I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!

Spookiesmom

What a guy!!!!

IllinoisLady

Ain't that the truth.

IllinoisLady

Oh boy, does Shakespeare have it right.

IllinoisLady

IllinoisLady

I hope this really is true. It is inspiring just reading it so fingers crossed.

HomeMom

I hate sometimes the fact that I live in FL with that Bozo governor. What's worse is that the repugs have been in power for the last 20 years (legislature) while we have a lot more Democrats than repugs. THAT'S why I'm mad at the slow moving unreactive Dems in this state and elsewhere. It's like a disease only they have!

IllinoisLady

Have not watched much news today. Had it on because Dh mainly wants it on, but I've felt a lot of frustration the past few days with the other half that championed the other guy. So, I took a bit of a break today. Likely didn't miss too much. It won't be long till I'm likely back in there griping bout' most everything the other side is up to since they can do nothing and wreck everything.

IllinoisLady

I just found this. Glory be but it is about time.

DivineMrsM

Well boo to Urban Meyer. And his wife Shelley. Have you heard about this scandal?

I don't follow much college football. However, my uncle was a coach for the University of Alabama “Crimson Tide" which my family always roots for so no Ohio State Buckeye fans here. But it's well known Urban Meyer led the Buckeyes to a national championship. He'd also coached the Florida Gators to a national championship.

Well, yadda yadda yadda, this year he started coaching in NFL football for the Jacksonville Jaguars (Florida). Doing a miserable job. They have lost all four games they've played this season.

After the last game in Ohio this weekend, Urban stayed in Ohio rather than fly back to Fla. with his team. Said he needed “family time", wanted to spend time with grandkids. His wife tweets about this, too.

Then a video surfaces of Urban sitting in a bar that same night with some young blonde in a tank top backing up and grinding up against him and a video from another angle shows him groping her between the legs.

The franchise owner is giving him a chance to redeem himself. I think it sucks. Like one news article states, this kind of behavior wouldn't be tolerated from a woman or a black coach.

Getting back to Urban's wife, Shelley. Sept. 22, she tweeted about Covid conspiracy. From an article: “Someone named Mike Brucato brought up the hundreds and thousands of lives lost during this pandemic, with Shelley replying that the flu could have done the same, and that COVID-19 death numbers are being manipulated.“ She makes many more outrageous claims. Antimasker, God will protect her.

The kicker: Shelley Meyers a registered nurse with a teaching position at Ohio State's medical school. Another article states: “She has 46,000 followers on Twitter; many of whom take their cues from her because a lot of Ohio State fans would eat literal garbage if a Buckeye sachem told them it was part of a well-balanced breakfast.“

Oh, they're big on “religion" too, attending one of those megachurches.

Urban and Shelley Meyers. Disgusting.

IllinoisLady

The greatest force in the human body is the natural drive of the body to heal itself--but that force is not independent of the belief system. Everything begins with belief. What we believe is the most powerful option of all. -Norman Cousins

IllinoisLady

I don't do sports much of any kind although I will watch the St. Louis Cardinals games sometimes. Otherwise most sports are not enjoyed here at our house. My first hubby was a fanatic. He would have two tv's going and sometimes a radio as well. We were together almost 10 yrs. and they were ( where sports were concerned ) really long years for me.

Urban Meyers ( rat that he sounds totally ) is not familiar to me, nor his wife. I will say though such shame should be hers. I guess I would have to say she is living proof that otherwise quite intelligent people can lose their way in conspiracy and or other stupid theories and do the harm they take a vow not to when they go into the medical field. Just horrid that these otherwise smart people just choose to ignore every opportunity apparently to secure for themselves long abiding facts for those who they teach. I wish there were penalties for those who do not adhere to cold hard and long established facts. Don't even have to get into the religious aspects that both she and her husband adhere to. What heathen hypocrits.

Elderberry

The mother of one of my friends once said "My mind is made up. Do not confuse me with the facts" --- seems to be a lot of that thought process out there.

DivineMrsM

Speaking of facts….

ChiSandy

There may be a debt ceiling breakthrough this week.

As to the Meyers, it's not about the science nor even religion--it's definitely partisan and tribal. There are very, very few liberals (much less Democrats) in pro or college football--coaches, players, especially season ticket-holders. As to Shelley, not all RNs, even those who hold teaching positions, have a complete enough understanding of medicine beyond what is necessary for patient care and catching doctors' mistakes. As the right-wing social media posts & YouTube videos of outlier "maverick experts" illustrate, an incomplete medical education often leads to extrapolating and jumping to erroneous conclusions, especially when it comes to immunology. "A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing" has never proved to be truer than it is now.

