Lessons of History and Trying To Avoid the Same Mistakes

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In response to Donald Trump’s false claim on Meet the PressSunday morning that Democrats support an abortion policy that allows doctors to “kill the baby after birth,” gun violence prevention advocate Fred Guttenberg tweeted, “Beyond this being a truly dumb lie, here are facts. My baby was killed after birth because of gun violence. Republicans, by blocking gun violence prevention, apparently support killing babies after birth.” Guttenberg has become a prominent voice on the issue following the 2018 murder of his teenage daughter Jaime and several others by a mass shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.


(full article online)

Parkland Dad Blasts Trumpâs âKilling Babies After Birthâ Lie

Fred Guttenberg, who became a gun control advocate after his teenage daughter was shot and killed, called out the former president for his hypocritical comments after abortion.

www.thedailybeast.com

 

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https://twitter.com/crismiller12
cris miller


To the tune of $6 billion thereby showing the way for future terrorists


https://twitter.com/7Veritas4
Jack Smith


It’s $6B of the $100B in Iranian assets that were frozen during the sanctions. Iran is in dire economic straits.Their money was frozen to stop their advancement of nuclear programs and to give us leverage. We are now using that leverage wisely.

 

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Kyle is a lifelong Republican. Yet when it came time to seek help, it wasn’t his tribe that lent a hand. It was Planned Parenthood that stepped up. A case worker connected them to a hospital in Pittsburgh that would do the procedure for $2,500. Planned Parenthood contributed $500 for their hotel, and the Abortion Fund of Ohio contributed $1,800 toward the cost of the procedure. As they waited for the bureaucracy to transfer records and appointments to be made, they listened to their baby’s heartbeat with a fetal Doppler. “I love her,” Beth wrote on Instagram, posting the video of the heartbeat. “And I refuse to let her suffer or be in pain for even a moment when she’s on the outside of me. Abortion is the most loving thing I can do for her as her mother, even if it shatters my heart.”

Because the process was dragged out—five weeks at this point— the procedure became more complex. “I felt myself tearing up,” a doula who specializes in helping grieving patients told CNN. The Longs had made “the worst decision anyone ever has to make, and then to deal with all the other logistics they had to deal with was just ridiculous.” She added that the Longs were “hanging by a thread” after the abortion, still facing a three-hour drive back home to Columbus.

Now, Kyle has written letters to both Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Sen. J.D. Vance, both of them Republicans, begging them to do something about it. “I am a lifelong Republican, but this has turned me into a one-issue voter for those that support reproductive rights,” he wrote. “I’m writing you to please reconsider how you approach reproductive rights going forward. There are a lot of unintended consequences for families from these laws, and while I can understand you come from a good place, care should ultimately be left to the parents and their physicians. We loved our baby girl and would have done anything to keep her.” He added that these regressive anti-abortion laws “prevent grieving parents from the healthcare they need.”

They never responded, of course.

I wouldn’t wish any of this on my worst enemy, which I guess is what makes me a liberal. I don’t need to be personally affected to have compassion toward those who are less fortunate or are dealing with horrors of their own. I want government to be there for everyone, and if it can’t do that, at least to stay out of the way and not make things worse.

I’m glad Planned Parenthood and the Abortion Fund of Ohio were there for the Longs, even though Kyle has been a lifelong supporter of the party seeking to defund and vilify such organizations. And I’m glad these organizations’ generosity will allow this family to save some of their money for their future children, even though Kyle supported the party that pretends to be about individualism and “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps.”

And I’m definitely glad Kyle is a single-issue reproductive rights champion now. Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown can use his vote next year in what will be an incredibly difficult election, and abortion-rights activists can use his newfound zeal and purpose to great effect. It would also be good if his devastating story could spur changes to Ohio’s brutal laws, and help avoid more situations like the one that befell the Longs.

The anti-abortion zealots can’t win this war. They’re already losing in places like Kansas and Kentucky. And it’s clear where this is all headed.

I just wish Kyle didn’t need to be directly impacted to realize how wrong he was. And I hope that so many other conservatives, currently pushing their anti-abortion laws on Americans, won’t have to face what the Longs had to deal with.


(full article online)

Republican couple's shift: From party loyalty to pro-choice advocacy

Beth and Kyle Long were so excited. After four years of trying to have a baby, through multiple rounds of expensive and difficult fertility treatments, Beth was finally pregnant. The implanted ...

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A former federal prosecutor who helped investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe said Wednesday she left the team because of concerns with then-Attorney General William Barr’s public comments about the case and because she strongly disagreed with a draft of an interim report he considered releasing before the election.

“I simply couldn’t be part of it. So I resigned,” Nora Dannehy told Connecticut state legislators during her confirmation hearing as a nominee to the state Supreme Court. It marked the first time Dannehy has spoken publicly about her sudden resignation from the probe overseen by former special counsel John Durham.


(full article online)

Former prosecutor who quit Trump-Russia probe says she left over concerns with Barr

Nora Dannehy had been part of the investigation led by John Durham.

www.politico.com

 

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The big story

Extreme weather = extreme costs

The climate crisis can be a polarizing topic, but here’s a number to chew on: $2,615,000,000,000. That’s the total bill for the 371 weather and climate disasters topping $1 billion in damage in the US since 1980. It’s a number so big I had to triple-check that I had the correct amount of zeros. The eye-popping figure is part of an incredible package on the true cost of extreme weather from Insider’s Annie Fu, Morgan McFall-Johnsen, Catherine Boudreau, Jacob Zinkula, and Marianne Guenot. The project includes stories on a teacher’s near-death experience in Arizona heat, a storm destroying much of a Texas citrus farmer’s crop, and a flood in Iowa that devastated a nonprofit. As staggering as $2.6 trillion is, it might be short-changing the actual cost. Plenty of bills go uncounted by official tallies, and supply-chain disruptions from weather events create an incalculable domino effect. There’s also no cost you can put on the loss of life — and emotional stress — from these events. And all of us are footing the bill. From taxes to insurance premiums, extreme weather impacts just about everyone one way or another. Discussions about the climate crisis often focus on the impact on future generations. However, the data shows the ramifications of extreme weather are being felt today.

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I spoke to Insider’s future of business editor, Tim Paradis, who helped oversee the project, about what stood out most to him. He pointed to the speed at which these disasters have racked up massive bills as extreme weather has worsened. Since 2013, there have been 178 billion-dollar weather events totaling more than $1.2 trillion. Even after adjusting for inflation, that’s a fivefold increase in both the cost and frequency of high-priced events from the ‘80s. A common critique regarding reports on the climate crisis is that the Earth’s weather is constantly fluctuating. And while that’s true, the above indicates rapid changes in a shockingly short time period, Tim said. If you’re short on time, I encourage you to at least read this incredible piece on Lois Nigrin. The Nebraska teacher nearly died from heatstroke in 2019 while hiking Camelback Mountain in Phoenix with her husband. It’s a harrowing, personal tale of how extreme temperatures can have devastating effects. The Insider

 

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Mississippi auditor says several college majors indoctrinate students and should be defunded

Mississippi's state auditor says numerous social science and humanities degree programs are “indoctrination factories.”

abcnews.go.com

 

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On Wednesday, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg weathered the slings and arrows of outrageous Republicans at a committee hearing. At one point, while discussing why his department needed more support in combating the issues presented by climate change, Buttigieg was forced to face off against Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a longtime climate change denier and the guy who supports a push for parts of Northern California to secede from California.

As the extent of LaMalfa’s understanding of the climate begins and ends with looking out of his window every morning, his intellectually undercooked climate denialism is very easily dismissed. But Buttigieg used LaMalfa’s ignorance against him in a subtle yet very effective way. During a tense exchange where LaMalfa obfuscated the task at hand by blathering about percentages of carbon in the atmosphere, Buttigieg bottom-lined him by saying, “What I can tell you is that climate change is real, and we gotta do something about it,” to which LaMalfa attempted to retort, “Yeah, this one’s called autumn, sir.”


Buttigieg responded, “I’m sorry?” This forced LaMalfa to repeat the same joke again … and then Buttigieg shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t make out what you said, sir.” And LaMalfa had to repeat his truly pathetic joke a third time. Then Buttigieg gave a light smile and dropped the hammer: “Yeah, that's the seasons changing, which, respectively, is not the same thing as the climate changing. And as somebody who is hoping to retire in the 2050s and who has kids who will be old enough to ask me as they're getting to their thirties, whether we did enough to deal with climate change or whether we just did what was convenient, I take that really seriously.”


(full article online)

Watch Pete Buttigieg expose utter idiocy of Republican climate change denier

On Wednesday, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg weathered the slings and arrows of outrageous Republicans at a committee hearing. At one point, while discussing why his department needed ...

www.dailykos.com

 

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The nonprofit American Library Association denies having a political agenda, saying it has always been nonpartisan.
“This effort to change what libraries are, or even just take libraries away from communities, I think, is part of a larger effort to diminish the public good, to take away those information resources from individuals and really limit their opportunity to have the kinds of resources that a community hub, like a public library, provides,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.
The ALA won’t say how many libraries are members of the group but denied any “mass exodus.”
The troubles come as individual membership in the ALA is down 14% since 2018 to about 49,700, the lowest since 1989, according to figures on the organization’s website. The ALA attributes the decline to suspended library conferences during the pandemic.
While librarians pride themselves about being open to different perspectives and providing access to different kinds of materials, political leaders telling them to part with the ALA runs against that, said Washington University in St. Louis law professor Gregory Magarian.
Magarian has been following Missouri’s departure from the ALA amid a debate over who may take part in local library “story hours” and new state rules that seek to limit youth access to certain books deemed inappropriate for their age.
“When you see state governments kind of replacing that type of control by librarians with greater control by politically motivated, politically ambitious, politically polarized government officials, I think that’s really troubling for the prospects for free access to ideas,” Magarian said.
In Campbell County, recent library policy changes remove the ALA’s “Library Bill of Rights,” which states: “A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.”



(full article online)

Conservative book ban push fuels exodus from American Library Association

The national association’s defense of disputed books, many of which have LGBTQ and racial themes, is part of the reason for the library exodus.

www.nbcnews.com

 

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”Red: A Crayon’s Story” is about a crayon that is blue but has a red label. Everyone tells the crayon that it’s red, and tries to help it be better at redness, until a friend helps it see that being blue is what it’s good at. Yes, that can absolutely be read as a parable about trans identity—but that’s not the only way it can be read. As is the case with so many apparently simple children’s books, it can be about lots of things: being true to your inner self, as the publisher explains the message of the book, or finding out that what you’re best at is not what you’ve been told you should be good at, or, in an example taken from the author's life, being told that you’re lazy or stupid when really you’re dyslexic.

You could figure that the right-wing obsession with driving trans people out of public life and terrifying children into hiding themselves is so strong that the parents who complained about “Red” were unable to see past their fear and rage, and get to the book’s other possible messages. That’s doubtlessly part of it. But it’s not all.

There’s a broader right-wing assault on social-emotional learning, known as SEL, that seeks to strip public schools of any messages about handling their emotions or self-esteem, or having healthy relationships with peers. When Florida banned 28 math textbooks “because they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT,” examples of such material included discussions of how to disagree respectfully when taking different approaches to a math problem. (Republicans definitely don’t want kids being taught to disagree respectfully.)

"We don't want things like math to have, you know, some of these other concepts introduced,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters at an April 2022 press conference. “It's not been proven to be effective, and quite frankly, it takes our eye off the ball.” Looking atwhat’s happening to his presidential candidacy, it’s hard not to think DeSantis himself could have benefited from more social-emotional learning earlier in life.

DeSantis didn’t know what he was talking about there. "Let's say a student is working on a really difficult algebra problem and they get so frustrated because they can't remember what the next step is," Aaliyah Samuel, president and CEO of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, explained to NPR. "They have to be self-aware enough to say, 'You know what? I'm feeling frustrated. How do I handle this?'"

Republicans have gone after SEL, though, by connecting it to critical race theory—convenient for them since, while CRT is not taught in K-12 schools, SEL is. Christopher Rufo, one of the architects of the CRT panic, told The New York Times last year that social-emotional learning is unacceptable because it “serves as a delivery mechanism for radical pedagogies such as critical race theory and gender deconstructionism.” There’s a large body of research showing the educational benefits of SEL, but claim that it’s the disguise for CRT and right-wing brains short-circuit.

The book-banning craze is multifaceted: It aims to exclude and harm LGBTQ+ kids, Black kids, Latino kids, and anyone else who doesn’t fit the Republican mold this week. It aims to undermine public education. And yes, it aims to create a nation of assh..... unable to collaborate with others or manage frustration.


(full article online)

North Carolina school district goes to a new extreme in book banning

Efforts to ban books are on track to break a record for the second year in a row, according to an American Library Association report. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district in North Carolina has banned a children's picture book called “Red: A...

www.dailykos.com

 

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[ STOP book banning in the US ]

Three Jewish writers of young-adult fiction are among the 10 most-banned authors on a new list of every book banned in the U.S.

The list also includes Maus and a graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary, along with stories from the Old Testament and nonfiction books about the Holocaust.

“People often say ‘Good for you!’ when they hear one (or several) of my books have been banned,” said Elana K. Arnold, who is one of the Jewish writers on the most-banned list, along with Sarah J. Maas and Jesse Andrews. “I always reply: No. Not good for me. Shame on them, those fear mongers, those haters of liberty, those who seek to ban books.”


The list was compiled by PEN America, a nonprofit organization advocating for free expression, for a report called Banned in the USA: The Mounting Pressure to Censor. The report documented 3,362 instances of book bans in U.S. public school classrooms and libraries in the 2022-23 school year, an increase of 33% from the previous year.

The latest bans took 1,557 titles off the shelves. Many of the targeted books feature content related to race or racism, LGBTQ+ themes or characters, physical abuse, health, grief or death. Work by the three Jewish writers on the top-10 list is not explicitly Jewish in theme or content, but Arnold described her next book, The Blood Years, due out in October, as her “most overtly Jewish book,” historical fiction inspired by her grandmother’s teenage years in Romania.


(full article online)

Jewish writers, Bible stories and Holocaust history are on new list of every banned book in the US

Jewish authors, Holocaust history and Bible stories are on a new list from PEN America of every banned book in the U.S.

forward.com

 

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Texasâ ban on certain drag shows is unconstitutional, federal judge says

Senate Bill 12 would have prohibited performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics in front of children. Critics sued the state, saying it violated the First Amendment.

www.texastribune.org

 

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On Wednesday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama went on the “Bloomberg: Balance of Power” show to discuss the impending government shutdown as well as his battle to weaken our military. Host Joe Mathieu asked Tuberville about voting against President Joe Biden’s pick for the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown. After saying how great Brown is, that he’s doing a good job, and how it’s not even really that important a job (begging the question of why he voted against his nomination in the first place), Tuberville added this: “But I heard him say a few things that really didn’t fit with me in terms of making our military better and better.”

Pray tell.

Now, I heard some things that he talked about, about race and things that he want to mix into the military. Let me tell you something. Our military is not an equal opportunity employer. We're looking for the best, the best, to do whatever. We're not looking for different groups, social justice groups. We don't want to single-handedly destroy our military from within. We all need to be one.

Let’s put a pin in that. The military has had an equal opportunity policy since July 26, 1948, when President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces. The first point of the order—“It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin”—makes things crystal clear. And it's been a policy protected since 1964 under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Tuberville has demonstrated one superpower: the ability to talk even when he has his foot in his mouth. As the interview proceeded, he reminded everyone that he was a college football coach once upon a time, then he threw in some casual racism. “I listen to all these generals and admirals, and we have some great ones. We have some great military people,” Tuberville bloviated. “But there are some in there that have a different agenda to make sure that they get their quotas in. And we're not a quota. This is a military …”

Mathieu pushed back to ask what exactly Tuberville means when he says “race.” And the senator came back with this:

Well, he came out and said we need certain groups, more pilots, certain groups to have an opportunity to be pilots. Listen, I want it to be on merit. I want our military to be the best. I want the best people. I don't care who they are. Men, women. It doesn't make any difference. Catholics, Protestants.

Here’s how equal opportunity works: Because our country has a long history of discriminatory policies and hiring practices, many groups have not been allowed into important positions and fields, even though they merit it. Since Tuberville enjoys dining off his sports analogies, here’s an example:

On July 7, 1948, a 42-year-old-ish Satchel Paige made his Major League Baseball debut with Cleveland. Owner Bill Veeck, when asked by reporters if signing the aged rookie was a “publicity stunt,” told them, “If Satch were white, of course he would have been in the majors 25 years earlier and the question would not have been before the house.” Sporting News writer J.G. Taylor Spink wrote, “To bring in a pitching rookie of Paige's age is to demean the standards of baseball.” Later, Paige would remark, “I demeaned the big leagues considerable that year. I won six and lost one.”

Paige went on to pitch spectacularly, helping Cleveland secure the American League pennant that year in a tight race. The average retirement age of a modern baseball player is 29.5. The average career length of a pitcher is less than six years. Paige pitched on and off until he was well into his 50s, and the questions people ask about him now revolve around whether or not he was the greatest pitcher of all time—of any race.

Tuberville is the only person filling a “quota” here: as a white supremacist in office for the Republican Party.

Tuberville's racism on display in new comments denigrating US military

On Wednesday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama went on the “Bloomberg: Balance of Power” show to discuss the impending government shutdown as well as his battle to weaken our military. Host Joe Mathieu asked Tuberville about voting against President...

www.dailykos.com