I prefer old and feeble to convicted criminal. It's up to us to get him across the finish line. For us.
Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
As we celebrated the 248th anniversary of the founding of this nation, our cowardly, complicit media is absolutely consumed with the question of Joe Biden’s fitness to be elected for a 2nd term this November.
The releasing of the Epstein files with allegations that would further support Biden’s claims that his opponent has the “morals of an alley cat,” (and that’s being unfair to an alley cat) did not make it to the news on CNN or MSNBC.
The plan to go against the expressed wishes of the “Founding Fathers” and to return us to a monarchy was deemed not worthy of the talking heads’ time and attention. I’m reminded that the FF were so opposed to the idea of monarchy that the first “4th of July celebrations consisted of mock funerals for King George III, who was king of England at the time.” Indeed, it is said that George Washington was so repulsed by the idea of replacing the British monarchy with an American one that he wrote that he viewed the suggestion “with abhorrence” and “reprehended it with severity.” But yet, here we are in 2024 with our media pre-occupied with the Joe’s appearance and not the gigantic threat looming over us.
All the victories brought by blood, sweat, and tears—the sacrifices of limbs, lives, and liberty—are now in jeopardy. The threat isn't just the imbecilic criminal narcissist himself, a man who may never have read a book other than Mein Kampf. The real danger comes from those who see him as the perfect tool to advance their fascist, racist, misogynistic, totalitarian goals. To realize their nefarious dream, they are prepared to make him the second coming of the naked emperor: flatter him, tell him what he wants to hear, and the keys to the kingdom will be theirs.
But we cannot and should not ignore the stark problem facing us. For a whole lot of us, perception is reality, and the person on that debate stage did not inspire confidence. The administration has said or done little since the debate to effectively counter the perception. In truth, in 2020, I thought Joe B had already lost a step or two. Personally, it doesn’t matter to me how feeble appears to be in part because the man has an unbelievable record of achievement to prove that he gets shit done. And, more importantly, for the millionth time, it’s not about him; it’s about his opponent. But the media is on a mission, and I worry that people will fall prey to the unceasing, incessant drumbeat. I don’t believe in their polls, as they have not been able to accurately predict the elections in quite a few cycles now. But I must admit that I get scared when I hear them say that the gap between the convict and the president is widening. What the hell do we do?
Since the debate, I've been struck by the seemingly widespread belief among Democrats and vocal ex-Republicans—those who foisted the convict upon us in the first place—that Biden failed us. That it is his job and his alone to save us. Having failed us so spectacularly, they argue, he should step aside and allow someone else to lead. And, wink, wink, that someone else had better not be The Black Woman! Some do know and agree that it is far too complicated and messy to have someone else step in at this point. The best idea I’ve heard, and the one that would be the least disruptive, came from Keith Olbermann. He contended that Joe could resign now, Kamala Harris becomes president and leader of the party, thus guaranteeing that she’d have access to all the money Joe has in the bank. Because, after all, Keith argued, if he’s too old and weak to run in November, then he’s too old and weak to be president now, so why not resign? But that scenario is not gonna play out. There’s a reason pride is considered one of the most deadly sins. So it will be Joe (unless he bombs terribly in his upcoming interview with Stephanopoulos). And if he can’t carry us to the finish line, then we’d all better buckle up and carry him to it. For ourselves. For our children. For this country.
Can we write a story for the ages this November? Are we up to the challenge? Can we carry our hopes and dreams, embodied in Joe Biden, across the finish line? Can we become the “ones we have been waiting for”? I believe we can. I believe we must rescue the dreams of the founding fathers. The sacrifices of our ancestors must not be in vain.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Schools like the University of Mississippi School of Medicine are trying to recruit more Black students. But they face a swell of Republican opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. NPR: Med schools face a new obstacle in the push to train more Black doctors
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“Just seeing him laid up in bed, in a hospital bed, it was traumatizing, to say the least,” Reedy said.
His father died within a week of being admitted, in the middle of a nine-month span when Reedy also lost an aunt and a grandmother. “They say death comes in threes,” he said.
That chain of events prompted him to pursue a career in medicine, one that might help him spare other children from losing loved ones too soon.
Fifteen years later, Reedy has completed his first year at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine — a remarkable feat, and not only because his career path was born of grief and trauma. Reedy is among a small share of Black medical school students in a state where nearly four in 10 people — but only one in 10 doctors — identify as Black or African American.
Of the 660 medical school students enrolled in the same four-year program as Reedy, 82 students, or about 12%, are Black.
Medical schools around the country are trying to recruit Black, Hispanic, and Native American students, all of whom remain disproportionately underrepresented in the field of medicine. Research has shown that patients of color prefer seeing doctors of their own race — and some studies have shown that Black patients who see Black doctors experience better health outcomes.
But a recent swell of Republican opposition threatens to upend those efforts, school administrators say, and could exacerbate deep health disparities already experienced by people of color.
Since 2023 — the year the Supreme Court voted to outlaw affirmative action in higher education — more than two dozen states, including Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas, have introduced or passed laws to restrict or ban diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs.
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A Black state deputy sheriff who was the alleged target of racial harassment by colleagues says he fears retaliation and now has special protection.
Deputy Sheriff Martin Horton, 56, says the harassment started shortly after his graduation last December when he was a new deputy sheriff on probation working at the state Capitol.
“A reasonable person, if placed in that situation, would have found it offensive, would have found it misogynistic, would have found it discriminatory, because the language that is used, and the people who are targeted are either of a different ethnicity, or gender,” said Horton.
He says deputy Alvin Turla was his first field training officer in December 2023 and made degrading comments to him. “It was a sexual comment that he had made not just one time, but at least two times, referencing to my lips,” said Horton.
He brought up with issue with Sgt. Erich Mitamura.
“His comment to me was that you’re nothing, you’re no one,” Horton said.
“It devalued me and as a trainee, he was my sergeant. I accepted it.”
Horton says he kept his concerns quiet until the Department of Law Enforcement’s Criminal Investigations Division interviewed in March to ask about the culture at the capitol.
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The Grio asked Black voters who are planning to vote for President Biden after last week’s debate why they are sticking beside him despite new calls for him to step aside. The Grio: Why these Black voters won’t give up on Joe Biden
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Biden’s campaign stop in Raleigh, North Carolina, just a day after the debate showed what seemed like a totally different candidate from the one at Thursday night’s debate – clear, passionate and highly self-aware.
“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious, I don’t walk as easy as I used to,” Biden told the cheering crowd. “I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth.”
It’s this version of the president that his strongest supporters say is the real Biden.
It’s why they are sticking beside him, among other reasons, citing either the impracticality of selecting a new nominee just four months from a national election or their genuine belief that Biden is the best man for the job.
TheGrio spoke with a range of Black voters who are still voicing support for Biden despite criticisms of the debate. Here are their different motivations for backing President Biden for reelection:
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The Republican party is going in two directions on race at the same time.
Electorally speaking, the modern GOP has never been so diverse. Each of the past two elections, and most available 2024 polling, reveals the GOP making real inroads with Black and (especially) Latino voters. These gains shouldn’t be overstated — Democrats still dominate among non-whites as a whole — but they are real.
But at the elite level, conservative intellectuals and operatives are developing a new doctrine of white identity politics. And it’s already shaping the Trump administration’s plans for a second term.
A new book on “anti-white racism” — The Unprotected Class, by Claremont Institute fellow Jeremy Carl — illustrates this trend clearly.
Carl’s book centers on the claim that “anti-white racism is the most predominant and politically powerful form of racism in America today.” What mainstream scholars of race call “white privilege” is, in his view, a series of “informal evanescent cultural legacies.” By contrast, anti-white discrimination “is increasingly legal and formal.”
This discrimination is, for Carl, primarily the product of a pernicious ideology popular among elites (nonwhite and white alike). “Anti-white racism is the all-but-official ideology of our ruling regime,” he writes — and they have acted in such a way as to ensure that whites are increasingly shunted to the bottom of America’s social hierarchy.
Carl’s arguments for this view resemble a funhouse mirror version of American racial history: roughly the same series of events, but with the roles of victim and perpetrator reversed.
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The first African-born MP to enter the German parliament has announced he will not be standing in next year’s federal election, weeks after he revealed the hate mail, including racist slurs and death threats, he and his staff had received.
Karamba Diaby, 62, who entered the Bundestag in 2013 in a moment hailed as historic by equality campaigners, said he wanted to spend more time with his family and to make room for younger politicians.
But his announcement comes just weeks after he laid out a litany of hate messages he and his parliamentary staff had received.
Diaby said the racist slurs and death threats were “not the main reasons” for his decision, having frequently emphasised he would not be cowed by threats. But they are widely believed to have played a part.
In interviews, Diaby has emphasised an increasingly hostile mood in parliament and society, blaming the 2017 entry of the far-right populist AfD to the Bundestag.
“Since 2017, the tone in the German parliament has become harsher,” he told the Berlin Playbook podcast of the news magazine Politico. “We hear aggressive speeches from colleagues of the AfD.
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