Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.
Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”
He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.
In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks.
“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said.
His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.
“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who writes about authoritarianism and fascism and has been outspoken about the dangers of a second Trump administration.
“So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us,” she continued. “That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”
The Trump campaign said while the “media obsesses over rhetoric,” the former president is responding to voters’ concerns.
“The American people care about results that impact their lives. President Trump will take action to deport Kamala’s illegal immigrants and secure the border on day one. That’s what Americans want to hear,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to POLITICO.
Trump has long deployed racist attacks for political gain, including spreading conspiracy theories about whether former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was born in the United States. And when he launched his first campaign in 2015, Trump said Mexico was “not sending its best,” calling immigrants from the country “rapists” who are bringing in crime and drugs. He also promised that day to build a “great big wall.”
But times have changed, and so has he.
The country has moved to the right on immigration — including the Democratic Party and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Trump repeatedly bashed Harris as “dumb,” questioned her racial identity and has called her a “DEI” candidate — perpetuating the idea that women and people of color can only be in positions of power because of quotas and preferential treatment.
Harris has touted her record prosecuting transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers and has promised strict enforcement at the Southern border — an effort to appease Americans’ concern about illegal migration. The vice president has vowed to go even further than the Biden administration’s crackdown on asylum.
As the political conversation around immigration has shifted, Trump has not only intensified his rhetoric, but his policy plans.
He has increasingly targeted specific communities, including Springfield, Ohio, Charleroi, Pennsylvania and Aurora, arguing that immigrants are destroying American towns and cities across the country and using those examples to call for large-scale federal response. Trump has spent the last month on the trail elevating the claims about those communities — even as local officials have been denying these allegations and asking the Republican nominee to stand down.
Trump on Friday used false stories about gang takeovers in Aurora as he announced he would remove migrants connected to gangs under an “Operation Aurora” based on presidential wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act. (While police in Aurora have encountered some gang activity tied to a Venezuelan group, there has been no gang takeover in Colorado.)
“Efforts to blame outsiders, a politically voiceless group, which Trump is an expert at doing, has led to atrocities in the United States — everything from Japanese internment to Operation Wetback,” said Ediberto Román, a Florida International University law professor who studies xenophobia and immigration.
Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. womenand girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.
But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”
“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
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A POLITICO analysis of more than 20 of his rallies and campaign events shows Trump has demonized minority groups in all of them.
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Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.
Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”
He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.
In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks.
“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said.
His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.
“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who writes about authoritarianism and fascism and has been outspoken about the dangers of a second Trump administration.
“So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us,” she continued. “That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”
The Trump campaign said while the “media obsesses over rhetoric,” the former president is responding to voters’ concerns.
“The American people care about results that impact their lives. President Trump will take action to deport Kamala’s illegal immigrants and secure the border on day one. That’s what Americans want to hear,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to POLITICO.
Trump has long deployed racist attacks for political gain, including spreading conspiracy theories about whether former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was born in the United States. And when he launched his first campaign in 2015, Trump said Mexico was “not sending its best,” calling immigrants from the country “rapists” who are bringing in crime and drugs. He also promised that day to build a “great big wall.”
But times have changed, and so has he.
The country has moved to the right on immigration — including the Democratic Party and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Trump repeatedly bashed Harris as “dumb,” questioned her racial identity and has called her a “DEI” candidate — perpetuating the idea that women and people of color can only be in positions of power because of quotas and preferential treatment.
Harris has touted her record prosecuting transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers and has promised strict enforcement at the Southern border — an effort to appease Americans’ concern about illegal migration. The vice president has vowed to go even further than the Biden administration’s crackdown on asylum.
As the political conversation around immigration has shifted, Trump has not only intensified his rhetoric, but his policy plans.
He has increasingly targeted specific communities, including Springfield, Ohio, Charleroi, Pennsylvania and Aurora, arguing that immigrants are destroying American towns and cities across the country and using those examples to call for large-scale federal response. Trump has spent the last month on the trail elevating the claims about those communities — even as local officials have been denying these allegations and asking the Republican nominee to stand down.
