Man whose wife died in Iranian strike presses Vance on “fundamental failures”
The vice-president was confronted by a man whose wife was killed with five others in an Iranian drone strike after the Trump administration made little effort to ensure that American servicemembers were adequately protected. “Though the Iranian drone was the weapon that killed my wife, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of fundamental failures that led up to that…my wife has told me things before she passed. There’s a failure in the leadership. And I want to know how this administration is gonna start holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we honor and that we love,” asked Nicole Amor’s husband, Joey Amor.

Vance responded in a completely cowardly fashion, trying to dodge blame by saying “If there were failures, and I don’t doubt there were, I just … literally the first time I’ve heard of this is this conversation, and I want to fix that stuff. I do not want this stuff to happen,” Vance told Amor, later adding that as vice president, “you live in a bit of a bubble” and “sometimes information doesn’t filter up to me.”

Oh, you haven’t heard about any failures in SEVEN MONTHS of war? You’re the VICE PRESIDENT. A completely disgraceful display that makes it clear why this man will (hopefully) never, ever be president.

Take Action: Expel family abuser Max Miller from Congress!

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VIDEO OF THE DAY: Top Trump ally humiliates Trump ahead of election
Brian Tyler Cohen sits down with independent South Dakota candidate for Senate, Brian Bengs, to discuss Republican Senator Mike Rounds’ desperate efforts to distance himself from Trump as the election draws near.

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Abdul El-Sayed beautifully shuts down racist Republican operative
Abdul El-Sayed for Senate: The Michigan Senate candidate was confronted by “Tommy,” who turned out to be a Republican operative and Josh Hawley staffer, over demands he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed shut him down with a scathing and powerful response, asking him “Have you disavowed them? I haven’t heard you disavow them yet. But here’s the thing about it. You’re asking the question because implicitly you assume that I’ll have dual loyalties, right? You assume that somehow I wouldn’t disavow, or that I’ll have some higher order allegiance than the Constitution, correct? Tommy, is that what you imply? Why would you think that about me?”

“Everybody knows the answer to it. All right, so let me just tell you. Let me just tell you. I’m going to swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States. And that Constitution guarantees us all that we like to practice whatever faith we want, don’t make it up. And now, you assume, that because I am Muslim, that somehow I would have some allegiance to something that is not our Constitution. I want to protect your right to practice your faith as you choose, as a Christian man, is that it seems like you don’t want to protect my right to practice that election. I’m going to ask you, do you disavow any attempt to read any religious doctrine into the laws of our country? So I think it’s you who needs to understand the Constitution of it.”

This is the kind of viral moment that swings elections. Will you chip in to help Abdul win this crucial Senate seat and flip the Senate blue?

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Where is the outrage over Trump’s racist targeting of Ilhan Omar?
Jeet Heer, The Nation: “Donald Trump has long fantasized about deporting Representative Ilhan Omar. In 2019, Trump lashed out against Omar and her congressional colleagues Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley—all left-wing Democrats and women of color and part of the ‘Squad.’ Deploying a familiar xenophobic jibe, Trump taunted, ‘Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.’ For three of the Squad, Trump’s threat was vile but empty: Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Pressley were all born in the United States.

But for Omar, Trump’s words carried a direct intent of harm. Omar was born in Somalia, came to the United States at age 8 as a refugee, and was eventually granted citizenship at age 17 in 2000. On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that in 2019, the same year Trump was telling Omar to ‘go back’ to where she came from, his administration ordered immigration officials to comb through her personal records to find evidence of fraud that could lead to her removal from the US. This fishing expedition came up empty-handed.

Never one to be defeated by a mere lack of evidence, Trump has persisted in calling for Omar’s deportation ever since—calls that have ramped up over the last year. There are ample reasons why Omar has been one of Trump’s favorite punchbags. As a leading leftist in Congress, she is a natural antagonist. But, more importantly, as a fearless Somali American woman, she excites all the passions of racism, xenophobia, and misogyny that animate Trump and his MAGA movement. Given the long history of Trump’s vendetta against Omar, it was ultimately not surprising when the Department of Homeland Security raided her home this week in search of evidence of immigration fraud, a move that the Wall Street Journal reports is motivated by a goal of stripping her of her citizenship. The campaign against Omar stinks to high heaven of partisanship and bigotry. It is also part of a larger pattern of Trump’s weaponization of law enforcement to punish perceived enemies.

But there’s a striking fact that sets the malicious prosecution apart: unlike earlier victims of Trump’s lawless abuse of the justice system, Omar isn’t getting a full-throttle defense from the political and media elite. Omar does have people fighting on her side. Even Former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was critical of Trump. In a post on X.com, Greene asked how ‘pretending to get ready to deport Ilhan Omar is going to bring gas down under $2, make health insurance freaking affordable, make a family’s weekly grocery bill make sense, and stop sending our beloved military off to fight for another fucking foreign war???’

Greene’s pointed rebuke of Trump stands in sharp contrast to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who in the five days since the raid has yet to say one word in defense of Omar. Schumer’s silence is hardly surprising. Because Omar has been outspoken in her criticism of Israel and the Israel lobby, establishment Democrats such as Schumer have often kept their distance from her. Trump’s subversion of liberal democracy is aided and abetted by an establishment that is so committed to fending off outsiders that it can’t be bothered to defend Ilhan Omar at this crucial moment.”

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Move over, pervert glasses – the latest toxic trend is robogroping
Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian: “You may be familiar with rule 34 of the internet, which states that if something exists or can be imagined, there will almost certainly be online porn of it. Now let me introduce my rule 35: whenever a new technology is created, it will, without exception, immediately be used to harass girls and women. See, for example, Meta’s ‘pervert glasses.’

As anyone could have foreseen, putting a tiny camera and microphone into smartglasses would immediately lead to people using them to record and harass women. Lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. So-called manfluencers have filmed themselves trying to flirt with women in public spaces and then uploaded the footage to TikTok. The women in these videos are often not aware they’ve been recorded until their identities are shared online and they are harassed by strangers. And what’s Meta doing about this? It’s instituted a few bans and made some privacy updates, but doesn’t seem to have an appetite to properly solve the problem.

Then there is the Flock license plate tracking system, which has been abused by an extraordinary number of law enforcement officers to track the locations of their exes or other women they are sexually interested in. And, of course, there are the AI image generators, which have been used to create deepfake pornography of women and girls.

Now, there’s a new toxic tech trend to worry about: livestreamed robogroping. Police in Cologne, Germany, are currently investigating an incident in which a humanoid robot controlled by two teenage males touched a 16-year-old girl’s buttocks and made sexually suggestive gestures toward her. Footage of the groping robot, which was wearing human clothes and a fake mustache, was reportedly livestreamed by the two males online. The robot in question has now been confiscated by the local police, who seem a little befuddled by the whole thing. “We have not been aware of this phenomenon so far,” a police spokesperson told the Associated Press, adding it was ‘new territory for us.’ It may be new territory but I can guarantee you that this won’t be the last time we hear about an incident like this.

As the industry develops, expect corporations to ensure that their profit-maximizing robots have more legal protections than the humans they may harm. Our brave new world, everyone! I’m afraid pervert glasses are just a small glimpse of what’s to come. By 2060, robogroping may be as commonplace as catcalling is today.”

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Food for thought

The Sunday roundup

Hope…

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