August 28, 1833 The Abolition of Slavery Act was passed by the British Parliament. As early as 1787, members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), particularly Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, organized to end the slave trade.Since Quakers were barred from serving in the House of Commons, the cause was led by a member of the Evangelical Party, William Wilberforce, ending the international trade in slaves in 1807. By 1827 slaving was considered piracy and punishable by death. The complete ban on slavery itself through the British Empire didn’t happen until this day; Wilberforce was informed of the Act’s passage on his death-bed. William Wilberforce
August 28, 1963 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of half a million gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C. They gathered there for jobs and freedom. The speech: https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety
1983: Three hundred thousand marched in Washington on the 20th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech for the second “March on Washington for Jobs, Peace and Freedom.”
August 28, 1976 60,000 joined the Community of Peace People demonstrations in Belfast and Dublin, Ireland. Peace People was founded by two women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan to decry the painful violence between Catholics and Protestants, between unionists and republicans, and to move the peace process forward in Northern Ireland. Betty Williams Mairead Corrigan They jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976. More about Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan From the Declaration of the Peace People: “ . . . We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society. We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, our lives at home, at work and at play, to be lives of joy and peace. We recognize that to build such a life demands of all of us, dedication, hard work and courage . . . We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to building that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.” The Peace People’s website: https://www.peacepeople.com/
tRump is a racist and Nazi supporter. tRump stealing money, money disappearing and not traceable. Fox Host claims Democrats are the real authoritarians.
My view on the people complaining about the Democratic Convention not pushing harder for LGBTQ+ and trans people / rights, and not being more against Israel.
Company A of the 3rd Battalion, the 196th Light Brigade, refused to advance further into the Songchang Valley of Vietnam after five days of heavy casualties; their number had been reduced from 150 to 60. This was one of hundreds of mutinies among troops during the war.
“He [President Nixon] is also carrying on the battle in the belief, or pretense, that the South Vietnamese will really be able to defend their country and our democratic objectives [sic] when we withdraw, and even his own generals don’t believe the South Vietnamese will do it.” –James Reston in the New York Times
(Note from A: Sometimes, people recall things that don’t make it into these newsletters. I referred someone one time to the page, where you can contact the owner/writers, and let them know. They appreciate that, and you’ll see the item next time! Just in case.)
“What they’ve done is they’ve allowed murderers, people in prisons, people in jails, people in mental institutions, insane asylums, and terrorists to pour into our country by the hundreds of thousands. And they are in our country right now, and the country that brought them out said, ‘If you ever come back, we’re giving you the death penalty or we’re gonna kill you.’” – The world’s most famous liar, inventing a death penalty for migrants who return to their home countries.
Trump claims countries are threatening migrants with the death penalty if they leave the United States and return to their country of origin. pic.twitter.com/d2kxR6czcN
“President Trump knew more about diplomacy than any president of the last 40 years. And Asia, he opened diplomatic talks with North Korea after a half century of stagnation.
🚨 SENATOR JD VANCE: “While all these Democrats lied about Donald Trump being the candidate of nuclear war, Donald Trump is the person who prevented nuclear war, and if we're not careful, Kamala Harris is going to walk us right into nuclear war.” pic.twitter.com/juUSChErYB
I hate the sound but know of no way to improve it with this mic. If anyone knows a way let me know. Ron and I have been talking to getting a Yeti Blue mic or a label mic. The lighting was off again. I can not seem to get it right like I used to do when I was in my other office. Hugs. Scottie
Please note what these bigots say. The issue under rational-basis review is not whether Texas should be concerned about opposite-sex sodomy, but whether it is reasonable to believe that same-sex sodomy is a distinct public health problem. They claim it is OK for straight cis couples to do anal sex, but not for two guys. Why, because they hate gay people, they hate the idea of having sex between people with both having dicks. This is just an attempt to have a straight cis society enforced by a Christian Taliban. It is based in a desire for a society that only includes people like them, with the same feelings and ideas that they have. The rest of us can just fuck off and get out. It is simply bigotry and anti-LGBTQ+ hate. This is the idea that if they do something it is OK but if others they don’t like do it then they are wrong and evil. Also notice they do their best to push these bigotry ideas on other countries which are poorer and need the money these groups bring. All this bill does is say treat others including trans people with respect and dignity. Don’t try to keep looking into their pants to see what is between their legs. Hugs. Scottie
A divided Supreme Court on Friday left in place lower court orders blocking changes to sex discrimination rules for schools in many states while new protections for transgender students under Title IX are being challenged.