Trump on Friday used false stories about gang takeovers in Aurora as he announced he would remove migrants connected to gangs under an “Operation Aurora” based on presidential wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act. (While police in Aurora have encountered some gang activity tied to a Venezuelan group, there has been no gang takeover in Colorado.)
“Efforts to blame outsiders, a politically voiceless group, which Trump is an expert at doing, has led to atrocities in the United States — everything from Japanese internment to Operation Wetback,” said Ediberto Román, a Florida International University law professor who studies xenophobia and immigration.
Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. womenand girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.
But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”
“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
Video at link above
Donald Trump vowed to “rescue” the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, from the rapists, “blood thirsty criminals,” and “most violent people on earth” he insists are ruining the “fabric” of the country and its culture: immigrants.
Trump’s message in Aurora, a city that has become a central part of his campaign speeches in the final stretch to Election Day, marks another example of how the former president has escalated his xenophobic and racist rhetoric against migrants and minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes. The supposed threat migrants pose is the core part of the former president’s closing argument, as he promises his base that he’s the one who can save the country from a group of people he calls “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.”
He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States. Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations.
In his lengthy speech Friday, Trump delivered a broadside against the thousands of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora. And he declared that he would use the Alien Enemies Act, which allows a president to authorize rounding up or removing people who are from enemy countries in times of war, to pursue migrant gangs and criminal networks.
“Kamala [Harris] has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens,” he said.
His rhetoric has veered more than ever into conspiracy theories and rumors, like when he amplified false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating pets. And Trump has demonized minority groups and used increasingly dark, graphic imagery to talk about migrants in every one of his speeches since the Sept. 10 presidential debate, according to a POLITICO review of more than 20 campaign events. It’s a stark escalation over the last month of what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology.
“He’s been taking Americans and his followers on a journey since really 2015 conditioning them … step by step instilling hatred in a group, and then escalating,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who writes about authoritarianism and fascism and has been outspoken about the dangers of a second Trump administration.
“So immigrants are crime. Immigrants are anarchy. They’re taking their jobs, but now they’re also animals who are going to kill us or eat our pets or eat us,” she continued. “That’s how you get people to feel that whatever is done to them, as in mass deportation, rounding them up, putting them in camps, is OK.”
The Trump campaign said while the “media obsesses over rhetoric,” the former president is responding to voters’ concerns.
“The American people care about results that impact their lives. President Trump will take action to deport Kamala’s illegal immigrants and secure the border on day one. That’s what Americans want to hear,” Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to POLITICO.
Trump has long deployed racist attacks for political gain, including spreading conspiracy theories about whether former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, was born in the United States. And when he launched his first campaign in 2015, Trump said Mexico was “not sending its best,” calling immigrants from the country “rapists” who are bringing in crime and drugs. He also promised that day to build a “great big wall.”
But times have changed, and so has he.
The country has moved to the right on immigration — including the Democratic Party and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. Trump repeatedly bashed Harris as “dumb,” questioned her racial identity and has called her a “DEI” candidate — perpetuating the idea that women and people of color can only be in positions of power because of quotas and preferential treatment.
Harris has touted her record prosecuting transnational gangs, drug cartels and human traffickers and has promised strict enforcement at the Southern border — an effort to appease Americans’ concern about illegal migration. The vice president has vowed to go even further than the Biden administration’s crackdown on asylum.
As the political conversation around immigration has shifted, Trump has not only intensified his rhetoric, but his policy plans.
He has increasingly targeted specific communities, including Springfield, Ohio, Charleroi, Pennsylvania and Aurora, arguing that immigrants are destroying American towns and cities across the country and using those examples to call for large-scale federal response. Trump has spent the last month on the trail elevating the claims about those communities — even as local officials have been denying these allegations and asking the Republican nominee to stand down.
Trump on Friday used false stories about gang takeovers in Aurora as he announced he would remove migrants connected to gangs under an “Operation Aurora” based on presidential wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act. (While police in Aurora have encountered some gang activity tied to a Venezuelan group, there has been no gang takeover in Colorado.)
