Blog Betty (Thomas Friedman is a Great Man was an online novel)

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Thank you, Abby Zimet (sincerely)

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Jill FrankenStein" went up tonight.

Love it. And the national Green Party is way too White.

Vice President Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are back on their campaign bus. The pair are together on the campaign trail for the first time since last week’s Democratic convention. This time, they’re on a two-day bus tour of Georgia.

Their trip is taking them into areas of the state that don’t always get attention from Democratic politicians. It will also be the site of Harris’ first major network interview since becoming her party’s nominee for president, on Thursday.

The attention this week is just the latest sign that Georgia, a state President Biden narrowly won in 2020, is once again in play this election year.

I know Atlanta is pulling for Kamala. I grew up there and I've been on the phone to my sisters who live there and to old friends who live there. Kamala fever has broken out in Atlanta and everyone's excited about this election.

At COMMON DREAMS, Abby Zimet writes:

In this hallucinatory election year, how weird can things get? Weird. Among the lunatic slings and arrows being tossed at Dems in hopes something sticks: The claim Walz is a serial-lying, horse-semen-drinking Great Replacement zealot, Harris is a child-trafficking, sexually-servicing trans man named Kamal Aroush, and it'll all be okay if you buy fabric-bedecked trading cards from a grifting crackpot who wants to start a "Space National Guard." At this point sure, why not.

Because going low is the only thing today's GOP knows, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have been targeted with a frenzied "avalanche of disinformation" since they were nominated. Unsurprisingly, they've quickly joined the ranks of other competent, high-profile figures hit by the same toxic stew - sexist, racist, transphobic, insane - like Michelle Obama, Brigitte Macron and, for Black "rabbis- drunk-on-Christian-blood" wingnut Candace Owens, anyone outside MAGA world. "It's not a coincidencethat Justin Trudeau is gay!" Owens has ranted."Obama: gay! Zelensky: gay! Macron: gay, married to a trans man who molested him as a child!" For Democrats in recent years - see Hillary Clinton in the nefarious "Pizzagate" - charges often include pedophile rings, cults, crimes, parties. Even Sleepy Joe's partaken, it seems. "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the number one traffickers of children, girls, into sex slavery on planet Earth," raves Stephen 'Goebbels' Miller,and if you cant believe him who can you believe.

Thus has Harris been accused of being a "prostitute for globalists," sleeping her way to the top herself or getting others to "service" said globalists. She's also been featured in fake photos with Jeffrey Epstein - arm in arm, canoodling on a beach etc - which totally makes sense given her history as a prosecutor whose fiery pursuit of those committing sex crimes largely "defined her career." Still, nothing prepared us for the newest QAnon bombshell - "MAJOR ALERT! ITS ALL COMING OUT!" - that Kamala Harris is actually a man named Kamal Aroush from Benghazi - conspiracy double dipping! - who "graduated" from Iraq in 1959 even though he/she was born in 1964 and got "higher training" in the UK. Irrefutable proof comes in a 2023 photo of Kamala/Kamal in a slinky dress with a very suspicious crease where a penis would be; it also shows "peculiarities in her teeth and hairline," indicating "a possible identity switch or disguise." And obviously there is no chance photos were in any way digitally doctored. Who would do that?

As a woman of color with grit to spare, Harris is an easy target for the haters; America's Amiable White Dad Tim Walz has been harder to nail. But they're trying. After his "legendary liar's" military record, they moved on to him as a zoophile who once drank horse semen and a Great Replacement fan who turned Minnesota's flag into Somalia's so he can "do the same to our country." He protected pedophiles (not), let undocumented migrants vote (ditto), lied about his dog Scout (LOL), said he got an award from the Chamber of Commerce when it was the Junior Chamber (typing error), and is what Tucker Carlson randomly called "a creeper." Twitter offered their own fact-check: He wore a crown declaring him "Burger King" but has no such title, he told students something would be on a test that wasn't, he was spotted drinking from a World’s Greatest Dad coffee mug but others have claimed that title, he bought a Happy Meal for his kids and they weren't, and "JUST IN: A 1/2" box wrench was seen in his metric wrench drawer."

Thank you to Abby for writing that article. It's got to be the first one at COMMON DREAMS in weeks that didn't attack Kamala.

Marcia said it all last night in "I'm supporting Kamala -- and noting the non-Blacks on the left who aren't" and I thank her for it.

This cycle of trashing Kamala needs to stop now. I can avoid Katie Halper and all the other grifters on YOUTUBE. But if you're telling me that there's no where I can go on the left to read about the election in a piece that doesn't tear Kamala apart? That I'm not going to accept very well.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Wednesday, August 28, 2024. Voter suppression and intimidation is taking place in Texas and we should all be calling it out but most left sites and YOUTUBERS aren't even noting it, Mark Zuckerberg lies again, Gaza supporters need to take a look at themselves because a number of you are hurting your cause.

Starting with the efforts of the GOP to Rig The Vote in 2024. Ken Paxton is the Attorney General of Texas. He has launched a series of raids targeting Latinos for being . . . pillars of the community. These are solid citizens who do more than is required. They give back to the community through unpaid public service such as voter registration. At a time when Democratic Party presidential nominee is polling very well in Texas as is Senatorial candidate Colin Allred (also a Democrat), the Republican Paxton sends armed officers to search and rummage through the homes of Latinos in what appears to be an attempt at armed intimidation.

Nicholas Liu (SALON) explains:

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), one of the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organizations, is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate a series of raids ordered by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that have targeted Latino voting activists and political operatives, The New York Times reported.

Paxton, a Republican who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, ordered the raids be carried out as part of a larger inquiry against alleged voter fraud. In a statement last week, he said that the raids were part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting, a specter raised by former President Donald Trump as an excuse for his 2020 loss.

Republican officials, following Trump's cues, have sought to pass restrictive election laws and purge voter rolls, despite experts noting that voter fraud is exceptionally rare.

But LULAC and other civil rights organizations and activists said that the raids disproportionately targeted Democratic leaders and volunteers, suggesting that they are meant not to uncover actual fraud but to suppress Latino voters.

Officers conducting the raids seized cellphones, computers and documents from people's homes, including the cellphone of Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat running against former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin for a state House seat. Castellano told the Times that the raid on her home last Tuesday was "very frightening" and she did not know why she was targeted. “This is all political,” she said.

