NATO Secretary General states that Russia invaded Ukraine to keep NATO out

The idea that Russia's chief reason for fighting against Ukraine (since 2014, but especially 2022) is to prevent  NATO membership for that country has been called a myth, falsehood and Russian propaganda . This is the case despite warnings from policy experts, and  diplomats including a stark warning from now-CIA chief, Nicholas Burns. In a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Burns wrote, 

"Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Russian President Vladimir Putin). In more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin's sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests."

Burns also wrote a classified assessment of the Bush plan to admit Ukraine into NATO called "Nyet means Nyet" available at Wikileaks.  I've written about all this before in some detail here. I restate the denials of the importance of the NATO enlargement issue only to set up the following clip of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg  speaking on just this subject earlier this month . It is from his opening remarks to the EU Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and its Subcommittee on Security and Defense given on Sept. 2, 2023 in Brussels. The clip is from UK Declassified, and below it is a partial transcription of his remarks, and a few supplementary  documents that he mentions to make his point.

After discussing the continuing enlargement of NATO including Finland and Sweden,  Jens Stoltenberg states that:

" The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that. 

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance..."

What happened in 2021 prior to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia? This is part of the background to which Stoltenberg alludes above.

A) In November,  US and Ukraine signed a US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership. Some of the passages that the Russians found concerning are quoted below. The Charter can be read in full here.

"Guided by the April 3, 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration of the NATO North Atlantic Council and as reaffirmed in the June 14, 2021 Brussels Summit Communique of the NATO North Atlantic Council, the United States supports Ukraine’s right to decide its own future foreign policy course free from outside interference, including with respect to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO.... The United States and Ukraine endorse the 2021 Strategic Defense Framework as the foundation of enhanced Ukraine-U.S. defense and security cooperation and intend to work to advance shared priorities, including implementing defense and defense industry reforms, deepening cooperation in areas such as Black Sea security, cyber defense, and intelligence sharing, and countering Russia’s aggression...The United States remains committed to assisting Ukraine with ongoing defense and security reforms and to continuing its robust training and exercises. The United States supports Ukraine’s efforts to maximize its status as a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner to promote interoperability."

 

The Russians had long sought guarantees that Ukraine and Georgia would not join NATO.  The US and NATO ruled out any such concessions. Russian troops Spring and then again Fall of 2021 were amassed ominously around much of Ukraine's borders signalling a possible invasion. It is in this context that the US-Ukraine Partnership was signed, sending a clear message to Moscow-- i.e.  troop buildup or no, NATO welcomes Ukraine, and the US will work with Ukraine to arm and advise them  to counter Russian aggression.

NATO membership and US-Ukraine military and intel cooperation on Russia's border have always been major drivers of the conflict, whatever US media says. Here is another clip, this one of Zelensky's former  advisor (2020-2023), Oleksii Arestovych.  He discusses candidly the fact that "[Ukraine's]price for membership in NATO is a big war with Russia"-- a "full scale war" with Russia, he says, in which Ukraine's population, cities, and infrastructure will be "devastated." (See subtitles in vid below).  When this interview was filmed in 2019,  Arestovych was an intelligence officer, and was aware of just how important it was for Russia to keep Ukraine out of NATO at all costs. He was clear-eyed about the consequence of Ukraine's  NATO aspirations being a brutal, full-scale war.  As is evident in this clip, he predicted with some prescience the course of future events.

 

Bits: Inverse vaccine invented; Paxton acquitted; Quiet genocide in China

SciTechDaily reports about what appears to be a major advance in treating some very nasty autoimmune diseases: 

New Vaccine Can Completely Reverse Autoimmune Diseases 

Like Multiple Sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes, and Crohn’s Disease

Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have developed a novel vaccine that, in laboratory tests, can completely reverse autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and Crohn’s disease — all without shutting down the rest of the immune system.

A typical vaccine teaches the human immune system to recognize a virus or bacteria as an enemy that should be attacked. The new “inverse vaccine” does just the opposite: it removes the immune system’s memory of one molecule. While such immune memory erasure would be unwanted for infectious diseases, it can stop autoimmune reactions like those seen in multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, or Crohn’s disease, in which the immune system attacks a person’s healthy tissues.  

The inverse vaccine, described in a recent paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, takes advantage of how the liver naturally marks molecules from broken-down cells with “do not attack” flags to prevent autoimmune reactions to cells that die by natural processes. PME researchers coupled an antigen — a molecule being attacked by the immune system— with a molecule resembling a fragment of an aged cell that the liver would recognize as friend, rather than foe. The team showed how the vaccine could successfully stop the autoimmune reaction associated with a multiple-sclerosis-like disease.  

The job of the immune system’s T cells is to recognize unwanted cells and molecules — from viruses and bacteria to cancers — as foreign to the body and get rid of them. Once T cells launch an initial attack against an antigen, they retain a memory of the invader to eliminate it more quickly in the future. 

T cells can make mistakes, however, and recognize healthy cells as foreign. In people with Crohn’s disease, for instance, the immune system attacks cells of the small intestine; in those with multiple sclerosis, T cells mount an attack against myelin, the protective coating around nerves.

Hubbell and his colleagues knew that the body has a mechanism for ensuring that immune reactions don’t occur in response to every damaged cell in the body— a phenomenon known as peripheral immune tolerance and carried out in the liver. They discovered in recent years that tagging molecules with a sugar known as N-acetylgalactosamine (pGal) could mimic this process, sending the molecules to the liver where tolerance to them develops.  

More work is needed to study Hubbell’s pGal compounds in humans, but initial phase I safety trials have already been carried out in people with celiac disease, an autoimmune disease that is associated with eating wheat, barley, and rye, and phase I safety trials are underway in multiple sclerosis.

This has the feel of a major advance in dealing with autoimmune diseases. If this advances to later stage phase II and III human clinical trials, that would mark a major step toward developing an actual human vaccine. Phase I clinical trials are designed to assess safety. Phase II and III are to confirm safety and prove efficacy. This is research worth keeping an eye on.

The published Nature paper is here, but it's behind a paywall.

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The Texas Senate acquitted Ken Paxton after a 9 day trial. Paxton is a terribly corrupt politician, but it now appears he is the face the deeply corrupt, authoritarian radical right GOP. The Hill commented:

A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll released earlier this month found 24 percent of the Republicans who were asked if “Ken Paxton took actions while Attorney General that justify removing him from elected office” said he did, 32 percent said he didn’t, and 43 percent said they “didn’t know” or had “no opinion.”

At least in Texas, authoritarian, pro-corruption rot has infected the rank and file to the point there's not much difference between the R&F and the elites. For the authoritarian radical right Republican Party, the rule of law has fallen. 

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A NYT opinion describes China's quiet genocide:

The One Million Tibetan Children in China’s Boarding Schools

One day in late November 2016, back home in Tibet, I received a distressing call from my brother telling me I needed to check on his granddaughters. “Something very strange is happening,” he said.

My young relatives, who were 4 and 5 years old at the time, had just enrolled in a boarding preschool that the Chinese government had established in my hometown, Kanlho, a seminomadic region in the northeast corner of the Tibetan plateau.

Though it had only been three months since the girls had started at the school, my brother described how they were already beginning to distance themselves from their Tibetan identity. On weekends, when they could return from school to their family, they rejected the food at home. They became less interested in our Buddhist traditions and spoke Tibetan less frequently. Most alarmingly, they were growing emotionally estranged from our family. “I might lose them if something isn’t done,” my brother worried.

Concerned, I set out to the girls’ school a few days later to pick them up for the weekend. When they walked out of the gates, they waved to me but barely spoke. When we arrived home, the girls didn’t hug their parents. They spoke only Mandarin to each other and remained silent during our family dinner. They had become strangers in their own home.

After listening to the girls’ stories, I asked my brother what would happen if he just refused to send them. He teared up. Disobeying the new policy would mean having his name blacklisted from government benefits. Others who have protested the new schools have suffered terrible consequences, he said.

Over the course of my three years of fieldwork and meetings with students, parents and teachers, what I discovered was worse than anything I could have imagined.

I met young Tibetan children who could no longer speak their native tongue. The schools strictly controlled parental visits. In some cases, schoolchildren saw their families only once every six months. Dormitories, playgrounds and teachers’ offices were heavily surveilled.

What the Chinese dictators are doing in China to cultural and social diversity is what the American Christian nationalism wealth and power movement is starting to do in America now that it has the power to do so. 

Are We Prepared for the Militarization of the Trump Movement?

 Historian, Adam Jortner wrote the following warning for Current (published 9/7/23)

The endgame of election denial is already underway

Two deaths last month. Craig Robertson of Provo, Utah, was shot by the FBI after making repeated threats against Joe Biden. Robertson was allegedly refusing to comply with a search warrant. Nine days later Laura Ann Carleton of Cedar Glen, California, was shot by a man who objected to her display of an LGBTQ+ flag in her shop. The assailant shouted at her, mocked the flag, and then killed her.

Two very different Americans—both dead because of the militarization of the right. Robertson threatened people through social media and, when asked about it, threatened with a gun. Carleton displayed a political flag and was shot. 

Neither should have died. But they remind us that we need to talk about American political violence—and the little-known fact that in modern America 96% of all murders linked to radicalism come from the far right. 

We know the source. Since the rise of President Trump, violent rhetoric and calls for armed retribution have become daily occurrences—sometimes from the president himself, sometimes from allies in the conservative media ecosystem, and sometimes from robots at Russian troll farms seeking to egg us on to more and greater violence. 

I don’t want to elaborate on this. We all saw the riot on January 6. We know about the Proud Boys. 

What I cannot understand is how our political reporters are still missing the connection between Trumpist calls for violence and paths to power in the United States. A recent cover article at Time mentions Trump’s indictments under the euphemism “legal troubles.” Trump does not have legal troubles: he has been indicted in an attempt to overthrow the legitimate election of an American president through violence[1]. As a former president now faces multiple trials for trying to overturn an election, and as that president threatens his opponents with force, most political columnists still wonder how it will all shake out for Trump’s strategy in the election. They remain focused on questions such as whether Trump will appear at the GOP debate, how he will alter his talking points, and what his messaging will be in the wake of accusations. 

They continue, in short, to treat this crisis as a scandal. It is far more than that.

Political experts and talking heads still assume in the age of election denial that everyone in America accepts the basic norms: Political power and authority come through a series of laws, determined and enforced by elected officials—the law binds us and gives power its legitimacy.

Trump does not believe that, and he and his close associates have been broadcasting a different version of American legitimacy for years. 

In this world, only “real” Americans have a right to rule. What makes a real American? It is left deliberately vague, but outward patriotism and militarism are sure signs. It is not quite race-based—Vivek Ramaswamy is running for the GOP nomination as an Asian-American. But he wants to limit the vote to people over twenty-five. Those Americans who fit the stereotype of a 1950s suburban or farm family: These are the people who count. But support for Trump matters, too. Trump and his retinue have over and overstated that the people who support him are Americans; everyone else is a traitor or potential traitor. 

Those who love America are the ones who must rule America. Legitimacy comes from ideology, not law. For Trumpists, the question that defines whether a person can legitimately voice political concern is not, Are you a citizen? It is, Do you love America?  

Yes, the question is ill-defined—but then, it is not a question of law but a question of intent. Trump still believes America is legitimate, but the courts, the Biden administration, and any Democrat are not legitimate, because they do not love America. 

The media continues to treat this rhetorical shifting of legitimacy as a sideshow—“Hey! That’s funny.” But it’s a feature, not a bug. Indeed, it explains much of Trump’s current movement: The election of 2020 was fraudulent, because the results indicated that Biden won, and Biden did not love America, and the late-counted votes for Biden came from big cities where real Americans do not live. Therefore, they must have cheated. 

Biden could not have won, therefore he did not win, therefore the government is no longer legitimate. 

And here is where we need to pay better attention: If the government really is illegal, then its decisions are not binding on the populace. This is part and parcel of most theories of political power, and certainly for the American experiment born from “no taxation without representation.” 

And so Trump and his allies ignore the law, lambast the judges, and encourage violence against other Americans—because in their minds, the law is no longer binding upon them. 

This idea is now filtering down to the streets of Provo and San Bernardino county. Robinson did not have to obey the search warrant the FBI produced, because (as one Facebook fan put it) he refused “to kneel before a godless tyrant.”) A man who apparently had threatened to kill numerous Americans did not have to follow the law, because the law had become godless. 

In the world of election denialism, the government has no authority, and therefore “real Americans” have no obligation to it. Indeed, the government itself is illegitimate and un-American, and Americans who are not real—Democrats, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ people—have abetted that crime. America is under siege. 

Therefore it is no crime to commit violence to liberate it. 

As efforts to rein in this violence—and as the process of bringing the perpetrators of the January 6 riot to justice picks up steam—this notion will get louder. And it will become, if it has not already, the paramilitary wing of the Trump movement—not formally aligned but omnipresent, willing to smash, shoot, and intimidate where necessary. 

Will all Trump voters do this? No. What about all of his hard-core base? No. What about the people who fly Trump flags, and Blue Lives Matter flags? No. Not even all of them. But some of them will. And then we will have a presidential candidate with an informal army.

Our modern politicos and commentators have no idea what this would look like; they are far more interested in whether Joe Biden likes ice cream than on how paramilitary groups helped destroy democracies in Argentina, Peru, Burma, etc. This has happened before in the U.S., by the way—in the 1870s, southern Democrats adopted the Ku Klux Klan as a paramilitary wing and used intimidation to smother Black votes and establish one-party rule in the South. It has not gone down as a great era. 

The media is still waiting for Trump to pivot to the general election and become a “normal” politician. The response to his solid grip on the 2024 GOP nomination is met with a kind of open-mouthed naivete: “What will happen if he wins?” They do not seem to understand that if Trump sounds insane, that is because he is no longer working with the constitutional model of American legitimacy.

The media will never get this, not really. But you can. It behooves all of us to recognize what calls for violence and violent political rhetoric are: a call for an uprising against the American constitution and the rule of law. It is literally un-American. 

This theory of where power comes from may not come to pass, but those who laugh it off or tolerate it because they think it will inevitably be defeated are abetting its rise. By failing to take the rejection of the consent of the governed seriously, they inhibit the efforts of this country to resist its coming effort to seize power. 

What exactly, will it look like on Election Day 2024? 

No one is quite prepared to say. But too many people are taking that lack of preparation as an excuse not to prepare for anything. 

[1] This is not quite accurate. Trump was not "indicted in an attempt to overthrow the legitimate election of an American president through violence." As the NYT noted in August, "The indictment asserted that as violence erupted that day, Mr. Trump “exploited the disruption,” using it to further his goal of stopping the certification of his loss in the election. But it stopped short of charging him with actually encouraging or inciting the mob that stormed the building, chasing lawmakers from their duties." (NYT: 8/323)

Adam Jortner is the Goodwin-Philpott Professor of History at Auburn University. This article was originally published here:  https://currentpub.com/2023/09/07/are-we-prepared-for-the-militarization-of-the-trump-movement/

Bits: Politicized rule of law; Delusional; Fulminating crackpots; Lying liars

Given the virulent animosity the radical right authoritarians feel toward the entire Biden family, the Department of Justice feels it needs to do something. It looks like Hunter Biden is going to get whacked for breaking a law that is rarely enforced. The Messenger writes:

The charges Hunter Biden faces related to a 2018 firearms purchase are also extraordinary in another respect: They are rarely brought against any Americans at all.

“It doesn't happen,” former U.S. Department of Justice inspector general Michael Bromwich said Thursday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “DOJ will need to produce data in discovery, which will show that this is the most selective of prosecutions.” Bromwich served as the DOJ's top internal watchdog from 1994 to 1999 during the administration of former President Bill Clinton.

Hunter Biden, 53, is charged with one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance and two counts alleging he made false statements in the course of purchasing the gun.

Prosecutors accuse Hunter Biden of knowingly possessing a Colt Cobra revolver for an 11-day period in October 2018 while “knowing he was an unlawful user of and addicted to” controlled substances, and falsely certifying on a federal “Form 4473” document he signed in the course of purchasing the gun that he was not using drugs at the time.  

The Government Accountability Office found in a 2018 report that state and federal law enforcement agencies “collectively investigate and prosecute a small percentage of individuals who falsify information on a firearms form.”

In an analysis of 112,000 cases in which firearm purchases were denied due to failed background checks in 2017, the GAO found only about 13,000 of those denials were referred to field divisions for investigations. Those referrals only resulted in 12 criminal cases brought by federal prosecutors by mid-2018.

“It is very unlikely that Hunter Biden would be charged with any of these crimes if his last name wasn’t Biden,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote in a post on X. “Charges for possessing a firearm while under the influence of narcotics are rarely brought. False statement charges in this context are also rare.”  

Lying on the firearms purchase forms is so ubiquitous that the strategy even has a name: “lie and try.”

Twelve prosecutions out of 13,000 (or 112,000?) instances per year where the law was broken. Why the law isn't enforced is an open question. If Hunter gets whacked, so should everyone else who does the same. So why aren't there prosecutions of others for breaking the same law? Politics, or as Mariotti put it, “it is very unlikely that Hunter Biden would be charged with any of these crimes if his last name wasn’t Biden.” 

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The 1/6 traitors are still delusional, but at least some of 'em know it: The WaPo writes:

When Yvonne St Cyr was one of the first people to enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the Idaho woman said she thought it was her right to crawl through a broken Senate office window to stop Joe Biden from becoming president.

But as she was sentenced Wednesday to 2½ years in federal prison for her role in the riot, St Cyr said she understood what Jesus felt like when he accepted his fate before he was crucified. And she told the judge that she didn’t feel remorse for her actions.

“I did the right thing,” St Cyr said, according to NBC News. “I know it sounds delusional.”

“I understood what Jesus felt like when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying and felt so alone,” St Cyr said.

The arrogance of some of these people is staggering. They think they know Jesus felt like. That is the essence of delusional.

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Radical right authoritarian Republicans in control of the House of Representatives are in full-blown grade school stupid, rage & hate mode. A WaPo opinion describes it like this:

The House is currently being run not by Speaker Kevin McCarthy but by backbenchers Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.

McCarthy, whose main strength as a leader has always been his steadfast devotion to self-preservation, recognized that he was about to get trampled by the impeachment parade. So he stepped out in front of it and pretended to be the drum major. “Today, I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” he announced in a hastily arranged statement outside his Capitol office on Tuesday morning — an hour before Gaetz was scheduled to deliver his speech on the floor denouncing McCarthy.

This set off a perverse competition to claim the credit for forcing McCarthy to bow and scrape: Was it Greene, who as a QAnon devotee and new congresswoman in January 2021 filed impeachment articles against Biden on the first full day of his presidency? Or was it Gaetz, subject of a newly revived House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct, illegal drug use and corruption?

“When @SpeakerMcCarthy makes his announcement in moments, remember that … I pushed him for weeks,” Gaetz posted on social media.

“Correction my friend,” retorted MTG in her own post. “I introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden … on his very first day in office. You wouldn’t cosponsor those and I had to drag you kicking and screaming …”

Gaetz, in a conference call with reporters, raised the ante, demanding the immediate impeachment of Biden — without a pesky inquiry. “I’m for it today. I’m for it tomorrow. I’m for it the next day,” Gaetz said. “Is Kevin McCarthy? And if he isn’t, perhaps my dear friend Ms. Greene could be more persuasive with him.”

McCarthy’s very public surrender was his most pathetic moment to date in a short tenure that has had many. In a flailing attempt to preserve his job as speaker, he set the House on an ineluctable course toward deploying the gravest punishment contemplated under the Constitution against the president. He did so even though, after months of lurid probing of the financial (and sexual) dealings of Biden’s drug-addicted son, House Republicans have produced no evidence of wrongdoing by the president — only wild, unsubstantiated allegations of bribery. And McCarthy did so by unilaterally authorizing the impeachment inquiry even though he has said for years, and as recently as two weeks ago, that such a momentous act could be taken only by a vote of the whole House.

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The Hill reports a whopper lie the ex-president is spewing on people: 

Former President Trump says it is not likely he will pardon himself if he is convicted of a crime and elected president again. “I could have pardoned myself. Do you know what? I was given an option to pardon myself. I could have pardoned myself when I left,” .... 

What a lying liar.

THE CRY GROWS LOUDER!

 BUT........................ IS ANYONE LISTENING?

The Cry Grows Louder — Should Joe Biden Step Aside?

RARELY HAS ONE COLUMN shook Washington like the one written this week by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, urging Joe Biden to step aside. And then came the call from Sen. Mitt Romney that the country needs a new generation of politicians. Clearly, age is a dominant issue in American politics. IGNATIUS IS ONE OF THE MOST RESPECTED COLUMNISTS in the country — in the top tier with George Will and Tom Freidman. Liberals like Ignatius essentially are making this argument: Biden could lose in the 2024 general election, which could subject the country to “the nightmare of a revenge presidency,” Ignatius wrote.

ROMNEY WAS JUST AS BLUNT, declaring in his resignation announcement yesterday that it’s time for politicians of his age (76) to step down. He specifically said that Biden (80) and Donald Trump (77) should not run again.

IN BOTH PARTIES, THE FOCUS IS ON BIDEN: He looks and sounds frail, and his verbal gaffes have become so numerous that his staff tries to keep him out of public appearances. His comment at a press conference in Vietnam last week that “it’s time to go to bed” will be replayed over and over in next year’s election campaign.

DEMOCRATS IN THIS TOWN WORRY that Biden could lose to the very vulnerable Trump, who faces four individual trials and 91 indictments. Yet Trump is the overwhelming favorite to be the Republican nominee, and he leads slightly in some general election polls.

THE CRUCIAL ISSUE for the Democrats is that there’s no clear successor to Biden. Kamala Harris is widely viewed as a disappointment, the dynamic Gavin Newsom is considered too liberal for the country, and virtually no one has heard of most of the other potential candidates, including rising star Andy Beshear, the moderate governor of conservative Kentucky.

THE REPUBLICANS have a stronger bench, with relative youngsters Ron DeSantis (45) and Nikki Haley (51) and several young governors. But virtually all of them have pledged allegiance to Trump if he wins the nomination. Most Republicans pledge allegiance to Trump even if he’s in jail.

WHEREVER WE GO, PEOPLE ASK whether there’s a chance of a serious third party candidate. The answer is no — the filing deadlines are fast approaching and other than Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin or West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, it appears that neither party has a likely game changer. What about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Be serious.

COULD TRUMP BE DENIED BALLOT ACCESS in the 2024 general election because of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits an insurrectionist from running? Legal scholars say it’s possible but we say it’s never going to happen.

SO IT LOOKS LIKE neither Biden nor Trump will heed the call from a growing percentage of Americans to step aside for the next generation. Wait until 2028 .

https://perspectives.agf.com/the-cry-grows-louder-should-joe-biden-step-aside/

THE CRUCIAL ISSUE for the Democrats is that there’s no clear successor to Biden?

On that note this SNOWFLAKE strongly disagrees. Whether Newsom or Whitmer or someone else a lot younger than Biden, could easily beat Trump. 

Don't take my word for it, none other than the esteemed Dan Abrams, whose broadcasts I listen to on SiriusXM Potus channel (https://www.siriusxm.com/channels/potus-politics) declared just yesterday that the ONLY candidate Trump could beat is Biden.

Bits: Anti-vaxx crackpottery; COVID crackpottery; Climate change update

In addition to wanting to rewrite and whitewash the history of slavery in America, DeSantis is an anti-vaxx crackpot. The WaPo reports:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the state’s surgeon general are warning residents under age 65 against the new coronavirus booster, going against the advice of federal health officials who have recommended the shots.

DeSantis and Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo repeated comments made in a live event last week in Jacksonville, Fla., and argued there isn’t enough evidence that the booster’s benefits outweigh any risks. “I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,” DeSantis said in a statement after the call with Ladapo and other doctors, which opened with the title “No way FDA.”

Asked about DeSantis’s vaccine guidance, a spokesperson referred to the governor’s statement on the discussion, which promised to fight “authoritarian policies” around covid.  

Florida leads the country in new covid hospitalizations, with 11.81 per 100,000 in the week ending Sept. 2, a 4.4 percent increase from the previous week.

Great. By opposing vaccination, anti-vaxx crackpots DeSantis and Ladapo use Floridians as guinea pigs to provide researchers with data on how the current COVID strains spread and what the death and illness profiles look like in a population with lots of unvaccinated people. 

And, consider this Germaine special analysis: The crackpots say that because there is not enough evidence of safety and efficacy for the new booster, people under age 65 should not get vaccinated. So, what can one conclude from that? One can and should conclude that (i) DeSantis and Ladapo want old farts to die from vaccine death, otherwise they would have recommended against the vaccine for everyone, and (ii) each illness and death that the two yahoos cause is on them and one should hope that they can be sued for the death and damages that their wrong advice causes. 

See, impeccable logic. You're welcome.

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From the Hey! Did He Grow A Pair? Files: The Hill reports that McCarthy might be getting a bit frustrated with his freak RRA (radical right authoritarian) caucus:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) vented his frustration about the hard-line conservatives [no, not conservatives, RRAs] holding up appropriations, dropping an expletive as he dared his fiercest critics to attempt a vote to oust him.

“If you want to file a motion to vacate, then file the fvcking motion,” McCarthy said, Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) recounted.

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The ex-pres is in a snit because his COVID policy was not properly accounted for. And he is right, he deserves a lot more blame for his massive failures than he is getting. The Hill reports: 

Trump said in an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show” airing Thursday. “I never got, I think, the credit that I deserved on COVID.”

With much of his political base skeptical of coronavirus vaccines, Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has tried to tread carefully when touting the success of his Operation Warp Speed, which developed highly effective and safe vaccines in record time.

Notice the blithering irrationality here? He almost single handedly poisoned the whole idea of vaccines and wearing masks in the minds of tens of millions of Americans but wants more credit for doing a good job? It's freaking insane. He deserves a grade of F. All the needless deaths he caused makes him a mass killer on a scale with killers like Putin and Xi.

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Climate change: Climate change warnings keep coming and the RRA GOP keeps ignoring or denying the data. The AP writes:

Earth is outside its ‘safe operating space for humanity’ 

on most key measurements, study says

Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said.

Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all out of whack, a group of international scientists said in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong direction, the study said.

“We are in very bad shape,” said study co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “We show in this analysis that the planet is losing resilience and the patient is sick.”

So, if you want more pollution, global warming, climate change, human climate deaths, species extinctions and so forth, vote for the RRA Republican Party. 

The research article is here.

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Hunter Biden's laptop did it!

First page of Hunter's lawsuit

Here's some fun bits from Hunter Biden's federal lawsuit in California against a Biden-hating zealot, Garrett Ziegler (an Illinois resident) and his happy crew (in Wyoming?):

1. Garrett Ziegler is a zealot who has waged a sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign against Plaintiff and the entire Biden family for more than two years.

2. Since approximately December 2020, Defendant Ziegler, Defendant ICU and their “team” of volunteers and independent contractors have spent countless hours accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data that they do not own and that they claim to have obtained from hacking into Plaintiff’s iPhone data and from scouring a copy of the hard drive of what they claim to be Plaintiff’s “laptop” computer.

3. Defendants’ actions are unlawful under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030), California’s Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (Cal. Penal Code § 502) and California’s Unfair Competition Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200 et seq.).

4. Plaintiff has demanded Defendants cease their unlawful activities with respect to Plaintiff’s data and return any data in their possession belonging to Plaintiff, but they have flatly and publicly refused to do so. Rather than comply, Defendants have doubled down on their illegal actions and have vowed to continue violating the law with impunity, thereby necessitating this action.

15. Defendant Ziegler is a former Trump White House aide who worked, from February 2019 until January 2021, as a Policy Analyst and, later, as an Associate Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy under the supervision of Dr. Peter Navarro.

21. Plaintiff is unaware of the precise dates on which Defendants have accessed, altered, tampered with, manipulated, damaged and/or copied Plaintiff’s data. According to Defendant Ziegler himself, Defendants spent at least 13 months – from September 2021 through October 2022 – “analyzing the voluminous material from the Biden Laptop.” On information and belief, Defendants’ unlawful access, tampering with, manipulation, damage and copying of Plaintiff’s data has continued beyond October 2022 and is ongoing to this day.

22. Defendant Ziegler has stated publicly that Defendants used Plaintiff’s data from what he calls Plaintiff’s “laptop” computer to create a voluminous report entitled Report on the Biden Laptop, which Defendants first published on or about October 19, 2022. In addition, in or around May 2022, Defendants used Plaintiff’s data from the claimed Plaintiff’s “laptop” computer to create what Defendant Ziegler has described as “an online searchable database of 128,000 emails found on the Biden Laptop.” Plaintiff has never authorized or consented to any access of his data by any Defendant (or anyone working with any Defendant) at any time or for any purpose.

23. Defendants not only admit to accessing, tampering with, manipulating and copying Plaintiff’s data from their claimed Plaintiff’s “laptop” computer without Plaintiff’s authorization or consent, they regularly brag about their illegal activities in interviews with members of the media, on social media, and on right-wing podcasts.

There sure are a heck of a lot nasty politics-related of lawsuits flying around these days. 

Q: Was it this bad when W or Obama was in office?