Eric Swalwell’s alleged rampant sexual assault was an open secret in the Congress. But then again we knew old whatshisface enjoyed grabbing women by the p*ssy.

Changed nothing.

Worse that grifter, adjudicated rapist, felon (Shitgibbon: see above) was elevated to full on emperor (think Brits installing the Shah in Iran like Russia and Trump) last election cycle. What do these two losers: Swalwell and Trump, have in common?

They are white menfolk in positions of power. I know. Stunning revelation. It’s really that simple when you consider the arc of the American story, and it is a story. Predicated on genocide and landed-white male supremacy none of us (unless we are landed, white menfolk, still) were meant to really have the rights we have.

Not really.

If we were meant to be seen as equal under the law, fully enfranchised, would we be in the position we are now? Reagan really did ruin everything; skipping a lot of steps here, Trump is the result of what Ronnie set in motion.

That goal? To recenter the American story on white, rich (landed) menfolk because ladies were having sex outside of marriage and Black people could vote. Again, skipping a lot of details but that is basically what this whole shootin’ match boils down to: Boners and Barons.

White women? We can be the absolute worst. Not standing in the literal breach between firehoses and drawn guns to help our Black and brown sisters and brothers. Legendary. But the white women who are even worse? Those who cover for terrible no good very bad boner barons. Again. We are a mess (admitting there is a problem is half the battle ladies - I mean some of us have known it for a while now but welcome aboard if this is just dawning on you now - there is time to pull up from the nosedive.

This of course brings me back to crappy white menfolk in positions of power who want to be given even more power which of course brings me right back to Iowa and Zach Wahls. I know. I’m such a f’ing harpy but no I shant forgive that twit giving the sex pest a great gig after a woman in his position fought to make that same sex pest GTFO.

So much for doing the right thing. My beef? Certainly it is with Wahls - absolutely. Also? Those white ladies who have chucked their troth his way, and I include his wife who is allegedly feminist, and the powerful neofeminists in her circle (we used to be on a listserv together yeaaaarrrsss ago when we needed listservs, I know that milieu because I was a part of it). I see some prominent national names out there slinging some bullshit to ignore Wahls’ ills. How in the hell can he be trusted to actually be an ally to women - and by proxy ally to othered groups that matter - if he’s being given a pass?

Much like Trump, here I blame the legacy media. No one wants to ask those kinds of questions - I mean you see how Trump cowed the Register in 2015 (and man shame on them). But I also blame the Iowa independent media at this point (with some exceptions) and am left suppose none of them care about three women Wahls sacrificed on the altar of a good labour lawyer.

But think of this, journalists in Iowa, what if for one moment you consider sexual assault and garbage men who enable it a grave enough concern to ask Wahls and Turek at a debate about it? We all know what Zach would say don’t we? He would make some lying excuse about boo-hoo, I was ousted from leadership because I’m victim xyz blah blah blah. But have you asked yourselves what might Josh say?

All the questions matter. (To be clear the questions write themselves when it comes to the abhorrent MAGA side of the coin.) If we ever manage to claw our way back to some form of little ‘d’ democracy we have a lot of House (and Senate) cleaning to do.

You must ask yourselves some very difficult questions. You must ask you leaders, your would be leaders questions that make you feel uncomfortable. I get it. There is this thing: Iowa Nice.

Iowa Nice is legendary, illusory, and at this point in the American experiment? It’s a cop out. It’s the equivalent of a Mississippian punctuating a scathing sentence with bless your heart.

But, look to the north. Our Minnesota friends and family. Minnesota Nice!

Consider how our Minnesota Nice comrades reacted to an invasion - not just of Minneapolis/St. Paul. But St. Cloud, Wilmer, north to the Iron Range, Rochester, Austin. Everywhere.

Wine moms, grandmas, mothers, fathers came out of their homes to save their neighbors. The had orange whistles. They put themselves in danger - instinctively running to it rather than away.

It’s who they are. It speaks to their character. I’ve strong ties to Minneapolis my grown daughter chose to call it home, dear friends live there, showed up, showed out, and showed the world Minnesota Nice is actual fuckaroundandfindout (and a hot-dish dontcha know).

They are nice to those who have earned their love and respect - their community. They are decidedly not nice to those who would seek to turn their cities and towns and small communities to rubble.

Pretti Good stuff.

I would like to think this could happen in Iowa. People willing to put their lives on the line for months on end - en masse - to tell the truth and shame the devil. They faced death every day and then they did it again.

We’ve see this kind of work in community organisations fighting for immigrant rights, trying to pass county or municipality covenants to protect the least of us. Scholars have written about the movement in Iowa that grew up around the packing plants across the state. It’s moving, powerful work.

Minnesota nice is a complex idea that has borne itself out to be the thing that brought a fascist leader to his knees. The attacks keep coming. This network they built from Mr. Floyd’s horrific murder on a public street as we all watch and screamed and cried.

My god how they were shamed for rising up. Do you remember? I do. There was much pearl clutching. And in Iowa journalist and proud Palestinian, Andrea Mae Sahouri was arrested after screaming through a face full of pepper spray - I’m press, I’m press, I’m press! - and put on trial by the former Polk County Attorney.

