Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel): We need to have Senator Wyden's back on Court reform

Thursday, September 26, 2024

We need to have Senator Wyden's back on Court reform

Some good news. Justin Jouvenal and Tobi Raji (WASHINGTON POST) report:

A sweeping bill introduced by a Democratic senator Wednesday would greatly increase the size of the Supreme Court, make it harder for the justices to overturn laws, require justices to undergo audits and remove roadblocks for high court nominations.

The legislation by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is one of the most ambitious proposals to remake a high court that has suffered a sharp decline in its public approval after a string of contentious decisions and ethics scandals in recent years. It has little chance of passing at the moment, since Republicans have generally opposed efforts to overhaul the court.

Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said the goal of the bill is to restore public confidence in a battered institution. He said he hopes to get parts of the bill passed, even if the whole package is not embraced by lawmakers.

“It’s not an atomic secret that the process for selecting justices is politicized,” Wyden said. “You’ve got this thoroughly politicized process resulting in a Supreme Court that now frequently issues sweeping rulings to overturn laws and upend precedents. We are proposing a way to restore some balance between the three branches of government.”

The bill’s most significant measure would increase the number of justices from nine to 15 over the course of 12 years. The staggered format over two or three administrations is aimed at diminishing the chance that one political party would pack the courts with its nominees.

This needs to happen and it needs to happen soon. Here's the press release from Senator Wyden's office:

Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today announced the introduction of new legislation to restore balance among the three branches of government, increase transparency to improve public trust in America’s courts, and modernize the courts to ensure greater access to justice for more Americans.

In the wake of recent rulings upending decades of precedent and evidence of unethical behavior, Wyden’s Judicial Modernization and Transparency Act would modernize the courts by expanding the Supreme Court to 15 justices over three presidential terms, prevent political inaction from bottling up nominations to the Supreme Court, and restore appropriate deference to the legislative branch by requiring a supermajority to overturn acts of Congress, among other modernizing provisions to improve access to justice.

The bill would also implement much-needed reforms to bring more accountability to the Supreme Court recusal process and improve transparency around potential financial conflicts and other unethical behavior.

“The Supreme Court is in crisis and bold solutions are necessary to restore the public trust,” Wyden said. “More transparency, more accountability and more checks on a power hungry Supreme Court are just what the American people are asking for.”

The bill modernizes the federal judiciary by:

Expanding the Supreme Court to 15 justices.
- The expansion is staggered over a total of 12 years with a president getting to appoint one nominee in the first and third years of each presidential term.
Establishing a new supermajority threshold to overturn acts of Congress on a constitutional basis at both the Supreme Court and Circuit Court level.
Requiring that relief granted by lower courts in cases seeking to invalidate an act of Congress expire upon the issuing date of an opinion by the Supreme Court.
Establishing a new process for Supreme Court nominations that are not reported out of committee within 180 calendar days to be automatically placed on the Senate calendar.
Expanding the number of circuit courts to 15 and returning to the practice of assigning one Supreme Court justice to oversee each circuit.
Expanding the number of circuits by splitting the Ninth Circuit and establishing a new Southwestern Circuit.
Expanding the number of Circuit Court and District Court judgeships to improve access to justice.

The bill increases transparency to improve public trust by:

Requiring all justices to consider recusal motions and make their written opinions publically available. Any justice would be recused from a case upon the affirmative vote of the justices.
Requiring the public disclosure of how each justice voted for any case within the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
Requiring the IRS to initiate an audit of each justice's income tax return (and any amended return) as quickly as practicable after it is filed. Within 90 days of filing, the IRS would be required to publicly release the returns and provide an update on the status of the audit. Every 180 days thereafter, the IRS must update the public on the status of the audit. It will also release the ultimate findings of the audit.
Requiring those nominated to the Court to include their most recent three years of tax returns in their publicly-available financial disclosure filings. In the case that a nominee does not disclose the tax returns within 15 days after nomination, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts would be instructed to obtain the tax returns from the Secretary of the Treasury and make them public. The Secretary of the Treasury is instructed to redact certain personal identity information.

A one-pager summarizing the bill is here.

A section-by-section of the legislative text is here.

The legislative text is here.

In July, as part of his ongoing efforts to reform and restore fairness to our country’s judicial system, Wyden introduced legislation to restore much-needed checks on Donald Trump’s radical right-wing Supreme Court by providing Congress with new authority to overturn judicial decisions that clearly undermine the congressional intent of laws following the Loper Bright decision. He also also introduced legislation to bring an end to the controversial practice of “judge shopping,” in which plaintiffs cherry-pick judges they know will hand down favorable rulings, leading to sweeping rulings that wield undue power over millions of Americans.

###

We need to turn out for this election. We need Kamala Harris as president to ensure that corruption of the Supreme Court is addressed and we need to deliver the House to the Democratic control and to maintain it in the Senate. Our very democracy is at stake.

There are real issues to address in this country.

It's a shame that a few bad apples have spoiled the Gaza issue. They've tried to make it the only issue in the US and, as a result, you've had people walk away from it. That's not surprising.

I had two good friends in high school. They were great, both of them. But they couldn't get along. One day, one of them came up to me and said that she couldn't be around the other. That's fine. We can't all get along. But the she added that I had to choose, that I could only be friends with one of them. I told her, "Okay, then I choose ____."

Why?

Because that friend was giving me an ultimatum. But if you want to tell me that I have to choose, then you are giving me an ultimatum.

That's how the Gaza crazies made me feel with their b.s. that if I vote for Kamala, I can't support the Palestinian people.

I can do both and many more things. I'm a functioning adult.

And I'm smart enough to grasp that there are very many issues facing us as a country and that, honestly, Gaza is not priority one at this time in history. Saving our democracy is. Fixing our court system is. Ensuring the rights for all Americans is.

Those of us in the US can't do a damn thing for Gaza if Trump gets back in the White House. The only hope is Kamala. We can pressure her.

But the Gaza crazies -- especially the smug Jill Steiners -- want to give us an ultimatum and worse: They want to pretend there's a chance in hell that Jill can win.

She's going to lose for the third time. Because she's a loser, because the Green Party refuses to spend time and money building the party. That's why Jill's the nominee for the third time -- three times now, she's the best that the Green Party can come up with for a presidential nominee. Are you getting how pathetic that party is?

And I became a Green. And wanted to stay a Green. But I saw the reality which is they don't want to grow the party and they don't actually want to win.

All they want to do is whine. Repeatedly.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Thursday, September 26, 2024. Kamala Harris gives economic speech, Jill Stein is allowed to say nothing yet again and we're supposed to pretend journalism took place.

Yesterday, Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris spoke in Pittsburgh.

Excerpt.

Kamala Harris: But let's be clear, for all of these positive steps, the cost of living in America is still just too high. You know it and I know it. And that was true long before the pandemic hit. Many Americans who aspire to own a home are unable to save enough for a down payment on a house and starting to think that maybe home ownership is just outside of their reach. Folks who live in factory towns and in rural communities who have lost jobs are wondering if those jobs will ever come back? Many Americans are worried about how they'll afford the prescription medication they depend upon. All of this is happening at a time when many of the biggest corporations continue to make record profits while wages have not kept up pace. I understand the pressures of making ends meet. I grew up in a middle class family. And while we were more fortunate than many, I still remember my mother sitting at that yellow Formica table, late at night, cup of tea in her hand, with a pile of bills in front of her, just trying to make sure that she paid them off by the end of the month. Like so many Americans, just trying to make it work. Every day, millions of Americans are sitting around their own kitchen tables and facing their own financial pressures because over the past several decades, our economy has grown better and better for those at the top and increasingly difficult for those trying to attain, build and hold on to a middle class life. In many ways, this is what this election is all about. The American people face a choice between two fundamentally very different paths for our economy. I intend to chart a new way forward and grow America's middle class. Donald Trump intends to take America backward to the failed policies of the past. He has no intention to grow our middle class. He's only interested in making life better for himself and people like himself -- the wealthiest of Americans. You can see it spelled out in his economic agenda -- an agenda that gives trillions of dollars in tax cuts to billionaires and the biggest corporations while raising taxes on the middle class by almost $4,000 a year, slashing overtime pay, throwing tens of millions of Americans off of healthcare, and cutting Social Security and Medicare. In sum, his agenda would weaken the economy and hurt working people and the middle class. You see, for Donald Trump, our economy works best if it works for those who own the big sky scrapers, not those who actually build them, not those who wire them, not those who mop the floors. Well I have a very different vision.

[. . .]

I remember being there when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Cooking meals for her, taking her to her appointments, just trying to make her comfortable, figuring out which clothes were soft enough that they wouldn’t irritate her, and telling her stories to try to make her laugh. I know caregiving is about dignity, it really is. And when we lower the cost and ease the burdens people face, we will not only make it then easier for them to meet their obligations as caregivers, we will also make it more possible for them to go to work.

CNN offers:

Harris laid out her vision for an “opportunity economy” and called for greater investments in manufacturing for new technologies to boost the American economy, particularly in historic manufacturing cities like Pittsburgh, where she spoke.
Some details about Harris’ plans were shared in a policy paper released by the campaign following her speech. Specifically, Harris is calling for a new tax credit that she would call “America Forward.” The tax credit would be targeted at investment and job creation in key strategic industries, according to the policy paper, which mentions steel and iron, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, aerospace, autos and farming.
And later on Wednesday, Harris spoke with MSNBC where said Trump’s plan to increase tariffs in all foreign imports demonstrates he is “not very serious” in his thinking around economic issues. Harris also said Trump’s economic proposals would “invite a recession by the middle of next year,” adding that economists agree her plan would “grow the economy.”
Also during the MSNBC interview, Harris responded to Trump labeling himself a “protector” of women by arguing that Trump has helped “punish women” through his role in appointing three conservative Supreme Court justices who helped overturn abortion protections in Roe v. Wade.

