Wednesday, July 24, 2024

 The joyful reception that Vice President Kamala Harris received from Democrats when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her was rooted largely in the contrast between the relatively youthful 59-year-old woman and the increasingly frail 81-year-old president. She gives good speeches! She's fun and energetic! And she can campaign aggressively, especially with Biden remaining president, allowing Harris to make campaigning her full-time job. People in focus groups frequently say they haven't seen much of Harris these past four years. Well, that's about to change, since she is well-positioned to give endless interviews, attend frequent events, and give oh-so-many speeches. The contrast with Biden, who struggled to find the energy to campaign on top of running a country, will be notable. 

Every time Trump talks, it confirms the Biden campaign's narrative that the former president is a self-centered jerk who will sell out the country for his own interests.   

Amanda Marcotte  in Salon.com

Monday, July 22, 2024

 


Joe Biden's brilliant exit: Democrats get a boost, Republicans left bewildered 

It's a new race and now Donald Trump is the old guy

 

Kamala Harris is all in

"My intention is to earn and win this nomination," Harris says in a statement after receiving Biden's endorsement

By KELLY MCCLURE

Nights & Weekends Editor

VP Harris

 I am running to be President of the United States.

It has been the honor of a lifetime to serve alongside our Commander-in-Chief, my friend, President Joe Biden — one of the finest public servants we will ever know. And I am honored to have his support and endorsement.
And I am eager to run on the record of what Joe and I have accomplished together, with each of you. We built our country back after our predecessor left it in shambles -- making historic progress in reducing prescription drug costs, upgrading our nation’s infrastructure, fighting climate change, and more. We are stronger today because we took action -- together -- to invest in America’s future.
I am excited to continue to work toward our vision for a better future for all. If that’s all you need to hear, then make a donation to support this team today.

VP Harris

Kamala

 


“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination. I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda. We have 107 days until Election Day. Together, we will fight. And together, we will win,” Harris said in a statement of her own on Sunday. 
-Salon.com

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

 For more than nine years, I have been chronicling and warning about the Age of Trump and the harm it has and will continue to do to American democracy and society. But these last three weeks, the surreal nature of the Age of Trump and its never-ending story—one where the next chapter begins with Donald Trump and the Republican fascists winning the 2024 election and then ending multiracial pluralistic democracy— had twists and turns that are (almost) unbelievable even by the standards of the Trump era.

Donald Trump destroyed President Biden in their first debate. Trump’s victory was so total and complete that senior leaders in the Democratic Party are now convinced that Biden will not be able to win the 2024 election and must be replaced.

The right-wing extremist justices on the Supreme Court then decided that Trump is a de facto king who is above the law. Donald Trump, and his Republican fascist successors, now have the power to order their political and personal enemies killed without consequence. In a democracy, no person should possess such power.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

Monday, July 15, 2024

 Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.

-David Frum

Friday, July 12, 2024

Sean Wilentz in the NY Times

 Advertisement

‘The Dred Scott of Our Time’

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Donald Trump walking onstage to give the keynote address at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference, Washington, D.C., June 22, 2024

The majority opinion in Trump v. United States, the most sweeping judicial reconstruction of the American presidency in history, secures the monumental historic disgrace of the John Roberts Court. Since last winter, the Supreme Court has intervened directly in the 2024 presidential campaign by effectively shielding Donald Trump from being tried on major federal charges before the November election. No previous Supreme Court has protected a political candidate in this way. Far more ominously, in March the Court in Trump v. Anderson openly nullified the section of the Fourteenth Amendment that bars insurrectionists from holding federal or state office, discarding basic lessons about threats to American democracy dating back to the Civil War. Now, in Trump v. United States, handed down on the last day of its 2023–2024 term, the Court has seized the opportunity to invent, with no textual basis, “at least presumptive” and quite possibly “absolute” presidential criminal immunity for official acts, a decision so broad that it essentially places the presidency above the law.

By throwing Trump’s federal indictments into doubt, Trump v. United Statesall but completes the former president’s immunization from legal accountability for the events of January 6, 2021, at least until after the election. But that is only the decision’s narrowest ambit. Its vague distinction between official and unofficial presidential acts gives any president carte blanche to commit crimes up to and including assassination and treason with virtual impunity from criminal prosecution, as long as he can justify those crimes as part of his “official” duties. In effect it invests the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, repudiating the foundational principle of the rule of law. Trump and his supporters have pledged to wield unfettered executive power and unleash a scorched-earth assault on the “deep state,” which is to say the existing constitutional and institutional order, if he is reelected. In the current crisis, that threat’s most powerful ally is the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

Thursday, July 11, 2024

Thomas

 Is there a bigger sleazeball that Supreme Court Justice Thomas?

 

Fred Hudson
Chantilly lace, pretty face, pony-tail, hanging down. A wiggle and a walk and a giggle and a talk made the world go round. There ain’t nothing in the world like a big eyed girl make me act so funny make me spend my doggone money. . . But baby I ain’t… 
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Moyna O'Riley Hudson
Fred, dear, you're getting crazier by the day.