Tuesday, October 01, 2024

MAGA Derrick Anderson is a fake

Paul Rudnick.



Homophobia is a sickness.  It harms not just the homophobe but also the entire community.  That is why forty-year-olds stay in the closet even when running for public office. 

Oh, look,  Alex Woodward (INDEPENDENT) reports:

A Republican congressional candidate posed for a photo with a woman and three young girls in an image that could be mistaken for a family holiday card.

But the picture — posted on the National Republican Campaign Committee website to promote Derrick Anderson’s campaign, and included in a video on his campaign’s YouTube account — is not a family photo at all. 

They are the wife and children of Anderson’s friend.

Anderson, a former Army Green Beret running for a seat in Congress in Virginia, also was filmed with the woman and her children in footage that was posted to his YouTube channel.

The candidate does not have children of his own and is not married. He has separately announced that he is engaged, and has filmed himself with his fiancee.

He lives with his dog, according to his campaign website.

The source of the images surfaced in a story from The New York Times titled “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives” that outlined how Republican campaigns are relying on their families as the fight for abortion rights and reproductive healthcare access takes center stage in 2024 elections.

The story noted how male anti-abortion Republicans who are “struggling to appeal to female voters concerned about their records on reproductive rights” are now “unleashing their spouses to make the pitch on their behalf.”


Greg Owen (LGBTQ NATION) adds:


The candidate’s duplicitous strategy seems aimed at creating the image of a family man aligned with the anti-abortion message that he and fellow Republicans are obsessed with.  

Anderson does not have children of his own and is unmarried, but anyone quickly glancing at the photos would likely assume they’re his own wife and kids.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade in 2022, Anderson celebrated the ruling, posting to Twitter that the court “finally got it right” and “overturned a 50 year decision of federalizing abortions.”

Earlier this month, he posted video to X campaigning on a deserted suburban street with a woman named “Maggie” that he claimed was his “fiancé.”


Not every straight man gets married by forty.  Some are Warren Beattys, for example, having sex with any and every woman.  They get a reputation for being a lothario.  There are also straight men not into marriage and that's fine too.  But a forty-something man who pretends to have a wife and kids?  That's usually a tell.



"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Monday, September 30, 2024.  Kamala delivers a major speech in Las Vegas, we review journalism and reporting and releasing information which are not all the same thing, COMMON DREAMS and THE PROGRESSIVE don't like Black women, and much more.


Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris continued campaigning over the weekend culminating in her Las Vegas stop that found her addressing a huge crowd in person starting around 10:45 pm EST.  



In addition the huge crowd that turned out to hear her speak, online where over 521,000 streamers turned out during the live speech which, again, started at 10:45 pm EST last night.  Now there was probably way more than that that.  We only checked the following during the speech: Kamala's campaign site (which had two streams), LAS VEGAS REVIEW JOURNAL, Roland S. Martin's YOUTUBE channel, NEWS 3 LAS VEGAS,  FOX "NEWS" and DEMOCRATS.ORG.  Usually, PBS and AP -- among others -- are also streaming the speech.  Ava and I were writing "The death of corporate media has been widely misreported" so that's all we had time to check during the speech. 

Pay attention to this next part.


Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris:  And right now a serious housing shortage is part of what's driving up costs.  So we will cut the red tape and work with the private sector to build three million new homes.  And provide first time home buyers with $25,000 down payment assistance so you can get your foot in the door. You'll do the rest.  And we must lower the cost of living because, while our economy is doing well by many measures, prices for every day things like groceries are still too high.  You know it and I know it.  So I have a plan that includes lowering costs on everything from healthcare to groceries -- including, I will take on the corporate price gouging that we know has resulted in jacking prices up -- often around tragedies and emergencies.  We will give a tax cut to a hundred million more Americans including $6,000 during the first year of a child's life knowing that the vast majority of our young parents have a natural desire to parent their child well but not always the resources to do it.  And that six thousand dollars in extending and expanding the child tax will help buying a crib,, buying a car seat, doing the thins that are so critical in that first phase of life.

That's my transcription.  Pretend it's not though.  Pretend I just copied and pasted the transcript the campaign sent out (I was told that transcript will be sent out later today).  If all I did was copy and paste and stopped right there?