Remember when Trump pointed his grizzled, bony finger at the Editorial Board of the Des Moines Register - back when we (mostly women, Black and women of color in the news) were screaming STOP THIS MADDNESS - and put a mark on their backs. Banned them from his events. Called them fake news. My god we told you so. Capitulation, compliance. Journalists arrested by the DOJ, targeted and killed in Lebanon, Belarus and the United States - five of our colleagues, 2018 shot dead in Maryland.

How much grace can we extend now into 2026 to a citizenry who elected a man who is in fact a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist and con man? How much are you able to bring them along? But importantly - how do we not let it happen within the ranks of Democrats? Swalwell anyone?

How does Iowa Nice translate into holding the most powerful man in the world accountable? Iowa nice lobs softballs to electeds, candidates. Iowa nice gives a pass to all the policy violence meted out by monsters in the statehouse. Iowa nice looks the other way when a man in a wheelchair with a compelling story and history of fighting faces the media darling outsider who sacrificed three women: Jessica, Sharon another woman (scared to share her name for fear of retaliation) on the altar of a good lawyer?

I have my orange whistle.

Minnesota nice was underestimated or rather completely misunderstood. Minnesota Nice is action, accountability, screaming into the face of oppression, guns and pepper spray.

Iowa nice can’t even ask the question: why did you allow a man to ascend to a position of power under your leadership, not let the party vote on his nomination separate and apart from the other nominees? Why? What is it about Sharon, Jessica and legion other women - who come forward bravely to say no more - that makes them throwaways?

Minnesota nice is a robust network of independent journalists who aren’t afraid. Iowan independent journalists doing the work? I see you. Loose Cannons and all. This isn’t any easier for me as I sit here, an Iowan on the Hudson. The heat I take from some of my very own family back home. What has being “nice” gotten any of us?

Ask the question: it is our orange whistle.

But guess what? Zach Wahls - yes that one - gave this guy another chance. You bet he did. Bros before hos amiright? Someone needs to ask him why he covered up for Boulton - sorry - why he promoted Boulton - during his catastrophic and short lived leadership in the Iowa State Senate.

Walls gave a pass to Boulton’s abuses and assigned him a to prestigious committee - and - even worse - picked him for one of the five democratic minority leadership team spots in the Iowa Senate. And, he wouldn’t allow individual voting. Meaning he proposed a slate of five senators and took an up or down vote. Instead of allowing people to vote individually for each candidate. Meaning enough people in the chamber would vote against Boulton if able (MORE BELOW).

I wrote this in 2023 - 2023. Because we knew.

To win Iowa someone with moral clarity on sexual assault needs to face Ashley Hinson so they can look at her and without having to blink say “Rep. Hinson, you are covering up for a man adjudicated of rape. How can you live with yourself?”

But here we are. With Zach Wahls. Of course. Because who doesn’t want a soft handed millionaire who took $250K in crypto-funds, took a shit on all his colleagues and got canned from the leadership position he was in because he was terrible at it?

Don’t let his fresh off the Amazon rack Carhart fool you. He’s not “one of us” - I don’t use fundraising cash to fly first class to Cali and NYC and god knows where for over $2K in undisclosed Delta flight tickets.

Do you?

Oh, and I certainly don’t cover up for men who sexually assault women. In fact, most of my reporting career has been fighting for their voices to be heard.

Do I sound pissed? It’s because I am. This system needs a goddamn enema - Democrats and all. This one’s for you, Claire. xx

From 2023:

“The Iowa Legislature has taken a few steps towards addressing this issue, but much more needs to be done to protect workers.” Emma Davidson Tribbs told me via email last week.

“We believe that the Iowa Legislature has an opportunity to lead the way on workplace safety, and that changing the rules in legislative offices will spur change in laws and practices for the rest of society.”

Ms. Davidson Tribbs is the Director and Co-Founder of the National Women’s Defense League. The non-profit group describes itself as a coalition of advocates from across the political spectrum - former staffers, lobbyists, policymakers and survivors. They advocate for victims and pursue policy changes to prevent offenses.

Noheartland is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

“The report finds that sexual harassment by sitting state lawmakers over the last decade is pervasive and ongoing in every statehouse.” she tells me. She saw first hand the gender based harassment, the abuse, going on in statehouses as a lobbyist over her career.

Using open source data, news stories and scouring public records, the report (which she told me is just a first go to put a stake in the ground) brings together enough anecdotal and hard data to show no state house is innocent.

But we know this, right?

It occurs to me now all my friends in Missouri - the women specifically - became my friends through criminal acts. Specifically, sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking. And every one of those women worked in the same place: The Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City.

Every single one. Two former lawmakers, several former interns, a lobbyist. All of them were assaulted or harassed by men in positions of political power.

I was speaking to my friend Jason, a colleague turned friend about the State of Misery (read his amazing expose “The Wolves of Jeff City” from his tenure at the KC Star).

He now runs the award winning Missouri Independent but we met when there was still an Iowa Independent - when the Family Leader was still The Iowa Family Policy Center and Bob Vander Plaats was just trotting out his “man on dog” love theory of homosexuality on the steps of the Iowa statehouse.

Jason was a sounding board for the torrent (and I mean that) of information spewing out of Jeff City about harassment, assault, predatory menfolk operating in the halls with no consequences. I said to him at one point years ago that Jefferson City was the epicenter of political predators. I remember saying Iowa was nothing like that cesspool. And at the time he agreed.

Oh, sweet, naive Andy.

