How Bad?

Pretty fuckin' bad.

From back in July. Funny how this kinda thing barely sees the light of day.

JD Vance called for ‘federal response’ to block women from traveling for abortions

VP nominee pushed baseless warning in 2022 that George Soros would pack planes of Black women to get abortions

JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, promoted a baseless rightwing talking point in 2022 when he warned of George Soros-funded planes transporting Black women across state lines for abortions.

“I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation – let’s say Roe v Wade is overruled,” Vance said in a recently resurfaced podcast interview. “Ohio bans abortion in 2022, or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity – uh, that’s kind of creepy.”

The US supreme court overturned Roe in 2022. Vance’s statements echo a common anti-abortion talking point accusing abortion providers and their supporters of targeting people of color.

Black women did seek abortions at a higher rate before Roe fell, but public health experts say that this is far from proof of a racist conspiracy. They point to a number systemic factors – for example, Black women are more likely to live in areas where it’s harder to access contraception. They are also disproportionately harmed by abortion bans.

Vance continued: “And, and it’s like, if that happens, do you need some federal response to prevent it from happening? Because it’s really creepy. And I’m pretty sympathetic to that actually. So, you know, how hopefully we get to a point where Ohio bans abortion in California and the Soroses of the world respect it.”

While Open Society Foundations, which was founded by Soros, does support reproductive rights, the billionaire philanthropist is not directing planes to swoop up Black women for abortions. He has been the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories for years.

Vance’s comments were reported by CNN. On Thursday evening, Kamala Harris’s campaign posted audio of the remarks on X.

Vance’s record on abortion has come under national scrutiny since Trump picked the Hillbilly Elegy author as his vice-presidential running mate. In 2022, Vance suggested he would support a national 15-week abortion ban with exceptions. But, like other Republicans wary of the political fallout of Roe’s demise, Vance has more recently sought to soften his position and said in an interview that “we have to accept people do not want abortion bans”. He has also expressed support for the availability of mifepristone, a common abortion pill, and said he agrees with Trump’s position that states should decide their own abortion laws. (Trump has flip-flopped on this stance.)

But in January 2023, Vance signed ont o a letter urging the Department of Justice to use the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-obscenity law, to ban the mailing of abortion pills nationwide. Since Roe’s fall, anti-abortion activists have begun claiming that the Comstock Act remains good law and can be used to enforce a federal abortion ban. Project 2025, a wish list for a conservative administration written by the influential thinktank Heritage Foundation, reiterates this argument.

“Senator Vance has made his position clear: he agrees with President Trump that each state should have the chance to individually set their own abortion laws,” Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Vance, said in a statement. “Desperate attacks from Democrats will not distract voters from the deadly effects of Kamala’s wide-open border, the untenable cost of living caused by her inflationary spending or any other aspect of her far-left, radical agenda.”

JD Vance: from 'never-Trump guy' to vice-presidential candidate – video profile
Vance’s vice-presidential run is off to a rocky start, and he has spent the last week haunted by other resurfaced remarks. In a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson, Vance said that the United States and the Democratic party wwere run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.

He then named Harris, who has two step-children, as an example, along with Pete Buttigieg (who has since had children) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said. “And how does it make sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Those comments have provoked an uproar, drawing condemnation even from relatively apolitical celebrities like Jennifer Aniston. Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, called the attacks on the presumptive Democratic nominee “baseless” and praised her co-parenting. In an Instagram story, Harris’s step-daughter Ella Emhoff posted: “I love my three parents.”

Overheard

I'm trying to get everything ready for when I go to the clinic for my vasectomy. So I've made a few calls, and I'm happy to report that I don't have to get any invasive scans, and I don't have to worry about being accosted by a mob of "Pro-Lifers" who loudly insist that I need to change my mind, and there's no waiting period, and they won't refer me to a Crisis Center for a lecture on - something.

It's like they trust me to make my own decisions on what I do with my own reproductive system.

Kind of a shocker, right?

The Difference

One side says a woman has the right to make her own decisions about having babies or not having babies, while the other side insists that the government should step in and make the call on whether she can or can't continue a pregnancy, or even prevent one.

Papa Joe and his gang say it's up to the pregnant woman, and everybody else can STFU about it.

Trump and the blue-nosed, pinch-faced MAGA Taliban are arguing over how severe they want the punishments to be if anybody defies the restrictions on women.

So let's be clear on this

★ The Democrats are trying to find ways to re-established the rights of 170 million Americans now that SCOTUS has fucked them over with the Dodd decision.

★ Trump doesn't give one empty fuck about the issue - he cares nothing about doing what's right. He's negotiating - bargaining with women's rights. ie: How much can I get the Puritans to pay me in exchange for a promise to impose a nation-wide ban on abortion and contraceptives?

And remember, he's already floated a deal with the Dirty Fuels Cartel for $1 billion - and he's been talking it up.

Tempers flare as Trump reviews revised abortion plank for Republican platform

The former president wants the platform to endorse leaving the issue to the states rather than a federal ban in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise.

Donald Trump has begun to review draft language for the 2024 Republican platform that antiabortion leaders expect will abandon the party’s decades-long call to amend the U.S. Constitution to extend personhood protections to the unborn, according to multiple people involved with the discussions.