As Rex Hupple (USA TODAY) notes, while Kamala was speaking about the economy, Convicted Felon Donald Trump was . . . speaking about something?

“All of your furniture-makers are going to come back and come back bigger and stronger and better than ever before,” Trump said. “They’re mostly gone. They're all coming back. This is why people in countries want to kill me. They’re not happy with me. It is, it’s a risky business. This is why they want to kill me. They only kill consequential presidents, remember that.”

Trump continued to masterfully demonstrate how a real he-man leader stays on topic: “I will end the chaos in the Middle East quickly, and I’m the only one that's gonna do this. We have never been so close to World War III as we are right now, we are so close. I will be sure that World War III will not happen, I’m the only one who can say it, won’t happen. But you’re very close, and that will be a war like no other because I always say it’s not going to be two army tanks, two tanks, which by the way our country wants to convert to electric, I’m not going to let that happen. They want electric tanks. They don’t work well. The battery size is so big you’re going to have pull a trailer behind the tank, can you believe this, they want electric tanks, they don’t care, they want to have a nice, free, beautiful for the environment as we blast our way through countries. These people are crazy, they’re crazy.”

Donald's flat. He tries to run the scales but can't hit the do or the re so he just sticks to the mi -- Me, Me, Me, Me, Me.

And that's how you know he can't and won't address the problems of the people.

Here's the MSNBC interview with Kamala that CNN noted above.

Now let's turn to the media.

As Karen notes above, the media is a huge problem. There's no accountability and we need to grasp that and demand better. CNN invented a quote by a member of Congress and some have pushed back against that. But it needs pushed back on all the time. Not just when one of our favorites have been harmed.

As Stan noted last night:

Also let me note Rebecca's "j.d. vance isn't the only telling lies" because facts do matter and what does it say about the state of journalism when multiple outlets report that michelle pfeiffer and david kelley are working together for the first time since they got married in 1993? They worked together on 1996's TO GILLIAN ON HER 37TH BIRTHDAY -- he wrote the script and produced and she was the second billed in the cast.

Rebecca noted DEADLINE and US running with the lie (FOX "NEWS" also did). How stupid are you? If you're a journalist you're too lazy to GOOGLE? These are basic facts and they haven't been hidden so why are you lying and claiming that for the first time since they got married in 1993, Michelle and David are finally working together on a project?

But grasp with that example, grasp just how sick and lazy our media is. Ava and my "Media: Broadcast TV and Jill Stein -- two things that always fail to deliver" went up this week at THIRD:

Mehdi's interview and Angela's the week before really just underscored what a lazy and incompetent media we have in the US. Third time. This is Jill Stein's third time running for president and it's the first time she's ever been challenged in an interview. For her two previous campaigns, the media has treated her like a child with a terminal disease in a Make A Wish program whose dream was to run for president. She has gotten one pass after another.

Her cult couldn't handle her being challenged. They trashed Angela and Mehdi for not just sitting across from Stein and fawning over her.

The howls and hisses coming from her cult was something to witness. Or seemed that way until things got even worse. As she slowly grasped just how idiotic she had come out, she took to TWITTER with a Tweet insisting she hadn't been allowed to respond in a "nuanced and serious" manner but now, on TWITTER where nuance and seriousness are all the rage, she wanted to say that, yes, Putin was a War Criminal and here's a list of others.

And then the breast beating, garment rending and howling truly began.

The crazies really came out as Kyle noted in a SECULAR TALK segment.

He missed noting some important crazies. Maybe he was trying to be kind? Maybe the amount of crazies was just so high that many had to be excluded.

You can't exclude one person.

It is unfortunate that elements in the Stein campaign have confused Jill's consistent anti-imperialism by attempting to play to the middle with the condemnation of the empire's favorite enemies. International criminality is coming from one source - the "collective West."

And that Tweet was coming from one source -- the 'collective Idiot.'

Ajamu Baraka Tweeted that. He took time out of his never-ending research on what 'really' brought down The Twin Towers to Tweet:

Ajamu Baraka, for any who don't know, was Jill's running mate the last time she ran for president.

Apparently what we and so many others saw as a Tweet put out by Jill Stein was actually a 'controlled demolition' carried out by others meant to bring down the campaign of Jill Stein.

