James Hohmann of t reviewed former President Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia in support of Biden. Obama lashed back at Trump’s specious claims and lies. The former president stood on a makeshift stage in a parking lot in front of the Philadelphia Eagles’ stadium and spoke to a drive-in audience.
Here are Obama’s top 10 daggers from his 36-minute speech:
1) Shredding Trump’s covid-19 response
“Donald Trump isn’t going to suddenly protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself…”
2) Teeing up a contrast between Trump and Biden
“Joe is not going to screw up testing. He’s not going to call scientists idiots. He’s not going to hold a superspreader event at the White House…”
3) Highlighting a double standard
“Can you imagine if I had a secret Chinese bank account when I was running for reelection? You think Fox News might have been a little concerned about that? They would have called me ‘Beijing Barry…’”
4) Connecting the dots
“Joe knows that the first job of a president is to keep us safe from all threats, foreign, domestic or microscopic. When the daily intelligence briefings flash warning signs about a virus, a president can’t ignore them. He can’t be AWOL. Just like when Russia puts bounties on the heads of our soldiers in Afghanistan, the commander-in-chief can’t be missing in action…”
5) Effectively employing mockery
“You’ll be able to go about your lives [if Biden wins] knowing that the president is not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world or that Navy SEALS didn’t actually kill bin Laden. Think about that. The president of the United States retweeted that! Imagine! What? What?….”
6) Trolling Trump
“Donald Trump likes to claim he built this economy, but America created 1.5 million more jobs in the last three years of the Obama-Biden administration than in the first three years of the Trump-Pence administration. How you figure that? … Now, he did inherit the longest streak of job growth in American history but just like everything else he inherited, he messed it up…”
7) Personnel is policy
“When Joe and Kamala are in charge, they’re not going to surround themselves with hacks and lobbyists. … That, more than anything, is what separates them from their opponents…”
“The Environmental Protection Agency that’s supposed to protect our air and our water is right now run by an energy lobbyist that gives polluters free reign to dump unlimited poison into our air and water. The Labor Department that’s supposed to protect workers and their rights right now is run by a corporate lobbyist who’s declared war on workers. … The Interior Department that’s supposed to protect our public lands and wild spaces … right now is run by an oil lobbyist who’s determined to sell them to the highest bidder. You’ve got the Education Department, that’s supposed to give every kid a chance, being run by a billionaire who guts rules designed to protect students from getting ripped off by for-profit colleges and stiff-arms students looking for loan relief in the middle of an economic collapse. The person who runs Medicaid right now is doing their best to kick people off of Medicaid, instead of sign them up. Come on…”
8) Highlighting promises not kept
“They keep on promising, ‘We’re going to have a great replacement.’ … It’s been coming in two weeks for the last 10 years. Where is it? Where is this great plan to replace Obamacare? They’ve had 10 years to do it. There is no plan!…”
9) Defending his own record
“Listen, listen: I understand why a lot of Americans can get frustrated by government and can feel like it doesn’t make a difference. Even supporters of mine, during my eight years, there were times where stuff we wanted to get done didn’t get done and people said, ‘Well, gosh, if Obama didn’t get it done, then maybe it’s just not going to happen.’”
Obama said he had “firsthand experience” with Republican obstruction and the way “special interests” tried to “stop progress” before making a case that voters need to work within the system, “The fact that we don’t get 100 percent of what we want right away is not a good reason not to vote,” said the onetime community organizer. “It means we’ve got to vote and then get some change and then vote some more and then get some more change, and then keep on voting until we get it right…”
10) Connecting protesting to voting
“We’ve seen Americans of all races joining together to declare in the face of injustice that Black lives matter – no more, but no less – so that no child in this country feels the continuing sting of racism. … We can’t abandon those protesters who inspired us. We’ve got to channel their activism into action.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Obama’s speech at Philly and Miami were really GOOD.
What a difference between Obama and the dump.
I was also so glad Obama mentioned his Pandemic Team and the Pandemic Response plan … both of which are nowhere to be found in dump-land.
It will be interesting to see what role Bruce Reed takes in the new Biden administration. Reed was Chief of Staff to VP Biden. Before that, he worked on getting the infamous 1994 crime bill passed, wrote a book with Rahm Emmanuel attacking the New Deal. He left his job as Biden Chief of Staff to become president of the Broad Foundation!
One hopes that all that goes into the dumpster fire of history.
If Bruce Reed returns to work in Biden administration, he should not work in education. No one who was on Arne’s staff should.
What about Arne?
If Arne took the job, i’d have lots of poems already written.
It sure would save me a lot of effort.
Maybe I’ll put in a request.
Nonononono!
Sometimes, I think that the Democrats education reforms are a huge financial scam for fleecing the rubes. There needs to be a clear line in the sand if Biden wins from both teacher unions leadership, that any return to the Obama ed reform efforts are non-starters. Biden should understand clearly that teachers know how DFER, their echo chamber & Republican bipartisanship for privatization skulduggery works. Teachers should not accept even a temporary return to their harmful polices in this administration.
Reform insiders & their messengers like Jonathan Chait & Michael Grunwald are already putting out tweets & articles to scapegoat teachers. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/10/neoliberal-education-reform-scapegoat-teachers-covid-19-reopening-school
To quote the great leader Karen Lewis: “We are tired of being sick & tired.” of stuff like this:
“As soon as it became clear that COVID-19 would not be contained by the fall, writers of a certain disposition began gearing up for the fight to come. As Politico writer Michael Grunwald tweeted with almost palpable glee in June, “This spring, the protests have sparked an uncomfortable debate about who police unions look out for, and this fall, COVID might spark a similar debate about teachers unions.”
This long-awaited debate finally came earlier this month with the publication of Alec MacGillis’s New Yorker article, “The Students Left Behind by Remote Learning,” which went viral and sparked a series of piggyback articles from writers at the Washington Post, New York Times, Reason, and New York magazine, among other outlets.
It’s a debate that’s revealed the depressingly narrow vision of economic and social justice held by pro-opening advocates, the contempt that pro-opening advocates have for the educators they paradoxically claim are essential, and the dismissive attitude pro-opening advocates have toward the actual views of the low-income families and families of color they claim to speak for.”
jcgrim,I like this post: let me tell you how.
“Sometimes, I think that the Democrats education reforms are a huge financial scam for fleecing the rubes.” Yup. I picture this conversation w/ Biden would include that Reps were all for those reforms too – it was bipartisan– & Reps, as soon as charters were a thing, moved right on bigly to voucher schools in many states, which are part & parcel of the same thing: entities supported by local school taxes yet unaccountable financially, & in many cases academically, to local govt or even parents– which underserve [if at all] SpEd or ELL students & exacerbate segregation. The best you can say about either type school is they usually offer smaller classes—the key to better ed—than pubschs, yet they do so by drawing funds from the 85% in pubschs, which consequently experience even larger classes.
As to covid, “the contempt that pro-opening advocates have for the educators they paradoxically claim are essential” says it all. 8 out of 10 articles promoting reopening ignore the 1/3 adult staff at any school, & the remaining 2 claim against all scientific evidence that kids “don’t spread it.” I was “happy” [not] to hear a Utah epidemiologist—interviewed today on NPR NewsHour about how their hospitals could barely manage the ICU onslaught of their local covid rise—when asked why the rise, state simply that it corresponded directly with the full reopening of schools [& sloppy/ non-comforming use of masks/ distancing].
Yet “the dismissive attitude pro-opening advocates have toward the actual views of the low-income families and families of color they claim to speak for” adds a crucial angle. I have been browsing various Northeastern states’ parent surveys on choices for all-remote, looking especially at big cities in MA & NJ. The pattern is clear. Poor inner-city minorities are choosing all-remote over hybrid in-person hands down. Now you know that’s a choice that involves serious economic sacrifice. But their ethnic populations are experiencing 5 times (!) the rate of hospitalization for serious covid complications, & double the death rate. And their local schools are underfunded & likely unsafe.
Great speech by Obama but when he got to the part about education, I had to cringe and heave a sigh of profound disappointment. Obama, who inflicted Arne Duncanism on the body politic and RTTT to destroy public schools. But I am giving Obama huge credit for appointing Kagan and Sotomayor to the SCOTUS.
Here is a great video comparing Obama and trump.
OMG!
Sometime you just can’t make stuff up.
That’s hilarious.
Thanks!
Truth is greater than fiction.
Hilarious, Dr. Rex!
Obama did an outstanding job in both Philly and Miami. Trump is now accusing him of slander. All Obama did was to repeat some Trump’s specious and outrageous assertions. He also highlighted Trump’s failure to lead in the pandemic and his admiration for dictators.
Obama is an effective speaker. It was interesting that when he went through the hypocrisy of Trump’s cabinet one by one, he only told half of DeVos’ inadequacy for the job. He talked about her rolling back students’ rights and saddling college students with crippling debt. He made no mention of what DeVos has continued to do to public education, and not one word about charters and vouchers.
When Obama talked about the economy, he talked about opportunities for workers in Biden’s plan. Unlike Biden who has openly supported unions, Obama avoided using the word “union” in his remarks.
Obama believes in privatizing our public education system. It’s undeniable after all of the evidence. He gave Wall St everything they wanted in 2009 after the crash so there is no reason to think he’s going to backtrack on the education alliances he’s formed with DeVos & Jeb Bush. Just look at the Oct. Miliken Institute Forum on Education- top Democrats are sharing the stage with DeVos & global finance titans.
Obama is a brilliant orator and strategist but he has not given one inch on education. As a brilliant constitutional scholar, he should understand the implications of privatized education to Black & Brown communities.
The hateful, racist & segregationist history of education ‘reform’/privatized education following Brown should haunt every Democrat. Why would any Dem want to return our children to education like the Jim Crow era?
Perfectly put!
Obama is civilized, genteel, polite, refined, well spoken, and not full of vitriol. He gives us hope and a chance to shine our inner light. Such wonderful and admirable style! I loved his style! Still do!
And Obama is a pure bastard who committed pernicious acts of governance with the utmost of polish, using his skin color to fool people of color and otherwise. He is a fraud, a dud, and a huge disappointment. And now he is rewarded – in part by Penny Pritzker – with two mansions, lucrative book deals, and an executive producer contract with Reid Hastings, another hater of public schools and public school boards.
No, Obama has always had Obama in mind when it came to his governance. He had HIS turn to screw the American people, a privilege largely reserved for older white men in the past.
Obama is living proof and a success story that The Plutocracy is an equal opportunity employer.
He will go down, in my book, as one of the worst presidents. I voted for him. You can be sneaky and deceitful in how horrible you are or you can be open and vulgar about how horrible you are. Horrible is horrible.
I will make a very cogent argument that his take on public education and teachers has dumbed down teaching and learning exponentially, using an quid pro quo obsession with standardized test scores. By doing so, it has very dangerously jeopardized the developing ability to think creatively, independently, and critically, which serves to render generations even more impotent when it comes to fighting social and economic injustices. This is exactly what most of Central and South America has managed to do successfully, with school system that are largely privatized. An under-educated and uneducated population serves the agenda of the plutocracy on both sides of the aisle. It is a bloodless and inexpensive way to hold onto power.
Connect the dots and wake up from the Obama honeymoon.
It was over long ago . . . .
Robert Rendo,
There is something really off about how some on the left always insist that the democrats who disagree with them on policy have evil intent. It can never just be a difference of opinion. Nope, they need to demonize the opposition, with the kind of truly reprehensible things you wrote about Obama. Obama was wrong on education policy and did great damage. But your ascribing that to some purely evil and selfish motives is beyond my understanding.
Chris Hedges does that too. He and some other overprivileged white progressives who will never pay the price of their idiocy because of their privilege.
The progressive future – if there is to be a progressive future – will be when the voices of those unwitting tools of the far right are silenced — those self-described progressives who specialize in demonizing politicians like Obama – and the voices of AOC – the most brilliant politician I have seen in my lifetime – and others replace them.
I heard AOC last night being pushed by the media to demonize Biden and Nancy Pelosi. She didn’t. She understood that that Biden and Pelosi (and Obama) are NOT the enemies of progressives. The enemies of progressives are the Republican neo-fascist party. It’s a shame some of her elders are still helping empower their real enemies because they don’t have half the sense that AOC does.
NYCPSP,
AOC – who is among the best and most honest – is in a different position than me. I am not a Congressional representative. She is.
Nope. I am not buying the Obama excusionism you offer. He had 8 years and he was intentional and deliberate about his education policy. I am NOT forgetting or forgiving that, as it had and has a sweeping and profound impact on society and generations of innocent children and their families. He has paved the way for DeVos. Bush cut down the trees, and Obama removed all the stumps and lay down the tar roads with rollers. He left children bereft of important learning and cognitive development. He also had a chance to create a public option for healthcare and did nothing about it.
Yeah, he is a slower acting poison than Trump, and in all honesty, he was great to the LGBTQ community. Wonderful! Indispensable, if you ask me, but there is more to the population than that. There is labor, taxation, public commons, Wall Street, and so forth. There was Flynt Michigan. He did nothing. His stimulus plan was a start. He was not a complete abomination, but conformed and compromised and bent towards corporate America. He did so consciously and willingly.
And for the record, AOC had plenty to say about Pelosi until she learned quickly about the power structures of Washington D.C., and then she wisely started to play the game. She is no dummy, and hopefully, we will be get more in like her. Yes, I am in alignment with you when it comes to her. She’s the real deal.
No, there is never or has to be 100% of agreement within our tent, but the Duncan-Rahm-Obama-Pritzker Chicago power circuit put tremendous ruination into the lives of children. I am NOT going to let that go EVER. Be in public education for 26 years the way I have (as a teacher and school administrator) and deal with low income populations, as I have, and then come back to tell me how you can excuse him and think he’s just fine.
In his recent speech, he came in as Clara Barton to nurse the wounds of so many his administration has injured.
Not buying it or you in this context . . . Never will. Trying reading up on Cornel West, who helped take down Lawrence Summers at Harvard. See what Dr. West has to say about Obama. I’m not the only one.
Chris Hedges was a keynote speaker at the virtual convention for the Movement for a People’s Party, and he blasted the entire establishment, citing both parties. His style is far too lugubrious for me, but I agree with his analysis and politics. We would be lucky to have several Chris Hedges in Congress and the Senate. If you had bothered to listen, you would see literally how he is concerned about all people, and not people who have white privilege . . .
Obama’s education policy was an abomination. We should never forget that because some of the responsible people will resurface in a Biden administration.
Sometimes people have differences of opinions because they just have differences of opinions. For example, I’m Jewish and I support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. I don’t support it because I hate Palestinians and want to wipe them off the face of the earth. And, I don’t assume that every person who is against the two state solution wants to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people like that on both sides. But it does mean that when you decide that someone who seems generally to support good things is not supporting something that seems good to you, it might just be that they are misguided or ignorant or value other things. Not that they are corrupt and evil.
When Diane Ravitch believed in reform, it was because she believed in reform, not because someone was paying her to do so. When she learned more and changed her position, it wasn’t because the unions paid her to change her position. But I have read critics that accuse her of both. Certainly there are supporters of education reform who do so because they find it far more financially lucrative to do so. But there are also people — like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren — who once believed that charter schools might do some good. If we lose the ability to tell the difference, then every single progressive politician will fail, because there will always be some issue in which they are “sneaky and deceitful” which clearly means that they need to be defeated even if a right wing Republican wins.
Even the way you are now describing AOC is part of the problem. You have already accused her of “playing the game”. Next it will be that she sold out. Next it will be that she is just in politics for the money. Nothing she does will ever be satisfactory — the right wing propaganda machine will amplify all these attacks targeted to progressives who will start to doubt AOC and believe she is untrustworthy.
This isn’t a “game”. Politics isn’t about imposing your will on everyone else because you know you are absolutely right and are superior to everyone else. That is a dictatorship. Politics is getting people to come around to your ideas. AOC understands that, and she isn’t playing a “game”. The people playing a game are those laughing at the progressives who help them demonize AOC and the entire democratic party so they can keep their right wing power.
LBJ didn’t play games. He understood politics, and thus managed to get lots of progressive ideas pushed through. But he didn’t get all his progressive ideas pushed through. Thankfully, the right wing propaganda machine wasn’t able to demonize him since he didn’t run again, but they sure did a job on Hubert Humphrey.
Progressives will not win with Chris Hedges demanding fealty to whatever he decides is best and attacking everyone who only agrees with him on half of it or 75% of it as an evil sell-out.
“Progressives will not win with Chris Hedges demanding fealty to whatever he decides is best and attacking everyone who only agrees with him on half of it or 75% of it as an evil sell-out.”
Yup.
“He also had a chance to create a public option for healthcare and did nothing about it.” OK, that’s a tree too far, Robert Rendo. Obama did exactly the most he could do given the political realities, an imperfect compromise. The accomplishment was enormous. I credit him with turning the entire US public, even the socialist-fearing future Trumpistas, toward the issue of healthcare, with a view toward finally voting in something that would give them a step up from “uninsured” despite their masochistic tendencies. Before that, we had 40 yrs of rising premiums in exchange for decreasing health services, & a huge proportion of the public uninsured– & voters sitting still for it. He turned the tide. Even today, a decade later, healthcare is actually a major issue affecting votes for Biden v Trump.
Thanks for reminding everyone that what seems totally reasonable to some—like Medicare for all or free community colleges—seemed completely impossible just a few years ago and is still an uphill fight
Bethtree and NYCPSP,
So, premiums under the ACA are not rising unreasonably, and people are not hit up with surprise medical bills? Really? Yes, no lifetime cap, acceptance of pre-existing conditions and staying on through age 26 are critical improvements, but the ACA ultimately did not contain healthcare costs. It rendered patients as consumers in a market that flooded sick people with a million details, plan designs, summarized comparison charts that still had the devil in the fine print, and no limit to pharmaceutical and health insurance CEO and executive compensation. Reprehensible! Just ask Katie Porter. Having to spend time just to compare healthcare plans is a full time job in and of itself, and when you’re ill,, ti is the last thing you want to do. It’s disgusting. NOT buying the ACA.
I too happen to believe in a two state solution for Israel and Palestine, by all means. It does not diminish the dignity of Jews for Palestinians to have their own sovereign nation. The question becomes which and how much land is to be redrawn. It has to start somewhere. My Jewish wife does not agree with me on that one.
No, I do not for one minute believe that AOC will morph into a corrupt politician, nor am I suggesting that she and Bernie and those like them have to be an all or nothing force. And what Hedges called for is a democratic party – if you really study his literature – that will not allow itself to be so heavily beholden to big corporate interests and that will fight for labor rights ad distribution of wealth. That means at this point that protecting what is already in place din order to not make it worse is NOT one molecule going to count towards structural and core reform. Taking the victim out of perpetrator’s way is one way to solve a problem, but removing the perpetrator and preventing them from harming again is a differ solution, isn’t it!
I am not asking for purity and extremism, but the moving pendulum more towards the center does not suffice when it needs to be moved towards the left, plain and simple. When your kid takes his prescription for an infection, you don’t give him half a teaspoon each night instead of the prescribed full tablespoon to make the medication work.
Stop living in the realm of lukewarm, feckless, and bland moves and start breathing in the reality of dramatic and immediate reform. Take a hint form there GOP who just confirmed ACB, moving swiftly. Total hypocrisy and dishonesty on their behalf, but total force, timing, and unity. The Democrats would be wise to have the same unity and militancy in fighting for labor and distribution of wealth. For the past 40 years, they have not been in a big rush. The GOP is not either.
You manage to tell me that politics is not about imposing your will on everyone, as in a dictatorship. Gee. I just NEVER knew that. Thank you for providing such a comprehensive and much needed education. Now WHY would I EVER have thought about that one? I’m so incapable, apparently. I’m so grateful for your shining beacon of explanation and wonderfulness. I’d be nothing without your enlightenment, poor little ole me . . . HOW would I EVER have figured that out about “one will imposed” linked to dictatorships? But you know clueless me by now.
I am not even implying about one view/one will, but I am talking about enough unity in the DNC to push its DNA to reflect working class, union, and labor values, and that includes – and I will say it a million times – distribution of wealth (DOW). DOW as in taxation, healthcare, higher education, public education, SS, mass transit, and consumer rights. Once again, neither party cares deeply about those things, as reflected in their governance.
Yes, I generally accept your tenet that working together and not dismissing POV diversity in the same tent is productive. But that is not the same thing as calling out the overall orientation and location on the spectrum of a party. It is crazy making and gas lighting to conflate the two.
But again, I will emphasize a million, billion times to vote for Biden and try hard to get this monster out of office. Same for flipping the Senate blue.
People believe this garbage.
………………..
RenewedRight.com says:
Barack Obama made a fool out of himself when he stood up and told these two lies
Barack Obama is back on the campaign trail for Joe Biden.
But it did not go well for Democrats.
And that’s because Barack Obama made a fool out of himself when he stood up and told these two lies.
Obama returned to the campaign trail for the first time this cycle to speak before a sparsely attended rally in Philadelphia.
During the rally, Obama unleashed four years of frustration over Donald Trump rolling back his agenda.
But during his verbal pyrotechnics, Obama lost his composure and told two blatant lies.
First, Obama falsely claimed Trump did nothing when Russians paid bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Second, Obama repeated the falsehood that President Trump called dead marines “suckers” and “losers” while on a trip to France in 2018.
“Just like when Russia puts bounties on the heads of our soldiers in Afghanistan, the commander-in-chief cannot be missing in action. I can tell you this, Joe Biden would never call them men and women of our military ‘suckers’ or ‘losers.’ Who does that? He knows these heroes are somebody’s children, somebody’s spouse, dad or mom. He understands that. He will restore our standing in the world, because he knows America’s true strength comes from setting an example that the world wants to follow, a nation that stands with democracy, not dictators,” Obama raged.
Both claims are outright lies.
The military has conducted investigations into the Russian bounty story and found that there is no evidence to corroborate this claim.
And around 20 officials went on the record – including anti-Trump former National Security Advisor John Bolton – to deny the report in The Atlantic that Donald Trump degraded dead veterans by calling them “suckers” and “losers.”
But in an example of how dishonest the Fake News Media is, the cottage industry of “fact checkers” that popped over the last four years did not blast Obama as a liar.
Renewed Right will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
The Republicans & the right wing are both delusional and dangerous. We need to get Joe Biden elected & then make sure he renews & strengthens unions and the public sector in the federal govt & state governments. If he fails, or if tRump is re-elected we will slip into a deeper, more fascist corporate takeover.
Donald Trump 60 Minutes interview released in full
https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/donald-trump-60-minutes-interview-released-in-full/news-story/aa4cd438fb5adbcb7caf0a30d38e0207#.km2rx
Isn’t that the one that is only “45 Minutes” (TM) cuz Trump cut it short?
SomeDAM Poet: Yep. That’s the one. IQ45 was interviewed by Leslie Stahl for 45 minutes.
This may seem off-topic, but the only way Trump can win Florida is if too many Democrats do not vote and the majoirty of indepdents taht vote, vote for Trump.
https://dos.myflorida.com/elections/data-statistics/voter-registration-statistics/voter-registration-reportsxlsx/voter-registration-by-county-and-party/
If you click that link and scroll to the bottom, you will discover that there are :
5,020,199 registered Republicans in Florida
5,203,795 registered Democrats
3,653,046 registered Independents
Couldn’t find anything with a Google search about who the indies favor in Florida.
I live in a deeply red part of Florida. Early voting here was busy, but no long lines here. This year I actually saw some Biden Harris signs, and Pensacola actually had a Biden car parade during Trump’s super spreader rally in the city. South Florida continues to have some very long lines waiting to vote so I remain hopeful. I’ve also heard rumors of ways the Republicans can still steal the election, but I try not to dwell on them.
I drove by a super spreader rally the other day.
I rolled up all my windows when I went by.
Never saw so many pickup trucks with flags in my life.
Nobody was wearing a mask. No surprise there.
The 2000 “election” by SCOTUS & the Brooks Brothers riots are a recurring nightmare these days.
There are 2 soon to be 3 SCOTUS justices who participated in the Brookes Bros riots that stymied the recounts. Roberts, Gorsuch & Coney-Barrett.
it45 can win w/Groveling Old Penumbras in FL cheating, stealing, suppressing votes &, generally, committing election fraud. Is their S.o.S. a Republican, like guv. DeINSANEtis?
Let’s not forget the hanging chads & the GOP FL S.o.S. who declared Bush the winner.
Perspective | Mary Trump: Psychiatrists know what’s wrong with my uncle. Let them tell voters.
Muzzling its members is a dereliction of duty by the American Psychiatric Association
By Mary L. Trump
Mary L. Trump, author of “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” holds a PhD from the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies and taught graduate courses in trauma, psychopathology and developmental psychology. She lives with her daughter in New York.
Oct. 22, 2020
…If we look at the past 3½ years, Donald has lied publicly in excess of 20,000 times; he has impulsively, and against all reason, gone against the advice of experts who could have helped contain the pandemic and protect the economy; he has put private citizens at risk by attacking them on Twitter because they have criticized him; he has proved himself to be incapable of accepting responsibility, changing course or exhibiting empathy. As Courtney Fingar wroterecently in the New Statesman: “The public can observe all these things too, but does so largely without translation or explanation by actual experts. In the end, what was written as a rule to curb speculation has, in fact, allowed it to run rampant.”
Donald’s rhetoric and behavior do have an enormous impact on and play an outsize role in the day-to-day lives of more than 300 million Americans and more in the larger world. We are, in this respect, in a relationship with him, even if it is inevitably one-sided. While it is impossible to diagnose him in the technical sense — because diagnosis is a stringent process that requires certain steps to be followed and certain data to be collected in a very specific way — shifting our focus from the diagnosis to the impact that erratic, impulsive, psychologically disordered behavior can have on those in a relationship, no matter how one-sided or involuntary, is not just useful but necessary.
I am a trained clinical psychologist and have worked as a clinician. If Donald had walked into my office for an evaluation, I would have gathered less information about him from a normal intake interview than I could gather from the countless hours of video available from his decades in the public eye. Often when self-reports aren’t available — because the patient is either unable or unwilling to offer information — the clinician turns to those close to the patient in order to fill in the blanks. But none of that is necessary because examples of Donald’s disordered, impulsive, self-defeating and destructive behavior, which are unlikely to present themselves in a clinical setting, have been extensively recorded…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/psychiatrists-mary-trump-goldwater/2020/10/22/ebf5e2b6-13c0-11eb-ba42-ec6a580836ed_story.html
Description of antisocial personality disorder / sociopathy as listed at to https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20353928
That was Obama at his best.
From Axios:
Trump plans to fire heads of FBI, CIA and Pentagon if he wins re-election
…As for Wray, whose expected firing was first reported by the Washington Post, Trump is angry his second FBI chief didn’t launch a formal investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business connections — and didn’t purge more officials Trump believes abused power to investigate his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump also grew incensed when Wray testified in September that the FBI has not seen widespread election fraud, including with mail-in ballots.
A senior FBI official tells Axios: “Major law enforcement associations representing current and former FBI agents as well as police and sheriff’s departments across the country have consistently expressed their full support of Director Wray’s leadership of the Bureau.”
Trump soured on Esper over the summer when the Defense secretary rebuffed the idea of sending active-duty military into the streets to deal with racial justice protests and distanced himself from the clearing of Lafayette Square for a photo op at St. John’s church….
https://www.axios.com/trump-firing-wray-haspel-esper-088cbd70-3524-4625-91f1-dbc985767c71.html?utm_campaign=organic&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=email
TR_ _ _
1) UMP
2) UTH
You can’t have both!
LMAO!!!! That’s an easy one!!!! Can I quote you on this?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/coronavirus-half-a-million-deaths-study-forecasts
Half a million deaths in US by February
Bob Shepherd: How can that be true when Trump declares something totally different. /s
But President Donald Trump said the U.S. is “crushing” the virus, comparing the country’s COVID-19 figures to that reported in Europe at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
How bad will this get before Trump lovers say something stinks? And the stink is coming from the WH.
This occurred after the 60 Minutes interview with Trump by Leslie Stahl:
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While we waited to see if the president was coming back, his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, came in with a hand delivery.
Kayleigh McEnany: Lesley, the president wanted me to deliver his health care plan, it’s a little heavy.
Lesley Stahl: Oh my god. This is his health care plan?
Kayleigh McEnany: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: Okay. Kayleigh, thank you.
Kayleigh McEnany: You’re welcome and the Vice President will be with you shortly.
Lesley Stahl: Okay. And the president’s not coming back?
Kayleigh McEnany: The president’s given you a lot of time.
It was heavy. Filled with executive orders, congressional initiatives, but no comprehensive health plan.
Here’s the thing about Obama. He spent the 2008 campaign listing all the horrible things Bush had done, all of which were true. He gave rousing speeches about how bad Bush was. But if you listened carefully (which I will admit I did not at the time), what was missing is anything he was actually going to do about it. We were just gullible enough to assume that he was going to fix everything, but he never actually said that.
Then he got into office and, rather than fixing things as we thought he would, he actually continued them, codified them, and even extended them. Bush, for example, could never have gotten away with assassinating U.S. citizens.
And now it’s playing out all over again. The Democrats in general, but Obama especially, are brilliant at pointing out everything wrong with Trump. But can anyone tell me the Biden/Harris plan for dealing with, say, the border wall? Are they going to tear it down? Are they going to just leave it as is? Are they going to build more? And what’s their plan for the separated families and the kids in cages (which cages, incidentally, started under Obama/Biden)? Have any of the Democrats actually said if and how Biden/Harris plan to change Trump’s policies?
Or will the Biden/Harris Administration just be an continuation and advancement, just like the Obama Administration was a continuation and advancement of the Bush Administration? And will the media report on Biden/Harris’s continuation and advancement? Will the liberals who tell us to “push him left after the election” going to follow up? Or will everyone just go back to brunch and life as “normal” because Biden is a “good guy”? If, as I fear, Biden/Harris govern like Obama/Biden did and there’s not massive push-back from the media and the liberals, expect President Cotton (or some equal or worse nightmare) in 2024 and then we’ll learn what fascism really is.
It is totally possible that Trump never got ill from COVID-19. He has gone to great lengths to keep his medical records secret. Why? He’s out of shape and eats junk food. He also doesn’t want the public to know how many in the WH got infected.
WaPo:
Trump has taken pains to hide his own medical records. He sent a bodyguard to collect his records from a previous physician. He forced everyone who treated him at Walter Reed during a surprise visit last year, which questions linger around, to sign non-disclosure agreements.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows confirmed Sunday that he sought to keep the public from finding out that at least five members of Vice President Pence’s staff have tested positive for the coronavirus just over a week before the election.
“Well, obviously, yes,” Meadows said on CNN. “Sharing personal information is not something that we should do, not something that we do actually do — unless it’s the vice president or the president or someone that’s very close to them where there’s people in harm’s way.”
“We are not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows said on CNN.
These people have no idea of what Jesus stands for. Why else would they put their trust in a lying, misogynistic, narcissistic heathen like Trump?
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Seeking power in Jesus’ name: Trump sparks a rise of ‘Patriot Churches’
Oct. 26, 2020 at 9:46 a.m. CDT
Add to list
KNOXVILLE, TENN. — The new congregation is gathered in a barn in Lenoir City, Tenn., with a roof that has a 60-foot American flag painted on it. And they are praying for a Trump landslide.
Standing in a circle, the dozen or so men and women, young and old, lay their hands on their pastor, Ken Peters, as he raises their requests to God.
He prays that “communism and socialism and transgenderism and homosexuality and abortion will not have their way in this land.”
“Yes, Lord,” someone cries.
He prays that the nation’s “Christian roots” will remain, that the church of Jesus Christ will be a “restraining power.”
“God, this nation is a miracle for you,” Peters continues. “You rescued us, and you gave us our independence for a purpose.”…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/10/26/trump-christian-nationalism-patriot-church/
This is off topic, but something that is very important. “Opening Schools’ is a disaster for the adults, and not so great for children. [But then it comes from that ‘fake news’ source CNN.]
Group sees 14% increase in child Covid-19 cases with close to 800,000 US kids infected
Updated 11:55 PM ET, Mon October 26, 2020
(CNN)Children account for 11% of all Covid-19 cases in the US, a 14% increase over the past two weeks, the American Academy of Pediatrics said Monday.
The group, which represents pediatricians, says about 792,188 children have been infected in the US as of October 22. According to Johns Hopkins University,more than 8.6 million Americans have been infected with the novel coronavirus.
The AAP said 94,555 new child cases were reported from October 8 to October 22.
Severe illness and deaths from Covid-19 are still rare among children. As of October 22, children represented between 1% and 3.6% of total hospitalizations, depending on the state. Between 0.6% and 6.9% of all child Covid-19 cases resulted in hospitalization and in states that reported the information, up to 0.15% of all children with Covid-19 died. Sixteen states reported no child deaths.
The AAP said it started collecting this data in the absence of regular releases of information from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC provides a national number of cases by age in its data tracker, but the age data isn’t released on a regular schedule. The AAP reports on numbers of cases among children weekly.
With the CDC numbers it is also hard to know where the cases are coming from, as there are no geographic indicators provided with the CDC’s age data.
The AAP’s count is not totally complete, because not all states report data in the same way. The cases are likely undercounted, according to the organization. These numbers come from 49 states, New York City, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. A smaller subset of states report information about hospitalizations and deaths by age.
The AAP recommends that children wear masks, avoid large crowds and keep a healthy distance from others. It also suggests all children 6 months or older get a flu shot. Pediatricians say it’s even more important than ever to get a flu shot before the end of October.
With two respiratory diseases circulating at the same time –flu and coronavirus — will be confusing to doctors, parents and caregivers. Plus, hospitals and clinics could be overwhelmed with the double burden.
The two viruses cause similar symptoms but a study published September in JAMA Network Open found that children hospitalized with Covid-19 were more likely to have fever, aches, diarrhea and vomiting than were children with the flu.
Children with Covid-19 also tended to be older and have at least one underlying health condition. Babies under a year old with certain underlying conditions such as asthma or diabetes may also be more likely to have severe illness from Covid-19.
Covid-19 and seasonal flu in children led to similar rates of hospitalization, intensive care admission, and need for a ventilator to help breathing, the study found. The CDC says 189 children died from flu over the 2019-2020 season.
This makes me sick. One more ‘quickie’ to get democracy destroyed.
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The Senate confirmed Barrett, 48, by a vote of 52-48 one month after President Trump nominated her, marking a lightning-fast confirmation process that left Senate Democrats bemoaning their powerlessness to delay or stop the ascent of another conservative to the high court (The Hill).
“This is a momentous day for America, for the United States Constitution, and for the fair and impartial rule of law,” Trump said while applauding Barrett during remarks at the White House on Monday night. “She is one of our nation’s most brilliant legal scholars and she will make an outstanding justice on the highest court in our land” (The Hill).
Democratic nominee Joe Biden issued a statement following the Senate vote in support of the Affordable Care Act, which comes before the Supreme Court on Nov. 7. “If you want to protect your health care, if you want your voice to be heard in Washington, if you want to say no, this abuse of power doesn’t represent you — then turn out and vote,” he urged.
The Hill: Biden says he opposes term limits for Supreme Court justices. “It’s a lifetime appointment. I’m not going to try to change that at all,” Biden told reporters.
Itch has to be scratched, the Senate must turn Blue & the House remain/gain more seats.
Only then can Biden/Harris start the cleanup.