Thursday, September 12, 2024. The question for this morning? Who are they trying to get elected?
There
are fifty three days until the US presidential election. If you're
planning to vote and you're not registered yet, you need to register.
The
big news this week remains the debate between the Democratic Party and
the Republican Party's presidential nominees. Of the debate between
Vice President Kamala Harris and Convicted Felon Donald Trump,
Jeet Heer (THE NATION) notes:
With Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump no
longer had the protective cover of a hapless and flailing rival. Quite
the reverse: Harris dominated the debate, relying in particular on a
masterful strategy of hitting topics that Trump is especially touchy
about. This deliberate baiting of Trump threw him off message. Instead
of pounding away on what he sees as his best topic (opposition to
undocumented immigrants), Trump was goaded into defensive and aggrieved
answers about crowd size, the January 6 attempted coup, and his response
to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017. At one
point, Trump became so unhinged that he started shouting about
immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio—a racist canard
that has much popularity on the online right but, as debate moderator
David Muir of ABC News pointed out, has no basis in fact. All of this made Trump sound unhinged.
As David Weigel of Semafor acutely noted,
Harris had a strategy that she deftly executed: “She invoked a fact
from the Trump years that Democrats felt had been forgotten by voters
since 2020, she said something that would set her opponent off, and then
she used his familiar eruptions in response to urge voters to take the
offramp on the Trump era.”
This strategy of baiting Trump was based on a sound understanding of
the psychology of the former president. Trump is a touchy narcissist who
holds grudges and likes to repeat favorite talking points. Harris keyed
her comments to hit Trump’s hot buttons. She teased Trump into getting
angrier and more incoherent.
In a sense, Harris was replicating Muhammed Ali’s famous rope-a-dope technique
that was used to such great affect in his 1974 match with George
Foreman. Ali made himself into a punching bag, which tired Foreman out
and allowed Ali to deliver the winning punches. In Harris’s case,
rope-a-dope meant allowing Trump to meander on into incoherence, a
strategy of selective silence. It’s noticeable that Trump spoke for considerably longer
than Harris: 43.03 minutes for Trump, 37.41 minutes for Harris, a
difference of 15 percent. But Harris wasn’t letting Trump walk over her.
Rather, she was giving the dope enough rope to hang himself.
Remarkably negative reactions to Donald Trump’s performance during
his first formal matchup against Vice President Kamala Harris have left
conservatives reeling—and Trump panicking.
On Wednesday, the
former president attempted to wiggle out of any further debates against
Harris, claiming that he had actually beaten Harris and deserved to be
acknowledged for the “K.O.”
“In
the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out,
they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’” Trump
posted
on Truth Social. “Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten
badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING, in one case, 92-8, so why
would I do a Rematch?”
Later, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted
that he didn’t believe he “had to do it a second time,” only to suggest
that he could be open to following through on the two other debates
slated to be hosted on NBC and Fox in the coming weeks.
(No
polls have indicated that Trump would win by such a large margin. A CNN
flash poll after the debate indicated that 63 percent of Americans felt
that Harris outperformed Trump.)
Oh, that garbage MAGA right. Lying about the debate. How can --
Oh wait.
It's not just MAGA.
No.
There's
a worthless piece of crap with a radio show that no one listens to and
he writes bad columns on those oh-so rare moments when he's sober who an
idiot left outlet elected to post to their site. That his 'journalism'
is incoherent and his coverage of the debate reads as though he's read
some coverage on it but didn't actually watch what he's covering, what's
more significant is the lies and conspiracy that he promotes in his
column. He finds David Muir, for example, correcting the record
regarding Donald's lie about immigrants killing and eating dogs in
Springfield suspect. JD Vance and Donald have both been repeating that
lie and doing so for days before the debate. Miss Sassy even got asked
about it by the press well before the debate.
It is a slur and a lie and it was intended to scapegoat others and panic people over immigrants.
That
the drunkard wants to question it isn't that surprising -- I think we
all understand the concept of 'wet brain' -- but that a left outlet
would publish thar garbage?
Yeah, I question that. I question a lot of the garbage going up these days.
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has issued a lengthy warning in the Washington Post (9/5/24) on the dangers another Donald Trump presidency would pose to a “free and independent press.”
