Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic National Committee said Tuesday they are sending nearly $25 million to support down-ballot Democrats — an earlier investment and far more money than the top of the ticket has sent in past election years.
The funding in part reflects the Harris operation’s ability to spread money around after record fundraising over the past six weeks. But it is also a recognition of the importance of this year’s down-ballot races — which overlap with many of the swaths of the country that could decide the presidential election, and whose outcomes will substantially affect how Harris, or former President Donald Trump, will be able to govern next year.
The newly announced funds come from both the Harris campaign and the DNC, with a total of $10 million each going to committees supporting Democratic candidates for House and Senate, along with $2.5 million to a national Democratic group supporting state legislative candidates and $1 million each for groups backing Democratic gubernatorial and attorney general candidates…
JMsays
Youtube: Trump Makes FEDERAL FILING after Judge’s SWIFT REJECTION
Trump’s lawyers have refiled the attempt to move the hush money case to Federal court. This is the first step, where they ask for permission to make a case for moving the trial to federal court. It’s really a lot of the same stuff because they have to provide a reason, which is the same reasons they gave before.
It will be rejected because the reasons given don’t fit the situation. The whole reason for the odd requirement that they have to file a motion to request permission to file a motion to move the case to federal court is that the status of the case. Trump has already been found guilty but he has not been sentenced. If the defense had a good reason to move the case they already would have done so, if there was some problem with the trial it would be grounds for appeal. It’s hard to think of any situation when this part of the trial should be interrupted and the case redone. It would have to be some bad trial movie weirdness such as discovering the defendant was a federal officer but lost his memory and wasn’t aware of it during the initial trial.
It is really still all a stalling tactic. The lawyers are hoping that the judge will hold a hearing and take some time before rejecting the motion. We are getting close to the election and the lawyers just want to push the sentencing past the election.
In Reinoehl v. Penn-Harris-Madison School Corporation, (SD IN, Aug. 30, 2024), an Indiana federal district court held that teaching the theory of evolution in public schools does not violate the Establishment Clause. The court said in part:
We find that Plaintiffs have failed to allege an Establishment Clause violation here because “it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause.” McLean v. Arkansas Bd. of Ed….
…according to Plaintiffs, “evolution promotes positions taken by advocates of Atheism,” embodies “all the tenets of atheistic religious belief, and fails to follow scientific laws . . . .” Plaintiffs thus “perceive” that the teaching of evolution in public schools “conveys a governmental message that students should subscribe to Atheism.”…
A former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul was charged with acting as an agent for the Chinese government, US Attorney Breon Peace announced Tuesday.
Linda Sun, a former deputy chief of staff to Hochul, was charged with violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registrations Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling and money laundering conspiracy, according to an unsealed copy of the indictment.
Her husband and co-defendant, Chris Hu, was also charged with money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit bank fraud as well as misusing means of identification, prosecutors said…
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign to stop using the song “Hold On, I’m Coming,” by Isaac Hayes, at campaign events in response to a lawsuit from the artist’s estate.
The judge, Thomas Thrash Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, issued a temporary injunction blocking further use of the song “without proper license.” However, Judge Thrash did not grant the estate’s request to order Mr. Trump’s campaign to take down recordings of past events in which it had used the song.
[…]
Many other artists have objected to Mr. Trump’s use of their music, including at least three over the past month.
The Foo Fighters said in late August that they had not authorized the use of their song “My Hero” to welcome Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a rally stage in Arizona to endorse Mr. Trump. A representative for Abba said it also had not granted a license for use of its music. And after “My Heart Will Go On” played at the Montana rally, a post on Celine Dion’s Instagram page said that the usage was unauthorized and that the singer did not endorse it. The post added, “And really, that song?”
We have filled the previous chapter with 500 comments, and so The Infinite Thread has automatically rolled over to begin a new chapter with comment #1.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous chapter:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-6/#comment-2234671
[…] the story of a Russian soldier from Siberia who was in prison back in 2022 but was sent to Ukraine. He survived and went home in July of this year only to be listed as a deserter and sent back to Ukraine where he was assigned to a new regiment where he was chained to a tree, a practice they refer to as “hugging a birch.”
Congress is staring down a deadline this month to prevent a government shutdown, as members on both sides of the aisle have made clear a stopgap of some kind will be needed to keep the lights on.
Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to pass legislation to prevent a funding lapse. And while November’s elections could make the chances of a shutdown less likely, leaders have their work cut out for them amid deep divides on spending…
[…] “Did you accept $10 million from Egypt in 2017?”
[…] The Washington Post reported:
Democratic leaders on the House Oversight Committee released a letter Tuesday asking former president Donald Trump if he ever illegally received money from the government of Egypt, and whether money from Cairo played a role in a $10 million infusion into his 2016 run for president.
According to the Post’s reporting, two leading House Democrats — Maryland’s Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight panel, and California’s Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on its subcommittee for national security, the border and foreign affairs — are now pressing the former president for answers.
“Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president — and a current candidate for president — took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator,” the congressmen’s letter reads. “Accordingly, we request that you immediately provide the Committee with information and documents necessary to assure the Committee and the American public that you never, directly or indirectly, politically or personally, received any fund from the Egyptian president or government.”
As a practical matter, the use of the word “request” was highly relevant: Raskin and Garcia have no legal authority to compel the scandal-plagued former president to cooperate with their inquiry. In theory, their Republican counterparts could issue a subpoena and hold hearings, but in practice, GOP members have proven wholly indifferent to Trump-related controversies, regardless of merit. [True]
[…] the questions deserve answers.
[…] it was about a month ago when the Washington Post first reported that five days before Trump’s inauguration, “a manager at a bank branch in Cairo received an unusual letter from an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service. It asked the bank to ‘kindly withdraw’ nearly $10 million from the organization’s account — all in cash.”
[…] records indicate that four men ultimately arrived at the state-run National Bank of Egypt and carried away bags containing nearly $10 million in bundles of $100 bills. The money represented “what was then a sizable share of Egypt’s reserve of U.S. currency.”
[…] Where’d the money go? What did officials linked to the Egyptian intelligence service want with roughly 200 pounds of $100 bills?
According to the reporting, some FBI agents were concerned that the money was intended to go to Trump. In fact, those agents reportedly opened an investigation into whether Egypt illegally funneled $10 million in cash to the Republican for his 2016 campaign.
And while that sounded like the basis for an incredible story, there’s more.
U.S. investigators, relying on U.S. intelligence, reportedly came to believe that Egypt’s then-president wanted to give Trump $10 million to boost his 2016 candidacy. Around the same time, Trump met with Egypt’s then-president, praising him on Fox News soon after as a “fantastic guy.”
We don’t know whether Egypt gave Trump the money. We do know that a few weeks after Trump met with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi — the one who apparently wanted to give the Republican $10 million — Trump somehow produced $10 million of his own money for his campaign. It was, however, structured as a loan so Trump would get the money back.
The then-GOP candidate, of course, ultimately won the election. It was during that presidential transition period, shortly before Inauguration Day 2017, when an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service allegedly picked up 200 pounds of $100 bills from Egypt’s state-run national bank.
Soon after, Egypt’s president became one of Trump’s first foreign guests at the White House — a generous diplomatic gesture — and the then-American president ultimately released over $1 billion in military aid for Egypt.
U.S. investigators never proved that the cash from that Egyptian bank went to Trump. That would’ve required access to more of Trump’s financial records, which they didn’t get.
Why not? According to the Post, because then-Attorney General Bill Barr intervened to prevent FBI agents from subpoenaing Trump’s financial records. What’s more, Barr removed the relevant prosecutor — and her replacement — until the controversial A.G. finally arrived at a prosecutor who shut down the investigation altogether.
Trump has denied wrongdoing, […] he has the wherewithal to simply shut down all questions by releasing relevant financial records — either to the public or to congressional investigators. To date, that hasn’t happened.
A few months ago, Trump falsely accused President Joe Biden of “receiving money, for no apparent reason, from foreign countries.” Given this, it would appear that the former president shouldn’t be too surprised to receive some related questions from his recent past.
[…] It’s no secret that the latest surveys have buoyed Democratic hopes. The latest USA Today/Suffolk poll, for example, found Vice President Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump, 48% to 43%. Those figures came on the heels of the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, which found the Democratic nominee ahead among likely voters, 52% to 46%. (As always, click the links for information on the surveys’ methodology and margins of error.) [Additional embedded links are available at the main link.]
But a Politico report from the holiday weekend touched on a detail that’s worth keeping in mind as the data makes the rounds.
Because of Republicans’ advantage in the Electoral College, a race that Harris leads nationally by between 2 and 4 percentage points, on average, is the equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth, and it’s set to be decided in a smaller-than-usual number of states.
I can appreciate why this might seem counterintuitive. After all, in a normal democratic election in a normal democratic system, candidates who win the most votes prevail. In American presidential elections, it’s vastly more complicated, and candidates who receive fewer votes can — and occasionally do — take office, while candidates who receive more support end up with nothing but disappointment.
It’s one of the reasons 2024 polling that shows Harris with a modest national lead comes with caveats, including one important detail: Trump’s Electoral College advantage is so significant that small polling leads for Harris are, for all intents and purposes, deficits.
Writing for The Washington Post four years ago, Paul Waldman explained: “Turnout projections are running at around 150 million [in 2020], which would mean that … Biden could win by 3 million to 4.5 million votes and still have less than a 50 percent chance of becoming president.”
As outlandish as that sounded, (a) it was entirely accurate; and (b) it remains true in the 2024 cycle.
Indeed, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes added a couple of weeks ago, “I really feel duty bound to keep pointing out to people that the Electoral College is an insane unworkable mess and creates wild distortions in the single most important election in the country that literally don’t exist in any other election.”
Many Americans might think Electoral College/popular-vote splits are incredibly rare and not worth worrying about. After all, most of the time, the candidate backed by the most voters actually becomes president.
But it’s not quite that simple. In fact, in American history, the candidate who received less public support was declared the winner in five presidential elections, and two of the five instances have happened in the 21st century.
It’s precisely why Harris isn’t popping any champagne in response to polls showing her with modest leads: Even if the surveys are largely accurate, our system makes it easier for Republicans to win the White House, even when they receive fewer votes.
The Democratic candidate will need to try to run up the score, not just to deliver a historic rebuke to a corrupt rival, but to ensure her inauguration.
I remember one prominent political figure declaring not too long ago, “The Electoral College is a disaster for a democracy.” It’s hardly an unreasonable point.
Two weeks after selecting Sen. JD Vance as his running mate, former president Donald Trump was asked whether or not Vance would be ready to step into the role of president if necessary. By then, the American people had already had a chance to see Vance, and Trump didn’t bother to defend him. Instead, he went right to what he considered important.
“Historically, the vice president does not have any impact,” said Trump. “I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion … then, that dies down and it’s all about the presidential pick.”
Except that’s not true. A new poll in the swing state of Michigan shows that the unpopular Vance is costing Trump votes. Meanwhile, that same poll shows that Gov. Tim Walz is a boost to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
If the choice of a running mate is the first big decision any candidate must make, Trump screwed up. Bigly.
As the Detroit Free Press reports, in the new poll from EPIC-MRA 28% of voters said that Harris’ selection of Walz made them more likely to vote for her. Additionally, 15% said Walz being on the ticket made them less likely to support Harris, giving Walz a net positive effect of 13%.
Meanwhile, only 14% of voters said that Trump’s selection of Vance made them more likely to support the Republican ticket, while 19% said Vance made them less likely to back Trump. Vance has a negative 5% net effect.
That would seem to make the strategy of sending Vance out to do events on his own, while Trump sits at Mar-a-Lago and fantasizes about President Joe Biden, somewhat … questionable. However, as Axios reports, that’s just what Trump’s campaign is doing. Since Trump is keeping a sparse schedule and isn’t doing another campaign rally until Saturday, someone has to do the work. Even if that someone is Vance.
Meanwhile, the number of clips that continue to resurface showing Vance’s obsession with women who don’t have biological children appears to be endless. [videos at the link]
[…] He’s not just bad, he’s epically bad. Bad enough that “Vance” might as well be a synonym for a poorly considered, deeply unwise decision.
Trump really vanced his choice of running mate.
However, Vance is an effective surrogate for Trump in one way. A surprising New York Times fact-check of what Vance is saying as he fills in for his absentee boss shows that the Republican VP candidate is holding up his side when it comes to lying about everything.
Whether it’s immigration, trade, or transportation, if Vance is talking about it, he’s lying.
For example, when talking about electric vehicles, Vance told a Philadelphia crowd that, “Kamala Harris wants to further entrench the E.V. mandate that sends your tax dollars to China instead of buying American-made cars from American workers.”
There is no “E.V. mandate.” Tax rebates on EVs go to vehicles produced by American workers. And Biden/Harris imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese vehicles in 2024 to keep them completely out of the U.S. market. This seems like something Trump and Vance might support, if they stopped lying long enough to notice. [That’s a well-done factcheck!]
Vance is a surrogate for Trump, right down to his disconnection from ordinary Americans and inability to connect to people outside his bubble. [video at the link]
And Walz is likewise a fitting surrogate for Harris and her effort to reach out to all Americans. [video at the link]
That difference is reflected in the Michigan poll. Trump may be denying that Vance has any effect now, but after November, he’ll be using him as an excuse.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ latest campaign ad highlights the contrast between Harris’ economic agenda and Trump’s tax-breaks-for-the-rich approach.
“We all know costs are too high,” says the narrator in the ad, released on Tuesday. “But while corporations are gouging families, Trump is focused on giving them tax cuts. But Kamala Harris is focused on you.”
The ad, titled “Focused,” then leans into Harris’ success as a prosecutor in California as well as the actions she plans to take to reduce food and housing costs. “Focused” is the fourth major campaign ad since the Democratic National Convention. The previous three articulated Harris’ goals of building out the middle class, and just about all of them address Americans’ desire to see corporations held accountable for shady practices that punish everyday Americans.
[video at the link]
“Focused” is part of a $370 million ad reservation that will run from now to Election Day, according to a statement from the Harris campaign. And it’s one more example of her campaign—which is outspending the Trump campaign almost 2 to 1 in ads—bringing attention to the convicted felon’s lack of policy prescriptions. Across the ads, the evolution from philosophy to action is clearly deliberate.
With the first debate a week away, there is speculation that the Harris campaign will release the full details of its economic agenda shortly before the two presidential candidates meet. Ads like “Focused” are sure to reinforce that message through and after the debate.
In the wake of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s exit from his failed independent bid for president, Republicans were giddy at his endorsement, and that (re)endorsement of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard a few days later. In their minds, it was but the beginning of a flood of Democratic defections to Donald Trump.
That never happened. But Republicans sure are defecting to the Democratic ticket!
It’s hard to understate just how excited conservatives were.
“We now have a trio of Power Rangers who can swoop right into the middle of the rival party and convince traditional Democrats that it’s OK to leave a party that left them,” a senior Trump adviser told conservative outlet Just the News, founded by former Washington Examiner editor John Solomon, back on Aug. 24. The quote was so ridiculous, that this “senior Trump adviser” was too embarrassed to put his name on it.
The third “Power Ranger” is Elon Musk, who is an independent.
“I think that the Trump people should package Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr, together, and they would—as joint former Democrat witnesses about the corruption of the system—be devastating,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast, apparently with a straight face. […]
In fact, their endorsements only serve to remind voters of how weird and creepy Republicans are.
Kennedy was funded by right-wing donors in order to take votes from the Democratic ticket, and was so batshit crazy that he repelled weirded-out Democrats and ended up taking votes from the Republican ticket. He would’ve stayed in if any Democrats were actually interested in what he was selling.
And to drive the point home, as soon as he dropped out, he signed on to one of the dumbest conspiracy theories in history—the one about chemtrails. [video at the link]
[…] Musk, long lost to the fever swamps of the right, isn’t attracting any Democrats anytime soon. On Sunday, Musk tweeted “interesting observation” at an incel posting that women and “low T men” shouldn’t be allowed to vote. “Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical people (hey autists!) are actually free to parse new information with an objective ‘is this true?’ filter,” the weirdo wrote. “This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think.”
Not really the sort of thing any campaign should be associating with, even if this is the sort of material Sen. JD Vance might embrace.
Gabbard [is] supposedly helping Trump with debate prep, playing the role of Vice President Kamala Harris. […] nothing in her history suggests she’ll attract traditional Democrats. She lost the plot a long time ago. [Post by Mitt Romney is available at the link.]
[…] what about all the Republicans who are abandoning Trump in droves?
Not a single former Republican president (George W. Bush), former vice president (Mike Pence, Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle), or presidential nominee (Mitt Romney) has endorsed Trump. Two of the four living Republican ex-House Speakers, Paul Ryan and John Boehner, have moved on from Trump. (He’s still got Gingrich and Kevin McCarthy.)
Of the 44 former Trump cabinet members, only four have publicly endorsed him.
Meanwhile, in addition to fully consolidating her own party, Harris is also cleaning up with Republican endorsements. So far, she has garnered:
– More than 200 former Republican staffers.
– Four former Republican governors.
– 16 former Republican House members.
– 12 former Republican White House lawyers who served under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
– Former Rep. Liz Cheney, soon.
[…] It’s hard to brag about kooky Gabbard and Kennedy when hundreds of Republicans are herding over to the Democratic tent.
The former Wyoming congresswoman, Liz Cheney, the most prominent Republican critic of Donald J. Trump, did not speak at Democrats’ convention, calculating that she could have more impact later in the race.
[…] Ms. Cheney, who has repeatedly pledged to do whatever it takes to stop Mr. Trump from holding office again, has yet to endorse Ms. Harris despite repeated outreach from the vice president’s campaign.
Instead, on the eve of the convention, she posted a selfie with her daughter from a Taylor Swift concert in London. (When she referred to Ms. Swift, who has yet to endorse any candidate but backed President Biden and Ms. Harris in 2020, as a “national treasure” this year, Mr. Trump responded by saying that “Liz has gone full democrat.”)
In reality, Ms. Cheney has been virtually silent since Ms. Harris became the Democratic nominee last month, except to say that Mr. Biden’s decision to step aside was “courageous.” As the campaign has started a “Republicans for Harris” organizing program with a full-time national engagement director and a seven-figure ad buy targeting anti-Trump Republicans and swing voters, she has been conspicuously absent from its rollout of dozens of new G.O.P. endorsements.
[…] That is not expected to be the case for much longer. Ms. Cheney, who continues to describe Mr. Trump as “unstable” and “depraved,” has decided that September will be her moment to weigh in, according to three people familiar with her thinking, when early voting has begun and her voice will not be lost in a sea of back-to-back convention speeches.
[…] Democrats and other Republicans committed to defeating Mr. Trump view Ms. Cheney as a unique figure who can help with a critical slice of the electorate that the campaign is betting big on. Campaign officials note that almost one million voters in swing states cast ballots against Mr. Trump in the Republican primary, and could be ripe for the taking for Ms. Harris.
[…] in a series of upcoming appearances in key states, Ms. Cheney plans to make plain the practical implications of what a second Trump term would look like, talking with specificity about his abuse of the intelligence community and his attempt to corrupt the Justice Department.
[…] Since Ms. Cheney renounced Mr. Trump for his role in instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, she has been blaring a warning siren about what would happen if Mr. Trump won the White House again. She was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him and one of two who served on the committee that investigated the attack. […]
Zeeshan Aleem also reminds us, this is not an isolated instance:
The incoherence of the Potterville speech is just one of countless examples. During a recent event in Wisconsin, Trump’s response to a question from the audience about reducing inflation entailed darting from his belief that Americans don’t eat bacon any more to his assertion that wind energy doesn’t work. During remarks this spring, he stumbled from an attack on Biden’s age into a nonsensical reverie about the actor Cary Grant, which then spun off into an anecdote about a conversation he had with Michael Jackson. Compared even to his first term in office, Trump’s inability to focus on one train of thought appears to be growing significantly worse.
President Biden is holding an event Tuesday to introduce a media series from the White House on its Investing in America agenda, which the administration launched earlier this year as a unifying theme for various initiatives to promote U.S. industries and stimulate the economy.
The White House has promoted the initiative as a means for onshoring businesses that have become reliant upon imports, as well as a way to finance various local infrastructure projects for transportation, shipping and environmental protection.
“For now, we need it,” he told NBC News in an exclusive interview, his first one-on-one since Kyiv took control of 500 square miles of Russian territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News on Tuesday that Kyiv is planning to indefinitely hold Russian territories it seized in a surprise incursion last month as it tries to force President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
“We don’t need their land. […],” he said during his first one-on-one interview since Ukraine’s high-stakes incursion into Russia.
Ukraine will “hold” the territory as it is integral to his “victory plan” to end the the war, Zelenskyy said, adding he will present the proposal to international partners like the United States.
“For now, we need it,” he said of the territory Ukraine is now holding in Russia.
Nearly a month ago, Ukrainian troops swept into Russia’s Kursk region in a secret operation that has challenged the status quo of the two-and-a-half-year-old war. Kyiv now claims it controls nearly 500 square miles of Russian territory and has taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war.
[…] Zelenskyy said he couldn’t discuss whether Ukraine planned to try to seize more Russian territory.
[…] “With all respect, I can’t speak about it. I think the success is very close to surprise.”
Zelenskyy also told NBC News that the Biden administration was not aware of plans to cross over into Russia ahead of time as it was a closely guarded secret even inside Ukraine.
Washington has repeatedly said it was not in on Kyiv’s plans for Kursk.
“Yes, we did not inform anyone. And it’s not the question of lack of trust,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Kyiv’s counteroffensive last summer failed in many ways because of how much it was advertised and talked about, which gave Russians a chance to prepare.
[…] “I shrunk to the maximum the circle of people who knew about this operation,” Zelenskyy added. “I think it was one of the reasons why it was successful.”
The Kremlin has tried to maintain a semblance of control in the face of the incursion, saying Kyiv’s forces are suffering from unusually heavy losses. So far, though, Russia has failed to push the Ukrainians out of its territory.
Despite what is widely seen as Ukraine’s success in Russia, it continues to lose ground in its east, where the Kremlin’s forces are inching closer to taking the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk and neighboring Toretsk in the Donetsk region.
One of the goals of the incursion, Zelenskyy said, was to force Moscow to pull troops from across the 600-mile front line in Ukraine, in particular in the east. And while he said Russia has diverted 60,000 troops to Kursk from Ukraine, Pokrovsk has not seen a big drop.
[…] more than 30 months since his invasion, Moscow still controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, having illegally annexed large portions of it. Ukrainian cities and villages get bombarded nearly daily, with the latest strike on the central city of Poltava on Tuesday claiming at least 51 lives.
With war fatigue growing amid Ukraine’s struggle to recruit enough manpower to sustain the war, talk of peace negotiations has grown.
But Ukraine has insisted it only wants to take part in them from a position of power, which holding Russian territory could help give it. A second peace summit is expected to be held in November — the first was in Switzerland in June — and Zelenskyy told NBC News that representatives from Russia have to be present.
“We understand that without the Russian side, ending this war diplomatically is very difficult,” he said.
Multiple Russian officials have already said peace negotiations were impossible after Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk. [Russians will always be looking for any excuse. Not credible.]
Richard Engel and Gabe Joselow reported from Kyiv, and Yuliya Talmazan from London.
The share price of Trump Media, whose majority shareholder is Donald Trump, fell Tuesday to the lowest level since the company began public trading in March following a merger.
DJT shares dropped to $17.72 per share Tuesday afternoon before recovering somewhat to end the day at $18.08. The stock’s prior low was set on Aug. 28, when it hit $19.38 per share. The stock price is down roughly 77% from its high of $79.38 per share on March 26, following Trump Media’s merger with a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company.
Trump Media’s single-day slide of more than 7% accompanied a broader market dip on Tuesday, especially for tech companies. The Nasdaq fell more than 3%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 1.5% and the S&P 500 slid more than 2%.
But market trends may only partially explain the slide in Trump Media’s share price.
That’s because the company’s stock typically trades more like a meme stock than a traditional investment. It also rises and falls with the political fortunes of the Republican presidential nominee.
[…] Trump Media’s latest drop comes just weeks before Trump, who owns almost 59% of DJT’s outstanding shares, and other company executives can cash in on the falling stock. Trump’s stake was worth over $2 billion as of Tuesday.
Trump and other major stockholders are currently prohibited from selling their shares due to a “lockup agreement,” which is set to expire on Sept. 25. But that deadline could get moved up to as early as Sept. 20, if the stock price remains above $12 per share for 20 trading days within the 30-trading-day period that started last Friday.
Trump has not signaled an intention to sell, but speculation has swirled that his various campaign expenses and lawsuit-related financial woes could weigh on his decision.
If Trump does take the payday, investors’ doubts about the company could intensify, potentially triggering a broader selloff of the stock.
Reginald Selkirk @ 9
The consequences of a shutdown will be awful, but will remind voters of how useless the House majority has been just a few weeks before election. As the Republicans are already in a panic, they will not want that. But I am assuming they make logical decisions which we already have seen is not correct.
Samsung has recalled hundreds of thousands of electric ranges used for stovetops in Canada because they’re a fire hazard.
In a recall notice posted this week, Health Canada said the slide-in ranges have front-mounted knobs that humans or pets can activate by accident if they bump into them. Since people might not realize the stovetop is running, the stoves create the risk for a fire…
And he did something else: He prodded me on how inconsistent I was as an atheist who nonetheless believed in right and wrong as objective, universal categories. Defenseless, I decided to take a seminar on meta-ethics. After all, atheists had been developing ethical systems for 200-some years. In what I now see as providential, my atheist professor assigned a paper by C. S. Lewis that resolved the Euthyphro dilemma, declaring, “God is not merely good, but goodness; goodness is not merely divine, but God.”
It amazes me that anyone finds Lewis to be convincing. Word games are not convincing arguments.
Joseph also pushed me on the origins of the universe. I had always believed in the Big Bang. But I was blissfully unaware that the man who first proposed it, Georges Lemaître, was a Catholic priest. And I’d happily ignored the rabbit trail of a problem of what caused the Big Bang, and what caused that cause, and so on.
“And then, when I got to God, I once again happily ignored the rabbit trail of causes. Because I are an intelekshal.”
So, what did the News Corp papers have to say about it all? (The threat to the Great barrier Reef and worsening bleaching -ed) Not much.
There was nothing in its big-city tabloids in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, only tiny stories in the Courier-Mail, Cairns Post and Gold Coast Bulletin, despite the reef being so vital to Queensland tourism.
And nothing at all in The Australian.
So, do the folks at News Corp not care that our reef is in danger?
Well, not exactly.
But they prefer not to believe it because that would mean doing more about global warming.
As they go on to relate there, the Murdoch empire in Oz then cherry-picks and exploits the one and seemingly only scientist who disagrees with the Climate consensus so the typical but still well done segment.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Oklahoma’s emergency appeal seeking to restore a $4.5 million grant for family planning services in an ongoing dispute over the state’s refusal to refer pregnant women to a nationwide hotline that provides information about abortion and other options.
The brief order did not detail the court’s reasoning, as is typical, but says three justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — would have sided with Oklahoma.
Lower courts had ruled that the federal Health and Human Services Department’s decision to cut off Oklahoma from the funds did not violate federal law…
StevoRsays
Oh & they’ve had a another good segment on billionaire and notorious portrait censorer Gina Rhinehart & her attempted anti-woke influencing too :
Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart gets a week of unfettered airtime and glowing editorial coverage in the Murdoch media as part of her sponsorship of News Corp’s ‘Bush Summit’
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic candidate for vice president, used Labor Day to remind voters of how Donald Trump sees common workers versus his wealthy friends.
This guy has made it clear how he stands. He’s sitting down at Mar-a-Lago after he got elected president, and this was his exact quote, he’s talking to a bunch of folks at Mar-a-Lago: ‘You’re rich as hell, and we’re gonna give you a tax cut.’ At the same time, he was telling workers they get paid too much already. That’s who this guy is.”
Trump made the tax-cut promise to “rich as hell” donors at a 2023 event for extremist North Carolina GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson — while declaring in 2015 that “our wages are too high.”
His administration also opposed a minimum wage hike in 2019, although he said in 2020 he would “consider it to an extent” if reelected.
Walz summed it up:
“You tell me who in Wisconsin is sitting around saying, ‘damn, I wish they’d give billionaires tax cuts and screw me over. Damn, I wish they’d take my health care away. I wish they’d underfund my public school. I wish they would make my job more difficult and more dangerous. And then at the end of the day I wish they’d make me work ‘til I’m 75 years old.’”
“No one’s saying that.. No one’s asking for that agenda. What they’re asking for is to be treated fairly, with dignity.”
Elon Musk’s satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked Tuesday and said it will comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice’s order to block the billionaire’s social media platform, X.
Starlink said in a statement posted on X that it will heed Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ order despite him having frozen the company’s assets. Previously, it informally told the telecommunications regulator that it would not comply until de Moraes reversed course.
“Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” the company statement said. “We continue to pursue all legal avenues, as are others who agree that @alexandre’s recent order violate the Brazilian constitution.” …
The son of the late Republican Senator John McCain has criticized Donald Trump for his campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery, and announced he plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November.
1st Lt. Jimmy McCain, a 17-year military veteran, told CNN that he changed his voter registration weeks ago from independent to Democrat, and called Trump’s cemetery visit a “violation.”
“It just blows me away,” McCain said. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice” whether they wanted to be in Trump’s campaign video or photographs.
“I just think that for anyone who’s done a lot of time in their uniform, they just understand that inherently—that it’s not about you there. It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country,” McCain added.
McCain also told CNN that he “would get involved in any way I could” to help Harris’s campaign, making him the first McCain family member to leave the Republican Party, even as his mother, Cindy, and sister Meghan have criticized Trump. (In response to her brother’s interview, Meghan McCain said she isn’t voting for Harris or Trump.) …
Ukraine has developed a balloon-carried electronic surveillance system designed to detect enemy drone operators, which can then be targeted, offering a more comprehensive solution than tackling individual drones. While the current status of the system, known as Aero Azimuth, is unclear, its unveiling points to a resurgence in interest in elevated sensors mounted on aerostats…
GOP Senate nominee Larry Hogan released a campaign ad Tuesday featuring scenes of “horror” from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and claiming he was an “early critic” of former President Donald Trump.
In the TV spot, a narrator calls Maryland’s former two-term governor “one of the few Republicans who never caved” to Trump, set against headlines calling Hogan an “un-Trump Republican” and “the face” of the anti-Trump GOP…
Yes, he could be “the face” of the anti-Trump GOP, because all the other never-trumpers have already been driven from office. Good luck with trying to become the one exception.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Reginald Selkirk @ 24:
(Jordan Monge writing in 2013, later Jordan Gandhi)
I was an atheist who nonetheless believed in right and wrong as objective, universal categories.
Riiight.
the man who first proposed [the Big Bang], Georges Lemaître, was a Catholic priest
Lemaître was Belgian. Did she emigrate to that culture for its deep insight? No.
In relation to Catholic teaching on the origin of the Universe, Lemaître viewed his theory as neutral with neither a connection nor a contradiction of the Faith; as a devoted Catholic priest, Lemaître was opposed to mixing science with religion
I had begun to read through the Bible and was confronted by my sin. I was painfully arrogant and prone to fits of rage. I was unforgiving and unwaveringly selfish. […] I could do nothing to right these wrongs. The Cross no longer looked merely like a symbol of love, but like the answer to an incurable need. […] I longed for the Bible to be true
Riiight. tldr, eh. She might’ve liked Samson.
looked up Christian rebuttals to apparent contradictions. But nothing compared to the rich tradition of Christian intellect.
I pray for forgiveness for the Republican Party to which I belong […] Help our politicians to spend their power for good and not for selfish gain. […] Father, help us to elect a candidate of decency and respect
Sadly no follow-up. That’s the last I found from her.
JMsays
Youtube: Federal Judge ISSUES RAPID ORDER to Trump Motion
The federal judge has already rejected Trump’s attempt to move his case to federal court. No hearing and no checking with the DA. The federal judge basically said that all of the issues fall into two types. The first group are things that the judge already rejected when he rejected Trump’s last attempt to move the case, nothing in the Supreme Court immunity ruling changes that. The rest could be grounds to appeal the case in NY but are not grounds to move the case to federal court. Without any issues to consider there is no reason to hold any hearings or get any opinions, motion denied. That he did this without even pretending to take any time is fairly insulting and means he knew what the lawyers were up to.
When Israel’s largest union began a strike on Monday, building on the largest anti-government protests since the start of the war in Gaza, the group hoped to persuade the government to swiftly agree to a cease-fire. Within hours, its effort fizzled. … Despite one of the biggest displays of wartime dissent in Israel’s history, an emotionally potent moment failed to evolve into a political turning point.
Airport still open and operating almost normally, etc.
NBC News:
Hamas’ armed wing said on Monday that since June the group has been operating under new instructions on how to handle hostages should Israeli forces approach their locations in Gaza. The announcement comes days after the Israeli military recovered the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying they had been shot dead by their captors as Israeli forces got close.
Abu Ubaida, spokesperson for Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades, did not provide details on what the instructions were. He said his group holds Israel responsible for the hostages’ deaths.
The new instructions, Ubaida said, were given to guards of hostages after a rescue operation by Israel in June. At that time, Israeli forces freed four hostages in a raid in which dozens of Palestinians, including women and children, were killed.
“Netanyahu’s insistence to free prisoners through military pressure, instead of sealing a deal, means they will be returned to their families in shrouds. Their families must choose whether they want them dead or alive,” he said.
Later on Monday, the Hamas armed wing published a pre-recorded video of one of the six dead hostages. It was unclear when the video was made.
Netanyahu said in a news conference on Monday that the hostages had been shot in the back of the head, and promised that Hamas would pay a heavy price.
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Netanyahu’s accusations against Hamas were an attempt to escape responsibility for their deaths.
“Netanyahu killed the six prisoners and he is determined to kill the remaining ones. The Israelis should choose between Netanyahu or the deal,” Abu Zuhri said. […]
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday pleaded with mainstream parties to not change course and decide to enter a coalition with the first far-right party to come first in a state legislature election since the Nazis held power 80 years ago.
Anti-abortion activists have been attacking mifepristone for decades. That mission has resulted in unnecessary restrictions on the abortion drug, renewed state legislative pushes to make it less accessible and a battery of lawsuits to get it yanked from the market altogether.
Misoprostol, the drug often prescribed with mifepristone for abortions, has been relatively unscathed. Due to its many uses outside of the abortion procedure, it’s remained much more readily available. Some doctors have already begun planning to carry out misoprostol-only abortions (still very effective, but with additional side effects) due to the constant threat to mifepristone’s legality.
Accordingly, the anti-abortion movement has shifted its focus. In May, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed legislation reclassifying mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV controlled dangerous substances, despite outcry from the medical community. The change will go into effect on October 1.
Misoprostol — a lynchpin of reproductive care, from miscarriage to postpartum treatment, and given to patients at risk of hemorrhaging — is already being removed from emergency care carts at local hospitals, according to the Louisiana Illuminator.
Doctors [emphasized] the difference seconds make when a patient is losing blood, that needing to stop treatment to jump through procedural hoops to get the medication could mean life or death. One provider raised the additional barriers rural or remote hospitals without in-house pharmacies will face in obtaining misoprostol, particularly on nights and weekends.
Louisiana overall has dismal maternal mortality rates in a country already getting routed on that measure compared to peer nations.
[…] Over 200 doctors signed a letter exhorting Landry not to sign the law rescheduling mifepristone and misoprostol. He ignored them. The anti-abortion movement is willing to sacrifice women’s lives and their freedom to make its regime absolute. Louisianan women — many of whom will have just finished giving birth, the professed ideal of politicians like Landry — will unwillingly pay for that war effort with their blood.
A fundraising event for defendants of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol scheduled to take place at former President Trump’s golf club in New Jersey this week has been postponed indefinitely.
[…] In an August statement to Fox Business, event organizer L.J. Fino said the event was postponed due to “scheduling conflicts of invited guest speakers.”
The event invited Trump to speak, though he was not expected to attend.
Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and Trump attorney who has dealt with his own legal battles regarding the 2020 presidential election, was confirmed to speak at the event.
Conservative comedian Anthony Raimondi confirmed to Fox Business that he plans to attend the event.
The funds raised at the event will provide the Jan. 6 defendants with “much-needed assistance” as they face “significant challenges.”
The event also intends to “honor and celebrate” 20 defendants who contributed to the “powerful ‘Justice For All’ song.”
[…] Tickets ranged from $1,500 per person for general admission to $50,000 for a “platinum” 12-person table, NBC News reported.
Content warning: This article contains examples of bigoted rhetoric.
Former President Donald Trump promoted a social media account that wrote that “the election must be too big to rig” above an image of a flag with the words “Trump or Communism.”
The account Trump promoted is filled with extremist content, including claims that “Jews have been capitalizing on [offensive N-word used to demean black people] for thousands of years”; “Adolf Hitler was right”; and the Holocaust was “the Holohoax. 6 Million never happened.”
The account also wrote: “I’m a proud White Nationalist” and “Make Anti-Semitism Great Again.”
Trump’s behavior isn’t an aberration: Media Matters also recently reported that Trump has frequently promoted a Truth Social account that’s shared material calling for Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Tim Walz, and others to be killed.
On August 24, Trump shared the following on his Truth Social account: [screengrab image at the link]
There is nothing subtle about the X account that Trump promoted: It is blatantly white nationalist and antisemitic, including writing numerous posts that deny the Holocaust and portray Adolf Hitler as a hero. Here are several examples:
TheRISEofROD wrote in April 2023: “Adolf Hitler was right.”
TheRISEofROD wrote in April 2024: “Hitler didn’t kill 6 million jews, but Stalin did kill 50 million Christians.”
TheRISEofROD promoted a pro-Hitler video in July 2024.
TheRISEofROD wrote in April 2023 that it is “my 1st Amendment right to call out the Holohoax. 6 Million never happened.” The account has called the Holocaust a hoax in other instances.
TheRISEofROD wrote in August 2024: “Jews have been capitalizing on [offensive N-word used to demean black people] for thousands of years.” The account also wrote that month: “Shut the fuck up, [offensive N-word used to demean black people].”
TheRISEofROD wrote in August 2024: “Bin Laden was a CIA/MOSSAD asset so he knew exactly what was going on. Jews did 9/11 and he was the patsy.”
TheRISEofROD wrote in August 2024: “The Kalergi Plan has been in action for decades to replace Whites in our countries. Mass deportations must happen to stop and reverse the evil jew scheme.”
TheRISEofROD wrote in August 2024: “Make Anti-Semitism Great Again.”
TheRISEofROD wrote in June 2024: “If you’re White and not a full blown patriotic White Nationalist at this stage in the Great Awakening then you’re a [offensive NFword used to demean gay men].”
TheRISEofROD wrote in February 2024: “I’m a proud White Nationalist.”
Here are other posts from the Trump-promoted account: [Examples at the link]
can’t even get bulk discounts right. 12 people getting separate tickets would be $18,000
It’s bonus crap. There’s a flyer image with prices.
“General admission” = $1,500. A “VIP” ticket = $2,500.
A “VIP” table for 12 = $30,000. Same VIP perks but you claim the table?
A “VIP Platinum” table for 12 = $50,000. VIP Platinum is like regular VIP plus a plaque and a speaker sits at your table.
@41: Second link (right at the bottom) doesn’t work.
I think that was meant to be plain text. The link above it was likely composed with a typoed closing tag, resulting in this weird structure as the blog tried to clean it up.
<p><a href=”MediaMattersUrl”>The word “Link”</a><a></a></p>
<a></a>
<p><a>Final line of text</a></p>
That’s a technically valid with every tag closed and nested, but humans wouldn’t manually write that. Empty “a” tags are unclickable and invisible links.
As Trump increasingly, deceitfully embraces pro-choice rhetoric for political gain, Live Action’s Lila Rose and other conservative, anti-abortion voices are turning on him…
They also argued a Sept. 18 sentencing, about seven weeks before Election Day, would be election interference. In a court filing last week, they raised the specter that Trump could be sent to jail just as early voting is getting underway…
Not sentencing would also be election interference. So the correct course of action is to do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because it is convenient or inconvenient for a particularly whiney crybaby.
Christmas will start next month in Venezuela, authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro has decreed – even as thousands of Venezuelans look set to pass the holidays behind bars amid his government’s crackdown on political unrest.
“September smells like Christmas!” Maduro said in his weekly television show on Monday, to the apparent delight of his audience.
“This year and to honor you all, to thank you all, I am going to decree the beginning of Christmas on October 1. Christmas arrived for everyone, in peace, joy and security!” he said…
Donald Trump is pressuring Republicans to shut down the government at the end of this month if Congress doesn’t pass a GOP-backed proposal to establish new election rules nationwide…
Attorney John Deaton won a three-way Republican primary to face off against incumbent U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who ran unopposed in Tuesday’s Massachusetts primary.
Deaton, a former U.S. Marine and cryptocurrency attorney who was born in Detroit, announced earlier this year that he would vie for the chance to challenge Warren in November as she runs for her third term in office. He defeated fellow Republicans industrial engineer Bob Antonellis and Quincy City Council President Ian Cain.
Deaton said in a statement that he was humbled by the support from voters…
Let’s hope he enjoys being humbled. It’s going to happen again in November.
During a 2023 deployment, senior enlisted leaders aboard the Navy ship USS Manchester secretly installed a Starlink Wi-Fi network, allowing them exclusive internet access in violation of Navy regulations. “Unauthorized Wi-Fi systems like the one [then-Command Senior Chief Grisel Marrero] set up are a massive no-no for a deployed Navy ship, and Marrero’s crime occurred as the ship was deploying to the West Pacific, where such security concerns become even more paramount among heightened tensions with the Chinese,” reports Navy Times. From the report: …
[…] Team Trump recently released a campaign ad, for example, that said Harris “literally unleashed the IRS to harass workers who receive tips.” That never happened. Team Trump then released another ad with several claims related to the vice president and the U.S./Mexico border, none of which is accurate.
The Republican nominee has told voters that Harris is a “communist.” He’s said Harris “killed“ American troops. He’s insisted that the Democratic nominee is trying to ban gas stoves. Each of these lines of attack are utterly bonkers.
But Trump has been especially interested of late in the work the vice president did while she was still a student. At a conservative event late last week, the GOP candidate declared:
“She also said, ‘I worked at McDonald’s.’ Turned out she didn’t work at McDonald’s. Anybody see that? After an exhaustive study that took about 20 minutes, they found out she never worked there. So, you know, a lot of fake stuff going on.”
His audience apparently found this amusing, as a video clip showed. [video at the link]
A day later, he published an item to his social media platform that read, “Kamala said she worked at McDonalds — She never did. Lie!” Two days later, Trump once again returned to the subject, insisting that Harris “never worked at McDonalds.”
Harris really did work at McDonalds. She didn’t include this on her resume when she sought a job at the Alameda County district attorney’s office in 1987 because it didn’t seem especially relevant to the position, but it doesn’t change the fact that she made French fries and worked a register, just like plenty of other young people nationwide.
Or put another way, Trump lied about Harris lying.
But stepping back, the broader circumstances should probably give Republicans pause. The Democratic nominee has been involved in public service for decades, working as a prosecutor, a state attorney general, a U.S. senator, and a vice president. If the GOP candidate and his team are eager to scrutinize her record, there should be plenty of accurate things to choose from.
So why is it that Trump has relied so heavily on made-up nonsense? […]
As JD Vance’s record of condemning Americans without children gets worse, a question hangs overhead: Did Team Trump actually vet this guy?
It’s been a real challenge trying to keep up with Sen. JD Vance’s lengthy rhetorical record of condemning Americans without children. NBC News added to the outlandish list last week, but remarkably, the list keeps growing.
Over Labor Day weekend, for example, Media Matters uncovered a 2021 podcast interview in which the future Republican vice presidential nominee targeted people “who can’t have kids” because they “passed the biological period when it was possible” as “miserable” people who pursue “racial or gender equity” to give “their life meaning.”
This week, Media Matters added to the list again, highlighting a 2021 Newsmax segment in which Vance argued that the United States had become a “dangerous place to live” because of childless elites.
But as my MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim explained, “new reporting on Vance’s stamp of approval for a 2017 document from the Heritage Foundation could lead to more backlash.”
The document in question is the “Index of Culture and Opportunity” put together by the Heritage Foundation to analyze cultural and economic trends from a conservative perspective. Vance … wrote an introduction for the report, praising it for “shed[ding] needed light on our country’s most difficult and intractable problems.” And as The New York Times has pointed out, he was also the keynote speaker at the release of the report.
That same New York Times report added that the Heritage Foundation document “proposed a sweeping conservative agenda to restrict sexual and reproductive freedoms and remake American families.”
In a series of 29 separate essays, conservative commentators, policy experts, community leaders and Christian clergy members opposed the spread of in vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments, describing those treatments as harmful to women. They praised the rapidly expanding number of state laws restricting abortion rights and access, saying that the procedure should become “unthinkable” in America. And they cited hunger as a “great motivation” for Americans to find work.
[…] the fact that Vance volunteered to champion the “Index of Culture and Opportunity” adds a fresh chapter to a story about the Ohio Republican’s rather radical worldview.
It also brings up a related question that’s too often overlooked: Did Team Trump actually vet the former president’s new running mate?
In theory, the Trump campaign’s research team was responsible for combing through potential vice presidential nominees’ backgrounds, looking for potential trouble areas. In practice, that leads to a couple of possibilities.
The first is that Team Trump didn’t invest much time or effort into examining Vance’s far-right ideas related to American families. The second is that Team Trump conducted a thorough vetting process, learned about Vance’s record — and decided not to care.
.@JoeNBC: “The campaign has said internally, they can’t make people like Donald Trump. So their goal is to make people hate Kamala Harris. And if they can’t get Americans to hate Kamala Harris, then they understand she will win.”
Fact check: GOP sends ‘heroin and hookers’ mailers about Democratic NC House candidates
The mailers paid for by the North Carolina Republican Party urged residents to vote for Melinda Bales, the former Huntersville mayor, over Helfrich in House District 98, and Rep. Tricia Cotham over Sidman in House District 105. One mailer says Bales will increase funding for law enforcement, while Helfrich supports legalizing heroin, prostitution and methamphetamine.
Both mailers feature black-and-white images of the Democratic candidates with their smiles altered into grimaces.
“When someone takes the time to photoshop your face and think up alliterative scare-tactics, it gets people talking,” Helfrich said in a statement to The Charlotte Observer. “However, the facts of this issue are not amusing. Addiction and overdose have real and devastating impacts in our communities… Serious issues call for serious, holistic approaches, not absurd scare-tactics.”
The Biden administration will announce a series of actions Wednesday targeting what it says are Russian government-sponsored attempts to manipulate U.S. public opinion ahead of the November election, two senior officials told NBC News.
Some of the alleged manipulation has been through RT, a Russian-backed media network, the sources said. The expected moves include Treasury sanctions and a law enforcement action by the Department of Justice. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to speak publicly Wednesday afternoon about the announcement.
U.S. intelligence agencies have previously assessed that Russia wants to interfere in the 2024 election and flagged RT as a source of Russian propaganda and disinformation and required it to register as a foreign agent.
RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan “has close ties to top Russian Government officials” and has stated publicly that “the Russian Government sets rating and viewership requirements for RT and, ‘since RT receives budget from the state, it must complete tasks given by the state,'” according to an ODNI report released publicly in 2017 following Russia’s efforts in the 2016 election.
The office of the Director of National Intelligence specifically said in July that Russia is seeking to exert influence over the U.S. election to undermine support for the Democratic presidential nominee and American public support for arming Ukraine. […]
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.
Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”
Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.
Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”
Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.
On the same call, Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)
After the call, First Liberty sent a recording of the 45-minute conversation to some of its supporters. ProPublica and Documented obtained that recording.
Ginni Thomas did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
In a call with donors, First Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford read the supportive email he said came from Thomas. The leader of the religious-rights group also labeled Justice Elena Kagan “treasonous” for backing a stronger ethics code.
Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.
Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”
[…] Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”
[…] On the same call, Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)
After the call, First Liberty sent a recording of the 45-minute conversation to some of its supporters. ProPublica and Documented obtained that recording.
[…] Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, said in a statement: “First Liberty is extremely alarmed at the Leftist attacks on our democracy and judicial independence and is fighting to bring attention to this dangerous threat. It’s shameful that the political Left seems perfectly fine destroying democracy to achieve the court decisions they favor instead of working through democratic and constitutional means.”
The July 31 call led by Shackelford came shortly after President Joe Biden had announced support for a slate of far-reaching Supreme Court changes. Biden endorsed term limits for justices, a constitutional amendment reversing the court’s recent presidential immunity decision and a binding ethics code for the court’s nine members. Kagan’s comments came before Biden’s. She did not mention any of the structural proposals Biden endorsed.
[…] This is not the first time that a spouse of a Supreme Court justice injected themselves into controversial political matters. Ginni Thomas sent dozens of messages after the 2020 election that echoed then-President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. In messages to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Thomas said “Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History” and urged Trump to not concede the election. In emails to Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers, she pleaded with them to fight back against supposed fraud and send a “clean slate of Electors.” […] (Thomas said in 2022 she regretted sending the inflammatory messages to Meadows.)
[Snipped details of Martha-Ann Alito, the wife of Justice Samuel Alito, flying an upside-down American flag at the family’s Virginia home — a symbol used by the Stop the Steal movement that claimed the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump.]
The push to change how the court functions grew after a series of ProPublica stories showed that wealthy Republican donors have showered Thomas and Alito with free gifts and travel that they failed to disclose. Following ProPublica’s reporting, Thomas amended past disclosure reports, and the Supreme Court adopted the ethics code, its first ever.
[…] In the last several years, First Liberty has notched big victories. In June 2022, the Supreme Court’s six conservatives ruled in favor of several Maine families represented by First Liberty and the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning legal advocacy group, when it struck down the state’s ban on using public funding to pay for religious schooling. Days later, the six conservatives ruled again in favor of a First Liberty plaintiff — in this case, a former football coach at a Washington state public high school who had been fired for praying on the field after games. The conservative majority said the coach had been wrongly removed from his job, a decision hailed by religious groups and criticized by some experts who said it would now be more difficult for public schools to keep education separate from religion.
First Liberty has also represented a bakery in Oregon whose owners refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, citing their religious beliefs; religious groups that opposed the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate; and nearly three dozen Navy SEALs and military members who refused to be vaccinated for the virus on the basis of their faith. In all the cases, First Liberty’s plaintiffs won partial or full victories in lower courts or at the Supreme Court.
Shackelford, who is First Liberty’s president and CEO, has led the group for nearly three decades. His influence extends into the broader conservative movement. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a former First Liberty attorney, once called Shackelford a mentor. […]
On the July 31 donor call, Shackelford […] aimed his fiercest criticism on the donor call at Kagan. “That is incredible, somewhat treasonous, what Kagan did,” Shackelford said. “The chief justice rules the court. They’re trying to keep the other branches’ hands off of them. And then you’ve got Kagan from the inside really being somewhat disloyal and somewhat treasonous in what she’s doing.”
Shackelford accused ProPublica of being part of a campaign to “delegitimize or get rid of the court.” He said that the ethics lapses unearthed by ProPublica’s reporting were “false” and “baseless,” […]
ProPublica stands behind all of the stories in its “Friends of the Court” series. Donors do not have access to stories ahead of their publication, and they have no say over coverage decisions.
Turning to what his donors could do to help, Shackelford said that prayer was at the top of the list. “This is a spiritual battle,” he said. “Because the evil that will occur if we lose the rule of law is beyond, I think, what any of us can even think through.”
[…] But now, he went on, First Liberty needed more money if it wanted to mount a similar campaign to stop Supreme Court reform. He mentioned the Brennan Center’s recent $30 million gift and then asked, “Where’s our, you know, $10 million guy or gal?”
And to anyone who wondered about the odds that Supreme Court reform would actually happen, Shackelford responded: “I don’t know. I mean, 25%? 30%? Whatever it is, it’s amazing how big that is when you consider that our country will be over and the rule of law will be over.”
[…]. He said that a First Liberty staffer based in Washington, D.C., had recently been in a meeting with Ginni Thomas. Afterward, Thomas sent the email that praised First Liberty for joining the fight against Supreme Court reform. […]
Clark has been putting up unprecedented numbers for her rookie season, averaging 18.7 points, 8.4 assists, and 5.9 rebounds per game. She tallied the first rookie triple-double in WNBA history earlier this season and currently leads the league in assists per game. She has already broken the rookie assist record, and she is on track to beat the single-season assist record that was set just last season by the Connecticut Sun’s Alyssa Thomas…
That is one goal achieved. Clark not only has the record for assists by a rookie, but also 3 point shots made by a rookie. She is also widely considered to be the lead candidate for Rookie of the Year. Angel Reese is getting a lot of rebounds and double-doubles, but her Chicago team is not winning very much.
LINCOLN, Neb. (WOWT) – The Nebraska Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge on the “Protect the Right to Abortion” initiative that argues it violates the state’s “single-subject rule.”
The Nebraska Supreme Court will hear 15-minute arguments from each side starting at 10 a.m. Monday. Each side has until 10 a.m. Thursday to file briefs…
The Thomas Moore Society put forward the request for a “relatively rare proceeding known as an ‘original action,‘” seeking to prevent the initiative seeking an amendment to the state constitution from appearing on Nebraska ballots…
The filing also takes issue with who can determine “viability,” saying the initiative opens that interpretation to “a large number of nonphysician ‘health care practitioners.’”
The Thomas Moore Society, a nonprofit based in Chicago, also recently filed a lawsuit challenging a pro-choice ballot initiative in Missouri. The organization is also assisting with a lawsuit accusing New York Attorney General Letitia James violated anti-abortion activists’ right to free-speech by targeting certain pregnancy counseling centers for promoting what critics say is an unproven method to reverse medication abortions. The organization is also fighting to free anti-abortion protesters who were found guilty of obstructing access to abortion clinics in Detroit.
The Secretary of State’s office on Friday confirmed that both the pro-choice and anti-abortion petitions met the requirements to appear on the state ballot.
Btw, if both the pro and the anti amendments pass, the one with the most votes will become law.
Pierce R. Butlersays
Reginald Selkirk @ # 50: Maduro decrees Christmas will start in October …
Which means we’re called back to duty in the War on Xmas early.
Damnit, where did I put those leftover anti-reindeer shells?
Trump made the claim in a rambling Truth Social post on Tuesday morning. The GOP nominee claimed “there was no conflict or ‘fighting’ at Arlington National Cemetery last week” and that it was “a made up story by Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad.” This comes despite confirmation from the Army that there was an incident in which an employee was pushed aside.
Trump is going full projection on Arlington. Now is claiming Harris is doing what he has been doing to Harris, simply making up scandals because he hasn’t found anything juicy to use against her.
Conservative judges on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals last fall dealt a near-fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act, the landmark federal law, in the seven states the circuit covers. Breaking precedent, the court ruled that advocacy organizations and private citizens can no longer file lawsuits alleging violations of the VRA. Instead, only the U.S. Department of Justice can do so.
The ruling is certain to deter voting rights litigation within the Eighth Circuit, and advocates worry that the U.S. Supreme Court could take the rule nationwide. Since the 1980s, outside organizations have pursued the vast majority of VRA cases since the DOJ doesn’t have the resources, and in many cases the political will, to pursue many lawsuits on its own.
But lawmakers in Minnesota looked for a remedy this year, and Minnesota has now become the first state within the Eighth Circuit to enshrine a private right of action into state law. Governor Tim Walz in May signed the Minnesota Voting Rights Act, which spells out protections for voters and allows private citizens and outside organizations to bring lawsuits in state courts….
The Minnesota Voting Rights Act was adopted as part of a package that contains other voter protections, like an end to prison gerrymandering. Voting rights advocates told Bolts that the Eighth Circuit’s ruling supercharged their push, and ensured that enshrining a private right of action would be part of the bill. Several other states have passed similar laws in recent years to shield voters from voting rights’ federal erosion.
“It was the Eighth Circuit decision that added the urgency by taking away the ability of Minnesotans who have been discriminated against to go to court and enforce their rights under federal law,” explains Emma Greenman, a state Representative who co-authored the bill, along with Minnesota Senate President Bobby Joe Champion. Greenman pointed to the fact that two thirds of Voting Rights Act cases are brought by private plaintiffs or organizations. “The U.S. Attorney General is a piece, but not a big piece, of the way that the federal rights are enforced.”
Often, individuals or groups that are being discriminated against are represented in court by organizations such as chapters of the ACLU or NAACP…. “A lot of these organizations are doing this work throughout the country, so they have a really good grasp of the trends that are out there, the different work that’s being done, the best practices that different agencies have undertaken in order to protect voting rights.”
The Eighth Circuit, in a ruling authored by Judge David Stras, a former Minnesota justice who was nominated to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2017, has threatened to halt a lot of that work.
[…]
Vaccine exemptions at nearly 9% in the state, enabling sustained transmission.
With one of the highest vaccine-exemption rates in the country, Oregon is experiencing its largest measles outbreak in decades. This year’s count is now higher than anything seen since 2000, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared the highly contagious virus eliminated from the US.
Since the start of the year, Oregon has tallied 31 cases of measles, all in unvaccinated people. The cases have been accumulating in sustained waves of transmission since mid-June…
When you hate women, no gender performance will ever be good enough!
For a self-proclaimed bunch of alpha dudes, the Trump base sure is hair-triggered. Armpit-hair triggered! Add now to the extensive list of Bud Light, M&Ms being unfuckable, rainbows, Latinos in line at the DMV, and tampons in unisex bathrooms: the existence of Doug Emhoff’s daughter, Ella.
Whatever for? She is a cisgender, apparently heterosexual woman with a boyfriend, GQ senior fashion writer Samuel Hine. She has the most traditionally feminine interests ever: fashion, and knitting. She’s got a degree from Parsons, has her own knitwear line, and is literally a model, with a contract with IMG. She’s walked the runway for Proenza Schouler and Balenciaga. She made the Secret Service hang out at Paris fashion week and go to the Met Gala […] When it comes to first kids and fashion, Ivanka was a plastic knockoff handbag, and Ella is the real deal.
But Ella’s look doesn’t always make certain chuds’ peepees hard, and that makes them mad! Spoiler alert, people who hate women hate women no matter what they do, or look like, or wear. You can even be pretty, blonde, and MAGA, like Caitlin Upton, and misogynist assholes like JD Vance will still torment you just for the hell of it, and blame you for not laughing it off. Which literally happened last week!
As Brooke Binkowski pointed out here recently, “there’s nothing women can do to make ourselves more palatable to people who already hate us. They hate us for just being, like, womanly at them.” Or not womanly enough! Or womanly, yet unfuckable. Or fuckable, yet a woman!
So anyway, here’s what white supremacist woman-hater and Project 2025 contributor Richard Hanania had to say about Ella Emhoff on Twitter: [Post is available at the link]
“Ella Emhoff being a part of the first family has the potential to radicalize American parents. I’m for women living the lives they want, but this is pretty much the nightmare scenario for most people with a daughter.”
WTF does “radicalize American parents” even mean? Insist their kids get into fashion and start a knitwear line? Ya got me.
He added: “Tattoos on women are generally disgusting.”
Said the eugenics-loving white nationalist.
Chimed in others:
– “Is that a man or woman? I can’t tell.”
– “These are the inevitable fruits this rootless, malignant, anti-natural spiritual filth begets.”
– “She decided to dress like she was having a bud light & a smoke on her break at the rural gas station”
– “Ella Emhoff is extremely unattractive. Just calling a spade a spade, because any sane person would admit to it. Only a troubled person puts tattoos on their skin that looks like a kindergarten child doodling”
Emhoff got “transvestigated,” of course, by a Tweeter calling themselves “Patriot Mama.”
– “I feel like that is a transitioned boy. Can anyone find a childhood picture of this person? Adam’s apple, large hands and all.”
– “100% Male.”
Tweeter Just_Mindy: “Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter looks like she is ready to assassinate a former President tonight” (referring to Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks).
Twitter fashion expert Derek Guy Tweetsponded to Hanania, which apparently humiliated him to the point that he hid the response, ha. [Post is available at the link]
[…] Bizarrely, like JD Vance, Hanania seems to wear a lot of eyeliner, as in this screenshot from one of his videos. […] [photo at the link]
Anyway, this targeting has sucked for Ella Emhoff. She ran a public knitting group, Soft Hands Knitting Club, and was forced to cancel it due to safety concerns from assholes. She posted to TikTok, “The smartest thing is to just hold off until things calm down. But uh, yeah, it has been amazing working on this and meeting all of you and has just felt so special to just build this little community, and I’m going to keep working on ways to make it more accessible and keep — keep building it while I’m not able to properly teach and host these.”
Then she crocheted a big chunky basket with her dog. [Totally charming image at the link]
As Amanda Marcotte wrote in Salon, these batshit-crazy attacks could backfire, though. At least you’d hope so. Thirty-seven percent of American women have tattoos! And it gets clearer every day, how the MAGAs don’t just hate women, […] and it’s a fucking drag.
At least nine others were injured in the violence at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
At least four people were killed and nine others were wounded in a school shooting an hour outside of Atlanta on Wednesday, authorities said.
One suspect was alive and taken into custody following the gunfire at Apalachee High School, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The suspect is a teenager, multiple senior law enforcement officials told NBC News, although it is unclear whether the suspect is affiliated with the school.
Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith confirmed there were “multiple injuries” at a news conference. He declined to provide more information, saying it would take “multiple days” to determine what happened.
“Every minute, it’s developing on what we’re finding,” he said.
Smith said authorities were working to reunite students with their parents after an “evil thing” occurred at the school.
Follow along for live coverage
The first call reporting an “active shooter” at Apalachee High School came around 9:30 a.m., Smith said. Deputies and emergency medical personnel rushed to the school at about 10:23 a.m., the Barrow County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. [map at the link]
All campuses of Barrow County Schools, based in Winder, Georgia, went into a “soft lockdown” with most of the activity centered around Apalachee H.S. where police cars, fire trucks and ambulances had all converged.
Students could be seen being directed to the school’s football stadium.
[…] In a statement, President Joe Biden said he was mourning those who were killed, as he pushed Congress to pass gun safety legislation.
“What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart,” Biden said.
“Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write,” he added. “We cannot continue to accept this as normal.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he was “devastated” for the affected families and said the Justice Department was ready to provide support.
Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta confirmed that it was treating one gunshot victim.
School has been in session at Apalachee H.S. since Aug. 1.
The school is Barrow County’s second high school, according to its website, and opened in 2000.
FBI agents from Atlanta were dispatched to the scene to assist local authorities, officials said.
Donald Trump’s public appearances tend to follow a pattern. The former president will have a message he intends to deliver, and he’ll have a teleprompter to guide his rhetorical path, but the Republican will invariably ramble, sharing weird and random thoughts about all sorts of things.
To hear the GOP candidate tell it, his stream-of-consciousness nonsense only appears to be incoherent.
“You know, I do the weave,” Trump boasted last week. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.’”
For one thing, the idea that the former president hangs out with “like, English professors” is hilarious. For another, there’s no hidden genius in Trump’s rambling. He seems to enjoy sharing bizarre ideas, theories, and the details of conversations that occurred only in his mind. There’s nothing “brilliant” about it.
Elaine Godfrey wrote for The Atlantic this week about one of the GOP candidate’s latest gems.
During a conversation onstage at a Moms for Liberty event last week, Donald Trump said something that made even me — a seasoned visitor to Trump’s theme park of hyperbole — look around in confusion at the people around me in the audience. Said Trump: “The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it; your kid goes to school, and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”
Not to put too fine a point on this, but Trump’s claim was plainly delusional. The is no epidemic of school-based gender-related surgeries.
But while the rhetoric was certainly ridiculous, it wasn’t altogether surprising.
Trump’s bizarre comments about “the transgender thing” came on the heels of the former president conflating wind power with people eating less bacon.
“You take a look at bacon and some of these products,” he told a Wisconsin audience last week. “Some people don’t eat bacon anymore. And we are going to get the energy prices down. When we get energy down — you know, this was caused by their horrible energy — wind, they want wind all over the place. But when it doesn’t blow, we have a little problem.”
As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones responded, “I don’t know how you can even fact-check a tangent like that.”
This rhetoric followed Trump speaking — more than once — about his fear of sharks, which apparently had something to do with electric boat batteries. It led author Steven King to note, “This is like listening to your senile uncle at the dinner table after he has that third drink.”
The larger question is whether Trump is actually getting worse.
My MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem presented a persuasive answer this week: “Trump has been embedded in the public consciousness as a rule-breaker for so long that it can be easily to forget how far he is from fulfilling the basic requirement of a politician to speak clearly. Trump’s speeches seem to be growing more discursive and difficult to comprehend by the day.”
The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie made a related case, arguing that the Republican presidential hopeful is unable “not just to speak truthfully about a topic, but speak coherently about any topic. … Trump hasn’t just deteriorated, he’s clearly cognitively impaired, and it is bizarre to me that this isn’t just a major story.”
[…] As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes summarized last week, “It is a little weird that ‘age concerns’ have disappeared as a constant focus of campaign reporting and discussion even though the GOP nominee would be the oldest man ever sworn in to the office and is very obviously sharply declining before our eyes.”
Soon after the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, a warning that was viewed more than 85,000 times started circulating among Germany’s far right: “Back up your Telegram data as quickly as you can and clean your account.”
The message came from Kim Dotcom, the embattled German founder of the now-defunct digital piracy website Megaupload who is set to be extradited from New Zealand, and who knows a thing or two about facing penalties for illegal activity on the internet.
Telegram users may have reason to fear after French authorities threw the book at Durov, charging him with complicity in crimes that take place on the app, including the sharing of child pornography and the trading of narcotics. If Durov can be held liable for crimes on the app, so too can the criminals perpetrating them, the logic goes…
Trump-backed Senate candidate Tim Sheehy has been caught on tape making offensive comments about Native Americans, according to reports.
Audio recordings, first reported by Char-Koosta News last week, revealed that the Montana Republican made racially-charged remarks about the Crow Tribe, who have land in the southcentral part of the state. At one point, Sheehy accused tribal members of being drunk in the morning.
“I rope and brand with them every year… A great way to bond with all the Indians while they’re drunk at 8am….” Sheehy is heard saying with a laugh in a clip from a fundraiser on November 6, 2023. The remark came after Sheehy said that one of his ranching partners is a Crow member…
About a week ago, an Omaha couple put a simple sign in their yard.
Jason Brown of the Dundee neighborhood painted over a lawn service yard sign with white paint. Then, he used a sawed-off bucket to paint a perfect circle in blue.
If no one mentioned it, it would have ended there, Brown and his wife Ruth Huebner-Brown said.
But across the street, a neighbor asked, then another neighbor asked. The Browns made about 10 signs for neighbors, then made 400 more.
On Sunday, they ran out of signs and are waiting on supplies to make 1,600 more. They’re also helping others get set up to make their own.
Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that don’t award all electoral votes to the state’s popular vote winner.
Nebraska has two winner-take-all electoral votes. But the other three go to the winner inside the boundaries of each congressional district.
“The blue dot could literally decide this election,” Brown said. “It could be that close.” …
Bexar County is moving forward with plans to hire an outside company to find and register potential voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election — something Attorney General Ken Paxton preemptively vowed to sue the county to stop.
The move came after a roughly three-hour discussion in which nearly every elected Republican in Bexar County signed up to raise concern about the potential for the move to help Democrats more than Republicans.
Commissioners voted 3-1-1 in favor of the plan, with Commissioner Grant Moody (Pct. 3) casting the lone “no” vote and Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4) abstaining amid concerns about the contract selection process.
Tuesday’s agreement calls for spending $393,000 to hire Civic Government Solutions LLC, which buys data from various sources to create a database of unregistered voters that wouldn’t normally appear in commercial voter files.
The company then mails out prefilled voter registration forms with prepaid return envelopes to those potential voters — the type of work normally done by political parties, campaigns and nonprofits. ..
Attorney General Merrick Garland accused state broadcaster RT, formerly Russia Today, of paying a Tennessee firm $10m to “create and distribute content to US audiences with hidden Russian government messaging”…
The criminal indictments of Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva do not identify by name the Tennessee-based content creation company they used.
But the court filing’s description of “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues” matches the self-description carried on the website of an outlet named Tenet Media.
Tenet, which posts English-language videos on social media, employs well-known right-wing commentators including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin…
For some definition of “well-known.”
Did the Tennessee firm break any laws? Because I don’t see anything about charges filed against them.
MIAMI — A retired federal judge is among those asking an appeals court to reassign former President Trump’s indictment on charges of mishandling classified documents case to a new judge.
In documents filed with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, two groups of legal experts and former government officials say U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon should be removed from the case.
Former federal judge Nancy Gertner and two legal scholars, Stephen Gillers and James Sample say rulings by Judge Cannon and her numerous delays have raised “well-founded concerns that she may be biased against the Government’s case and unable to manage that case impartially.” They’re seeking permission to file an amicus brief.
In July, Judge Cannon dismissed Trump’s indictment on charges he illegally withheld and concealed classified and top-secret documents from federal investigators. In a decision that ran counter to decades of judicial rulings, including by the U.S. Supreme Court, Cannon said the statute under which special counsel Jack Smith was appointed violated the Constitution. Smith is appealing the dismissal.
Gertner and the legal scholars were joined in the motion by the government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government (CREW). They say if the appeals court overturns Cannon’s ruling, it would be the third time it’s reversed her in “a seemingly straightforward case about a former president’s unauthorized possession of government documents.”
A second group of former government officials and legal scholars has also filed a motion with the 11th Circuit asking for permission to file an amicus brief.
They say Judge Cannon’s ruling ignored the “plain text” of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution which allows the Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor. Her dismissal of the charges they say are “in clear defiance of binding Supreme Court precedent and the plain text of Congress’ statutes.” They’re asking the Appeals Court to reverse Judge Cannon’s ruling and to remove her from the case.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Undercover Audio Leaks That May Cost Republicans The Senate”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=hOJ-QR5PGcw
The Republican voters won’t care. The Indian and the independent voters are another matter.
Pope Francis waded back into a controversial debate on parenthood Wednesday, hailing Indonesia’s birthrate and joking that people in other countries would rather have a pet cat or dog than their own babies…
And how many babies do you have, your royal popeness?
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, criticized former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard after she endorsed Donald Trump and joined his transition team.
Gabbard, who previously represented Tokuda’s congressional district from 2013 to 2021 and supported President Joe Biden in 2020, announced her endorsement of Trump at a National Guard event in Detroit last week. Tokuda quickly fired back on social media, saying Gabbard’s decision doesn’t align with the Aloha State.
“Trump and Tulsi do not represent Hawaii values and fail to fight for our freedoms,” Tokuda posted on Facebook. “We will reject their extremism this November. This is not pono.”
“Pono” is a term in Hawaiian culture that signifies righteousness, integrity, and moral responsibility. By saying Gabbard’s endorsement of Trump is “not pono,” Tokuda argues it goes against the ethical balance Hawaiians hold dear. The concept is embedded in Hawaii’s state motto, “Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono,” which means “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” …
Vice President Kamala Harris has agreed to the rules of Tuesday’s debate against Republican nominee Donald Trump, with her campaign telling ABC in a letter that it would set aside its concerns over muted microphones to ensure that the debate went forward.
“Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor, will be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President,” the campaign wrote in its letter, a portion of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “We suspect this is the primary reason for his campaign’s insistence on muted microphones.”
[…]
A Harris campaign official said they had come to an understanding of what might happen if a candidate spoke out while their microphone was muted. A pool reporter would be on hand to capture any crosstalk, and debate moderators would issue warnings to any candidate who constantly interrupts, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. If there is significant crosstalk, the microphones may be unmuted so that viewers can understand what is happening, the official said.
“We do not want to jeopardize the debate,” Harris’s campaign wrote in the letter to ABC, which was reported earlier by CNN. “For this reason, we accepted the full set of rules proposed by ABC, including muted microphones…..”
Caitlin Clark gets a “triple double” with 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 24 points.
This was only the second triple double by a rookie in WNBA history. The first was by Caitlin Clark on 6 July, 2024
The ‘Rookie of the Year’ award is looking like a strong bet.
JMsays
@83 Reginald Selkirk: No charges against Tenet media or it’s owners yet. The indictment says the company owners/founders knew where the money was coming from so I would expect charges. It also says the influencers that got paid were not aware of where the money came from so it’s unlikely they get charged.
The then-leader of the conservative policy blueprint known as Project 2025 appeared on a podcast in July produced by a company the Department of Justice accused Wednesday of being run by Russian agents.
Paul Dans appeared on an episode with podcaster Tim Pool on Tenet Media called, “The Media is Lying About Project 2025.” Dans, who was director of Project 2025 at the time, alleged “a very sophisticated group” was working to undermine the effort to set a policy agenda for the next Trump administration…
The Department of Justice did not name Tenet Media in its indictment released Wednesday, but the company’s business filings with the Tennessee secretary of state, and its public messages, align with what is described in the indictment…
A spokesperson for his 2024 campaign commented this week on reports of a Trump clemency recipient being convicted of a domestic violence-related charge by saying, “President Trump believes anyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars.”
The statement from Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, to The New York Times was in response to a new conviction of Jaime A. Davidson, whose sentence Trump commuted in 2021…
Manhattan federal prosecutors revealed the indictment as part of a long-running investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in U.S. elections, charging two employees of state-owned media firm RT with money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
[…] the indictment on Wednesday of Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, the two RT employees, may suggest an operation that resulted in greater reach, employing high-profile, well-known right-wing media personalities.
Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, prosecutors allege, secretly financed and directed the operations of an American media company based in Tennessee. Prosecutors said in the indictment that the company described itself on its website as “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.” [Excerpt from the indictment is available at the link]
The description of the company in the indictment matches that of Tenet Media, a Tennessee firm created in January 2022. [Screengrab from Tenet Media is available at the link.]
Tenet Media appears to have worked with and hosted content from several prominent right-wing media personalities, including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, and Dave Rubin.
Per the indictment, at least some of the commentators are essentially victims: when they asked who was paying them, representatives of the company replied by fabricating a wealthy benefactor named “Eduard Grigoriann.”
Prosecutors also said that the company was incorporated on January 19, 2022. On that day, corporate records show, a company called Roaming USA Corp — doing business as Tenet Media — was created. Tennessee corporate records list Lauren Chen, a host on Blaze TV, and her husband Liam Davidson as associated with the company.
It was a $10 million effort, prosecutors said, and its videos racked up more than 16 million views on YouTube.
Per the charges, RT started in October 2023 to use shell companies in a variety of countries to transfer millions of dollars to the firm that matches Tenet Media’s description. In one case, a $318,000 wire payment from a Turkish firm was listed as for “BUYING GOODS-INV.013-IPHONE 15 PRO MAX 512GB,” prosecutors said.
From there, the two RT employees allegedly created fake personas on the messaging platform Discord, from which they edited content and directed video posts.
In one episode detailed by prosecutors, the company’s Canadian founders worked with the now-indicted Russians to allegedly “deceive” two commentators with millions of YouTube subscribers between them.
When the commentators asked during contract negotiations about the company’s sponsor, one of the Canadian founders sent a fake profile describing “Eduard Grigoriann,” an “accomplished finance professional” from Western Europe who was supposedly funding the venture.
That was enough for the unnamed commentator, who went on to produce around 130 videos for the platform, prosecutors said.
One conservative influencer featured on Tenet Media, Benny Johnson, issued a statement on Wednesday saying that his attorneys had negotiated a deal with an unnamed “media startup,” which was later terminated. Johnson added that the indictment makes it clear that he “and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme.”
Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, mocked the indictment on X, writing “they have no other scenarios at all, except for sinking a competitor by scaring off the penguins with ties to the all-powerful RT.” […]
Chris Hayes presented some excellent analysis in several of his segments this evening.
Chris Hayes: The Electoral College functions in such a way that even as it appears that Kamala Harris is the clear favorite to win the popular vote—probably by a margin of a million votes at the bare minimum—the presidential race is an extremely close tie.
“Elon Musk runs one of the most influential internet platforms—formerly known as Twitter—and he has essentially turned it into a pro-Trump, pro-authoritarian machine where he just posts vile bigotry and disinformation that millions of people see and share,” says Chris Hayes. The New York Times’ Ryan Mac joins to discuss.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a vocal critic of former President Trump, announced Wednesday she is voting for Vice President Harris.
Cheney, who sat on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, announced her decision during an appearance at Duke University, according to multiple attendees who posted on social media.
“Because we are here in North Carolina, I think it is crucially important for people to recognize, not only is what I’ve just said about the danger that Trump poses something that should prevent people from voting for him, but I don’t believe that we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” Cheney said in a clip shared on the social platform X.
Cheney added that “as a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this, and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”
[…] In recent months, Cheney has gone after former President Trump as someone who “threatens to unravel our Republic” and a person who is not “fit to serve.”
Cheney joins fellow anti-Trump Republicans such as former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) and Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan in public support for the vice president. […]
SAN ANTONIO — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Wednesday against one of the state’s largest urban counties to stop lawmakers there from using taxpayer dollars to mail thousands of voter registration applications to its unregistered residents.
Despite a warning from the attorney general, commissioners from Bexar County — home to San Antonio — approved a plan this week to pay Civic Government Solutions to send more than 200,000 forms to residents one month before the Texas registration deadline. It is the first time county leaders have contracted an outside company to send unsolicited registration forms to residents in an effort to boost voter participation.
Paxton is seeking an emergency order to block the plan, which he derided as an effort by Democrats to boost their own numbers. He said it will “create confusion, facilitate fraud, undermine confidence in elections” and is illegal. He also argued it will worsen existing voter registration backlogs and that the firm hired has known ties to Democratic causes and candidates, according to the lawsuit.
Commissioner Justin Rodriguez, who brought the idea to local leaders, said there was nothing nefarious about being proactive in increasing voter participation. The commissioners’ attorney told them the plan was legal, he said.
“People have turned this into being some kind a partisan effort to get more Democrats registered. That was not the motivation,” said Rodriguez, a Democrat. “We’ve got people who just need to get registered. We don’t tell them who to vote for.”
…tensions between officials in large, Democrat-leaning cities and state Republican leaders continue to escalate. Paxton and GOP lawmakers for years have sought to curb local control of elections and justify restrictive voter laws as a means of warding off potential voter fraud. But critics and Democrats have long contended the goal is to suppress votes in areas where they say demographics do not favor the ruling party. Texas is one of the most difficult places to vote, according to civil rights organizations, and is one of a few states without online or automatic registration.
“All of these things are meant to keep new people from becoming voters in Texas,” said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), who represents parts of San Antonio and Bexar County. “If you’ve been winning elections for 20-plus years statewide, then you don’t want new people to vote … You want that voter profile in Texas to look exactly the same.”
The huge explosions that destroyed SpaceX’s Starship mega-rocket last year also blew one of the biggest ‘holes’ ever detected in the ionosphere, a layer of thin [partially ionized] air in the upper atmosphere. The [electrically neutral] hole stretched for thousands of kilometres and persisted for nearly an hour […] from Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula to the southeastern United States.
[…]
Ionospheric disturbances can affect not only satellite navigation but also communications and radio astronomy. As launch frequencies increase, these effects might become more of a problem.
Conservative media personality Tucker Carlson has been cavorting with Nazis for a while now, so when he released his interview with a Nazi apologist on Monday, no one was surprised.
Well, no one except the rest of the conservative media ecosystem. And you’ll be happy to know that they are shocked and outraged!
On Monday, Carlson posted an interview with Darryl Cooper, saying that he “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States. His latest project is the most forbidden of all: trying to understand World War Two.”
And here’s how Cooper, posting under a handle that shares a name with his podcast, understands WWII: [Posts are available at the link.]
During Carlson’s interview, Cooper called former U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill the “chief villain” of World War II and claimed that Hitler “didn’t want to fight.” He also claimed the Holocaust was merely a logistical mishap, that Germany was overwhelmed by the millions of “people who are surrendering or people they’re rounding up” and that these people just passively “ended up dead” in concentration camps. And then, after ignoring the reason why people were being “rounded up,” he says their mass execution was a mercy killing!
“Rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn’t it be more humane to finish them off quickly now?” Cooper pondered.
Noted antisemite Elon Musk sure was excited: [X post available at the link]
Musk later deleted the tweet.
But anyone who has paid the slightest attention to Carlson understands his interview with Cooper to be business as usual. As Media Matters for America noted way back in 2017, Carlson has long been “beloved by neo-Nazis and misogynists” [Text at the link]
In 2017, Carlson hosted “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, on which he espoused the antisemitic “great replacement” conspiracy theory, among other racist lies. But even after the network booted him in 2023, he’s still peddling the same Nazi crap.
But the conservative commentariat has erupted in outrage as if this weren’t who Carlson was all along.
“Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are,” tweeted conservative radio host Erick Erickson.
“I am trying to believe my ears, because on Tucker Carlson’s respected podcast I just heard these immortal words: ‘I read about Churchill, and he strikes me as a psychopath,’” tweeted Owen Strachan, senior director at the evangelical Dobson Culture Center. “Who *on earth* is Darryl Cooper, and how did he get this platform?” [“respected podcast”? Respected by whom?]
[…] here’s what Carlson says about Churchill during the interview: [X post available at the link]
Sohrab Ahmari, founder of the conservative outlet Compact, was apoplectic. “I can’t get over this. The claims made. The fact that Tucker saw fit to lend this guy an uncritical platform. The fact that Elon recommended the interview,” Ahmari tweeted. “This sector of the right is sinister. I’ll stop saying ‘they’ve lost their minds.’ No, it’s worse than that.”
“Tucker’s guest: The Holocaust was an unfortunate logistical problem. The Nazis ran out of space for prisoners. Nobody wanted to kill all the Jews. Except maybe Churchill, that dastardly terrorist,” tweeted Seth Dillon, owner of the conservative “humor” site Babylon Bee. “Tucker: Finally, an honest historian willing to tell us the truth.”
Jonah Goldberg, formerly of the National Review and currently at The Dispatch, said Carlson has changed.
“I’ve known Tucker for 30+ years,” he tweeted. “For most of that time, if I told him he’d become this guy one day, he’d have laughed, cursed me out, or punched me. This is just sad. It’s pathetic whether he’s doing it sincerely or as a grift.”
Carlson has been this guy since at least the last decade.
It sucks that Carlson and Musk are platforming and amplifying such rank anti-semitism. But if it finally exiles Carlson to the fringes of the far right, far away from polite (bipartisan) company, that’s something. And it’s always helpful for Musk to remind advertisers why they should stay far away from his platform.
A U.S. official said a unilateral deal is unlikely, but the administration has compiled a list of prisoners held by the U.S. whose release might interest Hamas.
The families of American hostages being held by Hamas have pressed the White House to seriously consider cutting a unilateral deal with the terrorist organization to secure their loved ones’ release, and the option is currently under discussion within the Biden administration, according to five people familiar with the discussions.
In a meeting Sunday with national security adviser Jake Sullivan after Hamas killed six hostages, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the relatives of U.S. citizens still in captivity urged the administration to evaluate options that do not include Israel, the sources said. Administration officials told the families that they would explore “every option,” but a deal with Hamas that includes Israel is still the best approach, people familiar with the conversation said.
The discussions about a unilateral deal come as family members, and some administration officials, increasingly believe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not commit to an agreement with Hamas that implements a cease-fire in Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages, according to the people familiar with the discussions.
There are four remaining American hostages being held by Hamas that the U.S. believes are alive, and the administration is seeking the return of the remains of three others who are believed to be dead.
NBC News reported in June that the Biden administration had discussed possibly negotiating a unilateral deal with Hamas for the release of American hostages in Gaza if cease-fire talks involving Israel fell apart. The idea did not advance, with some top administration officials strongly opposing it, and President Joe Biden opting to continue to try to reach a broader deal that includes Israel and ultimately outlines a path to end the conflict.
But, in a sign that a unilateral deal has been explored internally, the Biden administration pulled together a list of prisoners in the U.S. whose release Hamas might be interested in securing as part of an agreement that would free the kidnapped Americans, according to two former and two current U.S. officials familiar with the planning. One of the officials said there are five individuals on the list.
The Biden administration even made preliminary outreach to Hamas, through Qatari officials, about six months ago, to explore the possibility of a unilateral deal amid stalled negotiations on a broader agreement involving Israel, the U.S. officials said.
That initial overture did not go anywhere, they added.
One administration official said the idea of a unilateral deal with Hamas is unrealistic because the U.S. does not have enough to offer in exchange for the American hostages.
“We have considered all possible options to free the hostages and bring them home to their families. Because of Hamas’ demands, there has not been a formal offer for a side deal made because no such deal is possible,” the official said.
“Hamas wants two things that only Israel can deliver: a cease-fire and nearly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners currently in Israeli jails. Every other proposal has gone nowhere because that is what Hamas demands for the hostages,” the official added. “President Biden and the rest of the U.S. government remain fully committed to returning the hostages, including Americans, to their families. And we continue to work, day and night, to complete the cease-fire and hostage release deal that is under discussion.”
A spokesperson for the Qatari government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A representative for the families of American hostages being held by Hamas declined to comment.
[…] Asked Tuesday if the Biden administration has seriously considered the idea of a unilateral deal with Hamas, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller did not directly answer.
“Our entire focus has been on securing agreement to get home all the hostages. That, of course, includes the American hostages,” Miller said. When pressed on the idea of a unilateral agreement again Miller responded, “We are working on a deal to get all of them home.” […]
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Donald Trump on Wednesday referred to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a “strong man” after facing criticism for meeting with the autocratic leader in July.
“Sometimes you need a strong man. He’s a strong man,” Trump said of Orban during an event hosted by Fox News, adding: “And he said, ‘You bring back Trump … you’re not going to have any problems.’”
Orban, who has undermined Hungarian democratic institutions since taking power in 2010, has endorsed Trump. The Hungarian leader has championed restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights and immigration while cracking down on the country’s judiciary and the press. He met with Trump in July at the former president’s Florida estate weeks after visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Wooing Undecided Voters | Trump’s Marijuana Plan | Holocast denier and 1990s Porn Expert Mark Robinson is running for governor in North Carolina.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QvqhyslruVM
Planned Parenthood of Montana’s chief exec says the org is responding to a cyber-attack on its systems, and has drafted in federal law enforcement and infosec professionals to help investigate and rebuild its IT environment.
This comes as ransomware crew RansomHub boasted it had broken into the nonprofit, and stolen its data, which it is threatening to leak unless payment is made…
birgerjohanssonsays
Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza | Devi Sridhar | The Guardian
Donald Trump and his progeny have been touting a new crypto project that they claim will bring newfound economic power to “the people.” However, a new report claims that instead of doing that, it may—much like Trump’s economic plan for a second presidential term—actually do the opposite, and deliver a majority of the financial spoils to a small coterie of privileged insiders.
Trump’s project, dubbed World Liberty Financial, is a new crypto lending platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that backers claim will make finance more accessible to everyday people.
However, Coindesk recently got its hands on the project’s white paper and found that 70 percent of the project’s “governance” crypto tokens—known as WLT—would be “held by the founders, team, and service providers.” Meanwhile, a mere 30 percent of said tokens would be distributed to members of the public via a public sale. Coindesk notes that this is an “unusually high” ratio that is clearly weighted in favor of the project’s insiders (for comparison, Ethereum only kept 16 percent of its ETH tokens). Hilariously, the outlet notes that a chunk of the money that would be raised from the assets’ public sale would also be going to project insiders, while the rest of it would go to a treasury “to support World Liberty Financial’s operations.” …
Mongooses deployed on a small Japanese island to cull a population of venomous snakes have themselves been culled by the state, after the mammals insisted on eating the local endangered rabbits.
Mongooses (yes, that’s the plural) are venom-resistant and prey on venomous snakes like those on Amami Oshima, a subtropical island and UNESCO World Heritage site that is home to species like the Okinawa rail, the Iriomote leopard cat, and the endemic Amami rabbit.
It was that endangered rabbit—often referred to as a “living fossil” for its resemblance to ancient Asian rabbits—that found itself at the mercy of the small Indian mongooses (Urva auropunctata), introduced in 1979 to reduce number of habu, a pit viper, on the island.
But there were issues with the plan. For one, mongooses are diurnal and the habu are nocturnal, meaning the two animals rarely crossed paths. Instead, the mammals turned their gaze—and their appetites—on the Amami rabbits, drastically reducing numbers of the already threatened species. The mongooses also had a significant impact on Ryukyu long-furred rat populations, according to a Japanese environment ministry release…
As Team Trump says he believes “anyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars,” it’s worth noting that a little self-awareness goes a long way.
Donald Trump’s approach to presidential pardons and commutations was among the most scandalous parts of his White House term, and four years removed from office, many of the controversies still linger. The New York Times reported this week, for example, on a Florida man whose life sentence was commuted by Trump in 2021, who was recently convicted of assaulting his wife.
This was, the Times added, “the latest example of a Trump clemency beneficiary getting in legal trouble again.”
But as notable as the circumstances are, just as interesting was the reaction from the Republican’s campaign team. The article added:
When asked to comment about the latest incident, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said only, “President Trump believes anyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars.”
He does? Wouldn’t that have a direct impact on the former president himself, given his own rap sheet?
NBC News had a related report that added: “Leavitt and another campaign spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday about Trump’s view on jail time for convicts as it relates to his own conviction.”
It’s amazing how frequently this comes up.
In June, for example, Sen. JD Vance said that Trump’s potential running mates were being asked, “Have you ever committed a crime?” as part of the vetting process — despite the former president’s own crimes.
After Gov. Tim Walz joined the Democrats’ 2024 ticket, Team Trump complained that the Minnesotan has a record of “embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote” — which, again, seemed like an odd thing to say given the former president’s felonies.
A week later, the GOP nominee issued a statement complaining about the United States having “a Pro Criminal Atmosphere.” Around the same time, Trump declared with confidence, “You’re not going to teach a criminal not to be a criminal.” A day later, the former president echoed the line at an unrelated event.
“A criminal is a criminal,” the Republican nominee said. “They generally stay a criminal, and we do not have time to figure it out.”
Such rhetoric might have had more of an impact if he weren’t a criminal.
[…] A jury recently found Trump guilty of 34 felonies. This is not to be confused with a different jury finding Trump liable for sexual abuse, or the case in which a court found that Trump oversaw a business that engaged in systemic fraud.
He’s also still facing several dozen other pending felony counts, across multiple jurisdictions.
What’s more, the former president has also surrounded himself with other criminals. “With Lincoln, they had a team of rivals,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley recently noted. “With Trump, you have a team of felons.”
In case that weren’t quite enough, during his failed presidency, Trump had a habit of issuing scandalous pardons to politically aligned criminals, and if elected to a second term, the Republican has promised to issue even more pardons to politically aligned criminals — including those who violently clashed with police officers.
And so, as Team Trump insists that the former president believes “anyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars,” it’s probably worth reminding the Republican operation that a little self-awareness goes a long way.
Excerpt from a longer article that discusses the upcoming presidential campaign debate:
[…] So, the former president, who repeatedly went back and forth on whether he’d show up for next week’s debate, must be delighted to be getting his way, right? Wrong. As The New York Times reported, the Republican nominee is still whining anyway.
Hours after the Trump and Harris campaigns agreed to rules for their first presidential debate, former President Donald J. Trump sought to instill doubt that the debate would be fair, downplayed his need to prepare and suggested he was more worried about the network hosting the debate than his opponent.
As part of his latest event with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, the GOP candidate claimed anew that ABC News is “dishonest,” adding that he fears the network will give Harris “the questions in advance.”
All of this was quite bonkers, of course, but it was not unexpected.
Trump is defined in large part by a belief in preemptive delegitimization. Fearing possible election defeats, Trump has consistently taken steps to delegitimize the process to explain away potential losses. Fearing possible legal setbacks, he’s also repeatedly tried to delegitimize the justice system to validate potential adverse outcomes.
For whatever reason, Trump approaches practically every challenge with the same thought: “If I fail, it can’t be my fault.”
The GOP nominee has approached debates the same way, even making pre-emptive excuses for possible failure ahead of his recent debate with President Joe Biden.
Given this recent history, it would’ve been more surprising if Trump didn’t try to pre-emptively delegitimize next week’s debate with Harris.
Elon Musk reveals that he is becoming more bonkers over time. He is also dangerous:
[…] On Tuesday, after posting red-scare computer-generated images of Harris, Elon Musk retweeted Libs of TikTok. The famed homophobic, racist, and disinformation-filled account was originally created and operated by Chaya Raichik, who developed its following by frothing up anti-LGBTQ+ hate-mongers, and has expanded into throwing hate at anyone not white on the right.
Libs of TikTok posted a claim that “A group of 32 armed Venezualans took over an apartment building in Chicago tonight. Here’s the audio of the 911 dispatch call. First they did this in Aurora, CO and now Chicago? Which city will be next? This invasion happened on Kamala’s watch.”
The problem is that no such thing happened. Book Club Chicago followed up on this claim, speaking to neighbors in the area and the Chicago police department, all of whom told the outlet nothing even remotely like this happened. “Not true. That did not happen,” Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor told the website.
Musk followed up this bit of general xenophobia by tweeting a New York Post article claiming “Migrants flooding NYC’s justice system—making up ‘75% of arrests in Midtown’—as ‘pathetic’ sanctuary city laws handcuff cops.”
Musk wrote “When is enough enough? My mother lives in NY and her friends have been assaulted 3 times this year, with no punishment for the attackers!”
Not unlike Musk’s misinformation, the Post article is filled with paragraphs of anecdotal statements from former law enforcement conservatives before finally giving up the basis of their big headline claim:
“I would say about 75% of the arrests in Midtown Manhattan are migrants, mostly for robberies, assaults, domestic incidents and selling counterfeit items,” a Midtown officer said.
He said the figure is an estimate because “you can’t be 100% sure [they’re migrants] unless you arrest them in a shelter or they’re dumb enough to give you a shelter address.”
So … an anonymous guy says, based on anecdotal evidence that he himself cannot prove is true because he doesn’t even know if the people are actually migrants, that there’s a crime wave. Just, wow. Add to that that the myth of a migrant “crime wave” has been debunked multiple times, including by data collected by the NYPD itself. In fact, calling this story misleading would be a gross understatement.
On Wednesday, Musk was back to the GOP classic line of attack: phantom voting fraud. [X post is available at the link]
Noncitizens voting in elections isn’t a real problem. Every investigation into it has turned up absolutely nothing. For one, it is already illegal to vote in an election unless you are a citizen of the U.S. The idea that someone who is afraid of getting in trouble with the law, and could face possible deportation as a result, would go to a voting booth to illegally cast their vote is ludicrous.
Since purchasing Twitter in 2021, the world’s richest public midlife-crisis-haver has gutted the business, lost billions of dollars of investors money, and turned the social media site into a cesspool of right-wing extremism. During that time his political posts have increased, while posts about his own businesses have diminished. [True!]
Musk has a huge following on the site with almost 200 million followers. That gives him a gigantic platform and a megaphone to blast out all his unchecked, right-wing propaganda. That reach can have an impact on voters and potentially the election. [Musk also has X rigged so that it shows his posts first, even to people who do not follow him.]
Here is Musk this morning: [X post is available at the link]
[…] Twitter/X updated its code to “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, allowing them to bypass filters meant to feed people the best content. Musk is now the only recipient of what is known internally as a “power user multiplier,” which means his tweets are boosted by a factor of 1,000. By Monday afternoon, the CEO’s posts were flooding users’ “For You” feeds. […]
On Wednesday night, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared within the friendly confines of Fox News for a pre-taped town hall with fellow conservative Sean Hannity. The question and answer session with Hannity, whose close relationship with Trump involves reported late-night advisory phone calls and texts, led to several cringe-inducing movements.
Asked about the mass shooting on Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Georgia that led to four deaths (including two children) and multiple injuries, Trump instead talked about the support he has received from Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán. [video at the link]
“It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons, we’re going to heal our world, we’re going to get rid of all these wars that are starting all over the place because of incompetent American leadership,” Trump said.
“And we’re going to make it better, you know, Viktor Orban made a statement, he said, ‘bring Trump back and we won’t have any problems.’ He was very strong about that.”
[…] At another moment during the Fox broadcast, Hannity attempted to get Trump to attack Gov. Tim Walz over policies like immigration and providing free college. But Trump quickly went off track and argued that Walz’s brother had endorsed Trump. [video at the link]
That isn’t true. While Jeff Walz, the governor’s older brother, is a conservative who is being courted by the Trump campaign for his support, he has not formally backed Trump.
Trump also alleged that Walz’s “whole family endorsed me,” but the purported evidence of this is a photo of distant Walz relatives who support Trump. Walz’s sister, Sandy Dietrich, told the Associated Press, “We weren’t close with them. We didn’t know them,” and reaffirmed her support for her brother’s candidacy.
As Hannity tried to keep Trump on track to bash the Democratic ticket, he again veered off and complained about how Walz calls him “weird.”
“There’s something weird with that guy, he’s a weird guy. JD [Vance] is not weird, he’s a solid rock,” Trump said.
“We’re not weird. We’re other things, perhaps, but we’re not weird. But he is a weird guy.” [Doth protest too much.]
Despite Trump’s support of his running mate, recent polling has shown that Walz has an edge with the public. A Suffolk University poll released on Thursday showed that 48% of likely voters have a positive impression of Walz. Only 37% of voters expressed similar sentiment for Vance.
Trump, famous for conspiracy theories like the racist birther attack against former President Barack Obama and falsely describing climate change as a Chinese “hoax,” used the town hall to promote a new theory. Ahead of the scheduled presidential debate on Sept. 10 on ABC, Trump said Harris would be provided the questions in advance. [video at the link]
“Her husband’s best friend is married to the head of the network, and they’re going to get the questions I’ve already heard. They’re going to get the questions in advance,” Trump claimed. As has often been the case during his time in the public arena, Trump offered no evidence of his conspiracy. [ABC confirmed that no one will get questions in advance.]
This could be a tricky situation, as Trump conspiracies have not fared well in the past for Fox News. In 2023, the network paid out a settlement of $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems after airing multiple segments amplifying Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It was not, and he handily lost the race against President Joe Biden.
[…] “The funniest component of the Trump campaign’s media strategy so far is its commitment to dipshit outreach,” the Substacker Max Read wrote last month. The constellation of influencers with whom Trump has become enmeshed does not yet have a widely accepted name. “Manosphere” comes close, because it links together the graduates of YouTube prank channels, the Ultimate Fighting Championship boss Dana White’s sprawling empire, shitposters on Elon Musk’s X, and the male-dominated stand-up comedy scene. This is a subset of the podcast world with its own distinct political tang; it is suffused with the idea that society has become too feminized and cautious, and the antidote is spaces dedicated to energy drinks, combat sports, and saying stupid things about Hitler. Think of this as Trump’s red-pillpodcast tour.
These podcasts are often self-consciously anti-intellectual, marketing themselves as the home of deliberately dumb acts, edgy jokes, and rambling conversations about UFOs and sports statistics. Their spiritual daddy is Joe Rogan, but whereas he presents himself as a disaffected liberal, the new generation is happy to back right-wing causes and candidates: The Nelk Boys danced the YMCA with Trump at a rally in 2020, and Ross has explicitly endorsed Trump for president. […]
Since the start of the year, Oregon has tallied 31 cases of measles, all in unvaccinated people. The cases have been accumulating in sustained waves of transmission since mid-June.
Last month, when the outbreak tally was still in the 20s, health officials noted that it was nearing a state record set in 2019. There were 28 cases that year, which were linked to a large outbreak across the border in Washington state. But, with that record now surpassed, the state is in pre-elimination territory. […]
In 2000, when measles was declared officially eliminated, only about 1 percent of kindergarteners in the state had exemptions from childhood vaccines, such as measles. But in the years since, Oregon has become one of the states with the highest exemption rates in the country. In the 2022–2023 school year, 8.2 percent of Oregon kindergarteners had exemptions from vaccinations, according to a CDC analysis published in November. Only Idaho had a higher rate, with 12.1 percent of kindergarteners exempt. Utah was a close third, with 8.1 percent, followed by Arizona (7.4 percent) and Wisconsin (7.2 percent).
Oregon’s exemption rate has risen since then, with the exemption rate now at 8.8 percent, according to the Oregon Health Authority. Any exemption rate above 5 percent is concerning. At that threshold, even if every non-exempt child is vaccinated, a state will not be able to achieve the target of 95 percent vaccine coverage expected to prevent sustained transmission of infectious diseases.
Trump speech (filled with lies over job statistics, wages, etc.) had this to say about Harris: WaPo Live:
Donald Trump, during his speech at the Economic Club in New York, claimed that the vice president is someone who supports communist ideals, calling her “a Marxist” and “Comrade Kamala Harris.”
“Kamala Harris is the first major party nominee in American history who fundamentally rejects freedom, embraces Marxism, communism and fascism,” Trump claimed, citing in part what he called her promises for “communist price controls” and “wealth confiscation.”
How Did Evil Russians Manage To Fool Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, AND Benny Johnson? Wow!
It was fun and easy!
It might take you a while to get through the Justice Department’s indictment of two Russian nationals for using American right-wing influencers and opinionblabbers to covertly spread propaganda, because you’ll want to take time to really absorb and mock and laugh at each and every allegation.
Because c’mon, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson being directed by a bunch of Russian operatives and fake coworkers, who are being paid by RT to use those dipshits to manipulate American public opinion? […]
It’s the funniest Russian election interference we’ve ever seen, and we still have two months to go before November 5.
Here’s how the press release from the Department of Justice starts, it is not very funny:
An indictment charging Russian nationals Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, 31, also known as Kostya, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27, also known as Lena, with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and conspiracy to commit money laundering was unsealed today in the Southern District of New York. Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva are at large.
“The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.”
[…] we’ll fill in the blanks and try to construct the narrative for you, based on what folks have been able to figure out.
First, though, we need you to watch the late Norm MacDonald’s famous moth joke, so it’s fresh on your mind. [video at the link]
The reason for that will become clear in a moment.
The Basic Narrative!
Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, 31, AKA Kostya, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27, AKA Lena, work for RT, and they were involved in RT’s efforts to create secret cutouts to spread Kremlin propaganda in the United States. This was necessary because RT was sanctioned to fuck and forced to shut down official operations in the US and much of the West after Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine […] to satisfy Putin’s delusions and bloodlust.
[…] The FBI says Kostya is the manager of several of these cutouts in the US, which suggests the FBI knows about a fuckton more it hasn’t told us yet. [hmmm, more information coming soon, I assume]
The indictment alleges that Kostya and Lena recruited two founders for a new media company formed in Nashville. […]
That company has been identified by internet sleuths as Tenet Media, and the founders have been identified as a married couple named Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan. She’s a YouTuber who’s been affiliated with Turning Point USA and Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV, because of course. (Just after we posted this, news broke that Blaze had fired Chen.)
Thing is, according to the indictment, Chen and Donovan have worked for RT before in a direct capacity, and appear to have a pattern of trying to conceal that they’re working for RT, because of how it’s a bad look. [LOL]
The indictment provides this example: [screengrab at the link]
The indictment notes that the founders tended to refer to RT as “the Russians,” a habit they kept up in the scheme for which these two Russian RT employees Lena and Kostya are indicted. [eyeroll, and more LOL]
Anyway! So the Russians are accused of laundering $9.7 million to Tenet, which was 90 percent of all the money the company received during the time in question. (That’s right, 90 PERCENT of the money for this hot new upstart right-wing media company came from Russian shell companies. Oh, did you think they were funded by the grassroots?) Out of that, $8.7 million went to three commentators, video talent Chen and Donovan recruited. For example:
– As much as $400,000 per month went to “Commentator 1,” who appears to be dumb gay conservative Dave Rubin. To make like four videos per week!
– $100,000 per video for “Commentator 2,” who appears to be Tim Pool.
Russia, if you’re listening! We could learn to make videos! Allegedly!
The other commentators in the indictment have been identified as Lauren Southern (“Commentator 4”) and Matt Christiansen (“Commentator 6”). Media reporter Will Sommer says numbers three and five are unclear, but the two remaining personalities on the Tenet Media website are Benny Johnson and Taylor Hansen.
Like so: [screengrab at the link]
LMAO.
Now to be clear, the indictment specifically says the founders did not disclose to the talent that they were working for RT or the Russians. This is easy to believe, because the talent in question are morons. We cannot imagine it would be too difficult to fool, uhhhhh, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, and Tim Pool.
Indeed, at various times in the indictment, you see the founders — who did not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) — apparently working together to deceive Rubin and Pool. They told them that the sugar daddy for their operation was a completely fictitious man with no presence on the internet (on account of imaginary) named
EDUARD GRIGORIANN!
Who definitely sounds like one of the characters in Norm MacDonald’s moth joke, and if that was the inspiration, then fair fucking play to the Russians.
So uh, yeah, EDUARD GRIGORIANN!
Rubin was skeptical and wanted proof his new sugar daddy was who they said he was, so at one point they gave him this profile of EDUARD GRIGORIANN! and he was like OK sure I’m convinced now. (He’s stupid.) [screen grab at the link]
EDUARD GRIGORIANN!
Sometimes the Russians spelled his name wrong, because again, EDUARD GRIGORIANN! is this guy they made up, who may be based on the moth’s son in Norm MacDonald’s joke about moths.
Of Course Tucker Carlson Factors In As Moscow’s Useful Idiot In This Story
As spelled out in the indictment, Kostya and Lena were pretty hands-on with the company. They had messaging groups on Discord, including various entities and fake representatives for the very fake EDUARD GRIGORIANN!
But Lena also was like a fake editor, directing and editing coverage and so forth, using fake personae like “Helena Shudra” and “Victoria Pesti.”
Which brings us to the part of the indictment where Lena AKA “Helena Shudra” really really really really wanted Tenet Media to share a video of Tucker Carlson at a Moscow grocery store […]
[…] Literally everybody in the world made fun of that video.
On or about February 15, 2024, AFANASYEVA (as “Helena Shudra”) shared with U.S. Company-I a video of a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia. AFANASYEVA posted the video in the Producer Discord Channel. Later that day, Producer-I privately messaged Founder-2 on Discord: “They want me to post this” – referencing the video that AFANASYEVA had posted – but “it just feels like overt shilling.” [LOL, LOL, LOL] Founder-2 replied that Founder-I “thinks we should put it out there.” Producer-I acquiesced, responding, “alright I’ll put it out tomorrow.”
[…] In March of 2024, when terrorists struck a concert hall in Moscow, Lena (as “Helena Shudra”) had a very specific request for how Tenet Media’s talent handle that news:
[O]n or about March 23, 2024, AFANASYEVA (as “Helena Shudra”) privately messaged Founder-1 on Discord asking that “one of our creators . .. record something about [the] Moscow terror attack.” Despite public reporting that the foreign terrorist organization ISIS had claimed responsibility for the attack, AFANASYEVA requested that U.S. Company-I blame Ukraine and the United States, writing: “I think we can focus on the Ukraine/U.S. angle …. [T]he mainstream media spread fake news that ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack yet ISIS itself never made such statements. All terrorists are now detained while they were heading to the border with Ukraine which makes it even more suspicious why they would want to go to Ukraine to hide.” Founder-I responded that Founder-I would ask Commentator-3, and, the next day, confirmed that Commentator-3 said “he’s happy to cover it.”
Happy to blame it on Ukraine just randomly! [Sheesh!]
(Again, “Commentator 3” would either be Benny Johnson or Taylor Hansen, according to the journalists who have figured out these things.)
The Talent Is Shocked, Shocked! (They Are Very Stupid)
Again, the indictment says the true nature of this media company, its founders, its editorial direction and its funding was concealed from the talent. Not hard to do, because they’re fucking dumb.
Benny Johnson’s response is that he is officially APPALLED APPALLED please write in the newspaper that he is APPALLED. (Paraphrase.)
Benny is also so stupid he apparently thinks the indictment was “leaked”? Maybe not the verb you’re looking for there, champ.
Dave Rubin forcefully tweeted the part of the indictment that proves he was dense enough to fall for the lie that he was being funded by somebody who appears to be a character in Norm MacDonald’s moth joke. [screengrab of X post at the link]
He thought he was working for GREGARRO! Or whatever that guy’s fake name was!
Tim Pool apparently had a response that said he’s very upset, but he’s deleted it […]
As for RT, it has also responded:
RT reacted to the U.S. government actions with an email that mocked the indictment and included, “Hahahaha!”
OK.
Oh, there was a second Russian influence indictment yesterday, we should mention:
Justice officials said that in a separate legal action, prosecutors seized 32 Russian-controlled internet domains that were used in a state-controlled effort called “Doppelganger” to undermine international support for Ukraine. In addition, the Treasury and State departments announced sanctions on Russian individuals and entities who are accused of disseminating propaganda. […]
“In 2016, you had a clear case of a narrative being changed,” a senior western official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive national security matters. “Now it’s trickier because the world has divided more into camps and there are certain people who get certain information. In the case of Doppelganger, they were trying to fool people into thinking they were looking at normal newspapers or normal news services.”
They’re also trying to freak Americans out over the border and racial tensions. In other words, just helping with traditional Republican electoral strategy and messaging.
It’s September 5. Imagine what else we’re going to find out in the next two months.
The caper began Aug. 29 when West Palm Beach Police were called to the Republican Party office at 1555 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd., where some media has reported also house former President Donald Trump’s campaign operations. The individual who called the law enforcement agency said employees there had found “potential listening devices.”
The caller asked if officers could “sweep the floor” even though a security expert at Prosegur USA, which works for the RNC office, suspected the devices were placed as a prank…
In the end, the three devices — Cricket Noise Makers that sell for $11.99 on Amazon.com — were deemed to be no more than an unsettling joke. But not before the 50 employees working at the location were temporarily “evacuated” from the office suites, according to the police report, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Secret Service were notified.
“The suites were canvassed for any additional devices and evidence yielding negative results,” the West Palm Beach police report stated…
Joe Biden Keeps Doing Clean Energy To Rural America As If It Had Abundant Wind, Sun.
Oh, by golly, it does!
Joe Biden may have dropped out of the 2024 presidential election but he’s still presidenting like anything. Today, he travels to Westby, Wisconsin, to announce yet another tranche of funding for clean energy, this time a $7.3 billion in spending to help rural electric cooperatives transition from dirty old coal and fossil gas plants to affordable, reliable wind and solar (yes, battery backup is a must; the government really does know that the sun sets and the wind sometimes doesn’t blow).
The administration says this package of funding, the first from the Energy Department’s Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program, represents the “largest investment in rural electrification since the New Deal,” and it won’t even drown that old farm where the Soggy Bottom Boys maybe had a cache of gold stashed. The funding comes from Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, yet another of the many good projects being funded by the 10-year program. […] really is a 10-year program, as we like to remind you.
If you don’t mind our recycling HuffPost’s summary, this first block of New ERA funding will
be divvied out to 16 electric cooperatives serving millions of customers across 23 states, [and] will go toward building and purchasing more than 10 gigawatts of wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower.
In a call with reporters on Wednesday, a senior administration official said the […] the money is forecast to support more than 20,000 permanent or temporary jobs, eliminate more than 43.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually — equivalent to 10 million gas-powered vehicles — and lower electricity costs for approximately 20% of all rural households, around 5 million.
If you’re really hot to find out which 23 states will be getting some of this new clean power, they’re listed in the Agriculture Department’s press release on the funding. And yes, they include red states like Florida and Texas, and coal states like Pennsylvania and Wyoming, because you aren’t going to get an energy transition without helping places that have depended upon/been ruined by fossil fuels. As we’ve noted before, the IRA includes separate funding streams for helping those frontline energy areas clean up and develop green industries too.
And because federal investments help rural power co-ops leverage private investments too, Wisconsin’s Dairyland Power Cooperative, based in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, will use its New ERA award of $573 million to advance a total of $2.1 billion in clean energy projects, the White House announced:
Dairyland plans to procure 1,080 megawatts of renewable energy through eight wind and solar power purchase agreements, four solar installations, and four wind power installations across rural portions of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois. Dairyland estimates that electric rates for their members will be 42% lower over 10 years than they would have been without New ERA funding.
Cleaner energy, better health, cheaper power bills, and a solid basis for future clean development? Just goes to show why socialism can never work, or something like that. [smile]
On the other hand, Republican nominee Donald Trump offers America only dirtier energy, huge giveaways to fossil fuel companies, and a second abandonment of America’s commitment to fighting climate change. [True]
We think we’ll stick with Biden’s energy outlook […] which Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will continue and probably surpass.
The 14-year-old suspected of a mass shooting at Georgia’s Apalachee High School had been “begging for months” for mental health help before his deadly attack on Wednesday, according to an aunt of the suspect.
He “was begging for help from everybody around him,” the aunt, Annie Brown, told The Washington Post. “The adults around him failed him.”
Brown, who lives in Central Florida, declined to elaborate on the teen’s mental health challenges but said she tried from afar to get him help. She said his struggles were exacerbated by a difficult home life. He and his family had “previous contacts” with the local child services department, Chris Hosey, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said at a news conference Wednesday night.
Brown said that in January, she helped her nephew enroll at Haymon-Morris Middle School in Barrow County so he could finish 8th grade following a period of absenteeism. He had just started ninth grade at Apalachee High this school year, she said. […]
threatening comments were made on the social media platform Discord from an account associated with an email address that the FBI believed was owned by the teen, the records say. The teen told officers he had previously used Discord but got rid of his account months earlier “because too many people kept hacking his account and he was afraid someone would use his information for nefarious purposes,” the records show.
The account flagged by the FBI featured a profile name written in Russian that, when translated, spelled out “Lanza,” referring to Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter, according to the records.
The suspect’s father, Colin Gray, told investigators at the time that he was unfamiliar with Discord and said he had no knowledge of the email address associated with the Discord account that made threats. He also said that his son “does not know or speak Russian,” according to the records.
[…] On May 23, the investigator noted the case would be “exceptionally cleared” because the tip alleging Colt’s role in the threat could not be substantiated. Officers were unable to confirm that the Discord account was linked to Colt Gray, and information included in the FBI tip was “unreliable,” the records say.
[…] At the time of Jackson County’s investigation, the teen’s father told officers that he and his wife had split up after their family was evicted from their home a few months earlier. […]
[…] Trump’s team, returning to D.C. district court Thursday many eventful months after the case was taken from Judge Tanya Chutkan’s court on appeal, came wielding the Supreme Court’s immunity decision as a supposedly automatic win in the Jan. 6 federal case.
“The whole indictment craters,” Trump lawyer John Lauro crowed, drawing a wry chuckle from Chutkan as he called the Supreme Court’s decision “crystal clear.”
When the Supreme Court decided the immunity decision in July — establishing the various categories of presidential conduct and what degree of immunity they get — it kicked the case back down to Chutkan to sift through the charges and assign them to those categories.
In the meantime, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team obtained a superseding indictment from a new grand jury, a slimmed-down document aimed at staying within the parameters of the Supreme Court’s vague new guidelines for the type of presidential behavior that is still prosecutable. The indictment maintained the four central charges.
The Trump team now claims that even the new indictment is “infected” with conduct that the Supreme Court has said is protected. Primarily, Lauro argued Thursday that Smith’s evidence about Trump trying to convince then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the election is immune. Chief Justice John Roberts, in perhaps the most extreme part of his opinion, had ruled that prosecutors can’t use immunized conduct even to prove the existence of “unofficial acts” that are fair game to prosecute — which the Trump lawyers are stretching to mean that the inclusion of any immunized conduct in the indictment takes down the whole thing.
Chutkan sounded resistant to that reading Thursday and more inclined to agree with the government’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision: that Chutkan now needs to go through the charges and determine which survive the new immunity test.
“I’m not sure that I agree with you, as a matter of law, that I can dismiss the superseding indictment based on the Supreme Court decision at all,” she told Lauro.
While they’d prefer to get an outright dismissal on the heels of the Supreme Court decision, Trump’s lawyers threw additional fistfuls of spaghetti at the wall to otherwise gum up the works and delay the trial as long as possible. Their proposed pretrial schedule filed before Thursday’s hearing stretches into next fall.
“I’m not talking about the presidency of the United States, I’m talking about a four-count indictment,” Chutkan broke in exasperatedly as Lauro spoke. […]
Trump’s longing for delay took many forms Thursday: complaining about the “14 million pages” of documents to sift through, insisting that there’s much more discovery they’re owed (the government says it has no additional discovery to provide, as the indictment has remained largely the same), raising the new argument that all special prosecutors are improperly appointed, taking great umbrage at the government’s proposal to submit an opening brief defending its indictment under the new immunity regime.
Lauro sounded quite Trumpian as he protested the injustice of it all, calling the government’s proposed schedule a “fundamental unfairness never before seen in district court.”
Chutkan got fed up with Lauro’s performative flourishes, particularly as he waxed poetic on the weightiness of the case in American history.
“I don’t need any more rhetoric on how serious and grave this is,” she said.
“It’s not rhetoric, it’s called legal argument,” Lauro snapped back, prompting an audible reaction in the press room from which reporters watched the trial.
The lawyers on Jack Smith’s team — who had already watched their case stall for months, placing it decisively out of the window where it could be wrapped up before voters pick the next President — had similarly little patience for Lauro’s insistence that it’ll take his side a year to prepare for trial.
The Justice Department’s Thomas Windom countered that the Trump legal team can move very quickly when it wants to, pointing out that in Trump’s hush money case out of New York, it only took the lawyers nine days from the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling to file a 52-page brief arguing that the case should be tossed.
Chutkan leaned forward to her mic: “Congratulations, Mr. Blanche,” she said dryly, causing Trump lawyer Todd Blanche, who spearheaded that case, to burst into laughter at the defense’s table. [LOL]
Chutkan said that she plans to establish a schedule quickly, and her order may come later Thursday [today]. Windom had said at the start of the proceedings that the government is aiming to give the Trump team only one chance to appeal the interpretation of the immunity decision, rather than many bites at the delay apple throughout.
Smith’s team said it could have its opening brief ready in three weeks, where it would defend its indictment and argue that the charges still apply even to an ex-president with newfound and sweeping immunity. If Chutkan allows this route (and rejects Trump’s immediate dismissal request), which she sounded inclined to do Thursday, it would get the ball rolling on the next, arduous step in this case, where she decides which charges can stand.
“I’m risking reversal no matter what I do,” she sighed.
Luke Mayville, Idahoans for Open Primaries:, Reclaim Idaho
Dear supporters of Proposition 1 (the Open Primaries Initiative),
Moments ago, Idaho Fourth Judicial District Judge Patrick Miller ruled IN FAVOR of Idahoans for Open Primaries and AGAINST Attorney General Raúl Labrador.
In response to the Attorney General’s false claim that our campaign somehow “deceived” voters during our signature drive, the court ruled that the AG failed to provide evidence for his claim.
“The evidence the Attorney General submits,” the court found, “actually negates the idea that the Defendants perpetrated false statements to thousands of persons who actually signed a petition.”
This is another major victory for the people of Idaho, who will now have a chance to vote YES on Proposition 1 and give all voters a voice in every Idaho election. […]
A leading anti-corruption activist called on Honduran President Xiomara Castro on Wednesday to resign after a video surfaced that appeared to show her brother-in-law negotiating campaign donations with drug traffickers over a decade ago.
The video emerged a week after the leftist Castro ordered an end to an extradition treaty with the United States, which was used to take her conservative predecessor to face trial in New York where he was convicted on charges stemming from large-scale cocaine trafficking.
In a letter to Castro posted on social media, Gabriela Castellanos, the head of the National Anti-Corruption Council, argued the president should resign due to “serious drug trafficking accusations brought against (your) family circle.” …
NEW YORK — Former president Donald Trump formally endorsed a government spending commission that could give Elon Musk broad responsibilities for auditing federal spending and regulations — a move that reflects a tightening political alliance between the two men with less than nine weeks left until Election Day.
Trump’s advisers have discussed the commission for months, and Musk has publicly expressed interest in it on X, the social media platform he owns. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, expressed his support during a speech in New York on Thursday.
“This commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months,” Trump said.
Trump said the new commission would save “trillions of dollars — trillions. It’s massive. For the same service we have right now.” Budget experts have said it is possible a commission could identify tens of billions or possibly hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending cuts, but that it is not credible to imagine the commission cutting trillions of dollars without severely affecting federal services.
Trump said Musk has “agreed to head the task force” and credited him for the recommendation of the panel….
…Musk has used his social media platform to try to help Trump in ways that have prompted concern from some critics. He recently attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and posted a fake image depicting Harris as a communist, echoing Trump’s disparaging nickname for her, “Comrade Kamala.” He falsely claimed in a message accompanying the fabricated image: “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”
The image appeared to violate X’s own policies on manipulated content, which state that any “media that is significantly and deceptively altered, manipulated, or fabricated” must either be labeled or removed. Days after sharing the image, however, Musk’s original post was still circulating, with nearly 83 million views Thursday…..
….the growing ties between Musk and Trump are set to be cemented through a governing body that would likely put Musk at the center of U.S. policymaking, if Trump wins a second term. Despite potential conflicts of interest with his sprawling business empire, Musk would either chair or help lead an independent commission that would comb through thousands of federal programs and formally recommend which ones to cut, according to the plan long discussed by Trump and many of his top advisers. Cuts to government spending would likely need congressional approval, but cuts to government regulations could often be at least attempted by Trump unilaterally, should he win the 2024 election.
Trump advisers have for months eyed the commission as a way to publicly identify billions of dollars of unnecessary federal spending, reprising an idea from the Reagan administration. The plan has gained traction among Trump advisers as the former president has embraced increasingly aggressive plans to approve trillions of dollars in new tax cuts with no clear proposal for how to pay for them…..
A new gun rights group is launching a six-figure ad buy in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, focusing on the millions of Americans who became gun owners during and after the COVID pandemic.
Why it matters: The NRA — the longtime premier gun-rights group in the U.S. — cut its political spending from $54 million in 2016 to $29 million in 2020, according to OpenSecrets data. It has reserved $1.3 million in ad spending in 2024, according to AdImpact.
The Secure Our Freedom Alliance, a 501(c)4 organization, isn’t looking to compete with existing firearm groups, but wants to fill what it sees as an urgent need to address gun owners this election cycle.
By some estimates, post-pandemic, there are some 22 million new gun owners.
The big picture: The goal is to convince new gun owners, especially women and minorities, that their rights are under attack by the Biden administration and progressive politicians…
Their acronym is SOFA? Got to wonder if this is a prank.
Presentation material from November 2021that was provided to potential investors in Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC was a SPAC (Special-Purpose Acquisition Company) a shell company listed on the NASDAQ exchange which was created for the purpose of acquiring with a private company and thus making the private company public without requiring an IPO) and Trump Media & Technology Group has come to light and it reflects the vast chasm between the rosy picture investors were told would occur and what has transpired over the past year.
Revenue projections for 2023 $114,000,000 Reality $4,100,000 they only missed by 96% and a corporate loss of $58,000,000 for 2023.
[…] Revenue projection for 2025 $1,800,000,000
Revenue projection for 2026 $3,600,000,000
Of course, in the audit report for Trump Media there is a concern footnote that clearly states that unless revenue could be grown and funding raised there was a concern the company would be unable to pay its bills and would be forced into bankruptcy.
The auditor for Trump Media, BF Borgers CPA and its owner Benjamin Borgers has been forced to admit to the SEC that massive fraud was committed by the firm in over 1,500 SEC filings and paid a civil penalty of $14 million, and also permanently suspended from practicing as accountants before the SEC. The firm was called a “sham audit mill”, and that the company seemed to make it a practice of providing audit reports based on audits that it failed to conduct.
Only three days after DJT began to trade publicly in March 2024, the Board of Directors of DJT approved keeping BF Borgers as the company’s auditors for 2024. Of course, BF Borgers can no longer act as the company’s auditor given its settlement agreement and the suspension action, but it sure seems like the DJT board was fine with this sham auditor working for DJT.
[…] In the presentation Truth Social was presented as a comparative investment as Twitter (now X), Facebook, and would soon be as big as Netflix, iHeart and Disney.
Truth Social was presented as a “Big Tent” environment that would be inclusive like other social media companies. Focusing on Trump’s entertainment success, which were exclusively pointed at the ratings for “The Apprentice.”
Assumptions in the presentation projected Truth Social would have 81,000,000 users by 2026 […] Truth Social active users peaked on March 31, 2024 at 124,852, so they need to grow that by about 650 times in the next year and a half to two years to reach the projected user goal, or 27% a month in user growth for 24 months.
[…] Digital World Acquisition Corp was founded/created with the assistance of ARC Capital, a firm headquartered in Shanghai that specialized in assisting getting Chinese companies listing on American stock exchanges. There also reports that ARC Capital may have provided funding in order to assist in getting DWAC started. ARC Capital has been the target of United States SEC investigations related to misrepresenting shell companies.
There are battling lawsuits between the former CEO of Digital World Acquisition Corp. and Trump. In addition remember that to move the merger forward there were admissions of securities fraud against Digital World Acquisition Corp. which led to an $18,000,000 settlement.
[…] Thanks to MeidasTouch for getting me to dig deeper into this issue.
Trump Campaign ‘Don’t Talk To Press!’ Email Leaked To Press Immediately
Just a really well-oiled machine, that Trump campaign.
Last night, Puck reporter Tara Palmeri tweeted a politely panicked email signed by Trump campaign co-chairs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, begging staff to please not talk to or leak things to the press.
It doesn’t quite threaten anybody, but more sideswipes the issue, saying the press doesn’t care if somebody loses their job for speaking to them. And who would be ultimately deciding if that staffer lost their job? Like we said, they sideswiped a threat into the email. [Email screengrab is available at the link]
As the timestamps suggest, and as Palmeri confirms, she was able to tweet that email less than an hour after LaCivita and Wiles sent it. NBC News also got it almost immediately. That’s how fast somebody on the Trump campaign leaked it.
“There must be a hot story in the works,” Palmeri added.
So the moral of this story is that the 2024 Trump campaign is a leaking, poorly run shitshow just like the 2020 campaign and the 2017-2021 presidency and the 2016 campaign.
You can’t teach old losers new tricks.
In other news about how awesome the Trump campaign is and how they’re nailing it, and also how great they are at keeping their mouths shut around the press, the Daily Mail — the only REAL news source! — is reporting that the Trump campaign is “in chaos” because they are mad at all the “grifters” and “hucksters” and “profiteers” who are surrounding the grifterhucksterprofiteer-in-chief. This tracks, because Trump, a well-known conman and snake oil salesman and all those other name-callings, absolutely hates it when other people do grifterhuckstering off his name and likeness. Hates it when people try to get rich by being downwind of him. […]
‘He’s still got a lot of talented people around him in 2024,’ [a Republican] operative said.
‘But their main talent is getting rich.’
[…] And according to the Daily Mail, one of the people they hate the most right now is Charlie Kirk […] People in Trump’s circle reportedly don’t think he does anything of “long-term value,” but oh boy, he sure is rich:
This year Kirk – who has become immensely wealthy in the process and lives in an Arizona estate worth millions on the grounds of a private country club – announced his group was looking to raise the astronomic sum of $108million to run field campaigns and get-out-the-vote drives for Trump in swing states, despite having little to show for its past lavishly-funded efforts in those areas.
‘Turning Point spends a lot of money to host events and he travels around the country getting into fights at colleges, so he gets attention, but nothing he does is of long-term value.’ [according to some Daily Mail source]
[…] Meanwhile Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are just over here, being good at stuff.
Michigan Republicans have been featuring extremist commentator Garrett Soldano as a speaker at numerous campaign events.
Soldano has stated that he opposes abortion for rape victims because “God put them in this moment.” He has also referred to abortion as a “get out of jail free card,” said that he opposes Plan B, called on his followers to form militias, and suggested that the “deep state” is going to stage “false flag” events in the coming months.
Soldano is a right-wing commentator who streams online and hosts a podcast. In 2022, he unsuccessfully ran for governor, losing during the primary. He gained notoriety in Michigan during the pandemic when he formed a group opposing COVID-19 safety measures.
Michigan Republicans have been featuring Soldano as a campaign speaker in recent months.
[…] And this past weekend, he spoke at a Trump Force 47 event with Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Rogers in Iron Mountain, Michigan. […]
Soldano additionally spoke at a Turning Point Action event in August and met Trump in June 2023 when the former president was in the state.
Soldano has a history of toxic rhetoric and views. Here is a summary.
Soldano said he opposes abortion for rape victims because “God put them in this moment.” During a guest appearance on a January 2022 podcast, as Heartland Signal reported at the time, Soldano criticized the idea of providing abortion for rape victims. [statement available at the link]
Soldano this year dismissed abortion as something that isn’t a “real issue” and claimed that the public cares more about other matters. [statement available at the link]
Soldano called on his followers to form militias after predicting that armed attacks are “coming our way.” During an episode of his podcast in October 2023, Soldano aired video of alleged undocumented immigrants at the “Arizona/Mexico border” and then painted a violent picture of the future [statement available at the link]
[…] Soldano said on social media on July 1, 2024: “Be ready for a false flag. The Deep State will not give up power so easily. They know that if Trump wins, it’s accountability time.”