And HomeMom, don't blame the majority-Democratic electorate of Florida (nor of other GOP-led majority-blue-population states) for inertia. Due to the gerrymandering--starting with 2009's Project Redmap and ALEC-written cookie-cutter legislation--in these states, Democrats have gotten more votes in both Congressional & state legislature elections than have Repubs; but districts have been drawn in such a way ("packing & cracking" * to minimize the number of majority-Dem districts) as to create more GOP-dominant legislative & Cong. districts, thus disproportionately electing more Repubs. Sort of the Electoral College situation in miniature. And when this still doesn't work in their favor, Repubs. must resort to suppression tactics to limit traditionally-Dem-voting people's access to the polls (and discouraging them from trying to vote)--whether by purging similar but not identical names from the rolls; closing polling places; removing drop boxes; restricting the location, number & operating hours of gov't agencies that issue approved photo IDs (and deliberately making only those IDs carried primarily by Repubs, such as gun, hunting & fishing licenses "approved" while declaring college & employee IDs "unacceptable"); and outlawing giving voters standing in long lines water or food--even family members can be arrested for bringing them a bottle of water & a granola bar.

So the real reason for Democratic "inaction" is that Republicans have been playing dirty ever since Obama got elected, and we should have matched them move-for-move back then, before voter-suppression became part of the GOP game plan. "We're better than that" has been fatal to our chances. I know I've posted this here before (so forgive me for repeating it), but in Dec. 2008 Sen. Tim Kaine came to my neighborhood as guest speaker at a celebration for those of us who worked for and/or donated to the Obama campaign. After his thank-you/pep talk, he went around shaking hands, signing autographs and answering questions. When it was my turn, I told him "our work has just begun--the racist jokes & cartoons I've seen in e-mails and on online bulletin boards show that the Republicans are still fighting dirty, and we need to fight fire with fire." He replied "Thank you for your hard work" and went on to the next person. Sure enough, by summer 2009, the Tea Party movement was born, and conserva-PAC-funded "town halls" popped up--featuring GOP Senators blathering about "Obamacare death panels" (deliberately mischaracterizing the ACA's clause fully covering patients conferring with their doctors on end-of-life care preferences) and egging on (universally white) people crying "I want MY country back!" (Translation--"I can't believe a n-word is in the White House").

And then in 2016, came Michelle Obama's noble "When they go low low, we go high." Well, when we're up on the high road, we fail to recognize that the low road is where the action takes place--and the voters are. Voters glom onto catchphrases that can be reduced to acronyms on hats & T-shirts. We don't speak bumper-sticker, but we're doomed if we don't learn to. Just as the perfect is the enemy of the good, so is the ideal the enemy of the achievable. We will never get anywhere unless we get a more solid majority--solid enough to be able to rob certain 'DINOs" of their ego power trips. (We nearly lost the ACA because of a couple of such conservaDem holdouts back in 2010--when Kyrsten Sinema was still a liberal and Joe Manchin was a gleam in a hard-coal miner's eye, not the self-declared power brokers they are now).

I hate having to keep saying "I told you so." And if I've gotten so weary of it, is it any wonder that other Dems are tempted to follow through on that weariness and just tune out?

DivineMrsM

The point I was making about Shelley Meyers is not so much that she's an RN, but that she holds a teaching position at The Ohio State University. Many nurses dying of Covid because they chose not to get vaccinated so it's not about intelligence. The following article highlights some of the misinformation she spews to her followers via social media.

Shelley Meyer, the Worst Nurse in the World

Should Shelley Meyer really be in a teaching position considering the mountains of misinformation she has peddled throughout the pandemic?

https://rooster.substack.com/p/shelley-meyer-the-worst-nurse-in

ChiSandy

Those who teach have more power to influence impressionable minds than most of us know.

*"Packing" is the practice of drawing districts to cram minority-group voters into as few all-blue districts as possible. "Cracking" is its counterpart: taking a majority-blue district (especially a college campus) and dividing it so that its now-small parts are absorbed into majority-red districts. Different tactics, same objective & result.

DivineMrsM

Personally I blame the patriarchy. Shelley Meyers is going along with the tribe of OSU coaches and athletes. She probably hasn't had her own thoughts since…well, before marriage. Everything in her life is a reflection of the man she married. Easier to go along with this crowd than to say, 'hey, mask, vaccinate'. She has been conditioned to seek white male approval. I feel it's that way with a lot of female nurses. Just my opinion.

