Trump, Nikki Haley & the "Instant Karma" of Racism in the GOP

Is there anything more pathetic than watching Nikki Haley continually assert that the US is not a racist country, only to be subjected to racism by Trump and the MAGA-hordes for her own South Asian heritage? And will she ever learn? No. Blinded completely by ambition, Haley long ago sold her soul to a toxic Republican party with obvious racist markers for political gain. Most recently, she was asked by Brian Kilmeade in a Fox interview a few days ago if she was "involved in a racist party." Her reply was as patently absurd-- and offensive-- as every aspect of the GOP in 2024:

"NO. WE'RE NOT A RACIST COUNTRY, BRIAN. WE'VE NEVER BEEN A RACIST COUNTRY."

 As Politico notes:

On the one hand, she wants credit for being the first minority [Indian-American] woman governor, the same one who led the charge, under pressure, to take down the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds following the racist terrorist attack at a Black church in 2015 — that same church President Joe Biden visited last week to woo Black voters. Race had a lot — if not everything — to do with those events.

It wasn’t the first time she stumbled on race. Just last month, Haley failed to name slavery as a leading cause for the Civil War, only to come back later with “of course the Civil War was about slavery, we know that,” following a torrent of negative reports which forced her course correction.

 

Does she really not notice the racism directed squarely at her in the ongoing present by Trump? I mean, even after saying,  "I would pardon Trump if he is found guilty," in late December, Trump re-posted,  on Jan. 8, a false meme asserting that the US Constitution "disqualifies Haley from presidential or vice presidential candidacy."  It's pretty clear she's running for a VP slot on the Trump ticket, or some other major position, even as Trump continues to "other" her as un-American woman supposedly ineligible to run for office as she is doing right now.. So even though he's insulted her ethnic background as recently as Jan. 8, she set herself up for some real instant karma in an interview on Fox & Friends this past Tuesday. There, Haley showed an eagerness, yet again, to whitewash US history (literally)  in exchange for Trump and MAGA approval, by saying "The US was never a racist country."  She also made a speech which sounded triumphal after the primary result in which she was a distant third.

So, what was her reward for sucking up to Trump and ignoring her own history of being an object of his racist rants?  This is what Trump posted hours after the primary speech she made on Tuesday on his Truth Social platform: 

Anyone listening to Nikki “Nimrada” Haley’s wacked out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary. She didn’t, and she couldn’t even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious, who’s out of money, and out of hope. Nikki came in a distant THIRD! She said she would never run against me, “he was a great President,” and she should have followed her own advice. Now she’s stuck with WEAK POLICIES, and a VERY STRONG MAGA BASE, and there’s just nothing she can do!

  

Did you get that, Nikki NIMRADA Haley? That's called a lesson in racism 101. Making the barb worse than it would otherwise be is the (intentional?) misspelling of her given first name, Nimarata.  I doubt she'll learn her lesson, though. Trump has used her given name to "other" her in the past, and she continues to pursue a career in the racist's shadow. Still, her grovelling despite being treated like a second class citizen by Trump and others in the MAGA-sphere illustrates the blind lust for power and nihilism that IS  the Republican party today. At the risk of sounding mean, she richly deserves every bit of this abuse. She knows damn well about racism in the country's history and ongoing present. She is even willing to suffer its indignities in the desperate hope of getting to once again serve in a racist Trump administration.

 

 

News bits: Christian nationalism attacks; Senate Democrats retreat; Etc.

Rolling Stone reports about an apparently illegal CN (Christian nationalist) effort to get MAGA churches in to support DJT’s planned kleptocratic, theocratic, plutocratic dictatorship: 

Christian Nationalists Team Up on Illicit Push 

to Get Churches to Campaign for Trump

Far-right “apostle” Lance Wallnau and Turning Point USA are partnering on a campaign to turn swing-state churches into Trump turnout machines

CHRISTIAN NATIONALISTS ARE joining forces to recruit swing-state, MAGA-leaning churches to help elect Donald Trump in 2024. It’s a brazen effort to transform religious congregations — which are technically supposed to keep electoral politics out of the pulpit — into a campaign powerhouse for the former president.

During a weekend broadcast of his podcast, the influential Christian nationalist “apostle” Lance Wallnau unveiled a new collaboration with Turning Point USA that aims to get “civically enlightened” pastors to turn out their faithful for the “America First agenda.” The effort will be primarily focused, Wallnau said, in the purple states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia.

For weeks, Wallnau has been dropping hints about a swing-state effort to turn out coreligionists for Trump. And during the Saturday broadcast of the Lance Wallnau Show, he announced that he’s joined forces with Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a powerful conservative group that has recently embraced Christian nationalism, including by promoting a 50-state prayer tour at the nation’s state houses.  

The partnership — which Wallnau is referring to as a “Courage Tour” — seeks to spur conservative churches directly into the political arena. This is risky business: Under a 1954 law known as the Johnson Amendment, churches and other nonprofits are banned from “engaging in any political campaign activity.”

The law is rarely enforced, and has been skirted by churches of all political orientations — whether by pastors who make their personal endorsements public or by congregations organizing turnout-boosting efforts like “souls to the polls.”

As one can see from the two highlighted paragraphs, our pants and our defenses are down. The law protecting us is not enforced. 

We left to the mercy of merciless, bigoted Christian Taliban zealots working to impose Christian Sharia law on all Americans, other than CN elites of course.  

Christian Taliban elites Charlie Kirk (left)

and Lance Wallnau (right)

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The New Republic raises a great question about Senate Democrats:

Trump Pocketed Millions in Foreign Payments. 

Why Won’t Senate Democrats Investigate?

Jamie Raskin and House Democrats unearthed dynamite. But they can’t subpoena. Senate Democrats can. So—will they?

Earlier this month, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released an explosive report documenting that Donald Trump’s businesses pocketed at least $7.8 million in payments from foreign governments during his presidency. Disturbingly, the report noted that Democrats could have uncovered far more such foreign booty but were thwarted when GOP capture of the House deprived them of subpoena power.

So why aren’t Senate Democrats—who do have subpoena power, as they are in the majority—following up on the House Democrats’ investigation?  

Then there’s the politics. A big reason Republicans have manufactured fake scandals about President Biden and foreign dealings is to ensure that Trump’s actual corruption—and his likely criminality—gets lost in a fog of both-sides news coverage. [That’s an example of the FTZWS* propaganda tactic]

Again, us Americans are hopeless with our pants and defenses down. Law enforcement is broken. The Dem Party is a sick joke. The pro-kleptocratic dictatorship GOP is morally rotted to is core. The MSM is still mostly clueless, subverted and incompetent. Some Churches are being weaponized against democracy, our civil liberties, inconvenient truth and good faith sound reasoning.

* Flood the zone with shit

Pants down engagement posture

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Raw Story reports about another ferocious Christianity attack on democracy, secularism, truth and sanity:

Trump lawyer Alina Habba blames mysterious 

‘demonic plan’ for ex-president’s court cases

Alina Habba told a group of nearly 90,000 prayer warriors Sunday that the many court cases of Donald Trump were the work of Satan, new video shows.

Habba appeared on the Arc of Grace Ministries’ live broadcast to detail her battle to save America’s justice system from what she described as a nefarious foe.

“There’s God’s plan and then there’s the demonic plan,” Habba explained to Amanda Grace and 87,000 viewers of the online prophet’s YouTube show. “We need to fight these people that are obviously coordinated and are trying to have a crusade of election interference.”

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is mucho confused. He says that some Trump supporters are “out of touch with reality.” He says he is having a “hard time understanding why” Trump's legal issues don’t “seem to be moving the needle” with more voters. Poor Mittens. He’s soooo clueless it’s almost adorable. Maybe if he engaged in some more tax evasion, that would cheer him up.

Q: Why do churches that go along with attacks like this on democracy, innocent people (the ‘demons’) and the rule of law still get tax break privileges? Are we crazy-go-nuts, or are things just supposed to work like this?

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From the Rut Roh, We’re Hosed Files: Also meanwhile, back to the USSC rauchfest. During oral arguments yesterday, several of the Republican authoritarian radical right plutocrats signaled that they are ready to rip the guts out of nearly all federal agencies. The Hill reports, incorrectly calling the authoritarian plutocrats “conservatives”:

The Supreme Court’s conservatives appeared inclined to cut back the regulatory power of federal agencies, with several justices during a pair of arguments Wednesday seeming ready to overrule a legal doctrine that has bolstered agencies’ authority for decades.

Over more than three hours of argument, the justices put the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer on defense as she sought to preserve Chevron deference, which instructs courts to defer to agencies’ interpretation of federal law if it could have multiple meanings.

The practice has strengthened presidential administrations’ ability to regulate wide aspects of daily life. The range of examples referenced at the arguments revealed the breadth of Chevron’s impact: artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, environmental protections and more.

Although several conservative justices railed against the precedent during Wednesday’s arguments, it remains unclear whether a majority is willing to outright overrule Chevron, which would mark a major legal victory for business and anti-regulatory interests. The court could instead narrow the doctrine’s scope without explicitly disavowing it.

In particular, three members of the high court’s conservative wing — Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — reiterated their long-publicized concerns about the precedent’s viability.

“The government always wins,” Gorsuch said.

Gorsuch in particular hates federal agencies. His seething anger apparently dates back to the 1980s when his mommy was head of the EPA and got hounded out of power when she tried to gut the EPA’s regulations and power. Gorsuch is blinded by his authoritarian hate his huge grudge lust. Evidence of blindness is his insulting, arrogant blatant lie “the government always wins.” In reality, the special interests who run the government usually win and us regular people usually lose.

Neil Gorsuch - do not be fooled by his smiley

face, he is driven by radical plutocratic rage and hate

CNN reported about Gorsuch yesterday:

Neil Gorsuch has a grudge against federal agencies. 

He holds their fate in his hands

Anne Gorsuch, a former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, cut a flamboyant, defiant figure in early 1980s Washington as she slashed air and water quality regulations.

She fought with environmentalists, was held in contempt by Congress and eventually resigned under pressure from the Ronald Reagan White House that had championed her. Her memoir was, appropriately, entitled: “Are You Tough Enough?”

Her son Neil Gorsuch, a Supreme Court justice since 2017, has shown his own brand of defiance and anti-regulatory fervor.

In recent years, Justice Gorsuch has voted against regulations that protect the environment, student-debt forgiveness and Covid-19 precautions. 

He has led calls on the court for reversal of a 1984 Supreme Court decision that gives federal agencies considerable regulatory latitude and that, coincidentally traces to his mother’s tenure. The Supreme Court will hear a pair of cases on Wednesday testing that 40-year-old case known as Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which has become the touchstone for resolving conflicts over agency power.

See, it’s rut roh time, especially for the EPA and environmental protections for American citizens.

…/- - -/…

Dot dot dot / dash dash dash / dot dot dot.  That’s Morse Code for SOS.  Most everyone is familiar with that distress designation.

What does 'SOS' mean?

According to an article in USA Today: Many think "SOS" stands for "save our souls" or "save our ship," but it actually doesn't stand for anything. SOS is a Morse Code distress signal.

Morse Code is a system that uses dots, dashes and spaces to communicate letters and numbers. It was first created during the 1830s by Samuel F.B. Morse but was later improved in 1851 to create the simpler, more precise International Morse Code System.

The original distress signal was CQD, which stood for “seeking you, distress", or "all stations, distress," according to PBS. This was widely used by the British, while Germans used SOE and the Americans used NC, which meant "call for help without delay."

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Okay, okay, that’s already TMI. 😁 Enough history lesson. Where could I possibly be going here?  Well, I’ll tell you. Step right this way… 👇

I’m going “religious” on you. Religion-wise, I’m wondering how, or if, our consciousness is the same thing as our soul.

When it comes to “religion talk,” there is a lot of talk about our souls. The religious believers want to save them for all of us. They want to “Save Our Souls.” 

Now the questions: 

• If you are a religious believer, how do YOU see the two, consciousness versus the soul?
• If you are not a religious believer, how do YOU see the two, consciousness versus the soul?  For example, is consciousness just an “awareness” whereas the soul is “something different/apart/religious/holy/morality driven/etc.?”
• Talk about these phenomena called “consciousness” and “soul.”  No matter your place on the religion spectrum, including off of it, give us your take.

News bits: Various items

From the Oops, Unintended Consequences Files: China Told Women to Have Babies, but Its Population Shrank Again -- The number of babies born in China declined for the seventh straight year in 2023.

Playing with Pugsley on the 

Liangma River in Beijing

Where’s all the babies?: Can China Reverse Its Population Decline? Just Ask Sweden.

Wealthy countries have been trying to boost their birthrates for decades. The results have been pretty similar. History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little that its government can do to reverse it. And as a country’s population grows more top-heavy, a smaller, younger generation bears the increasing costs of caring for a larger, older one.

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A note about the USSC case that could gut federal agencies: Maybe the reason the USSC took up a nearly identical case to go with the first one was to get Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson back on the decision. She recused herself from the first case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo because she was an appeals court judge of that case. So, five months after she recused herself, in an extraordinary move the USSC accepted a second, nearly identical case Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce that Jackson Brown is not conflicted out of. The most likely reason for taking that 2nd case was to get all 9 justices on the decision. 

I interpret that to mean that, to make the political optics look as good as possible, the six radical authoritarian Republicans want Brown Jackson on the decision because they plan to gut federal agency power. Doing that will shift massive power from government to morally rotted, deeply corrupt, elite brass knuckles capitalist plutocrats. This step by the radical USSC would mark a major step in the dismantling of protections for American democracy, the rule of law, and indirectly most of our remaining civil liberties. The NYT comments:

The fishermen are represented by two conservative groups, Cause of Action Institute and the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Both have financial ties to the network of foundations and advocacy organizations funded by Charles Koch, a billionaire who has long supported conservative and libertarian causes.

As usual for the MSM, the NYT continues to fail to understand the nature of the American  radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement. It is not conservative. It is staunchly authoritarian, anti-democracy, anti-transparency and morally rotted. It is all about transferring a lot more power and wealth to those who already have vast power and wealth.

When power flows from government to special interests, elite plutocrats in this instance, civil liberties inevitably come under pressure. One must keep track of the flow of power. Power doesn’t just go away. It tends to flow to where existing wealth and power already are.

This reporting well and truly scares the bejesus out of me. With some luck, I misread the tea leaves. But I just can’t envision any other highly plausible reason for the USSC to take up that 2nd case. Now I’m deeply worried.

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From the Brass Knuckles Capitalism Files: Research shows drug prices in the United States are nearly double those in other well-off countries. The NYT comments:

In 2018, they were nearly double those in France and Britain, even when accounting for the discounts that can substantially reduce how much American health plans and employers pay.

“The U.S. market is the bank for pharmaceutical companies,” said Ameet Sarpatwari, an expert in pharmaceutical policy at Harvard Medical School. “There’s a keen sense that the best place to try to extract profits is the U.S. because of its existing system and its dysfunction.”

The NYT points to six factors unique to the US: (i) the absence of governments negotiating drug prices, (ii) no price control laws, (iii) incentives that reward doctors, hospitals and middle men to all make more from higher drug prices, (iv) a fragmented and complex system that adds cost but delivers little or nothing in return, (v) companies game the patent  system, and (vi) the core brass knuckles capitalist moral imperative of charging what the market will bear (which is defined by the drug companies, not defined in terms of adverse impacts on people who cannot afford what drug companies say they can afford -- it is capitalism-centric, not consumer-centric).

It is no wonder at all that the American people are being fleeced horribly in the name of sacred, infallible unregulated brass knuckles capitalism. 

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From the Clueless Blowhards & Arrogant Hypocrites Files: The Hill writes: Pope Francis urges avoiding pornography, ‘winning the battle against lust’ -- Pope Francis on Wednesday encouraged Catholics to avoid pornography, while noting sexual pleasure “is a gift from God.” Pornography undermines sexual pleasure and such “satisfaction without relationship” can lead to forms of addiction, the pontiff argued during a catechesis on the “vice of lust” at his general audience in Saint Peter’s Square on Wednesday.

If porn has some effect to reduce unwanted babies, that is good. The Pope (1) needs to deal with wanton lust and rape in his own morally rotted institution, and (2) support all those hundreds of millions of babies born into hopeless poverty that his hypocrite church commands and encourages poor people to have.  

In my opinion, the arrogance, hypocrisy, self-delusion and sheer lunacy about social issues that comes from Catholic popes is staggering.

This one is for you Francis

Trump stuff; Billionaires wait for huge USSC decision

One source summarized it like this: Florida Man Facing 91 Criminal Counts Wins Iowa Caucuses

But it wasn't a big blowout for the IFM (indicted Florida man), which is rather good news.

Another source commented: Trump poised to win 98 out of 99 Iowa counties

The AP commented: In his closing pitch to Iowa Republicans, Trump says their votes can help him punish his enemies

Germaine’s learned analysis: The GOP is what it is, pro-corrupt dictatorship, and what it is really sucks.

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Lots of sources are reporting that tomorrow, America's authoritarian radical right USSC will hear arguments in two related cases brought by fishermen unhappy about fishing quotas the federal government imposed to keep fish stocks from collapsing due to overfishing. The cases are Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, and Relentless v. Department of Commerce. 

What this is really about is gutting the power of essentially all federal agencies to make and enforce regulations. Billionaires and elite brass knuckles capitalists desperately want this case to be a win for the fishermen. That would be a gigantic win for regulation-free power and the access to more wealth that power brings to the elites. 

The NYT writes:

A Potentially Huge Supreme Court Case Has a Hidden Conservative Backer

The case, to be argued by lawyers linked to the petrochemicals billionaire Charles Koch, could sharply curtail the government’s regulatory authority

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Wednesday that, on paper, are about a group of commercial fishermen who oppose a government fee that they consider unreasonable. But the lawyers who have helped to propel their case to the nation’s highest court have a far more powerful backer: the petrochemicals billionaire Charles Koch.

The case is one of the most consequential to come before the justices in years. A victory for the fishermen would do far more than push aside the monitoring fee, part of a system meant to prevent overfishing, that they objected to. It would very likely sharply limit the power of many federal agencies to regulate not only fisheries and the environment, but also health care, finance, telecommunications and other activities, legal experts say.

“It might all sound very innocuous,” said Jody Freeman, founder and director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program and a former Obama White House official. “But it’s connected to a much larger agenda, which is essentially to disable and dismantle federal regulation.”

The lawyers who represent the New Jersey-based fishermen, are working pro bono and belong to a public-interest law firm, Cause of Action, that discloses no donors and reports having no employees. However, court records show that the lawyers work for Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by Mr. Koch, the chairman of Koch Industries and a champion of anti-regulatory causes.  

The law firm’s board of directors includes a top lawyer at the firm that has represented Koch Industries in a range of cases, like the company’s past defense against lawsuits linked to its handling of petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining, and in its opposition to stronger regulations on the substance.

The lawyer also represents Koch Industries in an ongoing lawsuit filed by the Minnesota attorney general that accuses the company of deceptive practices related to climate change.

As usual, corrupt billionaires and big corporations operate in as much secrecy as they can to hide their clearly authoritarian, government-hating wealth and power agenda. The capitalists (like Christian theocrats) want and mostly seem to get effective plausible deniability for the criticism they are corrupt plutocrats (or theocrats) with no social conscience. 

A decision in these two cases could easily gut the much of the power of federal agencies, which are already vehemently hated by the authoritarian radical right Republican Party (ARRRP). In essence, this case could wind up killing the mythical “socialist deep state”, causing a massive flow of power from citizens and the government to elite radical authoritarian plutocrats and Christian theocrats.

So even if DJT does not win the White House in the 2024 elections, the anti-democratic ARRRP monster has a life and vitality of its own. As I have warned many times here, the radicalized, authoritarian USSC is a major part of the radical right’s democracy-hating monster and it operated independently from the corrupt dictator DJT. In the end, one will probably eat the other. Right now, I don’t know which beast will eat and which will be eaten.

TIME TO PANIC!

 NO! NOT because Trump won the Iowa caucus. THAT was expected. BUT because of............

Germany is preparing for Putin attack against NATO in 2025: Leaked secret plans reveal step-by-step how Russia will escalate conflict to all-out war in 18 months

Germany is preparing for Vladimir Putin's forces to attack NATO in 2025, according to leaked secret plans. 

Secret documents from the German Ministry of Defence reveal a step-by-step doomsday guide on how Russia will escalate the conflict in Ukraine to an all-out war in just 18 months.

The leaked plans, published by German newspaper Bild, reveal in detail the path to a Third World War with Putin using Belarus as a launching pad for an invasion - as he did in February 2022 for his war in Ukraine. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12964575/Germany-preparing-Putin-attack-against-NATO-2025-Leaked-secret-plans-reveal-step-step-Russia-escalate-conflict-war-18-months.html

Whatchathink?

Either a .............

OR..................