CNN lottery sets next Democratic debate lineup. Winners, losers?
Top Tier July 30: Sanders vs Warren
Top Tier July 31: Biden vs Harris
I’d say the most pressure in this round is on Biden. Another dud performance could pull the plug.
Bottom line: Will Biden, Harris, Sanders or Warren lose top tier status?
the guardian:
Biden will be under huge pressure to perform better next time and will find Harris directly standing next to him on Wednesday 31 July. The media is likely to hype it as a grudge match and opportunity for revenge.
Van Jones, an activist and commentator, likened it to “the Thrilla in Manila”, the world heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier that followed “the Rumble in the Jungle”.
Jones said on CNN: “We’ve got the big rematch now. Both these candidates have got a lot on the line.”
Adding to the intrigue, another African American candidate, Senator Cory Booker, who was also critical of Biden’s comments, will be on the former vice-president’s other side.
more from that guardian piece:
The draw separates the former housing secretary Julián Castro and the former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, who sparred over immigration in the first debate. Castro was widely seen as getting the better of the exchange. It puts two New Yorkers, Bill de Blasio and Kirsten Gillibrand, together.
Notably, also, the Tuesday lineup is all white: Steve Bullock, Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney, John Hickenlooper, Amy Klobuchar, O’Rourke, Tim Ryan, Sanders, Warren and Marianne Williamson.
The Wednesday debate will be more racially diverse: Michael Bennet, Biden, de Blasio, Booker, Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Gillibrand, Harris, Jay Inslee and Andrew Yang.
CNN’s attempt to turn the draw into a cross between sporting event and TV game show, with shuffling of cards and overhead cameras for “transparency”, did not impress everyone.
Jon Favreau, a podcaster and former speechwriter for Barack Obama, tweeted: “This is the greatest CNN moment since their first hologram.”
Max Burns, a Democratic strategist and Fox News contributor, tweeted: “This is everything wrong with how we produce and consume political coverage in America.”
How weird that the lineup for 7/30 looks like a loaf of white bread and the lineup for 7/31 looks like a loaf of marbled rye.
Bernie!, Bernie!, Bernie! You didn’t see this coming?
I can’t see this coming up on the 30th… ~~~
But in fairness to Bernie!’s campaign, the $36,000 salary paid to organizers is equivalent to 2400 hours at $15, which would be 46 hours per week straight time at $15/hr or 44 hours if the additional time is at time and a half. If you’re a Bernie! supporter you better hope he’s done the math and says that no organizers are required to work more than 44 hours per week. Oh, and salaried workers aren’t generally subject ot wage and hour laws.
get a load of the expression on the face of the little ladyholding a sign just under her chin in the left center behind the twit’s right shoulder at 1:29 to 1:58 minutes in on this video. methinks she’s a bit uncomfortable.
Donald Trump rallies in North Carolina and continues his attacks on “The Squad,” causing his supporters to chant “send her back” about Rep. Ilhan Omar.
some other jibes about something else twit said at the rally from NY Times Best of Late Night:
‘Nothing’ to Rally Around
The hosts pounced on President Trump’s response to criticism of his Wednesday rally in North Carolina, where people in the crowd chanted “send her back” — referring to Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born congresswoman from Minnesota. Trump later claimed he’d tried to stop the chant; the hosts raised their eyebrows at that, as well as his remark at the rally that he had “nothing to do.”
During his speech, Trump referred to another progressive congresswoman, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as just “Cortez,” because he said he didn’t have time to say her full name.
“Man, you literally just told us you had nothing to do! [As Trump] ‘I have more time than anyone! I got nothing to do!’ ‘Can you say this congresswoman’s full name?’ ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t have time for that. You think these crazy tweets write themselves?’” — TREVOR NOAH
“[As Trump] It takes too much time to say three names. Time I could be spending with my dear friends Mohammed bin Salman, Kim Jong-un and KFC.” — STEPHEN COLBERT
“I wonder if he uses that excuse with his kids. [As Trump] ‘I can’t remember three different names!’” — SETH MEYERS
I’m hoping Klobuchar makes Bernie look like the fool that he is.