Another raid brought officers to the home of Manuel Medina, a consultant for Castellano and the chair of Tejano Democrats, a group that advocates for greater Latino representation in the Democratic Party. “I have been contacted by elderly residents who are confused and frightened, wondering why they have been singled out,” Rosales told the Times. “It’s pure intimidation.”

And it's outrageous. Fin Gómez and Nidia Cavazos (CBS NEWS) add:

In a letter first obtained by CBS News, LULAC requested that the Justice Department investigate Paxton's office for Voting Rights Act violations. The organization is accusing Paxton's office of carrying out illegal searches premised on voter fraud.

[. . .]

"Attorney General Paxton is using his position of authority to harass and intimidate Latino non-profit organizations like LULAC, Latino Leaders and LULAC members," Juan Proaño, LULAC's CEO told CBS News, calling the state AG's effort "point-blank" voter intimidation. "It is evident through his pattern of lawsuits, raids, searches, and seizures that he is trying to keep Latinos from voting."

Proaño said one of those targeted was Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old who lives in San Antonio. Martinez has been a LULAC member for over 35 years and works to expand voter registration among seniors and veterans in South Texas.

She said that last Tuesday, there was a knock on her door in the morning, and she was greeted by nine officers in tactical gear and firearms who said they were executing a search warrant. Martinez was questioned for over three hours about her voter registration efforts in Texas.

Law enforcement seized Martinez's phone, computer, personal calendar, blank voter registration forms and her certificate to conduct voter registration, according to Martinez.

"This is a free country, this is not Russia," Martinez said Monday during a press conference denouncing the raid.

Kristin Dean and Zack Briggs (KENS) also cover the press conference:

Lidia Martinez, a volunteer and great-grandmother in her 80s, was woken up in the early morning hours on Tuesday. She said nine law enforcement agents searched her home and questioned her for hours.

"After two hours of questioning, they took me outside in front of all of my neighbors for half an hour while they searched the living room where I had been sitting. They continued to question me, asking about LULAC members," Martinez said. "I said, 'what do you want from me? I am an old lady, all I do is help the seniors."

Martinez said she's been politically engaged since she was a little girl growing up in San Antonio. She never imagined to be trapped in such activity.

“I said I feel like I’m in Russia," Martinez said. “I asked them why they were there and they said because of voter fraud. And I said I’m not guilty of that.”

Hogan Gore (AUSTIN-AMERICAN STATESMAN via USA TODAY) notes:

Paxton, who has vowed to investigate "every credible report we receive" pertaining to criminal activity tied to elections, argued that citizens have the ability to register to vote when renewing or registering for a driver's license with the DPS, "so there is no obvious need to assist citizens to register to vote outside DPS offices — calling into question the motives of the nonprofit groups."

When you can't win the votes, you seek to suppress turnout. Ken Paxton is a crook. And he's working with Governor Greg Asshole to destroy turnout in Texas. The above is one way. Another? Juan Salinas II and Natalia Contreras (TEXAS TRIBUNE and VOTEBEAT) report:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Monday that the state has removed roughly a million people from its voter rolls since he signed a legislative overhaul of election laws in 2021.

“Illegal voting in Texas will never be tolerated. We will continue to actively safeguard Texans’ sacred right to vote while also aggressively protecting our elections from illegal voting,” he said.

However, election experts point out that both federal and state law already required voter roll maintenance, and the governor’s framing of this routine process as a protection against illegal voting could be used to undermine trust in elections. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 already governs how states should keep their registration rolls accurate and up-to-date, and also includes protections to avoid the inadvertent removal of properly registered voters.

“Year after year, people are taken off the voting rolls for all manner of innocuous reasons,” said Sarah Xiyi Chen, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project.

[. . .]

In 2019, Texas officials flagged 95,000 voters whom they identified as “noncitizens” and accused broadly of voter fraud. After review, it turned out that many of the people identified on the rolls were naturalized citizens. The scandal resulted in the secretary of state resigning. The state abandoned the effort after numerous lawsuits, which resulted in the state setting new guidelines for future voter roll clean-ups.

ACLU of Texas attorney Ashley Harris points to the 2019 incident as an example of the state's lack of transparency about how it collects this data.

In addition, we should point out that there is no national law or Texas law that states you have to register at the DMV. Though Greg Asshole and Crooked Ken Paxton would never give credit where it's due, it is because of then-President Bill Clinton and Rock The Vote that people can register at the DMV across the country:

Signed into law on May 20, 1993, by President Bill Clinton, the National Voter Registration Act opens a new window, also known as the NVRA opens a new window, revolutionized voter registration across the country establishing voter registration requirements and policies to facilitate those requirements. The NVRA required each state to:

It is because of the NVRA that eligible voters can register to vote at their state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) earning the law the nickname “Motor Voter”.

It is also why eligible voters who submit an application by their state’s deadlines can vote in the upcoming election because it required states to process applications in a timely manner. The passage of the NVRA made registering to vote more accessible.

Why is making voter registration more accessible important?

Voter registration is the first barrier to voting. Even with the NVRA and policies like online and automatic voter registrations in some states, approximately 25% of eligible voters remain unregistered to vote, according to 2020 U.S. Census data. The registration gap is greatest among young people, particularly young people of color, young Natives, young people with disabilities and young people from low-income backgrounds. Every year, millions of eligible voters find themselves unable to vote because they miss a registration deadline, do not update their registration, or are unsure how to register.

How did Rock the Vote contribute to the passage of the NVRA?

In the early 1990s, Rock the Vote launched a major national campaign to support the passage of the NVRA. We partnered with the Recording Industry Association of American, MTV, Rolling Stone, major artists and actors of the era, and elected leaders to record and broadcast PSAs, testify at Congressional hearings opens a new window, and conduct public media interviews.

The whole point was to make it easier for people to vote by making registration easier. That's why at any county fair in the fall you will find a table set up for voter registration. We say we want more voter participation but the actions of the GOP make clear that they do not want greater participation. That's probably due to the fact that the statistical model shows that greater turnout tends to mean Democratic Party victories.

This is a major story. I didn't want to write about it. Because I'm not there, I didn't know the whole story and I'm tired and didn't want to learn. So when I learned of it Monday night, I thought, "Okay, I'll grab coverage. There will be in depth coverage from DEMOCRACY NOW! and from IN THESE TIMES and from . . ." And there's really nothing.

What Paxton is doing is outrageous. He's abusing his governmental power to order raids on citizens' homes in an effort to scare them off of voting and voting registration. This should land him in hot water.

But apparently our left can't see beyond Gaza. Yeah, I went there. Because I'm out there talking to groups of people and I'm hearing over and over the same message of anger and frustration that a US election can't be addressed with US issues but instead needs to be framed in Gaza.

I warned over a month ago that if you want to help the Palestinians you better pay attention to your presentations. But too many aren't. That's true on YOUTUBE and it's true in our left media.

We'll come back to it.

Paxton's a liar, a crook and an idiot. He reads closeted and self-loathing gay man so if that emerges, I wouldn't be at all surprised. But what's already emerged is scary enough:

Paxton was indicted in 2015 on state securities fraud charges relating to activities prior to taking office; he has pleaded not guilty. The case was delayed over various procedural issues, but in October 2023 his trial was scheduled for April 2024.^[12]^[13]^[14] In October 2020, several high-level assistants in Paxton's office accused him of "bribery, abuse of office and other crimes."^[15]^[16] Paxton was impeached with bipartisan approval in May 2023 by the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives by a vote of 121–23, leading to his suspension.^[17] The articles of impeachment included allegations that Paxton gave preferential treatment to a political donor who bribed him, misapplied public resources and made false statements against whistleblowers, obstructed justice in the securities fraud trial against him, and made false statements regarding his financial interests.^[21] In September 2023, the Texas Senate voted to acquit Paxton of all articles of impeachment, ending his suspension from office.^[22]^[23] Paxton is separately being investigated by federal prosecutors for the same legal issues on coinciding federal statutes.^[24]

We could go into all of his raging homophobia but, again, he reads gay and he especially reads bottom with humiliation kink. I'm not interested in helping him get off.

Hafiz Rashid (THE NEW REPUBLIC) explains:

Paxton himself has little, if any, credibility for any of the allegations he makes. He has piggybacked on the right-wing anti-trans panic by calling gender-affirming health care “child abuse.” His raids against Texas Democrats follow punitive measures even against Republican critics. And then there’s the fact that his own party tried to impeach him last year. If anything, Paxton taking up the “Democrats are getting noncitizens to vote” myth gives it even less credibility.

Credit to THE NEW REPUBLIC for being one of the few left outlets that grasped how important this is. From liar Paxton to another, Mark Zuckerberg. META's anti-Christ is back in the news and see if you can spot the lie:

Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets that Meta bowed to Biden administration pressure to censor content, saying in a letter that the interference was "wrong" and he plans to push back if it happens again.

Meta's CEO aired his grievances in a letter Monday to the House Judiciary Committee in response to its investigation into content moderation on online platforms. Zuckerberg detailed how senior administration officials leaned on the company to censor certain posts about Covid-19, including humor and satire, and “expressed a lot of frustration” when the social media platform resisted.

FACEBOOK started as garbage. Sorry, I never had a FACEBOOK account. But you do see the lie don't you?

Ruth posted "There are numbers and then there are the fake numbers in Trump's crazy head" last night. Convicted Felon Donald Trump -- a worm apparently eating what was left of his brain -- was raving like a nut that in 2020 Joe Biden's White House was having him censored. Joe wasn't in the White House. Donald was.

So before you back up the liar Mark Zuckerberg, maybe revisit Kurt Wagner's March 30, 2020 report for BLOOMBERG NEWS entitled "Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Remove Posts From Bolsonaro" which opened:

Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google’s YouTube have all removed posts shared by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for including coronavirus misinformation that violates the social media companies’ rules against posting harmful content.

So FACEBOOK was censoring post on COVID in March 2020. Per Mark's testimony -- if you believe the liar -- that's due to the White House. Again, Joe Biden wasn't president in 2020. He's sworn in January of the following year.

Facts is hard for garbage like Zuckerberg. He wanted to endorse Donald a few months back but he was told it would be bad for the shares in the company -- so he claimed he wasn't endorsing despite calling Donald "bad ass." This is his way of endorsing him: Lying to Congress that FACEBOOK only censored COVID posts due to Joe Biden's White House.

Lie.

Liar.

Trash.

I can do this all day long. Want to drop back to February of 2021 (when Joe was president) and Michael Gryboski (CHRISTIAN POST) noted this:

In 2019, before the pandemic began, Facebook announced that they were looking to reduce the influence of anti-vaccination posts on their social media platform.

“We will reduce the ranking of groups and Pages that spread misinformation about vaccinations in News Feed and Search. These groups and Pages will not be included in recommendations or in predictions when you type into Search,” stated Facebook at the time.

“When we find ads that include misinformation about vaccinations, we will reject them. We also removed related targeting options, like ‘vaccine controversies.’ For ad accounts that continue to violate our policies, we may take further action, such as disabling the ad account.”

Again, Joe was president in 2021. However, he wasn't president in 2019. That was Donald Trump. So if Zuckerberg was having his arm twisted to censor by a White House, in 2019 that would have been Donald.

April 17, 2020, Scott Bicheno (TELECOMS) reported:

Under mounting pressure to counter misinformation around the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook is increasingly dictating what its users should see and think.

Facebook already downgrades any posts it doesn’t like the look of regarding the virus, but it’s apparently concerned that some of its users might still interact with the wrong content. It’s not Facebook users’ fault, you see, they’re just hapless plebs with not critical faculties of their own. Thankfully Facebook is on the case.

The social media giant’s VP of Integrity (an Orwellian job title if there ever was one), Guy Rosen, recently provided An Update on Our Work to Keep People Informed and Limit Misinformation About COVID-19. “We’re going to start showing messages in News Feed to people who have liked, reacted or commented on harmful misinformation about COVID-19 that we have since removed,” said Rosen.

Again, that would be when Donald Trump was president.

Legal idiot Jonathan Turley felt the need to Tweet:

Fox posted my column on Mark Zuckerberg's admission that Facebook did censor Americans under pressure from the Administration. He wants people to know that they are really regret now their role. It is the feigned regret that comes with forced exposure...

No, you fool, the censorship began under Donald -- as we took the time to document above. Jonathan, you're a damn liar and a bigger disgrace and disappointment than even Robert Kennedy Junior. Matt Taibbi and Glynneth Greenwald are equally stupid.

Deliver us from the idiots, please.

Again, Zuckerberg made statements that are being spun as truth but it is public record that the censorship began long before Joe was president.

I know Jonathan, Glynneth, Matt and FOX "NEWS" love to spin and lie. But facts are facts.

Philip Bump (WASHINGTON POST) offers this take on Zuckerberg's nonsense claims:

The actions of technology companies became a centerpiece of right-wing criticism, without a countervailing defense in the public conversation from the left. It is probably not surprising, then, that on Monday Zuckerberg responded to a request from the hard-right-Republican-led House Judiciary Committee with a letter broadly ceding the debate.

In his letter, Zuckerberg addressed three issues: Facebook’s approach to covid misinformation, the decision to limit sharing of the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the foundation’s contributions to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) aimed at backstopping resources for elections administrators.

On the first point, Zuckerberg criticized the Biden administration for its efforts to get Facebook to address coronavirus misinformation — a political win for his Republican critics.

“Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions, including COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in the wake of this pressure,” he wrote. “I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.”

The line between what Zuckerberg describes as “pressure” and that the decisions were ultimately Meta’s will be blurred. What’s more, the Supreme Court recently rejected the idea that the administration had crossed an unacceptable line. But this is almost exactly what Republicans wanted him to say.

[. . .]

It’s ironic: To alleviate pressure he’s felt from government actors, Zuckerberg once again sought to give them what they want.

At THE NATION, Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Jennifer Taylor-Skinner write:

Black women have long understood the assignment in organizing for a cause, especially when the stakes are high. And we’ve always ensured that movements are a multigenerational and multiethnic effort; collective organizing is our superpower, especially when we are outnumbered and outspent.

Which is why as the unsung heroes of the Democratic Party, Black women didn’t miss the opportunity to showcase our fortitude and influence in Chicago last week. After all, Black women not only set the stage for Kamala Harris’s rise; the policies we have long pushed for are now an integral part of the national conversation.

When rumors first swirled about who would replace President Biden if he stepped down, Black women, who have consistently voted for Democrats, warned leadership within the party to not pass over Kamala Harris. Fast forward to July 21 and Biden immediately followed his announcement that he was dropping out of the race with an endorsement for the vice president. Within 12 hours of that announcement, Win with Black Women (WWBW), an intergenerational network of Black women leaders in the United States, kickstarted a new model for digital organizing for the newly announced Harris campaign. With more than 40,000 attendees present at its weekly meeting, WWBW not only changed the meeting capacity limits of Zoom; it also set off a cascade of fundraising calls across the nation among other affinity groups. To date, other groups that have organized around the campaign include White Women for Harris, White Dudes for Harris, Republicans for Harris, and Latinas for Harris—all groups critical for the Democrats to win up and down the ballot in November. In just one month, the Harris-Walz campaign raised a record-breaking $500 million, demonstrating the level of excitement and joy swirling around the vice president.

The enthusiasm has only become more infectious in the past two weeks. After Harris announced her running mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, both have continued to build momentum and electrify audiences across the country. Their big test as a joint ticket was the Democratic National Convention—a natural crescendo on their journey to November and another opportunity for Black women to show up and show out for Kamala Harris.

Supposedly, Black women are valued on the left. Supposedly. Racism and sexism aren't supposed to exist on the left. But they do. And whether its a student group, a woman's group or an elderly group that I'm speaking with -- and I'm doing a minimum of six groups a day (that extends into the evening) every day and will be doing that up until the day before the election, I'm hearing over and over the reality: That a very vocal part of the left wants to steal people's joy.

Those old enough to remember Barack Obama's two runs for the presidency point at how the left rallied around Barack. They include the whore Jill Stein in that. She never called out Barack and when he was on the ropes in 2012, she immediately attacked Mitt Romney. Today, she attacks Kamala Harris non-stop.

People are excited by Kamala and by what a Kamala presidency could mean.

And Americans are getting damn sick of everything needed to run through the Gaza Purity Filter.

You're overplaying your hand and you're pissing off the people you're going to need after the election regardless of the outcome.

You've become a group of spoiled brats because you're highly uneducated and fail to grasp that not everyone's as ignorant as you.

The country does not need another YOUTUBE video on the 'poor' -- ugly faced -- state official who is Palestinian-American that was 'denied' from the DNC stage.

You're really stupid for pimping that to begin with.

Reality, you don't wait until weeks before a convention to push for someone to speak.

And if you're going to push for someone to speak, they are either a rising star or an established one. Otherwise, they're not getting on the stage. Barack got on the stage in 2004 because he was a rising political star.

He also got on because he was a man.

Or do you idiots not know the story as you pimp for Polly Palestinian to be on the stage?

Hillary Clinton spoke at the 2004 convention. She was a US senator. She was the party's biggest fundraiser. And in December of **2003**, it was announced she wouldn't be speaking.

Why?

Because she was a woman. Let's not play around. We don't have the time. She was a nationally known figure, she brought in tons of donations and she wasn't going to be allowed on stage. So the push began. And the DNC after a bit said she could introduce her husband. And the push continued and Hillary became an official speaker.

That took months and months of pressure.

And, again, Hillary was a political star. She brought in the donations. She was in the US Senate, she was nationally known.

And you crazies thought you could wait until a few weeks before the convention to start tossing out names. And then you thought that less than two weeks of work on this political nobody was going to get her and your pet issue on the national stage at the DNC?

You're ignorant beyond belief.

In "Media: They don't know any better" on Sunday, Ava and I touched on this.

One e-mail Ty passed along had a good question: "So are you saying people shouldn't dream?"

No, that's not our intent and my apologies if it came off that way to anyone.

We can't create a better world without dreams.

But you need to know what's possible to expand past that. And you need to grasp that most change is incremental. If people knew just the 2004 story regarding Hillary, they would have known how difficult it was going to be to get anyone up on that stage. They could have then shifted to someone nationally known -- didn't have to be a politician -- and spend a couple of months advocating and making the case. The DNC's dates didn't change. The nominee did.

The assault on Gaza didn't start in June.

These are things that should have been aware and working on for months.

And there is growing sense of outrage over the attacks on Kamala Harris.

It's not what we've seen before. And it's even worse than it was for Joe Biden.

And maybe you're so gleeful in your attacks that you don't realize that your attacks are coming off sexist and racist.

Marcia always lets it hang out at her site. I'd suggest people read her "I'm supporting Kamala -- and noting the non-Blacks on the left who aren't." Marcia's a lesbian and she didn't let the homophobia of some Gaza commentators stop her from supporting the Palestinian people.

But now she's supposed to ignore her country's needs, her own needs and just vote based on what some zealot for Gaza says?

As she points out, she's a woman, she's Black and she's a lesbian. She's the first one Donald and Project 2025 are going after. And where is that understanding or recognition in Katie Halper's garbage or any of the rest of the crap ass YOUTUBERS?

The crap ass set all broadcasts as though they're straight White men and only understand straight White men.

Maybe that's why you don't get how much damage you're doing.

Marcia's an out and proud lesbian and she didn't let the homophobia of a lot of Gaza supporters stop her from calling out the genocide.

But as she votes to protect her wife, her marriage, her family, these jerks aren't going to support her?

Again, you're destroying your cause.

You're attacking Kamala but you're destroying chances for Palestinians.

This was a once in a lifetime moment. For the first time in large numbers, Americans got what the Palestinians went through. And that was something to build upon. Instead, you're destroying support and, honestly, this has gone on so long that the average person was already looking for a reason to check out on it. Fatigue had set in.

But apparently no one told you -- either they were too lazy to or they preferred you ignorant.

I had hoped to cover Gaza (despite e-mails to the public account, the attack you're speaking of in your e-mails did not take place in Gaza -- and Gaza supporters, there's something you can work on -- educating people that the West Bank is not in Gaza) and to cover James Carville's latest (greatest?) stupidity as well as Iraq. We'll try to pick those up tomorrow. But voter suppression and the refusal to note the very real differences between Kamala Harris and Donald are stories that are not getting covered in the US left media..

The following sites updated:

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Kamala's housing plan, Georgia GOP's plan to hijack the election

AP reports:

Vice President Kamala Harris has a new advertising push to draw attention to her plan to build 3 million new homes over four years, a move designed to contain inflationary pressures that also draws a sharp contrast to Republican Donald Trump's approach.

Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, highlights her plan in a new minute-long ad released Tuesday that uses her personal experience, growing up in rental housing while her mother saved for a decade before she could buy a home. The ad targets voters in the swing states including Arizona and Nevada. Campaign surrogates are also holding 20 events this week focused on housing issues.

I support that plan. I applaud it. I planned to highlight the ad but can't find it on Kamala's YOUTUBE channel or the Democratic Party's YOUTUBE channel.

Now for the state I grew up in, Georgia. Katie Hawkinson (INDEPENDENT) reports:

Georgia’s governor has asked his attorney general if he can remove state election board members after three right-wing members approved a series of alarming new rules.

Republican Governor Brian Kemp asked Attorney General Christopher Carr for “guidance” on whether he can remove members of the state election board, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

This comes after three right-wing members of the five-person board championed and passed a series of new rules that add extra requirements for county election boards to certify their results.

Under the rules passed this month — less than 100 days before election day on November 5 — county boards must make a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying the election. However, the rules do not define what an inquiry should involve or what “reasonable” means, according to the Journal-Constitution.

County election boards are also required to hold a meeting to verify their vote count on the Friday after election day, which is before the ballot return deadline for voters overseas and in the military.

They're trying to hijack the election.

"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Tuesday, August 27, 2024. As things worsen in Gaza, it's time to admit that the ICC has done and is doing nothing.

Yesterday, Human Rights Watch issued an important report:

Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since hostilities began in October 2023, deported them to detention facilities in Israel, and allegedly tortured and ill-treated them, Human Rights Watch said today. The detention of healthcare workers in the context of the Israeli military’s repeated attacks on hospitals in Gaza has contributed to the catastrophic degradation of the besieged territory’s healthcare system.

Released doctors, nurses and paramedics described to Human Rights Watch their mistreatment in Israeli custody, including humiliation, beatings, forced stress positions, prolonged cuffing and blindfolding, and denial of medical care. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces, denial of medical care, and poor detention conditions for the general detainee population.

“The Israeli government’s mistreatment of Palestinian healthcare workers has continued in the shadows and needs to immediately stop,” said Balkees Jarrah, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The torture and other ill-treatment of doctors, nurses, and paramedics should be thoroughly investigated and appropriately punished, including by the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

From March to June 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed eight Palestinian healthcare workers who were taken by the Israeli military from Gaza between November and December 2023 and detained without charge for between seven days and five months. Six were detained at work following Israeli sieges of hospitals or during hospital evacuations that they said had been coordinated with the Israeli military. None of the healthcare workers said they were ever informed of the reason for their detention or charged with an offense. Human Rights Watch also spoke with seven people who witnessed Israeli soldiers detaining healthcare workers carrying out their duties.

Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Israeli military and Israeli Prison Services with the preliminary findings on August 13 but has not received a response.

All the healthcare workers interviewed provided similar accounts of mistreatment in Israeli custody. After being in Gaza, they were deported to detention facilities in Israel, including the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev desert and Ashkelon prison, or, forcibly transferred to the Anatot military base near East Jerusalem and the Ofer detention facility, in the occupied West Bank. All said that they were stripped, beaten, and blindfolded and handcuffed, for many weeks on end, and pressured to confess to being members of the Hamas movement with various threats of indefinite detention, rape, and killing their families in Gaza.

A surgeon said he was “wearing scrubs and Crocs” when Israeli forces detained him during their siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza, in December. “We were 50 healthcare workers, including nurses and doctors,” he said. “The soldier on the microphone ordered men and boys over 15 years old to evacuate the hospital.... When they took us out of the hospital, they told us to undress and stay in our underwear.”

