"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Archive for the ‘– Did they REALLY say that?’ Category
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, March 4, 2021
Welcome to the “new” reality.
But, just for a moment, let’s play “What if?”
What if the United States’ failed response (because of the inactions and deliberate failures of the previous administration) was the primary cause of the mutated, more virulent variants?
It’s entirely plausible.
Otherwise, how to explain that the United States, with the world’s 3rd most populous nation – China and India each have WELL OVER 1 BILLION MORE – has ABSOLUTELY THE WORLD’S WORST COVID-19 INFECTION RATE?
Other nations, most notably New Zealand, have had phenomenal success in keeping the disease at bay, relatively speaking, as have a few other nations, including China, India, Greenland, Australia, other Scandinavian nations, and… well, you get the picture.
Perhaps there should’ve been a sign:
Choose One: Your Life, or Your Freedom.
“When Will It End?” : How A Changing Virus Is Reshaping Scientists’ Views On COVID-19
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Chris Murray, a University of Washington disease expert whose projections on COVID-19 infections and deaths are closely followed worldwide, is changing his assumptions about the course of the pandemic.
“Let me explain to you why it is hard and why it is going to take time. I think it is important to understand what we have inherited, because it defines the situation as it currently stands. Entire systems are not rebuilt in a day or in a few weeks. To put it succinctly, the prior administration dismantled our nation’s immigration system in its entirety.
“When I started 27 days ago, I learned that we did not have the facilities available or equipped to administer the humanitarian laws that our Congress passed years ago. We did not have the personnel, policies, procedures, or training to administer those laws. Quite frankly, the entire system was gutted.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, March 1, 2021
This morning, bright and early around 0300 (that was the timestamp upon it, I was blissfully asleep then), I received an email from a friend and his better half whom are expats in Kitahiroshima on the island prefecture of Hokkaido, in northernmost Japan, near where her parents reside.
He wrote in part that “Vaccinations for coronavirus have started here but only for those with the highest priority (which makes sense).”
In that message, he also included a copy of an email communique from the United States Department of State which read in part, “The United States Government does not plan to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to private U.S. citizens overseas.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 22, 2021
(L-R ) Congresswomen Sheila Jackson Lee, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sylvia Garcia help distribute food at the Houston Food Bank on February 20, 2021 in Houston, Texas. – Texans are in need of aid after an unprecedented and deadly “polar plunge” burst pipes and left millions in the US state shivering without power or clean water for days. (Photo by Elizabeth Conley / POOL / AFP)
You KNOW things’re bad when a renown New York City Progressive Democrat has more chutzpah, and gets more things done for Texans than does their ne’er do well, out-of-touch privileged U.S. Senator Ted “Cancun” Cruz.
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 3:51 PM ET, Monday February 22, 2021
(CNN) – Last Thursday, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) announced her plan to raise money to help victims of the extreme weather — and power grid failure — in Texas.
Obviously, the most important thing here is that millions more dollars will go to Texans still struggling to find potable water and deal with the damage from last week’s deep freeze. (Ocasio-Cortez also traveled to the state over the weekend to see the situation firsthand.)
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, February 20, 2021
Update: Saturday, 20 February 2021 NOTE: TO THE READER: As you read any story anywhere mentioning, involving, or written by Donald V. Watkins, Sr., it must be borne in mind that he is now a Federal Convict, and along with his son, Donald V. Watkins, Jr., was found guilty of numerous charges.
“Donald Watkins Sr. was convicted of seven counts of wire fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy.
Donald Watkins Jr. was convicted of one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 19, 2021
Imagine for a minute, if you can, what it would be like for your elected Representatives and Senators, at either the State, or Federal level to literally “undo,” or attempt to “undo,” an election that was in every way conducted properly (meaning ethically, honestly, and openly, in accordance with all applicable laws), simply because they didn’t “like” the way The People voted – the results or outcome of the election wasn’t to their suiting, or liking.
The Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney and the Georgia State Attorney General’s Office are both investigating that matter in order to determine what, if any, election-related laws were broken in the course of that phone call, which may include “the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.”
The audio taped recording of the Trump-Raffensperger phone call is quite likely much worse than any of the numerous covert so-called “smoking gun” audio tapes of Richard Nixon’s presidency. Nixon’s numerous recorded conversations with staff, and others, including of his phone calls, which detailed his involvement in the numerous crimes of the Watergate burglary/break-in, also revealed him to be paranoid.
And cockamamie conspiracy theories aside – especially and particularly the one of “The BIG Lie,” as told by the former President – NO ONE made any overt, or clandestine effort or attempt to “steal” any election from anyone. PERIOD.
But the point of the matter is this:
There are
GENUINELY
now-ongoing efforts
to literally “undo”
the results of honest elections
in the United States.
No, this is NOT a joke… and, NO this is NOT a conspiracy theory.
It is a documented fact.
What does it say for democracy and the democratic process if the expressed will of the people is somehow, overridden, undone, or cancelled?
Yeah… it’s that “cancel culture” thing.
And it is Republicans who are doing it.
Remember the thing about “psychological projection” – a morbid behavior in which people deny or defend in themselves the very characteristic or behavior they abjure and detest in others? It’s a type of “blame shifting,” and a refusal to accept either reality or responsibility.
Read for yourself the following 2 news items to learn what GOP-Banana Republican types are doing in some states.
Marijuana Foes Deploy New ‘Playbook’ To Thwart State Legalization, Upend Election Results
Efforts to thwart voter-approved marijuana legalization in Mississippi, Montana and South Dakota are evidence of a “playbook” that reflects new legal strategies and greater willingness among local government officials to nullify election results, experts say.
Those efforts – led by anti-marijuana politicians and other opponents – threaten to stop or delay the implementation of new medical and recreational cannabis markets that would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in sales a year.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, February 18, 2021
The Texas Interconnection, which covers 213 of Texas’ 254 counties, is managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Counties NOT included: Bailey, Bowie, Camp, Cass, Cochran, Dallam, El Paso, Gaines, Gregg, Hansford, Hardin, Harrison, Hartley, Hemphill, Hockley, Hudspeth, Hutchinson, Jasper, Jefferson, Lamb, Liberty, Lipscomb, Lubbock, Marion, Moore, Morris, Newton, Ochiltree, Orange, Panola, Polk, Sabine, San Augustine, San Jacinto, Shelby, Sherman, Terry, Trinity, Tyler, Upshur and Yoakum. (Total = 41)
By now, you’ve likely read or heard numerous stories of Texans’ suffering because of electrical power outages, that are now becoming rolling blackouts.
And, perhaps as well you’ve read that deregulation has been a significantly influential part of the problem.
And then, you may have also read or heard that failure to properly insulate and protect against wintry weather conditions has been the preliminary finding of a root cause analysis.
But you may also wonder why other states or nations which regularly experience much colder temperature extremes don’t have the same kinds of problems that Texas has.
Scandinavian countries, Minnesotans, Michiganders and Mainers all regularly have much cooler temperatures and wind power, but their windmills and electrical power grids don’t stop operating like the ones in Texas did. And Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and other European nations also regularly have cold weather that doesn’t shut down their power grid. So, what gives?
The weather-related failures of Texas’ natural gas (NatGas) infrastructure that has resulted in this present and most unfortunate crisis, are because NatGas pipelines froze in the very time of year and season in which they are most heavily relied upon.
Again, states and nations with much colder climes don’t seem to have the kinds of problems that Texas is experiencing. And there remains at least 42 signatory nations with permanent, year-round research stations in the Antarctic, which also have electricity. So again, why exactly did natural gas pipelines freeze in Texas? Water is the primary thing that freezes, right?
With single-digit temperatures, Texas’ Natural Gas pipelines froze up because there was moisture in the gas. Like moisture on the exterior of an iced beverage glass, cold temperatures cause moisture to condensate, and once liquefied, then exposed to freezing temperatures, gas pipelines were literally blocked with ice, and in some cases, the compressors lost power. It’s common for Natural Gas to be stored underground, which is also where it originates. So in its “raw” state, or untreated condition, it is not uncommon for water – either as liquid, or vapor – to be present in the unrefined gas, which in turn, must be “dried out,” or dehumidified to certain levels in order to be salable and usable.
In response, pumps which were used to deliver Natural Gas then slowed down. The Diesel engines which were used to power the pumps refused to start. And from there, it was a cascade of failures – a “domino effect” – one power plant after another went offline. Even 1 of Texas’ 2 nuclear reactors went dark, hampered by inoperable equipment. And to be certain, the nuclear power plant wasn’t “crippled” in the sense that it was incapable of operations, but a decision – in the interest of safety – was made to shut down the plant because a critical component – a sensor – was not working because of the cold temperatures. Further complicating matters, the NatGas that was available was prioritized for heating residences and businesses, rather than for generating electricity.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
“The measurement of moisture in natural gas is an important parameter for the processing, storage and transportation of natural gas globally. Natural gas is dehydrated prior to introduction into the pipeline and distribution network. However, attempts to reduce dehydration result in a reduction in “gas quality” and an increase in maintenance costs and transportation as well as potential safety issues.. Consequently, to strike the right balance, it is important that the water component of natural gas is measured precisely and reliably. Moreover, in custody transfer of natural gas between existing and future owners maximum allowable levels are set by tariff, normally expressed in terms of absolute humidity (mg/m3 or lbs/mmscfh) or dew point temperature.
“Prior to transportation, water is separated from raw natural gas. However some water still remains present in the gaseous state as water vapor. If the gas cools or comes in contact with any surface that is colder that the prevailing dew point temperature of the gas, water will condense in the form of liquid or ice. Under pressure, water also has the unique property of being able to form a lattice structure around hydrocarbons such as methane to form solid hydrates. Ice or solid hydrates can cause blockage in pipelines. In addition, water combines with gases such as Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) to form corrosive acids. Water in natural gas also increases the cost of transportation in pipelines by adding mass and as water vapor has no calorific or heating value it also adds to the expense of compression and transportation. When natural gas is sold, there are contractual requirements to limit the concentration of water vapor. In the United States the limit or tariff is expressed in absolute humidity in units of pounds per million standard cubic feet (lbs/mmscf). The maximum absolute humidity for interstate transfer is set at 7lbs/mmscf. In Europe, bodies such as EASEE-gas make recommendations on the maximum permissible amount of water vapor in the gas. EASEE-gas has approved a limit of -8°C Dew Point, referenced to a gas pressure of 70 Bar(a). This recommended limit is generally being adhered to in the gas industry across Europe.”
Equinor, a Stavanger, Norway-based international energy company, engaged in exploration, development and production of oil and gas, including wind and solar power. They sell crude oil and are a major supplier of natural gas, with activities in processing, refining, and trading.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Right Wing Political Pundit-Radio Entertainer Rush Limbaugh caught Hell for one of his caustically outrageous diatribes… again. This time, his target was a woman. Next up, children.
A portion of the Wikipedia entry on Limbaugh, which has since been removed.
Hell yawns wide to receive his rotted, cancer-riddled, tone-deaf, racist, drug-addled corpse.
Good riddance.
Just desserts, you know.
He had no pity for others.
Others will have no pity for him.
The racist son-of-a-bitch got what he wanted: “A medal for smoking cigars.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Texas Electrical Energy Deregulation map The Texas and Dallas deregulated energy service areas are divided into six Transmission and Delivery Utility (TDU) Companies. Those TDUs are: • Texas New Mexico Power Company (TNMP) • Sharyland Utilites • AEP North (American Electric Power) • AEP Central • Oncor (most of DFW, Dallas-Fort Worth included) • CenterPoint (Houston and surrounding areas)
While it’s cold – and yes, it’s a Polar Vortex (see the motion gif showing 2 months of daily changes at the bottom of this page) – it’s NOT like the Polar Vortex of February 2019.
But if you’ve been wondering WHY Texas is having problems delivering electricity right now with a relatively minor cold snap moving through much of the United States, and other states aren’t, wonder no more.
Texas has a DEREGULATED energy/electrical power grid.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, February 16, 2021
More Compelling Evidence That Senators Are Members Not Of Congress, But Of The Cult of Trump
Banana Republicans in the United States Senate are a bunch of spineless jellyfish.
And… Kentucky Senate Minority Leader Moscow Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell is their leader.
An Impeachment Manager Says Republicans Privately Told Her She Made A Compelling Case To Convict Trump, But They Acquitted Him Anyway
• Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) was a House manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial.
• She told CNN some Senate Republicans privately told her she “made the case” for conviction.
• But she said they already planned to acquit Trump and didn’t want to “stand out on a limb” by convicting.
A House impeachment manager says Republican senators told her privately that she “made the case” to convict former President Donald Trump, but they still voted to acquit him.
Delegate Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat from the Virgin Islands, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday about the interactions she had with unnamed Republican senators during Trump’s second impeachment trial last week.
“I had Senators, even after we presented, who stopped me in the hallway, Republicans, who said that we had made the case, but yet they were going to vote to acquit the president,” Plaskett said.
Plaskett said she tried to win these senators over by saying they could vote to acquit Trump, but not vote to disqualify him from holding office in the future – a vote which would have taken place after conviction, and only requires a simple majority.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, February 16, 2021
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845), Daguerreotype portrait by Matthew Brady’s Studio c.1844/45
Joseph Story (1779-1845) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, nominated by President James Madison, who served in office from February 3, 1812 until September 10, 1845.
He was also: Republican Congressman from Massachusetts, 1808-1809; Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1811-1845; Acting Chief Justice, 1835-1836, 1844; Professor of Law Harvard University 1829-1845.
