WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders are warning party members against using overtly racist and sexist attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris, as they and former President Donald Trump’s campaign scramble to adjust to the reality of a new Democratic rival less than four months before Election Day.
At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies. (snip-more)
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Monthly headlines are turning into daily headlines:
Monday was recorded as the hottest day ever globally, beating a record set the day before, as countries around the world from Japan to Bolivia to the United States continue to feel the heat, according to the European climate change service.
Provisional satellite data published by Copernicus on Wednesday showed that Monday broke the previous day’s record by 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.1 degree Fahrenheit).
Climate scientists say it’s plausible that this is the warmest it has been in 120,000 years because of human-caused climate change. While scientists cannot be certain that Monday was the very hottest day throughout that period, average temperatures have not been this high since long before humans developed agriculture. (snip-more)
A 7-month-old tree kangaroo peeked out of its mom’s pouch at the Bronx Zoo and here is the video
The second baby of a tree-dwelling kangaroo made its public debut this week in New York, poking its pink head head out of its mom’s furry white pouch. (snip-click the Video hyperlink just above the title)
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%.
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — State Superintendent Ryan Walters and his top staff continue to bill Oklahoma taxpayers for expenses related to out-of-state trips — including for talk show appearances, a multi-day retreat, PragerU events at five-star resorts, and even a hot air balloon tour — according to open records obtained by News 4.
This week, News 4 obtained out-of-state travel expense records for State Superintendent Ryan Walters, his Chief Policy Advisor Matt Langston and his spokesperson Dan Isett dating back to the day Walters took office in 2023.
News 4 did not obtain the records through the Oklahoma State Department of Education, but rather from the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES).
In January, News 4 reported when Walters faced intense scrutiny for his out-of-state travel expenses billed to taxpayers, which at that time included other trips for talk show appearances, partisan conferences, and even a movie premiere.
The new records News 4 has obtained indicate, since facing that scrutiny in January, Walters and his staff have continued to bill the state travel expenses for trips Walters makes to help grow his national political profile.
Now, multiple Republican and Democratic Oklahoma lawmakers tell News 4 they want to see Walters’ spending formally investigated.
Back on March 19, Walters appeared on Fox News. On the studio backdrop behind him was a picture of the Phoenix skyline.
The records obtained by News 4 indicate Walters went to Phoenix for a five-day retreat hosted by national conservative think tank ‘the Heritage Foundation.’
Walters’ travel itinerary for March 19 scheduled him to begin the day at 5:45 a.m. for a “sunrise hot air balloon tour.”
Other things on Walters’ five-day itinerary included attending sessions titled “Philosophy and Conservative Vision of Education” and “How do we grow the movement,” among others. (snip-graphic on the page)
Walters also attended a reception dinner hosted by Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.
Roberts is a main co-author of the Heritage Foundation’s controversial ‘Project 2025’ plan.
Walters recently named Roberts to an executive review committee he tasked with rewriting Oklahoma’s social studies curriculum standards.
The records obtained by News 4 show, in total, Walters billed the State of Oklahoma $1,160 for airfare, mileage, per diem, taxi and “miscellaneous” expenses. The records indicate he did not seek to be reimbursed for lodging expenses on the trip.
Hi, welcome to Essence of Thought with me, Ethel Thurston, as your host.
Today’s video explores the Cold War’s impact on the West, namely how the Red Scare laid down the groundwork for the modern anti-trans panic in sports. From the media’s open misogyny to literally cartoonish fearmongering, there’s a lot to unpack.
@EssenceOfThought7 hours ago Today’s video explores the Cold War’s impact on the West, namely how the Red Scare laid down the groundwork for the modern anti-trans panic in sports. From the media’s open misogyny to literally cartoonish fearmongering, there’s a lot to unpack.
Happy Friday all. I’m writing to you today from Raleigh, North Carolina where I am excited to be spending the weekend campaigning with Anderson Clayton, Josh Stein, Governor Cooper and the good Democrats and Hopium community members who are busting their ass to turn this state blue this November.
The Republican Convention is over and last night Donald Trump gave the longest, most bizarre and worst speech at a party convention in American history. Friends of mine from across the country who are not that involved in politics reached out to me shocked at how bat shit crazy he sounded, how long he went on, how unfit and unwell he so clearly is. That he was oh so weak not Trumpian strong. Here at Hopium none of this was a surprise. We’ve been talking about him from Day 1 here. We know he is a rapist, fraudster, traitor and felon. We know he is far more extreme and dangerous now than he was in 2016 or 2020. We know that this danger to our democracy, our freedoms and our future became far more manifest when he picked pro-Russia extremist JD Vance as his running mate and heir apparent. To us here at Hopium we didn’t need to hear a single word of that terrible speech last night to know what they are fighting for, what they want for this country:
They want Putin to win, the West to lose. The border to be in chaos, and migrants to keep flowing into the country. Americans to lose even more rights and freedoms. The planet to warm faster. 10 year olds to carry their rapist’s baby to term, and for more women to die on operating room tables. Tens of millions to lose their health insurance. More dead kids in schools. Verified rapists in positions of authority. A restoration of pre-Civil Rights era white supremacy. Huge new tariffs which will raise prices on everything and wreck the global economy which has made us prosperous. Big new tax cuts for their wealthiest donors and tax increases for every day people. Books banned across the US. Seniors to pay more for insulin and prescription drugs. Foreign governments free to pollute our daily discourse and harass our citizens. Teenagers to work night shifts in meat packing plants and not go to school. The minimum wage to stay at $7.25. Mass arrests and mass deportations of immigrants long settled in the US. Insurrectionists to be pardoned. To end American democracy for all time.
Hannibal Lecter. Future GOP meetings in Russia-allied Venezuela. Hitler’s “poisoning the blood.” Autocratic leaders of China, Russia, Hungary and North Korea heaped with praise and respect. J6 criminals are “hostages.” Another embrace of QAnon, a violent cult calling for the jailing and assassination of Democrats. It was all there, ugly as it fucking gets, extreme, nothing held back. Another confirmation of why we are all working so hard to win the election, and why hard-working people of this great country deserve much better than this Putin-loving lunatic. (snip-More; the Hopium follows this)
July 19, 1848 The first Women’s Rights Convention in the U.S. was held at Seneca Falls, New York. Its “Declaration of Sentiments” launched the movement of women to be included in the constitution.The Declaration used as a model the U.S. Declaration of Independence, demanding that the rights of women as individuals be acknowledged and respected by society. It was signed by sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. The impetus came from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both of whom had been excluded, along with all the other female American delegates, from the World Anti-Slavery Convention (London, 1840) because of their sex. Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader attended the convention and supported the resolution for women’s suffrage.When suffrage finally became a reality in 1920, seventy-two years after this first organized demand in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration, Charlotte Woodward, then a young worker in a glove manufactory, had lived long enough to cast her first ballot.The Seneca Falls Convention and the Early Suffrage Movement https://www.gilderlehrman.org/ap-us-history/period-4?modal=/history-resources/essays/seneca-falls-convention-setting-national-stage-womens-suffrage
July 19, 1958 Several black teenagers, members of the local NAACP chapter (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), entered downtown Wichita’s Dockum Drug Store (then the largest drugstore chain in Kansas) and sat down at the lunch counter.Wichita sit-in sculptureThe store refused to serve them because of their race. They returned at least twice a week for the next several weeks. They sat quietly all afternoon, creating no disturbance, but refused to leave without being served. Though the police once chased them away, they were breaking no law, only asking to make a purchase, a violation of store policy.This was the first instance of a sit-in to protest segregationist policies. Less than a month later, a white man around 40 walked in and looked at those sitting in for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager, and said, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” That man was the owner of the Dockum drug store chain. That day the lawyer for the local NAACP branch called the store’s state offices, and was toldby the chain’s vice president that “he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc. (statewide), to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color.”
July 19, 1974 Martha Tranquill of Sacramento, California, was sentenced to nine months’ prison time for refusing to pay her federal taxes as a protest against the Vietnam War.
July 19, 1993 President Bill Clinton announced regulations to implement his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military, saying that the armed services should put an end to “witch hunts.” The policy was developed by General Colin Powell, then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and eventually summarized as “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, don’t harass.”
July 19, 2000 A federal administrative law judge ordered white supremacist Ryan Wilson to pay $1.1 million in damages to fair housing advocate Bonnie Jouhari and her daughter, Dani. The decision stemmed from threats made against Jouhari by Wilson and his Philadelphia neo-Nazi group, ALPA HQ.
This guy was writing on Substack, but was one of the ones who really left when Nazis were not invited to go elsewhere. He is generous enough to invite readers to follow him to where he writes now, and even provides a free piece fairly often. This one came today. He’s pretty spot on.
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JD Vance is an obvious, bald-faced opportunist. It makes sense that Trump would pick him as his Vice Presidential candidate; they probably understand each other quite well.
Biden’s proposal to tax unrealized capital gains is what Andreessen called “the final straw” that forced him to switch from supporting the current president to voting for Trump. If the unrealized capital gains tax goes into effect, startups may have to pay taxes on valuation increases. (Private companies’ appreciation is not liquid. However, the U.S. government collects tax in dollars.)
One could argue, of course, that the future of America is at stake. As The 19th reported about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s suggested plan for a next Trump administration whose authors include over 140 people who were a part of the last one:
Much of Project 2025 relates to gender, sexuality and race, aiming to end most all of the federal government’s efforts to achieve equity and even collect data that could be used to track outcomes across the public and private sectors.
The other sweeping changes it proposes include firing civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists, removing the Department of Education, gutting our already-insufficient climate change protections, reinstating the military draft, conducting sweeping immigration raids and mass deportations, and condemning more people to death sentences while making them swift enough to avoid retrial.
All this despite being on shaky legal ground:
Some of these ideas are impractical or possibly illegal. Analysts are divided about whether Trump can politicize the civil workforce to fire them at will, for example. And the plan calls for using the military to carry out mass deportations on a historic scale, which could be constitutionally iffy.
“This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do, and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.
JD Vance is walking this line too. My employer, ProPublica, recently reported that he, among other things, believes that the Devil is real, and that he had some unpleasant things to say about trans people:
He said that Americans were “terrified to tell the truth” and “point out the obvious,” including that “there are real biological, cultural, religious, spiritual distinctions between men and women.” He added, “I think that’s what the whole transgender thing is about, is like fundamentally denying basic reality.”
So, yes, all things considered, it feels a bit like America is in the balance.
What’s particularly bald about involvement from the Silicon Valley crowd is that they are, according to them, overlooking all of this and concentrating solely on their business interests. If policies like a tax on unrealized capital gains or tighter anti-trust actions are enacted, those investors may have to re-think some of their investment strategies.
For what it’s worth, those taxes are only applicable for individuals with a net worth of over $100M, with payments at an automatic minimum tax rate treated as prepayments against future realized gains. The effect could actually be to encourage startups to go public and realize their value sooner, which wouldn’t be a terrible thing for the ecosystem (but might limit the heights private valuations can reach). Given that people with that level of worth don’t usually make taxable income, this new levied tax on investment gains makes sense as a way to encourage the very wealthy to pay the same sorts of tax rates as the rest of us — but, clearly, Musk, Thiel, et al feel differently. (Invasive thought: where’s Sacks and Palihapitiya’s podcast co-host Jason Calacanis on this? Is he a sympathizer or just an enabler?)
Do tighter regulations and a new minimum tax for the wealthy risk the future of America, though? Maybe they have a different definition of America than I do. If, to them, it’s a place where you can make a bunch of money without oversight or accountability, then I can see how they might be upset. If, on the other hand, America is a place where immigrants are welcome and everyone can succeed, and where everyone has the freedom to be themselves, all built on a bedrock of infrastructure and support, then one might choose to take a different view. The tax proposal at hand is hardly socialism; it’s more like a correction. Even if you accept their premise, single-issue voting when the other issues include mass deportations and gutting public education is myopically self-serving, leave alone the barren inhumanity of leaving vulnerable communities out to dry.
Responses by prominent Republican supporters to the inclusion of a Sikh prayer in Punjabi in the Republican National Convention — one line reading, “in your grace and through your benevolence, we experience peace and happiness” — lay bare what the unhinged Christian nationalist contingent believes in:
Andrew Torba, CEO of the far-right social media platform Gab, ranted to his 400,000 followers on X, “Last night you saw why Christian Nationalism must be exclusively and explicitly Christian. No tolerance for pagan false gods and the synagogue of Satan.” Republican Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers seemed to agree. “Christians in the Republican party nodding silently along to a prayer to a demon god is shameful,” he posted.
From my perspective, there are no upsides to a Trump win. Even if you accept the idea that Project 2025 has nothing to do with him (which, as I’ve discussed, is laughable), his own self-published Agenda 47 for his next administration is similarly horrible, and includes provisions like sending the National Guard into cities, destroying climate crisis mitigations, mass deportations, and removing federal funding for any educational institution that dares to teach the history of race in America. It also includes a version of Project 2025’s call to fire civil servants who are seen as disloyal. JD Vance wants to end no-fault divorce(ironically, given his running mate), trapping people in abusive relationships. The effects on the judicial system from his first administration will be felt for generations; a second administration will be similarly seismic. He will gut support for vulnerable communities. I have friends who will directly suffer as a result of his Presidency; he will create an America that I do not want to bring my son up in.
Silicon Valley is supposed to invent the future. That’s what’s so inspiring about it: for generations, it’s created new ways of sharing and working that have allowed people to communicate and work together wherever they are. These new moves make it clearer than ever that a portion of it has never believed in that manifesto; that it is there solely to establish itself as a new set of power-brokers, trying to remake the world in their own image. The rest of us need to oppose them with our full voices and everything we can muster.
Ben (the writer) says, “I’m writing about the intersection of the internet, media, and society. Sign up to my newsletter to receive every post and a weekly digest of the most important stories from around the web.”
The Inflation Reduction Act – which Congress passed in 2022 without any Republican votes – provided an about $80 billion, 10-year investment to the IRS. The agency plans to hire tens of thousands of IRS employees with that money – but only some will be IRS agents who conduct audits and investigations. Many people will be hired for non-agent roles, such as customer service representatives. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.
The 85,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury Department report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees – not solely enforcement agents – over the course of a decade with a nearly $80 billion investment.
From CNN’s Katie Lobosco
*Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Transgender Day of Visibility
Greene said while attacking Democrats in her convention speech that “the establishment in Washington” held Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter this year.
“They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” the Georgia Republican said.
Facts first:This claim needs context. Transgender Day of Visibility has been held annually on March 31 since it was started in 2009 as a day of awareness to celebrate the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming people. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the first day of spring and can change year to year. The holiday happened to fall on March 31 in 2024.
Responding to Republicans criticizing President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in an April 1 briefing said she was “surprised by the misinformation” surrounding Easter and Transgender Day of Visibility falling on the same day.
“Every year, for the past several years, on March 31, Transgender Day of Visibility is marked. And as we know — for folks who understand the calendar and how it works, Easter falls on different Sundays every year. And this year, it happened to coincide with Transgender Visibility Day. And so, that is the simple fact,” she said.
From CNN’s Jack Forrest
*Republican chair falsely claims Middle East was ‘at peace’ four years ago
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said in his speech on Monday: “Four years ago, Europe and the Middle East were at peace.”
Facts First:Whatley’s claim is false. Whatever the merits of the Abraham Accords that Trump’s administration helped to negotiate, in which Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreed in 2020 to normalize relations with Israel (Morocco and Sudan followed), there was still lots of unresolved armed conflict around the Middle East four years ago in mid-2020 and when Trump left office in early 2021.
“It’s a highly inaccurate statement,” Miller, who worked on Mideast peace negotiations while in government and is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said last fall, when Trump himself made a similar claim about having achieved peace in the Middle East.
Dana El Kurd, senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC think tank, also called that claim “false” when Trump made it. She said in a November email: “The Abraham Accords did not achieve peace in the Middle East. In fact, violence escalated in Israel-Palestine in the aftermath of the Accords (using any metric you can think of – death tolls, settlement violence, etc).”
From CNN’s Daniel Dale
*RNC video attacks Biden with two-year-old gas price figure
The Republican National Convention featured a video attacking Biden over the price of gas. But the video misleadingly deployed out-of-date figures as if they were current.
A narrator claimed: “When President Trump left office, gas cost only $2.20. Under Biden and Harris, gas skyrocketed to the highest price in history, over five bucks a gallon.” Later in the video, a young man said, “Within my first year of driving, I’m having to deal with an average of $5.03 across the nation,” and a woman said, “It’s impossible to pay $5.03. We need to care about our people better than that.”
Facts First: These claims about Biden-era gas prices are two years out of date. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline was about $3.52 on Monday, according to the AAA. The national average did, under Biden, hit a record high of more than $5 per gallon – about $5.02, according to AAA data – but that happened in June 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a global spike in oil prices. The RNC videos offered no indication that the national average has since fallen substantially.
Also, the national average on the day Trump left office in January 2021 was about $2.39 per gallon, not $2.20, though it was lower than $2.20 in some states.
Because humorous snark is the only way I can take coverage of Republican conventions. Lots of good stuff here, so do click through and look at it all when you have time.
Wonkette Went To The Moms For Liberty Key Party And All We Got Was This Lousy Sticker
It was their *key* *party*, news factcheck websites!
On Tuesday, because of how we are all pretty much gluttons for punishment at this point, we (well, Dok and Robyn) attended a Moms For Liberty chat at the Bradley Symphony Center in downtown Milwaukee. Are you so jealous? I bet you are! Anyway, instead of writing a whole post on it, we decided to just have a Slack about our favorite moments. Fun? Fun!
Robyn: Hey Dok! So HOW MUCH FUN did you have at the Moms For Liberty forum yesterday?
Doktor Zoom: Well, I got that new bandage from Walgreens on my blistered toe, so that was a real win!
Robyn: That was pretty exciting. I got a bunch of Vitamin C there because I thought it might make me less anemic. So that was also nice. But sadly, instead of spending a few hours in the Walgreens where I could happily stare blankly at the ELF section for a while (it’s makeup, okay?) we had to go to the Bradley Symphony center not to see the symphony but to see a bunch of weirdos talk about how they are SAVING THE VERY SOULS of the children, but not in any specific way.
Doktor Zoom: But it was very specific, Robyn. Moms for Liberty cofounder Tina Vescovich started with a warning that “there’s something going on in this country,” which is a definitely true statement that I dare anyone to refute. Then she explained it was a battle between good and evil, and that sure sounded scary. Also, I guess radical Marxists are coming for America’s children, possibly to buy them school lunch, but also for their souls. That’s clearly terrible, and I hope the children don’t have their souls taken, by some unspecified Marxist evil.
Robyn: I feel like it’s not a real battle for good and evil if there’s not a Hellmouth but ymmv!
To be specific, she said that the radical Marxists are coming for their children’s futures, which is actually pretty true in the way that the radical Marxists do hope that, in the future, their children will have health care, subsidized college, a living wage, and a planet that is not entirely decimated.
Of course, the real “radical Marxists” are people like me (I guess?) with literally no power to do any of that, nevermind making it so the workers own the means of production, so perhaps she assumes we’ll just give up and … eat babies?
Doktor Zoom: Oh, wait, that does sound like us, doesn’t it. We’re the baddies, then. Also there’s all the radical gender ideology and the books that will make children think about gay pornsex if they see a child in a picture book who has two mommies, but for some reason nobody in the discussion actually mentioned any of the things that Moms for Libertines is best known for.
Donald was never going to pick a woman to be his running mate. He has far too much contempt for us.
In Vance, he’s found someone who hates women as much as he does; someone who wants to control them as much as he does. If the Trump/Vance ticket wins this election, it will be the beginning of the end of women’s reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.
Our corporate media don’t seem to care, but I’m fairly certain American women haven’t forgotten that, with the help of Mitch McConnel and Leonard Leo, my uncle rigged the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, overturning over 50 years of precedent and stripping away a basic human right from half of the population. Maybe they think we’re as fixated on President Biden’s age as they are, but we don’t have the luxury of forgetting. While the press might want to gloss over or downplay Vance’s backwards views on women, I can promise you that American women do not.
Vance’s website has a whole section entitled “End Abortion.” When asked if he believes whether or not there should be exceptions for rape or incest, he said, “two wrongs don’t make a right” We know he thinks women in abusive marriages should stay with their abusers for “the sake of the children.”
Just days after Roe was overturned, Vance tweeted: “If your worldview tells you that it’s bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you’ve been had.”
And then there’s what he told fellow misogynist Tucker Carlson: “We are effectively run in this country… by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
American women will know misery if by some great tragedy Donald and Vance get into the White House because those two will make The Handmaid’s Tale our reality.
Last year, after Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to protect reproductive rights, Vance called the people’s decision a “gut punch.”
“There is something sociopathic about a political movement that tells young women (and men) that it is liberating to murder their own children,” Vance said after the vote. “So, let’s keep fighting for our country’s children, and let’s find a way to win.”
Vance found his way to a win by sucking up to a man who demands total obedience, humiliation, and subjugation—especially from those, like Vance, who had spoken out against him in the past.
We need to recognize that the white men who see women as breeding stock have created a strong alliance. This week we learned that Elon Musk—who, along with fellow tech billionaire and all-around vile human being Peter Thiel, pushed hard for Vance to be the pick—is donating $45 million a month to Donald’s super PAC.
On Tuesday morning, we learned from a video accidentally leaked by Robert Kennedy’s son, that my uncle is colluding with the independent candidate to win the election.
These are scary times, but it’s good to know where everyone stands. I stand with the women of America. So do Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
We know where Donald and Vance stand. And we need to make sure neither of them gets anywhere near the Oval Office.
Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader attended the convention and supported the resolution for women’s suffrage.When suffrage finally became a reality in 1920, seventy-two years after this first organized demand in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration, Charlotte Woodward, then a young worker in a glove manufactory, had lived long enough to cast her first ballot.The Seneca Falls Convention and the Early Suffrage Movement 
Wichita sit-in sculptureThe store refused to serve them because of their race. They returned at least twice a week for the next several weeks. They sat quietly all afternoon, creating no disturbance, but refused to leave without being served. Though the police once chased them away, they were breaking no law, only asking to make a purchase, a violation of store policy.This was the first instance of a sit-in to protest segregationist policies. Less than a month later, a white man around 40 walked in and looked
Bonnie and Dani Jouhari