Former President Donald Trump’s recent acknowledgment that he lost the 2020 election has rattled prominent far-right figures, with some saying they will lead a campaign to keep him from being elected in 2024.
At least three times in recent weeks Trump, the 2024 Republican party nominee, has acknowledged that he lost in 2020 “by a whisker.”
“He beat us by a whisker. It was a terrible thing,” Trump said of President Joe Biden during a 45 minute interview Aug. 4 with podcaster Lex Fridman. He used similar language at an Aug. 30 Moms for Liberty summit and an Aug. 23 press event at the Southern border…
The reaction to Trump’s most recent comments from some far-right activists and influencers has been unusually stark.
White nationalist Nick Fuentes blasted Trump Sept. 4 for admitting that he lost the 2020 election, and said that he will work to get voters not to back Trump…
Zoe Tillman:
Chutkan confirms with Lauro that what they want is to first brief whether the VP Pence stuff is covered by immunity, and then get to everything else. Lauro says yes, that’s what SCOTUS called for in writing and I’m an originalist. Chutkan raises her eyebrows as he says that. She says, you may be an originalist but I’m a trial judge.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Warning. This poscast is not even safe for my work. And my work is making this podcast.”
Laufer is the chief spokesperson of Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, an anarchist collective that has spent the last few years teaching people how to make DIY versions of expensive pharmaceuticals at a tiny fraction of the cost.
[…]
Laufer has become well known for handing out DIY pills and medicines at hacking conferences, which include, for example, courses of the abortion drug misoprostol that can be manufactured for 89 cents (normal cost: $160)
[…]
sofosbuvir (Sovaldi), a miracle drug that cures hepatitis C […] those pills are under patent, and they cost $1,000 per pill. “Literally, if you have $84,000 then hepatitis C is not your problem anymore,” […] the DIY version would cost about [$70] for the entire course of medication, or about [$0.83] per pill.
[…]
Four Thieves had figured out how to make EpiPens and Daraprim—an HIV medication controlled at the time by “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli
[…]
what Four Thieves has built is called Chemhacktica, a forked version of an MIT-DARPA project called ASKOS that uses machine learning to map out chemical pathways for molecule synthesis, and to suggest potential chemical reactions that would yield the molecule that you want to make. […] will suggest precursor materials and will search a database to see whether it is buyable
[…]
“the Microlab is designed to load a recipe for a chemical reaction, then automate the temperature control, reagent addition, and stirring that are needed. It is designed for small-molecule organic chemistry to make certain medicinal compounds in your own home or workshop.”
[…]
Charging astronomical prices to people who are dying is immoral, and Four Thieves seeks to normalize the idea of making some types of medicine yourself.
I like DIY. His theatrics are a red flag though: tossing out unprescribed pills, calling a pharma CEO on stage (lying to get through, getting hung up on for that and his silly group name), swallowing a HepC pill on stage (which he didn’t need).
Daraprim is not “HIV medication”; it treats fungal pneumonia in HIV patients, not HIV itself. To be fair, a linked article said they also replicated Cabotegravir, which is an HIV treatment. Also Naloxone (Narcan).
So, the single most important thing about medicine is that we know it a) won’t hurt us, and b) will work. […] absolute basic requirements for something to be called medicine. Like many things in our society, these requirements are written in the blood of tens of thousands of people.
Can you explain to me how these folks will satisfy either of those requirements?
[…]
There are people working to reduce the harm who deserve time, publicity, and money. Those people work in ways where they can be relatively sure they’re not doing more additional harm. I am absolutely all for DIY medicine, when it’s done by folks who take not doing additional harm seriously […] by folks more interested in outcomes for humans than in PR for their hobby.
From the hour speech at the link:
(52:48): [Re: How do you know it’s safe?] the point of all of this is that you don’t have to test it. The systems are designed so that all of the care and attention you can get on the front end. […] But we did anyway [Picture of liquid chromatography results: 99.8575% pure]. If you were to buy Sovaldi in the raw from a chemical supplier, you only get 98%.
[At 1:10:18, he talks about low-tech Thiele tubes for purity/dosing.]
(55:40): None of our work scales up. […] And we don’t sell anything. […] you can make your own. […] You will never see [“FDA approved”] on anything ever because we are not an authority figure […] The only thing that the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective will ever approve is you making your own decisions about your own health
(57:03): I would like to address the feds out there and some of the execs from pharmacy. I’ve spotted some of you […] I would like it much better if you did your work properly so that our work became obsolete […] But until you do, if you would like to stop me, you will have to send assassins
(1:12:50): [Re: inactive biohacking subreddits] I’m so grateful that all 300 of you are here, but if we are the only people who figure out how to do this, we failed.
And Elon Musk wants a position in a Trump administration. Can we put to rest that notion that people who succeed in business are better at everything? These people are not accustomed to working for the salary government employees get. And there’s the question of conflict of interest. And the question of big shot CEOs having to abide by the rules.
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #159…
About businessmen working at government pay rates… FDR managed to get that done with his “dollar a year” men.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Follow-up to #110:
The podcaster who blew up online for Hitler apologia? JD Vance follows him on two accounts!
Donald Trump’s defense attorney, John Lauro, quickly corrected himself in court on Thursday after saying Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had “directed” him to challenge special counsel Jack Smith’s authority in the election subversion case.
Probably a slip of the tongue but needs to be investigated. If it’s literal at any level it’s the sort of blatant offense that would force Thomas out.
StevoRsays
NASA has released the first image of the open solar sail, formally called the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, and stated that the spacecraft from which the sail was released will continue to send back more footage and data as time goes on.The image itself may seem a little confusing to make heads or tails of, and that’s due in part to the fact that the spacecraft has been slowly tumbling in space. The tumble is happening because, as NASA explains in a statement, the spacecraft didn’t undergo any attitude control post-deployment. This behavior is therefore expected, the team says.
Sorry, but I simply refuse to mince words. I mean, it takes 18 years to complete just the tutorial section at the start? And the optimal strategy requires spending another 4 years on “optional” additional tutorial content and then 43(!) years grinding for gold full-time?
And don’t get me started on the final boss. One-dimensional cut-out cartoon villain with no moral complexity or any more sophisticated a motive than “I can haz world domination?” and no more nuanced a plan than 1 get rich, 2 become president, 3 all your planet are belong to us, departing from stereotype only in having a weird orange hue in lieu of a moustache that he regularly twirls — what is this, a throwback to the NES era? Even most SNES villains had more depth and characterization — and that’s before we get to how you beat him.
Of course you don’t just go up to him and kick his ass after battling through a final level full of elite mooks, nuh-uh, he has to be a gimmick boss, and one with an RNG mechanic to boot, where you pull some lever on some slot-machine-a-like and hope it spins up three Harrises. If it doesn’t, game over.
And this in a game with no save checkpoints, no continues, and various kinds of unhealable stat-nerfing perma-damage that even common basic early-game enemies can inflict, and that is running off a hack-resistant server, not your own hardware where you could find and clone or hex-edit the save data … if I’d known what I was signing up for I’d have said “no thanks”.
Who the fuck designed this thing, anyway? The Marquis de Sade’s tech-savvy great great great granddaughter?
0/5 Would Not Recommend.
:)
Bekenstein Boundsays
Oh, did I mention the “optional” additional tutorial content is all ridiculously expensive DLC? <smh>
birgerjohanssonsays
Today, Freddy Mercury would have had his 78th birthday.
It would have placed hom at the same age as Bill Clinton. And that other guy.
China’s men’s soccer team fell to a 7-0 loss to arch-rivals Japan on Thursday night, a startling new low for a soccer-obsessed nation where the game has been plagued by corruption scandals and ever-worsening performances.
China winning this game would have been a major upset but a 7-0 game is a crushing defeat. This is an issue on a couple of levels. The 7-0 score means Japan continued to score after having a huge lead. This tracks with the increasing national friction between the two countries. For China it is also indicative of their play getting worse even as the sport becomes more popular in China. As there is more money in play corruptions has become even more of a problem. There are also problems caused by heavy handed attempts by the government to push sports while keeping any individual players from becoming popular.
birgerjohanssonsays
Kamala Harris surges in the latest Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen typically has a Republican bias.
The event, organized by student organization Uncensored America, will feature a right-wing provocateur and the founder of the Proud Boys, a designated white supremacist hate group.
The White House on Wednesday avoided commenting on recent outrage over a planned comedy “roast” of Vice President Kamala Harris on the University of South Carolina campus.
The event is steeped in controversy due to the event’s vulgar advertising and the involvement of far-right extremist figures, conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes, the co-founder of Proud Boys, a designated white supremacist hate group.
Uncensored America, a nonprofit that bills itself as an organization fighting for freedom of speech, is hosting the event. Advertisement for the scheduled Sept. 18 campus event makes vulgar and sexual references to Harris, the nation’s first female vice president…
Critics of the USC campus event say it goes beyond free speech and exposes its students, particularly its Black student population, to hate speech and a hostile environment…
The NAACP noted that inviting McInnes and Yiannopoulos, in particular, poses a great danger to the student body and campus personnel. The leaders of the organization pointed out that the extremist leaders and the Proud Boys have a “history of violence,” including the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“As President, you have a duty to protect the students who have chosen to matriculate at USC, your employees, and campus guests,” said their letter. “We urge you to make the correct decision and cancel the proposed event.”
A petition led by students calling on the university to pull out of hosting the campus roast has garnered nearly 25,000 signatures. In a letter reported by the local TV news station Wis10, USC President Amiridis refused to cancel the event, which he said is organized by the student chapter of Uncensored America and is “not endorsed by the university.”
“We remain steadfast in safeguarding the First Amendment rights of our students, even when we may be offended by their choices and statements,” he said…
White nationalist Nick Fuentes blasted Trump Sept. 4 for admitting that he lost the 2020 election, and said that he will work to get voters not to back Trump…
Ah. This is good. Because Nick Fuentes decided to advertise Trump’s statement it will get even more attention.
Now they are shooting each other in the foot.
johnson catmansays
re Reginald Selkirk @171: USC President Amiridis:
We remain steadfast in safeguarding the First Amendment rights of our students, even when we may be offended by their choices and statements
[…] “I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms,” Trump said, noting that the panel was Musk’s idea.
[…] As part of the same remarks, the former president boasted that the commission will save taxpayers “trillions of dollars,” by creating “an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months.” [video at the link]
For emphasis, Trump again told his audience, “Trillions. It’s massive.”
At this point, we could talk at length about the fact that Musk has no meaningful experience in auditing, making him a curious choice for such a “commission.” We could also note that the billionaire has no background in federal budgeting or appropriations (except for receiving taxpayer money to help give one of his businesses a boost.)
We could even spend some time asking why Trump, during his four years in the White House, made no meaningful effort to identify or address the “fraud and improper payments” that he apparently believes are rampant throughout the federal government. (Somehow, we’re also supposed to believe that Musk will succeed where GOP-led congressional budget committees failed.)
But after seeing the remarks, I also found myself stuck on the word “trillions.”
The federal government’s budget for the most recent fiscal year was roughly $6 trillion. To hear Trump tell it, Musk’s “government efficiency commission” will not only uncover waste that heretofore has gone unidentified, his panel will also sketch out “drastic” reforms.
That leads to some questions that deserve pre-election answers.
How many Americans will be hurt by these “drastic” cuts? How, exactly, will Trump and his pal generate “trillions” in savings without gutting Social Security and Medicare? Can the GOP candidate point to any specific programs and/or departments — literally, any at all — that should expect to be slashed?
[…] the former president looking to reward a political ally while making ridiculous promises to voters that he’ll barely try to fulfill?
WaPo Live
Trump attends court arguments on E. Jean Carroll case verdict
NEW YORK — Donald Trump attended oral arguments Friday at a federal appeals court, where a panel of judges seemed skeptical of a push by the former president to reverse a $5 million verdict in favor of E. Jean Carroll for sexual assault and defamation….
A jury found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation in 2023 after hearing Carroll describe that Trump forcibly assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s. That panel awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. At a separate trial earlier this year, a different jury awarded Carroll $83 million for a second set of defamation claims against Trump….
_______________________________
Donald Trump has begun speaking in New York after appearing in court in a bid to reverse a $5 million verdict in favor of writer for E. Jean Carroll for sexual assault and defamation.
“I have no idea who the woman is, and I never met her,” said Trump, who called the charges against him “false” and “fabricated.”
With the victory, the world’s lowest ranked team by Fifa also ended the longest winless run in football, stretching back two decades and 140 games to when they won a friendly back in 2004 – also against Liechtenstein and by the same scoreline.
The indictment, filed and unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses Dmitri Simes, 76, and his wife, Anastasia Simes, 55, of participating in a scheme to violate U.S. sanctions for the benefit of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster and to launder money obtained through that scheme.
Commentary:
[…] If Simes’ name sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination: The dual U.S.-Russian citizen worked as an advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and as NBC News’ report added, Simes’ name also “appeared numerous times in the report compiled by special counsel Robert Mueller on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
News of the newly unsealed indictment comes the same week as Biden administration officials announced a series of efforts intended to combat the Kremlin’s 2024 effort to target U.S. elections, including sanctions and a criminal indictment against two employees of the state-owned RT media network, who were accused of conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
That indictment, of course, documented prosecutors’ allegations that employees of the Russia-backed media network RT funded and directed a scheme that sent millions of dollars to prominent right-wing commentators through Tenet Media, a leading platform for pro-Trump commentary. (The commentators have denied any wrongdoing and characterized themselves as “victims.”)
This was, according to the Justice Department, one of the “covert projects” launched by the RT employees to influence American politics ahead of the elections.
[…] For all the chatter in far-right circles about the Russia scandal being a “hoax,” a Washington Post analysis explained, “The new indictment reinforces that it wasn’t. Russia began trying to influence American politics a decade ago, ultimately finding a sympathetic ally in Trump. Now, instead of trying to make fake personalities who can elevate contentious issues to Russia’s benefit, there’s a stable of Trump-allied voices who already are.”
This was published before the Justice Department indicted a former Trump advisor with allegedly participating in a scheme to violate U.S. sanctions for the benefit of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster.
Rambling, bumbling, policy ignoramus Trump spouts word salad:
[…] This was one of those things that people really have to see to fully appreciate. [video at the link]
The question, for those who can’t watch clips online, was about making child care more affordable.
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down — you know, I was, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue,” Trump’s 368-word answer began. “It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that — because, look, child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it — in this country, you have to have it.
“But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to — but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not gonna stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.
“Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re gonna have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care.
“I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world.
“Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about Make America Great Again. We have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation, so we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”
So, why does this word salad matter? Several reasons, actually.
Right off the bat, it’s worth emphasizing that Trump — who presumably has been engaged in debate preparations, and should be at the top of his game — appeared wholly incapable of speaking coherently about a common issue. For those who believe the Republican nominee is in a state of cognitive decline, his answer on child care costs offered fresh evidence.
Similarly, Trump’s nonsensical rambling served as a timely reminder of a familiar problem: The former president doesn’t know or care about public policy, and he routinely has trouble faking it. Those expecting him to have meaningful governing plans — on any issue — are going to be disappointed.
After the remarks, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said he prefers Trump’s economic policies because the former president “can actually speak to details.” Reality suggests otherwise: We’re routinely confronted with proof that Trump is effectively economically illiterate.
But appearing on MSNBC the morning after the GOP candidate’s comments, White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates raised an underappreciated point: “If you have any idea what the hell that answer means, you’re a better detective than I am, because these tariffs that he wants to apply across the board would amount to a $4,000 tax increase on working families. And that is something that authorities across the private sector are warning would be devastating for our economy and would depress economic growth.” [video at the link]
To the extent that Trump said any understandable words in his response, the Republican seemed to suggest that he’ll impose tariffs on trading partners, which he believes will generate money that he can then apply to child care costs. But that’s bonkers: Not only will the tariffs fail to create some giant pool of money for Trump to draw from, but those same tariffs would raise costs for the families looking for relief.
The GOP candidate, in other words, has the entire policy dynamic backwards.
Bits and pieces of campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign raised $361 million in August, nearly triple the $130 million that Donald Trump’s operation raised over the same period.
* The Democratic nominee also received a new round of endorsements from 88 current and former top executives from across corporate America. The list includes the current CEO of Yelp and the former CEOs of Pepsi, Lyft, and Ford.
* In Montana’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, an AARP poll conducted by the bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward & David Binder Research, found Republican Tim Sheehy leading incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, 51% to 45%. If Tester loses, it will be extraordinarily difficult for Democrats to maintain their majority in the Senate, regardless of what happens in the presidential race. (Click the link for information on the surveys’ methodology and margins of error.)
* On the other hand, in Florida, the latest statewide poll from The Hill and Emerson College found incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Scott with a surprisingly narrow lead over former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, 46% to 45%. (Click the link for information on the surveys’ methodology and margins of error.)
* In a bit of a surprise, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity suggested he doesn’t want support from those who voted against him in 2020. “They say you should take everybody, but that’s not the way I’m built,” the Republican nominee said.
* In case Democrats weren’t already disappointed with retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginian this week appeared to endorse former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in Maryland’s U.S. Senate race.
* In Texas, Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales said at The Texas Tribune Festival this week that he expects the GOP to lose its majority in the U.S. House in this year’s elections, adding, “[W]e’re going to lose it because of ourselves.”
* While Trump suggested in recent months that he intended to compete in Virginia and Minnesota, Axios reported this week that the Republican’s campaign is now “placing less emphasis” in the states.
* And in Nebraska’s U.S. Senate race, the Legal Marijuana Now Party failed to choose a nominee before the legal deadline this week. As a result, incumbent Republican Sen. Deb Fischer will have a one-on-one race against independent candidate Dan Osborn.
A Florida surgeon mistakenly removed a man’s liver instead of his spleen, causing him to die on the operating table, a lawyer for the man’s widow alleges.
William Bryan, 70, of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, underwent surgery on Aug. 21, at Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast hospital in Miramar, Florida, because of spleen abnormalities, according to a statement from the personal injury firm Zarzaur Law, based in Pensacola, Florida.
The Walton County Sheriff’s Office, in coordination with other authorities, said in a statement to NBC News on Wednesday it is investigating Bryan’s death.
William Bryan and his wife, Beverly Bryan, were in the Sunshine State visiting their rental property when he began experiencing “left-sided flank pain,” Beverly Bryan’s attorneys said. He was admitted to the hospital for further evaluation, and although the Bryans were reluctant to have surgery in Florida, they were persuaded by Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky, a general surgeon, and Dr. Christopher Bacani, the hospital’s chief medical officer, that he could experience serious complications if he left the hospital’s care.
Both Shaknovsky and Bacani appeared to be involved in discussions, according to records, for how to proceed with Bryan’s medical treatment, Beverly Bryan’s lawyer, Joe Zarzaur, said in the statement.
Shaknovsky performed a hand-assisted laparoscopic splenectomy on William Bryan, Zarzaur said, which had deadly consequences. “Dr. Shaknovsky removed Mr. Bryan’s liver and, in so doing, transected the major vasculature supplying the liver, causing immediate and catastrophic blood loss resulting in death,” the statement said. “The surgeon proceeded with labeling the removed liver specimen as a ‘spleen,’ and it wasn’t until following the death that it was identified that the organ removed was actually Mr. Bryan’s liver, as opposed to the spleen.’” Shaknovsky told Beverly Bryan her husband’s spleen was so diseased that it was four times bigger than normal and it had moved to the other side of his body, Zarzaur alleges. But in a typical human body the liver exists on the opposite side of the abdomen and it is much larger than a spleen, he said.
Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast hospital said in a statement Wednesday it’s “performing a thorough investigation” into Bryan’s death and takes allegations like the one made by his family “very seriously.”
“Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast has a longstanding history of providing safe, quality care since the hospital opened its doors in 2003,” the statement said. “Patient safety is and remains our number one priority. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the family. We hold the privacy of our patients in the highest regard. We do not comment on specific patient cases or active litigation.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, the typical human spleen is roughly the size of an avocado, and the typical human liver is roughly the size of a football.
“The family was informed that Mr. Bryan’s spleen, the root of his original symptom profile upon presentation to the hospital, was still in his body and appeared with a small cyst on its surface,” the statement said. Shaknovsky had made a similar mistake in 2023, removing portions of a pancreas instead of an adrenal gland, in a case that was settled privately, Zarzaur said.
The employment status of Shaknovsky and Bacani wasn’t immediately clear on Wednesday afternoon. They were not reached for comment.
The Walton County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that authorities are investigating the circumstances around Bryan’s death.
“Walton County Sheriff’s Office in conjunction with the District 1 Medical Examiner’s Office and Office of the State Attorney is reviewing the facts involving the death of William Bryan to determine if anything criminal took place.”
[…]
According to a Wednesday afternoon search with the Florida Board of Medicine, Shaknovsky’s medical license is active. That is also the case for Bacani, records show.
Drip, Drip, Drip
NPR has been leading the pack in the reporting on Trump’s violation of the Arlington National Cemetery rules against political activities. It was the first to report that there had been an altercation of some sort between two Trump campaign staffers and a cemetery staffer who was trying to enforce the rules. Now NPR has identified those staffers:
The two staffers, according to a source with knowledge of the incident, are deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of Trump’s advance team.
According to the NPR report, both staffers verbally abused the cemetery worker, but it was Picard who allegedly pushed her aside:
When an ANC employee tried to enforce the rules, she was verbally abused by the two Trump campaign operatives, according to a source with knowledge of the incident. Picard then pushed her out of the way according to two Pentagon officials.
Caporale, as a deputy campaign manager, is the higher ranking of the two staffers. He used to work for Melania Trump in the White House before he reportedly ran into problems with his security clearance and was let go by then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. As NPR notes, Caporale also served in another notable capacity:
He was also listed as the on-site contact and project manager for the Women for America First rally in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021 where Trump urged the crowd to “stop the steal” before some of them stormed the U.S. Capitol.
The 14-year-old suspect in a shooting that killed four people at a Georgia high school and his father will stay in custody after back-to-back court hearings Friday morning where their lawyers declined to seek bail.
At Colt Gray’s hearing, the teen was advised of his rights along with the charges and penalties he faced for the shooting at the school where he was a student.
After the hearing, he was escorted out in shackles at the wrists and ankles in khaki pants and a green shirt. The judge then called Colt Gray back to the courtroom to correct an earlier misstatement that his crimes could be punishable by death. Because he’s a juvenile, the maximum penalty he would face is life without parole. The judge also set another hearing for Dec. 4.
Shortly afterward, his father, Colin Gray, was brought into court. Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting for letting his son possess a weapon. Nine people were also hurt in Wednesday’s attack at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta.
[…] According to arrest warrants obtained by The Associated Press, Colt Gray is accused of using a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” to kill two students and two teachers at the school. […]
Colin Gray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder related to the shooting […]
It’s the latest example of prosecutors holding parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings.
[…] The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also noted that numerous threats have been made to schools across the state this week.
[…] Colt Gray was charged as an adult with four counts of murder in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. [14 years old is “adult”?]
[…] Colt Gray denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities interviewed him last year about a menacing post on social media, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday. Conflicting evidence on the post’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anyone, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time.
The attack was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years […]
It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.
Fox News host Jesse Watters took some time on Wednesday to offer up a strange criticism of Gov. Tim Walz. “Women love masculinity and women do not love Tim Walz,” Watters claimed. “So that should just tell you about how masculine Tim Walz is.”
Brand-new polling shows that women prefer Walz to Republican running mate—and misogynist meme generator—Sen. JD Vance. And virtually every poll shows women would choose Vice President Kamala Harris to convicted felon Donald Trump, making this an odd way for the very creepy Watters to begin things. But it gets stranger.
“The other day you saw him with a vanilla ice cream shake. Had a straw in it. Oh. Again, that tells you everything,” Watters concluded.
What a weird, weird, weird device to fixate your concept of masculinity on. [video at the link]
[…] “Now, if you’ve seen me on The Five or on prime time, you know I recommend that all men refrain from using straws,” the Fox News host explained. “It’s unbecoming the way a man’s lips purse, the size of the straw is just too dainty, the way your fingers clasp on it. No. Come on. Straws are for women and little kids.” [video at the link]
Mystifying stuff! Many people responded to Watters’ attack on Walz by pointing out that Trump also uses straws. [Examples at the link]
[…] And back when Watters was working out his same insecurities on Biden, some noted that the Fox News host was full of hypocrisy. [Post and image of Watters with a straw]
The desperation is palpable these days over at Fox News. Some might say they’re grasping at straws. Hey now!
This attack on men using straws is far less creepy than his sexist statements about Harris. So that’s something he can hang a manly hat on.
JFC. This guy Watters is still on TV, replacing Tucker Carlson in the Fox News lineup. Who is watching this “news” broadcast and taking this guy seriously?
Do anti-abortion-rights advocates actually oppose abortion, specifically, or do they just have really bad reading comprehension skills? I’m starting to wonder if it might be the latter, because somehow they keep getting really confused about what abortions even are, what those who support abortion rights are asking for, what ballot measures say, who they are, where they are, what day it is, etc., etc., the list goes on.
For example: A Missouri judge this week had to tell Republicans that the language they wanted to use for a summary of an abortion ballot initiative was unacceptable, on the grounds that they were straight up lying about it.
The Missouri Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative is a relatively straightforward ballot initiative that would guarantee the right to abortion in the state’s constitution. It specifically allows the General Assembly (the state Lege) to “enact laws that regulate the provision of abortion after Fetal Viability provided that under no circumstance shall the Government deny, interfere with, delay, or otherwise restrict an abortion that in the good faith judgment of a treating health care professional is needed to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”
It does not say jack shit about malpractice. And yet …
The proposed summary, written by Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, was so egregiously off-base that Cole County Circuit Judge Cotton Walker — a white, male, Republican judge in Missouri whose actual first name is “Cotton” — threw it out entirely.
It read:
A “yes” vote will enshrine the right to abortion at any time of a pregnancy in the Missouri Constitution. Additionally, it will prohibit any regulation of abortion, including regulations designed to protect women undergoing abortions and prohibit any civil or criminal recourse against anyone who performs an abortion and hurts or kills the pregnant woman.
A “no” vote will continue the statutory prohibition of abortion in Missouri.
If passed, this measure may reduce local taxes while the impact to state taxes is unknown.
This bore no resemblance to the proposed amendment, which did not, in fact, include a “It’s fine to kill or maim someone you are performing an abortion on” clause anywhere in there.
What the text of the act actually says is that you cannot penalize someone for having or performing an abortion, which is a very, very different thing:
“No person shall be penalized, prosecuted, or otherwise subjected to adverse action based on their actual, potential, perceived, or alleged pregnancy outcomes, including but not limited to miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. Nor shall any person assisting a person in exercising their right to reproductive freedom with that person’s consent be penalized, prosecuted, or otherwise subjected to adverse action for doing so.”
That sure doesn’t sound anything at all like it would “prohibit any civil or criminal recourse against anyone who performs an abortion and hurts or kills the pregnant woman.”
There is a very big difference between not prosecuting doctors for performing a medical procedure and and not prosecuting them for malpractice. For instance, I am reasonably sure that there are no laws on the books anywhere regarding splenectomies, but if your doctor accidentally removes your liver instead of your spleen and you die (as happened recently in Florida), your relatives can definitely sue everyone involved in that. [See coffeepott’s comment 180]
Nothing in this law that says that if you go in to have an abortion and instead of removing the fetus, they remove your left leg, that you cannot sue the doctor or the hospital involved. […]
The new language, written by Judge Walker himself, reads:
“A ‘yes’ vote establishes a constitutional right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraceptives, with any governmental interference of that right presumed invalid; removes Missouri’s ban on abortion; allows regulation of reproductive health care to improve or maintain the health of the patient; requires the government not to discriminate, in government programs, funding, and other activities, against persons providing or obtaining reproductive health care; and allows abortion to be restricted or banned after fetal viability except to protect the life or health of the woman.”
See! It’s not that hard to be honest!
If having an abortion is so objectionable to these people, in and of itself, it’s truly a wonder why they feel they have to lie about it so much, why they have to add on all these extra untrue things in order to get people on their side? Why do they feel they have to claim that anyone supports “post-birth abortion” [as Trump has repeatedly done, and continues to do] or that an abortion rights amendment would nullify malpractice laws?
Perhaps they realize they can’t win if they don’t cheat, but that doesn’t say a whole lot for their “cause,” now does it?
Celebrating the initiatives that should be celebrated:
One of the great frustrations of Our Current Political Climate (and yeah, our Climate Climate) is that Joe Biden simply doesn’t get the credit he deserves for his historic actions to address climate change and get the USA on the road to transitioning to clean energy.
For any number of reasons, most people in the US, even those who say climate is among their top issues, just don’t know much about what Biden has done, even though he regularly touts programs and infrastructure being funded by his signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Hell, he was at it again just yesterday, and while some of us nerds were over the moon, most folks were instead paying attention to the latest insane babblings from Donald Trump, who … you know what, the details don’t matter, because there’s ALWAYS some new insane babblings.
Happily, to mark August’s second anniversary of the IRA, the clean energy nerds at Rewire America rolled out a nifty little campaign to help folks who have already taken advantage of the IRA’s incentives to make some noise about it, encouraging them to hold “front porch ribbon cutting” ceremonies to call attention to home energy upgrades made possible through the IRA. Your typical home solar and battery storage systems, efficient heat pumps for heating and cooling, home EV chargers, induction stoves, upgraded electrical panels, improved insulation, and the like.
If a new battery factory can have a ribbon-cutting ceremony, then why not celebrate your own new efficiency upgrades, complete with comically oversized scissors, a big red (or green!) ribbon, and if you can hook ‘em in, a few words from a local politician who supports clean energy?
Oh look, here is Colorado Gov. Jared Polis doing exactly such an event in Denver, where James Warren and Hayley Schroeder replaced the fossil-fueled furnace in their 1950s-built house with an IRA-subsidized heat pump. [Charming photo at the link]
So far, as Colorado Public Radio notes in its story on the event, more than $8 billion in homeowner tax credits for clean energy upgrades have gone to help more than 3.4 million American households for good clean energy stuff.
And hell yes, if you can connect with local climate activists and use an information kit like those provided by Rewire America, the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, and others, then your little event has a better chance of getting local attention. You could also coordinate with a local contractor / clean energy installer and invite neighbors to come and try out electric yard-care equipment, like these folks did in Pelham, New York: [Charming photo at the link]
Some local outlets will even just run your press release, photos and all, though we do have to tut-tut at what lazy journalisming that is.
We think this is pretty keen. If Joe Biden couldn’t personally sign every new solar panel paid for by IRA, then this is a good way to get the word out.
In Donald Trump’s meandering opening remarks, he offered effusive praise for Judge Aileen M. Cannon.
“Frankly, I don’t know the judge in Florida. Judge Cannon don’t know her at all. But, I think she’s a brilliant woman,” Trump said.
Cannon oversaw Trump’s classified documents case, and is one of more than 200 conservative lawyers Trump nominated to the federal bench.
[A legacy that will last long after Trump (and many of us) are gone.]
Donald Trump pivoted to talking about the economy after spending the first 40-plus minutes of his New York news conference complaining about his legal issues. Addressing the latest job numbers, the former president said people from other countries are entering the country illegally and “taking the jobs of native-born Americans.” These foreign-born residents are largely citizens or immigrants authorized to work in the United States.
When Donald Trump finished speaking, he insulted reporters — “Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves” — and then walked away without taking any questions at his news conference in New York.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Lynna @184:
the Fox News lineup. Who is watching this “news” broadcast and taking this guy seriously?
A judge agreed Friday to postpone Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case until after the November election, granting him a hard-won reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the homestretch of his presidential campaign.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is also weighing a defense request to overturn the verdict on immunity grounds, delayed Trump’s sentencing until Nov. 26, three weeks after the final votes are cast in the presidential election.
It had been scheduled for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day. The new date is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Merchan wrote that he was postponing the sentencing “to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.” …
As I have pointed out before, sentencing might have an effect on the election. Not sentencing might have an effect on the election. So the proper choice is to do the right thing because it is the right thing.
Two Virginians run a local county-approved militia, one that has made overt threats against the government. They also both happen to be top-performing noncommissioned officers in the Virginia Army National Guard, serving the very government one of them has repeatedly warned is drifting toward tyranny.
It’s a seemingly contradictory set of roles that likely runs afoul of new Army rules that explicitly prohibit anti-government behavior — for soldiers both on active duty and in the Guard.
Staff Sgts. Daniel Abbott and Alexandra Griffeth jointly run the Campbell County Militia, which operates in the rural surroundings of Lynchburg, Virginia, with Abbott serving as the militia’s commander and having ties to other similar groups in the region…
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Lawrence O’Donnell – New York’s stupidest rich people clapped after Trump said ‘child care is child care’ (9:52)
Trump: Next year I’m gonna suggest that the Economic Club hold its meeting in Caracas [Venezuela] because we’ll be safer than we are in our country if they win.
[…] Lawrence: just think of how stupid you have to be to say that. Then think about how stupid you have to be to clap for that. […] [Biden and Harris] are in power now. And the Economic Club of New York is not having its meeting in Caracas. […] They were all very, very safe. Most of the rich people in that room live in New York City […] it’s mostly Wall Street types who […] have spent their lives massaging money. And every one of them has gotten much, much richer during the four years of the Biden-Harris administration.
Now I knew how stupid the speaker was before he opened his mouth there today. But I really did not know how stupid so many members of the New York Economic Club are until I heard their reactions to the stupidest person who has ever spoken to them.
In early August, Donald Trump sat down with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo and claimed Vice President Kamala Harris doesn’t have support from law enforcement. As The Hill reported, there’s fresh evidence to the contrary.
In a letter signed by 101 law enforcement officials, the group declared that Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) are “the only candidates we trust to keep our communities safe.” The group cited Harris’ work as a prosecutor, district attorney, and attorney general, during which she took on issues ranging from child sexual assault to transnational crime organizations. … It also cited Walz’s investment in law enforcement in Minnesota, including $300 million in public safety training and community engagement.
It’s worth emphasizing that this group includes officials with ranks like sheriff, police chief, retired chief of police, retired detective, captain, state trooper, and FBI special agent.
“This November,” they wrote, “Americans will choose between someone who spent her career enforcing our laws and someone who has been convicted of breaking them.”
It was the end of that quote that was of particular interest, because while the 101 law enforcement officials made clear that they believe Harris and Walz earned their 2024 backing, they simultaneously emphasized their opposition to Donald Trump.
The former president, their joint statement read, “has repeatedly shown he does not respect law enforcement or the rule of law,” citing the Republican’s stated plans to pardon Jan. 6 rioters who clashed with the police at the U.S. Capitol.
At a campaign rally in July, the GOP nominee told an audience that the Democratic campaign was telling the electorate, “‘I’m the prosecutor, and he is the convicted felon.’” Trump added, “I don’t think people are going to buy it.”
I can think of 101 people who do buy it.
The timing of this announcement was not coincidental: It reached the public just hours ahead of the former president’s scheduled remarks at a Fraternal Order of Police event. It also comes roughly a month after Trump received an endorsement from the National Association of Police Organizations.
The fact remains, however, that the idea of the Republican candidate being a friend to law enforcement continues to be a tough sell. In fact, given the circumstances, it’s probably worth revisiting The Top 10 Reasons Donald Trump Deserves To Be Seen As An Opponent Of Law Enforcement.
10. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at those he’s described as “dirty cops,” as part of a larger offensive against law enforcement. He’s also condemned law enforcement officials as “fascists” and accused law enforcement officials of pushing “fake” crime rate statistics as part of a political plot to help Democrats.
9. A jury recently found Trump guilty of 34 felonies, and he’s still facing dozens of other criminal counts across multiple jurisdictions.
8. Trump is facing civil suits from police officers who sustained injuries during the Jan. 6 riot the Republican instigated.
7. Trump has condemned common law enforcement tools, including plea agreements for witnesses who cooperate with prosecutors.
6. Trump abused his powers by intervening in criminal cases in which the defendants were political allies, letting politically connected suspects go free — even after some pleaded guilty — and undermining law enforcement in the process.
5. Trump has undermined law enforcement by abusing his pardon powers, in one case even commuting the sentence of a man accused of helping murder of a police officer.
4. Trump lashed out at the police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt as a “thug” and a “coward” who deserves to be vilified.
3. Trump has promised day-one pardons for insurrectionists, many of whom violently clashed with police officers.
2. While in office, Trump saw law enforcement as a political weapon he can wield at his convenience, which led him to urge law enforcement officials to enforce his political vendettas and help Republicans win elections.
1. Trump has expressed support for prosecuting members of the Capitol police.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, a sycophantic supporter of the former president, declared earlier this year via social media, “No one Backs The Blue more than President Trump.”
It was difficult to believe when the Ohio congressman first made the comment in March, and it hasn’t improved with age.
Also, in breaking news, Liz Cheney says that her father, Dick Cheney, is going to vote for Kamala Harris.
Today rain is falling in the Sahara desert, one of the driest places on earth. Moisture from the African monsoon has moved far north of its normal tropical extent into the center of the Sahara desert. Rain is falling in places it hasn’t fallen in years. The African monsoon moved north of its normal region in August bringing some locations in north Africa many times their normal rain. [rainfall map at the link]
American and European weather and climate models forecast that the monsoon rains will continue for the next two weeks or more as the African monsoon will continue to be displaced far north of it’s normal tropical position. [map at the link]
At Severe Weather Europe Andrej Flis explained how unusual this Saharan rain is.
A unique rainfall event is currently unfolding across the Sahara desert, one of the driest places on Earth. The amount of rainfall might not seem large by normal standards, but a large part of the Sahara will get well over 500% of normal monthly rainfall in September.
It’s not very often that the Sahara desert experiences these rainfall events. They are very rare, less than once per decade on average, but they are usually a sign that something is changing in the Earth’s weather system, indicating an unusual state of the Atmosphere as we head into Autumn and Winter.
In normal years the subtropical high pressure area, a heat dome, sits relentlessly over the Sahara. The sands are so reflective, the air so dry and the ground is so hot that heat is actually lost to space over the Sahara under normal conditions. That leads to hot days and cool nights with huge temperature swings especially near the equinoxes. This September’s equinox period will be very abnormal with cooler days, warmer nights and intrusions of tropical air from the African monsoon.
The Sahara wasn’t always a desert. From the beginning of the interglacial period up to 6000 years ago, there were lakes in the Sahara. Megalake Chad and the other Saharan lakes were so large that they kept the climate moist even after the orbital parameters that brought maximum insolation to the Arctic in late spring and early summer ending the last glacial period became less favorable. However, 6000 years ago the solar heating patterns caused by earth’s orbital variations brought more ocean warming to the southern hemisphere and less to the northern hemisphere and the north Atlantic cooled. The cooling of the north Atlantic waters brought on the drying of the Sahara and the desert conditions that have predominated the region for the past 5000 years.
But this summer something is different. The waters of the north Atlantic are relatively hot while the waters of the south Atlantic are relatively cool. And the waters of the Indian ocean on the east coast of Africa are very warm. And the Mediterranean sea is hot. [map at the link]
The high heat content of the north Atlantic and the Mediterranean sea has affected the atmospheric circulation patterns bringing exceptional heat to far northern Europe and allowing the heat dome over western north Africa to break down, bringing monsoon moisture north into the Sahara desert. [map at the link]
The heating of the north Atlantic caused by human activities, in particular, greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions, may be creating conditions similar to those that brought the African monsoon into the Sahara 6000 years ago. Climate models have predicted that the Sahara could become wetter with increasing ghg emissions and that appears to be beginning this year.
There is good news in this. The atmospheric waves that move into the north Atlantic that develop into tropical storms have been displaced far north of their normal track this August and early September. They have moved into cooler waters. The waters of the main development region for Atlantic hurricanes is very hot, but without the strong tropical waves over the warm waters the hurricane season has gone quiet.
The bad news is the humidification of the Sahara leads to increased global uptake of solar heat because water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas.
Scandal, school board election failures, and a disastrous 60 Minutes interview appear to have diminished Moms for Liberty’s once powerful influence, and last weekend’s summit provided plenty of additional evidence that the group is currently flailing.
Nearly every Republican presidential hopeful and a number of right-wing giants spoke at Moms for Liberty’s lively summit last year. But this year’s gathering was comparatively small, with far fewer panels and a weaker speaker lineup. In fact, Glenn Beck and D-list comedian Rob Schneider were advertised as the star headliners until the exceptionally late addition of former President Donald Trump just days before the event.
This is the second year that my colleague Madeline Peltz and I attended Moms for Liberty’s summit. It was immediately apparent to us that the small crowd had seemingly been reduced to largely die-hard members who, unlike many, remained loyal to Moms for Liberty through its year of scandal and failure. Co-founder Tina Descovich acknowledged that the organization was losing some support while presenting an award, saying, “You have been a friend to Moms for Liberty when some have stepped away.”
A quick recap of Moms for Liberty’s really rough year
– About a week before Moms for Liberty’s 2023 summit, an Indiana chapter quoted Adolf Hitler in its newsletter. The chapter apologized, but co-founder Tiffany Justice doubled down at the summit, saying, “One of our moms in a newsletter quotes Hitler. I stand with that mom.”
– According to police records, co-founder Bridget Ziegler was “on prowl” with husband Christian Ziegler (who spoke at last year’s summit) to find women for a three-way sexual relationship. This information was released after Christian was accused of rape. (Police decided against recommending rape charges after reviewing video of the encounter.) He was then ousted from his position as chair of the Florida GOP. Bridget Ziegler refused to resign from her Sarasota school board position, despite the board voting 4-1 to ask for her resignation.
– Descovich and Justice appeared on a humiliating 60 Minutes segment and visibly fumbled softball questions. The interview was so bad that Moms for Liberty and its right-wing media allies scrambled to do damage control and condemn 60 Minutes.
– It’s losing elections. According to Brookings, only a small and declining share of Moms for Liberty-endorsed candidates won in 2023.
[…]
More at the link, including an analysis of how Moms for Liberty stoke transgender panic.
The conservative media network folded Thursday night, just one day after the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment accusing it of being funded by Russian state-controlled media, according to Tenet Media field reporter Tayler Hansen…
The Republican Party just blew itself up this week, and JD Vance didn’t notice.
Here in Phoenix to stump for his party’s presidential ticket, Vance put out a press release saying he would not distance himself from Tucker Carlson.
That is to say, Vance would not step out of the mushroom cloud that Carlson, the former Fox News personality, created when he invited a Hitler apologist onto his podcast and fawned all over him.
Carlson, who got a primetime speaking spot at the Republican National Convention this summer, invited amateur historian and World War II revisionist Darryl Cooper to tell Carlson’s mega-audience that Hitler was misunderstood.
He said that the German mass starvation of Russian POWs was an unhappy circumstance of failing to appreciate how many Russians would surrender.
Cooper also called then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill the “chief villain” of the war.
To this, Carlson called Cooper “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”
…
A spokesman for JD Vance said in his press release, “Senator Vance doesn’t believe in guilt-by-association cancel culture, but he obviously does not share the views of the guest interviewed by Tucker Carlson. There are no stronger supporters of our allies in Israel or the Jewish community in America than Senator Vance and President Trump.”
The damage is already done.
Tucker Carlson got prime time at Trump’s convention.
Now JD Vance has a decision to make. Will he make it worse?
Knowing what he knows now, will he still go to Hershey, Pa., for his scheduled appearance on Sept. 21 with Tucker Carlson at Carlson’s 2024 Live Tour?
PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A suburban Detroit judge is no longer handling cases after a court official turned over recordings of her making anti-gay insults and referring to Black people as lazy.
Oakland County Probate Judge Kathleen Ryan was removed from her docket on Aug. 27 for unspecified misconduct. Now the court’s administrator has stepped forward to say he blew the whistle on her, secretly recording their phone calls…
Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, said that although he never met the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, he is certain McCain would not support Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid.
“John McCain, I’m sure, disagreed with Donald Trump on a whole host of issues. And yes, Donald Trump disagreed with John McCain on a whole host of issues. I do not believe for a second that if John McCain were alive today and he sees what’s going on at the American Southern border, that he would support Kamala Harris and all the destruction that she’s brought,” Vance told a crowd at a rally event in Phoenix on Thursday night…
“Look, one of the things I love about Donald Trump — and I never knew John McCain, but I suspect that one of the things that I would have loved about John McCain is that they didn’t let their personal grievances get in the way of serving the country,” Vance said…
Boeing’s Starliner is getting ready for its long-anticipated return to Earth, leaving behind two astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS). It won’t be routine, as Starliner will have to quickly and safely move away from the ISS despite its malfunctioning thrusters and helium leaks.
The glitching Boeing spacecraft is scheduled to undock from the space station on Friday at 6:04 p.m. ET, beginning its six-hour journey back home. The crew capsule is returning without a crew on board, targeting a landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico on Saturday at 12:03 a.m. ET. For its undocking, Starliner will execute a breakout burn that’s meant to put less pressure on its thrusters and help it move away quicker from the space station.
The spacecraft’s undocking and return will be streamed live on NASA’s website and the space agency’s YouTube Channel. You can also watch it at the livestream below. The livestream will begin at 5:45 p.m. ET on Friday for the undocking of the spacecraft, and will resume at 10:50 p.m. ET for the anticipated landing of Starliner…
Senior Biden administration officials said Friday that the United States is preparing for the possible arrival of a more severe version of mpox, which has taken off in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries in Africa resulting in more than 600 deaths there.
With the hottest time of year on average in the rear view, Europe is still scorching as summer transitions to fall. In recent days, many parts of Scandinavia have posted their highest temperatures on record so late in the year. Several other European countries have also set notable September heat milestones, including Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia. The September heat wave follows Europe’s hottest summer on record and the hottest summer for the planet.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance is perhaps best known for appearing incapable of normal human behavior, valuing women by how many babies they crank out, and the endless well of deplorable things he says on podcasts. And yet Donald Trump and his campaign are apparently so thrilled with Vance that they intend to put him out in the public eye even more.
As The Bulwark reports on Friday:
In all, since Trump picked him 52 days ago, Vance has conducted 91 separate media interviews in 23 cities across 11 states.
And in the coming days, he is expected to kick it up a notch with a swing-state bus tour where, advisers say, he’ll try to remain accessible to the media as a means of drawing a sharp contrast with the press-averse Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
This certainly seems like an extension of the all-publicity-is-good-publicity theory that has been the primary driver of Trump’s life. Does it really matter that Vance doesn’t know how to order a doughnut, if 100 million Americans watch him fail?
Vance’s ubiquity allows the right to complain that Harris and running mate Tim Walz are “running a basement campaign,” even as Trump goes the better part of a week without holding a public event. Plus, Vance seems more than happy to make false claims about Walz’s military service, dismiss the concerns of grieving parents, or revive his “cat ladies” insults about women without children.
Trump’s team doesn’t even see Vance’s deep unpopularity as an issue. Here’s The Bulwark again:
That’s because Vance isn’t on the ticket to win over liberals or even, necessarily, persuade moderates. The Trump campaign sees him as an asset in a base turnout election, where the objective is to increase the number of men, especially white men in swing states, who go to the polls.
[sad]
While Vance keeps the pale bros riled up, Trump has the chance to go out and make noises about softening his positions. Like flip-flopping on marijuana, or tying himself in knots over Florida’s abortion ban.
There are only two problems with the strategy of using Vance to bring home the base while Trump (supposedly) reaches out to the middle.
First, according to recent polls, Harris’ support among women swamps the edge Trump has with men. This election isn’t about whoever can deliver their base to the polls. It’s about which candidate is expanding the map.
Second, that strategy requires that Trump be capable of staying on topic and holding to a position. He’s not.
Also … does even Trump’s base like Vance? Does anyone?
Posted by readers of the article:
It’s not simply pretending that they are thrilled, to help win the election. They mostly pretend they are thrilled to demonstrate fealty to Trump.
No MAGA Republican is allowed to contradict the Great Leader, because they will be cast into political oblivion if they do — and if Trump wins, maybe worse will happen to them.
This is the same sort of behavior we see in Russia with Putin. It’s how Trump wants to run America, too — like a dictator or at least like a mob boss. You cannot cross the leader.
——————————-
that’s easy: misogynist couch humper distracts from the malevolence and lunacy of King Felon Orange Turd
——————————
Meanwhile, while Vance keeps the white guys happy, Trump says the vp pick is inconsequential, and undermines Vance’s effectiveness by flip-flopping [Trump certainly is undermining JD Vance early in the game. He is waiting until after the election is over and he can blame Vance for the loss.]
—————————
Vance isn’t old and decrepit, so he distracts the low IQ voters from Trump’s age and decrepitude. Also, Vance’s horrible, disgusting outtakes keeps the heat and spotlight off of Trump’s mounting legal fiascos, financial disasters, and criminal convictions.
—————————
1. Trump likes Vance, so that’s that.
2. Trump believes that he has the election in the bag, because courts/lawsuits/corrupt officials/Congress, so what difference does it make who’s on the ticket with him?.
3. Trump believes he will be President For Life, and that he will outlive us all, rendering Vance irrelevant.
————————
It’s too late to change at this point and Trump’s ego is so titanic I doubt he would want someone that could steal his rotting mojo. It also doesn’t matter if Vance goes out more and isn’t “press averse” because he’s just going to say something stupid, tone deaf or both at every stop.
Trump Begs Republicans To Shut Down The Government Before Election
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SU3a0ISFmW0
And he wants congress to outlaw something that is already outlawed.
How easy is it to fool high-profile right-wing media personalities into joining an alleged Russian influence operation?
A federal indictment this week revealed the answer…
The main character of the Russians’ narrative was “Eduard Grigoriann,” a fictitious globe-trotting businessman and banker. He had no digital footprint, nor any public record of his existence, the indictment found.
He was allegedly represented by various “personas” who pretended to be his employees ― all of whom in fact were the same person, though the indictment did not identify this person by name…
But the indictment suggested the pair knew Grigoriann was a fake: “Despite describing U.S. Company-1′s investor … as ‘Eduard Grigoriann,’ a purported finance professional in Western Europe, Founder-1 and Founder-2 admitted to each other in their private communications that their ‘investors’ were, in truth and in fact, the ‘Russians,’” the indictment alleged…
In April, the indictment alleged, Chen performed Google searches for Grigoriann and found no results. She followed up with another email, stressing that Rubin was “really insisting on seeing some materials (profile, article, whatever) on Eduard before [he] feels comfortable moving forward. Is there anything we can provide [Rubin] with?”
At that point, Persona-1 emailed a “CV” to provide to Rubin, according to the indictment, which reproduced it:(…)
Rubin, though he did not respond to HuffPost’s questions, was apparently unfazed by the fake résumé, and the indictment makes no mention of any questions he may have had about Grigoriann’s lack of a digital footprint.
Except for one thing: He apparently didn’t like that Grigoriann’s CV used the phrase “social justice.”…
A website claiming to be a local San Francisco news outlet named KBSF-TV published a baseless claim on Monday alleging that Vice President Kamala Harris was involved in a June 2011 hit-and-run incident that left a 13-year-old girl paralyzed. Harris was California’s attorney general at the time, and has been a longtime Bay Area resident.
Analysis of the article and site indicate the story is false; public records and news reports show no evidence of the hit-and-run incident. The San Francisco Police Department told CBS News that they could not find records of the incident. A CBS News analysis of a video that accompanied the article found it contained several photos from other unrelated news stories…
Ohio’s prolonged drought is forcing the premature harvest of withered crops and depleting hay and feed reserves that had been stored for winter.
Yet the state votes again and again for the party of “drill, baby, drill” and climate change denial.
Ohio! Where the men are men and the settees are afraid.
KGsays
Lynna, ONM@178,
Could it be that Trump was not talking about tariffs, but intends to run a protection racket against foreign countries?
“Nice capital you have there, Denmark. Would be a pity if it got nuked.”
After all, he is known to have complained that having nuclear weapons and not using them was stupid.
KGsays
JD Vance has a choice. He can disavow Tucker Carlson or lose an election – Reginald Selkirk@197, quoting Phil Boas
I’d say Phil Boas is delusional if he thinks Vance’s association with Carlson will make the slightest difference. Antisemitism IOKIYAR.
I never thought I’d stand before. A crowd of Democrats refer to a president who was a liar so many times. I’m not trying to be funny. It’s sad.
Trump continues to lie about crime in America. Guess what? On his watch, the murder rate went up 30%—the biggest increase in history. Meanwhile, we made the largest investment, Kamala and I, in public safety—ever. Now the murder rate is falling faster than any time in history.
Donald Trump promised Infrastructure Week every week for four years, and he never built a damn thing. And now, because of what Kamala and I have done, we’re giving America an Infrastructure Decade—not “week.”
We’ve gone from an economic crisis to the strongest economy in the entire world. Record 60 million new jobs. Record small business growth. Record high stock market. Record high 401Ks. Wages up and inflation down. Way down and continuing to go down.
Donald Trump calls America a failing nation. He’s dead wrong.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s denialism isn’t surprising since he’s long been doing pro-Russian foreign policy work for free.
A recently unsealed Department of Justice indictment alleges that a Russia-sponsored scheme tried to influence public opinion using a prominent conservative media company. Many of the right-wing influencers associated with that company have publicly called themselves “victims.”
But that didn’t stop Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Fox News host Laura Ingraham from denying on Thursday the veracity of the charges. In fact, Hawley and Ingraham went so far as to imply that the indictment was some kind of deep-state attempt to help Vice President Kamala Harris win this year’s election.
“This is the third straight presidential election, Laura, that they’ve tried this,” Hawley told Ingraham. “Nobody believes this stuff. This isn’t about foreign interference by Russia. This is a smokescreen for domestic interference by our deep state and the Democrat Party. This is the same play that they’ve run for years. In 2016, the FBI used this playbook in order to interfere in our election that year.” [video at the link]
The DOJ alleges that Russian operatives funneled nearly $10 million into a Tennessee-based company, which CNN confirmed to be the right-wing Tenet Media, in order to push content friendly to the Kremlin’s interests. And it seems that Hawley and Ingraham’s head-up-ass approach here isn’t shared by their conservative brethren.
Semafor reported that the right-wing Blaze Media cut ties with one of its YouTube influencers, Lauren Chen, on Thursday. Chen and her husband co-founded Tenet Media.
Tim Pool, a Tenet-affiliated podcaster who has attacked Ukraine as “the enemy,” wrote on X, “I have been contacted by the FBI as a potential victim of a crime[.] The FBI believes I have information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation and have requested a voluntary interview[.] I will be offering my assistance in this matter.”
Pool added that “[if] these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims. I cannot speak for anyone else at the company as to what they do or to what they are instructed.”
Benny Johnson, the far-right commentator who is listed as part of Tenet’s “talent” on the company’s website, wrote that he is “disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment, which make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme.”
Hawley’s denialism isn’t surprising since he’s long been doing pro-Russian foreign policy work for free.
“We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling,” Sen. Marco Rubio [R-FL] acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement, directly refuting President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that Russian interference was a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats.
———————–
“One thing led to another, and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin in partnership with the Soviet government,” the president wrote in his book, Trump: The Art of the Deal.
Eric Tя☭mp 2014: “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
Donald Tя☭mp , May 2017: “I don’t know any Russians. I’ve never been to Russia.”
Trump and his associates repeatedly lied to the public and to Federal investigators about their more than 140 contacts with Russians during the campaign, as documented in “The Mueller Report”.
If there’s nothing to hide, why have so many in Trump circle lied about meeting with Russians?
Oleg Deripaska – Natalia Veselnitskaya – Sergey Yatsenko – Sergey Kislyak – Victor Podobnyy – Aras Agalarov – Dmitry Peskov – Victor Yanukovych – Andril Artemenko – Denis Katsyv- Dmitry Rybolovlev – Serhiy Kivalov – Victor Boyarkin – Dmitry Klokov – Evengey Shmykov – Maria Butina – Anastasia Vashukevich – Dmitry Rogozin – Aleksandr Torshin – Victor Vekselberg – Len Blavatnik – Konstantin Malofeev – Alexey Komov – Konstantin Kilimnik – Sergey Gorkov – Evgeny Buryakov – Rinat Akhmetshin – Arkady Dvorkovich –Kirill Dmitriev – Olga Polonskpsya – Dimitri Klokov – Ivan Timofeev – Irakly Kaveladze – Dimitry Peskov – Yevgeniy Prigizhin
————————–
Not to mention 10 unprosecuted cases of obstruction identified by Mueller b/c of a DoJ rule forbidding prosecution of a sitting prez.
———————–
Josh Hawley is either a useful idiot to Russia, unwitting asset or witting asset. Take your pick.
————————–
Hawley is working for the deep state. The Russian deep state.
Akira MacKenziesays
@216
No. America IS a failed state. Just not for the reasons that capitalists like Trump or Biden (or Harris for that matter) are willing to admit.
Israeli strikes in Gaza killed more than a dozen people overnight Saturday, hospital and local authorities said, as health workers attempt to administer polio vaccinations amid potential rise in infections.
Health authorities in the region teamed up with United Nations agencies to begin distributing polio vaccines to children in Gaza last weekend. There are an estimated 640,000 in the Gaza Strip who need to be vaccinated as fears mount about an outbreak in the war-torn region.
Medics said the Israeli strike hit the Halima al-Sa-diyya school compound that is serving as a shelter for displaced people. In addition to the dead, it wounded 15 others. Another strike hit a house in Gaza City, Reuters reported.
Later Saturday, another blast hit the Amr Ibn Al’as school, another building used to temporarily house those who have evacuated their homes amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, wounding 25.
Israel’s military said the strikes were targeting a command center used by Hamas gunmen inside the compound, the international news wire reported.
The strikes come after the World Health Organization (WHO) said there would be “humanitarian pauses” in the war to allow for the polio vaccine drive.
The second phase of vaccinations in the south of Gaza was in its final day Saturday, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The effort will move to the north and conclude on Monday, The Associated Press reported.
Officials estimate they need to vaccinate at least 90 percent of the kids in Gaza to stop the transmission of polio. More than 2,100 workers have administering vaccines to children. […]
House Republicans on Friday unveiled their highly anticipated plan to avert a government shutdown that is sure to upset Democrats and has already drawn skepticism from some in the GOP.
The 46-page plan would keep the government funded into March 2025, while tacking on language for stricter proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting, setting the stage for a budget showdown with Senate Democrats later this month.
[That requirement for proof-of-citizenship is meant to be a poison pill, I think. Republicans are looking for a way to force a government shutdown that they can blame on Democrats.]
“Today, House Republicans are taking a critically important step to keep the federal government funded and to secure our federal election process,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said after the bill went up.
“Congress has a responsibility to do both, and we must ensure that only American citizens can decide American elections.”
Democrats immediately knocked the proposal.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in a joint statement said “avoiding a government shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a bill drawn up by one party.”
“Speaker Johnson is making the same mistake as former Speaker McCarthy did a year ago, by wasting precious time catering to the hard MAGA right. This tactic didn’t work last September and it will not work this year either. The House Republican funding proposal is an ominous case of déjà vu,” they said.
“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands.” […]
The White House also argued the bill would make it more difficult for eligible voters to register and increase “the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls.” […]
The USA already has laws in place to prevent non-citizens from voting. The Republican talking point that claims non-citizens are voting has been debunked many times.
KGsays
Hilarious that Tim Pool, Benny Johnson etc. are claiming to be “victims” of the Tenet Media affair, after having been paid huge amounts of money for making a handful of videos which hardly anyone watched.
Wonkette: Dick Cheney And Liz Cheney Voting For Kamala Harris, Triggering Great Disturbance In The Force
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
We weren’t terribly surprised the other day when former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) announced that not only would she not vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump, she would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris — and she said it in North Carolina, which has now become a swing state again.
But on Friday, Cheney, speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, went a step further, endorsing Democrat Colin Allred in his bid to replace podcaster and sometime Senator Ted Cruz. Then she said something really remarkable, which for the sake of storytelling convention we’re pretending you’ll be surprised by even after our headline and snazzy photoshopped illustration: She said her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, would be voting for Harris as well. And he followed that up with a statement confirming it.
Well bullseye us with a womp rat! That’s the gol-durndest thing we’ve heard since Beggar’s Canyon voted for Mon Mothma after the Hutt Syndicate was dispossessed!
Here’s the straight dope from the Texas Tribune, since it was their festival and all:
“Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris,” she said of her father, who served as vice president under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. “If you think about the moment we’re in, and you think about how serious this moment is, my dad believes — and he said publicly — there has never been an individual in our country who is as grave a threat to our democracy as Donald Trump is.”
And if anybody knows a grave threat to our democracy, it’d have to be the guy who did the most, before Trump and his Council of Cretins, to advance the notion that presidential power is nigh-absolute, especially when it comes to bloody foreign adventurism. Team Trump just added a little Divine Right of Presidents to what Cheney and the neocons started, didn’t it?
Here’s his statement: [Statement available at the link]
So, dang, ain’t THAT something! The old war-crimer is on board with Kamala, and that’s certainly a measure of just how weird American politics has become. We’ll certainly be glad if this news gives non-Trumpy conservatives the permission they need to vote for a (*shudder*!) Democrat, for the good of the nation. (Wonkette rather famously believes in forgiveness and atonement, and you can still loathe the Cheneys but recognize when bad people do good things, and encourage them to do that more and further. Do you want bad people to stay bad? Or do you want the possibility of redemption?) […]
A Missouri judge ruled that an abortion ballot measure is invalid because it did not properly note what laws it would repeal, potentially restricting it from reaching a November vote.
Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh said the measure’s proponents did not sufficiently inform voters who signed the proposed amendment of its ramifications, echoing arguments made in a legal challenge by antiabortion advocates.
Limbaugh, appointed by Gov. Mike Parson (R) after serving as his general counsel, wrote in the Friday ruling that he would not issue an injunction ordering Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) to remove the measure until Tuesday, when the ballots are scheduled to be printed, allowing proponents of the measure known as Amendment 3 to file an appeal.
Missourians for Constitutional Freedom vowed to do just that.
“The court’s decision to block Amendment 3 from appearing on the ballot is a profound injustice to the initiative petition process and undermines the rights of the nearly 380,000+ Missourians who signed our petition demanding a voice on this critical issue,” Rachel Sweet, the group’s campaign manager, said in a statement.
If passed, Amendment 3 would permit the procedure until fetal viability, or about 24 weeks, the point in a pregnancy when a fetus can survive outside the womb.
Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, an abortion rights group, is seeking to enshrine in the state constitution “the right to make and carry out decisions about all matters relating to reproductive health care,” including abortion care. Missouri has a near-total ban on abortion.
Last weekend, Donald Trump made an appearance at the Moms For Liberty Joyful Warrior summit, during which he lamented that children were, and I quote, “Think about it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and many of these childs [sic], 15 years later, say ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’”
This is a patently false statement. It’s not a thing, it does not happen. But the Moms For Liberty are very, very upset that people are saying that it is false instead of just going along with him/them. So upset, in fact, that I got a PR email from someone representing the group titled “Embarrassing abdication of ‘JOURNALISM’ in CNN’s ‘Fact Check’ of Trump” that promised a litany of lawsuits related to just this very thing.
Are you so excited to hear what they have to say about that?
[…] every single lawsuit they sent along had to do with social transitioning, which is pretty different from actual surgery:
LAWSUITS SENT TO CNN, WHICH THEY IGNORED IN THEIR REPORTING:
January Littlejohn / Parental rights lawsuit in FL: (Excerpt, “…School officials’ secret social-transitioning of minor children in alternate gender identities and deliberately withholding that information from parents.)
Abigail Martinez /Parental rights lawsuit in CA: (Excerpt: “She shares her family’s tragic story in hopes that other families will not experience similar heartache from harmful state policies that exclude parents and pressure vulnerable minors to pursue gender transitions, often at the expense of their mental and physical health.”)
Foote v Ludlow /Parental rights lawsuit in MA: (Excerpt: “PRF submits this amicus brief because this case represents what we believe is rapidly becoming all too-common: schools and school personnel forgetting that parental rights are fundamental, and believing that they can encourage minor children to hide key components of who they are from their parents, while actively encouraging children to disobey and ignore their parents’ wishes, and while actively deceiving parents and hiding information about their own children from them.”
Kettle Moraine / Parental rights lawsuit in WI: Excerpt – “This particular case is simply whether a school district can supplant a parent’s right to control the healthcare and medical decisions for their children. The well established case law in that regard is clear – Kettle Moraine can not. The School District abrogated the parental rights of B.F. and T.F. on how to medically treat A.F. when the district decided to socially affirm A.F. at school despite B.F. and T.F. requesting it does not.”
