Kamala Harris, Joe Biden Need Unscripted Town Halls — No Preapproved Questions, No Preselected Audience

Remarks by President Biden in Press
Conference, July 11, 2024

Update: Make than Kamala Harris.
Madison, Wisconsin — President Joe Biden's reelection campaign can win confidence from the electorate by appearing in a series of unscripted, unvetted, town hall-type, question-and-answer events in swing states.

No preselected questioner pools, no campaign-approved questions. Scripted press conferences won't do the job.

In town hall-type, question-and-answer events, campaigns honor people asking questions, by not engineering questions, vetted by the campaigns.

Readers attending speakers in rooms 2650, 3650 of the Humanities building on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus know, for example, what unscripted questions-and-answer sessions are.

Questioners should ask, probe, and challenge political candidates who should be seeking mandates.

Political campaigns now-a-days treat unscripted people-centered events as unnecessary risks, akin to trial attorneys asking questions of witnesses, without knowing testimony.

Campaigns looking to win a mandate from the people for whom we have a country should avoid fake campaigns, such as what we see almost daily, like the plague.

Jacqueline Marie Captain, 1957 - 2024

Jacqueline Marie Captain, 1957 - 2024

Happy Life, Happy Memorial Day

Fitchburg, Wisconsin — Jackie Captain passed away May 15, 2024. I love her, and long before we married.
It's Memorial Day weekend, Jackie's favorite holiday.

Jackie is a late convert to beer, brats, hot dogs, and burgers dipped in beer, butter, garlic pepper and onions that I made for us every Memorial Day weekend. Often, I would venture to Dane County's Brat Fest to throw em in the concoction, with some corn on the cob  on the side.

Perhaps because of her father, World War II veteran, Wesley Captain, Jackie was a patriot and anarchist, and an aesthetic.

One of Jackie's favorite quotes is from RFK's Statement on Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Indianapolis, Indiana, April 4, 1968.

Said RFK, "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: 'In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.'"

Catholic agnostic Jackie would substitute the Universe, perhaps, for God. To a moral certainty, Jackie believed in human healing power and celebrating life through everyday acts of standing up for others.

Jacqueline Captain's Obituary from the Wisconsin State Journal is below.

Jacqueline Marie Captain, wife, neighbor, sister, daughter and friend to many passed Wednesday morning, May 15, 2024.

Jackie died of a long series of illnesses related to Sepsis, kidney disease and Crohn's Disease.

Jackie loved our neighborhood, now more than ever full of happy children welcoming Summer. Jackie loved kids running, biking down the street with dogs and wagons in tow.

Jackie loved her family, her community, her work and the giant family of which we and all life are members, Jackie believed.

Said a nephew of Jackie's this morning: "When I was a kid she was the funny, goofy aunt that always made time for family. She always had time for birthdays and came bearing cool gifts. She had a beautiful smile and laugh. I remember her knowledge of all music and movies and she would break into a verse of song lyrics often."

Jackie worked for peace, love and justice, trying, as Bertrand Russell wrote, using passion "making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression."

Jackie did PhD work on anti-fascist artists, Ben Shahn and Eugene Higgins before accepting positions that included a consultancy with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum before it opened; editorships; Professional Project Manager at American Family Insurance; and Administrative and Research Assistant to Dean, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jackie Captain did her graduate work under U.W. Prof. Jim Dennis, renown art history U.W. scholar, and Madisonian.

Jackie was born in Wisconsin Rapids August 29, 1957 to Wesley and Helen Irene Captain, a beautiful World War II family determined to spread peace.

Jackie is predeceased by Wesley Captain (Father); Helen Irene (Mother); Jan Captain (Sister); and Allen Braund (Brother- in -Law).

Jackie is survived by her husband, Michael Leon; her siblings; Jean (Sharon) Duluth, Minnesota; Joe (Margitta) Gulfport Mississippi; Pete (Sally). Wisconsin Rapids; Judy (Kate), Stoughton; Mary (Allen Braund, deceased) Wisconsin Rapids; John (Joanne) Antioch. Illinois; Jim (Mary), Plain, Wisconsin.

Jackie passed, saying she missed joking with her Aunt Sweet Loraine Weaver of Wisconsin Rapids who turned 103 last year, still spreading sweetness.

Jackie's husband is Michael Leon of Fitchburg, Wisconsin. Leon said of Jackie that he "has never seen a more beautiful soul betrayed to her core by injustice. I think Jackie sometimes suffered because of her commitment and sensitivity, but Jackie was not alone."

Jackie is survived by many cousins, nieces, nephews, and even larger numbers of other family members.

Jackie had many friends, and loved working at American Family Insurance, and missed seeing her friends after retirement.

Jackie's family and friends would like to thank the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, especially folks at the ER, and Trauma and Life Support Center (TLC) units; as well as Ingleside Nursing and Rehab Center (Mount Horeb) and Nazareth Health and Rehabilitation (Stoughton). We would like to thank Bristol Hospice Madison for all their love.

Most of all Jackie was blessed by two forces of nature, family friends, So and Tina, whose reservoirs of love and intelligence appears endless.

Jackie loved them all.

Family and friends are welcome to bring outdoor plants to Jackie and Mike's front lawn to create an oasis of peace at 5767 Monticello Way, until June 15.
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Macklemore's Defiaint Song Against Genocide and Joe Biden

Palestinian girl Hind Rajab poses for photograph in this
undated handout picture obtained by Reuters on February 10,
2024 [Palestine Red Crescent Society/Reuters]

Genocide Machine and Joe Biden Under Fire

Singer-songwriter Macklemore just released a powerful opus against Israeli-American genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.
Macklemore's song, Hinds Hall, is named after Hind Rajab joined in song title with Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall.
The six-year-old Gazan girl's family was slaughtered by Israeli Defense Forces, trapping the girl in a car begging for help in her cell phone to the Red Crescent Society.
Israel proceeded to slaughter the rescue party sent by Red Recreant, then murdered  Hind Rajab in a horrid act much of which is caught on audio.
Macklemore's Hinds Hall is below.

Israel Is Sadistic State-Movement Committing Genocide — Time to Detach America from Annilation Machine

Pietà (Mother with dead Son), 1937-1939
In 1937, on the anniversary of her son
Peter’s death in WW I, the anti-fascist
artist Käthe Kollwitz wrote in her diary:
"The mother is seated, her dead son lying
on her lap between her knees.
-- Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries, 22 October 1937
Käthe Kollwitz Museum Kollwitz was
adored by the German people; even the
Nazis minimized their harassment.
---
Notes Käthe Kollwitz Museum:
"In 1993, a version of the Pietà
sculpture, executed by Harald Haake
four times its original size, was installed
on the initiative of Helmut Kohl,
the German Chancellor at that
time, at the Neue Wache in Berlin, which
is the central memorial site of the
Federal Republic of Germany for the victims
of war and dictatorship."
--
In the brilliant 2017 anti-war movie, War
Machine (David Michôd), United States Army
General Stanley McChrystal, is played by Brad
Pitt, and memorably featured in a powerful
scene saluting the Pietà sculpture in Berlin.
Artist Käthe Kollwitz never recovered from
the death on her son in WW I.
See Brad Pitt below.

Joe Biden, Democrats Lead U.S. into Moral Oblivion

Commentary

 

Like any sentient, post-World War II American, at an early age, I developed an ethic to oppose totalitarianism, fascism, anti-Semitism, creeping authoritarianism where it slithered its way onto our liberties.

Zionism and supporting Israel seemed natural.

No more. Israel is a sick, fiest pack slaughtering 10,000s, with sights on 100,000 more.

Here is the United States, a moral person must abandon the Democrats, all the Democrats.

How many more mothers must endure the gruesome deaths of their children?

From susan abulhawa in The Electronic Intifada:

It’s 8 pm in Gaza, Palestine right now, the end of my fourth day in Rafah and the first moment I’ve had to sit in a quiet place to reflect.

I’ve tried to take notes, photos, mental images, but this moment is too big for a notepad or my struggling memory. Nothing prepared me for what I would witness.

Before I made it across the Rafah-Egypt border, I read every bit of news coming out of Gaza or about Gaza. I did not look away from any video or image posted from the ground, no matter how gruesome, shocking or traumatizing.

I kept in touch with friends who reported on their situations in the north, middle and south of Gaza – each area suffering in different ways. I stayed current on the latest statistics, the latest political, military and economic maneuverings of Israel, the US and the rest of the world.

I thought I understood the situation on the ground. But I didn’t.

Nothing can truly prepare you for this dystopia. What reaches the rest of the world is a fraction of what I’ve seen so far, which is only a fraction of this horror’s totality.

Gaza is hell. It is an inferno teeming with innocents gasping for air.

But even the air here is scorched. Every breath scratches and sticks to the throat and lungs.

What was once vibrant, colorful, full of beauty, potential and hope against all odds, is draped in gray-colored misery and grime.
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