“Efforts to blame outsiders, a politically voiceless group, which Trump is an expert at doing, has led to atrocities in the United States — everything from Japanese internment to Operation Wetback,” said Ediberto Román, a Florida International University law professor who studies xenophobia and immigration.
Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. womenand girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.
But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”
“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
Sorry I can not post the original. It is behind a sign-up to read wall for me. Maybe you can. Hugs. This with the other stuff I posted on guns from news stories (I lay awake most of the night trying to sleep but not getting there, due to steroid shots and worry about my friend) we see a rise in gang thug behavior by a minority of the right driven by maga and tRump driving fear of the other, fear of legal immigrants
These weren’t typical disaster-relief volunteers. They were members of Patriot Front, an organization branded by the Anti-Defamation League as a white-supremacist group. Neo-Nazi groups aggressively escalating their activity in recent months across the U.S. have seized upon a potent new recruiting tool: the surging tide of misinformation surrounding hurricanes.
Exploiting public confusion, grief and communication breakdowns, white supremacist groups are now showing up in vulnerable storm-ravaged communities in Florida and North Carolina.
They blend in among the many legitimate church or other charity workers that have rushed in to help. But these militia groups offer aid while filming propaganda videos that both amplify falsehoods about the government response and help the groups remake their image as patriotic civic organizations for men.
Read the full article. No paywall. Excellent reporting. Below is a sample of the screaming by the cult.
THIS is the front and center headline at the @WSJ. After gov has abandoned the people of NC, TN, the WSJ has this!!! No matter how much you hate the media…….
This week was a dark one for Ukrainian journalism.
On Oct. 9, Ukraine’s leading news outlet Ukrainska Pravda (UP) said the President’s Office was threatening their work by exerting “long-term and systemic pressure” against the newsroom.
UP said Zelensky’s office was blocking government officials from talking to the outlet or taking part in its events, as well as pressuring businesses to stop advertising collaborations with the outlet.
“These and other non-public signals indicate attempts to influence our editorial policy. It is especially outrageous to realize this at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when our joint struggle for both survival and democratic values is extremely necessary,” UP said in a statement.
The statement also referenced the outright disrespectful exchange between Zelensky and UP’s star political reporter Roman Kravets during a press conference in late August. The President was visibly annoyed with Kravets, interrupted him, and eventually accused the outlet of having a secret agenda to undermine him with negative coverage.
It’s worth noting that all governments, even democratic ones, try to control media narratives and restrict access to journalists. All those anonymous American officials giving comments to journalists without authorization risk getting fired when doing it, for example.
However, what is happening to UP is worse than just normal politics. Pressuring businesses to stop collaborating with the outlet directly undermines UP’s ability to stay afloat, at a time when advertising already plunged because of the war.
To be frank, apart from being objectively worrying, this situation is also quite embarrassing. Every public-facing Ukrainian spends countless hours persuading the world that Ukraine is a democratic country that’s defending European values and is worth the world’s help. Why the Ukrainian government would shoot itself in the foot when the world’s patience and money for Ukraine are running out is a mystery to me.
Yet this wasn’t even the worst piece of news. On the next day, we learned that Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna died in Russian captivity.
She was only 27, and was supposed to be included in the upcoming prisoner exchange, the government said. She was reportedly held in a brutal detention facility in the Russian city of Taganrok, known for its torture of prisoners.
I never met Viktoria, but her former colleagues say she was the embodiment of her profession – brave and determined, always the first one at every scene, working and bothering editors about her work 24/7.
She was taken captive while reporting from Russian-occupied territories in August 2023. But that wasn’t her first time in Russian captivity.
Viktoria was first detained by the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) for 10 days in March of 2022. To the dismay of her colleagues, she was trying to get into occupied Mariupol, which was being obliterated by Russian fighter jets back then.
“Nothing could stop Vika if an idea was born in her head. Nothing was more important to her than journalism,” her former colleague Yevheniia Motorevska wrote on Facebook. “She was a force of nature that we failed to tame.”
On the geopolitical front, Ukrainians were disappointed with the postponement of the Ramstein group meeting because of Joe Biden’s preoccupation with Hurricane Milton.
The Ramstein group—which is called the Ukraine Defense Contact Group but steals the name from Germany’s Ramstein Air Base, where its meetings happen—is a coalition of more than 50 states who militarily support Ukraine in its war against Russia.
The group was scheduled to meet this Saturday, Oct. 12, at the level of state leaders, for the first time ever. Zelensky hyped up the meeting beforehand, saying it would be “special”, while the media reported that President Biden may even be ready to advance Ukraine’s NATO bid before he leaves office, perhaps making significant decisions during the Ramstein. Biden was supposed to chair the meeting. But it didn’t happen: The US President had canceled to stay in the US and deal with the hurricane.
With Ramstein postponed indefinitely, Zelensky went on a European tour with his “victory plan”, presenting it to leaders of France, the UK, and NATO.
Presidential Office advisor Mykhailo Podoliak said on Saturday that the President might reveal the plan to the Ukrainian public within days. I’ll keep you updated as soon as that happens.
That will be it for today. I’ll be back next week,
October 12, 1492 Natives of islands off the Atlantic shore of North America came upon Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who was searching for a water route to India for Spanish Queen Isabella.
October 12, 1945 Pfc. Desmond Doss became the first conscientious objector ever to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist, enlisted in 1942 but refused to carry a rifle or train on Saturdays. On the island of Okinawa, under heavy Japanese fire, he saved the lives of 75 sick and wounded soldiers by lowering them, one by one, down a 400-foot cliff. The guest house at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is Doss Memorial Hall in his honor. Read more (includes movie trailer)
October 12, 1958 A Reform Jewish Temple in Atlanta (the city’s oldest) was firebombed with fifty sticks of dynamite in retaliation for Jewish support of local black civil rights activists. The Temple’s Rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was outspoken in his support of civil rights and integration, and was a friend of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. before he became well known nationally. From Georgia PBS
October 12, 1967 British zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his book, “The Naked Ape,” a frank study of human behavior from a zoologist’s perspective. Morris had earlier studied the artistic abilities of apes and was appointed Curator of Mammals at the London Zoo. Read more
October 12, 1967 “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” appeared in The Nation and the New York Review of Books. 20,000 signed it, including academics, clergymen, writers. It urged “that every free man has a legal right and a moral duty to exert every effort to end this war [Vietnam], to avoid collusion with it, and to encourage others to do the same.” This document became the main basis for the federal government’s criminal prosecution (for encouraging draft evasion) of five of the signers: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber, and the Reverend William Sloane Coffin. Read the Call
October 12, 1970 Lt. William Calley was court-martialled for the massacre of 102 civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai; far more actually died during the incident. The full sad story
Lt. Calley
October 12, 1977 “Regents of the University of California v. Bakke” was argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question: Did the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by practicing an affirmative action policy that resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke’s application for admission to its medical school? Read more
(Note from Ali: Jess wrote the anti-misogyny rant I was thinking of.)
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
~Maya Angelou
I go solo camping often. I head up to the North Shore in Minnesota or down to Northwest Arkansas and hang out a few days by myself or with my daughter. My husband is a big ole, corn-fed country boy who will not sleep on the ground, so we leave him at home.
I love to sleep outside, but the very thing I hate about camping is sleeping outside — exposed. As a woman, this is something I think about a lot. When I wake up for some unknown reason and wonder if I heard something in my sleep. Or, I wake up to actually hearing something or someone. I get scared. I get nervous. I wonder why in the hell I do the things I do and take the chances I take.
And then I go back to sleep and wake up on Lake Superior or Devil’s Den and hike to waterfalls and forget it all until it is time to go back to sleep outside. Love and hate.
Lake Superior, Split Rock Lighthouse State Park.
I once asked my husband if he’s ever afraid when he is alone. He laughed out loud.
“Of what? Why would I be scared?”
I tend to be an overthinker, but I can’t tell you how many times I have wondered about his statement of fact. He is not scared. Of men or animals or most of the danger I intuitively see around me. He has nothing to be scared of — he is physically imposing and there is not one law on the books that will harm him.