We don't need a government created commission to look into the matter of whether or not Ajamu is certifiable. No, we think the evidence on that is scattered all around and not across some open field but right there on his TWITTER feed for all to see. And to see his fellow Truthers like PACIFICA's Ann Garrion wanting to know "who wrote statement?"

Apparently, neither Ann nor Ajamu feel that Jill could have written the statement -- either because they think she's too stupid to write or because they believe she's such a push over that you can get her to put her name to anything.

It's bad when people see you that way -- but it's really, really bad when one of the people seeing you like that is your former running mate.

Jill Stein, the endless joke. Yesterday, she went on DEMOCRACY NOW! and got the same damn pass that they give her every time she runs for president. Let's note one paragraph above from Ava and my piece:

And it has been media malpractice. Jill has always had a home on DEMOCRACY NOW! and it's always been a safe space.

Bill Clinton calls in to get out the vote and Amy Goodman can be just as tough as Mehdi Hassan or Angela Rye then.

But Amy and Juan Gonzalez both failed at journalism yesterday.

There are celebrity talk shows that are harder hitting then the garbage DEMOCRACY NOW! served up.

It was so embarrassing, and if we had more time I'd quote from Susan Faludi's BACKLASH. But what we saw was disgusting and was not journalism. I try to not to call out Juan. I have great respect for him. But that interview was awful.

There were no follow ups. Jill just got to throw our her usual bulls**t remarks.

Yes, Juan, you did say, "And, Dr. Stein, I wanted to follow up. You were talking earlier about Gaza. This month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, published a poll that shows you are ahead of Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in key swing states, like Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin. But yet the National Uncommitted Movement, which decided not to endorse any of the two major-party candidates, also decided not to endorse any third-party candidates. I’m wondering your response."

That's not a follow up.

Juan, you know that's not a follow up.

You could get away with calling it "a related question," but you know journalism and you know that's not a follow up question.

A follow up question would have taken her answer and probed it. This was her answer to Amy Goodman's question (what's the most important question), not to Juan's. He had asked her about immigration when he elected to revisit Gaza by way of one poll. We'll come back to that garbage in a moment. Here's Jill on the most important question:

Well, let’s put it this way. The American people are in crisis in virtually every dimension of our lives, whether it’s the healthcare crisis and not being able to afford your pharmaceuticals. Some 8 million Americans are not able to afford their medications. Eighteen million were driven into poverty by the costs of healthcare in the last year for which data was available. Half of all Americans are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, severely economically stressed, trying to just pay their rent. And we are spending half of our congressional dollars on the endless war machine, of which the — this genocidal war against Gaza is one example that the American people vehemently object to.

Great, Jill, you offered a diagnosis. You didn't, however, offer any solutions. You didn't even offer a minimum plan.

In the real world -- Amy and Juan, pay attention -- people are expected to answer questions and you failed your audience by refusing to demand answers.

Let's continue with Jill's pie-in-the-sky remarks which she pretends are plans to address real problems.

The American people are calling for other options. You know, who is anyone to say they should be denied and that the two zombie political parties, that have so poorly served the American public, are the only options? You know, democracy is about competition. The American people are begging for other options. They are entitled to know who those options are.

Democracy is about competition? What is that, Jill's neocon notion of free-market democracy?

The reality that -- again -- she's yet to offer a plan. Again to crazy Stein:

It speaks volumes that the Democrats are pulling out all the stops, including fraudulent impersonations of the Green Party, hiring infiltrators and spies, which they have publicly advertised for, and hiring an army of lawyers, in their own words, to basically throw their competitors off the ballot, quite simply because they are terrified of actually meeting us in the court of public opinion and having a real debate about the crises that the American people face and the real solutions that we alone are putting on the table, from Medicare for All to free public higher education to rent control across the country to 15 million units of so-called social housing, which would meet our housing needs, cutting the military budget, and, above all, ending the genocidal war on Gaza right now, which the American people overwhelmingly support — a near supermajority, actually, supports a weapons embargo right now.

A lot of words to say nothing at all.

And, Amy and Juan, when you allow her to list all of these supposed crimes, you then have to ask her to back up her accusations. You didn't do that, did you?

No, you just gave crazy a microphone and let her spew her nonsense.

First question should have been: Who are these fraudulent impersonators you refer to?

Second question should have been: Exactly what help are you getting from the Republican Party? They got signatures for you to get on the ballot, they're providing pro bono legal work? What would be the financial estimate for what the GOP is providing you with in terms of cash donations and in-kind donations?

Third question should have been: Do you not believe that an attempted coup took place January 6, 2021? If you do not believe that, what would you call it; and, if you do believe it, how do you square taking free legal help from attorneys who defended insurrectionists?

Fourth question: The Green Party doesn't believe in accepting money from PACs. How do you square that with the contributions you get from the Republicans?

Stein then said:

And with Israel expanding this war, not only into the West Bank, but also now into Lebanon, this is extremely, extraordinarily dangerous. And when we hear the Biden-Harris administration say that, oh, there’s nothing they can do, their hands are tied, that’s absolutely false. They can do like Ronald Reagan and simply make a phone call and instruct Israel that this genocidal assault is over.

It's not the 1980s, Jill. And is that your plan for Gaza? To make a call and say the genocide assault is over?

Because that might fool your cult members but the reality is that's not ending anything. The assault on Palestinians might switch to some form of low-grade assault for a month, maybe even a year. But it won't stop the violence against Palestinians. Nor would such a phone call address the very real issue of the apartheid system Palestinians are forced to live under.

Amy especially should have asked about that. Or have we all forgotten the interview she did November 2nd, when DEMOCRACY NOW! spoke with Ta-Nehisi Coates.

AMY GOODMAN: As pressure builds for a ceasefire after 27 days of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, we spend the rest of the hour with the acclaimed author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. This summer, he spoke at a literary festival in the West Bank that connected the Palestinian struggle with decolonization struggles around the world. In Ramallah, he opened his remarks with a comparison between the struggle of African Americans and Palestinians.

In recent weeks, Coates joined dozens of other writers and artists in signing “An Open Letter from Participants in the Palestine Festival of Literature,” that was published in The New York Review of Books and called for, quote, “the international community to commit to ending the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and to finally pursuing a comprehensive and just political solution in Palestine.”

AMY GOODMAN: Last night, Ta-Nehisi Coates participated in another event hosted by organizers of the Palestine Festival of Literature, or PalFest, in the James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary here in New York City. It was called “But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience.”

Ta-Nehisi is the recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and the recipient of numerous prizes, including the National Book Award for his book Between the World and Me. We Were Eight Years in Power is another book, An American Tragedy, and his memoir, The Beautiful Struggle. His novel is titled The Water Dancer. In 2014, he wrote an award-winning cover story for The Atlantic magazine headlined “The Case for Reparations.”

Ta-Nehisi, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, under extremely difficult circumstances. Last night, this remarkable event almost didn’t happen. I mean, it was in the James Chapel of Union Theological Seminary, but venue after venue had said no to this gathering. And without almost any publicity, well over a thousand people turned out, but the place only held 300, so people went over across the street to another place of 300, overcrowd, overflow, and then thousands watched on the live video stream. Can you talk about your experience being in the West Bank, going to the Occupied Territories, and how it changed you?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Oh wow. I spent 10 days in Palestine, in the Occupied Territories and in Israel proper. I’ve had the great luxury over the past 10 years of seeing a few countries. I have not spent more time or seen more of another country or another territory than I did this summer.

I think what shocked me the most was, in any sort of opinion piece or reported piece, or whatever you want to call it, that I’ve read about Israel and about the conflict with the Palestinians, there’s a word that comes up all the time, and it is “complexity,” that and its closely related adjective, “complicated.” And so, while I had my skepticisms and I had my suspicions of the Israeli government, of the occupation, what I expected was that I would find a situation in which it was hard to discern right from wrong, it was hard to understand the morality at play, it was hard to understand the conflict. And perhaps the most shocking thing was I immediately understood what was going on over there.

Probably the best example I can think of is the second day, when we went to Hebron, and the reality of the occupation became clear. We were driving out of East Jerusalem. I was with PalFest, and we were driving out of East Jerusalem into the West Bank. And, you know, you could see the settlements, and they would point out the settlements. And it suddenly dawned on me that I was in a region of the world where some people could vote and some people could not. And that was obviously very, very familiar to me. I got to Hebron, and we got out as a group of writers, and we were given a tour by our Palestinian guide. And we got to a certain street, and he said to us, “I can’t walk down this street. If you want to continue, you have to continue without me.” And that was shocking to me.

And we walked down the street, and we came back, and there was a market area. Hebron is very, very poor. It wasn’t always very poor, but it’s very, very poor. Its market area has been shut down. But there are a few vendors there that I wanted to support. And I was walking to try to get to the vendor, and I was stopped at a checkpoint. Checkpoints all through the city, checkpoints obviously all through the West Bank. Your mobility is completely inhibited, and the mobility of the Palestinians is totally inhibited.

And I was walking to the checkpoint, and an Israeli guard stepped out, probably about the age of my son. And he said to me, “What’s your religion, bro?” And I said, “Well, you know, I’m not really religious.” And he said, “Come on. Stop messing around. What is your religion?” I said, “I’m not playing. I’m not really religious.” And it became clear to me that unless I professed my religion, and the right religion, I wasn’t going to be allowed to walk forward. So, he said, “Well, OK, so what was your parents’ religion?” I said, “Well, they weren’t that religious, either.” He says, “What were your grandparents’ religion?” And I said, “My grandmother was a Christian.” And then he allowed me to pass.

