The Common Ills: Iraq snapshot

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Iraq snapshot

Thursday, September 12, 2024. The question for this morning? Who are they trying to get elected?

There are fifty three days until the US presidential election. If you're planning to vote and you're not registered yet, you need to register.

The big news this week remains the debate between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party's presidential nominees. Of the debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Convicted Felon Donald Trump, Jeet Heer (THE NATION) notes:

With Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump no longer had the protective cover of a hapless and flailing rival. Quite the reverse: Harris dominated the debate, relying in particular on a masterful strategy of hitting topics that Trump is especially touchy about. This deliberate baiting of Trump threw him off message. Instead of pounding away on what he sees as his best topic (opposition to undocumented immigrants), Trump was goaded into defensive and aggrieved answers about crowd size, the January 6 attempted coup, and his response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017. At one point, Trump became so unhinged that he started shouting about immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio—a racist canard that has much popularity on the online right but, as debate moderator David Muir of ABC News pointed out, has no basis in fact. All of this made Trump sound unhinged.

As David Weigel of Semafor acutely noted, Harris had a strategy that she deftly executed: “She invoked a fact from the Trump years that Democrats felt had been forgotten by voters since 2020, she said something that would set her opponent off, and then she used his familiar eruptions in response to urge voters to take the offramp on the Trump era.”

This strategy of baiting Trump was based on a sound understanding of the psychology of the former president. Trump is a touchy narcissist who holds grudges and likes to repeat favorite talking points. Harris keyed her comments to hit Trump’s hot buttons. She teased Trump into getting angrier and more incoherent.

In a sense, Harris was replicating Muhammed Ali’s famous rope-a-dope technique that was used to such great affect in his 1974 match with George Foreman. Ali made himself into a punching bag, which tired Foreman out and allowed Ali to deliver the winning punches. In Harris’s case, rope-a-dope meant allowing Trump to meander on into incoherence, a strategy of selective silence. It’s noticeable that Trump spoke for considerably longer than Harris: 43.03 minutes for Trump, 37.41 minutes for Harris, a difference of 15 percent. But Harris wasn’t letting Trump walk over her. Rather, she was giving the dope enough rope to hang himself.

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling (THE NEW REPUBLIC) explains:

Remarkably negative reactions to Donald Trump’s performance during his first formal matchup against Vice President Kamala Harris have left conservatives reeling—and Trump panicking.

On Wednesday, the former president attempted to wiggle out of any further debates against Harris, claiming that he had actually beaten Harris and deserved to be acknowledged for the “K.O.”

“In the World of Boxing or UFC, when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING, in one case, 92-8, so why would I do a Rematch?”

Later, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that he didn’t believe he “had to do it a second time,” only to suggest that he could be open to following through on the two other debates slated to be hosted on NBC and Fox in the coming weeks.

(No polls have indicated that Trump would win by such a large margin. A CNN flash poll after the debate indicated that 63 percent of Americans felt that Harris outperformed Trump.)

Oh, that garbage MAGA right. Lying about the debate. How can --

Oh wait.

It's not just MAGA.

No.

There's a worthless piece of crap with a radio show that no one listens to and he writes bad columns on those oh-so rare moments when he's sober who an idiot left outlet elected to post to their site. That his 'journalism' is incoherent and his coverage of the debate reads as though he's read some coverage on it but didn't actually watch what he's covering, what's more significant is the lies and conspiracy that he promotes in his column. He finds David Muir, for example, correcting the record regarding Donald's lie about immigrants killing and eating dogs in Springfield suspect. JD Vance and Donald have both been repeating that lie and doing so for days before the debate. Miss Sassy even got asked about it by the press well before the debate.

It is a slur and a lie and it was intended to scapegoat others and panic people over immigrants.

That the drunkard wants to question it isn't that surprising -- I think we all understand the concept of 'wet brain' -- but that a left outlet would publish thar garbage?

Yeah, I question that. I question a lot of the garbage going up these days.

At FAIR, Julie Hollar rightly notes:

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger has issued a lengthy warning in the Washington Post (9/5/24) on the dangers another Donald Trump presidency would pose to a “free and independent press.”

Sulzberger details Trump’s many efforts to suppress and undermine critical media outlets during his previous presidential tenure, as well as the more recent open declarations by Trump and his allies of their plans to continue to “come after” the press, “whether it’s criminally or civilly.” He documents the ways independent media have been eroded in illiberal democracies around the world, and draws direct links to Trump’s playbook.

You might expect this to be a prelude to an announcement that the New York Times would work tirelessly to defend democracy. Instead, Sulzberger heartily defends his own miserably inadequate strategy of “neutrality”—which, in practice, is both-sidesing—making plain his greater concern for the survival of his own newspaper than the survival of US democracy.

“As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of journalistic independence,” Sulzberger writes, “I have no interest in wading into politics.”

It’s a bizarre statement. Newspapers, including the Times, regularly endorse candidates. Presumably, then, he’s referring to the “news” side of the paper, rather than the opinion side.

But, even so, you can’t report on politics without wading directly into them. Which political figures and issues do you cover, and how much? (See, for example: media’s outsize coverage of Trump since 2015; media’s heavy coverage of inflation but not wage growth.) Which popular political ideas do you take seriously, and which do you dismiss as marginal? (See, for example, the Times‘ persistent dismissal of Bernie Sanders’ highly popular critiques.) These decisions shape political possibilities and set political agendas, as much as the Times would like to pretend they don’t (FAIR.org, 5/15/24).

Sulzberger goes on (emphasis added):

I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection.

Sulzberger is always raging against critics who, he claims, want him to skew and censor his paper’s reporting (FAIR.org, 5/19/23). The Times must instead be steadfastly “neutral,” he claims. But those very political coverage decisions that media outlets make on a daily basis make it impossible for the outlets to be neutral in the way Sulzberger imagines.

Neutrality could mean, as he suggests, independent or free from the influence of the powerful in our society. This is possible—if difficult—for media outlets to achieve. Yet the Times, like all corporate media, doesn’t even try to do this.

Instead, the Times seems to take neutrality as not appearing to take sides, which in practice means finding similar faults among both parties, or not appearing overly critical of one party or the other (FAIR.org, 1/26/24). This strategy didn’t work particularly well when Republicans and Democrats played by the same set of rules, as both parties took the same anti-equality, pro-oligarchy positions on many issues.

But it’s particularly ill-suited to the current moment, when Republicans have discarded any notion that facts, truth or democracy have any meaning. If one team ceases to play by any rules, should the ref continue to try to call roughly similar numbers of violations on each side in order to appear unbiased? It would obviously be absurd and unfair. But that’s Sulzberger’s notion of “neutrality.”

It's a powerful piece, as we've come to expect from her, but while you're reading it, take the points being made -- strong ones -- and apply them to our own left sites.

What we're seeing at COMMON DREAMS and elsewhere is appalling and disgusting.

Are they trying to elect Donald Trump because that's what they're doing with their garbage crap that fails to realize there's a very real threat to our democracy.

This site started in 2004, after the election. It started because a number of us were doing a post-election analysis. What did we do, what should we have done, how can we address this?

I knew nothing about blogs. I used the internet to e-mail and that was probably it. But blogging kept coming up in the conversation. There had been a great game that someone had made during the election -- a SURVIVOR spoof -- that had been popular (and should have been, it was clever) online but it was felt that more should have been done in terms of blogs.

I don't do powerless. After the analysis, I looked online for about 30 minutes to figure out blogging (never have to this day, I'm sure) and started this site and my hands shook as I typed that first meaningless entry here.

The community built up around this site and made it anything that it is or was.

I'm not a big believer in electoral politics -- a point I've made here many times. I think the elections are the least important things we can do. I think we have to hold politicians' feet to the fire. I think we have to mobilize and make demands.

I didn't think, for example, Mitt Romney winning in 2012 would have been the end of the US. I lived under Reagan in the White House, for example, and the American people survived. We would have survived Mitt, no problem.

Donald Trump is not Mitt Romney. He has demonstrated who he is and he is someone very dangerous. He is a threat to America.

I've watched what passes for the 'left' waste everyone's time in the last years on garbage, garbage, garbage.

Too many have acted as though what happens to LGBTQ+ people isn't important or isn't as important as whatever pet overseas issue that's caught their fancy.

LGBTQ+ replaced all women as the most vulnerable to right-wing attacks.

When women's rights were attacked, we would see the squishy 'left' hide behind 'identity politics' and refuse to stand up with us. Our rights weren't important, we were a 'special interest.'

And I've watched the same piece of garbage 'left' now do the same to the LGBTQ+ community. If we're not all going to stand together on the left, we're going to be divided and conquered.

Yet I can still go to Twitter and find men -- under their own name -- with videos posted of them threatening to do violence in Target stores. Not only are the videos not taken down, but where is law enforcement. You're making a threat on Twitter to shoot up a Target and no one reported you?

This is how the squishy part of the left or 'left' has allowed the climate we're in to thrive.

You've refused to stand with the LGBTQ+ community the same way you refused to stand with women as late as the '00s. The same way you didn't stand with Black people until The Civil Rights Movement.

Now there are lefties in this country who stand with everyone and we're so lucky for that.

But a father got sentenced for beating and bloodying his son because he thought his son was gay and there's nothing on the left about it other than Greg Owen's report for LGBTQ NATION. The child is two-years-old. This is outrageous and its a direct product of the hate that hate that MAGA right has repeatedly promoted.

We did a joint-post this week and it should have gone up sooner on Sunday but did we link or not? The bigger point of the piece for me and Wally and Betty was to show what was going on online with the hatred towards Black people and LGBTQ+ people that's all over Twitter. And then it became a conversation about if we linked to it, actually linked to it, are we promoting it?

I don't know and I couldn't answer that question. I debate so much that I do online. I'm noting the David Muir nonsense attack from the drunk -- but not linking to it -- but I'm not noting some other crazed conspiracies about the debate because I don't want to promote them and is that right or is that wrong, I have no idea.

But there is so much on Twitter that people are completely unaware of, that promotes hate, that promotes violence. And you can just go to Twitter and type in "MAGA" and you should get a sample of it. You should see their manipulated photos of African-Americans in chains with the calls to bring back slavery, for example. This is what we're up against and the squishy pseudo left has no idea and wants to waste all of our time.

The attacks on Kamala Harris seems to be all that COMMON DREAMS can offer.

I'd love to know how they think this helps. Because the attacks are nonsense, bad enough, but when they use their platform -- as a left site -- to magnify attacks on Kamala, they aren't just hurting her, they're helping to destroy democracy.

These are our choices: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump.

And Donald is deranged and a real threat.

So I don't get your nonsense attacks on Kamala.

I've seen far more moderate male politicians promoted by COMMON DREAMS and others.

I have no idea.

I don't even read Norman Solomon's garbage because he's a cheap whore. In 2008, he was all over KPFA and KPFK and anywhere that would have him acting as a neutral party analyzing the Democratic presidential contenders. He never once informed the listeners that he was supporting Barack Obama and was, in fact, a pledged delegate for Barack. Now his readers? Different story. He knew his bad columns would be dropped by the real press (which actually pays him for them) if he didn't do the minimum required self-disclosure.

So I'm not really interested in what a whore has to say about Kamala. I do find it interesting that outlets presenting as media are okay with printing someone who lied repeatedly.

There is joy and excitement over Kamala's campaign and I know that because I see it as a go in front of various groups to speak about the importance of this election.

I just don't see it online.

I see a lot of people with a lot of wish lists.

Now COMMON DREAMS would argue that they did a ton of coverage of Kamala right before the **debate**. They did. They had one piece after another on what she needed and say and do.

I'm really not remembering that happening with Barack Obama.

But I guess when a woman runs, every asshole has an opinion and thinks they're smarter than the candidate.

You are harming yourselves and that's fine with me, slit your own wrists.

I hear over and over, every time I speak, from people telling me they've had to stop going to COMMON DREAMS, IN THESE TIMES and elsewhere because of this nonsense.

So if your site shut down, that's on you and I honestly don't care.

But before that happens, please note what you're doing -- and that does matter to me.

You are acting as though this election is not important and as though the two candidates are the same -- although a 21-year-old male said to a group yesterday that COMMON DREAMS is actually acting as though Kamala is worse than Donald.

Your coverage is disappointing and it could harm voter turnout.

That I do care about.

If, in July, the ghost of John McCain had become the Democratic Party nominee, I would be voting for him in November. I said long ago that I would be voting for the Democratic Party's nominee no matter who it was.

I didn't realize, until BROS (yes, the film), how much hatred was on the right. I didn't realize what MAGA was up to. Donald has encouraged them and has invited them to unleash their hate and rage. He is a threat for that reason alone. But he's a threat to democracy because he doesn't accept election results, because he talks of military tribunals for his political opponents, because he's corrupt and crooked -- Go down the list.

I would be voting for John McCain if he were the nominee.

He's not.

Kamala is.

And I'm thrilled to death that she is.

Go to the July snapshot where we first addressed the possible candidates. These are dictated, I'm thinking out loud. You can see me go from Kamala not being the right choice to stating maybe she would be.

I know Kamala Harris and have for years. We're not friends.

But as I was dictating that snapshot, everything that she's done over the years I've known her starts coming together in my mind and she is the perfect choice.

She can be a president of change.

I am thrilled that she's on the ballot. I'm thrilled to campaign for her and I'm thrilled to be able to vote for her.

She can do this.

But she's got to get votes to do that.

B-b-b-bbut Gaza!

STFU. I'm seriously so sick of this faction of Americans that I don't even want to cover Gaza right now. Your stupidity is harming us all.

1) Donald Trump is not going to help Palestinians.

2) Oh, look at me, I told Kamala I'm not voting for her -- Uh! What? She's not catering her campaign to me now! Even after I told her I wasn't voting for her!

Grow the hell up.

We're on top of an election and votes are needed. If you're announcing you're not voting for her, fine. Don't expect the campaign to waste valuable time trying to woo you after you've said you're not voting for her. That's a waste of time and resources.

She's running a campaign to reach out to Americans who want to ensure that we have basic rights and that we have a democracy.

That really is the most important thing right now.

For Americans, it is. Will we have a democracy or not?

So I'm just not in the mood for all the garbage that we're seeing at left and 'left' outlets.

Now maybe that's because we have US troops in Iraq.

Still.

And maybe because I remember these same left and 'left' outlets insisting that they wouldn't stop until all US troops were out of Iraq. And then Barack got elected and they stopped.

We didn't stop here.

So if Kamala's elected (and I pray she is), we'll be holding her accountable every damn day. That is what we do here. There? Over there? The so-called left sites?

They didn't continue to call for US troops out of Iraq. Their non-stop coverage of Gaza right now? Back then they picked it up every few months and that was it. There were no calls for Barack to get a peace deal together for the region or to recognize the rights of Palestinians.

They can't even be honest today.

Oh! Corruption in politics! Oh that Supreme Court case! Oh!!

Excuse me.

Barack did not use public financing in 2008.

Now in 2004, John Kerry flirted with not doing it.

But the push back was so hard that he dropped the idea within hours of an NYT report.

But Barack does it and to this day people don't want to talk about that. That was a reform put in place in the post-Watergate era.

I'm not really in the mood to watch you attack Kamala who is not president considering your long history of silence on various Democrats who came before. Silence that has continued, please note, even after the man is no longer president.

There is a standard that's being created for Kamala that is unfair and unreasonable.

Let's wind down with something of value. Dahlia Lithwick (SLATE) writes:

During Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, critics almost immediately became obsessed with Harris’ face-management choices: “If she wants to win, Harris needs to train her face not to respond,” tweeted GOP pollster and aspiring face-trainer Frank Luntz. “It feeds into a female stereotype and, more importantly, risks offending undecided voters.”

Other “female stereotype” haters were quick to agree. Christian conservative Carmine Sabia opined, “Kamala Harris has been way over coached on doing facial expressions because of the muted mics.” New York Post columnist Miranda Devine posted: “Kamala Harris is doing obviously rehearsed routines instead of answering questions. Then she does rehearsed and exaggerated facial expressions when Trump talks. She comes across as fake and weak.”

Harris fans of course begged to differ. The slow blink, the chin stroke, the quirked brow, the squinting, laughing eyes? This was the stuff of legend. It was a brilliant tactical attack on Trump’s ego. It was a self-meming performance of the face of every woman who has ever been forced to listen to a bunch of unreconstructed insanity spewing from someone who has unidirectionally failed upward.

Put aside for a moment Luntz’s implication that female political faces need to be trained, like small dogs or cucumber plants. There is no better proof that we still can’t quite define what we require of women in public life than that we demand that their faces be either vibrant and expressive or cold and dead. I’m old enough to remember that we have, in previous iterations of this battle, mandated that women train their voices, their wardrobes, their hair, and their partners into waxy submission so as not, to quote Luntz, “risk offending undecided voters.” But what does it signify that Kamala Harris, who has—against all political odds—managed to produce a voice, a wardrobe, a head of hair, and a spouse that all elicit very little horror when displayed publicly, is nevertheless excoriated for the sin of having Too Much Face?

On the one hand, it’s more of the same simple misogyny that will forever move the goalposts on how women can behave in public office so as to soothe doubters who think they should stay out of the ring. But when the candidate was pitted against Donald J. Trump—whose only discernible remaining power lies in his ability to threaten and discomfit women—the critique that Harris somehow owed the public and the former president a kind of button-down blank receptivity and amiability is simply ridiculous. The assumption seems to be that Trump gets to lie about you, insult you, threaten and mischaracterize, and that—with microphones turned off by design—your political obligation is to smoothly accept it. Almost all the memes that emerged after Harris’ face began to garner attention Tuesday night were variations on “When your graduate school adviser/law review editor/senior partner tells you that he’d make the changes in his draft himself but he has guests coming over for dinner and it’s his job to man the sous vide.” They’re all about what your face reflexively does when it’s not socially acceptable to speak your grievances out loud.

Actually, we have one more thing from the public e-mail account. The Center for Reproductive Rights issued the following:

Key agencies within the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) took significant strides this summer to improve family planning services, remove unnecessary barriers to care, and offer more accessible forms of birth control.

Here are three recent moves by HHS agencies:

1. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Approves First Dissolvable Birth Control Pill

On July 22, 2024, the FDA approved Femlyv, a new type of birth control. Combining two active ingredients that have been used in oral birth control pills since the 1960s, Femlyv is unique because of its delivery mechanism: it is the first orally disintegrating contraceptive.

This new treatment option will help make the birth control pill more accessible, especially for individuals who have trouble swallowing pills.

2. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Releases Guidance on Medicaid Family Planning Requirements and Best Practices

On August 8, 2024, CMS released new guidance on family planning services. The guidance:

Reiterates the standards that state Medicaid agencies must adhere to, including ensuring enrollees have access to free, comprehensive family planning services from their choice of providers.
Highlights strategies to enhance access, such as an extended supply of contraceptives given at one time, access to over the counter (OTC) contraceptives like Opill, and payment reforms that improve intrauterine device (IUD) access immediately postpartum.
Clarifies confidentiality requirements, both specific to Medicaid and generally under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and provides recommendations to integrate contraceptive quality measures.

3. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Updates Practice Recommendations for Contraception