Link

After the video, a regular post will appear on this page some time today. It will not be the Petfinder photo contest; that will appear on Friday. You have time to go out and vote. This web site will wait.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Ywq6sASGM&t=1767s 

Morgan Griffith on Voter Registration

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

"

Early voting starts on September 20^th in Virginia, and because there is some discussion in the press about the SAVE Act, I want to detail my involvement with the bill.

The SAVE Act prohibits non-citizens from voting by requiring states to obtain proof-of-citizenship when registering individuals to vote in federal elections.

Earlier this year I was one of six Members of the House who voted to send the SAVE Act to the full House for consideration.

During the summer, I supported the SAVE Act when it came to the House floor. The legislation passed with bipartisan support, though most Democrats voted against it.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Senate has yet to consider the legislation.

Non-citizen voting is complicated by federal government efforts to have federal agencies register voters and become political get-out-the-vote organizations, done on the order of someone who, at the time, was a candidate for president.

The Biden-Harris Administration directed executive agencies via Executive Order 14019 to work with local partners to register voters and turn out votes.

While the administration will tell you they are just protecting the vote, the involvement of numerous federal agencies is unprecedented.

Further, if their efforts are innocent, why haven’t they responded to House Republicans’ requests for the details of their strategic get-out-the-vote plans?

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner testified before a House Administration Committee hearing to discuss his efforts to protect West Virginia elections. His state has removed 400,000 names from their voter rolls and implemented voter ID requirements.

Because of the federal Motor Voter law, every person applying for a driver’s license with their state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) receives a voter registration application. The various states’ DMVs don’t check citizenship status before giving out the voter registration application.

Because they receive a registration form from a government agency, many non-citizens don’t know they are not supposed to vote and apparently some of them register to vote.

The same thing is likely to happen with federal agencies registering people with whom they come in contact.

I believe that is why the federal government has never done this before.

As far as I know, the agencies are not checking to see if a person they are dealing with is a citizen who is eligible to vote in federal elections before giving them voter registration forms.

From the non-citizen’s view, the government encouraged them to register. Therefore, it must be legal to vote!

That is why we need the SAVE Act.

The SAVE Act makes clear that non-citizens have no business voting in American elections.

Shouldn’t U.S. states be required to use their authority to obtain proof-of-citizenship when registering people to vote in federal elections?

When non-citizens have the opportunity to register to vote, some will vote, diluting the voting power of actual American citizens.

Last year, in order to address non-citizen voting, I introduced the NO VOTE for Non-Citizens Act. If a locality wants non-citizens to vote in their local election, the bill would require separate voter rolls for local and federal elections.

This push to address non-citizen voting comes as a result of looking at weaknesses in American election administration and recent state actions cleaning voter rolls.

In August, Governor Youngkin made a critical step by issuing Executive Order 35. The order codified security procedures put into place during the Youngkin Administration, which included stringent ballot security, complete and thorough counting machine testing, and best-in-the-nation voter list maintenance.

Following the Executive Order, the Youngkin Administration removed over 6,300 non-citizens from Virginia’s voter rolls.

The integrity of our elections is also threatened by potential cheating via political entities.

The House Administration Committee, on which I serve, is investigating ActBlue, a website that raises campaign funds for Democratic candidates.

ActBlue collects campaign contributions from donors and then sends funds to various Democratic candidates and causes.

According to whistleblower allegations, ActBlue is potentially skirting campaign donation laws.

ActBlue allows donations through Paypal, Venmo, Google Pay, prepaid credit cards and gift cards. These contribution methods do not check or use card verification value, or CVV.

This failure makes manipulation and fraud by malicious actors easier.

In August, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter to ActBlue requesting more information on the platform’s verification processes and procedures when assessing the legitimacy and accuracy of donor and contribution information.

As of the date of this writing, the AG’s investigation into ActBlue is ongoing.

Our elections must be secure in order to ensure fair outcomes and restore confidence in U.S. elections. That is why I continue to support the SAVE Act.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office.  You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.

" 

Can Dowdy Pants Refresh a Withered Orange?

So I said to myself, "Self, this e-mail mess has to be dealt with; it is getting ridiculous," and I held my nose and dived into the e-mail. When half of it was filed or deleted I said to a friend, "Friend, I could use a reward," so we went into town and watched the presidential debate.

Well, someone had really been working with Dowdypants. 

I started to type "old" Dowdypants, because her perpetual procession of fashion blunders is so old. The britches are probably new but they look old. I can't call her that, though. I am too close to her age to describe Dowdypants as either old or young. That's not a bad thing to have to face up to. She looked good on television, probably the best she ever has looked or ever will. Black jacket, white shirt, keep the dreaded sweat-trap trousers behind that lectern: that's the fashion rule that will probably always work for her. We knew it was probably some combination of badly fitted trousers and sex-toy shoes, but at least we didn't have to look at it. Or, since there was no audience, smell it.

What is harder to deal with is the fact that her vice-presidential candidate and support dog, who looks as if he might be her father, was born in the same year she was. Now I would have more than a dozen white hairs, if they didn't keep falling out during glyphosate reactions, and so would Dowdypants, if she didn't dye her hair to add blondish highlights...but men our age have no excuse for looking like that geezer.

I still think that, if there were no other reason to vote against Dowdypants, the dowdy pants would be an important one. If elected she'd probably start a fad for wearing sweat-trap trousers with hooker-heel shoes, and then where would we be? No thinking woman would vote for such a thing. Serious women candidates will wear shoes that are shaped like a human foot, and skirts that make it hard to tell which of the women in a group is wearing a pistol in a garter holster. Skirts also show consideration for other people on the commuter train who may be trying to breathe. But Dowdypants can probably afford a fresh new pair of sweat traps every hour, anyway, and the top of her outfit did suit her.

Then she opened her mouth. 

The questions she'd agreed to answer in public were not softballs; they were cotton balls. Did I ever have questions for her. A blog seems like the best place for these questions even if they have to be scheduled a few days after the debate.

Q. "Vice-President Harris, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?"

H (grinning and waffling frantically): "I grew up in a middle-class family...I intend on extending a tax cut for young families..."

Question that should have followed, but didn't: "And in view of all the damage that's been done to formerly established mid-sized businesses, where exactly do you plan to make up the money for this tax break to reward lack of sexual self-control?"

H. "...and for start-up small businesses. "

QTSHFBD: ""What about the established businesses? What about the Family Dollar stores, the neighborhood convenience stores, the family-owned restaurants, family-owned hardware stores, bookstores, crafts stores....? What about the people who are being asked to start up small businesses at our age when they've already spent forty years building the businesses your administration detroyed?"

H. "...and my opponent wants to raise the sales tax!"

The Orange Thing looked more withered than he did eight years ago. Less orange, more grey. We all know what happens when an orange turns grey. But even Trump should not be blamed for looking old while standing beside a bright young thing of sixty. For a White man who's closer to eighty than seventy, he did not look bad. Much better preserved than barely-sixty-year-old Walz.

T. "First of all I have no sales tax. That's an incorrect statement. She knows that. What we're doing is tariffs..."

QTSHFBD: "Is either of you candidates in the habit of buying American? Not that it's possible at any of these big-chain stores any more, but have you ever tried? Obviously Harris hasn't; that would explain her confusion about the difference between a tariff and a tax. But how do you plan to explain this to some thirty-year-old working father who doesn't even go into stores that still have anything that's not made in China? Won't the tariff hit him like a tax, too?"

T. "...and immigrants, those awful horrible terrible immigrants..."

QTSHFBD: "Will you kindly hire a psychologist to talk about this business of expecting all immigrants to be like your grandfather?! Immigration is obviously contributing to the congestion in our cities, which was already unsustainable. Immigration needs to be curbed. There's no need to make a noise like a hater about it. Just say, right, we have a limited number of spaces for people whose homes have been destroyed by natural disasters, but even war--we can't afford to bring in very many more immigrants who have lost their homes to war. Youall are going to have to start settling your disagreements like adults."

Q. "Let Vice-President Harris respond on the economy."

QTSHFBD: "President Trump having totally wasted his chance to talk about the economy, which is his strongest point. He knows that. Why?"

H. "Trump left us the economy...Trump let us the pandemic..."

QTSHFBD: "Did it occur to you that limiting quarantines and lockdowns to Trump's schedule would have done a lot less damage to the economy? Are you in biological fact a weasel?"

H. "...What we have done is clean up Trump's mess."

QTSHFBD: "Hello? I was awake during these past four years, and I can hardly wait to see how long it takes Trump or just about anyone else to clean up YOURall's mess."

H. "...In this debate tonight, you're going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling."

QTSHFBD: "Why don't you just stop now?"

H. "...And I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans."

QTSHFBD: "This is where we see your lying skills. You'd be a puppet for the would-be world rulers at the UN. Let's test your lying stamina. Tell us what the sovereignty of these United States means to you!"

T. "Everybody knows what I'm going to do. Cut taxes very substantially. And create a great economy like I did before."

QTSHFBD: "You didn't get us out of debt. You didn't restore an economic situation where anyone who wants money can go out an earn some. You did much less badly than Biden, but then again every presidential administration we've had since 1940 has done that, so watch the hyperbole."

H. "Goldman Sachs said Trump's plan would make the economy worse. Mine would strengthen the economy."

QTSHFBD: "I thought you were talking about the American people. What's good for Goldman Sachs is not necessarily what's good for the American people."

H. "Trump actually has no plan."

T. "She doesn't have a plan!"

QTSHFBD: "Can we put the inner toddlers in time-out, please? Vice-President Harris, are you aware of what your face is doing? You are smirking. In another minute you'll be sneering. You could be in a movie--a horror movie. Can you keep your lips together over your teeth when you're not actually saying words with E sounds in them? You look so much less bad when every single tooth in your head is not sticking out."

Q. "Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs?"

QTSHFBD: "Does your plan include licensing individual Americans who can't afford the tariffs to start building tariff-free domestic goods? Are we talking about, Joe Sixpack can't afford to wear shoes with little foreign flags on them, so he starts making his own shoes? His kids can't afford to buy all the junk associated with idiotic Japanese video games, so they build their own game boards and play chess?"

T. "They aren't going to have higher prices. Who's going to have higher prices is China."

QTSHFBD: "Specifically how do you see that happening and how does it keep the Chinese Communist Party, with their incredibly retrograde thought process, from starting another Cold War or maybe even a hot one?"

H. "The Trump administration resulted in a deficit...but let's talk about COVID!"

QTSHFBD: "Would you like to stop and thank Trump for actually having COVID so that there could be a Biden administration? Would you like to talk about how you and Biden basically bought votes by claiming the credit for what had actually been Trump's idea?!"

T. "She has no policy. Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window. She's going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat...But if she ever got elected, she'd change it. And it will be the end of our country. She's a Marxist. Everybody knows she's a Marxist. Her father's a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well. But when you look at what she's done to our country and when you look at these millions and millions of people that are pouring into our country..."

QTSHFBD: "Will you leave your grandfather out of this? And by the way, what about a shout to Richard Nixon, whose plan for curbing inflation she's trying to borrow? It made sense to me and my whole Girl Scout troop, too, at the time. But it did not exactly work."

T. "...Immigration is the worst thing that can happen..."

QTSHFBD: "Do you even notice that verbalizing all these issues around your grandfather is making you sound like a racist when you're not even acting like one? Can you give it a flippin' rest?"

Q. "President Trump, Vice-President Harris says that women shouldn't trust you because you've changed your position [on abortion]...why should they trust you?"

QTSHFBD: "Can we start with the fact that a majority of women think that having abortions is not liberated, that not starting unwanted babies is liberated?"

T. "They [Democrats] have abortion in the ninth month...even after the baby is born. \...But what I did is...get Roe v. Wade back into the States."

QTSHFBD: "With how much collusion from Ds who were willing to sacrifice their 'right' to do their women wrong if it'd get that idea of a right to privacy out of the language? What are you planning to do to get privacy enumerated as a constitutional right?"

H. "Now in over twenty states there are bans which make it illegal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care!////[Presumably she meant abortion.]  I think the American people believe that certain freedoms, in particular the freedom to make decisions about one's own body, should not be made by the government."

QTSHFBD: "What price those vaccine mandates, weasel?!"

T. "I'm not in favor of an abortion ban, but now it doesn't matter because this issue has now been taken over by the States."

Q. "J.D. Vance said you would veto [restoring Roe v. Wade] if it ever came to your desk."

T. "We don't have to discuss it because she'd never be able to get it just like she was unable to get student loans!" 

Presumably meaning student loan payment cancellation. At this point both candidates' blood pressure was up and their remarks sounded unscripted. In this case "unscripted" is a polite way of saying "incoherent."

QTSHFBD: "Sir, you cannot help having a round face or a ruddy complexion, but having those two things, you cannot afford to let your face pucker up like a baby's when it's about to howl. Can you try to get control of this?"

Q. "Would you support any restrictions on a woman's right to abortion?"

QTSHFBD: "Have you drawn a clear line between making love and making babies for yourself? Have you taught it to your children?"

H. "I would reinstate Roe v. Wade. Under Trump';s abortion ban, couples...are being denied IVF [in vitro fertilization] treatments."

T. "Another lie. I have been a leader on IVF."

QTSHFBD: "In this crowded world? Shame! Why not adoption?"

Q. "Why did the Biden administration wait until six months before the election to act [on restrictions on immigration]? Would you have done anything differently?"

H. "I supported...[a bill] which would have put 1500 more border agents on the border."

QTSHFBD: "That's your answer--spend more tax money? From whom is all this tax money to come?"

H. "And people leave Trump rallies early because of exhaustion and boredom."

QTSHFBD: "People leave all kinds of events early because they get up early in the morning. This has what to do with the question of whether, apart from findng the money to pay 1500 more border agents, you would have tried things like simply telling these people that there's no more room for them?"

Q. "President Trump, why didn't you support the bill?"

T. "I want to talk about her rallies. People don't leave my rallies. People don't go to her rallies!"

QTSHFBD: "Can we have another time-out for the inner toddlers?"

T. "And in Springfield, they're eating the dogs...they're eating the cats..."

QTSHFBD: "Haven't you heard that that rumor was supposedly disproved? Not that you can prove a negative. Not that it's not possible that somebody, somewhere, has eaten someone's straying pet. It's happened before. But it's not being reported as a large-scale occurrence."

T. "If she becomes Presidetnt...we'll end up being Venezuela on steroids."

QTSHFBD: "That's entirely possible. If we don't head the warning of what happened when Venezuela elected a Socialist, we could easily allow someone like Harris to add to our existing pile of toxic socialist schemes the last one that will bring the whole economy down. But what's it have to do with the question? Can you try to remember that everyone on Earth has not formed the mental habit of leaping from the thought of immigration to the thought of the apocalypse?"

