Randy Rainbow On Kamala ! Remember "The Wall" ? Important Interview From PBS With Former Chief of Staff @ Department Of Homeland Security, Miles Taylor: Trump Wanted People To Be Impaled or Burned Trying to Scale It - The Adelanto ICE Processing Center Nightmare By Dave Lindorff

We have not done any Randy Rainbow in ages and it is too hot to sit here and re-record the results from COVID and the drug war (which is still going super strong even in Rosarito Beach but no one really talks about it - worse case scenario since the very earliest days and massive payoffs to the US media [especially San Diego] to keep their mouths shut and promote tourism...remember?)


So here is Randy...enjoy:


 



Soooo many, Randy is brilliant ! Go here for the works and have a great many laughs !


~~~~~

Miles Taylor

 ~ This is a must watch, this evenings PBS Judy Woodruff interview of Miles Taylor, former Chief of Staff at Department of Homeland Security who has revealed that Trump actually wanted a design of The Wall to impale or burn people attempting to scale it. If this doesn't give you the creeps, I don't know what will.  I always knew and have said  and written it before, Trump is a sadist.




 



(Note: Miles Taylor's Op-Ed piece 08/17/20) on The Washington Post)


~~~~~


Adding this one, more Trump horrors with links:

 ~ From Counterpunch :

Gassing Immigrants With a Highly Toxic Industrial Disinfectant In Detention
by, Dave Lindorff - 08/18/20 


"As the first and hopefully only presidential term of Donald Trump nears its November 3 moment of truth, the accusations of fascist or even Nazi tendencies and actions by him and his administration have multiplied.

But this latest one I’m calling out is particularly horrific: The use of a powerful “for industrial use only” disinfectant called HDQ Neutral on captive immigrants at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, a Trump administration-funded for-profit detention center outside of Los Angeles, CA.

According to a report in the Independent, a UK newspaper, the powerful toxic ammonia-based chemical made by Spartan Chemical Co. is being sprayed in the occupied detention facility despite company warnings on the label that it only be used near people outdoors, not in confined spaces. Worse yet, there are allegations from detainees that the chemical is being sprayed directly on them, though the company’s label warns that exposure to the eyes can cause “permanent eye damage” while inhaling it can cause lung damage , breathing difficulty and asthma.

The Nazi connection?  As Charles Vidich, author of a powerful and timely new book due out later this year on the history of quarantines in the US, dating back to the earliest days of the Colonies in the 1600s down to the present (Germs at Bay, Praeger),  notes, Zyklon B, the extermination gas of choice of Hitler’s Third Reich for its extermination camps, was actually a powerful cyanide-based insecticide invented during the late 19th Century. It was for decades, well into the early 20th century, used to fumigate ships engaged in international trade in order to kill rats, mice, fleas and other vermin.  The Nazis adopted a variant of the product to eliminate Jews, Gypsies, Communists, people with deformities or retardation and other “undesirables” during the war years.

Now we have the administration of Donald Trump, whose own family had a history of Nazi sympathies and who himself has referred to Nazi demonstrators in the US as “good people,” similarly using an insecticide/disinfectant that is highly toxic and life-threatening on detained immigrants awaiting deportation

Investigations by Reuters an organization called the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition and a not-for-profit legal organization called Earthjustice, have learned that immigrants locked indoors in detention at Adelanto have been getting sprayed “as often as every 15-30 minutes,” sometimes directly at them, with a chemical that the company says should only be used outdoors or in well-ventilated areas. They are reporting rashes, nosebleeds, nausea, headaches and breathing difficulties among other symptoms following the spraying.

I must point out that when I first learned about the vicious way African slaves were treated in the colonies and later in the United States by their owners, it struck me, even as a youngster, that it was strangely worse than these white owners treated their own beasts of burden. I wondered at that, only coming to understand later as I got older, that the abuse of slaves — the whippings, the starving, the over-working, etc. —  was a control mechanism, a dehumanization process of both owner and slave that wasn’t necessary in dealing with horses or cattle. I recognize that the same analysis applies to the way ICE and its detention center contract employees cruelly abuse their immigrant captives.

HDQ Neutral thankfully isn’t as toxic as the Zyklon B gas used by Nazi death squads at the German extermination camps, but what is being done is still a grotesque chemical assault on America’s “undesirables,”  differing from the Nazi efforts against their human victims only in degree.  The inhumanity of the overlords administering this toxin to their captive victims is little different from that which was punished, often with death sentences, in the Nuremberg Trials that followed World War II.

One can only hope that when this Trumpian nightmare is over in the US, Donald Trump and his criminal henchmen in the Homeland Security Department will be similarly hauled before a court to face crimes against humanity charges for their abuse of immigrants, including young children, as well as for their other grotesque crimes."


~~~~~

Adding this: Here is the original report from The Independent  by Louise Boyle in case you missed it...and this is no bullshit.  Note the last paragraphs:



"On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported that Adelanto had received about 1,900 Covid-19 test kits but that ICE officials refused to allow the vast majority of them to be used. The non-profit filed a lawsuit against ICE for violating CDC guidelines for custodial institutions, noting that "the refusal to give tests to people who are symptomatic of the virus infection is... medically and morally repugnant".

Last year, the Trump administration awarded billions of dollars in contracts for private companies to operate immigration detention centres in California, just ahead of a state law that was enacted to prohibit them.

California Governor Gavin Newsom had signed a bill in October 2019 to ban contracts for for-profit prisons starting 1 January. Supporters hoped the law would force ICE to look elsewhere after current contracts expire.

A combined $6.8 billion was awarded for California detention facilities including Adelanto. The sites will house about 4,000 detainees, with capacity to expand in the future."

Wires contributed to this report

This report has been updated to include the ICE and GEO response


~~~~ 



Stay safe y'all.

Randy Rainbow On Kamala ! Remember "The Wall" ? Important Interview From PBS With Former Chief of Staff @ Department Of Homeland Security, Miles Taylor: Trump Wanted People To Be Impaled or Burned Trying to Scale It - The Adelanto ICE Processing Center Nightmare By Dave Lindorff

We have not done any Randy Rainbow in ages and it is too hot to sit here and re-record the results from COVID and the drug war (which is still going super strong even in Rosarito Beach but no one really talks about it - worse case scenario since the very earliest days and massive payoffs to the US media [especially San Diego] to keep their mouths shut and promote tourism...remember?)


