Before I share the clips a personal note. I spend the morning with Ron. We went to get blood work done. Then we did some other things. Then he went shopping while I did housework. Then after he got home I started working on a computer project a friend asked me if I would do for him as he couldn’t do it. I agreed to. I still have a lot of work on it but I will get it done today I think.
The lab work came back and I think I have a reason while I have been so tired, short of breath, and not able to concentrate or think clearly. My blood work shows I am very anemic again. I once had it get so bad I collapsed as I was entering my allergist office. They thought I was having a heart attack and I ended up in the hospital. Turned out my heart is great, but my damaged large bones don’t produce enough red blood cells. Their solution was to eat more red meat and take iron supplements. For a long time they watched for it but as I always managed to stay right inside the ok zone they stopped worrying about it. But my diet changed, red meat got too expensive and I just don’t eat much anymore. But my lab work showed my hematocrit is very low. So I imagine the doctor will ask me to do some more tests. I hope I don’t need a blood transfusion, that sucks. Now on to the clips, enjoy.
Some days I read this, and wonder how/why people want to allow some historical happenings to repeat, while ignoring history that ought to be recalled to keep earned progress. Then there are items that make me smile to recall how they were so bad when they happened, but wouldn’t it be great if misspellings were what is so bad these days?
December 21, 1919 Amidst a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers, the “Red Scare” was launched with the deportation of Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and some 250 other radicals. They were deported to Russia aboard the S. S. Buford (“The Soviet Ark”). Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman also organized against World War I J. Edgar Hoover, heading the Justice Department’s General Intelligence Division, advanced his career by implementing to the fullest extent possible the government’s plan to deport all foreign-born radicals. S.S. Buford “Sasha & Emma” Read more about Emma & Alex
December 21, 1956 The Montgomery, Alabama, public buses were officially integrated. This happened following a successful boycott of city buses led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and initiated by Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of the bus. “UH UH, I’m not going your way!” Bus Boycott cartoon by Laura Gray from 1956
December 21, 1965 American political activists Tom Hayden, Staughton Lynd, and Herbert Aptheker began a visit to Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam. Invited by the North Vietnamese, they went despite the U.S. travel ban. Lynd and Hayden wrote “The Other Side” following their trip, explaining the Vietnamese perspective.
December 21, 1968 Hundreds of supporters visited jailed Vietnam War resisters at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, organized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
December 21, 1982 President Ronald Reagan signed, after Congress had passed it unanimously, the first Boland Amendment. Representative Edward Boland’s (D-Massachusetts) legislation prohibited the use of U.S. funds for either overt or covert efforts by its intelligence agencies to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.
December 21, 1989 Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled “beakon.” “May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world.” — The Quayles’ 1989 Christmas card.
December 21, 1991 Eleven former Soviet republics and Russia peaceably declared an end to the Soviet Union and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine agreed to cooperate on the basis on sovereign equality.
It’s been one heck of a week, both on the public front, and here on the home front. It’s Friday afternoon, though, so here’s a toon about the public front from Clay Jones.
I’m going to use a colleague’s cartoon to point something out. Right-wing gaslighting lying fucknut Steve Kelley has a cartoon of a reporter asking White House Spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre to clarify who she’s talking about when she says “the president,” Joe Biden or Donald Trump. In Steve’s defense, it’s hard to write even adequate cartoons when you’re a lying racist MAGAt.
Steve might be a little slow on his civics but the answer is President Joe Biden. How do I know this? Because for one thing, Jean-Pierre works for President Joe Biden so you would have be a real idiot to believe she’s referencing the other guy. Second, President Joe Biden is the current president. The third thing is, Donald Trump is NOT president right now no matter how hard he’s trying to destroy the nation before he’s sworn into office.
Other fucknut cartoonists may also believe Trump is the leader of our government. Look at this bullshit from Idiot One Gary Varvel and copied days later by Idiot Two Dana Summers. I don’t see how Trump sitting his fat ass at MAGA-Lardo grifting his Trump Bibles as Christmas gifts while trying to destroy the government he’ll inherit on January 20 is leadership, but whatevs.
Trump is pushing for a government shutdown, saying he’s OK with it either way. If there’s a shutdown, he’ll blame Biden even though he’s the one shitposting on Truth Social that Republicans shouldn’t cooperate with Democrats, but they should raise the debt ceiling so that he can give asshole billionaires such as himself and Elon Musk tax cuts in 2025.
Remember, Republicans hate raising the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is to cover expenses Congress has already legislated but Republicans think it’s authorizing future spending. Trump is looking at future spending and wants the ceiling raised or done away with altogether. For once, I agree with Trump and the debt ceiling should be scrapped. Republicans won’t go along with that because for them, it’s a tool to hold the nation hostage.
