Lauren Boebert, fresh from filing divorce papers on her real creepy husband by which (supposedly) she had three kids before graduating high school(true), says that when Joe Biden says he is going after antisemitism he is actually going after conservatives.

Well, I'll be danged if she isn't 100% right. Now if Joe will double down and go after racists and fascists, Boebert can be triply right and I will 100% agree!

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May 29, 2023
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
MAY 30

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Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.” And if “we want to make certain that fascism does not come to America, we must make certain that it does not thrive anywhere in the world.”

Seventy-eight years after the publication of “FASCISM!” with its program for recognizing that political system and stopping it from taking over the United States, President Joe Biden today at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, honored those who gave their lives fighting to preserve democracy. “On this day, we come together again to reflect, to remember, but above all, to recommit to the future our fallen heroes fought for, …a future grounded in freedom, democracy, equality, tolerance, opportunity, and…justice.”

“[T]he truest memorial to their lives,” the president said, is to act “every day to ensure that our democracy endures, our Constitution endures, and the soul of our nation and our decency endures.”

We are on the Crazy Train!

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Tennessee Public Charter Schools: 28% proficient

See all the results HERE

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The rest of the Toons

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Joyce Vance breaks down the George Santos criminal charges. Well done as always. You might want to sign up for her feed.

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But wait! Can't we have some music? Please?

Well, OK. Since you were so nice about it...

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More than a dozen residents of House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s district filed a complaint with the Tennessee Attorney General, asking for a civil investigation into whether he wrongly filed reimbursement expenses with the state.

The complaint alleges by filing for the larger per diem allowed to lawmakers who live outside the State Capitol — even though he owns a home in Nashville —Sexton wrongly claimed expenses 150 times, which could result in a fine of between $375,000 and $1.5 million.

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Republican Sleaze!

On April 20, Tennessee Representative Scotty Campbell (R) abruptly resigned hours after News Channel 5 Nashville reported that a legislative subcommittee found that he had sexually harassed two legislative interns.

According to the report, Campbell told one of the interns that "he was in his apartment imagining that we were performing sexual acts on one another and how it drove him crazy knowing that was happening so close to him." He also "offered to give her cannabis gummies to see her tattoos and piercings" and "begged [her] for several hugs." When the intern declined, she said Campbell "reached out his hand towards me and grabbed me around my neck."

On March 29, the Workplace Discrimination and Harassment Subcommittee sent Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) a memorandum stating that Campbell violated the legislature's Workplace Discrimination and Harassment Policy. But no disciplinary action was taken against Campbell, who was a member of Sexton's leadership team.

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This would be funny if it were not true and horribly embarrassing for Tennessee:

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This is really cool. If only it were closer.

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Plus It is just plain damned MEAN!

“By denying only transgender youth access to these forms of medically necessary care while allowing non-transgender minors access to the same or similar procedures, SB 1 discriminates against transgender youth,” a DOJ press release said.

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Trump, like most Republican candidates, runs his campaign as a financial scam, bilking his own supporters for as much as he can squeeze from them:

Former President Donald Trump's reelection campaign issued a staggering sum of $122.7 million in refunds to supporters in 2020, giving back nearly 11% of the money it raised, according to an investigative report published by the New York Times on Saturday based on an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings...

"It felt like it was a scam," Russell Blatt told the Times after his family realized that $3,000 had been withdrawn from the account of his brother, Stacy, who was battling cancer and living on less than $1,000 per month.

Forbes

"Conservativism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." -- Frank Wilhoit

"Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves."

Rachel Carson

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So TN Republicans VERY PUBLICALLY tried the Tennessee Three Democrats for violating "decorum" but VERY SECRETLY tried Republican Rep Scott Campbell for sexually harassing interns, for which he was convicted and has resigned.

TENNESSEE STATE REP. Scotty Campbell resigned on Thursday after it was revealed that the state’s House Ethics Committee had secretly convicted him of sexually harassing at least one legislative intern, a violation of the chamber’s rules. Campbell’s resignation comes on the heels of his vote to expel three of his Democratic colleagues for protesting gun violence on the House floor.

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Maybe we should read this to the TNGOP legislators:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

In the immediate aftermath of our school children and their teachers being murdered, TN Republicans immediately passed a bill to prevent weapons manufacturers from being sued. A statement from NRA spokesmen said the deaths of children were sad but simply the price of protecting 2nd Amendment rights. So protect GUNS over CHILDREN and that is that? What happened to these children's LIFE and LIBERTY?

I think it's time to abolish Republicans.

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In reality, the inflation that plagued the U.S. as it reopened from the worst days of the Covid-19 pandemic has slowed dramatically, making it clear that the policies of the Biden administration are working. As Jennifer Rubin noted yesterday in the Washington Post, the annual inflation rate for producers is 2.7%—the lowest rate in more than two years—while consumer price increases are at their lowest point since May 2021: 5%. Gasoline prices have dropped 17.4% since the high prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The overall declines mark nine months of slowing inflation.

At the same time, labor force participation is at record high levels and unemployment is at a 50-year low of 3.5%. Black unemployment, which stands at 5%, has never been lower. Real incomes—that is, incomes after inflation is factored in—have risen 7% for those making $35,000 a year or less and 1.3% across the whole economy. Meanwhile, the deficit has dropped more than $1.7 trillion in two years.

Read the whole Letter from Heather Cox Richardson

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“We look like tin-pot dictators in this state and it pisses me off as a citizen of this state,” Carter said, alluding to the Republican expulsion of a pair of Democratic state representatives last week. “I’m angry and I’m embarrassed, and I’m humiliated.”

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