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HUMANITY DOOMSDAY CLOCK - Moves forward to 2125 due to election of US President trump.

Estimate of the time that Humanity will go extinct or civilization will collapse. The HUMANITY DOOMSDAY CLOCK moves forward to 2125 due to US President trump's abandonment of climate change goals. Clock moved to 90 seconds to doom at December 2023. Apologies to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for using the name.

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Saturday, November 2, 2024

UPDATED: Getting Real, Very Personal

 

 

Liberals will Fight Every Inch

 

This is my personal take on the state of the United States of America in the unlikely event that MAGA takes any offices in the USA.

 

Some of the MAGA cowards have suggested that if we liberals are so afraid of trump, then we should leave the country.

 

Do not be deluded.

 

We will not leave.

 

You MAGA may think that since we liberals believe in the rule of law that we will follow the law blindly whenever it is used to issue illegal orders.

 

It is my decision as to whether or not any order is legal or illegal. MAGA may say it is legal but it ain't legal until I or the Supremes say it is.

 

We will fight because it is our country and our home. We are proud of it. We will not leave and abandon it to the disgusting criminal mob that is MAGA.

 

We will fight you at every place you turn.

 

If you notify me to see an official MAGA apparatchik, I will assume that you want to kill me.

 

If you come to my home to talk to me, I will assume you will kill me.

 

Here is my reaction: As a political opponent of MAGA Fascists, I will scream, shout, bite and kick when you come; I will use a shotgun, a glock, baseball bats, iron weight dumbbells and whatever I can find. I know you intend to kill me and I will try to kill at least one of you before I die.

 

If you try to fire me as a government employee I will not leave unless and until you send armed force with a legal court order to remove me from my office.

 

If MAGA goons give an order to me as an armed forces member, I will refuse to obey. It is my duty to the Constitution. You will need to court martial me to get any satisfaction. I will not leave. AND I will sue you for illegal orders and treasonous behaviour.

 

If a MAGA Cabinet member issues an order that violates the Constitution, I will refuse to follow it. And, I will remain in office until and unless you send armed forces with a legal court order.

 

If you MAGA contest any election result, then the incumbent will stay in that office until the Supreme Court orders me to leave. 


Here's how the 314 Action Fund says it:


'If Donald Trump wins we need a line of defense to hold him in check. Because of the Supreme Court, he will be the first President in history with virtually unchecked power. 


In 2017, Trump ran rampant with a Republican trifecta. But remember what happened when Democrats flipped the House in 2018?


We slammed the BRAKES on his dangerous agenda, investigated his criminal behavior and put him on trial before the nation, saved the Affordable Care Act, and BLOCKED him from gutting Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and funding for vital government programs and agencies.


Three separate election models show House control coming down to a SINGLE seat. We’re supporting a DOZEN Democrats in the top Red-to-Blue flip opportunities in the nation and fighting to protect competitive open and Democratic-held seats that were previously Republican.


We JUST got word that election experts at Fox News, Inside Elections, the Center for Politics, and SBC have shifted a JAW-DROPPING dozen House races in favor of Democrats. Momentum is on our side and we need to build on it ASAP.'


FROM: 314 Action Fund is the only national organization working to train, recruit, support, and elect Democrats with STEM and medical backgrounds to office at all levels of government. 



Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Will you resist violently when MAGA goons try to take you to a deportation camp/gas chamber?

 

As a political opponent of MAGA Fascists, I will scream, shout, bite and kick when they come; I will use a shotgun, a glock, baseball bats, iron weight dumbbells and whatever I can find. I know they intend to kill me and I will try to kill at least one of them before I die.






'.. Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.” He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and election officials..'


In case you think I am just a delusional old man, read what Hitler actually did in the 1930's.


Heather Cox Richardson, Oct 22, 2024

 

On Saturday, September 7, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump predicted that his plan to deport 15 to 20 million people currently living in the United States would be “bloody.” He also promised to prosecute his political opponents, including, he wrote, lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and election officials. Retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is “a fascist to the core…the most dangerous person to this country.” 


On October 14, Trump told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that he thought enemies within the United States were more dangerous than foreign adversaries and that he thought the military should stop those “radical left lunatics” on Election Day. Since then, he has been talking a lot about “the enemy from within,” specifically naming Representative Adam Schiff and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats from California, as “bad people.” Schiff was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee that broke the 2019 story of Trump’s attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelensky that led to Trump’s first impeachment. 


Trump’s references to the “enemy from within” have become so frequent that former White House press secretary turned political analyst Jen Psaki has called them his closing argument for the 2024 election, and she warned that his construction of those who oppose him as “enemies” might sweep in virtually anyone he feels is a threat.


In a searing article today, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer of The Cycle explored exactly what that means in a piece titled “What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?” Bitecofer outlined Adolf Hitler’s January 30, 1933, oath of office, in which he promised Germans he would uphold the constitution, and the three months he took to dismantle that constitution.


By March, she notes,  the concentration camp Dachau was open. Its first prisoners were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s prominent political opponents [ED: they were killed there] . By April, Jews had been purged from the civil service, and opposition political parties were illegal. By May, labor unions were banned and students were burning banned books. Within the year, public criticism of Hitler and the Nazis was illegal, and denouncing violators paid well for those who did it.


Bitecofer writes that Trump has promised mass deportations “that he cannot deliver unless he violates both the Constitution and federal law.” To enable that policy, Trump will need to dismantle the merit-based civil service and put into office those loyal to him rather than the Constitution. And then he will purge his political opponents, for once those who would stand against him are purged, Trump can act as he wishes against immigrants, for example, and others.


Ninety years ago, as American reporter Dorothy Thompson ate breakfast at her hotel in Berlin on August 25, 1934, a young man from Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo, “politely handed me a letter and requested a signed receipt.” She thought nothing of it, she said, “But what a surprise was in store for me!” The letter informed her that, “in light of your numerous anti-German publications,” she was being expelled from Germany.


She was the first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany, and that expulsion was no small thing. Thompson had moved to London in 1920 to become a foreign correspondent and began to spend time in Berlin. In 1924 she moved to the city to head the Central European Bureau for the New York Evening Post and the Philadelphia Public Ledger. From there, she reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler. She left her Berlin post in 1928 to marry novelist Sinclair Lewis, and the two settled in Vermont.


