Kamala Harris

[GreyhoundFan]

Since Kamala is Biden's pick for VP, I thought she deserved her own thread.

Trumpvidians are upset. Some of the crap they are shoveling is more insane than usual.

Case in point:

 

[fraurosena]

 

[Cartmann99]

Marge Simpson responds to Jenna Ellis:

Quote

“I usually don’t get into politics, but the president’s senior advisor, Jenna Ellis, just said Kamala Harris sounds like me,” said Marge, who has been voiced by Julie Kavner on the animated Fox series for 31 seasons. “Lisa says she doesn’t mean it as a compliment.”

“If that’s so, as an ordinary suburban housewife, I’m starting to feel a little disrespected,” she continued. “I teach my children not to name-call, Jenna. I was going to say I’m pissed off, but I’m afraid they’d bleep it.”

 

[IrishCarrie]

Has anyone else felt happier since Kamala and Joe became a team? I'm in Ireland so I don't have direct skin in this game, but I've always loved travelling in the States and my heart has been breaking one tiny piece at a time over the last four years at what's been done to it. I feel very connected to the USA, i've been all over it and found absolutely lovely people everywhere I went. The heartbreak caused by Trump has escalated so rapidly and so ferociously throughout 2020 and Covid that I've been feeling I'll never see the USA again.

But watching Joe and Kamala's speeches the other night I felt...optimism! I felt like the grownups might be about to take over and sort stuff out!

I turn 50 next year and my plan for my 50th was always California - two or three weeks of going from the top to the bottom. I've passed many a happy hour looking up schedules and tourist attractions and reading blogs on it, and while I've more or less accepted it's unlikely to happen now I've kinda also been feeling that it'd NEVER happen for me. But since those speeches? Yeah, it'll happen! Things will get better and I'll get back my favourite holiday destination!! 

**And this is totally off the point, but I only realised when I watched her speech this week that her name isn't pronounced Kam-A-la, it's Comma-la! And that's such a pretty name, I just love it!**

[47of74]

Former NBA photographer learned the hard way that being a racist and misogynistic cannon of douche does not pay.

Quote

A freelance NBA photographer from Houston is in the hot seat after he shared an offensive meme about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on his Facebook page shortly after the pair announced they were 2020 running mates.

The photographer, Bill Baptist, posted a meme that read “Joe an and the Hoe.”

When KPRC 2 contacted the NBA for comment on the matter, a spokesperson for the organization issued the following statement:

“The photographer is an independent contractor and his services are no longer being used in Orlando.”

Of course he trotted out all the usual excuses after he was called to the carpet for his bullshit. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can see Faux (or OAN or Newsmax) saying pretty much every nutty thing in this video:

 

[front hugs > duggs]

My brother sent me that video and I found most of it hilarious. I was laughing with each name mispronunciation (not because I think that is funny in reality, but funny that again you can see some of them being used on Fox News). When they got to Alexandria O'Kamala Cortez I splurted out my water. I also thought the "taking your red meat away" thing was a joke until I saw Mike Pence's speech ?

[fraurosena]

Oh, come now. Repugliklans are only doing their best to live up to their misogynistic reputation...

 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

I'm in Iowa, and this was the 1st year I've ever door knocked and called for a presidential candidate, and the candidate I was door knocking for was Kamala. I was SO FUCKING HAPPY when he FINALLY announced her as his running mate. I love her, she's smart, fearless, sassy, classy, fierce, funny AND she knows her shit. Joe does as well, but Joe is Joe and Joe is old AF & I'm already over the Joe has dementia that the dementia don and his goons are throwing out there. 

Kamala will get black women, Indian women & men excited to vote, she's getting progressives excited to vote. She's got a commanding presence, charm for days and can run a room, we need that. Where Obama was more "we'll just let it play out" she'll be HELL NO we gonna do something. If, God forbid" something happened to Joe, she could step in and run, and we need that assurance. That was McCain's downfall in picking Palin, she wasn't ready to step in, she was/is bat shit crazy and not the sharpest tool in the shed.  The fact that the GOP is flipping their shit over her makes me even more certain she was the perfect choice for VP. 

[fraurosena]

Trump Promises to ‘Take a Look’ at Bogus Kamala Harris Birther Claim

Quote

In a move that reeked of the birtherism, racism, and xenophobia that helped elevate him to office, President Donald Trump on Thursday said he’s “heard” that Sen. Kamala Harris may not “meet the requirements” to appear on the Democratic presidential ticket and vowed to “take a look” at the claim when someone asked the president if Harris is somehow not a natural born citizen. 

Rather than immediately shutting down the birther conspiracy theory that erupted in the wake of Joe Biden’s pick of Harris as his VP, Trump appeared to lean into the baseless rumor when asked about it by a reporter at Thursday’s press briefing. 

“I have no idea if that's right, I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president," Trump said “But that's a very serious... you're saying that they're saying that she doesn't qualify because she wasn't born in this country?” 

Trump admitted he had no idea if the claim he was being asked about over the senator’s background was accurate before rambling on to say, “I just heard about it, I'll take a look." He went on to praise the lawyer who first put forward the birther claims about Harris as “highly qualified” and “very talented.” 

The questions about Harris are without merit. But the California Democrat, who had one parent come to the United States from India and the other from Jamaica, is already facing the same kind of racism that Trump elevated about former President Barack Obama during the Democrat’s time in office.

In a fact check earlier this week, The Associated Press thoroughly debunked the conspiracy charge being leveled at Harris, citing her being born in Oakland, California. 

After Trump’s comments, communications officials with Biden’s campaign pointed to a statement they had made earlier in the day as the same line gained oxygen on the right. 

“Donald Trump was the national leader of the grotesque, racist birther movement with respect to President Obama and has sought to fuel racism and tear our nation apart on every single day of his presidency,” Biden campaign rapid response director Andrew Bates said. “So it's unsurprising, but no less abhorrent, that as Trump makes a fool of himself straining to distract the American people from the horrific toll of his failed coronavirus response that his campaign and their allies would resort to wretched, demonstrably false lies in their pathetic desperation.”

Around a minute into the briefing Thursday, Trump used the opportunity to level a series of attacks on Joe Biden as his own administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic faces withering attacks from the newly announced Democratic presidential ticket. 

And in the process, he mangled his own messaging on masks, the crucial public health measure he took months to practice himself despite his own administration encouraging the public to don masks in public since early April. 

Earlier Thursday, the day after Biden appeared with Harris for the first time as a pair, both Democrats pushed for what would amount to a mask mandate across the country for three months. Biden urged governors to do the same thing. Harris used her introduction as the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Wednesday to eviscerate the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. 

At a time where one could hope the president would be using his platform to educate the American public about the pandemic that has killed more than 166,000 in the country, and on the same day the U.S. reported the most COVID-related fatalities since May, the first part of the briefing was filled with jabs and attacks at his political rival. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Kamala Harris, supported by a sea of sisters"

Spoiler

Shortly after Sen. Kamala D. Harris became Joe Biden’s running mate, the Democratic National Committee began receiving thousands of donations in the precise amount of $19.08, without any obvious explanation.

Soon, it became clear that the donations were a tribute to Harris (Calif.) from fellow members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, a Black women’s organization founded in 1908. As of Friday, the DNC had received 14,408 donations in that amount, for a total approaching $275,000, and they continue to arrive.

The contributions are a sign of how AKA, a close-knit network of Black women nationwide, has mobilized behind Harris. AKA cannot make official endorsements, so the work is less overt — members show up at Harris events, give money, organize get-out-the-vote efforts, network on how best to support the cause.

To some members, this is a version of the informal but powerful networks that have long supported White men: alumni groups, fraternal organizations, business associations. Harris was initiated into AKA at Howard University in Washington in 1986, and many members speak of being deeply moved by finally seeing one of their own on a major-party ticket.

“I think we all feel empowered and we all feel important,” said Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.), a co-founder of AKA’s political activist wing. “We all feel that now someone knows our history, someone knows our story, someone hears our voices. This makes a huge difference.”

Harris’s highest-profile moment since joining the ticket will come on Wednesday, when she will take the debate stage against Vice President Pence.

With 1,026 chapters and nearly 300,000 members, AKA is no small army. And it’s being reinforced by other members of the “Divine Nine” Black fraternities and sororities, with a total membership approaching 1 million, all working informally in their communities.

Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), a member of Delta Sigma Theta, said members see themselves in Harris. “We all feel this sense of pride that we have made it,” she said. “She knows her shoulders have to be wide and strong, because we are all standing on her shoulders and we are proud of her.”

Harris’s campaign appearances are limited by the coronavirus pandemic, but in almost all of them, she is surrounded by women in pink and green, AKA’s colors. On blazers and pins, signs and T-shirts — and virtually, on heart emoji and Instagram hashtags — the colors are omnipresent.

AKA members are also taking more practical action. The sorority recently put out a call to members who are lawyers, asking them to volunteer for the National Bar Association’s election protection initiative. Those AKA lawyers will be on call if a voter’s ballot is ruled invalid, a registration is challenged or a poll closes before someone can vote.

As of last week, 800 AKA members had volunteered, and more than 1,000 are expected to undergo the training before the Nov. 3 election.

“This time . . . you have a person of color on the ballot, and that has energized a lot of women,” said Glenda Glover, AKA’s international president.

Black sororities and fraternities have long played a critical role in African American life, starting in the decades in which White fraternities excluded African Americans and enabling Black women and men to form bonds and networks when other channels were closed.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), where many of the chapters are based, have also been crucial cultural influences — including Howard, where the first AKA chapter was formed in 1908 and where Harris graduated in 1986.

Her presence on the Democratic ticket, as someone who chose both AKA and Howard, is electrifying to many HBCU alumni who watched as Harris — the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, schooled at times in Montreal, able to float between worlds — chose to steep herself in Black history and tradition.

“The mere fact that Senator Harris, the vice-presidential candidate, saw worth in Howard University and became a lawyer — just think,” Wilson said. “I’m sure with her background and her galactic ability she could have gone to Harvard or Yale or Princeton, and she chose Howard. And she chose Alpha Kappa Alpha.”

Because AKA would lose its tax-exempt status if it officially backed a candidate, it is pouring much of its energy into generic get-out-the-vote efforts — although, truth be told, a certain candidate preference is assumed.

AKA created a 100-day plan directing every undergraduate chapter to ensure that its members cast a ballot. Many of those chapters have posted memes and pictures circulated by the national organization; others are holding rallies.

The chapter at Methodist University in Fayetteville, N.C., produced a video called “Why We Vote,” posted to Instagram, showing a woman in a pink-and-green 1908 sweatshirt saying, “In years past, we’ve been seen as property or less than a whole person. We’ve been seen as incompetent or unfit to be contributing members of society. Many trailblazers have been martyrs for our right to vote. That’s why voting is important to me.”

AKA’s graduate chapters are using Instagram and Facebook to circulate sorority literature, almost all of it pink and green, about early voting and absentee ballots.

The sorority also hopes to protect one of its own from the racist and sexist attacksy being aimed her way. When reports emerged that some Biden allies were urging him not to pick Harris because she was “too ambitious,” many AKA members heard echoes of comments that had long been directed at them.

Glover — who is president of Tennessee State University, an HBCU in Nashville — published an open letter saying, “Black women all across this nation should be outraged by the commentary that a qualified African-American woman is ‘too ambitious’ ” to be Biden’s running mate. “We jumped all over that one,” Glover said with a laugh. “I wrote that one myself.”

AKA is in many ways a political organizer’s dream. Members consider their commitment lifelong, and AKA leaders maintain a tight organization with regional groups broken down into smaller geographic clusters. Each chapter has its own social media presence and active leadership, so national leaders can mobilize them quickly.

AKA was founded by nine women, including Ethel Hedgeman Lyle, a Howard University student who in the early 20th century chafed at what she called the “small circumscribed life” imposed by segregation and male dominance. Over the years, the sorority has done everything from pushing anti-lynching legislation to establishing a mobile health clinic in the Mississippi Delta.

At one point, AKA bought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s home so it could be used by the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and it was involved in the effort to make the civil rights leader’s birthday a national holiday. It has undertaken initiatives such as building schools in South Africa. On one day recently, the group mobilized its networks to raise money for HBCUs as part of a regularly scheduled “Impact Day,” with a goal of bringing in $1 million.

Now the sisterhood hopes to provide an extra push for one of its own. It is being joined by the eight other Black sororities and fraternities, each with a similar sense of mission.

Wilson compared the Divine Nine to the “talented 10th” described by W.E.B.Du Bois, referring to the 1 in 10 African Americans who would become leaders of the community.

“It’s amazing how to the forefront Senator Harris has brought the Divine Nine,” Wilson said. “White people knew nothing of this. It was almost as if this were a secret organization.” The congresswoman described being “on multiple Zooms with my Divine Nine groups,” encouraging people to vote.

Individual AKA members nationwide are taking action on their own. Many local AKA leaders referred questions to Glover, but suggested that they are undertaking fundraising and get-out-the-vote initiatives individually.

Within hours of Biden’s announcement that Harris would join his ticket, AKA members had commissioned T-shirts and other gear to support her. Glynda Carr, founder of Higher Heights, which promotes Black women in politics, moderated a reception a few days later while wearing a pink-and-green shirt that read, “Black Women Lead.”

At that reception, Carr interviewed actor Yvette Nicole Brown, another AKA member, who wore a black shirt with the words “We’ve Got Your Back” in green and pink. An online store called “Sisterly Designs 1908” began selling black lawn signs that say “Kamala is my sorority sister” and “Biden Harris,” all in pink and green.

At a recent virtual fundraiser with members of the Howard community, Howard AKA members past and present — some acquaintances of Harris — offered support in a montage of pink-and-green-laden video messages. Harris watched the five-minute video with a smile on her face and a hand over her heart.

The senator regularly speaks of this network in emotional terms. “Family is my beloved Alpha Kappa Alpha, our Divine Nine, and my HBCU brothers and sisters,” Harris said in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

For many AKA members, this represents a pivotal moment to make a broader point about Black women and leadership. Glover said the sorority’s members will make sure that people who are uncomfortable with Black women in power see that “this is a reality” and that Harris, a senator and former attorney general of California, is “eminently qualified.”

“We have to make sure the silliness of the day can’t interfere with this campaign,” Glover said. “Everyone’s not pleased with this moment, but that’s their problem. And we can’t let them make it her problem.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I hope that at 9:04PM Eastern, Pence has curled up in a fetal position, sucking his thumb following the first statement made by Kamala.

 

[kpmom]

I'm really hoping she's able to make some of the points Biden wasn't able to make, what with the OSG yelling at him all night.

I'd like her to point out the Obama-Biden administration was handed an awful economy by a Republican president when they took over in 2009.  Under Obama-Biden the stock market rose, and unemployment, along with gas prices, fell.  She can throw out a few numbers here, too, nothing too boring, but make that point hard. 

And point out Trump was handed a very good economy by a Democrat.  People need to be reminded of that.

 

And she needs to talk up Obamacare, pre-existing conditions, etc.  That now we have a way for Americans to become insured that's not tied to their jobs.  And yes, hit it hard that Trump's recklessness made the White House a covid hot spot.

Americans are scared.  I'd like to see her make a connection between 2009 and today.

[GreyhoundFan]

Rachel Maddow had Kamala on her show tonight. It was an excellent interview. However, I can’t stop laughing because Rachel’s last question was if Kamala could see the fly. Poor Kamala was trying so hard to avoid laughing, but shook her head yes. She pulled herself together to say we have important topics to discuss and we should fly to one of those topics. I’m sure video will be online, it’s worth a watch.

[ALM7]

17 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Rachel Maddow had Kamala on her show tonight. It was an excellent interview. However, I can’t stop laughing because Rachel’s last question was if Kamala could see the fly. Poor Kamala was trying so hard to avoid laughing, but shook her head yes. She pulled herself together to say we have important topics to discuss and we should fly to one of those topics. I’m sure video will be online, it’s worth a watch.

During Rachel, I couldn't fly over here fast enough to post, you beat me to it!  @GreyhoundFan, I was laughing/tearing up so hard, I knocked myself off-line responding to your post.  What a classic moment!

[GreyhoundFan]

Here’s the clip. There’s more laughter than I remember hearing

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1316555884001189888

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Continued here: