Hartmann reported on January 27 2024 that rightwing seditionist media are positively orgasmic over the fact that Texas Governor Greg Abbott is quoting from the 1860 South Carolina Secession Proclamation in his defiance of a Supreme Court order that he back down from the border and leave immigration enforcement to the federal government.
Specifically, Abbott said the feds have “broken the compact between the United States and the States.” They’re excitedly talking about this kicking off the long-awaited and much-anticipated civil war laid out in the two novels that have become the bibles of the neo-Nazi hard right, Camp of the Saints and The Turner Diaries: in each, armed white men rise up and kill Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, “communists,” and queer people, leaving a purely straight white “Christian” country. On rightwing message boards they’re discussing their ammunition and weapons stashes and wondering out loud what will be the “triggers” that start the war. And now they are planning to put together a caravan of “well armed patriots” to come to the southern border.
In support of this, 25 Republican governors just published a statement backing Abbott’s insurrectionist sentiments and encouraging him to maintain his resistance to the federal government. So, what should Biden do?
Back in 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus defied a Supreme Court desegregation order, using his state’s National Guard to block Black children’s entrance to the schools. In response, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nationalized that state’s National Guard and ordered them to accompany the “Little Rock Nine” — nine young African American students — to school.
President Biden may be on the verge of doing the same in Texas, although his spokesperson this week said he’s going to wait to see if Congress can first pass the border aid package that’s currently being debated in the Senate (and opposed by Trump and Putin). Keep an eye on this: the mainstream media is downplaying it as they don’t want to amp up the temperature in the country, which may well be wise, but dipping your toe into rightwing corners of the web will reveal a shocking level of willingness to kill Americans in pursuit of a white nationalist vision for this country.
— New research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that during the past 18 months, since 14 states have totally outlawed abortion, there were an estimated 65,565 pregnancies in those states as a result of 519,981 rapes. Texas alone had an estimated 26,313 pregnancies that resulted from rape. Let that sink in…
— Speaking of rape, Donald Trump now has to pay E. Jean Carroll an additional $83+ million for having raped and then defamed her. It’s ironic that the first person to genuinely hold Donald Trump accountable for his behavior is an 80-year-old woman, all without help from a single government prosecutor. All praise to E. Jean!
— Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert! Hunters Meet the Self-Help Movement: On Being a Professional Victim of ADHD. Will we Hunters spend the rest of our lives as victims of our genes, pointing to them as the cause of every ill thing in our past & dragging that past into our future like the chains on Marley’s ghost? Check out my latest post at www.HuntersInAFarmersWorld.com.
— Alabama’s Governor Kay Ivey ordered a man tortured to death with nitrogen gas. Louise and I have had cats and dogs as pets continuously through the 51 years we’ve been married and, sadly, had to put a few of them down due to disease or infirmity. In every case, the veterinarian gave them a sedative drug overdose (typically, I believe, one of the barbiturates) that simply let the animal go to sleep and die peacefully. In
Alabama, though, a convicted murderer fought and struggled to breathe as all the oxygen in his lungs was replaced with pure nitrogen gas. There was a time in America when the Supreme Court had outlawed the death penalty under the cruel and unusual punishment provisions of the Bill of Rights: the death penalty only makes our society more brutal, which is why nearly every developed country in the world has discarded it. Forty-three more inmates are on death row in Alabama awaiting their own suffocation.
— New rules for journalists? If you’re going to write or talk about fascism then call it that! Dan Froomkin is a respected journalist and publisher of Press Watch, a great newsletter about the media, and he has some blunt advice for the mainstream media: stop pussyfooting around! When Republicans spout fascist rhetoric or act like fascists, Froomkin argues, reporters have an obligation to call it what it is: fascism. Amen!
— Crazy Alert! A male Wisconsin legislator who’s a “cow doctor” says he knows “more about abortion” than women because he’s done ultrasounds on pregnant cows: he’s now pushing a bill to outlaw the procedure after 14 weeks. Women in the chamber were offended at being compared to cattle; the legislation is unlikely to become law because Democratic Governor Tony Evers has promised to veto it if it passes the state’s legislature.
— EU threatens to silence Hungary if Orbán continues to block Ukrainian aid. Governments across the European Union are beginning preparations for war with Russia, which most believe will be the immediate outcome of a Russian victory over Ukraine. Putin’s only ally in the EU, Hungary’s fascist leader Viktor Orbán, has been blocking €50 billion in aid, and now EU leaders are openly discussing the “nuclear option” of using Article 7 of the EU’s constitution to end Hungary’s ability to vote in that body. Keep an eye on this: between Orbán, a few dozen Republicans in the US Congress, and Trump, Putin has powerful friends who possibly could hand him a victory and plunge the world into WWIII.
— Biden is killing what may well be the largest fossil fuel project in the world. Bill McKibbin is reporting here on Substack that forward progress on Liquidified Natural Gas (LNG) export terminals has been halted by the Biden administration as they reconsider what harms to the “public interest” these climate bombs may cause. This is very, very good news, although the battle isn’t yet over…
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