The United States Constitution states in part as follows:
Article I, Section 3, Clause 7:
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
Article II, Section 4:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Justice Story wrote about the matter of impeachment at great length, and in part wrote that:
§393. It is obvious, that, upon trials on impeachments, one of two courses must be adopted in case of a conviction; either for the court to proceed to pronounce a full and complete sentence of punishment for the offence according to the law of the land in like cases, pending in the common tribunals of justice, superadding the removal from office, and the consequent disabilities; or, to confine its sentence to the removal from office and other disabilities. If the former duty be a part of the constitutional functions of the court, then, in case of an acquittal, there cannot be another trial of the party for the same offence in the common tribunals of justice, because it is repugnant to the whole theory of the common law, that a man should be brought into jeopardy of life or limb more than once for the same offence. A plea of acquittal is, therefore, an absolute bar against any second prosecution for the same offence. If the court of impeachments is merely to pronounce a sentence of removal from office and the other disabilities; then it is indispensable, that provision should be made, that the common tribunals of justice should be at liberty to entertain jurisdiction of the offence, for the purpose of inflicting the common punishment applicable to unofficial offenders. Otherwise, it might be matter of extreme doubt, whether, consistently with the great maxim above mentioned, established for the security of the life and limbs and liberty of the citizen, a second trial for the same offence could be had, either after an acquittal, or a conviction in the court of impeachments. And if no such second trial could be had, then the grossest official offenders might escape without any substantial punishment, even for crimes, which would subject their fellow citizens to capital punishment. [emphasis added]
§394. The constitution, then, having provided, that judgment upon impeachments shall not extend further, than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold office, (which, however afflictive to an ambitious and elevated mind, would be scarcely felt, as a punishment, by the profligate and the base,) has wisely subjected the party to trial in the common criminal tribunals, for the purpose of receiving such punishment, as ordinarily belongs to the offence. Thus, for instance, treason, which by our laws is a capital offence, may receive its appropriate punishment ; and bribery in high officers, which otherwise would be a mere disqualification from office, may have the measure of its infamy dealt out to it with the same unsparing severity, which attends upon other and humbler offenders.
How the cowardly, weasel-like jellyfish of a man “Moscow Mitch, the Bitch” McConnell could POSSIBLY use the word “vindicate” in reference to the United States Constitution is beyond the scope of imagination – however derelict and perverted it may be – and it is definitely most perverted.
McConnell wrote “Our job wasn’t to find some way, any way, to inflict a punishment. The Senate’s first and foundational duty was to protect the Constitution.” -and- that “The text is unclear” about impeachment, whether “the Senate can try and convict former officers.”
McConnell had also earlier written a “dear colleague” letter to his fellow Banana Republicans in the Senate, in which he wrote in pertinent part that “I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal…”
His mind is like concrete – thoroughly mixed, and permanently set.
The cases of Tennessee United States Senator William Blount – impeached July 7, 1797, on charges of conspiring to assist in Great Britain’s attempt to seize Spanish-controlled territories in modern-day Florida and Louisiana, tried December 17, 1798–January 14, 1799 – and Ulysses Grant’s Secretary of War William Belknap – who tendered his resignation March 2, 1876 only moments before the House impeached him, was tried March 3–August 1, 1876 – demonstrate very clearly that officials may be tried on impeachment charges after they’re out of office. Or else, it completely absolves any official of any responsibility for any act of criminal wrong-doing while in office. It is the intellectual and moral equivalent of saying “so-and-so doesn’t live in Texas anymore, and moved to Minnesota 10 years ago, so s/he can’t be tried for murder or any crimes committed while residing in Texas.”
To assert as much is so absurdly preposterous that it defies imagination.
It’s an ethically reprehensible, morally wrong and judiciously untenable to deny anyone – including society – justice. And that is, in effect, what has happened with Donald Trump; society has been denied justice for the reprehensible, morally repugnant, and outright illegal acts of Donald Trump while in office as the President.
McConnell claims that Trump can be tried in other courts, and cites Justice Story’s writing that:
“There is also much force in the remark, that an impeachment is a proceeding purely of a political nature. It is not so much designed to punish an offender, as to secure the state against gross official misdemeanors. It touches neither his person, nor his property ; but simply divests him of his political capacity.” –– §406, chapter X, book III, p289
“And the final judgment is confined to a removal from, and disqualification for, office ; thus limiting the punishment to such modes of redress, as are peculiarly fit for a political tribunal to administer, and as will secure the public against political injuries. In other respects the offence is left to be disposed of by the common tribunals of justice, accord- ing to the laws of the land, upon an indictment found by a grand jury, and a trial by jury of peers, before whom the party is to stand for his final deliverance, like his fellow citizens.” –– §407, chapter X, book III, p290
But, rest assured: Trump is completely free and clear of any charges related to impeachment. However, there are other charges at the state level which he may face for things he did while in office, including most notably, attempting to persuade Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to manipulate the results of the election in that state to throw the election to Trump’s favor. The Fulton County District Attorney, and Georgia State Attorney General are investigating that matter.
1. To clear of accusation,blame,suspicion, or doubtwithsupportingarguments or proof:“Oursocietypermitspeople to sueforlibel so thattheymayvindicatetheirreputations”(Irving R. Kaufman). 2. To defend,maintain, or insist on therecognition of (one’srights,forexample). 3. To demonstrate or provethevalue or validityof;justify:Theresults of theexperimentvindicatedheroptimism. 4. Obsolete To exactrevengefor;avenge.
(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition.)
1. to clearfromguilt,accusation,blame,etc, as by evidence or argument
2. to providejustificationfor:hispromotionvindicatedhisunconventionalattitude.
3. to uphold,maintain, or defend (a cause,etc):to vindicate a claim.
4. (Law)Romanlaw to bring an action to regainpossession of (property)underclaim of legaltitle
5. (HistoricalTerms)Romanlaw to bring an action to regainpossession of (property)underclaim of legaltitle
6. rare to claim, as foroneself or another
7. obsolete to takerevenge on or for;punish
8. obsolete to setfree
(Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014)
1. to clear, as from an accusation or suspicion: to vindicatesomeone’shonor.
“Moscow Mitch, the Bitch” McConnell is a Banana Republican from Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader, the biggest weasel in Washington, D.C., and an ardent, though oblique, supporter of the Cult of Trump.
Acquittal Vindicated the Constitution, Not Trump
wsj.com
Sunday, February 14, 2021
by Mitch McConnell
January 6 was a shameful day. A mob bloodied law enforcement and besieged the first branch of government. American citizens tried to use terrorism to stop a democratic proceeding they disliked.
There is no question former President Trump bears moral responsibility. His supporters stormed the Capitol because of the unhinged falsehoods he shouted into the world’s largest megaphone. His behavior during and after the chaos was also unconscionable, from attacking Vice President Mike Pence during the riot to praising the criminals after it ended.
President-elect Donald Trump leaves a meeting with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, at the U.S. Capitol November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC Zach Gibson/Getty Images
I was as outraged as any member of Congress. But senators take our own oaths. Our job wasn’t to find some way, any way, to inflict a punishment. The Senate’s first and foundational duty was to protect the Constitution.
Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina joined Republican Senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and all 50 Democrats in voting GUILTY to convict. But, 57 votes was 10 shy of the 2/3 required by the Constitution in order to convict.
The Senate Minority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell had the temerity, audacity and unmitigated gall to actually give a brief speech on the Senate floor following his “NOT GUILTY” vote for Donald J. “Loser” Trump, which follows at the conclusion of this entry.
Senate Minority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell who wrote email to his Senate minions saying,
“Colleagues, as I have said for some time, today’s vote is a vote of conscience and I know we will all treat it as such. I have been asked directly by a number of you how I intend to vote, so thought it right to make that known prior to the final vote. While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction. The Constitution makes perfectly clear that Presidential criminal misconduct while in office can be prosecuted after the President has left office, which in my view alleviates the otherwise troubling ‘January exception’ argument raised by the House.
“Given these conclusions, I will vote to acquit.
“Mitch”
Yeah… that Kentucky heathen not only voted to acquit the POS45, aka Liar in Chief, leader of the Cult of Trump, but passed the buck.
Not guilty, not guilty 2x, guilty. Alcee Hastings was impeached and found guilty of on charges of perjury and conspiring to solicit a bribe, and was removed from office as a Federal judge in 1989. He’s been a United States Representative for Florida’s 20th Congressional District since 1993.
Here’s the thing, though: For a man who claims to have an interest in historicity for the purpose of the Senate, he is DEAD WRONG about his opinion that, as he writes, “I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal…”
As a matter of history, there has been of late at least a moderate amount of discussion and news made about an historical matter involving circumstances very similar to this one (in which the impeached individual is no longer in office), insofar as the two individuals impeached had ALREADY been resigned from, or otherwise out of office when their impeachment occurred.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 12, 2021
“Trump told us to do it.”
Trump’s MAGA supporters rioter-insurrectionists who were assembled at the White House Ellipse Park January 6, 2021 quickly became violent exclusively because they believed that Trump was asking them to do so – that they were doing his bidding.
“He said, ‘Be there.’ So I went and I answered the call of my president.”
House Impeachment Managers cited social media posts, recorded video, and court documents which reflected as much.
“I Answered the Call of My President.”
Impeachment Managers also extensively documented that several months BEFORE the election, Trump was laying the groundwork for convincing his cult of followers that the November presidential election was fixed, and that his victory was stolen because of Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, February 11, 2021
Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins
A significant number of the American people have been bamboozled, swindled, and otherwise cheated and lied to for at least the past 40+ years, at least since 1980, and beginning in earnest in January 1981 with the Reagan administration.
In actuality, the Republican party’s seeds of destruction were sown in 1964 at the Republican National Convention in Daly City, California when then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller warned the assembled delegates that
“The Republican party is in real danger of subversion
by
a radical, well-financed,
and
highly disciplined minority.”
He was given 5 minutes to address the delegates, but was booed for over 16 minutes.
Why?
He was seeking the inclusion of language in the official party platform which would have said,
“The Republican Party fully respects the contribution of responsible criticism, and defends the right of dissent in the democratic process. But we repudiate the efforts of irresponsible, extremist groups, such as the Communists, the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society and others, to discredit our Party by their efforts to infiltrate positions of responsibility in the Party, or to attach themselves to its candidates.”
One would think that such language condemning and repudiating the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society members, and others, would have been welcomed.
Ku Klux Klansmen rally in support of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the GOP 1964 Presidential nominee. Image: Universal History Archive/Getty Images
But, it wasn’t.
That was the year Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was the party’s Presidential nominee.
That was also the year the GOP suffered one of the greatest losses in American political history.
A mere 6 states – Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina – voted for Barry Goldwater.
Lyndon Baines Johnson won in a landslide with 486 Electoral College votes to Goldwater’s 52.
The Popular Vote was just as decisive:
Johnson 43,127,041 (61.1%), to Goldwater 27,175,754 (38.5%).
The next quadrennial election cycle proved to be a harbinger of things to come.
Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse
In 1968, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace – a stridently biogted racist and segregationist, at the height of his hatred of Blacks – campaigned on the American Independent ticket against Republican Richard Nixon of New York, and Minnesota Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey, who had been LBJ’s Vice President. That year’s election was equally decisive in its victory, but what may be most interesting, is the fact that as a 3rd Party Candidate, the openly racist, bigoted Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, though he was a Democratic governor, campaigned on a platform of racial segregation as a Presidential candidate on the American Independent ticket – and commonly, though incorrectly known as a “Dixiecrat” – won 5 states (AL, AR, GA, LA, MS) and their 46 Electoral College votes, along with 9,901,118 Popular Votes, for 13.5% of all Popular Votes cast. It remains the strongest showing of a 3rd Party candidate in American political history. Not even John B. Anderson in 1980, or Ross Perot in 1992 won any Electoral College Votes, though Ross Perot made a good showing among the Popular Vote with 19,743,821, or 18.9% of all Popular Votes cast, and in 1996, Perot secured 8,085,294 Popular Votes, which was 8.4% of all Popular Votes cast, though he never won any Electoral College votes in any election.
Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski
Wallace’s strong showing among those 5 Southern states in 1968 was resounding evidence of how pervasive, ingrained, and embedded – how thoroughly infiltrated – the message of hate, and he as its chief messenger – along with the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society, and other such elements as then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller had mentioned at 1964’s RNC convention – had become in the South. Sadly, Nixon did nothing to help, and rather, relied upon a “Southern Strategy” to win over those very voters – the racist bigoted “Dixiecrats” who had become enured with the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society members, and others – to welcome them into the fold of the Republican Party.
Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was the creation, per se (it was more an anthropological and demographic analysis of long-term trends than anything else), of Kevin Phillips (b.1940), a brilliant, if not genius (matriculated Colgate University aged 16, graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, spent his junior year at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, where he knew more about Scottish history than his Scottish classmates), Harvard Law-educated man who authored the 1969 book “The Emerging Republican Majority“ in which he detailed an ethnographic political strategy that capitalized upon, an exploited alleged hostilities between the Irish, Italians, and Poles, and Jews, Negroes, and affluent Yankees to achieve its goals. He later abandoned the GOP in the 1990’s after becoming grossly disaffected by them.
Having now authored over 13 books, the premise of his first book “The Emerging Republican Majority,” was the presumption that most voters “still voted on the basis of ethnic or cultural enmities that could be graphed, predicted and exploited. For instance, the old bitterness toward Protestant Yankee Republicans that had for generations made Democrats out of Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants had now shifted, among their children and grandchildren, to resentment of the new immigrants – Negroes and Latinos – and against the national Democratic party, whose Great Society programs increasingly seemed to reflect favoritism for the new minorities over the old.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, February 11, 2021
Suddenly, a Juror becomes a Witness!
Senator from Utah, Mike Lee suddenly stood up and said…
“Statements were attributed to me moments ago by the House Impeachment Managers. Statements relating to the content of conversations between a phone call involving President Trump and Senator Tuberville were not made by me. They’re not accurate, and they’re contrary to fact. I move pursuant to Rule 16 that they be stricken from the record.”
