Finally Friday Reads: Pobre Diabla

Posted: November 1, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, abortion rights, Abusive Relationships, American Fascists, just because, Right Wing Angst | Tags: #DonOld, 2024 Elections, @repeat1968. John Buss, Halloween Horror Movies, Liz Cheney, Texas abortion laws | 4 Comments

“Voting can stop it.” John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It was a dark and drizzly night, not one to make the rounds to all the Halloween parties in the hood. So, I settled into watching a friend from around Flagstaff, Arizona, stream a set of Horror Movies on Discord to a bunch of us who play a Zombie survival game together. It was like a pajama party with the girls, except my girls are all furry, and everyone else was scattered all over the country. I retwisted my ankle last night which was still hurting from a Tuesday mishap and feeling really old. The live Oaks of New Orleans’ Avenues drop acorns that rapidly become a coffee ground-like mess everywhere. That was the trick. I was glad that I stocked up on treats and wine earlier because I just missed the fog and the mist rolling in over the city. A very apt setting for Interview with a Vampire. I was hurting, traumatized by the DonOld Garbage Truck Cosplay spewing from the News Channels, and thought settling down to some movies would be a good break.

I saw a new version of Children of the Corn and was treated to several movies, including two of the “The Hills Have Eyes” franchises. It was hard to believe that the original version by Wes Crave had come out when I was at university. The fact the newest version of Children was centered in Nebraska was not lost on me. The original of that one came out when I was finishing my Masters. Back then, I’d take out the Beta tapes of the old Vincent Price horror movies that I recorded off the few cable channels back then.

The more I watched the Hill films, the more I could see Trump supporters in all the cannibal zombies in the Hills. Seriously, right down to their caps, their messy English, and the way they treated the two women in that National Guard Unit, I could swear I was watching a MAGA ambush. The creepy preacher in Children of the Corn and his implied “sin” against the little girl Eden was like the perfect metaphor for all those white Christian nationalist men whose arrest mug shots for crimes against children keep popping up on my X feed.

I had watched the news earlier and the meltdown that MAGA husbands are having at the idea their wives might get in the voting booth and vote their conscience instead of the will of their Patriarchal captor. One dude on Fox likened it to committing adultery, at which point the women on the panel laughed, and then he looked straight at the camera and told his chattel Emma that it would be finished if he found she’d done that. I thought she should get a lawyer to get her share, then Run Emma, RUN!! That and go have some fun with some young men that know what they’re doing! Just don’t bring them home or marry them.

This is from Vanity Fair. The analysis is provided by Bess Levin. “Fox News Host Says He’d Divorce His Wife for Voting for Kamala Harris. “If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair.” If you’d like, I can reference the part from the Hill movie where the mutant grabs a woman National Guard soldier, starts grabbing and raping her, and says, “You make nice babies!” Who among us can’t see DonOld in his prime doing that same thing?

How much respect do Donald Trump’s male supporters have for women? So much that at least one of them has said he’d end his marriage if his wife exercised her constitutional right to vote for Kamala Harris.

On an episode of The Five this week, Fox News host Jesse Watters told fellow panelists that if he learned his wife, Emma, cast her ballot for the vice president, after letting him think she was voting for Trump, he would consider it a betrayal on par with having an extramarital affair and it would be “over.”

“If I found out Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” Watters said. “That, to me, violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What else has she been lying about?” Asked by cohost Jeanine Pirro, “Why would she lie to you? Have you threatened her?” Watters responded, “Why would she do that and then vote Harris? Why would she say she was voting…. And I caught her and then she said, ‘I lied to you for the last four years—’”

“So you admit you intimidate people,” Pirro interjected. “It’s over, Emma!” Watters said. “That would be D-Day!”

Watters and co. were discussing an ad put out in support of the Harris campaign that reminds women, “You can vote any way you want, and no one will ever know.” Which is apparently a necessary point to make to women who are married to extremely fragile Trump-supporting men.

I know that once they think they’ve got you, they show their true colors, but seriously, who could stand to live like that? Salon has this great article up with an even more wonderful headline. “”It is so disastrous”: MAGA men are freaking out that wives may be secretly voting for Kamala Harris, “That’s the same thing as having an affair,” Fox News host argues as women fuel early vote in key states.” The entire concept of Control Freak is not hyped enough for these guys. Charles R Davis takes them on.

When you’re a star, Donald Trump has said more than once, women will let you do whatever you want to them. As president, that meant putting three right-wing justices on the Supreme Court and stripping half the country of a constitutional right, enabling people like him — their self-proclaimed “protector” — to have the final word on what any woman does with her body.

“I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,” the former president asserted at a campaign stop on Wednesday. “I am going to protect them.”

Women, it turns out, do not care for this — a large majority of them, at least. While millions will still vote for the Republican candidate, perhaps hating immigrants more than they love reproductive rights, the only certainty at this point is that many millions more will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll, the Democrat enjoyed a 14% advantage with women over Trump; among women with a college degree, that number rose to 23%; among women voters under 40, it rocketed to 34%.

According to the Brookings Institution, Harris’ strength among women angered by the 2022 Dobbs decision could explain why Democrats, for the first time in forever, are polling better with older voters than Republicans. The think tank’s Michael Hais and Morley Winograd noted that, per the ABC News/Ipsos survey, there has been a 10-point swing to Harris among voters over the age of 65 compared to 2020.

“Some observers think this shift is driven by the ‘revenge of Boomer feminists’ among the women of that famous generation, all of whom are now over 65 but who cut their political teeth in the battle for equality when they were much younger,” Hais and Winograd wrote. Younger voters may be angry over losing a right they had never lived without, but older people have seen hard-fought progress rolled back. They are also the most reliable group of voters — and they tend to vote early.

In battleground states, that appears to be exactly what’s happening. According to an analysis of early-voting tallies by Politico, women account for 55% of all ballots cast thus far in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

That, in turn, is causing some MAGA commentators to break from their usual posture of feigned confidence to outright panic.

“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA and helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort, posted on social media. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.” (Kirk, seeking to motivate these voters, offered Orwellian misogyny: “If you want a vision of the future if you don’t vote, imagine Kamala’s voice cackling, forever.”)

I feel seen for once, hopefully, not by the Children of the Garbage Bags and AR-15s. DonOld really has gone over the edge. During his rally in New Mexico, he made a loosely veiled threat at former Congresswoman Liz Cheney. This is from the Bulwark, as written by Bill Kristol. Don’t Horror shows make allies out of the strangest folks? That’s what happens when your very life is on the line.

Donald Trump’s two strongest personality traits each had a moment on the campaign trail yesterday.

At a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the buffoon: “I’m here for one very simple reason. I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic and Latino community.”

And later, on stage with Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, the menace. Here he was on former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

U.S. News has this headline. “Trump Says Liz Cheney Might Not Be Such a ‘War Hawk’ if She Had Rifles Shooting at Her. Donald Trump is calling former Rep. Liz Cheney, who’s one of his most prominent Republican critics, a “war hawk” and he’s suggesting she might not be as willing to send troops to fight if she had guns shooting at her.”

Donald Trump is suggesting that former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of his most prominent Republican critics, should have rifles “shooting at her” to see how she feels about sending troops to fight. It was his latest suggestion that his rivals should be targeted with violence.

Cheney responded by branding the GOP presidential nominee a “cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

The Republican presidential candidate has been using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of “enemies from within” undermining the country. Some of his former senior aides and Vice President Kamala Harris have labeled him a fascist in response.

At an event late Thursday in Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked whether it was strange to see Cheney campaign against him. The former Wyoming congresswoman has vocally opposed Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and endorsed Democrat Kamala Harris, joining the vice president at recent stops as they try to win over Republicans disaffected with Trump.

Trump called Cheney “a deranged person” and added, “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries.”

The former president continued: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.

The results of Donald Trump’s first reign of Terror are killing women. The Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have the blood of innocents on their hands. ProPublica has once again followed the trail of deaths left in Texas by the hypocrites who scream they are “pro-life.” “A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms. It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.”

Candace Fails screamed for someone in the Texas hospital to help her pregnant daughter. “Do something,” she pleaded, on the morning of Oct. 29, 2023.

Nevaeh Crain was crying in pain, too weak to walk, blood staining her thighs. Feverish and vomiting the day of her baby shower, the 18-year-old had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours, returning home each time worse than before.

The first hospital diagnosed her with strep throat without investigating her sharp abdominal cramps. At the second, she screened positive for sepsis, a life-threatening and fast-moving reaction to an infection, medical records show. But doctors said her six-month fetus had a heartbeat and that Crain was fine to leave.

Now on Crain’s third hospital visit, an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise,” a nurse wrote, before moving her to intensive care.

By then, more than two hours after her arrival, Crain’s blood pressure had plummeted and a nurse had noted that her lips were “blue and dusky.” Her organs began failing.

Hours later, she was dead.

Fails, who would have seen her daughter turn 20 this Friday, still cannot understand why Crain’s emergency was not treated like an emergency.

But that is what many pregnant women are now facing in states with strict abortion bans, doctors and lawyers have told ProPublica.

“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University.

Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, whether the pregnancy is wanted or not. It includes exceptions for life-threatening conditions, but still, doctors told ProPublica that confusion and fear about the potential legal repercussions are changing the way their colleagues treat pregnant patients with complications.

In states with abortion bans, such patients are sometimes bounced between hospitals like “hot potatoes,” with health care providers reluctant to participate in treatment that could attract a prosecutor, doctors told ProPublica. In some cases, medical teams are wasting precious time debating legalities and creating documentation, preparing for the possibility that they’ll need to explain their actions to a jury and judge.

Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, said patients are left wondering: “Am I being sent home because I really am OK? Or am I being sent home because they’re afraid that the solution to what’s going on with my pregnancy would be ending the pregnancy, and they’re not allowed to do that?”

There is a federal law to prevent emergency room doctors from withholding lifesaving care.

Passed nearly four decades ago, it requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients in medical crises. The Biden administration argues this mandate applies even in cases where an abortion might be necessary.

No state has done more to fight this interpretation than Texas, which has warned doctors that its abortion ban supersedes the administration’s guidance on federal law, and that they can face up to 99 years in prison for violating it.

ProPublica condensed more than 800 pages of Crain’s medical records into a four-page timeline in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists; reporters reviewed it with nine doctors, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in emergency medicine and maternal health.

Puerto Rican Americans continue to speak out about the horrible racist slurs spoken by #DonOld about their Island home and their presence on the mainland. Does he understand that Puerto Ricans are Americans and that they live everywhere in this country? This is from The Daily Beast. “J.Lo Claps Back at Trump Rally Puerto Rico Jab: ‘We Are Americans’, “Our pain matters,” the singer said at a Las Vegas event for Kamala Harris.” This is reported by Claire Lampen.

As promised, Jennifer Lopez took the stage at Kamala Harris’s rally in Las Vegas on Thursday night, responding to racist statements about Puerto Rico made at one of Donald Trump’s recent events.

“I am an American woman. I am the daughter of Guadalupe Lupe Rodríguez and David Lopez, a proud daughter and son of Puerto Rico. I am Puerto Rican,” Lopez said, restating the final point in Spanish. “And yes, I was born here. And we are Americans.”

In his much-maligned comedy routine at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday, right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” His comments, Lopez said, should offend “anyone of decent character.”

“It’s about us, all of us, no matter what we look like, who we love, who we worship, or where we’re from,” Lopez said. “[Harris’s] opponent, on the other hand, doesn’t see it that way. He has consistently worked to divide us. At Madison Square Garden, he reminded us who he really is and how he really feels.”

Trump‘s rally featured a parade of extremist speakers, though it was Hinchcliffe’s act that really dominated headlines. In it, he claimed Latinos “love making babies,” a riff whose anti-immigrant punchline fell flat, and threw in some racist stereotypes about Black people as well.

Although the Trump campaign has since attempted to distance itself from Hinchcliffe’s set—Trump trotting out a classic “I don’t know her” defense—it garnered criticism from all sides, even from his own party.

Trump’s enablers cannot stop him from his hate-filled speeches and comments.

“It wasn’t just Puerto Ricans who were offended that day,” Lopez added. “It was every Latino in this country, it was humanity.”

J.Lo went on to say that, “with an understanding of our past, and a faith in our future,” she‘s proud to vote for Harris. “You can’t even spell American without Rican,” she said. “This is our country, too, and we must exercise our right to vote.”

Towards the end of her speech, Lopez appeared to fight back tears. “I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional,” she told the audience. “But you know what? We should be emotional. We should be upset. We should be scared and outraged, we should. Our pain matters. We matter. You matter. Your voice and your vote matters.”

“This election is about your life,” J.Lo continued. “It‘s about you, and me, and my kids, and your kids. Don‘t make it easy; make them pay attention to you. That’s your power. Your vote is your power.”

“Your vote is your power” is the line I want everyone to remember today. Another one is a quote from the late Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota. Five Days until we get the opportunity to never hear that man or his zombie cultists again.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: Full-on Full Moon Crazy

Posted: October 18, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: "presidential immunity", 2024 Elections, democracy is threatened, Foreign Affairs, Fox News, Harris Walz 2024, Iran, Israel, Kamala Harris 2024, North Korea, Right Wing Angst, Russia, Ukraine | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, Full Moon Madness, Special Counsel Jack Smith, Trump's dementia | 4 Comments

“Every single time he opens his mouth…” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

If you got to look into the sky last night, you got to see the Hunter’s supermoon. There certainly was a lot of Lunacy yesterday. That causation or even correlation doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, but it has a literary tradition covering nearly all periods of history. DonOld’s Yesterday fits the adage neatly.

“It is the very error of the moon.She comes more near the earth than she was wont. And makes men mad.”
—William Shakespeare, Othello

Speaking of madness, “North Korea sends troops to support Russia in Ukraine war: NIS.” This was announced in The Korea Herald.

North Korea has dispatched special forces to support Russia in its war against Ukraine, with the first batch already having arrived in Russia and a second group of North Korean troops expected to follow soon, South Korea’s intelligence agency claimed on Friday.

The National Intelligence Service said it “confirmed that North Korea began its participation in the war by transporting special forces to Russia via Russian Navy transport ships from Oct. 8 to 13.”

However, the NIS provided no substantial evidence to support this claim, other than satellite imagery showing Russian vessels docked at the port of Chongjin in North Hamgyong Province.

Four amphibious ships and three escort ships from the Russian Pacific Fleet transported around 1,500 North Korean special forces to Vladivostok during this period, departing from areas near Chongjin and Musudan-ri in North Hamgyong Province, as well as Hamhung in South Hamgyong Province, according to the NIS.

The NIS further stated that a second operation to transport North Korean troops to Russia is “expected to take place soon.”

The North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia have been stationed at military bases in the Far East, spread across cities such as Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.

“They are expected to be sent to the battlefield once they complete their adaptation training,” the intelligence agency added.

According to the NIS, the North Korean soldiers were provided with Russian military uniforms and Russian-made weapons. They were also issued fake identification documents resembling residents of Siberian regions such as Yakutia and Buryatia, whose appearance is similar to North Koreans.

“This appears to be an attempt to disguise them as Russian soldiers and conceal their involvement in the war,” the NIS stated.

The NIS also reported that Kim Jong-sik, the first vice director of North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department and a key figure in the country’s missile development, was observed visiting a North Korean KN-23 missile launch site near the Russia-Ukraine front. He was accompanied by dozens of North Korean military officers to provide on-site guidance.

“It’s incomprehensible,” John Buss. @repeat1968. “More Full moon Madness!!!” me

American Madman DonOld is showing his age; finally, the legacy media have noticed and are reporting it. It only took 39 minutes of swaying to his playlist at a rally for them to start asking the real questions. He’s evidently tuckered out. “Trump cancels a streak of events with only days until election.” This is reported in AXIOS by Ivana Saric

Former President Trump’s planned appearance at a National Rifle Association event next week was cancelled Thursday, the latest in a slew of scuttled public appearances and interviews by the former president in recent weeks.

Why it matters: With only 17 days to go until Election Day, the spate of cancellations gives voters fewer chances to hear from Trump before heading to the polls in a coin toss race.

Vice President Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been on a media blitz after enduring criticism from Republicans about a perceived lack of interviews.

And while Harris has ventured into the unfriendly territory of a Fox News interview, Trump has stuck to the safe spaces of conservative outlets.

In the appearances he has made, Trump’s rhetoric has grown more violent and nativist. In recent weeks, he has decried his critics as the “enemy from within” and fanned the flames of false conspiracy theories about migrants.

Driving the news: The NRA said Thursday it had cancelled its “Defend the 2nd” event with Trump in Savannah, Georgia, next week due to “campaign scheduling changes.”

Trump also pulled out of two mainstream media interviews this week, with NBC News and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Earlier this month he backed out of a scheduled appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” while Harris appeared on the program.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.

Between the lines: Several of the events and interviews Trump has appeared at in recent weeks have raised eyebrows.

Trump cut short a Pennsylvania town hall this week to listen and sway to music for more than half an hour. “Let’s make it into a music fest,” Trump said. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”

In an interview with Bloomberg News at the Chicago Economic Club Tuesday, Trump downplayed the Capitol riot and struggled to respond when confronted about the costs of his economic plans

Trump later claimed he was “hoodwinked” into the interview.

During an all-women Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday, Trump declared himself the “father of IVF,” a decades-old fertility treatment that has come under threat since overturning Roe v. Wade — which Trump has repeatedly bragged about ending.

DonOld is asking for a sitdown with Rupert Murdoch. This is from MEDIAITE’s Isaac Schorr. “Donald Trump Outlines His Demands For Rupert Murdoch Live On Fox News Ahead of Private Meeting: ‘I Don’t Know If He’s Thrilled.’”

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outlined his demands for conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch live on Fox News Friday morning, musing that Murdoch should stop airing negative ads and allowing Democratic guests on the network in the run up to Election Day.

After Fox & Friends’ Lawrence Jones thanked Trump for appearing on the show Friday, the former president jumped back in to ask Jones and his co-hosts, “You know what the event I have now?”

“No,” said Brian Kilmeade.

“A very big event,” continued the former president. “I’m going to see Rupert Murdoch.”

A pensive Kilmeade replied, “Alright,” and Steve Doocy exclaimed, “Okay!” before Trump pressed on.

“That’s a big event. I don’t know if he’s thrilled that I say it. And I’m going to tell him, I’m gonna tell him something very simple because I can’t talk to anybody else about it: Don’t put on negative commercials for 21 days, don’t put them. And don’t put on the air their horrible people. They come and lie. I’m going to say, ‘Rupert, please do it this way.’”

“Right,” interjected Kilmeade.

“And then we’re going to have a victory, because I think everyone wants that,” concluded Trump.

Salon Fellow Griffin Eckstein reports that Faux News Reader Brett Baier is very sorry about his behavior during his interview with Vice President Harris. “”I did make a mistake”: Baier apologizes for playing edited Trump clip in Harris interview. The Fox News anchor’s deceptive video clip left out Trump’s remarks about “enemies from within.”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier is apologizing for playing a misleadingly edited clip in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris sat down with Baier on Wednesday for a tense interview, in which the “Special Report” host repeatedly cut off and chastised the Democratic candidate. One exchange in particular gave the game away.

When Harris admonished former President Trump over suggestions that he’d sic the military on his political opponents, Baier aired a portion of a Trump interview that omitted his comments against “the enemy from within.”

“I’m not threatening anybody,” Trump said in the clip Baier played. “They’re the ones doing the threatening.”

In a Thursday night episode of “Report,” Baier owned up his misdirection.

“I wanna say that I did make a mistake,” Baier admitted. “When I called for a soundbite, I was expecting a piece of the ‘enemy from within’ from Maria Bartiromo’s interview, to be tied to the piece from [Harris Faulkner’s ]town hall.”

Baier went on to play the intended clip for his audience, though Harris was still able to get her point across the previous night despite the misleading edit.

“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people,” the vice president said on Wednesday. “In a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”

Even the New York Times is noticing DonOld’s crazy demeanor and speech these days. “Trump’s Meandering Speeches Motivate His Critics and Worry His Allies. Some advisers and allies of former President Donald J. Trump are concerned about his scattershot style on the campaign trail as he continues to veer off script.” This is reported by Michael C. Bender.

Now, some Trump advisers and allies say privately they are concerned that the dynamic may be repeating itself four years later. They worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.

At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.

“When he’s good, he’s great, and when he’s off message, he’s not so great,” said David Urban, a Trump adviser. “I don’t think anyone is really changing their mind at this point, but when he distracts from his biggest, broadest messaging, it’s counterproductive because the Harris campaign uses it to turn out their voters.”

During a speech on Saturday in California, he described mail-in ballots as “so corrupt,” reviving one of his false attacks on the 2020 election results, and did a play-by-play of his internal thoughts when he watched SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, fly a rocket back onto its launch site.

On Sunday, in response to a question on Fox News about the possibility of foreign adversaries’ meddling in the election, he reverted to autocratic language by saying “the bigger problem is the enemy from within.” On Monday, he halted a town-hall event in suburban Philadelphia after five questions when two people in the crowd needed medical attention. He spent roughly the next half-hour playing D.J., swaying and grooving in front of his crowd to a playlist he curated from the stage. “Let’s just listen to music,” he said.

Last week, he canceled a CBS interview on “60 Minutes,” in which he and Ms. Harris were both scheduled to appear — and has not stopped talking about it. He complained about it during events in Detroit and Reno, Nev., and again on Monday in a social media post at 1:12 a.m.

All of this makes me wonder if he doesn’t care about winning or if he’s just relying on a country-wide repeat J6 event and his cronies planted in positions to disrupt the voting process in many states. It might be he has other things on his rapidly disintegrating mind. Just a few hours ago, Judge Tanya Chutkin, keeper of the American Way and the U.S. Constitution, allowed the Special Counsel to open up the floodgates of evidence. This is from CNN. “Special counsel releases trove of redacted documents in 2020 election subversion case against Trump.” October Surprise, perhaps? Care to Dance in the Moonlight with me?

Special counsel Jack Smith on Friday released a massive trove of heavily redacted documents in his 2020 election subversion criminal case against former President Donald Trump.

There are nearly 2,000 pages in a massive trove of documents released Friday, but nearly all of the pages appear to be completely redacted.

The redacted appendices filed on the public docket in the case are related to Smith’s expansive filing from earlier this month that laid out his fullest picture yet of the case against Trump and Smith’s belief that his actions around the 2020 election should not be shielded by presidential immunity.

One volume is filled with sealed pages as well as tweets and other social media posts from Trump, his campaign and allies, including some posted during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

One of the tweets include Trump’s post that day that Vice President Mike Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done” that day in supporting his effort to change the election results.

Others include a myriad of claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.

Prosecutors have argued that these tweets from Trump should be allowed to be used in the trial because they were personal in nature or part of his campaigning efforts and not his official duties as president.

The documents were released a day after Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected a bid by Trump to pause the release. Trump argued that posting the documents now could be seen as election inference and had asked them to remain under seal until after Election Day.

“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute – or appear to be – election interference,” Chutkan wrote in a decision late Thursday.

Another volume contains memos from lawyer John Eastman with a plan for Pence to reject the congressional certification of the 2020 election. The volume also includes a public statement Trump released the night before January 6 claiming he and Pence were on the same page about the congressional certification, Trump’s prepared remarks for his speech on January 6, and fundraising emails sent out by his 2020 campaign in the days before January 6.

Pence’s letter to Congress on January 6 explaining why he could not reject certifying the election and a transcript of Trump’s 2023 CNN town hall are also included in the documents.

The redacted files were expected to include an array of materials, including grand jury transcripts and notes from FBI interviews conducted during the yearslong investigation.

This was a big news dump week. Hopefully, the death of Yahya Sinwar will lead to a peaceful conclusion to this latest Mid-Eastern War. I’m not sure that’s what Bibi wants, but I’m sure the return of the hostages and a ceasefire would be a good start to ending hostilities. This is from Reuters. “Yahya Sinwar threw stick at drone just before death, according to Israel video. “

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was tracked by an Israeli mini drone as he lay dying in the ruins of a building in southern Gaza and filmed him slumped in a chair covered in dust, according to video released by Israeli authorities on Thursday.

As the drone hovered nearby, the video showed him throwing a stick at it, in an apparent act of desperation or defiance. Not long afterwards, the military said, a tank shell was fired into the building.

After an intensive manhunt that had lasted for more than a year, the Israeli troops that killed Sinwar were initially unaware that they had caught their country’s number one enemy after a gun battle on Wednesday, Israeli officials said.

Dental records, fingerprints and DNA testing provided final confirmation of Sinwar’s death for Israel and on Friday, Hamas confirmed their leader had been killed.

Intelligence services had been gradually restricting the area where Sinwar could operate, the military said. But unlike other militant leaders tracked down by Israel, including Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 13, the encounter which finally killed Sinwar was not a planned and targeted strike, or an operation carried out by elite commandos.

The seven days of Sukkot started last night. The Jewish Harvest Holiday lasts 7 days, and I’m sure there will be much celebration that there will be one less terrorist plotting another atrocity like October 7th. May all who observe find it in their hearts to search for peace and reconciliation with Israel’s innocent Palestinian neighbors. You would think eventually, we would all be way over all those who try to turn neighbors against each other. I know I’m hopeful we can get a better outcome here if we all just get out and vote for Kamala and Tim.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: The Gender Chasm

Posted: October 11, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: 2024 DNC, 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign | Tags: #DonOld, @repeat1968. John Buss, Barack Obama, DonOld and Dude Bros, Doug Emhoff, Father Figures, J Dank, Modern Masculinity, Stephan Miller, The Gender Chasm, The Gender Gap 2024, Tim Walz, Toxic Masculinity | 10 Comments

“Kamala is correct. Trump rallies are really a sight to behold. Everyone should watch at least one. Pro-tip, they’re getting more and more entertaining.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

When you watch and read as much news as I do, you can’t help but notice that every political act committed by DonOld these days is focused on young men. I believe that watching and listening to even a minimal amount of this has given me my first bout with acid reflux. I watched this segment on Alex Wagner last night. I had to endure a quick clip of Stephen Miller, who is an unpleasant, unattractive misogynist, racist, and xenophobe, which is this year’s Trump campaign outreach. “‘Infantile, petulant masculinity’: Trump aims low in appeal for American male ‘bro’ voters.” Are there really that many of them out there?

With a yawning gender gap in his base of support as a consequence of driving women away with his own words and behavior, Donald Trump appears to have made a strategy of wringing as much support as he can from American men, which has meant plumbing the depths of bro culture and encouraging a less-than-flattering version of masculinity. Michelle Goldberg, columnist for the New York Times discusses with Alex Wagner.

The funniest thing is watching Miller telling every male the best way to demonstrate you’re an Alpha is to wear your Trump goodies. Then, he goes on to mispronounce Beta. I can’t help but remember my first reading of Brave New World, as assigned in my 9th grade English class taught by a woman who also taught me swimming when I was a kid. Alphas are the intellectuals, while Betas are designed for physically demanding but not mentally challenging labor. I suppose Miller is referring to the hierarchy of the Apes, but wow, he sure comes off as a Gamma to me.

I enjoyed watching former President Barack Obama roast Donald Trump and contrast his inept and selfish behavior with that of the brilliant and caring Kamala. So, there are a lot of strange reads today about the strong comeback of the Gender Gap, which appears to be more like a Chasm. Let’s chuckle through them. Frankly, I prefer men with a less brutish approach to manhood, and I know you’re out there. We see you. Obama’s funniest line of the night is when he discusses the cost of diapers and doing the duty, then asks the audience if they thought Donald had ever changed a diaper. My Dad bombed NAZIs from a B-25 Bomber, and he changed diapers in the 1950s. Just consider Elon Musk going all on the Trump Campaign and that his businesses are generally as bankrupt-prone and in trouble with labor laws and anti-discrimination laws as the DonOld’s. DonOld can have Tech and Dude Bros because most women don’t want them. The ones with money attract gold diggers. The ones without are known as incels. It’s going to be a brutal 24 days.

This article and link to Longwell’s podcast is from Politico. Although, I think they’re turning to voting scams for victory. They’re just warming up the next group of J6ers .”‘They’ve given up on the idea that they can get women.’ How Trump is turning to the other gender gap for victory. A profound gender gap is shaping the 2024 election. And after listening to voters in hundreds of focus groups, Sarah Longwell thinks she knows why.”

The 2024 election — it’s a contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. But increasingly, it also looks like it’s girls versus boys.

Poll after poll is telling the same story: a Times/Siena survey this month showing Harris up 16 with women and Trump up 11 with men; a set of Quinnipiac polls in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showing Harris winning women by about 20 points in each. Meanwhile, according to a running average by the election quants at Split Ticket, Trump is on pace to win men by an even bigger margin than he did in 2020 — by about 9 points nationally.

But those numbers only tell part of the story.

The other half is from the mouths of the voters themselves. Which is where this episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast begins.

Sarah Longwell is the publisher of The Bulwark and is well known for her work as a Never Trumper.

But what she does with the rest of her time is talk to voters. Lots of them. Longwell has conducted hundreds of focus groups — you may have heard some of them on her podcast, The Focus Group.

While many of Washington’s top operatives have been digesting the election through polling datasets, she’s been taking a different approach: just asking people straight up what they think about Trump and Harris and what could change their minds.

Playbook’s Rachael Bade caught up with Sarah in her downtown Washington offices on Thursday and asked her to connect the dots from all of these hundreds of focus groups. In so doing, she laid out the stakes for what is arguably the biggest question of the 2024 election:

Why are men and women veering so far apart politically?

The answers to that may surprise you.

The Independent‘s Kelly Rissman has this analysis. “Inside the Trump campaign’s ‘edgy’ and crass approach to appeal to young men and ride them to victory.’ The Trump campaign’s crass language, wavering abortion stance, and sexist remarks about Harris have been a focus for Democrats.”

Donald Trump has proclaimed himself the “protector” of women but the tone of his messaging has become geared toward young men with crass language and put-downs in hopes the bloc will back him in November – despite the former president potentially isolating women voters.

“Alphas for Trump,” Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesperson recently tweeted, “vs Simps for Kamala.”

This seven-word tweet perhaps encompasses Trump’s years-long immersion into a stereotypical “tough” alpha male figure — a brand that some have described as “toxic masculinity.” In 2019, the then-president even tweeted a photoshopped image of himself as Rocky Balboa. Since then, he seemingly has tried to ingratiate himself into the real version of the fictional sports legend.

He has steeped himself in cryptocurrency, surrounding himself with tech bros and UFC fighters, using sexist terms to describe his Democratic rival, enters the rally stage to the Village People song “Macho Man,” all while his running mate disparages “childless cat ladies.” It could be costing him half of the electorate.

“It’s obvious Republicans have a woman problem, but it’s not just about policy differences like abortion. The GOP gender gap is just as much about how you talk about those differences,” Nachama Soloveichik, a GOP strategist and former adviser to Haley’s presidential campaign, told the Washington Post.

Soloveichik continued: “Regardless of gender, any political staffer with a pea-sized brain should know chasing away half the electorate is a bad idea. Talk to women with respect and understanding even when you disagree.”

Not only has the Republican nominee has appeared alongside “bro-y” celebrities, such as retired wrestler Hulk Hogan, wrestler-turned-YouTuber Logan Paul, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) chief executive Dana White, and podcaster Theo Von, but his campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung was also formerly a spokesperson for the UFC.

There’s never anyone on the Trump list of celebrities that I label anything other than grrrRoss. I can even remember how I used to say it with my 6th-grade voice while wrinkling my nose. This is also from Politico. “Inside Trump’s push to win over the ‘bro’ vote. But can he get young men to vote?”

Donald Trump is betting that support from young men will help propel him to the White House. And he’s getting an assist from a crew of pro-Trump millennial pranksters who are capitalizing on college football tailgates, Tinder and even the “Hawk Tuah Girl” podcast.

The Nelk Boys, digital content creators and hosts of the popular “Full Send” podcast, are mounting a multi-million-dollar voter registration push aimed at turning out young men. They plan to sign up voters at a “Send the Vote” music festival later this month that will feature a performance by pro-Trump rapper Waka Flocka Flame, and at a pair of Penn State football games.

They will also promote the registration drive on dating apps and advertise on highly-listened to, male-friendly podcasts like “Kill Tony,” “MrBallen,” and “BS w/ Jake Paul.”

It’s the latest effort in an all-out campaign by the former president to turn out young men, a demographic his campaign views as critical to his election given the overwhelming support Kamala Harris is expected to receive from young women. The question the Trump operation faces, however, is whether it can turn out a subset of voters his allies concede are uncertain to cast ballots.

“The question is, will that podcast fan, that College GameDay fan, that USC fan, will they actually get up on November 5th and go and vote?” said John Shahidi, the president of Full Send and the co-founder of Send the Vote. “That’s the big question right now that we want to start emphasizing on and putting pressure on.”

One voter registration promo is expected to run on a podcast hosted by Haliey Welch, who rose to viral internet stardom with a sexually explicit riff. And, in the heart of football season, the Nelk Boys are exploring the possibility of advertising on sports gambling sites.

By reaching out to young men, some of whom came of age during the former president’s administration, Trump, who long before running for office had cultivated an alpha-male like image with his involvement in sports and entertainment, is capitalizing on goodwill from a demographic he hopes will support him. And there are indications Trump is making inroads with the group, which like other youth subsets traditionally tilts liberal. According to a recent Harvard Youth Poll, 35 percent of men between 18 and 24 years old said they supported Trump — an improvement of 5 percent from Trump’s performance in the same survey in the 2020 election.

I have no idea what any of this is, but I am obviously not in that demographic. My youngest son-in-law has a birthday tomorrow, but I have a good idea that he doesn’t know about either. He’s a biological engineer and has a life. I’m sure the older one, who is a Radiologist and does ultrasounds a lot, wouldn’t know or care. However, former President Obama spoke out to black men in his speech last night in Pittsburgh. This is from the Washington Post. “Obama admonishes Black men for hesitancy in supporting Harris. Former president suggests some in the Black community are uncomfortable voting for a woman and are coming up with excuses.” I think the headline is harsh compared to what I heard, but legacy media always looks for clicks.

Former president Barack Obama on Thursday made a direct, impassioned plea to Black men to support Vice President Kamala Harris — a key demographic she is struggling to mobilize — admonishing them for thinking about sitting out the presidential contest as well as suggesting sexism might be at play.

During an unannounced stop at a Harris campaign field office in Pittsburgh, just hours before he was set to appear at his first campaign rally for the Democratic nominee, Obama said he wanted to “speak some truths” and address Black men specifically, making his most direct remarks about their hesitancy in supporting Harris to date.

“My understanding, based on reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities, is that we have not yet seen the same kinds of energy and turnout in all quarters of our neighborhoods and communities as we saw when I was running,” Obama said, adding that it “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers.”

Obama questioned how voters, and Black voters specifically, could be on the fence about whether to support Harris or former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.

“On the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences,” Obama said, ticking off a list of Harris’s policy proposals. In Trump, he added, “you have someone who has consistently shown disregard, not just for the communities, but for you as a person … And you are thinking about sitting out?”

The former president then spoke about what he thought might be contributing to Black men’s soft support of Harris: the discomfort of some with the idea of electing the first female president.

“And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that,” he said. “Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”

Meanwhile, we see Harris’ husband and her running mate, Tim Walz, emulate a more compassionate version of manliness. Perhaps this kind of role-modeling from powerful men will take hold. This is from Time Magazine, as analyzed by Belinda Luscombe. “The Doug Emhoff Model of Masculinity.”

Society has names for men they feel are overshadowed by their wives or partners, and they’re not terms of endearment; cuck, p-whipped, and simp are among the nicer ones. As women’s economic and social power has risen, some men have felt that theirs has receded, and have responded by doubling down on machismo. Masculinity has become contested ground. So when Doug Emhoff took to the stage to talk about his wife Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention, he had to walk a fine line: gushy without being slavish, supportive but not submissive, a true partner but completely self-sufficient.

Fewer than half the countries in the world have ever had female heads of state, and many of those women were unmarried, so there are not a lot of models for how to be the husband of the lady who might become the leader of the free world. Emhoff’s speech was a benchmark. How does a man handle this? How does a man talk about a strong ambitious woman gunning for arguably the most powerful job in the world, without making her look a nightmare or a nonentity? And without himself appearing to be a buffoon or puppet master?

Emhoff—and his speechwriters and his son Cole—pretty much nailed it. When he stepped down from the stage, he had given a little master class in how to be a guy’s guy as wellas a wife guy. First, he telegraphed that he was dependent on no one. He’d done name-tag jobs at McDonald’s and the valet stand when he needed to. He had partly put himself through college but wasn’t too proud to admit he had help. He had a successful career with skills that involved de-escalating rather than dominating situations.

He demonstrated a winning self-confidence by making fun of the goofy nervous first-date voicemail he left on Harris’ phone, and joking about his mother being the only person in the world who thinks Harris married up. Unlike many a divorced dad, he showed no bitterness to his ex-wife, even thanking her from the stage. While Harris’s opponents have tried to make her laugh seem bizarre or sinister, he named it as one of the things he loves most—because normal men aren’t freaked out by women who laugh.

Emhoff’s presentation also subtly played up his more traditional masculine traits. A photo from Cole’s video introduction showed how protective he was when someone threatened Harris. Emhoff let it be known that he belongs to a fantasy football league with buddies from back in the day, and that in his youth he was a fan of both The Clash and Nirvana, both classic angry-young-man bands. He slid in mentions of his ability to pivot and to sacrifice, by leaving a law practice when Harris became vice president and taking a job at Georgetown University.

In fact, many of the masculine attributes that Emhoff leaned into during his speech are similar to those also valued by conservatives: strength, pride, courage, industriousness, protecting families. In some ways, President Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance has many of the same qualities. He too came from humble beginnings, put himself through school, thrived, and married a woman who was more his equal than his helpmeet. But Emhoff—and Tim Walz, Harris’ partner in this campaign—are projecting those qualities while playing second fiddle to a woman. They’re not allowed to outshine the nominee, but they also can’t make her look like a harridan.

Emhoff’s exuberant support of his wife’s strengths (“Empathy is her superpower,” he noted) has definitely touched a nerve with some women. “THIS is a supportive husband! He gets it. Doug do you have a brother? Cousin? BFF?” asked one woman on Instagram. “If anyone would like to set me up on a blind date with the 33-45 year old NYC-based equivalent of Doug Emhoff, my DMs are open,” tweeted another. It wasn’t just among women either; there was a spate of “Teach me how to Dougie” tweets from guys as well.

I will not venture into the J Dank Vance model of weird masculinity, but I will mention Tim Walz’s impact by showing a fuller version of what it means to be a man, husband, and father. I really like this coverage by the Chicago Sun-Times, which was published around the convention. “Tim Walz is a man’s man, unlike MAGA’s man-children. A good male role model from the Democrats is an excellent foil for the cartoon version of masculinity on offer from the Republican Party.” This Op-Ed is written by Mona Charen. (Yes, THAT Mona Charen.) I’ve put in the complete piece because she handles J Dank better than I ever could.

If Kamala Harris becomes the first woman president, her first accomplishment could well have already happened — elevating and honoring the positive side of masculinity.

Tim Walz, whose politics are to the left of most Americans and certainly most swing voters, has been welcomed not as a box-checking, progressive pick, but as a Midwestern dad who poses with his hunting dog, served for 24 years in the military and coached the high school football team to a state championship. He’s a man’s man without being a strutting jackass. A good male role model is an excellent foil for the swaggering, snarling, cartoonish version of masculinity on offer from the Republican Party right now.

Men are struggling. Boys are falling behind girls in grades and graduation rates. Men are falling behind women in college attendance, participation in the labor force, and connection to family and friends. Men are more likely than women to be lonely and to succumb to deaths of despair. It’s not a man’s world anymore, even if some have been slow to notice.

Boys and men are picking up the signals that there is something inherently wrong with them. The word “masculinity” is hardly uttered in some precincts without the modifier “toxic.” Our culture has stressed girl power and female “firsts” long past the time when boys are the ones who are struggling. As Richard Reeves has noted, in 1972, the year Congress enacted Title IX to promote gender equity in higher education, the gender gap in college enrollment was 13 points in men’s favor. In 2019, the gender gap in bachelor’s degrees was 15 points the other way.

Men are feeling it. A Brookings Institution survey found that fewer Generation Z men call themselves feminists (43%) than do millennials (52%), and the gap between men and women on this self-ID is much larger for Gen Z than for older cohorts. Another sign of discontent is that nearly half of men aged 18 to 29 report that they face discrimination as men.

The right has a response that is reactionary, misogynistic and smutty. The party that once prided itself on traditional values now features at its convention, as David French put it, “an OnlyFans star, a man who publicly slapped his wife, a man who pleaded no contest to an assault charge, and another man who had sex with his friend’s wife while the friend watched — and that’s not even including any reference to Trump himself.”

Not content with being an adjudicated sexual abuser, Donald Trump continues to fill out his dance card with the vilest male “influencers” online, most recently sitting down for an interview with Adin Ross, most known for associating with accused rapist/human trafficker Andrew Tate and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. Trump knows there’s a longing for male affirmation out there and is choosing the very worst ways to satisfy it. His masculinity bears none of the hallmarks of manly virtue — restraint, honor, service to others, responsibility or self-sacrifice. Instead, he offers braggadocio, put-downs, disrespect for women and vulgarity.

Trump’s running mate has been fishing in these waters for several years and now trails a train of cringe-worthy quotations he must own. JD Vance chose to unburden himself to Tucker Carlson. “We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable, too.” He then name-checked Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

What’s offensive is not just that Vance is wrong about Harris or Buttigieg but that he would use such a personal matter as an opportunity for abuse. As Jennifer Aniston, who underwent years of fruitless fertility treatments, put it: “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.”

I’m about as pro-natalist as you can get. I believe the government should be generous to parents through the tax code because children are an investment in the country’s future.

But leave it to MAGA to mar a completely benign idea like pro-natalism with contempt for others. Vance recycled his insights in a fundraising appeal: “We’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths — they’re invested in NOTHING because they’re not invested in this country’s children.” Really? George Washington and James Madison might like a word.

In the face of this brutalist version of masculinity, the Democratic Party is now honoring a different kind of man in Walz. The hunter/fisherman/veteran/football coach is no pajama boy.

Walz is a regular guy at a time when the country needs reminding that being a regular guy is actually pretty great. As The Atlantic put it, “Dad is on the Ballot.”

Harris’s selection of Walz gave rise to a whole genre of warm dad memes: “Tim Walz just slipped me a 20 on my way out the door because ‘you never know if some place doesn’t take credit cards.” Another posted that Walz would “(take) care of the wasps’ nest for you.”

What unites these posts is the sense of security and comfort they exude — the very things a good dad conveys.

Tim Walz may be the father figure the Democratic Party — and the country — needs.

This is a long set of reads but I think you’ll enjoy the contrast. I really hope we can leave the minds of J Dank and Donald in the footnotes of history. Let’s give our kids the future they deserve!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Mostly Monday Reads: Poor, Poor Pitiful Trump

Posted: October 7, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: just because | Tags: #DonOld, #DorkMaga, @repeat1968. John Buss, Bans off our bodies, Hurricane Milton, Mister Pasty aka Elon, Trump incites violence again, Unfit for Office | 6 Comments

“I’m sorry, but Leon Musk deserves Mr Trump’s Purple Heart after taking one for the team instead of all this ridicule.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Could the next big October Surprise be the media deciding to report how unfit DonOld is for office? Rumors are that his new brofriends are about to get him elected only to turn around and do a 25th Amendment so that we get J Dank Vance as POTUS sooner than we expected. Who would put Elon Musk in charge of a national ground game? Why would anyone want to hear or see Mister Pasty? Let’s get right to it. This is from Politico. “Musk the surrogate: The tech titan will hit the campaign trail for Trump. Those close to Musk say his primary focus is on Pennsylvania.” This report is by Alex Isenstadt. So, DonOld can’t do the rally thing very well, so they’re sending Elon? What kind of Hail Mary pass is this?

Tech billionaire Elon Musk will ramp up his personal efforts to elect Donald Trump in the remaining weeks of the election — including making visits to Pennsylvania to campaign for the former president.

Musk intends to appear in the swing state in the four weeks leading up to Nov. 5, according to a person who has spoken with his team and was granted anonymity to speak freely because they weren’t authorized to do so. He is expected to make the stops with the backing of America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC he formed. He may make other appearances in the state independent of his super PAC — as he did on Sunday evening, when he showed up to the Pittsburgh Steelers game wearing a MAGA hat and was greeted by Steelers owner Art Rooney II, among others.

Musk, the world’s richest person, took his most aggressive steps yet over the weekend to personally show his support for Trump. Musk appeared at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, where during a brief speech he lavished praise on the former president and urged attendees to “vote, vote, vote.” After the rally, he joined Trump backstage where he participated in a tele-town hall event.

Also over the weekend, Musk changed his profile icon on his account on X to an image of him wearing a black MAGA hat and added to his bio a link to the America PAC account. He also repeatedly promoted posts from the PAC, which is running a pro-Trump voter turnout effort with financial backing from Musk and his associates.

And on Sunday afternoon, Musk unveiled a new program in which he promised to pay $47 to people who register voters in seven swing states — Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Musk has a history of using reward initiatives: He recently unveiled a referral program for Tesla, the electric car company he owns. In the program, buyers and their referrers are awarded $500 or $1,000 in credits which can be used toward Tesla products.

“Ya gotta love Dork MAGA.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Talk about your Dark Money and what is this all about? Dark MAGA? Does this reek of desperation or what? Let’s get back to why he’s sending in the clowns. This is from The New Republic by the great Michael Tomasky. “The Media Is Finally Waking Up to the Story of Trump’s Mental Fitness. On Sunday, The New York Times finally ran a brutal piece on the topic. Let’s hope others follow—and this kick-starts the conversation the country desperately needs to have.”

If things go the way I hope they go in November, it may well turn out that Sunday’s terrific New York Times piece by Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman on Donald Trump’s age and fitness for office could stand as the single most important piece of journalism in this election. If you’ve been reading me and Greg Sargent and Parker Molloy and our Breaking News desk, then you know that The New Republic has been pretty obsessive about the topic of Trump’s mental fitness—and more importantly about the media’s general refusal to discuss it.

This is what has come to be known as the “sanewashing” of Trump: the practice by media outlets of covering him like a normal candidate and not telling their audiences in detail about all the monstrous, false, disjointed, and plain old nonsensical fountains of gibberish he serially spouts at every public appearance he makes.

We (and others) have been critical of the press in general and the Times in particular, mainly because the Times is still the most important news outlet in the country. So let’s give credit where it’s due. The Baker-Freedman piece was a deeply reported analysis that wasn’t afraid to say things most mainstream outlets won’t say. I’d also note that in recent days, Michael Gold, the paper’s Trump correspondent, has written a couple pieces that are more blunt and direct in calling out Trump’s lies and quoting some of his more outrageous comments.

The Sunday Times article puts it on the line: “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought—some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own ‘beautiful’ body. He relishes ‘a great day in Louisiana’ after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is ‘trying to kill me’ when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.”

That’s just for starters. The gist of the piece argues—with statistical analyses of Trump’s tropes and speech patterns—that his rhetoric is very different from what it was in 2015 and 2016. Which is to say, it’s worse in every way: more long-winded, more disconnected, more rambling; also coarser, far more prone to swearing. In sum, the article is devastating about whether Trump, who is now the old one in the race and who would be 82 at the end of a second term, is simply capable on a mental level of doing the job of president.

This is the offering today from the Lincoln Project. They always find a way to amp DonOld’s paranoia volume knob up to 11.

Trump did an interview with Hugh Hewitt, and he’s amped the Hitler rhetoric up to 11. This is written by Sydney Blumenthal at The Guardian. “Donald Trump’s Hitlerian logic is no mistake. The former president claims to have never read Mein Kampf. But his use of blood and soil rhetoric is deliberate.”

If genealogy is destiny, as Donald Trump believes, then “poison in the blood” – a phrase Trump repeatedly uses – determines the fate of nations. By Trump’s logic, “blood” is the true and final measure. Trump, like Hitler, appears to classify people and countries by “blood” on a scale of their innate racial characteristics. Those features define the essence of nations, which are themselves delineated on a racial pyramid, with the purest and whitest, the most Aryan, at the pinnacle. True to his doctrine, the Nazis on his family tree must explain his penchant for Hitlerian rhetoric.

“Poison in the blood” was the core of Hitler’s race doctrine as well. Hitler, too, believed it explained the rise and fall of civilizations. “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” stated Hitler. It is also Trump’s fundamental trope. “We’re poisoning the blood of our country, and you have people coming in, think of it, mental institutions all over the world are being emptied out into the United States,” he said on Fox News in March. “Jails and prisons are being emptied out into the United States. This is poisoning our country.”

Just recently, on 31 August, addressing Moms For Liberty, a rightwing group devoted to book-banning, he raised again the menace of “poison in the blood”: “But what’s happening to our country, our country is being poisoned, poisoned!”

At a rally on 18 September, Trump elaborated: “They’re coming from the Congo, they’re coming from Africa, they’re coming from the Middle East, they’re coming from all over the world – Asia! A lot of it coming from Asia … And what’s happening to our country is we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country, and we’re not going to take it any longer, and you got to get rid of these people.”

“Blut und Boden” – blood and soil – was adopted as an official slogan of the Nazi regime to express its ideal of the nation rooted in the authentic unity of Aryan blood. The community of its people – Volksgemeinschaft – comprised only those of shared ethnic blood. Aliens corrupting the blood, principally Jews, but also Slavs, Poles and Roma, were described as disease carriers and “vermin” – Volksshadlinge – and posed an existential threat. Only those people of the blood belonged to the Heimat, a concept the Nazis cast as the racially pure home, intrinsic to Blut und Boden.

Jews were Heimatlos – a people separate from the Heimat, without a true home, wanderers, cosmopolitans and globalists, a menace to the sanctity of the culture and the identity of the nation. They were not simply outsiders, or the Other. They were a different species – subhumans, Untermenschen – and must be eradicated to preserve the blood of the race. “Although it has features similar to a human, the subhuman is lower on the spiritual and psychological scale than any animal,” instructed a pamphlet entitled Der Untermenschen, illustrated with distorted photographs of these lower beings to depict the “bestial” nature of the subhuman Jews and Slavs. Four million copies were published in 1942 under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS.

“In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion,” Trump said this March. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say. These are animals, OK, and we have to stop it.” When they are removed, it will be, says Trump, “a bloody story”.

Here’s the report from HuffPo on the Hitler Language by Matt Shuman. “Trump: Immigrants Have Brought ‘Bad Genes’ Into The Country. The Republican presidential candidate has long been obsessed with the racist talking point that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America.”

During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday, Donald Trump said immigrants were filling the country with “bad genes” and used lies about decades-old crime statistics to make his point.

Trump has long been obsessed with the idea that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of America — echoing Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric. For years, he has lied that other countries are purposefully sending criminals to the United States.

As part of his recent weekslong racist smear campaign, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), falsely said Haitian immigrants had raised the infectious disease rate in Springfield, Ohio. And Trump has been touting his mass deportation agenda, which he says he’ll enact as soon as he’s in office.

“How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers?” Trump told Hewitt, referring to the Biden administration. “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals.”

The xenophobic claim that immigrants are genetically predisposed to committing violent crimes is shocking and false — but xenophobia is also a cornerstone of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump’s numbers are based on heavily manipulated statistics about the criminal conviction records of people with cases in immigration court — cases that span several decades, some long before President Joe Biden was in office, and which include people currently serving prison time.

You may read, hear and see more on the latest Hugh Hewitt interview today at this link. “Former President Trump On The Anniversary Of The 10/7 Massacre In Israel.” Yes, that is an weird headline, isn’t it?

HH: If Israel hits Iran and goes after the nuclear sites, will you applaud Israel and back them up?

DT: Well, you want to do what they want to do. Now they may be making a deal with Iran right now. You know, to be honest with you, because Iran’s not looking so good. You know, Iran is not looking like they looked two months ago, if you want to know the truth. They could be making a deal. They could be doing some very smart things right now. There are a lot of things they can do. But the nice thing is they’re entitled to an attack, and nobody will be upset if they attack, because they’re entitled. Because Iran hit them with 187 missiles. And by the way, how good is the shield? And the United States should have a shield.

Here’s the hot take from Morning Joe from Raw Story for what it’s worth. “‘Increasingly deranged’ Trump is inciting ‘civil war’ as election loss looms: Morning Joe.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough warned Monday that an “increasingly desperate” Donald Trump is inciting civil war in anticipation of another election loss.

The former president returned to the scene of his first apparent assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where he baselessly accused Democrats of trying to kill him and his family members presented the November election as a choice between “good versus evil.

The rhetoric left the “Morning Joe” host disgusted and disturbed.

“The level of un-American activity that you just saw is stunning,” Scarborough said. “That is un-American. They know they’re lying, Donald Trump knows that’s a lie. He will tell you that the Secret Service, he thought, did the best job they could do. The fact that J.D. Vance and Trump’s family would come out and out and say what they said, takes the threat of violence, takes the threat beyond where it was even leading up to Jan. 6.

“This is an increasingly desperate person, an increasingly desperate family, who is preparing for civil war. They just are. Talking about they’re trying to kill him, Democrats are trying to kill him, and the lies. Think about this.”

“I saw part of Donald Trump’s speech this weekend,” Scarborough continued. “It was remarkable, the lies. Not just on these things, but on policy. He’d make up things and throw it out there. I was shocked that the audience was really that stupid, to believe the crazy lies that he was throwing out there.

This was a shock to me. It also comes from Raw Story, as reported by David McAfee. ‘Is that a threat?’ Trump stuns observers with a comment about Harris voter ‘getting hurt.'”

Donald Trump shocked observers on Sunday with a comment he made about a potential supporter of Vice President Kamala Harris at one of the former president’s swing-state rallies.

Trump, who has been accused of fostering violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, gave a speech in Wisconsin over the weekend. At that rally, the ex-president battled a fly on stage and called his own campaign members “so stupid.”

At that same rally, Trump made an off-hand comment that had some political onlookers sounding the alarm.

“Is there anybody here who’s going to vote for lyin’ Kamala?” Trump asked his rally attendees. “Actually, I should say don’t raise your hand, it would be very dangerous. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt. Please don’t raise your hand.”

Harris’ campaign shared the video on social media, writing, “Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.'”

Retired research engineer David Rommel voluntarily identified his voting preferences:

“I’m voting for Kamala! I’m a republican that is not opposed to taking on that challenge,” he wrote. “The only thing that scares me is Trump winning another term. When Trump is in prison and they are all arrested for rioting we can all take a breath of fresh air.”

A popular account called CALL TO ACTIVISM, founded by attorney Joe Gallina, replied, “What the hell does this mean? Donald Trump says it’s ‘very dangerous’ for Kamala Harris voters to identify themselves because they’ll ‘get hurt.’ Is that a threat??”

DonOld’s economic policy platform has gotten the attention of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. It’s like he’s purposefully going to tank the US economy. These folks are always deficit hawks. Here’s their bias/leaning report from Media Bias/Fact Check.

Overall, we rate The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) as slightly right-center Biased based on advocacy for a reduction in entitlement spending. We also rate them High in factual reporting based on regularly being used as a resource for IFCN fact-checkers.

And here’s their numbers and analysis.

Under our central estimate, Vice President Harris’s plan would increase the debt by $3.50 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan would increase the debt by $7.50 trillion.

These estimates come with a wide range of uncertainty, reflecting both different interpretations and estimates of the policies. Under our low- and high-cost estimates, we estimate Vice President Harris’s plan could have no significant fiscal impact or increase debt by $8.10 trillion through 2035, while President Trump’s plan could increase debt by between $1.45 and $15.15 trillion. Our analysis will be updated if additional policies are introduced.

So, you can see that even deficit hawks recognize Trump’s plan as a run on the Treasury for billionaires. Things are not going very well for Trump, which is why he’s acting out so many ways, but this may not mean we’re rid of him. Don’t forget that behind the scenes in many states are crazy Maga Supporters like Tina Peters. We still have to consider the threats of violence. We also need to realize there’s a lot of damage to the country and our democracy done already. This headline from the AP is a frightening reminder. “Supreme Court declines Biden administration appeal in Texas emergency abortion case.”

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate the law in Texas, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans.

The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order that said hospitals cannot be required to provide pregnancy terminations if they would break Texas law. There were no publicly noted dissents.

The decision comes weeks before a presidential election where abortion has been a key issue after the high court’s 2022 decision overturning the nationwide right to abortion.

The justices rebuffed a Biden administration push to throw out the lower court order. The administration argues that under federal law hospitals must perform abortions if needed in cases where a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where it’s banned.

Complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion.

The administration pointed to the Supreme Court’s action in a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues.s

Finally, decades of ignoring climate change have led to the fast development of Hurricane Milton into a Category 4 aimed at Tampa. This is from the Washington Post. Hurricane Milton reaches Category 5 strength on approach to Florida. The storm is expected to produce a devasting surge along Florida’s west coast, which could include the Tampa Bay area. Some decrease in strength is forecast ahead of landfall.

Milton, a top-tier Category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, is intensifying at near-record speed as it churns toward the west coast of Florida. The storm is expected to make landfall Wednesday or early Thursday as a “large and powerful hurricane,” according to the National Hurricane Center. It is predicted to produce a potentially devastating ocean surge over 10 feet in some areas, including perhaps in flood-prone Tampa Bay.

Since Sunday night, the storm’s rate of strengthening has reached extreme levels — its intensity leaping from a Category 1 to 5. The storm’s peak winds Monday afternoon were up to 175 mph, an 85 mph increase in 12 hours.

The Hurricane Center described the storm’s rate of intensification as “remarkable.” The explosive development has occurred over record-warm waters in the Gulf, with the extreme warmth linked to human-caused climate change.

Fuck the entire “Drill baby Drill” krewe of death. Every time I hear the name Milton, I can only think of my drunk great-grandfather, who was murdered while coming home from a bar in KCMO. His death led to my mother’s parents having to take care of my grandmother’s sisters. That story has stayed with me for decades. So, anyone in the path of this thing should really get out of there. That advice comes from me, who fled Katrina with dogs and cat in tow at the very last minute. If you’re on the Gulf side of this thing there will be surreal surge levels that nothing can survive. I also can’t imagine how stretched FEMA, the country’s National Guard, and every disaster response NGO will be. Prepare like you’ll be on your own for a while because you may be. I am forever thankful that I had incredible primitive camping chops via the Girl Scouts. You’ll need all those skills to survive this.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Finally Friday Reads: There are Disasters and then there are Man-made Disasters

Posted: October 4, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign | Tags: @repeat1968. John Buss, Anti-democracy MAGA Republicans, Ayatollah Mike Johnson, Bebe Netanyahu and American Election Interference, FEMA funding, Hurricane Helene, MAGA Republican Party | 5 Comments

“There ya go, that explains it! Trump is in serious decline.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

This week has been rather mind-blowing for me. First, I watched Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney stand beside Vice President Kamala Harris and heartily endorse her. The number of top Republicans going out of their way to stop DonOld is really heartening. The utter destruction left in the path of Hurricane Helene was beyond the warzone feeling I saw when I finally got to return home to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I can only imagine what’s in store for us in the future if we don’t speed up policy and action on Climate Change. Then, there’s the kind of shock only practitioners of the Dismal Science could feel. “U.S. Hiring Accelerated in September, Blowing Past Expectations” is a headline in today’s Wall Street Journal. Our economy is so good we’ve booted the once-assumed takeover of the title of the largest economy in the world by China. It has been moved farther into the future if ever.

The U.S. labor market strengthened in the weeks before Election Day, as job growth accelerated in September and the unemployment rate ticked lower.

Employers added 254,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That was significantly more than the 150,000 economists expected, and marked the largest monthly increase since March. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1%.

Friday’s bumper payrolls report is likely to close the door on another half-percentage-point rate cut by the Federal Reserve at its next meeting in November. It should keep officials on track to lower rates by a quarter point.

The Fed is trying to engineer what is called a soft landing, in which inflation moves down without major deterioration in the labor market. Though Friday is just one data point, it suggests that the U.S. is headed in that direction.

“It puts another set of wheels under the plane in terms of assuring a soft landing,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.

Friday’s report also signaled that hiring this summer wasn’t as weak as initially thought. Revised figures show employers added 72,000 more jobs in July and August combined than earlier reported.

The latest snapshot of the labor market’s health comes just a month before the U.S. presidential election, where the economy and inflation are key issues for voters. The strong jobs report could help Vice President Kamala Harris. In polls, she trails former President Donald Trump on the economy.

Stocks ticked higher. During much of the inflationary post-Covid-19 boom, stocks often quaked temporarily at stronger-than-expected economic data, because traders took such shocks as a sign that the Fed would tighten monetary policy more aggressively. Investors’ positive reaction Friday showed that they view good news as good news again—even if futures contracts tied to the federal-funds rate suggest traders are now expecting a slower pace of Fed easing.

Employers added jobs at bars and restaurants and construction, as well as in sectors that are less sensitive to the economy’s ups and downs like government, education and healthcare.

There were a few weak spots. Employers modestly cut head count in manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and temporary help services.

Analysts also said that although September’s jobs report was unexpectedly strong, other economic data point to a slightly less robust hiring picture. Labor Department data released earlier this week showed that the share of workers quitting their jobs each month fell to its lowest rate in more than four years in August, a sign people are more hesitant about leaving their current roles for new ones.

Liz Cheney described the Republican Party as being the MAGA Party. Those left in the MAGA party are living in lies, bigotry, and a world of active sabotage of the truth and of the country. In one of the most callous moves I’ve seen in Congress, Speaker Johnson refuses to call the House back into session to provide the funding needed for FEMA. He wants it to wait until November 12. He’s wandering around Florida today.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday that a congressional emergency spending decision in response to Hurricane Helene “will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session.”

Congress will be on recess for more than a month, and is set to return to session on Nov. 12. Johnson seemed to rule out a return before then, although President Joe Biden indicated this week that he may ask Congress to convene before the break’s scheduled end.

“Right before we left on Wednesday, a week ago, Congress appropriated $20 billion to FEMA to cover the immediate aftermath of the storm,” Johnson said in Steinhatchee Thursday. “Of course, we knew it was headed into the coast at that time, so FEMA has the funding that needs to respond immediately. We’re glad to see them on the ground here.”

Johnson said damage assessments must be complete before Congress can update the disaster budget.

“It will take some time to tabulate this storm — it’s one of the biggest in our history,” Johnson said. “So, a lot of that work’s being done immediately, and I think the timing of that will probably correspond when Congress is expected to return to session right after the election, and so we’ll be on that.”

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Federal Emergency Management Agency lacks enough funding to last through hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30.

Johnson appeared with Florida U.S. Reps. Kat Cammack and Neal Dunn at Roy’s Restaurant, which was ravaged by Helene.

The speaker of the House said that funding further disaster response will be bipartisan.

“There’ll be an appropriate amount requested to Congress, and we’ll have to dig deep and find a way to do that,” he said.

Johnson assured that Congress “will do what’s necessary to make sure that Americans are taken care of.”

What’s most impressive is to see just precisely who 175 Republicans are that voted against the aid. And, yes, it’s basically to make the Biden/Harris Administration look bad so DonOld can rant and make people forget his lousy response to disasters when he occupied the White House. This is from Newsweek. “Full List of Republicans Who Voted Against FEMA Funding Before Helene Hit,” written by Khaleda Rahman.

As Hurricane Helene careened toward Florida’s Panhandle, numerous Republicans voted against extending funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Last week, Congress approved $20 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund as part of a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through December 20. But the measure left out billions of dollars in requested supplemental disaster funding.

The Senate approved the measure by a 78-18 vote on September 25 after it passed the House in a 341-82 vote. Republicans supplied the no votes in both chambers.

Some of the Republicans who voted against the bill represent states that have been hard hit by Helene, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz.

Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 storm last Thursday, before plowing through several other states in the Southeast. The devastation could cost up to $160 billion, according to an estimate by AccuWeather.

Some Republicans railed against FEMA funding being allocated for assisting migrants after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Wednesday that FEMA will run out of money before the hurricane season is over. The agency is facing a multibillion-dollar deficit, even after imposing new spending restrictions.

The New Republic has released a “Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged Handling of Disasters Revealed By Insider. An interview with Olivia Troye, a top homeland security official in the Trump administration, about how badly Trump politicized disaster response as president—as seen from the inside.” Former Republican Women are not holding back on what a disaster DonOld was. This is from Greg Sargent’s podcast, The Daily Blast.

Sargent: OK, let’s start here. The other day after Trump started pushing that lie that disaster relief is being denied to Republicans, you did a tweet that got some attention. It said this, “As a Homeland Security Advisor in the Trump White House, I witnessed firsthand how Donald Trump politicized disaster relief, leaving devastated Americans waiting for help. Leaders across the country & government were calling my office, desperate for action as Trump failed them in moments of crisis.” Can you expand on that for us?

Troye: I have a lot of memories of working in the Trump White House where there are numerous situations where the government apparatus that does the whole disaster relief declaration process would come to a halt because the disaster declaration that needed to be signed by the president was sitting on Donald Trump’s desk. It was frustrating, as you can imagine, because we as national security officials serve for the greater good of the country. Our job is to help Americans, especially someone like me, who’s in the Homeland Security role working and advising the vice president. Our jobs are to work in response to a crisis as fast as possible and manage this. There were numerous instances where I had the head of government agencies calling me saying, Can you maybe get the vice president to weigh in on this because it’s still sitting on [Trump’s] desk and he hasn’t approved it yet.

Sargent: You were working for the vice president at the time. Can you characterize your official position?

Troye: Sure. I was Mike Pence’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor. In that role, I covered any crisis, global breaking news event that was related to whether it was global terrorism. On the Homeland space, I covered anything that was mass shootings, disaster relief like natural disasters like flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes. Anything that was a crisis domestically here that was related to the security and safety of Americans fall under me.

"Spanked." John Buss, @repeat1968 Not only do the MAGA Republicans want the country to fail and our country to fall to Tinpot dictator wannabe Donald, but they seriously want to see more death and destruction by tanking one of the most necessary and enormous FEMA responses ever. This is from NBC News. “Hurricane Helene live updates: At least 215 dead as some communities struggle to get basic supplies. People are still searching for loved ones and many residents remain isolated because of widespread damage.”

White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back on what he called “lies” shared by some Republican figures regarding the Hurricane Helene response.

In a new memo shared today, Bates said: “Some Republican leaders — and their partners in right wing media — are using Hurricane Helene to lie and divide us.”

“Their latest missive: baselessly claiming that FEMA is out of money to respond to Hurricane Helene — because of an existing program that supports cities and towns that are sheltering migrants. … This is FALSE,” Bates wrote.

“No disaster relief funding at all was used to support migrants housing and services. None. At. All,” he continued.

Trump echoed that false theory at a rally in Michigan yesterday, saying, “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”

Bates clarified that funding for communities to support migrants is appropriated by Congress to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and is merely administered by FEMA, and the funding isn’t related to FEMA’s response and recovery efforts.

“FEMA has the funds it needs for immediate response and recovery efforts for Hurricane Helene. In fact, FEMA has been able to provide over $45 million in direct financial assistance to individuals and families affected by Hurricane Helene, including over $17 million to those recovering and rebuilding in North Carolina,” Bates added.

I also wanted to point out that Republicans are still plotting ways to overturn the election. In the middle of all of this, is the sentencing of Tina Peters. Watch this on CNN where Jim Acosta shows the incredible number of voters that still believe Trump won the 2024. Check this sentencing hearing. This Judge rocks.

She was convicted in August for the Computer Breach associated with the My Pillow Goon. This is the AP story that details that.

Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election as unfounded conspiracy theories swirled, was found guilty by a jury on most charges Monday.

Peters, a one-time hero to election deniers, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.

Lindell is a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Donald Trump. His online broadcasting site has been showing a livestream of Peters’ trial and sending out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and including statements from her.

Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.

The breach Peters was charged of orchestrating heightened concerns over potential insider threats, in which rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.

It would be nice to think that future evil-doers would take the hint and fear a 9 year-sentence, but MAGA weirdos are nuts. So, this is an interesting tidbit from Springfield, Ohio. “Someone Was Arrested For Killing Geese In Springfield — But It Wasn’t A Haitian. Brian Comer, a 64-year-old white man, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course on the day Trump amplified racist lies about Haitian immigrants in the city.” Where’s fucking lying, J Dank Vance, now?

A 64-year-old white man in Springfield, Ohio, was accused of illegally hunting geese at a golf course pond as former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, were spreading racist lies that Haitian immigrants in the area were eating geese and people’s pets.

Brian Comer was charged with a misdemeanor in connection with the Sept. 10 incident. According to an arrest affidavit obtained by HuffPost, a golfer at Rocky Lakes Golf Course in Springfield reported seeing a Canada goose floating in a pond and Comer using a shotgun to shoot another bird.

Comer didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from HuffPost, but court records show he entered a guilty plea. A court spokesperson told HuffPost he paid $200 to cover a fine and court fees.

Journalist Steven Monacelli first posted about the arrest on Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.

This headline from The Guardian is frightening. “Two men have re-engineered the US electoral system in favor of Republicans. If the right strews

Two men recognized and exploited the anti-democratic loopholes within America’s rickety democracy in order to deliver Republicans victories that they could never win at the ballot box.

Now their willfully minoritarian creations threaten the very essence of a representative democracy: if Donald Trump, rightwing courts, gerrymandered state legislatures and an extreme Republican caucus in the US House of Representatives create constitutional chaos over the certification of this presidential election, two men cleared the path.

The single-minded determination of Leonard Leo built a conservative supermajority on the US supreme court and stacked lower and state courts with Republican ideologues that have pushed the nation to the right via the least accountable branch of government.

Chris Jankowski masterminded the partisan gerrymanders that tilted state legislatures and congressional delegations across the south and the purple midwest toward extreme Republicans, ended Barack Obama’s second term before it started, and rendered elections in Wisconsin and North Carolina all but meaningless over the last decade and a half.

Leo and Jankowski understood, separately, that the courts and state legislatures were undervalued and often undefended targets for a deliberate strategy aimed at capturing important levers of power that sometimes float under the radar. They could be Moneyball-ed, to borrow the term Michael Lewis used in his book about how the Oakland A’s made an end-run around large-market teams by understanding value that their opponents overlooked.

What Leo and Jankowski built separately would soon reinforce the other’s creation (with, of course, crucial assists from chief justice John Roberts), tightening the knots around meaningful elections, pushing policy to the extreme right and making it nearly impossible for voters to do anything about it.

Leo’s relentless focus on turning the judiciary Republican, first identifying and fast-tracking conservative jurists through his various roles at the Federalist Society, then coordinating the often eight-figure efforts to secure their confirmation on the US supreme court, helped conservatives to unpopular court-imposed victories on voting rights, abortion restrictions, gun access and gutting the regulatory state that would not have been won through the political process.

As I revealed in my book Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, Jankowski pioneered Redmap, short for the Redistricting Majority Project. That 2010 strategy, coordinated when he worked at the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), flipped state legislative chambers in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, Tennessee and several other states just ahead of the decennial redistricting. Then, with complete control of those processes, as well in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere, the RSLC helped draw some of the most extreme partisan gerrymanders in history, locking in huge Republican advantages in state legislatures and congressional delegations.

The supreme court’s decision in Citizens Unitedhelped make possible the $30m that funded Redmap. Redmap’s lines then proved so stout that they could hold back electoral waves. In 2012, the Republican party would easily hold the US House of Representatives even as they won 1.4m fewer votes nationwide; Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan and Wisconsin all went for Obama statewide, but the Republicans got 64 of those states’ 94 congressional seats.

Meanwhile, as Republicans drew themselves giant edges in the US House and state chambers, and packed Democrats into fewer seats they won with bigger majorities, low-turnout, base-driven Republican primaries became the key races to win, producing a new generation of lawmakers fixated on solutions for “voter fraud”.

This grim result is a US supreme court that has been captured by conservatives, which has delivered a decade of anti-democracy decisions that have advantaged the Republican party in elections, as well as an audacious plan to gerrymander Republicans into power in state legislatures nationwide and helped produce ever-more-extreme caucuses eager to adapt draconian voter restrictions in the name of stopping fraud that they cannot prove exist. The Roberts court has blessed this as well.

You better believe all these anti-democracy folks are just waiting to get Vance into the Oval Office. Trump is chaos, but Vance is single-minded, and there’s a method to his meanness. Then there is foreign interference in this election, too. The Hill reports that “Democrats suspect Netanyahu attempting to tilt Trump-Harris race.” This is written by Alexander Bolten. ( And, of course, all the end-time fundies are wild about all-out war in that area.)

Democrats increasingly suspect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to interfere in U.S. domestic politics by ignoring President Biden’s calls to negotiate a peace deal in Gaza and by confronting Hezbollah and Iran weeks before the U.S. election.

The rapidly escalating confrontation between Israel, Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s ally, Iran, has undercut Biden’s efforts to achieve peace through diplomacy.

The growing threat of a broader conflict has opened the door for former President Trump to argue that the world is “spiraling out of control” on Biden’s watch.

Biden’s polling numbers with Muslim Americans continue to deteriorate amid the mounting violence in the region, which poses a serious political liability to Vice President Harris in Michigan, a must-win state for Democrats.

Trump traveled to Michigan on Thursday to speak at a rally in Saginaw.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s relationship with even the most pro-Israel Democrats has becoming increasingly confrontational.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made headlines in March when he called Netanyahu a “major obstacle” to peace and urged Israel to hold new elections. Around that time, Biden called Israel’s offensive in Gaza “over the top.”

“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north and in Gaza,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a Tuesday interview.

I continue to write these long blog reads these days. Every day reveals more weirdness and criminal activity. I would like to note that this was a headline. “Fox News host: Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ to hold on to power.” That also was one of the shocking events that happened this week.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto said Wednesday that a newly unsealed filing in the federal Jan. 6 case revealed former President Trump “resorted to crimes” to stay in office.

“It was in this newly unsealed court paper we’re learning that former President Trump resorted to crimes to cling to power after the 2020 election. We don’t know much more than that,” Cavuto said Wednesday on Fox News.

“A lot of this stuff was going to be coming out anyway. We’re going to be getting the latest on that, and a legal look at what is being revealed here and whether it’s giving us any new information, anything we don’t know. The timing of this, of course, is little more than about five weeks before the general election,” he added.

I see more October surprises on the horizon.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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Sky Dancing

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Finally Friday Reads: Pobre Diabla

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Finally Friday Reads: The Gender Chasm

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Mostly Monday Reads: Poor, Poor Pitiful Trump

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Finally Friday Reads: There are Disasters and then there are Man-made Disasters

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