This is linked in a Substack I read. In and on its own merit, I’m bringing it here for people to take a look. I think it’ll be worthwhile. I wish that people in Yemen and refugees from Gaza and people in all troubled places had this opportunity, but there it is; we have this. Anyway, take a look, subscribe if you like, or pass it along, and send a good thought into the universe on behalf of parents and children and stopping war.
Becoming a mother amid war in Ukraine by Anastasiia Lapatina
Two days after the birth of my daughter, Russia launched one of its largest air attacks on Kyiv. It was terrifying, but also entirely expected, and that’s the worst part. Read on Substack
Heather Cox Richardson’s history Substack is just a treasure of information and connections between history and current times. Here’s a copy today, because there are fine talking points in favor of the Dem candidate for US President.
Vice President Kamala Harris continues her momentum toward the 2024 presidential election since President Joe Biden’s surprise announcement on Sunday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.
Today more than 350 national security leaders endorsed Harris for president, noting that if elected president, “she would enter that office with more significant national security experience than the four Presidents prior to President Biden.” As vice president, she “has met with more than 150 world leaders and traveled to 21 countries,” the authors wrote, and they called out her work across the globe from her work strengthening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region to her historic trip to Africa and her efforts to expand U.S. relationships with nations in the Caribbean and North Central America. In contrast to Harris, the letter said, “Trump is a threat to America’s national security.”
Those signing the letter included former Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, national security advisors Susan Rice and Thomas Donilon, former secretaries of defense Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, and former secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
In a New York Times op-ed today, former secretary of state Clinton praised Biden for his “decision to end his campaign,” which she called “as pure an act of patriotism as I have seen in my lifetime.” She went on to say that Vice President Harris “represents a fresh start for American politics,” offering a vision of an America with its best days ahead of it and, rather than “old grievances,” “new solutions.”
Clinton noted that her own political campaigns had seen her burned in effigy, but said, “It is a trap to believe that progress is impossible” and that Americans cannot overcome sexism and racism. After all, she pointed out, voters elected Black American Barack Obama in 2008, and she herself won the popular vote in 2016. “[A]bortion bans and attacks on democracy are galvanizing women voters like never before,” Clinton wrote, and “[w]ith Ms. Harris at the top of the ticket leading the way, this movement may become an unstoppable wave.”
Today, Harris held her first campaign rally, speaking to supporters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Republicans held their national convention just last week. The energy from the 3000 people packed into the gym where she walked out to Beyoncé’s song “Freedom” was palpable.
She began by thanking Biden and touting his record, then turned to noting that in her past as a prosecutor, California attorney general, U.S. senator from California, and vice president, she “took on perpetrators of all kinds—predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So,” she said, “hear me when I say: I know Donald Trump’s type.” She went on to remind the audience that Trump ran a for-profit college that scammed students, was found liable for committing sexual abuse, and “was just found guilty of fraud on 34 counts.”
While Trump is relying on “billionaires and big corporations,” she said, “we are running a people-powered campaign” and “will be a people-first presidency.” The Democrats, she said, “believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead; a future where no child has to grow up in poverty; where every worker has the freedom to join a union; where every person has affordable health care, affordable childcare, and paid family leave. We believe in a future where every senior can retire with dignity.”
“[A]ll of this is to say,” she continued, “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. Because…when our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
In contrast, she said, Trump wants to take the country backward. She warned that he and his Project 2025 will “weaken the middle class,” cutting Social Security and Medicare and giving “tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations,” while “working families foot the bill.” “They intend to end the Affordable Care Act,” she said, “and take us back…to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions…. Remember what that was like? Children with asthma, women who survived breast cancer, grandparents with diabetes. America has tried these failed economic policies before, but we are not going back. We’re not going back.”
“[O]urs is a fight for the future,” she said “And it is a fight for freedom…. Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom. And now…the baton is in our hands.”
Meanwhile, MAGA Republicans are still scrambling for a plan of attack against Harris. One of their first angles has been the sexism and racism Clinton predicted, calling her “a DEI hire.” House Republican leaders have told fellow lawmakers to dial back the sexist and racist attacks.
MAGA Republican representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) has taken a different angle: he introduced an impeachment resolution against Harris, while others are demanding that the House should investigate Harris and demand the Cabinet remove President Biden under the 25th Amendment. The Republican National Committee has decided to make fun of Harris’s laugh.
But concern in the Trump camp showed today when Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio shared with reporters a “confidential memorandum” trying to get ahead of polls he says will show Harris leading Trump. He said he expects to see a “Harris Honeymoon” that will end quickly.
Trump has continued to post angrily on his social media feed but is otherwise sticking close to home. His lack of visibility highlights that the Republicans are now on the receiving end of the same age and coherence concerns they had used against Biden, and there might be more attention paid to Trump’s lapses now that Biden has stepped aside. CNN’s Kate Sullivan noted today, for example, that “Trump said he’d consider Jamie Dimon for Treasury secretary, but now says he doesn’t know who said that.”
As Tim Alberta noted Sunday in The Atlantic, the Trump campaign tapped J.D. Vance in an attempt to harden the Republican base, only to find now that he cannot bring to the ticket any of the new supporters they suddenly need.
According to Harry Enten of CNN, Vance is the first vice presidential pick since 1980 who has entered the race with a negative favorability rating: in his case, –6 points. Since 2000, the usual average is +19 points. Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 by +6 points in an election Republican governor Mike DeWine won by +25 points. Vance “was the worst performing Republican candidate in 2022 up and down the ballot in the state of Ohio,” Enten said. “The J.D. Vance pick makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective.”
Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who specializes in focus groups, noted that swing voters groups “simply do not like” Vance. “Both his flip flopping on Trump and his extreme abortion position are what breaks through,” she wrote.
The 2024 election is not consuming all of the political oxygen, even in this astonishing week. Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that eight large companies must turn over information about the data they collect about consumers, product sales, and how the surveillance the companies used affected consumer prices.
“Firms that harvest Americans’ personal data can put people’s privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices,” FTC chair Lina M. Khan said. “Americans deserve to know whether businesses are using detailed consumer data to deploy surveillance pricing, and the FTC’s inquiry will shed light on this shadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.”
The eight companies are: Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture, and McKinsey & Co.
In the House, Republicans have been unable to pass the appropriations bills necessary to fund the 2025 U.S. budget, laced as they are with culture-wars poison pills the extremists demand. Today House members debated the appropriations bill for the Interior Department and the Environment which, among other things, bans the use of funds “to promote or advance critical race theory” or to require Covid-19 masks or vaccine mandates.
According to the European climate service Copernicus, last Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history. The MAGA Republicans’ appropriations bill for Interior and the Environment calls for more oil drilling, fewer regulations on pollutants, no new regulations on vehicles, rejecting Biden’s climate change executive orders, and reducing the funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by 20%.
Humanitarian groups are considering a mass vaccination campaign for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip after traces of variant poliovirus type 2 were found in water sources in the war-torn territory. The disease was detected in six locations in Gaza, the World Health Organization said.
Geneva-based WHO said it was working with partners – including UNICEF and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) – to conduct a risk assessment. Polio vaccination rates in Gaza before the war were “optimal,” according to the organization.
Israel on Sunday confirmed the resurgence of the virus, which can be spread by contaminated water and direct person-to-person contact, and said it would offer booster shots to its soldiers operating in and around the Gaza Strip.
Poliovirus has been detected in samples of sewage water in Gaza, placing “thousands” of Palestinians at risk of contracting the highly infectious disease that can cause paralysis https://t.co/foPyQihGcPpic.twitter.com/oWv6n9GPqc
When I first posted this it was from my phone in bed. I am sorry I did not check but no link or story posted. Thankfully wonderful Ali jumped to the rescue and added the link. Thank you Ali. Hugs. Scottie
This is a repeat of history. 1930s German with an authoritarian leader with a compliant congress with a plan to take over the government functions to end rights and liberty for some people while making others a superior race. Damn it people wake up. We have seen this movie before. The fascist are the bad guys. We had to stop them then, we have to stop them now. They did not have permits yet they marched and paraded anyway. They vandalized public property, costing taxpayer money to repair. They threatened people, rule by violence, by gang thugs, brownshirts, tRump soldiers. Hugs. Scottie
For the second time in just nearly as many weeks, a hate group stationed themselves in downtown Nashville and passed out flyers against those who were Jewish and in the LGBTQ community.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — For the second time in just nearly as many weeks, a hate group stationed themselves in downtown Nashville and passed out flyers against those who were Jewish and in the LGBTQ community.
The group kept passing out flyers that labeled Jewish people as pedophiles and screaming that those who are LGBTQ needed to “get the f—k home.” Their shirts read “pro white” on the front. On the back of the shirt, it read “whites against replacement.” They stood alongside a Nazi flag and a sign that said Let’s Go Brandon, a moniker against President Joe Biden.
“Joe Biden’s cabinet is 80% Jewish,” one of the group told our camera crew.
Men in the group were raising their arms in the same salute as Nazi soldiers did to Adolf Hitler during his fascist rise of power in the 1930s and 1940s.
“The Holocaust never happened,” they told our camera crew.
Justice Kennedy/WTVF
A man holds a flyer in the face of another while a hate group stood at Third and Broadway in Nashville, Tenn., on July 14, 2024.
Those at Third and Broadway identified themselves as the Goyim Defense League, and they are defined as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are a group that primarily lends their hate to the Jewish community, though the group on Broadway was screaming about the Jewish, LGBTQ and the Black community.
“It’s time for white people to stand up for themselves,” the group told pedestrians walking by.
We captured a woman who was gay screaming at the group for being out there in front of her child. They screamed at her that she shouldn’t have any children.
“My daughter is scared of you!” the woman screamed, who said she had just come out of a restaurant.
Metro Nashville police officers were near the group on Lower Broadway.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville posted on Sunday about hate groups continuing to hand out flyers that show hatred against Jewish people, including Saturday night in Nashville.
“The Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville is disgusted that once again our beloved city has been sullied by antisemitic instigators,” Jewish leaders said in a statement. “Last night, a group of roughly 15 Jew-haters handed out antisemitic literature in downtown while spewing loathsome rhetoric. We condemn this activity in the strongest possible way and denounce the perpetrators. Antisemitism — the irrational hatred of Jews — continues to escalate here in Middle Tennessee and around the country (and world). We are in constant contact with local law enforcement and thank them for their hard work and partnership in ensuring that the hateful words being espoused do not turn into violent actions against our community members or institutions.”
Previous hate groups in Nashville
The hate group the Patriot Front didn’t have a permit to march in the city, but they did so anyway last weekend.
The group went through the streets of downtown Nashville a “Reclaim America” banner, American flags, a Confederate flag and passing out flyers while chanting on their way to the front of the Capitol. Some also held red, white, and blue shields.
They also spray-painted their logo under the Woodland Street Bridge, which is vandalism.
In February, the group defaced the retaining wall in Brentwood on the side of Interstate 65. The Tennessee Department of Transportation had to paint over it.
Other racist flyers were passed out in downtown in February.
On Sunday, once again, a hate group put on a demonstration in downtown Nashville. This time, it was the neo-Nazi “Goyim Defense League,” shouting “Hitler was right!” and other vile words! 1/ pic.twitter.com/CcP59f7mIk
'They see Tennessee as a battleground.' New data points to dramatic rise of hate in Tennessee (From my “Hate Comes to Main Street” investigation) 3/3 https://t.co/23UouVF05H
JUST IN: Video of a fight in downtown Nashville involving the neo-Nazi Goyim Defense League. MNPD was on the scene. It’s unclear if any arrests were made. https://t.co/EOmA1VwGBvpic.twitter.com/PHJdaFYr7m
Justice Kennedy/WTVF
