Showing posts with label 2024 election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2024 election. Show all posts
Childless Cat Lady Endorses Harris/Walz
Still don't believe me? You think I'm just shilling for her endorsement? Try this one.
She's big and kind of wonderful, no? That bit where she runs out, more like skips out onstage with her guitar from backstage. It's just a few moments, and flickers by. From the dark of backstage she skips with her guitar through a doorway into the the bright lights of her huge stage like an Orson Welles shot, a singularly iconic personification of Elvis and Madonna and going on a century of live rock & roll hitting the stage. Love that and the whole thing, really. "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart." Faking it until you make it. She makes her story anthemic and fun. She's an independent working woman, like a Mary Tyler Moore for the 21st century, making pop songs for the broken hearted in all of us.
A Chicago Welcome to the DNC:
DNC Night 1: I've been following the TPM live blog, Kate Riga, for much of the evening, doing something else, refreshing the page, and crying like an spastically on-off sprinkler: Walz's wife crying over HRC (Breaking news: for Hilary and women this is a very big moment!), Jasmine Crockett, AOC (for potus 2044!), Fein's "Trump is a Scab" t-shirt, Pelosi's "We Love Joe" sign, ay yi yi, you'd think they were choreographing this thing for maximum waterworks. As Kate put it, "The first night of the convention had pathos baked in." Biden was emotional and full SOTU, blowing his horn and throwing his weight behind Kamala and now, all of a sudden, I'm noticing there is this Obama ring in saying Kamala that I hadn't noticed before. Harris/Walz are When We Fight We Win and at the same time a stealth version of Yes We Can, again! And again!
Maybe stuff can get better after all!
I was so excited by it all when Kate signed off I googled the DNC Convention and it was all bored boilerplate, contentless, and skeptical headlines. So I guess you had to be there. I got swept up in Kate reporting all the pathos. At minimum, she made it sound like a really good first night of the convention for all the Democrats in Chicago. Especially for women and those that support women's freedom.
No idea what was happening with the protesters outside, though? Hopefully, no problems with the Chicago police and the Dems find some way to throw them a bone. AOC pointed out how hard Biden is working for a ceasefire but that's not what the protesters want to hear, I know.
I don't blame the protesters but I can get impatient with the protests, nonetheless. For example, I heard Jill Stein's VP pick, Butch Ware, equivocating the two major parties over violence, they're both "war machines," which perhaps has never been very smart but in 2024?! If Trump wins may they rot in hell for eternity.
At any rate, I knew the hot dog question was bound to come up this week. I usually do only mustard and onions, that's it. But that's because I'm lazy. I never say no to Chicago style hot dog should I find one offered, even if this might be as close as they get to a salad in Chicago, a hot dog all dressed up with tomatoes, peppers, a spear of cucumber pickle, and I even like the glow-green relish, but the secret ingredient is celery salt, amirite?
DNC Night 2: Missed this one mostly on the road, although caught some on NPR in the car. Could have heard more but found the between-speech commentary tedious, as I usually do. Eventually got home and caught some speeches on youtube. What a Black power couple the Obamas have become. Michelle is a super professional mom, sister, a friend to lovers of freedom and uplift, and punctuates her clear, plainspoken speeches by dropping into the homie vernacular; "my girl"s and "yeah"s, etc. Her bearing alone fires up the crowd, roaring their support and breaking into one chant after another. One punchline, "Who is going to tell him the job he is currently seeking might be one of those 'Black jobs,'" brings down the house. The Obamas greet on stage before Barack's speech, and reaffirm immediately, iconically, where they first made their national impression in 2008: they are the most telegenically loving first couple of the modern TV era. The obvious peer respect between them is a political superpower. It probably makes some men, certainly Trump and his chauvinist bros, nervous but women and men who love women recognize it as a model of relationship strength right off. And as if to burnish this brand Barack makes a comparison of Michelle's recently deceased Black mother and his white Irish grandmother central to his speech. Otherwise, his performance is that old mesmerizingly meandering folksy eloquence of Obama, like the generational and professorial and secular progeny of MLK that he is. It's a comforting style, and to the consternation of racists, quintessentially American, making founding democratic values feel personal and inclusive, but maybe at points a bit of a yawner too, or there were moments where I was wondering where this was going. And then about two-thirds way in you notice this awesome quiet has overtaken the crowd, in that big arena rocking the rafters minutes before you could hear a pin drop. Everyone was listening to Obama telling us who we are, what binds us together, what we want and how with hard work and perseverance we can build a better future for all and we nod along to the obvious wisdom of his hopefulness. Yes we can, again! Why not?
Obama was not a perfect president, by any stretch. But one of if not the best in my lifetime at translating traditional American ideals into inspiring contemporary speech. And Jon Favreau probably deserves a big assist.
DNC Night 3:
"Full hearts, clear minds, can't lose." Public school teacher, high school, and social studies. Democratic candidate for Vice President. Represent, Mr. Walz! Coach. Veteran. Hunter. Rural small town roots. In other words, telegenic Republican identities but he's a dyed-in-the-flannel liberal public educator. And he doesn't mince his words. It's weird and wrong to deny women reproductive freedom. It's weird and wrong, and unneighborly, to persecute people over racial or religious or sexual differences. It's weird and wrong to always be punching down at those that are weaker, LGBTQ+ Americans, immigrants, homeless people. Instead of banning books and going on crusades against CRT, in Minnesota where Walz is Governor, all the kids in public schools get free breakfasts and lunches. In other words, he's obviously a godless communist and attacks will begin, if they haven't already, shortly. This is Trump's "radical Left" but of course it isn't radical at all (maybe echoes of an older prairie populism, or at least the midwestern roots of the Clintons and Obamas Big Tent we-the-people are all in this together). But there is a claim of sorts one can infer from Walz's candidacy: Public education is an essential government service, and a crucial investment in the future of our country. Attacking government is miserly elite panic and hateful bigotry, and it threatens the economic security of the middle classes and poor and, moreover, the very environmental sustainability of the planet.
"The Republicans are the party that says the government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it," quips P.J. O'Rourke. Harris/Walz, like Biden, are Democrats, despite Republican obstruction, trying to make government work for families and workers and consumers and not just Billionaires and racists.
Also of note I'm in awe of Walz's productive energies. As a retired high school teacher myself, who taught history and humanities in classrooms for 23 years, regularly putting in 60 hour work weeks during the school year and usually unable to get to anything else, Walz's family and community building industriousness is a wonder and obviously something we need more of in Democratic leadership.
We need Democrats that will work in government to help solve problems for regular people and workers, women's rights, good jobs, costs of living, affordable health care, etc. And Walz's energy, the raucous energy of the DNC, reminds why I was never any good for those big music festivals. I don't have the energy and stamina. I need a nap.
DNC Night 4: Maybe the Dems first misstep, or that's the way it's being reported anyway. The DNC rejected a request by a representative of Palestinian Americans to speak at the convention. It's hard to know from here what the decision making was. Inside and outside the convention there were calls for a "ceasefire" but outside also loud calls for an "arms embargo," Rep Ilhan Omar made this point to press outside the convention with more than a little attitude. This appears to be the line of unity inside the convention that the DNC and Harris were not willing to cross: i.e., no calls for an arms embargo on Israel. But, meanwhile, Netanyahu and Israel's right wing continue to abuse this support. Not two, three months past blocking an Iranian retaliatory strike of over 200 missiles, Israel is executing bombing campaigns again in Lebanon and Iran, forcing the US to commit more weapons and missile defense to Israel, and acting as a cover for Israel's genocidal bombing campaign in GAZA and anti-Palestinian pogroms in the West Bank. It's the chickens coming home to roost on over two decades of Israeli bad faith towards a two-state solution and Palestinian claims for self-determination. And it creates a dilemma for the U.S. and the Western democracies, to say the least: How to defend Israel's right to exist without empowering Israel to greater extremes of militarized belligerence? Arms embargoes are off the table for now, apparently, but I hope backchannels are talking to Iran. Regime change in Israel would appear to be the most fervent wish, if spoken out loud cautiously. But, all the while, war criminal Netanyahu increasingly threatens a wider war and deepens the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Not good.
Also, meanwhile, Kamala Harris gave her big nomination speech, calling again for a ceasefire in Gaza and affirming Palestinian rights to self-determination. Most impressive so far has been her unwavering commitment to the spirit of Bidenomics and a bottom-up hopefulness for the basic rights and opportunities of all Americans and democratic freedoms around the world against the top-down dumpster-fire bigot crazy that elements of entrenched elites would rather entertain and will haze her for until the election.
"When we fight we win!" That sounds right to me and, if nothing else, the determined and triumphant energy at the DNC sustained for four days would indicate the Democratic party is ready to bring that fight. For now, I need another nap.
Sifting through journalist accounts of what seemed like one of the best DNCs in memory (admittedly a low bar for me), more highlights from the DNC:
Democratic VP Candidate Tim Walz:
"Freedom. When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations—free to pollute your air and water. And banks—free to take advantage of customers. But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall."
Former national security official Leon Panetta and respected Hawk itemizes Trump's serious threats to national security:
James Fallows, Jimmy Carter's speechwriter, and longtime top-notch journalist, from his Breaking The News:
"Guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth," Kamala Harris
The privilege and pride of being an American.
I’ve never heard it put just that way before. But this is exactly right — I say as someone who has lived through some of America’s darkest chapters, and has spent a dozen years living outside its borders.
Trump’s GOP portrays the United States as a shithole-country in waiting. Harris’s convention portrayed it as the country we love, and want to improve.
On Wednesday, former president Bill Clinton noted that since 1989, the U.S. has created 51 million new jobs. Fifty million of those jobs were created under Democratic presidents, while only 1 million were added under Republicans—a striking statistic that perhaps will put neoliberalism, or at least the tired trope that Democrats are worse for the economy than Republicans, to bed.
We can still dream.
Her [Harris] plan to combat price gouging features an aggressive role for the F.T.C [where Lina Khan is taking on the monopolists]. At the Democratic convention, especially on the opening night, “corporate greed” was a scourge, and speaker after speaker sought to link “freedom,” the central theme of Harris’s campaign, to programs that protect the middle class from the depredations of concentrated wealth. Even the ordinarily pro-business secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo, blasted “monopolies that crush workers and small businesses and start-ups.” And as Lauren Feiner pointed out in The Verge, the Democratic platform mentions “competition” 18 times, twice as often as it did four years ago, and emphasized policies that Khan has been closely involved with. Suddenly, Khan seems more likely to be a linchpin of a potential Harris presidency than a casualty of it.
Harris may or may not disappoint AOC on Gaza. She will first have to defeat Trump, and the election remains close. But on Monday night, at least, her Democratic Party looked like a juggernaut of joy, enraptured with the prospect of a leader who has spent more than a third of her life in the 21st century. On a night organized as a send-off for the Clinton–Biden generation of Democratic leaders, it was tellingly poignant that Hillary Clinton’s most powerful note—framed within one of the most emotionally powerful speeches of the evening—was an overture to the future: “I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to know I was here at this moment, that we were here.”
The RNC Convention, 2024: Traitors, Violent Bigots, Cruel Sexists, and Crooks
Paul Manafort walking onto the floor of the Republican National Convention yesterday illustrated that the Republican Party under Trump has become thoroughly corrupted into an authoritarian party aligned with foreign dictators.
There were actually preprinted signs at the convention for attendees to wave, which they did with apparent enthusiasm. The signs said: “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!”
The convention has also emphasized its opposition to women’s rights. Trump, who has proudly claimed responsibility for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing abortion as a constitutional right, walked out last night to the song “It’s a Man’s World.”
Their rejection of democracy requires a strongman at the head of the government, and in Milwaukee that man is Trump, who will be the first convicted criminal nominated for president by a major party.
And the fall election is now a ratification or rejection of dictatorship
Keith Boykin listed the many excuses and arguments Trump enablers have made over the years. “He can’t be prosecuted in office,” Boykin wrote. “He can’t be impeached because the courts should decide. He’s immune from prosecution after office. He can’t be prosecuted by Biden’s DOJ because that’s ‘lawfare.’ And he can’t be prosecuted by a special counsel. We have created a dictator.”
The Debate Sucked But Doesn't Change The Stakes or Clear Choices in the Election
Before I gave up cable a few years back, I watched a lot of MSNBC at the beginning of the Trump era, which is dismissed by conservatives as partisan TV news for liberal left Democrats, but was rarely liberal left enough for me and way too much of a kind of outrage porn. Every week for months, even years, we were kept on the edge of our seats anticipating some course correction by Republicans, finally the moral pivot we'd been waiting for. Repubs, we desperately hoped, would finally figure out Dump was bad news and a national security threat, obviously more interested in enriching himself than building a better future for America. A pivot that would never come to pass, sadly, barely a peep of country-over-party from the fake news MAGA Repugs in congress, then as today.
Anyway, I finally had to give cable news up; probably not long after Biden won, like everyone else hoping the fascist crisis was over and I could return to my life. Too much doom hysteria. I'm not saying I'm above the TV news, or the 24/7 media environment, but actually as susceptible to it as anybody else.
So I'm not insensitive to the power of the image and TV performance. I'm just too squeamish to take it in unfiltered. But based on Biden's recent SOTU speech, recent snippets of Dump's dead-end Vegas act at his rallies, and the last debate in 2020, I was reasonably hopeful about the debate, even if I couldn't stand watching it live. Regardless, according to my sources-- i.e., people who did watch the debate-- the consensus is Trump appeared strong and vital and Biden weak and very weak. The live blog commentary I refreshed incessantly for the duration of the debate created a cringingly bad image: Biden standing-in-place, lost, mumbling hoarsely, stammering confusedly, while Grump ran circles around him with relentless energy; Trump's unchecked lies in full effect.
Of course the Repugs are now jubilant, Biden has at last been exposed as old and incompetent, as they've been trying to tar him with for months, but, additionally, and more concerning, I'm seeing all kinds of Dems that watched the debate, some of my most trusted sources, that in the aftermath of the debate were like, 'OMG, Biden's toast, he must resign immediately, and be replaced at the Democratic Convention,' like Ezra Klein was suggesting back in the spring. I can't say anything otherwise about the performances of the two candidates at the debate. But I can say I don't see how their relative performances, however bad they were, really changes anything about their contrasting positions on the political issues or the stakes those stark choices represent in the upcoming election.
I know, issues are not the way normies choose a POTUS. They have to identify with the candidate, like they were buying a box of cereal. They vote for the political charisma; the candidates' media packaged persona. I'm sure this is broadly true but in the spirit of hoping significant margins of voters actually can understand the issues, i.e., discern some qualitative differences about the cereals inside the boxes, let's review a few of the most salient political issues at stake in the election:
Women's rights. There is no grey area between the two candidates here. If you'd rather women, the individual woman, and pregnant women have the right to decide privately with their family and doctor what to do with their pregnancy, and would rather it not be left to some anti-abortion edict from the state, one that we can already see from documented evidence endangers the health of pregnant women, then you will vote for Biden, no matter how old he appears on TV. The Repugs on SCOTUS, that Dump put there, ended a women's right to choose with the Dobb's decision. And wherever they are in power they are trying to extend those restrictions to IVF, contraception, and by criminalizing reproductive health care as we speak. Any Repug vote at this point is a vote against basic women's rights and endangers women's reproductive health care.
Immigration. Biden recently implemented some executive order that reduced asylum seeking border crossings by 40%. The Democrats and a small handful of Republicans crafted a bipartisan bill to address the border and immigration "crisis" more comprehensively this past spring, reportedly, including numerous conservative priorities, but it was shot down by Trump because he was afraid the bill's effectiveness might reduce the border's value as a campaign issue. The southern border with Mexico really isn't about the Dems wanting "open borders" and only the Repubs wanting "secure borders," as Republicans like to frame it. It's really about one party, Dems, trying to reduce illegal immigration, and the other, Grump's MAGA Repugs, bragging about how they're going to throw a bunch of immigrants into concentration camps on day one of a second Dump term; by the millions, and then flying them back in army planes to where they came from, all paid for by Mexico, of course. The Republicans don't want to solve a border crisis. They want to abuse and do violence against immigrants. Takeaways: First, Trump is a sick humanitarian crime; fascist Nazi stuff. Second, any non-white or non-English speaking or non-Christian person should recognize this as preliminary to a bigot attack on them and should, of course, vote accordingly for Biden. And, third, any shocking, Big Bang, removal of labor on the scale trumpeted at Trump's rallies would be inflationary and likely catastrophic economically.
Climate Change is obviously a thing, a very serious thing. We see the increase in extreme weather events around us, the devastation wrought by these events. We know we have to curb carbon emissions and transition our economy to sustainable energy sources. Biden, and the Dems, even if belatedly, have done more to address climate change than any admin before. Ever. By contrast, Grump talks about eliminating all environmental regulations and "drill baby drill," again, from day one. He is so extreme he warns of the dangers of EVs, electric motors, and windmills, like he used to bad mouth masks and vaccines. A vote for Biden continues to pressure the gov to support progressive reforms that effectively address climate change. A vote for Trump isolates the US and further endangers the planet.
Economy. Dem admins have done considerably better than Repub ones on the economy for going on half a Century now but a conviction persists that the latter are better on the economy. As a friend frames it, the Repubs in power always find some way to screw up the economy and run up deficits and the Dems in power are left to invest in economic development and clean up the mess. More generally, business people prefer the way Republicans stick to Big Biz's free-market dogma. They still insist their tax cutting and deregulating policies are economically expansionary, even though the evidence piles up over the last four decades that they are not. But if you want the gov to protect worker's rights, to promote living wages and shared prosperity, to tax the rich fairly and promote sustainable economic growth, to curb corporate monopoly and reduce the cost of living for everyday Americans, or at least try to do these things, then again, however old and frail, you will vote for Biden, because that's what he's already been doing for going on four years now. Trump's economic model, by contrast, is crony capitalism and the rich-get-richer-while-the-poor-get-poorer, and only really benefits billionaires and conmen hustlers like him. That's it. In fact, if Dump's extreme plan for trade war tariffs and labor deportation were really enacted, as he promises and already alluded to, the economic impacts would be at best counter-productive and at worst catastrophic for the economy.
Crime. Most absurd of all, at this point, is the claim the Republicans are the party of law and order. Their candidate is a convicted felon. He has been indicted for trying to overthrow the 2020 election by violent force. Hundreds of his followers, his disheveled Brown shirts, have already been found guilty of attacking the police and trying to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election. January 6, 2021 was obviously a failed attempt at "insurrection or rebellion," we all saw it on TV. If Trump were found guilty of instigating Jan 6 he would be in violation of the 14th Amd, Article 3, of the Constitution and disqualified from holding any office in the federal government. The effort of SCOTUS to delay this prosecution, rather than expedite it, or make the completion of his legal prosecution and due process verdict, a necessary prerequisite to his candidacy, is a colossal dereliction of duty and betrayal of the US Constitution. Conservatives hope instead, presumably, by delaying the legal process that he can be re-elected and thereby stop his prosecutions altogether (like Netanyahu in Israel). And more or less the same applies to Trump stealing boxes of top secret documents. Delaying his prosecution is a threat to US national security. Or his election interference in Georgia, or his fake elector scheme, or his cheating with Russia and Wikileaks in 2016. All these assaults on our free and fair elections and the failure to prosecute them constitute a Constitutional crisis. And if all this were not bad enough, the highest of high crimes, abetted by SCOTUS and corrupt elements in our legal system, MAGA Repugs promote and spread criminal violence, like nothing we've ever seen before. Trump inspires mass murderers and violent lunatics. And his MAGA minions spread domestic terrorism and death threats against public officials, public health professionals, public school officials, judges, election workers, you name it, like nothing before in American history. A vote for Trump is a vote for more criminal violence and conflict.
And this list is leaving out or not giving due attention to foreign policy and other issues. Maybe Biden isn't doing enough to stop the violence in Gaza but Trump cheers on calls for more violence against civilian Palestinians. Of course, we want, like Biden, to ally with Europe and other democracies around the world, the United Nations, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and various peace treaties and international humanitarian law protecting human rights. Not the murderous dictators and dirty oligarchs and violent imperialists Trump pals with. And we want to protect the meager social safety net we have in this country, Social Security, Medicaid, and Obamacare, or affordable health care, that the Republicans wish to destroy. Again, I can't remember in my lifetime a starker choice between two candidates and their leadership.
So maybe Trump looked like an activated Superhero and Biden a doddering Zombie at the debate. It doesn't really matter how strong Trump or how weak Biden appeared. A vote for Biden and the Democrats this fall is the vote for progress and a better future. A vote for Trump and the Republicans is a vote for more crime and more violence, more inequality and environmental destruction, more financial fraud, more sadistic bigotry and crony capitalist corruption. Whether Biden presides over his second term from a hospital bed or Kamala Harris has to finish his job this remains the case, the stakes, and the choices before us.
Addendum: Well, surveying the morning-after postmortems I saw some clips of Biden on the Jon Stewart show. I can better appreciate now some of the panic responses. Biden has some frightening looking senior moments. HCR points out Biden was scoring points, evident in the transcripts, but what I heard was muffled and indecipherable. Word is Biden got stronger and Trump's lies more ragged, less poised. Some sources called the debate for Biden. Here's CNN's Daniel Dale's fact check on the debate and Heather Cox Richardson's take, making the case for Biden better than he can.
CNN's Daniel Dale fact check's debate claims
Letters from an American, HCR
Oops, Biden's prep team, apparently, didn't get to this story from 2023 about Gish Gallop:
The NY Times Abridged Version of Recent Inflation
As usual NY Times does a story about recent inflation without mentioning that it was global, or comparing the US inflation ride with the rest of the world's experience, and not a word about the many stories of corporations using the cover of post-pandemic supply-shock inflation (to be expected after any big disruption in global economic operations) to engage in price gouging and record making profiteering. Again, we're counting on the electorate being able to see through the fascist turn in corporate rule and the major media are NOT helping. Beware.
Inflation's Wild Ride, NY Times
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