Shelley's reward is now she gets to stand by her man after the video surfaces of him groping a young blonde grinding against his…grinder. Have you seen the video? It is short but disgusting to me when he claimed he needed time to spend with his grandkids and left wifey home to tend to them while he tended to…something else. I mean, I personally would be hiring a die-vorce lawyer. But she gets to eat humiliation pie. And of course you have lots of coaches and players claiming boys will be boys and shrug it off. But they're not the ones who thought they were sexually pleasing Urban at home.

IllinoisLady

We are all connected to everyone and everything in the universe.
Therefore, everything one does as an individual affects the whole.
All thoughts, words, images, prayers, blessings, and deeds
are listened to by all that is.
- Serge Kahili King

IllinoisLady

Sandy the last three paragraphs in your first entry ring so horribly true. Democrats don't play dirty, and oh how wonderful until we lose. High-minded principles are great but where are you going to be when you let the rug be pulled out from under you. We definitely need to 'change' behaviors and play something of the same game the Reps. have been playing for so long.

I read that they are/were attempting to create chaos by blowing up the debt limit so they would have something to run on for '22 and '24 when they 'fix' everything again while of course, blaming the Democrats, even though they would have been the REAL culprits. That is how dirty they don't mind playing.

I hope serious thought continues on the filibuster because that is why McConnell decided he had to blink. It will come again way too soon.

IllinoisLady

IllinoisLady

IllinoisLady

About what I was thinking about Mr. I'll just ignore that they wanted to hang me and do God knows what to my family, because I'm sure if Trump doesn't diss me now I can run for Pres. in '24 Pence. Not to mention any of the other great reasons, but I wouldn't even consider this man due to his having been part of the Trump troops for 4 long horrid yrs.

IllinoisLady

IllinoisLady

October 6, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 7

Today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) backed down from his obstructionism, agreeing to let the Democrats raise the debt ceiling by a simple majority rather than by the 60 votes they needed when the Republicans kept filibustering their bills.

A quick recap: the issue at stake was whether the United States would default on its debts, which it has never done before. The threat to default was purely a political ploy on the part of the Republicans to try to force the Democrats to abandon their very popular infrastructure measure.

Here's the backstory: Congress actually originally intended the debt ceiling to enable the government to be flexible in its borrowing. In the era of World War I, when it needed to raise a lot of money fast, Congress stopped passing specific revenue measures and instead set a cap on how much money the government could borrow through all of the different instruments it used.

Now, though, the debt ceiling has become a political cudgel because if it is not raised when Congress spends more than it has the ability to repay, the country will default on its debts. The cap has been raised repeatedly since it was first imposed; indeed, the Republicans raised it three times under former president Donald Trump. Once again, it is too low, and by October 18, the Treasury will be unable to pay our debts.

To meet the nation's obligations, Congress needs either to raise taxes, which Republicans passionately oppose, or to raise the debt ceiling so the Treasury can borrow more money. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling 32 times in his career, including the three times under Trump, refused to allow Republicans to vote to raise the debt ceiling.

Although the ceiling needed to be lifted because Trump added $7.8 trillion to the debt (which now stands at about $28 trillion), in part with the huge 2017 tax cuts that went overwhelmingly to the wealthy, McConnell tried to tie the need for more money to the Democrats' infrastructure plan. This was false: the debt ceiling is not an appropriation; it simply permits the government to borrow money it needs to pay debts already incurred.

But McConnell and the Republicans want to dismantle an active government, not to build it. They hope to convince Americans that Democrats are racking up huge debts—even though it is the Republicans on the hook for today's crisis—and that they should not be permitted to pass a bill that supports children and working parents and addresses climate change.

The Democrats insisted that the Republicans should join them in raising the ceiling, since they had been instrumental in making it necessary, but McConnell and his caucus refused. Finally, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warning that defaulting would crash the economy and with financial services firm Moody's Analytics warning that a default would cost up to 6 million jobs, create an unemployment rate of nearly 9%, and wipe out $15 trillion in household wealth, the Democrats tried to pass a measure themselves.

Republicans wouldn't let them. They filibustered it, trying to force the Democrats to save the country by raising the debt ceiling through a bill that can't be filibustered, a process called reconciliation, which would make it harder for them to use reconciliation for their own infrastructure bill since Congress can pass only one of that type of reconciliation bill per year.

It was a remarkably cynical ploy, risking the financial health of the country and our standing in the world to make sure that a Republican minority could continue to hamstring what the Democratic majority considers a priority. Republicans have played chicken with government shutdowns since the 1980s, refusing to pass measures to fund the daily operations of the government and thereby stopping paychecks and government operations.

