For bedtime, @irisgrim and I’ve been reading this CSPAN history of the presidents and it’s remarkable what bad luck the left — broadly and imperfectly defined — has had when it comes to mortality.
The first president to die in office, the Whig William Henry Harrison, was the first to run a modern campaign, even drawing 100k people to a rally, like 1/2 the damn population at the time. Women for the first time were a major part of his campaign and he ousted Jackson’s protege
Martin Van Buren. He died in a month and was replaced by the slavery-loving Democrat John Tyler, who was later elected to serve in the Confederate Congress
Then 8 years later the Whigs manage to elect Zachary Taylor, who surprising everybody by being a strong opponent of the Slave Power, threatens war with Texas and threatens to hang Jefferson Davis for treason
He does too, replaced by the wretched Millard Fillmore. Whigs had not learned their lesson.
Then 1865 wasn’t bad luck: a Confederate conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln was successful. But the Whigs-turned-GOP still hadn’t learned their lesson, and Andrew Johnson takes over
At Lincoln’s memorials, lots of prominent politicians referred to his assassination as the third — certain the Slave Power had also killed Harrison and Taylor, though the evidence doesn’t back that up.
Then Garfield is elected in 1880, after running post-Reconstruction as an explicit supporter of black civil rights. He dies his first year, replaced by Chester Arthur, who did not feel similarly.
You could argue the first one to go the other way came when an anarchist
shot McKinley and Teddy Roosevelt took over, launching the Progressive Era.
I don’t really have a point, just an interesting thing to add to all the structural right wing tilt already built in.
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Biden’s campaign manager and his deputy campaign manager both sent long emails to close groups of supporters trying to help people cope with the exposure of the lie the campaign has been telling everybody.
The short version: hey, everybody knew he was old. Shut up and vote.
1/ There is a lot of manufactured confusion around these ceasefire proposals, but what happened is fairly simple:
On 5/29, Israel’s war cabinet approved an offer for a ceasefire that was transmitted to Hamas. Netanyahu only agreed to it under extreme pressure, and over the opposition of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who are not in the war cabinet.
On 5/30, Hamas rejected it, saying no to talks unless Israel stopped its assault. Here’s their statement:
On 5/31, Biden grabbed the Israeli proposal, which Netanyahu had been happy to see rejected by Hamas, and made it fully public, cleverly but accurately calling it the Israeli proposal. Which it is. But Netanyahu hates it.
So now Netanyahu is walking back from it while Hamas is responding “positively.”
Now the mediators, U.S., Qatar, and Egypt, are putting pressure on both Israel and Hamas to accept the deal
🚨Update: Israel offered to evacuate Dr. Hamawy and others from the hospital but refused to allow new medical aid workers to replace them. Five volunteers accepted the offer but Dr. Hamawy refused, insisting on staying with his patients.
He sends this comment through a colleague:
“There is a palpable gloom and foreboding that had set in at the hospital. The children and staff are asking for everyone by name. All the Americans and Brits left. That can’t be a good sign.”
The medical missions rotate in and out every two weeks. The missions have insisted they not be evacuated until the new rotation is able to come in. Israel is refusing. More than a dozen international medical workers remain at the hospital.
Upward of 20 American doctors are trapped at the European Hospital in Gaza, facing extreme dehydration, at least one is on an IV drip. This is a developing situation…
The mission had been in a safe house but was urged to leave, concerned the IDF would strike it. A member of the mission took this video, of part of the dystopian route from the safe house to the hospital
🚨 Last week, we reported that AIPAC was using a "pro-science" group as a pass-through to take out Pramila Jayapal's sister in a Portland, OR congressional race.
There was serious pushback to that article, but we now have follow up reporting that is even more damning 🧵
First, I asked for staffers at 314 Action, the science PAC, to reach out. Several did. The operation AIPAC and 314 are running is bigger than Jayapal and will soon expand to target @CoriBush -- though under the name of a new shell PAC. One staffer said: “314 has turned its back on science in order to be used as a weapon against progressives by Zionists."
Second, Maxine Dexter was required to post a disclosure about a May 7 fundraiser. Thanks to help from people here (including @ddayen), we can report that nearly 90% of those donors also gave to AIPAC. I got one of the max-out donors on the phone and she said directly:
So the “stabbed in the eye” report, which sent genuine fear rippling through Jewish communities, for good reason, turns out to be bogus. Here’s the video, it’s a grazing at most by a tiny flag, and turns out the “victim” is a known right wing provocateur