73 Comments

Kahn is a shining star in Biden’s administration. Firing her is not “going forward”. I hope she doesn’t cave to donor pressure, but I’m getting used to being disappointed by politicians.

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I agree that the appointment of Khan is one of the administrations best actions. I also agree it will be an critical indication of a possible Harris administration.

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It is my greatest wish that a Harris administration does not roll back the (surprising) progressive gains of the Biden administration.

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Is America better off after Biden's 50+ years in office?

Not by a long shot.

Being anti-trust curious doesn't make up for NAFTA, Too Big Too Fail, and the for-profit prison industrial complex. Oh, and that whole unswerving (and very profitable!) genocide thing.

The only people who should be grateful to Biden are the ghouls that profit from human misery.

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Not to mention how Senator Biden ushered Clarence Thomas on to the Supreme Court. He gave Anita Hill a chance to speak, which she did powerfully. But he never let another woman witness w/ similar story to Professor Hill , speak to the judiciary committee in front of the camera’s. He shut it all down as Chair.

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Cutting off you nose to spite your face isn't good policy. There are many things in the historical record that Biden has to answer for, but his current labor policy isn't one of them. Just take the W there, and sort the rest of his boilerplate neoliberalism out from it. With the exception of his atrocious Israel policy (where he's not alone, thanks to decades of AIPAC dollars freely flowing inside the Beltway) he didn't enact any of those other policies by himself.

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1) voting for the people who rigged the system to disenfranchise the voters is not a great way to get policies passed.

If the Democrats hadn't rigged the 2016, 2020, and now the 2024 primaries, maybe I would consider voting for them.

2) take what win? I don't see anyone winning anything. I have seen, in some small areas, minor declines in the rate of destruction of the working and middle classes.

No one but vulture capital, pharma and the MIC have made any gains under the former Senator From MBNA.

The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, same as every Democratic administration since Clinton and the neoliberal Republican Lite took over.

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You're not wrong about any of it. It is, however, the system we're stuck with currently. So until you can propose a meaningful solution rather than just complaining about it, I'll take tinkering at the margins. Because the American public is too cowed to ask for more than that.

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My meaning solution is to not preserve the people impeding progress.

Tinkering around the margins isn't helping - it's preserving the people who serve the corporations bleeding America dry.

You don't feed a parasite.

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"Cutting off you nose to spite your face isn't good policy"

Just reread this and am really horrified by the lack of humanity here.

Is not supporting the deliberate murder of civilians, the for-profit incarceration of black men, the crushing of the middle class "cutting off my nose to spite your face"?

Glad to see your investments are doing well. Don't twist an ankle walking over the less fortunate.

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Anyone against Khan should listen to an interview. She's a measured, thoughtful person who's looking at the big picture. She doesn't want to put anyone out of business or even severely gut corporate profit. She wants to make sure that the marketplace is stable enough to sustain itself and support workers and their families. Anyone against this is just being hysterical.

This would be my line if were Harris.

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Thank you, Ryan, for this important reporting. I think Lina is a hero. The opposition to her is a measure of her effectiveness in slowing the corporate juggernaut.

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Bravo! Just the kind of reporting we need.

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Ryan Grim is basically a PR person for the tech industry.

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Khan is who government should be: fair, firm and effectively protecting the public.

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excellent expose of crooks trying to remove a public servant

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Khan is not partisan. Most American business owners and workers are benefitting from her work. She is good for the economy.

I am really tired of the Monopolists who we all know by name, they permeate the media. No wonder they feel entitled to more.

Why doesn’t CNN give one of the business people w/ 1,000 emoyees, a platform?

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Kamala will, of course, do the bidding of her donors. The only reason this person who dropped out before losing the primary in her own state to Bernie Sanders is vice-president is to preserve corporate profits with Genocide Joe, the former Senator From MBNA.

Looking forward to her inevitable humiliation on the campaign trail. It will mitigate the pain of another 4 years of The Orange Hemorrhoid.

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At least we had a southern border under Trump. I live in Chicago, one of our many Sanctuary Cities being ruined by the endless flood of illegals. No borders, no country. Does America even still exist as a country?

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I encourage you to carefully check facts. Earlier this year, Congress was ready to pass bipartisan legislation to enhance border security. Then Donald Trump intervened to scuttle the legislation. Mr. Trump pressured Republican legislators to block passage of the bill, because Donald Trump did not want the problem to be solved while Joe Biden is President. Instead, Donald Trump wanted to use the border as a campaign issue. He deliberately impeded bipartisan legislation to enhance the border, so that he can point to the failure he caused — while falsely claiming that it is Joe Biden‘s failure.

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We should listen to the Border Patrol. When people reach the border and apply for asylum, they should find themself in court in short order. Now they wait for years and years. The Judge who knows the laws of the US presides over the case, Amen.

The Border Patrol has requested legal help, not more ammunition. guns and torture.

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The bipartisan bill was garbage that allowed something like 2500 illegals a day to enter. That’s not a secure border. No borders means no country. A society too full of rot to maintain something as basic and essential as borders is not a country. It’s a failed state in rapid decline.

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By “illegals,” do you mean human beings? Seeking asylum is a human right protected under our laws.

The right to seek asylum — or safety from persecution — in another country was born out of the tragedies of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. In its aftermath, dozens of nations committed to never again slam the door on people in need of protection. The right to asylum was enshrined in 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then again in the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol.

The United States passed its own federal law in the Refugee Act of 1980, for people who are fleeing persecution on “account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” The Refugee Act is meant to ensure that individuals who seek asylum from within the U.S. or at its border are not sent back to places where they face persecution.

In today’s world, these protections remain critical, with more people forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict, violence, and human rights violations than at any other point since World War II.

To be granted asylum, people must come to the U.S. or the border and must prove their case.

This is US law. There are people in this world who are being persecuted. US law allows for them to seek asylum in the USA. In order to follow US law to seek asylum, these human beings are required by US law to come to the USA or the border. People who come to the US border to seek asylum are obeying US law. Seeking asylum is a human right protected under our laws.

The right to seek asylum — or safety from persecution — in another country was born out of the tragedies of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. In its aftermath, dozens of nations committed to never again slam the door on people in need of protection. The right to asylum was enshrined in 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then again in the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol.

The United States passed its own federal law in the Refugee Act of 1980, for people who are fleeing persecution on “account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” The Refugee Act is meant to ensure that individuals who seek asylum from within the U.S. or at its border are not sent back to places where they face persecution.

In today’s world, these protections remain critical, with more people forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict, violence, and human rights violations than at any other point since World War II.

To be granted asylum, people must come to the U.S. or the border and must prove their case.

Elected officials and news outlets often mischaracterize those seeking asylum at the border as breaking the law or failing to seek protection “the right way.” However, under U.S. law, a person seeking asylum may do so by arriving at the border and asking to be screened by U.S. officials at a “port of entry,” or by entering the U.S. without prior inspection and then declaring their fear of persecution.

Elected officials and news outlets often mischaracterize those seeking asylum at the border as breaking the law or failing to seek protection “the right way.” However, under U.S. law, a person seeking asylum may do so by arriving at the border and asking to be screened by U.S. officials at a “port of entry,” or by entering the U.S. without prior inspection and then declaring their fear of persecution.

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@seva

do you occasionally wonder WHY people leave their homes and their loved ones behind,

hoping to find decent living conditions and a decent future for their beloved children?

potus #45 called the countries these people come from "shit-hole countries".

has it ever occurred to you that US interference, aka 'regimes changes' have

- for many decades - prevented these countries from becoming democracies,

prevented them from thriving to offer their populations the same amount of

comfort and wellbeing that most US citizens enjoy?

totally unfair trade policies [such as US sanctions against venezuela, for instance]

have utterly devastating effects on these countries' economies, while the

US-declared "war on drugs" alone brought much violence to latin america ...

gangs "ask" families for their sons to join. if they refuse they must fear for their lives.

would you want your kids to grow up in such an environment?

plenty of US industries thrive on "illegal" labor, too. keep that in mind, if you will.

also consider that US tax fraud$ter$ cause much more damage than immigrants do!

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Both Barry Diller and Reid Hoffman are trying to influence cases currently pending before the FTC in which they are involved. This is as crooked as a dog's hind leg, much like any Trumpster would do. They are limousine liberals, supporting liberal causes until those causes impinge on their wealth accumulation and lives of luxury.

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Good reporting. Hope she hangs tough!

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I like. This is what I subscribed for. Thanks. I re-tweeted just the comments URL to invite others to sign-up

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I hope Harris understands that without Khan, Chopra, Biden's NLRB, and a willingness to use leverage for a ceasefire; she will not have the support of the left. Trump be damned.

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Antitrust these days is limited to preventing a few horizontal mergers like Kroger and Safeway. Haven't seen the govt actually trying to bust up monopolies since GWB dropped the prosecution of Microsoft, more than 20yrs ago. And FTC battling for "working people?" There's a notion I'm not holding my breath for no matter the president. :(

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I don't think you have been paying close attention. Lina Kahn is driving a train into the heart of some massive corporations. She is not there yet, and the voices of all these rich a**holes shows there is a real fear among them. Right, I ain't holding my breath either, but it is beginning to look hopeful.