But defaulting on our obligations was a whole new game of brinksmanship. The greatest international asset the U.S. has right now is its financial system. To bring that to its knees to score political points would be interpreted, correctly, as a sign our country is so unstable it must be sidelined.

Midday today, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin highlighted this international doubt when he took the unusual step of weighing in on politics. He warned that a default would "undermine the economic strength on which our national security rests." Paychecks for 1.4 million active duty military personnel and veterans' benefits for 2.4 million veterans, as well as payments on military contracts, would stop. Equally dangerous, defaulting on loans would devastate the nation's international reputation "as a reliable and trustworthy economic and national security partner."

Democrats said they could not guarantee the country would not default, and they were clearly starting to consider getting rid of the filibuster, at least for this particular issue, to enable them to pass a debt ceiling bill by a simple majority rather than by 60 votes.

Then McConnell blinked (although he didn't cave). In a scorching statement that laid all the blame for the crisis on the Democrats, he offered to "allow" Democrats to use normal procedures—that is, the Republicans won't filibuster them!—to extend the ceiling into December. Democrats indicate they will take that deal.

There is one major takeaway from this manufactured crisis: McConnell was willing to come right to the verge of burning the nation down to get his way. In the end, he stopped just before the sparks became an inferno, but it was much too close for comfort.

Still, he stopped. Trump and his supporters did not. The former president has been pushing Republicans to use the threat of default to get what they want, and he was not happy that McConnell had backed down. He issued a statement blaming McConnell for "folding" and added "He's got all of the cards with the debt ceiling, it's time to play the hand."

Trump's willingness to burn down the country is ramping up as the January 6 investigation gets closer to him. Tomorrow is the deadline for four of his aides to respond to subpoenas for documents and testimony from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol: former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, adviser Steve Bannon, and Defense Department aide Kash Patel. Meadows worked to overturn the 2020 election results and was in the thick of things on January 6, Scavino had met with Trump to plot to get congresspeople not to count the certified votes on January 6, Bannon strategized with other officials on January 5 to stop the count, and Patel was part of discussions about the strength of the Capitol Police.

The four are expected to defy the subpoenas at Trump's insistence, a defiance that suggests they think he and his people are going to regain power. According to Glenn Kirschner, a former U.S. Army prosecutor, contempt of Congress earns a year of prison time; obstruction of Congress, five years; and obstruction of justice, 20 years.

The rest of the former president's statements today were unhinged attacks on the committee.

A final note for October 6: U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman has temporarily blocked enforcement of Texas's S.B. 8, the so-called "heartbeat" bill prohibiting abortions after six weeks, when most women don't know they're pregnant. The Justice Department had sued to stop enforcement of the law. Pitman stopped it on the grounds that it deprived "citizens of a significant and well-established constitutional right."

DivineMrsM

IllinoisLady

Life is simple.
Everything happens for you, not to you.
Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late.
You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.
- Byron Katie

Be still and know who you are.
- Kirtana

IllinoisLady

October 7, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 8

On this date five years ago, in the run-up to the 2016 election, the Washington Post broke the story of the so-called Access Hollywood tape, a video from 2005 in which Donald Trump told television host Billy Bush about his approach to women. "I don't even wait" to start kissing them, he said. "And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.... Grab 'em by the p***y. You can do anything."

Today's events indicated that, as president, he took a similar approach to the Department of Justice.

This morning, the Democratic majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee released a draft report of its investigation into Trump's attempt to use the Department of Justice to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The report found that Trump repeatedly tried to get the DOJ to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to overturn its results, singling out nine specific attempts to change the outcome. Trump, the report says, "grossly abused the power of the presidency."

The report points to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as a key player in the attempt to subvert the DOJ, and it singles out a number of other officials as participants in the pressure campaign. Those people include Jeffrey Bossert Clark from within the DOJ, whom Trump tried to install as acting attorney general to push his demands; Representative Scott Perry (R-PA); Doug Mastriano, a Republican state senator from Pennsylvania; and Cleta Mitchell, a legal adviser to the Trump campaign. The draft report also notes that under Attorney General William Barr, the DOJ "deviated from longstanding practice" when it began to investigate allegations of fraud before the votes were certified.

The report concludes that the efforts to subvert the DOJ were part of Trump's attempt "to retain the presidency by any means necessary," a process that "without a doubt" "created the disinformation ecosystem necessary for Trump to incite almost 1000 Americans to breach the Capitol in a violent attempt to subvert democracy by stopping the certification of a free and fair election."

