That is an effective ad. President Biden’s campaign on Thursday launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona, focusing on abortion on as the state grapples with the fallout from a state Supreme Court decision earlier this week that enabled an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions. The Biden campaign has sought to link former President Donald Trump to near-total abortion bans since Trump appointed three conservative judges who were instrumental in the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump has touted his role in the effort to “kill” Roe v. Wade, although he has sought to distance himself from the Arizona decision. “Because of Donald Trump, millions of women lost the fundamental freedom to control their own bodies,” Mr. Biden says direct to camera in the ad. “And now, women’s lives are in danger because of that. The question is, if Donald Trump gets back in power, what freedom will you lose next? Your body and your decisions belong to you, not the government, not Donald Trump. I will fight like hell to get your freedom back.” Yes. Freedom. That’s the message.
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I have often wondered about this. There really is a stale sameness about Trump aesthetics and I wondered why more people just don’t get sick of seeing it. He’s been doing this since 2016, down to the same suit and tie and many of the same lines. It seems to me that it should be hitting the point that it’s a nostalgia act for a one hit wonder. But that’s just looking at it from a normal person’s standpoint. The MAGA cult is built on relentless repetition (indoctrination) and any deviation from that familiar cant is going to cause dissonance. These repetitive mantras, slogans and chants, the sameness of the events, Trump dressed exactly the same, the weird hypnotic nature of his speeches (which are now set to music) are what gives MAGA its power. I guess my bigger question is, to the extent there are any normal Republicans left, why aren’t they tired of it and loathe to sign on for four more years of it? Even more pertinent, why aren’t they creeped out by it? This whole thing is becoming more and more ritualized and devotional. Do they relate to this?
What started as a two-person newsletter has grown into a powerhouse newsroom.
It may very well work. Again. This is fascinating and sadly, it might just work: Steve Bannon no doubt thought he was being deviously clever. Speaking with The New York Times this week, he elaborated on a sophisticated plan that Donald Trump’s allies have developed for boosting third-party candidates, so they siphon votes from President Biden. A key part of this scheme, Bannon noted, entails boosting expected Green Party candidate Jill Stein by highlighting oil production under Biden to pull environmentally concerned voters away from him. As Bannon put it: Whoa, that’s some serious 11-dimensional chess, Steve! Except for one thing. If you think for a second about Bannon’s quote—that “oil production under Biden is higher than ever”—it entirely undermines one of Trump’s biggest lies: the claim that Biden’s effort to transition the United States to a decarbonized economy has destroyed the nation’s “energy independence,” leaving us weak and hollow to our very core. This saga captures something essential about how MAGA-world fights the information wars.
A RAND Corporation study finds that negative experiences in the military are a main cause of veterans turning to extremism.
The post There’s a Bigger Driver of Veteran Radicalization Than Donald Trump appeared first on The Intercept.
Divisive Peter Dutton has called for the nation to come together and settle the argument once and for all by demanding that all Australian’s call them potato scallops. ”It’s time for someone to take charge and start dealing with the... Read More ›
“It’s up to the states” is not going to cut it He thinks he can wash his hands of the abortion issue but I’m afraid the blood isn’t going to come off that easily: Back in 2022, when it looked as if the Supreme Court would soon overturn Roe v. Wade, Senate Republicans’ campaign arm sent out a memo encouraging GOP candidates to get their messaging right. “Republicans DO NOT want to throw doctors and women in jail,” the memo maintained. It cast the statement as a rebuttal to Democrats’ “lies” about the GOP’s abortion positions. Donald Trump did not get the memo. The former president on Wednesday responded to the Arizona Supreme Court’s reviving a harsh 1864 abortion ban — which indeed threatens abortion providers with two to five years in prison — by punting on this basic issue. Asked whether doctors who provide abortions should be punished, Trump allowed that certain states could do that. “I’d let that be to the states,” Trump said. “You know, everything we’re doing now is states and states’ rights.
The major obstacle to lobbying reform is that for members of parliament, their staff and senior officials, lobbying provides a very lucrative income when they leave parliament, the military or the public service. So they refuse to act on the lobbying scourge. Submission to Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee re Lobbying, February 8, Continue reading »
How can it happen that person who probably does not exist can keep an entire nation, North Korea, in poverty for more than twenty years, and the rest of us under prolonged nuclear threat. Continue reading »
I have flashes of climate grief, recognition in photographic bursts: Pakistani cotton farmers walking through knee-deep water trying to salvage a few white puffs of income off blackened plants; precious graves of ancestors being inundated by the sea in Fiji, the Torres Strait Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Samoa, the Marshall Islands; the view of fire-ravaged forests, Continue reading »
Almost unnoticed, the federal government has quietly pushed a Bill into parliament that will transform the NDIS as we know it. Make no mistake – this Bill is about containing costs. And for good reason. The spiralling cost growth of the NDIS – the National Disability Insurance Scheme – threatens its very existence. Doing nothing Continue reading »
UK Health Minister Aneurin Bevan introduced the National Health Service (NHS) pointing out that “Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune the cost of which should be shared by the community.” Advancing age brings with it infirmity and a Continue reading »
Is democracy spawning elected autocracies? In 2024, a tale of two much-vaunted yet internationally ranked “flawed democracies” is unfolding. The outcomes of their national elections—India in June and the US in November—will test the mettle of the democratic institutions that underpin their governance systems. In the lead-up to these pivotal elections, a disconcerting similarity confronts Continue reading »
There is no risk of China’s property sector woes spreading into a financial crisis but there is a policy-induced housing crisis and restrictions must be further eased. The property market must be stabilised to restore public confidence and spur private consumption, so economic growth can reaccelerate. A Chinese former official made headlines last September by Continue reading »
President Biden has announced an order forgiving more student loans. It hasn’t been easy since the right wing Supremes knocked down his big initiative, but they’ve kept at it, chipping away, bringing relief to many people’s debt burden. They say they aren’t done yet. The wingnuts are having their usual fit about anything that might benefit people other than the rich and the fascist, caterwauling that it’s not fair to other Americans who didn’t take out loans or who paid them back already. Why shouldn’t they get a break too? Guess what? They’re special people who deserve it, we know that. The American people should be proud to subsidize them — they’re all millionaires, of course. Those scofflaws who haven’t paid back their student loans need to be taught a lesson.
Plus, JPMorgan screams the quiet part about health care, Larry Hogan feels the heat from The Lever, and SCOTUS gets even more corporate.
Whaddup. It’s the flu your four-year-old brought home for spring break. Are you gonna let me in or what? You’re hoping I leave you alone? You booked a family trip to Wolf Lodge Water Park? The deposit is nonrefundable?
Listen, I just KO’ed two dozen preschoolers like complimentary chips and dip at Casa Azteca, and now I want my entrée, capisce? Vis-à-vis for the next week or so, this is my house. And lemme tell you something—Michelangelo had marble. Da Vinci had paint. I have fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. And in three days, your GI tract will be my magnum opus.
Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I’m way too contagious to pass you by. I’ve literally spent a millennia evolving my DNA to inflict maximum carnage on your O-ring. The fact we’re even having this conversation means I’m already prancing through your upper respiratory system, painting the walls with flu.
What I’m saying is the chain reaction has begun. There’s no stopping the shitstorm descending upon your world. Think of me as Franz Ferdinand, the flu.
Not a WWI buff?
It’s not going his way Later that day… Via Daily Beast: Arizona Republicans refused to vote on a bill to repeal the state’s extreme abortion ban Wednesday, a day after Republicans—including President Donald Trump—attempted to distance themselves from the decision. State Rep. Matt Gress (R) moved Wednesday to bring a Democratic bill repealing the ban, which outlaws all abortions except to save the life of the mother, to a House vote. Before a vote could be called, Rep. David Livingston motioned for a recess and all Republicans in the House—including Gress—voted to table the proceedings. Democrats in the House chanted “Shame!” at their Republican counterparts as voting rapidly came to a close. In a livestream after the session ended, Rep. Analise Ortiz (D) said Republicans moved to recess so they “would not have to be on the record voting to repeal the abortion ban.”