Over the last year I have fielded reports from people who work in the Iowa Capitol about sexual assault and harassment that is ongoing - and worse - is an open secret. I’ve heard rumblings before of long standing offenders in both chambers, in both parties.

But those are just rumors right? Sure. Unfortunately, someone will eventually get a source to speak on the record. Maybe a victim will come forward despite how incredibly difficult and shaming it can be. Maybe - just maybe - someone in a position to do something about the alleged abuse will actually do something before they are thrust into the sunshine.

In the meantime victims go unbelieved and too often must work alongside the Wolves.

And no, for those of you in Iowa who know about Nate Boulton’s reprehensible past, his lack of remorse (not even a half-hearted political mea culpa). But let’s revisit that for a moment shall we?

From Page 4 of the national report:

When this news came out, then democratic senate minority leader Janet Peterson called for Boulton’s resignation, vowing an internal investigation to try and force him out by senate vote, and stripped him of his committee assignments.

But, consider Petersen’s successor (she resigned her position after absolutely nothing happened to Boulton despite her advocacy for accountability).

Zach Wahls (D-Coralville) gave a pass to Boulton’s abuses and assigned him a to prestigious committee - and - even worse - picked him for one of the five democratic minority leadership team spots in the Iowa Senate. And, he wouldn’t allow individual voting. Meaning he proposed a slate of five senators and took an up or down vote. Instead of allowing people to vote individually for each candidate. Meaning enough people in the chamber would vote against Boulton if able.

So what did he do exactly? According to the Des Moines Register (in part):

To which Boulton who apparently had no crisis PR team or conscience said:

In the Iowa Senate and the Iowa House there are ethics guidelines about sexual harassment and misconduct. Kinda.

Iowa Senate Ethics guidlines

55.2KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Titled “Iowa Senate Harassment Prevention Policy”

Iowa House Harassment Policy

495KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Sort of

For what it is worth? There was an ethics complaint filed against Boulton. Bleeding Heartland by Laura Belin posted a copy here in 2020.

Oh, and for goodness sake don’t forget the GOP sexual harassment lawsuit (Iowa Senate) that cost the state $1.75 million (which is documented in the Abuse of Power report). That’s the thing about videos. They have a way of coming out.

Iowa State Senator Bill Dix (R-Shell Rock), who was the one behind this travesty, wasn’t asked to resign by Kim Reynolds. It was only after a video surfaced in 2018 of an apparently consensual kiss at a bar betwixt Dix and a lobbyist.

More, from the report:

The true numbers and impact of sexual harassment in statehouses can not currently be measured because most state governments do not share information about the number of complaints they receive each year. Few statehouses have robust, comprehensive and publicly available reporting systems, so it is difficult to request information and numbers when they are not being collected in a cohesive and consistent fashion.

After looking at most publicly available data, it is clear that these incidents are not simply “one offs” or a single “bad apple” but rather indicative of structural failure. American state houses run on antiquated systems, with few requiring transparency on behaviors or workplace safety. If we fail to acknowledge the lack of policies and protections currently in place, the scourge of sexual harassment will continue, limiting the professional opportunities of workers. We believe that by acknowledging this systemic issue, we can begin to address the root causes, and provide the training, tools and systems to ensure that our leaders and their teams are working in environments free from harassment.

You can download and read the report on the website or:

I know we are all thinking about the big ones: Trump (3rd time’s a charm) and that creepy VP of his. But, did you know that cabinet members (like Noem) and even supreme court justices are fair game?

Yes, that’s right. Congress does in fact have the power to impeach all them mother scratchers if the spirit so moves them — I know they better be feeling pretty moved right about meow.

** You can either scan this QR code on your phone or fill out the form here: https://form.typeform.com/to/zpADsE4N

That’s it. That’s the post.

This absolute piece of garbage must continue to be called out as the absolute piece of garbage he is.

Just swap out some of the old names Trump 1.0 Regime with Mike “Covenant Eyes” Johnson, for example.

Comparing the Taliban and the 2017 GOP is fraught with land mines. It is hard to reconcile decades of murderous rule by the Taliban in both Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan with a loathsome U.S president, cabinet, and scores of self-interested right-wing GOP legislators. There is no mistaking the Taliban’s intention to violently enforce the strictest form of Islamic law: Women must be covered from head to toe in public, girls cannot go to school and adulterous women should be publicly executed. It is the Taliban, after all, who nearly killed Malala.

Since 9/11, our media as made sure footage of turbaned, bearded men riding in the back of jeeps with rocket launchers, blazing across arid terrain has been burned into our collective understanding of what evil looks like. So how do we draw a comparison between them and the GOP without sounding completely unhinged? In part because you as a woman in this country have a right to speak is not a novel comeback. It is not new. It is a construct of the GOP political machinery. Women think it’s bad here? You have a right to speak! Look at those nations imposing Sharia law on their women. Good thing the U.S. doesn’t govern using fundamentalist religion … But of course the GOP powerbrokers do indeed write laws based on fundamentalist Christian interpretations of the Old Testament.

It’s not such a radical notion, this idea of the GOP as an American Taliban, if we look at each group’s essential shared premise: hardline religion as rule of law. Of course, the optics and methods differ but the desired outcome is the same: men of a certain religion imposing their will on a nation. Taliban? Shoot little schoolgirls in the head, stone loose women in the public square. GOP? Legislate away the rights of women and girls with similar desired outcomes.