One paramedic said that at the Sde Teiman detention facility he was suspended from a chain attached to handcuffs, electroshocked, denied medical care for broken ribs caused by beatings, and administered what he believed was a psychoactive drug before interrogations. “It was so degrading, it was unbelievable,” he said. “I was helping people as a paramedic, I never expected something like this.”

Healthcare workers also reported being punished in detention for moving or speaking, and collectively punished if other detainees spoke. “Sometimes if one spoke, they [soldiers] punished the whole warehouse [at Naqab prison], collectively,” one healthcare worker said.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported that Israeli forces have detained at least 310 Palestinian healthcare workers since October 7. Healthcare Workers Watch-Palestine, a nongovernmental organization, documented 259 detentions of healthcare workers and collected 31 accounts describing torture and other abuses by Israeli authorities, including the use of stress positions, deprivation of adequate food and water, threats of sexual violence and rape, and degrading treatment. Healthcare Workers Watch-Palestine helped Human Rights Watch interview released healthcare workers.

The prolonged arbitrary detention and mistreatment of healthcare workers has exacerbated the health crisis in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said. Since October, over 92,000 people in Gaza have been wounded, functional hospitals have fewer than 1,500 inpatient beds, and yet the Israeli authorities have allowed only 35 percent of nearly 14,000 people who requested medical evacuations to leave Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on August 5.

The healthcare workers’ accounts are consistent with independent reports, including by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Israeli news media, and rights groups, documenting dozens of detainee accounts of incommunicado detention, beatings, sexual violence, forced confessions, electrocution, and other torture and abuses of Palestinians in Israeli detention.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on June 3 that the Israeli military was conducting criminal investigations into the deaths of 48 Palestinians in Israeli detention facilities since October 7. These include Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, a surgeon and head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital, and Dr. Eyad al-Rantisi, the director of a women’s health center at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia.

Common article 3 to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, applicable to hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian armed groups, provides that “[p]ersons taking no active part in the hostilities … shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.” “Cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” are prohibited at all times. Those wounded and sick “shall be … cared for.”

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, applicable to occupied territories, prohibits individual forcible transfers within the occupied territory as well as deportations of civilians from occupied territory to the occupying power’s territory, regardless of the motive. Serious violations of Common article 3 and article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed with criminal intent are war crimes.

Human Rights Watch has found that Israeli authorities for decades have failed to provide credible accountability for torture and other abuses against Palestinian detainees. According to official Israeli statistics, between 2019 and 2022, 1,830 complaints of abuse were opened against Israeli Prison Services officers, with none resulting in a criminal conviction. Israeli authorities have not allowed independent humanitarian agencies access to Palestinian detainees since the start of hostilities.

Governments should support international justice efforts to address Israeli abuses against Palestinian detainees and hold those responsible to account. The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries should press Israel to end its abusive detention practices, which form one aspect of systematic oppression underlying Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians.

The ICC is considering arrest warrant applications against senior Israeli officials for grave international crimes and should ensure that its investigation addresses abuses against Palestinian detainees. Israel’s allies should press the government to urgently allow independent monitoring of detention facilities.

“The torture of Palestinian healthcare workers is a window into the much larger issue of the Israeli government’s treatment of detainees generally,” Jarrah said. “Governments should publicly call on the Israeli authorities to release unlawfully detained healthcare workers and end the cruel mistreatment and nightmarish conditions for all detained Palestinians.”

Humiliation, Ill-treatment, and Torture

The healthcare workers interviewed all reported humiliation, ill-treatment, and torture, including being stripped and beaten, with prolonged painful stress positions, near-constant cuffing, and blindfolding. Some said they were threatened with sexual violence and by attack dogs.

Abuses During Deportation, Detention

All eight men reported being forced to strip publicly immediately after being taken into custody and remain kneeling for extended periods, exposed to the cold, and at various times throughout their detention. Photographs and videos that Israeli soldiers shared online and that Reuters verified show Palestinian detainees unclothed or in underwear. Publishing such images online is an outrage on personal dignity and posted sexualized images are a form of sexual violence, which are war crimes.

“We were forced to strip in the street and remain in our boxers, one by one,” said Osama Tashtash, 28, a doctor at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia who was arrested in early December at his home nearby. “For an hour and a half, we were on our knees.” He said that during that period, he and other detainees were exposed to danger from Israeli military operations in the area. He said shrapnel fell on them as Israeli soldiers threw grenades at nearby houses and set them on fire.

Dr. Khalid Hamoudeh, 34, was arrested on the morning of December 12 at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia. A photograph circulated late that evening by the Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 shows Dr. Hamoudeh shirtless alongside four other men he identified as fellow healthcare workers. The photograph shows the men standing in a row in front of an Israeli soldier holding a light panel, illuminating the detainees.

Dr. Hamoudeh said they were photographed, then designated for release or detention. Behind them the photograph shows hundreds of men sitting in a large pit with at least 18 Israeli soldiers guarding them. A detailed analysis by the investigative TechJournalist identified several detainees with their hands tied behind their back, including Dr. Hamoudeh.

The image, whose site was identified first by the open-source researcher FDov on X, formerly known as Twitter, and later confirmed by Human Rights Watch, was taken approximately half a kilometer northeast of the hospital. Dr. Hamoudeh said that about 50 healthcare workers sitting together separately from internally displaced people. He said he was told to undress and stay in his underwear and was then blindfolded.

The healthcare workers described beatings and physical abuse after being detained, including being punched, kicked with steel-toed boots, slapped, and beaten with assault-rifle butts by Israeli soldiers.

Eyad Abed, 50, a surgeon at the Indonesian Hospital who was detained during a coordinated evacuation of the hospital in November, said:

Every minute we were beaten. I mean all over the body, on sensitive areas between the legs, the chest, the back. We were kicked all over the body and the face. They used the front of their boots which had a metal tip, then their weapons. They had lighters: one soldier tried to burn me but burned the person next to me. I told them I’m a doctor, but they didn’t care.

Abed said that he had broken ribs and a broken tailbone as a result of the physical assault by Israeli soldiers during his arrest and detention, which two months later still had not healed.

An ambulance driver who asked not to be named said while he was being held with dozens of other men in large a metal “cage” near the Israel-Gaza border fence, he saw guards beat to death two men, one of whom he recognized, with metal bars.

