US Elections (& Politics) :)
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Oceanslider
Known around here
GrrrGraphics - Ben & Tina Garrison Cartoons
@GrrrGraphics
I almost missed this- An Arrest-conviction finally! John Bolton pleaded guilty and took a plea deal for unlawful retention of National Defense Material- $2.25 million dollar fine and 60 months in prison. Now let's do Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Hillary Clinton!
@GrrrGraphics
I almost missed this- An Arrest-conviction finally! John Bolton pleaded guilty and took a plea deal for unlawful retention of National Defense Material- $2.25 million dollar fine and 60 months in prison. Now let's do Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Hillary Clinton!
He has not had formal sentencing yet-- so all of that info is speculative-- not definite.
Hmmmmm How long have we been making artillery shells? This article is disturbing on many levels... FUBAR
www.propublica.org
Fiasco in the Factory: Taxpayers Funded a $533 Million Artillery Plant That Made Nothing
General Dynamics opened a Texas factory to churn out artillery shells for Ukraine, but the machines kept breaking. Robot arms smashed into things. Hunks of metal crashed to the floor. There was even a real-life dumpster fire.
www.propublica.org
mat200
IPCT Contributor
- Jan 17, 2017
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Arjun
IPCT Contributor
"ill-conceived" 
Trump Humiliated as Republicans Skip His Big Day En Masse
Republicans are rolling out the excuses to skip Donald Trump’s midterm convention, which the president has organized in a desperate attempt to give the GOP a much-needed election boost.
The lawmakers have come up with an array of excuses, from wanting to remain in their districts to campaign, prior arrangements, the eye-watering $25,000 entrance fee, and a desire to distance themselves from the deeply unpopular president to boost their election hopes. One House Republican said they are not attending the event because it will be a “waste of time.”
“You shouldn’t be having to rally your base at this point,” the House Republican told Politico. “You should be trying to convince independents. Independents are not attending nor watching the midterm convention.”
Some are also concerned that, rather than using the convention to boost Republicans’ election hopes, Trump will waste his headline appearance by rambling on about his personal obsessions, such as his White House ballroom, or dismissing the affordability concerns faced by tens of millions of Americans.
There is also the issue of who will actually want to watch the event on television. Both nights of the convention will coincide with the first two games of the NFL season, which are guaranteed to draw a bigger primetime audience.
“It raises the question of whether the timing is somewhere between ill-conceived or just not conceived at all,” Joshua Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Hill. “It seems more like a reaction to concerns about enthusiasm among Republican voters. It’s more of a reaction than it is a clear plan.”
Trump Humiliated as Republicans Skip His Big Day En Masse
Republicans are rolling out the excuses to skip Donald Trump’s midterm convention, which the president has organized in a desperate attempt to give the GOP a much-needed election boost.
The lawmakers have come up with an array of excuses, from wanting to remain in their districts to campaign, prior arrangements, the eye-watering $25,000 entrance fee, and a desire to distance themselves from the deeply unpopular president to boost their election hopes. One House Republican said they are not attending the event because it will be a “waste of time.”
“You shouldn’t be having to rally your base at this point,” the House Republican told Politico. “You should be trying to convince independents. Independents are not attending nor watching the midterm convention.”
Some are also concerned that, rather than using the convention to boost Republicans’ election hopes, Trump will waste his headline appearance by rambling on about his personal obsessions, such as his White House ballroom, or dismissing the affordability concerns faced by tens of millions of Americans.
There is also the issue of who will actually want to watch the event on television. Both nights of the convention will coincide with the first two games of the NFL season, which are guaranteed to draw a bigger primetime audience.
“It raises the question of whether the timing is somewhere between ill-conceived or just not conceived at all,” Joshua Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Hill. “It seems more like a reaction to concerns about enthusiasm among Republican voters. It’s more of a reaction than it is a clear plan.”
What possibly could be the reason US voted no, only country to do so. It would make greenland look much smaller.
Oceanslider
Known around here
Arjun
IPCT Contributor
Arjun
IPCT Contributor
Oceanslider
Known around here
How We Taught Women To Fear Motherhood
When she was 22 years old, Gloria Steinem had an abortion. Looking back, she said that moment was pivotal in her life. The young Ms. Steinem believed that bearing a child – and getting married – would have radically narrowed the possibilities of her life. Earlier this year, she told an...
When she was 22 years old, Gloria Steinem had an abortion. Looking back, she said that moment was pivotal in her life. The young Ms. Steinem believed that bearing a child – and getting married – would have radically narrowed the possibilities of her life. Earlier this year, she told an interviewer that at the time she saw marriage and children “not as a beginning but as an end.” When she wrote her memoir in 2015, Steinem dedicated it to the doctor who performed the abortion, writing what he had asked of her: “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.” For Ms. Steinem, children were constricting, incompatible with the life of freedom she desired.
Although almost 70 years have passed since Steinem turned her back on motherhood in 1957, many American women continue to believe that motherhood in the United States is unfairly burdensome. Simultaneous with Steinem’s death, newspaper headlines have been focused on a murder trial in Massachusetts, in which Lindsay Clancy has been charged with killing her three young children. While the main issue in the trial is whether Clancy’s mental state was so impaired that she cannot be held criminally responsible for their deaths, debate over the case has turned into a flashpoint on social media for how American mothers perceive pregnancy, the postpartum period, and the task of raising young children. Without weighing in on the outcome in the Clancy trial, it is clear that part of the reason the case has struck such a nerve is that many mothers in the United States feel isolated and unsupported after the birth of a child.
Is it inevitable that motherhood be popularly viewed as limiting or constricting, preventing a woman from fully living the life she chooses? In the seven decades between when Steinem made her choice to end her pregnancy and today, why has there been so little cultural movement on how we popularly perceive motherhood?
Understanding and answering that question is vital as America stares down a historically low fertility rate and a population structure that is skewing ever older. When Steinem began her push for “women’s lib” in the 1970s, population decline and declining rates of motherhood were viewed as a positive. In a famous essay, “What It Would Be Like If Women Win,” Steinem wrote approvingly that the “population explosion dictates that childbearing be kept to a minimum.” She would later worry in public about the connection between overpopulation and environmental degradation.
Sixty years later, it is hard to be so sanguine about dramatic population decline. From other countries with even more catastrophic population decline than the U.S., we know that it may result in loss of economic productivity, as well as what journalist David Martin Davies calls “the erosion of communities and cultural continuity.”
For Steinem, and many of her second-wave feminist contemporaries, motherhood itself was often viewed as a method of oppression. Radical feminist theorist Shulamith Firestone famously wrote in her 1970 book, “The Dialectic of Sex,” “The heart of woman’s oppression is her childbearing and childrearing roles.”
As some of the fervor around the Clancy trial shows, there is a through line from that line of thinking popularized in the ’70s to discussion around motherhood today. And indeed, it isn’t limited to those headlines. The “childfree” Reddit group has 1.6 million subscribers, with countless posts lauding the freedom of living without children and the sacrifice inherent to parenting.
In 2020, Steinem was asked if she regretted not having children. “Not for a millisecond,” she replied. To be clear, there are indeed many ways to live a vibrant, flourishing life without being married or having children. However, the fact that we did not manage, over the course of Steinem’s lifetime, to shift the narrative much around motherhood, women’s independence, and freedom is its own form of national tragedy.
It is not inevitable that motherhood be understood primarily in terms of the resulting burdens and sacrifice. Having and raising babies does, of course, require significant commitment and indeed sometimes requires significant personal sacrifice. However, it can also throw open many doors. To list just a few: Having children can provide a tangible link to both past and future generations and provides a clear mechanism to pass something real on into the future. Pregnancy and babies can also expand your focus in life away from work and toward your family and community, and also keep you connected through old age with younger generations.
Popular perceptions about how motherhood can actually expand your horizons (not solely limit them) would probably be dramatically boosted if there was more social, cultural, and political commitment to decreasing the burdens of young moms. Putting aside the terrible tragedy of the Clancy case, it is an indisputable fact that many new moms in America feel isolated and alone and are in desperate need of more support from their extended families, neighbors, religious institutions, and local governments.
In short, both Steinem’s passing and the furor over the Clancy trial should serve as a reminder that we still have significant work to do around how motherhood is perceived in the United States. In the 1970s, women rightfully resented not being able to own personal bank accounts, receive mortgages from many banks, or work without facing serious sexual harassment and a host of other injustices. Somehow, however, many of those rightfully dedicated to fixing those issues successfully tore down our positive vision of motherhood as well — a problem still not fixed today. We have much work in front of us to build a vision of being a mom that shows it opens doors, not just closes them.
Oceanslider
Known around here
Before the weekend ends and America moves on to the next headline, we need to pause and look at a story that matters more than almost any other—the collapse of Venezuela, and what it warns us about if the last democratic superpower ever falls the same way.
This didn’t happen overnight. It happened step by step, over one generation.
VENEZUELA: HOW A PROSPEROUS NATION COLLAPSED
1992
Venezuela is the 3rd richest country in the Western Hemisphere, powered by oil and a growing middle class.
1997
Venezuelans become the 2nd largest buyers of Ford F-150s—a sign of widespread prosperity.
1998
Hugo Chávez is elected, promising to “redistribute wealth” and fix inequality.
2001
The country votes again for socialism, framed as compassion and fairness.
2003
The government imposes price controls and currency controls.
Black markets appear. Shortages begin.
2004
Private healthcare is fully socialized.
2006
Inflation rises sharply as massive welfare programs expand without real economic backing.
2007
All higher education becomes “free.”
2008
Key industries—oil services, steel, cement, telecom—are nationalized.
Production drops almost immediately.
2009
Private gun ownership is banned.
2010
The currency is devalued by 50%, crushing savings and accelerating inflation.
2011
Oil production begins a steady decline due to mismanagement and lack of investment.
2012
American politicians, like Bernie Sanders, publicly praise Venezuela’s model.
2013
Chávez dies. Nicolás Maduro takes power and tightens state control.
2014
Opposition leaders are arrested or silenced.
2015
GDP collapses. Hyperinflation begins.
2016
Severe food and medical shortages spread nationwide.
2017
The constitution is suspended. Elections are no longer meaningful.
2018
Inflation exceeds 1,000,000%. Maduro “wins” a widely fraudulent election.
2019
Unarmed civilians are killed by their own government.
2020
More than 8 million people flee the country to escape hunger and repression.
2023
Minor economic improvements fail to relieve mass poverty.
2024
Disputed elections trigger protests and global isolation.
2026
Maduro is removed by force. Venezuela is liberated after decades of ruin.
THE HARD TRUTH
It took one generation of “progressive” leadership to turn one of the richest countries on Earth into a nation defined by hunger, fear, mass graves, and mass migration.
This is the lesson history keeps teaching:
You can vote your way into socialism.
But history shows people only escape it through collapse, violence, or foreign intervention.
And here is the part Americans must understand clearly:
If this happens in the United States, there will be nobody coming to save us.
No outside superpower.
No rescue force.
No second chance.
Freedom is fragile. Prosperity is not guaranteed.
And once lost, they are brutally hard to recover.
Venezuela’s people paid the price.
America cannot afford to learn this lesson the same way.