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We Can All Be Accused Of Something, Says Kavanaugh Apologist

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By Amy Zimet / Common Dreams

The White House ostensibly run by a pathological liar, irredeemable grifter and self-confessed serial sexual predator has now officially set the bar so low it’s underground, or, more aptly these days, underwater.

This weekend, they and their slimy apologists responded to the credible charge that a Supreme Court nominee with an already appalling record also tried to sexually assault someone in his youth by dismissing, distracting, desperately victim-smearing – she donated $72 to Democrats over four years! –  crowing with gobsmacking cognitive dissonance about all the women he didn’t try to rape, blindly urging a vote NOW, and otherwise insisting nothing to see here other than the usual venal and occasionally rapey shit show. If they had any shame, this would be the time for it.   [Read more…]

Michael Moore: How The F*** Did This Happen? | Video Worth Watching

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All In’s Chris Hayes interviews Michael Moore in Michael’s home town, Flint, Michigan. Chris provides some teasers of Michael’s new movie: Fahrenheit 11/9; Michael gives a bit more background about the Flint situation, including an important historical marker: the 1936 Flint GM plant 45-day sit-down strike—the event which credibly can be considered the birth of the Middle Class; he ruminates on the Electoral College’s undemocratic underpinnings; and delilvers a jaw-dropping statistic on the number of Michigan voters who voted for public offices down to “Registrar of Deeds” and “Drain Commisioner”, yet did not cast a vote for the office of President of the United States.   [Read more…]

City Council District 6: How Can Hough Hew His Way Around An Incumbent’s Advantage?

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I’ll let you in on a little secret: San Diego is a lot bluer city than most people realize, meaning–as one politico told me recently–if you run the right Democrat, they can win just about everywhere.

City Attorney Mara Elliot carried every council district in 2016 except D5 Mark Kersey’s collection of north-central communities clustered along Interstate 15. There are roughly 130,000 more registered Democrats in the city than Republicans, who have sunk to third place–70,000 voters or so behind No Party Preference.

Fortunately for partisans on the right side of the aisle, San Diego’s City Council races are officially non-partisan. The words “Democrat” or “Republican” don’t appear on the ballot, making a high public profile a potential equalizer.   [Read more…]

A Blue Wave is Not Enough: Progressives Need to Win the Long War for Democracy

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Recently I had the pleasure of speaking to the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club about the Lincoln Club and the history of the American Right. In that presentation, I noted how the ultimate aim of the Right was to dishonestly promote deeply unpopular policies through stealth politics that take advantage of the general public’s naiveté about their agenda.  

Locally, groups like the Lincoln Club do their best to intervene in Democratic primaries and shift the landscape in their favor so they can win elections and promote policies that further enrich the elite. As I have written in this space, that’s how San Diego’s “shadow government” has rolled for decades.

At the national level, the Lincoln Club was a key player in bringing us the Citizens United case which helped further stack the deck of national politics in favor of the rich and corporate interests.   To really understand the big picture, however (as I told the audience), you need to understand the entire history of the Right’s long war to, as historian Nancy MacLean puts it, “save capitalism from democracy permanently.”        [Read more…]

Christine Blasey Ford’s Letter Detailing Sexual Assault Allegations Against Brett Kavanaugh

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Palo Alto University professor Christine Blasey Ford has gone public with allegations that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh drunkenly pinned her down and sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers in the 1980s.

She reached out to Senator Diane Feinstein via the letter posted below, initially asking for confidentiality, fearing retaliation and public attacks. News of the contact broke late last week when media reports indicated the Califonia Senator had forwarded serious allegations to the FBI.

Ford ultimately came forward out of concerns that reporters would soon identify her and a sense of public duty. She has provided medical records and the results of a polygraph test to back up her claim.   [Read more…]

This Is How Democrats (Women!) Win | Video Worth Watching

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Who says Democrats don’t have an agenda? Elissa Slotkin on the “pre-existing conditions” issue makes it real and personal. (h/t to AGD)   [Read more…]

Climate Change, Clogged Drains, and Lorie Zapf

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By Jordan Beane

On September 13th, the Union-Tribune released their interviews with our District 2 candidates, Dr. Jennifer Campbell and current District 2 City Councilmember Lorie Zapf. In Zapf’s interview, there were a lot of specific questions about the Climate Action Plan, it’s goals and more.

However, I believe the UT should have asked her a simpler question: Do you, Councilmember Zapf, believe in climate change?

Our Republican representative wants you to believe she cares about this existential threat and its impact on San Diego. She, along with the rest of the city council, voted to approve San Diego’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) in 2015. She mentioned the CAP in an op-ed. She even used the word “climate”  in a tweet once (the only time she’s done so in 1,700+ missives). She and the Lincoln Club (San Diego’s version of the Koch Brothers) flooded the mailboxes of District 2 with the same two images of Zapf cleaning out the San Diego River, portraying our Republican representative as an environmental champion.   [Read more…]

San Diego City Council District 4 | Cole vs. Montgomery: How to Make Black Lives Matter?

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At the heart of District 4 are San Diego’s historically black communities, created in large part by property deeds limiting where people of color could buy or rent homes.

In 1969 a coalition calling itself BOMB: Black, Oriental, Mexican Brothers called a public meeting in Southcrest Park and began advocating for a civil rights advocate to be appointed to a vacated City Council seat.

The appointment and subsequent election of Leon L. Williams began a tradition of the District 4 seat being held by African-Americans. Five decades later, issues of race and repression are at the center of a contentious contest between a storied incumbent and her activist challenger.   [Read more…]

Trump Blames Democrats After University Study Reports 3000 Hurricane Deaths in Puerto Rico

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“Only Donald Trump could see the tragedy in Puerto Rico and conclude that he is the victim.”
—Sen. Ed Markey

By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams

President Donald Trump has been “lying about Puerto Rico from the start to make himself look better,” and on Thursday morning Trump lied once more by falsely claiming that a widely accepted academic study showing that nearly 3,000 Puerto Ricans died as a result of Hurricane Maria was “done by the Democrats” in an attempt to make him “look as bad as possible.”

In a pair of tweets, Trump insisted that “3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico. When I left the Island, after the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers.”

“This was done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible when I was successfully raising billions of dollars to help rebuild Puerto Rico,” Trump added. “If a person died for any reason, like old age, just add them onto the list. Bad politics. I love Puerto Rico!”   [Read more…]

From Classroom to Campaign – Taking the Next Step in Service to Community | Video Worth Watching

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This campaign season has seen a number of teachers with their pedagogical training and experience take the next step in service to community by accepting the challenge of running for positions of public service. The Run for Something group released this video to encourage others to follow in their footsteps.   [Read more…]

San Diego’s City Council District 2 | Republican Zapf vs Democrat Dr. Jen: Is a Change Gonna Come?

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My coverage of the 2018 general election will focus on the City of San Diego over the next few days, starting with the City Council and moving on to ballot measures. Today’s topic is the District 2 contest between Lorie Zapf and Dr. Jen Campbell.

Let’s face it. For a city with a seemingly bright future and a terrific climate, if you had to pick a color to represent San Diego’s mood, it would be dark gray. When progressive things happen, they get tripped up by a petulant group of land speculators and scam artists entrepreneurs.

From an economic and political point of view, the “May Gray” is a year-round state of mind for all-too-many of us. All the promises of prosperity made over the past half-century compared to the ever increasing number of people who are economically challenged amount to a solid argument for why “trickle down” is a myth.   [Read more…]

Everybody Wants to be Heard

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I don’t remember how I first got on Facebook, but I’m glad I did because it’s worked for me.

I’ve learned to just scroll past all the ads, fabrications, fake news, and the like, and get right at what’s up with my “friends” who are mostly people I’ve known for some time and people who became my friends through them.

I like never knowing what I might find. It could be a sad story that makes you sigh, or a beautiful picture of someone’s grandchild that brings gentle tears to your eyes, or a meme that is wise, or one that’s not so wise. So many of them about ridding our lives of people who aren’t good for us.

And I’ve run across a few such people online from time to time, like a young woman who tore into me like a bull goring a matador – because I had the audacity to think it was okay for a woman to breastfeed her baby in public.   [Read more…]

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