Sunday, June 12, 2022

AOC refuses to endorse Biden for 2024 as Democrats doubt his ability to win

Left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday refused to endorse Joe Biden for another run at the White House, adding to growing anxiety in Democratic circles over the president's ability to run in and win the 2024 election.

See Also: Here's the Story with Kyrsten Sinema

"If the president has a vision and that's something we're all willing to entertain and examine when the time comes… we should endorse when we get to it. We'll take a look at it."

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

"Right now we need to focus on winning a majority instead of a federal presidential election."

Ocasio-Cortez is a vocal member of the Democratic party's left wing, which has been pushing Biden to take executive actions to get past a congressional logjam in his agenda.

But there appears to be growing discomfort with the 79-year-old president across the array of Democratic ranks.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that "dozens of frustrated Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters" were doubtful Biden possessed the ability to turn around the party's fortunes.

And New York magazine's Intelligencer explored the issue of Biden's longevity last month, noting that: "Many of the Democratic Party's biggest donors – even as they pledge to back Biden's reelection in earnest – have quietly started to poke around for alternatives in 2024."

See Also: Phim Tống Từ - Nhân Chứng

Biden is mired by the lowest approval ratings of his presidency and seemingly unable to solve a raft of problems facing the country from inflation to abortions rights and gun reform.

See Also: Phim Tống Từ - Bức Màn Bí Mật

Despite Democrats having control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, he has also been unable to advance signature policy objectives such as the Build Back Better act and voting protections.

See Also: Here's the Story with Kyrsten Sinema

But vice-president Kamala Harris, once seen as Biden's heir apparent, has struggled to make a mark, despite attempting to seize the lead on Democrats' opposition to the supreme court's expected imminent ruling ending almost half a century of abortion rights.

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

Biden has indicated he intends to run again, telling his old boss Obama in April that he was preparing for 2024 with Harris on the ticket. Sources said he sees himself as the only candidate capable of keeping Trump out of the White House if the former president launches another campaign.

According to Intelligencer, Democrats are broadly split into two camps, those who see Biden's troubles as familiar midterms woes facing most administrations, with fortunes set to improve as 2024 approaches; and those who consider that the unprecedented combination of circumstances, including Biden's age, his strategy and uncertainty of succession, make a future path uncertain and unpredictable.

Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic Texas state representative, told the New York Times that many of her party's problems at a national level, and by extension Biden's problems too, come down to one thing: failing to stimulate voters by using their power.

"Democrats are like, 'What the hell is going on?'" Crockett said.

"Our country is completely falling apart. And so I think we're lacking in the excitement."

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Ocasio-Cortez won't commit to backing Biden in 2024: 'We'll cross that bridge when we get to it'

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday would not commit to backing President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, saying instead that "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

The White House said last year that Biden intends to run for reelection in 2024, following a report indicating that the commander in chief and his staff are attempting to assuage concerns about his future political prospects.

The Washington Post reported at the time that Biden and members of his inner circle have been telling allies that he plans to run again -- an attempt to address concerns about whether he could commit to another presidential campaign given his age and ease worries Republicans returning to power.

One of Biden's close allies, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, said Sunday that he expects the President to run for reelection in two years.

"As of now, it is my understanding that the President is seeking a second term," he said on Fox.

CNN reported earlier this year that a significant number of both Democrats and Republicans currently hope to see their parties find alternatives to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the next presidential election, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS in January and February. But very few have specific candidates in mind, underscoring how distant -- and potentially mutable -- the 2024 race remains.

Unlike Biden, Trump has yet to officially announce another bid for the White House, though he frequently teases another run and still maintains influence over his party's direction more than a year after leaving office.

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Friday, June 10, 2022

Black gun owners sound off on 'ridiculous' Joy Behar's remarks: 'Her comments are stupid'

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 07:16 PM PDT

Millions of African Americans across the United States own firearms, which appeared to be news this week to "The View" co-host Joy Behar. Now some are speaking out after she suggested that loose...

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Here's how Fox News tried to spin the January 6 committee's first prime-time hearing

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 10:54 AM PDT

This column is about the media, and this moment exemplifies America's two parallel tracks of media. So if you watched Thursday night's hearing by the House's 1/6 committee, shown live by most of...

Thank you for spending some time at my site : www.tranganhnam.xyz and in my blog : http://hocdethi.blogspot.com/. I hope you come to visit again soon!

The Clown Car Corruption of the Crooked John Durham

It's hard to know what there is bad enough to say about the John Durham probe, which just saw its cause celebre indictment of lawyer Michael Sussmann drop kicked to eternity in a rapid acquittal. This was a corrupt effort from the git-go. Durham's own deputy, who had worked with or for him for decades, felt obliged to resign because of pressure to produce meritless indictments to save Trump's bacon in the dying days of his presidency.

Perjury and false statement cases are generally only brought when the evidence of deception is overwhelming. The cases most often turn on whether the deception was meaningful, material to an actual case. In this case the evidence that Sussmann deceived anyone was extremely thin. The argument that the notional deception was material to anything was even weaker.

Durham's probe has gone on more than a year longer than the Mueller probe it was purportedly investigating. And it's biggest "get" was this absurd indictment that was ignominiously tossed this afternoon. This was never a true investigation or prosecution. It was always a political assignment created by Bill Barr for the benefit of Donald Trump. Corrupt from the first moment, fruit of the poison tree.

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Verdict on Reform Prosecutors More Mixed Than Headlines Suggest

I consider myself middle of the road on police and criminal justice reform issues. As I said in the new episode of the podcast just out this afternoon, high crime rates will snuff out criminal justice reform as surely as night follows day. I'd reiterate a point I've made at other points over the years: no one has a greater interest in low crime rates than liberals and progressives because high crime rates spawn conservative politics. They don't just turn the tide against more humane criminal justice policies. They shift the whole political universe in a more authoritarian, conservative direction. Again, just an observable fact.

But with all this said, the narrative emerging out of yesterday's primaries that voters sent a big rebuke to Democrats over law and order politics or that it was a rejection of criminal justice reformers is at best incomplete.

This editorial from The Los Angeles Times gives a good review of the races across the state. It's really more of a mixed bag. Yes, Chesa Boudin went down to a resounding recall defeat. But there were a number of other races where reformist prosecutors did fine. The reformist state attorney general, Rob Bonta, managed to get more than 50% of the vote in a crowded field.

One interesting case is that of L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva. He was first elected as reform-minded Democrat (not reform in reform DA sense) in 2018 but has shifted hard to the right and now frequently appears as a guest on Tucker Carlson as a law and order foe of the "woke left." In his primary he got just under 35% of the vote and will now face a run-off with the number two vote-getter. As the Times points out that's the worst result for incumbent LA County Sheriff in the last century.

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

The whole picture is more of a mixed bag than the Boudin headlines would suggest.

See Also: Here's the Story with Kyrsten Sinema

I would stress again: I would expect reformers to be doing worse. That is because while crime rates are still far below the highs of the early '90s, they are up. What's more, while I think the spike in crime is mostly driven by dislocations caused by the pandemic critics can point to at least a broad chronology in which the rise of criminal justice reform was followed by rising crime rates. What's more, many of the policies reformers espouse are ones I'm at best ambivalent about. So this really isn't me trying to put the best face on something. The actual results both in California and the rest of the country are just much more equivocal than the overnight reports suggest. If anything they show the resilience of reform politics in a tough electoral environment.

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Understanding ‘Mass Shootings’

On the long list of excuses and deflections gun rights activists use to shut down any talk of gun regulation, one critical angle comes down to numbers. Mass shootings, school shootings, gun massacres — whatever you want to call them — only make up a tiny percentage of the number of people killed every year by guns in the United States. That's true. Relatedly, AR-15s, the mass shooters' firearm of choice, account for only a tiny percentage of overall firearms deaths in the United States. That's true. Indeed, some noted that the 10 African-Americans murdered in a Buffalo supermarket on May 14th may not even have been a majority of the African-Americans killed by firearms on that single day. Using these very real numbers, gun rights activists portray supporters of assault weapons bans, bans on high capacity magazines and the rest as reactive and innumerate. It's similar to the way that gun activists sometimes try to shut down restriction conversation by noting how people horrified by all the carnage don't know all the technical differences between this gun and that one.