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Anyone truly serious about helping the little guy survive corporate market manipulations would be pushing to reinstate the long-time prohibitions on shorting stocks on a down-tick, and stock buy-backs - which used to be considered criminal insider share-price manipulation. It's possible I just missed where Lina was pushing for either of those.

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You mean you missed where a bureaucrat in the executive branch pushed for a change in the law that can only be enacted by Congress?

If Congress made those illegal again I'm sure she'd enforce it vigorously. As she has done with what's left of anti-trust law.

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Thanks for this. This needs to be widely publicized. I think if it is, the grassroots will step up to support Kamala and Khan. People are tired of having "the worst government money can buy" thanks to willing sellers to people like Hoffman championed by the operatives of two cartel parties...well one party...now that the other is nothing but a well-funded street gang and Hoffman is trying to convert the other to the same.

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Open borders, dumbed down schools, the demonization of “Whiteness!” and the war on meritocracy which is being replaced by Equity aka Equal Outcomes are just a few of the many ways the democrats have ruined America yet many of our “fellow Americans” are very much in favor of all this. No society can survive this level of stupidity and flat out insanity.

“But leaders have long feared the possibility of a pre-DNC spike in buses and planes like the ones that have carried over 45,000 migrants to Chicago over the past two years. Those worries only grew last week when Abbott touted the effort at the Republican National Convention.”

“Those buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border,” Abbott said.

Chicago leaders brace for as many as 25,000 new migrants ahead of DNC: ‘We just need to be prepared.’

Yahoo News. Chicago Tribune. July 23, 2024

https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/chicago-leaders-brace-many-25-202300221.html

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Seva, I totally agree with you that "no society can survive [a high] level of stupidity and flat out insanity." You think "Democrats" have ruined America? Do you want to conduct a brief survey to see if you can think of any, or very, very many Republicans who have a high level of stupidity and flat out insanity? I'm not in any way saying you couldn't find a Democrat who could fairly be described like that, but I think you'll have a much more generous offering on the other side of the aisle.

None of us, except the Native Americans, would be here if the borders weren't open. You couldn't make a better attempt to dumb down schools than by diverting support for them to private schools, and banning books, and telling teachers what they're not allowed to teach. Demonizing white supremacy is not demonizing whiteness. (If you found that most rapists were men, would you think the prosecution and sentencing of them was somehow anti-male?)

When you advocate for "meritocracy" (and I do, too), are you forgetting all the fully capable people who are kept out of various settings, or limited by one or another form of "glass ceiling."

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“Demonizing white supremacy is not demonizing whiteness.”

“How Blatant Anti-White Racism Won Acceptance in Elite America.”

Real Clear Investigations. Sept 7, 2022

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/09/07/how_blatant_anti-white_racism_won_acceptance_in_elite_america_850879.html

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“When you advocate for "meritocracy" (and I do, too),”

Then why aren’t you concerned about the dumbing down of our medical schools for the sake of equity?

“Editor’s Note: America is at war. This is not a traditional war, fought on a battlefield against an external enemy. It is a civilizational conflict against an internal enemy: the group quota regime, a revolutionary threat that seeks to reorganize American society around the principle of outcome equality — what the regime’s partisans call “equity.”

“This cold civil war may go unnoticed by many day-to-day, but its stakes are often as high as life and death. Here, Roger B. Cohen, a celebrated oncologist and professor in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, explains how the group quota regime has taken hold of the American medical education system and asks urgent questions about the consequences for medicine, for the sick, and for the country.”

“The End of Merit in Med Schools Will Be Deadly.”

Real Clear Politics. Roger Cohen. Apr 2, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/the-end-of-merit-in-med-schools-will-be-deadly/

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“and banning books, and telling teachers what they're not allowed to teach.”

Democrats teach hate and pretend it’s black history. This Real Clear Investigations article below from 2020 is about the “1619 Project” and what the author Nikole Hannah-Jones told the editors of the Chicago Tribune about its purpose which is, she said, to instill guilt in white liberals so they will support reparations for blacks. White liberals are not being targeted though. White children in our public schools are. And our Woke white leftist ruling class loves this and is totally supportive of it. She was even given a Pulitzer Prize for this poison in 2020. This is not “black history” though. This is anti-white hate mongering pretending to be history. This is evil and this is what the democrats have become. And these are the same people who are working to put Trump in prison.

“If you read the whole project, I don’t think you can come away from it without understanding the project is an argument for reparations,” she told the Chicago Tribune in October.

“I'm not writing to convert Trump supporters. I write to try to get liberal white people to do what they say they believe in,” she said. “I'm making a moral argument. My method is guilt.”

“Disputed NY Times ‘1619 Project’ Already Shaping Schoolkids Minds on Race.”

Real Clear Investigations. Jan 31, 2020

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/01/31/disputed_ny_times_1619_project_is_already_shaping_kids_minds_on_race_bias_122192.html

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Seva, thank you for the reply. It was thoughtful, if angry.

I should tell you that I am a medical doctor, since you bring up medical schools. We had one weak African American student when I was in school, and the rest were very sharp. We had more weak Caucasian medical students than weak African American ones.

If you're concerned with "group quotas," does it bother you for how long the acceptable number of African Americans admitted to most medical schools was zero? Should we as a society -- the uniquely democratic USA, where "all men are created equal" -- feel guilty about that, even though we ourselves did not make those rules? "Those who don't know history..." And the Americans who are most avid about refusing to be exposed to references to things like slavery and racism are the most racist.

As for reparations, I myself don't think it's a good idea. First of all, there's not enough money in the world we could pay to compensate African Americans for what they were put through. Second, if we tried, most of them would lose it, as lottery winners and professional athletes, who don't know how to handle large sums of money, do. And third, we are continuing to mistreat African Americans. The answer is not to mistreat them, but pay them reparations. It's much more structural than that, and it's to stop mistreating them.

Instead of attaching links, please just say what you think is the salient point.

I don't know of anyone who knows what "Woke" means. No one is against Caucasians. But many people are against racists. If racists were black, and they victimized you, you'd be against them, too.

"Black history" is American history. There really isn't one without the other. Owning, overworking, and torturing African Americans was critical to many Americans. Half the country wanted to secede, and went to war, to avoid having to stop. Who do you think doesn't need to know about that?

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“I should tell you that I am a medical doctor, since you bring up medical schools.”

So you justify the dumbing down of medical schools by telling me that when you were in medical school the black students were smarter than the white students? This whole rotting farce of a country endlessly revolves around your Woke white leftist lie that AmeriKKKa is permeated with white racism aka “systemic racism” which is always everywhere at all times oppressing “people of color” in general and blacks in particular. I’m simply tired of hearing about how white devils like me are responsible for the black social dysfunction that’s destroying Chicago and so many other cities.

Shortly after Trump was elected in 2016 and the democrat’s “Resistance!” began I told a Mexican friend at work in Chicago, a Trump supporter who’s from Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest and most dangerous states, that the inability to transition to a new government after an election is a classic sign of a failed state. He actually shuddered as if a cold chill had just run down his spine. It was just so spontaneous as if he immediately understood the consequences of this. I never forgot his reaction to what I said. And we are far more polarized now than we even were then.

“It’s Getting a Little Civil War-y” Megyn Kelly on the Border Battle With Biden Admin Growing. (1 min)

Megyn Kelly. Mar 25, 2024

https://youtube.com/shorts/rJRQMF532xo?si=CS1-4DKpkcaxzokm

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Seva, I'm going to assume you're not a medical doctor. You'll correct me if I'm wrong.

It was you who claimed to believe that medical schools had been dumbed down, and you seem to claim to think the reason is that unqualified students are admitted. I have no idea from where you get this idea, but I will tell you that you are wrong.

I never said black students were smarter than Caucasian ones.

I don't know what kind of name Seva is, but it doesn't sound Americanized. If your recent heritage is not American (note that you have misspelled America), and if you think the United States is a "rotting farce of a country," you should give serious consideration to moving. There is probably some country that will feel more adaptive to you.

I told you I don't know of anyone who knows what "Woke" means, and you continue to use this invented word without explaining it. Please correct.

I'm sorry you're tired of hearing about systemic racism, but the fact that the mention of it is tiresome to you does not mean it is a vibrant and destructive force in this country.

It is entirely possible that "white devils like [you]" are a powerful contributing force to black social dysfunction, but even if you think you personally don't bear responsibility, you would be problematically myopic if you thought there wasn't systemic racism in this country.

Oh, so you have a Mexican work colleague and friend from a very poor and dangerous section, and this person is your friend, but you oppose immigration. Did you tell your friend to go back home to Mexico? If you had, you do understand that Trump would have agreed wholeheartedly. Your friend would have been scratching his head wondering how the person he supported would have deported him.

And you told your friend that "the inability to transition to a new government after an election is a classic sign of a failed state." Have you and your friend considered who mounted an insurrection to prevent just such a transfer?

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“It was you who claimed to believe that medical schools had been dumbed down,”

I posted an excerpt from a RCP article along with an excerpt that said that. How did you miss it?

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Do your posts ever have anything to do with the subject article?

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Do your questions ever have anything to do with the fact that the society you live in is rotting and collapsing?

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