Westerly MAGAs go nuts over trans kids and...chalk

Westerly School Committee discusses transgender student policy and the dangers of chalk rainbows

Steve Ahlquist

At the September 3 Westerly School Committee meeting, committee members once again took up the school system’s Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, and Transitioning Students protocol. This policy, legally mandated by state law, is meant to protect children from bullying and abuse, while allowing them to be their best and authentic selves. Committee member Lori Wycall had asked to discuss this policy at the last meeting, over concerns she had about the effect of Donald Trump’s Executive Orders regarding transgender rights and Title IX, a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or education program that receives funding from the federal government.

“I had a two-hour-long conversation with our Superintendent [Marc Garceau] and one of our attorneys who was helping us rewrite our Title IX policy for the district,” said Committee Member Wycall by way of explanation. “When we went through every regulation, because I went through and looked up every regulation that [the lawyer] was referencing as to why we needed to make the changes, there was a Title 11 and a Title 34 specifically that she referenced. When I looked at them, no state regulation says we have to change the definition of sex in our Title IX policy to include sexual identity, so we left that out of our Title IX policy for the district, which [means] we are now in compliance with both the state and the federal Title IX law.”

Later, Committee Member Wycall expanded on her comments. “I’ll repeat what I said [earlier]. Based on the reasons that I mentioned, A. we’re not in compliance with Title IX, and B. we’re not technically following the details of the protocol. I want to make a motion that we task the superintendent with drafting a policy to codify what he has been doing in our district that has been working, and give us a chance to review that.”

In essence, Committee Member Wycall was asking that the current policy be scrapped, and a new policy, based on what the Westerly School District has been doing, be created. A big problem with this idea is that, according to Superintendent Garceau, the district follows the current policy, the policy works, and no changes are needed.

Orlando, FL where Trump wannabe Ron Desantis
keeps ordering rainbow chalk crossroads to be wiped out

Committee Member Angela Goethals: The problem I see with throwing out a document that has been vetted by our [State] Department of Education and using individual incidents during which this protocol has been activated to craft a new one is that it seems like we’re going to be chasing our tails. How many times has this protocol been utilized? What was the outcome? How did it look? And then, how do you build something based on a few students and their experience that’s meant to apply to everyone?

Committee Member Michael Ober: Dr. Garceau, regarding the current protocol, are you having any problems implementing or following it?

Superintendent Garceau: No, we’ve had the same protocol in place since 2017, and we’ve had no issues.

Committee Member Ober: Do you think there are any changes you need to make to the protocol or how we’re following the protocol?

Superintendent Garceau: I don’t see that there’s any need for changes based on what we’ve experienced. No.

Committee Member Peter Nero: I’m hearing Lori loud and clear, but the policy book is loaded with a whole bunch of stuff and all kinds of student discipline things, and sometimes things aren’t followed by certain teachers and students… if the superintendent is saying that it works well right now, let’s keep it that way.

Committee Chair Leslie Dunn: My concern is similar to what Angela was saying. If the protocol is there and it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. It can be enacted in the right way, asking our administration to go back and start over again, when I would feel confident in saying we’ll probably end up back in the same space.

It’s working, together with students, families, and the district, to make sure that students are supported. I don’t feel there’s a space where handing it back to the superintendent will be productive for us to move forward, solidify our students, and say, “We see you, we want you here, and we have something to support you.”

The motion failed on a 5-2 vote. Committee Members Wycall and Joseph Jackson were the only ones to vote in the affirmative.

Near the end of the meeting, Committee member Wycall said, “I’ve never been more embarrassed by the votes that were taken at this meeting tonight. I can’t believe the things that were voted on at this meeting. And Dr. Garceau, I wish you had spoken up the way you did when you and I were having a conversation yesterday, and were more clear about what we are actually doing and what we are not actually doing with that protocol.”

"Alligator Alcatraz" is a Concentration Camp

Never forget: the Holocaust began with deportations

Steven Beschloss

Alligator Alcatraz. Such an entertaining and amusing name for this new place in the reptile-infested Florida Everglades to send migrants. 

Speaking to reporters on the grounds of the White House, the Sadist-in-Chief was really enjoying himself when asked if the idea is for prisoners trying to escape to get eaten by alligators. “I guess that’s the concept,” he said before sharing his pleasure.

"Snakes are fast but alligators—we're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. Don't run in a straight line, run like this," he said, making a zigzag with his hands. "You know what, your chances go up about one percent."

So funny. So much fun. But make no mistake: This 3,000-bed facility quickly built with cages and razor-wire by floundering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who is trying to get back into the cruelty spotlight—should be seen for what it is.

Banality of evil: Florida Republican Party is already selling merchandise

In short, “Alligator Alcatraz”—a facility where undocumented immigrants who have not received due process will be sent— is a concentration camp. This is no mere hyperbole.

As Steve Schmidt has noted here on Substack, Brittanica offers a clear definition of what a concentration camp entails. It’s worth taking a moment to read:

An internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political group rather than as individuals and without benefit either of indictment or fair trial. Concentration camps are to be distinguished from prisons interning persons lawfully convicted of civil crimes and from prisoner-of-war camps in which captured military personnel are held under the laws of war. They are also to be distinguished from refugee camps or detention and relocation centres for the temporary accommodation of large numbers of displaced persons.

Trump says it will house “some of the most vicious people on the planet” and the “worst of the worst.” But we already know that this labeling has typically been a lie to justify masked men snatching people off the streets and taking them away in unmarked cars without due process.

In the Authoritarians’ New War on Ideas, Biology Might Be Next

The right is gearing up for an all-out attack on biology

By C. Brandon Ogbunu

In 2021, U.S. Sen.Ted Cruz compared critical race theory — an academic subfield that examines the role of racism in American institutions, laws, and policies — to the Ku Klux Klan, the most notorious homegrown terrorist organization in U.S. history. 

In doing so, he opened a playbook that resembles one put into practice by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and others: Attack ideas that are unfriendly to a narrow view of the world, and do so by eliminating them from our school curricula and public conversation. 

The movement against critical race theory has now swallowed up high school Advanced Placement African American Studies in several states and threatens the teaching of basic facts about U.S. history. And this movement has devolved from pundit tough talk into authoritarian policies to ban books, modify curricula, and threaten intellectual freedom across the country (and world).

By now, many realize that these policies are a harbinger of things to come —  even for fields ostensibly unrelated to African American studies, like biology. Modern breakthroughs in biology are producing a picture of life that is increasingly incompatible with authoritarian preferences for neat boxes that dictate what people are and how they should behave. Consequently, biologists must shed the naive belief that our work is apolitical and recognize that the recent attacks on how to teach U.S. history are a battle in a larger war on ideas that includes the natural sciences.

Evolutionary biology in particular is not new to political controversies. Over the past century, it has been at the center of several high-profile legal battles. Most famous are the debates about the teaching of evolution in schools (documented in Brenda Wineapple’s new book on the Scopes trial, and many others). The political tension is generated by the world view that Darwinism presents. 

The reasoning from evolution deniers: If public education can challenge religious explanations for how life began, then tomorrow it might question the religious basis of good and evil, man and woman, and explanations for how we all got here. And they aren’t wrong. Biology’s increasingly complicated picture of human behavior isn’t so friendly to political stances peddling the myth that one group is essentially inferior to another; and that a deity decides the boundaries around sex, sexual preference, and other dimensions.

While biological sex is a meaningful dimension for millions of species, modern biology has frustrated many classical models for what sex is and how it manifests in nature. In recent decades, evolutionary theorists have offered improvements on models that implied that females were passive actors, driven by interest and competition between males. 

At our most charitable, we’d call these interpretations naive and imprecise, and they highlight a long tradition of confused thinking on sex and gender that is increasingly subject to scrutiny. And when we consider the added layer of culture in the world of Homo sapiens, then hard rules and expectations regarding sex are on even shakier ground.

MAGA monsters

Red state governors sacrificed 200,000 Americans to COVID-19

by Mark Sumner, Daily Kos Staff

Movie depictions of human sacrifice are usually pretty straightforward: There’s an altar. There’s a knife. Sometimes the scenes take place on a big pyramid to better show off a stream of blood or a tumbling head.

But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans witnessed an actual mass human sacrifice that came with a different kind of ceremony and distinctive ritual chants. Those ceremonies took place in red state governors’ offices and the chants intoned “freedom” as these elected officials fought against closing schools, blocked mask mandates, and belittled the effectiveness of vaccines.

According to a paper published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an enormous number of Americans died unnecessarily during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those deaths can’t be laid at the feet of Donald Trump for his diminishment of the threat and mishandling of the consequences. This tragic phenomenon was more local.

As many as one-quarter of a million Americans died simply because their state governments refused to impose good public health standards. They died as appeasements to the twin gods of ignorance and politics.

The results of the study are clear—and brutal.

GOP attacks against Kamala Harris were already bad – they are about to get worse

To no one's surprise, MAGAs have already started racist, sexist attacks

Stephen J. Farnsworth, University of Mary Washington

Vice President Kamala Harris attends a political event on July 17,
2024, in Kalamazoo, Mich. Chris duMond/Getty Images

Public opinion polls suggest that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is doing slightly better than Joe Biden was against Donald Trump, but Republican attacks against her are only now ramping up.

Even as a candidate for vice president, Harris was the target of an intense barrage of conservative attacks that claimed, among other things, that she slept her way to political prominence, a common slur against women in power. 

The anti-Harris rhetoric is part of what a report by the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, described as a broad pattern of gendered and sexualized attacks on prominent women in public discourse.

More recently, those comments were joined by conservative attacks branding Harris as the “border czar,” part of an effort to tie her to immigration, a hot-button topic for conservatives.

The intense attacks so far are only a fraction of what will come. Trump is skilled at both character assassination and political self-defense. Together, they translate into an exceptional ability to defeat his political rivals once they enter the presidential campaign arena.

But Harris also has sharp rhetorical skills that could make this a fierce election fight.

Trump’s alternative facts

As I discuss in my book “Presidential Communication and Character,” Trump is highly skilled at both channeling white working-class anger into political support for himself and at convincing his supporters to disregard the former president’s own well-chronicled professional and personal failings.

Trump’s character generates enduring contempt among liberals, but those voters will back the Democratic nominee.

Is Flip going to go clubbing?

With Republicans, cruelty is the point

By Will Collette

Composite by Will Collette.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Charlestown’s former state Representative Blake “Flip” Filippi (R) shows up at Blue Shutters Beach for one of the Mystic Aquarium’s frequent releases of rehabilitated seals. 

Except unlike most onlookers, instead of a camera, he'll have a big club to beat the newly healed critters to death before they hit the water.

I’m not joking.

If you follow Flip on Twitter/X, you’ll notice that he’s been campaigning against the growing population of seals in Block Island Sound on the grounds that they will attract great white sharks. 

And before you can say “Jaws,” there goes tourism on Block Island where, not coincidentally, the Filippi family has large business holdings catering to said tourists.

In his own words, here is what Flip has been saying: 

From Flip's Twitter/X feed

Accompanying a photo (👉) of seals gathered on a beach, he wrote: “Lots of Block Island shark bait!”

 

He wrote another post using the same photo and said: “Whoa – this is the most chum I’ve seen on Block Island!”

 

Accompanying a ProJo article on the growing seal population and Mystic Aquarium’s marine animal rescue program, he really got into his hatred of seals, writing: 

“Rhode Island will rue the ongoing explosion of our seal population when Great White Sharks take up residence alongside them. Cull the year-round seal population before it is too late.”

He wrote another post on the same ProJo article:

“Gee – let’s see if great whites take up residence off Block Island to follow the growing seal population. How about instead we get rid of the damn seals and not have to find out.”

He also posted a phone photo of what may be a shark fin in the water, saying the photo was taken south of Block Island.

There is a smidgen of truth in Blake’s anti-seal rants. There are now roughly 200-300 seals in the waters between Block Island and Charlestown, and seals are Great Whites’ favorite food, according to scientists.

Experts say that Cape Cod is a more popular venue for Great Whites because there are even more seals there. However, just the mere presence of sharks doesn’t lead, ipso facto, to attacks on humans.

While shark attacks on humans DO occur – and get big headlines – they occur far less often than you might think.

Last year, there were 36 shark attacks in all US waters. Worldwide, 69 unprovoked bites were reported plus another 22 listed as “provoked.”

Patch cited the Atlantic Shark Institute in Wakefield saying there have been two confirmed shark fatalities in Rhode Island waters in the last 200 years. That's once a century.

In an article listing all documented shark attacks, fatal or not, in New England waters between 1751 and 2019, six are listed for Rhode Island and of those, two were fatal.

The first recorded fatality was a young boy killed in Bristol Harbor in 1816. The second occurred at Watch Hill in 1895.

The last incident listed was a possible attack on a surfer while returning to Moonstone Beach in 2019. He reported his leg was bloody from punctures but could not identify what caused those lacerations.

It was NOT a Great White Shark. The Institute has tagged 30 Great Whites in Rhode Island waters but no shark fatalities by ANY species of shark in 129 years.

And that’s it. When I said Flip had a smidgen of truth in his rants, maybe I was being too generous since there is no scientific or historical evidence to support his fears of a Sharknado outbreak in Rhode Island. And no reason to start killing seals en masse unless Flip thinks that would be a tourist draw.

But perhaps Blake has another reason for ranting about killing seals: maybe Filippi, like his former MAGA-nut colleague Justin Price, is planning a political comeback.

One necessary step for any 2024 Republican politician is to show how in-sync their thinking is with the GOP’s Supreme Leader, convicted felon Donald Trump.

It turns out Trump is also obsessed with sharks. Yesterday, June 19, at a campaign event in Nevada, Trump went on a tear where he linked his hatred of sharks with his equally fierce hatred of electric vehicles.

He conjured the image of being in a sinking, electric-powered boat. In his own words describing his "dialogue" with a guy he was watching on TV:

"I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you're in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery is now underwater. And there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there…

"By the way, lot of shark attacks lately, I watched some guys justifying it today. 'Well, they weren't really that angry. They bit off the young lady's leg because of the fact that they were, they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was. He said 'there's no problem with sharks, they just didn't really understand a young woman's swimming. She really got decimated and other people too, a lot of shark attacks.

So I said [To the guy he was watching on television], there's a shark 10 yards away from the boat, do I get electrocuted? If the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking, do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted? Or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?

"Because I will tell you he didn't know the answer. He said, 'you know, nobody's ever asked me that question.' I said I think it's a good question. I think there's a lot of electric current coming to that water. But you know what I'd do? If there was a shark or you get electrocuted, I'll take electrocution every single time. I'm not getting near the shark."

Got all that?

In today’s Republican Party, cruelty seems to be the point. After all, Trump has great plans for even crueler policies toward immigrants than we saw in his first term when thousands of children were taken from their parents. Trump had no plan to reunite those children with those parents, and at the end of his term, almost a thousand were unaccounted for.

That just one of many Trump acts of cruelty with many more to come when he becomes “Dictator for a Day” and goes after his many enemies.

The apple doesn’t fall from the tree: lest we forget, his boys Donald Jr. and Eric posed [👈] gleefully with endangered animals they killed on safari. 

That’s par for the course, given Donald Sr.’s well-documented dislike of animals, dogs in particular.

To build their MAGA cred, ambitious MAGAnuts burnish their hard right credentials through acts of cruelty.

South Dakota Governor and Trump VP wannabe Kristin Noem thought that writing about shooting her puppy Cricket in the head, killing a goat that annoyed her and calling it “life on the farm” would be good for her career. She claimed she hated both animals.

On policy matters, GOP governors work hard to show how cruel they can be to those groups that their Orange Master dislikes. 

For example, there’s Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ new law banning mandatory water and heat breaks for outdoor workers. Maybe Florida agri-business sees dead farmworkers as good fertilizer for their crops.

Then there’s Texas Governor Greg Abbott who installs hundreds of miles of razor wire on the border ignoring court orders to stop. He has ordered the kidnap of other migrants who are put on buses and sent to northern cities.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee took credit for revoking laws prohibiting child labor in her state.

Of course, this is only a tiny part of the list of cruelties that includes attacks on reproductive rights, women, workers, veterans, Medicare and Social Security, domestic aid programs, help for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression, vaccinations, books, the environment, civil rights, education, the Constitution and democracy itself.

Let’s not forget the 1.1 million-plus Americans who died due to COVID and how Republicans are trying to provoke some lone wolf assassin to kill the pandemic’s most prominent hero, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Yes, cruelty is the point and that’s why I have a strong hunch we’re going to see Flip Filippi on the ballot this November.

We're awake, thank you very much

The end of anti-woke politics?

By Jim Hightower 

Well, well, well — look who’s waking up and raring to go: Mr. and Ms. Woke!

We so-called “woke” people have been the target of far-right politicos and front groups that are frantically trying to ban us and our ideas from America’s political discourse. 

In the past few years, such thuggish gubernatorial demagogues as Ron DeSantis have perverted the power of Big Government to attack teachers, librarians, public agencies, and even beer. Beer!

Why? Because such people and organizations make educational efforts to reduce bigotry, hatred, and exclusiveness in our society. “That’s woke,” screech the ultra-rightists, demanding that any talk about racism, sexism, gender discrimination, or other ugly realities in America must be suppressed.

Like the witch hunters of old, today’s pious puritans of ideological conformity have demonized such basic values as diversity and equity, calling them “toxic.” 

Wake up!

Back in the day, being woke meant being smart

Ronald E. Hall, Michigan State University

Demonstrators march on Jan. 1, 1934, in Washington
against the unjust trials of nine Black men falsely
accused of raping two white women. Bettmann/Getty Images

If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had his way, the word “woke” would be banished from public use and memory.

As he promised in Iowa in December 2023 during his failed presidential campaign, “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”

DeSantis’ war on “woke ideology” has resulted in the banning of an advanced placement class in African American studies and the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Florida’s universities and colleges.

Given the origins of the use of the word as a code among Black people, DeSantis has a nearly impossible task, despite his tireless efforts.

For Black people, the modern-day meaning of the word has little to do with school curriculum or political jargon and goes back to the days of Jim Crow and legal, often violent, racial segregation. Back then, the word was used as a warning to be aware of racial injustices in general and Southern white folks in particular.

In my view as a behavioral scientist who studies race, being woke was part of the unwritten vocabulary that Black people established to talk with each other in a way that outsiders could not understand.

MAGA menace: Canada

Some Republicans are saying we need to wall off the 5,500 mile Canadian border, too. 

By Jim Hightower 

They must be stopped!

In the 1980s, many Texans were alarmed that hordes of immigrants were fleeing Rust Belt states and pouring across the Red River to take our jobs. So my friend Steve Fromholz recommended a big beautiful wall across our northern border to keep them out.

Fromholz, a popular singer-songwriter and renowned political sprite, was ahead of his time in the political sport of wall building.

Instead of steel barriers and miles of nasty razor wire, Steve proposed preventing Yankee refugees from entering the Lone Star State by planting a 10-foot high, 10-foot thick wall of jalapeño peppers along the length of the Red River. Eat your way through and you’d be accepted as a naturalized Texan.

I thought of Steve’s impishness when I read that Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and other Republicans were concocting a whole new xenophobic bugaboo to goose up their anti-immigrant demagoguery.

What Would a Second Trump Presidency Look Like for Health Care?

In his first term, his COVID policies killed almost a million Americans. Can he top that?

Julie Rovner, KFF Health News 

Trump might appoint someone like this to head
 Health and Human Services

On the presidential campaign trail, former President Donald Trump is, once again, promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act — a nebulous goal that became one of his administration’s splashiest policy failures.

“We’re going to fight for much better health care than Obamacare. Obamacare is a catastrophe,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Iowa on Jan. 6.

The perplexing revival of one of Trump’s most politically damaging crusades comes at a time when the Obama-era health law is even more popular and widely used than it was in 2017, when Trump and congressional Republicans proved unable to pass their own plan to replace it. That failed effort was a big part of why Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms.

Despite repeated promises, Trump never presented his own Obamacare replacement. And much of what Trump’s administration actually accomplished in health care has been reversed by the Biden administration.

Still, Trump secured some significant policy changes that remain in place today, including efforts to bring more transparency to prices charged by hospitals and paid by health insurers.

Trying to predict Trump’s priorities in a second term is even more difficult given that he frequently changes his positions on issues, sometimes multiple times.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Perhaps Trump’s biggest achievement is something he rarely talks about on the campaign trail. His administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” managed to create, test, and bring to market a covid-19 vaccine in less than a year, far faster than even the most optimistic predictions.

Many of Trump’s supporters, though, don’t support — and some even vehemently oppose — covid vaccines.

Here is a recap of Trump’s health care record:

Trump's Similarities to Hitler Prove It Certainly Could 'Happen Here'

We must stop being bashful about calling Trump a fascist - the shoe fits

THOM HARTMANN Common Dreams

The Nazis in America are now “out.” This morning, former Republican Joe Scarborough explicitly compared Trump and his followers to Hitler and his Brownshirts on national television. They’re here.

At the same time, America’s richest man is retweeting antisemitism, rightwing influencers and radio/TV hosts are blaming “Jews and liberals” for the “invasion” of “illegals” to “replace white people,” and the entire GOP is embracing candidates and legislators who encourage hate and call for violence.

Are there parallels between the MAGA takeover of the GOP and the Nazi takeover of the German right in the 1930s?

It began with a national humiliation: defeat in war. For Germany, it was WWI; for America it was two wars George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied us into as part of their 2004 “wartime president” re-election strategy (which had worked so well for Nixon with Vietnam in 1972 and Reagan with Grenada in 1984).

Hitler fought in WWI but later blamed Germany’s defeat on the nation being “stabbed in the back” by liberal Jews, their fellow travelers, and incompetent German military leadership.

Trump cheered on Bush’s invasion of Iraq, but later lied and claimed he’d opposed the war. Both blamed the nation’s humiliation on the incompetence or evil of their political enemies.

The economic crisis caused by America’s Republican Great Depression had gone worldwide and Hitler used the gutting of the German middle class (made worse by the punishing Treaty of Versailles) as a campaign issue, promising to restore economic good times.

Trump pointed to the damage forty years of neoliberalism had done to the American middle class and promised to restore blue-collar prosperity. Hitler promised he would “make Germany great again”; Trump campaigned on the slogan: “Make America Great Again.”

Both tried to overthrow their governments by violence and failed, Hitler in a Bavarian beer hall and Trump on January 6th. Both then turned to legal means to seize control of their nations.

Hitler’s scapegoats were Jews, gays, and liberals. “There are only two possibilities,” he told a Munich crowd in 1922. “Either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.”

He promised “I will get rid of the ‘communist vermin’,” “I will take care of the ‘enemy within’,” “Jews and migrants are poisoning Aryan blood,” and “One people, one nation, one leader.”

Trump’s scapegoats were Blacks, Muslims, immigrants, and liberals.

With Shutdown Averted, Is Social Security Safe? Nope!

Taxing the rich is the best way to preserve Social Security and Medicare 

JAMES ROOSEVELT JR., HENRY SCOTT WALLACE, JUNE HOPKINS, TOMLIN PERKINS COGGESHALL for Common Dreams

Let’s talk Social Security. The government shutdown was averted (temporarily), so that’s a good thing, right? Trump is promising not to touch it. Benefits are not threatened, right?

Wrong. Social Security has a bullseye on its back. As descendants of the New Deal leaders who created it, we recognize the warning signs, and need to shout the alarm.

The right-wing hard-liners who fired House Speaker Kevin McCarthy—without a  replacement in sight—are determined to balance the budget by reducing spending. The word “revenues” is an obscenity to them. And defense spending is sacred and untouchable.

But even if they completely eliminated every single non-defense discretionary program—from food stamps to the FBI to border protection—it wouldn’t be enough. It would add up to about $900 billion, or about 15% of total federal spending, which would fall far short of balancing the budget. So their deficit-cutting zeal must inevitably turn to what is called mandatory spending, most prominently the largest government program of all, Social Security.

Republican presidential candidates are increasingly emboldened to touch this deadly “third rail” of American politics. Nikki Haley mocked other candidates for promising not to touch Social Security. Ron DeSantis wants to “revamp” it. Mike Pence wants to privatize it, turning it over to Wall Street and adding trillions to the national debt—to replace the New Deal with a “better deal.”

And although former President Donald Trump now swears he would never harm a hair on Social Security’s head, his history renders such assurances hollow. He has previously suggested that a second Trump term would mean cuts to Social Security and Medicare. 

Let’s not forget that his hugest unachieved social policy goal at the end of his presidency was the complete termination of Social Security’s principal funding source, the payroll tax.

Nihilism, Fascism, and the Failed United States Donald Trump Delivered

And the very worst may still be yet to come.

REBECCA GORDON in theTomDispatch

Sometimes the right wing in this country seems like a riddle wrapped in an enigma encased in a conundrum.

Do they want to strengthen the government in line with the once-fringe doctrine of the “unitary executive,” concentrating most official power in the hands of a president who would then rule more or less by fiat? That’s the fascist position.

Or would they prefer to destroy the government, to “starve the beast,” something anti-tax activist Grover Norquist used to call for decades ago? “I don’t want to abolish government,” he declared. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” That’s the anti-government nihilist position.

You might not think that those two goals could coexist comfortably within a single party. And of course, you’d be right if you were talking about an ordinary American political party. But the Republicans are no longer an ordinary party. 

In many respects, in fact, they have become the however-fractious sole property of one Donald J. Trump. That former and quite possibly (God forbid) future president has no trouble simultaneously advocating contradictory, not to mention devastating, ideas. 

That’s because, for him, ideas are an entirely fungible currency that he deploys primarily to maintain the attention and adulation of his — and it is increasingly his alone — GOP “base.” And precisely because Trump has so little invested in actual policy, the right wing believes he’s a weapon they can point and shoot in whatever direction they choose.

Spot the mistakes

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

Here we go again

Trump campaign already claiming Democrats trying to 'Steal the 2024 Election'

JULIA CONLEY for Common Dreams

With more than a year to go until the 2024 presidential election, top advisers to former U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign on Monday night claimed without evidence that the Democratic Party is trying to "steal" the election, echoing the lies spread before the 2020 election that fueled the violent January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump campaign officials called on the Republican National Committee (RNC) to "immediately cancel" the third GOP debate, which is scheduled to take place in Miami on November 8 and which Trump has indicated he will not attend, just as he skipped the first two primary debates.

Senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita called on the RNC to essentially terminate the primary election and "end all future debates in order to refocus its manpower and money on preventing Democrats' efforts to steal the 2024 election."

Long before voters went to the polls in the 2020 election, Trump repeatedly claimed that the Democratic Party was trying to "steal" or "rig" the vote by expanding mail-in voting—which the former Republican president himself had long utilized and which was expanded to help people vote safely amid the coronavirus pandemic—and made false claims about "fake polls" and absentee ballots.

Few in the Republican Party spoke out against Trump's pre-election lies in 2020, and MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes said Monday that the party is again signaling that it will "stay silent" about the former president's baseless accusations—"even though every last one knows how dangerous all this is."

Thar she blows!

Manatee spotted in Quonnie

By Will Collette

Maybe Quonnie dwellers will forego their exodus to Florida this year, as Florida seems to be coming to us.

DEM spotted and photographed a manatee near a pier in Quonochontaug Pond, well over a thousand miles from its normal habitat.

DEM says they are monitoring the manatee, along with US Fish and Wildlife and the Mystic Aquarium in case it needs help.

Manatee have be spotted in RI waters in 2006 and 2016, according to DEM. They advise keeping 150 feet away and are warning boaters to use caution. In Florida, manatees are often killed or injured by boaters, not that Gov. Ron DeSantis's administration cares.

Speaking of matters aquatic, in one week, September 19, join us in celebrating international Talk Like a Pirate Day. It's a holy day on the Pastafarian calendar and a time for us all to practice talking like pirates.

Graphic by Sam Howard

Governors may make good presidents

But not ‘imperial governors’ like DeSantis

Raymond Scheppach, University of Virginia

Nearly all are present or former governors. By Bill Day

Many people believe governors make good presidents. In fact, a 2016 Gallup Poll found that almost 74% of people say that governing a state provides excellent or good preparation for someone to be an effective president. As a result, many political commentators have tried to explain why Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is stumbling in his campaign for president.

Some say it is because he is stiff or awkward on the campaign trail, or his path to the nomination is not really to the political right of former President Donald Trump, or he needs to step up and directly confront the former president.

But as the former executive director of the National Governors Association for 27 years, I have worked with well over 300 governors. During that time I have been part of many conversations with governors regarding other governors running for president. 

So I know that some current and former governors on both sides of the aisle would have another reason for why DeSantis is stalling. If you were to ask them, I expect they would mostly smile and say quietly, “It is because he has become an imperial governor” – one who believes he is all-powerful and that all his decisions will be just applauded and never questioned or opposed.

How to teach about race in Florida

For more cartoons by Ruben Bolling, CLICK HERE

And they're off!

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE

 

This about sums him up