The escalating behind-the-scenes disagreement over the abortion language has become so tense and acrimonious in recent weeks that some social conservative leaders have issued public warnings of a coming split within Trump’s coalition. Others have started to discuss an effort to issue a “minority report” to the platform at the convention, according to the people involved, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Trump advisers, in turn, have been angered by the public pressure from antiabortion activists, according to people familiar with the campaign’s internal discussions. At the same time, Trump allies are not overly worried about the platform skirmish, because evangelicals strongly opposed to abortion have remained among his most fervent supporters regardless of his evolving positions on the issue.

“If the Trump campaign decides to remove national protections for the unborn in the GOP platform, it would be a miscalculation that would hurt party unity and destroy pro-life enthusiasm between now and the election,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are now just one business day away from the platform committee meeting and no assurances have been made. Instead, every indication is that the campaign will muscle through changes behind closed doors.”

Trump advisers — who selected the platform committee’s delegates — have made clear in private discussions that they want a shorter platform document, with abortion language consistent with Trump’s current position, multiple people said.

Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, Trump waffled on whether he would support a federal abortion ban. But Trump now says he wants each state to make its own decision on abortion regulation, while resisting calls for new federal limits that he once supported.

“Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have [sic] more conservative than others,” he said in April. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”

Trump allies have argued that letting states decide their own abortion limitations helps the former president seem more moderate on the issue. Democrats contend that, instead, it weds Trump to the most extreme abortion limits in the country, including some states that have enacted near-total bans on the procedure.

In the face of the activist backlash, Trump’s advisers have barred the press and C-SPAN cameras from next week’s scheduled meetings of the platform committee, a break in tradition that has alarmed some delegates. Members of the Republican National Committee not directly participating in the platform debate will be able to attend the meetings, which start Sunday afternoon at the Baird Center in Milwaukee, with a meeting to offer amendments scheduled for Tuesday.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a platform committee member, wrote a letter Monday to RNC Chairman Michael Whatley dismissing the private discussions as “stalling tactics” by Trump advisers. He called the decision to restrict the press from the platform committee discussions “un-American,” and warned that the platform could be watered down to “a few pages of meaningless, poll-tested talking points.”

“We reach consensus by presenting our ideas and playing by the rules. And I am very concerned about closing down the process,” Perkins said Thursday. “The Republican Party should not be operating as we point out the left so often does — wanting to silence opposition.”

The Trump campaign said the final abortion language has not been determined. Some campaign officials have suggested that the eventual language will appease many antiabortion activists.

“The Platform Committee has yet to convene to discuss what language should be in the final document,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.

Trump signed a letter to antiabortion leaders during his 2016 campaign promising to support the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” federal legislation that would have outlawed abortion nationwide after 20 weeks of gestation with some exceptions. He supported that legislation in his first term, but his policy changed after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Antiabortion activists reject the idea that the high court’s reversal changes the need for federal legislation or a constitutional amendment process, as they have expanded their efforts to challenge federal regulatory approval of abortion medication.

They argue that a constitutional amendment on abortion — a feature of the GOP platform since the 1980s — can be seen as a state issue, since any amendment would ultimately need to be ratified by at least 38 of the 50 states. They also say that Trump’s recent statements on abortion fail to address the abortions performed in more liberal states that allow the procedure with relatively few limitations.

Eight antiabortion and social conservative leaders wrote a June 10 letter to Trump demanding that the platform include support for federal legislative limits on abortion, and it contained the following sentence: “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

“This is the language that both you and Ronald Reagan ran on and won,” the leaders wrote. Among the signatories were Dannenfelser, Perkins, Faith and Freedom Coalition President Ralph Reed and Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America.

One antiabortion activist involved in the discussion with Trump’s team said there has been little recent communication with antiabortion leaders beyond broad assurances that the platform “will be fine, and it will be pro-life.”

“Our posture was, ‘Let’s fix this behind the scenes,’” this activist said. “Once it became more apparent to us that they didn’t want to work with us and seemed inclined to want to pick a fight with us, we have been more vocal.”

And it's not just women. These assholes are coming for the whole shebang.

Some RNC members are also concerned that the Trump team will back away from the 2016 platform’s declaration that denounced the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. The previous platform called marriage between one man and one woman “the foundation for a free society” that “has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values.”

Trump advisers say privately that they do not want a fight over same-sex marriage and consider it a settled issue not worth re-litigating, according to people familiar with the conversations.

“It would not be a smart move to define it any other way,” one RNC member said of marriage. “I’m a little bit concerned about what might transpire.”

Today's Patriarchal Theocracy

AOC hits it on the head starting at about 7:15.

About that Recreational Sex thing:

The Republican party has become a full-fledged anti-sex movement

The US supreme court justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas cited the Comstock Act, named after the 19th-century anti-vice campaigner Anthony Comstock, in last week’s case about access to the abortion pill mifepristone. If you don’t know who Anthony Comstock was or what his law did, that might not have alarmed you. But it should have.

The Comstock Law has come up a lot lately, and it’s part of the Republican war on sex, and to put it that way might sound overly dramatic. But there is such a war, and parts of it – against sex education, against access to birth control, against the healthcare provider Planned Parenthood and of course against abortion – have long been out in the open along with a war against the rights of women and on the rights and very existence of queer and trans people.

Comstock was reputed to be driven by religious shame over masturbation to become his era’s most extreme anti-sex crusader. He rose to prominence in the early 1870s, when he convinced Congress to make it a crime to advertise, sell or mail contraceptives or give out contraceptive information, even orally, or to mail anything “immoral” – a term whose vagueness allowed widespread prosecution, including of a feminist newspaper reporting on sexual abuse whose prominent publishers, Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, he got sent to prison. Like modern-day rightwingers he was a book-burner, and he boasted that he had driven 15 people to suicide.