When the couple traveled to Sweden in 1930 for Lewis to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature, Thompson visited Germany, where she saw the growing strength of the fascists and the apparent inability of the Nazi’s opponents to come together to stand against them. She continued to visit the country in the following years, reporting on the rise of fascism there, and elsewhere. 


In 1931, Thompson interviewed Hitler and declared that, rather than “the future dictator of Germany” she had expected to meet, he was a man of “startling insignificance.” She asked him if he would “abolish the constitution of the German Republic.” He answered: “I will get into power legally” and, once in power, abolish the parliament and the constitution and “found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.” She did not believe he could succeed: “Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights,” she wrote in apparent astonishment.


Thompson was back in Berlin in summer 1934 as a representative of the Saturday Evening Post when she received the news that she had 24 hours to leave the country. The other foreign correspondents in Berlin saw her off at the railway station with “great sheaves of American Beauty roses.” 


Safely in Paris, Thompson mused that in her first years in Germany she had gotten to know many of the officials of the German republic, and that when she had left to marry Lewis, they offered “many expressions of friendship and gratitude.” But times had changed. “I thought of them sadly as my train pulled out,” she said, “carrying me away from Berlin. Some of those officials still are in the service of the German Government, some of them are émigrés and some of them are dead.” 


Thompson came home to a nation where many of the same dark impulses were simmering, her fame after her expulsion from Germany following her. She lectured against fascism across the country in 1935, then began a radio program that reached tens of millions of listeners. Hired in 1936 to write a regular column three days a week for the New York Herald Tribune, she became a leading voice in print, too, warning that what was happening in Germany could also happen in America. 


In an echo of Lewis’s bestselling 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, she wrote in a 1937 column: “No people ever recognize their dictator in advance…. He always represents himself as the instrument for expressing the Incorporated National Will. When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. If anyone turned up here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he would be recognized and shunned…. But when our dictator turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.” 


In less than two years, the circulation of her column had grown to reach between seven and eight million people. In 1939 a reporter wrote: “She is read, believed and quoted by millions of women who used to get their political opinions from their husbands, who got them from [political commentator] Walter Lippmann.” The reporter likened Thompson to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, saying they were the two “most influential women in the U.S.”


When 22,000 American Nazis held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in honor of President George Washington’s birthday on February 20, 1939, Thompson sat in the front row of the press box, where she laughed loudly during the speeches and yelled “Bunk!” at the stage, illustrating that she would not be muzzled by Nazis. After being escorted out, she returned to her seat, where stormtroopers surrounded her. She later told a reporter: “I was amazed to see a duplicate of what I saw seven years ago in Germany. Tonight I listened to words taken out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler.” 


Two years later, In 1941, Thompson returned to the issue she had raised when she mused about those government officials who had gone from thanking her to expelling her. In a piece for Harper’s Magazine titled “Who Goes Nazi?” she wrote: “It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi,” she wrote. “By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.”


Examining a number of types of Americans, she wrote that the line between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or education, or race, or age, or nationality. “Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she wrote. They were secure enough to be good natured and open to new ideas, and they believed so completely in the promise of American democracy that they would defend it with their lives, even if they seemed too easygoing to join a struggle. “But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis,” she wrote. “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.”


In Paris following her expulsion from Berlin, Thompson told a reporter for the Associated Press that the reason she had been attacked was the same reason that Hitler’s power was growing. “Chancellor Hitler is no longer a man, he is a religion,” she said.


Suggesting her expulsion was because of her old article disparaging Hitler, in her own article about her expulsion she noted: “My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all. That is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people…. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are a German, you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris. Worse things can happen….” 



Notes:


https://www.axios.com/2024/10/11/mark-milley-trump-fascist-bob-woodward-book



The Cycle- On Substack

What (Really) Happens If Trump Wins?

January 30th 1933 dawned cold and clear in Berlin as Adolph Hitler took his oath of office and promised Germans he would uphold the constitution. It would ultimately take him less than 30 days to dismantle it…

Read more

11 hours ago · 68 likes · 7 comments · Rachel "The Doc" Bitecofer 📈🔭

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/20/politics/trump-enemy-from-within-schiff-pelosi/index.html


https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/trump-military-enemy-from-within-election-day/index.html


https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-cbf2afd0-6dc1-11ef-b9a6-4f5491137b64.html


https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/10/trump-gop-support-jd-vance-2024/679564/


https://www.historynet.com/encounter-dorothy-thompson-underestimates-hitler/


https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/07/woman/


https://time.com/archive/6895071/germany-little-man/


https://time.com/archive/6761718/the-press-cartwheel-girl/


https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/Dorothy-Thompson_Cott.pdf


https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/nazi-town-usa-dorothy-thompson-most-famous-female-journalist/


https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/


https://lithub.com/a-good-journalist-understands-that-fascism-can-happen-anywhere-anytime/


“Ousting Mystifies Dorothy Thompson,” New York Times, August 27, 1934, p. 8, at https://www.nytimes.com/1934/08/27/archives/ousting-mystifies-dorothy-thompson-american-writer-says-in-paris.html


Dorothy Thompson, “Dorothy Thompson Tells of Nazi Ban,” New York Times, August 27, 1934, p. 8, at https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/08/27/93763926.html


X:


InsideWithPsaki/status/1848516948994257271


GarrettHaake/status/1832567567934018026


emptywheel/status/1832801092200968211

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Documenting His Decline


October 19, 2024, Heather Cox Richardson


'A number of people telling me we all need a night off had almost convinced me not to write tonight. 


But then Trump spoke at a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he told a long, meandering story about golfing legend Arnold Palmer that ended with praise for Palmer’s… anatomy. 


He went on to call Vice President Kamala Harris—whose name he deliberately mispronounced—“a sh*t vice president. The worst. You’re the worst vice president. Kamala, you’re fired. Get the hell out of here, you’re fired. Get out of here. Get the hell out of here, Kamala.”  


As Trump’s remarks got weirder and weirder, the Fox News Channel cut away and instead showed Harris being cheered at a packed, exuberant, super-charged rally in Georgia. 


