Author: Jon Ponder

Fun Fact: Mother of Misogynist Footballer Harrison Butker Is a Medical Physicist

Another baby step toward Gilead

Jon Ponder
Elizabeth Butker and Harrison Butker
Elizabeth Butker and Harrison Butker

The Handmaid’s Tale-style campaign to push American women out of the public sphere comes from every direction. It recently erupted during a commencement speech at a college in Kansas. The misogynist propagandist was Harrison Butker, a professional football player.

Here’s what Butker said in his commencement address to Benedictine College in Kansas:

The 28-year-old kicker came under fire recently for telling female graduates at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, that they “have had the most diabolical lies told to you.”

He continued: “How many of you are sitting here now, about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career?” he asked.

“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

So Harrison Butker must owe his success to his stay-at-home mother, who was known for her quiet devotion to her family and a contented life having babies and preparing meals, right?

Wrong:
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Trump Would Not Be the First Presidential Candidate to Campaign from Prison

Jon Ponder
Socialist Party 1920 presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, Convict #9653

Donald Trump recently announced that he was eager to go to jail for violating the gag order in his criminal trial in Manhattan.

Trump has whined about the gag order on a daily basis since before the trial began. But on May 6, 2024, in his daily televised courthouse address to his cult, he added a note of false bravado to the whine. “And frankly, you know what,” he said, “our Constitution is much more important than jail. It’s not even close. I’ll do that sacrifice any day.”

Trump is notorious for hiding behind the Constitution when it can be construed to support his scams but shredding it when it gets in his way, as he did on January 6, 2020, in his uncountable ethical violations as president and in other areas.

The fact is he is a career criminal conman who has lived a life of luxury for nearly 80 years. There is zero chance he’d give up his solid gold toilets for an lid-less aluminum basin on Rikers Island.

If Trump were to go to prison, he would be the first U.S. ex-president to get locked up, but he wouldn’t be the first presidential candidate. That title goes to Eugene V. Debs, who campaigned for president from prison on the Socialist ticket in 1920 and received more than 1 million votes. He was serving a ten-year stretch in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta for violating Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s World War I Sedition Act of 1918.
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MAGA Senator Introduces Bill to Create Pregnancy Database

A baby step closer to Gilead

Jon Ponder
Sen Katie Britt introduces MOMS Act
Sen. Britt in her cringe-worthy promotional video for the MOMS Act (Click to view video)

In a follow-up to her disastrous response to Pres. Biden’s barnburner 2024 State of the Union speech, Sen. Katie Britt (MAGA-AL) has introduced a bill that would use federal resources both to discourage abortion and to create a database of pregnant people.

The More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed Act (MOMS Act) provides online pregnancy resources through a new website, pregnancy.gov, but it also funds anti-abortion organizations and offers no resources on abortion.

Users of pregnancy.com can opt to have their contact information compiled into a federal pregnancy database. The government may use the data to “conduct outreach via phone or email” to share “additional resources that would be helpful.”

But critics fear that the government database may be used to discouraged abortion. Troy Matthews at Meidas Touch News suggested that, “It’s very likely the government staffer that follows up with the website users will also be tasked with pressuring them out of seeking proper healthcare if it involves an abortion.”

Britt was famously caught lying during her MAGA State of the Union rebuttal. She claimed she met with a woman who was sex trafficked in the United States as a result of Biden administration policies. In fact, the woman was trafficked in Mexico City decades before Biden became president.

At Age 70, RFK Jr. Has Health Issues That Are More Serious Than the Brain Worm

And he's supposed to be the young healthy one

Jon Ponder

RFK Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain

The tabloid-ready headlines about the worm that ate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain have overshadowed it, but revelations about Kennedy’s medical history also revealed several other potentially debilitating health issues. The revelations were published by the New York Times this week in an article that was reprinted by Yahoo.com.

Testifying in a deposition in 2012, Kennedy, then 58, said he was experiencing symptoms of a brain tumor, especially memory loss and severe mental fogginess. The symptoms were especially concerning because his uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, died from brain cancer in 2009.

Scans showed a small mass in the Kennedy Jr.’s brain, and he was scheduled for surgery. A last-minute second opinion revised the diagnosis as a parasitic infection, likely from a pork tapeworm larva. As Kennedy put it back then, he was infected by “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”

Other health concerns
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Trump Loses Support to RFK Jr. When Voters Learn about Kennedy’s Virulent Antivax Claims

WaPo:When informed about RFK Jr.'s crackpot theories, Republicans became more open to supporting Kennedy, while Democrats soured on him

Jon Ponder
RFK Jr at antivax event
Robert Kennedy Jr., left, stands at a rally held in opposition to a proposed bill that would remove parents’ ability to claim a philosophical exemption to opt their school-age children out of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, Friday, Feb. 8, 2019, at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

Polls consistently find that around 15 to 20 percent of voters say they’ll vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president. Today, five months out from Election Day, Kennedy’s support remains a proverbial jump ball in the campaign. At first, Kennedy attracted support from Democrats. But now there is evidence that he is pulling support from both parties, with some polls showing his support coming increasingly from Donald Trump.

Writing in the Washington Post, Aaron Blake says that a recent Monmouth University poll “gets at why the Kennedy effect might shift in Biden’s favor.”

Blake writes that when voters are informed about Kennedy’s crackpot theories on vaccination and public health, “Republicans say they become more open to supporting Kennedy, while Democrats sour on him.”

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Rachel Maddow and Jon Favreau Discuss Her New Podcast Series about a 1930s Right-Wing Attempt to Overthrow the US Government

Jon Ponder

From Jon Favreau’s series, “Offline,” Rachel Maddow talks about her new podcast series “Ultra” and describes how she learned about the serious, nationwide campaign by pro-Nazi Christian Nationalists to overthrow the U.S. government in the run-up to World War II.

Listen to “Ultra”: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra

Gov Newsom (D-CA) Addresses SCOTUS Leak on Roe, Sounds Like a 2024 Democratic Presidential Primary Candidate

Jon Ponder
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) reacts to Supreme Court pending reversal of Roe v. Wade

Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., is running for reelection, so it’s unlikely that the I don’t think the Democratic Party he’s criticizing is the one he leads in California. It must be the national party led by Pres. Biden and V.P. Kamala Harris, Newsom’s former state attorney general. He certainly sounds like a candidate in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary.

Starts at 0:37. Transcript follows:

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Is Trump a Fascist? Based on a Yale Professor’s 10-Point Fascist Checklist, He Is

Jon Ponder
LEFT: Il Douche – Donald Trump emulating fascist dictator Benito Mussolini by shoving Montenegrin PM Dusko Markovic out of his way at an international summit; RIGHT: Il Duce – Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator from 1922 to 1943

Jason Stanley is a Yale professor and the author of five books on fascism and its basis in the politics of us versus them. In this nine-minute video from Big Think, he defines fascism based on 10 traits that authoritarians use to gain and maintain power.

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