to somehow become presidential. during his first term — over and over — every time Donny stopped short of taking out his dick and pissing on the floor, the press would fall all the fuck over itself in a mad dash to proclaim him presidential.

spoiler alert: Donny never became presidential. not from the the first time he threw a ketchup-hurling tantrum in the White House, to the moment he absconded back to his Florida golf motel, taking with him boxes of stolen classified documents.

now, what the small-batch artisanal fuck is this?

the premise here is that if we’re respectful to Donny — if we fucking kowtow to him, and stop opposing him — he’ll be nice to us in return. he’ll become — dare I say it? — presidential.

Stop indulging the fantasy that outrage, social stigma, language policing, a special counsel, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or impeachment will disappear him. And stop talking as if normal political opposition is capitulation.

Everyone should normalize Trump. If he does something good, praise him. Trump is remarkably susceptible to flattery.

Mike Luckovich, explain to the nice people at the Atlantic why they’re living in a fever-swamp fantasy world.

news flash for Newsweek: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are not going to save us.

okay, I will grant that Newsweek may be half right. Lisa Murkowski seems to genuinely loathe Donny, and we can probably count on her to vote against the worst of his fuckery — but Susan Collins? the credulous naïf who assured us over and over again that Donny had learned his lesson, and would never transgress again?


now, let’s bask under some rays of hope from people who aren’t just blindly wishcasting, but are actually offering reasoned arguments.

in the middle of a fairly clear-eyed assessment of the Trumpian horrors to come, the Guardian gives us this:

Elaine Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton administration, said: “For him to expand presidential power, Congress has to give up power and they’re not in the mood to do that. They’ve never done that. There are plenty of institutionalists in Congress.”

Kamarck also expressed faith in the federal courts, noting that judges appointed by Trump only constitute 11% of the total placed on the bench by former presidents. A Trump dictatorship is “not going to happen,” she added. “Now, there might be things that the president wants to do that people don’t like that the Republican Congress goes along with him on but that’s politics. That’s not a dictatorship.”

here’s Tom Nichols, in a piece titled Democracy Is Not Over.

Paradoxically, however, Trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope. Trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.

here’s Adam Serwer, from There Is No Constitutional Mandate for Fascism.

Americans cannot vote themselves into a dictatorship any more than you as an individual can sell yourself into slavery. The restraints of the Constitution protect the American people from the unscrupulous designs of whatever lawless people might take the reins of their government, and that does not change simply because Trump believes that those restraints need not be respected by him. The Constitution does not allow a president to be a “dictator on day one,” or on any other day. The presidency will give Trump and his cronies the power to do many awful things. But that power does not make them moral or correct.

I sure hope to fuck they’re right.


This is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means disengaging with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the shitfuckery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.

As I mentioned I spend all day listening to podcasts on one device or the other. Here is some of what I hear

This short clip is great.  The point she makes is the same one I made about the Democratic Party sliding right to get dissatisfied republican voters.  Her point, we should have paid more attention to the people who left the Democratic Party than those who were never tRumpers or left the republican party due to tRump.  Again it is the party of the working person not the party of republican lite.  Hugs

While I find it easier to follow Sam’s reasoning on some issues, while he is out on funeral leave after his mother died, I am glad it is Emma explaining this.  Listen to what tRump was saying about women.  He wanted to see Harris in a ring getting beaten by Mike Tyson. He said he would protect women if they liked it or not.  So she says two themes, I say three.  She says fear stoking by bashing immigrants and misogyny.  I say it was them plus racism.  The first thing he said about her was she changed to being black for advantage, then started calling a black woman retarded. But if you remember the things he said about women in the 2016 election about Clinton and the grab them by the pussy tape.  Sad that so many of our fellow people have these feelings in 2024.   Hugs.

in this video both Matts are upset with the culture of democrats in office refusing to do what is needed instead patting each other on the back as infallible.  Trump attacked both democrats and republicans who did not follow the ideas he pushed.  Ideas that he felt people wanted, and it became true the more he said it.  Even when they failed to actually help the lower incomes and did increase greatly the incomes of the upper incomes / very wealthy.  They mention that again in 2023 the mean average income was lower than in 2019.  Lower incomes are still losing and have been since the 1980s.  While harder to listen too it is all about the conditions on the ground vs words used by democrat candidates.  Brandon talks about the influencers on podcasts / social media.  Matt Bender continues that conservation.  Hugs

This video is about Joe Biden and him staying in until the last minute.  How there was no primary and no time for Harris to introduce herself to the public.   How Biden did not promote her publicly until he dropped out.  How Biden kept her sidelines because her age made him look older by comparison.  How the democrats need to do more to run to their extremer base like the republicans do.   Hugs

In video Emma points out that the covid recovery plan of massive help for the lower incomes made the Biden administration very popular, but when that changed in 2022 for a more austerity program pushed by bipartisan republicans and Manchin / Sinema … or should I say by the republicans and Biden’s need for the feeling of bipartisanship.  Once people realized again they wouldn’t be getting the help promised them by the democrats they again felt the democrats left them behind.  The lower incomes feel betrayed by the democratic party and they feel used.   Paid attention to only every four years and promised table scraps so the democratic candidate can keep the corporate dollars flowing.   Hugs