The Taliban emerged after the Soviets left Afghanistan in the early 1990s. Here in the U.S., white GOP religionists have more than 40 years under their belts. The Moral Majority, founded by Jerry Falwell, brought together predominantly Evangelicals and Catholics to take over the Republican Party—and it worked to elect Ronald Reagan as president with a family-values platform.

The Moral Majority doesn’t exist anymore as such, but has spun off into non-profit organizations like The Heritage Foundation, The Family Research Council, Concerned Women of America, and the National Organization for Marriage, as well as through so-called “right to life” groups that litter the country. This group and the candidates they support at the state and national levels exist to reinforce the overall agenda: hardline Christian religion as rule of law.

Right-wingers may not be anything new, but at this moment, they have the perfect political storm: With a boob in the White House who would rather watch television and have a meltdown on Twitter than govern; an uber-evangelical, I “can’t go out without my wife” de facto president, VP Pence; a coterie of soulless billionaires installed as heads of state agencies to dismantle them; and a majority in the House, the Senate, and now the Supreme Court. It’s an administration, and indeed a government, that makes the previous GOP administration look liberal, and we’re talking about George W. Bush, the born-again Christian whose Attorney General John Ashcroft literally anointed himself with oil (it had to be Crisco in a pinch) and ordered $8,000 modesty drapes to shield Americans from the breast of Justice.

As a brief primer on how the religio-political machine works in practice, I turn to my home state of Iowa, one of the first states in the nation to rule in favor of marriage equality—even before New York. This made the GOP religionists at home utterly bananas—sparking an effort to have a ballot initiative called “LUV Iowa.” LUV stood for “Let Us Vote,” as in hey, let us right-wing Christians vote on LGBT civil rights.

The effort was led by local Christian group called The FAMiLY Leader or TFL (little “I” to show subservience to god). TFL is the local chapter of rabidly anti-gay hate group The Family Research Council. Part the LUV effort included a bus tour that was co-sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage, Family Research Council and other Christian groups. The bus stopped in all 99 counties spewing anti-gay claptrap to anyone who would listen. TFL gets a lot of attention because Iowa is the first state in the nation to caucus.

Candidates spend time stumping through Iowa and in 2012. The New York Times dubbed TFL head Bob Vander Plaats a “political kingmaker” for the GOP. I have met Bob. I have spoken with Bob. He has very earnestly told me that the reason they were rallying against marriage equality was because (as he was sure I was aware) gay marriage leads to man-on-dog love and fathers marrying daughters. Fortunately, the LUV Iowa effort failed to go anywhere but away.

Any time a piece of legislation passes that harms a woman is one of the easiest examples of how the GOP imposes the most fundamentalist religious views through government. The most obvious are the myriad anti-choice bills filled year after year. Denying that abortion is part of women’s health care is key. Vilifying the most obvious reproductive health-care provider, Planned Parenthood, has always worked to rally the base to the polls. So what happens when Planned Parenthood, or more broadly, women’s health clinics, dry up?

Women die.

The GOP is not content to kill only women on American soil. By reinstating the global gag rule, pulling funds for UNFPA, and choking off funding to fight HIV/AIDS around the world (women make up over half of HIV/AIDS cases globally) will punish women everywhere. The god of the GOP doesn’t like women who have sex.

The singular focus on abortion (a symbol of women in control of their sex lives and bodies) as anathema to the god of the GOP allows “pro-lifers” to sleep at night. Targeting “baby-killers” takes the thinking out of it. The truth is more difficult; analysis and empathy are required. Many women’s only contact with a doctor or medical professional is through Planned Parenthood and well-women clinics. Abortion, even when outlawed, does not and will not stop abortion. Women will die without access to safe legal abortion, Planned Parenthood, and other women’s clinics.

You may ask, why don’t those women just go to another doctor?

Who can afford to have the choice? The GOP hates Medicaid. Though they haven’t explicitly invoked their racist, sexist, classist Welfare Queen-esque statement, the policies are unmistakable, from the drug-testing requirements in the offing to states refusing to expand Medicaid coverage through the ACA. There is a swath of states in the Deep South that didn’t expand Medicaid, which meant women, mostly women of color and women in more rural areas, fell into the Obamacare doughnut hole. Which is to say, these women make “too much” money for Medicaid but not enough to afford health care through the exchange. Of course, fixing this part of the ACA isn’t on the GOP agenda—quite the opposite. Jesus, to their minds, is all about small government.

Today’s GOP, the one born from the Moral Majority, embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of the right-wing Christian god they purport to serve. They are carrying out god’s will, very much like the Taliban. If shutting down women’s health clinics and blocking access to abortion doesn’t kill women, especially women of color, guns in the hands of domestic abusers just might. Stand your ground laws across the country will result in brown people dying; these laws are a license to kill. People of color will be swept up in the new war on drugs— the last war on drugs’ only accomplishment was incarcerating young Black and brown men, not only breaking up families, but forever taking away these men’s rights to vote. Voter ID laws targeting people of color along with gerrymandering will ensure reelection of god’s chosen legislators.

And if all else fails they have this: You as a woman in this country have a right to speak. The subtext: Only if we dress a certain way, wear our hair just so, don’t cover our heads with scary fabrics, and balance an aspirin between our knees. Otherwise we are asking for it: rape, assault, hate crimes, incarceration, forced birth. The Taliban will blow our heads off. The GOP prefers death by a thousand cuts.

That was what a week and a half ago?

So since then what’s been going on:

1. First nothing has changed in Minnesota: The only thing that happened was the 14-inch-tall Napoleon complex having sadist, Greg Bovino, shuffled off to a well earned retirement. May he always be plagued with scorching diarrhea that blows out of him with the heat of a thousand August midday suns.

   

2. Trump deported a 5-year-old American-born citizen to Honduras. It happened earlier this month. The girl lived in Austin, Texas with her family. They were renditioned to a hotel somewhere about 80 miles away and refused their constitutional right to speak to an attorney. Her mom has an active asylum case (in an ordinary worlk, this would stop any efforts to deport her as she prepares materials for a “merit” hearing in front of an Immigration Judge).

   1. I have to note: this is going to continue to happen. Consider the 14th amendment is on the slab at SCOTUS, but critically this administration is lawless. The number of habeas petitions that have been granted in Minneapolis alone is stunning. According to local news outlets 312 immigrant detainees had sought habeas relief through week ending Jan. 21. In 2025 - for the whole damn yeaer - there were only 260.

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3. TNR reported some asshole at the VA tried to block a memorial service for Alex Pretti because Trump hates veterans and their caregivers.

4. Ilhan Omar was attacked at a town hall meeting (some jackass sprayed her with something - god knows what) and The PDFile in chief said she likely staged it.

5. Susan Collins, malignant tree knot, thinks it’s all clear for Maine because Trumpleforeskin said so - sure he always keeps his word. Meanwhile, her constituents continue to rail against her support for that horrific, no good, very bad DHS funding bill (as we barrel toward another shut down if the democrats don’t sell their souls).

6. The Epstein Files remain filed or more likely Kash and Pam are running the industrial sized paper shredders in their off hours, both in their underwear like they are processing heroin in a two-bit laundry’s basement. A single bulb swings above them as they speak not a word. But one goddamn hero, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pennsylvania) moved to hold Bondi in contempt of a congressional subpoena to release the files back in August 2025.

What I’m working on next:

• What does Noem’s flawed bullshit revocation of Somalian’s TPS mean for MSP? I’m guessing that ICE is going to stay on until March when it is set to expire.

• How bout the US potentially violating maritime law, pissing off the Scots (again)?

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What is happening on the streets of Minneapolis is a feature not a bug.

This is an attempt at normalisation of authoritarianism. Historians like Heather Cox Richardson are talking about this very thing: an administration lies, knows it is lying, knows you know but lie all the same. (That's a terrible paraphrase of one of her recent livestreams). We can all watch for ourselves. This is happening in plain sight.

Behind closed doors, what is happening in US Immigration Courts (Administered through the Department of Justice these are administrative tribunals through the Executive Office of Immigration Review/EOIR) is stunning. Court observers have reported third country removals (attempts) by USCIS/ICE1 lawyers to third countries.

The administration changes the rules routinely. One IJ reportedly didn't know when an STCA ("safe third country agreement") was formed with Uganda. Juveniles are being removed from juvenile dockets to adult dockets. Others, some as young as 13 years old, have been mistakenly required to appear despite green card status or asylum under, for example, VAWA2 or CAT3 claims.

This is not in the public's face. However, there is an ongoing attempt by the DHS to (by fiat) create new rules seemingly out of whole cloth and without congressional oversight.

If you are able, consider training with a non profit organisation to become a court or detention observers. These roles are incredibly important. We see the horrific scenes on the streets. Court observers watch as families are summarily removed without any access to representation and communicate that to the world.

Friends are scared.

They are deleting their accounts online because they are afraid of what is coming, tracking and 2025.

The people having buyers remorse? I invite you.

Sit with that feeling.

Sit with it and understand that fear of what you voted for envelop you and

swallow

you

whole.

You have to sit with it.

Not as a punishment (although my darker angels feel the deliciousness of your incredulity at what you have truly wrought upon the Rest of Us) but as a canary in your coal mine.

That fear, that regret, that unknowing and How Can It Happen Here? is in fact a welcome mat.

Welcome.

We’ve been here fighting for The Other, ourselves, our bodies, to make a living to not be assaulted, for the rule of actual law as great equalizer - for a very long time.

We are tired so settle in.

We are familiar with that horror you are waking up to because some of us? Some of us were born with that knowing before we even knew how cruel, exacting and pestilent this world can be when we don’t fit the mold.

You know the mold I am talking about.

At least now you do, that is.

So welcome. Wallow. If you are just realizing what has happened you should take some comfort in the fact that you probably will not be harmed - because if you didn’t know what your precious vote for that man would really do you’ve been living the life of Riley. Note: that is “lived” as in that ship has sailed.

So again, welcome.

Did you know no where in the constitution does it say that Supreme Court justices are appointed for life? It doesn’t. You will not find the words “appointed for life” anywhere in that little document we are told we live by and many die by.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

What if we actually did something about it? What if we challenged the idea that SCOTUS justices are God? Because that is what we have made them. And that is never what was intended.

Much like the Almighty Second Amendment that is inflexible to the point of absurdity, why don’t we decide that that crusty old founding document’s allocation of power to the courts lived in the words those crusty old white male landed gentry intended.

