We're reposting some of C.I.'s Thursday "Iraq snapshot" to note some realities about the Green Party.
Thursday, September 19, 2024. Donald Trump gets his money's worth when he pays political whore Jill Stein, that includes purchasing Jill and her supporters' silence when it comes to the deaths of Candi Miller and Amber Thurman, Robert Kennedy Junior makes the case for stricter and continued rules regarding who can have ballot access, and the only grown up in the room, Kamala Harris, addresses the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
There are 46 days until the US presidential election. Again, THE WASHINGTON POST has published an important tool that you can utilize to make sure you are still registered to vote. Very important this year with a record number of people being purged from the rolls. If that happened to you, you may or may not know.
And you might not know that Robert Kennedy Junior lost his bid to get off the Michigan ballot. Craig Mauger (DETROIT FREE PRESS) reports:
A federal judge rejected Wednesday a request from former independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to intervene in the printing of Michigan's ballots and have his name removed as the presidential nominee of the Natural Law Party.
In an 18-page order, Judge Denise Page Hood of Michigan's Eastern District dealt the latest blow to Kennedy's bid to have his name taken off the ballot in the battleground state. Kennedy suspended his campaign and endorsed Republican Donald Trump on Aug. 23.
Hood wrote that Kennedy was "asking the court to interrupt the election process because he no longer wants to participate."
"Reprinting ballots at this late hour would undoubtedly halt the voting process in Michigan and cause a burden to election officials," Hood wrote, three days before ballots must be available to send to military and overseas voters.
To interrupt the election process because he no longer wants to participate?
Exactly.
This is nonsense on so many levels.
But the next time someone wants to run for president from something other than the parties with true ballot access -- that would be the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the Libertarian Party -- and they whine about how difficult it is to follow the agreed upon rules, grasp that it's idiots like Junior that make these rules necessary.
He wants on the ballot, he wants off the ballot. He's running for president, he's not running for president.
I get what's happening. He wants to give his votes to Donald Trump. I also get that he's not -- and never was -- a real candidate.
He whined, he stamped his feet, he broke FEC rules and laws, he acted like the little bitch that he is and now he wants off the ballot.
It's not enough that he drops out of the race, no, Junior demands that his name be removed from the ballots. And some states are stupid enough to indulge him -- setting a precedent so that other candidates can demand similar treatment in future elections.
Junior's latest temper tantrum is going to impact future elections a great deal.
Now let's turn to another grifter: Jill Stein.
Vlad's pal Jill is running yet again for president yet again on the Green Party ticket.
Let's help her the way we helped Junior when we explained here his latest FEC violation.
Ann's been a Green. We all knew she wasn't voting for Jill Stein because she was opposed to a third run by the same candidate yet again. In "How disgusting is Jill Stein?," last night, she revealed she's not even sure she's ever going to vote for a Green again:
Pretty damn disgusting. Really disgusting. This:
New reporting from CBS News reveals that third-party spoiler candidate Jill Stein’s legal efforts in Nevada and Wisconsin are being aided separately by Jay Sekulow, an attorney who represented Trump during his impeachment trials, and Michael Dean, an attorney involved in lawsuits attempting to overturn the 2020 election results.
Stein’s campaign has admitted it welcomes the support. On Monday, her campaign manager, Jason Call, acknowledged
Trump’s team has ulterior motives for propping up Stein’s spoiler
candidacy and showed no qualms about being used in their political
games.
No.
I was raised a Green. I voted for Jill in 2012 and 2016. And, no, the Green Party does not believe in taking dirty money. The fact that she's doing so now goes to how she is destroying the Green Party.
I am voting for Kamala Harris for a number of reasons but each day, it seems, Jill Stein gives me even more reasons to vote for Kamala.
Ann's correct, that is dirty money. And the Green Party itself is supposed to be against that so don't me the crap about they have no other choice. But more importantly?
Margaret Kimberley has overseen the destruction of BLACK AGENDA REPORT. Maybe she takes comfort in the failed attempts to build the Green Party? She spoke at their convention because she is a Green. And what has she offered in the last 3 days?
21 Tweets and reTweets attacking Kamala Harris -- she's especially enraged that Angela Y Davis has endorsed Kamala. It must be very frustrating for Margaret -- and her raggedy ass hair -- that someone who has made history endorsed Kamala. It just reminds Margaret of how useless she herself has become.
So she offers 21 Tweets attacking Kamala. How many attacking Donald Trump?
Zero.
Now I've got no problem holding my own accountable. This is not -- and has never been -- a site to blow kisses at Democrats.
But Margaret's not a Democrat. We get that, right?
She's a Green.
She's not holding the Green Party accountable. She's not, for example, noting the dirty money that Jill's campaign's surviving on. She's not holding Jill accountable.
But she is trashing the Democrats.
AOC did not attack Jill Stein. This is Feminism 101 and it's been telling -- very telling -- to see how that played out in the press. AOC did a Tik-Tok video. That's not where it started.
Jill and her running mate had been trashing Kamala Harris and attacking the Democratic Party.
As this continued, AOC commented.
The press largely ran with 'cat fight!' because they love to reduce any disagreement between women to a cat fight. But, that's not what it was. The primer on this for feminism is that when you're hit with a two-by-four and you respond to that, you are not starting the fight.
Jill and her crazed goons had been attacking over and over. AOC responded. She did not initiate it.
But political parties are always in conflict!!!!
They should be. But look at Margaret Kimberley's Twitter feed. Even giving her all the space that she so desperately needs to attack Kamala, also allowing for her desire to promote Holocaust deniers and to promote a convicted pedophile (a registered sex offender), that still leaves plenty of room to call out Donald Trump. But she doesn't do that.
Nor does the Green Party as a whole.
That's why the dirty money that Jill Stein's taking matters -- and the pro bono legal work that insurrectionist lawyers are doing for her campaign matter.
They give her free legal, they give money to her campaign and she attacks Democrats.
She's being paid to do so. Grasp that.
She's not an independent candidate, she's someone whose campaign materially benefits from Donald Trump.
She takes the money, she takes the pro bono legal assistance, she takes them gathering signatures for her to be on ballots (an FEC issue) and in exchange she stays silent and does not attack Donald Trump.
You want to pretend that's politics to emulate? She's a paid whore. That's all she is. She's not going to bite the hand that feeds her.
People need to be watching Margaret Kimberley and Holocaust denier and 9/11 Truther Ajuma Baraka
She's
reTweeting Jill's running mate and Jill's previous running mate as well
-- the latter being the 9/11 conspiracy freak Ajama Baraka and all the
other crazies. You'll see these party members doing the same thing --
just by chance, pure chance, you understand -- that Jill Stein does:
slam Kamala, slam the Democrats and give Trump a pass.
Why?
Because their paid agents of the GOP -- that's the reality.
Now Margaret loves to pretend to care about Black people. But where is old crusty lips when anyone needs her?
If there's one topic she should be noting -- and we'll get to that topic in greater detail in a moment -- it's the deaths of two Black women in Georgia because of Donald Trump and the Supreme Court. They died. But to note their deaths would require calling out Donald Trump.
And Donald Trump is apparently the only thing keeping the Green Party afloat and alive currently.
Candi Miller and Amber Thurman. They have to be disappeared by Margaret. Apparently, she wants to make clear to the country that BLACK AGENDA REPORT has an agenda but it's not about helping Black people (which does explain what Betty's long noted -- Glen Ford's death resulted in Margaret turning BAR over to non-Black Danny Haiphong).
Candi Miller and Amber Thurman are dead but Margaret Kimberley -- the executive editor of the so-called BLACK AGENDA REPORT -- has ignored them while posting and re-posting over a hundred Tweets since Ann -- a working mother with two young kids -- noted Amber's death in "Thanks to the Crooked Supreme Court, a woman is dead."
So let's all understand what's going on: Donald Trump's pouring money into the Green Party and pro bono work into the Green Party and his purchasing power buys him their silence.
Margaret needs to stop calling others "Uncle Tom." (And she needs to fix that ratty hair.)
From yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We look now at reproductive rights in the United States, which are a key issue in this presidential election, now less than 50 days away. On Tuesday, Republican senators once again blocked legislation to protect access to IVF, in vitro fertilization, and require health insurers to cover the fertility treatment, after Democrats forced a vote.
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Donald Trump, her Republican rival, for his role in abolishing national abortion rights after he appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who issued the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. In an interview yesterday with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia, Vice President Harris cited the case, reported by ProPublica, of Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old Black woman in Georgia who died from a fatal infection after doctors refused to treat a rare complication from a medication abortion.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I don’t know if anyone here has heard most recently the stories out of Georgia, tragic story, about a young woman who died because, it appears, the people who should have given her healthcare were afraid they’d be criminalized, after the Dobbs decision came down, laws that make no exception even for rape or incest, which means that you’re telling a survivor of a crime of a violation to their body that they have no right to make a decision about what happens to their body next, which is immoral, an approach that doesn’t take into account that — most people, I think, agree you don’t have to abandon your faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body.
AMY GOODMAN: Georgia’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee found Amber Thurman’s death was preventable and largely due to delays in care. This comes as Project 2025 staffer, former Trump White House personnel chief John McEntee doubted the danger of abortion bans in a TikTok post last Thursday.
JOHN McENTEE: Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don’t hold your breath.
AMY GOODMAN: McEntee was widely ridiculed as women posted responses about their experiences being denied care.
Well, today, ProPublica published a new report on a second woman in Georgia who died from medical abortion complications. Candi Miller’s family said she didn’t visit a doctor, quote, “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions,” unquote. Overall, deaths due to complications from abortion pills are extremely rare.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Monica Simpson is with us. She’s executive director of SisterSong, the national women of color reproductive justice collective based in Georgia. And Ziva Branstetter is also joining us, from Walnut Creek, California, senior editor at ProPublica, who helped edit two new reports by Kavitha Surana.
We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! I want to begin with Ziva. Actually, Vice President Harris cited your investigation in her answers to questions from the National Association of Black Journalists yesterday. Can you lay out the stories of [Amber] Thurman and also today you’ve just broke a new story on a second death?
ZIVA BRANSTETTER: Correct. Well, thank you, first of all, Democracy Now!, for having me on to talk about reporting by ProPublica and reporter Kavitha Surana. We have reported two stories. Both deaths of these women occurred in the months following the overturn of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Both were in Georgia. Both were African American women.
The first case, Amber Thurman, 28-year-old single mother with a 3-year-old son, she died after doctors did not provide care over about a 20-hour period in the emergency room. She had taken abortion medication to end her pregnancy, and fetal tissue remained, which is a rare — a very rare complication of taking abortion medication, very simply solved with a procedure called a D&C, that doctors did not provide over 20 hours in the emergency room. That procedure, in almost all cases in Georgia now and in other abortion ban states, is a felony. Doctors could face criminal prosecution for performing it. We don’t know what was going through their minds, but they did not operate over 20 hours. And she died in August of 2022.
The story that we just published today on ProPublica’s website is about Candi Miller, a 41-year-old woman, also from Georgia, a mother of three, who also self-managed her abortion at home, which is becoming far more regular under abortion bans. She took abortion medication. Again, rare complication. Instead of going to the hospital, she was afraid to seek care, and did not and died at home with a mixture of drugs that her family believes was trying to manage the pain. And she died, as well, in November of 2022. That death has been ruled by the state preventable and, not only that, directly related to the state’s abortion ban, which is the first time we’ve seen this reported.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain the abortion ban in Georgia.
ZIVA BRANSTETTER: Correct. It’s a six-week ban. You know, we classify that almost the same as a complete ban, because many people can become pregnant and don’t know at that point that they are even pregnant. And experts say a six-week ban is tantamount to a complete ban. And there are no health exceptions in Georgia’s ban. Well, Candi Miller had lupus. She had hypertension. She had diabetes. She’s 41 years old. She already has three children. She found herself pregnant. Doctors had told her, “You can’t. Your body cannot survive another pregnancy. It will kill you.” So, she had, literally, no good options under Georgia’s abortion ban.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, can you talk about how rare medication abortion complications are, Ziva?
ZIVA BRANSTETTER: About 6 million people, since the FDA approved abortion medication, have used it, and there have been 31 deaths of any kind, only 11 of those from sepsis. It is 0.0005% of cases that are fatal, which is a lower complication rate than penicillin and Viagra. And so, it’s extremely safe. All medications have risk. There is a simple solution to a complication with abortion medication, and that is a D&C. And abortion ban states, for the vast majority of cases, criminalize that procedure.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Monica Simpson. You’re executive director of the Georgia organization SisterSong. Can you talk about the levels of Black maternal mortality in Georgia?
MONICA SIMPSON: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me this morning.
We are devastated to hear this news and to see that Black women are still not being treated in the ways that they need to by our healthcare system in Georgia. What is real in the state of Georgia is that we are in a maternal healthcare crisis in our state. We are a state that has yet to expand Medicaid, which means that thousands upon thousands of people are already falling under the radar and not getting access to the care that they need. And on top of that, we are dealing with the fact that we are in this country seeing Black women die at a rate three to four times higher than white women in childbirth, right?
So, we look at that, and coupled with the fact that Georgia has a desert of OB-GYN availability in our state. There are over half of our states that do not — excuse me, half of our counties that do not have access to an OB-GYN, so people are having to travel miles upon miles just to get care. So, when you bring all of that together in this context of a state that is also dealing with a six-week abortion ban — SisterSong is the lead plaintiff in that case against our state; we have been fighting that for many years now, trying to get this ban removed — we are seeing a really dire picture for Black women and for people in general in the state of Georgia.
AMY GOODMAN: In this case that ProPublica talked about today, the story of Candi Miller, Monica, Candi Miller’s health was so fragile — I’m reading the first sentences. “Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her.” So she was already at high risk. Her previous pregnancy was high-risk. But she was terrified to go to the doctor. Talk about that, what this means. And the number of women who may be suffering or have died that we don’t know, it’s because of their fear of going to the doctor, that they would be criminalized.
MONICA SIMPSON: Absolutely. We hear this story far too often, that we know too many Black women, in particular — right? — are saying that they do not feel safe when they go to their doctor. They don’t feel as if they’re listened to. They don’t feel as if they’re trusted. We have seen this show up in the lives of people who are celebrities, like Serena Williams, right? So, if we have people who have the amount of privilege and resources that a Serena Williams has and they are still not listened to and trusted by healthcare providers, imagine what that looks like on the ground for everyday people who are trying to get access to care. In our membership, we get these stories all the time, that we don’t feel like we’re trusted, we don’t feel like we’re going to get access to the information that we want. And so it silences people. And we know that that silence then drives people inward, and it does not allow them to be able to move towards the solutions that they need for themselves and their families.
So, this is a really sad day in the state of Georgia. Our elected officials need to be on top of this more than ever. And we have to take this very seriously, because we knew and we have been saying, since the Dobbs decision and even before then, that when you remove access, restrict access, ban access to lifesaving care, healthcare that people need, then those who have historically been pushed to the margins will be the ones most affected. And we are seeing that in the state of Georgia, where these Black women have lost their lives to a preventable — preventable — issue that could have been taken care of in real time.
AMY GOODMAN: At the Democratic convention, a ceremonial roll call to nominate Kamala Harris as president included Kate Cox speaking for Texas. She had spoken out after she was forced to flee Texas to get abortion care after learning her pregnancy was not viable. She was introduced by former Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, who had an op-ed in The New York Times this weekend headlined “Harris Is Good on Abortion Rights. Now She Needs to Take It to 11.” Other featured speakers included three other women impacted by abortion bans: Hadley Duvall of Kentucky, Amanda Zurawski of Texas, Kaitlyn Joshua of Louisiana. This is Kaitlyn Joshua.
KAITLYN JOSHUA: Two years ago, my husband and I were expecting our second child. Our daughter Lauryn couldn’t wait to be a big sister. I was getting ready for her fourth birthday party when something didn’t feel right. Two emergency rooms sent me away. Because of Louisiana’s abortion ban, no one would confirm that I was miscarrying. I was in pain, bleeding so much, my husband feared for my life. No woman should experience what I endured, but too many have. They write to me saying, “What happened to you happened to me.” Sometimes they’re miscarrying, scared to tell anyone, even their doctors. Our daughters deserve better. America deserves better.
AMY GOODMAN: Kaitlyn Joshua is an African American woman. Ziva, you mention her case in both your ProPublica articles.
ZIVA BRANSTETTER: Yes. Well, obviously, as has been noted by your other guest, the burden of this issue falls heaviest on Black women, on women of color. I think it’s very interesting to note that there have been literally dozens of cases like hers across the country, where women have had to rush across state lines, have been denied care. There are now two confirmed deaths in an abortion ban state that have been ruled preventable by an official committee including 10 doctors. Both are Black women. I don’t think it’s an accident that we’re seeing this pattern. I think there are more cases out there. ProPublica is certainly interested in hearing from people whose loved ones may have died, who have questions about how they died. And we are going to keep looking into them.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to give Monica Simpson the last word. Cecile Richards had spoken at the DNC. She actually is suffering from brain cancer right now. And in this op-ed piece she just wrote for the Times, her headline, “Harris Is Good on Abortion Rights. Now She Needs to Take It to 11.” Do you agree with this?
MONICA SIMPSON: I do think that we are in a time where we have to not just look at where we are. We have to think about where we want to go, right? And what we have been saying for many, many years is that we know that a federal right to abortion is necessary, but access is even more imperative. And so, when we think about the state of where we are in this country, knowing that we don’t have the federal right, and we were already suffering from lack of access to abortion care, we have to think about this at the next level. How do we make sure that we’re not only creating the opportunities for legislation that creates a federal right to be achieved, but that we are expanding access in all the ways [inaudible] —
AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, and Ziva Branstetter, editor at ProPublica. We’ll link to both your pieces. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.
Candi Miller and Amber Thurman are dead. But watch the Jill Steiners work over time to ignore that reality and to render those two women invisible.
And then they wonder, these nut jobs, why we won't join them in a death-pact by wasting our vote on The Paid and Bossed Jill Stein.
Again, Donald Trump is getting from Jill Stein and her supporters exactly what he's paying for. Alison Durkee (FORBES) notes:
Key Facts
Jill Stein: Jay Sekulow, working for conservative-leaning legal group American Center for Law and Justice, is listed as the counsel of record in the Nevada Green Party’s Supreme Court challenge against a recent court decision, which ruled Stein and other Green Party candidates should be kept off the state’s ballot due to a paperwork error.
Sekulow’s legal group called the Nevada Democratic Party’s lawsuit challenging the party’s candidates “a blatant attempt to clear the field for Kamala Harris’ campaign,” claiming, “If the legal system can be weaponized against any party or candidate” like the Nevada Green Party, then “it can be used against your preferred candidate.”
Sekulow, who has not yet responded to a request for comment, has long aligned himself with former President Donald Trump and worked as his personal lawyer when he was in the White House, including representing the then-president during his 2020 impeachment trial and in the Mueller investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Stein has also reportedly accepted legal help in Wisconsin from attorney Michael Dean, who previously represented Trump in the state when the ex-president was trying to challenge the 2020 election results.
In addition to legal support, Republican operative Jefferson Thomas and his firm helped gather signatures for Stein in New Hampshire, the Associated Press reported.
The whores are giving Donald Trump exactly what he's paying them for. Jill Stein has destroyed the Green Party.
Kamala Harris isn't trying to destroy the Democratic Party. She's not ignoring Candi Miller and Amber Thurman or rendering them invisible. She's using her voice to call for all to be uplifted and all Americans to be welcome in their own country. This seems to enrage Jill Stein and her cronies. But that's what Kamala's doing -- demonstrating leadership and fighting for all.