A clash of pragmatism against ideological purity dominates Democratic debate
It's the Globe's take on what I did not see one minute of except for a clip of Tim Ryan on Fox at 11 as a breezed through some channels before lights out.
My printed paper gave me an early round accounting by the Associated Press while the web provided a fact check by the The New York Times (ha-ha-ha-ha!)
"Many suburban women recoil as Trump dives into racial politics" by Marc Levy and Scott Bauer Associated Press, July 30, 2019
BROOKFIELD, Wis. — Carol Evans approves of President Trump’s immigration policy. She gives him credit for the strong economy, but the Republican from the affluent Milwaukee suburbs of Waukesha County, a GOP bedrock in the state, can’t commit to voting for Trump next year, as she did in 2016.
‘‘I just don’t like the way he talks about other people,’’ Evans, 79, a retired data entry supervisor, said as she walked through a shopping mall in Brookfield, days after Trump fired off a racist tweet at Democratic congresswomen.
The president’s recent return to racial politics may be aimed at rallying his base of white working-class voters across rural America, but the risks of the strategy are glaring in conversations with women like Evans.
Many professional, suburban women — a critical voting bloc in 2020 — recoil at the abrasive, divisive rhetoric, exposing the president to a potential wave of opposition in key battlegrounds.
In more than three dozen interviews with women in critical suburbs, nearly all expressed dismay — or worse — at Trump’s racially polarizing insults and what was often described as his unpresidential treatment of people.
Even some who gave Trump credit for the economy or backed his crackdown on immigration acknowledged they were troubled or uncomfortable lining up behind the president.
So he's what, dead in the water, a lame duck, Dems could run a clown monkey and still win?
Very reassuring. I'm kind of hoping a Sanders-Warren ticket (or vice-versa), but I'm sure whichever one is allowed on the ticket in whatever form will be next to a moderate.
The interviews — in suburbs of Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Denver — are a warning light for the Republican president’s reelection campaign. Trump did not win a majority of female voters in 2016, but he won enough — notably winning white women by a roughly 10 percentage-point margin, according to the American National Election Studies survey — to help him eke out victories across the Rust Belt and take the White House.
Okay. So what we have here is the real reason Hillary lost, and she has no one to blame but herself. If the results are to be believed, which we are told they are, not tampered with in any way despite Russia's best efforts(?), then she lost it.
Furthermore, since I am a firm believer in rigged elections and narratives, is that Trump won by much more. The fix was in, and Clinton rolled in the popular vote (or so we are told; map of counties is red except for urban areas and some coasts), but they couldn't really flip enough in the heartland to get away with it. I know that will ruffle some of you up, but I have been a student of presidential elections for decades now and I know I have enumerated of the two pillars of peace and prosperity and how the failure of one should, but seldom does, doom a president.
To thumbnail the current century, Gore had both prosperity and peace in 2000 and we all know how that ended up. Flippity-flop in Florida. Odd doings in 2004, too, when Bush had lost the peace pillar due to his lies leading to the invasion of Iraq. Kerry won all the exit polls, especially in critical Ohio, but the power went out for an hour and once it came back Bush, not Kerry, was up by 3.
(As an aside, I'm not saying a different result would have been better in any of these cases. Maybe mitigating fringe factors and issues, but the basic plan stays in place. Kerry's main argument, if you remember, was I can manage the Empire better)
By 2008, Bush passes a torch with neither pillar. Still no peace and a financial crash at the end of his term. We get Obama, and rightfully so. By 2012, the people were tired of him and were ready for Romney. Still no peace, with Libya attacked and the start of the Syrian uprising. Obama had the operation, though, and was able to secure 2012. Then it was the Ukraine and Yemen, and by the end of his term wealth inequality had yawned. Both pillars had been knocked from under Hillary, a willing collaborator, and thus gave us Trump.
Since then, there are few signs Trump has expanded his support among women. The 2018 midterm elections amounted to a strong showing of opposition among women in the suburbs, registering in unprecedented turnout overall, a Democratic House, and a record number of women elected in state houses across the country.
A continuing trend of women voting against Republicans could prove exceedingly difficult for Trump to overcome.
‘‘It’s one of the more serious problems that the Republicans face,’’ said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania.
In the Detroit suburb of Novi, where Democrat Hillary Clinton narrowly beat Trump in 2016, pet store worker Emily West says she probably would have cast her ballot for Trump if she had voted in 2016. Now, she’s primed to vote against him.
‘‘It was mainly when he got into office when my opinion started changing,’’ said West, 26. ‘‘Just the way he treats people.’’
West spoke days after Trump had fired off a tweet calling on four Democratic congresswomen of color to ‘‘go back’’ to their home countries, even though three of the four were born in the United States. Trump’s supporters later turned ‘‘Send her back!’’ into a rally cry aimed at the one foreign-born member of the group, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who came to the United States as a child, a refugee from Somalia.
Gave them an ultimatum.
Over the weekend, Trump picked up another racial trope, using Twitter to attack Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings and his majority-black Baltimore district by calling it a ‘‘disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess’’ where ‘‘no human being would want to live.’’
Pollsters say it is difficult to measure whether female voters will count Trump’s behavior against him more than their male counterparts will in 2020, but interviews with women reveal a clear discomfort with Trump’s character: It emerged again and again in the AP’s interviews and was a consistent objection cited by women across the political spectrum.
Oh, so the issue is going to be character come November. That's bad news for Joe.
Good news for Liz.
‘‘I did not think it was going to be as bad as it is — definitely narcissism and sexism, but I did not think it was going to be as bad as it is,’’ said Kathy Barnes while shopping in the Denver suburb of conservative-leaning Lone Tree. ‘‘I am just ashamed to be an American right now.’’
There is the title of the post, and I guess you gotta leave.
I mean, I'm ashamed but not for the things the Globe constantly cites. I am ashamed over all the mass-murdering, war-criminal exercises they call wars that are based on lies bullhorn from my pre$$. The blood-spattered and the landscapes desolated by such endeavors, with sleight-of-hand deception and propaganda supplied the whole way along. With the still unrequited self-examination surrounding torture and indefinite detention lingering in the background, more war crimes for the ICC bar.