He has never worried about walking at dark. Or encountering someone on a trail. Or sleeping outside. Or most of the things that take up a lot of my mental space.
He has lived his life completely unencumbered by his environment, even as a resident of a red state. A homegrown Missouri man.
Sure, the Missouri GOP trifecta, a supermajority, has defunded the schools and let our roads crumble and closed hospitals and generally made a nuisance of themselves, but that is exactly what they were to him. An inconvenience. Annoying. Turds in the punchbowl, but nothing to get too riled up about.
He was just living his life.
He didn’t see it. Not because he is not empathetic. Not even because he doesn’t pay attention to politics. It’s because he has lived his life with a privilege he didn’t know existed until I pointed it out. Because, until he saw the world through his daughters’ eyes, through my eyes, these things just never occurred to him. He didn’t deny privilege, he just didn’t see it. He isn’t uncaring or a dolt — he just had absolutely no experience being marginalized. I had to tell him.
Once he saw it, though, he couldn’t look away. He was disgusted. He understood.
This is where I should mention something that I have spoken of in front of safe men. When I tell them that I have been sexually assaulted as well as almost every woman I know, they are astounded. When I tell them of sexual harassment, they are amazed. And then, one day it clicked for me. These are good and safe men and the predators know it. They don’t hurt women while they are around. They don’t talk about it or joke about it, because these men wouldn’t put up with it. The good guys have often really not been a witness to the behavior we have endured because they are just that…good guys.
I am not making excuses for the menfolk.
The men in my life will attest to the fact that I constantly push them to see what we see. I am hard on them. I ask that they look beyond themselves and be an ally to others. To be a witness and bear witness.
We don’t need protectors, but we do need witnesses.
As a woman, as a mom of girls and granddaughters, I have no degree of safety in Missouri and I know all of my girls fall into the same category. They are not safe from sexual assault or rape. They are not safe after a sexual assault or rape. They will likely be dismissed, or worse, blamed. They would be forced to bear the child of their rapist. They would likely be forced to co-parent with their rapist.
Missouri has a total abortion ban with no exemptions for rape or incest. Not that it would matter…I am sure there is some process to that exemption as well and I really hate the notion that a woman or girl can’t have bodily autonomy unless she has first been violated.
Writing that sentence made me sick at my stomach.
Missouri women have been denied care because of the abortion ban. A Kansas OBGYN, Dr. Ahmed, shared a story last week about her Missouri patient who suffered a miscarriage:
“She came in for a follow-up still bleeding,” said Dr. Ahmed. “Turns out there was some tissue that was still there. Retained tissue in that setting can become infected, can cause a lot of bleeding, so I discussed with her the options.”
The patient decided on medication and Dr. Ahmed says she prescribed it. But the following morning, she received a fax from Walgreens on Stateline after prescribing Misoprostol or Cytotec for the miscarriage stating, “Under Missouri law medication abortion is now illegal. Please advise patient to fill across Kansas border”.
Missouri has also had a 25% decrease in OBGYN residency applicants willing to come to our state because of the ban. That decreases care for all women, not just pregnant women.
We aren’t safe in Missouri.
The good news is that Missourians will get to vote on Amendment 3 in a few weeks. This amendment will restore abortion rights in Missouri. We will be the first state to overturn a complete ban.
The bad news is that our bodily autonomy is even put to a vote. That geography dictates our rights. That random folks will get to decide if we are first or second-class citizens. That we have been treated as less than. That our rights have been up for debate.
This is red state shit. We are used to it. It is constant and it is something we live in fear of every day. It is the thing I point to when I am speaking to the men around me. I never let them daydream their way back into complacence. I don’t let them fade into the peace of not knowing…of not being engaged. I don’t let them forget the fear of the women around them. I keep them awake.
Woke. (Emphasis mine- Ali)
I don’t want to be scared of living in Missouri anymore. I don’t want anyone to be scared in their home state. This is why we have to speak on it. Say it.
The reality is that we cannot gain our rights back without involving men. I have such good men in my life. Would they have voted yes on Amendment 3 without me telling them? I’d say yes. Would they be as rabid in telling other men around them to vote yes if I had not worked on them for so long? Maybe not.