Jamie… we saw Klobuchar on Rachel last night. Rick was very impressed and said he wishes she manages to breakthrough and climb up in the polls. Said he thinks she’d make a really good president.
how it’s playing down ticket in the heartland
Louisville courier-journal:
Matt Bevin: Trump isn’t a racist, but Beshear is a ‘coward’ for not calling Trump a racist
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin on Thursday said Democratic rival Andy Beshear “doesn’t have the stones” to say President Donald Trump’s tweet targeting four minority congresswomen was racist.
“He’s a coward,” Bevin said of Beshear in an interview with 840-WHAS radio host Terry Meiners. “He’s trying to have his cake and eat it too. He’s afraid to alienate the people that he wants to come here and raise money on his behalf, knock on doors on his behalf, run ads on his behalf.”
The comments came a day after both Bevin and Beshear, who are competing in this year’s governor’s race, refused to call the tweets racist during a Kentucky Farm Bureau forum in Louisville.
[…]
On Wednesday, Beshear said the statements were “wrong and ugly and he should have never tweeted them” but would not call them racist, while Bevin said Trump is “absolutely not” a racist and he would “let the president speak for his own tweets.”
About 24 hours later, however, Bevin said the controversy was “an absolute bunch of baloney” aimed at Trump, who has endorsed Bevin’s 2019 reelection efforts.
[continues]
gerth is surely gonna get guff for this op ed in today’s courier journal:
Why doesn’t Elaine Chao ‘go back’ to China? She can fix the huge problems there
Ever since I went to China in 2006, I pay a little more attention to it than most people.
My daughter was born there, and there will always be part of my heart that loves the country, but there are things I don’t like about China.
From its authoritarian government and its human rights abuses to its staggering poverty in large, rural swaths of the country to the way it has for years stolen both trade and military secrets from the United States.
There are aspects of Chinese government that are complete and total catastrophes, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world.
So, my question is, why doesn’t Elaine Chao, the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, go back and help fix the totally broken place from where she came and then come back and show us how it is done? That place needs her help badly, she can’t leave fast enough.
Whoa!
Did I just write that?
Normally those words would never have flown from my fingertips. A few days ago, it would have seemed wrong to write that. Wrong to even think that.
Telling someone of a different ethnicity or race to “go back where you came” always seemed among the most racist of racist things one could say. In the southern United States, when those words were said in the past, they were often preceded or followed by the N-word.
Lord only knows what horrible things Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine black students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957, heard just before and after 15-year-old Hazel Bryan screamed “Go back to Africa” at her.
But obviously I was mistaken.
The president tells me that telling someone to go back to where they came from — even if one is an African American woman, one is a Somali-born woman, one is a second-generation Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx, and one second-generation Palestian-American woman — is perfectly fine.
“Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” Trump tweeted Monday.
McConnell appears to agree.
During a Tuesday press conference, he blamed both sides for hypercharged rhetoric — a thing Republicans in the Trump era love to do — and suggested everyone needs to cool it.
“The president is not a racist,” McConnell said after reporters wouldn’t let him get away with his vague condemnations of everyone but no explicit condemnation of the guy who regularly heads to Twitter to blow his dog whistle.
McConnell, who has never been shy about calling his political foes racists when they criticize his wife, refused to say if he would consider a similar attack on his wife racist.
He then changed the subject and noted she came to the country legally when she was 8 years old, as if racism can only be practiced against people who came here without a visa.
On Wednesday, Gov. Matt Bevin, who once accused Lexington Herald-Leader cartoonist Joel Pett of “racist ideology” after Pett referenced Bevin’s children, four of whom were adopted from Africa, refused to take a stand when asked if he would consider it racist if someone called on his children to go back from where they came.
Democrat Andy Beshear didn’t do much better. He condemned what Trump said but refused to say if he thought Trump’s tweets were racist. Obviously, he thinks some of you are racists and doesn’t want to lose your votes.
So, one of two things is going on here.
Either McConnell was blatantly using his wife’s Asian ethnicity in a purely political effort to hammer his political opponents in the past, or he is a coward who refuses to take on a sitting Republican president who repeatedly says and does racist things — simply because criticizing Trump could harm him politically.
Ditto for Bevin.
And Beshear just lacks guts.
Fact is, Chao, whose family moved from mainland China to Taipei in 1949, four years before she was born, during the Chinese Civil War, shouldn’t go back to “where she came” from unless she wants to return. And no one — not me, not you and especially not the president of the United States — should tell her otherwise.
Nor should the president tell U.S. Reps. Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib that they should go back where they come from. Especially since three of them were born in the United States.
It’s been interesting to see the president and his supporters twist what he said in recent days to convince themselves that the man who has banned refugees from Muslim nations, who has promised to build a wall keeping dark-complected people from crossing our border, and the man who called developing countries “shit holes,” is not a racist.
You can decide if he’s a racist yourself.
But his words clearly were racist, and I feel dirty for even suggesting — even satirically — that a person of color doesn’t belong here.
I’m going to take a shower.
russians rapists racists and relatives.
Send them ALL back
Cramer : More corporations blame trump tariff taxes than the Fed for the slowing economy.
XR, great idea.
Bevin certainly has stones to call Beshear a coward for agreeing with him instead of saying something like, “See? Like I said…”. Btw, if Beshear believes what he said he’s as dumb as Bevin.
Epstein and Nader suggest a questionable pattern — pedophiles seem to be drawn to trump and vice versa — why? his spoiled rotten childlike persona maybe
wapo:
A Trump associate and key witness in former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian election interference has been indicted on charges of transporting a 14-year-old boy for sexual activity.
George Nader pleaded not guilty in Alexandria federal court on Friday; a trial is set for Sept. 30. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema declined to let him out on bail, citing “the nature of the charges and [his] extensive overseas connections.”
According to three-count indictment, in February 2000 Nader brought a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the United States through Dulles International Airport and brought him to his home in Washington for sexual activity.
[…]
The explicit videos of minors were found on one of the phones Nader gave to FBI agents working for the special counsel. He came and went from the country several times while being interviewed by Mueller’s team about his contacts with Trump’s associates. ….
[…]
An well-connected adviser to the United Arab Emirates, Nader was seen by Trump allies as an operator helpful at navigating politics in the Middle East. He attracted Mueller’s interest for helping arrange a meeting in the Seychelles in January 2017 between Erik Prince, a Trump supporter who founded the private security firm Blackwater, and a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Nader also visited the White House several times after the Seychelles encounter, meeting with senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, according to people familiar with his visits.
[continues]
And in TDF news Aliphilippe won the individual time trial today and extended his lead over Geraint Thomas by 14”. Tomorrow is a BIG day – the stage ends with a climb up the Col du Tourmalet, a 19km climb, at an average gradient of 7.4%. It is the first of the 2019 Tour’s mythic climbs, coming the day after Today’s sweltering and gruelling time trial. Should be interesting.
wapo:
A Yazidi woman from Iraq told Trump that ISIS killed her family. ‘Where are they now?’ he asked.
[…]
For several minutes in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Murad stood beside a seated Trump, who mostly avoided eye contact with Murad, and implored the president to help her community return to Iraq. She explained that the Islamic State, or ISIS, may be gone but that Iraqis and Kurds are now fighting for control over Yazidi lands.
“If I cannot go to my home and live in a safe place and get my dignity back, this is not about ISIS,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s about I’m in danger. My people cannot go back.”
Murad, who now lives in Germany, told him she never wanted to be a refugee but that ISIS murdered her mother and six brothers.
“Where are they now?” Trump asked.
“They killed them,” she repeated. “They are in the mass grave in Sinjar, and I’m still fighting just to live in safety.”
“I know the area very well that you’re talking about,” Trump responded.
[Opinion: I am a survivor of Islamic State violence. Don’t forget us.]
Trump met with nearly two dozen foreigners who, like Murad, had suffered religious persecution in their home countries. Others included a Jewish Holocaust survivor, a Tibetan from China and a Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar.
Trump told her he would look into it “very strongly.” As she started to back away, Trump said: “And you had the Nobel Prize. That’s incredible. They gave it to you for what reason?”
