Remember there is no Hamas in the West bank. However, while the Palestinians are forbidden to have any guns, the settlers are allowed to be fully armed. I recently posted how a settler shot and killed a Palestinian man who the settlers were taking his land, while IDF soldiers were standing there watching. The settlers routinely take the positions, entire homes, lands, crops, and smash the property they don’t steal from the Palestinians. All with IDF soldiers standing there watching. The Palestinians have the same status as slaves did in the 1840s US southern states. None! Plus as this video shows, the killing of Palestinian children in the West Bank is at an all-time high as well. Now do you understand what fuels Hamas and the anger the Palestinians feel towards Jewish people and Israel? Think how you would feel if you were treated like that where you live? Hugs. Scottie
This is great. The video has such good information and facts. If hearing is not your thing, the CC is also spot on. He talks of how immigrants don’t commit as many crimes / violent crime as native citizens. He points out how a study in 18 countries showed how trickle down did not work, while the wealthy doubled their wealth during it. He points out while republicans keep you scared about harm to your kids, no kid has been killed at a drag queen brunch / story hour while due to the gun loving republican congress kids have been mowed down trying to learn how to read and kids need bulletproof backpacks. He tells how Biden democrats have brought such large economic benefits and expanded healthcare to so many and then tells how republicans voted against all of it then tried to take credit for it all. He also mentions how much the tRump kids took while working in the White House, while hunter did not work in the WH. Hugs. Scottie
The fundamentalist Christians and the maga right can not tolerate positive affirming media about LGBTQIA, independent women, or black people because it ruins their narrative. They want to push the idea that women need men to function and be whole, that blacks are lazy and less intelligent, and that the LGBTQIA are evil incarnate that will destroy everything good in the country / world and god hates them, so god will take it out on everyone if they are treated decently. They are desperate to push the 1950s social narrative that white men are good, the Christian god is the right and only god in public, and that cis straight is normal so every thing else is an abhorrent abomination. They are wrong and stuck in a regressive oppressive past, unable to let others enjoy the modern world. They are modern Amish, only they demand that everyone live like them. Without positive reinforcement the lives of LGBTQIA and minority kids are much harder, much more anxiety ridden, much more unpleasant. Kids learn to hate themselves. They learn that others hate them and are free to attack them. So they either keep hidden, missing out on great times straight cis kids are having along with a much higher risk of suicide. Hugs
This is a fucking hard short video to watch. Children found alive buried under ruble of bombed buildings. The rescuers are just normal people and they want to help so badly that they get into each other. Some try to yank the kids out, which hurts the kids, but others make them stop. There are a few that seem to know they have to move the stuff first to get the weight off the kids. These are the terrorist that Israeli is targeting with the bombs in crowded places, little kids and civilians. Israel has the most sneaky intelligence spies that tracked down German Nazis all over the world, why not use them to get Hamas members instead of killing over 20,000 civilian men, women, and so many innocent children. This is why Israel will never get rid of Hamas, the hate against them, will never win this war. They are just creating more people who hate them. I know from experience you can not have respect and love beaten into you. Israel won’t get the Palestinians to love them by abusing them, killing them, making their lives miserable, making them live in fear. Trust me that just breeds more hate and anger. Sad angry hugs. Scottie
This is the incredible moment Palestinians pull out children trapped underneath the rubble of a house in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza, after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike.
M4L is a nationwide “parental rights” organization. Like Truth and Liberty, M4L strives to take over and transform public school boards in their own Christian “conservative” image. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated M4L as an extremist group due to their anti-LGBTQ+ policies and ties to the Proud Boys, which led the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Wallnau also popularized the “seven mountains” mandate trumpeted by Truth and Liberty. The mandate is a supposedly divine strategy used by Christian supremacists in order to achieve societal dominion for God, as I’ve reported previously. They seek control over these seven “mountains” or “spheres”: business, government, family, religion, media, entertainment, and education.
TALLAHASSEE — Time is running out for Florida to opt into a new federal program that would provide $248 million to help feed 2 million children next summer who might otherwise go hungry.