Domestically, it's what the country has become regarding a police state and prison-industrial complex, all by policy design based on the same lies that undergird the wars. Citizens are blown away with no accountability from authority, the public is constantly subjected to endless mind-manipulating events both real and contrived, electronic data collection and surveillance is ever more ubiquitous, and the pocket-lining corruption has reached epidemic levels at nearly all layers.
That such a government would then hypocritically lecture the rest of the world on human rights, or any other matter, is embarrassing. I know it's not being carried out with my approval, but it is being carried out under all our names; therefore, I feel I must at least offer some sort of apology to the world from the belly of the beast for its conduct.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see the warning light flashing.
Barnes, 55, a former insurance broker, left the Democratic Party years ago because she was open to voting Republican, but now she is one of the reasons that Colorado, once a competitive swing state, has been slipping away from the GOP.
In Novi, Mich., Yael Telgheder, 36, said she tends to vote Democratic and reluctantly voted for Clinton in 2016, ‘‘even though I didn’t like either, by the way.’’ Asked about Trump, the database manager lowered her voice.
‘‘I don’t think I should say those words in front of my daughter,’’ she said, her 3-year-old next to her. ‘‘To be honest, there are certain things that — he’s a businessman — so I understand the reasons behind them. But all of the disrespect and lies and stuff like that, it’s just too much for me.’’
That must be why my print copy chopped it there.
Such women are an electoral threat to the president in large part because women outnumber and outvote men, said Kelly Dittmar, a political science professor and a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
‘‘They are especially vital because they are base voters for Democrats. They vote for Democrats in larger numbers than men, but for Republicans, they are also important because they have tended to be a larger proportion of swing voters,’’ Dittmar said.
It's really right there for Liz, isn't it?
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Maybe his support would increase if he apologized.
Well, it's off to Virginia:
"Trump hails African-American contributions to America amid battle with black critics" by Peter Baker and Katie Rogers New York Times, July 30, 2019
JAMESTOWN, Va. — The bitter, racial furor of recent days, punctuated by his latest comments assailing Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, followed President Trump to Jamestown, where elected representatives first met in 1619. Virginia’s African-American state lawmakers boycotted his speech, calling the president an “emblem of hate” who does not represent the best ideals of the nation.
One state lawmaker, Ibraheem Samirah, stood and interrupted the president’s speech, holding up a sign that said, “Go Back to Your Corrupted Home” and “Deport Hate.” Samirah, a Democratic state delegate and a Palestinian American, shouted: “Mr. President, you cannot send us back. Virginia is our home.” He was led out politely by police officers.
Trump made no response nor did he reference the broader controversy during his speech but instead made a point of highlighting that this year is also the 400th anniversary of the first slaves brought to America.
“Today, in honor, we remember every sacred soul who suffered the horrors of slavery and the anguish of bondage,” he said, adding, “In the face of grave oppression and grave injustice, African Americans have built, strengthened, inspired, uplifted, protected, defended, and sustained our nation from its very earliest days.”
He was just reading from a script and didn't mean it.
Just hours earlier, Trump again disparaged Cummings, whom he has accused in recent days of running a “disgusting” congressional district. “Baltimore is an example of what corrupt government leads to,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House. “I feel so sorry for the people of Baltimore, and if they ask me, we will get involved.”
Trump offered no evidence of corruption nor did he explain on what he based such an accusation, but he made clear he was unwilling to back down in a continuing war of words that has aggravated racial tensions and left many of his own advisers concerned that he was turning off suburban voters who could be a key to his reelection next year.
Give it a week. Then the ma$$ media will be focused on something else.
Facing questions about his apparent willingness in recent days to divide his supporters and opponents along racial lines, Trump insisted that he was “the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.” Then he called the Rev. Al Sharpton, another recent adversary, “a racist.”
He's also an informant for the FBI, which explains a lot of his activity.
This line of self-defense came a day after the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, which represents elected members of the House of Delegates and the state Senate, said in a statement that its members could not “in good conscience sit silently” as a president who has promoted racial divisions is given such a prominent platform.
Think of what they are actually commemorating, and I know we have come a long way since they, but they are tearing down Robert E. Lee statues at the same time.
“It is impossible to ignore the emblem of hate and disdain that the president represents,” the caucus said in its statement. The statement added that Trump’s “repeated attacks on black legislators and comments about black communities” made him “ill suited to honor and commemorate such a monumental period in history, especially if this nation is to move forward with the ideals of ‘democracy, inclusion and opportunity.’ ”
This has gone from Trump is racist to you can't criticize a minority now!
The lawmakers’ protest came as Trump has employed racist tropes repeatedly in recent weeks. He told four Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to their home countries, even though three were born in the United States and the fourth was naturalized as a teenager. In the last several days, he has repeatedly assailed Cummings and his “rat and rodent infested” majority-black district and targeted other foes like Sharpton, who he said “Hates Whites & Cops.”
Print paper cut of the hate-filled, racist diatribe.
Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, has emerged as a major foil for the president as his panel presses investigations into Trump’s administration. Last week, the committee authorized Cummings to subpoena work-related e-mails and text messages on personal devices of White House officials, including Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. “I think that Representative Cummings should take his oversight committee and start doing oversight on Baltimore,” Trump said.
Cummings is attacking the family and making things personal.
Aides said that the subpoena move last week riled Trump and helped fuel the anger that had been on public display since Saturday. The president has also bristled at criticism from Cummings of how detained migrants are being treated at the border, saying that the lawmaker should first worry about what Trump called the dismal conditions in his own district.
The ceremony Tuesday at the Jamestown Settlement Museum marked the first meeting of elected legislators in the New World. On July 30, 1619, a group of 22 representatives of plantations or settlements gathered in a church in Jamestown for the first time in what would be known as the House of Burgesses, the precursor to state legislatures and Congress in the centuries to come.
The event was already fraught for African-American lawmakers because of the anniversary of slavery. The caucus held alternative events in Richmond, including a wreath-laying at the Virginia state Capitol to honor African-American lawmakers who served after the Civil War, but Lieutenant Governor Justin E. Fairfax, Virginia’s only African-American statewide elected official and a Democrat, attended Tuesday’s ceremony, saying beforehand that the twin anniversaries “far supersede the petty and racist actions of the current occupant of the White House.”
Ironically, Fairfax himself has been accused of sexual harassment and the guy he works for, Northam, seems to have ridden out the blackface yearbook photos, as all that Democratic malfeasance is dispatched down the pre$$ memory hole and missing from the out-of-context narrative now being provided!
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Related: Trump defends McConnell, attacks Washington Post
Looks like a gunfight at the D.C. corral:
2 dead, 2 wounded in shooting at Walmart in Mississippi
I'm told the shooter was a disgruntled employee.
"Two women who worked with other mothers to try to stop gun violence in their South Side Chicago neighborhood were killed by bullets police do not believe were intended for them on the same corner where they would often hand out food and bring children to play. The gunfire on Friday night was instead meant for a man who is affiliated with a Chicago street gang and recently got out of prison, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. The 58-year-old man, who was struck in the arm in the shooting and whose name hasn’t been released, is not cooperating with police, Guglielmi said. ‘‘We have no information to suggest they were the intended targets,’’ he said Tuesday, adding that police are still seeking leads in the case. No arrests have been made. The deaths of 26-year-old Chantell Grant and 35-year-old Andrea Stoudemire in the Englewood neighborhood served as a grim reminder of the kind of violence that prompted them to join Mothers Against Senseless Killings. The antiviolence group launched five years ago in the wake of the shooting death of another young mother at the same corner. ‘‘That’s why we’re out here seven days a week . . . trying to create a safe place where people can learn to be neighbors and not kill each other,’’ the group’s founder, Tamar Manasseh, said. She said she’s not willing to accept the notion that Grant, a mother of four, and Stoudemire, who had three children, were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘‘They killed mothers on a corner where mothers sit every day,’’ Manasseh said. ‘‘You don’t have mothers killed in a place that is sacred to mothers and not take that as a message.’’ The drive-by shooting followed what has become a familiar pattern in Chicago, where more people are fatally shot than in any other city in the United States. During the same weekend, 48 people were shot in Chicago, eight of them fatally. A 23-year-old woman was shot in the leg, back, and face on June 25 by someone in a black vehicle in the same block where Grant and Stoudemire were gunned down, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The woman survived, and police said there is no indication that shooting was connected to the one that killed the two mothers. Grant and Stoudemire were found lying on the sidewalk after a spray of bullets came from inside a blue SUV, police said. Manasseh said the women had been on the corner for hours Friday handing out food to other mothers and keeping watch over a vacant lot the group has turned into a play area for neighborhood children. She said Grant and Stoudemire had finished up for the day and had begun walking to a store to get food for themselves and their children when they were shot. ‘‘They can’t even walk to the store without getting killed,’’ said Manasseh, her voice rising. ‘‘They were killed for parenting.’’"
Of course, you can't say it's a Democrat city or criticize the mayor.
Besides, they care more about migrant families:
"More than a year after President Trump officially ended migrant family separations at the southern border, immigration authorities continue to routinely separate families for reasons as minor as a parent not changing a baby’s diaper or having a traffic citation for driving without a license, according to new documents filed Tuesday in federal court. More than 900 children have been removed from an adult — usually a parent — with whom they arrived at the southern border since June of 2018, according to tallies provided by the Department of Justice to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging the separations. The latest separations are mainly based on crimes committed by the parent, according to the new documents, but ACLU lawyers argue that many of the violations are as minor as traffic tickets....."
I hope they are not DUIs or anything, and given the state of the motor records around here, maybe not a good idea.
Related: Two California college professors have installed seesaws along the U.S.-Mexico border so kids can play
See, the kids will have something to do while they confirm criminal status.
Speaking of California:
"California’s Democratic governor signed a law Tuesday requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns to appear on the state’s primary ballot, a move aimed squarely at Republican President Trump, but even if the law withstands a likely legal challenge, Trump could avoid the requirements by choosing not to compete in California’s primary. With no credible GOP challenger at this point, he likely won’t need California’s delegates to win the Republican nomination. ‘‘As one of the largest economies in the world and home to one in nine Americans eligible to vote, California has a special responsibility to require this information of presidential and gubernatorial candidates,’’ Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom wrote in his veto message to the state Legislature. While the law is aimed at Trump, it would apply to all presidential contenders and candidates for governor. The major Democratic 2020 contenders have already released tax returns for roughly the past decade. Trump has bucked decades of precedent by refusing to release his....."
All Trump has to do to get delegates is call for a write-in campaign, and I'm glad they don't have problems in California like feces and needles in the streets of San Francisco or tent cities popping up everywhere (I know, racist to criticize).
What I did notice was the recent shooting was nowhere to be found in my paper today. The garlic must have left a bad taste in their mouth as the event was so quickly called out. Just another blip, blip, drip.
You know, with all the racial furor we have forgotten about the ladies:
"Two Republican senators split sharply in assessments of general accused of sexual assault" by Karoun Demirjian The Washington Post, July 30, 2019
WASHINGTON — Two survivors of sexual assault who serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee split sharply Tuesday in their assessments of whether President Trump’s pick to serve as the military’s second-highest officer was fit for the job amid accusations that he sexually assaulted an Army colonel when she was under his command.
‘‘Sexual assault happens in the military. It just didn’t happen in this case,’’ Senator Martha McSally, Republican from Arizona, said in defense of General John Hyten at his confirmation hearing, arguing that the case ‘‘wasn’t just a jump ball, not a he-said, she-said’’ but that ‘‘the full truth was revealed in this process.’’
‘‘The truth is that General Hyten is innocent of these charges,’’ she said, but Senator Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, said the facts of the investigation ‘‘left me with concerns regarding your judgment, leadership and fitness to serve as the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.’’
Hyten, who is currently in charge of the nation’s nuclear arsenal as the head of US Strategic Command, was nominated to serve as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April. That prompted Colonel Kathryn Spletstoser to come forward with allegations that he repeatedly made unwanted sexual contact with her while the two traveled for work in 2017.
‘‘I’m intensely aware of the allegations made against me concerning one of the most serious problems we have in the military,’’ Hyten said Tuesday during his opening statement before the committee. ‘‘These allegations are false. There was a very extensive, thorough investigation . . . that revealed the truth: nothing happened, ever.’’
McSally and Ernst went public earlier this year with their personal stories of sexual assault and rape: McSally was the victim of a superior officer in the Air Force, while Ernst, who is also a veteran, was victimized in college.
Ernst did not defend Spletstoser’s allegations but focused her concerns on Hyten’s approach to the colonel, who was asked to leave his command after an internal investigation determined she had created a ‘‘toxic work environment.’’
McSally did not say how or why she reached the conclusion that she would support Hyten.
Both Hyten and Spletstoser said Tuesday that they would endorse a release of the report.
Several senators spoke in Hyten’s defense during Tuesday’s hearing, but no senators spoke out specifically in defense of Spletstoser.
Unlike in the Kavanaugh case.
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Related: Sexual assaults in the military spiked nearly 38 percent last year, Pentagon says
"A conservative lawyer and writer who argues for selling off the nation’s public lands is now in charge of a nearly quarter-billion acres in federally held range land and other wilderness. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Monday signed an order making Wyoming native William Perry Pendley acting head of the Bureau of Land Management. The bureau manages nearly 250 million acres of largely wild public lands and their minerals and other resources in vast holdings across the West. Pendley, a former midlevel Interior appointee in the Reagan administration, for decades has championed ranchers and others in standoffs with the federal government over grazing and other uses of public lands. He has written books accusing federal authorities and environmental advocates of ‘‘tyranny’’ and ‘‘waging war on the West.’’ He argued in a 2016 National Review article that the ‘‘Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold.’’ Pendley has welcomed Trump administration moves to open more federal land to mining and oil and gas development and other private business use, and he has called the oil and gas extraction technique known as fracking ‘‘an energy, economic, AND environmental miracle!’’ A conservation group called Pendley an ‘‘ideological zealot’’ and pointed to the federal agency’s announcement that it planned to move the BLM’s headquarters from Washington and disperse the headquarters staff among Western states. Pendley’s ‘‘ascending to the top of BLM just as it is being reorganized strongly suggests the administration is positioning itself to liquidate our shared public lands,’’ said Phil Hanceford, conservation director for The Wilderness Society conservation advocacy group. Interior spokeswoman Molly Block denied the accusation."
Looks like Trump just sealed up the Rockies and Southwest come election night 2020, and don't worry about prices at the pump. They will soon be handing the stuff out for you to drink.
Also see:
"Maine, “the colony of a colony,” kicked off a celebration Tuesday for the 200th anniversary of its statehood and independence from Massachusetts....."
Maybe it is time to secede.
UPDATE:
I now think I know why the pre$$ and ma$$ media are hollering racist at Trump.
NEXT DAY UPDATES
The debate headline was slightly above my printed fold before the updated Bo$ton version turned it into the lead:
Health care, immigration emerge as points of division in second night of Democratic debate
Same drill as yesterday, with Jess Bidgood once again replacing the early round report today I received from the AP (not even going to waste the time to find, sorry). The Globe did give you an AP fact check that puts the Democratic debate rhetoric under scrutiny.
The general take is it was a mugging of the lefties, and when it comes to beating Trump, the far left will not hold and that will lead to nothing but loss.
Portland hurries to move asylum seekers out of sports arena before deadline
Related:
"Two New Hampshire judges who were lawyers for a woman convicted of lying about her role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide to obtain US citizenship are willing to testify on her behalf as she appeals her case. Beatrice Munyenyezi received a 10-year prison sentence in 2013. She was found guilty of lying about her role as a commander of a roadblock where Tutsis were singled out for slaughter. She also denied affiliation with any political party, despite her husband’s leadership role in the extremist Hutu party (AP)."
I wonder if she remembers Jean Teganya?
That leads us to the page A2 National co-lead:
"Reagan called Africans ‘monkeys’ in call with Nixon, tape reveals" by Sarah Mervosh and Niraj Chokshi New York Times, July 31, 2019
Man, they are really diving deep, huh?
Ronald Reagan was the governor of California in 1971 when he phoned the White House to vent his political frustration to President Richard M. Nixon and, according to a newly released audio recording, called African people “monkeys” in a slur that sparked laughter from the president of the United States.
The previously undisclosed exchange took place after the United Nations voted to expel Taiwan in order to seat representatives from Beijing, a move that the United States opposed. Delegates from Tanzania celebrated with a victory dance in the General Assembly hall.
It means they have been sitting on it, waiting for just the right time to use it.
“To see those monkeys from those African countries, damn them,” Reagan said, to laughter from Nixon. “They are still uncomfortable wearing shoes.”
In other recordings, Nixon went on to recount his conversation with Reagan to others, describing the African delegates as “cannibals” as he sought to blame them for the UN vote.
The exchange between two former presidents of the United States on Oct. 26, 1971, was revealed in new audio released by the National Archives and published Tuesday by The Atlantic. The audio was the latest reminder of the long history of racism by American presidents and came as the current president faces fierce criticism for his attacks on prominent people of color.
“Reagan opens the door and Nixon runs with the racist tropes,” said Timothy Naftali, the former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum who requested the recording and wrote the article in The Atlantic.
“This is not just a story about Reagan’s racism,” he said in an interview. “It’s also a reminder about how in the Oval Office, racism can beget racism” and “reveal latent racism in others.”
In other words, you are racist and you don't even know it (with supremacist Jews making the decision).
The National Archives originally withheld part of the recording to protect Reagan’s privacy, said Naftali, who requested a full version last year. He said the timing of the release this month was a coincidence that offered important historical context.
UH-HUH!
If you believe that one, I've got a bridge to sell you.
In recent weeks, President Trump has been under renewed criticism for comments that have been condemned as racist.
Gotta get that Iranian regime changed, man!
A poll conducted this month by Quinnipiac University found that half of voters believe Trump is racist, but voters are sharply divided along partisan lines. When separated by party, 86 percent of Democratic voters classified Trump as racist, while 91 percent of Republicans said he was not.
Race is expected to be a key issue in the 2020 election, as Democratic candidates seek to prove they can help America bridge its racial divide.
In other words, it's the flip side of Trump's gig and also identity politicking in an attempt to scare all the black voters into line.
Gee, the back-and-forth of the $elf-$erving wre$tling match is so compelling, huh?
From the beginning, the American presidency has been stained by racial prejudice, often a reflection of broader sentiment among white citizens. Such views have persisted well into modern times.
“If you dig deep enough you’ll find something like this in probably most presidents of the 20th century,” said Jelani Cobb, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and former director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, who frequently writes on race, politics, history, and culture.
Then remove the names, take down the statues, and by no means my mealy-mouthed puppet politicians refer to the glorious history of this hateful, blood-soaked nation of empire or revere its war criminal presidents. All the paintings must come down, and pray with me, Henry, pray with me.
Reagan died in 2004. “If he said that 50 years ago, he shouldn’t have,” Melissa Giller, a spokeswoman for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, said in a statement. “And he would be the first person to apologize.”
Wasn't he lionized in the eulogies by Billy C and George W?
Naftali said that the tapes revealing the private conversation between Reagan and Nixon were a “data point” to help understand their racial worldview and a prism through which to view their policies. At the same time, the legacies of some of the presidents who held such views are complicated, Cobb said.
“The fact that they said something racist doesn’t tell you everything about their politics,” he said. “And then sometimes it does.”
President Ronald Reagan poses for photographers in the Oval Office at the White House on June 23, 1986. (MIKE SARGENT/AFP/Getty Images)
Well.....
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Now about your politics:
"The Senate has confirmed Kelly Craft to become the next US envoy to the United Nations despite Democratic concerns about her inexperience and potential conflicts of interest. Craft, a longtime GOP activist from Kentucky, is currently US ambassador to Canada. She was confirmed 56-34, ending a more than seven-month vacancy in the key diplomatic position. She and her husband, Joe Craft, have donated millions of dollars to Republican political candidates, and she will be the first major political donor to occupy the top UN post for any administration. Joe Craft is the chief executive of Alliance Resource Partners, one of the largest coal producers in the country. In her confirmation hearing, Craft vowed to continue the efforts of Trump’s first ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, to push for reform at the world body and to fight against anti-Israel resolutions and actions by the UN and its affiliated agencies."
Not enough Democrats were concerned because she picked up three of them, and as you can see, amidst all this media-generated smoke about racism, it is Make Israel Great Again when it comes to Trump administration (the World lead, btw):
World lead:
"Israel is expected to approve surge in Jewish construction in West Bank" by Isabel Kershner New York Times, July 31, 2019
JERUSALEM — In a rare step, Israel approved plans late Tuesday to build 715 housing units for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, though the government is soon expected to endorse 6,800 units for Jewish settlers there, too.
Rare indeed, for they are usually knocking their houses down!
About 3,700 settler housing units have already been approved this year, and the addition of 6,800 would push 2019 past the record for approvals in a single year. The news comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is campaigning for support from right-wing voters, including settlers, less than six weeks before a parliamentary election.
The land theft continues unabated along with all the other indignities inflicted upon Palestinians, but don't worry, help is on the way!
With Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, visiting the region to lay more groundwork for the administration’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the approval of Palestinian housing is seen in Israel as a gesture that will please the Americans, but it did nothing to placate the Palestinian leadership.
Oh, after the Bahrain summit fell flat and was quickly dispatched down the pre$$ memory hole.
The true scale of the approvals was unclear because some of them may be retroactive, authorizing homes that had already been constructed without permits. Settlement plans are also often “recycled,” going through several stages of approval.
Meaning Zionist Jews build illegally on Palestinian land, then the government retroactively legalizes it. Nice shell game and trick.
The Palestinian housing units would go up in what is known as Area C, covering more than 60 percent of the West Bank, where Israel maintains full civilian and security control. Only a few dozen permits for Palestinian buildings in that area have been approved in the last decade, the last in 2016, according to Peace Now, an Israeli left-wing advocacy group that tracks settlement construction.
Many settlers hope — and Palestinians fear — that Israel aims eventually to annex much of that territory.
Basically a given now, and it sure doesn't raise a ruckus like Crimea, does it?
Shani Sasson, a spokeswoman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli security agency that deals with Palestinian civil affairs, said that an Israeli military planning committee would convene in the next week or two to promote plans for 6,800 units in the Jewish settlements.
Israeli political analysts said that the approval of housing for Palestinians appeared timed to Kushner’s visit and was meant to help him sell a long-awaited peace plan to Arab leaders.
By offering 715 crumbs while Israel approves 6,800 homes?
I don't know if you can top such arrogant chutzpah. They might as well say we have you by the balls.
David M. Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel and an architect of the administration’s plan, told CNN in an interview Tuesday: “We spent lots of time speaking to the Israelis about improving conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. A lot.”
“We care very much about the Palestinian people, about improving the quality of life,” he added. “We work with them extensively on it. We think it’s good for the Israelis and good for the Palestinians.”
Yeah, they care. That's why they shut down their offices and took away what miserly aid we offered as they plow billions upon billions into Israel war machine and supply it with weapons of mass destruction like depleted uranium munitions and white phosphorous bombs.
Fuck, 9/11 was good for Israel, or so I heard.
There has been speculation in Israel that the Trump administration might begin to roll out its plan before the election, possibly at a summit meeting to be attended by Arab leaders. White House officials said Wednesday that, as yet, no such meeting was planned.
If so, they are desperate! This means they are trailing badly in the polls, as all the pre$$ smokescreen and lies conceals the endless degradation of the environment, the ad nauseam continuation of the mass-murdering wars of empire, and the increasing yawn of wealthy inequality that seems to accelerate no matter who is president, with the end result being rural poverty and places like Baltimore (for the record, Bo$ton has its own sections but the Globe spends most of its time in Cambridge and the Seaport).
After an inconclusive election in April, Netanyahu was unable to form a governing coalition, forcing him to call another election Sept. 17. He has been urging right-wing voters, including settlers, to vote for his conservative Likud party, rather than smaller parties to the right, to ensure that he will be in a position to lead the next government.
I want to clear up something in that last paragraph. Netanyahu wasn't forced to call another election. His move to dissolve the Knesset and call for a new election was unusual. In the entire history of Israel, it had never been done. Instead, the president would ask the second-place finisher if they could form a government after Netanyahu failed to do so. This is based on the Globe's own reporting.
My point is, why the distortion from the New York Times reporter (who is also an Israel citizen with ties to the military)?
“No settlement and no settler will ever be uprooted,” Netanyahu pledged during a visit to the settlement of Efrat, south of Jerusalem, on Tuesday. That statement staked out a maximalist position that appeared to preclude both the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state alongside Israel — a longstanding Palestinian and international goal — and the engagement of the Palestinian leadership in renewed peace talks.
No preconditions!
Friedman told CNN that the administration believed in Palestinian autonomy, short of independent statehood.
“We believe in Palestinian civilian self-governance,” he said. “We believe that autonomy should be extended up until the point where it interferes with Israeli security.”
What he is saying is it is all Israel.
In Efrat, Netanyahu toured sites where more than 1,000 new homes had already been completed or were under construction. He said an additional 8,000 homes would be built in Efrat in the coming years. Most Israelis believe Efrat will remain under Israeli control under any future peace deal with the Palestinians.....
But NO preconditions!
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Related:
"Facebook Inc. doesn’t have to face a lawsuit by victims of Hamas attacks and their relatives who claimed that the social network unlawfully assisted the terror group, a federal appeals court ruled. In a 66-page ruling issued Wednesday, a divided court upheld a judge’s decision to throw out the case, saying an interactive computer service is not the publisher of third-party information when it uses tools that are designed to match content with consumer interests. “Facebook does not edit (or suggest edits) for the content that its users — including Hamas — publish,” the US Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit said, noting that the company only requires users to provide basic information and therefore acts as a “neutral intermediary.”
Here is a tour of the Palestinian houses they plan to build, and you will never guess who has been contracted to build them:
"Trump ‘rodent’ tweets ring true at Kushner-owned apartments" by Regina Garcia Cano and Bernard Condon Associated Press, July 31, 2019
BALTIMORE — Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm owns thousands of apartments and townhomes in the Baltimore area, and some have been criticized for the same kind of disrepair and neglect that the president has accused local leaders of failing to address. Residents have complained about mold, bedbugs, leaks, and, yes, mice — plenty of mice, and they say management appears in no hurry to fix the problems.
Conditions got so bad two years ago that the Baltimore County government issued a release showing the Kushner Cos. had violated housing codes more than 200 times in just 10 months and only moved to fix the problems after being threatened with fines.
Yeah, threaten the money -- BDS -- and it gets their attention.
In a statement, the Kushner Cos. said it was proud of its Baltimore-area apartments and has worked to maintain a ‘‘high quality residential experience for our tenants’’ by investing ‘‘substantial amounts’’ in upkeep.
A boasts of “amenities that amaze,’’ but many of the 181 comments posted by residents at the review site apartmentratings.com complain of rats, mold, bedbugs, roaches, and leaks. The reviews say management is generally unresponsive.
A 2017 report by the New York Times and ProPublica about residents at Kushner-owned developments echoed many of the online complaints, with one woman saying she found a mouse on her 12-year-old child’s bed. The Kushner Cos. told the Times at the time that it had spent $10 million on its properties, but their age means issues can still arise.
A Baltimore Sun story the same year found the Kushner Cos. used the courts to arrest tenants late on rent more than any other landlord in the state, and a lawsuit seeking class-action status for residents alleges Westminster Management, the Kushner subsidiary that oversees rental properties in Maryland and other states, often charges tenants illegal and excessive fees that keeps them in constant fear of eviction and guessing what they owe. Westminster has said it has broken no laws and denies the charges.
When you think about how involved in the Zettler movement he is, I suppose it is no surprise that he is just another Jewi$h slumlord. What is a surprise is that Baltimore is becoming like Gaza!
Jared Kushner took in $3.1 million from Westminster in the past two years, according to financial disclosure reports he filed with the federal government. He stepped down as chief executive of parent company Kushner Cos. when he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, joined the White House as senior advisers to the president, but he still retains a financial interest and draws money from many of its operations.
We hear a lot about emoluments and the Trump hotel, but the Democrats never bring this stuff up and the pre$$ often treats such things as a one-day wonder. It doesn't get the flogging that the advocacy issues and agendas do.
At the Kushners’ Dutch Village community in Baltimore, Ronald Newson says his 86-year-old mother, Carrie, has been asking maintenance staff for nearly a year to patch a hole in her ceiling from a leak on the second floor, and that someone has to come to kill all the mice she’s been living with.
As a stopgap measure, she jammed the leg of a chair against a hole in the corner of her living room, but they kept coming out anyway. They also come from behind her stove.
‘‘It takes them a long time to get repairs done,’’ the son said. He suggested that Trump, instead of blaming Cummings for the city’s problems, should look to landlords like Kushner, too.
‘‘He talks about everyone but his son-in-law.’’
Somehow the kid is above it all.
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Make that kids:
"Rape case that roiled Israel falls apart, with 12 suspects freed" by Isabel Kershner New York Times, July 28, 2019
JERUSALEM — An allegation of gang rape at a Cyprus resort that produced a bout of national soul searching in Israel took a dramatic turn Sunday with the release of the remaining teenage Israeli suspects and the arrest of the woman who accused them.
