Sorry to interrupt your Sunday but I think it useful in these final weeks before the election to give you the truth on important matters of public policy.
Today, Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance told NBC News that the tariffs Trump imposed during his term in office had not raised prices for Americans but had brought a significant number of jobs back to the United States.
Wrong on both counts.
In a careful analysis, researchers found the cost of Trump’s tariffs were “almost entirely borne by U.S. firms and consumers.”
That’s not surprising; tariffs function like taxes by raising the costs of imported goods. Trump’s proposal to raise tariffs on all imports as a means of raising revenue to offset a tax cut is obviously absurd.
Vance is also wrong about employment. Research clearly shows that the Trump tariffs did not bring jobs back to the United States.
Tariffs may be necessary for national security to protect critical industries such as semiconductors. But no one should be fooled into thinking they’re costless for consumers, or good for workers. The 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff made the Great Depression far worse than it already was.
That Vance would make these claims — which have been so convincingly debunked — should cause all of us some concern. He seems as unreliable as the person who named him his running-mate.
(It’s very interesting. Well-written, but there are still little gold nuggets or Easter Eggs scattered throughout. It’s worth the click. Read it on my phone last night.)
Paxton is a well known corrupt partisan hack. He is a complete culture warrior trying to turn the clock back to 1950 if not back to 1900. He wants rights only for white straight cis men. Women are to be controlled and used by men. There will be no LGBTQ+ people allowed in pubic or in society. They will hide and be afraid. As for non-whites. They won’t have rights nor ability to rise in society, business, or anything amounting to making gain for themselves. He wants them to be segregated and below every white person. Texas is not in play, it will go red and vote republican, so why raid the offices of the blue democratic leaning districts. To give credence to the upcoming cries of the election was rigged and election fraud when tRump and the republicans lose the election. They are doing everything they can to set the stage for what they fear most, loss of power, loss of the ability to rule over everyone else. Hugs. Scottie
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) office executed search warrants in one of the state’s largest urban counties — and biggest Democratic strongholds — where it alleges vote tampering.
On Tuesday the attorney general’s office searched offices in Bexar County, the state’s fourth most populous county and the home of San Antonio. The office said the searches followed a two-year investigation, and that “secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic.”
The searches came amid a broader push by Paxton to prosecute election fraud — a campaign that in 2023 spent $2.3 million to prosecute just four cases, according to the Houston Chronicle.
BREAKING NEWS: Attorney General Ken Paxton's office executes search warrants in several counties, including Bexar County, in ongoing election integrity probe. https://t.co/rAAW4J7nNxpic.twitter.com/FpSIlPmIKr
Paxton is a dick. He's searching "multiple San Antonio-area election offices" for evidence of fraud in SA, a big blue dot in a big red state. What does that tell ya?
“She wants to take away your private health care. There are many people in this country who spend a lot of money on private health care.
“It’s the best health care in the world, by the way. But they want to do it. They worked hard to make money and they want to do it under her. You’re not going to have private health care plans anymore.
“And you can be a wealthy person or middle income person and you want to spend on a really good plan, better than a government plan. And you’re not gonna be allowed.
“You’re all going to be thrown into a communist system. It’s a communist system. You’re going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care.” – Trump, at yesterday’s disastrous “press conference” in New Jersey.
Wow. Trump finally said it out loud. Everyone having access to health care is bad. pic.twitter.com/YVxWuFkY9C
He is appealing to the selfish assholes who want to deny everyone but themselves of any privilege. ” This is not about me hoarding. This is about you who should not have anything.”
If you take that argument to its logical conclusion (since timely health care in more than just a few cases literally saves lives), what it obliquely implies is that the amount of money you have in the bank is the measure of your worth as a human and that you don’t necessarily have a right to life.
Guess what. The anti-abortion challenges to EMTALA are also going to destroy EMTALA itself. Get used to being dumped back in the parking lot if you should be unlucky enough to not be able to prove your ability to pay. Too bad if you are brought in without identification or an accompanying family member with the insurance card.
… EMTALA … requires hospital emergency departments that accept payments from Medicare [i.e. virtually all hospitals] to provide an appropriate medical screening examination (MSE) for anyone seeking treatment for a medical condition regardless of citizenship, legal status, or ability to pay. Participating hospitals may not transfer or discharge patients needing emergency treatment except with the informed consent or stabilization of the patient or when the patient’s condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment.
… EMTALA, as a federal law, supersedes state laws that ban abortion. So, doctors who perform emergency abortions to stabilize a patient are protected by EMTALA. Hospitals that fail to do so could face fines or be booted from Medicare. …
[with more about cases SCROTUS heard and punted on]
By Eric Bradner, CNN 3 minute read Updated 4:58 PM EDT, Tue August 20, 2024
Donald Trump said Tuesday he would “certainly” be open to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. playing a role in his administration if the independent candidate drops out of the 2024 race and endorses the former president.
“I like him, and I respect him,” Trump told CNN’s Kristen Holmes in an interview after a campaign stop in Michigan.
“He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a very long time,” the Republican presidential nominee said. “I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.”
Trump’s comments came after Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said on a podcast posted Tuesday that the Kennedy campaign is considering dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump. She described the decision as intended to reduce “the risk” that Vice President Kamala Harris defeats Trump.
Trump said he would “love that endorsement, because I’ve always liked” Kennedy.
Asked if he would consider appointing Kennedy to a role in his administration if he wins in November, Trump said he “probably would.”
“I like him a lot. I respect him a lot,” Trump said. “I probably would, if something like that would happen. He’s a very different kind of a guy — a very smart guy. And, yeah, I would be honored by that endorsement, certainly.”
The former president also downplayed the potential for backlash from Republicans for appointing Kennedy, who has taken a number of progressive positions.
“I like smart people, and Republicans like me,” Trump said. (snip-More on the page, linked in the title of this post.)
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
“I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor.
“But civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.
“She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she got it for — and that’s through committees and everything else.” – Trump, speaking yesterday at a campaign event supposedly about antisemitism.
Trump: When we gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom… It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor— it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many… pic.twitter.com/a766KxAC2e
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.
Hi grand people. Yesterday I made what I hope will be daily videos. I need to work on the audio, and I apologize for tapping on the desk so a small section of the video. I did not think it was audible and only when I played it back did I realize it. I would love better sound equipment. Ron is wondering if a lapel mic would be better. He also intends to but something behind me to absorb the sounds. Once he saw the video he helped me adjust the lighting. He did not like how the bright light was washing out my lips. He said he was going to buy me lipstick. 😜😁😂💖 Anyway here is the video. If you need CC it takes YouTube a couple of days I think to add that and sometimes it is sloppy at it. Hope you enjoy. Hugs. Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 