GOOD FOR HER

Kamala Harris embraces new attack role, draws fresh Republican fire

US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Israeli President Isaac Herzog (not pictured) in her ceremonial offices at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, US, on July 19, 2023.

PHOTO: Reuters file

PUBLISHED ONJULY 29, 2023 

BOSTON - Vice President Kamala Harris has shown a punchy side during a tour of nearly a dozen US states in recent weeks, attacking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for backing "revisionist history" about slavery, telling Iowa healthcare workers to rebel against the state's new restrictive abortion laws and rallying Latinos in Chicago to fight "extremist" Republicans.

On Saturday (July 29), Harris, the first woman and first woman of colour to serve as vice president, opened the NAACP's annual conference in Boston, a key political event for Black Americans that will help define the issues Democrats focus on in the 2024 election.

"We are in a moment where there is a full-on attempt to attack hard-fought and hard-won rights and freedoms and liberty. And what I know about the leaders here is that the members of NAACP are up to the challenge to fight," Harris, a lifetime member of the civil rights organisation, told several thousand people inside the city's convention centre.


The high-profile appearances are part of an expanded role for US President Joe Biden's much-scrutinized governing partner ahead of the election, senior Democrats say.

She'll engage in many more campaign-style events in months to come, designed to reacquaint Harris with supporters, burnish her image with independents and reach out to Democrats' who haven't been hearing the Biden administration's message.

It's a move that couldn't happen too soon, some influential Democrats say.


"We have constantly said to the White House that they need to send her out more because we need the base - that is Black voters and others - to understand what you are doing," Reverend Al Sharpton, a veteran civil rights activist and head of the National Action Network, told Reuters.

Biden credits Black voters for his 2020 victory, with exit polls showing he carried 87 per cent of the vote. But recent polls and turnout in the 2022 midterms reveal erosion in enthusiasm among the bloc that needs to be shored up before next November.

Harris also made a surprise visit to a congressional black caucus event at Roxbury Community College, where she reminded the crowd of the role Black voters played in capturing the White House for Biden.

She said as a result the administration capped insulin prices, increased removal of lead pipes and secured broadband for under served communities.

"Let's start registering folks now to vote," she said. "Remind your friends and your neighbours to do that."

The White House is also hoping to improve Harris' public image and historically low approval ratings. A recent NBC News poll showed 49 per cent of registered voters hold a negative view of Harris, compared to 32 per cent with a positive view, a net-negative rating of 17 that is the lowest for a vice president in the history of its poll.


US Vice President Harris fundraises for 2024 in Georgia


While it's too early to say whether her polls are improving, Harris's remarks are drawing new Republican fire, and highlighting divisions in the opposition.

DeSantis on Friday accused US Senator Tim Scott, the most high-profile Black candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential race, of accepting Harris's "lie" about Florida's new slavery curriculum requirements.

His campaign accused another Black Republican who criticised the changes, which include teaching that slavery had possible benefits to the enslaved, of being a Harris supporter.

Voters wary of the president's advanced age of 80 are expected to take a much harder look at the vice president. Some Republicans are already suggesting Harris could run the country if Biden wins in 2024.

"We are running against Kamala Harris. Make no bones about it...[it's] Kamala Harris that's going to end up being president of the United States if Joe Biden wins this election," Republican candidate Nikki Haley told Fox News in June.

Harris, who was more popular than Biden with women, young voters and even some Republicans when he picked her as his vice presidential running mate, has seen her ratings sag in office under a firehose of criticism from conservative media outlets and a portfolio that included the intractable US issue of immigration.

Some Democrats say she hasn't stepping up forcefully enough, or taken burdens off the President's shoulders. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade last year, though Harris has become increasingly vocal.

"She does better on subject matters and audiences she is comfortable with. Given the portfolio she was handed early on - and the challenges it represented - it's simple campaign management to get her out front of friendly audiences where she can get some of her mojo back," said an adviser at the Democratic National Committee.

Source: Reuters

Florida man & friends won’t tolerate Those People criticizing his slavery’s silver lining history curriculum

BY SHAKEZULA

 

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ON JULY 29, 2023

 

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AT 7:25 PM

 

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IN RACIST SHITHEADS

Unsplash

Republican outreach to African-Americans is reaching the next inevitable phase. The attacking Republican African-Americans who criticize attempts to whitewash slavery phase (Fox “News” link).

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hit back at fellow White House contender Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., on Friday after the latter criticized Florida’s new school history curriculum and its approach to teaching about slavery.

“I think part of the reason our country has struggled is because D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left,” DeSantis said during a campaign stop. “And to accept the lie that Kamala Harris has been perpetrating even when that has been debunked – that’s not the way you do it.”

“The way you do it, the way you lead is to fight back against the lies, is to speak the truth. So I’m here defending my state of Florida against false accusations and against lies. And we’re going to continue to speak the truth,” he added.

As an aside: Once again the man some Republicans hoped would provide all of the bigotry and tax breaks they got from tRump without the unpleasant side effects (open display of all seven deadly sins, being an ignorant lump and refusing to share all the money he gets from economically anxious Americans) shows he doesn’t have what it takes to be America’s next top fascist.

The Republican base doesn’t want wishy-washy whining about truth, lies and siding with Vice President Harris. They want someone to say chattel slavery was good, Black people should be thankful and joke about bringing it back. They want threats, they want slurs.

Meanwhile, human plushie Matt Walsh had an imaginary dialog with Scott.

Of course it included some whitesplaining based on the lamentably common assumption that Scott hadn’t given race a thought until someone “bad” told him about it.

And to start with, anytime you hear the left saying anything about anything related to race, never believe it on face value. Assume that they are lying because they always are.

No, Sen. Scott! Stay away from the forbidden apple of race that Vice Serpent Harris is offering you!

Walsh shifts from saying Scott is being manipulated by the left (because he’s a dumb blah person) to saying Scott knows what he’s doing (because he’s a conniving blah person). After some fumbling he settles on finding Scott guilty of attacking DeSantis from The Left. That is, Scott, a member of the right, holds an opinion that happens to be held by anyone on The Left and that opinion contradicts anyone else on The Right.

You never go after your own side from the left. Go after them. You criticize them. Never from the left. That is the unforgivable sin. If there is one sin among conservatives, it is attacking your own side from the left. You do that and you are — you should be dead to us at that point. The moment you did — do that, it’s over. You adopt the left’s talking points to go after your own side, screw you. You’re done.

LOL. Black Republicans aren’t going to leave the party because something like Matt wants them to step without fetching. However, it is interesting to see white Republicans raise the price of admission.

I just hope Vice President Harris attacks sticking a metal fork in an electric socket. From the left.

Gila River Indian Community Hosts Vice-President Kamala Harris’s First Visit to Indian Country

• Yahoo News

Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Lewis introduces U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris at the Gila Crossing Community School in Laveen, Arizona on July 6, 2023. (photo by Darren Thompson)

BY DARREN THOMPSON 

 

JULY 07, 2023

LAVEEN, AZ—On Thursday, the Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) hosted Vice President Kamala Harris’s first visit to Indian Country at the Gila Crossing Indian School.

It was Harris’s first to Indian Country as the Vice President and the first by a sitting Vice President in United States history. 

“Representation matters,” said Junior Miss Gila River Sinica Sunflower Jackson, who was one of the people introducing Harris. “I have the privilege of welcoming one of my role models to the community.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of Interior Bryan Newland and GRIC Governor Stephen Lewis also introduced the Vice President, touting the historic investments to Indian Country made by the Biden-Harris Administration. 

In his introductions, Newland said that the Biden-Harris Administration has invested more than $45 billion since the beginning of the administration in 2021. Newland said that the amount invested by the administration comprises 15 years of funding for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the federal agency he oversees.

“This administration has taken partnership to a whole new level, bringing Tribes generally to the table and working with us on important business,” said Lewis in his introduction. “Here in the community, I can easily point to our successful partnership. From federal funding to new investments in buildings like this one, this school, with more to come.”

Harris took the stage and announced the administration’s commitment to strengthening tribal sovereignty and self-determination. She said that the relationship between the federal government and Tribal Nations is sacred and acknowledged the contributions of American Indian people in the country’s armed forces. 

“President Joe Biden and I believe that the bonds between our nations are sacred,” she said. “We believe we have a duty to safeguard those bonds, to honor tribal sovereignty and to ensure Tribal self-determination.”

In an effort to address disparities that exist across Indian Country, the Vice President spoke on historic investments made by the administration, including more than $500 million in tribal entrepreneurship and small businesses in tribal communities.

“Disparities are a result of centuries of broken treaties, harmful assimilation policies, displacement, dispossession and violence,” Harris said.

She also spoke of investments in Tribal communities to support fund Native-led climate resiliency efforts.

“That is why we are investing billions of dollars to help fund Native-led—not Native-consulted — climate resiliency efforts,” Harris said. 

Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration announced that the Gila River Indian Community would be receiving $83 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act for a pipeline that would move water from the reservation to its Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project Facility. Officials have said that the project will help conserve an additional 20,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River. Harris visited the project location after her visit to the community school. 

Harris also spoke of the recent Supreme Court decision that upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act, sharing her former experience working as an attorney for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and the Attorney General of the state of California. She advised the community to be vigilant because attacks on tribal sovereignty will continue. 

“We are building a better future for this generation and the next seven generations to come,” Harris said. 

Since taking office, the Biden-Harris Administration has worked closely with Tribal leaders and relaunched the White House Tribal Nations Summit, which was initially launched during the Obama Administration and ceased during the Trump Administration. 

A crowd of more than 800 people attended Harris’s scheduled visit, including leaders from all 22 Arizona based Tribes, with presentations by local youth dignitaries, including Jr. Miss Gila River Sineca Sunflower Jackson and Miss Gila River Lehua Lani Dosela, who sang the National Anthem in the O’odham language. A cultural display of song and dance was demonstrated by the Maricopa Bird Singers and a youth group from the Gila River Indian Community.

Robert Miguel, Ak-Chin Indian Community's Tribal Chairman, said the event was “wonderful” to Native News Online. “I’m really glad we were invited to witness this,” he said.