It's the official end of #MeToo.
A dozen Israelis, ranging in age from 15 to 18, had been arrested in the case, in which a 19-year-old British woman said they had raped her in a hotel room in the Cyprus resort town of Ayia Napa.
Five of the suspects were freed Thursday and returned to Israel. The others were freed Sunday without conditions, according to their lawyers and police.
The woman was charged with making a false accusation, according to a police spokesman. She was due to appear in court Monday, he said by phone. Neither the woman nor the suspects have been publicly identified.
So much for believe the woman.
Now it is verify, don't trust! Just came too late for Conyers, Franken, Rose, Lauer, Moonves.
According to law enforcement officials, the woman said she was gang raped July 17, and the first details of the case emerged with the arrest of the Israelis and their subsequent arraignment in a Cyprus court July 18.
The 12 Israelis were investigated on charges of rape and conspiracy to commit a felony, said Yaniv Habari, a lawyer representing three of the suspects. Speaking by phone from Cyprus on Sunday, he added that the police conducted DNA tests and seized 11 cellphones to examine videos and other evidence.
DNA tests indicated that three of the suspects had had some form of sexual contact with the woman, according to the lawyers for the detainees, but their clients said the encounter had been consensual. It was not clear how or whether the other nine suspects were involved.
Habari said that one of his clients had an alibi and another said that he had not been in the room where the alleged attack took place.
The Accused.
Lawyers representing the suspects told reporters that the 12 had traveled to the resort in three separate groups that did not know one another.
The case has roiled Israel, where the reaction has revolved around concerns about victim shaming and about the pressures in Israeli society to prove manliness.
You prove your manliness by gang-raping a woman?
What kind of sick, evil, satanic soul would even think such a thing?
Not only that, it appears that the Palestinians are in the same boat given the oppressive treatment at the hands of monsters like these.
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I'm sure that one-day wonder will be just a blip, and at least Epstein and Weinstein can breath a bit easier now -- as can we all:
"The Senate Armed Services Committee voted Wednesday to recommend that President Trump’s pick to be the military’s second-highest officer be confirmed by the full Senate, despite an Army colonel’s allegations that he repeatedly sexually assaulted her while she served under him. The vote was 20 to 7, reflecting bipartisan support for General John Hyten, currently in charge of the national’s nuclear arsenal as the head of US Strategic Command. The vote reflected bipartisan opposition, after Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, decided to vote against recommending Hyten’s confirmation....."
One Republican votes with six Democrats in a two-thirds vote and I'm told it is bipartisan opposition, wow!
"The ousted governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo A. Rosselló, chose his successor Wednesday, nominating Pedro R. Pierluisi, who formerly represented the island in Congress, to serve as secretary of state. The move positions Pierluisi to take over as governor when Rosselló’s resignation becomes effective this week, but Pierluisi’s confirmation seems far from certain....."
Those are rather absurd optics.
Maybe it is time to move to Detroit:
"Prosecutors are dropping an assault charge against a 10-year-old suburban Detroit boy who was accused of hitting a 9-year-old classmate in the face with a rubber ball similar to a dodge ball. Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy on Wednesday said there’s a ‘‘better way to go forward’’ than to take the child to juvenile court. She encouraged the families to find a solution. Students at a Canton Township school were playing a game on April 29 in which kids jump to catch a ball. Authorities said the older boy forcefully threw the ball, leaving his classmate with a concussion. The older boy’s mother claimed race was a factor in the investigation. Her son is black. Worthy, who is black, called that ‘‘categorically wrong.’’
Think of it as a schoolyard baptism:
"An Iowa seminary student honeymooning in Florida drowned when he was swept out to sea on his first time in the ocean, officials said. A St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office incident report said Dalton Cottrell, 22, of Malcom, Iowa, drowned while swimming Tuesday at Crescent Beach, south of Jacksonville, according to The Florida Times-Union. A beachgoer heard screaming from the water and grabbed a paddleboard, joining a lifeguard who went to the rescue. They found Cottrell and brought him back to shore but it was too late. Cottrell’s wife, Cheyenne, told St. Johns County sheriff’s deputies it was his first time in the ocean. She said the current pulled them out and ‘‘he started to freak out.’’ Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary in Ankeny, Iowa, said in a statement that the couple were seniors at the school and had married Saturday."
That tragedy must have been a terrifying experience, and I no longer feel the need to ever go into the water.
At the top of page A2 was a photo of the blast at an ExxonMobil plant in Texas where dozens were hurt, although the Globe did find it fit to print about the Kentucky gas line fire.
Related:
Rally calls for National Grid to repair gas leaks
They are getting $143 million in a settlement so what's the big deal?
Just blowing a bunch of hot air, huh?
You may want to wait until the tornadoes and thunderstorms pass before Rounding up the cancer awards.
Time to get back to Baltimore:
"US Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson traveled here Wednesday to defend President Trump’s harsh depiction of the city, saying ‘‘there are problems in Baltimore, and you can’t sweep them under the rug.’’ Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon who has a long history at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, said the city has to be ‘‘willing to address’’ the problems it faces. ‘‘It’s sort of like a patient who has cancer: You can dress them up and put a nice suit on and try to ignore it, but that cancer is going to have a devastating effect,’’ he said standing outside of Hollins House, a federally funded housing complex for senior citizens located in the congressional district of US Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. ‘‘You have to be willing to address that issue if you are ever going to solve it.’’ Trump has triggered a firestorm since Saturday by repeatedly attacking Cummings and his majority-black legislative district, which he described on Twitter as a ‘‘rodent infested mess’’ . . . where ‘‘no human being would want to live.’’ He called Cummings ‘‘a racist and a bully,’’ and tweeted that Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city, was a ‘‘very dangerous & filthy place.’’ No state or city officials appeared at the news conference, which was announced Tuesday night and was originally slated to be held on an open lot that belongs to a church, across the street from the eight-story housing development. Carson aides hastily moved the event to an alley behind the housing complex after Gregory Evans, a member of Morning Star Baptist Church, said no one asked permission to hold an event on the church property."
It's a firestorm of racism and Holocau$t™!
"President Trump on Wednesday renewed his attacks on CNN’s Don Lemon, one of the moderators of the Democratic debate, calling him ‘‘the dumbest man on television’’ and suggesting he was ‘‘too dumb’’ to understand that he should ask fair questions. Trump’s latest ire directed at Lemon, an African-American whose intelligence he has publicly questioned before, appeared prompted by Lemon’s assertion at Tuesday’s debate in Detroit that Trump is pursuing ‘‘a reelection strategy based in part on racial division.’’
Trump did it in a dumb way, but what the pre$$ is now pushing is that you can no longer criticize a minority.
"In unusually forceful language, the leadership of the Washington National Cathedral condemned what it called the ‘‘racialized rhetoric’’ of President Trump and directly compared him to 1950s anti-Communist demagogue Senator Joseph McCarthy. The statement, released Tuesday, isn’t so much an appeal for Trump to retract or soften his statements as a call for the nation as a whole to reject them. It asks: ‘‘After two years of President Trump’s words and actions, when will Americans have enough?’’ The statement accuses Trump of deliberately fanning racial divisions for political gain in the same way that McCarthy used fears of Communist infiltration....."
The cathedral belongs to the Episcopal Church and is designated by Congress as a nondenominational National House of Prayer that is the site of four state funerals for deceased presidents — most recently George H.W. Bush in 2018, our hero leader. Thus the charges of racism by the WASPy Bushes are cleansed from memory.
"Democrats in Mitch McConnell’s home state are pitching ‘‘Moscow Mitch’’ merchandise to try and capitalize on a bitter dispute involving the Kentucky senator over election security legislation. The Kentucky Democratic Party said Wednesday it’s launching the ‘‘Moscow Mitch’’ Web store in a dig at the Senate majority leader. The party is selling red T-shirts for $25. They depict a picture of McConnell wearing a Cossack hat with the ‘‘hammer and sickle’’ symbol. The shirt declares ‘‘Just say Nyet to Moscow Mitch’’ in yellow, Soviet-style letters. A Washington Post columnist recently criticized the Senate Republican leader for blocking legislation aimed at protecting the nation’s political system against foreign attack. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough weighed in with the ‘‘Moscow Mitch’’ nickname. McConnell fired back in a speech comparing the attacks to ‘‘modern-day McCarthyism.’’
The terms have been so devalued they mean nothing anymore as they are tossed around like fertilizer with no context, and the first one who cites Hitler loses.
A rare do-over congressional election is a chance to battle-test 2020 strategies
It's North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, and how do you rank 'em?
"Georgia’s passage of one of the country’s strictest abortion laws has triggered a nationwide competition to lure TV and film production from the state in the event of a boycott. Production in Georgia was responsible for an estimated $9.5 billion in economic impact last year, according to the state, so there’s plenty at stake. Georgia’s tax incentives and spending credits made it such a darling of Hollywood that the state surpassed California as the favorite setting for TV and film production in the United States. Several studios, including Walt Disney Co., lambasted Georgia for the legislation, but few have announced they’re moving out. Some individual productions have, though, including Kristen Wiig’s film for Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” which switched to Mexico and New Mexico. The Netflix Inc. hit “Stranger Things,” as well as successful movies “Black Panther” and “First Man,” were filmed at least in part in Georgia."
Did they give away more than $90 million like we did, and I guess some boycotts are okay, huh?
That gets us back to healthcare and the Democratic debate:
"Trump administration proposes allowing drug imports for cheaper prescriptions" by Katie Thomas New York Times, July 31, 2019
NEW YORK — The Trump administration said Wednesday that it was taking steps to make it easier for less expensive prescription drugs to be imported from other countries, particularly Canada, a move that has long been supported by progressives but has encountered fierce opposition from the pharmaceutical industry.
Is that going to be part of the trade deal?
Although the announcement signaled a major policy shift because Democratic and Republican administrations have generally opposed importing drugs from overseas, the proposal was also limited in nature.
No insulin.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress have been debating legislation that would allow importation of drugs to obtain cheaper prices, and other measures to try to rein in costs, but leading members of Congress have said that major proposals will not be fully prepared before September.
The rising price of prescription drugs has been a popular topic at the Democratic presidential debates, and the timing of the administration’s announcement fell in the middle of the Tuesday-Wednesday schedule of the July debates for the Democratic candidates.
On Tuesday night, Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, who has long supported the idea, said he traveled to Canada on Sunday with a group of consumers who were buying insulin at what they said was one-10th the price they usually pay in the United States. Higher prices are being charged by “the crooks who run the pharmaceutical industry in America today,” Sanders said.
Oh, I like him!
Many other countries are able to negotiate lower prices because their health care systems are run by the government, giving them more leverage. In the United States, private insurers typically negotiate with drug companies on prices. The drug industry has said that the prices overseas are artificially low and that people in those countries often do not get access to as many new drugs as Americans do.
Canadian officials have warned the US government that importation programs could jeopardize their own supply of drugs, leading to potential shortages, Reuters reported in July.
Charity begins at home. Any excess you export.
One wonders if China cut them off over Meng's arrest and detention.
Others have said drug companies could limit their supplies to those countries or raise their prices in response to any new US policy. Trump has railed against the idea that many countries pay less for drugs than in the United States, calling it a form of “global freeloading” because many treatments sold overseas were developed by US companies.
In July, Trump said he was planning an executive order, a “favored-nation clause,” which would allow the United States to pay whatever the lowest price is in other countries, but his comments were vague, and it was unclear whether he was referring to a more limited pilot program being proposed by his administration that would apply only to a small subset of drugs administered by doctors and in clinics. There were also questions about how far any executive order could go without congressional legislation.
Several of Trump’s other proposals to lower drug prices have faltered recently, including efforts to force drug companies to list their prices on TV ads.
It's the ads that make me sick, although a few have catchy classic jingle parodies.
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