So here is Randy...enjoy:


 



Soooo many, Randy is brilliant ! Go here for the works and have a great many laughs !


~~~~~

Miles Taylor

 ~ This is a must watch, this evenings PBS Judy Woodruff interview of Miles Taylor, former Chief of Staff at Department of Homeland Security who has revealed that Trump actually wanted a design of The Wall to impale or burn people attempting to scale it. If this doesn't give you the creeps, I don't know what will.  I always knew and have said  and written it before, Trump is a sadist.




 



(Note: Miles Taylor's Op-Ed piece 08/17/20) on The Washington Post)


~~~~~


Adding this one, more Trump horrors with links:

 ~ From Counterpunch :

Gassing Immigrants With a Highly Toxic Industrial Disinfectant In Detention
by, Dave Lindorff - 08/18/20 


"As the first and hopefully only presidential term of Donald Trump nears its November 3 moment of truth, the accusations of fascist or even Nazi tendencies and actions by him and his administration have multiplied.

But this latest one I’m calling out is particularly horrific: The use of a powerful “for industrial use only” disinfectant called HDQ Neutral on captive immigrants at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, a Trump administration-funded for-profit detention center outside of Los Angeles, CA.

According to a report in the Independent, a UK newspaper, the powerful toxic ammonia-based chemical made by Spartan Chemical Co. is being sprayed in the occupied detention facility despite company warnings on the label that it only be used near people outdoors, not in confined spaces. Worse yet, there are allegations from detainees that the chemical is being sprayed directly on them, though the company’s label warns that exposure to the eyes can cause “permanent eye damage” while inhaling it can cause lung damage , breathing difficulty and asthma.

The Nazi connection?  As Charles Vidich, author of a powerful and timely new book due out later this year on the history of quarantines in the US, dating back to the earliest days of the Colonies in the 1600s down to the present (Germs at Bay, Praeger),  notes, Zyklon B, the extermination gas of choice of Hitler’s Third Reich for its extermination camps, was actually a powerful cyanide-based insecticide invented during the late 19th Century. It was for decades, well into the early 20th century, used to fumigate ships engaged in international trade in order to kill rats, mice, fleas and other vermin.  The Nazis adopted a variant of the product to eliminate Jews, Gypsies, Communists, people with deformities or retardation and other “undesirables” during the war years.

Now we have the administration of Donald Trump, whose own family had a history of Nazi sympathies and who himself has referred to Nazi demonstrators in the US as “good people,” similarly using an insecticide/disinfectant that is highly toxic and life-threatening on detained immigrants awaiting deportation

Investigations by Reuters an organization called the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition and a not-for-profit legal organization called Earthjustice, have learned that immigrants locked indoors in detention at Adelanto have been getting sprayed “as often as every 15-30 minutes,” sometimes directly at them, with a chemical that the company says should only be used outdoors or in well-ventilated areas. They are reporting rashes, nosebleeds, nausea, headaches and breathing difficulties among other symptoms following the spraying.

I must point out that when I first learned about the vicious way African slaves were treated in the colonies and later in the United States by their owners, it struck me, even as a youngster, that it was strangely worse than these white owners treated their own beasts of burden. I wondered at that, only coming to understand later as I got older, that the abuse of slaves — the whippings, the starving, the over-working, etc. —  was a control mechanism, a dehumanization process of both owner and slave that wasn’t necessary in dealing with horses or cattle. I recognize that the same analysis applies to the way ICE and its detention center contract employees cruelly abuse their immigrant captives.

HDQ Neutral thankfully isn’t as toxic as the Zyklon B gas used by Nazi death squads at the German extermination camps, but what is being done is still a grotesque chemical assault on America’s “undesirables,”  differing from the Nazi efforts against their human victims only in degree.  The inhumanity of the overlords administering this toxin to their captive victims is little different from that which was punished, often with death sentences, in the Nuremberg Trials that followed World War II.

One can only hope that when this Trumpian nightmare is over in the US, Donald Trump and his criminal henchmen in the Homeland Security Department will be similarly hauled before a court to face crimes against humanity charges for their abuse of immigrants, including young children, as well as for their other grotesque crimes."


~~~~~

Adding this: Here is the original report from The Independent  by Louise Boyle in case you missed it...and this is no bullshit.  Note the last paragraphs:



"On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported that Adelanto had received about 1,900 Covid-19 test kits but that ICE officials refused to allow the vast majority of them to be used. The non-profit filed a lawsuit against ICE for violating CDC guidelines for custodial institutions, noting that "the refusal to give tests to people who are symptomatic of the virus infection is... medically and morally repugnant".

Last year, the Trump administration awarded billions of dollars in contracts for private companies to operate immigration detention centres in California, just ahead of a state law that was enacted to prohibit them.

California Governor Gavin Newsom had signed a bill in October 2019 to ban contracts for for-profit prisons starting 1 January. Supporters hoped the law would force ICE to look elsewhere after current contracts expire.

A combined $6.8 billion was awarded for California detention facilities including Adelanto. The sites will house about 4,000 detainees, with capacity to expand in the future."

Wires contributed to this report

This report has been updated to include the ICE and GEO response


~~~~ 



Stay safe y'all.

Yes !!! We Felt It !!! - More On the Great Trump US Post Office Scam Of the Century - Bernie & Michelle Obama Shine At The DNC

Courtesy Zeta 

Early this morning - around 2:17am I was down here with Paris & Rubio reading when suddenly everything just shook, and it seemed like it lasted  for at least two minutes, maybe more.  The screen on the desk just wobbled to the point I put my hands on the base to steady it.  Earthquake ! But where?  I went to the USGS site and saw nothing...maybe the heat has finally gotten to me (it's horrible hot).

But here this morning, is the report from Zeta...BTW, did you feel It?

Se Registran 3 Sismos En Baja California
por, Lorena Lamas 

"This morning, Monday, August 17, three earthquakes have been registered in different parts of the Ensenada and Mexicali municipalities, confirmed the Ensenada Civil Protection Directorate.


