Aug. 18, 2024 "Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi: How America's most powerful women look to make history again": Today I found this article by Sarah D. Wire, Michael Collins and Susan Page, USA TODAY and Yahoo:
WASHINGTON – They made history once before. Now they’re trying to do it again.
Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly settled into their seats directly behind President Joe Biden as he delivered the opening lines of his first speech to a joint session of Congress. The annual ritual had been repeated for decades. But this time the tableau was very different.
For the first time ever, both leaders were women.
“Madame speaker, Madame vice president: From this podium, no president has ever said those words – and it’s about time,” Biden said, acknowledging the history of the moment on April 28, 2021.
Three years later, Harris is aiming to make history again by becoming the nation’s first female president.
When she formally accepts the Democratic nomination Thursday night at the party’s national political convention in Chicago, she will owe her rise to the top of the ticket in part to Pelosi, whose behind-the-scenes pressure campaign led Biden to drop out of the race just four weeks ago and to the party’s decision to anoint Harris as the nominee.
It was a remarkable turn of events that once again brought together the two most powerful women in American politics –
both from the San Francisco Bay area,
both products of the city’s Democratic political machine,
both at the pinnacle of power in Washington.
From different generations and family backgrounds, Harris and Pelosi aren’t close personally. But their unlikely rise through San Francisco’s competitive political environment instilled in them a mutual admiration, according to multiple people in the orbits of both women.
“Politically, officially, personally, I have great respect for her,” Pelosi said of Harris during a recent interview with USA TODAY.
Pelosi said she was particularly impressed by how quickly Harris wrapped up the presidential nomination after Biden’s exit and the skill with which she navigated her successful campaign for California attorney general more than a decade ago.
“She's a person of faith and values in terms of civic life and being responsible in the community,” Pelosi said.
“She's a person officially who is strong. And you see how she's led the way on a woman's right to choose, for one thing, but there are many others. … She's politically astute.”
Harris offers similar praise for Pelosi.
“There is so much about the future of our country that has relied on leaders like Nancy Pelosi who have the grit, the determination, the brilliance to know what is possible and then to make it so,” she said at a fundraiser in San Francisco last week.
The thing Pelosi admires most about Harris is the same thing Harris admires about her, said Ashley Etienne, who served as head of communications for Pelosi when she was House speaker and for Harris as vice president.
“Maybe it speaks to their California political roots, but it's their level of sort of shrewdness, their political astute and shrewdness,” Etienne said.
“Pelosi's has been on full display for decades now. But now we're starting to see Harris' to a different degree, which is quite refreshing and interesting.”
Both have the ability to keep their heads down and do the background work necessary to excel without drawing attention to it, Etienne said.
“I always say Pelosi plays five-dimensional chess, and you rarely ever know what she's fully up to,” she said. “And I think the same is the case with Harris.”
'Someone who was special'
Harris, 59, and Pelosi, 84, come from different political generations, but both have bridged San Francisco’s long activist tradition and its old-school local Democratic machine.
Harris was born in Oakland and raised by a single mother, a cancer researcher involved in the civil rights movement who intentionally brought up the future vice president and her sister in multicultural, multiethnic communities.
Harris spent much of her childhood in Canada and attended Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington, where she interned in the same Senate office she would one day hold. She returned to California for law school.
On the other side of the country, Pelosi grew up in a political family, the daughter of a powerful Maryland congressman who went on to become mayor of Baltimore. When her family moved to San Francisco, Pelosi joined the city’s political circles but never ran for local office. Eventually, she rose to become chairwoman of the California Democratic Party, orchestrated the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco and made an unsuccessful bid to run the national Democratic Party.
San Francisco, like many cities, has core political families that shape the political landscape. Harris and Pelosi would both come through what locals call the “Burton-Brown machine.”
Former Democratic Rep. Phil Burton organized a coalition made up of
labor,
civil rights leaders,
and gay
and Asian voters
to win control of the city from Republicans in the 1950s.
“All these different communities had something very much in common, which was no one was paying attention to them,” said Sam Lauter, a longtime friend of both Harris and Pelosi. “For the most part, that coalition has been the most successful entity in San Francisco politics.”
Willie Brown, a legendary political figure who served as speaker of the California State Assembly and later as San Francisco mayor, extended those coalitions when he rose to power in the 1980s and 1990s.
When Burton died of heart failure in 1983,
his wife, Sala Burton, succeeded him.
Four years later, on her own deathbed, Sala Burton made it clear who she wanted to replace her: Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi’s rise from political operative to political candidate was a surprise.
“I never viewed Nancy Pelosi as ambitious," Lauter said. “No one thought she was going to be an elected official, including her.”
In typical Pelosi style, she not only entered the race. She won.
Lauter, whose mother is a close friend of Pelosi, then made a prediction: One day she would be House speaker.
A few years later, Harris would begin making a name for herself in political circles. A prosecutor in the Alameda County District Attorney's office, she formed friendships and developed allies within the local political world. Those friendships led to a position in the San Francisco district attorney’s office and a short-lived romantic relationship with Brown, along with several state board positions and involvement in local campaigns.
Longtime political operative Alex Tourk first met Harris in 2000 when party officials asked them to help with a tight runoff in the supervisorial election campaign of Rev. Amos Brown, who is now the head of the San Francisco NAACP.
“I got to spend six weeks, seven days a week, 14 hours a day, side by side with her,” Tourk said. “And I knew then that this was someone
who was special,
who just had immense leadership abilities,
could articulate strategy,
(and was) incredibly, you know, inspiring.”
Harris was elected California attorney general in 2010. Six years later, when Democrat Barbara Boxer retired from the U.S. Senate, Harris ran for that seat and won, placing her in the same office where she interned under Sen. Alan Cranston of California during college. Her star clearly on the rise, Harris ran for president in 2019, but her campaign sputtered and she dropped out before the first primary or caucus vote was cast. Within months, though, Biden came calling. He had wrapped up the Democratic nomination and needed a running mate.
He wanted Harris to be his vice president.
'Not confined by convention'
San Francisco, population 808,437, is a good training ground for politicians with ambitions for state or national office.
One of the most competitive political environments in the country, officer seekers must learn to navigate an electorate that is diverse, passionate and actively involved in the political process.
“We have more democratic clubs and neighborhood organizations than probably any other town in America,” said Dale Carlson, a veteran San Francisco lobbyist and public relations consultant. “People in this town are engaged. ... And so if you come up through politics here, you've really had to master the ability to get along with very diverse, very competing interests. And it gives you an edge.”
San Francisco’s electorate is a lot more moderate than people assume, Carlson said, and voters are discerning. People don’t tend to vote straight ticket or automatically support ballot measures because they’re told to.
“If you're successful in San Francisco,” Carlson said, “you're a step ahead. You've mastered the game at a different level.”
To maneuver through San Francisco politics requires unique coalition building, Tourk said.
“We don't agree on much in San Francisco,” he said. “Some would think the bluest city and the bluest state in America, that we would be holding hands on most issues. But unfortunately, it's not that way, and it can be a very energetic group of people trying to move their kind of unique policy vision forward.”
Those who successfully navigate the system, like Pelosi and Harris, apply the lessons learned in San Francisco when they move on to higher office.
Harris “has this keen ability to see people in their circumstances, and in many cases, can identify with them,” Etienne said.
“People can identify with her, see themselves in her, in her own story.”
In Washington, Pelosi and Harris have the California way of wanting to do big, bold things for the country, Etienne said.
“Both of them are big thinkers,” she said.
“They're not confined by convention.
They kind of start with the impossible,
what people would think is impossible,
they work backwards from there to make it possible.”
Pelosi is a tactician while Harris is better at putting herself in other people’s shoes, Etienne said.
“When you're the speaker your job is to win the House,” she said.
“You've got to be a superb strategist and a tactician.
But to be the vice president or the next president United States is about vision and then how do you rally people around,
how do you inspire people around a vision?
They're both just highly suited for the jobs that they actually have.”
'Democracy is on the ballot'
Last Sunday afternoon, some 700 people crowded into San Francisco’s famous Fairmont Hotel in the affluent Nob Hill neighborhood, known for its parks, art galleries and picturesque bay views. The event was a political fundraiser, and the guest list included tech-industry billionaires, titans of the business world and leading political figures like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who also came up through San Francisco politics and was mayor.
And, of course, Pelosi and Harris.
For Harris, it was her first trip back to San Francisco since she had wrapped up the Democratic presidential nomination.
“It was a homecoming,” Tourk said. “How often is, you know, one of your own positioned to be the next president of the United States?”
Pelosi spoke first and received a standing ovation. After the crowd quieted down, she heaped praise on Harris and spoke of the campaign ahead, comparing it to the Olympics in which the difference between winning a gold, silver and bronze medal can come down to seconds.
“Elections are that close,” she said, adding later, “Democracy is on the ballot, and we want democracy to win the gold that day.”
Harris walked out a few minutes later to more cheers and another standing ovation. “We will win this election,” she said, but warned “we can take nothing for granted.”
With a mad dash ahead to introduce herself to voters over the next few weeks and lay out a policy agenda, Tourk said he wasn’t surprised Harris came back to San Francisco first. “I think she was coming home, both for resources, but also for energy as well,” he said.
She got both. The event raised $13 million for her nascent White House campaign.
'She has to win'
Only one other woman, Hillary Clinton, has ever won a major party’s presidential nomination. Harris is the first Black woman and the first Asian woman to lead a presidential ticket. If she wins the presidency, she will shatter another glass ceiling.
Harris will win, Pelosi predicted.
“She has to win,” Pelosi said during her interview with USA TODAY. “Fate of the nation is at stake.”
What advice does the former speaker have for her fellow Californian as she prepares for the difficult race against Republican Donald Trump?
“Just to be herself,” Pelosi said.
“That's my advice to everybody.
Just be yourself.
The authentic you,
why you came here,
what you believe,
how you want to get things done,
what your judgment is,
what's in your heart.
You show them that you don't need any advice.
Do it your way.”
It’s not only how elections are won. It’s how history is made.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi broke the mold
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/kamala-harris-nancy-pelosi-americas-090603072.html
Sept. 30, 2024 "Texas man pays $4,000 for ‘autographed’ Taylor Swift guitar at auction then smashes it to pieces with hammer": Today I found this article by Kevin E G Perry on the Independent and Yahoo. This is about the American Presidential election:
A man in Texas paid $4,000 for what was described as an “autographed” Taylor Swift guitar, only to immediately smash it to pieces with a hammer.
Footage of the incident at the Ellis County Wild Game Dinner in Waxahachie, Texas has since gone viral.
The event was a fundraiser to support agricultural education for local youth, and the guitar was one of many items that were auctioned off along with tickets to see George Strait and Chris Stapleton, an African safari, a dove hunt and a trip to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
In a statement to The Independent, one of the organizers said the Swift guitar was “a real autographed guitar and it sold for $4,000.”
In the video, the man can be seen approaching the stage where a member of auction staff is waiting with the instrument, which is covered in images of Swift from her record-breaking Eras Tour, and a hammer.
The man then takes hold of both and smashes the face of the guitar with the hammer to the sound of loud cheering from the audience.
As the man returns to his seat with the broken instrument in hand, the auctioneer laughs, passes him a box and says: “Now take that and hang up that busted thing.”
One event attendee, Rob Bartley, told The Independent: “A Taylor Swift guitar had sold at another event unrelated to this earlier in the year, so it wasn’t an unheard of type of item to auction.
“That said... when the man announced his intention to smash it the camera phones came out.”
Bartley added: “It was unexpected, but not surprising. This part of Texas leans heavily conservative and the Biden/Harris administration isn’t held in high regard.
“A lot of the working class people that live around me feel that the administration gone from not working for us to working against us.”
Swift has provoked the ire of Donald Trump supporters in recent weeks after endorsing his rival Kamala Harris for president.
In the days following Swift’s announcement, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to write: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Swift’s endorsement drove more than 400,000 visitors to the vote.gov website in under 24 hours.
“I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post soon after Harris and Trump met in a televised debate. “If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most.”
Sharing a photo of herself holding her cat Benjamin Button from last year’s Time magazine shoot – when the publication named her its person of the year – she wrote: “Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight.
“As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.”
The cat seemed to be a reference to Trump’s running mate JD Vance who told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a 2021 interview that the country was run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
Swift also mentioned AI-generated images, previously shared by Trump on Truth Social, falsely suggesting she was endorsing him for president, and called out the “dangers of spreading misinformation.”
She wrote: “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site.
“It really conjured up my fears around AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation.
“It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth”.
She added: “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.”
https://ca.yahoo.com/news/texas-man-pays-4-000-182219190.html
"The man who predicted the Great Resignation has a few more thoughts about what's next"/ "In Canada, the Great Resignation never actually happened"
"Is the Great Resignation back on? More workers planning to quit as pressures mount"/ "The Great CEO Resignation is here: Executive departures hit record high"
A Virginia high school custodian was overcome with emotion, shedding tears of joy and rolling around on the ground when a group of students surprised him with his dream car Monday after raising $20,000, according to a report published in the New York Post.
James Madison High School janitor Francis Apraku left his family behind to come to America a few years ago and told a group of students that even though he always wanted a Jeep Wrangler for his birthday, he couldn’t afford it, according to a GoFundMe set up by the boys.
The students started the fundraiser last year when they were freshmen, and a year later their efforts paid off.
“We just kind of decided we were going to try to get him his Jeep Wrangler with the GoFundMe, and we never really thought that it would come this far,” sophomore Logan Georgelas told Fox 5 DC.
“When we got $5,000 in the first day, we were like, all right, this is real.”
Video captured the heartwarming moments after the students presented Apraku with his new wheels.
Apraku was seen rolling on the sunny pavement with his arms extended above his head in the parking lot of a local restaurant where the surprise took place.
He lay on the ground in pure disbelief and bliss before he was finally helped to his feet.
“Oh my God,” he kept saying. “Oh my God.”
He said he would never forget the generosity he was shown.
“I will give thanks to Almighty God for making today for me. Today is a great day for me and I didn’t believe this would happen in my life,” said Apraku.
Fri. Sept. 26, 2024 "Dad Sees Newborn for the First Time After Virus Is Injected into His Eye: 'It's Been a Blessing'": Today I found this article by Cara Lynn Schultz on People and Yahoo:
A father with a progressive eye disease was able to see his son thanks to a new therapy that uses a virus to bring a healthy gene into the eye
A dad with the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa was able to see his newborn son for the first time, thanks to a genetic therapy that restored partial sight
A "healthy copy" of a mutated gene that had caused his blindness was injected into Tyler Wilfong's eye
A new father with a degenerative eye disease was able to see his newborn son for the first time, thanks to a genetic therapy that helped restore partial sight to one of his eyes.
Tyler Wilfong of Lincolnton, North Carolina, said it’s “amazing” to see his newborn son.
Wilfong was born with the progressive eye disease retinitis pigmentosa (or RP), which, according to the National Eye Institute, causes the “cells in the retina [to] break down slowly over time, causing vision loss.”
While they use a virus as a carrier of the gene, Dr. Lejla Vajzovic, Associate Professor of Opthalmology at Duke, explained to CBS 17, “This virus is specifically developed to infect the cells in the back part of the eye to really serve as a vehicle to deliver the new gene, a good gene.”
https://ca.yahoo.com/style/dad-sees-newborn-first-time-164921815.html
Sept. 27, 2024 "Utah mother diagnosed with Stage 4 small cell lung cancer, given 3 months to live": Today I found this article by Ryan Bittan on Yahoo:
UPDATE 9/29 — Over the weekend, Erika Carr’s GoFundMe broke $1 million, even though her original goal for the fundraiser was $5,000.
ORIGINAL STORY
OGDEN, Utah (ABC4) — An Ogden mother who has been fighting for life after being diagnosed with a rare terminal cancer has now been given three months to live, and she’s decided to spend it with her kids. People across the country have rallied around her, donating over $750,000 to her GoFundMe, which had an original goal of only $5,000.
Erika Carr, 30, is a single mother of two children — Jeremiah, 7, and Aaliyah, 5. She calls them her “whole life, light and soul … and what keeps [her] going.”
Carr’s been given the seemingly impossible task of planning her own funeral, and she decided to create a GoFundMe to help cover the costs. She set a modest goal, asking for only $5,000, hoping that maybe she’d be able to leave some extra money behind for her children.
She has since received over $750,000.
There have been over 26,000 donations given to her cause. She’s now created a trust fund, and she’s thankful her children will be okay when they grow up.
Sept. 23, 2024 "Toronto rapper freed after 1st-degree murder charge stayed": Today I found this article on CBC:
A Toronto rapper charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of a 20-year-old man was freed on Monday after the Crown stayed the charge.
Hassan Ali, known by his rap moniker Top 5, had been charged in the death of Hashim Omar Hashi, an accounting student.
Hashi was shot multiple times in his vehicle while trying to enter a parking garage near Jane Street and Falstaff Avenue shortly before 9 p.m. on Jan. 31, 2021, according to Toronto police. He died at the scene. Family members and friends have described him as "humble, kind and hardworking."
Outside a downtown Toronto courthouse on Monday, Ali praised the work of his defence lawyer Gary Grill, saying he felt like "a baseball player, superstar" to be out of jail.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-rapper-top5-murder-charge-stayed-1.7331783
My opinion: I was watching my recordings and I saw this news clip of Hassan Ali looks happy and saying to lawyer Gary Grill, "You freed me."
The rate in Ontario is rising by 65 cents to $17.20 an hour, an increase tied to inflation.
Saskatchewan’s minimum wage is going up by a dollar to $15, but it will still be the lowest in Canada, along with Alberta.
In Manitoba, the rate is going up by 50 cents to $15.80, a hike that follows a formula set in provincial law tied to the rate of inflation of the previous calendar year.
And in Prince Edward Island, the minimum wage is increasing by 60 cents to $16, which comes after a 40-cent hike earlier this year.
British Columbia has the highest minimum wage of all the provinces at $17.40, while Nunavut’s $19 an hour is the highest across Canada.
The federal minimum wage, which the government says affects some 30,000 employees in the federally regulated private sector, is $17.30 an hour.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 1, 2024.
Sat. Sept. 28 Community League Clothing Swap: My mom donated some clothes and hangers. Today I went there and got a blue sequin small jacket with a tag on them.
My mom said I had so many clothes already (mostly free clothes/ hand- me- downs from S), that I should wear them and not get more.
I wore most of the clothes from last year's swap.
I got there before it opened at 10 am and there was a line of like 20 people.
Donate pop cans and bottles: The door bell rang and I hoped it's someone selling chocolate.
It was a 10 yr old boy raising money with a pop cans and bottle drive for his hockey team to travel and play out of town. I gave him 4 bottles in my recycle bin.
Wed. Oct. 2, 2024 Community League meeting: There are 149 bags of clothes donated. At the end there were 14 bags left over (9%). Those left over were donated to like the Salvation Army.
This was good as 3 workers from the Boyle Street Community Services told us about how they're helping homeless people.
I said: "If you want to help homeless people, donate the charities like Hope Mission and the Mustard Seed."
The Italian Bakery: I ate lemon jelly donut and a chocolate Boston cream donut. I only ate Tim Horton's. The donuts taste good from both restaurants.
Thurs. Oct. 3, 2024 Prescription: Yesterday I was on the phone with the pharmacy, and they said I need to talk to a doctor to get a prescription, even though I have taken this medication before.
My doctor's office doesn't have a website. The address is on the internet. I called and the answering machine said these hours are when they're open.
I took the bus there, and there's a note that they're closed until this day.
I waited for 15 min. so the pharmacy would open, and try to get the medication. They said I need a prescription.
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