Wendell Perez /Parental rights lawsuit in FL- Headline: “Florida father sues school after daughter’s suicide attempts, says gender counseling hidden from parents.“
Again, none of this is surgery. […]
But the email also offered some quotes from Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice. Perhaps those will be more illuminating?
The President is right to bring up this issue because public schools in America are the ON-RAMP for gender transitioning of minor children. As soon as a school is legally allowed to assign a new pronoun without parental knowledge (which the Biden-Harris Administration wants to codify in federal law with their Title IX re-write for gender ideology), then students quickly go down the road from SOCIAL TRANSITION of their gender to MEDICAL TRANSITION with hormone therapy, and then SURGICAL TRANSITION with gender reassignment surgery. If schools were not the on-ramp and it was just children self-identifying, then why have the cases of gender dysphoria exponentially multiplied since the start of schools using ‘affirming care!?’
Curiously, while she has no problem bending the truth here — claiming that schools “assign” a child a different pronoun rather than simply using the pronoun they choose to go by — even Tiffany Justice does not actually claim that schools are doing any operations, as Trump did.
What about this other quote though. Does that refute it?
What President Trump said to our audience of Moms for Liberty in DC was met with a round of applause because parents of school kids hear about this all the time. There is absolutely no school untouched by ‘gender ideology’ now. And, when a child is hurting and confused, the schools isolate them from their parents to the point of numerous lawsuits being filed against schools and school districts. CNN also made a HUGE error in fact when they say no US state allows gender surgery without parental consent. Guess which one does? Minnesota, which is run by Tim Walz, who is now running to lead our whole country. What an important fact for them to ignore.
No, it does not, despite all of the other ridiculous lies contained therein.
What Minnesota law holds is if parents are not together and live in different states, a parent in Minnesota can get their kid gender-affirming care without worrying about legal repercussions from whatever state the other parent lives in. That is very different!
The idea that these surgeries are even remotely common among teenagers is also patently ridiculous.
A recent study published by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that not only is it incredibly rare for teenagers to get gender-affirming surgery at all, but that the vast majority of those getting “gender-affirming surgeries” aren’t even trans — they are cisgender boys getting “breast reduction surgery” for gynecomastia.
The study found no gender-affirming surgeries performed on TGD youth ages 12 and younger in 2019. This was expected, the researchers said, as current international guidelines do not suggest any medical or surgical intervention for TGD individuals prior to puberty. For teens ages 15 to 17 and adults ages 18 and older, the rate of undergoing gender-affirming surgery with a TGD-related diagnosis was 2.1 per 100,000 and 5.3 per 100,000, respectively. A majority of these surgeries were chest surgeries. When considering use of gender-affirming breast reductions among cisgender males and TGD people, the study found that cisgender males accounted for the vast majority of breast reductions, with 80% of surgeries among adults performed on cisgender men and 97% of surgeries among minors performed on cisgender male teens.
[Good factchecking in the paragraph above.]
Schools, also, are not taking boys to get gynecomastia surgery, for whatever that is worth.
It is, actually, the job of schools to protect kids from their parents at times. It is their job to call Child Protective Services when they suspect child abuse or neglect. It is their job to listen to kids without those kids having to worry that their parents will find out, and it is their job to put the welfare of the children above that of their parents. It’s also not the job of teachers to shame or bully children and refuse to call them by their preferred pronouns or the name they choose to go by — at least decent people who actually care about children hope it is not.
At the end of the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, 3.3 million more U.S. residents had health insurance than did so in 2019, according to a Capital & Main analysis of U.S. Census data conducted with the support of Thomas Data Consulting. That increase led to a 1.2% decline in the national uninsured rate and the lowest rate of residents without health insurance in U.S. history.
By contrast, Donald Trump oversaw an increase of 2.3 million uninsured people during the first three years of his presidency and a 0.6% increase in the national uninsured rate.
Health care affordability may not dominate the media coverage of this year’s presidential campaigns, but it remains a critical issue for many Americans, with 57% describing it as a “very big problem,” according to a Pew Research Center survey released in May. Health care is especially unaffordable for the roughly 27 million people who still lack insurance. That unaffordability makes uninsured people more likely to skip or delay medical treatment, leading to worse health care outcomes […]
Under Trump, 39 states saw increases in their uninsured rates, and the number of uninsured people swelled by more than 440,000 across the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to census data. Meanwhile, in the first two years of the Biden administration, all but three states saw decreases in their uninsured rates. The number of uninsured fell in six out of seven swing states under Biden, resulting in 580,000 fewer uninsured people in those states.
[…] During his presidency, Trump sought to undermine the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s health care law, which expanded health coverage and mandated health insurance as a means to reduce health care costs. By contrast, Biden focused on expanding and protecting the ACA and signed executive orders to reverse Trump’s policies.
The reduction in the number of uninsured people under Biden also stemmed from pandemic-era policies that were put in place under both presidents. Some of those protections expired in 2023, and more will expire in 2025. Uninsured rates are expected to rise again absent federal action.
TRUMP’S ATTACK ON HEALTH CARE
In 2016, Trump campaigned on a policy of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. Trump nearly succeeded in dismantling the ACA in 2017, but it was saved by a single vote when Republican Sen. John McCain cast a dramatic “no” vote, joining two other Republican senators in preserving the law. Instead, Trump weakened the act’s effectiveness while in office.
Trump’s health care approach involved “a mix of both undermining and attacking the ACA coupled with attacks on the Medicaid program,” said Natasha Murphy, director of health policy at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank in Washington. […]
Under Trump, Texas saw its uninsured population balloon by nearly 700,000 people; Florida by more than 240,000; and Arizona by almost 130,000 from 2016 to 2019, according to census data.
LIFE UNDER COVID
When COVID-19 began upending American life in 2020, the Trump administration temporarily abandoned its strategy of attacking Medicaid, and Trump signed a Democrat-sponsored bill that increased funding to states that prolonged people’s Medicaid coverage until the end of the federal health emergency instead of disenrolling them when their eligibility would have typically expired.
“That was a policy that really made a huge difference in ensuring access to much needed COVID treatment, testing and, subsequently, vaccines,” […]
In contrast to Trump, Biden campaigned for president in 2020 on a promise of expanding and protecting the ACA. Eight days after his inauguration, he signed an executive order that made it easier to enroll in Medicaid and private plans by giving people more time to sign up for insurance. He also reversed some of Trump’s executive orders that weakened the ACA by granting federal agencies broad discretion to change, delay or waive provisions of the law they considered financially burdensome.
In addition, Biden signed the American Rescue Act in March 2021, which expanded the availability of subsidies and tax credits for low- and moderate-income people seeking health insurance through the ACA. His signature climate and health bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, extended those provisions through 2025.
[…] All those policies helped send the uninsured population plummeting.
Black and Latino populations, who have historically had lower coverage rates than white people, experienced some of the highest rates of coverage gains. [snipped some caveats]
WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW
This election cycle, Trump has shifted away from his 2016 pledges to eliminate the ACA but has yet to offer clear alternative policies. His campaign’s official platform, Agenda 47, is generally light on policy specifics but states that Republicans “will increase transparency, promote choice and competition, and expand access to affordable healthcare.” [Meaningless blather.]
Project 2025, a blueprint for the next Republican administration created by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, calls for the next GOP president to implement lifetime caps on Medicaid benefits, a move that Murphy estimated could imperil the health care coverage of more than 18 million people. Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, but reports suggest that dozens of Project 2025 personnel have worked for Trump and that he has praised the Heritage Foundation’s work on laying the groundwork for a future administration.
In mid-August, Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled her economic agenda, which included a proposal to expand subsidies for ACA plans and to work with states to “cancel medical debt for millions of Americans.”
[…] What’s remaining is largely the “unglamorous” work of closing loopholes and “sweeping up all the last stragglers who aren’t eligible or don’t have access.”
NASA announced Saturday that Boeing’s Starliner had landed in New Mexico even though its crew remains on the International Space Station.
The Starliner touched down at 12 a.m. ET at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, completing Boeing’s crew flight test.
[,,,] Boeing launched a long-delayed mission in early June with Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore on board. It was delayed several times due to thruster failures and helium leaks.
When trying to dock at the space station, five of the 28 thrusters went down.
[…] The company insisted the Starliner was safe enough to bring Williams and Wilmore back to Earth but NASA determined in late August they would remain in space because it was unsafe to bring them home.
Even though the Starliner made a safe return to Earth, NASA commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said he believes it was the right decision to keep Williams and Wilmore on board the International Space Station.
[…] The entire situation is a blow to Boeing, since it had long-awaited an opportunity to join the commercial space scene.
Boeing’s vice president and program manager of its commercial crew program, Mark Nappi, said in a statement the company will review the data and “determine the next steps for the program.”
Adam Kinzinger had turned down more than a dozen requests to make a documentary. Then the director of Hot Tub Time Machine walked in.
The Illinois Republican congressman who famously — and largely solitarily — turned on Donald Trump after Jan. 6 was reluctant to participate in a movie that focused on his fading hopes to retain his seat. But Steve Pink, the aforesaid auteur of the jacuzzi, wanted to get more personal than that.
“Everyone else was interested in re-election,” Kinzinger said in an interview with THR as the Toronto International Film Festival was set to start Thursday. “But when I talked to Steve and the team their interest was in the human element — what’s the cost to you and your future kid?”
That conversation was more than two years ago. Now the resulting film, The Last Republican, could make an impact on more than just Kinzinger when it premieres at TIFF 2024 on Saturday. That film and Carville — a Telluride documentary about the maverick consultant James Carville and his long lonesome bid on the other side of the aisle to move the Democrats off Joe Biden — could thrust movies into the thick of the election. But how much are film companies interested in these stories — and will it matter in the grand voting scheme if they are? …
Whole cantaloupes sold in Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Texas and Virginia at various retail supermarkets are being recalled due to the potential they could be contaminated with salmonella, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
According to the recall alert posted to the FDA website on Sept. 6, 2024, Eagle Produce LLC based in Scottsdale, AZ initiated the recall of 224 cases of whole cantaloupe sold under the brand name ‘Kandy’ after routine testing by the State of Michigan reveled the presence of salmonella in fruit sold at retail.
So far, the FDA said, no one has reported an illnesses due to the recalled cantaloupe…
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said she would be backing Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) in the Texas Senate race, endorsing the House member over the Republican incumbent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
“I want to say specifically, though, here in Texas, you guys do have a tremendous, serious candidate running for the United States Senate,” Cheney said during her Friday appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, stopping as she was cut off by a raucous applause.
“Oh, well, it’s not Ted Cruz, but Colin Allred is somebody I served with in the House, and somebody who really, when you think about the kind of leaders our country needs, and going to this point about, you know, you might not agree on every policy position, but we need people who are going to serve in good faith,” she said.
“We need people who are honorable public servants and in this race that is Colin Allred so I’ll be working on his behalf.” …
Three Libertarian candidates seeking U.S. House seats in Iowa will not appear on the ballot this November following a judge’s ruling Saturday, upholding a state election panel’s decision.
The ruling came in an appeal by the candidates after the State Objection Panel, composed of one Democratic and two Republican elected officials, ruled 2-1 that the Libertarian candidates should be removed from the ballot on a technicality.
The panel agreed with several Republican Party officials who argued that the Libertarian Party failed to follow state law when it nominated the candidates at its party convention, which was held on the same day as precinct caucuses where the candidates were selected. State law says the term of convention delegates begins the day after the caucuses.
That means the Libertarian candidates were not nominated at valid county conventions, conservative attorney Alan Ostergren argued…
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday called for “modifying” the 25th Amendment to allow for the removal of a vice president who “lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the president,” a political nonstarter and the latest escalation of his attacks on President Joe Biden and the change atop the Democratic ticket.
Trump’s still obsessed with running against Biden. I wonder if he is still angry over 2016 and feels the need to beat Biden more then the need to run again.
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna, OM @ 222
Don’t worry, I am quite capable of making revenge fantasies about Dick Cheney on my own.
BTW if I have to team up with morally ambgiuios characters, my first choices would be Dr. Johannes Cabal and Hannibal Lecter, not Dick Cheney.
Also, the creepy guy you never quite see in the beginning of that David Lynch film? He is the obvious choice for Veep.
birgerjohanssonsays
Cheney revisited: Use one of those weird curses you find in even weirder Japanese films.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 223
In case anyone was wondering, yes, he’s a cousin to Rush Limbaugh who is still, thankfully, dead.
Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday threatened a wide range of people, including lawyers, political donors and operatives, with prosecution if he wins the November election and people have been found to have “cheated” or engaged in “unscrupulous behavior” in connection with the voting….
Mr. Trump has increasingly spoken publicly about the 2020 election, repeating his false claims that widespread fraud had affected the outcome and insisting that he is guarding against it in 2024.
“CEASE & DESIST,” Mr. Trump wrote in his post. “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.”
Mr. Trump’s post continued: “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.
….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.”
He later posted the message to X, the website formerly known as Twitter, where he has a significantly larger following than he does on Truth Social…..
Can college football rivalries motivate Michigan voters to oppose a GOP ticket that includes Ohio State fan JD Vance? Democrats continue to test the theory — this time with a plane flying a banner highlighting Vance’s loyalty to his alma mater above the Big House on Saturday.
The Democratic National Committee flew a plane to take its anti-Vance message to the skies over the Michigan Stadium for four hours during fans’ tailgate before the 12 p.m. kickoff at the U-M game against Texas. In addition to noting Vance’s support for Ohio State, the banner in a few words tries to attach Vance to Project 2025, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation’s playbook for the next Republican presidential administration…
A Democratic group has released new audio of North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is running for governor, saying that he wants to get abortion restrictions down to “zero” weeks.
In the audio, which the group said was recorded on Sept. 3 at a Robinson campaign event in Troy, N.C., a woman asked Robinson about his stance on abortion and why he was supporting North Carolina’s current 12-week ban on the procedure.
Robinson replied by saying, “That 12 weeks, exceptions for rape and incest … I’m not going to say it’s reasonable. But my faith allows me to live with that, because that’s where the consensus is. Do I want to continue to lower it? You better know it. I would love to get down to six weeks. And I’d like to get down to zero. I would like to push it back as far as we could and eliminate as many abortions as we can.” …
…
And on Donald Trump’s side? Which past Republican presidents, vice presidents and nominees are lining up behind him? …
Here, presented for the first time, is an exhaustive list of the previous Republican presidents, vice presidents and nominees to these posts who have publicly said they will be voting for Trump in November:
On Wednesday, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s legal group, American First Legal, filed a lawsuit against all 15 Arizona County recorders over their supposed failure to prevent non-citizens from voting in the state. This lawsuit comes against the backdrop of a larger effort by red state Republicans who, in the last several months, have breathed new life into the myth of widespread non-citizens voting, by advertising the removal of supposed thousands of non-citizens from the voter rolls.
[…] It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections – and it is something that rarely happens. According to Arizona law, if voters register to vote with federal registration forms, they do not need to provide documentary proof of citizenship. Election officials, however, are required to reject state voter registration forms if voters using them do not provide documentary proof of citizenship. The lawsuit argues that because voters don’t need proof of citizenship when using federal forms to register, non-citizens are able to register to vote in Arizona.
[…] Last month, in a partial win for Arizona Republican lawmakers, the Supreme Court upheld part of an Arizona law requiring proof of citizenship when registering to vote using a state-created form. The court rejected the GOP effort to require proof of citizenship for federal forms too.
In July, America First Legal sent letters to the 15 Arizona counties, threatening them with legal action if they did not take action to remove supposed non-citizens from the voter rolls, without providing evidence that non-citizens are on the rolls.
Trump and his allies have been elevating the myth of non-citizen voting for months, creating distrust in the election system and setting up a scenario where Trump and his allies have something to blame if they lose in the fall.
“It is feeding the disinformation that this is a problem, which obviously has become a talking point of the Trump campaign and frankly other political campaigns,” Alice Clapman, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Program, previously told TPM.
The text quoted above is excerpted from a longer news roundup. You may have to scroll to find the bit about America First Legal.
Michael Shells McNamee and Vanessa Buschschluter of BBC News report that Venezuelan opposition leader Eduardo Gonzalez has left the country for Spain.
Venezuela’s Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez said in a post on social media that after “voluntarily” seeking refuge at the Spanish embassy in Caracas some days ago, Mr Gonzalez asked the Spanish government for political asylum.
She added that Caracas had agreed to his safe passage and that he had left.
Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs José Manuel Albares said Mr González had departed the country at his own request, and on a Spanish Air Force plane.
He added that Spain’s government was committed to the political rights of all Venezuelans.
A lawyer for Mr González confirmed to AFP news agency he had left the country for Spain, but did not give any further detail.
[…] Trump vowed to vastly reshape the federal bureaucracy on Saturday in a wide-ranging, often unfocused speech at a rally in Wisconsin.
He pledged to ultimately eliminate the Department of Education, redirect the efforts of the Justice Department and fire civil servants charged with carrying out Biden administration policies that he disagreed with. […]
Many of the proposals in Mr. Trump’s speech align with plans reported by The New York Times to conduct a broad expansion of presidential power over government, and to effectively concentrate more authority within the White House, if he wins in November.
And many of his pledges dovetailed with the stated goals and proposals of Project 2025, an effort by a group of conservative organizations to develop policies for the next Republican president. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Cat Becomes Well-Cited Scholar With New Scam Method
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FtuSG5fPJkw
Grifting is the oldest profession, and will be with us forever.
History will remember Joe Biden as one the greatest presidents of modern times not just for steering the country out of the ditch the previous guy left the place in but also for putting the well-being of the nation above his own ego and ambition by handing the wheel to Kamala Harris.
But imagine if, after watching people freak out after his disastrous debate performance against a fellow sundowning senior, Old Handsome Joe instead declared the Democratic Party was going to sit this one out and urged candidates to either run as independents or throw their support to Cornel West and the People’s Party as the best bet to kick Donald J. Trump to the curb again. Or, even worse, Jill Stein.
This is pretty much what just happened in British Columbia after BC United leader Kevin Falcon suspended the party’s campaign for the provincial election next month and urged candidates — including the party’s 20 sitting incumbents — to find a seat aboard the BC Conservatives’ crazy train instead.
You’ve perhaps never heard of BC United. This is part of their problem; a lot of British Columbians haven’t heard of them either after the center-right party formerly known as the BC Liberals rebranded last year because the L-word has become kryptonite to a good chunk of their base. […]
The BC Liberals were in charge for 16 of the 25 years I’ve spent living in Canada’s westernmost province. They lost by a whisker […] to the lefty NDP in 2017 despite winning the popular vote. But they got their asses handed to them in the following election and, despite being the Official Opposition, decided it was time for a full makeover. Hence a new leader and unintentionally ironic new name.
Birds of a feather flock together but Falcon didn’t want to be seen as completely out-of-touch with the times — and so one of his first acts as the new boss was to boot longserving Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad from caucus for insisting the climate crisis isn’t real. Rustad retaliated by jumpstarting the slumbering BC Conservatives — a fringe party also officially unaffiliated with their federal counterpart that had more or less been consigned to the dustbin of history — and convinced three other elected former Liberals to join him when it became clear BC United weren’t actually uniting anyone.
[…] “What became apparent to me, as I’ve crisscrossed the province and heard from literally tens of thousands of people, is the number one major concern that they had, and that is, ‘Kevin, if you guys don’t do the right thing and be the adults in the room and help bring together that free enterprise center-right, common-sense coalition, you are going to help elect an NDP government,” Falcon told reporters at a hastily convened press conference announcing the surrender.
There hasn’t been a political 180 this abrupt since JD Vance decided “America’s Hitler” wasn’t so bad after all. This is the same guy who just two weeks ago showed up at an event with special tinfoil hats emblazoned with the words “5G Resistant, Endorsed by John Rustad” after it came out one of the Conservatives running for office had made Facebook posts during the pandemic claiming cellphone towers are “genocidal weapons” that cause COVID-19.
[…] Rustad recently had a meeting of the minds with Jordan Peterson — last seen in Wonkette pitching a fit over new traffic safety measures in New Jersey — on the disgraced psychologist’s podcast where the two discussed their shared skepticism about climate change.
“It’s a sad reality, but how is it that we’ve convinced carbon-based beings that carbon is a problem?” Rustad asked his host while vowing to axe BC’s carbon tax and expand fuel production if put into power. [JFC]
Which is a bit like asking how it’s possible human beings can drown since we are made of more than 50 percent water. Or why, since we are made entirely of atoms, anyone would be concerned about a falling anvil about to land on their head since it too is made of atoms.
At press time, BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau had yet to insist her own candidates throw in the reusable towel and join the NDP to avoid splitting the progressive vote. But there’s still six weeks to go before election day. […].
Sky rookie Angel Reese’s season over with wrist injury
With six games remaining in the Sky’s season, Reese had already been eclipsed by Caitlin Clark as the probable WNBA rookie of the year. The Sky are 12-22, while Clark has turned around the Fever, who are now 18-17 (After a 1-8 start) and playoff-bound.
Donald Trump recently joined the Hitler-quoting book-banners at Moms for Liberty for their “Joyful Warriors” summit in Washington, D.C., and in addition to him admitting he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker” and a good dash of overt racism, one particular claim of Trump’s stood out for its over-the-top mixture of delusion and conspiracy.
“The transgender thing is an incredible thing,” said a slouching, low-energy Trump. “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child, and you know many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’”
The moment was so ludicrous that it’d be easy for the media to just ignore the comment, like it does with so many of Trump’s outrageous statements. However, CNN didn’t just shake its head and move on. The outlet thoroughly fact-checked Trump’s lie and followed up with both his campaign and various conservative groups.
For the record, this is what CNN found when they asked education and health experts about Trump’s lie:
Trump’s claim is false. There is no evidence that US schools have sent children into gender-affirming surgeries without their parents knowing or performed gender-affirming surgeries on site; Trump’s own presidential campaign could not provide a single example of this ever happening. Even in states where gender-affirming surgery is legal for people under age 18, parental consent is required before a minor can undergo such a procedure.
As Dr. Landon Hughes, a fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, made clear to CNN in an email, “There are no instances of children receiving surgeries or access to surgeries from their schools,” adding, “No provider in the US would perform surgery on a minor under the direction of a school, let alone without parental consent.”
While Hughes was speaking about gender-affirming surgery, the same is true if the question was a tonsillectomy—because grade schools and high schools don’t do surgery. You’d be hard-pressed to find a school nurse willing to hand a kid an aspirin without a parent’s permission, much less break out a scalpel.
Little Jimmy is not getting secretly shuffled off for gender-related surgery on his way to history class.
And when CNN asked Trump’s campaign for examples of the “transgender thing” their candidate was pushing, the outlet didn’t receive any. Instead, a Trump spokesperson insisted that she had personally talked to parents who were upset after learning that their children were “being called entirely different names” at school.
Somehow, that doesn’t seem like the same thing.
CNN even followed up with four conservative groups, allowing them to take their best shot at showing this “thing” Trump talked about had ever happened. Despite right-wing claims that make it seem as if every child in America is only days away from a gender switch, the groups didn’t produce a single case even vaguely related to Trump’s claims.
However, Tiffany Justice, the Moms for Liberty co-founder who interviewed Trump at her group’s summit, was smitten with Trump’s lie.
“It grabbed your attention,” she said, “and we’re talking about it now, and that makes me very happy.” [video at the link]
As with the myth about litter boxes in schools, the right doesn’t care if Trump’s statement has an ounce of truth to it. His lie is one that Republicans can now repeat to audiences who will nod along with the hoax. Another log to throw on the trans-panic bonfire.
CNN did an admirable job of following up on every aspect of this lie and showing … it’s a lie, only a lie, and nothing but a lie. Now, expect Trump to repeat it. Often.
Weeks of tense standoff in the Philippines have ended in the capture of a pastor accused of leading an international ring of sex abuse and trafficking of young women and girls.
The Appointed Son of God, as his followers call him, favors satiny white suits. The young women who surround him in photos are often clothed in the same virginal hue.
Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, the 74-year-old founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, The Name Above Every Name, is a charismatic doomsday evangelist who claims millions of followers in about 200 countries. His sermons have drawn the faithful in Ukraine, Hong Kong, Brazil and New York. He served as spiritual adviser to Rodrigo Duterte, the powerful former president of the Philippines.
And now Mr. Quiboloy, who is also known as The Owner of the Universe, [prime comic book fodder] is in custody after a manhunt in the southern Philippines that enlisted thousands of security forces. On Sunday evening, Benjamin Abalos Jr., the interior secretary of the Philippines, announced that the fugitive preacher had been caught. The pastor’s lawyer said that Mr. Quiboloy had voluntarily surrendered. The police said that security forces had negotiated the surrender from the pastor’s compound.
Mr. Quiboloy is on the F.B.I.’s most-wanted list. He faces charges in the United States and at home of masterminding a human trafficking and child sex abuse ring. He has been accused of rape, including of minors. Through his lawyers, Mr. Quiboloy has denied all the charges.
The search for the fugitive pastor, to serve him a Philippine arrest warrant, is also about a megachurch that American and Philippine prosecutors say has depended on labor exploitation and the deception of people least able to afford the financial burden placed on them.
And Mr. Quiboloy’s fate exposes an array of rifts in Philippine society: between a Roman Catholic majority and a growing evangelical population; between a moneyed elite from the Philippine capital and power brokers from the country’s periphery; and between the president of the Philippines and his vice president.
[…]
The Appointed Son of God
Mr. Quiboloy’s critics call him a Rasputin whose ability to harness large voting blocs for favored politicians made him a kind of spiritual kingmaker. His flock considers him a descendant of God who can stop earthquakes […]
In 2021, an American federal grand jury indicted Mr. Quiboloy and other church officials operating in the United States on charges that include conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, the sex trafficking of children, and smuggling huge amounts of cash. Girls as young as 12 worked as Mr. Quiboloy’s personal assistants, or “pastorals,” the 74-page indictment alleged.
The pastorals, including two girls who were 14 and 15, were forced to perform “night duty,” a euphemism for sex, with Mr. Quiboloy, the indictment said. Female victims wrote “commitment letters” in which they devoted their lives and bodies to Mr. Quiboloy, the indictment said, risking “eternal damnation” if they demurred. [Master of Evil Shit]
Two former pastorals told The Times of the psychological hold Mr. Quiboloy had on them and how guilty they were made to feel if they tried to reject his sexual advances. Female aides who were deemed to have sinned were sent to a property on the outskirts of Davao City called Prayer Mountain. One of those former pastorals said her head was shaved and she was made to wear orange clothes, like a prisoner. She was beaten with a wooden paddle, she said.
The pastor was placed on the F.B.I.’s most wanted list, which described his aliases as “Sir,” “Pastor” and “The Appointed Son of God.”
Despite the seriousness of the charges, an American arrest warrant was never served in the Philippines. Mr. Quiboloy continued to preach from the church’s headquarters in Davao City, where representatives of the Kingdom, as the sect is known by its followers, also ran a college, law school, airline and a McDonald’s franchise. The Kingdom controlled an influential media network, too.
At the time, in 2021, the Philippines was led by Mr. Duterte, who is now being investigated by the International Criminal Court for allegedly ordering thousands of extrajudicial executions. Mr. Duterte called Mr. Quiboloy his spiritual adviser. He also counted on the pastor’s vocal support for his political campaigns. [Coalition of evil comic book characters.]
With Mr. Quiboloy on the run, the former president, who served as Davao City’s mayor for more than 20 years, took on duties as the administrator of the Kingdom’s properties.
[…] Mr. Marcos assumed the presidency two years ago and chose Mr. Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte, also a former mayor of Davao City, as his running mate in a union of two powerful political clans. Known familiarly as Bongbong, Mr. Marcos is the son of an American-backed dictator who in his two-decade rule plundered state coffers and ordered his own extrajudicial killings, according to human rights groups.
The Dutertes have positioned themselves as gritty, populist counterpoints to a soft, moneyed, pro-American political class exemplified by the Marcoses. The two families’ political alliance in 2022 was awkward from the start.
[…] On Sept. 1, the 39th anniversary of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ’s founding, Vice President Duterte flew to Davao City to show her support for Mr. Quiboloy. On the oversized screen in the compound, a church-affiliated news network excoriated her boss, Mr. Marcos.
[…] With New Jerusalem heaving with heavily armed police officers, their places of worship off limits, the Kingdom’s followers turned a fast food eatery owned by the church into their command center.
Until April, the shop was a McDonald’s. But the charges against Mr. Quiboloy spooked the international company. Now it has been rebranded as Waxi’s, offering Davao specialties like rice burgers and durian coffee. […] they watched newscasters from Sonshine Media Network International, or S.M.N.I., a popular radio and television broadcaster that is majority owned by the church and its representatives.
The network’s YouTube channel has been shut down because of the charges against Mr. Quiboloy, and the Philippine House of Representatives has approved a bill revoking its franchise. But S.M.N.I. continues to stream online. […]
Sophia Argentine, a purchasing manager for the Kingdom, runs Waxi’s. Before that she was a “volunteer manager” of the McDonald’s. Ms. Argentine, who asked to be only identified by part of her name, is one of about 2,000 faithful known as “workers,” who live in the compound and donate their earnings to the church, according to former and current members. […] Ms. Argentine said she does not collect a salary and has no savings.
“Everything is free in the Kingdom,” she said.
[…] when Ms. Argentine first began living in the compound in Davao City, she said, the sect was so impoverished that she would buy fruits and vegetables rejected by markets to feed the growing congregation.
American and Filipino law enforcement say the church grew rich soliciting donations from people who could barely afford it and from the forced labor of its members. Ms. Argentine’s mother, an ophthalmologist, sold her properties and gave her life savings to the church. […]
To remain in good standing, worshipers had to meet increasingly onerous monetary quotas by soliciting donations or selling whatever small items they could, American and Filipino prosecutors said. […] Those who neglected to raise enough cash were often locked in rooms and denied food. The church arranged sham marriages to import workers to the United States. [Abuse at every level of everyday life.]
Michael Jay Green, an American lawyer and global general counsel for the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, rejected any wrongdoing by the church. […] Mr. Green acknowledged that the sect’s workers sign vows to raise money for the poor, a similar structure to the Church of Scientology, he said. [Yep. Cults offen have a lot in common.]
The Kingdom is particularly popular among members of the Philippines’ large overseas work force. On the streets of Singapore, Dubai, Los Angeles and beyond, they raise money for the Children’s Joy Foundation, which is supposed to aid underprivileged children. But at least one branch of that charity was bogus, the American indictment alleges, its money used not to help orphans but to fund the lavish lifestyles of Mr. Quiboloy and other church elders. [Also typical of cults.]
Mr. Quiboloy traveled in a private jet. One of his birthdays was celebrated in a chandeliered banquet hall at a Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong, three attendees confirmed. Four former church members told The Times that he particularly liked to choose young “pastoral” aides from Ukraine because he found them fair-skinned and beautiful. [Oh FFS. Yet another layer of evil.]
[…] Two Ukrainian women said in video testimony they were raped by Mr. Quiboloy while serving as pastorals. A Filipino woman told senators that Mr. Quiboloy raped her when she was a minor. […]
Some police officers stationed at the compound who were from Davao City said that their allegiance was with Mr. Duterte, not their bosses from the capital, Manila. […]
Ms. Argentine said that when Mr. Duterte, then Davao’s mayor, was running for president, the Kingdom gave him “unlimited flights” in an Apollo Air helicopter because he didn’t have any money. A former employee of Apollo Air confirmed Mr. Duterte’s reliance on the airline. The Kingdom’s compound has a taxiway that connects to the Davao City airport.
While president, Mr. Duterte steered relations away from the United States, which once colonized the Philippines, and embraced China instead. […]
For days, representatives of the Kingdom had insisted that Mr. Quiboloy was not in the compound, and that even if he were, the church would not give him up unless the Philippine Department of Justice promised not to extradite him to the United States. The Philippine government said it could not honor such a request.
[…] Ms. Argentine said she thought Mr. Quiboloy was initially able to escape the pursuit of the regional police chief because “the pastor passed through walls.”
That a nonbeliever police chief was the only witness to such a miracle, rather than the faithful who had dedicated decades of their lives to Mr. Quiboloy and the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, was, she admitted, a cause of regret. The security presence in the compound, day after day, had worn them all down.
“It’s a spiritual test that we have to overcome,” she said. “We have to humble ourselves. But it’s hard.”
The large numbers of trans-Neptunian objects are also a potential solution to the problem of terraforming Mars. With the discovery of 1996TL66 it was obvious that many objects > 100 km were at eccentric orbits. At aphelia, a modest delta-v could send them on course for a gravity assist at Neptune or Uranus.
Most outer objects are 50% solids, the rest volatiles. Assume half of the volatiles will be gaseous at Mars’ temperature range, the rest water.
On Earth the atmosphere has a 10 ton mass for each m2. For a similar atmospheric mass per area unit on Mars you need~
40 ×(m2 per km2= 1 million) × (area of Mars= 150 million km2) tons of trans-Neptunian matter.
6000 million million, 6× 10 to the 15 power tons. That’s 6-12 100 km objects, assuming a density between 1 and 2 grams cm2.
For this you get a 10 m martian layer of gravel (assuming a density twice that of water) plus a 10m layer of water, plus a gas column with the same mass per area unit as the terrestrial atmosphere. With gravity=0.37 g you get a pressure of 370 millibar, at average, consisting of nitrogen, some methane and a lot of carbon dioxide.
Kimberly Guilfoyle eventually had to ask her audience at the Florida Republican Party annual dinner to clap for her as her awkward speech fell flat in front of an audience of allies…
“And we are ready, we are willing, and we are able to spark a new era of American exceptionalism,” she added.
She paused as a few people clapped and an awkward silence ensued.
“You can clap for that!” she said, prompting a few others to join in with the applause…
birgerjohanssonsays
If you live in Montana or Nebraska you can make a difference in the election for a senator to DC.
In Texas or Florida it is more of a long shot, but Ted Cruz and Rick Scott are nervous. Please contribute to giving them insomnia!
birgerjohanssonsays
This was charming.
Jesse Dollemore:
“Tucker Carlson & Charlie Kirk Ratchet Up The Hate for American Military!!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mc5I0dZIKAo
Meh. Is anyone surprised? Revolted, maybe, not surprised.
@260 birgerjohansson: That isn’t so much hate for the military as misogyny. Those two love the military as long as it fits into their fascist view of how the military should be. When those two think military they are thinking about unrealistic movie versions of WW1/WW2, burly men with big guns storming the enemy. Women don’t have a place in their fantasy military except for raising the next generation of soldiers.
birgerjohanssonsays
Reginald Selkirk @ 264
For the benefit of Americans, The Sun is part of the British “Gutter Press”🙂.
Katherine, a recent USA-to-Sweden migrant blog.
“Refreshingly Swedish”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=z4f3DvxFzvk
(Of course, we in the North look down on those in South Sweden as they hardly ever can drive their trucks across the ice. BJ)
birgerjohanssonsays
JM @ 265
(Vision of Tucker Carlson singing ‘Das Vaterland muss ruhig sein’, see ‘Casablanca’ for melody)
‘It’s already happening’: How Trump’s intimidation and authoritarian tactics will be amplified.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=x4kh21iFIyI&si=MQpbyOEvTQuXGxdA
This news item was clearly aimed at people who have been in hibernation and are emerging like cicadas.
Atheist Women: Why so few? What Does the Research Say?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=sStW6K0EBqA
There are probably many reasons.
In the comments section, it is suggested that this is a version of ‘sunk cost fallacy’ as religious women look back at their unhappy marriages, wasted youth and truncated careers and see it as a “spiritual investment”.
There is an article on the Reykjavik Grapevine, an English-language site in Iceland. The article is all about why you shouldn’t try to get a close look at any of the volcanic eruptions…mostly on account of all the ways you might die in the attempt. The article includes this gem as one of the reasons….
Third— even if there were a hiking trail, it would start near the Grindavík-Keflavík road junction. This area used to be a training ground for the US Army back in Dr. Strangelove times. The US Army is not known for cleaning up messes they’ve created — remember Iraq? — and they left unexploded bombs strewn all over the area. Yeah, we’re not even kidding. So if you ignore the hiking ban and somehow manage to not break a leg or fall through the ground into lava, you might step on a Korean War-era mortar round and explode.
one of his first acts as the new boss was to boot longserving Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad from caucus for insisting the climate crisis isn’t real.
And he was right to do so. In another hundred years — if, that is, there’s anyone left by then — climate change denial will be treated in like fashion to Holocaust denial.
Meanwhile, Harris is slipping in the polls (538 now gives her barely better than even odds) for some reason, and then there’s trouble brewing up north at the federal level, too, as the Canadian Liberal party’s center-left coalition partner abandons it:
His confidence deal with Trudeau’s Liberals delivered progressive policies. But no NDP political payoff.
IOW, he put party (“no NDP political payoff”) ahead of country (“delivered progressive policies” and, of course, keeping the Tories out).
Just like Trump.
He’s thrown us all under a bus … Oilievre’s campaign bus.
I might not even survive this. The planet might not survive it. The previous Tory federal government, Stephen Harper’s, lasted 10 long years full of drill, baby, drill and climate change denial. Another like that and we’re probably losing the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets from all the tar sands oil that will be dug up and burned. Not to mention our own Arctic turning into quicksand and swallowing northern communities (mostly poor and Native, aka disposable to the fatcats and their Tory lapdogs).
Making matters worse, Oilievre has been caught on tape hobnobbing with Nazis and other assorted deplorables. Much like Trump back in 2016. I doubt four years of Oilievre will do as much damage as Trump did — for one thing, abortion rights are probably secure in Canada — but it sure won’t do any good, not for the poor or working class or marginalized groups. And definitely not for the climate. Falcon and Rustad, Singh and Oilievre, and Trump, all represent existential risk worldwide via climate disaster.
At least I’ll be able to directly vote against Oilievre.
VERIFY found that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has unpaid bills in at least six cities for costs associated with his campaign events over the years…
Those cities are: Albuquerque, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Erie, Pennsylvania; Mesa, Arizona; Lebanon, Ohio; and Spokane, Washington.
It’s unclear, however, whether he’s legally obligated to pay all of them. The Center for Public Integrity, which reported on the Trump campaign’s unpaid bills in 2019, said that in many cases, there are no signed contracts between the municipal governments and the Trump campaign. That means the cities may not have legal recourse to recoup those funds…
“Six years after sailing out of San Francisco with the ambition of developing the technology to rid the world’s oceans of plastic, The Ocean Cleanup returned to San Francisco with the knowledge and know-how to relegate the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the history books,” according to a new announcement from the group…
[…] Barring any surprises or dramatic reversals, the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential candidate won’t have the support of his party’s 2000, 2004, or 2012 presidential nominees.
What’s more, Trump also won’t have the support from the GOP’s 2000, 2004, 2012, 2016, or 2020 vice presidential nominees.
Regardless of what one might think of these former officials and their highly controversial records, an important question hangs overhead: When was the last time a major-party White House hopeful failed to receive endorsements from so many of his or her own party’s national candidates?
The answer is never. In the American tradition, it’s literally never happened. There have been occasional intraparty fights along these lines — Teddy Roosevelt made little effort to hide his frustrations with William Howard Taft, for example — but there’s no precedent for the kind of resistance Trump is facing from his own party’s recent national nominees.
Bush’s office told NBC News on Saturday, “President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago.” Maybe so. But Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have also retired, and they’re not only enthusiastic proponents of Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy, they were also celebrated at their party’s recent national convention.
The Republican convention, in contrast, featured zero former presidents and/or presidential nominees.
It led The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last to recently note, “That’s a portrait of two institutions: One institution in harmony with its legacy and continuing to evolve in such a way as to hold its coalition together. The other institution in a state of convulsion.”
Donald Trump traveled to North Carolina on Friday and, despite the Republican’s criminal record, picked up an endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police. During his remarks at the FOP’s event, the former president urged the nation’s largest police union to give him a hand by “watching for voter fraud” nationwide.
It was, as a New York Times report noted, “an appeal that, if followed through on, could run afoul of multiple state laws and raise accusations of voter intimidation.”
A day later, the GOP nominee made matters considerably worse. NBC News reported:
Former President Donald Trump, who makes frequent false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen through rampant fraud, warned Saturday that he would try to imprison anyone who engages in “unscrupulous behavior” during this year’s race.
Even for Trump, the written message — published to his social media platform — was a doozy.
It began “CEASE & DESIST,” which is apparently a phrase the Republican has heard, though he apparently doesn’t fully understand what it means. He then accused Democrats of being responsible for “rampant Cheating and Skullduggery” in 2020 — an extension of the ridiculously dishonest propaganda campaign known as the “big lie” — before making his way to his threat.
“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,” Trump wrote.
In case that weren’t quite enough, he concluded, “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.”
If this were a normal White House candidate, leading a healthy political party’s national ticket, one might be tempted to assume that such a written message would be accompanies by some kind of credible evidence of systemic wrongdoing. Not surprisingly, however, this was nothing of the kind: Trump was simply threatening assorted people associated with the election with lengthy prison sentences based on ridiculous conspiracy theories that only make sense in his twisted mind.
It was, as a Politico report summarized, one of the Republican’s “most explicit threats yet to upend the rule of law.” A Washington Post report added that the former president’s threats also represented “the most overt signal yet that he may not accept the result in November if he loses.”
That same article quoted an unnamed Republican official in a battleground state who found the online rant rather alarming.
“He sounds like he is losing it,” the Republican official said. “Sad, someone should do something, like replace him as a candidate.”
The assessment seemed more than fair, though reading Trump’s harangue, I also found myself marveling at his candor. The former president is effectively running on an authoritarian platform, and he’s becoming increasingly overt about it.
[…] Trump is instead throwing caution to the wind, endorsing a “strongman” leadership style, bragging about his support from dictators, raising the prospect of a temporary American “dictatorship,” talking about “terminating” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions, arguing that his rivals shouldn’t be “allowed” to run against him, targeting immigrants with Hitler-style rhetoric, all while promising pardons to politically aligned criminals and promising a crack down on the free press.
None of this is secret. He’s unveiled this vision publicly and with pride.
After a six-week summer recess, lawmakers return to the Capitol on Monday facing a changed political landscape but a vexing, very familiar problem: figuring out how to avert a shutdown. They have just three weeks to do so. Funding for the government runs out at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, and […]Trump is urging Republicans to force a shutdown unless certain demands are met.
Commentary:
Late last week, House GOP leaders unveiled a stop-gap spending bill — known as a “continuing resolution” (or “CR”) — that would keep the government’s lights on until March 2025. As expected, House Speaker Mike Johnson included something called the “SAVE Act” in the legislation, despite knowing that it would make a shutdown far more likely.
The SAVE Act — the “Safeguard America Voting Eligibility Act” — remains a solution in search of a problem. The point of the legislation is to require proof of citizenship to register to vote, despite the fact that (a) it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections; and (b) the bill’s far-right champions can’t find any evidence to support their effort. (Johnson said in May that he “intuitively“ believes in the legitimacy of the problem, which continues to be amusing.)
Some Republicans have effectively argued, “Sure, noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in federal elections, and yes, evidence of noncitizens casting ballots is nearly impossible to find, but maybe there’s no harm in simply passing the legislation anyway? Just to be safe?”
Except, that’s wrong, too, because the legislation would add new and entirely unnecessary hurdles for Americans who want to participate in their own country’s elections — forcing them, for example, to produce documents such as a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. As House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has explained, “[T]his extreme MAGA Republican voter suppression bill is not designed to solve any problem on behalf of the American people. It is designed to jam people up and prevent Americans from voting.”
[…] “If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands.”
[…] With exactly three weeks remaining before the deadline, it’s simply inconceivable that Democrats — on Capitol Hill and in the White House — will give in to the Republicans’ threats, which means that GOP leaders will either have to back down (again), or they’ll shut down the government (again).
[…] Biden administration officials announced a series of efforts intended to combat the Kremlin’s 2024 election-related efforts — the latest in a series — including sanctions and a criminal indictment against two employees of the state-owned RT media network who were accused of conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Soon after, the Justice Department indicted a contributor to a Russian state-run TV channel — who also happens to be a former adviser to Donald Trump — charging him and his wife with violating U.S. sanctions and money laundering.
[…] The Washington Post reported on Saturday, “The Russian government’s covert efforts to sway the 2024 presidential election are more advanced than in recent years, and the most active foreign threat this political season, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday.”
In a briefing with reporters late last week, the Post’s report noted, a senior official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence explained that Russia’s activities “are more sophisticated than in prior election cycles,” with the Kremlin relying on “authentic U.S. voices” to “launder” Russian government propaganda and spread socially divisive narratives.
All of these tactics, the report added, are intended to “shape the outcome in favor of former president Donald Trump.”
Confronted with all of this new information, the Republican Party’s 2024 nominee forcefully denounced Russian intervention in American politics, rejected Moscow’s assistance, and warned Vladimir Putin that there would be consequences for trying to undermine the U.S. system.
No, I’m just kidding. Trump actually defended Russia and told voters to see the Kremlin as a victim of U.S. officials.
The GOP candidate’s pushback began on Friday morning when he declared that his own country was perpetrating a “scam.” [video at the link]
Notably, as part of the set of unscripted comments, Trump said, “I haven’t spoken to anybody from Russia in years. They know that.” It was a curious denial, since the latest allegations haven’t publicly touched on any communications between Trump and Russia. He appeared to be answering a question that no one had asked.
A day later, Trump brought up the subject again at a rally in Wisconsin, boasting that “the whole world” is laughing at the U.S. Justice Department for taking Russian election interference seriously. [video at the link]
Trump concluded, “I don’t know what it is with poor Russia,” suggesting the foreign adversary attacking the United States is somehow deserving of sympathy.
All of this came on the heels of the GOP candidate talking up the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions against Russia, which came weeks after Trump publicly congratulated Russia over a historical prisoner swap.
[Trump pointed] to Putin for validation to justify his position on Ukraine.
Which came on the heels of Trump celebrating the fact that Putin was echoing his talking points about the 2024 election and Trump’s multiple criminal indictments.
Which came on the heels of Trump telling a Mar-a-Lago audience how “smart” Putin was for invading a neighboring country.
Which came on the heels of Trump describing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as “genius” and part of a “wonderful” strategy.
Which came on the heels of years’ worth of Trump kowtowing, genuflecting, and repeatedly showing abject weakness toward his Russian ally.
Is it any wonder why Moscow is going to considerable lengths to “shape the outcome in favor of former president Donald Trump”?
The trend here is clear, the picture is easy to see, and Hillary was right when she said that Trump is Putin’s puppet.
Elon Musk’s America PAC is investing in new digital ads in support of Trump’s candidacy, warning voters that “the crazies” will prevail if the former president loses.
On Sunday, Donald Trump posted a claim that 20% of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania are fraudulent. [JFC!] “Here we go again!” Trump wrote as he called for Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI to investigate.
It’s going to be a brief investigation. Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots have not even been sent out yet. In fact, due to several unresolved court cases, it’s unlikely that ballots in some counties in the state will be sent to voters before the first week of October.
So, even if Trump was right, 20% of zero is still zero. Case closed.
But of course, Trump isn’t concerned about these nonexistent votes. He’s just preparing for the next round of protests and insurrection, planting the seeds for Big Lie 2.0. So that if he loses, everyone loses. And if he wins … everyone loses.
Trump’s source for the revelation that votes that haven’t happened yet are already fake comes from disgraced former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson. The fact that Carlson has been cavorting with Nazis to the extent that even conservatives have been running away from him, doesn’t bother Trump. Neither does Carlson being a sycophant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. […]
Trump’s claim about Pennsylvania doesn’t represent concern over votes in the state. Just as in 2016 and 2020, Trump is lying about voter fraud or a “rigged election” far in advance of Election Day. He’s preparing to lose and prepping his followers to repeat the kind of actions seen in 2020 to perpetuate the Big Lie.
On Sunday, Donald Trump posted a claim that 20% of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania are fraudulent. “Here we go again!” Trump wrote as he called for Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI to investigate.
It’s going to be a brief investigation. Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots have not even been sent out yet. In fact, due to several unresolved court cases, it’s unlikely that ballots in some counties in the state will be sent to voters before the first week of October.
So, even if Trump was right, 20% of zero is still zero. Case closed.
But of course, Trump isn’t concerned about these nonexistent votes. He’s just preparing for the next round of protests and insurrection, planting the seeds for Big Lie 2.0. So that if he loses, everyone loses. And if he wins … everyone loses.
Trump’s source for the revelation that votes that haven’t happened yet are already fake comes from disgraced former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson. The fact that Carlson has been cavorting with Nazis to the extent that even conservatives have been running away from him, doesn’t bother Trump. Neither does Carlson being a sycophant of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But then, if Trump was to stop quoting right-wing pundits who either defended Nazis or were in the pocket of Russia, who would he have left to quote?
Trump’s claim about Pennsylvania doesn’t represent concern over votes in the state. Just as in 2016 and 2020, Trump is lying about voter fraud or a “rigged election” far in advance of Election Day. He’s preparing to lose and prepping his followers to repeat the kind of actions seen in 2020 to perpetuate the Big Lie.
One thing has changed since 2020. After years of making claims that mail-in votes were intrinsically unlawful, Trump did a massive flip-flop last spring and began to encourage his supporters to use mail-in ballots as well as other forms of early voting. The Republican Party has continued this push, with a program called “Swamp the Vote.” Swamp is apparently a good thing when it means more votes for Trump.
But don’t expect Trump to stick to any consistent message on either mail-in voting or absentee ballots. They’re a good thing when it’s his people filling out the form. They’re a disaster when he needs an excuse.
An anonymous conservative network paid a group of influencers to promote sexual smears and rumors about Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, Semafor reported.
The network began as a campaign that paid influencers to push standard pro-Donald Trump rhetoric like insulting President Joe Biden’s mental capabilities and accusing Democrats of weaponizing the Department of Justice amidst the former president’s hush-money case.
The group would communicate regularly via email and Zoom calls, organized by a man who went by James Bacon. On the calls however, everything was anonymous. Nobody turned on their cameras or used their names, Semafor reported.
When Biden stepped down as the Democratic nominee and Harris rapidly gained widespread support to take his place, the network turned the focus of their attacks to the vice president.
In a call on July 22, just a day after Biden dropped out, the influencers were told to share various sexual rumors and smears about Harris, including comparing her to the “Hawk Tuah” girl. According to Semafor, this comparison was the “least crude” of the sexual slanders made against Harris…
A coalition of groups issued a warning on Monday about ongoing attempts to target Black voters with disinformation regarding the 2024 election.
[…] The group also noted the long history of disinformation within the United States meant to minimize the impact of Black voters. And the letter was signed by the groups Advancement Project, Black Male Voter Project, Working Families Party, and Higher Heights.
The warning comes after several high-profile incidents using false information to promote Donald Trump’s relationship with the Black community.
In March, Trump supporters, including right-wing radio host Mark Kaye, disseminated AI-generated images of Trump hugging Black people who purportedly support his campaign. Reporting on the fake photos, the BBC noted some Facebook users believed the images were real.
In April, Trump’s campaign promoted an appearance with a Black audience at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia, as evidence that he was broadening his appeal to a demographic that has historically opposed him.
But the event was not organic. It was arranged by Black conservative activist Michaelah Montgomery, who said she received advance notice that Trump would appear at the restaurant. She told the Associated Press, “Everybody got together at around 9:30 in the morning and walked on over to the Chick-fil-A and then we sat there and waited until the president showed up.” Montgomery also appeared on stage with Trump at a rally in August. [Trump has a long history of staging fake events.]
[…] Before becoming a politician, Trump advocated for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino young men who were falsely accused of sexual assault and later exonerated.
For years, Trump was also the most prominent supporter of the racist “birther” conspiracy theory that falsely claimed President Barack Obama was a foreign national and not eligible for the presidency.
In the White House, Trump referred to countries with large Black populations as “shithole” nations.
After he lost the 2020 election, Trump incited racist attacks on election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, two Black women who were poll workers in Georgia. Trump, along with his then-attorney Rudy Giuliani, spread false conspiracy theories accusing the women of interfering with election results.
Trump’s direct interactions with the Black community have been far more toxic than the AI images and arranged meetings would indicate.
In a July appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention in Chicago, Trump complained that the invitation had been made under “false pretenses” when ABC News reporter Rachel Scott, a Black woman, questioned him about his racial track record.
Trump also alleged in that interview that Vice President Kamala Harris had only recently “happened to turn Black.”
Asked about the exchange in a later CNN interview, Harris dismissed Trump’s bigotry, noting that he was utilizing the “same old tired playbook.”
[…] Recent polling shows high levels of support for Harris’ campaign among Black voters. A Washington Post/Ipsos poll released Sept. 9 found 82% of Black registered voters backing Harris, compared with 12% for Trump. Harris’ showing in the poll is an increase from the 74% who backed President Joe Biden in an earlier version of the poll, taken in April.
In the 2020 election, Trump was trounced by Biden among Black voters, losing 13% to 87%, according to exit polls. Trump’s poor performance came despite repeatedly claiming he had done the most for Black voters since President Abraham Lincoln.
I’m highlighting two stories from the Columbia Journalism Review today. For many DK readers, the situations that these stories describe aren’t exactly news. But they deserve every bit of attention they can get given the need for long-term solutions to the multi-faceted media brokenness they explore.
From Jon Alsop at the Columbia Journalism Review on Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump? (That’s a headline that didn’t need to be couched as a question):
[…] Aaron Rupar, a journalist who is very active on X, has been credited with coining “sanewashing” in this specific context, but the term appeared to really blow up last week, after Parker Molloy wrote a column about it in The New Republic. (She expanded on the idea as a guest on the podcast Some More News.) The word has since been picked up by media bigwigs including Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow, and appeared in outlets from Ireland to India.
As applied to Trump, the idea is that major mainstream news outlets are routinely taking his incoherent, highly abnormal rants—be they on social media or at in-person events—and selectively quoting from them to emphasize lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing. In her column, Molloy called out CNN for sanitizing a Trump screed about tomorrow’s presidential debate and the New York Times for omitting an allusion to a conspiracy theory about vaccines and autism from its summary of a Trump pledge to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help make health policy; since then, she and others have applied the same analysis to coverage of Trump’s incoherent remarks—particularly around the costs of childcare and a proposed Elon Musk–led “efficiency commission”—at an economic forum in New York. “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism,” Molloy wrote. “It’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.”
If the word “sanewashing” is not new, neither is the idea that the media is masking Trump’s incoherence. As Molloy noted in her column, she wrote a similar piece—headlined “By reframing Trump’s incoherent, inaccurate ramblings as bland political copy, journalists are carrying water for the president”—in 2020, for the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America; she also quoted from a more recent article in which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, criticized headlines about a Trump rally that focused on “extraneities” like the weather and Trump’s frustration with the teleprompter, rather than his bizarre rhetoric about sharks. […]
And from Jake Lahut, The decline of local news has become a campaign problem:
At a post–Memorial Day event earlier this year, Elissa Slotkin, one of the nation’s top Democratic candidates for US Senate, had almost all the ingredients in place for an effective swing through northern Michigan: beautiful weather, a prime location in the middle of the biggest metro area for a hundred miles, and a packed audience.
Yet upon a closer look, the crowd—bathed in hues of blue from the sun reflecting off Lake Michigan—was missing something.
There was nobody in attendance from any of the local television affiliates or the region’s paper of record, the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Instead, the event was being covered by a single public radio affiliate from the nearby artsy town of Interlochen; a reporter for Michigan Advance, a nonprofit startup; and me, a New York–based journalist dropping in on an election with national implications.
It was a prime example of a media problem that campaigns and political-communications experts say is reshaping how they approach election season: the steep decline of local news. […]
Milo Yiannopoulos Challenges Nick Fuentes To Human Woman Impregnating Contest
No matter who wins, we all lose.
It has been a while since we’ve mentioned or even thought about Milo Yiannopoulos around here. In fact, as far as I can tell, the last time was back in 2021 when he was selling Virgin Marys on some sad Christian Nationalist QVC.
He’s not really all that relevant these days, given that his value as a Trump surrogate went poof after he went on Bill Maher and defended child-molesting priests. He is, however, still a giant fucking weirdo and, supposedly, still an “ex-gay.”
It also seems as though he’s got some kind of rivalry going on with Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist Eve Harrington to his alt-right Margo Channing, possibly stemming from Milo’s claim that he set Trump up to have dinner with Fuentes and Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) in order to “make his life miserable” as punishment for ignoring him and others who had been so devoted to him.
Anyway, at some point in the recent past, Fuentes made a bizarre video about how he and all of the other Groypers need to start having sex with human women, even though they are all deeply repulsed by the idea and by women in general, in order to make more white babies. Sadly, this erases the one positive contribution Fuentes has made to society — convincing the worst of all possible men to take themselves out of the sexual marketplace.
(Wonkette does not recommend watching this video directly after eating) [video at the link]
It is somewhat significant given that a core tenet of Groyper nonsense has long been “not having sex with women.” Fuentes previously asserted that it is “gay” to have sex with women, and even gave the treasurer of the Groyper movement the axe for having had a girlfriend, as that was not allowed.
Anyway! Yiannopoulos got wind of that one and decided to issue a challenge to Fuentes — a baby-off, in which whichever one of them fathers the most children by 2027 will pay the other $250K and admit to being a lesser man on social media.
It reads:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
I am publicly challenging Nicholas J. Fuentes to a baby-off. I say I will have more natural-born offspring by the second quarter of 2027. Here are my conditions:
– No Dave Rubin-style pay to play
– You cannot rape-you must succeed in courting a woman and persuading her to breed with you
– Children must be conceived naturally, as a product of ordinary intercourse and not in-vitro fertilization or other artificial methods loathsome to God
– In the event of a tie, marriage to the mother shall be the determining factor
The loser shall pay the winner $250,000, and tweet the following: “I accept that my adversary (name] is a superior man to me in every way.”
I like that the marriage part is optional, given how deeply religious they both are … and that the “no rape” caveat was necessary.
Yiannopoulos is preparing for fatherhood by engaging in the traditional heterosexual male ritual of … swallowing raw eggs? Is that a thing? [post and image at the link]
I wasn’t sure, so I asked Gary in the Wonkette chat cave, and he assured me that it definitely is.
Look,” he explained, patiently. “It’s very clear: the man swallows an egg, then passes it to the woman via intercourse, and she incubates a baby chicken in her womb. I fail to see the confusion.” [LOL]
[…] Yiannopoulos has also been engaging in a spirited discussion with his followers about how wokeness has deprived women of the gay husbands they were meant to have. [Post available at the link]
It’s not entirely surprising that this is where that discourse eventually landed. Or that the virulently pro-life Yiannopoulos is openly advocating for baby murder on the timeline. [video at the link]
So pro-natalist!
So far, Fuentes has not responded to the challenge, which is very surprising given how excited he seemed by the idea of having sex with a human woman.
After serving four years in prison for fraud, the Fyre Fest founder wants to gather 3,000 attendees for a second try at the infamously botched music festival.
Fyre Festival is set to return for round two next spring, this time on a privately-owned island off the coast of Mexico.
The infamous Fyre Fest in 2017 fell so far short of its promises that its name has become a cultural shorthand for epic disaster — but its founder Billy McFarland thinks he can pull off another try.
McFarland told NBC News in an interview that the first time around, he was a 24-year-old trying to pull together a festival with a few of his friends. Now, he insists he’s going about it professionally.
“We have the chance to embrace this storm and really steer our ship into all the chaos that has happened, and if it’s done well, I think Fyre has a chance to be this annual festival that really takes over the festival industry,” said McFarland, now 32.
Slated for April 25 through April 28 next year, McFarland said he’s hoping to gather 3,000 people for Fyre Fest II. Ticket prices will range from $1,400 on the low end to $1.1 million for the most expensive festival package (which he said would include luxury yachts, scuba diving and island hopping).
The New York City entrepreneur claimed he has hired a festival production company to “handle the stages and the bathrooms and all the stuff that I clearly don’t know how to do.” He declined to provide the name of the island or the production company, noting that more details will be revealed in the next few months. He added that the festival has not yet booked its artists.
[…] It’s an ambitious endeavor for a world-renowned fraudster.
The first iteration of Fyre Fest had promised ticket buyers luxury villas and gourmet food at what was supposed to be an extravagant music festival in the Bahamas. Instead, attendees were met with disaster relief tents, cheese sandwiches in styrofoam boxes and no concert.
The festival had been promoted by the likes of Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski, among other celebrities and influencers. Upon arrival, however, hundreds of people circulated viral social media posts of their botched experience, inspiring multiple documentaries and podcasts about the failed event.
[…] It was a fiasco that got McFarland sentenced to six years in prison on fraud charges. Released in 2022 after serving four years, McFarland was quick to announce plans for a second Fyre Fest even as he continues to chip away at $26 million in restitution for the fraudulent event.
Last August, the first drop of 100 presale tickets (at $499 each) for Fyre Fest II sold out within a day, despite its website at the time offering no lineup, no specific location and no details about accommodation.
He said he believes much of the initial interest is credited to Fyre Fest’s notoriety, even if (or, possibly, because) it generates expectations for another catastrophic failure.
“I think there’s a large number of people who want to go to Fyre II because they’re unsure of the outcome, and they would like to have a front-row seat no matter what happens,” McFarland said. “Thankfully, we have good partners who will make sure they’re safe and obviously make sure things work out.”
He emphasized that the festival’s island actually has the physical hotels and villas this time. […]
Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz released the details of their policy program on their campaign website Sunday, ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled debate between Harris and Donald Trump.
We have detailed the stark differences between Harris’ campaign website promoting a positive way forward for America and Trump’s website selling aggrievement and fear (and surplus red MAGA hats). These policy pages offer up another example of the differences between the two campaigns.
Titled “A New Way Forward,” Harris’ page promotes her campaign’s designs for building “an opportunity economy and lower costs for families.” It includes 10 points, each with drop downs that detail the policy ideas Harris plans on pushing as president.
Trump’s 20 all-caps bullet points include a lot of exclamation marks and read like a fascist billboard. In order to see the “details” of this platform, you are bounced to another page filled with similar sentiments that reads more like the manifesto of an angry, disgruntled drunk person that includes very little in the way of specifics.
Under “cut taxes for middle class families,” the Harris-Walz website goes through the plans to expand the Earned Income and Child Tax Credits. She also makes a pledge not to raise any taxes on families making less than $400,000, making up revenues by rolling back Trump and the GOP’s tax cuts for the rich. [Practical]
Trump’s promise is to make his tax cuts for the rich “permanent.” The rest of the platform seems to be an expansion on the tone of the bullet-point manifesto. One of the larger sections of policy is titled: “SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION.” It includes this Joseph McCarthy-era hysteria under “Strict Vetting”:
Republicans will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America. Those who join our Country must love our Country. We will use extreme vetting to ensure that jihadists and jihadist sympathizers are not admitted.
[Yikes!]
While Harris’ policy page includes her plans to help grow small businesses and lower drug health care costs, Trump’s page includes a whole section promising to beautify Washington, D.C., and to make sure to “organize a National Celebration to mark the 250th Anniversary of the Founding of the United States of America.”
In the end, the two campaigns’ policy pages reflect the general tenor of what they are running on: Harris-Walz are talking about how to best move forward to afford more people a chance at the American dream, while Trump-Vance are mostly interested in weaving a story of an apocalyptic America that can only be saved by the wealthiest of men.
Beyoncé has been snubbed by the Country Music Awards, despite having one of the biggest country hits of the year with Texas Hold ‘Em.
When the nominees for the ceremony were announced on Monday morning, the star was notably absent – with not a single nomination.
Beyoncé had widely been expected to gain recognition at the awards, with fans speculating she could become the first black woman to be shortlisted for album of the year, for Cowboy Carter…
Nigeria’s drug approval agency has warned people not to buy “miracle” products produced by a church with popular Nigerian Christian televangelist Jeremiah Fufeyin at the helm.
Nafdac said the products – which have names such as “miracle water” and “River Jordan water” – claim to have “bogus” healing properties, such as the ability to cure women of infertility.
The statement also said Mr Fufeyin’s Christ Mercyland Deliverance Ministry was selling these wares even though they did not have Nafdac approval…
The MAGA right, including Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, are spreading a racist rumor that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are capturing, cooking, and eating people’s pet cats and ducks…
MYSTIC, Conn. (WTNH) – Stonington Police received multiple complaints Saturday afternoon about a roadside Trump rally that featured a man dressed in Ku Klux Klan robes.
Police said the group appeared in front of Olde Mistick Village on Coogan Boulevard at 3:00 p.m. and stayed for about an hour.
Drivers passing by reported that the group carried signs with vulgar messages. Photos from the rally show a man in white robes with a white pointed hood covering his face holding a sign that read “Trump Endorsed by the KKK!”. …
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #301…
Truth in advertising?
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 300
I’m certain that they’ll just claim their “communist Antifa” operatives dressed as bigots to embarrass the always racially tolerant Trump.
I won’t even be surprised if they dredge up the old “the Klan was started by Democrats line.”
The Michigan Supreme Court on Monday dismissed an effort by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be taken off the ballot in the state, reversing an earlier appeals court decision that could have significant implications for the crucial battleground state.
In a short opinion written by the court’s majority, the ruling said that Mr. Kennedy, who ended his independent presidential campaign and endorsed former President Donald J. Trump last month, had not pointed to a “source of law” that gave him the right to withdraw from the ballot, adding that Mr. Kennedy was asking for an “extraordinary remedy.”….
U.S. prosecutors unveiled criminal charges on Monday against two alleged leaders of a white supremacist gang, accusing them of soliciting attacks on Black, Jewish, LGBTQ people and immigrants in hopes of inciting a race war.
The group, dubbed ‘The Terrorgram Collective,’ used the social media site Telegram to celebrate white supremacist attacks around the world and solicit racially motivated violence, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court in Sacramento, California.
Passage of a six-month temporary spending bill would have widespread and devastating effects on the Defense Department, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said in a letter to key members of Congress on Sunday.
On his most recent financial disclosure form, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. reported a single gift: $900 concert tickets from a German princess known for her links to conservative activists.
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance attacked a different kind of “cat lady” on Monday, falsely claiming in a social media post that immigrants were eating pets in a small Ohio city.
“Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio,” Vance wrote on X. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?
All of this is a lie. No pets are being eaten. The town is not in chaos. And the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are in the country legally.
What’s disgusting is the behavior of Vance and others pushing this xenophobic horror story.
Vance’s post came after a post in a Springfield Facebook group went viral across social media. Despite assurances from the Springfield police department that there were no unusual reports of pets going missing, much less being eaten, the claim was amplified on X by Elon Musk, who stated, “Apparently, people’s pet cats are being eaten.”
This follows a previous incident in which a Springfield resident claimed, without evidence, that Haitians were decapitating and eating ducks in a city park. That story was picked up and widely repeated by right-wing news outlets.
Vance has repeatedly pointed at Springfield as an example of a town being overrun by immigrants. He even features the town on his campaign site in which he claims “this immigration problem” is draining the town’s social services.
However, in August, NPR visited Springfield to investigate the claims being made by Vance and other Republicans. What they found was that there were legitimate concerns in the city about housing. That’s because Springfield grew from a population of around 60,000 to 75,000-80,000 over the last four years, after the availability of jobs—many of them at a local steel manufacturing plant—drew immigrants to the city. In addition, Springfield was facing a burden due to translation, with both the local hospital and police saying that service had been slowed down by the lack of translators.
Additionally, the City of Springfield confirms that the Haitian immigrants are in the town legally. Because of the ongoing conflict in Haiti, immigrants qualify for Temporary Protected Status.
While not everyone in Springfield is thrilled with the influx of immigrants, the city’s issues appear primarily related to the town’s rapid growth. The owner of the local steel plant insists that he was having trouble filling the jobs in Springfield and is grateful to the immigrants for moving to the area, according to NPR.
There is no evidence of chaos—or pet-eating.
Undeterred, the local Republican Party has xenophobically made the immigrants a symbol of the problems with the immigration system and repeated claims that they represent a threat to the community.
“Some of the Haitians are gang members”, GOP committee woman Glenda Bailey told NPR. “I’ve seen them.”
How she knows they’re gang members isn’t explained. Regardless, the local police told NPR there’s no evidence of Haitian gangs in the town.
Bailey went on to declare that the immigrants were “occupiers” and that they had “replaced the population” of Springfield—language that alludes to the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which Republicans regularly use to anger and mobilize white voters. That the Haitians represent an influx of Black residents into a town that was largely white four years ago only makes it easier to sell that fear.
Haitians have not “replaced” any population. They have only added to it. And many residents are excited to see the city growing and evolving.
“I think it’s sad that some people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear,” police officer Jason Via, the deputy director of public safety and operations, told NPR. “We get these reports ‘the Haitians are killing ducks in a lot of our parks’ or ‘the Haitians are eating vegetables right out of the aisle at the grocery store’. And we haven’t really seen any of that. It’s really frustrating. As a community, it’s not helpful as we try to move forward.”
The false stories of pets being eaten, of animals being killed in parks, and of general chaos in the streets of Springfield all serve a purpose. They allow Vance, Trump, and other Republicans to dehumanize immigrants. To “other” them. To present them as violent, primitive, and threatening.
It’s all a lie. But don’t expect them to admit this.
JMsays
Youtube: 10 Sep: NO CREMATION NEEDED! Ukrainians UNLEASH DRAGON-DRONES & INCINERATE RUSSIANS ON SPOT!
The Ukrainian army is stopping various Russian advances. The ability of the Ukrainians to move their forces quickly and launch small attacks lets them adapt faster when both armies are stretched thin. On the other side of the vast battle line the Russians are still making small advances towards Pokrovsk but at high costs.
The Ukrainians are testing drones equipped to dump thermite on enemy forces. It’s only being tested and may not be used, likely because the risk of large scale forest fires make it risky to use. This would be hideously unpleasant to be under and there will be an attempt to get it banned as a war crime if it comes into common use.
(While planets with Earth’s mass cannot be sampled well because of the limits of technology, the larger super-Earths are presumably good proxies for the existence of small planets in a system. So no abundance of terrestrial planets in the early galaxy)
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 322
That would seem to make sense considering that a solar system’s primary and attendant planets form from the same accretion disk.
Ukraine targeted the Russian capital on Tuesday in its biggest drone attack so far, killing at least one and wrecking dozens of homes in the Moscow region and forcing around 50 flights to be diverted from airports around Moscow…
“There is no way that night time strikes on residential neighbourhoods can be associated with military action,” said Peskov…
But if you are shooting down the drones, who is responsible for where it lands?
The Telegraph of the U.K. reported that Kamala Harris was aided in her presidential debate prep by Lee Strasberg, the legendary drama coach who taught “method acting” to the likes of Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Sally Field.
But even legends have their limits. Strasberg died in 1982…
Ron DeSantis isn’t just opposed to an abortion-rights measure, his administration has also dispatched officers to check in with some who signed petitions.
[…] Trump’s conspiracy theories fueled tiresome hysteria in Florida Republican circles, leading GOP officials to impose new restrictions to address a problem that didn’t exist. Among the “reforms” was the creation of an Office of Election Crimes and Security, which far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis intended to use to pursue election crimes that largely didn’t (and don’t) exist.
Not surprisingly, the special unit has become controversial, and several of the cases it’s pursued ultimately collapsed.
After the multi-million-dollar office was approved in 2022, the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez summarized the problem nicely: “There are few things more dangerous than a government agency handed cash and resources with a mandate to solve a problem that does not exist. As a rule, they’ll invent it if they have to.”
That quote came to mind anew this week. The Washington Post reported on the Republican governor’s election police unit “investigating alleged fraud in signature gathering for the state’s upcoming abortion referendum.”
In the past week, two people reported that an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrived at their homes and asked them about petitions they had signed months ago to add Amendment 4 to the November ballot. One voter, Isaac Menasche, posted on his Facebook page Wednesday that a detective questioned him about his signature and showed him a folder containing 10 pages of his personal information.
[Yikes!]
In his social media message, the local voter wrote that the experience with law enforcement left him “shaken.” He added that it was “troubling” to see the DeSantis administration devote so many resources to such an endeavor.
In case this isn’t obvious, it was just last year when the GOP governor and his state legislative allies created a controversial and unpopular six-week abortion ban. Soon after, voters statewide began collecting signatures for a ballot measure that would undo DeSantis’ abortion ban and enshrine reproductive rights in Florida’s state constitution.
The governor has claimed that wealthy philanthropist George Soros is secretly behind the effort, and DeSantis denounced the all-Republican state Supreme Court for allowing voters to consider the issue.
Evidently, however, that was not the totality of the governor’s response. The DeSantis administration also appears to have dispatched police officers to some Floridians’ homes to inquire about their signatures on the abortion rights petitions.
Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani responded soon after, “This is unhinged and undemocratic behavior being pushed by Governor Ron DeSantis in an effort to continue our state’s near total abortion ban. It’s clear voter intimidation and plain corruption — continue to call it out and fight back.”
Towards the end of Barack Obama’s term, an interviewer noted that the right had targeted him with all kinds of foolish conspiracy theories, and he asked the Democratic president whether he had a favorite. Obama didn’t hesitate: The first thing that came to mind was Jade Helm.
In case anyone’s forgotten, U.S. military officials organized some training exercises in 2015 for about 1,200 people in areas spanning from Texas to California. Somehow, right-wing activists got it in their heads that the exercises, labeled “Jade Helm 15,” were part of an elaborate conspiracy theory involving the Obama administration, the Pentagon, Walmart and some “secret underground tunnels.”
The far-right fears never made any sense, and the then-president apparently found all of this rather amusing. But one of the underappreciated parts of the story was that a variety of Republican officials — including senators, governors and U.S. House members — at least pretended to take the conspiracy theories seriously. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott even felt the need to order the Texas Guard to “monitor” the military exercises — just in case Obama was up to something nefarious.
When GOP officials were pressed to explain their interest in claims that were transparently ridiculous, they invariably said the same thing: Their supporters and constituents took the nonsense seriously, so they were compelled to do the same.
All of this came to mind again this week. As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones summarized:
On Monday, JD Vance dived face-first into a racist and xenophobic conspiracy theory when the GOP vice presidential nominee promoted a false allegation that Haitian immigrants in Ohio have been eating people’s pets. This aligns with other “fear the brown people” rhetoric pushed by Donald Trump and his cringe-inducing running mate.
Yes, as this week got underway, the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee actually published a social media message in which Vance wrote, “Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country. Where is our border czar?”
All of this was utterly bonkers, even by 2024 standards. The Haitians in Springfield are in the country legally; they’ve been there for decades; and there were no actual “reports” about the immigrants stealing and eating pets. The nonsense spread like wildfire on the right, but it had no basis in reality.
Nevertheless, folks like conspiratorial billionaire Elon Musk and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz — whose affection for reckless misinformation appears limitless — seized on racist right-wing chatter and treated the insane theory as a legitimate story.
As did Vance.
And why, pray tell, did a candidate for national office decide to lend his voice to a conspiracy theory that’s racist and ridiculous in equal measure? NBC News asked Vance’s team.
After NBC News asked the Vance campaign about the lack of evidence for his claim, a spokesperson said that the senator had received “a high volume of calls and emails over the past several weeks from concerned citizens in Springfield” and that “his tweet is based on what he is hearing from them.” The spokesperson did not say, however, whether any of those calls or emails had included evidence of violence against pets, and did not offer proof of Vance’s statements.
It was, in other words, the Jade Helm dynamic all over again: A bunch of hysterical people told the senator that the ludicrous theory might be true, so Vance, instead of relying on facts, proceeded as if the preposterous claims had merit and deserved to be amplified.
Whether he fell for a scam or cynically went along with the absurdities is irrelevant: Vance was told to take ugly nonsense seriously, so he did.
The idea of applying critical thinking skills never entered the picture. The vice presidential hopeful isn’t a leader so much as he’s a follower of frenzied conservatives who saw some racist garbage on Facebook.
In theory, Vance could apologize for his role in this fiasco. In practice, those waiting for the Ohio Republican to express contrition will probably be waiting for a very long time.
I don’t plan to watch it. I know who Trump is and what he stands for. And I know that Kamala Harris is not Trump.
Reginald Selkirksays
@328: In theory, Vance could apologize for his role in this fiasco. In practice, those waiting for the Ohio Republican to express contrition will probably be waiting for a very long time.
Yup, we know Vance is the sort to double down, not admit error and apologize.
In a Monday call with reporters, Trump spokesman Jason Miller revealed some of Trump’s strategy for Tuesday’s debate. As might be expected, the key strategy is: lie.
According to Miller, Trump’s big pitch isn’t just to tie Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to the policies implemented under President Joe Biden. It’s not even to suggest that Harris has been advising Biden on those policies. Instead, Trump intends to push the idea that Harris has been secretly running the government all along; that this is actually the “Harris/Biden administration.”
It’s a strategy that may appeal to Trump’s base, who are already big believers in secret governments, and is the focus of at least one new Trump ad. But it’s likely to leave most Americans scratching their heads.
And if Trump wants to fight on this ground, expect Harris to be very prepared.
The idea that Trump would try to tie Harris to the actions of the Biden administration isn’t exactly shocking. Trump has been repeating that claim in rallies and speeches. Trump has also made claims about Harris being responsible for immigration issues because she was “the border czar.” She wasn’t. And isn’t.
But the idea that Harris “owns” issues from the Afghanistan withdrawal to the economy because she was somehow pulling Biden’s strings takes Trump’s claims to a new level.
Meanwhile, Miller was also happy to pile on one of the other lies that Trump has been making: that Harris is “very stupid” and that debate prep is just too much for her.
“These binders of stats and details,” Miller told reporters on the Monday call. “She has no idea what any of this is. No idea whatsoever.” [OMG, what a weak argument.]
[…] As Bloomberg reports, anyone connected to the accomplishments of this administration has many sources of pride: record household wealth, record health care coverage, a record run of job creation, and a trillion dollars invested in moving America to renewable energy sources.
Meanwhile, investments made possible by the Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act are creating jobs and growing the economy in so many red districts that Republicans are finding it hard to gather support to move away from these “Harris/Biden” policies.
Trump will spend the night trying to blame Harris for the “failures” of the Biden administration. But nearly four years in, those failures look like more jobs, more wealth, more health care, more energy, and a better environment. Harris is certainly going to make clear those areas where she differs from Biden. But if Trump insists that she owns these accomplishments, it’s unlikely she’s going to argue too hard. Then again, with Trump, you never know truly what to expect.
Another high-ranking government official who investigated UFOs/UAPs is ready to tell their story.
Jay Stratton, the former director of the U.S Government’s secretive Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, has struck a memoir deal with HarperCollins. Stratton represents the most senior former U.S government official yet to go public about their direct involvement in the investigation of UAP and non-human intelligence…
This article provides no new evidence, and fails to mention that existing evidence (it mentions the “Tic Tac” video) has been pretty thoroughly debunked.
Ron DeSantis So Proud Of Jackbooted Thugs Harassing Innocent Abortion Amendment Supporters
Ron DeSantis loves his abortion ban, and he’d do just about anything to keep it in place. Unfortunately for him, petitions to get Florida’s Amendment 4 — which would nullify his precious six-week abortion ban and make it illegal to restrict abortion prior to viability — on the ballot this November managed to get a million signatures from Florida residents, 100,000 more than was even needed.
“No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider,” the amendment reads. “This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
As you might imagine, he is not pleased! While the ballot measure will require a supermajority of 60 percent to become law, polls show that a majority of voters support it, and even Donald Trump said he would vote for it on the grounds that “six weeks” is not enough time — before he said he wouldn’t, on the grounds that anti-abortion activists got really mad at him.
Should the ballot measure get 60 percent of the vote, DeSantis’s six-week abortion ban would be deemed unconstitutional and he would be further prevented from trying to do anything else crazy with regard to abortion. That’s a high percentage, but given the polling and also that every state that’s tried an abortion-rights referendum has passed an abortion-rights referendum, we’ve got a good feeling about it.
Thus, DeSantis has turned to more desperate measures. Over the weekend, he demanded that Florida Republicans not only publicly support his six-week ban, but that they give him some of their campaign funds to fight the effort to overturn it.
Via Sun-Sentinel:
At one point, he divided 22 Republican U.S. senators and U.S. representatives into three categories.
Of the 22, he named 10 and praised who he said are publicly opposed to Amendment 4 and have supported the opposition financially. That group included U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and Carlos Gimenez from Miami-Dade County.
DeSantis listed six more who he said are publicly opposing Amendment 4 but haven’t contributed financially, a tier that includes U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Miami-Dade County.
Finally he called out the other six — though he didn’t say their names from the stage at the Republican event — for not declaring public opposition to the abortion-rights amendment.
The governor said it is “untenable to just sit here and let George Soros run amendments in our state and not be willing to stand up and say no. Not on our watch. That’s the least you can do as Republicans.”
George Soros, for the record, does not have jack shit to do with any of this.
On top of that, DeSantis has been doing his level best to defeat Amendment 4 ahead of November, with a plan to prove that enough of the signatures were fraudulent that the state would be required to remove it from the ballot.
This plan has involved sending his “election police” to the homes of people who signed the petition in order to interrogate them about whether or not they actually signed it. You know, just to make sure they’re not dead and to helpfully let them know exactly how much information the state of Florida has on them, in case they perhaps had something, like a ballot initiative signature, that they wanted to retract.
The Tampa Bay-Times reported that voter Isaac Menasche was visited recently by a plainclothes officer [see comment 327]
Another Floridian, Becky Castellanos, was visited by a police officer who came to her door to tell her that a relative of hers could be a “victim of fraud.”
Castellanos was concerned it could be identity fraud or credit card fraud and invited the officer inside while she called her family member. The officer and her relative talked over Castellanos’ phone as she stood by.
The officer asked about the abortion petition her relative signed, Castellanos said, and sent a picture of it over. One number on the date of birth appeared wrong — a three instead of a two, she said. But her relative confirmed it was his petition that he signed, and the officer accepted it.
So … was she his mom? Did the cops go to someone’s mom’s house to ask about the abortion petition?Regardless, what are the election police doing asking people’s relatives about their political signatures, instead of the people who did the signing?
It’s not entirely unusual for a state to investigate possible cases of forged signatures on such petitions, but these signatures came not from rejected petitions, but rather ones that had already been vetted — often by Republican election workers — and deemed legit.
DeSantis has defended the investigation, insisting that it has already uncovered examples of signature fraud and was spurred by reports that petitioners included fake signatures from dead people.
Considering it’s Ron DeSantis, we will believe that when he gives out any proof.
But that’s not all he’s doing, mind you! He’s also launched a (possibly illegal or at least unethical) website by an official agency of the state, using state funds, to convince voters to vote against Amendment 4, claiming that his gross and terrible ban “protects women,” while legalizing abortion would somehow harm women’s health in some unspecified capacity.
[…]
It’s a convenient example of lots of hidden patterns they are motivated to deny and avoid.
Vance couch fucking rumors =/= migrant pet eating rumors.
1) punching direction
2) group vs. individual target
3) bringing unrelated people into a fight
4)…
I’m sure there is more others have better filters to detect. That lack of Adderall…
“Make up stories about our vice presidential candidate!?!? We’ll go attack disadvantaged people we’re already attacking!”
They keep showing what they are.
Meanwhile there is a guy shooting up pets in California, I’m pretty sure they are a citizen. And I wouldn’t blame starving citizens and non-citizens from eating ducks at a park instead of starving.
That’s right, this ties into desperation and poverty shaming.
New York Times Apologizes For Sanewashing Trump By Sanewashing Trump Some More
To be fair, NYT didn’t actually say the words ‘I am sorry for being bad at journalism.’
[…] “Sanewashing” not a totally brand new term, but people are using it now to describe the mainstream media’s bizarre proclivity for, well, sane-washing Donald Trump’s rambling, bumbling, babbling batshit quotes to try to force them to make sense, in order to satisfy the mainstream media’s bizarre need to report all things as binary issues with equal, opposite sides.
It appears to have blown back into the discourse recently after Aaron Rupar said it and Parker Molloy wrote a column about it, and we guess the timing and the mood were just right. It’s taken off like wildfire — in a way that, to our eyes, is paying dividends and having a positive effect on the media’s normally egregiously shitty election coverage.
Jon Allsop gives a nice summary of how the word is being used at the Columbia Journalism Review:
As applied to Trump, the idea is that major mainstream news outlets are routinely taking his incoherent, highly abnormal rants—be they on social media or at in-person events—and selectively quoting from them to emphasize lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing. In her column, Molloy called out CNN for sanitizing a Trump screed about tomorrow’s presidential debate and the New York Times for omitting an allusion to a conspiracy theory about vaccines and autism from its summary of a Trump pledge to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help make health policy; since then, she and others have applied the same analysis to coverage of Trump’s incoherent remarks—particularly around the costs of childcare and a proposed Elon Musk–led “efficiency commission”—at an economic forum in New York. “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism,” Molloy wrote. “It’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.”
There have been a lot of articles calling this out in the past couple weeks. So many that last night, the New York Times, the capital of lazy, shitty, both-sides, phoning-it-in, sanewashing journalism about Trump, felt compelled to weigh in on the phenomenon.
And in that very article, it sanewashed Trump.
If you’d like, you can just watch Lawrence O’Donnell scream at the Times for 14 minutes last night, because it was as satisfying as it sounds. [Video at the link]
As Lawrence explained, the Peter Baker article in question — headline: As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity — was the Times’s very good try at writing an article that suggested that perhaps Donald Trump has been an old, incoherent lunatic this entire time. It’s certainly not as fun as writing about Joe Biden being old, but that bastard dropped out of the race and stole all the Times’s joy, and also far more people than usual are calling the Times a bunch of talentless hacks.
So, a Trump age/dementia story it is!
The subheadline explained that now that Biden is gone, Trump would be the oldest president ever […] and that “his rambling, sometimes incoherent public statements have stirred concern among voters.” That’s one way to say it.
The first paragraph of the Trump age/dementia story was of course about Joe Biden:
The last time the nation held a debate with the presidency on the line, a candidate with about eight decades of life behind him faced the challenge of proving that he was still up to the job of running the country. He failed.
The third graf is about how Trump has more energy than Biden, but he is also very old and incoherent and bugfuck. But overall, it’s a serviceable piece that tries to explain in 1,500 words or less that Trump is prone to extended fugue state diatribes about getting electocuted and eaten by sharks and how much he hates windmills and how he aced a dementia test one time in 2018 (allegedly) and school nurses are doing top surgery and sexual assault doesn’t count if you’re on top of clouds and besides, “I know you’re going to think it’s a terrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen. And, she would not have been the chosen one. She would not have been the chosen one.”
It’s not some great piece of journalism. It’s fine. But toward the end, this is the part that really chapped Lawrence O’Donnell’s ass. Baker wrote this:
Mr. Trump’s response to the child care question in New York on Thursday underscored the concerns. Often his mangled statements are summarized in news accounts in ways that do not give the full picture of how baffling they can be. Quoting them at length, though, can provide additional context. Here is a more extended account of his reply on affordable child care:
“It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that — because the child care is, child care, it’s, couldn’t, you know, there’s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly — and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care.”
Baker is talking about a truly insane answer Trump recently gave to a bunch of stony-faced, silent grownup people at the Economic Club of New York. That appeared to be his nod to the fact that everybody is talking about “sanewashing” and staring at the New York Times and yelling WHY DO YOU FUCKING SUCK SO MUCH?
And Baker did provide a longer quote than they usually do, as you see.
But it still cut off the majority of the bugfuck answer! Here, let us click the Wonkette post above and copy and paste it! Are you ready? It’s a bumblefuck!
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down — you know, I was, uh, somebody, we had Sen. Marco Rubio [(R-Fla.)] and my daughter, Ivanka, was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue.”
“But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that — because child care is child care. It’s, couldn’t — you know, it’s something, you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it.”
“But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to but they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.”
“Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s gonna take care. We’re gonna have — I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time. Coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country — because I have to say with child care, I want to stay with childcare, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth.”
“But growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about. We’re gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as childcare is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in.”
“We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re gonna take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about: Make America great again. We have to do it, because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question.”
See how he [the NYT reporter, Peter Baker] left off the really stupid rambling parts and only included a little tiny stupid rambling part? And then Baker typed (and this was the part that set policy-wonk Lawrence O’Donnell off):
What he seemed to be saying was that he would raise so much money by imposing tariffs on imported goods that the country could use the proceeds to pay for child care. In itself, that would be a disputable policy assumption.
[…] What made Lawrence so furious was that Baker wrote that last graf — that it would be a “disputable policy assumption” that Trump could raise all kinds of money from tariffs to pay for childcare — while ignoring completely that what Trump said in his answer to the idiots at the Economic Club was “taxing foreign nations.” Is that what tariffs do? No, according to literally everyone all the way back to your middle school social studies teacher. Tariffs raise costs on American consumers.
But apparently nobody in the New York Times campaign coverage newsroom knows that. And it matters, because this is a lie Donald Trump has long been telling, one he’s particularly obsessed with right now. He’s out there calling himself a tariffs man, saying he’s going to be a tariffs president, and in an article that’s ostensibly about voters’ concerns over Trump’s age, incoherence, babbling, and lying, they didn’t bother to note that the one central conclusion of their sanewashing of Trump’s quote about (theoretically) childcare was based on Trump’s longstanding lie that tariffs are taxes on foreign countries.
[…] It wasn’t just the New York Times, they’re just often the worst offenders. The Associated Press is still blaring this trash: [Screengrab at the link of headline: “Trump suggests tariffs can help solve rising child care costs in a major economic speech.”]
Tonight, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris meet in Philadelphia for what might be their only debate. Several commentators have noted, though, that she’s not only going to be debating Trump and his bullshit. She’s also going to be debating a media that is fundamentally incapable of calling Trump what he is […]
That “chosen one” phrase has been used by Trump many times. It really irks me. The implication is that a woman Trump chooses to rape should feel honored.
Also, as “sanewashing” Trump proceeds apace in the NYT and other media outlets, I am resisting despair.
JD Vance’s Vice Presidential campaign has been one for the history books for all the wrong reasons, and we can now add “entering restricted airspace” to his list of accomplishments. You see, the Ohio Senator and Republican VP hopeful’s Boeing 737-800 accidentally violated the Prohibited Airspace 56 over Washington, D.C. a few days ago as it was leaving Washington Reagan National Airport for Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in Arizona. Woof.
The pilot was notified of the airspace violation by air traffic control and was given a phone number to contact for possible pilot deviation once they landed, according to Simply Flying. The prohibited airspace – referred to as P-56 – encompasses important areas of Washington, D.C., including the U.S. National Mall, the White House and the Naval Observatory. It’s completely prohibited for commercial and private planes…
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #334.
As regards signatures from people who are dead…I’d want to see reported when they signed and when they died. Just because they’re dead now doesn’t mean they were dead when they signed the petition.
Former Nevada Assemblywoman/Council woman/Justice of the Peace/State Treasurer candidate/Las Vegas Mayor pro-tempore/Cliven Bundy booster/star of her own sexxxy gun-toting pin-up calendar Michele Fiore pleaded not guilty on Monday to new wire fraud charges related to a charity fraud scheme she (allegedly!) perpetrated.
According to the Department of Justice, while she was a Las Vegas city councilwoman, Fiore solicited donations through her own PAC and a nonprofit she founded called A Bright Present Foundation to fund a statue of fallen Las Vegas police officer Alyn Beck … despite the fact that a private company had already agreed to fund the statue. Beck was killed 10 years ago in the line of duty by some far-right lunatics who had been hoping to start a revolution and overthrow the US government and who had also previously been associated with the Bundys.
Fiore stands accused of embezzling money from the fund in order to pay off her own political fundraising debts, pay her rent and, naturally, to throw her daughter the wedding of her dreams.
[…] Among those Fiore is accused of scamming are the Laborers International Union 872 of Las Vegas, which represents construction workers and public service employees, and Republican Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo.
Fiore was initially indicted by a grand jury in July on four counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with these two new charges added in August in a superseding indictment. She has pleaded innocent to all charges.
The Nevada Independent reports that new court documents released on Monday reveal that one of those Fiore is accused of defrauding is her former friend and co-councilwoman Victoria Seaman, who previously sued Fiore for creating a hostile work environment by violently assaulting her, “pulling, jerking, twisting, and breaking … Seaman’s finger in a violent manner.” You know, normal city council stuff.
They also reveal that the unidentified, unindicted co-conspirator referred to as Person A in the previous indictment is, in fact, Fiore’s daughter, Sheena Siegel. Fiore was previously accused of using more than $109,000 from her PAC to fund Siegel’s event-planning company.
To her credit and our collective great relief, Michele Fiore did not use any of the money she allegedly embezzled to shoot another pin-up calendar or to film a sequel to Siren, her 2002 vanity project movie. [video at the link]
Fiore’s trial starts on September 24, and she faces 20 years in prison for each charge if found guilty. […]
The New York Times now has a front page post with this subhead: “The former president has proposed using tariffs to fund child care, boost manufacturing, quell immigration and encourage use of the dollar. Economists are skeptical.”
The Iranian missiles will let Russia reserve its own missiles for long-range attacks on Ukrainian forces, said Secretary of State Blinken.
Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia for its war against Ukraine in a “dramatic escalation” that will let Moscow strike deeper inside Ukrainian territory, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.
As a result of the move, the U.S., Britain and other European powers plan to impose new sanctions on the Iranian state airline, Blinken and his British counterpart, David Lamy, said at a joint news conference in London.
“Russia has now received shipments of these ballistic missiles and will likely use them within weeks in Ukraine against Ukrainians,” Blinken told reporters.
Although Russia has its own substantial arsenal, Blinken said, “the supply of Iranian missiles enables Russia to use more of its arsenal for targets that are further from the front line, while dedicating the new missiles it’s receiving from Iran for closer-range targets.”
“We’ve warned Iran publicly, we’ve warned Iran privately, that taking this step would constitute a dramatic escalation,” Blinken said. “Dozens of Russian military personnel have been trained in Iran to use the Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system, which has a maximum range of 75 miles,” he said.
Iran has already provided armed drones to Russia, helped build a drone factory in Russia to produce the aircraft and trained Russians how to operate them, Blinken said.
[…] The U.S. has shared intelligence about the missile shipments with partners in recent days and the allies are planning to inflict “significant economic consequences for Tehran’s actions,” Blinken said, including additional sanctions on Iran Air, the state airline.
Iran has denied it is providing missiles to Russia and has called for countries to halt any weapons shipments to either side in the conflict. […]
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, “Not every time information of this kind corresponds to reality. … We are developing dialogue with Iran in the most sensitive areas and will continue to do so.”
British Foreign Secretary Lamy said, “We’re seeing a disturbing pattern of greater Iranian support for the Kremlin’s illegal war, and we discussed today our shared commitment to holding Tehran to account for their undermining of global stability.”
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank, said Tehran has calculated that it has more to gain than to lose by transferring the weapons to Russia.
“The big question is now: What did Tehran get in return? Nuclear cooperation, cash, space program assistance?” he said
A city councilor in Switzerland has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media.
Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later said she had been practicing shots from about 10 meters (33 feet) and found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target.
“I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I realized its religious content. I didn’t think about it,” Ameti wrote on X. “I’m incredibly sorry.” …
When Donald Trump boasted to Fox News in June that he’d fire U.S. military leaders he deemed “woke,” it was not an isolated comment. On the contrary, Trump repeated the commitment in July and then again in August.
The former president might not have much of a governing vision, but he’s made no secret of the fact that he intends to purge the nation’s military leadership of officers he considers insufficiently loyal to the MAGA vision. […]
While in office Trump reportedly lashed out at generals as “a bunch of dopes and babies,” while publicly going on the offensive against his own former Defense secretary, retired Gen. James Mattis, whom he accused of acting like a “Democrat” for questioning the White House’s less-defensible national security moves. After leaving office, Trump went after retired Gen. Mark Milley — the man he tapped to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — falsely accusing the Army general of having committed treason.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ relationship with U.S. military leaders is noticeably different.
Two weeks ago, for example, retired four-star Gen. Larry Ellis, a highly decorated veteran who served under 10 presidential administrations, announced his support for the Democratic nominee. Ellis, who served his country for nearly a half-century, had never before endorsed a candidate for elected office, but in the 2024 presidential election, he made an exception, writing that “this is not a decision I take lightly, but one I believe necessary.”
The retired general was the first senior military leader to publicly back the vice president, but we now know he wasn’t the last. NBC News reported this week on the launch of National Security Leaders for America and the group’s support for Harris.
The group said in a statement, signed by several [retired] generals and admirals, that Harris is “the best — and only — presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief.”
“She has demonstrated her ability to take on the most difficult national security challenges in the Situation Room and on the international stage, from rallying our allies against Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine to standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies in the Indo-Pacific against China’s provocative actions, to advancing U.S. leadership on space and artificial intelligence. She is a steadfast supporter of service members, veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors,” the group wrote.
Members, who include a former George W. Bush advisor, went on to describe Trump as a “danger to our national security and our democracy.”
“At his core, he does not understand selfless service and sacrifice, and he should never be allowed to again serve as commander-in-chief of the greatest fighting force in the world,” the group wrote.
This list might yet grow. Around this time four years ago, a surprising number of retired military leaders, many of whom had been apolitical for decades, stepped up to denounce Trump, endorse Joe Biden, or both.
For the most part, however, they waited until October to express their election-related opinions. Will many of those same retired generals and admirals step up again as Election Day nears? Watch this space.
Over the weekend, I shared what I believe to be the real reasons Donald Trump showed up to Friday’s oral argument in his appeal of E. Jean Carroll’s first civil verdict against him. But I didn’t focus on what happened at the argument itself — or at his purported “press conference” thereafter.
Friday’s argument — where the legal focus was whether the admission of evidence of Trump’s alleged, prior sexual assaults was erroneous, and if so, whether that error was or was not harmless — turned out to be much less about Carroll herself than another octogenarian, Jessica Leeds. Shortly after the “Access Hollywood” tape was leaked in 2016, Leeds alleged that an “octopus”-like Trump groped her breasts and reached under her skirt as they sat in adjoining seats in the first-class cabin of an airplane in the late 1970s. And her testimony in Carroll’s first trial, Trump’s lawyers maintained, should not have been admitted because it was not yet a federal crime to commit sexual assault on a plane at the time of the alleged assault.
The amount of time devoted to discussing Leeds’ testimony was a surprise, yes. But the real shock came hours later when, holding court at Trump Tower, the former president decided to attack Leeds, insisting “she made up the story,” and continuing, in part:
So think of the impracticality of this. I’m famous. I’m in a plane. People are coming into the plane, and I’m looking at a woman, and I grab her and I start kissing her and making out with her. What are the chances of that happening? What are the chances? And frankly, I know you’re going to say, “It’s a terrible thing to say,” but it couldn’t have happened. It didn’t happen, and she would not have been the chosen one.
Perhaps realizing what he had said, Trump ruefully concluded, “Now I assume she’ll sue me now for defamation.” [There’s a photo of Jessica Leeds in 1978 at the link.]
[…] While Leeds hasn’t sued, it’s not clear that Trump’s prediction is wrong. Indeed, at a press conference of her own Monday, Leeds said she is “considering a number of options” because of Trump’s “latest remarks.”
It might seem strange that Leeds could file suit now; after all, the alleged incident itself happened, as Leeds acknowledged, nearly 50 years ago. But the timeliness and validity of a defamation claim turns not on the age of the underlying events but rather when the defendant makes a knowingly false statement and with malice.
That’s why, for example, Carroll successfully sued Trump twice: once for statements he made in June 2019 after an excerpt of her book was published in New York magazine and again after an October 2022 social media post renewing his attacks on Carroll. That post — in an eerie parallel to his bashing of Leeds — similarly accused Carroll of making up the story, asserted the assault never happened, and insisted Carroll was not his type. It’s also why when, days after Carroll’s first trial victory, Trump again publicly denied knowing Carroll and called her story fake, a judge allowed Carroll’s lawyers to seek even greater punitive damages at her second trial.
And it’s why Leeds is now contemplating going to court. The only question is whether her claim might be even stronger after Tuesday night’s debate.
Why, you ask, would that be the case? Recall that Kamala Harris’ chief goal at Tuesday’s debate is to demonstrate that she is ready and able to be president on Day 1. Key to her case — and there are indications that she is approaching the debate like a trial where she bears the burden of proof — is highlighting her own fitness for the office versus that of her opponent. And given that her 30-plus-year history in public service includes years of prosecuting sex crimes, is it likely that somewhere, somehow, she’ll bring up the panoply of women who have accused Trump of sexual assault? I’d bet on it — and I’d also bet on Trump lashing out at one or more of those accusers.
The bottom line? Tuesday’s debate could be the first time in American history a major party nominee’s debate performance helps nudge a potential defamation plaintiff from press conference to court. Something tells me Leeds might be one of the debate’s most attentive viewers.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported on Tuesday that median income for U.S. households increased in 2023, returning to pre-pandemic levels. The agency said that the median income level is now at $80,610, up 4% from 2022 for the first increase since 2019.
The rise in income levels means that families have regained their purchasing power despite price increases due to inflation.
The announcement is another data point demonstrating the economic recovery that has taken place since the Biden/Harris administration took office in early 2021 and implemented its “Investing in America” agenda.
Vice President Kamala Harris has played a key role in the recovery from early in the administration. Harris provided the tiebreaking vote in the Senate for the American Rescue Plan, the economic stimulus package unanimously opposed by Republicans in Congress.
Harris also broke the logjam of Republican opposition to the Inflation Reduction Act with her Senate vote, leading to massive investments in green jobs while also cutting drug costs. Other legislation contributing to economic growth that received Harris’ support includes the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act.
Ahead of her debate with Donald Trump, the household income improvement gives Harris another opportunity to contrast her economic record with the former president.
[…] Harris will also be able to point to her shared jobs record. […] Under the Biden/Harris administration, more than 15 million jobs have been added and Harris has pledged to pursue similarly successful economic policies as part of her “New Way Forward” agenda.
Neo-Nazi ‘Terrorgram’ Leaders May Have To Continue Planning Their Race War In Prison
Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison have been charged with inciting hate crimes, assassinations.
On October 12, 2022, Juraj Krajčík, a 19-year-old neo-Nazi in Bratislava, Slovakia, walked into a gay bar and started shooting. He ultimately killed two people, Juraj Vankulič and Matúš Horváth, and injured a third. Not long after, he took his own life.
People always talk about these kinds of shooters being “loners,” but Krajčík wasn’t alone. [Important to note: not a “loner.”] Not really. Not only were his actual parents aware of what he was going to do (and didn’t report him), but he was part of a community called Terrorgram — a white supremacist accelerationist group active on Telegram. It functioned for several years as a hub for members of groups like Atomwaffen and The Base, as well as other far-right groups and individuals, to freely discuss their plans for a race war, celebrate white supremacist murderers like Dylan Roof, Brenton Tarrant, Anders Breivik, Timothy McVeigh and more, and exchange bomb recipes.
The group has been tied to the Bratislava shooting, a stabbing attack at a mosque in Turkey, and a New Jersey man who had planned to attack energy facilities in the state and then run off to join the Russian Volunteer Corps, “which he described as specializing in assassinations, attacks on power grids, and other infrastructure sabotage, so that he could act on his violent plans.”
On Friday, two of the leaders of Terrorgram, Dallas Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California, and Matthew Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho, were arrested and “charged with a 15-count indictment for soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.”
Those participating in the channels, most of which have since been banned by Telegram, were accelerationists who planned to commit violent crimes for the explicit purpose of starting a race war, with the hope that it would force society to ultimately collapse, allowing them to bring about the Aryan fascist hellscape of their dreams.
“Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy, and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This indictment charges the leaders of a transnational terrorist group with several civil rights violations, including soliciting others to engage in hate crimes and terrorist attacks against Black, immigrant, LGBT, and Jewish people. Make no mistake, as hate groups turn to online platforms, the federal government is adapting and responding to protect vulnerable communities.”
Previously only known as “the narrator,” “miss gorehound” or “the wahman” (because you know they hate women, too, in these places), Humbert’s identity and participation in the group has been known for at least a year, thanks to investigations by Left Coast Right Watch and Huffington Post’s Christopher Mathias. She has been active online as a self-identified Nazi for decades, and was sharing praise for Hitler and various serial killers on LiveJournal and other forums at the age of 13. Nice lady!
Humbert frequently narrated audio recordings of the manifestos of white supremacist killers, whom the group referred to as “saints,” as well as a “documentary” about various hate crimes (meant to encourage hate crimes) called “White Terror.” [images at the link]
The most disturbing thing about Humbert’s online history is the way it almost mirrors the evolution of a normal teenage girl with normal interests. One of her first screen names was “hopelessfangirl,” but instead of swooning over terrible emo bands and writing embarrassing Twilight fanfiction on Tumblr, she was gushing over serial killers, drawing pictures of them as chibis and posting them to DeviantArt. [Screengrab at the link]
I mean, talk about the banality of evil.
According to the the Department of Justice’s press release, the “indictment charges Humber and Allison with a total of 15 counts, including one count of conspiracy, four counts of soliciting hate crimes, three counts of soliciting the murder of federal officials, three counts of doxing federal officials, one count of threatening communications, two counts of distributing bombmaking instructions, and one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.”
If convicted, the two face up to 220 years in prison.
The migrant paranoia and similar are all looming threats.
And looming threat language is human. Nothing to do but refocus attention onto the real looming threats like global warming and not bigotry instead of fixing real problems. And actively labeling, explaining, and shaming these irrational bigoted looming threats.
Days before the 2020 presidential election, cars and trucks adorned with pro-Donald Trump flags nearly ran a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign bus traveling north on Interstate 35 off the road. For roughly 90 minutes, “Trump Train” members shouted, honked and weaved in and out of traffic around the vehicle, with one crashing into a Biden campaign staffer who was following the bus on the journey from San Antonio to Austin…
In 2021, the bus occupants sued some of the Trump Train drivers in federal court under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which forbids two or more people from threatening, harassing or using violence to prevent a citizen from engaging in political support or advocacy.
A weeklong jury trial began Monday in a packed Austin courtroom. The plaintiffs are seeking punitive and compensatory damages as well as attorneys’ fees, according to the complaint.
The plaintiffs are accusing the defendants of launching an “organized, coordinated ambush” to intimidate the Biden campaign and prevent passengers from engaging in political activity, noting that the event was planned publicly in a number of social media posts.
In the plaintiffs’ opening statements, Hall presented a barrage of expletive-laden social media posts, comments, videos and private communications from the defendants to argue that the “Trump Train” members intended to shut down their Democratic opponents’ campaign events, including by using the term “#blockthebus” on posts urging supporters to show up in San Antonio.
In one communication, Joeylynn Mesaros wrote, “We’re raging to chase down the Biden bus. It looks like others are ready to f— s— up too.” She described the event in a social media post as “giving (the bus) a friendly escort out of town.”
Hall also said the defendants gloated about the incident’s effect…
Reginald Selkirksays
@349
In a separate lawsuit, the plaintiffs in 2023 settled with San Marcos police in a case accusing officers of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act by ignoring 911 calls from the bus’s occupants.
Christy Walton, an heir to the fortune left by the founder of Walmart Inc., is set to co-host a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris, a sign of the growing support for the Democratic ticket among wealthy donors and business leaders.
Tickets for the Sept. 15 event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a lunch reception featuring Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and former Montana Governor Steve Bullock, run from $1,250 to $100,000, according to an invitation reviewed by Bloomberg News. Co-hosts are expected to give at least $50,000 per couple…
I have to admit that I forgot about the “danger to pets/wildlife” looming threat flavor. It’s related to threat to family/property I think. I can add that to the disease, vermin (contamination), invasion…
The U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday that it had offloaded more than $54 million worth of cocaine that was intercepted in the Caribbean Sea in a “complex counter-drug mission” — including over 1,200 pounds of cocaine that was seized from a semisubmersible vessel, or so-called “narco sub.”…
Semi-submersibles, which cannot go fully underwater…
A 76-year-old man has been arrested in an alleged attack on the owner of a New York City clothing boutique who says confrontation erupted last month over a large poster of Vice President Kamala Harris she displayed in her window, according to police.
The New York City Police Department confirmed to ABC News that the suspect, Juan Bernal of New York City, was arrested on Saturday and charged with assault in the third degree — a class A misdemeanor.
Williams, the owner of Tanya’s Luxury Fashion Boutique on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and alum of the VH1 series “Basketball Wives,” told ABC News the attack unfolded outside her store on Aug. 30. She said she was standing in the doorway of her store around 1:30 p.m. when a man walked by her and then came back after apparently noticing the large poster of the Democratic presidential nominee displayed in her window along with T-shirts supporting Harris’ run for the White House.
“He said, ‘You should have this in your window,'” Williams said of the man who allegedly pointed to his T-shirt touting Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump. “I moved toward him to keep him sort of out of the store and said, ‘I’m supporting Kamala.'”…
JMsays
@334 Lynna, OM: That there are a bunch of extra signatures is normal. People running for office and people with petitions like this always try to get a pile of extra signatures. That is a safety margin so that having some signatures disqualified won’t get the entire thing rejected. There are always some bad signatures because they can’t be verified or become somebody thought it funny to put in a bogus name or some signature collector was desperate to hit their target. Considering how controversial the topic they probably should have aimed for more then roughly 10% extra.
@351 Reginald Selkirk: The Waltons are pretty conservative. I wonder how much of this is thinking Harris is more likely to win, how much is realizing that funding Trump isn’t worth much because he doesn’t remember who did him favors, and how much is thinking Harris is a better bet for the country?
Thom Hartmann
A listener called in to my program recently and asked, “Is Donald Trump the Antichrist and, if so, will he reveal himself at the debate?”
I passed on drawing a conclusion, but then the lines lit up with a steady stream of people over the next few hours offering their “proofs” that Trump was, in fact, the Evil One come to ravage the earth. That he’s a literal and iniquitous thaumaturge. My first caller clearly hit a nerve…
Donald Trump gave an incoherent response last week to a question about how he would address the rising costs of child care to the point of incoherence. It turns out his allies at The Heritage Foundation already have a plan in mind.
Page 486 of Project 2025 — the conservative group’s terrifying master plan for a second Trump term — states that “instead of providing universal daycare, funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home child care.” …
Researchers from the University of Kansas have published findings in the journal Ichthyology & Herpetology describing a new species of fanged frog, named Limnonectes cassiopeia, from the Philippine island of Luzon.
Surprisingly, specimens of the new species have been collected a dozen times over the last 20 years, but all were mistakenly thought to be the juvenile version of the well-known, nearly identical (but not too closely related, it turns out) Luzon giant fanged frog.
“They’re called that because the males of some species have large, bony protuberances, like fangs, in their lower jaw—it’s pretty unique,” said lead author Mark Herr, doctoral student at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum…
The Missouri Supreme Court rejected a bid on Tuesday to throw out a question on the ballot in November that will ask voters whether to establish a right to abortion in the state Constitution.
The seven-member court handed down a one-page ruling less than three hours before the state’s deadline for printing ballots for absentee voters, capping a furious few days of legal maneuvers, as anti-abortion groups and state Republicans made a last-ditch effort to stop the ballot amendment.
[…]
“Evidence of a Stellar Flyby That Shaped the Early Solar System”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sl8K0wewrdQ
This would remove the need of a ninth planet to explain the odd orbits of trans-Neptunian objects.
During a routine house call to a private estate in Camden, Maine, auctioneer Kaja Veilleux made an unexpected discovery in the property’s attic: A 17th-century painting of a young woman wearing a cap and ruffled collar…
Astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore is an ardent supporter of Answers in Genesis. Captain Wilmore is stuck, possibly until next year, on the International Space Station (ISS) because of concerns with the safety of the Boeing Starliner capsule. Apparently, Ken Ham will get tons of publicity from support by astronaut Wilmore, who can be seen wearing an Ark Encounter T-shirt and hat in the photo. Captain Wilmore has also taken separate photos of two different Ark baseball caps on the ISS.
Mr. Ham is already hawking “as seen in space” merchandise promoting the Ark here. He writes:
These “as seen in space” items are available on our online store or at the attractions. It’s a fun way to promote the Ark and talk about a man who is bold in his witness for Jesus Christ and the truth of God’s Word from the very first verse, even while working as an astronaut with NASA…
@CompulsoryAccount7746
Maybe. But that’s got less potential to spread to migrants/refugees broadly. Also maybe that’s scheduled for next week?
StevoRsays
A group dedicated to “speaking for trees” says it will continue pressuring Adelaide councils into saving an estimated 75,000 of them from the axe each year, as a petrol giant’s plan to remove two significant river red gums in the inner south is delayed. …(snip)…. Speak for the Trees is a Conservation Council SA group, which has reported an estimated 75,000 trees are cut down across the Greater Adelaide area every year. Ms Preston’s group recently protested against removing two old gum trees for the construction of a new ice rink in Marion.
.. (Snip!)..
Board chairperson Professor Chris Daniels said 30 per cent (tree canopy cover -ed.) was a “widely accepted level to achieve multiple health, liveability and economic benefits for urban areas”. “Urban temperatures are predicted to increase, so it’s even more important that we grow a healthy and diverse urban forest to ensure that Adelaide stays liveable and cool,” he said. He said Adelaide’s current canopy level was just 17 per cent.
..(Snip)..
Ms Preston said people often did not appreciate the importance of saving a single tree, equating one big tree with nearly 900 saplings in terms of drawing carbon from the atmosphere. “There’s no way we can possibly plant that many trees to replace the benefits of one big tree,” she said.
I don’t personally care about her political opinion but it could have a significant(?) impact. And it will piss off Trump and the rest of the republican party which is a nice bonus.
StevoRsays
Herad something about the police using rubber bullets too on TV news – Rubber bullets. On unarmed protesters. InAustralia! WTF?!
Capsicum spray has been used by police and protesters have been detained as demonstrations outside the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre escalate. Follow our coverage live.
Followup to Jean @371, Taylor Swift has more than 200 million followers on Instagram. Within a few minutes, her endorsement of Kamala Harris garnered over a million likes.
The endorsement was well-written. Swift emphasized that voters should make sure they are registered. She advised people to vote early because that’s easier. Practical. (And good steps to take to mitigate Republican voter suppression efforts, which is my conclusion but not something Swift said).
Swift made the point that she was making her endorsement public because the Trump campaign had earlier put out disinformation, some of it created with AI, claiming that Swift had endorsed Trump. She wanted the facts to be known. That being said, she did not pressure her followers to vote for Harris. She advised them to do some research regarding each candidate’s policies and then to make up their own minds. Swift did definitely encourage people to register to vote, and to vote.
I feel obligated to note at the top that you can win a debate and lose the election. Donald Trump isn’t a momentary candidate. He has a big national political following that has remained loyal over almost a decade. Nothing happened tonight that is going to shake the confidence of his supporters. But with that said, this debate was an absolute rout. Harris had a minute or two of nerves […] but from the very first exchange she maintained the initiative, kept Trump on the defensive the entire time and simply dominated him. I don’t see any way to contest that basic verdict.
She set a tone at the very start when she walked right into his space to shake his hand and made him almost pull back into himself in response. She was in charge and never stopped being in charge. [She basically chased him down on stage and shook his hand, introducing herself with the correct pronunciation of her name!]
Harris also managed what neither Joe Biden nor Hillary Clinton nor any of the 2016 Republicans managed to do which is successfully bait Donald Trump and get under his skin. Within a few minutes Trump was visibly angry and not in a way that empowered him but in a way that made him lose focus, go down rabbit holes and generally go off onto damaging tangents. Spittle anger, not righteous anger, shall we say.
The debate basically ended after the extended exchange on abortion rights. Trump’s answers were meandering, defensive and absurd, topped off by a completely needless decision to throw JD Vance under the bus. Harris I think hit every point her campaign or probably any abortion rights advocate could have wished for. She didn’t stop with definitive promises to defend abortion rights. She went into an extended discussion of the human impact of what she branded “Trump abortion bans.” Again and again, through the debate she found ways to hit points her campaign would have prepped her to be ready for. It’s like what are all the possible policy or attack points we might conceivably want to make? Kamala was practically emptying the cupboard. I’m going to hit every damn one! It was amazing. Trump actually managed to lose the exchange over the withdrawal from Afghanistan. How was that even possible? He managed to repeat the grotesque conspiracy theory about feral immigrants hunting down the cats and dogs of flag waving Americans and eating them for breakfast. [That was perhaps the moment when he was most pathetic. He claimed it was true because he saw it on TV. Moderator David Muir corrected Trump with the statements of officials.]
It’s not clear to me the degree to which Harris led Trump into relitigating Jan 6th, blaming Nancy Pelosi for planning the attack, hyping Vladimir Putin or diving head first into a dozen other story lines that people hate about him or whether he just went to all those damaging places on his own because he was angry and reverting to form. It’s an interesting question on debating merits. But it doesn’t matter: he went to all those places with the same angry spittle-flecked tone. By the second half of the debate, with Trump punch-drunk and staggering, Harris was beginning to shift every question to her basic themes: national unity, turning the page on the Trump era, Trump’s lies.
As you can see I think Kamala Harris did quite well and Trump did about as bad a job as he could have. It’s fun to reminisce. But I won’t belabor the point. As I said above, we’re still going to have a close election. But what Harris had to do in this debate was show she could handle Donald Trump, even dominate him if possible and do so in a way that was steady and forceful. She did that. And that puts her on a path toward sealing the deal with that small fraction of voters who will determine the outcome of the election. Not a done deal but she took the critical first step. She also managed a bonus, which wasn’t absolutely necessary, which was to set Trump off, rambling, incoherent and angry. He was practically yelling by the end of the debate. She baited him into acting out the role of her foil. As I’ve often said in other contexts, more important than any of the details is likely the imagery of dominance.
She came, she saw, she conquered. But tomorrow is another day. And there’s still two hard fought months to go.
It was really a telling moment when Trump entered the “Spin Room” after the debate and started looking around for someone who pay attention to him.
Excerpts from Talking Points Memo’s live coverage of the debate:
[…] Abortion
Among Harris’ best answers was the set of responses she gave on abortion, pinning Trump down on the topic in a way he rarely is.
“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree, the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” Harris said in one of her responses.
Trump also continued to spread some by-now-familiar misinformation around abortion, claiming that all across the country babies are being aborted at nine months and are being “executed” after being born.
In a clear contrast from the last debate, moderator Lindsey Davis fact-checked the former president in the moment saying, “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” [Yay! Real factchecking! I wanted to stand up and cheer.]
‘I Didn’t Discuss It With JD’
As the questioning around abortion continued, Trump was asked if he would veto a national abortion ban if it came to his desk.
He avoided answering the question, saying it wouldn’t get the votes to come to his desk anyway.
But he was pressed on it by Davis, who pointed out that Trump’s vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), recently said that Trump would veto the legislation if it was to come to his desk.
“Well I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness,” Trump said, distancing himself from his own running mate. “I don’t mind if he has a certain view … but I really didn’t.” [Nice. Throw the V.P. candidate under the bus, Donald.]
Immigration
Almost every single question the moderators asked saw the former president, often incoherently, trying to tie his answer back to immigration. Relying on his now-familiar but fictional claims that immigrants are pouring across the border from “insane asylums” and “mental institutions,” Trump demonized immigrants over and over again while trying to attack the Biden-Harris record.
Trump also managed to lean aggressively into the right-wing conspiracy theory being pushed by Republicans who claim Haitian immigrants in Ohio are kidnapping and eating American’s pets. The moderators quickly fact checked that myth.
Trump tried (very very hard) to dodge questions on Jan. 6
When asked if he regrets anything about the Jan. 6 riot, Trump dodged the question, saying “nobody on the other side was killed. Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out of control police officer” and then quickly switched to talking about immigration.
When pressed on the question, Trump said he had “nothing to do with that” — other than the speech he gave.
He also blamed former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the mayor of Washington D.C. for the deadly and violent events that took place that day — a false narrative he’s been pushing since the debate with Biden when he claimed Pelosi was actually the one behind the attack.
“I wasn’t responsible for security. Nancy Pelose was responsible. She didn’t do her job,” Trump said of his duties as the former commander-in-chief.
[…] Trump Enters Spin Room To Declare Victory For Himself
Let’s put it this way: You don’t see politicians who thought they won the debate taking on the spin room.
[…] Harris Campaign Immediately Calls For A Second Debate
“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump,” said Harris-Walz Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon in a statement released as the debate ended.
“That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”
[…] Trump Concedes He Does Not Have A Plan—But He Does Have ‘Concepts of a Plan’—To Replace Obamacare
Trump, asked for his plan to replace Obamacare, says instead that he has “concepts of a plan.”
“I would only change it if we come up with something that’s better and less expensive. And there are concepts and options,” he said.
At Least One Right-Wing Radio Host Is Unhappy With The Eating Pets Section
“YOU STUPID MF’ers JUST GOT TRUMP TO REPEAT YOUR LIE ABOUT THE PETS. CONGRATS ON SETTING THE NEWS STORIES TOMORROW BY LYING SO TRUMP PICKS IT UP AND SAYS STUPID SHIT,” Erick Erickson tweeted. Eek!
Harris: Putin Will ‘Eat You For Lunch’
Harris said that without her and Biden’s support, Putin would be sitting in a conquered Kiev, eying Poland next. She asked if Trump wanted to tell the 800,000 Polish Americans in Pennsylvania how quickly he’d give up and let Putin “eat you for lunch.”
Then he basically blamed her for the Russian invasion.
Harris Reminds Viewers About Trump’s Deal With The Taliban
She’s currently hammering that his meeting with Taliban leaders [cut the Afghan government out of negotiations, and that Trump offered to meet with the Taliban at Camp David.]
Trump Refuses To Say He Wants Ukraine To Win
He’d only say that the war should “end,” and again, weirdly, that he’ll negotiate an end even before he becomes president.
Harris Gives Trump The Crazy Uncle Treatment
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. And he seems to be having a very difficult time processing that,” she said.
Trump Again Refuses To Acknowledge His 2020 Election Loss
Trump says he actually does not acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election, even though last week he said that he “lost by a whisker.” Trump clarified that he said the “whisker” comment sarcastically. [Ha. David Muir said he watched that footage and that if Trump intended sarcasm, the sarcasm was not evident.]
Trump then gets in another non-citizen reference, saying “our elections are bad, and a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in,” and “they’re trying to get them to vote.”
Trump Dodges Jan 6 Questions
Trump dodges multiple questions about whether or not he regrets anything about what he did on January 6 2021. Instead of answering, he said, “nobody on the other side was killed.”
When asked once more if there is anything he regrets, Trump once again dodged the question, and said he did nothing other than “show up for a speech.”
“It wasn’t done by me, it was done by others,” he said.
Moments later, he also wouldn’t say whether he’d accept the results of the election, which he has refused to do throughout this entire campaign cycle.
[…] Harris Takes Trump’s ‘Weaponizing The DOJ’ Complaint And Segues Into His Plan For Retribution
It was good, that’s my analysis.
Harris Brings Up Trump’s Bevy Of Crimes
Trump is taking every single piece of bait she dangles and burning the first half of his answers by responding angrily.
Harris Turned Immigration Portion Into Relitigation Of Trump Killing Border Bill
This is supposed to be Trump’s strongest topic!
[…]Moderator Muir Asks Whether People Can Afford To Pay More Under Trump’s Tariff Plan
Good question that focuses on the ramifications of Trump’s plan — Trump, of course, is saying that sky-high tariffs won’t make people pay more.
Harris: ‘Donald Trump Has No Plan For You’
[Harris explained her economic vision.]
“That’s just a soundbite; they gave her that to say,” Trump said dismissively. […]
Vice President Kamala Harris began the debate Tuesday night with a power move—walking right up to a befuddled Donald Trump and shaking his hand. It signaled who was the boss, and she took command of the debate from the start. For 90 minutes, Trump was forced to respond to Harris’ attacks while she ignored his.
In question after question, Harris took hard, focused, and effective swipes at an increasingly agitated Trump. Increasingly rattled, Trump’s voice sped up, louder and louder until he was yelling into his microphone, sounding hysterical, repeating lies like “after birth abortions”—provoking a rare fact-check from the moderators. In fact, more than one.
“I’m not in favor of an abortion ban,” Trump barked, which will set off the right wing after he flopped all over the place on whether he’d vote for the Florida ballot initiative legalizing abortion in the state. (Trump ultimately said he will vote against abortion rights in his state.) […]
[David Plouffe posted: “Forty point difference with undecided voters on their abortion answers. Widest gap I’ve ever seen in debate dials.”]
Harris hit Trump for sabotaging the bipartisan immigration deal in Congress, and then mocked him for his boring rallies, inviting viewers to actually attend a Trump rally to see for themselves for his nonsense. Trump took the bait, saying crazy things like “Harris pays people for her rallies”—something easily disproved by the eye test.
Moderators couldn’t help but offer a forceful and repeated fact check when he insisted the racist lie that “Haitians are eating dogs and cats”—pushed by his own running mate—is real. Harris burst out laughing. It was next-level unhinged, and will almost certainly feature prominently in post-debate clips. […]
Trump also attacked the FBI; claimed he was shot because of Democrats, even though his assailant was a registered Republican; insisted Democrats are a threat to democracy; cried that he wasn’t given enough credit for his disastrous COVID response; sputtered Harris is “against the defund the police”; claimed solar farms are a problem because they take desert soil; demanded all sorts of people be prosecuted; claimed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was supposed to bring in the National Guard during his Jan. 6 insurrection; […] yelled “our country has gone to hell” and that he could’ve “let [the country] rot”; and flubbed the name of the top Taliban leader—and flubbed it confidently wrong. [“Abdul” … FWIW the leader of the Taliban is Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, who has been in charge since 2016. Not a guy named Abdul. https://x.com/nanditab1/status/1833694406282551516 ]
He claimed in nearly every answer that the Biden-Harris administration was the worst in the history of the world. His sophomoric hyperbole doesn’t play in his own rallies anymore, and it certainly wasn’t playing Tuesday night. It was repetitive, rote, tedious, and boring.
[…] Trump never made eye contact with Harris. Meanwhile, Harris would look right at Trump when ripping him apart. That, in itself, was as much a power move as her initial handshake.
The moderators, David Muir from “World News Tonight” and ABC News anchor Linsey Davis, were perfect. No nonsense. They followed up when Trump wouldn’t answer a question. They fact-checked Trump’s nonsense multiple times, on everything from abortion to the 2020 election. [The moderators could not, and did not try to, factcheck every lie Trump told.]
[…] Will it move numbers? Who knows? Voters are weird. But if conservatives truly do hate weakness, they will be profoundly shook at how weak, small, and old Trump looked Tuesday. As of now, they’re trying to blame the moderators. [Yeah, I could see that coming. For the most part, the moderators just said, “Thank you Mr. Trump” when his time to speak was expired. They did make an effort to get Trump to answer questions, but if he just went off on another tangent the moderators stopped pressing and move on.]
[Charlie Kirk posted: “this is not a debate, this is a public show trial where the judge, jury and executioner is ABC News.”]
[…]
The Charlie Kirk post, as well as floods of other rightwing posts show that they know Trump lost the debate. Bigly.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Excerpts from the CSPAN debate stream.
1:05:41 Trump: We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.
(Referring to asylum seekers.)
–
1:18:08 Moderator: There is no state in this country in which it is legal to kill a baby after it is born. Madam Vice President, can I get your response to President Trump?
–
1:22:17 Mod: JD Vance has said that you WOULD veto [a federal abortion ban] if it came to your desk. Trump: Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD.
–
1:29:10 Trump: In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs! Harris: Oh come on! *laughing* Mod: The Springfield city manager says there is no evidence of that. Trump: *Argues with the mod, calls the manager a liar, cuz he heard claims on TV.*
–
1:34:37 Mod: President Trump, as you know the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country. Trump: They didn’t include the worst cities! It was a fraud! Harris: I think this is so rich, coming from someone who has been prosecuted for national security crimes, economic crimes, election interference, has been found liable for sexual assault, and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing. […] The former president called for defunding federal law enforcement (45,000 agents)—get this&mdashon the day after he was arraigned on 34 felony counts. Trump: I’m winning most of [those cases], and I’ll win the rest on appeal. […] Fake cases!
–
1:42:21 Trump: she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that’re in prison. […] She wants to confiscate your guns.
–
1:50:31 Mod: You have said you lost by a whisker, that you “didn’t quite make it”, that you came up a little bit short. Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020? Trump: No. I don’t acknowledge that at all. I said that sarcastically. Mod: I did watch these pieces of video. I didn’t detect the sarcasm. Trump: *rants about judges* Harris: Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. […] Clearly, he’s having a very difficult time processing that.
–
2:17:23 Harris: Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine—he calls himself a deal-maker. Even his national security advisor said it was a weak, terrible deal. […] He bypassed the Afghan government. He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban. The negotiation involved getting 5000 Taliban terrorists released. AND the president at the time invited the Taliban to Camp David! […] This *chokes on words* former president invited them to Camp David
–
2:26:53 Mod: Tonight, nine years after you started running, do you have a plan [to replace Obamacare], and can you tell us what it is? Trump: *rambles* Mod: Just a yes or no. You still do not have a plan? Trump: I have comcepts of a plan. Harris: *bemused smiling*
Trump: When this weak, pathetic man that you saw at a debate just a few months ago—that if he weren’t at that debate he’d be running instead of her, she got no votes, he got 14 million votes—what you did you talk about a threat to democracy— he got 14 million votes and they threw him out of office and you know what, I’ll give you a little secret: He hates her. He can’t stand her.
Trump has had a hard time accepting that he is no longer running against Biden and that Harris is the official Democratic nominee. […]
Video at the link.
Posted by a reader of the article:
Trump came off super rude and ABC should be embarrassed how they gave Trump so much time to interrupt and no time for Harris to respond back.
Trump ended up with 9 more minutes. That’s a lot of time in a debate. Still, Trump did use that time to shoot himself in the foot several times, so I guess it all worked out.
Before the debate people polled thought Trump had a 50% chance of winning. But those same viewers, even the ones supporting Trump, admit Kamala crushed him.
Moreover people like what they saw and are voting with their wallets. A whopping $9 million poured in during the debate to Act Blue during the 10 PM hour and another $12.5 million came in during the 11 PM hour. [graph at the link]
[…] Hahahahah, Harris notes that the WHARTON school — you know, where Trump failed upward into for his higher education — says her economic plans are better.
Trump: I WENT TO THE WHARTON SCHOOL! ALL MY PROFESSORS FROM WHEN I WENT THERE IN 1923 SAY I HAVE THE BEST PLANS.[…] Trump says the only people who will have higher costs from his tariffs are GIIINA.
Person at my watch party notes that the moderators basically just taught Trump what a tariff is and he still doesn’t get it.
[…] Harris notes from the beginning that she’s the only person up there who’s ever prosecuted transnational criminals, and oh yeah, Trump killed the bipartisan border bill, everybody remember that?
Harris tells people to go to Trump’s rallies and hear about Hannibal Lecter, windmills cause cancer, and oh yeah, they always leave early because they’re bored. But he never talks about YOU.
So THAT was fun.
Moderator asks Trump why he killed the bill.
And the bait WORKED. Trump is [complaining] about his crowd sizes, and also somehow talking about World War III and OH MY GOD HE SAID “THEY’RE EATING THE DOGS, THEY’RE EATING THE CATS, THEY’RE EATING THE PETS OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE.”
And he’s accusing Harris of bussing people into her rallies.
And she is looking at him like BLESS YOUR HEART.
[…] Trump, how will you deport all the millions of people you want to deport? [The moderators asked.]
TRUMP: NO CRIME IN VENEZUELA ANYMORE! KAMALA HAS ALL THE VENEZUELA CRIMINALS! OTHER NAZI WORDS ABOUT IMMIGRANTS!
He is so, so mad.
Moderator: Actually, violent crime is down.
TRUMP: WAAAAAAAH!
HARRIS: It’s funny because he’s a criminal who’s been held liable for sexual assault and his next big court appearance is for his sentencing.
So …
Trump: ALL MY CRIMES WERE RIGGED AND STOLLEN BY THE DEMOCRATS!
He says he’s winning all the cases, and will continue to win them.
WHERE’S HUNTER? [Yes, Trump really did bring up Hunter Biden.]
[…] TRUMP: Trump says such fine journalists as Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity have “debunked” Charlottesville. (They have not.)
[…] Now he’s for some reason babbling about pipelines. Now back to Viktor Orban’s penis. Now he’s mad Kamala Harris did a coup. Now he says Joe Biden hates Kamala Harris. Now he says he doesn’t understand why she’s running.
And somehow they aren’t letting Harris respond to that, we’re moving on to Israel/Gaza.
[…] Trump says Harris “hates Israel […] He says Harris hates Arabs too. Just hates ‘em all. Iran had no money when he was president, now they have all the money. Look at the Houthis!
[…] Trump babbling his confusion about how NATO funding works, and also how he’s a traitor who doesn’t want to commit to defending NATO. He says Zelenskyy respects him. (Hey remember that time Trump tried to extort Zelenskyy into helping him steal the 2020 election, and Zelenskyy wouldn’t do it, because he respected Trump so much, and then Trump was impeached for the first time?)
Trump still babbling about Putin. Says he thought Putin massing troops on the Ukrainian border was “negotiating.” Also WHERE’S JOE BIDEN? IS HE ALIVE?
Moderator tries to get Trump to answer whether he thinks Ukraine should win. Trump refuses to answer that (because he’s a Putin-fellating traitor).
[…] Trump says he dealt with the Taliban real well because he said HEY ABDUL, don’t kill the Americans! Don’t do it! And babble babble babble and he is so fucking lost.
[…] Climate change, what will you do about it?
HARRIS: Dipshit over here says it’s a hoax. During the Biden administration we’ve invested a trillion bucks in clean energy. We’re opening up factories around the world. We have to support American industry and keep manufacturing jobs to fight this. Etc.
TRUMP: The jobs are going to GIIIIIIINA! And we’ll do TARIFFS!
[…] Now he’s babbling about Hunter Biden and the mayor of Moscow’s wife.
TheOnion – Trump avoids answering hard questions by pretending he shot in ear again
You should spend less time asking about Project 2025 and more time finding the guy who definitely just shot me. Wait, there he goes! I’ll go after him!
Republican representative Joe Wilson, a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, collapsed at an event on Tuesday and was rushed to hospital, his office said.
The official X profile for Wilson, 77, wrote a message that said the congressman “was taken ill and is being evaluated at a local hospital in Washington, DC.”
Wilson’s son Alan Wilson, the attorney general of South Carolina, wrote on his X profile that “doctors have confirmed to us that he has experienced stroke-like symptoms.”
“I was able to speak with him moments ago and I am incredibly thankful that he is stable and being monitored by medical professionals,” he added.
Wilson fell ill as he was sitting in the front row of a celebration of Ukraine’s Independence Day at Ukraine House in Washington’s diplomatic enclave. The Ukrainian ambassador had just started speaking when she stopped and asked for a doctor.
Wilson has represented a conservative district in South Carolina since 2001. He became well-known in the U.S. in 2009 for shouting “you lie!” at President Barack Obama during a joint session of Congress.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay in Washington and Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Two telescopes have spotted the closest pair of supermassive black holes to date. The duo, only about 300 light-years apart, were observed in different wavelengths of light using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope.
While black holes are invisible against the dark void of space, these two blaze brightly as the gas and dust they feed on is accelerated and heated to high temperatures. Both celestial objects, which circle around one another, are known as active galactic nuclei…
The black hole duo is the closest pair found through visible and X-ray light. While other black hole pairs have been observed before, they are usually much farther apart. Astronomers discovered these black holes dancing around one another at the center of a pair of colliding galaxies called MCG-03-34-64, which is 800 million light-years away…
Vice President Harris’s campaign called for another presidential debate against former President Trump, just moments after Tuesday’s event in Philadelphia ended.
Not surprisingly the Harris campaign wants another debate. Trump said he would think about it, which likely means no but he doesn’t want to say that.
Eventually, Graham [Sen. Lindsey Graham] offered a fist bump, leaned in, and with an exasperated grin gave me his candid assessment of the night: Trump’s performance was a “disaster,” Trump was unprepared, and his debate team should be fired.
Well, that’s also a predictable development, blame the debate team. We’ll add that one to the “blame ABC moderators” as just another excuse that does not the hide the fact that Trump is ignorant, a liar, and an ineffectual liar to boot.
Kamala Harris destroyed Trump’s heretofore uncanny ability to create a new reality with his lies and his overly confident bluster.
More commentary:
[…] Even Fox News hosts conceded that the Republican nominee struggled. “Look, make no mistake about it, Trump had a bad night,” Brit Hume said, adding that Harris “came out in pretty good shape.”
As the dust settled, much of the right, instead of celebrating, lashed out at the debate’s ABC News moderators for occasionally having told viewers the truth, or they spread conspiracy theories about the vice president’s earrings. The morning after the event, Trump told Fox News he believes Harris might’ve secretly received the questions in advance.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but these responses only help reinforce what was plainly true: Trump flopped under pressure.
[…] Perhaps the most memorable exchange came roughly a third of the way into the debate, when Harris broke new rhetorical ground:
I’m going to actually do something really unusual and I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your, your desires.”
She was obviously baiting him. Trump took the bait anyway and in the process proved the Democrat’s point.
He began his response by claiming that the Harris campaign is paying people to attend her rallies — a bizarre and false claim — before transitioning to utterly bonkers assertions about immigrants eating pets. [video at the link]
Harris clearly assumed that a reference to bored and exhausted people leaving Trump’s rallies would trigger him and cause him to lose his composure. She assumed correctly.
Indeed, in the hour that followed, he never recovered.
I’ve seen every televised debate in American history, and I can honestly say that there’s never been a more lopsided affair. Trump was unprepared; he lied uncontrollably; he fell into every trap; he came across as rattled and angry; and by all appearances, the GOP candidate didn’t have any kind of strategy whatsoever.
Trump failed in every way a candidate can fail, as Harris succeeded in every way a candidate can succeed.
As the event got underway, the vice president quickly crossed the stage to shake her opponent’s hand — a power move, to be sure — and introduce herself. Trump told her, “Have fun.”
A grateful nation vicariously reacted to Donald Trump through the facial expression of Kamala Harris.
That’s a really good collection of reaction images. Scroll down at the link to view them. The panoply is part of a longer news report.
Also from that report:
The most annoying thing the moderators did was to repeatedly let Trump grab control of the microphone and talk out of turn. That led to considerable disparities in total time spoken and number of times speaking:
KAMALA HARRIS
Spoke for: 37.1 minutes
Amount of times she spoke: 23
DONALD TRUMP
Spoke for: 41.9 minutes
Amount of times he spoke: 39
Details regarding the “blame ABC” for Trump’s failure:
[…] Trump allies quickly began to assert that the moderators had teamed up with Harris against the Republican nominee.
“These moderators are a disgraceful failure and this is one of the most biased, unfair debates I have ever seen. Shame on you ABC,” former Fox News anchor and conservative pundit Megyn Kelly wrote on X.
Kari Lake, the GOP’s Senate candidate in Arizona, wrote, “Moderators always make sure to make bogus ‘corrections’ for Trump after he makes a point. The fake news is the enemy of the people.”
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt said, “It is laughable how ABC choreographed this to help VP Harris but it isn’t working because it is so obvious.”
Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity also complained about the debate moderators purportedly being biased against Trump.
Asked on “Fox & Friends” if he would participate in another debate, Trump said he would be “less inclined,” asserting that he had “a great night” and “won the debate” despite a “terrible network.”
[…] Demonstrating the paucity of positive reviews, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform a graphic from the Republican National Committee declaring him “reigning presidential debate champion” very early on Wednesday morning.
Pathetic.
Trump also claimed that polls show he won the debate “92 to 7” and that he has been told he is a good debater. “I think it was one of my better debates.”
Courthouse News Service: Arkansas ‘wet’ signature requirement paused by federal court Officials in Arkansas — the state with the lowest voter registration rate in the nation — said the rule is necessary for consistency among county clerks.
Erik De La Garza / September 10, 2024
(CN) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked Arkansas from requiring handwritten signatures on voter registration forms, a legal victory for voting rights advocates who claim the new “wet” signature rule is unconstitutional and does nothing to maintain election integrity.
“What the court struggles to understand is how a handwritten “x” (i.e., a mark) would better protect against fraud than a signature made with a stylus on a tablet,” U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks wrote in his 52-page opinion issued Monday after a bench ruling on Aug. 29.
The ruling that preliminarily blocks enforcement of the emergency rule, which was adopted by the Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners in May and became permanent in August, prohibits any county clerk from rejecting or refusing to accept any new voter registration application based on it being signed with a digital or electronic signature.
“The court rightly recognized that requiring a handwritten signature is not material to determining a voter’s qualifications and would cause irreparable harm to voters,” said Uzoma Nkwonta, a partner at Elias Law Group which represented Get Loud Arkansas, Vote.org and two Arkansas voters whose voter registration forms were rejected for having digital signatures.
[…]
Get Loud Arkansas said it has relaunched its online voter registration tool, which allows new voters to fill out and sign their voter registration application online and authorizes the organization to print and submit the form to the applicant’s county clerk. An applicant is not registered to vote until the application has been accepted by the county clerk.
The deadline to register to vote in the upcoming presidential election is Oct. 7.
Trump’s Abortion Answer Was So Stupid We Had To Make A Flowchart About It
The lies! The lies!
Donald Trump can’t stop lying about abortion. Literally everything that comes out of his mouth about abortion is a lie, not just because he’s a liar (which he is), but also because he has no idea what he’s even talking about when it comes to abortion. (Also, obviously: everything else.) It’s very clear that he just wants to skip to the part where everyone agrees with him and no one ever has to bring it up again.
But that’s not life!
Thus, to his obvious chagrin, he was asked to share his thoughts on abortion in last night’s debate.
Here’s the whole transcript:
MODERATOR LINSEY DAVIS: I want to turn to the issue of abortion. President Trump, you’ve often touted that you were able to kill Roe v. Wade. Last year, you said that you were proud to be the most pro-life president in American history. Then last month you said that your administration would be great for women and their reproductive rights. In your home state of Florida, you surprised many with regard to your six-week abortion ban because you initially had said that it was too short and you said, “I’m going to be voting that we need more than six weeks.” But then the very next day, you reversed course and said you would vote to support the six-week ban. Vice President Harris says that women shouldn’t trust you on the issue of abortion because you’ve changed your position so many times. Therefore, why should they trust you?
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, the reason I’m doing that vote is because the plan is, as you know, the vote is, they have abortion in the ninth month. They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, who’s doing an excellent job, but the governor before. He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.
And that’s why I did that, because that predominates. Because they’re radical. The Democrats are radical in that. And her vice presidential pick, which I think was a horrible pick, by the way, for our country, because he is really out of it. But her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay. And that’s not okay with me. Hence the vote. But what I did is something for 52 years they’ve been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states.
And through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that. Now, I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. I believe strongly in it. Ronald Reagan did also. Eighty-five percent of Republicans do. Exceptions. Very important. But we were able to get it. And now states are voting on it. And for the first time you’re going to see — look, this is an issue that’s torn our country apart for 52 years. Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote. And that’s what happened, happened. Now, Ohio, the vote was somewhat liberal. Kansas the vote was somewhat liberal. Much more liberal than people would have thought. But each individual state is voting. It’s the vote of the people now. It’s not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it. It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it. And I give tremendous credit to those six justices.
LINSEY DAVIS: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.
I thought about fisking up his answer and answering it point by point … but honestly the whole thing was such a mess that it was just easier to make a flowchart of lies.
And that is just what I did!
Hopefully this will come in handy for those who just do not feel like having to get into the weeds with a stranger or an estranged relative about what he was lying about, specifically. [Flowchart is available at the link]
As you can see, pretty much every sentence out of his mouth was a boldfaced lie, which is not something a person has to do when they are actually right about things — or even if they simply believe they are right about things. Trump has to exaggerate and make claims about “post-birth abortions” because he doesn’t actually know what’s supposed to be so bad about the actual abortions that actual people have.
That being said, not only does he need to be fact checked (and thank goodness he was), he needs to be forced to provide proof beyond greatly misunderstanding the former Governor of Virginia’s (not West Virginia) explanation of how palliative/hospice care works for infants. In fact, Trump needs to be asked, specifically, how he thinks palliative/hospice care works, just to see if he has a different way of describing it than Ralph Northam — who was an actual pediatric neurologist, who treated babies who were dying and sometimes saved their lives — had. Because I’ll bet you that, on the off-chance he even understands what those words mean, he will not.
Price growth is within range of the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, but the sting of rapid increases over the past four years lingers for many consumers.
Inflation’s steady march lower continued Wednesday, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that consumer price growth slowed to 2.5% in August, the lowest measure since 2021.
Estimates were for an annual increase of 2.6%, down from 2.9% in July. Food price growth slowed to 2.1%, its lowest level since at least May 2021; while gasoline prices declined more than 10% year on year. According to AAA, the average cost of a gallon of gasoline is now $3.25, compared with $3.83 a year ago.
Though price growth is now within range of the Federal Reserve’s official 2% target, the sting of rapid price increases over the past four years lingers for many consumers. And the latest report showed “core” inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, unexpectedly climbed 0.3% month on month thanks to rising housing costs. [graph at the ink]
[…] The latest inflation report is likely to cement a 0.25% cut in the Federal Reserve’s key interest rate, currently at about 5.3%, later this month.
[…] In a note last week, Torsten Slok, partner and chief economist at Apollo Global Management financial group, cited wage growth, consumer spending and GDP as all indicative of a “soft landing” for the economy in which unemployment and inflation are subdued.
“The bottom line is that the US economy is not in a recession, and there are no signs of a recession on the horizon,” Slok wrote. […]
Former president Donald Trump said on Wednesday that ABC’s broadcast license should be revoked over his debate with Kamala Harris that the network hosted Tuesday, and reiterated his complaints that the moderators were unfair to him….
Trump also called the debate “rigged” — echoing his false claims of a “rigged” 2020 election — and implied, without evidence, that Harris may have known beforehand what would be asked. “She seems awfully familiar with the questions,” he said.
For days, JD Vance has been pushing disgusting, unsupported lies about Haitian immigrants in a small Ohio city eating pets. The city manager of Springfield, Ohio, has denied this story. The Springfield police have made it clear there have been no such reports. Legal immigrants brought new life to a dying city where the population and local employers have been “ecstatic” about the influx of new, reliable workers.
But on Tuesday night, Vance’s racist claims that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of people in the area became Republican doctrine after an enraged Donald Trump snarled out the claim in the middle of a debate with presidential Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said. “The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating– they’re eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Congratulations, JD. Your racist, baseless, and dangerous lie is now Republican dogma.
Following the debate, Vance came out to be interviewed. Not only did he have the unenviable task of trying to act as if Trump had not just been utterly eviscerated by Harris, he also had to take up the mantle of being Trump’s surrogate minutes after Trump had made it clear that Vance did not speak for him.
Asked about Vance’s claim that Trump would veto a national ban on abortion, the Republican nominee completely undercut his running mate. “Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness,” Trump said. “And I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I don’t think he was speaking for me.”
Then Vance plopped into a chair next to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins following the debate to … speak for Trump.
Naturally, the pet-eating-immigrants claim was one of the first things Vance was asked to address.
Collins: He brought up this misleading, false claim that you yourself have talked about in recent days about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, abducting people’s pets and eating them, which officials there have said is not true. You yourself acknowledged that it may be false. On Twitter you told people to keep spreading it. But Trump just amplified it to tens of millions of people who were watching. Why push something that’s not true?
Vance: Well first of all, city officials have not said it’s not true. They’ve said they don’t have all the evidence–
Collins: They’ve said they have no evidence.
Vance: We’ve heard from a number of constituents on the ground, Kaitlan, who both first-hand and second-hand reports saying this stuff is happening. So they very clearly, meaning the people on the ground dealing with this, think that it is happening. And I think that it’s important for journalists to actually get on the ground and uncover this stuff for themselves. When you have a lot of people saying “My pets are being abducted” or “Geese at the city pond are being abducted and slaughtered right in front of us,” this is crazy stuff. And again, whether those exact rumors turn out to be mostly true, somewhat true, whatever the case may be, Kaitlan, this town has been ravaged by 20,000 migrants coming in.
The population of Springfield, Ohio, was 80,000 in 1960 but had shrunk to just 58,000 before Haitian migrants began coming into the area in 2020, attracted by a combination of affordable housing and available jobs. City officials had worked for years to attract new businesses to the area, and they had succeeded, but they were unable to find workers to fill those jobs until legal Haitian immigrants began settling in the area four years ago.
As the Daily Mail put it, “The immigrants had social security numbers and job permits, paid taxes, and lived in houses that were empty and boarded up as the town shrank.”
That’s apparently what Vance means by “devastated.” Or maybe he just means that thousands of Black people moved into his state.
There are over a million Haitian Americans according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Roughly 544,000 live in Florida alone. But suddenly, when they come into Vance’s backyard, Haitians are inhuman, pet-eating monsters.
The embrace of this overtly, deliberately racist, and utterly disgusting claim is the ultimate outcome of where Republicans have been going for years. Decades, even. It’s a mishmash of Trump’s xenophobic racism against Mexicans, the white supremacy at the heart of the Republican Party, and the vilest Nazi-inspired blood libel.
Now they own it. And have to defend it. No dogs may actually have been harmed in Springfield, but Republicans have definitely thrown away their dog whistles. And taken off their sheets [“sheets” is a reference to the Ku Kux Klan].
Debate Spent Two Minutes On Climate, And One Candidate Actually Talked About Climate
Can you guess which one? Can you?!
[…] When Joe Biden won the nomination and then the presidency, he incorporated a lot of Jay Inslee’s plan into his own policies, particularly his signature Big Fucking Climate bill, aka the Inflation Reduction Act.
But in 2024, the chief discussion of climate and clean energy has focused on Donald Trump’s pledge to undo all the progress that Biden made. Climate made only the briefest appearance in the June debate between Biden and Trump, when Biden tried to talk about his policies and Trump changed the subject and also lied a lot.
In last night’s debate between Kamala Harris and an angry bag of mostly bile, climate was only raised at the very end of the debate, with each candidate getting only a minute to answer because time was running out, and how’s that for a metaphor.
But at least there was a climate question, and Harris answered it aptly, as you’d expect. Then the angry bag of mostly bile ranted for his minute about anything but climate. Not too surprising, since Harris had activated his “tirade” setting early on and he’d come unglued for most of the final 84 minutes of the 90-minute debate. Here’s the clip! [video at the link]
Harris noted that Trump has dismissed climate change as a hoax, then said that people who have been affected by extreme weather and wildfires know how real it is, especially those who have lost their homes, or been “denied home insurance or is being jacked up” for their premiums.
She pretty deftly noted that the Biden-Harris administration has maintained US energy independence while also making possible the first serious shift away from those fossil fuels:
“I am proud that as vice president over the last four years, we have invested a trillion dollars in a clean energy economy while we have also increased domestic gas production to historic levels. We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president. We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world.”
Harris contrasted that record to Trump’s big talk about saving manufacturing jobs, which declined under Trump, and noted that she received the endorsement of the United Auto Workers and its president, Shawn Fain, who understand that
“part of building a clean energy economy includes investing in American-made products, American automobiles. It includes growing what we can do around American manufacturing and opening up auto plants, not closing them like what happened under Donald Trump.”
Trump, for his part, didn’t even bother with his usual throwaway line about wanting clear air and water (which ain’t climate) and instead raved about how nobody has a factory job any more, which is bullshit of course. Then he lied some more, claiming that manufacturing jobs are leaving, they’re leaving home, bye bye, meeting some Chinese man on the motorway in Mexico. No, Biden and Harris are not sponsoring Chinese EV plants in Mexico […]
You could possibly give Trump some credit for being on topic when he lied that his tariffs will save jobs (they never do). He accused Harris of wanting to “kill the United Auto Workers and any auto worker, whether it’s in Detroit or South Carolina or any other place” — generously, that may have meant jobs, but his mind is a terribly literal place — and then shifted to an incoherent rant about Joe Biden being paid off by China and Ukraine and “the mayor of Moscow’s wife,” and that is Trump’s climate plan. [Madness on display.]
[…] Trump, weirdly, accused Harris of planning to ban fracking “the day after the election,” lying nonsensically that instead of transitioning rapidly to renewables and making them economically viable, Harris would simply turn off the lights out of pure spite:
“They’ll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant? By the way, I’m a big fan of solar. But they take 400, 500 acres of desert soil.”
At the Boise Democrats’ watch party that “I’m a big fan of solar” got a huge laugh.
Finally, on another major Biden-Harris industrial policy achievement, the CHIPS and Science Act, which has boosted the US microchip industry and created a boom in new factory construction to bring computer chip manufacturing back to the US, Trump flat out lied again, winning a fact check from those radical Marxists at the Wall Street Journal. Trump lied that due to Biden-Harris policies, “we hardly make chips any more,” when in reality, the CHIPS Act provides $52 billion in federal subsidies to incentivize chip manufacturing, which the industry has leveraged into even more additional private investment. Says the Journal:
The U.S. has in recent decades lost much ground in chip production to Asia, but the new legislation, called the Chips Act, has sparked several multi-billion-dollar construction projects around the country that, when complete, will markedly boost U.S. production of computer chips. The chip program is one of the largest industrial development programs the federal government has ever administered.
We’d say the highest-ever growth in new investments in domestic chip manufacturing is pretty good, but the factories won’t start producing chips until they’re actually built, and by then undocumented migrants may have eaten all the silicon and engineers […]
Russia appears to have launched its first major counterattack to drive Ukrainian forces out of Russia’s Kursk region more than a month after Ukraine began its surprise offensive, according to Russian and Ukrainian sources as well as independent military analysts.
Russian forces appeared already to have some success on Tuesday — retaking some territory and driving a wedge into Ukrainian lines in Kursk, analysts said.
Videos posted by pro-Russian military bloggers and geolocated by ABC News showed a large Russian armored column attacking toward the village of Snagost. Another video appears to show Ukrainian troops taken prisoner.
PHOTO: In a still from a video posted by a pro-Russian account, multiple vehicles are seen rushing toward the village of Snagost in Russia’s Kurst region, Sept. 10, 2024. ( ) …
Donald Trump winked and smiled at photographers during the 9/11 memorial ceremony at Ground Zero. Minutes before the first moment of silence marking American Airlines Flight 11 striking the World Trade Center’s North Tower, the former president grinned and repeatedly mouthed “thank you” to the crowd…
On social media users blasted Trump’s winking and smiling as “creepy” and “inappropriate,” echoing recent criticism lodged against the former president after he smiled and gave a thumbs up while posing with Gold Star families next to headstones in Arlington National Cemetery.
“He treats the 9/11 Memorial like he treats Arlington National Cemetery,” a user wrote on X…
When it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the official position of the United States is unambiguous. “The bottom line is this. We want Ukraine to win!!” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during his latest visit to Kyiv. The nation’s top American diplomat added, “Our support will not wane. Our unity will not break.”
Whether Donald Trump agrees is very much in doubt. The Associated Press reported:
Former President Donald Trump spoke heatedly in the presidential debate about wanting Russia’s war in Ukraine to be over — but twice refused to directly answer a question about whether he wanted U.S. ally Ukraine to win.
But it was the questions the GOP candidate refused to answer that stood out most.
ABC News’ David Muir asked, “I want to ask you a very simple question tonight. Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” Instead of offering a straight answer, Trump replied, “I want the war to stop.”
So the moderator followed up, asking Trump, “Just to clarify the question, do you believe it’s in the U.S. best interests for Ukraine to win this war? Yes or no?”
He dodged again. “I think it’s in the U.S. best interest to get this war finished and just get it done,” the former president said.
It wasn’t a trick question. It would’ve been incredibly easy for Trump to simply say that he stands with his own country’s allies — but he wouldn’t.
An exceedingly generous observer might suggest that the Republican was trying to maintain some degree of neutrality in the hopes that it might help advance future diplomatic negotiations, but that’s a difficult argument to take seriously: Not only has Trump shown humiliating weakness toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but he’s also recently mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
For her part, Harris took the debate opportunity to praise NATO, and he called for international support for Ukraine in response to Russian aggression.
“Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland,” the Democratic nominee said. “And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?”
During the presidential debate, Donald Trump was asked whether he had any regrets stemming from the Jan. 6 attack. It was a good question, which the Republican clearly struggled with.
“Ashli Babbitt was shot by an out-of-control police officer that should have never, ever shot her,” the Republican said, adding: “Nobody on the other side was killed.”
It was, by any fair measure, a ridiculous comment, in part because the former president was clearly lying, and in part because the answer helped reflect Trump’s ongoing anti-law-enforcement posture. But just as notable was the GOP nominee’s “other side” comment — suggesting he saw rioters as his allies, and police officers as opponents.
Soon after, Trump also told the debate audience that he had reached out to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington ahead of the riot. “I said I’d like to give you 10,000 National Guard or soldiers,” he claimed. “They rejected me. Nancy Pelosi rejected me.”
This continues to be ridiculously untrue, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with reality really ought to know.
But perhaps most important of all was his claim, in reference to Jan. 6, that he had “nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech.” [OMFG] [video at the link]
(Pay particular attention in this clip to the comments at the 38-second mark, when Trump briefly used the word “we” to describe the insurrectionists, before correcting himself.)
Look, I recently wrote a book about Republicans rewriting recent history, and I included an entire chapter about GOP messaging surrounding Jan. 6. But even I was caught off-guard by his shamelessness on this one.
Trump summoned radicalized supporters to the nation’s capital. He filled them with lies. He explicitly told his mob, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” He deployed his followers to Capitol Hill. He used social media to add fuel to the fire during the violence.
To hear the former president claim he had “nothing to do with that” is comparable to the iceberg claiming it had nothing to do with the sinking of the Titanic.
“I was at the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Kamala Harris said soon after. “I was the vice president-elect. I was also an acting senator. I was there. And on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation’s Capitol, to desecrate our nation’s Capitol. On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And some died. And understand, the former president has been indicted and impeached for exactly that reason.”
What’s more, in case this isn’t obvious, Trump has spent the last several months defending Jan. 6 criminals, raising money for them, labeling them “victims” and “hostages,” and promising to reward them with day-one pardons — even those who violently clashed with law enforcement.
A recent Associated Press report noted that the former president has positioned “the violent siege and its failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of his bid to return to the White House.” This coincided with a related Semafor report on the degree to which the Republican has put Jan. 6 rioters “at the heart of his campaign.”
That report was published in March. It’s worse now.
[…] Not only was Trump unable to give cohesive debate answers, but also he went even further into la la land by bringing up a debunked, racist hoax about migrants eating local pets. Was that Matt Gaetz’s role in that debate prep? To get Trump to talk about even crazier things?
The reality is there isn’t a person in this world who could’ve gotten Trump to do the work to meet the moment. At the bare minimum, it would’ve included ignoring Harris’ jabs at the size of his crowds or his COVID-19 record. It would’ve required him to keep his composure, engage in basic human behavior like looking at his opponent, and offer concise, coherent answers to questions. Harris did all of that—and made it look so easy that conservatives are falsely claiming her earrings were earpieces through which she could be fed answers.
Last night was a stunning success for Harris. But tarring Gabbard with the blame for Trump’s catastrophic performance is the cherry on top. [Video at the link]
After Donald Trump’s incoherent performance at the presidential debate, in which he shouted about people eating household pets, his fans fixated on Kamala Harris’ earrings.
KAMALA HARRIS: And I’m going to tell you that I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States. And world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you. And they say you’re a disgrace. And when you then talk in this way in a presidential debate and deny what over and over again are court cases you have lost, because you did in fact lose that election, it leads one to believe that perhaps we do not have in the candidate to my right the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact.
KAMALA HARRIS: It is well known that he admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on day one according to himself. It is well known that he said of Putin that he can do whatever the hell he wants and go into Ukraine. It is well known that he said when Russia went into Ukraine it was brilliant. It is well known he exchanged love letters with Kim Jong un. And it is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they’re so clear, they can manipulate you with flattery and favors. And that is why so many military leaders who you have worked with have told me you are a disgrace. That is why we understand that we have to have a president who is not consistently weak and wrong on national security including the importance of upholding and respecting in highest regard our military.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That’s because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost. We’re a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War 3, just to go into another subject. What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame. As far as rallies are concerned, as far — the reason they go is they like what I say. They want to bring our country back. They want to make America great again. It’s a very simple phrase. Make America great again. She’s destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn’t have a chance of success. Not only success. We’ll end up being Venezuela on steroids.
DAVID MUIR: I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community —
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ve seen people on television
DAVID MUIR: Let me just say here this …
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.
DAVID MUIR: I’m not taking this from television. I’m taking it from the city manager.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.
DAVID MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there’s no evidence of that.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’ll find out.
It’s important to see/hear the details here. Trump’s assholerly is revealed.
“While I don’t think the debate hosts were fair to @RealDonaldTrump @KamalaHarris exceeded most people’s expectations tonight,” Elon Musk posted on his social media platform X on Tuesday night.
In an article last Thursday, I looked at the rise of the colorful Trumpian epithet shitgibbon. The word first hit it big last June when Donald Trump was called a “tiny fingered, Cheeto-faced, ferret wearing shitgibbon” on Twitter and then made an even bigger splash last week when Pennsylvania state Sen. Daylin Leach called the president a “fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon.” But where did this exquisite creation come from, originally?
Some have assumed it must be Scottish, since the June insult came at the height of backlash against Trump’s visit to Scotland, where he was lambasted for his tonedeaf comments about the Brexit vote. But that tweet actually came from an Englishman, one who goes by MetalOllie on Twitter (and will only reveal that his first name is Darren due to online death threats)…
Donald Trump’s flailing debate performance encapsulated one of the Republican Party’s key vulnerabilities: Its message is dictated by the deranged fixations of conspiracy-minded propagandists.
Trump wasted a rare opportunity to speak to a broad swath of the nation on Tuesday night, instead repeatedly parroting talking points coherent only to viewers familiar with the deep lore of the Fox News Cinematic Universe and the right-wing online fever swamps.
He promoted a viral, racist lie about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating house pets in Ohio, falsely claimed Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris support “execution after birth,” baselessly accused the FBI of “defrauding” data showing that violent crime has fallen, and much more. […]
Trump’s echoing of the “STUPID SHIT” pushed by his sycophants represents a continuation of an unfortunate trend in his party.
Republican leaders spent decades telling their supporters that mainstream journalists could not be trusted and urging them to get their information from the parallel network of right-wing propagandists they propped up instead. Over time, that information bubble became ever-more-seamless, even as the weirdos it empowered pushed the party in bizarre directions that normal people find deeply off-putting.
[…] A fervent Fox fan, Trump spent hours a day as president watching and tweeting about the network’s coverage and relied on Fox’s star hosts as key outside advisers.
Since leaving office, he’s still been posting a steady stream of Fox clips to Truth Social. But he’s also waded deeper into the right-wing swamp, promoting an array of even fringier denizens of the MAGA movement, including QAnon adherents with violent fantasies.
[…] Some Trump allies are responding to his debate debacle by blaming the presence of Laura Loomer — an arch-conspiracy theorist and Trumpist zealot — on the former president’s plane as he arrived in Philadelphia. [Oh. So now we get to blame Laura Loomer too! How about we blame Trump for being a gullible doofus?]
Trump himself appears to be retreating ever-deeper into the bubble. He followed up his debate performance by returning to the familiar embrace of Fox News, giving interviews both to his loyal adviser, Fox host Sean Hannity, and to his loyal partisans on Fox & Friends. […]
re Lynna @411: Those are EXACTLY the people who are LEAST qualified to moderate anything. Mainly because they are extremists who have no clue what fairness looks like, and their small minds wouldn’t allow anything like facts to upset their slavish fealty to The Orange Shitgibbon. You can be sure that they would never fact-check any lie that spewed from his mouth.
I think Stephen Colbert gives the funniest debate summaries.
“LIVE Monologue: Harris Gets Under Trump’s Skin | Eating Cats And Dogs | Taylor Swift’s Endorsements”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ecGjnR3aNvA
In a study published in the Journal of Oral Microbiology, ADA Forsyth scientists found that FP 100 (Hygromycin A), a first-in-class, small molecule, narrow-spectrum antibiotic, successfully eradicates Fusobacterium nucleatum without harming the oral or gut microbiomes.
Fusobacterium is a key pathogen triggering the onset of periodontitis (gum disease), and its progression has been linked with many serious systemic diseases. The researchers’ recent discovery could help in the fight against severe gum disease and related systemic conditions…
In honor of Donald Trump here is a live Ladytron performance starting with ‘(You) Destroy Everything You Touch’
Ladytron – Live 2006 [Full Set] Performance
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FNV5nrWB4eE
In one evening, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris eviscerated Donald Trump at the debate, gained the endorsement of the planet’s most popular performer, and collected an enormous burst of fundraising from Democrats enthusiastic over her performance. If that wasn’t the best few hours in the history of American politics, it had to be close.
Twenty-four hours ago, even usually liberal pundits were warning that Harris was “in trouble,” that her momentum had “stalled,” and that Trump was going to “Gish gallop” (the strategy of throwing so much incoherent information the opponent can’t handle it) all over her in the debate.
What a difference a day makes.
In Tuesday night’s debate, Harris might as well have been holding a technical diagram showing the precise location of every one of Trump’s oh-so-sensitive buttons. And she pressed them all. Gleefully.
Or, as The New Yorker put it, “Kamala Harris, veteran prosecutor, proved beyond a reasonable doubt on Tuesday night that her opponent will always take the bait.”
CNN’s flash poll following the debate shows Harris positively romping over Trump with a 63% to 37% victory. That means that while a bitter core of Trump voters stuck by their man, even a sizable fraction of those that went into the evening proudly wearing MAGA hats came out knowing that Trump had been soundly defeated.
CNN’s polling results were not far off the 67% to 33% results that came from the admittedly terrible performance of President Joe Biden during the first presidential debate. It seems unlikely that The New York Times will be calling for Trump to withdraw from the race as they did with Biden, but they should.
How Harris was baiting Trump into one unforced error after another became obvious early on. No matter what the topic, Harris made sure to insert one shiny little nugget certain to ramp up Trump’s ire: Crowd sizes. People leaving his rallies because his speeches were boring. His felony convictions. And every single time, Trump jumped on the bait, losing his chance to respond to Harris’ policy statements, and becoming angrier and angrier as he realized that his golden opportunity was slipping away.
In the aftermath of disaster, Trump surrogates dutifully trudged out to make his scowling snit seem like a win, but even Fox News knows that Harris took him apart.
“It’s pretty clear to me that on Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris won what may be the only debate between herself and former President Trump,” wrote Fox stalwart Doug Schoen, before he turned to the excuse that Trump’s campaign has been pushing the most—blaming the moderators from ABC for fact-checking some of Trump’s most outrageous lies.
But the fact that Fox News felt compelled to tell viewers “don’t believe this election is over,” is more than enough to signal just how badly the night went for Trump.
Way out on the heartland of Trump, Newsmax matched post-debate statements from surrogate (and former Trump staffer who still somehow supports Trump) Reince Priebus by trying to convince their viewers that Trump’s horrible performance wouldn’t cost him votes. The debate “won’t move the needle” says Newsmax while Priebus assured Republicans that Trump’s supporters are locked in and being absolutely shellacked in a debate wasn’t going to change that.
Meanwhile, even if The New York Times editorial board was mum, the “paper of record” brought in their whole editorial page team to rate the event. At the end of the night, 13 writers out of 14 handed the debate easily to Harris.
Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor of libertarian magazine “Reason,” wrote that “many of Trump’s comments were intelligible only to those who are already heavily invested in the MAGA corners of the internet.” [True.]
Republican strategist Liam Donovan wrote that Harris “successfully baited Trump into self-indulgent, spittle-flecked tangents that squandered a prime opportunity to sow doubts about his opponent.”
Even conservative columnist Ross Douthat, always a reliable source of eye-rolling justification for any Trump claim, could only manage to come up with “it wasn’t a rout.”
Douthat is lying to himself. It was a rout.
However, he’s not lying as hard as “Modern Age” editor Daniel McCarthy, who was the only one of the 14 commentators to claim that Trump won. “He emphasized his willingness to fire officials who performed badly,” wrote McCarthy.
Trump didn’t mention that he was also the one who hired all those bad officials, but sure. He can still deliver his punchline from “The Apprentice,” and for McCarthy, that seems to be enough.
But on Wednesday morning, most Republicans aren’t up to McCarthy’s level of lying about what happened Tuesday night. They have to admit that this was simply a “disaster” for Trump and for their party. Such a disaster that even Sen. Lindsey Graham had to drop the act for at least a minute. [See comment 386]
[…] The way Trump was looking is the way they are all feeling. But don’t worry. They can always just make things up: [video at the link]
The United States and Britain pledged nearly $1.5 billion in additional aid to Ukraine on Wednesday during a visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats as Ukrainian officials renewed their pleas to use Western-provided missiles against targets deeper inside Russia.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced more than $700 million in humanitarian aid, while British Foreign Secretary David Lammy confirmed that his country would provide another $782 million in assistance and loan guarantees.
Francine’s northern eyewall is approaching the Louisiana coast and is expected to make landfall today as at least a Category 1 hurricane, bringing life-threatening storm surges and hurricane-force winds
Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday yanked a government funding bill off the House floor hours before an expected vote after a growing number of disgruntled Republicans vowed to tank the measure.
During a scorching, relentless wildfire season, Facebook has been flagging and removing dozens of posts containing links and screenshots from Watch Duty, a widely relied-upon wildfire alert app, as well as from federal and state agencies. … And it’s not happening just to people in Hutchinson’s rural and extremely fire-prone community 135 miles north of San Francisco but to volunteer responders, fire and sheriff departments, news stations and disaster nonprofit workers across California and in other states, according to screenshots.
Donald Trump’s vile lie about immigrants eating pets in Ohio may be the most headline-grabbing (and meme-generating) statement from Tuesday night’s presidential debate. But it wasn’t the most shocking.
Eight years after he campaigned on a promise to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, Trump was questioned about his plan to replace the legislation that now provides crucial health care to a record 50 million Americans—and Trump admitted that he still has no plan. He’s never had a plan. He has only the “concepts of a plan.”
What Trump means by “concepts” isn’t clear. What is clear is that Trump has been eager to put the lives and health of millions of Americans at risk to satisfy his long-simmering hatred for Barack Obama, who shepherded the 2010 act known as Obamacare in an effort to provide affordable health care to all Americans .
During a closely watched presidential debate, Trump admitted that the issue he has run on for three straight elections is a mere talking point backed by nothing.
“We are working on things,” Trump said. “We’re going to do it. We’re going to replace it.” [scoffing laughter]
Asked about these statements on Wednesday morning, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN that Trump would produce a health care plan “in the not too distant future.”
“I don’t have a date for you this morning,” Leavitt said, “but I’ll definitely get back to you with one as soon as I can.”
Leavitt tossed in some claims that Trump’s plan would be based on the “free market.” Which is strange for her to say, because Trump doesn’t have a plan.
Trump’s embarrassing admission doesn’t just show a yawning gap in his policies: It underscores that Trump has no actual plans. He’s simply been lying since 2015, when he sailed down a golden escalator on a wave of racism and hate to announce he was running for president.
In 2016, replacing the Affordable Care Act wasn’t just one item on Trump’s to-do list—it was the core of his campaign. [video at the link]
“We’re going to deliver real change that once again puts America first,” Trump told a Florida rally crowd three weeks before the 2016 election. “That begins with immediately repealing and replacing the disaster known as Obamacare. … My first day in office, I’m going to ask Congress to put a bill on my desk … We’re going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost, and it’s going to be so easy.”
Republicans did write a bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act. They just never got around to the “replace” part—because Trump never came up with a plan.
Even a year after Sen. John McCain’s brave vote saved the plan from destruction, Trump was still scheming to destroy Obamacare while having no more than a sketchy idea of what came next.
As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2018:
Donald Trump has at various times promised a healthcare plan that would be “beautiful,” “terrific” and “unbelievable.”
But the healthcare outline his campaign released Wednesday mostly highlights standard, if vague, Republican proposals, several of which conservatives themselves say will have little impact on patients’ health or their pocketbooks.
As Stat reports, Trump’s past defeats on the Affordable Care Act have been embarrassing, but he “just can’t seem to let the prospect” of killing the plan go. He’s still focused on attacking the ACA even though the plan has brought health care protections to a record number of Americans and now enjoys broad public support.
Trump’s obsessive attacks on Obamacare and his open admission that he has never developed an alternative are now an absolute negative for his campaign and for the GOP in general. As Stat notes, it’s creating uncertainty for Republicans—who are left with Trump’s “concepts” as their only plan—and for a health care industry that doesn’t have a clue what might be coming its way.
Still, Trump remains willing to rip away the health care of 50 million Americans with no replacement to offer—a level of vindictive recklessness that’s hard to imagine.
Claiming that Haitian immigrants are eating pets might be the most memorable Trump blunder of the evening, but the statement about health care shows how fundamentally hollow his promises have always been.
I’ll also note that Trump claimed that while he was president he made Obamacare work better, that he did the best he could with it. Balderdash. Trump shortened enrollment times, defunded help lines, etc.
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has been out of the news lately, but that may end shortly because a federal judge is expected to soon decide whether to unseal a series of depositions in a civil lawsuit filed by Gaetz associate Chris Dorworth. The lawsuit reportedly includes sealed testimony from a number of women, including Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend, about sex parties and drugs that Gaetz is alleged to have been involved with.
Last Thursday, Dorworth dropped his defamation suit against Gaetz’s former associate Joel Greenberg, a convicted sex trafficker. According to the news outlet NOTUS, this move “sought to bury the scandal,” which has hung over Gaetz, who denies ever having had sex with a minor or engaging in human trafficking. (In late 2022, the Department of Justice recommended no charges against Gaetz in the matter, though a House Ethics Committee continues to investigate similar allegations.)
But on Friday, defense lawyers in Dorworth’s suit against Greenberg submitted papers arguing that the documents in the case should be unsealed, with the alleged victims’ names removed.
In response, Dorworth’s attorneys argue that all the transcripts in the case are “confidential.” However, Greenberg’s lawyer is arguing that the court was already leaning toward unsealing the documents, citing Magistrate Judge Daniel Irick’s comments about keeping the depositions secret.
“This is a case of public importance,” Irick said in court, according to NOTUS. “It is one that there may be media interest in, and it’s one that involves important issues … I’m not seeing any confidentialities that would really overwhelm the First Amendment right for the public to see this case, especially when a plaintiff brings claims in relation to their marriage and spouses and the kind of intimate issues in this case which are laid out in extreme detail in the … complaint. I am unlikely to seal anything because it all seems relevant.”
It is unclear whether Gaetz, who was subpoenaed in the civil case, sat for a deposition and whether any transcripts or video of it would be released if the court unseals depositions. However, any depositions released to the public might help the ongoing House ethics investigation into the Florida congressman. That probe has reportedly gotten its hands on texts and testimony from an unnamed woman who allegedly used to participate in sex parties with Gaetz’s circle of friends. That information could support other reports about the drug- and alcohol-fueled nature of the parties Gaetz was allegedly involved in.
Gaetz has denied all of these reports.
U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014, is overseeing the civil case and may make the final decision about whether to release the depositions. The decision is expected to happen by Sept. 19.
Five Times Kamala Harris Flawlessly Triggered That Idiot, By A Doktor Of Rhetoric
It’s hardly a secret that one very effective way to get Donald Trump is to target the things he’s most insecure about. […]
Harris was far more deliberate in mashing Trump’s buttons, unlocking his incoherent rage mode […]
The Atlantic put it quite nicely: “Harris’s debate prep seemed to have concentrated on psychology as much as on policy. She drove Trump and trapped him and baited him—and it worked every time.”
Or to borrow the only thing I learned in ninth grade biology, it was cool to see how many times Harris could make that dead frog’s leg jump with just a little juice from a verbal nine-volt battery.
Harris started off by crossing the stage to shake Trump’s hand, which he wasn’t expecting; that moment was echoed at a 9/11 memorial event in New York this morning, where you can see Trump try that stupid dominance move of his where he pulls on the other person’s hand to try to pull them close — God, remember when we had to witness that at every global leaders’ meeting? — and she stayed anchored, unmoving. [smiles]
Again and again, Harris found Trump’s weak points, and squeezed. On foreign policy, she used his own top appointed staffers’ words against him. Watch the pretend-smile and immediate scowl! [video at the link]
HARRIS: If you want to really know the inside track on who the former president is — if he didn’t make it clear already — just ask people who have worked with him. His former chief of staff, a four-star general, has said he has contempt for the Constitution of the United States. His former national security adviser has said he is dangerous and unfit. His former secretary of Defense has said the nation, the republic, would never survive another Trump term.
Trump was left sputtering and insisting that he’d had the good sense to fire those lousy idiots he’d appointed in the first place, because they were terrible. So why did you appoint ‘em, Donald, why?
A half hour in, Harris went for the heavy guns, hitting Trump right in his beloved crowd sizes, the measure of how much he is loved. That was too much for him, and he snapped into a state of sputtering rage that lasted the rest of the debate; that may have broken something, since in response he shot back not only by accusing Harris of paying people to come to her rallies, but then immediately segued to the fake Haitian immigrants-eating-pets story.
[…] Here’s a clip, lightly edited for time. Good lord, what a meltdown. [video at the link]
After noting the weird things Trump talks about at his rallies, Harris got him right in the voonerables: “And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” Let’s just note his reaction face: [image at the link]
Then it was on to the madness:
“A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in — they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
As the New York Times noted with a nice montage of screenshots from the debate, Harris’s facial reactions to Trump’s weirdness had a kind of rhetoric all in themselves, […] wordlessly reflecting or even coaching the viewing audience’s disbelief and amusement. Her mic was muted for most of his rants, but her expressions were not: [images at the link]
In a one-two punch, Harris took a dig at Trump’s election lies, saying “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. […] And clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that,” and then immediately Tomoe Nage’d one of Trump’s favorite lies, his claim that under Obama and Biden (and Harris), other countries are “laughing at us.” Well heck no, Donald, they’re laughing at YOU. [video at the link]
HARRIS: I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States. And world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you. And they say you’re a disgrace.
Trump, fuming, then invoked one leader who really loves him: Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban, “one of the most respected men.”
And everybody laughed at him yet again. We could list other examples, but honestly, Trump was run over by a truck. Not suddenly, but repeatedly.
People with multiple sclerosis (MS) are far less likely than those without the condition to have the molecular hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis…
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #430…
That’s a damned if you do, damned if don’t situation.
Threads video: JD Vance on Fox News, lacking self-awareness again
We admire Taylor Swift’s music, but I don’t think most Americans are gonna be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.
She signed off on the post with a jab at comments [about] “childless cat ladies”—by identifying as one herself.
[…]
Elon Musk, […] responding to her with an offer [declared intent] of insemination. “Fine Taylor […] you win… I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life.”
[…]
He appeared to be tickled […] that the election could come down to an allegiance to either him or Swift. […] an account declaring, “Oh my God, this has really become an Elon vs Taylor Swift election now,” […] Musk, whose recreational drug use and at times erratic behavior have worried the leadership at his companies, tweeted his line about impregnating Swift
[…]
Neither Swift nor her boyfriend, NFL star and three-time Super Bowl winner Travis Kelce, have responded
Just to state the obvious […] Elon Musk’s totally ew-gross stalker-creep post about Taylor Swift is a demonstration of power. It isn’t just a dog dry-humping a stranger’s leg. The point isn’t what he thinks he can actually happen. The point is to be *seen* saying something that disgusting and be *seen* experiencing no consequences for it. It’s about who gets impunity.
it’s a rape threat from the richest man in the world, I’m amazed people miss the violence of it
Independent: Russia-Ukraine War in Maps: Where are the frontlines now as Kremlin claims advances in Donetsk?
Lots of conflicted claims of control over the last few days. The Russians seem to be advancing towards Pokrovsk but are taking huge losses. At the same time they are trying to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk. How long they can do all of this is an open question but the Ukrainians are also stretched thin.
The Russian generals are probably willing to throw anything at the line right now because they don’t have much time before winter and Putin gave them some goals for this year. If they can’t achieve some significant progress in Ukraine or throw the Ukrainians out of Kursk there are liable to be some changes in the command staff.
Stephen Colbert:
Harris’s Debate Smackdown | Trump’s Bizarre Pet Rumor | A Hidden Message In Taylor Swift’s Endorsement?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gvQAEFQv4gU
A comment that, at the time, hadn’t been made yet? How the heck?
Lynna@341:
U.S. says Iran is sending ballistic missiles to Russia in a ‘dramatic escalation’
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuckity fuck. And here I was hoping the idiots cosplaying as “world leaders” would hold off on having WWIII until after I was dead.
Lynna@374:
Debate Wrap Up: No One Has Ever So Thoroughly Dominated Donald Trump
Now eagerly awaiting a cartoon depicting Harris in leather leading an all-fours Trump around by a leash …
Lynna@388:
The most annoying thing the moderators did was to repeatedly let Trump grab control of the microphone and talk out of turn. That led to considerable disparities in total time spoken and number of times speaking
I believe that’s called “giving Trump enough rope to hang himself”.
<snicker>
Reginald Selkirk@409:
shitgibbon
Given the primate’s, er, complexion, would not “Ordure Orangutan” have been more appropriate? :)
Reginald Selkirk@430:
Multiple sclerosis appears to protect against Alzheimer’s disease
“I’ve got great news, folks! You can only get one of these deadly neurodegenerative disorders at a time!”
Sky Captain@433:
J. D. Vance:
We admire Taylor Swift’s music, but I don’t think most Americans are gonna be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.
… says the adopted-in-adulthood trust-fund baby of Peter Thiel.
Oh my God, this has really become an Elon vs Taylor Swift election now
Really?
Oh, well, then. Goodbye, Musk. Can’t with a straight face say it was nice knowing you, though.
Elon Musk’s totally ew-gross stalker-creep post about Taylor Swift is a demonstration of power. It isn’t just a dog dry-humping a stranger’s leg. The point isn’t what he thinks he can actually happen. The point is to be *seen* saying something that disgusting and be *seen* experiencing no consequences for it. It’s about who gets impunity.
So, just like street harassment then, except this time it’s billionaire-on-billionaire.
JM@435:
If they can’t achieve some significant progress in Ukraine or throw the Ukrainians out of Kursk there are liable to be some changes in the command staff.
“The Emperor is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress.”
“He asks the impossible. I need more men!”
“Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.”
Yeah, that sounds familiar. Along with “You have failed me for the last time!” …
StevoRsays
Sarah Gillis is doing an EVA too! Didn’t know that was gunna happen.
@433: But I don’t think most Americans are gonna be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.
Elon Musk has said a lot of stupid stuff over the years. One of the stupider things he’s said is that—at some point in the near future—he is going to help humanity colonize Mars. Besides the fact that colonizing Mars is an unessential and arguably pointless endeavor, we know that successfully terraforming and populating the red planet is not going to happen anytime soon because of the obvious financial and logistical hurdles that it would entail.
Musk, a studied peddler of vaporware, is used to spouting off bullshit that uninformed stans think sounds cool, only to then never accomplish the feat he claimed he would accomplish. On the issue of Mars colonization, Musk himself has admitted that he wouldn’t want to do it because he doesn’t want to die.
Now, Musk has a new excuse for not going to Mars: presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Musk, who has notably been working overtime to get former President Donald Trump re-elected, said Wednesday that if Trump fails to win the White House, you can kiss Mars goodbye. “Trump supports a government efficiency commission to allow great things to be done, Kamala does not,” Musk said on X on Wednesday, adding, “We will never reach Mars if Kamala wins.” …
There is nothing efficient about sending humans to Mars. So this is an indication that Musk would use a position in Trump’s administration to favor his own companies and pet projects.
Joe Biden donned a Trump baseball cap and told a crowd of people “not to eat dogs and cats” during a light-hearted exchange on the campaign trail…
Mr Biden was initially persuaded to wear his former opponent’s hat by a Trump supporter after a humorous back-and-forth between the two men…
Mr Biden then quipped that he needed the man’s Trump hat and was urged to put it on by the Republican and the crowd in the fire station.
After initially saying “I’m not going that far”, Mr Biden eventually donned the Trump hat, earning applause from the crowd and the Republican supporter. “I’m proud of you now,” the Trump supporter said…
Reginald @447: “this is an indication that Musk would use a position in Trump’s administration to favor his own companies and pet projects.”
Yep. Musk’s support of Trump is, at least in part, a plan to get more funding for Musk’s projects. (The other component of Musk’s support is male supremacist, racist, rich-guy Dunning-Kruger personality trait.)
There were a great many low points for Donald Trump in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, but two days later, one continues to stand out. After having been triggered by Vice President Kamala Harris’ comments about his rally crowds, the Republican thought it’d be a good idea to embrace a racist anti-immigrant conspiracy theory.
“In [Springfield, Ohio] they’re eating the dogs,” the former president said as part of a longer rant. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
In reality, of course, Trump had no idea what he was talking about. He might’ve convinced himself that the crackpot theory has merit, but it does not, and local officials have thoroughly discredited this ugly nonsense.
Nevertheless, roughly 24 hours after the debate, Sen. Bill Hagerty sat down with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who asked the Tennessee Republican whether his party’s presidential nominee would’ve been better off avoiding the racist theory for which there is no evidence. The senator replied:
“Well, you talk about evidence. I’ve heard conflicting reports. There’s conflicting evidence. There’s a lot of information on the internet that this is happening. … The city officials aren’t the only source. There are plenty of people who are saying this is happening.”
[oh FFS]
This reminded me of a story from eight years ago.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was speaking in Ohio when a man rushed the stage, prompting Secret Service agents to intervene. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the incident proved inconsequential.
But the then-candidate insisted at the time that the man in question had ties to ISIS, pointing to online evidence that turned out to be false. As longtime readers might recall, NBC News’ Chuck Todd asked the Republican about his willingness to substantiate odd claims with bogus evidence.
“What do I know about it?” Trump replied. “All I know is what’s on the internet.” [Yep. He said that. Very telling moment.]
It was a powerful, pre-election summary of one of Trump’s most important flaws: He has no meaningful critical thinking skills, and he lacks the wherewithal to assess the reliability of random nonsense he finds online. [Or random nonsense he sees on TV] Before, during, and after his presidency, the Republican has shown that he’s not much different from that weird guy you know via Facebook who keeps sharing wild-eyed, all-caps tirades about some new conspiracy he uncovered in the fever swamps.
But just as importantly, Trump’s refrain — “All I know is what’s on the internet” — is a phrase that now summarizes how too much of the Republican Party processes current events.
For example, when a madman nearly murdered House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer in 2022, a variety of GOP officials disseminated disinformation about the violent attack. Why? Because they saw some garbage online.
It wasn’t an isolated incident. Ask Republicans why they continue to believe ridiculous election conspiracy theories, and they’re likely to point to nonsense they found online. Ask them about their opposition to Covid vaccines, and you’ll probably get a similar response. Ask those caught up in the QAnon delusion how they slipped into the madness, and many will say the same thing.
The point is not that all online news is wrong. I publish online commentary for a living, so I’m the last person who’d encourage folks to reflexively disregard information from the internet.
Rather, the point is that major political parties and politicians seeking the public’s trust need to be able to distinguish between credible information from legitimate outlets, and sheer madness that happens to reinforce their preconceived ideas.
Republicans, in other words, not only need to choose good information over bad, they also need to understand how to choose good information over bad. As Bill Hagerty helped demonstrate, it’s a skill too much of the party seems to lack right now.
As national security attorney Bradley P. Moss lamented, “The Party of Lincoln and Reagan has been reduced to ‘I saw something online.’”
Reginald Selkirksays
@452: He has no meaningful critical thinking skills, and he lacks the wherewithal to assess the reliability of random nonsense he finds online. [Or random nonsense he sees on TV]
This is not some rando off the street. He is the presidential candidate of one of the two major political parties. He has access to staff and resources, people who can check things out. Anyone who is in office, such as Sen. JD Vance or Sen. Hagerty likewise has a staff and access to Congressional resources. They have no excuse for relying on “something they read on the Interwebs” or what “many people are saying.”
Researchers from Kyushu University have revealed that a zeolite material called Na-ZSM-5 is effective in improving the chemical conversion of biomass into olefins—a precursor chemical that makes everything from plastics to pharmaceuticals—using microwaves.
Publishing their work in Chemical Engineering Journal, the team explains that microwave heating of Na-ZSM-5 could open doors to a more energy-efficient and sustainable chemical industry…
Reginald @453, I agree. Trump cannot make any adjustment that would compensate for his weaknesses.
Also, Trump seizes on nonsense like the immigrant-eating-people’s-pets because he is predisposed to ill will toward immigrants. Confirmation bias, plus general ignorance, stupidity and brain rot.
Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t just suffer another failure, the Republican leader also pushed the nation closer to a pre-election government shutdown.
After voters handed Republicans a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, GOP leaders had high hopes. The party and its members appeared convinced as this Congress got underway that Republicans wouldn’t just rack up victories, they’d also impress the public with their vision and legislative prowess.
So much for that idea.
The GOP-led House has generated one fiasco after another. Resignations in the chamber have reached a generational high. Legislative progress has slowed to a pace unseen in nearly a century. Lawmakers have struggled mightily to complete basic tasks. In the spring, House Speaker Mike Johnson organized a retreat focused on unifying his conference, and most of his members didn’t show up.
Soon after, one of the party’s most radical members launched an effort to oust the incumbent House speaker, which comes six months after the previous ouster of the last House speaker. It was around this time when a Punchbowl News report concluded, “This is the most chaotic, inefficient and ineffective majority we’ve seen in decades covering Congress.”
Can things get worse. Of course they can. NBC News reported:
Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday yanked a government funding bill off the House floor hours before an expected vote after a growing number of disgruntled Republicans vowed to tank the measure.
The beleaguered House speaker’s original plan was to pass appropriations bills months ago that would fund the government through the next fiscal year. That plan collapsed in July when Johnson’s own members balked.
As members returned to Capitol Hill from their August break, the GOP leader embraced a new plan: The House would, at Donald Trump’s direction, push a temporary spending bill that included cuts and a far-right election scheme called the Save Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
If Democrats opposed the scheme, Johnson said, then Republicans would allow the government to shut down at the end of the month.
The House speaker’s plan faced swift and bipartisan opposition, but he said he was pushing forward anyway. Johnson was backed by his party’s former president, who published thoughtful messages online, including one that said, in reference to federal operations, “CLOSE IT DOWN!!!” [Trump is not a member of Congress. He is not president. He is still gumming up the works.]
Johnson said he’d bring his plan to the House floor on Wednesday. Then he came to terms with the fact that too many of his own members refused to support his bill — at which point the speaker pulled his bill and scrapped his plans.
No one seems to have any idea what GOP leaders will do next. If the Louisiana Republican continues to insist on pushing a far-right spending bill, filled with radical and unnecessary anti-election measures, he’ll certainly make Trump happy, but Johnson won’t have a bill that can pass either chamber.
If the House speaker backs down and agrees to a clean, bipartisan bill, he’ll prevent a shutdown, but he’ll be dependent on Democrats to save his skin — again — and further weaken his standing within the GOP conference he ostensibly leads.
Complicating matters, Johnson’s latest embarrassment comes on the heels of several months’ worth of similar setbacks.
“Extreme MAGA Republicans have been in the majority for over 18 months,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement in July. “Can anyone name a single thing extreme MAGA Republicans in the House have done in order to make life better for the American people? A single thing that they have done? You can’t. … They are incapable of governing.”
Two months later, the New York Democrat’s assessment continues to ring true.
[Trump] told a national television audience that ABC’s license should be targeted because he didn’t like the network’s anchors telling the public accurate information.
There’s been some public conversation of late about Trump’s authoritarian-style vision — and for good reason. The former president is threatening perceived foes with prison sentences, endorsing a “strongman” leadership style, bragging about his support from dictators, raising the prospect of a temporary American “dictatorship,” talking about “terminating” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions, arguing that his rivals shouldn’t be “allowed” to run against him, targeting immigrants with Hitler-style rhetoric while promising to create militarized mass deportations and detention camps, and promising pardons to politically aligned criminals.
Trump’s plan to crack down on the free press is a key and radical part of the same agenda.
[…] As for the entertainer’s [Taylor Swift’s] impact, the General Services Administration confirmed with NBC News that, as of midday Wednesday, more than 337,00 people visited a custom URL that Swift posted on Instagram. The custom URL directs people to vote.gov, a website that helps people to register to vote.
Bits and pieces of campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* How did Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign feel about Tuesday night’s debate? The Democrat’s campaign joked via social media a day later, “Our newest ad just dropped.” It was accompanied by a video of the entire debate, from start to finish. [Smile]
* On a related note, Nielsen ratings suggested that roughly 67.1 million people tuned in for the debate. That was a considerably larger audience than the 51.3 million viewers who watched the debate between Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden in June.
* His advice will likely be ignored, but Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida commented after the debate that Trump and his party should probably begin “difficult conversations” about whether his candidacy should continue.
* In Wisconsin, the latest Marquette Law School Poll found Harris leading Trump among likely voters, 52% to 48%, in a head-to-head matchup. When third-party candidates are added to the mix, the Democrat is ahead by roughly the same margin. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodologies and margins of error.)
* On a related note, the same survey showed incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin leading Republican challenger Eric Hovde, 52% to 48%, among likely voters. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodologies and margins of error.)
* In Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, when Republican hopeful Bernie Moreno joined the board of the Cleveland Foundation, his biography claimed he held an MBA from the University of Michigan. He does not have an MBA from the University of Michigan, and his campaign blamed “a staffer who made a mistake.”
* In Georgia, two state court judges ruled this week that presidential candidates Cornel West and Claudia De la Cruz are disqualified. An Associated Press report noted, “For now at least, the decision means votes for West and De la Cruz won’t be counted in Georgia, even if their names remain on ballots because it’s too late to remove them.”
* And the non-partisan National Association of Secretaries of State wrote to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy this week, complaining about problems in the Postal Service in delivering mailed ballots, and warning that many voters will receive ballots “well after Election Day.” It’s a problem worth watching closely in the coming weeks.
Embedded links leading to additional sources are available at the main link.
JMsays
@453 Reginald Selkirk: A bit of Trump’s problem is that it is his staff that is feeding him these things. He is too lazy to do any investigation himself or get an outside advisor to investigate.
In his first campaign and administration he was talking with Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Both racist and anti-immigration but had some sense and didn’t buy into the random stupid stuff. He has replaced them with people like Laura Loomer, who has never heard a right wing conspiracy theory she didn’t buy into and only skill is soothing Trump’s ego.
City Hall evacuated, county offices closed, parents at one Springfield school asked to pick up children early
Multiple city, county and school buildings around Springfield were closed Thursday after a bomb threat “to multiple facilities throughout Springfield,” according to a city statement released Thursday morning. Springfield City Hall was evacuated around 8:30 a.m.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said everyone who was in the City Hall building was moved out and is safe. Rue would not comment on the precise language of the threat but said it came from someone claiming to be from Springfield, and mentioned frustration with the city related to Haitian immigration issues.
All Clark County buildings were also closed to the public, “out of an abundance of caution,” which includes all commission departments, the Department of Job and Family Services, the Common Pleas Court, the Board of Elections and the A.B. Graham Building, according to a statement released at 11:45 a.m. The county said it would update the public with more closures “as they become available.”
Drivers license bureaus in Clark County were also closed Thursday morning in relation to the threats, according to Clark County Clerk of Courts Melissa Tuttle.
Springfield City Schools evacuated students from Fulton Elementary on Thursday morning. Parents said they were told to pick up their children, and a police officer outside Fulton told concerned parents that their children had been moved to Springfield High School. Springfield City Schools issued a brief statement at 10:40 a.m.
“Based on information received from the State Fire Marshal, Fulton students were evacuated from their building to Springfield High School this morning,” school officials said. “Students and staff are safe; however, the district is in the process of a controlled release to safely dismiss students to their parents.”
[…] the issue was raised during Tuesday night’s presidential debate. [Trump repeated the lie that Haitian immigrants are eating the pets of people who live in Springfield.] […]
State and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday warned that problems with the nation’s mail delivery system threaten to disenfranchise voters in the upcoming presidential election, telling the head of the U.S. Postal Service that it hasn’t fixed persistent deficiencies.
In an alarming letter, the officials said that over the past year, including the just-concluded primary season, mailed ballots that were postmarked on time were received by local election offices days after the deadline to be counted. They also noted that properly addressed election mail was being returned to them as undeliverable, a problem that could automatically send voters to inactive status through no fault of their own, potentially creating chaos when those voters show up to cast a ballot.
The officials also said that repeated outreach to the Postal Service to resolve the issues had failed and that the widespread nature of the problems made it clear these were “not one-off mistakes or a problem with specific facilities. Instead, it demonstrates a pervasive lack of understanding and enforcement of USPS policies among its employees.”
[…] The Postal Service on Wednesday reiterated DeJoy’s assurances that it’s well positioned to swiftly deliver election mail despite being in the midst of a network modernization that has caused some delivery hiccups. [DeJoy cannot be trusted.]
The two groups, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, said local election officials “in nearly every state” are receiving timely postmarked ballots after Election Day and outside the three to five business days USPS claims as the standard for first-class mail.
[…] many voters have embraced mail voting and come to rely on it. And both Democrats and Republicans have launched efforts to push supporters to vote early […]
officials in rural states have been critical of the Postal Service for years as it has consolidated mail-processing centers to cut its costs and financial losses.
[…] The election officials warned that any election mail returned to an election office as undeliverable could trigger a process outlined in federal law for maintaining accurate lists of registered voters. That means a voter could be moved to “inactive” status and be required to take additional action to verify their address to participate in the election, the officials said in the letter.
[…] Kansas election officials also have said some ballots arrive on time but without postmarks, which keeps them from being counted under Kansas law. What’s more, local postal clerks have told election officials that they can’t add postmarks later even if it’s clear that the Postal Service handled the ballot ahead of the mail-in deadline.
Kansas will count ballots postmarked on or before Election Day if they arrive within three days. The Republican-controlled Legislature created that grace period in 2017 over concerns that mail delivery had slowed after the Postal Service shut down seven mail-processing centers in the state. That left much of the state’s mail handled through larger centers in Denver, Amarillo, Texas, and Kansas City, Missouri.
Schwab has promoted the use of local ballot drop boxes for voting in advance, breaking with other Republicans who have suggested without evidence that they can be sources of fraud. Schwab has long said the boxes are more secure than the U.S. mail.
[…] In their letter Wednesday, election officials said colleagues across the U.S. have reported that Postal Service staff, from managers to mail carriers, are uninformed about the service’s policies for handling election-related mail, give them inconsistent guidance and misdeliver ballots.
“There is no amount of proactive communication election officials can do to account for USPS’s inability to meet their own service delivery timelines,” the officials wrote. “State and local election officials need a committed partner in USPS.”
[…] MAGA isn’t just gullible, it’s hungry, always seeking out a new reason to Hate Thy Neighbor.
Trump fed their xenophobia with the story about immigrants in Ohio gobbling down pets. And while it’s not known if the Trump and Vance lies are directly connected, a bomb threat Thursday morning has warranted a major police response in Springfield, Ohio.
Now he’s leaning into another conspiracy theory that could lead to a second Jan. 6 … or worse.
On July 13, a 20-year-old man fired a rifle at Trump from a rooftop as he was speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. That man was shot and killed seconds later by members of a Secret Service counter-sniper team. The attempted assassin was a nursing home employee who reportedly investigated the schedules of both Trump and President Joe Biden before settling on an event that was taking place close to his home. Trump appears to have been a target of convenience for a shooter more interested in making himself infamous than who he put in his sights.
[…] That implication that Biden or others in the administration were involved in Trump’s attempted assassination has never completely gone away, even if Trump’s ear bandage has faded from the headlines. This week, as she promoted her upcoming book, former first lady Melania Trump stepped into the issue, insisting that there was more to the story and opening the door to every form of conspiracy theory.
“Now, the silence around it feels heavy,” Melania said in a promotional video. “I can’t help but wonder why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to this story. And we need to uncover the truth.”
As the weeks have gone by and the media’s attention has shifted from Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris, the way that Trump has talked about this issue has shifted significantly.
“I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” Trump said during the debate.
[Trump’s statement is] intended to silence critics by making any complaints about Trump equivalent to attempted murder. But that’s the lesser of the two effects.
Because this kind of statement can also be seen as justification for taking similar measures in response.
[…] there are also right-wing sources making much more direct accusations. And Trump is increasingly leaning into those claims.
For example, this was Trump in an Aug. 29 interview with right-wing podcaster Monica Crowley.
Crowley: The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks. It looks like the three-letter agencies are slow-walking a lot of this evidence, a lot of the videos, etc. Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious, maybe even inside job?
Trump: It’s very suspicious. The more you see it, the more you start to say, ‘There could be something else.’
Trump has already made several moves toward building out the Big Lie 2.0, starting with mail-in voting. And suspicions that a losing Trump could inspire more violence directed at the government has caused Biden to ensure that Capitol Hill has greatly increased security on Jan. 6, 2025, for the electoral vote certification.
But if the polls run away from Trump following his miserable debate performance, he may not wait until Jan. 6. […]
If Trump begins to fully voice the idea that the shooting in Butler was an “inside job”—an open attempt at assassination directed by Biden or others in the government—all bets are off.
This hasn’t happened yet. Hopefully, it will never happen. But Trump appears to be moving toward such a claim. Trump has never hesitated to embrace conspiracy theories, especially those where he is the victim, and that is not changing.
Trump’s lies are likely to grow along with his desperation. And so will the threat those lies represent.
Donald Trump is holding a rally on Thursday in a rented hall in my hometown, Tucson. I would prefer to ignore that sad fact. But since the building has my name on it, I need to say something.
It saddens me to see the former President bring his hate show to Tucson, a town with deep Mexican-American roots and a joyful, tolerant spirit.
I don’t just deplore his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance — although there’s that.
For me it comes down to this: In Nogales and across the southern border, the Trump Administration systematically ripped apart migrant families seeking asylum. Family separation made orphans of thousands of little children and babies, and brutalized their desperate mothers and fathers. It remains a humanitarian catastrophe that Physicians for Human Rights said met the criteria for torture.
There is no forgiving or forgetting the heartbreak he caused.
Trump first ran for President warning about rapists coming in from Mexico. I’m worried about keeping the rapist out of the White House.
Linda Ronstadt
P.S. to J.D. Vance:
I raised two adopted children in Tucson as a single mom. They are both grown and living in their own houses. I live with a cat. Am I half a childless cat lady because I’m unmarried and didn’t give birth to my kids? Call me what you want, but this cat lady will be voting proudly in November for @kamalaharris and @timwalz .
We’d like to announce that while we are not a hotel, we are a concept of a hotel.
Commentary:
During the debate, when Donald Trump was asked what his plans were to improve Obamacare, he responded, “I have concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now.”
Four Seasons Total Landscaping wins the internet with their response. […]
Trump won Tuesday’s debate like he won the 2020 election. And he’s handling his debate loss the same way he handled his 2020 loss: by lying about it.
Trump’s post debate spin alternates between “I won” and “the debate was rigged,” as if people won’t wonder why he’d say it was rigged if he’s also saying he won it. Is he saying it was rigged so he won it? Or does he not understand basic logic, that winning a rigged contest isn’t really winning at all and it’s not in his best interest to claim it is?
[…] Trump kept his eyes down when Harris spoke and did not look directly at her throughout the debate, like the true beta bully he has always been.
Trump blames the moderators for fact checking him
Trump’s self-indulgent, grievance-laden bloviations were so pathetic that even Fox News is reporting it.
[…] Another GOP lawmaker told Fox the debate was a “dumpster fire” for Trump. “It was one of the worst bloodlettings I’ve ever seen.”
Still choosing between his contradictory “I won” and “the debate was rigged” spin, Trump is now wailing that moderators factchecked several of his lies, but didn’t do the same with Harris. His aides are probably afraid to tell him that Harris did not spew any bilious material on par with Trumps’ post-birth abortion and immigrants-are-eating-your-dog lies that would have merited an equal, quick and easy fact check.
It’s not like moderators fact-checked his serial falsehoods on crime, abortion, or the broken economy he left for Biden post-covid; they only checked him when it was so painfully obvious he was lying they’d have lost credibility as journalists if they didn’t.
[…] Harris made Trump look stupid
Republican outrage over the debate, and Trump’s ongoing, badfaith sales pitch about what a great performance he gave, are tacit admissions that Harris outsmarted him. [Yep]
[…] That Harris effectively baited Trump throughout the 90 minutes, trigger after trigger, left few viewers wondering which candidate could checkmate the world’s authoritarians who would do harm to America. The other candidate demonstrated on live stream how easily he can be manipulated, angered, and triggered. No one should overlook the national security implications.
Trump has been lying about his disastrous debate ever since it ended, citing nonexistent polls to Fox, citing made-up statistics in the spin room, and appearing on any news outlet that will have him, claiming both that the debate was “rigged” and that he outperformed Harris, overwhelmingly. The opposite is so obviously and painfully true– even to Fox News and his sycophants in Congress– that his attempts to save face are an obvious con job in action, in real time, on national television. […]
Nevada To Use Google AI To Decide Who Gets Unemployment Benefits
It gets things right only 76 percent of the time at best, so WCGW? [What Could Go Wrong]
[…] Not sure how to write this article, but I have the concept of a plan. I know, let’s have ChatGPT write the story in the style of Wonkette about how Nevada is going to use Google’s AI to help decide who will get unemployment benefits, to sort through their backlog of unemployment cases since COVID.
Hold onto your gaming chips, Nevada, because your unemployment appeals process is about to get a digital makeover that’s more high-tech than a self-driving slot machine. Nevada has announced that it will soon be deploying a generative AI system from Google to dive into the world of unemployment appeals. This thing will parse through every “um” and “uh,” every tear-soaked plea, then spit out a recommendation with all the warmth of a robot trying to pass off as a human on Tinder. Welcome to the future of bureaucracy!
Not great, not bad. Kind of tiresome though, and definitely try-too-hard.
How about in the style of Barbara Cartland, explain how the retrieval-augmented generation AI model they’re using supplies incorrect or misleading answers to questions between 17 and 33 percent of the time, and the best-performing model, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, is still only right 76 percent of the time?
In the desert’s embrace, where once there was uncertainty, there now blossoms a new dawn of possibility. But as with any tale of grandeur, there is an element of drama that belies the initial enchantment. For while these models offer the allure of swiftness and efficiency, they come with a nuanced narrative of their own. Recent revelations have unveiled a disconcerting truth: these models, despite their impressive façade, supply answers that are incorrect or misleading between 17 and 33 percent of the time, and the best are are only right 76 percent of the time. This revelation, dear readers, is akin to discovering that a once-revered suitor is not quite the paragon of virtue he appeared to be.
That AI forgot bosoms entirely. How about some haikus about how AI models are so complex that when the system makes all those errors, the humans can be unable to find them and figure out what went wrong?
Silent code unspools,
Decisions made by machine—
Errors hard to trace.
Complexity veils,
The path of AI’s intent—
Truths are hard to find.
A snapshot elusive,
Shadows in the digital mist—
Whence the error comes?
Code’s silent dance hides,
Where decisions went astray—
A maze without maps.
Decisions drift by,
In circuits’ tangled whispers—
Origins are lost.
And in the style of Dr. Seuss, explain how if robots make mistakes that much of the time, and no one can trace where the mistakes are, employees at the Nevada Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation could end up spending more time trying to unspool the mistakes made by the AI than if they never used it at all?
In the land of computers, so shiny and bright,
Where machines rule the day and all through the night,
There’s a marvelous gadget, a wonderful sight—
A robot named Robby, who does things just right!
“Oh, no need for humans!” the boss said with glee,
“We’ve AI and robots, as smart as can be!”
“Why hire a worker? Why bother with fuss?
We’ll let robots do everything—no need to discuss!”
So off went the humans, they packed up and left,
And Robby the Robot was feeling quite deft.
He churned out the data, he sorted the files,
With blinking green eyes and mechanical smiles.
But the time that they spend fixing up what went wrong,
Ends up being far longer, and all of it’s long.
If robots make errors and humans can’t trace,
The time for corrections just races apace.
Thus, here’s the big lesson, the moral we see,
Mix robots and people in harmony!
For while robots are grand, they sometimes go astray,
It’s the human touch that keeps errors at bay.
But the human touch is expensive! Especially for Nevada, which has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.4 percent (after Puerto Rico and DC), and has a big backlog because COVID shut down so much of the hospitality industry.
As is life for the people whose unemployment claims are incorrectly rejected, who then can’t pay bills for an indeterminate amount of time all because of some hallucinating robot. How about some Yates?
The hours stretch long, a desert’s cruel expanse,
Where hope, like distant stars, seems faint and frail,
For no divine or mortal hand can chance,
To mend the fractured weave where shadows sail.
Welp, can’t beat that. Nothing left to do but have the robot write about how now I should file for unemployment, because I will probably be fired and replaced by AI. Take it away, Bot Easton Ellis!
The city’s relentless pulse continues unabated outside. The neon lights blink with the same mechanical indifference as the AI that displaced me. I sit in my apartment, surrounded by the trappings of a life that feels increasingly foreign. The sounds of the city — once a vibrant backdrop to my existence — now seem like the soundtrack to my personal decline.
Alberto Gonzales, a Republican attorney general under the George W Bush administration, has announced his endorsement of Kamala Harris.
“As the United States approaches a critical election, I can’t sit quietly as Donald Trump – perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation – eyes a return to the White House,” Gonzales, who served as the US’s 80th attorney general from 2005 to 2007, wrote in an article for Politico.
“For that reason, though I’m a Republican, I’ve decided to support Kamala Harris for president.” …
“In a generation” – in other words, since W made you his Attorney General due to personal loyalty, not competence?
An unprecedented number of abortion initiatives are on state ballots this November, nearly all seeking to protect reproductive rights, but opponents are trying to defeat them even before the start of voting through legal challenges, administrative maneuvers and, critics say, outright intimidation.
In Missouri, the Republican secretary of state pulled an abortion rights measure from the November ballot until the state’s highest court ordered him to include it.
In Florida, the governor’s election police arrived at voters’ front doors to question them about signing a petition for an abortion referendum — encounters that one man said “left me shaken.”
And in Arizona, the state’s Supreme Court allowed government pamphlets on the proposed constitutional amendment there to describe a fetus as an “unborn human being.”
Conservatives are “really supercharged,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis and expert on the legal history of abortion…..
“A lot of abortion opponents don’t think they would win a fair vote, so they’re not trying to. They’re trying to find other ways,” Ziegler said, including capitalizing on “election-law technicalities to keep these proposals from going before voters.”
Challenges escalated this summer after the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the secretary of state’s rejection of one ballot initiative because proponents had not followed rules related to paid canvassers. The arguments in Missouri as well as Nebraska, where that state’s top court must rule by Friday, centered primarily on whether the ballot proposals’ wording is too vague and whether they addressed only a single issue as required.
“You’re seeing a period of experimentation because antiabortion groups haven’t found a winning recipe,” Ziegler added.
[…]
Arizona opponents of its ballot measure scored a victory last month with the court decision on the state pamphlets’ wording. However, the judges rejected their contention that the information provided during abortion rights groups’ petition drive “misrepresented and concealed the principal provisions” of the amendment — namely, that its “primary thrust” was a “wholesale dismantling of state abortion laws.”
Attorneys for Arizona for Abortion Access had argued that opponents were pursuing a “political quarrel masquerading as a legal claim” and that their political argument should be made not in a court of law but in “the court of public opinion.” Proponents submitted 577,971 signatures to ensure the measure reached that other setting — more than double the legal requirement…
…Proposition 139 [Arizona] would create the right to obtain an abortion any time before viability, about 24 weeks. After that point, “the State will not be able to interfere with the good-faith judgment of a treating health care professional that an abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant individual.”….
Polling in August shows lopsided sentiment, with 73 percent of voters saying they support Proposition 139.
Republican officials in Florida have taken a different tack, launching a “Florida Cares” website earlier this month — complete with the state seal — that claims the ballot measure known as Amendment 4 “threatens women’s safety.”
“Florida is Protecting Life,” it says. “Don’t let the fearmongers lie to you.”
The new website, which critics say is filled with “demonstrably false” information, is in addition to a financial impact statement that the Florida Supreme Court last month allowed to be included alongside the measure on the ballot.
According to the lengthy text, there is “uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds.” The statement then continues: “Litigation to resolve those and other uncertainties will result in additional costs to the state government and state courts that will negatively impact the state budget. An increase in abortions may negatively affect the growth of state and local revenues over time. Because the fiscal impact of increased abortions on state and local revenues and costs cannot be estimated with precision, the total impact of the proposed amendment is indeterminate.”
Supporters have blasted Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida House for the move. “They’re trying to cause confusion and hide the real issue: Amendment 4 is about ending Florida’s extreme abortion ban, which outlaws abortion before many women even realize they are pregnant,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for “Yes on 4.”…..The latest polls show that a majority of voters — though less than the 60 percent needed for passage — back the amendment. It would allow abortions “before viability.”
Supporters collected 996,512 signatures, more than 100,000 beyond the number required to place the issue on the ballot. But in recent weeks, saying it was working to combat fraud, DeSantis’s administration has deployed elections police to check up on some of those voters.
“These last-ditch efforts from antiabortion activists and politicians are blatantly trying to stop people from voting because they know they’re going to lose,” said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes. She said similar “shenanigans” took place in Kansas last year, where antiabortion groups called police on signature collectors.
Nebraska’s Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday on two competing ballot petitions that were certified in August by Secretary of State Bob Evnen. At the time, he said it was likely the first time the state had two initiatives on the same topic in one election year. Should both remain on the ballot in November, whichever garners more votes will take effect….
In a separate case, lawyers for Protect the Right to Abortion argued Monday that if the court dismisses one petition due to violations of the “single issue” rule, then it should dismiss the other petition as well.
The justices’ tight timeline for a decision is because the state’s ballot must be certified Friday.
In a remarkable ruling issued Thursday morning — the second time in less than three months the courts have rebuked the Utah Legislature — a judge declared a controversial constitutional amendment question on the Nov. 5 ballot void.
After hearing oral arguments less than 24 hours prior, 3rd District Court Judge Dianna Gibson sided with plaintiffs who have been in a yearslong legal battle alleging the Utah Legislature has engaged in unlawful gerrymandering and violated the Utah Constitution when it repealed and replaced Better Boundaries’ 2018 voter-approved ballot initiative that required lawmakers to use an independent redistricting commission.
When the Utah Supreme Court issued a ruling in that case in July remanding the case back to district court and set limits on the Utah Legislature’s power to repeal and replace government reform initiatives, the Republican-controlled Utah Legislature reacted with defiance. The Legislature called itself into an “emergency” special session last month to sidestep the Utah Supreme Court’s interpretation of the constitution and instead ask voters to rewrite the Utah Constitution in favor of lawmakers’ interpretation of their power over ballot initiatives.
Anti-gerrymandering groups then sued, alleging Amendment D’s ballot language written by top Republican legislative leaders was “false and misleading” because it mischaracterized the true effect of the constitutional amendment. While the ballot question said the amendment would “strengthen” and “clarify” Utah’s ballot initiative process if passed, plaintiffs argued in court it would actually “weaken” voter initiatives because it would enshrine in the Utah Constitution the Legislature’s power to change or repeal any ballot initiative.
Plaintiffs also successfully argued state officials failed to meet publication requirements for proposed constitutional amendments. The Utah Constitution explicitly states the Legislature “shall cause” the text of constitutional amendments to be “published in at least one newspaper in every county of the state, where a newspaper is published, for two months immediately preceding the next general election.”
The judge ruled the Utah Legislature failed to meet those requirements…
More than 330,000 visitors have flocked to vote.gov by way of pop superstar Taylor Swift’s postdebate endorsement of Vice President Harris, according to the General Services Administration (GSA).
A GSA spokesperson said 337,826 visitors had been referred to the voter information website through Swift’s custom link as of 2 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, not even 24 hours after the debate or her endorsement…
JMsays
Newsweek: Six Countries That Could Mediate Possible Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks
Talk of peace treaty are floating again. It isn’t clear if they are serious or not, both Ukraine and Russia may simply be going through the motions or trying for a cease fire over the winter while they prepare for next year.
Russia could be serious rather then just posturing. The Kursk invasion is cutting into Putin’s support in Russia, the economy of Russia continues to decay, the potential for a conflict between Russia and China is warming up, Russia is running out of man power and gear, and the oligarchs are not happy with the dragging war and heavy sanctions. Ukraine has been open to negotiations the whole way but they want their land back and Russia wants to hold on to it. At this point Ukraine may be willing to give some land to Russia if they are allowed to join NATO and have full military support to protect them from further intrusions.
As for which countries might host negotiations, it’s hard to see a good place. Obviously any NATO country is out. This eliminates Turkey which otherwise might be a reasonable host for negotiations. Hungary is too close to Russia. The rest of the little countries in the region are too hostile too one side and not powerful enough. Brazil is just powerful enough to be a neutral host but has no reach in that part of Europe. Austria are not powerful enough to put any push on the negotiations. China isn’t trusted by any side and has a bad record for treaty negotiations. India is likely the best choice but may not want to get themselves into the middle of this. I think negotiations are most likely to happen on the sly someplace like Austria, clearly neutral and not powerful enough to influence the negotiations.
A state judge struck down North Dakota’s ban on abortion Thursday, saying that the state constitution creates a fundamental right to access abortion before a fetus is viable.
In his ruling, state District Judge Bruce Romanick also said that the law violates the state constitution because it is too vague.
Under the judge’s order, abortion would be legal in North Dakota, but the state currently has no clinics performing them, and the Republican-dominated state government would be expected to appeal the ruling.
Romanick was ruling on a request from the state to dismiss a 2022 lawsuit filed against the ban by what at the time was the sole abortion clinic in North Dakota. The clinic has sinced moved across the border to Minnesota, and the state argued that a trial wouldn’t make a difference. The judge had canceled a trial set for August.
Romanick cited how North Dakota Constitution’s guarantees “inalienable rights,” including “life and liberty.”
“The abortions statutes at issue in this case infringes on a woman’s fundamental right to procreative autonomy, and are not narrowly tailored to promote women;s health or to protect unborn human life,” Romanick wrote in his 24-page order. “The law as currently drafted takes away a woman’s liberty and her right to pursue and obtain safety and happiness.” …
When Pennsylvanians vote by mail, they must seal their ballots inside secrecy envelopes and place them into outer envelopes that they are required to sign and date. The ballots must be received before 8 p.m. on Election Day. Local election workers track when ballots arrive.
In recent elections, if a voter misdated or forgot to date the outside envelope, their otherwise valid ballot would be thrown out. But last month, a panel of state judges ruled that not counting those votes over “meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors” infringed on the state’s constitutional right to vote.
Now, with weeks to go until Pennsylvanians start voting, Republicans are pressing for the state Supreme Court to overturn that decision, arguing that mail-in ballots without a proper date should be tossed out…..
“If you talk to election officials, we will tell you that date is utterly meaningless. It serves no purpose to our operations for administering elections,” said Forrest Lehman, director of elections in Pennsylvania’s Lycoming County, a GOP-leaning area in the center of the state. “I got into this business to count ballots, not to look for excuses to throw them out.”
Republicans have engaged in similar legal battles to throw out mail-in ballots over technical reasons in other states, including those, like Pennsylvania, considered crucial to the outcome of the presidential vote.
In Wisconsin, where voters are required to have witnesses sign their mail-in ballots, Republicans unsuccessfully sought to have votes rejected if the witness fills in an incomplete address.
In North Carolina, Republicans are suing to throw out ballots if the inner secrecy envelope isn’t fully sealed.
In Georgia, Republicans have fought to have ballots thrown out if voters fail to accurately write their birth date on the outer envelope.
In Michigan, Republicans sued for stricter enforcement of signature matches on mail-in ballots.
And in Nevada, which allows mail-in ballots to be received up to three days after Election Day as long as they are postmarked on or before that day, Republicans sued in May not to count late-arriving votes.
…..sometimes they are blunt about the political motives. In an April filing in a Minnesota case over mail voting requirements, Republicans cited data showing that mail-in votes were more likely to be cast for Democrats. As a result, the GOP brief concluded, it was “reasonable” for the party to “fear that if duly enacted restrictions of voting by mail go unenforced, the resulting increase in mail ballots may impair their prospects for electoral success.”
Democrats and voting rights advocates describe Republican efforts to discredit mail-in voting and to throw out ballots on technical grounds as an attempt to suppress votes, potentially thousands, in battleground states where the presidential election is expected to be extremely close.
[…]
The question of whether mail-in ballots with missing or inaccurate dates on the envelopes should be counted has ping-ponged through the Pennsylvania courts the past several years.
In 2022, when Pennsylvanians were voting for governor and a U.S. senator, the state Supreme Court ruled that mail-in ballots with a missing or inaccurate date on the envelope should not be counted. That resulted in thousands of votes being invalidated….
The court decision was in effect for the 2024 primary, resulting in thousands of discarded votes. Shapiro’s administration announced in July a redesign of the outer envelope to include preprinting the year, “2024,” so voters need to fill in only the month and day in hopes of reducing the number of votes thrown out over a mistake….
Democrats in the state legislature have pushed to change the law to say the date isn’t a requirement, but the legislation never made it to a vote….
The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled on Aug. 30 that throwing away ballots over the date on the outer envelopes unconstitutionally interfered with people’s right to vote.
[…]
The case is now with the state Supreme Court, where justices have set an aggressive schedule for dealing with election-related cases. It is expected to be decided before the state begins counting votes, which in Pennsylvania cannot begin until Election Day.
Kyle Miller, the Pennsylvania policy strategist for Protect Democracy, said that the rule is arbitrary and that the state Supreme Court’s ruling should reflect that.
“It’s just gotcha, a chance to disenfranchise voters,” Miller said. “It’s definitely not a pro-voter policy.”
tomhsays
NYT:
Simon J. Levien / Sept. 12, 2024, 3:40 p.m ET
Trump ruled out the idea of a second debate with Kamala Harris, posting on social media in all capital letters on Thursday that “There will be no third debate” — counting his debate with President Biden in June as the first one. The Harris campaign expressed interest in holding another debate with him after Tuesday’s matchup. He had previously goaded her to commit to one, but changed his tune after Tuesday.
Earlier this year, we got a look at something unusual: the results of an internal investigation conducted by Harvard Business School that concluded one of its star faculty members had committed research misconduct. Normally, these reports are kept confidential, leaving questions regarding the methods and extent of data manipulations.
But in this case, the report became public because the researcher had filed a lawsuit that alleged defamation on the part of the team of data detectives that had first identified potential cases of fabricated data, as well as Harvard Business School itself. Now, the court has ruled on motions to dismiss the case. While the suit against Harvard will go on, the court has ruled that evidence-backed conclusions regarding fabricated data cannot constitute defamation—which is probably a very good thing for science…
A federal appeals court has rejected Donald Trump’s request to halt postconviction proceedings in his hush money criminal case, leaving a key ruling and the former president’s sentencing on track for after the November election…
U.S. wholesale price increases mostly slowed last month, the latest evidence that inflation pressures are cooling enough for the Federal Reserve to begin cutting interest rates next week.
NBC News: Storm Francine: Thousands without power as severe rain and wind hit the Gulf Coast
About 12 million people are under flood alerts as Francine makes its way north through Louisiana.
The center of Francine passed over New Orleans last night, dumping 5 to 7 inches of rain in the city. The storm is expected to continue to bring heavy rainfall across parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and the Florida Panhandle. […]
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday denounced ‘dangerous’ and ‘outrageous’ attacks on Justice Department prosecutors and personnel and sought to reassure them that he has their backs. The speech to his employees, at times emotional and forceful, appeared to allude to the kinds of accusations and threats made by former President Donald Trump, his allies and supporters, though Garland didn’t explicitly name Trump in his remarks.
North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, the first such launch in more than two months.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ epic debate performance on Tuesday was watched by 67.1 million Americans, according to the media analytics firm Nielsen. That’s nearly 16 million more than the number who tuned in to see Donald Trump face off with President Joe Biden in June.
As important as the number of viewers could be who those viewers were. Among the top 10 markets for the debate were a number of cities in swing states, including Pittsburgh and Philadelphia at the top of the list, according to Mike Mulvihill, an analyst for Fox. Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Detroit also had high levels of viewership.
West Palm Beach, Florida, was also near the top in viewers glued to a screen. Did you like what you saw, neighbors of Trump?
Trump’s campaign workers and surrogates were certainly not pleased, and now they’re working overtime to clean up the mess left by Trump’s angry, conspiracy-driven performance. […]
Following Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump campaign adviser Stephen Miller was caught on video screaming at a reporter who asked him to provide data backing up his claims about immigration.
“The crime rate in Venezuela is down, I believe, a little bit over 60% over the last several years,” Miller asserted while discussing crime in the United States.
José María Del Pino, a reporter for Colombia-based news channel NTN24, asked Miller if he was relying on figures released by the Venezuelan government, currently led by dictator Nicolás Maduro. Maduro has become an international pariah during his time in power and has been criticized for limiting civil liberties and free expression.
Miller declined to directly answer the question, so Del Pino persisted and repeated his query.
“I am trusting the fact that Kamala Harris is letting illegal immigrants into this country who are raping and murdering children,” Miller responded, raising his voice.
Del Pino continued to ask Miller for the source of his data, but the Trump insider instead filibustered, yelling at the reporter about crimes purportedly connected to immigrant groups. Eventually, Miller walked away from the cameras instead of backing up his argument. [video at the link]
Trump has made similar claims about Venezuela in an attempt to attack President Joe Biden’s administration over immigration.
“Crime is down in Venezuela by 67% because they’re taking their gangs and their criminals and depositing them very nicely into the United States,” Trump said in an April speech.
Politifact rated the statement as false, noting that crime in the U.S. has gone down since Biden took office and that crime data from Venezuela is not reliable. In fact, the Venezuelan government has not published data on murders or robberies in a decade.
[…] Miller was the architect of Trump’s Muslim travel ban and advocated for the heartbreaking policy of separating immigrant children from their families at border crossings. As part of the Trump team, Miller also pushed for restrictions that cut the number of people who could seek refuge in the United States, and he advocated for denying green cards to immigrants who might seek public assistance.
[…] After the Trump administration ended, Miller has led the conservative legal group America First Legal, which is currently trying to prevent the federal government from compensating Black farmers who have been historically disadvantaged.
Before teaming up with Trump, Miller was an aide to former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions. Leaked emails released in 2019 showed that while working for the senator, Miller promoted racist immigration stories and white supremacist literature, and complained about attempts to remove symbols of the pro-slavery Confederacy from the public sphere.
her cars have been vandalized twice in the middle of the night. She woke up one morning to broken windows and another to acid thrown on the vehicle. […] tales of intimidation, bullying and assaults […] “Many families are starting to leave Springfield last night and some kids aren’t even going to school because of fear of being attacked.” […] In August, white supremacists held an anti-Haitian demonstration during a music festival. […] a Haitian business owner […] suspects [an] eviction attempt was due to rising anti-Haitian sentiment.
incl AJ article on the legal implicatiosn of Polaris Dawn’s EVA’s.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@463:
Election officials warn widespread problems with USPS could disrupt voting
Remind me again why that fuckheaded political hack DeJoy wasn’t fired way back in 2021 and replaced with someone normal?
Meanwhile, I’ve had a thought about how human social organization evolved, and it connects to politics.
Most primates — everything in the “monkeys” clade, which includes apes and us — are social, and have a particular social form that produces troops with, often, an internal pecking order and a power-politics dynamic that is also often seen among humans. This is clearly facilitated by a social “protocol stack”, a set of interrelated instincts, that first emerged over 20 million years ago.
But humans do something none of the other social primates even dream of. Something that has more in common with behavior associated with termites and other social insects: huge collective construction projects, huge scouting and search operations with efficient division of labor, things like that.
The social insects and the apes root their relations in significant part in kinship, making for kin-based ingroup-outgroup divisions and rivalries. Ants from sufficiently-unrelated colonies go to war with one another. So can chimpanzee troops, and, obviously, humans.
However, when humans do the termite-colony thing, working cooperatively in teeming numbers to erect the pyramids or maintain a city or harvest a year’s crops that autumn, this is done across kinship based group boundaries and in ways that cannot be explained that way. The members of an insect hive tend to be all or mostly half-brothers and half-sisters to one another, allowing a kinship-based social bond to scale to large numbers (hundreds, thousands) of individuals. Humans manage it without that degree of kinship being involved.
The key in humans seems to be language. We developed a second, more recent (c. 300Ka at most) “protocol stack”, an alternate way of social-being, that uses language to establish and communicate norms and some kind of shared ontology — a culture, typically with a code of conduct and an understanding of how-the-world-works and a way-of-life-that-works-within-that to provide for the community’s needs. This system made civilization possible, and based on descriptions of ancient Turkey and the pre-Columbus Americas in “The Dawn of Everything”, it dates back a minimum of 13,000 years and probably all the way to the appearance of the species H. sapiens. The second human social system is based not on genetic kinship as its underlying basis for trust but on a form of memetic kinship, that shared understanding of the world and the people’s place in it.
Humans thus ended up having two different social “protocol stacks” that coexist, a layering of a newer system upon an older one that is a recurring theme in evolutionary biology. And sometimes these two systems come into conflict, within one person and at the group level.
There lies the nexus to politics. Conservative politics is, very clearly, built on the older, ape-style social system, with its pecking hierarchy and its emphasis on strength and prowess as a basis for status within the troop, as well as strong ingroup-outgroup distinctions and the capacity to make war across that border.
Liberal (and left) politics is built on the newer system, which is inclusive as long as the memetic kinship trust basis is present. This is why the political left can easily throw open a big tent to include very different ethnic, religious, and kinship groups, but also why it is prone to infighting around “purity tests” and the alleged “cancel culture”.
The different epistemological compasses are explained this way as well. The conservative one is based on feeling and status and group divisions: “makes me/my group look good” = “true” and “makes me/my group look bad” = “false”. This is a suitable system for a primate troop whose objective circumstances are a particular, fairly static habitat and whose major disagreements are, always and only, who should be in charge and how should stuff be divvied up?
The liberal one is the secular-rational one: “is supported by empirical evidence” = “true” and “is refuted by empirical evidence” = “false”. This is a suitable system for a technological species that needs to adapt itself, at faster than genetic speeds, to new habitats and environments and to an unstable and changing climate (ever since the Pleistocene started) by learning within one’s lifetime, developing new tools and techniques and even whole new social arrangements on the fly (say, transitioning from a coastal fisher-gatherer to an inland animal-herder strategy, with concomitant massive changes in what labor is being done let alone how it is divided up), and passing these innovations on horizontally and vertically through language.
I think this also can give an insight into the autism spectrum. One of the earliest-detectable and most-universal signs of someone being on the spectrum is a diminished interest in human faces, compared to neurotypical people of the same age and developmental stage. I suspect this is early (detectable in infancy) and universal because it is causative.
Any protocol stack, whether it’s implemented in carbon or in silicon, needs a “handshake” to start an interaction. The handshake for TCP/IP starts with sending a SYN packet and waiting for an ACK. The handshake for the human hive-social protocol starts with “Hey, you over there!” or someone’s name. And that for apes starts with eye contact and facial expressions, which are conserved features in primate social communication going all the way back to the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys.
Someone on the spectrum appears to be disconnected from the ape-social network: every SYN there prompts an RST, or just a timeout, and the host never originates a SYN of their own. On the other hand, they can and will plug in via the hive-social protocol. The verbal, articulate, “high-functioning” people on the spectrum prove this, and are also notably politically left-leaning as a bunch. The “low-functioning” ones may have comorbid learning disabilities (if the underlying cause even for their face-blindness is a deeper neurological deficit of some sort), or have had parents who refused to communicate with them at all unless they acknowledged all the normal ape-social protocols and not only the hive-social ones. Deprived of the latter signals, they ended up with both systems (and not only the ape one) remaining underdeveloped, hence nonverbal or limited verbality. Even the “high-functioning” have poorly developed ape-social understanding and don’t “get” the things that get conservatives all outraged, or disgusted, or hostile, and as a result are less susceptible to conservatism in general.
The observed higher incidence of LGBTQ identities among people on the spectrum may also be partly connected to this. Undoubtedly part of the explanation is that people on the spectrum are disinclined to conformism and refractive to peer pressure, so are less likely to let those forces push them into the closet; but why are they disinclined to conformism and refractive to peer pressure? Because those are parts of the ape-social protocol. (Note how conformism is one of the traits strongly correlated with Altemeyer’s RWA scale! And the exerting of peer pressure is an RWA trait…)
It may go deeper than that, however. Gender norms themselves may be a part of the ape-system and as a result are weakly internalized by those on the spectrum, who might therefore be naturally more fluid in gender and in sexual orientation than neurotypical persons. In that case, not only are they less likely to closet themselves if LGBTQ, they are also more likely to be LGBTQ in the first place.
The RWA scale, meanwhile, indicates that even among neurotypical people, there’s significant variance in which social system is stronger. The association of liberal attitudes with city dwelling points to one possible cause, related to the cause of the differences between neurotypical people and those on the spectrum: the degree to which the two systems get exercised. Rural dwellers in small communities deal mainly with kin and small groups beyond the kin-border: the same few hundred faces over and over, rarely seeing many actual strangers. Most interactions and coordinated activities happen in the kin context or at the next larger, tribal-like context (e.g. at church). This is an environment in which the ape-social system is exercised heavily but the hive-social system is liable to atrophy with disuse, getting little stimulation of its own.
A city slicker, on the other hand, must frequently interact with strangers and may be involved in work projects that involve a cast of thousands. The hive-social system gets a hefty workout here, and becomes well-developed along with the ape-social system. Such individuals end up politically more liberal due to the former’s pull on their political (and epistemological!) compass.
The tendency of liberals to play by the rules and conservatives to cheat is also tidily explained here. Liberals are built on the hive-system which in turn is built on playing by the rules as the core social glue holding the whole network together! However, conservatives are built on the ape-system which is inherently hierarchical and pecking-ordery, aka built on what-can-you-get-away-with and might-makes-right. This naturally lends itself to cheating, or an “all’s fair in war” approach.
So, our political divisions reflect a fundamental division in our very biological makeup, a fault line where evolution layered a newer, more expansive social system adapted to the vicissitudes of a) catastrophic climate instability in the Ice Age and b) world domination, upon an older, preexisting social system that was adapted to smaller social groups thriving in more uniform, local, and stable contexts during the stabler Miocene and Oligocene epochs.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Bekenstein Bound @498:
the ape-system which is inherently hierarchical and pecking-ordery, aka built on what-can-you-get-away-with and might-makes-right.
subordinate males that formed strong bonds with the alpha male had higher siring success, while, independently, males with larger networks of strong bonds also had higher siring success. The social bonds formed between males provided access to mating opportunities that they would not have been able to access without allies. This bonding also brought other benefits, including improving rank within the group and turning potential male rivals into allies.
[…]
authors […] relied on observational data and they were unable to confirm a causal relationship between male sociality and reproductive success […] relatively small number of subjects (32 males and 26 female chimpanzees). […] other factors, such as population density, how isolated a population is, or external strains on resources, might have an effect on the social behavior of chimpanzees, including bonds
Male bonobos are about three times as likely as chimps to engage in aggressive behavior […] Whereas chimpanzee violence is intense and indiscriminate, however, male bonobos don’t kill one another; they also almost exclusively pick fights with fellow males. […] Chimps are patriarchal, forming all-male coalitions that patrol their territory; they react violently when they happen upon an outsider or neighboring clan. “Chimpanzee intergroup encounters are not possible, […] They will kill each other.”
[…]
Bonobos—which some have called “hippie chimps”—are far more peaceful […] Their societies are dominated by females, and amicable interactions between communities are commonplace—and frequently marked by displays of enthusiastic sexual activity. And although bonobos are no strangers to conflict, scientists who study the apes have never witnessed a lethal encounter. As far as we know, Hare says, “no bonobo has ever murdered another bonobo.” […] bonobos weren’t afraid to push, hit, and bite their foes. Their aggression didn’t appear to be a turn-off for female bonobos, who actually preferred to mate with aggressive males.
[…]
But whereas male chimpanzees frequently ganged up to or defeat rivals or bully females, bonobo males mainly participated in one-on-one fights and rarely attacked members of the opposite sex. […] Mouginot suspects that male bonobos gravitate toward aggression because they don’t have to worry about retaliation from coordinated groups of other males—which, for chimps, carries a very real threat of death or serious injury.
[…]
Wrangham says the differences between chimps and bonobos may come down to a mere quirk of geography. […] chimps broke into small communities and began to compete for limited resources, bonobos were free to forage in large, stable social groups. Sticking together in this way may have allowed females to forge long-lasting alliances, eventually rising to dominance. “The root of everything […] seems to be female power.” […] “A male bonobo is able to be more aggressive because the females are allowing it. A coalition of females could shut that down if they decided to.”
[…]
Male bonobos may be more aggressive than assumed […] but the fact that they’re markedly less violent than chimps suggests some form of domestication has indeed occurred.
Baboon culture is rife with violence. […] one troop has found a better way. […] an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis killed off the most aggressive males in the group. [Researchers returned 10 years later.] Members sat closer together and groomed each other more. The dominance hierarchy remained—Number Two still scrapped with Numbers One and Three as in a normal troop—but the higher-ranking baboons didn’t vent their anger on subordinates. And that’s apparently improved life for lowlier baboons; they don’t have the classic markers of chronic stress […] in other troops. The most remarkable observation, however, was that the troop had apparently […] maintained the peace despite a complete turnover in the male population. […] male adolescent baboons leave their native troop and slowly work into a new one; Forest Troop had somehow managed to assimilate these surly newcomers without losing its peaceful culture. […] they suspect that it has to do with the observed friendly attitude of the female baboons towards newcomer males.
A study […] analyzed the remains of 24 ancient cities in present-day Mexico and found that collective governance, investments in infrastructure, and cooperation between households were consistent in the cities that lasted the longest.
[…]
Among the 24 ancient cities in the study, the cities that had more collective forms of governance tended to remain in power longer, sometimes by thousands of years more than the more autocratic ones. […] efforts to build dense and interconnected homes and large, central open plazas were two factors that contributed to sustainability and regional importance
[…]
residents of these cities faced everything from drought and earthquakes to periodic hurricanes and heavy rains, in addition to challenges from competing cities and groups.
Trump Blames Harris for Arlington National Cemetery Story: ‘She Made It All Up’
Harris campaign, DNC, announce unprecedented down-ballot spending
Youtube: Trump Makes FEDERAL FILING after Judge’s SWIFT REJECTION
Trump’s lawyers have refiled the attempt to move the hush money case to Federal court. This is the first step, where they ask for permission to make a case for moving the trial to federal court. It’s really a lot of the same stuff because they have to provide a reason, which is the same reasons they gave before.
It will be rejected because the reasons given don’t fit the situation. The whole reason for the odd requirement that they have to file a motion to request permission to file a motion to move the case to federal court is that the status of the case. Trump has already been found guilty but he has not been sentenced. If the defense had a good reason to move the case they already would have done so, if there was some problem with the trial it would be grounds for appeal. It’s hard to think of any situation when this part of the trial should be interrupted and the case redone. It would have to be some bad trial movie weirdness such as discovering the defendant was a federal officer but lost his memory and wasn’t aware of it during the initial trial.
It is really still all a stalling tactic. The lawyers are hoping that the judge will hold a hearing and take some time before rejecting the motion. We are getting close to the election and the lawyers just want to push the sentencing past the election.
Filed under, ‘they never give up.’
Religion Clause blog:
Teaching of Evolution Does Not Violate Establishment Clause
Former aide to New York governor charged with acting as an agent of the Chinese government
NYT:
A judge orders Trump to stop using Isaac Hayes’s song ‘Hold On, I’m Coming’ at his rallies.
God Awful Movies:
“GAM472 Noahs Ark 2007”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2DyzS7FSFVc
Greetings to readers of The Infinite Thread.
We have filled the previous chapter with 500 comments, and so The Infinite Thread has automatically rolled over to begin a new chapter with comment #1.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous chapter:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-6/#comment-2234712
[…] an important insight into the hateful, selfish absurdity that is the elongated muskrat
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-6/#comment-2234671
[…] the story of a Russian soldier from Siberia who was in prison back in 2022 but was sent to Ukraine. He survived and went home in July of this year only to be listed as a deserter and sent back to Ukraine where he was assigned to a new regiment where he was chained to a tree, a practice they refer to as “hugging a birch.”
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-6/#comment-2234670
In Russia, “heroes of the SMO” are being robbed en masse.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-6/#comment-2234667
A former Google product manager made an AI-powered website to sift through Project 2025 so you don’t have to
Not this shit again:
4 things that could complicate Congress’s efforts to avert shutdown
Donald Trump will likely ignore new congressional questions about Egypt and an alleged $10 million cash withdrawal, but the line of inquiry has real merit.
Kamala Harris’ polling lead might be real, but our system makes it easier for Republicans to win the White House, even when they receive fewer votes.
New audio, bad numbers, and more: Vance is a terrible running mate, by Mark Sumner
New Harris ad slams corporate price-gouging and its key enabler—Trump
Harris has hundreds of GOP endorsements—Trump has these weirdos
The former Wyoming congresswoman, Liz Cheney, the most prominent Republican critic of Donald J. Trump, did not speak at Democrats’ convention, calculating that she could have more impact later in the race.
New York Times link
Excerpt from a longer article:
Link
More, including videos, at the link.
The Hill:
Zelenskyy says Ukraine plans to indefinitely hold Russian territory it has seized
“For now, we need it,” he told NBC News in an exclusive interview, his first one-on-one since Kyiv took control of 500 square miles of Russian territory.
Videos available at the link.
Trump Media stock falls to new low
The Nightmare Scenario for Dark Matter is Inching Closer
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_P6WIRnweRo
Reginald Selkirk @ 9
The consequences of a shutdown will be awful, but will remind voters of how useless the House majority has been just a few weeks before election. As the Republicans are already in a panic, they will not want that. But I am assuming they make logical decisions which we already have seen is not correct.
Hundreds of thousands of Samsung electric ranges recalled in Canada over fire hazard
‘If you find cancer too early, we as doctors might not know what to do with it’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DZh0ZYb9Xq0
Criminatlee. It’s another article about how an atheist converted to Christianity.
The Atheist’s Dilemma
It amazes me that anyone finds Lewis to be convincing. Word games are not convincing arguments.
“And then, when I got to God, I once again happily ignored the rabbit trail of causes. Because I are an intelekshal.”
Bluesky Adds 2 Million New Users After Brazil’s X Ban
From this Week’s Media Watch
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/reef/104301136
As they go on to relate there, the Murdoch empire in Oz then cherry-picks and exploits the one and seemingly only scientist who disagrees with the Climate consensus so the typical but still well done segment.
Supreme Court won’t allow Oklahoma to reclaim federal money in dispute over abortion referrals
Oh & they’ve had a another good segment on billionaire and notorious portrait censorer Gina Rhinehart & her attempted anti-woke influencing too :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/gina/104301138
Transcript not working?
Trump Posts AI-Generated Image of Kamala Harris as Joseph Stalin, But Instead It Just Looks Like Mario
Tim Walz Uses Donald Trump’s ‘Exact Quote’ Against Him In Scathing New Takedown
Musk’s Starlink backtracks and says it will comply with judge’s order to block X in Brazil
Trump Ripped by John McCain’s Son—as Harris Picks Up Big Endorsement
Balloon-Based Sensor That Pinpoints Location Of Drone Operators Emerges In Ukraine
Republican Larry Hogan Debuts Campaign Ad Depicting ‘Horror’ Of Jan. 6
Yes, he could be “the face” of the anti-Trump GOP, because all the other never-trumpers have already been driven from office. Good luck with trying to become the one exception.
Reginald Selkirk @ 24:
(Jordan Monge writing in 2013, later Jordan Gandhi)
Riiight.
Lemaître was Belgian. Did she emigrate to that culture for its deep insight? No.
Wikipedia – Georges Lemaître
Riiight. tldr, eh. She might’ve liked Samson.
bwahaha
Written 2009
Written 2016
Sadly no follow-up. That’s the last I found from her.
Youtube: Federal Judge ISSUES RAPID ORDER to Trump Motion
The federal judge has already rejected Trump’s attempt to move his case to federal court. No hearing and no checking with the DA. The federal judge basically said that all of the issues fall into two types. The first group are things that the judge already rejected when he rejected Trump’s last attempt to move the case, nothing in the Supreme Court immunity ruling changes that. The rest could be grounds to appeal the case in NY but are not grounds to move the case to federal court. Without any issues to consider there is no reason to hold any hearings or get any opinions, motion denied. That he did this without even pretending to take any time is fairly insulting and means he knew what the lawyers were up to.
New York Times:
Airport still open and operating almost normally, etc.
NBC News:
NBC News:
Louisiana Offers Up More Women’s Bodies In Its Quest To Ban All Things Abortion-Related
‘J6 Awards Gala’ fundraiser scheduled for Trump New Jersey golf course postponed indefinitely
Link
Trump associates with all the best people.
Lynna@40:
Idiot treason goofs can’t even get bulk discounts right. 12 people getting separate tickets would be $18,000, which is way less than $50,000.
This coming just hours after that other Trump supporter who couldn’t accurately count to three …
@41: Second link (right at the bottom) doesn’t work. It highlights like a link but nothing happens if you click it.
Ireland to set up inquiry into sexual abuse at schools run by religious orders | Ireland | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/03/ireland-to-set-up-inquiry-into-sexual-abuse-at-schools-run-by-religious-orders
Drosophila study discovers mechanism that potentially could control longevity, cancer cell production
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-drosophila-mechanism-longevity-cancer-cell.html
Re: Bekenstein Bound @ 42:
It’s bonus crap. There’s a flyer image with prices.
“General admission” = $1,500. A “VIP” ticket = $2,500.
A “VIP” table for 12 = $30,000. Same VIP perks but you claim the table?
A “VIP Platinum” table for 12 = $50,000. VIP Platinum is like regular VIP plus a plaque and a speaker sits at your table.
I think that was meant to be plain text. The link above it was likely composed with a typoed closing tag, resulting in this weird structure as the blog tried to clean it up.
That’s a technically valid with every tag closed and nested, but humans wouldn’t manually write that. Empty “a” tags are unclickable and invisible links.
Going down together.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/t4Ni7Mmrx4QZSThn/
Pat Toomey former Republican senator from Pennsylvania will not endorse Trump.
.http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx6ZhvpdHLNwwE_GPKi2z3rrk2gcm2zqIi
Top Anti-Abortion Leader Is Telling Her Followers Not to Vote for Trump
@36
Federal judge rejects Trump’s request to intervene in “hush money” case
Not sentencing would also be election interference. So the correct course of action is to do the right thing because it is the right thing, not because it is convenient or inconvenient for a particularly whiney crybaby.
Maduro decrees Christmas will start in October as Venezuela cracks down on dissent
@9, 21
House GOP leaders weigh options as Trump pushes for a government shutdown fight
Republicans in Massachusetts select attorney John Deaton to take on Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Let’s hope he enjoys being humbled. It’s going to happen again in November.
@42
Sorry. My mistake. The last line was meant to be a comment, not a link.
@45, thanks for explaining my mistake. :-)
Navy Chiefs Conspired To Get Themselves Illegal Warship Wi-Fi
Link
Headline-Making Report Full Of Mistakes: Coal Better Than Gas?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=shk1zmfkoA0
New Vance revelations spark fresh questions about vetting process
As JD Vance’s record of condemning Americans without children gets worse, a question hangs overhead: Did Team Trump actually vet this guy?
Cartoon: Prairie progressives
https://x.com/Morning_Joe/status/1830920806852968911
Video at the link.
News Observer link
Re: Lynna, OM @ #57….
On vettng Vance, there’s a third possibility… They found all of Vance’s statements and opinions and liked what they found.
whheydt @61, yeah, that’s what I thought. That Vance guy, he says all of the misogynistic rubbish they wish they could say out loud.
In other news, Biden administration to hit Russia with sanctions for trying to manipulate U.S. opinion ahead of the election
ProPublica
Ginni Thomas Privately Praised Group Working Against Supreme Court Reform: “Thank You So, So, So Much”
by Andy Kroll, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented / Sept. 4,2024
Much more at the title link.
Ginni Thomas Privately Praised Group Working Against Supreme Court Reform: ‘Thank You So, So, So Much’
In a call with donors, First Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford read the supportive email he said came from Thomas. The leader of the religious-rights group also labeled Justice Elena Kagan “treasonous” for backing a stronger ethics code.
Led by Caitlin Clark, Kelsey Mitchell, Indiana Fever clinch first playoff berth since 2016
That is one goal achieved. Clark not only has the record for assists by a rookie, but also 3 point shots made by a rookie. She is also widely considered to be the lead candidate for Rookie of the Year. Angel Reese is getting a lot of rebounds and double-doubles, but her Chicago team is not winning very much.
tomh @63. Sorry. I didn’t see your comment 63 before I posted comment 64.
@ Lynna
I know. :)
WOWT News:
Nebraska Supreme Court to hear challenge on abortion ballot initiative
By Gina Dvorak / Sep. 3, 2024
Btw, if both the pro and the anti amendments pass, the one with the most votes will become law.
Reginald Selkirk @ # 50: Maduro decrees Christmas will start in October …
Which means we’re called back to duty in the War on Xmas early.
Damnit, where did I put those leftover anti-reindeer shells?
Independent: Trump now claims Arlington cemetery scandal was ‘all made up’ by Harris
Trump is going full projection on Arlington. Now is claiming Harris is doing what he has been doing to Harris, simply making up scandals because he hasn’t found anything juicy to use against her.
Bolts:
Minnesota’s Voting Rights Act Preserves This Key Protection A Federal Court Has Erased
Minnesota ensured that voters and private groups can sue over VRA violations, restoring a longstanding right that federal judges had gutted last fall.
Sean Ericson | September 4, 2024
Record measles outbreak in Oregon blamed on vaccine exemptions
Ella Emhoff Performing Femininity Wrong And MAGA Chuds Are NOT ERECT.
When you hate women, no gender performance will ever be good enough!
Four killed in shooting at Georgia high school, suspect is in custody
At least nine others were injured in the violence at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
Link
Navy commander relieved of duty after photo showed him firing rifle with scope backward
Telegram Now Under Fire Over Deepfake Porn In South Korea
Germany’s Far Right Is in a Panic Over Telegram
Phoenix Marks 100 Straight Days of 100-Degree Temperatures
Trump-backed candidate in Montana caught on tape making racially-charged remarks about Native American tribe
‘Blue dot’ signs popping up in Omaha aim to highlight importance of swing district
Ken Paxton sues Bexar County for hiring outside firm to register new voters
SaveAfox:
“Jackal pups get their first experience outside!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_pIHUtQjcbA
@62
US accuses Russia of 2024 election interference
For some definition of “well-known.”
Did the Tennessee firm break any laws? Because I don’t see anything about charges filed against them.
NPR:
Legal experts want Judge Cannon removed from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents case
By Greg Allen / September 4, 2024
“Undercover Audio Leaks That May Cost Republicans The Senate”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=hOJ-QR5PGcw
The Republican voters won’t care. The Indian and the independent voters are another matter.
Georgia high school shooting leaves four confirmed dead and nine injured
.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/04/georgia-high-school-shooting-apalachee
Pro-Trump official in “key” Georgia GOP position complained about Jewish people “controlling everything”
Pope wades back into parenthood debate with cat and dog quip
And how many babies do you have, your royal popeness?
Tim Walz Trolls J.D. Vance by Buying Donuts Like a Normal Human Person
Trump Is Losing His Mind And The Media Is Ignoring It
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=RtSXZYFVXo4
The media is yellow.
Hawaii congresswoman says Tulsi Gabbard endorsing Trump is ‘not pono’
Jesse Dollemore:
“Conservatives Fake Like They Had No Idea Tucker Carlson is a Nazi!!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=d_eNBbcPRk4
Saw The Eclipse, Aurora And Perseids? Now See A Fourth Rare Sky Event. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS
.https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2024/09/04/saw-the-eclipse-aurora-and-perseids-now-see-a-fourth-rare-sky-event/
Bizarre Organism From a Toxic Lake Is a Possible Missing Link For Complex Life
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2vzOXj_lh58
New Scientist
“How to avoid being fooled by AI-generated misinformation”
.https://www.newscientist.com/article/2445475-how-to-avoid-being-fooled-by-ai-generated-misinformation/
WaPo:
Harris agrees to debate rules — with muted mics — in letter to ABC
By Toluse Olorunnipa and Tyler Pager / Sep. 4, 2024
Teen arraigned on attempted murder in shooting of San Francisco 49ers rookie says he is very sorry
The shoe drops:
Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney Endorses Kamala Harris For President
Elon Musk ‘can’t wait’ to help cut government programs if Trump is reelected
He could start with all those fat government rocket contracts to SpaceX.
@64:
The Indiana Fever wins again, 93-86 over the L.A. Sparks.
Caitlin Clark gets a “triple double” with 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 24 points.
This was only the second triple double by a rookie in WNBA history. The first was by Caitlin Clark on 6 July, 2024
The ‘Rookie of the Year’ award is looking like a strong bet.
@83 Reginald Selkirk: No charges against Tenet media or it’s owners yet. The indictment says the company owners/founders knew where the money was coming from so I would expect charges. It also says the influencers that got paid were not aware of where the money came from so it’s unlikely they get charged.
@62, 83
Project 2025 ex-chief appeared on media channel DOJ called ‘covert project’ linked to Russia
Stephen Colbert Jokes the Election Is Down to 7 States: Michigan, Wisconsin, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance
(This is a joke based on the 7 stages of grief, widely attributed to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross)
Trump campaign says the former president believes ‘anyone convicted of a crime’ should be jailed
Followup to comments 83 and l01.
The Justice Department may have understated its findings in an indictment unsealed on Wednesday.
YouTube link
Chris Hayes presented some excellent analysis in several of his segments this evening.
YouTube link
Followup to Reginald @98.
Liz Cheney says she’s voting for Harris
WaPo:
New Paxton lawsuit targets mail-in voter registrations in Texas’s Bexar County
By Arelis R. Hernández / September 4, 2024
Huge SpaceX rocket explosion shredded the upper atmosphere
Followup to birger @92.
Conservatives are shocked that famed bigot Tucker Carlson is a bigot
https://x.com/PsychoPAC24/status/1831273499035390028
Video at the link.
The video and commentary is also available here.
“Opinion Birds of a feather”
A cartoon by Ann Telnaes published by the Washington Post.
Hostage families press Biden admin to make a deal with Hamas that doesn’t include Israel
A U.S. official said a unilateral deal is unlikely, but the administration has compiled a list of prisoners held by the U.S. whose release might interest Hamas.
Newsweek: Russian forces have continued to make advances toward the city of Pokrovsk, according to the U.S. think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW), whose latest map shows the state of play on the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Youtube: 05 Sep: ONSLAUGHT. Russians GO ALL IN ON POKROVSK OFFENSIVE! | War in Ukraine Explained
It looks like Russia is making the big move towards Pokrovsk, the last major city in Donetsk held by Ukraine. Russia has been advancing towards Pokrovsk all year bit by bit. For the last month or two they have been accumulating large forces for an attack on the city. The Russians have 30,000+ on the attack, launching groups of 200 or so again and again all across the line. The Ukrainians are being forced into retreats because they simply don’t have the manpower. Russians are taking heavy losses trying to advance that fast.
The Russians are running out of time before winter and need to cross a lot of ground if they want to take the city this year. This is likely to be an important battle in the outcome of the war.
WaPo Live:
Trump repeats praise of Hungary’s autocratic leader
By Abbie Cheeseman / Sep 24, 2024 9:37 p.m. EDT
TYT Elon Musk Questions Whether We Should Have Democracy under 15 minutes long.
Stephen Colbert is brilliant!
Wooing Undecided Voters | Trump’s Marijuana Plan | Holocast denier and 1990s Porn Expert Mark Robinson is running for governor in North Carolina.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QvqhyslruVM
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Trump Campaign Gives Up on New Hampshire and Minnesota as Trump Hides on Fox News: A Closer Look
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kgjzkT05DdI
Jimmy Kimmel
Trump Can’t Put a Sentence Together, Gets Questioned About Epstein Island & RFK Jr on Kamala
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=lpc00XkEgMg
Late Night with Seth Meyers
Kamala Harris Unveils Economic Proposal Focusing on Small Businesses
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kEwqEi7wx-0
Lynna@105:
I knew Apple hardware was expensive, but this is ridiculous! :)
Molecular ‘cage’ approach could advance selective elimination of cancer cells
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-molecular-cage-approach-advance-cancer.html
These substances are deadly in the slightly acidic conditions of cancer cells but harmless in normal environments.
New population model identifies phases of human dispersal across Europe 43000 -32 000 years ago.
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-population-phases-human-dispersal-europe.html
Planned Parenthood confirms cyber-attack as RansomHub threatens to leak data
Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza | Devi Sridhar | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/05/scientists-death-disease-gaza-polio-vaccinations-israel
I am gonna have to inspect that book!
http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx2lifwEgatwygB9XepiWM98rbSXX57i3W
or possibly
http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx2lifwEgatwygB9XepiWM98rbSXX57i3W?si=uw-DChSX79ihtaJE
Trump’s New Crypto Project Is Reportedly Saving the Best Loot for Its Founders
Japan Exterminates Killer Mongooses That Just Had One Job
Allan Lichtman – A second Trump presidency would be a disaster! Youtube short and short it is but spot on.
Huh. Not working? Should be.. dunno why not. Take II :
here Maybe this time it’ll play and be found as expected?
@128, 129 When I hover over it, the URL has an unclosed quotation mark at the end.
Oh FFS! Nope. Still not & beats me why not. Sigh.
Incidentally, Allan Lichtman will be making his 2024 eeltion prediction based on his special keys methodology in approx nine hours on youtube Allan Lichtman’s 2024 Presidential Prediction! | Lichtman Live #72
Reginald @ 126, it was only a matter of time before Trump and his sons used a crypto project to commit yet another scam.
In somewhat related news: On Trump and crime, his campaign flunks self-awareness (again)
As Team Trump says he believes “anyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars,” it’s worth noting that a little self-awareness goes a long way.
Excerpt from a longer article that discusses the upcoming presidential campaign debate:
Link
@130. Reginald Selkirk : Thanks.
Take III – hopefully now working?
(Usual cut’n’paste of the “magic” formula thingy that gets links to work without embedding..)
@128, 129, 134
It didn’t work for me, came up 404. So I removed the trailing quotation mark from the URL and it worked.
the link
open-angle-bracket the-letter-a href= open-quotation-mark actual-URL close-quotation mark close-angle-bracket the-text-that-appears open-angle-bracket forward-slash the-letter-a close-angle-bracket
Preview is your friend. Hover over your link and look over the resulting URL.
Elon Musk reveals that he is becoming more bonkers over time. He is also dangerous:
Link
See also: Link
See also: Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first
Link
Helen Lewis, writing for The Atlantic:
Followup to Reginald @72.
More details:
Link
Trump speech (filled with lies over job statistics, wages, etc.) had this to say about Harris:
WaPo Live:
Followup to comments 83, 102, and 105.
How Did Evil Russians Manage To Fool Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, AND Benny Johnson? Wow!
It was fun and easy!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/how-did-evil-russians-manage-to-fool
West Palm Police ‘sweep’ GOP office after suspected bugging devices found. What were they?
Joe Biden Keeps Doing Clean Energy To Rural America As If It Had Abundant Wind, Sun.
Oh, by golly, it does!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/joe-biden-keeps-doing-clean-energy
Excerpts from a longer Washington Post article:
Judge Chutkan Fights Trump Attempt To Spin Immunity Decision As Automatic Win
Luke Mayville, Idahoans for Open Primaries:, Reclaim Idaho
See also: Idaho Statesman
Honduran president faces call to resign as video scandal intensifies
WaPo:
Trump backs plan that would give Elon Musk broad role in U.S. policymaking
By Marianne LeVine, Jeff Stein and Trisha Thadani / September 5, 2024
New gun group launches to fill NRA vacuum
Their acronym is SOFA? Got to wonder if this is a prank.
DJT Investor Deck Leaked, It Is As Bad As You Would Imagine
Trump Campaign ‘Don’t Talk To Press!’ Email Leaked To Press Immediately
Just a really well-oiled machine, that Trump campaign.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-campaign-dont-talk-to-press
Michigan Republicans enlist extremist who opposed abortion for rape victims because “God put them in this moment”
More at the link.
Trump admits he lost in 2020, leading white nationalist Nick Fuentes to disavow him
@145:
A zinger
“Warning. This poscast is not even safe for my work. And my work is making this podcast.”
Scathing Atheist 603 Something Italian Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=72gJ6EtSxcc
‘Nuclear Fusion Predictions are Nonsense’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=RbZ-XYy0k10
Stonehenge tale gets ‘weirder’ as Orkney is ruled out as altar stone origin
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/05/stonehenge-tale-gets-weirder-as-orkney-is-ruled-out-as-altar-stone-origin
‘Right to Repair for your body‘: The rise of DIY, pirated medicine
I like DIY. His theatrics are a red flag though: tossing out unprescribed pills, calling a pharma CEO on stage (lying to get through, getting hung up on for that and his silly group name), swallowing a HepC pill on stage (which he didn’t need).
Daraprim is not “HIV medication”; it treats fungal pneumonia in HIV patients, not HIV itself. To be fair, a linked article said they also replicated Cabotegravir, which is an HIV treatment. Also Naloxone (Narcan).
Counterpoint
From the hour speech at the link:
Mark Cuban offers to serve in the Harris White House
And Elon Musk wants a position in a Trump administration. Can we put to rest that notion that people who succeed in business are better at everything? These people are not accustomed to working for the salary government employees get. And there’s the question of conflict of interest. And the question of big shot CEOs having to abide by the rules.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #159…
About businessmen working at government pay rates… FDR managed to get that done with his “dollar a year” men.
Follow-up to #110:
The podcaster who blew up online for Hitler apologia? JD Vance follows him on two accounts!
JD Vance will join Tucker Carlson on stage after the ex-Fox News anchor hosted [that] pro-Nazi [podcaster]
Trump Lawyer Corrects Self After Saying Clarence Thomas ‘Directed’ Defense
Probably a slip of the tongue but needs to be investigated. If it’s literal at any level it’s the sort of blatant offense that would force Thomas out.
Source : https://www.space.com/nasa-solar-sail-space-photo
I’ll be the first to say it:
This game fucking blows chunks.
Sorry, but I simply refuse to mince words. I mean, it takes 18 years to complete just the tutorial section at the start? And the optimal strategy requires spending another 4 years on “optional” additional tutorial content and then 43(!) years grinding for gold full-time?
And don’t get me started on the final boss. One-dimensional cut-out cartoon villain with no moral complexity or any more sophisticated a motive than “I can haz world domination?” and no more nuanced a plan than 1 get rich, 2 become president, 3 all your planet are belong to us, departing from stereotype only in having a weird orange hue in lieu of a moustache that he regularly twirls — what is this, a throwback to the NES era? Even most SNES villains had more depth and characterization — and that’s before we get to how you beat him.
Of course you don’t just go up to him and kick his ass after battling through a final level full of elite mooks, nuh-uh, he has to be a gimmick boss, and one with an RNG mechanic to boot, where you pull some lever on some slot-machine-a-like and hope it spins up three Harrises. If it doesn’t, game over.
And this in a game with no save checkpoints, no continues, and various kinds of unhealable stat-nerfing perma-damage that even common basic early-game enemies can inflict, and that is running off a hack-resistant server, not your own hardware where you could find and clone or hex-edit the save data … if I’d known what I was signing up for I’d have said “no thanks”.
Who the fuck designed this thing, anyway? The Marquis de Sade’s tech-savvy great great great granddaughter?
0/5 Would Not Recommend.
:)
Oh, did I mention the “optional” additional tutorial content is all ridiculously expensive DLC? <smh>
Today, Freddy Mercury would have had his 78th birthday.
It would have placed hom at the same age as Bill Clinton. And that other guy.
birgerjohansson@156,
Nuclear fusion – Sabine Hossenfelder talks vacuous vapourware.
Israeli podcasters are laughing about genocide. What would it take to stop? | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/06/israeli-podcasters-laughing-gaza-genocide-two-nice-jewish-boys
CNN: China’s men soccer team faces fan backlash after humiliating loss to arch-rivals Japan
China winning this game would have been a major upset but a 7-0 game is a crushing defeat. This is an issue on a couple of levels. The 7-0 score means Japan continued to score after having a huge lead. This tracks with the increasing national friction between the two countries. For China it is also indicative of their play getting worse even as the sport becomes more popular in China. As there is more money in play corruptions has become even more of a problem. There are also problems caused by heavy handed attempts by the government to push sports while keeping any individual players from becoming popular.
Kamala Harris surges in the latest Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen typically has a Republican bias.
White House reacts to ‘obscene’ campus roast of VP Harris at University of South Carolina
Text quoted by Reginald @153:
Ah. This is good. Because Nick Fuentes decided to advertise Trump’s statement it will get even more attention.
Now they are shooting each other in the foot.
re Reginald Selkirk @171: USC President Amiridis:
Of course he is personally not offended at all.
Followup to comments 99, 148 and 159.
Commentary from Steve Benen:
Link
WaPo Live
Trump attends court arguments on E. Jean Carroll case verdict
San Marino made history by winning a competitive match for the first time with victory against Liechtenstein in the Nations League.
NBC News:
Commentary:
Link
Rambling, bumbling, policy ignoramus Trump spouts word salad:
Link
Bits and pieces of campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Link
Embedded links to sources are included at the main link.
Florida surgeon mistakenly removes patient’s liver instead of spleen, causing him to die, widow says
Link
Accused Georgia school shooter and his father will stay in custody
Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews: DR. CALIGARI
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5KvgeFbC7dU
“This film is too predictable!”
In rant against Tim Walz, Fox host resurrects strange masculinity test
JFC. This guy Watters is still on TV, replacing Tucker Carlson in the Fox News lineup. Who is watching this “news” broadcast and taking this guy seriously?
https://www.wonkette.com/p/missouri-judge-wont-allow-blatant
Celebrating the initiatives that should be celebrated:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/spread-the-word-on-joe-bidens-climate
Trump’s “news conference”
WaPo Live
[A legacy that will last long after Trump (and many of us) are gone.]
Lynna @184:
“No reasonable person”
Judge delays Donald Trump’s sentencing in hush money case until after November election
As I have pointed out before, sentencing might have an effect on the election. Not sentencing might have an effect on the election. So the proper choice is to do the right thing because it is the right thing.
2 Virginia Guardsmen Are Running a Rural Anti-Government Militia
Lawrence O’Donnell – New York’s stupidest rich people clapped after Trump said ‘child care is child care’ (9:52)
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain, @188, Good answer. :-)
In other news: Donald Trump has claimed Vice President Kamala Harris lacks support from law enforcement. There’s fresh evidence to the contrary.
Also, in breaking news, Liz Cheney says that her father, Dick Cheney, is going to vote for Kamala Harris.
Link to Daily Beast article.
Monsoon Rain is falling in the Sahara Desert
Somewhat good news: they are diminished but they still exist.
What I saw at the Moms for Liberty summit: a diminished and desperate group
More at the link, including an analysis of how Moms for Liberty stoke transgender panic.
Pro-Trump Media Firm Abruptly Folds After Russia Scheme Exposed
JD Vance has a choice. He can disavow Tucker Carlson or lose an election
(Why not both?)
Liz Cheney Says Dick Cheney Is Voting For Kamala Harris
Honestly, I did not know that Dick Cheney was still alive.
US activist – a 26 year old American womsn- shot dead in occupied West Bank | BBC News
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BjgrZUT8G8M
Reginald Selkirk @ 198
He is alive thanks to a heart transplant which I find hilarious. The heartless villain given a new chance of life.
New Poll Shows Democratic Senate Candidate Down JUST ONE PERCENT In Florida
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9qYXxLHpfAQ
Aaaargh! Don’t give me false hope!
Michigan judge loses docket after she’s recorded insulting gay people and Black people
Hottest summer on record could lead to warmest year ever measured | Climate crisis | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/06/hottest-summer-record
JD Vance tells Arizona crowd late Sen. John McCain wouldn’t have supported Harris
Watch Live as a Busted Boeing Starliner Returns to Earth Without Its Crew
NBC News:
Washington Post:
Everyone hates JD Vance. So why is Trump’s campaign thrilled with him?, by Mark Sumner
Posted by readers of the article:
Scientists confirm first lunar cave that could help shelter astronauts from the moon’s extreme temperatures | CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/17/science/moon-lava-tube-cave-discovery/index.html
This is two months late but still interesting.
Trump Begs Republicans To Shut Down The Government Before Election
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SU3a0ISFmW0
And he wants congress to outlaw something that is already outlawed.
Federal Indictment Reveals It’s Remarkably Easy To Fool Right-Wing Media
It’s easy when they want to be fooled.
Sham U.S. news site spreads false claims about Kamala Harris
More disturbing climate news:
https://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/story/weather/2024/09/06/ohio-drought-crop-damage-little-rain-in-forecast/75084314007/
Yet the state votes again and again for the party of “drill, baby, drill” and climate change denial.
Ohio! Where the men are men and the settees are afraid.
Lynna, ONM@178,
Could it be that Trump was not talking about tariffs, but intends to run a protection racket against foreign countries?
“Nice capital you have there, Denmark. Would be a pity if it got nuked.”
After all, he is known to have complained that having nuclear weapons and not using them was stupid.
I’d say Phil Boas is delusional if he thinks Vance’s association with Carlson will make the slightest difference. Antisemitism IOKIYAR.
Biden pulls no punches in fiery new video.
https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1832063835198439496
The video is also available here, with commentary, and a transcript.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s denialism isn’t surprising since he’s long been doing pro-Russian foreign policy work for free.
Link
Posted by readers of the article:
@216
No. America IS a failed state. Just not for the reasons that capitalists like Trump or Biden (or Harris for that matter) are willing to admit.
More than a dozen killed in latest Israeli strike amid polio vaccinations
Link
The USA already has laws in place to prevent non-citizens from voting. The Republican talking point that claims non-citizens are voting has been debunked many times.
Hilarious that Tim Pool, Benny Johnson etc. are claiming to be “victims” of the Tenet Media affair, after having been paid huge amounts of money for making a handful of videos which hardly anyone watched.
Wonkette: Dick Cheney And Liz Cheney Voting For Kamala Harris, Triggering Great Disturbance In The Force
Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/dick-cheney-and-liz-cheney-voting
There’s just a bit more at the link, but the text included a celebration of a fantasy about Dick Cheney’s death, so I didn’t include it.
WaPo:
Missouri abortion rights measure is invalid, judge says days before deadline
By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff / Sep 7, 2024
https://www.wonkette.com/p/moms-for-liberty-very-mad-media-said
Americans without health insurance surged with Trump—and plummeted under Biden
Boeing Starliner lands in New Mexico as crew remains on International Space Station
Could Two New Docs Subtly Change the Presidential Election?
Former President George W. Bush has no plans to endorse in the election
Cantaloupe sold in five states recalled: FDA
Liz Cheney will back Allred in Texas Senate race
Judge keeps Libertarian candidates off ballot for Congress
CNN: Trump calls for modifying 25th Amendment to make it possible to remove a vice president
Trump’s still obsessed with running against Biden. I wonder if he is still angry over 2016 and feels the need to beat Biden more then the need to run again.
Lynna, OM @ 222
Don’t worry, I am quite capable of making revenge fantasies about Dick Cheney on my own.
BTW if I have to team up with morally ambgiuios characters, my first choices would be Dr. Johannes Cabal and Hannibal Lecter, not Dick Cheney.
Also, the creepy guy you never quite see in the beginning of that David Lynch film? He is the obvious choice for Veep.
Cheney revisited: Use one of those weird curses you find in even weirder Japanese films.
@ 223
In case anyone was wondering, yes, he’s a cousin to Rush Limbaugh who is still, thankfully, dead.
NYT:
Trump threatens lawyers, donors and others with prosecution after election.
Maggie Haberman / Sep 7, 2024
Takena Nagao does animations with clay (NOT like Wallace and Gromit, splatter warning) (NSWF)
“Midnight Vampire”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BRHrAMYkeLs
Akira MacKenzie@235:
Oh. Guess I won’t need these then. <puts away the garlic, wooden stake, and vial of holy water>
Trump:
… says the first president ever to receive a felony conviction.
Putin Stooge in America With Terrible Defence”
.https://youtube.com/live/Qtaysw5_jIw
“Even Tories Think Their Prisons Policy Was Wrong?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tQ2A-4vCMfE
DNC flies plane over Michigan Stadium with banner blasting Ohio State fan JD Vance
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson says he wants abortion to be illegal at ‘zero’ weeks, in new audio released by Democrats
The Complete List Of Past GOP Presidential Ticket Members Who Say They’re Voting For Trump
Shorts.
God Awful Movies finding /the best/ autism representation
.https://youtube.com/shorts/lYmZB7TF2X0
Stephen Miller Take It Upon Himself To Elevate Trump’s Non-Citizen Voting Lies in Arizona
The text quoted above is excerpted from a longer news roundup. You may have to scroll to find the bit about America First Legal.
Michael Shells McNamee and Vanessa Buschschluter of BBC News report that Venezuelan opposition leader Eduardo Gonzalez has left the country for Spain.
From the New York Times, September 7, 2024:
Cat Becomes Well-Cited Scholar With New Scam Method
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FtuSG5fPJkw
Grifting is the oldest profession, and will be with us forever.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/bc-conservatives-doing-like-the-french
Sky rookie Angel Reese’s season over with wrist injury
With six games remaining in the Sky’s season, Reese had already been eclipsed by Caitlin Clark as the probable WNBA rookie of the year. The Sky are 12-22, while Clark has turned around the Fever, who are now 18-17 (After a 1-8 start) and playoff-bound.
Labour’s Turn to Delay Brexit Checks
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=apgHzrbVZWo
The system is quite inadequate, and has been since 2021
Media bias
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxmkKEfsYqJ2Kg_nBa9LANqU0KLYxnV6Kz
Even Trump’s team can’t defend his lie about schools and surgeries, by Mark Sumner
Monday Mini:
Blaming Women in South Korea |
Stuff Mom Never Told You
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=weW8n_vhXEg
Fugitive Televangelist Wanted by F.B.I. Is Caught in the Philippines.
New York Times link
Weeks of tense standoff in the Philippines have ended in the capture of a pastor accused of leading an international ring of sex abuse and trafficking of young women and girls.
More, including photos, at the link.
Trump Says He’s Putting Elon Musk in Charge of Making the Government Super Efficient, Like He Did With Twitter
Canada beats United States in U.S. for first time since 1957, winning friendly 2-1 (soccer)
“Solution to a cosmic mystery—the eccentric orbits of trans-Neptunian objects”
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-solution-cosmic-mystery-eccentric-orbits.html
The large numbers of trans-Neptunian objects are also a potential solution to the problem of terraforming Mars. With the discovery of 1996TL66 it was obvious that many objects > 100 km were at eccentric orbits. At aphelia, a modest delta-v could send them on course for a gravity assist at Neptune or Uranus.
Most outer objects are 50% solids, the rest volatiles. Assume half of the volatiles will be gaseous at Mars’ temperature range, the rest water.
On Earth the atmosphere has a 10 ton mass for each m2. For a similar atmospheric mass per area unit on Mars you need~
40 ×(m2 per km2= 1 million) × (area of Mars= 150 million km2) tons of trans-Neptunian matter.
6000 million million, 6× 10 to the 15 power tons. That’s 6-12 100 km objects, assuming a density between 1 and 2 grams cm2.
For this you get a 10 m martian layer of gravel (assuming a density twice that of water) plus a 10m layer of water, plus a gas column with the same mass per area unit as the terrestrial atmosphere. With gravity=0.37 g you get a pressure of 370 millibar, at average, consisting of nitrogen, some methane and a lot of carbon dioxide.
Kimberly Guilfoyle forced to ask audience to clap as awkward speech falls flat
If you live in Montana or Nebraska you can make a difference in the election for a senator to DC.
In Texas or Florida it is more of a long shot, but Ted Cruz and Rick Scott are nervous. Please contribute to giving them insomnia!
This was charming.
Jesse Dollemore:
“Tucker Carlson & Charlie Kirk Ratchet Up The Hate for American Military!!!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mc5I0dZIKAo
Meh. Is anyone surprised? Revolted, maybe, not surprised.
Meet the postpartum punks – a primal scream in the face of all tradwives | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/08/postpartum-punks-tradwives-pushy-mothers-music-industry
Comedian Jamali Maddix: ‘The translator suddenly said: “I think she might have killed a guy”’
| Documentary | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/sep/08/comedian-jamali-maddix-the-translator-suddenly-said-i-think-she-might-have-killed-a-guy
The bassist Herbie Flowers has died.
I was an atheist who set out to prove Shroud of Turin was fake – but probing it turned me CHRISTIAN & I know it’s REAL
Posted for amusement. It’s the Sun.
@260 birgerjohansson: That isn’t so much hate for the military as misogyny. Those two love the military as long as it fits into their fascist view of how the military should be. When those two think military they are thinking about unrealistic movie versions of WW1/WW2, burly men with big guns storming the enemy. Women don’t have a place in their fantasy military except for raising the next generation of soldiers.
Reginald Selkirk @ 264
For the benefit of Americans, The Sun is part of the British “Gutter Press”🙂.
Katherine, a recent USA-to-Sweden migrant blog.
“Refreshingly Swedish”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=z4f3DvxFzvk
(Of course, we in the North look down on those in South Sweden as they hardly ever can drive their trucks across the ice. BJ)
JM @ 265
(Vision of Tucker Carlson singing ‘Das Vaterland muss ruhig sein’, see ‘Casablanca’ for melody)
Also, Stan Ridgeway; ‘Cannon Song’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OcmMmHQU8cg
‘The Real Polyamory Behind Wonder Woman’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=lTi6AuyObps
Swedish truck porn.
‘Driving our Scania R770 Before it Ships to USA! ‘
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aTImgTh6ZZU
‘It’s already happening’: How Trump’s intimidation and authoritarian tactics will be amplified.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=x4kh21iFIyI&si=MQpbyOEvTQuXGxdA
This news item was clearly aimed at people who have been in hibernation and are emerging like cicadas.
Promising immunotherapy treatment targets multiple pathogenic hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-immunotherapy-treatment-multiple-pathogenic-hallmarks.html
Atheist Women: Why so few? What Does the Research Say?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=sStW6K0EBqA
There are probably many reasons.
In the comments section, it is suggested that this is a version of ‘sunk cost fallacy’ as religious women look back at their unhappy marriages, wasted youth and truncated careers and see it as a “spiritual investment”.
“My God Is Bigger Than Your God”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bVSHqCA5YTc
Not much has changed since 1989
There is an article on the Reykjavik Grapevine, an English-language site in Iceland. The article is all about why you shouldn’t try to get a close look at any of the volcanic eruptions…mostly on account of all the ways you might die in the attempt. The article includes this gem as one of the reasons….
The article is here: https://grapevine.is/travel/2024/09/07/dont-go-to-the-volcano-because-you-might-die/
‘Top Psych Reveals Trump’s Dire Mental Condition’ | The Weekend Show
.https://youtube.com/live/8E0BsgpLtWA
Takena clay animation. I make no sense of this, but it is art, so what do I know? Hope some of you enjoy it.
レモンちゃん対怪人シロアリー （Lemon Animation 2）
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_xvyTaB1jYQ&feature=shared
Girl X part2
I understand this claymation art message! And it is less violent than the Simpsons.
.https://youtube.com/shorts/RWw2yL5EkQ4
Lynna@248:
And he was right to do so. In another hundred years — if, that is, there’s anyone left by then — climate change denial will be treated in like fashion to Holocaust denial.
Meanwhile, Harris is slipping in the polls (538 now gives her barely better than even odds) for some reason, and then there’s trouble brewing up north at the federal level, too, as the Canadian Liberal party’s center-left coalition partner abandons it:
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/09/05/Jagmeet-Singh-Cancels-NDP-Liberal-Agreement/
IOW, he put party (“no NDP political payoff”) ahead of country (“delivered progressive policies” and, of course, keeping the Tories out).
Just like Trump.
He’s thrown us all under a bus … Oilievre’s campaign bus.
I might not even survive this. The planet might not survive it. The previous Tory federal government, Stephen Harper’s, lasted 10 long years full of drill, baby, drill and climate change denial. Another like that and we’re probably losing the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets from all the tar sands oil that will be dug up and burned. Not to mention our own Arctic turning into quicksand and swallowing northern communities (mostly poor and Native, aka disposable to the fatcats and their Tory lapdogs).
Making matters worse, Oilievre has been caught on tape hobnobbing with Nazis and other assorted deplorables. Much like Trump back in 2016. I doubt four years of Oilievre will do as much damage as Trump did — for one thing, abortion rights are probably secure in Canada — but it sure won’t do any good, not for the poor or working class or marginalized groups. And definitely not for the climate. Falcon and Rustad, Singh and Oilievre, and Trump, all represent existential risk worldwide via climate disaster.
At least I’ll be able to directly vote against Oilievre.
Yes, Trump’s campaign has unpaid bills in multiple U.S. cities
Friends: A canid, mustelids and an ungulate.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/cpx4BSnY7jS9C85a/
‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ Can Be Cleaned Within 10 Years, Says Ocean Cleanup Project
Link
As Donald Trump threatens election officials with lengthy prison sentences, the Republican’s authoritarian-style platform is becoming more overt.
NBC News:
Commentary:
Link
As U.S. officials combat the Kremlin’s efforts to attack American elections, Donald Trump wants voters to see “poor” Russia as a victim. No, seriously
The trend here is clear, the picture is easy to see, and Hillary was right when she said that Trump is Putin’s puppet.
Summarized by Steve Benen from Bloomberg News:
Trump gets a head start on Big Lie 2.0 with focus on mail-in voting, by Mark Sumner
Cartoon: Maga goggles
Secretive right-wing network paid influencers to spread sexual smears about Kamala Harris: report
Elon Musk on pace to become world’s first trillionaire by 2027, report says
This despite the meltdown at Twitter and the downturn of Tesla sales and stock. We have got to start taxing billionaires.
Link
@birgerjohansson 200
Don’t you mean heart implant? That might explain the willingness to vote for Harris.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/milo-yiannopoulos-challenges-nick
Milo Yiannopoulos Challenges Nick Fuentes To Human Woman Impregnating Contest
No matter who wins, we all lose.
Billy McFarland says Fyre Fest II will take place in April on a private Caribbean island
After serving four years in prison for fraud, the Fyre Fest founder wants to gather 3,000 attendees for a second try at the infamously botched music festival.
Harris’ newly released policies stand in stark contrast to Trump’s
Beyoncé locked out of Country Music Awards
Nigerian officials warn people off church’s ‘miracle’ water
James Earl Jones, master of stage and screen, dead at 93
MAGA Launches Most Unbelievable Conspiracy Yet—on Migrants Eating Pets
Community alarmed by man dressed in Klan robes at Trump rally in Mystic
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #301…
Truth in advertising?
@ 300
I’m certain that they’ll just claim their “communist Antifa” operatives dressed as bigots to embarrass the always racially tolerant Trump.
I won’t even be surprised if they dredge up the old “the Klan was started by Democrats line.”
Whoops! Make that @ 301.
Another Japanese kaiju film
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/5J9AxVuFfo79rUQQ/
Archaeologists challenge theory of violent Steppe invasion in Iberia Peninsula
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-archaeologists-theory-violent-steppe-invasion.html
NYT:
Kennedy will be on Michigan’s ballot, the state’s Supreme Court rules.
By Chris Cameron / Sep 9, 2024
Reuters:
Associated Press:
New York Times:
Followup to Reginald @300.
JD Vance hits new low by amplifying racist lie about Haitian migrants
Youtube: 10 Sep: NO CREMATION NEEDED! Ukrainians UNLEASH DRAGON-DRONES & INCINERATE RUSSIANS ON SPOT!
The Ukrainian army is stopping various Russian advances. The ability of the Ukrainians to move their forces quickly and launch small attacks lets them adapt faster when both armies are stretched thin. On the other side of the vast battle line the Russians are still making small advances towards Pokrovsk but at high costs.
The Ukrainians are testing drones equipped to dump thermite on enemy forces. It’s only being tested and may not be used, likely because the risk of large scale forest fires make it risky to use. This would be hideously unpleasant to be under and there will be an attempt to get it banned as a war crime if it comes into common use.
Watch live! SpaceX to launch Polaris Dawn spacewalk mission via :
https://www.space.com/spacex-private-polaris-dawn-launch-watch-live
This is that the priate spoace EVA mission that PZ isn’t a fan of as noted here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/08/24/i-thought-capitalism-private-enterprise-would-make-space-travel-more-efficient/
T-minus 15 mins approx now.
Methane emissions are rising faster than ever, research shows
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-methane-emissions-faster.html
Success! Polaris Dawn has lifted off smoothly as far as I can tell and saw. ten minutes long replay here – Blastoff! SpaceX launches Polaris Dawn crew on first private spacewalk mission with the liftoff at the start.
In less happy spaceflight news there’s this half hour long youtube doco What Actually Happened To The Boeing Starliner?
New Polls: Harris Takes The Lead In Battleground Georgia
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=yF4SXnpj_cE&si=Q_nAN8-Zjvsaywv3
The average of the polls give her a small advantage but it is the first time she has had any advantage in Georgia.
Terminator Zero
“This Anime Did What Hollywood Couldn’t”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=uwMuiZDkQlI
This Facebook video has an unexpected ending. And the symbolism is spot on.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/zQbWQqiCvCigqXfT/
Good news.
“Double trouble for triple-negative breast cancer: Two-pronged strategy restores immunotherapy sensitivity”
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-triple-negative-breast-cancer-pronged.html
…And more
‘Synthetic immune niche’ approach enhances T-cell proliferation without compromising cancer-killing ability
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-synthetic-immune-niche-approach-cell.html
Sweeping global study charts a path forward for climate-resilient agriculture
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-global-path-climate-resilient-agriculture.html
Formation of super-Earths proven limited near metal-poor stars
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-formation-super-earths-proven-limited.html
(While planets with Earth’s mass cannot be sampled well because of the limits of technology, the larger super-Earths are presumably good proxies for the existence of small planets in a system. So no abundance of terrestrial planets in the early galaxy)
@ 322
That would seem to make sense considering that a solar system’s primary and attendant planets form from the same accretion disk.
True facts about Morgan Freeman.
https://youtu.be/Ch5MEJk5ZCQ
Ukraine targets Moscow in biggest drone attack yet
But if you are shooting down the drones, who is responsible for where it lands?
Newspaper Says Harris Is Being Prepped For Debate By Long-Dead Acting Legend
FFS.
DeSantis’ controversial election police unit sparks new outrage
Ron DeSantis isn’t just opposed to an abortion-rights measure, his administration has also dispatched officers to check in with some who signed petitions.
What’s worse than JD Vance promoting a racist conspiracy theory about immigrants eating pets? The Republican’s woeful defense for why he did it.
Cartoon: Comrade cognitive crazy
How to watch the first presidential debate between Harris and Trump
I don’t plan to watch it. I know who Trump is and what he stands for. And I know that Kamala Harris is not Trump.
Yup, we know Vance is the sort to double down, not admit error and apologize.
How Trump’s ‘attack’ and ‘lie’ debate strategies could backfire—bigly
Another UFO Boss to Break Silence in Major Book Deal: “The Process of Disclosure Has Begun”
This article provides no new evidence, and fails to mention that existing evidence (it mentions the “Tic Tac” video) has been pretty thoroughly debunked.
Followup to comment 327.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ron-desantis-so-proud-of-jackbooted
Ron DeSantis So Proud Of Jackbooted Thugs Harassing Innocent Abortion Amendment Supporters
But, but… making up stories about migrants eating pets is exactly like making up stories about Vance couch fucking!
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/09/and-the-david-broder-award-for-outstanding-achievement-in-the-field-of-false-equivalence-goes-to
It’s a convenient example of lots of hidden patterns they are motivated to deny and avoid.
Vance couch fucking rumors =/= migrant pet eating rumors.
1) punching direction
2) group vs. individual target
3) bringing unrelated people into a fight
4)…
I’m sure there is more others have better filters to detect. That lack of Adderall…
“Make up stories about our vice presidential candidate!?!? We’ll go attack disadvantaged people we’re already attacking!”
They keep showing what they are.
Meanwhile there is a guy shooting up pets in California, I’m pretty sure they are a citizen. And I wouldn’t blame starving citizens and non-citizens from eating ducks at a park instead of starving.
That’s right, this ties into desperation and poverty shaming.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/new-york-times-apologizes-for-sanewashing
New York Times Apologizes For Sanewashing Trump By Sanewashing Trump Some More
To be fair, NYT didn’t actually say the words ‘I am sorry for being bad at journalism.’
That “chosen one” phrase has been used by Trump many times. It really irks me. The implication is that a woman Trump chooses to rape should feel honored.
Also, as “sanewashing” Trump proceeds apace in the NYT and other media outlets, I am resisting despair.
JD Vance’s Plane Accidentally Enters Prohibited Airspace Over Washington, D.C.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #334.
As regards signatures from people who are dead…I’d want to see reported when they signed and when they died. Just because they’re dead now doesn’t mean they were dead when they signed the petition.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/beloved-nevada-wingnut-grifter-pleads
Followup to comment 346.
The New York Times now has a front page post with this subhead: “The former president has proposed using tariffs to fund child care, boost manufacturing, quell immigration and encourage use of the dollar. Economists are skeptical.”
JFC.
U.S. says Iran is sending ballistic missiles to Russia in a ‘dramatic escalation’
The Iranian missiles will let Russia reserve its own missiles for long-range attacks on Ukrainian forces, said Secretary of State Blinken.
Swiss city councilor apologizes for firing gun at a Mary and Jesus poster
whheydt @338, Good point.
In other news: Group of retired generals, admirals announce support for Harris
Trump keeps generating potential defamation lawsuits by his accusers
Household income booms, proving economic recovery under Biden-Harris
https://www.wonkette.com/p/neo-nazi-terrorgram-leaders-may-have
Neo-Nazi ‘Terrorgram’ Leaders May Have To Continue Planning Their Race War In Prison
Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison have been charged with inciting hate crimes, assassinations.
To add to my 335.
The migrant paranoia and similar are all looming threats.
And looming threat language is human. Nothing to do but refocus attention onto the real looming threats like global warming and not bigotry instead of fixing real problems. And actively labeling, explaining, and shaming these irrational bigoted looming threats.
In retrospect I’m not sure what that “not bigotry” is doing in 347. But attacking “wokeness” is sort of “not bigotry”.
Defendants in ‘Trump Train’ trial gloated about swarming Biden bus: ‘Ready to f*** s*** up’
@349
Walmart Heiress to Co-Host Harris Fundraiser in Jackson Hole
I have to admit that I forgot about the “danger to pets/wildlife” looming threat flavor. It’s related to threat to family/property I think. I can add that to the disease, vermin (contamination), invasion…
Coast Guard seizes 1,239 pounds of cocaine from “narco sub”
Arrest made in alleged attack over New York City store owner’s Kamala Harris window display
@334 Lynna, OM: That there are a bunch of extra signatures is normal. People running for office and people with petitions like this always try to get a pile of extra signatures. That is a safety margin so that having some signatures disqualified won’t get the entire thing rejected. There are always some bad signatures because they can’t be verified or become somebody thought it funny to put in a bogus name or some signature collector was desperate to hit their target. Considering how controversial the topic they probably should have aimed for more then roughly 10% extra.
@351 Reginald Selkirk: The Waltons are pretty conservative. I wonder how much of this is thinking Harris is more likely to win, how much is realizing that funding Trump isn’t worth much because he doesn’t remember who did him favors, and how much is thinking Harris is a better bet for the country?
Will Donald Trump Reveal Himself Tonight as the Antichrist?
Project 2025 Proposes Defunding Daycare
Genetic analysis reveals new giant fanged frog species in Philippines that is nearly identical to even larger species
NYT:
Missouri High Court Restores Abortion Measure to Ballot
By Kate Zernike / Sept. 10, 2024
The legacy of Boris Johnson
“135 Tory Covid Contracts Have Corruption Red Flags”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=PZHnN5lO2kw
“Evidence of a Stellar Flyby That Shaped the Early Solar System”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sl8K0wewrdQ
This would remove the need of a ninth planet to explain the odd orbits of trans-Neptunian objects.
A portrait found in a Maine attic unexpectedly sold for $1.4M. Could it be a long-lost Rembrandt?
NASA astronaut promotes Ark in space
Conclave review – Ralph Fiennes takes charge of tense papal election thriller | Toronto film festival 2024 | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/sep/10/conclave-movie-review-ralph-fiennes
Having read the book, I think the thriller might be worth a watch. Certainly better than the films with Tom Hanks chased by the illuminati.
Re: Brony @ 352:
Singling out Haitians could’ve invoked Vodou animal sacrifice for some classic ‘satanic’ panic, but Vance seems to have screwed up his stereotypes.
Electric VTOL drone/taxi
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/PUEN1w3gWsBjvuNm/
“Battle of Waterloo dig uncovers horror of severed limbs and shot horses” | Belgium | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/10/battle-of-waterloo-dig-uncovers-horror-of-severed-limbs-and-shot-horses
Trum just started ranting about the size of his rallies.
@CompulsoryAccount7746
Maybe. But that’s got less potential to spread to migrants/refugees broadly. Also maybe that’s scheduled for next week?
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-10/tree-canopy-cover-adelaide-protests-saving-signficant-red-gums/104328072
Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris
https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/sep/11/taylor-swift-endorses-kamala-harris-president-us-debate-cat-lady
I don’t personally care about her political opinion but it could have a significant(?) impact. And it will piss off Trump and the rest of the republican party which is a nice bonus.
Herad something about the police using rubber bullets too on TV news – Rubber bullets. On unarmed protesters. InAustralia! WTF?!
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/live-blog-land-forces-protest-melbourne-israel-gaza/104333922
Followup to Jean @371, Taylor Swift has more than 200 million followers on Instagram. Within a few minutes, her endorsement of Kamala Harris garnered over a million likes.
The endorsement was well-written. Swift emphasized that voters should make sure they are registered. She advised people to vote early because that’s easier. Practical. (And good steps to take to mitigate Republican voter suppression efforts, which is my conclusion but not something Swift said).
Swift made the point that she was making her endorsement public because the Trump campaign had earlier put out disinformation, some of it created with AI, claiming that Swift had endorsed Trump. She wanted the facts to be known. That being said, she did not pressure her followers to vote for Harris. She advised them to do some research regarding each candidate’s policies and then to make up their own minds. Swift did definitely encourage people to register to vote, and to vote.
Josh Marshall: Debate Wrap Up: No One Has Ever So Thoroughly Dominated Donald Trump
It was really a telling moment when Trump entered the “Spin Room” after the debate and started looking around for someone who pay attention to him.
Excerpts from Talking Points Memo’s live coverage of the debate:
Kamala Harris absolutely killed it at the debate
The Charlie Kirk post, as well as floods of other rightwing posts show that they know Trump lost the debate. Bigly.
Excerpts from the CSPAN debate stream.
1:05:41
Trump: We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.
(Referring to asylum seekers.)
–
1:18:08
Moderator: There is no state in this country in which it is legal to kill a baby after it is born. Madam Vice President, can I get your response to President Trump?
–
1:22:17
Mod: JD Vance has said that you WOULD veto [a federal abortion ban] if it came to your desk.
Trump: Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD.
–
1:29:10
Trump: In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs!
Harris: Oh come on! *laughing*
Mod: The Springfield city manager says there is no evidence of that.
Trump: *Argues with the mod, calls the manager a liar, cuz he heard claims on TV.*
–
1:34:37
Mod: President Trump, as you know the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country.
Trump: They didn’t include the worst cities! It was a fraud!
Harris: I think this is so rich, coming from someone who has been prosecuted for national security crimes, economic crimes, election interference, has been found liable for sexual assault, and his next big court appearance is in November at his own criminal sentencing. […] The former president called for defunding federal law enforcement (45,000 agents)—get this&mdashon the day after he was arraigned on 34 felony counts.
Trump: I’m winning most of [those cases], and I’ll win the rest on appeal. […] Fake cases!
–
1:42:21
Trump: she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that’re in prison. […] She wants to confiscate your guns.
–
1:50:31
Mod: You have said you lost by a whisker, that you “didn’t quite make it”, that you came up a little bit short. Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?
Trump: No. I don’t acknowledge that at all. I said that sarcastically.
Mod: I did watch these pieces of video. I didn’t detect the sarcasm.
Trump: *rants about judges*
Harris: Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. […] Clearly, he’s having a very difficult time processing that.
–
2:17:23
Harris: Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine—he calls himself a deal-maker. Even his national security advisor said it was a weak, terrible deal. […] He bypassed the Afghan government. He negotiated directly with a terrorist organization called the Taliban. The negotiation involved getting 5000 Taliban terrorists released. AND the president at the time invited the Taliban to Camp David! […] This *chokes on words* former president invited them to Camp David
–
2:26:53
Mod: Tonight, nine years after you started running, do you have a plan [to replace Obamacare], and can you tell us what it is?
Trump: *rambles*
Mod: Just a yes or no. You still do not have a plan?
Trump: I have comcepts of a plan.
Harris: *bemused smiling*
Trump claims that Biden, who has endorsed Harris, ‘hates her’
Video at the link.
Posted by a reader of the article:
Trump ended up with 9 more minutes. That’s a lot of time in a debate. Still, Trump did use that time to shoot himself in the foot several times, so I guess it all worked out.
CNN Poll: Kamala Wins Debate in Landslide 63% to 37%
A few highlights from Wonkette’s debate coverage:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/drink-every-time-kamala-harris-calls
TheOnion – Trump avoids answering hard questions by pretending he shot in ear again
Trump: Taylor Swift will ‘probably pay a price’ in the marketplace for Harris endorsement
And how is he enjoying paying the price for reposting those fake AI endorsements?
Congressman Joe Wilson collapses at event, rushed to hospital
Bright lights detected by NASA telescopes lead to a dancing pair of supermassive black holes
The Hill: Harris campaign promptly calls for another debate against Trump
Not surprisingly the Harris campaign wants another debate. Trump said he would think about it, which likely means no but he doesn’t want to say that.
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller:
Well, that’s also a predictable development, blame the debate team. We’ll add that one to the “blame ABC moderators” as just another excuse that does not the hide the fact that Trump is ignorant, a liar, and an ineffectual liar to boot.
Kamala Harris destroyed Trump’s heretofore uncanny ability to create a new reality with his lies and his overly confident bluster.
More commentary:
Link
Commentary from Steve Benen:
Link
A Panoply Of Kamala Harris Reaction Shots
A grateful nation vicariously reacted to Donald Trump through the facial expression of Kamala Harris.
That’s a really good collection of reaction images. Scroll down at the link to view them. The panoply is part of a longer news report.
Also from that report:
Details regarding the “blame ABC” for Trump’s failure:
Pathetic.
Trump also claimed that polls show he won the debate “92 to 7” and that he has been told he is a good debater. “I think it was one of my better debates.”
Link
Video available at the link.
Cartoon: AI gone mad
Courthouse News Service:
Arkansas ‘wet’ signature requirement paused by federal court
Officials in Arkansas — the state with the lowest voter registration rate in the nation — said the rule is necessary for consistency among county clerks.
Erik De La Garza / September 10, 2024
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trumps-abortion-answer-was-so-stupid
Trump’s Abortion Answer Was So Stupid We Had To Make A Flowchart About It
The lies! The lies!
Inflation cools to 2.5%, slowest rate in more than three years
Price growth is within range of the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, but the sting of rapid increases over the past four years lingers for many consumers.
More details at the link.
WaPo:
Trump says ABC should lose its broadcast license
By Hannah Knowles, 35 min ago
Vance won’t drop lies about Haitians after Trump echoed them in debate
https://www.wonkette.com/p/debate-spent-two-minutes-on-climate
Debate Spent Two Minutes On Climate, And One Candidate Actually Talked About Climate
Can you guess which one? Can you?!
DonaldTrump’s Truth Social Takes a Huge Dive on the Stock Market Following Debate
Stock market today: S&P 500 surges, Dow jumps over 450 points as stocks rebound from worst week of 2024
Russia appears to have launched initial major counterattack against Ukraine in Kursk
Donald Trump Flamed for Winking at Photographers During 9/11 Service
Link
TV News Overtaken By Digital Rivals For First Time in UK
Link
Link
Ha! Okay, we get add Tulsi Gabbard to the “blame everyone for Trump’s failure, except Trump” pile. And maybe Matt Gaetz get’s blamed too.
See also: Trump Fans Spread Debate Conspiracy About Microphone Earrings, from WIRED magazine.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/its-not-just-that-kamala-harris-called
It’s important to see/hear the details here. Trump’s assholerly is revealed.
Link
“While I don’t think the debate hosts were fair to @RealDonaldTrump @KamalaHarris exceeded most people’s expectations tonight,” Elon Musk posted on his social media platform X on Tuesday night.
:-)
Harris-Trump debate nabs at least 57.5 million viewers, according to early ratings
A New Breakthrough in the History of the “S—gibbon”: The Insult’s Originator Steps Forward
(Feb 2017)
Trump’s debate debacle put the GOP’s dangerous obsession with MAGA media nonsense on display
Followup to comment 410.
Trump said that he would want Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters, or Laura Ingraham to moderate a Fox News debate.
This temper tantrum is cuter than the debate.
“Coffee guardian Bites and Yells at man trying to steal his coffee!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xmKsbNi736E
A new type of RNA (saRNA) could enhance vaccines and cancer treatments
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-09-rna-vaccines-cancer-treatments.html
re Lynna @411: Those are EXACTLY the people who are LEAST qualified to moderate anything. Mainly because they are extremists who have no clue what fairness looks like, and their small minds wouldn’t allow anything like facts to upset their slavish fealty to The Orange Shitgibbon. You can be sure that they would never fact-check any lie that spewed from his mouth.
“Woman kills baby live on television 78 years after its birth.”
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxnhdNXhfhpUGui_3jePD8lcGqU1GXFKvU
“How to Train a Russian Tank Crew”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5hzl_wcNfis
The instructor Ruzzianwindowfallski takes us through the process.
Pesto linked to botulism cases in France
I think Stephen Colbert gives the funniest debate summaries.
“LIVE Monologue: Harris Gets Under Trump’s Skin | Eating Cats And Dogs | Taylor Swift’s Endorsements”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ecGjnR3aNvA
Late night with Seth Meyers
“Donald Trump and Kamala Harris Face Off in First Presidential Debate”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=1b0IfsiEKJg
First narrow-spectrum antibiotic successfully eliminates Fusobacterium nucleatum, a gum disease pathogen
“Jimmy Kimmel Breaks Down the Presidential Debate Between Donald Trump & Kamala Harris”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y9bqtlWphXA
In honor of Donald Trump here is a live Ladytron performance starting with ‘(You) Destroy Everything You Touch’
Ladytron – Live 2006 [Full Set] Performance
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FNV5nrWB4eE
Days in politics don’t get much better than this for Democrats
johnson catman @413, I agree.
In a correction to comment 378: Trump got five more minutes to speak than Kamala Harris did. (Not nine minutes more.)
Associated Press:
NBC News:
NBC News:
Washington Post:
WTF?
Trump finally admits it: He has no plan to replace Obamacare
I’ll also note that Trump claimed that while he was president he made Obamacare work better, that he did the best he could with it. Balderdash. Trump shortened enrollment times, defunded help lines, etc.
Matt Gaetz’s alleged sex scandal is heating up again
https://www.wonkette.com/p/five-times-kamala-harris-flawlessly
Five Times Kamala Harris Flawlessly Triggered That Idiot, By A Doktor Of Rhetoric
Multiple sclerosis appears to protect against Alzheimer’s disease
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #430…
That’s a damned if you do, damned if don’t situation.
The front of the ship is not supposed to fall off!
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/3ufYKXMLqF3cjutt/
Taking off in strong headwind.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/CSQw9NNvpLhXb2Ab/
Threads video: JD Vance on Fox News, lacking self-awareness again
Elon Musk threatens Taylor Swift after Harris endorsement
https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/113119895174266135
^ Chaos Engineer spelled out Elon’s natalist subtext in PZ’s thread.
Independent: Russia-Ukraine War in Maps: Where are the frontlines now as Kremlin claims advances in Donetsk?
Lots of conflicted claims of control over the last few days. The Russians seem to be advancing towards Pokrovsk but are taking huge losses. At the same time they are trying to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk. How long they can do all of this is an open question but the Ukrainians are also stretched thin.
The Russian generals are probably willing to throw anything at the line right now because they don’t have much time before winter and Putin gave them some goals for this year. If they can’t achieve some significant progress in Ukraine or throw the Ukrainians out of Kursk there are liable to be some changes in the command staff.
Tom’s Guide
Rebel Ridge
‘Netflix finally has a No. 1 movie worth watching — and this action-thriller is rated 95% on Rotten Tomatoes’
https://www.tomsguide.com/entertainment/netflix/netflixs-new-action-thriller-movie-with-95-on-rotten-tomatoes-is-its-best-original-in-months-heres-why-it-deserves-the-no1-spot
XKCD: Water filtration
https://xkcd.com/2982/
SMBC: Bible-based parenting
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/grounded
Stephen Colbert:
Harris’s Debate Smackdown | Trump’s Bizarre Pet Rumor | A Hidden Message In Taylor Swift’s Endorsement?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gvQAEFQv4gU
I know there’s always basic maths but still :
https://www.270towin.com/2024-countdown-clock/
53 days , 3 hours to go.
It will be so good to have it over with – assuming the right choice wins.
Happening now Watch live! SpaceX’s historic Polaris Dawn spacewalk aka Isaacman’s stunt.
Lynna@340:
A comment that, at the time, hadn’t been made yet? How the heck?
Lynna@341:
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuckity fuck. And here I was hoping the idiots cosplaying as “world leaders” would hold off on having WWIII until after I was dead.
Lynna@374:
Now eagerly awaiting a cartoon depicting Harris in leather leading an all-fours Trump around by a leash …
Lynna@388:
I believe that’s called “giving Trump enough rope to hang himself”.
<snicker>
Reginald Selkirk@409:
Given the primate’s, er, complexion, would not “Ordure Orangutan” have been more appropriate? :)
Reginald Selkirk@430:
“I’ve got great news, folks! You can only get one of these deadly neurodegenerative disorders at a time!”
Sky Captain@433:
… says the adopted-in-adulthood trust-fund baby of Peter Thiel.
Really?
Oh, well, then. Goodbye, Musk. Can’t with a straight face say it was nice knowing you, though.
So, just like street harassment then, except this time it’s billionaire-on-billionaire.
JM@435:
“The Emperor is most displeased with your apparent lack of progress.”
“He asks the impossible. I need more men!”
“Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.”
Yeah, that sounds familiar. Along with “You have failed me for the last time!” …
Sarah Gillis is doing an EVA too! Didn’t know that was gunna happen.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/08/24/i-thought-capitalism-private-enterprise-would-make-space-travel-more-efficient/comment-page-1/#comment-2235819
Her wikipage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Gillis
You mean, someone like Donald J. Trump?
Bluesky lets you post videos now
There goes the last excuse to keep using X/Twitter
Elon Musk Has a New Excuse for Not Making It to Mars
There is nothing efficient about sending humans to Mars. So this is an indication that Musk would use a position in Trump’s administration to favor his own companies and pet projects.
@433, etc
The Independent makes the punchline obvious:
Vance says Americans won’t be swayed by ‘billionaire celebrity’ Swift’s endorsement (who is his running mate again?)
‘Childless Dog Lady’ Stevie Nicks doubles down on Taylor Swift’s message to vote
‘Don’t eat cats and dogs,’ Biden tells voters while wearing Trump hat
Reginald @447: “this is an indication that Musk would use a position in Trump’s administration to favor his own companies and pet projects.”
Yep. Musk’s support of Trump is, at least in part, a plan to get more funding for Musk’s projects. (The other component of Musk’s support is male supremacist, racist, rich-guy Dunning-Kruger personality trait.)
GOP senator tries, fails to defend racist theory about pet-eaters
This is not some rando off the street. He is the presidential candidate of one of the two major political parties. He has access to staff and resources, people who can check things out. Anyone who is in office, such as Sen. JD Vance or Sen. Hagerty likewise has a staff and access to Congressional resources. They have no excuse for relying on “something they read on the Interwebs” or what “many people are saying.”
Zeolite catalyst method uses microwaves to convert waste cooking oil into useful chemicals
Reginald @453, I agree. Trump cannot make any adjustment that would compensate for his weaknesses.
Also, Trump seizes on nonsense like the immigrant-eating-people’s-pets because he is predisposed to ill will toward immigrants. Confirmation bias, plus general ignorance, stupidity and brain rot.
Speaker Mike Johnson adds to his list of avoidable embarrassments
Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t just suffer another failure, the Republican leader also pushed the nation closer to a pre-election government shutdown.
Link
@448
I think a more important question is, who’s Vance to be making that criticism?
Link
Hey, JD Vance, how many people have registered to vote thanks to your encouragement?
Bits and pieces of campaign news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Embedded links leading to additional sources are available at the main link.
@453 Reginald Selkirk: A bit of Trump’s problem is that it is his staff that is feeding him these things. He is too lazy to do any investigation himself or get an outside advisor to investigate.
In his first campaign and administration he was talking with Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Both racist and anti-immigration but had some sense and didn’t buy into the random stupid stuff. He has replaced them with people like Laura Loomer, who has never heard a right wing conspiracy theory she didn’t buy into and only skill is soothing Trump’s ego.
Springfield City Hall, school, county hit by threats tied to Haitian issue
City Hall evacuated, county offices closed, parents at one Springfield school asked to pick up children early
Followup to the last paragraph in comment 460.
Election officials warn widespread problems with USPS could disrupt voting
Link
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug reports that another U.S. school has been hit by an ICBM
Four Seasons Total Landscaping:
Commentary:
Link
At the link, a photo of the infamous Rudy Giuliani and cohort “press conference” at Four Seasons Total Landscaping is provided for context.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/nevada-to-use-google-ai-to-decide
Nevada To Use Google AI To Decide Who Gets Unemployment Benefits
It gets things right only 76 percent of the time at best, so WCGW? [What Could Go Wrong]
Bush’s attorney general endorses Harris, calling Trump ‘most serious threat to law’
“In a generation” – in other words, since W made you his Attorney General due to personal loyalty, not competence?
FIFY
Republicans urge Trump to accept second debate against Harris
Gluttons for punishment
@470
ROLE OF ALBERTO GONZALES IN SETTING TORTURE POLICY
Alberto Gonzales: A Record of Injustice
WaPo:
Abortion foes use government power to fight red-state ballot measures
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Lori Rozsa and Annie Gowen / September 12, 2024
Judge voids controversial constitutional amendment on Utah’s Nov. 5 ballot
GSA says 337K Taylor Swift referrals have come to vote.gov
Newsweek: Six Countries That Could Mediate Possible Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks
Talk of peace treaty are floating again. It isn’t clear if they are serious or not, both Ukraine and Russia may simply be going through the motions or trying for a cease fire over the winter while they prepare for next year.
Russia could be serious rather then just posturing. The Kursk invasion is cutting into Putin’s support in Russia, the economy of Russia continues to decay, the potential for a conflict between Russia and China is warming up, Russia is running out of man power and gear, and the oligarchs are not happy with the dragging war and heavy sanctions. Ukraine has been open to negotiations the whole way but they want their land back and Russia wants to hold on to it. At this point Ukraine may be willing to give some land to Russia if they are allowed to join NATO and have full military support to protect them from further intrusions.
As for which countries might host negotiations, it’s hard to see a good place. Obviously any NATO country is out. This eliminates Turkey which otherwise might be a reasonable host for negotiations. Hungary is too close to Russia. The rest of the little countries in the region are too hostile too one side and not powerful enough. Brazil is just powerful enough to be a neutral host but has no reach in that part of Europe. Austria are not powerful enough to put any push on the negotiations. China isn’t trusted by any side and has a bad record for treaty negotiations. India is likely the best choice but may not want to get themselves into the middle of this. I think negotiations are most likely to happen on the sly someplace like Austria, clearly neutral and not powerful enough to influence the negotiations.
North Dakota judge strikes down the state’s abortion ban
WaPo:
Trump, Republicans push swing-state courts to reject mail-in ballots
By Colby Itkowitz / September 10, 2024
NYT:
Simon J. Levien / Sept. 12, 2024, 3:40 p.m ET
2024 Election Map Based on the Latest Poll in All 50 States. September 12
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=l6ek9RjFHxc
“Scathing Atheist 604 Progressive Parent Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BnoZA_qvX_s
Mystery tremors were from massive nine-day tsunami
God Awful Movies 284 The Healing Field
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4RQZV4NnnE4
An old classic.
Peruvian strongman Alberto Fujimori’s death leaves divisive legacy
Court clears researchers of defamation for identifying manipulated data
JD Vance says GOP should threaten a shutdown: ‘Why have a government if it’s not a functioning government?’
What a great time to show the public you put your party interests above the country’s interests.
2nd Circuit rejects Donald Trump’s request to halt postconviction proceedings in hush money case
New research reveals how El Niño caused the greatest ever mass extinction
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-reveals-el-nio-greatest-mass.html
DNA suggests that the Rapa Nui arrived in the Americas two centuries before Columbus | Science | EL PAÍS English
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-09-11/dna-suggests-that-the-rapa-nui-arrived-in-the-americas-two-centuries-before-columbus.html
Associated Press:
NBC News: Storm Francine: Thousands without power as severe rain and wind hit the Gulf Coast
About 12 million people are under flood alerts as Francine makes its way north through Louisiana.
NBC News:
NBC News:
Link
More details at the link, including data on the ages of those watching the debate.
Famously racist Trump adviser goes ballistic when asked for facts
Someone worse than Trump?
Haitian families in Ohio under attack as racist claims spread
Crossposted but putting some more thoughts here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/08/24/i-thought-capitalism-private-enterprise-would-make-space-travel-more-efficient/comment-page-1/#comment-2235930
incl AJ article on the legal implicatiosn of Polaris Dawn’s EVA’s.
Lynna@463:
Remind me again why that fuckheaded political hack DeJoy wasn’t fired way back in 2021 and replaced with someone normal?
Meanwhile, I’ve had a thought about how human social organization evolved, and it connects to politics.
Most primates — everything in the “monkeys” clade, which includes apes and us — are social, and have a particular social form that produces troops with, often, an internal pecking order and a power-politics dynamic that is also often seen among humans. This is clearly facilitated by a social “protocol stack”, a set of interrelated instincts, that first emerged over 20 million years ago.
But humans do something none of the other social primates even dream of. Something that has more in common with behavior associated with termites and other social insects: huge collective construction projects, huge scouting and search operations with efficient division of labor, things like that.
The social insects and the apes root their relations in significant part in kinship, making for kin-based ingroup-outgroup divisions and rivalries. Ants from sufficiently-unrelated colonies go to war with one another. So can chimpanzee troops, and, obviously, humans.
However, when humans do the termite-colony thing, working cooperatively in teeming numbers to erect the pyramids or maintain a city or harvest a year’s crops that autumn, this is done across kinship based group boundaries and in ways that cannot be explained that way. The members of an insect hive tend to be all or mostly half-brothers and half-sisters to one another, allowing a kinship-based social bond to scale to large numbers (hundreds, thousands) of individuals. Humans manage it without that degree of kinship being involved.
The key in humans seems to be language. We developed a second, more recent (c. 300Ka at most) “protocol stack”, an alternate way of social-being, that uses language to establish and communicate norms and some kind of shared ontology — a culture, typically with a code of conduct and an understanding of how-the-world-works and a way-of-life-that-works-within-that to provide for the community’s needs. This system made civilization possible, and based on descriptions of ancient Turkey and the pre-Columbus Americas in “The Dawn of Everything”, it dates back a minimum of 13,000 years and probably all the way to the appearance of the species H. sapiens. The second human social system is based not on genetic kinship as its underlying basis for trust but on a form of memetic kinship, that shared understanding of the world and the people’s place in it.
Humans thus ended up having two different social “protocol stacks” that coexist, a layering of a newer system upon an older one that is a recurring theme in evolutionary biology. And sometimes these two systems come into conflict, within one person and at the group level.
There lies the nexus to politics. Conservative politics is, very clearly, built on the older, ape-style social system, with its pecking hierarchy and its emphasis on strength and prowess as a basis for status within the troop, as well as strong ingroup-outgroup distinctions and the capacity to make war across that border.
Liberal (and left) politics is built on the newer system, which is inclusive as long as the memetic kinship trust basis is present. This is why the political left can easily throw open a big tent to include very different ethnic, religious, and kinship groups, but also why it is prone to infighting around “purity tests” and the alleged “cancel culture”.
The different epistemological compasses are explained this way as well. The conservative one is based on feeling and status and group divisions: “makes me/my group look good” = “true” and “makes me/my group look bad” = “false”. This is a suitable system for a primate troop whose objective circumstances are a particular, fairly static habitat and whose major disagreements are, always and only, who should be in charge and how should stuff be divvied up?
The liberal one is the secular-rational one: “is supported by empirical evidence” = “true” and “is refuted by empirical evidence” = “false”. This is a suitable system for a technological species that needs to adapt itself, at faster than genetic speeds, to new habitats and environments and to an unstable and changing climate (ever since the Pleistocene started) by learning within one’s lifetime, developing new tools and techniques and even whole new social arrangements on the fly (say, transitioning from a coastal fisher-gatherer to an inland animal-herder strategy, with concomitant massive changes in what labor is being done let alone how it is divided up), and passing these innovations on horizontally and vertically through language.
I think this also can give an insight into the autism spectrum. One of the earliest-detectable and most-universal signs of someone being on the spectrum is a diminished interest in human faces, compared to neurotypical people of the same age and developmental stage. I suspect this is early (detectable in infancy) and universal because it is causative.
Any protocol stack, whether it’s implemented in carbon or in silicon, needs a “handshake” to start an interaction. The handshake for TCP/IP starts with sending a SYN packet and waiting for an ACK. The handshake for the human hive-social protocol starts with “Hey, you over there!” or someone’s name. And that for apes starts with eye contact and facial expressions, which are conserved features in primate social communication going all the way back to the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys.
Someone on the spectrum appears to be disconnected from the ape-social network: every SYN there prompts an RST, or just a timeout, and the host never originates a SYN of their own. On the other hand, they can and will plug in via the hive-social protocol. The verbal, articulate, “high-functioning” people on the spectrum prove this, and are also notably politically left-leaning as a bunch. The “low-functioning” ones may have comorbid learning disabilities (if the underlying cause even for their face-blindness is a deeper neurological deficit of some sort), or have had parents who refused to communicate with them at all unless they acknowledged all the normal ape-social protocols and not only the hive-social ones. Deprived of the latter signals, they ended up with both systems (and not only the ape one) remaining underdeveloped, hence nonverbal or limited verbality. Even the “high-functioning” have poorly developed ape-social understanding and don’t “get” the things that get conservatives all outraged, or disgusted, or hostile, and as a result are less susceptible to conservatism in general.
The observed higher incidence of LGBTQ identities among people on the spectrum may also be partly connected to this. Undoubtedly part of the explanation is that people on the spectrum are disinclined to conformism and refractive to peer pressure, so are less likely to let those forces push them into the closet; but why are they disinclined to conformism and refractive to peer pressure? Because those are parts of the ape-social protocol. (Note how conformism is one of the traits strongly correlated with Altemeyer’s RWA scale! And the exerting of peer pressure is an RWA trait…)
It may go deeper than that, however. Gender norms themselves may be a part of the ape-system and as a result are weakly internalized by those on the spectrum, who might therefore be naturally more fluid in gender and in sexual orientation than neurotypical persons. In that case, not only are they less likely to closet themselves if LGBTQ, they are also more likely to be LGBTQ in the first place.
The RWA scale, meanwhile, indicates that even among neurotypical people, there’s significant variance in which social system is stronger. The association of liberal attitudes with city dwelling points to one possible cause, related to the cause of the differences between neurotypical people and those on the spectrum: the degree to which the two systems get exercised. Rural dwellers in small communities deal mainly with kin and small groups beyond the kin-border: the same few hundred faces over and over, rarely seeing many actual strangers. Most interactions and coordinated activities happen in the kin context or at the next larger, tribal-like context (e.g. at church). This is an environment in which the ape-social system is exercised heavily but the hive-social system is liable to atrophy with disuse, getting little stimulation of its own.
A city slicker, on the other hand, must frequently interact with strangers and may be involved in work projects that involve a cast of thousands. The hive-social system gets a hefty workout here, and becomes well-developed along with the ape-social system. Such individuals end up politically more liberal due to the former’s pull on their political (and epistemological!) compass.
The tendency of liberals to play by the rules and conservatives to cheat is also tidily explained here. Liberals are built on the hive-system which in turn is built on playing by the rules as the core social glue holding the whole network together! However, conservatives are built on the ape-system which is inherently hierarchical and pecking-ordery, aka built on what-can-you-get-away-with and might-makes-right. This naturally lends itself to cheating, or an “all’s fair in war” approach.
So, our political divisions reflect a fundamental division in our very biological makeup, a fault line where evolution layered a newer, more expansive social system adapted to the vicissitudes of a) catastrophic climate instability in the Ice Age and b) world domination, upon an older, preexisting social system that was adapted to smaller social groups thriving in more uniform, local, and stable contexts during the stabler Miocene and Oligocene epochs.
Re: Bekenstein Bound @498:
For male chimps looking to mate, an entourage is the way to go (2021)
Bonobos might not be so mellow after all (2024)
A kinder, gentler baboon (2004)
What the longest-lasting Mesoamerican cities all had in common