Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Yes, the Trump regime was counting specifically on Justice Clarence Thomas to allow Trump to steal the 2020 election.

 

Donald Trump’s attorneys saw a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their best hope of derailing Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, according to emails newly disclosed to congressional investigators.

“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020, email to Trump’s legal team. Chesebro contended that Thomas would be “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.”


“I think I agree with this,” attorney John Eastman replied later that morning, suggesting that a favorable move by Thomas or other justices would “kick the Georgia legislature into gear” to help overturn the election results.

The messages were part of a batch of eight emails — obtained by POLITICO — that Eastman had sought to withhold from the Jan. 6 select committee but that a judge ordered turned over anyway, describing them as evidence of likely crimes committed by Eastman and Trump. They were transmitted to the select committee by Eastman’s attorneys last week, but remained largely under wraps until early Wednesday morning.

House General Counsel Douglas Letter acknowledged Wednesday afternoon that his office effectively released the messages by including a link to them in copies of messages publicly filed with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We were not aware that the links in Dr. Eastman’s email remained active, and had no intention to provide this type of public access to the materials at this stage. Providing public access to this material at this point was purely inadvertent on our part,” Letter told the appeals court in a brief letter. The emails, as produced to the committee, included formatting errors that removed “i”s and “l”s. POLITICO has included the missing letters for clarity.

 

The conspiracy to defraud the United States included the Trump White House, the House and Senate GOP, and the Supreme Court. There's no way Thomas should be on the Court anymore, but he's being protected by co-conspirators.

 

We're already a banana republic, the rule of law in America is all but dead, and a GOP win next week will allow the conspiracy to carry forward into 2024, where the American experiment will end.

 

We can still do something about it, but after next week, it gets increasingly impossible.

 

Vote like your country depends on it.

Taking The Red Line Home

I've talked about the racial disparities in America's suburbs where homes owned by Black families are selling at a fraction of the prices white families in the same neighborhood can garner even here in "racism is a relic of the barbarous past" 2022, but the issue is now so widespread nationally that it requires heavy intervention from the Biden administration in enforcement of HUD and Fair Housing Act rules and regulations.

White homeowners can expect their homes’ values to increase at twice the rate of homeowners of color, a stark confirmation of systemic racial bias in home appraisals, according to a new report.

Despite ongoing accounts of ingrained discrimination over the past two years, researchers exploring racial inequality in the housing market have not had access to appraisals. This changed last week, when, following a directive from the Biden administration, the Federal Housing Finance Agency released 47 million appraisal reports to the public for the first time.

The appraisals, which were compiled between 2013 and 2021, present evidence of a persistent, widespread practice in the home appraisal industry to give higher values to homes when the occupants are white, and devalue them if the owners are people of color.

Analyzing the millions of appraisals by using census tracts as a proxy for neighborhoods and comparing communities with nearly identical housing stock, two researchers found that the results showed a clear correlation: The higher the proportion of white residents in each community, the higher the appraised value of individual homes.

The researchers restricted their study to neighborhoods in metropolitan areas with at least 500,000 people and at least 50,000 residents of color, and ensured that not only did the houses in the compared communities look similar, but residents were of the same socioeconomic status, and amenities like parks, grocery stores and local services such as banks and post offices were on par.

Set side by side, the only discernible differences in the communities was their racial composition, said the researchers, Junia Howell, a visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago, and Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, an assistant professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. Both are respected sociologists who study segregation, housing markets and racial inequality in American cities. The report was jointly published by Washington University in St. Louis and the nonprofit Eruka, which was founded by Dr. Howell.

Inequity within the appraisal system stems from the housing industry’s long legacy of racism, Dr. Howell said. Policies like redlining, a Depression-era practice that kept homeowners of color out of certain neighborhoods, continue to cast a shadow over communities of color and deny their residents of resources.

“The appraisal system is supposed to be our checks and balances, because it’s supposed to show us how much a home is worth. But we’ve created a system that starts with racism, based on who lives in an area,” Dr. Howell said. “And who lives in what area is always connected to our racial hierarchy. So where white people live, those homes are always valued for more.”

In recent years, dozens of homeowners have made allegations of discrimination, trying to prove bias through what is known as the “whitewashing experiment.” Homeowners scrub their property of any signs that Black people are the occupants.

After a white appraiser gave their Baltimore-area house a value of $472,000 last year, Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, both professors at Johns Hopkins University, conducted a whitewashing experiment, removing family photos, posters and books from their home and asking a white friend to stand in for them at the door. A second appraiser, unaware a Black family lived in the home, gave the property a value of $750,000.

While many accounts of systematic bias in the appraisal industry have focused on Black homeowners, Dr. Korver-Glenn and Dr. Howell found that the pricing difference was greatest for homes in areas where the population is comprised primarily of other people of color. In 2021, their report says, homes in white neighborhoods were appraised at three times the value of comparable homes in communities where residents were primarily of American Indian, Alaska Native, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander descent.

On average, homes in neighborhoods where the majority of residents are white are appraised for $371,000 more than in neighborhoods where the majority of residents are people of color, the researchers found. This gap in values has increased 75 percent since 2013.

 

It's not just a couple of bucks, folks.

 It's nearly $400,000.

White wealth in home equity compared to Black wealth for a similar neighborhood, controlled for all other factors, is a one-third of a million dollar tax on non-white homeowners. 

If you're white, your home sells for twice the price. There's literally an entire industry enforcing redlining in America through the "free market" and they're all complicit.

But please, white folk, tell me how you're all the victims here, make it about you.

Benjamin Revenge 'N' 'Em

In a gigantic warning sign for America regarding one orange man, Israel's fifth general election in four years has produced the return of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister, along with his far-right coalition dead set on collecting political, metaphorical, and actual heads of the opposition. 

 

Former prime minister and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to become Israel's next prime minister, according to the counting of almost all of the ballots. By Wednesday afternoon, Netanyahu held his lead with more than 80 percent of the votes counted across the country.

Arab party Balad was originally said to be close to crossing the threshold but by Wednesday afternoon that option seemed to dissipate. Had it happened, Netanyahu's bloc would have potentially dropped to 60 seats, one short of a coalition majority. Likud had sent an urgent letter to the police commissioner on Tuesday night demanding that allegations of voter fraud in the Arab sector be immediately investigated.

According to the exit polls on Tuesday night, Netanyahu's bloc, which includes Likud, Religious Zionist Party (RZP), United Torah Judaism (UTJ) and Shas, crossed the 61-seat threshold and will be able to form the next coalition.

Netanyahu's Likud party was expected to receive 31 seats according to Channel 12 and 32 seats according to Channel 13, while Lapid's Yesh Atid party is expected to get 23 seats according to both polls.

The Religious Zionist Party - led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich - saw a dramatic rise in contrast to previous years with channels reporting between 13-14 seats.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz's National Unity Party is expected to get 11 seats, while Yisrael Beytenu wins five to six seats.

Israel's ultra-Orthodox parties saw a large voter turnout with Shas getting 10 seats in both polls and United Torah Judaism (UTJ) earning seven seats

Meanwhile, Israel's Left managed to keep its head above the water with five seats going to Labor and four seats going to Meretz.

Finally, while there was concern over the turnout of the Arab vote, Hadash-Ta'al is expected to receive either four or five seats and Ra'am is expected to receive five seats. According to all channels, the Netanyahu bloc has 62 seats while the Lapid bloc has 54-53 seats. 

All indications are that a new Netanyahu government is going to get very nasty, very quickly. His bribery trial, still ongoing, is now expected to be all but thrown out. 

 

The new coalition, if it comes to be, could radically change the face of the country and significantly alter Israel’s status in the global diplomatic community.

Netanyahu is currently on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, an unprecedented situation which barely figured in the 4-month-long election campaign.

His allies have promised to transform the nation’s governing structure by passing a law which would override the Supreme Court and canceling two out of the three crimes with which Netanyahu is charged.

“If the results we are seeing this evening hold true,” Pleaner said, “the coalition that will form the next government is poised to propose a series of reforms that would seek to politicize the judiciary and weaken the checks and balances that exist between the branches of government and serve as fundamental components of Israeli democracy.”

 

Rule of law is about to be eliminated in Israel, and it's going to be a radically different country soon. It should serve as a cautionary tale for Democrats here in the US.

 

We're about to see what happens when democracy loses at the ballot box.

Last Call For The Mask Slips Once Again...

...and a Republican accidentally tells the truth about what they will do if elected.

 

Hinting at his plans to overhaul how elections are run, the Republican running for governor of Wisconsin this week said his party would permanently control the state if he wins.

“Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor,” construction executive Tim Michels told supporters Monday at a campaign stop.

Michels is seeking to unseat Gov. Tony Evers (D), who over his four years vetoed a string of Republican-backed bills that would have changed voting rules in a battleground state that Donald Trump narrowly won in 2016 and narrowly lost in 2020.

Michels has promised to sign similar legislation and has said he would restructure the state’s bipartisan elections commission. He has never spelled out what specific changes he would make to the commission, which is run by three Democrats and three Republicans.

Michels, who won his August primary with Trump’s endorsement, has left open the possibility that he would try to decertify the 2020 election in Wisconsin, which legal scholars say is impossible. He has declined to say whether he would certify the results of the 2024 election.

 

Now of course the Michels camp is saying that economic growth in Wisconsin will be so good under one-party rule that nobody will want to vote Democratic, but of course Wisconsin is the most gerrymandered state in the nation, where Democrats could get 51% of the state's US House votes and still only win two of the state's 8 districts, and would have to win 57% of the state's US House votes to get to 5 of 8.

We'll see how it goes next week with Democrat Tony Evers trying to keep his place as governor.

The Nice Italian Fascist, Con't

With all the recent turmoil at 10 Downing Street in the UK, Lula's comeback win this weekend in Brazil, and US midterm elections in just a week (and early voting ongoing in multiple states), it's easy to overlook that Italy's new PM, Giorgia Meloni, is a fascist empowering other fascists in the home of Rome.

Galeazzo Bignami, a lawmaker of the rightist Brothers of Italy party who sparked outrage in 2016 after a newspaper published a picture of him wearing a Nazi swastika on his left arm, was named junior infrastructure minister on Monday.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who personally announced Bignami's appointment at a news conference, is the leader of Brothers of Italy, a group which traces its roots to the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).

Bignami, 47, was elected last month to a second term in parliament. He has long been part of the Italian hard-right but has spent part of his political career in former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's more moderate Forza Italia.

He said in a statement on Monday that he felt "profound shame" for the pictures and firmly condemned "any form of totalitarianism," calling Nazism and any movement connected to it "the absolute evil".

Meloni did not comment on the 2016 photo but repeatedly condemned the infamous racist, anti-Jewish laws enacted by dictator Benito Mussolini in 1938 and last week told parliament she "never felt any sympathy for fascism".

"I have always considered the (anti-Semitic) racial laws of 1938 the lowest point of Italian history, a shame that will taint our people forever," she said in parliament.

Bignami will serve under the right-wing League party leader Matteo Salvini, who is the infrastructure minister and deputy prime minister.

 

The "former" Nazi has literally been appointed to help make sure the trains run on time.

 

You can't make this up, folks.

 

Hey Mark, And The Masters Of The Puny Versus

Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters received a last-minute endorsement from departing independent candidate Marc Victor in the race for incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly's seat, but it's probably not enough to put Masters over the top.

 

The Libertarian candidate running for Senate in Arizona — who had threatened to play spoiler in the closely watched race — is dropping out and endorsing Blake Masters, the Republican nominee.

The decision, announced on Tuesday, gives Mr. Masters a lift heading into the final week as he seeks to unseat Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, who has generally held a narrow lead in the polls.

“This is another major boost of momentum as we consolidate our support,” Mr. Masters said in a statement to The New York Times.

Marc Victor, the Libertarian candidate, and Mr. Masters spoke on Monday for a 20-minute recorded conversation that Mr. Victor is expected to publish, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Mr. Victor had made such a conversation a precondition to quitting, technically offering such an opportunity both to Mr. Masters and to Mr. Kelly.

“I found Blake to be generally supportive of the Live and Let Live Global Peace Movement,” Mr. Victor said in a statement. “After that discussion, I believe it is in the best interests of freedom and peace to withdraw my candidacy and enthusiastically support Blake Masters for United States Senate.”

Mr. Victor’s underfunded campaign had a chance to make more of an impact than some other third-party candidates this year, in part because he was onstage for the race’s lone debate. (He made waves in the appearance by suggesting the “age of consent” is something “that reasonable minds disagree on” and “should be up for a vote.”)

Mr. Masters appears to have gone to some lengths to court libertarian-minded voters and assuage any concerns from Mr. Victor. Last Thursday, he posted a picture from 2010 of himself with Ron Paul, the former congressman and libertarian folk hero, saying he was “honored” to have Mr. Paul’s endorsement. Mr. Masters also made recent appearances on Mr. Paul’s podcast and another libertarian podcast.

Mr. Victor had previously been funded at least in part by Democrats, presumably hoping to redirect some votes away from the Republican nominee.

Donations included $5,000 from the Save Democracy PAC, which says on its website that it is pursuing “a nationwide effort to confront and defeat Republican extremism” and another $5,000 from Defeat Republicans PAC. In May, Ron Conway, the California-based Democratic investor, gave Mr. Victor part of more than $45,000 in donations from various people who share the Conway last name in California; those funds account for about one-third of everything Mr. Victor raised in total.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Monday showed Mr. Kelly ahead, 51 percent to 45 percent, with Mr. Victor garnering 1 percent support. Mr. Victor has been shown as earning a larger share of the vote in other polls, including one in mid-October from the progressive group Data for Progress that had Mr. Victor pulling in 3 percent with Mr. Kelly and Mr. Masters tied.

 

Normally I'd say that Kelly is in real trouble here, and that his loss would almost certainly result in GOP control of the Senate. It's that last paragraph there that shows why I'm not worried however: if Kelly is over 50%, nothing Marc Victor does can save Blake Masters.  Instead of losing 51-46, he loses 51-48...but he still loses.

Kelly being over 50% is all that's required. Having said that, the margin of error in those polls could now be the difference. If you're in Arizona, VOTE MARK KELLY. Get your relatives and friends in AZ to do so too.

We need every blue vote in the state.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Opening statements in the NY state criminal trial against the Trump Organization began on Monday as the Manhattan DA's office laid out a tale of corruption, greed, and fraud in Donald Trump's real estate business over 15 years.

New York prosecutors set the table for the criminal tax fraud trial against the Trump Organization Monday, telling jurors the case is about “greed and cheating.”

Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger laid out an alleged 15-year scheme within the Trump Org. to pay high-level executives in perks like luxury cars and apartments without paying taxes on them.

Two Trump Organization entities are charged with nine counts of tax fraud, grand larceny and falsifying business records in what prosecutors allege was a 15-year scheme to defraud tax authorities by failing to report and pay taxes on compensation provided to employees.

The scheme, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, was orchestrated by the company’s long-time Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, the top executive handling the books of the company. Prosecutors allege the companies benefited from the scheme by paying less taxes on the employee salaries while keeping their longtime employees happy.

“At the end of the day, keeping the trusted CFO happy by paying him more without him being taxed on that income, that was also a benefit to these companies,” Hoffinger said during her opening statement.

The jury will see portions of former President Donald Trump’s personal ledger and the checks he signed from his personal account to pay school tuition for Weisselberg’s grandchildren for years, the prosecutor said.

Trump is not a defendant in the case and is not expected to be implicated in any wrongdoing, but the charges against the real estate business he built from the ground up are the closest any prosecutor has gotten to Trump, and the political ramifications of the case has irritated the former president, people familiar with the matter say.

“Donald Trump didn’t know that Allen Weisselberg was cheating on Allen Weisselberg’s personal tax returns. The evidence will be crystal clear on that,” defense attorney Susan Necheles said.

She also cautioned the jurors to leave their political views out of their deliberations.

“You must not consider this case to be a referendum on President Trump or his policies. That type of thing has no place in our criminal justice system,” Necheles said.

 

On one hand, the case against the Trump organization is going to be pretty strong. On the other, it will only take one Trump voter on the jury to deadlock deliberations leading into a mistrial, which I expect will happen.

It's possible that there may be convictions for some of Trump's real estate fraudsters, but the reality is I expect a mistrial to be declared later this year, and you should too.

Affirmative In The Negative

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether or not colleges and universities can consider race at all for admissions, and it's all over but the shouting for decades of affirmative action programs in higher education. The only question is how far the Roberts Court will go in ending them, driving Black and Hispanic kids out of the top schools for a generation in both public and private universities.

The end of affirmative action, at least on college campuses, is almost certainly near.

The big picture: The Supreme Court said in 2003 that colleges and universities could consider race as a factor when deciding which students to admit, for the sake of building a diverse student body. But now, the much more conservative court appears to be changing its mind.

Driving the news: The court is set to hear oral arguments this week over the admissions processes at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, both of which give a little extra weight to applicants who come from certain underrepresented groups.Life is full of surprises, but the court has sent just about every conceivable signal that it’s likely to put a stop to those sorts of policies.

Why it matters: Harvard and UNC — supported by a host of other schools, as well as business organizations — argue that diversity is essential to the educational experience and that the only effective way to ensure diversity is to make it an explicit part of the admissions process.But they’ll be making that argument to a court that is extremely skeptical of any sort of racial preference. 

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2007 opinion about the use of race when assigning kids to public schools. 

From voting rights to K-12 education to employment law and probably now college admissions, the court over the past several years has consistently knocked down programs that tried to correct racial inequities by explicitly taking race into account.

This is all largely one man’s doing. Conservative activist Ed Blum has organized and funded a slew of high-profile lawsuits explicitly designed to get the court to strike down affirmative action.He orchestrated a 2013 case in which a white student sued because she didn’t get into the University of Texas — and the sequel, in which the same student came back to the high court again in 2016. 

This time around, the named plaintiffs are not only white students but also Asian Americans, who say they’ve been discriminated against because of the way Harvard and UNC give preference to applications from Black and Hispanic students. 

This is not a particularly secretive endeavor. Blum is open about the fact that this is, effectively, a campaign, and that he is the campaign manager. 

"I'm a one-trick pony," Blum recently told Reuters. "I hope and care about ending these racial classifications and preferences in our public policy." 

Blum also had a hand in the landmark case that nullified a key section of the Voting Rights Act — another instance in which the conservative court said policies designed to offset a history of discrimination had outlived their usefulness.

 

The goal for Republicans and conservative millionaires and billionaires is the elimination of the Civil Rights Era and a rollback of federal protections, if not return us to the era where states can resume Jim Crow laws.in education, employment, housing, and more.

But it won't be enough to eliminate federal protections. Open, overt discrimination as "free speech" is nearing the norm. America will not survive as a country if that happens, not without massive social upheaval.

Musk Rat Love, Con't

With billionaire Elon Musk buying Twitter and reportedly firing half the company's employees over the weekend in order to avoid having to pay them vested stock option that go out on November 1, his next trick is to drive off the long-time verified users of the platform with pay-for-play.

Now that he owns Twitter, Elon Musk has given employees their first ultimatum: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and leave.

The directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, according to people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence seen by The Verge. Twitter is planning to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription, though that price is subject to change. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired.

Musk has been clear in the months leading up to his acquisition that he wanted to revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots. He is also keen on growing subscriptions to become half of the company’s overall revenue. On Sunday, he tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.”

Platformer’s Casey Newton first reported that Twitter was considering charging for verification. A spokesperson for Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

 

Musk has said that he's not doing either and that the NY Times in particular is "spreading disinformation" on Twitter, which pretty much sums up how the last 72 hours on Twitter has gone. 

And if it seems like Musk is acting like a James Bond supervillain who wants a "new world order" where he is in charge of the planet, it's because he absolutely is one.

Last Call For Brazil, Nuts Con't

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has been defeated in today's national elections, and Luiz Lula de Silva will once again claim the country's highest office. Maybe.

 

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is set to become the next president of Brazil, after defeating his rightwing rival, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, by a razor-thin margin.

The leftist former leader, widely known as “Lula,” won 50.83% of the votes, with over 98% of the votes counted in a fiercely contested run-off election on Sunday.

Bolsonaro, who mustered 49.17% votes, will be denied a second term.

The two candidates had previously gone head to head in a first round of voting on October 2, but neither gained more than half of the votes, forcing Sunday’s runoff vote, which has become a referendum on two starkly different visions for Brazil.

Lula da Silva supporters thronged São Paulo Avenida Paulista on Sunday evening after polls closed. The mood was celebratory even before the results were called, with people setting off flares when he was declared winner by the country’s election authority.

Many had tears in their eyes, telling CNN that they were hopeful for the country, which has been struggling with high inflation, limited growth and rising poverty.

But others on Avenida Paulista expressed fears. Lula da Silva’s razor thin margin comes as fears mount that Bolsonaro will not accept defeat, having repeatedly claimed that Brazil’s electronic ballot system is susceptible to fraud. The entirely unfounded allegation has drawn comparisons to the false election claims of former US President Donald Trump. 

 

Bolsanro has not conceded as of this post, and he's not exactly the type of person who loses gracefully.  He's warned that he will not accept a loss due to "fraud".

Things could go very bad in Brazil this week.

Americans in particular should be paying very close attention.

 

 

Sunday Long Read: Voices Carry

Our Sunday Long Read this week is John Woodrow Cox's profile in the Washington Post of Caitlyne Gonzales, survivor of the deadly Uvalde, Texas school shooting, who at age 10 is doing more for gun safety issues in Texas than a generation of politicians.

She had clipped a white bow into her hair and slipped on a yellow shirt embellished with a butterfly, and now, an hour before meeting her fifth-grade teachers for the first time, Caitlyne Gonzales sat cross-legged on her living room couch, watching YouTube videos about other school shooting survivors.

Caitlyne, who is 10, listened to a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High graduate describe witnessing the killing of two classmates in Parkland, Fla. She already knew the names of the victims, because she’d spent weeks on her phone poring over accounts of what had happened to kids like her and her friends. She lingered on a video showing a map of Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut and skipped a story about the gunman, then tapped another segment on Parkland.

“He’s now in a wheelchair,” she said about a boy who was shot three times.

“She’s a cheerleader,” she said about a girl who had seen students dying in their own blood.

When she reached a video about the four teenagers gunned down at Oxford High in Michigan last year, she pointed at a picture of one victim smiling in a field of flowers: “She was 14. She was the youngest.”

It had been 100 days since Caitlyne hid in a classroom, listening to a stranger slaughter 19 fourth-graders and two teachers across the hallway at Robb Elementary. Caitlyne knew them all.

In the shooting’s aftermath, many of Uvalde’s children were plagued by post-traumatic stress, but, to most people, Caitlyne wasn’t one of them. By September, she had become Robb’s most public survivor, a voice for her friends who were dead and for those who were alive but too daunted to say anything. She had spoken at rallies in Uvalde and Austin and to U.S. senators in Washington. She’d demanded that the people in charge of her school district fire the police officers who failed to save her classmates. She wrote her own speeches in neat block letters and stood alone before the microphones, sometimes on her tippy-toes.

The father of a child killed at Robb tweeted a photo of Caitlyne addressing the school board along with an image of the “Fearless Girl” statue facing down the charging bull in New York.

“#TeamCaitlyne,” he added.

She was a portrait of resilience, a 4-foot-8, 75-pound embodiment of the maroon “Uvalde Strong” flags flying all over Texas. To an admiring public, she was also living evidence that the hundreds of thousands of children in the United States who have survived school shootings can recover, becoming some version of who they used to be.

But the girl Caitlyne had been before “that day,” as she’d started calling the May 24 massacre, was gone. In her place was a uniquely American amalgam, a child who didn’t know how to ride a bike without training wheels but did know about ballistic windows and bulletproof backpacks and the movement to ban assault weapons. Who spent as much time following the Instagram pages of her favorite gun safety champions as she did Bad Bunny’s TikTok account. Who was 10, but seldom acted her age, speaking in public about fear and death with the eloquence of an adult, while in private, enduring flashbacks so vivid that she needed bedtime lullabies meant for toddlers to soothe her.

Now, on the way to her new school for “Meet the Teacher” night, the apprehension Caitlyne worked hard to conceal bubbled up.

“There’s going to be so much people,” she told her mother, Gladys Gonzalez, when they neared Flores Elementary. “I’m scared.”

She used to adore school, because that was the place she made new friends, and Caitlyne liked to think she could make a friend out of anyone. Now, whether she would be able to go back at all, Gladys didn’t know.

Caitlyne couldn’t stand to be apart from her mother for more than a few minutes. The night of the shooting, she asked Gladys to lie at the foot of her bed, down by her toes. Then, as the weeks passed, she insisted that her mom sleep beside her, then facing her, then so close that Caitlyne could feel Gladys’s breath on her face.

Outside Flores, Caitlyne stepped out of the car, silent as she and her mom walked in. The school’s floor was brown, the walls a weathered beige, and the overhead lights so dim that faces at the end of the hallway were obscured in shadows. They had visited Flores a month prior, and Caitlyne had been too unnerved by the darkness to go to the restroom by herself. Twice after that, she pleaded with the school board to install better lighting, but nothing had changed.

On their way to her new classroom, they rounded a corner, and Caitlyne noticed an armed police officer. She veered to the opposite side of the hallway, glancing at him with disdain. Dozens of sheriff’s deputies, state troopers, U.S. Border Patrol officers and local police had taken 77 minutes to confront the gunman at Robb, and, like many people in Uvalde, Caitlyne deeply resented them for it.

Inside Room 302, she met her homeroom teacher, a young woman with a warm smile who called her “honey.” She escorted Caitlyne next door, where her new classmates were gathering. Caitlyne barely knew most of them, in part because dozens of Robb students had decided to take virtual classes or withdraw from the district and go elsewhere.

Caitlyne avoided eye contact with a boy who used to have a crush on her and hugged a girl she did know well, relieved to have at least one old friend in her class. The teachers handed out “About Me” forms to all their new fifth-graders, and Caitlyne filled hers out in the back. Favorite hobby: TikTok. Favorite animal: dog. Favorite food: pizza rolls. Favorite color: blue.

None of the staff mentioned the kids who weren’t there, but Caitlyne couldn’t stop thinking about their absence. Back in the car after they left, she turned to her mom.

“Can we go to the cemetery?”

 

The last few years have broken an entire generation of kids. They will never be who they were before, but they will rebuild themselves as something different, something stronger, something that survives an America that is dangerous and violent, where school shootings and pandemics and climate crises and political violence are normal events.

 

I'm a Gen Xer near the Millennial border, which just means I've been an internet cynic for the entire latter two-thirds of my life. But these kids are going to be titanium when the crucible gives them a moment to reforge.

They'll need that strength. They have to fix three generations of fuck-ups while dealing with their own issues.

Godpseed, Caitlyne.

 

The Crime Spree That Wasn't

As MSNBC's Hayes Brown points out, the "major increase in crime under Biden" doesn't actually exist, except in the minds of Republican voters who are lying and being lied to by the right-wing noise machine.

A Gallup Poll released Friday morning found that 56% of Americans think crime has increased in their local area over the last year, the most in 50 years. But as I’ve said before, there’s often a disconnect between the perception of increased crime in an area and whether that purported increase can accurately be measured. That goes double for a climate like today’s, where the GOP is determined to frame cities as liberal-created hellscapes.

Gallup noted that “Americans have consistently been more likely to say crime is worsening in the U.S. than in their local area,” and that held true in its latest findings: 78% of respondents think that crime is up nationwide compared to 2021, versus the 56% who believe crime is up where they live. In other words, people are more likely to think that rising crime is a problem somewhere else than it is in their own community.

Small wonder when the GOP is spending so heavily on hammering home that message. “Since July 1, the National Republican Congressional Committee has run at least $4 million in general-election ads with police or crime themes, with the House GOP’s main super PAC running $12.1 million over that period,” Politico reported this week, using data from nonpartisan research firm AdImpact.

And, surprise surprise, it’s Republicans who are most convinced in Gallup’s polling that crime is coming for us all. “Currently, 73% of Republicans say crime in their area has risen, while 51% of independents and 42% of Democrats say the same,” the polling firm found. That’s a 6-point increase compared to last year, which in turn was a massive leap from the 38% of Republicans who said crime was up when asked in 2020. More impressively, a full 95% of Republicans in this most recent poll believe that crime is up nationally, “the highest ever for any party group,” as Gallup put it.

But that belief doesn’t square with what we know so far this year about crime across the nation — which admittedly is not a lot. Crime statistics are not collected uniformly nationwide, leaving us with large gaps in our understanding. In the absence of accurate and current data, we’re left with anecdotes or perceptions, as Gallup has measured.

One useful source is the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, which last month released its 2021 data on criminal victimization nationwide. When it comes to “violent victimization” — aka people who are the victims of violent crimes like rape, robbery and aggravated assault, but not murder — it found that the estimated rate had declined from 2012 through last year and that the rate “did not change” between 2020 and 2021. As for property crimes, the rate also had not significantly increased from the previous year.

 

The Justice Department numbers are pretty well-documented. Crime is down significantly from, say, the "superpredator" 90's. But it's not like being a Republican in 2022 has anything to do with reality, after all. When the vast majority of your party believes in conspiracy theories and unfounded idiocy, why should the perception of crime have any factual truth to it? 

When Republican tell you to your face that larges sections of liberal cities have been completely destroyed in "Antifa riots" in 2020, that the election was stolen, and the JFK Jr is still alive, why wouldn't they say that crime is out of control?

They lie and are lied to about everything else, after all.

These Disunited States, Con't

Once again, the largest terrorist threat to the US remains MAGA Republicans.

Less than two weeks before the 2022 elections, the U.S. government is warning of a "heightened threat" to the midterm contests, fueled by a rise in domestic violent extremism, or DVE, and driven by ideological grievances and access to potential targets, according to a joint intelligence bulletin obtained by CBS News.

"Potential targets of DVE violence include candidates running for public office, elected officials, election workers, political rallies, political party representatives, racial and religious minorities, or perceived ideological opponents," the bulletin, published Friday, stated.

The bulletin was issued on the same day that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband was violently attacked by a man who broke into their home and demanded, "Where's Nancy? Where's Nancy?"

According to the memo distributed to law enforcement partners nationwide Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) predict that "violence will largely be dependent on drivers such as personalized ideological grievances and the accessibility of potential targets throughout the election cycle." Intelligence analysts assess that the "most plausible" threat ahead of Election Day comes from "lone offenders who leverage election-related issues to justify violence," with many individuals still amplifying false narratives of fraud that date back to the 2020 general election.

Analysts cautioned that government officials and personnel, "including candidates in the midterm election and officials involved in administering elections," will likely remain "attractive targets" to those motivated by debunked claims of election fraud that have spread online. U.S. Capitol Police have reported a "sharp increase" of threats against members of Congress in recent years and notably documented 9,600 direct or indirect threats in 2021 alone.

"We assess some [domestic violent extremists] motivated by election-related grievances would likely view election-related infrastructure, personnel, and voters involved in the election process as attractive targets — including at publicly accessible locations like polling places, ballot drop-box locations, voter registration sites, campaign events, and political party offices," the bulletin warns.

Their aim, the bulletin suggests, would be to try to discredit the elections: "DVEs could target components of the election infrastructure in hopes of swaying voting habits, undermining perceptions of the legitimacy of the voting process, or prompting a particular government reaction."

And it goes on to note that the places where people vote could be targeted for attacks "because they prioritize accessibility to maximize exposure to potential voters, making them vulnerable to simple, easy-to-use weapons, like firearms, vehicles, edged weapons, and incendiary devices, which DVEs have used in the past."

"Some [domestic violent extremists], particularly anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists and racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists motivated by differing perceptions of issues like government overreach, firearms regulation, and immigration policy, will potentially view social and political tensions during the upcoming midterm election as an opportunity to use or promote violence in furtherance of their ideological goals," the bulletin noted.

 

I'd say this was an unprecedented threat to America, but January 6th made it abundantly clear what precedent is now for Republicans and election violence.  Frankly, this is a warning that should have sent months ago, with federal law enforcement and Justice Department task forces in place in Republican states well before now.

MAGA terrorist violence over the days and weeks ahead is almost guaranteed at this point. The only question is how bad the bill will be when it comes due.

 

Vote early if you can, and be careful on Tuesday the 8th.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was broken into last night, and Pelosi's husband Paul was hospitalized after being brutally beaten with a hammer by the assailant.

 

Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was attacked and severely beaten by an assailant with a hammer who broke into their San Francisco home early Friday, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Pelosi, 82, suffered blunt force injuries to his head and body, according to two people who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe.

The attack was not random; the assailant specifically targeted the home, the people said. The assailant was in custody.

Pelosi was being treated by doctors for bruising, severe swelling and other injuries. Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman Drew Hammill said he was expected to make a full recovery.

“The Speaker and her family are grateful to the first responders and medical professionals involved, and request privacy at this time,” Hammill said in a statement.

While the circumstances of the attack are unclear, the attack raises questions about the safety of members of Congress and their families as threats to lawmakers are at an all-time high almost two years after the deadly Capitol insurrection. The attack also comes just 11 days ahead of midterm elections in which crime and public safety have emerged as top concerns among Americans.

 

Even if this somehow doesn't turn out to be a terrorist attack, and all the available evidence indicates that this was an assassination attempt on Nancy Pelosi's life,. it does call into question the safety of members of Congress. This wasn't protesting or even vandalizing property, this was felony assault on the spouse of the Speaker of the House.

 

We forget that a man walked up to Gabrielle Giffords at a campaign event and put a bullet in her skull, then attacked almost 20 others in 2011.

 

The message is clear: if Pelosi's family isn't safe, no Democratic lawmaker's family is.  And if Pelosi herself was there in her home, would she have been attacked, maybe killed just days before the midterms?

I warned this was coming. Expect a lot more of this in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

Musk Rat Love

The sale of Twitter to Elon Musk is complete, and the first people the new boss is throwing out the window are the company's top diversity, security, and safety executives.

Elon Musk became Twitter’s owner late Thursday as his $44 billion deal to take over the company officially closed, marking a new era for one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.

As one of his first moves, he fired several longtime top Twitter executives, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. One of those confirmed the deal was complete.

Chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety, were let go, according to the people. Sean Edgett, the company’s general counsel, was also pushed out, one of the people said. The top executives were hastily escorted out of the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Musk’s moves late Thursday signal his intentions to firmly put his stamp on Twitter. Musk has publicly criticized the company’s outgoing management over product decisions and content moderation, as well as saying he would restore former president Donald Trump’s account.

Still, “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Musk tweeted Thursday, in a post offering assurances to advertisers.

Late in the evening, he tweeted, “the bird is freed.”

 

Trump will almost certainly be reinstated soon, if not over the weekend.  The company's safety protocols are already gone, judging from the abusive harassment already being reported this morning. By the end of the year, Twitter will absolutely be the hellhole Musk promised that it wouldn't become.

Which is entirely the point. He put himself in an unwinnable position over ego, and eventually he's going to lose and lose big.

 

Watch the tire fire get out of control real fast.