It’s not that we are dealing with self-centered jerks. It’s that they didn’t know what they didn’t know.
Trump has a long history of endorsing police violence, having said that police reaction to the racial unrest in response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020 “was a beautiful thing to watch.”
The Purge is a revenge horror franchise.
The only thing Trump’s speech has in common with it is he’s talking about a temporary spasm of widespread violence.
That is NOT what this is. This is STATE-sponsored terrorism against a targeted group. This is 1938 in Nazi Germany. https://t.co/49S7Hkwe8A
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) September 29, 2024
The former president, who risks jail time and more criminal trials if he loses, has expanded his range of baseless attacks on U.S. voting procedures in recent weeks and months. Trump falsely claimed Monday that Democrats are exploiting an overseas ballot program for expats and military members in order to circumvent “any citizenship check or verification of identity.”
Look at the projection in the next story. Look the only end might be the clawing back some of the taxes owned to the public treasury from the wealthy people who constantly want more and more public funds only for themselves. The only loss will be a white majority nation, and Elon Musk is a full out South African racist bigot. Full out racist bigot. He is not worried about voting, he is a white man. He is worried brown / black people will get to vote. He and tRump talk bad about Haitians and immigrants while hiring them on the cheap. Hugs. Scottie
Trump: Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong and I don’t know what it is but there is something missing pic.twitter.com/RP5TaHMVhQ
These maga gang thugs think they can get away with anything and that they don’t have to obey any laws or rules. Hate rules their lives. It may have been this guy who said he wrote the bill because he couldn’t stand that kids were coming out at school and being accepted by other students instead of targeted for abuse. He wants LGBTQ+ kids to be scared to be themselves and to stay in the closet hiding from them straight cis bullies. Hugs. Scottie
Fine was in court due to a lawsuit involving a Brevard County election official. As I’ve said here before, he is probably the most obnoxious of all Florida lawmakers, which is really saying something.
He last appeared here when DeSantis vetoed funding for a “woke zoo” because it wouldn’t host a fundraiser for Fine.
Fine also appeared on JMG in May 2022 when he tweeted what many interpreted as a threat to assassinate President Biden. That tweet remains online.
Before that, Fine appeared on JMG when he called for felony charges after Florida Democrats staged a sit-in over the racist US House map submitted by DeSantis.
And before that, he appeared here when he threatened to defund a Florida Special Olympics event and called a local school board member a “whore” because she’d been invited its fundraiser gala and he was not.
Fine was a sponsor of the bill that stripped Disney’s self-governing status. His family owns annual passes to the “woke” theme park giant.
In 2022, he arranged for a Florida town to honor a war criminal who was convicted of executing four Iraqi prisoners. In April 2023 he declared, “Damn right, we ought to erase” LGBTQs.
Fine is also a sponsor of Florida’s bill criminalizing drag shows in view of minors. Of note, his wife runs a self-described “sultry” burlesque show that would violate her husband’s law.
ALEC member and Israel proxy Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) was "caught on camera appearing to give the middle finger and making other gestures during an Aug. 19 virtual court hearing." Fine and his attorney will attend a contempt of court hearing today.https://t.co/6CSOoF56Fm
A Michigan man, 61, was arrested after assaulting a postal carrier who delivered a flyer featuring Kamala Harris. He told the postal carrier that he didn’t want that "Black b****" in his mailbox and then threatened her with violence. https://t.co/DIlREaWx3b
The Straight Pride Flag looks like it’s the cover of MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS if it was written by the Hamburglar. pic.twitter.com/k69ANfFc1y
Hit the link for other already known examples of Trump withholding federal relief from blue states. Earlier this week Trump posted that Biden was withholding relief from “Republican areas” in North Carolina.
You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you.