And it became very, very clear to me what was going on there. And I have to say it was quite familiar. Again, I was in a territory where your mobility is inhibited, where your voting rights are inhibited, where your right to the water is inhibited, where your right to housing is inhibited. And it’s all inhibited based on ethnicity. And that sounded extremely, extremely familiar to me.

And so, the most shocking thing about my time over there was how uncomplicated it actually is. Now, I’m not saying the details of it are not complicated. History is always complicated. Present events are always complicated. But the way this is reported in the Western media is as though one needs a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern studies to understand the basic morality of holding a people in a situation in which they don’t have basic rights, including the right that we treasure most, the franchise, the right to vote, and then declaring that state a democracy. It’s actually not that hard to understand. It’s actually quite familiar to those of us with a familiarity to African American history.

What was described to Amy has been taking place for decades. Jill didn't address these realities.

Instead, she offered garbage answers.

They were dishonest remarks.

We've never been honest about what's taking place. Historically and currently. I'm included in that as well. I focus on the Palestinian people.

I don't defend or cover for Hamas.

And I do get that Israel was attacked by Hamas on October 7th. And had the Israeli government just pursued Hamas, I doubt many would have objected.

The objection was to equating every Palestinian with Hamas, the objection was to collective punishment which is a War Crime.

I can -- and have -- speak to people who to this day defend the actions of the Israeli government since October 7th. I don't agree with them one bit. But I do know their arguments. And if someone other than Benjamin Netanyahu had been in charge during this period, the world would not have revolted against the oppression. The world's tolerated the violence against the Palestinian people on a simmer or low boil. It's only when Netanyahu turned into a rolling boil that the world said: No more.

And the world's also suffering from fatigue over this issue.

All of what I've just said goes deeper than what Jill offered but I don't for one moment think that covered any kind of an overview on this topic. That said, as Mehdi Hassan pointed out, "I'm not running for president, you are."

But grasp that this is what passes for an informed discussion with someone running for president. That was a garbage answer.

And it demanded a follow up but didn't get one.

Instead, we're back on the CAIR poll. Why?

We note CAIR here anytime they send something to the public e-mail account (common_ills@yahoo.com). I think they do important work.

But I'm not an idiot.

And I took graduate classes in research and methodology -- poli sci.

I'm not an idiot but Amy and Juan are and so is most of the media.

One poll?

Even if it was from an objective organization, one poll is still one poll and it doesn't tell you one damn thing.

No one predicts an election on one poll.

But I guess Amy, Juan and Jill are more comfortable with the 'horse race' aspect because that doesn't require knowledge, doesn't require thought, all it takes is for you to have the ability to jaw bone.

CAIR is not an impartial organization. It has a vested interest in the topic they are polling on. Doesn't mean they are lying. It does mean that you factor in that, on its face, the poll is not impartial.

I tried to be nice. I never looked at the poll until today. Just reading of it made it clear that there were problems with the poll. But I like CAIR so I just ignored it. If I didn't look at it, I didn't have to call it out.

Do you know how appalling it is that the media didn't examine the polling?

How about the fact that Cornel West is not with the People's Party? Did no one catch that? All you had to do was read the damn summary. You didn't have to go into the weeds on that.

What a bunch of idiots. Before we get to the next flaw, let's note Juan's words again:

"And, Dr. Stein, I wanted to follow up. You were talking earlier about Gaza. This month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, published a poll that shows you are ahead of Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in key swing states, like Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin. But yet the National Uncommitted Movement, which decided not to endorse any of the two major-party candidates, also decided not to endorse any third-party candidates. I’m wondering your response."

That's how he presented it, that's how the media presented it.

And what's clear is people are either liars or incompetent.

And the ones being polled weren't too smart either.

When asked what party they wanted to win control of Congress in the November 2024 general election, 6.6% (162) of respondents reported the “Republican” party while 37.9% (929) chose the “Democratic” party.

However, the largest majority of Muslim respondents (55.4%, 1357) were "Not sure".

So over 50% of those surveyed have no idea who they wanted to "win control of Congress" (what awkward wording)? That suggests to me that there's a huge number in this poll who will not be voting.

And on the polling population, it's not 100% Muslim by their own self-identification. So maybe fix that in the media reports.

The sample size is far too small to extrapolate across states, let alone nationally.

CAIR's poll should have been discarded because it's pure garbage.

Allowing for a significant increase in the number of Muslim homophobes, CAIR's findings are not backed up by PEW or the Arab American Institute or anyone doing polling on Muslims in the last four years. (No, Arab Americans are not all Muslim but before you waste everyone's time e-mailing do some research, the Arab American Institute usually does the Arab American category and then the Arab American Muslim subsection.)

There are so many problems with this poll and it should have been treated as garbage the minute people saw that it wrongly put Cornel West as the candidate for The People's Party.

If something seems to good to be true, it usually is.

CAIR's poll has repeatedly been cited by the press. The poll is garbage.

Survey respondents included 1326 men (60.6%), 809 women (37%), and 50 (2.2%) individuals who preferred not to report their gender from across the nation. In reporting responses to questions by gender, only male and female responses were provided.

That tells you several things. The first thing is that they're not sharing the breakdown by state but it was across the nation. So less than 1326 people are now responsible not just for this crap poll but also for the spin of what's happening in swing states. The second thing that tells you is that CAIR needs to address its sexism immediately.

Women only made up 37% of those surveyed. Now there are thought to be less Muslim women in the US than there are men but it's not that skewed. Thought to be? The US census doesn't ask religion. PEW is probably the most relied upon measure for a number on this and they go with Muslim women making up 45% of the Muslim population in the US.

Yet CAIR only surveyed 37%? That's enough to trash their survey, enough to wad it up and trash it.

It's worthless. Females are backing Kamala Harris. She has a 21 point lead in the most recent polling over Donald Trump. When you grasp that women weren't important enough to CAIR to make up at least 45% of the respondents, we're left with the reality that the poll is garbage and that our media is as well because we've all wasted so much time on this nonsense that CAIR put out when no one should have given it a second thought.

Again, I tried to be nice. I avoided the poll because it read too good to be true and because it came from an organization with built-in bias.

It's a shame that professional journalists are so stupid and uninformed. But the prize for stupid goes to Jill Stein who, later in the interview, insists, "the CAIR polls were quite comprehensive"

She's always a Karen, that racist Jill Stein. If you missed it, she's already accused AOC and Angela Rye of not having brains of their own (Angela confronted her on her pattern of doing this to women of color in the now infamous BREAKFAST CLUB interview where Jill Stein infamously said there were over 600 members of the House of Representatives -- the correct answer is 435). So let's note this section.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Stein, before you selected Butch Ware as your running mate, several high-profile Palestinian and Arab rights activists said they were approached by your team, including Abed Ayoub, the director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Palestinian American lawyer and professor Noura Erakat. Professor Erakat tweeted, “I offered to join ticket if they would be willing to concede the election if Dems deliver on permanent ceasefire and arms embargo. The idea being using Stein’s margin in 3 swing states to compel those concessions. If we truly believe the Dems would never concede, then there is nothing to lose. It also makes clear to those eager to throw Palestinians, Arab Americans, and American Muslims under the bus that if they lose to Trump, they are the source of their own loss. The Green Party rejected this as they are accountable to their broader base and the health of their Party. I understand that but my priority in this moment is doing everything we can to end genocide by using all the leverage we have,” Professor Noura Erakat said. Your response to that, Dr. Stein?

[. . .]

Instructor Jill Stein: More power to Noura Erakat for being the powerhouse voice that she is. Some of us have been, shall we say, in the political game for quite some time and have had time to observe how these various strategies do and don’t work. And extracting a simple concession without — you know, without a permanent guarantee is a very risky proposition, especially because, as an independent third party, the obstacles to gaining ballot status are so enormous that if you simply lay down your arms and you give up on the race, you lose your ballot status, and you lose it across the board, in a way that you will not gain it back. By continuing to run for office, we maintain our ballot status, and we are able to continue to apply pressure against this very reckless and dangerous empire, which is a problem not only in Gaza, you know, but throughout the Middle East and around the world. We’re currently engaged right now in two hot wars on the verge of going nuclear and another third cold war on the verge of becoming hot. So —

Shall we say Jill Stein is a bitch? You can do politics without holding elected office. But if you're someone who has run and run and run and run and run for political office and never been elected?

Again, Angela Rye pointed out to Stein, "It is amazing to hear you talk about women of color as parroting talking points instead of us looking at basic math. And the one thing AOC has done that you haven't is win some elections."

From WIKIPEDIA, here's some basic information about Noura Erakat:

In 2005, she received her Juris Doctor from the UC Berkeley School of Law and was awarded the Francine Diaz Memorial Scholarship Award.^[10] She completed her L.L.M at Georgetown University Law Center in 2012.^[11]

In 2010, she was a co-founder of Jadaliyya, an online magazine published in English, Arabic, and French, and which is affiliated with the non-profit Arab Studies Institute, operating in Washington, D.C. and Beirut.

Erakat has served as "legal counsel to the House of Representatives Oversight Committee"^[3] and has previously taught at Georgetown University.^[3]^[11] From 2012–2014, she was a Freedman Fellow with Temple University Beasley School of Law.^[12] Erakat also has taught international studies at George Mason University at Fairfax, Virginia.

She currently serves on the board of the Institute for Policy Studies and serves as an associate professor at Rutgers University,^[13]^[14] is a member of the Board of Directors for the Trans-Arab Research Institute,^[15] and is a policy advisor with Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.^[16]

But, hey, she's never offered junk science (like anti-vax Jill has) so what does she know, right?

Jill also offered this garbage, "So, first of all, we don’t go away between presidential elections. What goes away is the media coverage. And I’m sorry, you know, if you’re only tuned into mainstream media and believe the propaganda that we go away. No, we’re here. We are working. We are doing the work."

That is exactly what you do. You go away every four years and you can pull your garbage on some people because they lack the spine to call you out (apparently that's Amy and Juan) but don't run your game on me,

The Green Party disappears every four years. That's what Jill did. By the way who did Jill donate the millions too in 2017 -- is anyone ever going to make her answer that? She publicly stated she was donating the recount money for 2016's election. Where did it go?

Grifter.

Until Howie Hawkins -- 2020 presidential candidate -- they all did.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Howie didn't get a salary for his YOUTUBE videos. But after the election, immediately after, he did at least one video a week. These were Green Party issues as the topic, often with Green Party guests. Jill never did that. We gave Howie credit for that. He also offered writing.

And, as we have long documented here and at THIRD, the Green Party -- national -- can't even handle press releases. They hibernate between elections. So stop your garbage, Jill.

The Michigan Green Party? They're out there working every month of the year and I applaud them for it and I note anything they send to the public account and have for years now.

Jill's a liar and she and the national Green Party are a joke.

She's never done any work to build the party, not once.

Juan and Amy let her lie about the Working Families Party -- which is a political party even though Jill lied.

Rudolph Ware was on with her. If he wants to be called "Butch," why doesn't he legally change his name? There's something rather sad about a fifty-year-old man wanting to be called a nickname as he runs to be vice president of the United States. We aren't interested in his b.s. or his comments about "Dr Jill" -- is she a radio personality?

Jill Stein is and remains a joke.

And I can say that because Ava and I are the only ones who ever called out DEMOCRACY NOW! for the way they treat the Green Party. Jill won't do it. She's the queen of accepting crumbs.

Every four years, DN! devotes a week to the GOP convention and a week to the Democratic Party convention. And that week? They expand from one hour to two hours daily. 10 hours of coverage for the GOP convention and 10 hours of coverage for the Democrats. And the Green Party? Amy tosses them a paragraph in headlines when she bother to note their convention at all.

Back to Idiot Jill. The only plan she offered in her entire interview was this "on day one of our administration, we would legalize marijuana" and that's it. Smoke 'em if you got 'em, Jill. That's her plan for immigration. She offers a lot of empty words but that's the only concrete thing she offers. I'm not sure how you legalize something on day one of your administration -- be it pot or whatever.

Because you don't.

That's reality. She could try to legalize pot. But on day one it will not be legal -- not even via an executive order which many states in the union would object to.

So she lied.

But she lied in a bigger way and note that Juan and Amy took civics classes (Juan is a very intelligent man and I'm pissed at him right now for making me tear him apart).

The president can sign something into law.

The president cannot introduce a law or pass a law. That's Congress.

Where, on day one or any day in her mythical four year term, would President Jill Stein get the votes -- from Democratic, Republican and independent members of the House and Senate -- to pass any legislation?

That's right, she wouldn't.

She thinks it's unfair now?

Try being a Green in the White House (which will never happen for her, but let's pretend). That's when you're a real threat to the duopoly and, no, it is not in the interest of either major political party to help your agenda succeed. They are out to protect their own party and their own seat and they're not going to let you achieve. When Barack Obama got elected, you had Republicans immediately saying that they wanted to see him fail -- elected Republicans. That's politics and she may think she's above politics but Jill still has to work in the system that's been established.

She has a laughable concept of doing immigration at the border -- she has no workable plan for it but she appears to think that you can be processed in about the same time as you'd get a room at Holiday Inn. The only reason I mention that is she has "background checks" -- among other things -- being done as people are queued up in line.

Background checks?

Has anyone bothered to check out the Green Party's embarrassing gun policy? It's no stronger than the Democratic Party's and I thought the Greens were going to wake the nation, come the new Jerusalem.

Apparently not on that issue or any other.

One more thing that the media failed to note on CAIR's poll? Not all Palestinians are Muslim. Most are but there are significant numbers who are Christian. Palestinians, however, are Arabs. Meaning put a little more faith in a poll of Arab-Americans if you're trying to figure out where Palestinian-Americans might stand on an issue. There's a whole thing we could go into here about holy wars and how categories can provide the wrong impressions but we'll save that for another day.

The following sites updated: