Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude: 12/08

12/12/2024

fafo, right?

that's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Jussie Smollett Is Nancy Mace's Life Coach"

that comic made me laugh and i was already laughing so hard tonight. maga has no idea what they voted for and they're paying for that. and when i think about that, i think of all the voters not in government. but there are maga voters in government. turns out, they're finding out some hard truths too. sarah k. burris ('raw story') reports:

For the first time since the 114th Republican-led Congress, it appears that there won't be any women leading House committees, Bloomberg Government reported.

Republicans have already named who they intend to take over each committee, but it won't be official until all members are sworn in on Jan. 3. So, Republicans can make changes before then and ensure there is some female representation in the assignments, but doing so would admit they need more diversity, equity and inclusion.

“It’s unfortunate,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) told Bloomberg. She's currently an assistant whip and on the Ways and Means Committee.

“We’ve never been the party that was about checking boxes or identity politics, but the difference is we have women that are qualified to be chairs, and I don’t know why there wasn’t one who was able to become a chairperson of a committee," she added.

you don't know why? really, you dumb bimbo, you don't know why?

because you're a woman. that's why d.e.i. exists. to ensure all are included, all have the chance to compete and that we have a level playing field.

you're against d.e.i., nicole? but you're so damn stupid you don't even realize why it actually exists.

The only woman who sought a chair post was Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO). She lost to Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL).

There are currently two female committee chairs in this Congress; however, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) is retiring from Congress, and Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) is term limited.

The new Congress also has a more significant gender gap. For the first time in 46 years, there will be fewer women in Congress.

'term limited' is a nice phrase for what virginia foxx actually is. she's going to be dead soon and spending eternity in hell - which is where she belongs.

'for the first time in 46 years, there will be fewer women in congress.' thank maga for that crap and thank democratic trash like bernie sanders as well. bernie's not just racist, he's also sexist which is why he paid women less in 2016 and ignored it when his male staff harassed the women.

let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'

Thursday, December 11, 2024. We know so very little when we don't know our history and we can fall for a lot of lies as a result. The next four years will be rough and tough but what's awful on the Dem side is the liars who want to push the party to the right and lie to people to try to get them to go along with a rightward push. All that and Aaron Mate finally gets the attention he's earned.

At SLATE, Christina Cauterucci writes:

Once upon a time, politicians refrained from using slurs to describe members of minority groups. Instead, they expressed their hatred through euphemism and impersonal fearmongering, lest they be deemed uncivilized. For public officials, it seemed like enough to pass discriminatory laws and promote negative stereotypes—they didn’t need to name-call too.

That era is over. Last week, a group of trans-rights activists staged a sit-in at the Capitol to protest a resolution, proposed by South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, that would prohibit transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the building. After a few of them were arrested for protesting, Mace herself headed down to the offices of the U.S. Capitol Police to make a video at the scene.

Here’s how Mace explained the situation: “Some tr—y protesters showed up at the Capitol today to protest my bathroom bill.” To make sure no viewers would miss the slur, Mace posted it with subtitles.

Mace read it like a throwaway line, but it was clearly calculated. Her Republican peers in the House have already made a practice of calling transgender people—including their soon-to-be colleague, incoming transgender Rep. Sarah McBride—by the wrong pronouns and names. If Mace wanted to be the national face of keeping trans people out of bathrooms, she had to go further. So she used a slur. Later that day, she did it again.

Her escalation marks a new stage of U.S. anti-transgender politics. When the current backlash against trans visibility began, about five years ago, right-wing politicians limited their rhetoric mostly to fantasies of protection: protecting trans children from medical therapies, protecting cisgender children from being beaten in sports, and protecting all children from malicious abusers in bathrooms. Conservatives have since expanded their pearl-clutching to transgender adults—but often, it’s still under that same guise of protection. Medicaid shouldn’t pay for gender-affirming care for anyone, they said—unless patients jump through a series of arduous and time-consuming hoops—because it protects against future regret. However disingenuous all this was, it still suggested that most right-wing politicians considered it politically smart to refrain from trashing trans people in extreme ways.

Nancy Mace and her kind are disgusting.

As Ruth notes, we're in for "A world of hurt" on January 20th. And we're there for a number of reasons including the racism and sexism in the media (including Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! and Katrina vanden Heuvel's THE NATION).

48 and 49%.

What's that?

AP's current toll for the US presidential election. Kamala's at 48% and Satan's at 49%. There are a few more votes still to be counted. When we repeatedly note that here, it's not saying, "She can still win!" We don't elect the president by popular vote. We need to. We need to do away with the electoral college. But we haven't. We've made no move on -- even when Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 but lost the presidency.

You want to increase voter turnout? Make voting matter.

It doesn't matter with the electoral college. I voted knowing Kamala would carry my state. When you know that, your vote doesn't really matter. If every vote mattered in the US presidential elections, you would probably get a higher turnout. Instead, we're left with the reality that we know our state will go this or that way -- know that in many states -- so why bother voting? Life's busy, life's tough, we all are short on enjoyment time, why vote if you already know the outcome.

So that's us in California, that's Texas that will go GOP, that's this state and that state. Only in the swing states does your vote really matter. Popular vote determining the president would most likely increase voter turnout across the country.

But the reason we note those totals over and over since the election is because it's reality.

As opposed to what the media told you immediately after the election and continues to attempt to lie about.

And they do that for a number of reasons including the right-wing tilt of the media. It's not a left wing tilt. It used to be a centrist tilt but it's gone on over to the right-wing.

