Last edition:
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Friday, December 13, 2024
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 67th Edition. So you say you want a revolution?
Наро́дная во́ля?
The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats
Hanauer is a very wealth man.
Hanauer concluded his article with:
My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three
generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.
Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.
I suspect we're past that point now. We've elected a plutocrat who promised to be sort of what Franklin Roosevelt actually was, "a traitor to his class".
He won't be.
I suspect the rage will amplify.
So, what am I talking about?
I've never had any problems with my health insurance. People complain about their health insurance a lot, however.
I'm noting that here as the public reaction to the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, has been shocking. I've seen people I know and respect actually rejoice at his killing, and that reaction has been extremely widespread. I even saw somebody who is associated sort of with the insurance industry rejoice at the murder. Moreover, one of the most right wing people I know, who voted for Trump twice, made a positive comment about the killing.
Let that sink in. Far right, voted for Trump twice, and expressing some sympathy with the killer.
We find ourselves, at the same time that populists elected a childish billionaire who started nominating his billionaire buddies to government positions, in a situation in which a large section of the American population, including no doubt many of the people who voted the overaged rich child into office, pretty much cheering a terroristic assassination of a health insurance company CEO.
That it was an assassination, there can be no doubt. Expended shell casings were labeled "delay", "defend" and "depose", showing both a familiarity with civil litigation and the book Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.
What's that tell us?
Well it tells us in part that the social fabric in this country is a lot more ripped than we even began to imagine.
And it also tells us people attempting to read the populist weather vein might be reading it wrong. The rage might not be as fully right wing as imagined, as now we have Americans cheering the killing of an industry figure, something that Trump/Musk and his cronies love. That's its populist, however, there can be no doubt.
I can't recall things like this happening in the US, the targeted assassination of industry figures, since the 1920s, when it was a feature of real radicalism. We're entering a very bad space.
It suggest, however, that in spite of what Trump/Musk imagine, the country might actually be ready for some real economic reform as it received in the 1930s. Assassination is not tolerable, but it would appear some aspects of corporate capitalism may not be so much any longer either.
Indeed, the same right wing fellow I mentioned above proposed that all health insurance companies should be forced to be 100% policy holder owned, a highly distributist suggestion.
It is, I'd note, worth noting that plenty of current Trump backers from the far right are noting that the killer, Luigi Mangione, is from a well to do family. He is. This is supposed to tell us that this was a deluded left winger.
Deluded, no doubt. Left winter, maybe. But it's also worth noting that before Trump was the populist darling, Bernie Sanders was. Tulsi Gabbard, one time Democrat and now Trump nominee for security chief, was a Sanders supporter before she supported Trump.
Joseph Goebbels was a Communist before he was a Nazi.
Goebbels in 1916.
Lenin was from a middle class family, whose parents were monarchists. He was a lawyer, hardly a proletarian occupation.
The point of this? Well, just because Mangione was from a well to do family, who no doubt supported none of this, doesn't mean that he became a populist assassin as he was radicalized by the left. He personally may have been. We don't know. He may be just a nut.
But the widespread cheering for him, and it is widespread, shows that Hanauer may very well be very right.
Last edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer up your pants.*
Sunday, December 8, 2024
Tuesday, December 8, 1874.. The James Gang robs a train.
Western Fictioneers: On This Day in the Old West: December 8: Let’s talk outlaws this December. On December 8, 1874, the infamous Jesse James and the Younger gang robbed the Kansas Pacific Railroad in...
Last edition:
Thursday, December 5, 2024
Tuesday, December 5, 1944. The Royal Navy in the Greek Civil War.
The Royal Navy shelled Greek communist positions near Piraeus.
The Red Army took Szigetvár and Vukovar, Hungary.
Canadians took Ravenna, Italy.