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross” is a handy quote and it does seem to describe well Donald Trump, who has hugged a lot of US flags onstage and last week was hawking Christian nationalist Bibles. But if fascism really comes to America, it won’t come just as a single figure. It will come sneaking in, as local, state and federal laws and the gradual erosion of rights pushed by many players at many levels. In fact it has been coming at us all along. It is right now, among other things, a full-fledged anti-sex movement.

Too many people thought that Roe v Wade wouldn’t really be overturned just like they thought Trump wouldn’t really be elected. The assumption that norms will persist is these days a dangerous obtuseness, whether it’s about climate, domestic policy, society or the international order. While the backlash to Roe’s June 2022 overturning has been spectacular, with Democratic election victories and blue-state legislation strengthening reproductive rights, that doesn’t spare women in red states from the horrific consequences of the decision.

At this point we all know they include prosecution for miscarriages suspected of being abortions, let alone for actual abortions, and lack of timely care from medical providers, who, fearful of prosecution themselves, sometimes wait for miscarrying patients to go critical from infection or loss of blood before offering care. As the law journalist Mark Joseph Stern tweeted on 27 March, “The anti-abortion movement’s end goal is to let doctors refuse treatment – including life-saving emergency care – for patients whom they deem to be sinful and morally impure.” The patients, largely women, are supposed to die for their sins.

As if that weren’t enough, in May 2023, the Heritage Foundation declared on social media, “Conservatives have to lead the way in restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.” It’s a fanatical statement: the vast majority of sex had by the vast majority of human beings does not have reproduction as its goal, though the term recreational disparages what can be a joy, a profound connection, or a transcendence of self, among other things.

The far right the Heritage Foundation belongs to is, nevertheless, driving toward this goal by striving to take away birth control and abortion to make sex punitively risky for anyone who might get pregnant. Taking away women’s reproductive freedom takes away other freedoms, social, economic and educational, and rebuilds a society of gender inequality, which is clearly the goal. The right has also made noise about ending no-fault divorce and marriage equality, and introduced hundreds of anti-trans bills this year and last.

The Project 2025 agenda for a rightwing coup, should Trump win this November, declares that the USAid office of gender equality and women’s empowerment “should remove all ... language on USAid websites, in agency publications and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants that include” terms including “gender and gender equality” and should also remove references to “abortion”, “reproductive health” and “sexual and reproductive rights”. The threats are in plain sight; I hope people notice them.

It’s not a coincidence that the authoritarian right is obsessed with both the border and women’s bodies; they’d like to increase the patrolling of both, and essentially shut them both down. It’s an obsession with purity and control to be achieved by punitive and sometimes homicidally violent means. And it’s a roadmap straight back to the terrible inequality women were already campaigning against in Anthony Comstock’s time.

Encouragement

Seems like a pretty good sign when a judge rules that free speech is not an absolute or unlimited thing.

And I don't know how we got to the point where we've allowed this stupid notion that anything goes as long as it pads my bottom line.

I'm pretty sure there was this whole Civil Fucking War that was fought over that one, and it was decided:

NO - you don't get to do whatever the fuck you want to do in order to make your mortgage payment. There are limits, goddamn it.

The lawsuit might also explain why Elon Musk has been all over TwiXter, pissing and moaning about it (even more than usual) for like a week or more.

The Product Liability angle sounds promising. We'll see - the NRA, with the help of lots of their coin-operated politicians, got gun makers exempt from this kind of suit.

🤞🏻

Random Quote(s)

I'm almost done with "The Second" - which is the kind of real history that assholes like Ron DeSantis won't allow to be taught.

And guess what - not teaching kids the real history of USAmerica Inc is not a new thing.

I think I may have cause to raise a class action suit against the Jefferson County School System of the 60s and 70s. Which I thought did pretty fucking great by me - and they didn't. Not by a long shot.

None of this was taught in any of the many American History classes I took - and I had every right to expect that my teachers would let me know about it.

I will never not be pissed off about this.

"It is impossible to be unarmed when your blackness is the weapon that they fear."

A Rundown

 Brian Tyler Cohen

The big one at about 12:50: "We the people" - the voters - are the victims of Trump's criminal acts. We have the right to not be excluded from witnessing the proceedings against him.

Crime Victims' Rights Act

18 U.S.C. § 3771. Crime victims' rights

(a) RIGHTS OF CRIME VICTIMS. A crime victim has the following rights:

1. The right to be reasonably protected from the accused.
2. The right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding, or any parole proceeding, involving the crime or of any release or escape of the accused.
3. The right not to be excluded from any such public court proceeding, unless the court, after receiving clear and convincing evidence, determines that testimony by the victim would be materially altered if the victim heard other testimony at that proceeding.
4. The right to be reasonably heard at any public proceeding in the district court involving release, plea, sentencing, or any parole proceeding.
5. The reasonable right to confer with the attorney for the Government in the case.
6. The right to full and timely restitution as provided in law.
7. The right to proceedings free from unreasonable delay.
8. The right to be treated with fairness and with respect for the victim's dignity and privacy.
9. The right to be informed in a timely manner of any plea bargain or deferred prosecution agreement.
10. The right to be informed of the rights under this section and the services described in section 503(c) of the Victims' Rights and Restitution Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 10607(c)) and provided contact information for the Office of the Victims' Rights Ombudsman of the Department of Justice.