For what reason?” Murad replied. “For, after all this happened to me, I didn’t give up. I made it clear to everyone that ISIS raped thousands of Yazidi women.” She told him she was the first woman to get out and speak publicly about what was happening.
“Oh, really, is that right?” Trump said, his voice notably more upbeat. “So you escaped.”
“I escaped, but I don’t have my freedom yet,” she said.
Trump has said that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Syria and North Korea and has lamented that President Barack Obama received one during his first year in office.
[continues]
Pogo – I do wonder what Alaphillipe was going to do tonight to get ready for tomorrow. He burned a lot to make the time. Did you see the crash where the rider tangled up in the fence. Terrible. He is in a hurt. Peter Sagan did do a wheelie for the crowd today.
The Amazon Prime days sale has produced a couple winners again this year. The prime is a new recliner. My old one is on the way to either a person who can put in new springs and recover the frame, or the garbage pit. Because I sometimes spend weeks in it the thing wore out. The cats have shown me their love by aerating the fabric, mostly where I cannot swat them. After a couple springs cried out in agony when breaking I knew I had only a few weeks or days left on it. So. Prime came through and delivered it a week early. So now I have to tear down one, rearrange my family room and assemble another. Something to do on a hot weekend.
Strange things of the internet tubes. I look up a lot information across a tremendous rainbow. From gun cleaning tools, to elephant toe nail polish, to LGBTQ issues to information about stupid things. On YouTube I watch all sorts of videos including guns, computers, hacking, sailing, sump pump repair – you get the idea, I look up some “manly man” things. I get a laugh out of ads I get for far right causes. The privacy switches mean nothing. All the media sites share your searches with others. The only good is that I can see a little of the hate groups and the disinformation spread by them.
BB no I didn’t see the ITT. Just followed it casually on line. I’ll watch it tonight.
Denver 100F . . . Washington D.C. 100F
Denver 9% humidity Washington D.C. 60% humidity
One okay. One sucks!
It’s a cool 91 here (feels like 99) – (54% humidity and a little wind – 9 mph wsw). I’m debating whether to go home and ride the lawn tractor. Low tonight is 77, dew point is 72. I’m thinking a beer’s gonna win out on this one and the grass can wait for the morning.
94F here.
“Where are they now ? ” – trump addressing woman who had just explained that isis killed her family
Thus, trump wins a place in the 2019 Michele Bachmann Award contest in the Logic category.
RR
Glad Rick liked her. She is so totally prepared to step in to the office and go to work. Big problem, she comes across so “Minnesota Nice” that people have trouble seeing the steel in the woman. Who raises their hand for permission to speak in a political debate? She is an attorney and was her County attorney for 8 years and has now been in the Senate since 2007, so she definitely knows her way around town.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Klobuchar
craig, did you mean to schedule Sturge’s Saturday “puncture this” offering for Sunday?
or are we on FT — florida time — and gone native
My front yard visitor this morning. Her boyfriend was in the backyard.
Used to have a Red Buddy flew in mornings and evenings to do battle with his reflection in the glass doors but haven’t seen him lately.
Trump has unleashed the hoards of idiots. I’ve always know there was a deep racist strain in the US, but I don’t remember a time when the majority of the idiots felt empowered to openly express their hatred.
The idiot whisperer.
Jamie, firing up the deplorables by replacing Hillary with the squad and making them the face of the democratic party (who now have to embrace them on principle because of his “send them back” chant) looks like his plan for 2020 until the nominee (whom he will then demean with guns blazing) is selected.
in the meantime, media is NOT covering democrat candidates. their attention completely on trump giving him again free PR (except for the air time when they cover AOC).
Sunday’s offering is ready to go. I found something special or at least I think so.
Jack
TDF – Alilphilippe shows how to hold the yellow jersey.
Cc said he was going to put up what I sent last week for this Saturday but I don’t know…..
Sorry Sturg, i put the wrong date on it. Now live, new thread
No hay problema, amigo
Hello trail riders. Haven’t been here for awhile, but I’m glad to see so many old friends. Hope you don’t mind if I rejoin you on the trail. CJ