H. "This is, I think, why I have the endorsement of 200 Republicans."

QTSHFBD: "We all know a lot of people don't like Trump. Isn't it more germane to the issue that the masses of moderate Ds who would have backed Kennedy, not to mention the I's and Rs who do back Kennedy, are not described as "Never-Harrisers"? We don't hate you, personally, Vice-President. We just think your policies are unworkable, the ideas you do talk about are unsustainable, the ideas you've been trying to avoid even letting other people talk about are more important than the things you waste our time talking about (such as abortion), even the fashion trend you'd set is an abomination, and generally you're unfit for the White House and should go home and learn to play shuffleboard. What do you say to the more than 200, I wouldn't be surprised if it were 200,000, Democrats who think that way about you?"

T. "When somebody does a bad job, I fire them. With me they can write books. With nobody else can they...But I got more votes than any Republican President in history."

QTSHFBD: "Do you remember the three-foot shelf of books the Clinton staff wrote? Anyway there are more voters than at any previous time in history. There are too many humans on Earth. That's the source of many of our problems. Can you consider not taking credit for it?"

Q. "How would you deport eleven million immigrants?"

T. "We have a new form of crime! It's called migrant crime! It's happening at levels that nobody thought possible!"

QTSHFBD: "Funnily enough, all the crime the newspapers have reported lately--when they send anyone out to report anything, when they don't just sit around blethering about COVID--fits the pattern of 'Prozac Dementia'. If reelected, President Trump, will you redirect the national conversation away from unconstitutional gun bans that actually serve to sell more firearms to people who probably shouldn't use them, toward a consideration of which drugs all these violent criminals and especially the homicide-suicides are on? What will you do about guaranteeing closer supervision for people who choose to use prescription drugs that are well known to cause homicide-suicide thinking? Do you think survivors of these incidents should own Lilly?"

H. "Well, I think this is so rich, coming from someone who had been prosecuted for..." [nonviolent, white-collar crimes, all charges except the past adultery being purely political in nature]. So what are you going to do about the housing crisis?"

QTSHFBD: "What indeed? What about helping the people who lost their homes due to the COVID panic to recover their homes? What kind of pay cut is either of you candidates taking by way of an apology to the people who've lost their jobs and homes because of a deliberately whipped-up panic over a rather mild chest cold?!" 

T. "But I'm winning most of those cases" (those white-collar crimes) "and I'll win the others on appeal. It's called weaponization..."

QTSHFBD: "It's called trumped-up charges. It was tacky when all those white-collar 'criminal' charges against President Nixon were trumped up, too. Do you find it ironic, Trump, that a strategy that was probably suggested by your name is distracting so much attention from things you've done that actually cause people whose relatives you have not fired to dislike you, that these so-called criminal charges are actually generating sympathy for you? Is it possible that this junior-grade prosecuting attorney's attitude is making you look good? Can dowdy pants refresh a withered orange?"

H. "The Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct [charges[ if he were to enter the White House again...he's said he would 'weaponize' the Department of Justice..."

QTSHFBD: "Yes. It'll be payback time. Does that idea scare you?"

T. "I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things they say about me.

QTSHFBD: "Yes, Vice-President? Your administration wants to censor all kinds of legitimate discourse that you fear may promote ill will between subgroups of people, or, more realistically, hurt sales of profitable products such as the clot-shots. You understand, I'm not opposed to people taking vaccines if they think that's the best choice for them, but once you start censoring accurate reportage of the not at all surprising fact that experimental vaccines have not worked for everyone, you're spitting on the Constitution and, as far as I'm concerned, you should move to China now. But since youall think censorship is such a great idea, what about censoring the kind of offensive talk that led to the hatecrime against President Trump? Let's see fines on any newspaper that repeats the tired old lie about the currently living generation of Republicans being racists. Let's see shadowbans for anyone who suggests that Trump's or W Bush's policies were 'extreme.' 'Extreme' applies to Lyndon LaRouche and various other self-nominated candidates whose campaigns the news media have never taken seriously. Riiight?"

Q. "Vice President Harris, in your last run for president you said you wanted to ban fracking. Now you don't. You wanted mandatory government buyback programs for assault weapons. Now your campaign says you don't. You supported decriminalizing border crossings. Now you're taking a harder line. I know you say that your values have not changed. So then why have so many of your policy positions changed?"

H. "My values have not changed!...I will not ban fracking."

QTSHFBD: "So you're comfortable with the idea of Washington washing out to sea? The Appalachian Mountains have been more stable than the West Coast recently, but they were formed by seismic upheavals too. We have fault lines too. You tamper with our bedrock and our artesian springs, you don't know what you're doing to the East Coast. I don't want to do it. We have a housing crisis on the East Coast already. It'll be worse if the coastal cities are under water."

H. "We are going to work with the private sector and home builders to increase three million homes."

QTSHFBD: "And where are all those houses going to be? Don't insult people by calling apartment blocks homes! What about simply helping people reclaim the homes from which they were evicted because they lost their jobs in the COVID panic?"

T. "She was big on 'defund the police'..."

H. "That's not true!" (her microphone was turned off, but the camera picked it up)

T. "I'm talking now. If you don't mind. Please. Does that sound familiar?"

H. "Don't lie!"

QTSHFBD: "The statement that it was his turn to talk was not a lie. We could all see that you were angry that Trump found a chance to use some phrases you had intended to use, first. You were angry that you were the one who'd been goaded into talking out of turn. Were you thinking in terms of 'lies' because it's a lie to say that you weren't angry?

T. "Criminals that killed people, that burned down Minneapolis, she went out and raised money to get them out of jail."

QTSHFBD: "Did you see BLM as only a group of political allies, or did you understand that most Americans see them as rioters and violent criminals?"

T. "I got the oil business going like nobody has ever done before."

QTSHFBD: "Does the name 'Eisenhower' ring a bell?"

Q. "Mr. President, on January 6th you told your supporters to march to the Capitol. You said you would be right there with them. The country and the world saw what played out at the Capitol that day. The officers coming under attack. Aides in the West Wing say you watched it unfold on television off the Oval Office. You did send out tweets, but it was more than two hours before you sent out that video message telling your supporters to go home. Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?"

QTSHFBD: "Like having failed to bring Twitter's unethical use of censorship to the nation's attention sooner? Well, fear it not, we've all seen how censorship promotes violence. Why, Candidate Trump, have you not made the fact that censorship directly caused that violence, on that day, a major issue in this election? Why are you failing to call out the Party of Censorship as the un-American, crime-promoting, moral evil that it is?"

T. (Paraphrased) "Blame the immigrants, blame the immigrants, it's all about those awful immigrants!"

QTSHFBD: "When it comes to a real threat to our democratic republic like censorship, does anyone really give a daam about the wretched immigrants?"

T. "Ask her that question. They took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle. When are they going to be prosecuted?"

QTSHFBD: "Are you waffling because you intend to be soft on censorship as long as it's being done by your party?"

Q. "Is there anything you regret about that day?"

T. "I said, you know, this is going to be a very big rally...I wasn't responsible for security. Nancy Pelosi was responsible. She didn't do her job."

QTSHFBD: "Considering what the rioters were threatening to do to the Senator, I'd say she's been punished for what was really a totally white-collar crime on both sides apart, of course, from the woman the policeman mistakenly shot. But I think the question has to do with whether you feel any remorse for the way people who were not violent are being used as scapegoats and substitutes for those who were violent, actually. Do you? And don't try blaming the Senator--we can rake her over the coals some other time."

H. "I was there! And on that day the President of the United States incited a violent mob to..." (I can't pinpoint the source but I know I've heard every word of her rant from someone else, before.)

QTSHFBD: "Has anyone ever called you out on plagiarism?"

T (referring to an old news story referenced in H's rant) "That story has been debunked...but..." (paraphrased) "let's make it about immigrants, those awful immigrants. Why doesn't Harris seal the border now?"

QTSHFBD: "Badly as the nation needs to stop the immigration, President Trump, are you aware of any other things we need to stop?"

Q. "You repeatedly falsely claimed that you won the election (i n 2020) by a landslide. In the past couple of weeks...you have said, quote, that you lost by a whisker...Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?"

T. "I said that sarcastically...I got almost 75 million votes."

QTSHFBD: "But you do understand that, even if your 75 million votes were all 100% legitimate and most of Biden's 80 million were fraudulent, which is possible with the electronic voting machines, you still lost the electoral college?"

T. "The problem that we have right now is...they have put (the nation) into decline."

Q. "Trump has said, 'When I win, the people who cheated will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the last, which includes long prison sentences.' One of your campaign's top lawyers responded saying, 'We won't let Trump intimidate us'...Is that what you believe he's trying to do?"

QTSHFBD: "It's called payback time. How badly does that thought scare you? How much do you have to hide?"

H. "World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump."

QTSHFBD. "The people you call world leaders are very duplicitous. Why do you think they're not laughing at you, for being so easy for them to lead into such foolish acts, and saying they're laughing at Trump?"

T. "Vktor Orban said...you need Trump back as president...but this weak pathetic man that you saw at a debate a few weeks ago...got fourteen million votes. She got no votes...and he can't stand her."

Q. "How would you..." (resolve the current war in the Middle East)?

H. (Recites a speech that I happen to recognize, thanks to Michael Moore having shared it recently, as a word-for-word quote from one of Jon Stewart's so-called comedy speeches. No, it wasn't funny when Stewart said it, either.) "We must have a two-state solution where the Palestinians can have...the dignity they so rightly deserve."

QTSHFBD: "The Palestinians are rapists and terrorists and baby killers. The Palestinians are also Semites, and in the ancient lore of their culture we read that what they think deserves to happen to rapists is for all the men in the rapist's tribe to be killed. Who are you to think you can improve on their own traditional solution? What gives you the idea that any Palestinian now deserves anything that might be described as 'dignity'? They deserve shame. They deserve to be lined up, the widows and orphans, the disabled, the ones who did not participate and could not have participated in the terrorist act the whole world saw, and be allowed to choose to defile their men's bodies and beg for the privilege of living in tents and caves and going out to beg for day labor. They deserve to beg to eat scraps out of Israel's garbage. If any arrangement that seems more humane than that is acceptable to the Israelis it would have to be called grace, the spirit of Jesus moving among them, rather than anything the Palestinians deserve! What is wrong with a woman who suggests that any rapist deserves to live, or even to be killed humanely?"

QTSHFBD: "By the way, Vice-President Harris, there's nothing really wrong with paying professional writers to write your speeches, but how much did you pay Jon Stewartn for that one? What about the other speeches you've recited tonight? Who wrote them, and how much did you pay?"

Q. "President Trump, how would you..."

T. "She hates Israel. At the same time, she hates Arabs."

QTSHFBD: "Yes, President Trump, are you aware that that's what being an anti-Semite really means? 

T. (Summarized: The trouble with the Israelis and Palestinians, and likewise with the Russians and Ukrainians, is that they have money to spend on a war.) "...and I'll get that settled. If I'm President-Elect I'll get that settled before I'm President."

Q. "He says that you hate Israel?"

H. "That's not true! Trump is weak and wrong!" (Summarized: The only people who like him are the dictators Americans hate.)

T. "She's weak! And ineffectual!...And Biden..."

Q. "It's time for a commercial break."

QTSHFBD: "Cutting off money to nations that are wasting it on war is a good solution, especially if we have the strength, as a nation, to wean ourselves off dependence on petroleum-fuelled motor vehicles. Does either of you seriously think you're a strong enough or beloved enough leader to do that?""

Mercy. That's just the first half hour of the lies, verbal abuse, and failure even to mention any real issue that the commercial media aren't beating to death. I find myself feeling that I've spent enough time and typed enough words for one day. Youall, if still reading, are probably feeling that you've read enough words on a screen too. I think I'll stop now and let the numbers tell me whether youall want me to reopen the tab with the video of the debate and share my questions for the other two half hours.

Friday Poem: If You Love Your Neighbor...

"If elected, in the first 100 days, Kamala Harris promised an Australian-style recall of all firearms in America."--News item.

Well, I don't drive. I take no handouts. Burn 

Rather than dump. Sometimes I used to sing

In aid of urban missions. I did learn

Commandments as a child. Still new days bring

New challenges in service of True Love.

We hear Mean Girl McDowdypants proclaim:

"The Constitution? What of it? Above

It, I am. All firearms I'll simply claim!"

I seem to see a street lined with young men,

Lying where they fell when shot through the back.

Crows, gulls, or pigeons make wounds bleed again.

They are all colors, but three-fourths are Black.

On a less grandiose scale I saw such things,

The harvest that the long-sought gun ban brings.

If Dowdypants ever made good her boast

I do not say she'd ever be forgiven.

Leave that to grandparents who've lost the most.

I doubt there will be dowdy pants in Heaven.

Let love and pardon wash the gutters down.

Let hope and pity enshrine those young men.

(How many'd been kissed on the innocent down

Of their soft cheeks? How many fathers, then?)

For gall, for hubris, for mere bigotry

McDowdypants has earned some sort of prize.

Could one love oneself, having done what she

Has done? Would one be ugliest to one's own eyes?

Love for McDowdypants? I think what's meant

Are prayers that she may earnestly repent.

But, love for those who've waited long to see

"A woman President! Jamaican, too!"--

I'm sure some of that still remains in me.

I'm sure some of it still remains in you.

We need not even ask their vote on Rice,

Though she was fact where Harris is the sham,

Though she was brave and loyal, at a price,

And was a class act; Harris is a scam.

We think our sense of presidential sort

Ought to rest on things weightier than size,

But, for a President, Rice was so short...

We do not hate. We do not scream "All lies."

The only way we can get through the labor

This Admin's left behind, is love of neighbor.

Rejecting Biden: What's Race Got to Do With It?

Last month (5.28.24 p. A5) the Kingsport Times-News harmfully misrepresented Black women writers and/or Biden supporters by printing a disgraceful piece of misunderstanding on the part of Cynthia Tucker.

Cynthia Tucker, perhaps wilfully, misunderstands White American voters in the same way most fiction writers misunderstand opposite-sex novelists: Grossly overestimating the amount of time people different from themselves spend thinking about, well, them. 

What seemed to set her off was that a Virginia school board voted to restore the names of schools named after Confederate officers. This is not a "race" issue, either, though it could be made into one. Since it would make a long diversion here, let's just say that Tucker obviously didn't spend enough time with the life and letters of General Lee in school, nor has she given much thought to the level of strife among different ethnic groups in North America at this period, and she seems to have yet to read Thomas Sowell's history of how ethnic minority groups have been treated, worldwide. The Civil War was not about race or slavery, though slavery was a test issue. It was about local self-governance, as is the local school board's reclaiming the right to name the schools.

For poor self-obsessed Cynthia Tucker, reclaimng the names of those schools is "growing bolder in racism." It is not. Everything is not about Cynthia Tucker! And my concern is that, because Cynthia Tucker's self-focus reads like whiny narcissism and nobody likes whiny narcissism, giving articles like Cynthia Tucker's a public platform may actually be building a resurgence of racism. 

Let's put it this way. The young people collectively known to cyberspace as The Nephews are a mixed lot; some look White, some really are nothing but White, some look Black. I love them impartially and don't care to try to understand how anyone else might be able not to see their wonderfulness, impartially. But what that means to me is that I expect everyone to appreciate that the Black ones are not whiny narcissists like Cynthia Tucker. If any of The Nephews, Black, White, or other, were saying "resurgence of racism," I'd expect the story to be about a business that refused to serve Black people and what they were doing to take it down.

Why is Trump judged less unfavorably than Biden? Tucker asks, and in her self-obsession she "has seen clearly" that it's all about racism. 

Never mind that both Trump and Biden are White. Both are old men; as such, both grew up thinking and talking about non-White people in a different way than we do now. Biden may have been more genteel about it because of his background--but what that means in practice is that Biden had to think less about non-White people, because of his background. Nobody can be blamed for thinking a gentleman is nicer than a person-who-is-not-and-will-never-be-a-gentleman. That opinion has been echoed around the world for three hundred years. The fact is that, beyond appointing some non-White people to prominent positions (which Trump also did), Biden's policies have done more damage to non-White Americans than Trump's have. Politeness is good but Biden is the one who politely let Black people's parents' little Mom-and-Pop business be shut down. Non-wealthy people, even Black people who are really keeping it real, notice things like that.

This is why the Ds can't win the popular vote merely by replacing Biden with a younger D who endorses the same polices Biden did. They have a strong chance if they can reclaim Candidate Kennedy; if they nominate, e.g., Kamala Harris, they're dead. The party's current policies are just too dysfunctional to win votes. Kennedy's willingness to look at prickly issues that other Ds prefer to ignore  enjoys wide bipartisan support and might claim enough swing votes to beat Trump. Party-liners who aren't strongly opposing censorship, reconsidering the United Nations' failures and its claim to any further support from us, and standing up to Bayer, Lilly, Merck, and Pfizer, can't beat Trump even if tey are not only young but also pretty. Ds need a candidate who will vigorously repudiate Biden's mistakes, not in a spirit of contempt for Biden or scoring off their "enemy," but in a spirit of correcting decisions that failed to serve anyone, anywhere, well enough to be continued.

Reclaiming the names of schools is about a pathetic token attempt to reclaim local control of the said schools. Choosing between the two old White men--the three old White men if we count the one who's most aware of the real issues of concern to Americans, and also most likely to live another four years--is not something sensible people can do as if choosing a real feminist or a real Black American, or anyone who really had the interests of women, Black people, lefthanded people, Catholics, celiacs, or any other special interest group in mind. 

We have a choice among White men who are all about themselves and, if anything, their heirs. I pity anyone who imagines that Trump is motivated to do anything on behalf of anyone whose name is not Trump, but in that he's a few points ahead of the other two. Kennedy may have good intentions toward, but has not been able to unify, people whose name is Kennedy. Biden has been credibly accused of unspeakable crimes toward one other person whose name is Biden, and of criminal conspiracy with another Biden. 

I'm blessed with one candidate who represents me on one issue, which happens to be my top-priority issue. Many people are less fortunate in this year's election. If they're voting their interests as part of a large demographic bloc, they're voting on which candidate has done and is likely to do the least harm to their bloc. 

"Elites"? Who are they, and who cares? I'm afraid that, if you're reading this on a computer, you are "an elite." I make that judgment call based on the number of things I don't have to explain to you that I would have to explain, at great length, to the people who use the Internet just to watch videos and the people who don't use it at all. I don't believe voters are terribly concerned about "the elites" but they are concerned about Biden's willingness to let the United Nations dictate that the United States should be like the backward nations of the Old World and regress toward tyranny. They don't want censorship. They don't want to be told to spend a month celebrating a Deadly Sin. They don't want to be told what to eat, drive, say, watch, read, or think.

"Skepticism over Biden's handling of the economy" is not necessarily too tactful a phrase, given that the larger portion of responsibility for the economy belongs to Jerome Powell. Let's just say that the voters can tell that the economy is not doing well. They're out of work. The locally owned businesses in their neighborhood are shutting down. The prices of things are higher every time they go to the store. These conditions have never helped an incumbent candidate. Or party.

Concerns about the ages and conditions of all three candidates are valid but, of the three, Biden has had the most conspicuous lapses in public. All three men's voices are weak points. Kennedy's is permanently fried. Trump's tenor, almost treble, voice and negative-status-indicator accent sound the strongest of the three, on the whole, but they're far from being assets. But Biden, not necessarily through any fault of his own, looks by far the most likely of the three to collapse, during any given public appearance. It's not that any specific number of birthdays makes a person "too old" for anything the person may want to do. It's that Biden looks as if any day now, any day now, his soul shall be released. This did a lot to temper the criticism of him in even the opposition papers, but it can't be kept from working against him in the election.

Biden's vice-president's no help. Many Americans are still prejudiced, even bigoted--only not in the obvious way Cynthia Tucker imagines. It's not simply about "race" or color. 

Voters have, on the whole, kept our opinions of Kamala Harris to ourselves. That does not mean they are favorable opinions. Still, whether voters merely think Harris wouldn't be a good President or actually hate her or fall somewhere in between, their prejudices--preconceived notions--about Vice-President Harris are very different from their prejudices against (a) Kanye West, (b) Sarah Palin, (c) a blue-eyed blonde English-speaking woman who wants to immigrate to the US without following the standard procedure, (d) a more typical looking Tex-Mex student at a community college, and (e) a Black single mother who is juggling different part-time jobs and still relying on handouts to pay the inflated expenses of living in a city these days. 

Prejudice about money, against those who have either much more or much less than oneself, are much harsher and are taken much more seriously than prejudices about physical looks. Many White Americans are sincere admirers of various Black American celebrities. They are awestruck--and uncritical--about Clarence Thomas; they wish they or their wives looked like Halle Berry; they'd be absolutely delighted if Tiger Woods moved into their block or Karine Jean-Pierre sat down beside them at the beauty parlor. They would not trust any of those people, because their prejudice tells them not to trust rich people, but they would admire and emulate any or all of those people's achievements and would want to cultivate them as acquaintances.

On the other hand, those voters still clutch their purses when they see an ordinary young man across the street, and some of them may clutch tighter if the young man is Black. They still make the assumption that even young children from poor families or neighborhoods are dirtier, rougher, slower to learn and more likely to steal than rich kids are, though in fact most children are dirty, rough, and likely to steal and some rich children are very slow learners. If they hear that someone is or has been unemployed for more than a year, they want to believe that the person is unemployable, even if they know the real reasons why the person is unemployed. 

At no time in history have human beings ever had particularly warm and fuzzy feelings about people perceived as pushing or sneaking into a place far from their home in the hope of making more money there than they could at home. At a few times in history governments have encouraged immigration; even then, the masses have not exactly welcomed immigrants. Prejudice against immigrants may be moderated by factors like the perception that Scandinavian immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were going to raise wheat on the prairies (i.e. stay well away from the established resident population, unless individually invited to visit) and offer some security against indigenous populations'  understandable rancor. Prejudice aainst immigrants is heightened by factors like inflation, a high cost of living, crowded cities, and a perception that one's children are likely to be poorer than one's younger self was; thus it doesn't really matter who's crossing our southern border now. Blond, English-speaking immigrants from former Soviet Socialist Republics maybe less conspicuous than Black, French-dialect-speaking immigrants from Haiti, but people who don't welcome immigrants (who are in a clear majority) don't care what immigrants look like, actually; they just want them to stay at home. 

Trump's exploitation of prejudice against immigrants is gratuitous; he could beat Biden without it. It is ugly; it may even be based in Trump's view of his own parents and grandparents. It is offensive to Americans who see themselves as belonging to old families and/or well off and/or liberal and/or well educated and/or members of subcultures that value hospitality. It is other bad things as well as these, but it is not racist. People who identify as Black, Brown, and Red see themselves as threatened by undesirable immigrants, some of whom are White. People who have immigrated legally, or whose parents or grandparents have done, are among the loudest opponents of illegal immigration--and Trump is one of them. 

If Cynthia Tucker had frankly indulged n the normal sort of pearl-clutching "Trump is so tacky" comments the upper middle class make about Trump generally, and specifically mentioned his exploitation of people's justified concerns about immigration, that would have been both reasonable and natural and, at the same time, a novelty in this country's history. It would be an instance of a well-off daughter of an established, upper-middle-class if not positively landed, family deploring the vulgarity of a loud, working-class son of immigrants...except that Tucker happens to be Black and Trump happens to be White. That might even have been interesting.

But no, Little Miss All-About-Me had to claim that Trump's campaign is all about immigration, that his position on immigration equals racism, and that people support Trump because they are racists. If Cynthia Tucker's goal had been to demonstrate that Black women aren't worth educating because what they and anything they write will always be so stupid, she'd be throwing herself up against a solid wall of evidence, but this article would have done as good a job as can be done.

Opposition to immigration is coming from people whose parents immigrated from the same places the current immigrants are leaving. It is being expressed toward people of the same physical type, the same ethnic type, the same language group, as the people against which it is directed. When the demographic types of immigrants are mentioned as a basis for opposition to immigration, the image that arouses the most opposition is of groups of young White men. There probably are people who oppose immigration by one physical type more than they oppose immigration by another physical type, but the majority of anti-immigration feeling is directed toward all immigrants impartially.'

Trump does not particularly need the pointa his campaign scores by engaging with actual issues rather than whining "Anyone who disagrees with us is a racist." For the sake of maintaining a two-party system the Ds need to show some initiative in facing issues of concertn to today's voters, like upholding individuals' rights to privacy, choice, and freedom of speech. 

During the Clinton Administration one of the smartest women in the D Party, Arianna Huffington, blew the whistle on corporate censorship regarding the role of Lilly's moxt profitable product in homicide-suicides. Earlier this week one of the smartest men in the Clinton Administration, Robert Reich, made the claim that the proliferation of bureaucratic agencies under D aministrations was necessary to protect America from tyranny by rich businessmen. Very well; let the Ds rally around the candidate who's been willing to stand up to Bayer, Lilly, Merck, and Pfizer, and let those agencies justify their existence by cracking down on those corporations' bids for censorship and global tyranny.

If the Ds were able to unite around Candidate Kennedy they still have a hope of being able to offer a positive alternative to Trump...instead of doing all the bad things Ds claim to fear that Trump will do, only less competently than Trump would do them.