Elon wants a shutdown because he wants to destroy the government except for the parts of it that pay him billions of dollars in government contracts. But he’s howling for a shutdown and that’s when Trump changed his mind. Elon did invest $277 million to get Trump elected, so his stake in that orange fat ass may be higher than Putin’s. And how much does Elon expect to reap for his quarter-billion-dollar purchase?
House Speaker Mike Johnson filed a stopgap spending bill Tuesday night which went to shit after Elon went into a tweet(X) frenzy consisting of over 100 posts in one night against a deal negotiated with Democrats. The bill would have provided $100 billion in disaster aid funding, billions in farm assistance, and other assorted projects like fighting cancer in children and kept the government running.
Among Elon’s tweets were lies that the bill included a 40 percent increase in congressional pay, $3 billion for a new stadium for the Washington Commanders, funding for bioweapon labs, and protecting the Jan. 6 Committee from being investigated. Why didn’t he also tweet it would fund Critical Race Theory, Drag Queen Story Time, trans men in women’s sports and restrooms, and buffets of cats and dogs to be eaten by illegal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio?
Here’s the thing: If you have to lie your tiny South African balls off, you’re on the wrong side of the issue. The reason creepy goons and idiots like Elon and Trump have to lie is that the truth doesn’t help them. They also know they’re lying because Google’s search engine works for Republicans too.
As of this writing, there are only about eight hours left to pass a funding bill to prevent a shutdown. Trump says the shutdown will be Biden’s problem, but the idiot doesn’t realize he’s inheriting this problem in January. Or maybe, he thinks Elon will inherit it. Just go play golf, Tiny. Elon’s got this (sic).
During his last administration (sic), Trump told Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi he’d be glad to take the blame for a shutdown. When that shutdown happened, he blamed Schumer and Pelosi and eventually negotiated a deal where he lost funding for his stupid racist wall.
Trump is as good of a negotiator as George Constanza who negotiated his and Jerry’s salary for their NBC TV pilot down from $13,000 to $8,000.
The leader of this nation until January 20, 2025, is President Joe Biden, but the leader of the Republican Party is not Donald Trump or even Mike Johnson. It’s unelected Elon Musk.
This is a preview of the next four years. Republicans are in a rush to destroy this nation and they’re starting early.
Music note: I listened to Audioslave.
Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-click through to help him out, and watch him draw!)
Yesterday, 37 Democratic Senators voted to pass the anti-trans NDAA.Those same Dems refused to allow Senator Baldwin to advance an amendment to remove anti-trans provisions from the bill.EITM has released an easy to read list of Senators who voted for it.Subscribe to support our journalism.
This follows the Queensland and French reviews into care that found care to be safe and effective. The Cass Review was a political hatchet job. Guarantee the NYT and US media doesn't cover this.
In 2024, several New Hampshire Democrats, afraid that anti-trans attacks would work, voted in favor of a trans surgery ban and bathroom bill.They lost more seats than most other states. Now the R majority is ramping up targeting us.Capitulation didn't work.National Dems, take note.
There is no joy in taking health insurance coverage away from any of our constituents, including trans children of active duty service members here in Virginia.You can’t support our troops by making it harder for families to afford medically necessary health care prescribed by their doctors.
The result of puberty blocker bans means trans youth are just skipping to grey market hormones, not managed by a healthcare provider. So the result of bans is care that is not managed and worse for everyone involved. This is why gatekeeping doesn't work. People will get access anyways.
The only thing you do is make it less safe for trans people. Trans teens taking grey market hormones has been a thing for decades and had been declining until bans started kicking in. You'd think these idiots would learn that prohibitions never actually stops anything, you just make it less visible.
Rand Paul becomes the first to call for Elon Musk to replace Mike Johnson as Speaker. Which, if you listened to my podcast Uncovered yesterday, you already knew was going to happen before it just happened.
Mitch McConnell ran a playbook of total opposition after the 2008 election and it resulted in Republicans flipping 6 senate seats and 63 house seats two years after the biggest Dem victory since LBJwhat the fuck are you people doing
I don't think we're prepared for just how stupid things are about to get. The dumbest people on earth high on conspiracy theories will be making policy decisions like pandemic response based on disinformation from twitter.
"2025 Will Be the Year of Trump's Crackdown on Islam"What Trump’s hawkish anti-Muslim appointees mean for the Middle East – and beyond, writes @attackerman.bsky.social for @zeteo.com
Jeffries: That bipartisan agreement has now been detonated because House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt the very working-class Americans that many of them pretend to want to help
This is why police unions are not real unions and no one should view them as such. They exist to protect power and property. That's it. There's no solidarity to be found there.