Kids vs Rights

If you tell me you'd be willing to sacrifice the lives of your children in defense of your idea of unlimited 2nd amendment rights, you're either a total fucking liar, or a total fucking monster.

Kids & Books & Parents

1. None of the rights guaranteed in the US Constitution is absolute or unlimited.
2. With every right comes responsibility

"Conservatives" demand the freedom while ignoring the work required to achieve and maintain that freedom.

So who's the fuckin' moocher now?

Opinion
The parents’ rights movement keeps ducking parental responsibilities

The current “parental rights” movement has a dirty little secret: It depicts parents as victims of teachers and librarians. Yet many of the movement’s proposed solutions fob off parental responsibilities onto those public servants.

Listen to enough debates about what books belong in public and school libraries, or about sex education, and a theme emerges: Even as they demand more rights, advocates of book bans and curriculum-dodging appear to wish they could do less parenting.

Take the group of Alaska parents who recently asked their local library to remove books “which are intended to indoctrinate children in LGBTQ+ ideologies” from the children’s section, or put them on a restricted shelf. “Parents who do not wish for their children to stumble across … confusing ideas,” they complained, can’t let their kids browse without close supervision.

Or take this move. Texas state Rep. Jared Patterson introduced a bill requiring vendors who want to sell books in Texas to rate their offerings as “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant,” based on whether the books are “patently offensive,” “pervasively vulgar,” “obscene” or “educationally unsuitable.” Apparently, it’s not enough for parents to keep an eye on what their children are checking out. Instead, librarians must read the minds of every adult in town, anticipate what each one might find objectionable and pre-censor their shelves accordingly.

Such proposals actually give publishers, librarians and school administrators more power to make moral judgments on behalf of parents, not less.

Instead, parents should explain to their kids what they’re forbidden to check out and why. And let their kids’ librarians know. When she was a school librarian, says Andrea Jamison, Illinois State University College of Education professor, she would enforce parents’ rules. But she insisted they explain their reasoning to their children themselves. Stepping in to impart those values on their behalf would usurp parents’ rights.

In dodging these conversations, parents are also transferring their anxiety about how their children are growing up onto teachers and librarians.

It can’t be that young people express authentic interest in gender, sexuality or current events — or even that they crave junky thrillers and bathroom humor. It must be nefarious librarians pushing guides to puberty such as “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” and trash classics such as V.C. Andrews’s “Flowers in the Attic.” As Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa put it in March with an air of resignation, “I wish they would pick up Shakespeare.” But it’s Captain Underpants and the Fart Quest series that got her son into books.

And it couldn’t be that kids are naturally curious about racism or climate change. Instead, it’s teachers and librarians who are scattering dangerous ideas through their shelves like so many intellectual improvised explosive devices.

In reality it is the very books adults are trying to protect students from that they find most vital. That’s what kids tell Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who runs the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “Students experience violence, they experience racism, they experience poverty,” agrees Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school English teacher. “If you’re old enough to experience these things, you’re old enough to read about these things.”

More ducking of parental duty shows up in the furor around sex education and other curriculums. Many school districts require parents to actively opt out their children from lessons that run counter to their values. Instead, some parents want to require that families opt in.

These advocates suggest that children shouldn’t be exposed to the social consequences of feeling singled out. For instance, at a 2022 hearing on a proposed sex-ed curriculum, Daniel Gallic, who chairs the Warren Township, N.J., planning board, complained: “An opt-out of the program makes the children subject to harassment and intimidation.” In 2017, a Palo Alto, Calif., parent protested her daughter hadn’t felt comfortable filling a form to skip a sex-ed class because “she would have been the only student in the class to do so and didn’t want to feel left out.”

Certainly, schools should protect students from bullying or discrimination based on their beliefs. But giving middle and high school students practice at explaining their family’s values seems like a form of education everyone should get behind.

“We do not want to raise snowflakes who are not able to take the realities of the real world,” was how Talarico put it in a March 21 Texas House committee hearing on Patterson’s books bill, flipping conservative rhetoric on its head. “We want to prepare our kids, especially our teens in high school, for what they’re going to face when they’re outside our school laws.”

That preparation takes work. Parents who want to assert their rights ought to be ready to take on their responsibilities.

The Economy

This should mean the owners and managers can be convinced to throw workers a nice bone. Like Paid Time Off, and Insurance, and a better hourly rate, along with normal regular shifts that add up to a solid 40 hours a week, and an end to the "right-to-work" bullshit that torpedoes the right to unionize.

It's about fucking time we honor the debt to people who actually work for a living.

What Recession? Some Economists See Chances of a Growth Rebound.

The Federal Reserve has raised rates rapidly. But instead of cracking, some data point to an economy that’s thriving.

Many economists and investors had a clear narrative coming into 2023: The Federal Reserve had spent months pushing borrowing costs rapidly higher in a bid to tame inflation, and those moves were expected to slow growth and the labor market so much that the economy would be at risk of plunging into a downturn.

But the recession calls are now getting a rethink.

Employers added more than half a million jobs in January, the housing market shows signs of stabilizing or even picking back up, and many Wall Street economists have marked down the odds of a downturn this year. After months of asking whether the Fed could pull off a soft landing in which the economy slows but does not plummet into a bruising recession, analysts are raising the possibility that it will not land at all — that growth will simply hold up.