The Biden administration, in an emergency request, had argued the court orders were too sweeping and some of the updates should be allowed to take effect as scheduled on Aug. 1. But the GOP-led states and conservative groups challenging the new rules said the components can’t be easily separated.
“Schools would have to work out how the Rule functions without its key provisions, amend their policies, and train their staff accordingly—all by next week—and then do it all again after judicial review,” lawyers for Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents a Louisiana school board, told the court last month.
As I’ve mentioned here many times, Alliance Defending Freedom once petitioned the US Supreme Court to keep homosexuality criminalized. Since then, they have provided free legal support to overseas groups seeking to maintain or institute such laws in their own countries.
Here’s what ADF Global executive director Benjamin Bull said in 2013 when India re-criminalized homosexuality:
“When given the same choice the Supreme Court of the United States had in Lawrence vs. Texas, the Indian Court did the right thing. India chose to protect society at large rather than give in to a vocal minority of homosexual advocates. America needs to take note that a country of 1.2 billion people has rejected the road towards same-sex marriage, and understood that these kinds of bad decisions in the long run will harm society.”
In 2003, ADF president Alan Sears co-wrote a book titled The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing The Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, which warned that eliminating anti-sodomy laws would lead to the overturning of “laws against pedophilia, sex between close relatives, polygamy, bestiality and all other distortions and violations of God’s plan.”
And from the ADF’s 30-page Lawrence amicus brief:
Same-sex sodomy is far more effective in spreading STDs than opposite-sex sodomy. Multiple studies have estimated that 40 percent or more of men who practice anal sex acquire STDs. In fact, same-sex sodomy has resulted in the transformation of diseases previously transmitted only through fecally contaminated food and water into sexually causes diseases — primarily among those who practice same-sex sodomy. The issue under rational-basis review is not whether Texas should be concerned about opposite-sex sodomy, but whether it is reasonable to believe that same-sex sodomy is a distinct public health problem. It clearly is.
Alliance Defending Freedom was jointly founded in 1994 by the leaders of Coral Ridge Ministries, Focus On The Family, and the American Family Association.
#BREAKING: By 5-4 vote (with Justice Gorsuch joining the three Democratic appointees in dissent), #SCOTUS *rejects* Biden administration applications to put most of its new Title IX guidance back into effect. Rule remains blocked pending further litigation: pic.twitter.com/L0W0op2FwI
The complaint of Republican vice presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) last weekend on CNN that Democrats are bullying him by calling him weird has stuck with me. As I wrote at the time, Republicans have made punching down their stock in trade for decades, and Vance’s complaint suggests that the Democrats are finally pushing back. It strikes me that behind this shifting power dynamic is a huge story about American politics.
Since the 1950s, those determined to get rid of business regulation, social welfare programs, government infrastructure spending, and federal protection of civil rights have relied on a rhetorical structure that centers “real” Americans who allegedly want nothing from government and warns that un-American forces who want government handouts are undermining the country by bringing socialism or racial, gender, or religious equality.
In 2024, that rhetoric is all the MAGA Republicans have left to attract voters, as their actual policies are unpopular. Yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told reporters at his Bedminster availability that to win the 2024 election: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s gonna destroy our country.”
But it is not just Trump. A MAGA pundit has called Vice President Harris “Hitler and Stalin combined but times 200,” and on Wednesday, Republicans in Minnesota nominated Royce White as their candidate for the U.S. Senate. “We face an enemy that intends to bastardize our citizenship through an idea called globalism,” White has said. “We must begin to understand how the global affects the local and take a stand for God, Family, and Country.” White has also said that “women have become too mouthy,” and that “Donald Trump could get up on stage, pull his pants down, take a sh*t up at the podium, and I still would never vote for you f*cking Democrats again.”
The rhetorical strategy setting up Republicans against a dangerous “other” was behind Trump’s demand that Republicans in Congress kill a bipartisan border bill so that Trump could continue to demonize immigrants. You could see that demonization of immigrants today in Vance’s straight-up lie that Vice President Kamala Harris “wants to give $25,000 to illegal aliens to buy American homes.” In fact, Harris today called for Congress to expand plans already in place in the Biden administration, and none of those plans call for giving money to undocumented migrants.
Also in that vein today was the announcement of Representative James Comer (R-KY), chair of the House Oversight Committee, that he is opening an investigation into Minnesota governor Tim Walz’s work in China. Walz is the Democratic vice presidential nominee. He went to China in 1989 as part of a teach-abroad program and went on to coordinate trips for students in China, becoming a vocal advocate for human rights in that country as leaders cracked down on opposition. But by suggesting this cultural exchange is nefarious, Comer can seed the idea that Walz is somehow operating against the interests of the United States.
This longstanding rhetoric that positions Republicans as true Americans defending the country against those who would destroy it has metastasized into the determination of MAGA Republicans to replace American democracy with a Christian nationalism that cements the power of white patriarchy. Vance has been in hot water for his derogatory remarks about “childless cat ladies”; interviews have resurfaced in the past few days in which he embraced the idea that the role of “the postmenopausal female” is to take care of grandchildren.
The New College of Florida is in the news today for illustrating the logical progression of the idea that Republicans must protect the nation from those who would destroy it. The New College of Florida was at the center of Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s program to get rid of traditional academic freedom. He stripped the New College of its independence and replaced officials with Christian loyalists who tried to build a school modeled after those that Viktor Orbán’s loyalists took over in Hungary. New College officials painted over student murals celebrating diversity, suppressed student support for civil rights, and voted to eliminate the diversity, equity, and inclusion office and the gender studies program. Faculty fled the New College, and more than a quarter of the students dropped out. To keep its numbers up, the school dropped its admission standards.
Yesterday, Steven Walker of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that the school cleared out the Gender and Diversity Center, throwing the books it had accumulated into a dumpster. Officials said the books are no longer serving the needs of the college: “gender studies has been discontinued as an area of concentration at New College and the books are not part of any official college collection or inventory.”
The image of piles of books in a dumpster in the United States of America is not easily forgettable.
But the dominance rhetoric of the MAGA Republicans was never just about political power. Political power always went hand in hand with corruption. A new book by Joe Conason called The Longest Con notes that the modern right-wing movement has its roots in the promise of grifters after World War II to protect America against the communists they insisted were infiltrating the country. Their promises to defend true Americans against an enemy was always about getting cash out of the deal.
Conason emphasizes how drumming up fears of an “other” was a deliberate grift to put money into the pockets of those who told small donors that their dollars were vital for defending the United States. The biggest prize for the extremists, though, was the control of government purse strings that allowed them to turn federal and state largesse toward their own cronies. Conason notes that under President Ronald Reagan, Republicans’ cuts to government oversight and reliance on the private sector to regulate itself, along with their belief that unfettered capitalism was a form of resistance to communism, led to a boom in corruption.
That corruption has continued in the Republican Party, largely unaddressed as politicians insisted that those calling it out were simply un-American malcontents engaging in political hits against good, patriotic Americans. In contrast, as any corruption on the Democratic side can be expected to be sliced and diced in public, the Democrats have stayed relatively clean.
And this is why Vance’s comment about Democrats bullying him jumped out at me. Republican dominance is cracking as Trump struggles and Vance offends people, and as that dominance falls away, the many things it covered are starting to get attention—among them, stories of Republican corruption. And they’re doozies.
On Sunday, for example, Garrett Shanley of the Independent Florida Alligator, the student newspaper of the University of Florida, reported that when former senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) took over the presidency of the University of Florida, he “channeled millions” to his Republican allies and to secretive contracts. In 17 months he more than tripled spending from his office, with most of the money going to his former aides and political friends, most of whom continued to live and work outside the state. Sasse was appointed in November 2022 in an opaque hiring process and stepped down unexpectedly in July, citing family issues, although Vivienne Serret of The Independent Alligator reported that DeSantis allies on the Board of Trustees forced him out.
One of the biggest stories in the country these days is the corruption scandal in Ohio, in which dark money groups led by the FirstEnergy utility company worked with former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder to put into office politicians who, thanks to about $61 million in bribes, backed a $1.3 billion bailout for FirstEnergy paid for with tax dollars.
On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost agreed to settle the scandal. FirstEnergy will pay a $20 million fine, an amount that Marty Schladen of the Ohio Capital Journal notes is less than one-third the amount FirstEnergy spent to bribe legislators, and a fraction of the money ratepayers have had to pay because of the corrupt legislation the bribes paid for.
Nothing better illustrates the grift at the center of today’s MAGA Republicans than Donald Trump’s Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 election and that it was stolen from him by those dangerous “others,” the Democrats. The Big Lie enabled the Trump team to continue soliciting donations in order to fight for the White House. According to Conason, Trump and his fellow election deniers pocketed $255.4 million between the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Democratic candidate Joe Biden president.
On Monday, jurors found former Colorado election clerk Tina Peters guilty on seven counts in relation to her compromising of her county’s election system. Peters was determined to get voter information to My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a key Trump ally, in order to prove the Big Lie. She is facing more than 22 years in prison.
The speech: https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety
organizing to build the march
Betty Williams
Mairead Corrigan
Scottie's Playtime 