tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-295754632024-03-18T15:01:22.114-04:00Main Street Liberal<b>The Voice of Liberalism from Main Street, not Hollywood Boulevard</b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5662125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-77226675493462328282024-03-18T15:00:00.004-04:002024-03-18T15:00:29.847-04:00The Non-Conspiracy<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">The only thing GOP Representative Nancy Mace, of a swing district in South Carolina, got right here was her timing.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Nancy mace flips the script on Bill Maher:<br />"You think we should have an authoritarian strongman? I'm not saying anyone in particular."<br />"You're talking about Joe Biden?"<br />"Oh Joe Biden's the authoritarian strongman!?"<br />"He wants to kick his opponents off the ballot. Talk about… <a href="https://t.co/zhGWKfTx8V">pic.twitter.com/zhGWKfTx8V</a></p>— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricAbbenante/status/1768838530036330786?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 16, 2024</a></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>When it's time for Bill Maher to go to the "New Rules" segment of "Real Time," Bill Maher goes to New Rules. No exception.</p><p>And Representative Mace was able to slip in her lie at the right time, just under the wire. Mace may not recall the exact date or the adjective "fine," but surely she learned of the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-says-fine-trump-staying-ballot-2024-rcna136458">President's sentiment</a> after Joe Biden on January 30 said</p><p><i>that he thought it was "fine" for former
President Donald Trump to remain on the ballot for this year's
election.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>In response to a reporter who asked whether Trump should
"be allowed on the ballot," Biden said, “As far as I’m concerned,
that’s fine.”<o:p></o:p></i></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>Biden made the remark shortly before he boarded Marine One
for Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, from which he departed for a trip to Florida.,,,</i><o:p></o:p></p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><p class="MsoNormal"><i>The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/oath-breaking-insurrectionist-trump-ineligible-office-colo-voters-tell-rcna135904" target="_blank"> </a>next week in the Colorado ballot case,
which could affect whether Trump can stay on the primary ballot in that state
and others.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p><i>Colorado's Supreme Court ruled last month that Trump violated a provision of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, which states that "an
officer of the United States" who has "engaged in insurrection"
cannot hold office and is therefore ineligible as a candidate.</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i><br /></i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i>The Supreme Court, six Republicans and three Democrats, promptly decided unanimously against the plaintiffs, thus restoring Trump to the ballot in Colorado.</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Thus marked the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/03/04/1230453714/supreme-court-trump-colorado-ballot">demise</a> of the lawsuit which aimed to bar Donald Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment. Though filed by CREW, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/05/trump-supreme-court-ballot-norma-anderson/">suit </a>was organized by a research assistant with the 2008 presidential campaign of Rudolph Giuliani. It was joined by the first woman to serve as majority leader of both chambers of the Colorado legislature, as well as</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b>a former Republican member
of Congress from Rhode Island who now lives in Colorado; a teacher; a former
deputy chief of staff to a Republican governor; a former executive director of
the Boys & Girls Clubs of Larimer County; and a conservative columnist for
the Denver Post.</b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Yet, Representative Mace was able to claim "(Joe Biden) wants to kick his opponents off the ballot." With GOP politicians such as her implying a Democratic plot to erase Trump from the ballot, many <a href="https://twitter.com/MAGAMichelleS69/status/1769747081059614777">conservative </a>voters seem to believe the myth.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">The problem is magnified when, as has been the case, there is little or no pushback from Democrats, liberals or progressives. Throughout the entire discussion portion of the show, Representative Ro Khanna (clearly booked as the progressive foil to Mace, proved distressingly complaisant, apparently loathe to displease his colleague. And Bill Maher himself allowed the congresswoman to interject this crucial lie before he switched gears to "New Rules." On this night, Nancy Mace was disturbingly, dishonestly effective.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-32443382854460944182024-03-16T18:37:00.003-04:002024-03-16T18:37:41.620-04:00Thorough Examination<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">In light of the rumor that RFK Jr. will select Aaron Rodgers to be his running mate, it is timely to tell Ari Fleischer and his fellow travelers:<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPEcDg6mUsM"> R-E-L-A-X</a>.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">I don’t ever again want to hear a Democrat lecture about foreign interference in an American election. With his speech today, Chuck Schumer forfeited any claim the US can make about foreign nations staying out of our elections. <a href="https://t.co/nETLkUTJfP">https://t.co/nETLkUTJfP</a></p>— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) <a href="https://twitter.com/AriFleischer/status/1768431394663850061?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 15, 2024</a></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>Of course, Fleischer is flacking for Donald Trump and acolytes, who will deny to their lasting, lying breath that Putin's Russia did not work to elect Trump to the presidency. And Fleischer should not go hysterical over the speech of Majority Leader Schumer, a longtime ally of the State of Israel, whose assessment of the war against Hamas was realistic, respectful, and reasoned (alliteration day!). </p><p>In his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxKyNNx1xY8">lengthy speech</a> (transcript<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-senator-chuck-schumers-speech-israeli-elections-are-the-only-way/"> here</a>), Schumer described in detail what he labeled the "four major obstacles standing in the way of two states." They are, in his words, Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways; radical right-wing Israelis in government and society; Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Hamas, and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways.</p><p>Schumer's speech instantly became famous for his support for "holding a new election once the war starts to wind down," which should be promoted more promptly. However, he recognizes- and is willing to admit- that</p><p><b>The Palestinian people must reject Hamas and the extremism
in their midst. They know better than anybody how Hamas has used them as pawns,
how Hamas has tortured and punished Palestinians who seek peace.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p>Quite frankly, I haven’t heard enough Palestinian leaders
express anguish about Hamas and other extreme elements of Palestinian society.
I implore them to speak up now, even when it may be hardest. Because that is
the only true way to honor the lives of all those lost — by transcending the
enmity and bloodshed, and working together in good faith for a better future.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p>Once Hamas is deprived of power, the Palestinians will be
much freer to choose a government they want and deserve. With the prospect of a
real two-state solution on the table, and for the first time, genuine statehood
for the Palestinian people, I believe they will be far more likely to support
more mainstream leaders committed to peace.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p>I think the same is true of the Israeli people. Call me an
optimist, but I believe that if the Israeli public is presented with a path to
a two-state solution that offers a chance at lasting peace and coexistence,
then most mainstream Israelis will moderate their views and support it.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p>Part of that moderation must include rejecting right-wing
zealots like Ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and the extremist Israeli
settlers in the West Bank. These people do not represent a majority of the
Israeli public, yet under Prime Minister Netanyahu’s watch, they have had far
too much influence.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p> </o:p>All sides must reject “From the river to the sea” thinking —
and I believe they will if the prospects for peace and a two-state solution are
real.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Schumer describes the concerns of both Israelis and American Jews and their justified concern about Israel's plight. Regrettably, he does not explicitly call out religious extremism, which has played a major role in the Israeli response to the October 7 murders and an even greater role in the Hamas attack itself. However, as this war has dragged on, it its clear that in any discussion of the Middle East, the phrases "Islamic terrorism," "Islamic extremism," and "Orthodox Jewish extremism" may not be uttered. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Nonetheless, Schumer does understand that beyond Hamas and Israel, there is a third player in the Middle East which is critical to a peaceful and just resolution. He notes</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Beyond the Israeli and Palestinian people and their leaders,
there are others who bear a serious responsibility to work towards a two-state
solution. Without them, it cannot succeed.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Middle Eastern powers like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Egypt, Jordan and other mainstream Arab states can have immense power
and influence with the Palestinians. Working with the United States, they must
responsibly deploy their clout, their money and their diplomacy to support a
new demilitarized Palestinian state that rejects terror and violence. I believe
they have the leverage to do this with the support of the majority of the
Palestinian people, who want what any other people want: peace, security and
prosperity</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Not all Jews are the same, as is blatantly obvious for the lack of support for the Netanyahu government among Israelis. Nor are all Arabs, or Muslims, or the individuals labeled "Palestinian," a reality which serves as a premise for Chuck Schumer's analysis. He has not presented a blueprint but has presented a more balanced view of the crisis than Ari Fleischer and others are giving him credit for. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p><br /></p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L8MLNSQjKFw?si=iYdHvkutXsihjhAT" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-55670132202932962482024-03-14T11:23:00.003-04:002024-03-14T11:34:26.214-04:00Media Denial<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Can we be honest?</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">If the question is posed to Mehdi Hasan, Vox, The Hollywood Reporter, or X readers who have "added context," the accurate answer is a resounding "no." Vox <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2024/3/11/24097323/jonathan-glazer-oscar-acceptance-speech-gaza-controversy">explains</a></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i>Accepting the Academy Award for Best International Feature
Film for his harrowing Holocaust film The Zone of Interest, director Jonathan
Glazer took a stance against the state of Israel’s ongoing military bombardment
of Gaza as part of the Israel-Hamas war. Glazer, who is Jewish, made a simple
and straightforward through line from his film, which is about the literal
banality of evil, to the present day.</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“All our choices we made to reflect and confront us in the
present,” Glazer said. “Not to say ‘look what they did then’ — rather, ‘look
what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It
shaped all of our past and present.”<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness
and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for
so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the
ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we
resist?”</i><o:p></o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"> First, the<a href="https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1767237387346653688"> journalist</a> who until recently had a show on MSNBC:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">That’s not what he did. This is a lie. It’s a complete cut off/distortion of his full quote. But now this lie has gone viral & people like <a href="https://twitter.com/MeghanMcCain?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MeghanMcCain</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/bungarsargon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bungarsargon</a> are refusing to delete their disinformation tweets despite 100s of people informing/correcting them. Shameful. <a href="https://t.co/i9MpzzimGP">https://t.co/i9MpzzimGP</a></p>— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) <a href="https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1767237387346653688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 11, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /><p>Next, Vox</p><p><i>Glazer’s speech was initially badly misquoted by some
sources <a href="https://twitter.com/AASchapiro/status/1767017428658384927"><b>including Variety</b></a>,
which led to confusion about whether he had “refuted” his Jewishness full stop.
This predictably met with conservative <a href="https://twitter.com/bungarsargon/status/1767002321051955202"><b>backlash</b></a>,
as when Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, and <a href="https://twitter.com/FoxmanAbraham/status/1766998200135651487"><b>Abe
Foxman</b></a>, former head of the Anti-Defamation League, each
incorrectly <a href="https://twitter.com/MeghanMcCain/status/1767142561204899964"><b>cited</b></a> Glazer
as “refuting his Jewishness.” Several Jewish organizations <a href="https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-791348"><b>argued</b></a> that
Glazer himself was actually “hijacking” the Holocaust.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>What Glazer actually said is much clearer: He and his
collaborators reject that Jewishness and the Holocaust are being used to
justify the ongoing military offensive in Gaza.</i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1767015487869764008?s=20">Chris Hayes,</a> snot fully familiar with the English language, remarke"it was a little awkwardly phrased but he's clearly saying he refutes his Jewishness being hijacked. Not refuting his Jewishness." "Awkwardly phrased" but "clearly saying." Gotcha.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> Finally, </o:p><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/zone-of-interest-jonathan-glazer-2024-oscar-speech-israel-gaza-conflict-1235848917/">The Hollywood Reporter</a>:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>The reaction to Glazer’s speech was swift, although much of
the early negative sentiment occurred because some news sites hadn’t fully
quoted the British filmmaker, or because his quotes were taken out of context
with the rest of his speech. Some people, incorrectly, took Glazer’s speech to
mean that he was refuting his Jewishness, rather than that he was refuting his
“Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to
conflict for so many innocent people,” as he said in his speech.</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This (reading and understanding the English language) shouldn't be difficult. It wasn't for Meghan McCain. Glazer's defenders cry "context," so to be fair- and brutally honest with them- the<a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/oscars-2024-jonathan-glazer-speech-full-transcript.html"> entire statement </a>is as following:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Thank you so much. I’m gonna read. Thank you to the Academy
for this honor and to our partners A24, Film4, Access, and Polish Film
Institute; to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for their trust and guidance;
to my producers, actors, collaborators. All our choices were made to reflect
and confront us in the present — not to say, “Look what they did then,” rather,
“Look what we do now.” Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst.
It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who
refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation,
which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of
October the — [Applause.] Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or
the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we
resist? [Applause.] Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, the girl who glows in the
film, as she did in life, chose to. I dedicate this to her memory and her
resistance. Thank you.</b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Glazer's words are literally "right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation...." He did not say "as men who refute their Jewishness because of the Holocaust being hijacked." He did not say "as men who refute their Jewishness insofar as the Holocaust has been hijacked." He did not say even "as men who refute their Jewishness while the Holocaust is being hijacked," which would have been ambiguous.</p><p class="MsoNormal">He said "we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness <i>and </i>the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation." It means- literally and figuratively, that they are refuting two things: their Jewishness; and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation.</p><p class="MsoNormal">The meaning is clear. Glazer is making two points: we are refuting Jewishness and the Holocaust is being hijacked. He wasn't impulsive, speaking extemporaneously, off-the-cuff. He read from prepared remarks he had an opportunity to write and edit so that his points (plural) would be evident and not twisted.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Glazer may have been thinking "the only reason we're refuting our Jewishness is because of Israel's actions." But he did not say that. And although we cannot be certain of what is in the deep recesses of Nathan Glazer's mind, we have the words of an educated, presumably literate individual to assess for their validity.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Each of us is left to consider, if he or she wishes, the motivation of someone who makes his beliefs clear and the aim of individuals who refuse to acknowledge what is directly in front of them. Possibly, they are eager for Jews themselves to slam Israel because they believe it is more powerful refutation of the nation's actions in Gaza, and perhaps elsewhere. It is a little bit of a "Nixon goes to China moment"- if a Jew himself hates what Israel is doing, what more evidence do we need? And they don't want to be seen applauding someone explicitly rejecting his "Jewishness."</p><p class="MsoNormal">Nathan Glazer is free to renounce his Judaism and to slam Israel's policy in the Gaza Strip. He has conspicuously done both without claiming one as the cause of the other.. Yet, opponents of Israeli policy ask "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? They urge readership to believe what they want Glazer to have meant or what they suspect he meant, rather than what he said. Labeled as commentary, it is legitimate. This is deeply dishonest, advocacy journalism in a cloak of objectivity.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/px4RKPEwcfI?si=hTLF8YyX_qqBg4ik" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-18799835705701215972024-03-13T09:43:00.000-04:002024-03-13T09:43:24.357-04:00Elevated Sense of Self-Regard<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">As The Hill <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4524362-nancy-mace-george-stephanopoulos-tried-to-bully-me-during-testy-interview/">reports,</a> U.S. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina has</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><i>accused ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of trying to “bully” her
during an interview Sunday morning when he pressed her on why she endorsed
former President Trump.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“George Stephanopoulos tried to bully me and shame me as a
rape survivor over my support for Donald Trump, which is insane to me, because
he wasn’t found guilty of rape anywhere,” she said on Fox News’s “The Faulkner
Focus.”</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>But the other thing is that, George Stephanopoulos, he
doesn’t — he has never felt the shame of rape. He does not know what this
journey is like. It’s a journey of healing over a lifetime,” she added.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Mace and Stephanopoulos got caught in a heated debate during
ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday when he asked her how she could endorse Trump after
he was found liable for sexual battery in a defamation lawsuit with E. Jean
Carroll last year. He had played a clip of her delivering testimony about being
a victim of rape shortly before she announced her bid for Congress in 2019.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Throughout the exchange on Sunday, Mace criticized
Stephanopoulos for “shaming” her by asking why she supported Trump.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“And it’s a shame that you will never feel, George, and I’m
not going to sit here on your show and be asked a question meant to shame me
about another potential rape victim. I’m not going to do that,” Mace said.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Stephanopoulos maintained that his question was not meant to
“shame” her and at one point called her “courageous” for coming forward. He
still continued to press her on how she could endorse Trump after saying he
should never hold office again after the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, and given that he had been found liable
for sexual battery.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Mace said in her interview Monday that she was “shocked and
dismayed by the line of questioning.” She also said that she was not aware he
was going to bring up her testimony during the interview.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/agetXBCrzRE?si=HYz2Qmf77cOxFRta" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Oh, good Lord. Since
revealing in a debate over an abortion bill in the South Carolina legislature
in 2019 that she had been raped twenty five years earlier at age 16, Mace has
tried to make the violent the heart of her political identity.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Though she successfully argued for including an exception
for rape and incest in the bill curbing women's reproductive freedom, Mace has
since<a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/174335/hypocrite-nancy-mace-backs-abortion-measure-called-asshole-amendment"> opposed </a>a right to abortion. She also has endorsed
the nomination of Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, even though
Trump denounced her run for the House of Representatives in 2022 while Nikki
Haley promoted it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So much for loyalty.