Not every data point looks sunny: Manufacturing remains glum, consumer spending has been cracking, and some analysts still think a mild recession this year remains likely. But there have been enough surprises pointing to continued momentum that Fed officials themselves seem to see a better chance that the nation will avoid a painful downturn. That resilience could even be a problem.

While a gentle landing would be a welcome development, economists are beginning to ask whether growth and the job market will run too warm for inflation to slow as much as central bankers are hoping — eventually forcing the Fed to respond more aggressively.

“They should be worried about how strong the U.S. labor market is,” said Ajay Rajadhyaksha, the global chairman of research at Barclays. “So far, the U.S. economy has proved unexpectedly resilient.”

The Fed has lifted rates from near zero early last year to above 4.5 percent as of last week — the fastest series of policy adjustment in decades. Those higher borrowing costs have translated into pricier car loans and mortgages, and for a while they seemed to be clearly slowing the economy.

But as the central bank has shifted toward a more moderate pace of rate moves — it slowed the speed of its increases first in December, then again this month — markets have relaxed. Rates on mortgages, for example, have come down slightly.

That’s showing up in the economy. Mortgage applications have been bouncing around, but in general they have ticked back up. New home sales are now hovering around the same level as before the pandemic. Used car prices had been declining, but they have begun to rise at a wholesale level — which some economists see as a response to some returning demand for those vehicles.

And while retail sales and other measures of household spending have been pulling back, according to recent data, several nascent forces could help to shore up consumer demand into 2023 — with potentially big implications for the Fed’s battle against inflation.

Social Security recipients just received a sizable cost-of-living adjustment in their first check of 2023, putting more money in the pockets of older Americans. More than a dozen states, including Virginia, California, New York and Massachusetts, sent tax rebates or stimulus checks late last year. And while Americans have been working their way through the excess savings that were amassed during the early pandemic, many still have some cushion left.

“Such employment gains mean labor income will also be robust and buoy consumer spending, which could maintain upward pressure on inflation in the months ahead,” Christopher Waller, a Fed governor, said on Wednesday.

There is no guarantee that those factors will be enough to counteract the large amount of policy adjustment the Fed has done over the past year. Technology companies have already begun to lay off workers. Lower-income consumers have burned through their savings buffers more quickly than higher-income people, leaving them with less wherewithal to shop.

“I don’t think we’re re-accelerating,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist at the payroll and data company ADP. “You can have a strong labor market and slow economic growth.”

But the possibility that the economy will not grow as modestly as expected is a risk for the Fed.

Inflation has been cooling in recent months, partly because prices for used cars and some retail products have outright dropped, subtracting from overall price increases.

But if auto dealers and retail stores like Walmart and Target feel that they can stop slashing prices as demand stabilizes and they work through bloated inventories, it could keep inflation from slowing as steadily, said Omair Sharif, founder of Inflation Insights.

“The concern is now you shift to a situation where that downward pressure goes away,” he said. “Wages are still supportive of people buying more stuff.”

Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, acknowledged during a news conference last week that some of the drag on inflation from goods could be “transitory,” meaning that it will fade away. That is, in part, why central bankers are closely watching what happens in other sectors, particularly services.

Lower-income consumers have burned through their savings buffers more quickly than higher-income people, leaving them with less wherewithal to buy things.Credit...John Taggart for The New York Times

One major service cost — rent — does look poised to decelerate this year. But both the extent and the timing are enormously uncertain: Some economists think that rent increases will slow in official inflation data within the coming months, while others are expecting the change to come much later.

Lael Brainard, the Fed vice chair, suggested in a recent speech that rent inflation might not decline until the third quarter of 2023, which stretches from July through September.

The trajectory for other service prices, from child-care to restaurant meals, is expected to hinge on what happens with the labor market. Wages tend to be a major cost for service companies, and if pay is climbing swiftly, businesses may charge more. Workers who are taking home bigger paychecks may be able to keep spending through those cost increases.

To be sure, inflation and wage growth have slowed in recent months even with very strong hiring. Fed officials have embraced that, and they have made clear that they’re focused on what happens with inflation rather than aiming for a specific increase in unemployment.

But several have expressed doubts that wage and price moderation can continue with labor demand so robust and a jobless rate at 3.4 percent, the lowest since 1969. Companies will be left competing for a limited pool of workers. And given that today’s disinflation is coming partly from product price declines that are not expected to continue indefinitely, slowing down services prices is crucial.

“The services sector, really, except for housing services, is not really showing any disinflation yet,” Mr. Powell said this week.

The question for the Fed is how much more policy adjustment is needed to ensure that the economy and inflation return to a sustainable pace. The central bank has forecast that it will make two more quarter-point rate increases.

John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, indicated on Wednesday that quarter-point moves were likely to remain the norm, but he suggested that rates might have to adjust by more if demand and price increases stayed elevated.

“Demand in our economy is much stronger right now than you might expect in a regular, prepandemic situation,” Mr. Williams said, attributing that to fiscal support, a strong labor market and other factors. How high rates must climb in order “to be sufficiently restrictive has got to be influenced by that.”

Although many business leaders are still watching consumers warily, some of them have suggested that impediments to growth are fading. The S&P 500 as a whole has been recovering over the past six months, a sign that investors see a sunnier outlook on the horizon.

Ryan Marshall, chief executive officer of the homebuilder Pulte Group, suggested in an earnings call last week that the housing market was noticeably improving.