Trump has no mandate. He has no landslide.

Now if most Americans grasped that -- especially Democratic voters -- it would harm a lot of people.

Like?

US House Rep Seth Moulton for one. Senator Mark Warner for another -- see Rebecca's "old man mark warner needs to retire already." People like that -- lazy fat asses who would just as soon sell their own mothers to get a vote -- who want to lie because they don't want to have to fight to defend women's rights, or LGBTQ+ rights, or Civil Rights, or human life for that matter. They're cowards and they're liars. And they will destroy the Democratic Party given the chance.

Simon Rosenberg. E-mails come in insisting that I have him all wrong.

No, I don't.

He may be a progressive today or pose as one. I have no idea.

When I bring him up, I'm talking about what he did in 2004 and 2005 right after that election. That's when he insulted Black women, that's when he was pushing for Dems to stop supporting ROE V WADE and abortion rights, that's when he rallied against LGBTQ+ rights.

He's done a 180, you say? I doubt that very seriously. WIKIPEDIA:

Simon Rosenberg (born October 23, 1963) is a Democratic political strategist and blogger. He was the founder of New Democrat Network (NDN), a centrist think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.^[1]

According to the 2015 book How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley, Rosenberg and NDN were instrumental in shifting control of the Democratic Party away from labor unions and toward Silicon Valley businesses.^[2] Rosenberg said in 1999, "Our problem as a party is that the biggest source of our venture capital now comes from labor, which is a group that's becoming less and less important, and representing less and less of a percentage of American voters. [...] We have to replace labor's investment in the party with investment from another source, and hopefully from a source that's growing."^[2]

Rosenberg shuttered NDN in March 2024.^[3]

That's who you're wasting your time defending. NDN was the DLC made over. It was a right-leaning, Joe Lieberman hand-holding group of trash.

He waited until March of this year to shut it down. Now I felt sorry for him in 2004. He seemed gay and he was publicly gay hating, so I felt sorry for him. Closet cases can be so pathetic. But even that bit of sympathy didn't stop me from calling him out.

Rachel Maddow called him out as well. I'm not remembering a lot of others calling him out.

Simon was running for DNC chair (he would drop out of the race in February 2005 and tell his few supporters to back Howard Dean).

We see the same garbage over and over.

REUTERS notes, "The job of DNC chair is largely administrative and involves logistics and fundraising. But focus on who will next fill the role has grown given the breadth of the Democrats' losses and urgent calls from some party members for a complete reset." The first sentence is about the duties of the chair. Again, we need to make sure the person going in has the skills required. That's all the jobs about.

After the 2004 election, Simon went around insisting Dems needed to move further to the right and you might have thought this would result in his being called out. Very few bothered to call him out. We did. And after John Kerry lost to Bully Boy Bush, people lied to get what they wanted -- they wanted to push the Democratic Party further to the right.

And that's what the continued nonsense of 'oh, we lost the voters!' is about. It was a close election. We needed better turnout. Turnout was depressed and suppressed by all the attack pieces posted at THE NATION, all the segments trashing Kamala at DEMOCRACY NOW!, not one article praising Kamala by THE PROGRESSIVE or IN THESE TIMES. These are outlets that beg us for money and they used their space to tear down Kamala Harris. Nothing she did was good enough. Donald Trump was elected because of that.

No one should be giving a dime to DEMOCRACY NOW!, THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE, IN THESE TIMES and so many other crap-ass outlets. A friend at THE NATION begged this week for an article on trans issues to be highlighted here. I replied, "Sure, and you can go back in a time machine and remove all those attack pieces on Kamala, right? Including the interns editorial that Kamala didn't deserve anyone's vote?"

What we need to focus on is turnout for 2028. What we need to focus on is how to respond -- and respond rapidly -- to attacks on our candidate -- especially when these attacks come from outlets that depend upon our money to stay afloat. Always begging us to send money. Only a damn fool would send money to Amy Goodman or THE NATION et al right now. Only a damn fool.

There were plenty of damn fools on the 'left' who attacked Kamala non-stop. She wasn't supporting Lina Khan! That's what the whores would say. And then they'd tell you that even JD Vance supports Lina Kahn! And attack Kamala and build up Trump. They did it -- from the 'left.'

POST-LEFT WATCH wonders:

They lied and they lie. And they think we're going to forget. We're not forgetting anymore than we're forgiving.

They built up Satan and they built up grifter Jill Stein. Where is Jill these days?

Exactly. She's a grifter, she's a fake ass.

We'll go out with an example of another fake ass.

For now, I pray that we survive the next four years.

The world of liars today who keep trying to water down the Democratic Party instead of strengthening it, they also fail to impart some basic wisdom.

If we do make it to 2028, the Democrats are very likely to win regardless of whom they nominated.

When the GOP embraces hate, America grows tired of them very quickly.

They wear out their welcome.

They preach hate and they pursue programs and policies that the American people are against -- even if it takes them a while to figure that out.

And if you'll watch, even though the new Congress isn't sworn in yet nor is Satan, you can see the signs as to why the American people are going to turn against the GOP. For example? Aliss Higham (NEWSWEEK) reports:

Republican Congressman Mark Alford has touted raising the retirement age to help cut federal government costs.

Speaking on Fox News, the Missouri representative said GOP members had recently sat down with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head up the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] under Donald Trump, beginning in January, to explore ways "to cut our budget."

"I think there's a way, when people are living longer, they're retiring later, then on the front end, we can move that retirement age back a little bit," Alford said. The current full retirement age is 67 for those born in 1960 or later, and is the earliest age at which workers can begin getting Social Security benefits without any financial penalty for claiming early.

Alford said the "$36 trillion" national debt and its interest payments is "unsustainable," with a whittling down of government spending required to "right the ship."

So to deliver even more tax cuts for the obscenely rich, the GOP is gearing up to raise the retirement age. Or take this from Jeff Schogol (TASK & PURPOSE):

A growing chorus is calling for cuts to Veteran Affairs disability benefits as a way to save federal dollars — a move that ignores the very real costs of two decades of war, and could cause irreparable harm to generations of veterans, experts warn.

The most recent call for cuts is a widely criticized opinion article in The Economist on Nov. 28 that described veterans’ disability benefits as “absurdly generous.” Experts told Task & Purpose that the essay is representative of widespread public misperceptions that threaten to reduce veterans’ compensation for service-connected health conditions.

The Economist piece echoes an argument made by the Washington Post’s editorial board last year that limiting disability payments to veterans would help get America’s financial house in order.

These arguments may now have a real chance of becoming law.

Policies laid out in Project 2025, touted as a blueprint for a second Donald Trump term, would revamp the Department of Veterans of Affairs with proposals to increase privatization, narrow the eligibility criteria for health benefits and replace civil service-style employees with political appointees in its ranks. Produced by the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., the policy guide states that a growing number of health conditions that qualify for VA disability are “tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service.”

In mid-November, President-elect Donald Trump has tappedRussell T. Vought, one of the key players in Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, a powerful federal post that oversees government spending.

And then there are the efforts to repaint insurrectionists as heroes.

You've got Public Citizen noting:

Washington, D.C. — Today, President-elect Donald J. Trump declared on his social media platform that, “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

Tyson Slocum, Energy Program Director at Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“The President has no authority whatsoever to waive statutory public health and safety protections based upon a dollar value of capital investment. Trump’s claim deserves ridicule for being so outlandishly illegal and wrong, and it will not come to pass, no matter what Trump fantasizes.

“However, the statement does highlight Trump’s utter disregard for protecting the environment or human health and the imminent peril that he and his cronies will push policies that jeopardize health, safety and planetary well-being.

“Of special importance, Public Citizen has noted Trump’s efforts to use national security designations to force bailouts of coal power plants during his firm term — which Trump may seek to expand to all domestic oil and gas production, transportation, and export, especially with Trump’s declaration that his Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum would have a seat on the National Security Council.

“This, along with other moves the administration is likely to take starting January 20, offers a more realistic and insidious Trump scheme to allow Big Oil to sidestep an array of environmental laws by designating domestic fossil fuel production and export as essential for national security.”

These are not things you can support and then run easily for re-election.

Let's get some humor in here. Trashy FOX "NEWS" and the gutter rats on it did an insulting segment on First Lady Jill Biden where they insisted that Jill was attracted to Satan Trump. No woman is attracted to Satan Trump which is why his current wife got a redo on the prenup. From Marcia's "Top 10 reasons Jill Biden would never be interested in Trump:"

1) She's never been a chubby chaser, let alone someone to run after the morbidly obese.

2) While Trump's never minded sporting lipstick on his collar, Jill knows damn well that orange foundation Trump wears will burn a hole through fabric.

3) His halitosis.

4) He farts with each step he takes.

5) She believes in marriage.

6) Hooking up with a rapist has never been on her bingo card.

7) She believes in and supports education.

8) Long ago, as a teenager, she made the decision to never couple with a man whose boobs were bigger than her own. As David Bautista has noted, Trump "has jugs, like Dolly Parton."

9) While she enjoys primates and animal documentaries, she has no desire to mate with an orangutang.

10) A bad boy might be intriguing but a traitor is a buzz kill.

Let's not another fake ass poser. Aaron Mate of Mate-Taibi-Halper-and-Scum.

At long last, Aaron Mate is finally getting the attention he's always craved. Speaking of I Need Attention Benjamin . . .

Susan Benjamin who goes by the stage name Medea. Actors have stage names and we all know that there's nothing real about Susan. There she is with registered sex offender, convicted pedophile Scott Ritter. You stand with Ritter, you stand with trash.

Here's the backstory on Susan's current problems. CODEPINK represents as a women's group. Don't dig too deep into those roots. Jodi who is the money behindf the project -- which is why she was able to marshal the group against John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and others seeking the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination (Jodi supported Barack and was, in fact, a bundler for Barack -- a detail that proved most embarrassing for Jodi when discovered in the summer of 2008 after she had deployed CODEPINK to bird dog Barack's opponents) -- Anyway, Jodi's the money of the group and she's gotten rather tired of Susan Benjamin's cozying up to Scott Ritter. It's bad for donations and it's bad for the brand. And when Susan announced she would be speaking at the faux Rage Against the War Machine, it appalled members of CODEPINK because they don't understand why anyone would be part of event featuring a convicted pedophile. So, faced with a huge rebellion within the ranks, Jodi had to tell Susan "NO!" Now, a few years later, Susan's taken the stage with Ritter and it's causing Jodi more problems. Things were so much easier for Jodi when she was just bungling her duties working for then-Governor Jerry Brown. So Susan's being told, yet again, to pipe down or find her way to the exit door.

It's Jodi's own fault for letting 72 year old Susan Benjamin remain the face of the group. I can remember as far back as 2005 when CODEPINK was facing criticism for being all White and all middle aged. They're still basically all White and Susa is still holding the mike.

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12/11/2024

old man mark warner needs to retire already

senator mark warner. he wants to share his 'wisdom' (derangement) that the democratic party is being hurt by 'cultural issues' - human rights, warner, human rights. his nonsense:

“I think the Democrats’ disconnect culturally with a lot of Americans is fundamental. I mean, it played out in things like the trans ad,” he said, referring to a Donald Trump campaign ad highlighting Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for the transgender rights of prisoners.

when an old white man talks like that, you think, 'he'll be dead soon, just remember, he'll be dead soon.'

trans issues did not cost votes and there are no polling results that demonstrate otherwise.

in a matter of days, ugly warner turns 70.

no 1 needs to hear from old man warner. the times, they have a changed. and they've marched right over mark warner.

mark was never a brave senator. he was always 1 of those cowardly dlc types who valued corporations more than people.

he turns 70 before the end of the week.

he'd do the nation a big favor by shutting his damn fool mouth.

i love how liars like him always run to strip people of their rights instead of actually strengthening a party.

let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'

Wednesday, December 11, 2024. MAGA crazy -- can it propel a cult member into an "intelligence" job?

Let's start with Trashy Garbage. This is the weirdo that Satan Trump wants to be the new Director of National Intelligence -- a development that, for the first time, brought the name Tulsi Gabbard and the term intelligence into the same sentence. Nick Grube (HONULULU CIVIL BEAT via RAW STORY) reports on the latest news:

A former member of a secretive Hawaiʻi religious sect is warning members of Congress about the potential dangers of confirming Tulsi Gabbard as President-elect Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence.

Anita van Duyn says she spent 15 years inside the Science of Identity Foundation, a fringe offshoot of Hare Krishna that was formed in the 1970s and has been described by defectors as a cult.

Van Duyn has sent letters to Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, detailing Gabbard’s deep ties to the organization and its reclusive founder, Chris Butler, who still resides in a multimillion-dollar beachfront home in Kailua.

[. . .]

The van Duyn letters outline what she says are Butler’s long-standing political ambitions and the ways he groomed and supported his disciples in their pursuit of public office while promoting his own ideologies, which include a long history of espousing anti-gay rhetoric.

Van Duyn says she worries that Gabbard is still under Butler’s influence, which could compromise national security, noting in her letter that she suspects that any sensitive intelligence Gabbard is privy to will be “communicated to her guru.”

She's a cult member -- we've long noted that and noted her devotion to "Guru" Chris. Christine Gralow (SPY TALK) fills in some details:

I also learned that Gabbard, then in her mid-30s, had grown up in, and appeared to remain socially and politically immersed in, Science of Identity, whose devotees worship a man named Chris Butler (born Kris, with no middle name). Although today she typically dodges questions about Butler, Gabbard had publicly celebrated him as her “guru dev” at a 2015 gathering of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, or Hare Krishna). And she has never disavowed him or spoken critically of him. I also came across pictures and video clips posted by Butler followers on social media that placed Gabbard at more recent, private Science of Identity events in Windward Oahu. Most Gabbard congressional staffers were also followers of Butler, as are her parents, sister, ex-husband, current husband, mother-in-law, and others close to her.

Early in my research, Science of Identity struck me as just another benign ISKCON copycat sect. As an L.A. teen in the ‘90s, I’d become familiar with the Hare Krishnas through their Venice Beach and LAX presences. I attended maybe 10 events at their Culver City temple for its free vegetarian food. The community seemed kind, but didn’t appeal to me beyond its diet. So, initially, I didn’t find it newsworthy that Gabbard was tied to Science of Identity. Yet there were red flags: its expressed homophobia was virulent, its finances suspect, and its guru politically power-hungry. Despite this, Gabbard’s ties to the group appeared staunch.

Perusing decades of Hawaii news archives, I learned Butler had been claiming guru status in Hawaii since his late teens, in the 1960s, under a multitude of names. He told the Honolulu Advertiser in 1977 that he was expelled from Kailua High School. (One clue as to possibly why: As he wrote in his 1970 self-published booklet, “Sai Speaks,” he was “very familiar with mind-expanding chemicals.”) I also learned he is the son of the late Dr. Willis P. Butler, Jr., a Hawaii plantation doctor and Communist-leaning non-interventionist. Dr. Butler wrote in his 2006 book about his late wife, “Barbara: Memoir of a Love Affair,” that Chris declined to attend his mother’s funeral because he “would not care for any event at which he was not the center of attention.”

In July 1970, Honolulu Advertiser religion writer Janice Wolf interviewed Butler, then 22, and two female followers—“Boni,” 21, and “Tulsi,” 18. Wolf reported that Boni and Tulsi said they did everything Butler told them to do. They told Wolf they would kill themselves if Butler said to, and “they would kill anyone who tried to attack” him. Wolf described Butler as the group’s “spiritual leader—and dictator.” She reported that several followers “seemed completely hypnotized.” Wolf was careful to differentiate Butler’s budding group from ISKCON. Later, in 1970, Wolf reported that ISKCON’s founder had denounced Butler as a fraud. Butler then briefly joined and split from ISKCON, after being accused of selling a temple and pocketing the money. He was at that time known as Siddha-svarupa.

In a 1977 series, Advertiser investigative reporter Walter Wright exposed Butler’s grooming of about a dozen early followers to run for local political office with their new party, Independents for Godly Government. In 1992, Honolulu Weekly revealed that then-Hawaii State Sen. Rick Reed was a Butler devotee and that Honolulu Magazine journalists had been stalked and threatened while reporting on Butler and Reed. Butler also reportedly spent a lot of time unsuccessfully suing Hawaii news media.