Trump’s speech comes on top of his repeated backing out of interviews and his bizarre appearances. Last night, his advice to an audience in Detroit to vote took its own wild turn: “Jill, get your fat husband off the couch,” he said. “Get that fat pig off the couch. Tell him to go and vote for Trump, he’s going to save our country. Get that guy the hell off our— get him up, Jill, slap him around. Get him up. Get him up, Jill. We want him off the couch to get out and vote.” 


Trump’s performances over the past few days seem to confirm that the 2024 October surprise is the increasingly obvious mental incapacity of the Republican candidate for president. 


It seems clear that a vote for Trump is really a vote for his running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who if he becomes president will be the youngest American president in our history. At 40 years old, he is two years younger than Theodore Roosevelt was when he took office in 1901 at 42. Vance would also be one of the least experienced presidents ever. His 18 months in the Senate has given him only slightly more experience in office than Chester Alan Arthur, who succeeded James Garfield in 1881. Arthur was a political operative who had never held elected office at all before becoming vice president. 


I’ll be back at the wheel tomorrow.'


Notes:


https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-arnold-palmer-comments-ibaffle-1971769


X: harris_wins/status/1847778189374063089


Acyn/status/1847446208094028251


atrupar/status/1847761778215645529 

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Jack Smith 165 page brief :

 

  

Here is the 165 page brief:


Or, copy and paste this link:


https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/73357920e3c8d739/8fc8bfd0-full.pdf


A quote from Page 3 : 


'I. Factual Proffer 


When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost-Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the “targeted states”). '



Thursday, October 10, 2024

Post Putin Plan for Russia



'There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.' 

Source: Wm. Shakespeare in Julius Caesar Act 4Scene 3Line 249


Russia today faces its arguably most consequential crossroads since 1918. 


Putin's tyranny has nearly run its course in Ukraine and, consequently, in Russia as well. The military is not effective, Moms are angry at the losses of nearly one million sons, Putin will die in the near future and there is no succession plan in place.  


A Russian failure to plan any transition may result in more misery and repression if another tyrant takes over - such a takeover may result in prolonging Putin's repressive policies.


However, Russia can make a different choice, a choice which would avoid that future. Russian power brokers [political, military, security, et al] can choose to install a representative government instead of a tyranny. After all, most Russians want to look to the West and perhaps join the European Union [EU]. There's a lot of hard work to create that future, but it can be done.


With proper planning Russia can emerge as a stable, prosperous member of the European Union. Great nations are great because their citizens are prosperous. [THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GREAT POWERS, Paul Kennedy, 1987, Random House New York.]


The good news is that choosing EU membership as a goal will install a sound economy, reduce political repression and assure Russia's power and influence at a time when Western Democracies including the United States have become so indebted to Oligarchs and thus frozen in policies that they will likely fall behind as Russia advances.


A country can become an official candidate for EU membership once it meets basic political, economic and reform criteria. It can then start formal negotiations on 35 chapters covering many different policy areas with the EU.


'In order to apply for EU membership, a country has to be European and respect the EU's democratic values. It also needs stable institutions guaranteeing democracy and the rule of law; a functioning market economy; and the ability to take on and carry out the obligations of the EU membership. Dec 6, 2023.'

  

Here are those detailed steps.


BEFORE THE EU APPLICATION


There are some prerequisites before making an EU application.


STEP 1: Establish a shadow Duma before Putin's demise using expat Russians who will meet and work on the EU Candidate process; and, begin writing a new Constitution. USA and EU can help organize and fund this. The shadow Duma can continue after Putin's demise until a newly elected Duma can meet. 


STEP 2: Create a Steering Committee to manage the process. This Committee will have vast authority but only for a limited time. It may require outside assistance to keep to the course. It will establish coordination with both top intelligence and military officials to secure their agreement they will accept subordination to civilian authority established pursuant to the new Constitution. Discharge those who refuse.


Step 3: Enact martial law to prevent violence, election interference and possible overthrow of new government. 


STEP 4: Conduct elections to the new Duma with international supervision ensuring election integrity.


STEP 4.  Nationalize all enterprises above an arbitrary limit such as 1,000 employees. The state will manage the enterprises. Later, the Duma can negotiate proposed acquisitions on a case-by-case basis with the objective of professional sustainable management and financial capacity


STEP 5. New government seeks outside cash assistance to endure that newly nationalized enterprises can meet their payroll until divested. Such assistance may take the form of loans to the State or firm. Loans to enterprises can be repaid upon a sale to private parties. 


STEP 6. Appoint judges who support the new government to all judicial posts. Ensure each judicial appointment requires a public impeachment in the Duma to be overturned or compromised.


STEP 7. Establish Civil Service board to establish required credentials for new employees select and install government employees. Ensure that all meetings of the Board will be publicly viewable. 


STEP 8. New Duma will establish areas of interest for business enterprise regulation; then, it will write appropriate regulations.


Monday, October 7, 2024

Documenting Russia's plan to subvert USA democracy:


Heather Cox Richardson  Oct 7

  

This morning began with a CNN headline story by fact checker Daniel Dale, titled “Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response.” Dale noted that Republican nominee for president Donald Trump has been one of the chief sources of the disinformation that has badly hampered recovery efforts. 


Trump has claimed that the federal government is ignoring the storm’s victims, especially ones in Republican areas, and that the government is handing out only $750 in aid (in fact, the initial emergency payment for food and groceries is $750, but there are multiple grants available for home rebuilding up to a total of $42,500, the upper limit set by Congress). He has also claimed—falsely—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is out of money to help because the administration spent all its money on Ukraine and undocumented immigrants.


Trump’s lies are not errors. They are part of a well-documented strategy to overturn democracy by using modern media to create a false political world. Voters begin to base their political decisions on that fake image, rather than on reality, and are manipulated into giving up control of their government to an authoritarian. 


Russian political theorists who were key to the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin after the collapse of the Soviet Union called this manipulation “political technology.”


They developed a series of techniques to pervert democracy through this virtual political reality. They blackmailed opponents, abused state power to help favored candidates, sponsored “double” candidates with names similar to those of opponents in order to split the opposition vote and thus open the way for their own candidates, created false parties to further splinter the opposition, and, finally, created a false narrative around an election or other event that enabled them to control public debate.


Essentially, they perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.


This system made sense in former Soviet republics, where it enabled leaders to avoid the censorship that voters would recoil from by instead creating a firehose of news until people became overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out what was real and simply tuned out. 


But it has also worked in the United States, where right-wing leaders have used it to divide the American people and spread disinformation. While “misinformation” is simply false information—which we all spread innocently and correct with accurate information—“disinformation” is a deliberate lie to convince people of things that are not true. 


Before the 2016 presidential election, Russian operatives working for Putin set out to tear the U.S. apart and thus undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) they see as stopping the resurrection of Imperial Russia. They called for provoking “instability and separatism within the borders of the United States... encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts,... [and] support[ing] isolationist tendencies in American politics.” 


But they were not the only ones operating in this disinformation sphere. In 2014, then–Breitbart chief executive Steve Bannon explained to a right-wing Catholic group meeting at the Vatican that he believed traditional western civilization was fighting a war for survival. To win, current western-style civilizations must be completely reconfigured to put a few wealthy white Christian male leaders in charge to direct and protect subordinates. 


In that year, Bannon set out to dismantle the administrative state that was leveling the playing field among Americans and push Christian nationalism. With the help of funding from Republican megadonors Robert and Rebecca Mercer, he launched Cambridge Analytica, a company designed to develop profiles of individuals that would enable advertisers to group them for targeted advertising. Before the 2016 election, the company captured information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission or knowledge, enabling it to flood the platform with targeted disinformation. 


Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 campaign. He then served as chief strategist and senior counselor for the first eight months of Trump’s term, during which he worked to put MAGAs in power across the administration and across the country.


“The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon told a reporter in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.” Keeping listeners constantly trying to defend what is real from what is not destroys their ability to make sense of the world. Many people turn to a strongman who promises to create order. Others will get so exhausted they simply give up. As scholar of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt noted, authoritarians use this technique to destabilize a population.


Trump’s administration began with a foundational lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Recent challenges to that assertion from Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Barack Obama rankled as badly as they did for Trump because that lie allowed Trump to define the public conversation. Forcing his supporters to commit to a lie that was demonstrably untrue locked them into accepting others throughout his presidency, for backing away would become harder and harder with each lie they accepted. 


Challenging that lie, as Harris and Obama did, challenged all those that came afterward, including the lie that Trump had been the true winner of the 2020 presidential election. Thanks to the October 2 filing by special counsel Jack Smith, we know that Trump was in almost daily communication with Bannon as he pushed that lie. 


Scholars of authoritarianism call a lie of such magnitude a “Big Lie,” a key propaganda tool associated with Nazi Germany. It is a lie so huge that no one can believe it is false. If leaders repeat it enough times, refusing to admit that it is a lie, people come to think it is the truth because surely no one would make up anything so outrageous.


In his autobiography Mein Kampf, or “My Struggle,” Adolf Hitler wrote that people were more likely to believe a giant lie than a little one because they were willing to tell small lies in their own lives but “would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.” Since they could not conceive of telling “colossal untruths…they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” He went on: “Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”


The U.S. Office of Strategic Services had picked up on Hitler’s manipulation of his followers when it described Hitler’s psychological profile. It said, “His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”


The MAGA movement is now based in the Big Lie. Its leaders refuse to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, two days ago actually said Trump won, and as media figures more frequently ask the question of MAGA lawmakers, they continue to dodge it, as Arkansas senator Tom Cotton did today on NBC’s Meet the Press, and as House speaker Mike Johnson did on ABC News’s “This Week.”


Now, though, their lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene show that they are completely committed to disinformation. As Will Bunch noted today in the Philadelphia Inquirer, when Vance lied again at the vice presidential debate about the legal status of the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and complained when moderator Margaret Brennan corrected him, he gave up the whole game. “Margaret,” Vance said, “the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check.” He continued to argue until the moderators cut his microphone. 


Bunch points out that MAGA Republicans insist on the right to lie, considering any fact-checking “censorship,” a position to which Vance pivoted when Minnesota governor Tim Walz asked him if Trump won the 2020 election.   


Just as Russian political theorists advocated to overturn democracy, MAGA Republicans have created an alternative political reality, aided in large part by the disinformation spread on social media by X owner and Trump supporter Elon Musk. 


They continue to be aided by foreign operatives, as well. This morning, on CBS’s Face the Nation, Senate Intelligence Committee member Mark Kelly (D-AZ) warned, on the basis of information he has heard from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency, that Russia, Iran, and China are generating about 20% to 30% of the political content and comments on social media.


But the largest purveyors of disinformation are homegrown.


Perhaps, though, the very real, immediate damage MAGA’s disinformation about Hurricane Helene is causing might finally be a step too far. In what is at least a muted rebuke to Trump, Republican governors across the damaged area have stepped up to praise President Joe Biden and the federal response to the disaster. 



Notes:


https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/06/politics/fact-check-trump-helene-response-north-carolina/index.html


https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/gleb-pavlovsky/


https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world#.nbJrrXK8gx


https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/virtual-politics-and-the-corruption-post-soviet-democracy


https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/02/08/514102356/steve-bannon-aligns-with-vatican-hardliners-who-oppose-pope-francis


John B. Dunlop, “Aleksandr Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics,” paper available at https://stanford.io/3wTNlEx.


Quoted from “Joseph Goebbels: On the ‘Big Lie,’” Jewish Virtual Library, https://bit.ly/2PlQmdI.


Office of Strategic Services, A Psychological Analysis of Adolph Hitler: His Life and Legend, Walter C. Langer, CIA-RPDP78-02646R000600240001-5, Washington, D.C., August 24, 1999, p. 38. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-02646R000600240001-5.pdf


​​https://www.yahoo.com/news/vance-says-trump-won-2020-192218871.html


https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/10/01/vance-walz-vp-debate-tonight/moderators-fact-check-00182066


https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/gop-disinformation-trump-vance-20241006.html#loaded


https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/media/steve-bannon-reliable-sources/index.html


https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/10/gov.uscourts.dcd_.258148.252.0.pdf


https://gazette.com/news/wex/helene-makes-unlikely-friends-of-republican-swing-state-governors-and-biden/article_b2814791-6ca3-5d89-9a3f-35ab3c135c4a.html


https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4870818-barack-obama-donald-trump-new-kamala-harris-campaign-ad/


https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/10/harris-trump-crowd-size-debate-00178116


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/06/mike-johnson-donald-trump-election/


X:


keithboykin/status/1842975629995921781


NewsJennifer/status/1842940155847746011

Friday, October 4, 2024

Here is How We Cure Our MAGA Cancer




MAGA resembles a cancer-like virus which infects our body politic; and, it can kill us unless we take aggressive steps to stop it.


It is a disease; it is NOT a political movement or party. 


Cancer treatment typically includes both surgeries to remove any malignant cells as well as chemotherapy to prevent further spread of the disease. We can apply analogous tactics to the MAGA virus.


'Oct. 2 (UPI) -- War in the Middle East and political extremism within the United States mean there is a high threat of terrorism within the nation, the Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday.' SEE IT HERE


The MAGA threat will survive after the election regardless of the eventual winners. 


Today foreign actors in Russia, China, Iran and elsewhere support our domestic terrorists by providing misinformation on various social media platforms. Some domestic terrorists are in prison today due to their criminal convictions resulting from their criminal acts on January 6, 2020.


The National Security of the United States is at risk today due to the cumulative effects of past and continuing support directed to our Domestic Terrorists from around the world.


It is time to ramp up our efforts to stop the attacks.


SURGICAL EFFORTS:


1. We should damage or destroy the physical equipment used by foreign and domestic actors to support our terrorists - servers, web sites, platforms, etc, etc, et al. The critical nature of the threats suggests that some actions be taken using physical destruction as well as cyber efforts. Our efforts may be considered illegal. We should do them anyway; our survival is at risk.


2. Social media platforms which allow these activities should be decommissioned. Platform owners should have the choice to stop the actions; if they fail to do so, the platform will be destroyed.


3. Web sites which traffic in terrorist propaganda should be disabled immediately. Apparently, some foreign actors have created bots which create thousands of such sites every week. It will require manpower to track all these sites and disable each and every one.


CHEMOTHERAPY EFFORTS:


4. Sitting politicians who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution and refrain from supporting, engaging in or tolerating MAGA actions may be allowed to continue their offices. Those who refuse either of both oaths should be prosecuted and/or defeated in their next election.



5. Hire and coordinate many voices that can challenge and/or refute any MAGA assertion whenever and wherever it appears. It is the job of the poster to provide evidence of his claim, it is NOT the job of the rebutter to provide evidence unless it is easy and readily available.


Any statement without source data should be challenged immediately and evidence demanded. Any false evidence or evidence from a MAGA source, web site or social media platform should be refuted immediately with a demand for retraction or better sources data. 



Here is a collection of more generic and/or political activities resembling chemotherapy courtesy of Chat GPT


Preventing any group, including those affiliated with the MAGA movement, from interfering with the law requires a multifaceted approach that emphasizes accountability, education, and community engagement. Here are some strategies:


A. Strengthening Law Enforcement: Ensuring that law enforcement agencies are well-equipped and trained to handle disturbances and uphold the law impartially can deter interference.


B. Promoting Rule of Law: Reinforcing the importance of the rule of law through civic education can help communities understand the significance of respecting legal processes and institutions.


C. Open Dialogue: Encouraging open and respectful conversations across political divides can reduce tensions and misunderstandings, fostering a more cooperative environment.


D. Community Engagement: Building relationships between law enforcement and local communities can create trust and collaboration, making it easier to address potential conflicts.


E. Legal Consequences: Ensuring that there are clear legal consequences for unlawful acts can act as a deterrent. This includes enforcing laws consistently, regardless of political affiliation.


F. Media Literacy and Critical Thinking: Promoting critical thinking and media literacy can help individuals better evaluate information and reduce susceptibility to extreme ideologies.


G. Conflict Resolution Training: Offering training in conflict resolution and de-escalation techniques for community leaders and law enforcement can help address tensions before they escalate.


H. Monitoring and Accountability: Establishing oversight mechanisms to monitor potential interference in legal processes can help ensure accountability and transparency.


I. Promoting Nonviolent Advocacy: Encouraging peaceful and constructive forms of political expression can help mitigate confrontational behaviors.


J. Building Coalitions: Forming coalitions with diverse community groups can create a united front that emphasizes the importance of lawful conduct and mutual respect.


Ultimately, fostering an environment where respect for the law is paramount, and open dialogue is encouraged can help mitigate interference from any group.


 

Monday, September 23, 2024


YOU MUST HEAR THIS:


TRUMP'S GOAL IS TO CREATE SO MUCH DOUBT ABOUT THE ELECTION THAT CONGRESS WILL FAIL IN CERTIFYING THE ELECTIONS IN A TIMELY MANNER.


THEN HE WILL TRY TO SEND IT TO SCOTUS SO THEY WILL NAME HIM POTUS


BIDEN/HARRIS MUST STAY IN OFFICE UNTIL THE PROCESS BELOW CONCLUDES, REGARDLESS OF ANY DELAY BEYOND JANUARY 20, 2025 NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES.


TRUMP WILL INCITE ARMED REBELLION DURING THAT PERIOD.


BE PREPARED.


Here is the NYT on the GOP plan. 


The  Constitution establishes clearly the succession procedures in the event the election remains undecided past the specified times.




Since we have clarity about the succession process, then it appears likely that the GOP will use the indecision of an uncertified election to foment violence similar to the violence they created on January 6, 2021. Their goal will be to overthrow the government so they can seize control.




We cannot allow that. 




We should very sure to count every vote before inaugurating a new President.




The law states this:




'If Congress does not certify the vote for President of the United States, the situation is handled according to the 12th Amendment and the procedures outlined in the Electoral Count Act of 1887. If Congress fails to certify the electoral vote, the process to resolve the issue is as follows:




    Role of the President Pro Tempore of the Senate: If no President has been elected by the time the new Congress convenes on January 3rd, the President pro tempore of the Senate, who is third in the line of presidential succession, would be next in line to assume the role of acting President. This position is typically held by the longest-serving member of the majority party in the Senate.




    If a President is not elected by January 20: According to the 20th Amendment, if there is no President elected and inaugurated by January 20th, the Vice President-elect would assume the role of Acting President until a President is officially elected.




    Contingency Procedure: In the absence of a certification of electoral votes and no President or Vice President in place, the Speaker of the House of Representatives would become the Acting President. This would be a temporary solution until the issue of the certification of the electoral vote is resolved.




For a detailed understanding, you can refer to the following sources:




    12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution


    Electoral Count Act of 1887'




Courtesy ChatGTP August 11, 2024


Sunday, September 22, 2024

UPDATE: NOW IT'S CLIMBED TO 700; 100 National Security People Support Harris




100 National Security people support Harris, many are GOP.


The full list and Text here


Now it's climbed to 700, as per the NYT: 


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/22/us/politics/harris-national-security-officials.html



Monday, September 2, 2024

Why Labor Day


Historian Heather Cox Richardson, Sep 2

 'Almost one hundred and forty-two years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade. The parade almost didn’t happen: there was no band, and no one wanted to start marching without music. Once the Jewelers Union of Newark Two showed up with musicians, the rest of the marchers, eventually numbering between 10,000 and 20,000 men and women, fell in behind them to parade through lower Manhattan. At noon, when they reached the end of the route, the march broke up and the participants listened to speeches, drank beer, and had picnics. Other workers joined them.


Their goal was to emphasize the importance of workers in the industrializing economy and to warn politicians that they could not be ignored. 


Less than 20 years before, northern men had fought a war to defend a society based on free labor and had, they thought, put in place a government that would support the ability of all hardworking men to rise to prosperity. But for all that the war had seemed to be about defending men against the rise of an oligarchy that intended to reduce all men to a life of either enslavement or wage labor, the war and its aftermath had pushed workers’ rights backward.   


The drain of men to the battlefields and the western mines during the war resulted in a shortage of workers that kept unemployment low and wages high. Even when they weren’t, the intense nationalism of the war years tended to silence the voices of labor organizers. “It having been resolved to enlist with Uncle Sam for the war,” one organization declared when the war broke out, “this union stands adjourned until either the Union is safe, or we are whipped.” 


Another factor working against the establishment of labor unions during the war was the tendency of employers to claim that striking workers were deliberately undercutting the war effort. They turned to the government to protect production, and in industries like Pennsylvania's anthracite coal fields, government leaders sent soldiers to break budding unions and defend war production.


During the war, government contracting favored those companies that could produce big orders of the mule shoes, rifles, rain slickers, coffee, and all the other products that kept the troops supplied. The owners of the growing factories grew wealthy on government contracts, even as conditions in the busy factories deteriorated. While wages were high during the war, they were often paid in greenbacks, which were backed only by the government’s promise to pay. 


While farmers and some entrepreneurs thrived during the war, urban workers and miners had reason to believe that employers had taken advantage of the war to make money off them. After the war, they began to strike for better wages and safer conditions. In August 1866, 60,000 people met as the National Labor Union in Baltimore, Maryland, where they called for an eight-hour workday. Most of those workers calling for organization simply wanted a chance to rise to comfort, but the resolutions developed by the group’s leaders after the convention declared that workers must join unions to reform the abuses of the industrial system. 


To many of those who thought the war would create a country where hard work would mean success, the resolutions seemed to fly in the face of that harmony, echoing the southern enslavers by dividing the world into people of wealth and workers, and asking for government intervention, this time on the side of workers. Republicans began to redefine their older, broad concept of workers to mean urban unskilled or semi-skilled wage laborers specifically.


Then in 1867, a misstep by Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio made the party step back from workers. Wade had been a cattle drover and worked on the Erie Canal before studying law and entering politics, and he was a leader among those who saw class activism as the next step in the party’s commitment to free labor. His fiery oratory lifted him to prominence, and in March 1867 the Senate chose him its president pro tempore, in effect making him the nation’s acting vice president in those days before there was a process for replacing a vice president who had stepped into the presidency.


Wade joined a number of senators on a trip to the West, and in Lawrence, Kansas, newspapers reported—possibly incorrectly—that Wade predicted a fight in America between labor and capital. “Property is not equally divided,” the reporter claimed Wade said, “and a more equal distribution of capital must be worked out.” Congress, which Wade now led, had done much for ex-slaves and must now address “the terrible distinction between the man that labors and him that does not.”


Republican newspapers were apoplectic. The New York Times claimed that Wade was a demagogue. Every hard worker could succeed in America, it wrote. “Laborers here can make themselves sharers in the property of the country,—can become capitalists themselves,—just


as nine in ten of all the capitalists in the country have done so before them,—by industry, frugality, and intelligent enterprise.” Trying to get rich by force of law would undermine society.


Congress established an eight-hour day for federal employees in June 1868, but in that year’s election, voters turned Wade, and others like him, out of office. In 1869, Republican president Ulysses S. Grant issued a proclamation saying that the eight-hour workday of "laborers, workmen, and mechanics" would not mean cuts in wages.


Then, in spring 1871, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, workers took over the city of Paris and established the Paris Commune. The transatlantic cable had gone into operation in 1866, and American newspapers had featured stories of the European war. Now, hungry for dramatic stories, they plastered details of the Commune on their front pages, describing it as a propertied American’s worst nightmare. They highlighted the murder of priests, the burning of the Tuileries Palace, and the bombing of buildings by crazed women who lobbed burning bottles of newfangled petroleum through cellar windows. 


The Communards were a “wild, reckless, irresponsible, murderous mobocracy” who planned to confiscate all property and transfer all money, factories, and land to associations of workmen, American newspapers wrote. In their telling, the Paris Commune brought to life the chaotic world the elite enslavers foresaw when they said it was imperative to keep workers from politics. 


Scribner’s Monthly warned in italics: “the interference of ignorant labor with politics is dangerous to society.” Famous reformer Charles Loring Brace looked at the rising numbers of industrial workers and the conditions of city life, and warned Americans, “In the judgment of one who has been familiar with our ‘dangerous classes’ for twenty years, there are just the same explosive social elements beneath the surface of New York as of Paris.”


At the same time, it was also clear that wealthy industrialists were gaining more and more control over both state and local governments. In 1872 the Credit Mobilier scandal broke. This was a complicated affair, and what had actually happened was almost certainly misrepresented, but it seemed to show congressmen taking bribes from railroad barons, and Americans were ready to believe that they were doing so. Then, in July 1877, after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad cut wages 20 percent and strikers shut down most of the nation’s railroads, President Rutherford B. Hayes sent U.S. soldiers to the cities immobilized by the strikes. It seemed industrialists had the Army at their beck and call.


By 1882, factories and the fortunes they created had swung the government so far toward men of capital that it seemed there was more room for workingmen to demand their rights. By the 1880s, even the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune complained about the links between business and government: “Behind every one of half of the portly and well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation,” it wrote. The Senate, Harper’s Weekly noted, was “a club of rich men.” 


The workers marching in New York City in the first Labor Day celebration in 1882 carried banners saying: “Labor Built This Republic and Labor Shall Rule it,” “Labor Creates All Wealth,” “No Land Monopoly,” “No Money Monopoly,” “Labor Pays All Taxes,” “The Laborer Must Receive and Enjoy the Full Fruit of His Labor,” ‘Eight Hours for a Legal Day’s Work,” and “The True Remedy is Organization and the Ballot.” 


Two years later, workers helped to elect Democrat Grover Cleveland to the White House. A number of Republicans crossed over to support the reformer, afraid that, as he said, “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.” 


In 1888, Cleveland won the popular vote by about 100,000 votes, but his Republican opponent, Benjamin Harrison, won in the Electoral College. Harrison promised that his would be “A BUSINESS MAN’S ADMINISTRATION” and said that “before the close of the present Administration business men will be thoroughly well content with it….” 


Businessmen mostly were, but the rest of the country wasn’t. In November 1892 a Democratic landslide put Cleveland back in office, along with the first Democratic Congress since before the Civil War. As soon as the results of the election became apparent, the Republicans declared that the economy would collapse. Harrison’s administration had been “beyond question the best business administration the country has ever seen,” one businessmen’s club insisted, so losing it could only be a calamity. “The Republicans will be passive spectators,” the Chicago Tribune noted. “It will not be their funeral.” People would be thrown out of work, but “[p]erhaps the working classes of the country need such a lesson….”


As investors rushed to take their money out of the U.S. stock market, the economy collapsed a few days before Cleveland took office in early March 1893. Trying to stabilize the economy by enacting the proposals capitalists wanted, Cleveland and the Democratic Congress had to abandon many of the pro-worker policies they had promised, and the Supreme Court struck down the rest (including the income tax).


They could, however, support Labor Day and its indication of workers’ political power. On June 28, 1894, Cleveland signed Congress’s bill making Labor Day a legal holiday. Each year, the first Monday in September would honor the country’s workers.  


In Chicago the chair of the House Labor Committee, Lawrence McGann (D-IL), told the crowd gathered for the first official observance: “Let us each Labor day, hold a congress and formulate propositions for the amelioration of the people. Send them to your Representatives with your earnest, intelligent indorsement [sic], and the laws will be changed.”


Happy Labor Day.



Notes:


https://www.dol.gov/general/laborday/history-daze


New York Times, July 1, 1867, p. 4. 


New York Times, July 9, 1867, p. 4.


New York Times, September 6, 1882, p. 8.


New York Times, September 6, 1882, p. 4.


New York Daily Tribune, September 7, 1882, p. 4.


https://blogs.loc.gov/law/files/2011/09/S-730.pdf


https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1851-1900/The-first-Labor-Day/


Grace Palladino, Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, 1840–1868 (Fordham University Press, 2006).


Mark Wilson, The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–1865 (Johns Hopkins, 2006). 


Brace quotation is from Robert M. Fogelson, America’s Armories: Architecture, Society and Public Order (Harvard University Press, 1989).


Frank Norton, “Our Labor System and the Chinese,” Scribner’s Monthly 2 (May 1871).


Chicago Tribune quoted in Harper’s Weekly, February 9, 1884, p, 86.


New York Times, November 10, 1892, p. 8. Statement from the Commercial Travelers’ Republican Club, quoted in Chicago Tribune, November 1, 1892, p. 2. Chicago Tribune, November 14, 1892, p. 2. Senator Teller, quoted in New York Times, November 15, 1892, p. 1. Washington Post, February 16, 1893, p. 7. Chicago Tribune, November 21, 1892, p. 4. Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1892, p. 4. Chicago Tribune, November 13, 1892, p. 4.


Grover Cleveland, Fourth Annual Message, December 3, 1888, at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/fourth-annual-message-first-term'


Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Generals, Republicans Support Harris/Walz

 

GOP Alums and some retired Generals come out against the current GOP candidate.


Click below for a link to the letter and signatory list.


Bush, McCain, and Romney Alumni for Harris Statement


Sunday, August 11, 2024

GOP Playbook for November


 As discussed below, our Constitution establishes clearly the succession procedures in the event the election remains undecided past the specified times.


Since we have clarity about the succession process, then it appears likely that the GOP will use the indecision of an uncertified election to foment violence similar to the violence they created on January 6, 2021. Their goal will be to overthrow the government so they can seize control.


We cannot allow that. 


We should very sure to count every vote before inaugurating a new President.


The law states this:


'If Congress does not certify the vote for President of the United States, the situation is handled according to the 12th Amendment and the procedures outlined in the Electoral Count Act of 1887. If Congress fails to certify the electoral vote, the process to resolve the issue is as follows:


    Role of the President Pro Tempore of the Senate: If no President has been elected by the time the new Congress convenes on January 3rd, the President pro tempore of the Senate, who is third in the line of presidential succession, would be next in line to assume the role of acting President. This position is typically held by the longest-serving member of the majority party in the Senate.


    If a President is not elected by January 20: According to the 20th Amendment, if there is no President elected and inaugurated by January 20th, the Vice President-elect would assume the role of Acting President until a President is officially elected.


    Contingency Procedure: In the absence of a certification of electoral votes and no President or Vice President in place, the Speaker of the House of Representatives would become the Acting President. This would be a temporary solution until the issue of the certification of the electoral vote is resolved.


For a detailed understanding, you can refer to the following sources:


    12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

    Electoral Count Act of 1887'


Courtesy ChatGTP August 11, 2024



Friday, August 9, 2024

Bring Back The Equal Time Rule



The Equal Time Rule, part of the U.S. Communications Act of 1934, was designed to ensure that broadcasters provide equal opportunities for political candidates to reach the public. However, this rule was repealed in 2014 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As a result, the Equal Time Rule no longer applies, and there are no penalties for violations related to it under current regulations.


Historically, the penalties for violating the Equal Time Rule included:


    Fines: Broadcasters could face monetary fines imposed by the FCC.


    License Sanctions: The FCC could impose sanctions on a broadcaster's license, which might include suspension or revocation.


    Compliance Orders: The FCC could issue orders requiring broadcasters to comply with the rule and take corrective actions.


For information on the history and specifics of the Equal Time Rule, you can refer to:


    Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Official Website: FCC Equal Time Rule


    Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute: Communications Act of 1934


Since the rule was repealed, broadcasters now have more flexibility regarding political programming but should be aware of other regulations and guidelines governing political advertising and programming.



Source:  Chat GPT question: what are the penalties for media which violates the equal time regulation and provide sources





Thursday, August 1, 2024

Harris Meets Realpolitik


REALPOLITIK


'Realpolitik is the approach of conducting diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly following ideological, moral, or ethical premises. In this respect, it shares aspects of its philosophical approach with those of realism and pragmatism. Wikipedia.'


REALITY #1 - DO NOT ALLOW TRUMP TO STEAL OFFICE OF POTUS


It is time to step back and simulate the Presidential election of 2024 transfer of power. 


trump and MAGA forces may try to delay the Constitutional election certification so that the newly elected President cannot take office,  either permanently or until all the votes are certified. Several States already have installed MAGA supporters in the election certificating process. They may succeed in preventing a certification as required by the Constitution in a timely manner; it is likely that any votes so challenged will be for Harris.  If that happens, trump may claim the he is the rightful winner and demand that his forces seize the White House. MAGA has shown they do not abide by the rules of law. 


If Biden/Harris choose to follow a strict interpretation of the laws, they may hand the office to trump. This is a terrible idea; it will end permanently our elected Republic.


Biden and Harris should not concede the election under any circumstances, if that concession may install trump as POTUS. At the very least, they should not leave the office until ALL votes are counted and certified and trump is the Electoral College winner. Harris most likely will have a significant majority of the popular votes, but there may be some questions about the Electoral College votes.


REALITY # 2 - MURDER ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE


Tyrannical forces test every President to see what she/he is made of: 


Harris WILL face a challenge to the United States that shows whether she values life more than our National Interests.


If she chooses to spare a life instead of taking a life, then tyrants will understand that she is vulnerable. If she chooses to take a life, then she will be recognized as a leader. 


REALITY POLAND # 3 - 


Here is a story about Poland in WW II that we forget at our peril. NSFW, courtesy of historian James Fell.


'James Fell. Poster based in Canada


The European theatre of World War II began in September of 1939 with the fucking Nazi invasion of Poland. On a per-capita basis, Poland lost more people in the war than any other independent nation, a whopping 17% of the population killed. Five years after the invasion, a heroic but ultimately doomed uprising in Warsaw against Nazi occupation began. 


--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: August 1, 1944--


In the summer of 1944 things were not going well for the fucking Nazis. The Western Allies had established a solid beachhead in France and were moving inland, and on the Eastern front those Nazi assbuckets were dropping like cicadas after a mating frenzy. With the Nazi dick towels in retreat out of Poland and the Soviet Red Army camped just outside the city, the Polish Resistance decided it was time for some motherfucking payback. 


But it was also political. The Polish resistance were fans of the democratic Polish government, which was in exile in London. With the Soviets ready to “liberate” Warsaw, Poles didn’t want to trade one oppressive external ruler for another. So on August 1, 1944, they said fuck it we’re taking this city back ourselves. Despite being poorly supplied, the Poles had early victories against those Nazi fucks. But that murderous mass of manatee mucus Adolf Hitler said oh hell nein and sent in reinforcements to fight the uprising. 


What followed was brutal street-to-street fighting. With superior weaponry, the fucking Nazis crushed the rebellion. Meanwhile, the Soviets sat just outside the city and watched it happen, doing nothing to help the Poles. The battle lasted two months, and despite pleas from Churchill to Stalin to get off his ass and do something, it’s near certain Stalin ordered his Red Army to allow the Polish resistance to be crushed so that when they moved in and kicked out the fucking Nazis there would be little resistance to the USSR setting up a communist puppet state in Poland. Because that’s exactly what they did. 


The British and U.S. tried to help the beleaguered rebels with air drops of supplies, but it wasn’t enough. Approximately 16,000 members of the Polish resistance were killed and around 200,000 Polish citizens lost their lives in the uprising. Most of the civilian deaths were due to mass executions carried out by fucking Nazis. Warsaw was almost completely destroyed, and another 700,000 fled the city. 


The Soviets had encouraged the uprising just two days before it began, sending out a radio broadcast, saying “Fight the Germans!” and that they were “all together” to “pursue the enemy westwards.” Some historians are Stalin apologists, saying there was intense fighting elsewhere on the Eastern Front and so the Red Army was too busy to stop a mass murder of Warsaw citizens. Knowing Stalin’s reputation, however, I can totally see that maniacal dickcheese purposely withholding support so he could control the city more easily after the war. 


Get the book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN at JamesFell.com/books.



Tuesday, July 30, 2024

The United States of America Does Not Negotiate With Terrorists


Terrorist trump and his GOP have announced they will try, through election officials they have placed in state and local governments already, to prevent the certification of the election in November.


This is an existential challenge to the United States of America. 


While we want to uphold the law to the letter, we cannot allow Terrorist trump and the terrorist GOP to occupy any consequential office of the United States. 


In the event that the election cannot be certified according to the Constitution, then Biden and Harris should refuse to hand over the Presidency until and unless the election is certified according to the law. 


There will be numerous matters of fact and law available to provide the justification for the refusal. 


The moral imperative is simply this: Terrorist trump refuses to acknowledge the law and have and will ignore the law in the future.


Therefore, we are justified to refuse to bend to his will.



Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Joe from Scranton



You are a good man and a man of honour.


You have allowed billions of people to feel hope. 


I am proud to be American because of you.


Americans are grateful.


Thank you.