We have been held hostage by the Supreme Court but that’s because we have clutched onto some ideals written down in a rule book [anyone not white male] never ever written for us.

So let’s just use it as we see fit shall we?

We are staring down the barrel of the end of the American Empire. I am not mourning this; the arch of history bending toward justice for many in the world could be this very end. I know that is hard for Americans - raised on exceptionalism, unearned pride and draping and groping Old Glory - but we are that imperialist colonial power. Remember Great Britain? The sun never set on that empire until it did.

I was talking to my daughter (grown, independent, childless by choice thank you very much) about this moment in her life. For me? I’m Gen X. I grew up going to bed at night believing we (the US) could be blown off the face of the earth by the USSR upon the morrow. Growing up under the real possibility of nuclear war was a helluva thing; the constant ratcheting up of rhetoric, old-timey news reels on the evening news as filler to show just how catastrophic a nuclear blast would be. The Day After.

Anyway. My kid. Talking. On the phone. I told her listen lady, it’s hard to live through the downfall of society - but this was coming for a long time. I cheered her: dear-heart at least the hoods are off. She agreed. She lives in Minnesota and was glad she told me to have “papa Walz” back.

When she asks me questions (as a grown ass woman) about wtf do we do now? I tell her the same thing I’ve told her since she could walk: we fight the patriarchy like every other day, child.

This isn’t to make light of what is happening. It’s bad.

But - let’s get creative shall we? Let’s get together and file a writ or something or another to the Supreme Court challenging the validity of Marbury v. Madison (that turned them into the Untouchables they are today). It was decided in a purely partisan act expanding its own powers that have only grown more tyrannical.

Follow Dobbs: Stare Decisis is Dead.

I know. That is the predicate of common law nations! We are built (in part) by case law and the rule of precedent.

Sure. But we were also under the assumption that rapist felons who incite an insurrection against the United States shouldn’t be allowed to run for office, right?

Jason Robards said to his TV wife in a scene from The Day After (comforting her that nah - there’s no way they will use nukes) as they watched the news dispatch about the USSR ramping up their arsenal:

Wife: “It’s not going to happen, is it?”

Jason: “Nah, people are crazy but not that crazy”

Right.

In January 1989, 20 years after Jan Palach’s death, the clandestine resistance movement formed after the Soviets crushed the promise of Prague Spring planned what they dubbed “Palach Week.” For the first time since Palach’s self-immolation, they would go to the place where he fell in Wenceslas Square for as public memorial and protest against the ongoing Soviet occupation. Nearly 5,000 people came out the first evening of that week — an unthinkable number since the Prague Spring. It set the stage for what became known as the Velvet Revolution.

On Nov. 17, 1989, student protesters filled the streets of Prague. It was eight days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the same tide of freedom that had swept Berlin seemed to have come to the Czech capital. Police tried to beat back the demonstrators, hoping to tamp down the demand for freedom, but the people seemed to have grown immune to the brutality of the regime; the show of force only galvanized the resistance.

The students were joined in the coming days by Czechoslovak citizens of all ages. By Nov. 20, a half-million Czechs and Slovaks filled Prague’s streets and took over Wenceslas Square. The Communists were forced out. By the end of 1989, Czechoslovakia was on its way to having an elected President for the first time since 1948.

The events of those world-changing days would come to be known as the Velvet Revolution. But, while the Velvet Revolution was over relatively quickly, it had been decades in the making.

The Failed “Prague Spring”

In January of 1968, the USSR gave the leadership of Czechoslovakia to someone new: Alexander Dubček. Dubček had fought against German forces during WWII, joining the communist party in his country after the end of the war. He rose through the ranks, serving in the parliament and general assembly as part of a new generation of Slovak communists. Compared to his successor, the Stalinist Antonin Novotny, Dubček was liberal. Within months, he implemented governmental and economic reforms and allowed citizens increased freedom of speech, including freedom of the press. The people of Czechoslovakia embraced the changes and the period of Dubček’s liberalism became known as Prague Spring.

Like the spring, it was fleeting. By August of 1968 the Soviet Union had enough. A more liberal Czechoslovakia was a threat to its regional power and could signal weakness on the world stage. Over half a million Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia; Soviet tanks rolled through the narrow streets of Prague, crushing mostly student-led protests. Soviet loyalist Gustav Husak replaced Dubcek and returned the country to an authoritarian communist regime — but something had changed.

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While I was in Prague last month (see above) I learned fellow journalist, Mech Dara, was arrested in Cambodia. Dara, who reported fearlessly about the corruption and totalitarianism of Hun Sen, former Khmer Rouge leader, Donald Trump enthusiast and current dictator of Cambodia. Sure, he was “elected” in 2018, but I was there in 2018 - twice in February and again in June and the devolution of freedom of speech and press plummeted in those few months before the country voted for the strong man.

It’s unclear what truly motivated that vote. But I can guess. I can guess it’s the years and decades and generations of exhaustion of surviving a genocide, wars visited upon the country by western (and Russian) imperialists. The assassination, imprisonment and rendition of political opponents, exiling figureheads of democracy to France (remember, Cambodia was once a colonized by ye olde French. When I was first there in 2000, when Phnom Penh airport was still a breezeway and a landing strip, the human rights defenders and native khmer activists did indeed speak French in addition to local dialects).

