Are. You. Kidding. Me???!!! A national pregnancy registry, but not a registry for guns , which are the leading cause of death of children already born. A gun registry is "invasive" but a pregnancy registry is not?! We are becoming a combination of Handmaid's Tale, 1984, and Animal Farm. What a nightmare! But WE WON'T EVER GIVE UP OR GIVE IN!
How is it possible to get a whole party supporting such a gangster, such a loser, such a deranged proven conman? I am gobsmacked, it’s depressing. There is no worse blind than the one who refuses to open his / her eyes and face reality.
Culture war is more important and pervasive than our politicians and establishment report and emphasize. They have us chasing bright shiny objects, while they cement their rule.
Wolves in sheep's clothing. The sheep are the MAGA cult, who mostly don't have a pot to piss in and uniformly vote contrary to their economic and even physical health.
When most of my friends, my family, and my colleagues voted for Trump because of abortion, they just assumed pregnant patients would simply be turned away at the door.
None would have imagined the country turning into a Police State where pregnant women would be hunted down, as has become and is becoming the norm in Red States and all of the USA if certain people get elected.
David, do you know why your friends, family and colleagues voted for Trump because of abortion?
I mean the real reason, not the excuse of unborn babies. As you know they don't care about babies, born or unborn, otherwise they wouldn't attack SNAP and WIC, or education.
so there is a real reason, and I'm pretty sure I know what it is.
Basically it is patriarchal control over women, and their offspring, particularly males.
There seems to be an unconscious belief in humans that we can cheat the grave, by reproduction, and then pass our worldly goods onto ourselves via wills and inheritance laws..The sacred sperm. Or as it is also known the selfish gene, but the sacred sperm describes what I have in mind.
A woman who aborts is rejecting the man, if not his "perpetuity" then rejecting the men, and a certain type of man does not take rejection.
The patriarchal imperative is the motivation for religion, Kingship, leadership. and anti choice, misogynism. Until the 19th Amendment women were considered lesser than, not fully sentient beings, and even with the passage of the 19th Amendment
nothing changed, because the men who passed it (Republicans) saw it as a means of doubling their votes, because they believed women did not have their own mind, and followed the husband.
Considering the great number of women Trump humpers, like the bitch who wore a t shirt printed with "Trump Grab me here, with an arrow pointing to her crotch", the Ginnie Thomas's,, Babbits, Candace Owens and millions more, the estimation of females married to Republicans is correct, or the ho's like Kelly Anne Conway, and Anne with the Adams apple, Coulter.
Gotcha. I understand now, and to what section of Thom's post you are responding. The reporting pregnancies to a federal data base. I am sure that our six trad Catholic judges will find a way to condone the law, if it passed. Biden won't sign it, but if Congress and the Presidency go Republican I am sure that it will become law.
I hope the Republicans saved some of those boos for Senator Britt. Are she and Marjorie Taylor Green having a contest for creating fear and loathing of the Republican Party? I thought that was Trump's job!
Somebody call Scarlett---I can see another SNL skit coming soon. The comedy writers haven't broken a sweat in a long time. You couldn't imagine this shit, and it just keeps coming. Seth Meyers almost killed me the other night; I have to remember not to drink anything during A Closer Look. I hate it when coffee goes down the wrong pipe.
We ought to revel in their stupidity and tyrannical ideas, because those things should stop them at the ballot box. But SHOULD is the operative word in that sentence. We have to work, work, work and vote, vote, vote.
Thanks Thom, a mighty HUZZAH for you! A resounding BOOOO for Britt!
I just struggle with that word, enemy. However, on a practical note, there are several world leaders that would not be safe if they were alone with me and I was serving the drinks.
All I can say to all of that is Holy Sh#t!! And keep fighting friends!! I made up my mind last week I would not give up and would not give in!! I will not go down without one hell of a fight!!
I live in Indiana and was somewhat encouraged by our Primary results. Over 100,000 people Voted for Nikki Haley. So many Republicans in the Hoosier state are very dissatisfied with Trump!! That is good news for the Biden campaign in my Book. So I will keep doing what I'm doing with my Activist work. Thank you Thom for always keeping us so well-informed. Keep the faith dear friends!! It ain't over 'till it's over!!!
Lisa, the best we can hope for is that a good portion of that 100,000 votes third party or not at all. Because there is one thing that drives Republicans and that is a visceral hatred and fear of Democrats. Remember Barr, Sununu and Romney, amongst others have said that as much as the detest Trump they will vote for him, because they hate Democrats.. Push comes to shove, it is the culture war that drives them.
I know William you're so right. They despise Biden and many think he's ushering in "Communism". It's insane is what it is!! You can't get through to them either. 25-30 years of Fox and the right's brainwashing is just about impossible to reason with. I thought January 6th might have made a difference but that has faded from most of their memories.
There is no way to deprogram a believer. Try to convince a Muslim that the Quran is a joke, and that it is ridiculous that an illiterate like Muhammad could write the Quran (they have a ready made answer) Try to convince a Christian that the Bible is a fraud, borrowed stories and hero's from Sumerians, Babylonains, Syrians, Egyptions and others among whom the Hebrew sojourned or fought, try to convince Christians that their Jesus didn't exist and he was a composite of Appolonius of Tyana and a Jewish guerilla leader..
It is not going to happen. I am sure efforts were made to deprogram James Jones cult, Heavens Gate and David Koresh's cult, didn't happen.
Same with trying to break through the wall that is the MAGAt mind.
My birth state of Alabama has already earned a reputation as the most backward state in the nation. The senator's proposed registry of pregnant women reminds me of "Decree 770" by the deposed Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceaucescu. It was meant to increase the nation's falling birthrate. Contraceptives were removed from sale (though the wealthy still managed to obtain them), and all women of reproductive age had to be monitored monthly by a gynecologist. Any failure to become pregnant had to be accounted for, and any detected pregnancies were followed until birth. But because parents could not afford to care for so many children, many of those unwanted babies were abandoned to understaffed orphanages. Most failed to develop normally, even if they were later adopted. It resulted in an international scandal. Ceaucescu and his wife were eventually executed by firing squad.
I remember that situation. Unwanted babies and children were abandoned in overcrowded orphanages if they were lucky. Foreigners who came in after the fall of the Ceaucescu government were finding children left in the open - often the deformed ones.
Yes. But the Alabama senator who proposed a national registry of pregnant women was probably still in diapers when the Romanian story made the news, if she'd been born yet at all. Funny how their registry of pregnancies failed to transition into a record of child care and development!
Yet, during the 1980s, Romania was setting new records at the Olympics. At the time, I wondered if that related to their practice of giving GH3 (aka Gerovital or procaine hydrochloride) to athletes. If so, it got past the drug-testing of the day!
Ceaucescu was a big fan of GH3, touted as an anti-aging drug, or nutrient. After his death, it continued to be promoted as a remedy for AIDS, before any effective treatment was actually available.
I briefly met its inventor, Ada Aslan, at an event to publicize a book on GH3 in the late 1970s. She would have been around 80 at the time, but looked much older than my mom did at the same age. Mom's secret was a salad with each meal!
After reading the book, I ordered a two-month supply of liquid GH3 to see if it would enhance my well-being. It didn't, and it tasted horrible. The chemical name does suggest that it could have some stimulant properties, but if so, they were too mild to notice. It's still being sold as an anti-aging agent in skin creams or "serums."
But Senator Britt doesn't go far enough. To identify pregnant women they should wear some sort of mark. Perhaps a yellow star would show up well. And to enforce the anti-abortion laws a new Gestation Police is required. That long name can be simplified to Gesta-Po.
Thanks, Thom! I follow the C3S (EU) daily and have seen their daily temp track upward 0.25 degF over the 1991-2020 baseline for the past 11 mo's, but that trend has been climbing at the same incline rate for 18 mo's.! So, we may expect 1.75 degC by 2025, 2.0 by 2026, and 3.0 by 2030, if this trend continues and we continue to burn 8 billion tons of coal annually, and 100 million barrels of oil A DAY. On their "Climate Pulse" page we can see a 10 degF temp anomaly between the hotter sea temp of 70 degF. and the land air temp of 60 degF, so this is driving the evaporation of 1 trillion tons of water vapor daily, which falls back to the surface within 10 days as rain and drives all the flooding we are seeing, unless, like the "orange turd", we have our heads up our arses.
As for a pregnancy registry, the only reason to promote human reproduction, in a climate collapsing from fossil fuel burning, is for the same fossil fuel corporate shilling you point out with the "orange turd" prostituting himself for those same fossil fuel corporate overlords, irrespective of the thermal demise of his offspring and all the rest of our progeny in the ever closer and hotter/colder (global heating causes both!) dystopic future.
The immigration problem accounts for the rise of the right in Europe as well as in America.
It is what brought Orban to power, is a factor in the power of the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS),
Marine le Pen in France, Gilders in the Netherlands, the problems in Norway and Sweden., the cause of Brexit.
Basically the culture of Europe is under assault and being overwhelmed by migrants from North Africa, the MidEast and West Asia. There maybe some elements of racism, however the real problem is the incompatiblity of cultures. There is a tipping point of 17%, when a minority culture breaches that threshhold, the majority culture is under pressure and starts to change.
This is causing the Islamization of Europe, halted by Charles Martel at Poitiers, and the Flying Hussars under King John III Sobieski.
Orban ran on a program of building a wall and excluding the Muslims and he won.
Trump did and is doing the same.
All of the right wing parties in Europe have as their major agenda, anti immigration.
America's immigration problem is different, it is not about culture, but race. Hispanic immigrants are Catholic, Evangelical, Pentecostal and as a result ultra conservative, perfect allies of the right.
Like Mayra Nohemi Flores (born January 1, 1986) is an American politician who represented Texas's 34th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2022 to 2023. A member of the Republican Party, she was the first female Mexican-born member of the House.
Flores was born in Burgos, Tamaulipas, Mexico; her family moved to the United States when she was six years old before she gained citizenship at age 14. she is an ultra conservative, homophobic, misogynistic Trump Humper., also Joe Arpaio, Nick Fuentes, Enrique Tarrio and the list goes on.
The culture war in Europe is quite different than the culture war in the USA., but it is a culture war.
And apparently culture wars "trump" everything. It certainly accounts for the rise of the right, Trump and the rise of fascism in Europe.
Brilliant! It makes perfect sense. Transporters of all manner of things need to be licensed, registered and/or otherwise regulated. Why not fetus-transporters?
I, will only say it’s crazy out there in GOP land. Thank you Thom. They really don’t have a bottom. Then, with that they don’t care about not having a bottom either.
I just received a news letter from the Lincoln Project, again Republicans are self deluded.\
Here is a guote from the beginning. " Trump happened because too many people lacked the imagination to see how far MAGA would go"
Wrong, Trump won because he is the logical consequence of conservatism.
The MAGAts want to halt progress and return the country to at least 1960, with many wanting to go back to 1860, before the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th and 19th Amendments, back to before reconstruction and to the time when women were the property of men.
I have a news flash. Having chaplins placed in public schools is just the latter day recognition of the fact that religion has been and will continue to be a huge influence in schools. The mission started with Horace Mann who used a Protestant version of the Bible as a primary reader, and religion in the form of Christianity has been in the ether, in the air, and in the water in public schools, ever since.
A week or so ago, I wrote to Thom to briefly outline an article by a professor and author I had just discovered. The only thing I had read of his at that point was an article entitled, “The Critiquing of Charters While the Elephant of Public Schools is in the Room” (2006) by Dr. Deron Boyles of Georgia State University. I have since read a second article (some quotes and details below) and I ordered two of his books, which I have received. I have nearly finished the second chapter in one of the books (American Education & Corporations).
Yesterday, I posted a piece on my Substack newsletter with my first analysis of what I had read up to that point. It is apropos to the questions at hand. I will copy here some of that FIY.
The first article mentions that most teachers are practicing Christians or have a relatively solid background in one of the many branches of Christianity. To wit:
“But public schools are also guilty of stratification, tracking, (de facto) segregation, and the like. Since most public school teachers and their boards are self-described Christians and work ethic rules structure the codes of conduct along with the explicit as well as hidden curricula, the issue of assumed truths and values comes to the fore.8”
This means that, despite differences in the particular beliefs and rituals among church affiliations, insidious and pathological concepts such as the theory of “original sin” and male superiority (the Strict Father metaphor) are prominent in schools and accepted without question. These often accompany strong inclinations toward guilt, shame, and hyper-responsibility, and rationalizations common to the superstitious and magical thinkers or conspiracy theories often pervade the thinking, convictions, and habit patterns of teachers and other school staff and administrators, as well as of many parents. This leads to inherent attitudes and actions which have profound and commonly pernicious effects on students.
Boyles also touches on the fact which I have tried to illuminate for many years, which is that values are not taught. He says, “Girding this inquiry is a concern about the problematic enterprise of teaching character, as if it were an unquestionable domain”. Values are developed organically as a function of living in a reasonably secure and sensible environment through modeling, intuitive processes, learning by experiencing data and positive or intrinsically rewarding feedback, cognitive awareness and logic, and emotional satisfaction or ego building.
Dr. Boyles refers to the teachings of Dewey. He states that “Dewey…is arguing against morals “in the air…something set off by themselves...{morals} that are so very ‘moral’ that they have no working contact with the average affairs of daily life.” One learns some things more by “osmosis”, in other words, than through organized or intentional methodology and programming.
The sad reality is that, as Dr. Boyles writes, “…public schools, far more often than most of their personnel themselves realize, are under the heavy influence of the dominant ideology”. He asks about this program funded by a fundamentalist Christian using free “kid’s meals” as a bribe, whether it might be the case that the motives are “…imposing hierarchy, developing non-questioning students, and privileging Christian-corporate values…” and to “…maintain and increase their power, even at the expense of the very students to whom they preach equality and kindness?”
The following excerpt from the earlier article gets to the explanation for how and why traditional public school curricula can be so easily hijacked and modified by corporate and other outside interests.
“Public schools operate under state constitutional guidelines which place legislatures in control of expenditures. School boards on both the state and local level interpret policy established by departments of education and the legislature. Given that legislatures are inordinately pro-business and neo-classical in their thinking, the policies they sanction are only a logical extension of that kind of thinking.”
Here are more incisive excerpts driving home Dr. Boyles message:
“Since they have been managed by “school leaders” who take their cue from industry and business, we should not be surprised that public schools are not the citadels of social justice, democracy, or the free exchange of ideas Howe and I might otherwise wish them to be.”
“Consider the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).2 ALEC has a staff of 30, boasts 2400 national memberships of state legislators from both parties, has more than 300 private-sector members (including ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco), and a 5.5 million dollar yearly budget to push “decidedly pro-business bills through state legislatures.”3
“Given the connection between ALEC, legislators, and private business and given that legislators are responsible for school funding and school policy, is it possible that schools can be anything other than already privatized spheres? If they are not fully privatized, they are at least subsumed under neo-classical ideology and take many of their cues from it.”
“…while evidence indicates that public schools pursue private economic interests as aggressively as private entities, the commonly-held belief that they serve a public good allows private economic interests of a few to masquerade as the public interests of all.”
Dr. Boyles has noted that the line between church and state is blurred if not obliterated. This comports with my own assertion for decades that there must be a line between school and state, given the impossibility of eliminating church influence in schools; the arbitrary almost limitless power invested in agents, officials, and authorities who set policies and curriculum, and the constant temptation to allow outside interests and particularly corporate interests to invade with material and programs disguised as technical, technological, or practical supplements to the school’s instructional, testing, and certification regimes. Once again, he says it best.
“Are we not faced with the strange reality that what we call public schools are actually and already venues for future private capital production? Where in public schools are students encouraged to question the idea of schooling itself that is not caught up in the bait-and-switch of neo-classical, reductionist thinking?”
What I have found especially disappointing in all of this once again, however, is that still, no one else is connecting the dots directly between the compulsory feature inescapable with compulsory attendance laws and the interminable problems with abuses of arbitrary authority, the perceived need to impose and “teach” value sets borrowed and imported from religion and corporations, and the backlash of discipline, measurement, attentional, anti- intellectual, and comprehension problems, just to hit the highlights. If these unconstitutional, paternalistic, and unproductive laws were not in effect, the US Supreme Court would not be allowing the perpetual decimation of students’ precious rights and no one would be comparing schools to harmful prisons where children are “dumbed down” and where their spirits are routinely broken. When will someone with the brilliance and reputation of a Dr. Boyles step up and break that taboo?
The citations in the book and articles lead me to believe that these threads must lead to real breakthroughs. But, when? Readers would do well to look up Dr. Boyles and read his material. He appears to be more concerned with corporate intrusion than the underlying conservative and religious influence. But he is definitely on the right track and extremely well informed about how students are being conned and turned into Fox Noise enthusiasts.
Robert B. Elliottt, There is a plus side to many things. Take Horace Mann. He championed univeersal education. Until him, my paternal ancestors, were among the earliest of Settlers in an for profit enterprise called the London Company of Virginia and my 9th ggf and name sake, in Wikipedia by the way) was a planter, although he used indentured servants, not slaves, however his son, grandson, graeat grandsons were also planters and some of them owned slaves, then in my line, the family fell into illiteracy when the father, Richard, died before he could educate his younger sons, the eldest his namesake was tutor, and pass that benefit on
My 4th,3rd,2nd, and great grandfather were illiterate, dirt and pig farmers. The first in my line to be educated, but only to the 8th grade was my grandfather, his sons, including my father, finished high school, my father acquired some Freshman classes before he died young.
I have an Masters , my son a PhD.
Thanks to Horace Mann, we finally climbed a rung or two up thesocial=economic ladder.
The news keeps missing the point that having a Christian one mate means you do not have to control anyone to keep yourself from having sex from your own body. You only need to control women if you intend to trade women in general with groups of outsiders as the hunter gathers did. Why do Repubs want to control women when the standard Christian model works?
Hubermanlab.com video May 1, 2023 Dr Sobelo at 29 minutes Oder Tracking indicates that people (or dogs) can smell if someone is ADHD and is taking Ritalin or not.
Clayton. I understand the fantacism of a convert, been there done that, with a little time and an assist, the fantacism wears off because cognitive dissonance which drives fantacism wears off.
Religion, especially Christianoty, especially Greek Orthodox in your case, is not the cure all, but actually part of the problem.
My focus was on the fact that the GOP was being unconsciously driven by an old idea of solving the breeding problem. They have abandoned the Christian solution of a life long mate which was Paul's solution for being an acceptable Bishop. I am not Greek Orthodox though I agree with the gospel of Thomas rather than the Paul of Rome. Of course white male christian privilege is a problem the world does not need.
The traveloque of Appolonius is identical to that of Paul, only in reverse order.
It is possible to live a spiritual life (whatever that means)to be a good person, to be loving, to be faithful, to be charitable without being a religious believer.
And it is common, very common, to be a selfish, evil, hateful, prudish, dishonest and immoral person and be a religious believer. One need look no further than 40% of America for proof.
Are. You. Kidding. Me???!!! A national pregnancy registry, but not a registry for guns , which are the leading cause of death of children already born. A gun registry is "invasive" but a pregnancy registry is not?! We are becoming a combination of Handmaid's Tale, 1984, and Animal Farm. What a nightmare! But WE WON'T EVER GIVE UP OR GIVE IN!
@ Jenn. This is a gift. Just like the misogynist antisemite Republican candidate for governor in NC.
The other night I zoomed into: https://linktr.ee/givingcircles
Thank you Thom Hartmann for continually rounding up each week's need-to-know.
Everybody everywhere please read every word of the Saturday Report every weekend.
How is it possible to get a whole party supporting such a gangster, such a loser, such a deranged proven conman? I am gobsmacked, it’s depressing. There is no worse blind than the one who refuses to open his / her eyes and face reality.
Culture war is more important and pervasive than our politicians and establishment report and emphasize. They have us chasing bright shiny objects, while they cement their rule.
Wolves in sheep's clothing. The sheep are the MAGA cult, who mostly don't have a pot to piss in and uniformly vote contrary to their economic and even physical health.
The antidote is visceral. Trump hates dogs.
Proof. https://rvat.org/
When most of my friends, my family, and my colleagues voted for Trump because of abortion, they just assumed pregnant patients would simply be turned away at the door.
None would have imagined the country turning into a Police State where pregnant women would be hunted down, as has become and is becoming the norm in Red States and all of the USA if certain people get elected.
Voting has consequences.
David, do you know why your friends, family and colleagues voted for Trump because of abortion?
I mean the real reason, not the excuse of unborn babies. As you know they don't care about babies, born or unborn, otherwise they wouldn't attack SNAP and WIC, or education.
so there is a real reason, and I'm pretty sure I know what it is.
what is it?
Basically it is patriarchal control over women, and their offspring, particularly males.
There seems to be an unconscious belief in humans that we can cheat the grave, by reproduction, and then pass our worldly goods onto ourselves via wills and inheritance laws..The sacred sperm. Or as it is also known the selfish gene, but the sacred sperm describes what I have in mind.
A woman who aborts is rejecting the man, if not his "perpetuity" then rejecting the men, and a certain type of man does not take rejection.
The patriarchal imperative is the motivation for religion, Kingship, leadership. and anti choice, misogynism. Until the 19th Amendment women were considered lesser than, not fully sentient beings, and even with the passage of the 19th Amendment
nothing changed, because the men who passed it (Republicans) saw it as a means of doubling their votes, because they believed women did not have their own mind, and followed the husband.
Considering the great number of women Trump humpers, like the bitch who wore a t shirt printed with "Trump Grab me here, with an arrow pointing to her crotch", the Ginnie Thomas's,, Babbits, Candace Owens and millions more, the estimation of females married to Republicans is correct, or the ho's like Kelly Anne Conway, and Anne with the Adams apple, Coulter.
This is a direct violation of HIPAA. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html
HIPAA, schmipaa. Who needs mere laws when you have voices from on high whispering directly into your ear?
Excellent point!
What is a direct violoation of HIPAA?
Violation of confidential medical records information.
Gotcha. I understand now, and to what section of Thom's post you are responding. The reporting pregnancies to a federal data base. I am sure that our six trad Catholic judges will find a way to condone the law, if it passed. Biden won't sign it, but if Congress and the Presidency go Republican I am sure that it will become law.
William, I was responding to Dawna. The order of posts is confusing sometimes.
I hope the Republicans saved some of those boos for Senator Britt. Are she and Marjorie Taylor Green having a contest for creating fear and loathing of the Republican Party? I thought that was Trump's job!
Somebody call Scarlett---I can see another SNL skit coming soon. The comedy writers haven't broken a sweat in a long time. You couldn't imagine this shit, and it just keeps coming. Seth Meyers almost killed me the other night; I have to remember not to drink anything during A Closer Look. I hate it when coffee goes down the wrong pipe.
We ought to revel in their stupidity and tyrannical ideas, because those things should stop them at the ballot box. But SHOULD is the operative word in that sentence. We have to work, work, work and vote, vote, vote.
Thanks Thom, a mighty HUZZAH for you! A resounding BOOOO for Britt!
If you had to pick an enemy, who would you choose?
me-with a small m
I just struggle with that word, enemy. However, on a practical note, there are several world leaders that would not be safe if they were alone with me and I was serving the drinks.
All I can say to all of that is Holy Sh#t!! And keep fighting friends!! I made up my mind last week I would not give up and would not give in!! I will not go down without one hell of a fight!!
I live in Indiana and was somewhat encouraged by our Primary results. Over 100,000 people Voted for Nikki Haley. So many Republicans in the Hoosier state are very dissatisfied with Trump!! That is good news for the Biden campaign in my Book. So I will keep doing what I'm doing with my Activist work. Thank you Thom for always keeping us so well-informed. Keep the faith dear friends!! It ain't over 'till it's over!!!
💙🇺🇸💙
Lisa, the best we can hope for is that a good portion of that 100,000 votes third party or not at all. Because there is one thing that drives Republicans and that is a visceral hatred and fear of Democrats. Remember Barr, Sununu and Romney, amongst others have said that as much as the detest Trump they will vote for him, because they hate Democrats.. Push comes to shove, it is the culture war that drives them.
I know William you're so right. They despise Biden and many think he's ushering in "Communism". It's insane is what it is!! You can't get through to them either. 25-30 years of Fox and the right's brainwashing is just about impossible to reason with. I thought January 6th might have made a difference but that has faded from most of their memories.
There is no way to deprogram a believer. Try to convince a Muslim that the Quran is a joke, and that it is ridiculous that an illiterate like Muhammad could write the Quran (they have a ready made answer) Try to convince a Christian that the Bible is a fraud, borrowed stories and hero's from Sumerians, Babylonains, Syrians, Egyptions and others among whom the Hebrew sojourned or fought, try to convince Christians that their Jesus didn't exist and he was a composite of Appolonius of Tyana and a Jewish guerilla leader..
It is not going to happen. I am sure efforts were made to deprogram James Jones cult, Heavens Gate and David Koresh's cult, didn't happen.
Same with trying to break through the wall that is the MAGAt mind.
My birth state of Alabama has already earned a reputation as the most backward state in the nation. The senator's proposed registry of pregnant women reminds me of "Decree 770" by the deposed Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceaucescu. It was meant to increase the nation's falling birthrate. Contraceptives were removed from sale (though the wealthy still managed to obtain them), and all women of reproductive age had to be monitored monthly by a gynecologist. Any failure to become pregnant had to be accounted for, and any detected pregnancies were followed until birth. But because parents could not afford to care for so many children, many of those unwanted babies were abandoned to understaffed orphanages. Most failed to develop normally, even if they were later adopted. It resulted in an international scandal. Ceaucescu and his wife were eventually executed by firing squad.
I remember that situation. Unwanted babies and children were abandoned in overcrowded orphanages if they were lucky. Foreigners who came in after the fall of the Ceaucescu government were finding children left in the open - often the deformed ones.
Yes. But the Alabama senator who proposed a national registry of pregnant women was probably still in diapers when the Romanian story made the news, if she'd been born yet at all. Funny how their registry of pregnancies failed to transition into a record of child care and development!
Yet, during the 1980s, Romania was setting new records at the Olympics. At the time, I wondered if that related to their practice of giving GH3 (aka Gerovital or procaine hydrochloride) to athletes. If so, it got past the drug-testing of the day!
Ceaucescu was a big fan of GH3, touted as an anti-aging drug, or nutrient. After his death, it continued to be promoted as a remedy for AIDS, before any effective treatment was actually available.
I briefly met its inventor, Ada Aslan, at an event to publicize a book on GH3 in the late 1970s. She would have been around 80 at the time, but looked much older than my mom did at the same age. Mom's secret was a salad with each meal!
After reading the book, I ordered a two-month supply of liquid GH3 to see if it would enhance my well-being. It didn't, and it tasted horrible. The chemical name does suggest that it could have some stimulant properties, but if so, they were too mild to notice. It's still being sold as an anti-aging agent in skin creams or "serums."
But Senator Britt doesn't go far enough. To identify pregnant women they should wear some sort of mark. Perhaps a yellow star would show up well. And to enforce the anti-abortion laws a new Gestation Police is required. That long name can be simplified to Gesta-Po.
Thanks, Thom! I follow the C3S (EU) daily and have seen their daily temp track upward 0.25 degF over the 1991-2020 baseline for the past 11 mo's, but that trend has been climbing at the same incline rate for 18 mo's.! So, we may expect 1.75 degC by 2025, 2.0 by 2026, and 3.0 by 2030, if this trend continues and we continue to burn 8 billion tons of coal annually, and 100 million barrels of oil A DAY. On their "Climate Pulse" page we can see a 10 degF temp anomaly between the hotter sea temp of 70 degF. and the land air temp of 60 degF, so this is driving the evaporation of 1 trillion tons of water vapor daily, which falls back to the surface within 10 days as rain and drives all the flooding we are seeing, unless, like the "orange turd", we have our heads up our arses.
As for a pregnancy registry, the only reason to promote human reproduction, in a climate collapsing from fossil fuel burning, is for the same fossil fuel corporate shilling you point out with the "orange turd" prostituting himself for those same fossil fuel corporate overlords, irrespective of the thermal demise of his offspring and all the rest of our progeny in the ever closer and hotter/colder (global heating causes both!) dystopic future.
Thanks for the update Thom.
The immigration problem accounts for the rise of the right in Europe as well as in America.
It is what brought Orban to power, is a factor in the power of the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS),
Marine le Pen in France, Gilders in the Netherlands, the problems in Norway and Sweden., the cause of Brexit.
Basically the culture of Europe is under assault and being overwhelmed by migrants from North Africa, the MidEast and West Asia. There maybe some elements of racism, however the real problem is the incompatiblity of cultures. There is a tipping point of 17%, when a minority culture breaches that threshhold, the majority culture is under pressure and starts to change.
This is causing the Islamization of Europe, halted by Charles Martel at Poitiers, and the Flying Hussars under King John III Sobieski.
Orban ran on a program of building a wall and excluding the Muslims and he won.
Trump did and is doing the same.
All of the right wing parties in Europe have as their major agenda, anti immigration.
America's immigration problem is different, it is not about culture, but race. Hispanic immigrants are Catholic, Evangelical, Pentecostal and as a result ultra conservative, perfect allies of the right.
Like Mayra Nohemi Flores (born January 1, 1986) is an American politician who represented Texas's 34th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2022 to 2023. A member of the Republican Party, she was the first female Mexican-born member of the House.
Flores was born in Burgos, Tamaulipas, Mexico; her family moved to the United States when she was six years old before she gained citizenship at age 14. she is an ultra conservative, homophobic, misogynistic Trump Humper., also Joe Arpaio, Nick Fuentes, Enrique Tarrio and the list goes on.
The culture war in Europe is quite different than the culture war in the USA., but it is a culture war.
And apparently culture wars "trump" everything. It certainly accounts for the rise of the right, Trump and the rise of fascism in Europe.
Then
The irony is that Trump is the poster boy for employer sanctions for hiring illegals under the table DOL fined him. The penalty was more than $1 mil. https://time.com/4465744/donald-trump-undocumented-workers/
Trump Inc hires temporary visa workers to displace American workers at the Doral and Mar a Lago. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2023/06/14/mar-a-lago-foreign-workers-trump-classified-documents/?sh=3a09768a2b6b
Although as president his policy was to deport undocumented aliens, Trump Inc. hired them and did not report them. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/trump-organization-undocumented-workers
The upstairs maid. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-two-undocumented-housekeepers-took-on-the-president--and-revealed-trumps-long-term-reliance-on-illegal-immigrants/2019/12/04/3dff5b5c-0a15-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html
Yep Daniel, Trump hires illegals and legals but doesn't pay them. And this is the working class hero.
Brilliant! It makes perfect sense. Transporters of all manner of things need to be licensed, registered and/or otherwise regulated. Why not fetus-transporters?
I presume that was tongue in cheek, maybe a /s at the end to denote sarcasm. William Politt
I, will only say it’s crazy out there in GOP land. Thank you Thom. They really don’t have a bottom. Then, with that they don’t care about not having a bottom either.
One other comment, not entirelyOT.
I just received a news letter from the Lincoln Project, again Republicans are self deluded.\
Here is a guote from the beginning. " Trump happened because too many people lacked the imagination to see how far MAGA would go"
Wrong, Trump won because he is the logical consequence of conservatism.
The MAGAts want to halt progress and return the country to at least 1960, with many wanting to go back to 1860, before the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th and 19th Amendments, back to before reconstruction and to the time when women were the property of men.
Dear Friends,
I have a news flash. Having chaplins placed in public schools is just the latter day recognition of the fact that religion has been and will continue to be a huge influence in schools. The mission started with Horace Mann who used a Protestant version of the Bible as a primary reader, and religion in the form of Christianity has been in the ether, in the air, and in the water in public schools, ever since.
A week or so ago, I wrote to Thom to briefly outline an article by a professor and author I had just discovered. The only thing I had read of his at that point was an article entitled, “The Critiquing of Charters While the Elephant of Public Schools is in the Room” (2006) by Dr. Deron Boyles of Georgia State University. I have since read a second article (some quotes and details below) and I ordered two of his books, which I have received. I have nearly finished the second chapter in one of the books (American Education & Corporations).
Yesterday, I posted a piece on my Substack newsletter with my first analysis of what I had read up to that point. It is apropos to the questions at hand. I will copy here some of that FIY.
The first article mentions that most teachers are practicing Christians or have a relatively solid background in one of the many branches of Christianity. To wit:
“But public schools are also guilty of stratification, tracking, (de facto) segregation, and the like. Since most public school teachers and their boards are self-described Christians and work ethic rules structure the codes of conduct along with the explicit as well as hidden curricula, the issue of assumed truths and values comes to the fore.8”
This means that, despite differences in the particular beliefs and rituals among church affiliations, insidious and pathological concepts such as the theory of “original sin” and male superiority (the Strict Father metaphor) are prominent in schools and accepted without question. These often accompany strong inclinations toward guilt, shame, and hyper-responsibility, and rationalizations common to the superstitious and magical thinkers or conspiracy theories often pervade the thinking, convictions, and habit patterns of teachers and other school staff and administrators, as well as of many parents. This leads to inherent attitudes and actions which have profound and commonly pernicious effects on students.
Boyles also touches on the fact which I have tried to illuminate for many years, which is that values are not taught. He says, “Girding this inquiry is a concern about the problematic enterprise of teaching character, as if it were an unquestionable domain”. Values are developed organically as a function of living in a reasonably secure and sensible environment through modeling, intuitive processes, learning by experiencing data and positive or intrinsically rewarding feedback, cognitive awareness and logic, and emotional satisfaction or ego building.
Dr. Boyles refers to the teachings of Dewey. He states that “Dewey…is arguing against morals “in the air…something set off by themselves...{morals} that are so very ‘moral’ that they have no working contact with the average affairs of daily life.” One learns some things more by “osmosis”, in other words, than through organized or intentional methodology and programming.
The sad reality is that, as Dr. Boyles writes, “…public schools, far more often than most of their personnel themselves realize, are under the heavy influence of the dominant ideology”. He asks about this program funded by a fundamentalist Christian using free “kid’s meals” as a bribe, whether it might be the case that the motives are “…imposing hierarchy, developing non-questioning students, and privileging Christian-corporate values…” and to “…maintain and increase their power, even at the expense of the very students to whom they preach equality and kindness?”
The following excerpt from the earlier article gets to the explanation for how and why traditional public school curricula can be so easily hijacked and modified by corporate and other outside interests.
“Public schools operate under state constitutional guidelines which place legislatures in control of expenditures. School boards on both the state and local level interpret policy established by departments of education and the legislature. Given that legislatures are inordinately pro-business and neo-classical in their thinking, the policies they sanction are only a logical extension of that kind of thinking.”
Here are more incisive excerpts driving home Dr. Boyles message:
“Since they have been managed by “school leaders” who take their cue from industry and business, we should not be surprised that public schools are not the citadels of social justice, democracy, or the free exchange of ideas Howe and I might otherwise wish them to be.”
“Consider the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).2 ALEC has a staff of 30, boasts 2400 national memberships of state legislators from both parties, has more than 300 private-sector members (including ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Wal-Mart, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco), and a 5.5 million dollar yearly budget to push “decidedly pro-business bills through state legislatures.”3
“Given the connection between ALEC, legislators, and private business and given that legislators are responsible for school funding and school policy, is it possible that schools can be anything other than already privatized spheres? If they are not fully privatized, they are at least subsumed under neo-classical ideology and take many of their cues from it.”
“…while evidence indicates that public schools pursue private economic interests as aggressively as private entities, the commonly-held belief that they serve a public good allows private economic interests of a few to masquerade as the public interests of all.”
Dr. Boyles has noted that the line between church and state is blurred if not obliterated. This comports with my own assertion for decades that there must be a line between school and state, given the impossibility of eliminating church influence in schools; the arbitrary almost limitless power invested in agents, officials, and authorities who set policies and curriculum, and the constant temptation to allow outside interests and particularly corporate interests to invade with material and programs disguised as technical, technological, or practical supplements to the school’s instructional, testing, and certification regimes. Once again, he says it best.
“Are we not faced with the strange reality that what we call public schools are actually and already venues for future private capital production? Where in public schools are students encouraged to question the idea of schooling itself that is not caught up in the bait-and-switch of neo-classical, reductionist thinking?”
What I have found especially disappointing in all of this once again, however, is that still, no one else is connecting the dots directly between the compulsory feature inescapable with compulsory attendance laws and the interminable problems with abuses of arbitrary authority, the perceived need to impose and “teach” value sets borrowed and imported from religion and corporations, and the backlash of discipline, measurement, attentional, anti- intellectual, and comprehension problems, just to hit the highlights. If these unconstitutional, paternalistic, and unproductive laws were not in effect, the US Supreme Court would not be allowing the perpetual decimation of students’ precious rights and no one would be comparing schools to harmful prisons where children are “dumbed down” and where their spirits are routinely broken. When will someone with the brilliance and reputation of a Dr. Boyles step up and break that taboo?
The citations in the book and articles lead me to believe that these threads must lead to real breakthroughs. But, when? Readers would do well to look up Dr. Boyles and read his material. He appears to be more concerned with corporate intrusion than the underlying conservative and religious influence. But he is definitely on the right track and extremely well informed about how students are being conned and turned into Fox Noise enthusiasts.
Robert B. Elliottt, There is a plus side to many things. Take Horace Mann. He championed univeersal education. Until him, my paternal ancestors, were among the earliest of Settlers in an for profit enterprise called the London Company of Virginia and my 9th ggf and name sake, in Wikipedia by the way) was a planter, although he used indentured servants, not slaves, however his son, grandson, graeat grandsons were also planters and some of them owned slaves, then in my line, the family fell into illiteracy when the father, Richard, died before he could educate his younger sons, the eldest his namesake was tutor, and pass that benefit on
My 4th,3rd,2nd, and great grandfather were illiterate, dirt and pig farmers. The first in my line to be educated, but only to the 8th grade was my grandfather, his sons, including my father, finished high school, my father acquired some Freshman classes before he died young.
I have an Masters , my son a PhD.
Thanks to Horace Mann, we finally climbed a rung or two up thesocial=economic ladder.
The news keeps missing the point that having a Christian one mate means you do not have to control anyone to keep yourself from having sex from your own body. You only need to control women if you intend to trade women in general with groups of outsiders as the hunter gathers did. Why do Repubs want to control women when the standard Christian model works?
Hubermanlab.com video May 1, 2023 Dr Sobelo at 29 minutes Oder Tracking indicates that people (or dogs) can smell if someone is ADHD and is taking Ritalin or not.
Clayton. I understand the fantacism of a convert, been there done that, with a little time and an assist, the fantacism wears off because cognitive dissonance which drives fantacism wears off.
Religion, especially Christianoty, especially Greek Orthodox in your case, is not the cure all, but actually part of the problem.
It is patriarchal, and that is the problem.
My focus was on the fact that the GOP was being unconsciously driven by an old idea of solving the breeding problem. They have abandoned the Christian solution of a life long mate which was Paul's solution for being an acceptable Bishop. I am not Greek Orthodox though I agree with the gospel of Thomas rather than the Paul of Rome. Of course white male christian privilege is a problem the world does not need.
Clayton, dude, I do like your comments, but please leave your religious enthusiasm out of it, we don't need any prosleytizing.
Paul (Saul) is a misognyistic fiction. in fact much of the Jesus (IHSus) is the teachings of Appolpmois of Tyana https://stellarhousepublishing.com/apollonius/.
The traveloque of Appolonius is identical to that of Paul, only in reverse order.
It is possible to live a spiritual life (whatever that means)to be a good person, to be loving, to be faithful, to be charitable without being a religious believer.
And it is common, very common, to be a selfish, evil, hateful, prudish, dishonest and immoral person and be a religious believer. One need look no further than 40% of America for proof.