There is NO court of jurisdiction EVER which has allowed a juror to become a witness also.
Lead Impeachment Manager Representative Jamie Raskin, Maryland-8, Democrat
In the trial’s final hour of arguments on Day 2, Wednesday, February 11, 2021, Representative David Cicilline, an Impeachment Manager, and Democrat of Rhode Island-1, spoke of then-President Trump who, during the very midst of the insurrection and breach of the Capitol building, had mistakenly called Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah, in an effort to reach newly-elected first-time politician Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, a former football coach for Auburn University. In describing the call, which was detailed in numerous news reports, Representative Cicilline asserted that Senator Lee had stood by as Trump asked Senator Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification of President Biden’s electoral votes.
“With a mob of election protesters laying siege to the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Mike Lee had just ended a prayer with some of his colleagues in the Senate chamber when his cellphone rang.
Caller ID showed the call originated from the White House. Lee thought it might be national security adviser Robert O’Brien, with whom he’d been playing phone tag on an unrelated issue. It wasn’t O’Brien. It was President Donald Trump.
“How’s it going, Tommy?” the president asked.
Taken a little aback, Lee said this isn’t Tommy.
“Well, who is this? Trump asked. “It’s Mike Lee,” the senator replied. “Oh, hi Mike. I called Tommy.”
Lee told the Deseret News he realized Trump was trying to call Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the newly elected Republican from Alabama and former Auburn University football coach. Lee walked his phone over to Tuberville who was talking to some colleagues.
“Hey, Tommy, I hate to interrupt but the president wants to speak with you,” Lee said.
Tuberville and Trump talked for about five to 10 minutes, Lee said, adding that he stood nearby because he didn’t want to lose his cellphone in the commotion. The two were still talking when panicked police ordered the Capitol to be evacuated because people had breached security.
As police were getting anxious for senators to leave, Lee walked over to retrieve his phone.
“I don’t want to interrupt your call with the president, but we’re being evacuated and I need my phone,” he said.
Tuberville said, “OK, Mr. President. I gotta go.”
Lee said when he later asked Tuberville about the conversation, he got the impression that Trump didn’t know about the chaos going on in the Senate chamber.
Impeachment Manager David Ciciline, a Democrat representing Rhode Island-1 said,
“Senator Lee described it. He had just ended a prayer with his colleagues here in the Senate chamber, and the phone rang. It was Donald Trump. Senator Lee explains that the phone call goes something like this. ‘Hey, Tommy,’ Trump asks. Sen. Lee says, ‘This isn’t Tommy.’ He hands the phone to Senator Tuberville.
“Senator Lee then confirmed that he stood by as Senator Tuberville and President Trump spoke on the phone. And on that call, Donald Trump reportedly asked Senator Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification process.”
Senator Lee NEVER objected to the news report which he himself had told to Deseret News on January 7, 2021. Nor did he note that any corrections should be made to it, and there is no errata or corrections cited on the story.
As Impeachment Manager Representative Ciciline was speaking, Senator Lee became apparently agitated and wrote in large letters upon a sheet of paper from a legal pad at his desk “This is not what happened.” and then handed the paper to David Schoen, one of Trump’s lawyers.
As Lead Impeachment Manager Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat representing Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, was at the speaker’s podium and was attempting to close the day’s session, Senator Lee then stood up, and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, February 11, 2021
Larry Flynt, known globally as an entrepreneur and First Amendment champion, has died aged 78.
Mr. Flynt had a strong desire for service to the nation, and first enlisted in the United States Army using a false birth certificate when he was aged 15, and had dropped out of the 9th grade. After 7 months, in 1960, he was declared supernumerary and honorably discharged. He then repeated that performance, and joined the United States Navy, where he served for 5 years, and was honorably discharged in 1964 during the Vietnam War. While serving aboard the USS Enterprise as a radar operator, he was on duty during the operation to recover John Glenn’s space capsule after splashdown following his first space orbit.
Larry Flynt (center) makes his way through a crowd at a rally in Cincinnati in 1977.
He was a native Southerner, and was born and raised in Lakeville, Kentucky, in Magoffin County, a still-small village in the practical middle of nowhere, in the state’s eastern central portion, due east of Lexington about a 2-hour drive on Kentucky State Highway 9009.
Mr. Flynt may perhaps best be known as pornographer, and publisher of Hustler magazine, a title of which he was unashamed, and for which an attempted assassin’s bullet severed his spinal cord outside the courthouse in Gwinnett County Georgia, on March 6, 1978, where he was facing obscenity charges, which he won. From that point on, he was never able to walk, and relied upon a wheelchair for mobility, albeit, a custom-made, gold-plated one.
For many years thereafter, Mr. Flynt’s sniper went undiscovered until an arrest for two unrelated killings elsewhere, when the suspect confessed to being Flynt’s shooter. White Supremacist John Paul Franklin said the reason he shot Flynt, was because he objected to photos in Hustler depicting interracial couples. He was executed by the state of Missouri in 2013 – an act which Mr. Flynt disapproved of as an opponent of the death penalty.
The mention of his religion is of no consequence, save perhaps, for the fact that he had asked for, then rescinded his request for the trial to take a day off – Saturday, beginning from sundown Friday, to sunrise Sunday (the Jewish “sabbath”) – to attend Synagogue, wear his little beanie, not use electricity, not serve dairy and meat together (like on a cheeseburger), or to practice whatever superstitious silliness that religiously observant Jews practice on Saturdays – just like Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump, Loser Trump’s second child, and first-born daughter, of whom he said that he would be “dating her” (TRANSLATE: Having sex with) if he wasn’t married to Malaria, er… Melania, and noted that she was a “fine piece of ass.”
The TEMERITY to quote Lincoln in his closing remarks!
Is he trying to defend, or prosecute his client?
The atrocity occurs very near the closing after 3:57… that’s 3 HOURS and 57 minutes.
“Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right, and PART with him when he goes wrong.” –– The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume II, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois” (October 16, 1854), p. 273.
And then, to read – and give an UTTERLY HORRIBLE performance of – an 1849 poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow!
That’s utter heresy!
The atrocity!
A goddamn moron, he is.
Schoen, a 3rd rate goofball, who the Piece of Shit former loser President hired after his first slew of attorneys quit in disgust, after the shit bag insisted that they base their claim of defense that he lost because of massive vote fraud, and they refused.
What?
Giuliani couldn’t do it?
Loser Trumpanzee is a goddamn moron.
Schoen is the 3rd, or 4th string.
Loser Trumpanzee can barely sign his name with a Sharpie permanent marker. He butchers words like “Yosemite” pronouncing it instead as “Yo – Semite” as if he were talking to his bigoted Semite son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Yeah… the bigot who was credibly accused of housing discrimination (he’s a slumlord) against Blacks, and rather than go to trial, agreed to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
Banana Republicans in the United States Senate do NOT, and will NOT need, “smoking gun evidence” to convict Donald Trump of Insurrection, because in their warped imaginations, he did nothing wrong.
Those feckless individuals have not merely bowed the knee to Trump, or fallen prostate at his feet to lick his boots and the ground he walks upon, but by so doing, they have unambiguously signaled that they are not merely corrupted, but are traitorously and treasonously aligned, as well.
Allan Lichtman
Their fealty, their loyalty, their oath, though it may have appeared so, is NOT to the Constitution, but to some other nation, some other government, one that is NOT the United States of America – The Cult of Trump.
The benighted Moscow Mitch McConnell and his equally benighted Kooky Kentucky Klown pal Rand Paul are still up to no good.
Here Is The Smoking Gun Evidence To Back Impeachment Of Donald Trump
By Dr. Allan Lichtman, PhD, opinion contributor
02/08/21 10:00 AM EST
While the House impeachment managers have focused on events leading up to the Capitol breach, it was the real time response from Donald Trump to the rioters which yields smoking gun evidence of his intent to incite the insurrection. Trump failed to promptly call off his followers or to summon timely assistance for the police, despite pleas from his fellow Republicans caught up in the mayhem. His final words that day connect his incendiary statements about a “stolen election” to the storming of the Capitol.
As he watched the insurrection unfold on television, with some delight according to witnesses, Trump made no immediate demand that the rioters leave the Capitol. He failed to heed the pleas of Republicans in Congress, who desperately tried to call him with no response. “We are begging essentially, and he was nowhere to be found,” Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said. We know Trump did call Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama after mistakenly dialing Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Trump called Tuberville not to ask about his safety or to offer assistance, but to discuss a strategy for objecting to the count of electoral votes.
When rioters breached the Capitol in full view of cameras, Trump did not appear on television to denounce them or tell his followers to cease and desist. Instead, he stoked the incitement with a tweet to attack his vice president and double down on claims about a stolen election. He wrote, “Mike Pence did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones.”
Trump later sent a tweet in the passive voice, “Stay peaceful!” He sent a similar message more than half an hour later. He still had not appeared in person on any medium at this point. Trump eventually released a video that told his supporters, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
The New York Times today published a story which detailed a very suspicious, and quizzical relationship to then-President Trump in his last days in office.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
The transcript of then-President Trump’s hour-long call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is too lengthy to duplicate here, per se, but suffice it to say, it all boiled down to this oft-repeated remark by Trump during the call:
“The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new, and they don’t have seals, and there’s a whole thing with the ballots. But the ballots are corrupt. And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal — it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
The call, which occurred on a Saturday afternoon, January 2, 2021, is a classic example of a shakedown.
In common parlance, the term “shakedown” refers to a criminal activity, describing extortion of money, as by blackmail. It is the preferred and primary definition in most reputable, and modern dictionaries.
Even the “Urban Dictionary,” a repository of modern colloquial use acknowledges similarly, but takes it at least one step further, by also acknowledging context of usage by writing that shakedown is,
“Another word for extortion/blackmail, or the obtaining of a good or service through means of force, threats/intimidation, or abuse of power.
Only one other dictionary acknowledges that capacity by writing that shakedown refers to “extortion, as by blackmail or threats of violence.”
Merriam-Webster defines it as “to rob by the use of trickery or threats.”
The Online Slang Dictionary finds similarly, by writing that it means “to extort. That is, to obtain something via force, threats, intimidation, abuse of power, etc.”
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
James A. Garfield
It’s always interesting to see how our forebears thought about certain fundamental matters to our nation’s governance. We have historians to guide us, who make it their life’s work to study, and investigate the men, women, and circumstances of their lives, and the times in which they lived. We can, and should be grateful to, and for, them; for they bring to life those things which, though they may seem dead, are still often, very much alive.
Following is an excerpt in whole, as found in the Congressional Record – a verbatim record of remarks made on the floor of the House of Representatives – of a statement made by then-Ohio Representative James A. Garfield, from the 19th Congressional District, who later became President of the United States, and was also, at age 50, ingloriously, the second President assassinated.
Interestingly, he survived being shot on July 2, but eventually succumbed to infection September 19, which was introduced by doctors who frequently inserted their unsterile hands into the wound in efforts to remove the bullet. Today, unless a bullet is lodged near a vital organ, or blood vessel, and is thought to possibly migrate, they’re left in situ (in place) because, the theory being, that the heat generated by firing kills any bacteria which may be introduced, and sometimes, cauterizes the wound.
Mr. GARFIELD. I desire in a very few words, not to argue the merits of this case but to give the ground on which the Committee on Appropriations made their recommendation. Having stated that ground, I shall leave the question to the discretion of the House.
I agree with everything that the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. E. R. Hoar] has said about Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 8, 2021
See how insane that headline is?
The fact of the matter is, that 43-year old quarterback Tom Brady led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl 55 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 in Tampa, Florida’s Raymond James Stadium.
And like the 2020 General Election, it too was seen worldwide. There was no “Deflate-Gate,” there were no biased referees, there were no ineligible players on field, there were no players on either side using performance enhancing drugs, and there were no changes to the goal lines, or hash marks.
It was a 100% fair game.
Just like the 2020 November General Election.
Maybe in the interim, before the next season starts, for the benefit of future games, and in order to restore confidence in the game, the Kansas City Chiefs can get some rules changed to help them win next time.
Remember: Denial is not a river in Egypt.
States’ Republicans Weigh New Laws Making It Harder To Vote
After an election that saw record voter turnout, with many of those voters casting their ballots early and by mail, some Republican state lawmakers are proposing a wave of new voting laws that would effectively make it more difficult to vote in future elections.
The proposals come in the aftermath of the unprecedented onslaught of disinformation about the conduct of the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and some of his allies in the Republican Party.
“Some folks bring these proposals forward and say, ‘Well, we just need to address confidence in our election systems,’ when it’s some of those very same people, or at least their allies and enablers, [who] have denigrated our election system by either telling lies or at least leveraging or relying on other people’s lies to justify some of these policies,” said Steve Simon, Minnesota’s Democratic Secretary of State, at a news conference organized last week by the Voter Protection Program.
A recent analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found that 106 bills have been filed by Republican lawmakers in 28 states that would restrict voting (the group also found 406 bills in 35 states that would expand voting access). Many of the bills would limit voting by mail, add new voter ID requirements, make it more difficult to register voters and give states greater leeway to purge voter files if voters don’t consistently cast ballots in every election.
“Some of them are for show; some of them have to be taken more seriously,” said Trey Grayson, a former Republican Secretary of State in Kentucky, at the same news conference.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, February 6, 2021
The Number 1 smash hit popularized by Atlanta, Georgia-based family band of Gladys Knight and the Pips in October 1973 was the work of a native Mississippian from Pontotoc named Jim Weatherly.
His family reported that Jim died recently at his residence in Brentwood, Tennessee, a tony suburb of Nashville, of natural causes, aged 77.