Preliminary data indicates that there were two movements of 5.1 degrees of magnitude and another of 4.7 degrees, during the morning of Monday.


For their part, the personnel of the National Seismological Service (SSN) indicated that the one in San Felipe was an earthquake of magnitude 5.2 degrees at approximately 08:20 a.m., 85 kilometers northwest of the town, while in Ensenada the epicenter was in Maneadero .


Faced with the possibility of a stronger earth movement, the agency issued a series of recommendations and asked the population to remain alert.


According to Isaías Bertín Sandoval, Technical Secretary of the Mesa de Seguridad in Baja California, so far, no damage has been reported."

~~~~~

 Okay...so remember to keep some Flip Flops by your beds so you don't step on any glass, in case you have to scramble.

~~~~~ 

It seems as though everything in the world is happening...here's more on the Trump US Post Office Scam (which we still are not hearing about down here):

 ~ From Truthout:

Trump Is Facing a Nationwide Wave of Backlash Over His Postal Service Sabotage
by, Alexis Goldstein 

(With even more related reports attached to the bottom)


"Facing increasingly unfavorable poll numbers, Trump has clearly decided the only way he can win reelection is to cheat. Trump has ramped up attacks on the post office, including the removal of mail sorting machines, in a naked attempt to suppress mail-in voting in the middle of a pandemic. As calls for investigation and accountability grow among lawmakers, the public has begun to take direct action to save the post office — and the election itself — from Trump’s desperate and corrupt power grab.

The post office has long been a conservative target. President George W. Bush signed into law the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to pre-fund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future, an absurd requirement which no other agency has been forced to follow. But Trump has taken USPS sabotage to new heights, including by appointing businessman Louis DeJoy as postmaster general of the USPS. DeJoy is a major Trump donor, giving nearly $450 million dollars to Trump’s inauguration, Victory Fund, and the Republican National Committee (RNC). He’s also in frequent contact with top Republican Party officials and met with Trump the first week of August prior to his meeting with Democratic leadership.  

DeJoy has enacted and overseen multiple policies that will put both the viability of the Post Office and the integrity of the November election at risk. On August 7, DeJoy displaced two top executives at the USPS and reassigned 23 others, in a move critics called a “Friday night massacre” that centralizes power around DeJoy. He has also attempted to increase the rates states pay to send mail-in ballots. And most recently, during his tenure, the USPS removed post office boxes in Portland and Eugene, Oregon, and across the state of Montana, prompting Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) to demand answers from DeJoy. The USPS is still unable to confirm to CNN if the removal of mailboxes will stop.


Aaron Gordon at Vice obtained internal USPS documents that outline plans to remove 15 percent of their mail sorting machines. Multiple sources told Vice they’ve witnessed destruction of these machines, which cost millions of dollars. The Washington Post reported that at least 671 machines have been removed, including many in districts likely to be key to swing states in the presidential election. The USPS estimates that the removal of the sorting machines will reduce the number of pieces of mail processed per hour by 394,000 in Pontiac, Michigan; 327,000 in Columbus, Ohio; and 324,000 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Overall, the removal of the sorting machines represent a total reduction of 21.4 million pieces of mail processed per hour nationwide.

The changes at USPS are a naked attempt to suppress mail-in voting — a goal which Trump openly stated last Thursday. Trump told Fox Business on August 13 that he opposed the $25 billion rescue package for the USPS because, “they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.” White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow also admitted their opposition to protecting the vote. When speaking to CNBC about stimulus negotiations, Kudlow said “so much of the Democratic asks are really liberal left wishlists, we don’t want to have voting rights … that’s not our game.” These comments are unsurprising in light of the GOP’s open attempts to suppress the vote across the country. The New York Times reported that the Trump campaign and the RNC are involved in 40 lawsuits in 17 states, all fighting policies that make it easier to vote. One of those lawsuits is in Pennsylvania, where the Trump campaign sued over plans to expand the use of mail ballot drop boxes.

Mail delays aren’t just threatening wide-scale voter suppression; they also delay shipment of medicines and paychecks. Reports show that residents of the majority Black neighborhoods in southeast Washington, D.C., have waited weeks for their mail. The New York Times reports that due to mail delays in rural Michigan, diabetes medicine that used to arrive in three days now takes two weeks to arrive.

Veterans Affairs uses USPS to fill about 80 percent of veteran prescriptions, and hundreds of veterans have contacted their senators to report missing prescription deliveries. The delays led former Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré to tell MSNBC that Trump’s attacks on the USPS “have to stop!”

The USPS and its employees have been sounding the alarm. The post office warned that in nearly all 50 states, current mail delays mean ballots may not be received by election offices in time to be counted. Jonathan Smith, president of the New York Metro Area Postal union, told NY1 the delays are due to the actions of DeJoy. “If you were to leave the Postal Service under the exact same conditions Mr. DeJoy found it, using the overtime, using the staff we do have, we would have absolutely no problem delivering on our mission to make sure every ballot is getting back to the election committee on time.”

There have been more calls for investigation from lawmakers, including Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). Peters opened an investigation into the mail delays following DeJoy’s failure to respond to his repeated inquiries. Warren called for the Post Office’s inspector general to investigate changes the USPS has made to slow mail delivery, and highlighted DeJoy’s potential conflicts of interest, including stock in the logistics giant Amazon, which he purchased following his appointment. The Post Office’s inspector general confirmed on Friday that they are reviewing DeJoy’s policy changes.

State lawmakers have also called for local law enforcement to investigate. Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs asked their attorney general to investigate whether Trump and DeJoy’s actions violate an Arizona state law that prohibits anyone from knowingly delaying the delivery of a ballot. In New Jersey, Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. made a criminal referral to New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, asking him to examine whether or not Trump and DeJoy breached state election laws with their actions. Pascrell said, “What trump and his crony are doing is criminal. Period.”

Democrats have been united in opposition: On August 12, every Senate Democrat and both independent senators wrote to DeJoy urging him “not to take any action that makes it harder and more expensive for Americans to vote.” But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been criticized for letting the House go on recess without holding hearings to investigate the mail delays and attempts to suppress the vote. Several lawmakers, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Elise Slotkin, Rep. Jim Cooper, and even Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the House leadership, have all called for a return from recess and an immediate start to hearings on Trump’s attacks on the post office


Speaker Pelosi will be bringing the House back from recess early in order to investigate the crisis at the USPS, hold a hearing with DeJoy on August 24, and to take up legislation to roll back the attacks on the post office made since January. But organizers aren’t waiting for lawmakers to act to increase the pressure on DeJoy and Trump. On August 15, the climate group Shutdown DC organized a protest outside DeJoy’s condo in the wealthy neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Demonstrators participated in a cacerolazo, a kind of civil disobedience with a long history, recently seen in Canada, Brazil and Colombia, where protestors use pots, pans, and other kitchen tools to make noise. Protestors also left mock absentee ballots at the entrance to DeJoy’s condo. The following day, a group protested at DeJoy’s North Carolina mansion. The progressive advocacy group MoveOn announced a day of nationwide protests to save the USPS on August 22. And Vanita Gupta, former head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights outlined 10 things people can do to protect the vote, including signing up to be a poll worker and asking your local officials to make secure drop boxes available.

Advocates are also suing for transparency. The nonprofit legal group Protect Democracy previously filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records pertaining to the USPS’s strategy for dealing with the anticipated influx of ballots cast by mail in the 2020 presidential election. The USPS ignored this FOIA, so on August 13, the organization sued to compel the release of the documents.

From lawsuits and investigations to protests and plans to mail back ballots as early as possible, the nation is grappling with how to save both the post office and the election from deliberate sabotage. If activists can continue to pressure both lawmakers and DeJoy himself, they may be able to successfully stop the election results from being distorted by Trump’s increasingly desperate attacks."

~~~~~

 Everything here:

Democracy Now ! 


~~~~~

So we will see if Nancy can  persuade the Congress to come back to order (Mitch is hiding under his turtle shell); I'll be back later when it cools down a bit (Paris hates the heat) with the stats, and although the US press has not been covering it...we'll look at the Mexico-Venezuela endeavor to produce a COVID vaccine.  

BTW, here are the Democratic Convention  highlights, and  you know Jake Tapper does not like Bernie Sanders, period.  I think Jake Tapper is an operative for the DNC, period.  His interview of our Bernie over the weekend was disrespectful.  You are a jerk, Jake.

~~~~

Courtesy The Guardian

 A quick edit:💕 Bernie & Michelle Obama💕shine at the DNC, here are their speeches:

💕Michelle Obama💕


💕Bernie Sanders ! 💕


At around 2:30 am it is still sweltering here, hot and horrible humidity. No black outs...yet.

Stay safe everyone.

~~~~~




 

Yes !!! We Felt It !!! - More On the Great Trump US Post Office Scam Of the Century - Bernie & Michelle Obama Shine At The DNC

Courtesy Zeta 

Early this morning - around 2:17am I was down here with Paris & Rubio reading when suddenly everything just shook, and it seemed like it lasted  for at least two minutes, maybe more.  The screen on the desk just wobbled to the point I put my hands on the base to steady it.  Earthquake ! But where?  I went to the USGS site and saw nothing...maybe the heat has finally gotten to me (it's horrible hot).

But here this morning, is the report from Zeta...BTW, did you feel It?

Se Registran 3 Sismos En Baja California
por, Lorena Lamas 

"This morning, Monday, August 17, three earthquakes have been registered in different parts of the Ensenada and Mexicali municipalities, confirmed the Ensenada Civil Protection Directorate.


Preliminary data indicates that there were two movements of 5.1 degrees of magnitude and another of 4.7 degrees, during the morning of Monday.


For their part, the personnel of the National Seismological Service (SSN) indicated that the one in San Felipe was an earthquake of magnitude 5.2 degrees at approximately 08:20 a.m., 85 kilometers northwest of the town, while in Ensenada the epicenter was in Maneadero .


Faced with the possibility of a stronger earth movement, the agency issued a series of recommendations and asked the population to remain alert.


According to Isaías Bertín Sandoval, Technical Secretary of the Mesa de Seguridad in Baja California, so far, no damage has been reported."

~~~~~

 Okay...so remember to keep some Flip Flops by your beds so you don't step on any glass, in case you have to scramble.

~~~~~ 

It seems as though everything in the world is happening...here's more on the Trump US Post Office Scam (which we still are not hearing about down here):

 ~ From Truthout:

Trump Is Facing a Nationwide Wave of Backlash Over His Postal Service Sabotage
by, Alexis Goldstein 

(With even more related reports attached to the bottom)


"Facing increasingly unfavorable poll numbers, Trump has clearly decided the only way he can win reelection is to cheat. Trump has ramped up attacks on the post office, including the removal of mail sorting machines, in a naked attempt to suppress mail-in voting in the middle of a pandemic. As calls for investigation and accountability grow among lawmakers, the public has begun to take direct action to save the post office — and the election itself — from Trump’s desperate and corrupt power grab.

The post office has long been a conservative target. President George W. Bush signed into law the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to pre-fund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future, an absurd requirement which no other agency has been forced to follow. But Trump has taken USPS sabotage to new heights, including by appointing businessman Louis DeJoy as postmaster general of the USPS. DeJoy is a major Trump donor, giving nearly $450 million dollars to Trump’s inauguration, Victory Fund, and the Republican National Committee (RNC). He’s also in frequent contact with top Republican Party officials and met with Trump the first week of August prior to his meeting with Democratic leadership.  

DeJoy has enacted and overseen multiple policies that will put both the viability of the Post Office and the integrity of the November election at risk. On August 7, DeJoy displaced two top executives at the USPS and reassigned 23 others, in a move critics called a “Friday night massacre” that centralizes power around DeJoy. He has also attempted to increase the rates states pay to send mail-in ballots. And most recently, during his tenure, the USPS removed post office boxes in Portland and Eugene, Oregon, and across the state of Montana, prompting Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana) to demand answers from DeJoy. The USPS is still unable to confirm to CNN if the removal of mailboxes will stop.


Aaron Gordon at Vice obtained internal USPS documents that outline plans to remove 15 percent of their mail sorting machines. Multiple sources told Vice they’ve witnessed destruction of these machines, which cost millions of dollars. The Washington Post reported that at least 671 machines have been removed, including many in districts likely to be key to swing states in the presidential election. The USPS estimates that the removal of the sorting machines will reduce the number of pieces of mail processed per hour by 394,000 in Pontiac, Michigan; 327,000 in Columbus, Ohio; and 324,000 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Overall, the removal of the sorting machines represent a total reduction of 21.4 million pieces of mail processed per hour nationwide.

The changes at USPS are a naked attempt to suppress mail-in voting — a goal which Trump openly stated last Thursday. Trump told Fox Business on August 13 that he opposed the $25 billion rescue package for the USPS because, “they need that money in order to make the Post Office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. But if they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.” White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow also admitted their opposition to protecting the vote. When speaking to CNBC about stimulus negotiations, Kudlow said “so much of the Democratic asks are really liberal left wishlists, we don’t want to have voting rights … that’s not our game.” These comments are unsurprising in light of the GOP’s open attempts to suppress the vote across the country. The New York Times reported that the Trump campaign and the RNC are involved in 40 lawsuits in 17 states, all fighting policies that make it easier to vote. One of those lawsuits is in Pennsylvania, where the Trump campaign sued over plans to expand the use of mail ballot drop boxes.

Mail delays aren’t just threatening wide-scale voter suppression; they also delay shipment of medicines and paychecks. Reports show that residents of the majority Black neighborhoods in southeast Washington, D.C., have waited weeks for their mail. The New York Times reports that due to mail delays in rural Michigan, diabetes medicine that used to arrive in three days now takes two weeks to arrive.

Veterans Affairs uses USPS to fill about 80 percent of veteran prescriptions, and hundreds of veterans have contacted their senators to report missing prescription deliveries. The delays led former Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré to tell MSNBC that Trump’s attacks on the USPS “have to stop!”

The USPS and its employees have been sounding the alarm. The post office warned that in nearly all 50 states, current mail delays mean ballots may not be received by election offices in time to be counted. Jonathan Smith, president of the New York Metro Area Postal union, told NY1 the delays are due to the actions of DeJoy. “If you were to leave the Postal Service under the exact same conditions Mr. DeJoy found it, using the overtime, using the staff we do have, we would have absolutely no problem delivering on our mission to make sure every ballot is getting back to the election committee on time.”

There have been more calls for investigation from lawmakers, including Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). Peters opened an investigation into the mail delays following DeJoy’s failure to respond to his repeated inquiries. Warren called for the Post Office’s inspector general to investigate changes the USPS has made to slow mail delivery, and highlighted DeJoy’s potential conflicts of interest, including stock in the logistics giant Amazon, which he purchased following his appointment. The Post Office’s inspector general confirmed on Friday that they are reviewing DeJoy’s policy changes.

State lawmakers have also called for local law enforcement to investigate. Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs asked their attorney general to investigate whether Trump and DeJoy’s actions violate an Arizona state law that prohibits anyone from knowingly delaying the delivery of a ballot. In New Jersey, Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. made a criminal referral to New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, asking him to examine whether or not Trump and DeJoy breached state election laws with their actions. Pascrell said, “What trump and his crony are doing is criminal. Period.”

Democrats have been united in opposition: On August 12, every Senate Democrat and both independent senators wrote to DeJoy urging him “not to take any action that makes it harder and more expensive for Americans to vote.” But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been criticized for letting the House go on recess without holding hearings to investigate the mail delays and attempts to suppress the vote. Several lawmakers, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Elise Slotkin, Rep. Jim Cooper, and even Rep. Adam Schiff, a member of the House leadership, have all called for a return from recess and an immediate start to hearings on Trump’s attacks on the post office


Speaker Pelosi will be bringing the House back from recess early in order to investigate the crisis at the USPS, hold a hearing with DeJoy on August 24, and to take up legislation to roll back the attacks on the post office made since January. But organizers aren’t waiting for lawmakers to act to increase the pressure on DeJoy and Trump. On August 15, the climate group Shutdown DC organized a protest outside DeJoy’s condo in the wealthy neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Demonstrators participated in a cacerolazo, a kind of civil disobedience with a long history, recently seen in Canada, Brazil and Colombia, where protestors use pots, pans, and other kitchen tools to make noise. Protestors also left mock absentee ballots at the entrance to DeJoy’s condo. The following day, a group protested at DeJoy’s North Carolina mansion. The progressive advocacy group MoveOn announced a day of nationwide protests to save the USPS on August 22. And Vanita Gupta, former head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights outlined 10 things people can do to protect the vote, including signing up to be a poll worker and asking your local officials to make secure drop boxes available.

Advocates are also suing for transparency. The nonprofit legal group Protect Democracy previously filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records pertaining to the USPS’s strategy for dealing with the anticipated influx of ballots cast by mail in the 2020 presidential election. The USPS ignored this FOIA, so on August 13, the organization sued to compel the release of the documents.

From lawsuits and investigations to protests and plans to mail back ballots as early as possible, the nation is grappling with how to save both the post office and the election from deliberate sabotage. If activists can continue to pressure both lawmakers and DeJoy himself, they may be able to successfully stop the election results from being distorted by Trump’s increasingly desperate attacks."

~~~~~

 Everything here:

Democracy Now ! 


~~~~~

So we will see if Nancy can  persuade the Congress to come back to order (Mitch is hiding under his turtle shell); I'll be back later when it cools down a bit (Paris hates the heat) with the stats, and although the US press has not been covering it...we'll look at the Mexico-Venezuela endeavor to produce a COVID vaccine.  

BTW, here are the Democratic Convention  highlights, and  you know Jake Tapper does not like Bernie Sanders, period.  I think Jake Tapper is an operative for the DNC, period.  His interview of our Bernie over the weekend was disrespectful.  You are a jerk, Jake.

~~~~

Courtesy The Guardian

 A quick edit:💕 Bernie & Michelle Obama💕shine at the DNC, here are their speeches:

💕Michelle Obama💕


💕Bernie Sanders ! 💕


At around 2:30 am it is still sweltering here, hot and horrible humidity. No black outs...yet.

Stay safe everyone.

~~~~~




 

Not Only Was She Born In The USA....Damn, That Gal Was Born To Run

Borrowed From Informed Comment:Featured photo: By United States Senate – This file has been extracted from another file: Kamala Harris official photo.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64332043

 ~ From Truthout:


The 2020 Race Is Down To Center-Right vs. Far-Right 
by, William Rivers Pitt, Truthout - 08/12/24 


"Vice President Mike Pence was doing a campaign gig in Arizona last night, the state where incumbent Republican Sen. Martha McSally continues to trail Democratic challenger and former astronaut Mark Kelly. Pence’s boss is locked in a virtual tie with presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, which explains why the vice president was spending time in a state that Republican presidential candidates have dominated in nearly every election since Barry Goldwater came down the mountain in 1964.

“On the way here,” Pence told that Arizona audience in a voice drizzling sarcasm, “I heard Joe Biden just named his running mate — California Sen. Kamala Harris. So let me take this opportunity to welcome her to the race.” At this point, the crowd booed lustily. “As you all know,” he continued, “Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have been overtaken by the radical left. So given their promises of higher taxes, open borders, socialized medicine and abortion on demand, it’s no surprise that he chose Senator Harris.”

That, right there, might just be the funniest thing you’ll hear on the campaign trail this year. It’s a vivid preview of the Trump/Pence strategy for the remaining 83 days: Paint Joe Biden and his newly minted vice presidential pick as a Trojan horse bursting with socialism, abortion doctors, and lighters for burning Bibles. Biden/Harris: Antifa in Tailored Suits.  


Why is that so funny? Because the Democratic presidential tickets in my lifetime have been, in order: McGovern/Eagleton rapidly followed by McGovern/Shriver, Carter/Mondale twice, Mondale/Ferraro, Dukakis/Bentsen, Clinton/Gore twice, Gore/Lieberman, Kerry/Edwards, Obama/Biden twice, Clinton/Kaine, and now this.

While there are some doozies buried in that long, strange line, the simple fact of the matter is that — in assessing by the candidates’ records — Biden/Harris is on numerous counts the most right-leaning Democratic presidential ticket I have personally laid eyes on. Donald Trump and his crew are going to need a nuclear-powered brush to paint his Democratic opponents into some sort of far-left corner. That dog won’t hunt.

Biden’s long record of service to the banking industry, the carceral industry, and the war-making industry is well-documented. He is about as “left-wing” as the right side of an F-22 Raptor. In choosing Senator Harris, Biden has tapped a politician well within his own ideological sphere.

Harris very eloquently extols the virtue and necessity of social justice, but portions of her record demonstrate where and how her official performance has fallen short of her rhetoric. Her hands-off approach to police violence against citizens while serving as California Attorney General is a grim fact, as is her crusade against sex workers during that time. Her record on LGBTQ issues is mostly solid but far from steady, and her record of fighting to keep improperly incarcerated people behind bars is chilling.

Of course, Harris has backed away from or actively disavowed many of the less-than-progressive blemishes on her resume since becoming a senator, presidential candidate and now vice-presidential nominee. Yet she still speaks the language of high finance fluently — “I believe in capitalism,” Harris told a big-dollar Wall Street crowd at an East Hampton fundraiser a year ago — and the financial news network CNBC seems to think Wall Street is pleased with Biden’s choice.

We are a long way round the bend from primary season, aren’t we. A race that began with progressive stalwarts like Bernie Sanders, Julián Castro, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson and Mike Gravel has boiled down to a ticket that is as establishment-right as one gets in today’s Democratic Party.

That’s the rub: A progressive insurgency against the Democratic establishment, led since 2015 by Bernie Sanders, has been temporarily snuffed at the highest levels. Rep. Ilhan Omar won her primary yesterday, and the progressive tide is still running high in the House. In the offices of the Democratic National Committee, however, the process of choosing a presidential nominee remains firmly in the hands of the last people in America who can call Biden and Harris “progressive” and still keep a straight face.

A recent exchange on Democracy Now! between Aimee Allison of She the People and Briahna Joy Gray, the former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders campaign, underscores the ways in which many progressives are feeling torn over the historic nature of the nomination of Harris who — as the daughter of a mother of Indian Tamil descent and a Black father from Jamaica — is both the first Black woman and the first woman of South Asian descent on a U.S. presidential ticket.

“It’s hard to overstate how historic, how monumental this is. It’s a watershed moment for women of color across the country,” Allison said in the roundtable conversation, adding that the nomination is “an indication that the establishment in the Democratic Party … now acknowledges that America needs the leadership of women of color.”

Gray responded: 

''There can be no doubt that of course this nomination is historic. But something else historic is going on right now, which is that we are in the middle of the largest protest movement in American history. And it’s a protest movement that’s all about finding nonpunitive, noncarceral solutions to the kinds of economic problems that are plaguing disproportionately Black and Brown communities … And so there’s a great deal of frustration … [over] a running mate who is known for being the top cop from California, the state that has the second-highest number of incarcerated people in America. 

Both of these sentiments are reverberating through much of the progressive response to the selection of Harris. Biden’s choice is indeed a bright acknowledgement of a fact too many Democratic candidates have been happy to ignore: Black voters, and specifically Black women voters, are the backbone of the Democratic base.

Rep. Jim Clyburn knew this when he saved Biden’s campaign during the South Carolina primary. By leaning hard on Biden to tap a Black woman for VP after that successful rescue mission, and with Biden’s subsequent payment of the debt he owed from the primaries, Clyburn was explicitly elbowing a properly larger space at the table of government for a sector of the populace that has been waiting more than 400 years to exert the influence they deserve to. 


The fact that Harris is on the Democratic ticket four years after the first Black president left office, and is the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2024 or 2028 if the Biden/Harris ticket wins in November, marks a sea change in the balance of political power within the Democratic party. No one is ever, ever going to take “the Black vote” for granted again.

There is also the unique opportunity for genuine progressive influence in the assembly of Biden’s Cabinet-to-be, should he win. Many people, myself included, strongly suspected that Harris would be nominated for attorney general should he pick someone else to join him on the ticket. Now that she is out of the running for the top law enforcement position, there are a number of exciting possible nominees Biden should be pushed hard to consider, if not nominate outright.

At the top of my personal list for the AG spot is Preet Bharara, the former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York who was shoved out of his office by Trump shortly after the 2016 election. Bharara was investigating Trump and his business dealings when he was fired, which is why many believe he was removed in the first place. The material from Bharara’s investigation into Trump was absorbed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and lent much weight to Mueller’s exhaustively detailed report on Trump’s Russia dealings. Mueller may have fumbled the ball, but Bharara’s contribution was damning for the president nonetheless.

Biden has promised there will be no pardons for Trump if he wins, no “looking forward” and away from the crimes of this administration. I can think of no better person to pursue justice than Bharara. He already knows the details down to the decimal, and would be a highly motivated investigator. As attorney general, Preet Bharara would run Donald Trump to ground, and that is argument enough for his nomination.

Before the theoretical, of course, is the actual: The filthy damn campaign mess awaiting us over these next 83 days.

Straight out of the gate last night, Trump hit Harris with his newest, and easily worst, nickname: “Phony Kamala.” Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? He repeatedly referred to Harris as “nasty,” an insult he reserves only for women. While discussing the Harris pick on a radio show yesterday, Trump said that Biden had “insulted” men by choosing Harris.

Trump is also deep into racist dog-whistling, talking about how Biden “roped himself off into, you know, a certain group of people.” It’s going to be like this every day, but then again, it would have been like this every day no matter who Biden picked.

Because nothing awful ever truly dies, the echo of Biden’s announcement had not yet faded before Trump proxies rolled out the “birther” artillery for another salvo. They are spreading lies about Harris not being a U.S. citizen (fact check: she has been one since birth), using the offensive term “anchor baby” and falsely arguing that she cannot by law assume the office of the presidency should the need arise. Of course it’s bullshit, but count on hearing this and similar racist allegations over and over again.

It will be interesting to see if Mike Pence has the guts to bring that garbage to the table when he meets Harris in Salt Lake City for an October 7 debate. The job Harris did on Biden for his work with and praise of congressional segregationists during a June 2019 debate has become the stuff of legend, and was a fair portion of the reason why Biden needed Clyburn’s help to survive the primaries.

However one may feel about Harris, if that entirely lethal version of the senator from California shows up in Utah — the woman who bounced Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh off every wall in the hearing room when she had them before her — it feels quite likely that she will carve that chalkdust mannequin of a vice president into ribbons so fine, even Pence’s wife (“Mother”) won’t be able to knit them into a devotional for the bathroom wall. Just a hunch. 

So here we are, up to our ears in a lethal pandemic and a righteous social uprising while climate disruption burns on and capitalism collapses around us. In this fraught environment, a right-center Democratic ticket with dubious social justice chops is set to square off against the most brazenly fascist presidential administration in history.

Only Nixon can go to China, went the saying. With the help of a new coalition formed around a cornerstone of energized Black voters, perhaps only Biden can go to the White House under these extraordinary circumstances.

83 days. "

William Rivers Pitt

William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.

More by this author…

~~~~~

I'll be back with all that jazz around these parts....

Don't miss.... 

Democracy Now !  

 

 

Not Only Was She Born In The USA....Damn, That Gal Was Born To Run

Borrowed From Informed Comment:Featured photo: By United States Senate – This file has been extracted from another file: Kamala Harris official photo.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64332043

 ~ From Truthout:


The 2020 Race Is Down To Center-Right vs. Far-Right 
by, William Rivers Pitt, Truthout - 08/12/24 


"Vice President Mike Pence was doing a campaign gig in Arizona last night, the state where incumbent Republican Sen. Martha McSally continues to trail Democratic challenger and former astronaut Mark Kelly. Pence’s boss is locked in a virtual tie with presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, which explains why the vice president was spending time in a state that Republican presidential candidates have dominated in nearly every election since Barry Goldwater came down the mountain in 1964.

“On the way here,” Pence told that Arizona audience in a voice drizzling sarcasm, “I heard Joe Biden just named his running mate — California Sen. Kamala Harris. So let me take this opportunity to welcome her to the race.” At this point, the crowd booed lustily. “As you all know,” he continued, “Joe Biden and the Democratic Party have been overtaken by the radical left. So given their promises of higher taxes, open borders, socialized medicine and abortion on demand, it’s no surprise that he chose Senator Harris.”

That, right there, might just be the funniest thing you’ll hear on the campaign trail this year. It’s a vivid preview of the Trump/Pence strategy for the remaining 83 days: Paint Joe Biden and his newly minted vice presidential pick as a Trojan horse bursting with socialism, abortion doctors, and lighters for burning Bibles. Biden/Harris: Antifa in Tailored Suits.  


Why is that so funny? Because the Democratic presidential tickets in my lifetime have been, in order: McGovern/Eagleton rapidly followed by McGovern/Shriver, Carter/Mondale twice, Mondale/Ferraro, Dukakis/Bentsen, Clinton/Gore twice, Gore/Lieberman, Kerry/Edwards, Obama/Biden twice, Clinton/Kaine, and now this.

While there are some doozies buried in that long, strange line, the simple fact of the matter is that — in assessing by the candidates’ records — Biden/Harris is on numerous counts the most right-leaning Democratic presidential ticket I have personally laid eyes on. Donald Trump and his crew are going to need a nuclear-powered brush to paint his Democratic opponents into some sort of far-left corner. That dog won’t hunt.

Biden’s long record of service to the banking industry, the carceral industry, and the war-making industry is well-documented. He is about as “left-wing” as the right side of an F-22 Raptor. In choosing Senator Harris, Biden has tapped a politician well within his own ideological sphere.

Harris very eloquently extols the virtue and necessity of social justice, but portions of her record demonstrate where and how her official performance has fallen short of her rhetoric. Her hands-off approach to police violence against citizens while serving as California Attorney General is a grim fact, as is her crusade against sex workers during that time. Her record on LGBTQ issues is mostly solid but far from steady, and her record of fighting to keep improperly incarcerated people behind bars is chilling.

Of course, Harris has backed away from or actively disavowed many of the less-than-progressive blemishes on her resume since becoming a senator, presidential candidate and now vice-presidential nominee. Yet she still speaks the language of high finance fluently — “I believe in capitalism,” Harris told a big-dollar Wall Street crowd at an East Hampton fundraiser a year ago — and the financial news network CNBC seems to think Wall Street is pleased with Biden’s choice.

We are a long way round the bend from primary season, aren’t we. A race that began with progressive stalwarts like Bernie Sanders, Julián Castro, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, Marianne Williamson and Mike Gravel has boiled down to a ticket that is as establishment-right as one gets in today’s Democratic Party.

That’s the rub: A progressive insurgency against the Democratic establishment, led since 2015 by Bernie Sanders, has been temporarily snuffed at the highest levels. Rep. Ilhan Omar won her primary yesterday, and the progressive tide is still running high in the House. In the offices of the Democratic National Committee, however, the process of choosing a presidential nominee remains firmly in the hands of the last people in America who can call Biden and Harris “progressive” and still keep a straight face.

A recent exchange on Democracy Now! between Aimee Allison of She the People and Briahna Joy Gray, the former national press secretary for the Bernie Sanders campaign, underscores the ways in which many progressives are feeling torn over the historic nature of the nomination of Harris who — as the daughter of a mother of Indian Tamil descent and a Black father from Jamaica — is both the first Black woman and the first woman of South Asian descent on a U.S. presidential ticket.

“It’s hard to overstate how historic, how monumental this is. It’s a watershed moment for women of color across the country,” Allison said in the roundtable conversation, adding that the nomination is “an indication that the establishment in the Democratic Party … now acknowledges that America needs the leadership of women of color.”

Gray responded: 

''There can be no doubt that of course this nomination is historic. But something else historic is going on right now, which is that we are in the middle of the largest protest movement in American history. And it’s a protest movement that’s all about finding nonpunitive, noncarceral solutions to the kinds of economic problems that are plaguing disproportionately Black and Brown communities … And so there’s a great deal of frustration … [over] a running mate who is known for being the top cop from California, the state that has the second-highest number of incarcerated people in America. 

Both of these sentiments are reverberating through much of the progressive response to the selection of Harris. Biden’s choice is indeed a bright acknowledgement of a fact too many Democratic candidates have been happy to ignore: Black voters, and specifically Black women voters, are the backbone of the Democratic base.

Rep. Jim Clyburn knew this when he saved Biden’s campaign during the South Carolina primary. By leaning hard on Biden to tap a Black woman for VP after that successful rescue mission, and with Biden’s subsequent payment of the debt he owed from the primaries, Clyburn was explicitly elbowing a properly larger space at the table of government for a sector of the populace that has been waiting more than 400 years to exert the influence they deserve to. 


The fact that Harris is on the Democratic ticket four years after the first Black president left office, and is the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2024 or 2028 if the Biden/Harris ticket wins in November, marks a sea change in the balance of political power within the Democratic party. No one is ever, ever going to take “the Black vote” for granted again.

There is also the unique opportunity for genuine progressive influence in the assembly of Biden’s Cabinet-to-be, should he win. Many people, myself included, strongly suspected that Harris would be nominated for attorney general should he pick someone else to join him on the ticket. Now that she is out of the running for the top law enforcement position, there are a number of exciting possible nominees Biden should be pushed hard to consider, if not nominate outright.

At the top of my personal list for the AG spot is Preet Bharara, the former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York who was shoved out of his office by Trump shortly after the 2016 election. Bharara was investigating Trump and his business dealings when he was fired, which is why many believe he was removed in the first place. The material from Bharara’s investigation into Trump was absorbed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and lent much weight to Mueller’s exhaustively detailed report on Trump’s Russia dealings. Mueller may have fumbled the ball, but Bharara’s contribution was damning for the president nonetheless.

Biden has promised there will be no pardons for Trump if he wins, no “looking forward” and away from the crimes of this administration. I can think of no better person to pursue justice than Bharara. He already knows the details down to the decimal, and would be a highly motivated investigator. As attorney general, Preet Bharara would run Donald Trump to ground, and that is argument enough for his nomination.

Before the theoretical, of course, is the actual: The filthy damn campaign mess awaiting us over these next 83 days.

Straight out of the gate last night, Trump hit Harris with his newest, and easily worst, nickname: “Phony Kamala.” Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? He repeatedly referred to Harris as “nasty,” an insult he reserves only for women. While discussing the Harris pick on a radio show yesterday, Trump said that Biden had “insulted” men by choosing Harris.

Trump is also deep into racist dog-whistling, talking about how Biden “roped himself off into, you know, a certain group of people.” It’s going to be like this every day, but then again, it would have been like this every day no matter who Biden picked.

Because nothing awful ever truly dies, the echo of Biden’s announcement had not yet faded before Trump proxies rolled out the “birther” artillery for another salvo. They are spreading lies about Harris not being a U.S. citizen (fact check: she has been one since birth), using the offensive term “anchor baby” and falsely arguing that she cannot by law assume the office of the presidency should the need arise. Of course it’s bullshit, but count on hearing this and similar racist allegations over and over again.

It will be interesting to see if Mike Pence has the guts to bring that garbage to the table when he meets Harris in Salt Lake City for an October 7 debate. The job Harris did on Biden for his work with and praise of congressional segregationists during a June 2019 debate has become the stuff of legend, and was a fair portion of the reason why Biden needed Clyburn’s help to survive the primaries.

However one may feel about Harris, if that entirely lethal version of the senator from California shows up in Utah — the woman who bounced Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh off every wall in the hearing room when she had them before her — it feels quite likely that she will carve that chalkdust mannequin of a vice president into ribbons so fine, even Pence’s wife (“Mother”) won’t be able to knit them into a devotional for the bathroom wall. Just a hunch. 

So here we are, up to our ears in a lethal pandemic and a righteous social uprising while climate disruption burns on and capitalism collapses around us. In this fraught environment, a right-center Democratic ticket with dubious social justice chops is set to square off against the most brazenly fascist presidential administration in history.

Only Nixon can go to China, went the saying. With the help of a new coalition formed around a cornerstone of energized Black voters, perhaps only Biden can go to the White House under these extraordinary circumstances.

83 days. "

William Rivers Pitt

William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.

More by this author…

~~~~~

I'll be back with all that jazz around these parts....

Don't miss.... 

Democracy Now !