The New York Times today published an op-ed by someone who supports many of the current administration’s policies but thinks that Trump himself is dangerous. What is incredible is that the op-ed is anonymous but written by a senior official working in the administration.
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Yesterday’s Democratic primary elections in Massachusetts saw another shock win by a young woman of color against a long-time incumbent.
It wasn’t supposed to happen. Ayanna Pressley trailed Rep. Joe Capuano by 13 percentage points in the last poll before Tuesday’s Democratic primary to represent Massachusetts’s 7th district in Congress. When Capuano, a 10-term incumbent, conceded an hour after the polls closed, he was trailing Pressley by 18 points. Because there is no Republican running in the district, the 44-year-old Pressley, who in 2009 became Boston’s first female African-American city council member, is now expected to become the first African-American woman from the state to serve in the House of Representatives. The victory is yet a another sign of a demographic sea change taking place within the Democratic party, with constituents opting for fresh, aggressively progressive candidates over establishment mainstays. Appropriately, Pressley’s campaign slogan was #ChangeCantWait.
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The Trump white House is keeping the publishing industry busy with one gossipy book after another. The latest is from Bob Woodward, whose style is to write books based on conversations on ‘deep background’ with high officials, where he can quote people but cannot say who told him what. The presumption seems to be that since they are given anonymity, they will speak freely and frankly without fearing repercussions, even though he says that he actually recorded all the conversations and thus cannot be contradicted too forcefully. The picture he paints is hardly surprising or new. Trump comes across as an ignorant, narcissistic, and vindictive person. Is there anyone who does not know this by now?
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That is according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll released today, with 93% disapproval.
Just 3 percent of black Americans polled said they approved of Trump’s performance, compared to the president’s 36 percent approval overall. An overwhelming 93 percent of black Americans, meanwhile, said they disapprove. Those numbers have plummeted, data over time shows; just months ago his approval among black Americans was nearly 20 percent.
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There have been some surprising and encouraging results in various elections around the country. Primary elections held in Florida on Tuesday resulted in a surprise win for Andrew Gillum as the Democratic nominee for governor. Shaun King writes that the nominations of three black candidates for governorships (Ben Jealous in Maryland, Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and Gillum in Florida) marks a watershed in US politics.
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Apparently word was conveyed to her that it would be better if she stayed away from the funeral service for John McCain. This should not come as a surprise to her. It has long been public knowledge that despite his public protestations to the contrary, McCain regretted his choice of her as his running mate in 2008.
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I am a long-standing member of the ACLU. After the election of Donald Trump, the membership in this group more than tripled. I ran into the then-director of the Ohio ACLU and she wryly told me that while this surge in membership was welcome, there would come a time when the ACLU would take a stand on some issue that would make many of these new members realize that the ACLU was not an arm of the Democratic party and they would react angrily.
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A jury in Texas has found a police officer Roy Oliver guilty for the murder of Jordan Edwards, a 15-year old unarmed black youth, while he was a passenger in car driving by. The story was a familiar one in which the officer argued that the boy and his friends had been acting aggressively towards his partner and that he had been forced to fire at them in defense. But the body cam videos showed a very different story, that the car had been moving away.
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A little over two years ago, in June 2016, the people of the UK voted in a non-binding referendum to leave the EU, what is now known as Brexit. I have been following the fallout off and on but have to admit that my eyes glaze over when I read articles about Brexit, because the issues seem so complicated and technical. None of the major British political parties seem to like the idea of leaving the EU in general, though significant factions within them are pushing for it. There is talk of a hard Brexit, a soft Brexit, and things in-between. There are so many possible directions in which it can go, each of them having major problems.
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In my post and the comments about people whom I would be shocked by being charged with sexual abuse, Crip Dyke asked the following interesting question about the names given by me and other commenters.
I find it interesting that Tabby is the only person to name any women. Are there really no women who would shock the commenters on this post? Or is it that it doesn’t even occur to you that women might be perpetrators, so you didn’t imagine being shocked at an accusation because you can’t even imagine the accusation?