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bigtree's JournalPeople magazine, y'all
(photo, Gioncarlo Valentine)
(Jeff Kowalsky)/AFP/Getty
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' First Joint Interview: 'Audacity' of Partnering & Their 'Modern Family' Values
The Democratic running mates sat down with PEOPLE for this week's issue to talk about what drew them together, how they'll work behind closed doors and more
https://people.com/politics/joe-biden-and-kamala-harris-first-joint-interview/?amp=true&__twitter_impression=true
Trump admin finalized plans Monday to auction off the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1295350704782147586The move will allow leasing on the 1.6 million-acre coastal plain, the center of a nearly pristine wilderness home to migrating caribou and waterfowl as well as polar bears and foxes that live there year-round. It marks a major step toward reviving fossil fuel development in an area that has been untouched for three decades.
In a statement, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said that his department was following through on the 2017 budget bill that instructed the federal government to conduct oil and gas leasing on the refuge.
In issuing a “record of decision,” officials at the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management concluded that establishing a network of well pads and pipelines would not pose an undue threat to the wildlife that depend on the refuge for survival. The draft plan called for the construction of as many as four airstrips and well pads, 175 miles of roads, vertical supports for pipelines, a seawater-treatment plant and a barge landing and storage site...
read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/08/17/trump-drilling-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-alaska/
Here's the other remote patch of Alaskan wilderness where the administration plans to expand drilling
https://wapo.st/37nMXAh
How is America a democratic nation right now under Trump?
...one party and their president are working every day to evicerate the principles and laws which distinguish our form of government from dictatorships and authoritarian regimes around the globe. How can there be a free and fair election with Trump in office and republicans manipulating the vote at the state level with impunity, no threat to them at all from the Justice Dept.?
We've never been a perfect republic, but we've at least been aspirational in the way we govern and execute our laws. The Trump administration and the president's republican enablers have proven without any doubt or qualifications that they don't believe in free and fair elections, and toil zealously to win at any cost; trampling laws, regulations, and norms which represent centuries of agreement and understanding about the primacy of our representational democracy.
Donald Trump has revealed deep corruption within the republican party for all to see by brushing right past protections and openly manipulating the vote, hoping to win ugly, knowing full well that our system of accountability for election crimes committed by campaigns and nominees absolutely collapsed under republican rule.
Trump just doesn't give a damn how it looks anymore...
thread: twitter.com/ddale8/status/1290981912589348865
https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1290827858496102400
Looking to recover what we've lost in Trump's term
I've been thinking about what we've lost during Trump's term in office, and what we'll need to recover when he leaves. Nothing in this election is assured, but looking beyond this presidency can give us direction, and hope.
Lives needlessly sacrificed to ineptness, deliberate incompetence and sloth, tens of thousands of loved ones in this pandemic dying without family by their side, obviously never to return. Jobs abruptly yanked away, many lost permanently; foreclosures, evictions; immigrant families separated, countless children likely never to be reunited again with their parents.
Smaller, more ephemeral things have also been lost among us- things no less important or consequential- like touch, companionship, intimacy, the ability to read each others' faces past our eyes. Do our eyes betray, or do they reveal us? Have we lost the substance of our interactions, or is that actually heightened because of more focus and intent negotiating through barriers and masks?
It's no coincidence that we've seen the revival of attitudes and interactions which mirror what occurred during decades of Jim Crow, another time in our history when the mistreatment and demonization of the nation's minorities was accepted and encouraged from the highest offices in the land. A new generation is perpetuating this today, fed a daily diet of the bigoted and racist pablum by FOX and ilk, and Donald Trump angling to reap the spoils.
Merely three years after the election of the nation's first black president, there's been a revival of that same insidious brand of racism and bigotry which is being encouraged by the cynical politics practiced by the present batch of republicans. Open hatred trickling down to folks in our communities who are encouraged by these pols to identify their angst and misfortune with these racist and bigoted appeals which have root in our nation's tragic past.
What I think we've lost in all of that is our sense that those animosities were receding, and the certain diversity of our country making it inevitable that we'll come together as a united nation. The speed and virulence with which it's come back on line is dismaying, and may be the most intractable legacy of Trump as he deliberately allows it to resurface and flourish.
There are many international relationships strained, some broken, by Trump's unwavering attention and fealty toward America's adversaries and enemies; soldiers' lives lost due to feckless, cynical stewardship of our obligations and responsibilities abroad; and increasing isolation at a time when international cooperation is essential to our survival.
We've lost the genius of our system of checks and balances to republicans and the White House ignoring and eviscerating norms and understandings reserved for men of integrity; presidents who haven't always lived up to responsible ideals and standards of law and society in office, but nonetheless, never demonstrated or exercised the level of disdain Donald Trump holds against the nation for our diversity, independence, and our right to disagree and petition the government for redress of its wrongs.
Brazen and wanton criminality reigns around Trump, and in his wake. Courts are being stacked under the management of Senate republicans; the same politicians who waved off impeachment proceedings against the president without allowing one page of evidence to be recognized in the hearing- the legal and political cover of President Trump's crimes openly orchestrated from the institutionally independent, but corruptly compromised Justice Dept..
Most of these losses can be recovered by us through the willful act of voting republicans out of office and power, and regaining the WH and Senate. They've been a destructive class of legislators, existing only to block or eliminate any benefit or reform which doesn't line their benefactors' pockets with the money we borrow to keep government going.
The endless, incessant gaslighting from Trump and his sycophants has replaced reality for them, even though it's completely shredded their credibility. It's all about the game now, and they're stuck with the toolbox they brought to the race. But we're not in anyway obligated to their desperate script. In this election we can restore hope, regain our ability to believe again in our power to effect the changes we want, to confront threats, solve problems, aim high for our children's future.
We'll need to work hard, work together to restore truths obscured by the republican veils of indifference and inaction. Work to restore truths like, an accountable government is a responsive one; an educated and healthy nation is a prosperous one; nations working together promote world peace; we rise and fall together. We may have taken these for granted in the past, but we're wedded to them now. Reality dictates truth, and we're all set to administer a good dose of that to the nation in November.
Thirty-seven minutes of Kamala Harris and Sarah Cooper
...an engrossing, revealing, and informative talk between two bright points in our own political discussions.
Deserves more adjectives....
Turns out, huge majority of Americans knows exactly what 'defund the police' means, and supports it
Ben Kamisar @bkamisar 18mFascinating new # from Monmouth on "defund the police."
—77 percent of adults say the movement aims to "change the way the police departments operate."
—Only 18 percent say it wants to "get rid of police departments." twitter.com/bkamisar/status/1280881950681595904
report: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/blog/meet-press-blog-latest-news-analysis-data-driving-political-discussion-n988541/ncrd1233158#blogHeader
WASHINGTON — As President Trump is launching new ads attacking calls to "defund the police" and stoking racial and cultural division on Twitter, a new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans don't agree with the way the president is framing the police-reform movement.
The new survey from Monmouth University found that 77 percent of American adults say that "defund the police" means to "change the way the police departments operate," not to eliminate them. That view is shared by 73 percent of white, non-college educated Americans and two-thirds of Republicans, Trump's core voters.
Just 18 percent of Americans say the movement wants to "get rid of police departments," a view shared by only 28 percent of Republicans and 18 percent of independents.
____ Biden does not support blanket cuts to police budgets. He told The Daily Show on June 11 that he supported linking federal dollars to fundamental changes in police departments including abiding by a national use-of-force standard and releasing police misconduct data.
Sixty-two percent of Americans say that Trump's handling of the recent protests on reforming policing has made the "current situation worse," with just 20 percent saying he's made it better. Sixty-five percent say that the actions of protestors in recent months were justified, with 29 percent saying the actions were not justified.
read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/blog/meet-press-blog-latest-news-analysis-data-driving-political-discussion-n988541/ncrd1233158#blogHeader
new survey from Monmouth University:
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_US_070820/
how long had Barack Obama been in the Senate before he was elected president?
...new to national government and all.
At the rate of attrition you're suggesting, the future is bleak for legislators like Kamala Harris, Black, a woman in a hierarchy of mostly White men.
But, maybe you're right. Maybe they'll let her excel, one day.
That debate some were having about 'spikes' in Covid infections due to BLM protests
...protesters took a lot of flack for this, including from my own governor grousing on television about more cases coming from protests, even after he allowed beaches to be filled with travelers to the Eastern shore without any visible safety measures, unlike BLM protesters who were mostly masked and distanced, outdoors where there's less chance of spreading the virus.
MSNBC @MSNBC
There is no evidence yet that the wave of Black Lives Matter protests across the U.S. has sparked COVID-19 outbreaks in the more than 3 weeks since they began, a new study says. https://t.co/mPX9QII4Ta?amp=1
https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1277225492798738433
my earlier post (May 31):
How does anyone get to cite these nascent protests as cause for the virus re-spreading
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213513953
Gov. Hogan looks like he's done with concern over testing Marylanders, angling to open our state
Hogan saying he needs to see 'a few more days' of what he says are downward trends shows how eager he is to pull the rug out from under those Marylanders whose workplaces still carry un acceptable risk. I have to think it's more about paying workers unemployment benefits, than any sound policy focused on our safety.
What's become of testing Marylanders outside of these 'hot spots?' What we know about asymptomatic infections should give pause to any assertion that numbers of infected residents are going down. It's impossible to tell how many have contracted the virus with only 500k (and dropping) test kits that he's been bragging about - it's a farce.
Why isn't Md. testing grocery store workers, for instance? So much public traffic is focused on grocery stores. Neglecting to test workers provides a hidden threat, waiting, I suppose, for some tragic turn to draw the governor's attention. That's not proactive, it's folly.
Further, we've yet to see the impact of the outbreaks in nursing homes and meat plants in the state. The governor's myopic focus on the numbers he says are declining ignore the impact we should expect in these workers' communities, among families and friends.
You want to mingle with an infected poultry plant worker at the beach? A nursing or retirement home resident fresh out from one of the states' hundreds of outbreak sites?
What happened to determining whether reinfection can occur? What about the murky immunity question?
I'm a night grocery worker and tomorrow our store will test every worker's temp before their shift. That's fine, but wholly inadequate to anyone actually concerned with how many workers have been infected. Right now, Gov. Hogan is transitioning to a crap shoot. Russian roulette. His true republican self back in action, it seems.
https://twitter.com/wjz/status/1258118474221727745
https://twitter.com/wjz/status/1257691855099179010
https://twitter.com/GovLarryHogan/status/1258110019888992256
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