election connection

Election Connection: Vaccines

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I watched a video by a pediatrician debunking the nonsense the president and his HHS secretary claimed about the amount of liquid in vaccines that go into a child’s body. Spoiler alert! The President doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Link here (it appeared on Threads).

The following graphics are the recommended vaccination schedule from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

You may notice that I’m not giving any advice other than what the experts are saying. That is because I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on the Internet. I can tell you what we did with our own kids, what my parents did when I was a kid, and what I do as an adult for myself.

In other words, follow the advice of your doctor.

Election Connection – Just Real Quick…

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There are hundreds if not thousands of things to criticize the Trump Administration, the Republican Congress, and the Supreme Court about. Seriously. But people, could we get a grip and focus on prioritizing some of them?

I’m talking about the newly vacant Senate seats in South Carolina and almost in Kentucky.

  1. Stephen Colbert is not running for it. He doesn’t live in South Carolina. He doesn’t want the job. There is a perfectly good candidate running right now – Dr. Annie Andrews. Donate and vote for her.
  2. Stop talking about the suggestion that Graham’s sister be appointed to fill out his term. This is a normal suggestion when a congressperson dies in office. This is something that is done. For anyone saying she has no experience as a politician, I thought that was what we wanted from those running for Congress – outsiders?
  3. He’s wearing jeans…..STFU – people wear street clothes in rehab. That’s the least of the questions.
  4. Stop talking about if it’s AI or not AI – you know the picture I’m talking about. If McConnell won’t meet anyone in person, call the special election, and let him call you out on it. Personally, I think he died.
  5. Follow and support Marc Elias and Democracy Docket.

Election Connection – This Week

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Let’s start with the obvious:

Is Mitch McConnell dead? Alive? Somewhere in the middle? I spoke to him for 20 minutes and he said to me, and I quote, “As a doornail.”

Should Thomas Massie be appointed as interim Senator? SPOILERS: NO FUCKING WAY

Being against pedophiles doesn’t make anyone a progressive. Thomas Massie is a ridiculously conservative Republican who likes raw milk and taking governmental services away from the people who need it, and let’s not get into his views on the second amendment.

Not to mention that Kentucky changed the law to prohibit the Democratic governor from appointing anyone. He should call a special election and force TPTB to prove that McConnell is living and recovering. Am I the only one who feels as though Tom Kean of New Jersey was a trial balloon for something like this?

Graham Platner – Misunderstood or Nazi Rapist? Our panel of experts from a diner in Iowa weighs in on Maine’s disaster of a progressive

Vote blue no matter who is null and void when the candidate is a rapist with a Nazi tattoo, neither of which he apologizes for, not that an apology wipes away the heinous actions. We are Democrats. We don’t vote for rapists or Nazis. Ever. If that means Susan Collins gets another term, so be it. Fuck Nazis is the minimum.

The DSA is not a friend of the Democratic party. They don’t even claim to be Democrats. Stop giving them our money.

Did an Olympian athlete vandalize the reflecting pool at the Washington Mall or is Trump the fool that drove his motorcade over the national monument and then hired substandard contractors to fix something that wasn’t broken before the POTUS broke it himself? CNN investigates. Ha! No, they’re not.

If they can’t blame it on Joe Biden, they don’t report it.

Is Jew-hate the new summer trend or have we seen this before?

And how do we protect ourselves and our kids?

Also see previous DSA comments.

A group of friends spends the day on an island. The one Black man doesn’t come home. Am I the only white person seeing this? It sure feels like it.

Tragic and heartbreaking doesn’t begin to cover it.

Subscribe and follow me for more hot takes and follow and support (with money if you can):

Mark Elias and Democracy Docket – he and his team is the only one keeping our voting rights afloat – the Supreme Court certainly isn’t.

Heather Cox Richardson

Brian Tyler Cohen

Election Connection: Jesse Jackson (1941-2026)

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When I was in college, so somewhere between 1984 and 1988, I saw Jesse Jackson give a speech. We were in some kind of gymnasium with metal folding chairs, and I can still picture him up at the podium, I was about halfway back. I feel like he was wearing a grey suit. His hair was not as big as in the picture but it also wasn’t close-cropped as in later years. He did have a mustache. I remember a raised fist.

I didn’t remember him as the civil rights icon that he was even then. I only knew him as the Presidential candidate, and I was ready to vote for him.

At this time in my life, I was a pre-law, political science major, and to say I was a political junkie would be an understatement. Every morning I’d wake up and put on the television to the one station we could get in the dorms – ABC for the news. It would be on constantly. Before the 24 hour cable news, my TV was news, news, news even if I wasn’t in the room.

Seeing Jesse Jackson in person was exciting. The room was electric, and his preacher’s voice carried. I was all in. (The photo I chose above is not recent. I wanted one to reflect how he may have looked when I saw him in person.)

He didn’t become president but I think he was more influential as an activist than as a politician. He was one of the OG civil rights heroes, next to John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, James Lawson, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr, often literally.

Rest in peace, Rev. Jesse Jackson. In peace and in power.

Obituary from the LA Times

Wikipedia from Rev. Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign

Election Connection – Renee Good

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I’m struggling today.

Yesterday and this morning have been very difficult for me; my spoons have clattered to the floor, and the idea of picking them up and beginning again isn’t there yet.

I’ve called this Election Connection because it is connected to our recent past elections and the two future ones in 2026 and 2028. It’s the people.

And it’s also more than the elections and the consequences of an illiterate and ignorant electorate.

It’s that the lack of fundamental thought processing is gone. Media literacy is gone. Impartiality on behalf of our journalists is gone.I’m not sure if we will ever get any of this back.

There are not always two (or more) sides to every issue. Sometimes there is the fact side and the anti-truth side. Good versus evil.

A woman and her spouse were driving home with their dog after dropping their six-year-old off at school. They never arrived home. That trauma will never go away.

I watched in real time as side-by-side, the video of the murder next to the government lying about it, and I was stunned. I truly was. I still am.

Anyone who’s watched the video saw what happened. A woman, trying to follow the direction of one ICE agent and leave was murdered by another ICE agent who then calmly walked to her car, turned around and walked away. Not limped. Not taken to the hospital. Not injured in any way. He walked away.

The federal agents on the scene refused to let a doctor attend to her. The federal agents on the scene refused to allow an ambulance to reach her.

The EMTs had to walk into the scene and them carry her limp, dead body back to the ambulance.

At the same time that her spouse was sitting on a snowy curb sobbing, the President of the United States, the Director of Homeland Security, and other federal officials claimed that the driver was a terrorist, that she attempted to harm the ICE agent. We know this is not true. It has been described in the media as the government gaslighting the rest of us.

I will say it more clearly:

The federal officials, the director of Homeland Security, the President and Vice President of the United States are lying to us. They are, in George Orwell’s words, asking us not to believe what we see, but to believe what they tell us. They are lying. Over an over again.

And this morning, we are being told that the FBI, led by a corrupt, unqualified director will be solely in charge of the investigation; that they are refusing to share any evidence found with the Minnesota State Police or the Minneapolis City Police. We cannot be expected to trust them. Not one iota when they’ve been lying to us as we watched the video of Renee Good’s murder.

We know her name because she was a white, middle class suburban woman, a mother of three.

I ask you to search the internet for the following two names:

Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez (Chicago).

Keith Porter (Los Angeles).

We know of others who’ve died in ICE custody, several not wanted on any charges, not undocumented immigrants. We don’t hear their stories because they are not white suburban women, but men of color, and we should be following their deaths and their stories equally as close.

The first man (Villegas-Gonzalez) was allegedly killed by the same ICE agent that killed Renee Good, at least that’s what Director Noem seemed to say in her press conferences.

CORRECTION: While the ICE agent who killed Renee Good was dragged by a car, it was not Mr. Villegas-Gonzalez who was driving. These were two separate incidents with two different ice agents.

The government went too far on January 21. It continues to push us to the brink of the end of democracy, the end of civil rights, the end of life in the United States as we know it.

CBS has capitulated. CNN has capitulated. AP News, the NY Times, the Washington Post have all capitulated. Who will be left to tell the true story? When will actual journalists stand up and remember their commitment to unbiased, truthful reporting, of speaking truth to power, of not showing two sides of a single truth?

I hope it’s soon, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Election Connection – Nobody Voted For This!

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(c)2025

On a road near my house, there are two of the same sign directly across from each other. For months now, I’ve been trying to take a photo because I loved and agreed with the sentiment. I finally got that photo, which you can see in this post. Once I got the photo however, the more I looked at it, trying to decide where to use it, and the more I thought about it, I realized that it’s a nice thought, a way to absolve voters, and get them to speak out and stand up. I agreed that even people who voted for the current president didn’t want this to be the outcome. But I’ve only just recently realized that it’s a lie.

“Nobody voted for this.”

That is a lie.

People did vote for this, greedily, happily, with determination and glee at what the other side would get, and indeed “get what’s coming to them.” I don’t have to give them the redemption arc they so desperately crave because the bad things are happening to them, and they’ve suddenly decided that the  monster in the room is actually the monster in the room.

I can’t possibly list all the depraved, petty, destructive things this president and his Congress cohorts have wrought upon us.

Just because they’ve changed their minds because their landscaper was deported or their cousin the farmer is going to lose his farm because of tariffs or your health insurance is going up, like we told you it would, doesn’t mean that you get a pass because you’ve joined the suffering.

What did they vote for exactly if not for this?

They voted for lawlessness, for terrorism in our streets, for pulling people out of court hearings when they’ve immigrated “the right way,” for canceling citizenship swearing in ceremonies when these almost citizens met every hurdle, for “papers please,” for higher taxes, for lies upon lies upon lies, for pettiness that would put a toddler to shame, for misogyny, transphobia, antisemitism, and white supremacy. Yes, even if you’re not white, you voted for white supremacy. You’ve allowed him to denigrate our press, and the press has allowed him to do the same also by ignoring his outlandish and despicable behavior and their complicit silence. You’ve allowed him to call our women journalists names, and ignore the questions he dislikes. You voted for war, and disrespect for our country, our military, and put our citizens here and around the world in danger. You voted for murder and the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, the paving over the Rose Garden because the dementia-addled resident of the White House can’t remember where he is or what he’s doing. His made up grievances are on repeat, his whines are pathetic, his falling asleep at the cabinet table would be cute if it was Grandpa at Thanksgiving dinner sated by the turkey, but not for the President of the United States.

He’s so narcissistic that he needs to deface a national monument, a memorial to a fallen President; yes, it’s sad, even for this joyless man, but it’s also pitiable.

His need to pull himself up by tearing everything and everyone around him down would be sad if he wasn’t also pulling down the future for my kids, for your kids. Will the next generation have a country to be proud of? Will they even have a country? Will we be able to recover from the nastiness he unleashed? Will the White House recover from the sad, gold accents that reduce this once great house, the people’s house to a tacky golf club?

Nobody voted for this.

Lies.

*I* didn’t vote for this. Many of the people reading this didn’t vote for this. But others, there are others who DID vote for this. They’re only upset that it affects them too and not just the brown skinned people they were “punishing” simply for not being white.

But make no mistake – this is exactly what you voted for, and for those of you who didn’t vote because “they’re both the same…” shame on you.

I, and many of us, won’t forget, and forgiveness is a long way off…if it ever comes.

Election Connection – Senators, Stand Your Ground, Stand Our Ground

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Note: This didn’t even get a chance to age poorly.
I hate this timeline.

We are one week beyond the historic Election Day. We reached Presidential year numbers in voters and we made our position clear:

Do NOT give in. Do NOT cave.

Anything the Republicans say – we know from experience is a lie.

They’ve made these promises and commitments before. They will say anything. And then they will laugh at us, and take the credit for ending the shutdown. They know we are the better people and that we trust our better angels. They have NO better angels. I don’t care if John Thune used to be a decent person. (I actually question that.) He is part of the Trump Administration – rubber-stamping ALL of Trump’s crazy and illegal executive orders, not standing in the way of Trump’s murder of foreign nationals in the Caribbean, not putting a stop to the illegal and extrajudicial ICE tactics as they tear gas children on Halloween in Illinois, and commit perjury in court.

They will say and do anything and then when we let them kick the can down the road, they block the road and “forget” their “promise to address the needs of the people.” Their people are the rich, the wealthy, and the connected.

They will never return to the table if we let them walk away from this.

And why should they?

They’re Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football, and they know it.

And just yesterday, Trump pardoned Rudy Giuliani and many of the other election deniers. What happens to the compensation they were supposed to pay? What happens to the jail time? What happens in the next election?

We are on the brink of the failure of democracy.

Senators would do well to stand their ground. No ACA extension through all of 2026; NO VOTES to end the shutdown.

Stand firm.

We, the people are with you.

Are you with us?