The Liberty ship Antoine Saugrain was sunk by Japanese aircraft in Leyte Gulf. And on the ground:
Today in World War II History—December 5, 1939 & 1944: US launches final offensive on Leyte in the Philippines, driving into the Ormoc Valley. Victory ship SS Red Oak Victory is commissioned into the US Navy
"Men of the 121st Regt., 8th Inf. Div., U.S. First Army, after 15 days at the front, move back along the road from Hurtgen, Germany. 5 December, 1944. 121st Infantry Regiment, 8th Infantry Division. Photographer: T/3 Jack G. [illegible], 165th Signal Photo Co."
" An American infantryman keeps firing while two of his comrades insert fresh ammunition in their rifles, as steady fire from this sheltered infantry covers advance near Rosteig, France. December 5, 1944. K Company, 398th Infantry Regiment, 100th Infantry Division. Rosteig Area, France. December 5, 1944." Note that the men are wearing L. L. Bean Maine Hunting Shoe boots.
Last edition:
Monday, December 4, 1944. The Dutch Famine.
Friday, November 29, 2024
The American Drug Problem
It's interesting, at least to some degree, that the US regards its massive drug problem as everyone else's fault. It's not as if, for example, there must be something really wrong here that causes people to use drugs.
We don't really treat our other big social problems this way.
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Seriously, blaming Canada?
What the crap?
How the DEA views it:
Doesn't seem like Canada is the problem. . . .
But then who pays attention to the facts anymore?
Monday, November 25, 2024
The Post Insurrection. Part IX. The waiting upon justice edition.
March 15, 2024
March 19, 2024
Trump, who represents that his assets are vast, is not able to post a bond covering the full amount of a $454 million civil fraud judgment against him during appeal and has related the same in a filing in court. He's seeking not to have to post bond.
If the Court does not grant him relief, execution on the judgment could start immediately.
Cont:
Donald Trump is suing ABC News and George Stephanopoulos over comments made in the last This Week episode in the Nancy Mace interview.
April 25, 2024
As Trump sits in a New York courtroom on charges of election interference for paying porn figures not to reveal his dalliances with them, while a married man, a host of figures were indicted in Arizona for an attempt to seat false electors.
May 1, 2024
Trump was fined for violating a court "gag" order in a contempt of court ruling in his hush money trial. He was further warned that he may be jailed in a future contempt ruling, should this conduct repeat.
The same court is allowing him to appear at his son Barron's high school graduation, which apparently would be the first time that he would attend one of his children's high school graduations.
Elise Stefanik filed an ethics complaint against Trump prosecutor Jack Smith, in a move that itself lacks moral ethics. Stefanik should be ashamed, but the concept of shame is sadly lacking currently.
May 30, 2024
Trump was convicted on all 34 Counts in the New York election interference case.
The claims that it was a political prosecution and featured a rigged jury will start any second now.
June 6, 2024
The Georgia election interference case, which is one of the more significant ones, has been stayed while an appeal goes forward on whether prosecutor Willis may remain on the case, and so human foibles will end up causing this case not to be heard prior to the election, probably.
Willis should step aside to let t his matter go forward.
July 15, 2024
To the general amazement of the legal community, the classified documents case has been dismissed on the basis of the Special Prosecutor having been appointed in violation of the appointments act. The Special Prosecutor is going to appeal, but there's no way an appeal will be heard prior to the election.
This is frankly bizarre.
August 3, 2024
The criminal case against Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election shall resume. It's been stayed for 8 months pending the outcome of the Supreme Court opinion on immunity, which the Judge will now have to figure out how to apply.
August 28, 2024
A new amended indictment has been filed.
September 7, 2024
Not related to the insurrection, but to Trump's legal problems, his sentencing in the hush money case has been delayed until after the election.
Frankly, this makes no sense.
November 25, 2024
Special Counsel Jack Smith has requested that all charges against President-elect Trump be dropped in the Federal case.
The progress of official justice in this mater was horrifically slow, which in part is why we now have somebody as President Elect who should have stood trial well over a year ago.