Stephanopoulos asked Mace "Judges in two separate juries have found
him liable for rape and for defaming a victim of that rape. How do you square
your endorsement of Donald Trump with the testimony we just saw?"</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The judges concluded that Trump was not responsible for
rape, which under New York State law requires penile penetration. However, they
found that the New York businessman had committed sexual assault in what is
commonly considered rape. So, there is that.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nevertheless, Donald Trump is the guy who is <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=access+hollywood+tape&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS798US798&oq=access+hollywood+tape&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQABiABDINCAIQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAMQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAUQABiGAxiABBiKBdIBCDU3MzVqMGo0qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:df7143b3,vid:fYqKx1GuZGg,st:0">on tape</a>
admitting that he sexually assaults women and Stephanopoulos would have been
committing journalistic malpractice had he not asked Mace about her unqualified
support for a guy who has bragged about doing what he wants, when he wants,
with whatever woman he wants.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Instead of defending Trump as the Republican more likely to
defeat the devilish Joe Biden nor as a candidate who promotes conservative
values or causes, Mace turned on Stephanopoulos, who questioned her relentlessly while remarking "you've talked courageously about that" (being raped).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nonetheless, the congresswoman persisted in dishonestly<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-3-10-24-transportation-secretary-pete/story?id=107966303"> condemning</a> Stephanopoulos, completely without cause, trying to gin up resentment against him.. Last November, as Republicans were
flopping around trying to elect a Speaker of the House, Representative Dusty
Johnson, a Republican from South Dakota, outed Nancy Mace as a self-absorbed narcissist. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">This is one of Nancy Mace’s own colleagues in the House Republican Conference.<br /><br />Our two political parties don’t often see eye to eye.<br /><br />But when it comes to Mace, everyone agrees: She’s one of the most self-serving, unserious members of Congress.<a href="https://t.co/d8i9raDeNe">pic.twitter.com/d8i9raDeNe</a></p>— Michael B. Moore (@michael_b_moore) <a href="https://twitter.com/michael_b_moore/status/1767553588686139620?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 12, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"This is a time," Johnson asserted, when we need
people who are interested in problem-solving, not self-aggrandizement. At about
the same time, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/176609/leaked-staff-handbook-shows-real-reason-nancy-mace-voted-mccarthy">The New Republic</a> (not behind a paywall) noted that The <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/nancy-mace-blows-up-at-george-stephanopoulos-over-trump-rape-case">Daily Beast </a>(possibly behind a paywall)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>examined the South Carolina representative’s staff handbook
and interviewed several of her former staffers. The main message was clear: All
eyes should be on Mace at all times.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“Are we in a P.R. firm, or working for a member of
Congress?” a former senior aide said they repeatedly asked themselves while
working for Mace.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The handbook, which Mace reportedly wrote herself, includes
clear instructions for making sure the congresswoman gets the most attention
possible.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Staffers are also expected to book Mace at least 15
television appearances per week: a minimum of nine spots on national channels
(between one and three times a day) and six or more times on local outlets. And
to get on television, she’ll pull stunts—like strip the House speaker of his
gavel.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Former staffers criticized Mace’s decision to vote to oust
former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Mace later used her vote to cast herself as a
maverick, fundraising aggressively off the move.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>But according to a former senior aide, she didn’t actually
care all that much. “She saw the votes on the board and said, ‘Fuck it, I’m
just gonna vote for it just so I can go on TV and talk about it.’”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Mace also has other staff metrics with the hope of getting
her on television. Staff are required to send out at least one press release
per day, an unusually high rate....</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Daily Beast reviewed other internal documents from
Mace’s office, including her office budget. She has dedicated more than a third
of her office’s annual $500,000 budget for “marketing,” a word almost unseen on
Capitol Hill.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“It is not normal for a member to prioritize media and comms
over actual legislation like that,” a second former Mace staffer told The Daily
Beast. “In my experience with and in other offices, comms serves to promote
what the member is doing legislatively. In Mace’s office, legislation served to
get her more media opportunities.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So this is United States Representative Nancy Mace. George
Stephanopoulos was not not blaming the rape on her, not questioning her
decision to go public about the incident, nor in any way to shame her. If he
had been, it wouldn't have been successful, anyway, for Nancy Mace is
shameless. Nancy Mace is no whore, but
she is an attention whore.</p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-48643513423438574632024-03-11T10:42:00.000-04:002024-03-11T10:42:49.656-04:00Over-Correction, a Symptom<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">After the first inning, the score is: Trump 1, Biden 0.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Asked about his State of the Union message by MSNBC's
Jonathan Capehart on Saturday</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>the president also said that he regrets using the word
“illegal” to describe the undocumented immigrant who is charged with killing a
22-year-old nursing student in Georgia.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“During your response to [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s]
heckling of you, you used the word ‘illegal’ when talking about the man who
allegedly killed Laken Riley,” Capehart said.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“An undocumented person. And I shouldn’t have used
‘illegal.’ It’s ‘undocumented,’” Biden said.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“So you regret using that word?” Capehart pressed him.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“Yes,” Biden replied.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The statement marks an apparent reversal from what Biden
said Friday. While at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, the president was asked,
“Do you regret using the word ‘illegal’ to describe immigrants last night,
sir?”</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“Well, I probably — I don’t re — technically not supposed to
be here,” he responded.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>During his State of the Union speech Thursday night, Biden
used the term “an illegal” to describe Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan who
was previously arrested by federal authorities after having crossed the border
into the U.S. Ibarra has been charged with killing 22-year-old nursing student
Laken Riley. The president did not mention Riley’s case in his MSNBC interview.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VqB3QEwGl0I?si=kWz6rer9F_yB8aIe" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Memorandum to Capehart: the President did not use the word
"illegal" to <i>describe</i> immigrants. He used it as a noun, which it is
not, as a substitute for "illegal immigrants." There are illegal
immigrants as there are legal immigrants; illegal immigration and legal
immigration. "Illegals" is pejorative; "illegal immigrant" is descriptive, accurate, and objective.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Memorandum to Biden: However the left likes to use it,
"undocumented person" is not synonymous with illegal immigrant. Born
in the USA, I was "undocumented" when I was 16, before earning a
driver's license. Or not- because no one would have used the term
"undocumented" before "undocumented immigrant" or
"undocumented person" was invented to avoid saying "illegal
immigrant."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Initially, Biden uses the
pejorative "illegals," then condones illegal immigration by invoking
"undocumented person" as if the individual is late going to the DMV.
Joe Biden cannot <i>ignore</i> addressing publicly the immigration issue but faces the problem of how to do so. It's an issue he's very uncomfortable with.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Additionally, he's playing on Donald Trump's turf. And so
after Biden<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-says-regrets-using-term-illegal-describe-suspected-killer-laken-riley/"> acknowledged the error</a>, his immediate predecessor was joined at a rally in Rome,
Georgia by the parents of Laken Riley, the University of Georgia student who
while jogging was murdered, allegedly by an illegal immigrant. And</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Trump, in a lengthy speech that lasted nearly two hours,
hammered Biden on the border and for mispronouncing Riley’s name during his
State of the Union address this past week.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“What Joe Biden has done on our border is a crime against
humanity and the people of this nation for which he will never be forgiven,”
Trump charged, alleging that Riley “would be alive today if Joe Biden had not
willfully and maliciously eviscerated the borders of the United States and set
loose thousands and thousands of dangerous criminals into our country.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Trump, who had made immigration a centerpiece of his
campaign, has repeatedly vowed to mount the largest deportation in the nation’s
history if he wins.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>He contrasted his rhetoric with Biden’s — “I say he was an
illegal alien. He was an illegal immigrant. He was an illegal migrant” — and
accused Biden, who has long been seen as an empathetic leader, of having “no
remorse. He’s got no regret, he’s got no empathy, no compassion, and worst of
all, he has no intention of stopping the deadly invasion that stole precious
Laken’s beautiful American life,” Trump said.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>He added “Joe Biden went on television and apologized for
calling Laken’s murderer an illegal,” he said to loud jeers and boos. “Biden
should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In contrast to his upcoming opponent, the incumbent
President clearly is out of his element, because of age or otherwise, when
talking about immigration. When Representative Greene suckered Biden with
"say her name," Biden held up a pin reading "Say Her Name, Laken
Riley"- then proceeded to refer to her as "<a href="https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football/state-of-the-union-biden-lincoln-riley">Lincoln Riley</a>," who is 3,000 miles away on the West Coast.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9oMuHigVJXc?si=AjNDMv8fz8SaWBiz" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Condemning the President, Trump in Rome added "Joe Biden went on television and apologized for calling
Laken's murderer an illegal. Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to
this killer."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Ouch. That's what's known as game, set, match. Actually, not
"match" yet- that would be the election. However, when one is trying to prove that he is aware of the huge border problem and is not cognitively impaired, getting the name wrong of a violent crime victim and later apologizing for what he has called the accused perpetrator does not inspire confidence. </p><p class="MsoNormal">It's not too educate
the President of the USA on immigration. However, it's going to take someone in his circle who understands the issue much better than does the boss.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-82556260474084204192024-03-09T17:05:00.002-05:002024-03-09T17:05:26.562-05:00Valuable Point<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">A particularly good, traditional line invoked to ridicule
and repudiate a fascistic comment goes something similar to "I liked it
better in the original German." Think Donald Trump remarking of immigrants
"they are poisoning the blood of our country." Altered slightly- but significantly- the tenor of the quote
can be used to describe various things, even approvingly.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fervently praising President Biden's <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/read-president-bidens-2024-state-of-the-union-address-annotated/3562330/">State of the Union address</a>, at 20:13 of the video
(with bad audio) below, Max Brooks, author and son of Mel Brooks, is seen
remarking on Real Time with Bill Maher</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>There was- there was something buried in his speech that I
think needs to get a lot more play- when he talked about billionaires paying
their fair share. You know, remember when Obama said you didn't build that and
got shouted down. He should have doubled down because there is a bond between
the state and the marketplace and Biden's (word indistinguishable to me)
because it's not that we don't want Bezos to make billions of dollars.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>We do. But he can only make his billions because his trucks
drive on roads that I pay for, that his workforce is educated in public schools
that I pay for, that his drivers got driving licenses at DMV's that I pay for.
And the cops that protected vans that I pay for and the entire global supply
chains protected by the United States military that I, the taxpayer, pay for.
So I am paying my fair share and all I want is for billionaires to pay theirs.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jp638geI_uA?si=5Rijk5fJpNf8fY7h" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">It's an excellent point and Obama did get dumped upon when
in July, 2012 he<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/07/did-obama-say-if-youve-got-a-business-you-didnt-build-that"> commented</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>... look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on
your own. You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who
think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart
people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let
me tell you something - there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out
there.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you
some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to
create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to
thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business. you
didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get
invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the
companies could make money off the Internet.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of
our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are
some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own. I mean, imagine
if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize
fighting fires.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The remark was uncharacteristic of Obama both because it was
not particularly well-crafted while being unabashedly progressive. It's a
critically important point- but I preferred it in the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/elizabeth-warren-has-one-less-challenger-and-a-viral-video/">original Warren</a>, of
September 2011:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.
Nobody,. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear:
You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired
workers the rest of us paid to educate. You built a factory, and it turned into
something terrific or a great idea: God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part
of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward
for the next kid who comes along.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AHFHznu-N-M?si=Td9WAqTzs-xk9BNo" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Barack Obama got re-elected. Elizabeth Warren won the
Democratic nomination, as expected, for U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and won
the general election and re-election in the heavily Democratic state, then got
pummeled in her bid for a presidential nomination. Much more narrowly, Hillary Clinton invoked a related idea in 2016 with "it takes a village." We all know how that turned out.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Max Brooks believes Biden's similar statement "needs to
get a lot more play," and it very much does... on merit. The voting
public- let alone corporate interests, which hate such sentiment
publicly expressed- seems to be in no mood for such an argument. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Americans are in mood at this dark and disturbing time.
Communitarianism is out, conflict is in.
Still, some things have to be said, no matter the anger it invokes in
the moneyed interests or disinterest in the media- and whether in the original
Warren or emulated by a President or two.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-48041634648780388572024-03-07T16:17:00.003-05:002024-03-07T16:17:49.804-05:00Self-Respect<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Donald Trump was right, and good for Charles Barkley for
taking advantage of it. In the famous and infamous Hollywood Access tape,
then-presidential candidate Trump boasted</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- I just
start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait, And when
you're a star they let you do it ... You can do anything.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Trump was talking about sexual harassment and assault.
Ironically, with that understanding, the NBA Hall of Fame forward, as <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/tv/charles-barkley-goes-off-on-black-people-wearing-trump-mugshot-merch-you-are-a-freakin-idiot/">reported</a>
by Mediaite</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>went off at the beginning of Wednesday’s edition of King
Charles on CNN, where he expounded upon remarks he made over the weekend.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Barkley’s co-host Gayle King noted that he made waves on
Saturday when he declared, “If I see a Black person walking around with a Trump
mugshot, I’m gonna punch him in the face.”<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>On Wednesday, Barkley cited comments by Trump in a speech to
Black conservatives in which the ex-president claimed Black voters like him
more since he was indicted four times.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“And then I got indicted a second time and then a third time
and a fourth time!” Trump told the crowd. “And a lot of people said that that’s
why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and
discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as– I’m being discriminated
against. It’s been pretty amazing.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Barkley blasted Trump and Black people who would wear merch
featuring the former president’s mugshot that was taken when he was indicted in
Georgia after he tried to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Number one, obviously, I’m not gonna go around punching
random strangers in the face – first and foremost. Secondly, people can vote
for who they want to. People can vote for who they want to.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The point I was trying to make, no, the point I was making,
I wasn’t trying to make it – when Donald Trump compares his plight with that of
the Black person, that is what I had a problem with.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Now, I do wanna say this. I want to make it perfectly clear…
If you’re a Black person and you wearing a Donald Trump mugshot, you are a
freaking idiot. And I’m only saying “Freakin’ idiot ’cause they won’t let me
say what I really wanna say. But you can figure it out. It starts with an F.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Later, he reiterated his “freakin’ idiot” stance:</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>BARKLEY: I’ll stick by what I said. If you’re wearing a
Trump mugshot around, you are a freakin’ idiot.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>KING: But you aren’t gonna go just randomly attacking people
in the street. That’s the only point I wanted to make.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>BARKLEY: Unless they had Trump sneakers on too</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Whether the person is an idiot or lacks self-awareness is
open for debate. If blacks want to wear a shirt with a Trump mugshot, it's not
going to offend white people. Heck, ever since Richard Nixon's<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV_14O5wuDM"> 1968 mantra</a> about a need for "law and order" to eradicate "crime in the
streets," many- if not most- whites have associated crime with blacks.
Laurel and Hardy, soup and salad, burger and fries, blacks and violent crime-
it plays a role in every chapter in every playbook of conservative Republicans.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Charles Barkley can say what others can't because he was a
hoops superstar and now is a star on probably the most famous and most popular
studio show in all of professional team sports. He can say "I'm gonna
punch him in the face" and there are even a few Trump admirers who
will give "Sir Charles" a pass because he pledged violence-
metaphorically, not literally, but still.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So try a little self-respect, folks, and not celebrate a
crooked politician who thinks victims of racial discrimination and criminals
are bedfellows. And don't even think about buying those gaudy, ugly murders.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b2-UY2hmaY8?si=zWT5ifdLvsTomjb_" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-64409964994672388772024-03-05T13:42:00.000-05:002024-03-05T13:42:33.586-05:00When You Imply Termination of the Constitution is a Small Matter<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Senator Chris Murphy<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-3-3-24-sen-chris-murphy/story?id=107747315"> appeared</a> Sunday on ABC's <i>This Week </i>without
George Stephanopoulos. After giving a bad answer on immigration (roughly: we
need to address the border but once people are here, even illegally, welcome!),
he was asked by correspondent/host Jonathan Karl</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Okay, I want to turn to what we saw in Michigan, where over
100,000 Democrats went to the polls and voted non-committed, obviously a
protest vote to the president’s handling of the situation in Gaza. How
concerned, as a political matter, should Democrats be?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Connecticuter (Connecticutite?) replied<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>I don’t think we should be concerned about this as a
political matter because this is such a critical issue relative to America’s
national security and the security of the Middle East. I would hope that the
president doesn’t make decisions about what to do in Gaza or the Middle East
based upon how the votes lined up.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Listen, I think it is time for the president to use all the
levers that he has to get a long term ceasefire. I think if that ceasefire
doesn’t come in, it’s in Israel’s interest for them to pause military activity
to solve the humanitarian crisis. But to the extent the president is using
additional leverage on Israel, he should do that for national security reasons,
not for political reasons. These issues are too important to be dictated by the
polls.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch, a fervent critic of Israeli policy, is incensed:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I used to be a big Chris Murphy fan but no more. It's not because I disagree on Gaza. It's telling voters that they don't matter. How dare he. This is as undermining of democracy just as bad as anything Trump has ever said <a href="https://t.co/EDWrgTSCFW">https://t.co/EDWrgTSCFW</a></p>— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) <a href="https://twitter.com/Will_Bunch/status/1764436877765939321?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 3, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Murphy's statement was political boilerplate. Scratch a
politician and the politician will claim that he or she has taken an action not
to be politically popular but because it is the right thing to do. That is virtually
identical to "I would hope that the President doesn't make decisions about
what to do in Gaza or the Middle East based upon how the votes lined up.</p><p class="MsoNormal">This is serious business, and not only Israeli bombing of
Gaza and Hamas' brutal, sadistic slaughter of civilians which proceeded
it. The future of our ally and of the
Jews, Christians, and Muslims of the region is at stake, presenting nearly unprecedented danger and opportunity. They are, in fact, "too
important to be dictated by the polls."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The senator clearly is not "telling voters that they
don't matter." He's explaining that people matter and national security
matters. For all the voters who are as hostile to Israel as Bunch- and are as
favorable to Israel as (for example) U.S. Representative <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/27/rep-ritchie-torres-is-israels-loudest-house-supporter-00123969">Ritchie Torres</a>- the impact upon the
election of Biden's policy in Gaza will be affected less by the current
preferences of the ideologically committed than by the outcome of the war.
Hence, policy matters.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If Bunch believes that Murphy's statement "is as
undermining of democracy just as bad as anything Trump has ever said, his
memory fails him. It was in December of 2022 that Donald J. Trump, complaining
about the 2020 presidential election<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/03/politics/trump-constitution-truth-social/index.html">, asserted </a>on Truth Social "A Massive
Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules,
regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So Will Bunch believes forming Mideast policy based on
national security rather than sentiment of voters is as bad as terminating the
United States Constitution. Or maybe, hopefully, he does not. An excellent
columnist, Bunch when tweeting allows his typing fingers to race ahead of his
brain. But then, maybe that's what social media is all about.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-25572022548923670972024-03-03T19:42:00.003-05:002024-03-03T19:42:59.573-05:00Recipe for Surrender<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Ro Khanna presumably means well. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ro-khanna-face-the-nation-transcript-03-03-2024/">Interviewed</a> by Margaret Brennan on Sunday's
<i>Face the Nation</i> on CBS, the U.S. Representative from California concedes
"everyone agrees Hamas is a terrorist organization. What they did on
October 7 is brutal. It should be condemned unequivocally."</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He then immediately calls for a de factor Israeli surrender,
remarking "But the point is, now, it's time to get a permanent ceasefire
and release of the hostages, and the President can do it, with one call he can
do it."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That's what President Biden is working on. However, unlike
the appeasement caucus, the President at least intends to extract assurance
that all hostages be released in return for a permanent ceasefire.. Asked by Brennan about the possible political
danger Biden faces if he continues to support Israel, Khanna responded</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>.... he can turn it around, not just by calling for a
ceasefire, if he becomes the first American President to convene Gulf allies,
to convene Israel to convene municipal leaders in Palestine and civic society
and said, I'm going to get this done. I'm going to recognize a Palestinian
state, I'm going to have a two state solution, and I'm going to recognize that
the security of Israel matters, that the end of occupation matters, he can
become a hero.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Rep. <a href="https://twitter.com/RoKhanna?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RoKhanna</a> (D-CA) says President Biden "needs to do something bold" as CBS News polling shows him struggling with his base. He suggests Biden should "call for a cease-fire" in Gaza and be the first president to "recognize a Palestinian state" and "have a two-state solution." <a href="https://t.co/teH1rhAMyg">pic.twitter.com/teH1rhAMyg</a></p>— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) <a href="https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1764336837412217223?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 3, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<p class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, the congressman wants the President to
"recognize a Palestinian state" going into the gathering. He calls
for a Palestinian state immediately after calling on Biden to convene
interested parties and "municipal leaders in Palestine." Khanna therein already has recognized a
Palestinian state- "municipal leaders in Palestine." He wants the USA to create a Palestinian
state, which he believes already exists.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If that seems like a contradiction, you've been paying
attention. It makes as little sense as does the idea of the President speaking
to Gulf allies at the same time he speaks to Palestinian leaders (whomever they
are and whomever they purport to represent).</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Gulf nations may be key to a long-term solution because of
their resources (read: money); some have serious financial resources; and they
have similar antipathy toward ethnic Palestinians as does the Netanyahu
government.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Administration should iron out a proposal with Saudi
Arabia, which believes Israel must accept a two-state solution for a viable
solution. Once a framework is reached with Riyadh, those amorphous Palestinian
leaders and the Israeli government should be brought into negotiations. Biden
should get buy-in from nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan
(approximately half of whose population is ethnic Palestinian) before squeezing
the two warring parties.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A two-state solution must be negotiated, not declared in
existence by fiat. By contrast, Ro
Khanna and the appeasement caucus already have decided that the USA should call
for a ceasefire, only then hammering out
an agreement, which may or may not include release of all hostages. If the
Biden Administration acquiesces to that approach, Hamas will be the
unquestioned winner of the war it initiated with a slaughter of Israeli
citizens.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-7257485270712847342024-03-01T12:05:00.003-05:002024-03-01T12:05:16.123-05:00This Is Missouri, and Andy Reid is Part of the Problem<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Andy Reid was once a bad football coach. Then he lucked into
his Kansas City Chiefs drafting the greatest quarterback God ever created and
the rest, as the cliche goes, is history. At the team's last Super Bowl parade
on Valentine's Day, bystander Lisa Lopez Galvan was murdered and 22 other
individuals wounded. <a href="https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/togetherness-and-love-andy-reid-reflects-on-shooting-after-chiefs-super-bowl-parade-rally">Offering his condolences</a> at the NFL combine on February
27, Mr. Reid missed the boat when </div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>In his first press conference since the tragic shooting on
Feb. 14, Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and general manager Brett
Veach offered their condolences to the families affected.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>I want to share my condolences for the Galvan and Lopez
family for their loss of Lisa, and for the people of Kansas City. She was a
personality there, and a very good human being, first of all. We’ll all miss
her, as I know her family will....</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Stop, Andy, stop- oh, no:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Just a positive word on Kansas City: That’s not what Kansas
City is all about,. And for our youth of America, that we gather together and
make this great, you’re our future and as great as we can make this place, we
want to do that. So we can turn this, which was a negative, into a real
positive. With just a little togetherness and love we can fix a lot of
problems.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If Reid had simply offered condolence, his would have been
an appropriate remark. But he didn't leave it at that, adding "that's not
what Kansas City is all about."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yes, it is what Kansas City is about, though not by
choice. The pro-gun safety <a href="https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/state/missouri/">Everytown</a> has
found that the State of Missouri has only the ninth strongest set of gun laws
in the country and 244 gun deaths per 100,000 residents in a nation of 144 gun
deaths out of 100,000 residents. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The alleged Super Bowl assailant, 23-year-old<a href="https://www.kctv5.com/2024/02/29/murder-suspect-chiefs-rally-shooting-hospital-case-continued-march-4-hearing/"> Lyndell Mays</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>was wounded in the
shooting but was released and booked into the Jackson County Detention Center.
However on Thursday morning, he did not show for a bond review hearing because
he had been taken back to the hospital.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The murder suspect still has no legal representation for his
case. His hearing has been continued for March 4.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Prosecutor Jean Peters-Baker stated that an argument took
place at the Chiefs rally, and Mays was the first person to pull out a gun. The
prosecutor stated that multiple others pulled out firearms, including Dominic
Miller.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Peters-Baker stated that it was Miller’s gun that fired the
bullet that struck and killed Lopez-Galvan.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Two teens face gun-related charges as well as resisting
arrest in the shooting. Another person was charged with unlawful possession of
a firearm but was said to not be involved in the shooting.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Kansas City police chief Stacey Graves said the shooting
appeared to be the result of an argument between two groups of people.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Detectives stated that Mays was involved in some kind of
argument and pulled out a firearm, later determined to be stolen. Mays then
proceeded to chase one of the people in the group while pointing his gun at the
person. At that point, others also drew out their guns and pointed them at
Mays, according to the document.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Mays then was seen in surveillance video chasing an unarmed
person and firing his weapon. He was then struck by gunfire and fell to the
ground.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Mays admitted to law enforcement at the hospital that he
pulled his gun out first and fired.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“When asked why Lyndell Mays advanced on them to begin with,
he replied, “Stupid, man. Just pulled</i> a <i>gun out and started shooting. I
shouldn’t have done that. Just being stupid,” the court document stated.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">(Mays and another man have been charged.)</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A6CKpitq_qE?si=vmjl5KcH8kBDlJh1" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Mays now has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/20/us/mays-kc-charging-docs.html">charged</a> with Felony Murder, Unlawful Use
of Weapon, and two counts of Armed Criminal Action. He has not been charged
with illegal possession of a weapon or with bearing a concealed weapon. because he appears to have<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Missouri"> legally</a> possessed the weapon and concealed carry is
permissible in Missouri. Lovely.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If Reid wanted to be constructive, he need not have been
overtly political by calling for stronger gun laws. Very much respected and popular in
much of Missouri, he asserted the need "to fix a lot of problems" and
whatever that means, it is <i>not apolitica</i>l. Reid could have been <i>overtly</i> political- not partisan- and called for gun safety. </p><p class="MsoNormal">That could have been accomplished without calling for gun <i>legislation </i>by simply decrying the proliferation of weaponry on the streets of Kansas City or of Missouri or of the nation (his choice). Failing to do that, and going beyond merely expressing appropriate sympathy for the victim's family and other loved ones, he remarked "with
just a little togetherness and love we can fix a lot of problems."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kumbaya, my Lord. "A little togetherness and love"
will "fix a lot of problems" made no sense when John Lennon wrote
"All You Need is Love," utopian nonsense which became "an anthem
for the counterculture's embrace of flower power philosophy." </p><p class="MsoNormal">That was in
1967, before the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy;
the Vietnam War; the Iran hostage crisis and the rise of terrorism; the
Reagan-led evisceration of government as a force for good; the hard drug
culture and the concurrent explosion in violent crime of the '80s and '90s; the
counter-productive wars in Iran and Afghanistan; the election to the presidency of a proud
practitioner of sexual assault. And Andy Reid calls for "a little
togetherness and love." It was pie-in-the-sky then, less realistic now, and encourages us to wish our problems away.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kansas City itself, except for the individuals involved in
this incident, is not responsible for the crime(s) committed at the tail end of
the parade. Nonetheless, contrary to the statement of the grossly overrated
Kansas City head football coach, this is what Kansas City <i>is</i> about. It's what
Kansas City is about because it is what Missouri is about.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It's tempting to say this is what <i>America</i> is all about. Yet
that would be approximating the Andy Reid perspective in which we won't call out
evil, merely say that "we can fix a lot of problems" wherever they are, as if all are equally dire and we all bear equal responsibility. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Any professional athlete and coach can comment on current events if he or she wishes.
But anyone choosing to do so should seek solutions, not feign concern with
empty platitudes.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-2347064360120165362024-02-28T15:58:00.001-05:002024-02-28T15:58:37.062-05:00The Banish Jews Caucus<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Representative Moskowitz's post followed a<a href="https://nypost.com/2024/02/28/media/anderson-cooper-snaps-at-nina-turner-over-slaughter-in-gaza-comment/"> panel discussion</a> with Anderson Cooper in which the CNN host wanted to discuss the implications of the "uncommitted" vote in the Michigan Democratic primary rather than the Mideast policy of the Biden Administration. The larger point, however, is suggested by a predictable tweet from leftist activist Nina Turner, to which the proper response is "Would you prefer "Nazi-like?"</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">No. Humanizing Palestinians is not antisemitism. Period.<br /><br />I want peace for ALL people, and that *includes* Palestinians.<br /><br />What we’re not going to do is erase the pain of Palestinians and the horrors of what’s happening in Gaza. <a href="https://t.co/DHhJfGb06S">https://t.co/DHhJfGb06S</a></p>— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) <a href="https://twitter.com/ninaturner/status/1762872541985517921?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br /><p>Not all opposition to Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas is rooted in anti-Semitism or anti-Jewish animus; maybe not even a majority. Nonetheless, "would you prefer (to be called) Nazi-like," while a little extreme, is more than snarky. The San Francisco Chronicle<a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/uc-berkeley-talk-israeli-lawyer-halted-violent-18692073.php"> reports</a></p><p><b>Hundreds of anti-Israel student protesters broke down the
door of UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse on Monday night, smashing a window
and preventing an Israeli speaker from addressing a few dozen Jewish students.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Danielle Sobkin, one of the organizers who invited Israeli
lawyer Ran Bar-Yoshafat, said the mob grabbed a sophomore who tried to attend
the event, called him a “dirty Jew” and spat on him. She said that protesters
also shoved a senior into the auditorium door as she tried to check in
attendees, and that they grabbed a freshman by her neck.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>“This isn’t an isolated incident. This is a continuous trend
that’s persisted my entire time on campus. Jewish hate. The targeting of Jewish
students,” said Sobkin, co-president of Bears for Israel, one of three Jewish
groups that invited Bar-Yoshafat.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>“For a lot of us, this was the tipping point. The last
straw,” she said, noting that she’s seen anti-Israel graffiti for years on
campus, and said that for nearly two weeks, anti-Israel protesters have
partially blocked the iconic Sather Gate broadcasting the sounds of war...</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>(Dan) Mogulof, the campus spokesperson, said the university
is investigating the Monday incident, in which many students covered their
faces with masks and Palestinian scarves known as keffiyehs.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The Not Anti-Jewish protestors evidently passed on the
Courage 101 for Human Beings Course. John Lewis, they're not. The incident had
its genesis (if it's not genocidal to use the term beginning the Scripture
accepted by Jews and Christians) when</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Israeli lawyer was originally supposed to speak at
Wheeler Hall, home of the English department. Roughly 50 students sent in their
required RSVPs, and about 30 students “liked” the Instagram invitation from the
three groups, Bears for Israel, Tikvah and Students Supporting Israel.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>But more than 2,200 other students “liked” a post from Bears
for Palestine that urged: “Shut it down: Genocidal murderers out of Berkeley,”
and featured a photo of the speaker labeled “murderer.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>A huge crowd gathered outside Wheeler Hall at 5 p.m. Monday
chanting so loudly that students inside told Sobkin they couldn’t hear their
professors.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>The event shifted to Zellerbach Playhouse, and the
university sent what officials thought would be enough police to protect
attendees.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>“We had a significant number of police at the event — a
number we believed to be sufficient based on past experience — and that clearly
was not the case,” said Mogulof, noting that the university doesn’t disclose
how many officers it deploys.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Meanwhile, the university — and students who support Israel
— may have more to contend with next week.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Bears for Palestine has announced a schedule of events for
its annual “Apartheid Week,” condemning Israel and speaking out on the history
of the Palestinians.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/axXhLtyGFa4?si=E1R9tXz-PJB06j4v" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">During the Apartheid Week, the pro-Palestinian students are
expected also to denounce apartheid, or what has been labeled "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_apartheid_by_country">apartheid</a>," in Mainland China, India, Myanmar and
Sudan. I'm kidding, of course.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">It will be only Israel and at those events or at riots, they
will continue to hold American Jewish students responsible for the actions of
the Likud government of Israel, more than 7,000 miles away. Not anti-Semitic or
anti-Jewish in any way. Nope, not a chance.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-68517820453610982252024-02-26T14:24:00.001-05:002024-02-26T14:24:14.513-05:00Time to Relinquish the Stage<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Senator John Fetterman is funny; also, wrong when he<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/john-fetterman-biden-james-carville-b2470529.html"> says</a></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Like I said, my man [Carville] hasn’t been relevant since
grunge was a thing. And I don’t know why he believes it’s helpful to say these
kinds of things about an incredibly difficult circumstance with an incredibly
strong and decent and excellent president.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fetterman was miffed when, appearing in September on Bill Maher's podcast, longtime Democratic strategist James Carville<a href="https://www.mediaite.com/podcasts/james-carville-warns-somebody-better-wake-the-fck-up-when-it-comes-to-the-2024-election/"> stated</a> that
if the election were two months later, President Biden would lose to Donald
Trump. He added "and so somebody better wake the f_ _ _ up."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wxgE2nDK-gw?si=DETRIoyARvy8j8wE" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">And earlier this month,<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4460817-carville-biden-not-accepting-super-bowl-interview-is-a-sign/"> Carville</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>said President Biden not sitting for an interview before the
Super Bowl is a “sign” of his administration having little confidence in him.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“It’s the biggest television audience, not even close, and
you get a chance to do a 20, 25-minute interview on that day, and you don’t do
it, that’s a kind of sign that the staff or yourself doesn’t have much
confidence in you, there’s no other way to read this,” Carville said in a
recent interview on CNN’s “Smerconish.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>This will be the second year in a row that the president has
not sat for an interview before the big game. Biden’s decision not to
participate comes as he’s been facing bad press in the wake of the release of a
special counsel report on his handling of classified documents.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Shortly after the interview with Carville, and after he had
spoken to him, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/opinion/ezra-klein-biden-audio-essay.html">Ezra Klein</a> expressed similar, much more detailed, concern about
Biden's chances. In his opinion piece in The New York Times, Klein was fairly
effusive about Biden's performance in office and conceded that the President
may be "in command, strong, energetic, compassionate (and)
thoughtful." However, he argues "whether it is true that Biden has it
all under control, it is not true that he seems like he does." Further</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>I was stunned when his team declined a Super Bowl interview.
Biden is not up by 12 points. He can’t coast to victory here. He is losing. He
is behind in most polls. He is behind, despite everything people already know
about Donald Trump. He needs to make up ground. If he does not make up ground,
Trump wins.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The Super Bowl is one of the biggest audiences you will ever
have. And you just skip it? You just say no?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The most famous "just say no" was the campaign,
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/08/nancy-reagan-drugs-just-say-no-dare-program-opioid-epidemic">ultimately unsuccessful</a>, of then-First Lady Nancy Reagan to persuade young
people to reject illegal drugs. The Biden team's "just say no"
campaign is rooted more firmly in reality.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Recently, Nate Silver <a href="https://thehill.com/elections/4476959-nate-silver-urges-biden-reassure-voters-or-stand-down/">wrote</a> "Personally, I crossed the
Rubicon in November, concluding that Biden should stand down if he wasn’t going
to be able to run a normal reelection campaign — meaning, things like conduct a
Super Bowl interview.” The President's handlers aren't trying to sabotage the
boss if they believe their their guy shouldn't conduct the kind of interview
that's done under such friendly circumstances. They believe it would be a risk
for him to do so, a greater risk than running a normal re-election campaign.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This does not bode well for keeping Donald Trump out of the
White House. Nonetheless, the Democratic establishment, as Carville protests,
refuses to consider an alternative. Some, like Fetterman, at least understand
that Biden has been an effective President worthy of re-election. Others do not want to block the path of the first black and first female Vice-President. That's a truly awful reason to stick with a likely loser in November, especially when blacks such as Georgia senator Raphael Warnock and Maryland mayor Wes Moore and women such as Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer could be convinced to stop Donald Trump.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many Democrats have promoted the "but Trump, too" defense of Biden's age. However, as <a href="https://time.com/6693305/biden-age-memory-trump-campaign/">noted</a> in an opinion piece in TIME</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i>A Reuters/Ipsos poll
found that three quarters of Americans, including more than half of
Democrats, think Biden is too old to work in government, with only half of
voters and a third of Republicans saying the same thing about Trump. A January
NBC poll found nearly identical numbers saying they had concerns about Biden’s health, while less
than half of respondents said the same thing about Trump.</i><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">And this is without the Secret Service <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=secret+service+sandbags+joe+biden&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS798US798&oq=secret+service+sandbags+joe+biden&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTEwOTc1ajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&ip=1&vld=cid:b9cf7ec4,vid:VES4hbgQmuo,st:0">sandbagging </a>Mr. Biden for a second time.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">A second Biden term would be unlikely to end on January
20, 2029 because Trump and Biden are not "similarly OLD." One is 77
and the other is 81 and would be 86 on 1/20/29. There typically is little
difference between 37 and 41 or 47 and 51. There is a difference between 77 and
81.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Aside from Silver, Klein, and Carville, there are few
prominent individuals who would vote for the incumbent who will acknowledge
both the difference in age and its importance to voters. There may be enough Democrats
and liberal Independents to pull Biden-Harris across the finish line in
November. But it is a huge risk to take with the future of the country and its representative democracy.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-75673144384440595692024-02-24T19:39:00.001-05:002024-02-24T19:39:04.890-05:00The Natural Rights of Christian Nationalism<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">He's right, you know.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Despite Wheerler's unearned arrogance, <a href="https://twitter.com/HeidiReports?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HeidiReports</a> is absolutely correct. Rights given by a god can be taken away by men claiming to speak for that god. That's exactly the fight we're in now. That's what the Alabama Supreme Court just did with IVF. That's Christian Nationalism. <a href="https://t.co/A2YoaWGNT6">https://t.co/A2YoaWGNT6</a></p>— Andrew L. Seidel (@AndrewLSeidel) <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewLSeidel/status/1761388032706396330?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><br /></p></blockquote></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">In 2021, the conservative author of "The Good Constitution: A Moral Account of U.S. Constitutionalism in Clarence Thomas's Political Thought" approvingly<a href="https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2021/11/78854/"> noted </a>that the Associate Justice in his memoir had written</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b>I led my staffers (especially Ken Masugi and John Marini) in
discussion of the natural-law philosophy with which the Declaration of
Independence, America’s first founding document, is permeated. “All men are
created equal,” Thomas Jefferson had written in 1776. “They are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” That’s natural law in a
nutshell: if all men are created equal, then no man can own another man, and we
can only be governed by our consent.</b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">His "unalienable Rights" work accomplished, Mr. Jefferson returned to the plantation and tended to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/">his slaves.</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">If basic human rights are endowed by the Creator, someone forgot to tell the rulers of the 167 countries which today practice<a href="https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/"> slavery</a>. Admittedly, this includes not only slavery in the classic sense but also forced labor, sexual exploitation, forced marriages, and human trafficking.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Though abiding in Asian countries, in a surprise to all those who smear western civilization as oppressive and decadent, slavery is more prevalent per capita in African and Middle Eastern nations. Wherever, it exists.. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The Creator- or God, as Jefferson presumably meant- did not intend to endow some individuals with the right to own other individuals, nor the right to be owned by other individuals. Slavery is not an expression of individual freedom. (Sorry,<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/haley-addresses-backlash-civil-war-comments/story?id=105968986"> Nikki Haley</a>.) If all men (and women) are created equal and slavery is a real thing, clearly mankind has gone asunder. Where there is no slavery, rights obviously were created by man, even if God the Creator gave mankind the ability to establish those rights. Ultimately, the choice was bequeathed to human beings.</p><p class="MsoNormal">As Przybyla (a great name, if you don't have to go through life spelling it) suggests, Christian nationalism is a thing apart from Christianity. It is not exclusive of Christianity but is in tension with the religion because it contorts theological belief to try to validate political ideology. And radical Islamism has taught us anything, it should be that extremism fueled by religious fanaticism is not a recipe for individual freedom.</p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><ul class="list-disc mt-3 mb-0" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px; list-style-image: initial; list-style-position: initial; margin: 0.75rem 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="p-1 ml-7" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 1.75rem; padding: 0.25rem;"><span class="[&>p]:p-0 [&>p]:m-0" style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="--tw-border-spacing-x: 0; --tw-border-spacing-y: 0; --tw-ring-color: rgba(59,130,246,.5); --tw-ring-offset-color: #fff; --tw-ring-offset-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-ring-offset-width: 0px; --tw-ring-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-scroll-snap-strictness: proximity; --tw-shadow-colored: 0 0 #0000; --tw-shadow: 0 0 #0000; --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; border: 0px solid rgb(229, 231, 235); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.75rem; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></p></span></li></ul></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-76733926522020536602024-02-22T10:31:00.000-05:002024-02-22T10:31:24.688-05:00And "Genocidally" is Not an Adjective<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Respectfully, councilwoman, you've been punked, as the tweeter may have been.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">I was, too, when I saw the tweet with the associated video:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Every single member of Congress - without exception, regardless of party - should be asked if they'd support a measure to expel Ogles.<br /><br />Anything less than a "yes" is an endorsement of this, as far as I'm concerned. Blood-boiling. <a href="https://t.co/jYFJ0Wqu2f">https://t.co/jYFJ0Wqu2f</a></p>— Aidan Smith (@aidan_smx) <a href="https://twitter.com/aidan_smx/status/1760168126531182639?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2024</a></blockquote><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 14px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><br /></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 14px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">The exchange, which was</span></p></div><p><b>caught on video as the activist approached Ogles in
Washington, sparked pushback from local Nashville officials and the
Nashville-based American Muslim Advisory Council....</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>In video of the incident, the activist walks alongside Ogles
and staff members as she has a back-and-forth with the congressman about
mounting civilian deaths in Gaza. Ogles asked the activist if she'd seen
footage of dead Israeli children.<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>"I've seen footage of shredded children's bodies, and
that's my taxpayer dollars going to bomb those kids," the activist said.<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“I think we should kill them all, if that makes you feel
better," Ogles replied.</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Representative Ogles' comment, as shown in the video, was
not met with applause and as the Tennessean adds</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>At-large Metro Council member Zulfat Suara learned about
Ogles' comments while at Tuesday night's council meeting, where the council was
discussing a resolution condemning the display of Nazi symbols, chants and hate
speech in downtown Nashville on Feb. 17.<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Suara said rhetoric like Ogles emboldens people "to
march and preach hate."<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>"In the conflict overseas, I have been very mindful of
what I say and how I say it because I want to make sure that my Jewish friends
are not hurt in what I say, and to make sure that my Palestinian families are
taken care of," Suara said, noting she represents both in her
constituency.<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>"But when legislators at the federal level and the
state level continue to demonize people, continue to only look at one side and
not the other, that's the result that we see on the streets. And I hope that we
will continue to do better. This otherization, this demonization, this 'Kill
them all' is only breaking us apart."</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Houston, we have a problem. Ogles after the word
"better" added "everybody in Hamas." His spokesperson
noted in an email to the paper "The Congressman was not referring to
Palestinians, he was clearly referring to the Hamas terrorist group."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And so he was. However, that did not deter a United States
Representative from the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area from jumping to a
conclusion: <o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">"We should kill them all," said a sitting US Congressman (who will undoubtedly not be censured) genocidally.</p>— Summer Lee (@SummerForPA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SummerForPA/status/1760389461454504149?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div>
This is bad. When I saw the tweet, I assumed the extremely conservative Ogles had in fact asserted, in toto, "kill them all," implying all Palestinians. But he was not. In understandable frustration, he had blurted out the remark "... kill them all, if that makes you feel better." Instead, in adding "kill everybody in Hamas," Ogles was making a comment which, to all opposed to terrorism, is uncontroversial. </div><p>I could suggest that would not include Representative Summers and like-minded individuals. However, that would be making a similar mistake as did the congresswoman, assuming something without definitive evidence. In her case, it was taking as face value a video, which is not only dangerous, but has become increasingly common.</p><p>So we should beware, not assuming any video, wherever it's seen, is completely accurate and not intended to misinform. As Democrats, we must hold ourselves to this standard, lest our credibility as a Party, like that of Republicans, further diminish. And that would include not using terms such as "genocide" or "genocidally" without understanding fully the facts of a complex regional situation.</p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<p></p><p class="gnt_ar_b_p" style="background-color: white; color: #303030; font-family: "Georgia Pro", Georgia, "Droid Serif", serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 14px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><br /></p><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-56371477145053206422024-02-21T09:38:00.006-05:002024-02-21T09:38:54.415-05:00The Ignominious Thirteen<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Say their names.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are fifteen members of the <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/current-members#:~:text=PERMANENT%20AND%20NON%2DPERMANENT%20MEMBERS,Ecuador%20(2024)">United Nations Security Council</a>, of which five are permanent: China, France, Russia Federation, the
United Kingdom, and the United States of America. There are ten temporary
members: Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Republic of Korea,
Sierra Leone, Slovenia, and Switzerland.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Name them because 13 of the 15 now have voted to continue
the war in Gaza. Those 13 have sided with Hamas. And those 13 have endorsed
hostage-taking. The USA vetoed the resolution at the UN Security Council which
demanded an immediate cease-fire while the United Kingdom abstained.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gwhV9b3c9Ko?si=hO9_aCRp6als7NC9" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">There is an alternative to the Algerian-sponsored resolution
which gained overwhelming support in the Security Council but failed upon the
veto of a permanent member. As reported by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics/un-gaza-ceasefire-algeria-resolution-vote-intl/index.html">CNN</a>, last week a meeting in Cairo
which included top-level intelligence chiefs from the US, Israel (and) Egypt
and the Qatari prime minster... failed to achieve a breakthrough." The USA
opposed the terrorist-friendly resolution because, as White House National
Security Council spokesman John Kirby explained after the vote, "we just
weren't able to support a resolution today that was going to put sensitive
negotiations in peril- and that's what we believe this resolution would
do."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The USA has circulated a draft of a resolution which has
circulated an alternative draft resolution which <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna139513">NBC</a> explains "instead calls for a temporary pause in the fighting as part of hostage
negotiations and opposes any ground operation in Rafah."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That would not represent a surrender by Israel, only an
acknowledgment of defeat, a far less reprehensible outcome. By contrast, the resolution vetoed by the USA demanded that Israel lay down its arms and rest on the goodwill of bloodthirsty terrorists to release the hostages they hold. It would in effect have stopped a democratic nation from ridding itself of the greatest threat to its existence. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/us-news/2024/02/20/us-middle-east-envoy-heads-to-region-for-talks-after-veto-of-un-gaza-ceasefire-resolution/">Diplomacy is continuing</a> and there is at least a possibility of the return of a significant number of hostages. It is, as the United Kingdom seems to understand, to permit the world's greatest superpower to forge with Egypt, on whose doorstep hundreds of thousands of Gazans sit, a deal not completely one-sided. We now know that, left to their own devices, the Contemptible 13 would have none of it. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Israel is not satisfied to play the victim. Yet to much of the world, Israel is acceptable only when it is the victim. If it responds in the same manner any other nation would to an effort to wipe it out, that's going too far and the men, women, and children held hostage become mere irritants whose lives are expendable.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-58813151507013205412024-02-19T03:54:00.003-05:002024-02-19T10:00:38.299-05:00Reid's Skewed Perspective<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">In the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7mLNSj3zrE&t=949s">video</a> below, Joy-Ann Reid can be seen answering (at 14:04) a question (at 13:33) about "the ways that black people through time have been treated." In the following lengthy portion of the extremely lengthy response, she advocates reparations (a truly bad idea) for blacks while properly speaking in the third person rather than the first person. Daughter of two professionals, a father from the Democratic Republic of Congo and a mother from British Guiana, Reid comes from a reasonably privileged background. Presumably, she understands that any rationale for reparations does not apply to someone of her ancestral background as she remarks</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i>I mean, to be a black person in- you know, in 2024 in America is to be a state of complete perplexed confusion about what is wrong with a country that hates your history to this day can't admit even the basics of what was done to your ancestors, won't accept any responsibility for the fact that has carried throughout the entirely of the existence of you in this country and thins 60 years of relative freedom is enough.</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i><br /></i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i>Now blacks who can't get into Harvard, now blacks who can't get any more loans, you can't even give each other loans of $20,000 unless white men who get 99% of funding for their businesses. We want a hundred.</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i><br /></i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i><br /></i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i> .
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L7mLNSj3zrE?si=K5dgxpbAjaNP-bVQ" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">The "loans of $20,000 appears to be a reference to President Biden's student loan forgiveness program, although it's unclear, understandable because the MSNBC host evidently is not in a field in which she is expected to speak clearly and cogently. The program, now suspended by the courts, was not sold as racial preference tool and whites (and others) were eligible for it. If there has been racial bias- uh, er- preference- Reid should have explained it. And if banks are giving all white men 99% of the loans requested for their businesses- and rejecting all black applicants- she needs to expose this extreme racial discrimination. She is, after all, a journalist (supposedly).</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Reid employs the general term "blacks" rather than of the smaller universe of "African-Americans. This is especially significant as pertains to individuals being refused admission to Harvard, whose affirmative action program was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/us/politics/supreme-court-admissions-affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html">struck down</a> by the US Supreme Court last June. Three years earlier, the <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/10/15/gaasa-scrut/">Harvard Crimson</a> explored the changing demographics at the university, which prompted creation of the Harvard College Generational African American Student Association. The writer noted that generational African-American is "a label for the community of Black folk who trace their lineage in the United States back for centuries." Therefore</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b>Within Black communities at Harvard, there’s an overarching
belief that GAA representation is disproportionately low, that “we’re in the
minority,” as </b>(then-student Samantha C.) <b>O’Sullivan explains. Every Black student I interviewed — GAA or
not — expressed this as common knowledge.</b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>As a first-year, I once heard from a teaching fellow of the
Introduction to African American Studies course that GAA students make up 10
percent of Harvard’s Black population. For the Class of 2022, that would mean
roughly 17 students.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Brown used to joke “that there were only a few of us on
campus.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Within Harvard’s GAA population today, O’Sullivan has
noticed a seemingly large percentage of biracial students and students who come
from socioeconomically-privileged backgrounds. “If we were to count the number
of GAA students at Harvard who were descended from enslaved people, came from
low income backgrounds, first generation, four grandparents descended from
enslaved people, I feel like that number would be so low — like, maybe one
person. It’s just so, so, so low,” she says.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The demographics seem to have shifted from what they were
decades ago. Professor Cornel R. West ’74 says that, when he was the
co-president of the Black Students Association in the early 1970s, “about 95
percent of the Black folk in the association were Black people from the United
States who had been enslaved in Jim and Jane Crow.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>He continues, “So you [have] a fascinating expansion of what
we mean by Black people, what we mean by African Americans"....</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>“I don’t have the statistics and the University doesn’t
release them, but a large percent of the Black students in the College are
descendants of recent Africans as opposed to being descended from
African-Americans who were enslaved in North America,” says African and African
American Studies professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.</b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">In such a context, "black" takes on a slightly, but significant, meaning than "generational African-American." Harvard fought hard at the Supreme Court, with Reid and the similarly ideologically inclined, cheering it on. Unable to trace her lineage in the USA over a long period of time- and thus not GAA- Reid would be particularly partial to the program at Harvard, which did not <i>broadly</i> embrace black applicants. </div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">The university enthusiastically accepted blacks who do<i> not</i> trace their lineage in the USA back for centuries. Individuals whose descendants were brought to this land as slaves and whose progeny faced segregation, lynching, and other atrocities in this country need not apply. Harvard still would boast of its racial diversity while largely shutting out the victims of what has been termed "America's original sin." </div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Consciously or not, Reid did not explicitly place herself within the cultural group which has endured what she described as "a state of complete perplexed confusion about what is wrong with" the USA. However, she descends into- as she would put it- "a state of complete"- ignorance or bigotry when she claims</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i>And to find out literally Barack Obama's two terms as President are your reparations and Juneteenth, which you already celebrate anyway, is your reparation. And yet, you built this country. You literally, physically, built this country and yet the attitude toward you from a lot of your peers and your fellow citizens is just "shut up" and be grateful.</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i><br /></i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Whites either accept Juneteenth as appropriate recognition as an historical event or don't consider it important in any way. And the whites whom Reid believes consider Obama's two terms as President as reparations don't see Obama's election as payback or righting a wrong. Rather, they think of it as vindication, as hard evidence that the USA isn't the land of bigotry and racism which many individuals such as Reid believe it is.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Those conservatives, similar to many on the left, fooled themselves into thinking that the election (finally) of a black individual to the presidency was more significant than it was. Ironically, they bought into the myth of the left- and of the center- that electing Obama was historic in a pertinent way. Election of a black man did not concretely change anything in this country, and was due to events particular to the time. They included his long-time opposition to an unpopular war coupled with opposition from a candidate apparently quite comfortable with a permanent wartime footing- and who put onto his ticket a truly ridiculous first-term governor. Race was less of a factor than commonly believed and revealed little about the fundamental character of the nation. Sometimes an election is just an election.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Far worse is Reid's contention that "you"- by which she means blacks and only blacks- built this country.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">It was blacks. It also was whites, with contributions from other ethnic groups.<i> We</i> built this- all of us. One wishes Reid would take the more inclusive and expansive view Tom Paxton recognized several decades ago:</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"> <iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qNdMnafHwWI?si=opc1NqYe9dYdXOvd" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
: </div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"> </div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"> </div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-39699210365095363922024-02-17T13:40:00.001-05:002024-02-17T13:40:35.158-05:00Apropos Comparison<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">If the MSNBC host is using "wild" as a synonym of "accurate" and, especially, "apt," his is an insightful <a href="https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1758622023276769346">tweet</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">This is a wild thing to say! <a href="https://t.co/OW0nWlK9rN">https://t.co/OW0nWlK9rN</a></p>— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) <a href="https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1758622023276769346?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 16, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">
<br /><p>New York governor Kathy Hochul in the video above says</p><p><b>.... call out Hamas for what it is. It is a terrorist organization that must be stopped. No- no country should live with that specter over them. And for those who don't understand this dynamic, their own stake in their own country, I'll give you an example. </b></p><p><b>I'm from Buffalo.... if Canada one day were to attack, I'm sorry, my friends, the next day there would be no Canada. I love Canada. We did have the War of 1812. They did burn Buffalo, so there might be a little conflict here. But think about that. There's a natural reaction. You have a right to defend yourself and make sure it never happens again and that is Israel's right. </b></p><p>To give Hayes his due- and to be quite generous- the analogy is a little weird because the government of Canada never would allow, less encourage, much less be a party to, such an attack. It is not only an ally of the USA but is a civilized and peaceful state.</p><p>Nonetheless, Hochul's analogy is accurate because Canada and Buffalo are adjacent to each other, as Gaza is adjacent to Israel. Moreover, the attack of October 7 was not carried out by a bunch of rogue terrorists but by members of the ruling party, Hamas, of Gaza.</p><p>And if recent American history- or common sense- is a guide, we know that what the New York governor is saying is prima facie accurate. It is hard to exaggerate the <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/hamass-october-7-attack-visualizing-data">enormity of the mass murder</a> of Israeli citizens because </p><p><b><span style="background-color: #fcfcfc; color: #080808; font-family: "Publico Text Web", Times, serif;">The October 7 attack is the deadliest per capita terrorist attack since the Global Terrorism Database started data collection in 1970, with a rate of slightly over one person killed per every 10,000 Israelis. This metric adds context for the national impact of the attack and sense of loss for Israel. As President Biden </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-israel-pressure-democrats-rcna119506" style="--tw-blur: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-border-opacity: 1; --tw-brightness: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-contrast: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-drop-shadow: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-filter: var(--tw-blur) var(--tw-brightness) var(--tw-contrast) var(--tw-grayscale) var(--tw-hue-rotate) var(--tw-invert) var(--tw-saturate) var(--tw-sepia) var(--tw-drop-shadow); --tw-grayscale: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-hue-rotate: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-invert: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-rotate: 0; --tw-saturate: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-scale-x: 1; --tw-scale-y: 1; --tw-sepia: var(--tw-empty,/*!*/ /*!*/); --tw-skew-x: 0; --tw-skew-y: 0; --tw-transform: translateX(var(--tw-translate-x)) translateY(var(--tw-translate-y)) rotate(var(--tw-rotate)) skewX(var(--tw-skew-x)) skewY(var(--tw-skew-y)) scaleX(var(--tw-scale-x)) scaleY(var(--tw-scale-y)); --tw-translate-x: 0; --tw-translate-y: 0; background-color: #fcfcfc; border-color: rgba(234,234,234,var(--tw-border-opacity)); border-image: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Publico Text Web", Times, serif;">invoked</a><span style="background-color: #fcfcfc; color: #080808; font-family: "Publico Text Web", Times, serif;"> in his reaction to the attack, it is as if 40,000 to 50,000 Americans had died on 9/11. </span></b></p><p>And even though 40,000 Americans were not killed on 9/11/01, the Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs of Brown University<a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi"> has explained</a></p><p><b>.... we know
that between 280,771-315,190 have died from direct war related violence caused
by the U.S., its allies, the Iraqi military and police, and opposition forces
from the time of the invasion through March 2023. The violent deaths of Iraqi
civilians have occurred through aerial bombing, shelling, gunshots, suicide
attacks, and fires started by bombing. Many civilians have also been injured.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Because not all war-related deaths have been recorded
accurately by the Iraqi government and the U.S.-led coalition, the numbers are
likely much higher. Several estimates based on randomly selected household
surveys place the total death count among Iraqis in the hundreds of thousands.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Several times as many Iraqi civilians may have died as an
indirect result of the war, due to damage to the systems that provide food,
health care and clean drinking water, and as a result, illness, infectious
diseases, and malnutrition that could otherwise have been avoided or
treated. The war has compounded the ill
effects of decades of harmful U.S. policy actions towards Iraq since the 1960s,
including economic sanctions in the 1990s that were devastating for Iraqis.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Despite more than $100 billion committed to aiding and
reconstructing Iraq, many parts of the country still suffer from lack of access
to clean drinking water and housing.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Unlike the attack of October 7, the horrific attack of September 11, 2001 was not launched by one government or state actor upon another's people. The Bush Administration and its supporters claimed a close relationship, now generally seen as widely exaggerated, between Al Qaeda and Iraq President Saddam Hussein. By contrast, Israel was attacked by the governing authority of an antagonist, Gaza. We weren't attacked by Iraq, yet (justifiably or not) started two wars; Israel was attacked by Gaza.</p><p class="MsoNormal">It has responded with ground forces and with bombing, preceded by recommending that Gazan residents in the line of fire to evacuate. These warnings are inadequate but undoubtedly have saved thousands of lives.. These are not numbers reported by the media, let alone taken at gospel truth, as are the numbers of Palestinian lives lost <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-ministry-health-death-toll-59470820308b31f1faf73c703400b033">according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health</a>, an agency in the Hamas-controlled government. (The phrase "according to" or word "says" is uncommon in the centrist and liberal portion of the media.) </p><p class="MsoNormal">As the Watson Institute acknowledges, "no one knows with certainty how many people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since the 2003 United States invasion." But we are expected to swallow whatever number is next spouted by Hamas as casualties in the current war.</p><p class="MsoNormal">If agents of the Canadian government slipped across the northern border and murdered 1,000 or so Buffalonians- let alone 40,000- the governor (whomever she or he might be) would call on the federal government to retaliate. And it would, with massive force, probably beyond what the Netanyahu government has done.</p><p class="MsoNormal">So Chris Hayes should suck it up. He may- apparently won't- promote the idea that<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat"> tit for tat </a>(or tit for much more than tat) is ineffective or does not effectuate world, or regional, peace. But if Hayes wants to argue that we'd take lying down an attack such as that conducted by Hamas, he's ignoring evidence and common sense. And on this matter, exposing himself as a fool.</p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-5260465342238475032024-02-15T19:09:00.002-05:002024-02-15T19:09:25.191-05:00"Voters Have Outright Rejected Dean Phillips"<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez believes she is making sense, <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1757595970383012068">telling Jake Tapper</a></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b>Right now, when it comes to the President's age, folks are talking about how he's 81 but first of all we have to look- first of all, Donald Trump is around the same age- he's 77 years old, they could have gone to high school together.</b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">They didn't. Middle class Joe was in Delaware and attended a private (Roman Catholic) preparatory school in Delaware and Donald J. Trump attended New York Military Academy, a private boarding school 60 miles north of NYC. If they had gone to the same high school, Trump probably wouldn't have been even a freshman while Biden was a senior. Today, they are both seniors. And a lot can happen to an individual between age 82- when Trump would be completing a second term- and age 86, when Biden would be completing a second term. A lot.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">The New York congresswoman continues</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b>.... and beyond that, Donald Trump has ninety-one indictments. And I know who I'm going to choose. It's going to be one of the most successful Presidents in modern American history, that passed the Inflation Reduction Act, that got us the American Rescue Plan, that ensured we could pass one of the largest investments in climate change in U.S. history.</b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b><br /></b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">(Sarcasm ahead.) It's heartening to learn that Ocasio-Cortez is going to vote for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Hopefully, it's not a close call for her. She deserves no argument on assessing Biden "one of the most successful Presidents in modern American history." No doubt, justifiably, she would not suggest a Republican President has been more successful. Therefore- depending upon her definition of modern- the young congresswoman may be comparing the incumbent against Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter. If so, she could have omitted "one of" from her evaluation.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">That may be nitpicking but it's not nitpicking to inform the congresswoman that Donald J. Trump is facing nor 91 indictments but <a href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/07/politics/trump-indictments-criminal-cases/">four indictments</a>. Presumably, she was referring to the 91 total counts with which he is being charged. By going with ninety-one indictments, Ocasio-Cortez was off by nearly 2300%. A rudimentary understanding of criminal justice is not one of the strong points of the congresswoman who, not coincidentally, was one of the most prominent and ardent supporters of the misguided Black Lives Matter movement.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Ocasio-Cortez added</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b>And as far as we know, as we know, virtually all of the filing deadlines have passed. There's already been a primary, voters have outright rejected Dean Phillip. President Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee.</b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">in which AOC describes Biden as "one on most successful presidents in modern American history" -- a statement that shouldn't be controversial on the left but is, sadly <a href="https://t.co/Tf1Kd3EHay">https://t.co/Tf1Kd3EHay</a></p>— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1757595970383012068?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
</b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b><br /></b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Well, of course, they have done so. The Democratic National Committee, in defiance of tradition (and why would tradition matter to a 77-year-old who has spent his entire career in politics), moved the primary in the Republican state of South Carolina. ahead of votes in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. President Biden explained that race was the explicit rationale for the move when he <a href="https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2023/02/07/why-democrats-moved-south-carolina-to-the-start-of-the-2024-presidential-campaign/">wrote the DNC</a></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i>For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process. We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">This is what can happen when individuals, including the President of the USA, prioritize race over everything. The will not level with the public.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">The Democratic Party does not rely on South Carolina in elections. The last time a Democratic nominee captured So. Carolina in a presidential election was in <a href="https://www.270towin.com/states/South_Carolina">1976</a> (remember disco? bell bottom jeans?) and Joe Biden lost the state in 2020 by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/state/south-carolina/president">11.7 percentage points</a>. Knowing he won't win it in 2024, he won't campaign there in the general election. Democrats do not "rely on these voters in elections" nor have they "not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar." Biden gained the nomination in 2020 because of South Carolina's voters, and only because of South Carolina's voters. If he- like most of the Party movers and shakers- didn't recognize that, they wouldn't have maneuvered the state into first place in this cycle's process.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Joe Biden is going to be re-nominated (unless he expectedly withdraws) the Democratic nomination. However, it's not going to be because of the impressive record cited by Ocasio-Cortez in brief. As he realizes, he was nominated in 2020 because of African-American voters and, whatever his mental state now, he was smart enough four years ago to buy himself insurance against rejection by Democratic elites or Democratic voters (of whatever race). Vice-President Kamala Harris may have been a mediocre Senator and bad state Attorney General (both) and is very unpopular but her status as first in line to the presidency has scared away Democrats otherwise considering a challenge to Joe Biden.. Veteran Democratic strategist and Harris supporter Karen Finney was quoted by NBC News last September as <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/democratic-elites-struggle-get-voters-excited-biden-2024-rcna102972">warning</a></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><i>When you had people who were trying to test the waters, the party rose up and made it clear to those individuals- who were mostly white men- that to disrespect the vice president would not be well received by women and people of color within the party. They got a little bit of a smack in the face.</i></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Notwithstanding the congresswoman's claim to the contrary, Joe Biden could, and would, be replaced on the ballot if the Party's power brokers wished. They do not, and it's not because of whatever filing deadlines have passed, because he has governed far better than the last Democratic President (never acknowledged), or because he won big in a Democratic primary against a United States Representative no one outside of Minnesota has heard of. Party establishment could replace Joe Biden on the ballot if it chose but the affront to the vice-president is more important than defeating Donald Trump. </div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">The reason is fairly obvious but cannot be uttered in polite company. Joe Biden appears to be (politically, anyway) dead man walking. But to many Democrats, some things are more important than defeating Donald Trump. </div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-72224973588414304502024-02-13T15:12:00.003-05:002024-02-13T15:12:35.217-05:00The Risk of Multiplying Obama's Mistakes<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Whenever Donald Trump tells a story which includes an
anonymous person addressing him as "Sir," he is lying. However, we're
being told here of plans to encourage Vladimir Putin when</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Former president
Donald Trump ramped up his attacks on NATO on Saturday, claiming he suggested
to a foreign leader that he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell
they want” to member countries he views as not spending enough on their own
defense.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said,
‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect
us?,’” Trump said during a rally at Coastal Carolina University. “I said, ‘You
didn’t pay. You’re delinquent.’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I
would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell
they want.”</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HzOq8a2AOpg?si=8JVVctT1GowKSfhd" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Finally, under President Joseph R. Biden, the USA is taking
action to stem the threat posed by the world's second greatest superpower. This
is occurring after four- no, twelve- years of disregarding the threat posed by
Putin's Russia. During Donald Trump's
term, in February of 2018 in a commentary on the Brookings website, the
Atlantic's Benjamin Haddad and Alina Polyakova of the Center for European Policy
Analysis wrote of our 44th Chief Executive</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Throughout his presidency, Obama consistently underestimated
the challenge posed by Putin’s regime. His foreign policy was firmly grounded
in the premise that Russia was not a national security threat to the United
States. In 2012, Obama disparaged Mitt Romney for exaggerating the Russian
threat—“the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because
the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” Obama quipped.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The zinger was "The 1980s are now calling to ask for
their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years."
It was a mistake in judgement easily made, and I personally fell for the line.
Haddad and Polyakova continue</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>This breezy attitude prevailed even as Russia annexed
Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine, intervened in Syria, and hacked the Clinton
campaign and the DNC. Obama’s response during these critical moments was
cautious at best, and deeply misguided at worst. Even the imposition of
sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine was accompanied by so much
propitiation and restraint elsewhere that it didn’t deter Russia from
subsequent aggression, including the risky 2016 influence operation in the
United States. Obama, confident that history was on America’s side, for the
duration of his time in office underestimated the damaging impact Russia could
achieve through asymmetric means.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Obama’s cautious Russia policy is grounded in three
conceptual errors: a failure to grasp the true nature of the Russian threat,
most clearly visible in his administration’s restrained response to Russia’s
annexation of Crimea in 2014; a “long view” of historical trends which in his
view inexorably “bent” toward liberalism; and the perception that formidable
domestic political obstacles stood in his way when it came to crafting a
response to Putin’s assault on the elections in 2016.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Haddad and Polyakova acknowledge</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Obama’s much-ballyhooed “Reset” with Russia, launched in
2009, was in keeping with optimistic attempts by every post-Cold War American
administration to improve relations with Moscow out of the gate. Seizing on the
supposed change of leadership in Russia, with Dmitry Medvedev temporarily
taking over the presidency from Vladimir Putin, Obama’s team quickly turned a
blind eye to Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia, which in retrospect was Putin’s
opening move in destabilizing the European order.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The twelve years of failure may have been more like twenty
years because</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Like George W. Bush before him, Obama vastly overestimated
the extent to which a personal relationship with a Russian leader could affect
the bilateral relationship. U.S.-Russia disagreements were not the result of
misunderstandings, but rather the product of long-festering grievances. Russia
saw itself as a great power that deserved equal standing with the U.S. What
Obama saw as gestures of good will—such as the 2009 decision to scrap missile
defense plans for Poland and the Czech Republic—Russia interpreted as a U.S.
retreat from the European continent. Moscow pocketed the concessions and
increasingly inserted itself in European affairs. The Kremlin was both
exploiting an easy opportunity and reasserting what it thought was its historic
prerogative.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The analysis has application to the ongoing war Russia
initiated four years later in eastern Europe because</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was the final
nail in the coffin of the Reset, President Obama remained reluctant to view
Moscow as anything more than a local spoiler, and thought the whole mess was
best handled by Europeans. France and Germany spearheaded the Minsk ceasefire
process in 2014-2015, with U.S. support but without Washington at the table.
The Obama administration did coordinate a far-ranging sanctions policy with the
European Union—an important diplomatic achievement, to be sure. But to date,
the sanctions have only had a middling effect on the Russian economy as a whole
(oil and gas prices have hurt much more). And given that sanctions cut both
ways—potential value is destroyed on both sides when economic activity is
systematically prohibited—most of the sacrifice was (and continues to be) born
by European economies, which have longstanding ties to Russia. In contrast, the
costs of a robust sanctions policy have been comparatively minor in the United
States; Obama spent little political capital to push them through at home.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Obama spent little political capital...." can be
applied to much of his time as President. But in their balanced evaluation of
the President's actions toward Russia, the analysts add</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Obama administration also sought to shore up NATO’s
eastern flank through the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI), which
stationed rotating troops in Poland and the Baltics while increasing the budget
for U.S. support. Nevertheless, the president resisted calls from Congress,
foreign policy experts, and his own cabinet to provide lethal weapons to
Ukraine that would have raised the costs on Russia and helped Kyiv defend
itself against Russian military incursion into the Donbas. As Obama told Jeffrey
Goldberg, he viewed any deterrent moves by the United States as fundamentally
not credible, because Russia’s interests clearly trumped our own; it was clear
to him they would go to war much more readily that the United States ever
would, and thus they had escalatory dominance. Doing more simply made no sense
to Obama.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>This timid realpolitik was mixed up with a healthy dose of
disdain. Obama dismissed Russia as a “regional power” that was acting out of
weakness in Ukraine. “The fact that Russia felt it had to go in militarily and
lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not
more,” Obama said at the G7 meeting in 2014. This line has not aged well.
Obama’s attitudes on Russia reflected his administration’s broadly
teleological, progressive outlook on history. Russia’s territorial conquest “belonged
in the 19th century.” The advance of globalization, technological innovation,
and trade rendered such aggression both self-defeating and anachronistic. The
biggest mistake for America would be to overreact to such petty, parochial
challenges. The 2015 National Security Strategy favored “strategic patience”.
But was it patience… or passivity? As its actions in 2016 proved, Russia is
very much a 21st century power that understands how to avail itself of the
modern tools available to it, often much better than we do ourselves.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"Disdain" is a fitting term given that Barack
Obama nonetheless managed to get re-elected, in part because of the disdain
many of us voters have for the importance of foreign policy. His term in
office, however, made it far more difficult for a Democrat to succeed him in
office as</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The same intellectual tendencies that shaped Obama’s timid
approach to Ukraine were reflected in his administration’s restrained response
as evidence of Russian electoral interference began to emerge in the summer.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Statesmen were inadvertently and intentionally sacrificed,
Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney respectively, for President Obama's
foolishness. His was a good faith
stumble into bad foreign policy, though with ramifications continuing to this
day.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">However, naivete about Russia's intent is reaching a whole
new level. Donald Trump long has made his <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/us-out-nato-second-trump-term-former-senior-adviser/index.html">intent clear</a>. At the NATO summit in
Brussels in 2018, President Trump had
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Secretary draw up
orders for the USA to withdraw from NATO despite their opposition and only at
the last minute pulled back. In a video
on his campaign website, Trump <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trumps-threat-nato-allies-draws-condemnation-gop-reflecting-107175299">promises</a> to "finish the process we began
under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's
mission."</p><p class="MsoNormal">From a generally insightful author comes an opinion is that Trump's policy is grounded less in ideology than in self-interest:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Well, no, because Trump is not confused. He’s a Kremlin asset with decades of transnational organized crime ties. He and his partners would benefit from the annihilation of NATO. Trump’s been discussing it since 1987.<br /><br />Quit pretending people are confused when they’re corrupt. <a href="https://t.co/vYbcpVt1BI">https://t.co/vYbcpVt1BI</a></p>— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) <a href="https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1756743095046017038?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 11, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<p class="MsoNormal">Eastern Europe became more dangerous because of President
Obama's policies, though the impact has been felt only the last couple of
years. The effect of the approach, whether impelled by self-interested or misguided principle, in the second term of a Trump Administration
would be devastating not only to Ukraine- and thereafter, probably to its
neighbor(s), It also would open a new front in east Asia if mainland China is
emboldened to invade Taiwan.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Until then, we have a President, old and accused of
senility, who understands the world better than the last Democratic President
and infinitely better than the guy who wants to beat him in November.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-55048337686286993342024-02-11T18:08:00.001-05:002024-02-11T18:08:21.067-05:00Tiny Step Forward<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">At a<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/10/turf-battle-erupts-in-sc-after-trump-questions-haleys-husbands-military-service-00140836"> Get Out The Vote rally</a> at a Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South
Carolina</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away,” Trump said,
appearing to imply Haley was having challenges in her marriage that would
explain her husband’s absence. “What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s
gone.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><b>At her separate rally in Gilbert, South Carolina, Haley
addressed Trump’s comments head on, and again challenged the former president
to a debate.</b></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“I need to start with the fact that Donald Trump had a rally
today, and in that rally, he mocked my husband’s military service,” she began.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>“I have long talked about the fact that we need to have
mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75. Donald Trump claims that
he would pass that — maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. But if you mock the
service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone
being President of the United States.”</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><br /></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AifEIwTDWzA?si=_hdiDXAtiHzaEbx4" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I don't know where in the US Constitution competence tests
are listed as a qualification for federal office but my guess is that Nikki
Haley would have <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4330733-koch-group-afp-action-backs-nikki-haley/">Americans for Prosperity</a> administer those tests.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Last July,<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4116068-haley-says-shell-support-trump-if-hes-2024-nominee/"> the same </a>Nikki</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and
former governor of South Carolina, said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Monday that the country needs a “new generational leader” but added she would
back Trump if he wins the primary.<o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“I would support him because I am not going to have a
President Kamala Harris. We can’t afford that. That is not going to happen,”
she said.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(Rev.com) In
September 27, 2023, the debate stage at the Reagan Presidential Library,
Simi Valley, California, co-moderator Dana Perino asked ".... And candidates, it’s now obvious that if you all
stay in the race, former President Donald Trump wins the nomination. None of
you have indicated that you’re dropping out. So which one of you on stage
tonight should be voted off the island....?
Nikki Haley responded "Are you serious?"</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4391848-haley-says-she-would-only-pardon-trump-if-hes-found-guilty/">In January</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said in an
interview on Fox News that if elected she would pardon former President Trump
only if he were found guilty and would not consider preemptively pardoning him.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>“I think you only do it if someone’s found guilty. So, you
know, what I’ll say is this is about moving the country forward, and the last
thing we want to see is an 80-year-old former president sitting in jail,” she
told the network when asked if she would pledge to pardon Trump preemptively or
only if he was found guilty.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The former President will not be "sitting in a
jail," even if he is convicted and sentenced to a period of incarceration.
It would be prison- not jail- and he would be much more likely to serve such a
sentence with electronic monitoring or some other punishment; so, straw man.
She would not pre-emptively pardon Trump, in part because he might not accept a
pardon because it comes with an assumption of guilt.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Look, <a href="https://twitter.com/NikkiHaley?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NikkiHaley</a>, you supported Trump after he mocked John McCain, attacked a Gold Star family, called fallen military heroes “losers and suckers,” and tried to order military to attack Americans. <br /><br />You said you’d support Trump if he was convicted of a felony. <br /><br />So now he mocks… <a href="https://t.co/89xsm90XFZ">https://t.co/89xsm90XFZ</a></p>— Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) <a href="https://twitter.com/stuartpstevens/status/1756458335354687669?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 10, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yet just as President, Trump<a href="https://apnews.com/article/john-mccain-ap-fact-check-joe-biden-veterans-veterans-affairs-f322b3774b773cc29a527bc6f9b204ad"> lied about veterans</a>; <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-questioned-kellys-sons-sacrifice-on-memorial-day-grave-visit-2020-9">rhetorically asked</a> "I don't get it- what was in it for them?" while at the
gravesite of the Homeland Security chief John Kelly's son, killed in
Afghanistan; objected to the presence of maimed veterans at a military parade
because "nobody wants to see that;" and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/">cancelled a visit </a>to
Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris while remarking "Why should I go
to that cemetery? It's filled with losers."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But now the former President has questioned the military
service of Nikki Haley's husband, and her criticism finally has gone beyond
derogating Trump- and Joe Biden- as "grumpy old men," a stereotype
which would be beneath Nikki Haley if anything were.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">However, no one has asked the candidate if she still would
support the former President if he is nominated for a second term. Nor has
anyone asked whether she still believes that Trump should be pardoned if and
when he is found guilty of a criminal offense.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No one, even at Americans for Prosperity, knows when Nikki
Haley will drop out of the presidential race. Nor does anyone know for sure
what she will do thereafter. However, we do know that it will be whatever
benefits Nikki Haley, and there will be no other consideration.</p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-2144129121440697462024-02-09T19:26:00.008-05:002024-02-09T19:26:58.843-05:00Not Too Late<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">As Fox News White House correspondent, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYN7r9PvD0c&t=18s">Peter Doocy</a> is often
an annoyance to President Biden or his press secretary, past or present. He was
no different on Thursday night when, following up on the President's response to a question of his, Doocy asked
"how bad is your memory and can you continue as President?"</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The President sarcastically responded "my memory is so
bad I let you speak."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What in the name of the Almighty was he talking about? No
one laughed because, obviously, it was neither funny nor clever. And it made no
sense.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OYN7r9PvD0c?si=H--wTBFTqu7s_u9s" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Biden was responding to yesterday's release of the Special
Counsel, who has investigated the classified documents found in the President's
Delaware home (garage, offices, and basement den) and his office at Penn Biden
Center in Washington, D.C. in December of 2022 and the following month. Robert
(not <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frE9rXnaHpE">Ben</a>) Hur, appointed to the position by Attorney General Merrick Garland,
had served as US Attorney in Maryland during the Trump administration.
Recommending that Biden <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/merrick-garland-robert-hur-biden-report-classified-documents-1868504">not be prosecuted</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">"It would be difficult to convince a jury that they
should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a
serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness," Hur wrote. In
the report, he said that during interviews Biden couldn't remember when he was
vice president, and had to ask when his first term ended and began. The report
added that Biden did not remember, "even within several years," when
his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Still, Democratic Party operatives were anxious to spin
furiously:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Let's be clear--the special counsel isn't a dummy and we should be very careful not to take the bait after Comey pulled this in 2016. Hur, a lifelong Republican and creature of DC, didn't have a case against Biden, but he knew exactly how his swipes could hurt Biden politically.</p>— Jim Messina (@Messina2012) <a href="https://twitter.com/Messina2012/status/1755722610929729859?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 8, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This matter is substantively, significantly different than
Comey/Clinton. Hur is not the Attorney General, but a special counsel who was
given the task of investigating the retention of documents and making a
recommendation to the Attorney General. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/white-house-finishes-review-special-counsels-report-biden/story?id=107047339">He</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>"uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully
retained and disclosed classified information after his vice presidency when he
was a private citizen," the report said.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>"These materials included (1) marked classified
documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks
containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security
and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and
methods," said the report.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The FBI reviewed 33,000 <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/3836347-davis-time-to-correct-the-record-again-hillary-clinton-did-not-have-a-single-email-marked-classified/">Clinton emails </a>individually and
found only three emails- later corrected to one- which contained a lower-case
"c" in the middle of a paragraph. Not even classification experts
would recognize that as "classified" without a header which would
immediately expose the report as classified.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nonetheless, Comey<a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system"> announced</a> to the nation on July 5, 2016
that "Hillary Clinton and her colleagues" were "extremely
careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified
information." As of that date,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries"> every Democratic primary</a> (or caucus) had
been held and Mrs. Clinton already had, safely, declared herself winner of the
nomination. She was the presumptive- and certain- Democratic nominee. Whether
or not there was interest, there no longer was the opportunity for any primary
voter to change his or her vote.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By contrast, this is only January and only one
party-sanctioned primary (South Carolina) has been held. There is still plenty
of time to prevent the Hur report from having a significant effect on the
general election- if the candidate is not Joe Biden.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzc5YrA3BR8">mistaken Mexico for Egypt</a> and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/08/joe-biden-kohl-mitterrand-gaffe-age-questions">deceased Helmut Kohl for Angela Merkel</a>, failed to recall when he
became Vice-President or vacated the office, confused the war in Ukraine and
Iraq, forgotten the year of death of the beloved son he often refers to with
great pride... and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnists/2022/09/29/biden-jackie-walorski-memory-lapse-age-generosity/10457566002/">more</a>. It doesn't suffice that he will be running against
Agent of the Devil Donald Trump, with his own, severe, cognitive problems.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Opinions of Donald Trump are largely baked-in. Therefore, if
the President's condition gets progressively worse- as is likely- and Trump's
condition also declines, voters will be alarmed only by Biden's deterioration.
Moreover, in the unlikely event Biden is re-elected, it he probably would not
be able to finish out his second term, either through death or incapacitation.
And given the <a href="https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment25.html">25th Amendment,</a> that would be a tragedy.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-41392943221580588712024-02-07T17:46:00.000-05:002024-02-07T17:46:11.687-05:00Some Are Not So Lucky<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Credit to D.C. Johnston for referring to Paul Whelan. It is unknown, though, whether Tucker Carlson has been a "useful
idiot" or rather strategically shopping a pro-Putin line for fun and
profit or perverse ideological preference.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Tucker -- a useful<br />idiot in Kremlin speak -- meant to say:<br /><br />I'm happily letting a murderous dictator use me as his propaganda tool - while real American journalist Evan Gershkovich of the <a href="https://twitter.com/WSJ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WSJ</a> <br />languishes in prison - because I'm desperate for attention, a coward and a stooge. <a href="https://t.co/bqtkmjd6fe">https://t.co/bqtkmjd6fe</a></p>— David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidCayJ/status/1755003198794760509?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 6, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<p class="MsoNormal">The term probably originated from a 1996 book written by a
Yuri Annenkov, who was commissioned in
1921 to paint a portrait of Vladimir Lenin and who after the dictator's death
was given access to the personal papers of the dictator. He allegedly found that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/12/magazine/on-language.html">Lenin had written</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on
the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim. The whole world's
capitalists and their governments, as they pant to win the Soviet market, will
close their eyes to the above-mentioned reality and will thus transform
themselves into men who are deaf, dumb and blind. They will give us credits . .
. they will toil to prepare their own suicide.'</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Only Tucker Carlson himself knows whether he has willingly
become dead, dumb and blind or instead understands what Vladimir Putin is up to
and approves. In January, a Russian court ordered that the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68111693">Evan Gershkovich</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>be extended until 30 March which means the Wall Street
Journal reporter will spend over one year behind bars as he awaits trial.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Mr Gershkovich, his newspaper, and the US deny the espionage
charges.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>US officials have called for his immediate release.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>"The grounds for Evan's detention are baseless,"
the American embassy in Moscow tweeted on Friday. "Journalism is not a
crime. We continue to call for Evan's immediate release"...</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>It is the fourth time his detention has been extended and as
a result he will continue to be held in Moscow's Lefortovo prison. Mr
Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty...</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US and
Russia were discussing Mr Gershkovich's possible release, and were working to
find a "mutually acceptable" outcome.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The US government has designated the reporter as being
"wrongfully detained", a status which requires it to work to free
him....</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Alsu Kurmasheva, who works for US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is accused of failing to register as a foreign agent and is facing a jail term of up to 15 years.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">And then there is former US Marine <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46757119">Paul Whelan,</a> who was
given a 16-year prison sentence in 2020 after being arrested in Moscow in 2018
for suspicion of spying. When Whelan was not part of a prisoner swap in
December of 2022, President Biden claimed that his Administration "will never give up" on securing release of the Michigan native.</p><p class="MsoNormal">However, Whelan's brother termed the failure to get the Michigan native released a "catastrophe for
Paul." Last December, the prisoner accused President Biden of a "serious betrayal" by, as the New York Post<a href="https://nypost.com/2023/12/21/news/paul-whelan-says-biden-has-abandoned-in-russian-prison/"> put it</a>, "abandoning him in a brutal Russian prison on bogus spying charges." Whelan maintained "they've basically abandoned me." <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">That contrasted sharply with the<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/10/us/brittney-griner-release-us-arrival-saturday/index.html"> case</a> of Britney</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Griner, who was arrested at a Moscow airport in February on drug charges and later sentenced to 9 years in prison, was released as part of a prisoner exchange between the US and Russia for notorious convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.<o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>The swap, which took months to negotiate and has drawn mixed reaction in the US for not also including fellow detainee Paul Whelan, occurred at an airport tarmac in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Shortly after the swap was successfully completed, US officials connected Griner to her family. That call “was as moving as it was unforgettable” to hear Griner speak on the phone with her wife, Cherelle, who was present for an Oval Office meeting, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>“Their strength, their resilience, has been nothing but short of inspiring,” Blinken said.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Blinken said nothing of the strength or the resilience of the Whelan family nor of the family of Evan Gershkovich, who had been arrested eight months earlier while reporting on the Russian war on Ukraine. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Ultimately, the Administration got Britney Griner back because it wanted to get Britney Griner back. It could have been because of her gender, race, sexual preference, or profession. Most likely it was the latter, the clamor from the WNBA to rescue. the women's professional basketball star. "With each case," Paul Whelan maintains, "my case is going to the back of the line." But without Griner's qualifications, every case seems to go to the back of the line.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Something Carlson stated may apply to this situation. "There are risks to conducting an interview like this, obviously,." he says of his attempt to lend credibility to the Soviet dictator. And while there are great risks dealing with Vladimir Putin, the risk in leaving behind anyone but a Britney Griner is very much limited for an American President.</p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-23772619359418989942024-02-05T21:42:00.001-05:002024-02-05T21:42:47.336-05:00Choosing Friends Unwisely<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">The pre-presidency Joe Biden <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1754206954715513083">has returned</a></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1754206954715513083"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong.<br /><br />That’s exactly what can lead to Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate, and it shouldn’t happen to the residents of Dearborn – or any American town.<br /><br />We must continue to condemn hate in all forms.</p>— President Biden (@POTUS) </a><a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1754206954715513083?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 4, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoNtj27a6Rk">What's it all about, Alfie</a> (or Joe)?</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p>On Groundhog Day, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece, written by executive director Steven Stalinsky of the Middle East Media Research Institute, entitled "Welcome to Dearborn, America's Jihad Capital." Outside of Detroit, Dearborn- at 54% of its overall population- has the largest Arab-American population per capita in the USA.</p><p>The column reportedly precipitated a surge in hostility to Muslims. Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud, son of immigrants from Lebanon, was not amused, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/04/dearborn-michigan-security-america-jihad-capital-00139555">tweeting</a> that it "led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city of Dearborn." (ABC) He <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/4448461-dearborn-michigan-mayor-wsj-response/">ordered increased</a> police presence at the locations of critical infrastructure and at houses of worship. </p><p>The Wall Street Journal is typically behind a paywall and "Welcome to Dearborn" is not freely available. Evidently, though, <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/americas-jihad-capital-the-controversy-surrounding-dearborn-michigan/articleshow/107426538.cms?from=mdr">as indicated by the Times of India</a>, Stalinsky made pointed to legitimate concerns of the Department of Homeland Security about Dearborn, albeit with no smoking gun. Notably, Prior to his tweet, Hammoud <a href="https://twitter.com/AHammoudMI/status/1753811609309319391">had condemned</a> the piece as "reckless. bigoted, Islamophobic."</p><p>More notably, Stalinsky challenged Hammoud to cite inaccuracies, and Hammoud has been conspicuously silent- or, rather, inconspicuously silent as no one has defended the author nor slammed the mayor. (It is too hot to handle.)</p><p>And there is a lot to criticize about Abdullah Hammoud, even if it has escaped the attention of President Biden. On the night of October 7, 2024, the Mayor- who has an extremely intimate and personal knowledge of bigotry-<a href="https://twitter.com/AHammoudMI/status/1710826757803196880"> tweeted </a>(in full)</p><p><b>Israel’s decades of illegal military occupation and
imprisonment of Gaza make peace impossible and tragic violence inevitable.
Israel has trapped millions of Palestinians in Gaza in what is recognized by
the international community as the world’s largest open-air prison. Failure to
recognize this context is the inability to comprehend what is unfolding
overseas.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>It is outrageous that our elected leaders from both parties
continue to support this brutal occupation and in the same breath call for
peace. This is not leadership, it is hypocrisy. What they are really calling
for is not peace, but a return to the status quo of daily violence and
humiliation against Palestinians, which many in the U.S. accept as normal. True
peace requires justice. It requires the end of a racist apartheid system that
criminalizes Palestinian existence. If our elected officials were truly
interested in peace, we would hear their voices condemning the bulldozing of
Palestinian homes, the torching of olive trees, the theft of water, the
vandalism of mosques and churches, the violent theft of land, the illegal
detention of Palestinian children, and the calls from Israeli leaders to
“erase” Palestinians entirely.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>Hypocrisy is sending billions of tax-payer dollars to
Ukrainians fighting for their homeland and championing their armed struggle as
“resistance,” while condemning even peaceful forms of Palestinian resistance,
such as boycotts, as illegitimate.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>I condemn the killing of all innocent civilians, no matter
their background. Ending this violence requires ending the occupation. Peace
and permanent occupation and apartheid cannot coexist. I urge global leaders to
work towards a just and lasting solution that upholds the dignity, rights, and
aspirations of all people.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">Israel did not occupy Gaza. If it had done so, there would not have been the extensive tunnel network built by Hamas to store those weapons used against Israel, which did not "imprison" Gaza. Apartheid does not exist in Israel. Nor is the nation racist, with many of their whose residents not clearly racially differentiated from Palestinians. Nor are Palestinian homes being bulldozed in Gaza- and if Hammoud were referring to the West Bank, he should have said so rather than conflating Gazans with Palestinians elsewhere in the Middle East. Hammoud is deeply dishonest.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Of course, the Mayor is something much worse, even worse than one who obviously hates Jews. Claiming to "condemn the killing of all innocent civilians," he did not mention "Israelis" not "Hamas," instead promoting a false equivalence by adding "no matter their background"- on October 7.</p><p class="MsoNormal">The twelve sentences which follow Abdullah Hammoud's first sentence serve only to reinforce the Mayor's fondness for terrorists, at least of the Arab variety. Therein, he defended the terrorist attack which had occurred only hours earlier, labeling it "inevitable" because of "Israel's decades of illegal military occupation and imprisonment of Gaza." He would not say mass murder by Hamas was wrong, referring only to "tragic violence," as if it had been some act of God- a tornado, flood, earthquake, or even something positive.</p><p class="MsoNormal">There are liars and bigots everywhere, as Abdullah Hammoud demonstrated, yet we already knew. More important than the head of one town, albeit a large one in a swing state, is the President of the United States of America, who is not a liar or bigot but is feckless.</p><p class="MsoNormal">In June, 2020 Kamala Harris at a presidential debate <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/01/22/news/biden-knows-vp-harris-not-up-to-the-job-preferred-gretchen-whitmer-book/">lectured </a>Joe Biden for having decades earlier opposing school busing for racial integration. During a commercial break, Biden "muttered to fellow candidate Pete Buttigieg "Well, that was some f-king bullsh-t." The following week, Jill Biden on a conference call with supporters, evidently<a href="https://nypost.com/2021/05/21/jill-biden-embraces-kamala-harris-after-go-f-k-yourself-reveal/"> remarked</a> "With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he's committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis? Go f-k yourself."</p><p class="MsoNormal">Nonetheless, Joe Biden selected Harris to be a heartbeat from the presidency. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The "kick me" sign on the President's rear remains. Now the anti-Jewish, pro-terrorist mayor of Dearborn, Michigan accuses Biden (and others) of "hypocrisy" and of "not being interested in peace." President Biden's response to the pro-Hamas public official is to do as he wished: condemn "Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate." </p><p class="MsoNormal">Grow a pair, Mr. President. You're going to need them to defeat Donald Trump.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5bzb0LEN36Q?si=HZH_CEsrA5YuycxR" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-22536708231867680302024-02-03T18:22:00.001-05:002024-02-03T18:22:05.174-05:00Patsies<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a href="https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/02/01/austin-says-he-never-told-anyone-his-staff-keep-white-house-dark-hospitalization.html">This</a> is how you do it.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Or rather, this is how it should be done.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Secretary of Defense Lloyd</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Austin was diagnosed with prostate cancer early in December
and had surgery on Dec. 22. On Jan. 1, he was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed
National Military Medical Center after experiencing extreme pain due to
complications from the surgery and was admitted to the intensive care unit.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>He transferred decision-making authorities to Deputy Defense
Secretary Kathleen Hicks, but did not tell her why. And he did not tell Biden
and other top officials about his diagnosis, his surgery or hospitalization
until several days after was was in the ICU.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Having returned to his office in the Pentagon on Monday,
three days later Austin stated at a news conference</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>I want to be crystal clear. We did not handle this right.
And I did not handle this right. I
should have also told my team and the American public, and I take full
responsibility. I apologize to my teammates and to the American people.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Austin may have added "I apologize"
only because reporters and others don't understand that uttering the word
"apologize" does not constitute an apology. Moreover, "take full
responsibility" is utterly meaningless in a world in which "take
responsibility" substitutes seamlessly for "don't blame me."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By contrast was an "apology" issued by the head of
Facebook/Meta, who appeared Friday with representatives of social media companies
Discord, TikTok, Facebook, and Snap at a Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing pithily titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation
Crisis." Mark Zuckerberg was asked
by arguably the Senate's leading grandstanders, Josh Hawley of Missouri,
"<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=hawley+asked+would+you+like+to+apologize+to+them&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS798US798&oq=hawley+asked+would+you+like+to+apologize+to+them&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigAdIBCTEwNTI3ajBqNKgCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:4d8fcc73,vid:gXJHWiqZP9w,st:0">would you like to apologize to them</a>," referring to the families present there who have had a loved one committed suicide or been exploited by social media. The mainstream media was conned.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/31/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-apology-social-media-congress-alaimo/index.html">CNN</a><i>: Zuckerberg also stood up and apologized to families of
children harmed by social media who attended the hearing, saying, 'I’m sorry
for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things
that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are
going to continue doing industry wide efforts to make sure no one has to go
through the things your families have had to suffer.'”</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/31/senate-hearing-child-safety-tech-ceos-zuckerberg/">The Washington Post:</a> <i>Zuckerberg responded to the onslaught
of grief by rising from his chair in an extraordinary moment to apologize after
pressure from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to admit Meta’s wrongdoing.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/mark-zuckerberg-apologizes-parents-online-child-safety-hearing-rcna136578">NBC News</a>: <i>"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized
Wednesday."</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://apnews.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-apology-c7055b654f63a23d09b6a96388dfa2b4">AP News</a>:<i> "Zuckerberg has accumulated a long
history of public apologies."</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/31/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-apology-social-media-congress-alaimo/index.html">CNN</a>: <i>"Zuckerberg also stood up and apologized to families of
children harmed by social media who attended the hearing, saying..."</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4440060-zuckerberg-apologies-social-media-victims-meta-senate-hearing/">The Hill</a>: <i>"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned his back to
senators during a Wednesday hearing to stand and apologize to parents of
children who have died or were seriously harmed after suffering abuse through
social media."</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/01/meta-whistleblower-haugen-says-zuckerberg-apology-a-turning-point.html">CNBC</a>: One expert considered Zuckerberg’s testimony “powerful' "especially
when he turned to apologize directly to families who blamed the toxicity of
social media for the loss of a loved one."<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/1/why-did-mark-zuckerberg-apologise-at-the-us-senate">Al Jazeera</a>: <i>"This apology adds to a long list of
apologies Zuckerberg has issued since he launched Facebook in 2004 when he was
19 years old."</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-ceo-zuckerberg-apologizes-parents-us-senate-social-media-hearing-2024-01-31/">Reuters</a>: <i>"Meta CEO Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on
Wednesday apologized to families at a U.S. Senate hearing about the impact that
social media has on children."</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/watch-im-sorry-zuckerberg-says-as-he-opens-senate-hearing-with-apology">PBS</a>: <i>"Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began a two-day
congressional inquisition Tuesday with a public apology for a privacy scandal
that has roiled the social media giant he founded more than a decade ago,"</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article284913687.html">Kansas City Star</a>:<i> "Zuckerberg then stood up, turned to
an audience holding up pictures of their loved ones, and apologized."</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">Also, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmcti82PW-I">The Guardian</a>:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pmcti82PW-I?si=NzwnbRCXk7Rk8mXQ" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Zuckerberg said that he was "sorry for everything you
have all been through." He did not admit what that was; did not indicate
that Facebook/Meta was responsible for whatever it was; did not concede that he or his platform had made any mistake. This was not Zuckerberg's first rodeo, </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That is not an apology. (If an apology had been issued, Meta's attorneys would have been apoplectic.) I, too, am sorry for the parents'
loss, just as we all are sorry when a tidal wave, earthquake, or other act of
God takes the lives of human beings. Probably, too, is Zuckerberg sorrow for
all those casualties. He didn't apologize for those events, either, nor should he have.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When news media get played for suckers and mistake the
ordinary for the extraordinary, they fail to recognize the remarkable, even
extraordinary, when they encounter it.
"I did not handle this right.
I should have also..." is a way of assuming responsibility and
admitting wrongdoing, which is all too uncommon.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29575463.post-8799438691445221082024-02-01T17:53:00.001-05:002024-02-01T17:53:38.306-05:00The Haley Way<!--AddThis Button BEGIN-->
<div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url">Here we go again.</div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a New Hampshire town hall gathering in late December,
Nikki Haley was asked about the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/27/nikki-haley-slavery-civil-war/">cause of the Civil War.</a> When the presidential
candidate failed to mention slavery, the questioner responded "In the year
2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning
the word ‘slavery.’” Haley in turn responded "What do you want me to say
about slavery?"</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It turns out that exclusion from Haley's answer of the role
of slavery should not have been astonishing, nor even surprising. After what
most of us thought at the time was a gaffe, then-candidate Ron DeSantis said
that Haley “has had some problems with some basic American history.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">American history, and probably also civics.<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nikki-haley-texas-secede-us-isnt/story?id=106837677"> Appearing</a> with the obviously humble host
Charlemagne tha God</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>"if Texas decides they want to do that, they can do
that," Haley said in an interview with the radio show "The Breakfast
Club."</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>"If that whole state says, 'We don't want to be part of
America anymore,' I mean, that's their decision to make," Haley said,
though she also noted, "Let's talk about what's reality. Texas isn't going
to secede."</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Asked if she still believes that states generally have the
right to secede, a sentiment she expressed on camera during her initial run for
governor of South Carolina, Haley said that "states have the right to make
the decisions that their people want to make."</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>"I believe in state's rights, I believe that everything
should be as close to the people to decide," she said.</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is Nikki Haley being Nikki Haley, consistent if nothing
else. When Haley initially was asked
about the Civil War, she did not explicitly mention states' rights. However,
this has always been the intellectual rationale for secession of southern
states from the Union. And here we have the supposedly normal and moderate
rival to Donald Trump arguing "if that whole state says 'We don't want to
be part of America anymore,' I mean, that's their decision to make."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, no, it's not the state's decision to make. Conveniently, it was action by the State of Texas which resulted in a ruling by the United States
Supreme Court in 1869 which confirmed that a state cannot simply call it
quits. The Texas firm Zadeh <a href="https://www.zadehfirm.com/blog/what-is-texas-v-white-.cfm">has explained</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>In the aftermath of the Civil War, the state of Texas issued
bonds that were purchased by George W. White and others. The bonds were
guaranteed by the state of Texas, but after the war, the state claimed that the
bonds were invalid because they were issued during a period when Texas was not
a part of the United States.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>White and the other bondholders sued the state of Texas,
arguing that the state had not legally seceded from the United States and was
therefore still responsible for its debts. The case eventually made its way to
the Supreme Court.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of White
and the other bondholders, holding that Texas had never legally seceded from
the United States and remained a part of the Union. The Court also held that
the Constitution did not provide for the right of secession.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><o:p></o:p></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The decision in Texas v. White had significant implications
for the post-Civil War Reconstruction period and helped to establish the
supremacy of the federal government over the states.</i></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The firm added "It also had important implications for
the country's understanding of the relationship between states and the federal
government."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HH792JXTClY?si=3H5daW3hzBTUkecD" title="YouTube video player" width="520"></iframe>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Evidently, that's no longer the case, at least for someone
who managed to be a governor and ambassador to the United Nations, seemingly
without learning civics. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Haley would be justifiably confident that virtually no one
will accuse of ignorance someone assumed to be knowledgeable and intelligent.
Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor to President Clinton and to Hillary
Clinton,<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/01/nikki-haleys-comment-on-the-us-civil-war-was-no-gaffe"> maintained</a> "the unexpected incident (in New Hampshire) showed Haley to be slight, frightened, and cowardly. Her deeper problem is that she is a
slave to her party" who "keeps trying to pass the southern
test."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jaime Harrison, current
Democratic National Committee chairman and South Carolina party chairman during
Haley's term as governor, saw Haley's act close-up. When she couldn't, or wouldn't, give a straight answer about slavery's role, Harris advised us "Time to take off the rose colored
Nikki Haley glasses, folks."</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><br /></div><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style" expr:addthis:title="data:post.title" expr:addthis:url="data:post.url"><a class="addthis_button_compact" href="http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=gregoryrichter">Share</a>
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<!--AddThis Button END-->main street liberalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11309905603024705085noreply@blogger.com0