Add the humble Oreo cookie to the long and growing list of ordinary bits of Americana the self-declared patriots of the MAGA movement now are expected to shun. As Ashlie Stevens reported at Salon on Monday, the usual yapping heads of the right are so furious at the brand for sponsoring a pro-LGBTQ short film that they are calling on their followers to "boycott" the company. Well, not the actual company — Oreos are owned by a multinational corporation that owns hundreds of everyday brands — but just the cookie itself. Ideally, you also issue a lecture on the evils of homosexuality to the poor checkout girl who didn't even ask why you were going with Nillas instead of Oreos for your cookie purchase today.
Like every right-wing "boycott" before — from the one against Starbucks to the one against Gillette to the various Twitter "boycotts" to this current Disney "boycott" — the Oreo "boycott" isn't really a boycott. A genuine boycott is much like an economic sanction, except imposed by organized citizens instead of governements. It's an effort to cause economic pain for a company or other entity, with an eye towards pressuring them to change their political behavior. The most famous example is the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, in which Black residents of the Alabama city refused to ride the bus until it was desegregated. A more recent example was the targeted boycott of Wirecutter, in which the union asked readers to avoid the site during their strike.
The Republican Party is committed to tearing America apart by pitting us against each other. Why would they do this?
Here’s a clue: 63 Republicans voted this week against a resolution in support of NATO.
Yes, they voted for Putin’s side of the war. Seriously. Although it’s been largely ignored by American TV media, you can read all about it over at The Washington Post in an article by Aaron Blake titled: “Why 30 percent of the House GOP voted against reaffirming NATO support.”
Their unflinching support of Putin comes shortly after Koch Industries announced they would be joining Halliburton and Cargill among the handful of American companies staying in Russia.
In a historic 53-47 vote, the Senate has confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. The 51-year old Jackson will take the seat of the justice she once clerked for, Stephen Breyer, when he retires before the October term. Vice President Kamala Harris—who represents two firsts as a woman and person of color to serve in that office—presided, making the moment doubly historic.
Jackson’s impeccable qualifications have been well-documented. Her path to this confirmation was as heinous as Republicans could make it. But to paraphrase Sen. Cory Booker, those Republican senators can’t steal our joy.
“I want to tell you, when I look at you, this is why I get emotional,” Booker said to Jackson on her final day in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I’m sorry, you’re a person that is so much more than your race and gender. You’re a Christian, you’re a mom, you’re an intellect, you love books, but for me, I’m sorry, it’s hard for me not to look at you and see my mom, not to see my cousins—one of them who had to come here and sit behind you. She had to have your back. I see my ancestors and yours. Nobody’s going to steal the joy of that woman in the street or the calls I’m getting or the texts. Nobody’s going to steal that joy. You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.”
All around the United States, far-right MAGA Republicans have been pushing bills designed to bully and intimidate schoolteachers and/or librarians. One of their goals is to purge public K-12 schools and libraries of any subject matter that makes them uncomfortable, whether it pertains to gay rights, feminism or racism. Books that have been targeted range from Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” to Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on April 7, Paul Rosenzweig — a former official for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — warns that this movement is right out of the authoritarian playbook.
“In 1787, the Framers of the Constitution saw important values inherent in the principle of freedom of inquiry: the search for truth, scientific progress, cultural development, increased virtue among citizens, holding governmental officials to account, strengthening the community, and serving as a check on politicians,” Rosenzweig explains. “Today, as we rush to ban books and limit the freedom of inquiry, we are tossing aside those values. In doing so, we risk becoming that which our forebears rebelled against. Instead of exalting the liberty of free inquiry, some now seek to restrict thought and channel it into ‘accepted’ ideas.
— from The New Civil Rights Movement
The Alabama Senate on Thursday passed a dual anti-transgender bathroom bill coupled with a last-minute “Don’t Say Gay” amendment. The vote was 26-5. They are now voting on an additional bill attacking transgender youth, a ban on medically-necessary treatment, including widely-accepted puberty blockers.
The dual anti-trans public school bathroom bill and “Don’t Say Gay” legislation will have to go back to the House for final passage after the additional amendment was added.
The Alabama Senate has a whopping 27-8 Republican supermajority.
“We just don’t think it’s appropriate to be talking about homosexuality and gender identity,” said Sen. Shay Shelnutt, who added the “Don’t Say Gay” amendment, the Montgomery Advertiser reports. “You know, they should be talking about math, science (and) writing, especially in elementary school.”
War is not a performance. Ukraine is not a stage. The death and destruction aren't happening to so we can "take a stand" and feel better about ourselves. It is real, and we should all be thinking about how to stop it as quickly and effectively as possible.
That may seem obvious, but a concert promoter's marquee (above) and shopping-mall posters reflect a war fever that's become all too prevalent in the West.
The words, "First They Came For ... Ukraine," have been splashed above ads for upcoming concerts by the Lumineers, Tears For Fears, country singer Dierks Bentley and a host of other musical acts and comedians. The promoter behind the concerts and the posters is Washington D.C.-based I.M.P. Concerts. Its venues include the 9:30 Club, where the area's 80's punk scene produced bands like Minor Threat and Fugazi, as well as larger ones like the Anthem and the Merriwether Post Pavilion.
Excuse me if I wander a little today—and if it bothers you, don't blame me, blame Vladimir Putin. After all, I didn't decide to invade Ukraine, the place my grandfather fled almost 140 years ago. I suspect, in fact, that I was an adult before I even knew such a place existed. If I could be accused of anything, maybe you could say that, for most of my life, I evaded Ukraine.
All of us are, in some fashion, now living inside the shockwaves from the Russian president's grotesque invasion and from a war taking place close to the heart of Europe. I was not quite one year old in May 1945 when World War II in Europe ended, along with years of carnage unparalleled on this planet. Millions of Russians, six million Jews, god knows how many French, British, Germans, Ukrainians, and… well, the list just goes on and on… died and how many more were wounded or displaced from their homes and lives. Given Adolf Hitler's Germany, we're talking about nothing short of a hell on Earth. That was Europe from the late 1930s until 1945.
In case you haven’t noticed, a major consequence of the Ukraine war is the bonanza it has provided for the oil and gas industry. US sanctions on Russian oil and gas have given the industry yet another reason for more drilling and fiercer opposition to environment-friendly energy sources.
Yes, a tight oil market and inflationary prices are good for electric car production. But the oil and gas industry is doing even better, not just because of high gas prices, but also because they can demand more access to public lands for drilling—and blame the administration for the high gas prices if the companies don’t get to drill more. This is a false argument on five counts.
Here in Port Arthur, we know firsthand the cost of our country's addiction to fossil fuels. As Ukranians fight for their country, the fossil fuel industry in the United States and its political allies have chosen to capitalize on the ongoing crisis. The same companies who made tens of billions of dollars working hand-in-hand with Putin for years in Russia—like BP, Exxon, and Shell—are now making record profits while gas prices rise, and pushing for increased drilling.
Congressional Republicans and Democrats, like Senator Joe Manchin, are calling for fossil fuel expansion and using proposed sanctions on Russian gas as a cover. Just last week, President Biden approved more liquified natural gas (LNG) exports from the Gulf Coast to Europe in an effort to lessen their dependence on Russian energy. But new fossil fuel projects and more drilling won't impact short-term prices at the pump, or support Europe's current gas shortage.
Here's the reality: President Biden and European leaders' deal to ramp up new fossil fuel infrastructure and fracked gas exports is a death sentence for those of us on the frontlines of this climate emergency.
Two retired U.S. Air Force generals who were deeply involved in the early development of the U.S. drone war program have suggested introducing the notorious MQ-9 Reaper, the most powerful U.S. killer drone, into the skies over Ukraine.
Such a move would open a new, even more dangerous phase in Ukraine’s war in which Reapers, and MQ-1 Gray Eagle drones, both widely used in Afghanistan, might be put at the service of the Ukrainian military to attack Russian forces in Ukraine and, quite possibly, to conduct assassination and bombardment inside Russia.
These drone operations, which would almost certainly be reliant on U.S. military personnel, could lead to a nuclear response from Russia if they are seen to further signal a determination by the United States to fragment Russia’s central government and turn Russia into a failed state like Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. The United States and western Europe waged wars of choice in these countries, presumably because the countries had not subordinated their national interests to the national interests of the United States and Western Europe.
Professor Harvey Kaye and Alan Minsky, Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America, recently launched a proposal calling for a 21st century Economic Bill of Rights. It is a necessary proposal that creates a clear agenda for Progressive Democrats that distinguishes them from centrists. The policy implications can't be understated either, if adopted these proposals would lift millions out of poverty. I’m writing this response article to emphasize the importance of bringing the disabled into the forefront of the conversation, and shed light on the struggles we face engaging with society. Discrimination against the disabled is often hard to see, especially as it relates to our participation in the economy. We're discouraged from seeking the American dream by our laws, the economy, and physical barriers. We’re discouraged from living independently, owning a home, even from marriage.
This response is not meant to tear down the proposal but to offer important considerations as these ideas shift from proposals to legislation, from the perspective of a disabled progressive. I will go through Kaye and Minsky’s proposed Economic Bill of Rights point-by-point and address the concerns related specifically to the disabled.
Russia isn’t the only or the worst war criminal
The United Nations General Assembly voted 93-24 with 58 abstentions to drop the Russian Federation from membership on the UN Human Rights Council, based on allegations and grisly videos and photos appearing to show execution-style slayings of civilians in Ukraine by Russian troops.
While there are calls for independent investigations into those allegations, the US and NATO member state governments have been pushing the claim that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine including the major war crime of invading another country, the unasked question in the US media is: Why hasn't the US been kicked out of the Human Rights Council for similar war crimes that aren't at all allegations, but are well documented fact? Why indeed, for all the accusations that Russian President Vladimir Putin is himself a war criminal responsible for all these crimes, haven't a number of US presidents still living been accused of war crimes?
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Climate change/global warming is an existential threat to humanity. But the main effect of it, warmer weather, is repeatedly reported as something positive. What we really need to be spurred into action is a seriously painful development.
SUPERINTENDENT AS VALUES INSTILLER OR DISTILLER DEPENDING UPON THE HOUR.
Often the board of education members who would have preferred some other person as SoS, were also the ones whose attitudes were, "like a parent told me this so that must be so, so I'm telling you superintendent so you can fix it all better." I disliked those attitudes a lot, as I did the the parents who held them! On a different hand, as we discussed a parental complaint that appeared to be be true, a principal might sometimes ask, 'how many parents complained about this or that, to which my righteous and forceful response, though not particularly friendly response, was something on the order of, "What the fuck difference does how many make? If only one was right to complain, we don't have a quorum to meet before we act on legitimate parental concerns! The number of complaints never controlled our responses. A policy or regulation that needed work received it, even if only one parent complained. We cared completely about the substance of complaints, whether from one or many parents. Although officially, parents needed to try and resolve alleged problems withprincipals before daring to approach my august SoS self with their problems. That message to parents was delivered more appropriately than that. I wasn't as careful explaining to principals who'd ask me how many parents had complained about a particular concern. A kindergarten sense of right and wrong should have taught them that long before they became principals.
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Yesterday, CEOs from America’s largest oil companies appeared before a House committee probing why they’re raising prices at the pump while raking in record profits and spending huge sums buying back their shares of stock. (Last year, Chevron, Exxon, BP, and Shell spent more than $44 billion on buybacks and dividends, and plan to spend $74 billion this year — money that should be used instead to lower prices at the pump.) It’s price-gouging and profiteering, and we’re all paying for it.
Republicans, meanwhile, are focusing on sex. I’ll explain why in a moment, but first consider the extent of the Republican sex obsession.
In her recent confirmation hearings, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was barraged with questions from Republican senators about her alleged lenient treatment of child pornographers. It was a baseless claim, but that didn’t matter to the Republicans who kept hammering her. In four days of hearings, the phrase ‘child porn’ (or ‘pornography’ or ‘pornographer’) was mentioned 165 times, along with 142 mentions of “sex” or related terms like “sexual abuse” or “sex crimes.”
— from The New Civil Rights Movement
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) shut down Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) after she broke House protocol by heckling his remarks as he called for former top Trump officials Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino to be cited for criminal contempt of Congress.
“What about Ashli Babbitt?” Greene yelled at Raskin, according to The Washington Times. “What about Russian collusion?”
Raskin, a former constitutional law professor at American University Washington College of Law, was undeterred.
“The gentlelady I think said something about ‘the Russian hoax, or ‘Russian collusion.’ I accept the heckling, Mr. Speaker. That’s alright. Because if she wants to continue to stand with Vladimir Putin and his brutal, bloody invasion against the people of Ukraine, she is free to do so – and we understand there is a strong Trump/Putin axis in the gentlelady’s party,” Raskin charged.
Republicans love nothing more than setting up their own "alternatives" to the cultural institutions they believe have been "tainted" by liberalism. Did Twitter ban you for racist vitriol and inciting domestic terrorism? Then try to start (but fail) at creating a Twitter of your own. Don't like that Disney disavows hatred of LGBTQ people? Try to start a children's entertainment company that pushes dull right-wing propaganda instead. Angry that major razor companies won't financially support fascism? Make your own razors! Are you just generally mad at Starbucks because you have a sneaking suspicion that drinking coffee is somehow effeminate? Start your own coffee company that's draped in gun-related imagery and pretend it doesn't scream "overcompensation." There will surely be a "conservative" Oreo to come out any day now that the right is mad about the company running pro-LGBTQ ads.
Even though they tend to be a little quieter about it these days, Republicans are also still mad that queer people have supposedly sullied the heterosexual institution of marriage. So it shouldn't be a surprise that they're scheming for ways to create an "alternative" form of marriage, one that excludes same-sex couples. But unlike "alternative" cartoons or razors, it appears that the long-term goal here is to make the straights-only "alternative" the only way to get married.
John C. Eastman was the author of an infamous two-page memo that found the far-right attorney and Donald Trump supporter outlining a scheme in which then-Vice President Mike Pence would throw out the 2020 presidential election results during a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021. Eastman’s insurrectionist activities have been probed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 committee, which, according to CNN, has “obtained a cache of emails” that Eastman “sought to keep secret.”
CNN reporters Katelyn Polantz and Paul LeBlanc explain, “The 101 e-mails, exchanged between January 4 and January 7, 2021,were released to the committee after Judge David Carter ruled that Eastman had not made a sufficient claim to attorney-client privilege. One e-mail, a draft memo for Rudy Giuliani, was obtained by the committee because the judge decided it was potentially being used to plan a crime. The memo recommended that then-Vice President Mike Pence reject some states’ electors during the January 6 congressional meeting.”
In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Monday, Trump Justice Amy Coney Barrett previewed the horrors to come from the extremist Supreme Court majority. She attempted to posit that the increasingly destructive opinions the majority has issued and will issue are not aimed at imposing a “policy result,” and that Americans should wait and “read the opinion” to learn why the court took those controversial actions.
Two days later, from the shadow docket, Barrett and four of her colleagues gutted states’ ability to protect their own waters, and with it put the 1972 Clean Water Act in jeopardy. Without issuing an opinion for any of us to read. The shadow docket ruling comprises one paragraph reinstating a Trump environmental rule that limits states’ ability to block projects that could pollute rivers and streams pending an appeals court hearing. There is no decision to read in the policymaking move by five conservative justices.
Ron DeSantis, the most likely GOP candidate for president in 2024, has gone to war with trans people and Disney, saying he’s doing so to protect Florida’s children. It’s a slick trick that seems to be working for him and his Republican colleagues, and is thus spreading to other states.
Authoritarian politicians in electoral democracies typically exploit people’s fear to gain political power, and then use that power to destroy the democracy itself from within. But first they have to create that fear by building up a straw-man villain.
Republicans today are running that strategy to try to turn America, like Hungary, into a strongman oligarchy.
All they need to run the con is to identify a minority group and convince people they’re a threat to the nation:
In the middle of a brutal assault, it's difficult to talk about demilitarization. And so, it was with trepidation that I recently convened a conversation about exactly that.
One of my guests, Anastasiya Leukhina, a war refugee from Ukraine, has a degree in peacebuilding from Notre Dame. In regular times, she said, she'd describe herself as a sort of peacenik, but now, "considering the situation and the losses that we have on the ground, we really need military assistance and we really need modern warfare and we need as much of it as we can get, as soon as possible."
More warfare is certainly coming. Even if Russian forces draw back from Kyiv and negotiations reach a deal, the conflict has already seen massive growth in weapons spending by the EU and NATO, even by countries like Germany and Denmark who've been spending down for years. Russian spending is up, and the US leads the pack. The Biden administration’s proposed Pentagon budget for 2023 stands at $813 billion. It's bigger in real terms than ever before, as bloated as ever and spending on Ukraine is only a tiny fraction of it.
While Franklin Graham recently appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree on a Holy Week ceasefire, there is no ceasefire in Graham’s war against transgender youth and the LGBTQ communities. Graham also blasted Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Jackson: "Where are we going as a nation when a nominee for our highest court will not define what a woman is?" Graham wrote in a March 25 post on Facebook.
No one expects Franklin Graham to be silent. In fact, on any given day, Graham, the son of the late Billy Graham and the head of the relief organization, Samaritan’s Purse, and currently oversees the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, will bloviate with the best of the country’s Christian nationalists. During the past week, Graham denounced the Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), calling the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ guidance, titled “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People,” “one of the most wicked initiatives that we’ve seen come out of Washington.” He followed that up by attacking The Walt Disney Company for opposing Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.
— from Foreign Policy In Focus
A failed military intervention. The genocidal killing of citizens. Economic isolation by the international community. The arrests of anti-war protestors at home and the shuttering of independent media.
Any one of these factors could mark the end of an ordinary political leader. Yet Russian President Vladimir Putin has not only weathered these challenges, his popularity has actually risen. According to the independent Levada polling center, Putin has improved his support among Russian citizens from a 69 percent approval rating in January to 83 percent in recent days. That’s significant even when you discount the steady impact of government propaganda on the Russian capacity for critical thinking.
The images coming out of Bucha, Ukraine, are harrowing, almost surreal.
A quiet residential street filled with smashed and burned war machines, one appearing to have almost melted into the pavement beside a street sign pointing the way to the supermarket.
Civilians searching desperately for missing loved ones with no idea where or how to begin. In the chaos of this charnel house, anyone could be anywhere, everywhere or nowhere.
A Russian tank turret lies in an open field strewn with smaller debris, the tank it belonged to nowhere in sight, a testament to the unspeakable violence that had been visited upon this town.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, imposed a religious test upon Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court hearing, thus violating Article 6 of the Constitution. This begs the question of whether the subject of religion should be raised at all when someone aspires to public office.
It depends on the circumstances. Religion in America is tricky. Some religious beliefs and practices contradict the democratic values that shape our political system. A religion’s adherents will sometimes exploit religion to violate the law and twist public policy.
Graham interrogated Jackson so that a Democrat would know how it feels to be grilled about their religion as was Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who is Catholic, when she was nominated for the court in 2020. Many people fear that Barrett and other justices will apply their religious beliefs to their rulings, but that is not the case for Jackson.
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