Family Ties

Gabbard’s father, Mike, is a Hawaii State Senator. Her mother, Carol, is a former Hawaii State School Board Member. Both have been extreme Butler loyalists since the early 1980s, when Tulsi was born. They ran a Science of Identity (then “Identity Institute”) school on Oahu called Ponomauloa School. Per its former students, the Gabbards taught children, among other things, to worship Butler, hate homosexuals, and fear Muslims. (Ponomauloa School is still listed in Mike’s bio on his website, under professional experience, the only tie to Butler he hasn’t yet whitewashed.) Mike was also Butler’s personal secretary for years, and Carol was president of Science of Identity’s Arizona branch, according to documents and local reporting.

Mike and Carol reportedly home-schooled Tulsi and sent her for two years to one or more Science of Identity girls’ boarding schools in the Philippines, where the Butler followers are also active. I located five ex-Science of Identity sources, two quite vocal online, all of whom said their Butler-devoted parents sent them to a similar boys’ boarding school in Baguio, the Philippines. They provided overwhelming evidence that their parents were Butler followers, and they all said that, while in the Philippines, they were isolated and heavily indoctrinated to serve Butler. Some also attended the Gabbards’ school.

I wasn’t the only journalist digging into this at the time. My sources told me The New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh was also contacting them. In his October 2017 profile of Tulsi Gabbard, Sanneh, the only journalist Butler has agreed to speak with in recent decades, assessed that, “Gabbard’s life would be unrecognizable without Butler’s influence.” Butler told Sanneh he was not Hindu, but he encouraged Gabbard to use the term for political expediency. Butler and Gabbard both told Sanneh that Science of Identity is not a religious organization, but it is in fact registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt church, which arranges religious visas for non-U.S. citizens to travel to Kailua to serve on Butler’s extensive kitchen and laundry teams.

Home schooled. That makes so much sense. First off, it is where the bigotry is being taught in the US. Second, she cant say "Islamist" correctly. There a lot of words she mispronounces -- with an undue confidence so many of the extremely ignorant possess.

In part two of her reporting, Christine Gralow notes:

Local activists had demanded that Gabbard hold the open meeting, since she’d been evasive with constituents and journalists on almost everything, particularly the controversial Syria trip. Once seated, I recognized nearly half of the town hall attendees as followers of Chris Butler, the once charismatic, now reclusive leader of Science of Identity.

Gabbard's husband Abraham Williams, who, like Gabbard, was a second-generation Butler follower, weaved through the crowd with high-end video equipment, filming his wife and the crowd. Another man born into the Science of Identity group, Prahlad Strickland, was his soundman. Gabbard’s chief of staff, Kainoa Penaroza, whose father William chaired Butler’s political party in the 1970s, controlled the mic. As Gabbard talked, Butler’s followers applauded her, as if on cue. Anytime someone critically questioned her, her fans hissed in disapproval and at times shouted over them. Meanwhile, John Bishop, a Butler devotee since the '70s and husband of Science of Identity President Jeannie Bishop, seemed to be there to surveil Gabbard critics. The man was not subtle about it, zooming in on the faces of constituents asking tough questions, including me. He ignored Gabbard’s fans.

"Cult-staged, cult surveilled," I thought.

When I got up to use the bathroom, Bishop blatantly followed me. Another constituent inadvertently caught Bishop’s chilling behavior in an hour-long video (which I still have). I was later told by a highly reliable ex-Science of Identity source that Butler had also assigned Bishop and others as “undercover photographers” at Honolulu gay pride parades. As I explained yesterday in Part One, and had previously reported, Butler’s messaging was blatantly anti-LGBTQ.

Gabbard was questioned about her odd Syria sojourn, to which she responded with regime propaganda absolving it of war crimes (which had been thoroughly documented). Eventually, though, she begrudgingly opened the town hall to critical questions about her trip.

Tempers flared. A near physical fight broke out between a Gabbard loyalist and a constituent concerned by Gabbard’s frequent appearances on Fox News, which was then heavily parroting Trump’s stolen election falsehoods. I took the opportunity to politely demand the mic.

I questioned Gabbard about the people who set up and escorted her to her meeting with Assad in Damascus. They were Ohio-based members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. I cited a 1987 article from the Atlantic Monthly magazine about the party's terrorist history, including its role in the 1986 TWA bombing over Scotland. A video taken by another attendee shows I was exceedingly civil to Gabbard as I stood up and addressed her, yet her staff accused me of "disrupting the town hall” when I asked, "Did you vet these men before you allowed them to arrange your trip to Syria?"

Gabbard did not answer the question. The moment was featured on local TV news programs that night.

The next afternoon, Feb.26, as I left my Kailua home to walk my dog, I found myself within approximately 20 feet of a man I knew from my research to be deeply affiliated with Science of Identity, Gabbard, and her husband. He was parked immediately outside my home, sitting behind the driver’s wheel of a white pick-up truck. A man I didn’t recognize was in the passenger seat. The driver appeared extremely tired. When he saw me, I heard him say to his partner, “Ok. Now what?” I scowled at them, my big dog barked, and off they sped. I reported this and subsequent incidents via email to the police.

That turned out to be the opening chapter in well over a year of stalker-like surveillance, defamation, cyberattacks, false police reports, false arrests, manufactured restraining orders, and legal harassment by members of Butler’s cult. Science of Identity was using the same attorneys as Scientology to try to silence journalists and former members.

This is not Hinduism, which Science of Identity purports to teach. It’s the practice of a psychologically abusive cult.

With even BAPTIST NEWS GLOBAL noting her membership in the cult, it's no surprise that so many senators are hearing from their constituents that they don't want a cult member in the administration.

Satan Trump wants to staff his administration with the stupid and the stupider. That includes Dr. Oz. Senator Elizabeth Warren's office issued the following:

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) sent a letter to Dr. Mehmet Oz, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), raising stark concerns about his advocacy to eliminate Traditional Medicare and his deep financial ties to the private health insurers that would benefit from that move.

In June 2022, ahead of his campaign for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz outlined his vision for the Medicare program, in which he advocated to eliminate Traditional Medicare and instead lean on private insurers that run Medicare Advantage, a private health care program that drastically overcharges for care. Non-partisan estimates project that these insurers overcharged CMS $88 billion in 2024 alone, especially through the practice of “upcoding,” in which private insurers exaggerate the health conditions of their enrollees on paper to secure higher payments from CMS – even if enrollees receive no treatment for those conditions.

Notably, Dr. Oz has at least $550,000 invested in UnitedHealth Group, the largest private insurer in Medicare Advantage. Under Dr. Oz’s plan, UnitedHealth Group’s revenue from Medicare Advantage would roughly double to $274 billion annually – a glaring conflict of interest.

“As CMS Administrator, you would be tasked with overseeing Medicare and ensuring that the tens of millions of seniors that rely on the program receive the care they deserve, including cracking down on abuses by private insurers in Medicare Advantage,” wrote the lawmakers. “The consequences of failure on your part would be grave. Billions of federal health care dollars – and millions of lives – are at stake.”

“Given your financial ties to private insurers, combined with your view that the traditional Medicare program is “highly dysfunctional” and your advocacy for eliminating it entirely, it is not clear that you are qualified for this critical job,” concluded the lawmakers.

Senator Warren is a leading voice on reining in abuses in Medicare Advantage and protecting patients:

In May 2024, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), responding to the agency’s request for information (RFI) on Medicare Advantage (MA) data and raising concerns that CMS does not collect adequate data to determine when vertically integrated insurance companies in MA may be using anti-competitive tactics to raise health care costs and pocket extra profits.
In May 2024, at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Warren called out private insurers in Medicare Advantage for accelerating the rural hospital crisis.
In March 2024, Senators Warren and Brown led their colleagues in a letter to HHS and CMS that urged the agencies to protect seniors by holding insurance companies accountable for abuses in Medicare Advantage.
In January 2024, Senator Warren and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) sent a letter to CMS, urging the agency to take administrative action to curb billions in overpayments to MA insurers.
In December 2023, Senators Warren, Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) sent a letter to the CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, raising concerns about shortfalls in CMS’s data collection and reporting practices for MA plans, and urging CMS to close data gaps to strengthen oversight of MA plans and improve care for Medicare beneficiaries.
In November 2023, Senators Warren, Cortez Masto, Cassidy, and Blackburn introduced bipartisan legislation to improve transparency of MA plans and ensure these plans are best serving the health care needs of America’s seniors. The Encounter Data Enhancement Act would require Medicare Advantage plans to report important information about how much they are actually paying for patient services and how much patients are responsible for paying out-of-pocket.
In November 2023, Senators Warren and Braun urged the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General to determine if vertically-integrated health care companies are hiking prescription drug costs, evading federal regulations.
In November 2023, at a Senate Finance Committee markup of the Better Mental Health Care, Lower-Cost Drugs, and Extenders Act, Senator Warren highlighted the need to do more to prioritize hearing health for seniors and strengthen transparency in Medicare Advantage, and secured commitments from Senate Finance Committee leadership to prioritize these proposals in future packages.
In October 2023, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren called out giant MA insurers for using deceptive marketing tactics to lure seniors into the wrong plans and drown out competition from smaller insurers that may offer better coverage. Senator Warren called on CMS to act within the fullest extent of its authority to crack down on MA insurers that game the system to overcharge the government and to ensure insurers publish accurate data on patient care and out-of-pocket costs.
In May 2023, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren highlighted the prevalence of ghost networks in Medicare Advantage plans and called for stronger oversight of the program.
In March 2023, Senator Warren sounded the alarm on a new analysis by policy experts showing that all Medicare beneficiaries – including those enrolled in Traditional Medicare – are paying higher premiums due to overpayments in MA. She sent a letter to CMS and called on the agency to finalize its proposed rule to ensure payments to MA plans accurately reflect the cost of care.
In March 2023, U.S. Senators Warren and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) sent letters to the top seven MA insurers – Humana, Centene, UnitedHealthcare, CVS/Aetna, Molina, Elevance Health, and Cigna – regarding their questionable claims that CMS’s 2024 proposed Medicare Advantage payment rules would hurt beneficiaries.
In March 2023, at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Warren defended CMS’s proposed adjustments to the Calendar Year 2024 MA payment rates, pushing back against giant insurance companies and their lobbyists who are peddling misinformation to protect their billions in profits and scare beneficiaries into opposing the rule.
In April 2022, Senator Warren and Representatives Katie Porter (D-Calif.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) led their colleagues in sending a letter to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure highlighting concerns about overpayments to Medicare Advantage plans that line the pockets of big insurance companies.
In February 2022, chairing a hearing of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth, Senator Warren delivered remarks about strengthening Medicare and cracking down on pharmaceutical and insurance companies’ corporate greed to pay for expanded coverage.

###

In other news, Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) reports:

President-elect Donald Trump's proposed new arrangement for any company looking to expand in America garnered immediate suspicion and criticism Tuesday on social media.

In a post to his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, Trump said: "Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!"

This idea drew scorn and doubt from some commenters, who saw it — along with Trump's billionaire-run blue ribbon committee to advise on how to slash government programs — as the surrender of America to an oligarchy.

[. . .]

The reception on rival platform Bluesky was similar.

"A government of oligarchs that will exist to solely serve the interests of oligarchs while distracting working people with culture wars," wrote former GOP adviser turned anti-Trump strategist Ron Filipkowski.

"A government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires," wrote history professor Aviel Roshwald.

Tacky Trump and his tag sales on America. The corruption gets paired with the gluttony.

Over 60% of respondents on a recent poll of X owner Elon Musk favored "deleting" the funding of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The poll came after remarks from Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, who urged Congress to release $20 billion in withheld IRS funding, warning that without it, the agency may face operational challenges. Adeyemo said, "The IRS is going to potentially have to make dramatic decisions about stopping hiring and starting to budget for a world which they don't have $20 billion which will stop a lot of their progress."

Do away with oversight. Haven't we seen this? Season ten, episode 21 of FAMILY GUY -- "Tea Peter." "Freedom" from government leads Peter and the gang to learn that oversight and regulation are actually required and that without oversight and regulation, corporations will rip everyone off and destroy our world.

Elon Musk is a danger and you grasp that unless you're an idiot like Jon Stewart and Bernie Sanders.

Greg Sergent (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports:

We have now learned, belatedly, that billionaire Elon Musk spent at least $250 million to help billionaire Donald Trump win the White House. One key part of that spending came in the form of the $20 million Musk dumped into a brazen pro-Trump propaganda campaign. The move highlights with new urgency what you might call the “information gap” -- the deficit Democrats face in the info wars, which the next Democratic National Committee chair must have a comprehensive plan to address.

Musk lavished that $20 million on a shadowy outfit called the RBG PAC, named after the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The PAC’s mission was to soften Trump’s position on abortion by absurdly suggesting it’s akin to RBG’s. How many low-information voters this reached is unknown. But it’s another sign that Musk -- who also transformed X/Twitter into a sprawling right-wing disinformation machine -- and the pro-Trump forces have found potent new ways to swamp the system with propaganda and communicate compellingly with politically unengaged Americans, helping cost Democrats the election and leaving them badly disarmed going forward.

So what do the candidates for DNC chair have to say about this disastrous situation? I put the question to three leading hopefuls: Wisconsin state party Chair Ben Wikler, Minnesota state Chair Ken Martin, and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley.

And this is the sort of thing we need to know. Greg's done a great job, use the link and read in full, because it's not really about what your hot button issue -- the DNC chair. It is about how you're going to address elections -- that's messaging, that's voter turnout.

As I said last week, if you agree with me on every political issue, that's great. But that's not what you'll be overseeing as DNC chair and we need to be sure that we're not falling for spin and p.r. but are instead focused on is the person qualified to chair and does the person have clear and concise answers addressing what need to do to move forward. Too often, in the past, we've been deceived by what we thought we saw from a campaign. Greg's laying down markers and he and the three hopefuls are getting at what they could do and what they need to do. As I said last week, I'm not endorsing anyone in the race.

And I am not endorsing garbage passed off as news. Meaning? I don't give a s**t -- nor should you -- what Jon Stewart did with this one in the running or how they chuckled or -- That's not what the position is about.

I'm looking one person in particular -- the one who in 2004 tried to seel us on DLC Simon Rosenberg for DNC chair. And now, twenty years later, the same idiot has learned nothing and now wants to act as though a breezy interview on THE DAILY SHOW means you're qualified to lead as DNC chair.

As bad as things get, some refuse to even try to rise to the moment. Instead they present garbage and pretend they've imparted wisdom.

So much awful is coming and the chuckle boys will be giggling while we're all dying. Mira Lazine (LGBTQ NATION) reports:

Republicans in Congress have hijacked a bill authorizing national defense spending for the coming year by forcing a ban on any medical treatment for “gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for those under 18 under the military’s health insurance plan, TriCare. The provision could prevent military members from getting safe, effective transitional care for their transgender children.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is an annual act published by Congress that regulates how the military budget is spent; it also regulates additional military facets beyond the budget. The GOP added a provision in this year’s NDAA that regulated any gender-affirming care for minors. However, in a bipartisan compromise meeting, the aforementioned provision against gender-affirming care was revealed instead.

This version awaits a vote from the House and Senate, and will go to President Joe Biden’s desk, where he may veto or pass it. If he passes it, this would be the first federal statute restricting the LGBTQ+ community since the infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the 1990’s which heavily restricted LGBTQ+ people’s membership in the military.

Chuckle boys say what? Nothing -- at least nothing of value.

But on Sunday, US House Rep Adam Smith released the following:

Representative Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, issued the following statement regarding the release of the text of the final negotiated language for the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (FY25 NDAA).

“For the 64th consecutive year, House and Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats and Republicans worked across the aisle to craft a defense bill that invests in the greatest sources of America’s strength: service members and their families, science and technology, modernization, and a commitment to allies and partners.

“Rooted in the work of the bipartisan Quality of Life Panel, the bill delivers a 14.5 percent pay raise for junior enlisted service members and 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It includes improvements for housing, health care, childcare, and spousal support. House Armed Services Democrats were successful in blocking many harmful provisions that attacked DEI programs, the LGBTQ community, and women’s access to reproductive health care. It also included provisions that required bipartisan compromise. And had it remained as such, it would easily pass both chambers in a bipartisan vote.

“However, the final text includes a provision prohibiting medical treatment for military dependents under the age of 18 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong. This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills. Speaker Johnson is pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he retains his speakership. In doing so, he has upended what had been a bipartisan process.

“I urge the Speaker to abandon this current effort and let the House bring forward a bill—reflective of the traditional bipartisan process—that supports our troops and their families, invests in innovation and modernization, and doesn’t attack the transgender community.”

Click here to view a summary of the FY25 NDAA final text compiled by House Armed Services Committee Democrats.

###

Abby Monteil (THEM) notes:

Congressman Ro Khanna, a Democrat representing California and a fellow member of the House Armed Services Committee, confirmed that he would also vote no on the measure in a statement to journalist Erin Reed’s newsletter Erin In The Morning.

“This year’s NDAA also includes harmful provisions that would attack the dignity and well-being of trans people by prohibiting coverage of medically necessary healthcare,” Khanna said. “At the same time, Congress has failed to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) for active-duty military members and their families. We must do better to support all military families and reject these harmful policies.”

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear to Fellow Democrats: Don't Throw Trans People Under the Bus

“As governor, I have vetoed numerous anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice bills, yet I still beat Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidate last fall,” Beshear said.

In a December 9 statement, Mike Zamore, the ACLU’s national director of policy and government affairs, described the provision as “a dangerous affront to the dignity and well-being of young people whose parents have dedicated their lives to this country’s armed forces.”

“Medical care should stay between families and their doctors, but this provision would baselessly and recklessly inject politics into the health care military families receive,” Zamore said. “Nobody should have to choose between serving the country and ensuring their child has the health care they need to live and thrive.”

Trans people are being scapegoated by the ignorant. People like Naomi Wolf, for example, who has no ethics and took a Phd that she didn't deserve. Her research got everything wrong. (Which is why the publishers pulped the book she tried to turn her dissertation into.) Oxford just wants to forget the whole thing -- because she didn't just get it wrong, so did the dissertation committee that ignorantly signed off on her made up research. When you're that stupid, you need someone else to hate, you need it really badly.

And that's why former feminist Naomi Wolf now attacks trans people -- it's also why she got on board the MAGA bus. And it's why she Tweets idiotic things like this:

Beng trapped RIGHT NOW in a NYC subway car underground full of women, men and and at least one toddler while a meth addict is heedlessly masturbating, is one more reason if we need one that I don’t want men in women’s bathrooms.

Huh?

What type of bathrooms does that nut job go into?

She's in a subway car with men and women (! oh, the horror, Naomi) and there's a toddler (pre-op, Naomi, is that what has you in a panic) and there's a meth addict present (Naomi's husband) who is "heedlessly" masturbating. Is that really the term you meant to use, Naomi? It's kind of a weak and non-descriptive term to hook up with masturbating. We'd ask her more questions but having become Just Another Pig for MAGA, she appears to have the 'meth addict' in a chokehold.

How does she know the person is a meth addict. And are we just supposed to stereotype the person she accuses of being a meth addict and of masturbating as a man?

Times like this make you wish Camille Paglia had punched the s**t out of Naomi in the 90s.

Punched the s**t out of her heedlessly?

Hey, remember, if you can locate a copy of Naomi's laughable PROMESCUITIES, you can read all about how in college, she was hanging at the frat and, next morning, eating breakfast and she'd heard the rape and heard about it but Naomi was such a tramp she didn't go to campus security but instead just laughed and started at the 'Cinderella slipper' the rape survivor left behind -- no, Naomi didn't call it that because she's a really bad writer. Maybe she can re-edit the bad book and add "Cinderella slipper"? And if you want to really experience her racism, read Naomi's FIRE WITH FIRE and pay close attention to how she describes Black women. She was always a racist and always defending men who were accused of rape. She was never really a feminist and that's why, when she attempted to take down Harold Bloom, so many refused to stand with her.

But for the biggest laugh of all, just look at her picture below.

Even at her best, she was gruesome. Not unlike Tara Reade, in fact. Although I'm not sure Tara Reade has Naomi's facial hair problem. When we started calling Naomi out years ago, people didn't realize what she was. They do now. And her grifting off the actual academic work of Judith N. Shklar is now widely known.

Speaking of trash, how is this considered ethical or, for that matter, legal:

MAGA Republicans often threaten members of their party with primary challenges if they stand up to the president-elect. And far-right MAGA attorney Mike Davis, during an interview for Politico's Playbook column, threatened non-compliant Senate Republicans with another tactic: hiring private investigators to probe their backgrounds.

Politico's Adam Wren, in a Playbook column published on December 8, reports that Davis is "mobilizing his Article III Project to become the tip of the spear in building pressure from the base on Republican senators to confirm" former Fox News host Pete Hegseth (Trump's pick for defense secretary).

You are going to research someone? No problem there. But you're going to use the information to blackmail -- and that is the term -- a sitting member of Congress to vote the way you want them to vote?

That would be blackmail.

Which is a crime and the MAGA nut has confessed publicly to his intent.

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "It's All About The Recounts" went up last night. The following sites updated: