This “transvestite certificate” reads, “The worker Käthe T., born in Berlin in 1910, resident at 8 Muthesiushof, Britz, is locally known to wear men’s clothing.” COURTESY MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD INSTITUTE
atharina T., a resident of Berlin in the early 20th century, had a deep voice and masculine appearance, and preferred to wear men’s clothing at home and in public. In 1908, they—there’s no record of which pronoun Katharina preferred—went to visit the sexual reformer and “sexologist” Magnus Hirschfeld, to apply for official documentation that would allow them to wear men’s clothing in public: a “transvestite pass.”
Perhaps dozens of these passes were granted by German police between 1909 and 1933, the year Adolf Hitler became chancellor. The term “transvestitism” at that time encompassed people of all gender identities, from those who occasionally wore men’s or women’s clothes on weekends, to those who today might well identify instead as transgender, a term that was not in common usage at the time. Cross-dressing individuals were vulnerable to arbitrary decisions of the police, usually according to how well they “passed.” While it wasn’t illegal to cross-dress, per se, the practice often led to charges of being a “public nuisance,” which could mean six weeks’ imprisonment or a fine of 150 marks—and police were “often keen to exercise their extensive regulatory powers,” writes historian Kate Caplan in “The Administration of Gender Identity in Nazi Germany,” a 2011 paper in History Workshop Journal.
Hirschfeld examined Katharina, quizzed them on their life and sexual history, and then wrote a report to the police supporting the application. In it, he argued that Katharina’s preference for men’s clothing corresponded to their inner self. If they couldn’t wear them, their well-being and even survival would be jeopardized. In time, they did receive a pass, though for unknown “formal legal reasons,” a further request to adopt a male name was not granted. This, writes Katie Sutton, a scholar of German history and gender studies at Australian National University, in German Studies Review, is the first known example of someone seeking such a pass. By 1912, probably as a result of Hirschfeld’s pressure on the police, the pass became a specific permit in what would become the Weimar Republic.* (That they remained hand-written suggests that few were issued.)
Hirschfeld was one of a few doctors in the city who helped people with minority sexual identities. Meanwhile, other people became increasingly aware of the issues they faced. A 1906 German newspaper report, quoted in Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity, tells the story of a person who was assigned female at birth**, but only appeared “unsuspicious” if allowed to wear men’s clothing. The paper chastises city officials: “There are men with the faces of women, and women with the faces of men. If necessary, police officials need to be schooled by Dr. Hirschfeld. Such mistrust as in this case should not be based on ignorance.” This was typical of a certain segment of Weimar society, Beachy says. “You can sort of see that there was, at least in some quarters, a liberal tolerance that was clearly visible.”
Hirschfeld was stocky and mustachioed, a pacifist, anti-imperialist Jew. He was also likely gay, with two younger lovers—Tao Li Shiu and Karl Giese—though he generally wrote about “homosexuals” at a remove. By the time he saw Katharina, he had been writing about complex sexual identities for well over a decade. After qualifying as a doctor, Hirschfeld began to work specifically on minority sexual identities, and published a selection of books on gender and sexuality, including, in 1910, The Transvestites. In 1919, he started the Institute of Sex Research, a nonprofit foundation that provided services from marriage counseling to STI treatment to early attempts at hormone therapy. Backed by anonymous wealthy benefactors, the Institute treated rich and poor alike, and sought “advancement of scientific research into all aspects of sexual life and of sex education.”
By medicalizing—arguably pathologizing—people’s sexual identities, Hirschfeld believed he would better be able to make the case that sexual identity is as innate as eye color***. Perhaps most radically, he made a clear distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation, says Beachy, and had an activist bent that carried through to his work with these transvestite passes. “He thought it was really unfair that they weren’t able to go out in the public the way they felt most comfortable,” Beachy says.
Hirschfeld described another of his patients, born either male or intersex, as displaying “androgyny, transvestism and homosexuality. … He is wearing mourning clothes [on the left] because his mother has died; an indication of how seriously he takes his transvestism.” PUBLIC DOMAIN/GOOGLE BOOKS
Hirschfeld claimed to have made the acquaintance of far more than 10,000 gay men and women, and cross-dressers, in Berlin alone. “He was considered somebody who knew everybody,” Beachy says—at once familiar with the so-called “subculture,” as a gay man himself, and respectable in the eyes of both his patients and the general public. “People would come to him, sometimes they’d send their children to him .… Anybody who thought themselves to be in this category would want to go and talk to an expert, especially if they were middle-class or elite, and had resources.” Often, Hirschfeld was that expert.
Berthe, later Berthold, Buttgereit’s travel pass makes no mention of tranvestitism. But “B.B. is not forbidden to wear man’s clothes” was written on the back. LANDESARCHIV BERLIN/LAB A REP. 341-04 NR. 1087
In 1912, a 21-year-old then named Berthe Buttgereit visited Hirschfeld as part of an application for a transvestite pass. Buttgereit was assigned female at birth**, had grown up in Berlin, and attended a coeducational school where, writes the German academic Edwin In het Panhuis, he was described as “energetic and purposeful as a child, and behaved like a boy,” with little interest in the girls’ games. After receiving the pass, Buttgereit was able to live publicly as a man. In 1918, he also received a “transvestite passport,” permitting travel to Cologne where, In het Panhuis writes, “presumably he wanted to build a new life.”
Seven years later, Buttgereit submitted a request to officially become known as Berthold instead of Berthe. The report stressed that Buttgereit “neither felt nor acted like a woman.” The request was granted. Later in life, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to marry the woman he had by that point lived with for eight years. He noted their long relationship in the supporting report as an indication of “constancy and harmony,” which would lend itself well to a happy marriage. But the mayor, after seeing Buttgereit’s birth certificate, denied the request.
Buttgereit later attempted to change his birth certificate, but it is not known whether he was successful. What we do know, however, is that he remained in Cologne for the rest of his life. He died around 1984, and apparently had escaped the scrutiny of the Nazis. This, In het Panhuis writes, is “remarkable,” as he would have been known to the police and perhaps even on a particular register as a “transvestite.”
Today, Buttgereit would almost certainly be described as transgender rather than transvestite. Throughout the 1920s, Hirschfeld edged closer to the idea, and used the expression “total transvestitism” to describe it. In his 1926 book Sex Education, Hirschfeld published anonymous photographs of Buttgereit in the section titled “Total Transvestitism.” “That’s more or less the equivalent of transgender identity the way we’d think of it today,” Beachy says. People who sought to transition medically were given access, by Hirschfeld, to experimental hormone therapies and even early sex reassignment surgeries.
Historians don’t know how much protection from harassment, by police or members of the public, “transvestite passes” ultimately gave their holders, Beachy says. “How many people actually received them, what their influence would have been exactly—it’s really hard to say.” But, in the two decades after they were first issued, the cultural climate had shifted, and it became easier and easier for transvestites, or transgender people, to wear whatever clothing they liked.
Transvestite and transgender sex workers at the popular Berlin gay bar Marienkasino in the 1920s. COURTESY MAGNUS HIRSCHFELD INSTITUTE
Queer activism, led by Hirschfeld and many of his colleagues, friends, and acquaintances, was having an impact. The Institute “championed the principle that science, rather than religious morality, ought to dictate how state and society responded to sexuality,” writes Laurie Marhoefer, in Sex and the Weimar Republic. By 1929, many forms of female sex work had been legalized. There were scores of gay, lesbian, and “transvestite” publications. And Germany came very close to repealing a law prohibiting sex between two men. There was a selection of transvestite bars in Berlin, including the famous Eldorado, which attracted throngs—straight and queer alike.
But in the early 1930s, the rise of Nazism brought it all to an end. In May 1933, students and armed soldiers broke into the Institute and confiscated its library. Less than a week later, at a public book burning in the city center, they destroyed tens of thousands of irreplaceable photographs and scholarly works on human sexuality. Hirschfeld, who was lecturing in the south of France at the time, watched on a newsreel as his life’s work went up in flames. He never returned to Germany.
By the end of the year, the Eldorado and other gay bars and clubs were closed, queer magazines and newspapers were forced to fold, and police were ordered to supply the Gestapo with lists of all men engaged in homosexual activities. Between 1933 and 1945, some 100,000 German people from these lists were arrested. Lesbianism, however, was not criminalized—the lower status of women meant that it was not generally regarded as a social or political threat. It’s difficult to know how the Nazis responded specifically to “transvestites,” such as Buttgereit, who were not obviously gay men.
A member of the paramilitary Nazi Sturmabteilung throws confiscated books into a bonfire during the public burning of “un-German” books in Berlin in 1933. PUBLIC DOMAIN
In 1941, a case landed on the desk of the German Interior Ministry, regarding a person known as Alex S., born Jenny S. in 1898. Alex S. had been living as a man since 1920 and was applying to alter his birth certificate accordingly. Perhaps surprisingly, even though the Ministry didn’t allow the change, it also did not repeal his 1920 name change or say that he would have to return to living as a woman. Indeed, writes Caplan, they “felt it would be an ‘unjustifiable hardship’ and ‘probably quite impossible’ for him to have to start living as a woman again.” The passes might have been obsolete by then, but it’s impossible to say whether their impact was as well.
* Correction: This story was updated to reflect that the Weimar Republic was not yet in place in 1912.
** Correction: This story was changed to replace the phrase “biologically female” with “assigned female at birth.”
*** Correction: This story was changed to remove the phrase “and biological sex.”
The underlying problem is not inflation. It’s corporate power. The entire American economy is concentrated into the hands of a few greedy, corporate giants with the power to raise prices. pic.twitter.com/QnWHKNoWOH
Entire Republican Party is weak and compromised. Their fealty toward Putin is manifest.
The Russian troll farms can still depend on Congressional Republicans.
Thank you, President Biden.
Reagan wouldn’t be wearing a halo, he also would have horns and a pitchfork.
The weakest POS in the world: Trump
Putin has been playing the long game with Republicans. Using them. Bigly.
Republican voters, ‘doing their research’ and definitely not sheeple, have no fcuking clue.
The whole thing rots.
Republicans carry so much water for Russia. Their politicians adore Putin. Their campaigns are stuffed with Russian donations. Their media is in lockstep with Russian state media. Their base/voters have no idea their emotions/politics have been played the entire time.
It’s one massive cesspool of whiteness looking to achieve a synthetic nostalgia that will never happen.
Putin is evil, never to be trusted. No mystery that indoctrinated Republicans and their base adore him. The Right can not stand up to objective evil. They can only cower in shame, hoping the bully will save them.
#Russia's state TV again showcases @FoxNews clips as part of their war propaganda, seeking to demoralize the Ukrainian troops with dire predictions from retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor (who gave multiple interviews to Russian state media in the past). pic.twitter.com/wmBwUrnKHB
If we have been looking for something that might unify polarized, divided democracies, defending Ukraine (and by extension, freedom) from Russian shock troops might fit the bill.https://t.co/CdUmAje5LK
Again the right wing distorts everything. The vaccines have different effective rates against the different variants. Vaccines need to deal with the virus circulating in the population, not the one from last year or the start of the pandemic. But they can not wait to demonize Dr. Fauci even though as the science data changes so does the advice Dr. Fauci gives.
The news is bad for Republicans, quick say something about Hillary to get the base foaming at the mouth again. Distract and misinform is the goal. All the things they have accused Hillary of has been soundly debunked yet they keep repeating it. Look at what they are bringing up: Benghazi, Whitewater, Uranium One which is a Canadian company, spy on tRump which e en Durham said was never in his filing and did not happen. The right wing media just makes up stuff and the base believes it and loves it.
This is the talking point the right wing loves to throw out all the time about Ukraine and tRump. See how much tougher the Republicans are against Putin, they sent lethal weapons to Ukraine. But it ignores the truth.
While the Obama administration was criticized for its refusal to provide lethal assistance to Ukraine, it did provide more than $100 million in security assistance, as well as a significant amount of defense and military equipment.
By March 2015, the US had committed more than $120 million in security assistance for Ukraine and had pledged an additional $75 million worth of equipment including UAVs, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
That assistance also included some 230 armored Humvee vehicles.
Trump appears to be echoing a critique leveled at the Obama administration by the late Republican Sen. John McCain. “The Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we’re sending blankets and meals,” McCain said in 2015. “Blankets don’t do well against Russian tanks.”
While it never provided lethal aid, many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine’s military. Part of the $250 million assistance package that the Trump administration announced (then froze and later unfroze) included many of the same items that were provided under Obama, including medical equipment, night vision gear and counter-artillery radar.
It also seems to forget that tRump froze US aid to Ukraine as he extorted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to find dirt on Hunter Biden.
Also it forgets that for a year Biden has been arming Ukraine. Obama is not president and has not been for 6 years. Biden is president and he has been sending the lethal aid Ukraine wants.
Biden is not controlling the price of oil or gas, nor is he stopping US energy production. However, based on the right wing assumption that he can control the price, I would suggest the US government start regulation gas prices as a necessary item. I think $1.25/gallon would be a fair price for the consumer and still have massive profits for the oil company CEO’s to split. Payne follows the right-wing insinuation and false accusation that Biden cut oil production when the fact is that Biden went to the U.S. oil companies and asked them to increase production to bring prices down. Biden went to the Saudis as well, as they are the ones who started this bout of inflation. Inflation → Price gouging and record profits.
A year ago in February of 2021 is when the Saudis announced they were raising their prices to make up for the 40% loss in profit due to COVID-19 in 2020. That is when gas prices went up. Other industries followed their lead making today’s inflation. The Saudis should have taken the hit, like the rest of us did, suffering on their yachts.
This inflation is world wide, not just the U.S.
Any praise for Romney’s Russia stance is incomplete unless it acknowledges his track record of being an opportunist with a seemingly ever-shifting sense of morality. Romney’s 2012 comments warning about the threat posed by Russia conveniently ignores Romney’s own role in empowering the Russian government. He initially fawned over then-President-elect Donald Trump, who demonstrated incomparable servility to the Kremlin. In 2016, as Romney sought to become Trump’s secretary of state, he was extremely complimentary toward Trump when the two met for dinner during the presidential transition. After the meeting, Romney said that Trump shared a “message of inclusion and bringing people together,” that he’d been “impressed” by Trump’s transition effort, and that America’s “best days are ahead of us.” And all of that praise came months after Trump had openly called on Russia to interfere in the 2016 election.
this piece of shit just emptied an unhoused person's tent of all their belongings and threw it all away. when i asked what they were doing they said cleaning up trash. when i said it was someone's stuff they called me a fucking weirdo, threatened me, and told me to back off. pic.twitter.com/hvHSvOEHtJ
Robots and automation in general eat up jobs. That should be a good thing. People do not exist just to work. Other countries know this. Living should be more than a daily grind to make wealth for the wealthy and trying to survive.
Since JK Rowling has blocked any reply to this litany of half-truths and transphobic dogwhistles, I thought I'd catalogue them properly here: https://t.co/vo3AsrZJLz
— 🤦♂️ Andrew James Carter (@Carter_AndrewJ) June 10, 2020
FOX is complicit. They parrot Russian active measures reflexively.
Republican rhetoric is meaningless.
Who pays an artist to take someone else's existing painting and repaint the figures and faces to depict yourself standing with a heroic sword-wielding Jeffrey Epstein? https://t.co/0lxj5cHwbW
— Please follow my new X/Tw1tter: @BarryIsVery (@barrydeutsch) February 28, 2022
— Please follow my new X/Tw1tter: @BarryIsVery (@barrydeutsch) February 28, 2022
This is perhaps the most horrifying move. Shrier outs a trans minor in national press, virtually ensuring harassment and threats. https://t.co/GIJl7sZdE3
Alternate title: Transphobic father, Ted Hadacko, loses custody of his transgender kid after expressing his transphobic views and abusing his family.
This is more misinformation laundering by the NY Post for Abigail Shrier who outed the trans kid of the judge in this case. pic.twitter.com/h7Pf4jIFOj
— Alejandra Caraballo is on Threads/Bluesky (@Esqueer_) February 27, 2022
The amount of right-wing takes about the Russian army not using woke pronouns… nukes could be raining from the sky and these people would be saying “GUESS YOU DONT NEED GENDER NEUTRAL BATHROOMS NOW!!” Deranged, psychosexual obsession pic.twitter.com/uBuj2JDhDc
Since JK Rowling has blocked any reply to this litany of half-truths and transphobic dogwhistles, I thought I'd catalogue them properly here: https://t.co/vo3AsrZJLz
— 🤦♂️ Andrew James Carter (@Carter_AndrewJ) June 10, 2020
John Kerry is a highly decorated Vietnam Veteran who risked his life to save others and was injured in battle and also came home to speak out against an unjust war. He has more understanding of life, death, energy and, yes, fighting for freedom than CHICKEN HAWK Mike Ramirez who has never served.
John Kerry’s current position is to seek solutions to the climate crisis and, in that capacity, he has called for greater energy independence, including the user of electric vehicles.
This is an important issue, but it has little direct relevance to the Ukrainian war of self-defense against the aggression by Russia and its dictator who receives worshipful praise from Trump, Pompeo and Tucker Carlson.
Trying to tie the two together by someone like Michael Ramirez, who understands neither demonstrates the desperation and intellectual vapidity we are dealing with.
If Russia stops fighting, the war ends.
If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.
Oil and gas are top products of both Russia and Ukraine, whose energy Russia covets.
Perhaps if we listened to John Kerry and plugged our electric vehicles into solar panels (as my wife and I do), we would disempower Putin and reduce the need to fight over energy which can be produced by sun, wind and other renewable sources.
Perhaps if the president from 2017 to 2021 had not been busy doing everything he could to weaken Ukraine, weaken NATO, threaten to pull out of NATO, threaten to pull our troops out of Europe, invite Putin to gatherings other world leaders kicked him out of and so many more actions designed to strengthen Russia then Russia wouldn’t be a major threat to world peace now. It is all perspective isn’t it. At the time Romney said it Russia was not a major threat or a large problem. It grew into one with the help of tRump.
You’d think that a major global tragedy like Russia invading Ukraine could tear him away from taking pot shots at Democrats for a couple of seconds. He’s taking gratuitous shots at the President during what amounts to a proxy war. Politics used to stop at the water’s edge. Whatever you think of him, by exposing Putin’s lies and tactics well before he invaded Ukraine, Biden led the free world in a more United front than Putin thought possible. Biden and his team have done a good job of wrangling a fractious alliance and putting together some very tough economic sanctions. Their decision to telegraph the intelligence that the invasion was coming took guts as well — because if Russia had pulled back they would have been accused of either lying or being hysterical. As it was, Biden and his team prepared the world for what was coming and laid the groundwork for a unified response.
BREAKING: Amazon told union organizers at JFK8 today that they were calling the police after they delivered a pasta & grilled chicken lunch to break room.
Here is the video of NYPD showing up and arresting 3 union organizers, 2 are current employees.https://t.co/v07oFCZFKo
As I told Congress last week, Medicare for All is inevitable because current healthcare trends are unsustainable. The only real question is how much unnecessary pain, suffering, and cost Americans will have to endure before we get there. https://t.co/M1dPuZCBBL
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Imagine a supremely qualified SCOTUS nominee with two Harvard degrees with honors, a SCOTUS clerkship for the justice they'd replace, and two years as a federal judge.
(That's Chief Justice John Roberts.)
Ketanji Brown Jackson has all of that, plus seven more years as a judge.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. This is what a leader looks like. This is what courage looks like. He didn’t fake bone spurs or flee to Poland to leave his people to die. 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/2Lhk6ZBGRo
Anyone who questions why Ukraine decided to become a sovereign nation and why they don’t want to go back to being under the thumb of Russia should read this thread. @cspanwj#IStandWithUkrainehttps://t.co/nQPUd7iUhL
Kyiv now. Continuous rocket shelling. And three convoys of tanks – almost 500 in total – approaching the city from different directions. It will be hellish tonight. pic.twitter.com/pgkjvSnVT1
Russian military is bombing hospitals in Ukraine, health minister Viktor Liashko said. "This is a violation of Geneva convention, a shameful and cowardly act. Such actions by the occupiers put civilian lives in danger and contradict principles of international humanitarian law'
Thinking back on Tucker Carlson's "Has Putin ever called me a racist?" comment-it's wild how so much of the conservative culture war is just driven by being afraid of getting called bigoted.
Franklin Graham is the son of Billy Graham. Both are/were idiot charlatans.
Five Texas district attorneys pushed back on Gov. Greg Abbott's directive in which he called gender-transitioning and affirming procedures as "child abuse." https://t.co/PXLfcmaBcl
The governor of Texas wants parents who support their trans kids to be prosecuted for "child abuse."
Thru March 31st, 🌟RT and comment🌟 with proof of donation 👉🏽directly benefitting trans minors in Texas👈🏽 to download any one of our celebrated comics collections ⚡️for free.⚡️ pic.twitter.com/IfvGzuxMPR
Attorney general Paxton's opinion and Governor Abbott's letter have no legal effect, can't change Texas law, and can't override the constitutional rights of Texas families.
No court anywhere in the country has ever found that gender-affirming care can be considered child abuse. https://t.co/D8F7rfELdV
Getting a little worrisome how much the right wing is embracing "the West was weakened by our failure to oppress trans people" as a narrative right now pic.twitter.com/Q0HlozOalo
It is 100% repackaged homophobia by the way. When gay marriage was the big culture war issue the reactionary talking point was all about how men and women procreate and same sex couples don't so homosexuality isn't "scientifically justified".
Right wing media is split with some praising Putin and others are mocking the invasion to slam Biden. None of them seem to care about the people of Ukraine.
SKelley thinks Biden is responsible for the global rise in gas prices.
Notice that the US isn’t even near the middle of the list.
Also, another cheap shot at the polls, when he hasn’t even gotten close to the Last Occupant yet.
Rising petroleum prices are simply an inevitable consequence of dependence on a finite commodity. Every bit of oil taken out of the ground is that much less oil left in the ground. Duh.
Hopefully it becomes inevitable that nowadays any country invading another one, even if it’s next door, it turns into a quagmire that the invader loses. Problem with “explosions in Moscow” is that those would be followed by “explosions in New York and Washington D.C. “. Anybody really want that?
Gab CEO Andrew Torba, slated to speak at AFPAC alongside Fuentes- "Putin is brilliant"; "I hope the Globalist American Empire gets humiliated from all angles"; "Ukraine needs to be liberated & cleansed from the degeneracy of the secular western globalist empire" pic.twitter.com/18HJa8kRH9
For those wondering what this is about last night I had finally had it. After weeks of patience mine was gone with the rabid right wingers. Two in particular, who simply ignore any evidence, lie, misinform, misdirect, and When backed into a corner move the goal post. Everything they disagree with is fake news and what ever they want to believe is fact. They are pushing conspiracies about everything and there is no nuance or shades of grey with them. They feel that all Democrats are one block out to destroy the country, rape the kids, and do all the evil. Republicans in their view are both the strongest people in the world and being cancelled while being pushed around by the tyrannical left. They make no sense and when I point that out that they have conflicted themself I am an evil liar out to destroy the US. Putin is right yet Biden is a weak doddering fool for not stopping him. Yes that was in the same paragraph. I told them both off, not that it did any good and now I am simply refusing to engage with them. While I am busy it seems all they do is spend time in the right wing comic sections picking fight non-stop. So denying them engagement is the best thing to hurt them.
Failed humans think wage suppression and labor exploitation are acceptable.
News has become clickbait for ratings.
Fascists of a feather.
Trump’s sycophantic idolatry is pathetic.
Trump has been on Team Russia for decades.
The weakest POS in the world: Trump
Russian owns the Republican Party.
Republicans are spineless swine, cemented minds.
Russia owns the Republican cowards.
People who attack Ukraine and people who attack the Capitol share the same leader.
We need an education revolution. We need more solidarity with our teachers. We need to counter reactionary parents and their cowardly agenda.
The sad thing is, for two years, we have been watching people crying and saying goodbye to loved ones that they will not see again… because someone didn’t wear a mask.
There’s no debate: FOX is a sister station for Russian state media.
NYPD does not need that much money. Defund and redistribute. Lower poverty. Lower crime.
Fascism is central to Republican politics.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
Russia invades Ukraine and we get this. Takes a special kind of ass to post this “toon” today as scores of lives are lost to Putin’s evil. He is so much worse than Putin. What’s next making restaurant workers wash their hands? How can we let this happen, we should attack Canada now to protect those poor truckers.
A few truckers, many antivax, QAnon conspiracy mongers and some funding from a foreign country (USA) were blocking major infrastructure / economy and major cities. The vast majority of Canadians did NOT support the idiots. The idiots brought 18 wheelers and were having a party. THis was NOT lawful protests. They were warned, warned again and then they were removed.
Oh…by the way, where are your Russian v Ukranian strips? Tell us the truth about a real situation of WAR!!!!
I can’t tell you the current sanctions regime will succeed, the the Trumpservative insistence that economic sanctions can’t work is ridiculous. The 1970s Arab oil embargo was nothing more of less than a regime of economic sanctions against the U.S. For its support of Israel in the 1973 war. It crippled the U.S. economy for nearly a decade and forced permanent policy changes.
Uneducated ignoramus Lisa Benson’s minimizing extremely severe sanctions as a “ding in a credit score” smacks of the same ignorant aid to our enemies as Trump praising his puppet master Putin’s war crimes as “savvy genius” for just “walking in” and taking over a “whole country” for the price of a “two dollar sanction.”
How ignorant does someone have to be not to understand the unprecedented step of massive sanctions on an unprecedented scale, going far beyond what any president has dared to impose in the past, and coordinated with virtually all European nations as well as many others, including international assets frozen (how will Mar-a-Lago make payroll?) for Russia as a nation, all the top OILigarchs as well as Putin himself (an unprecedented move), cutting off access to the international banking system, and further restrictions to trade and technology as well as direct sanctions on Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov and the top OILigarchs?
Trump basically reduces war crimes to a real estate deal and both he and Lisa completely misrepresent these severe, unprecedented sanctions that will impose real pain.
The real question is, why are these people peddling such perverse misinformation for the purpose of supporting our enemies over our own government and our allies?
This was a cartoon on the misleading right wing media today. Gas prices were low because the demand for gas was very low with the world closed down and the factories not running. Now the world is opened up again. That is much better for the world to be up and running. The economy was slowing down and showing signs or regression in early 2019 as the fuel from the 2017 tax give away to the wealthy was burned through. Rather than invest that money in the country or more capacity the corporations spent it on stock buy backs and raising dividends. The US is as energy independent as it ever has been. That situation has not changed just the price of fuel has risen. Do you think US oil doesn’t rise when the rest of the worlds oil cost is rising? The US is still a net exporter. The borders are secure. Nothing has changed at the southern border. Those coming across it illegally are apprehended and deported. Those seeking asylum are being housed illegally in Mexico, and those seeking asylum with families are vetted given, court dates, and monitored in the country. tRump praised Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and called Putin a genius for doing it. China is still in check , nothing has changed.
The congresswoman from Georgia spoke at the America First Political Action Conference, organized by white nationalist “groyper” leader Nick Fuentes.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at a white nationalist conference Friday night in Orlando, Florida.
SCREENSHOT FROM COZY TV LIVESTREAM
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) spoke at a white nationalist conference in Florida on Friday evening.
Greene, a QAnon conspiracist and rabidly anti-trans Republican, was the surprise speaker at the third annual America First Political Action Conference in Orlando, organized by white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes.
Fuentes, an antisemite and racist who attended the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and who was recently subpoenaed for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, excitedly introduced Greene as the featured speaker from behind a lectern inside the Marriott Orlando World Center, according to a livestream of the event. (HuffPost was denied entrance to AFPAC.)
In her speech, Greene referred to the assembled AFPAC crowd — among them prominent right-wing extremists who have been photographed giving the Nazi salute and reciting the infamous “14 words,” a white supremacist slogan — as “canceled Americans.”
“You’ve been handed the responsibility to fight for our Constitution and stand for our freedoms, and stop the Democrats who are the communist party of the United States of America,” Greene said.
She also took time to attack transgender people, claiming Democrats have destroyed “gender” and “pronouns.”
Her speech was immediately followed by a series of virulently racist and homophobic diatribes from prominent extremists.
“They want to replace you,” said Vincent James Foxx, a former propagandist for the white supremacist street-fighting club Rise Above Movement. “Western white culture is the majority culture, to which even non-whites assimilate into today — and they’re better off for it.”
Then far-right podcaster Stew Peters called for the execution of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whom he falsely blamed for causing the coronavirus pandemic.
“Tony Fauci literally unleashed a bio weapon on the world. Why is this man running around free instead of hanging on the end of a noose somewhere?”
The crowd roared.
Greene’s presence at AFPAC underscores the thin line separating the Republican Party from the white nationalist extremist movement in America. Greene, after all, was not the only public official who spoke at AFPAC on Friday night.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who spoke at last year’s AFPAC, made an appearance via a pre-recorded video, as did Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers and Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, both Republicans.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) poses for a picture with a Donald Trump supporter at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on Friday. Greene later spoke at AFPAC.
OCTAVIO JONES/REUTERS
Greene is also scheduled to speak Saturday morning from the main stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the pre-eminent annual gathering of the conservative movement in America, a few hours before former President Donald Trump is set to speak from the same stage.
HuffPost also spotted Greene at CPAC on Friday — only a few miles from the site of AFPAC — where she was treated like a celebrity, posing for photos and conducting interviews with right-wing media outlets.
Last year, Greene was stripped of her committee assignments for promoting violence against Democrats.
The Left’s worst nightmare is an informed parent. And in places like Florida and Missouri, legislators are doing everything they can to build an army of them.
For conservatives in the Sunshine State, it’s been a rocky road with the media and Democrats—who seem determined to misrepresent the legislation they’ve introduced.
Even President Joe Biden weighed in, calling it “hateful” to give parents a voice in their children’s education.
As usual, the proposal has nothing to do with LGBT discrimination. That’s a convenient talking point for a party who hasn’t found a way to combat parents’ newfound influence in education.
Dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill by the Left, Florida State Rep. Joe Harding’s (R) proposal is actually aimed at transparency (not that anyone would get that honest assessment from the radical media).
Florida Republicans want to give all parents the right—and means—to sue the school district if they aren’t getting the information they need.
If a mom or dad can’t afford to hire an attorney, the state board of education would hire a magistrate and pay for it.
FRC Action has been proud to be a part of that movement, encouraging parents through events like our School Board Boot Camp.
This weekend, we’re taking the training on the road to Lynchburg, Virginia for a special education summit with the Noah Webster Educational Foundation. The goal is to replicate that in more and more states.
Maybe you aren’t on the local school board. Maybe you don’t have kids in the public school. You can still use your voice: in the debate and in prayer for these state efforts and parents, fighting to bring light to a dark world.
I just watched a verified video of a Russian tank swerve across the road to run over and sit on a car going the other way on the road. The intent was clear to kill by crushing the people in the car. It looks like the man survived. But that is a war crime. You do not target or try to kill civilians that are no threat to you. You simply don’t try to deliberately kill civilians. The US and the nations must use everything we can to stand up to Putin.
Gods this is like me arguing with the right wing cult members. I can not count how many times I have been called evil for quoting facts.
The pipeline wouldn’t have helped the US oil situation at all. If it was running they projected 75% of the oil was going to overseas markets, and 25% was to be charged as an import. Meaning that when oil prices went up so would the oil in the pipeline and we still have to pay more. For some reason the right acts like it is free oil given to us that Biden cancelled, it never was that.
“US Senator Elizabeth Warren put the pieces together when Fed chair Jerome Powell appeared last month before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Offering a lesson in what she referred to as “Econ 101,” the senator from Massachusetts led Powell through a series of questions related to inflation.
“If you’re a corporation that has eaten up most of the competition and cornered the market, is it easier for you to raise prices on your customers and maximize your profits because you don’t have to worry about losing your business?” asked Warren.
Powell replied, “In principle, if you don’t have competition and you’re a monopolist, yes, you can raise your prices.”
“Okay,” Warren continued. “Over the past year, we know that prices have risen because of supply chain problems, unexpected shifts in the demand for goods, and even higher labor costs. But if corporations were simply passing along these costs in highly competitive markets, would the companies’ profits margins have changed much?”
After mumbling something about varying factors that impact such calculations, Powell concluded, “But, in principle, you could be right.”
With that answer in hand, the point was made:
Senator Warren: Well, it’s very much not what we’re seeing right now. Today, nearly two out of three of the biggest publicly traded corporations in the country are reporting fatter profit margins than they reported before the pandemic which doesn’t sound like they’re just passing along costs. So let me ask you: Does that increase in profit margins, combined with greater market concentration in industry after industry, suggest to you that some corporations may be passing along increased costs and, at the same time, charging more on top of that to fatten their profit margins?
Warren made the vital connection that all Democrats should be making as debates about the causes of inflation heat up. Instead of letting Wall Street apologists create the impression that inflation is simply the result of supply chain kinks and pent-up consumer demand after two years of pandemic lockdowns, and instead of letting Republicans suggest that federal and state investments in health care and housing are the problem, Democrats should be speaking like Warren. And like former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, a congressional candidate who declared Thursday: It’s not “inflation,” it’s price-gouging.Exxon and other Big Oil corporations are price-gouging us at the gas pump.Grocery chains are making record profits price-gouging us at the register.Corporations are bleeding working people dry. Enough.
In 2001, President George Bush issued a truly astounding appraisal of Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent who has run Russia since replacing Boris Yeltsin in 1999. “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”
Sure. Ukrainians are dying and you’re complaining about this. That’s your right, but it makes you look pretty self centered, don’t you agree? Maybe inflation would be better if your shithead POTUS Trump hadn’t screwed up the economy with a trade war with China. If you don’t see the huge problem with Russia invading Ukraine, you have a problem
Sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld in 1928. WELLCOME IMAGES/CC BY 4.0
![Hirschfeld described another of his patients, born either male or intersex, as displaying "androgyny, transvestism and homosexuality. ... He is wearing mourning clothes [on the left] because his mother has died; an indication of how seriously he takes his transvestism."](https://img.atlasobscura.com/Et6BUvXI6IlQF0Tz0WXte88-Pfyi_Mz0Gk3KXV8i-yc/rt:fill/w:1200/el:1/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL2Fzc2V0/cy9lMWYxMTJkZTMy/YWMyYzQyZTFfU2V4/dWFscGF0aG9sb2dp/ZSBjb3B5LmpwZw.jpg)
Scottie's Playtime 
John Kerry is a highly decorated Vietnam Veteran who risked his life to save others and was injured in battle and also came home to speak out against an unjust war. He has more understanding of life, death, energy and, yes, fighting for freedom than CHICKEN HAWK Mike Ramirez who has never served.
John Kerry’s current position is to seek solutions to the climate crisis and, in that capacity, he has called for greater energy independence, including the user of electric vehicles.
This is an important issue, but it has little direct relevance to the Ukrainian war of self-defense against the aggression by Russia and its dictator who receives worshipful praise from Trump, Pompeo and Tucker Carlson.
Trying to tie the two together by someone like Michael Ramirez, who understands neither demonstrates the desperation and intellectual vapidity we are dealing with.
If Russia stops fighting, the war ends.
If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.
Oil and gas are top products of both Russia and Ukraine, whose energy Russia covets.
Perhaps if we listened to John Kerry and plugged our electric vehicles into solar panels (as my wife and I do), we would disempower Putin and reduce the need to fight over energy which can be produced by sun, wind and other renewable sources.