The International Criminal Court today issued an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Putin’s commissioner for children’s rights, for war crimes: kidnapping Ukrainian children and transporting them to Russia. Russia does not recognize the ICC, which is established at The Hague—the government seat of the Netherlands—and for its part, the Russian government claims its deportation program is humanitarian and patriotic. The international assessment that Putin and one of his top officials have personally engaged in war crimes drives another wedge between Putin and the rest of the Russian people as over time his inability to interact successfully with the rest of the world will have growing consequences for the people at home,
Very heavy news day. Thanks HRC for organizing it for us. So much corruption and spin and helpful to find clarity here.
I must say the conscription of Ukrainian children certainly pulls at the heart and the future of Ukrainian culture. As any history lover will know it is an old playbook used to crush a culture. One that was used with Native Americans here in our own history. So sad to see these terrorizing acts against culture continued
YOUR CORDIAL PUBLIC SERVICE REMINDER that the end of gerrymandering, limiting dark money, ending voter suppression, codifying reproductive rights, codifying LGBT rights, commonsense gun regulations, police reform, a Civilian Climate Corps, drug price caps, universal childcare and elder care, free preschool and community college, paid family and medical leave, a $15 minimum wage, federal union and worker protections, the child tax credit, 2 new senators from the new state of D.C., a general respite to the nonsense, and so much more... can be all yours in just a little over 600 days if the following things happen with regards to the federal government, which MAKE NO MISTAKE, we still control the composition of. (Call now and tell a friend! Limited time only with a set of steak knives!)
1) Joe Biden needs to stay President. Obviously. And since he is a) doing a good job by b) enacting very popular policies, and c) the US has never elected back-to-back one-term Presidents of different parties, I'd say we are looking good.
2) We need one more anti-filibuster vote in the Senate. To make this happen:
John Tester and Sherrod Brown will need to outperform the rest of the party in their red states of Montana and Ohio, respectively. Both of them have in fact previously outperformed Kerry, Obama, and Clinton by very large margins. They clearly think they can do so again, and we shouldn't doubt them. (If Joe Manchin does so as well, then yay, because an extra seat is helpful. If not, then I can't be bothered, because f#ck that jagweed.)
Elissa Slotkin needs to hold Debbie Stabenow's current seat in Michigan. Slotkin is a fantastic candidate who has won multiple times now in a swingy/conservative area. The Repubs have not won statewide since the early 90s, and have yet to begin finding a viable candidate.
Ruben Gallego needs to replace Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona. He is one of the most popular, vibrant, and hardworking politicians in the blue-ing state, and early polling shows that even in a potential three-way race, he runs neck-and-neck to win. (It will very likely not be a three-way, as our favorite "independent" hasn't even said if she will run again. Anyone want to make bets on which corporate boards she is deciding between? Or maybe she'll just go work at The Gap. Or Gymboree.)
Are you in one of these states? THEIR CAMPAIGNS HAVE ALREADY STARTED! Donate, volunteer, write letters to the editor in support, start talking them up to neighbors. The works!
3) We need to win the House back. Where to look?
The following 23 Repub-held districts were won (or would have been won) by Biden and/or had a margin of ~3% or under in 2022:
Arizona 1st (Schweikert)
Arizona 6th (Ciscomani)
California 13th (Duarte)
California 22nd (Valadao)
California 27th (Garcia)
California 40th (Kim)
California 45th (Steel)
Colorado 3rd (Boebert)
Iowa 3rd (Nunn)
Michigan 10th (James)
Montana 1st (Zinke)
Nebraska 2nd (Bacon)
New Jersey 7th (Kean)
New York 1st (LaLota)
New York 3rd (Santos)
New York 4th (D'Esposito)
New York 17th (Lawler)
New York 19th (Molinaro)
New York 22nd (Williams)
Oregon 5th (Chavez-DeRemer)
Pennsylvania 1st (Fitzpatrick)
Virginia 2nd (Kiggans)
...and the following are the mirror-image Dem-held districts (* means they already won in 2020 with Biden):
Alaska (Peltola)
Colorado 8th (Caraveo)
Connecticut 5th (Hayes)*
Maine 2nd (Golden)*
New Mexico 2nd (Vasquez)
New York 18th (Ryan)
North Carolina 13th (Nickel)
Ohio 9th (Kaptur)*
Oregon 6th (Salinas)*
Pennsylvania 7th (Wild)*
Pennsylvania 8th (Cartwright)*
Washington 3rd (Gluesenkamp-Perez)
If all the Democrats win (and that's plausible - no incumbent Repub was beaten in 2020 after their down midterm), then we only need to flip FIVE of 23 races to take back the trifecta. That's not even all our options in New York ALONE! (Seriously, WTF went on in New York last time? I need it to make sense.) Statistically, a winning presidential ticket should see at least that coattails effect naturally through increased turnout.
Are you in one of these states or districts? Are you anywhere near one of these districts? START GETTING FREAKING READY. We can do this, y'all. Don't let the fact the dreams of glory got another delay distract you. We are so, so close.
IN THE MEANTIME, use the this world wide web of ours to find ways to support Janet Protasiewicz for Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Her winning in a few weeks would flip the court, pretty much guaranteeing gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the chance of election subversion stops in the ultimate tipping-point state.
It’s past time to recognize that The United States is under attack by domestic Christo-Fascists willing to use violence to achieve the goals they are unable to achieve in fair elections. These efforts are funded by a cabal of Wealthy White Male “Christian” oligarchs and authoritarian foreign governments. Letting this assault continue under the guise of Free Speech is suicidal.
So the Federalist Society claims that “democracy… would result… in the tyranny of the majority.” Perhaps they need to be reminded the etymology of the term: “The word democracy comes from the Greek words "demos", meaning people, and "kratos" meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as "power of the people": a way of governing which depends on the will of the people.” https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/democracy
I wonder why the DOD hasn't punished Flynn for his behavior? I thought they could recall and court martial him, or at least deny his benefits and pension due to his being involved in attempts to undermine our government. Is he being protected by his brother and other officers who agree with his right-wing rhetoric?
Stupefied Speaker McCarthy and his Animal House renegades are playing Russian roulette. A stray bullet could splatter the American economy, trigger millions of job losses, and sully the ‘full faith and credit’ of the United States.
These would-be suicide bombers are seeking to hold the once-routine raising of the national debt limit hostage to their demands of no new taxes and draconian slashes in ‘social spending.’ (Such has never occurred under Republican presidents.)
The recent Fed/Treasury emergency measures to prevent a cascade of regional bank bankruptcies following the Silicon Valley Bank depositor debacle is a fire bell of the fragility of our financial system.
Default on America’s national debt would spark a roaring financial fire that would push the United States into recession, shatter our vulnerable credit network, and spread flames throughout the global financial world.
THIS CAN NOT BE PERMITTED TO HAPPEN!
House arsonists may, with their warped minds, believe that triggering a recession would be blamed on President Biden and would assure a White House Republican in 2024. They are woefully mistaken.
President Biden displayed steely boldness in spearheading America’s leadership of an unprecedented Western, NATO, Eastern European, and global riposte to Putin’s brutal assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.
He must be equally bold in assuring that our national debt limit is increased this summer. This is not a matter for fatuous ‘negotiation.’ Rather, it is an imperative for the United States.
President Biden should confront these naysayers with an ultimatum: approve a national debt increase with no supercilious strings.
Were this not to occur, then Biden can accomplish this unilaterally under a legal interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
Good old fashioned American common sense is the appropriate response to Russian roulette.
They will still twist Putin's war crimes against Ukraine's children as virtues and not authoritarianism. As fascists they will fall into Putin's propaganda that someone else (Russia) can raise the children better. It's the same in the U.S. when conservatives have the idea they can raise kidnapped South American children, or poverty level U.S. children their "proper" way. They just can't seem to grasp the concept of it's kidnapping someone else's child. They think their cult will "save" the children. 🙄
I would think that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would sanction Michael Flynn and take away all of his pension and court martial him for going against the constitution. The democrats must be louder than the republicans. The don't understand that the only message getting across is the GOP rewrite
What I find surprising is that US pols (including the President) are not linking Putin to the atrocities committed by Hitler: Violating borders, killing civilians, destroying cities. This man is "Hitler revisited." He needs to be correctly identified as the international pariah that he has become.
…and one of our most recent crimes against children here in the US!
'When a fourth-grader in Florida was frustrated about having to sit out his afternoon recess, he penciled a word on an outdoor bench: kill. A teacher asked him about it, and he said it was what he wanted God to do to him.'
'His mother, Marah Marino, guessed he was hurt and angry. “He’s not a mature 10-year-old,” she said.'
'But soon, a sheriff’s deputy who was working in the school stepped in, using a controversial state law to order an involuntary psychiatric evaluation and confinement for up three days in a mental health facility. Marino, who rushed to the school after getting a call about the incident, was stunned, pleading with the officer and asking to be with her son.'
'The deputy drove away with the terrified boy, and Marino followed closely behind them in her car, watching her son stare out the back window, sobbing, his hand on the glass.'
'Every day in Florida, children and adolescents are involuntarily committed for psychiatric assessments under the Baker Act, a 1971 law. In fiscal year 2020-21, involuntary exams happened more than 38,000 times to children under 18 — an average of more than 100 a day and a nearly 80 percent increase in the past decade, according to the most recent data. The law is so deeply enmeshed into the state’s culture that it is widely used as a verb, as in: The 6-year-old was “Baker Acted.”
'Some children have been taken away in handcuffs.'
'In Florida, showing mental health struggles could get a child detained'
'Advocates say the Baker Act, designed as a measure of last resort, is not used that way. The result: Kindergarteners can be forcibly committed to psych centers for exams.' (WAPO) Sorry no gifted links available to me.
Let me get this straight — the folks upset that hospitals are refusing to use ivermectin, horse deworming medicine that is not approved for human use, to treat Covid are the same folks who are upset that mifepristone, a drug that been FDA approved and used safely for 20 years, claiming it was approved improperly. Oh, I get it. Logical inconsistencies and hypocrisy are not flaws in right wing thinking, they are features.
Why hasn’t the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Trump and his Homeland Security chief for kidnapping migrant children?
Very heavy news day. Thanks HRC for organizing it for us. So much corruption and spin and helpful to find clarity here.
I must say the conscription of Ukrainian children certainly pulls at the heart and the future of Ukrainian culture. As any history lover will know it is an old playbook used to crush a culture. One that was used with Native Americans here in our own history. So sad to see these terrorizing acts against culture continued
YOUR CORDIAL PUBLIC SERVICE REMINDER that the end of gerrymandering, limiting dark money, ending voter suppression, codifying reproductive rights, codifying LGBT rights, commonsense gun regulations, police reform, a Civilian Climate Corps, drug price caps, universal childcare and elder care, free preschool and community college, paid family and medical leave, a $15 minimum wage, federal union and worker protections, the child tax credit, 2 new senators from the new state of D.C., a general respite to the nonsense, and so much more... can be all yours in just a little over 600 days if the following things happen with regards to the federal government, which MAKE NO MISTAKE, we still control the composition of. (Call now and tell a friend! Limited time only with a set of steak knives!)
1) Joe Biden needs to stay President. Obviously. And since he is a) doing a good job by b) enacting very popular policies, and c) the US has never elected back-to-back one-term Presidents of different parties, I'd say we are looking good.
2) We need one more anti-filibuster vote in the Senate. To make this happen:
John Tester and Sherrod Brown will need to outperform the rest of the party in their red states of Montana and Ohio, respectively. Both of them have in fact previously outperformed Kerry, Obama, and Clinton by very large margins. They clearly think they can do so again, and we shouldn't doubt them. (If Joe Manchin does so as well, then yay, because an extra seat is helpful. If not, then I can't be bothered, because f#ck that jagweed.)
Elissa Slotkin needs to hold Debbie Stabenow's current seat in Michigan. Slotkin is a fantastic candidate who has won multiple times now in a swingy/conservative area. The Repubs have not won statewide since the early 90s, and have yet to begin finding a viable candidate.
Ruben Gallego needs to replace Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona. He is one of the most popular, vibrant, and hardworking politicians in the blue-ing state, and early polling shows that even in a potential three-way race, he runs neck-and-neck to win. (It will very likely not be a three-way, as our favorite "independent" hasn't even said if she will run again. Anyone want to make bets on which corporate boards she is deciding between? Or maybe she'll just go work at The Gap. Or Gymboree.)
Are you in one of these states? THEIR CAMPAIGNS HAVE ALREADY STARTED! Donate, volunteer, write letters to the editor in support, start talking them up to neighbors. The works!
3) We need to win the House back. Where to look?
The following 23 Repub-held districts were won (or would have been won) by Biden and/or had a margin of ~3% or under in 2022:
Arizona 1st (Schweikert)
Arizona 6th (Ciscomani)
California 13th (Duarte)
California 22nd (Valadao)
California 27th (Garcia)
California 40th (Kim)
California 45th (Steel)
Colorado 3rd (Boebert)
Iowa 3rd (Nunn)
Michigan 10th (James)
Montana 1st (Zinke)
Nebraska 2nd (Bacon)
New Jersey 7th (Kean)
New York 1st (LaLota)
New York 3rd (Santos)
New York 4th (D'Esposito)
New York 17th (Lawler)
New York 19th (Molinaro)
New York 22nd (Williams)
Oregon 5th (Chavez-DeRemer)
Pennsylvania 1st (Fitzpatrick)
Virginia 2nd (Kiggans)
...and the following are the mirror-image Dem-held districts (* means they already won in 2020 with Biden):
Alaska (Peltola)
Colorado 8th (Caraveo)
Connecticut 5th (Hayes)*
Maine 2nd (Golden)*
New Mexico 2nd (Vasquez)
New York 18th (Ryan)
North Carolina 13th (Nickel)
Ohio 9th (Kaptur)*
Oregon 6th (Salinas)*
Pennsylvania 7th (Wild)*
Pennsylvania 8th (Cartwright)*
Washington 3rd (Gluesenkamp-Perez)
If all the Democrats win (and that's plausible - no incumbent Repub was beaten in 2020 after their down midterm), then we only need to flip FIVE of 23 races to take back the trifecta. That's not even all our options in New York ALONE! (Seriously, WTF went on in New York last time? I need it to make sense.) Statistically, a winning presidential ticket should see at least that coattails effect naturally through increased turnout.
Are you in one of these states or districts? Are you anywhere near one of these districts? START GETTING FREAKING READY. We can do this, y'all. Don't let the fact the dreams of glory got another delay distract you. We are so, so close.
IN THE MEANTIME, use the this world wide web of ours to find ways to support Janet Protasiewicz for Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Her winning in a few weeks would flip the court, pretty much guaranteeing gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the chance of election subversion stops in the ultimate tipping-point state.
It’s past time to recognize that The United States is under attack by domestic Christo-Fascists willing to use violence to achieve the goals they are unable to achieve in fair elections. These efforts are funded by a cabal of Wealthy White Male “Christian” oligarchs and authoritarian foreign governments. Letting this assault continue under the guise of Free Speech is suicidal.
So the Federalist Society claims that “democracy… would result… in the tyranny of the majority.” Perhaps they need to be reminded the etymology of the term: “The word democracy comes from the Greek words "demos", meaning people, and "kratos" meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as "power of the people": a way of governing which depends on the will of the people.” https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/democracy
I wonder why the DOD hasn't punished Flynn for his behavior? I thought they could recall and court martial him, or at least deny his benefits and pension due to his being involved in attempts to undermine our government. Is he being protected by his brother and other officers who agree with his right-wing rhetoric?
I'd like to see the R's try to define "deep state". They would probably have as much success as they have had with "woke".
Stupefied Speaker McCarthy and his Animal House renegades are playing Russian roulette. A stray bullet could splatter the American economy, trigger millions of job losses, and sully the ‘full faith and credit’ of the United States.
These would-be suicide bombers are seeking to hold the once-routine raising of the national debt limit hostage to their demands of no new taxes and draconian slashes in ‘social spending.’ (Such has never occurred under Republican presidents.)
The recent Fed/Treasury emergency measures to prevent a cascade of regional bank bankruptcies following the Silicon Valley Bank depositor debacle is a fire bell of the fragility of our financial system.
Default on America’s national debt would spark a roaring financial fire that would push the United States into recession, shatter our vulnerable credit network, and spread flames throughout the global financial world.
THIS CAN NOT BE PERMITTED TO HAPPEN!
House arsonists may, with their warped minds, believe that triggering a recession would be blamed on President Biden and would assure a White House Republican in 2024. They are woefully mistaken.
President Biden displayed steely boldness in spearheading America’s leadership of an unprecedented Western, NATO, Eastern European, and global riposte to Putin’s brutal assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.
He must be equally bold in assuring that our national debt limit is increased this summer. This is not a matter for fatuous ‘negotiation.’ Rather, it is an imperative for the United States.
President Biden should confront these naysayers with an ultimatum: approve a national debt increase with no supercilious strings.
Were this not to occur, then Biden can accomplish this unilaterally under a legal interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
Good old fashioned American common sense is the appropriate response to Russian roulette.
They will still twist Putin's war crimes against Ukraine's children as virtues and not authoritarianism. As fascists they will fall into Putin's propaganda that someone else (Russia) can raise the children better. It's the same in the U.S. when conservatives have the idea they can raise kidnapped South American children, or poverty level U.S. children their "proper" way. They just can't seem to grasp the concept of it's kidnapping someone else's child. They think their cult will "save" the children. 🙄
I would think that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would sanction Michael Flynn and take away all of his pension and court martial him for going against the constitution. The democrats must be louder than the republicans. The don't understand that the only message getting across is the GOP rewrite
What I find surprising is that US pols (including the President) are not linking Putin to the atrocities committed by Hitler: Violating borders, killing civilians, destroying cities. This man is "Hitler revisited." He needs to be correctly identified as the international pariah that he has become.
…and one of our most recent crimes against children here in the US!
'When a fourth-grader in Florida was frustrated about having to sit out his afternoon recess, he penciled a word on an outdoor bench: kill. A teacher asked him about it, and he said it was what he wanted God to do to him.'
'His mother, Marah Marino, guessed he was hurt and angry. “He’s not a mature 10-year-old,” she said.'
'But soon, a sheriff’s deputy who was working in the school stepped in, using a controversial state law to order an involuntary psychiatric evaluation and confinement for up three days in a mental health facility. Marino, who rushed to the school after getting a call about the incident, was stunned, pleading with the officer and asking to be with her son.'
'The deputy drove away with the terrified boy, and Marino followed closely behind them in her car, watching her son stare out the back window, sobbing, his hand on the glass.'
'Every day in Florida, children and adolescents are involuntarily committed for psychiatric assessments under the Baker Act, a 1971 law. In fiscal year 2020-21, involuntary exams happened more than 38,000 times to children under 18 — an average of more than 100 a day and a nearly 80 percent increase in the past decade, according to the most recent data. The law is so deeply enmeshed into the state’s culture that it is widely used as a verb, as in: The 6-year-old was “Baker Acted.”
'Some children have been taken away in handcuffs.'
'In Florida, showing mental health struggles could get a child detained'
'Advocates say the Baker Act, designed as a measure of last resort, is not used that way. The result: Kindergarteners can be forcibly committed to psych centers for exams.' (WAPO) Sorry no gifted links available to me.
Let me get this straight — the folks upset that hospitals are refusing to use ivermectin, horse deworming medicine that is not approved for human use, to treat Covid are the same folks who are upset that mifepristone, a drug that been FDA approved and used safely for 20 years, claiming it was approved improperly. Oh, I get it. Logical inconsistencies and hypocrisy are not flaws in right wing thinking, they are features.
“It was a stroke of genius really, to hide the micro chips in the horse dewormer.”
I've finally arrived at the point I'd be just fine if Trump was "terminated...with extreme prejudice... "
If Trump is re-elected in 2024, this country is finished. Period.