The healthcare workers all described ill-treatment during their deportation from Gaza to detention facilities in Israel, including beatings, sitting in prolonged painful stress positions while blindfolded and cuffed by the hands and feet, being “stacked above each other like sheep,” pepper sprayed, and denied water.

Abuses in Detention Facilities

The healthcare workers said that Israeli authorities abused detainees at detention facilities inside Israel. Four said that when they arrived at detention facilities, the authorities forced them to wear adult diapers and denied them access to toilets.

The ambulance driver, who was detained for five months, was first transferred to a prison in Ashkelon, where guards interrogated him daily for a week, during which time they bound him in his underwear to a chair for between 10 and 15 hours a day in a room with a blasting air conditioner. He said he had been badly beaten and that sitting caused extreme pain in his spine. He said the authorities denied him access to a toilet, forcing him to urinate on himself, and refused to provide him any food or water. He was then transferred to the Ofer military detention facility in the Occupied West Bank, where at night, the guards threw cold water on him and on his mattress.

A paramedic, Walid Khalili, 36, said that when soldiers removed his blindfold at the Sde Teiman facility, he saw he was in a large building “like a warehouse,” with chains hanging from the ceiling. Dozens of detainees in diapers were suspended from the ceiling, with the chains attached to their square metal handcuffs. He said that personnel at the facility then suspended him from a chain, so his feet were not touching the ground, dressed him in a garment and a headband that were attached to wires, and shocked him with electricity.

Two doctors held at Sde Teiman said that other detainees came to them to seek care for wounds inflicted by Israeli authorities. When detainees “lifted their shirts, I saw signs of abuse and physical beatings,” one doctor said. The other said, “I saw [men] who had cigarette burns on their arms, it was very clear. One had a dog bite on his stomach.”

As punishment for moving or speaking, detainees would be forced to stand, sometimes for hours, with their cuffed hands held above their head or fixed to a fence, detainees said. Detainees could hear the screams of other detainees being beaten nearby. One said that after he asked a question, an Israeli officer forced his fingers through a chain-link fence, he “told me to shut up and not say a word,” and pressed downward on the detainee’s fingers for several minutes, causing severe pain until the detainee could no longer feel his fingers.

Three healthcare workers reported soldiers using military dogs to intimidate detainees. “They would threaten to shoot us and start loading their weapons,” one doctor said. “This felt like horror. They brought in military dogs. I screamed, that was the worst moment in my life, because I was still cuffed and blindfolded, not seeing where the dogs are coming from.” Another doctor said dogs were brought in late at night to wake and terrify detainees.

Threats and Acts of Sexual Abuse

Three healthcare workers said that Israeli authorities threatened them with sexual assault. Khader Abu Nada, 30, a nurse at Beit Hanoun hospital in northern Gaza, said that when he denied any Hamas affiliation during his first interrogation at a military base in Gaza, the commander threatened to rape him with an “electric stick.” When Abu Nada continued to deny any Hamas affiliation, soldiers beat him until he was bleeding from his nose, hands, and mouth.

Abu Nada said the commander then asked him where his mother was and threatened to bring her from the checkpoint where he was arrested and strip her in front of everyone. “When I heard this, I was psychologically broken. I felt humiliated,” he said. He said he was threatened with rape again prior to his release.

A detained paramedic who was transferred to al-Naqab prison after 20 days in Sde Teiman, said that a man who was visibly “bleeding from his bottom” was brought in and placed next to him. The man told the paramedic that before he was placed in detention, “three soldiers took turns raping him with an M16 [assault rifle]. No one else knew, but he told me as a paramedic. He was terrified.” In addition, a doctor said while he was detained in a military base, a detainee, “in his late 30s, crying hard … told me he was sexually assaulted during the strip search.”

Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Conditions

All the healthcare workers described horrific conditions in detention. Abed, the surgeon, said the food was “horrible” and inadequate, and that he lost 22 kilograms during a month and a half in detention. The bathrooms were “not even fit for animals.” The mattresses and blankets were thin, and the cold nights were “unbearable.” In the cells, water for toilets and for drinking was only available for one hour a day, with a “disgusting” stench emanating from the non-flushable toilets. “They gave us a bag for the garbage. We used to fill it with water and drink from it later. It smelled horrible but we had no choice,” Abed said.

For detainees’ meals at Sde Teiman, soldiers “emptied tuna cans into a garbage bag and gave it to me,” said Dr. Khalid Hamoudeh, whom soldiers ordered to distribute food to detainees. “One time I saw a soldier spit in the bag. Many [detainees] were starving and telling me they were hungry.” A nurse detained at Anatot said, “We got two meals [a day]. It was terrible food. I would just drink water, there were no fruits, not even apples. They gave us food just to survive the day.”

Khalili, the paramedic, said that at one point when he was detained in Sde Teiman, an Israeli news crew arrived, and a detainee who understood Hebrew told him that a prison official told the journalists, falsely, that the detainees were members of a unit of Hamas’s armed wing responsible for the October 7 attacks. The next day, the paramedic said, soldiers brought food and set it in front of the detainees, ordered them not to eat it, took photographs, then took the food away.

Prolonged Cuffing and Blindfolding

The healthcare workers said that they were cuffed almost constantly throughout their detention. They said Israeli authorities often ignored detainees who complained about the tightness of their cuffs or tightened their cuffs as punishment for complaining. In a public letter, an Israeli doctor working in the military field hospital at Sde Teiman wrote that in a single week, “two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event.”

Abu Nada, the nurse, said he was arrested at the Kuwaiti Roundabout in Gaza on November 22 while evacuating from the north with his family. Soldiers ordered him to strip, cuffed and blindfolded him, then took him for questioning. He said his first interrogation ended with an Israeli military commander punching him in the face and kicking him all over his body, then ordering another soldier to tighten his cuffs and drag him to an open field, where he waited on his knees for an hour.

“My wrists hurt so much, they felt paralyzed and numb. I cried so much, I couldn’t take the pain,” Abu Nada said. When he asked a soldier to loosen his cuffs, he said the soldier repeatedly kicked his head instead. “I told him, ‘Kill me I can’t take it anymore, kill me already.’” Israeli soldiers ignored or beat him in response to his multiple requests to loosen his handcuffs.

Abu Nada said his wrists later turned black, and he feared his mistreatment may have caused permanent damage: “I still feel pain in my hands. My hands are weak, and I have no strength to hold or carry anything. Also, there’s still pain from my shoulders all the way to my fingertips. I have severe neck pain from the pressure on my head when they kept pushing our heads down.”

As Physicians for Human Rights Israel has reported, prolonged physical restraint causes intense pain and can result in permanent nerve damage that interferes with using the hands and in extreme cases can lead to death.

The healthcare workers also all reported prolonged, near-constant blindfolding. According to Physicians for Human Rights Israel, “blindfolding can, even with short-term use, induce visual hallucinations in healthy individuals. Over extended periods, prolonged use of blindfolds can contribute to the onset of anxiety disorders, depression, substance abuse, and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) in the medium to long term.”

There's a little more but that gives you the gist, click here to read in full. At COMMON DREAMS, Brett Wilkins covers the report and writes:

"The Israeli government's mistreatment of Palestinian healthcare workers has continued in the shadows and needs to immediately stop," HRW acting Middle East director Balkees Jarrah said in a statement. "The torture and other ill-treatment of doctors, nurses, and paramedics should be thoroughly investigated and appropriately punished, including by the International Criminal Court (ICC)."

"The torture of Palestinian healthcare workers is a window into the much larger issue of the Israeli government's treatment of detainees generally," Jarrah added. "Governments should publicly call on the Israeli authorities to release unlawfully detained healthcare workers and end the cruel mistreatment and nightmarish conditions for all detained Palestinians."

[. . .]

Meanwhile at the ICC -- which is also located in The Hague -- Prosecutor Karim Khan is pushing the tribunal to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, at least one of whom, former political chief Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated by Israel.

Why is anyone urging the ICC?

They got a huge outpouring of respect and praise when they did the little that they did months and months ago. And nothing has come from it.

REUTERS noted Saturday:

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court stressed the court had jurisdiction to investigate Israeli nationals and asked judges to urgently decide on arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

In court filings made public Friday, prosecutor Karim Khan urged judges weighing the arrest warrants sought against Israeli officials and Hamas leaders to not delay. "Any unjustified delay in these proceedings detrimentally affects the rights of victims," he said.

Khan has to ask and urge. He works for the ICC. The rest of us don't. The ICC has been inactive and derelict in their duties. You don't beg that kind of agency. You protest, you shame it, you make sure that the judges see that you're on to their inaction and that the ICC is becoming nothing in the eyes of the world. Maybe then they'll take some action. Maybe they won't -- but if they don't, it'll be after we've exposed them as the useless body they are becoming.

It is almost September. And the paperwork for arrest warrants was originally filed in May. And the iCC has refused to respond to that paperwork. It's been almost four months. Is there anything else as prominent and ongoing taking place on the world state as Gaza? Is there any excuse for going even one month without responding?

There's not. There's never been. Let's all wake up and grasp that the ICC judges are doing nothing and that this is not a mistake on their part, this is the actual choice of (non) action that they have chosen.

Meanwhile, Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy (AP) report, "One of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals has been emptying out in recent days as Israel has ordered the evacuation of nearby areas and signaled a possible ground operation in a town that has been largely spared throughout the war, officials said Monday." It's al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in deir al-Balah. ABC NEWS adds, "Out of the 650 patients in Al-Aqsa Hospital, only 100 remain in the hospital that are being treated, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said." ALJAZEERA notes:

The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya says Israel wants to “destroy the health sector” by preventing fuel from reaching the Strip.

Giving an update on the situation at the hospital, he said most people who arrive wounded by Israeli attacks die due to poor conditions and lack of medical services.

He also said Gaza is facing a “germ war” and demanded the institution of a vaccination programme.

Earlier this month, the Health Ministry in Gaza reported that it detected the first polio case in the besieged enclave after United Nations officials called for a pause in the fighting to enable a vaccination campaign for children against the virus.

Picking up on that thread, Maya Davis (CNN) explains:

After six sewage samples taken in Gaza in late June tested positive for poliovirus, World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that it was “just a matter of time” before the disease reached thousands of Palestinian children.

At the time of his warning in late July, cases of acute flaccid paralysis, a symptom of poliovirus infection, had been flagged in the area where the samples were taken. Just week’s later, Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years was confirmed in an unvaccinated 10-month-old.

Now more than 1.2 million oral polio vaccines have arrived in the Gaza Strip, with millions more expected in coming days. The aim is to vaccinate about 640,000 children under the age of 10 with two doses each.

But a cease-fire or a pause passed off as a 'cease-fire' is needed for the doses to be given. And there's still no pause in sight.

THE NATIONAL reports on the shrinking space in Gaza in the video below.

Gaza remains under assault. Day 325 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll rises to 40,476, with 93,647 wounded." Early on, Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) pointed out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." Months ago, United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of of acute food insecurity or worse." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons. In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."

Let's move quickly to the US presidential election. Marjorie Cohen has an important interview with Lauren Miller Karalunas at TRUTHOUT and this the intro:

After the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump and his allies denied that Joe Biden had won. To this day, election deniers refuse to accept that Trump lost the election. Efforts to thwart Biden from becoming president, including the Trump-inspired insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were ubiquitous. Trump’s supporters filed dozens of lawsuits to stop the certification of Biden’s win, none of which was successful.

One of the tactics the election deniers used was the refusal of local officials to certify the results of the 2020 election, based on the false claim that there was widespread voter fraud.

Fortunately, safeguards built into state laws held, and they prevented Trump from stealing the election from Biden.

During the 2022 midterm elections, “several rogue local officials” in multiple states “refused or threatened to refuse to certify valid election results based on false claims of widespread fraud. All of these efforts were unsuccessful,” Lauren Miller Karalunas, counsel in the Brennan Center’s democracy program, told Truthout.

In this interview, Miller Karalunas explains the mandatory duty of election officials to certify the results. She details what would happen if the 2024 election results are not certified by the constitutional cut-off date, the legal remedies available to protect certification of the results of the election, and whether the strategies of the election deniers to undermine the outcome could be successful.

Yesterday, Thom Hartman spoke with investigative journalist Greg Palast about former candidate and forever fool Robert F. Kennedy Jr.