Wounded Bear
Wounded Bear's JournalAnother take on what to thank Joe Biden for...
This whole elevation of Ms Harris to the top spot on the ticket didn't happen overnight, and more and more I don't think it came about through mere chance.
Looking back on history and how Vice Presidents have been treated over the years I sense something a little bit different here. The way Kamala Harris was used in her position of VP seems a bit different than others have been. This feels a lot like she was being groomed, in a way, to take over the top spot in time. She has been put out on more high profile tasks, even involving foreign governments on issues like immigration. Speaking of which, she was never the "Border Czar." That was made up shit from the trump camp. She was working with Central American countries in efforts to stem immigration at the source. Immigration will never be solved as long as the countries to our South are hell-holes that people are willing to risk everything to get out of.
In the past, the VP position has been almost an afterthought, the "other" person on the ticket that didn't have much to do after the election. They were often selected either to curry favor in certain states or regions, or as the "attack dog" that would be out front for the nastier aspects of the campaign allowing the top of the ticket to look more "presidential" and not muddy themselves up with the poo flinging. Once in office they would not have much to do and would be shunted aside to ensure they didn't do anything to outshine the guy in the Oval Office. That was particularly true of the trump administration, where trump would never tolerate anybody stealing camera time from himself.
Watching this first month of her journey and the convention, one gets the feeling that Yes! This Woman is Ready to sit behind the Resolute Desk, assert her authority and stand up to the autocrats in the outside world. The timing was a bit surprising, but I always felt that this was a setup to make Kamala the rational next person in the succession.
Ms Harris was being prepared for this and we can thank Joe Biden for setting his ego aside long before he actually stepped aside, and allowed and encouraged his VP to get out and do stuff to prove herself and learn much of what it takes to be a President. I suspect she'll be a damn good one.
Some thoughts about trump and Project 2025...
First off, let me start by saying that I actually believe that trump doesn't really know what is in Project 2025, beyond the more basic proposals. I say that because he is widely known to not be a reader. I doubt he has read anything more than a few pages long since he left school all those many decades ago. He is stupid and decidely uninterested in learning anything he doesn't already think he knows, which ain't a whole lot. No way he's read a 900+ page document, not on this earth.
However, hanging this document around his neck as an albatross he can't get rid of is a great strategy. It's not really trump himself that I fear on this one issue. What I fear is all of the assholes and hangers on that follow in his greasy wake like a pack of Jackals. Those guys, the Millers and the Flynns and the Bannons et al are the ones to be feared. They all know they could never win an election, their hope is to get their guy in office. Without trump, their power fades to nothing. No decent politician would let them so much visit them in their offices.
trump is not a strong man, not in the traditional sense. His strength lies in the coterie of supporters, all of whom seem to have evil intent with sick ideas they wish to foist off on the American people. trump will not be interested in controlling them, except that he demands "loyalty" and fealty to the trump name and persona. All of those toadies are perfectily fine with kissing trump's ass in public as long as they can do their evil in background.
Definitely continue to call it the "trump Project 2025" every chance you get. trump won't actually carry it out, but his handlers definitely will if we give them the chance. No way can we let trump and his evil minions take over our government.
In the end, it's all about the fight between Church and Science...
The current focus is on women's health care issues, of course, and a fight that we libs desperately need to win for all women everywhere. But the roots of all this goes back hundreds of years, back to the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment.
What we're currently seeing is a movement of Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and all the various permutations of Talibangelicals attempting to turn back the medical calendar by decades, if not centuries. It's roots go back to putting Gallileo on house arrest for saying that the earth revolves around the sun. During the Enlightenment, numerous philosophical and scientific scholars started applying rational thought to all fields of scientific investigation and research. Amazing advances were made in science and medicine, culminating during the 20th Century in actually providing relief from many of the worst scourges of disease that afflicted less advanced civilizations throughout history.
Coupled with that came advances in women's health, starting with doctors and researchers actually starting to acknowledge that many of the things that make women's lives shorter and less enjoyable were separate from male problems and actually working on solving some of them. Throw in the ability to avoid and terminate unwanted pregancy and methods to solve the problems of inability or difficulty to start and nuture desired pregnancies. It has all helped to make women's lives more livable, productive, and just more full.
And therein lies the basic problem. Right now, it's the driving issue behind the current attacks on women's health, the problem being, of course, that all of this is basically thwarting their vision of "God's Will." In their minds, we're supposed to leave all of that up to their invisible friend in the sky. Let go and let God.
It drove the anti-vax crowd that cost untold thousands of lives in the Covd pandemic, and now it threatens thousands more, both in that and in the thousands (millions? ) of women needing health care in all of it facets. If God "gifted" a woman with a body that has difficulty getting pregnant, well suck it up, it's God's Will. If a woman hasn't found "the right man" to join with and have children together, he'll send you a rapist to handle the job...and don't you dare to thwart God's Will.
Abortion is important as a singular issue, but it's really just the tip of the iceberg threatening the Titanic ship of state. All forms of modern medicine and scientific research is threatened, because it undermines their ideology. We've suffered real setbacks in these basic advances in modern science and medicine. We need to fight back because yes, the specter of a Gilead-like society is a real threat.
First world problems...
So, not looking for sympathy here, just kind of venting/recounting...whatever.
The other day, the remote to my TV started acting up. Wasn't sure what it was, but was kind of intermittent and seemed to work a bit better or at least more often after I changed the batteries. Well, yesterday it crapped out altogether. None of the functions worked and the TV kept flashing "command not available" or some such. As a matter of fact, I didn't even have to push any buttons, it happened just when the remote was so much as pointed at the TV. Ugh. Had to take the batteries out altogether.
This sucks, because I don't much like commercials and other than news or The Weather Channel I don't watch a lot of commercial TV but rely on my rather extensive library of old TV series and movies stored on hard drive. Of course, my access to those was through my TV. It's a smart TV, not a new one, but new enough to cycle through my directory of stored media on a couple of external hard drives. Oops!
There is still a power switch I can use to physically turn it on and off with, at least. Kind of sucked that I couldn't control volume and such.
But, today I was able to sit down and program my cable remote so it would control the TV, and even access my library. The Tron God taketh, and the Tron God giveth. 
Technology throws a curve, and technology swings for the base hit.
First world problems, I know. I'm surprisingly techno-phobic for being a retired engineer who worked in electronics for my entire career until my late fifties. At least, given a little time I can usually figure out the simpler problems. I was an old hardware guy, always hated software. When doing code, I always felt like I was trying to teach quadratic equations to a 3rd grader.
Oh well, life sucks and then you die.
Worried, but I have to be gentle and careful...
My daughter has not got vaxxed. I suspected as much, but it was confirmed last night in a text exchange that she hasn't. My two grandsons are under 12 now and going back to school, of course. She thinks she may have had covid from a 'cold' from Jan of 2020 that 'had covid symptoms' in her words.
She is afraid of side effects of the vax and asked me about my experience. I was honest while trying not to be alarmist. My after effects were mild and I said so. She has apparently heard some horror stories, from what she calls 'personal friends' that I suspect are internet 'friends.'
I told her that I recommended the shots, even if she had covid before and even threw in a 'for the kids' comment, because yeah that matters. It all started when she asked me about my booster shot and I assured her that I would get it as soon as I am eligible and the VA calls me with a schedule to do so.
I hope I pushed her (gently) in the direction of getting the shots, but I don't know. She lives in California and I'm in Washington, so I don't see her every day. If I deluge her with texts and FB posts she would probably just block me. Clock is ticking and the virus is out there...
Thanks. I've been ruminating on this concept for a while...
the big divide, though it is manifest in red/blue, is really about urban/rural. It dates back to the earliest days of the founders and is codified in the Constitution.
The Constitution and the Senate rules are written to protect the minority. Not the minority defined by race, that's a different problem, the minority defined by wealth and class. We're not a true democracy and right now, minority rule by oligarchs is looming on the horizon, again, like it was in the post Civil War era through the 'Golden Age' up until FDR in the 1030's.
Crazy times.
Trump's base is shrinking to just the rural areas...
This is the urban/rural divide being played out in real time. Rubes in the hinterland know nothing about how cities operate and will be just fine with Trump "taking control" of them. Most of our problems with gun control is that what is being passed works fine in rural areas, while in places where people are more concentrated, unfettered gun ownership becomes more and more problematic.
Our hope lies in the suburbs, and whether or not they feel the threat Trump is putting out there with his "take over the cities" movement.
You can bet your sweet ass that the rubes would be up in arms (literally) if this (the Portland BS) was happening in small town America.
Keep up the fight. I want 35 blue states. I want 400 EC votes.
A comment about viruses and evolution and sciency shit...
The thing is that the more cases of virus that are out there and the wider the spread, the more chances the virus has to mutate. That's basic evolution. The more individual organisms, the more chances there are to mutate.
We all know that viruses mutate. That's basic biology. If we had successfully blunted the spread of the virus, if there were fewer cases out there, there would have been fewer chances for the recent news of a new, more virulent strain to happen. Experts are saying that the newer strain doesn't appear to be more lethal, which is good news. But as we approach and pass 3 million cases, and the number of cases continues to increase past 20,000 per day, we also increase the potential for more lethal and damaging versions of the virus to emerge.
Sometimes we like to think we're better, as human beings, than the herds of wildebeasts on the savannah trying to breed faster offspring to outrun lions and hyenas, but often as not we aren't. We have evolved superior brains in order to circumvent these types of brute force 'herd immunity' solutions to our problems. It's a pity that our leaders, in too many cases, are choosing not to use them.
Science allows us the chance to not leave solutions to these problems up to "God." Generally speaking, God's solutions tend to be brutal and nasty, with lots and lots of casualties. I'll take science, thank you very much.
Trump's current problem-and there ain't really a fix for him...
is that he can't live without his screaming WWE-like crowds. The thing is, the only places he can go that will allow the crowds he craves are in the middle of Covid hotspots. Maybe his true diehard syncophants will go, but will the 'softer' support he drew in 2016 really show up at one of his super-spreader rallies to cheer him on while he pats himself on the back and demonstrates the physical capabilities of a 3 year old being weaned from his sippy cup?
Tulsa kind of showed what Trump is up against. Even his own die hard fans don't want to take that kind of risk just to stroke Trump's ego. Plus, with the economy in the tank-sorry, Wall Street doesn't really matter any more-who has the money to travel. Even his groupies are probably feeling the crunch of 6-8 weeks off, watching Trump bungle the Covid response so badly. How many are really ready to spend next month's food budget on a road trip to suck up to Trump?
Unnecessary advice to Biden, just keep up the class act, focus on real issues and more photo-ops talking and listening to people in the streets, something Trump will not do. Sure, send off a harsh Tweet at Trump when warranted, but keep it low key otherwise. We got this.
In the good old days, both R's and D's had some diversity in them...
While there was definitely a "leaning" left or right of the parties, there were once liberal R's and conservative D's in America.
Both parties also had moderates, who could actually vote across party lines based on a range of issues, both economic and social.
Since Nixon, and especially Reagan, the Repub party has been systematically radicalizing, purging their ranks of liberals and even moderates. We like to point at the Tea Party bullshit of the Obama Era as some kind of turning point, but in reality it was just an intensifying of an ongoing trend. Citing economic motives while spewing racist hatred is a conservative tradition nowadays. I mean, Reagan made his candidacy announcement in the Mississippi town where KKK assholes were lionized for killing civil rights workers.
Repubs have been trying for decades to decouple Wall Street from Main Street, and they have finally seemed to have succeeded. Trump's economy has favored the wealthy and the executive class, just like Repubs love to do, while job and wage growth have been stagnant for workers.
Unfortunately, while there are no moderate R's left, there are plenty of conservadems, at least economically. Some Repub pols like to talk a moderate game, but still tend to vote the party line.
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