These numbers are real. Upwards of 50,000 Americans die every year by firearms, a number that massively dwarfs a dozen or two fatalities in even the biggest mass shootings. But the whole line of argument mischaracterizes the role of mass shootings in U.S. culture and society. It's an argument made in bad faith on the gun supporting side of the equation. But it exists on the restrictionist side as well. That's part of what gives the argument such power.

School shootings and all of what we call mass shootings in the United States are properly understood as terror crimes. They function as such and they are intended as such. They cast a pall of terror far beyond those immediately affected by them. Definitions here get in the way of proper understanding. The most common definition of a "mass shooting" is an incident in which four or more people are shot in a single incident, or series of incidents closely related in time and location. That definition comes from the FBI and the Congressional Research Service. But that includes all sort of crimes most of us aren't thinking of when we think of mass shootings: robberies gone wrong, domestic disputes, gang killings. Those victims are just as shot. They are just as dead. But they're not what most of us are talking about when we talk about mass shootings. If they meet a technical definition then we need a new set of words to describe what we're talking about.

The hallmark of almost all of these attacks is their randomness. Sometimes they target specific groups — African-Americans at the Buffalo Supermarket or the Emanuel AME church shooting in Charleston or Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. But the shooter seldom has any relationship with his victims. He doesn't know them in most cases and they don't know him. They have no reason to know he's coming. Indeed, there's no particular person he's trying to kill. He's just trying to kill as many people as possible. In the vast majority of cases he's already decided he's going to die in the attack, which puts him beyond any negotiation or threat or deterrence. It's the randomness and spectacle that casts a pall and specter of terror far beyond the individual crime.

From one perspective, racist or anti-Semitic or misogynistic attacks are in a different category from the more random school shootings that don't seem to have any clear purpose or ideological agenda. They are certainly different to the targeted groups. But I would argue that the commonality is greater than the differences. They are all massacres as spectacle and terror. And it is these crimes where AR-15s really are central to the deed. There's a reason why virtually every mass shooter uses one. They are symbols of overwhelming force and massacre. They also kill the most people in the shortest period of time.

America has a whole other largely handgun-based problem. That's the one that facilitates the firearm suicides that make up almost half of all firearms death. It's behind most intimate partner killings, toddlers stumbling on unsecured gun and killing themselves, killings in robberies, gang killings and more. That's the source of the great majority of deaths. It's disproportionately a hand gun rather than a long gun problem. But it's mostly distinct from these terror crimes which have a logic, a goal and origins that are quite distinct.

We can't address this problem without understanding it properly. And we can't be distracted by bad faith arguments that are facilitated by lack of a proper understanding.

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Michigan GOP Gov Frontrunner Arrested

We mentioned last week that after the top GOP candidates for the Michigan governor's race were stripped from the ballot over forged signatures, the remaining at least nominal frontrunner (poll leaders in most recent poll) was a guy named Ryan Kelley, who was literally part of the mob that stormed the Capitol building on January 6th and had a lot of connections to the guys who plotted to kidnap and murder Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Well, he just got arrested by the FBI. No details yet on what the charges are or why he was taken into custody.

11:49 AM: Kelley's arrest was part of a raid on his home and stems from his actions breaching the Capitol complex on January 6th. Charges forthcoming.

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A Few Thoughts on the Hearings

I wanted to share a few quick thoughts with you before tonight's hearings.

One very minor point is that for some time I've heard complaints to the effect of, "what has the committee been doing all this time? Most of what we've found out about January 6th has been from the media." This is mostly a misunderstanding. The great majority of reporting you've seen over the last six months revealing texts and other material about the insurrection originated with the committee's investigation. So this isn't an either/or. The committee investigation has almost certainly been the primary generator of new information even though very little of it has come officially from the investigation.

The other issue is whether the committee can live up to the hype. Many Americans are convinced that none of this really matters. No one will face consequences no matter what is revealed. But precisely since many of the fruits of the investigation have already emerged in the press, is there a lot still to be learned? Is there enough game-changing information to sustain interest? I have no way of knowing the answer to this. But it has been striking to me that the top members of the committee have gone out of their way to say that there are lot of bombshells to come. We'll see.

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

Finally, what is the goal of all this? I would say there are two goals. One is simply that when there's an armed insurrection aimed at overthrowing the government, you should compile a detailed record of what happened. You should do that regardless of whether it has any immediate effect on anything. The more practical goal of the hearings should be to put the country back in the mode it was in in the hours and days just after the insurrection. At the time the country overwhelmingly saw what happened as totally unacceptable and an effort whose leaders should either be prosecuted or at least written out of legitimate politics going forward.

You get a feel for that in the recording two New York Times reporters released last night from the immediate aftermath of the insurrection in which Kevin McCarthy told his GOP colleagues that Republicans couldn't "sweep this under the rug." It's a piercing, telling revelation since McCarthy quickly steadied himself and then spent the next 18 months sweeping the whole matter under the rug. But having that comment preserved does capture the shock and realism of those initial days.

It is worth remembering that though I think there was always little chance of it happening in the 48 hours following the insurrection Vice President Pence found it necessary to release a statement stating explicitly that he had decided he would not seek to remove Trump from office by means of the 25th amendment. It was really a crazy thought since that was really never what the 25th amendment was intended for. But for a brief moment the possibility seemed very real. Real enough that Pence initially wouldn't say what he would do and then felt the need to address it directly.

This was all before the establishment GOP decided that the insurrection was, if not good, then at least completely fine. Once Republicans became functionally pro-insurrection, to many observers of American politics the whole matter became just another squabble between the two political parties. Just more politics.

You'll never get back to that original moment. The shock is gone. Too many people have spent too much time building stories which justify and minimize what happened. But that is or should be the goal: getting back as much as possible to that initial moment when the gravity and seditious nature of what happened was too clear to be ignored.

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Trump Tries Mid-Meltdown To Discredit Ivanka For Admitting She Knew Daddy Lost The Election

Sorry Ivanka, even you aren't safe from your dad's well-established pattern of publicly throwing people under the bus.

Ivanka Trump, ex-President Donald Trump's eldest daughter who served as a White House adviser, struck a massive blow to her father's fake narrative about the 2020 election on Thursday night, when the House Jan. 6 Committee aired her recorded testimony that she had "accepted" then-Attorney General Bill Barr's assessment that there wasn't evidence of widespread voter fraud.

And the former president didn't let that slide on Friday morning.

To hear Trump tell it, his daughter didn't know what she was talking about, didn't really care about her job and was just being nice to Barr (who sucked, by the way!).

"Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results," he wrote on his fake Twitter app, TRUTH Social. "She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!)."

The House Jan. 6 Committee unveiled Ivanka Trump's testimony during the panel's first public hearing to establish how the ex-president's own inner circle didn't believe the 2020 election had been stolen.

Key evidence lay in Ivanka Trump's response to the committee asking her during her interview how Barr shooting down her father's voter fraud lies affected how she saw the election.

"It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr," she replied. "So I accepted what he was saying."

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'The View': Sunny Hostin And Ana Navarro Argue About Congress' Response To The Attempted Murder Of Brett Kavanaugh

Ana Navarro and Sunny Hostin get into a skirmish on The View as the panel discuss the attempted murder of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But Navarro makes the point that as much as it's wrong for anyone to try to attack a public official, the urging for legislation isn't as swift as it should be for victims of gun violence, particularly the 19 children and two adults who were killed in Uvalde, TX.

According to Decider, Navarro commented on the incident, saying that Americans "should be worried about the Supreme Court, and we should condemn, and not condone any violence against any public official, whether we agree with them or not."

"It shouldn't just be the Supreme Court. There's also federal judges," she continued. "There was one in New Jersey, Esther Salas, whose son got killed, and she's pushing her own legislation."

Hostin interjected to contradict House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's insistence on Congress passing legislation to protect judges. She said, "Justice Sotomayor was threatened right after that judge's son was murdered, and you didn't hear about Mitch McConnell wanting to pass any legislation then. So let's remember that that wasn't a direct result. Let's put it all in perspective."

Navarro replied that the fact that an attack could occur to any judge is why condemning violence "against any public official" is important.

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

"But what we don't agree on," Navarro continued, "and what I want to know is, how come the reaction is an immediate call for legislation but our children get thoughts and prayers?"

See Also: Here's the Story with Kyrsten Sinema

"She also said regarding the Republican insistence that mass shootings come from lack of prayer in school, "If prayer prevents mass shootings, then how come people are getting killed in churches?…What do you say to that?"

The View has been addressing gun violence extensively after the Uvalde massacre. Overall, the panel agrees that Congress should pass common sense gun reform.

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Ana Navarro Furious Over Jan. 6 Hearings on ‘The View’: “I Am So Angry Again”

Ana Navarro got heated on Friday's episode of The View, reigniting her anger over the Jan. 6 insurrection during a conversation about the ongoing hearings. As the country tunes in to the prime-time committee hearing, which kicked off yesterday (June 9), Navarro said she is once again feeling upset about what took place that day last winter.

"History will not whitewash or erase what happened on Jan. 6. Donald Trump, no matter how much people try to change the narrative, is going to go down in the annals of American history with the names of Benedict Arnold and Richard Nixon. He is a traitor," Navarro said.

The hearing, which presented the Jan. 6 committee's findings over the course of June, included evidence showing how former president Donald Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election.

Navarro continued, "We've had all these indictments so far, but the people who've been indicted were the cavalry. The generals have not yet been indicted. So what I hope is that as this committee goes through the case — and Liz Cheney did an excellent job yesterday laying out the case — seven different steps of things that Donald Trump did.

"She was speaking legal jargon, she was speaking to Merrick Garland, who better get off his duff and do something about this, because we cannot be a lawless country where a president with the help of people in Congress, who apparently were asking for presidential pardons, we cannot be a country where a president can try to stage a coup, get that close to it, where police officers end up hurt, where we are all in a level of shock."

Exasperated, Navarro practically spit out, "You know, I'm so angry again. I thought I had processed this because we've been hearing about it for so long."

Her co-host Joy Behar agreed, chiming in, "I'm furious," as Navarro added, "All of a sudden, this thing has me. I will never forgive Trump or his accomplices for the havoc they've wreaked on this country."

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Sunday, June 12, 2022

AOC refuses to endorse Biden for 2024 as Democrats doubt his ability to win

See Also: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dodges on whether she'll support Biden in 2024, focuses on midterms: 'That's not a yes'

See Also: Here's the Story with Kyrsten Sinema

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

See Also: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dodges on whether she'll support Biden in 2024, focuses on midterms: 'That's not a yes'

See Also: Here's the Story with Kyrsten Sinema

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

Ocasio-Cortez won't commit to backing Biden in 2024: 'We'll cross that bridge when we get to it'

See Also: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dodges on whether she'll support Biden in 2024, focuses on midterms: 'That's not a yes'

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

Friday, June 10, 2022

Black gun owners sound off on 'ridiculous' Joy Behar's remarks: 'Her comments are stupid'

Black gun owners sound off on 'ridiculous' Joy Behar's remarks: 'Her comments are stupid'

The Clown Car Corruption of the Crooked John Durham

Verdict on Reform Prosecutors More Mixed Than Headlines Suggest

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

See Also: Here's the Story with Kyrsten Sinema

Understanding ‘Mass Shootings’

Michigan GOP Gov Frontrunner Arrested

A Few Thoughts on the Hearings

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

Trump Tries Mid-Meltdown To Discredit Ivanka For Admitting She Knew Daddy Lost The Election

'The View': Sunny Hostin And Ana Navarro Argue About Congress' Response To The Attempted Murder Of Brett Kavanaugh

"It shouldn't just be the Supreme Court. There's also federal judges," she continued. "There was one in New Jersey, Esther Salas, whose son got killed, and she's pushing her own legislation."

Navarro replied that the fact that an attack could occur to any judge is why condemning violence "against any public official" is important.

See Also: Joy Behar said on "The View" on Monday that inflation and high gas prices were a "worldwide problem" and largely blamed the baby formula shortage on Republicans.

See Also: Here's the Story with Kyrsten Sinema

"She also said regarding the Republican insistence that mass shootings come from lack of prayer in school, "If prayer prevents mass shootings, then how come people are getting killed in churches?…What do you say to that?"

Ana Navarro Furious Over Jan. 6 Hearings on ‘The View’: “I Am So Angry Again”

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