Dan Pfeiffer said it well following yesterday's sequence of events triggered by Hur's report. This Is a good response to people In your lives who will take this news as a fresh opportunity to dump on Biden: "It’s worth remembering that the election is a choice between a decent, accomplished 81-year-old man who cares about you and an incompetent, chaotic 77-year-old criminal who only cares about himself."
I agree 100! I will commit it to memory so that I am ready to repeat it.
I am a monthly donor to the Biden/Harris and yesterday I increased my monthly amount and added a separate one-time donation. And I will spend some time this weekend phonebanking for Tom Suozzi in advance of his race on Tuesday.
The more Biden is in denial, the more the age issue remains the lead story. Need to move on.
All politics is local. The lead story in the "New Castle News is "Trump tells NRA members 'no one will lay a finger on your firearms' if he returns to the White House." Guns are more important in flyover country.
In the Miami Herald, "Biden administration refutes Cuba’s claim that the U.S. ‘supports’ Miami ‘terrorists’".
Above the fold the NYT lead is : Terrified Gazans Await an Israeli Advance in the City They Fled To.
The big story is actually the Super Bowl. We have an opportunity to go on offense: Channel Taylor Swift!
Here's another "tool," George Conway's take on Trump's gaffs from Newsweek:
"George Conway Defends Biden, Says Trump's Gaffes Could Make '5-Hour' Clip"
I've been plastering the House GOP twitter X feed (@HouseGOP) with it. I found a number of tweets about President Biden's "mental unfitness" and commented with the link to the article.
Samples of my comments:
"If "constant verbal blunders" is a disqualifier for president, you might want to check your own guy."
"As to the President's "mental unfitness," if occasional memory lapses is the only way to judge mental fitness, (leaving out all the many positive decisions/actions of the past 3 yrs.) shouldn't Trump supporters be equally worried if not more so?"
This is a great article, Daniel, mostly because it highlights the true perversity and weirdness of the MAGA right. I never gave a moment’s notice to Taylor Swift until recently. Her music is not my thing; but if she can have some effect on the voting patterns of young Americans, then I’m grateful for her and I hope she speaks out.
Look at this positively. Whether or not success hinges on a pop star, we need to succeed in order to maintain our Democracy. Maintaining our Democracy will make it more likely that with trump out of the way, more people will come to understand just how important Democracy is, and how important so many Democratic policies are, and what an amazing thing our Democratic form of government is! We're in a weird, dangerous time, and if Taylor Swift can help us come out stronger and better on the other side, I'm all for it!
Well Michael, please relax. I don’t think anyone believes that the Biden Campaign is or will be dependent on Taylor Swift. But we can all welcome her participation in getting out younger voters. As with all things, there will be many factors that contribute to a Biden win. We’ll take help from Taylor or any other influencers who are decent people and want the best for our future.
We'll take whatever we can get, Michael. Remember what is at stake! She is a good person, right-minded, and it's an open question at this point whether she will become a surrogate for Biden. We MUSt take what we can get in these precarious times!!!
Even older people who are reading the New York Times for their news (like my brother and sister!) aren't getting the correct information! it's gotten more dangerous just these last few days! WE must get out there loud and PROUD. My grandson know what's right because he lives with a very bright, Democratic father and is highly influenced by his aunt, my daughter, who is VERY political. Though Biden would not have been their first choice, they see the binary moment the country is in! And my grandson is 17!!!
How does this work? How do so many ignore the REAL, DANGEROUS issues Trump presents? Fight back - yes Loudy - yes! Full of Biden's accomplishments - yes! Full of Biden's goodness, ethics and his care for ALL of us, including Republicans - YES! I'm ready!
I have thought for a long time that one of the weirdest thing about the focus on Biden’s gaffes is that they aren’t necessarily new. Yet he has had a stellar career in public service and was well thought of by his Senate colleagues for particular skills such as closing deals and foreign policy. But now, for ridiculous reasons, gaffes are elevated to incompetence. (Even in the interview with Dan Goldman, the interviewer got her words twisted and said highest land in the office rather than highest office in the land. It struck me as evidence that things like that happen to all of us. Thoughts don’t quite come out with the right words, but we don’t jump to conclusions just on that basis alone.)
I love that you said how a simple word in a complex sentence, one that doesn’t even cause confusion, is now evidence of incompetence … and let’s not get into trumps mis-speaks.
What the eff has happened to compassion and respect. These people are part of the problem.
Sorry to say but for the longest time my husband would lambast me when the wrong word slipped out. … What are you talking about blah, blah, blah. My answer to hubs was “you lead up an international company and can infer what someone from Taiwan is saying but you can’t infer from my sentence that I said black but obviously meant white. Ridiculous!”.
Welp; what goes around comes around. He now occasionally lets the wrong word slip and quickly begins to explain ‘what he meant to say’. I interrupt him and say that “plz, it’s no biggie, I’m paying attention to you, I already know what you are sayin’.
When I watched that clip, I was surprised that Dan Goldman did not point out the anchor’s verbal slip up and remark that we all get ahead of ourselves sometimes when we speak. Biden has been making similar gaffes and comments for years, including the hot mic comment about Obamacare being a “big f&$king deal.” All of this needs to be out there.
I was absolutely thrilled and laughed out loud to see that interviewer make a verbal gaffe herself while she was criticizing Biden‘s ability to hold “the highest land in the office.” I also loved Biden‘s responses in that chaotic and downright disgusting press attack yesterday. I think he called on Peter Doocy to speak twice, and when Doocy brought up the memory issue again, Biden said, “My memory is so bad that I allowed you to speak again.” People with dementia, or even slight mental decline, are not capable of sarcasm. Doocy himself is such a lame doofus that I’m not even sure he got the joke.
I think the joke went over most people in the room. There were so many things they could have used that opportunity to ask the president about. Instead they sound like a pack of wild dogs hungry for raw meat. How many in that room were from the NYT producing all those multiple stories above the fold?
I do have to wonder if the Times Editorial Board has made a conscious decision to press Biden to step aside. Their coverage and failures to highlight greater failings of Trump speak volumes in regard to their journalism or lack of integrity. I have to say, I have become really disappointed by the irresponsible focus on Biden’s age and their failure to more regularly and consistently (that may be redundant) focusing on the profound threat that a Trump return to the White House would pose for every citizen, not to mention the press.
Honestly, I don’t thing many folks are fully cognizant of the reality of the well known statement that starts, “they came for the socialist and no one spoke up, they came for…and no one spoke up…” fill in those blanks and recognize any person who did not stand with Trump would be at risk. No one will be immune and no one should be naive about recognizing DJT has throughout his time in the public arena he has said the quiet part outloud. No one should fail to see his intentions & plans.
For too long people like Merrick Garland have incredibly underestimated DJT even after all his affronts and lies.
Heather Cox Richardson’s piece tonight is all about Trump’s relationship with Russia, historically and now, and his position on NATO. He is campaigning by saying he would “tell Russia to do whatever the hell they want.” Yes. It’s a valid question how many media outlets are paying attention to how dangerous he would be to national or global security. That’s what he said in South Carolina today. Certainly Mike Johnson should not be in charge of whether votes on foreign aid for our allies in key parts of the world come to the floor of the House.
Although I watched the video, the only person I recognized was the numbskull from Fox News. I’ve never seen behavior quite that bad in a press conference. It was obscene. The press secretary needs to reprimand the press corps the next time she has them in front of her. I’m trying to put this behind me and move on because it is so infuriating. Someone I follow also just posted an interesting piece about Biden and his administration being fed up with Garland:
Why are all the special prosecutors Republicans? Have you noticed that? Garland does seem to go to such extremes to be above reproach that he ends up shooting his own team. Isn't there a professional middle ground? Now this is going to open the door to Republican-run Congressional hearings, despite the conclusion, and we have Republican election interference all over again, just like 2016 when there was nothing there on Hillary but the FBI opened it in July, closed it, and then opened it again days before the election.
I couldn’t agree more. I feel like we’re running in circles dealing with the most vicious and depraved Republican party that has ever existed. Robert Hur disgraced himself by this report. He obviously has no shame, and he should be reprimanded by Garland. Garland is very weak, however. I’m hoping that when Biden is reelected, he will fire him or Garland will just resign. I prefer that he resigns sooner, but that may not be a good idea while Jack Smith is in the middle of all these investigations. It’s just a mess.
Plus, re: Mike Johnson, I would have loved for Dan Goldman to tack on to the Mike Johnson comment that the Speaker is SECOND IN LINE TO THE PRESIDENCY while making the Iran gaffe. I'm sure it would have taken the interviewer a few seconds to compute that fact, if she was even aware contextually of this line of succession. The lack of critical thinking in "journalism" is appalling (everyone's makeup, hair, clothes and bodies look great, though....thank you Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch for the dumbing down of the media....what a legacy)!
Mike Johnson is making hay out of this line from the special prosecutor’s report about Biden being a confused old man. I hope he swallows it back after confusing Iran and Israel, which are very much not the same thing.
I harangued his director of operations to give me a way to contact him, since he had nothing publicly availalble unless you are in his district. She finally gave me something the Telegram app (which I have not yet downloaded) or a gmail address. I have not yet used them. But I am on the brink. Teetering.
I've thought about this a long time, and I am going to share. Because the point I was making with her is that the speaker should be accessible to all Americans. (To be fair, I never checked to see if McCarthy was.) I'm irritated that I have to download an app I otherwise have no use for, but she says that is the fastest way to get a response. I thought it was very weird when I pressed for an email that she gave me a gmail address. I would think there would be a Congressional address that a staff member is monitoring. But here it is. Have at it. If you use Telegram, or are willing to use the app, https://t.me/jamesmichealjohnson. On gmail, use jamesmichealjohnson983@gmail.com. NOTE: the weird spelling of "micheal" (rather than "michael") in both cases. This is how it came to me.
You just nailed it—every citizen of this country who wants to know what is currently happening in/to our country needs to read MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains,” H C Richardson’s “Democracy Awakening,” and Maddox’s “Prequel.”
We may ‘thank’ Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch for dumbing down the media, but whom do we thank for dumbing down millions of Americans who follow and support those media?*
YES! Since our public schools were integrated, a great many members of a couple of generations of American children have been “educated” (read indoctrinated) in private “schools.
Children of every race, religion and culture are eager to learn unless you present the learning in a rote worksheet method that discourages natural curiosity and desire to know more. Or you decide they're not worthy of learning.
The standards have changed as communities promoted and/or allowed them to be downgraded. I had 3 students stay seated during the Pledge of Allegiance. I asked them why and they said they felt like it. I told them to stand or face the principal. They stood. When we have higher expectations and standards for our students they usually rise to meet them.
During study session there were 3 or 4 young women discussing pregnancy with little real knowledge of how it happens, or even the structure of women's bodies. They were respectful to me as I told and drew it for them. It was that important to me. I gave them knowledge and facts.
There is much statistical evidence of black students excelling in upper level mathematics, in overcoming hurdles to become doctors, research scientists and astronauts, as well as excelling in the arts and in all areas of human knowledge.
With respect, caring and high hopes/standards, we can reap what we sow.
Imho it was the entertainment industry that was/is one of the greatest contributors to the demise of public critical thinking when––after figuring out it could make a lot more money by paying“ stagers” than writers––it introduced the world to Realty TV. In that not so brave new realm, a lot of unscripted stupid people were allowed to say a lot of unscripted stupid stuff, inevitably leading to dumbing-down shows like Honey Boo Boo, Duck Dynasty ... and eventually The Apprentice.
I noticed that "highest land in the office" snafu. Dan could have jumped on it, but he kept his focus. I'm not sure I would have been that restrained. And what about the idiotic fear mongering that the loser has been saying recently about "they" are going to "change the name of Pennsylvania." Why hasn't anyone remarked on THAT? I wouldn't even call it a gaffe; I would call it a clear sign of mental failure.
Totally agree. His achievements over the last 3+ years, both domestically and in foriegn affairs, demonstate that, despite his occassional gaffes, he is a saavy and skilled communicator.
For me it happens when I have too many thoughts swirling at one time. When I write (wordsmith by trade), I can sort them out. But speaking, possibly things will come out inverted or attached to an erroneous neurological impulse on occasion, or I may require a pause to clear my brain of the Portuguese I was just reading. There is nothing doddering or nefarious.
I've been so angry at the "NY Times" for many months. The fact that my disgust with their reporting and editorial accents is mirrored by your own is, sadly, an affirmation that I am not alone in my disgust and outrage. This morning I wrote to "The Times" as follows:
I've been a subscriber and a reader for 50 years. I've always thought of your editorial positions as balanced news and opinion until recently. Your headlines and editorial accents have moved decidedly to the Right . You seek to openly or subtly downplay President Biden's steady hand and progressive achievements. You report on Trump with a favorable bent. You've become a subversive element and I am disgusted with your organization nowadays. If Trump should defeat Biden/Harris, it will be partially due to your efforts to undermine our Democratic institutions and allow an insurrectionist racist to assume the Presidency. Shame. If I don't see any change in your positions, I'll cancel my paper delivery and seek more reliably fair and balanced journalistic media.
I cancelled my subscription to the Times a while back. Within a week or so of my cancellation, I was getting offers to please come back and get a year for $50. (Oh, and don't believe them that it is a limited time offer; I am still getting those emails many months later! I get far more value from my subscription to Robert's substack, so I simply delete their emails.
Maybe the Times would wake up if they get a flurry of letters to the editor than are followed by long-time subscribers cancelling. If you find you can't hack it without the Times, then at least you'll save a little money when you resubscribe. ;-)
I’m very conflicted about canceling my subscription to the Times. But I loathe what they have been doing; is dropping the paper the best way to express my anger? I am thinking before I do that I will write to my favorite pundits and ask them why are they still writing for the times? It is their feet walking away that would really matter. Do they have the courage to do it?
You can pause your subscription. I discovered this when I was canceling today, and considered it. Send them a letter saying you are pausing for a month, and will reconsider at the end of that time based on whether they have improved their approach.
"I am thinking before I do that I will write to my favorite pundits and ask them why are they still writing for the times?"
I am confused what you would expect to get out of this inquiry.
Because it pays their bills and they aren't in a position to retire? Newsrooms are shedding staff right and left - Legacy newspapers are a dying breed.
Lots of people put up with jobs and bosses that they can't stand.
I cancelled my subscription this morning. Explained to the Times phone rep that I could no longer support a publication that was slow-walking us to autocracy. Checked the site tonight and they still have multiple stories on their front page about Biden’s age - and only one story (not on top) about Trump’s latest remarks saying he would allow Putin to invade NATO countries while the U.S. did nothing. It’s shocking and beyond the pale. Will write another letter to the editor tomorrow!
I sent one yesterday and another today-Could not help myself. In the one today, I ask how the historic legal news of the week (immunity decision and the 14th Amendment insurrection oral arguments) ended up getting pushed off the front page to two days (so far) of coverage about the special report. I asked where the coverage was of the NRA convention, where Trump did not know what day it was, he stated that Pennsylvania would no longer be a state if he was not elected - as well as the constant slurring of his word salad. Instead, the lead digital story was about how the health and age of presidents has been with us for while, but the picture placement had Biden, looking confused.
I ended with how the are continuing their irresponsible coverage in the vein of the Iraq war, 2016 election coverage and their irresponsible coverage of the hospital bombing in Gaza.
I think we need an onslaught of letters to continue.
Trump has been proven in court trials, by juries and judges, to be a proven rapist, proven fraud and proven insurrectionist. He should be referred to that way by every journalist and tv interviewer. And if not, Democratic interviewees should refer to him that way and comment how the interviewer is failing to accurately portray Trump as a rapist, fraud and insurrectionist. IIn addition every Republican should be described as a rapist’s accomplice, a fraudster’s enabler and a aider and abettor of an insurrectionist. And finally, we viewers should write and call in to papers, magazines and tv programs when they fail to do so.
Judge Aileen Cannon's order to disclose names of witnesses really bothers me. Witnesses against Trump or his cohorts regularly find themselves subject to verbal abuse at a minimum and sometimes much worse. Is she blithely unaware? Or is she being partisan in plain sight? What is her problem?
Judge Kaplan’s warning to the jury in the E. Jean Carroll case to never divulge that they had been on the jury comes to mind as I read about this latest travesty of Judge Cannon’s.
An important job of mob lawyers is to use the legal system to identify witnesses in ongoing investigations or before a trial. Their goal is to intimidate and silence those witnesses – one way or the other. There have reportedly been cases of judges or prosecutors either on the take or otherwise under pressure to play along.
That a judge is doing this so brazenly and in plain view is a new one.
Yes it is a bit weird to see her bias so blatantly displayed--is she playing for a Supreme nomination?
I simply don't understand why the Supreme Court Associate Justices (and Chief Justice Roberts, too) haven't followed the logical course that will inevitably happen should Trump get re-elected.
Surely they are students of history and KNOW what will happen once Trump becomes a "Day One Dictator" and then Dictator-For -Life all the days after that first day??? The US justice system will become hopelessly corrupt and superfluous. Trump will brush them all aside like so much useless chaff.
The justices should know from any study of history is that the judges are some of the first to be shot or disappeared when the dictator arrives. For this bunch in the SCOTUS that might be just karma.
She has drug her feet since the start of all this. The way she pounced on this is Cannon showing her hand. Big time!
“Judge Cannon promptly ordered Jack Smith to turn that document over to Donald Trump's lawyers within 24-hours. This lightning order comes from a judge who has slow-walked the prosecution from day one” (that from todays newsletter).
She can't be as stupid as her order implies. My guess is she is still playing for time. She is expecting Smith to rightly try to remove her which may take months to accomplish. Meanwhile... The 11th circuit should make removing her a priority.
Swbv, I’m thinking that Cannon knows she’s in over her head, that eventually she’ll have to follow the law and face the wrath of Trump or she can get the 11th Circuit to allow her an exit ramp
She is endangering the lives of people. She should be removed from the bench. I don't know for whom she works, but it is certainly NOT for law-abiding American citizens.
I cancelled my NYT subscription today. I just couldn't take it anymore. There is so much of the paper that I will miss but it will take losing many subscribers to make them think sanely again.
I cancelled mine and gave the reason as too much disrespectful Biden bashing.Yes, I wish more would do it so it will have some sort of impact on them.Smh.
Yes.You are right.Their disgraceful ageism directed toward our current POTUS was hard to take and it became unrelenting.I am totally done with them.They want me back of course but never again.
Here I sit with a letter from the Editor of the NYT where he defends their coverage of Biden after I complained a couple of weeks ago about how bad and uneven their coverage of Biden and Trump is, and how ageist they are, and how the journalists are too monocultural and lacking in diversity of life experience. I asked where are the people on welfare to cover the economy? Somehow the media does not consider that the pov of someone in poverty is worthwhile, but I think it is essential. I am grateful to the Substack writers that I subscribe to and the Independent media as well for exposing me to different ideas than the mainstream media. I find the NYT insufferable, but I like the puzzles. With WaPo, one can write responses, more than in the NYT, so I continue to support it too. However, I need to step back perhaps and decide whether I want to know what the enemy is reporting. The fact that the NYT does not see any value in Biden because of his age is a sickness that I hope they lose before they are old too.
We sometimes get caught up in the emotion of the moment. Sure the coverage of Biden’s age may be over done but the coverage of Trump being a threat to our country was also front and center. It took a while for me to get that the voters who will make the election a win or loss don’t read the NYT and although they wish Biden was younger he is a better and a safer choice than Trump.
I am writing postcards with Field Team 6 to women in NC-01. They also have a BYOP texting program that I need to get going with. It leverages their phone banking platform to send free texts one-at-a-time to people for whom they have a cell phone number in their database. Each volunteer is limited in how many texts that can send by this method but with enough volunteers the impact will be massive.
I also support The Civics Center (www.thecivicscenter.org) with $$ to help expand their support of student-led HS Voter registration drives as well as helping with their periodic postcard and letter-writing campaigns.PLus, I send money to Campus Vote Project (www.campusvoteproject.org/) for similar work on college campuses. Contributions to both of these groups is tax-deductible.
Sorry, but that’s based on a common mathematical error: If it were true that the election depends only on Gen Z (or Blacks, or whatever), then all the others might as well not have voted. That, of course, is absurd.
*All* votes count, not just the votes some people single out as having “made the difference”.
Linda, I dropped my NYT subscription and only subscribe to their ‘games’ for $5/month. Sadly, I need my daily crossword puzzle although they make it an increasingly difficult puzzle to print it out.
I dropped my NY Times subscription a while back and now I get endless offers to renew for $50/yr. So keep that in mind while you consider what to do. I'm pretty sure that you can get a puzzles and games subscription for around the same amount if you can't go cold turkey without the crossword puzzle. (I'm addicted to Wordle but that isn't behind their paywall).
I see Betsy beat me to it about the games subscription. Wouldn't that be a poke in the eye for them to discover that people value their games more highly than they do their journalism!
I will vote for Biden. He has been the best president in my long life. But I would also vote for ANY Democrat who runs for president. I will vote, I will donate, I will encourage others to vote, I will write letters... There is no Republican Party. It has been swallowed by MAGA madness. Fear and intimidation are the tools of their Bronzed Mafioso Mussolini.
But with some exceptions, this group (who I love and respect) are similar and often the same as the groups at HCR, Reich, Rosenberg, Hartmann, Vance, Jessica...you get my drift? What do you think the average age is of this community?
We are talking in a room largely of retirees. We need to get out of the room. Young people could care less what is on cable TV news or in "newspapers" like WaPo or NYT. I agree that the focus of these outlets is driven by "gotcha" journalism and stories that attract eyeballs. They are doing that because they are fading. Our soon to be gone generation uses those vehicles for info. Younger people live elsewhere. And it is ALL on their phones.
I suspect that most people in our age group are settled into a political position - and are never going to change it. I certainly won't. Why would I? I am old, therefore I am smart and wise. /s
We need to support groups that focus on young people. Gen Y and Gen Z are disgusted, dismayed and highly frustrated that they have to choose between two very old white men. I share that feeling. But I know that the reality is that if we don't fully support the Democratic nominee, if we stay home, if we vote for some third party or independent out frustration that we would, in reality, be supporting Donald Trump.
Until Ranked Choice Voting is established everywhere, the choice is now binary. Good or Evil. Compassion or Hate. Inclusiveness or "othering". Community vs fake "Cowboy".
My mission will be twofold. Speak with everyone younger in my personal circle - as well as asking other ancient ones like me to do the same. And I will support the organizations that recruit young people to become activists and register to vote.
Nutshell: Let's stop worrying about the media that the people we NEED don't use. The future of our nation and its democracy will be determined by how many young people show up. Between ageism and Gaza we have a lot of work to do.
You are quite right about the average age and how we retirees get our info...however I feel compelled to say that I am, indeed, wiser and smarter and better informed than I was when I was in my mid-thirties. I'm 70 now, and have more time to read, read, read all the pov's and follow up with checking for facts and context. Fact chasing and contextual reading takes mounds of time--and you are correct: young folks who are working and with families, do not have the luxury of time.
We are using Ranked Choice voting here in Maine (as you may already know) and it works great--although the Repubbies hate it because they will probably not get a chance to get a majority for a long, long time (not after the LePage disaster). But unless and until RCV is the law of the land, our system is set up as binary and injecting third parties, however well regarded they may be, just makes the outcome...well, not the one that might have been envisioned; let's just put it that way.
T L - based on your comments in these forums, I think you are quite wise, as well! Cheers! Here's to learning as we age.
We were living in Maine when LePage was elected. He dismantled Dirigo Choice - the insurance program that allowed small businesses like ours to exist. And then he was re-elected again - all because of a third candidate who I believe is now serving time for child porn.
Maine had every incentive to employ RCV after all those years of someone who was to be "Trump before there was a Trump". We are working on RCV here in MA. Wish us luck.
Please don't get me wrong. I think Biden is the smartest and wisest president we could have. But millions of younger people have no interest in the value of that experience. And they feel disenfranchised. I am very worried.
I take solace from the fact that the GOP has nothing to offer young people. So if is more of an issue of convinving them to register and (if already registered) to vote.
I'm in NC, where Governor Cooper (D) is term-limited and both chambers of the state legislature are held by GOP super majorities. Because of a traitorous Democratic legislator who flipped to R, they overrid (overrided?) the Gov. Cooper's veto of a 15-week abortion ban this session! The presumptive GOP candidate for Governor is super MAGA Mark Robinson who is promising to put in a total abortion ban. (See https://www.realmarkrobinson.com/ to understand what a disaster he would be).
I think we have the hook to get young people to the polls based on the issues, plus we have a very dynamic state party chair Anderson Clayton who only recently turned 26!! She has lit a real fire in the party and energized a lot of people to pay attention to the state.
In the 2022 election cycle, there were 30 Republicans running unopposed for seats in the state legislature and who knows how many were running unapposed in other "local" races. For 2024, that was slashed to only 2 legislative races without a D on the ballot plus only 2 other races for a total of 4 statewide!! (For those who may have forgotten, NC is the state that Trump won by the smallest margin, so even with our extreme gerrymandering it is important to get voters to the polls!!)
I'm writing postcards with Field Team 6 (www.fieldteam6.org) to register new voters in NC-01. Starting next week, I will be registering voters weekly at a local Community College with You Can Vote (https://www.youcanvote.org/), a non-partisan group that promotes registering voters in NC. I'll also be registering voters with the League of women voters at community events throughout the spring and summer.
And when Vote Forward drops their campaigns in early March I will be writing letters to low-propensity NC voters who are under-represented in the voter demographics. They have already announced that NC will be one of the 8 states with early campaigns (more will be added later).
Thanks! I'm retired and have a fair amount of time on my hands. I retired in 2018 and got heavily involved in grassroots groups in 2020 just as Covid hit. My local Swing left group was writing Vote Forward letters to NC voters via Zoom and socially distanced outdoor letter writing parties. The group of around 100 of us wrote over 33K letters. We also wrote postcards and did information drops for local candidates for legislative races. That lit the activist bug in me.
My blue county is the slacker when it comes to Democratic turnout, so this past summer our county party chair (also not yet 30) started organizing combination social gatherings and informational meetings for Democrats in groups of a dozen or so adjacent precincts. It has helped build community and educate our voters ... and to recruit volunteers. It is much harder to say no when you know the precinct chair personally and she has dropped off a loaf of homemade pumpkin bread to thank you for your past volunteering :-)
We are all very worried--and are wise to be so. Yeah, it's true that young folks are feeling very disenfranchised and little wonder...I know quite a few younger folks (my spouse and I had none of our own so I have become a popular Auntie who is "way cooler than Mom" and I get confidences and questions that I do my best to answer as honestly as possible)--and I very well remember how it was when I was in college and knew far more than my own parents...until I started earning a living and saving for a house, paying off my (very minor) college debt and establishing credit...and all the endless things that you do to prove to yourself that you are adulting.
I think our own kid's kids are far wiser about how the world works than we ever were...tbh.
well when they, the younger people are standing in that booth voting and it's the 2 choices we all know - I believe that will be point where they have to choose who they are gonna support.
Don't be too depressed about the younger ones. I have three sons and whenever I try to talk to them or their spouses about things like climate change or a dictator in the White House their eyes glaze over and they tell me to go away because they are enjoying their board game. But I'd be willing to bet the farm that they will all vote for and donate to Biden and talk to their friends about the choice facing the nation. Just because they aren't agreeing with their parents' fears doesn't mean that they are happy go lucky voters.
How do we counteract young people's anger at the genocide in Gaza? The Democrats want to send aid to both Israel and Ukraine. Are they the same? One country is committing genocide and the other is fighting for their lives. Netanyahu is responsible for genocide in Gaza, not Biden. How do we point out that netanyahu and Trump are cut from the same cloth? They both are trying to stay in power so they don't go to prison. If Trump is elected he will make netanyahu look like mother Teresa. He has said it out loud.
I can't talk to my sons about this atrocity. I am so angry that my country is complicit in the genocidal actions of Israel. Biden has made a very, very large mistake after 3 years of magnificent leadership. Will that mistake sink his re-election bid? I don't know but I still support him. If there was any politician who had a moral compass when it came to Israel I might not be able to say that but I do not see a one in the US. I guess that is what I'd tell that young person "Show me a US politician who will stand up to the Israelis and who can get elected and make a reasonable President." You are right Trump will be a lot worse the Netanyahu and he'll be worse across the globe with his adoration of dictators like Putin and Xi.
Israel is not trying to eliminate the Gazan population. If it were, its military campaigns would be even bloodier.
Look– Israel urged Gazans to get out of the way of planned bombing campaigns (Hamas tried to get them to sit tight). Is that an act of genocide? Where else in history has a nation tried to warn civilians in such a way?
Would you argue that the Allied bombings of Germany in World War II were *genocidal*?
Are you trying to equate the German military of WWII with the rag tag bunch of Hamas? Where are Hamas' jets, choppers, their tanks, their artillery pieces? A few AK's, even fewer RPG's, and a pile of very inaccurate rockets don't make an army. To even call this a war is bordering on ludicrous. 100,000 casualties on one side, maybe 1600 on the other. Over 50% of Gaza destroyed against a few houses in Israel. The Israeli people need to get rid of the maniac who is trying to avoid prison by murdering Palestinians. Across the Arab world he is probably making more fighters than he's killing.
As to Gaza I wrote weeks ago in a local paper that the Israelis were trying to ethnic cleanse Gaza so it could be re-populated by settlers. The settlers are now demonstrating in Israel for just that right. Time will tell if they are successful.
All of this is beyond my control but I can and will be very critical of my government's participation in it. That is blatantly disgusting; a horrible blotch on Biden's record.
Bill, just two additions to your excellent idea to focus on the youth vote: www.civicscenter.org whose mission is to register every high school student in the country. They hire local college students and often work on college campuses in swing states. Terrific focus in critical places!
Then, Jessica Craven of Chop Wood, Carry Water here on Substack creates frequent TikTok videos that reach thousands on TikTok and Instagram - and that’s where many young folk hang out. Support her work with a newsletter subscription. (I follow her on Instagram).
Finally, if you are able, support the Biden campaign NOW. Early money is the most important gift we can give. www.joebiden.com to donate!
Courier newsrooms do a lot of TikTok videos aimed at young and low-propensity voters especially in parts of the country with no real local news, where news outlets have been bought up by right-wing outfits. That's a lot of Trump country. https://couriernewsroom.com
Also, Bill, I agree that we need to reach the young voters. They use Tik-Tok. But if I made a Tik-Tok video, it wouldn't do anything. We need "influencers" to do the amplification. What are your thoughts about enlisting some popular youth figures to start doing this?
Maybe you know, maybe you don't, but stating that Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the storming of the Capitol, is nonsense of a totally different order.
My letter to the Times - fat lot of good it will do, I fear
What shall I do? For years I have subscribed to the NYTimes and respected balanced and thoughtful reporting. But your focus on Robert Hur's report’s inappropriate (given the purpose of the task of the report) comments about Biden’s age and memory is offensive and shocking from the Times.
How can I protest? I could suspend my subscription, but that would make little difference to you.
I can ask you to write an apology for this bias and for you to use better judgement in what you think will sell your paper, because what you are publishing about this appears to be just for sensation, and, I might add, disrespectful - garbage. As Special Counsel Hur inappropriately chose to couch his report as a political statement, should the Times follow that suit? Might the Times, instead, criticize Mr. Hur’s including in his report an assessment that was not called for and for which he has no background or authority (that is not qualified to do a mental status exam)?
If I were your teacher I would demand that you write twenty reasons why Biden is a good president. They might include his attention to the US position throughout the world - Asian Pacific, Middle East, Euro-zone - just to mention some, with efforts to reestablish alliances and collaborate. They might include the positive signs of the economic improvement due to the Recovery act - OK to observe that some people don’t see it in food prices - but perhaps there could be more emphasis on job creation and inflation stabilization and what they actually mean for people going forward. They might include the adjustment of his attitudes towards Israel as Netanyahu continues to perpetrate atrocities in Gaza - Biden looking for others for negotiating. That’s just a start. You need to find the balance of the twenty corrections I am demanding! It’s almost as simple as writing 20 times, “We are a thoughtful news outlet that provides balanced and informative reporting and do not engage in fomenting unsubstantiated negative opinions.”
And balanced reporting about Trump will most likely record his gaffs but more importantly his destructiveness and his complete lack of concern about this country.
I’m watching as are many other readers. I’m not happy.
Sadly, I think the NYT is simply mirroring the mindset of the social media landscape that all of us are living in. I have already canceled my subscription to the Washington Post and probably will cancel the NYT as well. It just doesn't make any sense to pay for biased, conceptually-lazy, agenda-driven articles lacking meaningful insights that require me to spend time and emotional energy critiquing and mentally re-writing. The MSM has had 8 years to learn how to maintain appropriate balance and professionalism and it is unlikely they will be able to engage in the level of self-examination necessary to change course during the heat of the campaign in which one side is trying to end free speech and democracy.
We are not going to change our society, probably at all, and certainly not before November, but this whole kerfuffle has gotten me thinking about our youth culture. I heard an interview somewhere with some young Native Americans about their views on politics. One said, "In our culture we value our elders. We consider them to be wise. So I am not concerned about the age issue,"--very much paraphrased. I have also read somewhere along the way that in some tribes, it was the women who had the final say as to whether their husbands/sons/brothers would go to war.
We do have a sick worship of youthfulness and physical traits of strength and beauty in this country that I think does us harm. I think it helps explain the influence of libertarianism, of lack of care for one another and the less fortunate, and also our view that the earth is for us to mine rather than steward.
I also think that those distorted values are inflated further by our media culture, advertising, and unrestrained capitalism, and for some, Prosperity Gospel teachings.
It's a sick society that elevates someone like Donald Trump to a vaunted place in our culture.
As Simon Rosenberg says, time to get “loud and proud” !! 📣
I’ve been wearing my Biden/Harris t-shirt here in the Redlands of Florida. So far, so good !👕🛒
I still have my NYT subscription and will continue to contact about their offensive coverage.💻
The next person, and every other person, who tells me “Biden is demented” , I will (calmly 😉) challenge to watch an entire Trump speech vs. Biden speech. If they have a short attention span, I’ll just share….”Bing, Bing, Bing”⬇️
I sent this letter to the NYT today, with the subject line "How old is too old to save democracy?":
I ask the editors and headline writers at the New York Times to take a good hard look at the role you are playing in the election that may end with the demise of democracy in America. Yesterday, you had five stories about President Biden's age. Today I awoke to "How Old is Too Old to Be President? An Uncomfortable Question Arises Again" (Feb 10, 20224.). It's "Hilary's emails" all over again. While former President Trump mixes people up regularly and has trouble completing a sentence, you insist on focusing on Joe Biden's occasional slip. Both men are old, but only one speaks nonsense. And only one poses a threat to American democracy and the world.
I have been a New York Times reader since I was in middle school in the 1970s and a subscriber since I began college in 1980. I am sadly considering canceling my subscription because I can no longer bear to look at your coverage of the election. It's your job to do the hard work of illuminating the real differences between the candidates' plans for the country. Instead, you create click-bait, lopsided headlines. I believe you can -- and I know you must -- do better.
I am copying and pasting this from the Feb 9th newsletter from HCR and tweeting it to Joe in reply to his positive tweets. I will post anywhere I can:
"Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen outlined how Biden’s performance disproves the argument that he is unfit for the presidency: “The thing about Biden’s memory,” Cohen wrote, “is that he’s presided over the addition of ~15 million jobs & 800k manufacturing jobs, 23 straight months of sub-4% unemployment, surging consumer sentiment, wages outpacing inflation, the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPs Act, PACT Act, infrastructure law, gun safety law, VAWA, codified marriage equality, canceled $136 billion in student loan debt for 3.7 million borrowers, bolstered NATO, and presided over electoral wins in ‘20, ‘22 and ‘23.”
The saddest part of this is that the people who are accusing President Biden of mental decline, dementia, and confusion are far less intelligent than he is, and certainly far less capable of accomplishing anything. The recovery that he has presided over is nothing short of phenomenal, and the right absolutely hates this. They can no longer run on a bad economy, so they have to pick a couple of favorite issues and keep swinging with that.
But I would modify one point in today’s newsletter. While it is true that some of the media want Trump to win, most, I think, want (at least unconsciously) an exciting and scary story to tell, in which they star as narrators. This egoism of theirs, given the stakes, is unbelievably selfish and fatuous—and a dereliction of their duty as free press in a democracy.
Let’s hold their feet to the fire. We need journalism not infotainment.
The most exciting, scary story I have seen is PBS Frontline's exposè of Trump. Just goes to prove the media doesn't have to tell lies to get a good story.
To my thinking it is patently absurd to write that the NY Times and WaPo want Trump to win. It diminishes the credibility of everything else we write. We have a problem with gaffes. So does everybody else. Pointing that out with some anger is good. Then we should move on. Biden is a very decent man. He should proudly contrast his record of awesome accomplishments with Trump's and run on it. Which he is doing. And, yes, we need to constantly bury Trump in his record of right wing extremism, misogyny, racism, climate denial, anti-chioce, thievery from the people's government, and dangerous whacko foreign policy diminishing our standing as the beacon of democracy and human rights, a friend and supporter of a free world wherever hope for it shines. Joe Biden is standing up for us with grace and dignity. Some anger in defense is good. Let's support him in the same spirit. Onward. The media will follow us when we act out our dreams.
They do support Trump because they want the ratings and circulation back that they had during the Trump Catastrophe. The Washington Post is this far >< from going down the tubes financially. MSNBC, CNN, and the rest have 1/3 the viewers they did. It what Zuck the Fuck (as we used to call him here in Hollywood) said when he was questioned about CNN giving Trump all the free coverage of his hatealongs in 2016: "Trump brings us great ratings." Linear TV is in a death spiral and cable news knows they'll be chopped (which is what has CNN's knickers in a knot) when the companies that own them find they no longer make economic sense. They're all too fucking stupid to see where they're going to end up this time. All they have left is adopting the FarceBook algorithm: get people upset and they'll come back.
TCinLA, I think you are definitely on to something. When they see their counterparts laying off news rooms, they must be thinking, “we have to offer more outrage with constant Trump to hold our audience.”
Over the years I have noted that the Times had abandoned so much of their former coverage - sports, travel, quarterly stock/bond reports, business section that feels like they’ve ceded that to WSJ. And, of course adding (or rebranding) the “opinion” section rather than “editorial section.”
Yet, of course, they keep the Styles section pandering to the wealthy class and NY Society.
Hey! They have to keep the profits in focus if they want to retain the claim to the country’s newspaper of record.
Actually, it's not me, but I read people who are following this stuff. People out here in Hollywood now understand linear TV is going out, but digital streaming isn't reliable, so there's a lot of question of what to build on. It's clear that the kind of movies I was ever involved with (mid-budget, star-driven, adult-oriented story) are never going to be theatrical again. I'm glad I write books now.
One personal observation. I do find PBS Masterpiece Theater offers good shows even as I have watched their Masterpiece Theater Mysteries really taking off. At least they are well done.
Oh yes, there is good stuff out there. You just need to look around for it. I absolutely love "Miss Scarlett and the Duke." (I am a sucker for 19th century cop shows. Look up the following on streaming: "Ripper Street" - a London detective stumbling into using modern police procedure in the 1880s; "Copper" - an Irish-American cop in New York City during the Civil War).
I highly highly recommend "Domina" - both 8 episode seasons now on streaming at MGM+. the story of Livia Drusilla, second wife of Gaius Caesar (Augustus) - told from her POV and facts rather than the propaganda Suetonius wrote in The Twelve Caesars. Also "Billy The Kid," final season coming in May on MGM+ - the true story of Billy The Kid (when I was 8, my uncle in New Mexico introduced me to a man then in his 80s who as a young man had known and ridden with Billy and the Regulators in the Lincoln County War, so after being told the real story by him, I've waited a long time for his). "Justified: City Primeval" has two seasons on F/X streaming that are as good as the original series. I also like "Belgravia: The Next Chapter" on MGM+ (I'm a sucker for Julian Fellowes - also like "Gilded Age") I find a lot of good stuff on MGM+, shows and movies; a better deal overall than even HBO, which I have. Forgot to mention "Dark Winds" - if you're a Hillerman fan, this series does him justice.
Dan Pfeiffer said it well following yesterday's sequence of events triggered by Hur's report. This Is a good response to people In your lives who will take this news as a fresh opportunity to dump on Biden: "It’s worth remembering that the election is a choice between a decent, accomplished 81-year-old man who cares about you and an incompetent, chaotic 77-year-old criminal who only cares about himself."
I agree 100! I will commit it to memory so that I am ready to repeat it.
I am a monthly donor to the Biden/Harris and yesterday I increased my monthly amount and added a separate one-time donation. And I will spend some time this weekend phonebanking for Tom Suozzi in advance of his race on Tuesday.
Great idea to commit it to memory! I will do the same.
Me too!!
The more Biden is in denial, the more the age issue remains the lead story. Need to move on.
All politics is local. The lead story in the "New Castle News is "Trump tells NRA members 'no one will lay a finger on your firearms' if he returns to the White House." Guns are more important in flyover country.
In the Miami Herald, "Biden administration refutes Cuba’s claim that the U.S. ‘supports’ Miami ‘terrorists’".
Above the fold the NYT lead is : Terrified Gazans Await an Israeli Advance in the City They Fled To.
The big story is actually the Super Bowl. We have an opportunity to go on offense: Channel Taylor Swift!
Here's another "tool," George Conway's take on Trump's gaffs from Newsweek:
"George Conway Defends Biden, Says Trump's Gaffes Could Make '5-Hour' Clip"
I've been plastering the House GOP twitter X feed (@HouseGOP) with it. I found a number of tweets about President Biden's "mental unfitness" and commented with the link to the article.
Samples of my comments:
"If "constant verbal blunders" is a disqualifier for president, you might want to check your own guy."
"As to the President's "mental unfitness," if occasional memory lapses is the only way to judge mental fitness, (leaving out all the many positive decisions/actions of the past 3 yrs.) shouldn't Trump supporters be equally worried if not more so?"
https://www.newsweek.com/george-conway-defends-biden-says-trumps-gaffes-could-make-5-hour-clip-1868731
Along with his clearheadedness, there's something charming about Conway. I always like watching him and hearing what he has to say.
He's growing on me....and I cannot see him with Kellyanne!!! Ok Terry, no snark allowed!!
Snark IS allowed, Chaplain Terry! I was just going to comment that his relationship with her did not make sense! (I'm being snarky!)
I can't see him with Kellyanne either. He probably wonders what the hell he was doing with her.
Well stated, Terry!
Thanks, Kathleen!!
Totally agree. The characterization of trump is way too flattering though.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/taylor-swift-gop-attacks-biden/
Taylor Swift May Yet Save Joe Biden
This is a great article, Daniel, mostly because it highlights the true perversity and weirdness of the MAGA right. I never gave a moment’s notice to Taylor Swift until recently. Her music is not my thing; but if she can have some effect on the voting patterns of young Americans, then I’m grateful for her and I hope she speaks out.
Not to criticize or demean Taylor Swift, but:
God help the United States if the success of the (Biden) campaign for President of this nation hinges on a pop star.
Look at this positively. Whether or not success hinges on a pop star, we need to succeed in order to maintain our Democracy. Maintaining our Democracy will make it more likely that with trump out of the way, more people will come to understand just how important Democracy is, and how important so many Democratic policies are, and what an amazing thing our Democratic form of government is! We're in a weird, dangerous time, and if Taylor Swift can help us come out stronger and better on the other side, I'm all for it!
Absolutely. I said exactly the same!!! Great minds...
Thanks Kathleen. You put a smile on my face!
Well Michael, please relax. I don’t think anyone believes that the Biden Campaign is or will be dependent on Taylor Swift. But we can all welcome her participation in getting out younger voters. As with all things, there will be many factors that contribute to a Biden win. We’ll take help from Taylor or any other influencers who are decent people and want the best for our future.
You go, Taylor!!
We'll take whatever we can get, Michael. Remember what is at stake! She is a good person, right-minded, and it's an open question at this point whether she will become a surrogate for Biden. We MUSt take what we can get in these precarious times!!!
Young people don’t read the news… what ever it takes to get the word out!
That’s not to say that I don’t ‘get’ you on this!
Even older people who are reading the New York Times for their news (like my brother and sister!) aren't getting the correct information! it's gotten more dangerous just these last few days! WE must get out there loud and PROUD. My grandson know what's right because he lives with a very bright, Democratic father and is highly influenced by his aunt, my daughter, who is VERY political. Though Biden would not have been their first choice, they see the binary moment the country is in! And my grandson is 17!!!
If it does it will be because God wills it
Thanks! This is well worth reading!
Amen, Daniel!
How does this work? How do so many ignore the REAL, DANGEROUS issues Trump presents? Fight back - yes Loudy - yes! Full of Biden's accomplishments - yes! Full of Biden's goodness, ethics and his care for ALL of us, including Republicans - YES! I'm ready!
Here's another great one, I just heard. And easy to remember! "I'd rather have a President with 81 birthdays than one with 91 felonies."
I have thought for a long time that one of the weirdest thing about the focus on Biden’s gaffes is that they aren’t necessarily new. Yet he has had a stellar career in public service and was well thought of by his Senate colleagues for particular skills such as closing deals and foreign policy. But now, for ridiculous reasons, gaffes are elevated to incompetence. (Even in the interview with Dan Goldman, the interviewer got her words twisted and said highest land in the office rather than highest office in the land. It struck me as evidence that things like that happen to all of us. Thoughts don’t quite come out with the right words, but we don’t jump to conclusions just on that basis alone.)
I love that you said how a simple word in a complex sentence, one that doesn’t even cause confusion, is now evidence of incompetence … and let’s not get into trumps mis-speaks.
What the eff has happened to compassion and respect. These people are part of the problem.
Sorry to say but for the longest time my husband would lambast me when the wrong word slipped out. … What are you talking about blah, blah, blah. My answer to hubs was “you lead up an international company and can infer what someone from Taiwan is saying but you can’t infer from my sentence that I said black but obviously meant white. Ridiculous!”.
Welp; what goes around comes around. He now occasionally lets the wrong word slip and quickly begins to explain ‘what he meant to say’. I interrupt him and say that “plz, it’s no biggie, I’m paying attention to you, I already know what you are sayin’.
When I watched that clip, I was surprised that Dan Goldman did not point out the anchor’s verbal slip up and remark that we all get ahead of ourselves sometimes when we speak. Biden has been making similar gaffes and comments for years, including the hot mic comment about Obamacare being a “big f&$king deal.” All of this needs to be out there.
Exactly!!
I was absolutely thrilled and laughed out loud to see that interviewer make a verbal gaffe herself while she was criticizing Biden‘s ability to hold “the highest land in the office.” I also loved Biden‘s responses in that chaotic and downright disgusting press attack yesterday. I think he called on Peter Doocy to speak twice, and when Doocy brought up the memory issue again, Biden said, “My memory is so bad that I allowed you to speak again.” People with dementia, or even slight mental decline, are not capable of sarcasm. Doocy himself is such a lame doofus that I’m not even sure he got the joke.
I think the joke went over most people in the room. There were so many things they could have used that opportunity to ask the president about. Instead they sound like a pack of wild dogs hungry for raw meat. How many in that room were from the NYT producing all those multiple stories above the fold?
I do have to wonder if the Times Editorial Board has made a conscious decision to press Biden to step aside. Their coverage and failures to highlight greater failings of Trump speak volumes in regard to their journalism or lack of integrity. I have to say, I have become really disappointed by the irresponsible focus on Biden’s age and their failure to more regularly and consistently (that may be redundant) focusing on the profound threat that a Trump return to the White House would pose for every citizen, not to mention the press.
Honestly, I don’t thing many folks are fully cognizant of the reality of the well known statement that starts, “they came for the socialist and no one spoke up, they came for…and no one spoke up…” fill in those blanks and recognize any person who did not stand with Trump would be at risk. No one will be immune and no one should be naive about recognizing DJT has throughout his time in the public arena he has said the quiet part outloud. No one should fail to see his intentions & plans.
For too long people like Merrick Garland have incredibly underestimated DJT even after all his affronts and lies.
Heather Cox Richardson’s piece tonight is all about Trump’s relationship with Russia, historically and now, and his position on NATO. He is campaigning by saying he would “tell Russia to do whatever the hell they want.” Yes. It’s a valid question how many media outlets are paying attention to how dangerous he would be to national or global security. That’s what he said in South Carolina today. Certainly Mike Johnson should not be in charge of whether votes on foreign aid for our allies in key parts of the world come to the floor of the House.
Although I watched the video, the only person I recognized was the numbskull from Fox News. I’ve never seen behavior quite that bad in a press conference. It was obscene. The press secretary needs to reprimand the press corps the next time she has them in front of her. I’m trying to put this behind me and move on because it is so infuriating. Someone I follow also just posted an interesting piece about Biden and his administration being fed up with Garland:
https://www.mediaite.com/biden/biden-is-reportedly-growing-frustrated-with-merrick-garland-this-has-been-building-for-a-while/
Why are all the special prosecutors Republicans? Have you noticed that? Garland does seem to go to such extremes to be above reproach that he ends up shooting his own team. Isn't there a professional middle ground? Now this is going to open the door to Republican-run Congressional hearings, despite the conclusion, and we have Republican election interference all over again, just like 2016 when there was nothing there on Hillary but the FBI opened it in July, closed it, and then opened it again days before the election.
Merrick Garland. The third worst attorney general in our nation's history.
Wouldn’t this have been just great if Obama had put him on the Supreme Court like he wanted to
Also, I don’t trust James Comey as far as I could throw them across the room. I think all his actions were deliberate.
I felt a little sorry for the way Trump treated him, but otherwise had no love lost. He had no business interfering with the election the way he did.
Him, not them
I couldn’t agree more. I feel like we’re running in circles dealing with the most vicious and depraved Republican party that has ever existed. Robert Hur disgraced himself by this report. He obviously has no shame, and he should be reprimanded by Garland. Garland is very weak, however. I’m hoping that when Biden is reelected, he will fire him or Garland will just resign. I prefer that he resigns sooner, but that may not be a good idea while Jack Smith is in the middle of all these investigations. It’s just a mess.
It does make me wonder what he would have been like on the Court if McConnell had not so egregiously interfered with that process.
Plus, re: Mike Johnson, I would have loved for Dan Goldman to tack on to the Mike Johnson comment that the Speaker is SECOND IN LINE TO THE PRESIDENCY while making the Iran gaffe. I'm sure it would have taken the interviewer a few seconds to compute that fact, if she was even aware contextually of this line of succession. The lack of critical thinking in "journalism" is appalling (everyone's makeup, hair, clothes and bodies look great, though....thank you Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch for the dumbing down of the media....what a legacy)!
Mike Johnson is making hay out of this line from the special prosecutor’s report about Biden being a confused old man. I hope he swallows it back after confusing Iran and Israel, which are very much not the same thing.
But of course they will give him a pass because he’s a Trumper.
I harangued his director of operations to give me a way to contact him, since he had nothing publicly availalble unless you are in his district. She finally gave me something the Telegram app (which I have not yet downloaded) or a gmail address. I have not yet used them. But I am on the brink. Teetering.
If you find a way to communicate with him, would you please share? Thanks!
I've thought about this a long time, and I am going to share. Because the point I was making with her is that the speaker should be accessible to all Americans. (To be fair, I never checked to see if McCarthy was.) I'm irritated that I have to download an app I otherwise have no use for, but she says that is the fastest way to get a response. I thought it was very weird when I pressed for an email that she gave me a gmail address. I would think there would be a Congressional address that a staff member is monitoring. But here it is. Have at it. If you use Telegram, or are willing to use the app, https://t.me/jamesmichealjohnson. On gmail, use jamesmichealjohnson983@gmail.com. NOTE: the weird spelling of "micheal" (rather than "michael") in both cases. This is how it came to me.
You just nailed it—every citizen of this country who wants to know what is currently happening in/to our country needs to read MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains,” H C Richardson’s “Democracy Awakening,” and Maddox’s “Prequel.”
We may ‘thank’ Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch for dumbing down the media, but whom do we thank for dumbing down millions of Americans who follow and support those media?*
* The American educational “system”?
YES! Since our public schools were integrated, a great many members of a couple of generations of American children have been “educated” (read indoctrinated) in private “schools.
Children of every race, religion and culture are eager to learn unless you present the learning in a rote worksheet method that discourages natural curiosity and desire to know more. Or you decide they're not worthy of learning.
The standards have changed as communities promoted and/or allowed them to be downgraded. I had 3 students stay seated during the Pledge of Allegiance. I asked them why and they said they felt like it. I told them to stand or face the principal. They stood. When we have higher expectations and standards for our students they usually rise to meet them.
During study session there were 3 or 4 young women discussing pregnancy with little real knowledge of how it happens, or even the structure of women's bodies. They were respectful to me as I told and drew it for them. It was that important to me. I gave them knowledge and facts.
There is much statistical evidence of black students excelling in upper level mathematics, in overcoming hurdles to become doctors, research scientists and astronauts, as well as excelling in the arts and in all areas of human knowledge.
With respect, caring and high hopes/standards, we can reap what we sow.
Imho it was the entertainment industry that was/is one of the greatest contributors to the demise of public critical thinking when––after figuring out it could make a lot more money by paying“ stagers” than writers––it introduced the world to Realty TV. In that not so brave new realm, a lot of unscripted stupid people were allowed to say a lot of unscripted stupid stuff, inevitably leading to dumbing-down shows like Honey Boo Boo, Duck Dynasty ... and eventually The Apprentice.
I noticed that "highest land in the office" snafu. Dan could have jumped on it, but he kept his focus. I'm not sure I would have been that restrained. And what about the idiotic fear mongering that the loser has been saying recently about "they" are going to "change the name of Pennsylvania." Why hasn't anyone remarked on THAT? I wouldn't even call it a gaffe; I would call it a clear sign of mental failure.
Totally agree. His achievements over the last 3+ years, both domestically and in foriegn affairs, demonstate that, despite his occassional gaffes, he is a saavy and skilled communicator.
Absolutely! You should hear me!!!
And it's been happening to me since... well... forever. Age not necessary. (I'm 74)
For me it happens when I have too many thoughts swirling at one time. When I write (wordsmith by trade), I can sort them out. But speaking, possibly things will come out inverted or attached to an erroneous neurological impulse on occasion, or I may require a pause to clear my brain of the Portuguese I was just reading. There is nothing doddering or nefarious.
I've been so angry at the "NY Times" for many months. The fact that my disgust with their reporting and editorial accents is mirrored by your own is, sadly, an affirmation that I am not alone in my disgust and outrage. This morning I wrote to "The Times" as follows:
info@manningintl.com <info@manningintl.com>
6:17 AM (6 minutes ago)
to letters
To the Editor:
I've been a subscriber and a reader for 50 years. I've always thought of your editorial positions as balanced news and opinion until recently. Your headlines and editorial accents have moved decidedly to the Right . You seek to openly or subtly downplay President Biden's steady hand and progressive achievements. You report on Trump with a favorable bent. You've become a subversive element and I am disgusted with your organization nowadays. If Trump should defeat Biden/Harris, it will be partially due to your efforts to undermine our Democratic institutions and allow an insurrectionist racist to assume the Presidency. Shame. If I don't see any change in your positions, I'll cancel my paper delivery and seek more reliably fair and balanced journalistic media.
Gerry Manning
2338 Immokalee Road
Suite 167
Naples, Florida 34110
I cancelled my subscription to the Times a while back. Within a week or so of my cancellation, I was getting offers to please come back and get a year for $50. (Oh, and don't believe them that it is a limited time offer; I am still getting those emails many months later! I get far more value from my subscription to Robert's substack, so I simply delete their emails.
Maybe the Times would wake up if they get a flurry of letters to the editor than are followed by long-time subscribers cancelling. If you find you can't hack it without the Times, then at least you'll save a little money when you resubscribe. ;-)
I’m very conflicted about canceling my subscription to the Times. But I loathe what they have been doing; is dropping the paper the best way to express my anger? I am thinking before I do that I will write to my favorite pundits and ask them why are they still writing for the times? It is their feet walking away that would really matter. Do they have the courage to do it?
You can pause your subscription. I discovered this when I was canceling today, and considered it. Send them a letter saying you are pausing for a month, and will reconsider at the end of that time based on whether they have improved their approach.
No reason you can’t do both.
"I am thinking before I do that I will write to my favorite pundits and ask them why are they still writing for the times?"
I am confused what you would expect to get out of this inquiry.
Because it pays their bills and they aren't in a position to retire? Newsrooms are shedding staff right and left - Legacy newspapers are a dying breed.
Lots of people put up with jobs and bosses that they can't stand.
I cancelled my subscription this morning. Explained to the Times phone rep that I could no longer support a publication that was slow-walking us to autocracy. Checked the site tonight and they still have multiple stories on their front page about Biden’s age - and only one story (not on top) about Trump’s latest remarks saying he would allow Putin to invade NATO countries while the U.S. did nothing. It’s shocking and beyond the pale. Will write another letter to the editor tomorrow!
I cancelled my subscription several months ago and I communicated with their "chat" service who said they would send my reason "up the chain."
I sent one yesterday and another today-Could not help myself. In the one today, I ask how the historic legal news of the week (immunity decision and the 14th Amendment insurrection oral arguments) ended up getting pushed off the front page to two days (so far) of coverage about the special report. I asked where the coverage was of the NRA convention, where Trump did not know what day it was, he stated that Pennsylvania would no longer be a state if he was not elected - as well as the constant slurring of his word salad. Instead, the lead digital story was about how the health and age of presidents has been with us for while, but the picture placement had Biden, looking confused.
I ended with how the are continuing their irresponsible coverage in the vein of the Iraq war, 2016 election coverage and their irresponsible coverage of the hospital bombing in Gaza.
I think we need an onslaught of letters to continue.
Hey Gerry; What do you put in the subject line when you send a letter to the editor?
Trump has been proven in court trials, by juries and judges, to be a proven rapist, proven fraud and proven insurrectionist. He should be referred to that way by every journalist and tv interviewer. And if not, Democratic interviewees should refer to him that way and comment how the interviewer is failing to accurately portray Trump as a rapist, fraud and insurrectionist. IIn addition every Republican should be described as a rapist’s accomplice, a fraudster’s enabler and a aider and abettor of an insurrectionist. And finally, we viewers should write and call in to papers, magazines and tv programs when they fail to do so.
Judge Aileen Cannon's order to disclose names of witnesses really bothers me. Witnesses against Trump or his cohorts regularly find themselves subject to verbal abuse at a minimum and sometimes much worse. Is she blithely unaware? Or is she being partisan in plain sight? What is her problem?
Judge Kaplan’s warning to the jury in the E. Jean Carroll case to never divulge that they had been on the jury comes to mind as I read about this latest travesty of Judge Cannon’s.
Exactly!!
Partisan in plain sight is my guess. She's a suck-up from the get go.
An important job of mob lawyers is to use the legal system to identify witnesses in ongoing investigations or before a trial. Their goal is to intimidate and silence those witnesses – one way or the other. There have reportedly been cases of judges or prosecutors either on the take or otherwise under pressure to play along.
That a judge is doing this so brazenly and in plain view is a new one.
Yes it is a bit weird to see her bias so blatantly displayed--is she playing for a Supreme nomination?
I simply don't understand why the Supreme Court Associate Justices (and Chief Justice Roberts, too) haven't followed the logical course that will inevitably happen should Trump get re-elected.
Surely they are students of history and KNOW what will happen once Trump becomes a "Day One Dictator" and then Dictator-For -Life all the days after that first day??? The US justice system will become hopelessly corrupt and superfluous. Trump will brush them all aside like so much useless chaff.
The justices should know from any study of history is that the judges are some of the first to be shot or disappeared when the dictator arrives. For this bunch in the SCOTUS that might be just karma.
Opposition judges, to be sure, may be eliminated. But judges who play along with the dictator survive. Look at the Russian court system.
Trump is so erratic I'd be willing to bet any judge will sooner or later be on the wrong side of him. Then they get what they deserve.
And you had to mention Russia……
She has drug her feet since the start of all this. The way she pounced on this is Cannon showing her hand. Big time!
“Judge Cannon promptly ordered Jack Smith to turn that document over to Donald Trump's lawyers within 24-hours. This lightning order comes from a judge who has slow-walked the prosecution from day one” (that from todays newsletter).
She can't be as stupid as her order implies. My guess is she is still playing for time. She is expecting Smith to rightly try to remove her which may take months to accomplish. Meanwhile... The 11th circuit should make removing her a priority.
These are rhetorical questions, right?
Swbv, I’m thinking that Cannon knows she’s in over her head, that eventually she’ll have to follow the law and face the wrath of Trump or she can get the 11th Circuit to allow her an exit ramp
You’re preaching to the choir. Hopefully some of the MAGA adherents pause and think of the damage Trump is doing to every branch of the government .
MAGA and Think are incongrous
She is endangering the lives of people. She should be removed from the bench. I don't know for whom she works, but it is certainly NOT for law-abiding American citizens.
She’s a partisan and doesn’t seem to care. I hope Jack Smith follows through with what Robert suggested. She is unethical and a disgrace.
I cancelled my NYT subscription today. I just couldn't take it anymore. There is so much of the paper that I will miss but it will take losing many subscribers to make them think sanely again.
I cancelled mine and gave the reason as too much disrespectful Biden bashing.Yes, I wish more would do it so it will have some sort of impact on them.Smh.
I cancelled my NYT subscription over a year ago for exactly the same reason you mention here. And their coverage has gotten much worse since then.
Yes.You are right.Their disgraceful ageism directed toward our current POTUS was hard to take and it became unrelenting.I am totally done with them.They want me back of course but never again.
I did the same. I wrote a letter to the editor explaining the reasons, and then was pleased to get a second shot on the cancellation page.
Here I sit with a letter from the Editor of the NYT where he defends their coverage of Biden after I complained a couple of weeks ago about how bad and uneven their coverage of Biden and Trump is, and how ageist they are, and how the journalists are too monocultural and lacking in diversity of life experience. I asked where are the people on welfare to cover the economy? Somehow the media does not consider that the pov of someone in poverty is worthwhile, but I think it is essential. I am grateful to the Substack writers that I subscribe to and the Independent media as well for exposing me to different ideas than the mainstream media. I find the NYT insufferable, but I like the puzzles. With WaPo, one can write responses, more than in the NYT, so I continue to support it too. However, I need to step back perhaps and decide whether I want to know what the enemy is reporting. The fact that the NYT does not see any value in Biden because of his age is a sickness that I hope they lose before they are old too.
We sometimes get caught up in the emotion of the moment. Sure the coverage of Biden’s age may be over done but the coverage of Trump being a threat to our country was also front and center. It took a while for me to get that the voters who will make the election a win or loss don’t read the NYT and although they wish Biden was younger he is a better and a safer choice than Trump.
Voters who will make the election a win or loss are mostly Gen Z. https://www.fieldteam6.org/
I am writing postcards with Field Team 6 to women in NC-01. They also have a BYOP texting program that I need to get going with. It leverages their phone banking platform to send free texts one-at-a-time to people for whom they have a cell phone number in their database. Each volunteer is limited in how many texts that can send by this method but with enough volunteers the impact will be massive.
https://www.mobilize.us/mobilize/event/405150/
I also support The Civics Center (www.thecivicscenter.org) with $$ to help expand their support of student-led HS Voter registration drives as well as helping with their periodic postcard and letter-writing campaigns.PLus, I send money to Campus Vote Project (www.campusvoteproject.org/) for similar work on college campuses. Contributions to both of these groups is tax-deductible.
I also have made non-tax-deductible donations to Gen-Z for Change (https://genzforchange.org/) and Voters of Tomorrow (https://votersoftomorrow.org/).
Thanks.
Sorry, but that’s based on a common mathematical error: If it were true that the election depends only on Gen Z (or Blacks, or whatever), then all the others might as well not have voted. That, of course, is absurd.
*All* votes count, not just the votes some people single out as having “made the difference”.
Given that the potential Gen Z voters have to be registered and show up! If the population is increased by Gen Z, not error.
Linda, I dropped my NYT subscription and only subscribe to their ‘games’ for $5/month. Sadly, I need my daily crossword puzzle although they make it an increasingly difficult puzzle to print it out.
Thanks for the suggestion. I might get my daughter the same.
I dropped my NY Times subscription a while back and now I get endless offers to renew for $50/yr. So keep that in mind while you consider what to do. I'm pretty sure that you can get a puzzles and games subscription for around the same amount if you can't go cold turkey without the crossword puzzle. (I'm addicted to Wordle but that isn't behind their paywall).
I see Betsy beat me to it about the games subscription. Wouldn't that be a poke in the eye for them to discover that people value their games more highly than they do their journalism!
Linda, The Pete Townsend quote is now on my mind regarding the NYT
I will vote for Biden. He has been the best president in my long life. But I would also vote for ANY Democrat who runs for president. I will vote, I will donate, I will encourage others to vote, I will write letters... There is no Republican Party. It has been swallowed by MAGA madness. Fear and intimidation are the tools of their Bronzed Mafioso Mussolini.
But with some exceptions, this group (who I love and respect) are similar and often the same as the groups at HCR, Reich, Rosenberg, Hartmann, Vance, Jessica...you get my drift? What do you think the average age is of this community?
We are talking in a room largely of retirees. We need to get out of the room. Young people could care less what is on cable TV news or in "newspapers" like WaPo or NYT. I agree that the focus of these outlets is driven by "gotcha" journalism and stories that attract eyeballs. They are doing that because they are fading. Our soon to be gone generation uses those vehicles for info. Younger people live elsewhere. And it is ALL on their phones.
I suspect that most people in our age group are settled into a political position - and are never going to change it. I certainly won't. Why would I? I am old, therefore I am smart and wise. /s
We need to support groups that focus on young people. Gen Y and Gen Z are disgusted, dismayed and highly frustrated that they have to choose between two very old white men. I share that feeling. But I know that the reality is that if we don't fully support the Democratic nominee, if we stay home, if we vote for some third party or independent out frustration that we would, in reality, be supporting Donald Trump.
Until Ranked Choice Voting is established everywhere, the choice is now binary. Good or Evil. Compassion or Hate. Inclusiveness or "othering". Community vs fake "Cowboy".
My mission will be twofold. Speak with everyone younger in my personal circle - as well as asking other ancient ones like me to do the same. And I will support the organizations that recruit young people to become activists and register to vote.
Nutshell: Let's stop worrying about the media that the people we NEED don't use. The future of our nation and its democracy will be determined by how many young people show up. Between ageism and Gaza we have a lot of work to do.
Here are some ideas:
https://activisthandbook.org/campaigns/youth-activism?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA2pyuBhBKEiwApLaIO6rFC53gb5c17fzJ_hIIiDelY4hoIw5qZXjrq3cxB8aDGGUGplLixRoC-AoQAvD_BwE
https://allianceforyouthaction.org/
https://www.turnup.us/
https://go.acespace.org/page/77475/subscribe/1?utm_medium=ads&utm_source=ads_ggrt&utm_campaign=vreg&ea.tracking.id=google-grads&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA2pyuBhBKEiwApLaIOwiyfv4F-EFaHWfo-acrrGIc0ALRHESvY5H4Q9d3YOULH1vYcDbIUhoCX6sQAvD_BwE
You are quite right about the average age and how we retirees get our info...however I feel compelled to say that I am, indeed, wiser and smarter and better informed than I was when I was in my mid-thirties. I'm 70 now, and have more time to read, read, read all the pov's and follow up with checking for facts and context. Fact chasing and contextual reading takes mounds of time--and you are correct: young folks who are working and with families, do not have the luxury of time.
We are using Ranked Choice voting here in Maine (as you may already know) and it works great--although the Repubbies hate it because they will probably not get a chance to get a majority for a long, long time (not after the LePage disaster). But unless and until RCV is the law of the land, our system is set up as binary and injecting third parties, however well regarded they may be, just makes the outcome...well, not the one that might have been envisioned; let's just put it that way.
T L - based on your comments in these forums, I think you are quite wise, as well! Cheers! Here's to learning as we age.
We were living in Maine when LePage was elected. He dismantled Dirigo Choice - the insurance program that allowed small businesses like ours to exist. And then he was re-elected again - all because of a third candidate who I believe is now serving time for child porn.
Maine had every incentive to employ RCV after all those years of someone who was to be "Trump before there was a Trump". We are working on RCV here in MA. Wish us luck.
Please don't get me wrong. I think Biden is the smartest and wisest president we could have. But millions of younger people have no interest in the value of that experience. And they feel disenfranchised. I am very worried.
I take solace from the fact that the GOP has nothing to offer young people. So if is more of an issue of convinving them to register and (if already registered) to vote.
I'm in NC, where Governor Cooper (D) is term-limited and both chambers of the state legislature are held by GOP super majorities. Because of a traitorous Democratic legislator who flipped to R, they overrid (overrided?) the Gov. Cooper's veto of a 15-week abortion ban this session! The presumptive GOP candidate for Governor is super MAGA Mark Robinson who is promising to put in a total abortion ban. (See https://www.realmarkrobinson.com/ to understand what a disaster he would be).
I think we have the hook to get young people to the polls based on the issues, plus we have a very dynamic state party chair Anderson Clayton who only recently turned 26!! She has lit a real fire in the party and energized a lot of people to pay attention to the state.
In the 2022 election cycle, there were 30 Republicans running unopposed for seats in the state legislature and who knows how many were running unapposed in other "local" races. For 2024, that was slashed to only 2 legislative races without a D on the ballot plus only 2 other races for a total of 4 statewide!! (For those who may have forgotten, NC is the state that Trump won by the smallest margin, so even with our extreme gerrymandering it is important to get voters to the polls!!)
I'm writing postcards with Field Team 6 (www.fieldteam6.org) to register new voters in NC-01. Starting next week, I will be registering voters weekly at a local Community College with You Can Vote (https://www.youcanvote.org/), a non-partisan group that promotes registering voters in NC. I'll also be registering voters with the League of women voters at community events throughout the spring and summer.
And when Vote Forward drops their campaigns in early March I will be writing letters to low-propensity NC voters who are under-represented in the voter demographics. They have already announced that NC will be one of the 8 states with early campaigns (more will be added later).
I am very impressed with your command of the situation. And even more impressed with your action plan! Kudos.
Thanks! I'm retired and have a fair amount of time on my hands. I retired in 2018 and got heavily involved in grassroots groups in 2020 just as Covid hit. My local Swing left group was writing Vote Forward letters to NC voters via Zoom and socially distanced outdoor letter writing parties. The group of around 100 of us wrote over 33K letters. We also wrote postcards and did information drops for local candidates for legislative races. That lit the activist bug in me.
My blue county is the slacker when it comes to Democratic turnout, so this past summer our county party chair (also not yet 30) started organizing combination social gatherings and informational meetings for Democrats in groups of a dozen or so adjacent precincts. It has helped build community and educate our voters ... and to recruit volunteers. It is much harder to say no when you know the precinct chair personally and she has dropped off a loaf of homemade pumpkin bread to thank you for your past volunteering :-)
We are all very worried--and are wise to be so. Yeah, it's true that young folks are feeling very disenfranchised and little wonder...I know quite a few younger folks (my spouse and I had none of our own so I have become a popular Auntie who is "way cooler than Mom" and I get confidences and questions that I do my best to answer as honestly as possible)--and I very well remember how it was when I was in college and knew far more than my own parents...until I started earning a living and saving for a house, paying off my (very minor) college debt and establishing credit...and all the endless things that you do to prove to yourself that you are adulting.
I think our own kid's kids are far wiser about how the world works than we ever were...tbh.
well when they, the younger people are standing in that booth voting and it's the 2 choices we all know - I believe that will be point where they have to choose who they are gonna support.
Don't be too depressed about the younger ones. I have three sons and whenever I try to talk to them or their spouses about things like climate change or a dictator in the White House their eyes glaze over and they tell me to go away because they are enjoying their board game. But I'd be willing to bet the farm that they will all vote for and donate to Biden and talk to their friends about the choice facing the nation. Just because they aren't agreeing with their parents' fears doesn't mean that they are happy go lucky voters.
How do we counteract young people's anger at the genocide in Gaza? The Democrats want to send aid to both Israel and Ukraine. Are they the same? One country is committing genocide and the other is fighting for their lives. Netanyahu is responsible for genocide in Gaza, not Biden. How do we point out that netanyahu and Trump are cut from the same cloth? They both are trying to stay in power so they don't go to prison. If Trump is elected he will make netanyahu look like mother Teresa. He has said it out loud.
I can't talk to my sons about this atrocity. I am so angry that my country is complicit in the genocidal actions of Israel. Biden has made a very, very large mistake after 3 years of magnificent leadership. Will that mistake sink his re-election bid? I don't know but I still support him. If there was any politician who had a moral compass when it came to Israel I might not be able to say that but I do not see a one in the US. I guess that is what I'd tell that young person "Show me a US politician who will stand up to the Israelis and who can get elected and make a reasonable President." You are right Trump will be a lot worse the Netanyahu and he'll be worse across the globe with his adoration of dictators like Putin and Xi.
Israel is not trying to eliminate the Gazan population. If it were, its military campaigns would be even bloodier.
Look– Israel urged Gazans to get out of the way of planned bombing campaigns (Hamas tried to get them to sit tight). Is that an act of genocide? Where else in history has a nation tried to warn civilians in such a way?
Would you argue that the Allied bombings of Germany in World War II were *genocidal*?
Are you trying to equate the German military of WWII with the rag tag bunch of Hamas? Where are Hamas' jets, choppers, their tanks, their artillery pieces? A few AK's, even fewer RPG's, and a pile of very inaccurate rockets don't make an army. To even call this a war is bordering on ludicrous. 100,000 casualties on one side, maybe 1600 on the other. Over 50% of Gaza destroyed against a few houses in Israel. The Israeli people need to get rid of the maniac who is trying to avoid prison by murdering Palestinians. Across the Arab world he is probably making more fighters than he's killing.
As to Gaza I wrote weeks ago in a local paper that the Israelis were trying to ethnic cleanse Gaza so it could be re-populated by settlers. The settlers are now demonstrating in Israel for just that right. Time will tell if they are successful.
All of this is beyond my control but I can and will be very critical of my government's participation in it. That is blatantly disgusting; a horrible blotch on Biden's record.
Biden is speaking out more now about Netanyahu‘s excesses, and he needs to keep doing that.
Genocide is what Hamas pledged in its founding document.
Look at the war crimes and worse that Hamas committed last October.
It’s weird (and worse) that the objects of Hamas’s genocidal intentions get accused of genocide.
Thanks for your reply Will. I'm not sure what the dividing line is between war crimes and genocide but BB is definitely close.
Bill, just two additions to your excellent idea to focus on the youth vote: www.civicscenter.org whose mission is to register every high school student in the country. They hire local college students and often work on college campuses in swing states. Terrific focus in critical places!
Then, Jessica Craven of Chop Wood, Carry Water here on Substack creates frequent TikTok videos that reach thousands on TikTok and Instagram - and that’s where many young folk hang out. Support her work with a newsletter subscription. (I follow her on Instagram).
Finally, if you are able, support the Biden campaign NOW. Early money is the most important gift we can give. www.joebiden.com to donate!
Courier newsrooms do a lot of TikTok videos aimed at young and low-propensity voters especially in parts of the country with no real local news, where news outlets have been bought up by right-wing outfits. That's a lot of Trump country. https://couriernewsroom.com
I like The Civics Center!
Here is another group: https://civicinfluencers.org/
Also, Bill, I agree that we need to reach the young voters. They use Tik-Tok. But if I made a Tik-Tok video, it wouldn't do anything. We need "influencers" to do the amplification. What are your thoughts about enlisting some popular youth figures to start doing this?
Civic Influencers are well-worth supporting.
thanks for the links!
100% you are so right!
From the top of your head: Who is the president of Austria? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_heads_of_state_and_government
Maybe you know, maybe you don't, but stating that Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the storming of the Capitol, is nonsense of a totally different order.
Not to mention that Nikki Haley was responsible (as tfg said recently)!
My letter to the Times - fat lot of good it will do, I fear
What shall I do? For years I have subscribed to the NYTimes and respected balanced and thoughtful reporting. But your focus on Robert Hur's report’s inappropriate (given the purpose of the task of the report) comments about Biden’s age and memory is offensive and shocking from the Times.
How can I protest? I could suspend my subscription, but that would make little difference to you.
I can ask you to write an apology for this bias and for you to use better judgement in what you think will sell your paper, because what you are publishing about this appears to be just for sensation, and, I might add, disrespectful - garbage. As Special Counsel Hur inappropriately chose to couch his report as a political statement, should the Times follow that suit? Might the Times, instead, criticize Mr. Hur’s including in his report an assessment that was not called for and for which he has no background or authority (that is not qualified to do a mental status exam)?
If I were your teacher I would demand that you write twenty reasons why Biden is a good president. They might include his attention to the US position throughout the world - Asian Pacific, Middle East, Euro-zone - just to mention some, with efforts to reestablish alliances and collaborate. They might include the positive signs of the economic improvement due to the Recovery act - OK to observe that some people don’t see it in food prices - but perhaps there could be more emphasis on job creation and inflation stabilization and what they actually mean for people going forward. They might include the adjustment of his attitudes towards Israel as Netanyahu continues to perpetrate atrocities in Gaza - Biden looking for others for negotiating. That’s just a start. You need to find the balance of the twenty corrections I am demanding! It’s almost as simple as writing 20 times, “We are a thoughtful news outlet that provides balanced and informative reporting and do not engage in fomenting unsubstantiated negative opinions.”
And balanced reporting about Trump will most likely record his gaffs but more importantly his destructiveness and his complete lack of concern about this country.
I’m watching as are many other readers. I’m not happy.
Sadly, I think the NYT is simply mirroring the mindset of the social media landscape that all of us are living in. I have already canceled my subscription to the Washington Post and probably will cancel the NYT as well. It just doesn't make any sense to pay for biased, conceptually-lazy, agenda-driven articles lacking meaningful insights that require me to spend time and emotional energy critiquing and mentally re-writing. The MSM has had 8 years to learn how to maintain appropriate balance and professionalism and it is unlikely they will be able to engage in the level of self-examination necessary to change course during the heat of the campaign in which one side is trying to end free speech and democracy.
We are not going to change our society, probably at all, and certainly not before November, but this whole kerfuffle has gotten me thinking about our youth culture. I heard an interview somewhere with some young Native Americans about their views on politics. One said, "In our culture we value our elders. We consider them to be wise. So I am not concerned about the age issue,"--very much paraphrased. I have also read somewhere along the way that in some tribes, it was the women who had the final say as to whether their husbands/sons/brothers would go to war.
We do have a sick worship of youthfulness and physical traits of strength and beauty in this country that I think does us harm. I think it helps explain the influence of libertarianism, of lack of care for one another and the less fortunate, and also our view that the earth is for us to mine rather than steward.
I also think that those distorted values are inflated further by our media culture, advertising, and unrestrained capitalism, and for some, Prosperity Gospel teachings.
It's a sick society that elevates someone like Donald Trump to a vaunted place in our culture.
As Simon Rosenberg says, time to get “loud and proud” !! 📣
I’ve been wearing my Biden/Harris t-shirt here in the Redlands of Florida. So far, so good !👕🛒
I still have my NYT subscription and will continue to contact about their offensive coverage.💻
The next person, and every other person, who tells me “Biden is demented” , I will (calmly 😉) challenge to watch an entire Trump speech vs. Biden speech. If they have a short attention span, I’ll just share….”Bing, Bing, Bing”⬇️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgwr9r36zIU
We can all continue to “channel Taylor Swift” 💃 with GOTV !
💙
Thank you
I sent this letter to the NYT today, with the subject line "How old is too old to save democracy?":
I ask the editors and headline writers at the New York Times to take a good hard look at the role you are playing in the election that may end with the demise of democracy in America. Yesterday, you had five stories about President Biden's age. Today I awoke to "How Old is Too Old to Be President? An Uncomfortable Question Arises Again" (Feb 10, 20224.). It's "Hilary's emails" all over again. While former President Trump mixes people up regularly and has trouble completing a sentence, you insist on focusing on Joe Biden's occasional slip. Both men are old, but only one speaks nonsense. And only one poses a threat to American democracy and the world.
I have been a New York Times reader since I was in middle school in the 1970s and a subscriber since I began college in 1980. I am sadly considering canceling my subscription because I can no longer bear to look at your coverage of the election. It's your job to do the hard work of illuminating the real differences between the candidates' plans for the country. Instead, you create click-bait, lopsided headlines. I believe you can -- and I know you must -- do better.
Sincerely,
Claire Ullman
New York, NY
You completely nailed it, Claire. Just fabulous!
I am copying and pasting this from the Feb 9th newsletter from HCR and tweeting it to Joe in reply to his positive tweets. I will post anywhere I can:
"Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen outlined how Biden’s performance disproves the argument that he is unfit for the presidency: “The thing about Biden’s memory,” Cohen wrote, “is that he’s presided over the addition of ~15 million jobs & 800k manufacturing jobs, 23 straight months of sub-4% unemployment, surging consumer sentiment, wages outpacing inflation, the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPs Act, PACT Act, infrastructure law, gun safety law, VAWA, codified marriage equality, canceled $136 billion in student loan debt for 3.7 million borrowers, bolstered NATO, and presided over electoral wins in ‘20, ‘22 and ‘23.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-9-2024
The saddest part of this is that the people who are accusing President Biden of mental decline, dementia, and confusion are far less intelligent than he is, and certainly far less capable of accomplishing anything. The recovery that he has presided over is nothing short of phenomenal, and the right absolutely hates this. They can no longer run on a bad economy, so they have to pick a couple of favorite issues and keep swinging with that.
Sad, but unfortunately true.
This is excellent advice— to go hard on offense.
But I would modify one point in today’s newsletter. While it is true that some of the media want Trump to win, most, I think, want (at least unconsciously) an exciting and scary story to tell, in which they star as narrators. This egoism of theirs, given the stakes, is unbelievably selfish and fatuous—and a dereliction of their duty as free press in a democracy.
Let’s hold their feet to the fire. We need journalism not infotainment.
The most exciting, scary story I have seen is PBS Frontline's exposè of Trump. Just goes to prove the media doesn't have to tell lies to get a good story.
To my thinking it is patently absurd to write that the NY Times and WaPo want Trump to win. It diminishes the credibility of everything else we write. We have a problem with gaffes. So does everybody else. Pointing that out with some anger is good. Then we should move on. Biden is a very decent man. He should proudly contrast his record of awesome accomplishments with Trump's and run on it. Which he is doing. And, yes, we need to constantly bury Trump in his record of right wing extremism, misogyny, racism, climate denial, anti-chioce, thievery from the people's government, and dangerous whacko foreign policy diminishing our standing as the beacon of democracy and human rights, a friend and supporter of a free world wherever hope for it shines. Joe Biden is standing up for us with grace and dignity. Some anger in defense is good. Let's support him in the same spirit. Onward. The media will follow us when we act out our dreams.
They do support Trump because they want the ratings and circulation back that they had during the Trump Catastrophe. The Washington Post is this far >< from going down the tubes financially. MSNBC, CNN, and the rest have 1/3 the viewers they did. It what Zuck the Fuck (as we used to call him here in Hollywood) said when he was questioned about CNN giving Trump all the free coverage of his hatealongs in 2016: "Trump brings us great ratings." Linear TV is in a death spiral and cable news knows they'll be chopped (which is what has CNN's knickers in a knot) when the companies that own them find they no longer make economic sense. They're all too fucking stupid to see where they're going to end up this time. All they have left is adopting the FarceBook algorithm: get people upset and they'll come back.
The best characterization of the MSM I can think of: they have become useful idiots for Trump.
Sadly true.
TCinLA, I think you are definitely on to something. When they see their counterparts laying off news rooms, they must be thinking, “we have to offer more outrage with constant Trump to hold our audience.”
Over the years I have noted that the Times had abandoned so much of their former coverage - sports, travel, quarterly stock/bond reports, business section that feels like they’ve ceded that to WSJ. And, of course adding (or rebranding) the “opinion” section rather than “editorial section.”
Yet, of course, they keep the Styles section pandering to the wealthy class and NY Society.
Hey! They have to keep the profits in focus if they want to retain the claim to the country’s newspaper of record.
The NY Times has become a disappointment.
You. Have. Nailed. It.
Actually, it's not me, but I read people who are following this stuff. People out here in Hollywood now understand linear TV is going out, but digital streaming isn't reliable, so there's a lot of question of what to build on. It's clear that the kind of movies I was ever involved with (mid-budget, star-driven, adult-oriented story) are never going to be theatrical again. I'm glad I write books now.
One personal observation. I do find PBS Masterpiece Theater offers good shows even as I have watched their Masterpiece Theater Mysteries really taking off. At least they are well done.
Oh yes, there is good stuff out there. You just need to look around for it. I absolutely love "Miss Scarlett and the Duke." (I am a sucker for 19th century cop shows. Look up the following on streaming: "Ripper Street" - a London detective stumbling into using modern police procedure in the 1880s; "Copper" - an Irish-American cop in New York City during the Civil War).
I highly highly recommend "Domina" - both 8 episode seasons now on streaming at MGM+. the story of Livia Drusilla, second wife of Gaius Caesar (Augustus) - told from her POV and facts rather than the propaganda Suetonius wrote in The Twelve Caesars. Also "Billy The Kid," final season coming in May on MGM+ - the true story of Billy The Kid (when I was 8, my uncle in New Mexico introduced me to a man then in his 80s who as a young man had known and ridden with Billy and the Regulators in the Lincoln County War, so after being told the real story by him, I've waited a long time for his). "Justified: City Primeval" has two seasons on F/X streaming that are as good as the original series. I also like "Belgravia: The Next Chapter" on MGM+ (I'm a sucker for Julian Fellowes - also like "Gilded Age") I find a lot of good stuff on MGM+, shows and movies; a better deal overall than even HBO, which I have. Forgot to mention "Dark Winds" - if you're a Hillerman fan, this series does him justice.
Thank you.