The Progressive Wing

Tips for Nina Turner and her new podcast, Hello Somebody!

Today has been A DAY!
I haven’t had the chance to read all the feedback, but am already overwhelmed with gratitude.
Our episode on #Junteenth got more downloads than expected!
I want everyone to know this journey belongs to US. Thank u for listening!https://t.co/445uCd34em pic.twitter.com/UQ6JglaaW7
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) June 19, 2020

https://apple.news/A1IYIGPXiQJWux4tSHO2eNA

Asked repeatedly to say ‘Black lives matter,’ Mike Pence says ‘all lives matter’

Juneteenth, however, commemorates the end of slavery in America, which happened nearly a century after the nation’s founding.
The distinction between saying “Black lives matter” and “all lives matter” has emerged as something of a cultural dividing line amid the nationwide discussion about racial equality that has been touched off in recent weeks. The phrase “Black lives matter” has gained widespread use in recent years as a way to draw attention specifically to deadly encounters between Black Americans and police.
“Forgive me for pressing you on this, sir,” anchor Brian Taff said to Pence, “but I will note you did not say those words, ‘Black lives matter,’ and there is an important distinction. People are saying, of course all lives matter, but to say the words is an acknowledgment that Black lives also matter at a time in this country when it appears that there’s a segment of our society that doesn’t agree. So why will you not say those words?”
“Well, I don’t accept the fact, Brian, that there’s a segment of American society that disagrees, in the preciousness and importance of every human life,” Pence said. “And it’s one of the reasons why as we advance important reforms in law enforcement, as we look for ways to strengthen and improve our public safety in our cities, that we’re not going to stop there.”

The FRighties are at it again: deliberately mangling the meaning of the phrase: ‘all lives matter.’ ‘All’ means the entire rainbow of humanity.

From the 1943 movie “Cabin in the Sky”, the wonderful Ethel Waters sings the Oscar nominated song

From a movie from the same year as Cabin, Lena Horne sings the title song in Stormy Weather. Lena also was featured in Cabin as the “ bad girl “

My favorite version.

Diana and Ethel get together

Adding this classic. 🙂

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉https://t.co/V54ZtgYnOC
— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) June 20, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/nyregion/us-attorney-manhattan-trump.html?referringSource=articleShare

The Justice Department abruptly announced on Friday that it had replaced the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
The announcement that Mr. Berman would be replaced was made with no notice by the Attorney General William P. Barr, who said the president intended to nominate as his successor Jay Clayton, the current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The orange maggot will be on his 757 flying to Sochi, the minute he leaves the WH. Watch.

Kentucky braces for possible voting problems in Tuesday’s primary amid signs of high turnout

Fewer than 200 polling places will be open for voters in Kentucky’s primary Tuesday, down from 3,700 in a typical election year. Amid a huge influx in requests for mail-in ballots, some voters still had not received theirs days before they must be turned in. And turnout is expected to be higher than in past primaries because of a suddenly competitive fight for the Democratic Senate nomination.
The scenario has voting rights advocates and some local elections officials worried that the state is careening toward a messy day marked by long lines and frustrated voters — similar to the scenes that have played out repeatedly this spring as the novel coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the 2020 primaries.
Because of a shortage of workers willing to staff voting sites during the health crisis, each of the commonwealth’s 120 counties is opening a very limited number of polling locations. The two largest counties will have just one in-person location each.
On Thursday evening, a federal judge rejected an effort to add polling places in the state’s largest counties, citing a legal standard discouraging last-minute court intervention in election procedures.
That means Jefferson County — the state’s largest, home to 767,000 residents and the city of Louisville — will have as its sole polling location a convention and expo center where voting booths have been set up about eight feet apart in a cavernous hall. About 1 in 5 residents in the county is African American, the largest black population in the state.
In Fayette County, the state’s second-largest county and home to Lexington, voters who want to cast ballots in person will have to head to the football field at the University of Kentucky, where voters will find hand-sanitizing stations and booths where they can fill out paper ballots and scan them through machines.
The pandemic has already altered how tens of millions of Americans can cast their ballots this year
Don Blevins Jr., the Fayette County clerk, said that while he is confident in the county’s plans to accommodate everyone who wants to vote, he is concerned that large numbers could overwhelm staff on site and force voters to wait.
“If we get a massive turnout at Kroger Field, that’s just going to be an angry mob,” Blevins said. “That does worry me a little.”
State officials anticipate a higher turnout than in past presidential primary years, driven in part by a late surge by upstart Senate candidate state Rep. Charles Booker, who is challenging former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath for the Democratic nomination to take on GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the fall.
Booker has secured high-profile endorsements from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) since he recently joined protesters and demonstrated against police brutality in Louisville.
Trepidation about how pandemic-era voting will play out in Kentucky comes on the heels of troubled primaries such as Georgia’s on June 9, when voters waited as long as five hours in line and poll workers struggled to work new voting machines after training sessions had been scrapped because of the pandemic.
Voting debacle in Georgia came after months of warnings went unaddressed
“It’s outrageous that officials are seeking to hold in-person elections in a single location,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It’s as if Kentucky failed to follow the crisis that unfolded in Wisconsin and Georgia, where officials were woefully unprepared for the turnout on Election Day.”
State and county officials say they have been preparing for the turnout and are doing what they can to head off long lines Tuesday.
Michael G. Adams, Kentucky’s Republican secretary of state, said his office has been aggressively trying to reach voters through the news media and social media, encouraging them to vote by mail and seeking to reassure those worried that the expansion of mail voting will lead to fraud.
Adams launched an educational campaign around mail-in ballots with the slogan, “Easy to vote, hard to cheat.” The goal is to explain to voters that “absentee voting is a great concept and there are laws in place about how it works,” he said.
“I’m much more concerned about voter confusion than I am about people trying to steal an election,” Adams said.
Minuscule number of potentially fraudulent ballots in states with universal mail voting undercuts Trump claims about election risks.
Like many states, Kentucky relaxed the rules of who can vote absentee by applying the “medical emergency” excuse to fear of the coronavirus.
More than 937,000 voters requested early ballots as of Wednesday, or 27 percent of all registered voters in the state, Adams said.
That is a big spike from previous primary elections when there was a narrower criteria for mail-in voting. About 1.5 percent of registered voters typically vote by mail, according to the secretary of state’s office, or about 51,000 voters.
Adams said he still has concerns about whether the voter education effort has successfully reached rural counties.

@Booker4KY GOTV Mail-in, have Dem Party arrange for a stamps distribution org for Sunday and do the mail ins. Do you need $ for that kind of project? https://t.co/0aqlVeiQkq
— Benny🌹 (@Benny06) June 20, 2020

It couldn’t be clearer: We do NOT trust our for-profit healthcare system. #MedicareForAll #PoliticalRevolution https://t.co/dx9IfxwZeb
— Our Revolution (@OurRevolution) June 20, 2020