This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
Wednesday, June 28, 2023. John Stauber and Marjorie Taylor Greene lead the fright wing in circulating another lie, a number of MPs resign in northern Iraq, noted transphobe Jonathan Turley struggles with pop culture references, and much more.
Statement from President Joe Biden on the Anniversary of Landmark Marriage Equality Rulings
Today marks the anniversary of three landmark Supreme Court cases
which were consequential in affirming the basic truth that every
American should have the right to marry the person they love. Ten years
ago today, the Supreme Court rulings in United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry made
significant strides laying the groundwork for marriage equality in our
country. They were followed two years later, to the day, by the Supreme
Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, finally allowing millions of LGBTQI+ Americans to marry who they love.
These
monumental cases moved our country forward, and they were made possible
because of the courageous couples and unrelenting advocates in the
LGBTQI+ community who, for decades, fought for these hard-won rights.
Last year, I was proud to build on their legacy by signing into law the Respect for Marriage Act
– guaranteeing the rights and protections which LGBTQI+ Americans are
entitled to – surrounded by many of the plaintiffs from these cases. But
more work lies ahead, and I continue to call on Congress to pass the Equality Act, to codify additional protections to combat the increased attacks on the rights and safety of those in the LGBTQI+ community.
As
we conclude Pride month, we’re once again reminded that we must never
stop fighting to reach full equality for all LGBTQI+ – and all –
Americans.
###
So the White House issued that on Monday. Those are actual words and the fright-wing seemed distracted and uninterested. Instead, egged on by chief bit of trash Marjorie Taylor Greene and deceptive editing, they were focused on three days earlier when US President Joe Biden met with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- focused on lying about what took place. Joe made a joke and identified it as such -- see White House transcript. Marjorie and others cut it off before he identifies it as a joke and claim outrage. All the fright wing participated -- you know that means John Stauber too -- not for nothing did Rebecca note earlier this year "john stauber is the 21st century david horowitz."
This dishonesty involved it appalling. From the official White House transcript:
PRESIDENT BIDEN: Okay. We — I was just thanking the — anyway, I
started off without you, and I sold a lot of state secrets and a lot of
very important things that we shared. (Laughter.)
Now, all
kidding aside — look, we’re teaming up to design and develop new
technologies that are going to transform the lives of our people around
the world. And together, we’re lifting the private and public partners
to make this possible, including launching a new program between India
and America — American astronauts, Indian astronauts, and entrepreneurs,
scientists, students.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is one of several online touting a deceptively-edited video of President Joe Biden supposedly "admitting his crimes out loud."
The video, first shared by the Republican National Committee (RNC) Research Twitter account, shows the president saying at a press briefing last week that he had "sold a lot of state secrets and a lot of very important things" during a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The clip was edited to end just before Biden clearly said that he was "kidding" about his comments. Modi and others present during the briefing can also be seen and heard laughing in the extended version of the video.
Marjorie, as Josh Marcus (INDEPENDENT) notes, thinks she can move for impeachment (as long as people are too stupid to know the video's edited), "Nonetheless figures on the right like the Republican party congresswoman Ms Greene spread video of the exchange on social media, with Mr Biden’s disclaimer he was kidding edited out."
"Figures on the right." Oh, look, Johnny Stauber! You finally got mentioned in NEWSWEEK! They didn't mention you by name, but they acknowledged you so, for a day or two or maybe even three, you can feel just a little less impotent.
AP does the fact check on the nonsense here.
This is the garbage the country has to deal with. And it needs to be called out. Lying and repeating lies for political gain is the game of hucksters and con artists. They revealed themselves to you in the last 24 hours if you paid attention. There is no reason to trust a word out of Marjorie or John's mouths. They're liars and they exposed themselves as such. They insult you by trying to trick you. They insult you be assuming you're too stupid to catch on.
You really need to grasp what just took place.
By the way, while we're discussing Marjorie, she came up in a discussion we had yesterday with a college group. It was pointed out that she and fellow hate merchant Lauren Boebert preact to others about 'family values' but both of their marriages collapsed after only one term in Congress. Let's again note Chelsea Handler on MTG.
I love that part. But note the start of the MTG section, MTG talking about how hard it is to be in Congress and how you're away from your family -- guess she took of that absence with her affair, didn't she. What's the Bible say about adulterers? Stone them. Stone them. "Both the man and the woman must be put to death." It's Leviticus, the book the hate merchants love. So remember that the next time Marjorie's trying to take her 'moral' high ground. She's not just a hate merchant, she's a fake ass.