Weatherly wrote two additional tunes that became hits for Gladys Knight and the Pips: “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)” and “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” – which was originally recorded by country singer Ray Price.
A star quarterback for the University of Mississippi, aka “Ole Miss,” in the 1960s, after graduation, Weatherly, who had already formed a band with some classmates, moved to Nashville where he hoped to find his fortune. Nashville, however, long known as a very cliquish town musically, rejected him. So he and his band moved to the Los Angeles area where he became a songwriter in that area’s then-hot music scene. It was a “training ground” for many musicians who later became immensely popular, super-star caliber artists, including Glen Campbell, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Beck, and many others who populated the Laurel Canyon area – a mountainous canyon region in LA’s Hollywood Hills West district, in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Although Laurel Canyon is a rocky, arid, and largely agriculturally inhospitable area, it was fertile ground for artists like Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt, The Byrds, Frank Zappa, Jim Morrison, Buffalo Springfield, Love, Michelle and John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, J. D. Souther, Judee Sill, Carole King, the Eagles, Richie Furay (of Buffalo Springfield and Poco) and many, many more, almost too numerous to mention.
But, lesser known is the backstory of Jim Weatherly’s first hit song for Gladys Knight and the Pips.
After his college football days ended, Weatherly worked in Los Angeles as a songwriter.
During his off-time in LA he often played flag football with other creative types who had athletic backgrounds – among them, Lee Majors, who himself was a former college football player and was then starring in The Big Valleyas Heath Barkley, alongside the lead and central character Victoria Barkley, played by renown actress Barbara Stanwyck. The Big Valley was a unique western television serial whose central character was a woman (Stanwyck), who had taken Heath as her own, though he was the illegitimate son of her character’s late husband Thomas Barkley, following his death.
Jim Weatherly was inducted to the Songwriters Hall of Fame at their 45th Annual Induction and Awards ceremony at the Marriott Marquis Theater on June 12, 2014 in New York City.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, February 4, 2021
Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District has been expelled from her committee assignments – House Education and Labor Committee, and House Budget Committee – by a majority vote of Members of the House of Representatives.
House Resolution 72 – Removing a certain Member from certain standing committees of the House of Representatives – was passed by a vote of 230-199. The breakdown was as follows:
219 Democrats voting FOR,
11 Republicans voting FOR,
199 Republicans voting AGAINST,
2 Democrats Not Voting,
1 Republican Not Voting.
The resolution was introduced by Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D, FL-23) on 2/1/21, and was agreed to on 2/4/21 by Roll Call vote number 25 at 6:50 PM ET.
Whereas clause 1 of rule XXIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives provides, ``A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.''; and Whereas Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene should be removed from her committee assignments in light of conduct she has exhibited: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the following named Member be, and is hereby, removed from the following standing committees of the House of Representatives: Committee on the Budget: Mrs. Greene of Georgia. Committee on Education and Labor: Mrs. Greene of Georgia.
It’s only the SECOND TIME in recent history that a Banana Republican has been removed from their House committee assignments.
After a 17-year Congressional history, Steve King of Iowa’s 4th Congressional District was the first, however, though he was removed by GOP leadership (Kevin McCarthy) in January 2019 rather than by a vote of the House, as was Greene.
King’s list of egregious behavior was at least as extensive as Greene’s.
• In 2016, he was found displaying a Confederate flag on his Washington office desk.
• In 2017, he endorsed a Toronto, Canada mayoral candidate who had neo-Nazi ties.
• In 2018, during a trip to Europe financed by a Holocaust memorial group, he met with a far-right Austrian party which had been founded by a Nazi, with continued leadership of neo-Nazis.
• In 2018, he was recorded by The Weekly Standard referring to Mexicans as “dirt.”
In an interview with a website associated with the party, King (R-Iowa) declared that “Western civilization is on the decline,” spoke of the replacement of white Europeans by immigrants and criticized Hungarian American financier George Soros, who has backed liberal groups around the world.
In July 2013, King spoke about proposed immigration legislation and said of illegal immigrants: “For every one who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds — and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
And in March 2017, King wrote, “Culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-14, Georgia) pretend-apologized for some her past controversial remarks and embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory during a heated closed-door House GOP conference meeting — and received a standing ovation at one point from a number of her colleagues.
Greene told her colleagues that she “made a mistake” by being curious about “Q” and said that she told her children that she learned a lesson about what to put on social media, according to two unnamed sources in the room.
She also denied that she knew what “Jewish space lasers” were and defended her comments that past school shootings were staged by stating that she had personal experience with a school shooting. (Oh? Really? Which one? What was your “personal experience”?)
She received a standing ovation from some members of the caucus at the conclusion of her remarks. (Trained seals receive standing ovations for their performances, too.)
The House will vote Thursday on removing Greene from the House Budget and Education panels, where she was placed by Republicans. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has so far declined to take disciplinary actions against Greene. (McCarthy and Greene are two peas in a pod, insofar as they BOTH recently went trotting off to see the cult leader Wizard of Mar-a-Lago, seeking guidance and instruction.)
Nearly three years before Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd as he cried out that he couldn’t breathe last May, Zoya Code found herself in a similar position: Handcuffed facedown on the ground, with Chauvin’s knee on her.
The officer had answered a call of a domestic dispute at her home, and Code said he forced her down when she tried to pull away.
“He just stayed on my neck,” Code said, ignoring her desperate pleas to get off. Frustrated and upset, she challenged him to press harder. “Then he did. Just to shut me up,” she said.
Last week, a judge in Minnesota ruled that prosecutors could present the details of her 2017 arrest in their case against the former officer, who was charged with second-degree unintentional murder in Floyd’s death.
The Face of Evil An undated photo provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office in Minnesota of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, who was fired from the force, and charged with second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter after kneeling on George Floyd’s neck until he was dead. (image from Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office via The New York Times)
Code’s case was one of six arrests as far back as 2015 that the Minnesota attorney general’s office sought to introduce, arguing that they showed how Chauvin was using excessive force when he restrained people — by their necks or by kneeling on top of them — just as he did in arresting Floyd. Police records show that Chauvin was never formally reprimanded for any of these incidents, even though at least two of those arrested said they had filed formal complaints.
Of the six people arrested, two were Black, one was Latino and one was Native American. The race of two others was not included in the arrest reports that reporters examined.
Discussing the encounters publicly for the first time in interviews with The Marshall Project, three people who were arrested by Chauvin and a witness in a fourth incident described him as an unusually rough officer who was quick to use force and callous about their pain.
The interviews provide new insight into the history of a police officer whose handling of Floyd’s arrest, captured on video, was seen around the world and sparked months of protests in dozens of cities.
Chauvin, who was fired, has said through his attorney that his handling of Floyd’s arrest was a reasonable use of authorized force. But he was the subject of at least 22 complaints or internal investigations during his more than 19 years at the department, only one of which resulted in discipline. These new interviews show not only that he may have used excessive force in the past, but that he had used startlingly similar techniques.
All four people who told of their encounters with Chauvin had a history of run-ins with law enforcement, mostly for traffic and nonviolent offenses.
Code’s arrest occurred June 25, 2017. In a court filing, Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, said the officer acted properly in the case, responding to “a violent crime in a volatile situation.” He said that “there was nothing unreasonable or unauthorized about Mr. Chauvin’s actions.”
Code’s mother had accused her of trying to choke her with an extension cord, according to the arrest report. Code said in an interview that her mother was swinging the cord around, and that she merely grabbed hold of it.
She said she had left the house to cool off after the fight and when she returned, Chauvin and his partner had arrived. In the prosecutors’ description, based on Chauvin’s report and body-camera video, Chauvin told Code she was under arrest and grabbed her arm. When she pulled away, he pulled her to the ground face first and knelt on her. The two officers then picked her up and carried her outside the house, facedown.
There, prosecutors said, Chauvin knelt on the back of the handcuffed woman “even though she was offering no physical resistance at all.”
Code, in an interview, said she began pleading: “Don’t kill me.”
At that point, according to the prosecutors’ account, Chauvin told his partner to restrain Code’s ankles as well, even though she “was not being physically aggressive.”
As he tied her, she said, she told the other officer, “You’re learning from an animal. That man — that’s evilness right there.”
Misdemeanor domestic assault and disorderly conduct charges filed against Code were ultimately dropped.
“You’re Choking Me!”
The earliest incident in which prosecutors said Chauvin used excessive force took place February 15, 2015, when he arrested Julian Hernandez — a carpenter who was on a road trip to Minneapolis to see a band at the El Nuevo Rodeo nightclub. Chauvin worked as an off-duty security officer there for almost 17 years.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, February 2, 2021
As a treasonously wicked, son of perdition and Manipulator in Chief, Trump’s planned corruption played out in public, in print and broadcast news reports (he’s a media whore), on Twitter (he’s a narcissist), on other social media, like FaceBook, and Parler, the favorite of White Supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other right-wing extremists.
His followers are rightly called the “Cult of Trump.”
WALLACE: In general, not talking about November, are you a good loser?
TRUMP: I’m not a good loser. I don’t like to lose. I don’t lose too often. I don’t like to lose.
WALLACE: But are you gracious?
TRUMP: You don’t know until you see. It depends. I think mail-in voting is going to rig the election. I really do.
WALLACE: Are you suggesting that you might not accept the results of the election?
TRUMP: No. I have to see. Look, Hillary Clinton asked me the same thing.
WALLACE: No, I asked you the same thing at the debate.
77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election
Within a few hours after the United States voted, the President declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power.
By Jim Rutenberg, Jo Becker, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Martin, Matthew Rosenberg and Michael S. Schmidt
January 31, 2021
By Thursday the 12th of November, President Donald J. Trump’s election lawyers were concluding that the reality he faced was the inverse of the narrative he was promoting in his comments and on Twitter. There was no substantial evidence of election fraud, and there were nowhere near enough “irregularities” to reverse the outcome in the courts.
Mr. Trump did not, could not, win the election, not by “a lot” or even a little. His presidency would soon be over.
Allegations of Democratic malfeasance had disintegrated in embarrassing fashion. A supposed suitcase of illegal ballots in Detroit proved to be a box of camera equipment. “Dead voters” were turning up alive in television and newspaper interviews.
The week was coming to a particularly demoralizing close: In Arizona, the Trump lawyers were preparing to withdraw their main lawsuit as the state tally showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. leading by more than 10,000 votes, against the 191 ballots they had identified for challenge.
As he met with colleagues to discuss strategy, the president’s deputy campaign manager, Justin Clark, was urgently summoned to the Oval Office. Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was on speaker phone, pressing the president to file a federal suit in Georgia and sharing a conspiracy theory gaining traction in conservative media — that Dominion Systems voting machines had transformed thousands of Trump votes into Biden votes.
Mr. Clark warned that the suit Mr. Giuliani had in mind would be dismissed on procedural grounds. And a state audit was barreling toward a conclusion that the Dominion machines had operated without interference or foul play.
Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Clark a liar, according to people with direct knowledge of the exchange. Mr. Clark called Mr. Giuliani something much worse. And with that, the election-law experts were sidelined in favor of the former New York City mayor, the man who once again was telling the president what he wanted to hear.
Thursday the 12th was the day Mr. Trump’s flimsy, long-shot legal effort to reverse his loss turned into something else entirely — an extralegal campaign to subvert the election, rooted in a lie so convincing to some of his most devoted followers that it made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.
Weeks later, Mr. Trump is the former President Trump. In coming days, a presidential transition like no other will be dissected when he stands trial in the Senate on an impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection.” Yet his lie of an election stolen by corrupt and evil forces lives on in a divided America.
A New York Times examination of the 77 democracy-bending days between election and inauguration shows how, with conspiratorial belief rife in a country ravaged by pandemic, a lie that Mr. Trump had been grooming for years finally overwhelmed the Republican Party and, as brake after brake fell away, was propelled forward by new and more radical lawyers, political organizers, financiers and the surround-sound right-wing media.
In the aftermath of that broken afternoon at the Capitol, a picture has emerged of entropic forces coming together on Trump’s behalf in an ad hoc, yet calamitous, crash of rage and denial.
But interviews with central players, and documents including previously unreported emails, videos and social media posts scattered across the web, tell a more encompassing story of a more coordinated campaign.
Across those 77 days, the forces of disorder were summoned and directed by the departing president, who wielded the power derived from his near-infallible status among the party faithful in one final norm-defying act of a reality-denying presidency.
Throughout, he was enabled by influential Republicans motivated by ambition, fear or a misplaced belief that he would not go too far.
In the Senate, he got early room to maneuver from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell. As he sought the president’s help in Georgia Read the rest of this entry »
What We Learned from Trump’s Effort to Overturn the 2020 Election Results
by Matthew Rosenberg, Jim Rutenberg
February 1, 2021
The January 6, 2021 rally/riot of MAGA Trump supporters before their assault on the Capitol. Nina Berman/NOOR, via Redux Pictures
An examination by the New York Times of the 77 days between election and inauguration shows how a lie the former president had been grooming for years overwhelmed the Republican Party and stoked the assault on the Capitol.
For 77 days between the election and the inauguration, President Donald J. Trump attempted to subvert American democracy with a lie about election fraud that he had been grooming for years.
A New York Times examination of the events that unfolded after the election shows how the president — enabled by Republican leaders, advised by conspiracy-minded lawyers and bankrolled by a new class of Trump-era donors — waged an extralegal campaign that convinced tens of millions of Americans the election had been stolen and made the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable.
Interviews with central players, along with documents, videos and previously unreported emails, tell the story of a campaign that was more coordinated than previously understood, even as it strayed farther from reality with each passing day.
