It’s good to see Kamala Harris righteously pissed. When news broke about Florida's horrible African American social studies standards for public schools, the vice president dropped the hammer in a searing speech denouncing the ahistorical and straight-out racist efforts to minimize slavery’s impact.
“And what is happening here in Florida? Extremist so-called leaders for months have dared to ban books. Book bans in this year of our Lord 2023.
“Extremists here in Florida passed a law, ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ trying to instill fear in our teachers that they should not live their full life and love who they love. (Applause.)
”And now, on top of all of that, they want to replace history with lies. Middle school students in Florida to be told that enslaved people benefited from slavery.”
Harris was in Jacksonville, addressing a packed crowd at the Ritz Theatre and Museum on Friday. They openly booed the repulsive notion that enslaved people “benefitted” in any way from slavery.
“High schoolers may be taught that victims of violence, of massacres were also perpetrators,” Harris continued. “I said it yesterday: They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us — (applause) — and we will not have it. And we will not have it.”
After Harris’s speech, DeSantis and right-wing media quickly converged against her. DeSantis has previously called Harris “impeachment insurance” for President Joe Biden, which just goes to show that he can’t count. (Republicans will never have enough votes in the Senate to remove a sitting president, even if he were literally Hunter Biden.) He also deliberately mispronounced her name “kuh-MALL-uh” when talking to reporters in Iowa last week, demonstrating that he’s a childish bully who could personally benefit from adult education classes. (It’s not that hard to pronounce “Kamala” correctly.)
Harris was originally accused of lying about the standards, but then DeSantis himself admitted she was telling the truth when he absurdly claimed that enslaved people picked up helpful life skills while in bondage.
This resulted in a somewhat shocking mass rebuke from prominent Black Republicans, including Rep. Byron Donalds from Florida and Sen. Tim Scott from South Carolina. Harris was able to stand back and enjoy this political “Let Them Fight” meme in action.
Not even the combined might of the National Review and the brain trust at Fox News could help DeSantis prevail in his standoff with Harris. And he was looking for this fight. NBC News reported, “The Florida governor needs to breathe life into his campaign. He's starting by breathing fire at the vice president.”
Harris is a strong woman. She doesn’t need protection from DeSantis. However, it’s worth pointing out that Mitt Romney focused his ire on Barack Obama, not Joe Biden, and Biden didn’t pick fights with Mitt Romney. This isn’t simply ungallant. It’s pathetic.
Jonathan Harris at NBC News writes, “As he battles to gain traction on the campaign trail, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has shifted attention away from the two presidents he has to beat — Donald Trump and Joe Biden — and toward a less conventional foil: Vice President Kamala Harris.”
And he still got his ass whooped.
DeSantis, along with Nikki Haley, not so subtly reminds voters that Biden is very old, possibly already dead, so Harris is the real Democratic nominee next year. DeSantis even refers to the “Harris/Biden administration,” suggesting she’s actually running the show. This is hardly a smart move, as that contradicts the Right’s narrative that Harris is just an empty suit who can’t speak good. (It’s unfortunately a Leftist narrative, as well.)
A desperate DeSantis, falling in the polls to his Disney villain death, challenged Harris this week to debate the Florida curriculum with him and special guest villain William Allen, who back in 1989 gave a speech titled “Blacks? Animals? Homosexuals? What is a Minority?”
Harris doesn’t need to waste her time on DeSantis, who’s set to become an ugly footnote in history. He can’t run against her instead of Biden because he won’t be the nominee, and he definitely isn’t going to run against her for real in 2028. He’s done and Harris helped.
Thank you, Madame Vice President.
[NPR]
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Anybody else thinking of that famous photograph of a shirtless male slave whose back is turned to the camera and crossed with a lattice of brutal scars from brutal horsewhippings?
Somebody should Tweet that at DeSantis every hour on the hour until he slinks back to Florida.
And Harris can’t speak? Please. I remember how she publicly humiliated Bill Barr.
Fuck cancer.
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Scientists have developed a holy grail cancer drug that kills all solid cancer tumors while leaving other cells unharmed. The new molecule - codenamed AOH1996 - targets a protein present in most cancers that helps tumors grow and multiply in the body. It is significant because this protein - the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) - was previously thought to be 'undruggable'. The drug was tested on 70 different cancer cells in the lab - including those derived from breast, prostate, brain, ovarian, cervical, skin, and lung cancer - and was effective against them all.
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