The minority of the Senate Judiciary Committee promptly published a rebuttal, defending the former president by saying that "President Trump listened to his advisors, including high-level DOJ officials and White House Counsel and followed their recommendations."

The top Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee is Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is running for reelection in 2022 and is facing a primary challenger from the right. Grassley will be speaking on Saturday at Trump's "rally" in Iowa. As then–Senate president pro tempore and thus the next person in line to count the electoral votes if Vice President Mike Pence were absent, Grassley was not uninvolved in the events of January 6.

Indeed, on January 5, Roll Call reported Grassley's statement that he and not Vice President Mike Pence would preside over the counting of the certified votes the following day. "[I]f the Vice President isn't there, and we don't expect him to be there, I will be presiding over the Senate," Grassley said. His staff immediately walked the statement back, but it does suggest he might have been aware of some of the White House machinations to overturn the election.

On CNN, host Jake Tapper called Grassley's response to the majority's report "a very, very generous to the point of delusional reflection of what actually happened."

Today was also the deadline for four of Trump's closest allies to turn over documents to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol and to schedule testimony. Former chief of staff Mark Meadows, social media manager Dan Scavino, adviser Steve Bannon, and former Defense Department official Kash Patel have until midnight tonight to contact the committee.

Trump's lawyers wrote a letter telling the four men not to cooperate with the congressional subpoena. The letter claims that Trump is planning to contest the subpoenas on the basis of executive privilege.

But even if this president does accept his assertion of executive privilege—and there are good reasons for any president to be nervous about depositions from a chief of staff—such an assertion would likely not cover Steve Bannon.

Meanwhile, the committee issued three new subpoenas today, this time for people or entities involved in rallies to protest the 2020 election results to testify. The committee subpoenaed Ali Abdul Akbar, known as Ali Alexander, and Nathan Martin, as well as Stop the Steal L.L.C., an organization affiliated with the January 6 protest in Washington.

After the election, Alexander called frequently for violence to overturn the results and claimed to be in contact with White House officials and Representatives Mo Brooks (R-AL), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) about January 6. In a now-deleted video, Alexander said: "We four schemed up… putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting… so that who we couldn't lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside."

This evening the Senate managed to pass a measure to raise the debt ceiling until December, but it was not an easy sell. Trump continued to object to clearing the way for Democrats to keep the nation from tipping over the cliff into default despite the fact that the nation racked up $7.8 trillion in debt on his watch and raising the debt ceiling is necessary to cover that debt.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) promise that the Republicans would no longer block the Democrats from addressing the issue did not stop a number of Republican senators from continuing to object. Finally, 11 Republicans agreed to join the Democrats to break a Republican filibuster by a vote of 61–38. The Democrats then passed legislation to address the debt ceiling by a strict party vote of 50–48 and sent the measure to the House.

It took a filibuster-proof majority of the Senate not to pass a bill to protect the nation's economic health and international standing, but simply to keep an angry minority at bay long enough to permit Democrats to pass that bill.

The news that the Senate had agreed to a deal made the Dow Jones Industrial Average jump 330 points.

IllinoisLady

There seems to me to be a train load of proof that Trump and HIS deep state were plotting and planning and had fruitfully stirred up those who would carry out their devious plans. Since everyone on Trump's end would have resigned ( even Pat Cippolini ) at the Jan 3rd. meeting of very un-great minds ( other than knowing it was suicidal to give into Trump that day ) it resulted in Trump having to rely on those who traitorously stormed the Capitol under Trump direction. It is good that this is all coming out despite the Reps. writing up their own description of this meeting. They say he isn't guilty because he was talked out of it. That is a very high shading indeed. He couldn't afford being deserted by all his hand-picked people. Other-wise Jeffrey Clark would have become the AG or acting AG in chg. and Clark was slobbering mightily to be able too. I'm sure it was a heart-breaking result to him.

The only thing that makes it sort of okay not to throw the whole lot of these traitors in jail ( including those who are trying to run out the subpoena's going on ( that traitor Trump is telling them to ignore ) is the fact that the longer the game is played the more damning information that will be available for '22 and '24 elections.

Someone ( sorry I didn't save it ) mentioned that Trump is clearly breaking the law by having his lawyers tell the first four subpoenaed people's lawyers to tell them not to comply with subpoenas. It was also mentioned that nothing should be done until the day these men are actually supposed to appear for interview by the 1/6 committee, and then Trump and company, but especially Trump should definitely be referred to DOJ. I, with all my heart and soul hope that happens.

IllinoisLady

Still doing it too.

IllinoisLady