Mostly Monday Reads: Say Hello to my Little Friend Francine

“We must shut down the government to prevent this from happening.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m trying to get this post up while doing early Hurricane Prep.  I’ve located the matches for my hurricane lamps and the range.  I’m powering up the solar charger and all the little charge sticks I have left from Hurricane Ida.  I’m not excited about this since the last few days brought some drips back into my usual spot over my bed. I need to go up and caulk between the roof on the addition and the side of the old house. That’s usually what solves it.  At least the roof is relatively new.  We’re on the edge of the cone, so we could get the dirtiest part of it or miss it. It’s always something, isn’t it?

One of the worst parts of the RNC, which I refused to watch but did see clips, was the utter hypocrisy of the crowds waving ‘mass deportation’ signs while Usha Vance reaffirmed the “GOP’s “good immigrant, bad immigrant” narrative.”

“Usha Vance talking about being a daughter of immigrants as the mostly white people at the RNC hold ‘Mass Deportations Now’ signs is quite the scene,” one person tweeted.

Throughout the evening, blue and red signs peppered the convention floor, reading “Mass Deportations Now” Audible chants of “Send them back” also reverberated multiple times when politicians like Usha Vance’s husband, former president Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick JD Vance, spoke about “illegal aliens” entering the country.

The bottom line is that if you’re not indigenous, your status as an American citizen is the result of being a colonizer or an immigrant. But this kind of xenophobia has worked well in the past, so no wonder we have to endure it again.  DonOld has just hyped up a lot of people whose relatives were unwanted at various parts of our history, like the Irish, the Germans, or the Italians in recent history. This is a disturbing headline in The Guardian today.  “Trump says his plan to expel millions of immigrants will be a ‘bloody story.’ The GOP’s plans for America after a Trump victory include aggressive immigration enforcement and mass deportations.”

Donald Trump has issued yet another ominous warning about his potential second term in the Oval Office, this time promising a “bloody story” for the millions of immigrants he intends to deport.

He made the comments at a campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin on Saturday, echoing the broader Republican National Committee’s 2024 platform. The GOP’s plans for America after a Trump victory include aggressive immigration enforcement and mass deportations.

That’s when Trump alluded to the blood.

“And ya know getting them out will be a bloody story,” Trump said. “[Undocumented immigrants] should have never been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”

Though Trump did not explain what he meant by “bloody story,” he has frequently — and falsely — insisted that many undocumented workers crossing into the US illegally are criminals released from Venezuelan prisons or other violent lawbreakers.

He told his supporters that “in Colorado, they’re so brazen they’re taking over sections of the state,” which is likely a reference to a fake story claiming that a Venezuelan gang took over an apartment building in the city.

The fearmongering and dehumanizing language used by Trump to describe immigrants may be intended to prime his base for more brutal ICE crackdowns, should he succeed in November.

As was previously reported by the New York Times, Trump’s vision for America includes mass deportations that will be so extensive that “huge camps” will be needed to detain people. To execute his vision, Trump has proposed the creation of a deportation force pulled from local police and National Guard troops volunteered by “Republican-run states.”

In other words, Trump wants an army of Republican-loyal racial purity troops and concentration camps.

“Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” he told a crowd in Iowa earlier his month.

Suppressing rights: October 28, 2018

It’s hard to analyze this policy suggestion as being much more than hate and fear-mongering, racist, and inhumane. But that’s who he is and what his cult loves to hear.  He’s unlikely to get a plurality of the vote.  More of his former appointees and Republicans are announcing they will not vote for him.  The latest to announce this is Trump’s Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. That also adds to the number of national Security Advisors who warn about him.  Raw Story has an interesting take by Mark Chapman outlining how Tennesse has been gutting voting rights. “‘Master class in undermining democracy’: How Tennessee has gutted voting rights.”

Tennessee has become America’s most efficient state at stripping its citizens of voting rights, according to an analysis for The New York Times — to the point the Volunteer State has become a “master class in undermining democracy.”

The issue comes back to felony disenfranchisement laws, which became commonplace throughout Southern states following the end of slavery, since the justice system of several states for decades made it possible to essentially fabricate charges against Black Americans as needed, and then use that as pretext to eliminate voting rights.

In recent years, most states with these laws have rolled them back, making it far easier for most rehabilitated convicts to regain voting rights on completion of their sentence.

But in Tennessee, things are going backward: over 200,000 people are disenfranchised by such laws in the state, including 21 percent of Black adults. Among them is Sarah Bynum, a grandmother and local community advocate who runs her local homeowners’ association and has fought for many municipal improvements — but because she still has no right to vote, she says she feels like “I’m a foreigner in my own country.”

“The good news is, Tennessee has a path for reclaiming voting rights,” she added. “The bad news is, the process is absurdly complicated.”

It appears they may be relying heavily on voter suppression measures, given their campaign is sorely lacking on the ground in many states. This is from Hugo Lowell writing for The Guardian. “Trump’s voter turnout operation in swing states is too small, GOP worries. Republican officials see Trump’s campaign as comparable in size to a midterm election rather than a presidential.”

Republican officials are raising the alarm that Donald Trump’s campaign has invested far fewer resources for its voter turnout operation in battleground states than previous presidential election races, and attempts to bridge the gap with political action committees have come too late.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) once envisioned an extensive field operation for the 2024 election, including having about 90 staffers in the must-win state of Pennsylvania.

But the Trump campaign scrapped those plans when it took over the RNC in March, redirecting the focus on field operations to combating supposed voter fraud and pursuing a twin voter turnout strategy of relying on several political action committees and ardent Trump volunteers.

The result has been that the Trump campaign has put fewer resources into its ground game in battleground states, according to people familiar with the matter – and Republican officials have derisively said the Trump operation is more comparable in size to a midterm cycle than a presidential.

Also, the Harris campaign and the DNC are spending unprecedented levels of money to help down-ballot candidates.  They have sent nearly $25 million to help states turn votes and advertise their local candidates. Trump is siphoning money from the Republican Party and his campaign to pay his massive law bills.  He’s even asked candidates who appear with him to give to his campaign.  The Washington Post has the numbers of the Harris fund-raising and fund-sharing. Michael Scherer has the analysis.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee plan to transfer nearly $25 million to support down-ballot Democratic candidates in state and federal races this year, a significant boost to those efforts following record fundraising for her campaign this summer.

“If we want a future where every American’s rights are protected, not taken away; where the middle class is strengthened, not hollowed out; and a country where our democracy is preserved, not ripped apart, every race this November matters,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement Tuesday. “The Vice President believes that this race is about mobilizing the entire country, in races at every level, to fight for our freedoms and our economic opportunity.”

The funds include $10 million transfers to both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which are leading the efforts to win Democratic majorities next January on Capitol Hill.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which focuses on winning control of state legislative bodies, will receive $2.5 million, while the Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will each receive $1 million.

The Harris Walz policy agenda will have a much more difficult time if the Democratic Party does not hold the Senate and retake the House.  The ABC Debate is tomorrow.  It is unlikely to bring whatever little best Trump has to offer.  Kamala has dealt with big-time Criminals before, so she will be ready. But what about the press?  Will they be ready?  This is from Andrew Egger writing for The Bulwark. ” Trump Leans Into the Violence. Is our press corps up for this moment? Take the Ranting Seriously!”

Donald Trump’s rhetoric has only ever really been constrained by one thing: His lizard-brain sense of what he can get away with.

As the election draws near, he seems to believe he can get away with more than ever.

Trump’s policy promises are getting wilder and his flirtation with authoritarianism more brazen. At a rally in Wisconsin Saturday, he made a new pledge to slap a “100 percent tariff” on countries that adopt reserve currencies other than the dollar: “You leave the dollar and you’re not doing business with the United States because we are going to put a 100 percent tariff on your goods.”

“We’re gonna be a tariff nation,” he went on inanely. “It’s not going to be a cost to you, it’s going to be a cost to another country.”

He keeps promising to elevate kooks. He says he’s tapped Elon Musk to run a “government efficiency” task force. He’s left open the door to a cabinet appointment for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vax crank whose endorsement he secured last month. In Wisconsin, he extolled his plan to end the federal Department of Education and “send it back to the states so that Ron Johnson can run it.”

His diagnoses of what ails the country remain utterly untethered from reality, as with his repeated false assertions that public schools are performing transgender surgeries on minors: “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation,” he Saturday.

Most of all, though, he’s leaning into the violence. Trump, repeatedly and in open sight, is outlining two major initiatives involving large-scale, systematic arrests of groups of people.

His proposed mass deportations of millions of migrants, he warned Saturday, will be “a bloody story.” And he keeps pledging to redirect the Department of Justice against his own political enemies, calling for prominent Democrats to face “public military tribunals” and for members of the congressional committee who investigated January 6th to be indicted for treason. (For good measure, his promises to pardon January 6th rioters now explicitly include those who assaulted police during the insurrection attempt.)

On Saturday, Trump made clear that that enemies list won’t stop with national Democrats, promising “long term prison sentences” for anyone he deems to have cheated in the upcoming election in a baroque post to Truth Social:

CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.

Emmy Martin of Politico reports that the Vice President has this prediction for the debate.“Harris says Trump is ‘going to lie’ during the debate, prepares for ‘untruths.’  The vice president said she expects Trump to revert to personal attacks during their match-up on Tuesday.”

Kamala Harris expects that former President Donald Trump is “going to lie” during their debate Tuesday and is prepping for those “untruths,” she said in a prerecorded radio interview released Monday.

“There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” the vice president said on “The Rickey Smiley Morning Show.” “And we should be prepared for that. We should be prepared for the fact that he is not burdened by telling the truth.”

Harris also said she believes the former president will revert to personal attacks during the debate, pointing to the “playbook” he used with former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Such an attack might have been just what the Harris campaign had hoped for if the candidates had unmuted microphones throughout the event. However, each candidate’s mic will be muted while the other speaks on Tuesday, limiting the time they can challenge each other to their allotted turns.

This coverage of the debate is from NPR. “Harris and Trump debate in Philadelphia tomorrow night. Here’s what you need to know.”

Harris has since made up the ground Biden lost in swing state polls and now stands virtually tied with Trump. Despite a groundswell of support and reportedly record-breaking fundraising amounts, her campaign’s honeymoon phase is likely to end, especially as Trump and Republicans look to ramp up attacks.

Here’s what you need to know about this second debate of the 2024 presidential election cycle.

The event will air at 9 p.m. ET for 90 minutes from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis are slated to moderate the debate, which will be broadcast by the network and streamed on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu.

Follow NPR’s live blog for the latest updates, analysis, fact-checking and color; listen to NPR’s special coverage of the ABC News Presidential Debate Simulcast on many public radio stations.

S0, that’s it from me today.  I’m back to getting the house ready for what could be a lot of wind and rain.  I’m hoping it doesn’t develop too much since it does appear to be moving quickly.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?