That's really not journalism.  I'm trying to walk a few through what Ava and I covered last night.  

So the Association of Home Builders estimates building a new house to require 22 subcontractors.  Are you grasping the number of jobs that are being created with Kamala's proposal?  Do you know that home construction has fallen in the US and we are not matching population growth currently when it comes to building homes?  Or that there's been a national decrease in the number of homes built -- 44% decrease -- since 2006.  

That information provided?  That falls under the category of reporting. 

Last week, journalist Ken Klippenstein published at his SUBSTACK the   research that the Trump campaign did as part of the vetting of JD Vance to be on the ticket with Donald Trump.

It's not all the vetting that was done or that was written as anyone who's worked higher on a campaign knows.  This is the most basic vetting that can be done, a review of public sources.

Publishing it is not reporting.   Here's what Ava and I wrote:

Like Matt Taibbi's TWITTER FILES 'reports,' there's no reporting being done here.   We called Matt's work "The Twitter Dumps" and that's what Ken has done.

 

Reporting is not releasing documents.  Releasing documents is releasing documents.


We applaud the releasing of documents -- The Pentagon Papers, WIKILEAKS' work, etc.


But we don't confuse that with journalism.


That Ken does makes him appear more than a little out of touch.  


271.  That's the amount of pages -- that's how long the leaked report is.  In what world do most Americans have time to wade through 271 pages.  We did.  It meant losing sleep time.


Reporting could have been done on the 271-pages.


We'd argue that what emerges is that JD Vance is an angry, little boy who's never grown up and feels he'll never become a man because of Daddy issues related to his father abandoning him.  He goes around looking for a Daddy and he has no scope or prism by which to examine any issue beyond his own limited personal view.  He can't relate to others or understand them unless they share his grievances and immaturity.  He clearly needs help.

 

We say that as two who trudged through every page -- including the page where his September 1, 2006 speeding ticket is reproduced.  The ticket, of course, wasn't issued to "JD Vance."  It wasn't issued under his birth name  James Donald Bowman.  It was issued under his first legal name change name James D. Hall.  He would have another name change in 2013 -- around the age of 29  -- when he became JD Vance.


Who changes their legal name twice?  Once, okay, but going to court to get a third name?  That really goes to his inability to be consistent.  His name, like his political positions, are all over the map.


As debate prep for Tim Walz, publishing the 271 pages might have some value.  They demonstrate how hollow Vance is and how he'll do or say anything  America doesn't know JD Vance. 


That is the take way from the 271 pages -- and JD Vance doesn't know JD Vance.  He's forever changing and remaking himself, forever looking for a daddy figure to guide him.


He's forty-years-old and, if Donald's elected, he could be president because Donald's so old and so very fat that he could easily die in the next two years from a massive heart attack.  


Tim might wonder in Tuesday's debate whether, for example, he was standing onstage with the JD that supported the Supreme Court's ruling legalizing same-se marriage or he was standing on stage with the 2020 JD that had a hissy fit over basic workplace protections that prevented someone from being fired for being gay?


Corporate media refused to release the report or cover it because, some claim, it might have been hacked and it might have been from Iran (the hack might have been done by an Iranian citizen acting alone or by the Iranian government).  

 

While that may indeed be a reason given, we'd argue the larger issue is that they take the position that they've already covered it.

 

Vetting Vance, for any who don't know, is research that the campaign did on JD.  They vetted others as well.  Marco Rubio, for example, was vetted as well.  (His file has not leaked at present.)  But, at that Mother Tucker Carlson's urging, Donald went with JD.  Whack job Tucker insisted that the 'deep state' would assassinate Trump if he picked Rubio because they'd want Marco to be president.  


Remember, kids, when you need the polling on the deep-state go to Mother Tucker, he's the inside man.


We'll come back to Tucker.


How can the media claim that they've already reported on the 271 pages?  Because it's largely their reporting.  It's statements that Vance made to the media, it's statements from pieces that Vance wrote for the media.  It's also his traffic record (public information), his basic school records (public information), etc 

 

If Ken were to do journalism on the 271 pages, he could pick any issue and report on the changing positions that Vance has held in his 20 or so adult years.  He could do that on any issue.  He could do that on many issues.  He hasn't done that though he has published that TWITTER deactivated his account and then he shared a communication informing him that this was permanent -- he was permanently banned from TWITTER.  He's shared that FACEBOOK and GOOGLE have also banned links to the 271 page report but they have not banned Ken himself.


We repeatedly castigated Matt Taibbi for claiming Tweets were reporting.  They are not.  Nor is publishing a 271-page report.  There's an argument that can be made insisting it was journalism and we wouldn't quibble with that.  But publishing a 271-page report is, in and of itself, not reporting.


Should the 271-page now published report be banned?  No.  There's no reason to ban it or to ban Ken.  The bulk of it is a collection of quotes from publications like THE WASHINGTON POST.  

 
A number of e-mails are already coming into the public account -- and honestly feels like we just finished writing the piece for THIRD ten minutes ago -- horrified that we said it's not reporting.  Sorry, but it's not.  A journalist is not supposed to be a stenographer.  CBS has already announced they won't be fact checking.

So why the hell are they pretending to be journalists.  On Tuesday night's debate, they'll ask questions.

Who gives a f**k about their pompous and out of touch questions?

They're not needed for that.  You can get questions from voters online.  Or when Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda read questions like in the video below.


Stop pretending that you're doing reporting when you are not.  And don't pretend that asking a question and then nodding along to whatever response is offered (no matter how big of a lie it is) passes for journalism.


Elisabeth Bumiller has her pros and cons -- many more pros -- but in the '00s many saw her as a stenographer for the Bully Boy Bush administration and not a reporter.  That's in part due to journalistic ignorance.  Every piece with her name signed to it in THE NEW YORK TIMES was not reporting "Memo From The White House," for example, was intended to be mini-commentary.  She was a reporter (she's now an editor) and that was the paper's fault for not explaining what was going on and putting the "memo' in the news section.   We called her out for her reporting many times and we called her out for her opinions in the "memo" pieces.  She also wrote the most important Iraq War piece for the paper which was also the most underread.  

I think Ken did the right thing and I think he shouldn't be banned.  But what he did wasn't reporting.  Reporting would have required him writing about what was in the 271 pages.  We live in a climate where talk show hosts are mistaken for reporters.  

The position we take on Ken is consistent with the positions we've taken repeatedly on these issues.  Unlike Glenneth Greenwald and Matt Taibbi.  Taibbi wanted to lie last week that this and the censoring of THE NEW YORK POST report on Hunter Biden's laptop were different because of what he calls government involvement.  (As Mehdi Hassan noted in his interview with Matt over the Twitter Dump, Joe Biden was not in office.  We could go more into that but I'm honestly bored with this topic already.)  No, that's not accurate.  Matt called out the censorship in real time.  We did too.  We did it more strongly and we addressed the legal issues that Glenneth couldn't with both of his hands.  

But what did Matt do in 2023?  Went around bragging about the importance of The Twitter Dump and how he revealed in it that the government was censoring.

So when Matt says, as he did last week, that he doesn't have to respond -- that was his attitude when people called him out on his silence -- because this isn't government censorship?  He didn't call that out -- the laptop -- as government censorship in real time.  That's why he preened and strutted in 2023 thinking he had proved something, remember?

Again, this is not a topic that I care to spend much time on.  Ava and I had to read all of that 271 pages -- as well as a lot of pieces of yea Ken and boo Ken nature.  

This is not an issue that voters are desperate to learn of.  There are real issues out there.  

Summary: Ken was right to publish it and shouldn't be banned for it.

Now we can get back to real issues that have to do with the election?  Because voting's already started and will continue through election day which means there are 35 days left to vote.

I'm not going to be drinking today other than a few sips of water.  Why?  I'm non-stop throwing up.  (Drinking any significant amount of water will mean throwing up throughout the day which won't happen on a dry and empty stomach.) As I dictate this, I have to keep stopping and go off to the side to throw up. (Dona note: C.I. didn't dictate the snapshot to me but to clarify, she works out while she dictates the snapshot.  If she's not at home, like this morning, then she's outside running while she dictates so that what she means about having to go off to the side.  To step off the track or park sidewalk or where ever it is that she's running this morning, step to the side to throw up and then go back to running and dictating.  Saw that question in the e-mails and added this to answer it.)   I could be at home now in my bed.  Instead I'm out on the road and I'm getting damn tired of it as I watch these so-called left outlets that do nothing, not one damn thing.

When I speak about Kamala's home ownership plan, I do what I did above.  I talk about the jobs it's going to create.  I talk about the sinks and tubs and toilets it's going to sell.  I talk about the impact this will have the economy  -- it's going to boost the economy.  And people are always say that they hadn't realized all that.  

And they hadn't because most outlets aren't doing their damn job.  Let's repost what I wrote last night in full.

THE WEATHER CHANNEL notes, "Millions of people across the Southeast remained without power Sunday in the aftermath of Helene. For many in the western Carolinas, rescues were still happening, as crews tried to reach communities isolated by flooding and landslides." At least sixty people lost their lives.  At COMMON DREAMS, Jessica Corbett notes:


The youth-led Sunrise Movementsaid Sunday that "any reporting about Hurricane Helene needs to be clear—this is not normal. This is not just a tragedy. This is a crime. Fossil fuel companies have known this would happen for the last 50 years. They lied to the public and bought out our government just to make a profit. Make them pay."

Greenpeace USA similarly declared on social media Saturday that "#HURRICANEHELENE MUST BE A WAKE-UP CALL FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE!"

"We are heartbroken," the group said, noting the dozens of people killed. "Communities have been devastated. The corporations heating the climate must be held accountable." 


Corbett goes on to misreport by next including a Tweet from the increasingly deranged Nina Turner who tries to paint a picture of this being a non-political issue.


Wrong.  This is absolutely a political issue.  Maybe Nina needs to find one topic -- at least one -- she can be an expert on.  Maybe that would put an end to her non-stop tumbles and fumbles of recent years.


Her comments are pure stupidity.  And its journalist malpractice for Jessica to even include them.  It amounts to climate change denialism.  That's what it is.  Donald Trump does not give a damn about climate change.  He didn't address it when he was previously in the White House and his plans for another four years include dismantling oversight.  His supporters -- such as Elon Musk -- are fine with trashing the earth because they believe that they can colonize Mars.  This is not minor.


Jessica and COMMON DREAMS are guilty of not just misreporting but of endangering the planet.  There was no reason for Nina Turner's b.s. Tweet to be included.  There was every reason to note that Donald is not going to protect the planet.  There was every reason to note Joe Biden's efforts over the last four years which have not been enough but have been something.  And there's every reason to note Kamala's plans and how a Kamala presidency would be more open to pressure. 

It's interesting that Jessica includes Nina Turner's Tweet but not this Tweet from Antonia Juhasz:



Let me note some from Antonia.  She reTweeted this:



And she Tweeted this:



And she Tweeted this:


Guess which one of the three above Tweets and one reTweet that Jessica notes in her article?  That's right, the one that doesn't mention Kamala Harris. 


It's amazing just how far COMMON DREAMS went to ignore Kamala.  They are supposed to be a left outlet yet they repeatedly expose themselves as something other than that.


Our planet is at risk.  Your choices are Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.  For COMMON DREAMS, they're not really in the fight to save the earth.  They make that clear with their selective coverage where even when they're quoting someone (their Tweet) about the topic, they ignore the support for Kamala.

Jessica ends her article with this:


Highlighting the connection between climate change and more intense hurricanes, Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said Thursday that "the climate crisis is here. We must act to save lives."


And how are we going to do that Jessica?  One way would be voting Kamala and then holding her feet to the fire on the climate issue.  But apparently, even a little over a month away from the election, COMMON DREAMS refuses to entertain that idea.  Even though that's the easiest action that anyone can take for climate justice.


Days before Jessica's dangerous typing went up, Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling (THE NEW REPUBLIC) explained:

Hurricane Helene has derailed the Republican presidential ticket’s campaign across the South, forcing Trump’s vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, to cancel several stops in Georgia. But the 20-foot storm surge–inducing, tornado-spawning weather event hasn’t yet changed Trump’s stance on his plan to tear down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, root and branch.

The climate agency, whose responsibilities include providing free weather forecasts as well as tracking and predicting hurricanes, would be completely gutted under Project 2025, the 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto that purports to be Trump’s second-term agenda. (Trump has haltingly and not particularly convincingly attempted to disavow Project 2025; a recently unearthed video features one of the project’s authors bragging that there will be “one-to-one mirroring” of the policies laid out in the document and Trump’s proposals.) 


Are you getting it?  Because it's sailing right over the heads of the people working for COMMON DREAMS.

You know what else is sailing over their heads?  How Black women are especially noting their lack of support for Kamala Harris.  Black women who turn out every election.  The same Black women that learned in the '00s they'd be ripped apart at DAILY KOS and all the other Democratic Party sites.  Because Black women weren't appreciated.  And that's still true today as COMMON DREAMS makes clear.  COMMON DREAMS went all in for John Kerry or have we forgotten?  They went all in for Hillary.  So forgive those of us who are noticing that the only different standard comes into play when it's a Black woman.


Then COMMON DREAMS wants to be reluctant about supporting the Democratic Party presidential candidate.  And only then.  Don't think we aren't noticing it. 


JD Vance is completely unqualified to be president.   In 2008, Sarah Palin was ripped apart by the press and that was done, we were told, because John McCain was so old he might die in office after being sworn in -- that would have been 2009.   John McCain was 71-years-old.  That's seven years younger than Donald Trump is now.  For the record, McCain died ten years after the 2008 run at the age of 81.  No one's a prophet (unless they're a crazy on stage with JD this past weekend).  But contrast the way Sarah was examined with the way that JD is.  Most people have no idea who he is.  But the GOP put out the lie that people didn't know who Kamala was and the media ran with it.  


No one knows that little weirdo JD Vance.


We -- Ava and I -- read the 271-page report.  He has flipped on any issue and every issue.  He has flipped on Trump.  There is nothing there, no there there.  He is hollow and has no core.  In a better media environment, the corporate media would have run with that on their own. 


Instead, they ran with the GOP line that Kamala was unknown.  No, America knew their vice president before she became the presidential candidate.  They do not know JD Vance.  They do not know how he lies about everything.  His personal life should back up the life that he is trying to now enforce on others but that's not the life he lives.  He's a little henpecked male who never grew up and who has very serious issues that require therapy.  


But we're less than forty days to the election and not only has the press failed to address the realities of JD Vance -- the mainstream press -- so has the so-called left media.  Let's look at THE PROGRESSIVE.  No one buys the print copy anymore -- they have more subscribers to the print copy than they sell at bookstores and on magazine racks.  So all they've really got is online.  They have a Ted Glick article about Harris is better for Palestinians -- they published that Friday.  And Wednesday was a miracle day for THE PROGRESSIVE when they discovered JD Vance was lying about Haitian immigrants.  You know, the topic most people were talking about by September 10th when Donald Trump repeated those lies in the debate with Kamala.  

They certainly have a laid back attitude to the election, don't they?


I'm not Robert Redford so don't expect me to whore for that trash magazine the way he does.  


What I will do is note their staff:

  • Publisher - Norman Stockwell
  • Web Editor - Delaney Nelson
  • Acting Managing Editor - David Boddiger
  • Associate Editor - Michaela Brant
  • Art Director - Susan Webb
  • Director of Advancement & Engagement - Daniel K. Libby
  • Digital Engagement Coordinator - Sheriffer Chisanga

  • Office Manager - Elizabeth Miller


    • Not very progressive, is it?  See men all the important positions.  I don't consider "office manager" an important position.  And having seen the images THE PROGRESSIVE runs with, I don't consider an art director at THE PROGRESSIVE to be an important position either.  


    If you missed it, THE PROGRESSIVE is so unimportant now that it's had to drop to a bi-monthly magazine published only six times a year.  If you want to be even more depressed, pick up the August-September issue and notice the bylines -- how few women, how few people of color.  Yet they call themselves THE PROGRESSIVE?  And do they really think Ruth Conniff's piece explaining "Despite what Donald Trump and his cult following claim, the former President is not an almighty, irresistible man of the people" is the hardest that they can hit?  


    I see they can't promote Kamala at all.  


    Maybe there's some hidden diversity there, in those bylines?  Bite your tongue, I tell myself, don't out someone no matter how pathetic their closet case living is.


    The following sites updated:






     
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