Donald Trump’s interactions with Russia’s Vladimir Putin have long been scandalous, but the story took an unexpected turn last week thanks to fresh allegations raised in Bob Woodward’s new book.
To summarize, Woodward’s book alleges that the former Republican president, while in office, secretly sent Covid-19 testing equipment to Putin at the height of the pandemic, even as people in his own country struggled to gain access to such resources. The book, citing a source close to Trump, also claims that the former president and the Russian leader have had direct conversations “as many as seven times” since he left the White House.
The GOP candidate denied the allegations, but not in a detailed way. A statement from a Trump spokesperson simply said that the claims in the book are not true, before lobbing a series of odd and personal attacks at the author. For its part, the Kremlin said Trump sent covid tests but denied Woodward’s reporting on the phone calls. (Of course, the Kremlin is notorious for spreading disinformation, so it’s hard to give much weight to its statements on the matter.)
That was last week. This week, Trump’s line was noticeably different. NBC News reported:
At an event at the Economic Club of Chicago with Bloomberg News, Trump said he wouldn’t comment on whether or not he called Putin multiple times after he left office. “Well, I don’t comment on that, but I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing,” he said. [scoffing laughter] “If I’m friendly with people. If I can have a relationship with people, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing in terms of a country.”
To be sure, that wasn’t an explicit confirmation, but given the comments, the qualifiers and the tone in which he made the comments, it’s hardly a stretch to think the allegations raised in Woodward’s book are credible. [video at the link]
And that, of course, raises a series of related questions. If Trump and Putin have engaged in a series of secret chats — conversations the Republican now believes would be “smart” — how many interactions have the two had? Did Trump offer briefings to U.S. intelligence agencies and the State Department after the conversations?
Did the two talk about U.S. policy toward Ukraine? Did Trump make any promises or extend any guarantees to his benefactor in Moscow? Did the former president say or do anything during the discussions that directly or indirectly undermined his own country’s foreign policy agenda?
Did Trump violate the Logan Act, which prohibits private citizens from communicating with foreign leaders “with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States”?
[…] “The number of people who lost their grandparents and parents, remember what that was like?” she [Kamala Harris] continued. “People were scrambling for the resources and needed tests, and Donald Trump secretly sent covid tests to the president of Russia.”
Just to give some positive vibes in the midst of the election anxiety, I dug up Ladytron’s celebration of Los Angeles.
.
Ladytron – City of Angels (Official Audio)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=r7-n_vk8ox8
Today’s post from Heather Cox Richardson, mostly about he’s bizarre interview with John Micklethwait (Bloomerg News) and the Economic Club of Chicago. She then goes into the position a Trump win puts JD in and his two main backers: Peter Thiel and Elon.
It’s been five weeks since Donald Trump stood on a debate stage and told a bizarre lie about developments in Ohio. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” the former president said before a national television audience, despite reality. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Predictably, there were dangerous consequences — bomb threats, closed buildings, canceled events, terrified residents, death threats, etc. — both for the immigrants and the broader community. State and local officials from his own party urged Trump to stop lying. He declined.
More than a month later, the problem persists. His running mate, Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, still won’t back down from the conspiracy theory, and the former president himself continues to pretend his alternate reality is real. In fact, during his latest Fox News town hall, Trump told new and related lies about Springfield, rooted in part in his apparent confusion about his own country’s immigration laws and the meaning of “probation.”
Hanging overhead is a related question: Did the lie work?
The answer is one of perspective. The Washington Post reported last week on the results of a statewide poll in the Buckeye State.
Most Ohio voters don’t believe former president Donald Trump’s debunked claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are “eating people’s pets,” and agree with Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s defense of Haitians as hard workers who are in the United States legally, a Washington Post poll finds.
The results weren’t especially close: According to the survey, only 24% of Ohioans said they believe Trump’s comments about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets were “probably” or “definitely” true, while 57% said the claims are probably or definitely false. […]
At first blush, this seems relatively encouraging. Sure, it’s unsettling that roughly 1 in 4 Ohioans fell for this ugly nonsense, but the Post’s poll nevertheless found that a majority of the state knew better than to accept the garbage at face value.
Note, however, the next sentence in the newspaper’s article on the results: “But Trump holds an edge of six percentage points over Vice President Kamala Harris among likely voters in the Buckeye State — 51 percent to 45 percent — similar to his eight-point winning margin four years ago.”
In other words, quite a few voters in Ohio believe that Trump and Vance lied to them about developments in their own state, attacking their neighbors and dividing a local community in order to advance their political interests.
But those same voters have decided to vote for the folks who lied to them anyway.
The more Trump and his allies see this, the greater the incentive they’ll feel to keep lying, confident in the knowledge that they’ll pay no price for the public deceptions.
There were some tense moments on Saturday when volunteers witnessed an armed group of people confronting and threatening FEMA workers in the Elk Mills community of Carter County in Tennessee.
Tracy Elder is president and founder of the International Alliance of Community Chaplains. Her group has been working in disaster relief for more than 20 years.
They are in Carter County at the request of the Elk Mills Volunteer Fire Department to help run the command center there, providing supplies and resources for those in need. But Elder told Nexstar’s WJHL that she found herself between FEMA workers and a group of armed citizens criticizing the work of the government agency on Saturday.
Elder was ultimately able to diffuse the situation.
“They were armed — they were all open-carry — they had surrounded [the FEMA workers] and there was a lady that was yelling at them and threatening them,” Elder said.
She explained that she listened to the group’s grievances about FEMA but explained to them that her organization was not associated with the federal agency. Elder said she felt the group was frustrated and she was able to hear them out, but was firm that their behavior wasn’t appropriate.
“People just need to be heard, and then some of that does take a skill that doesn’t take a confrontation,” Elder said. “I said, ‘Hey I hear you. You can say there’s no volunteers but I’m standing right in front of you honey and I’m here and we’re helping.’”
Elder said once the group realized that FEMA wasn’t taking those donations, and that the command center was run by volunteers, they left and surprisingly returned later with supplies to donate.
During the confrontation, Elder did call 911 because she said the group wasn’t being rational.
“I don’t care whatever their beef is with the government or FEMA, that’s not my job. My job on this ground is to take care of the folks here,” Elder told WJHL.
Because of the bridges washed out in the community, the area is now a now a much longer drive from the sheriff’s department. That doesn’t sit well with Carter County Sheriff Mike Fraley, and it’s why he’s working to get a sub-station up and running at the site of the now washed-away fire department. Two deputies will be stationed there 24 hours a day.
Fraley suspects the group that confronted Elder is from North Carolina. According to other sheriffs he’s spoken to, they’ve been causing these problems on both sides of the state line and it’s unacceptable.
“Those FEMA workers, they’re here to help, and if you don’t want FEMA’s help, then politely tell them so. But they are human beings just like we are,” Fraley said.
Despite the confrontation, a FEMA representative told WJHL that FEMA will still be in the region working with those impacted by the flooding as they begin the recovery process.
Stupid Hitler Confirms He Meant Democrats When He Said ‘Enemy Within’
If there was some part of you that wanted to give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt with what he said this weekend about using the military to go after his enemies — if there was part of you that wondered if when he said “enemy from within,” maybe he didn’t mean literally all people who opposed him, maybe he was hallucinating about imaginary antifa/Black Lives Matter people or something like that — then number one, STOP GIVING HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.
[…] Besides, he mentioned Adam Schiff as part of his “enemies within” on Sunday, it’s not like he was unclear.
Also, he clarified today that yes, he just means Democrats in general, all Americans — the great majority of Americans, to be clear — who dare to oppose Dear Leader, all patriotic Americans who want to make sure he never is allowed anywhere near the presidency ever again.
He said it in his “women’s town hall” with Fox News North Korean News Reader Harris Faulkner, which from what we can tell was mostly him screaming and fearmongering about migrants and lying about abortion and weirdly saying he was the “father of IVF” and fearmongering about migrants some more. Also a lot of babbling, as usual.
Faulkner asked him about what he said in that Sunday interview with Maria Bartiromo. She played the clip of him saying “the enemy within” is a greater threat than Russia or China, specifically saying that Adam Schiff is the “enemy within.” Faulkner mocked the fact that Kamala Harris is saying, correctly, that Trump is out for unchecked power, that he sounded “unhinged.” That made the audience of Fox News women voters — you know, the kinds of women Fox News and Trump like, the kinds of women who enjoy obeying fascist men — laugh and laugh. [video at the link]
In his response, Trump mocked the idea that America can actually be brought together, and clarified that yes, he means just Democrats in general are who he considers America’s enemy. He even namechecked the Pelosis this time.
“It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous, they’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re saying … I use a guy like Adam Schiff because they made up the Russia Russia Russia hoax, it took two years to solve the problem, absolutely nothing was done wrong, etc., etc., they’re dangerous for our country. We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president they can all be handled. The more difficult are the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick, and they’re so evil. If they would spend their time trying to Make America Great Again, we would have, it would be so easy to make this country great …”
[…] yes, Trump is confirming that anyone who opposes him is the “enemy within,” and that when he seizes power again, he’s demanding Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi and the majority of Americans who loathe the air he breathes sign on to his Hitler plans to Make America Great Again, demanding they bend the knee.
That’s what he wants.
Sorry, loser motherfucker, but America will never bend the knee. […]
Hey suckers, are you not satisfied with only buying Trump shoes, Trump watches, Trump Chinese-printed Bibles, or Melania’s jewelry? Step right up because Trump’s new cryptocurrency thing, World Liberty Financial tokens (aka $WLFI ), just launched Tuesday! With […] a website that crashed multiple times, and not many buyers. And a “gold paper” with some new details and hilarious disclaimers that boil down to look, we are just gonna take your money.
The details before were vague, but now that it’s launched, well, it sounds even scammier than it did before!
There really are tokens, Trump-branded Ethereum ERC-20 tokens, to be exact. But buyers in the US can’t actually buy or sell the tokens, or transfer them, because the wet blankets over at the Securities and Exchange Commission are a bunch of joyless nags who demand that “Regulation D” securities only be sold to accredited investors.
So the “gold paper” says in giant all-caps at the top:
THE TOKENS ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR U.S. PERSONS AND ARE ONLY AVAILABLE FOR PERSONS OUTSIDE OF THE UNITED STATES. THE TOKENS HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED WITH ANY U.S. OR OTHER AUTHORITY AND MAY NOT BE OFFERED OR SOLD IN THE UNITED STATES.
Instead, if you’re in the US, say the terms and conditions, your non-investment buys rights to participate in the “WLF Governance Platform.”
The disclaimer is frank:
You should think of your purchase of Tokens like other non-refundable purchases of goods and services and accept the risk that once you’ve paid the purchase price, your interest in the Token may decline and you have no expectation of resale of the Token.
The platform is offering 20 billion tokens, so each one you buy (but don’t actually buy buy) will get you a one-in-20-billionth of a say in “protocol upgrades, technical changes, promotional partnerships, and oversight of security risks.” Oh boy!
But hey, only 2 percent of the tokens have been sold so far, so if you ACT NOW you can get an even-stronger 0.00000000000001 percent of a vote on if the company should update its software or not! Did we mention yet that there are no refunds? […]
The company is registered in Delaware as DT Marks DeFi LLC, which seems a little too on the nose. In exchange for using their likenesses for promotion, Trump, the choads who set it up for him, and his fug sons will get 22.5 billion of World Liberty Financial’s governance tokens — 22.5 percent of its total supply — and 75 percent of net revenues from the protocol.
Only 9,409 wallet addresses signed up to buy it as of Wednesday, and World Liberty Financial says it has sold 532 million tokens at $0.015. That’s a little short of the $300 million worth of sales they’d estimated, but hey, that’s almost $8 million bucks! Somebody’s gotta keep Poppy in foundation and shoe lifts, so why not you?
Where’s this money coming from? It’s crypto, so, nobody knows! The World Liberty Financial website is registered by Namecheap, a website registrar that outsources domain privacy services to Withheld for Privacy. Withheld for Privacy, a service based in Iceland set up in 2021 by Sergio Raygoza Hernandez, a Mexican living in the United States, was linked in 2021 to Russian ransomware attacks. And Namecheap has been accused of links to malicious actors. Which does not make WLF guilty by association, but it’s also odd that a red-blooded American company wouldn’t use GoDaddy or Network Solutions. [All the best people.]
The blockchain app was built by Trump’s new business partners, Zachary Folkman and Chase Herro, and is called Dough Finance. D’oh! This July, that app was hacked, and $2.1 million got extracted. [LOL]
Zachary Folkman’s experience includes having registered a company called Date Hotter Girls LLC, which posted seminars on YouTube on how to pick up women, “Date Hotter Girls: Better, Faster & Easier.” (“You’re going to be ripping their clothes off and throwing them up against the wall,” he promises.) But it also includes better experience, like selling a nonrefundable $2,000 ecommerce training course while being $77,000 in credit card debt.
Chase Herro (which he spells “Hero” for his podcast) calls himself “the dirtbag of the Internet,” and has spent time in prison for theft and dealing weed. He pushed a $149-a-month get-rich-quick club, sold weight-loss colon cleanses, and ran an advertising business using fake Facebook accounts. As a podcaster he touts get-rich-quick schemes online such as “From Broke to Millionaire in 14 Days,” though he’s left a trail of nonpayment lawsuits and unpaid taxes from California to Puerto Rico. But crypto apparently helped him turn the whole thing around, and he started hosting seminars with Jordan Belfort, the penny-stock scammer played by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, for $40,000 a seat. […]
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov was in China this week, meeting with Chinese leaders to confirm the continued military partnership between Moscow and Beijing. While Belosov was in Beijing, Russian ships joined the Chinese fleet for bilateral naval exercises in the Pacific. On a very different front, Russian and Chinese hackers are now cooperating in cyber-terrorism aimed at “espionage, destruction, or influence” in Western countries.
Joining Russia and China in these cyber attacks are hackers from Iran. Despite facing new sanctions from the European Union, Iran continues to provide Russia with thousands of drones and with ballistic missiles to be used in attacks on Ukrainian cities. Even in the midst of launching hundreds of missiles into Israel, Iranian leaders see their support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion as so important that they are willing to crate up and deliver some of their most potent weapons.
North Korea is also supplying Russia with artillery and other weapons. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kim Jong-un is providing soldiers to fight on the front lines of the unprovoked, illegal invasion. How many North Korean troops are currently fighting in Ukraine, or where they are located, isn’t yet clear. But this level of direct, boots-on-the-ground assistance may be a big part of why Putin is currently pushing hard for a “Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” that would join Russia and North Korea in a mutual defense agreement.
None of these nations is trying to tell Russia where they can use their weapons or how to deploy their resources. From day one, weapons provided by China, Iran, and North Korea have been used by Russia in long-range attacks on civilian population centers and vital infrastructure. None of these regimes is setting limits on Putin. None of them is fretting about possible repercussions.
They’re not pretending to support Russia in this conflict. They’re supporting Russia.
“We see an increasing alliance between Russia and regimes like North Korea,” Zelenskyy said in a televised address on Sunday. “It is no longer just about transferring weapons. It is actually about transferring people from North Korea to the occupying military forces.”
The Authoritarian Axis is growing stronger and more committed. And it’s not hard to see why the authoritarian regimes are all in.
They see Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as a chance to defeat and humiliate the West, demonstrate the inferiority of liberal democracies, and open the door for the expansion of their own regimes through aggressive military action. For them, Ukraine is an experiment. If Putin can do this and get away with it, well then … anything goes.
They also see the war in Ukraine as the end of Pax Americana; as the point when the United States steps away from its role as the greatest among equals. If the end of the Cold War was supposed to be a repudiation of international communism, this open military conquest of Ukraine by a brutal dictatorial regime marks the end of stability, the end of democracy, and the end of the progress that’s defined the last century.
They are making the world safe for large-scale war again.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is making it clear that he sides with the Axis. On Fox News last Sunday, Trump argued that not confronting Kim, Putin, and other authoritarian leaders is the only possible option, because the risk of stopping them is too high.
“We would’ve had a nuclear war with millions of people killed,” Trump said. “And when I was in there, I got along great with Kim Jong-un.”
In other words, Trump has already made it clear that he fears them too much to stand in their way. Or he is simply using that fear as an excuse. It really doesn’t matter.
Against this backdrop, the U.S. has now spent over a month dithering on whether to allow Ukraine to use a single weapons system in the way that Ukrainian military leaders have made clear is a necessity for the nation’s defense. Russia’s grinding advance in Donetsk continues. And the time for the Allies to pull this fight out of the ashes is growing very damn short.
Kursk
After weeks in which the situation in Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region of Russia seemed all but stable, this week Russia made its first real moves to recapture significant portions of this area. [map at the link]
According to Russian military sources, they have driven down the highway on the northwest side of the Ukrainian-controlled region and recaptured the towns of Novoivanoka and Tolstya Lug. On Monday, Russia also claimed to have recaptured the village of Cherkasskaya Konopelka to the southeast, but there had been no confirmation of action in this area.
Russia has also taken control of the area that had been at the very northern tip of the incursion, but Ukraine doesn’t seem to have had any significant force in the area. The larger concern is that Ukrainian troops at Olgovka now appear to be nearly surrounded by Russian forces, and if Russia controls the highway south to Novoivanoka, Ukraine’s options to support—or withdraw— these forces may be limited.
In the two smaller incursion areas to the west, there are still reports that Ukraine has been advancing, with hopes of controlling more area south of the river. However, it doesn’t seem that any other villages or towns have come under Ukrainian control over the last week.
Pokrovsk
In Donetsk Oblast, evacuations continue as Russia draws ever closer to the critical city of Pokrovsk. [map at the link]
It’s now been a solid year since Russia concentrated its forces in the area near Donetsk and began a dedicated effort to break through Ukrainian defensive lines at Avdiivka. That location held out until 17 February 2024, and Russia lost hundreds of armor units and thousands of men in the effort to take this position.
Since the fall of Avdiivka, Russia hasn’t exactly galloped across the landscape (their rate of advance toward Pokrovsk has been limited to about a soccer field per day). However, over the last eight months, the defensive lines that had kept Russian forces within a few kilometers of Donetsk throughout the invasion have essentially ceased to exist. Russia is advancing slowly, but they’re advancing everywhere.
Ukraine has continued to hold the highway positions at Selydove, but the position there could become untenable in a matter of days. There are few good defensive locations between Pokrovsk and this position. [X post and map at the link]
Russia isn’t walking freely into these areas. Drones and artillery are continuing to extract a high price for Russian advances. But the story of what’s happening now near Pokrovsk is essentially the story of this war: Ukraine is extracting a lopsided cost from Russia at every advance, but that cost is not so lopsided that they can stop the Russian advance. [X post and video at the link]
“Quantity has a quality of its own,” says the U.S. War College (not Stalin, Clausewitz, or Napolean, dammit), and that quality is still extremely evident on the Donetsk front. Something has to change in this region if Russia is going to be stopped. Russian forces are now less than 6 kilometers from Pokrovsk, and there is no getting around it: Pokrovsk counts.
——————————— Threats like this one by Vladimir Solovyev come with regularity. They’re not serious threats. They’re just meant to give guys like Trump a regular excuse for letting Putin have whatever he wants. [video at the link]
———————————-
Remember the Canadian idiots who emigrated to Russia to escape “wokeness”? That hasn’t worked out well for them […]
[…] they were running the wrong way. While people are struggling to get into America, they are flowing out of Russia. Oh, and they’re also enjoying a life expectancy almost a decade lower than that in the United States.
Getting half a million people killed on the battlefield probably isn’t helping these numbers. [X post at the link, along with a list of personnel killed, and a list of equipment destroyed]
Russian tactics have been abysmal throughout much of the war, but they haven’t been static. It may have taken them two years, but they’ve learned to use their advantage in numbers and artillery to maintain a slow, steady advance. It’s not too far from the tactics they used in capturing Bakhmut in the spring of 2023, but now they’re doing it without the massive level of loss they suffered in that effort.
While the combination of mines and drones still makes any attempt at a traditional armored thrust next to impossible, Russian forces can still disrupt Ukrainian operations and move forward when given time to develop a position — especially when they have forces sufficient to press at multiple points along a front measured in hundreds of kilometers.
Ukrainian tactics in defense have been largely brilliant (mixed with occasional interludes of stubbon-to-the-point-of-insanity). But now those tactics need to change, and whatever they’re going to do, they have to do it in the face of an advancing enemy that’s days away from securing a critical strategic location.
This could be the most difficult hour since the first days of the invasion.
The special counsel says Trump “willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct” the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
A team of federal prosecutors led by special counsel Jack Smith said in a filing Wednesday that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump bears responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In a filing responding to Trump’s attempt to dismiss the case, Smith’s team said it “is incorrect” for Trump’s team to assert that the superseding indictment returned against Trump in August does not show that Trump bears responsibility for the events of Jan. 6.
Trump, Smith’s team said, “willfully caused others” to obstruct the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory by repeating his false claims of election fraud and giving “false hope” to his supporters who believed that then-Vice President Mike Pence might overturn the election, and by “pressuring” Pence and legislators to accept fraudulent certificates as part of the fake electors scheme.
“Those allegations link the defendant’s actions on January 6 directly to his efforts to corruptly obstruct the certification proceeding,” Smith’s team wrote.
“Contrary to the defendant’s claim … that he bears no factual or legal responsibility for the ‘events on January 6,’ the superseding indictment plainly alleges that the defendant willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceeding by summoning them to Washington, D.C., and then directing them to march to the Capitol to pressure the Vice President and legislators to reject the legitimate certificates and instead rely on the fraudulent electoral certificates,” Smith’s team wrote.
Trump’s lawyers previously argued the indictment “stretches generally applicable statutes beyond their breaking point based on false claims that President Trump is somehow responsible for events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021,” and sought to “assign blame for events President Trump did not control and took action to protect against.”
The indictment alleged that Trump exploited the violence and chaos at the Capitol, and in a recent filing Smith’s team said that Trump — when he heard that Pence had to be rushed to a secure location shortly after Trump attacked him on Twitter — responded by saying, “So what?”
Smith and Trump’s lawyers have continued to exchange legal filings in the case with less than three weeks left until Election Day, when Trump will hope to return to power after his 2020 loss. He has denied wrongdoing in the case and asserted the indictment was politically fueled.
The latest filing comes after the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity gutted part of Smith’s case against Trump. The superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury alleged that Trump knowingly spread lies about the 2020 election that were “unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing” in his bid to overturn his loss and remain in power.
Smith’s team said Trump’s dismissal filing “fails to identify any pleading flaw in the superseding indictment warranting its dismissal” and his motion “ignores entirely that the case against him includes allegations that he and his co-conspirators sought to create and use false evidence — fraudulent electoral certificates — as a means of obstructing the certification proceeding.”
Smith’s team said in a filing earlier this month that Trump “resorted to crimes” to stay in office after his loss and that he was fundamentally acting as a private candidate for office, not as president, when he engaged in much of the conduct at the heart of their case.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, gave Trump’s team an extension that moved the due date of a filing until after the election. Trump’s motion to dismiss based on his claims of presidential immunity is now due Nov. 7, while the government’s reply is due on Nov. 21. Whether the case ultimately goes to trial depends on the outcome of the election.
Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected most of Trump’s lawyer’s attempts to compel prosecutors to hand over more evidence in their case.
A judge overseeing the federal election interference case against Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected the former president’s claim that he was actually concerned about foreign influence and interference in the 2020 election — rather than the false claims about domestic voter fraud that he repeated in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack. [LOL]
There is “no reason to believe” that Trump’s purported worries about foreign influence in the 2020 election “animated his concerns at the time,” Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote, adding that Trump’s theories that such evidence would be relevant to his criminal case “do not withstand scrutiny.”
Trump’s team had asked Chutkan to compel prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s office to provide them with additional evidence, including “all information” about foreign interference and influence efforts in the 2020 election. It’s part of the Trump team’s attempt to present Trump’s concerns about mass voter fraud — which were roundly rejected by independent arbiters and courts — as “reasonable” and grounded in reality.
The defense has maintained that Trump’s false election fraud claims “were plausible and maintained in good faith” and “not unreasonable at the time,” even though many Jan. 6 defendants have since lamented that they were gullible enough to believe Trump’s lies, like Trump’s false claim on Jan. 6 that 139% of voters had cast ballots in the majority-Black city of Detroit.
Chutkan pushed back on Trump’s claims Wednesday in an order that rejected all but three of his 14 categories of requests for additional evidence.
About his request for evidence on foreign interference, Chutkan noted that the claims of election fraud Trump made as part of the alleged criminal conspiracy were “totally unrelated to foreign cyberattacks,” pointing to language in the superseding indictment that states that Trump’s allegations of fraud revolved around his false claims that “large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes.” [Correct.]
“At best, then, Defendant might attempt to use information about these network breaches to argue that because of generic foreign cyberattacks unrelated to election results, he had reason to worry that foreign adversaries would interfere in the 2020 election, which in turn somehow gave him a good-faith basis to claim that domestic actors had perpetrated outcome-determinative election fraud in non-cyberattack forms,” Chutkan wrote. “That logic is too strained to meet Defendant’s burden.” [LOL]
A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment in August charging that Trump schemed to use a campaign of “unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing” claims of voter fraud to overturn his election loss and maintain the presidency.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the four charges against him: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.
Trump’s state of mind is essential to the case, and Smith’s team has alleged that Trump “knew” his election lies “were false.” [Correct.]
Chutkan also rejected Trump’s request for evidence on “undercover agents and individuals acting at the direction of official authorities at the Capitol on January 6,” a request that aligns with the false-flag narrative promoted by some conspiracy theorists — including some Republican members of Congress — about Jan. 6.
Trump, she wrote, “does not provide anything more than speculation that there even were any such undercover actors at the Capitol on January 6” and there was no reason to compel the government to search for and produce that information.
Chutkan also rejected Trump’s request for communications by “members, relatives, or associates of the Biden Administration,” saying the “sweepingly broad and undefined” request “utterly fails” to meet the rigorous standard required for Trump to be able to make a selective prosecution claim.
The judge said that Trump was entitled to three categories of information: materials reviewed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe before his interview with the government; records about security measures that were conveyed to Trump during a meeting with Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, and acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller; and evidence related to the unauthorized retention of classified documents by former Vice President Mike Pence, which Trump’s team could use to potentially undermine Pence’s credibility if he were to testify. The Justice Department declined to press charges against Pence in the classified documents case. [More trouble down the road for Pence?]
The Supreme Court gutted part of Smith’s case over the summer with its ruling on presidential immunity, but the case against Trump is — very slowly — churning toward a potential trial. The likelihood of the case going to trial plummets if Trump wins re-election; he is widely expected to replace Attorney General Merrick Garland with a loyalist who could dismiss the case. [Snipped the usual denials from the Trump campaign, which included: witch hunt, sham, and partisan.]
birgerjohanssonsays
(I am going nuts compulsively checking polls. I had to check something completely different)
A new era of mycelial conservation could begin this month when the UK and Chile propose that fungi should be placed alongside animals and plants as a separate realm for environmental protection.
Mushrooms, mould, mildew, yeast and lichen would all receive elevated status under the plan, which will be submitted to the UN convention on biological diversity (CBD) during the Cop16 meeting in Cali, Colombia, which opens on 21 October.
The two governments will co-sponsor a “pledge for fungal conservation”, which has been exclusively shared with the Guardian, arguing for the “recognition of fungi as an independent kingdom of life in legislation, policies and agreements, in order to advance their conservation and to adopt concrete measures that allow for maintaining their benefits to ecosystems and people in the context of the triple environmental crisis.”
This refers to a growing body of evidence that fungi play a crucial role in remediating soil, sequestering a third of carbon from fossil fuel emissions, and breaking down plastics and polluting chemicals. Mycologists say that without fungi, most plants are unable to live outside water and therefore life on Earth as we know it would not exist.
“This is the most important thing that has ever happened in the field of fungal conservation,” said Giuliana Furci, the Chilean-British chief executive of the Fungi Foundation, which has been the driving force in the 3F Initiative, which aims to have “funga” recognised alongside flora and fauna. Unlike those terms, the word funga is not Latin and has been coined because it is morphologically similar.
—
Dad joke: “Why was the mushroom always invited to parties? Because he was a fungi.”
JMsays
@11 Lynna, OM:
From day one, weapons provided by China, Iran, and North Korea have been used by Russia in long-range attacks on civilian population centers and vital infrastructure. None of these regimes is setting limits on Putin. None of them is fretting about possible repercussions.
That isn’t really true, China does care about repercussions. China doesn’t care about Ukraine but they do consider their international trade more important then Russia. The governments of China and Russia make a show of being friends right now but really they don’t get along, they just have a mutual enemy. China has forced Russia to renegotiate oil sales, giving China a much more favorable price now that Russia desperately needs the money. They have not done things to help Russia, they are seeing how much they can extract from Russia.
China has played a complex dance seeing how much they can get away with before it triggers trade problems for them. Chinese banks have cut off the Russian banks to avoid China being cut out of the international banking system. This makes it harder for any trade because Chinese companies won’t take Rubles if they can’t be converted into Rembi or dollars. Large Chinese companies are not dealing with Russia, at least not directly. They are selling to fly by night Chinese companies that are selling to the Russians. And even that is limited, no large sales of military gear, weapons, ammunition or vehicles.
Another way of getting rid of reserve currencies from foreign trade is barter, something to which the Russian Finance Ministry has recently turned its attention. Officials have floated a diverse range of ideas, from an exchange of goods worth equal value, to offset deals when a foreign partner exports goods on behalf of a Russian company and then provides this company with goods worth the same amount.
None of these formats, however, are suitable even for the domestic market, never mind foreign trade. Exchanging goods for other goods would have to be manually accounted for, which would create major difficulties for any large or technologically advanced businesses using automated accounting systems.
As a result, mandarins and rice from Pakistan’s Meskay & Femtee Trading Company will be exchanged for chickpeas and lentils from the Russian company Astarta-Agrotrading, The Moscow Times reported.
“Russia and Pakistan have some difficulties in making mutual payments. Therefore, the two companies decided to launch a barter trade mechanism,” Ukrainska Pravda quoted Pakistani Deputy Minister of Trade Nasir Hamid as saying.
According to the agreement, Russia will provide 20,000 tons of chickpeas in exchange for the same amount of Pakistani rice. Separately, Pakistan will trade 10,000 tons of potatoes and 15,000 tons of mandarin oranges for 10,000 tons of Russian lentils and 15,000 tons of chickpeas.
—
(See, those are limits)
John Moralessays
This is, um, something. Germany has a reputation, and not for this sort of thing.
A state-of-the-art fire station in western Germany that was completed last year at a cost of tens of millions of euros has burned to the ground because it had not been equipped with a fire alarm.
The town of Stadtallendorf had proudly unveiled the new structure less than a year ago, but early on Wednesday emergency services were alerted to a fire that had started in a vehicle before quickly spreading to the whole building.
About 170 firefighters battled the blaze, including members of the local volunteer fire brigade, as 10-metre flames leapt from the station’s roof.
No one was injured although 10 fire engines were destroyed. But relief at the lack of casualties quickly gave way to incredulity that the building had no fire alarm – and then growing outrage and bafflement over the revelation that this was not a legal requirement.
Firefighters who rushed to the scene became emotional at the realisation that their own station had burned to the ground.
“It is a nightmare for a firefighter. No one wants to have to extinguish his own fire station,” the district fire inspector, Lars Schäfer, told German media, adding that the cost of the damage was estimated at €20m-24m.
Former President Donald Trump’s transition operation is compiling lists of names of people to keep out of a second Trump administration.
The lists of undesirable staffers include people linked to the Project 2025 policy blueprint; officials who resigned in protest of Trump’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; and others perceived as disloyal to the former president, said two former Trump officials familiar with the discussions.
That Trump has a blacklist isn’t a surprise. There is a long list of government officials that angered him the last time he was president. He has a history of being petty and vindictive. That people associated with Project 2025 are on the list is a surprise. Wonder how he will replace Vance?
Just kidding. The whole thing may just be part of Trump dissociating himself from Project 2025 and they could easily be dropped from the list after the election. That officials from the Trump campaign are willing to talk about it suggests this is the case.
Trump may actually want to keep people too closely tied to Project 2025 out because they will not personally loyal to him or it will bring bad publicity to him. In any case a really broad ban on people associated with or supporting Project 2025 is impractical, the list of organizations supporting it is long. Even if he sticks by a ban it will probably just be people who wrote it, not all supporters.
Jeansays
JM @22
Project 2025 will be back once President J.D. Vance is sworn in after the 25th amendment has been invoked. That’s looking more and more like the plan is to get Trump elected (since Vance would not be electable) and get rid of him once it becomes practical to do so.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unveiled his much anticipated “victory plan” on Wednesday, calling on his allies to take urgent steps to bolster Kyiv at a precarious moment in a bid to end the war with Russia next year.
As Moscow’s forces advance in the east and a bleak winter of power cuts looms, he told parliament his plan contained five main points that were in the hands of his allies, including an unconditional invite to join NATO now and weapons support.”
In return, he offered a Western role in developing Ukraine’s natural mineral resources and said Ukrainian troops could enhance the security of NATO and replace some of the U.S. forces in Europe.
“Together with our partners, we must change the circumstances so that the war ends. Regardless of what Putin wants. We must all change the circumstances so that Russia is forced to peace,” he told lawmakers and top officials.
Zelenskyy, who has unrelentingly called for a “fair” end to the war, says his plan is needed to force the Kremlin to negotiate in good faith […]
“We hear the word ‘negotiations’ from partners and the word ‘justice’ much less often. Ukraine is open to diplomacy, but honest (diplomacy),” he said.
His plan proposed establishing a “comprehensive non-nuclear strategic deterrence package” inside Ukraine to protect against threats from Russia and to destroy its military power. He did not elaborate, but said there was an additional secret addendum that he could not disclose.
The plan, he added, also envisaged a Western role investing in and jointly protecting Ukraine’s natural mineral resources from Russian attacks as well as post-war reconstruction pledges.
The plan is a major test of the political will of Kyiv’s key allies, who have poured in many billions of dollars of weapons to support Ukraine, while navigating fears of an “escalation” in a war against a nation with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.
NATO has said Ukraine is heading for membership but has stopped short of issuing an invitation.
The Kremlin said it was too early to comment in detail on Zelenskyy’s plan, but that Kyiv needed to “sober up” and realize the futility of the policies it was pursuing. […]
Zelenskyy said it was imperative Kyiv’s partners remained united.
He reiterated his months-old request for Western backing to conduct longer-range strikes into Russia, spoke of a “clear list of weapons” and air defenses that were needed and the importance of continuing its operations in Russia, a reference to Kyiv’s surprise incursion in Russia’s Kursk region in August.
“If we start moving on this victory plan now, we may be able to end the war by next year at the latest,” he said.
Zelenskyy said he would travel to a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday to present his plan.
He already met U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington at the end of the September to discuss it. In a subsequent whirlwind tour of Europe, he met the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany and outlined his plan.
The speech was attended by his top military, intelligence and political brass as well as lawmakers, some of whom occasionally stood up to applaud, although it was panned by some lawmakers.
[…] Zelenskyy said it was imperative Kyiv’s partners remained united.
He reiterated his months-old request for Western backing to conduct longer-range strikes into Russia, spoke of a “clear list of weapons” and air defenses that were needed and the importance of continuing its operations in Russia, a reference to Kyiv’s surprise incursion in Russia’s Kursk region in August.
“If we start moving on this victory plan now, we may be able to end the war by next year at the latest,” he said.
Zelenskyy said he would travel to a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday to present his plan.
He already met U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington at the end of the September to discuss it. In a subsequent whirlwind tour of Europe, he met the leaders of Britain, France, Italy and Germany and outlined his plan.
The speech was attended by his top military, intelligence and political brass as well as lawmakers, some of whom occasionally stood up to applaud, although it was panned by some lawmakers.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the Biden administration at least in the short term to enforce its latest attempt to curb climate-harming carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants that contribute to climate change. The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, rejected emergency requests brought by Republican states led by West Virginia and various industry groups seeking to block the regulation.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday celebrated new data from the National Labor Relations Board showing that the number of workers filing for union representation has doubled since the start of his administration.
In a statement, Biden said his is the “first administration in five decades to have an increase in union petitions.”
Papa fertilization really stepped in it Wednesday when trying to convince a group of women that his supposed ardent support for in-vitro fertilization is a genuine, long-held political position — and not a bandwagon he hopped on when it became a convenient middle ground for damage control on his abortion record this campaign cycle.
During a town hall event hosted and moderated by Fox News’ Harris Faulkner in the battleground state of Georgia on Tuesday, Donald Trump faced questions from an all-female audience, which reportedly consisted of women associated with local Republican groups, hand-picked by Fox News. Despite the friendly audience, Trump fumbled around as he answered their questions in weird and sexists ways — at one point painting himself as the “father of IVF” while admitting he just learned what the procedure was this year when the “fantastically attractive” Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) explained it to him.
Here’s what the former president said in response to a question about his support for the procedure:
[Britt] called me up like, “Emergency! Emergency!” Because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed down. A judge ruled. And she said, “Friends of mine came up to me, and they were — oh, they were so angry!”
I didn’t even know they were going, you know, they were — it’s fertilization. I didn’t know they were even involved in, nobody talks about — they don’t talk about it. But now that they can’t do it — she said, “I was attacked. In a certain way, I was attacked.”
And I said, “Explain IVF very quickly.” And within about two minutes, I understood it. I said, “No, no. We’re totally in favor of IVF.”
Trump introduced his new moniker for himself in response to a question about restrictive abortion bans in red states and how the bans might impact access to the popular and commonly used fertility treatment.
“I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF!” he exclaimed, before assuring audience members that the extreme bans that have been passed in states across the nation in the wake of Roe’s overturning — a legacy that he picks and chooses when to take credit for — are “going to be redone.”
“It’s going to be redone, it’s going to be redone, they’re going to — you end up with the vote of the people. And some of them, I agree, they’re too tough, too tough. And those are going to be redone,” he said.
“We really are the party for IVF. We want fertilization and it is all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it and we are out there on IVF even more than them. We are totally in favor of it,” he continued.
This, of course, all flies in the face of recent history: Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have spent recent months espousing their undying support for the fertility treatment, though it was put in harms way in the first place through the legal reasoning of their religious right allies, who contend that personhood begins at or even before conception. That ideology paved the way for the conservative Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling.
It was not until the Alabama Supreme Court handed down a decision that made that reasoning explicit, declaring embryos to be “babies” and putting IVF in the crosshairs, that Republicans spoke out about their supposed deep and undying love for the procedure. That rhetoric has been rolled out in split screen, as Republicans fight Democrats’ attempts to pass federal IVF protections in Congress, and continue to push for laws that would enshrine fetal personhood at the state level.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ first-ever interview on Fox News aired Wednesday. The pretaped segment was expected to be an ambush on the Democratic presidential nominee—and host Brett Baier did not defy those expectations.
Baier immediately tried to bulldoze Harris on the issue of immigration and border security, not even allowing her to respond to his opening “question.” After all, allowing Harris to explain how GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and Republicans decided to exploit border security as an election issue instead of working on a solution wouldn’t make Fox News’ favored candidate particularly appealing.
“I’m responding to the point you raised, and I’d like to finish,” Harris said when Baier tried to bulldoze through a second “question.” She proceeded to detail all of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to address border security that were ultimately obstructed by Trump and his minions in the Republican Party.
“And Donald Trump found out about that bill and told them to kill it because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.” Harris said, steamrolling right through Baier’s interruptions. “And in this election, this is rightly a discussion that the American people want to have. And what they want are solutions, and they want a president of the United States who is not playing political games with the issue.”
[video at the link]
Harris also set the record straight when Baier tried to downplay Trump’s indefensible threats to sic military forces on American citizens who he deems “radical left lunatics.” She objected when Baier instead showed a clip of Trump joking about being persecuted and comparing himself to infamous gangster Al Capone.
“I’m sorry, and with all due respect, that clip was not what he has been saying about ‘the enemy within’ that he has repeated,” Harris insisted. “That’s not what you just showed.”
The vice president then broke it down for Fox News viewers.
“Here’s the bottom line. He has repeated it many times. And you and I both know that. And you and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people,” Harris told Baier. “He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him.”
“This is a democracy,” Harris continued. “And in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it. And this is what is at stake” [video at the link]
On the fly, and in the moment, Harris had to call out Brett Baier’s deceptive editing of a clip he showed of Trump speaking. Baier and his team did, in fact, edit out the part where Trump emphasized “the enemy within.” Trump has been using that phrase a lot to describe anyone who disagrees with him.
“Maddow: Trump is Trying to Make More Hush Money Payments to Porn Star Stormy Daniels”
I can’t believe I just wrote that title. But seriously it’s happening, and Rachel has all the receipts.
Through lawyers, Trump has been pressuring Stormy to sign an NDA, offering different sums depending on the level of her silence. She won’t sign an NDA, but I think, has accepted something like $600,000 as a “settlement” from Donald Trump.
As troffelmasse corrected me — perhaps this isn’t officially “hush money”, it is still extremely sketchy.
Maddow has documentation of the bargaining back and forth from as recently as July of 2024. That’s just a couple of months ago.
This is terrible for TFG. He has been caught red handed, committing the exact same crimes that only months ago gave him 34 felony convictions! This almost feels like an October surprise, but who knows anymore.
Lets keep kicking ass and go win this thing.
I will embed the video of Maddow breaking into Chris Hayes’ show to break this news, the moment it is available.
Or you can click the play button on this tweet: [available at the link]
Update 9:58pm EDT:
In the comments, troffelmasse makes a very important point:
hey eric … I think this whole thing was a negotiation between Trump and Daniels for the judgment against her over her failed defamation suit … which must have gotten up to the $600k range because of interest? Trump’s lawyers were willing to REDUCE that settlement if Daniels would shut up, and were negotiating about it.
I think you might edit your diary so it doesn’t sound like the $600+k was hush money. Maddow’s video explains the numbers. Ultimately, Daniels didn’t accept the NDA idea and settled for $627.5k.
I appreciate the correction!
I believe, nevertheless, that this is still newsworthy. It is odd that Trump is constantly trying to keep this one porn star quiet. What else does she know?
Yes, I agree. The new developments are newsworthy because Trump is still trying to buy Stormy Daniel’s silence. And he is trying to do so right before an election.
Trump’s lawyers wanted Stormy Daniels to sign a very restrictive NDA, an NDA that even included her agreeing to not talk about Trump’s campaign for the presidency.
Trump’s campaign responded to an inquiry from Rachel Maddow. Part of their response included a claim that all of the documents Rachel used in her report were part of an illegal hack-and-dump by the Iranians. Rachel made it clear that Stormy and her lawyers provided access to the documents. Nothing was hacked. Nothing was second hand.
Posted by readers of the article:
Maddow argues that Trump was apparently trying to launder another NDA through the legal settlement monies Daniels owed Trump. Trump was willing to lower the settlement to $620k if she agreed (started at $650k). She wouldn’t, so the negotiations ended at $627.5k, which she paid. Trump’s campaign then accused Maddow of getting the docs she had from the Iranian hacking. Maddow got them from Daniels’ lawyer lol.
———————————
What is he so desperate to keep her from spilling to the media this time around? I can think of any number of possibilities, but even so, none of them is so grave as to have him willingly stick his head even deeper into the noose, unless whatever it is will seem magnified by being so close to the election […]Curiouser and curiouser…
———————————
somebody set up a Go-fund-me that netted all the money Daniels needed to settle with Trump. What was going on was the negotiating between Trump and Daniels’ lawyers about exactly what the finally settlement would be. And part of those debts stem from a defamation suit that Daniels brought against Trump, and lost, and so owes Trump several hundred thousand dollars in damages and legal fees.
Facts:
– Stormy Daniels did NOT agree to sign an new “hush” agreement. No NDA was signed.
– Ms. Daniels paid her legal debt to Trump.
– Trump was saying, basically, “you owe this much but we will allow you to pay less if you also sign an NDA.” That’s the part of the Trump-proposed deal that looks like trying to launder (hide) a hush-money agreement inside a legal settlement
– Trump, who rather infamously does not use his own money to pay for anything, was willing to use his own money to try to silence Stormy Daniels … again.
– Trump failed in this latest attempt to silence Ms. Daniels.
Bekenstein Boundsays
birgerjohanssen@490:
Joe Manchin Explodes In Panicked Rage Over Kamala’s Announcement She Is Ready To Do Away With The Filibuster.
Whatsamatter, Joey boy? Worried that if you can’t block climate legislation anymore the coal barons who fund your campaigns will demote you to just “idiot”?
John Moralessays
Um, he didn’t actually explode. That’s just the clickbait title, Bekenstein Bound.
(That channel always always always got the stupidest most hyperbolic bullshitty headlines and they are never, ever, ever right)
John Moralessays
PS
Worried that if you can’t block climate legislation anymore the coal barons who fund your campaigns will demote you to just “idiot”?
Nope.
He’s already 77 years old, and has had a great life, and is a serving senator and has all the contacts necessary. Should he need them, because I think his nest is probably rather well-gilt.
(Whyever would he worry?)
John Moralessays
[in case anybody thinks I’m exaggerating]
<clickety-click>
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(Birger is special that way)
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 33
I try to tune down the titles from eleven to something more approoriate by removing the ALL CAPS stuff, but if I rewrite the titles completely I cannot use quotation marks.
I avoid stuff with titles that too obviously is clickbait, but with Trump-related content you never
know. He might have literally been throwing feces or something.
Headlines containing “shocking” are usually a bad sign.
And if a headline says “shocking news of Elon Musk”, no, nothing that @☆ is doing can shock me anymore.
John Moralessays
It’s OK, Birger. I get it.
Surely we understand each other. Mutual respect.
I appreciate you share stuff of interest.
I appreciate you use your phone to do it, with the shittiest of interfaces.
I definitely know you are a good egg.
But, you know… clickbait title and naked link, that’s kinda uninformative.
A bit lazy, interface and all that
But, thing is, BB kinda took that literally.
Just making sure they get what the actual circumstances are.
And if a headline says “shocking news of Elon Musk”, no, nothing that @☆ is doing can shock me anymore.
I believe you. But still, not like you post the (adjusted) clickbait title and naked link and also that you personally don’t think it is shocking.
Whatever “it” is, because the thing about clickbaity titles is you have to click on them to find out what the actual content may be.
(Also, be aware that in English there is quite a distinction between “of X” and “for X” and “about X”)
—
Point being, you so very often merely post the (adjusted) clickbait title and the naked link but never, ever editorialise. Perhaps make that tiny teeny little bit more effort for such unspecific but LOUD clickbaity titles?
A barebones synopsis, a brief adumbration, a summary opinon… basically, anything from you. Anything t all. A gist.
That would be nice, and surely easier on your readers.
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 35.
OK
As for polls, I will limit myself to the ones that have a good reputation, like YouGov, and the podcasters that try to be serious.
birgerjohanssonsays
ELBONIA! Milbloggers LazerPig, Animarchy et al have a fun three hours working out with which weapons systems to arm the People’s Republic of Elbonia.
Rules: The suggested hardware must be crap -otherwise the resistance will have you assassinated- but it must also look impressive, otherwise the Generalissimo will have you shot for suggesting obviously bad weapons. A surprising number of the entries are British-made.
(nerds have odd obsessions)
The premise is less weird than much of the history of Stalinist countries.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=sHP7F_SBpu4
BTW tech history is addictive. I bet many readers can look at a 1980s concert and immediately identify which version of synthesizer they are using.
birgerjohanssonsays
…on the subject of tech history, I must try to dig up the link about the Soviet jet-powered biplane intended to be a crop-duster for really big collective farms.
KGsays
Rules: The suggested hardware must be crap -otherwise the resistance will have you assassinated- but it must also look impressive, otherwise the Generalissimo will have you shot for suggesting obviously bad weapons. A surprising number of the entries are British-made. – birgerjohansson@37
I have an interesting book, Britain’s War Machine by David Edgerton. Among other things, he argues that Churchill, far from being hostile to science and innovation (a claim he attributes primarily to the “post-war academic left”), was a gadget enthusiast, and as a result, during WW2 the country spent too much money and effort on developing new weapons and devices, at the expense of maximising output of reliable weapons. Among Churchill’s favourite projects (some of which he invented himself) were aerial mines (they didn’t destroy any planes), a 100-ton “mole” that would dig a trench for troops to advance along (never built), using icebergs as giant aircraft carriers (never got beyond the planning stage), and PLUTO (PipeLine Under The Ocean) which did work, but was much less useful than anticipated.
It’s not unique to that channel! Clickbait is a thing, and since YouTube video titles lack styling, the headline SHOUTING a word or two for ridiculous EMPHASIS is sadly just run of the mill.
It annoys me especially when a generally good channel with interesting content has to indulge in such empty sloganeering in trying to hawk their wares, as I expect some literal truth to be at work and I am very frequently disappointed.
birgerjohanssonsays
Xanthe @ 40
One way to discourage this would be if viewers could opt for software that actively blocks ALL CAPS and common clickbait phrases.
birgerjohanssonsays
A Different Bias is forwarding how even conservatives think the Tory party has a bad time ahead. Amidst the alarming US polling news, this tidbit cheered me up a bit.
“Telegraph (newspaper) Accidentally Shows How Screwed the Tories Are”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=iUME1pqKlNo
(“puuurrrr”) 🐯
birgerjohanssonsays
‘Ancient Apocalypse’ on Netflix os spreading the claim there was a worldwide advanced civilisation during the ice age, and that there are flooded houses left from this civilisation.
Short version: BS!
(Note that I used all caps!)
Sabine Hossenfelder has long been very critical of the quantum computation hype – while the available tech will have applications, it always has to play catchup with the evolution of ordinary computers.
Here’s the actual wording of the agreement Trump’s lawyers proposed to Storm Daniels’ lawyers, along with a few more added details:
[…] “We disagree that a payment of $620,000 would be in full satisfaction of the three judgments,” Trump’s lawyers said in a July letter obtained by Rachel. “However, we can agree to settle these matters for $620,000, provided that your client agrees in writing to make no public or private statements related to any alleged past interactions with President Trump, or defamatory or disparaging statements about him, his businesses and/or any affiliates or his suitability as a candidate for President.”
So to review, Trump wanted $650,000. He was prepared to accept $620,000 alongside a signed NDA.
When Daniels balked, Trump agreed to accept $635,000 — and he got $627,500, without an NDA.
So what’s the bottom line? As Rachel summarized on the show, “The Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, is currently awaiting sentencing for crimes related to a secret hush-money payment he made to porn star Stormy Daniels, just before the 2016 election, to keep her from talking about him — and specifically about having sex with him.
“And now just before the 2024 election, Trump has once again demanded that Stormy Daniels sign on to an agreement not to talk about him, offering to knock off thousands of dollars off her bill if she did. […] he really is basically trying to do the same thing again.”
The Israeli military said Thursday that it was investigating whether Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed in a recent operation.
Three militants were killed in Gaza, but their identities are not yet confirmed, Israel said in a post on X, adding they were working to confirm them.
NewsNation’s Robert Sherman confirmed with IDF sources that Sinwar was among those killed, following an initial DNA check.
CNN reported that Isreali forces encountered the man believed to be Sinwar during routine military operations and engaged him, along with two other militants.
[…] Sinwar is the mastermind behind the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people, while Hamas fighters took another 250 hostages.
He has been elusive since the war started following the Oct. 7 attacks, considered to be hiding in the vast networks of tunnels underneath Gaza.
[…] Sinwar has also been an obstacle to a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza, according to the U.S., and has played the chief role in accepting or rejecting conditions. Netanyahu has also been accused of being an obstacle in the talks, which died out in August.
About 100 hostages are still held by Hamas in Gaza. It’s not clear exactly how the death of Sinwar would complicate securing their release, along with a cease-fire in Gaza, which faces a dire humanitarian situation in a territory where more than 42,000 people have been killed in the war since Oct. 7.
Israel has taken out multiple leaders of Hamas, including the former top political chief Ismail Haniyeh in a late July strike.
After the death of Haniyeh, Sinwar was named the new top leader of Hamas, a group that has lost much of its power since the war began, with Israel taking out nearly all of its battalions in the fighting in Gaza.
Mohammed Deif, who was the top military commander of Hamas’s military wing, was also killed in July, Israel confirmed in August.
Israel has also decimated the command structure of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, including killing its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, last month.
Heritage Chief’s ‘Violent’ Talk Upsets Delicate Fascist Who Ran Project 2025
Undoing democracy is a job for gentlemen, sir!
Paul Dans, the former director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, seems to be at odds with his former boss, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, according to an interview with the Washington Post. Dans condemned what he considers “violent rhetoric” from Roberts, and what’s more called for JD Vance to retract the foreword he wrote for Roberts’s book, which is scheduled to be published November 12, one week after Election Day.
Project 2025, you’ll recall, is the set of instructions for How To Undo Democracy As We’ve Known It, written by a crowd of former Trump White House aides as a policy wish list if Donald Trump returns to power. Once Project 2025 started getting more attention than Trump himself, he angrily distanced himself from it and insisted his real second-term plan was a thing called Agenda 47, which was a lot like Project 2025 but written in crayon and actually worse in several ways. [True. And LOL] Not long afterwards, Dans resigned from Heritage, explaining that Project 2025 had accomplished all the work it needed to do, or at least that any of You People would be allowed to see.
Dans explained to the Post that gosh darn it, there’s such a thing as decorum, and if you want to enable a sociopathic narcissist who wants to wield dictatorial powers, you need to keep a civil tongue. (We are paraphrasing broadly.) [LOL]
“If we’re going to ask the left to tone it down, we have to do our part as well. […] There’s no place for this sort of violent rhetoric and bellicose taunting, especially in light of the fact that President Trump has now been subject to not one but two assassination attempts.”
Specifically, Dans was aghast at Roberts for saying that this summer’s Supreme Court decisions marked yet another “second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the Left allows it to be.” Your righties love them a good second American Revolution, and declare them about as frequently as they see Wars On Christmas.
Roberts declined to be interviewed, the Post says, but Heritage spokesperson Noah Weinrich huffily explained that Roberts was only warning that “the Left” might become violent, not that it would be asking for violence, and “Any attempt to mischaracterize Dr. Roberts’s comments as supportive of violence is grotesque and completely contrary to the observation he was making,” so there. [Yeah right. He doth protest too much.]
In addition, the Post adds, Dans was concerned about how Roberts was marketing his upcoming book Dawn’s Early Light, not so much because everything with these guys is a goddamn Olde Tyme American Glorie reference, but because its original subtitle was “Burning Down Washington to Save America,” and the cover even pictured a wooden match. […]
Roberts used similarly incendiary imagery in promotional materials for the book, too […]
In early versions of the text reviewed by The Washington Post, Roberts called for “a political revolution” to “overthrow today’s incarnation of the ruling class,” argued that the nation “must be destroyed and replaced,” and supported the elimination of institutions including the Ivy League, the FBI, Fairfax County Public Schools and the Boy Scouts. [Heh. Very thorough I must say.]
However, following the first assassination attempt against Trump right before the Republican convention, which killed a member of the audience and wounded some idiot’s ear, the promotional copy was toned down a bit:
Gone was a reference to overthrowing the ruling class; the revolution was specified as “peaceful”; and Fairfax County schools and the Boy Scouts were spared. The subtitle changed from “Burning Down Washington” to “Taking Back Washington,” and the match disappeared from the cover.
We’ll assume that the basic message remains of imposing rightwing rule on Americans whether they like it or not, but it’s a kinder, gentler fascism now. Roberts decided in August to hold the book until after the election, and Weinrich insisted that wasn’t violent language anyway:
Dr. Roberts initially was using a rhetorical turn of phrase to emphasize the need for certain aspects of the federal government to be restored to a citizen-centered balance, rather than being the captive of a small minority from the Left. However, following the slanderous media coverage of Project 2025, Dr. Roberts did not want to allow the same voices to attribute false allegations of violence to his book as well.
Even so, Dans told the Post, “There’s really no place for this level of rhetoric, let alone from the head of an august think tank. And by doing that, he’s essentially besmirched the professional reputations of everyone involved in Project 2025.”
Oh no, not besmirch statements!
The article also includes more gossipy discussion of Sweet Valley Beltway drama and backbiting among all the major characters than we want to go into here […] There’s a fun closing paragraph, noting that for all the griping about his vitriolic tone, Roberts’s only regret seems to be that he was too nice; at a New York Times conference on September 25, he reflected, “We allowed the radical Left to define the brand Project 2025. […] We should have — figuratively speaking — punched back. Lesson learned.”
Also, we don’t know when Paul Dans was interviewed for the story before last Sunday, when Trump called for sending the US military to go after his political enemies. It seems like someone should probably ask him about that, considering his principled rejection of violent rhetoric. […]
You Won’t Believe How Racist Trump Was At Univision Latino Town Hall JK Yes You Will
Also just his usual babbling dementia stupidass self.
Donald Trump had his Univision town hall last night in Miami, where he hoped to be surrounded only by Cuban American Republican voters who love him, just like how at the fake Harris Faulkner “women’s issues” town hall he did for Fox News on Wednesday, he was surrounded only by MAGA cult women who are fine with having their lives and bodies controlled by MAGA men, as long as other women have it worse.
During the Univision town hall, a 67-year-old man named José Saralegui asked Trump about the lies he’s been spreading about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. You will not will absolutely believe how racist Trump was right in front of this man and that audience. [video at the link]
The gentleman noted at the beginning that he is a registered Republican, but is right now an undecided voter. He said he wanted to talk about the conspiracy theories about Springfield, Ohio, about Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs. He noted that Springfield authorities have said multiple times that this is not happening. Nonetheless, Trump has said he wants to un-legalize them (they are here legally). Respectfully, he asked, does Trump really believe Haitian people are eating people’s pets?
Trump said:
“This was just reported. I was just saying what was reported. That’s been reported. And eating other things too that they’re not supposed to be. All I do is report. I have not … I was there, I’m going to be there and we’re going to take a look and I’ll give you a full report when I do.”
“But that’s been in the newspapers and reported pretty broadly.”
OK fucking stop. It was not reported by the real news. It was not “in the newspapers and reported pretty broadly.” It was reported by the Nazis […] whose racist bullshit Stupid Hitler Trump snorts up like cocaine […]
And “eating other things too that they’re not supposed to be”? So basically he’s telling this room full of Latino voters that yep, he’s still pretty sure that’s what these Haitian migrants were doing.
Also, “all I do is report”? Fuck you. He’s not a reporter, he’s Stupid Hitler, and he’s trying to seize power and become America’s dictator so he can escape prison. [I have to ask, as a presidential candidate does he not have a responsibility to vet the information he delivers to the public?]
Trump continued:
“I will say this as far as Springfield’s concerned, because I do know that situation.”
He does not know that situation. He has a white supremacist fever dream about what he imagines should be a whites-only town in Ohio that’s been invaded by hordes of whoever Stephen Miller tells him has invaded.
“You have a city of 52,000 people, and they’ve added almost 30,000 migrants into the city. If you were a person that lived there, if you lived in Springfield, Ohio, and all of a sudden you couldn’t get into a hospital, you couldn’t get your children into a school, you wouldn’t be able to buy groceries, you could no longer pay the rent because the government’s paying rent. If any of that happened, it would be a disaster for you and you wouldn’t be happy.”
He’s just fucking making up numbers. It’s more like 20,000 migrants. The rest is just his babbling Klan wizard editorializing and hallucinating. Not sure why he thinks you can’t buy groceries when Haitian people are present, but he’s a total piece of shit and incredibly stupid. [yep]
“We wanna make our people safe and secure, and we wanna make them happy. But Springfield, Ohio, is a perfect example. You have a town, a beautiful little town with no problems … “
He means white town.
“… all of a sudden they have 30- or 32,000 people dropped into the town. Most of whom don’t speak the language, most of whom don’t speak the language at all. And what they’re doing is they’re looking all over for interpreters.”
Did we mention that the questioner, Señor Saralegui, asked the question en español, either because he doesn’t speak English or feels much more comfortable in Spanish?
No, we didn’t, because we wanted to wait until that very moment to tell you that, so it could really sink in what a Nazi Trump was being to these people’s faces.
Trump finished:
“Well, I mean, I think you can’t just destroy our country. It’s, uh, maybe some people disagree with me, but you can’t, you can’t put in a very short period of time 32,000 people into a 50,000-people town and expect things to go well. It’s a disaster, it’s a total disaster, and the people that live there, are, you know, they wanna leave, they wanna move, because if you, if you read about it or talk to ‘em, people wanna move, they wanna leave, because they’ve never had anything like this. And we can’t let that happen to our towns and our cities in our country. Just fan’t let it happen. It’s not sustainable, thank you, I hope you vote for a Republican.”
When he says “destroy our country,” he means “have skin that isn’t white.” And the rest is just more Klanbabble.
Elsewhere during the event, Trump answered a question from Ramiro González, 56, who also said he was a Republican but who was really uncomfortable with that whole thing where Trump ordered a coup and incited a terrorist attack to overthrow the government to overturn the results of the election he lost. He didn’t like Trump’s shitty response to COVID, and said it disturbed him that so many members of his former administration, including his vice president, didn’t support him.
González said he wanted to give Trump an “opportunity to try to win back my vote.” [video at the link]
Trump told González that January 6 was “a day of love,” that he did nothing wrong that day, and that all his MAGA terrorists who came to terrorize “didn’t come because of me, they came because of the election, they thought the election was a rigged election.” (They came because he lied to them for months and told them it was a rigged election, “BE THERE, WILL BE WILD!”)
We could be wrong, but we don’t think Trump earned back Ramiro González’s vote.
Also the looks on the faces of the people in the audience when Trump said “Ashli Babbitt was killed, nobody was killed,” and also González’s face when Trump said it was a “day of love,” all of that was CHEF’S KISS.
When normal people see Trump, they see what a fucking lunatic he is, and they loathe him.
Hamas leader confirmed dead by Israel
Yahya Sinwar, architect of Oct. 7 attacks, killed in Gaza; body identified by DNA testing Washington Post link
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, was killed by the Israeli military in Gaza after eluding its forces for more than a year. His body was identified after DNA testing in Israel, said two Israeli officials speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Separately, a comparison with dental records also confirmed that the body is Sinwar’s, Israeli security officials told The Washington Post, also on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Hamas did not immediately confirm his death. […]
As Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has progressed, the Republican has emphasized his support and affection for Jan. 6 rioters. The former president has defended them as “victims” and “hostages.” He’s promised to reward them with day-one pardons — including those who violently clashed with law enforcement. He’s helped rioters raise money, and at one point Trump even released a song with Jan. 6 inmates.
But as it turns out, there was still room for him to fall further.
During a Univision town hall event, a man named Ramiro Gonzalez told Trump that he’d lost his support, in part because of his handling of Jan. 6. “I want to give you the opportunity to try to win back my vote,” the Floridian — who described himself as a Republican — told the former president. [video at the link]
After pretending he wasn’t responsible for summoning the Jan. 6 crowd to the nation’s capital, Trump said, “Nothing done wrong. At all, nothing done wrong.”
He went on say, in reference to the insurrectionist violence, “There were no guns down there; we didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns.”
Just so we’re all clear, when Trump referenced “we,” he was aligning himself with the violent criminals — some of whom carried guns, his latest lies notwithstanding. Similarly, “the others” was in reference to law enforcement personnel.
[…] At last month’s presidential debate, Trump cited ‘we’ before shifting to ‘this group of people.‘”
[…] the day after the assault on the Capitol, the then-president said, “Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem.” He went on to describe the riot as a “heinous attack.”
Reading from a prepared text, Trump added, “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. … To those who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country, and to those who broke the law: You will pay.”
Five days later, Trump condemned the “mob [that] stormed the Capitol and trashed the halls of government.” On the final full day of his term, again reading from a script, Trump added, “All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated.”
Nearly four years later, Trump not only “tolerates” the rioters’ crimes, he associates himself with the rioters.
Trump is not just rewriting history and relitigating insurrectionist violence in the race’s final weeks, he’s also engaged in a bizarre fight pitting the January 2017 version of himself against the October 2024 version.
It’s a fight he’s losing because it’s one he can’t win.
I think this is just Trump revealing what he thought all along. And no amount of red-faced protestations that he included “peacefully” in one of speech during his months-long attempt to foment an insurrection will save him.
[…] Trump stood on a debate stage and told a national television audience, “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country.”
There were no caveats. He didn’t preface his comments by saying, “Rumor has it” or “I’ve seen reports that suggest.” The former president simply asserted that racist lies were factual. For him to pretend more than a month later that he wasn’t responsible for peddling this garbage is ridiculous.
[…] If the Democratic vice president found a fringe website that made outlandish claims about Trump, could Harris bring those lies to the public and say, “I just repeat what was reported”?
But just as notable is the larger, underappreciated pattern.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, 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.”
Four years later […] the then-president participated a town hall on NBC News. In the runup to the event, Trump promoted a series of bizarre ideas about Osama bin Laden and SEAL Team 6, which in turn sparked some aggressive pushback.
At the town hall, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked for some kind of explanation, and Trump said he didn’t know anything about the conspiracy theory that he’d brought to the public.
“That was an opinion of somebody,” the then-president said, adding, “I’ll put it out there.”
It fell to Guthrie to remind the incumbent leader of the free world, “You’re the president. You’re not someone’s crazy uncle who can retweet whatever.”
Almost exactly four years to the day later, he’s still acting like someone’s crazy uncle, peddling nonsense without regard for accuracy, decency, or consequences.
It’s a timely reminder that Trump has a child-like approach to reality: It starts when he sees something ridiculous. The Republican then decides he wants the ridiculous thing to be true. Soon after, the former president decides the ridiculous thing must be true.
And at that point, Trump urges the public to believe the ridiculous thing, telling Americans it is true, even when it’s not.
Adults with critical thinking skills tend not to say things such as, “All I know is what’s on the internet.” […]
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2020 said then-president Donald Trump was a “despicable human being,” a “narcissist,” “stupid” and “ill-tempered,” according to excerpts from a new biography of the Republican leader by the Associated Press’s deputy Washington bureau chief.
According to the AP, which reported on excerpts of “The Price of Power” by Michael Tackett, a longtime Washington reporter and deputy Washington bureau chief, McConnell made the comments in the weeks before the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, in which a mob of Trump supporters attempted to stop the affirmation of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election.
[…]
Tackett’s book will be released one week before Election Day, on Oct. 29. It is based on nearly three decades of McConnell’s recorded diaries and years of interviews that Tackett conducted with McConnell.
At the time McConnell made the comments, Trump and his allies were working to overturn the results of the election, falsely claiming that the election had been fraudulent in key states including Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia. According to the AP, McConnell was afraid that Trump’s efforts would hurt the two Senate Republican candidates running in runoff races in Georgia — races that would dictate who won the majority in the Senate.
McConnell reportedly said — before the Georgia runoff races — that Trump is “stupid” and “ill-tempered.” Trump, he added, “can’t even figure out where his own best interests lie.”
Ultimately, both Georgia Republicans lost, and Democrats grabbed the Senate majority.
And while McConnell reportedly worried about Trump’s actions after the election, publicly he did not do much to stop a wave of election denialism that continues to prevail in the Republican Party — other than publicly acknowledging Biden’s victory and his warning to Republican colleagues not to participate in election denialism.
According to Tackett, however, McConnell privately said that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office. McConnell appeared hopeful that the American public had had “enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.”
“For a narcissist like him … that’s been really hard to take,” McConnell said. “And so his behavior since the election has been even worse, by far, than it was before, because he has no filter now at all.”
[…]
McConnell also called Trump a “despicable human being” when he held up a bipartisan spending package meant to offer relief and government funding amid the coronavirus pandemic. Trump, McConnell said, “is sitting on this package of relief that the American people desperately need.”
[…]
The Trump campaign had no immediate response to the McConnell criticism.
McConnell’s office issued a statement, saying, “Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now.” …..
A few weeks ago, Donald Trump appeared at a campaign event held at a Pennsylvania farm, at which the Republican issued an unusual threat.
While it’s unheard of for a presidential candidate to threaten a major American company directly, Trump said he was prepared to punish John Deere with a 200% tariff if the agricultural manufacturer moves some of its production to factories in Mexico.
The company had announced plans to shift some production from Iowa to Mexico, so the intimidating warning was rooted, at least in part, in fact.
It was against this backdrop that the former president made a bizarre appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, where he delivered an unexpected boast: His threat, he claimed, worked like a charm.
“Are you ready? John Deere, great company,” Trump said. “They announced about a year ago they’re gonna build big plants outside of the United States. Right? They’re going to build them in Mexico. … I said, ‘If John Deere builds those plants, they’re not selling anything into the United States.’ They just announced yesterday they’re probably not going to build the plants, OK? I kept the jobs here.” [blatant lie]
So, good news? I suppose it might be, were it not for the fact that the Republican candidate referenced developments that don’t appear to exist. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Farm equipment maker Deere & Co. said it isn’t abandoning a plan to move some production to Mexico from the U.S., countering former President Donald Trump’s claim Tuesday that he persuaded the company to reconsider. … Deere said after the Trump interview that it didn’t make any announcement about canceling plans to build farm tractor cabs and some construction machinery at plants in Mexico.
As for the GOP candidate’s comments about John Deere’s announcement from “yesterday” — in context, Monday, Oct. 14 — a CNN report noted, “[A] search of news articles and corporate press releases showed nothing about any such John Deere announcement the day prior.”
The report added, “The Trump campaign did not respond to a CNN request for any evidence for the former president’s story.”
As this reporting reached the public, the former president published a related item to his social media platform. “For over a year, I’ve said China is building giant plants in Mexico,” Trump wrote. “Since they heard about the Tariffs, all work has STOPPED on those plants. I saved Michigan autoworkers.” [blatant lie … or Trump is now so demented that he is hallucinating?]
As best as I can tell, there’s no evidence of China abandoning any manufacturing plans in Mexico.
[…] I’m mindful of the big-picture takeaway — he wants to win an election — but when he made the public boast about John Deere this week, he probably realized that someone would check to see if the claims were true.
[…] did he assume that people would hear his lie, while far fewer people would see the reporting that proves his lie wasn’t true?
Oh No, Betsy DeVos Forgot To Murder The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program :(
From only mostly dead, it’s now forgiven loans for ONE MILLION students.
Even after a whole bunch of stupid lawsuits from Republican-run states that have blocked, for now at least, a number of Joe Biden’s efforts to reduce student debt, one debt forgiveness program, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, is still going strong, and reached a huge milestone this week.
In a White House announcement, President Biden said that the Education Department has approved another $4.5 billion tranche of student debt forgiveness, wiping out loan balances for more than 60,000 public service workers. That brings the total number of people who’ve had their debt cancelled by PSLF to over a million. Here, have a good cry at this video of Biden “surprising” Rhode Island kindergarten teacher Kelly Beckford with the news that her balance of $46,000 has been forgiven. [video at the link]
Not bad for a program that was passed by Congress in 2007, under George W. Bush, but which up until Biden took office had only erased the debt of 7,000 borrowers. Yes, in 13-some years. That was due to a number of problems that Biden directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to fix. (The easiest fix was “don’t be Betsy DeVos.”) From 7,000 to a million loans forgiven in less than four years is pretty good performance, we’d say! [Agreed. The Biden administration did some good work.]
The idea behind PSLF is simple enough: People who choose to go into teaching and a whole bunch of other public service jobs could, for the most part, be making more money in the private sector. So to attract and retain public servants, the program will forgive their remaining student loan balance after they’ve made 10 years of loan payments.
At least that’s how it was supposed to work. In reality, the program was plagued with “administrative problems,” some of them (under Betsy DeVos) completely intentional. The problems ranged from for-profit loan servicers losing track of borrowers’ payments or not getting the records to the Department of Education, to similar snafus in the Department itself under Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump.
To make matters worse, the first groups of borrowers in PSLF reached the 10-year threshold in 2017 under — you guessed it! — Trump Education Secretary DeVos. Her mismanagement made the department a chaos machine on the best days. Under DeVos, the department went out of its way to deny applications and to not count payments that people had made toward the forgiveness threshold. It was such a fucking mess that out of the first 28,000 applications for PSLF debt forgiveness, the department only approved 96 borrowers.
We’re going to repeat that: Under DeVos, out of the first 28,000 applications, they approved 96.
In 2019, the American Federation of Teachers sued DeVos and the Ed Department to make them honor the commitments under PSLF; that suit was only settled after Biden took office.
And while current Secretary Cardona was fixing the many glitches in the PSLF, the Education Department also fixed a bunch of other Income Driven Repayment programs that were designed to ease debt, but which had been so badly run that a 2021 report found that although 4.4 million Americans qualified for loan forgiveness in those programs, only 32 had actually seen their balances forgiven. That was separate from the PSLF mess.
Thanks to pissy lawsuits from red states claiming they’ll be harmed by fewer people being deep in debt, most of the administration’s debt forgiveness efforts, including the potentially revolutionary SAVE repayment plan, are now on hold while the lawsuits chug forward. But PSLF is the Little Loan Forgiveness Program That Could, and it will keep chugging right along unless Congress someday repeals it.
Hey, let’s not elect that Congress, or a president who might try to undermine debt relief, either deliberately or through DeVossian incompetence and neglect. We’re not, as they say, going back.
Trump Withdraws From NRA Rally
Maybe hanging out with a guy involved with torturing a cat is a bad look? Who can say!
The 34-times-a-felon former president is legally prohibited from owning a gun. But still, he was scheduled to show up next Tuesday, October 22, for an NRA “Defend the 2nd” rally in Savannah, Georgia. Now he’s pulled out, citing “scheduling conflicts,” though there is nothing else on his schedule that day.
Weird! He’s had two weeks of event cancellations, including backing out of 60 Minutes, CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, and chickening out of a 2nd debate with Harris. Too enfeebled to be out here campaigning? That creepy 39-minutes of swaying and bopping to Sarah Brightman the other night would certainly make it seem so. As would his racist babbling at that town hall with Univision. BUT he does still have other events on his schedule for this week and next: rallies Saturday and Sunday in Pennsylvania, one in North Carolina on Monday, and one with Turning Point in Duluth, Georgia on Wednesday.
Maybe he did not want to be linked with a group whose new leader, Douglas Hamlin, has been accused of sadistic cat murder? [Hamlin claims fellow fraternity members killed the cat, not him. Details at the link.]
[…] Or maybe the campaign realizes that with 58 percent of Americans supporting stricter gun laws, being the party of more guns in schools and telling everybody to “just get over it” isn’t the best look to be working right now, especially in a state that is top 10 for school shootings and has had 89 of them since 2004. Though it would be odd for them to start caring about that now. Maybe they realize that the NRA is starting to get the stink of loserdom. It’s been hemorrhaging members […] ever since it turned out former Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre was looting everybody’s donations for luxury vacations […]
Meanwhile, Second Gentlemensch Doug Emhoff was there today, at the Savannah Cultural Arts Center. Which sounds much more pleasant than hanging out with a guy involved with setting a cat on fire.
Why the actual pullout, we will never know. But whatever the reason, that’s one less event of Trump’s addlebrained gaffes and threats to murder Adam Schiff that we’ll all be forced to read about, so that’s nice! Hooray!
President Joe Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday on the occasion of the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, the prime minister’s office said.
“The two leaders agreed that there is an opportunity to advance the release of the hostages and that they will work together to achieve this goal,” reads the office’s statement.
Harris does not have to win Pennsylvania for the reasons explained here. Trump cannot afford to lose anything.
Also, The TEC Show is less ‘yelly’ than other sources and usually give useful comments.
We have no recent polls for the senate races, Ted Cruz’ lead of 1% is within the margin of error but he can still win. It would be great if the local Dem campaign can send him packing.
birgerjohanssonsays
Electrifying! Scott Manly Provides An Inside Tour Of Archer Aviation’s Midnight EVTOL: Engines, batteries and simulator.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HMyOSJX7a9Q
38 minutes.
birgerjohanssonsays
The podcast ‘Heralen’ about Dungeon Meshi :
“The Anime That Gets Worldbuilding Right”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=trtyC7VaUbc
How to avoid being a DSI/Dog shit isekai anime.
birgerjohanssonsays
(Podcast The Kavernacle)
The Weird World of ‘Wehraboos’ – Reddit Simps for the Nazi Military and Rommel (Wehrmacht Myths)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=yIpZ9mKo2as
“Yeah, Hitler was evil, buuuuut…..”
birgerjohanssonsays
Farron Cousins comments on the debate between senator Ted Cruz and challenger Colin Allred. Cruz would not condemn the Jan 6th riot.
Maybe Cruz had been better off if he had followed the example of Trump and ducked all debates.
birgerjohanssonsays
(Sorry for the link. It is past local midnight, I get sloppy)
Maybe Cruz had been better off if he had followed the example of Trump and ducked all debates.
Well, he has allegedly been destroyed.
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(The stream of bullshit rages on, unabated)
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 70
When people use the word “destroyed” in a headline I expect to find a swarm of small asteroids at the site.
Bekenstein Boundsays
“The two leaders agreed that there is an opportunity to advance the release of the hostages and that they will work together to achieve this goal,” reads the office’s statement.
I’ll believe that when I see it. And not a moment sooner.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump used his remarks at a Catholic charity banquet here on Thursday to skewer prominent Democrats, often in off-color terms.
He mispronounced Vice President Kamala Harris’s name and said she had “no intelligence whatsoever.” He made fun of her husband, Doug Emhoff, for an affair he acknowledged during a previous marriage.
Trump has no taste, part 5^5^5. It was supposed to be a light roast favoring opposing politicians but Trump just insulted Democrats. I’m mostly surprised that Trump didn’t get a speech writer to help him. Putting together an extended funny speech is a very difficult task even for professional writers. Trump may have thought he was being funny given his past attempts at humor.
The only person off limits for Trump was himself.
“Tradition holds that I’m supposed to tell a few self-deprecating jokes this evening,” he said. “So here it goes. … Nope. I’ve got nothing. I’ve got nothing. There’s nothing to say.”
Not surprising but really it’s sad. So lacking in self awareness or composure that he can’t even put in a lame joke or two. This should be grounds to disqualify him for the presidency itself.
The dinner has historically featured good-natured ribbing by both parties’ presidential nominees after the third debate and is typically the last time the two presidential candidates appear together before the election.
But this year, Trump has refused another debate against Harris since their first faceoff on Sept. 10. And Harris did not attend, instead campaigning in Wisconsin and appearing at the banquet in a prerecorded video.
It is interesting that Harris just didn’t attend. I suspect she anticipated what was coming and refused to give him a platform. Trump naturally wasn’t going to miss a high society event in New York, he has always been irked by not really be accepted in the elite in NY.
Two lawsuits aim to stop US federal regulators and industry from “illegally” hiding basic information about toxic chemicals used in consumer products that are potentially polluting the environment and endangering public health.
Companies often claim that toxic chemicals’ health and safety data, and even their names, are “confidential business information” (CBI) because making the data public could damage their bottom line.
There are some trade secrets in there that should be kept. If this is anything like other industries there is far more obscuring information just to keep it out of the public. When dealing with toxic chemicals that shouldn’t be allowed.
When it comes to billionaires and American politics, these incredibly wealthy people tend to maintain relatively low public profiles. […]
There are, however, occasional exceptions. NBC News reported:
As Elon Musk steps up his work on behalf of former President Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris is calling in her own billionaire, Mark Cuban, […] Cuban appeared with Harris in Wisconsin on Thursday and is set to hold a town hall for her Saturday in Phoenix before he heads to Michigan on Sunday to campaign alongside second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
The result was an unexpected contrast, with Cuban and Musk delivering very different remarks on the same afternoon.
Cuban, perhaps best known to the public as a “Shark Tank” investor, spent a fair amount of time in Wisconsin, focusing on the radicalism of Trump’s proposed trade tariffs, and by all appearances, those in attendance for the Harris rally were impressed by his remarks. [video at the link]
Roughly 900 miles to the east, Musk spoke to a Philadelphia-area audience […] where he touched on a subject he probably should’ve avoided. NBC News also reported:
Billionaire Elon Musk promoted debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud Thursday at the first of a series of planned campaign events across Pennsylvania meant to rally support for former President Donald Trump’s campaign. At a town hall hosted at a high school outside Philadelphia, Musk referred to the false conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems was part of a plot to rig U.S. elections in recent years.
“When you have mail-in ballots and no proof of citizenship, it’s almost impossible to prove cheating,” he said. “Statistically there are some very strange things that happen that are statistically incredibly unlikely. There’s always this question of, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they were used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County [in Arizona] but not in a lot of other places. Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?”
It didn’t take long for a company spokesperson to push back in a statement: “Fact: Dominion does not serve Philadelphia County. Fact: Dominion’s voting systems are already based on voter verified paper ballots. Fact: Hand counts and audits of such paper ballots have repeatedly proven that Dominion machines produce accurate results. These are not matters of opinion. They are verifiable facts.”
Of course, the problem isn’t just that Musk promoted debunked conspiracy theories in a way at odds with the facts; the problem is made worse by the fact that Musk picked up a live wire better left untouched.
After all, when Fox News peddled false claims about Dominion, the voting systems company walked away with a $787.5 million settlement. There’s also a separate case that Dominion brought against Newsmax.
With this in mind, it probably wasn’t a great idea for Musk to go down the same conspiratorial road.
Sometimes I think that Trump’s rich cult followers must actually work to remain uninformed about the facts.
There’s no evidence that the Kremlin has prepared talking points for Donald Trump to share with the American public. But if the former president were, hypothetically, receiving rhetorical scripts from Moscow, the Republican candidate would probably sound an awful like he sounds now.
The New York Times reported, for example, on the GOP nominee’s latest comments regarding Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Former President Donald J. Trump blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for Russia’s invasion of his country in a podcast interview released on Thursday, inverting the facts of the largest military action in Europe since the Second World War. … Mr. Trump, in a rambling, muddled answer on a conservative podcast, was criticizing President Biden’s leadership when he abruptly brought up his skepticism over the administration’s continued military aid to Ukraine.</blockquote.
“I think Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen,” Trump said, repeating a familiar refrain. “Every time he comes in, we give him $100 billion. Who else got that kind of money in history? There’s never been. And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him, because I feel very badly for those people. But he should never have let that war start.” [video at the link]
A Washington Post analysis explained, “Even in the context of Trump’s long-standing obsequiousness to Putin, it’s hard to understand how Zelensky would have prevented having his nation be invaded. He could, in theory, have taken the approach that many Trump allies have since endorsed: simply agreeing to cede some or all of Ukraine to Russia, a move that would have prevented the damage incurred to the country’s buildings but amplified the damage done to its sovereignty.”
Later, in the same podcast interview, Trump went from blaming Zelenskyy to saying he also blames his own country’s government, claiming that President Joe Biden helped “instigate” the conflict.
The only person Trump didn’t blame was Vladimir Putin — who, incidentally, is the one person responsible for the deadly and disastrous conflict.
The comments came just days after the former American president refused to say whether he’s had multiple, secret conversations with Putin since leaving the White House, though he added, “[B]ut I will tell you that if I did, it’s a smart thing.”
Which came on the heels of allegations that the former Republican president, while in office, secretly sent Covid-19 testing equipment to Putin at the height of the pandemic, even as people in his own country struggled to gain access to such resources. (While Trump denied the allegations, the Kremlin — to the extent that its statements have merit — said Trump did, in fact, send Covid tests to Moscow.)
Which came on the heels of Trump refusing to say whether he wants our Ukrainian allies to prevail in the war against Russia.
Which came on the heels of Trump denouncing U.S. efforts to combat Russian misinformation campaigns, going so far as to characterize Russia as a victim.
Which 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 historic prisoner swap.
Which came on the heels of the Republican pointing to Putin for validation to justify his position on Ukraine.
Which came on the heels of the former American president 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.
[Wow. That list above is damning.]
Is it any wonder why Moscow is reportedly going to considerable lengths to “shape the outcome” of the 2024 race “in favor of” Trump?
Embedded links to additional sources are available at the main link.
Whenever Donald Trump says, “I shouldn’t say this, but…” it’s best to stop and pay close attention. It’s a phrase he uses often — about everything from health care to political violence to anti-worker tactics — and in nearly every instance, the Republican ends up causing trouble for himself.
In his appearance Friday morning on Fox News, he nevertheless used the line again. [video at the link]
Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy, sitting alongside the former president, praised Trump’s remarks Thursday at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner — better known as the Al Smith Dinner — and asked who helped write some of the funnier lines.
“Well, I’ve had a lot of people helping, a lot of people, a couple people from Fox, actually — I shouldn’t say that, but they wrote some jokes,” the GOP candidate said.
Oh. Is that so?
Right off the bat, it’s worth emphasizing that Trump’s appearance at the dinner wasn’t exactly a roaring success. The New York Times published a report that noted, “Mr. Trump rushed through prepared remarks, stumbling at times as he read through pointed political jokes, bitter grievances and crude and at times profane personal attacks.”
Not to put too fine a point on this, but when prominent political leaders appear at a dinner to benefit Catholic charities, there’s a general expectation that they’ll avoid “bitter grievances and crude and at times profane personal attacks.”
But putting aside the cringeworthy attempts at humor — which elicited some booing — the former president probably realized that he “shouldn’t say” that Fox News voices worked with him […] Trump made it sound as if some people inside the ostensible news organization are his partners, lending him a hand at the height of the presidential campaign, instead of covering him as detached media professionals. [LOL]
Given Fox’s obvious and yearslong role in Republican politics, Trump’s admission probably won’t surprise anyone, but the relevant players generally try to maintain the pretense and keep up appearances. The former president slipped by accidentally telling the truth.
To be sure, in recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly complained — online and at rallies — that Fox News is a source of personal disappointment. He’s admonished the network for airing commercials he disapproves of and booking guests that don’t toe the party line.
Indeed, in the same interview in which he blurted out the fact that some at Fox helped him with his Al Smith Dinner jokes, the former president suggested to the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts that the network should only air ads that align with his political wishes.
But the complaints are rooted in an unstated assumption: Trump expects Fox News to be a partisan ally in all instances, taking steps such as helping him with his speeches […]
[…] “So now, we here, know Jan. 6 was a tragic day. It was a day of terrible violence. There were attacks on law enforcement — 140 law enforcement officers were injured, some were killed. And what did Donald Trump say last night about Jan. 6? He called it a ‘day of love,’” Harris told a rally in Wisconsin Thursday.
In Trump’s remarks earlier this week, he once again referred to the Jan. 6 rioters as “we,” an admission that is sure to pique the interest of Special Counsel Jack Smith: “We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns. And when I say we, these are people that walked down — this was a tiny percentage of the overall, which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows.” Trump’s claim that none of the rioters had guns is a falsity that he often repeats.
For her part, Harris folded Trump’s Jan. 6 lies into her larger “We Are Not Going Back” theme: “The American people are exhausted with his gaslighting — exhausted. … Enough,” Harris said. “We are ready to turn the page.” […]
The administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida must stop threatening television stations with criminal prosecution for airing a political ad in favor of enshrining abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, a federal judge ordered on Thursday.
Judge Mark E. Walker of the Federal District Court in Tallahassee ruled in a temporary restraining order that the threats by the Florida Department of Health to stations across the state likely amounted to “unconstitutional coercion” and “viewpoint discrimination.”
“The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false,’” Judge Walker wrote in his 17-page order. “To keep it simple for the state of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”…
This month, the state’s health department sent several television stations a cease-and-desist letter… to stop airing an ad, titled “Caroline,” that is part of the “Yes on 4” campaign. It features a woman named Caroline Williams discussing how she had been diagnosed with stage four brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant.
“Florida has now banned abortion even in cases like mine,” Ms. Williams says in the ad.
The state called the ad “false.” At least one station stopped airing the ad after receiving the department’s letter, the suit said….
Lauren Brenzel, the director of the “Yes on 4” campaign, said in a statement on Thursday. “The court has affirmed what we’ve known all along: The government cannot silence the truth about Florida’s extreme abortion ban.”
Donald Trump struggled to deliver a series of insults and jokes at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City on Thursday night.
The long-running event has traditionally been a venue for politicians of both parties to make lighthearted jabs while helping to bring in donations for Catholic charities. But Trump instead used the bulk of his time to repeat insults he has made on the campaign trail.
“Right now, we have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child,” Trump said, haltingly reading his prepared statement. “But enough about Kamala Harris.”
Trump also decided to emphasize the middle name of former President Barack Obama, stressing “Hussein,” a tactic that was frequently used by those promoting the racist “birther” conspiracy theory. Trump was for years the most prominent birther in the country. [video at the link]
On Friday morning, Trump’s campaign emailed reporters a recap of his speech, declaring that it was a “knockout roast” that was a “master class in humor, delivery, and tact.” [Now that is actually funny. LOL]
“Donald Trump struggled to read scripted notes written by his handlers, repeatedly complaining that he couldn’t use a teleprompter,” Ammar Moussa, the Harris campaign’s rapid response director, said in a statement. “He stumbled over his words and lashed out when the crowd wouldn’t laugh with him. The rare moments he was off script, he went on long incomprehensible rambles, reminding Americans how unstable he’s become.”
[…] In contrast to Trump’s appearance, Vice President Kamala Harris did not attend due to a scheduling conflict, but she did send in a video that was more in line with the traditional comedic tone of the event. [video at the link]
Harris was joined by “Saturday Night Live” alumnus Molly Shannon playing her Catholic schoolgirl character Mary Katherine Gallagher. Gallagher advised Harris not to insult Catholics in her remarks and Harris replied, “I would never do that, no matter where I was. That would be like criticizing Detroit in Detroit.”
Last week, Trump insulted the city of Detroit while campaigning for critical votes in the swing state of Michigan, drawing widespread condemnation and a fiery Harris ad in response.
In September, after accepting the opportunity to speak at the Al Smith dinner, Trump questioned the mental stability of Catholics who might vote for Harris, saying on his Truth Social platform, “Any Catholic that votes for Comrade Kamala Harris should have their head examined…”
The Al Smith dinner outing comes as Trump has suddenly canceled a series of public appearances and has largely focused on speaking on conservative media outlets, like Fox News. When he has gone outside of the bubble, like in a recent Univision town hall meeting, he has performed awkwardly and generated scorn.
Posted by readers of the article;
Having watched the whole thing, I can say that Trump (reading his prepared lines) was actually funny — for about three minutes. After that, however, his delivery devolved rapidly into sheer nastiness, wrapped in a vaguely menacing tone and a weird sort of smile/sneer. His tone was very much that of an embittered mob boss. What was probably most disturbing to watch were the reactions of his supporters on camera.
All in all, it was an ugly performance bearing no resemblance to what that dinner used to be like. It was an attempt at normalizing and humanizing the abnormal and inhuman that inspired queasiness more than anything.
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Absolutely agree with everything you’ve said. It was creepier than I can say. He was menacing by the end but he was still getting thunderous laughs and applause. Eye opening.
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Trump: “Tradition holds that I’m supposed to tell a few self-deprecating jokes this evening. So here it goes. Nope. I’ve got nothing. There’s nothing to say. I guess I just don’t see the point of taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me for a hell of a long time.”
I thought that was genuinely funny. Of course, nothing is as subjective as humor.
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Last night, Lawrence O’Donnell read an editorial from a Catholic publication that called Cardinal Dolan’s invite of Trump a disgrace and an insult to all that the Catholic Church should represent.
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Since the event is supposed to be non-partisan, they cannot hold the event and not invite him. Sadly, he is the Republican presidential candidate. However, they should have cancelled the event. No partisan statement would have been needed in association with the cancellation.
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My Twitter was full of posts with many hundreds of likes talking about how it looked and sounded with rapist Trump being next to Catholic officials with raps of their own relating to sex abuse.
Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz and former President Bill Clinton campaigned in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, on Thursday, where they teamed up to shine a spotlight on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate and erratic behavior.
“Trump’s plan to seize unprecedented power for himself isn’t hypothetical. It’s written down in Project 2025,” Walz told the crowd. He then highlighted some of the shady ghouls in Trump’s orbit, like former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who Trump pardoned after he lied to the FBI.
Trump has said he would consider bringing Flynn back to the White House if he wins in November, even though Flynn was recorded saying scary shit just last weekend.
The recent video shows Flynn answering questions at a right-wing Second Amendment-palooza in Pennsylvania. Flynn was asked a question about military tribunals and potential executions of perceived enemies if Trump is elected in November.
Flynn’s answer? “We have to win first.”
“He followed up that to make sure that we understood just how batshit crazy he was,” Walz told the rally audience. “He said, ‘the gates of hell.’ The gates of hell,” Walz repeated. “Mike Flynn said this. ‘My hell will be unleashed.’ This is the guy that Donald Trump wants to hand the keys to the federal government over to mind security.” [video at the link]
Walz then introduced Clinton, who poked fun at Trump’s age and his unstable behavior during what was supposed to be a “town hall” event in Oaks, Pennsylvania, on Monday night.
“I don’t have any more elections I’ll be involved with, and I’m too old to gild the lily,” Clinton remarked. “Heck, I’m only two years younger than Donald Trump,” he joked. “Good news for you is I will not spend 30 minutes swaying back and forth for you. And I’ve played enough music that I will not clap off beat, nor will I pretend to be a conductor.” [LOL]
“I’ve been doing this a long, long time,” Clinton continued. “And I can honestly say that this time I am not here running for anything anymore except for my grandchildren’s future.” [video at the link] […]
In 2020, when Donald Trump questioned the results of the election, the courts decisively rejected his efforts, over and over again. In 2024, the judicial branch may be unable to save our democracy.
The rogues are no longer amateurs. They have spent the last four years going pro, meticulously devising a strategy across multiple fronts — state legislatures, Congress, executive branches and elected judges — to overturn any close election.
The new challenges will take place in forums that have increasingly purged officials who put country over party. They may take place against the backdrop of razor-thin election margins in key swing states, meaning that any successful challenge could change the election.
We have just a few short weeks to understand these challenges so that we can be vigilant about them.
First, in the courts, dozens of suits have already been filed. Litigation in Pennsylvania has begun over whether undated mail-in ballots are permissible and whether provisional ballots can be allowed. Stephen Miller, a former Trump adviser, has brought suit in Arizona claiming that judges should be able to throw out election results.
Many states recently changed how they conduct voting. Even a minor modification could tee up legal challenges, and some affirmatively invite chaos.
Any time a state changes an election rule or can be accused of not having followed one, someone with legal standing (like a resident of that state or a candidate or a party) can bring a lawsuit. Recently courts in Georgia and Pennsylvania protected voting rights, but these lower court decisions may be appealed within the state system.
Lawsuits will also make their way to federal courts. […] In regular times, the judicial system corrects for outlier judges through the appeals process, up to, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court. But here we are looking at a narrow window of time, and public confidence in the court is nearly at a three-decade low. No matter how nonpartisan the justices are, should the Supreme Court intervene, there is a high chance millions of Americans would see the decision as unfair.
[…] there are state legislatures to contend with: They might make baseless allegations of fraud and interfere to get a different slate of electors appointed to the Electoral College, as happened in 2020. Last year, in Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court put an end to many such tactics. (Disclosure: I argued the case in front of the court.) But a state legislature might ignore the law and try anyway, especially if the governor of that state is politically aligned and seizes on the alternative slate.
Fourth, the Congress has the power to swing the entire election. The rules are complex; even as a law professor, I can barely make sense of them.
The good news is that under the 2022 law, Congress has reduced the chance of mischief. The threshold for a member of Congress to object to the vote from any state is higher. It must be signed by at least 20 percent of the members of both houses for it to be taken up and perhaps debated and voted on. To pass, an objection must be sustained by a simple majority in both chambers. Only two categories of objections are permissible: if the vote of any electors was not “regularly given” or if the electors were not “lawfully certified.”
The bad news is that the rules are so complicated that they could be stretched, wrongly, to give Congress the power to select the next president by sustaining bogus objections. Don’t get me wrong: Such maneuvering is totally inconsistent with the 2022 law. But it can be attempted and create chaos. Likewise, if a governor certifies a fake slate, that will be hard for Congress to fix.
[…] It does not require much imagination to see a member of Congress acting in bad faith to try to squeeze through bogus election fraud theories and plunge the country into uncertainty on Jan. 6. The 20 percent voting threshold is meant to avoid crackpot election fraud theories, but these days more than 20 percent of Congress might be inclined to support a crackpot theory. And some Republican strategists are gearing up to argue the 2022 Electoral Count Reform Act is unconstitutional and invalid.
[…] The stark reality is that there are no immediate solutions to a potential election crisis. The personnel to trigger one — in the courts, legislatures and executive branches — are largely in place.
Two votes on Nov. 5 will matter tremendously to sidestepping the chaos. One is the presidential vote. If either candidate wins the Electoral College decisively, any dispute will be rendered academic.
The other is the vote for Congress. A key point here is that it is the new House and Senate, not the existing ones, that will call the shots on Jan. 6. Congress desperately needs principled people who will put democracy over self-interest and party politics.
Americans should vote for candidates who share a commitment to democracy and who will think critically before accepting election innuendo. The next month must be about ensuring continued rule by the people and for the people.
Summarized by Steve Benen from The Washington Post:
* In Arizona’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, Republican Kari Lake said there might be “really, really bad” information in Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego’s divorce records. An Arizona court has now unsealed most of the case file, and the results were quite boring.
From The Washington Post article:
[…] revealing what one judge called “one of the most garden-variety divorce files I have ever seen.”
The records were made public following a 10-month-long legal battle between the Gallegos and the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication that filed a lawsuit earlier this year to unseal them. The partially redacted documents show Gallego filed a petition to dissolve the marriage on Dec. 14, 2016 — shortly before the birth of their son — claiming that his marriage was “irretrievably broken.”
[…] Lake and her allies have repeatedly sought to paint Gallego’s personal life in a negative context — running ads describing him as a “deadbeat dad” and alleging his divorce records contain a “massive story.”
[…] Instead, the 465 pages that were unsealed Thursday by the Yavapai County Superior Court detail standard divorce proceedings, including the dividing of property and assets, as well as custody and child support arrangements. They also include no details of any illegal activity or infidelity and expressly state that no physical abuse had occurred.
Following the documents’ release, the Gallegos blasted Lake and demanded an apology “for lying about our family and the circumstances of our divorce,” the former couple wrote in a joint statement.
Lake, they added, “will stop at nothing to score a cheap political point — even if it means endangering the privacy and well-being of our young son.”
[…] The Gallegos’ divorce was finalized in 2017. Last year, Kate Gallego publicly endorsed her former husband’s Senate campaign. […]
Yeah, Kari Lake has nothing. Looking forward to seeing her lose.
Summarized by Steve Benen from The Huffington Post:
[…] in Montana’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, new reporting shows Republican Tim Sheehy endorsed abolishing the U.S. Department of Education because it’s meant to “enslave” students. He added, “We formed that department so little Black girls could go to school down South and we could have integrated schooling.” (That’s not even close to being true. The Department of Education became a cabinet agency in 1979.)
[…] Over the course of his presidency, Donald Trump had two Senate-confirmed Defense secretaries. The latter was Mark Esper, who, after departing the Pentagon, warned the American people that Trump is “unfit” for office, a national security threat, and a “threat to democracy.”
All of this, of course, is unprecedented: No former Defense secretary has ever made public comments such as these about a president he worked for.
But let’s also not overlook Esper’s predecessor. The Bulwark’s Tim Miller reported:
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis privately told Bob Woodward that he agrees with the assessment laid out in his book “War,” which paints Donald Trump as a unique and menacing threat to the country. In an interview on The Bulwark Podcast on Thursday, Woodward said he recently received an email from Mattis, who served under Trump before resigning in protest. In the email, Mattis seconded the assessment offered by Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Woodward quotes as calling Trump “the most dangerous person ever.”
In other words, Trump had two Defense secretaries, and if Woodward’s reporting is correct, both see the Republican as a threat to the United States.
To be sure, these latest developments don’t come as too big of a surprise. When Trump first tapped the retired four-star Marine general to serve in his cabinet, the Republican seemed impressed, not only by Mattis lengthy and decorated military career, but also by his nickname — “Mad Dog Mattis” — which Trump seemed to enjoy referencing frequently.
The relationship quickly soured. The more Mattis emphasized responsible decision-making and the importance of international alliances, the more Trump dismissed his Pentagon chief as “sort of a Democrat.”
In December 2018, not quite two years into his tenure, Mattis wrote a rather brutal resignation letter to Trump, calling into question the then-president’s judgment, values, and respect for American allies. In the process, the retired general became the first modern first Pentagon chief to resign in protest.
That was nearly six years ago. Now, Mattis has reportedly seen retired Gen. Mark Milley recent condemnations of Trump — the Republican’s handpicked former chairman of the Joint Chiefs described Trump as a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” — and the former Defense secretary apparently thinks Milley’s assessment was correct. […]
Judge Tanya Chutkan for the District of Columbia unsealed nearly 1,900 pages of appendices containing evidence supporting Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump over his 2020 coup attempt on Friday.
The appendices are mostly redacted; those parts that aren’t appear to contain material that was already mostly publicly available.
Smith filed the appendices in support of a brief arguing for why his January 6 prosecution of Trump should survive the Supreme Court’s holding in July that Presidents are broadly immune from prosecution for official acts.
The non-redacted portions of the filings themselves, as released on Friday, appear to contain information that’s been gathered over years of investigation into Trump’s attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. A series of memos written by Ken Chesebro feature in appendices three and four; appendix two is composed mostly of tweets; appendix one contains excerpts of interviews conducted by the House January 6 Committee. […]
[…] U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who oversees the trial proceedings, released the information against objections from Trump, suggesting his desire to shield the information due to the election amounted to its own form of interference.
“If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute—or appear to be— election interference,” she wrote in a Thursday night order requiring the documents’ release. […]
OK, fine, nobody was actually annihilated, eviscerated, blasted, destroyed, defenestrated, or keel-hauled, but we sure do love this video of Kamala Harris responding to some shouty MAGA forced-birth activists who showed up at her rally last night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
As Harris talked about the fight to protect abortion rights and criticized Donald Trump because he “hand-selected” three of the rightwing justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, there was a hubbub in the crowd. Several protesters loudly interrupted, shouting either “Jesus is Lord” according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, or “That’s a lie!” according to Rolling Stone, or who knows, maybe both or neither. […]
Whatever the losers were shouting, Harris had a ready answer that may have been planned in advance for deployment when needed, or maybe just was as off-the-cuff as she delivered it. [video at the link]
“Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally,” Harris deadpanned, clearly enjoying the crowd response, then delivering the punchline. “No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”
And by golly, wasn’t THAT just an Obama-level takedown of the man with small crowds […]
Montana ranger comes forward with account of Sheehy gun incident
Candidate says he was shot in Afghanistan; ranger witness to gun incident questions that account
Over 35 seasons working as a ranger in Glacier National Park, Kim Peach, 67, recalls only two incidents in which he responded to a report of a gun being fired […]
last year, when he spotted an advertisement featuring a smiling Tim Sheehy running for Senate, Peach, now retired, immediately recognized the ex-Navy SEAL’s face, he said. It was the same man who had told him years earlier that he had accidentally shot himself in the right arm after his gun dropped to the ground while he said he was loading up gear after a hike.
Last spring, Peach shared his account of ticketing Sheehy $525 for discharging a weapon in Glacier National Park in Oct. of 2015 with The Washington Post — an account that was backed up by U.S. District Court and national park documents from the incident. The Post allowed him to speak on the condition of anonymity at the time because he feared political retaliation. But Laura Loomer and other conservative pundits quickly shared his identity online after the story published, leading to harassment, Peach said.
Now, angry at what he sees as Sheehy’s refusal to own up to the truth, Peach is speaking on the record to lend weight to his account of what happened 9 years ago. The Montana candidate, who looks poised to defeat Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester and likely help flip the Senate to Republican control next year, has said he has a bullet lodged in his right arm from his time serving in Afghanistan. When asked earlier this year about the Glacier National Park incident, Sheehy said he lied to the ranger when he told him he had a fresh gunshot wound that day, in order to prevent the authorities from finding out about a potential friendly fire incident from 2012, which he feared could spark a military investigation.
Peach finds that hard to believe. “The truth isn’t complicated,” he said.
[…] That October day in 2015 took an unexpected turn when Peach got a call on his radio directing him to the parking lot of Logan Pass, a popular Glacier National Park destination, after a dispatcher received a report that someone had accidentally shot himself there. The dispatcher later directed Peach to a hospital instead, saying the victim was now there, according to the ranger’s memory and his written report at the time. Sheehy, then a young businessman on a hike with his family, told Peach at the hospital he had accidentally shot himself with his Colt .45 revolver after it fell off a pile of gear in the back of his vehicle and misfired.
[…] in April, Sheehy told The Post that he sought medical attention that day because he fell during a hike and feared he had dislodged a bullet in his arm from Afghanistan that he had never reported to his superiors, for fear of sparking an investigation into its origins. He said hospital staff reported the gunshot wound to the local authorities, even though it was not fresh. Then, Sheehy said, he lied to Peach when the ranger came to investigate and said he had accidentally shot himself to avoid potentially triggering a military investigation into his former unit. [Well that’s a complicated and unnecessary lie.]
Sheehy, who received a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with valor during his service for actions unrelated to the gunshot wound, said in April that he never reported the 2012 gunshot injury and believes the bullet may have been the result of friendly fire during a night mission.
Sheehy’s lawyer argued then that the weapon he was carrying in 2015, a Colt .45 long, could not misfire when dropped. A ballistics expert consulted by The Post said it would be very unlikely for the gun to misfire.
[…] “He said that questioning his military service was ‘disgusting,’” Peach said. “What is disgusting is saying a wound from a negligent, accidental firearm discharge is a wound received in combat.” […]
Then-President Donald Trump also benefited from U.S. officials and others seeking jobs and pardons who paid for stays at his downtown Washington hotel, House Democrats allege.
Donald Trump overcharged Secret Service agents protecting him and his family for rooms at his hotel in Washington while he was president, a new report from House Democrats alleges.
Trump also benefited from foreign and domestic officials, including people seeking jobs in his administration or pardons from him, who paid for rooms at what was then the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington, according to the report, which was obtained by NBC News.
[…] the report accuses the Trump Corporation of jacking up the prices of hotel rooms at the property for the Secret Service, in some instances to the tune of 300% more than the approved government per diem rate and beyond what other guests were being charged for rooms on the same nights.
The report points specifically to Nov. 28, 2017, when the Secret Service paid $600 apiece for several rooms for agents guarding Trump’s son Eric and his wife, Lara. On the same night, records show, more than 80 rooms were rented out at the Trump hotel at less than $600 a night.
In addition to the fees paid by the Secret Service, Democratic investigators say eight U.S. ambassadors, three people Trump appointed to be federal judges, two state governors, a state legislative delegation and a Trump Cabinet secretary stayed and spent money at the Trump hotel while they were serving as state or federal officials during the 11-month period the committee investigated.
One was Kelly Craft, whom Trump appointed as U.S. ambassador to Canada and later as ambassador to the United Nations. Craft booked rooms at the Trump hotel on 20 nights over the 11-month period, spending close to $30,000. The report shows communications in May 2018 between Craft, who was then ambassador to Canada, and her staff, who offered her different hotel options closer to an upcoming conference she was planning to attend at National Harbor, in Maryland. But emails the committee obtained from the State Department show she insisted she stay at the Trump hotel.
[…] The Constitution does not provide a remedy or a clear penalty for violations of the emoluments clause, however, and Trump frequently tested its limits in office. He originally planned to hold meetings around the 2020 Group of Seven summit at his Doral golf resort in Florida, but he reversed course because of scrutiny over how his private business would benefit from the event. Trump expressed frustration over having to move the event, telling reporters at a Cabinet meeting that he blamed “you people with this phony emoluments clause.”
[…] “While this is an exceedingly small window into the opaque web of more than 500 corporations, limited liability companies, and trusts that Donald Trump carried with him into the presidency,” the report says, “it is enough to reveal hundreds of unconstitutional and ethically suspect payments he accepted while in office from domestic sources—including a federal agency, numerous federal and state officials, and individuals who sought, and frequently obtained, federal offices as well as presidential pardons.”
“The findings of these Democratic staff reports reveal significant shortcomings in the current federal anti-corruption framework—shortcomings that Donald Trump exploited to the tune of millions of dollars and intends to exploit again if he is returned to the Oval Office,” the report’s authors write. “As such, these reports are urgent calls to action that Congress must heed to ensure the effective enforcement of the Constitution’s Domestic Emoluments Clause—as well as the Foreign Emoluments Clause—and to ensure that our government serves exclusively the public interests of the people rather than the private interests of the president.”
Democrats on the Oversight Committee released the first part of their report in January; it revealed Trump’s private businesses received at least $7.8 million from foreign entities while he was president.
Early on in Donald Trump’s presidency, the Republican looked to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as someone who would simply follow the White House’s demands. When the senator tried to explain how government worked, a “profane shouting match” soon followed.
After Trump’s defeat in 2020, […] McConnell had the audacity to accept the results of his own country’s elections and criticize Trump for failing to do the same, at which point the former president started condemning the GOP leader as a corrupt “hack.”
On Feb. 13, 2021, in the immediate aftermath of Trump second impeachment trial, McConnell delivered especially pointed remarks, condemning the former president’s “disgraceful dereliction of duty” on Jan. 6. The Senate minority leader added, “There is no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. No question about it.”
In the same speech, McConnell called out Trump for his “crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole … orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”
In private, the Kentucky Republican reportedly went even further. NBC News reported:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has endorsed Donald Trump for president this year. But in a new book, the powerful Kentucky Republican is quoted after the 2020 election disparaging Trump as a “despicable human being,” “stupid” and “ill-tempered.”
The same book — “The Price of Power,” from veteran journalist Michael Tackett, the Associated Press’ deputy bureau chief — added that McConnell described the GOP candidate as “narcissistic” and unfit for office. McConnell also reportedly sobbed to his staff on Jan. 6, lamenting the fact that the then-president put their lives in danger.
Oddly enough, when asked for a comment, the Senate’s top GOP member didn’t deny any of this. McConnell instead told the AP in a statement, “Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now.”
The statement was striking in a few ways. For one thing, McConnell could’ve distanced himself from the provocative quotes in the book, but he didn’t bother. For another, the statement offered no actual praise for his party’s 2024 nominee.
Finally, McConnell’s broader point seemed to be that plenty of Republicans supporting Trump’s current candidacy condemned him in the recent past. That’s true, though it doesn’t change the fact that the GOP senator apparently told others that his party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office is a “despicable human being” and “stupid” — and he’s shown no interest in denouncing those comments.
The larger question is the one McConnell prefers not to talk about: It’s not about whether he and Trump are “on the same team now,” but rather, why.
As regular readers might recall, in the months after Trump left the White House, he waged an unsubtle campaign against McConnell, all but begging GOP senators to replace the longtime lawmaker as their leader. He also said McConnell “has a DEATH WISH” for disagreeing with Trump’s legislative strategies, and went on to tell The New York Times, on the record, that he consider McConnell to be “a piece of s—.”
Trump was just as aggressive in going after the GOP leader’s wife, former cabinet secretary Elaine Chao, with racist taunts and dubious allegations of corruption.
It was against this backdrop that McConnell sat down in April 2022 with reporter Jonathan Swan, who asked whether there were any “moral red lines” that would lead the senator to withhold his support from a Trump-led ticket.
“As a Republican leader of the Senate, it should not be a front-page headline that I will support the Republican nominee for president,” McConnell replied, adding, “I think I have an obligation to support the nominee of my party, and I will.” [WTF!?]
When Swan pressed on, asking if there’s anything Trump could possibly do that would be a bridge too far, McConnell appeared visibly frustrated. “I don’t get to pick the Republican nominee for president,” he replied. “They’re elected by the Republican voters.”
In other words, asked about his “moral red lines,” the Kentuckian conceded that such lines effectively do not exist, at least insofar as electoral politics is concerned.
A year later, after Trump targeted McConnell’s wife again, the Senate minority leader again said he’d support his party’s nominee, “no matter who that may be.”
Now, McConnell is “on the same team” as a man he apparently considers “despicable” — not because he’s changed his mind, and not because Trump has improved, but because the senator is convinced that the only affiliation that truly matters is party.
For the first time in 114 years, biologists from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) have observed a fall-run Chinook salmon returning to spawning in the Klamath Basin in Oregon.
[…] This is the first anadromous fish to return to the Klamath Basin in Oregon since 1912 when the first of four hydroelectric dams was constructed, blocking migration to historic habitat, according to an announcement from the ODFW. Hopefully, we will see the return of coho salmon and steelhead to the upper watershed soon.
Make no mistake about it — the dam removal couldn’t have happened without the protests, rallies and direct action by Tribal members, environmentalists and fishermen over the past 20 years, including trips to Scotland when a Scottish corporation owned the dams and to Omaha, Nebraska when Warren Buffett bought the PacifICorp dams.
The agency said this salmon and others “likely traveled about 230 miles from the Pacific ocean to reach the tributary only months after four Klamath River dams were removed to ensure fish passage from California to Oregon.”
[…] “The return of our relatives the c’iyaal’s is overwhelming for our tribe,” said Roberta Frost, Klamath Tribes Secretary. “This is what our members worked for and believed in for so many decades.” […]
ODFW, the Klamath Tribes and other partners have been working together on this historic restoration project to monitor Chinook salmon, coho salmon, steelhead, and Pacific lamprey once they are able to repopulate habitat above the dams, ODFW noted.
Michael Belchik, Senior Scientist for the Yurok Tribe, also celebrated the return of salmon to a Klamath tributary in Oregon.
“There are at least 4 adult salmon and a redd (nest) in Spencer Creek in Oregon,” said Belchik. “This is over 260 miles from the ocean and at an altitude of over 4,000 ft. and only 10 miles from Klamath Falls. These salmon climbed many class 4 and 5 rapids above the dam sites, and ascended a waterfall in the Klamath River just below Spencer Creek. Wow.”
“I cannot believe how quickly they found their way to their ancestral homes!” I figured they’d go above the dam sites relatively quickly, but I thought it would take a few years for them to make it all the way to the Upper Klamath Basin. Salmon amaze me over and over again.” […]
While the Klamath Basin is seeing the return of salmon to the Upper Basin for the first time since 1912, the fish still face many problems such as water quality, water diversions, climate change and warming ocean conditions. All ocean recreational and commercial salmon fishing and all recreational salmon fishing in California rivers was closed this year and in 2023, due to low adult fall-run Chinook returns on the Sacramento and Klamath rivers. […]
The electricity went out Friday in Cuba, affecting the entire island’s population of 10 million after one of its main power plants failed, according to Cuba’s energy ministry.
The government had tried to keep the lights on earlier in the day by closing schools and having most state workers stay home in an effort to conserve energy. But it wasn’t enough, and by 11 a.m. the largest power plant went offline, causing a grid failure.
The communist-run country’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, wrote on X that they are giving “absolute priority” to solving the problem, and that “there won’t be any rest” until the power comes back on.
Cubans have been grappling with rolling blackouts for months. In some provinces outside the capital, Havana, many people have been facing power outages that last up to 12 hours at a time.
Cuba’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero, on Thursday blamed the ongoing blackouts on the deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand among its people.
While demand for electricity has gone up, the supply of oil has been greatly limited. Cuba’s ally and main oil supplier, Venezuela, has decreased the amount of shipments it sends to the island. Oil shipments from other countries, like Russia and Mexico, have also been greatly diminished.
Authorities said they did not know how long it would take to re-establish power.
This particular moment has been worrying for many Cubans. During a walk in a Havana neighborhood people expressed alarm at the situation, and one resident said it felt as if the country had reached the “bottom of the barrel.”
“This is incredible,” said a Havana resident who declined to provide his name. “I don’t see a solution to this problem.”
A woman in a neighborhood in Old Havana said she was fearful the situation would get worse. “It really worries me that we may not yet be at the bottom of this electricity crisis,” she told NBC News.
Cuba’s government has long blamed the decades-old U.S. embargo for many of the island’s economic shortcomings. Donald Trump increased sanctions while he was president, and the pandemic had a devastating impact on the island’s tourism industry, one of the most lucrative sources of income for the state-dominated economy.
The economic crisis has already made life difficult for the average Cuban with shortages in food, medicine and fuel.
Inflation is where it was when Trump left office. Economic growth under the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration we now know is higher than economic growth was under the first three years of the Trump administration. … Economic growth is up. Wages are up. Retail sales are good. Interest rates are dropping. We are having record highs on Wall Street. Biden and Harris, this administration, has produced the best job growth numbers of any presidential administration in American history by a mile. Unemployment numbers are profoundly low and in a sustained way. It’s the best unemployment figures that we have seen in decades.
Commentary:
[…] If your concern is about the deficit and fiscal issues, Trump’s record is indefensible, and his vision for the near future is even worse.
If your concern is about inflation, Trump’s economic agenda is rooted in policies that would absolutely make inflation worse — as economists keep trying to tell the people.
If your concern is about the candidates’ business backgrounds, Trump failed repeatedly in the private sector, and he’s been reduced to hawking a bunch of highly sketchy products.
If your concern is about how the candidates interact with business leaders, Trump keeps having special gatherings with corporate executives, who tend to come away with the impression that the Republican is utterly clueless.
If your concern is about the candidates’ running mates, Republican Sen. JD Vance has spoken publicly about imposing “pain” on businesses that fail to align themselves with his party’s culture war agenda.
If your concern is about the candidates looking out for the business community, Trump has recently threatened a variety of corporate giants, from John Deere to Google.
For those are who are simply “making a business decision,” this doesn’t seem like an especially tough call.
The Biden administration on Friday announced $2 billion in funding for projects to strengthen the resilience of the U.S. grid against extreme weather, an increasing concern following two consecutive major hurricanes in the Atlantic.
The funding, which will go to 38 projects in 42 states, will be provided through the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships (GRIP) program, a $10.5 billion initiative included in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, Energy Department officials told reporters on a call.
The projects range from installing new power lines to adding protections for infrastructure against wildfires in fire-prone regions. They would create an estimated 300 miles’ worth of new power lines and 7.5 gigawatts of new electrical capacity, officials said.
Although the GRIP program predates Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm specifically invoked the storms, which devastated parts of western North Carolina and Florida, respectively, on the call. The projects covered by the funding include programs to strengthen the grid system in those areas, as well as a $250 million grant that would allow the Tennessee Valley Authority to add an additional 2,400 megawatts of transmission capacity.
“The devastating and deadly Hurricanes, Helene and Milton, have put on stark display how extreme weather events continue to stress the nation’s aging electric systems – but across the country, the Biden-Harris Administration is using every tool in the toolbox to make sure America’s power grid is hardened in the face of this challenge,” Granholm said. “The Administration’s Investing in America agenda has provided the largest grid investment in U.S. history helping us add more energy to the grid faster, improve reliability and resilience, and invest in innovative technologies so customers across the county can have access to more renewable energy and pay less for their electricity.”
The announcement comes after a report from the International Energy Agency projecting demand for electricity will grow at a faster pace than earlier projections, due largely to increased demand from data centers.
“Not to put too fine a point on this, but when prominent political leaders appear at a dinner to benefit Catholic charities, there’s a general expectation that they’ll avoid “bitter grievances and crude and at times profane personal attacks.””
This is so transparently false, it’s basically pathetic.
Nobody, but nobody, would have that expectation of Trump these days.
(Whoever wrote that is a total bullshitter)
John Moralessays
“OK, fine, nobody was actually annihilated, eviscerated, blasted, destroyed, defenestrated, or keel-hauled, but we sure do love this video of Kamala Harris responding to some shouty MAGA forced-birth activists who showed up at her rally last night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”
(‘OK, OK, fine, nobody actually loved this video, but we sure love to post falsehoods’)
birgerjohanssonsays
(I am inserting this because most of us need cute, furry things to cheer us up)
SaveAFox:
“Meet our newest Grey Fox Pet Surrender Faelyn”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=McSWlL4tGpk
This cute fox quickly goes from very cautious to extremely plauful.
John Moralessays
Birger, twice I had my chicken run attacked by foxes.
The results were not even slightly cute.
Did you know hens have like a little conveyor belt of eggs inside them, so they lay their egg a day?
They sort of get bigger and riper and the shells begin to harden up.
I didn’t, till I saw it for myself after a visit from a fox.
(Cute serial killers, O my!)
John Moralessays
Nothing cuter than a kitty playing with a live mouse.
John Moralessays
Chickens don’t play with mice; they flock in and tear them to shreds and eat them.
(I seen it!)
John Moralessays
(once were dinosaurs)
John Moralessays
Oh, right. Maybe a tad obscure. In-joke between me and my lover.
The tiny elephant makes a cameo in 1959’s Unnatural History.
The cartoon was edited into Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters. Here, it begins from the bird bath scene and leaves out the scenes concerning the high-rise apartment, the circus, the cat, and the flagpole. The film’s version of the bird bath scene has the bird bath owner phoning up Daffy to report the elephant, which leads Daffy to send the orderlies to pick the bird bath owner up having deemed him “definitely _non compos mentis_ “; the elephant’s height here is also stated to be “5¼ inches tall”. The newspaper headlines had been swapped around so that they are shown in this order; “Mass Hallucination Grips City”, “Picayune Pachyderm Panics Populace”, “Hundreds Claim To Have Seen Tiny Elephant” and “I Seen It”. The last headline had been changed from “Noted Scientist to Take to Air to Calm Alarmed Citizenry” to “Sightings of Tiny Elephant Continue” to tie in with the story; Daffy, having read of the mass panic from the last headline, made a backfired attempt to disprove the tiny elephant’s existence that resulted in him being “publicly disgraced on a coast-to-coast hookup!” when during his interview on Frightline with Zed Toppel, the elephant walked by Daffy (Daffy halfway noticing the elephant before the elephant trumpeted at him) much to Zed’s amusement.
One by one, many of my left-leaning news sources seem to be going bonkers. First there was Vox instituting its apparently-fake paywall (still can read the allegedly “exclusive” articles as of yesterday); and now The Tyee, a Canadian site, has screwed up its home page. Starting two days ago it came up blank grey; using the web developer toolkit’s “Inspector” revealed a body tag with a style=display:none attribute that didn’t used to be there and isn’t supposed to be there, the removal of which via hand-editing completely fixes the problem, resulting in the front page of the site rendering exactly the way it used to and is supposed to.
The bizarreness here is twofold: first of all, this is not an error that could plausibly have been made through carelessness or ignorance. It looks a lot like intentional sabotage. And second, in 3 days the operators of the site have not noticed and corrected the problem, which would take all of 20 seconds in a text editor by any educated lay person (after all, I was able to figure out and fix the problem locally in my browsing session that fast). During those same three days they have continued posting new content at a normalish rate, so it’s not like nobody’s home; how could they not have noticed that nobody can see that new content without manual hacking of the HTML? (Or disabling CSS, which also works but uglifies the page severely.) The only thing I can figure is that a) it’s the desktop version of the site that’s affected and b) nobody there bothers to visit the desktop version of the site, surfing via mobile, so they have yet to see the problem.
Unfortunately, I have no way of notifying them, as their “contact us” page lacks either email addresses or a type-and-click-send input form for feedback. I’d have to try to get a human on the phone (∗shudder∗) or send them snail-mail (which would take a fair bit of time, a hike to the post office, and actual money).
Someone there needs to be not only fixing their HTML, though, but hunting for a security hole, a missing patch, or something: someone made what seems to be an intentionally malicious edit to the desktop version of their site, and it behooves them to lock whoever that is out before they come back, or someone else finds the hole and does something worse than an irksome, but ultimately reversible, prank. Like unleashing ransomware or just trashing the DB, or stealing sensitive data to sell to the Russians or something. And given how infrequently they check that the desktop version of their site is rendering correctly, I shudder to think how frequently they are performing backups …
John Moralessays
“One by one, many of my left-leaning news sources seem to be going bonkers.”
BB, just move on, then. Plenty more fishies in the sea.
Why persevere unless it’s worthwhile?
(If it ain’t free, I ain’t reading it.
Unless, of course, I feel like reading it.
More properly, I ain’t paying for it)
The exhibits to Smith’s immunity brief largely remain a mystery, but snippets of witness statements give clues about his litigation strategy, if the federal election interference case survives.
When it comes to legal briefs, I can be a speed reader. But where evidence is concerned, I always prefer to take a more focused, methodical review where I can.
As of Friday afternoon, I’m continuing to pore over all 1,889 pages of the newly released, heavily redacted appendix of special counsel Jack Smith’s brief defending his superseding indictment of former President Donald Trump. But in the few hours since Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered its release, I’ve found several things that stand out already.
What I have reviewed — and the limited amount we can see — reveals that Smith alternately intends to play it safe and take risks as Chutkan assesses which of the allegations and evidence from the superseding indictment should remain in the case.
First, the unsealed content within the first volume of 720-plus pages is excerpted testimony and interviews from the House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation. With one notable exception — which I’ll address — those transcripts have long been public.
That makes it all the more inexplicable that the witness names are redacted, especially as the dates of the interviews are not. That means each witness can be identified through both the dates of their interview or deposition and a comparison of the substance of their comments to public versions of the transcripts.
Specifically, the special counsel’s appendix includes portions of interviews with the following, who appear in alphabetical order: former Attorney General Bill Barr, who resigned in late December 2020; former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers; former Trump deputy campaign manager Justin Clark; former senior Trump White House aide Kellyanne Conway, who left the Trump administration months before the election; Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman; Stephanie Grisham, former chief of staff to Melania Trump; White House speechwriter Vincent Haley, who helped draft the Ellipse speech; Chris Hodgson, then Vice President Mike Pence’s chief aide in the Senate; Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob; Jan. 6 rally organizer Amy Kremer; then-senior campaign adviser Jason Miller; then-campaign adviser Katrina Pierson; Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; former Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey; former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien; White House speechwriter Ross Worthington, who also contributed to the Ellipse speech; and former Trump fundraiser Caroline Wren, who later advised grocery heiress Julie Fancelli on where to direct her money in the post-election period. [video at the link]
What’s most interesting about this group collectively — but also advisable in the wake of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling — is that the vast majority of these witnesses were not executive branch employees, but instead were private citizens, campaign staff or state officials Trump tried to influence. Those who did work within the executive branch — Barr, Jacob, two White House speechwriters and Grisham — were included likely because they observed or participated in an overtly political act, event or conversation or because their own decision-making or communications with others (as with the circumstances surrounding Barr’s resignation, which he discusses in the portion of his interview excerpted) provide context for understanding Trump’s own intent or knowledge.
Now, for that exception: As Politico’s Kyle Cheney observed on X, one interview was provided with fewer redactions than were previously in the public domain. Specifically, earlier this year, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., released a redacted version of the June 10, 2022, interview that a still-unnamed White House valet provided to the Jan. 6 committee.
The version that begins at page 169 of the first volume, however, reveals that the valet, who acknowledged that “sometimes I just don’t know how to deal with my emotions,” had a critical interaction with Trump during the early afternoon of Jan. 6. At 1:21 p.m. ET, the valet notified Trump, who was eager to see footage of his Ellipse speech, that he was not able to record it all because live TV “cut off” coverage in order to show the “rioting down at the Capitol.” According to the valet, Trump then walked straight to the Oval dining room to “go see” for himself as the valet removed Trump’s overcoat, set up the TV, and handed him the remote, at which point the valet left to retrieve Trump’s beloved Diet Coke while Trump “s[aw] it” — meaning the mounting violence at the Capitol — “for himself.”
The version that Loudermilk released in the name of “complete transparency,” however, curiously redacts many of those details.
But, of course, those are just the witnesses whose statements we can see. And while Volume 3 of the appendix contains the cover and several highlighted pages from Pence’s book “So Help Me God,” actual testimony from Pence is nowhere to be found. Or is it merely hiding in plain sight? After all, there are nearly 100 pages of fully sealed material (GA 387-481, for those following along at home) between the apparent end of the excerpt of Miller’s Jan. 6 committee deposition and the start of the portion of Pierson’s transcribed interview. And alphabetically, what, or rather who, falls between them? Pence.
But don’t take it just from me. Smith’s immunity brief recounts, in bulleted form, a series of conversations between Pence and Trump, at pages 12-14. In some cases, Smith cites Pence’s book as a source. But Smith more often credits pages from the government’s appendix within the same range I identified above. And that likely means Smith has ample testimony from Pence about his many post-election conversations with Trump about its outcome — and whether either of them had any reason to doubt or try to change it.
Whether we’ll ever read that testimony, however, is unclear. And before we ever get to courts’ analyses of whether, during the conversations he likely testified to, Pence was functioning as Trump’s adviser, rendering the evidence inadmissible, or his running mate, making it fair game, the bigger determining factor seems to be the outcome of this election.
President Joe Biden met with top world leaders in Berlin Friday at a tenuous moment for Ukraine and the Middle East, two ongoing and volatile wars that have marked Biden’s time in office […]
Both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged to new record highs Friday, sealing six straight weeks of gains. The broad market benchmark advanced 0.40% to close at 5,864.67. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 36.86 points, or 0.09%, to end at 43,275.91. The Nasdaq Composite, led by a post-earnings jump in Netflix, ended the day up 0.63% at 18,489.55.
A Donald Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol and assaulted law enforcement officers now says she was ‘duped’ by the former president’s lies about the 2020 election. Dana Jean Bell was sentenced to 17 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly on Thursday.
After years of rising, the tide may finally be turning on deadly drug overdoses in America. Drug overdose deaths fell 12.7% in the 12 months ending in May, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ‘This is the largest recorded reduction in overdose deaths,’ White House officials said in a statement.
Greetings, fellow Enemy Within™️! Hope you enjoyed the lovely autumn week! The crisp weather, the changing of the foliage, the perhaps temporary absence of U.S. military personnel rounding us up into camps for disparaging Dear Leader!
[…] There seems to be a direct correlation between his rapidly declining mental state and his open embrace of naked fascism, so I think we need to consider the possibility that he’s entered into a secret pact with Putin to divvy up Poland. He’ll mention the invasion in passing, about 90 minutes into the American Carnage II: Blitzkrieg Boogaloo inauguration speech, between the snake story and the part where he hits on Katie Britt.
Because he’s fading fast, folks. We’ve arrived at the “applying the bronzer to the entire face is too much trouble” phase. The “Kamala will abolish cows” phase. The “communication is too difficult for me now, but tell ya what, let’s put on some music so y’all can watch me wobble for an hour” phase.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly glad this latest malfunction (which historians have already labeled the Night of the Undulating Dingbat) has jump-started the overdue conversation on cognitive fitness, […]
Because in those increasingly rare moments when his brain manages to eke out a little human speech, it’s to threaten to send SEAL Team Six after Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, […]
At a Univision town hall, former registered Republican Ramiro González gave America’s overmatched political media a much-needed journalism lesson, asking Off-Brand Orbán, to his face, to justify his inaction on January 6th, while roving gangs of his subpar supporters rampaged through the Capitol in search of Vice Presidents to lynch.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” responded the Dotard, stopping momentarily, for old times’ sake, to exaggerate the size of the crowd, “It was a day of LOVE.” Which is true enough, I suppose. Love of mob violence. Love of the rapist game show host who grants permission to dress up like a Game of Thrones extra and engage in said violence. Love of…well, call it fascism. Cuz that’s what it is.
Now, obviously, no decent person could justify or defend this shit, which, I suppose, explains how the task fell to Glenn Youngkin, who could barely hack up a little half-assed, Orwell-for-the-borderline-braindead spin […]
No wonder he won’t release his medical records. Which presumably consist of a yellowed, decades-old certificate for passing a cognitive test, […]
Anyway, I don’t need to tell you that jousting with little kids over the causes of the Civil War can be tiring work, but suffice to say, this Dotard is alllll tuckered out. He’s cancelling interviews left and right during these, the closing days of the campaign, lacking the stamina to even swat at softballs lobbed by the likes of Dan Bongino.
In contrast, Vice President Harris spent the week barnstorming swing states, with a brief interlude to fact-check Bret Baier’s bullshit, right on his own home turf. Got better ratings than Donnie One-Term did, too.
According to Bob Woodward, former Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis seconded everything General Mark Milley said about their former boss, you remember, “fascist to the core,” danger to the nation, yadda yadda yadda. […]
Shouldn’t need saying, but Donald Trump is not “the father of IVF,” despite what you may’ve heard to the contrary.
He did, however, yet again offer hush money to Stormy Daniels, so I think we can safely say the ship has sailed on the whole “ever learning anything” thing. [LOL] Which might explain his unshakable faith in the punitive tariffs every economist alive insist would kidney-punch our economy.
[…] Former Trump attorney Christina Bobb, who currently works for the RNC, called for a national “cleansing” to “clean out the filth,” in a bizarre rant about Diddy and pedophilia, further demonstrating the American Right’s deep, abiding belief in Donald Trump’s trade policy. […]
Turns out JD Vance’s financial policy advisor, Aaron Kofsky, leads a secret double life as internet coke fiend “PsychoticMammal,” whose boundless love of substance abuse has led him to fill Reddit with tips n’ tricks for smuggling drugs onto domestic flights. And just like that, Don Jr.’s advocacy for JD’s addition to the ticket makes a little more sense, doesn’t it?
I see Elon Musk is out to pad his Guinness World Record for largest loss of personal fortune in human history, regurgitating the same lies about Dominion Voting Systems that cost his pal Rupert a cool $787 million. All I’m saying is, y’know…get that $100 bribe up front, Pennsylvanians.
Heavily armed Real Americans liberated communities in Tennessee and North Carolina from the tyranny of hurricane relief, in case anybody’s looking for fresh material for our nation’s tourist brochures.
[…] Following a rally in Coachella, the Trump campaign abandoned hundreds of their most devoted supporters in the middle of a literal fucking desert, offering the latest in a series of clear-as-the-nose-on-your-fucking-face lessons to the least teachable creatures to ever walk on two legs.[…]
Ted Cruz was publicly humiliated this week, though not, for a change, by a presidential candidate he endorsed.
Having apparently run out of convicts, Vladimir Putin turned to his sister shithole, North Korea, for cannon fodder. That’s right there in Chapter 39 of the Superpower Handbook: When Your Three-Day War is Going Really, Really Well.
Embedded links that lead to sources for the commentary are available at the main link.
The electricity went out Friday in Cuba, affecting the entire island’s population of 10 million after one of its main power plants failed, according to Cuba’s energy ministry.
On Friday evening, authorities announced power had been restored to about 20,000 residents of the capital, Havana, which has a population of 2 million.
Lack of trade partners, Mexico, Venezuela and Russia all cutting oil supplies, increasing demand and aging infrastructure have led to a total failure. The Cuban government blames the US embargo and that is certainly a factor but that isn’t directly the cause of this. If they have actually run out of oil it may not be possible to restore power. That could be a threat to the government but the Cubans also realize that as long as the embargo is in place nothing will fix their problem.
John Moralessays
Shame Cuba built a power network based on burning oil which was provided basically for free, from the Soviet Union and then Venezuela (before both economically collapsed).
Turns out, they can’t afford to pay for more oil, and can’t afford to rebuild their electrical generating plants.
Joe Blogs has been covering the circumstances, and posted this a few days ago:
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
4:03 POWER
9:10 WATER SHORTAGES
10:35 FOOD SHORTAGES
11:21 POPULATION
14:20 DOLLARIZATION
16:48 PRIVATE SECTOR
21:51 NARCOTICS
23:50 SUMMARY & CONCLUSION
John Moralessays
[meh, I used CR/LF instead of a mere LF, thus the embed. Sorry, not intentional]
StevoRsays
State election news from ABC news and from the ACT – Australian Capital Territory or basically Canvberra our national capital plus its outskirts here :
Dunno that it has that much wider impact or federal implications but still Intrestingly,well, I reckon it is, theydo use another votin g system there -the Hare-Clarke model with multipel pollies voted in from each electorate ona proportional basis whch I actually rather like so it is an example of how elections work that way here. Kinda nic e if you have a couple of local reps to contact and represent you better rather than just a single MP that can be utterly horrific like we had for a long time in my federal (& state) electrorates.
The AG’s of Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho are suing the FDA on the grounds that the states have a compelling interest in having teen moms is being harmed by the FDA. The argument is that the percentage of teen pregnancies didn’t go up the amount expected after Roe vs Wade was overturned. And they need to block mifepristone, since they have a compelling interest in pregnant teens.
[…] because the actual arguments in the cases are so unbelievable that folks would just think I was exaggerating. So I am going to link two articles with the details
A loss of potential population causes further injuries as well: the States subsequent “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds,” such as potentially “losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are” reduced or their increase diminished.
[…] yes they spent decades shaming teen mothers and blaming them for the ills of the world. But this last couple of years shows, they want to create teen mothers, and take away all their rights at the same time. This is who they really are, and its time we believed them […]
Vice President Kamala Harris plans to tap a pair of celebrity singers to help with get-out-the-vote events Saturday in two battleground states: Lizzo in Michigan and Usher in Georgia. […]
Ten minutes into his speech [in Detroit], Trump told the crowd: “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary, it’s not love, it’s not respect —” He was warming up to say “tariffs,” but no one got to hear it. His microphone cut out.
[…] For 20 minutes, Trump paced the stage, voiceless, helpless, frustrated, alone. For a moment, he was no longer the entertainer.
[…] As “Eye of the Tiger” began to play, Trump walked back to the lectern. He leaned into the microphone. “Hello,” he said, his voice now booming through the crowd. The audience cheered.
“I won’t pay the bill for this stupid company that rented us this crap,” Trump said. “I won’t pay the bill. And then we’ll have a story that Trump didn’t pay the bill to a contractor. No. When they do that kind of a job, don’t pay the bill.”
[…] Trump mocked the pronunciation of Vice President Kamala Harris’s name — “I don’t give a damn if I pronounce it right,” he said — and repeated false claims about her record, such as misrepresenting reduced sentences that California voters approved during her tenure as the state’s attorney general. He again misrepresented Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics on immigrants with criminal histories, many of them serving sentences and in the country for many years, by claiming they had all been released by Harris.
He repeated a pledge to launch a mass deportation operation using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law last used to displace and detain Japanese Americans during World War II. In an interview earlier on Friday, Trump equated Japanese incarceration to the imprisonment of his supporters who are serving sentences for convictions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
[…] In the Detroit speech, the former president encouraged his supporters to vote early by dramatizing how a supporter might encourage a friend named Jill to motivate her husband.
“Jill, get your fat husband off the couch,” he said. “Get that fat pig off that couch. … Slap him around. Get him up.”
Recently, quite alarmingly, it was reported that the “carbon sink” function of various natural ecosystems across the world may be disappearing. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/14/nature-carbon-sink-collapse-global-heating-models-emissions-targets-evidence-aoe
[The story opens with a satellite image of algal blooms in Baltic Sea. These blooms are locally a notorious environmental problem linked mainly to eutrophication, but the story erroneously links the image to recent reports of climate-related changes in the Arctic Ocean ecosystem.]
The Guardian continued on this theme with a long, confusing story that focuses on Finland specifically. I thought to add some clarifying notes and context. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/15/finland-emissions-target-forests-peatlands-sinks-absorbing-carbon-aoe
[The story opens, somewhat misleadingly, with a photo of nearly treeless birch shrub tundra in northern Norway near the Finnish border. The mountain birch shrubs in the photographed area have recently been devastated by a certain species of moth, as occasionally happens to mountain birch stands in the northern highlands. AFAIK it’s unclear how climate change affects this particular species dynamic.]
Tiina Sanila-Aikio cannot remember a summer this warm … “I have spoken with many old reindeer herders who have never experienced the heat that we’ve had this summer. The sun keeps shining and it never rains,” says Sanila-Aikio, former president of the Finnish Sami parliament.
This past summer has seen a very persistent weather pattern that produced extremely rainy conditions with floods in much of western Europe, and extreme warmth with varying degrees of drought in vast areas further east. I’ve seen some recent research suggesting that this pattern may become more regular as a result of the shutdown of North Atlantic circulation.
The heat/drought anomaly was particularly prominent in far northern Finland and nearby areas – the homeland of indigenous Sámi people. The Guardian points out the weather-related concerns of local reindeer ranchers, most of whom are Sámi. Only at the end of the story it is clarified that the drought affects the amount and quality of grazing available for reindeer, particularly mushrooms, which are very important in autumn. (In recent years, there have already been major problems with the hardening of snow cover during mild and rainy winters, which makes it difficult for the reindeer to forage and survive through the winter.)
It is these forests that helped underpin the credibility of the most ambitious carbon-neutrality target in the developed world: Finland’s commitment to be carbon neutral by 2035.
The law, which came into force two years ago, means the country is aiming to reach the target 15 years earlier than many of its EU counterparts.
…
For decades, the country’s forests and peatlands had reliably removed more carbon from the atmosphere than they released. But from about 2010, the amount the land absorbed started to decline, slowly at first, then rapidly. By 2018, Finland’s land sink – the phrase scientists use to describe something that absorbs more carbon than it releases – had vanished.
Its forest sink has declined about 90% from 2009 to 2022, with the rest of the decline fuelled by increased emissions from soil and peat. In 2021-22, Finland’s land sector was a net contributor to global heating.
The impact on Finland’s overall climate progress is dramatic: despite cutting emissions by 43% across all other sectors, its net emissions are at about the same level as the early 1990s. It is as if nothing has happened for 30 years.
The collapse has enormous implications, not only for Finland but internationally. At least 118 countries are relying on natural carbon sinks to meet climate targets. Now, through a combination of human destruction and the climate crisis itself, some are teetering and beginning to see declines in the amount of carbon that they take in.
“We cannot achieve carbon neutrality if the land sector is a source of emissions. They have to be sinks because all emissions can’t be decreased to zero in other sectors,” says Juha Mikola, a researcher for the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), which is responsible for producing the official government figures.
I haven’t seen much reporting or discussion on these recent developments on Finnish media. A while ago I saw something that seemed to suggest that earlier estimates on the carbon sinks had turned out to be overly optimistic. It’s quite unclear to me what is the role of inaccurate estimates vs. actual changes in the ecosystems. The latter could potentially make the situation even more serious than it already is.
The reasons behind these changes are complicated and not fully understood, say researchers. Burning peatland for energy – more polluting than coal – remains common. Commercial logging of forests – including rare primeval ecosystems formed since the last ice age – has increased from an already relentless pace, making up the majority of emissions from Finland’s land sector. But there are also indications that the climate crisis has become a driver of the decline.
Rising temperatures in the most rapidly warming part of the planet are heating up Finland’s soils, increasing the rate at which peatlands break down and release greenhouse gases into the air.
…
The number of dying trees also increased in recent years as forests are stressed by drought and high temperatures. In south-east Finland, the number of dying trees has risen rapidly, increasing 788% in just six years between 2017 and 2023, and the amount of standing deadwood – decaying trees – is up by about 900%.
The country’s forests, mostly planted after the end of the second world war, are also maturing, approaching the maximum amount of carbon that they can naturally store.
I haven’t really kept up with the science, but I gather that the reasons are indeed complicated. That said, you’d think the system would have to be reasonably well understood for the researchers to be able to measure and model the total carbon balance somewhat accurately.
Logging of old growth forests has long been criticized as a threat for biodiversity. Incidentally, the large amount of deadwood found in old growth forests is a particularly critical resource for many endangered forest species. Recently, there’s also been a lot of debate on how forest management affects the forest carbon sink and carbon storage – often these two are mixed up.
The total forest area in Finland (ie. most of the country) has long been stable, even slightly increasing, as mires and marginal agricultural lands have been converted into forest. Modern intensive forest management has long sought to improve tree growth and ensure efficient tree establishment after logging, at the expense of everything else in the forest ecosystem. It has also sought to ensure that every tree is logged before it dies on its own, for one reason or another, and becomes economically worthless deadwood. Naturally, the people with a financial interest in this (ie. forest owners and logging/wood industry) prefer to frame enhanced tree growth as an inherent good, and natural death of trees as a threat to the forest itself.
The amount of wood in Finnish forests has greatly increased since the mid 20th century, in part because lots of forest area was logged and re-established at the time. Now those stands are coming to prime logging age, and there’s increasing debate on whether they should be let to grow longer, or harvested to make space for new trees. As they grow older, their mass growth slows down but they continue to store lots of carbon. Heck, some of that area could be allowed to develop into a real old growth forest. But there’s all the scaremongering about how older trees stop growing and start to die, while blocking the growth of new saplings.
Thus far, I haven’t seen any really alarming reports of mass tree death in Finland due to drought and insect outbreaks, but it has been certainly recognized as a potential future threat for Finnish forests. Particularly by those who refuse to recognize that letting trees die might be helpful for the health of forest ecosystem. When it comes to climate policy, it is eagerly pointed out that when trees die, they start to decay and release their carbon into the atmosphere. Then again, harvested wood material also tends to break up in use and decay, even if it’s not immediately burned for energy. Meanwhile, large dead trunks in the forest can often last quite a long time and form a substantial carbon storage.
The role of peatlands and other forest soils is hugely important when it comes to natural carbon storage in Finland. Peat bogs, which are very common in Finland, naturally sequester some amount of carbon each year, accumulating massive carbon storages over thousands of years. Extraction of peat for fuel has been a topic of heated (hah) debate in recent years. I understand that another major problem is that huge areas of peat bog and peaty forest soil have been drained to improve tree growth. This increases the decomposition rate of peat, which I presume has been taken into account by experts in the estimates of ecosystem carbon balance. Likewise, I presume the demographic shift of Finnish forests has been taken into account.
[There are several quotes from worried researchers and environmental activists, giving the general impression that the observed decline of natural carbon sinks is not only highly concerning but also unanticipated.]
These changes – while anticipated by climate scientists – are worrying policymakers. Finland is not alone in its experience of decline or vanishing land sinks. France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Estonia are among those that have seen significant declines in their land sinks.
Drought, climate-related outbreaks of bark beetle, wildfire and tree mortality from extreme heat are ravaging Europe’s woodlands on top of pressure from forestry. Across the EU, the amount of carbon absorbed by its land each year fell by about a third between 2010 and 2022, according to the latest research, endangering the continent’s climate target.
Johan Rockström, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, says: “The reasons [for Finland’s shift] are not fully explored but it’s very likely a combination of unsustainable forest management and also dieback because of droughts and extreme weather conditions. We see similar trends in Canada, very much from disease outbreaks, but also in Sweden.
“These are countries in the temperate north that have factored in their carbon sink as a very central part of their climate policy,” he says. “It’s such a big risk for these governments.”
The causes of this decline probably vary somewhat in different countries, but common themes seem to be wildfires and other mass tree death events plus increased decomposition of organic matter due to rising temperatures.
[There is a brief introduction of Finnish environmental activists who try to prevent old growth logging by recording local ecologically valuable forest habitats and shaming potential buyers of timber and wood products – a worthy endeavor.]
Liimatainen, a Greenpeace forest campaigner, and Hakulinen, project manager with the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, have travelled to the remote forest to document rare species that live there, part of a cat-and-mouse game with the forestry industry. By establishing the presence of endangered wildlife, they hope to prevent the mills getting sustainable timber certification and grant the forest a stay of execution.
“This was part of a massive old-growth forest and it was cut down last winter,” says Liimatainen, pointing to the clearcut expanse.
A fraction of Finnish forest is believed to be untouched, often found on or around peatlands, but there is little formal protection from the government. New areas are regularly cleared for pulp and lumber.
There are strictly protected forests in Finland, but the problem is that most forest area is entirely unprotected, open to clearcuts and other intensive management. There has been some progress in the industry and landowners trying to incorporate biodiversity maintenance in forestry, but the prevailing attitude seems to be that only little bits of forest need to be allowed to grow old. This is not ecologically sustainable.
Researchers say that slowing forest clearance, better protection for intact ecosystems, and improved forest management could help to restore Finland’s land sink. But the cost has led to resistance from the forestry industry.
Finland’s finance ministry estimates that harvesting a third less would reduce GDP by 2.1%, costing €1.7bn-€5.8bn (£1.4bn-£4.8bn) a year. Increasing forest protection would also cost the country hundreds of millions of euros, according to the Finnish Nature Panel. The state owns 35% of forests, while private owners, companies, municipalities and various organisations own the rest.
Finland’s leading timber companies say the country’s forests still absorb more carbon than they release, while acknowledging that the amount has shrunk dramatically in recent years. Fossil fuels, rather than forestry, represent the biggest threat to the climate, they say.
A spokesperson for Metsä Group, a co-operative of more than 90,000 forest owners, says that whenever forest is harvested, new trees are planted, which means carbon sequestration can be increased over the long term.
Convenient framing from the industry lobby, exactly as I described above. The more trees you cut, the more trees you can grow! What carbon storage! Also let’s talk about fossil fuels instead!
A spokesperson for UPM, a Finnish forestry firm, says the 2035 carbon-neutrality target is overly optimistic and “too many climate policy hopes were pinned on the land-use sector sinks”.
That bit might be actually true.
“The calls for restricting harvesting often miss the point that the state owns approximately a quarter of Finnish forests. The government can restrict harvesting in its own land if it is willing to bear the significant direct and indirect financial consequences,” they say.
Of course, that’d limit the supply of timber and increase the prices. Therefore, when the public discourse demands more protection for state-owned forests, trolls will show up to suggest that private forest owners’ property rights are being threatened, and the activists and concerned citizens should just privately buy any forest they want to protect.
Under the rightwing government that was elected last year, much less emphasis has been put on meeting climate targets. The Finnish government did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Classic.
But researchers warn that rising global temperatures are likely to further degrade Finland’s land sink. Studies indicate that across boreal ecosystems, the forest is losing its ability to absorb and store as much carbon.
“There are some really serious scientific scenarios where, if climate change proceeds, the spruce in Finland will not survive, at least in southern Finland,” says Nordman. “The whole forestry system is based on this tree.”
This quote is included offhand without context. There has been some concern for the native spruce (Norway spruce, picea abies) specifically, because it’s one of the two overwhelmingly important tree species in Finnish forestry (the other is Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris), and its productivity might collapse if the climate becomes warmer and more maritime/variable. It’s unclear to me whether any other tree species (preferably one of the native ones) could produce similar economic value on Finnish soils in the new climate.
lumipunasays
The paragraph breaks came out less clear than I expected. Ah well, at least saved some space on this page.
birgerjohanssonsays
I see that actor John Lithgow has turned 79.
Not only is he older than Trump, he played a baddie in Dexter. That makes him over-qualified to be a Republican presidential nominee.
.
John Morales @ 103
Obligate carnivores are “problematic”.
.
That is why it is wise to introduce kittens/puppies to other species- especially domesticated ones they are likely to run into- before they reach
adulthood. You don’t want your dog to kill your neighbor’s cat/rabbit/parrot.
Once a cat or dog is used to another species it might still play rough with an animal, but not kill it.
Foxes that have grown up beside cats do not see them as “food” (but the foxes will still pee indoors because “tame” is not the same thing as “domesticated”).
lumipuna @127, thanks for that presentation of the news as you interpreted it. Very well presented.
In other news, here is another take on Elon Musk’s questionable participation in Trump’s campaign efforts. Josh Marshall, writing for Talking Points Memo:
There’s deeply cynical and then there’s things which might be illegal. In the first category we have an Elon Musk-funded PAC microtargeting Jewish and Arab communities with diametrically opposed ads about Kamala Harris’s support for Israel or Palestine. Amazingly cynical. But then you have what I’m going to describe next which comes from another Musk-funded dark money operation. They have set up fake sites impersonating the Harris campaign using fake policy positions and then sending out text messages also impersonating the campaign which aim to drive voters to the fake site. [!!!] (A lot of potential legal and regulatory questions turns on word like “fake” and “impersonating”, which we’ll return to in a moment.)
I found out about this from this article by Anna Massoglia at OpenSecrets. As far as I can tell she’s the first to report it. The project is the work of Building America’s Future PAC, which seems to be largely and perhaps now entirely funded by Elon Musk. It’s part of a network of Musk-funded PACs which are run and/or organized by a group of operatives who ran Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential campaign. America PAC is another of these entities organized with the same money and by the same operatives. That’s the one doing the canvassing and get out the vote operations.
As Massoglia reports, in late September Building America’s Future set up a site called Progress 2028 which purports to be Kamala Harris’s response or counter to Project 2025. The site is designed to have the general appearance of a Harris site in the sense of being in favor of gun regulation, supportive of gender-affirming care, etc. but with wildly over-the-top versions of those policies. So for instance, it calls for minor children to be able to get sex change operations at school without the knowledge of or interference from parents, calls for a mandatory gun buy-back program etc. [Sheesh!]
The PAC also funded a text message campaign which pushes the same fake policy messages impersonating Harris’s campaign and drives recipients of the texts to the site. [yikes]
Courtesy of TPM Reader DM here’s what one of those texts looks like. [image available at the link]
Now let’s get back to “impersonating”.
The texts and the site are clearly meant to make you think that these come from the Harris campaign or perhaps one of its associated committees. They refer to “our” plan, etc. There’s no question this is the intent and likely effect. The limited disclaimers say they are paid for by Progress2028. But campaign’s often have sites with separate names or even separate funding vehicles. It would be totally normal for the Harris campaign or one of its associated committees to have set up a site with such a name. Legally speaking, however, it is funded by “Progress2028”. That’s a fictitious name created by Building America’s Future in late September in Virginia. The same intentionally misleading but not technically inaccurate labeling is followed on the website, the texts and also online ads, which Massoglia references. To get really specific it was registered by a DC based lawyer named James E. Tyrrell III […]
If these said “paid for by Harris for President” you’d have a straight up campaign finance violation. But that’s not what they’re doing. So I don’t think the Musk group is doing anything illegal here.
The one part of this I’m not sure about, however, is the texts. Texts, like the US mail and phone calls, come under specific regulatory and even legal frameworks. In some cases, it’s not enough to be technically accurate in the way I’m describing above. If you’re trying to impersonate someone that can be enough to get you in trouble. That’s very different from a website in which you can say basically anything.
If you’ve gotten these texts please let me know. Also if you’re more versed than I am on the regulatory regime for text messaging drop me a line as well.
Ziklag and the Courage Tour, the far-right groups that hosted the Republican vice-presidential nominee, are charities that can’t legally intervene in political campaigns.
By Andy Kroll, ProPublica; Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch; and Nick Surgey, Documented for ProPublica
[…] On Sept. 28, Vance held an official campaign event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in partnership with the Courage Tour, a series of swing-state rallies hosted by a pro-Trump Christian influencer that combine prayer, public speakers, tutorials on how to become a poll worker and get-out-the-vote programming.
Ziklag, a secretive organization of wealthy Christians, funds the Courage Tour, according to previously unreported documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented. A private donor video produced by Ziklag said the group intended to spend $700,000 in 2024 to mobilize Christian voters by funding “targeted rallies in swing states” led by Lance Wallnau, the pro-Trump influencer.
Even before the Vance event, ProPublica previously reported that tax experts believed Ziklag’s 2024 election-related efforts could be in violation of tax law. The Vance event, they said, raised even more red flags about whether a tax-exempt charity had improperly benefited the Trump-Vance campaign.
According to Texas corporation records, the Courage Tour is a project of Lance Wallnau Ministries Inc., a 501(c)(3) charity led by Wallnau. There have been five Courage Tour events this year, and Vance is the only top-of-the-ticket candidate to appear at any of them.
Wallnau has said that Vice President Kamala Harris is possessed by “the spirit of Jezebel” and practices “witchcraft.” As ProPublica reported, Wallnau is also an adviser to Ziklag, whose long-term goal is to help conservative Christians “take dominion” over the most important areas of American society, such as education, government and entertainment.
The Vance campaign portion was tucked in between Courage Tour events, and organizers took pains to say that Wallnau’s podcast hosted the hourlong segment, not the Courage Tour. Two signs near the stage said Wallnau’s podcast was hosting Vance. And during Vance’s conversation with a local pastor, the Courage Tour’s logo was replaced by the Trump-Vance logo on the screen.
An email sent by the Courage Tour to prospective attendees promoted the rally and Vance’s appearance as distinct events but advertised them side by side: [image available at the link]
But the lines between those events blurred in a way that tax-law experts said could create legal problems for Wallnau, the Courage Tour and Ziklag. The appearance took place at the same venue, on the same stage and with the same audience as the rest of the Courage Tour. That email to people who might attend assured them that they could remain in their same seats to watch Vance and that afterward, “We will seamlessly return to the Courage Tour programming.”
The Trump-Vance campaign promoted the event as “part of the Courage Tour” and said Vance’s remarks would take place “during the Courage Tour.” And although the appearance included a discussion of addiction and homelessness, Vance criticized President Joe Biden in his remarks and urged audience members to vote and get others to vote as well in November.
Later in the day, Wallnau took the stage and asked for donations from the crowd. As he did, he spoke of Vance’s appearance as if it were part of the Courage Tour. “People have been coming up to us, my staff, and saying we want to help you out, what can we do, how do we do this? I want you to know when we do a Courage Tour, which will be back in the area, when we’re in different parts of the country,” he said. Asking for a show of hands, Wallnau added: “How many of you would like to at least be knowing when we’re there? Who’s with us on the team? If we have another JD Vance or Donald Trump or somebody?”
An employee of Wallnau’s, Mercedes Sparks, peeked out from behind a curtain. “I just wanted to clarify: You said they came to the Courage Tour,” Sparks said. “They didn’t. For legal reasons, the podcast hosted that. It was very separate. I don’t need the IRS coming my way.”
Despite the disclaimers, Vance’s campaign appearance at the Courage Tour raises legal red flags for several reasons, according to experts in tax and election law. [Yeah. The disclaimers like cover-you-ass attempts to hide the truth.]
Both Lance Wallnau Ministries and Ziklag are 501(c)(3) charities, the same legal designation as the Boys & Girls Club or the United Way. People who donate to charities like these can deduct their gift on their annual taxes. But under the law, such charities are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS. [video and posted comment at the link]
Internal Ziklag records lay out how the Courage Tour could influence the 2024 election. “Our plan,” one private video states, “is to mobilize grassroots support in seven key swing states through large-scale rallies, each anticipated to attract between 5,000 and 15,000 participants. These ‘Fire and Glory’ rallies will primarily target counties critical to the 2024 election outcome.” Wallnau said he later changed the name of his swing-state tour from Fire and Glory to the Courage Tour, saying the original name “sounds like a Pentecostal rally.”
Four nonpartisan tax experts told ProPublica and Documented that a political campaign event hosted by one charitable group, which is in turn funded by another charitable group, could run afoul of the ban on direct or indirect campaign intervention by a charitable organization. They added that Wallnau’s attempt to carve out Vance’s appearance may not, in the eyes of the IRS, be sufficient to avoid creating tax-law problems.
“Here, the [Trump] campaign is getting the people in their seats, who have come to the c-3’s event,” Ellen Aprill, an expert on political activities by charitable groups and a retired law professor at Loyola Law School, wrote in an email. “I would say this is over the line into campaign intervention but that it is a close call — and that exempt organization lawyers generally advise clients NOT to get too close to the line!”
Roger Colinvaux, a professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, said that regulators consider whether a consumer would be able to distinguish the charitable event from the political activity. Does the public know these are clearly separate entities, or is it difficult to distinguish whether it’s a charity or a for-profit company that’s hosting a political event?
“If it looks like the (c)(3) is creating the audience, then that again is potentially an issue,” he said.
Ziklag, Wallnau and the Vance campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
tomhsays
@ #129 on John Lithgow
Lithgow wrote (and illustrated) a great book of verse about Trump that came out just before the 2020 election, Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age. It was a follow-up to his NYT list bestseller, Dumpty. From a Kirkus review at the time:
The book arrives at a time when it’s needed most. With all-new poems and never-before-seen line drawings, Lithgow will once again make readers laugh and pause to remember some of the most defining moments in recent history—skewering the reign of King Dumpty one stanza at a
time….
A hilarious and pertinent parody to help pass the time until the November election decides the nation’s fate.
More Holes In Tim Sheehy’s Accidental / Friendly Fire Shooting Story Than In His Arm
Lying liar still favored to beat Jon Tester in Senate race, because Montana.
The Washington Post Friday published an update on that weirdass story it reported back in April, revealing that Montana’s Republican nominee for US Senate, Tim Sheehy, lied outrageously about a bullet wound in his right forearm. As it happens, the New York Times is also on the story, with additional details. […]
The only details that are in dispute are 1) how and 2) when the bullet got there, 3) who exactly he lied to, and 4) why Sheehy lied. […]
Both stories, as we’ll see, involve new details from people who dispute Sheehy’s version of events. One is Kim Peach, a retired US Park Ranger who investigated Sheehy’s involvement in an accidental shooting in Glacier National Park in 2015. Peach spoke to both the Post and the Times. The other is Dave Madden, a former friend of Sheehy who was close to him when they were both Navy SEALs serving in Afghanistan.
First, the basics: In 2015, while he was hospitalized in Kalispell, Montana, after an incident at the national park, Sheehy told Peach — who wasn’t identified in the Post’s April story — that after a hike, he was putting his Colt .45 revolver back in his SUV when the gun slipped and fell to the pavement, discharging and wounding him. He paid a $525 fine for discharging a firearm in a national park, and that was the end of it, OK?
Except it wasn’t the end of it! Peach told the Post about the incident after he realized the guy in the TV ads was the guy from the incident in Glacier, and when reporters asked Sheehy about it, he had another explanation: He hadn’t been wounded in 2015 at the park at all!
He said he’d actually made up the story to cover up a bullet wound he received in Afghanistan in 2012. He wasn’t sure whether he was hit by the enemy or by friendly fire, but didn’t report the incident to his superiors at the time because he worried it would implicate his platoon members in a possible friendly fire incident he considered no big deal.
In this telling, he went to the ER after falling while hiking, worried the bullet had been dislodged, and told medical staff that he had a bullet in his arm, but avoided saying how it got there. He said hospital staff explained they had to report all gunshot wounds to law enforcement, so when Peach arrived to interview him, Sheehy lied to keep the truth from potentially getting his former teammates in trouble.
The story gets even weirder as reported by the New York Times, which says Sheehy’s lawyers explained that when the hospital staff told Sheehy they had to report the wound to law enforcement,
He decided to lie about it, the lawyers said, by telling both the medical staff and Mr. Peach that the bullet had come from an accidental shooting that day.
“Mr. Sheehy’s account is the only plausible one,” the lawyers said.
Plau …! Plausible!? We’re supposed to believe the ER staff couldn’t tell a three-year-old bullet wound from a fresh one? Did the fall tear up his arm exactly where the old bullet wound was, leaving doctors thinking it was a fresh gunshot wound? Had Sheehy been picking at the scab a lot for three years? It makes no damned sense at all! [True!]
The Times adds that Sheehy
declined requests to provide The Times with military medical records that might show when he received any injuries in Afghanistan, or hospital records that would reflect that the injury in Montana was a result of a fall and not a fresh gunshot wound.
And no, Sheehy won’t let you look at his arm, none of your business.
Anyhow, the Post explains why Mr. Peach, 67, has come forward to tell his story more openly. In April, the paper
allowed him to speak on the condition of anonymity at the time because he feared political retaliation. But Laura Loomer and other conservative pundits quickly shared his identity online after the story published, leading to harassment, Peach said.
[Of course. Sheesh.]
Now, angry at what he sees as Sheehy’s refusal to own up to the truth, Peach is speaking on the record to lend weight to his account of what happened 9 years ago.
Peach quite simply doesn’t buy Sheehy’s explanation of the events, saying, “The truth isn’t complicated.” Peach also told the Times, “I am 100 percent sure he shot himself that day.” [My bet is that there was not an accidental discharge when the gun was dropped, but that Sheehy did shoot himself accidentally while stupidly mishandling a gun.]
Peach met Sheehy at the hospital and interviewed him just after he was discharged, then went with him to his SUV in the parking lot to examine the gun. He told the Post in the spring that he had found one spent bullet casing in the cylinder, suggesting that the gun had been fired, although that detail didn’t make it into his written report. He temporarily confiscated the revolver, but returned it when Sheehy paid his fine. Back in April, Sheehy’s lawyer said that the fact that the missing bullet wasn’t mentioned in the 2015 report meant that Peach’s memory of seeing it had to be a “fabrication.”
Back in April, Sheehy himself magnanimously said he doesn’t “in any way impugn the law enforcement officer,” because “Everything he says is true to the extent of his knowledge.” But with the election so close, the Sheehy campaign is getting openly pissy about Peach, and why not, now that the rightwing online flying monkey brigade knows who he is? Campaign spokesperson Katie Martin told the Post that the former ranger is nothing but a partisan activist, calling attention to a scandalous Facebook photo where Peach wore a hat saying “Make Lying Wrong Again,” shame on him.
“Anyone trying to take away from the fact that Tim Sheehy signed up for war as a young man and spent most of his 20s in some of the most dangerous places in the world is either a partisan hack, a journalist with an agenda, or outright a disgusting person,” Martin said.
“Tim has been and will continue to be a humble servant of our great nation, our veterans, and the men and women he admirably served with,” she continued. “He got into this race to put our country first and he won’t ever let any of this slander stop him from fighting every day as Montana’s next U.S. Senator.”
Notice how none of that actually addresses the substance of the articles.
Oh, yes, and the new person who spoke to the Times, Dave Madden, knew Sheehy when they were in training to go to Afghanistan, although they were assigned to different platoons once they deployed. They stayed in touch by email, and Madden says that he met up with Sheehy again in July 2012. That would be after the April or May 2012 firefight in which Sheehy says a ricocheting bullet lodged in his arm, but
During that in-person meeting, Mr. Madden said, the two men swapped war stories about the various close conflicts with enemy fighters that they had endured. But through the entire conversation that day, he said, Mr. Sheehy never mentioned any sort of bullet wound. He said he remembers that Mr. Sheehy had his sleeves rolled up during the conversation, and there was no visible evidence of any injury to his arm.
Mr. Madden said he was surprised when Mr. Sheehy began talking more recently about having been shot that spring in Afghanistan, and that he became convinced that Mr. Sheehy had invented the story.
“It seems obvious to me and every other operator I’ve talked to about this,” Mr. Madden said, referring to other military veterans.
Not surprisingly, Sheehy’s lawyers say that conversation never took place, and that Madden too is a partisan who’s trying to destroy Sheehy. Madden has indeed taken issue with Sheehy’s politics in social media posts, so that has to prove he’s a liar somehow. For his part, Madden says he dislikes both political parties, but felt he had to speak up. Good luck with the online creeps, Mr. Madden.
As electricity was being restored in parts of Cuba following an island-wide blackout, a total collapse of the electrical grid occurred once again Saturday […]
State-run media reported that at 6:15 a.m. local time there was complete disconnection from the national electro energetic system. […]
On Saturday morning, there were few cars in the streets of the capital, Havana. Traffic lights were not working. People were out looking for food since much of what they had in the refrigerator is now spoiled. A limited number of stores were open. Some state-run stores opened without power while some of the privately owned ones were operating with generators.
In the upscale Vedado neighborhood of the capital, the government opened an open air market at a park on Saturday with agricultural products including root vegetables, rice and some other vegetables.
[…] Power outages have been chronic in Cuba for years and have worsened in recent months.
The country’s aging and crumbling infrastructure require constant maintenance, and the government has often blamed the decades-old U.S. embargo on Cuba for making it difficult to import parts. The government has also cited increasing energy demand and fuel shortages used to fire up its plants as causes for constant blackouts. In some provinces outside the capital, Havana, many people have grappled with power outages that last up to 20 hours at a time.
[…] Cuba’s economic crisis has spurred massive migration. Over one million people, or 10% of Cuba’s population, have fled the island between 2022 and 2023, according to the country’s national statistics office.
The shootings about five miles outside of Lexington, Mississippi, followed a football game several hours earlier at the Holmes County Consolidated School’s homecoming celebration.
Three people were killed and eight others were injured in central Mississippi early Saturday when at least two people opened fire into a group of several hundred people who were celebrating a school’s homecoming football win at an outdoor trail several hours after the game had ended, authorities said.
The gunfire was preceded by a fight between some of the men at the celebration, but deputies hadn’t yet learned what sparked the fight, said Holmes County Sheriff Willie March.
Anywhere from 200 to 300 people were on the trail celebrating, and the gunfire sent them fleeing, the sheriff said in a phone interview.
“It was chaos, to tell you the truth,” March said. “The shooting just started and people started running.”
The shootings about five miles outside of Lexington, Mississippi, followed a football game several hours earlier at the Holmes County Consolidated School’s homecoming celebration. After the victory, scores of young people headed to the trail to celebrate.
Lexington is located more than 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of Jackson.
Two of the victims who died were 19 and the third was 25. The injured victims were airlifted to local hospitals.
The Biological Trap of Being Human – Robert Sapolsky
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3iSMW8vRH1A.
John Moralessays
“In this fascinating talk hosted by the Leakey Foundation, neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky delves deep into the biological underpinnings of human behavior. He dismantles the illusion of free will, highlighting how our actions are dictated by a complex interplay of genetics, environment, and evolutionary history. By exposing the deterministic nature of human behavior, Sapolsky challenges the notions of moral responsibility and conscious choice. This lecture aligns with The Nacre God’s rejection of free will, making it a must-watch for those questioning the foundations of human autonomy.”
Heh heh heh.
Storytelling.
John Moralessays
Interesting comment there: “The description of this video DOES NOT CORRESPOND to the content of THIS talk by Sapolsky. They copied and pasted, without paying attention to the relationship between description and content: this description fits in other lectures of his, where the center is free will and determinism, BUT NOT IN THIS one, where the subject is supposed human singularity, or even: similarities and differences between humans and other animals.”
—
Hey, Birger, did you watch the video you cited, where you added nothing of your own?
John Moralessays
[BTW the non-breaking space looks much nicer than the full stop]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: Lynna @124:
Rando comment: “one of the complaints is that girls in the foster care system who’ve been raped are still able to access abortion care. Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.”
Plaintiffs have suffered injury to their sovereign interests […] Defendants intentionally facilitated […] an out-of-state abortion drug distribution network […] to displace and nullify the States’ state-law parental rights of notice and consent for abortions for teen girls in foster care.
page 150-151
Plaintiff States are the legal parent […] of many minor girls in state foster care […] Plaintiff States actively enforce and administer their rights to decide whether these children obtain medical care. […] rights to restrict and prohibit abortions for minor girls in state foster care
CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Sunday to explain former President Trump’s ribald rally remarks about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.
At a Saturday campaign event in Palmer’s Pennsylvania hometown, Trump praised the golfer and said, with “all due respect to women,” Palmer was a man “that was all man.”
“When he took the showers with other pros, they came out of there. They said, ‘Oh my God. That’s unbelievable,’” Trump said. “I had to say. We have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at Arnold as a man.”
Tapper asked Mike Johnson on Sunday’s “State of the Union” if that is the message that Trump wants to share with voters with just days remaining before Election Day.
Johnson largely avoided the question until he was pressed by the anchor on Trump’s acuity and asked why Trump was talking about Palmer’s genitalia in front of Pennsylvania voters.
“Jake, you seem to like that line a lot,” Johnson said.
Tapper interjected, saying, “I don’t want to be talking about this, right? Donald Trump is out there saying it.”
Johnson said he would “address it,” and then drew a comparison between the length of Trump’s rallies and for how long he suspected President Biden could speak at a comparable event.
“There’s lines in a rally. When President Trump is at a rally, sometimes he’ll speak for two straight hours. You’re questioning his stamina, his mental acuity, Joe Biden couldn’t do that for five minutes,” Johnson said.
Here’s another thing on which Mike Johnson commented:
House Speaker Mike Johnson said the race between former President Trump and Vice President Harris, just days away, should come down to policy.
“Look at the record of these two candidates, this shouldn’t be about personalities. It should be about policy,” Johnson said Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union.” […]
‘Exhausted’ Trump Naps In Michigan Policy Meeting
And Wonkette was there!
Friday night former president Donald Trump participated in a round table discussion in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan, with members of the community, as well as Reps. Mike Rogers (running against Rep. Elissa Slotkin for US Senate) and Byron Donalds.
Or, at least that’s the lead I scribbled in notes. It’s … technically true. Trump was there, so were Donalds and Rogers, and a handful of people who had some connection to Michigan.
But when Rebecca asked me, “How was it, what happened,” I couldn’t answer. And I spent the last few hours going through photos and video of the event and I still can’t really answer that question. What happened? What was the point of all this?
After lumbering through security, I marked my spot on the riser with a step stool. This is common for a lot of photographers. It’s a subtle, unwritten rule among photo and videographers that says, “This is my spot.”
I noticed the guy with Real America’s Voice, the pro-Trump pravda internet channel, was doing a live shot. He wore a gold crucifix with an American flag painted inside on his right lapel. He said he had been walking around the area with a Trump hat and getting audible support from people. He also claimed that “gangs” like “Asian triads,” and South American criminals were “invading” and going to “war” with the American gangs. The whole bit was comically absurd.
When the rally finally started, other journalists and the production crew had to tell the terribly inexperienced guy to shut the hell up. He was speaking at full volume into a cheap, Bluetooth earpiece about technical difficulties, seemingly unaware that he was ruining the audio for actual journalists, the production crew, and members of the audience. Members of the Secret Service and private security began eyeballing him, AV crews tried shush him with a finger to their mouths, and I finally leaned over and whispered, “Dude, shut the fuck up.”
Trump was flanked by Donalds and Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a New York-based international securities and investment firm. Donalds seemed to be Trump’s chaperone for the evening. He would introduce the other speakers at the table for Trump, and the audience. Donalds would reel Trump in if he started wandering off on a tangent.
Sponsored by Building America’s Future PAC, a shadowy 501(c)4 funded by obscenely rich people like Elon Musk, the town hall was billed as a policy discussion. But it’s not exactly clear what policies they were actually discussing.
Lutnick railed against NAFTA, screaming, “LOCK THAT DOOR,” but if their goal is to renegotiate NAFTA, Trump did that with his USMCA agreement, and it’s been a failure. If it’s healthcare, the policy seemed to suggest that Trump would let anti-vaccine skeptics like RFK Jr. run the Department of Health and Human Services with the help of crackpots on Facebook Groups and junk science schemes. If it’s to revitalize auto manufacturing in the US, their solution doesn’t seem to have gotten past a “concepts of a plan.” If it’s to (further) reduce crime, their solution seems to be to further exempt police from legal liability and encourage them to murder potentially innocent civilians without due process.
The only comprehensive plans for a potential second Trump administration come from Project 2025, and the Trump campaign has tried to distance itself from the former Trump staffers at the Heritage Foundation that spent the last four years lashing it together. Trump’s Agenda 47 isn’t so much a series of policy proposals as it is highly edited microblog posts shouted awkwardly into a camera from some gaudy room in Doral or Mar-a-Lago.
The whole thing seemed hastily put together. The event space was the floor of an engineering consultant company that utilizes robotics. The audio was so bad that when someone became excited, the mics would pop, prompting Trump to say that whoever was operating the mics shouldn’t be paid. The risers and bleachers wobbled, and barricades weren’t connected. This didn’t seem like union work. [Sounds like a trumpian affair.]
At the end of everything, Trump slowly stands up and bobbles to the side of the stage for photo ops. He raises a half-balled fist, and flashes a strained, toothy smile. Lutnick stands awkwardly to the side while Trump babbles at length to another panelist. […]
Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate running against Democratic Rep. Alissa Slotkin for the seat being vacated by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, seemed pissed. He was on the far side of the stage craning his neck towards Trump. He didn’t have a large role during the event, speaking only briefly. […]
These questions were left unanswered as Trump left for a Detroit rally — the one where the sound once again was less than perfect, as it cut out entirely for almost 20 minutes while Trump simply paced the stage.
As I was leaving, several UAW members were attempting to change the tire on a large truck. I pulled up next to them and asked if they needed an extra hand, or a flashlight to combat the day’s fading light.
“We’re all good now,” said one of the men. I recognized him as a panelist during the event.
“I think we got it under control now,” said another man.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have any tools beyond a Leatherman,” I joked.
We all laughed. It was a self-deprecating joke that acknowledged their preconceived ideas of journalists, and the absurdity of trying to change a tire with a multi-tool.
“Watch it, now CNN is gonna be watching us,” another said. The joke fell flat.
“Man, it’s like, how many UAW Trump guys does it take to change a tire,” the second man blurted out.
We all laughed hard. That was a good joke.
Photo of Trump appearing to sleep during the event is available at the link,
A contentious interview of Vice President Kamala Harris conducted on Wednesday by Bret Baier, the chief political anchor for Fox News, was an inevitable subject of satire on this week’s “Saturday Night Live.” The opening sketch that parodied this interview also marked the return of Alec Baldwin, a frequent “S.N.L.” guest and host who played former President Donald J. Trump in “S.N.L.” sketches during the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s time in office. […]
Baldwin quickly posed a leading question to Rudolph — “Give me the exact number of murderers you let loose in this country,” he said — and he interrupted her each time she attempted to respond. “A million? Two million?” he asked, adding, “Ten million? Give me a number.” […]
The US House speaker, Mike Johnson, confirmed the investigation in remarks to CNN’s State of the Union program on Sunday, saying “the leak is very concerning”.
The leak indicates Israel is still setting things up and isn’t ready to attack yet. Who leaked the document isn’t clear and there is always the possibility it was hacked. The document would have been shared among the 5 eyes intelligence group so there are a bunch of possible sources.
There is also a whole pile of possible reasons for the leak, whoever leaked it may have intended to influence Israel but could have hoped to made Israel go faster or that pressure would make them slow down. This could also be to influence the US, to warn Iran or several other goals. I expect it won’t actually do much, events are pretty much locked in now because nobody is going to change course until the US election is held.
Far-right groups bring lawsuits against counties, Dems respond. I know nothing of Merican litigation, but it is nice to know the Republicans don’t get everything their way.
Protestors Labeled Terrorists After Dousing Recruiters With Ketchup Bottles
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bljj5NFDA5s
This is a green issue, they are protesting turning a chunk of a national park into a military base.
birgerjohanssonsays
Christian Consevative Writer Peter Wehner Blasts Evangelicals For Falling For Trump’s ‘Freak Show’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GMuEHvyHOFs
Personally I find it amusing to see the MAGA fail to deal with cognitive dissonance.
birgerjohanssonsays
Pro-Trump Pastor Joel Webbon Demands Death Penalty For Women Who Report Crimes Commitred Against Them
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0gsptcNe5KQ
But we already knew his ilk are the American Taliban
Donald Trump said on Friday that schools that teach the accurate history of slavery and racism’s role in America should not receive funding from the federal government.
Trump’s statement on education policy came during a friendly interview with the hosts of “Fox & Friends” on the conservative Fox News, continuing Trump’s trend of appearing before sympathetic audiences. He also mentioned dismantling the Department of Education.
During a discussion about allowing states to determine educational priorities with minimal federal oversight, co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump what would happen if a “liberal city” decided to teach history that said, “this is America, built off the backs of slaves, on stolen land.”
“Then we don’t send them money,” Trump replied.
The forced labor of enslaved Black people was a key factor in America becoming an economic powerhouse, and land was forcibly and systematically taken away from the Native American population by European colonists to build the United States. These are historical facts that are a part of U.S. history.
Trump’s dismissal of historic abuses is in line with his history of praising the pro-slavery Confederacy and arguing in favor of historical monuments and building names that honor the Confederate movement.
During his time as president and after, Trump and other Republicans have attacked education programs that seek to inform students about the role discrimination based on race, gender, and sexual orientation has played in American history. [video at the link]
In another education-related statement, Trump also told the “Fox & Friends” hosts that he is in favor of dismantling the federal Department of Education.
“We’re moving it all out of Washington, and we’re going to let the states run the schools,” Trump said. “Department of Education, I’m going to have one person working there, maybe with a secretary.”
Trump also said that he wanted to limit schools to teaching English and teaching “reading, writing and arithmetic, not transgender.”
His policy prescription is directly out of the Project 2025 agenda, which calls for dismantling the existing federal education infrastructure and ceding control of local school curricula to right-wing interests. The National Education Association described the plan as a strategy to “deny our most vulnerable students the resources they need to succeed.”
Additionally, the NEA said it would “gut federal education funding, sanction discrimination against LGBTQ+ students, divert taxpayer funds to private schools, and codify book bans and classroom censorship on a national level. That’s just the beginning.”
Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 but his endorsement of the plan—which was formulated by a group consisting of many of his former subordinates and current allies—further ties him to the initiative. […]
Trump inadvertently highlighted the need for education with a wider historical scope in his interview with Fox, as he argued that President Abraham Lincoln should have “settled” the Civil War.
If Lincoln had settled the war instead of defeating the rebellious Confederacy, it would have preserved the institution of slavery in the south, harming millions of Black Americans. [video at the link]
Reports indicate he jumped/accidentally fell/was thrown out of an 11th-floor window.
The body of 64-year-old Mikhail Rogachev was found in the courtyard of a house on Protopopovsky Lane. According to preliminary data, he died from injuries sustained in a fall from a height.
Rogachev was a top manager at ONEXIM and worked as Deputy General Director of MMC Norilsk Nickel. From 1996 to 2007, he held a number of management positions in various divisions of NK YUKOS, including being General Director of the Research and Development Center.”
[X post at the link]
[…] North Koreans are already showing up at the front. [X post with photos is available at the link]
The South Korean National Intelligence Service reports that a North Korean soldier, identified using AI facial recognition, is active on the front lines of Russia and Ukraine. This soldier was spotted at a KN-23 missile launch site near Donetsk, wearing a Russian uniform.
NIS reports that North Korean missile engineers are deployed to support the launch of North Korean missiles, aiming to identify technical issues and enhance their technology.
[…] The Russians hit civilian targets in Kryvyi Rih overnight, including the Hotel Druzhba. At least 17 were injured. [X post and video at the link]
[…] France steps up:
France converts € 300 million of frozen Russian assets into Caesar howitzers for Ukraine
Paris will finance 12 Caesar howitzers along with critical military hardware.
[X post and image at the link.]
Moldova is voting today on whether to join the EU and for a president in an election that has seen major Russian interference, including bribing citizens to vote against Sandy and against the EU.
Crucial vote is taking place today in Moldova: voters will decide who should be their next president, and whether the country should join the European Union.
Maia Sandu is a principled and honest politician, a rare find. Let’s wish her and all of Moldova the best of luck.
[X posts and photos at the link.]
Less than 24 hours before polls opening here in Moldova, national police showed us a warehouse filled with seized anti-EU propaganda. Moldovan police chief told us they’re fighting an unprecedented illegal mafia style network funded by Russian money trying to derail the democratic order.
Republicans’ ongoing voter suppression campaign made headlines this week after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the state must immediately restore voting rights to former felons. While the court’s ruling is a major civil rights victory, it’s also a drop in the bucket compared to the GOP’s professionalized, nationwide efforts to keep certain Americans away from the ballot box.
Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen’s plan to strip voting rights from over 7,000 Nebraskans is a slap in the face to democracy. It’s also a shockingly common form of election interference. Republicans have spent decades and millions of dollars crafting state laws designed to ensure permanent GOP majorities, even if that means overriding their own citizens’ wishes and steamrolling legally binding ballot measures. So far, they’ve faced almost no legal resistance.
The end result is a broken system that prevents nearly 6 million Americans from casting a ballot, while millions more are subjected to the equivalent of an unconstitutional poll tax. That’s just fine with Republicans—and things will get even worse if GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump wins a second term in November.
Republican efforts to keep former felons from voting are aided by a patchwork of laws that make the process of restoring voting rights confusing, costly, or even impossible. Take Virginia, where in 2021 Gov. Ralph Northam signed an executive order automatically restoring voting rights to all nonincarcerated Virginians. Not even a year later, newly elected Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin quietly reversed that order, instead requiring former felons to submit a request for voting rights restoration to the state.
The result was widespread confusion and a near-total dropoff in former felons regaining their voting rights. […]Earlier this year, a federal court dismissed a challenge to Youngkin’s restrictive new approach on a technicality, meaning the process remains in place ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Florida is another nightmare scenario. In 2018, 65% of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment that automatically restored voting rights to all felons upon completion of their sentence. That enraged Gov. Ron DeSantis, who took the extraordinary step of forcing through a new state law that required former felons to first pay off any outstanding court fees—without providing a way for former convicts to actually find out what fees they owed.
DeSantis’ new law was so confusing that even Florida election officials didn’t understand it. In 2020, the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections provided incorrect voter registration information to felons nearing their release date. When those former convicts showed up to cast a ballot, they were arrested for voter fraud. Since then, DeSantis and Florida Republicans have used the threat of voter fraud prosecutions to intimidate thousands of former felons who are legally eligible to vote. Instead, those eligible voters choose to play it safe by staying home.
[…] Back in May, DeSantis took the unusual step of guaranteeing Trump would be able to vote in Florida despite not qualifying for voting rights restoration under DeSantis’ own law. The reason? Because DeSantis personally disagreed with the jury’s guilty verdict.
“Given the absurd nature of the New York prosecution of Trump, this would be an easy case to qualify for restoration of rights per the Florida Clemency Board, which I chair,” Desantis declared in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Black Floridians aren’t as lucky as Trump. Nearly 20% of Florida’s Black population is legally disenfranchised, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Sentencing Project. […]
Earlier this year the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition dropped its legal challenge to the law after DeSantis promised to sit down with civil rights advocates to develop clearer guidelines. That turned out to be a massive tactical mistake: As of October, the Florida Department of State still hasn’t implemented any reforms—meaning there’s virtually no chance the issue will be resolved in time for next month’s election. That’s a big win for Republicans and a massive loss for democracy.
[…] Trump shares the GOP’s hatred for restoring voting rights to former felons. The former president has repeatedly attacked Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz for ensuring formerly incarcerated Minnesotans can cast a ballot, calling the idea “dangerous.” Given Trump’s open hostility to free and fair elections, it’s likely a restored President Trump would push for Florida-style voting restrictions in states across the nation. […]
GOP leaders have worked tirelessly for decades to tilt the balance of political power by restricting the voting rights of former felons who have served their time. […]
The CBS News show “60 Minutes” responded on Sunday to former President Trump’s claims that the network selectively edited an interview with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Harris, to make her look good.
“Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris,” the show wrote. “That is false.”
In a statement, “60 Minutes” acknowledged it gave fellow CBS News show, “Face the Nation,” a “longer section” of Harris’s answer to air in response to a question on the war in Gaza, but the show maintained that the substance of the exchange did not change.
“Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response,” the statement read.
“When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point,” the statement continued. “The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.”
The show noted that the Republican candidate pulled out of his scheduled “60 Minutes” interview, and the statement reaffirmed the offer to Trump to join the show for an interview.
“Our long-standing invitation to former President Trump remains open. If he would like to discuss the issues facing the nation and the Harris interview, we would be happy to have him on 60 Minutes.”
CBS News, after the initial broadcast, later provided a transcript of Harris’s remarks online, but Trump and his allies have repeatedly criticized the outlet for airing the abridged version of her conversation with journalist Bill Whitaker. […]
John Moralessays
In my feed: “Derren Brown Exposes Fraudulent “Psychics” with Richard Dawkins” (YouTube).
This amused me enough to share.
After all, if they are a “Psychic”, then they are not a Psychic, right?
Silly scare quotes!
So, “Derren Brown Exposes Fraudulent non-Psychics with Richard Dawkins” is the actual headline.
From which follows they are true psychics being exposed by whatshisname.
(heh heh heh)
—
Layers of unfortunate silliness there, of course.
After all, whether or not they are “psychics”, they are with Richard Dawkins when they are allegedly exposed.
(I bet they aren’t really exposed; YouTube is not generally X-rated)
John Moralessays
“60 Minutes’ responds to Trump’s ‘false’ claims about Harris interview”
Not false claims by Trump, but merely ‘false’.
(Heh heh heh)
JMsays
TLDR global: Why Saudi Arabia’s Economic Woes Just Keep Getting Worse
The short explanation is that the combined cost of extracting oil plus what the government needs to support the country now exceeds the sale price of the oil.
The long form is that the government of Saudi Arabia knows this and knows that the oil situation isn’t going to get better. Global has leveled off as countries move to greener economies. Due to internal conflicts and more competition OPEC no longer has strong control of oil prices. They still get a lot of money from selling oil and that isn’t changing but at some point they are going to have debt problems.
The leaders of Saudi Arabia know they need to diversify. The fundamental problem is that they have a lot of money but not much economy outside oil and the leaders don’t want to give up control. They are liberalizing some things but that is moving from horribly repressive to highly repressive. The government is erratic, corrupt and fickle. Industries like plastics that might want to move close to the source of oil don’t want to move to Saudi Arabia. Expansion into other industries is driven by large government subsidies projects and isn’t creating much real economic growth.
The weird thing about this? The government under Mohammed bin Salman is still preferable to the alternatives because the next alternative is a religious government that would make Iran look liberal.
The time is running running out to see the comet with the naked eye, it will be down to magnitude 4 the 22th October.
It is by now quite high in the western sky and you can see it at twilight preferably before the moon rises. For star maps see internet, for instance Sky and telescope.
When Donald Trump sat down with Fox News’ Howard Kurtz, the host asked the former president about his description of many Americans as the “enemy within.” Trump replied, “I think it’s accurate. I mean, I think it’s accurate.”
In the same on-air interview, however, the GOP nominee described U.S. international adversaries as “so-called enemies” and countries that “might not be enemies.”
In other words, according to the Republican Party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office, Americans should be seen as “enemies,” but actual foes should be seen as “so-called enemies.”
It was a jarring perspective, to be sure, though the rhetoric came against a backdrop in which Trump has failed repeatedly of late to side with the United States’ international allies.
Take South Korea, for example. Just last week, North Korea blasted road and rail links with South Korea, labeled South Korea a foreign and hostile nation, and discussed the use of “offensive forces” against its neighbor. Chances are, officials in Seoul were looking to their allies in the West for support.
It was against this backdrop that Trump publicly chided one country on the Korean Peninsula — and it wasn’t our adversary. Bloomberg News reported:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said South Korea would pay billions of dollars more every year to host US troops if he were in the White House, calling the long-time US ally a “money machine.” “If I were there now, they’d be paying us $10 billion a year and you know what, they’d be happy to do it,” Trump told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on Tuesday in an interview at the Economic Club of Chicago. “It’s a money machine, South Korea.”
This came on the heels of Trump referring to South Korea as “an enemy“ on matters of trade — despite the fact that his own administration struck a trade deal with South Korea — adding that he believes “it’s time we stop“ helping our Korean allies.
In a separate Fox News interview last week, Trump also claimed that the United States has been “screwed” by the European Union. “Oh, the ‘European Union,’ it sounds so nice,” he said. “‘The villages of the European Union,’ right? They are brutal.”
A few days earlier, Trump spoke at the Detroit Economic Club and argued, in apparent reference to trade, “Interestingly, it’s often those allies that we consider to be friends that have been the greatest abusers. We have some great abusers. I’ll give you an example: the European Union.”
Soon after, Trump also blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Russia invading his country. “He should never have let that war start,” the Republican said, as if Zelenskyy had the ability to stop Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack.
In other words, in rapid succession, the GOP nominee publicly admonished his own country’s South Korean allies, E.U. allies, and Ukrainian allies — all while referring to the United States’ actual foes as “so-called enemies” and pointing to Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and his “strongman” style as some kind of international model worthy of emulation.
In August, Trump said, “Our allies are the worst.” A month later, he added, “They’re allies, but not when we need them. They’re only allies when they need something.”
When was the last time anyone heard the former president make comparable comments about the United States’ actual foes?
As Donald Trump handed a bag of food to people at a McDonald’s drive-through window, the former president remarked on how “beautiful” he found the family in the car. “It’s like the perfect-looking person,” the Republican said.
It was almost as if the people ordering the food had been carefully chosen to appear in some kind of clumsy political play — because that’s precisely what happened.
Much of the public probably saw some images of Trump briefly “working” at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, but that’s not quite what happened. NBC News reported:
The franchise in Feasterville was closed for normal business during Sunday’s photo op. The customers who went through the drive thru were pre-selected by the franchise and the local Trump campaign team, according to a person familiar with the event. The cars were also screened and searched, and the people in them were wanded down, according to the source.
In recent months, Trump has been fixated to an unhealthy degree with Vice President Kamala Harris having worked at a McDonald’s while she was a student many years ago. The Republican apparently convinced himself that Harris lied about this — it’s never been altogether clear how he arrived at this belief — and he’s raged about it on a nearly daily basis ever since.
Nearly a month ago, the GOP candidate said he planned to go to a McDonald’s “in two weeks” and he’d “work the french fries.” Trump concluded, “I will have worked longer and harder at McDonald’s than she did if I do that even for half an hour.”
It took a little longer than two weeks, but he followed through and played his part in this staged campaign event. Those characterizing this as “work,” however, have been overly generous: There’s an important difference between work and theatrics, and this was definitely the latter.
Just as notably, this was a trolling exercise, rooted in the idea that Trump caught Harris in a lie, despite the fact that neither the former president nor any of his allies have presented a shred of evidence discrediting the vice president’s claim. (A friend of Harris’ told The New York Times that she recalled her working there.)
There was, however, a fleeting moment of policy relevance in this little production. The Washington Post reported:
Trump, a real-estate-billionaire-turned-politician, also did not answer a question about whether he supported raising the minimum wage. “Well, I think this. These people work hard,” Trump said. “They’re great. And I just saw something — a process that’s beautiful.”
This is one of Trump’s mental glitches that I hadn’t seen before:
[…] when asked about his age and cognitive abilities, he replied, “I have no cognitive. [Harris] may have a cognitive problem. But, but there’s no cognitive problem. It was nice that they actually said that, they said, ‘You know, if anyone has any questions, we were grilling this guy for two hours or two and a half hours and he’s got no cognitive.”” […]
Link
Video and many other examples of Trump’s lack of “cognitive” are available at the link.
Giving new meaning to the term “battleground states,” the Wall Street Journal reports that elections officials around the country are bracing for terrorism in November, of the domestic Trump-supporting few-fries-short-of-a-Happy Meal kind.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, nearly 40 percent of local election officials reported experiencing threats, harassment, or abuse due to their jobs. And about one-third of Republicans in a new poll say that if Trump loses, “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” [Yikes. One-third is a high number.]
How and why a nepo baby in clown makeup and shoe lifts inspires them so, we will never understand. But the words he moans have real consequences.
In Arizona,
On Election Day, as workers tabulate ballots behind new fencing and concrete barriers, drones will patrol the skies overhead, police snipers will perch on rooftops and mounted patrols will stand ready.
Across the state, election workers have gone through active-shooter drills and learned to barricade themselves or wield fire hoses to repel armed mobs. At the ready are trauma kits containing tourniquets and bandages designed to pack chest wounds and stanch serious bleeding.
Arizona has been fortifying its systems against cyberattacks, monitoring social media threats, and training staff to spot AI deepfakes. Elections facilities have added bulletproof glass, bollards, and cameras, and have been giving tours to try to reassure the conspiracy-minded, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much.
According to most polls, Trump is ahead by 1-3 points in Arizona. The top election official in Maricopa County is a Republican, their Supreme Court is all Republican, and Republicans control the Legislature. Arizona Republicans have already been voter-suppressing as hard as they can, even though so far the only “election fraud” they’ve found has been from, you guessed it, other Republicans.
Do the election deniers care? Heck no! They’re still photographing the license plates of workers leaving the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center, threatening bombings and mass shootings of poll workers, and threatening to harm poll workers’ children. Whatever Russian-sponsored Rumble channels these people are watching is some powerful stuff.
And the chaos is not confined to Arizona. Officials in 20 states received suspicious packages last month. In Colorado, county clerks and elections officials are stocking up on bulletproof vests, and Narcan, after envelopes of white powder with traces of fentanyl arrived in ballot envelopes. Ohio has equipped workers with radios, and is planning for increased security checks. Georgia became the first state to require election-law training for police. That’s so they know to arrest communists who are trying to give water or a bag of chips to people waiting in line, sure, but hopefully also to de-escalate Y’All Qaeda situations and discourage anyone illegally carrying a gun within 150 feet of a polling place, too.
It’s all some pretty freaky shit. The aim is clearly to suppress voting, to intimidate elections officials, and to make everybody throw up their hands and be like “welp, voting has become a hassle, so guess we’ll just have to be a dictatorship now!”
That’s not going to happen, but man, it’s going to be a long election season.
Random biological snake memnonics.
Python snakes live in most continents beginning with ‘a’ : Asia, Africa, Australia. Places where the empire that produced Monthy Python was most active. NB: tropical snakes avoid Canada so forget the Americas.
.
‘Boa’ constrictor are found in the continent that includes ‘Bo’livia.
‘A’naconda snakes – water boas – live in water including the ‘A’mazonas river
.
Poisonous snakes: too many to remember. If you have a phobia, just settle down in Ireland
(The absence of snakes here supports the narrative of the ice age and disproves creationism).
birgerjohanssonsays
‘Trump Failed Stunt at CLOSED McDonalds Gets Revealed’
While a certain loser ex-president’s brain was fermenting […] future president Kamala Harris was having possibly the best weekend ever, full of joy, laughter, and song!
North Carolina Central University held a “Soar to the Polls” event to march to early voting, and the turnout was massive! Look at all those energized youths! [video at the link]
And “Saturday Night Live” had Alec Baldwin back, to skewer that meaty-headed interrupting jackass, Bret Baier. [video at the link]
Baier, by the way, apologized on Thursday for showing a clip during his Harris “interview” of Trump not saying he would send the National Guard and military after American citizens, instead of one of the many clips where Trump did say that exact thing. [And which Trump has since repeated several times.]
[…] Harris also held a rally in Detroit, where Lizzo got un-canceled to appear. And one in Atlanta, where Georgian and musician Usher Raymond stopped by, along with about 11,000 other people. Yuueeeyuh! Urrssshuurrr! [video at the link]
There’s 8.2 million registered voters in Georgia, and 1.3 million have already voted since early voting began last Tuesday, breaking all records. Polls in Georgia have Trump ahead by 1-2 points. Buuuttt poll averages also had Herschel Walker ahead of Raphael Warnock by 1.4 in 2022, and Trump ahead of Biden by 1 point in 2020, and both of them lost. Because polls aren’t votes!
MAGA Republicans have failed at every voter-suppression attempt they’ve made (so far). Mass removals of voters from the rolls? They challenged 63,000 registrations, and removed 800. Demanding that poll workers hand-count ballots? No! […] Letting election-denying county board members delay reporting results while they “investigate” some “fraud”? Hm, how about fuck off?
Will more bullshit be pulled by the MAGA election board? You can bet your bottom dollar! And yes, they’ve still passed laws like closing some polling locations on Sundays (you know which kind!), and making it illegal to give people in line food or water. But is the energy big enough to overpower than the bullshit? Maybe?
And Harris turned 60 on Sunday! She celebrated by visiting New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, where the pastor, Jamal Bryant, was once married to a Real Housewife of the Potomac. The congregation sang the Stevie Wonder version of “Happy Birthday” to her. […] Many fancy hats! [video at the link]
And Harris had uplifting things to say, and they were not even about sharks, batteries, Hannibal Lecter or a dead golfer’s schlong. They are cued up below, and also transcribed in this morning’s tabs! [video at the link]
And THEN she went to Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro, Georgia, where actual Stevie Wonder was there, and he sang “Happy Birthday” to her too, and a beautiful version of “Redemption Song.” [video at the link]
Sure beats pretending to work at a closed McDonald’s.
Hope and joy are in the air!
From the transcription mentioned above:
Vice President Harris: “So during my final year of law school, I was a summer intern in the DA’s office in Oakland, California, and I was working in the superior courthouse. And there was this one case that I got, and it was – it involved a drug bust, and the police had arrested a number of people, including an innocent bystander, a woman who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“And when I got the case, it was a late Friday afternoon, and most folks had gone home for the weekend, and I knew in all likelihood, the judge would probably not see her case until that following Monday, which would have meant that she would have had to spend the whole weekend in jail. Now, this woman had children. She is a mother. She had children at home, and I wondered if they even knew that their mother had been arrested.
“Who would take care of them? If she could not, would child protective services come and take those children? Everything was on the line for that woman. So I rushed to the clerk of the court and asked them to have the case called that day. And then when that did not work, I pleaded with them. Remember, I was not vice president. I was an intern. So yes, I pleaded. And finally, the judge returned to the bench and reviewed her case, and with a pound of his gavel, she was free to go home, and she would go home to see her children and take care of them.
“And I never did get the chance to meet that woman, but I will never forget that moment, and I share that story to say that we have all, in our lives, from the earliest stages of our lives, had those moments where it has been revealed to us our power. And we should never let anyone take our power from us, or in any way try to convince us we are powerless.”
Biden Admin Wants Health Insurers To Cover Your OTC Birth Control And Condoms
Earlier this year, the United States got its first over-the-counter birth control — Opill, which retails at $19.99 a month, a progestin-only pill that is 98 percent effective against pregnancy when used correctly and 91 percent effective when used “typically.” It was great news that meant that people who can’t afford to go to the doctor, who can’t see a doctor for some other reason, who don’t have health insurance, or who are teenagers with super-religious parents would finally be able to get it.
The problem, of course, remains the fact that it still costs $19.99 a month (and OTC Plan B costs about $40-$50), while prescription birth control is free at the point of service with health insurance and has been since the Affordable Care Act. There’s also the additional cost of condoms and even the cost of spermicide, should one choose to be extra careful. (Which one should!)
Well, that is about to change, at least for those with health insurance. On Monday, the Biden administration proposed a new rule under the Affordable Care Act that will require health insurers to cover over-the-counter birth control as well.
The new rule would cover not just over-the-counter birth control pills, but the aforementioned condoms and spermicide as well.
“At a time when contraception access is under attack, Vice President Harris and I are resolute in our commitment to expanding access to quality, affordable contraception,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “We believe that women in every state must have the freedom to make deeply personal health care decisions, including the right to decide if and when to start or grow their family.”
It’s especially important right now, given the fact that so many people are living in areas where abortion is illegal and thus […]
This is also good for men, by the way. […]
This will also be a great help to those who (for instance!) have the kind of health insurance I once had, where you technically have health insurance but can’t actually see a doctor because the only doctor less than three bus/train rides away from you that takes your ACA plan is a giant weirdo in a dirty-looking building who won’t even begin talk to you about getting your meds until you hear his pitch about his very expensive nutrition and weight-loss programs.
It would be swell if we could also do something for the eight percent of Americans who do not have health insurance, given that they are the people who would have the most trouble seeking treatment were they to get pregnant or get an STI, but that would make too much sense for the US.
The new rules will be subject to 60 days of public comment before they can be finalized. […]
We have to hand it to Elon Musk. Most illegal vote-buying schemes are undertaken out of sight of the public, to avoid legal and ethical complications. […] he is running his vote-buying scheme right out in the open.
Musk has been camped out in Pennsylvania, trying to help deliver the state and its important electoral votes to Donald Trump. As part of the effort, the superPAC he founded and funds has been running an online petition to “support … the First and Second Amendment.” The PAC offered $47 to anyone who got a Pennsylvania voter to sign the petition. […] Then they — and by “they,” we mean Musk — upped it to $100.
Now as of this past Saturday, Elno is offering a daily lottery drawing of $1 million, with the payout going to any swing state voter who has signed the petition. The catch is that you have to be a registered voter to sign. So basically Musk, […] is bribing swing state residents to register to vote.
Is this legal? Election law expert Rick Hasen says not on your life, and cites an actual statute in the US Federal Code to support his argument:
See 52 U.S.C. 10307(c): “Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both…”
In other words, tying an offer of money to voter registration status is illegal. Seems simple enough. Musk, as is his wont, is […] flouting the law. […]
The petition is in actuality a data harvesting scheme for the PAC’s canvassing operations in support of Trump in Pennsylvania […]
[Musk] has explicitly said that anyone who signs the petition is eligible for the lottery, so long as that person is a registered voter. And Musk has made no secret of which candidate he sweatily supports. The petition does not specifically say anything about Donald Trump, but we can be reasonably certain that the sorts of people who sign this thing are mostly fan boys. […]
In fairness, The New York Times found someone to disagree with Hasen, and one would presume this person knows what he’s talking about:
Brad Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said this was “something of a gray area” but “not that close to the line.”
“He’s not paying them to register to vote. He’s paying them to sign a petition — and he wants only people who are registered to vote to sign the petition. So I think he comes out OK here,” he said.
Yr Wonkette disagrees. The language of the statute as quote by Hasen seems pretty clear to even non-lawyers like us.
We also note that the petition does not appear to have any mechanism to verify a signer during the sign-up process. Presumably someone at the PAC checks the name of the lottery winner against Pennsylvania’s voter registration roll before cutting the $1 million check, but Musk is such an incompetent boob that it’s no sure thing.
Also because there is no verification, we are assuming the petition now has many, many signatures from Seymour Buttz […]
When Elno hands you that $1 million check, make sure you let him know you would vote for a cirrhotic liver before you would vote for Donald Trump. […].
Viral attack on Walz features fake former student making false claim
Hawaii man who attended a school where Walz taught — but says they never met — was dismayed to see person in video using his name to make a false allegation against the vice presidential candidate
Matthew Metro didn’t recognize the face that popped up on his cellphone screen when he clicked a link that a friend texted him last week. But after hitting play on the online video, he was dismayed by what he saw.
“My name is Matthew Metro,” said the man in the video, who went on to describe life as a student decades ago at a high school in Minnesota where Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz was a teacher. Some of the details — including about being at the school when Walz worked there — matched the biography of the real Metro. But the man in the video went further, leveling fabricated allegations against Walz, who the real Metro said he never met.
Millions of people have viewed social media posts containing the video since it was published Wednesday on X, formerly Twitter. For some viewers, the use of Metro’s name and verifiable biographical details created an aura of credibility around the false allegations. Not so for the real Metro, whom The Washington Post located in Hilo, Hawaii.
“It’s obviously not me: The teeth are different, the hair is different, the eyes are different, the nose is different,” said Metro, 45, who has not previously spoken publicly. “I don’t know where they’re getting this from.” Metro showed The Post his Hawaii driver’s license to confirm his identity.
Metro told The Post that Walz never taught him. He said he was irate that his name and biographical information were being used to bolster a lurid false accusation — and that he may be forever associated with it online. “It’s an invasion of my privacy and my personal life,” he said.
The four-minute video, published by a mysterious X account falsely using Metro’s name, is one of numerous outlandish smears against Walz and the other candidates that have flown around social media in recent days, in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. While X eventually added labels beneath the video indicating the content had been manipulated, multiple versions of the clip remain online. In all, posts featuring the video garnered at least 5 million views, according to engagement data the platform publishes.
[…] the former student appeared to have been selected because personal details about his real life — among them, his sexual orientation — figured into the fabricated claim and could be seen as corroborating it.
Metro said he was contacted after the video’s publication by a senior aide to Walz. According to Metro, the aide said Walz’s team was investigating and already knew he was not the person featured in the video.
[…] The earliest instance of the video that The Post could find online was published just after noon on Wednesday by an X account using Metro’s name as its user and display names. Metro told The Post he had no connection with the account; user and display names can be changed at any time. The account was created in October 2023.[…]
The video containing the false allegation against Walz attracted little attention until several hours after it was posted, when it was repackaged and shared by an anonymously operated X account associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. [QAnon!] The video was also shared on Rumble, Truth Social and Gettr — all popular platforms among Trump supporters — by accounts that, according to information in their bios, are linked in a network that also includes the X account.
[…] Many Trump supporters with small followings promoted the post as a bombshell revelation about the conduct of Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate toward students when he was a teacher, one made credible because there was seemingly a named accuser who had attended a school where Walz taught.
[…] Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Lab, said the video was likely a “cheap fake.” Unlike a typical deepfake, he noted that the bogus Metro — whose voice is heavily accented — does not look or sound like the real one.
Farid said an analysis his team conducted with a computer-assisted detection tool found no evidence of generative AI, a technology used to create deepfakes. He said apparent distortions are actually indications of a low-quality video that was compressed from its original size.
[…] It could not be determined who the man in the video is or why he would pose as Metro and make a false allegation against Walz — or who else, if anyone, might have been involved.
[…] In the video, the man posing as Metro claims that Walz groped and kissed him in a classroom after he turned to Walz for guidance during a difficult period in his senior year in 1997. But the real Metro said no such interaction occurred and that his senior year “was a breeze.”
The fake Metro says in the video that his parents were getting divorced that year and that he was having to keep his sexuality secret. The real Metro, who is gay, told The Post the opposite was true. “I was completely out in high school,” he said, adding that his parents remain happily married today.
[…] In November, he said, he plans to vote for Harris and Walz.
The lawsuit was in response to Donald Trump’s comments at the Sept. 10 presidential debate, where he incorrectly said the men pleaded guilty and the victim in the 1989 attack had died.
The five men who make up the Central Park Five, and now call themselves the Exonerated Five, have filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump over his remarks during the presidential debate last month.
The lawsuit focuses on the Sept. 10 debate in Pennsylvania, where Trump said that the five men — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise — pleaded guilty when they were tried in connection with the assault and rape of a woman who had been running in Central Park on April 19, 1989, and that the victim had died.
During the debate he said: “They admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty.”
At the time of the trials, each had pleaded not guilty and the victim of the attack survived.
The complaint said Trump’s statements are “demonstrably false,” adding, “Plaintiffs never pled guilty to any crime and were subsequently cleared of all wrongdoing. Further the victims of the Central Park assaults were not killed.” The complaint further said that the men, now in their 50s, have “suffered injuries as a result of Defendant Trump’s false and defamatory statements.”
The five, who were teenagers when they were indicted, had maintained their innocence throughout their trials and incarceration. In their trials, they were charged with the assault of the female jogger as well as other assaults and robberies that occurred in Central Park.
The five spent years behind bars before being exonerated in 2002 after DNA evidence linked another man, a serial rapist, to the attack. The city ultimately agreed in a legal settlement to pay the exonerated men $41 million.
The case was subsequently heavily scrutinized as the five were claimed they were intimidated and coerced into making false confessions.
[…] The defamation suit was filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The complaint noted that Salaam, a New York City Council Member representing District Nine, was in attendance at the debate and was in the room when Trump made those statements.
The five men did not ask for a specific amount in relief, but asked that a trial be held to determine damages.
Trump’s campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, said Monday: “This is just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists, in an attempt to distract the American people from Kamala Harris’s dangerously liberal agenda and failing campaign.” [blah, blah, blah]
Shanin Specter, an attorney for the five, said Monday: “Unfortunately the civil justice system doesn’t permit us to require Mr. Trump to apologize or retract his statement. The most that we can obtain are money damages both to compensate these five men for Mr. Trump’s damaging their reputations and for punishment of Mr. Trump for making these statements.”
While he said it would be “helpful” if Trump apologized or retracted his statements, he said, “we are not holding our breath for that.”
Bits of campaign news, a summarized by Steve Benen:
* In Friday, Harris campaigned in Lansing, Michigan, where she showed local voters video footage of Trump saying auto factories “don’t build cars” but instead “take them out of a box, and they assemble them.” He went on to suggest that a “child could do it.” [summarized from Politico]
* Speaking of Michigan, Trump campaigned in Detroit a day later and told locals, “Make sure you vote and bring all our friends that want to vote for us. Tell them, ‘Jill, get your fat husband off the couch. Get that — get that fat pig off that couch. Get him up, Jill. Slap him around.’” [summarized from The New York Times]
In news that surprises no one, CBS has obtained a video that shows NC “Election Protection” group leaders instructing their volunteers to use “Hispanic-sounding names” as a rationale for flagging voters.
[…] the leader of an “election protection” activist group of 1,800 volunteers in North Carolina is seen instructing attendees at a virtual meeting to flag voters with “Hispanic-sounding last names” as one way to identify potentially suspicious registrations as the group combs through voter rolls
North Carolina, thanks to laws enacted before the disastrous Republican takeover of 2010, has some fairly expansive voting systems — weeks of daily early voting, same-day registration during early voting, and requirement for a ballot “paper trail” that means that voting is a two-step process where you fill out and print your ballot on one machine, examine it, and then hand-walk it over to scan, thereby casting your ballot. It’s transparent and polling places tend to be easily accessed, well-run and efficient whether you’re voting on the day or during early voting, thanks to the fact that the statewide offices that manage elections are held by Democrats. But we do require an official ID to vote because of laws enacted AFTER the Republican takeover, and this is of course a significant obstacle to students, people who don’t drive, and the poor. As Repubs intended.
[…] There’s a significant network of election deniers in this state, and a large number of them turned out for Donald Trump’s little January 6 insurrection party. Many have gone to jail. But the effort to sow distrust in NC’s voting practices continues.
[…] the RNC says possible non-citizen voters on the rolls could dilute the votes of “legal” voters, and specifically cites a complaint by a “concerned citizen, Carol Snow,” to the Board of Elections in October 2023 as the basis for concerns with voter registrations in the state.
Snow, who described herself as an “election denier” in an email to CBS News, is a member of NC Audit Force, another group under the umbrella of Womack’s North Carolina team. At a meeting of fellow activists this April, Snow appeared alongside Womack and described herself as “a busybody,” in a video posted to YouTube.
[…] They make it quite clear that the GOP is gearing up to go after individual voters during the time between voting and certification. So if you live in NC and have a “misspelled” Hispanic or “Arab” name, be on the lookout for shenanigans.
And be sure that you vote Against on the greasy amendment that’s trying to sneak a Jim Crow loophole for requiring miscellaneous crap from voters into our constitution.
Had you traveled to a McDonald’s in Feasterville, Pennsylvania, on Sunday afternoon, you would have been treated to the sight of a convicted felon working the French fry machine.
Now, there is nothing weird about this per se. McDonald’s has a “felon friendly” hiring policy in an admirable corporate effort to help rehabilitated criminals find even a tiny toehold as productive and working members of society once they have paid for their crimes. [LOL]
But usually, the felon has served his prison sentence already. And also usually, your average ex-felon fry cook is not also a former President of the United States.
That’s Donald Trump. Always breaking down barriers.
So there Trump was on Sunday, wrapped up in an apron the size of a boat cover, standing for the first time in his miserable life on one of the lower rungs of American capitalism with the rest of the plebeians. For about five minutes, anyway.
No, really. According to a write-up of the stunt from The Washington Post, Trump spent about five minutes at the restaurant’s fry station, pulling the fry basket out of hot oil, salting the fries and putting them into those little containers. Then he spent 15 minutes at the drive-through window, where he mostly kibbitzed with the reporters lined up nearby.
We’ll be generous and say he was on the clock for 20 minutes. The average fast-food worker in Pennsylvania makes $13.20 an hour according to the Post, so 20 minutes of work comes out to — we’ll do the math for Trump, whose brain is basically an angry ferret trapped in a canvas sack — congrats, Donald, you earned yourself $4.40 before taxes.
E. Jean Carroll immediately filed a motion to garnish Trump’s wages, noting that he only has to repeat that 20 minutes approximately 19.5 million more times to pay the $86,000,000 he owes her. [LOL]
A normal presidential candidate would in fact have used an appearance of this sort to send a message about increasing the minimum wage, or the importance of government-provided healthcare because someone making $13.20 an hour is not going to be able to afford insurance on their own. Doing so might have even served as an indirect rebuke to the owner of this particular McDonald’s franchise, who has a record of dragging his heels on raising his employees’ wages and lobbying against state rules making more people eligible for overtime.
In other words, this was a great chance to earn some credibility with the working-class voters that The New York Times said was the entire purpose of the whole spectacle.
Trump being Trump, however, this appearance was mostly about trolling Kamala Harris, who he is still convinced lied about working at a McDonald’s during summer vacation 40 years ago:
“Now I’ve worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala,” Trump said as he wrapped up his time at the fryer. When asked why Harris would lie about working at McDonald’s, Trump responded: “Because she’s Lyin’ Kamala.”
Ah, the magnificent dignitude of presidential politics in 2024.
The McDonald’s trip was the sort of retail campaigning that we very rarely see Trump do, since it’s much more fun to stage a rally where everyone is chanting your name and beating up protestors. And indeed, his campaign staff clearly did not want to risk any sorts of unscripted voter interaction that might set former President Brainworms on some rambling anecdote about the cock size of a particular professional athlete. So the restaurant was closed for his visit, depriving Trump of the experience of a McDonald’s in full and chaotic swing […]
Also, the only patrons inside had been pre-screened by the Secret Service. Anyone who wanted to steer through the drive-through to be handed a container of over-salted fried potatoes from Trump was likewise pre-screened by the Secret Service. None of these customers actually got to order anything. You took whatever Trump decided in his beneficence to hand you. Which, when you think about it, is a metaphor for his entire presidency.
Also, he was sans hairnet, which we’re betting is a health code violation. Complete indifference to laws and to keeping other Americans from being struck down by illness? Also a great metaphor for his entire presidency.
In one final kick in the nuts, Newsweek calculated that the average McDonald’s franchise has more revenue in one year than the Trump Media and Technology Group, owner of his vanity social media site TruthSocial:
Franchise disclosure documents show that an average franchised McDonald’s restaurant makes $3.5 million annually. When divided by four to estimate quarterly revenue, this comes to $876,250.
TMTG’s Q2 earnings, published in August, show that it earned $837,000 in revenue that quarter─$39,250 less than the average McDonald’s franchise. Q3 ended in September and TMTG is yet to report these earnings.
If his family had a sense of humor, they would have already gotten to work chiseling “Not even as successful as your average McDonald’s franchise” on his headstone.
Speaking at a campaign event in Asheville, Trump again made the false claim that FEMA had no money to help victims in the hurricane-stricken area because it was spending funds on migrants.
As he’s done for weeks, Trump appeared to conflate two completely separate funds to paint a misleading picture. FEMA has dedicated disaster relief money that cannot be used for other purposes, and it was separately tasked by Congress in 2022 to disseminate money from Customs and Border Protection to help communities that received influxes of migrants.
“They spent a lot of money on bringing illegal migrants. … They don’t have any money for the people who live here,” Trump said. “They’ve spent it on illegal migrants.”
Trump’s repeated false claims and other conspiracy theories and misinformation have led to threats against FEMA workers in the area. Trump was asked if his comments were “helpful” to emergency workers trying to do their jobs. “I think you have to let people know how they’re doing,” Trump responded. “If they’re doing a poor job, are we not supposed to say it?”
“How inversion variants can shape neural circuitry: Insights from the three-morph mating tactics of ruffs” https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9641025/
3 male morphs: independent, satellite, and faeder. These are due to chromosomal inversions that are present in both male and female ruffs. The authors make the important point,
“in our most recent work we show there are clear morph differences in HSD17B2 mRNA expression in the brains of embryos, as early as day 14 of incubation (Giraldo-Deck, 2022)…
As we move forward, it will be important to maintain an integrative interpretation of results, keeping in mind that inversion effects occur in both sexes and that even in females this could have effects on behaviorally relevant cell types.”
Females with independent, satellite, or faeder genetics will soon be informative.
“The behavioral effects of the inversion likely come from its ability to reduce not only circulating levels of testosterone, but perhaps even more so, from its ability to affect hormone synthesis in brain areas where the de novo synthesis of sex steroid hormones, especially estrogen from circulating testosterone, takes place.”
I knew the local brain expression was going to matter. I’m still collecting all of that.
“These patterns in circulating androgens emerge already in both sexes as early at 10 days old, where variance in testosterone levels in Independents is three times greater than that of Satellites and Faeders, while the variance in androstenedione is greater in inversion morphs compared to Independents (Giraldo-Deck, 2022). Furthermore, we have also confirmed that it persists into adulthood for females as well, where even though circulating levels of testosterone are low, inversion morphs have even lower levels than Independent females (Figure 1A).”
“We propose that the inversion affects not only circulating testosterone levels among morphs, but also the de novo synthesis of estradiol in the brain and that these two events combined, shape both the development and subsequent activation, of morph-specific behaviors in adulthood.”
Fox News host and Donald Trump adviser Sean Hannity claims that Vice President Kamala Harris is lying when she says Trump’s proposals would threaten the solvency of Social Security. But according to a new study, Trump’s tax plans would drain the Social Security Trust Fund in just six years, triggering devastating cuts to the payments seniors depend on if no further changes are made.
Trump’s “campaign proposals would dramatically worsen Social Security’s finances,” according to the analysis of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB):
[…] Trump’s proposals to eliminate taxation of Social Security benefits, end taxes on tips and overtime, impose tariffs, and expand deportations would all widen Social Security’s cash deficits. Under our central estimate, we find that President Trump’s agenda would:
– Increase Social Security’s ten-year cash shortfall by $2.3 trillion through FY 2035.
– Advance insolvency by three years, from FY 2034 to FY 2031 […]
– Lead to a 33 percent across-the-board benefit cut in 2035, up from the 23 percent CBO projects under current law.
– Increase Social Security’s annual shortfall by roughly 50 percent in FY 2035, from 3.6 to 4 percent of payroll.
– Require the equivalent of reducing current law benefits by about one-third or increasing revenue by about one-half to restore 75-year solvency.
[X posts with graphs at the link]
Trump adviser and Project 2025 contributor Stephen Moore has argued such changes are good policy because “we want people to keep working. We want to keep incentivizing people once they turn 65, or 66, or 70.”
Democrats, meanwhile, typically favor extending the solvency of Social Security by increasing taxes on wealthy Americans rather than cutting benefits for vulnerable seniors.
Fox News and its right-wing counterparts rarely discuss Social Security because they want Republicans to win elections and they recognize that the right’s proposals are generally politically toxic. When Trump suggested in a March interview that he would consider cutting Social Security benefits — a mainstay of right-wing punditry — Fox ignored the remarks.
But when Trump’s propagandists talk about one of the most successful federal programs in history, which sustains tens of millions of American seniors, they stress that he and his party are committed to defending it, claiming suggestions otherwise are lies.
“At multiple rallies today in North Carolina, Harris also continued her long-running lie that Donald Trump wants to cut your Social Security,” Hannity complained last month. “But the official Republican Party platform and Donald Trump in his own words over and over again say just the opposite. As you can see on your screen, a complete and total lie from Kamala Harris.” [It is Hannity that is joining Trump in spreading a lie. It is Hannity that partners with Trump to gaslight Americans.]
Hannity may be willing to take Trump at his word, but CRFB’s analysis shows Harris is correct that the former president’s plans would devastate Social Security.
[…] Tim Walz knows just how to break down the American political landscape. He took us back to school, drawing on his coaching days to give voters the play-by-play of Project 2025 in a post on X on Sunday.
With circles and squares on a whiteboard in a locker room, Walz laid out Project 2025’s plan in three points: an abortion ban, raising costs, and unchecked power. […]
California’s Minimum Wage Hikes Actually Working Out Very Well, Thank You!
When it was first announced that fast food workers in California would soon make at least $20 an hour, there was no shortage of critics insisting it would lead to calamity and $45 Big Macs.
And yet! Just like every other time the minimum wage has been raised and people predicted doom and gloom … it’s actually worked out quite well and none of the bad things have happened. It’s almost as if it would be entirely possible for us all to manage living in a country in which every person has enough to live.
[…] The Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley has released research showing that while wages went up by 18 percent, employment remained stable and menu prices increased by just 3.7 percent. Oh no, that sounds like it might be a lot? Nope. It is an extra 15 or so cents on a hamburger.
None of this should be surprising. Most employers, especially in that sector, are going to employ the fewest number of people they can get away with regardless of how much they are paid. […] Additionally, they can’t actually charge more than people are willing to pay for a product. Like, sure, you can try to sell a Big Mac for $45, but you’re going to lose a ton of money waiting around for someone to buy that.
Previously, another study from researchers at Harvard and UC San Francisco found the same damn thing. They also found that the increase also did not lead to a decrease in benefits or on how many hours people were assigned.
US Americans typically think of things in terms of impact to the individual — raising the minimum wage is supposed to be bad because if people can reasonably live off of working at McDonalds, they won’t be “motivated” to try to do more but at the same time if people who own McDonalds franchises are not making bank, no one will be “motivated” to buy a McDonalds franchise. And, because it’s assumed that the people who own the franchises have to continue making the same amount of money they previously were, it’s then assumed they will “have” to charge customers much more in order to continue making what they were making.
If we thought of things in terms of what’s best for us as a society, we would realize that if we want people to work at McDonalds, it can’t cost more to work at McDonalds than it pays to work at McDonalds. People have to be able to live in or reasonably close to the community where they work, they have to be able to pay their bills so they can shower and feed themselves so they don’t smell or pass out during their shift, they have to be able to get to and from their jobs (either with a car or with public transit). That is the bare minimum. Ideally, we also want those people to have disposable income so that they can contribute to our economy and the tax base. This latter part is likely the reason why all of the bad things people predict when raising the minimum wage never actually come to pass.
The more money that people at the bottom have to spend, the more money there is to make for those in the middle, who then have more disposable income of their own to reinject into the economy. But, if we keep going the way we’re going, the only viable money to be made will be in selling things to the rich — and that is a relatively limited customer base. Rich people, for the most part, are not the ones eating at McDonalds, so their ability to profit lies in those at the bottom and in the middle being able to afford to eat there.
It is fine that Americans feel so importantly about “motivation,” but it can’t be at the expense of a functioning society.
This is why this happens the same way every time. It’s why the sky never falls. It’s why other studies show that minimum wage increases actually lead to more employment, not less. Hell, it’s even why all of the Universal Basic Income experiments have turned out so well and usually have the exact opposite effect that critics insist they will have.
There are no studies showing the opposite. Not any. None. There are no studies or even observances showing that we benefit in any way from people not making enough to live on or not being able to afford rent or basic living expenses. There’s no evidence that this is creating a better world for any of us, or even that extreme income inequality is the motivating factor that people believe it is.
So why not just do the things that work, instead of the things that could totally work given the exact right circumstances and even then will only work for a very small number of people?
Musk had asked to use imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s latest futuristic concept cars at their unveiling on a Warners studio lot. When Alcon wouldn’t agree to provide the rights through Warner, the suit alleges that Tesla, at Musk’s direction, used that imagery as raw material to duplicate it using an AI model.
Interesting way to try and dodge around copyrights and trademarks. Likely hard to make it stick in court but Time Warner has the money to do it. The difference between using an AI system to copy something with changes and getting an artist to produce artwork in a particular style is small but seems significant to me.
Five men who were wrongfully convicted in the so-called Central Park Five jogger rape case sued Donald Trump.
The men alleged in the lawsuit in Philadelphia federal court that the Republican presidential nominee defamed them by falsely claiming they killed someone and pleaded guilty.
They likely have a winnable case, even after all these years Trump has never admitted he was wrong about the case. It’s another topic that wouldn’t get him in trouble if he just shut up about it but he can’t. He has brought up the case multiple times even after DNA evidence proved none of them could be the rapist.
John Moralessays
“When Alcon wouldn’t agree to provide the rights through Warner, the suit alleges that Tesla, at Musk’s direction, used that imagery as raw material to duplicate it using an AI model.”
while wages went up by 18 percent, employment remained stable and menu prices increased by just 3.7 percent. Oh no, that sounds like it might be a lot? Nope. It is an extra 15 or so cents on a hamburger.
However, that hamburger used to cost between $.89 to $1.00 until the recent corporate food price gouging started in the wake of Covid. That hamburger shrunk in size, but now costs $2.50, and a small fry is $1.99.
Because of course the people who own the MacDonalds must make record profits, but the workers can’t complain if they can’t afford to spend their limited food budget on even the cheapest items on the menu.
You can purchase a lot of frozen French Fries for much less than $1.00 per ounce.
Former Republican lawmakers, advisers and Justice Department officials have called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate tech billionaire Elon Musk for awarding cash prizes to voters in swing states if they sign his political organization’s petition, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post and sent to Garland on Monday.
The letter argues that the large prizes set up by Musk, a vocal supporter of Republican nominee Donald Trump, violate federal voting laws that prohibit paying people to register to vote.
Musk announced Saturday that his political group, America PAC, would use a lottery to award $1 million each day until the election to a registered voter who signs a petition saying they support free speech and the right to bear arms. Only voters registered in seven swing states — including Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada — are eligible for the prizes.
The former officials who signed the letter to Garland and Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry argue that Musk’s petition is a disguised voter drive in which he is essentially bribing people to register.
[…]
The law they are accusing Musk of violating carries a $10,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
The letter also questions the purpose of Musk’s petition, which it describes as vague, saying little beyond “I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments.”
“Moreover, while the usual purpose of a petition is to demonstrate public support for some proposition, America PAC’s petition does not appear to serve that purpose,” the letter reads. “And, critically, America PAC has not made the names or numbers of petition signers public — so the petition provides no demonstration of public support for even that statement. ”The letter also questions the purpose of Musk’s petition, which it describes as vague, saying little beyond “I am pledging my support for the First and Second Amendments.”
…. “And, critically, America PAC has not made the names or numbers of petition signers public — so the petition provides no demonstration of public support for even that statement.”
birgerjohanssonsays
The TEC Show:
‘Breaking News!! Early Voting Landslide: Harris vs Trump 2024 One Million Votes in North Carolina ‘
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DigZJtvuqqg
Looks somewhat promising. I might be able to suppress a panic attack for the nexr 24 hours.
birgerjohanssonsays
Hazel:
“The Bizarre Rabbit Hole of Direct To VHS Anime”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=mF-XaCPqjqE
I had actually heard of some of those titles, but what caught my interest is that she had spent so many hours watching anime to make this video. That is being a committed fan. Also, kudos to fans that make unofficial subtitles to help the media overcome the language barrier.
(Yeah, I too have a weakness for touching animal stuff, cynical though I am;
shame about the stupid tinkly music one must endure to hear the narration unless one just uses subtitles, but hey. Geared to the great unwashed, is popular media)
—
A cat, basically. Mine does exactly the same, but is a bit smaller and a touch more domesticated.
(And with no sound track of gloppy shitty “mood” music, which is a winner for me)
chigau (違う)says
It’s late, I’m tired, I’m on my second drink … is that why J.D. Vance looks AI generated?
No real yumons look like that. Do they?
John Morales #208
I didn’t mind the music.
TikTok boi selfies were annoying.
John Moralessays
chigau, no worries. I know I ain’t normal.
John Moralessays
For you, chigau:
—
In this video, a dog meets its owner, who went to defend the Motherland. The dog hadn’t seen him for a long time and at first couldn’t even recognize him… only by smell. But as soon as he realized who was in front of him, his joy knew no bounds.
John and chigau @214, 215 and 216. I love a good Ukrainian reunion video.
In other news: Here is the YouTube link for a segment of The Rachel Maddow Show in which Rachel interviews Yulia Navalnaya. Yulia is the pro-democracy, anti-Putin, anti-corruption activist that is also the widow of Russian opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny.
More Ukraine news, posted by NBC News, and based on reports from Reuters:
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Ukraine on Monday, in a show of solidarity with Kyiv just two weeks ahead of a U.S. presidential election that is casting uncertainty over the future of Western support.
[…] Trump has signaled he would be more reluctant than Biden to continue to support Ukraine, which could deprive Kyiv of its biggest military and financial backer.
Austin played down such concerns.
“I’ve seen bipartisan support for Ukraine over the last 2-1/2 years, and I fully expect that we’ll continue to see the bipartisan support from Congress,” he said.
The retired four-star general has been one of Ukraine’s staunchest advocates, building a coalition of dozens of nations which has supplied Kyiv with weaponry that has helped it deal heavy blows to Russian forces.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin seems content to invest more and more forces in a costly advance in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, which Moscow claims as its own territory.
In recent weeks, Russia has surrounded towns in the Donetsk region and then slowly constricted them until Ukrainian units are forced to withdraw.
“It’s a very tough fight and it’s a tough slog,” Austin said.
[…] Even with […] U.S. military support, including the provision of F-16 fighter jets, Abrams tanks and more, Ukraine faces a tough fight ahead.
President Maia Sandu said on Monday Moldovans had won a ‘first battle in a difficult fight’ for their future, a day after a slim majority of 50.46% backed EU accession in a referendum that was clouded by allegations of Russia-backed meddling.
[…] Now, WIRED is reporting that similar smears against Walz are the product of Russia-aligned propaganda outfit Storm-1516.
Experts believe that the campaign is tied to a network called Storm-1516, which has been linked to, among other things, a previous effort that falsely claimed vice president Kamala Harris perpetrated a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West. […]
Numerous figures in MAGA world boosted the Tim Walz assault claims, including Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate promoter who is now a member of Trump’s campaign team, and Candace Owens, the popular right-wing podcaster. The claims went viral on X last week, when an anonymous account called Black Insurrectionist posted screenshots of emails from a purported victim. Other X users quickly debunked the claims, citing formatting errors in the images that suggested the emails were fake, but days later another conspiracist posted a video on X claiming he had spoken to one of Walz’s supposed victims on the phone—without providing any proof. The video racked up millions of hits.
Then, on Wednesday, a video claiming to show a former student of Walz describing abuse by the former football coach spread widely on X. […] The video, shared by a prominent anonymous QAnon-promoting account, garnered over 4.3 million views before it was deleted.
Darren Linvill of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub matches the elements of the smear—fake X accounts dropping rumors, follow up “evidence” generated by AI— with other known campaigns by Storm-1516.
It is well that Linvill’s group was able to identify the source of this BS quickly, but the episode is an example of how far Republicans and their Russian allies are willing to go in this home stretch. We’re a long way from the days of Prigozhin’s quaint little Factory on Savushkina Street. [video at the link]
Why is António Guterres going to Russia for a BRICS summit?
The UN chief António Guterres is expected to attend a BRICS summit this week in Kazan, Russia. This may challenge the Western efforts to isolate Moscow diplomatically.
RACHEL MADDOW: One of the things that strongman leaders do when they do get control of a country is they shut down independent media. They make it a crime or they make it otherwise impossible for anybody to report or say or broadcast anything that is independent of the strongman or that is critical of the strongman.
And that of course is not how the American system of government works, with our robust First Amendment and freedom of the press protections, that’s not at all how we are set up as a government and as a country. But again, what’s on the table from Republicans in this election is scrapping our system of government and instead doing it the strongman way instead. […]
This comes in the wake of that same candidate, Donald Trump, saying that ABC News should also have its broadcast license revoked. And it comes in the wake of that same candidate saying that this network, MSNBC, and NBC News should have its broadcast license revoked. And it comes on the heels of him saying that the head of Facebook should be put in prison, and it comes on the heels of him saying, “Just you wait, just you wait to see what he’s going to do to The New York Times, wait until you see what I’m going to do to them.”
This is not normal American stuff. This isn’t American at all. This is strongman authoritarian form of government stuff, which our Constitution protects us from explicitly. But he wants to get rid of all that, and he’s saying if you vote for him, he will get rid of all that.
Bekenstein Boundsays
birgerjohansson@191: Ah, Trump showing his homoerotic side. And maybe a touch of necrophilia.
I wonder how that will play with the more religiously-prudish among his base?