Here are some key takeaways:
As some lawyers on Trump’s team pulled back, others were ready to press ahead with suits skating the lines of legal ethics and reason
Within 10 days of the election, even as Mr. Trump and his supporters promoted allegation after allegation of voter fraud, his team of election lawyers knew that the reality was the inverse of what Mr. Trump was presenting: They were not finding substantial evidence of malfeasance or enough irregularities to overturn the election.
That reality was hammered home on November 12, when final Arizona results showed Joseph R. Biden Jr. with an irreversible lead of more than 10,000 votes that rendered the legal team’s main lawsuit in that state — which had identified 191 ballots to contest — moot.
At an Oval Office meeting that day, the election lawyers squared off against the president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, over Mr. Giuliani’s embrace of questionable legal tactics and conspiracy theories like one that Dominion voting machines had transformed Trump votes into Biden votes.
Ultimately, Mr. Trump decided to give Mr. Giuliani leadership of the entire legal strategy, making November 12 the day when Mr. Trump’s effort to reverse his loss in the courts became an all-out, extralegal campaign to disenfranchise millions of voters based on the false notion of pervasive fraud.
Voting-machine conspiracy theories became intertwined with a supercomputer story pushed in conservative media
The Dominion conspiracy theory taking root among the president and many of his supporters had been weeks in the making. In late October, an obscure conservative website, The American Report, was pushing stories about a supercomputer called The Hammer that it said was running software called Scorecard to steal votes from Mr. Trump.
The theory found amplification the day before the election on the podcast of Mr. Trump’s former political strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 1, 2021
“Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country. Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying it school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky issued a short statement Monday night that didn’t directly mention Georgia’s Banana Republican MT-headed Greene by name, but left no mistake that he wrote about her exclusively.
Hey, you ignorant Kentucky hillbilly!
Read your history.
Ku Klux Klansmen rally in support of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, 1964 GOP Presidential nominee.
Image: Universal History Archive/Getty Images
In 1964 at the Republican National Convention, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller reminded the delegates that he warned over a year earlier that the party was in danger of being infiltrated by radical elements, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Communists, John Birch Society members, racist Dixiecrats, White Supremacists who used Nazi-like tactics, and other such ilk. By the time of the convention, it already had been.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 1, 2021
Unless you’ve been in a cave in Tora Bora for the past week, or so, by now, you’ve probably heard of the Reddit/GameStop/Robinhood ordeal.
Here are the “players”:
• Vlad Tenev, CEO of the trading app Robinhood
• National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC)
• Day traders using the Robinhood app who also were participants in a Reddit group Wall Street Bets (properly as “r/wallstreetbets” – a forum called a “subreddit” on the popular website Reddit, which is a social platform and discussion group that also rates web content.)
• GameStop, a electronics/video game retailer
The long and short of it (a most befitting pun, wouldn’t you say?) is that a no-fees stock brokrage company named Robinhood, which uses an app for a mobile device to effectuate trades, had ceased processing orders on a company named GameStop, which raised the hackles of some observers, including Elon Musk, and other news reporting groups.
The reason why Robinhood ceased activity on trades for GameStop, and other companies was because a loose-knit group of day trader investors in the subReddit forum WallStreetBets – which totals over 4 million strong, and describe themselves as “degenerates” – decided to take on the abuses of Wall Street power players, most typically as hedge funds.
Hedge funds are alternative investments using pooled funds that employ different strategies to earn active returns, or alpha, for their investors. Hedge funds may be aggressively managed or make use of derivatives and leverage in both domestic and international markets with the goal of generating high returns (either in an absolute sense or over a specified market benchmark).
It is important to note that hedge funds are generally only accessible to accredited investors as they require less SEC regulations than other funds. One aspect that has set the hedge fund industry apart is the fact that hedge funds face less regulation than mutual funds and other investment vehicles.
Each hedge fund is constructed to take advantage of certain identifiable market opportunities. Hedge funds use different investment strategies and thus are often classified according to investment style. There is substantial diversity in risk attributes and investments among styles.
Legally, hedge funds are most often set up as private investment limited partnerships that are open to a limited number of accredited investors and require a large initial minimum investment. Investments in hedge funds are illiquid as they often require investors to keep their money in the fund for at least one year, a time known as the lock-up period. Withdrawals may also only happen at certain intervals such as quarterly or bi-annually.
A former writer and sociologist Alfred Winslow Jones’s company, A.W. Jones & Co. launched the first hedge fund in 1949. It was while writing an article about current investment trends for Fortune in 1948 that Jones was inspired to try his hand at managing money. He raised $100,000 (including $40,000 out of his own pocket) and set forth to try to minimize the risk in holding long-term stock positions by short selling other stocks. This investing innovation is now referred to as the classic long/short equities model. Jones also employed leverage to enhance returns.
In 1952, Jones altered the structure of his investment vehicle, converting it from a general partnership to a limited partnership and adding a 20% incentive fee as compensation for the managing partner. As the first money manager to combine short selling, the use of leverage shared risk through a partnership with other investors and a compensation system based on investment performance, Jones earned his place in investing history as the father of the hedge fund.
Hedge funds went on to dramatically outperform most mutual funds in the 1960s and gained further popularity when a 1966 article in Fortune highlighted an obscure investment that outperformed every mutual fund on the market by double-digit figures over the previous year and by high double-digits over the previous five years.
High-profile money managers deserted the traditional mutual fund industry in droves in the early 1990s, seeking fame and fortune as hedge fund managers. Unfortunately, history repeated itself in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s as a number of high-profile hedge funds, including Robertson’s, failed in spectacular fashion.
Since that era, the hedge fund industry has grown substantially. Today the hedge fund industry is massive—total assets under management in the industry are valued at more than $3.2 trillion according to the 2018 Preqin Global Hedge Fund Report. Based on statistics from research firm Barclays hedge, the total number of assets under management for hedge funds jumped by 2335% between 1997 and 2018.
The hedge funds had all “shorted” GameStop, which is well-known tactic to make money by the failure of a stock – “failure,” defined as a reduced price. In this case, Wall Street hedge fund managers had all “shorted” GameStop, and others, waiting for the price to drop before they sold the shares they were holding.
In a “short” sale (as it pertains to Wall Street trading), an entity “borrows” a stock from its owner, and holds it for a period of time, in anticipation that its price will drop enough so that they can then sell it (return its purchase price to the owner), and pocket the difference. It’s not illegal, and has been done for quite some time.
As you might imagine, by so doing (shorting), a stock can significantly, and adversely be affected.
But… a short sale can “go bad,” and that’s what the 4 million+ members of the subReddit group WallStreetBets did – ruin the day (or even longer) of many vulture capitalists hedge fund managers by driving up the price per share of GameStop.
GameStop, which has the ticker symbol GME, and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), has faced a decline in sales, 7 brokerages have issued twelve-month price objectives for GameStop’s shares which range from $3.50 to $33.00 per share. And on average, they expect GameStop’s per share stock price to be $11.93 in the next twelve months. That suggests that the stock has a possible downside of 96.3%.
For the last 5 years, GameStop stock price has been relatively stable, and only minimally changed, and has ranged from the lower $30 range to slightly over $4 per share. Their last dividend payment was March 14, 2019, which was $0.38 per share, which represented an increase from 2012 when it was $0.12 per share. Aside from the most recent price fluctuations, over its lifespan, GameStop’s price per share has ranged from $3.91 to $63.68 from February 2002 though August 2020.
At its highest, GameStop was valued at $483 per share on January 25, 2021. That’s where the Wall Street Bets Redditors (participants in Reddit) come into play. Their trading of the stock – specifically as purchases – drove up the stock to terrific heights, which in turn, caused problems with the hedge funds that held a short position on the stock – SIGNIFICANT problems.
In effect, the Redditors caused what’s called a “short squeeze” which is a market condition that occurs when investors who are betting against the stock (thinking it will fall in price) are forced to close out their position by buying the stock, which in turn, adds fuel to the fire.
So far this year, the Redditors have cost short-sellers over $19 billion in losses on GameStop alone. Much of Wall Street’s trades are now done by computer algorithm, which almost completely eliminates human involvement. So day traders, and others who may use apps to trade, are an anomaly in an otherwise almost-wholly automated market.
Melvin Capital, a roughly $12 billion hedge fund has suffered a more than 30% decline largely due to its short position in GameStop.
Payment For Order Flow (PFOF) is a practice in which brokerage firms are compensated to route their customers’ trading orders to certain market makers to execute the trades rather than directly to an exchange, which creates a potential conflict of interest between the brokerage and the customer.
The PFOF practice has enabled $0 commission trading, which was jump started by Robinhood’s launch in 2015, and was considered groundbreaking at the time when most investors had to pay upwards of $10 for every buy or sell order.
According to a SEC filing by Robinhood, they make a bulk of their money from the PFOF practice, and generated upwards of $100 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2020 from a number of market makers, including Citadel Securities.
Now, another free-trading brokerage firm is bucking the PFOF practice and shifting its business model to tipping.
In a blog post on Monday, Public.com said it would end the practice of selling its customers’ order flow to market makers, and would instead route them directly to exchanges like the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange.
The company issued a press release which stated in part that they would remove that inherent conflict of interest from their business model, “To align our incentives with those of our members, we will stop participating in the practice of PFOF and instead introduce a tipping feature on trades. Trades will remain commission-free and tipping is entirely optional.”
APEX, which is Public.com’s clearinghouse firm, was notified on January 30 of their intent to be taken off the “PFOF rails,” according to a blog post by the company, noting that all trade orders at the brokerage firm will be directly routed to exchanges for execution. The company said that transition away from PFOF and towards tipping could take a few weeks, but that “Transparency is a core pillar of building trust, and we think it’s important that we live up to our name. Direct routing to the exchanges is more expensive, and therefore we’re turning what used to be a revenue stream (PFOF) into a cost center and we’re optimistic that the difference will be offset by the optional tipping feature.”
Now, nearly every brokerage firm offers $0 commission trading.
But the PFOF practice is facing backlash from many, including venture capital investor Bill Gurley, who tweeted on Sunday, “If the SEC/government wants to ‘fix the plumbing’ the number one thing they should do is ban Payment for Order Flow.”
Gurley said that the practice “smells bad” and is already outlawed in the United Kingdom, and in Canada.
We’ve Seen This Before: The Current GameStop Drama Has Grassroots In The 2008 Housing Crash
by Liam O’Hara
• Main Street played by the rules, but Wall Street changed them mid-game.
• Retail traders on Reddit’s r/wallstreetbets had a simple buy-and-hold strategy for an overleveraged short position on GameStop held by Melvin Capital — until Wall Street shut it down.
• The game has been rigged all along and now it’s out in the open for all to see.
It’s been only a few days since news about the feud between Main Street and Wall Street entered the public’s awareness and the internet is already filled with more articles and stories about it than one could realistically hope to keep up with.
As a retail investor who bought a long position in GameStop (I am not a financial advisor, I just like the stock) only hours before its historic ascent, I only have my limited perspective and experience to offer. But, as a millennial who came of age during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 — and decided to study finance and accounting specifically because of it — I believe I have a somewhat unique, but relatable viewpoint.
For many retail traders, GameStop was a chance to get in on the ground floor of an arguably undervalued stock with the added benefit of watching the high and mighty of Wall Street squirm after being caught in an embarrassing position.
We’ve been through this type of thing before.
It is impossible to escape the fact that many of these small-time traders have vivid memories of the financial equivalent of an atomic bomb that Wall Street and government regulators dropped on the world in 2008. In the fallout of the housing crisis, hundreds of millions of people’s lives were upended.
Save for a few, like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, many Wall Street banks came out ahead because of obscure and convoluted financial derivatives that left regular people holding the bag.
Unemployment skyrocketed, families’ houses were foreclosed on, pensions were decimated, and the middle class was suddenly forced to scrape by just to feed their families. To add insult to injury, the federal government awarded these same banks $700 billion dollars of taxpayer money because they were “too big to fail.”
I was only 18 years old then and didn’t understand much about what was happening, but seeing my family suffer motivated me to learn more, and I’ve learned much since then. In many ways I’ve been waiting 13 years to write about it.
I was raised in a working class family in the suburbs of middle America.
My parents both worked hard to provide the best upbringing and educationavailable to us. Both are college educated and have worked in a variety of jobs, with my mother eventually settling into a role working for the county, and my father working in mortgage lending until the subprime mortgage crisis when he was forced to look for work elsewhere which he found at a large manufacturing company.
As the dust of the crisis settled and the recession loomed on the horizon, my dad was eventually let go during one of the multiple rounds of layoffs by his employer. We were fortunate enough to keep our house, but had little more to spend since most of the jobs available at that point were minimum wage. Between meager wages, intermittent unemployment benefits, and trips to the food banks, we managed to make it through one of the deepest recessions in decades.
In October 2008, two months after I began my freshman year at university (only made possible by generous scholarships), the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, was Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, February 1, 2021
No honey… God does not love you.
Neither do His people.
Public tax dollars should NOT go to religious or private K-12 schools.
Period.
Second-Grader Expelled Over ‘Crush’ On Girl At Owasso Private School, Thankful For Community Support
By: Tanya Modersitzki, FOX23 News
Updated: January 27, 2021 – 7:07 AM
OWASSO, Okla. — Delanie Shelton said her 8-year-old daughter, Chloe was kicked out of Rejoice Christian School in Owasso because Chloe told another girl she had a crush on her.
“[Chloe] said the vice principal sat her down and says the Bible says you can only marry a man and have children with a man,” Shelton said. “My daughter was crying saying ‘Does God still love me?’”
Chloe Shelton, a 2nd grader at Rejoice Schools in Owasso, Oklahoma (a private, so-called “Christian” school system), was expelled for saying that she had a girl crush on another little girl.
