New BURN IT DOWN WITH KIM BROWN went up tonight.
Seemingly in response to the disappointing polling numbers, DeSantis has restructured his campaign staff three times in the past month or so, and his recent focus on issues like crime may be a sign that he is shifting his messaging from the war on "woke." A recent New York Times/Siena College poll of likely Republican primary voters found that messages of "law and order" were much more attractive than fighting against liberal policy agendas.
Despite facing repeated attacks from Trump on the campaign trail—and firing back a few of his own—DeSantis has also defended the former president from his list of criminal charges, and previously called the Justice Department's investigations against Trump a "weaponization" of the federal government.
In a series of memos published online by a political firm associated with DeSantis' supporting super PAC, Never Back Down, allies of his campaign suggested that the governor spend Wednesday's debate defending Trump if the former president gets assailed by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and saving his own attacks for Ramaswamy.
Thankfully people appear to grasp that more and more. I like this video.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
As the world grows hotter and blistering summer days become routine, the task of supplying electricity is becoming an increasingly intractable problem across the Middle East. Soaring demand for cooling — fans, air conditioners, fridges and freezers — is overtaxing electrical grids long beset by war damage, mismanagement or corruption.
And it’s set to get worse. Already, the heat index, which measures the combined effect of temperature and humidity, has reached 152 degrees in some parts of the region, near the limits of human tolerance. Scientists predict that by 2050 much of the Middle East will suffer extreme heat — defined as an average annual temperature of around 84 degrees. A recent study in the journal Lancet Planet Health looking four decades into the future found that for every 100,000 people in the region, 123 will suffer heat-related deaths each year — more than 60 times the current rate.
Even nations with the capacity to provide more power balk at the higher costs or have to contend with infrastructure that’s simply not designed to cope with the increased stress of working harder for longer under hotter conditions. But failing to supply electricity carries economic and political risks, especially for nations whose authoritarian regimes have governed according to a simple rule: cheap basic services in exchange for public quiescence. In recent years, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria have all seen protests ignite over issues of power provision.
“Part of the social contract with the government was services for the people, to silence them,” said Ahmed Tabaqchali, an Iraqi economic expert.
In this summer’s extraordinary heat, many Middle Eastern countries have instead resorted to mandatory work furloughs or power cuts, cannibalizing parts of their economies to save power — and money.
Starting with Iraq, ASHARQ AL-ASWAT reports:
Iraq no longer required the presence of "foreign combat forces" on its territories to combat ISIS, announced Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Monday.
Sudani was speaking during a meeting with commanders of the Armed Forces and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), members of the Ministries of Interior and Defense, and the military forces that took part in the war against the ISIS terrorist organization.
PRESS TV quotes him saying:
"Today, Iraq does not need foreign combat forces, and we are conducting advanced dialogues in order to determine the form of future relationship and cooperation with the international coalition," he said.
“The Iraqis have become, after the liberation battles, more united than ever before… All Iraqis fought in one trench from all nationalities, religions, sects and components."
What a load of garbage. His remarks, the prime minister himself.
Do they need foreign troops? No, they don't. But he's not calling for them to leave. And it was just last week that Iraq's Minister of Defense Thabit Muhammad al-Abassi was in DC meeting with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to discuss the new agreement as the DoD press release noted:
This meeting looks beyond the defeat of the Islamic State and is an outgrowth of a visit Austin made to Baghdad in March. "We are interested in an enduring defense relationship within a strategic partnership," said Dana Stroul, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, during an interview last week.
Many officials are calling this an agreement on establishing a "360-degree relationship" -- meaning it would be a whole-of-government strategic partnership for years.
For years.
Years.
Foreign troops not needed but US troops to continue "for years."
Iraq's prime minister was lying to the Iraqi people.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani on Monday received United Kingdom Minister of State for Security Affairs Tom Tugendhat and his accompanying delegation.
At the meeting, the two sides discussed bilateral relations between the two countries, improving cooperation in security and defense, as well as combating terrorism and corruption.
Al-Sudani thanked the United Kingdom for supporting Iraq in the fight against ISIS.
Moreover, al-Sudani stressed the importance of partnering with the UK to combat cross-border crimes, particularly those related to smuggling, human trafficking, and the illegal drug trade.
In other news, look who US Ambassador to Iraq Alina L Romanowski met with last week.
Yes, former prime minister and forever thug Nouri al-Maliki.
He's also still powerful. A fact that the US media seemed woefully unaware of in 2021 and in 2022. It's 2023 now and she's meeting with the thug. Would seem to indicate that the US media might need to pay a little more attention to Nouri -- but then, so would the defeat of Moqtada al-Sadr.
For months, al-Maliki’s coalition has set two goals concerning provincial council elections.
Firstly, they adamantly oppose any postponement of the scheduled December deadline.
Secondly, they are shutting the door on forming alliances with other Shiite factions in Iraq’s Coordination Framework.
Jean Siebenaler moved to Florida following her retirement to bask in the warmth of the Sunshine State.
"I finally thought I'd be sitting on the water with an umbrella drink in my hand," she said.
The Milton resident, a military veteran and retired physician, now says she wonders if Florida was where she needed to relocate after all. Having been politically active in her home state of Ohio, she finds beach time consumed by "steaming and stewing" over the state of the state and local politics.
"It's very upsetting, the direction we see Florida heading," she said. "Every day I wonder why I am living here."
For many, Florida has changed. What was once a proudly purple state has turned an angry red, they say. Gov. Ron DeSantis, with the dedicated backing of a Republican supermajority in the state legislature, is waging war on what he calls "wokeism" — a term he has loosely defined as "a form of cultural Marxism." But many — people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, non-Christians, teachers, union members, students — feel it is a war against themselves, as they face ridicule, discrimination, and, potentially, violence.
The NAACP, Equity Florida and the League of United Latin American Citizens each issued travel advisories for Florida. The NAACP advisory states, in part, "Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ individuals."
There exist widespread reports of people abandoning the state because they no longer feel welcome here. Following her family's exodus to Pennsylvania in May, former Brevard County resident and Democratic Party activist Stacey Patel told FLORIDA TODAY, "It's like breathing, you know? After holding your breath for a really long time."
Nikki Fried, the state's former commissioner of agriculture and current Florida Democratic Party chair, predicted 800,000 immigrants had left the state after DeSantis signed SB 1718 into law. It imposes strict restrictions and penalties to deter the employment of undocumented workers in the state.
Democrats also count themselves among the groups feeling persecuted. Patel's family was vilified, she said, for its party affiliation.
Siebenaler, who has stepped into the position of legislative chair for the Democratic Women's Club of Florida, attended an early June meeting of the Santa Rosa County Commission to call out Commissioner James Calkins for labeling the Democratic Party as evil.
"I took an oath to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic," she told the governing board. "And I must speak out against the hate speech that is emanating from the Santa Rosa County Commission dais."
"If you knew Lauri you know she loved hard, laughed often, and nurtured and protected those she cared about," the post said. "She was a force, she loved to crack jokes and wanted to live as joyful of a life as possible."
The group said that Carleton and her husband organized the co-op, which offered free food and supplies for four months after a blizzard swept through the area.
“Lauri put her whole heart into keeping it going as long as we could,” the group said.
The group urged people to "pay an act of kindness forward in her honor" and encouraged people to fly Pride flags in her honor.
“It was only a matter of time.”
That was my first thought upon hearing of the callous and hateful murder of Laura Carleton, the owner of Mag Pi Clothing in Cedar Glen, California. A straight woman, Carleton was fatally shot by a man who confronted her over an LGBTQ+ Pride flag which was displayed at her shop. Her assailant was later killed by police.
This was not the first time someone had taken issue with Carleton’s Pride flag. As The Independent has previously reported, friends of Carleton say that the flag has been ripped down multiple times. Every time, she simply replaced the flag with another, refusing to cave in to the hateful bigots who vandalized her shop.
The inevitability of something like this happening was apparent to anyone paying attention. Following last year’s deadly homophobic shooting at a Colorado gay club, Scientific Americanreported on the link between rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on the right and violence against LGBTQ people. Around the same time, the UCLA Williams Institute released a startling statistic: LGBT people are nine times more likely to be a victim of a hate-crime than non-LGBT people. This was followed by a document from the Department of Homeland Security in May warning that violent threats against the LGBTQ community are increasing in both number and intensity.
In June, a joint report by the Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD found more than 350 anti-LGBTQ incidents across 46 states and the District of Columbia. These included acts of online harassment and vandalism, which Carleton’s murder – after multiple incidents of vandalism – shows can and do escalate into incidents of physical violence.
These incidents also do not exist in a vacuum. This year has seen a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures; more than 500 were introduced, with over 75 of them becoming law. While we can and should debate public policy on its merits, what cannot be denied is that with these bills has come the normalization of some truly disgusting and hateful rhetoric.
For example, in April, a spokeswoman for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted that anyone who opposed the state’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law is “probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” This, after the Human Rights Campaign found that the anti-LGBTQ grooming narrative had increased on social media by 400% following the passage of the law, which prohibits teaching Florida students about sexual orientation or gender identity. This harassment is not limited to the internet, though; in April, The Independent interviewed three people who “had been harassed or attacked in public over the past two weeks by strangers who accused them, with no provocation or evidence, of ‘grooming’ children or being a ‘groomer.’”
This is not the first time the American right has been swept up in a moral panic over LGBTQ people and children. Nearly 50 years ago, Anita Bryant (the singer and orange juice spokeswoman) famously led the so-called Save Our Children campaign which sought to allow teachers in Florida – and later California, when she campaigned for the Briggs Initiative – to be fired for being gay. This led gay rights activists Jean O’Leary and Bruce Voeller to write in a 1977 New York Times op-ed that “gay women and men in this country have been required to join a conspiracy to pretend we don’t exist, so that other people can lie to their children.”
Make no mistake, that is what is happening: people are lying to their children, to themselves, and to the public. As the Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact reported last year, most child molesters are straight, “school employees who perpetrate child sexual abuse are most likely to be white, heterosexual, male adults…” and that actually, “gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people are less likely than people who do not claim those labels to commit child sexual abuse in school settings.” There is also no evidence that teaching about LGBTQ people, sexual orientation, or gender identity leads to children becoming LGBTQ or increases incidents of child sexual abuse.
In the last few weeks, we have seen a disturbing uptick of reported threats against public figures, grand jurors, and judges. One of the most disturbing and disgraceful are threats against Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who will be presiding in the trial of former president Donald Trump. Abigail Jo Shry, 43, of Alvin, Tex., allegedly left an Aug. 5 voice mail at Chutkan’s chambers in which she called her a racial slur and threatened her, saying, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, b—-.” That same week, there was also a sentencing in a prior case where the threat led to an attempt on the life of Trump. Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, 56, has been sentenced to 262 months or roughly 22 years for mailing ricin to Trump. What makes her case even more striking is the defense raised by her lawyer.
Ferrier is a dual citizen of Canada and France. She pleaded guilty to sending a letter containing ricin in 2020 to then-President Trump and others.
“You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” Shry allegedly said in the message, according to Bloomberg. “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, (expletive).
“You will be targeted personally, publically, your family, all of it.”
-
-
Weekend box office6 hours ago
-
Blowhard Doo-Doo Ron Ron DeSantis6 hours ago
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
His own deplorables7 hours ago
-
-
-
The Criminal Insanity of Climate Change16 hours ago