2."If you’re uncomfortable or struggling with some aspect of your child’s exploration of gender — name or pronoun change, self-expression, whatever — that’s for you to address with your support, NOT YOUR CHILD. Ideally an LGBTQ+ therapist, but partners and friends who are allies can be good sounding boards, too."
"Your kid isn’t going to feel supported and accepted if you complain that you don’t like their new name or ‘just don’t understand’ nonbinary pronouns to them.
I struggled a lot with my child’s use of the word ‘deadname’ to describe the birth name we chose to honor a beloved relative who has since passed. It felt hurtful and disrespectful to their memory, but those conversations were for my therapist and a friend of mine who also has a trans child. It’s okay to have feelings about changes to your child’s identity, but it’s not your child’s job to help you work through them."
—Anonymous, parent of a nonbinary 16-year-old
10."Read as much as you can about non-gender conforming people from their own perspectives. I wish I'd had a better understanding of what it means to be trans when my child came out in his teens."
"I tried to be supportive, but I questioned a lot of his feelings because I didn't understand. What he needed most was to be heard and understood, not challenged. If we knew then what we know now, he would have started gender-affirming care much earlier, and it would have saved a lot of heartache. He receives trans care now and is so much happier.
It's so difficult to see new attacks every day on the trans community. Verbal attacks are nonstop, and these bills and laws across the country that strip their rights and freedom to live as they see fit are soul-crushing. But I want every nonbinary and trans person to know that they have allies across the nation who love and support them in spirit, at the ballot box, and every way we can."
—Anonymous, parent of a 23-year-old
As the Senate Judiciary Committee kicked off a hearing on LGBTQ+ rights last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sought to draw a clear distinction between same-sex marriage — once at the center of the culture wars — and the Republican Party's recent targeting of civil rights for trans people.
"You mentioned that eight years ago, the Obergefell decision created a constitutional right to same-sex marriage," said Graham. "We're not talking about that here — we're talking about other things here."
Since the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision, same-sex marriage has largely faded as an issue targeted by Republicans, at least at the national level. Instead, most have redirected their fire to transgender women's participation in sports, gender-affirming care for minors, and drag performances.
But like them, the Klan remains a threat to democracy, civil rights and the voting rights of people of color, especially that of Latinos.
Once you’ve confronted such sinister forces, you never forget.
This week in 1983 the KKK came to San Antonio promising “to clean San Antonio of cockroaches,” using a hate-filled term to describe people of Mexican descent.
Antonio Cabral remembers. A former Marine and retired federal employee, he’d been involved in the anti-war movement and advocated for farm workers.
When a Klan leader announced a march in San Antonio, he waited to see if activists would organize, but “no one else was responding,” he said.
Cabral, now 83, was among those who started planning a counter-protest. Other activists of the day got involved, including Teresa Gutierrez, Ramon Mata, Margaret and Daniel Moreno, and Eliosa, Nicolas and Demetrio Aguirre, he said.
They formed the ad hoc Anti-Klan Committee, a largely Mexican-American effort to protest the KKK march in San Antonio that year.
Cabral was reprimanded by family members. “Me regañaron,” or scolded, he said.
On Sunday, he spoke to me about that episode half a lifetime ago, about how much has changed since then — and how much hasn’t changed at all.
The counter-protesters met regularly in a little house on the city’s West Side. They planned. They left nothing to chance.
They studied the march route, noting side streets they could use to get away should things turn sideways.
They were armed only with signs and slogans. They brought cameras and saw others in the crowd taking pictures, too.
His wife Mary Cabral recalled how she tried to engage in conversation with those who were taking pictures, hoping they’d share images. But they had little to say.
The Anti-Klan Committee identified them as FBI agents or informants conducting surveillance — not of the Klan but of the protesters, especially leaders like Cabral.
Everyone, it seemed, was against the counter-protesters. City Hall. The San Antonio Police Department. Even the Archdiocese of San Antonio. Then Archbishop Patrick Flores asked people to instead pray.
"If you're a socialist, communist, somebody that believes in big government, I would think twice," Scott said in a video message posted to Twitter. "Think twice if you're thinking about taking a vacation or moving to Florida."
Remember today Marianne Williamson, a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, is supposed to be a major fireside chat responding to the war on LGBTQ+ members with a specific focus on the attacks on transgendered persons.
We'll wind down with this from Salar Salim and Abdulrahman Zeyad's AP report:
More than 50 members of the local parliament in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region in the north have submitted their resignations to protest a court decision that deemed as unconstitutional the legislature’s postponement of elections by a year.
Jihad Hassan, an MP with the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which holds the largest number of seats in the autonomous region’s parliament, said Tuesday that all 45 members of its bloc had resigned the day before from the 111-member parliament, along with nine MPs from other parties.
The following sites updated:
