Saturday, November 5, 2022
Friday, November 4, 2022
GUEST POST BY DAVE MILLER
I’ll try to give an answer to the questions many on the right ask us liberals:
Here’s a typical example of what I’m talking about, from one of the conservative blogs I read on a mostly daily basis. In it, the author cites an article about former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman.
In the article, Whitman is quoted as follows:
“…there’s a part of me that says, ‘I hope all the crazies do win and everybody has to live with that for a while and see how much they like [it]… But then I realize, no, I don’t want to have to live in that world and I don’t want to leave it for my grandkids, either, the damage they could do.”
Then we are asked this series of questions from the blog author:
BLOGGER: “WHAT DAMAGE?”
DAVE: This one is easy.
There is no doubt that a large number of Republicans who will be elected in Tuesday’s election will be people who are election deniers. People who, without any evidence, claim the election of 2020 was stolen.
Maybe our worry is that handing the keys of government to people who believe the Clintons are child molesters, Joe Biden runs a crime syndicate, Barack Obama is a closet Muslim born in another country and refuse to accept the results of the 2020 elections is a bad idea.
BLOGGER: “Is she [Whitman] one of the total NUTS who believe Republicans don’t want you using contraception?”
DAVE: Total NUTS?
In July a majority of Republicans in Congress refused to help pass legislation designed to codify a SCOTUS decision [Griswold] that granted women access to contraceptives.
A decision that Justice Thomas, in the recent Dobbs case, said should be challenged. A decision that Tennessee GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn said was “constitutionally unsound.” When asked to clarify whether she believed a woman had a right to contraceptives, she refused to comment.
So maybe Gov. Whitman is one of those “total nuts” who believe Republicans don’t want you using contraception, but if she is, it’s because it’s true.
BLOGGER: “Does she [Whitman] believe closing the border’s a bad idea?”
DAVE: I bet Whitman, like many others, does believe closing our border is a bad idea. Me too, because it is a bad idea. But that does not mean we want open borders. Most of us lefties want a more liberal, legal immigration policy.
We are tired of people stuck in the system for years waiting. We know the US has jobs that are going undone right now for lack of workers. We know those jobs are in the tech industry, medical care, manufacturing and even agriculture. We know it because we have the data.
And we can see it everyday as we walk in malls and see the help wanted signs.
But here’s the simple truth many extremists do not want to accept. Those signs and job openings across America are not there because Americans refuse to work and are sitting in basements. They are there because we are short workers.
Between early retirements and deaths from Covid the last few years, America is short, according to the US Chamber of Congress, almost four million workers. Workers we desperately need to keep our economy strong and the social security and medicare systems solvent.
Which brings us to the final question:
BLOGGER: Does she [Whitman] honestly believe Republicans want to do away with Medicare and Social Security?”
DAVE: In a word, Yes!
And here’s why:
The head of the Senate Reelection Committee, Florida Senator Rick Scott, has a proposal to sunset, or in everyday language, to end, all entitlement programs every five years, unless Congress, a Congress that literally cannot pass anything bi-partisan, reauthorizes those programs.
Literally what he is proposing is for Congress to end those programs and then reform them. And many GOP Senators and leaders support his plan. But it doesn’t stop there. 158 out of 212 House Republicans, including top GOP leadership Members Whip Scalise and Chair Stefanik, have called for slashing and privatizing Social Security, raising the retirement age to 70 and ending Medicare as we know it as part of the Republican Study Committee FY2023 budget.
But there’s more.
Many conservatives, including some who comment on the blog of the person critical of Whitman, have called both Social Security and Medicare unconstitutional. Why is it a stretch to believe that Republicans would work to eliminate a program they see as unconstitutional?
But this is just a start. There’s the way Republicans have abandoned the Capitol police officers hurt on the job as they worked to defend the US Capitol from an insurrection on January 6. There’s the way conservative extremists dismissed the Secret Service agents who were so scared they would die January 6 defending Vice President Pence, that they called their families to say goodbye.
You see, conservatives must either believe the stories of these brave men and women who were ready to give their lives to defend VP Pence, Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan and yes, Nancy Pelosi, the Dems and our entire elected Congress, or believe those law enforcement officers are liars.
Because there is no other logical understanding.
Crazies?
Yes.
Because any group of people that refuses to acknowledge widely available evidence that believes lies in the absence of evidence and calls great numbers of federal police and law enforcement officers who, to this day are still recovering from injuries from January 6, liars, are indeed crazies.
Christine Todd Whitman was right. But to quote a great movie, many extremists can’t handle the truth.
And we’d post the truth to your site, but you don’t allow people with whom you disagree to post there.
https://www.azmirror.com/2022/10/31/the-republican-threat-to-contraception-is-real
https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage
https://banks.house.gov/uploadedfiles/fy23_budget_final_copy.pdf
***************************************
I'll add a couple of thoughts to Dave's thoughtful.
The blogger he and I read -- because her blog is the perfect microcosm of how older, white American Trump conservatives think -- had this to say about President Biden's speech on Wednesday evening:
There's no discussion on any of the points President Biden made, nothing about his plea for unity and an end to vicious threats to and violent attacks on Democrats AND Republicans. Nothing about Trump and his enablers', (many of whom are seeking elective office in federal and state positions), persistent lies about a stolen election. She and her readers offer not a thoughtful or substantive word about anything that was said, except calling it a "whole stupid talk," which is what one would expect from petulant teenagers who essentially know nothing but have an opinion on everything.
The people who populate that blog are Americans who stubbornly cling to a lie that is corroding our American democracy. And any reminder of that truth elicits the word "stupid" from the very people who willingly participate in the unraveling of our democratic republic. --S.K.
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
UPDATE:
"The last words the jury heard before the prosecutors rested their case: -
Defendant Elmer Steward Rhodes, Oath Keepers founder, saying:
“We should have brought rifles. We could have fixed it right then & there. I’d hang f**king Pelosi from the lamppost.”
In the courtroom, you could have heard a firing pin drop.
POLITICAL VIOLENCE -- WHAT THE TRUMP WING OF THE GOP DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW
Terrorism in America, Post 9/11: New America
The New America think tank found last year that, since Sept. 11, 2001, far-right terrorists had killed 122 people in the United States, compared with only one killed by far-leftists.
[skip]
A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year found that, since 2015, right-wing extremists had been involved in 267 plots or attacks, compared with 66 for left-wing extremists.
A Washington Post-University of Maryland survey released in January found that 40 percent of Republicans said violence against the government can be justified, compared with only 23 percent of Democrats.
There is little doubt about what is driving political violence: the ascendance of Trump.
The former president and his followers use violent rhetoric of extremes: Trump calls President Biden an “enemy of the state,” attacks the FBI as “monsters,” refers to the “now Communist USA” and even wrote that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has a “DEATH WISH” for disagreeing with him.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has expressed support for executing Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) has tweeted that “the America Last Marxists … are radically and systematically DESTROYING our country.”
The U.S. Capitol Police report that threats against members of Congress have risen more than tenfold since Trump’s election in 2016, up to 9,625 last year.
Some Republican politicians have made campaign advertisements showing themselves wielding semi-automatic weapons, metaphorically gunning not only for Democratic Party candidates, but even for Republican candidates who are insufficiently strident and pro-Trump, e.g. "RINOS."
At least 840 individuals have been indicted and convicted for their actions in the J6 insurrection. To the best of my knowledge, every last one of them was, at the time of J6, a Trump supporter (Amazingly enough, quite a few of those traitors didn't vote, yet had the gall to complain about a mythical stolen election that they didn't participate in).
The cognitive dissonance of MAGA-world complaining of a mythical stolen election while going to great lengths to steal that same election is, well, stunning.
The violent rhetoric of the Right, is deadly to individuals, and even more deadly to our democracy.
Most Republican leaders have condemned the attack on Paul Pelosi — though many were also quick to couple those denunciations with blame on “both sides” for the rise in political violence. But Lake’s quip at her campaign event was just the latest instance of some Republicans turning a brutal attack on the House speaker’s octogenarian husband into a punchline." --WaPo
These Trump cultists below, for example, believe the attack on the 82 year old husband of Nancy Pelosi is hilariously funny:
Paulie the wino along with Nancy the drunk have less than a week to get his near death story published and on the shelves in order to save the election.
PETER! That’s hilarious! And..isn’t it just ODD that Paul and the burglar were fighting over a HAMMER when the cops walked in but Paul said everything was OKAY? what’s OKAY about two guys in underwear pulling on the same hammer? And THEN the guy hits him on the head? There’s something VERY “off” on this…really off….and we’ll NEVER KNOW…. Geeez
Re PAUL PELOSI…..last time, he was drunk and had the car accident…..I guess he just figures you have to drink a LOT to “GET HAMMERED!” Geeez
Well, there you have it. Trump cultists who believe a brutal attack on an 82 year-old man asleep in his own home to be a "punchline."
Just when we thought they couldn't go any lower, they do.
We are witnessing our beloved country turning into a cesspool. The rest of the world knows it. Have we passed the point of no return?
Tuesday, November 1, 2022
THE EX-preznit, Donald J. Trump, lying and crying AGAIN about his epic loss to Joe Biden.
And this:
"The attack on the morning of Oct. 28 came amid an increase in politically motivated violence just ahead of next week’s midterm elections. And the Justice Department’s swift action in bringing criminal charges on Monday against the suspect reflected the sense of urgency at the highest levels of the American government to confront an issue that officials view as a stark threat to the nation.
There has been a surge in threats and attacks against figures of both political parties in recent years, and Ms. Pelosi, in particular, has long been the subject of vilification and threats."
(But wait! There's a good Christian woman who runs a blog on the internet who made a joke about an attempted murder on an old man; because in her version of Christianity, that's hilariously funny.
But we must give her credit where credit is due: She's now worried about the "homosecshuals!" Again. So, her god is pleased with her fine Christian values.)
Monday, October 31, 2022
From The San Francisco Examiner
(I had a Trump troll come to this blog today and lie about what was behind the Pelosi attack. The troll "Anonymous" repeated a lie and a Qanon conspiracy theory it heard on some Right Wing talk show or read in a Right Wing rag. This report is from the San Francisco Examiner, which includes what the SF police reported.)
The man accused of attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer after breaking into their San Francisco home told police he planned to hold her hostage and break "her kneecaps," targeting her because of her leadership within the Democratic Party.
David DePape, 42, told the San Francisco Police Department in an interview on Friday that he didn't leave the couple's Pacific Heights home after Paul Pelosi called 911 because he viewed himself as a freedom fighter without the option of surrender, comparing himself to the American founding fathers in the Revolutionary War.
A summary of DePape's police interview was filed in U.S. District Court on Monday as part of an affidavit. Prosecutors charged DePape that day with assault on the immediate family member of a federal official and attempted kidnapping of a federal official.
The San Francisco District Attorney's Office said earlier on Monday it would file charges against DePape, a Richmond resident. He is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
DePape told police he broke into the Pelosis' home by breaking a glass door with a hammer, seeking out the San Francisco congresswoman because he saw her as the "leader of the pack" of the Democratic Party's lies, FBI Special Agent Stephanie Minor wrote in an affidavit.
He claimed he wanted to hold Pelosi hostage and would only release her if she told the "truth," which DePape said he didn't expect. As a result, he told police he planned to break her kneecaps, so Pelosi would need to enter Congress in a wheelchair and show her colleagues there were consequences for her actions.
"Where is Nancy?"
BREAKING: I just heard that Paul Pelosi is in the ICU and his family has gathered around him. I don't know anything further than that, and I don't know what the implications are in the report.
SAN FRANCISCO — Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was violently assaulted by a man who broke into the couple’s home in San Francisco early Friday morning, the police said.
The authorities identified the suspect as David Depape, 42, and said they were investigating a possible motive.
The details:
The San Francisco Police responded to a break-in at the Pelosi residence at 2:27 a.m. on Friday, Chief William Scott said in a news conference. The assailant, who pulled a hammer from Mr. Pelosi and “violently attacked” him in front of police officers, has been charged with attempted homicide, the chief said.
The intruder was in search of Speaker Pelosi, according to a person briefed on the attack, and confronted Mr. Pelosi in the couple’s home shouting: “Where is Nancy, where is Nancy?”
With his usual level of class, Donald Trump put out a message of sympathy to the family of Jerry Lee Lewis, “the Killer” of rock ’n’ roll, who died Friday at age 87, but said nothing all day about the Pelosi family."
Since the odious Trump descended the escalator in 2016, we've seen the descent into violence and mayhem in America. I don't believe we'll recover from the destruction to our republic Donald J. Trump and his MAGAts have caused America since his ascent to power.
The GQP has fundamentally changed America.
For the worse. And IMO we will never recover.
Trump endorsed the loser.
Bolsonaro lost!
HOORAY! HOORAY! HOORAY!
Brazil ElectionBrazil Elects Lula, a Leftist Former Leader, in a Rebuke of Bolsonaro
Sunday, October 30, 2022
Saturday, October 29, 2022
SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING AT THE MOVIES
This movie, Metropolis, a sci-fi film, was made in 1927 by Fritz Lang. No CGI or any other enhancements used. Just camera work. I find it amazing.
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Some facts on the U.S.'s oil production
Frequent contributor to P.E., Dave Miller, contributed some of these facts in a comment. The rest were found @Forbes
* The U.S. owned Aramco but recklessly gave it to the Saudis when President Nixon and Henry Kissinger panicked in the 1970s.
* Gasoline prices should have fallen recently to match the decline in crude oil, but refineries are enjoying a soaring windfall, with profits quadrupling from 2021 levels. Refiners have added $30 a barrel in refining margins on top of the price of crude—even though 1 million barrels per day in refining capacity was added in 2022 with more coming in 2023. That’s not counting the return of hundreds of thousands of barrels of capacity which was taken offline due to idiosyncratic outages and disruptions the last couple months due to refinery mismanagement.
* The billions of dollars oil producers lost in 2020 was not due to Biden, who had not been elected yet, but due to COVID-related economic shutdowns.
* Federal leases under Biden far exceed those under Trump—with 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in Biden’s first year, far outpacing the Trump Administration’s first year total of 2,658, with record numbers of unused leases. That’s the case even though all federal leases combined account for less than 20% of all U.S. oil and gas production.
* The U.S. already provides more gas to the EU than Russia did at its peak, and now the EU buys 80% less from Russia than they did before Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
* The recent Saudi/OPEC price hike was not justified by oil markets as producers were already making 80% profit margins. Only the inefficient oil producer Russia, with break-even production costs twice that of Saudi Arabia, needed these price hikes, to fuel its war.
* U.S. SPR releases are not political. Every modern president has authorized significant SPR releases, including Donald Trump—who likewise faced attacks from self-serving industry voices. Furthermore countries like Saudi and China maintain their own sizable strategic petroleum reserves from which they released ample supplies at least until this year.
* Biden’s new policy of replenishing the SPR through futures contracts, taking advantage of backward-dated futures markets where oil is hovering cheaply around $70 a barrel, locks in hefty profits for domestic oil producers for years to come—which Riyadh refused to do.
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Monday, October 24, 2022
Sunday, October 23, 2022
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Thursday, October 20, 2022
What a surprise! The Lying Liar Lied! Under Oath!
Trump "knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong" but touted them "both in court and to the public,"
Judge David Carter wrote.
Carter made the determination in a ruling ordering a GOP lawyer to turn over his communications to the Jan. 6 committee.
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
What are the gobshites saying?
Excuse me?
A FOREIGN ENTITY attacked our country and flew planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Another attack by the same FOREIGN ENTITY was thwarted and downed in Pennsylvania by brave passengers on Flight 93, which was probably headed toward the Capitol building.
January 6 was attack on our country BY OUR OWN PEOPLE, who were in the Capitol building hunting down Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Pence, hoping to do them bodily harm -- even KILL them.
Which one is worse? January 6, because traitors to our own country were the people who perpetrated that evil act.
Leave it to Trumpers to not be able to see the difference and to pretend what happened on January 6 was NBD -- even though the NBD was being led by American insurrectionists against their own government, spurred by a defeated POTUS who lied to his gullible supporters about the 2020 election.
This NEVER happened in America until the Liar, Cheat, and Fraud lost an election and tried to steal it from the American people.
America has faced foreign enemies before and prevailed against them.
But 35% of the voting public STILL support the man who lied about the 2020 election being stolen and would have stopped the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history, unlawfully installing himself, like a tin-pot dictator, in the presidency.
Dear gawd! THIS! is what America is up against. Foolish people who haven't the ability to see the glaring differences between 9/11 and J6, and what it means to our democratic republic.
We now know that there are forces within America who seek to destroy our democracy and who look to countries like Hungary and Russia as models for America.
"The exorbitant rates charged to the Secret Service and agents' frequent stays at Trump-owned properties raise significant concerns about the former President's self-dealing and may have resulted in a taxpayer-funded windfall for former President Trump's struggling businesses," Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney wrote in a letter to Kimberly Cheatle, the service's director.
Monday, October 17, 2022
Why does Trump wish pedophiles well?
Well of course he would. Who else but Donald J. Trump would give encouragement to a woman who was the lover of a disgusting criminal pedophile who procured and joined with Epstein in his sexual exploitation and abuse of minors?
Donald Trump has shockingly horrible taste in people he "boosts." But his "Christian Nationalist" fans will never, ever stop supporting the ex-president and phenomenal dirt bag.
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