"Andrea Junker & @Strandjunker
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Nothing says ban assault rifles like 5 school officers, 8 federal DEA officers, 13 U.S.
Marshals, 16 sheriff's deputies, 25 Uvalde officers, 69 officers of nearby law enforcement, 91 state police officers plus 149
U.S. Border Patrol agents being scared of 1 shooter with an AR-15.
12:45 PM • 5/24/24 From Earth • 30K Views"
"Experts say abruptly removing millions of workers from the U.S. economy could send it into a tailspin.
Writing in the Washington Monthly, economist Robert J. Shapiro crunches the numbers and finds Trump’s ambitious deportation goals would remove about 4.5% of the current U.S. workforce, and create ripples that would cause hundreds of thousands of native-born Americans to lose their jobs, as well. Shapiro posits that “if Trump’s program were carried out over three years, it would produce a downturn that could approximate the Great Recession in 2009, when GDP fell 2.6% and sluggish growth persisted for years.”"
"I’m sure some fear that calling out the over-the-top fascist elements of Trump’s plans might sound hysterical — even when that’s what he’s openly proposing.
And yet, there are so many unanswered questions. What would happen to the estimated 4.4 million children who were born here as U.S. citizens with at least one undocumented parent? How long would it take for heavily armed Insurrection Act troops to turn their firepower against the large number of Americans who would inevitably take to the streets in protest? Is a country where our neighbors and coworkers fear a knock on the door every night, while the world gawks at pictures of barbed-wire detention camps that look like colorized photos from the 1940s, really the future we want?"
" was somewhat amazing to watch the furious debate online and on cable news this week over the weird incident in which small text about a “unified Reich” found its way into a Trump promo video the ex-and-wannabe president posted on Truth Social. The perplexing part, for me, is that this was discussed as some kind of Sherlock-Holmes-magnifying-glass a-ha moment, revealing Trump’s secret plan for Nazi-style rule.
Folks, he is screaming his plan out loud at his rallies! The Trump deportation scheme is really Trump’s blueprint for dictatorship.
"We need open hearings in the Senate laying out for the American people all of the corrupt practices the super-majority of the Roberts court has been engaged in—from the potential lies some of them told to get in the Court in the first place, to the claims made against Brett Kavanaugh that were never investigated and ending with the undeclared gifts received by and the anti-Constitutional decision made by Thomas and Alito. The Court as an institution cannot survive these crises. And America cannot survive this Supreme Court."
"The good news is that the Democratic Party actually does care about defending democracy it’s just that many of our leaders haven’t caught up with the reality on the ground. Many of them, particularly those who have been inside of these institutions for decades, have become complacent. It’s up to us, then, to get them back in the game and remind them where they get their power."
As I left the theater after the show in Chicago today, I heard a street musician playing Happy Together by the Turtles. I listened, cried, and gave him $10.
That was the last song I played on the piano for my wife, the morning she passed.
TX Appoints Radical Anti-Choicer to Maternal Mortality Committee
"Texas’ Maternal Death Nightmare
Doing this work, it takes a lot to shock me. But my jaw was absolutely on the floor when I saw the news that anti-abortion activist Ingrid Skop has been appointed to Texas’ maternal mortality committee. If Skop’s name sounds familiar, that’s because she is one of the best-known anti-abortion OBGYNs in the country—a woman who works for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, regularly testifies in favor of abortion bans, and publishes nonsense anti-abortion studies.
In fact, remember the studies that were retracted because they had “unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions,” “material errors” and “misleading presentations” of data that “demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor and invalidate the authors’ conclusions in whole or in part?” That’s Skop!" https://jessica.substack.com/p/tx-appoints-radical-anti-choicer
"Not that you need a reminder of what Texas is like for pregnant people, but this viral Twitter thread is just mind-boggling—and a perfect example of why people like Skop are so dangerous. Ryan Hamilton’s wife, fresh into her second trimester, was denied care even though her fetus didn’t have a heartbeat. Multiple hospitals told the couple that they would have to just wait it out at home:
“Another long day/night of early labor pains. Only to discover my wife UNCONSCIOUS in the bathroom. Having to pick my wife's cold, limp body off of that bathroom floor, not sure if I was about to lose her, is something I will NEVER forget. She had to be rushed to the hospital.”
Raskin targets Trump-style foreign payments with emoluments legislation | The Hill
"“Although we have not needed to develop a full-blown legislative machinery to enforce the Emoluments Clause for more than two centuries, Congress must now enact a law to prevent presidents from ever again exploiting the presidency for self-enrichment by selling out our government to foreign states,” he said in a statement.
"Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) introduced legislation Tuesday to strengthen enforcement of the constitutional limitations on federal officials accepting payments from foreign governments, zeroing in on an issue that dogged the Trump presidency.
"Raskin’s bill expands the reach of the so-called Emoluments Clause, restricting federal elected officials as well as some high-ranking appointees from accepting such payments while in office as well as for two years beyond.
"The Constitution already directs the president and other officials to seek the permission of Congress before accepting any profit from foreign governments.
"But that process was flouted by former President Trump, with House Oversight Democrats documenting nearly $8 million in income he received from 20 different countries via his various businesses."
"What is going on? How is it possible that the leading candidate to become president of the United States can float the prospect of executing a general and the media response is…crickets?
How is it possible that it’s not front page news when a man who soon may return to power calls for law enforcement to kill people for minor crimes? And why do so few people question Trump’s mental acuity rather than Biden’s, when Trump proposes delusional, unhinged plans for forest management and warns his supporters that Biden is going to lead us into World War II (which would require a time machine), or wrongly claims that he defeated Barack Obama in 2016."
"Most voters don’t think about politics in their daily lives. Only the big stories that make headlines cut through. And for those hundreds of millions of Americans, they have no clue that Trump wants to kill shoplifters, or thinks it’s funny that an innocent man nearly died after being hit on the head with a hammer. Instead, many think of Trump as a rough-around-the-edges guy, but not someone who’s actively dangerous. Plenty hide behind their ignorance of his worst, vilest behavior to justify voting for him.
"Consider this: Americans soured on Trump when he held daily press conferences about covid-19, because they saw him unscripted and unvarnished. When he proposed injecting disinfectant to “clean” the body or using a “very powerful light” to cure covid in a patient, ordinary people saw the true Trump—and they didn’t like him very much."
"the persuadable voters are being given the chance to forget the horrible stuff Trump did that they once knew about, all while reading blaring headlines about how Biden is old. (Biden is three years older than Trump — but, and I can’t believe I need to say this, elevated age is not remotely the same as being an authoritarian fraudster, found liable for rape, who stole the government’s nuclear secrets and sought to overturn an election to stay in power by inciting a violent attack on the US Capitol).
"Keep this in mind: Trump’s approval rating plummeted after his comments about Charlottesville in 2018. Why? Because everyone knew about it. People who supported Trump grew a bit more sheepish about that support, because it became obvious that they were backing a racist. Nobody could pretend otherwise. Everyone knew. And that mattered."
When people tell me they read one of my books and found it “quite good”, I like to assume they’re from the US where “quite” apparently means “very” 😊
As opposed to the UK/Aus, where “quite good” is just damning with faint praise.
Unless you say it was “really quite good”. That’s when you mean “very good”.
If you say “quite good, really”, that means you’re surprised it was any good.
And if you say “Oh, I say, that is quite, quite remarkable”, you’re an 18th-century Earl confronted by a tempestuous highland beauty who is tossing her raven-black locks and flashing her sapphire-blue eyes at you because you’re enclosing her commons 😉