Kamala Harris Recounts her Presidential Run - 107 Days - Where Are We Now???

At 5:29 p.m., staff alerted me that the British singer-songwriter Charli XCX had posted: Kamala is brat. Brat was the title of her latest album and identified me with her brand: edgy, imperfect, confident, embracing. From then on, our rebranded Kamala HQ social media site was awash in her signature color, lime green, and posts supporting us used that color. At ten p.m., I finally decided it was too late to call anyone else. We had been going for eight hours. I’d spoken to more than a hundred people. Every single call had mattered. I’d had to be entirely present for each one, giving out and taking in important information. Now the dining room table was strewn with scrawled notes, sandwich crusts, and the greasy remains of a pizza with anchovies—my favorite, no one else’s. I was still in my workout clothes, my unbrushed hair tangled in its scrunchie. Despite that, I decided we needed to record the moment. Before I went upstairs to take a long-overdue shower, I gathered my team. “Things are going to get wild,” I said. “There will be hard days ahead. We have a lot of ground to cover. But you are the best team in the world, and I know we can do this. Let’s take a photo.”

Donald Trump lied over and over and over again, as he is wont to do. He would not disavow what happened on January 6. He would not give a clear answer on whether he would stand by the election results this November. He went back and forth about where he stands on one of the most critical issues of freedom in America, which is the right of women to make decisions about their own body.” As I went on to point out that women suffering miscarriages had been denied emergency care, he tried to interrupt me, saying that the president hadn’t been able to clearly make that case. I shot back that what mattered more is a president’s actions in office, pivoting to what Trump had done in inciting the attack on the Capitol.

 

“This is the process. If anyone wants to challenge me, they’re welcome to jump in. But I intend to earn the support of the majority of the delegates and I’m doing it right now.” Each call took no more than two or three minutes. Outside, in the fierce afternoon heat, a media scrum swarmed. A few hours into this day of frenzied, nonstop calls, I realized I needed centering. I stopped everything to call my pastor. Reverend Dr. Amos C. Brown is a Baptist preacher who marched with Dr. King. Of course he had already heard the news. I put him on speaker so the whole table could listen to his wise and sonorous voice, and we prayed. He talked about Queen Esther, who saved her people when they were threatened. “You were born for a time such as this,” he said, and I teared up. He asked God to protect me, my family, my team, and to give us an understanding of our purpose in this moment. It grounded us all. Then we were back on it. Outside, the sky darkened... 

You know, folks, when I saw the exclusive first interview with Rachel Maddow, related to the release of her book, I knew I wanted to have the book, at least in my personal library... and documented here at Book Readers Heaven!

When I began to read, however, I realized that, since I had watched the news daily during that time period, I was reading what I already know, mostly. What I do when I'm sharing about a new book, I look for an excerpt that I think will be most informative, yet not share something that will affect others in knowing something before they, too, read the book. That, of course, is primarily for fiction novels. Given the news involvement of the election, as we followed Kamala's campaign, the book already does most of that. Therefore, I am doing something that I've never shared before... I'm sharing the ending of the book... As far as I am aware, there is no restrictions of what you excerpt from a book for a review. Except if you give away the ending that is been built up from what happened in novels.

I chose what Kamala writes as an Afterword. We know that the election was not what was expected for most of us. It was by a very narrow margin, contrary to what you may have heard boasted by Trump... Little did the citizens of the United States really comprehend what would be happening--even if we had learned about Project 2025... It was impossible to gather sufficient information about how the republican party planned to take over the entire nation through deceit, lies, illegal actions, and ignoring our Constitution. We still are being attacked daily as our lives are being affected mostly negatively--if not totally--about what is being permitted by this party's president...

I decided I wanted to hear what my candidate felt afterward... I believe it is important for all of you to know her words at this time as well.

Afterword

In the midst of half-filled packing boxes at the vice president’s residence, Doug and I sat in silence in front of the television, watching LA burn. I had seven more days as vice president of the United States, and I was spending them in FEMA briefings, making sure my home state had all the support we could give. Still, Doug and I felt powerless as we watched walls of flame, driven by searing hundred-mile-an-hour winds, incinerating familiar neighborhoods. A mandatory evacuation of our neighborhood had been called three days earlier. Kerstin Emhoff phoned me and offered to rush to our house to gather whatever few precious photographs and keepsakes I could describe to her. As we sat three thousand miles away, a chyron crawled across the bottom of the screen: “Kamala Harris’s house is now in the path of the fire.” 

In seven days, I was supposed to climb the steps for my final flight on Air Force Two. The plane was supposed to take me home. But now it looked like we might not have a home to go to. We lived with that uncertainty until the day before we were to leave. The direction of the fire changed, sparing our immediate neighborhood, and on January 19 the evacuation order was finally lifted. On the afternoon of January 20, Doug and I took off from Joint Base Andrews. As I was heading to the base, I learned that the Air Force had decided to give me an all-women crew, the first time in history for this type of plane. We went straight from LAX to Altadena. World Central Kitchen had set up at Gordy’s Garage, so we helped distribute meals alongside other volunteers, many of whom, as so often, had suffered losses themselves. One woman looked at me sadly as I handed her a meal. “I really wish you weren’t here,” she said. 

Almost a year before the election, Doug and I had planned to take a brief vacation to Hawaii. A crisis blew up, and I needed to stay in the West Wing. We’d paid the rent for the house and couldn’t get a refund, but the owners said they’d give us till the end of the year to use it. After election night, DC felt unbearable. Numb and grieving, we were in no condition to organize a trip, but then we remembered that house near Mauna Kea. “Let’s go now,” Doug said. “Let’s get out of here.” Lorraine and my other team members made it happen. This was not like going on vacation. It was reaching for the oxygen mask that had dropped from the ceiling. In that house, at that distance, we started a process that is still continuing. 

Two of the trending searches after the election: What is a tariff? Can I change my vote? Gore Vidal called them “the four most beautiful words in our common language”: “I told you so.” 

I disagree, I don’t think they’re beautiful, and I wish I had no cause to say them. Tariffs are a tax on everyday Americans. We are at risk of a recession. The marines, war-fighting warriors, have been deployed in our streets against civilians. The authoritarian, nationalist Project 2025 is the blueprint for the Trump administration’s second term. As of this writing, of its 316 objectives, 114 have been fully realized and 64 more are already in progress. The Justice Department is going after Trump’s enemies list, while Trump supporters have been pardoned and released: January 6 rioters who attacked police, the fentanyl dealer Ross Ulbricht, numerous tax cheats. 

Foreign leaders have played him with flattery, grift, and favor. A luxury jet, or a Trojan horse? He has lined his own pockets and enriched billionaires while doing nothing for the middle class and worsening the condition of the poor. The destruction of scientific research aimed at fighting our worst diseases and the climate crisis, the targeting of SNAP, Medicaid, and programs for our veterans, the deterioration of our global friendships, the terrorizing of our immigrant communities, the starvation and sickening of millions around the world for lack of foreign aid, the reckless abandonment of clean energy, the rollback of environmental protections, the attack on intellectual freedom in our universities, the bullying of law firms, the breathtaking corruption. I could go on. 

Trump says he has a mandate for these things. He does not. His victory was whisker-thin. He beat me by 1.5 percentage points in one of the closest elections in a century. A third of the electorate voted for me. But a third of the electorate stayed home. That means two-thirds of our country did not elect Donald Trump. Two-thirds of us did not choose this man or his agenda. That’s why I have no patience for anyone saying, I’m giving up on America because America wanted this. We did not. 

Of the third that voted for Trump, a good part of them voted for him on promises unkept. He did not “immediately bring prices down starting day one.” Instead, the opposite. He did not “cut energy prices in half within twelve months.” He could not bring peace to Ukraine “before I even become president.” Instead, he has acted as enabler to the aggressor and shamefully attacked a brave leader defending democracy. I predicted all that. I warned of it. What I did not predict: the capitulation. The billionaires lining up to grovel. The big media companies, the universities, and so many major law firms, all bending to blackmail and outrageous demands. So what do we do? The answer will not come out of Washington, DC. 

Their immediate task is to win the midterms and restore some checks and balances on this unchecked and unbalanced president. What we the people must understand is that the dismantling of our democracy did not start with the 2024 election. The right-wing and religious nationalists have played the long game, working for decades to take over state houses, gerrymander districts, and dominate local government boards. Their think tanks like the Federalist Society created the blueprint for stacking the Supreme Court, while the Heritage Foundation created Project 2025. Their plans have been amplified by the rise of a right-wing media ecosystem built to operationalize their agenda through massive propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation. 

Trump was their vehicle, his road paved for him, years earlier, by a hot and pungent brew: Ronald Reagan’s celebrity, Newt Gingrich’s belligerent discourse, and Pat Buchanan’s nativism. Don’t be duped into thinking it’s all chaos. It may feel like chaos, but what we are witnessing is a high-velocity event, the swift implementation of an agenda that was written many decades ago. “This is how fascism begins,” warned Françoise Giroud, a journalist who served in the French Resistance. “It never says its name. It creeps, it floats. When it reaches the tips of people’s noses, they say: ‘Is this it? You think? Don’t exaggerate!’ And then one day it smacks them in the mouth, and it is too late to get rid of it.” 

It is not too late for us, but we need to think both strategically and tactically. When we go to the streets, as we will, we must not give them the spectacle they are craving. We will go out of love of our country and belief in its promise. We cannot let them lie about that. We need to come up with our own blueprint that sets out our alternative vision for our country. A blueprint on how we will lead a government that truly works for the American people. There will have been so much damage done. Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government. And that doesn’t mean nostalgically reproducing what has been before, but something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient. At the heart of my vision for the future is Gen Z. The youngest member of that cohort is thirteen now, the oldest is twenty-eight. In five years, the younger members will be about to vote, the oldest might be having kids. They have lived through the pandemic, the resulting economic upheaval, the accelerating climate crisis, the increasingly toxic dominance of social media. And now they are living through Donald Trump’s global tariff chaos, isolationism, and slashed safety net, including health coverage and food assistance. Their generation is larger in number than the Boomers’. We need to invest in them. 

I’m talking about something on the scale of the investment that we made in the Greatest Generation. Initiatives such as the GI Bill allowed people to harness their potential, to realize their greatness. Since Ronald Reagan, we’ve systematically gutted Pell Grants, which once covered much of the cost of college for talented but low-income kids. These grants now cover less than a third, making them useless to the kids most in need. The education we fund shouldn’t focus only on college degrees but should equally value and uplift the trades and skills that build our homes, modernize our electric grid, improve our infrastructure, realize the clean energy transition. As they enter the workforce, Gen Z is feeling the greatest impact as AI and robotics revolutionize industries. 

We will need to govern with vision so that the opportunities of the new era fall equally. It is a challenge of massive complexity. Gen Z needs access to an education that is supple enough to adapt to rapid change and that helps them move nimbly through those innovations. This generation is the destiny of our country and the world. 

These days, unemployed for the first time, I have literally been unpacking my life. Folders of letters and emails sent to me, some by voters, some from people in distant countries, expressing gratitude for the campaign we ran and despair over the aftermath. Boxes of awards I received in elected office and before. Each engraved plaque or lead glass tchotchke reminds me of the work I have done, the people helped by it. That’s consoling. 

But it also brings up a swell of regret for all the work that I wanted to do. By now, maybe, young people would be applying for their $25,000 housing down payment assistance. An increased child tax credit would be lifting thousands more families out of poverty. Medicare would be helping thousands of families and people in the sandwich generation to provide home care for their elderly loved ones. People in Africa would still have access to their AIDS medications. Our global friendships and our national reputation wouldn’t be in tatters. I can’t help having these thoughts, when the daily barrage of bad news becomes overwhelming. 

But I’m not looking back. Of all the advice and consolation I have received since the election, Minyon Moore’s words have moved me: “God gave you a beautiful 107 days to reclaim who you are. You have been able to push back against the caricatures, all the vile and ugly things, and be yourself. You gave America your heart and soul. You gave it your all.” I did. And I’m not done. 

When I decided to become a prosecutor, I had to defend that decision to my family, like a student defending a thesis. I asked why, when we seek change, must it either be by breaking down doors or crawling on bended knee? I wanted a seat at the table. I wanted to make change from inside the system. Today I’m no longer sure about that. Because the system is failing us. At every level—executive, judicial, legislative, corporate, institutional, media—every single guardrail that is supposed to protect our democracy is buckling. I thought those guardrails would be stronger. I was wrong. 

To keep people safe and help them thrive. That’s what I’ve always worked for, and that work has never been more needed—when the government sends armed, masked men into churches and courthouses, when children are washed away in known flood zones starved of resources for adequate warning systems, when the Department of Education is torn apart and the hungry and sick are denied their basic needs. In this critical moment, working within the system, by itself, is not proving to be enough. I’ll no longer sit in DC in the grandeur of the ceremonial office. I will be with the people, in towns and communities where I can listen to their ideas on how we rebuild trust, empathy, and a government worthy of the ideals of this country. 

One hundred and seven days were not, in the end, long enough to accomplish the task of winning the presidency. But we accomplished other things, as I learn every day. This spring, Doug was winding up a business dinner when one of the restaurant staff, Myshay Causey, shyly handed him a menu, on the back of which she had written a note to me: While I hope this message doesn’t cross the line of professionalism (considering our meeting place) I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to speak on the class act and inspiration you’ve been, especially to young Black girls like myself… handling adversity with a smile, a laugh, and levelheadedness. I hope to develop into someone similar one day and be someone of benefit to my community. Three weeks later, I attended Myshay’s graduation from Compton High. In the fall, she will be going to Cornell to study public policy, with an emphasis on education. She has already served as the student representative on the school board for the Compton Unified School District. A good start. Sitting among the faculty, I looked out on the bright faces of the graduates, filling their new football stadium. Their proud parents, packing the stands. As Myshay walked across the stage and accepted her diploma, I felt real optimism for our country. She had written that I inspired her. That morning, she returned the gift. 

~~~

The Devastation Continues...

Note: Comey's book right after leaving the FBI is available here

 

His book: The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory

When good people are fed lies over and over and/or told they are affected in one way or another, they will begin to think the liar may be right... Do this: Are people being hurt right now by the government? Are programs for the elderly, the hungry, those who need medical care being taken away... If you don't know the answer is yes to just a few of the examples listed, then you need to change your television station, Watch for those who are concerned about what is happened, rather than a belief that the republican party is only for Christians... I chose to be a democrat after 2015 when I opened my eyes and ears to the elected president... I speak of the love of Jesus who asks us to love all of our neighbors!

 God Be With Us All,

Gabby

What's Happening at Book Readers Heaven - The Personal and Professional...

 

Time goes by so fast these days, especially when things happen in your own life that needs to be addressed, so I've been busy and not able to sit down to share here on my blog with all of you. But that never means that I am not reading! LOL One of the books that I've been reading is Tim Spiess' The Light of the World. One of the things that this author discovered in his research is that the better translation of the name of Jesus was actually Joshua. And, so, he has used this name as he presents what is essentially the first four books of the New Testament, along with commentary. I've found that, in reading, having a new and different name for The Son of Man has brought my mind into a deeper and clearer reading--as if I'd never read or heard the words before. It is an important book, one of the most important books I, and maybe you, too, will have read in our lives... And so, I've been reading this book daily while going about all that is happening... New and different health related issues...

It all started when I was on my way to get my hair cut. I had chipped one of my front teeth and was concerned whether it could be fixed. So I stopped at my dentist who was located nearby. I walked in and there was nobody there that I recognized! I stopped at the reception desk, told the individual what I needed and she assured me that it could be fixed, so I asked to schedule an appointment. As I recall, I was told that it would be with a new dentist, that my dentist was retiring or had retired already and that I would have to change sooner or later... Hmmm... I scheduled an appointment, knowing that the tooth needed to be fixed...

When the day came I walked in and there were people standing around in the background, more than I'd ever seen there. I sat down to wait and started reading new signs posted. One was about cancellations and being charged. The other said that I could not use a credit or debit card that only cash or personal check was to be used for payment. That hit me the wrong way, of course. I rarely carry a lot of money and had been using my debit card for years at all companies with which I've interacted. I was upset right from the beginning.

I was called and told to turn to the right--there had been three stalls in the office before. all to the left. So I walked in and glanced around. The furniture was all new and I immediately worried about being able to get down/up on the dental chair. I stood there and then said that I had been using a debit or credit card for over 10 years and was upset this had changed. Before I could stop myself I looked around the office again taking in the new people I'd never even seen before and had not introduced themselves to me, and said, "I'm not interested in all this..." And walked out! As I write this now, I'm smiling... Because I went home, did a search for a woman dentist in the area, and have found a wonderful new dentist! Her name is Dr. Sharon Stokes and if you're in the Uniontown, PA area, I would highly recommend her to you...

Since then I've had two appointments with her, my chipped tooth looks better than it did before it was chipped! But not everything was so easily addressed. I've had surgery and had a small section of skin cancer removed and now recuperating from that, while at the same time, I got word that my mammogram was not clear and I'd have to go back for another test plus a sonogram...

Also had a scare of possible allergy to medication and was taken to the emergency room, but it was quickly addressed and I got better directions on the use of the medication. I also decided against having a knee replacement and cancelled that appointment.

So I've been busy handling health issues at the same time trying to work my way through working with big communication corporations that fail in providing effective communication! I have come to the conclusion that efficiency has disappeared, while, hidden fees and lack of access is the new world... Tell me, how in the world can you get emails and not be able to respond to those emails?!!! Have you had that experience?! You know the ones, that, if you respond, you quickly get a new email that the first email was not able to receive responses!!! It boggles the mind, doesn't it!

Speaking of boggling my mind? It's now been over 4 months since I've been locked out of Facebook "for my protection." I've tracked down some of my friends and found that my group, Reviewers Roundup, just disappeared, as well as, of course...Me... Finally found another person on GoodReads that had the same experience. He is an author and is online only to promote his books... He kept after them, however, and learned that a foreign entity had signed on and used his (my?) accounts for their own purposes... I recognize that these are private sites, but, on the other hand, they've opened sites for people to use... No wonder people are so terribly confused these days.

We are being lied to left and right. Worse, it is coming from a significant part of America, who are looking to tear down our Democracy... Are you able to keep track and know for sure that what you are hearing on television ads are true--or lies? Some have been really disgusting and obvious. But others are slid in with enough actual information, that when the lie is presented, it just sounds like normal discussion; but, lies are slid in... Don't know what I mean? Find the vice-presidential debate and listen to one of the latest and slickest republicans. He is a man who speaks fluently and if we didn't already know the truth, we wouldn't be able to even catch the lies being said. Fortunately Tim Walz caught him on the most important... The Big Lie, and Vance would not say who won the 2020 election! Right then, every single individual listening to that debate should have realized that what he'd said earlier was also false... Especially when he declared me and thousands and possibly millions of other women when he claimed that the United States was run by childless cat comen! And that we had no value to the world... Geesh! how crude can he be?!

Which leads us back to The Light of the World...

“I am the truth”, and they say, “the book and all these other voices which quote the book are “the truth” you need to be set free, not just the one who says, “I am the Truth” … not just the one who says, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed”… If this happened, then isn’t the truth of the statements above by the one who says, “I am the truth”, LOST as the people look to the book and other’s words and other voices, and those other words and voice’s nullify, cancel or make of no effect the one who says: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life…”, and “All who are of the truth listen to MY voice.” ? If this is so, then is it not true that those eternally valuable truths… “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no one gets to the Father except through me.” "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." …have been drowned out … buried … LOST. And so, that which is extremely valuable - and which has been lost - has been revealed.  The Creator/Father sent One beloved, error-free Messenger who can bring freedom from your hopelessness, confusion, bondage or pain, but his voice has been drowned out, nullified, hidden, obscured, spoken over, made-of-no-effect, ignored… Lost. It is a difficult truth to receive, but in truth, the teachings of the One who calls himself the Light of the world have been covered, buried and for all practical purposes, lost.   His Voice has been drowned out by thousands of other voices.  In fact, at the most essential level...

Why is it that so very few are concerned about focusing whole-heartedly on Jesus and his person and his teachings ONLY?  Perhaps, just perhaps, these things are true… "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.” "But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me.” Maybe the truth is that the one Voice that brings freedom, offends the vast majority (especially the religious people who

claim him as their ‘Lord’ and ‘God’), and they do not want to let his simple and uncompromised truth shine forth?  Perhaps most christians/biblians are especially loath to turn to the Light because they very much like believing they are “saved” and “heaven bound” while they continue to ignore the real Light of the world and instead live the way they want? …beware of the all too common self-justification and self-deception of, ‘oh yes, that is true, but not of ME or MY church’… This commentator hopes that those who are in the darkness of bible and christian religion will allow the Light of the world to shine on their hearts.  Seek to understand this key saying of his… "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.” …and then, please, come, follow HIM!

In 2015/16 we first heard about the Evangelical Christians supporting a man like Donald Trump as president. Especially since it was not by the popular vote but by the Electoral College. At the same time, many of us questioned what could cause this type of decision. For me, I immediately started my research, reading as many books as I could, to determine why I, as a Christian, had turned away from a man who I considered unfit for leading our America. More and more is being discovered that the Truth was withheld... The latest, this morning I learned from Senator Whitehouse's, a congressional study report, that the Trump Administration had prevented the FBI from actually vetting now sitting Supreme Court Judge Kavanaugh! Many will recall that a woman came forth, testifying about his attack of her years ago, and then another... 

Another bombshell is one particular excerpt from the latest book by Bob Woodward during the time of Covid. I've ordered this book, which will be out on October 15th... Essentially, it was revealed that, while America was struggling to find tests and other items related to the pandemic, and hundreds and thousands had started to die, Trump shipped these items to Dictator Putin!

I and everybody else has lied in their lives... We normally call them "White Lies" and often do it to keep from hurting another individual... But, it is clear from The Light of the World, that we all should strive to follow The Son of God/Man and know that God is TRUTH! Only one human did not lie. The Son of God... We who are Christians must strive toward that perfection of TRUTH! And, to point out those who are using Lies to gain power, at the same time they are hurting the millions affected by those lies by the past president and his political party members... And authoritarian dictators across the world...Many have turned away from TRUTH--turned away from God-- during this period of chaos. Yet, I believe God already had sent President Biden and now Kamala Harris to continue the path toward TRUTH in America... When Jesus was still young and traveling around sharing and healing the sick and hungry, he chose to give His message to all people who thirst for More...He told us to turn to Love... Truth... to Love God first and to Love our Neighbors... To turn away from those who spoke of power and hate. It's still the same story. We must choose to turn toward the Light rather than the darkness. Choose who wants only one thing of us. Love Our Neighbors. Do Good to those that persecute you. Speak Truth!

God Bless Us All!

Gabby