I had several clandestine meetings with democracy enthusiasts, former journalists, those who witnessed the murder of other fellow activists (one gunned down at a gas station).

Message? Received.

In the run up to that election there were predictions of mass violence. There was fear over what exactly Hun Sen would do - how far he and his West Point educated son, Hun Manet would do to hold on to power?

The fear of violence is violence. The fear of possible torture - that of the camps and black pajamas - still fresh in the minds and genes of generations - is torture. Anyone tries to tell you it’s not is lying and probably in on hustle.

So we come now to Mr. Dara. A man I knew only as a tangential colleague albeit one who helped me navigate belt and road of scary Cambodia. Scarier than 2000 Cambodia. When the last outposts of free journalism was killed off. Killing fields turned into tourist traps while Hun Sen channels Saloth Sar.

Now? Today?

From the Cambodia Daily:

Mech Dara, the award-winning reporter whose recent arrest drew global outrage, has called it a career. He has quit journalism, he said, and intends to farm vegetables at home in Kandal province. 

It was a stunning turnaround for the 36-year-old newspaperman, who was detained Sept. 30 on incitement charges for social media posts relating to a CPP-linked tycoon. After three weeks in jail, he apologized. On Monday, he appeared on Hun Manet's Facebook page, embracing the prime minister. 

His bombshell capitulation sends a chilling message to the nation’s would-be journalists. It's a dark time for free speech in Cambodia — and there's no telling when it will end

How can we judge a man who has been a consistent and often lone Truth beacon in a world where Donald Trump has been elected - decisively - in the moldy old city (burnt out, rotting) on a hill?

I don’t blame him. But this is what relying on the western vision has gotten so many of us. Unsafe world. Unfree speech. Glad-handing a dictator to escape a fucking Cambodian prison.

Here’s to bountiful harvest, Mech. Rest. Recharge. In hopes we will still be here when you and our fellow journalists are ready to help you return.

Buckle up USA.

Buckle. Up.

The autist in me is operating overtime right now. What does this mean? It means I’m having a lot of trouble with cognition of very simple (to “normal people”) things.

Like writing

Reading

Following instructions

Not because I’m a jerk - although god knows I can be and sometimes on purpose - but because you are all speaking a foreign language.

It’s exhausting, overwhelming to have to decipher every thing every one is saying my my mother tongue.

It’s easier to study Czech. Why?

Because all of us in the class have no goddamn idea what is going on.

I’m sorry, you said SEVEN cases?

We are all fumbling and finding our way and the only expert is the tutor.

There’s comfort in communal unknowing, misunderstanding, confusion.

I just flew back from Prague and boy are my arms tired.

I’ve been gone a month. I was blissfully disengaged in the nonsense, bullshittery and gamesmanship of US media/news for a glorious month.

Instead, I was able to do serious training on issues impacting journalists and others in Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Europe is a construct not a continent but I digress). While I was in Prague a Cambodian colleague and journalist Mech Dara was arrested and imprisoned, a Belarusian journalist friend went into exile in Vilnius, two Ukrainian lawyers and a Ukrainian journalist at Kyiv Independent said the best part of coming to Prague (one for a documentary film screening, the others at the legal institute with me) wasn’t the breathtaking architecture of the city of spires.

It was getting to sleep through the night.

Americans and much of the west (including the current Western European generation) have no idea what torturous hell it is to wake nightly to another siren and decide if you are going to move to the interior of your apartment or head to the bomb shelter.

Such is life.

Thank god nothing has changed around this dump, though. There’s a lot journalistic hand wringing over the state of affairs in the US - certainly, I won’t downplay the Trump created threats journalists and others face - but I’ll be damned if I didn’t scroll across a journalist and instructor proclaiming that journalist’s are in fact public figures.

Speak for yourself.

Journalists are not public figures. We simply aren’t unless we declare ourselves to be by putting ourselves to the forefront of some group, organization or inserting ourselves into highly visible positions.

Definitionally - we don’t make the cut. And we shouldn’t. The idea that I’m a public figure is asinine. No one cares what I say or think - they really don’t. My work as a journalist doesn’t seek to make a splash or name for myself. Most journalists don’t care about bouquets and public adoration.

We just want to be left alone to do our work and get paid accordingly.

There is a good working definition of “public figure” from a 1974 SCOTUS case Gertz v. Welch, Inc. (sited to this case see: New York Times v. Sullivan for legal discretion):

“Those classed as public figures stand in a similar position. Hypothetically, it may be possible for someone to become a public figure through no purposeful action of his own, but the instances of truly involuntary public figures must be exceedingly rare. For the most part, those who attain this status have assumed roles of especial prominence in the affairs of society. Some occupy positions of such persuasive power and influence that they are deemed public figures for all purposes. More commonly, those classed as public figures have thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved. In either event, they invite attention and comment.”

The ego on some menfolk in positions of journalistic power to think that all of us are somehow reflected in the definition laid out in Gertz (which BTW is what PBS uses as the definition of public figure for it’s guidelines both in reporting on [person] and reporting as a person.

I’ve been scolded by one ironically mustachioed Iowa journalist as a “public figure” to wit he put me on blast for daring to ask him a question (IPR I’m looking at you) and continued to act like Pat from Kim Reynolds office (IYKYK). I requested he go fuck himself. That was a couple years ago and now I see it turn up in a presentation by an U of I adjunct. I’m not going to name him as I am still considering reaching out to him and asking WTF?

As of now I’m more concerned about the Georgian elections, the crumbling of Hungary and Slovakia under totalitarian a-holes and being generally furious over the West looking away from what is happening in Eastern/SEE/Eurasia.

Well, the way things are going we’ll know soon enough when Putin decides it’s time to re-occupy the former eastern bloc.

But what I am really doing:

Mom: “What if he had a knife?”

Me: “Um, what if he had a gun?”

A Dirty Man aged sixty or so with a beat up pickup truck (one door white unlike the others - a replacement for the old rust bucket) followed my mom around a grocery store in my home county taunting her about Donald Trump.

My mom is 86 years old.

She was having a conversation in the store with some long time neighbors and her good friends. They: Republicans (who really don’t like trump) Mom: Democrat with a deep blue D. They conversation wasn’t about the debate per se but their concern over what could happen after the election. Because….the whole thing with January 6th.

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I was out and about yesterday and came upon two ladies circling a vehicle. I’d seen it before and thought it was a brushed aluminum dumpster with four wheels. It was hideous.

So when I saw two older women standing around looking at the dumpster on Overlook Terrace I stopped to ask them what in the world was going on around here?

It’s a Tesla truck she told me. She went on to say that a man who works in a building nearby owns it (120K) and that he “works three jobs” to afford it.

I nearly died.

So I came home and gave this new fangled thing - a reMarkable - writing notepad that I thought I would try (it converts handwriting to text and sometimes this typing thing is too much and I like to actually physically write.

I didn’t realize it had a drawing feature. So I thought, huh. let me give this a swing.

Eat or be eaten

I wish I still subscribed to the Des Moines Register so I could cancel it again.

A series of lies stacked together in a series of paragraphs - I mean absolutely fact free disinformation - run on an “opinion” page doesn’t make it an opinion. That the Register ran yet another piece of ludicrous right-wing propaganda instead shows you just how bad things are around there.

The title should be a tell; sounds like something ‘ole “sandy hook was a hoax” Alex Jones would bleat out through his bulging, red, tick-like face hole.

The title should be a tell; sounds like something ‘ole “sandy hook was a hoax” Alex Jones would bleat out through his bulging, red, tick-like face hole.

Feel free to Google and read all about Bohlken. Prepare yourself though as he has a rap sheet of right wing bonafides that will curl your toenails.

The problem is this: it’s not true. None of it. At all. There isn’t anything that column that is true. Not even that nonsense about animals being great parents. Clearly this gentleman hasn’t lived on a farm, watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom nor picked up a National Geographic (probably because he may stray upon a pair of errant boobs or that gay penguin - RIP).

But here’s what is key: Tim Walz signed an omnibus bill that changed language to comport with reality. An infant definitionally is alive by virtue of being spat forth from someone or others womb-parts.

The idea that these MAGA people have lodged in their brains that liberals are just aborting babies, popping popcorn and gathering round the little jerk to watch it die is crazy making; Trump is wandering around out there saying Democrats just execute babies - months after their birth in some cases he figures.

Get a hold of yourselves morons.

An infant is definitionally alive. Changing the language to reflect that fact terrifies the right wingers. If they can’t claim Democrats are child killers and that we watch children “born alive” just die what do they have?

That children who are alive actually need to be cared for beyond the delivery room? That pregnant parents need help and support of birthing centers, job training, public schools and public school breakfast and lunch programs to feed to wee born alives? Air to breath that isn’t full of carcinogens and water to drink that isn’t full up of pesticides, herbicides and pig shit?

OPINION PIECE: “In Minnesota, during Walz’s term as governor, eight babies were born alive in failed abortions between 2019 and 2021. Despite the law requiring they be given life saving care, none were.”

Nope.

This from MN Department of Health: (2021)

• In one instance, fetal anomalies were reported resulting in death shortly after delivery. No measures taken to preserve life were reported and the infant did not survive.

• In two instance, comfort care measures were provided as planned and the infant did not survive.

• In two instances, the infant was previable. No measures taken to preserve life were reported and the infant did not survive.

First Donald you have a counting error - that’s five not eight. Anyone who knows anything about miscarriage leading to necessity for abortion care - it is understood that the procedure will end in the inevitable death. Which is why we have to own the word abortion.

Note that “comfort care” was planned for and provided. That is some of the hardest work that a medical professional can do - comfort a parent as their baby dies? But sure - no aid was given.

OPINION PIECE: In 2023, Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation ending both the requirement to report such births and the requirement to provide life saving care to a baby surviving an abortion.

Nope. Read the language friends. Nothing has changed except the removal of the incorrect nomenclature. And it’s just straight up insulting isn’t it? To our doctors, nurses, parents, our intelligence?

OPINION PIECE: It is impossible to conceive how a major political party, or even a minor party, could knowingly select such candidates for president and vice president. Indeed, it is probable that these facts about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were not widely known. Kamala Harris’ and Tim Walz’s actions permitting infanticide for babies born alive during abortions are now known.

Wait? Is this a case of right wing FOMO? Is Donald here trying to spill some scorching hot bullshit on the Harris/Walz infanticide breaking news train? Is there some other nutty old crank out there claiming even more batshit stuff?

Please reach out to this guy to let him know your thoughts.