Then again, the Access Hollywood tape wasn’t a deal-breaker for those idiots …
StevoRsays
Via PBS Newshour :
David Fahrenthold: ..(snip).. It’s hard to overstate how entangled Elon Musk is with the federal government. And there’s two dimensions to that. One is his — the federal government is a customer of his, a huge customer of his. NASA and the Defense Department pay billions of dollars a year to SpaceX to launch their satellites, to launch their people, launch their rockets. There’s 300 contracts within the federal government and Elon Musk’s companies this year alone.
The other dimension of that relationship is that he fights with the federal government all the time. Regulators from different agencies are limiting what his companies can do, checking on his companies, making sure they live up to their promises. He doesn’t like that. He’s often complaining about these different regulators.
(Snip).. Now, why does that matter for Elon? Well, it matters a lot because now the people that oversee him, the agencies that oversee him, Elon’s going to flip that relationship. Now he oversees them. He’s the one who could decide, OK, how much is your budget going to be? How much cuts am I going to recommend?
So now you’re in a situation where the people who are supposed to be keeping tabs on Elon Musk and his companies, making sure that they’re safe for the public, he’s going to have a position of power over them. So the question is, what will — how will he use that power? And even if he doesn’t use it explicitly, how will that sort of chill and scare the regulators who are supposed to be keeping tabs on his businesses?
“Donald Trump urged Christian voters on Monday to participate in the 2024 election, claiming that a Kamala Harris administration would restrict religious freedoms and casting himself as a protector of Christians.
During an event in North Carolina billed as an “11th-Hour Faith Leaders Meeting”, a series of conservative pastors warmed up for Trump, including Guillermo Maldonado, an “apostle” and longtime Trump ally who cast the election in perilous terms.
“You know, we’re now in spiritual warfare,” said Maldonado, alluding to the idea that Christians are at war on the supernatural plane against dark forces that impact the real world. “It’s beyond warfare between the left and the right. It’s between good and evil. There’s a big fight right now that is affecting our country and we need to take back our country.”
Introducing Trump, Ben Carson, the campaign’s National Faith Chairman for the 2024 election, openly rejected the idea of secular society.
“This election is about whether we are a secular nation or one nation under God,” said Carson, echoing the aims of Christian nationalists who view the US as a Christian nation that must return to God.”
(Well, he didn’t actually say ‘penis’ there, any more than he said it about some dead golfer. But, precedent)
The Victorian Foot Fad Inspired by a Horror Novel : Weird Fashion History (and the origin of the Svengali films)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=J_DKcehMlkY
Also, very anti-semitic.
“Let’s Talk Elections”:
Brand New Polls | Harris Leads in GA, MI, PA, and WI
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DEcTUyevLBo
All swing states are within the margin of error but overall the situation does not look bad. The latest poll made the distinction between voters who are certain and voters who are likely to vote for a particular candidate.
birgerjohanssonsays
When you are dealing with someone with a track record like Trump, the appropriate response is to assume the worst possible interpretation of what he says.
.
If people imply “schlong”, then they mean “schlong”.
It is like when you say there are good people on both sides and one side are literal nazis, it means you think nazis are good.
And Trump did not say he wants to put immigrants into concentration camps, he ‘merely’ said they would be rounded up and put in camps. For the people about to be rounded up, the semantic difference is probably not reassuring.
@236.birgerjohansson : Just seen a Frace 24 news report on TV – via c24 Aussie ABC news channel – saying the USA’s Presidential race is far too close to call. Polling (push or dubious or whatever but still) has things pretty much within the margins of error. I think we need to be very wary of any complacancy and do everything we possibly can to stop Trump which means whatever we can to help Kamala.
Couldn’t find the interview they just had on their website but did find this :
..Trump during his brief stint as a server, at one point asking if customers ever ask for more salt. “I love salt!” he exclaimed, also throwing some over his shoulder onto the floor, explaining that he is “superstitious.”
Told by reporters that Sunday was also Harris’s birthday, Trump wished her well. “I think I’ll get her some flowers,” he quipped. “Maybe I’ll get her some fries.”
In the lead-up to her birthday Harris has increasingly raised questions about Trump’s own fitness to be president. “He’s ducking debates and canceling interviews because of exhaustion,” Harris told an Atlanta rally Saturday, mocking his rambling, off-script speeches.
The former president has surprised attendees at his rallies with sometimes bizarre references, including a ribald reference Saturday to the anatomy of a famous golfer. But Trump’s age and spontaneous remarks have not appeared to be a deal-breaker for voters, as polls show a close battle ahead.
Trump rarely smiles, but in the videos showing him talking about Arnold Palmer’s penis, Trump breaks out in a genuine smile near the end. Telling details.
Donald Trump is vowing to cut funding to schools that recognize transgender students, teach history in ways he dislikes, and/or have vaccine mandates.
[…] Most policymaking related to schools happens at the local and state level.
But the rules change when a major-party presidential nominee threatens — over and over again — to defund school districts that he disagrees with.
Donald Trump visited a barbershop in the Bronx with Fox News’ Lawrence Jones, and a voter asked the former president for his ideas about improving education. After rambling a bit about the Department of Education, the Republican got to the heart of his vision:
“No transgender, no operations, you know they take your kid. There are some places, your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl, OK? Without parental consent. What is that all about? … Can you imagine, without parental consent? And first, when I was told that was actually happening, I said, ‘You know, it’s an exaggeration.’ No, it happens. It happens. There are areas where it happens.”
Right off the bat, it’s important to emphasize that Trump’s claims were utterly bonkers. There are no schools in the United States — literally, not one — performing transgender surgeries. If the GOP nominee genuinely believes “there are areas” where this happens, he’s become completely unfamiliar with daily life in his own country. [correct]
What’s more, the local voter in New York asked a fair question about improving schools, and Trump answered by pointing to a problem that only exists in his imagination. […]
But even if we put aside these relevant details, let’s also not overlook the fact that Trump has talked about defunding schools that recognize transgender students.
We’re not talking about surgical procedures; we’re talking about the possibility of a Republican White House pushing to defund local schools that recognize students based on their preferred gender identity.
Meanwhile, last week, Trump also appeared on Fox News and was asked about school districts that teach American history in ways conservatives don’t like. “Then we don’t send them money,” the former president quickly replied.
In case that weren’t quite enough, Trump has also spent most of the year declaring, at one campaign rally after another, “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”
When Trump first started peddling this vow, there was some discussion about whether he was referring specifically to Covid vaccine mandates or all vaccine mandates, but the presumptive GOP nominee, at least publicly, has ignored the distinction. What’s more, in some instances, Trump has said his policy would apply to all public education, “from kindergarten through college.”
Or put another way, a second Trump administration — if the candidate’s promises are to be believed — would be prepared to cut federal support from every public school district in the United States, as well as most institutions of higher learning. (Remember, all 50 states require vaccinations for students.)
So, taken together, Trump is prepared to cut funding to schools that recognize transgender students, schools that teach versions of history that bother him, and/or schools that try to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.
Education hasn’t been much of a 2024 campaign issue. With two weeks remaining, perhaps that should change.
[…] – Trump tapped then-Gen. Mark Milley to serve as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After working side-by-side with Trump, Milley now believes the Republican is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.”
– Trump tapped Mark Esper to serve as the secretary of Defense. After working side-by-side with Trump, Esper concluded that Trump is “unfit” for office, a national security threat, and a “threat to democracy.”
– Trump tapped retired Gen. James Mattis to serve as the secretary of Defense. After working side-by-side with Trump, Mattis reportedly told Bob Woodward that he also sees Trump as a threat to the United States.
– Trump tapped retired Gen. John Kelly to serve, first as the Homeland Security secretary, and then as White House chief of staff. After working side-by-side with Trump, Kelly concluded that Trump is “poisoning” people’s minds, has “serious character issues,” and is not “a real man.” Kelly has also said that Trump has “no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about,” and has “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
– Trump tapped John Bolton to serve as his White House national security advisor. After working side-by-side with Trump, Bolton warned Americans, “A mountain of facts demonstrates that Trump is unfit to be president. … If his first four years were bad, a second four will be worse.”
There’s never been anything like this in American history. If you’re an on-the-fence voter, learning that leading members of his own national security team are disgusted by him — even describing him on the record as a “fascist” — it seems like the sort of thing that should have an impact.
With this in mind, it’s hard to blame Harris, not only for emphasizing this in campaign advertising, but also for talking about it on a nearly daily basis. [video at the link]
For his part, Trump was asked over the weekend on Fox News about Milley’s and Mattis’ condemnations. The former president responded by claiming they were “not great generals,” adding, “I don’t respect them as soldiers. I never did.” He concluded that he “fired them both” — a claim that’s plainly and demonstrably untrue. [A whole stack of lies.]
Milley and Mattis, for the record, are two of the most decorated U.S. military leaders of their generation. […]
birger @226, man oh man, that intro from Seth Meyers was something else. I knew that Fox News and other rightwing media were repeating the lie that Kamala Harris has no policy positions, (and/or that Harris has not explained her policy positions), but, sheesh! The sheer amount of repetition from the Fox News hosts alone startled me.
They obviously have an extensive, ongoing campaign to smear Kamala Harris as someone with no policy positions. The opposite is true. Even within the constraints of her shortened campaign, she has presented her policy positions repeatedly and well.
[…] Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina appeared on “Meet the Press” over the weekend and asked a rather pointed question. NBC News reported:
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Sunday slammed members of his own party who are supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, asking them, “What the hell are you doing?”
It was probably a rhetorical question, though it’s a relatively easy one to answer.
In fact, former House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney has held some public events with Harris, including one in Wisconsin in which Charlie Sykes — an MSNBC Daily columnist and conservative media host who’s also broken with his party and backed Harris — reminded the former Wyoming congresswoman about Graham’s on-air comments, and asked for her reaction.
“Well, don’t listen to Lindsey Graham,” Cheney responded. “It’s good life advice, actually.” [video at the link]
It was a funny line, and it generated some applause from the audience, but that’s not all Cheney has had to say on the matter. In fact, at the same event, Cheney also said, “If you wouldn’t … hire somebody to babysit your kids, you shouldn’t make that guy president of the United States.” She went on to argue, “In this election, we need to elect the person who is the responsible adult.”
Hours earlier, at a separate Harris event in Pennsylvania, the former House GOP leader encouraged voters to consider the significance of electing a president who’s “totally erratic,” “completely unstable,” and who “idolizes tyrants.”
If Graham genuinely wants to know “what the hell” anti-Trump Republicans are doing, there’s no great mystery here: They’re putting patriotism above party. They’re coming to terms with the fact that their party has nominated an erratic criminal, […] and who’s running on an authoritarian platform. They believe it’s in the nation’s interest to defeat him […]
For more along these lines, I’d also refer the South Carolinian to Cheney’s recent remarks delivered at the birthplace of the Republican Party. [video at the link]
Nearly three weeks later, the speech holds up quite well, whether Lindsey Graham wants to listen or not.
The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, on Tuesday upheld the conviction of the Cowboys for Trump founder who entered the restricted area of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, saying rioters didn’t have to know the Secret Service was protecting then-Vice President Mike Pence inside when they breached the area.
Straightforward case but a bunch of Jan 6th riot convictions would have to be redone if this was overturned. The court accepted the government’s sensible position that it’s enough that the government clearly mark that your trespassing, they don’t have to spell out every individual law you might be breaking.
Specifically, the rule bans reviews and testimonials attributed to people who don’t exist or are generated by artificial intelligence, people who don’t have experience with the business or product/services, or misrepresent their experience.
It also bans businesses from creating or selling reviews or testimonials. Businesses that knowingly buy fake reviews, procure them from company insiders or disseminate fake reviews will be penalized. It also prohibits businesses from using “unfounded or groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or certain false public accusations.”
This will be impossible to strongly enforce but it should reduce the scale of fake reviews.
Trump occasionally whines that he doesn’t get “credit” for the “great job” he did responding to Covid. It was smart of Obama to set the record straight.
Donald Trump doesn’t generally talk much about Covid and his response to the pandemic in 2020, but every once in a while, the former president will bring it up — in order to feel sorry for himself.
In August, for example, Trump sat down with Fox News and boasted that he and his team did a “great job” responding to the public health disaster, before quickly adding, “[We] never got the credit for that.”
This came to mind watching Barack Obama headline a campaign rally in Arizona over the weekend. [video at the link]
“Listen, when I was president … I had been talking to scientists for a while,” the former Democratic president said. “And so, in my last year in office, we put together a playbook for how to deal with the eventuality of a pandemic — because scientists had been saying, with globalization and travel, etc., rising populations, that at some point there was going to be a pandemic. And so, I said to my team, I said, ‘We’ve got to have a plan,’ just like you do for hurricanes or tornadoes or natural disasters.
“So, we put together this whole playbook, and we ran, we practiced the playbook. We get all the agencies. This is how we’re going to respond. This is how to make sure that the public health systems in all the states are working. Here’s how we’re going to think about the schools. And when Donald Trump came in, we gave over this playbook to them. But the point is, he ignored it.” [correct]
After conceding the scope of the pandemic crisis, Obama added that Trump’s failures led to a death toll that could’ve been lower through more responsible governing.
“If somebody tells you that this doesn’t make a difference — having somebody competent, somebody who cares about you, who listens to ordinary people, who listens to people who are experts in these areas — if you hear somebody say, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ it does matter,” the former Democratic president concluded.
At first blush, this might not seem especially notable. Obama has directed plenty of criticisms at Trump over the years, so some might perceive this as little more than the latest installment in a larger pattern.
But let’s not be too quick to rush past this.
For all the recent talk about whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago, the question itself suggests too much of the public doesn’t remember just how painfully and tragically awful conditions were in the United States in 2020.
Some of that suffering can and should be connected to the then-American president who failed in practically every way he could: ignoring experts, pursuing quack cures, politicizing federal agencies, lying unnecessarily, downplaying the importance of testing, sidelining anyone who told them truths he didn’t want to hear, promoting conspiracy theories, pitting states against one another, undermining public confidence in science, offering overly rosy projections based on nothing but unrealistic wishes, and at one point, even suggesting from the White House briefing podium that there might be value in injecting disinfectants into human beings.
And did I mention that Trump also ignored the pandemic playbook left by his predecessor? Because Obama was right: The incompetent Donald Trump did that, too.
I’m mindful of the fact that memories can be short in politics, but as Trump occasionally whines that he doesn’t get “credit” for the “great job” he did responding to the pandemic, it’s smart of his Democratic predecessor to remind Americans about what actually happened.
Donald Trump has canceled a surprising number of interviews and appearances lately. The list is still growing […]
If it seems as if Donald Trump has canceled a surprising number of events, interviews and appearances lately, it’s not your imagination. Indeed, as Politico reported, the list keeps growing.
Donald Trump was scheduled to appear at a virtual town hall with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) today at 2 p.m. — but it was canceled, with the organizers citing “changes in Trump’s schedule.” … The Make America Healthy Again town hall, which organizers planned to live stream on X, was meant to highlight Kennedy’s health agenda and contributions to the Trump campaign. (The former independent candidate dropped his bid in August and endorsed Trump.)
In fairness, it’d be an overstatement to suggest that the former Republican president is somehow hiding. He hasn’t. The GOP nominee continues to make a variety of public appearances, usually in settings in which he doesn’t have to worry about adversarial questions.
But he’s made a surprising number of cancellations, too:
– Trump agreed to appear on CBS’s “60 Minutes” before canceling.
– He agreed to appear on CNBC before canceling.
– He reportedly planned to sit down for an interview with the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia before canceling.
– He was reportedly in conversations for weeks with The Shade Room about a sit-down interview before withdrawing.
– His campaign said he’d debate Kamala Harris more than once, but he soon after scrapped those plans, too.
It’s also worth noting that Trump was supposed to participate in an event in Georgia with the National Rifle Association, but it too was canceled. The right-wing group explained that the change was the result of “campaign scheduling changes.”
As for the possible explanations for these many cancelations, Politico reported that Trump’s team told one outlet that the candidate’s schedule has been so busy that it’s led to “exhaustion.”
Making matters a bit worse, the 78-year-old Republican appeared to be falling asleep — more than once — during some recent events. [Embedded links to additional sources are available at the main link.]
This has not gone unnoticed by the rival campaign. [video at the link]
“Being president of the United States is probably one of the hardest jobs in the world,” Harris told reporters late last week, after referencing the Politico report. “And so, we really do need to ask if he’s exhausted being on the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?”
Presumably, Trump could push back against such questions by releasing his medical records, but to date, he’s refused to do so for reasons he has not explained.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow focused the opening of her show on the ramifications of Donald Trump’s corruption and authoritarianism.
“What Trump is proposing to do here in America, to the media, is what [Vladimir] Putin, of course, has already done in Russia,” Maddow explained. Trump’s supporters continue to try to obfuscate his recent comments fantasizing about using the federal government’s might in order to silence and punish what he perceives as the “enemy from within” our country—his political critics.
“This is not normal American stuff. This is not American at all,” Maddow said after detailing some of Trump’s more specific threats to various media outlets that have reported critically on him from CBS to The New York Times. “This is a strongman, authoritarian form of government, stuff which our Constitution protects us from explicitly.”
Added to this mix, Maddow explained, is the abject corruption Trump is involved with. One glaring example is Trump’s son-in-law and former jack-of-all-trades adviser, Jared Kushner. Kushner received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia as an investment in his equity firm. Democrats launched an investigation in June into the seemingly transparent conflict of interest.
“If you wanted to create a kindergarten-level textbook to explain to a kindergartner what corruption is, right? This is how you spell it out,” Maddow said. “Now imagine your friend is running for president. Somebody gives your friend a huge sweet business deal while he’s running for president, and that same someone then gives your friend’s family billions of dollars while he’s running for president. ‘C’ is for corruption. Your friend is corrupt, right?”
And that money comes with a price, Maddow explains, giving an example of the soft reporting done by Saudi state-controlled media recently. It seems Trump did an interview with a Saudi media outlet that didn’t get much traction in the U.S.
That lack of coverage, Maddow notes, could have something to do with the insipid headline that followed the interview: “Trump says Middle East peace possible if elected, plans to extend Abraham accords.”
“You will be surprised to learn that that was not the actual newsworthy takeaway from that interview with Saudi state-controlled media,” Maddow reports. In fact, she continues by showing clips of Trump’s rambling cruelty about making deals with Hamas and how he claimed hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 are probably all dead anyway:
Trump: Now, still, you have hostages, but many of them have been killed, and I’m sure many of them are dead. I think even early on, I think a lot of those hostages were dead. I think they were dead. […]
I would have made a deal with them and they wouldn’t have done Oct. 7.
“You know, Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign cratered because he put on a helmet that made his head look like a little bean, made his face look short,” Maddow pointed out. “Donald Trump pretended to work at a McDonald’s this weekend while wearing this lovely ensemble. And then the next day, he said, all the hostages are dead, and I want to do a deal with Hamas.”
You couldn’t find enough monkeys with typewriters to make this story up.
A federal judge has ordered Rudy Giuliani to place numerous assets, including cash, jewelry and his New York apartment, into a receivership controlled by two former Georgia election workers as they seek to collect a $148 million defamation claim against the former lawyer for Donald Trump.
The 24-page ruling issued Tuesday orders Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, to place the assets into a receivership within seven days. But U.S. District Court Judge Lewis J. Liman of New York ordered the “immediate turnover” of Giuliani’s apartment on the Upper East Side, which is already for sale.
Liman also orders Giuliani to take legal steps that would allow the election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, to seek an estimated $2 million in legal fees that Giuliani has said he is owed by Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee for his work leading Trump’s post-2020 election legal challenges.
“The Court finds transfer and receivership is appropriate here as it will allow [Freeman and Moss] to stand in [Giuliani]’s shoes with respect to the Trump campaign in order to effectively pursue that claim,” the judge wrote.
A host of big-name celebrities are hitting the campaign trail for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, headlining rallies to help get out the vote in the home stretch of the campaign.
On Tuesday, CNN reported that rapper Eminem will introduce former President Barack Obama at a campaign rally in Detroit. Eminem, who spent much of his childhood in Detroit, has not minced words about his disdain for Donald Trump, saying in 2018 that “a fucking turd would have been better as a president” than Trump was.
And multiple outlets reported on Tuesday that rock icon Bruce Springsteen will hold concerts alongside Obama in both Atlanta and Philadelphia to encourage people to vote.
Springsteen endorsed Harris earlier in October, saying Harris’ vision for the country is “the vision of America I have been consistently writing about for 55 years.” [video at the link]
[…] other celebrities have already hit the trail for Harris.
On Saturday, Usher headlined a massive 11,000-person rally in Atlanta, taking a break from his tour to implore voters to get to the polls and vote for Harris.
“I’m supporting Vice President Harris because she fights for everyone’s rights, for freedom. And it doesn’t matter where you from. She has a vision for our country that includes everyone, a vision that supports small businesses, invests in our health, in our communities, and gives everyone a chance to get ahead,” Usher said. [video at the link]
Lizzo, meanwhile, headlined a rally in her hometown of Detroit, where she slammed Trump for denigrating the city, and voiced support for electing Harris.
“If you ask me if America’s ready for its first woman president? I only got one thing to say; it’s about damn time!” Lizzo said, referring to her hit song.
Marc Anthony, a popular Puerto Rican singer and actor, cut a campaign ad for Harris in which he reminds Latino voters of Trump’s terrible treatment of their community during his time in office.
“Even though some have forgotten, I remember what it was like when Trump was president,” Anthony said in the 60-second spot, which highlights Trump’s botched response and cruel effort to block aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. [video at the link]
An unnamed Harris campaign aide told CNN that the celebrity endorsements are deliberate.
“We’re not throwing spaghetti against the wall. We have literally studied who these voters listen to,” a campaign official told the outlet.
Meanwhile, Trump has a smaller cadre of degenerates campaigning for him.
Over the weekend, former NFL player Antonio Brown, a loose cannon who settled a sexual assault lawsuit by a former trainer who alleged he raped her, campaigned for Trump in Pennsylvania. And former NFL player Le’Veon Bell, who wore a disgustingly sexist shirt calling Harris a “tramp,” recently endorsed Trump as well.
“32-year-old Le’Veon Bell, who spoke yesterday at the Trump rally in PA, has 7 kids by 6 different women, and he calls VP Harris, a married woman a ‘tramp?’ What a POS. […] the Republicans against Trump account wrote on X. “Decency is on the ballot. Vote Harris.”
Sleazy Ex-Abercrombie CEO Arrested For Sexually Exploiting Aspiring Models
Also sex trafficking and ‘interstate prostitution.’
Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch […] has been arrested, along with two of his associates, on charges of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution.
The charges come a year after the publishing of a BBC investigation into allegations brought by at least 12 men who say they attended or participated in sex parties hosted by Jeffries.
Eight of the men — many of whom were aspiring Abercrombie models — say they were recruited for these parties by a middleman with “a missing nose covered with a snakeskin patch,” later identified as James Jacobson. They say they were pressured into watching and participating in various sex acts for Jeffries and his partner Matthew Smith.
The men, for the most part, were aspiring Abercrombie models who were more or less told that if they wanted the job, this is what they had to do. Given the number of celebrities* who modeled for the brand before getting their big breaks — Channing Tatum, Lindsay Lohan, Lana Del Rey, Jamie Dornan, Olivia Wilde, Penn Badgley, Emma Roberts — many of them felt like it was an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.
Half of the men interviewed said that they were not previously aware that these “events” would turn out to be sex parties or that sex would be expected.
Via The BBC:
Men who attended these events told the BBC Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith would engage in sexual activity with about four men — or “direct” them to have sex with each other. Afterwards, the men said staff at the event handed them envelopes filled with thousands of dollars in cash. […]
[David Bradberry] later accepted an invitation to a daytime event at Mr Jeffries’ former home in the Hamptons on New York’s Long Island — recently sold for $29m. While there, he said he spoke to Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith about his aspirations to be an A&F model. Then, he said, Mr Jeffries held “poppers” under his nose — a drug which can cause a strong head-rush and disorientation — and later had sex with him.
Another man, Barrett Pall said he felt pressured into attending an event in the Hamptons in 2011. Then 22, he said he was recruited by an older model, who received a referral fee, to be his “replacement” for “some sort of sexual experience” with the couple. He said he agreed because the older model had financially supported him and he felt indebted to him.
Mr Pall said the older model told him “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do” but suggested that “the further you go, the better”, and alluded to career opportunities. When he arrived at the event, he said he felt under pressure to “perform”. At one point, Mr Pall said Mr Jeffries was behind him, groping him.
[…] we are talking about people who were not sex workers, who felt exploited and often did not feel like what happened was consensual.
This is not too surprising given everything that has come out about Abercrombie under Jeffries’ rule over the last several years. I’m certainly not surprised, given that they tried to make my then-18-year-old sister stand out in front of the store in a bikini when she worked there back in the day, and had men doing the same in boxers. […] This wasn’t just one random store, this was part of this man’s whole vision. The stores, the catalogs were all hypersexualized […]
Jeffries’ lawyers have so far not issued a response to the arrest, and, according to The New York Times, will “respond in detail to the allegations” in court “when appropriate.” […]
Idaho’s ‘Parental Rights’ Anti-Trans Law Harming Idaho Teens, As Designed
Content advisory: sexual abuse, suicide. If you need to talk to someone for support, please call the national suicide and crisis lifeline at 988, even if you’re in goddamned Idaho.
The Washington Post was probably wise not to allow comments on its story Monday about how an Idaho law designed to “protect parental rights” is getting in the way of teenagers getting healthcare. The law requires that parents must give consent before their minor children receive any healthcare at all, with the only exception being when treatment is necessary “in order to prevent death or imminent, irreparable physical injury.” That’s basically the same standard as Idaho’s extremely narrow “exceptions” to its total ban on abortions.
The goal of Senate Bill 1329, the “Parental Rights in Medical Decision-Making Act,” which passed earlier this year, was to make sure parents knew and approved of any healthcare their precious children were getting. Just helping parents! But as SB 1329’s sponsors very openly explained, the bill was specifically aimed at protecting kids from evil socialist groomers (counselors or medical providers) who might discuss birth control or gender identity without the parents’ knowledge. Because if parents are informed, they can stop their kids from being horny or trans, obviously.
Turns out there’s a downside, as the lede of the WaPo story explains: When a pregnant 13-year-old in McCall, Idaho, showed up at the ER having “mild but frequent contractions” at 36 weeks, the staff couldn’t even begin examining her without permission from a parent or guardian. But the girl, identified only as Aleah, was in the care of her great-aunt, because Aleah’s mom lived in a car and couldn’t be found, and her grandmother, Aleah’s legal guardian, was in jail down in the Boise area. Only after the hospital located her grandmother — in jail — and got consent could the ER doc, Caitlin Gustafson, determine that Aleah wasn’t in labor.
[…] This is one of those stories where we will have to slap our hands every time we’re tempted to blockquote large passages, because it’s such a batshit terrible situation you really should go read the whole story appreciate how very fucked up it all is.
We’ll give you a little spoiler, if only so you can collect your jaw off the table. Eventually, Ms. Karren did get medical power of attorney for Aleah, and then became her legal guardian, and now the girl is a mother at 13. We learn that her child’s dad, also a teen, is in juvie, that they didn’t think about using birth control, and that “she never considered an abortion, which would have required a trip to another state anyway.” Idaho’s insane “abortion trafficking” law remains on hold as a lawsuit continues, so its possible her great-aunt could have taken her to a free state — if they’d had the money, which seems unlikely as well. That poor kid. Her poor kid, too.
The Post notes, not at all chillingly, that “One of the new law’s quirks is that while Aleah cannot consent for her own care, she is the parent who can do so for her baby.” […]
WaPo explains why the law was opposed by so many healthcare providers, counselors, school officials, and even some members of law enforcement:
Critics say the law — which also grants parents access to minors’ health records, doing away with confidentiality that providers and teen advocates call crucial — ignores the reality that parents aren’t always present or trustworthy.
The result has been that teenagers are avoiding getting counseling, and law enforcement agencies aren’t sure whether they can collect rape kit evidence, to say nothing of the difficulty of gathering evidence if a minor is sexually assaulted by a family member. Prior to SB 1329, victims could give consent for the exams if they were at least 14 years old.
The Post also cites examples offered by Idaho Academy of Family Physicians board President Crystal Pyrack:
In one, a 17-year-old with a hornet allergy was stung but was unable to get a new EpiPen from his primary-care physician or urgent care because his parents were traveling; by the time he arrived at a hospital, he was in anaphylaxis. In another case, Pyrak said, a 16-year-old was treated at an emergency department for a suicide attempt, but the parents refused to allow follow-up.
Idaho, we’ll just note, is among the states with the highest teen suicide rates — not at the very top with Alaska and South Dakota, but very bad, like several other states in the Mountain West.
[…]depressed kids in Idaho now don’t even have the option of seeking confidential help. Thank goodness, the Idaho Legislature will make sure their parents are informed, to facilitate better communication or sweep their kids’ crises under the rug.
As the Post reports, advocates for the bill were very open about their motives: Minors need to be protected from getting information about sexual health, sex itself, the existence of LGBTQ+ people, and other stuff that might make them reject their parents’ version of Christian morality.
[…] Fears about the law impeding sexual assault exams are a “ridiculous” misreading, according to Ehardt. Idaho Attorney General Raúl R. Labrador (R) has accused critics of trying to “stir up unnecessary strife and conflict” with extreme interpretations of the law, Idaho Education News reported.
[No one] seems to have explained — certainly not to the satisfaction of school and hospital lawyers — exactly what in the law would protect them from punitive actions, so the default advice from the attorneys tends to be “assume you need consent.”
During hearings for the bill, one woman
tearfully described how her family had been “severely affected” by school policies that kept confidential her child’s counseling about gender identity. She testified that the teen had been prescribed testosterone without her permission.
The story doesn’t mention the teen’s actual age or any details about the case, but it’s pretty obvious that the prescription didn’t come from the school.
[…] Maybe the Lege will find a way to fix some of the problems with the law, but don’t hold your breath waiting for anything that might let teens confide in a trusted adult about something their parents might need to put a stop to, like being LGBTQ+, doubting their faith, or wanting to have sex without becoming a 13-year-old parent.
birgerjohanssonsays
Miscellaneous medical news.
.
Novel gene discovery paves the way for treating central nervous system injuries
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p7BH6eP5h6c
The independents are going to Harris by a 9-point margin, which is good news. I am forwarding the link to save you from the stress levels I experienced when the polls had a hiccup. Remember, the margin of error is 2%.
Donald Trump unleashed a torrent of personal attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday, saying at a Latino outreach campaign event in Miami that she is “the worst” and “slow,” with a “low IQ.”
“This woman is the worst. I mean, it’s just unbelievable,” Trump said at the roundtable event with Latino leaders.
He first attacked Harris for choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. “I think she made a horrible mistake. We’ll see what happens. On Nov. 5, you know, let’s see what happens. But there’s something wrong with him. Honestly, there’s something wrong, and there’s something wrong with her, too. She’s slow, low IQ, something, I don’t know what the hell it is, but they lied.”
“We don’t need another low-IQ person,” he continued. “We had one for four years. We don’t need another.”
During the event, during which participants of the roundtable repeatedly praised Trump, the former president also attacked Harris for not appearing on the campaign trail Tuesday.
While Harris is not appearing at campaign events, she is sitting down for interviews with NBC News’ Hallie Jackson and Telemundo’s Julio Vaqueiro. Though she had been criticized by Trump and his allies for a lack of news interviews, she has done a flurry of media appearances in recent weeks, including an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that Trump himself skipped.
“They lie about everything. And I was going to hit her really hard on the trail today, but now I don’t have to, because she’s off. She’s off. No, I can’t get over it. Who the hell takes off?” Trump said Tuesday. “You have 14 days left, and she’ll take a couple of more days off, too. You know why? She’s lazy as hell, and she’s got that reputation, and she’s a radical left lunatic, she’s further left than Bernie Sanders or Pocahontas,” he said, using the derogatory nickname he’s given to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
[…] Trump frequently refers to Harris, the country’s first Black, South Asian and female vice president, as dumb, weak and crazy […]
At a rally in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Trump went further with his personal attacks, telling supporters, “You have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore. We can’t stand you. You’re a s— vice president.”
What a toxic stream of vitriol from Trump! And none of it backed up with facts. And none of it backed up with policy differences. It all just pure misogyny, racism, and meanness.
attorneys for Gov. Ron DeSantis penned the cease-and-desist letters sent by Florida’s health department threatening to criminally prosecute local TV stations over their airing of an abortion rights ad
[…]
In an affidavit filed [Oct 21] […] the former general counsel for Florida’s Department of Health, said that [DeSantis’ attorneys directed him] to send the letters under his own name[. He] resigned from his post the following week, a decision he said he made “in lieu of complying with directives […] to send out further correspondence to the media outlets,” after the threats […] ignited outrage.
[…]
[A DeSantis attorney] also directed Wilson to find outside attorneys who could be retained by the health department to assist with actions against the local stations
John Moralessays
If “Nobody knows this cult exists”, it follows that whoever made that video does not know this cult exists.
(Such a stupid title!)
“Nasty stuff.”
How so? I mean, the alleged cult members of the alleged cult do not even know it exists!
Nobody knows!
In 2021, Donald Trump’s spokesperson denied that the former Republican president had ever made positive comments about Adolf Hitler. More than three years later, those denials are increasingly difficult to believe. A new report from The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg included:
Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this.
As was the case three years ago, a Trump spokesperson told The Atlantic that the quote is “absolutely false,” adding that the former president “never said this.”
That said, retired Gen. John Kelly — Trump’s former Homeland Security secretary and former White House chief of staff — went on the record with Goldberg. From the report:
Kelly told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’
[…] For his book, “The Return of Great Powers,” Kelly told reporter Jim Sciutto that Trump privately said that Hitler “did some good things.” For their book, “The Divider,” the retired general also told Peter Baker and Susan Glasser that he wanted Kelly and his colleagues to be more like “the German generals.”
When Kelly asked Trump for clarification, the then-president reportedly replied by specifying, “The German generals in World War II.”
[…] the former White House chief of staff is adding even greater clarity to his experiences at Trump’s side.
[…] Kelly has also said that Trump has “no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about,” and has “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”
What’s more, Kelly told The New York Times in 2022 that Trump, during his presidency, told his chief of staff to use the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department to target his critics and perceived political foes.
The Times’ report went on to note, “Mr. Kelly said he made clear to Mr. Trump that there were serious legal and ethical issues with what he wanted.” The then-president “regularly” made the demands anyway.
With two weeks remaining ahead of Election Day 2024, it appears the retired general isn’t quite done shedding light on what he knows about his former boss’ perspective.
John Moralessays
CA7746, whether or not DeSantis instructed Florida’s Department of Health, it remains the case that DeSantis is not Florida’s Department of Health.
Right? I quote the specific claim: “Florida’s Department of Health is [blah]”.
That was the named entity that was [blah], not Trump.
On ABC’s “The View” on Monday, Walz responded in a quick-fire round of questions to host Sara Haines.
“My advice to JD Vance is?” Haines asked.
WALZ: “Just go in and order the chocolate doughnut, and don’t add anything else.”
[…] “One nice thing about Donald Trump is?” she asked.
WALZ: “He will not be president again,” said Walz, eliciting rowdy cheers and applause from the audience.
When asked how a Harris-Walz administration might differentiate itself from President Joe Biden, Walz discussed plans to expand Medicare, create a “care economy,” improve housing accessibility, enhance child tax credits, and protect rural hospitals.
“[Harris is] her own leader. She’s got her own path, a new way forward,” he said, adding, “We’re putting meals in schools and trying to get guns out of them.” […]
In an interview with NBC News’ Hallie Jackson, the vice president said her campaign has the “resources and the expertise” to handle a challenge from Trump.
In an interview with NBC News’ Hallie Jackson on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris said she’s preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump declares victory before the votes are counted next month.
[…] “We will deal with election night and the days after as they come, and we have the resources and the expertise and the focus on that,” Harris said.
When pressed on the possibility that Trump will try to declare victory before the votes are counted and a winner is projected by the news networks and other media outlets, Harris said she is concerned.
“This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo the free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol, and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked, some who were killed. This is a serious matter,” Harris said, referring to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol where Trump supporters tried to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. […]
The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously denied an appeal from Republicans seeking to reinstate multiple state election rules before Election Day after a local judge found them “illegal, unconstitutional and void.”
The rules, which would have upended decades of settled state law around the certification of elections and added new procedures such as counting ballots by hand, were passed by a right-wing majority on the State Election Board over the past few months.
Last week, a local judge delivered a sweeping ruling that rejected the new rules, finding that the election board had overstepped its authority and gone beyond the bounds of Georgia law, the State Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.
The Georgia Supreme Court effectively upheld that decision for the upcoming election, rejecting the Republican push for expedited appeal.
The Georgia State Election Board does not currently have any meetings scheduled before Election Day.
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* This has been in the works for a long while: “The United States and Europe are close to finalizing a plan to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan backed by Russia’s frozen central bank assets by the end of the year, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Tuesday.” [summarized from The New York Times]
* The latest leak investigation: “The FBI announced Tuesday that it is investigating an alleged leak of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents, days after assessments containing information about Israel’s potential plans for a retaliatory attack on Iran were published on an Iran-linked Telegram account.” [summarized from The Washington Post]
[…] * The latest Jan. 6 arrest: “A Donald Trump supporter who federal authorities say built a giant pro-Trump billboard that the mob of Trump supporters used as a battering ram against police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was arrested on Tuesday.” [summarized from NBC News]
[…] * Hmm: “A federal judge has ordered Army officials to release their records by the end of this week regarding President Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery this summer. Senior Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday granted the release request as part of a lawsuit brought by American Oversight, a non-partisan, nonprofit group dedicated to getting the government to release records.” [summarized from Military Times]
* I’ll let you know what happens with this one: “A federal judge heard arguments at a hearing Monday on whether he should temporarily block a new Louisiana law that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom by Jan. 1.” [summarized from NBC News]
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@257:
“We don’t need another low-IQ person,” he continued. “We had one for four years. We don’t need another.”
Wow. Did Trump just endorse Harris?! Because it suuuure looks like it. :)
@259:
Do you really think that you’re contributing usefully when you make these types of comments? <sigh>
Lynna@260:
“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this.
Erm, begging your pardon, Mr. Trump, but Hitler’s generals lost him a war that, given the technological advantages he had over his opponents at its outset, was frankly his to lose.
Fortunately.
So yeah, if you do somehow end up in power again, you absolutely should get the kind of generals that Hitler had, so the rest of the world stands a chance of survival and maybe it’s only the United States that you’ve doomed.
whheydtsays
Re: “Hitler’s Generals”…
The other problem with them (from Hitler’s perspective) is that some of them ended up trying to kill him.
John Moralessays
Bekenstein Bound:
@259:
Do you really think that you’re contributing usefully when you make these types of comments? <sigh>
So, in your estimation, unless someone is in your opinion useful to the comments section, they are to be shunned? Disparaged?
Sure seems like it.
—
Do you ever consider how noticeable it is you don’t even attempt to dispute my claims in that little dramatic session?
(Before me, there was truth machine. I am not worthy, but there are no better who remain)
birgerjohanssonsays
‘Let’s Talk Elections’
A+ North Carolina Poll Shows Harris in Better Position Than We Think”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=iWfGn_oNaJM
It’s complicated. But the betting sites have disproportionally affected the narrative to exaggerate a Trump advantage. And in North Carolina things are looking up.
KGsays
Erm, begging your pardon, Mr. Trump, but Hitler’s generals lost him a war that, given the technological advantages he had over his opponents at its outset, was frankly his to lose. – Bekenstein Bound@266
No. It was a war Hitler could only have won through an extremely unlikely combination of circumstances, and errors by his enemies. The resources available to Nazi Germany, even after Hitler conquered western and central Europe (which he should not have been able to do – northern Norway at least should have been held, and the invasion of France should have failed), were wholly inadequate to defeat the combination of the UK (with its empire and commonwealth) and the USSR, let alone when Hitler added the USA to the coalition against him. See for example Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, David Edgerton’s Britain’s War Machine, and Ian Kershaw’s Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-1941.
Instead, recent research shows that the observed pulsing of the starlight is probably caused by an unseen companion star orbiting Betelgeuse.Formally named Alpha Ori B, the “Betelbuddy” (as astrophysicist Jared Goldberg calls it) acts like a snowplow as it orbits Betelgeuse, pushing light-blocking dust out of the way and temporarily making Betelgeuse seem brighter. Goldberg and his colleagues present their simulations of this process in a paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. The findings are published on the arXiv preprint server.
“We ruled out every intrinsic source of variability that we could think of as to why the brightening and dimming was happening in this way,” says Goldberg, the study’s lead author and a Flatiron research fellow at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics. “The only hypothesis that seemed to fit is that Betelgeuse has a companion.”
Blue Origin’s uncrewed NS-27 mission is slated to launch at 11:00 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Wednesday (Oct. 23).
…(Snip)..NS-27 will mark the debut of the second human-rated New Shepard vehicle, which consists of a first stage known as Booster 5 and a crew capsule named RSS Kármán Line. (The Kármán line is the 62-mile-high boundary that many people regard as the start of outer space.)
U.S. intelligence agencies continue to warn Americans about Russian efforts to help benefit Trump. Voters should keep the Kremlin’s motivations in mind.
As the summer got underway, senior U.S. intelligence officials told reporters that the Russian government had launched a “whole-of-government” effort to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The Kremlin’s goal, not surprisingly, was to help return Donald Trump to power.
As the summer ended, senior U.S. intelligence officials held another media briefing, highlighting the same problem. The Washington Post published a report noting that 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.”
As Election Day nears, and Russian efforts intensify, U.S. intelligence agencies are again ringing the alarm. NBC News reported, for example, that U.S. officials exposed a smear campaign against Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, which apparently originated from a Kremlin-linked propaganda outlet.
U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Russia is continuing to work to benefit Trump’s campaign, including by circulating a false story about Harris’ running mate. “Based on newly available intelligence … the IC assesses that Russian influence actors manufactured and amplified inauthentic content claiming illegal activity committed by the Democratic vice-presidential candidate during his earlier career,” the assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says.
[See comment 187]
The U.S. intelligence agencies, NBC News added, are also “increasingly confident that Russian actors are considering — and in some cases implementing — a broad range of influence efforts timed with the election. Some of these are aimed at inciting violence and calling into question the validity of democracy as a political system, regardless of who wins. Others are aimed at amplifying false information and conspiracies—that may exacerbate post-election tensions in the United States.”
Broadly speaking, there are a few angles to this that are worth keeping in mind.
First, Trump and his political operation have made no public efforts to denounce Russian intervention in the American political process. It’s tempting to think they might at least keep up appearances, and pretend to be outraged, but so far, the GOP ticket hasn’t even bothered.
On the contrary, the more his own country tries to combat Russian misconduct, the more Trump suggests Russia is a victim of an American “scam.”
Second, it’s worth appreciating why Moscow appears to be working so hard to benefit the Republican candidate. It might have something to do with Trump’s willingness to echo Vladimir Putin’s talking points, including the former president’s recent suggestion that Ukraine was to blame to Russia’s invasion.
And third, the familiarity of the circumstances is striking:
In 2016, Russia targeted U.S. elections. There used to be a bipartisan consensus on this obvious and uncontested fact.
In 2018, Russia targeted U.S. elections. Though Trump, for reasons that have never been explained, rejected his own country’s intelligence on the matter, the United States’ top national security officials made it categorically clear that Russia took deliberate steps to interfere in the midterm cycle.
In 2020, Russia targeted U.S. elections. In fact, intelligence officials told Congress about the evidence showing that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign for the express purpose of trying to secure a second term for Trump.
In 2022, Russia targeted U.S. elections. In fact, The Wall Street Journal reported last year, “The Russian government and its proxies attempted to denigrate the Democratic Party and undermine voter confidence ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.”
And in 2024, Russia is once against targeting U.S. elections — as Trump tells the public that his alleged secret post-presidency chats with Putin deserve to be seen as “a smart thing.”
The pattern isn’t exactly subtle.
Of course, as Rachel has explained on the show, one of the most important differences between the Kremlin’s latest efforts and the Putin regime’s earlier intelligence operations is that many Republican officials no longer bother with the pretense that Russian intervention is a problem.
StevoRsays
Watching the new Blue Origin NS-27 rocket lift off and fly. Plus land. Just finished.. Seems to have gone well and to plan.
Space X needs some competition and we need an alternative that we can rely on and not be so depedent on it. So good. Very good to see this fly.
n July 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis raised a few eyebrows with an unexpected personnel announcement. The then-Republican presidential candidate said that if he were elevated to the White House, he’d consider then-Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a position in his administration — with either the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That caused a stir for a variety of reasons, including the fact that Kennedy is an environmental lawyer with no professional background in medicine or public health. Complicating matters, Kennedy’s bizarre conspiracy theories and ridiculous ideas about health threats have left him derided as a proponent of “kook science.”
DeSantis ultimately backed off the idea of giving Kennedy a powerful administrative position, but 15 months later, a different Republican is still thinking along the same lines. The Wall Street Journal reported a few days ago on members of Donald Trump’s prospective cabinet.
Trump did give some hints, referencing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but stopping short of confirming concrete plans. He praised Kennedy, […] who ran for president as an independent before dropping out to endorse Trump in August, for his work supporting women’s health and the environment. “He’s going to be a part of it,” Trump said.
Since making those comments on Fox News late last week, Trump has emphasized RFK Jr.’s potential role on his team several times.
On Monday, for example, Trump appeared in New York and fielded a question from a voter who was concerned about banning artificial foods in urban communities.
“So, Bobby Kennedy, right?” the GOP nominee responded. “Everybody likes Bobby, and he’s so big into the health food and women things, everything.”
As eloquent as those comments were, Trump added a day later, at a campaign rally in North Carolina, “[We’re going to] make America healthy again. Come on, Bobby. Bobby’s gonna do it. Bobby. Let’s go, Bobby. You gonna make us healthy, Bobby?”
He’s obviously one of the great orators of our time.
All joking aside, the idea that Kennedy should be rewarded with a powerful position in a Republican administration, presumably to work on making Americans “healthy,” is more than a little bizarre.
As my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem recently explained, RFK Jr. “is best known for fringe conspiracy theories tied to vaccines and other medical interventions, such as the belief that antidepressants cause school shootings.”
NPR had a related report last year, noting, “Wi-Fi causes cancer and ‘leaky brain,’ Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan last month. Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings, he mused during an appearance with Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender, he told right-wing Canadian psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson, echoing a false assertion made by serial fabulist Alex Jones. AIDS may not be caused by HIV, he has suggested multiple times.”
To be sure, this is just scratching the surface.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but if his name were Robert F. Smith, there’s obviously no way he’d be considered for a position of authority in the federal government. He’d be dismissed by the American mainstream as a fringe figure, better left ignored by serious people.
But in 2024, the Republican Party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office is nevertheless letting the public know — indeed, he’s boasting to voters — that this fringe figure with ridiculous ideas is “going to be a part” of his team in a second term.
Federal Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Trump’s classified documents case in July.
A proposed personnel roster circulating within Donald Trump’s campaign and transition operation lists Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who threw out Trump’s classified documents case, as a possible candidate for attorney general, multiple sources familiar with the matter have told ABC News.
Cannon’s name appears on a document reviewed by ABC News titled “Transition Planning: Legal Principals,” which lists potential staffing for the White House counsel’s office, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and U.S. attorneys’ offices, as well as proposed candidates for the top legal positions within multiple government agencies, should Trump be reelected.
The document was drafted by Trump’s top advisers with input from Boris Epshteyn, who oversees Trump’s legal team and is one of Trump’s most trusted advisers, sources familiar with the matter said.
[…] Cannon’s name was added to the list well after the classified documents case was thrown out over the summer, the sources said.
[…] other documents circulated within Trump’s transition operation show that potential candidates under consideration for attorney general include Jeffrey Clark, who pleaded not guilty after being indicted in Georgia for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election; Mike Davis, who has posted several controversial statements on social media promoting plans to target Trump’s political opponents, imprison members of the media in “gulags” and put migrant children “in cages”; and Mark Paoletta, a former White House lawyer and longtime friend of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who also represented Thomas’ wife Ginni during the House Select Committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
[…] Documents also propose several of Trump’s defense attorneys for top cabinet posts — including his lead attorney Todd Blanche, who has appeared in Cannon’s courtroom multiple times, and is listed as a candidate for deputy attorney general and White House counsel. Sources tell ABC News that Blanche is also being considered for FBI director.
Stanley Woodward, who represented Trump valet Walt Nauta in the classified documents case, is also among those being considered for top positions, including White House counsel, according to the documents.
[…] Trump’s running mate and co-chair of his transition team, Sen. JD Vance, said recently that attorney general is the second most important position in an administration behind the president.
“You need an attorney general who believes in true equal justice under law,” Vance said earlier this month, attacking the Department of Justice and Attorney General Garland as the “most corrupt” in history.
Elon Musk’s America PAC is buying ads on Elon Musk’s social media platform X to promote Republican nominee Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. According to reporting by Wired, the Trump-supporting billionaire’s political action committee spent more than $166,000 for 59 ads targeting swing states between July 8 and Oct. 1.
On one hand, this isn’t particularly surprising. Since being purchased by the world’s richest midlife crisis stereotype, the website Musk bought in October 2022 has devolved into a right-wing thunderdome of misinformation. The billionaire’s personal X account, once the place to read Musk’s thoughts on his companies like Tesla and SpaceX, has increasingly become an outlet for his alarming far-right views.
After Musk endorsed Trump in July, The Wall Street Journal reported on the exorbitant amount of money he planned to funnel through his new America PAC to get Trump elected. Since then, Musk’s super PAC has been involved in some pretty dubious election practices.
An early set of digital ads paid for by Musk’s PAC promising to register voters turned out to be a deceptive way to farm personal information about swing state voters. Musk then hosted a disastrous one-on-one interview with Trump on X that included the two incredibly wealthy tycoons fantasizing about breaking labor laws.
Musk announced his newest scheme last Saturday: In order to get registered voters to sign his PAC’s petition, he has promised to give away $1 million daily. This “prize” is possibly illegal, according to experts.
The Washington Post reports that the Musk-owned X has morphed into a Republican-dominated space.
Accounts backing Republican candidates spent three times as much on political ads on X than those backing Democrats from March 6 to Oct. 1— $3 million to $1 million—according to an analysis of company data by AdImpact and The Washington Post.
This election cycle has seen 50 “megadonors” donate more than $2.1 billion combined to candidates. In line with Musk’s largesse, most of that $2.1 billion has gone toward “Republican-leaning” campaigns. According to analysis by The Washington Post, Musk ranks at No. 6 in donations at $76.3 million, which is nearly twice as much as the only Democratic-leaning megadonor in the top 10—Mike Bloomberg—has donated. […]
Three videos are available at the link, including a brief one in which Obama raps.
Excerpt from text at the link:
Obama added, “All [Trump] did was give a tax cut to people who didn’t need one, drove up the deficit in the process, now he wants to do it again. Do not fall for that okey doke, don’t be bamboozled.”
When Obama took office in January 2009, the U.S. and the world were in the middle of the Great Recession, which began under former President George W. Bush. Democrats pursued economic stimulus via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but the legislation faced unified Republican opposition in the House and only three Senate Republicans backed the bill.
By the time Obama left office in 2017, 11.6 million jobs had been added to the economy on his watch. Despite inheriting an economic recovery from Obama, the economy lost 2.7 million jobs under Trump—the only president in recent history with a net job loss. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the economy has added over 15 million jobs.
Obama also criticized Trump for lying about election results and spreading election conspiracy theories, pointing out that his rhetoric has incited threats and violence against election workers. Obama noted that Trump has similarly promoted false conspiracy theories about the federal response to hurricanes in the south, leading to threats of violence against FEMA first responders.
“If you had a family member who acted like that, you might still love them, but you wouldn’t put them in charge of anything,” Obama said.
The former president also had some fun at the event and remarked that he was “feeling some kind of way following Eminem,” and launched into an Obamafied version of the hit song “Lose Yourself.”
a recent pilot study exposed concerning amounts of lead, arsenic, and toxic chemicals in tampons: 30 different tampons from 14 brands were evaluated for 16 different metal(loid)s, and tests indicated that all 16 metal(loid)s were detected in all different samples.
[…]
There are three ways in which these metal(loid)s can be introduced into the product: 1) from the raw materials that absorbed the soil and air, like the cotton used in the absorbent core; 2) contamination from water during the manufacturing process; and 3) intentionally being added during the manufacturing process for certain purposes. No matter how these metal(loid)s are introduced into the product, the pilot study stresses that further research must be done to explore the consequences of vaginally absorbed chemicals given the direct line to the circulatory system.
[…]
On Tuesday, September 11, 2024, the FDA announced they would investigate […] As of July 2024, the FDA classifies tampons as medical devices and does regulate their safety but only to an extent, with no requirements to test menstrual products for chemical contaminants (aside from making sure they do not contain pesticides or dioxin). The pilot study on tampons containing harmful metals was the first of its kind, which sheds light on how long women’s health has been neglected.
Other examples of gender/racial bias in medicine at the link.
As I wrote on September 8, “The NYT Can’t Stop Being a Fluffer for a Deranged Donald Trump.” I have also written on how how NYT Editor Joe Kahn and Publisher A.G. Sulzberger are in the tank for big corporations, such as the New York Times, actually favoring the corporate tax cuts of Trump and defends the interests of Wall Street and its wealthiest readers.
However, there is another reason that the NYT should be sanctioned by the Pulitzer Committee. When it comes to Trump, it doesn’t allow its reporters to write articles on what prattle, vulgarities, and deranged behavior that they are presenting as “truthful” reports on Trump’s insane remarks and actions. By now, everyone is aware of sanewashing, something that the NYT has set the national standard for employing. Any apprentice journalist understands that their obligation is to report the truth, not to create fictional accounts.
It is, however, more insidious and unethical. Imagine if the Columbia School of Journalism taught its aspiring journalists to write stories based on inventing a coherency to absolute nonsense, uncouth, violent and insane rambling remarks, not to mention a man running for president stopping a rally to pathetically dance for more than a half an hour.
The NYT piled on, in 2016, in stories too numerous to mention that basically Hillary Clinton’s non-scandalous emails were disqualifying from her assuming the presidency. That probably was a decisive factor in her losing the razor thin election.
But what the NYT is doing this year is far more troubling. It is instructing its reporters to create a candidate that doesn’t exist: a candidate that makes sense, by not writing what Trump says or does, but by creating out of whole cloth a cogent narrative. This is in violation of the most basic journalistic ethics of even a cub reporter.
The NYT should be reprimanded and censured by the Pulitzer Committee for journalistic malpractice that is assisting a demented Donald Trump in pursuit of a second term. It’s not an issue of what Kahn claims is his paper not taking a position on either party.
It’s just a flagrant and intolerable violation of the most basic journalistic ethics.
Howard Lutnick, the Wall Street CEO heading up Donald Trump’s transition operation, is facing accusations from some Trump insiders that he is improperly mixing his business interests with his duties standing up a potential administration.
Political infighting now that figures in the campaign around Trump are seriously planning for what to do if Trump actually wins. This is critical because it’s clear that Trump is going to do even less then he did in his first go as president. His administration members will likely have a lot of freedom to run their own grifts rather then skimming off some money from the Trump grifts they are ordered to implement.
Seems to be 3 basic factions. The Heritage foundation people that Trump is trying to politically separate himself from even though a lot of his policy is cribbed from them, people from his last government that he said he liked and expected jobs someplace in his new government, and people from his current campaign trying to secure a more permanent position. While this is going on Lutnick is scheduling them for back to back meetings, interviews for positions in the new administration and meetings to try and sell his legal firm’s advice.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a simple explanation for why North Korea is providing troops to assist in Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
“I think it’s because of the money,” said Zelenskyy. “I think North Korea is very poor, so they will send their people to the front.”
According to South Korean intelligence, dictator Kim Jong-un has dispatched 12,000 North Korean soldiers to provide more fodder for Putin’s war. In addition, The Guardian reports that 1,500 members of North Korea’s special forces have been sent to Russia for additional training before they enter the war.
Money seems like as good an explanation as any. North Korea has been selling Russia artillery, bombs, ammunition, and other military materiel for months. Why shouldn’t Kim sell Putin a few thousand men? Pyongyang has them, […]
There have been reports that thousands of the North Korean troops have already entered Ukraine. As of Tuesday morning, there are no confirmed reports that these troops have taken part in front-line fighting, but don’t be surprised if that confirmation comes in the next few days. (And don’t be surprised if it’s near Pokrovsk.)
In a diplomatic sense, this is a Big Deal. For Kim, these men may be utterly disposable—it would be very surprising to find that he had sent Putin anything other than men from the very bottom of the North Korean military’s none-too-tall skill tree. However, for most of the world, putting “boots on the ground” represents a far more serious involvement in a conflict than shipping boxes of ammunition. How this move will affect the actions of Ukraine’s allies remains unclear. It may, at least, accelerate the slow-motion handling of requests to authorize broader use of Western weapons.
[…] On paper, Russia’s advantages in this conflict seemed so massive and overwhelming from day one, that Ukraine’s independence seemed measurable in hours. But from the moment that Russian troops rolled across the Ukrainian border, the world has witnessed a string of miracles—miracles constructed from skill and audaciousness.
Ukraine won enormous victories around Kyiv, in Kharkiv, and at Kherson. For some time there, Goliath wasn’t exactly dead, but David was definitely looking like a contender.
But over the last six months, Russia has ground its way back across Ukraine, breaking out of the cordon of defensive positions near Donetsk and slowly eating its way to the west at a rate of about a soccer field a day; not so fast that there’s a threat that Kyiv is going to fall in a month, a year, or even several years. But enough that Putin can keep up a pretense of victory and Ukraine is saddled with a string of destroyed towns, displaced persons, and military losses.
Russia is achieving this through a strategy that might be identified as “applied neglect.” They’re not quite practicing the mindless-waves-of-zombies technique that was perfected by former Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in the impossibly costly assault on Bakhmut, but what they are doing is simply an evolution of that technique. Russia is trading enormous numbers of men and equipment for modest gains.
The Ukrainian General Staff is regularly estimating Russia’s casualties at over 1,300 men a day along with three dozen artillery and twice that number of vehicles. For that, Russia has been gaining about one 13th of the distance that would be covered if you laid the men lost end to end each day.
Feeding 12,000 poorly trained and inexperienced North Korean troops into the Russian system represents about a kilometer and a half. They’re nine days’ worth of fuel for a war machine that runs on blood.
But if they get that kilometer and a half before being used up, Putin will be thrilled. And Kim won’t care.
In a military sense, what’s going to matter is whether Putin is satisfied with the performance of his new “ammo” from North Korea. And whether he orders more.
——————————-
Mixed signals in Kursk as things heat up around Novoivanovka
Last week, Russia made a dash down the highway northwest of Sudzha reaching the town of Novoivanoka. At the same time, Russian forces chopped off the northernmost tip of the Ukrainian advance above Pogrebki. The result was a group of Ukrainian troops at Ogolvka who were in danger of being cut off. [map at the link]
Now Ukrainian forces have reportedly withdrawn from Ogolvka while Russia has moved in to reclaim the village. Ukrainian forces in the area remain stretched out and in danger. Without reinforcement, they could be forced to fall back to the highway from Sudzha to Pogrebki.
However, this situation may not be as bleak as it first appears. There were reports on Monday that Ukrainian forces had advanced to the west from their position just south of Novoivanovka and were threatening to cut off the Russian salient and reverse the situation in this area.
It’s particularly interesting that Ukraine is reportedly using a combination of the U.S. M1A1 Abrams tank and Bradley fighting vehicle at Novoivanovka. For Ukraine to be using these vehicles in the hottest fighting in the region may signal that Russia lacks that combo of drones plus mines that made so many front-line battles over the last year a death trap for armor. [X post and video at the link]
Reports of Ukrainian success in the area continued on Tuesday. This isn’t a vital strategic location or a massive conflict, but if Ukraine can recapture the town and drive Russia back, it would be an embarrassing defeat for Putin’s efforts to reclaim this area. [X post, video, and maps at the link]
To the west, Ukraine continues to hold the area that it developed around Veseloye two weeks ago. It’s not clear if there has been any progress in expanding this area over the last week.
Other reports indicate that Russia has solidified control over the area west of Borki at the southeast area of the incursion, but the fighting near Novoivanovka seems to be the heart of the action for now.
——————————-
Russia captures multiple villages south of Pokrovsk
Results are decidedly less mixed in the massive push of Russian forces moving west from the occupied city of Donetsk. While Ukraine clings to critical defensive positions, Russia advanced in multiple locations this week, making Ukraine’s ability to protect the strategically significant city of Pokrovsk more difficult by the day. [map at the link]
For much of the war, the fighting in this area was near the 2014 line at Avdiivka, Optyne, and Pisky on the east side of this map. The red area here represents the most significant advance of Russia since the first year of the war. The whole distance between Pokrovsk and Donetsk is only about 50 kilometers, so this may not seem like a lot to show for a year’s worth of fighting and hundreds of thousands of casualties, but Russia has been able to sustain this slow advance over that period. Even the resumption of U.S. assistance doesn’t seem to have done much to affect Russia’s gains.
Russia has now reportedly taken the villages of Mykhailivka and Zhelanne Pershe. It has also solidified its positions around the three towns southeast of Pokrovsk. Russia is now concentrating artillery and bombs on Lysivika and a pair of villages directly west of Hrodivka as it prepares its assault on Pokrovsk from the east.
But by far the most critical target remains the town of Selydove, protecting the highway access to the south. The experienced Kara-dag brigade has reportedly been handed the task of holding this position, and by all accounts, they are acquitting themselves well, but Russia continues to work around the town on the south, making this position increasingly difficult.
————————-
Confirmed losses on both sides are daunting, but the way Russia has been burning through armored transports (and presumably soldiers inside them) is simply jaw-dropping. [list at the link]
For what it’s worth, Russian military bloggers claim that Abrams tanks are also on the front line at Selydove. But since those Russian bloggers are also claiming that “over 50” Abrams have been destroyed here — which would be 20 more than the total sent to Ukraine — take that with a whole mountain of salt.
Russian bloggers are also claiming that Ukraine is withdrawing forces from Kursk to reinforce positions south of Pokrovsk, but there is no confirmation from the Ukrainian side.
Another focus of activity is developing a few kilometers south at Kurakhivka. [X post and video at the link featuring Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin]
Putin’s war of choice poses fundamental questions to every government and every person who seeks a decent and secure world. And so I ask today: Do rules matter? Do rights matter? Does sovereignty matter? I believe that they do. President Biden believes that they do. And every free citizen of Ukraine believes that they do.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, warned that Trump’s failure to enter into agreements with the Biden administration on a presidential transition could endanger the peaceful transfer of power.
The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, is sounding the alarm over former President Donald Trump’s failure to enter into key agreements with the Biden administration for the presidential transition process, warning that it could endanger the peaceful transfer of power and threaten U.S. national security.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, obtained exclusively by NBC News, Raskin warned that they are “breaking the precedent set by every other presidential candidate since 2010” by not accepting resources provided by the federal government for a smooth transition.
“Your actions depart from well-established norms of the federal government and demonstrate a spectacular disregard for the successful continuation of the essential institutions of American democratic government,” Raskin wrote.
The Maryland Democrat said it appears Trump could be trying to flout fundraising reporting requirements and rules designed to prevent conflicts of interest in the incoming administration.
Both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris were supposed to enter into a memorandum of understanding (MOU), or agreement, with the General Services Administration by Sept. 1 and an MOU with the White House by Oct. 1, as part of the transition process.
The Trump campaign has missed the deadlines, while Harris’ campaign entered into the agreements in September, Raskin said. A GSA spokesperson confirmed the agreement with the Harris campaign to NBC News on Wednesday and said the agency is “actively working with the Trump transition team to complete” a separate agreement. A White House spokesperson also confirmed that to NBC News and said the federal transition coordinator “is actively working with the Trump transition team to complete a MOU.”
The GSA agreement provides campaigns with access to office space and equipment, information technology and staff assistance from the federal government, Raskin wrote, adding that it gives candidates and their transition teams “direct access to the people, resources and information — including national security information — needed to keep our country safe.”
[…] Candidates who accept the government’s “services and facilities” are also required to disclose privately raised funds for the transition to the public and are limited to $5,000 per person.
[…] Trump was asked by Bloomberg News’ Editor in Chief John Micklethwait in an interview last week if he would respect and encourage a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election. Trump responded by claiming there was “a very peaceful transfer” in 2020 because he left Washington, D.C., on the morning of President Joe Biden’s inauguration and went to Florida.
He also defended his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters rioted inside the U.S. Capitol, saying it was a day of “love and peace.”
When it comes to politics, Elon Musk’s ideas are utterly, revealingly conventional.
I write a newsletter called On the Right, which covers the often-complicated and compelling political ideas driving the modern conservative movement. This week, I thought it’d be important to cover Elon Musk, a man who is single-handedly bankrolling much of Donald Trump’s ground game. What are the ideas that drive an engineering titan to make such a sharp turn into politics?
But reporting on Musk’s worldview led me to a perhaps surprising conclusion: His politics are boring.
His social politics are taken straight from the X replies he frequents — a specific type of edgelord bigotry that drifts frequently into debunked conspiracy theories. His economic views are even less interesting — the same tired hostility toward taxation and regulation that you hear from most people of his economic strata. For someone who has done such innovative work on cars and rocket ships, his politics could scarcely be more conventional.
Yet for all their boringness, I realized Musk’s ideas were worth writing about anyway.
This is true, in part, because of his sheer financial investment — one that Trump himself estimates at roughly $500 million in total. The eye-popping sum together with stunts like the possibly illegal million-dollar-a-day raffle for registered swing state voters demand some scrutiny of the man behind it all. While Musk may not successfully buy the election, he has succeeded in purchasing our collective attention.
Perhaps more importantly, the unoriginality of Musk’s politics is revealing in itself. In Musk, we see Trumpism as it truly is: not a war between populists and small-government types, but a marriage of them.
In the conventional picture of the modern GOP, the Trumpian culture warriors are described as “populists” comfortable with big government who are being held back by their super-rich allies. The super-rich, in turn, are described as cultural libertines who put up with the race-baiting and xenophobia to get their tax cuts.
Yet this picture is misleading, capturing only part of the dynamic. And no one shows why more clearly than Elon Musk.
He is a gullible conspiracy theorist chummy with white nationalists, true — but he is also a plutocrat who believes that the greatest kind of freedom is letting big corporations do whatever they want.
In this, he exposes the flaw in the popular analysis the new GOP is beset by a fundamental contradiction between populists and elites when, in fact, the priorities of the culture warriors and the wealthy are often one and the same.
[…] Musk’s town hall in Pittsburgh on Sunday — which began with about 30 minutes of Musk free-associating on politics followed by an hour and a half of questions — provided one of the most unvarnished looks yet into his political worldview. In front of a friendly audience, with all the time in the world, Musk was free to say whatever he wanted.
He sounded exactly like the person he is on X.
When warning about the risks of a Kamala Harris presidency, for example, Musk dismisses the vice president as an irrelevancy. “There’s almost no point in attacking Kamala personally because she’s just a puppet of the Dem machine,” he says.
Many of his fears about this machine’s agenda — like “wide-open borders” and “freedom of speech taken away” — are classic Trump-right themes. But his crowning fear, the one that he says pushed him into investing so heavily in the Trump campaign, is that the Democrats are importing “illegals” to replace native-born American voters.
“There’s a massive increase in the number of illegals being put in swing states,” Musk said. “The goal will then be, over the next four years, to legalize all of those illegals. … Every swing state will be blue. America will be a one-party state forever, just like California. And that will be a nightmare — democracy gone. That’s what I think will happen with a Kamala presidency.”
This, as my colleague Li Zhou explains, is top-to-bottom nonsense.
Musk’s claim that the undocumented population in swing states is surging, sourced to unspecified “government data,” appears false: Data from both Homeland Security and Pew Research Center debunks Musk’s claim of a Biden-era surge in undocumented immigrants to swing states. (In a few swing states, undocumented populations have shrunk, whereas in others, they’ve increased slightly or been stagnant.) Migrants aren’t being “put” in those states by anyone, let alone Democrats — that’s not how undocumented migration works. Nor is there any evidence Harris has a viable plan to grant them all citizenship in four years or proof they’d all vote for Democrats forever once given the franchise.
Really, what Musk is doing is taking a hoary old white nationalist trope — the “Great Replacement” mainstreamed by X’s most prominent talk show host, Tucker Carlson — and reiterating it with dubious swing-state demographic data. More or less what you’d expect from the guy who once told an X user ranting about Jews that “you have said the actual truth.”
Musk had one other big policy theme throughout the town hall: deregulation. Again and again, he returned to his fervent desire to shrink government so that private industry can work its alleged magic — employing tired anti-government rhetoric that could have been cribbed from any national Republican campaign since Ronald Reagan.
“The larger government gets, the less individual freedom you have,” Musk said. “They’re currently making new agencies at a rate of two per year, and every one of them is chipping away at your freedom. It’s essential for us to unwind that process and restore your personal freedom — and with that will come great prosperity and personal happiness.”
One might note the irony of a man whose companies benefit immensely from subsidies and government contracts proposing to starve the beast. But Musk, for his part, seems unconcerned.
The perfect Trumpist
“Rich guy supports Republicans to eliminate regulations and increase profits” is a tale as old as time. But what’s interesting about Musk is that he pairs it with an almost naive faith in the rankest culture war conspiracies: the sorts of thing the ultra-wealthy aren’t supposed to believe.
Theoretically, the Republican Party is torn between its “populist” and “establishment” wings. The populists are culture warriors who take a more government-friendly line on the economy; the establishment are elite cultural squishes and free market dogmatists.
Yet this stylized description has never really captured the reality on the ground. Trump, the populist-in-chief, is a billionaire whose sole first-term legislative accomplishment was a tax cut for the wealthy. And many of the party’s big-money elite — including Musk, Rebekah Mercer, and Bill Ackman — are all-in on the culture war.
In emerging as Trump’s leading surrogate, Musk helps bring this reality to the fore. His unoriginality, cribbing equally from X trolls and hoary anti-government cliches, shows us what the true priorities of a second Trump term might be. Not the faux populism of JD Vance and staged McDonald’s shifts, but the co-equal prioritization of culture and class war — both waged on the wealthy’s behalf.
Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is a simple if mind-bending fact: A man who became a felon before Election Day could possibly be president of the United States again afterward. But what would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow former President Donald J. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to “retribution.”
In all the different ways that Mr. Trump has upended the traditional rules of American politics, that may be one of the most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.
Whether in his personal life or his public life, Mr. Trump has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.
His businesses went bankrupt repeatedly and multiple others failed. He was taken to court for stiffing his vendors, his bankers and even his own family. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and avoided paying any income taxes for years. He was forced to shell out tens of millions of dollars to students who accused him of scamming them, found liable for wide-scale business fraud and had his real estate firm convicted in criminal court of tax crimes.
He has boasted of grabbing women by their private parts, been reported to have cheated on all three of his wives and been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, including one whose account was validated by a jury that found him liable for sexual abuse after a civil trial.
He is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact). And he used the authority of his office to punish his adversaries and tried to hold onto power on the basis of a brazen lie.
Hurricane Helene had just cut off this already isolated foothill town from everything: power, water, information. Paralyzed, the only thing that residents Carin Harris and Hilary Yoxall could think to do was post up outside their Ingles supermarket and hand out something warm. Soon, donations began to pour in, and a makeshift supplies distribution center emerged from a parking lot off the main two-lane road.
Then everything got more complicated.
A group called Veterans on Patrol showed up in Rutherford County late on the night of Oct. 11, just four people with no supplies. But their leader, Lewis Arthur, came with a lot of promises and a big vision, which he said was sent from God: a three-year plan to help this lakeside community and others around here bounce back, according to Yoxall and Arthur.
At first, it did seem like a Godsend, Yoxall, Harris and other residents said. They started organizing the piles of diapers, boxes of canned food and mounds of winter clothes. But as soon as Yoxall, a retired Army nurse, and Arthur got to talking, and he started telling her about his work fighting cartels at the border, about his need for armed security, she got a bad feeling.
“There’s something wrong here,” she told another longtime resident and fellow organizer.
What she and others didn’t know yet was that Veterans on Patrol is an anti-government group steeped in conspiracy theories and that it has a well-documented history of embedding in communities to launch missions related to migrants or purported child trafficking, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Western States Center, two watchdog groups.
And that the group was motivated to come to this small town because its members believed that the government was using the hurricane to move people here off lithium-rich land and stop them from getting it back, according to the group’s posts on Telegram, the messaging service.
“Hurricane Helene was an act of war perpetuated by the United States Military”; a “land grab” responsible for “murdering hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans,” the group said on Oct. 3. That same day, it launched its disaster deployment operation, stating that it was “coming to the aid of those who will not sell, have stolen, or be restricted their property” and to replace the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Over the course of 11 days, this makeshift hurricane supplies depot in a supermarket parking lot became a snapshot of the chaos that can unfold in some corners of post-disaster America: Residents came together to help their community because local officials were unable to. People came searching for critical supplies because the federal government does not give those out as part of its disaster response. An extremist group motivated by anti-government beliefs and conspiracy theories was able to show up, wield influence and become a source of help for some and fear for others.
And in the mix of all that, an armed man from a town over, also fueled by viral, anti-government misinformation, joined the fray. He showed up right when Veterans on Patrol did, Yoxall and two other volunteers said, joining their Sunday prayer circle. Then he talked about “hunting FEMA,” she said. Police eventually arrested and charged him with “going armed to the terror of the public.”
“What is happening in my backyard?” Yoxall said last week. “I don’t know these people, and if they are trying to get a foothold here in my community, they are getting a good start.”
[…] In addition to Veterans on Patrol, members of more than a dozen other extremist, white-nationalist and militia organizations also came to some hard-hit western North Carolina towns for disaster response, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which studies extremism and disinformation, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
[…] Armed threats at the Ingles parking lot and elsewhere caused snags in FEMA’s work and that of other federal agencies on the ground, according to federal officials. For at least 48 hours, workers and contractors doing an array of jobs such as clearing trees and inspecting homes stopped working. FEMA adjusted its security practices, for example, not going door-to-door in certain locations. The agency, already stretched thin, has had to divert time and resources away from helping people to combating misinformation […]
On Sept. 29, an X user suggested that the supposed presence of lithium provided a motive for someone to “modify” the storm, to steal access to the mineral. Prominent voices amplified the theory to millions of people.
Groups such as Veterans on Patrol soon picked it up. “Isn’t it ironic how much lithium is available in the areas targeted by Helene?” the group asked in a Sept. 30 Telegram post.
(There is, in fact, a lithium mine in the North Carolina foothills about a 60-mile drive from Lake Lure. But that area wasn’t as affected, and the government cannot control a hurricane’s path. […])
Chris Martenson, a right-leaning, conspiracy-minded author and influencer with more than 200,000 followers, published on his verified X account that he had heard that residents in nearby Chimney Rock were told that their town “was being bulldozed, bodies and all and the land was being seized by the federal government,” possibly to mine lithium. […]
Amid this swirl of suspicion, Trump also started casting doubts on FEMA. On the morning of Oct. 3, he took to Truth Social and shared that “FEMA is largely MIA because it has diverted resources for immigration resettlement.”
[…] Harris and Yoxall decided to confront Arthur directly. “We appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but you’re not part of this community, you can back off the supplies,” Yoxall said she told him.
And that’s when he snapped, they said.
“He was threatening me,” Harris said Saturday morning. “Then it turned into people calling me last night, like, be careful. Be careful. Really, he’s talking a lot about you.”
After that, they decided to walk away.
On Monday morning, they went back, again telling Arthur to pack it up, showing the encounter on a video call with a reporter. The Ingles supermarket chain had also gotten involved, the women said. And the people who lent him the giant circus tent and massive trailers no longer wanted to be a part of this.[…]
Re @ 293
Unless there are algorithms that can be assessed, no, I would not trust a large language model to drive anything except perhaps a lunar rover.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=T_-kRjjpE0k
If you are familiar with the Nigerian “Vultures Of Horror” film franchise, but want something worse: The films made by the Wright family.
birgerjohanssonsays
The TEC Show:
Early Voting Surge: Harris Vs Trump – Possible Paths To A Win In The 2024 Presidential Election
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jhdwaMJS-Ng
It is not all doom and gloom.
Donald Trump’s favorite morning show beclowned itself once again on Wednesday morning, when “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade defended Trump for reportedly saying that he needed “the kind of generals that Hitler had.”
In his embarrassing screed, Kilmeade said Trump was righteously angry that some of his generals refused to carry out his will—even though some of the things Trump wanted them to do were insane and illegal, such as using the military to shoot protesters at the White House in 2020.
That lamentation led up to the pièce de résistance, in which Kilmeade said, “I could absolutely see [Trump] go, ‘Now you know what, it would be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do’—knowing that’s a third—maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis and whatever.”
It goes without saying that probably everyone is cognizant of the fact that Adolf Hitler and his generals were bad. Together, they helped carry out one of the worst genocides in history in their effort to ethnically cleanse the world of Jews, LGBTQ+ people, other ethnic minorities, and anyone who disagreed with their goal.
To even make the assertion that Trump maybe didn’t know Hitler and his generals were bad is absurd enough. But Kilmeade’s defense that maybe Trump wasn’t speaking about Hitler’s generals per se is just false.
John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff who went public on Tuesday about Trump’s fascist behavior and praise of Hitler, said that Trump specifically wanted to have generals like Hitler.
The Atlantic:
This week, I asked Kelly about their exchange. He told me that when Trump raised the subject of “German generals,” Kelly responded by asking, “‘Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” He went on: “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals? And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler.” Kelly told me Trump was not acquainted with Rommel.
Remarkably, this also wasn’t the only time Trump praised Hitler’s leadership.
Kelly also told media outlets that Trump said Hitler “did some good things.” (This was first reported by CNN’s Jim Sciutto, in March.)
“I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing,’” Kelly recalled telling Trump.
Trying to put Trump’s disgusting comments into context in an effort to sanitize them and erase their shock value is par for the course for Trump’s nihilistic defenders.
They don’t want voters to internalize the warnings from multiple former Trump aides, like Kelly, who are warning how dangerous a second Trump term in office may be.
But even some Republicans have had enough.
“This… is insane. Hitler’s generals carried out GENOCIDE,” wrote Republican strategist Sarah Matthews, who has endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. “Republicans: STOP defending this. This is not normal. There is no way to spin this.”
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen claimed victory on Russian money frozen in Western bank accounts, infuriating the Kremlin. Washington Post link
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko held a signing ceremony Wednesday advancing plans to provide Ukraine with $50 billion in loans, breaking a months-long logjam and providing Kyiv with cash it urgently needs before the end of the year.
The plan relies on the interest accruing on roughly $280 billion in Russian central bank assets kept in Western accounts but frozen since the start of the war in 2022. That interest, estimated at several billion dollars each year, would go to repay the loans over time. The United States will lend $20 billion before the end of this year, and European and other Western allies are expected to provide more than $30 billion.
Yellen announced this week that allies have agreed to require Russia to pay the loan back if the war ends before the interest can cover the total — a move intended to keep it from becoming Western taxpayers’ responsibility. Finance ministers from around the world are in Washington now for meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
The breakthrough represents a victory for Yellen, who has worked with her international counterparts for much of this year to find a way to use Russian central bank assets to help Ukraine. It also reflects the lengths the Western allies have gone to maintain the flow of funding for Kyiv, adopting a strikingly aggressive measure that few diplomats thought possible until recently.
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin is engaged in a contest of wills with our coalition, and he is counting on us to retreat,” Yellen said at a news conference Wednesday. “We will not retreat. … We will do everything we can to support Ukraine.”
President Joe Biden also said in a statement on Wednesday that the loan “is another reminder to Vladimir Putin that the world has rallied behind Ukraine.”
Russia has characterized the plan to use its bank assets as an attack on its sovereignty and the rule of law, while defenders of the plan have argued that the Kremlin deserves to face consequences for illegally invading Ukraine in 2022. Western officials have been eager to finish the loan before the U.S. election, given former president Donald Trump’s repeated skepticism of the Ukrainian cause.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said [snipped those comments]
Ukraine faces a deficit as high as $45 billion next year, and the additional infusion from the West could help avoid painful cuts to government services or tax hikes that could slow its economy to a halt, said Oleg Ustenko, who has served as an economic adviser to the Ukrainian government. Many Ukrainians also worry that if Trump wins, he would cut off any additional U.S. support to Ukraine, including military assistance.
“It’s crucially important from two points of view: We have to make sure the country is about to continue its fight against Russia, so inside the country it’s a very powerful and symbolic action. But it’s also extremely important to mitigate the risk related to a possible cut in financial support if Trump is elected,” Ustenko said. […]
The United States and European allies imposed sanctions freezing Russia’s central bank assets after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. U.S. officials have since pushed for all of those assets to be confiscated and redirected to Ukraine, but some European countries strongly opposed the idea, raising concerns about the legality of the move and the potential to undermine investor confidence in Europe, where most of the Russian bank assets are held.
The agreement to use only the interest emerged as a successful compromise that both sides could support. But even after that understanding was reached this year, logistical challenges slowed disbursement of the aid. Washington sought safeguards that it would not be left on the hook for loans if European Union sanctions were one day loosened, unfreezing the assets.
The particular concern was that Hungary and its Moscow-friendly prime minister, Viktor Orban, might veto the sanctions, which must be renewed unanimously by E.U. members every six months. The United States had pushed for the assets to remain frozen for a longer period, but that would require E.U. unanimity, which Hungary made impossible.
But the prospect of another Trump presidency gave the Europeans greater urgency to act before the end of the year. As the joint initiative stalled, the European Union decided in recent weeks to lend Ukraine up to 35 billion euros (nearly $38 billion). Now, the United States is also moving forward, despite concerns from congressional Republicans and others who have said American taxpayers have already shouldered too much of the financial burden of the war. Congress has approved more than $100 billion in aid for Ukraine since the start of the war, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank.
“You shouldn’t be allowed to have it both ways — both to benefit from your position in the global economy and attack the global economy,” said Simon Johnson, an MIT economist, who called the loan a “remarkable achievement” for the U.S. Treasury. “This sends a signal to other countries, including China, that you should play by the rules on international security. It’s an entirely fair and reasonable message.”
a man standing in the background appears to have six fingers grasped around his glass. […] a slight inconsistency in the reflection in the girl’s eyes. Her left eye clearly shows a specular reflection, but her right eye does not […] the girl’s right forearm and hand, which appears elongated and misshapen as it disappears into Trump’s underarm […] It also does not match the more tanned skin tone of the rest of her arm. […] overly shiny and smooth skin and hair texture on both Trump and the girl, which gives them an almost cartoonish quality.
birgerjohanssonsays
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 302
Thank you!
.
“Trump Is a Fascist Who Praised Hitler and Hitler’s Generals, John Kelly Says / A Closer Look”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=e0jh86S1j5I
Some Democrats blame Stein for robbing them of victory in the 2016 presidential election.
In Michigan and another key swing state, Wisconsin, the Green Party candidate’s total number of votes was greater than the margin by which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
This time, Democrats are taking no chances.
A Gen-Z voter group backing Kamala Harris has branded Stein as a scammer, who’s running a “spoiler” campaign. ( I completely agree – ed.)
…(Snip).. Stein is polling nationally at about one per cent, but small shifts to a third-party candidate in key battlegrounds could make all the difference in who wins the White House in November.
If Stein and West among others actually cared about progressive causes and the future they would drop out and throw their support 100% behind Kamala Harris and do everything they can to get her elected. Then work to change the system and make third parties voting actually possible and workable e.g. having preferential voting.
Now is NOT the time to fuck around or allow divide & conquer to destroy left wing hopes of any improvement yet again.
The consequences of a Trump winning this are far too grave to risk especially given his openly stated desire to end American Democracy (such as it is in a system already heavily biased to the reichwing) and rule as a repressive merciless dictator. If they cost Kamala victory I have little doubt they will very soon deeply regret it for the rest of their lives and will have destroyed democracy in the USA and damaged the world incalculably badly. .This is NOT hyperbole but a very serious concern and legitimate fear given all Trump has already said and done.
We also know that the Repugs will be vastly catastrophically worse for Palestinians in particular and Muslims in general and that they won’t just lose Gaza (already arguably lost) but also the West Bank and any hope of a state of their own. The counter-productive, self-destructive “Uncommitted / Abandon Harris” group really needs to reconsider their position and what the consequences of their choices and words will be here. Punishing Harris for what Netanyahu is doing will – potentially literally as wellas metaphorically – be the death of them. Think Muslim ban & deportation plans under the Christianist extremist Project 2025 and Trump’s actual fucking nazism.
StevoRsays
A new study has found infant mortality rates in the US have increased more than expected following a court decision which overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
Meanwhile research published by the Society of Family Planning, has found abortion rates have stayed the same overall, despite an outright ban in some states.
Here’s what we know.
… (snip).. Researchers used national monthly data on total live births and infant deaths from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) database for the years 2018 to 2023.It found the months after the Dobbs decision there was a 7 per cent absolute increase in infant mortality overall, about 247 more deaths than the prior periods.
Researchers used national monthly data on total live births and infant deaths from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) database for the years 2018 to 2023.It found the months after the Dobbs decision there was a 7 per cent absolute increase in infant mortality overall, about 247 more deaths than the prior periods.
And no fewer abortions. So who are the real baby killers, even if we grant the dubious premise of fetal personhood? <smh>
“Hey, hey, Brett K! How many kids did you kill today?”
John Moralessays
Good grief!
What’s this, some competition for the most inane comment?
—
“Can you spell “quid pro quo”?”
Yup. Bloody oath I can.
Do you know what it means?
“So who are the real baby killers, even if we grant the dubious premise of fetal personhood? ”
The Sydney Morning Herald is the real baby killers, are they? Heh.
““Hey, hey, Brett K! How many kids did you kill today?””
None, you fool. Zero. Nil. Less than one.
(How many did you kill? Be honest, now)
—
“Now is NOT the time to fuck around or allow divide & conquer to destroy left wing hopes of any improvement yet again.”
So, as far as you are concerned, there exists a time to fuck around and allow divide & conquer to destroy left wing hopes of any improvement yet again.
Just not right now, this very moment.
(What, tomorrow?)
“A new study has found infant mortality rates in the US have increased more than expected [etc]”
Yeah, well. That means someone’s expectations were wrong.
“”There are generations who no longer want to celebrate Mother England, the British Empire, or the family that’s ruled over it for centuries.””
And someone is supposedly excited about that?
(What, do you still want to celebrate Mother England, the British Empire, and the family that’s ruled over it for centuries?)
John Moralessays
BTW, the house of Hanover became the ruling family of England in 1714, and was succeeded by the house of Windsor in 1901.
1901-2024 is not “centuries”.
John Moralessays
Why some people take titles as a given (though the content contradicts those) and appeal to false claims (centuries!) on the basis of some opinion piece is not definitively known to me. I can but speculate.
lumipunasays
birgerjohansson at 174 (a couple days ago):
The time is running running out to see the comet with the naked eye, it will be down to magnitude 4 the 22th October.
It is by now quite high in the western sky and you can see it at twilight preferably before the moon rises. For star maps see internet, for instance Sky and telescope.
I still haven’t managed to see a comet in my life. The couple prominent ones in recent years (when I started paying attention to astronomy) were apparently only visible from the southern hemisphere. This current one, too, has been poorly visible from the high northern latitudes.
I first tried to see it on Saturday 12th. The sky was reasonably clear, but I hadn’t yet correctly figured out where to look, and what’s the best sighting spot in my local park. The next couple evenings were overcast. On Tuesday 15th I failed to see it again, unsurprisingly, as it would have been low in the hazy horizon above the lights of Helsinki. As I later heard, it was already rapidly growing dimmer. No wonder i couldn’t see it.
There hasn’t been a properly clear evening since then. However, the magnificent Moon has been often visible between and behind clouds. It just passed very close to what I guess is Jupiter. On a couple occasions, there’s been a lovely view of tattered clouds rushing across the sky very rapidly in windy weather, and the stars in their fixed positions partly visible from the gaps between clouds.
Rob Grigjanissays
John @311:
and was succeeded by the house of Windsor Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1901.
Name changed to Windsor in 1917.
1901-2024 is not “centuries”.
It’s 1.23 centuries. You eat a slice of pizza. Then you eat a further half slice. Someone asks you how much pizza you ate. Do you respond “one and a half slice”?
Anyway, Edward VII (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) was the son of Victoria (Hanover), so different house, same family, so still more than two centuries.
John Moralessays
Rob:
It’s 1.23 centuries.
So, not even two (2) centuries.
A century and a bit, actually.
Anyway, Edward VII (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) was the son of Victoria (Hanover), so different house, same family, so still more than two centuries.
So quick you are to repudiate your earlier claim of 1.23 centuries!
In that very spirit, I note we’re all descended from Adam and Eve, so all the same family. Right?
(The incest is not quite as metaphorical in the Royal lines, but whatever)
—
See, context is that King Chuckie has visited Oz.
Fawning over them is old hat, but being boorish towards them is, well, still being boorish.
It’s an opinion piece, that of course StevoR treats as Gospel.
(Can’t actually be discriminating, can we?)
John Moralessays
“You eat a slice of pizza. Then you eat a further half slice. Someone asks you how much pizza you ate. Do you respond “one and a half slice”?”
Is there supposed to be a ‘gotcha’ here?
Honestly, I am bemused that you even attempt to try that.
Of course I would respond “one and a half slice”, were I being honest.
Fewer than two, more than one.
(You know about fenceposts, no?
The day after your birthday, you are not one year older than on the day of your birthday)
John Moralessays
[we did inequalities in, um, third year of high school. It was all intuitively obvious to me, even then]
Also posted on my social media, but I thought I’d drop a copy here since I’ve tried to write it in a “newsy” fashion, and I didn’t see this subject matter upthread.
So the weekend-before-last, Emma and I, along with my brother and his husband, were driving off to a late lunch when I noticed something interesting on the maths forum I make occasional contributions to, and exclaimed: “Oh! There’s a new Mersenne prime!”
These are famously easier than primes of other forms to discover and prove prime, so that for most of the last few centuries the largest known prime number has usually been a Mersenne prime.
At least four were known to antiquity, and their properties codified by Euclid. Arab mathematicians found another three, though it is disputed whether they truly had tested their primality. Five more were discovered in Europe and Russia up until the First World War, using manual techniques. The next 40 have been found with the invention of the computer. So they’re big and very rare.
This new prime is 2 to the power of 136,279,841, minus 1. That’s a huge number; in decimal representation, it is 41,024,320 digits in size. Just ridiculously colossal.
Anyway, it was not exactly unexpected for one of these to turn up now (nearly six years had elapsed since the last find), as several months ago a new contributor had started generating results at an incredible rate. Back on the 4th of July I had said something like the following on the forum:
“I’ve been thinking our new ANONYMOUS contributor is chewing up exponents so rapidly that circumstances might eventually compel them to uncloak their status incognito. Circumstances such as a first discovery indicated by a [positive, Probable Prime] result.”
It’s sort of bizarre to have something you write, turn out to be true in every detail within a matter of three and a half months. The ANONYMOUS contributor found the needle among the haystack of five hundred thousand negative tests, which did provide the impetus for him to go public. He is (or was) a software engineer for NVIDIA from San José named Luke Durant, and he assembled a global cloud supercomputer of GPUs at 24 different datacenters in 17 countries. A GPU in Dublin found the Mersenne prime with a probabilistic test; a GPU in San Antonio, TX confirmed it prime with a definitive primality test.
There’s some videos on YouTube from the usual Maths channels run by Aussies (Matt Parker of Stand-Up Maths, and Brady Haran of Numberphile), one of which has an interview with the discoverer – who it also turns out, is one of the guys I’ve been chatting with on the forum publicly and via private message, on and off for the last six months.
Earlier in April, I was working on bug-fixes to one of the pieces of software that might potentially be used to confirm the primality of a new Mersenne prime. At that point I’d written the following in the patch note:
“This patch also incorporates improvements and bug fixes from (in no particular order) Teal Dulcet, Ken Kriesel, Laurent Desnogues, nbdy, Gary Gostin, and Catherine Cowie;” and it turns out to no big surprise, the guy planning to discover a Mersenne prime who might have an interest in contributing to that code was our pseudonymous nbdy, aka Luke Durant.
So … that’s all feeling a bit weird, in a ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ way. Except obviously there was only one degree of separation.
lumipuna @ 313
Check the website for Sky And Telescope, they describe the path of the comet until the beginning 8f this week. You should be able to extrapolate wherevthe comet is today, but it will be too faint to see with the naked eye.
You may try using binoculars with only minor magnification, the important part is to boost the light intensity.
birgerjohanssonsays
Found And Explained’:
“This is the best fighter jet ever”
Fun fact: Viggen is the only fighter jet you can parallel park (it has a thrust reverser).
The successor SAAB JAS-39 Gripen is much smaller, and can make do without a thrust reverser when landing.
(BTW the British Panavia Tornado was also intended to be a ‘universal’ fighter aircraft but ran into the same problems as Viggen with radar systems that needed to be specialised- the tech of the era was not up to the task of making a ‘swiss universal knife’ radar)
Another unconventional fighter. The first to ever do the ‘cobra’ manouver.
This was the first generation of Mach 2 aircraft and there was no consensus about how a Mach 2 fighter should be designed, hence both the British English Electric Lightning and several Soviet types stuck to the air intake being in the nose rather than making potentially risky design choices.
Note that both Lightning and Draken could climb very rapidly but Draken had one Avon engine while Lightning needed two.
Elon Musk’s super PAC didn’t announce a winner for its “daily” $1 million giveaway to registered swing state voters on Wednesday, the same day news broke that the Justice Department warned Musk’s group that its sweepstakes might be illegal.
The pro-Trump group, America PAC, had publicly named a winner every day since Saturday, when Musk announced that he would award $1 million every day to people who sign his petition. The petition is in support of the 1st and 2nd Amendments to the Constitution, but importantly, only registered voters in the battleground states can sign the petition and are therefore eligible for the money.
CNN reported Wednesday afternoon that the Justice Department had sent a warning letter to the super PAC, notifying it that the lottery might violate federal law against offering incentives such as cash or prizes to induce voter registration, people briefed on the matter told CNN.
[…]
Former senior Homeland Security official Elizabeth Neumann said in reference to Donald Trump, “Does he have authoritarian tendencies? Yes.”
When Elizabeth Neumann was a Trump-appointed official at the Department of Homeland Security, she served as assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy. Her focus, as her title suggested, was focused on identifying possible domestic security threats.
What Neumann discovered, however, was that it was effectively impossible to convince Donald Trump to take certain threats — such as those posed by violent right-wing extremists — seriously, no matter how many times he was told. The then-president, the DHS official came to realize, simply wouldn’t listen.
With this in mind, Neumann, who voted for Trump in 2016, publicly endorsed Joe Biden in August 2020.
Four years later, the former senior Homeland Security official — professionally trained to identify threats — is still trying to alert the public to the dangers her former boss poses. Politico reported:
A former senior Homeland Security official in the Trump administration said Wednesday that the former president has “authoritarian tendencies” and “does not operate by the rule of law” — echoing a denunciation by his former chief of staff and other senior figures. Elizabeth Neumann, who served as deputy chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security and assistant secretary for threat prevention and security policy, said she agreed with former Marine Gen. John Kelly’s explosive assessment that Donald Trump is not fit for the office.
“Does he have authoritarian tendencies? Yes,” Neumann told Politico. “Is he kind of leaning towards that ultra-nationalism component? Absolutely.”
To be sure, the vast majority of Americans are probably unfamiliar with the former DHS official and her work. I don’t seriously expect a significant number of voters to suddenly decide to cast a vote for Kamala Harris because of Neumann’s assessment, no matter how accurate it is.
But the broader point is that Neumann has an extraordinary amount of company. Her criticisms come on the heels of similar — in some cases, even more brutal — condemnations from former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, and former White House national security advisor John Bolton.
They were all appointed by Trump. They’re all now denouncing him in striking ways.
[…] there’s a reason the Harris campaign is leaning into messaging about the opposition Trump is facing from former leading officials in his own administration.
Mark T. Esper, the former defense secretary under Donald Trump, suggested Wednesday that he agreed with the assessment by Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, that the former president meets the definition of a fascist. Esper, another former Trump administration official who has since become a critic, said in a CNN interview that he was reluctant to use the same label that Kelly used in a New York Times interview published Tuesday. But Esper then noted that Kelly had looked up the definition of a fascist in the interview — and Esper urged “everybody” to do the same.
Commentary:
“Ask yourself, does he fall into those categories?” Trump’s former handpicked Pentagon chief told a national television audience. “And it’s hard to say that he doesn’t when you kind of look at those terms. He certainly has those inclinations, and I think it’s something we should be wary about.” [video at the link]
This came on the heels of Esper also expressing public concern about the former president describing many Americans as “the enemy within,” and even threatening to use the U.S. military against civilians on American soil.
“I think President Trump has learned the key is getting people around you who will do your bidding, who will not push back, who will implement what you want to do,” Esper said on CNN. “And I think he’s talked about that. His acolytes have talked about that. I think loyalty will be the first litmus test.
“So yes, of course, it concerns me on many levels, not least of which is the impact it could have on American citizens. It’s the impact on the institution of the military, the impact it could have on the professional ethic of our officers and NCOs and soldiers and sailors and airmen. So I’m concerned about all these things, all the impacts on multiple levels.”
These comments echoed related rhetoric from the former Defense secretary, who has also warned Americans that Trump is “unfit” for office, a national security threat, and a “threat to democracy.”
In case this isn’t obvious, let’s go ahead and again note for the record that nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the United States.
But just as notable is the degree to which Esper has company among so many others who worked side-by-side with the GOP candidate and learned firsthand how he thought, led, processed information, and made decisions.
These same former officials have not only warned Americans about the dangers Trump poses, they keep warning Americans about the dangers Trump poses. […]
The Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters moved from the capital to Colorado in 2020, causing an exodus of leadership. If elected, Trump plans to use the same tactic across more of the federal government.
This article first appeared at ProPublica and High Country News. […]
In 2019, the administration of then-President Donald Trump announced plans to relocate the federal government’s largest land management agency from the nation’s capital to Grand Junction, Colorado, a city of about 65,000 people a four-hour drive from the nearest major airport.
Trump had […] voiced suspicions about the federal bureaucracy. […]
The bureau, known as the BLM, manages mining, hunting, recreation, timber harvesting, oil drilling and more across an area more than 50 times larger than New Jersey, nearly all of it in the West. […]
A total of 176 employees working in the BLM headquarters were told to move; 135 declined, with many leaving the agency to take positions elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy, according to the Government Accountability Office, an independent federal research agency. The office’s research also found that disruptions caused by the relocation delayed the BLM finalizing policies governing the use of federal public lands.
Looking to undo the previous administration’s “upheaval,” President Joe Biden’s administration quickly moved the headquarters back to Washington and proposed increasing the agency’s funding. The BLM’s fiscal year 2024 budget represented a more than 30% increase from fiscal year 2021, the last year the Trump administration prepared the budget request.
But if Trump wins in November, he has signaled he’ll pick up where he left off with the BLM as part of a broader strategy to shrink the federal government and create a bureaucracy more beholden to him.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the 900-plus page blueprint for a potential second Trump term, recommends sending the BLM headquarters back to Colorado and relocating other agencies, ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional offices to the Air Traffic Organization and the American Indian Environmental Office.
[…] scores of people who worked in the Trump administration helped draft Project 2025. They include William Perry Pendley, his former pick to helm the BLM. Pendley oversaw the headquarters relocation to Grand Junction and authored the Project 2025 chapter on the Department of the Interior, which includes the recommendation to move the BLM’s headquarters back to the West.
Separate from Project 2025, Trump has doubled down on his plan to take aim at the federal bureaucracy as part of Agenda47, his campaign’s outline for a second term. “Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado,” he said in March 2023, “as many as 100,000 government positions can be moved out, and I mean immediately, of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America, and they really do love America.”
BLM employees who watched the relocation told ProPublica that the 2020 move out of Washington felt like naked politicking and the latest swing of the pendulum between administrations that has pointed the agency in wildly different directions. Rather than move, many in leadership left the agency. Those who remained were scattered, making collaboration with other divisions of the federal government more difficult and disrupting the continuity of internal programs.
[…] Mick Mulvaney, then Trump’s acting chief of staff, insinuated during a 2019 speech that downsizing was the intent of the move, calling the relocation of agency offices “a wonderful way to streamline government.”
[…] Project 2025 advocates reinstituting the so-called Schedule F classification for federal employees that Trump created via a 2020 executive order to remove job protections and make such workers easier to fire. As part of Project 2025, backers created a database of potential replacement hires who share Trump’s mission.
Jeremy Symons, a former climate policy adviser with the EPA, is concerned that such changes would undermine his ex-employer’s ability to protect the environment and public health, in part by relocating or entirely dissolving government offices. […]
Months before the Trump administration moved the BLM’s headquarters to Grand Junction, James Caswell, the agency’s director during President George W. Bush’s administration, warned Congress that “the reorganization will functionally dismantle the BLM.” It would remove the agency from having a voice in major decisions made in the capital, he said, and “effectively take the BLM off the playing field.”
[…] “All of the BLM staff we interviewed told us about challenges in completing their duties because of headquarters vacancies after 2016,” the GAO report found. Vacancies matter because the BLM oversees an estimated 30% of all the mineral value in the country.
Pendley, the man selected to oversee the agency at the time of its relocation, is a self-avowed “sagebrush rebel,” part of the anti-federal government movement that wants public lands handed to states or sold off. [!!]
[…] “Part of the goal” of relocating the BLM’s headquarters “is for it to be disruptive,” said Mary Jo Rugwell, who was the BLM’s Wyoming state director until her 2019 retirement and now serves as president of the Public Lands Foundation, a nonprofit made up mainly of retired BLM employees. “We’ve got to stop this back-and-forth thing. It’s just not good for an organization. It’s not a healthy way to operate.”
Giving even more power to political appointees to fire career staff is a frightening proposition to Rugwell. “Putting people in place because of their loyalty to a person puts people in place that are not qualified to do the job,” she said.
[…]
More at the link, including a discussion about Trump’s hobbling of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said former President Trump has hurt the Republican Party’s ability to compete and that the “MAGA movement is completely wrong.”
“I think Trump was the biggest factor in changing the Republican Party from what Ronald Reagan viewed and he wouldn’t recognize today,” McConnell said, according to a new biography penned by Michael Tackett of The Associated Press.
[…] McConnell said Trump has “done a lot of damage to our party’s image and our ability to compete.”
“Trump is appealing to people who haven’t been as successful as other people and providing an excuse for that, that these more successful people have somehow … cheated and you don’t deserve to think of yourself as less successful because things haven’t been fair,” McConnell said.
The GOP leader, who is wrapping up his record-long 18-year term as Senate Republican leader, made his comments to an oral historian, and those comments were made available to his biographer.
[…] “Unfortunately, about half of the Republicans in the country believe whatever he says,” McConnell said.
“I think I’m pretty safe in saying it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days until he leaves on Jan. 20, but the Republicans as well,” he added, speaking at the end of 2020.
Some of McConnell’s strongest comments were focused on Trump’s behavior after he lost the 2020 election, calling him “erratic.” He also criticized his fitness for office.
He described Trump as “not very smart, irascible, nasty, just about every quality you would not want somebody to have.”
The new biography, “The Price of Power: How Mitch McConnell Mastered the Senate, Changed America, and Lost His Party,” also describes how strongly the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol impacted McConnell.
He wept when he addressed his staff hours after Trump supporters ransacked Senate offices, telling them: “You are my family, and I hate the fact that you had to go through this.”
He called the incident a “shocking occurrence and further evidence of Donald Trump’s complete unfitness for office.”
The mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin, and former Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton both endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday, saying Donald Trump is unfit to serve and Harris would bring the country together.
Both men come from critical swing states that could decide the 2024 election, and said they were speaking out publicly about their vote to provide a permission structure for other Republicans who are disgusted by Trump’s behavior to reject his candidacy.
“Watching Trump day after day, he’s ignored the advice of many senior, respected Republicans to stay on the issues,” Upton, 71, a moderate Republican from the Detroit suburbs who served in the House for 36 years, told The Detroit News. “Instead, he’s still talking about the election being stolen, trashing women left and right. He’s just totally unhinged. We don’t need this chaos. We need to move forward, and that’s why I’m where I am.” [Pretty accurate assessment of Trump, but I do wonder why Upton ever expected anything different from Trump.]
Upton said that Harris is the first Democrat he’s ever voted for for president.
“At some point, the country has to come ahead of party, and that’s what this is all about,” Upton said of his vote.
Meanwhile, Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly, whose district is a critical Republican stronghold in a swing state, said his vote for Harris is to stop Trump.
“It’s difficult. The easy thing to do is just not say anything and cast my vote the way I want, but I think we’re at a crossroads now,” Reilly told a local Fox affiliate in Wisconsin of his vote. “I feel in my heart that this is something that I need to come out and say: I am going to be voting for Vice President Harris to become our next president. [video at the link]
[…] “In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Dick Cheney said in a statement on Sept. 6. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again. As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” […]
tomhsays
Re: #329
McConnell, four years later, commenting on the book,
“Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now.”
At a pro-Trump campaign rally in Duluth, Georgia, conservative pundit and disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson depicted Donald Trump as a “dad” who would spank Vice President Kamala Harris.
In his speech, Carlson equated Democratic Party policies and liberal ideology with bad behavior, arguing, “If you allow it, you will encourage more of it.”
Carlson went on with the comparison as children misbehaving and came to the conclusion: “There has to be a point at which dad comes home.”
“Dad is pissed,” Carlson said to a raucous reception by the red hat-wearing MAGA crowd. “And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now.”
The audience reportedly greeted Trump when he later spoke by echoing Carlson, chanting “daddy’s home.”
James Singer, rapid response adviser to the Harris-Walz campaign, reacted to Carlson’s speech, posting on X, “This is fucking weird.”
In his speech, Trump reiterated his attack on Harris as having a low IQ, which has been a go-to racist attack against the vice president.
[…] The embrace of Carlson, who has a considerable track record of bigotry, is also in line with Trump’s years of racial hostility.
Carlson and Trump have both promoted debunked ideas like the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which argues that nonwhite immigration is part of a plot to replace white people. Those ideas were echoed by the shooter who killed 10 people in a 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York.
Carlson and Trump also had the backing of conservative Fox News, which exposed them to a much wider audience. Trump took his rants about the racist birther conspiracy and built a political movement, while Carlson used his prime-time show to advance a bigoted agenda.
After Fox pushed him out, Carlson has continued to independently produce content—pushing conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones (of Sandy Hook conspiracy fame) but also mainstream political figures like Trump running mate JD Vance.
While Carlson and Trump supporters were chanting about “dad” in Georgia, Harris took part in a CNN town hall where she discussed immigration, the economy, and the looming threat of fascism from Trump.
Kamala Harris spoke from the steps of the vice president’s residence on Wednesday about the disturbing report concerning Donald Trump’s praise of Adolf Hitler and his desire for a Nazi army.
“He said he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler had,” Harris remarked. “Donald Trump said that because he does not want a military that is loyal to the United States Constitution,” she said, referring to recent interviews with Trump’s White House chief of staff John Kelly.
“[Trump] wants a military who will be loyal to him personally, one that will obey his orders even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States,” the vice president said.
Harris also spoke about the numerous instances where Trump has commented on fellow Americans being the “enemy within”—threatening to use the military against his perceived opponents.
“Anyone who refuses to bend a knee or dares to criticize him would qualify in his mind as the enemy within,” Harris explained.
“This is a window into who Donald Trump really is,” Harris said, reminding Americans that multiple former Trump administration officials have publicly spoken out against Trump’s pursuit of a second term in office.
“Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guard rails against his propensities and his actions,” Harris warned. “Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there, and no longer be there to rein him in.”
“So the bottom line is this: We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power,” Harris said. “The question in 13 days will be, what do the American people want?”
I don’t think she could possibly have done better. She hit every question, softball and hardball alike, head on. Facing an audience of supposedly undecided voters, she was warm, accommodating and responsive.
She was asked tough questions about Israel, inflation, immigration and her economic plans.
She didn’t shy away from anything. She repeatedly hammered Trump on his fascism and ineffectiveness, explained without reservation how the Biden administration faced challenges in immigration, in particular, and tackled some personal questions about her own family, particularly her mother’s death from cancer, with serious grace.
Asked whether she personally thought Trump was a fascist, she said he was. Unequivocally (Trump was invited but declined to appear).
With regard to Trump, she emphasized, quite pointedly, that this country expects a certain standard from someone sworn to uphold the Constutution and serve the American public.Trump has not even come close to that standard, was the clear implication.
She also noted repeatedly Trump’s involvement in killing an immigration deal that would have made this issue largely irrelevant.
Asked if she would support expanding the Supreme Court, she said she believed reform was necessary but did not commit to any expansion.
The audience was notably respectful and the questions were intelligent. There were no “gotcha” type moments but more of an honest Q and A.
She did a great job at hitting Trump’s dictatorial propensities and contrasted them with how she would approach her responsibility towards the American people.
In the context of a contest between a proven public servant and a raging, dangerous psychopath, if not pitch perfect, it was pretty damn close.
The appearance ends months of suspense over whether the pop star would throw her support behind the Democratic nominee.
Queen Bey is taking sides.
The recording artist Beyoncé has agreed to appear Friday at a Houston rally for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, along with her mother, Tina Knowles, and country music icon Willie Nelson, according to people familiar with the planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview an appearance that hasn’t been publicly announced.
The appearance ends months of suspense over whether Beyoncé would work to support the vice president. She has long been seen as one of the most impactful potential surrogates for Harris, along with pop star Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris in September but has not appeared on her behalf.
Harris has long used “Freedom,” a song by the 32-time Grammy winner, as her walk-on music at rallies. There were false rumors that Beyoncé would perform on the final night of the Democratic convention, even though an appearance by Beyoncé was never planned for that event.
Harris is traveling to Texas, which her campaign calls “ground zero of the nation’s extreme abortion bans,” to hold a rally centered on abortion rights. Campaign officials said Harris plans to speak to Americans about the threat she believes former president Donald Trump poses to women and those who support women’s reproductive rights.
Harris officials say they hope a speech outside the seven battleground states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina — will draw more media attention, as they conceded it has been difficult at times to break through the noise of a campaign that has focused almost exclusively on that handful of states
.
“Obviously the most important decision a presidential campaign makes is where their principal is spending time,” David Plouffe, a Harris senior adviser, said in an interview Sunday. “So the fact that we’re going to Texas means we really believe that will help us in those seven battleground states.”
A number of celebrities in recent weeks have worked to help Harris, including Oprah Winfrey, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Matt Damon, Robert De Niro and Lizzo. On Thursday, Bruce Springsteen is scheduled to perform in Atlanta at a rally with Harris and former president Barack Obama. […]
Trump has criticized the celebrities who have lined up behind his opponent, including posting “I hate Taylor Swift” on Truth Social after she endorsed Harris. Trump’s celebrity endorsers include country music stars Lee Greenwood and Jason Aldean. Kid Rock performed and Hulk Hogan spoke at the Republican National Convention on Trump’s behalf.
[…] The survey indicates that a staggering eight in 10 Republicans believe it is acceptable, or even preferable, to place undocumented immigrants in military encampments.
[…] nearly 79% of Republicans favor the use of encampments for undocumented immigrants, contrasting sharply with only 47% of independents and a mere 22% of Democrats. […]
Excerpt from Tucker Carlson’s weird, misogynistic speech in which he fantasized about Trump spanking Kamala Harris:
[…] “You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl.” […]
Commentary about a few more things Tucker Carlson said:
[…] along the way, he insisted that “almost every single person” on MSNBC has “a personal life so grotesquely weird [that] if you knew the details, you’d call for their arrest.” (We knew that Rachel Maddow does catch-and-release fly fishing and Chris Hayes loves his e-bike, but wow!) Carlson explained that such horrible freaks can’t be allowed to define the terms of the national conversation, no way.
He also was mad about immigration and called it the greatest crime in US history, then explained that Real America is a very nice, tolerant place that, because it’s so decent and tolerant, has “put up with this crap for too long” from “people who never built anything in their lives” who tear down statues and “spit on the graves of your ancestors, and (((who on earth could he be talking about)))?
It’s unjust, he said, for the “majority” to “reward the most parasitic, useless, violent, nasty, aggressive people in your country. You can’t make them the richest. It’s just wrong!”
Gosh, he never said the bad guys had hooked noses, so maybe it wasn’t an antisemitic dogwhistle. But then, Carlson named only as an example of those America-destroying parasites who actually run the country instead of its hardworking honest decent smartest talented majority: Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock. He happened to be the one usurper whose name came to Carlson out of the blue.
So yeah, the name of a Jewish investment banker just happened to immediately precede the clip above, right before “Kamala Harris.”
We appear to be the only source calling attention to it, because the weird kinky pedo overtones certainly are more sensational. But it’s right there, 12 minutes into the full video. […]
Video is available at the link. As you will note if you watch the video, Tucker Carlson talked about spanking 15-year-old girls. Yes, he tied that directly to spanking Kamala Harris.
birgerjohanssonsays
Vitamin K supplement slows prostate cancer in mice, researchers discover
Re. Lynna, OM @ 339
Everybody,
Feel free to use AI to make fake images of Tucker Carlson in incriminating situations. He has earned it.
birgerjohanssonsays
A decade ago in the infinite thread, I got pushback when I wrote something about surely not many Americans can be evil. The recent polling about attitudes among Republican sympathisers might be seen as a final repudiation of my opinion.
(It is ‘repuduation’, right? Or am I mixing up my english vocabulary?)
BTW I am not at all surprised that he brings up people of Jewish heritage.
Oh Look, It’s The US Naval Academy Canceling Lecture On Authoritarians Under Pressure From The Heritage Foundation
Today in “obeying authoritarians in advance,” we have the US Naval Academy letting Project 2025 dictate its curriculum. Yes, the Naval Academy, immediately surrendering to howls from the right-wing outrage machine that cozies up to Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán on the regular.
What happened was the USNA invited expert on authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat to speak about her work at the annual Bancroft Memorial Lecture, on October 10. Ben-Ghiat’s a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University, specializing in authoritarians, propaganda, and democracy protection, and author of the book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present”. […]
Ben-Ghiat noted on her Substack in September,
I will be speaking about what happens to militaries under authoritarian rule, touching on Fascist Italy, Pinochet’s Chile and the Russian military during the war on Ukraine.
The lecture’s title was “Militaries and Authoritarian Regimes: Coups, Corruption, and the Costs of Losing Democracy,” so of course the people who would like America to lose democracy were personally offended on Trump’s behalf. Ben-Ghiat was actually not planning to speak about Trump at all, she said, and emailed Baltimore Banner reporter Rick Hutzell: “The lecture had nothing to do with contemporary America and I was not going to mention Mr. Trump at all in this strictly nonpartisan event at an institution, the U.S. Naval Academy, which I greatly admire.”
But Ben-Ghiat has previously pointed out the many ways Trump has been running the fascist playbook, and has also appeared on MSNBC, which was enough […]
Anyway, Spakovsky and Stimson lied in The Daily Signal (a web site founded by the Heritage Foundation) that Ben-Ghiat planned to “attack” Donald Trump in her lecture, and that was “partisan political activity,” “indoctrination,” and “venomous,” and that she has “hallucinations” inhabiting her mind. [FFS!]
And so a day later, US Rep. Keith Self, a West Point graduate representing a district in Texas, wrote the Academy Superintendent, demanding that the USNA cancel the lecture. Which they did! Ben-Ghiat was disinvited. But that was still not enough. US Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia and 16 Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee also fired off an angry Karen letter, pouting and stamping their little feet, demanding to speak to the manager about how a “partisan individual like Dr. Ben-Ghiat was selected in the first place” and demanding to know “What steps will the USNA take to ensure that future speakers at the Bancroft Lecture series reflect the Academy’s commitment to impartiality and intellectual rigor, particularly on politically sensitive topics?”
Politically sensitive! […] so strong they should rule the world and be able to tell everybody else what to think, read, do with their bodies etc., and yet so sensitive they cannot handle anyone even noticing that they want to rule the world and tell everybody else what to think, read, do with their bodies etc.
It is a play out of the fascist playbook. Literally! On page 104 of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership”:
Audit the course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination, eliminate tenure for academic professionals, and apply the same rules to instructors that are applied to other DOD contracting personnel.
Gee, sounds pretty Thought-Police-y. So much for freedom of speech! Oh hey, guess which partisan was invited to speak to West Point, and the Air Force Academy? Why, Elon Musk! [!!!] West Point described him as a “thought leader,” though his thoughts are mostly of the racist, anti-semitic conspiracy-theory, jump-up-and-down-like-a-dipshit-for-Trump variety. Not everybody liked that he was invited either, but it didn’t get him disinvited.
Not a great sign for democracy, folks.
But hey, what IS a good sign for democracy, Baltimore Banner’s Annapolis reporter Rick Hutzell! He is former editor of the Capital Gazette, and happened to be off the day of the mass shooting there, which killed employees Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, John McNamara, and Rebecca Smith. And the paper still got out on schedule. Hutzell retired three years later, but now apparently he is un-retired, and working at the Banner, and digging up important stories like this one. The Naval Academy may surrender to the sound of a little whining, but subduing all the journalists is probably not going to be so easy.
And now there’s something in my eye!
birgerjohanssonsays
Meidastouch:
Trump Gets Surprising Bad News From Latest Polls.
Over the course of the last couple of years, Donald Trump has, from time to time, shared a few unkind words about special counsel Jack Smith. The former president has, for example, referred to the prosecutor as a “thug” in a “mental state of derangement.”
Trump has also condemned the special counsel as a “mad dog psycho.” He’s also accused Smith of being an “animal,” a “lunatic,” and “a dumb son of a b—-.” At one point, Trump suggested the special counsel’s investigation was “treasonous” and deserving of “sanctions.”
And did I mention that the former president also wants to see Smith “arrested”? Because he said that, too.
With this in mind, perhaps it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that Trump is eager, if not desperate, to fire the prosecutor. NBC News reported:
[…] Trump said Thursday that, if elected to a second term in November, he would immediately fire special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against Trump. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump if he plans to pardon himself or fire Smith on the day he would take the oath of office.
“It’s so easy — I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump responded, adding that he’s confident it wouldn’t lead to his impeachment in the event that Democrats retake the House majority.
Time will tell — I have a hunch more than a few Democrats would offer a different perspective on this — though it was of interest to see Trump reference the possibility of getting impeached for firing a special counsel who’s investigating him.
In fact, we’ve been down this road before.
During Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s Russia scandal, the then-president was so terrified of the probe that he ordered the firing of the then-special counsel. Trump ended up backing off, not because he realized this was ridiculous, but because his White House counsel threatened to resign.
This behind-the-scenes drama was not widely known while it was happening, though the possibility of Trump firing Mueller did not go unnoticed on Capitol Hill. In 2017, for example, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters that if the then-president fired the then-special counsel, it “could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency.”
The South Carolinian added that the system needed “a check and balance here,” and the senator even endorsed legislation that would prevent a president from acting unilaterally to remove a special counsel.
Months later, Graham also said that it would be “corrupt“ for Trump to fire a special counsel investigating him, adding that a president stopping an investigation without cause “would be a constitutional crisis.”
Around the same time, then-Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona said in a written statement, “We are begging the president not to fire the special counsel. Don’t create a constitutional crisis. … Congress cannot preempt such a firing. Our only constitutional remedy is after the fact, through impeachment.”
The question isn’t whether he’d fire a special counsel. We already know that he tried to fire Mueller, and he’s apparently eager to fire Smith. The better question is whether Republicans would simply let him get away with it.
Six years ago, some leading GOP voices said the answer was no. The Republican Party is almost certainly worse than it was six years ago.
[…] it was just a few weeks ago when The New York Times reported that the U.S. job market “is as healthy as it has ever been” — as in, in the history of the United States — and described recent economic growth as “robust.” A few days later, The Washington Post’s Heather Long explained in a column that by “just about every measure, the U.S. economy is in good shape. Growth is strong. Unemployment is low. Inflation is back down. More important, many Americans are getting sizable pay raises, and middle-class wealth has surged to record levels. We are living through one of the best economic years of many people’s lifetimes.”
The same day, Politico described the status quo as “a dream economy.”
But there’s also an international dimension to this. The Wall Street Journal reported:
The U.S. is increasingly pulling ahead of the world’s advanced economies, with a surge of investment paying off in higher productivity and wages. The International Monetary Fund highlights those divergent paths in its latest global scorecard, released Tuesday. In what has become something of a trend, the IMF upgraded the outlook for both U.S. and global growth, though more for the former.
Among the world’s wealthiest nations, the IMF doesn’t just see the U.S. economy as the world’s strongest, it also expects Americans to see the fastest growth on the planet as 2024 comes to a close.
Officials at the IMF aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed: The Economist, a leading British publication, recently described the U.S. economy as “the envy of the world,” adding that the American economy “has left other rich countries in the dust.”
Around this time four years ago, Donald Trump told supporters that Democratic policies would “unleash an economic disaster of epic proportions” and force the country “into depression.”
Oops.
Of course, the larger question isn’t just about the status quo, it’s also about the future. The U.S. economy is strong now, but what about what’s to come?
As it turns out, 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump in a joint letter released this week, explaining that the Republican’s agenda would “lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.”
“Simply put, Harris’s policies will result in a stronger economic performance, with economic growth that is more robust, more sustainable, and more equitable,” the letter added.
The Nobel laureates aren’t alone. The Wall Street Journal also recently asked economists a related question and found that most economists think “inflation, interest rates and deficits would be higher” under Trump’s agenda than Harris’ agenda.
[…] those focused on the economy and business decisions should be rallying behind Harris as quickly as possible, hoping desperately that Trump loses.
In recent weeks, Donald Trump has been more animated and more fixated on one issue above all others. It’s not immigration or the economy. It has nothing to do with transgender rights or trade tariffs.
Trump has instead obsessed over “60 Minutes.”
By now, you’ve probably heard the story. Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with the news program; some of her answers were edited for time; and the GOP nominee has spent every day since pretending that this is some kind of scandal. Trump has, among other things, called for CBS to lose its broadcasting license, “60 Minutes” to be pulled from the air and for the Democratic nominee to end her candidacy altogether.
After Trump described the editing of the interview as “totally illegal” — a bonkers claim, by any fair measure — Trump’s legal team wrote to CBS News this week, threatening litigation.
The network has patiently explained that the claims are baseless and that the editing process was routine and fair, but the former president won’t hear of it. Trump has apparently convinced himself that editing an interview in a way that might’ve made a candidate look slightly better constitutes “A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY” and “the single biggest scandal in broadcast history.”
It’s against this backdrop that CNN reported on Trump’s staged event at a New York barbershop this week, which was aired on Fox News:
[T]he version of the visit shown on television was, to borrow a hairstyle metaphor, a crop cut. Fox edited out many of Trump’s rambling comments and false claims. Participants had to repeatedly follow up when Trump meandered away from the original point of their questions. CNN reviewed a more complete video of the barbershop visit that was uploaded to Instagram on the day of Trump’s appearance in the Bronx and compared it to the segments that were shown on ‘Fox & Friends’ on Monday.
[LOL]
CNN’s report […] added that what Fox News showed viewers “omitted numerous Trump tangents and exaggerations,” as well as his “rambling comments.”
In other words, Fox’s on-air segment was edited in such a way as to make the Republican candidate look better.
The segment that reached the air didn’t exactly make Trump look good. At one point, asked about improving education, the former president gave a truly ridiculous and utterly false response about schools performing transgender surgeries without parental consent.
At the same event, the GOP nominee fielded a question from a voter who was concerned about banning artificial foods in urban communities.
“So, Bobby Kennedy, right?” Trump responded. “Everybody likes Bobby, and he’s so big into the health food and women things, everything.”
In other words, the appearance wasn’t exactly a great success.
But according to CNN’s report, Fox’s segment was edited in such a way as to prevent Trump from looking even worse.
[…] Will the former president demand that “Fox & Friends” be pulled from the air? Will he target Fox’s broadcast license? Will he withdraw from the 2024 race as a result of the allegations?
Will he demand that Fox release the full and unedited version of his appearance? Will he characterize the network’s edits as “totally illegal,” a “threat to democracy” and “the single biggest scandal in broadcast history”?
Will Fox’s lawyers be hearing from Trump’s attorneys? […]
Summarized from a New York Times article: In a ruling that might prove highly consequential, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that voters whose postal ballots are rejected for procedural reasons can still cast provisional ballots.
The line between the MAGA fringe and the Republican Party continues to blur as Donald Trump’s surrogates participate in the preemptive “rigged” election conspiracy theories that he is peddling before Election Day. Former presidential anti-vaxxer candidate-turned Trump supporter Robert F. Kennedy Jr. jumped on the counterprogramming Wednesday to promote an easily debunked conspiracy theory that’s been making the rounds.
“This is the kind of inflammatory poison that divides our nation and inspires assassins,” Kennedy wrote on social media site X, in response to Vice President Kamala Harris’ press conference where she warned the country about Trump’s fetishism of Nazis. “It’s particularly ironic since Biden/Harris have just pushed through DoD Directive 5240.01 giving the Pentagon power—for the first time in history—to use lethal force to kill Americans on U.S. soil who protest government policies,” Kennedy said.
If you’re asking yourself, what the !@#$ is he talking about, you are not alone. As many people in the comments rightly pointed out, DoD Directive 5240.01 is a George W. Bush-era document, from 2007, that does not and never has created the right for the military to employ “lethal force to kill” American protesters.
“The provisions in [the directive] are not new, and do not authorize the Secretary of Defense to use lethal force against U.S. citizens, contrary to rumors and rhetoric circulating on social media,” Sue Gough, a Department of Defense spokesperson told The War Horse.
The outlet also explained that while it was true that the Pentagon updated the 22-page document in late September, military policies are routinely updated—as DoD Directive 5240.01 was previously updated under the Trump administration.
Directive 5240.01 has a narrow focus: It only addresses military intelligence, and the section that has circulated online specifically deals with intelligence assistance to civilian law enforcement.
The paragraph that contains the term “lethal force” refers to a requirement that the Secretary of Defense—the highest level of the Defense Department—must now authorize military intelligence assistance to civilian law enforcement when lethal force might be involved.
Kennedy had promoted this baseless theory earlier in the day, during remarks he made in front of Turning Point Action PAC. But Kennedy didn’t come up with this dangerous conspiracy theory on his own, he’s just selling it. The entire MAGA world has been ablaze with the made-up martial law boogieman conspiracy theory for a few weeks.
The Center for an Informed Public out of the University of Washington analyzed the birth and growth of this misinformation dump. According to their analysis, a DoD social media account posted the updated directive on Oct. 3. That same day, “Natalie Winters, a co-host on Steve Bannon’s War Room and self-described investigative journalist, posts about the 2024 directive on X. The post focuses on—and speculates about—slightly different wording in a provision that prohibits DoD staff from engaging in assassinations.”
Two days later, a “newsbrokering” account picked up a similar story and pushed it out on X and Facebook. Newsbrokering accounts curate and disseminate news information. The story takes off a couple of weeks later when it is picked up by another newsbrokering account. At the same time this was happening, an anti-vaccine website published a story tying the erroneous understanding of the directive to the upcoming election.
Shortly thereafter, prominent looney toons like the spectacularly wrongheaded Naomi Wolf went on “The Alex Jones Show” to promote this new iteration of the “deep state” theory that Democrats are setting up for martial law no matter what the results of the election are.
Disgraced former Gen. Mike Flynn took time away from promising to hold military tribunals if Trump is victorious in November, to peddle this fearmongering conspiracy theory to his followers on X. [X post at the link]
Joseph Nunn, a lawyer with the Liberty & National Security program at the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice, told The War Horses “There’s nothing here. People like Michael Flynn should know how to read a DOD directive.”
It’s hard to know whether Flynn does know better, and maybe more importantly, whether or not any of these folks care anymore about knowing anything other than that they want power.
Of course false charges of voter fraud can’t ever really be “haha” funny; and the Benedictine Sisters of Erie (Pa.) are taking it seriously enough to have issued a news release about the false claim by a Republican operative posting on X.
“We want to call Cliff Maloney to account for his blatantly false post that accuses our sisters of fraud. We do live at Mount Saint Benedict Monastery and a simple web search would alert him to our active presence in a number of ministries in Erie. We also want to alert those who subscribe to X and other social media platforms to be vigilant and seek additional information before accepting these posts as truth,” said Sister Stephanie Schmidt, prioress. “A free republic depends on free and fair elections. It depends equally on a discerning and conscientious citizenry who do not unquestioningly accept the word of anyone who has a social media platform.”
Amen to that, Sister Schmidt.
Raw Story reported:
Republican Cliff Maloney publicly stated that the home of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie in Pennsylvania had dozens of voter registrations — yet nobody lived there. In reality, 55 sisters live there full time — and 53 of them are legally registered to vote […]
Maloney had posted to nearly 58,000 followers on X that the monastery was an empty building. […]
Reportedly, Maloney claimed a canvasser went to the place and found a church but no residence. After being corrected, Maloney reportedly pivoted to a position of being unconvinced, though the nuns existed, that their votes were legal. And warned that he would have attorneys checking up on that.
From the nuns’ news release, Maloney is affiliated with a Republican initiative called PA CHASE.
According to a March 2024 post from the Lincoln Institute, “The ‘PA Chase’ is an effort led by Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania (CAP) to knock on 500,000 doors and raise the GOP mail-in ballot statewide total from 20% to 33%.” Cliff Maloney is listed as the CEO of Citizens Alliance.
Of course no one knows how the nuns are going to vote, but Maloney seemed to assume they were going D. “We will not let the Dems count on illegal votes,” he reportedly said. […]
An interview described in the National Catholic Reporter between Liz Cheney and the remarkable Sister Joan Chittister at a community forum in Erie earlier this month.
The lifelong Republican and the acclaimed spiritual leader and author both believe that the soul of America will prevail despite the highly divisive 2024 U.S. presidential election.
They say it will take hard work, collaboration between both sides of the political spectrum and the defeat of Donald Trump to return to a healthy state of affairs.
[…] “In these dangerous times, staying silent isn’t just indifference, it is complicity,” Mariel Garza wrote. “I’m standing up by stepping down from the editorial board.”
The editorials editor of The Los Angeles Times, one of the most-circulated newspapers in the United States, announced her resignation Thursday over the billionaire owner’s decision to block a proposed endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the high-stakes 2024 contest that’s less than two weeks away.
Mariel Garza, who spent nearly a decade on the Times’ editorial board, handed in her resignation letter days after Semafor reported that Patrick Soon-Shiong—the newspaper’s owner—vetoed the editorial board’s plan to endorse Harris.
[…] In her resignation letter to executive editor Terry Tang, Garza wrote that the decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in what the editorial board recently described as potentially “the most consequential election in a generation” makes the paper “look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist.”
“How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the U.S. Senate?” Garza asked. “The non-endorsement undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will justifiably wonder if each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through decree by the owner.”
Garza continued:
Seven years ago, the editorial board wrote this in its series about Donald Trump “Our Dishonest President”: “Men and women of conscience can no longer withhold judgment. Trump’s erratic nature and his impulsive, demagogic style endanger us all.”
I still believe that’s true.
In these dangerous times, staying silent isn’t just indifference, it is complicity. I’m standing up by stepping down from the editorial board. Please accept this as my formal resignation, effective immediately.
In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Garza said she resigned because she wanted to “make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” echoing her letter.
“In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up,” Garza added. “This is how I’m standing up.”
Semafor reported earlier this week that the newspaper’s decision not to endorse in the November 5 presidential contest came directly from Soon-Shiong, who made his fortune in the healthcare industry. Soon-Shiong bought the paper for $500 million in 2018.
“It wouldn’t be the first time since he bought the paper in 2018 that owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong had overruled the wishes of the paper’s editorial board,” Semafor’s Max Tani noted. “In 2020, the paper met with Democratic candidates for president for interviews with the intention of making a pick in the race. But after deciding to endorse Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic presidential primary, at the last minute Soon-Shiong overruled its leadership and said there would be no endorsement in the primary race (the paper endorsed Joe Biden in the general election).”
Facing backlash over the non-endorsement, Soon-Shiong wrote in a social media post Wednesday evening that the paper’s editorial board was “provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation”—which, as critics noted in response, is not the purpose of an editorial.
“In addition, the board was asked to provide their understanding of the policies and plans enunciated by the candidates during this campaign and its potential effect on the nation in the next four years,” Soon-Shiong continued. “In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being president for the next four years.”
John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, replied, “I’ve been a journalist for four decades, and what you just wrote, Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong, is the most clueless, beside-the-point gibberish I’ve ever seen a media enterprise owner write.” [LOL]
Frederick Deknatel, executive editor of the journal Democracy in Exile, added that “in case there was still any doubt, billionaire owners are not the saviors of journalism.”
Georgian government officials raided the homes of local staff of an American think tank who work on tracking Russian disinformation, raising alarm among pro-democracy activists, civil society groups and some U.S. officials ahead of Georgia’s Oct. 26 parliamentary elections.
Investigators targeted local staff in Tbilisi of the Atlantic Council, a think-tank based in Washington D.C. that is known for promoting democratic values and institutions, particularly in eastern Europe.
The investigations unit of Georgia’s Finance Ministry searched the homes of Sopo Gelava and Eto Buziashvili, both staff members with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab (DFRLab). The two have authored reports on how Russia is carrying out overt and covert influence operations to sway the upcoming elections in favor of the ruling Georgian Dream party.
“The Atlantic Council is deeply concerned about this development and its impact on our staff’s work shortly before Georgian elections,” Graham Brookie, the Atlantic Council’s vice president for technology programs and strategy and senior director of the DFRLab, said in a statement.
“Our Georgian colleagues, Sopo Gelava and Eto Buziashvili, are engaged in independent, non-partisan work aimed at defending and strengthening democracy from those who would undermine it in online spaces, including research related to foreign influence efforts, the targeting of marginalized communities, and other online harms.” […]
Russian President Vladimir Putin name-checked […] Trump at this week’s BRICS summit and seemingly welcomed the Republican nominee’s desire to end the Russian-Ukraine war.
“What Mr. Trump said recently, what I heard, [is] he spoke about the desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine,” Putin said during a Thursday news conference, according to The Associated Press (AP).
“It seems to me that he said it sincerely,” he added. “We certainly welcome statements of this kind, no matter who makes them.”
Putin’s remarks at the BRICS summit, a three-day event held in Kazan, Russia, and attended by representatives of 36 countries, comes after Trump suggested last month that he could help broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine that would end the conflict that has raged for more than two-and-half years.
“[…] I also have a very good relationship — as you know — with President Putin. And I think if we win, I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” Trump added before sitting down for talks with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky] […]
North Korean forces have entered the combat zone between Russian and Ukrainian forces for the first time after training at Kremlin military bases, Ukraine’s defense intelligence service said Thursday.
Ukrainian spies spotted the troops, who they said were trained at one of five military sites in east Russia, in Russia’s Kursk region. Ukraine also said the North Korean soldiers are being trained over several weeks and that Moscow intends to use them in the war against Ukraine, according to a statement posted to social media.
The United States on Wednesday confirmed that some 3,000 North Koreans are training in Russia at military sites.
The troops were moved into the former Soviet state between early to mid-October and are now undergoing basic combat training at what they assessed to be three military sites, according to White House national security spokesperson John Kirby. […]
Kyiv, however, had much higher estimates, with the General Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine assessing the number of North Korean soldiers in Russia to be about 12,000 people, including 500 officers, three of whom are generals.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this week said Pyongyang had already sent tactical personnel and officers into Russian-occupied areas of his country.
[…] Putin said “it was not Russia’s actions that led to the escalation” in Ukraine, accusing the West of helping Kyiv fight Moscow.
He also referred to Russia’s “comprehensive strategic partnership” with North Korea, signed by the two countries in June, where both pledged “mutual assistance in case of aggression” against either country.
“We will see how this process develops,” Putin said.
Hey, know that thing where Elon Musk is so lonely and abandoned by God that he’s been trying to buy friends by trying to buy votes for Donald Trump at a million buckaroos a pop? Of course, it’s not officially listed as “Million-Dollar Bribe For Be My Friend Please And Love Me Please And Vote For Donald Trump Please?” It’s way more pathetic than that. It’s a “petition” to say you support the First and Second Amendments, and if you sign “petition,” you could win the daily million!
As long as you’re a registered voter in a swing state.
Well for SOME reason — maybe that “hey fuck you, it’s illegal to pay people to register to vote” letter Attorney General Merrick Garland sent Elon — his America PAC didn’t announce a lucky duck winner of “prize” on Wednesday.
As CNN explains, there’s been a “winner” every day since Saturday. But then news of the fuck you letter broke yesterday. And Elon’s little “sweepstakes” appears to have gotten broke yesterday.
We checked Elon’s Twitter, and we don’t see any tweets about Elon trying to buy friends for Donald Trump today. To be fair, he tweets incessantly and thirstily and we got bored after scrolling for like three seconds.
In summary and in conclusion, we guess it was fun while it lasted, and a really fun thing to do on November 5 would be to show Elon in a really visceral way how much of a loser everybody thinks he is, by handing Donald Trump the most embarrassing electoral loss imaginable.
“The TEC Show”:
‘Trump VS Harris: Shocking Early Results for the 2024 Presidential Election’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MpatX4MpO2s
A closer look at Georgia. The Harris campaign can probably feel confident here.
JMsays
@357 Robbo: He could mean this Youtube: Trump Suddenly Hit With The BAD News In Crushing Epstein Game Bombshell
Another groping allegation, this one involving Epstein also. Credible witness but no hard evidence so I don’t think this makes much difference at this point. Anybody that was going to chance side because of Trump sexual abuse has already done so. Giving the news a reason to bring up Trump and Epstein together probably does more damage to his election.
U.S. and Israeli negotiators will travel to Doha in the coming days, the top diplomats for U.S. and Qatar said Thursday, intending to resume long-stalled talks to reach a ceasefire deal and secure the release of hostages in Gaza. The announcement comes after Israeli forces killed Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, earlier this month and the militant group continues its search for a new leader.
The New York Times has a piece up this morning which is largely complimentary of Elon Musk’s political operation and Musk himself. It’s a far cry from the range of critical pieces which have been published elsewhere […] It rather confidently reports that Musk’s canvassers are hitting “well over 100,000 doors a day,” for instance, “according to a person with knowledge of the group’s activities.
Needless to say, that’s almost certainly someone from America PAC or someone who works directly for Musk. So the Times appears to be going purely off their say so. Which strikes me as more than a little odd. [I agree.]
Having said all this, Musk has spent a vast amount of money — “$134 million on the presidential campaign and 18 congressional races, 60 percent of which has been dedicated to voter canvassing operations.” […] Even if half the Musk door-knocks are phony and fraudulent, that still leaves quite a few real ones.
The article also makes clear — and this is the more interesting part of the piece — that Musk, at least for now, seems to be excitedly planning for the political future beyond this campaign. That’s probably where the most interesting story is. He’s a man of obsessions. And with a couple hundred billion dollars. He can fund a lot of obsessions.
[…] I have either read or received directly multiple accounts of voters and political operatives in multiple swing states simply seeing no evidence of Musk’s operation. There have been repeated similar accounts in a range of publications over the last couple months. […] I do not see how that can be reconciled with the Times’ account of a juggernaut political operation hitting 100,000 doors a day.
The one exception I see pretty clearly is in Arizona and, to an extent, the efforts targeted at Hispanic voters. But the operation in Arizona seems to be in the hands of what remains of Turning Points Action’s operation. They’re based in Arizona. It’s the one place they’re still executing their original plan. So there may be a real and robust GOTV operation in Arizona. But the evidence we have suggests it’s the one place where Musk isn’t operating.
[…] that still doesn’t explain why the normal stomping grounds of GOTV operations in the suburbs don’t seem to be seeing any Musk operation at all.
At a minimum the Times article seems fairly ingenuous in taking Musk’s statistics more or less at face value given all the reporting raising serious questions about his operation. […]
[…] in terms of traditional GOTV and door knocking at least I have to think the Times just got taken in a bit in this piece. To me the evidence just seems too one-sided.
Stacey Williams first surfaced claims on Facebook and in a documentary before adding more detail in a call with Harris supporters; Trump denied the allegation.
A former swimsuit model who is sharing newly detailed allegations that Donald Trump groped her in the early ’90s had previously alluded to the incident in Facebook comments starting in 2020 and in an interview for a documentary recorded two years ago.
Stacey Williams, 56, said Thursday that she decided to tell her story in a call this week organized by allies of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris after she learned that the film about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue would become public right before the election and would include her interview about the alleged incident.
Williams alleges that Trump groped her in Trump Tower in New York City in 1993 after they were introduced by Jeffrey Epstein, the jet-setting financier who later killed himself while in jail on sex trafficking charges.
She said she contemplated coming forward during Trump’s first bid for president in 2016 but was worried about the ramifications for her then-teenage daughter. Now, her daughter is grown, and Williams said the documentary’s release was the catalyst for her to speak out.
“What is the message we are sending by putting an adjudicated sexual abuser in the White House? That’s horrifying to me,” Williams told The Washington Post in an interview. “How can I let that happen on my watch?”
Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Thursday called Williams’s allegation “unequivocally false” and suggested it was pushed by the Harris campaign less than two weeks before the election. Leavitt alluded to the fact that Williams is a registered Democrat and climate activist […]
“It’s obvious this fake story was contrived by the Harris campaign,” Leavitt said. [Nope. Not obvious.]
Williams came forward as Harris supporters engaged in a last-minute effort to remind voters about the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against Trump in recent decades. Several of those claims involve chance encounters, in which Trump allegedly grabbed or kissed them without consent. The former president has called his accusers liars.
Last year, a jury found the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a lawsuit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump has denied wrongdoing in that case and is appealing awards totaling more than $88 million.
Williams, who frequently appeared in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue in the 1990s, described the alleged encounter with Trump and Epstein in a conference call Monday organized by a newly formed group called Survivors for Kamala that recently took out a full-page ad in the New York Times assailing Trump as a “proven abuser.”
“He put his hands all over my breasts,” she said, pausing for a moment as she choked up, in a video of the call provided to The Post. “My waist. My butt. … The hands were moving all over me, yet these two men were, like, smiling at one another and continuing on in their conversation.” [Gross.]
She said Epstein, whom she was casually dating at the time, berated her after they left the office because she “let” Trump touch her. As the humiliation set in, she said, she believed that the encounter was “some sort of sick bet … or twisted game” planned by the two men to degrade her.
Two friends confirmed that Williams told them years ago about the alleged incident, which was first reported by the Guardian. On the advice of her attorney, Williams submitted to a polygraph examination one week ago that concluded her description of what happened with Trump and Epstein was “not indicative of deception,” according to results shared with The Post.
“In my experience, so many women who come forward are not believed, and we wanted to make clear that Stacey was assaulted,” said Williams’s attorney, Mariann Wang. “She took a polygraph, she cleared it, and she is telling the truth.” [I think the two friends confirming Williams’s account is better evidence than the polygraph.]
Between 2020 and 2024, she either indirectly or directly accused Trump of sexual assault in at least five Facebook posts and comments, according to a Post review of her account.
Her allegation is also briefly mentioned in a new documentary celebrating the founding editor of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. In “Beyond the Gaze,” which premiered last Friday at the Woodstock Film Festival in New York, Williams talks about the hazards of the modeling industry.
“When you’ve almost been raped a few times and roofied, and beaten on the streets of Paris and had photographers exposing themselves to you, and the former president groped you in front of Jeffrey Epstein, and like it goes on and on and on, there’s [a lot] of baggage there, so there’s a lot to sort through,” Williams told the director in the 2022 interview at her home, according to a transcript provided to The Post by the film’s producer.
Williams said she had no control over the timing of the film’s release or even if her comment would be included. A representative for the film, Steven Beeman, said Williams’s comment about the former president was included “as it speaks to the overall themes in the film about how women can be treated and objectified.” He said the film will not be released to the general public until possibly next year.
[…] During what she described as a “long, lucrative career” that took her to New York and Europe, she appeared in Sports Illustrated from 1992 to 1998. She was later inducted into its Swimsuit Hall of Fame, alongside supermodels Tyra Banks, Christie Brinkley and Heidi Klum, according to the magazine, which described her as “a brunette stunner.”
She said in the video that she met Epstein in 1992 at a swanky Manhattan restaurant where there were “models there and the usual men, hangers on.” She and Epstein bonded over Democratic politics, and they met again at Trump’s Christmas party at the Plaza Hotel. They dated occasionally for a few months, she said, and Epstein would often mention Trump.
“It became clear to me that he and Donald were really, really good friends and spent a lot of time together,” she said.
Williams account of Trump and Epstein’s friendship is borne out in photos and video footage from that time. The two men traveled in the same social circles in the late 1980s and 1990s — jetting from New York to Palm Beach together, partying at Mar-a-Lago with cheerleaders and models, and dining together at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.
“Terrific guy,” Trump said of Epstein in a New York magazine interview in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
After Epstein’s arrest in 2019 on sex trafficking charges, Trump sought to distance himself, saying from the Oval Office, “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.” Epstein hanged himself in his jail cell later that year. [Trump proffers his usual lies.]
Williams said she was 24 years old when she and Epstein were walking down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and he suggested they stop to say hi to Trump. She said shortly after they got off the elevator, Trump greeted her by putting his hands all over her body while continuing to chat with Epstein.
After they left Trump Tower, she said, she was confused by Epstein’s anger toward her. She blamed herself, she said, in part because she prided herself on being a “tough model” who spoke up when men harassed her or her peers.
She said she later received a postcard from Trump sent by courier from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach that said “Your home away from home.” Williams provided photos of both sides of the postcard to The Post, which was signed “Donald” in what looked like his trademark black Sharpie pen. […]
A longtime friend of Williams, Allison Gutwillinger, said she was at Williams’s house in Los Angeles in 2015, just days after Trump launched his first presidential campaign, when she saw the postcard sitting on the kitchen counter.
“She had this disgusted look on her face,” Gutwillinger said. “She said, ‘He’s vile. And he groped me at Trump Tower.’” [Images of postcard at the link]
Soon after, she said, Williams started telling her and other friends that Epstein had “served her” to Trump. “Trump announcing his candidacy opened the floodgates,” said Gutwillinger, who moved to Germany at that time. “It was never a question that she wouldn’t be telling the truth or even exaggerating.”
Another friend of Williams, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she said she feared retaliation from Trump supporters, said they met through a mutual friend in Los Angeles in 2006. She said Williams told her over coffee that she regretted dating Epstein and said he had facilitated her being groped by Trump.
[…] Her jabs at Trump on Facebook went at least as far back as 2020. “He’s always been as dumb as a post — even while sexually assaulting people,” she said in one 2021 post.
[…] Trump has been accused by at least 17 other women of sexual assault or misconduct dating back to the 1990s. Two of those women testified at Carroll’s trial and appeared in a recent ad paid for by an anti-Trump political committee. Williams appeared on CNN on Thursday night.
[…] Trump said Thursday the U.S. is “like a garbage can” for the rest of the world because of its border policies during an immigration-focused rally in Tempe, Arizona, less than two weeks out from Election Day.
“They unleashed an army of migrant gangs waging a campaign of violence,” said Trump, who regularly uses dehumanizing language when he talks about undocumented immigrants. “We’re a dumping ground. We’re like a garbage can for the world.” […]
[…] NBC News spoke to seven people who said they discussed the allegations with Williams between 2006 and 2022. All of them said they found Williams and her claim to be credible and consistent. Her allegation was first published in The Guardian and first broadcast by CNN.
Williams appears to be the first person to publicly allege sexual misconduct by Trump in which Epstein played a role. None of the dozens of women in Epstein’s orbit whom NBC News has interviewed over the last seven years have accused Trump of misconduct that involved Epstein. […]
Williams and Epstein never discussed the incident again, she said. Williams was deeply troubled and cut off contact with Epstein shortly afterward. She said she had no awareness that Epstein had abused young women and broken the law until media reports about him emerged. […]
“I had a lot of shame, and I blamed myself for it. And that made me not want to talk about it,” Williams said.
[…] “He harmed me,” Williams told NBC News. “Sexual assault is harmful. It damages people.”
two IDF Merkava tanks destroyed [a UN position in Ramyah]’s main gate and forcibly entered […] They requested multiple times that the base turn out its lights. […] UNIFIL protested through our liaison
[…]
For the fourth time in as many days, we remind the IDF […] of their obligations […] Breaching and entering a UN position is a further flagrant violation of international law
Following Unifil protests, the tanks left after 45 minutes. But within an hour, several rounds were fired about 100 metres north of the base, which emitted “smoke of suspected white phosphorus” that wafted into the base, the report said, injuring 15 peacekeepers.
[…]
Rights groups have documented Israel’s use of white phosphorus in Lebanon throughout the past year. Israel has previously defended its use of white phosphorus as consistent with international law.
10-14: UN Security Council backs Lebanon peacekeepers after Israeli attacks
The United Nations Security Council on [10-14] expressed strong concern […] In a statement adopted by consensus, the 15-member council also urged all parties—without naming them—to respect the safety and security of the personnel and premises of the U.N.
[…]
Since the start of Israeli ground operation in Lebanon on Oct. 1, UNIFIL positions have been affected 20 times […] For the past two weeks Israel has been telling U.N. peacekeepers to move 5 km (3 miles) back from the so-called Blue Line—a U.N.-mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights […] Netanyahu said on [10-13] […] “The time has come for you to withdraw UNIFIL.”
Couldn’t find the UN statement. No outlets linked it. This recent consensus statement was notable as the Council had been divided over Gaza, with the US defending Israel. I tried to find a statement with the distinctive quote, “we all hope there will be a return to the negotiation table, and that there will be finally a real effort to full implementation of resolution 1701.” Wasn’t even a sternly worded letter!
peacekeepers at a position near Kafer Kela observed an IDF Merkava tank firing at their watchtower. […] Yet again we see direct and apparently deliberate fire
[…]
We remind the IDF […] of their obligations […] to respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times.
an IDF bulldozer deliberately demolished an observation tower and perimeter fence of a UN position in Marwahin.
Yet again, we remind the IDF […] to respect the inviolability of UN premises […] again, we note that breaching a UN position and damaging UN assets is a flagrant violation of international law
[…]
We will continue to undertake our mandated tasks to monitor and report.
[UNIFIL spokesperson said that under the UN Charter], “self-defence can be used, but we also have to be very pragmatic on when to use it and how to use it, because we don’t want to become part of the conflict and use force that would trigger more violence”
[…]
Most villages along the Blue Line are “completely destroyed and damaged”, the UNIFIL spokesperson continued. Although some 450,000 people have fled the hostilities, the thousands of others who remain are in desperate need of aid.
a UN convoy of 12 trucks carrying vital aid arrived in the villages of Marjeyoun and Klayaa in the south […] WFP provides ready-to-eat food and cash to some 200,000 people on a daily basis, while UNICEF and UNHCR continue to support primary healthcare services and provide water, hygiene kits, mattresses, blankets and other items.
[…]
UNHCR is working with the Lebanese authorities to upgrade the shelters with weatherproofing and rehabilitation of water and sanitation facilities, as well as assessing more sites that can be used for displaced people.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Some guy cosplaying as the Terminator burbled:
Good grief!
What’s this, some competition for the most inane comment?
Yep, and guess what — you won!
<snicker>
birgerjohanssonsays
Stephen Colbert:
Trump To Play MSG | Tucker Carlson’s Weird Daddy Issues | Beyoncé & Bruce Springstten To Rally For Harris
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FjzA2cPvr5E
I did not know Trump prevented a war with France.
John Moralessays
Bekenstein Bound:
“Yep, and guess what — you won!”
I can’t possibly win, mate — gotta be in it to win it.
(Nice admission, but)
<snicker>
“Oscar Wilde — ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.'”
Heh.
John Moralessays
PS Some guy cosplaying as the Terminator burbled:
I notice when people try to appeal to the, um, “lurkers”, they address me in the third person.
(In your case, with a purple tinge, Beebee)
birgerjohanssonsays
Kate Bush shares plans to make new music: ‘I’ve got lots of ideas’ | The Guardian
The idea that Donald Trump didn’t try to have Hillary Clinton prosecuted is one of the more demonstrably ridiculous myths in Republican politics.
Donald Trump raised a few eyebrows when he said he’d consider pardoning Hunter Biden after the election, but there was another part of the former president’s comments that stood out for me. As part of Trump’s latest interview with Hugh Hewitt, the candidate also boasted about his decision not to prosecute former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the wake of their 2016 campaign:
“I could have gone after Hillary. I could have gotten Hillary Clinton very easily. And when they say, ‘Lock her up,’ whenever they said, ‘Lock her,’ you know, they’d start, 30,000 people, ‘Lock her up, lock her up.’ What did I do? I always say, ‘Take it easy, just relax. We’re winning. Take it easy. Take it easy.’ I could have had her put in jail. And I decided I didn’t want to do that. I thought it would look terrible. You had the wife of the president of the United States going to jail. I thought it would be very bad if we did that. And I made sure that didn’t happen, okay? I thought it would be bad.”
[JFC. The gaslighting!]
Around the same time, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida told NPR that Trump, while in office, did not tell the Justice Department to “go after” Clinton.
A few days earlier, New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, told ABC News that Americans need not worry about Trump targeting his political opponents in a second term, because he didn’t “go after” Clinton in his first term.
[…] the idea that Trump gave Clinton some kind of pass remains one of the more ridiculous myths that too many Republicans insist on peddling.
Indeed, it comes up with surprising regularity. A couple of years ago, Republican Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida argued in apparent seriousness that Trump, after arriving in the White House, made a conscious choice to leave his 2016 opponent alone.
“President Trump took that approach. He said, ’You know what, we’re not going to prosecute Hillary Clinton,’” Waltz said, as if reality had no meaning. The GOP lawmaker added, “[Trump] said, ‘You know what, let’s move on. Let’s move forward.’”
Nearly a year later, Sen. Ron Johnson also went to Fox News to push the same line. “President Ford decided it was best for America not to pursue prosecution against President Nixon. President Trump pretty much made the same decision and decided not to pursue any kind of prosecution of Hillary Clinton,” the Wisconsin Republican claimed.
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, let’s review the receipts. In Trump’s first year in the White House — after the 2016 election was over and Clinton largely withdrew from public view — the then-president publicly pleaded with the Justice Department to go after Clinton.
A year later, in 2018, the then-president told the White House counsel that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute Clinton. As former special counsel Robert Mueller documented in his findings, it was around this time that Trump pressured then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to go after Clinton.
Ahead of Election Day 2020 — nearly four years after Clinton’s defeat — Trump again publicly called for the Democrat’s incarceration and lobbied then-Attorney General Barr to prosecute Clinton for reasons unknown.
None of this was kept secret. It happened out in the open. We all saw it play out in public. As the GOP nominee and his surrogates continue to brag about his magnanimity toward Clinton, they’re asking us to forget what we all saw with our own eyes.
As for why this still matters, the problem is not just the fact that Trump, Donalds, Sununu and others are peddling a demonstrably false version of the recent past, the problem is also the significance of their lie as it relates to the near future: If Americans want to know whether the Republican candidate will target his foes and abuse his powers in a second term, it’s highly relevant to know that he targeted his foes and abused his powers in his first term.
More lies from Montana Republican Senate nominee Tim Sheehy:
[…]NBC News reported on Thursday that despite Sheehy claiming to have been discharged from his service in the military because he was declared medically unfit to serve, his discharge records say Sheehy voluntarily resigned and did not cite any medical conditions.
From NBC News:
Tim Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL running for the Senate in Montana, has said he was discharged from the military for medical reasons because of injuries he sustained on duty, but his discharge paperwork tells a different story.
The heavily redacted, two-page document obtained by NBC News indicates that Sheehy voluntarily resigned his commission and does not list any medical condition that forced him out of uniform, according to a review of the document and a current and former U.S. official familiar with the details of his separation.
This is the latest false claim Sheehy appears to have made about his time as a Navy SEAL, service he has touted on the campaign trail in his quest to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
In April, The Washington Post reported a discrepancy in a story Sheehy told about being shot in the arm. On the campaign trail, Sheehy said he was shot in the arm while serving in Afghanistan in 2012.
However, in October 2015, Sheehy went to the emergency room after a trip to Glacier National Park, where he reported having a gunshot wound in his arm. He told a park ranger that he had shot himself in the arm in the park by accident, and was fined $525 for illegally discharging a weapon in a national park. [snipped details that are available in the previous comments]
Sheehy has never released the medical records from that day that would have said whether the bullet wound was fresh.
Military veterans in Montana held an event on Oct. 22 in which they slammed Sheehy as an “egregious” and “serial liar” who can’t be trusted because of the discrepancy in his story about the gunshot wound.
“In some circles, we veterans call this stolen valor,” Michael Jarnevic, who was in the military for more than 40 years and at the event on Tuesday said, according to a report in the Daily Montanan. “And it’s one of the most horrific things you can do as a veteran.”
Questions about his military service are not the only scandal Sheehy has faced during the election. Sheehy was hit by a lawsuit in April from former employees of his aerial firefighting company of defrauding them out of millions of dollars.
Sheehy has also been slammed by Native American groups in the state after he used racist stereotypes in talking about the Native population in the state. At a fundraiser in November 2023, Sheehy talked about going cattle branding on Montana’s Crow Reservation, and said it’s “a great way to bond with all the Indians out there while they’re drunk at 8 AM.”
Polls show Sheehy, a multimillionaire Minnesota transplant, leading Tester in the race, which could determine control of the Senate. Tester has an uphill battle to overcome the likely double-digit win former President Donald Trump will pull off in the state, which would require Tester to win over a number of GOP voters.
Donald Trump called in while Vance was supposed to be taking questions from voters and asked, “How brilliant is Donald J. Trump?”
“Sir, of course you’re very brilliant, and we both agree that it’s important to have very smart people running our government,” Vance replied.
For Trump, it was something of a moment of validation for the “sir” stories he has loved to tell for years. Trump frequently tells a “sir” story at his rallies, which as CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has cataloged, that when he says the word ”sir,” it is usually a sign that he is about to lie.
A “sir” story traditionally contains a generous helping of Trump’s verbal flourishes, along with a cast of characters who are crying to Trump, praising him for an imagined accomplishment that allows them to pursue their great American dreams.
[…] By finally giving him what may be the first real “sir” story, Vance took a step further (or backward) in his transition from Trump naysayer to complete subordinate.
Vance once identified himself as “a never Trump guy” who “never liked him.” He said Trump’s policy proposals “range from immoral to absurd.” He described Trump as “America’s Hitler” and called his campaign “an exercise in pointing the finger at someone else.”
Vance said Trump failed to deliver on his promises once he took the presidency, and that the Republican leader was a “moral disaster.”
As Gov. Tim Walz pointed out during his debate with Vance, the reason Vance is on the ticket in this cycle with Trump is because Trump supporters threatened to hang former Vice President Mike Pence for the sin of denying Trump’s request to steal the 2020 election.
Now Vance makes excuses for Trump’s fascist impulses, pushes lies about migrants, and indulges in ridiculous election denialism. Vance has cemented his new role, moving from “never Trump guy” to real-life “sir” guy.
Turns out force-retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, QAnon fan and peddler of 2020 stolen election lies and also posters, mugs, and even a children’s book to go with them, knew all along that there was no fraud in the 2020 election. And that he profited bigly from the lie, with his ReAwaken America grift netting at least $21 million. And there is video! [Two videos are available at the link]
Not only that, within a month after that deposition, Flynn was back out there on the airwaves, telling Chris Cuomo on NewsNation that the 2020 election was “filled with fraud,” a hustle he never quit hustling. […]
These tidbits come from Flynn’s deposition earlier this year in one of the many lawsuits filed by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Dr. Eric Coomer, who was driven from his home and job by violent threats in 2020 after he became the target of stolen-election conspiracy theories. People driven from their homes by Trump’s lies sure is a big club!
Two of the groups Coomer’s suing were co-founded by Flynn: the ReAwaken America Tour and The America Project. Coomer’s also suing the podcast ThriveTime Show, and its podcaster and ReAwaken tour co-founder Clayton Clark, personally.
Coomer also sued NewsMax, which settled with him for an undisclosed amount and apologized; Sidney Powell, who also settled; Jim Hoft and The Gateway Pundit (which has filed for bankruptcy); the Trump campaign; and other assorted rageaholic carnival-barking loons and their entities, including Rudy, Michelle Malkin, Eric Metaxas, and Joseph Oltmann. May he get all their money!
Shall we quickly recap Flynn’s ignoble career?
He was in the Army for 33 years, but got force-retired as a Lieutenant General in 2014, because, as Colin Powell said in a hacked email, he was “abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc.” […]
In 2009 or early 2010, Flynn was accused of revealing to Pakistani officials sensitive US intelligence, and sharing highly classified intelligence with Australian and British forces. Still, somehow, in 2012 Barack Obama appointed him to be head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in charge of 20,000 employees. Flynn proceeded to cozy up to Russia, and in 2013 he “arranged a trip to Moscow to speak to a group of officers from the GRU, Russia’s intelligence agency, about leadership development.” Flynn tried to invite GRU officers to the US, but his superiors told him FUCK NO.
So Flynn was strongly encouraged to retire. But he still got intelligence briefings! And kept his fat $200k-plus pension. You’re welcome, taxpayers! But instead of retiring […] he immediately formed his own consulting company, Flynn Intel Group, and traveled the world like a little bad-news Carmen Sandiego. He went to Egypt and Israel in June 2015, and to Russia that December, where he got paid $45,000 to speak at a gala for RT, the state-sponsored Russian TV network, and sat a table with Putin and Jill Stein.
Soon after that he joined the Trump campaign, which got Russian spies all a-twitter. They bragged amongst themselves which one of them was his closest bestie, and pondered how to make the best use of that idiot and his fashion-plate pal Paul Manafort. They had at least 18 gossip sessions with Flynn and other Trump aides, and Flynn told Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak not to retaliate for Obama kicking out Russia’s spies, because soon Trump would be able to kiss them and make it all better. Kislyak agreed that Russia would respond with “cold heads.” Adorable.
Flynn also found time to make $530,000 working for the Turkish government. He resigned from the Trump administration after his Kislyak ass-smoochery came to light, and ended up pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about it. Because lying to protect the interests of America’s enemies and enrich himself is an ongoing theme with that guy. In 2020 Trump pardoned him. Because hurting America by lying for personal enrichment is a hobby of Trump’s also! There’s a lot more shady shit, and listing it all would take most of the day. New York magazine’s got a rundown, and yr Wonkette has much in her archives! [Embedded links available at the main link.]
Let’s skip to the past four years, which Flynn has spent peddling “the steal” that wasn’t, to whichever rubes are suckers enough to believe it, and slobbering over fantasies of opening the “gates of hell” and blood from mass executions of Trump’s enemies running in the streets. He’s been traveling around with his aide Ivan Raiklin, a former Green Beret who calls himself the “Secretary of Retribution” and has a “Deep State Target List” of 350 people, so far. (Raiklin’s currently, like today, trying to gin up support for North Carolina’s Legislature to give its electoral vote to Donald Trump by acclamation, because who needs an “election”?) Is this what the soccer-mommies want instead of health care? [video at the link]
“But we have to win first,” he says. Oh boy, well, sure hope that doesn’t happen!
With a week and a half to go until the election — and nothing but chaos in sight between now and then — a huge article has come out in the Wall Street Journal about Elon Musk’s secret telephone sessions with blood-covered Russian baby murderer Vladimir Putin, which brings to mind just one question for us:
Is the 2024 Russian attack on the US election actually just one pathetically needy absolute loser of a richest man in the world named Elon Musk?
[…] First of all, we learn a number of things in this article, some of which we already knew some things about, like for instance:
– Putin and Elon been having their little secret fuckchats for a while now, going back as far as 2022, plus Elon’s had other fuckchats with other Russian bigwigs close to Putin.
– Putin was like hey Elon, can you plz not let Taiwan have Starlink? Asking for a friend who is the dictator-for-life of China.
– Though Elon was initially supportive of Ukraine’s side in the Russia/Ukraine war— as one would expect any decent person to be, since it’s customary to defend the side that gets invaded for no reason, which in this case also happens to be our ally, as opposed to the side that does the invading/baby murdering — he quickly changed his tune on that later in 2022, when he wouldn’t let Ukraine’s military use Starlink for any kind of offensive operations. Guess who benefited from that? Elon has said he wouldn’t allow it because he — in his infinite fucking wisdom about goddamned nothing — was pretty sure it would cause a nuclear war. Any idea who whispered that Kremlin lie […]? We can only imagine.
– One of the Russian officials Elon has fuckchatted with is Putin’s first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko, who according to the US government has created domains for the spread of Kremlin disinfo, including on the Nazi hell-husk formerly known as Twitter, which Elon owns.
– The Kremlin has put pressure on Elon and his businesses, and there have been “implicit threats against him.” Cool friends, dude. Beggars can’t be choosers, we guess.
As we have discussed previously here, there is just about no Russian propaganda Elon Musk isn’t a stupid enough useful idiot not to fall for. Whenever he speaks on the subject, it’s amazing how he just barfs out whatever Putin wants.
But this shit has kind of been in plain sight for a long time, if you knew what to look for.
We wrote this in early 2023, after Elon had been babbling out so-called peace plans for Ukraine that contained everything Putin wanted, plus oddly specific information he had no reason to know:
Elon’s “prediction” for Ukrainian peace was specific and oddly aligned with Vladimir Putin’s exact views. It was like they had been on AOL Instant Messenger or something. It called for new elections in the areas of Ukraine that Russia stole, thereby giving legitimacy to the idea that there were two sides to the question “Should Russia invade and steal Ukraine’s land?” It went ahead and gave Crimea to Russia. (Russia apologists have since last year’s invasion tried hard to separate the 2022 Russian stealing of Ukrainian territory from the 2014 stealing of Ukrainian territory, desperate for us to believe that the 2014 seizure of Crimea is OK now.)
But Elon’s “prediction” also mentioned water supply issues for Crimea. Timothy Snyder noted wryly that it was kinda weird that Elon mentioned the water supply thing, since it was something “well known to Russian authorities but not common knowledge.” In other words, it was something Elon would know fuckall about. (Snyder is good at noticing things that are kinda weird.)
Also we know they have talked on the phone before.
And now here we are.
As the WSJ notes, Elon Musk has billions of dollars of US government contracts, and is the “primary rocket launcher for the Pentagon and NASA.” He has a classified clearance. So it’s kind of weird to have him tongue-fucking our sworn enemies on the side, yeah? […]
One person aware of the conversations said the government faces a dilemma because it is so dependent on the billionaire’s technologies. SpaceX launches vital national security satellites into orbit and is the company NASA relies on to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
“They don’t love it,” the person said, referring to the Musk-Putin contacts. The person, however, said no alerts have been raised by the administration over possible security breaches by Musk.
Putin is having secret chats with Elon. Putin is having secret chats with Trump. Trump and Elon are publicly bumping their pubic bones together on stage in Pennsylvania while Elon basically bribes people to vote for Trump. [Oh yeah. All perfectly legit I’m sure.]
Elon is one of the loudest voices in the room for fucking Ukraine and leaving it to die […]
Meanwhile, Elon and his Twitter are some of the foremost purveyors of Russian disinformation on the globe, particularly as it pertains to the US election. Here is a good report from NBC News’s Brandy Zadrozny on the current Russian lie factory-to-American mainstream superhighways. Plus, here’s a story on the former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who’s working with Russian intelligence to seed America with deepfakes and hurt Kamala Harris’s campaign. Guess where some of his work has ended up? [Embedded links available at the main link.]
Elon constantly falls for Russian propaganda and shares it incessantly. His Twitter is the biggest disinformation/bullshit factory on the planet, the happiest host to Russian lies.
And now Elon has basically moved to Pennsylvania to help “stop” (start) the steal for Donald Trump, who has basically promised that if he’s elected, Elon will get to be the secretary of making sure nobody ever tells Elon no.
Seems like in an ideal world the US government would probably immediately cancel all of Elon Musk’s government contracts, immediately open a criminal investigation, and perhaps even confiscate all the Walmart wastebasket-on-wheels Cybertrucks […]
[…] Apparently Trump keeps talking about what a great time the 1890s were? I don’t know, I don’t listen to that fucking guy. Turns out there was a depression caused … by the tariffs. (Bulwark) […]
[…] Stacey Williams deserves to be heard, regardless of the impact it has on the election, because every survivor deserves that. We need to listen, because we need to really absorb the fact that the man that did that to her, ever so casually, is the man that nearly half of the country wants to be president again. It’s important to know who people are.
The fact is, the more they continue to support him through things like this, through all of the “Hey, you know who wasn’t a bad guy? Hitler!” and through everything else, their support for him doesn’t get eroded, it gets cemented. They become more loyal to him. There is no one more fiercely loyal and dedicated than the person who is defending an obvious monster because of who they are.
[…] I don’t think Donald Trump is guilty just because I dislike him as a person, but because there are 87,000 reports of him doing this to women [more like 17 reports], one of which came directly from his own mouth, and because Williams said it multiple times to multiple people and passed a lie detector test. If there were evidence to the contrary, I wouldn’t think twice about changing my mind — not least of all because there are also 87,000 other entirely valid reasons to fear another four years of Trump.
It would be lovely if we could still think to ourselves “Oh boy, he’s really crossing a line now!” with regards to these things, but that’s not going to happen. There are no lines left to cross for these people — at this point, we just have to hope that we outnumber them.
How Trump talks: Abrupt shifts, profane insults, confusing sentences.
The Republican presidential nominee calls it “the weave” and a sign of a brilliant mind, but his remarks at recent public appearances have been strikingly erratic and coarse.
Donald Trump debuted a name for his idiosyncratic, digressive speaking style this summer: “the weave.”
The Republican presidential nominee, now 78, was frustrated with news coverage describing his speeches as rambling and speculating about cognitive decline, according to people who have talked with him, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Trump decided to brand his habit of going off on wide-ranging tangents as the mark of a vibrant and sophisticated mind, they said — trying to turn what many voters, and some of his advisers, saw as a weakness into a strength. [video at the link]
Trump’s recent public appearances have been strikingly erratic, coarse and often confusing, even for a politician with a history of ad-libbing in three consecutive presidential runs, a Washington Post review of dozens of speeches, interviews and other public appearances shows. His speeches have gotten longer and more repetitive compared with those of past campaigns. He promotes falsehoods and theories that are so far removed from reality or appear wholly made up that they are often baffling to anyone not steeped in MAGA media or internet memes. [True.]
He jumps more abruptly between subjects and from his script to improvising, sometimes offering what sound like non-sequiturs. He occasionally mixes up words or names, and some of his sentences are meaningless or nonsensical. As he delivered more speeches in October, he has made multiple slip-ups per day. He has become more profane in public.
Many of Trump’s supporters say they enjoy his off-the-cuff commentary, favorably contrasting his speeches with what they usually hear from politicians.
[…] With less than two weeks of campaigning left, Vice President Kamala Harris is increasingly trying to use Trump’s words against him. At recent rallies, she has started playing clips of him speaking and calling him “unstable and unhinged.”
“He has called it ‘the weave,’” Harris said at a rally on Saturday. “But I think we here will call it nonsense.”
[…] His unscripted appearances generate widespread attention, accomplishing his goal of dominating headlines.
The Republican nominee has scoffed at questions about his age and fitness and challenged Harris’s intelligence.
“I have no cognitive,” he said at a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
[…] Trump’s Truth Social posts don’t have anywhere near the reach he once got on Twitter and his rallies are not covered wall-to-wall on live TV, meaning his comments don’t get the traction they once might have. Privately, some of his advisers see this as a positive development. Harris, for her part, has urged people to watch Trump’s rallies for themselves.
[…] Trump has dramatically increased the pace of campaigning since Labor Day, with multiple events on some days, leaving him appearing more tired and irritable. […]
Some of his puzzling statements arise from how he gets his own information. In the years since leaving the White House, Trump’s sources of news have grown increasingly insular and self-reinforcing, according to people who talk with him. He both validates and thrives on an alternative ecosystem that selects and amplifies stories to suit him, and he summarily dismisses any other reports as fake. Aides who contradict him or bring him bad news quickly lose his favor and access. Much of the information he gets these days comes from Natalie Harp, a junior but highly influential aide who often trails Trump no matter where he is, printing out supportive articles and social media posts for his review, according to advisers.
[…] Trump spokesman Steven Cheung in an email praised the Republican nominee’s rhetoric: “President Trump is the greatest orator in political history and his patented Weave is a brilliant method to convey important stories and explain policies that will help everyday Americans turn the page from the last four years of Kamala Harris’s failures. The media is too stupid and ignorant to understand or comprehend what is happening in the country and, therefore, is unable to accurately report on President Trump’s achievements while in office and the pro-America agenda he will implement in his second term.” [Wow. Spin so thick with delusion that it’s like concrete. That doesn’t fly.]
He repeats falsehoods that are far removed from reality [video at the link]
And then they have the apps, right? How about the apps? Where they have an app so that the gangs, the people, the cartels, the heads of ’em, they can call the app. They call the second-most resettled population. Nobody’s ever seen. They call up the app and they ask, where do we drop the illegals? And people are on the other side, and they left that. She actually created an app, a phone system, where they can call up. I mean, she’s a criminal. She’s a criminal. She really is. If you think about it. — Oct. 11 rally in Aurora, Colorado
[…] some of his falsehoods are so fantastical it can be hard to tell what he is referring to.
He accused Harris of speaking “about teddy bears,” which have never come up in any of her interviews. He claimed she was known as “the tax queen” as San Francisco district attorney even though prosecutors have no power over taxation. He falsely claims banning cows and windows are part of Democrats’ plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even accusing them of trying to raze Manhattan. He sometimes vividly describes nonexistent crime sprees. [video at the link]
Trump’s riffs about Hannibal Lecter roughly coincided with false right-wing internet rumors about cannibals from Haiti. He and his campaign have never provided any basis for Trump’s frequent claim that foreign countries are emptying their prisons and mental institutions to send people to the United States.
As Trump emphasizes immigration in the closing stretch of the campaign, his speeches routinely feature the false allegation that Harris created a phone app for cartels to coordinate human smuggling at the U.S.-Mexico border. The false claim stems from a mobile application developed and released by Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration to facilitate trade. In 2023, the agency expanded the app to add appointment scheduling for asylum applications.
Most prominently, Trump promoted unfounded, racist allegations against Haitian refugees settled in Springfield, Ohio, during the Sept. 10 debate with Harris. False internet rumors accused people of eating geese and cats, and Trump, without any basis, added dogs.
He occasionally mixes up words and names [video at the link]
[…] At an Oct. 1 press conference in Milwaukee, Trump complained that the Secret Service was busy protecting the U.N. General Assembly, including “the president of North Korea, who’s basically trying to kill me,” apparently meaning Iran. [snipped other examples]
[…] Almost two hours into the Greensboro rally, Trump struggled to summon the word fryer two days after visiting a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania.
“Those french fries were good,” he said. “They were good. They were right out of the uh, they were right out of whatever the hell they make them out of.”
He transitions abruptly, verging on non-sequiturs [video at the link]
“This isn’t like Elon with his rocket ships that land within 12 inches on the moon where they want it to land or he gets the engines back. That was the first I really saw. I said, ‘Who the hell did that?’ I saw engines about three or four years ago. These things were coming. Cylinders, no wings, no nothing, and they’re coming down very slowly, landing on a raft in the middle of the ocean, someplace with a circle. Boom. Reminded me of the Biden circles that he used to have, right? He’d have eight circles and he couldn’t fill them up. But then I heard he beat us with the popular vote. I don’t know, I don’t know, couldn’t fill up the circles. I always loved those circles. They were so beautiful. That was so beautiful to look at. In fact, the person that did them, that was the best thing about his — the level of that circle was great. But they couldn’t get people, so they used to have the press stand in those circles because they couldn’t get the people. Then I heard we lost. ‘Oh, we lost.’ No, we’re never going to let that happen again. But we’ve been abused by other countries. We’ve been abused by our own politicians, really, more than other countries. I can’t blame them. We’ve been abused by people that represent us in this country, some of them stupid, some of them naive, and some of them crooked, frankly.”
— Oct. 10 speech to the Detroit Economic Club
[…] Some phrases and answers are nonsensical [video at the link]
New construction at a military research site near Moscow reveals a specialized laboratory complex designed to research and handle deadly pathogens, experts say.
A few months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, satellite imagery captured unusual activity at a restricted military research facility nestled among the birch forests northeast of Moscow.
The Russian site, called Sergiev Posad-6, had been quiet for decades, but it had a notorious Cold War past: It had once been a major research center for biological weapons, with a history of experiments with the viruses that cause smallpox, Ebola and hemorrhagic fevers.
Satellite imagery over the next two years — collected by Google Earth and commercial imaging firms MAXAR and Planet Labs — shows construction vehicles renovating the old Soviet-era laboratory and breaking ground on 10 new buildings, totaling more than 250,000 square feet, with several of them bearing hallmarks of biological labs designed to handle extremely dangerous pathogens.
There has been no sign such weapons have been used in the Ukraine conflict, but the construction of new labs at Sergiev Posad-6 is being closely watched by U.S. intelligence agencies and bioweapons experts amid worries about Moscow’s intentions as the conflict grinds through its third year.
The images showed multiple signatures that, when combined, indicate a high-containment biological facility: dozens of rooftop air handling units, layouts consistent with partitioned labs, underground infrastructure, heightened security features and what appears to be a power plant.
[…] In recent weeks, Russian officials have publicly confirmed that the scientists will use the labs to study deadly microbes such as the Ebola viruses, in an effort to strengthen the country’s defenses against bioterrorism as well as future pandemics. Under Centers for Disease Control guidelines, U.S. research on Ebola is restricted to laboratories rated as “biological safety level 4” (BSL-4), equipped to handle the most lethal and incurable kinds of viruses and bacteria.
[…] Four buildings have an unusually large amount of air-handling equipment, at a scale typically associated with high-containment laboratories.
BSL-4 labs require precise air pressure control, robust filtration, backup air equipment, and separate systems for lab and non-lab spaces to protect scientists from contagious microbes.
The air in a BSL-4 lab must be replaced 12 to 15 times per hour to maintain negative pressure, said Andrew C. Weber, a former top Pentagon official for nonproliferation who spent years investigating Soviet bioweapons facilities in the 1990s.
[…] The site also includes a building with tall exhaust stacks that several experts believe to be a small power plant.
A power plant independent of local energy infrastructure is critical to maintain the temperature and air circulation that a BSL-4 requires, Weber said.
Satellite images taken in April and May 2023 reveal the construction of a 36-foot-wide underground tunnel that links the labs and power plant — enough room for vehicles and personnel to travel in a secure and environmentally controlled space, as well as pipes to convey steam that can be used for heating as well as for autoclaves that sterilize contaminated laboratory equipment.
Images taken before the roof construction also reveal a complex design with clusters of compartmentalized rooms that experts said were likely laboratory antechambers for decontamination. […]
Weber said he was troubled by Moscow’s decision to embed the new research capabilities within the Russian military in a highly secretive location notorious for its past role in bioweapons research.
[…] checkpoints, road design, tree clearing, and nested fencing tightly control movement and allow for monitoring and surveillance […]
Its security perimeter was cleared of trees to maintain clear lines of sight, in a manner consistent with defenses at other top-security Russian military sites […]
Kelly told the New York Times that Trump meets the definition of a fascist and also said he observed the former president on multiple occasions praising Adolf Hitler.
[…] “We applaud General Kelly for highlighting in stark details the danger of a second Trump term. Like General Kelly, we did not take the decision to come forward lightly,” the letter said. “We are all lifelong Republicans who served our country. However, there are moments in history where it becomes necessary to put country over party. This is one of those moments.”
[…] The letter, released by the Harris campaign, is signed by former officials including former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security Miles Taylor, and Olivia Troye, former national security adviser to Mike Pence. All three former Trump administration officials have become high-profile critics of his after his presidency ended. […]
Trump has suggested the United States might not need income taxes — thanks to tariff policies he only pretends to understand. What could possibly go wrong?
The more Donald Trump promises to impose dramatic trade tariffs in a possible second term, the more Democrats tell voters that the former president’s policies would effectively impose a new national sales tax on consumers. The Republican candidate has heard these criticisms, and he doesn’t like them.
“I am NOT proposing a National Sales Tax, as the Democrats say in their Advertisements against me,” he wrote on his social media platform, adding that the tariffs would paid for by other countries “and will MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN!”
Part of the problem is that Trump, at the most basic of levels, simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s really just Economics 101: For all intents and purposes, tariffs are effectively taxes paid by businesses, which pass on the costs to consumers. They are not paid by other countries, no matter how many times he says otherwise.
The Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez summarized matters nicely: “It is so, so bizarre that the core of Trump’s policy agenda is based on just lying about how tariffs work at the most basic, 101 level imaginable. It’s not controversial. It’s not even complicated. It’s just a lie. It’s like saying income taxes are paid by leprechauns.”
Complicating matters, however, is that the confused GOP nominee has also raised the possibility of trying to replace taxes with tariffs. NBC News reported:
Trump said “there is a way” to eliminate federal taxes when asked by a voter in New York City last week about whether such a thing would be possible. “You know in the old days when we were smart, when we were a smart country, in the 1890s and all, this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was,” Trump said. “It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax.”
The former president added, “There is a way, if what I’m planning comes out,” suggesting he genuinely believes it’s possible to eliminate income taxes entirely and rely on trade tariffs to replace the revenue needed to fund the government and social-insurance programs.
Making matters worse, of course, is the fact that Trump doesn’t really understand tax policy, either. Consider, for example, some of his recent campaign promises.
Work as a first-responder? You get a tax break. Need to buy a generator for your home? You get a tax break, too. An American living abroad? Tax break. Buying a new American-made car? Tax break. Overtime pay? Tax break. Tips? Tax break. Social Security benefits? Tax break.
All of these measures would be added to the tax breaks he signed into law in 2017, which are due to expire, but which he intends to extend, no matter how many trillion of dollars it would add to the national debt. [Yikes]
[…] How would all of these ideas work? Trump doesn’t know. How much would these tax policies cost? Trump doesn’t know. Who’d benefit from the measures? Trump doesn’t know. How would he get such measures approved? Trump doesn’t know. Why didn’t he pursue any of this during his four-year term in the White House? Trump doesn’t know.
The former president doesn’t have answers to any of these questions because — and this is the important part — they’re not actual tax policies.
Indeed, the most important thing to remember about Trump’s tax plans is that they’re not actual tax plans. They’re desperate grunts, blurted out without forethought or vetting. [True, but that would stop Trump from trying to implement them anyway.]
[…] But Trump is now apparently going further, suggesting the United States might not even need income taxes — thanks to tariff policies he only pretends to understand. What could possibly go wrong?
* Harris’ star-studded event in Atlanta — Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen were among the big names appearing at the event — reportedly drew an audience of 23,000 people. Around the same time, Trump claimed that 29,000 people were on hand for his recent McDonald’s stunt, which was plainly bonkers.
[…] * The Senate Majority PAC, which is closely aligned with the Senate Democratic leadership, is investing an additional $5 million into Texas’ U.S. Senate campaign, hoping to derail Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s bid for a third term. [I hope that works.]
[…] “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” Will Lewis [publisher and CEO] wrote in an opinion piece published on the paper’s website. He referenced the paper’s policy in the decades prior to 1976, when, following the Watergate scandal that the Post broke, it endorsed Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter. The last time the Post did not endorse a presidential candidate in the general election was 1988, according to a search of its archives.
[…] Former Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump’s presidency, denounced the decision starkly.
“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” Baron said in a statement to NPR. “Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
[…] The Post’s investigative team has routinely reported on wrongdoing and allegations of illegality by former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and his associates. The editorial board, which is operated apart from the newsroom, has repeatedly declared that Trump’s actions in office and his rhetoric as a candidate have rendered him unfit for office.
It has especially focused on what he did in January 2021 to encourage his supporters to deny the formal certification of President Biden’s election.
On the campaign trail, Trump has threatened to exact vengeance on journalists and media outlets should he win the presidency once more.
In particular, he has promised to jail reporters who won’t identify the source of government leaks and to strip three big television networks of their licenses to broadcast. (Only local TV stations are actually licensed by federal regulators, not the networks themselves. But the three networks own 80 local television stations between them.)
[…] Post owner Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest people, has major contracts before the federal government in his other business operations, with billion-dollar implications affecting Amazon’s shipping business and cloud computing services as well as his Blue Origin space company.
He brought in Lewis, who has significant conservative bonafides, as publisher and CEO in January. Lewis held the same role at Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal; served as the editor of the London-based Telegraph, which is closely allied with the Tory party; and was a consultant to Conservative Boris Johnson when Johnson was U.K. prime minister.
Colleagues have told NPR that Bezos selected Lewis in part for his ability to get along with powerful conservative figures, including Murdoch. […]
Republican Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona said women who get abortions in the United States “hate the country because they only care about themselves.”
HuffPost reported that Schweikert made the comments in a 2022 interview with a conservative radio host Seth Leibsohn.
In the interview, Schweikert said of women who get abortions: “They hate their neighbors because they only care about themselves. They hate that baby because it symbolizes a responsibility.”
Of course, getting an abortion has nothing to do with someone’s level of responsibility, patriotism, or their love for their children. Abortions happen for many reasons, including women who end wanted pregnancies because their life is at risk or the fetus has been diagnosed with abnormalities that are incompatible with life.
Indeed, since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022 and paved the way for GOP-controlled states to pass laws banning the procedure, a number of harrowing stories emerged of women who were denied abortion care and faced serious or even deadly consequences.
Vice President Kamala Harris has featured some of these stories in campaign ads, including one released on Wednesday featuring the story of a woman in Texas who almost died after she was unable to receive an abortion for her fetus that would not survive, causing her to go septic. [video at the link]
What’s more, the majority of women who get abortions are already mothers and do not have the financial resources to have another child, not because they hate kids and responsibility, as Schweikert said.
“One of the main reasons people report wanting to have an abortion is so they can be a better parent to the kids they already have,” Ushma Upadhyay, a professor who studies reproductive health at the University of California, San Francisco, told The New York Times.
Republicans like Schweikert, however, cannot seem to grasp that women don’t want politicians to dictate what they can do with their bodies.
Other GOP lawmakers and candidates have made similarly disturbing comments denigrating women and their reproductive choices.
In September, Ohio Republican Senate nominee Bernie Moreno said women who are voting to preserve abortion rights—especially those past reproductive age—are “crazy.”
“Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it, if I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ Okay, it’s a little crazy, by the way, but especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself: I don’t think that’s an issue for you,” Moreno said at a campaign event. [video at the link]
Montana Republican Senate nominee Tim Sheehy said women who care about abortion rights have been “indoctrinated.”
And Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance famously attacked women without kids as “childless cat ladies” who “want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
Abortion is ultimately one of the key issues in the 2024 elections. Women voters, still enraged about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe, could be the decisive factor in the outcome of both the presidential contest and key downballot races, like Schweikert’s.
A YouGov poll published in September found that 58% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and that 37% of voters said they would vote against a candidate based solely on their position on abortion.
That could be a problem for Schweikert, who is locked in a toss-up race against Democrat Amish Shah. President Joe Biden carried Schweikert’s House seat in 2020 by 1.5 percentage points, according to Daily Kos data. Little public polling has been released in the race, though polls that were made public showed Schweikert and Shah in a virtual tie.
Should North Carolina lawmakers consider allocating the state’s presidential electors to Trump before votes are counted? The Freedom Caucus chair says yes.
At the presidential level, North Carolina is one of this year’s most closely watched battleground states, and while recent polling averages suggest Donald Trump is leading Kamala Harris, the Republican’s advantage in the state is less than a single percentage point.
The Tar Heel State, in other words, could go either way. North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes are definitely up for grabs. Much of the political world will be watching closely to see what the state’s vote totals show.
There is, however, one prominent voice suggesting there’s no real need to wait for those vote totals. Politico reported:
The chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus says the North Carolina Legislature should consider allocating the state’s presidential electors to Donald Trump even before votes are counted in the swing state. Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) said Thursday that such a step by North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Legislature “makes a lot of sense” given the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene in the western part of the state.
The Maryland Republican — recently chosen to lead the House’s most right-wing faction — actually said all of this out loud and in public, making the comments at a Maryland state party dinner. [video at the link]
“In North Carolina, that makes a lot of sense,” he said, responding to a question from a pro-Trump activist. “I mean you statistically can go and say ‘Hey, look, you got disenfranchised in 25 counties. You know what that vote probably would’ve been.’ … If I were in the legislature, I’d go, ‘Yeah, we gotta convene the legislature.’ We can’t disenfranchise the voters, but how do you make the argument in other states? I mean, otherwise it looks like it’s just a power play. In North Carolina, I mean, it’s legitimate. I mean, there are a lot of people who aren’t gonna get to vote and it may make a difference in that state.”
Just as a rule, anytime a politician starts a sentence, “We can’t disenfranchise the voters, but …” the rest of the sentiment is likely to be problematic.
Highlighting the Republican congressman’s comments, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote online, “It’s really important to understand the mainstream Republican goal — to make Donald Trump President whether or not he wins the election.”
In a statement to Politico, Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, which oversees election policies, added, “Extreme Republican leaders are openly advocating that North Carolina’s electoral votes be given to Donald Trump without an election. For the first time in North Carolina’s history, voters could be denied their right to choose the president. This blood-chilling scheme, suggested by the chair of the so-called House Freedom Caucus, is anti-American.”
The assessment is more than fair given the circumstances, though it’s hard not to wonder how many related comments we’ll soon hear from other Republicans pushing similarly undemocratic schemes.
Federal Election Commission data and reporting suggest a longtime GOP lawyer named Chris Gober blessed Musk’s massive giveaway.
You might have heard that Elon Musk’s super PAC has given away $1 million checks to voters through a daily lottery of sorts. To enter, one must be registered to vote in a swing state and sign a petition sponsored by his group, America PAC, stating they favor free speech and the right to bear arms.
But because federal law prohibits paying any person for their vote or even to register to vote, some legal scholars, like NBC News/MSNBC election law analyst Rick Hasen, sounded an immediate alarm about Musk’s giveaway scheme. A group of former GOP Justice Department officials even asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation. And while it’s not clear that Garland has done that, public reporting, including by NBC News, indicates the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section has at least sent a letter to America PAC warning that the giveaway may violate federal law.
Although America PAC announced two winners on Thursday, the group did not announce a winner on Wednesday after awarding $1 million to registered voters the previous four days.
Meanwhile, a source familiar with America PAC’s efforts told NBC News earlier this week, “The PAC is confident in the legality of this initiative.”
That made me wonder: Why is the super PAC so confident? And who exactly is providing legal advice to the group?
Federal Election Commission filings by America PAC may reflect the answer. According to publicly available FEC data, America PAC has made payments to only one firm — The Gober Group PLLC – where the descriptions of the disbursements contain the words “legal” or “law.” Those payments — made in July, August, September and October of this year — total over $247,000. (At least part of the October payment covered “travel” in addition to “legal consulting,” according to the FEC data.)
That begs a second question: What or who is The Gober Group?
Although the firm’s website is no longer accessible, a version saved in July 2024 reflects that the firm was founded by attorney Chris Gober, who has previously represented conservative luminaries like Sen. Ted Cruz and podcaster Ben Shapiro. Indeed, Gober’s biography touts his “dozens” of wins before the FEC; his lead role in drawing Texas’ new congressional maps following the 2020 census; his prior, senior legal roles at the Republican National Committee and its Senate-specific arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee; and a client base of “dozens of U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, governors, and state attorneys general across the country.” And it mentions that Gober has connections to two Supreme Court Justices: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, whom he helped prepare for their confirmation hearings.
So is Chris Gober the legal mastermind behind Musk’s massive checks? Veteran political journalist Tom LoBianco, writing for his own Substack, said the DOJ’s letter was indeed sent to Gober Monday and that while it “did not specify any immediate legal action … it did spell out the penalties for breaking U.S. voting laws, including possible imprisonment of up to five years.”
The real question then is whether Gober remains sanguine about the lawfulness of Musk’s handouts, especially given the absence of a lottery winner announcement on Wednesday. Gober did not respond to MSNBC’s attempts to reach him for comment. Stay tuned.
All the best conservative doofuses working together.
Musician Vanessa Carlton is using her famous song “A Thousand Miles,” to bring attention to the fight for reproductive rights. The song, and Carlton, are featured in a new video released by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
The video follows the journey of one young woman as she drives out of her home state of Texas to find health care access in another state. It is a lonely journey, marked by rest stops, sleeping in her car, and ending in a medical facility’s waiting room.
A title card reads “Last year, abortion bans forced 170,000 Americans to go out of state for reproductive care,” citing research done by the Guttmacher Institute.
“I had an ectopic pregnancy and without abortion care, I could have died,” Carlson says at the end of the video. “Abortion is health care. Please tell Congress to protect reproductive freedom nationwide.” [video at the link]
Nicks in sharing very personal stories about their reproductive histories, in service to the fight to regain the rights taken away when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
[…] It is just the latest video reminding more than half of the country’s voters that they have fewer rights since Donald Trump became president, and their lives are less safe as a consequence.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, personally made the decision to kill an endorsement of Vice President Harris for president that the newspaper’s editorial board had drafted, the outlet reported Friday.
Citing two sources it said had been briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, the Post reported its editorial board had drafted an endorsement of Harris that was to be published before the election.
“The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources,” the newspaper reported. […]
Pardon us, Washington Post, but when you told us after the 2016 election that your new motto would be “Democracy dies in darkness,” we assumed you were saying so because you knew that democracy dying would be a bad thing.
And yet, on Friday the newspaper that broke Watergate, the newspaper of Woodward and Bernstein, of Ben Bradlee and Katherine Graham, one of the two largest and most prestigious papers in all of the United States, will for the first time since 1972 not endorse a presidential candidate.
Torn between a normie Democrat who would be the first female POTUS and a fascist blob of orange Jell-o covered in so much hairspray that he can’t get within a mile of an open flame, the storied newspaper has shrugged and said, “Meh.”
Okay, not exactly “meh.” The Post’s publisher, former British tabloid hack Will Lewis, did waste a few hundred words and pixels on the paper’s website trying to justify the paper’s cowardice:
We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.
[Hogwash]
Okay, but what if one candidate embodies those traits and the other is the complete opposite of literally everything you just wrote? What exactly is the point of rolling back 50 years of practice now, when Donald Trump is wiping his ass with your alleged principles?
Even worse, the Columbia Journalism Review reports that the Post was in fact planning on endorsing Kamala Harris. But editorial page editor David Shipley informed the rest of the board at a Friday meeting that there would be no endorsement after all.
The paper itself later reported that it was owner Jeff Bezos who made the decision to spike the endorsement.
Reaction was pretty fierce, but perhaps nothing was as pointed as what the Post’s former editor, the legendary Marty Baron, said in a statement to his own former paper:
“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners),” former Post executive editor Martin Baron, who led the paper while Trump was president, said in a text message to The Post. “History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Literally as we were writing the above, editor-at-large Robert Kagan announced his resignation from the Post. So that’s also pretty pointed!
Regrettably — very regrettably — the Post is the second major American newspaper this week to see ownership spike a presidential endorsement. On Tuesday the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, announced that he had also prevented his paper’s editorial board from endorsing a presidential candidate. He tried to explain himself on X: [X post available at the link]
The Editorial Board was provided the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation. In addition, the Board was asked to provide their understanding of the policies and plans enunciated by the candidates during this campaign and its potential effect on the nation in the next four years. In this way, with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years.
Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.
More than a day later, Soon-Shiong’s daughter Nika tried to cover for him by invoking the situation in Gaza: [X post available at the link]
There is a lot of controversy and confusion over the LAT’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate. I trust the Editorial Board’s judgment. For me, genocide is the line in the sand.
Progwashing her billionaire father’s decision to unendorse Kamala Harris, thereby making an implicit equivalency between Harris and Trump, by invoking Gaza? And then implying the Editorial Board did it? Who is lighting all this gas?!
There are a couple of ways you know this reason is untrue. One is that Nika’s father did not say a word about Gaza in his own tweet relating his decision. The second is that the editorials editor, Mariel Garza, and two other members of the board resigned in protest without saying anything about Gaza.
From CJR:
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told me in a phone conversation. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.” […]
“But two things concern me: This is a point in time where you speak your conscience no matter what. And an endorsement was the logical next step after a series of editorials we’ve been writing about how dangerous Trump is to democracy, about his unfitness to be president, about his threats to jail his enemies. We have made the case in editorial after editorial that he shouldn’t be reelected.”
[…] Soon-Shiong made his billions as a biotech engineer. Yes, he pays the bills, but maybe he should leave the journalism to the journalists.
The irony is, newspaper endorsements don’t really mean much. They don’t change enough minds to affect elections. Had the Post and the Times simply gone ahead with the endorsements, there would not be a story here. Now the papers have made themselves the story.
It is not hard to guess why Bezos and Soon-Shiong made these decisions. Both are billionaires whose other businesses could be hurt by people who conflate their papers’ editorials with the two men’s own opinions. And both are hedging against the chance of Donald Trump winning the election, since he will surely turn his vengeance on those who opposed him. He’s already been feuding with Bezos for years, so why not add another billionaire he can zing and threaten on TruthSocial.
But that hedging is exactly why these decisions are a huge mistake. They are a pre-emptive capitulation to a fascist, at a time when the independence of journalism could not be more important to the nation.
But thanks for all these new subscribers, Bezos. They gotta spend that WaPo money somewhere, and looks like they’re spending it with us.
[…] The [Kamala Harris] rally [featuring Beyoncé] is scheduled to begin at 9:30 Eastern tonight, and we’re going to be sure to watch along with you. Here’s the MSNBC livestream. […]
Trump signals support in call with Netanyahu: ‘Do what you have to do’
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump expressed support for Israel’s offensives against Hamas and Hezbollah in a recent call with the country’s prime minister — a position that could complicate his campaign’s outreach to Arab Americans claiming he opposes the war.
Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu in one call this month, “Do what you have to do,” according to six people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and confidential information. Trump has said publicly that the two have spoken at least twice in October, with one call as recently as Oct. 19.
[…] Trump has tried to court both Jewish and Muslim voters with at times contradictory positions on the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon. He portrays himself as an unrivaled friend to Israel in front of Jewish audiences, while surrogates appeal to Arab communities by saying Trump supports peace and opposes the war.
Netanyahu, for his part, has spent years cultivating Republicans and has shown a clear preference for Trump in this election. People familiar with the situation said he is trying to regain Trump’s favor after antagonizing him by congratulating President Joe Biden on winning the 2020 election, a victory Trump has never accepted.
[…] Trump’s campaign also is betting on appealing to American Jews, especially in the pivotal swing state of Pennsylvania, by emphasizing Israel and antisemitism. Without evidence, Trump accuses Harris, who is married to a Jewish man, of hating Israel and Jews, and he warns of the state’s total destruction if she wins. He has also criticized American Jews — who for years have strongly supported Democrats over Republicans — sometimes in terms that many view as playing on antisemitic tropes.
[…] Trump has pledged if elected to reimpose his ban on travel from some Muslim-majority countries and to revoke student visas from participants in pro-Palestinian protests. He has repeatedly crowed about relocating the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv; moving to normalize relations between Israel and some Arab states through the Abraham Accords; and recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel. “What’s that worth, $2 trillion?” he has asked donors. “And I did it in five minutes.”
Israel, he told the donors, will “be finished” if he isn’t reelected. “I actually believe that,” he said.
At a fundraiser this year, Trump repeatedly assured donors that he would be solidly behind Israel and would throw campus protesters out of the country. “Maybe you have to go further than that,” he said.
“We’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he said.
[…] A pro-Trump super PAC called Future Coalition PAC has been placing contradictory ads targeting Arab voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. The group’s digital ads in Michigan portray Harris as taking Israel’s side against pro-Palestinian protesters. In Pennsylvania, on the other hand, the group’s ads question her support for Israel and accuse her of “pandering to Palestine.”
The goal of the Trump campaign in Michigan, a campaign adviser said, is to persuade voters in heavily Muslim areas like Dearborn not to vote for the Democratic ticket, even if they are not willing to cast a ballot for Trump.
[…] “He instituted the Muslim ban, he made Jerusalem the capital of Israel, he gave the Golan Heights away. There is your heart, and people are mad. And there is your logic. People aren’t voting strategically,” David said.
[…] “We just have to really remind people about Donald Trump’s real record and how he treats the Arab American community, and remind people of the Muslim ban, that he wants to start internment camps,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan).
tomhsays
According to Republicans, just about everything that happens or has happened in the last 10 years is Kamala’s fault.
NYT:
Chris Cameron / one hour ago
Reporting from North Carolina
JD Vance, speaking less than 20 miles from Fort Liberty, made a point of calling the base “Fort Bragg,” for when it was previously named for a Confederate slave owner. He tried to blame Kamala Harris for renaming it, saying “Whatever Kamala Harris renamed it, it’s Fort Bragg.”
But it was congressional Republicans who voted overwhelmingly to approve the renaming of military bases that honored Confederates, the first and only override of a veto by Donald Trump, delivered during his final days in office.
WaPo:
Patrick Svitek / 1 hour ago from Texas
Donald Trump opened his campaign stop in Austin, Texas, by criticizing a federal judge’s ruling blocking Virginia from automatically canceling the voter registrations of suspected noncitizens.
Trump said the ruling was “blatantly un-American, and it’s election interference, and Kamala Harris is behind it very much.” There is no evidence the vice president was involved in the ruling.
It seems their entire campaign is built around this strategy. We hear it every day, over and over.
Rob Grigjanissays
birger @388: Could I gently suggest that, rather than posting the teasing title and link to a video, you might add the actual conclusion. For those of us who don’t have the time to watch every fucking video.
whheydtsays
Re: Rob Grgjanis @ #395…
Or for those of us who simply don’t (generally) watch videos to gain information at all.
birgerjohanssonsays
One of the few genuinely good and original short videos.
Rob Grigjanis @ 395
whhdeyt @ 396
Sorry, this video at 388 is going into details about what can be discerbed about the voting situation in Nevada.
.
“Hell And Back” is an original SF story that plays out in less than two minutes.
John Moralessays
“Sorry, this video at 388 is going into details about what can be [discerned] about the voting situation in Nevada.”
Actually, it says “Shocking Early Results”.
What those may be are left to the imagination; one must click on the link and spend time to determine what the poster (even if it’s not a total bait’n’switch) supposedly claims is “shocking”.
Par for the course; I have not and will not click on clickbaity bullshit stuff without any context whatsoever.
BTW, it also claims “33 Million Ballots Have Been Cast”, which is odd, since Nevada has a population of around 3 million people, not all of whom are voters.
—
I reckon it’s pure laziness.
—
““Hell And Back” is an original SF story that plays out in less than two minutes.”
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I very much doubt it’s original, whatever it is.
I reckon, um, 99.9% chance it’s derivative and recycles old tropes.
(What is it about? Who knows? Click on the link to find out!)
JMsays
@394 tomh: When the Republicans overrode Trump on the naming of military forts a good part of the reason is that they knew it would instantly become a cultural issue they could use. It didn’t effect anything and didn’t mean much but it would offend conservatives. The moderates just don’t like to see names change, the more radical see it as an attack on Southern Heritage (and the racism that goes along with it but you don’t say that part out loud).
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
#397,398:
One of the few genuinely good and original short videos.
“Hell And Back” is an original SF story that plays out in less than two minutes.
It’s a CGI rendition of a comic of the same name (not linked), which—unlike the video—explained what was happening. As a standalone short story, the comic is better.
Plot: An astronaut in a deep sea diving suit descends onto Venus, plants a techy staff in the dirt. Her suit begins to fail. She initiates a launch sequence to escape on a balloon… for only her head. The suit decapitates to minimize the payload. She expects to get a new body later.
Israel confirmed that had launched “precise strikes on military targets in Iran” early Saturday morning local time. The Israel Defense Forces said the strikes were in response to “months of continuous attacks” from Iran. On Oct. 1, Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.
The initial strike targeted a barracks or office and a weapons depot near Tehran, two senior Arab officials told NBC News.
The strikes today came as Israel intensified its campaigns in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon
Secretary of State Antony Blinken finished a whirlwind trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia, where he attempted to get Hamas and Israel to agree a cease-fire and calm spiraling tensions that have raised fears of a region-wide war.
Three United States defense officials tell NBC News that the U.S. was given a heads-up before Israel launched strikes tonight on Iran.
The U.S. was not involved in the strikes, the officials said.
An Israeli official told NBC News that Israel is not striking Iranian nuclear facilities or oil fields and is focusing on military targets.
“We’re targeting things that might have threatened us in the past or could do in the future,” the official said.
[…] Iranian state media are reporting explosions inside the country’s capital of Tehran.
The Iranian State Television Service, or IRIB, reported sounds of explosions in the city.
Jordan, one of the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East, confronted Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday with a stark and unwelcome assessment: Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza.
Blinken was in London after holding meetings in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, during which he pressed the need for a cease-fire and the return of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.
“We do see ethnic cleansing taking place” in Gaza, Blinken’s Jordanian counterpart, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, said, speaking to the American delegation in front of journalists. “It has got to stop.”
[…] An NBC News crew was in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis where they filmed a crowd of desperate civilians trying to get bags of bread.
The situation is worse in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces have been besieging the Jabalia refugee camp and hunger has been rampant.
China sought to hack Trump, Vance and campaign phones, officials say.
The Harris-Walz campaign was also targeted by a Chinese attack on the candidates’ communications, but it was not immediately clear if attempts were successful.
Chinese government hackers have tried to get inside telephones used by former president Donald Trump, Sen. JD Vance and others working on their campaign for the White House, officials familiar with the matter said Friday.
It could not immediately be learned whether the attempts involving the candidates’ devices were successful, but the hack is believed to have compromised the phones of staffers, two of the people said. Two more people confirmed the targeting of Trump and Vance, which was first reported by the New York Times.
People affiliated with the Harris-Walz campaign were also targeted, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person would not say whether Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz were targeted, citing an ongoing law enforcement investigation.
The Trump-Vance campaign was notified by the FBI this week after the attack was discovered by Verizon, the people said. While the campaign is waiting on a full list of individuals that may have been targeted, a number of senior staffers were given new phones in the last 24 hours.
Some senior staffers were beginning to use encrypted devices to make even basic phone calls, a Trump adviser said.
Trump advisers were told by the FBI that the hackers were also targeting some members of the media and other prominent Americans. “They made very clear it wasn’t just us,” a person familiar with the briefing said.
The Chinese effort is seen as “bipartisan” for now, two officials said, noting that there have been attempts to target the communications of President Joe Biden, too. Targeting candidates as well as leaders for espionage is standard practice by world powers, and officials said they do not consider the latest attempts to be election interference.
At least two additional Trump family members were targeted, a person familiar with the matter said.
The attacks follow a previously reported deep intrusion into U.S. telecommunications providers by a Chinese hacking group that has been dubbed Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, which tracks cyberattacks that involve its software and services. Two people familiar with the earlier attempted Trump campaign hacks said the Salt Typhoon group had used that access to try to crack into the Trump phones.
That case had already alarmed the White House, which stood up a special response team to deal with it. The hackers got into as many as a dozen companies, The Washington Post has reported, including AT&T and Verizon. At some of the companies, including Verizon, they had essentially the same access as senior engineers, allowing them to mine account records and reroute customer traffic.
Officials said Salt Typhoon was connected to China’s powerful Ministry of State Security, the country’s main spy agency.
“Call record data is exactly the type of information the [People’s Republic of China] would want as part of an intelligence operation against major communications providers,” said Brandon Wales, who served until August as executive director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “Targeting campaigns, candidates and national leaders has been a consistent priority for China. Given the reported level of access to these companies, I assume there were many other targets that have not been made public.”
Though the Salt Typhoon intrusion has been a critical concern since August, the FBI issued its first statement confirming the attacks only Friday.
“The U.S. government is investigating the unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China,” the agency said in a joint release with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The statement said that after detecting the intrusions, the FBI and CISA “notified affected companies, rendered technical assistance, and rapidly shared information to assist other potential victims.”
[snipped detail from a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington]
[…] Officials cautioned that China looks to benefit from internal U.S. chaos and may seek to amplify disinformation around the election or in the weeks afterward, especially if there are significant domestic claims of fraud around a contested vote.
“We assess China seeks to denigrate American democracy, but without fueling the perception that it seeks to influence or interfere in the US presidential election,” intelligence leaders said Monday in a recently declassified memo.
With 10 days until Election Day and early voting underway in many states, Republicans appear to be targeting battleground states using shady tactics meant to disrupt the Democratic vote.
Recent reporting sheds light on third-party candidates who are receiving significant financial backing from conservative-affiliated dark-money groups. This could set the stage for spoiler candidates to siphon crucial votes away from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and give her GOP opponent Donald Trump more footing to reoccupy the White House.
According to a Washington Post investigation, Republican super PAC Badger Values has spent at least $307,000 on mailers and advertising to bolster the Green Party’s Jill Stein in Wisconsin. […]
The group sent mailers to voters in Wisconsin advocating for Stein. The mailers read, “As President, Jill Stein would end pollution in our great lakes and rivers,” and claimed “Kamala Harris and co. don’t care about the environment.”
Since when is the GOP the party of environmental concern and “green” friendliness? Last time I checked, their nominee giddily destroyed environmental protections while in office.
According to reporting by Real Clear Politics, the Republican-aligned dark-money group Fair Election Fund has taken credit for similar efforts to promote Stein and independent candidate Cornel West. Their paid media campaigns are designed to elevate these candidates, likely at the expense of the Democratic ticket.
Lis Smith, a communications adviser for the Democratic National Committee, condemned the GOP’s strategy in a campaign email.
“Jill Stein has no chance of winning this election, but Republicans and Trump know that she can help deliver them the White House,” Smith wrote. She emphasized that heavy investments in battleground states like Wisconsin indicate a clear strategy to manipulate voters.
“A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump,” Smith warned.
The Harris-Walz campaign reiterated these sentiments in a campaign email, asserting that this underhanded Republican strategy aims to peel votes away from Harris and ultimately aid Trump’s bid for the White House.
[…] Mother Jones reports on another emerging dark-money influence: the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, a right-wing organization perpetuating the debunked narrative that noncitizens are illegally voting. Fueled by Trump and MAGA Republicans, this bald-faced lie has contributed to widespread belief of election fraud among the American populace.
The coalition has raised a staggering $590 million from right-wing donations since 2020 and has over 80 factions nationwide. One-quarter of its donors are linked to Project 2025, the extremist blueprint for a second Trump administration, and have influenced the installation of right-wing judges across the country, according to Mother Jones.
It sure seems like the MAGA movement’s dark-money operatives have given up on winning races the old-fashioned way: running the best and most-qualified candidates—and telling the truth.
Israel has bombed the Qaa crossing between Lebanon and Syria
[…]
This comes after Israel hit near the Masnaa crossing, the main international passage […] on 4 October. Only one main official passage between the two countries remains operational.
(I know what’s being exposed, and it ain’t a master plan)
—
Ahem.
Does this luridly-titled show expose conspiracy theories, do you know, StevoR?
Bekenstein Boundsays
Many of Trump’s supporters say they enjoy his off-the-cuff commentary, favorably contrasting his speeches with what they usually hear from politicians.
Yeah, it’s like replacing the stink of diesel fumes with the reek of an open sewer. Refreshing! /s
He falsely claims banning cows and windows are part of Democrats’ plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even accusing them of trying to raze Manhattan.
Ludicrous. There’s only one American politician currently likely to get Manhattan razed, and that’s Trump, indirectly by way of a Russian or Chinese H-bomb.
“Those french fries were good,” he said. “They were good. They were right out of the uh, they were right out of whatever the hell they make them out of.”
Potatoes?
I think they need to run him through that cognitive test again. The one he bragged about. I don’t think he’ll get a bragging-worthy sort of result this time, though.
The initial strike targeted a barracks or office and a weapons depot near Tehran, two senior Arab officials told NBC News. … The U.S. was not involved in the strikes, the officials said.
Iran might not see it that way, given who supplies much of Israel’s military hardware. And Iran is allied with Russia.
In other words, the headline might well have been just as accurate had it read, “World War III begins; film at 11”.
At bare minimum, this likely leads into a neo-Vietnam, with Iran standing in for North Vietnam and Israel for South Vietnam. As I recall, the last one didn’t end very well for either the United States or its proxy in that fight …
Meanwhile, some twit was so flustered by a comment I wrote that he made two replies to it in a desperate attempt to unpwn himself. :)
John Moralessays
Meanwhile, some twit was so flustered by a comment I wrote that he made two replies to it in a desperate attempt to unpwn himself. :)
Noticeable to anyone is that you have not even tried to attempt to dispute my claims or actually engage with the substantive part of my comment. Sly digs are your thing.
Tell me more about this supposed twittery, O sage.
It will amuse me.
(Hey, notice how I directly address you?
Quite the contrast, no? )
John Moralessays
… a desperate attempt to unpwn himself …
Revealing.
John Moralessays
Sudden quietude, I see.
“Those french fries were good,” he said. “They were good. They were right out of the uh, they were right out of whatever the hell they make them out of.”
Riot Instigator Tommy Robinson Charged With Terror Related Offence
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=8Yu94ZTXGyM
This is the far-right racist nut that got the anti-immigrant riots in Britain started with his social media posts. He avoided the previous court hearing by simply leaving the country.
He is a nasty piece of work that claims he is a political prisoner whenever he gets in trouble with the law.
birgerjohanssonsays
“This New Drug Makes the Flu Less Deadly”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zbAX_OlkKxI
It is a link about stopping flu from killing people with a compromised immune system by providing this medicine after people get ill.
A federal judge on Friday granted a Department of Justice request to block Virginia from systematically removing alleged noncitizens from the voter rolls this close to an election. U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles ordered the state to stop its program immediately and restore the voter registrations of more than 1,600 people who were removed in recent months within five days.
More petty bullshit is “going viral” as it appears online from various rightwing sources. This time it is about grocery prices:
There is a weird genre of conservative trolling where someone posts a photo of a handful of groceries and captions it with stuff like “This cost me $190. THANKS, BIDEN.”
It’s all bullshit, of course. But aside from the lies, what do these people expect Donald Trump to do about it?
The genre may have gotten its start with none other than The New York Times’ David Brooks, a conservative columnist who complained on X last September about spending $78 at an airport for a burger and fries.
“This meal just cost me $78 at Newark Airport,” Brooks tweeted. “This is why Americans think the economy is terrible.” The included photos showed what appeared to be a burger, crinkle-cut fries, lettuce, tomato, ketchup packets, and an amber beverage over ice. Turns out, he heavily exaggerated and had seemingly bought two double-shots of whiskey.
The genre has since been popular among right-wingers as a way to claim that the economy is crushing people’s lives, hence the need to vote for Trump. [X post and image at the link]
An X user quickly debunked the claim, pricing out the same items at two different outlets:
Even New York Times reporter Mike Isaac priced it out according to the Whole Foods near him in the high-cost San Francisco Bay Area. The price? $120.
That said, no one claims the price of groceries hasn’t gone up. It has. But what would Trump do about it?
Asked that specific question at a Michigan event, Trump said he would lower prices by restricting food imports. Economists rightfully pointed out that restricting competition would actually increase prices as well as lead to retaliatory tariffs that would hurt American farmers, forcing them to, yet again, raise prices to compensate for those losses.
We know price gouging was a meaningful driver of those higher grocery bills, but Trump has attacked a proposal by Vice President Kamala Harris to punish price-gougers as “Soviet-style” controls. Yet Republicans at the state level have gone after price gouging in the food industry. But Trump is not interested, because he will never do anything to stand in the way of anyone’s profit, especially if it’s at the cost of the plebes.
And then there’s the effect Trump’s policies would likely have on the overall economy.
Sixteen Nobel Prize-winning economists have argued that Trump’s policies would “reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets.” Another letter, this time by 23 Nobel-winning economists, stated, “[Trump’s] policies, including high tariffs even on goods from our friends and allies and regressive tax cuts for corporations and individuals, will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality. Among the most important determinants of economic success are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these.”
None of that would bode well for grocery prices.
Those conservatives posting pictures of their groceries aren’t going to buy arguments from academics, or look at charts of falling inflation that is the envy of the world. They have an agenda to sell: They need Trump to get elected.
And they are either lying or exaggerating to do it. Link
There has never been a more important presidential election in our lifetime. The road to the White House may well run through Pennsylvania and every vote matters.
Voters face an easy but tectonic choice in the race for the White House.
Will they choose the first woman or the oldest man to be the next president?
Will they choose the prosecutor or the convict?
Will they choose the candidate who supports restoring Roe v. Wade, or the man who bragged about overturning it?
Will they choose the candidate with a tax plan to help the middle class or the one who wants to help the superrich?
Will they choose the candidate who backs a tough bipartisan immigration law or the guy who killed the measure?
Let’s look at just one excerpt from that three-hour interview that Trump did with Joe Rogan:
[…] Trump has for the past four years refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and claimed without evidence there was widespread fraud that changed the outcome. Rogan on Friday gave the former president space to explain his claims.
“How do you think you were robbed? Everybody always cuts you off,” Rogan said.
“What I’d rather do is –we’ll do it another time. I would bring in papers that you would not believe. [OMFG!!! LOL] That election was so crooked,” Trump said, at one point repeating the false claim that he did not lose in 2020.
Pressed for examples, the former president argued that state legislatures did not properly approve changes to ballot deadlines and collection methods. State lawmakers moved quickly in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic to adjust voting laws to make it easier to vote early and by mail.
“They used COVID to cheat,” Trump said.
He further claimed that a letter from dozens of former intelligence agents asserting that a laptop belonging to the president’s son, Hunter Biden, that was revealed in the closing weeks of the 2020 campaign was Russian disinformation cost him enough votes to flip the election for Biden. [And … more LOL]
Trump went on to argue that using paper ballots would guard against fraud, and the former president and Rogan agreed that states should enact voter ID laws.
[Note that Trump also says that all ballots should be counted and reported almost immediately on election day. You can’t do that if you are counting that many paper ballots. In reality, Trump likes and wants the semi-chaos that ensues as various states report results over about a three-day to one-week period of time. He takes advantage of that to sow conspiracy theories on the winds of his blustering pronouncements.]
Rogan’s podcast draws more than 15 million followers on Spotify, and his YouTube channel boasts more than 17 million subscribers. He is particularly popular with young men, and he spoke to the concerns of younger voters during Friday’s interview.
“I think young people are rejecting a lot of this woke bullshit. Young people are tired of being yelled at and scolded,” Rogan said.
[…] Texas was chosen for this rally specifically because it’s the most prominent of many Ground Zeros for the Republican war on women’s reproductive freedom. Per CNN, the rally
will spotlight Amanda and Josh Zurawski, the Texas couple who led a lawsuit against the state’s abortion bans after Amanda suffered life-threatening pregnancy complications but couldn’t have an abortion in the deep-red state. Shanette Williams — the mother of Amber Nicole Thurman, who ProPublica reported died in 2022 from a treatable infection due to delays to her medical care stemming from Georgia’s restrictive abortion law — will also be in attendance.
Ahead of tonight’s rally, the Harris campaign released a new ad titled “He Did It,” which places the blame for the loss of women’s bodily autonomy exactly where it belongs. [video at the link] […]
YouTube link to a clip showing Beyoncé and her sister, Kelly Rowland, taking the stage at the rally. Both spoke passionately about the importance of voting for Harris.
Rolling Stone link. Beyoncé Endorses Kamala Harris at Houston Rally: ‘We’re All Part of Something Much Bigger’
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On Friday, Beyoncé, who was joined by singer and actress Kelly Rowland, declared her support for Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, at a rally focused on abortion rights in her hometown of Houston. Texas has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.
“We are at the precipice of an incredible shift,” she said. “Your vote is one of the most valuable tools, and we need you.”
“Our moment is right now. It’s time for America to sing a new song,” the Beyoncé added. “A song that began 248 year ago.”
The pop star said she was not there as a celebrity or a politician.
“I’m here as a mother who cares deeply about the world, my children and all of our children,” she said. “A world where we have the freedom to control our bodies.” […]
Beyoncé did not sing. It was not that kind of performance. Her endorsement of Harris was powerful. She brought her social media followers to the rally virtually, adding them to the 30,000 people who showed up in person in Houston. Beyoncé has 314 million followers on Instagram.
Charlamagne tha God Has Some Advice for Kamala Harris and the Democrats
The radio host talks with David Remnick about Black voters, his recent interview with the Vice-President, and why the Democratic Party needs a lot more “Bulworth.”
As a co-host of “The Breakfast Club,” the syndicated morning radio show, Lenard McKelvey, better known as Charlamagne tha God, has come to play a central role in political life—interviewing Democratic Presidential candidates in each of the past three election cycles.
In a far-reaching and personal new conversation for this week’s episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, he tells David Remnick that he received death threats about his recent interview with Kamala Harris—“legitimate threats, not . . . somebody talking crazy on social media,” he explains. “That’s just me having a conversation with her about the state of our society. So imagine what she actually gets.”
Charlamagne argues that the narrative of Harris losing Black support has been overstated, but he adds that the Party has failed to adequately respond to widespread concerns about immigration and the economy. “I just want to see more honesty from Democrats,” he notes. “Like I always say, Republicans are more sincere about their lies than Democrats are about their truth.”
Excerpt from Talking Points Memo’s “The Weekender”:
[…] As his influence grew in American domestic politics, Musk began to play a larger role internationally. He supplied Starlink terminals to Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion, providing what soldiers there have described as a vital communications link for the military.
But as the war went on in its first year, reports started to emerge that Musk had begun to speak with senior Kremlin officials. Late in 2022, Musk began to restrict access to Starlink for Ukrainian troops, and began to make pro-Russian statements online. He complained that SpaceX couldn’t afford the expense of running Starlink for Ukraine; geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer said at the time on Twitter that Musk had told him that he spoke with Putin and other Kremlin officials.
Since then, the WSJ reported, Musk has maintained contact with top Russians; at one point, the paper reported, Musk declined to activate Starlink in Taiwan. The Kremlin had asked for it as a favor to the Chinese regime.
There aren’t borders to political currents. You might, for good reason, think that Trump is an authoritarian at home; the facts suggest that Musk is engaging with its global axis. For him, the benefit is lower taxes, lax regulations, and (maybe) the chance to shape how the government treats his heavily regulated businesses. It’s an abdication in a way: he’s not acting as an independent businessman with interests apart from those of the government. Rather, he’s subordinating himself (and his interests) to those of a potential future leader. Be it for Trump or for Putin, the relationship is the same: the oligarch only gets to play so long as the king is happy.
[…] “Texas, what we’re experiencing here is a health care crisis, and Donald Trump is the architect of it,” Harris said.
“We know freedom is not to be given. It is not to be bestowed. It is ours by right, and we are prepared to fight for it,” she added. “We must be loud. We must organize. We must mobilize. We must energize.”
[…] “Imagine our daughters growing up, seeing what’s possible, with no ceilings, no limitations,” she said, adding that she wanted a world where “my children and all of our children, we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided.”
“It’s time for America to sing a new song. Our voices sing a chorus of unity. They sing a song of dignity and opportunity. Are y’all ready to add your voice to the new American song?” she said to cheers before introducing Harris to the stage. […]
Correction to comment 425: Kelly Rowland, whom Beyoncé referred to as her sister, is not her actual sister.
birgerjohanssonsays
The polling comments on The TEC Show (Youtube) generally start with an in-dept piece on some topic (in the latest case, the situation in Nevada) before doing a summary of the national outlook if the election was held today, with emphasis on the situation in the Swing states.
This keeps the overall length manageable.
At the end, he weighs several polls to get an average, keeping any bias in methodology low. There are probably many other ways to do this but polling can never capture a truly exact image of the situation at a particular time.
And as we have seen, several conservative polls seem to be gaming the system in the time immediately before the election.
tomhsays
Re: #422
For all its faults, the New York Times also endorsed Harris last month, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president.” They painted a grim picture of a second term for Trump, focusing on Harris’ plans for the economy, health care, foreign policy and immigration as reasons for electing her over Trump.
Good story but I want to read about the bit at the end that didn’t happen in the story.
“What if we actually start talking about feminism instead of avoiding the conversation? Maybe the workshops you give could be why feminism is good. You could be the woman that blatantly teaches about feminism… at a conservative homeschool convention. It’s brilliant!”
“I laugh out loud, partly intrigued, partly because I think he is insane.
“We will get canceled,” I tell him.
“For all the right reasons,” he replies.
The bartender brings over two dirty martinis.”
The Global South-oriented organization BRICS has released plans to transform the international monetary and financial system and challenge the dominance of the U.S. dollar.
The original goal of a BRIC currency is dead for the moment. With Russia at war and nobody trusting China’s economic numbers it can’t progress. It would be very hard to do in a good situation and right now is a bad one. That doesn’t mean no activity is happening.
The BRICs countries are stockpiling gold, except Russia which is financing a war. There are a bunch of possible reasons but stabilizing their currency and funding new international banking organizations are likely reasons. They are working towards setting up their own alternative to the Swift international banking network, letting them transfer currency on their own. This is a slow process because the countries don’t trust each other, don’t trust that other countries won’t meddle, and each has their own laws and bureaucracy to work through. They are looking at setting up their own alternatives to the IMF and other international finance but nothing is likely to come of that immediately. Conflicts over who gets to control those organizations would be immense and negotiating their organization will be slow.
The interesting possibility that nobody seems to have noticed yet is that if they can get their Swift alternative running they can trade in dollars without the US. They will be able to go around international sanctions much more easily. Russia would be able to buy dollars for trade from India, which can easily buy US dollars. It would require a huge realignment of international relations and trade.
President Joe Biden slammed Elon Musk during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh on Saturday, referencing a Washington Post report that the South African-born billionaire worked illegally in the United States in the 1990s even as he boosts former president Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign.
“The wealthiest man in the world is now [Trump’s] ally,” Biden said of Musk, while appearing at a union hall to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Well, that wealthiest man in the world turned out to be an illegal worker here, when he was here,” Biden said. “He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn’t in school. He was violating the law. And he’s talking about all these illegals coming our way?”
Musk, who has railed against Biden and Harris over illegal immigration, was himself working unlawfully in the U.S. as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies program in California, The Post said in an exclusive report on Saturday.
Musk has endorsed Trump and has amplified the Republican presidential candidate’s claims that “open borders” and migrants from across the globe are destroying America. He has given at least $118 million to a political action committee supporting Trump since July and appeared in battleground states on his behalf.
Musk arrived in Palo Alto in 1995 for a graduate degree program at Stanford University but never enrolled in courses, working instead on his start-up. Leaving school meant Musk did not have a legal basis to remain in the United States, according to legal experts.
[…] As the races for control of Congress tighten to the point where a single seat could determine which party controls the House or Senate, Project 2025 is being used by Democratic-aligned outside groups to portray Republicans as linked to its hardline proposals.
The House Accountability Project has created micro-websites for more than a dozen House Republicans in some of the most contested seats, tying their past votes on abortion, government funding and other issues to Project 2025 proposals.
“The House GOP is actually pushing policies that are in Project 2025 as we speak,” said Danny Turkel, spokesman for the House Accountability War Room. “They’re already taking these policies into the Capitol.”
The House Republican campaign committee argues its candidates have nothing to do with Project 2025. [And that sounds like Trump’s disingenuous claims. Not believable.
Even though the former president’s campaign has vigorously distanced itself from Project 2025—Trump himself declared he knows “nothing” about it—the sweeping Heritage Foundation’s proposal to gut the federal workforce and dismantle federal agencies aligns closely with his vision. Project 2025’s architects come from the ranks of Trump’s administration and top Heritage officials have briefed Trump’s team about it.
[…] Though […] Trump presents himself as a champion of the working class with promises to cut taxes on overtime, his record as both a businessman and president paints a different picture. Trump and his businesses have faced multiple accusations of failing to pay workers overtime they were owed. Once he was in office, Trump’s Department of Labor issued a rule that reduced by millions the number of workers who would have become eligible for overtime pay under an Obama era rule.
Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint for a potential second Trump term that the former president has alternately embraced and distanced himself from, goes even further. The 900-page document outlines plans for a sweeping overhaul of overtime protections that would give employers ways to avoid paying overtime to workers who have long qualified for time-and-a-half pay after 40 hours.
[…] Project 2025 calls for undoing the Biden administration’s overtime pay expansions and also proposes ways for employers to avoid paying it to those who do qualify, eroding its status as a bedrock labor protection.
In each of Project 2025’s overtime provisions, “Workers do not get any additional benefits. It is only employers who get additional benefits,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with Economic Policy Institute Action, a nonpartisan advocacy group focused on economic issues. Employers are granted various ways to avoid paying extra for extra work while benefiting from a worker’s labor. “It is an extremely anti-overtime agenda,” she said.
[…] While in office, Trump refused to support an Obama-era rule that would have expanded overtime pay to an additional 4 million workers. Instead, Trump issued his own rule that significantly reduced the number of people eligible for overtime, extending protections to only 1.3 million additional workers.
After Trump left office, President Joe Biden finalized his own overtime rule, which this summer adjusted Trump’s $35,568 salary threshold for overtime pay eligibility to account for inflation. Biden’s rule will again raise the salary threshold from $43,888 to $58,656 by January 2025. Additionally, it mandates that the threshold be updated every three years to keep pace with inflation. Once fully implemented, 4.3 million more workers will be eligible for overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours a week.
[…] The document then goes further, calling on Congress to let employers calculate overtime pay over two or four weeks instead of one. While the document says this would give workers “greater flexibility,” in practice workers would end up earning less. An employee who works 45 hours one week and 35 the next would earn overtime pay for those extra five hours in the first week under current law, but if averaged over two wouldn’t get any extra pay at all. “Employers would be able to game that like crazy,” Shierholz said. They could ask workers to put in incredibly long hours one week “and then smooth out their hours over the following week or weeks so that they just would never get paid overtime.”
[…] Trump has been accused personally of failing to pay workers. His companies were cited for 24 violations of overtime or minimum wage protections between 2005 and 2016, according to Department of Labor data analyzed by USA Today. [snipped details from the 1980s] Guy Dorcinvil, a dishwasher at Mar-a-Lago, filed a lawsuit in 2007 alleging he hadn’t been paid overtime he was due over a period of three years, ending in a $7,500 settlement the next year. In 2016 Trump Miami Resort Management LLC settled with 48 servers for failure to pay overtime, paying an average of $800 per worker. The lawsuit alleged that some workers put in 20-hour days over a 10-day event. […]
Taken together, Trump’s past business practices, his presidency and the Project 2025 agenda indicate a focus on eroding overtime protection. “The ability to get overtime is security and stability,” noted Janelle Jones, vice president of policy and advocacy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Project 2025 attacks workers’ “paychecks, their economic safety and security.”
“Trump DESTROYS Kamala on the Joe Rogan Podcast Part 1”
…
“YT cut the video off before it was done. Here is PART 2 • Trump ENDS Kamala on the Joe Rogan Po… ”
—
We all know that whatever the title of a video may be, it must be a real thing.
So, Kamala is now DESTROYED and ENDED. Right?
(Heh)
Bekenstein Boundsays
Noticeable to anyone is that you have not even tried to attempt to dispute my claims or actually engage with the substantive part of my comment.
That’s because there was none.
Sly digs are your thing.
Oh, the irony!
(Twit then proceeds to compare me to Trump, which I shall not dignify with a response. And, needing to outdo his previous certificate of pwnership, this time follows up to my comment with three separate replies…)
Former first lady Michelle Obama delivered a fiery speech at a campaign rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Kalamazoo, Michigan, asserting that Harris and former president Donald Trump are held to different standards.
“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs,” Obama said. “But for Trump, we expect nothing at all, no understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honest, no decency, no morals.”
She urged voters not to dismiss his comments. “Too many people are willing to write off his childish, mean-spirited antics by saying, ‘Well Trump’s just being Trump,’” Obama said.
John Moralessays
Ah, the Beebee yet lives!
“That’s because there was none.”
‘Were none’ to which you dare admit.
In reality, there were multiple issues I raised.
Here’s one — quoth you: “Hey, hey, Brett K! How many kids did you kill today?”
You obviously stand by that, since you haven’t addressed my mockery, other than to fluff yourself up and try your feeble script-kiddie putdowns.
(Takes some slower people ages to grok I don’t actually have to try to be superior, it’s just a fact of nature)
—
Sly digs are your thing.
Oh, the irony!
You really are basically a script kiddie when it comes to argument.
Go on, care to attempt to explain the basis for that little eruction?
—
Again:
““Hey, hey, Brett K! How many kids did you kill today?””
None, you fool. Zero. Nil. Less than one.
(How many did you kill? Be honest, now)
You call that a sly dig?
Like, you know, flustered burbling cosplaying twit, because I mock your most stupid claims?
(How much more direct can I possibly be?)
—
You know, you are following the pattern multiple others have followed, where you try to get personal with me and utterly ignore anything substantive I say.
Trying to mock me would work were you sufficiently competent, but does not change the fact that you are making noises about “Brett K!” killing kids. And that I mocked that claim.
(Ah, the gentle burblings continue!)
John Moralessays
(Twit then proceeds to compare me to Trump, which I shall not dignify with a response.
Heh. That is actually a direct response.
(You dignified it!)
And, needing to outdo his previous certificate of pwnership, this time follows up to my comment with three separate replies…)
Heh heh heh.
Mate! Infinite thread, we’re not gonna run out of comments.
And you know, you didn’t have to try to get personal.
(Enjoy!)
—
Gotta love how you switched to the third person at the end, there.
(The ancient Greeks did like their chorus, but in your case, it’s classic defensive displacement, and it wasn’t done by the characters themselves)
John Moralessays
[thing is, you’re slow at responding. I get bored. And I know you’re around, since you comment elsethread and stuff. Which is rather indicative, no, BB?]
The Saturday event in Michigan marked the former first lady’s first appearance on the 2024 campaign trail alongside Vice President Kamala Harris.
Video at the link.
In her first stop on 2024 campaign trail, former first lady Michelle Obama delivered an urgent message to men, arguing that the election could have life or death consequences for the women they love.
“I am asking y’all from the core of my being to take our lives seriously,” she said at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The former first lady praised Harris’ credentials and urged voter turnout and engagement in her speech. But she devoted significant time, laden with emotion, to arguing that there would be dire consequences for the future of women’s health if former President Donald Trump, who spent Saturday campaigning in Michigan and Pennsylvania, were elected once more.
“To the men who love us, let me just try to paint a picture of what it will feel like if America, the wealthiest nation on earth, keeps revoking basic care from its women and how it will affect every single woman in your life,” Obama said.
Obama argued a woman affected by the policies could be “in legal jeopardy if she needs a pill from out of state or overseas, or if she has to travel across state lines because the local clinic closed up.”
“Your daughter could be the one too terrified to call the doctor if she’s bleeding during an unexpected pregnancy. Your niece could be the one miscarrying in her bathtub after the hospital turned her away,” she continued.
“And this will not just affect women; it will affect you and your sons,” she said, suggesting both men and women would suffer from “the devastating consequences of teen pregnancy.”
Obama expanded beyond abortion, suggesting that increasingly limited access to types of women’s health care could also have serious ramifications for miscarriage care, cancer screenings and access to medical professionals.
“Your wife or mother could be the ones at higher risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they have no access to regular gynecological care,” she said.
“And then there is the tragic but very real possibility that in the worst case scenario, you just might be the one holding flowers at the funeral,” she later added. “You might be the one left to raise your children alone.”
Her speech comes as polling indicates a wide gender gap in Americans’ support for Harris and Trump. An NBC News poll from October found that women were supporting Harris by a 14-point margin, while men were supporting Trump by a 16-point margin. Polls from multiple major outlets also have showed that Harris and Trump are locked in an extremely tight race.
Obama also addressed voters who were considering not casting ballots or voting for Trump or a third-party candidate in protest, arguing that “we as women will become collateral damage to your rage.”
“Are you as men prepared to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them that you supported this assault on our safety?” she asked.
Harris, who spoke after Obama, echoed similar sentiments, arguing that men saw the women they loved “put at risk because their rights have been stripped away.” Before speaking in Michigan on Saturday, Harris held an event in Texas on Friday, using the red-state setting to rally supporters against what she called a Trump-inflicted “health care crisis.”
“The men of America don’t want this. Women have died because of these bans,” Harris said in Michigan on Saturday. “How could anybody say that they wanted this? And you have heard me say, I do believe Donald Trump to be an unserious man, but the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious, brutally serious.”
[…] As Obama emphasized potential dangers to women, Trump during his Saturday rallies invoked dark images of crime, criticized Beyoncé campaigning with Harris and touted his foreign policy experience while claiming that Harris “wants” war.
“She’d love a draft. All she wants is war. The reason I don’t get along with her is because she wanted to invade every damn country that she looked at,” Trump said in Novi, Michigan, without evidence.
Trump’s also rallied in State College, Pennsylvania, and his speeches hit on his typical themes. The former president argued that “we’re very close to World War III,” painting migrants as coming from “prisons and jails, insane asylums and mental institutions,” and insulting Harris as a “grossly incompetent person.”
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Obama contended that some people are “holding Kamala to a higher standard than her opponent.”
“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs,” she said. “But for Trump, we expect nothing at all. No understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals.”
[…] More than 7,000 people attended the rally, according to a Harris campaign official. Most people in the room stood during Obama’s entire 40-minute speech, frequently breaking into cheers and emphasizing her comments.
The misinformation boosted by X’s AI model Grok has included conspiracy theories about voter fraud and unsubstantiated smears about Vice President Kamala Harris.
Elon Musk’s social media app X is supercharging the spread of voter-fraud conspiracy theories with the help of artificial intelligence, boosting unfounded claims including two personal smears against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The dubious content is spreading in the app’s “explore” section, which says it uses Musk’s AI software, named Grok, to aggregate trending social media topics. The information does not appear to be fact-checked by humans, and in several recent examples it seemed to repeat false or unsubstantiated claims as if they were true.
The feature is named “stories for you” and has a label saying it’s in a beta test, meaning it’s an experiment not available to all users. Each “story for you” consists of a feed of posts related to a trending topic. […]
The feature’s placement in X’s explore section gives it prominent digital real estate in the final weeks of the presidential election, in which Musk is backing former President Donald Trump. Its repeated amplification of misinformation and conspiracy theories related to the election follows a string of instances where Musk has personally shared similar ideas, both in live appearances and on his social media.
In the past week, NBC News identified five “stories for you” that pushed baseless claims related to the election.
[….] On Monday, Grok uncritically repeated debunked allegations of wrongdoing related to the voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems. […]
Grok’s written summary of the online debate accused Dominion of “potentially stifling legitimate discussions on election security” through “legal threats.”
On Wednesday, Grok parroted unfounded claims of wrongdoing in Maricopa County, Arizona, boosting a claim by an X user that county election workers are “corrupt” because of the speed at which they count ballots.
And in a third election-related “story for you,” Grok this week spread the unsupported claim that a voting machine in Tarrant County, Texas, was “flipping” votes. X’s AI software promoted posts alleging that there were multiple examples, but only one voter came forward and his claim was not verified. Local officials said there was no evidence behind his claim, suggesting that he may have unintentionally pressed the wrong candidate. They say he was able to successfully cast the vote he intended to after he reviewed his ballot.
Grok has also spread smears against Harris, the Democratic nominee for president. It created a “story for you” repeating unfounded allegations by X users that she used cocaine in the White House, and it created a “story for you” repeating allegations by X users that she attended parties hosted by Sean “Diddy” Combs, who’s facing federal sex-abuse charges. Fact-checkers have said a photo of Combs with fashion designer Misa Hylton was altered to add Harris’ face.
[…] Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has shared some of the same conspiracy theories amplified by his Grok software, including the unfounded allegations of wrongdoing related to Dominion Voting Systems.
The feature has been problematic in the past. In July, Grok-written summaries boosted false information about President Joe Biden, helping to spread wild conspiracy theories that Biden had an undisclosed medical emergency, might be dying, had been murdered or would be murdered soon.
It’s a job that used to be done by human curators as recently as two years ago, before Musk bought the app then known as Twitter. In 2015, Twitter’s management rolled out curated trending topics as a way to help users make sense of the flood of information on the app. Twitter employees added verified context from traditional news sources such as The Associated Press and Reuters, in an attempt to elevate the quality of information that was trending.
But Musk, in one of his first acts after buying Twitter, eliminated the jobs of human curators, and now the tech billionaire has delegated the task to his AI software.
[…] In recent weeks, dozens of X users have posted about “explore beta,” and the vast majority of the posts have been negative. One user said it was pointless, and another said it was “absolute trash.” But several said they knew of no way to opt out of the beta test. […]
Former First Lady Michelle Obama hit the campaign trail for Vice President Harris in battleground Michigan on Saturday, blasting former President Trump and railing against what she cast as a double standard in the high-stakes presidential race.
“I gotta ask myself: why on earth is this race even close? I lay awake at night wondering: what in the world is going on?” Obama told a raucous rally crowd in Kalamazoo, Mich.
[…] “I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn,” Obama said.
“I hope that you’ll forgive me if I’m a little angry that we are indifferent to his erratic behavior, his obvious mental decline, his history as a convicted felon, a known slum lord, a predator found liable for sexual abuse, all of this while we pick apart Kamala’s answers from interviews that he doesn’t even have the courage to do, y’all,” she added.
[…] The Obamas have remained major voices in the Democratic Party since leaving the White House after the 2016 cycle, when Trump won his term in the Oval Office. Both gave memorable speeches at this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago as Harris accepted the party nomination.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, the White House hopefuls and their surrogates are working in overdrive to crisscross key states […]
The Washington Post published a Very Serious Article yesterday about Donald Trump’s “idiosyncratic, digressive speaking style” and his insistence that it’s a deliberate rhetorical strategy he calls “the weave,” although many experts call it “Jesus fucking Christ, he’s gotten a lot worse, hasn’t he?”
[…] Of course yesterday it also came out that The Post would not be, for the first time in a very long time, endorsing among the candidates, one of whom is a competent youngish Black woman and the other of whom is apparently having long articles written about his sundowning, in the Washington Post. This has led many of you to be very angry and withhold your money in the marketplace of ideas. This is your right.
The Post appears to have learned at least a little from the Times, which in September embarrassed itself in its own examination of the possibility that Trump is old and sundowning. It was a decent enough look at Trump’s incoherent word salads, but it nevertheless ended up sanewashing Trump by partially quoting one of his rants — right after a paragraph bemoaning that practice.
The Post mostly avoids that trap by quoting Trump at length, with video, and explaining some of the weird references that seem to be shorthand for rightwing conspiracy theories that nobody would know if they didn’t obsessively follow the same crazy outlets Trump does.
The article also provides plenty of examples of lies Trump seems to pull entirely out of another dimension, by which we mean his ass. Many are so disconnected from reality that they aren’t even distortions of wingnut media, like Trump’s notion that Democrats want to “ban windows” to fight climate change, or his weirdly detailed accounts of criminals running rampant that exist only in his imagination, like this wholly fictitious example from an October 20 town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. [video at the link]
TRUMP: You go to a lot of cities and they rob a department store and guys are walking out with refrigerators. They have it on their back with two front and air conditioning and everything, and they literally are stripping. And the police are standing outside and they’re shaking out of anger because they really want to do something, but they’re told to stand down, stand down, and they’re watching these criminals walk out.
It has to be true, the former president of the United States saw it on the TV that plays only in his head.
As a catalogue of Trump’s recent sundowning, it’s really not a bad article; it even places Trump’s verbal flights of flatulence into a few categories: “He occasionally mixes up words and names,” “Some phrases and answers are nonsensical,” and so on, all with plenty of examples.
We especially enjoyed “I have no cognitive,” also from the Lancaster town hall. […]
Two days after his stint cosplaying as a fry cook at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, Trump couldn’t for the life of him bring to mind the word “fryer.” [Or perhaps the word “potato.” We don’t really know. We don’t care which glitch it was. We do care that Trump is continually glitching.]
“Those french fries were good,” he said. “They were good. They were right out of the uh, they were right out of whatever the hell they make them out of.”
[…] The authors aren’t terribly serious in suggesting there could be anything to that “weave” Trump talks about. The notion that he’s just wowing us with a complex but artful speaking style is undermined simply by quoting the fucker:
“I call it ‘the weave.’ And some people think it’s so genius. But the bad people, what they say is, ‘You know, he was rambling.’ That’s not a ramble. There’s no rambling. This is a weave. I call it the weave. You need an extraordinary memory because you have to come back to where you started.”
The article makes clear he never brings the threads together, and certainly not with anything like the obsessive order he brings to his combover.
But here’s the real problem: The article teases us by hinting at a rigorous analysis of Trump’s deteriorating discourse that never arrives.
Trump’s recent public appearances have been strikingly erratic, coarse and often confusing, even for a politician with a history of ad-libbing in three consecutive presidential runs, a Washington Post review of dozens of speeches, interviews and other public appearances shows. His speeches have gotten longer and more repetitive compared with those of past campaigns. […]
As he has delivered more speeches in October, he has made multiple slip-ups per day. He has become more profane in public.
But the article doesn’t even bother comparing 2024 Trump and any earlier Trump. Ultimately, it’s just a categorized list of stupid shit an aging ex-president says.
That said, there’s at least this nice insight about Trump’s frequent stream-of-stupid departures from the prepared text on his teleprompter:
Trump often delivers speeches in conversation with his own text, ad-libbing asides and reacting in real time to his own statements as he reads them. Sometimes he switches back and forth between improvising and reading the script or teleprompter without warning, leading to abrupt or jarring transitions.
That was pretty good. Heck, we could go all postmodern and say Trump is performing a narcissistic version of Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea that all texts and interpreters are in dialogue with others, but it’s Saturday morning and we don’t wanna.
[…] “We had no problem with him,” Trump said of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, before adding, “I say it to people, we have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within.”
The Republican presidential nominee has used the term “enemy from within” to describe his domestic political opposition and has suggested Democratic politicians such as former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (California) fall into that category. He recently said the military could be deployed against such domestic foes, prompting concern from critics.
[…] “We have an enemy from within, we have people that are really bad people, that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful.” […]
“Good Early Voting Results!
New Poll: Harris vs Trump 2024 Election”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3fZVtxnMVM4
Male / Female voters
Democrats / Republicans /Independents
A summary of voting trends.
birgerjohanssonsays
The Empire History Lied About (it’s not Tartaria!)
.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=A95MwdxQHlk
The Medes: Herodotos mistook an Elamite empire for a Medean empire! This explains the absence of archaeological evidence of a Medean empire.
[OpenAI’s] Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text […] racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments.
[…]
Whisper is being used […] to translate and transcribe interviews […] and create subtitles for videos. More concerning […] is a rush by medical centers […] to transcribe patients’ consultations with doctors
[…]
A […] developer said he found hallucinations in nearly every one of the 26,000 transcripts he created […] engineers and researchers said they had never seen another AI-powered transcription tool hallucinate as much as Whisper.
[…]
The tool is integrated into […] ChatGPT, and is a built-in offering in Oracle and Microsoft’s cloud computing platforms […] also used to transcribe and translate text into multiple languages.
[…]
a speaker said, “He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella.” But the transcription software added: “He took a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece… I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.”
A speaker in another recording described “two other girls and one lady.” Whisper […] adding “two other girls and one lady, um, which were Black.”
[…]
Over 30,000 clinicians and 40 health systems […] have started using a Whisper-based tool built by Nabla […] It’s impossible to compare Nabla’s AI-generated transcript to the original recording because Nabla’s tool erases the original audio for “data safety reasons,” […] Because patient meetings with their doctors are confidential, it is hard to know how AI-generated transcripts are affecting them.
The Redfield & Wilton Strategies survey found 44 percent of eligible voters who have voted, or plan to vote, for Trump believe he should “publicly concede defeat to Kamala Harris” if defeated on November 5, compared to 34 percent who don’t think he should and 21 percent who answered “don’t know.” By contrast, 65 percent of those who either have backed, or plan to back, Harris said Trump should concede defeat if beaten, compared with 21 percent who disagreed and 14 percent who were unsure.
The title is overly friendly to Republicans but the poll shows an important point. More Republicans want Trump to concede if he loses then don’t. The number that doesn’t want Trump to concede is absurdly high but it is still minority. This is why it is important for the vote denies to create doubt. They need to convince people there was fraud and that the election was within the margin of error to get the presidency thrown to Trump.
birgerjohanssonsays
At the 15-minute mark we see the North American Wife Carrying Championship in Maine. The prize is your wife’s weight in beer.
“Have I Got a Bit More News for You S68 E3. Hannah Fry. 18 Oct 24”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-zmTjSPNMhM
Suggested line. “She is not heavy. She is my beer.”
“I tell my people immediately, don’t pay the bill for the guy that did that,” he said. “Then they get a story that says, ‘Trump doesn’t want to pay the bill.’ No, when people do a lousy job — they did a lousy job with the sound, but the good news is you understand it.”
Very much the archetype Trump bit. He even understood that it would become a story but said it anyways.
-Trump used a burner phone, routed through a foreign country to contact Michigan house speaker.
-He tried to pressure the speaker in this off book call.
-Speaker McCarthy knew about the burner phone line.
-The phone showed up as “Spam Risk Egypt” on caller ID.
If the President thought his attempt to overturn the election and forge elector documents were legitimate “official acts” why was he using an insecure, foreign routed burner phone for these calls?
This is from the unsealed Jack Smith documents. I agree this really goes against the idea that it was an official act.
As we barrel towards the finish line of what pretty much everyone agrees will be the most consequential election in American history, polls insist it’s still a coin toss between the current vice president and a guy whose recent campaign highlights include cosplaying as a fry cook, sharing locker room talk about a fellow golfer’s tremendous trouser snake, stanning for Hitler, and turning a townhall Q&A into “a music” where he swayed for 39 uncomfortable minutes to a playlist of golden oldies. (Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” was regrettably not tossed into the mix.)
[…] So I’d hoped to write a comforting post about a different North American democracy that just had an election where advance polls showed an incumbent lefty party in a virtual dead heat with a MAGA-adjacent challenger, and then handily beat the crap out of them on election day. You’ve no doubt deduced from the headline this will not be that.
British Columbia experienced the heaviest rainfall in five years the day voters cast their ballots last week. The resulting fatal flooding seemed like Mother Nature’s way of suggesting maybe not letting the lunatics take over the asylum given the BC Conservatives believe the existential climate crisis isn’t actually a thing.
Several days after the general election, it’s still too close to call. […] The eventual winner will also need to appoint a speaker in the Legislature, chopping their party’s numbers by one. Two rookie Green Party candidates also won seats, and time will tell if they’ll be willing to prop up the New Democrats again like they did seven years ago after a similarly close election. As Kermit the Frog famously said, it’s not easy being Green but it’s hard to imagine them teaming up with climate science deniers instead. The final tally likely won’t be until Oct. 28, the cutoff for mail-in ballots and after automatic recounts in two electoral ridings won by the NDP decided by fewer than 100 votes. But at least there won’t be any hanging chads or sketchy Supreme Courts involved.
The climate crisis is sort of what got my adopted home province into this mess in the first place. John Rustad, a former BC Liberal cabinet minister, was unceremoniously booted from the party two years ago for repeatedly expressing wackadoodle beliefs on the subject. […] (A note for non-Canadian readers: The BC Conservatives aren’t affiliated with the federal Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre, which may come as a surprise to a substantial number of low information voters who thought they were sticking it to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.) […]
Rustad is also an anti-vaxxer who attracted precisely the sort of candidates you’d expect. See if you can guess if the following quote is from a newly minted lawmaker or a parody of Alex Jones from an HBO superhero show:
Below their lying, liberal human faces lurk extraterrestrial beings, who want nothing other than our civilization to fail! They are among us!
Ha! Sorry, that was a Wonkette gotcha as it’s actually the same person. Brent Chapman is both the new MLA for Surrey South and a struggling actor who played the host of an Infowars spoof called Fact Attack on the new John Cena series “Peacemaker.” His acting career has been mostly bit parts but, giving credit where it’s due, he has the distinction of having been decapitated by both Jason Voorhees AND Michael Myers (the durable Halloween slasher, not Austin Powers) although it turns out the actor can be surprisingly camera-shy, as evidenced when he hid in a closet after a TV reporter showed up at his office to ask about some of the awful things he’s said online.
[…] Chapman has also cast doubt about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary and other mass shootings. In a Facebook post just days after a white supremacist murdered six people at a Quebec mosque, he wrote:
I’m sorry but all the recent “mass shooting” events also have some other things in common they all happened in the last eight years, they all have sketchy stories that change drastically from initial events… Why did Aurora, Sandy Hook and Quebec City all have witnesses that saw multiple shooters and are, ultimately, ignored by police and the legacy media? Look, I really hope no one was actually killed at these events but in the Orlando nightclub shooting, the people that talked to the press were not actually shot.
So that was gross, […] Not to mention reinforcing a Canadian stereotype by apologizing in advance before saying something shitty, although he doesn’t always manage this. Like the time he called Palestinians “little inbred walking, talking, breathing time bombs… figuratively and quite literally.” […]
while the BC Conservatives may not technically be in bed with their federal counterparts, Chapman himself actually is. He’s married to Surrey South-White Rock MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay, a former Minister of National Revenue when the Tories were in power under Stephen Harper. Ironically, her current gig is party whip, meaning she’s the one in charge of maintaining in-house discipline and minimizing damage from the inevitable bozo eruptions […]
at least she now has plenty of opportunity to practice at home.
For the upcoming Halloween celebrations in the USA:
I got a date on my estate down in Hades /
Call my chariot so I can go /
And should the Moocher walk in /
Just tell her you’ve been talkin’ /
To the ghost of Smokey Joe
Lyrics are from a early jaxx tune about ghost.
Bandleader Cab Calloway adapted a prior vaudeville hit called “Willie the Weeper” into a story about Minnie called “Minnie the Moocher“, most known for its “hi-de hi-de hi-de ho!” scat-singing. This became one of the biggest hits of the 1930s. Interestingly, the song is about Minnie and her friend (or dealer?) Smokey (who is a cocaine addict), and how they start smoking opium, and she dreams of a better life.
in 1939, we finally get to “The Ghost of Smokey Joe”. We learn that ol’ Joe has died, on Striver’s Row in Harlem. His ghost is haunting the old opium dens that he and Minnie used to frequent – but we find out that Minnie has cleaned up! Joe has to get back to his punishment in Hell(!), where he patiently waits for Minnie. […]
Videos and other examples of spooky music are available at the link.
Tony Hinchcliffe, host of the “Kill Tony” comedy podcast, criticized Puerto Rico and made an off-color joke about Latino immigrants as he warmed up the crowd Sunday at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.
“I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said, as Trump courts Latino voters — including Puerto Ricans.
Hinchcliffe said he welcomes migrants “with open arms — and by open arms, I mean like this.” He waved his hands in a “stop” motion, then added that Latinos “love making babies” and made a sex joke about them.
Sounds about right for the Trump show.
birgerjohanssonsays
The TEC Show
“Great news! Early voting: Harris vs Trump 2024 Election Update”
In-depth analysis of the situation in Michigan, and a brief summary of the swing states. Women voters really do not seem to like Trump, for some reason.
.
tomh@ 462
In the Michigan data, it was clear Latinos favor Democrats over Republicans ca 55-45. I wonder why that is…
tomh @462, that belongs in the “worse and worse” category.
As a followup, here is commentary from The Hill:
A speaker at former President Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday spent a portion of his time attacking Puerto Rico, drawing backlash from Democrats and the Harris campaign.
Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a set to the crowd ahead of the former president’s speech.
“There’s a lot going on. Like, I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico,” Hinchcliffe said, eliciting mixed reactions from the crowd.
At another point, Hinchcliffe said Latinos “love making babies.”
“They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country,” he said.
The remarks, particularly about Puerto Rico, were swiftly condemned by Democrats.
“As a Puerto Rican, I am tempted to call Hinchcliffe racist garbage but doing so would be an insult to garbage,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) posted on the social platform X. “When casting their ballots at the voting booth, Latinos should never forget the racism that Donald Trump seems all too willing to platform.”
Harris campaign aides noted Hinchcliffe’s remarks came as Vice President Harris was in Philadelphia speaking at a Puerto Rican restaurant, where she detailed her plans to assist the island and bolster its electrical grid. [Quite the contrast!]
Other Democrats pointed out that hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans live in Pennsylvania, which is shaping up to be one of the most critical battlegrounds on Election Day. […]
[…] Speaking on a livestream with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Sunday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, responded to the comedian’s comments.
“Who is that jack-wad? Who is that guy?” Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, asked after a clip of Hinchcliffe’s joke played on their stream.
“People in Puerto Rico are citizens. They pay tax and they serve in the military at almost a higher rate than anybody else,” Walz added, knocking Trump for his response to Hurricane Maria in 2017 — including a now-famous clip in which the former president tosses rolls of paper towels to Puerto Ricans seeking aid.
“Obviously, it’s super upsetting to me,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I need people to understand that when you have some ‘a-hole’ calling Puerto Rico floating garbage, know that that’s what they think about you.”
Puerto Rico, which is home to over 3 million American citizens according to the 2020 census, experienced significant outward migration to the mainland United States after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island territory in 2017.
Puerto Rican who live on the island are not eligible to vote in presidential elections despite being U.S. citizens. […]
But their relatives on the mainland can.
Vice President Kamala Harris, for her part, unveiled her plan for Puerto Rico as she campaigned in Pennsylvania on Sunday, posting details to her social media accounts and adding a section to her campaign website. Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican rapper and singer, shared Harris’ announcement with his more than 45 million Instagram followers. […]
Why weren’t they vetted? Even if they weren’t vetted, the campaign must have known what they were getting. You don’t set up a campaign event at Madison Square Garden without a lot of advance planning.
Interesting commentary published in The New Yorker.
Excerpts:
[…] A recent study in The Lancet, led by Thomas Bollyky, the chair of global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, suggests that, for many health outcomes, the strength of a country’s democracy may matter more than the size of its economy. On average, nations that transitioned from autocracy to democracy saw near-immediate improvements—within a decade, life expectancy increased by more than two years—and those which slid from democracy to autocracy experienced the opposite. Bollyky estimates that, in the decades between the fall of the Soviet Union and Trump’s glide down the golden escalator, democracy helped prevent some sixteen million deaths from cardiovascular disease alone.
Democratic governments are accountable to people, and people like to be healthy. Health care is what economists call a superior good, meaning that as societies get richer they want more of it. Democracies, accordingly, spend more on health than autocracies do, and are likely to preserve access to care even when the economy tanks. Meanwhile, a free press keeps people informed; the rule of law fuels innovation, by curbing corruption and protecting intellectual property; and independent agencies check power and implement regulations to promote clean water, breathable air, and safe food.
The real danger of a second Trump term is not that Trump is a man in decline. It is that, this time around, he would be surrounded by a cast of characters who aim to reify, not restrain, his worst impulses. John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, has argued that Trump is “certainly an authoritarian”; Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned that Trump is “fascist to the core.” Healthy democracy, like good health, requires adherence to a particular set of norms and behaviors, and the price of neglect is not just sick polities but sick people. With both, it’s better to push for prevention than to hope for a resuscitation.
Re: 464 & 465, followup NYT Live:
Michael Gold, Maggie Haberman, and Shane Goldmacher Reporting from Madison Square Garden
Former President Donald J. Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday opened with a standup comic who called Puerto Rico an “island of garbage” in a set that also included derogatory remarks about Latinos generally, African Americans, Palestinians and Jews.
It was a startling program for a campaign that has been trying to cut into Democrats’ support among Hispanic, Black, Jewish and Arab American voters in an effort to win in several key battleground states.
The comic, Tony Hinchcliffe, was the warm-up act ahead of several other speakers whose remarks were laced with vulgar insults, profanity and racist comments.
The crowd inside Madison Square Garden was predominantly white, with a significant number of Latinos. Many groaned at Mr. Hinchcliffe’s insult to Puerto Rico. Still, he told a tasteless, vulgar joke about the size of Hispanic families, mentioned watermelons as he called out a Black man in the audience and mocked Palestinians as rock-throwers and Jews as cheapskates.
At roughly the same time on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris was in Philadelphia courting Pennsylvania’s sizable Puerto Rican population with a stop at a local Puerto Rican restaurant, Freddy & Tony’s.
But in New York, Mr. Trump’s rally featured a series of speakers whose remarks were far outside of longstanding political boundaries. One, Sid Rosenberg, a conservative radio host, referred to Hillary Clinton with profanity and a sexist epithet. And Grant Cardone, a businessman who spoke early in the program, referred to Ms. Harris as if she were a prostitute.
Conservatives can’t do comedy because what they find funny—picking on the weak and defenseless—doesn’t amuse normal people. […]
3.8% of Pennsylvania’s population—467,000 people—is Puerto Rican. President Joe Biden won the state by only 80,555 votes in 2020.
That’s not all: 1.15 million live in Florida, where Democrats are hoping for an upset Senate win.
Another 230,000 live in Texas, home of yet another competitive Senate race.
North Carolina has 115,000 Puerto Ricans, where Trump won by only 74,483 votes in 2020.
Georgia has 109,000 Puerto Ricans, a state Trump lost by just 11,779 votes in 2020.
Wisconsin has 65,084 Puerto Ricans, which Trump lost by 20,682 votes in 2020.
[…] a stark reminder of just how much these people hate anyone that isn’t white men like them. […]
[New York City, “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe speaking to and pointing out a Black guy in the mostly white audience] “That’s cool, a Black guy with a thing on his head. What the hell is that? A lampshade? …I’m just kidding. That’s one of my buddies. He had a Halloween party last night. We had fun. We carved watermelons together.”
Current headline at CNN.com: “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults.”
NYT.com: “Racist remarks and insults mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally.”
From Time.com: “Trump rally at MSG marked by racist and lewd jokes.”
From Deadline.com: “Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally Opens With Speakers Ranting About “F—ing Illegals,” Puerto Rico A “Floating Pile Of Garbage” And Kamala Harris As The ‘Antichrist’.”
The AP headline: “Trump’s Madison Square Garden event turns into a rally with crude and racist insults”
Spanish-speaking social media users are reposting about this, with Spanish translation.
StevoRsays
@ ^ Lynna, OM : There’s no longer even any weak pretence fromthe Trumpists at not being utterly hateful and crude anymore. Not that therewas ever really that much. But yeesh..
StevoRsays
@411. John Morales :
StevoR – 25 October 2024 at 9:20 pm
Secular Talk – EXPOSED: Elon Musk’s Master Plan For America 31 minutes long. Must admit only just started watching and haven’t seen yet myself but looks intresting here -good YT channel.
#411 John Morales – 25 October 2024 at 9:46 pm
“Master Plan For America”, eh?
EXPOSED
(I know what’s being exposed, and it ain’t a master plan)
—
Ahem.
Does this luridly-titled show expose conspiracy theories, do you know, StevoR?
No, it doen’t. Having now watched it in full, it discusses the reichwing vision and governance philosophy of the toxic techbros and Musk especially with a lot more info and intresting points made too. Not Conspiracy theory but the ideas and goals and philosophy and some of thepeople shaping specifically Musk’s views.
From someone who often raises good points in his discussions and a channel I find usually worthwile. Which discusses politics and covers a wide range of news stories from a progressive perspective. I will grant you that the title is poor but the content of that clip I do think worth hearing.
What did you think was exposed and why? Were you correct and have you watched it now also?
You know, I am beginning to suspect the team behind team Trump are quite stupid.
In the clip from The TEC Show I shared before, it was obvious the majority of latino voters (in Michigan, at least) were voting Democrat, but 45% still voted Republican.
Team Trump: “We are getting too many latino voters. Let’s insult them”.
A federal appeals court on Sunday upheld the ruling of a Virginia judge who struck down an effort from state officials to automatically cancel voter registrations of suspected noncitizens, pointing to a federal law that prohibits states from purging voters 90 days before a presidential election.
The decision in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit comes after U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles on Friday rejected arguments from attorneys for Attorney General Jason S. Miyares (R) and Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who signed an executive order Aug. 7 to expedite the removal of registered voters who checked a box on their driver’s license applications indicating that they were not U.S. citizens.
Shaun Kenney, a spokesperson for Miyares, said in an email after the appellate court decision Sunday that Virginia would file an appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court “immediately.”
[…]
A federal court in Alabama similarly halted efforts from state officials to remove noncitizens from the voting rolls. There, the Justice Department also argued that eligible voters were being wrongfully swept up in the effort.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
I am beginning to suspect the team behind team Trump are quite stupid.
They did Springtime for Hitler in 2016, winning and drawing legal scrutiny. If his campaign weren’t so desperate to use the White House to scuttle his court cases, I’d suspect they’re trying ever harder to fail.
John Moralessays
Implication there is that, were they not so very remarkably stupid, Trump would win easily.
(No?)
Bekenstein Boundsays
A […] developer said he found hallucinations in nearly every one of the 26,000 transcripts he created […] engineers and researchers said they had never seen another AI-powered transcription tool hallucinate as much as Whisper.
So they all did it, but Whisper was the worst of the lot?
a speaker said, “He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella.” But the transcription software added: “He took a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece… I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.”
A speaker in another recording described “two other girls and one lady.” Whisper […] adding “two other girls and one lady, um, which were Black.”
What on Earth?
Oh no.
Oh dear God no.
They didn’t!
Did they?
Did they train Whisper on Trump’s campaign ramblings speeches?!
Why weren’t they vetted? Even if they weren’t vetted, the campaign must have known what they were getting. You don’t set up a campaign event at Madison Square Garden without a lot of advance planning.
You do if you’re Donald Trump. Trump doesn’t do “planning” — it’s too much effort for his three poor, overworked brain cells. Recall the utter chaos that passed for a “Cabinet” 2017-2020. It’s doubtful that Trump could organize a fuck in a brothel now, after eight more years of worsening cognitive decline, let alone plan a campaign event.
So he delegated instead, and as always he hired “all the best people”. And then probably stiffed them for their fees.
birgerjohanssonsays
The Daily Show:
“Magic: The Gathering Gamers Unpack JD Vance’s Dorkiness & 2024 Election”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=iszcDrDl93A
Nooo! Don’t let MTG get tainted by the MAGA crowd.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Conservatives can’t do comedy because what they find funny—picking on the weak and defenseless—doesn’t amuse normal people. […]”
.
BTW here is where I find John Cleese -who has an overly nostalgic view of the more ethnically ‘English’ London of his youth- to be different from conservatives. He condemns those who punch downwards in their jokes.
And even most of those other comedians who have problems keeping up with the Zeitgeist would understand it is problematic joking about brown people. Denis Leary don’t go around saying latinos have too many children.
[South Park and Family Guy gets around this by being incredibly rude to everyone]
This guy would be better off doing his “comedy” in closed events for fellow MAGA hats (or Boris Johnson/ Nigel Farage supporters).
Trump really has opened the door for ‘deplorables’ that no longer feel the need to hide their views. Next step: using the N word in public.
birgerjohanssonsays
…BTW years ago I read about an ex-Republican who recalled hearing “jokes” about Jews at AIPAC meetings when there was no microphone around.
So, is this a planned provocation to avert attention from Harris?
Or is it just thugs being thugs? I suspect – although this is impossible to prove- it is a little bit of both.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: birgerjohansson @480:
I find John Cleese -who has an overly nostalgic view of the more ethnically ‘English’ London of his youth- to be different from conservatives. He condemns those who punch downwards in their jokes.
An ahistorical moan about London, supporting Brexit, ranting about wokeness, hosting a TV show on a right wing ‘free speech’ channel. Announcing not caring about trans people, in a whataboutist defense of JK Rowling, then doing a variant of the helicopter joke and complaining about trans athletes.
South Park and Family Guy gets around this by being incredibly rude to everyone
Shaking a fist at comfortable millionaires too doesn’t make punching down better. Some targets are particularly vulnerable, so piling onto them should avoided. It’s not about intent, so personal callousness and blanket disregard are not an excuse.
A bit of welcome news from the UK. Fascist scumbag Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (a.k.a. Tommy Robinson) has been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for contempt of court – the contempt consisting of repeating and spreading as far as possible false allegations he made against Jamal Hijazi, a Syrian refugee who was filmed being beaten up by racists at his school (he was 15 at the time). Yaxley-Lennon is unlikely to actually be behind bars for 18 months, but if released earlier will have to watch his mouth unless he wants to be recalled to prison.
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 483
🍹🍾
birgerjohanssonsays
I am.disappointed by the coverage of the US election by Swedish media.
On one hand, there is so much of it you might think we were a US territory.
.
On the other hand the quality is lacking. I get the impression the journalists are content to read New York Times.
I get more depth when searching bloggers at Youtube (I watch more than ‘The TEC Show’, but that one is good at using diagrams).
US media are catching up on the conservative ‘junk polls’ but Swedish media still think Trump is way ahead.
birgerjohanssonsays
Is there enough time for hispanics to register to vote, if they were shocked into action by the crude insults at the NY rally?
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Re: birgerjohansson @ 486:
Is there enough time for hispanics to register to vote
Backlash to the unfunny joke has been so overwhelming that Trump campaign had to issue a statement distancing themselves from the comments. “Obviously, that joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign, and I think it is sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian, rather than the truth that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had.”
Yeah, I’m not buying it. It does reflect Trump’s views.
A sampling of the coverage, as reported by Talking Points Memo:
– NYT: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism
– Axios: MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump’s MSG rally
– Politico: Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks
– WaPo: Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico ‘island of garbage’
[…] The district attorney’s office in Philadelphia has apparently gone one step further. [Further than the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in regards to Elon Musk’s $1 million lottery of sorts.] NBC News reported:
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is suing Elon Musk and his super PAC to block their million-dollar giveaway to registered voters, seeking to halt the lottery-style stunt that election experts, and the Department of Justice, have warned might violate federal law. Krasner is seeking an injunction: he argued in a filing that the effort is an illegal, unregulated lottery, sidestepping the question of whether it violates vote-buying laws.
“America PAC and Musk are lulling Philadelphia citizens — and others in the Commonwealth (and other swing states in the upcoming election) — to give up their personal identifying information and make a political pledge in exchange for the chance to win $1 million. That is a lottery,” the suit alleges. “And it is indisputably an unlawful lottery. Under unambiguous Pennsylvania law, all lotteries in Pennsylvania must be regulated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
An attorney representing America PAC did not respond immediately to NBC News’ request for comment on the suit.
Time will tell when and/or whether a judge will set a hearing in this matter, though the local prosecutor is clearly counting on swift action.
“This was a hate rally. This was not just a presidential rally, this was also not just a campaign rally. I think it’s important for people to understand these are mini January 6 rallies, these are mini Stop the Steal rallies. These are rallies to prime an electorate into rejecting the results of an election if it doesn’t go the way that they want.”
Commentary:
[…] AOC’s assessment is backed by experts like Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who pointed specifically to rally speakers claiming an unspecified “they” tried to assassinate Trump: “The purpose of this is to conjure a threat environment sufficient to justify authoritarian action if they win. Old trick of those planning coups as well.”
The Madison Square Garden rally was a harbinger of what’s to come, not just in a Trump II presidency, but as soon as election night next week. Consider yourself warned.
Fascism Watch
– NYT Magazine: Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind.
[…] In a column that appeared online on Jan. 11, 2021, Paxton wrote that the invasion of the Capitol “removes my objection to the fascist label.” Trump’s “open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line,” he went on. “The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary.” […]
– CBS News: Elon Musk says people accusing Trump of endangering democracy are the real danger
– WaPo: Vance defends Trump on using U.S. military against Americans
– TPM: Trump Is Not A Fascist, Insists Man Who Called Him ‘America’s Hitler’
A memo circulating among at least half a dozen advisers to former President Donald J. Trump recommends that if he is elected, he bypass traditional background checks by law enforcement officials and immediately grant security clearances to a large number of his appointees after being sworn in, according to three people briefed on the matter.
[…] Kilmeade [Fox News host] criticized The New York Times for its headline on the rally referencing the racism and misogyny on display, commenting, “Only somebody who worked for the Harris campaign pretending to be a reporter for the New York Times would write something like that.”
His fellow co-host Lawrence Jones said Hinchcliffe’s racism appealed to his “dark sense of humor,” adding, “Maybe this was not the appropriate format for the comedian to be there, but it’s comedy.”
“They’re focusing on the wrong things,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt lectured media outlets.
While the attack on Puerto Ricans is generating the most headlines, it wasn’t just one comment out of the blue. His “jokes” were in line with the tone of the entire event.
Most prominently, Trump used his speech to again push his violent fantasies about fighting back against an “enemy within,” which he has previously defined as his political rivals—including members of the Democratic Party.
Senior Trump adviser and source of dating tips Stephen Miller made it clear that under a Trump administration, “America is for Americans and for Americans only.” For context, Miller’s family emigrated from Belarus to America to escape anti-Jewish pogroms in Belarus.
[two video snippets are available at the link, one in which Grant Cardone says Kamala Harris has “pimp handlers” and one in which Rudy Giuliani fear mongers about Palestinians]
[…] “The Palestinians are taught to kill us at two years old,” Giuliani said, adding, “And Harris wants to bring them to you.”
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson exhibited the racism he was infamous for during his time at the network. He referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “a Samoan, Malaysian, low IQ former California prosecutor.”
David Rem, identified as a childhood friend of Trump, waved a cross on stage and referred to Harris as the “antichrist.” […]
Sheesh. The Trump rally covered a whole spectrum of hatred, racism and misogyny. (I should add batshit bonkers religiosity to the list.) The more we examine the details, the worse it gets.
In a statement recounting the attack-filled event, the Harris campaign summarized the rally as “an offensive, dark, and dangerous spectacle.”
microraptorsays
Two ballot drop boxes were firebombed in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington last night/early this morning.
[…] I knew it would send shockwaves through the Boriqua community in key battleground states. And boy, did it ever.
The holy trinity of Puerto Rican stardom—Bad Bunny, J-Lo, and Ricky Martin, with over 315 million combined followers on Instagram alone—have been on a tear, sharing Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan for Puerto Rico side-by-side with the comedian’s racist tirade against the island.
Other Puerto Rican celebrities like Luis Fonsi (16 million Instagram followers) followed suit. This was Bad Bunny’s first time engaging this election.
In fact, Bad Bunny shared Harris’ video four times. […]
“This joke bombed for a reason. It’s not funny and it’s not true,” tweeted Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott. “Puerto Ricans are amazing people and amazing Americans! I’ve been to the island many times.”
Not only is Scott locked in a tough reelection battle, but he’s already had to deal with Trump and his pals alienating the Haitian community, another large and politically active Florida voting bloc.
”Disgusted by @TonyHinchcliffe’s racist comment calling Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,’” tweeted Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar. “This rhetoric does not reflect GOP values.” Except that of course it does. It was literally featured in Trump’s big rally. And Trump sure hasn’t disavowed it (and no, the campaign doesn’t count; he has to apologize for it).
Other Republicans followed suit, like Puerto Rico’s Republican Party chairman, Florida Rep. Carlos Gimenez, and New York Rep. Anthony D’Esposito. More will likely join the list in the next 24 hours.
[…] Univision: “Aliados de Trump insultan a Harris y denigran a los puertorriqueños en evento en el Madison Square Garden.” In English: “Trump allies insult Harries and denigrate Puertoricans.”
Telemundo: “El comediante Tony Hinchcliffe hace chistes racistas sobre los latinos y Puerto Rico en evento de Trump en el Madison Square Garden.”
[…] it’s so bad that people are barely focused on whatever drivel Trump spewed. The entire narrative has been reset. […]
Followup to comments 352 and 384 (and other comments on the subject of The Washington Post choosing to not endorse a presidential candidate.)
Brian Stelter, writing for Reliable Sources, commented on the Washington Post fallout:
I think it’s crucial to see the other side of the story as well, the sense of satisfaction from Trump loyalists. This is what they want: For Trump’s critics to cave. For billionaires to be intimidated. For Trump to break the backs of institutions like the Washington Post. Breitbart’s article about the Post filled up with celebratory comments. National Review’s Jeffrey Blehar mocked the media’s “garment-rending peals of agony” over the move.
Bottom line: No one is buying Post publisher William Lewis’s explanation that “we are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates” – especially in light of the NYT’s report that “Lewis and the opinions editor, David Shipley, made their case” to Bezos “not to end The Post’s tradition of making a presidential endorsement.” When Bezos nixed the endorsement anyway (without ever reading the Harris draft) Lewis was left to explain it to the public, according to the NYT.
If you saw and believed a viral video last week that showed someone tearing up ballots in Pennsylvania, I have some bad news for you: As the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency explained on Friday, the video was “manufactured and amplified” by Russian actors.
If this news sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. Days earlier, U.S. officials exposed a smear campaign against Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, which also apparently originated from a Kremlin-linked propaganda outlet.
The same day as those revelations, The Washington Post reported on a Republican operative who’s allegedly “working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign.”
A month earlier, federal prosecutors alerted the public to alleged Russian payments to prominent far-right media personalities.
[…] Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” and faced an important line of questions about the Kremlin-linked tactics. As Axios noted, the Ohio senator largely expressed indifference.
Asked on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” what price Russia should pay for trying to manipulate American voters using a fake video of Pennsylvania ballots being destroyed, Vance said the country should not set its policy based on “a foreign country spreading videos on social media.”
Appearing on a network his running mate has targeted in hysterical fashion, Vance said of Russian election interference, “I think it’s bad, but social media posts and social media videos, Margaret, you want us to go to war because the Russians made a ridiculous video or paid for it?”
When Margaret Brennan reminded her guest that there are options beyond war, the senator derided Biden administration sanctions on Russia.
Asked if he’d at least call on Moscow to knock it off, Vance said he could do that, but Russia would probably just do it anyway. [video at the link]
The same morning, the Ohioan appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and hedged on whether he’d describe Russia as an “enemy.” In the same interview, host Kristen Welker asked, “Under a Trump/Vance administration, can you pledge sitting here today that the U.S. will continue to remain a member of NATO?”
The senator replied, “Of course, we’re going to honor our NATO commitments. But I think it’s important, Kristen, that we recognize that NATO is not just a welfare client.”
That was not a definitive “yes.”
A day earlier, Vance appeared on a podcast and downplayed Ukraine’s geopolitical significance. In the same interview, the Republican suggested the United States was partially to blame for the war in Ukraine, before adding, reference to our NATO allies, “I mean, look, if I was a European country, in some ways, I would feel kind of pathetic … Because these guys, they don’t even have their own countries anymore. They just do whatever the United States tells them to do.” [Sounds like Putin!]
As extraordinary as it’s been to watch Donald Trump echo a Kremlin-friendly script, let’s not overlook the degree to which his running mate is doing the same thing.
The Trump campaign aired a two-minute ad during the latest Philadelphia Eagles game purporting to show evidence that the United States has “gone to hell” over the last four years. As Politico noted, however, the ad featured footage from 2020 — when Trump was president.
LOL
* In Wisconsin, a super PAC closely aligned with Republican politics invested hundreds of thousands of dollars last week in support of Jill Stein’s Green Party presidential candidacy.
* In North Carolina on Friday, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance singled out right-wing gubernatorial hopeful Mark Robinson for praise, calling him “a great lieutenant governor.” Hours later, Barack Obama had a little fun at Robinson’s expense, telling a crowd, “I do not know where to start with this man. He called the civil rights movement ‘crap.’ Called LGBTQ people ‘filth.’ Self-identified as a ‘Nazi.’ Suggested bringing back slavery. Now, I shouldn’t have to really get into all this. I think it’s fair to say you do not need a governor who makes Donald Trump look almost normal.”
* In 2022, the editors of The New York Post, pointing to Jan. 6, told readers that Trump “has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.” Two years later, the editors of the Murdoch-owned paper endorsed the former president’s bid for a second term.
* In Wisconsin, Republican Senate hopeful Eric Hovde has launched a highly misleading attack ad targeting Sen. Tammy Baldwin, which seems awfully eager to remind voters that the Democratic incumbent is a lesbian. Twelve years ago, Baldwin became the nation’s first openly gay senator.
* On a related note, Trump has begun referring to CNN’s Anderson Cooper as “Allison Cooper,” as part of an apparent reference to Cooper’s sexuality. In 2016, then-candidate Trump told LGBTQ voters, “I will fight for you.” Those days are apparently over. [It was never real anyway.]
Link
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-1/#comment-2239600
Vance’s laughable lie: Trump ‘didn’t go after’ his political foes
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-1/#comment-2239595
Guardian: Elon Musk gave $75m to his pro-Trump group in three months
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-1/#comment-2239575
CNBC: Trump’s coin sale misses early targets as crypto project’s website crashes
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-1/#comment-2239488
Watch Rachel Maddow debunk one of the biggest Trump myths
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-1/#comment-2239462
If election board officials in Georgia are thinking about refusing to certify election results they don’t like, a judge has now told them they can’t.
Just to give some positive vibes in the midst of the election anxiety, I dug up Ladytron’s celebration of Los Angeles.
.
Ladytron – City of Angels (Official Audio)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=r7-n_vk8ox8
Why Turkey Has Finally Had Enough of Erdogan
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7oLPL9KOCWE
Today’s post from Heather Cox Richardson, mostly about he’s bizarre interview with John Micklethwait (Bloomerg News) and the Economic Club of Chicago. She then goes into the position a Trump win puts JD in and his two main backers: Peter Thiel and Elon.
Poll shows the effectiveness of Trump’s lie about Springfield, Ohio
FEMA workers threatened by armed group in Tennessee
https://www.wonkette.com/p/stupid-hitler-confirms-he-meant-democrats
Stupid Hitler Confirms He Meant Democrats When He Said ‘Enemy Within’
https://www.wonkette.com/p/step-right-up-trumps-crypto-scam
Step Right Up! Trump’s Crypto Scam Is Live!
Yep. All the best people. Top to bottom.
Art that is weird in a good way:
PUPARIA by Shingo Tamagawa
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=CWnqX41JHuM
GUILE’S THEME
Composed by Yoko Shimomura
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Iof5pRAIZmw
Ukraine Update, by Mark Sumner.
Big Mama Thornton: Hound Dog (1953)
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/c1NwxXTtveooUvDP/
Followup to comment 11.
Mark Sumner added:
Donald Trump bears responsibility for Jan. 6 attack, Jack Smith argues in new filing
The special counsel says Trump “willfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct” the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
Stickerbrush Symphony (Remix)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jE_V_ok2wKk
Dragonan at Youtube providing a synthwave remix from old game music.
Related to comment 14.
Judge in Trump’s Jan. 6 case rejects ‘strained’ argument about his false 2020 election claims</a.
Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected most of Trump’s lawyer’s attempts to compel prosecutors to hand over more evidence in their case.
(I am going nuts compulsively checking polls. I had to check something completely different)
Perturbator (Feat. Noir Deco) – Technoir (Dark Synthwave AMV)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=NWQKiefZ-XI
(From the anime The Running Man.
I thought the ambience fits the times we live in)
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/16/fungi-status-boost-conservation-cop16-uk-chile-biodiversity-plan
—
Dad joke: “Why was the mushroom always invited to parties? Because he was a fungi.”
@11 Lynna, OM:
That isn’t really true, China does care about repercussions. China doesn’t care about Ukraine but they do consider their international trade more important then Russia. The governments of China and Russia make a show of being friends right now but really they don’t get along, they just have a mutual enemy. China has forced Russia to renegotiate oil sales, giving China a much more favorable price now that Russia desperately needs the money. They have not done things to help Russia, they are seeing how much they can extract from Russia.
China has played a complex dance seeing how much they can get away with before it triggers trade problems for them. Chinese banks have cut off the Russian banks to avoid China being cut out of the international banking system. This makes it harder for any trade because Chinese companies won’t take Rubles if they can’t be converted into Rembi or dollars. Large Chinese companies are not dealing with Russia, at least not directly. They are selling to fly by night Chinese companies that are selling to the Russians. And even that is limited, no large sales of military gear, weapons, ammunition or vehicles.
What JM wrote.
cf. Joe Blogs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE6Uvqr_Fbo
“Chapters:
0:00 Intro
3:33 US DOLLAR
5:19 TRADING VOLUMES
6:55 CHINESE YUAN
8:42 IMPLICATIONS
12:39 FOREIGN CURRENCY”
—
Main driver: secondary sanctions — that is, sanction enterprises that break the sanctions.
India is much the same; they will not pay in rubles.
cf. https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2022/09/bartering-cryptocurrencies-and-yuan-russia-seeks-alternatives-to-trading-in-dollars
Thus: https://www.newsweek.com/russia-oranges-trade-barter-pakistan-1962512
—
(See, those are limits)
This is, um, something. Germany has a reputation, and not for this sort of thing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/16/blaze-destroys-german-fire-station-fitted-without-alarms
Politico: Trump team preps list of banned staffers
That Trump has a blacklist isn’t a surprise. There is a long list of government officials that angered him the last time he was president. He has a history of being petty and vindictive. That people associated with Project 2025 are on the list is a surprise. Wonder how he will replace Vance?
Just kidding. The whole thing may just be part of Trump dissociating himself from Project 2025 and they could easily be dropped from the list after the election. That officials from the Trump campaign are willing to talk about it suggests this is the case.
Trump may actually want to keep people too closely tied to Project 2025 out because they will not personally loyal to him or it will bring bad publicity to him. In any case a really broad ban on people associated with or supporting Project 2025 is impractical, the list of organizations supporting it is long. Even if he sticks by a ban it will probably just be people who wrote it, not all supporters.
JM @22
Project 2025 will be back once President J.D. Vance is sworn in after the 25th amendment has been invoked. That’s looking more and more like the plan is to get Trump elected (since Vance would not be electable) and get rid of him once it becomes practical to do so.
“Together with our partners, we must change the circumstances so that the war ends. Regardless of what Putin wants,” the Ukrainian president said.
NBC News:
NBC News:
Washington Post:
No, Trump Is Not The ‘Father Of IVF’
Watch Harris kick ass during combative Fox News interview
On the fly, and in the moment, Harris had to call out Brett Baier’s deceptive editing of a clip he showed of Trump speaking. Baier and his team did, in fact, edit out the part where Trump emphasized “the enemy within.” Trump has been using that phrase a lot to describe anyone who disagrees with him.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/16/2277337/-Maddow-Trump-is-Trying-to-Make-More-Hush-Money-Payments-to-Porn-Star-Stormy-Daniels
“Maddow: Trump is Trying to Make More Hush Money Payments to Porn Star Stormy Daniels”
Yes, I agree. The new developments are newsworthy because Trump is still trying to buy Stormy Daniel’s silence. And he is trying to do so right before an election.
Trump’s lawyers wanted Stormy Daniels to sign a very restrictive NDA, an NDA that even included her agreeing to not talk about Trump’s campaign for the presidency.
Trump’s campaign responded to an inquiry from Rachel Maddow. Part of their response included a claim that all of the documents Rachel used in her report were part of an illegal hack-and-dump by the Iranians. Rachel made it clear that Stormy and her lawyers provided access to the documents. Nothing was hacked. Nothing was second hand.
Posted by readers of the article:
Facts:
– Stormy Daniels did NOT agree to sign an new “hush” agreement. No NDA was signed.
– Ms. Daniels paid her legal debt to Trump.
– Trump was saying, basically, “you owe this much but we will allow you to pay less if you also sign an NDA.” That’s the part of the Trump-proposed deal that looks like trying to launder (hide) a hush-money agreement inside a legal settlement
– Trump, who rather infamously does not use his own money to pay for anything, was willing to use his own money to try to silence Stormy Daniels … again.
– Trump failed in this latest attempt to silence Ms. Daniels.
birgerjohanssen@490:
Whatsamatter, Joey boy? Worried that if you can’t block climate legislation anymore the coal barons who fund your campaigns will demote you to just “idiot”?
Um, he didn’t actually explode. That’s just the clickbait title, Bekenstein Bound.
(That channel always always always got the stupidest most hyperbolic bullshitty headlines and they are never, ever, ever right)
PS
Nope.
He’s already 77 years old, and has had a great life, and is a serving senator and has all the contacts necessary. Should he need them, because I think his nest is probably rather well-gilt.
(Whyever would he worry?)
[in case anybody thinks I’m exaggerating]
<clickety-click>
60K views 1 day ago
9:33
Now playing
Trump’s Attack Post Instantly BACKFIRES First Thing In The Morning
38K views 1 day ago
8:14
Now playing
Republicans FRANTIC As Trump’s Staggering Military Threat Revealed
15K views 1 day ago
Meghan McCain RAGES In Stunning Kamala Threat, Immediately Regrets It
80K views 1 day ago
Trump Team IN PANIC Over Brutal Medical Truth After Crushing Fox News Surprise
87K views 1 day ago
Panicked MAGA Supporters COLLAPSE Over Embarrassing Naked Trump Sculpture
23K views 1 day ago
Fox Host STUNNED As Melania ATTACKS Trump & Vance
25K views 2 days ago
Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey: October 14, 2024
1.5K views 2 days ago
Marjorie Greene LOSES All Control As Deranged Disaster Scheme Falls Apart
38K views 2 days ago
California Police Cybertrucks UNVEILED As Bizarre Video Blows Up
19K views 2 days ago
Kamala Drops MASSIVE Surprise Announcement In Stunning Business Proposals
44K views 2 days ago
Armed Trump Supporter CORNERED In Suspicious Coachella Rally Revelations
19K views 2 days ago
Megyn Kelly IMPLODES Over Kamala Harris Cover Story In Revealing Meltdown
18K views 2 days ago
Trump ERUPTS As Terrifying Crackdown Plot Unravels On Stage
40K views 2 days ago
Republican House Speaker BUSTED As Catastrophic Trump Stunt Gets Worse
83K views 2 days ago
Republican Visibly STRUGGLES As Trump Meltdown Against Kamala Backfires On CNN
56K views 3 days ago
(Birger is special that way)
John Morales @ 33
I try to tune down the titles from eleven to something more approoriate by removing the ALL CAPS stuff, but if I rewrite the titles completely I cannot use quotation marks.
I avoid stuff with titles that too obviously is clickbait, but with Trump-related content you never
know. He might have literally been throwing feces or something.
Headlines containing “shocking” are usually a bad sign.
And if a headline says “shocking news of Elon Musk”, no, nothing that @☆ is doing can shock me anymore.
It’s OK, Birger. I get it.
Surely we understand each other. Mutual respect.
I appreciate you share stuff of interest.
I appreciate you use your phone to do it, with the shittiest of interfaces.
I definitely know you are a good egg.
But, you know… clickbait title and naked link, that’s kinda uninformative.
A bit lazy, interface and all that
But, thing is, BB kinda took that literally.
Just making sure they get what the actual circumstances are.
I believe you. But still, not like you post the (adjusted) clickbait title and naked link and also that you personally don’t think it is shocking.
Whatever “it” is, because the thing about clickbaity titles is you have to click on them to find out what the actual content may be.
(Also, be aware that in English there is quite a distinction between “of X” and “for X” and “about X”)
—
Point being, you so very often merely post the (adjusted) clickbait title and the naked link but never, ever editorialise. Perhaps make that tiny teeny little bit more effort for such unspecific but LOUD clickbaity titles?
A barebones synopsis, a brief adumbration, a summary opinon… basically, anything from you. Anything t all. A gist.
That would be nice, and surely easier on your readers.
John Morales @ 35.
OK
As for polls, I will limit myself to the ones that have a good reputation, like YouGov, and the podcasters that try to be serious.
ELBONIA! Milbloggers LazerPig, Animarchy et al have a fun three hours working out with which weapons systems to arm the People’s Republic of Elbonia.
Rules: The suggested hardware must be crap -otherwise the resistance will have you assassinated- but it must also look impressive, otherwise the Generalissimo will have you shot for suggesting obviously bad weapons. A surprising number of the entries are British-made.
(nerds have odd obsessions)
The premise is less weird than much of the history of Stalinist countries.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=sHP7F_SBpu4
BTW tech history is addictive. I bet many readers can look at a 1980s concert and immediately identify which version of synthesizer they are using.
…on the subject of tech history, I must try to dig up the link about the Soviet jet-powered biplane intended to be a crop-duster for really big collective farms.
I have an interesting book, Britain’s War Machine by David Edgerton. Among other things, he argues that Churchill, far from being hostile to science and innovation (a claim he attributes primarily to the “post-war academic left”), was a gadget enthusiast, and as a result, during WW2 the country spent too much money and effort on developing new weapons and devices, at the expense of maximising output of reliable weapons. Among Churchill’s favourite projects (some of which he invented himself) were aerial mines (they didn’t destroy any planes), a 100-ton “mole” that would dig a trench for troops to advance along (never built), using icebergs as giant aircraft carriers (never got beyond the planning stage), and PLUTO (PipeLine Under The Ocean) which did work, but was much less useful than anticipated.
It’s not unique to that channel! Clickbait is a thing, and since YouTube video titles lack styling, the headline SHOUTING a word or two for ridiculous EMPHASIS is sadly just run of the mill.
It annoys me especially when a generally good channel with interesting content has to indulge in such empty sloganeering in trying to hawk their wares, as I expect some literal truth to be at work and I am very frequently disappointed.
Xanthe @ 40
One way to discourage this would be if viewers could opt for software that actively blocks ALL CAPS and common clickbait phrases.
A Different Bias is forwarding how even conservatives think the Tory party has a bad time ahead. Amidst the alarming US polling news, this tidbit cheered me up a bit.
“Telegraph (newspaper) Accidentally Shows How Screwed the Tories Are”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=iUME1pqKlNo
(“puuurrrr”) 🐯
‘Ancient Apocalypse’ on Netflix os spreading the claim there was a worldwide advanced civilisation during the ice age, and that there are flooded houses left from this civilisation.
Short version: BS!
(Note that I used all caps!)
At 4.50 a famous political candidate gets grumpy after being fact-checked.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=oF8F5Vpx7S8
“Fossil unearthed in Brazil is 237-million-year-old sister-group to Dinosauria”
.https://phys.org/news/2024-10-fossil-unearthed-brazil-million-year.html
-This confirms that evolution of lineages is not a ‘tree’ but a bush with multiple dead branches.
Latest – last on this channel – & Days of Science clip here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/10/10/bring-me-the-head-of-arthropleura/comment-page-1/#comment-2239686
Posting here as well as that thread for folks.
Sabine Hossenfelder has long been very critical of the quantum computation hype – while the available tech will have applications, it always has to play catchup with the evolution of ordinary computers.
“The Quantum Computing Collapse Has Begun”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ONDs6zaSRTc
Followup to comment 29.
Here’s the actual wording of the agreement Trump’s lawyers proposed to Storm Daniels’ lawyers, along with a few more added details:
Link
Video at the link
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug presents Q-NUTS, in ‘It’s Election Day!’
This is just1% of the Euclid map apparently – just the “first page” – and yet is already extremely impressive :
https://www.space.com/euclid-first-images-cosmic-atlas
Israeli military investigating whether Hamas leader Sinwar killed
https://www.wonkette.com/p/heritage-chiefs-violent-talk-upsets
Heritage Chief’s ‘Violent’ Talk Upsets Delicate Fascist Who Ran Project 2025
Undoing democracy is a job for gentlemen, sir!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/you-wont-believe-how-racist-trump
You Won’t Believe How Racist Trump Was At Univision Latino Town Hall JK Yes You Will
Also just his usual babbling dementia stupidass self.
Followup to comment 51.
Hamas leader confirmed dead by Israel
Yahya Sinwar, architect of Oct. 7 attacks, killed in Gaza; body identified by DNA testing
Washington Post link
NBC News video that features Richard Engel discussing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death. Engel describes the raid.
The video is 4 minutes long.
Trump’s position on the Jan. 6 attack reaches an ugly new low
Donald Trump has said a lot of outlandish things about Jan. 6, but he never referred to rioters as “we” and the police as “the others” — until now.
I think this is just Trump revealing what he thought all along. And no amount of red-faced protestations that he included “peacefully” in one of speech during his months-long attempt to foment an insurrection will save him.
Followup to comment 53.
Link
WaPo:
McConnell called Trump ‘stupid,’ a ‘despicable human being,’ new book says
By Mariana Alfaro / October 17, 2024
The question isn’t whether Trump lied about John Deere, tariff threats, and production in Mexico. Rather, the question is why he lied.
I think Trump is now living in LaLa Land.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/oh-no-betsy-devos-forgot-to-murder
Oh No, Betsy DeVos Forgot To Murder The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program :(
From only mostly dead, it’s now forgiven loans for ONE MILLION students.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-withdraws-from-nra-rally
Trump Withdraws From NRA Rally
Maybe hanging out with a guy involved with torturing a cat is a bad look? Who can say!
Washington Post link
Podcast ‘The TEC Show’ presents latest polling numbers and early voting with context.
“Good News For Vice President Kamala Harris In New Early Voting Numbers Announced”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UEJ9bl_oI08
Harris does not have to win Pennsylvania for the reasons explained here. Trump cannot afford to lose anything.
Also, The TEC Show is less ‘yelly’ than other sources and usually give useful comments.
We have no recent polls for the senate races, Ted Cruz’ lead of 1% is within the margin of error but he can still win. It would be great if the local Dem campaign can send him packing.
Electrifying! Scott Manly Provides An Inside Tour Of Archer Aviation’s Midnight EVTOL: Engines, batteries and simulator.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HMyOSJX7a9Q
38 minutes.
The podcast ‘Heralen’ about
Dungeon Meshi :
“The Anime That Gets Worldbuilding Right”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=trtyC7VaUbc
How to avoid being a DSI/Dog shit isekai anime.
(Podcast The Kavernacle)
The Weird World of ‘Wehraboos’ – Reddit Simps for the Nazi Military and Rommel (Wehrmacht Myths)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=yIpZ9mKo2as
“Yeah, Hitler was evil, buuuuut…..”
Farron Cousins comments on the debate between senator Ted Cruz and challenger Colin Allred. Cruz would not condemn the Jan 6th riot.
Maybe Cruz had been better off if he had followed the example of Trump and ducked all debates.
(Sorry for the link. It is past local midnight, I get sloppy)
While I do not understand medicine, it is obvious the search for new medicines (and the basic understanding of their function) needs to be more effective.
.
“More efficient phenotypic screening method can simultaneously test multiple drugs”
.https://phys.org/news/2024-10-efficient-phenotypic-screening-method-simultaneously.html
Well, he has allegedly been destroyed.
—
(The stream of bullshit rages on, unabated)
John Morales @ 70
When people use the word “destroyed” in a headline I expect to find a swarm of small asteroids at the site.
I’ll believe that when I see it. And not a moment sooner.
“Scathing Atheist 609 Pumpkin Spice Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eV_yOHHiX9k
At the 56 minute mark Anna Bosnick sings a song accurately describing the experience of reading the bible.
Also, a lying preacher explains how he killed a liberal supreme court judge by prayer.
Labour to legalise harmful practice of carrying chickens by legs, say charities | Farming | The Guardian
.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/18/labour-to-legalise-harmful-practice-of-carrying-chickens-by-legs-say-charities
Washington Post: Trump delivers profanity, below-the-belt digs at Catholic charity banquet
Trump has no taste, part 5^5^5. It was supposed to be a light roast favoring opposing politicians but Trump just insulted Democrats. I’m mostly surprised that Trump didn’t get a speech writer to help him. Putting together an extended funny speech is a very difficult task even for professional writers. Trump may have thought he was being funny given his past attempts at humor.
Not surprising but really it’s sad. So lacking in self awareness or composure that he can’t even put in a lame joke or two. This should be grounds to disqualify him for the presidency itself.
It is interesting that Harris just didn’t attend. I suspect she anticipated what was coming and refused to give him a platform. Trump naturally wasn’t going to miss a high society event in New York, he has always been irked by not really be accepted in the elite in NY.
Guardian: Lawsuits aim to prevent ‘illegal’ hiding of toxic chemicals by US regulators
There are some trade secrets in there that should be kept. If this is anything like other industries there is far more obscuring information just to keep it out of the public. When dealing with toxic chemicals that shouldn’t be allowed.
Frieren Abridged – POV: Racist Elf Cancels You
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=e3pYt7kLcrk
(Team Rocket turns up to kill Frieren)
Two high-profile billionaires — Mark Cuban and Elon Musk — delivered campaign speeches on the stump. Guess which one promoted debunked conspiracy theories.
Sometimes I think that Trump’s rich cult followers must actually work to remain uninformed about the facts.
FFS.
Donald Trump blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the White House for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but he didn’t hold Vladimir Putin responsible all.
In a moment of accidental candor, Trump peeled back a curtain and acknowledged that “a couple people from Fox” helped him write jokes for the Al Smith Dinner.
Link
NYT:
A federal judge ordered the DeSantis administration to stop threatening TV stations over an abortion-rights ad.
Patricia Mazzei Reporting from Miami
Oct. 18, 2024, 2 hours ago
Followup to comment 80.
Posted by readers of the article;
Cartoon: Beer
‘Batsh-t crazy’: Tim Walz and Bill Clinton team up to trash Trump
In Case of an Election Crisis, This Is What You Need to Know, by Neal Katyal
New York Times link</a.
More at the link.
Summarized by Steve Benen from The Washington Post:
From The Washington Post article:
Yeah, Kari Lake has nothing. Looking forward to seeing her lose.
Summarized by Steve Benen from The Huffington Post:
Link
Chutkan Unseals Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 Appendices Over Trump Objections”>Chutkan Unseals Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 Appendices Over Trump Objections
The filings are available at the link.
Followup to comment 90.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/watch-kamala-harris-annihilate-donald
Washington Post link
Montana ranger comes forward with account of Sheehy gun incident
Candidate says he was shot in Afghanistan; ranger witness to gun incident questions that account
Trump overcharged Secret Service agents to stay at his D.C. hotel, new Democratic report says
Then-President Donald Trump also benefited from U.S. officials and others seeking jobs and pardons who paid for stays at his downtown Washington hotel, House Democrats allege.
New book: McConnell privately called Trump a ‘despicable human’
Link
Photo at the link.
Power goes out on entire island of Cuba, leaving 10 million people without electricity
Rachel Maddow:
Commentary:
Link
Link
Quoted above:
“Not to put too fine a point on this, but when prominent political leaders appear at a dinner to benefit Catholic charities, there’s a general expectation that they’ll avoid “bitter grievances and crude and at times profane personal attacks.””
This is so transparently false, it’s basically pathetic.
Nobody, but nobody, would have that expectation of Trump these days.
(Whoever wrote that is a total bullshitter)
“OK, fine, nobody was actually annihilated, eviscerated, blasted, destroyed, defenestrated, or keel-hauled, but we sure do love this video of Kamala Harris responding to some shouty MAGA forced-birth activists who showed up at her rally last night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”
(www.wonkette.com/p/watch-kamala-harris-annihilate-donald)
Well, then. Why that title?
(‘OK, OK, fine, nobody actually loved this video, but we sure love to post falsehoods’)
(I am inserting this because most of us need cute, furry things to cheer us up)
SaveAFox:
“Meet our newest Grey Fox Pet Surrender Faelyn”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=McSWlL4tGpk
This cute fox quickly goes from very cautious to extremely plauful.
Birger, twice I had my chicken run attacked by foxes.
The results were not even slightly cute.
Did you know hens have like a little conveyor belt of eggs inside them, so they lay their egg a day?
They sort of get bigger and riper and the shells begin to harden up.
I didn’t, till I saw it for myself after a visit from a fox.
(Cute serial killers, O my!)
Nothing cuter than a kitty playing with a live mouse.
Chickens don’t play with mice; they flock in and tear them to shreds and eat them.
(I seen it!)
(once were dinosaurs)
Oh, right. Maybe a tad obscure. In-joke between me and my lover.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_Trunk#Legacy
Ah well, while I’m at it… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Were_Warriors
One by one, many of my left-leaning news sources seem to be going bonkers. First there was Vox instituting its apparently-fake paywall (still can read the allegedly “exclusive” articles as of yesterday); and now The Tyee, a Canadian site, has screwed up its home page. Starting two days ago it came up blank grey; using the web developer toolkit’s “Inspector” revealed a body tag with a style=display:none attribute that didn’t used to be there and isn’t supposed to be there, the removal of which via hand-editing completely fixes the problem, resulting in the front page of the site rendering exactly the way it used to and is supposed to.
The bizarreness here is twofold: first of all, this is not an error that could plausibly have been made through carelessness or ignorance. It looks a lot like intentional sabotage. And second, in 3 days the operators of the site have not noticed and corrected the problem, which would take all of 20 seconds in a text editor by any educated lay person (after all, I was able to figure out and fix the problem locally in my browsing session that fast). During those same three days they have continued posting new content at a normalish rate, so it’s not like nobody’s home; how could they not have noticed that nobody can see that new content without manual hacking of the HTML? (Or disabling CSS, which also works but uglifies the page severely.) The only thing I can figure is that a) it’s the desktop version of the site that’s affected and b) nobody there bothers to visit the desktop version of the site, surfing via mobile, so they have yet to see the problem.
Unfortunately, I have no way of notifying them, as their “contact us” page lacks either email addresses or a type-and-click-send input form for feedback. I’d have to try to get a human on the phone (∗shudder∗) or send them snail-mail (which would take a fair bit of time, a hike to the post office, and actual money).
Someone there needs to be not only fixing their HTML, though, but hunting for a security hole, a missing patch, or something: someone made what seems to be an intentionally malicious edit to the desktop version of their site, and it behooves them to lock whoever that is out before they come back, or someone else finds the hole and does something worse than an irksome, but ultimately reversible, prank. Like unleashing ransomware or just trashing the DB, or stealing sensitive data to sell to the Russians or something. And given how infrequently they check that the desktop version of their site is rendering correctly, I shudder to think how frequently they are performing backups …
“One by one, many of my left-leaning news sources seem to be going bonkers.”
BB, just move on, then. Plenty more fishies in the sea.
Why persevere unless it’s worthwhile?
(If it ain’t free, I ain’t reading it.
Unless, of course, I feel like reading it.
More properly, I ain’t paying for it)
You worry too much.
Here’s what stands out in Jack Smith’s 1,889 page appendix
The exhibits to Smith’s immunity brief largely remain a mystery, but snippets of witness statements give clues about his litigation strategy, if the federal election interference case survives.
Washington Post:
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
Sundowning Rapist Demands Nap
Embedded links that lead to sources for the commentary are available at the main link.
NBC News: Power goes out on entire island of Cuba, leaving 10 million people without electricity
Lack of trade partners, Mexico, Venezuela and Russia all cutting oil supplies, increasing demand and aging infrastructure have led to a total failure. The Cuban government blames the US embargo and that is certainly a factor but that isn’t directly the cause of this. If they have actually run out of oil it may not be possible to restore power. That could be a threat to the government but the Cubans also realize that as long as the embargo is in place nothing will fix their problem.
Shame Cuba built a power network based on burning oil which was provided basically for free, from the Soviet Union and then Venezuela (before both economically collapsed).
Turns out, they can’t afford to pay for more oil, and can’t afford to rebuild their electrical generating plants.
Joe Blogs has been covering the circumstances, and posted this a few days ago:
[meh, I used CR/LF instead of a mere LF, thus the embed. Sorry, not intentional]
State election news from ABC news and from the ACT – Australian Capital Territory or basically Canvberra our national capital plus its outskirts here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-19/2024-act-election-follow-live/104477892
Dunno that it has that much wider impact or federal implications but still Intrestingly,well, I reckon it is, theydo use another votin g system there -the Hare-Clarke model with multipel pollies voted in from each electorate ona proportional basis whch I actually rather like so it is an example of how elections work that way here. Kinda nic e if you have a couple of local reps to contact and represent you better rather than just a single MP that can be utterly horrific like we had for a long time in my federal (& state) electrorates.
Heh. I missed this at the time:
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2024-10-14/scientists-cast-doubt-on-claims-christopher-columbus-was-a-sephardic-jew-from-spain.html
reckon this is an intresting disv=cusssion here – Elon’s Dork MAGA Rally Gets Awkward by The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder – under 15 mins long
Cartoon: Mar-a-Lie-Go
This is not the Onion – 3 state AG’s sue for the right to cause teen pregnancies
Washington Post link
Hello again. A long post upcoming.
Recently, quite alarmingly, it was reported that the “carbon sink” function of various natural ecosystems across the world may be disappearing.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/14/nature-carbon-sink-collapse-global-heating-models-emissions-targets-evidence-aoe
[The story opens with a satellite image of algal blooms in Baltic Sea. These blooms are locally a notorious environmental problem linked mainly to eutrophication, but the story erroneously links the image to recent reports of climate-related changes in the Arctic Ocean ecosystem.]
The Guardian continued on this theme with a long, confusing story that focuses on Finland specifically. I thought to add some clarifying notes and context.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/15/finland-emissions-target-forests-peatlands-sinks-absorbing-carbon-aoe
[The story opens, somewhat misleadingly, with a photo of nearly treeless birch shrub tundra in northern Norway near the Finnish border. The mountain birch shrubs in the photographed area have recently been devastated by a certain species of moth, as occasionally happens to mountain birch stands in the northern highlands. AFAIK it’s unclear how climate change affects this particular species dynamic.]
This past summer has seen a very persistent weather pattern that produced extremely rainy conditions with floods in much of western Europe, and extreme warmth with varying degrees of drought in vast areas further east. I’ve seen some recent research suggesting that this pattern may become more regular as a result of the shutdown of North Atlantic circulation.
The heat/drought anomaly was particularly prominent in far northern Finland and nearby areas – the homeland of indigenous Sámi people. The Guardian points out the weather-related concerns of local reindeer ranchers, most of whom are Sámi. Only at the end of the story it is clarified that the drought affects the amount and quality of grazing available for reindeer, particularly mushrooms, which are very important in autumn. (In recent years, there have already been major problems with the hardening of snow cover during mild and rainy winters, which makes it difficult for the reindeer to forage and survive through the winter.)
I haven’t seen much reporting or discussion on these recent developments on Finnish media. A while ago I saw something that seemed to suggest that earlier estimates on the carbon sinks had turned out to be overly optimistic. It’s quite unclear to me what is the role of inaccurate estimates vs. actual changes in the ecosystems. The latter could potentially make the situation even more serious than it already is.
I haven’t really kept up with the science, but I gather that the reasons are indeed complicated. That said, you’d think the system would have to be reasonably well understood for the researchers to be able to measure and model the total carbon balance somewhat accurately.
Logging of old growth forests has long been criticized as a threat for biodiversity. Incidentally, the large amount of deadwood found in old growth forests is a particularly critical resource for many endangered forest species. Recently, there’s also been a lot of debate on how forest management affects the forest carbon sink and carbon storage – often these two are mixed up.
The total forest area in Finland (ie. most of the country) has long been stable, even slightly increasing, as mires and marginal agricultural lands have been converted into forest. Modern intensive forest management has long sought to improve tree growth and ensure efficient tree establishment after logging, at the expense of everything else in the forest ecosystem. It has also sought to ensure that every tree is logged before it dies on its own, for one reason or another, and becomes economically worthless deadwood. Naturally, the people with a financial interest in this (ie. forest owners and logging/wood industry) prefer to frame enhanced tree growth as an inherent good, and natural death of trees as a threat to the forest itself.
The amount of wood in Finnish forests has greatly increased since the mid 20th century, in part because lots of forest area was logged and re-established at the time. Now those stands are coming to prime logging age, and there’s increasing debate on whether they should be let to grow longer, or harvested to make space for new trees. As they grow older, their mass growth slows down but they continue to store lots of carbon. Heck, some of that area could be allowed to develop into a real old growth forest. But there’s all the scaremongering about how older trees stop growing and start to die, while blocking the growth of new saplings.
Thus far, I haven’t seen any really alarming reports of mass tree death in Finland due to drought and insect outbreaks, but it has been certainly recognized as a potential future threat for Finnish forests. Particularly by those who refuse to recognize that letting trees die might be helpful for the health of forest ecosystem. When it comes to climate policy, it is eagerly pointed out that when trees die, they start to decay and release their carbon into the atmosphere. Then again, harvested wood material also tends to break up in use and decay, even if it’s not immediately burned for energy. Meanwhile, large dead trunks in the forest can often last quite a long time and form a substantial carbon storage.
The role of peatlands and other forest soils is hugely important when it comes to natural carbon storage in Finland. Peat bogs, which are very common in Finland, naturally sequester some amount of carbon each year, accumulating massive carbon storages over thousands of years. Extraction of peat for fuel has been a topic of heated (hah) debate in recent years. I understand that another major problem is that huge areas of peat bog and peaty forest soil have been drained to improve tree growth. This increases the decomposition rate of peat, which I presume has been taken into account by experts in the estimates of ecosystem carbon balance. Likewise, I presume the demographic shift of Finnish forests has been taken into account.