And hence, as Justice shall not come, and the guilty shall go free, we conclude this trailing thread.
Last prior edition:
The Post Insurrection. Part VIII. The tangled web edition.
Sunday, November 10, 2024
Monday, November 10, 1924. Henry Cabot Lodge passes.
He was a giant of American politics.
The Tientsin Conference opened in China between warlords Zhang Zuolin, Feng Yuxiang, and Lu Yongxiang. Former president Sun Yat-sen, the ongoing head of the Kuomintang and the government sitting in Canton, organized the meeting to discuss the ongoing civil war.
Ranch property belonging to Mexican president elect Plutarco Elías Calles was expropriated by the state in accordance with Mexican agrarian laws.
Chicago mobster Dean O'Banion, leader of Chicago's North Side Gang, was gunned down in his florist shop, making the cover of The Casper Herald. His murder was nearly inevitable as he'd grown crosswise with one of the Italian mob families in Chicago.
Last edition:
Saturday, November 8, 1924. Declaration from Honolulu.
Saturday, November 9, 2024
Sea of red.
On a dreary Friday morning, more than a dozen people gathered outside Courtroom 1A of the Townsend Justice Center to witness the end of the prosecution of the killer of 17-year-old Lene’a Brown, who was shot dead near Buckboard Park on May 14.
Most of those hearing attendees wore red in one form or another to support Brown — fl annel shirts, hoodies and T-shirts lined the left rows of the courtroom ahead of the trial.
I stepped out of the courtroom after a hearing to see this crowd. It was a sea of red.
Friday, November 1, 2024
Saturday, November 1, 1924. Political, and real, warfare.
It was Saturday.
Country Gentleman's cover was a follow-up from the prior week's.
Sultan bin Saqr Al Qasimi II invaded the Emirate of Sharjah resulting in the overthrow of Khalid bin Ahmad Al Qasimi, who had been the Emir since 1914.
Sharjah was one of the Trucial States under British protectorate status. It is now one of the United Arab Emirates.
He'd find his rule ineffective as he was ignored by Beudoins and Khalid retained support. He remained the titular rule, however, until his death in 1951.
The Royal Air Force introduced its Meteorological Flight Service.
Éamon de Valera was sentenced to a month in prison for entering Ulster illegally.
Frontier lawman Bill Tilghman, age 70, was shot and killed by drunken prohibition agement Wiley Lynn, who obviously wasn't that dedicated to the cause of his employment. Tilghman would lie in State in the Oklahoma state house. Lynn would escape conviction, pleading self defense, but was killed in a gunfight in 1932.
The days headline did, and did not, read like today's.
Last edition:
Thursday, October 30, 1924. King maker.
Friday, September 27, 2024
History in politics. Post I. Immigration, crime and strife.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905
The Five Points Gang of New York City, which was formed as an Irish American gang, but under the leadership of Italian born "Paul Kelly", Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli. The gang evolved from an entirely Irish gang into an Italian gang, reflecting demographic trends in Five Points.
Well, first of all, I also said there were a lot of benefits to that wave of immigration, but has anybody ever seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’? That’s what I’m talking about. We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates.
* * *
What happens when you have massive amounts of illegal immigration? It actually starts to create ethnic conflict. It creates higher crime rates.
J. D. Vance
Is Vance right?
Keep in mind, I'm just basically fact checking here, not trying to make a political point.
Secondly, Gangs of New York is a horrible motion picture and historically inaccurate.1
So let's start with the two basic assertions. When you have:
- massive ethnic enclaves it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates; and
- massive amounts of illegal immigration creates ethnic conflict and higher crime rates.
Are these assertions correct, based on the historical data?
On the surface, a person could certainly argue yes. The US Mafia was, at its core, an ethic gang. So was the US expression of the Camorra, as were the Chinese Tongs, and as are the various Mexican gangs sometimes loosely referred to as the "Mexican Mafia". All of these entities found their first expression amongst ethnic groups that immigrated into the US, from Sicily, Italy, China and Mexico respectively, and retained their ethnic character thereafter. And the US also saw, in the late 19th Century and into the mid 20th, Irish gangs and Jewish gangs, the latter two of which are largely forgotten.
But then, in examining it, there have also been African American gangs, and still are, as well as Hispanic gangs made up of American born Hispanics.
And, while we commonly do not think of it in this fashion, there have been domestic native born European American gangs. The James Gang was made up entirely of Missourians and was widely tolerated in rural Missouri. The Wild Bunch was a criminal gang with rotating members headquartered in Wyoming and made up entirely of whites. Any number of Depression Era gangs out of Missouri and Oklahoma could also be named.
Hmmm. . . .
So what can we draw from this.
The common element in all of this is poverty. The common thread in the formation of all gangs, at their onset, is that their membership is poor, originally. Gaining wealth is a primary motivating force of gang formation.
Gangs go right to crime, obviously, to address their lack of wealth. The next element of it, however, is that they do form, originally, based on commonality, with the common element being shared ethnicity and status. The Mafia formed originally in Sicily, an impoverished region of what is now Italy, for complicated and obscure reasons, but Sicilian ethnicity was obviously an element of it, and that element was imported into the US. The Camorra was (and is) Neapolitan, and was when it came into the US.2 Sicilians and Neapolitans made up part of the impoverished Italian community that immigrated into the US in the late 19th Century and early 20th Centuries. Indeed, the criminal organizations associated with them basically re-formed in the US, rather than being directly imported.
The James Gang sprang up from impoverished post Civil War rural Missouri with every single memer of it being a white, Protestant, Missourian. The Rollins 40 Crips and the Bloods came from impoverished African American neighborhoods. The Zetas and the Sinolas came out of impoverished communities in Mexico.
So, poverty is an early major motivator.
Poverty, combined with ethnic identity, creates the basic constituents for ethnic gangs. It is, quite frankly, evolutionary biology at work. Humans are tribal by nature, and form tribes in order to acquire and protect resources. Gangs do that, operating in a world in which the members are outsiders due to their poverty and ethnicity.
But therein lies their weakness as well.
Over time, the ethnicity normally dissipates, and its always the case that the members of gangs are a minority of any one ethnicity. Indeed, gangs tend to terrorize the members of their own ethnicities far more than anyone else. As the economic fortunes of the ethnic class rise, being a member no longer retains its original benefits. While being a gang member might offer wealth, it also offers a high risk of shortened life. At a certain point that is a decreasing benefit to the ethnic cohort. To a very large degree this is why the Camorra has largely disappeared in the US, the Mafia is a shadow of its former self, and why Irish and Jewish gangs simply no longer exist.
And ethnicities, moreover, dissipate. To be in the Mafia, originally, you had to be of straight Sicilian descent in the US. Now you must have some Sicilian descent, but it's a decreasing amount.3
So, there's some truth to what Vance related about immigration and crime, but its a much more complicated picture than he relates.
What about ethnic conflict?
Well, as noted part of human nature is tribalism, and an interesting aspect of that is that the "different" both repels and attracts. Large immigrant groups usually do cause some consternation in a prior group, no matter what it is, but contacts nearly immediately arise. Indeed the relatively accurate historical novels Giants In The Earth and Peder Victorious by Ole Edvart Rølvaag do a good job of demonstrating that as, in his novels, a Lutheran Norwegian immigrant family is at first horrified by a Catholic Irish immigrant family moving into their region, only to have a child, Peder, marry into it. Entire ethnicities, such as Creoles in the US and the Mexicans of Mexico are the result of intermixing of cultures. The degree to which a culture is hostile to this varies, with some being very hostile to it, and others not so much. Even where there's pretty strong resistance, however, it happens.
Strife, however, between two cultures in one reason also tends to have a strong common element, that being, once again, poverty. When hostility breaks out between two ethnic groups in a region, it usually features a very strong element of poverty, so in a way, its once again scarcity of resources that is the common problem.
Where's that leave us on Vance's assertion?
Well, its not completely untrue in a superficial way, but in a really in depth manner, its poverty that's the problem. So what we really are looking at is an economic topic, or should be.
Footnotes:
1. Gangs of New York is not only historically inaccurate, its downright perverse.
The movie depicts the New York borough of Five Points in the 1840 through 1860s with a Nativist Protestant gang fighting an Irish Catholic gang, the Dead Rabbits (which was in fact a real gang). New York ethnic gangs in fact existed, but the conglomeration of nativist feelings, Irish immigration in general and Irish gangs is way over the top.
In terms of oddities, Daniel Day Lewis character is just weird.
2. In fact, all the Italian criminal gangs come out of southern Italy, a region of Italy which has been historically impoverished and still is to a significant degree.
3. A movie that depicts this really well is Goodfellas.
Last edition:
History in politics. A new trailing series of threads
Saturday, September 14, 2024
Sunday, September 14, 1924. Most Valuable Player.
Premiered on this day in 1924. It had been filmed on location. Anna Mae Wong, the famous Chinese American actress, was cast as an Inuit.
It was a bad day for police officers:
Deputy Constable J. Edward Brown:
Police Officer Francis X. "Buck" Roy
Patrol Inspector James F. Mankin
Walter "Big Train" Johnson was chosen Major League Baseball's Most Valuable Player
Last edition:
Saturday, September 13, 1924. Pershing retires.
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Blog Mirror: September 8, 1974: President Ford Pardons Former President
September 8, 1974: President Ford Pardons Former President Nixon
Absolutely correct.
The pardon of Richard Nixon set us up for Donald Trump.
Last edition:
Monday, September 8, 1924. Landing at Long Island. Beauties in Casper. Gunning down the mistress in Texas.
The U.S. Army's around the world flight, that is the surviving aircraft of it, landed at Mitchel Field on Long Island.
The Prince of Wales was there to greet them.
The Casper papers reported on the big aviation event.
The Casper Daily Tribune also reported on the Princess Petrolia Ball.
The Casper Herald, a morning paper, noted that the flight would be coming, but headlined with other news.
Last edition:
Sunday, September 7, 1924. Infernos.
Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1924 at the Movies, Casper Wyoming, Catholic, Christianity, Movies, religion, Spain, The written word, Wyoming (Casper)
Monday, September 2, 2024
Observations on Denver
Some years we have Rockies' ticket package. We did last year, but we didn't go to a single game for a variety of reasons. Work was the big one, but then, about this time just a year ago, I was under the knife for the second time as well.
We went to the Orioles game on September 1.
The choice of the date was not my own, September 1 is the opening day of blue grouse and dove season, but I didn't complain about it. A young member of the family loves the Orioles and that's why it was chosen. When you get old, as I am, you yield in favor of younger family members, so I did, without complaining. You also learn, hopefully, not to complain where in former days you might have.
It was a great game.
I've been to Denver several times since my surgery, but they were all hit and run type of deals for work. In and out, with no time to spare. This is the first time I've lingered in the Mile High City for awhile, and the first time over a weekend for a long while. Therefore some observations, I guess.
It was hot. "Unseasonably hot" is what I'm hearing. I'm not a fan of hot. As Wyoming has already been chilly in the morning, and I couldn't find my Rockies jersey, I wore a light flannel shirt. I don't really feel comfortable in just wearing a t-shit in that setting anymore, so I when I got hot, right away, before the game, I went and bought a jersey. Now I have two.
I can't wear my old New York Yankees pull on jersey anymore. I'm too big and its too small. My Sox jersey is messing a button.
It's really weird to think that at least into the 1940s people dressed pretty formally at baseball games. Men were in jacket and tie, something you'd never see now.
We were there on Sunday.
Holy Ghost is, in my view, the most beautiful church in the region and the most beautiful one I've ever been in. We went to Mass early Sunday morning. It's stunning and it never fails to impress me with its beauty.
A beautiful church really adds something to worship, and a sense of the Divine.
Not a new impression, but the street people problem is out of control.
I don't know what can be done to help these people. Some, you can tell, are now so organically messed up that they'll never really recover.
In various places, when approached for money by somebody on a street, I'll give them some. But not in Denver. The people on the streets are so messed up I know where that money is going. Something needs to be done to help them, but I have no idea what it would be.
The day before I went down I read that the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) had taken over two apartments in Aurora. Looking it up, it's apparently true, and they're using them for sex trafficking.
The greater Denver area, fwiw, has never been all that nice, in spite of what people might say. I recall going down in the 1980s, when I was an undergrad at UW, and parts of were really rough then. 16th Street was just starting to develop. The area around LoDo was really really rough. I can recall walking from an off street towards 16th past a really rough looking bar mid morning when a prostitute came spilling out of it, probably just getting off work. The Episcopal Cathedral, St. John in the Wilderness, had lots of broken windows, broken by rocks thrown into them from the street. Colorado Blvd in the region of what is now Martin Luther King Blvd was as complete red light district full of XXX movie theaters. Lo Do was a no/go zone.
Coors Field really cleaned up a lot of that, and much of downtown Denver has really gentrified. 16th Street, however, is a drug flop house as is much of downtown Denver. The legalization of marijuana, COVID, and a highly tolerant city council has created an enormous problem.
Anyhow, I don't go into Aurora much, but I don't really recall it being really nice. I recall my father, who had experience with Denver going back to the 1930s, mentioning it had never been nice.
We had a big breakfast at Sam's No. 3. It's a great cafe. A real urban one, which probably makes it surprising that I'll go there, but it is great.
At the game, I had a hot dog. I usually have "brots", rather than dogs, if I have your classic small sausage on a bun. I'd forgotten, accordingly, what real dogs taste like. I like them, but I don't like them as much as brots.
Converse Chuck Taylors are comfortable for sitting at a game, but not for hiking around a city. Like my baseball jerseys, I like Chuck Taylors but given my line of work and my off time avocations, which I unfortunately seem to be able to engage in less and less, I have little call to actually wear them.
Regarding clothing, while I hesitated to post it, a lot of young women in urban settings don't dress decently when dressing casually. I don't mean "dress up" either. Perhaps because it was hot, a lot of them had on "summer clothes" which showed way more skin, and other things, than is decent, in my view. For that matter, coming out of a hotel a barista was coming in wearing a t-shirt who had chosen to omit undergarments and was showing, well, through. I almost turned to my daughter who was with me and thanked her for not dressing like so much of what I was seeing, but I didn't.
On that, some of the younger women were clearly with a parent. Why would you let a child, even if not a child any longer, go out dressed like that?
I'm not really proud of noticing and I didn't glare or stare, but frankly with so much on display its impossible not to notice anything. I'm old, but not dead, and there's way too much on display, certainly way more than is the case up here in the rude hinterlands. A Christian should have custody of their eyes but I'd rather other folks make it easy to exercise.
Also on display were vast numbers of tattoos, some artful and some really bad. Having a bad tattoo has to be a bummer.
I was reminded of how much I don't like country music. My wife and daughter do, so we listed to one of the XM Radio satellite radio channels on the way down. I never listen to contemporary country music, although over the years I've gotten to where I like some of the older stuff.
Anyhow, I was surprised by how much country music is just devoted to getting drunk. It's weird.
A fair amount is devoted to bad decisions, particularly with alcohol and women. Some has gotten inappropriate towards women in general. One of the songs on the way down I heard was Country Girl, which involves alcohol, and also the lyrics "shake it for me, girl". I've been around country people, including country girls, my entire life and I've never seen a country girl shaking whatever for anyone. Indeed, I've always been impressed by how almost everyone who lives in the sticks knows how to swing dance and tends to wear, usually, a fair amount of clothing, even in the summer.
Friday, August 30, 2024
What on Earth does the Republican Party stand for?
Ronald Reagan was the first President that I was able to vote for, or against (I voted for) in my lifetime.
The GOP of that era was far from perfect, but I knew what it stood for.
It was pro life, pro defense, tough on crime, pro fiscal responsibility, and overall conservative.
People have claimed that for the Trumpist GOP, but what of it?
1. Pro life?
The GOP went into this election cycle claiming responsibility, which it had every right to do, for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, which returned the abortion issue to the states. Not surprisingly, however, a controversial issue remains controversial. Now the GOP is running from the issue as quickly as it can. It took its pro life plank out of its platform, where it's been for decades. And now we have Trump, who has flip flopped on the issue for decades, stating this, in regard to a proposed six week provision in Florida:
I think the six week is too short, there has to be more time
This is really a simple issue. Either you believe that life starts at conception, or aren't sure when a human is a human and therefore you err on the side of life, or you think killing only matters at some arbitrary point in time in which you can't stomach it.
At best, the Republicans here can claim to support State's Rights, but pro life? Donald isn't.
Added to that is this, which gets also into the next topic.
I am announcing today that under the Trump administration, your government will pay for or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for all costs associated with IVF treatment.
We want more babies!
IVF means the creation of large numbers of embryos that are later killed, and in Catholic theology, IVF is regarded as a moral evil.
It's notable that Vance, who is a Catholic convert, has made some statements now generally supporting IVF as he runs towards Trump and away from his Faith.
2. Fiscal Responsibility?
Trump added 8T to the federal debt in his term in office.
And he proposed, prior to Harris, cutting income taxes on tips, which has no logical defense. Income is income.
Trump has stood for tax cuts, which have amounted to tax cuts for the wealthy. People, including the wealthy like Elon Musk, have noted the country is going bankrupt. Well, this is a big part of the reason why.
Back to the above, the GOP whined endlessly about Obamacare, and now proposes to expand government support for an insurance payment. What the crud?
3. Pro defense?
The Republican willingness in many quarters to abandon Ukraine says all you need to know about this. Added to it, Trump has a weird relationship with Russia that has never been explained.
Much of the current GOP wants to return to isolationism, which worked oh so well during the 1930s.
4. Tough on crime?
Running Trump says all you really need to know on that.
This party, in spite of what its supporters believe, stands only for reelecting Donald Trump, and nothing else.
Mind you, there were signs of this happening for some time. The entire spectacle of Evangelical Christians lashing themselves to the decks of the Trump serial polygamy ship was never easy to fathom. National Conservatives came on board in a calculated fashion, thinking that when Trump shuffled off his mortal coil they'd be in charge, only to see the less popular portions of their beliefs mocked and categorized as "weird". The Hawk Tuah girl was embraced by the Lynyrd Skynyrd branch of the populist whose Christianity is rather thin and not hardly of the Mike Johnson New Apostolic Reformation variety.
So what does that do to the populist movement in the GOP and the GOP in general? Well, quite a few real Republicans are abandoning ship, particularly those cultural conservatives who were never really Trumpites, but believed there was a moral obligation to support the GOP due to its cultural conservative positions. The American Solidarity Party is suddenly getting a lot of attention because its actually prolife. But a lot of the Trumpites now stand for nothing but Trump and will go down with him like stormtroopers in Berlin on May 2, 1945. Locally those politicians who have arisen in the Populist Freedom Caucus will keep on saying the same things they've been saying, even as their leader is saying the opposite.
Populism always gets co-opted in the end. Here, it already has been. Conservatism, for its part, was simply killed in the party.
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