Joe Biden’s Baltimore Speech Transcript: Inflation, Infrastructure Agenda
Update: Sorry, wrong speech. Here’s the transcript of President Joe Biden’s Rockville, MD speech, a masterful speech. (Scroll down, click Show Full Text.)
Video: President Biden’s Remarks at Democratic National Committee Rally
Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos: Abortion-related stories—once relatively scarce and often shrouded in shame—are now prolific and wrapped in righteousness.
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These are the makings of an unstoppable force. Every person of childbearing age—not to mention their mothers and fathers—can look at these stories and imagine, That could be me or my loved one, regardless of the circumstances by which they became pregnant and how badly they may or may not want to carry to term.
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Abortion rights are rapidly making the same transition. The big difference is that a solid majority of Americans were already with the reproductive rights movement, they simply needed a reason to prioritize the issue at the polls. An extremist Supreme Court has now handed choice activists that precipitous event along with a flood of harrowing stories to create lasting change.
I had to snip a lot of Kerry's brilliance. Please feel free to quote more of her paragraphs in the comments.
A proposal to enshrine abortion rights in the Michigan Constitution gathered enough valid signatures to make the November ballot, according to state Bureau of Elections reports published Thursday.
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Reproductive Freedom for All turned in 752,288 signatures in July, a record number that exceeded the state-mandated signature tally of 425,059. After examining petition sheets and a random sample of 513 signatures, state officials found the campaign had submitted an estimated 596,379 valid signatures, more than the minimum threshold for certification by the Board of State Canvassers.
Of course the nitpickers are nitpicking, but I’m ignoring them.
Ambassador (Ret.) Lee Wolosky at justsecurity.org):
Americans across the political spectrum had grown tired of endless wars in South Asia and the Middle East, especially when they evolved into missions more about nation building than national security. The tens of billions poured into the war in Afghanistan each year are better spent here – rebuilding our infrastructure, supporting our communities, protecting our environment, delivering affordable healthcare. That is what Biden believed, and he is now delivering on those promises.
National security dollars are also better spent defending against current first-order geostrategic threats to the United States, particularly those emanating from Russia and China. Consider the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. The robust U.S. and NATO response would not have been possible — or at least nearly as robust — if we were still fighting a war in Afghanistan given the very substantial military, intelligence, and financial resources we were committing to that conflict.
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The agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in February 2020, mandated a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan within just weeks after Biden’s inauguration. Despite the deadline to which they had agreed, the Trump administration made no plans to responsibly leave Afghanistan or to accelerate the granting of visas to Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghan populations who might otherwise be left behind.
And so the incoming Biden administration was left with a deadline but no plan.
This Week in Gnuville
The Last Time the White House Was This on Fire was 1814 🔥😎: Saturday's GNR
GoodNewsRoundup
Today’s title was stolen from this tweet by Chris Jackson
[PPP = Paycheck protection Program]
Jackson is referring to how the WH destroyed the MAGA hypocrites on Twitter. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. If you have, enjoy it again:
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But it isn’t just that. It is also Biden, in person, knocking it out of the park. Check out some highlights [there].
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Lots of reason for hope and optimism. And I’ll go over many more below.
IMHO, the biggest challenge in front of us is keeping the House so we can continue to do great things and we can keep the Rs from running 24/7 hearings on the Biden kids and blocking every good thing that Biden tries to do. [GoodNewsRoundup’s fundraiser: Lets Save The House!]
Good News Roundup for Friday, August 26, 2022: Get ready for the mid-term sprint
chloris creator
Are you psyched to work for the midterms? Because we need all good Gnusies to work for the midterms!
We can do this, my friends. Did you see what happened in the NY 19 special election? The Democrat, Pat Ryan, was down in the polls to the Republican, Molinaro. Despite the polls and the pundits, Pat Ryan won!!! 😄 Moreover, NY 19 is the swingiest of districts. It went for tRump in 2016, the Ds in 2018, and Biden in 2020. The pundits thought it would swing back for this special election, but it didn’t.
But we only win if we work for it. There are so many ways to help. Donating money, of course. Letters to the editor. Contacting your local parties and seeing what you can do.
And signs. People here have been talking about how signs make a difference. Do you put a sign in your yard, or do you do signs in some other way? Because that seems to make a difference. Numerous Gnusies have remarked on how they have noticed different signage. I know that when I see good signs, well, I feel better.
Pour yourself a serving of your favorite beverage, fortify yourself with some good news, and then roll up your sleeves. We have work to do.
22+ Environmental Accomplishments and Bonus CG, Too! - August 25 Good News Roundup
niftywriter
Good Day, Gnusies! Surprise! It’s Me and CG [Curlygirl] again! See if you can spot the bonus picture of CG in today’s Good News Roundup!
MCUBernieFan alerted us yesterday evening that a bulldozer and a telephone pole got into it on her street and the telephone pole lost! Apparently that pole carried her internet line, so….. it is potluck time! But not just any potluck — a genuine MCUBernieFan-friendly environmental potluck, including some links that the CUB herself emailed over. ☺️
On fourth Thursdays we can usually count on lots of good environmental news and cool science stories. This Thursday will be no exception! First, I’d like to remind everybody about 12 awesome things that Joe Biden (and the Dems) did to protect the environment in just the first year of his administration AND 10 more awesome things they did in 2022!. Let’s get started!
Check Out Good News from States plus Top 22 for 2022 - August 24 Good News Roundup
niftywriter
😎💙🐴 Joe and the Democrats Deliver 🐴💙😎 — TOP 22 ACCOMPLISHMENTS BY AUGUST 2022:
Here is a list of just some of the many accomplishments of President Joe Biden and the Democrats so far:
1. American Rescue Plan (1.3t for families and businesses reeling from the pandemic recession; cut child poverty in half). March 2021
2. SAVES LIVES Act (Covid vaccination access expansion for veterans and families), April 2021
3. TRANSPLANT Act (re-authorization of the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005)
4. Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, June 2021.
5. Sgt. Ketchum Rural Veterans Mental Health Act of 2021 (expanded access to mental health care in rural areas), June 2021.
6. At least 18 other bills to improve care and benefits for veterans in 2021 alone (Dems are the party that truly thanks veterans for their service) and even more in 2022.
7. K-12 Cybersecurity Act of 2021 (Dems are tackling the need to regulate the internet and website intrusions on children’s privacy — something that was long overdue). October 2021
9. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, (the roads and bridges bill), November 2021.
Continued here.
A Worthy Purpose - GNR for Bluesday, August 23rd
NotNowNotEver
Quite literally, oceans of words have been written about finding purpose in life. You probably need an advanced degree in philosophy to even begin to scratch the surface of them. Rather than following Cervantes and spending our time tilting at the madness of cancer causing windmills, we’ve got republicans to joust with.
There are a lot of different ways to find purpose. Many don’t get a real choice. Finding food and shelter takes up so much time, there’s no bandwidth left for a higher calling. Then there are those who pervert the idea of purpose and deny their humanity.
Some of them find their purpose through the cynical manipulation of others as a means for their own unethical aggrandizement. We know them as titans of industry, prosperity preachers, con artists, scammers, and republican office holders.
Others delight in forcing their narrow antediluvian views on the gullible and naïve. We know them as white supremacists, religious zealots, Nazis, and members of The Federalist Society.
Still others are content to go through life without purpose, often lost in a haze of drugs or alcohol.
Then there are the rest of us. We find part of our purpose in standing up to injustice, cruelty and bigotry. We fight against the evils in the world, wherever we find them. We want to make the world a better place. It’s not a particularly easy thing to do, but it is most certainly the right thing to do.
We fight against a writhing mass of base emotion, lacking depth or substance, addicted to cruelty, incapable of empathy, and fueled almost entirely by anger. Look into the faces of the dullard’s ardent disciples. Bigotry and hate ooze from their pores, coating their skins with the stench of their malevolent corruption. Their empty eyes, a window into a soulless world of treason against the world, founded in deceit, dedicated to greed, and worshipping at the altar of hatred. Their red hats serve as a badge of dishonor and stupidity.
It is a worthy purpose.
Live from the GNR Newsroom, it’s the Monday Good News Roundup
Jessiestaf, Bhu, and Killer300
What could go right? Clean energy abundance
Of the IRA’s more than $430 billion in total spending—paid for largely through a 15 percent minimum tax on large corporations, prescription drug price reforms, and increased IRS enforcement—$369 billion will go to climate and clean energy investments. These include subsidies and tax credits to drive both consumers and US manufacturers toward electric vehicles and cleaner energies and help lower energy costs.
Many of the bill’s manufacturing tax credits are aimed at spurring the domestic production of renewable technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. Consumers, meanwhile, can get rebates for installing solar, buying electric vehicles, and making a host of energy-efficient upgrades to their homes.
On top of these and a slew of other clean energy incentives for companies and communities, the bill also includes $60 billion to help clean up pollution and reduce environmental injustice in disadvantaged communities.
Sunday Good News Roundup of Roundups ¤ WineRev! ¤ 2 Polls: WWtW? + Will tfg's crimes affect voting?
2thanks
Stick up for Your Rights! Vote Pro Roe on November 8!
Last week, oceanrain brought us an image for a new national campaign they’ve been commenting about in our Roundups.
Image: Visual samples of notes for the Stick Up For Your Rights! Campaign 2022. The majority demands abortion access. Americans are posting notes in public urging voters to reclaim reproductive rights in the midterms. Please join us. Let's stick it to the anti-choice GOP on November 8th!
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WineRev’s Good and Goofy Notes
After WineRev posts his G&G comment, I’ll post a link here. His G&G comments are small but worthy Good News Roundups with a welcome, a good-news tidbit, another bold-faced and centered welcome, and his this-day-in-history notes. You can find all his comments here, in case you have a hankerin’ and missed one. Meanwhile:
WineRev, last Sunday: Good Sunday morning 2thanks and 2thankyou for opening up the Good News RoundUp we all come here and offer tips in the tip jar (“They put bread my jar and say, ‘Man, what are YOU doin’ here?’…...) and recs on the dashboards of our Koswagens (an obscure, licensed version of the Volkswagen assembled by night in Lesotho by Peruvian runamalas and sold only on Tuesdays from a eco-friendly, underground facility in San Jose (if you know the way…...) Good to be here after the usual 3rd Saturday in August Minnesota State Fair orientation for ticket-sellers (I’ll be on duty Thursday, starting at 11 at the far North gate, FYI), combined with an afternoon of Cat-io remodeling, complete with sawing, cussing, and the frustrations of TRYING to achieve Bob Vila levels of carpentry and far too often from moment to moment coming off as Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor. But the cat is pleased, so all is well.
Science
Please share good science news with us! (Especially JSWT, health, environment.)
Need more good news?
… arhpdx posted a list of good news sites toward the top of a recent Roundup, or you can find that same list in my comment: Good News Sources. Thank you, arhpdx and Mokurai!
[On a desktop, you could open that comment in a new Tab by clicking the timestamp, and then you could Bookmark that page or save it to your Favorites.]
Our map of Gnuville: 769 of us have shared our global locations!
To leave your mark, please Reply in the comments to tljdk or the map-building comment. Please include your city and state only, NOT street number and street. (Please persist, we are volunteers.)
Image: Two maps of the United States, one above the other. The maps indicate the approximate locations of members of the Good News Roundup community in 2019 and 2021. The lower map contains many more blue pin-markers than the upper map. Upper image: A map of Gnuville from February 15, 2019 with about 50 Gnusie pins. Lower image: A map of Gnuville from March 21, 2021 with 582 pins across our orb.
If you join us regularly, are ou Following us? More than 400 Kosacks Follow us.
Tech Talk for Kosacks
- Load-More Workaround: On a desktop or laptop, to banish the Daily Kos Load More buttons, click this link, which opens the main Daily Kos page and shuts off the Load More buttons at the same time. You must Reload any open Daily Kos pages. After that, you’re good to go, but you may need to come back here and click that link again in a few weeks. The DK Help Desk asked me to add this: The “Load More” option also resets the user back to the display of the old-style, React comments. [Revised 3/13/2022]
- Got a Daily Kos tech question? Let us know. No question is too basic, even “What’s a Kosack?” or “What’s a Gnusie?”
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Where Ever is Herd
Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days a week:
- The Monday GNR Newsroom (Jessiestaf, Killer300, and Bhu). With their five, we survive and thrive.
- Alternating Tuesdays: NotNowNotEver and arhpdx.
- Wednesdays: niftywriter.
- Thursdays: Mokurai the 1st, 2nd, and 5th (when there is one), WineRev the 3rd, MCUBernieFan the 4th.
- Fridays: chloris creator. Regular links to the White House Briefing Room.
- Saturdays: GoodNewsRoundup, the one and only!
- Sundays: 2thanks. A brief roundup of Roundups, a retrospective, a smorgasbord, a bulletin board, an oasis, a watering hole, a thunder of hooves, a wellness, a place for beginners to learn the rules of the veldt. For instance, we do not welcome grammar-police comments in Roundups.
Sun-High Good News Roundup: It’s a long dry trek between 7 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET. About half way between is noon or 1 o'clock. If you'd like to create a midday oasis post a Good News Group diary regularly at about that time, please let me know via kosmail. The team will support you. If morning is a better time for you, Mokurai says he can trade times.
hpg posts Evening Shade diaries at 7:30 p.m. ET every day! After a long day, Gnusies meet in the evening shade and continue sharing Good News, good community, and good actions. Find Evening Shades here or on the Trending List.
oldhippiedude posts Tweets of the Week on Sundays at 6 p.m. CT. Our second evening Gnusie hangout zone! In search of a TOTW diary? Look here or here or on the Trending List.
For more information about the Good News group, please see our detailed Welcoming comment, one of the first comments in our morning diaries.
The 6 R’s of the Resistance
Joe Biden is now our President. However, we continue to stay vocal and active, we continue to pull Joe to the left, and we continue resist the GQP.
- Refresh and Rest: Take care of you, the hero: Eat well, exercise, and rest.
- Resist: Protest on the streets, call senators and representatives, etc.
- Rebel: Run for office, GOTV (Get Out The Vote), support a progressive.
- Revolt: Change the laws, change the culture, build your communities.
- Rely: Trust that millions of others are fighting the good fight.
- Rejoice: Joy promotes resilience and gives rise to hope.
How to Resist: Do Something …
Some of our Good News writers regularly post a panoply of fantastic action steps in every one of their Good News Roundups. If you don’t see a way to become active that suits your personality, your funds, or your time, please review their most recent diaries for many different options to volunteer and/or donate:
As you may have noticed, recently I’ve been posting this suggestion in the comments:
On Daily Kos:
We welcome comments in Roundups every day regarding:
- National or local Good News.
- Links, stories, music, videos, quotes, tweets. (No tweets or images of the saffron chlamidiot, please.)
- Your resistance activity.
In my Sunday smorgasbord Roundups, I especially welcome the following types of comments:
- Who won YOUR week?
- Questions about Daily Kos tech issues or our map.
- Good News Roundups and you.
- How are you resisting?
- How are you supporting Democratic candidates?
- Please let’s stick to Good News today, no mews or databases.
In the comments of all Roundups, we do not welcome Grammar Police or Debbie Downers.
Top Image: A quite detailed sketch of a gnu drawn in brown, green, and black on white. A happy and dynamic gnu dances on its left hind leg in a classic heraldric rampant pose. Joyful letters prance above and behind the mane: “Happy Dance.” Signature: Nick Korolev, 2021. — Thank you, Starhawk, for creating the top image of a dancing gnu and for giving it to us Gnusies!
Our Roundup is almost open!
Thank you for fighting for truth and justice with all us Gnusies! 40% of our Readers don’t visit every day, 50% of us do, and 10% are here for the first time! We all do what we can. For 4 years, we’ve shared positive news, laughed, organized, resisted, rebelled, revolted without being revolting, relied, rested, mentored, created, crossed rivers, chewed our cud, puffed methane out both ends, and laughed. Here’s looking at you, kid, and standing upwind!
As always, please share more Good News than I can find or provide.
This is a group diary, and by my power I declare this Good Gnus Salo(o)n open! Let the good-news sharing and community building begin!
Power with, not power over, and with love ❤️ ✊ ❤️
2thanks (he, him)
My local family is expecting about four-score relatives and friends and friends-not-yet-met to arrive in my wood next weekend for a multi-day wedding reception celebrating the union of my daughter and her wife as well as the recent birth of their child, my first grandbaby 3 months ago.
Isn't it absolutely and joyfully amazing the way families take many forms these days? (Love is love.)
A smallish group gathered to celebrate their wedding on the day before the pandemic in 2020. Fortunately, none of the wedding guests came down with the plague, and everyone got home safely and in good health.
In light of this major flowing together of lives, I may not be around on the veldt much next weekend. My relatives and friends will be here for days, and I will probably take a break from internetting and good newsing. But I know you gnus, you will carry on without me in your inimitable veldtish way, because you all know what to do.
Because of my potential exposures to viruses, I am adding two actions to my anti-viral preventative measures: At the advice of our long-time compounding pharmacist, I will be using nasal lavage before and after meet-ups with family, because the virus has to remain in the nasal cavity for 24 to 48 hours to get a good grip on cells, so washing those surfaces could help minimize the ability of viruses to swim into my cells. I will also be using a povidone iodine nasal spray before and after meet-ups, which has been proven to be very effective at reducing viruses. Science. The pharmacist also recommended quercitin 250 mg a day, zinc 15 to 30 mg a day, vitamin D 5,000 units a day, and vitamin C 1,000 to 2,000 mg a day; however, I already take these four items daily.