Sulzberger
details Trump’s many efforts to suppress and undermine critical media
outlets during his previous presidential tenure, as well as the more
recent open declarations by Trump and his allies
of their plans to continue to “come after” the press, “whether it’s
criminally or civilly.” He documents the ways independent media have
been eroded in illiberal democracies around the world, and draws direct links to Trump’s playbook.
You might expect this to be a prelude to an announcement that the New York Times
would work tirelessly to defend democracy. Instead, Sulzberger
heartily defends his own miserably inadequate strategy of
“neutrality”—which, in practice, is both-sidesing—making plain his
greater concern for the survival of his own newspaper than the survival
of US democracy.
“As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of
journalistic independence,” Sulzberger writes, “I have no interest in
wading into politics.”
It’s a bizarre statement.
Newspapers, including the Times, regularly endorse candidates.
Presumably, then, he’s referring to the “news” side of the paper, rather
than the opinion side.
But, even so, you can’t report on politics without wading directly
into them. Which political figures and issues do you cover, and how
much? (See, for example: media’s outsize coverage of Trump since 2015; media’s heavy coverage of inflation but not wage growth.) Which popular political ideas do you take seriously, and which do you dismiss as marginal? (See, for example, the Times‘ persistent dismissal
of Bernie Sanders’ highly popular critiques.) These decisions shape
political possibilities and set political agendas, as much as the Times
would like to pretend they don’t (FAIR.org, 5/15/24).
Sulzberger goes on (emphasis added):
I
disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the
free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection.
Sulzberger is always raging against critics who, he claims, want him to skew and censor his paper’s reporting (FAIR.org, 5/19/23). The Times
must instead be steadfastly “neutral,” he claims. But those very
political coverage decisions that media outlets make on a daily basis
make it impossible for the outlets to be neutral in the way Sulzberger
imagines.
Neutrality could mean, as he suggests, independent or
free from the influence of the powerful in our society. This is
possible—if difficult—for media outlets to achieve. Yet the Times, like all corporate media, doesn’t even try to do this.
Instead, the Times seems to take neutrality as not appearing
to take sides, which in practice means finding similar faults among
both parties, or not appearing overly critical of one party or the other
(FAIR.org, 1/26/24).
This strategy didn’t work particularly well when Republicans and
Democrats played by the same set of rules, as both parties took the same
anti-equality, pro-oligarchy positions on many issues.
But
it’s particularly ill-suited to the current moment, when Republicans
have discarded any notion that facts, truth or democracy have any
meaning. If one team ceases to play by any rules, should the ref
continue to try to call roughly similar numbers of violations on each
side in order to appear unbiased? It would obviously be absurd and
unfair. But that’s Sulzberger’s notion of “neutrality.”
It's
a powerful piece, as we've come to expect from her, but while you're
reading it, take the points being made -- strong ones -- and apply them
to our own left sites.
What we're seeing at COMMON DREAMS and elsewhere is appalling and disgusting.
Are
they trying to elect Donald Trump because that's what they're doing
with their garbage crap that fails to realize there's a very real threat
to our democracy.
This site started in 2004,
after the election. It started because a number of us were doing a
post-election analysis. What did we do, what should we have done, how
can we address this?
I knew nothing about
blogs. I used the internet to e-mail and that was probably it. But
blogging kept coming up in the conversation. There had been a great
game that someone had made during the election -- a SURVIVOR spoof --
that had been popular (and should have been, it was clever) online but
it was felt that more should have been done in terms of blogs.
I
don't do powerless. After the analysis, I looked online for about 30
minutes to figure out blogging (never have to this day, I'm sure) and
started this site and my hands shook as I typed that first meaningless
entry here.
The community built up around this site and made it anything that it is or was.
I'm
not a big believer in electoral politics -- a point I've made here many
times. I think the elections are the least important things we can
do. I think we have to hold politicians' feet to the fire. I think we
have to mobilize and make demands.
I didn't
think, for example, Mitt Romney winning in 2012 would have been the end
of the US. I lived under Reagan in the White House, for example, and
the American people survived. We would have survived Mitt, no problem.
Donald Trump is not Mitt Romney. He has demonstrated who he is and he is someone very dangerous. He is a threat to America.
I've watched what passes for the 'left' waste everyone's time in the last years on garbage, garbage, garbage.
Too
many have acted as though what happens to LGBTQ+ people isn't important
or isn't as important as whatever pet overseas issue that's caught
their fancy.
LGBTQ+ replaced all women as the most vulnerable to right-wing attacks.
When
women's rights were attacked, we would see the squishy 'left' hide
behind 'identity politics' and refuse to stand up with us. Our rights
weren't important, we were a 'special interest.'
And
I've watched the same piece of garbage 'left' now do the same to the
LGBTQ+ community. If we're not all going to stand together on the left,
we're going to be divided and conquered.
Yet I
can still go to Twitter and find men -- under their own name -- with
videos posted of them threatening to do violence in Target stores. Not
only are the videos not taken down, but where is law enforcement.
You're making a threat on Twitter to shoot up a Target and no one
reported you?
This is how the squishy part of the left or 'left' has allowed the climate we're in to thrive.
You've
refused to stand with the LGBTQ+ community the same way you refused to
stand with women as late as the '00s. The same way you didn't stand
with Black people until The Civil Rights Movement.
Now there are lefties in this country who stand with everyone and we're so lucky for that.
But
a father got sentenced for beating and bloodying his son because he
thought his son was gay and there's nothing on the left about it other
than
Greg Owen's report for LGBTQ NATION.
The child is two-years-old. This is outrageous and its a direct
product of the hate that hate that MAGA right has repeatedly promoted.
We
did a joint-post this week and it should have gone up sooner on Sunday
but did we link or not? The bigger point of the piece for me and Wally
and Betty was to show what was going on online with the hatred towards
Black people and LGBTQ+ people that's all over Twitter. And then it
became a conversation about if we linked to it, actually linked to it,
are we promoting it?
I don't know and I
couldn't answer that question. I debate so much that I do online. I'm
noting the David Muir nonsense attack from the drunk -- but not linking
to it -- but I'm not noting some other crazed conspiracies about the
debate because I don't want to promote them and is that right or is that
wrong, I have no idea.
But there is so much on
Twitter that people are completely unaware of, that promotes hate, that
promotes violence. And you can just go to Twitter and type in "MAGA"
and you should get a sample of it. You should see their manipulated
photos of African-Americans in chains with the calls to bring back
slavery, for example. This is what we're up against and the squishy
pseudo left has no idea and wants to waste all of our time.
The attacks on Kamala Harris seems to be all that COMMON DREAMS can offer.
I'd
love to know how they think this helps. Because the attacks are
nonsense, bad enough, but when they use their platform -- as a left site
-- to magnify attacks on Kamala, they aren't just hurting her, they're
helping to destroy democracy.
These are our choices: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.
And Donald is deranged and a real threat.
So I don't get your nonsense attacks on Kamala.
I've seen far more moderate male politicians promoted by COMMON DREAMS and others.
I have no idea.
I
don't even read Norman Solomon's garbage because he's a cheap whore.
In 2008, he was all over KPFA and KPFK and anywhere that would have him
acting as a neutral party analyzing the Democratic presidential
contenders. He never once informed the listeners that he was supporting
Barack Obama and was, in fact, a pledged delegate for Barack. Now his
readers? Different story. He knew his bad columns would be dropped by
the real press (which actually pays him for them) if he didn't do the
minimum required self-disclosure.
So I'm not
really interested in what a whore has to say about Kamala. I do find it
interesting that outlets presenting as media are okay with printing
someone who lied repeatedly.
There is joy and
excitement over Kamala's campaign and I know that because I see it as a
go in front of various groups to speak about the importance of this
election.
I just don't see it online.
I see a lot of people with a lot of wish lists.
Now
COMMON DREAMS would argue that they did a ton of coverage of Kamala
right before the **debate**. They did. They had one piece after
another on what she needed and say and do.
I'm really not remembering that happening with Barack Obama.
But I guess when a woman runs, every asshole has an opinion and thinks they're smarter than the candidate.
You are harming yourselves and that's fine with me, slit your own wrists.
I
hear over and over, every time I speak, from people telling me they've
had to stop going to COMMON DREAMS, IN THESE TIMES and elsewhere because
of this nonsense.
So if your site shut down, that's on you and I honestly don't care.
But before that happens, please note what you're doing -- and that does matter to me.
You
are acting as though this election is not important and as though the
two candidates are the same -- although a 21-year-old male said to a
group yesterday that COMMON DREAMS is actually acting as though Kamala
is worse than Donald.
Your coverage is disappointing and it could harm voter turnout.
That I do care about.
If,
in July, the ghost of John McCain had become the Democratic Party
nominee, I would be voting for him in November. I said long ago that I
would be voting for the Democratic Party's nominee no matter who it
was.
I didn't realize, until BROS (yes, the
film), how much hatred was on the right. I didn't realize what MAGA was
up to. Donald has encouraged them and has invited them to unleash
their hate and rage. He is a threat for that reason alone. But he's a
threat to democracy because he doesn't accept election results, because
he talks of military tribunals for his political opponents, because he's
corrupt and crooked -- Go down the list.
I would be voting for John McCain if he were the nominee.
He's not.
Kamala is.
And I'm thrilled to death that she is.
Go
to the July snapshot where we first addressed the possible candidates.
These are dictated, I'm thinking out loud. You can see me go from
Kamala not being the right choice to stating maybe she would be.
I know Kamala Harris and have for years. We're not friends.
But
as I was dictating that snapshot, everything that she's done over the
years I've known her starts coming together in my mind and she is the
perfect choice.
She can be a president of change.
I am thrilled that she's on the ballot. I'm thrilled to campaign for her and I'm thrilled to be able to vote for her.
She can do this.
But she's got to get votes to do that.
B-b-b-bbut Gaza!
STFU.
I'm seriously so sick of this faction of Americans that I don't even
want to cover Gaza right now. Your stupidity is harming us all.
1) Donald Trump is not going to help Palestinians.
2)
Oh, look at me, I told Kamala I'm not voting for her -- Uh! What?
She's not catering her campaign to me now! Even after I told her I
wasn't voting for her!
Grow the hell up.
We're
on top of an election and votes are needed. If you're announcing
you're not voting for her, fine. Don't expect the campaign to waste
valuable time trying to woo you after you've said you're not voting for
her. That's a waste of time and resources.
She's running a campaign to reach out to Americans who want to ensure that we have basic rights and that we have a democracy.
That really is the most important thing right now.
For Americans, it is. Will we have a democracy or not?
So I'm just not in the mood for all the garbage that we're seeing at left and 'left' outlets.
Now maybe that's because we have US troops in Iraq.
Still.
And
maybe because I remember these same left and 'left' outlets insisting
that they wouldn't stop until all US troops were out of Iraq. And then
Barack got elected and they stopped.
We didn't stop here.
So
if Kamala's elected (and I pray she is), we'll be holding her
accountable every damn day. That is what we do here. There? Over
there? The so-called left sites?
They didn't
continue to call for US troops out of Iraq. Their non-stop coverage of
Gaza right now? Back then they picked it up every few months and that
was it. There were no calls for Barack to get a peace deal together for
the region or to recognize the rights of Palestinians.
They can't even be honest today.
Oh! Corruption in politics! Oh that Supreme Court case! Oh!!
Excuse me.
Barack did not use public financing in 2008.
Now in 2004, John Kerry flirted with not doing it.
But the push back was so hard that he dropped the idea within hours of an NYT report.
But
Barack does it and to this day people don't want to talk about that.
That was a reform put in place in the post-Watergate era.
I'm
not really in the mood to watch you attack Kamala who is not president
considering your long history of silence on various Democrats who came
before. Silence that has continued, please note, even after the man is
no longer president.
There is a standard that's being created for Kamala that is unfair and unreasonable.
During
Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former
President Donald Trump, critics almost immediately became obsessed with
Harris’ face-management choices: “If she wants to win, Harris needs to train her face not to respond,” tweeted GOP pollster and aspiring face-trainer Frank Luntz. “It feeds into a female stereotype and, more importantly, risks offending undecided voters.”
Other “female stereotype” haters were quick to agree. Christian conservative Carmine Sabia opined, “Kamala Harris has been way over coached on doing facial expressions because of the muted mics.” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine posted:
“Kamala Harris is doing obviously rehearsed routines instead of
answering questions. Then she does rehearsed and exaggerated facial
expressions when Trump talks. She comes across as fake and weak.”
Harris
fans of course begged to differ. The slow blink, the chin stroke, the
quirked brow, the squinting, laughing eyes? This was the stuff of legend. It was a brilliant tactical attack on Trump’s ego. It was a self-meming performance of the face of every woman who has ever been forced to listen to a bunch of unreconstructed insanity spewing from someone who has unidirectionally failed upward.
Put aside for a moment Luntz’s implication that female political faces
need to be trained, like small dogs or cucumber plants. There is no
better proof that we still can’t quite define what we require of women
in public life than that we demand that their faces be either vibrant
and expressive or cold and dead. I’m old enough to remember that we
have, in previous iterations of this battle, mandated that women train
their voices, their wardrobes, their hair, and their partners into waxy
submission so as not, to quote Luntz, “risk offending undecided
voters.” But what does it signify that Kamala Harris, who has—against
all political odds—managed to produce a voice, a wardrobe, a head of
hair, and a spouse that all elicit very little horror when displayed
publicly, is nevertheless excoriated for the sin of having Too Much
Face?
On the one hand, it’s more of the same simple misogyny that will forever
move the goalposts on how women can behave in public office so as to
soothe doubters who think they should stay out of the ring. But when the
candidate was pitted against Donald J. Trump—whose only discernible
remaining power lies in his ability to threaten and discomfit women—the
critique that Harris somehow owed the public and the former
president a kind of button-down blank receptivity and amiability is
simply ridiculous. The assumption seems to be that Trump gets to lie
about you, insult you, threaten and mischaracterize, and that—with
microphones turned off by design—your political obligation is to
smoothly accept it. Almost all the memes that emerged after Harris’ face
began to garner attention Tuesday night were variations on “When your
graduate school adviser/law review editor/senior partner tells you that
he’d make the changes in his draft himself but he has guests coming over
for dinner and it’s his job to man the sous vide.” They’re all about
what your face reflexively does when it’s not socially acceptable to
speak your grievances out loud.
Key agencies within the U.S. Department of Health & Human
Services (HHS) took significant strides this summer to improve family
planning services, remove unnecessary barriers to care, and offer more
accessible forms of birth control.
Here are three recent moves by HHS agencies:
1. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Approves First Dissolvable Birth Control Pill
On July 22, 2024, the FDA approved Femlyv,
a new type of birth control. Combining two active ingredients that have
been used in oral birth control pills since the 1960s, Femlyv is unique
because of its delivery mechanism: it is the first orally
disintegrating contraceptive.
This new treatment option will help make the birth control pill more
accessible, especially for individuals who have trouble swallowing
pills.
2. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
Releases Guidance on Medicaid Family Planning Requirements and Best
Practices
On August 8, 2024, CMS released new guidance on family planning services. The guidance:
- Reiterates the standards that state Medicaid agencies must adhere
to, including ensuring enrollees have access to free, comprehensive
family planning services from their choice of providers.
- Highlights strategies to enhance access, such as an extended supply
of contraceptives given at one time, access to over the counter (OTC)
contraceptives like Opill, and payment reforms that improve intrauterine device (IUD) access immediately postpartum.
- Clarifies confidentiality requirements, both specific to Medicaid
and generally under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act (HIPAA), and provides recommendations to integrate contraceptive
quality measures.
3. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Updates Practice Recommendations for Contraception
On August 8, 2024, the CDC released new contraception recommendations for providers
designed to “remove unnecessary medical barriers to accessing and using
contraception and to support the provision of person-centered
contraceptive counseling and services in a noncoercive manner.”
Notably, the recommendations include new guidance on person-centered pain management for IUD insertion. The guidance:
- Expands pain management options for the first time since 2016,
adding topical Lidocaine cream, spray, and gel to the list of
recommended pain management options.
- Outlines the importance of personalized pain counseling and best practices for follow-up care.
The Center for Reproductive Rights applauds the Administration’s
efforts to expand access to a range of effective and affordable
contraceptive options. The ability to decide when and how to start a
family is crucial to each individual’s ability to control their life and
future.