Since 2020, Democracy Docket has extensively covered and tracked important litigation related to voting rights, elections and redistricting and now has a database of over 660 cases. As in previous years, we are providing a comprehensive year-end report on all the democracy-related cases filed and decided in 2023 that directly impacted voters.
Considering it was not a federal election year, 2023 was quite busy for democracy in the courts. While there were not as many new lawsuits filed this past year relative to 2022, there was a notable influx of consequential outcomes stemming from democracy-related cases that directly impacted voters.
Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, we tracked:
73 new democracy-related lawsuits filed across 31 states.
146 court orders that impacted voters across 34 states.
83 victories for voters across 26 states.
The statistics in this report are based on the lawsuits in our case database as of Dec. 31, 2023. For the purposes of this report, we excluded the 57 active redistricting lawsuits and the small number of criminal cases we are tracking.
Throughout 2023, we tracked 73 new democracy-related lawsuits across 31 states.
Despite not being a federal election year, 2023 nevertheless saw over 70 democracy-related lawsuits spanning dozens of states. By comparison, in 2021 — another off-cycle year — Democracy Docket tracked 57 new democracy-related lawsuits across 18 states.
As expected, the number of new lawsuits filed in 2023 was lower than the 175 new democracy-related lawsuits filed in 2022 both before and after the midterm elections. In anticipation of the upcoming 2024 presidential election, we expect the number of new lawsuits to once again drastically increase this year.
In 2023, we tracked more pro-voting than anti-voting lawsuits and saw a nearly even split amongst lawsuits filed in federal and state courts. Lawsuits that centered around election administration — especially relating to direct democracy and the ballot initiative process — were most prominent among democracy-related litigation filed this past year. We observed how Republicans are doubling down on their anti-voting efforts in court, with GOP litigants bringing 68% of anti-voting lawsuits in 2023. Meanwhile, lawsuits filed by nonpartisan organizations — such as the NAACP or League of Women Voters — accounted for the vast majority of pro-voting litigation.
Below, we break down our comprehensive database of lawsuits that were filed in 2023 and provide analysis of the broader trends that characterized the past year’s litigation landscape.
Unlike in 2022, there were more pro-voting than anti-voting lawsuits filed in 2023.
Democracy Docket categorized the 73 new lawsuits filed in 2023 as either “pro-voting” or “anti-voting.” In total, we tracked 51 pro-voting lawsuits and 22 anti-voting lawsuits filed in 2023.
While this past year’s breakdown is a departure from the trend we saw in 2022 — in which there were more anti-voting lawsuits (93) than pro-voting lawsuits (82) — it is more in line with what we saw in 2021, when there were 49 pro-voting lawsuits and 8 anti-voting lawsuits.
Between 2022 and 2023, we noticed a distinct shift in who was behind new democracy-related litigation, with pro-voting parties bringing the bulk of all new lawsuits in 2023. While anti-voting parties brought 53% of the total lawsuits filed in 2022, they only brought 30% of new lawsuits filed in 2023. Inversely, pro-voting parties brought 47% of the total lawsuits filed in 2022, but nearly 70% of new lawsuits filed in 2023.
This is likely explained by the fact that most off-year election litigation focuses on pro-voting challenges to new voter suppression laws. In both 2021 and 2023, we saw waves of new anti-voting laws enacted by Republican-controlled legislatures. On the other hand, in even-numbered years, litigation tends to focus on how elections are administered and votes are counted — two areas where the anti-voting parties are particularly litigious. (snip-graphics and much More Info on the page)
The first entry may be a clue as to why Musk is supporting the Don; he could wish to turn the US into S. Africa. As hard as we worked when we were young until now, progress doesn’t seem to have stuck, here.
December 17, 1982 The U.N. passed a series of 4 resolutions attacking apartheid in South Africa: To organize an international conference of trade unions on sanctions against South Africa (approved 129 to 2); To encourage various international actions against South Africa (126 to 2); Support of sanctions and other measures against South Africa including international sporting events (139 to 1); Cessation of further foreign investments and loans for South Africa (138 to 1). The U.S. was the only country to have voted against all 4 resolutions (joined only by the United Kingdom on two).
December 17, 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical Roman Catholic priest and opponent of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier who had been deposed in 1986, was elected president in the first free election in Haiti’s history. He was overthrown in 1991 in a military coup led by Brigadier-General Raoul Cedra. More about Jean-Bertrand Aristide Jean-Bertrand Aristide Fast Facts
December 17, 2010 In Tunesia jobless graduate Mohmad Bouazizi starts selling vegetables. When police seize his cart, he sets fire to himself and later dies. This event believed to be the ignition of Arab Spring. A UK Guardian interactive timeline
Scottie's Playtime 