American Politics from 2019 on

[pErvinalia]

Refill the swamp!

[Brian Peacock]

[JimC]

The lunatics have taken over the asylum...

[Svartalf]

The lunatics have taken over the asylum...

it's been that way at least since 2016, possibly since 2000

[Tero]

deep state2.jpg (24.13 KiB) Viewed 149 times

[Tero]

Blog:
We had the 2016 election and then the 2020 election and things seemed to be going back on a normal course of US politics. Then 2024 happened. And we liberals were confused. where did these people come back from? they seemed to have disappeared in 2020. But a good number of them voted Trump both 2016 and 2020. Without going into detail about Harris or Biden and anything on the Democrat side, there is something we should recognize here. It was not all about Trump.

Political scientists can analyze this for more years, but the major success Trump had in 2024 had to do with 2020. His voters and he have been focused on 2020 for years. They were all offended by THEIR vote not meaning anything. They could not have been wrong! The election was stolen! These people do not need facts. Confirmation bias is all they need. They were wronged and they are not going to take this! This alone assured a solid MAGA turnout 2024. Other than that it was the usual "too much government."

Both January 6th and the 2024 are explained by this simple fact. It did not even matter that it was Trump running in 2024. They would have showed up in huge numbers to vote for the Reapublicans to pusnish Biden, Harris and the Democrats for stealing their vote in 2020!

Are we Democrats not concerned with election fraud? Yes we are, but somwhow our fears do not carry over to the next election as well. We have a large coaltion of different views that all translates to voting for a Democrat. We are not as easily predicted as the MAGA crowd.


https://esapolitics.blogspot.com/2026/0 ... voter.html

[Brian Peacock]

If family wealth, health, and living standards continue along their falling trend then the incumbent is always going to get voted out, whoever they are.

[Tero]

Nebraska abortions rose nearly 8% in 2025, mostly due to influx of Iowa patients
Number of Iowa patients traveling to Nebraska for abortions nearly doubled from 2024 to 2025
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/07/09 ... -patients/

There are currently 2 clinics. Even in the capitol the residents need to drive about 60 miles to Omaha, though telehealth will get you the pills. Cutoff is currently 12 weeks and nothing is on the ballot to change it.

[L'Emmerdeur]

The unlamented late Senator Lindsey Graham was only one of the American politicians whose lack of principles has been prominently displayed in the Trump era. Secretary of State (along with several other jobs, including 'viceroy' of Venezuela) Marco Rubio has all too clearly sold his soul to Trump. Despite reports that he may not actually challenge Vance for the designated successor role, his ambition keeps him playing the game.

In May, the Trump administration released a 16-page strategy memo outlining what it called the most significant terrorist threats facing the nation. Authored by the recently appointed senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, it drew a distinction between three categories: Narco-terrorism, Islamic terrorism and left-wing terrorism. Since Gorka himself has ties to a far-right group in Hungary, perhaps it was to be expected that the document neglected to mention the right-wing violence that has plagued the United States for the last decade or more.

It was a significant omission in a memo that was long on hyperbole and short on strategy, and offered little more than a call for aggressive, violent action against terrorism. As ProPublica reported, in other contexts Gorka has described “U.S. operations turning suspected terrorists into ‘red mist’ and stacking bodies ‘like cordwood.’” He has also sported a lanyard with the letters “WWFY & WWKY,” which stands for “We will find you and we will kill you.” Obviously, Gorka, who was fired from the White House in Donald Trump’s first term but was allowed to return to the fold in the second, is a very serious and sober person — a first-rate choice to head counterterrorism efforts.

It’s not surprising that the report, if you want to call it that, would name narco-terrorists and Islamic terrorism. Those are perennial threats named in reports by both Democratic and Republican administrations. But the focus on left-wing terrorism is new. And now the Trump administration, led by Secretary of State — and likely 2028 presidential candidate — Marco Rubio is leading the charge to take the far-left terror crusade global.

Left-wing terrorism hasn’t been a focus until now for good reason. As TIME reported in September, “In the last five years, 81 people have been killed by political violence in the United States. Right-wing terrorists account for over half of those murders, some 54%, according to research by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Islamists account for 21%, and left-wingers for 22%.” Going back to 1975, excluding the 9/11 attacks, right-wing terrorism has accounted for 63% of deaths from political violence, while only 10% came from the left.

...

Lest you think this is all just another onanistic show for the MAGA cult, the administration is working overtime to enlist foreign countries in its effort. In late May, the State Department held a meeting in The Hague that brought together counterterrorism officials from Europe and elsewhere, and it was not well-received. According to the Washington Post, many of the invitees’ view was “we don’t see it quite the way you do.” They are rightly more concerned with the rise of right-wing violence as seen in the anti-Muslim attacks that were recently on display in Northern Ireland.

Undeterred by this rejection of the administration’s provincial obsession with their own domestic enemies, Rubio, reported the Post, has invited leaders from more than 60 countries to discuss the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism” this week — and his international counterparts are once again unimpressed, as are domestic and foreign terrorism experts. (Even some Trump officials worry that “a Gavin Newsom administration” will turn these tactics on the right.)

“Antifa” is just not a thing, but apparently, the Trump administration is determined to pretend it is so they can designate the group a transnational terrorist organization and use the extra-constitutional methods they have applied to Islamic terrorism — and, presumably, the kill order they are currently using in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific against alleged narco-terrorists.

[source]

[pErvinalia]

From The Other 98% facebook page

Lindsey Graham is dead at 71. In 2016, he dared America on camera: "Use my words against me." This is his obituary. These are his words.

The facts first, plainly. Graham died Saturday night at his Washington home of what his office calls a brief and sudden illness. He served four terms, chaired the Judiciary and Budget committees, and spent decades as one of the loudest voices in American foreign policy.

By sunrise the whitewash had begun. Trump declared him a "true American Patriot." Netanyahu called him a beloved friend. The eulogies will tell you about his service.

They will not tell you about the ledger. So we will.

In December 2015, Graham looked into a camera and called Donald Trump a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." By February 2016: "I think he's a kook. I think he's crazy." That May he wrote: "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it." He refused to vote for him.

Then Trump won, and Lindsey Graham discovered golf.

By late 2017 he was scolding the media for calling the president, yes, really, a kook.

His best friend was John McCain, a man Trump mocked for being captured in Vietnam and kept mocking after he was dead. Graham wept for McCain on the Senate floor, then deepened his devotion to the man who spat on his grave.

The words he wanted used came in 2016, when he swore that if a Supreme Court seat opened in an election year, the next president should fill it. In 2018 he repeated the promise and added: "hold the tape."

In October 2020, as Judiciary chairman, he rammed Amy Coney Barrett onto the Court eight days before the election.

In November 2020, Georgia's Republican secretary of state said Graham had called him asking about tossing legally cast mail ballots. Graham denied it, fought the grand jury subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court, and lost.

On January 6th, with the glass still on the Capitol floor, he announced: "Count me out. Enough is enough." He was back at Mar-a-Lago within months.

He cheered the country into Iraq. Three weeks ago he was on television promising that if diplomacy failed, Trump was "going to take the Strait of Hormuz."

Honesty requires one more line: he was, to the end, one of Ukraine's most reliable champions in the Senate, and he died the day after standing beside Zelensky in Kyiv. Even a ledger this dark has an entry in the other column.

But the ledger is the legacy. A man who saw exactly what Trump was, said so in the plainest English of his era, and then spent nine years kneeling to it for relevance.

He asked us to use his words against him.
Consider them used.