“Despite the higher-rate environment dominating the national conversation, we saw buyer demand improve as the fourth quarter progressed and can confirm this strength continued through the month of January,” he said.

And David B. Burritt, the chief executive of U.S. Steel, said in a recent earnings call that he expected “prices will be sustainable and higher” in the longer-term as headwinds to growth fade.

“We’re in this transitional period with a lot of uncertainty,” he said, “and frankly I think a lot of people think the Fed is doing a lot better job on this soft landing than what was expected.”

Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro, said that the re-acceleration signs in the economy were “undeniable,” and that inflation could get stuck at unusually high levels as a result — forcing the Fed to keep rates high for longer than expected.

“They’ve been raising rates for a while,” he said. “All they have to show for it is an unemployment rate at 3.4 percent.”

It's Elon's Twitter Now

There's a sewer-y part of practically everything. That doesn't mean you should seek it out, and live in it. Although, on the intertoobz at least, that's exactly what some folks are wont to do.

(pay wall)

A BASELESS CONSPIRACY theory about the assault of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi trended on Twitter Monday morning after being boosted all weekend by prominent conservatives and even new Twitter owner Elon Musk.

Hashtags including “PelosiGayLover,” “PelosiSmollett,” “PelosiGate,” and “Listen to the 911” appeared in the trending bar amid the proliferation of false claims about the attack and mockery of Pelosi. Several prominent right-wing figures pushed the false idea that both the attacker and Pelosi were in their underwear at the time of the assault, and that Pelosi knew his attacker and that they were actually lovers because Pelosi had referred to him as a “friend” while attempting to tip off 911 dispatchers as to his situation.

San Francisco police have debunked claims that both men were in their underwear and that Pelosi knew the attacker. The attacker, David DePape, 42, broke into the Pelosi home early Friday morning, allegedly shouting “Where’s Nancy?” before ultimately attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer. Pelosi underwent “successful surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” and according to a statement from the speaker’s office, “doctors expect a full recovery.”

Musk on Sunday tweeted (and later deleted) a story from right-wing rag The Santa Monica Observer claiming Paul Pelosi was not the victim of a break in, but that the attack was part of a domestic dispute with a male prostitute. It has been widely noted that the Observer has a history of publishing false claims, including that Hillary Clinton had died and been replaced with a body double. Musk later made fun of The New York Times for reporting that the tweet was based on a claim from a regular source of misinformation.

Former first son Donald Trump Jr. mocked the attack on Instagram and Twitter later on Sunday, posting a meme depicting a pair of underwear and a hammer with the text, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” Jr. captioned the post “OMG. The internet remains undefeated.”

Trump Jr. on Monday morning tweeted out a photo of a hammer in a holster, captioned “open carry in San Francisco”

Sitting politicians have also been mocking the attack. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) tweeted, then deleted, an image mocking Speaker Pelosi, captioning the tweet, “That moment you realize the nudist hippie male prostitute LSD guy was the reason your husband didn’t make it to your fundraiser.”

Researchers have found that while DePape did hold anti-establishment ideologies, his online activity indicated a longstanding pattern of extremist beliefs, including QAnon conspiracies, Holocaust denail, false voter fraud claims, and screeds against trans people and “groomers.”

On Fox News, the hosts of Fox & Friends alluded to the conspiracy on air. “Something, something doesn’t make sense,” said host Pete Hegseth, adding that it “doesn’t add up.” Larry Elder, the former California gubernatorial candidate and frequent Fox News guest, mocked the attack at an event Sunday night, saying that between the DUI conviction and the assault Pelosi was “was hammered twice in six months.”

 

Professional conspiracy theorists beat the disinformation drum on Twitter all weekend. Dinsesh D’Souza began publishing an alternate version of events on social media virtually immediately after the attack happened. Former Trump administration hand Sebastian Gorka published what is allegedly a partial clip of the conversation between 911 dispatchers sending someone to Pelosi’s home, captioning the video “The Paul Pelosi 911 Lie…” (The clip does not feature Paul Pelosi himself speaking to officers.) Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich claimed news outlets are “hiding facts from the public,” suggesting that a break in at the Pelosi home was implausible and baselessly alluding to a connection between the attack and Paul Pelosi’s recent DUI case.

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has thrown the future of enforcement of anti-disinformation policies into chaos. Massive layoffs are expected at the social media company, and over the weekend Musk tweeted that he had not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies, but reports indicated that instances of racist and hateful abuse on the platform skyrocketed in the immediate aftermath of Musk’s takeover.

On Monday morning, Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt defended Musk tweeting a conspiracy theory about Pelosi’s attack, labeling it a “free speech” issue.

I haven't decided yet whether to stay with Twitter and lurk, so I can keep an eye on it, or bail and try to find something else. 

So far, I've seen a lot more weird shit, but that could be me engaging with the crazies more than I have done (mostly Blue Check Crazies) so maybe the algorithm is slanted in their direction.

I have noticed though that I've lost a couple of hundred followers, which may be the beginnings of "Twexit".

I don't know. Interesting times.

Those Plucky Persians

For almost 2 months, Iranian women have been standing up and telling the government in Tehran to take their Morailty Police and shove it.

Yes, Morality Police really is what they named it.

Listen up, America - our own future is calling.

Students defy protest ultimatum despite crackdown across Iran

Summary

• Protests show no sign of easing amid fierce state warnings
• University students clash with security forces
• Journalists demand release of their jailed colleagues
• Rights groups report arrests of activists, students

DUBAI, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Iranian students defied warnings from the feared Revolutionary Guards that nationwide protests must end by Sunday and were met with tear gas, beatings and gunfire from riot police and militia, videos on social media showed.

The confrontations at dozens of universities, along with threats of a tougher crackdown, indicated that the demonstrations, now in their seventh week, were entering a more violent phase.

Iranians from all walks of life have been protesting since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police after she was arrested for attire deemed inappropriate.

What began as outrage over Amini's death on Sept. 16 has evolved into one of the toughest challenges to clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution, with some protesters calling for the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The top commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned protesters that Saturday would be their last day of taking to the streets, the harshest warning yet by Iranian authorities.

Nevertheless, videos on social media, unverifiable by Reuters, showed confrontations between students and riot police and Basij forces on Sunday at universities all over Iran.

One video showed a member of Basij forces firing a gun at close range at students protesting at a branch of Azad University in Tehran. Gunshots were also heard in a video shared by rights group HENGAW from protests at the University of Kurdistan in Sanandaj. Videos from universities in some other cities also showed Basij forces opening fire at students.

Across the country, security forces tried to block students inside university buildings, firing tear gas and beating protesters with sticks. The students, who appeared to be unarmed, pushed back, with some chanting "dishonoured Basij get lost" and "Death to Khamenei".

HISTORY OF CRACKDOWNS

• The activist HRANA news agency said 283 protesters had been killed in the unrest as of Saturday including 44 minors. Some 34 members of the security forces were also killed.
• More than 14,000 people have been arrested, including 253 students, in protests in 132 cities and towns, and 122 universities, it said.
• The Guards and its affiliated Basij force have crushed dissent in the past. They said on Sunday, "seditionists" were insulting them at universities and in the streets, and warned they may use more force if the anti-government unrest continued.
• "So far, Basijis have shown restraint and they have been patient," the head of the Revolutionary Guards in the Khorasan Junubi province, Brigadier General Mohammadreza Mahdavi, was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.
• "But it will get out of our control if the situation continues."

JOURNALISTS APPEAL

More than 300 Iranian journalists demanded the release of two colleagues jailed for their coverage of Amini in a statement published by the Iranian Etemad and other newspapers on Sunday.

Niloofar Hamedi took a photo of Amini's parents hugging each other in a Tehran hospital where their daughter was lying in a coma.

The image, which Hamedi posted on Twitter, was the first signal to the world that all was not well with Amini, who had been detained three days earlier by Iran's morality police for what they deemed inappropriate dress.

Elaheh Mohammadi covered Amini's funeral in her Kurdish hometown Saqez, where the protests began. A joint statement released by Iran’s intelligence ministry and the intelligence organisation of the Revolutionary Guards on Friday had accused Hamedi and Mohammadi of being CIA foreign agents.

The arrests match an official narrative that Iran's arch-enemy the United States, Israel and other Western powers and their local agents are behind the unrest and are determined to destabilise the country.

At least 40 journalists have been detained in the past six weeks, according to rights groups, and the number is growing.

Students and women have played a prominent role in the unrest, burning their veils as crowds call for the fall of the Islamic Republic, which came to power in 1979.

An official said on Sunday the establishment had no plan to retreat from compulsory veiling but should be "wise" about enforcement.

"Removing the veil is against our law and this headquarters will not retreat from its position," Ali Khanmohammadi, the spokesman of Iran’s headquarters for "Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice" told the Khabaronline website.

"However, our actions should be wise to avoid giving enemies a pretext to use it against us."

The apparent hint at compromise is unlikely to appease the protesters, most of whose demands have moved beyond dress code changes to calls for an end to clerical rule.

In a further apparent bid to defuse the situation, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said people were right to call for change and their demands would be met if they distanced themselves from the "criminals" taking to the streets.

"We consider the protests to be not only correct and the cause of progress, but we also believe that these social movements will change policies and decisions, provided that they are separated from violent people, criminals and separatists," he said, using terms officials typically use for the protesters.

Oops Again, Republicans

Hoping this is another sign that Republicans have badly over-reached, and that the ladies are coming out to show these idiots what happens when you fuck over half the population.

Judge who denied Florida teen an abortion citing grades loses reelection

A state judge who, in a highly publicized case, denied a 17-year-old an abortion in part because of her grades lost his election in a Florida primary on Tuesday.

Jared Smith, who was appointed to Florida’s 13th Circuit Court by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2019, narrowly lost his nonpartisan primary against attorney Nancy Jacobs.

Jacobs received roughly 51.9 percent of the vote, beating Smith by about 3.7 percentage points, or roughly 7,900 votes.

Smith had ruled in January that the 17-year-old, who was kept anonymous in court documents, could not receive an abortion, citing her grades. An appeals court overturned the ruling.

“While she claimed that her grades were ‘Bs’ during her testimony, her GPA is currently 2.0,” Smith ruled. “Clearly, a ‘B’ average would not equate to a 2.0 GPA.”

Florida is one of six states that require both parental notification and consent for minors to obtain abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The teen had asked the court to waive the requirement.

Under Florida law, a judge can waive parental consent if it finds by “clear and convincing evidence” that the minor is “sufficiently mature” to decide to have an abortion. In considering those requests, judges are required to assess factors like the minor’s age, overall intelligence and emotional stability.

The statute has led to multiple high-profile cases, including one earlier this month in which a Florida appeals court ruled a 16-year-old did not demonstrate she met the maturity requirement to circumvent the parental notification and consent requirements.


Smith received an array of endorsements in the primary race, including former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez (R), the Tampa Bay Times’s editorial board and multiple retired judges who served on the circuit.

Democrats have hoped the Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion in June will help energize voters in this year’s midterm elections and avoid steep losses for the party as it seeks to maintain control of Congress.

Voters in Kansas, a traditionally red state, rejected a ballot question earlier this month that would remove abortion rights from the state constitution.

As voters headed to the polls in Florida on Tuesday and defeated Smith in his circuit court race, New York’s simultaneous primary showed another sign of the potential impact of the abortion ruling.

Pat Ryan (D), who made supporting abortion rights a cornerstone of his campaign, defeated Marc Molinaro (R) in the state’s 19th Congressional District, a bellwether district that voted for former President Obama in 2012, former President Trump in 2016 and President Biden in 2020.

A Little Privacy Please

I don't know how you read some amendments to the US Constitution and not come away with the idea that privacy is at the center of the debate over what rights we do and don't have here in USAmerica Inc.

A1: My private thoughts are my own and the government can go suck eggs.

A3: I get to decide who does and who doesn't stay in my own private housing.

A4: My person and my place and my stuff are private and nobody else's business.

A5: I'll keep my answers to myself so the government can't use my words against me.

A6: Government can't strip me of my privacy without due process.

A10: Information about me belongs to me.

NYT - Opinion by Alex Kingsbury: (pay wall)

We’re About to Find Out What Happens When Privacy Is All but Gone

Whenever I see one of those billboards that read: “Privacy. That’s iPhone,” I’m overcome by the urge to cast my own iPhone into a river. Of lava.

That’s not because the iPhone is any better or worse than other smartphones when it comes to digital privacy. (I’d take an iPhone over an Android phone in a second; I enjoy the illusion of control over my digital life as much as the next person.)

What’s infuriating is the idea that carrying around the most sophisticated tracking and monitoring device ever forged by the hand of man is consistent with any understanding of privacy. It’s not. At least not with any conception of privacy our species had pre-iPhone.

Reconciling the idea of privacy with our digital world demands embracing a profound cognitive dissonance. To exist in 2022 is to be surveilled, tracked, tagged and monitored — most often for profit. Short of going off the grid, there’s no way around it.

Consider just last week: Apple released a surprise software update for its iPhones, iPads and Macs meant to remove vulnerabilities the company says may have been exploited by sophisticated hackers. The week before that, a former Google engineer discovered that Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was using a piece of code to track users of the Facebook and Instagram apps across the internet without their knowledge. In Greece, the prime minister and his government have been consumed by a widening scandal in which they are accused of spying on the smartphones of an opposition leader and a journalist.

And this month Amazon announced that it was creating a show called “Ring Nation” — a sort of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” made up of footage recorded by the company’s Ring doorbells. These video doorbells, sold by Amazon and other companies, are now watching millions of American homes, and they are often used by police departments as, effectively, surveillance networks. All in the name of fighting crime, of course.

Step back, and what we’re looking at is a world where privacy simply doesn’t exist anymore. Instead of talking about old notions of privacy, and how to defend or get back to that ideal state, we should start talking about what comes next.

That reality is becoming clearer to Americans after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, which eliminated the federal right to abortion. They now understand that their phone location data, internet searches and purchase history are all fair game for the police — especially in states that do not protect abortion rights, and where women can be hunted down for their health care choices. If the courts once defended the right to have an abortion as part of a broader right to privacy, by vaporizing that right, the Roberts court shattered many of Americans’ conceptions of privacy as well.

In 2019, Times Opinion investigated the location tracking industry. Whistleblowers gave us a data set that included millions of pings from individual cellphones around daily commutes, churches and mosques, abortion clinics, the Pentagon, even the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. “If the government ordered Americans to continuously provide such precise, real-time information about themselves, there would be a revolt,” the editorial board wrote.

Yet despite years of talk, Congress is no closer to passing robust privacy legislation than it was two decades ago when the idea first came up. Even their baby steps aren’t encouraging. Two bills in the current session aim to roll back some of this mass monitoring around abortion and reproductive health in particular, although neither one is likely to pass.

One, the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act, would prevent law enforcement and government agencies from purchasing location data and other sensitive information from data brokers. Another, the My Body, My Data Act, would forbid tech companies to keep, use or share some personal health information absent written consent. Neither bill would prevent police officers with a court order from getting such information.

Some tech companies, like Google, have announced voluntary measures to protect some user data around reproductive health care. A group of hundreds of Google employees is circulating a petition to strengthen privacy protections for users who look for information about abortion through its search engine.

But even if those bills pass and some tech companies take more steps, there are simply too many tech companies, government entities, data brokers, internet service providers and others tracking everything we do.

Protecting digital privacy is not in the interest of the government, and voters don’t seem to care much about privacy at all. Nor is it in the interest of tech companies, which sell user private data for a profit to advertisers. There are too many cameras, cell towers and inscrutable artificial intelligence engines in operation to live an unobserved life.

For years, privacy advocates, who foresaw the contours of the surveilled world we now live in, warned that privacy was a necessary prerequisite for democracy, human rights and a flourishing of the human spirit. We’re about to find out what happens when that privacy has all but vanished.