Brief campaign note. Was knocking doors for Branden Fletcher Dominguez yesterday, and I was paired with Susan Sander, who just won a seat on the Red Clay School Board. She’s the real deal! What an upgrade.
Hey, it’s an open thread, so that’s not a digression…
Ezra Klein: Why Biden Is Losing, And What He Can Do To Change It. I agree with him that one step is to stop the poll denialism:
It’s not Joe Biden’s poll numbers that worry me, exactly. It’s the denial of what’s behind them.
Democrats need to redefine Trump. “Biden is not running against God,” as Bernie Sanders put it. “He is running against Donald Trump.” A year ago, Democrats were pretty confident than as the possibility of a Trump presidency came closer, voters would realize what they were risking and come home to Biden. That looks less likely with each passing day.
The mistake Democrats keep making about Trump again and again is to assume that the rest of the country will see Trump as they see Trump. But Trump won in 2016 and he came scarily close in 2020; absent the pandemic, he may well have been re-elected.
There are other ways to run against Trump: He cut taxes for rich people and tried to cut Medicaid for poor people. He cut funding for the police before a crime wave and got rid of the National Security Council’s pandemic preparedness group before the coronavirus hit. He told the oil companies to give him a billion dollars because they’d get preferential treatment if he’s re-elected. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, took $2 billion from Saudi Arabia to fund his private equity firm. Trump’s flagrant violations of democratic norms and basic decency often overshadow the banal ways in which he governed, or let others govern, in cruel, stupid and corrupt ways. Right now, the Biden campaign has much more money than the Trump campaign; it should be using it to redefine Trump in the ways that matter to the voters they need.
Discuss.
Rudy Giuliani Gets His Felony Indictment. Fittingly, during his 80th birthday party:
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was officially served with a felony indictment on Friday night for allegedly interfering in Arizona’s 2020 presidential election. Officials with the office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes served Giuliani in front of nearly 100 guests at his 80th birthday celebration in the Palm Beach, Florida area.
The New York Post reported early Saturday morning that the former personal attorney to Donald Trump was in high spirits when he was served around 11 PM on Friday at the Lake Clarke Shores home of GOP consultant Caroline Wren. Prior to being served with felony indictment paperwork, Giuliani reportedly “belted” the song “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra in front of what the Post said was between 80 and 100 guests. Some of the more high-profile attendees of the party were longtime Trump aide Roger Stone and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“Some partygoers started screaming and one woman even cried as Giuliani was served,” the Post’s Lydia Moynihan wrote.
Yep. Segregation Academies Still Exist In Alabama:
Divisions like this have long played out across the region. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring public school segregation unconstitutional. As the federal courts repeatedly ruled against the South’s massive resistance, many white people pivoted to a new tactic, one that is lesser known and yet profoundly influences the Black Belt region today: They created a web of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of private schools to educate white children.
Now, 70 years after the Brown decision, ProPublica has found about 300 schools that likely opened as segregation academies in the South are still operating. Some have flourished into pricey college-prep behemoths. Others, like Wilcox Academy, remain modest Christian schools. Many have accepted more nonwhite students over the years, and some now come close to reflecting the communities they serve.
But across Alabama’s 18 Black Belt counties, all of the remaining segregation academies ProPublica identified — about a dozen — are still vastly white, even though the region’s population is majority Black. And in the towns where these schools operate, they often persist as a dividing force.
We had the same thing happen here in Delaware after desegregation. They were called ‘Christian schools’. And, yes, de facto vestiges remain to this day. They shouldn’t get any public funding, but they do.
Great Gut Food. Hey, I eat lots of these (but no miso in lukewarm water thankyouverymuch). Perhaps it’s why I’m often referred to as a magnificent chiseled specimen of manhood.
The Burgeoning DE Turf Frederica Empire. Pretty much everything you need to know. Except THIS:
Now, academic researchers are conducting higher-quality studies to determine whether PFAS and other chemicals detected in turf samples can end up on athletes and pose a risk to their health.
“I don’t think there’s been nearly enough studies to know,” said Christopher Kassotis, an assistant professor in the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at Wayne State University who is preparing to conduct a study on whether the chemicals found in turf can affect the endocrine system. “There’s very little work here on human exposure, and that’s certainly a piece of the puzzle when it comes to risk.”
Kyla Bennett, the lead researcher behind the tests in San Diegoand the director of science policy for PEER, said the results are a “red flag,” and larger studies are needed.
But some parents aren’t waiting around for clearer answers.Parvini has lobbied forlocalschool boards in California to use turf fields made without PFAS.In the meantime, he tries to limit his daughter’s playing time on artificial turf fields.
“If they want to use PFAS in microchips, great. My kid doesn’t eat microchips,” he said. “But if they want to use it in artificial turf and my kid is exposed to it 2,070 hours a year, well, what is that doing to her body?”
That’s an article worth reading. You won’t find it in any Delaware articles cheering the economic development boon that may be forthcoming in Frederica.
What do you want to talk about?