Rejoice Christian Schools told Shelton they don’t condone boyfriend/girlfriend relationships on campus, but in the student handbook it doesn’t say it’s grounds for expulsion.
“The vice principal asked me how do I feel like girls liking girls and I said if we’re being honest, I think it’s okay for girls to like girls and she looked shocked and appalled,” Shelton said.
Shelton said she is raising her family to not judge and love whomever you want.
Rejoice initially cited the school’s student handbook and policy, before releasing the following statement:
“Due to privacy and other factors, it is the school’s policy to refrain from public comments regarding any particular student or family.”
– Rejoice Christian School Superintendent Joel Pepin
“They ripped my kids out of the only school they’ve ever really known away from their teachers and friends they’ve had over the past four years over something my daughter probably doesn’t know or fully understand,” Shelton said.
FOX23′s Tanya Modersitzki talked to Chloe after she’d received an outpouring of support from the community following the telling of her story.
“I feel so loved and supported, thank you so much to everyone who helped me feel better for being who I am,” Chloe said.
“The mob assault on the U.S. Capitol was predictable. Fortunately, democracy held. But security failed spectacularly.
“In short, the failure of planning is incomprehensible. We’re lucky this wasn’t a massacre. The intruders could’ve taken elected officials hostage; it was only in October that the FBI thwarted a plot by right-wing extremists to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
“January 6th is now a day to be remembered on the calendar of violent resistance to the federal government. Emerging from the deadly debacle are diehards whose fantasies of a stolen election are still being fueled.
“These extremists could now be emboldened by their successful confrontation last week. A continuing deep sense of injury coupled with an unrealistic assessment of their own power is always a bad combination.
“Defiance is not easily put back in the box. The siege may cause some previously inflammatory politicians to sober up. But to the rioters, any weak denunciations by such politicians may only feed their sense of betrayal and harden their resolve.
“Extremist activity during the inauguration or the SOTU address is possible in the near term. But I worry more about terrorist plots by right-wing extremists over the horizon.”
Domestic Violent Extremists Will Be Harder To Combat Than Homegrown Jihadists
Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Adviser to the RAND President, Michael D. Rich.
By Brian Michael Jenkins
01/31/21 05:00 PM EST
Brian Michael Jenkins is a Senior Adviser to the President of the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. He is a former Captain in the Green Berets, initiated RAND’s Terrorism Research program in 1972 and has been researching terrorism for RAND since. He is a Fulbright Fellow, University of San Carlos in Guatemala, has served in several administrations in various capacities related to security and terrorism, authored numerous books, articles, and reports published worldwide, and is a Vietnam Veteran.
The Biden administration has said it will take steps to combat domestic violent extremism. While the move comes close on the heels of the January 6 attack on the Capitol Building, the nation has witnessed recent acts of violence stemming from both far left and far right extremists.
The announced actions – conducting a comprehensive threat assessment, coordinating intelligence sharing, disrupting networks, trying to prevent radicalization – might have a familiar ring. They’re similar to the post-9/11 response to thwart terrorist attacks launched from abroad, and later, homegrown jihadists, which have been largely successful. While these are solid steps, for a variety of reasons shutting down domestic extremists will prove far more difficult than combating homegrown jihadists.
Larger constituencies.
Jihadist ideology, with few exceptions, gained very little traction in America’s Muslim communities. In contrast, the beliefs driving today’s domestic extremists are deeply rooted in American history and society. Precisely for that reason, some law enforcement officials argue against coming down too hard on those involved in the 1/6 assault, perhaps fearing that doing so might provoke the kind of bloody confrontations witnessed in the early 1990s.
The jihadists never had a supportive constituency in the U.S. They responded as individuals to exhortations from groups abroad. Indeed, many of the tips that led to arrests reportedly came from within the Muslim community. There were no continuing terrorist campaigns. Plots and attacks were one-offs. But domestic extremists have a sympathetic base.
Domestic extremists are better organized.
Hindered by FBI infiltration, far right extremists long ago adopted a strategy of “leaderless resistance,” avoiding a hierarchical structure and instead relying on local autonomous cells to carry out attacks on behalf of the cause. What is new about today’s domestic extremists is Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 31, 2021
The answer to the question below is an unambiguously, and resounding: “YES!”
There is an overwhelmingly abundance of evidence that shows he did, most all of which was plastered across social media by the man himself – particularly on Twitter.
Did Trump know what was about to happen January 6?
By Donald Ayer and Dennis Aftergut
Donald Ayer served as Deputy Attorney General under George H.W. Bush and as a U.S. Attorney and Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the Reagan administration.
Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor and Supreme Court advocate, currently a Lawyers Defending American Democracy steering committee member.
President Trump speaks to his rioters before they breached the Capitol.
Photo: Carol Guzy/Zuma Press
That close call should compel robust criminal investigations — not only to hold accountable all those who entered the Capitol but also to tell us exactly what Trump knew when he gave his speech that morning inciting the rioters.
The facts already known do not cast Trump in a good light.
Consider the context: Trump’s increasing desperation on January 6 as the walls closed in on his prospects for holding power.
• More than 60 courts had rejected Trump’s unfounded legal attempts to overturn the election.
• On January 2, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had refused, in an hourlong phone call, to knuckle under to Trump’s pleas to alter the Georgia vote count.
• On January 3, Trump was stopped from replacing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, an assistant attorney general working with Trump to overturn Georgia’s election. A threat from the rest of the Justice Department leadership team to resign en masseforced Trump to back down.
• On January 5, the U.S. Attorney in Georgia resignedrather than collaborate in Trump’s attempts to overturn a state election result affirmed in three recounts.
These facts — along with Trump’s January 6 speech in which he told supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” “You’ll never take back our country with weakness” and “When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules” — ought to be evidence enough, we think, to convict him in his imminent impeachment trial.
What is already known to prosecutors is likely also sufficient to indict Trump for his willful efforts to deny Americans’ civil rights by subverting our democracy.
But more is needed.
History — as well as competent prosecution — demands that we establish Trump’s knowledge and intent on January 6 so that he is held accountable and Read the rest of this entry »
January 6 Rally Funded by Top Trump Donor, Helped by Alex Jones, Organizers Say
by Shalini Ramachandran, Alexandra Berzon and Rebecca Ballhaus
Updated Jan. 30, 2021 1:28 pm ET
The rally in Washington’s Ellipse that preceded the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol was arranged and funded by a small group including a top Trump campaign fundraiser and donor facilitated by far-right show host Alex Jones.
Mr. Jones personally pledged more than $50,000 in seed money for a planned Jan. 6 event in exchange for a guaranteed “top speaking slot of his choice,” according to a funding document outlining a deal between his company and an early organizer for the event.
Mr. Jones also helped arrange for Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a prominent donor to the Trump campaign and heiress to the Publix Super Markets Inc. chain, to commit about $300,000 through a top fundraising official for former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, according to organizers. Her money paid for the lion’s share of the roughly $500,000 rally at the Ellipse where Mr. Trump spoke.
Another far-right activist and leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement, Ali Alexander, helped coordinate planning with Caroline Wren, a fundraising official who was paid by the Trump campaign for much of 2020 and who was tapped by Ms. Fancelli to organize and fund an event on her behalf, organizers said. On social media, Mr. Alexander had targeted Jan. 6 as a key date for supporters to gather in Washington to contest the 2020-election certification results. The week of the rally, he tweeted a flyer for the event saying: “DC becomes FORT TRUMP starting tomorrow on my orders!”
Alex Jones addressed protesters on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6.
Photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images
The Ellipse rally, at which President Trump urged supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol, was lawful and nonviolent. But it served as a jumping-off point for many supporters to head to the Capitol. Mr. Trump has been impeached by the Democrat-led House of Representatives, accused of inciting a mob to storm the Capitol with remarks urging supporters to “fight like hell.”
Few details about the funding and organization of the Ellipse event have previously been revealed. Mr. Jones claimed in a video that he paid for a portion of the event but didn’t offer details.
Messrs. Jones and Alexander had been active in the weeks before the event, calling on supporters to oppose the election results and go to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Mr. Alexander, for instance, tweeted on Dec. 30 about the scheduled Jan. 6 count for lawmakers to certify the Electoral College vote at the Capitol, writing: “If they do this, everyone can guess what me and 500,000 others will do to that building.”
Julie Jenkins Fancelli, shown in 2019, donated more than $980,000 in the 2020 election cycle to a joint account for the Trump campaign and Republican Party, records show.
Photo: Barry Friedman/LKLNDNOW
A hodgepodge of different pro-Trump groups were planning various events on Jan. 6. Several of them, led by the pro-Trump Women for America First, helped coordinate the Ellipse event; another group splintered off to lead a rally the night before, at which Mr. Jones ended up speaking, and the group organized by Mr. Alexander planned a protest outside the Capitol building.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, January 29, 2021
So… today, this morning, I spent about $10 with Krispy Kreme.
If you’re a Southerner reading this, you know what that means.
If you’re not a Southerner, or are otherwise uninformed, Krispy Kreme is the North Carolina-heeadquartered company that has for years made the most delightfully light, fluffy, airy doughnuts.
They’re NOT at all like Dunkin’ Doughnuts, which are heavy, doughy, bread-cake like doughnuts. There is NO comparison whatsoever.
It’s like the difference between a Model-T, and a F1. Even though they’re both cars, they’re worlds apart.
But what I wanted to focus upon is a portion of the brief, pleasant exchange I had with the clerk in the store.
I had decided to stop in as I was returning home from taking Queenie to the veterinarian’s office for ACL surgery today. As I was nearing the area, the thought “doughnuts” occurred to me, and I knew the KK was nearby. As I drew closer, another thought occurred to me: The locally-owned-and-hometown-operated doughnut shop a little further down the road.
Not wanting to drive any further, even though it wasn’t far, per se, I opted for the nearest shop, which was the KK.
Even though I’m not a “shopaholic,” nor adherent, nor promoter of “retail therapy,” I’m fortunate to live in an area that’s conveniently located to many different shops and retailers. Some folks have to drive quite a distance to do so almost anything, whereas I do not. So, I count my blessings, in a manner of speaking.
I had donned a facemask before I walked in, looked around briefly – I was the only customer present – and Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Thursday, January 28, 2021
If you cant win honestly, the next step is using dishonesty.
And that’s EXACTLY what Georgia Banana Republicans are doing – changing the rules in the middle of the game when it becomes apparent that they’re starting to lose favor with The People.
Lying, corrupt, sons of bitches, and bastards… every god-damned one of ’em.
A Georgia Republican is introducing a bill requiring voters to send copies of their photo ID to election officials two times before being permitted to cast an absentee ballot.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 27, 2021
New Guidelines Issued on Medical Cannabis for Chronic Pain
International task force shares recommendations for dosing, administering.
by Ryan Basen, Enterprise & Investigative Writer, MedPage
September 13, 2020
Chronic pain patients can be treated with medical cannabis following one of three protocols based on patient characteristics, according to an international task force at the virtual PAINWeek meeting.
Note the words “NO OPIATES” PROMINENTLY displayed on the label.
Citing limited clinician knowledge about medical cannabis treatment and the opioid crisis, one task force member said the recommendations are timely.
“We as a task force believe it’s extremely important to bring [medical cannabis] to patients,” Alan Bell, MD, of the University of Toronto, told MedPage Today. “Our main focus was to provide directions to clinicians.”
Medical cannabis has been suggested to treat chronic pain, the task force noted, but too many providers still do not utilize it because there has not been accepted guidelines about dosing and administration. Others prescribe medical cannabis without knowing how patients can properly dose.
“There’s a huge knowledge gap and no way clinicians can fall back on a specified dosing regimen,” Bell said.
Led by Arun Bhaskar, MD, of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust Pain Management Centre in London, the 20-clinician Global Task Force on Dosing and Administration of Medical Cannabis in Chronic Pain used a modified Delphi process. Among their recommendations:
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 25, 2021
WashingtonMonthly.com
Can Trump’s Pardons Be Reversed?
by Holly Brewer and Timothy Noah
President Ulysses S. Grant did it, and George W. Bush, and the Constitution would seem to encourage it.
January 22, 2021
2:07 PM
We’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing about President Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour marathon of glaringly unethical pardons, but only a little consideration (see 1-here, 2-here, 3-here, 4-here, and 5-here) about whether the Constitution permits them. A decent case can be made that it does not—and that at least some of these pardons can be reversed.
The relevant passage is Article II, Section 2, in the so-called “Commander-in-chief clause.” The president, it says, “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Nobody knows precisely what that means, but Trump has been under impeachment and awaiting Senate trial — for the second time — since January 13, 2021.
The most interesting real-life precedent for restricting a president’s right to issue pardons concerns President Andrew Johnson, who in March 1868 became the first of three presidents to be impeached by Congress, and two months later became the first to win Senate acquittal.
In March 1869, Johnson, on his last full day in office, pardoned Jacob and Moses Dupuy, who’d been convicted of defrauding the Internal Revenue Department, and Richard C. Enright, who’d been convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government. On assuming office, Johnson’s successor, President Ulysses Grant, reversed all three by calling back the U.S. marshals out delivering the pardons. A fourth pardon that Grant meant to reverse, to one James F. Martin, was permitted to stand because Martin had it already in hand, according to the late P.S. Ruckman, Jr., a political scientist at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois. Grant’s reversal of Moses Dupuy’s pardon was challenged in court and upheld on the technical grounds that Dupuy never received it. (Ruckman, an expert on presidential pardons, Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 24, 2021
Bill Lee is the 50th Governor of the State of Tennessee, a Republican, and is serving his first term in office, having been elected in 2018.
Vice President Kamala Harris two days ago Tweeted:
“On the 48th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we recommit ourselves to ensuring that everyone has access to care—including reproductive health care—no matter their income, race, zip code, health insurance status, or immigration status.”
On the 48th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we recommit ourselves to ensuring that everyone has access to care—including reproductive health care—no matter their income, race, zip code, health insurance status, or immigration status. https://t.co/2CMdjihsXV
I’d like to address this entry to Governor Lee, and to every other person who, for whatever reason, opposes abortion – though opposition to the procedure is mostly religious-based, and that itself presents a Constitutional problem, insofar as our nation is not established upon any religion, and I mean specifically to refer to the “Establishment clause” of the First Amendment. I am NOT going to argue religion, that is for theologians, and I am not making a theological argument.
First, it is a very dangerous precedent to write a law that not only eliminates one’s ability to make an independent, and informed decision (about that, or any other private matter), but mandates that the government tell you (or anyone) what to do in your private life. That is the essence of what is happening with this type of argument. Proponents are: 1.) Forbidding exercise of Constitutional rights and freedom to make a free-will decision, and; 2.) Essentially forcing the pregnant woman to give birth to the child.
Regardless of whether one agrees, or not, that abortion should be discouraged, or even made illegal, the essence of what is happening is that, when government gets involved in a personal, private matter, there is no longer just a woman, and her physician, in that private treatment room, but 535 other people – 435 Representatives, and 100 Senators. And that’s just too many people in one small room.
Whenever government steps in and makes decisions for you, you no longer have freedom, you no longer have liberty. And whether they realize it, or acknowledge it, or not, that’s what the anti-abortion activists want – for government to make your decision, or more accurately, to deny you the ability to make a decision… one with which they disagree with upon religious grounds. Not only is that is the VERY antithesis of so-called “smaller, less intrusive” government (something about which GOP types have clamored about), but it is “Big Brother” government, another thing about which most right-wing, and GOP-type folks complain.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 24, 2021
Dear Judas,
(A Letter to the Evangelical Church)
NOVEMBER 20, 2020
by JOHN PAVLOVITZ
Dear Evangelicals,
I thought of you today.
I was reading the Bible. (You may remember the Bible from a sitting president’s recent upside-down, tear-gassed, church steps photo op.)
I came across Matthew’s story of Judas’ final moments here on the planet: overwhelmed with guilt, in a searing, sweaty panic — realizing that he had betrayed his beloved Jesus and sent him to an unthinkably violent death, all for thirty cold pieces of silver that now felt worthless in his hands.
He’d kissed him and he’d killed him, just to gain a quick windfall that he suddenly realized was fool’s gold.
He died knowing he’d forfeited his soul and couldn’t get a refund.
President Donald Trump poses with a Bible outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House Monday, June 1, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Part of the church was set on fire during protests on Sunday night. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
I wonder if you will ever have such a last-minute awakening: a similarly sickening moment of clarity-come-too-late, when you look around and see all that you’ve destroyed and how many people you’ve grievously wounded — and if you too will realize that you’re now permanently in the red because you have abandoned your namesake for another name that adorns very different kinds of buildings.
Take a moment and survey the coins in your hand, now, friends.
Roll them around your fingers.
Feel the weight of them.
Your thirty pieces of silver were these last four years, some Supreme Court Justices, a couple hundred lower court judges, the temporary high of a few political wins, the bully pulpit of a President’s Twitter feed for forty-eight months, and perhaps soon, loss of a woman’s right to autonomy over her own body.
That was your soul’s selling price.
Was it all worth betraying Jesus for, I wonder?
Was it worth brutalizing the already vulnerable and oppressed, whose lives he said he inhabited?
Was it worth aligning with this petulant, profane Caesar in all his pervasive and prolific violence?
Was it worth driving a generation from the Church that Jesus built to be a refuge for wanderers, a balm for the hurting, a destination for weary pilgrims, and a home for prodigals?
From where I’m standing, it wasn’t.
From where I’m standing, you’re bankrupt.
From where I’m standing, you’re stuck.
President Donald Trump (in blue tie, 3rd from right) poses outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House Monday, June 1, 2020, in Washington. Part of the church was set on fire during protests on Sunday night. Standing with Trump are, LEFT to RIGHT, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Attorney General William Barr, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien, Trump, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
I’m out here with the multitudes who will never darken the door of one your gatherings ever again because they’ve seen your greed.
I’m here with those whose last remaining tethers to religion have been fully severed seeing you abandon the tender world-loving heart of Jesus, in favor of a thin facade of nationalistic bravado.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, January 22, 2021
Following are excerpted portions of the in-depth interview, which may be read in its entirety, or heard, via the link at the end this entry.
Book ‘Kill Switch’ Examines The Racist History Of The Senate Filibuster
TERRY GROSS, HOST: Congress is trying to return to normal after the insurrection. But what is normal? There are more threats of violence surrounding the inauguration. The norm-breaking that became the norm during the Trump presidency is about to change with the Biden administration. Another change will be the new Democratic majority in the Senate. After newly elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock are sworn in, the Senate will be evenly divided, 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats. But Vice President Kamala Harris will have the tie-breaking vote.
But how much power does that actually give Democrats in the Senate? A majority is not enough to pass legislation anymore and hasn’t been for a long time because of the modern use of the filibuster. It takes three-fifths of the Senate to override a filibuster, which means the minority only needs 41 votes to prevent any bill from even coming to a vote. My guest Adam Jentleson says the modern use of the filibuster has crippled American democracy, enabling the minority to systematically block bills favored by the majority. He’s the author of the new book, “Kill Switch,” about the rise of the modern Senate. He knows the ins and outs of Senate rules because he worked as Harry Reid’s deputy chief of staff when Reid was the Democratic leader. Jentleson joined Reid’s staff in 2010 and stayed until 2017.
“Kill Switch” is a history of how the filibuster started as a tool of Southern senators upholding slavery, and then later was used as a tool to block civil rights legislation. The book concludes with Senator Mitch McConnell’s advances in the use of filibuster as an obstructionist tool. Jentleson is now public affairs director at Democracy Forward, which was founded in 2017 to fight corruption in the executive branch.
ADAM JENTLESON: Slowly, over the course of time, but primarily to serve the interests of slave states and try to preserve slavery against the march of progress and a growing majority of both states and Americans who wanted to abolish slavery. The filibuster did not exist in name or practice until about the middle of the 19th century. So this was well after all of the Founding Fathers had passed away. James Madison was one of the longest lived and an ardent opponent of the filibuster to the extent that it sort of was coming into existence in the 1830s. And he passed away in the early 1830s.
John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), United States Representative of South Carolina-CD6, 10th Secretary of War, 16th Secretary of State, Senator of South Carolina, and 7th Vice President (1825-1832), ardent slavery proponent, and slave owner.
So the progenitor of the filibuster, its main innovator, was John C. Calhoun, the great nullifier, the leader, father of the Confederacy. And Calhoun innovated the filibuster for the specific purpose of empowering the planter class. He was a senator from South Carolina. His main patrons were the powerful planters. And he was seeking to create a regional constituency to empower himself against the march of progress and against – what was becoming clear was a superior economic model in the North. So Calhoun started to innovate forms of obstruction that came to be known as the filibuster.
GROSS: So you describe John Calhoun as, like, basically, the father of the filibuster. Let’s be clear who he was. I mean, he not only wanted to protect slave owners, he argued that slavery created racial harmony and improved the lives of slaves. You quote him in the book. He said, never before has the Black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. Amazing that he could justify that slavery was improving the lives of enslaved people.
JENTLESON: That’s right. And it’s important to note at this time, you know – not to give people of that era too much credit for being enlightened. But, you know, there was a shift in public opinion going on regarding slavery in the United States. The abolitionist movement was beginning to gain traction. And, you know, while folks weren’t exactly at the enlightened state of believing in full equality, they recognized that slavery had – was, at best, a necessary evil, emphasis on the evil.
And so Calhoun took it upon himself to argue that there was nothing evil about it. In that same speech that you quoted, he went on to explain that slavery was not a necessary evil, but, quote, “a positive good.” He was such an ardent defender and such a vehement racist that he couldn’t even accept the sort of antebellum acknowledgement that there were parts of the institution that were evil. So it was very clear what his motivations were. He wanted to preserve slavery. And the filibuster was what he deployed to achieve that goal.
GROSS: So we’ve established that needing a supermajority to pass legislation was not what the founders wanted. They wanted simple majorities. You’ve talked about how the filibuster was initiated in the mid-19th century and the ways it was used to enable slave owners and to keep the institution of slavery. But you write that the only time the filibuster was used during Jim Crow with any consistency was to block any form of civil rights legislation and that this happened through the 1960s.
So give us an example of that – like, of the systematic use of the filibuster to block civil rights legislation.
JENTLESON: So what Southern senators faced starting in the 1920s was majority support for civil rights bills. These were rudimentary civil rights bills. These were anti-lynching bills and anti-poll tax bills, but they were civil rights bills nonetheless. These bills started passing the House with big majorities. They had presidents of both parties in the White House ready to sign them, and they actually had enormous public support. Gallup polled the public on anti-lynching bills in 1937 and found 70% of Americans supporting federal anti-lynching laws. And they polled anti-poll tax laws in the 1940s and found 60% support. So Southern senators started to block these bills in the name of minority rights Read the rest of this entry »
Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
The White House
13-16 minutes
The United States Capitol
11:52 AM EST
THE PRESIDENT: Chief Justice Roberts, Vice President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, Leader McConnell, Vice President Pence, distinguished guests, and my fellow Americans.
This is America’s day.
This is democracy’s day.
A day of history and hope.
Of renewal and resolve.
Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge.
Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy.
The will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded.
We have learned again that democracy is precious.
Democracy is fragile.
And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed.
So now, on this hallowed ground where just days ago violence sought to shake this Capitol’s very foundation, we come together as one nation, under God, indivisible, to carry out the peaceful transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.
We look ahead in our uniquely American way – restless, bold, optimistic – and set our sights on the nation we know we can be and we must be.
I thank my predecessors of both parties for their presence here.
I thank them from the bottom of my heart.
You know the resilience of our Constitution and the strength of our nation.
As does President Carter, who I spoke to last night but who cannot be with us today, but whom we salute for his lifetime of service.
I have just taken the sacred oath each of these patriots took — an oath first sworn by George Washington.
But the American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us.
On “We the People” who seek a more perfect Union.
This is a great nation and we are a good people.
Over the centuries through storm and strife, in peace and in war, we have come so far. But we still have far to go.
We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and possibility.
Much to repair.
Much to restore.
Much to heal.
Much to build.
And much to gain.
Few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now.
A once-in-a-century virus silently stalks the country.
It’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War II.
Millions of jobs have been lost.
Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed.
A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.
A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.
And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.
To overcome these challenges – to restore the soul and to secure the future of America – requires more than words.
It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy:
Unity.
Unity.
In another January in Washington, on New Year’s Day 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
When he put pen to paper, the President said, “If my name ever goes down into history it will be for this act and my whole soul is in it.”
My whole soul is in it.
Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this:
Bringing America together.
Uniting our people.
And uniting our nation.
I ask every American to join me in this cause.
Uniting to fight the common foes we face:
Anger, resentment, hatred.
Extremism, lawlessness, violence.
Disease, joblessness, hopelessness.
With unity we can do great things. Important things.
We can right wrongs.
We can put people to work in good jobs.
We can teach our children in safe schools.
We can overcome this deadly virus.
We can reward work, rebuild the middle class, and make health care
secure for all.
We can deliver racial justice.
We can make America, once again, the leading force for good in the world.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 20, 2021
While I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of any political party, I am completely simpatico with Senator Sasse’s observations, and remarks.
Competition is good, wholesome, and healthy, and strengthens each competitor. So in a very real way, it would be disastrous for our political system – which for all practical purposes, is comprised of but two political parties – to suffer the loss of one. Instead, we should be seeking to increase the number of viable competitors.
The GOP’s problems are myriad, not the least of which are cowardice, and failure to stand for truth, and oppose lies, no matter their source, or who promulgated them. As evidenced by what they did the past 4 years, if the party cannot will not stand for “truth, justice, and the American way,” what will they fall for?
As the colloquial saying – and song by the same name – goes, “you’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.”
Sadly, the GOP has already fallen.
The following article contains abbreviated excerpts of the original, which may be found linked at the conclusion.
QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within
Until last week, too many in the Republican Party thought they could preach the Constitution and wink at QAnon. They can’t.
Eugene Goodman is an American hero. At a pivotal moment on January 6, the veteran United States Capitol Police officer single-handedly prevented untold bloodshed. Staring down an angry, advancing mob, he retreated up a marble staircase, calmly wielding his baton to delay his pursuers while calling out their position to his fellow officers. At the top of the steps, still alone and standing just a few yards from the chamber where senators and Vice President Mike Pence had been certifying the Electoral College’s vote, Goodman strategically lured dozens of the mayhem-minded away from an unguarded door to the Senate floor.
…
If and when the House sends its article of impeachment against Trump to the Senate, I will be a juror in his trial, and thus what I can say in advance is limited. But no matter what happens in that trial, the Republican Party faces a separate reckoning. Until last week, many party leaders and consultants thought they could preach the Constitution while winking at QAnon. They can’t. The GOP must reject conspiracy theories or be consumed by them. Now is the time to decide what this party is about.
The newly elected Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. She once ranted that “there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it.” During her campaign, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a choice: Disavow her campaign and potentially lose a Republican seat, or welcome her into his caucus and try to keep a lid on her ludicrous ideas. McCarthy failed the leadership test and sat on the sidelines. Now in Congress, Greene isn’t going to just back McCarthy as leader and stay quiet. She’s already announced plans to try to impeach Joe Biden on his first full day as president. She’ll keep making fools out of herself, her constituents, and the Republican Party.
If the GOP is to have a future outside the fever dreams of Internet trolls, we have to call out falsehoods and conspiracy theories unequivocally. We have to repudiate people who peddle those lies.
…
America’s Junk-Food Media Diet
The way Americans are consuming and producing news—or what passes for it these days—is driving us mad. This has been said many times, but the problem has worsened in the past five years. On the supply side, media outlets have discovered that dialing up the rhetoric increases clicks, eyeballs, and revenue. On the demand side, readers and viewers like to see their opinions affirmed, rather than challenged. When everybody’s outraged, everybody wins—at least in the short term.
This is not a problem only on the right or only on obscure blogs. The underlying economics that drive Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Democratic Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you.
Perhaps you’ll recognize the opening words of Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, delivered March 4, 1861. There is one very minor, only slight change, however, and it is the substitution of the word “Democratic” for the word “Republican.”
That is purposeful, and deliberate, to illustrate a case in point.
Photograph shows participants and crowd at the first inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, at the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. Lincoln is standing under the wood canopy, at the front, midway between the left and center posts. His face is in shadow but the white shirt front is visible. (Source: Ostendorf, p. 87) “A distant photograph from a special platform by an unknown photographer, in front of the Capitol, Washington, D.C., afternoon of March 4, 1861. ‘A small camera was directly in front of Mr. Lincoln,’ reported a newspaper, ‘another at a distance of a hundred yards, and a third of huge dimensions on the right … The three photographers present had plenty of time to take pictures, yet only the distant views have survived.” (Source: Ostendorf, p. 86-87)
Slave Southern states nowadays are largely Republican political strongholds.
That is not accidental. It is deliberate, and has been an ongoing effort in the Republican party since at least 1964, or, perhaps even earlier.
States below the Mason-Dixon line – a surveyor’s line of demarcation delineating primarily the southern border of Pennsylvania, and the western border of Delaware, from Maryland – sometimes also known as, or referred to as “slave states,” i.e., states where slavery as an institution was considered not only legal, but morally upright, ethical, and good – were once largely Democratic strongholds until around the mid-1960’s, or thereabouts.
The tables, however, were largely turned, and the tide began to shift in earnest beginning with the candidacy of Arizona United States Senator Barry Goldwater, who was the failed Republican candidate for President in 1964, opposite President Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas, who as Vice President, succeeded to the Presidency upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.
At the GOP National Convention that year, New York’s Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller ominously warned of the invasion of the GOP by radicalized elements from the South, which included members of the Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society, Communists, and other domestic terrorists. In his address to the party’s delegates at the July 1964 Republican National Convention at Cow Palace in Daly City, California, he was given 5 minutes to address the delegates, and was booed for over 16 minutes. He was requesting adoption of a resolution to the 1964 official party platform condemning those groups and individuals whom belonged to them, who had infiltrated the Republican party, and sought to include the following language: “The Republican Party fully respects the contribution of responsible criticism, and defends the right of dissent in the democratic process. But we repudiate the efforts ofRead the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, January 18, 2021
Dear President Lincoln,
You and George Washington had something in common, aside from Presidency – you were both honest men.
There’s a story told, that as we understand it now, is but a mythical fable of someone’s vivid imagination, although every lie has an element of truth. That fable was first apparently crafted by the Reverend Mason Locke Weems (1759-1825), the first person ordained by the Anglican Church for the Episcopal Church in America after the American Revolution.
Though he first studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and in London, his calling was apparently to the Christian ministry, and he never practiced medicine.
His 1784 ordination – first as deacon, as customary, September 5, and then as priest on September 12 – was remarkable in part, because he was the first beneficiary of the English Parliament’s passage of the Enabling Act on August 13, 1784, which thereby enabled English bishops to ordain clergy for the American Church without requiring them to swear a loyalty oath to the English sovereign.
He later served as rector in two Maryland parishes – All Hallows’ Parish in Anne Arundel County, 1784-1789, and then from 1790-1792 of Westminster Parish in the same county.
For about 20 years, he was also an itinerant preacher at various Virginia parishes, most notably among them the Pohick Church, where George Washington (1732-1799) attended, before the Revolution. That enabled him to refer to himself as “formerly rector of Mt. Vernon Parish.”
From around 1791 until his death, he became an author, and book peddler for publisher Matthew Carey. Though he wrote and had published various moralizing tracts and biographies of individuals of renown in that era, such as Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, and General Francis Marion (a Continental Army General nicknamed the “Swamp Fox” for his elusive tactics), his most famous biography was of George Washington – “The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington, General and Commander of the Armies of America” – and first published in 1800. It proved to be quite a success, especially with school-aged children, and in its fifth edition in 1806 – albeit with a slightly different title, “The Life of George Washington: With Curious Anecdotes, Equally Honourable to Himself, and Exemplary to His Young Countrymen” – for the first time, there appeared the anecdote of Washington and the cherry tree.
For the ignorant – and, that’s most people – it’s a SCOTUS ruling handed down June 17, 2019 that ruled that, “The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prohibits only governmental, not private, abridgment of speech.”
In other words, Censorship laws DO NOT apply to the Private Sector.
Thank the so-called “conservative” Supremes who handed down that ruling. They are: KAVANAUGH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined.
So, Mr. Dorsey, and every other private company does NOT have to abide by anti-censorship laws.
Furthermore, what in the hell is Ted Cruz doing meddling, trying to tell Twitter how to run their business? That jacked-up twat probably doesn’t even own one share of Twitter.
What fucking hypocrite that son-of-a-bitch is!
I’d have loved to have seen Mr. Dorsey ask Cruz that question – “Are you telling me how to run my business?” – and follow it up with this one:
“Exactly what laws are you accusing me, and/or my company, of breaking?”
Of course, the obvious answer is ‘none.’
And remember: This is Political Theater for Banana Republican Ted Cruz, who feigns not-so-righteous indignation on behalf of those who would vote for him in future elections, Presidential, or not. And chances are, we’ll see that Texas turd make a Presidential run for the border in 2024.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 17, 2021
Oh yeah… add QAnoners, Deep Staters, Alex “InforWars” Jonesers, Stop the Stealers, militia members, neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Proud Boys, and other nutzos – including Banana Republicans.
That is the “Party of Donald Trump.”
“This gathering should send a message to them; this isn’t their Republican party anymore, this is Donald Trump’s Republican party, this is the Republican party that will put America first.”
–– Donald Trump, Jr., January 6, 2021 at the “America First/Stop the Steal” (or whatever they called it) “officially known as the “March to Save America,” was largely organized by a 501(c)(4) group known as Women for America First” rally on The Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House, which can be seen in the background
Speaking of which…
Here’s what the Liar in Chief and his clan were doing while the Capitol Building was under seige.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, January 16, 2021
Dr. Robert R. Redfield, MD – 18th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
But allow me to be more explicit.
Dr. Robert R. Redfield, MD is a goddamn moron for whom I have no professional respect.
Why do I write that?
Like his soon-to-be former boss – the outgoing 45th President – he is, and remains, an ineffectual (mis)leader, under whose oversight the agency, like America, has languished, and suffered significant loss. Furthermore, also like his soon-to-be former boss – the outgoing 45th President – he refuses to accept responsibility for any of it.
The outgoing President, himself an utterly incompetent goddamn know-it-all moron, has a knack and penchant for identifying and naming the most utterly incompetent boobs to important positions within the administration.
Does that mean Redfield is a “most utterly incompetent boob”?
Not necessarily.
Of course, if you’ve been paying the least bit of attention for the past year, or so, you’d know the moronic and utterly idiotic things he’s done, and the equally moronic and contradictory things he’s said to justify, in response to the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.
Outgoing CDC Director Warns Of Pandemic’s Peak:
“We’re About To Be In The Worst Of It”
January 15, 20216:07 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
by Mary Louise Kelly
Mary Louise Kelly: “Why has the U.S. done so much worse than the rest of the world?”
Robert Redfield: “I think this virus has a unique ability to have differential pathogenesis in different people. And what it really does is it exploits the underlying health condition of the individual it infects. And so, I would argue one of the reasons we’re having more significant death in this country than, say, Sweden is because unfortunately, the underlying health conditions — with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and the significant health disparities that we have in these illnesses in our nation — haven’t been effectively addressed.”
• [Pass the buck, please. There is EXACTLY ONE research paper in the entire National Library of Medicine with the subject “differential pathogenesis” in its title which is about COVID-19: Molecular Aspects of COVID-19 Differential Pathogenesis. The gist of the paper’s findings is that a type of the female hormone estradiol increases the levels of Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2), and that ACE2 apparently has some role in preventing severity of symptoms associated with COVID-19 infection, although, “ACE2 expression is dramatically reduced with aging in both genders. The levels of ACE2 expression, which could be sex- and age-dependent, have a protective role against lung and kidney injuries that could impact the severity of COVID-19 illness in male vs. females and old vs. young individuals.” As well, TMPRSS2, a cellular transmembrane protease, has a role in the severity of the disease, insofar as the “expression levels of TMPRSS2 protein are regulated by levels of androgen and androgen receptors … women and children have a lower level of androgen and androgen receptors than men, and therefore, TMPRSS2 could play a potential role in the severity of COVID-19 pathogenesis in men.” The study’s authors also write that, “it could be possible that the expression levels of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 impact virus infectivity and pathogenesis among different groups of individuals, considering the variation in the expression levels in older men compared to the women and children.” It is well known that individuals with comorbidities of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart diseases, and cerebrovascular disease, are at increased risk for poor outcomes, and increased risk of mortality, if infected with COVID-19, and the authors specifically state that the treatments for such conditions may very well place such individuals at increased risk for poor outcomes by writing that they “could be linked to the ACE2 function during SARS-CoV-2 infection and the cardio-metabolic treatments that may interfere withACE2–virus interaction.” The study’s authors conclude that, “variations in the expression levels of SARS-CoV-2 receptors and co-receptors, due to physiological and co-morbidity conditions, could impact the differential pathogenesis of COVID-19.” Contrary to what Dr. Redfield says, the virus does NOT have “a unique ability to have differential pathogenesis in different people.”]
Kelly: “But in terms of how the U.S. has responded, in terms of how the CDC has responded … are you able to defend the Trump administration’s record on this as anything other than a catastrophic failure?”
Redfield: “Well, I’m actually very proud of the response that CDC has done. I think if I have one criticism that Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, January 15, 2021
Freedom.
What a concept, eh?
The very idea that you have a brain, and therefore, can think independently to decide FOR YOURSELF what you want, or ought, to do, continues to frustrate others who think that they know better than you do what personal decisions you should make for yourself!
It’s an adult decision.
Why, it’s nothing short of… LIBERTY!
ENOUGH! of the “Nanny State”!
Take your religion home, and GET IT OUT OF GOVERNMENT!!
Practice it PRIVATELY, with your family, friends, and other like-minded individuals. STOP forcing your PRIVATE religious ethics and morals upon others by writing public laws that mirror your private interpretation of your religion.
Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists that cited the establishment clause of our nation’s Constitution, which as he wrote, erected a “a wall of separation between Church & State,” or as we now say, between government, and religion.
Religious nuts have been trying to tear it down, ever since.
And they’re STILL TRYING TODAY!
‘Drug Use For Grown-Ups’ Serves As An Argument For Personal Choice
If you grew up scared of what illicit drugs could do to you — hearing about all the horrors that could befall you from everyone from Nancy Reagan to your parents — the threat may have felt very real: If you actually took a puff off that joint that the kid who slept through math class offered you, it could lead to failed relationships, chronic unemployment, self-destruction.
The shame would outlive you.
But drugs are a more complicated matter than they’ve been made out to be, according to Dr. Carl L. Hart. In his new book Drug Use for Grown-Ups, the Columbia University professor of psychology and psychiatry zealously argues that drug use should be a matter of personal choice — and that, in more cases than not, personal choice can lead to positive outcomes. His positions may seem quite extreme to some but they also, by and large, make a lot of sense — and are backed up by ample research.
A major reason drugs have such a negative public image, Hart asserts, is racism. He notes that after the Civil War, some Chinese railroad construction workers smoked opium and, sometimes, established “opium dens” to do so. Over time, more and more white Americans visited these dens to smoke opium too. That in turn led to broader, bigoted social fear among whites, like, for example, the sentiments captured in H.H. Kane’s 1882 report:
“The practice spread widely…Many women and young girls, as also young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise.”
Then there was the post-Civil War use of cocaine among some Black day laborers, something Hart writes was at first encouraged by white employers because of the productivity it could promote. Soon enough, however, articles appeared widely that tried to make a connection between African American cocaine use and criminality. One particularly egregious article in The New York Times in 1914, cited by Hart, even reported that some police in the South “who appreciate the vitality of the cocaine-crazed” were switching to higher-caliber weaponry capable of “greater shocking power for the express purpose of combating ‘the fiend’.”
But horrifying history aside, one of the book’s most eye-opening aspects is its challenge of the long-running association between drugs and addiction. First the basics: Addiction, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM – 5), must be a source of distress for a drug user. It must also interfere with a person’s job, parenting or personal relationships. Other indications of addiction may be Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome to the “new” reality.
(because of the inactions and deliberate failures of the previous administration) was the primary cause of the mutated, more virulent variants?
After a 17-year Congressional history, Steve King of Iowa’s 4th Congressional District was the first, however, though he was removed by GOP leadership (Kevin McCarthy) in January 2019 rather than by a vote of the House, as was Greene.
A major reason drugs have such a negative public image, Hart asserts, is racism. He notes that after the Civil War, some Chinese railroad construction workers smoked opium and, sometimes, established “opium dens” to do so. Over time, more and more white Americans visited these dens to smoke opium too. That in turn led to broader, bigoted social fear among whites, like, for example, the sentiments captured in H.H. Kane’s 1882 report: