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Yikes: In another era of politics, Republican presidential hopefuls may have hesitated before hitching their brands to an organization whose members have harassed and threatened opponents, fantasized about enacting gun violence, mingled with known extremist groups, quoted Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in their materials, and earned a designation as an anti-government hate group. It’s safe to say that time is long gone. Five 2024 candidates traveled to the birthplace of the United States to take turns auditioning for the support of a sold-out crowd of Moms for Liberty activists and rhetorically kissing the rings of the group’s co-founders, former school board members Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, at their “Joyful Warriors” conference in Philadelphia this week. It’s little surprise; Moms for Liberty has emerged as a juggernaut in the conservative movement since its inception two years ago.
Elon thinks you should STFU I wish we didn’t have to pay attention to this moron. But his influence is huge as twitter owner and he’s making everything even more terrible than it already was.
I don’t know if you have the stomach to watch any of Trump’s rally yesterday but at least read this if you don’t. It’s really gotten Nurembergesque: Former President Donald J. Trump drew a crowd of thousands on Saturday to a quiet South Carolina town’s Independence Day event, where he assailed the integrity of major American institutions and painted a dark portrait of the country ahead of a holiday meant to celebrate its underpinnings. Speaking for nearly 90 minutes on Main Street in Pickens, S.C., with at least 20 American flags behind his back, Mr. Trump often eschewed the rhetorical flag-waving and calls for unity that have long been as central to Independence Day as hot dogs, baseball and fireworks. Instead, the twice-impeached and twice-indicted former president railed against Democrats and liberals, who he said threatened to rewrite America’s past and erase its future. He skewered federal law enforcement, which he accused without evidence of rampant corruption. And he attacked President Biden, enumerating what he saw as his character flaws and accusing him of taking bribes from foreign nations.
There is nothing he could do to push them away: Right-wing media are standing by Donald Trump in the wake of a leaked tape of the former president admitting that he did not declassify documents taken from the White House and showing that Trump knew he could not retroactively declassify them, which contradicts a key part of his legal defense. […]l OAN played the portion of the tape of Trump saying, “This totally wins my case,” and included his dig at Hillary Clinton and Anthony Weiner before parroting his defense: “Trump blasted the FBI and the DOJ for quote, ‘illegally leaking and spinning the tape.’” [One America News, One America News, 6/27/23] Fox News host Sean Hannity spun Trump’s words to add plausible deniability: “That does not confirm for me whether or not specifically this document was declassified or not.
Alan Arkin was a part of my childhood. He lived in Chappaqua, where I grew up. His son Tony was in my grade. Arkin used to come to our elementary school, I’m guessing, though I can’t remember for sure, for something like career day. He’d be spotted around town. More important to me was “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.” Not only was it one of my favorite movies as a kid; it was also one of my dad’s. It’s one of the few movies where I remember my dad laughing out loud. The other was Mel Brooks’s “Spaceballs.” Anyway, I have fond memories of my dad and I laughing through “The Russians Are Coming.” In memory of […]
What in God’s name did he do to deserve this? He’s the most servile of Trump loving Senators in the government? I don’t get it. Trump pretty much calls him a liberal. What’s he talking about? Graham isn’t happy. This may be a watershed moment for him. There is literally nothing he can do to make himself more of a Trump sycophant and it isn’t enough, They hate him anyway. He is nothing. Update. Ok. I guess it must be Ukraine. I suppose he can try to become a Putin loving symp in a vain attempt to remain “relevant” but that’s all he’s got left. Yikes. This is so fucking sick: Sounds just a little “Auschwitz-y” to me. She knew what she was saying. They all did.
Feels like another big one Here’s an eye-catching headline: Man cited in Supreme Court LGBTQ rights case says he was never involved. In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis on Friday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Lorie Smith, a Colorado web designer who objected to building a wedding web site for a gay couple … that did not exist. Wait, what?! Washington Post: Lorie Smith filed her initial case to Colorado district court in 2016, arguing that the state’s anti-discrimination law prevented her from including a message on the webpage for her company, 303 Creative, stating that she would not create wedding websites for gay couples. In subsequent court documents, her lawyers cited a query that they said was sent by an individual named Stewart with contact information that matches the person The Post interviewed. The request asked for Smith’s services for Stewart’s forthcoming wedding to a person named “Mike.” “We are getting married early next year and would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website,” the message cited in the case read.
South Carolina, y’all Yup. Pretty much like this: In which a local deploys a metaphor: Sen. Lindsey Graham is from Central, SC where he once tended bar. Central is just south of Pickens. (I lived in Central, a former mill village, for a stretch in the mid-1980s.) Lindsey seems to have outlived his usefulness to local MAGA foot soldiers. Nobody gets indoctrinated around these parts. Hell, no: Back in the day, the weekly Mountain Monitor of Travelers Rest used to document the weekly car wrapped around a tree and feature (IIRC) articles borrowed from The Thunderbolt (Klan), the apparent voice of truth in America. Since then, T.R. (just north of Greenville) has gentrified some. Pickens, less so, apparently. Southern Poverty Law Center on the National Justice Party.
If you were to do an informal poll of conventional progressive opinion—asking where is the public to be found, in acts of speech or in the marketplace—I suspect most liberals, and probably not a few leftists, would say: in acts of speech. Since the eighteenth century, speech has been firmly associated with the public sphere or the public square. “The people’s darling privilege”: that’s how freedom of speech was understood, as the instrument of the people, assembled in their sovereign and public capacity. There’s a long history behind the notion, stretching back to Aristotle, whose justification for the claim that man is a political animal rests upon the fact that human beings, unlike other animals, have the capacity for speech. […]