[There are several quotes from worried researchers and environmental activists, giving the general impression that the observed decline of natural carbon sinks is not only highly concerning but also unanticipated.]
The causes of this decline probably vary somewhat in different countries, but common themes seem to be wildfires and other mass tree death events plus increased decomposition of organic matter due to rising temperatures.
[There is a brief introduction of Finnish environmental activists who try to prevent old growth logging by recording local ecologically valuable forest habitats and shaming potential buyers of timber and wood products – a worthy endeavor.]
There are strictly protected forests in Finland, but the problem is that most forest area is entirely unprotected, open to clearcuts and other intensive management. There has been some progress in the industry and landowners trying to incorporate biodiversity maintenance in forestry, but the prevailing attitude seems to be that only little bits of forest need to be allowed to grow old. This is not ecologically sustainable.
Convenient framing from the industry lobby, exactly as I described above. The more trees you cut, the more trees you can grow! What carbon storage! Also let’s talk about fossil fuels instead!
That bit might be actually true.
Of course, that’d limit the supply of timber and increase the prices. Therefore, when the public discourse demands more protection for state-owned forests, trolls will show up to suggest that private forest owners’ property rights are being threatened, and the activists and concerned citizens should just privately buy any forest they want to protect.
Classic.
This quote is included offhand without context. There has been some concern for the native spruce (Norway spruce, picea abies) specifically, because it’s one of the two overwhelmingly important tree species in Finnish forestry (the other is Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris), and its productivity might collapse if the climate becomes warmer and more maritime/variable. It’s unclear to me whether any other tree species (preferably one of the native ones) could produce similar economic value on Finnish soils in the new climate.
The paragraph breaks came out less clear than I expected. Ah well, at least saved some space on this page.
I see that actor John Lithgow has turned 79.
Not only is he older than Trump, he played a baddie in Dexter. That makes him over-qualified to be a Republican presidential nominee.
.
John Morales @ 103
Obligate carnivores are “problematic”.
.
That is why it is wise to introduce kittens/puppies to other species- especially domesticated ones they are likely to run into- before they reach
adulthood. You don’t want your dog to kill your neighbor’s cat/rabbit/parrot.
Once a cat or dog is used to another species it might still play rough with an animal, but not kill it.
Foxes that have grown up beside cats do not see them as “food” (but the foxes will still pee indoors because “tame” is not the same thing as “domesticated”).
lumipuna @127, thanks for that presentation of the news as you interpreted it. Very well presented.
In other news, here is another take on Elon Musk’s questionable participation in Trump’s campaign efforts. Josh Marshall, writing for Talking Points Memo:
Link
Sabine Hossenfelder
Most Age Records are Pension Fraud, ‘Scientist Says’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VpwXswyt-zg
(Which is why we need to ‘hack’ the genomes of long-lived organisms like those whales that reach two centuries)
‘Trump’s Univision Town Hall gave us enough audience reaction GIFs to last a lifetime’
.https://youtube.com/shorts/1K_IjLynFJk?si=E66cXbVhWEAW-JpV
Vance appearance at far-right Christian revival tour may have broken tax and election laws
@ #129 on John Lithgow
Lithgow wrote (and illustrated) a great book of verse about Trump that came out just before the 2020 election, Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age. It was a follow-up to his NYT list bestseller, Dumpty. From a Kirkus review at the time:
Followup to comments 88 and 93.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/more-holes-in-tim-sheehys-accidental
More Holes In Tim Sheehy’s Accidental / Friendly Fire Shooting Story Than In His Arm
Lying liar still favored to beat Jon Tester in Senate race, because Montana.
Followup to comments 97 and 117.
Link
3 killed and 8 injured by gunfire following a Mississippi school’s football game
The shootings about five miles outside of Lexington, Mississippi, followed a football game several hours earlier at the Holmes County Consolidated School’s homecoming celebration.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
Mass shootings are a routine thing in the USA.
The Biological Trap of Being Human – Robert Sapolsky
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3iSMW8vRH1A.
“In this fascinating talk hosted by the Leakey Foundation, neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky delves deep into the biological underpinnings of human behavior. He dismantles the illusion of free will, highlighting how our actions are dictated by a complex interplay of genetics, environment, and evolutionary history. By exposing the deterministic nature of human behavior, Sapolsky challenges the notions of moral responsibility and conscious choice. This lecture aligns with The Nacre God’s rejection of free will, making it a must-watch for those questioning the foundations of human autonomy.”
Heh heh heh.
Storytelling.
Interesting comment there: “The description of this video DOES NOT CORRESPOND to the content of THIS talk by Sapolsky. They copied and pasted, without paying attention to the relationship between description and content: this description fits in other lectures of his, where the center is free will and determinism, BUT NOT IN THIS one, where the subject is supposed human singularity, or even: similarities and differences between humans and other animals.”
—
Hey, Birger, did you watch the video you cited, where you added nothing of your own?
[BTW the non-breaking space looks much nicer than the full stop]
Re: Lynna @124:
Rando comment: “one of the complaints is that girls in the foster care system who’ve been raped are still able to access abortion care. Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.”
From the AG’s mifepristone lawsuit, page 142
page 150-151
Those sick, perverted fucks!
Foxes & kitties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgzL0piAOMo
Ruffies.
For StevoR: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-08/easter-chocolate-bilby-vs-bunnies/102190198
[obs, a switcharoo with ‘furries’ — not with ‘roofies’]
SNL Weekend Update
Video available at the link.
Sigh. I’ll be so glad when we don’t have to encounter news like this: Trump commenting on the size of Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.
Followup to comment 148.
Here’s another thing on which Mike Johnson commented:
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/exhausted-trump-naps-in-michigan
‘Exhausted’ Trump Naps In Michigan Policy Meeting
And Wonkette was there!
Photo of Trump appearing to sleep during the event is available at the link,
New York Times link
Video at the link.
Guardian: US investigates leaked documents alleging Israel plans to attack Iran
The leak indicates Israel is still setting things up and isn’t ready to attack yet. Who leaked the document isn’t clear and there is always the possibility it was hacked. The document would have been shared among the 5 eyes intelligence group so there are a bunch of possible sources.
There is also a whole pile of possible reasons for the leak, whoever leaked it may have intended to influence Israel but could have hoped to made Israel go faster or that pressure would make them slow down. This could also be to influence the US, to warn Iran or several other goals. I expect it won’t actually do much, events are pretty much locked in now because nobody is going to change course until the US election is held.
(Sigh) Another unexplained goddamn signal (no, it isn’t aliens.)
“New Alien Signal Rumour — What’s Behind It?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gxedtCGCBfc
Is it PAULianity or Christianity?!? (feat Robyn Faith Walsh)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=8wiiG_aUFPI
Far-right groups bring lawsuits against counties, Dems respond. I know nothing of Merican litigation, but it is nice to know the Republicans don’t get everything their way.
This link may be for viewers with an interest in legal matters.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5yRHR5geZPE
Protestors Labeled Terrorists After Dousing Recruiters With Ketchup Bottles
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bljj5NFDA5s
This is a green issue, they are protesting turning a chunk of a national park into a military base.
Christian Consevative Writer Peter Wehner Blasts Evangelicals For Falling For Trump’s ‘Freak Show’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=GMuEHvyHOFs
Personally I find it amusing to see the MAGA fail to deal with cognitive dissonance.
Pro-Trump Pastor Joel Webbon Demands Death Penalty For Women Who Report Crimes Commitred Against Them
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0gsptcNe5KQ
But we already knew his ilk are the American Taliban
Add the American education system to things Trump wants to destroy
Facebook
“Just because we are from Kentucky does not mean we are not smart” (removes signs in wrong order before camera)
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/BCfBmdE9AbnX8mKV/
Alzheimer’s disease may damage the brain in two phases
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-alzheimer-disease-brain-phases.html
So, which phase is Trump in now?
BB, unwarranted premise.
Alzheimer’s is but one type of dementia; there are others.
Similarly, dementia is but one type of senility.
(Also, headlines with “may” in the title, well… Sorta Betteridge’s, no? ;)
I mean, I may break my leg when next I stand up from my chair, should I trip and fall.
(A perfectly true claim, but of course the likelihood of it being the case is infinitesimal — it’s merely not impossible)
BTW: “So, which phase is Trump in now?”
Is that question premised on the supposition that Birger actually read the article, not just the title?
If so… well.
Link
’60 Minutes’ responds to Trump’s ‘false’ claims about Harris interview
In my feed: “Derren Brown Exposes Fraudulent “Psychics” with Richard Dawkins” (YouTube).
This amused me enough to share.
After all, if they are a “Psychic”, then they are not a Psychic, right?
Silly scare quotes!
So, “Derren Brown Exposes Fraudulent non-Psychics with Richard Dawkins” is the actual headline.
From which follows they are true psychics being exposed by whatshisname.
(heh heh heh)
—
Layers of unfortunate silliness there, of course.
After all, whether or not they are “psychics”, they are with Richard Dawkins when they are allegedly exposed.
(I bet they aren’t really exposed; YouTube is not generally X-rated)
“60 Minutes’ responds to Trump’s ‘false’ claims about Harris interview”
Not false claims by Trump, but merely ‘false’.
(Heh heh heh)
TLDR global: Why Saudi Arabia’s Economic Woes Just Keep Getting Worse
The short explanation is that the combined cost of extracting oil plus what the government needs to support the country now exceeds the sale price of the oil.
The long form is that the government of Saudi Arabia knows this and knows that the oil situation isn’t going to get better. Global has leveled off as countries move to greener economies. Due to internal conflicts and more competition OPEC no longer has strong control of oil prices. They still get a lot of money from selling oil and that isn’t changing but at some point they are going to have debt problems.
The leaders of Saudi Arabia know they need to diversify. The fundamental problem is that they have a lot of money but not much economy outside oil and the leaders don’t want to give up control. They are liberalizing some things but that is moving from horribly repressive to highly repressive. The government is erratic, corrupt and fickle. Industries like plastics that might want to move close to the source of oil don’t want to move to Saudi Arabia. Expansion into other industries is driven by large government subsidies projects and isn’t creating much real economic growth.
The weird thing about this? The government under Mohammed bin Salman is still preferable to the alternatives because the next alternative is a religious government that would make Iran look liberal.
No 10 says Starmer won’t offer reparations or apology over Britain’s role in slavery at Commonwealth summit – UK politics live
.
.https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/oct/21/keir-starmer-wes-streeting-consultation-reforming-nhs-labour-policy-uk-politics-live
I am soo surprised / sark.
The time is running running out to see the comet with the naked eye, it will be down to magnitude 4 the 22th October.
It is by now quite high in the western sky and you can see it at twilight preferably before the moon rises. For star maps see internet, for instance Sky and telescope.
In rapid succession, Trump criticized our South Korean allies, E.U. allies, and Ukrainian allies — while referring to actual foes as “so-called enemies.”
There were reports suggesting Trump “worked” at a McDonald’s, but that’s not quite right — because there’s a difference between work and staged theatrics.
This is one of Trump’s mental glitches that I hadn’t seen before:
Link
Video and many other examples of Trump’s lack of “cognitive” are available at the link.
Cartoon: Trump smash democracy!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/elections-officials-prepping-for
Random biological snake memnonics.
Python snakes live in most continents beginning with ‘a’ : Asia, Africa, Australia. Places where the empire that produced Monthy Python was most active. NB: tropical snakes avoid Canada so forget the Americas.
.
‘Boa’ constrictor are found in the continent that includes ‘Bo’livia.
‘A’naconda snakes – water boas – live in water including the ‘A’mazonas river
.
Poisonous snakes: too many to remember. If you have a phobia, just settle down in Ireland
(The absence of snakes here supports the narrative of the ice age and disproves creationism).
‘Trump Failed Stunt at CLOSED McDonalds Gets Revealed’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2nda9fVPneU
I am soo tired of this dude…
Kamala Harris Had A Weekend Of Joy
From the transcription mentioned above:
A youtube short.
“How long have themes of gender been around in Anime?”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/TOemEplFKQU
YouTube link to “An Oath.”
A well-done presentation that features a Capitol police officer commenting on January 6. The video is one minute long.
A referendum in Moldova backs a membership in EU.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/biden-admin-wants-health-insurers
Biden Admin Wants Health Insurers To Cover Your OTC Birth Control And Condoms
Elon Musk Now Straight Up Bribing People To Vote For Trump
Washington Post link
Viral attack on Walz features fake former student making false claim
Hawaii man who attended a school where Walz taught — but says they never met — was dismayed to see person in video using his name to make a false allegation against the vice presidential candidate
Exonerated ‘Central Park Five’ sue Trump for defamation after debate comments
The lawsuit was in response to Donald Trump’s comments at the Sept. 10 presidential debate, where he incorrectly said the men pleaded guilty and the victim in the 1989 attack had died.
Bits of campaign news, a summarized by Steve Benen:
Trump as ignorant vulgarian.
Link
Trump’s penis envy – Robert Reich
.https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trumps-penis-envy
The eejit made lewd remarks about a golfer’s penis.
‘How Did Blond Hair & Blue Eyes Spread to Europe?’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=EbVHQq2XYLE
Lots of details but still some room for speculation.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-finally-gets-real-job-for-20
NBC News link
Text quoted above is just one of many news articles posted at the same link.
“The eejit made lewd remarks about a golfer’s penis.”
So Robert Reich is en eejit, in your estimation. Fair enough.
(Did you read the piece to which you linked?)
This will be useful. It’s a review.
“How inversion variants can shape neural circuitry: Insights from the three-morph mating tactics of ruffs”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9641025/
3 male morphs: independent, satellite, and faeder. These are due to chromosomal inversions that are present in both male and female ruffs. The authors make the important point,
“in our most recent work we show there are clear morph differences in HSD17B2 mRNA expression in the brains of embryos, as early as day 14 of incubation (Giraldo-Deck, 2022)…
As we move forward, it will be important to maintain an integrative interpretation of results, keeping in mind that inversion effects occur in both sexes and that even in females this could have effects on behaviorally relevant cell types.”
Females with independent, satellite, or faeder genetics will soon be informative.
“The behavioral effects of the inversion likely come from its ability to reduce not only circulating levels of testosterone, but perhaps even more so, from its ability to affect hormone synthesis in brain areas where the de novo synthesis of sex steroid hormones, especially estrogen from circulating testosterone, takes place.”
I knew the local brain expression was going to matter. I’m still collecting all of that.
“These patterns in circulating androgens emerge already in both sexes as early at 10 days old, where variance in testosterone levels in Independents is three times greater than that of Satellites and Faeders, while the variance in androstenedione is greater in inversion morphs compared to Independents (Giraldo-Deck, 2022). Furthermore, we have also confirmed that it persists into adulthood for females as well, where even though circulating levels of testosterone are low, inversion morphs have even lower levels than Independent females (Figure 1A).”
“We propose that the inversion affects not only circulating testosterone levels among morphs, but also the de novo synthesis of estradiol in the brain and that these two events combined, shape both the development and subsequent activation, of morph-specific behaviors in adulthood.”
The model becomes more useful.
New analysis shows Trump would devastate Social Security’s finances, debunking MAGA talking point
Watch ‘Coach Walz’ break down the Project 2025 playbook as only he can
Video at the link.
YouTube link in case you need it.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/californias-minimum-wage-hikes-actually
California’s Minimum Wage Hikes Actually Working Out Very Well, Thank You!
Techcrunch: ‘Blade Runner 2049’ producer accuses Musk and Tesla of circumventing copyright with AI imagery
Interesting way to try and dodge around copyrights and trademarks. Likely hard to make it stick in court but Time Warner has the money to do it. The difference between using an AI system to copy something with changes and getting an artist to produce artwork in a particular style is small but seems significant to me.
CNBC: Trump sued by Central Park Five for defamation
They likely have a winnable case, even after all these years Trump has never admitted he was wrong about the case. It’s another topic that wouldn’t get him in trouble if he just shut up about it but he can’t. He has brought up the case multiple times even after DNA evidence proved none of them could be the rapist.
“When Alcon wouldn’t agree to provide the rights through Warner, the suit alleges that Tesla, at Musk’s direction, used that imagery as raw material to duplicate it using an AI model.”
Hm. https://www.tme.com/au/en/news/library-articles/page/56932/reverse-engineering-what-is-it-and-is-it-legal/
@199
However, that hamburger used to cost between $.89 to $1.00 until the recent corporate food price gouging started in the wake of Covid. That hamburger shrunk in size, but now costs $2.50, and a small fry is $1.99.
Because of course the people who own the MacDonalds must make record profits, but the workers can’t complain if they can’t afford to spend their limited food budget on even the cheapest items on the menu.
You can purchase a lot of frozen French Fries for much less than $1.00 per ounce.
WaPo:
Former GOP lawmakers, officials call on AG Garland to investigate Musk
By Perry Stein / October 21, 2024
The TEC Show:
‘Breaking News!! Early Voting Landslide: Harris vs Trump 2024 One Million Votes in North Carolina ‘
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DigZJtvuqqg
Looks somewhat promising. I might be able to suppress a panic attack for the nexr 24 hours.
Hazel:
“The Bizarre Rabbit Hole of Direct To VHS Anime”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=mF-XaCPqjqE
I had actually heard of some of those titles, but what caught my interest is that she had spent so many hours watching anime to make this video. That is being a committed fan. Also, kudos to fans that make unofficial subtitles to help the media overcome the language barrier.
Just out yesterday by Ben G Thomas’es good science youtube channel
here – When Earth Was Ruled By Arachnids here. Just over 25 minutes length.
For Birger: Rescued lioness Yuna steps on grass for the first time in her life…
The Big Cat Sanctuary
(Yeah, I too have a weakness for touching animal stuff, cynical though I am;
shame about the stupid tinkly music one must endure to hear the narration unless one just uses subtitles, but hey. Geared to the great unwashed, is popular media)
—
A cat, basically. Mine does exactly the same, but is a bit smaller and a touch more domesticated.
(And with no sound track of gloppy shitty “mood” music, which is a winner for me)
It’s late, I’m tired, I’m on my second drink … is that why J.D. Vance looks AI generated?
No real yumons look like that. Do they?
Heh.
Republicans’ Revealing Fetish for A.I.-Enhanced Trump and Vance Pics
A celebratory postdebate picture, heavily edited to masculinize Vance’s features, shows how close Republicans come to gender dysphoria and trans gender theory—without realizing it.
ああ、わかりました。
John Morales #208
I didn’t mind the music.
TikTok boi selfies were annoying.
chigau, no worries. I know I ain’t normal.
For you, chigau:
—
In this video, a dog meets its owner, who went to defend the Motherland. The dog hadn’t seen him for a long time and at first couldn’t even recognize him… only by smell. But as soon as he realized who was in front of him, his joy knew no bounds.
https://x.com/Lyla_lilas/status/1838352851615076410
Thanks, John.
Good for me to go to sleep.
[Lynna, I think I got that video from one of your DailyKos links. So you get a share of the gratitude :) ]
John and chigau @214, 215 and 216. I love a good Ukrainian reunion video.
In other news: Here is the YouTube link for a segment of The Rachel Maddow Show in which Rachel interviews Yulia Navalnaya. Yulia is the pro-democracy, anti-Putin, anti-corruption activist that is also the widow of Russian opposition leader and political prisoner Alexei Navalny.
More Ukraine news, posted by NBC News, and based on reports from Reuters:
Link
Good news, as posted by Reuters:
Putin will not be happy about that result.
NBC News:
Followup to comment 187.
Link
Why is António Guterres going to Russia for a BRICS summit?
https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1848383771877220725
Watch Rachel Maddow explain the threat Donald Trump poses to journalists and news outlets
Video at the link.
birgerjohansson@191: Ah, Trump showing his homoerotic side. And maybe a touch of necrophilia.
I wonder how that will play with the more religiously-prudish among his base?
Then again, the Access Hollywood tape wasn’t a deal-breaker for those idiots …
Via PBS Newshour :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/whats-behind-elon-musks-massive-effort-to-elect-trump#transcript
Seth Meyers:
‘Trump’s Weird Story About Arnold Palmer’s Penis Size, McDonald’s Stunt: A Closer Look’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qJiFsUNXB04
Jon Stewart on Trump’s McDonald’s Shift & His “Enemy Within” Threat | The Daily Show
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-5KWZL1blWc
I am myself feeling as upset and frantic as Jon Stewart.
Hey Birger, what’s this alleged “Weird Story About Arnold Palmer’s Penis Size”?
(Clutching your pearls? Dropping your monocle? Bah)
—
Heh. Headlines matter to you, but actual content is… well, not really a consideration, is it?
Ah, right. A trope. A shift.
(Well, we know who the faddists are, no? Penis-obsessives, apparently)
—
“I am myself feeling as upset and frantic as Jon Stewart.”
That is, not the tiniest whit. It’s grist for the mill. Entertainment.
(But he actually makes a living out of it, so that’s not quite the same, is it?)
Trump’s penis-talk: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/21/trump-christians-vote-us-election
“Donald Trump urged Christian voters on Monday to participate in the 2024 election, claiming that a Kamala Harris administration would restrict religious freedoms and casting himself as a protector of Christians.
During an event in North Carolina billed as an “11th-Hour Faith Leaders Meeting”, a series of conservative pastors warmed up for Trump, including Guillermo Maldonado, an “apostle” and longtime Trump ally who cast the election in perilous terms.
“You know, we’re now in spiritual warfare,” said Maldonado, alluding to the idea that Christians are at war on the supernatural plane against dark forces that impact the real world. “It’s beyond warfare between the left and the right. It’s between good and evil. There’s a big fight right now that is affecting our country and we need to take back our country.”
Introducing Trump, Ben Carson, the campaign’s National Faith Chairman for the 2024 election, openly rejected the idea of secular society.
“This election is about whether we are a secular nation or one nation under God,” said Carson, echoing the aims of Christian nationalists who view the US as a Christian nation that must return to God.”
(Well, he didn’t actually say ‘penis’ there, any more than he said it about some dead golfer. But, precedent)
This is sad to watch: Rocky Horror Picture Show Reunion | Full Q&A | For The Love Of Fantasy (London) 2024 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqBXQ-LAEJg)
—
I saw the movie with friends at Adelaide Uni; an all-nighter featuring a number of movies.
(Including “Flesh Gordon” — yeah, the parody)
Stephen Colbert:
“Harris Leads In Early Voting, Deftly Handles MAGA Heckler | Trump Fixates On Arnold Palmer’s Manhood”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zmi0W96qYWw
Britain:
Judges could impose house arrest on criminals as part of major overhaul of sentencing
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2024/oct/21/england-and-wales-sentencing-overhaul-could-bring-in-home-detention
The Victorian Foot Fad Inspired by a Horror Novel : Weird Fashion History (and the origin of the Svengali films)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=J_DKcehMlkY
Also, very anti-semitic.
Trump : “Biden is holding Netanyahu back and he should probably be doing the opposite.” (2 mins 21 secs mark) here – Kyle Kulinski / Secular talk – Trump PRAISES Netanyahu’s Psychotíc Murdėr Spree. (7 & a half minutes.)
“Let’s Talk Elections”:
Brand New Polls | Harris Leads in GA, MI, PA, and WI
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DEcTUyevLBo
All swing states are within the margin of error but overall the situation does not look bad. The latest poll made the distinction between voters who are certain and voters who are likely to vote for a particular candidate.
When you are dealing with someone with a track record like Trump, the appropriate response is to assume the worst possible interpretation of what he says.
.
If people imply “schlong”, then they mean “schlong”.
It is like when you say there are good people on both sides and one side are literal nazis, it means you think nazis are good.
And Trump did not say he wants to put immigrants into concentration camps, he ‘merely’ said they would be rounded up and put in camps. For the people about to be rounded up, the semantic difference is probably not reassuring.
Dóh! Stuffed up the link Taker II for #235 here
@236.birgerjohansson : Just seen a Frace 24 news report on TV – via c24 Aussie ABC news channel – saying the USA’s Presidential race is far too close to call. Polling (push or dubious or whatever but still) has things pretty much within the margins of error. I think we need to be very wary of any complacancy and do everything we possibly can to stop Trump which means whatever we can to help Kamala.
Couldn’t find the interview they just had on their website but did find this :
Source : https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20241020-harris-trump
Trump rarely smiles, but in the videos showing him talking about Arnold Palmer’s penis, Trump breaks out in a genuine smile near the end. Telling details.
In other news, Trump keeps coming up with new ways to threaten school funding
Donald Trump is vowing to cut funding to schools that recognize transgender students, teach history in ways he dislikes, and/or have vaccine mandates.
Link>
birger @226, man oh man, that intro from Seth Meyers was something else. I knew that Fox News and other rightwing media were repeating the lie that Kamala Harris has no policy positions, (and/or that Harris has not explained her policy positions), but, sheesh! The sheer amount of repetition from the Fox News hosts alone startled me.
They obviously have an extensive, ongoing campaign to smear Kamala Harris as someone with no policy positions. The opposite is true. Even within the constraints of her shortened campaign, she has presented her policy positions repeatedly and well.
Here is a link to am online version of Harris/Walz policies:
https://kamalaharris.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Policy-Book-Economic-Opportunity.pdf
Link
CNN: January 6 riot conviction of ‘Cowboys for Trump’ founder is upheld in precedent-setting case
Straightforward case but a bunch of Jan 6th riot convictions would have to be redone if this was overturned. The court accepted the government’s sensible position that it’s enough that the government clearly mark that your trespassing, they don’t have to spell out every individual law you might be breaking.
AP: FTC’s rule banning fake online reviews goes into effect
This will be impossible to strongly enforce but it should reduce the scale of fake reviews.
McDonald’s, if you care at all about saving democracy, give Donald Trump a full-time job!
.https://youtube.com/shorts/LogyLYUxLKc
Nobody knows this cult exists
Bruder- Baptistengemeinde
/Community of Brothers- Baptists
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TSBjOyR24S0
Nasty stuff.
Why Obama slamming Trump on his response to Covid matters
Trump occasionally whines that he doesn’t get “credit” for the “great job” he did responding to Covid. It was smart of Obama to set the record straight.
Following ‘exhaustion’ report, Trump cancels yet another appearance
Donald Trump has canceled a surprising number of interviews and appearances lately. The list is still growing […]
Rachel Maddow does her thing and absolutely torches Trump
Video is available at the link.
WaPo:
Judge gives control of Giuliani assets to Georgia poll workers he defamed
Holly Bailey / Oct 22, 2024
tomh @251, that’s good news. Glad to hear it. Celebrate every measure of justice.
In other news: Kamala Harris enlists A-list stars to get out the vote
https://www.wonkette.com/p/sleazy-ex-abercrombie-ceo-arrested
Sleazy Ex-Abercrombie CEO Arrested For Sexually Exploiting Aspiring Models
Also sex trafficking and ‘interstate prostitution.’
https://www.wonkette.com/p/idahos-parental-rights-anti-trans
Idaho’s ‘Parental Rights’ Anti-Trans Law Harming Idaho Teens, As Designed
Miscellaneous medical news.
.
Novel gene discovery paves the way for treating central nervous system injuries
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-gene-discovery-paves-central-nervous.html
Lipin1 enzyme
A fully automated AI-based system for assessing IVF embryo quality
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-fully-automated-ai-based-ivf.html
New review suggests evaluating Tibetan medicinal herb as potential treatment for mild cognitive impairment
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-tibetan-medicinal-herb-potential-treatment.html
Jeez, Trump would have needed this a decsde ago.
Independents And Early Voters
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p7BH6eP5h6c
The independents are going to Harris by a 9-point margin, which is good news. I am forwarding the link to save you from the stress levels I experienced when the polls had a hiccup. Remember, the margin of error is 2%.
From the “Worse and Worse” category:
Link
What a toxic stream of vitriol from Trump! And none of it backed up with facts. And none of it backed up with policy differences. It all just pure misogyny, racism, and meanness.
Re: John Morales:
Follow-up
If “Nobody knows this cult exists”, it follows that whoever made that video does not know this cult exists.
(Such a stupid title!)
“Nasty stuff.”
How so? I mean, the alleged cult members of the alleged cult do not even know it exists!
Nobody knows!
(heh)
John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, is sharing fresh details on his former boss’ perspective, specifically about “Hitler’s generals.”
CA7746, whether or not DeSantis instructed Florida’s Department of Health, it remains the case that DeSantis is not Florida’s Department of Health.
Right? I quote the specific claim: “Florida’s Department of Health is [blah]”.
That was the named entity that was [blah], not Trump.
Link
Video at the link.
Harris says ‘of course’ her team is prepared if Trump declares victory before votes are counted
In an interview with NBC News’ Hallie Jackson, the vice president said her campaign has the “resources and the expertise” to handle a challenge from Trump.
NYT:
Georgia Supreme Court rejects efforts to reinstate new state election rules.
Nick Corasaniti / Oct 22, 2024
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Lynna@257:
Wow. Did Trump just endorse Harris?! Because it suuuure looks like it. :)
@259:
Do you really think that you’re contributing usefully when you make these types of comments? <sigh>
Lynna@260:
Erm, begging your pardon, Mr. Trump, but Hitler’s generals lost him a war that, given the technological advantages he had over his opponents at its outset, was frankly his to lose.
Fortunately.
So yeah, if you do somehow end up in power again, you absolutely should get the kind of generals that Hitler had, so the rest of the world stands a chance of survival and maybe it’s only the United States that you’ve doomed.
Re: “Hitler’s Generals”…
The other problem with them (from Hitler’s perspective) is that some of them ended up trying to kill him.
Bekenstein Bound:
So, in your estimation, unless someone is in your opinion useful to the comments section, they are to be shunned? Disparaged?
Sure seems like it.
—
Do you ever consider how noticeable it is you don’t even attempt to dispute my claims in that little dramatic session?
(Before me, there was truth machine. I am not worthy, but there are no better who remain)
‘Let’s Talk Elections’
A+ North Carolina Poll Shows Harris in Better Position Than We Think”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=iWfGn_oNaJM
It’s complicated. But the betting sites have disproportionally affected the narrative to exaggerate a Trump advantage. And in North Carolina things are looking up.
No. It was a war Hitler could only have won through an extremely unlikely combination of circumstances, and errors by his enemies. The resources available to Nazi Germany, even after Hitler conquered western and central Europe (which he should not have been able to do – northern Norway at least should have been held, and the invasion of France should have failed), were wholly inadequate to defeat the combination of the UK (with its empire and commonwealth) and the USSR, let alone when Hitler added the USA to the coalition against him. See for example Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, David Edgerton’s Britain’s War Machine, and Ian Kershaw’s Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World 1940-1941.
SAVEAFOX Minnesota gets major upgrades!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=L1F6Mxzk5WE
This is a site that always cheers me up.
Oriental hornets do not get sick or die when consuming very large amounts of alcohol, study shows
.https://phys.org/news/2024-10-hornets-sick-die-consuming-large.html
What is good for hornets is good for humans. We need to GM more copies of the alcohol dehydrogenase gene, right away!
Have you heard of the #Shieldtails? Minute and a half long clip on a little known Indian set of harmless snakes.
Source : https://phys.org/news/2024-10-betelgeuse-bright-star-betelbuddy-stellar.html
Source : https://www.space.com/blue-origin-new-shepard-vehicle-debut-ns-27-launch
whheydt @267, good point.
In other news, U.S. intelligence agencies expose Russian efforts to help Trump
U.S. intelligence agencies continue to warn Americans about Russian efforts to help benefit Trump. Voters should keep the Kremlin’s motivations in mind.
Watching the new Blue Origin NS-27 rocket lift off and fly. Plus land. Just finished.. Seems to have gone well and to plan.
Space X needs some competition and we need an alternative that we can rely on and not be so depedent on it. So good. Very good to see this fly.
All the best people: Trump vows to reward RFK Jr. with a job in a possible second term
All the best people: Judge who tossed Trump’s classified docs case on list of proposed candidates for attorney general
Federal Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Trump’s classified documents case in July.
X marks the scam: Elon Musk using his PAC cash to pay himself
Watch Obama take down Trump—and rap—at raucous Harris rally in Detroit
Three videos are available at the link, including a brief one in which Obama raps.
Excerpt from text at the link:
Cartoon: Performance issues
Deja vu all over again? Maybe but posted just 20 hours ago. EXPOSED: Details Of Trump’s Plan To STEAL 2024 Election | The Kyle Kulinski Show 10 & a half minutes length.
Toxic tampons and gender bias in health research
Other examples of gender/racial bias in medicine at the link.
The New York Times Has Committed Unethical Journalism Malpractice, Should Be Sanctioned by Pulitzer
Politico: Trump transition chief under fire for conflicts
Political infighting now that figures in the campaign around Trump are seriously planning for what to do if Trump actually wins. This is critical because it’s clear that Trump is going to do even less then he did in his first go as president. His administration members will likely have a lot of freedom to run their own grifts rather then skimming off some money from the Trump grifts they are ordered to implement.
Seems to be 3 basic factions. The Heritage foundation people that Trump is trying to politically separate himself from even though a lot of his policy is cribbed from them, people from his last government that he said he liked and expected jobs someplace in his new government, and people from his current campaign trying to secure a more permanent position. While this is going on Lutnick is scheduling them for back to back meetings, interviews for positions in the new administration and meetings to try and sell his legal firm’s advice.
Ukraine Update: North Korean troops are just another item up for sale
House Democrat says Trump campaign has ‘refused to commit to a smooth transition’ by not working with administration
Rep. Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, warned that Trump’s failure to enter into agreements with the Biden administration on a presidential transition could endanger the peaceful transfer of power.
The banality of Elon
When it comes to politics, Elon Musk’s ideas are utterly, revealingly conventional.
NYT:
Donald Trump’s lifetime of scandals heads toward a moment of judgment.
Peter Baker / Oct. 24, 2024
The Full Record: Read the full article recounting the decades of scandals involving Donald J. Trump.
Washington Post link
The Jon Hamm Connection | Have I Got News for You US
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yl7JLq7muI8
Let’s see if the link works…
Is this a real photo or AI? I don’t want to fall in the trap of “yes, he is capable of it” and get fooled.
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxAGtNSgYX43EugTEI3oJatw9e7rAcNK_5
Sabine Hossenfelder
“AI Can’t Reason. Should It Drive Cars?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TpfXFEP0aFs
Re @ 293
Unless there are algorithms that can be assessed, no, I would not trust a large language model to drive anything except perhaps a lunar rover.
Cartoon: Phallic panic
God Awful Movies
GAM 479 Hillock Haunting
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=T_-kRjjpE0k
If you are familiar with the Nigerian “Vultures Of Horror” film franchise, but want something worse: The films made by the Wright family.
The TEC Show:
Early Voting Surge: Harris Vs Trump – Possible Paths To A Win In The 2024 Presidential Election
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jhdwaMJS-Ng
It is not all doom and gloom.
Oh FFS.
Link
Skepticrat 235 TikToxic Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0b91ybOCoDk
U.S., allies finalize $50 billion Ukraine loan backed by Russian assets
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen claimed victory on Russian money frozen in Western bank accounts, infuriating the Kremlin.
Washington Post link
Mad scientist vibes:
Re: birgerjohansson @292:
Reverse image search only turned up copies of the meme, no raw photo in circulation. Results included similar creepy photos with young Ivanka.
The free Illuminarty service says 71.8% probability of AI.
SightEngine says 95% AI, 86% MidJourney in particular, or 37% other face manipulation.
A larger copy shows the flaws more clearly.
AP – Image claiming to show Trump dancing with underage girl is fake
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 302
Thank you!
.
“Trump Is a Fascist Who Praised Hitler and Hitler’s Generals, John Kelly Says / A Closer Look”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=e0jh86S1j5I
Lewis Black’s Rantcast #195 | Live In Madison
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qi9Gr8IHN_I
Lewis Black is my favv stand up comedian. 🍾
Aussie ABC news analsyis :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-22/us-election-trump-harris-jill-stein-green-party-michigan/104492754
If Stein and West among others actually cared about progressive causes and the future they would drop out and throw their support 100% behind Kamala Harris and do everything they can to get her elected. Then work to change the system and make third parties voting actually possible and workable e.g. having preferential voting.
Now is NOT the time to fuck around or allow divide & conquer to destroy left wing hopes of any improvement yet again.
The consequences of a Trump winning this are far too grave to risk especially given his openly stated desire to end American Democracy (such as it is in a system already heavily biased to the reichwing) and rule as a repressive merciless dictator. If they cost Kamala victory I have little doubt they will very soon deeply regret it for the rest of their lives and will have destroyed democracy in the USA and damaged the world incalculably badly. .This is NOT hyperbole but a very serious concern and legitimate fear given all Trump has already said and done.
We also know that the Repugs will be vastly catastrophically worse for Palestinians in particular and Muslims in general and that they won’t just lose Gaza (already arguably lost) but also the West Bank and any hope of a state of their own. The counter-productive, self-destructive “Uncommitted / Abandon Harris” group really needs to reconsider their position and what the consequences of their choices and words will be here. Punishing Harris for what Netanyahu is doing will – potentially literally as wellas metaphorically – be the death of them. Think Muslim ban & deportation plans under the Christianist extremist Project 2025 and Trump’s actual fucking nazism.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-24/infant-mortality-increases-abortions-stay-the-same/104506248
Can you spell “quid pro quo”?
Conclusion excerpt tells truth here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-24/lidia-thorpe-king-indigenous-calls-reparations-are-not-polite/104511596
And no fewer abortions. So who are the real baby killers, even if we grant the dubious premise of fetal personhood? <smh>
“Hey, hey, Brett K! How many kids did you kill today?”
Good grief!
What’s this, some competition for the most inane comment?
—
“Can you spell “quid pro quo”?”
Yup. Bloody oath I can.
Do you know what it means?
“So who are the real baby killers, even if we grant the dubious premise of fetal personhood? ”
The Sydney Morning Herald is the real baby killers, are they? Heh.
““Hey, hey, Brett K! How many kids did you kill today?””
None, you fool. Zero. Nil. Less than one.
(How many did you kill? Be honest, now)
—
“Now is NOT the time to fuck around or allow divide & conquer to destroy left wing hopes of any improvement yet again.”
So, as far as you are concerned, there exists a time to fuck around and allow divide & conquer to destroy left wing hopes of any improvement yet again.
Just not right now, this very moment.
(What, tomorrow?)
“A new study has found infant mortality rates in the US have increased more than expected [etc]”
Yeah, well. That means someone’s expectations were wrong.
“”There are generations who no longer want to celebrate Mother England, the British Empire, or the family that’s ruled over it for centuries.””
And someone is supposedly excited about that?
(What, do you still want to celebrate Mother England, the British Empire, and the family that’s ruled over it for centuries?)
BTW, the house of Hanover became the ruling family of England in 1714, and was succeeded by the house of Windsor in 1901.
1901-2024 is not “centuries”.
Why some people take titles as a given (though the content contradicts those) and appeal to false claims (centuries!) on the basis of some opinion piece is not definitively known to me. I can but speculate.
birgerjohansson at 174 (a couple days ago):
I still haven’t managed to see a comet in my life. The couple prominent ones in recent years (when I started paying attention to astronomy) were apparently only visible from the southern hemisphere. This current one, too, has been poorly visible from the high northern latitudes.
I first tried to see it on Saturday 12th. The sky was reasonably clear, but I hadn’t yet correctly figured out where to look, and what’s the best sighting spot in my local park. The next couple evenings were overcast. On Tuesday 15th I failed to see it again, unsurprisingly, as it would have been low in the hazy horizon above the lights of Helsinki. As I later heard, it was already rapidly growing dimmer. No wonder i couldn’t see it.
There hasn’t been a properly clear evening since then. However, the magnificent Moon has been often visible between and behind clouds. It just passed very close to what I guess is Jupiter. On a couple occasions, there’s been a lovely view of tattered clouds rushing across the sky very rapidly in windy weather, and the stars in their fixed positions partly visible from the gaps between clouds.
John @311:
Name changed to Windsor in 1917.
It’s 1.23 centuries. You eat a slice of pizza. Then you eat a further half slice. Someone asks you how much pizza you ate. Do you respond “one and a half slice”?
Anyway, Edward VII (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) was the son of Victoria (Hanover), so different house, same family, so still more than two centuries.
Rob:
So, not even two (2) centuries.
A century and a bit, actually.
So quick you are to repudiate your earlier claim of 1.23 centuries!
In that very spirit, I note we’re all descended from Adam and Eve, so all the same family. Right?
(The incest is not quite as metaphorical in the Royal lines, but whatever)
—
See, context is that King Chuckie has visited Oz.
Fawning over them is old hat, but being boorish towards them is, well, still being boorish.
It’s an opinion piece, that of course StevoR treats as Gospel.
(Can’t actually be discriminating, can we?)
“You eat a slice of pizza. Then you eat a further half slice. Someone asks you how much pizza you ate. Do you respond “one and a half slice”?”
Is there supposed to be a ‘gotcha’ here?
Honestly, I am bemused that you even attempt to try that.
Of course I would respond “one and a half slice”, were I being honest.
Fewer than two, more than one.
(You know about fenceposts, no?
The day after your birthday, you are not one year older than on the day of your birthday)
[we did inequalities in, um, third year of high school. It was all intuitively obvious to me, even then]
BTW, Daniil is still making videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV9wpU3Z3U8
(““We’re going downhill” — Russian man on involvement of North Koreans in the war” – YouTube 5m English subtitles)
Also posted on my social media, but I thought I’d drop a copy here since I’ve tried to write it in a “newsy” fashion, and I didn’t see this subject matter upthread.
So the weekend-before-last, Emma and I, along with my brother and his husband, were driving off to a late lunch when I noticed something interesting on the maths forum I make occasional contributions to, and exclaimed: “Oh! There’s a new Mersenne prime!”
These are famously easier than primes of other forms to discover and prove prime, so that for most of the last few centuries the largest known prime number has usually been a Mersenne prime.
At least four were known to antiquity, and their properties codified by Euclid. Arab mathematicians found another three, though it is disputed whether they truly had tested their primality. Five more were discovered in Europe and Russia up until the First World War, using manual techniques. The next 40 have been found with the invention of the computer. So they’re big and very rare.
This new prime is 2 to the power of 136,279,841, minus 1. That’s a huge number; in decimal representation, it is 41,024,320 digits in size. Just ridiculously colossal.
Anyway, it was not exactly unexpected for one of these to turn up now (nearly six years had elapsed since the last find), as several months ago a new contributor had started generating results at an incredible rate. Back on the 4th of July I had said something like the following on the forum:
“I’ve been thinking our new ANONYMOUS contributor is chewing up exponents so rapidly that circumstances might eventually compel them to uncloak their status incognito. Circumstances such as a first discovery indicated by a [positive, Probable Prime] result.”
It’s sort of bizarre to have something you write, turn out to be true in every detail within a matter of three and a half months. The ANONYMOUS contributor found the needle among the haystack of five hundred thousand negative tests, which did provide the impetus for him to go public. He is (or was) a software engineer for NVIDIA from San José named Luke Durant, and he assembled a global cloud supercomputer of GPUs at 24 different datacenters in 17 countries. A GPU in Dublin found the Mersenne prime with a probabilistic test; a GPU in San Antonio, TX confirmed it prime with a definitive primality test.
There’s some videos on YouTube from the usual Maths channels run by Aussies (Matt Parker of Stand-Up Maths, and Brady Haran of Numberphile), one of which has an interview with the discoverer – who it also turns out, is one of the guys I’ve been chatting with on the forum publicly and via private message, on and off for the last six months.
Earlier in April, I was working on bug-fixes to one of the pieces of software that might potentially be used to confirm the primality of a new Mersenne prime. At that point I’d written the following in the patch note:
“This patch also incorporates improvements and bug fixes from (in no particular order) Teal Dulcet, Ken Kriesel, Laurent Desnogues, nbdy, Gary Gostin, and Catherine Cowie;” and it turns out to no big surprise, the guy planning to discover a Mersenne prime who might have an interest in contributing to that code was our pseudonymous nbdy, aka Luke Durant.
So … that’s all feeling a bit weird, in a ‘six degrees of Kevin Bacon’ way. Except obviously there was only one degree of separation.
Late Night With Seth Meyers
Trump Wanted the Kind of Generals That Hitler Had
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qgVIW0jkvqA
lumipuna @ 313
Check the website for Sky And Telescope, they describe the path of the comet until the beginning 8f this week. You should be able to extrapolate wherevthe comet is today, but it will be too faint to see with the naked eye.
You may try using binoculars with only minor magnification, the important part is to boost the light intensity.
Found And Explained’:
“This is the best fighter jet ever”
(SAAB-37 Viggen)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6HmoPwdRo
Fun fact: Viggen is the only fighter jet you can parallel park (it has a thrust reverser).
The successor SAAB JAS-39 Gripen is much smaller, and can make do without a thrust reverser when landing.
(BTW the British Panavia Tornado was also intended to be a ‘universal’ fighter aircraft but ran into the same problems as Viggen with radar systems that needed to be specialised- the tech of the era was not up to the task of making a ‘swiss universal knife’ radar)
Iconic presidential quotes
.http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx8D1qwfbvNpv_VYNjGiPYha362w5hA1aj
‘Found And Explained’
“How Sweden made Saab 35 Draken”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=pJeu_i28dRk
Another unconventional fighter. The first to ever do the ‘cobra’ manouver.
This was the first generation of Mach 2 aircraft and there was no consensus about how a Mach 2 fighter should be designed, hence both the British English Electric Lightning and several Soviet types stuck to the air intake being in the nose rather than making potentially risky design choices.
Note that both Lightning and Draken could climb very rapidly but Draken had one Avon engine while Lightning needed two.
CNN
After news of DOJ warning, Elon Musk’s super PAC didn’t announce ‘daily’ lottery winner on Wednesday
By Marshall Cohen and Shania Shelton, CNN / October 24, 2024
Followup to comments 241, 260 and 298.
Another former Trump aide agrees: He has ‘authoritarian tendencies’
Former senior Homeland Security official Elizabeth Neumann said in reference to Donald Trump, “Does he have authoritarian tendencies? Yes.”
Followup to comments 241, 260, 298, and 326.
The Washington Post reported:
Commentary:
Link
Trump Says He’ll Move Thousands of Federal Workers Out of Washington. Here’s What Happened the First Time He Tried.
The Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters moved from the capital to Colorado in 2020, causing an exodus of leadership. If elected, Trump plans to use the same tactic across more of the federal government.
More at the link, including a discussion about Trump’s hobbling of the Environmental Protection Agency.
McConnell: ‘MAGA movement is completely wrong’
‘We don’t need this chaos’: Two swing-state Republicans endorse Harris
Re: #329
McConnell, four years later, commenting on the book,
“Whatever I may have said about President Trump pales in comparison to what JD Vance, Lindsey Graham, and others have said about him, but we are all on the same team now.”
tomh @331, yep. McConnell is completely two-faced. He is still going to vote for Trump.
It amazes me that he can see Trump for what he is, and still vote for him.
In other news about Trump supporters: Tucker Carlson reveals the creepy weirdo within at bonkers Trump rally
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug presents a Captain America for the Trump 47 era
@ 330
<
blockquote>The mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin…
<
blockquote>
Hey! The city of my birth and where I’m currently working!
Link
Video is available at the link.
Vice President Harris nailed it at CNN’s Town Hall
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/10/24/beyonce-kamala-harris-houston-rally/“>Washington Post link
Beyoncé will join Kamala Harris at Houston rally Friday
The appearance ends months of suspense over whether the pop star would throw her support behind the Democratic nominee.
Details at the link.
Link
Followup to comment 332.
Excerpt from Tucker Carlson’s weird, misogynistic speech in which he fantasized about Trump spanking Kamala Harris:
Commentary about a few more things Tucker Carlson said:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/tucker-carlson-tells-rally-daddy
Video is available at the link. As you will note if you watch the video, Tucker Carlson talked about spanking 15-year-old girls. Yes, he tied that directly to spanking Kamala Harris.
Vitamin K supplement slows prostate cancer in mice, researchers discover
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-vitamin-supplement-prostate-cancer-mice.html
Menadione is a precursor to vitamin K
Re. Lynna, OM @ 339
Everybody,
Feel free to use AI to make fake images of Tucker Carlson in incriminating situations. He has earned it.
A decade ago in the infinite thread, I got pushback when I wrote something about surely not many Americans can be evil. The recent polling about attitudes among Republican sympathisers might be seen as a final repudiation of my opinion.
(It is ‘repuduation’, right? Or am I mixing up my english vocabulary?)
BTW I am not at all surprised that he brings up people of Jewish heritage.
Llamas with Hats: Epilogue
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=olxXLDqDzcU
I am shallow. I had to read the comments to figure out what the hell was going on.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/oh-look-its-the-us-naval-academy
Oh Look, It’s The US Naval Academy Canceling Lecture On Authoritarians Under Pressure From The Heritage Foundation
Meidastouch:
Trump Gets Surprising Bad News From Latest Polls.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7EiyCRczNvM&si=-koEIJsrNjrmlqfx
Link
The robust U.S. economy is leaving ‘other rich countries in the dust’
New evidence makes Trump’s crusade against CBS far more difficult
Summarized from a New York Times article: In a ruling that might prove highly consequential, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that voters whose postal ballots are rejected for procedural reasons can still cast provisional ballots.
Oh FFS. Really?
RFK Jr. jumps on newest conspiracy—this time involving the military
Link
LA Times Editor Resigns After Billionaire Owner’s ‘Craven’ Veto of Harris Endorsement
I agree.
Authoritarianism in the country of Georgia:
Link
Putin name-checks Trump at BRICS summit
North Koreans training in Russia are now in combat zone: Ukraine Defense Intelligence
https://www.wonkette.com/p/huh-no-bribes-from-elon-today-or
Huh, No Bribes From Elon Today Or Yesterday
anyone know more about this:
https://www.newsweek.com/mark-halperin-says-hes-been-pitched-story-that-could-end-trumps-campaign-1973637
Polls and early voting
“The TEC Show”:
‘Trump VS Harris: Shocking Early Results for the 2024 Presidential Election’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=MpatX4MpO2s
A closer look at Georgia. The Harris campaign can probably feel confident here.
@357 Robbo: He could mean this
Youtube: Trump Suddenly Hit With The BAD News In Crushing Epstein Game Bombshell
Another groping allegation, this one involving Epstein also. Credible witness but no hard evidence so I don’t think this makes much difference at this point. Anybody that was going to chance side because of Trump sexual abuse has already done so. Giving the news a reason to bring up Trump and Epstein together probably does more damage to his election.
NBC News:
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some-more-ground-operations-tea-leaves
Followup to JM @359
Former model says Trump groped her years ago in ‘twisted game’ with Jeffrey Epstein.
Washington Post link
Stacey Williams first surfaced claims on Facebook and in a documentary before adding more detail in a call with Harris supporters; Trump denied the allegation.
Trump says the U.S. is ‘like a garbage can for the world’ as he dials up immigration rhetoric
Followup to comment 362.
Link
More at the link.
More attacks on UN bases in Lebanon.
10-13:
Follow-up from a leaked report
10-14: UN Security Council backs Lebanon peacekeepers after Israeli attacks
Couldn’t find the UN statement. No outlets linked it. This recent consensus statement was notable as the Council had been divided over Gaza, with the US defending Israel. I tried to find a statement with the distinctive quote, “we all hope there will be a return to the negotiation table, and that there will be finally a real effort to full implementation of resolution 1701.” Wasn’t even a sternly worded letter!
Didn’t stop the attacks of course.
10-16:
10-20:
10-18:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/115585610-15:
https://press.un.org/en/2024/db241015.doc.htmSome guy cosplaying as the Terminator burbled:
Yep, and guess what — you won!
<snicker>
Stephen Colbert:
Trump To Play MSG | Tucker Carlson’s Weird Daddy Issues | Beyoncé & Bruce Springstten To Rally For Harris
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FjzA2cPvr5E
I did not know Trump prevented a war with France.
Bekenstein Bound:
“Yep, and guess what — you won!”
I can’t possibly win, mate — gotta be in it to win it.
(Nice admission, but)
“Oscar Wilde — ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.'”
Heh.
PS
I notice when people try to appeal to the, um, “lurkers”, they address me in the third person.
(In your case, with a purple tinge, Beebee)
Kate Bush shares plans to make new music: ‘I’ve got lots of ideas’ | The Guardian
.https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/oct/25/kate-bush-shares-plans-to-make-new-music-ive-got-lots-of-ideas
Why Trump’s lies about trying to prosecute Hillary Clinton matter
The idea that Donald Trump didn’t try to have Hillary Clinton prosecuted is one of the more demonstrably ridiculous myths in Republican politics.
Followup to comments 88, 93, and 134.
More lies from Montana Republican Senate nominee Tim Sheehy:
Link
A “Sir” story that is really yucky:
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/cant-get-michael-flynn-to-admit-election
https://www.wonkette.com/p/maybe-elon-musk-is-the-2024-russian
https://www.wonkette.com/p/beyon-say-what-tabs-fri-oct-25-2024
Followup to comment 362.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-voters-do-not-care-if-he-groped
How Trump talks: Abrupt shifts, profane insults, confusing sentences.
The Republican presidential nominee calls it “the weave” and a sign of a brilliant mind, but his remarks at recent public appearances have been strikingly erratic and coarse.
Washington Post link
More at the link.
Washington Post link
Satellite images available at the link.
Much more at the link.
13 former Trump administration officials sign open letter backing up John Kelly’s criticism of Trump
Kelly told the New York Times that Trump meets the definition of a fascist and also said he observed the former president on multiple occasions praising Adolf Hitler.
Trump flunks Economics 101 with latest promises on taxes, trade
Trump has suggested the United States might not need income taxes — thanks to tariff policies he only pretends to understand. What could possibly go wrong?
The Harris campaign just released an ad, featuring John Kelly’s words about Trump: “Fascist,” “Dictatorial,” etc.
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1849612515992375807
One-minute-long ad is available at the link.
You can also view the ad here.
News summarized by Steve Benen:
‘Washington Post’ won’t endorse in White House race for first time since 1980s
NPR link
Unearthed audio finds latest Republican with hateful abortion opinions
Freedom Caucus chief: Maybe N.C. should award its electors before votes are counted
Should North Carolina lawmakers consider allocating the state’s presidential electors to Trump before votes are counted? The Freedom Caucus chair says yes.
Who told Elon Musk his PAC could give $1 million checks to swing state voters?
Federal Election Commission data and reporting suggest a longtime GOP lawyer named Chris Gober blessed Musk’s massive giveaway.
All the best conservative doofuses working together.
The TEC Show:
“Trump VS Harris: Shocking Early Results 33 Million Ballots Have Been Cast. Who’s Leading?”
.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3ok9dKSlLqo
Link
Followup to comment 384.
Link
Followup to comments 384 and 390.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/thanks-for-all-these-new-wonkette
https://www.wonkette.com/p/welcome-to-wonkette-happy-hour-beyonce
Washington Post link
Trump signals support in call with Netanyahu: ‘Do what you have to do’
According to Republicans, just about everything that happens or has happened in the last 10 years is Kamala’s fault.
NYT:
Chris Cameron / one hour ago
Reporting from North Carolina
WaPo:
Patrick Svitek / 1 hour ago from Texas
It seems their entire campaign is built around this strategy. We hear it every day, over and over.
birger @388: Could I gently suggest that, rather than posting the teasing title and link to a video, you might add the actual conclusion. For those of us who don’t have the time to watch every fucking video.
Re: Rob Grgjanis @ #395…
Or for those of us who simply don’t (generally) watch videos to gain information at all.
One of the few genuinely good and original short videos.
“Hell and Back”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9s5nZOCQtHc
Rob Grigjanis @ 395
whhdeyt @ 396
Sorry, this video at 388 is going into details about what can be discerbed about the voting situation in Nevada.
.
“Hell And Back” is an original SF story that plays out in less than two minutes.
“Sorry, this video at 388 is going into details about what can be [discerned] about the voting situation in Nevada.”
Actually, it says “Shocking Early Results”.
What those may be are left to the imagination; one must click on the link and spend time to determine what the poster (even if it’s not a total bait’n’switch) supposedly claims is “shocking”.
Par for the course; I have not and will not click on clickbaity bullshit stuff without any context whatsoever.
BTW, it also claims “33 Million Ballots Have Been Cast”, which is odd, since Nevada has a population of around 3 million people, not all of whom are voters.
—
I reckon it’s pure laziness.
—
““Hell And Back” is an original SF story that plays out in less than two minutes.”
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I very much doubt it’s original, whatever it is.
I reckon, um, 99.9% chance it’s derivative and recycles old tropes.
(What is it about? Who knows? Click on the link to find out!)
@394 tomh: When the Republicans overrode Trump on the naming of military forts a good part of the reason is that they knew it would instantly become a cultural issue they could use. It didn’t effect anything and didn’t mean much but it would offend conservatives. The moderates just don’t like to see names change, the more radical see it as an attack on Southern Heritage (and the racism that goes along with it but you don’t say that part out loud).
#397,398:
It’s a CGI rendition of a comic of the same name (not linked), which—unlike the video—explained what was happening. As a standalone short story, the comic is better.
Plot: An astronaut in a deep sea diving suit descends onto Venus, plants a techy staff in the dirt. Her suit begins to fail. She initiates a launch sequence to escape on a balloon… for only her head. The suit decapitates to minimize the payload. She expects to get a new body later.
Live updates: Israel says it has launched retaliatory attacks in Iran
Washington Post link
China sought to hack Trump, Vance and campaign phones, officials say.
The Harris-Walz campaign was also targeted by a Chinese attack on the candidates’ communications, but it was not immediately clear if attempts were successful.
Breaking news :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-26/explosions-heard-in-iran-tehran-and-nearby-karaj-state-media/104521390
GOP is showering dark money on candidates who may sabotage Harris
A https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Mi-Go_Brain_Cylinder just keeps the brain; more efficient, obs.
@#404 shoulda scrolled up, sorry. Oh well.Extra news source anyhow.
Second Lebanon-Syria crossing out of service after Israeli strike
This is well deserved and very good. The hyperbole works here.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/10/25/2279402/-Forget-about-destroyed-Ben-Shapiro-gets-ANNIHILATED
Secular Talk – EXPOSED: Elon Musk’s Master Plan For America 31 minutes long. Must admit only just started watching and haven’t seen yet myself but looks intresting here -good YT channel.
“Master Plan For America”, eh?
EXPOSED
(I know what’s being exposed, and it ain’t a master plan)
—
Ahem.
Does this luridly-titled show expose conspiracy theories, do you know, StevoR?
Yeah, it’s like replacing the stink of diesel fumes with the reek of an open sewer. Refreshing! /s
Ludicrous. There’s only one American politician currently likely to get Manhattan razed, and that’s Trump, indirectly by way of a Russian or Chinese H-bomb.
Potatoes?
I think they need to run him through that cognitive test again. The one he bragged about. I don’t think he’ll get a bragging-worthy sort of result this time, though.
Iran might not see it that way, given who supplies much of Israel’s military hardware. And Iran is allied with Russia.
In other words, the headline might well have been just as accurate had it read, “World War III begins; film at 11”.
At bare minimum, this likely leads into a neo-Vietnam, with Iran standing in for North Vietnam and Israel for South Vietnam. As I recall, the last one didn’t end very well for either the United States or its proxy in that fight …
Meanwhile, some twit was so flustered by a comment I wrote that he made two replies to it in a desperate attempt to unpwn himself. :)
Noticeable to anyone is that you have not even tried to attempt to dispute my claims or actually engage with the substantive part of my comment. Sly digs are your thing.
To segue from your immediately-preceeding comment, both you and Trump do seem to like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
some twit, eh, Beebee?
Tell me more about this supposed twittery, O sage.
It will amuse me.
(Hey, notice how I directly address you?
Quite the contrast, no? )
Revealing.
Sudden quietude, I see.
Nah. The frier.
(Such acumen!)
Qld election live ABC news coverage here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-26/queensland-election-live-updates-results-2024/104505940
Riot Instigator Tommy Robinson Charged With Terror Related Offence
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=8Yu94ZTXGyM
This is the far-right racist nut that got the anti-immigrant riots in Britain started with his social media posts. He avoided the previous court hearing by simply leaving the country.
He is a nasty piece of work that claims he is a political prisoner whenever he gets in trouble with the law.
“This New Drug Makes the Flu Less Deadly”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zbAX_OlkKxI
It is a link about stopping flu from killing people with a compromised immune system by providing this medicine after people get ill.
Good news, as reported by NBC:
Kamala Harris Receives Key Endorsement From Insane Clown Posse
More petty bullshit is “going viral” as it appears online from various rightwing sources. This time it is about grocery prices:
And they are either lying or exaggerating to do it.
Link
Not every newspaper is afraid to endorse Kamala Harris
The New Yorker endorsed Kamala Harris.
Let’s look at just one excerpt from that three-hour interview that Trump did with Joe Rogan:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4954999-donald-trump-joe-rogan-podcast-takeaways/
Of note:
“Scientists May Have Finally Found the Origin of One of History’s Most Important Inventions”
.https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a62698091/first-wheels/
Carphathian miners may have invented the wheel.
But did they know which color the wheel should have?
About the Kamala Harris rally in Houston:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/welcome-to-wonkette-happy-hour-beyonce
Ordinary people, not just celebrities, were featured.
YouTube link to a clip showing Beyoncé and her sister, Kelly Rowland, taking the stage at the rally. Both spoke passionately about the importance of voting for Harris.
Rolling Stone link. Beyoncé Endorses Kamala Harris at Houston Rally: ‘We’re All Part of Something Much Bigger’
That link requires signing in with an email address.
USA Today link.
Beyoncé did not sing. It was not that kind of performance. Her endorsement of Harris was powerful. She brought her social media followers to the rally virtually, adding them to the 30,000 people who showed up in person in Houston. Beyoncé has 314 million followers on Instagram.
The New Yorker:
Excerpt from Talking Points Memo’s “The Weekender”:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/the-weekender/putins-little-finger
‘We must mobilize’: Harris rallies with Beyoncé and Willie Nelson in Texas
NBC News link. Video at the link.
Excerpts:
Correction to comment 425: Kelly Rowland, whom Beyoncé referred to as her sister, is not her actual sister.
The polling comments on The TEC Show (Youtube) generally start with an in-dept piece on some topic (in the latest case, the situation in Nevada) before doing a summary of the national outlook if the election was held today, with emphasis on the situation in the Swing states.
This keeps the overall length manageable.
At the end, he weighs several polls to get an average, keeping any bias in methodology low. There are probably many other ways to do this but polling can never capture a truly exact image of the situation at a particular time.
And as we have seen, several conservative polls seem to be gaming the system in the time immediately before the election.
Re: #422
For all its faults, the New York Times also endorsed Harris last month, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president.” They painted a grim picture of a second term for Trump, focusing on Harris’ plans for the economy, health care, foreign policy and immigration as reasons for electing her over Trump.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/homeschool-conference-curriculum-girl-empowerment_n_652445c9e4b0102e6962fd39
Good story but I want to read about the bit at the end that didn’t happen in the story.
“What if we actually start talking about feminism instead of avoiding the conversation? Maybe the workshops you give could be why feminism is good. You could be the woman that blatantly teaches about feminism… at a conservative homeschool convention. It’s brilliant!”
“I laugh out loud, partly intrigued, partly because I think he is insane.
“We will get canceled,” I tell him.
“For all the right reasons,” he replies.
The bartender brings over two dirty martinis.”
BRICS plans ‘multi-currency system’ to challenge U.S. dollar dominance
The original goal of a BRIC currency is dead for the moment. With Russia at war and nobody trusting China’s economic numbers it can’t progress. It would be very hard to do in a good situation and right now is a bad one. That doesn’t mean no activity is happening.
The BRICs countries are stockpiling gold, except Russia which is financing a war. There are a bunch of possible reasons but stabilizing their currency and funding new international banking organizations are likely reasons. They are working towards setting up their own alternative to the Swift international banking network, letting them transfer currency on their own. This is a slow process because the countries don’t trust each other, don’t trust that other countries won’t meddle, and each has their own laws and bureaucracy to work through. They are looking at setting up their own alternatives to the IMF and other international finance but nothing is likely to come of that immediately. Conflicts over who gets to control those organizations would be immense and negotiating their organization will be slow.
The interesting possibility that nobody seems to have noticed yet is that if they can get their Swift alternative running they can trade in dollars without the US. They will be able to go around international sanctions much more easily. Russia would be able to buy dollars for trade from India, which can easily buy US dollars. It would require a huge realignment of international relations and trade.
WaPo:
Biden slams Musk as former ‘illegal worker,’ alleging hypocrisy on border
Toluse Olorunnipa / October 26, 2024
Excerpt from a longer article:
Link
Of note:
Followup to comment 434.
Link
Cartoon: The undecided
On my YT feed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upba_qU6I1A
“Trump DESTROYS Kamala on the Joe Rogan Podcast Part 1”
…
“YT cut the video off before it was done. Here is PART 2 • Trump ENDS Kamala on the Joe Rogan Po… ”
—
We all know that whatever the title of a video may be, it must be a real thing.
So, Kamala is now DESTROYED and ENDED. Right?
(Heh)
That’s because there was none.
Oh, the irony!
(Twit then proceeds to compare me to Trump, which I shall not dignify with a response. And, needing to outdo his previous certificate of pwnership, this time follows up to my comment with three separate replies…)
WaPo:
Michelle Obama slams double standard for Trump and Harris in media
Maegan Vazquez / Oct 26, 2024
Ah, the Beebee yet lives!
“That’s because there was none.”
‘Were none’ to which you dare admit.
In reality, there were multiple issues I raised.
Here’s one — quoth you:
You obviously stand by that, since you haven’t addressed my mockery, other than to fluff yourself up and try your feeble script-kiddie putdowns.
(Takes some slower people ages to grok I don’t actually have to try to be superior, it’s just a fact of nature)
—
You really are basically a script kiddie when it comes to argument.
Go on, care to attempt to explain the basis for that little eruction?
—
Again:
You call that a sly dig?
Like, you know, flustered burbling cosplaying twit, because I mock your most stupid claims?
(How much more direct can I possibly be?)
—
You know, you are following the pattern multiple others have followed, where you try to get personal with me and utterly ignore anything substantive I say.
Trying to mock me would work were you sufficiently competent, but does not change the fact that you are making noises about “Brett K!” killing kids. And that I mocked that claim.
(Ah, the gentle burblings continue!)
Heh. That is actually a direct response.
(You dignified it!)
Heh heh heh.
Mate! Infinite thread, we’re not gonna run out of comments.
And you know, you didn’t have to try to get personal.
(Enjoy!)
—
Gotta love how you switched to the third person at the end, there.
(The ancient Greeks did like their chorus, but in your case, it’s classic defensive displacement, and it wasn’t done by the characters themselves)
[thing is, you’re slow at responding. I get bored. And I know you’re around, since you comment elsethread and stuff. Which is rather indicative, no, BB?]
John Morales and Bekenstein Bound, please stop.
The endless nitpicking is boring and does not add value to this thread for other readers.
At the very least, please take a break.
Thanks.
Followup to tomh @439.
Michelle Obama hits the trail, warning what a Trump presidency would mean for women’s health
The Saturday event in Michigan marked the former first lady’s first appearance on the 2024 campaign trail alongside Vice President Kamala Harris.
Video at the link.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #443.
Thank you.
Elon Musk’s X is boosting election conspiracy theories with AI-powered trending topics
The misinformation boosted by X’s AI model Grok has included conspiracy theories about voter fraud and unsubstantiated smears about Vice President Kamala Harris.
whheydt @445, thanks for adding that.
In other news, here is a followup to comment 444.
Link
I found Michelle Obama’s speech powerful. She is eloquent and direct.
Followup to comment 378.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/washington-post-finally-notices-donald
Followup to comment 423.
Quoting Trump in that interview with Joe Rogan:
Washington Post link
Polls / The TEC Show:
“Good Early Voting Results!
New Poll: Harris vs Trump 2024 Election”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3fZVtxnMVM4
Male / Female voters
Democrats / Republicans /Independents
A summary of voting trends.
The Empire History Lied About (it’s not Tartaria!)
.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=A95MwdxQHlk
The Medes: Herodotos mistook an Elamite empire for a Medean empire! This explains the absence of archaeological evidence of a Medean empire.
AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said
Monty Python – Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook
“8 Invasive Species That Battle And Prey On Other Invaders”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=WmUda6vbiqU
Cats vs geckos, cane toads poisoning pythons etc.
Photo: How the world really ends.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/8TprKTAkDoNR7WBt/
Naah. The Predator in the foreground has more sense than the one in the background.
Newsweek: Donald Trump Should Concede If He Loses, Supporters Say
The title is overly friendly to Republicans but the poll shows an important point. More Republicans want Trump to concede if he loses then don’t. The number that doesn’t want Trump to concede is absurdly high but it is still minority. This is why it is important for the vote denies to create doubt. They need to convince people there was fraud and that the election was within the margin of error to get the presidency thrown to Trump.
At the 15-minute mark we see the North American Wife Carrying Championship in Maine. The prize is your wife’s weight in beer.
“Have I Got a Bit More News for You S68 E3. Hannah Fry. 18 Oct 24”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-zmTjSPNMhM
Suggested line. “She is not heavy. She is my beer.”
Rawstory: ‘Don’t pay the bill’: Trump lashes out at ‘lousy’ sound engineers during his rally
Very much the archetype Trump bit. He even understood that it would become a story but said it anyways.
Twitter: Trump used a burner phone
This is from the unsealed Jack Smith documents. I agree this really goes against the idea that it was an official act.
JM @458, “I agree this really goes against the idea that it was an official act.”
I also agree.
Other news: Cartoon: Play stupid games …
British Columbia Torn Between Goofus And Gallant
When the going gets weird, the weird turn out to be surprisingly electable.
For the upcoming Halloween celebrations in the USA:
Lyrics are from a early jaxx tune about ghost.
Videos and other examples of spooky music are available at the link.
Black Music Sunday: Let’s get spooky for Halloween
WaPo Live, 21 min ago
Hannah Knowles
Sounds about right for the Trump show.
The TEC Show
“Great news! Early voting: Harris vs Trump 2024 Election Update”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=P1_vv5fI5BA
In-depth analysis of the situation in Michigan, and a brief summary of the swing states. Women voters really do not seem to like Trump, for some reason.
.
tomh@ 462
In the Michigan data, it was clear Latinos favor Democrats over Republicans ca 55-45. I wonder why that is…
tomh @462, that belongs in the “worse and worse” category.
As a followup, here is commentary from The Hill:
Link
Followup to comments 462 and 464.
Link
Good for Bad Bunny.
Politico link
Why weren’t they vetted? Even if they weren’t vetted, the campaign must have known what they were getting. You don’t set up a campaign event at Madison Square Garden without a lot of advance planning.
Interesting commentary published in The New Yorker.
Excerpts:
New Yorker link
Re: 464 & 465, followup
NYT Live:
Michael Gold, Maggie Haberman, and Shane Goldmacher Reporting from Madison Square Garden
Followup to comments 464, 465, and 468.
Link
Current headline at CNN.com: “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults.”
NYT.com: “Racist remarks and insults mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally.”
From Time.com: “Trump rally at MSG marked by racist and lewd jokes.”
From Deadline.com: “Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally Opens With Speakers Ranting About “F—ing Illegals,” Puerto Rico A “Floating Pile Of Garbage” And Kamala Harris As The ‘Antichrist’.”
The AP headline: “Trump’s Madison Square Garden event turns into a rally with crude and racist insults”
Spanish-speaking social media users are reposting about this, with Spanish translation.
@ ^ Lynna, OM : There’s no longer even any weak pretence fromthe Trumpists at not being utterly hateful and crude anymore. Not that therewas ever really that much. But yeesh..
@411. John Morales :
No, it doen’t. Having now watched it in full, it discusses the reichwing vision and governance philosophy of the toxic techbros and Musk especially with a lot more info and intresting points made too. Not Conspiracy theory but the ideas and goals and philosophy and some of thepeople shaping specifically Musk’s views.
From someone who often raises good points in his discussions and a channel I find usually worthwile. Which discusses politics and covers a wide range of news stories from a progressive perspective. I will grant you that the title is poor but the content of that clip I do think worth hearing.
What did you think was exposed and why? Were you correct and have you watched it now also?
Trump rally in NY.
It is a stupid idea to insult people from Puerto Rico before an election. For instance, popular artists from that place may endorse your opponent.
.http://youtube.com/post/Ugkxvjul7qnZQIK1XA15vopdqHQjyexeACtO
You know, I am beginning to suspect the team behind team Trump are quite stupid.
In the clip from The TEC Show I shared before, it was obvious the majority of latino voters (in Michigan, at least) were voting Democrat, but 45% still voted Republican.
Team Trump: “We are getting too many latino voters. Let’s insult them”.
WaPo:
Virginia appeals court strikes down effort to purge suspected noncitizen voters
Michael Brice-Saddler / October 27, 2024
They did Springtime for Hitler in 2016, winning and drawing legal scrutiny. If his campaign weren’t so desperate to use the White House to scuttle his court cases, I’d suspect they’re trying ever harder to fail.
Implication there is that, were they not so very remarkably stupid, Trump would win easily.
(No?)
So they all did it, but Whisper was the worst of the lot?
What on Earth?
Oh no.
Oh dear God no.
They didn’t!
Did they?
Did they train Whisper on Trump’s campaign
ramblingsspeeches?!You do if you’re Donald Trump. Trump doesn’t do “planning” — it’s too much effort for his three poor, overworked brain cells. Recall the utter chaos that passed for a “Cabinet” 2017-2020. It’s doubtful that Trump could organize a fuck in a brothel now, after eight more years of worsening cognitive decline, let alone plan a campaign event.
So he delegated instead, and as always he hired “all the best people”. And then probably stiffed them for their fees.
The Daily Show:
“Magic: The Gathering Gamers Unpack JD Vance’s Dorkiness & 2024 Election”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=iszcDrDl93A
Nooo! Don’t let MTG get tainted by the MAGA crowd.
“Conservatives can’t do comedy because what they find funny—picking on the weak and defenseless—doesn’t amuse normal people. […]”
.
BTW here is where I find John Cleese -who has an overly nostalgic view of the more ethnically ‘English’ London of his youth- to be different from conservatives. He condemns those who punch downwards in their jokes.
And even most of those other comedians who have problems keeping up with the Zeitgeist would understand it is problematic joking about brown people. Denis Leary don’t go around saying latinos have too many children.
[South Park and Family Guy gets around this by being incredibly rude to everyone]
This guy would be better off doing his “comedy” in closed events for fellow MAGA hats (or Boris Johnson/ Nigel Farage supporters).
Trump really has opened the door for ‘deplorables’ that no longer feel the need to hide their views. Next step: using the N word in public.
…BTW years ago I read about an ex-Republican who recalled hearing “jokes” about Jews at AIPAC meetings when there was no microphone around.
So, is this a planned provocation to avert attention from Harris?
Or is it just thugs being thugs? I suspect – although this is impossible to prove- it is a little bit of both.
Re: birgerjohansson @480:
An ahistorical moan about London, supporting Brexit, ranting about wokeness, hosting a TV show on a right wing ‘free speech’ channel. Announcing not caring about trans people, in a whataboutist defense of JK Rowling, then doing a variant of the helicopter joke and complaining about trans athletes.
John Cleese had thoughts on slavery at SXSW and it was super cringey
(with bonus attempt at a Jew stereotype as his mic was snatched away)
Shaking a fist at comfortable millionaires too doesn’t make punching down better. Some targets are particularly vulnerable, so piling onto them should avoided. It’s not about intent, so personal callousness and blanket disregard are not an excuse.
Amoral with proudly uncorrected biases.
A bit of welcome news from the UK. Fascist scumbag Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (a.k.a. Tommy Robinson) has been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for contempt of court – the contempt consisting of repeating and spreading as far as possible false allegations he made against Jamal Hijazi, a Syrian refugee who was filmed being beaten up by racists at his school (he was 15 at the time). Yaxley-Lennon is unlikely to actually be behind bars for 18 months, but if released earlier will have to watch his mouth unless he wants to be recalled to prison.
KG @ 483
🍹🍾
I am.disappointed by the coverage of the US election by Swedish media.
On one hand, there is so much of it you might think we were a US territory.
.
On the other hand the quality is lacking. I get the impression the journalists are content to read New York Times.
I get more depth when searching bloggers at Youtube (I watch more than ‘The TEC Show’, but that one is good at using diagrams).
US media are catching up on the conservative ‘junk polls’ but Swedish media still think Trump is way ahead.
Is there enough time for hispanics to register to vote, if they were shocked into action by the crude insults at the NY rally?
Re: birgerjohansson @ 486:
Only in a few places. (Voter Registration Deadlines)
Texas hospitals prepare to gather data on treating non-citizens
Cross posted from PZ’s “Who is that jackwad?”
Backlash to the unfunny joke has been so overwhelming that Trump campaign had to issue a statement distancing themselves from the comments. “Obviously, that joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign, and I think it is sad that the media will pick up on one joke that was made by a comedian, rather than the truth that were shared by the phenomenal list of speakers that we had.”
Yeah, I’m not buying it. It does reflect Trump’s views.
A sampling of the coverage, as reported by Talking Points Memo:
– NYT: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism
– Axios: MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump’s MSG rally
– Politico: Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks
– WaPo: Trump rally speakers lob racist insults, call Puerto Rico ‘island of garbage’
And there’s this:
Image of the cover can be viewed here:
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1850739671954813080
or here: TPM link
Link
See also comments 186 and 204.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY):
Commentary:
Link
Related:
More embedded links are available at TPM
New York Times:
“In (European) Georgia, Russia has just scored another victory against liberal democracy” |
Natalia Antelava | The Guardian
.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/28/georgia-russia-democracy-kremlin-election
More commentary on Trump’s racist rally:
Sheesh. The Trump rally covered a whole spectrum of hatred, racism and misogyny. (I should add batshit bonkers religiosity to the list.) The more we examine the details, the worse it gets.
Two ballot drop boxes were firebombed in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington last night/early this morning.
https://bsyy.app/profile/phillewis.bsky.social/post/3l7lbfqx7tz2o
More commentary on Trump’s racist rally:
Link
The MAGA crowd has officially moved from “talking about engaging in political violence” to “engaging in political violence.”
Followup to comments 352 and 384 (and other comments on the subject of The Washington Post choosing to not endorse a presidential candidate.)
Brian Stelter, writing for Reliable Sources, commented on the Washington Post fallout:
Pressed on Russian election interference, Vance gives the wrong answer
Campaign news summarized by Steve Benen:
LOL