I wa despairing because no prominent candidate has mentioned education. Kamala Harris spoke about public schools and teachers when she addressed the AFT yesterday in Houston. I expected that. She went to public schools and has always supported them, and that’s what a candidate says to a nation Union of teachers.
But on Jen Psaki’s show on MSNBC, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota denounced vouchers and book bans. I had never seen him speak. He was excellent! Please watch.
Jonathan V. Last posted two videos of President Biden speaking. One took place in April 2023, when he spoke in his ancestral hometown of Ballina in County Mayo, Ireland. He received an ecstatic welcome from the locals. Biden’s voice was strong and clear. He was vigorous and joyful. He was not senile then, he’s not senile now. But he has aged.
Last wrote:
I’ll always remember Joe Biden in Ballina.
It was nighttime. America’s last great Irish pol was visiting the county of his forebears. A bunch of local Irish notables gave boring remarks in front of an ancient stone church. There was a minute of restless silence. Then the music hit.
Suddenly the Dropkick Murphys are blaring from the speakers. Lasers and lights cut through the evening mist.
And Joe Biden strides out in a black longcoat like a damn WWE star to the single biggest pop I’ve seen in politics.
That was 15 months ago. Only 15 months ago.
The President Biden we saw last night was a different man. We can all see the physical changes. But where the Biden in Ballina was exuberant, sharing a once-in-a-lifetime moment of pure joy, the Biden of last night was doing something different and infinitely more important. He was teaching his country a lesson.
It was, on the surface, a valedictory speech with boilerplate about what his administration accomplished. But under the hood, the important stuff wasn’t so much a valediction as a homily. He was talking directly to Americans not about the job he’d done, but about our jobs going forward.
Two sections are worth clipping and saving.
The first was the part where Biden explained why he stepped aside:
When you elected me to this office, I promised to always level with you, to tell you the truth. And the truth, the sacred cause of this country, is larger than any one of us. Those of us who [cherish] that cause cherish it so much. The cause of American democracy itself. We must unite to protect it.
In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor. I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.
So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation. I know there was a time and a place for long years of experience in public life. There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.
I submit to you that no other president in our lifetimes would have believed that he was replaceable. None of those guys could have even countenanced the idea that the country might be better served if he passed the torch.
Biden’s humility in this act is so unique that we risk overlooking it and failing to appreciate how singular and extraordinary it is.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a hero to the party of Trump but not to the moderate and liberal Israelis who want him to be ousted from office and prosecuted for his failures. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz published the following scathing analysis of his speech to the U.S. Congress. Liberal Israelis believe that Netanyahu is prolonging the war in hopes of Trump winning the election, because Trump will let him do what he wants without pressuring him to make peace. The families of the hostages are furious at Netanyahu. Many thinks he’s delaying the day when he will be held accountable for his financial crimes, for the massive security lapse on October 7, 2023, and for his refusal to end the war.
Anshel Pfeffer writes:
If Benzion Netanyahu had his way and, instead of being forced by his wife Cila to return to Jerusalem in late 1948, he had kept his family in New York, Benjamin Netanyahu would have been born there. Perhaps he would have gone into politics and become the first Jewish president of the United States. On Wednesday evening, we had a glimpse of that parallel universe.
Netanyahu’s address to the joint meeting of Congress was a studied imitation of a presidential State of the Union, complete with the recognition of distinguished guests in the gallery at the start and the “God bless the United States of America” at the end.
But Netanyahu was not born in the U.S. He is the prime minister of Israel, and nowhere in the 52 minutes of his record-breaking fourth address (yes, he made sure to mention right at the very beginning how many times he had been given this honor) was there any detail, not even the slightest hint, of how he plans to extricate Israel from the tragic impasse in which it’s trapped, and on his watch.
Netanyahu may have won 52 standing ovations from the rapturous, majority-Republican audience, but his rhetoric that so impressed the natives in Washington offered nothing for Israelis watching back at home.
The first half of his speech was devoted to stories of the heroism of Israeli soldiers on October 7, and graphic details of Hamas’ bestiality on that day. But there was so much missing from that account. Nothing about how the strategic concepts of a prime minister who had led his country for 15 years crumbled that day. Nothing about the failures that allowed Hamas to kill and kidnap hostages at will. Or about his refusal to form a commission of inquiry.
He lauded the IDF soldiers who fought on October 7 as “unbowed, undaunted, unafraid,” and of course the soldiers brought to represent the IDF were an Ethiopian-Israeli paratrooper and a Bedouin master-sergeant. They are indeed worthy of recognition, despite Netanyahu’s blatant tokenization. But he has yet to summon up the courage to meet with any of the kibbutz communities devastated on that day.
He spoke of the ordeal of former hostage Noa Argamani, who stood there uncomfortably in the audience as an excruciatingly exuberant Sara Netanyahu gripped her with one arm and petted her with the other. Two seats away stood the beaming wastrel son Yair, on a day-trip form his opulent, taxpayer-subsidized exile in Miami. A 33-year-old Israeli who has nothing in common with the brave soldiers brought to serve as window-dressing for his father’s speech.
It was a speech that had Netanyahu written all over it. All the old hasbara clichés he’s used so many times, the regulatory lame joke (a tip he once got from Larry King that he abides by) and the biblical verse in Hebrew. But it was a speech about a reality Netanyahu is extraordinarily detached from. He talked of Hamas saying “they will carry out October 7 again and again and again. I swear to you today I will never allow that to happen,” and every Israeli watching who is not a member of the shrinking Bibi-worshipping cult said to themselves at that moment, “but you already have!”
There were some disruptions and protesters in the gallery. Seven members of hostage families were forced to leave by the Capitol Police. That humiliation was only compounded by the fact that Netanyahu had nothing for them but an empty promise that “efforts are happening right now” to free their loved ones.
They’ve been hearing those promises for nearly 10 months and they know the truth. That Netanyahu opposed the first hostage release agreement back in November and it took all of President Joe Biden’s pressure to make it happen, and that he’s spent the last few months, under pressure from his far-right coalition partners, delaying and preventing another deal.
Before the speech his entourage briefed that he would present “a vision” for the future of Gaza and the region. In the end that vision consisted of “a demilitarized and deradicalized” Gaza. Just how Netanyahu, who can’t even get his ultra-Orthodox partners to teach their kids math, is planning to educate “a new generation which must be taught not to hate Jews” wasn’t quite clear, but he was already on to the next round of slogans about an “Abraham Alliance” between Israel and “moderate” Arab nations, but once again, forgot to mention his coalition, which won’t allow him to even breathe the words “two-state solution,” which are the first condition for this alliance.
For Netanyahu, it was a triumph. It was a day on which he got in everything that means anything to him. But Israelis got nothing.
John Merrow spent many years as an investigative reporter, most recently at PBS. In the education space, he is probably best known for his multiple segments on “miracle-worker” Michelle Rhee as chancellor of the D.C. public schools, which ended with his hour-long expose of her failures.
He writes:
I spent nearly 75 years reporting for PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Pravda. During that time I received three Pulitzer Prizes, 12 George Foster Peabody Awards, 17 Emmy nominations (but only nine Emmys, to my great disappointment), and three George Polk Awards.
(My editor and I have agreed that fact-checking this column wasn’t necessary.)
In 2016 I had the unprecedented honor of being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II AND receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama. These awards were somewhat controversial because of my quite public romances over the years with Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Farah Fawcett, Cindy Crawford, and Beyonce.
(The internet has made fact-checking irrelevant.)
But there’s no truth to the rumor that Mother Teresa and I were romantically involved. We were very good friends, that’s all.
(Fact-checking is soooo yesterday!)
In 1996 at the age of 55, I fulfilled a childhood dream: I temporarily gave up reporting and signed with The New York Yankees. That season was a dream–I batted .307, stole 36 bases, and won a Gold Glove for my defensive play in left field. Many feel that I should have won the Rookie of the Year award, but my teammate and good friend Derek Jeter was certainly a deserving winner.
(Why would anyone want to fact-check me? Don’t you trust me?)
During my time as a war correspondent when I was embedded with the Special Forces in Iraq, I saved the lives of seven Americans when I picked up and threw an unexploded IED into a ditch. It subsequently exploded, and observers said we all would have been killed but for my instinctive action. For this, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the only civilian to ever have received this recognition.
(Are you thinking about fact-checking this? Maybe you should!)
OK, subtlety isn’t my strong suit, and you’ve probably figured out that I’m really writing about the absence of fact-checking during the televised debate between President Biden and former President Trump, for which both political parties and CNN agreed that there would be no live fact-checking. The result, which many of you saw, was a lie-filled 90 minutes during which Trump lied 28 or 29 times–and was never challenged!
Why am I upset? Because CNN should never have agreed to that condition. And once CNN did agree, the two reporters that CNN assigned to serve as moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, should have flat-out refused to participate. But they went ahead, giving candidate Trump license to say whatever he wanted, without fear of being challenged.
The result damaged Biden, as we all know. But for me, the process also did serious damage to CNN and to the reputations of Tapper and Bash. When I tried to make that point recently with Marty Baron, the former editor of the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, he dismissed the idea, and I imagine that many others in my (former) line of work agree with him, but I strongly believe that no reporter anywhere should ever agree to that condition.
For every journalist, fact-checking is not a choice but an obligation!
(Editor’s note: Fact-checking reveals that Merrow told at least 16 lies in the preceding paragraphs. We apologize for our failure to fact-check and will be certain to keep a closer watch on him in the future. To do so, we have subscribed to his blog, which YOU may also do by clicking the ‘subscribe’ button at the top of the page.)
Dear Kamala,
You are an exciting candidate, and I am thrilled to help in any way I can to see you become President of the United States. I admired President Biden and his courage in selecting you to be his Vice-President.
Now I see you in the campaign trail, happy and spreading joy. Quite a contrast to Trump, who is always scowling, angry, and promising to wreak vengeance on his enemies.
I have one piece of advice: Please do not choose Josh Shapiro as your Vice President. I know he is popular in Pennsylvania, and you need Pennsylvania.
But Josh Shapiro is a supporter of vouchers. Vouchers are a hoax. Their boosters are right-wing foundations who oppose abortion, gun control, and climate action. Vouchers hurt public schools. Vouchers are the pet project of Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and Texas evangelical billionaires Wilks and Tim Dunn. Another huge voucher supporter is multibillionaire Jeff Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania, who has spread money to other states to promote vouchers and is rumored to have encouraged Shapiro to push vouchers.
Vouchers are bad not only because of their supporters but because they fail to help poor kids. In fact, the evidence from evaluations in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and D.C. demonstrate that vouchers damage the academic outcomes of poor kids.
Most students who use vouchers are already enrolled in private schools. Why should the state subsidize families who don’t need the money but would be happy to have it as a gift from the state?
I know you don’t have a lot of time for reading these days, but I urge you to read anything that voucher researcher Josh Cowen has written since 2022. In that year, he declared that vouchers had failed and were hurting the kids they were supposed to help. His new book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, lucidly describes the origins of vouchers in the fight against desegregation in the 1950s and their utter failure to help “poor kids escape from failing schools.”
You have a great list of potential VPs. Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania should not be on that list.
Thank you,
Diane Ravitch
Ryan Teague Beckwith of MSNBC writes about one of Project 2025’s most unusual objectives: criminalizing porn. He digs deep and finds that beneath the rhetoric is an ill-conceived attack on transgender people and those who are LGBT.
But the immediate contradiction is that their candidate Trump has a long history of interacting with porn and—ahem—porn stars.
He writes:
Amid the 920 pages’ worth of conservative ideas in the Project 2025 plans for a second Donald Trump administration, one stands out for its sheer improbability: criminalizing pornography.
Just five pages into the foreword by the president of the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank, the proposal stakes out an uncompromising position that porn should be banned, porn producers and distributors should be sent to prison, and tech companies that circulate it should be shut down.
It’s true that politics makes strange bedfellows, but we’re talking about anti-porn crusaders teaming up with Trump, who has literally had his share of strange bedfellows. To recap:
Trump has said, unconvincingly, that he does not know the people behind Project 2025 and does not support all of its proposals. But on this subject, he has previously endorsed a similar idea, signing a pledge from the group Enough is Enough in 2016 to crack down on porn and potentially appoint a presidential commission to look at the “harmful public health impact of Internet pornography on youth, families and the American culture.” (He did neither.)
Hahahaha!
The state of Florida—Ron DeSantis and his dumdum legislature—has decided that climate change doesn’t exist, but climate change doesn’t care. The Miami Herald reported that the last of a rare species in the Florida Keys has died—because of rising seas. The children of Florida won’t understand any of this because the State Department of Education will not buy textbooks that explain climate change. They think—I suppose—that if you don’t learn about it, it will go away.
Key Largo has a new, disturbing and first-of-its-kind graveyard. There are no headstones, no burial markers, no names, no bodies.
It’s the last place an incredibly rare species of tree called the Key Largo tree cactus was seen alive, back in 2023. The killer? All the clues point to climate change.
At least, that’s what a newly published paper suggests. Scientists have been watching this particular stand of cacti — known for their height (up to 20 feet) and brown hairlike puffball they grow around their flowers — since the 1990s.
At the time, researchers determined that a two-acre patch in John Pennekamp State Park was the only population in the U.S. of Pilosocereus millspaughii, an offshoot from the larger Caribbean population of the cactus. But as of last year, the very last of the bunch is gone. And researchers believe sea level rise was the main culprit — rising tides and groundwater turning the soil too salty for the plant to survive. It appears this local extinction (also known as extirpation) could be the first climate-driven demise of a species in the United States.
“As far as we know, from any published research we can find, this is the first case we can find,” same James Lange, lead botanist with Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens and co-author of the study, which was published Tuesday in the Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. “It was tragic to see as we monitored this over the years,” he said. “It was a big, old beautiful plant, one of the things that makes the Keys unique. And we’ve lost it.”
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article289915489.html#storylink=cpy
Trump selected J.D. Vance as his running mate. He is not well-known. He grew up in Appalachia, and he wrote a bestseller called Hillbilly Elegy. He subsequently graduated from Yale Law School and became a hedge fund Manager.
Not so long ago, he derided Donald Trump. But subsequently, he changed his view and became a Trump fan. He didn’t just criticize Trump, he loathed him.
Rachel Maddow explains Vance’s dramatic transformation here.
Mercedes Schneider read Project 2025 and concluded that its unifying goal is to turn the American people into white evangelical Christians. This “conservative” vision of a different America doesn’t give much thought to those who are neither white nor evangelical not Christian.
She writes in summary:
Free the churches, imprison the librarians.
Roberts was in the news for stating that an “ongoing American Revolution” will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” According to The Hill, that comment caused “blowback” for Roberts and the Heritage Foundation.
None of Jesus’ ministry involved any political agenda, much less the government-driven denigration of “other” or the imposing of His will on any human being.
Yet here we are.
It behooves every literate American to read this extremist document before casting a vote in November.
Andy Borowitz is a humorist, probably the best in the country. He notes here that President Biden has exercised the new power of immunity for his official actions granted him by the U.S. Supreme Court. Very likely the rightwing majority created that “one person is above the law” exemption with the expectation that Trump would be the next president. Maybe they will reverse their decision when Kamala Harris is elected President.
Borowitz writes:
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Using the sweeping presidential immunity recently granted him by the U.S. Supreme Court, President Biden on Tuesday replaced Judge Aileen Cannon with his dog, Commander.
The legal community’s initial reaction to the appointment was favorable, with most experts agreeing that Judge Commander is an improvement over Judge Cannon.
In his first official act, the German Shepherd reversed Cannon’s ruling on the Trump documents case by eating it.
President Biden had no comment on Commander’s decision, other than, “Good boy.”
In a positive development for Judge Cannon, a GoFundMe has been established to send her to law school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 