Reagan’s conservatism, in Boot’s telling, was little more than a farrago of erroneous statistics, spurious quotations and incendiary claims about an ever-present communist conspiracy — many of them derived from his reading of tracts from the lunatic-right John Birch Society. Boot suggests that Reagan didn’t care about factual accuracy because he “was convinced his larger moral point was correct and that was all that mattered.” Yet Boot notes with some irritation that throughout Reagan’s career, “reporters seldom held him to account for his falsehoods,” and that on the rare occasions when they did, “they found that most readers did not care.”
Finally Friday Reads: Heavy Rains and Readings
Posted: September 27, 2024 Filed under: 2024 DNC, 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign | Tags: "some weird shit", @repeat1968. John Buss, Dame Maggie Smith, Hurricane Helene, Weirdos 12 Comments
“Yes, it’s quite insane. I think it hurts my brain.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I stayed up too late last night watching Hurricane Helene come on shore. It’s difficult to explain that dual feeling of relief that it went east of you while realizing the number of people whose lives have been turned upside down. I get a flashback full of feelings about my hurricane and tornado experience. I’ve been fortunate to date even though Hurricane Katrina upended my life; it was nothing compared to many, many others’ lives.
I remember sitting on the dorm hall floor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln during the massive 1975 Omaha Hurricane. I was one of the few with a TV and a phone in my room. Those of us who had such luxuries were surrounded by others who took turns trying to call home and watching to see if there was news available on the limited number of channels then on my tiny black and white portable. The only way we really got to know was to pack up and go back home. Almost everyone I knew living along the 72nd Street corridor had severe damage. Fortunately, living in Hurricane Alley meant you had basements. Friends of mine in apartments did less well. I’ve also driven alongside, almost into, and surrounded by tornadoes. I became interested in severe weather early in my teens when I watched an oversized double garage door spin over my house in Omaha from the basement window while strumming and singing, “The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.” This was 1968. Irony and sarcasm have always been my friend and best defense when in the middle of these terrifying events.
I am still waiting to hear from family and friends. Even though Helene was still a Cat 2 Hurricane in Georgia, JJ and her family are okay. We’ll be hearing more from many folks north of Florida who also took a hit of intense rain and wind. Thank goodness the guy with the Sharpie isn’t in charge of the Federal response to all of this in all those states. And yes, De Santis has those white boots on again.
The severe damage and the death toll in Florida today should humble us all. We can build all kinds of places, but the sciences of climatology and meteorology show that we can only do so much with these massive storms. “Hurricane Helene ravages the Southeast, killing at least 22 and leaving millions without power. The storm made landfall overnight as a Category 4 hurricane, bringing devastating flooding and high-speed winds.” This is from NBC News.
Hurricane Helene killed at least 22 people and left millions without power across the Southeast before weakening on its way north Friday morning, officials said.
Widespread damage was expected in Florida’s Big Bend region, where Helene made landfall as a Category 4 shortly after 11 p.m. ET on Thursday. It was the strongest storm to ever strike the area, which connects Florida’s panhandle and peninsula.
Water levels in some parts of the region reached more than 15 ft. above ground level, the National Hurricane Center said, citing preliminary storm surge models.
In Perry, Florida, where officials urged residents who refused to evacuate to write their information on their bodies for identification, police chief Jamie Cruse braced himself for the storm’s aftermath as first responders began rescue operations.
“We’re starting to get the first glimpse of what we actually have laying on the ground and what we’re going to be dealing with,” he told NBC News. “The only regret I have at this moment is we weren’t aggressive enough in the notification to tell people to evacuate the areas that were prone to flooding.”
“I just hope that when we finally discover what we’re dealing with that we don’t have a big loss of life,” he added.
Officials in Clearwater, further south along Florida’s Gulf Coast, also feared the worst after seeing overnight footage of first responders rescuing elderly locals in knee-deep flood water.
“We had some homes burn to the ground out on the island. There were some folks that we just couldn’t get to because of high waters to rescue,” Clearwater mayor Bruce Rector told NBC’s “TODAY” show.
By Friday morning, Floridians woke up to extensive damage from the devastating flooding, high-speed winds, and heavy rain.
Helene’s name will be retired and she will be one for the records. “Helene is now a tropical depression, catastrophic flooding still likely.” This is also from NBC News. More deaths are being reported in Georgia. Atlanta and Valdosta, Georgia, have a lot of flooding and are powerless.
Helene, now a tropical depression, is located 125 miles southeast of Louisville, Kentucky, with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph, moving northwest at 28 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 2 p.m. ET advisory.
All tropical storm warnings have been discontinued and there are now no coastal watches or warnings in effect.
It’s forecast to slowdown and will stall over the Tennessee Valley through the weekend.
Helene will still produce more rainfall for the Central and Southern Appalachians, resulting in “catastrophic and potentially life-threatening flash and urban flooding.” Tornadoes are possible today across eastern South Carolina, central and eastern North Carolina and southern Virginia.
Many blessings to you, my American Family, on your recovery journey.
One journalist has published the Iran-hacked JD Vance dossier. X and Thread censored it after Klippenstein announced that he had published it on social media. “Read the JD Vance Dossier. We’re publishing the supposed Iran-hacked document. Here’s why.” This is from Ken Klippenstein.
Behold the dossier.
It reportedly comes from an alleged Iranian government hack of the Trump campaign, and since June, the news media has been sitting on it (and other documents), declining to publish in fear of finding itself at odds with the government’s campaign against “foreign malign influence.”
I disagree. The dossier has been offered to me and I’ve decided to publish it because it’s of keen public interest in an election season. It’s a 271-page research paper the Trump campaign prepared to vet now vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. As far as I can tell, it hasn’t been altered, but even if it was, its contents are publicly verifiable. I’ll let it speak for itself.
“The terror regime in Iran loves the weakness and stupidity of Kamala Harris, and is terrified of the strength and resolve of President Donald J. Trump,” Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, responded when I asked him about the hack.
If the document had been hacked by some “anonymous” like hacker group, the news media would be all over it. I’m just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combatting foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know.
On August 19, the U.S. intelligence community issued a statement on Iranian election interference, including cyber operations attempting to gain sensitive information. “This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign, which the IC [intelligence community] attributes to Iran.”
On September 18, the intelligence community issued another statement going into further detail about Iran’s efforts. “Iranian malicious cyber actors” were still undertaking efforts since June, the press release says, “to send stolen, non-public material associated with former President Donald Trump’s campaign to U.S. media organizations.”
The intelligence community would not confirm to me whether the stolen campaign materials included the Vance Dossier. “We don’t have anything beyond what’s noted in the September 18 joint statement,” Lauren Frost, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told me this week.
You may download and read the document at Klippenstein’s Substack at the above link.
Today, Newsweek stood up. “JD Vance Dossier—What We Know.”
The alleged vetting documents of Ohio Senator JD Vance before he was chosen as the Republican vice presidential candidate have been made public after they were allegedly obtained via an Iranian hack on Donald Trump‘s campaign.
Journalist Ken Klippenstein published the 271-page report into Vance which was carried out by the Trump team on his Substack on Thursday.
The Vance dossier is said to have been part of a trove of sensitive materials which Iranian hackers stole from Trump’s campaign team. At least three news organizations—Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post—were said to have received the documents, but refused to report on them.
Klippenstein said he disagreed with the suggestion that publishing the materials allegedly obtained by Iranian hackers amounted to helping a foreign country influence the outcome of the 2024 election. The FBI previously confirmed that Iran had attempted to disrupt both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.
…
The report is a detailed examination of Vance’s background based on hundreds of his public statements, media interviews and available official records.
The document highlights the potential vulnerabilities Vance could face if selected as Trump’s running mate, including his previous stances and political views.
The dossier delves deep into times Vance has publicly criticized Trump over the years. Included in the document, for instance, is the transcript of an October 2016 appearance on Charlie Rose, where Vance said he was a “Never Trump guy.”
The document also cites social media posts apparently to highlight issues surrounding Vance being added to the 2024 GOP presidential ticket.
The dossier includes a reference to a tweet Vance reportedly sent in 2016 asking “what percentage of the American population has @RealDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?” The post said to be from Vance has since been deleted. Trump has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault. He has denied all the allegations against him.
The document also notes Vance’s positions on numerous issues including potentially contentious views, or what the dossier cites as “controversial” such as supporting higher taxes for people without children.
Vance’s phone number, home address, photos of his properties and email address are in the document, but have been redacted.
Klippenstein’s account on X, formerly Twitter, was suspended soon after he published the Vance dossier on his Substack.
In a statement, X said: “Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance’s physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number.”
Newsweek has contacted X for further comment via email.
Users on X are prevented from sharing a link to Klippenstein’s Substack page where he posted the dossier.
Time magazine has this interesting breaking news of proposed legislation by Rep. Adam Schiff.”Exclusive: New Bill Would Prevent Trump From Quashing His Criminal Cases.”
A prominent House Democrat is introducing legislation Friday that would prevent former President Donald Trump from dismissing his ongoing criminal prosecutions if he were to win the presidency again.
The new bill, shared exclusively with TIME ahead of its release, is being led by Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic nominee for California’s Senate seat who has been a leading Trump antagonist. He says his bill, which would prevent a sitting President from quashing a criminal prosecution against him or herself, aims to ensure that no President can use their position to evade accountability.
“This is about protecting our democracy and ensuring a President can’t place themselves above the law,” Schiff tells TIME in a statement. “There is every indication that Donald Trump will use the Justice Department to do away with any effort to hold him accountable.”
There’s a reason Schiff feels urgency to introduce the bill now. Trump is currently facing multiple criminal prosecutions, including charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. “The need for swift passage of this bill could become even more pressing,” Schiff says, “depending on the outcome of the election.”
Some more shocking news on Vance with the vice-presidential debate on the horizon. This is from The Daily Beast. “Vance’s Pre-Debate Prep Includes Christian Nationalist Who Called Harris a Witch. The veep hopeful will hold a town hall with a notorious televangelist who said last year that opponents of Donald Trump would soon suffer “sudden deaths” at the hands of God.” You never know if you should laugh, cry, or throw a rotten tomato at these guys. This is written by Josh Fiallo.
JD Vance’s embrace of far-right Christian nationalists will reach a whole new level this weekend.
Donald Trump’s running mate is set to spend one of his final afternoons before Tuesday’s vice presidential debate by hosting a town hall with Lance Wallnau, a notorious conspiracist who recently praised the 2021 Capitol riot as “an election fraud intervention.”
Vance is set to appear alongside Wallnau at 1 p.m. Saturday, platforming the self-described “prophet” who said in earnest this month that Kamala Harris is a “Jezebel spirit” who uses “witchcraft” to emasculate Trump.
“She can look presidential and that’s—and we’ll get to this later—that’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft,” Wallnau said of Harris after her Sept. 10 debate. “That spirit, that occult spirit, is operating on her and through her.”
This is from Right Wing Watch. “Lance Wallnau Blames the Seduction of Witchcraft for Kamala Harris’ Success written by Kyle Mantyla.” This guy makes me want Insane Asylums back.
Shortly after President Joe Biden announced in July that he would not be running for reelection and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and unabashed Trump cultist Lance Wallnau immediately began posting videos in which he warned that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel” and declared that she is “the devil’s choice.”
When Harris bested former President Donald Trump in a debate earlier this week, Wallnau was quick to blame it on “witchcraft,” and then doubled down on that attack Wednesday when he appeared on the “FirePower” show, hosted by fellow Trump cultists Mario Murillo and Todd Coconato.
“What you’re seeing now is a real Jezebel,” Wallnau declared. “When you’ve got somebody operating in manipulation, intimidation and domination—especially when it’s in a female role trying to emasculate a man who is standing up for truth—you’re dealing with the Jezebel spirit. … So, with Kamala, you have a Jezebel spirit, a characteristic in the Bible that is the personification of intimidation, seduction, domination and manipulation.”
“She can look presidential,” he continued. “That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft. That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her.”
While Harris is supposedly operating under an occult Jezebel spirit, Wallnau claimed that Trump has “an Elijah mantle on him, probably from the intercession of a million Christians.”
“So, we have to double down in intercessory prayer in the warfare mode of Pentecostals,” Wallnau proclaimed. “We need to close ranks and actually begin to get in a superlative agreement over what we believe we’re hearing God say he wants to manifest, because this election is coming five days after Halloween—another high holy day for all the Satanist crazy people.”
“We’ve got to lean into this thing because the Elijah mantle can break the spell of witchcraft off America,” he concluded. “God can tear the veil and unless that veil is torn, we have a lot working against us.”
Yes, this guy is real. I put the CBS interview up to demonstrate he’s not a movie character. I’m not sure what’s wrong with these people, but I want them nowhere around any human being. They are insane. They run wicked cults that target the vulnerable, and it’s sickening.
This is the sheet music, and yes, I own one. It’s from 1969.
The formidable dowager Violet Crawley, Maggie Smith’s scene-stealing character in Downton Abbey, made Smith a bona fide celebrity.
“It’s ridiculous. I led a perfectly normal life until Downton Abbey,” said Smith, who has died at 89. “I’m not kidding. I’d go to theaters. I’d go to galleries. Things like that, on my own, and now I can’t. And that’s—you know—awful. It’s all… It’s truly television. I mean, I’ve been working around for a very long time before Downton Abbey. And life was fine. Nobody knew who the hell I was. Now, it’s all—it has changed.”
…
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith CH DBE was born Dec. 28, 1934 in Ilford, Essex. Her own version of her life thereafter was terse but to the point: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one’s still acting,” she said. “I love it. I’m privileged to do it, and I don’t know where I’d be without it.”
She was first nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Desdemona in the 1965 film version of Othello (in an Academy first, all four principal actors in the movie were Oscar nominees). She had originated the role in the National Theatre Company’s production in London in 1964.
Four years later she won the best actress Oscar for the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and ten years later won a best supporting actress Oscar for California Suite, for which she also won a Golden Globe.
So, the closer we come to November 5th, the more insane it will get with the Party of Weirdos doing what they do. My birthday is the day before, and the only thing I want as a gift is for everyone and their cousins to go and vote for the Democratic Party up and down the ballot. It’s as essential as bombing NAZIs, taking the beaches, and writing The Constitution at this point. We lose all of that if they don’t win. And you don’t have to take it from me.
To say all this is unusual is an understatement.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: This is the Craziest Party that Could Ever Be
Posted: September 23, 2024 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Economy | Tags: "some weird shit", #DonOld, @repeat1968. John Buss, Ayatollah Mike Johnson, Bidenomics, Government Shutdown Blues, Reaganomics, Trump and Racism, Trump lies and dark shit 9 Comments
Modern Day Moses Mike Johnson has achieved Rinocchio status as Trumplicans demand a motion to vacate the chair. John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
There’s been good news on the U.S. economy and other issues like a decreasing crime rate. Weirdly, the legacy media wouldn’t cover history-making- statistics like the ones we’ve experienced over the last 4 years. But 48% of the country seems to prefer dark, weird lies for some reason. “Murder and other violent crime dropped across the U.S. last year, FBI data shows. Murder dropped 11.6% from 2022 to 2023, the largest single-year decline in the last 20 years. Property crime was also down overall, while motor vehicle theft and shoplifting rose.” This crime report is from NBC News.
Crime, including serious violent incidents like murder and rape, dropped nationally from 2022 to 2023, according to new data released by the FBI on Monday.
Violent crime was down about 3% from 2022 to 2023 and property crime took a similar drop of 2.4%, the FBI reported in its annual “Summary of Crime in the Nation.” The most serious crimes went down significantly: Murder and non-negligent manslaughter were down an estimated 11.6% — the largest single year decline in two decades — while rape decreased by an estimated 9.4%.
Preliminary numbers showed that 2024 crime numbers were also dropping for the early part of this year, continuing a trend of crime easing as America has come out of the pandemic.
The Economic Data from the U.S. is impressive. This is from The Real Economic Blog. “American outperformance in the post-pandemic global economy.” This analysis is by Joseph Brusuelas. American Economists can no longer claim to be practitioners of the dismal science during the Biden administration. Everything is going much better than expected.
One of the more underdiscussed economic developments following the shocks of the pandemic has been the United States’ outperformance compared to its peers.
This success can be traced to bold monetary and fiscal policies put in place that have hardened supply chains, bolstered energy independence and started to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.
Since 2020 real U.S. GDP has increased 9.4% compared with:
- Canada 4.9%
- Italy 4.7%
- EU 4%
- France 3.8%
- Japan 3.1%
- UK 2.3%
- Germany 0.3%
Perhaps more important, the U.S. is approaching what I think is a productivity boom.
If one asks how the U.S. can grow so fast even as hiring slows, the answer is productivity. With productivity increasing at 2.7% year over year, the American economy is experiencing its best gains in that area since the boom from 1995 to 2004.
That is why wages are rising above inflation, corporate earnings and profits are increasing and the U.S. continues to outperform its peers.
It’s all a result of smart decisions after the pandemic that increased supplies across the economy and encouraged long-term investments that integrate sophisticated technology into the production process.
Canada is our mini-me. They shadow and follow are economic results so it’s not surprising they’re number two on that list. But, the same reason we could not get a bi-partisan immigration bill is the same reason we may get a government shut-down right before the election. Just 3 days ago, the FED cut the FedFunds rate by 1/2%. As a Financial Economist, I can tell you this is a BFD. Did you know that Biden spoke at the New York Economic Club? Of course, it wasn’t covered the way the Trump debacle was. This is from ABC News. “Biden calls rate cut ‘an important day for the country.’ Biden told The Economic Club how far the U.S. has come since the COVID pandemic.”
President Joe Biden on Thursday called the Federal Reserve’s rate cut the day before an “important signal” from the Fed to Americans that inflation is cooling, but he cautioned that it “doesn’t mean the work is done” to improve the economy.
In remarks on Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Biden said, “Yesterday was an important day for the country.”
“Two and a half years after the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates, it announced that it began lowering interest rates,” Biden said. “I think it’s good news for consumers, and that means the cost of buying a home, a car, and so much more would be going down. And it’s good news in my view, for the overall economy.”
The president in his remarks discussed how far the U.S. has come since the COVID-19 pandemic, including supply chain issues, high costs of food and goods, and baby formula shortages. He also checked through all of his legislative achievements such as the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, Chips and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“At its peak, as you all know, inflation was 9.1% in the United States. Today it’s much closer to 2%,” Biden said. “It doesn’t mean our work is done. Far from it. Far from it, no one should confused why I’m here. I’m not here to take a victory lap. I’m not here to say, ‘A job well done.’ I’m not here to say ‘We don’t have a hell of a lot more work to do.’ We do have more work to do.”
“Secret Service stepping up its game on the campaign trail.” John Buss, @repeat1968
If you search the legacy media, you can find a few stories about the normalcy and improvements the Biden/Harris administration has provided our country. Ronald Reagan’s economic stewardship has been mischaracterized for years and these stories are still hanging around. I think the treatment that the press gave Reagan prepared us for the total media meltdown on Trump Coverage. Max Boot has a new book that will hopefully demonstrate it’s mostly myth,. Boot, you may recall, was a Republican Operative at the time. This is the Washington Post‘s review of his Reagan biography “Reagan: His Life and Legend.” Geoffrey Kabaservice wrote the review, and the lede states, “How Important was Reagan? Max Boot’s biography deflates the Gipper’s legacy.”
This splendid new account of the 40th president’s life shows that Reagan’s influence doesn’t loom so large 35 years after he left the White House.
To some extent such criticisms bounced off Reagan simply because reporters and the public liked him. His mastery of symbolism, largely derived from his Hollywood experience, also meant he never suffered politically for the contradictions between, for example, the traditional values he preached and his dysfunctional family life. (Reagan’s two children with his previous wife, the actress Jane Wyman, and his two children with Nancy were alienated from their emotionally detached parents as well as each other and engaged in a range of self-destructive behaviors.) As Boot perceptively observes, “The trappings of family, displayed in photographs and videos, conveyed the right image even if they were disassociated from the underlying reality.”
Reagan’s presidency likewise was more symbol than substance. Boot goes so far as to say that Reagan was “an oddly passive chief executive,” “a disengaged president who had little interest in, or aptitude for, running the federal government.”
In Boot’s telling, few of Reagan’s apparent successes owed much to Reagan himself. Several significant bipartisan bills were passed during his presidency, including a comprehensive tax overhaul and Defense Department restructuring, but “he did not take an active role in crafting any of them.” The most important economic policymaker was not the president but Paul Volcker, the chairman of the quasi-independent Federal Reserve Board — though Boot does credit Reagan for showing “considerable courage and perspicacity” in backing Volcker despite the economic costs of his anti-inflationary policies. In any case, “there was nothing particularly impressive or unusual about the Reagan economic record,” given that, according to the statistics Boot cites, annual growth in the gross domestic product during his presidency was about the same as what it had been under Richard Nixon and below the rates during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson
The worst headlines still fill today’s papers and are always about you-know-who or the candidates running with MAGA status. North Carolina Gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is the latest in the MAGA lineage of someone who shouldn’t hold public office. The CNN headline is “Nearly all of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign staff quits after CNN report.” But the big question is, why did they go to work for him before? It’s not like he just turned into a deplorable overnight! As usual, CNN goes with normalizing MAGA behavior even when each story about them is more abnormal than the last.
Days after a CNN report about racist and sexual comments posted on a pornography forum, all but a few of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s campaign team quit their jobs on Sunday.
A campaign news release said that four top staffers have left the campaign: Conrad Pogorzelski, general consultant and senior advisor who’s worked for Robinson since his initial 2020 lieutenant governor campaign; Chris Rodriguez, campaign manager; Heather Whillier, finance director; and Jason Rizk, deputy campaign manager.
But WUNC has confirmed that other staffers have quit as well, leaving Robinson with just three people working on his campaign — two campaign spokesmen and a bodyguard. The list of departures also include longtime director of operations Patrick Riley and political directors John Kontoulas and Jackson Lohrer.
Sunday’s news release says that new staff hires will be announced “in the coming days.” But hiring a new campaign team less than two months from Election Day will be tough for a campaign rocked by scandal.
The lengthy CNN report, published Thursday afternoon, highlights comments posted to an online pornography forum called “Nude Africa” from an user calling themselves Mark Robinson with many of his personal biographical details and an email address associated with the man who’s now the Republican nominee for governor.
The report includes a long list of sexually explicit and racist comments posted to the site between 2008 and 2012, long before Robinson entered politics as a candidate for lieutenant governor in 2020. The commenter describes himself as a “Black Nazi,” calls for the reinstatement of slavery, says he enjoys watching transgender pornography and describes a time he spied on women taking showers in a locker room.
Robinson has denied that he wrote the posts, but other Republicans have been distancing themselves from the GOP nominee for governor in recent days. President Donald Trump made no mention of Robinson during a Saturday rally in Wilmington, even as the GOP nominee for attorney general, Congressman Dan Bishop, spoke to the crowd.
Controversies have been present in most of the MAGA set. I mean, what type of weirdo can vote for a guy who’s about to get his sentence for committing 34 felons, is an adjudicated felon, and still has plenty of my felonies lined up to get him if he doesn’t get into office. His wife won’t even be seen with him, and she was just paid to show up at a Log Cabin Republican meeting by some unknown person. “Melania Trump was paid for a rare appearance at a political event. It’s not clear who cut the unusual six-figure check.” She made another weird, rare appearance at the RNC. It was filled with the visual rebuffs of her husband. For a Political Party obsessed with a traditional family and flying so-called Christian Values, something is very wrong here.
Also, the Barron Trump allegations are beginning to come out since he’s no longer considered a kid. Oy, and what a kid he was! “The shocking Barron Trump allegations just keep getting worse.” This is from MSN.
Yesterday, we learned that Barron Trump—according to an insider—allegedly “slapped the sh*t” out of his nanny years ago. But apparently Barron’s behavior is far worse than that.
After one poster—who nannied for a kid who went to the same New York school as Barron after every DC school allegedly refused to take him—started dishing the dirt on the young psycho-in-training, even more stories started to come out about the youngest Trump.
“The more y’all annoy me, the more Imma keep telling the Trumps business,” original poster @WonderKing82, aka Mr. Weeks, promised Trump supporters in his replies. And boy, did he deliver. Soon after telling the story about the nanny, a few other damning details came to light, mostly about Barron’s treatment of small animals.
For Barron, the bad behavior allegedly didn’t stop with animals. He also directed his abuse at other classmates, according to Mr. Weeks.
The part about the inappropriate touching and investigation is especially disturbing. And for the people in the comments claiming that these are somehow signs of autism, that’s not only incredibly untrue, it’s irresponsible and harmful for individuals who are actually autistic. Folks on the autism spectrum don’t tend to harm animals or classmates, and it’s a little bit ridiculous that this has to be said out loud.
There are even people in the replies trying to find a way to blame Barron’s behavior on Hillary Clinton. Good luck with that!
Whatever the truth is about Barron Trump, you can be sure it will eventually come to light. For now, we’re going to keep a close eye on these disturbing, utterly believable claims.
We’re basically seeing a family tree full of sociopaths! And blame that on Hillary??? WTF? So, there appears to be a spending deal that my avoid the government shutdown Trump wants. This is from the AP. “Spending deal averts a possible federal shutdown and funds the government into December.” I’m not sure how dumb you must be to know that the party that doesn’t deliver the deal gets blamed. The Citizens get really pissed if they start missing all kinds of things owed them, like Vet Benefits and paychecks.
Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a possible partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and pushing final decisions until after the November election.
Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but an additional $231 million was included to bolster the Secret Service after the two assassination attempts against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and additional money was added to aid with the presidential transition, among other things.
Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
But Johnson abandoned that approach to reach an agreement, even as Trump insisted there should not be a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement.
Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president.
In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones” and include “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”
“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”
I have just a few other recommendations. The first one comes from Emptywheel. Also, if you haven’t watched From Russia, with Lev, You should. “Why No One Went to Prison for Rudy Giuliani’s Hunter Biden Corruption.”
As I said, the film leaves the impression that Lev was arrested to protect Trump during impeachment by silencing the key witness.
But that’s not why Lev went to prison (as a news clip in the movie tacitly admits).
Lev and Igor Fruman (along with David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin) were first charged on October 9, 2019, via indictment that was (according to then US Attorney for SDNY Geoffrey Berman’s memoir) drafted quickly overnight in advance of Lev and Igor’s trip to meet Dmitry Firtash in Vienna. From Berman’s memoir, I’m not 100% sure whether he pushed it because he genuinely feared they were about to flee the country, felt he had to do so before Barr intervened … or for more nefarious reasons.
The charges were:
- Conspiring to make a bunch of political donations in the name of Global Energy Producers
- Lying to the Federal Election Commission
- Falsifying a document to the FEC
- Laundering donations from Russian Andrey Muraviev to pay pro-cannabis politicians
As Bondy described, the indictment implied that Lev and Igor’s political contributions to Pete Sessions were tied to an attempt to fire Marie Yovanovitch. But that was not charged as FARA.
On September 17, 2020, the indictment was superseded. Lev and Correia’s longterm Fraud Guarantee fraud was added and the charges tied to Muraviev (who was secretly indicted that same day) were bumped up. The paragraph describing a payment to Sessions took out the reference to an Ambassador, describing it instead as to “further their political goals.” There were still no FARA charges though.
Ultimately, Lev was convicted at trial in October 2021 of the GEP and Muraviev donations, and in March 2022, pled guilty to the fraud guarantee charges. He was never charged with FARA violations.
Bondy’s insinuation that SDNY took out the foreign agent aspect to protect Rudy is wholly inconsistent with the warrants (linked below) targeting Lev and Rudy unsealed last year.
They show that the investigation into Lev, which started based on a Campaign Legal Center complaint, initially focused on campaign finance crimes. In August 2019 — after the firing of Marie Yovanovitch but before the disclosure of the Perfect Phone Call — SDNY began to turn to Foreign Agent suspicions (though one of two warrants obtained in August 2019 was not executed). After the arrest, SDNY more aggressively turned to developing the Foreign Agent prong of the investigation. On November 4, 2019, SDNY obtained warrants targeting Rudy (which were not released last year). On December 10, 2019, the Foreign Agent prong continued.
That’s when Bill Barr intervened to kill that prong of the investigation, certainly as it pertained to Rudy, as I’ll lay out below.
After that point, SDNY focused on the Fraud Guarantee fraud.
It’s not that Lev went to prison for this but Rudy did not. On the contrary, Barr worked hard to ensure no one could go to prison on such charges.
While Barr was doing that, SDNY appears to have put that investigation on ice and attempted, without success, to resuscitate once Barr was out of office.
There are also a few more articles analyzing DonOLD. I’ll be brief with these. From the Washington Post and Phillip Bump: “The ‘policy’ mirage that undergirds Donald Trump’s support. The former president and his supporters insist he wins a race centered on policy. It’s not because of Trump’s detailed policy platform.”
A central reason for this is the deep polarization in American politics, particularly around Trump himself. In 2016 and 2020, he earned a bit under 50 percent of the vote, about where he is in most recent polls. The shift from Biden to Harris helped firm up the Democratic electorate, which may be crucially important in who actually turns out to vote — but the race generally went from a narrow national Trump lead to a narrow Harris one. The 2024 race continues to be largely a referendum on Trump, much as the 2020 race was.
There has been one notable difference this year, though. While Trump’s 2016 campaign was unabashedly indifferent to policy specifics and his 2020 campaign centered on his incumbency, his 2024 effort has often — largely through the energies of his boosters — been presented as a campaign centered on the policies he seeks to implement.
It’s an unexpected argument, but a common one. You will often hear that Trump has an advantage on policy; that, if the campaign set aside all of the fluff of personal emotion, Trump would prevail simply by virtue of the popularity of his positions. That his support is rooted in what he stands for, not who he is.
Juan Williams dives in further at The Hill. “Trump is at 48 percent. How could this be possible but for widespread racism?”
At this point, the racism is obvious. How else does it make sense that 48 percent of registered voters in last week’s Fox News poll say they have no problem putting Donald Trump back in the White House?
Who are these people who look the other way when their candidate tells a bold lie about Black immigrants eating a mostly white Ohio town’s cats and dogs?
How can it be that not a soul among the 48 percent cares that Trump’s vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, says it is okay to “create” racist lies about immigrants eating pets “so the American media actually pays attention”?
How can 48 percent of voters back a candidate who says immigrants coming from “infested” places are “poisoning the blood of our country?”
Is it just snowflakes who notice when one of Trump’s close allies says, “The White House will smell like curry” if Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant, wins the presidency?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R- Ga.), no snowflake, condemned the comment as “appalling,” “racist” and “hateful.”
Do these voters also prefer to sail past Trump once calling a Black woman and former aide a “dog”? And he called Alvin Bragg, the Black Manhattan district attorney who successfully prosecuted him for business fraud, an “animal.”
Maybe Trump’s 48 percent don’t excuse his racism so much as get the message. They are inside a Republican Party that is 82 percent white. Most of those white Republicans are in small towns and rural areas.
Harris said Trump can’t be trusted to serve as president after “engaging in…hateful rhetoric that, as usual, is designed to divide us as a country…to have people pointing fingers at each other.”
In this year’s campaign, one of Trump’s regular dog-whistles at his rallies is his false claim that big cities, full of racial minorities and immigrants, are scary places full of crime and failure. Last week he flatly lied at a rally when he said a parent who leaves a child alone on the New York subway has “about a 75 percent chance that [they’ll] never see [their] child again. What the hell has happened here?”
Trump’s use of racism to stir up his white supporters was called out by writer Fran Lebowitz back in 2018. Trump, she wrote, has “allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that…It’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.”
Ashley Parker writes this at The Washington Post. “Donald Trump’s imaginary and frightening world. His extreme caricatures serve as a way to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.”
In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender reassignment surgery.
The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.
It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.
Trump, for instance, regularly claims that Democrats favor abortions up until the day of birth — and, in some cases, even after birth.
Speaking at the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Trump falsely claimed that Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has said “abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine.”
“He also says, ‘execution after birth’ — execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born — is okay,” Trump continued.
In fact, Walz has not said this, The Washington Post Fact Checker found, and “execution after birth” — or infanticide — is illegal in all states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, nearly all abortions — 93.5 percent — occur at or before 13 weeks, and fewer than 1 percent were performed after 21 weeks. World War III, too, is another all-but-certainty should Trump not be elected in November, the former president frequently claims. In July, before a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his private Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump told reporters that only his electoral victory could stave off another global conflagration.
“If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all going to work out and very quickly,” Trump said. “If we don’t, you’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a Third World War. You are closer to a Third World War right now than at any time since the Second World War. You’ve never been so close, because we have incompetent people running our country.”
Seeing this dark stuff, or as Dubya put it back at his inauguration, “some weird shit,” we can only ask ourselves what causes people to swallow this hook, line, and sinker. Is this what makes you feel better about yourself? I keep wondering if it’s their brand of religion, their lack of education, or just their Iron Age tribalistic hate of any “other than them.” I had to even call it weird because, to me, the word evil is far more descriptive. It’s certainly no way to run a country. And, it’s not the way to have fun.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: Ms Harris, Please Unite Us!
Posted: September 20, 2024 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, abortion rights | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, DonOld Weirdo and Perv, Harris/Walz policy priorities 2024, JD Vance Weirdo and perv, John Neely Kennedy Weirdo, Mark Robinson, Mark Robinson weirdo and perv, Oprah Winfrey, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Vice President Kamala Harris, Weirdo, weirdo and perv 11 Comments
“One Quadruple Bogey at a time.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I saw some of Oprah’s Zoom interview with Vice President Harris Last night. Watching the back tier with 1000 individual screens showing the faces of celebrities and folks around the country was fascinating. Tonight, the Vice President will give a speech on the preventable deaths of two young women from complications in Atlanta. I’m sure that the Republicans and the Christian Right will go after mifepristone and misoprostol since incomplete medical abortions were involved. This is even though the procedure would be used for a miscarriage as well. This is from the New York Times. “Harris Will Give Abortion Speech in Georgia After Deaths of Two Women. The vice president has said the stories of pregnant women who have been denied or have been unable to gain access to medical care show the consequences of former President Donald J. Trump’s actions.” This is reported by Lisa Lerer.
Vice President Kamala Harris will give remarks in Atlanta on Friday focused on the stories of two Georgia mothers whose deaths she has argued show the consequences of the strict abortion bans passed by Republicans after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
The speech is part of an effort by the Harris campaign to push reproductive rights to the center of the presidential election, according to a person with knowledge of the event who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the plans.
The deaths, reported this week by ProPublica, occurred in the months after Georgia passed a law banning abortion at six weeks. Amber Thurman died of sepsis resulting from an incomplete medication abortion after waiting 20 hours in a suburban Atlanta hospital for medical care. A second woman, Candi Miller, died after declining to seek medical care for complications from abortion medication.
Throughout her campaign, Ms. Harris has sought to tie former President Donald J. Trump, who has taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who provided the key votes to overturn the federal right to abortion, to dire medical situations faced by women seeking the procedure in states where it is banned or heavily restricted.
Georgia is very much in play. This is why so much attention has been paid to it with positive and negative actions. This kind of shenanigans is likely why Trump is only playing to his base and not heading to the middle to appeal to swing voters and voters in the suburbs. Although, when I watch the snippets of his speeches I think he may be incapable of actually doing that. He seems to repeat some of the golden oldies, then goes off on some unintelligible tangent. The Guardian reported this yesterday. “Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result. Emails reveal Georgia Election Integrity Coalition, a group of officials and election deniers, coordinating in swing state.”
Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.
The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.
Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.
The Georgia Election Board continues to make a mess of voting in Georgia. The idea appears to make it impossible to certify the vote count by the Constitutionally required Date. That way, the Trump campaign may start a lawsuit that lands in his Supreme Court. “Pro-Trump Georgia election board votes to require hand counts of ballots. Critics plan to sue, saying the new requirement would almost certainly lead to errors and could disrupt the process of certifying the vote in a crucial battleground state.” This headline is in today’s Washington Post. Amy Gardner reports the story.
The Georgia State Election Board approved a rule Friday requiring counties in the critical presidential battleground to hand-count all ballots this year, potentially upending the November election by delaying reporting of results by weeks if not months.
The change was spearheaded by a pro-Trump majority that has enacted a series of changes to the state’s election rules in recent weeks and approved the hand-count requirement despite a string of public commenters who begged them not to. Critics included democracy advocates who accused the board of intentionally injecting chaos and uncertainty into the presidential contest as well as election supervisors and poll workers who said hand counts would take too long, cost money and almost certainly produce counting errors.
The board voted 3-2 to approve the measure, which would require the hand count in addition to the customary machine count in each precinct. The rule requires the hand count to take place the night of the November election or the next day. But dozens of election officials said that would be physically impossible in all but the smallest counties. Many also said in public comments Friday that it is far too late in the year to adopt new procedures for which their staffs have not been trained and for which they have no funds.
“Military ballots have already been issued,” said Ethan Compton, elections supervisor in south Georgia’s Irwin County. “The election has begun. This is not the time to change the rules. That will only lower the integrity of our elections.”
The hand-count requirement was one of 11 rules expected to be voted on Friday, the latest batch the State Election Board has considered in recent weeks in an effort, proponents say, to make state elections more secure and transparent. The flurry is the work of a new right-wing majority that took control of the board in May with an avowed mission of preventing fraud and other irregularities from tainting the presidential result this year.
All three are supporters of former president Donald Trump, and the rules they are pushing have been promoted by the state’s leading proponents of the false claim that Joe Biden stole the Georgia election in 2020.
JD Vance is not experiencing the issues of advanced age like DonOLD. He’s just admitted to making up stories to make his point. His reprehensible talking points and speeches are just that, reprehensible. “JD Vance Makes Light of Actual Foreign Interference in His State.” This is from EmptyWheel
At a press conference on Ohio’s efforts to respond to the chaos created in Springfield by a slew of bomb threats, Governor Mike DeWine revealed that a number of the bomb threats came from “one particular country” overseas.
We have people, unfortunately, overseas, who are taking these actions. Some of them are coming from one particular country. We think that this is one more opportunity to mess with the United States. And they’re continuing to do that.
After that, in a truly deranged Xitter manifesto basically arguing that if the media doesn’t platform the false claims of Nazis attacking migrants, they’ll shoot someone, JD Vance falsely claimed that that’s proof a double standard from the media, then continued to lie that Kamala Harris was responsible for the assassination attempts against Trump.
[R]eports today suggest they came from a foreign country, not–as the media suggested–a deranged Trump fan.
The double standard is breathtaking. Donald Trump and I are, by their account, directly responsible for bomb threats from foreign countries. Why? Because we had the audacity to repeat what residents told us about the problems in their town. Meanwhile, Harris allies call for Trump to be eliminated as the media publishes arguments that he deserved to be shot.
Vance integrated this attack into his stump speech in Sparta Michigan, claiming that, “the American media has been laundering foreign disinformation” and deliberately lying — before DeWine revealed this — when they noted the bomb threats followed Trump and JD’s false attacks on Haitians.
Meanwhile, ABC News reports that “Ohio Haitian immigrants say they are afraid to leave home after recent backlash In Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants claim they are terrified.” This is stochastic terrorism.
Haitian migrants residing in Springfield, Ohio, shared with ABC News their harrowing experiences of living in constant fear, expressing deep concerns about their safety that prevent them from venturing outside their homes.
In a town of more than 58,000 residents, threats of bombings and shootings led to the closure of city buildings and schools for several days. Wittenberg University canceled all activities on Sunday and classes on Monday as a precautionary measure.
James Fleurijean, a Haitian Community Help & Support Center member, stated that the continual spread of false and divisive statements from prominent politicians was fostering an environment of fear.
The entire small city will need therapy and Federal disaster help when this happens. And still, the despicable dotard and his sidekick Vance Viscious are still spinning lies to the deplorables. Even Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, wrote this in the New York Times. ” I’m the Governor of Ohio. I Don’t Recognize the Springfield That Trump and Vance Describe.”
Sydney Blumenthal published this piece in The Guardian today. “Trump and Vance’s Springfield smear is a microcosm of their entire campaign. The Republicans desperately need to distract voters away from abortion. They’ve now found the perfect new scapegoat “
After Donald Trump’s disastrous debate with Kamala Harris on 10 September he decided to center his campaign on a single incendiary issue: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
When Trump was corrected during the debate by the ABC moderator David Muir, who pointed out that his statement about the Haitian community in the Ohio town was erroneous, he insisted it was factual. “Well,” he said, “I’ve seen people on television, people on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food.’” But there were no such “people on television”. There were no dogs taken for food. Trump called Muir a “foolish fool”, and said, “He’s a guy with good hair, but not as good as it was five years ago.”
…
After the debate left him staggering into the spin room to proclaim, “It’s the best debate I ever had,” before confusedly retreating, Trump’s imperative has been to hold on to his base. He can afford no erosion. Losing even a point might be a falling rock that starts a landslide.
Trump desperately needed to distract the national discussion away from abortion. His pre-debate charade of gyrating positions failed to beguile women voters. His charm offensive was offensive without the charm. The gender gap widened to an even greater chasm.
The day before the debate, he held a commanding lead on the economy, 10 points over Harris, 55% to 45%, in a Pew poll. But afterwards, the FT-Michigan Ross polls showed Harris with an advantage on trust in her handling of the economy by 44% to 42%, and 48% to 42% among those who watched the debate.
Trump knows in his bones that his supporters will believe anything he says. If he ever feels they will abandon him, he cannot shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. He does not require any evidence, not even spectral, to trigger their need to demonstrate unswerving faith. Once he speaks, declaring miracles, he is certain his supporters will fall to their knees. And, mirabile dictu, a majority, 52%, say it’s true that “Haitian immigrants are abducting and eating pet dogs and cats,” according to a post-debate YouGov poll. Only 5% are willing to confess the heresy that it is “definitely false”, while 25% are agnostically “unsure”.
Trump’s lie about “eating pet dogs and cats” is his best-polling lie. It polled nine points better among his supporters than his lie that “in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth”. It polled 24 points better than his lie that “public schools are providing students with sex-change operations” and 44 points better than his lie that “noise from wind turbines has been shown to cause cancer.” The raw numbers dictated the emphasis of his fiction.
The illogic of his demagogy gives Trump no pause. He has railed that immigrants are stealing “Black jobs”. He says the Haitians of Springfield are illegal. But they are in fact legal and of course black. They are the black people usurping the “Black jobs”.
Trump knew before he uttered his lie in the debate about “eating pets” that it was untrue. The morning of the debate, according to the Wall Street Journal, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate, had a staffer call the office of the Springfield city manager. “He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” that official, Bryan Heck, told the Journal. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
Rather than debunk the rumor he had been informed was untrue, Vance spread the falsehood immediately. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?” he tweeted, pinning the blame for the presence of the Haitian community, which had settled in the town a decade earlier, on Harris, who was incidentally not the “border czar”. Within a half-hour of Vance’s post, the Springfield News-Sun reported that police stated that there were no incidents of pets being stolen or eaten and that the story was “not something that’s on our radar right now”.
Trump repeated the lie in the debate and kept repeating it. His incitement was followed by 33 bomb threats that shut down schools, hospitals and municipal buildings in Springfield. The town’s CultureFest was cancelled. Classes at Clark State College and Wittenberg University were suspended because of bomb threats. (Wittenberg was founded in 1845 at Springfield by devout German-American abolitionists. The last time classes were suspended there was for the send-off of a volunteer military company of students to fight for the Union in the civil war. When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the school held a day of prayer and fasting in celebration.)
“Do you denounce the bomb threats in Springfield?” a reporter asked Trump on 14 September.
“I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats,” Trump lied. “I know that it’s been taken over by illegal migrants, and that’s a terrible thing that happened.” He pledged: “We will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio. Large deportations. We’re gonna get these people out.” He said they would be the first to be rounded up. He would use “local law enforcement” and the national guard, despite the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits such deployments against civilians. “Well, these aren’t civilians,” he claimed. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country.” “And you know,” he had previously told a cheering crowd, “it’s going to be a bloody story.”
Trump’s sidekicks are just as despicable as he is. This story came across live while I was watching Nicole yesterday afternoon. I’ve gotten to the point that I think this guy represents the modern Republican party to a t. This is from The Bulwark, and the headline says it all. “Uh, Gross.” I’m with Andrew Egger on that one.
When the rumor mill started churning yesterday that some major, potentially campaign-shaking news was coming on North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor this year, people’s minds began going to truly dark places. After all, Robinson was already one of the most insanely controversial figures in today’s politics: a Holocaust denier; a modest enthusiast of political violence; a walking, talking Breitbart comments section who’d been posting unhinged stuff online for years. A story that he used to be a frequent patron of video porn stores was barely a blip in the race. What could possibly be worse?
Well, uh, we found out. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski had tracked down a bunch of old online profiles of Robinson—most notably, an account he’d frequently used to comment on a porn site, Nude Africa, in the early 2010s. Those posts included some of the most insane ranting you’ll ever see:
- “I’m a black NAZI!”
- “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!”
- “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it back. I would certainly buy a few.”
- Of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Get that fucking commie bastard off the National Mall. . . . I’m not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!”
- Of a story about a woman who said she was sexually assaulted by her taxi driver: “The moral of this story . . . . . Don’t fuck a white bitch!”
There was more beyond that. What’s really incredible is that all this was the sanitized version. CNN tiptoed politely around a heap of other Robinson comments that were simply some of the most obscene, degraded sexual stuff you could imagine.
I’d say North Carolina is really in play now. How could you vote for anyone that’s on the ballot with this deplorable? I suppose it’s all fine and reasonable by the MAGA crowd, but I can’t see a suburban mom or dad going for any of this. Independents will likely head to the Democratic Party’s offerings. Then there’s this information on the deplorable Matt Gaetz from NOTUS. Why are Republican men so obsessed with women’s bodies? “New Court Filings Place Matt Gaetz at a Party at the Center of the Sex Trafficking Scandal. This is the first public filing that cites sworn testimony alleging that Gaetz attended one of the long-rumored parties with a teenage girl.” This is just one of many Florida stories that put Florida into play.
Rep. Matt Gaetz attended a drug-fueled sex party in 2017 with the 17-year-old girl at the center of the alleged sex trafficking scandal, according to legal documents filed to a Florida federal court shortly before midnight Thursday, which cite sealed affidavits from three eyewitness testimonies.
The minor, who was a junior in high school at the time, arrived in her mother’s car for a July 15, 2017, party at the Florida home of Chris Dorworth, a lobbyist and friend of Gaetz’s, according to a court filing written by defense attorneys who interviewed witnesses as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit Dorworth brought in 2023.
The lobbyist claimed he had been unfairly dragged into the alleged sex trafficking scandal that has dogged Gaetz and his allies for years. Dorworth ultimately dropped the case, but lawyers filed these documents in an attempt to recoup attorneys fees for a lawsuit they say should never have been brought.
One eyewitness cited in the court filings, a young woman referred to as K.M., provided a sworn affidavit that claimed the teenage girl was naked, partygoers were there to “engage in sexual activities,” and “alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy … and marijuana” were present. The teenage girl was identified in the filings only as A.B.
“The discovery taken in this case to date reflects that on Saturday, July 15, 2017 … Dorworth, hosted a party at his residence … with the following guests present: (1) A.B.; (2) K.M.; (3) B.G.; (4) Matt Gaetz,” lawyers wrote in the filing, also listing several others. The defense lawyers filed testimonies from those three women — who the attorneys say placed Gaetz at Dorworth’s house that night — under seal pending a judge’s approval to make the records public.
Additionally, Gaetz’s own ex-girlfriend — who was present at the party — provided testimony that lawyers say rebuts Dorworth’s claims that he was not there.NOTUS independently verified that Gaetz and one of the women who testified were previously involved in a relationship; she is only identified in the court filing by her initials, B.G.
The congressman’s ex-girlfriend’s eleventh hour testimony on Sept. 3 came just two days before Dorworth dropped his lawsuit, defense attorneys said in the filing. The defense lawyers also relied on Dorworth’s geolocated cell phone records, which showed that he communicated constantly with the congressman that day.The defense’s court filings show a hired digital forensic examiner identified Gaetz’s number, which has a Florida panhandle 850 area code and texted back and forth 30 times that day and then called Dorworth twice in the hours before the evening revelry. “B.G., another attendee at that party, confirmed A.B.’s testimony under penalty of perjury,” defense lawyers wrote.
This marks the first time that sworn testimony has been referenced in public court filings alleging that the congressman attended one of the long-rumored parties tied to an alleged underage sex scandal.Previous reports have revealed details of ex-politician and Gaetz friend Joel Greenberg’s confession letter that was never made public, which described how Gaetz would allegedly pay him to arrange several sexual encounters with young women — including a 17-year-old girl. Greenberg is serving an 11-year prison sentence for a list of charges, including fraud and sex trafficking with a child.
Deplorable Louisiana Senator John Neely Kennedy set a new level of low. This is from MSNBC. “Sen. John Kennedy used a Senate hearing on hate crimes to spew hate. A senator’s racist attack on a witness in a hearing was appalling even by Trump-era standards.” This Op-Ed was written by Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor.
On Tuesday, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, Maya Berry, appeared as a witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on an issue that should garner concern across the political spectrum: hate crimes. In both her prepared statement and her testimony, Berry apprised lawmakers of the need for stronger enforcement of the law to tackle the country’s growing “hate crime crisis.”
She acknowledged both Jewish and Arab American victims of hate crimes, and shared statistics on those crimes’ effects on all kinds of demographic groups, including Black Americans, Asian Americans and members of the LBGTQ community.
It’s difficult to imagine how a reasonable person could take issue with Berry’s comments, other than to interrogate how effective the hate crime enforcement model is. But in a shocking display, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., demonstrated that he is not a reasonable person.
Instead, Kennedy used the hearing as an opportunity to launch a series of racist attacks on Berry, centered around accusations that she supports terrorism. His repugnant broadsides were a stunning illustration both of why the panel was being held in the first place and how politicians use ad hominem attacks to try to silence criticism of Israel.
Shortly after beginning to question Berry, Kennedy abruptly asked her: “You support Hamas, do you not?”
“Senator, oddly enough, I’m going to say thank you for that question, because it demonstrates the purpose of our hearing today in a very effective way,” Berry replied.
Kennedy interjected: “Let’s start first with a yes or no.”
“Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support,” Berry responded, “but you asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country.”
“You support Hezbollah, too, don’t you?” Kennedy then asked — implying that he didn’t believe her answer on Hamas.
Berry replied, “I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing.”
“Is that a no?” Kennedy demanded.
“I don’t support violence, whether it’s Hezbollah or Hamas or any other entity that invokes it, so no, sir,” she said.
“You just can’t bring yourself to say no, can you? Kennedy said, even though Berry’s answer could not have been clearer. He continued his absurd line of questioning, asking her if she supports or opposes Iran “and their hatred of Jews?”
You may watch this reprehensible behavior below. I would also like to reference Kennedy’s use of the word “Jews” can be a hate word itself. The Deplorable in Chief demonstrates this. This is from the Jewish Journal Forward. “Trump says Jews would deserve much of the blame if he loses. The speech was supposed to be about antisemitism but instead trafficked in it, Trump’s critics said.” This is written by Jacob Kornbluh.
In a speech Thursday billed as former President Donald Trump’s answer to rising antisemitism, he said Jews would bear much of the responsibility if he loses the presidential election.
And in a second speech later in the evening, to the Israeli American Council, Trump elaborated on his past assertions in recent weeks that Israel would not survive if he doesn’t win in November, by painting a doomsday scenario in which Iran launches nuclear weapons and invoking the Holocaust.
“The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” Trump said during the first speech of the evening, an hourlong address at an event called “Fighting Antisemitism in America,” organized with GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Capitol Hill.
“You can’t let this happen,” he told his largely Jewish audience.
Trump in recent weeks has offended many Jews by questioning their mental health for voting for Democrats — as most Jews do — and predicting Israel’s demise should Harris win. But Thursday night’s comments seem to represent an escalation in Trump’s rhetoric, in that he singled out Jewish Americans — who represent only about 2% of the electorate — as a significant reason he might lose the election, one whose results he has never pledged to accept.
Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said after the speech that Trump’s remarks endanger Jews.
“Treating Jews and Israel as political footballs makes Jews, Israel, and all of us less safe,” she said in a statement.
“Dividing Jews into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ camps and engaging in dual loyalty tropes further normalizes antisemitism.”
“Anyone who cares about Jewish safety should call it out,” she added. “This is not partisan politics — it’s about the fundamental safety of the Jewish community.”
This is running at nearly 5000 words now, and there are more of these examples of stupidity, hatred, fear-mongering, lying, and trying to divide the country in the news today. I’m unsure if fear of a significant loss, panic, or finally dropping the sheep’s clothing to expose the wolves is for these examples of keeping the audio relentlessly at 11. So, I will end with something the Vice President said last night in her interview with Oprah. These quotes come from Australia’s The Nightly.
Speaking with Winfrey in an exclusive sit-down interview, aired on Thursday, local time, Ms Harris described the sense of responsibility she felt when President Joe Biden announced she would not seek re-election.
She described the race to the White House as being about America — not herself.
“I felt a sense of responsibility,” Ms Harris said. “With that comes a sense of purpose.
“We are here because there really is so much at stake.”
“There’s so much about this campaign I love because it’s about the people. This movement is about reminding each other that there is so much more we have in common.
“I don’t ask people if they are a Democrat or a Republican, I ask if they are okay.
“I do know that I am in a position to do something about it. I felt a great sense of responsibility.”
I want the grown-ups, the ordinary people, the ones who want to unite us to serve us. I want the weirdos and the red meanies to leave the buildings permanently. I want people that will fight for us! Do everything within your power for the Harris/Walz campaign and the local Democratic candidates in your jurisdiction.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: A Broken Orange Clock
Posted: September 16, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Black Women Lead, black women's reproductive health | Tags: "concepts of a plan", #DonOld, @repeat1968. John Buss, A Clockwork Orange, Politics and Football, Republicans "create stories" 5 Comments
“I know someone who is in serious decline…” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I usually take a long break from TV in the Fall. I actually don’t have a TV at the moment, although I have a new one sitting on a box on my bed that I haven’t bothered to set up for over a year now. I stick to the news and weather, so I’m usually okay as long as I can stream those. I typically like following politics, but that’s not like it used to be, and I prefer to get that from the print media. I’m even avoiding as much of that as possible because there’s no discussion about policy anymore. The cult of personality is everywhere these days.
This political season reminds me of all the things I detest about football. I ignore football games as much as possible. I usually call it mutants crashing and men fighting over ceremonial big balls. It starts with a between the legs movement and some guy bending over. It’s about throwing and catching and running away. It also causes brain damage. It’s a perfect allegory for today’s Republican politics right up to the part where the adherents of the team wear silly costumes and scream a lot.
Maybe it’s because most people don’t harvest, do something productive, or return to school to meet new kids and teachers. Maybe social media is the new American circus and it doesn’t just happen one week of the year. I’m happy for the cooler weather. Halloween is still the best holiday on the calendar, but it’s short-lived and overrun by the overtly commercial Crassmess season. But really, America. This is one of the silliest silly seasons that I’ve experienced in a long time.
So, I’m hesitant to follow the herd into the latest guy with a gun near Trump. There are guys with guns in schools. In our reality, they’re in shopping centers, neighborhoods, and even hospitals every day. They’re all ready to shoot things up for one reason or another. Most of them are troubled, surrounded by gun culture, encouraged to take out whoever has run off with their balls, and they’re unfortunately successful. When we’re encouraged to see all others as a team, we don’t want to play ball with but against, it begins to make sense. Is this the way American governance and law work now?
Everyone knows there’s someone on the team willing to shit talk. The crowd evidently loves it. Truth be damned. I mean, ‘concepts of a plan’ wouldn’t win a football game. Why should it get votes in an election? Every team has a designated shit-talker. But donOLD has a team full of them. That’s all they can do. Here’s a great example from The Guardian, as Edward Helmore wrote. “JD Vance admits he is willing to ‘create stories’ to get media attention. Republican vice-presidential candidate defends spreading false, racist claims demonizing Haitian immigrants.” What happens if the people on the other end aren’t participating in the ball-chasing activities? Then, the other side looks much more like the droogies in A Clockwork Orange. H/t for this to Hillary Clinton.
In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.
Vance’s remarks came during an appearance on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”. Asked by the CNN host Dana Bash whether the false rumors centering on Springfield, Ohio, were “a story that you created”, Vance replied, “Yes!” He then said the claims were rooted in “accounts from … constituents” and that he as well as the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, had spoken publicly about them to draw attention to Springfield’s relatively large Haitian population.
Vance’s remarks drew a quick rebuke from the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who supports his party’s White House nominee in November’s election, Kamala Harris.
“Remarkable confession by JD Vance when he said he will ‘create stories’ (that is, lie) to redirect the media,” Buttigieg wrote on X. “All this to change the subject away from abortion rights, manufacturing jobs, taxation of the rich, and the other things clearly at stake in this election.”
Vance further insulted people in Springfield who are Haitian as “illegal”, though the vast majority of them are in the US legally through a temporary protected status (TPS) that has been allocated to them due to the violence and unrest in their home country in the Caribbean. The status must be renewed after 18 months.
The rumors proliferating out of Springfield have led to bomb threats aimed at local hospitals and government offices. Vance on Sunday told Bash it was “disgusting” for the media to suggest any of his remarks had led to those threats. He also used the same term to refer to the people issuing those threats, though – in a separate appearance on Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press – he made it a point to blame the media for accurately reporting on them, saying it was “amplifying the worst people in the world”.
Vance ultimately defended his endorsement of the lies about Springfield as calling attention to the immigration policies at the White House while Harris has served as vice-president to Joe Biden.
“I’m not mad at Haitian migrants for wanting to have a better life,” Vance said. “We’re angry at Kamala Harris for letting this happen.”
Haitians in Springfield have been thrust under the US’s divisive political spotlight after Trump alleged that some of them were responsible for the abduction and consumption of pets during the former president’s debate with Harris on Tuesday.
Town officials have vociferously rejected the lies, and a woman who helped start the rumors on a widely circulated Facebook post acknowledged they were unfounded hearsay.
Two Springfield Elementary schools were evacuated again today. Fire Department Investigators are trying to determine the cause of a fire that destroyed two apartment buildings Sunday morning. The buildings were located directly across the street from one elementary school there. This analysis is from Jonathan V. Last written for The Bulwark. “Trump Is the Main Character of 2024. Again. How to take over the news cycle with this one weird trick.”
Late last week, in between laughing at JD Vance and Donald Trump, I had a thought:
What if the Haitians-stealing-and-eating-your-pets is actually good for the Trump campaign?
Not good in the tactical sense. Polling on the story doesn’t look especially good for him. But good in the strategic sense. This insane lie—which, borders on blood libel—may be reorienting the campaign in ways that are ultimately useful for Trump.
Let me explain.
(1) Trump needs to be the main character. Trump’s grand unified theory is that politics, like entertainment, is an attention economy. His strategy—always—is to dominate the news and make himself into the main character of every story.
A neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville? It’s about Trump’s response.
A global pandemic? It’s about Trump’s daily antics.
Geostrategic considerations involving a 75-year conflict on the Korean peninsula? It’s about Trump’s relationship with the Korean dictator.
It doesn’t matter what the issue, or context, is. Trump wants it to be about Trump. He believes that if he owns the spotlight—even if it is a very unflattering spotlight—then he can maneuver and find angles.
This theory may be callow, dangerous, and/or immoral. But it is not crazy.
And while it doesn’t always work out for Trump, it works out enough that it’s a good percentage play for him. Like doubling down on an 11. You don’t always win that bet. But you win it often enough that you should do it automatically, without hesitation.
I remember those years in football when knocking the other guy senseless to the point they had to send EMS in with a stretcher was considered fun. Do you suppose all those old guys who loved those wipe-outs still love it even though the NFL finds it costly for them and tries to avoid it? Then, there are always the folks that boo at the Ref and think the Refs are there to call a play on the part of the other team. This is from Judd Legume writing at Popular information. “The attack on the legitimacy of the 2024 presidential election has begun.” It can’t be that they just suck at the game or that play. It has to be the fault of someone else! Right?
There are 49 days until Election Day in the United States. Although the presidential race remains extremely close, Donald Trump and his allies have escalated their efforts to undermine the results.
In a post to Truth Social on Sunday morning, Trump falsely claimed that the United States Postal Service (USPS) “has admitted that it is a poorly run mess that is experiencing mail loss and delays at a level never seen before.” Trump asked, “how can we possibly be expected to allow or trust the U.S. Postal Service to run the 2024 Presidential Election?”
Trump has attacked mail-in voting for years, baselessly asserting that mail-in ballots facilitated fraud that robbed him of victory in 2020. Early this year, Trump appeared to change his tune on the practice. “ABSENTEE VOTING, EARLY VOTING, AND ELECTION DAY VOTING ARE ALL GOOD OPTIONS,” Trump posted to Truth Social on April 19. “REPUBLICANS MUST MAKE A PLAN, REGISTER, AND VOTE!” That change of heart appears to be short-lived.
In addition to attacking mail-in voting, Trump has advanced broader claims that Democrats “want to cheat” in the 2024 election. In a September 7 Truth Social post, Trump pledged to prosecute and jail Democrats who repeat “the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election.” (In nearly 4 years since the 2020 election, Trump has produced no evidence of cheating.) Trump claimed that prosecuting “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials” was the only way to ensure “this Depravity of Justice does not happen again.”
Trump will not commit to accepting the results in November, saying he would only do so “if everything’s honest.” Otherwise, Trump said, he plans to “fight.”
Screenshot
Remind me again: who appointed Louis DeJoy as Postmaster General and CEO of the USPS? How about this headline from Forbes in April? “The Trump donor whom Biden can’t fire is running the U.S. Postal Service directly into the ground—just what everyone warned about when he was confirmed during the pandemic.” Mission accomplished, Asshole!
Let’s see how much airplay this gets today, what with crazies with guns in the bushes and immigrant hellscape stories out there as bait for the media. This is from Newsweek. “Kamala Harris Gets Good News From Economists: New Survey.” This is reported by Rachel Dopkin.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, received good news from economists about her economic agenda, according to a survey published on Saturday.
The economy has been a major talking point in this year’s election following high inflation in recent years. Even though inflation has decreased, falling to its lowest level in three-and-a-half-years in August, many Americans are still feeling its effects.
The Federal Reserve is expected to cut its benchmark rate, known as the federal funds rate, during next week’s meeting by either a modest quarter-point or a larger half-point cut. The Fed raised the rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023 to curb high inflation, which hit both the United States and countries around the world after the COVID-19 pandemic. The expected rate cut would be the first in over four years. The cost of consumer borrowing, including for mortgages, auto loans and credit cards, should go down over time with a series of Fed cuts.
So, which presidential nominee has the better economic agenda to get Americans back on track? According to nearly 40 economists from America’s top schools surveyed by the Financial Times and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’ Kent A. Clark Center for Global Markets, it’s Harris instead of former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee.
When asked which nominees’ economic policies would be more inflationary—in other words, which would be more likely to cause inflation—70 percent of the economists said Trump’s while only 3 percent said Harris’. Meanwhile, 27 percent said there is no material difference in each economic platform’s inflationary consequences.
A total of 70 percent also thought Trump’s economic platform would produce larger federal budget deficits, while only 11 percent said Harris’ platform would and 19 percent said there would be no material difference.
Budget deficits are when government expenses exceed revenue. They also add to the national debt, which is not good for the economy.
DonOLD is doing his usual grift thing after being very unaware of a shooter in the bushes of his Florida Golf Club. Oh, the Humanity! This is from The Daily Beast. “Trump Asks for Cash Hours After Second. “I will NEVER SURRENDER!” the former president wrote in an email solicitation Sunday. Assassination Bid. “
Donald Trump wasted no time hitting up potential donors for money Sunday in the immediate aftermath of the second apparent assassination attempt against him in two months.
Within a few hours, the former president sent out an “Alert from Trump” email blast to potential donors saying: “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL! Nothing will slow me down.”
After the first attempt on his life at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, Trump, in spite of blood streaming down his face after his ear was grazed by a bullet, managed to tell his supporters to “fight, fight, fight.”
On Sunday, after Secret Service agents foiled what authorities are calling a possible second assassination attempt, Trump wrote: “I will NEVER SURRENDER! I will always love you for supporting me.”
Never forget that the only thing this guy was successful at for a period of time was being a reality star on TV. This guy really has no shame. Meanwhile, Laura Loomer is back in the spotlight again. “GOP Senate nominee Bernie Moreno raised funds on Laura Loomer’s show and met with her in D.C.” This is reported by Media Matters.
In late July, Ohio U.S. Senate nominee Bernie Moreno fundraised on the show of Laura Loomer, a far-right extremist who has celebrated the deaths of migrants and mocked Vice President Kamala Harris’ Indian American heritage. Loomer also said on her show that she met with Moreno that month when he was in Washington, D.C.
Moreno’s appearance with Loomer is yet another example showing Republicans’ deep entrenchment with the far-right conspiracy theorist, despite recent efforts to distance the party from her.
Loomer’s history of offensive remarks is long and awful. It includes a toast to “2,000 more” dead migrants; an admission that she’s “not going to care” when there’s anti-immigrant violence; racist insults following the death of “ghetto b—-” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX); and the claim that the White House “will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” if Vice President Kamala Harris wins.
Loomer has also described herself as “pro-white nationalism” and a “proud islamophobe.” Last year she posted a video claiming that “9/11 was an inside job.” Loomer has also promoted the viral, racist lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating pets.
Trump and his campaign are heavily connected to Loomer, with the far-right bigot flying on his plane to Pennsylvania and New York last week. Their close connections have caused consternation among a few Republicans.
I can only imagine what Senator Sherrod Brown is going through. Meanwhile, women are dying from the Trump Abortion Laws throughout the country. This is from ProPublica, which does the most crucial investigative journalism in the country. Trump Lies and people die. Say her NAME. Amber Nichole Thurman, She is a victim of MAGA.
In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat.
She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C.
But just that summer, her state had made performing the procedure a felony, with few exceptions. Any doctor who violated the new Georgia law could be prosecuted and face up to a decade in prison.
Thurman waited in pain in a hospital bed, worried about what would happen to her 6-year-old son, as doctors monitored her infection spreading, her blood pressure sinking and her organs beginning to fail.
It took 20 hours for doctors to finally operate. By then, it was too late.
The otherwise healthy 28-year-old medical assistant, who had her sights set on nursing school, should not have died, an official state committee recently concluded.
Tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, the experts, including 10 doctors, deemed hers “preventable” and said the hospital’s delay in performing the critical procedure had a “large” impact on her fatal outcome.
Their reviews of individual patient cases are not made public. But ProPublica obtained reports that confirm that at least two women have already died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state.
There are almost certainly others.
Committees like the one in Georgia, set up in each state, often operate with a two-year lag behind the cases they examine, meaning that experts are only now beginning to delve into deaths that took place after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion.
Thurman’s case marks the first time an abortion-related death, officially deemed “preventable,” is coming to public light. ProPublica will share the story of the second in the coming days. We are also exploring other deaths that have not yet been reviewed but appear to be connected to abortion bans.
Doctors warned state legislators women would die if medical procedures sometimes needed to save lives became illegal.
I haven’t heard stories like this since I was in High School awaiting the Roe Decision. Leaders in my Presbyterian Church in Omaha held a panel of speakers with horrible stories like these. We learned firsthand what Roe would mean to us if the Supreme Court decided to keep it out of the realm of others’ politics and religion. This is not acceptable in a country like ours. The fight is on, and this isn’t a game. We’re better than this.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Finally Friday Reads: MAGA and Domestic Terrorism
Posted: September 13, 2024 Filed under: MAGA Domestic Terrorism | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, immigration, MAGA Bigotry, MAGA Domestic Terrorists, Republicans against Trump, Springfield Ohio 9 Comments
“For those who missed it. The childless cat lady won.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I’ve been out of the national news loop the last few days since I’ve been fixated on the local news station’s continuous reports on Hurricane Francine. My immediate neighbors and I were fortunate. The electricity/WIFI glitched as the eyewall came over the city like a CAT 1 hurricane. We actually had the city’s largest rain levels coming in at 6.8 inches per minute, but our pump had been fixed recently, the electric lines had been up-armored, and the main pipes on my street were replaced a few years ago. You may recall I called the Tom Joad Memorial Dust Bowl construction site. All that mess must have paid off, as the drains and pump cleared the water when I went out around midnight with Temple. There were a lot of leaves and a few small, dead branches around, but everything was lit up and standing. Others were not so fortunate.
Just think. Trump wants to get rid of the National Weather Service. He probably hates them since they shut down his little act with the black Sharpie. He wants to get rid of FEMA. He wants to get rid of the folks in the EPA working diligently to stop the encroachment of the Gulf waters, making the Louisiana coastline and the textbook Louisiana Boot impossible to see in reality because a lot of it is gone. I’d rather make him Impossible.
This morning’s check of social media, headlines in legacy media, and television news reporting in cities that usually do not garner headlines has led me to conclude that the MAGA movement is a Domestic Terrorist Organization as well as an Insurrection movement. You may recall in December 2022, that DonOld called for the termination of the U.S. Constitution in a Truth Social post. This was definitely a harbinger of things to come, including Project 2025. This is from the files of CNN.
Former President Donald Trump called for the termination of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election and reinstate him to power Saturday in a continuation of his election denialism and pushing of fringe conspiracy theories.
“Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social and accused “Big Tech” of working closely with Democrats. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
Trump’s post came after the release of internal Twitter emails showing deliberation in 2020 over a New York Post story about material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Saturday that Trump’s remarks are “anathema to the soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned.”
“You cannot only love America when you win,” Bates said in a statement. “The American Constitution is a sacrosanct document that for over 200 years has guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our great country. The Constitution brings the American people together – regardless of party – and elected leaders swear to uphold it. It’s the ultimate monument to all of the Americans who have given their lives to defeat self-serving despots that abused their power and trampled on fundamental rights.”
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, an outspoken Trump critic, denounced the former president’s Truth Social statement on Sunday. Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, tweeted that Trump’s statement “was his view on 1/6 and remains his view today.”
“No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution,” she said.
“Dick Cheney has entered the chat.” John Buss, @repeat1968
That belief is shared by Cheney’s father and many of Trump’s former staff and an increasing number of Republicans who have announced they’re voting for the Harris/Walz ticket. DonOld has become increasingly unhinged after his sorry performance in the Debate on Tuesday. It also appears that the notorious Laura Loomer has become a major influence on him. She has been traveling with him everywhere and parked in his Florida Bunker. News film has shown hints of more familiarity than we’d think possible, given his physique and everything accompanying it. So, rumors now abound. But, it’s likely she has less venial interest in him than monetary ones. This is from The Bulwark, the major source of Never Trump Republican thoughts.
A failed congressional candidate with a penchant for conspiracies and pot-stirring, Loomer has long been viewed by a faction of Trump land as a Rasputin-like figure. Last year, Trump offered her a job on the campaign, but her internal critics ultimately persuaded him to withdraw the offer. At issue was the controversy that surrounds her. Loomer has called Kamala Harris “a drug using prostitute.” As for why Harris doesn’t have biological children, she once said: “I’m willing to bet she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.”
A more recent Loomer tweet said that the White House would smell of curry if Harris, who is of Indian-American descent, won the election. This week’s 9/11 commemorations led to the resurfacing of past posts made by Loomer in which she questioned whether the U.S. government had a role in, or forewarning of, the attacks on that day.
Loomer insists that she wasn’t questioning whether the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” noting that she never actually used that phrase (she shared a video in a lengthy post on X that did use the phrase). A self-identified Islamophobe (she was kicked off Twitter for it years ago before Elon Musk reinstated her), she re-stated her belief that al Qaeda was to blame for the attack.
But the rap sheet of Loomer’s controversial posts extends well beyond the aforementioned topics. And in comments on Wednesday and Thursday, Greene said that Trump was better off ditching Loomer, whose congressional campaign she had supported.
“I don’t think that [Loomer] has the experience or the right mentality to advise a very important president,” Greene said. “To me, many of the comments that she makes and how she attacks Republicans like me, many other Republicans that are strong supporters of President Trump, I think they’re a huge problem.”
Shortly thereafter, Graham weighed in too, telling HuffPost on Thursday that he believed Loomer was “just really toxic.”
Loomer was removed from Twitter in 2022 and other social media until Elon Musk bought the now-beleaguered social media platform. Her incendiary remarks, along with the Russian Limbaughs and other MAGA provocateurs led by Trump’s outraged public comments, have led to what can only be referred to as a massive Domestic Terrorist network. If you haven’t read the news about the terror inflicted on the small city of Springfield, Ohio, you will read about it here. If you’ve followed any recent rallies or appearances on FOX or News Max, you will observe that Trump is living on the Dark Web now. His talk is riddled with whacko, hateful conspiracy theories.
I know that it’s fun to watch these videos of cats and dogs attacking the TVs while Trump announces that Haitian immigrants in the small city are feasting on pets and park birds, but I’m not going to put up anything reinforcing the stereotypes. I’m also avoiding the memes and cartoons because we don’t need anything egging these folks on. It seems weird and funny to us, but it’s a full-on terror attack on that small town and everyone who lives there. It’s gone beyond making fun of a very damaged, aging, bigoted idiot whose biggest routine is angrily belittling others.
There’s a Bomber in Springfield. Public buildings and elementary schools have been shut down. The source of this untrue story is what NewsGuard’s Reality Check calls ” Triple Hearsay'”
In just days, a bizarre and baseless claim accusing Haitian migrants of eating pet cats in Springfield, Ohio, went from an obscure Facebook post in a private group to a talking point by Republican Donald Trump during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
The journey of the viral claim from vague, third hand gossip among Ohio neighbors to the presidential debate stage — where it was broadcast to 67 million people — is as stunning as the claim itself, according to those who started it all.
NewsGuard identified and tracked down the two people central to the claim: Erika Lee, the Springfield resident who wrote the original Facebook post, and Kimberly Newton, the neighbor who had provided her with a third-hand account of the rumor, making Lee’s social media post a fourth-hand account: the alleged acquaintance/cat owner; Newton’s friend; Newton; and Lee, who posted it on Facebook.
In exclusive interviews, NewsGuard spoke both with Lee, a 35-year-old hardware store worker who has lived in Springfield for four years, and Newton, her neighbor and a 12-year resident of Springfield. The interviews reveal just how flimsy and unsubstantiated the rumor was from the beginning — based entirely on third hand hearsay. Yet it quickly gained traction and, remarkably, found its way to Trump’s lips on a national stage.
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor, Lee, the Facebook poster. Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.”
That adds up to three people with no firsthand knowledge of the allegedly victimized cat: Newton’s “friend,” Newton, and then her neighbor Lee. Or perhaps it’s four people if we count the “source” that Newton says her “friend” relied on.
This is from the Washington Post. “Springfield bomb threat used ‘hateful’ language toward migrants, Haitians, mayor says. “Springfield is a community that needs help,” Mayor Rob Rue said in an interview with The Post, adding that national leaders should provide that help.”
The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, said a bomb threat Thursday that led to the evacuation of City Hall and numerous buildings “used hateful language towards immigrants and Haitians in our community.”
“Springfield is a community that needs help,” Mayor Rob Rue said in an interview with The Washington Post. The mayor added that national leaders should provide that help and not “hurt a community like, unfortunately, we have seen over the last couple of days.”
The Ohio city recently gained national attention as it became the subject of dehumanizing and xenophobic conspiracy theories amplified by former president Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), who claimed Haitian immigrants there were killing and eating people’s pets. Police officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence to support the claim, which Trump repeated in Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said at the ABC News debate between him and Vice President Kamala Harris that 67 million people watched. “And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
When moderator David Muir pushed back, saying that the city manager of Springfield has said there were no credible reports of such claims, Trump refused to concede.
“I’ve seen people on television. … The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food,” Trump said, interrupting Muir. “So maybe he said that, and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.”
Earlier this week, White House national security spokesman John Kirby called the unsubstantiated reports Vance had pushed “dangerous” misinformation.
“Because there will be people that believe it, no matter how ludicrous and stupid it is. And they might act on that kind of misinformation, and act on it in a way where somebody can get hurt, so it needs to stop,” Kirby said Tuesday, ahead of the debate.
Even GOP officials have gotten into the act, exaggerating the tragedy unfolding in the small city. Ohio’s Republican Governor, Mike Dewine, responds like a responsible person. This is from the AP. “Ohio is sending troopers and $2.5 million to a city that has seen an influx of Haitian migrants.” The state’s Attorney General is inflaming the situation.
The governor of Ohio will send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants that has landed it in the national spotlight.
Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Tuesday he doesn’t oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which some 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help impacted communities.
His news conference was held just hours before the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump, where the divide over immigration policy was sure to be an issue.
On Monday, Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost also drew attention to the crisis when he directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending “an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities.”
Thousands of temporary Haitian migrants have landed in the city in recent years, as longstanding unrest in their home country has given way to violent gangs ruling the streets.
…
DeWine’s family operates a charity in Haiti in honor of their late daughter, Becky, who died in a car accident. He said the Haitians who have moved to Ohio are generally hard-working people who love their families and who are seeking to escape the violence in their home country for good jobs in Ohio.
This article about the Ohio Attorney General comes from The Ohio Capitol Journal. “Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost defends conspiracy chorus about Haitians in Springfield. Springfield public buildings and a local elementary school had to be closed Thursday due to bomb threats,”
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Wednesday did his bit to amplify a conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants legally present in Springfield, Ohio are stealing and eating pets, ducks and geese.
The conspiracy has been debunked by the Springfield mayor, city manager and chief of police, as well as by Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. Yost is looking to succeed DeWine as governor in 2026.
“Citizens testified to City Council,” Yost posted on X Wednesday. “These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”
Many of Springfield’s public buildings were closed for much of the day Thursday due to bomb threats after former President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated a widely debunked conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were stealing people’s pets and eating them.
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said during a debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
A day earlier, on Monday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, posted on X that “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”
As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Thursday, between 15,000 and 20,000 Haitians have migrated to Springfield over the past five years. Contrary to Vance’s claim, the great majority of them are legally in the United States, either as naturalized citizens or under temporary protected status due to the violent chaos in their home country. Earlier this week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced he would send state highway patrol troopers to Springfield to help, as well as $2.5 million to help with health care resources.
While resources in the city of almost 60,000 have been strained by the heavy influx, the New York Times last week reported that many there believe it also revitalized a community that had long been on the decline.
But Trump and his supporters have long been whipping up fears of immigrants — particularly those of color — even though multiple studies show that immigrants — particularly the undocumented — commit crime at substantially lower rates than the native-born.
The influx of thousands of immigrants had already brought hate groups to Springfield, with a neo-Nazi group marching there in August.
Some Springfield residents have begged politicians to stop promoting conspiracy theories about their community. And some Haitian immigrants are keeping their children home out of fear for their safety, the Haitian Times reported Thursday.
But last week, Yost’s campaign claimed that undocumented immigrants were “terrorizing” Ohio communities. As evidence, it pointed to a Fox News article about the situation in Springfield that made no such claim.
Nevertheless, on Wednesday, Yost continued to perpetuate assertions about Haitians in Springfield.
“There’s a recorded police call from a witness who saw immigrants capturing geese for food in Springfield,” Yost said in his X post. “Citizens testified to City Council. These people would be competent witnesses in court. Why does the media find a carefully worded City Hall press release better evidence?”
In other words, Yost, a former journalist, was criticizing the media for not assigning the same credibility to any claim made in a police call or council meeting as they would to the public declarations of the Springfield mayor, city manager, police chief, and the Ohio governor.
GOP Congressional members are creating more havoc. “Republicans seemed more disturbed by the moderators fact-checking Trump than they were with his false claims.” This comes from NOTUS. Haley Byrd Wilt provides the analysis.
If you’ve watched Donald Trump demonize immigrants to fuel his political rise over the last decade, the former president’s insistence that immigrants are abducting the cats and dogs of Americans and eating them shouldn’t come as a surprise.
It probably also shouldn’t come as a surprise that Republican lawmakers are not only indifferent to the former president making these claims; they largely support him spreading the conspiracy.
In interviews with more than two dozen GOP lawmakers this week, Republicans brushed off Trump’s allegation that Haitian immigrants are stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. They didn’t care that Trump’s claims during a presidential debate were, predictably, not true. They weren’t worried that, by blurting out “they’re eating the dogs,” he was elevating racist rumors — the most cited of which relies on a neighbor’s daughter’s friend — to the national stage.
They told NOTUS Trump was simply sharing something he believed to be true, that he was doing important work by raising the broader issue of immigration and that they weren’t concerned about the ramifications his rhetoric could have for Haitians living in their states.
Some even added their own allegations.
“Apparently there’s pictures of it,” Rep. Greg Steube of Florida said of Haitians eating cats. “The fact that you’re saying it’s not happening, it’s not true.”
Steube mentioned a woman — an American citizen who was arrested recently for allegedly killing and eating a cat during an apparent mental breakdown — as evidence for his claims. When told she was an American, Steube was undeterred.
“Well, apparently there’s reports that there are. In Ohio. Haitians are doing that,” he told NOTUS. “It’s just interesting that, like, you have news reporters that are taking one guy’s — some city manager or something — when there’s reports.”
Asked where he was getting these reports, Steube said, “From all over.”
He said he would have his staff send over the reports. And his team forwarded NOTUS a newsletter from a right-wing blog, which linked to a story alleging animal sacrifices are happening in New York — unconnected to Haitians in Springfield — and a local news story about the American woman who had been arrested. The blog falsely described her as “a hungry Ohio immigrant.”
“Pictures of Jamaicans and Haitians doing pagan sacrifices,” Steube told NOTUS, incorrectly summarizing the right-wing blog post. “In Ohio.”
Rep. Brian Mast was also dismissive. “The point of it is that we have a major problem with illegal immigration,” he told NOTUS.
Mast’s state has a large Haitian population, but he didn’t sound worried about how any of his own constituents might be affected by Trump spreading rumors and racist stereotypes.
“It’s not a stereotype that people eat different animals. I mean, it’s just a fact of the matter,” Mast said. “You go to different markets in different parts of the world, and you’re going to find horse on the menu, you’re going to find dog on the menu, you’re going to find cat on the menu.”
People in Florida often eat “chicken of the trees,” he said, referring to lizards.
Still, even if cuisines differ, Trump was saying something else entirely. He was saying immigrants are stealing household pets to eat. Pressed whether it was appropriate for the former president to make a claim like that, Mast sidestepped.
“I’d say this,” Mast said. “They’re stealing the taxpayer dollars.”
Haitians have received temporary protected status to live and work in the United States because of the dangers they face back home. As many as 15,000 Haitians have moved to Springfield in recent years, saying it’s where they found job opportunities or that they followed family members who were already living there. Some Haitians have said since the debate that they now feel unsafe in the community. Springfield’s city hall was also evacuated this week after receiving a bomb threat, according to local officials.
Let’s get back to the community itself, as reported by NBC News. “Bomb threats force second consecutive day of school closures in Springfield, Ohio. Several local leaders have also been targeted in the wake of baseless claims aimed at Haitian immigrants that have been repeated by former President Donald Trump.”
Bomb threats on Friday forced the evacuation and closure of public schools and municipal buildings for a second consecutive day, as the city continues to deal with sudden national attention due to false claims involving its Haitian population.
Students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary Schools in Springfield “were evacuated from their buildings to an alternate district location,” school district spokesperson Jenna Leinasars said.
Roosevelt Middle School had already been “closed prior to the beginning of the school day in relation to the information received from the” Springfield Police Department, Leinasars added.
In addition to those school evacuations, several city commissioners and a municipal employee were the target of an emailed bomb threat, city spokesperson Karen Graves said.
A second email threatened multiple locations that included Springfield City Hall, Cliff Park High School, Perrin Woods Elementary School, Roosevelt Middle School, the Bureau of MotorVehicles and the Ohio License Bureau Southside, Graves added.
“As a precaution, all affected buildings have been evacuated. Authorities, with the support of explosive detection canines, have conducted thorough inspections and cleared the facilities listed in the threats,” Graves said in a statement.
Local police and FBI agents based in Dayton are working “to determine the origin of these email threats,” the city official said.
The city just west of Columbus has been the focal point of a national political firestorm that has included false rumors that Haitian immigrants have been stealing and eating household pets. City officials and police have said there is no credible information to support those outlandish claims.
Reuters reports on the truth of the economic value of the Haitian Immigrants to the town’s previous frail economy. “How Haitian immigrants fueled Springfield’s growth.”
The arrival of Joseph, Oreus and as many as 15,000 other immigrants from Haiti over roughly the last three years has reshaped this city of 58,000, offering some promise of economic revival along with growing pains. It also has unwittingly thrust Springfield into the middle of a national conversation about immigration, the economy and race – with Republican candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance recirculating what local police and city officials say are false claims of crimes and atrocious acts being committed by Haitians.
After a half-century of decline, data show the rapid population rebound has had a notable impact in Springfield.
…
What didn’t happen, according to interviews with a dozen local, county and officials as well as city police data, was any general rise in violent or property crime. Wages didn’t collapse, but surged with a rising number of job openings in a labor market that remained tight until recently.In early July, days before he was tapped to be Trump’s running mate, Vance read aloud a letter from Springfield officials as he quizzed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at a congressional hearing on whether immigration added to inflation by increasing housing costs, and whether a rising supply of new workers hurt others by holding down wages.
What was happening in Springfield was “a very real example of this particular concern, straight from the horse’s mouth,” Vance said.
Powell responded that those effects might be apparent in some places, but overall the rising labor supply in recent years had helped grow the economy and slow inflation. And in the long run, he said, the impact was “kind of neutral” because markets adapt.
More recently, Vance and other Republicans have amplified false claims aired by some residents at weekly city commission meetings. City commissioners in their public comments have pushed back, noting that the vast majority of Haitians are in the country legally and have a right to live where they choose.
Springfield police also responded forcefully: “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community,” they said in a statement. “Additionally, there have been no verified instances of immigrants engaging in illegal activities such as squatting or littering in front of residents’ homes.”
Still, Trump aired those falsehoods including the baseless claim that immigrants are eating pets in his debate Tuesday night with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Biden White House earlier on Tuesday condemned the viral misinformation, saying such remarks sought to divide Americans through lies and was based on racism.
If you delve into the world of academic research on trying to regenerate the viability of small-town America, you find that the solution is immigration. That link goes to a study by the Richmond Fed.
Rural areas, however, can also benefit significantly from immigration:
- Immigrants can bring skills not available in the local labor market.
- They can help fulfill seasonal labor shortages in industries like agriculture and tourism.
- They spend money and pay taxes in their local communities, which can help develop other businesses.
Business leaders have long held that immigration is essential to many industries. This link goes to the American Immigration Council.
The main findings of the report include:
- A total of 219 companies in the Fortune 500 list had immigrant roots: 102 of those companies were founded by immigrants, and 117 companies were founded by the children of immigrants.
- Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants employ more than 14.8 million people worldwide.
- The over $7 trillion in revenue generated by Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or children of immigrants is greater than the GDP of every country in the world outside the United States, except China.
- Immigrant-founded Fortune 500 companies drive 68 industry sectors across the American economy.
- 35 U.S. states are headquarters to at least one New American Fortune 500 firm, and seven of those states have at least 10 firms.
MAGA once again proves that it has nothing to do with economic prosperity, the U.S. Constitution, or anything linked to form a more perfect union. It is racist. It is misogynistic. It is xenophobic. It is homophobic and transphobic. It’s purely a terrorist movement made up of White Christian Nationalists who will do anything to maintain their beliefs that only they are the true Americans despite all evidence to the contrary.
So, let’s write about and create more memes about who they are. Let’s also ensure that their mean, bigoted viewpoints are identified and not presented as a set of alternative facts. Most importantly, let’s vote the ones that creeped into our political positions at all levels the hell out of office.’
Let’s hope the FBI and law enforcement in Ohio catch this MAGA terrorist before anyone gets hurt.
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