But it isn’t likely to happen as the state agency best equipped to run the program said it wouldn’t be pursuing the funding for it.
“We anticipate that our state’s full approach to serving children will continue to be successful this year without any additional federal programs that inherently always come with some federal strings attached,” Mallory McManus, spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families, wrote in an email 30 minutes after this story went online.
The Summer EBT Program was approved by Congress last December. It would provide healthy meals while school is out to children who receive free or reduced-cost lunches during the school year. So far, 25 states, territories and tribes have signed on.
It’s administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps.
After discussions between state officials and childhood hunger advocates, Florida has not designated a lead agency to administer the program. The deadline to apply is January 1.
Sky Beard, Florida director of No Kid Hungry, an advocate for programs to help end child hunger, called DCF’s decision “incredibly disappointing.”
More than three-quarters of Floridians reported it was harder to buy food this year than last, she said, and summer is the hungriest time of the year when children lose access to consistent and nutritious food provided by their schools. That money would have helped them buy groceries and other essentials at local stores across the state, she said.
“Not only does this hurt nearly 2 million children in our state but it also disregards the economic boost this would have provided many hardworking families,” said Beard, who added that her organization had been in conversations with House and Senate leaders about the program.
The state would have to provide a 50% match for administrative costs to participate, which comes out to about $12 million a year, Beard said. The state budget has no money approved for such an expense.
Spokespeople for the governor, Senate president and House speaker did not reply to requests for comment.
DCF was first asked for comment on Monday but did not respond until McManus’ email Thursday. It said the state already runs programs to make sure “children have access to nutritious meals.”
Those include free and reduced lunch programs at school, SNAP benefits to families who qualify, and Summer Break Spot programs administered by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Florida has a record of culling the ranks of those receiving food assistance. It opted out of a COVID-19 food benefits program two years before it expired in March, costing the state $5 billion. Also in 2021, Gov. Ron DeSantis decided not to enlist in a pandemic food aid program for about 2 million children from low-income families that would have brought Florida $820 million.
And with one in seven homes short on food to feed their families, Beard said, agencies like hers “are looking for as many tools in the toolbox as we can find. This would be a huge missed opportunity.”
In a letter to Washington in July, Vianka Colin of the agriculture department said her agency wasn’t “the best equipped” to run the program, and that DCF would be better suited to the task.
“At this time, the FDACS does not have the necessary infrastructure and legislative directive to administer the Summer EBT Program,” Colin said.
DCF does have the infrastructure as the state agency in charge of running SNAP and providing customer support services, she said. The agriculture department helped DCF issue Pandemic EBT cards in the past, and would be willing to do the same with Summer EBT cards, Colin said.
“We look forward to our continued partnership to ensure that children in our state have continuous access to nutritious food throughout the summer,” she wrote.
The full quote perfectly describes the Republican mindset.
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir.”
“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I am very glad to hear it.”
“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned–they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Clearly racism and bigotry. They even rescinded anti-discrimination policies. Why not discriminating is good, discrimination is bad. But we can thank tRump for making it safe for these … people to come out from under the rocks and openly push for white supremacy. Their goal is to push the LGBTQIA out of public view and remove any equality for black / brown people. Read the quote below and see if you can find the real truth he is saying.
Cook, in July, defended rescinding the anti-racism resolution, saying the board “doesn’t need to be in the business of dividing the community.”
Why would anti-racism divide the community unless a lot of the white community wants to be racist against the black community, and the whites feel targeted / put on by the resolution. Hugs. Scottie
O’FALLON, Mo. (AP) — A conservative-led Missouri school board has voted to drop elective courses on Black history and literature, five months after the same boardrescinded an anti-discrimination policyadopted in the aftermath of the killing ofGeorge Floyd.
The Francis Howell School Board voted 5-2 Thursday night to stop offering Black History and Black Literature, courses that had been offered at the district’s three high schools since 2021. A little over 100 students took the courses this semester in the predominantly white suburban area of St. Louis.
In July, the board revoked an anti-racism resolution and ordered copies removed from school buildings. The resolution was adopted in August 2020 amid the national turmoil after a police officer killed Floyd in Minneapolis.
The resolution pledged that the Francis Howell community would “speak firmly against any racism, discrimination, and senseless violence against people regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ability.”
The resolution and course offerings were targeted by five new members who have taken control of the board since being elected last year and in April, all with the backing of the conservative political action committee Francis Howell Families. All seven board members are white.
The PAC’s website expresses strong opposition to the courses, saying they involve principals of critical race theory, though many experts say the scholarly theory centered on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions is not taught in K-12 schools.
The decision to drop the courses was met with protests outside the board meeting. Several parents and students chanted, “Let them learn!” Inside, speakers questioned the decision.
“You’ve certainly taught me to not underestimate how low you will go to show your disdain toward the Black and brown communities’ experiences and existence,” Harry Harris, a Black father, told the board.
Another speaker, Tom Ferri, urged the board to focus on bigger issues such as high turnover among teachers.
“Tapping into a diverse talent pipeline would be a great way to slow attrition, but what diverse staff wants to work in a district waging culture wars?” he asked.
Board Vice President Randy Cook Jr., who was elected in 2022, said the Francis Howell courses to which he and others objected used “Social Justice Standards” developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center with a bent toward activism.
“I do not object to teaching black history and black literature; but I do object to teaching black history and black literature through a social justice framework,” Cook said in an email on Friday. “I do not believe it is the public school’s responsibility to teach social justice and activism.”
District spokesperson Jennifer Jolls said in an email that new Black history and literature courses “could be redeveloped and brought to the Board for approval in the future.”
This semester, 60 students at the three schools combined enrolled in the Black History course, and 42 took Black Literature, the district said.
Francis Howell is among Missouri’s largest school districts, with 16,647 students, 7.7% of whom are Black. The district is on the far western edge of the St. Louis area, in St. Charles County.
The county’s dramatic growth has coincided with the equally dramatic population decline in St. Louis city. In 1960, St. Louis had 750,000 residents and St. Charles County had 53,000. St. Louis’ population is now 293,000, nearly evenly split between Black and white residents. St. Charles County has grown to about 415,000 residents, 6% of whom are Black.
Racial issues remain especially sensitive in the St. Louis region, more than nine years after a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri,fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brownduring a street confrontation. Officer Darren Wilson was not charged and the shooting led to months of often violent protests, becoming a catalyst for the national Black Lives Matter movement.
Cook, in July, defended rescinding the anti-racism resolution, saying the board “doesn’t need to be in the business of dividing the community.”
“We just need to stick to the business of educating students here and stay out of the national politics,” he said.
The district’s description of the Black Literature course says it focuses “on contemporary and multi-genre literary works of Black authors and will celebrate the dignity and identity of Black voices.”
For the Black History course, the description reads, “Students understand the present more thoroughly when they understand the roots of today’s world in light of their knowledge of the past. This Black History course tells the history of Blacks from the beginning Ancient Civilizations of Africa through the present day accomplishments and achievements of Black individuals today.”
School board elections across the U.S. have become intense political battlegrounds since 2020, when some groups began pushing back against policies aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19.
PACs in many local districts have successfully elected candidates who promised to take action against teachings on race and sexuality, remove books deemed offensive and stop transgender-inclusive sports teams.
Never ceases to amaze me that a word generally understood to mean “not asleep,” “awake” is the worst epithet that Trump and his thugs can throw at progressives.
It just shows how entrenched they are in their dogma they are, that equality is so undesirable. They are incapable of considering anything that challenges their bigotry
I recall reading about a journalist who asked a bunch of Trump supporters what “woke” means to them. The replies were hysterical.
Half of them really didn’t have any idea what it means. The other half used the usual “commie, socialist, atheist, homo” description they use when describing anyone or anything they don’t like or don’t understand.
It was first used by white liberals to mean “I’m listening to women, black, hispanic, lgbt, etc. voices and hearing what they are saying.” How horrible. To acknowledge other people’s lived experiences and treat them with respect.
Yep, in the city of Saint Louis , in the gated private streets of 1904 Worlds Fair era mansions just north of the large city park where the Fair was held. Private streets are really private, they don’t allow (certain) non-residents to walk or drive there – the streets hire private security. I have lived about 2 blocks from idiot gun-toters’ house for over 30 years, in a neighborhood of pre-WWII high rise apartment buildings. 1904 World’s Fair is the one immortalized in the Judy Garland movie Meet Me in St. Louis. “Have yourself a merry little Christmas…”
Yes, it’s population boomed, growing more than four-fold in the ’50s. O’Fallon, MO, should not to be confused with O’Fallon, IL or the O’Fallon neighborhood in north St. Louis, all within the same metro and named after the same rail baron. The O’Fallon neighborhood was hard-hit by block-busting, white-flight, and subsequent red-lining. It’s to recent to be allowed to publish the individual household records to see how many moved from the O’Fallon neighborhood to what is now the largest, and exceedingly white, suburb of St. Louis.
Thanks to ten Bears for the link. This is a scary and important read, and people need to understand what will happen this time if tRump and his ilk get into power again. We must put small time bickering of age and other things aside until the threat posed by these people are gone. If we don’t stand together and vote for Biden and other democrats in large numbers or democracy goes away and the US becomes a hell of inequality, no rights, no personal freedoms, and required living as you are ordered to do so. The LGBTQIA will be illegal, as will other personal freedoms. Reading material and movies will have to be state sanctioned and follow party lines, like in China. Hugs. Scottie
If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you…
If Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world.
Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans, include:
Criminalizing homosexuality
Part of Agenda 47, Trump says, is “finishing the job” he started as president between 2017 and 2021.
Just two hours after he and Pence were sworn into office, they removed all mention of LGBTQ+ issues from the White House website.
Two days later, his State Department deleted former Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology to the nation for the “Lavender Scare” government persecution of gays and lesbians during the McCarthy era 1950s and early 1960s. A month later, Trump’s Justice Department announced they’d no longer defend the civil rights of trans kids.
His Education and HUD offices both withdrew their court defenses of queer people, particularly students and those in homeless shelters, and his Secretary of State refused to mention to the Russian Foreign Minister the detention and brutal executions of gay men by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. On May 4, 2017 Trump signed an executive order letting the DOJ ignore claims of illegal discrimination against queer people and women throughout every single one of the nation’s federal agencies.
In September, 2017, Trump’s Secretary of Education, billionaire Betsy DeVos, officially ended that agency’s Title IX guidance requiring schools to do something about sexual harassment, including sexual violence, against women and LGBTQ+ kids. In response to a question from the media about the change in policy and gay men, Trump said that his Vice President “wants to hang them all.”
In January of 2018, Trump rolled out the “Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom” at HHS, which would backstop people who wanted to use the excuse of “deeply held religious beliefs” to justify explicit discrimination against queer people and women, or to simply to make life difficult for government agencies.
All of this is just the beginning. The Human Rights Campaign has documented page after page of anti-queer policies put into effect by Trump that will be resurrected and put on steroids in a second term.
Destroy academic freedom and gut our public schools
In the Agenda 47 section of his website, Trump explains how he’s going to use our schools and colleges to indoctrinate young Americans in rightwing ideology. He explicitly says:
“When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again and once and for all.”
Any colleges that continue to teach “under the guise of [racial] equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”
In other words, just like Viktor Orbán did in Hungary and Putin did in Russia, he’s going to bankrupt the nation’s schools and colleges if they continue to teach the true history of America and promote egalitarian values. As Trump notes at his website:
“[W]e are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all.”
Gut the EPA, OSHA, CPSB, IRS, the Labor Department, and other federal agencies that keep our air clean, our water pure, and protect average Americans from predation by the morbidly rich and their corporations
Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon said he was going to use “impoundment” to strip funding from agencies his donors didn’t like, claiming that, even though Congress had appropriated budgets for them, he could, as head of the Executive Branch, simply “impound” the money and refuse to spend it. His plan to remake the federal government was interrupted by Watergate.
In 1974, Democrats in Congress got together and passed legislation outlawing this and Jerry Ford signed it into law. But Trump’s lawyers apparently think they can get it overturned through their appointees on the courts or even, if they can take both branches of Congress, through new legislation. As Trump says on his website:
“I will use the president’s long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings.”
Since the fossil fuel companies, banks, refineries, anti-union big employers, and their billionaires who fund the GOP hate all of these agencies, it’ll be a bonanza for them.
Not so much for working people, retirees, and those of us concerned about a livable future environment for our kids and grandkids, though.
Destroy the media and the truth
First, he wants to make it illegal for the federal government’s security services to notify social media platforms about Russian disinformation and other foreign efforts to swing elections, since nearly 100% of those efforts are coming from authoritarian countries in support of Trump and against democracy.
“I will ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information,” Trump proclaims on his Agenda 47 website.
He also wants to force social media to carry his buddy Putin’s trolls’ lies and attempts to pit Americans against each other, and limit the companies’ ability to label or block lies and propaganda. As Trump puts it:
“I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk revising Section 230 to get big online platforms out of censorship business.”
In Hungary, one way Viktor Orbán got rid of actual news media and replaced the ownership of all the nation’s major radio and TV networks, websites, and newspapers was by changing the libel laws so that public figures (like Orbán himself) could sue for libel when they thought they were treated unfairly.
They then sued company after company, commentator after commentator, reporter after reporter, into bankruptcy.
Orbán’s rightwing buddies could buy the media properties out of bankruptcy which is why now virtually all the media in Hungary is like Fox “News,” broadcasting suck-ups to Orbán and criticism of “liberals,” immigrants, and gays 24/7.
Trump wants to do the same here in the US.
When Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury came out with some unflattering characterizations of Trump in it, the then-president said:
“We are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. And if somebody says something that’s totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled, will have meaningful recourse.”
Simply reporting on what Trump’s up to could bring lawsuits that would bankrupt even the Times or the Post, and, like in Hungary and Russia, pretty much end the existence of a free and independent press in America.
Turning America into a vigilante police state
Trump has promised to pardon the January 6th insurrectionists who tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House (and whose actions led to the death of four police officers), and put into place a national “stop and frisk” law that upends the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
It would also — like Duterte in the Philippines who executed over 10,000 people during his reign of terror — authorize the federal government to immediately execute anybody convicted of trafficking in drugs without further due process or appeals.
Republicans in Texas have already pioneered using vigilantes to hunt down women who’ve had abortions and the people who’ve helped them. Expect these vigilante-enforced laws to spread across the country with a second Trump administration, with groups like the Proud Boys and III Percenters becoming the modern-day equivalent of the old west’s 19th century bounty hunters.
In a flashback to Hitler’s “work camps” that preceded the death camps by five years, Trump’s also proposed building concentration camps around the country to house “millions” of undocumented aliens and his political enemies. As he noted in a speech on Veterans’ Day this year:
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” adding that Russia isn’t a problem. Instead, he said, “the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
Presumably that means people like me and you, who would oppose his fascist agenda.
Corrupting the federal government
Way back in 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau thought he’d properly bribed President James Garfield by giving the president, during an in-person visit in the White House, a speech he’d written for Garfield to use. Garfield was polite but didn’t offer Guiteau a federal speechwriter’s job, which provoked a murderous rage: shortly thereafter, Guiteau met Garfield’s train and shot him twice, killing him.
The explicit and institutionalized practice of exchanging gifts and personal loyalty for federal jobs dated back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), arguably the second-most depraved president in American history behind Trump (which is probably why Trump hung his picture in the Oval Office; Jackson’s favorite nickname for himself — given him by the Cherokee he slaughtered — was “The Indian Killer”).
Jackson had elevated the practice of bribing the president — himself, at the time — to get federal jobs into an art-form: it was called the “spoils” or patronage system and was insanely corrupt. It was also, by Garfield’s presidency in 1881, routine.
After Guiteau failed to gain his “spoil” or “patronage” from Garfield and killed him, President Chester Arthur oversaw the writing and passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883.
It separated all those government jobs from the administration in power, turning federal workers from patrons of the president into permanent bureaucrats, whose first loyalty was to the nation instead of the guy who happened to be in the White House at any particular time.
It also explicitly outlawed bribing the president for a job. The goal, which it accomplished and has held for 140 years, was to end corruption in the bureaucratic branches of the federal government.
Donald Trump wants to functionally end the Civil Service system and replace the top levels of the nation’s 2.7 million federal workers with people loyal exclusively to himself.
He tried to do this in the last months of his presidency through an October 21, 2020 executive order, Schedule F, (which Biden reversed on his first day in office) that reclassified those workers out of their Civil Service jobs and into political appointee positions, doing the same work but now entirely dependent on the good will of the president to keep their jobs.
The next Republican administration will almost certainly put Schedule F back into force, reestablishing the 1829 spoils system for the federal government, and ending any possibility that people in the government will push back against Trump the way they did during his presidency.
Making the nation’s police into Trump’s private enforcers
The Department of Justice was established by President Ulysses S. Grant after the Civil War, in part to enforce federal laws protecting the rights of people who’d recently been freed from slavery.
After Richard Nixon tried to use it against his enemies (and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to prison for his efforts), Congress in 1978 passed the Ethics in Government Act which put a wall of separation between the DOJ and the White House.
Trump has explicitly proclaimed his intention to tear that wall down and go farther than Nixon ever imagined in using our armed investigative services for personal revenge and harassment of people he perceives as his enemies.
He wants the nation’s premiere police agencies to become his own personal enforcers, and has already said they will be hunting down “liberals,” Black Lives Matter protest participants, and Joe Biden, his family, and members of his administration.
He wants to imprison them, as well as the prosecutors and judges who have been participating in the effort to hold him to account for the crimes he committed over the past 7 years.
This politicization of law enforcement has been a first-order and primary feature of every authoritarian or totalitarian regime that’s risen to power over the past few hundred years, worldwide. It’s always one of the first things fascist leaders do when they seize power.
“Freedom cities”
In an apparent attempt to portray himself as a visionary like JFK, with his promise to send men to the moon and bring them back safely, Trump is promising to build “freedom cities” in his second term. The main feature he’s discussed is that people will get around in them in “flying cars.”
While it’s being portrayed as a goofy stunt designed to make him seem like an imaginative idealist, in fact there has been a movement among rightwing billionaires for some time to create cities that they basically run as little feudal fiefdoms, the same way the morbidly rich run their companies and their football teams.
Some libertarian billionaires assert that the only reason there’s never been a successful libertarian nation in the history of the world is because true libertarianism — government doing nothing but running the police, army, and courts and everything else left to private charity and business owners — “has never been tried.”
The ”freedom cities” could be a new libertarian experiment, or they may be the 21st century version of the old “company town,” where nobody has rights or protection of the law but is subject to the whims of the local billionaire owner. A group backed by Silicon Valley billionaires has already put forward what appears to be a plan to build a new city in California that they may or may not envision running along these lines. The group has so far purchased more than 53,000 acres of land, an area larger than the entire city of Beaumont, Texas, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Ending democracy across Europe and the world
Trump is also promising that he’ll end the brutal attacks against Ukraine on “day one” by simply turning the country over to his good friend, Vladimir Putin.
For the first time since World War II, this would legitimize a nation attacking another nation simply to seize their land, resources, and people.
It would greenlight China to do the same with Taiwan, and encourage every other tinpot dictator in the world to grab nearby territory that he wants. It would encourage war, and could very easily lead to a world war.
Abandoning Ukraine like this, along with Trump’s oft-stated preference to leave or end NATO and stop support for the UN, would lead the autocracies of the world — particularly Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and North Korea — to destroy the democracies in their sphere of influence, replacing those democracies with strongman autocracies.
The democratic experiment on this planet is only 250 years old, more or less, and this would signal a return to the way the world had been ruled for the 7,000 years prior to that: by kings, popes, mullahs, strongman warlords, and the morbidly rich.
Between Agenda 47 and Project 2025, Donald Trump and the rightwing billionaires who own the GOP have big plans for this nation, regardless of which Republican takes the White House next. They’re dead serious and far more well-funded than any of the groups that fight for and advocate democracy.
If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you.
Triple check your voter registration, especially if you live in a Red state where the voter purges have already begun, and make sure everybody you know is registered vote.
Thank you for reading The Hartmann Report. This post is public so feel free to share it.
DeathSantis keeps claiming that no books are being banned in Florida, that it is a hoax spread by groomers and democrats. Which to him and his ilk are the same thing. But he also claims the don’t say gay laws don’t target the LGBTQIA, but the way the laws are written they do have the effect of wiping out any representation of the LGBTQIA or the symbols of those groups from schools. Even anti-bullying programs had to be stopped because the way the laws are being interpreted they can not tell cis kids not to target or bully LGBTQIA kids. The real object is to drive any kid who is not cis or straight into the closet, into hiding, and instead of teaching respect, tolerance, and acceptance it teaches hate and bigotry. Hugs. Scottie
A quote from the linked article.
“It’s creating this culture of fear within our media specialists and even teachers who just want to have a library in their classrooms, so kids have access,” said Castor Dentel, a former OCPS elementary school teacher.
Parents, she said, can restrict what their own children read, making it hard to justify pulling so many books from classrooms. “They’re in a pile of we’ll-get-to-it-later and in the meantime, no one can read those books.”
The harm of so much censorship far outweighs the benefits of finding “a book or two that is offensive,” Castor Dentel added. “Look at all the chaos that has been created. It’s not worth it.”
A total of 673 books, from classics to best-sellers, have been removed from Orange County classrooms this year for fear they violate new state rules that ban making “sexual conduct” available to public school students.
The list also includes popular novels by Stephen King, Sue Monk Kidd and Jodi Picoult, classics like “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” “Jude the Obscure,” and “Madame Bovary,” and award-winning books like “A Thousand Acres,” “Beloved,” and “Love in the Time of Cholera.”
The rejected books include ones teachers say were once regularly taught in high school classes, such as “The Color Purple,” “Catch-22,” and “Brave New World.
Orange schools reject 673 books from classroom libraries for fear they violate new Fl law. The rejected books include "Paradise Lost," "East of Eden," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and "Madame Bovary." Story and list (first obtained by @FLFreedomRead): https://t.co/xNWZldrgeS
To fact-check Ron DeSantis’ claim that book bans in Florida are a “false narrative,” we started with the Florida Dept. of Education’s list of currently banned books https://t.co/rzGRjGtmRf
Yet as bad as these bans are, the thing that truly does piss me off the most about what Governor Puddingmitts and his fascist Rethugs are doing is they then LIE about it and insist they aren’t banning any books at all, not a one.
“It’s not censorship, if we do it. It’s restoring ‘parents’ rights’ to approve the curriculum.” That would be certain right-wing parents’ rights, and no one else’s.
Fudd looks kinda like Vivian Vance, like in that wonderful story from Tim Gunn’s childhood about meeting Miss Vance in J Edgar Hoover’s office, except that J Edgar wasn’t there too.
Paradise Lost, a 17th Century epic poem by John Milton which has been banned along with dozens of other absolutely classic works of literature, has NO sexual content, gay or otherwise.
It is being removed solely because radical fundamentalist Evangelicals object to its subject matter, namely the depiction of a former high angel who becomes jealous of Yahweh’s new favorite hominid toys and leads a revolt. As a consequence, Lucifer and his allies are cast down to Hell. That’s it. That’s the story.
But fundies hate it because Lucifer isn’t portrayed entirely as an unsympathetic character and because the story it tells doesn’t comport with their biblical dogma.
I’ve was suspicious that the buybull only tells one side of the story about Lucifer’s fall and his mission against humanity. Shouldn’t we hear from the other side too? I just love mythology.
The real message in Milton’s poem is a common but very true theme: “No one believes they are the villain in their own story.”
Essentially, what he was trying to do was to create a framework, a rationale to explain how and why a figure like Satan could come to be. In the end, the conclusion really was that the former angel Lucifer essentially got what he deserved.
But like I said, this whole story gets in the way of radical fundamentalist dogma, which when you think about it is at the core of all these book bans.
Scottie's Playtime 