It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it. https://t.co/FuPHwtlZuu
Upon the advice of right-wing Christian Independence Law Center, South Western's far-right school board is cutting windows so passersby can look into the so-called “gender-identity” student bathrooms. "A new Level of Weird," writes @YorkDispatch. READ: https://t.co/KxuSQAaZojpic.twitter.com/usSfxhl451
October 7, 1989 Tens of thousands (estimates ranged from 40,000 to 150,000) from all over the country marched on Washington, lobbied Congress and Housing Secretary Jack Kemp to provide affordable housing for the homeless. Some of the signs read, “Build Houses, Not Bombs.” Kemp signed a letter committing the George H.W. Bush administration to several steps to help the homeless, including setting aside about 5000 government-owned single-family houses for them.
=============== October 7, 1998 Matthew Shepard Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days later. His death helped awaken the nation to the persecution of homosexuals and their victimization as objects of hate crimes. A play about the incident, and later an HBO movie, “The Laramie Project,” has been performed all over the country. Watch a preview MatthewShepard.org Matthew’s Place
Brain drain could undermine the country’s hi-tech economy as liberal families conclude social contract has been broken
This summer, the Nobel laureate Prof Aaron Ciechanover joined a group of prominent Israelis gathered in the ruins of the Nir Oz kibbutz to demand a hostage release and ceasefire deal.
Nir Oz was the worst hit of all the communities targeted by Hamas on 7 October, with a quarter of its residents kidnapped or killed. Twenty-nine are still in Gaza.
If the hostages were not brought back, the basic social contract that underpinned Israeli society would unravel, the 77-year-old professor of medicine warned – with catastrophic consequences for the entire country.
He cited an accelerating “brain drain” of doctors and other professionals as a worrying sign that some of Israel’s elite already feel they no longer have a future in the country. And without them, Israel itself might struggle to have a future.
Ciechanover is a long-term critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and joined protests against his government before the war. But concern about this trend is not limited to political opponents of the Israeli leader. Earlier this year, Netanyahu’s former chair of the National Economic Council, Eugene Kandel, joined forces with the administrative expert Ron Tzur to warn that Israel faces an existential threat.
In a paper calling for a new political settlement, they warned that under a business-as-usual scenario “there is a considerable likelihood that Israel will not be able to exist as a sovereign Jewish state in the coming decades”. (snip)
The problem precedes the 7 Octoberattacks and the war that followed, as demographic and political shifts have prompted some secular, liberal Israelis to question their future in a state increasingly dominated by religious traditionalists.
Noam is a father of three with businesses that include a PR consultancy and a cannabis pharmacy. He expected that his 40s would be a time of “less doing, more enjoying”, after decades of hard work.
Instead, he and his wife spend evenings poring over school options in European countries as they weigh up where to start a new life. The war increased the urgency of the search, but it has been a decision born out of longstanding concerns.
“The main reason we are leaving is that we are seeking a better future for our children. Even if peace can be brokered tomorrow, we still can’t see a future we want to be a part of,” Noam said. “The demographics speak for themselves.”
Springfield city government announced Wednesday that only residents of Clark County will be permitted to speak during the public comment portion of City Commission meetings in the future.
“The city of Springfield is committed to prioritizing the voices of our local residents at all commission meetings,” a city statement released Wednesday said. “To enhance community engagement and ensure that our decisions reflect the needs and interests of Springfield residents, we are implementing a new policy effective immediately.”
For months, Springfield City Commission meetings have been packed with attendees, many of them addressing grievances toward the commission over Haitian immigration issues. Some recent meetings have met the capacity limit for the City Hall Forum, forcing some later arrivals to sit outside on City Hall plaza.
To participate in the public comment portion of future commission meetings, speakers will have to complete a comment card and present valid proof of residency. Accepted forms of identification will include a State of Ohio driver’s license or a State of Ohio ID card.
“This requirement for proof of residency is designed to uphold the integrity of our meetings by ensuring that Clark County residents have a proper platform to address issues that matter to them,” city officials said. “This policy also aims to minimize disruptions from individuals who may misrepresent their residency to seek notoriety or cause distractions during meetings.
City officials said they do encourage all residents to speak up and share their perspectives on community matters at the meetings.
The next City Commission meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, in the City Hall Forum at 76 E. High St. in downtown Springfield.
Scottie's Playtime 