Finally Friday Reads: Ms Harris, Please Unite Us!

“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?