Politics & Stuff

[cosmicway 1,301]

Just now, YorkshireBlue said:

Tbh in a general sense most homeless are ex criminals ex forces or junkies, the genuinely normal people that end up homeless are the exception to the rule.

Rather true.
For me the big economic problem is the punitive taxation against the poor people and the punitive taxation against private businesses forcing them to close.
Some people use to publish in facebook lists of prices 40 years ago and compare them with today's prices.
But I remember those prices and the big difference with today is from government taxes. Some other reasons exist (inflation - raw materials) but it's mainly taxes.

[YorkshireBlue 3,118]

5 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

Rather true.
For me the big economic problem is the punitive taxation against the poor people and the punitive taxation against private businesses forcing them to close.
Some people use to publish in facebook lists of prices 40 years ago and compare them with today's prices.
But I remember those prices and the big difference with today is from government taxes. Some other reasons exist (inflation - raw materials) but it's mainly taxes.

For me it's not even that, I'm just tired of everything going up, apart from wages, we have seen some stuff almost doubled or triple in price while wages stay the same, before Ukraine war my gas and electric was £120 a month, then it rose to £400+ a month, luckily for me I can afford it, but I know alot of people who couldn't and have struggled really bad, things are calming down ATM but still wages for people need to be looked at, for some of the lower earner it's more beneficial to be on benefits than actually go out and work, and that is a flawed system which ever way you look at it.

Edited July 8 by YorkshireBlue

[cosmicway 1,301]

1 hour ago, YorkshireBlue said:

For me it's not even that, I'm just tired of everything going up, apart from wages, we have seen some stuff almost doubled or triple in price while wages stay the same, before Ukraine war my gas and electric was £120 a month, then it rose to £400+ a month, luckily for me I can afford it, but I know alot of people who couldn't and have struggled really bad, things are calming down ATM but still wages for people need to be looked at, for some of the lower earner it's more beneficial to be on benefits than actually go out and work, and that is a flawed system which ever way you look at it.

Ukraine in any case counts as international crisis, it's not taxes.
But yeah, it's junta without jiunta and I don't believe the leftists when they say to me "mondieux, les pauvres, why don't they make consortium with Rolls Royce ?" - the Kouloglou character, search him.
I don't think you have the equivalent though, you have other stuff.

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Wimbledon: Ukrainian Tennis Star Elina Svitolina Bursts Into Tears As The Russian Murderous Attack On A Children's Hospital In Kyiv Outweighs The Joy Of A Dominant Victory

 

 

Edited July 8 by Vesper

[Fulham Broadway 16,715]

50 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Wimbledon: Ukrainian Tennis Star Elina Svitolina Bursts Into Tears As The Russian Murderous Attack On A Children's Hospital In Kyiv Outweighs The Joy Of A Dominant Victory

 

 

Absolute atrocity - the poor children. 

Whether deliberate or a mistake war is fucking stupid

[YorkshireBlue 3,118]

13 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Absolute atrocity - the poor children. 

Whether deliberate or a mistake war is fucking stupid

War is war, it's absolutely horrible, boots on the ground soldiers fighting is hard enough, but bombings and bombings in ways like this isn't war, it's murder, it's not war crimes it's just murder, killing children 100s of miles away with the push of a button should be a good reason to bring hanging back or burning at the stake.

[Vesper 28,441]

New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act and he won’t do it

https://presswatchers.org/2024/05/new-york-times-editor-joe-kahn-says-defending-democracy-is-a-partisan-act-and-he-wont-do-it/

 

Joe Kahn, right, and Dean Baquet, in happier times. (NYT photo)

 

Joe Kahn, after two years in charge of the New York Times newsroom, has learned nothing.

He had an extraordinary opportunity, upon taking over from Dean Baquet, to right the ship: to recognize that the Times was not warning sufficiently of the threat to democracy presented by a second Trump presidency.

But to Kahn, democracy is a partisan issue and he’s not taking sides. He made that clear in an interview with obsequious former employee Ben Smith, now the editor of Semafor.

Kahn accused those of us asking the Times to do better of wanting it to be a house organ of the Democratic party:

To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda.

But critics like me aren’t asking the Times to abandon its independence. We’re asking the Times to recognize that it isn’t living up to its own standards of truth-telling and independence when it obfuscates the stakes of the 2024 election, covers up for Trump’s derangement, and goes out of its way to make Biden look weak.

Kahn’s position is, not coincidentally, identical to that of his boss, publisher A.G. Sulzberger, who I recently wrote about in my post, “Why is New York Times campaign coverage so bad? Because that’s what the publisher wants.”

And to the extent that Kahn has changed anything in the Times newsroom since Baquet left, it’s to double down on a form of objectivity that favors the comfortable-white-male perspective and considers anything else little more than hysteria.

Throwing Baquet under the bus, Kahn called the summer of the Black Lives Matter protests “an extreme moment” during which the Times lost its way.

“I think we’ve learned from it. I think we found our footing after that,” he said.

I translate that to mean that the old guard has reasserted total control over the rabble.

But how, exactly, the Times lost its footing, he doesn’t explain. I’d love to see him point to a few articles that he considers went too far. Best I can tell, his real complaint is that the Times under Baquet hired too many young and diverse people who — in his view — don’t understand the rules.

“I think there’s a larger number of people who we might at some point have hired, but we’ve asked the kind of questions or looked at the sort of work that they do, and wondered whether they’d be a good fit for us,” Kahn said, making it clear he won’t make that mistake again.

His example was hyperbolic and not even vaguely credible:

We’re looking more closely and asking more questions and doing more interviews. … We’ve actually asked people, “What happens if you got an assignment to go and report on some people that have said some nasty things and that you don’t like, what would you do?” And some people say, “I’d reject the assignment.” Okay, well, then you should work somewhere else.

I’d be willing to bet a large sum that no job candidate at the Times has ever said any such thing.

On Democracy

In one small paragraph, Kahn outdid himself. He:

• Dismissed the importance of democracy as a political issue.
• Disclosed that the Times coverage is poll driven.
• Asserted that coverage of the economy and immigration is favorable to Trump.
• Whined that more coverage of democracy was tantamount to becoming a partisan publication.

Here’s what he said:

It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them? I don’t even know how it’s supposed to work in the view of Dan Pfeiffer or the White House. We become an instrument of the Biden campaign?

(Smith had asked Kahn to respond to Pfeiffer, a former Obama official, who recently complained that the editors at the Times  “do not see their job as saving democracy or stopping an authoritarian from taking power.”)

That one paragraph, posted on social media by NYU professor Jay Rosen, elicited a storm of critiques.

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling was among those upset by Kahn’s dismissal of democracy as a key issue.

Hate to Godwin’s Law this, but what if the Berlin Bugle in 1931 said, Hitler may be a threat to democracy, but polls show that most Germans are most concerned about Communism and the Jewish problem. A journalist’s job is not to reflect the polls, but to cover the objectively important stories.

University College London professor Brian Klaas wrote:

It is insane to me that someone in this role doesn’t understand that democracy is the superstructure for literally everything else. Democracy isn’t an issue that matters because of public opinion. It’s *the* issue that makes free public opinion possible.

Veteran political observer Norm Ornstein wrote:

This is both cringeworthy and frightening. I can’t say it is sleepwalking to dictatorship. He is not sleeping. It is marching in that direction.

Entrepreneur and writer Anil Dash concluded:

Just so you know, NYT fully believes they have no obligation to stop the fascist attack on America. They’ve finally said so explicitly. Act accordingly.

Many objected to Kahn’s argument that democracy is a partisan issue. Extremism researcher Mark Pitcavage wrote:

This quote strongly suggests the exec editor of the NYT can’t even think of democracy as an issue other than as a Biden campaign strategy.

OG blogger Heather “Digby” Parton wrote:

This is so, so tiresome. Nobody says it’s his job to “help” Joe Biden. It would be nice if they could find it in their hearts not to sabotage him though.

Others were horrified that Kahn breezily suggested that the economy and immigration were favorable stories for Trump. Journalist and author James Surowiecki wrote:

If the NYT covers it accurately, the economy is not an issue that is “favorable to Trump.”

A Twitter user named Hank Hoffman wrote:

The Exec. Editor of @nytimes  believes immigration, the economy, & inflation are issues “favorable to Trump.”

Just to take immigration, why would a plan for militarized mass deportations & concentration camps be “favorable to Trump?” How’s a STRONG economy “favorable to Trump?”

Some took offense at the notion that the Times was so poll driven. Journalist Reed Richardson wrote:

Conceptualizing democracy as a kind of niche issue that a free press should only prioritize in coverage according to how many people rate its importance in a poll is a huge tell about why the NYTimes’s current election coverage has been so myopic, timid, and consistently unable to meet the moment.

Others thought that was just a cop-out of an excuse. University of Illinois professor Nicholas Grossman wrote:

Biden’s age isn’t among voters’ top issues in polls, but the NY Times made it a recurring top story anyway Voters sure didn’t say they care about the president of Harvard, but the Times made that the number one story for days. When NYT editors care, they don’t defer to polls.

Crushing the Woke

I found it startling that Kahn basically expressed his agreement with former opinion editor James Bennet that the Times went too woke in the wake of the summer of 2020. The only daylight between the two men appears to be that Kahn thinks that under his leadership everything has returned to normal, while Bennet believes the problem is ongoing.

Kahn said that “in the early days of Trump in particular,” the message to new hires was  “join us for the mission.”

Now, he said, “I think the big push that you’re seeing us make and reestablish our norms and emphasize independent journalism and build a more resilient culture comes out of some of the excesses of that period,” Kahn said.

Here’s the relevant part of the interview, which started when Smith asked Kahn: “Do you think the Times let the inmates run the asylum for too long?”

Joe: I wouldn’t use those words. I do think that there was a period of peak cultural angst at this organization, with the combination of the intensity of the Trump era, COVID, and then George Floyd. The summer of 2020 was a crazy period where the world felt threatened, people’s individual safety was threatened, we had a murder of an innocent Black man by police suffocation. And we have the tail end of the most divisive presidency that anyone alive today has experienced. And those things just frayed nerves everywhere.

Ben: Do you think you made mistakes, or just that it was very hard to navigate that moment?

Joe: I think it was very hard to navigate that moment. Everybody’s remote. We’re dealing with this political upheaval. We still did good journalism through that moment. But I think we’ve looked back at that and learned.

Unlike James Bennet, who sees that as emblematic of what the Times and maybe the news media in general has become, I think it was a particular moment. I think it was an extreme moment. I think we’ve learned from it. I think we found our footing after that.

Ben: You see why James takes that one particularly personally.

Joe: James has a singular take on it. I can see why it has become the single defining moment for him. But I think it is not as a single, defining moment for The New York Times [or] for journalism as he thinks it is.

Bennet was fired by the publisher in 2022 — after a newsroom revolt – for allowing a racist and deceptive op-ed column by far-right Senator Tom Cotton slide onto the home page without proper editorial supervision.

Holding a grudge, Bennet wrote a 16,000-word essay in the Economist late last year accusing the Times of becoming “illiberal” and of bowing to the stifling social-justice ideology of the newsroom’s young (and more diverse) staffers.

But beyond Bennet’s firing, I’m at a loss for anything remotely like an example of the Times going woke. Casting Dean Baquet as some sort of woke pushover is laughable. The fact is he wouldn’t even listen to those younger and more diverse staffers.

As I wrote in 2022, in one interview he contrasted the “demands” of  the “next generation of Black journalists,” on the one hand, to his duty to “make sure that the New York Times is a fair-minded institution,” on the other. In his mind, it was no contest.

So I still don’t understand what Bennet and Kahn are actually complaining about.

Thomas Zimmer, a visiting professor of history at Georgetown University, wrote on social media that he sees Kahn’s comments as representative of how centrist elites, out of aversion to wokeism, bend to the right:

What stands out about this interview with New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn is this pervasive sense among centrist elites that by the summer of 2020, “woke” radicalism had been allowed to advance too far – and people like Kahn see it as their mission to stem the tide….

The prevailing view on the center is that we need to turn the clock back, to a time before what they see as the current excesses of radical leftism, “wokeism,” identity politics, “cancel culture”… Too much “chaos,” too much “unrest” and “turmoil.” Who can stem the tide?

Centrist elites seem convinced that those young radicals must be prevented from toppling an order of, as they see it, reason, stability, and quite enough progress (no more!) by any means necessary. Even if that entails legitimizing and making common cause with the Far-Right.

Similarly, Davidson College Professor Isaac Bailey shared an observation based on the Kahn quote that Smith used as his headline: “The newsroom is not a safe space”

Something else about this Kahn response that shouldn’t go unnoticed. He used the right-wing “safe space” trope. Every time these dudes open their mouths, even during softball interviews, they reveal more of an anti-woke philosophy even while clinging to an air of “objectivity.”

The Wrath at Kahn

Pfeiffer, who was namechecked by Smith and Kahn, fired back on Tuesday in his newsletter, writing that it’s now clear that the Times doesn’t view the election as a fight for democracy and there’s not much anyone can do about it.

And he made a very important point about how his own view had been oversimplified by both men:

I haven’t argued that the New York Times or anyone stop covering negative stories about Biden or become a state-owned propaganda outlet (not that Kahn knows my argument). No one else has argued that either. What most people want is for the media to spend less time on the horserace and more time on the stakes of this election; and to specifically call out the threat that is a second Trump presidency. There have been a lot of very good stories, but there could always be more. In general — and this is a complaint I have had about the New York Times that is two decades old — I wish they would take good faith criticism from the Left with as much seriousness as they take bad faith criticism from the Right.

At the New Republic, Greg Sargent also explicated the critique that Smith and Kahn intentionally garble:

It’s that the unique danger Trump poses to democracy requires a serious reevaluation of the conventions of political reporting at big news organizations—the daily editorial choices that subtly shape how readers receive information and ideas—and the ways they unmistakably obscure the true nature of that threat.

And he asked a key question:

Does the casual reader regularly come away from most Times coverage grasping that core difference between Trump and Biden, that one fundamentally threatens the system, and the other doesn’t?

And Paul Waldman, writing in his newsletter, reached this damning conclusion:

When it suits the Times’ leaders, they insist on the centrality of their role and the vital and salutary influence they have. But when criticized, they claim they are not independent actors exercising their own power at all.

The Dishonesty

My overarching concern is about how Kahn is not being forthright or honest in responding to the legitimate critique of the Times.

As Atlantic staff writer  Adam Serwer observed:

An editorial decision has been made about the slant and direction of coverage and they’re going to defend and justify it any way they can.

Blogger Duncan Black was even more blunt:

Details change a bit but every “conversation” about general leftwing criticism of the New York Times for 20+ years has been the same in that they do not engage with the substance of the criticism at all. This is not because they are stupid it’s because they are liars

Maybe the most telling element of the interview is who Kahn picked as his interlocutor: A shmoozy former Times media critic whose interview style is sycophantic.

You know what would be nice? If Kahn sat down for an interview with a truly independent journalist. Why is he avoiding that? What is he afraid of?

 

[cosmicway 1,301]

9 minutes ago, YorkshireBlue said:

War is war, it's absolutely horrible, boots on the ground soldiers fighting is hard enough, but bombings and bombings in ways like this isn't war, it's murder, it's not war crimes it's just murder, killing children 100s of miles away with the push of a button should be a good reason to bring hanging back or burning at the stake.

Gaza is different because Hamas has opted for city war.
Here looks like deliberate area bombing.

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What is Project 2025? Project 2025 Explained | 5 Criticisms of Project 2025

 

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Keeping up with the Rees-Moggs — can Jacob become a reality star?

Filming has started on a new fly-on-the-wall TV show starring the former Conservative MP. Hugo Rifkind imagines its script

https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/celebrity/article/jacob-rees-mogg-reality-tv-show-kardashians-qlbtwddh5

 

 

Optomen, the internationally renowned television production company that brought us such blockbusters as Gordon Ramsay’s The F-Word and Richard Hammond’s Crazy Contraptions, has another monster concept on its hands — a reality TV show starring the former Conservative MP for North East Somerset, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Filming is under way and the show is expected to stream on Discovery+. Although the contents remain strictly under wraps, Hugo Rifkind has an idea how the script — and surely all reality TV follows some sort of script — will pan out …

SCENE ONE

Int. a castle

The camera swoops up a staircase and into a small room in a turret. In the middle, on a raised platform, is a coffin. Slowly, creaking, it opens. Jacob Rees-Mogg sits up, in a double-breasted suit.

JRM Greetings! And welcome to Somerset. I must say, one doesn’t know why the producers have put one in a coffin, but they were awfully keen!

 

JRM hops from the coffin and sweeps down a spiral staircase into a farmhouse kitchen.

JRM And this is one’s wife! Helena de Chair!

HELENA Hello!

JRM It’s French, of course. And it means Helen! The chair!

HELENA I don’t think it does.

JRM Anyway, darling. Do you understand what this show is about? Because one must confess to being somewhat unclear.

HELENA It’s a reality show. Like Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Or The Osbournes.

JRM George did one? He has had a lot of jobs.

HELENA Different Osbourne. From Black Sabbath.

JRM You mean Black Wednesday. That was Norman Lamont.

HELENA No.

INTERLUDE (black and white)

We see JRM and Helena standing in front of their 17th-century country house in the manner of Grant Wood’s American Gothic.

• On the campaign trail with Jacob Rees-Mogg: ‘I worry I’m deluded’

 

SCENE TWO

Ext. a lawn

Various people stand around.

JRM Now let’s meet the family! And these are our children, Jacob, Girl, Jacob, Quattro, Fünf and Sixtus.

HELENA The Rees-Moggs are not super at names.

JRM looks hurt and confused.

NANNY What about me?

JRM How rude of me! Yes, and this is Nanny! Our loyal family retainer these past six decades!

NANNY I do have a name, you know.

JRM Do you?

INTERLUDE (black and white)

In his suit, JRM stands upright on top of a horse, in the manner of Taylor Swift in the Blank Space video.

SCENE THREE

Ext. a street

JRM strides towards a rough-looking pub, in a surprisingly unscenic bit of Somerset. He is followed, at walking pace, by an ambulance.

JRM So here we are in … sorry, where are we? Why am I here?

PRODUCER’S VOICE (off camera) We want you to go in there and explain to all the drinkers your thesis that people who went to state schools are “potted plants”. Also, you could make the case for austerity again, and advocate further benefit caps.

JRM And proudly! But what’s the ambulance for?

PRODUCER’S VOICE For you. Insurance requirement. Don’t worry about it.

INTERLUDE (black and white)

JRM stands proudly in front of his house again, but this time wearing an overcoat. He opens the overcoat and we see that it is in fact not JRM at all, but two of his children, with one standing on the other’s shoulders.

SCENE FOUR

Ext. a rural Somerset railway station

JRM sits in the back of an old-fashioned trap, pulled by a pony. NANNY drives, with her sleeves rolled up. The trap pulls up outside. BORIS JOHNSON steps from the station.

BORIS What ho, the Moggster!

JRM Hello old friend! Step aboard. Mush, Nanny! Mush!

BORIS Do I get the cheque now or later?

JRM Ho ho!

BORIS No, but seriously?

JRM Look, old chap, the producers want us to show the cameras what splendid friends we are. And brothers in arms! With our strident Conservativism, and our joshing back and forth in Latin!

BORIS Carpe diem!

JRM Quite so!

BORIS Acta, non verba!

JRM Indeed!

BORIS But do you actually speak Latin? Because I thought you did history?

JRM Not a word. I just like how it sounds.

BORIS Sterculinum publicum!

JRM That’s the stuff!

BORIS Look, pay me or I walk.

INTERLUDE (black and white)

JRM moves from one end of a walled garden to the other on a pogo stick.

SCENE FIVE

Int. a supermarket

JRM is at the self-service checkout.

JRM Some people say one couldn’t survive in the modern world. Which is preposterous, because one does so every single day! Why, here we are visiting a traditional local grocer’s.

NEIGHBOURING CUSTOMER It’s a Tesco.

JRM (firmly) A traditional local grocer’s.

CHECKOUT ROBOT Unexpected item in the bagging area.

JRM Such impertinence!

NEIGHBOURING CUSTOMER Don’t take it personally, mate.

JRM But one is being judged, and harshly, for one’s pickled eggs, devilled sausages and Gentleman’s Relish!

NEIGHBOURING CUSTOMER I don’t think it’s that. More that it’s unusual to go shopping with a briefcase.

INTERLUDE (black and white)

It’s a very bright day. JRM wears a light straw hat, similar to a boater. It matches his charcoal suit not at all, but he’s wearing it anyway. Go figure.

• From napping Rees-Mogg to Lettuce Liz, satirists had never had it so good

SCENE SIX

Int. the manor house, Somerset

JRM, Nanny and one of the Jacobs are eyeing each other, warily.

JRM Being a traditional fellow, I have of course never changed a nappy. Ho, ho! What an idea. But it’s never too late to learn!

JACOB Get away from me, you freak. I’m literally a teenager.

JRM Nanny, what now?

JACOB Er, hello? Did you hear what what I said?

NANNY Your father wore them until he was 26.

JACOB You know I’m a goth, right?

JRM You don’t look like a goth.

JACOB This house is unbearable! You’re stuck in the past!

JRM Speak for yourself. You were wiped out by the Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th century.

INTERLUDE (black and white)

A huge crowd of men in dark suits with umbrellas and bowler hats walk down a street in London’s Square Mile. They look up. They are all JRM.

SCENE SEVEN

Int. a swanky moderrn office

JRM Of course, reality TV is just the start! But just like those Kardashian fellows, the next step is merchandise. So I’m here with our new marketing team, plotting a fashion line.

SALES EXECUTIVE (peering at a mannequin) Hang on. Is this jacket quite right? The waist is incredibly loose. But the shoulders are almost triangular.

TAILOR Don’t blame me. Look, I’ve got the brief here: “Suit that looks like it was inherited by a thin descendent of an incredibly fat ancestor.”

SALES EXECUTIVE OK, we should have checked this was going to work.

JRM But it’s perfect! A suit that tells a story!

TAILOR Sir, you’re a rich man. You know you could get these clothes adjusted?

JRM But I did. You think they sell them like this?

SALES EXECUTIVE (grimly) We do now.

INTERLUDE (black and white)

A cupboard, full of creepy Victorian dolls in weird clothes with porcelain faces. Then the camera zooms in on one of them, and we see that it is Liz Truss.

SCENE EIGHT

Int. a conference centre

JRM is backstage.

JRM One may now be a private citizen. But the fight continues! And so today I have come to our nation’s great capital, to speak in a post-election conference for Popular Conservativism! Along with colleagues such as Liz Truss!

PRODUCER (off camera) Make Truss say “cheese”.

JRM Don’t worry. She always does eventually.

LIZ TRUSS Cheese!

JRM Anyway, we are here at this conference to discuss the grave matter of the future of our party. And what better person to be speaking alongside than Liz herself?

LIZ TRUSS Cheese!

JRM (aside) Although do say if this isn’t the sort of thing you wanted. Because I know this is meant to be a fun show. And perhaps two Conservatives who just lost their seats speaking at an event called Popular Conservativism isn’t actually that entertaining?

PRODUCER (off camera) Nah, keep going. This stuff is gold.

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Peter Welch becomes first senator to call for Biden to step aside

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/10/welch-biden-withdraw/

Peter Welch, a Democrat, represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate.

I have great respect for President Biden. He saved our country from a tyrant. He is a man of uncommon decency. He cares deeply about our democracy. He has been one of the best presidents of our time.

But I, like folks across the country, am worried about November’s election. The stakes could not be higher. We cannot unsee President Biden’s disastrous debate performance. We cannot ignore or dismiss the valid questions raised since that night.

I understand why President Biden wants to run. He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again. But he needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not.

For the good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race.

Trump is a felon. He is a pathological liar. He is a menace. And he is sure to be emboldened by his activist Supreme Court, which granted him near-total immunity.

When Trump was president, he consistently put his own interests ahead of the nation’s — culminating with his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. He has called the Jan. 6 insurrectionists “patriots.”

MAGA Republicans, meanwhile, have clearly stated their plans for a second Trump term, laying out an extremist agenda with their Project 2025.

But the national conversation is focused on President Biden’s age and capacity. Only he can change it.

I deliver this assessment with sadness. Vermont loves Joe Biden. President Biden and Vice President Harris received a larger vote percentage here than in any other state. But regular Vermonters are worried that he can’t win this time, and they’re terrified of another Trump presidency. These are real concerns of regular voters who I’ve heard from recently — like a mom who counts on the child tax credit and seniors who rely on Medicare.

The latest data makes it clear that the political peril to Democrats is escalating. States that were once strongholds are now leaning Republican. These new shifts — in Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — must be taken seriously, not denied or ignored.

The good news is that President Biden has united the party and created a deep bench that can defeat Trump. Vice President Harris is a capable, proven leader, and we have other electable, young, energizing Democratic governors and senators in swing states. Not only do these leaders have experience running and winning in tough political environments, they also have fundraising networks, media experience, charisma, and the ability to inspire voters across generations and across our big tent.

We have asked President Biden to do so much for so many for so long. It has required unmatched selflessness and courage. We need him to put us first, as he has done before. I urge him to do it now.

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[cosmicway 1,301]

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,891]

 

Yikes....

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2 hours ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

 

Yikes....

 

Biden loses his train of thought, calls Harris ‘Vice President Trump’ in solo press conference tonight

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/11/joe-biden-press-conference-updates.html

[Fulham Broadway 16,715]

Trump, 78, has not gone entirely underground. Since Mr Biden's poor debate performance in late June, Trump has given a handful of radio interviews, appeared at rallies in Virginia and Florida, and kept up a steady drumbeat of posts on Truth Social.

"The radical left Democratic party is divided in chaos," Trump said at a Tuesday campaign rally in Miami. "They can't decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden or laughing Kamala."

He also challenged the president to a golf match, claimed all US airports were dirty, said that visitors to Washington DC end up "shot, mugged and raped", claimed 45,000 people were at the Miami event when there were closer to 700, and pondered why "we don't eat bacon anymore".