Just got a call from dad.
Mom had a bad spill at the grocery store. She's in the hospital and getting transferred to another facility to get checked for head trauma. She's able to text on the phone but still... this is NOT good.
I can't cope with the political shit at the moment.
Hug everybody.
donald trump really only knows how to do one thing: market himself as a fucking brand.
Not just putting his name in gold on buildings, golf courses, steaks, fake universities: In the past few years even in the midst of fighting criminal charges and running for President (again) trump's been out here shilling NFTs, his own publicly traded media stock, overpriced golden sneakers, trump-themed Bibles (!) that alone should be an epic form of blasphemy, cryptocurrency, and now - what the actual fuck - overpriced watches (Alistair Charlton at Wired shared my horror):
Celebrities partnering with watch brands is nothing new. Sometimes a bona fide watch enthusiast like John Mayer partners with Audemars Piguet, or Ed Sheeran (owner of a unique Patek Philippe, no less) teams up with Casio. Then there's the other end of the scale, where controversial Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy and his own watch company resides.
Now, however, there’s a new nadir: the Trump Watch. Announced this week by former US president Donald Trump, the collection consists of two pieces. One is called “Fight Fight Fight” and is priced from $499, and the other is the “Victory Tourbillon.” The latter is claimed to be made from solid 18-karat gold, with 122 diamonds and a tourbillon automatic movement. It’s priced at a nice, round $100,000—about three times the price of an equivalent Rolex Submariner—and, yes, crypto payment is available.
The watches are claimed to feature “premium, Swiss-Made materials and intricate details,” but so far as we can tell, the Fight Fight Fight uses a movement by Japanese company Seiko, while the Victory Tourbillon has a movement alleged to be partially built from Chinese components...
Everything we know about trump and his business empire is that he will cut corners, buy cheap with no care for quality, and sell to excess (and try to trick his suckers customers into spending even more). This watch will be no different.
But don’t just take our word for it. WIRED Watch expert Tim Barber told us: “Trump evidently has some cut-through among certain watch fans, since the gold sneakers he auctioned earlier this year were bought by Roman Sharf, one of the most prominent gray-market watch dealers, with a sizable YouTube following." (Incidentally, the companies that made the gold sneakers and the new Trump Watches were established by the same register agent, Andrew Pierce of Cloud Peak Law, Wyoming.)
“Having said that, I doubt these hideous pieces will increase his equity among most watch collectors. As it happens, all-gold watches being very on trend in the luxury market at the moment, he joins Rolex in producing a gold dive watch this year. But I would be less confident of this sharing any other qualities with a Rolex...”
Now for the Tourbillon, the $100,000 flagship of the Trump watch collection. “This isn’t just any watch,” the former president said. “It’s one of the best watches made,” he adds without context...
This is Trump as Used Car Salesman: he's going to tell you "this is the best ever" and "everybody's talking about" (that part is right, although laughing/screaming in horror is more apt). The kind of fake oversell for shoddy product that led to a ton of Lemon Laws. I digress.
The watch is claimed to use a “TX07 Tourbillon” with 105 hours of power reserve, but finding any record of such a movement online is tricky. Watch commentator Nico Leonard van der Horst said in an Instagram post: “This is hilarious … the manufacturer of this movement is Olivier Mory, who ironically is known for making very affordable Tourbillons half made in China, half made in Switzerland.” Van der Horst added: “If you were to buy this movement and put it in your own watch, you would be able to buy it for under $3.5k...”
Why even sell a watch so much that your average MAGA voter - most of them middle-class/self-employed (car salesmen themselves more likely) - can't afford one? It's a watch meant for the oligarch class, the foreign millionaires and billionaires still looking to curry favor with trump should he ever cheat his way back into the White House. It doesn't help that trump is encouraging people to use crypto as a way to purchase these watches, because that kind of money can't be tracked.
trump is not just violating the Emoluments Clause, he's mocking it: because he knows Congress can't touch him and the courts have no idea how - or no willingness - to enforce it.
Hell, why I am sitting here whining about what trump's doing? If trump is out here shilling overpriced watches to gullible buyers reasonable markets, I can be doing that too!
Hey, everybody, BUY MY BOOKS! People are out here saying they're great reads, even the ones with poor formatting and glaring grammatical flaws!
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Buy now, and you can happily receive a firm handshake and a pat on the back from me some time down the road if you ever run into me hiding from the feds for possible tax evasion (you can't prove I had anything to do with Eric Adams' mayoral operations, I swear!).
These books are guaranteed to NOT tell you the proper time in any way - unless you use them as part of a makeshift sundial - and will NOT rust or fall apart on you within seven days of receiving.
Amazon Kindle operators ARE STANDING BY!
If I can get oh 12 million people to buy the ebook versions that will allow me to buy a Big Mac next Tuesday, hmmmm yum.
P.S. for the LOVE OF GOD do not let that grifter trump anywhere near the White House again.
What the hell, while I'm in a happy, perky mood this afternoon (don't tell me the bloody Broncos-Bucs football score yet dammit).
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| From the 270towin website |
This is what I want the Presidential Electoral map to look like after this November's Election Day:
I know this isn't real, and the odds of this happening are slim to none: But if the Democrats can drum up this much enthusiasm and turnout in even the rural Red States of the Midwest - if they can keep Georgia and flip North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Texas Blue to break the goddamned racist Southern Strategy - this would override any trumpian attempts at sabotaging the elections. Oh, he and the other Republicans will scream "STOLEN" but there will be too many states and too many voters refusing to play their game. It'll be the largest Electoral College stomping by the Democrats since 1964, and the conservative GOP will feel the impact.
Hell, I'm letting the Libertarians ride off with New Hampshire just to piss off trump after he tried to bully and threaten them into supporting his orange ass (and failed). It'll unlikely affect the state-level elections unless the Libertarians are running a lot of candidates there to overtake control of that legislature, but hey if they do let's see how bad they can fuck up a state and let the bears sort it out.
Along with that big wish for the Presidential race - BALZ TO THE WALZ, Dems! - I hope we get to see this map for the Senatorial races happening across the nation.
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| Had to copy/paste this from 270towin, couldn't embed for some reason. |
Even if Harris wins the Presidential race, it's going to hurt her if the Republicans regain control of the Senate - even by one seat - and stymie every Judicial and Cabinet nomination she brings to the table. It'd also be pretty to watch the pro-Insurrectionist GOP Senators like Missouri's Hawley get tossed out on their ass, while Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott and Ted "Cancun" Cruz suffer for their evil ways. It'd be funny to see Scott get kicked out just as he's fighting to become the Republican party leader for the Senate as Mitch McConnell is stepping down from that role.
The real Senate map is a lot tighter - and more harrowing - as the seats for Texas, Florida, Missouri are threatening to stay Republican, while losing West Virginia as Joe Manchin retires and with Montana's Joe Tester under attack there. If the Dems can win the White House while tying it up 50-even in the Senate, the Vice Presidency to Walz becomes key, but damn it will make passing legislation a lot harder. So here's hoping a massive Democratic voter turnout EVERYwhere - especially Nebraska where an independent campaign backed by the Dems is doing well - secures a Blue Senate.
Along with the hopes for the Presidency and the Senate are hopes for the House to flip Democratic as well. Given how gerrymandering created an unfair advantage for the Republicans in 2022 and they STILL couldn't dominate control of that branch of government, the recent attempts in battleground states like Wisconsin to undo that damage could help in minor ways to allow the Dems a stronger shot. A massive Kamala/Walz Blue Wave that flips a lot of Red states should guarantee a massive flip in the House and give Jeffries the Speakership.
(I can't show a 270towin map for the House races because it's damn near impossible to work it)
I'm also hoping that this massive Blue Wave coincides with the ten state-level referenda - especially in Florida - that can override the wingnut legislatures and undo their anti-abortion laws that are punishing doctors and killing women. As long as voters make the mental connection that the Republicans running for state level and congressional seats are the ones responsible for those draconian laws and decide to vote them out for it, we should see major Democratic gains in those ten states.
This is all I'm hoping - and praying - for this election cycle, America.
I hope you are too, and doing your part to vote and get everyone else to vote alongside us.
Gods, I feel like a negative nabob half the time. So let's try some good news.
I may not trust the polls but the late September numbers keep favoring Kamala Harris for the presidency over donald "34 count felon" trump.
Harris leads over trump in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Again, polls don't vote, voters do: So get the damn vote out Democrats.
Just a reminder that the mainstream media polling services - due to billionaire owners or their own craven needs - skew too much rural and conservative, meaning the pro-Kamala numbers should be even more in her favor (and that the tight races in other battleground states aren't really favoring trump).
The polling, for example, shows a tighter race in Alaska for Harris and Democrats than the past 30 years. Harris' numbers in Nebraska - where the shared Electoral College results by congressional district established a single EV dot in a Red State - are strong enough that the Republican Party is trying to pressure the state legislature to undo the shared Electoral and go Winner-Take-All. But there's signs Harris - thanks to her VP ally Tim Walz, who's from Nebraska - could flip the whole state Blue. Again, get the voters out to vote this November, Democrats. (Psst: Fight for EVERY state - well okay maybe not West Virginia, that's a lost cause - just to keep trump from clearing the Electoral College hurdle!)
Thanks to Richardson's escalating scandals, there's a growing chance Harris - and the whole Democratic ticket - can clinch North Carolina. If that happens alongside Harris reclaiming the battleground states Biden won in 2020, there is no way trump and his lackeys can stop the count and claim "they stole the election".
Even trump's schemes to undo the results are going to hit a wall: the Electoral Count and Presidential Transition Act of 2022. That cleaned up a number of loopholes and grey areas at the state level about challenging election results, and required election certifications done certain ways to minimize partisan sabotage. Granted, trump's legal team are going to test that law and insist on undermining the vote counts in key states/counties, but considering how their lack of evidence undercut their efforts in 2020 will be the same this 2024, it's doubtful he and his lawyers will prevail (the one negative thing to consider: That the trump-loving Supreme Court will break the entire Constitution in his favor when his legal battles reach their bench).
A Presidential win for Harris/Walz won't be enough: which is why the signs of a 2024 Blue Wave affecting the Congressional/Senate races provide a positive buzz. Again, voter turnout matters.
The encouraging news on that front: Democratic voter enthusiasm is increasing this 2024.
Voter turnout remains key, America. Republican efforts at voter suppression can't stop that, no matter how hard they try. If we can get the turnout for Kamala over 81 million - Biden's record - trump and the Republicans can't overcome that.
All this good news comes with that call to action: Get the damn vote out.
Get to work, America.
I haven't blogged much about the recent craziness in North Carolina, but now this is unavoidable. The wingnut Republican candidate for the governor's office there is going off the rails in the biggest train wreck since JD Vance said more demeaning stuff about immigrants yesterday. CNN has all the gory details about Mark Robinson (via Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck):
Editor’s Note: This story contains offensive language.
(CNN) — Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery, a CNN KFile investigation found.
Okay, just on this lede alone, this is a disaster for the state national GOP. Their preferred candidate in North Carolina - voted in by a primary process, and who had been elected currently as Lt. Governor - was posting stuff on a porn website. The next part is about Robinson openly claiming to be a Black Nazi (!), which used to be a career ender in 98 percent of the American states. And the topper - at this point in the story, which is still the first fcking paragraph - is having a black man supporting slavery in a former Confederate state.
But wait, it gets worse.
Despite a recent history of anti-transgender rhetoric, Robinson said he enjoyed watching transgender pornography, a review of archived messages found in which he also referred to himself as a “perv.”
The comments, which Robinson denies making, predate his entry into politics and current stint as North Carolina’s lieutenant governor. They were made under a username that CNN was able to identify as Robinson by matching a litany of biographical details and a shared email address between the two.
Many of Robinson’s comments were gratuitously sexual and lewd in nature. They were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa,” a pornographic website that includes a message board. The comments were made under the username minisoldr, a moniker Robinson used frequently online...
That Robinson is publicly hateful towards trans people and yet fetishizes them as porn subjects is part and parcel of the Far Right hypocrisy when it comes to sex and power. This should be shameful except the modern conservative elites no longer have shame.
And the fact that Robinson kept using a common online moniker for going into the kinky stuff underscores not so much his idiocy in leaving behind easily-tracked clues to his identity years later, it's that he likely believed he would never get caught or held accountable for it.
That said: There are a handful of Witty Librarians out there on social media, so do be aware I'm only responsible for like 37 percent of the crazy stuff coming from a Witty account, I swear... I have to admit, I've been insanely active on the Internet since 1994 - when I got into the Usenet chats for the X-Files television show - so I know if I ever get into politics or become a public figure there's going to be a lot of... ahem, interesting things I've posted.
In my defense, I've made it a personal policy to speak my mind to what I believe and know. My belief: You better be able to say in public what you say in private, and you better say in private what you've said in public. And I try to avoid saying mean or derogatory things towards people who don't deserve it. The mean and derogatory things I say about goddamn conservative wingnuts is that they DO deserve it. So there.
Enough about my bad habits. Back to the report:
Many of Robinson’s comments on Nude Africa stand in contrast to his public stances on issues such as abortion and transgender rights.
Publicly, Robinson has fiercely argued that people should use bathrooms only that correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth. He’s also said transgender women should be arrested for using women’s restrooms...
Yet privately under the username minisoldr on Nude Africa, Robinson graphically described his own sexual arousal as an adult from the memory of secretly “peeping” on women in public gym showers as a 14-year-old. Robinson recounted the story as a memory he said he still fantasized about.
“I came to a spot that was a dead end but had two big vent covers over it! It just so happened it overlooked the showers! I sat there for about an hour and watched as several girls came in and showered,” Robinson wrote on Nude Africa...
In other comments on Nude Africa, Robinson discussed his affinity for transgender pornography.
“I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s f*cking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Robinson wrote. “And yeah I’m a ‘perv’ too!...”
He's against "trans" going into ladies' restrooms but for himself - like other deviant narcissists - he wants to retain his privilege to invade safe places and demean women. It's all about his lusts getting satisfied, after all.
Robinson, who would become North Carolina’s first Black governor if elected, also repeatedly maligned civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., attacking him in such intense terms that a user accused him of being a white supremacist.
“Get that f*cking commie bastard off the National Mall!,” Robinson wrote about the dedication of the memorial to King in Washington, DC, by then-President Barack Obama.
“I’m not in the KKK. They don’t let blacks join. If I was in the KKK I would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!” Robinson responded...
In the pornographic forums, Robinson revealed his unvarnished thoughts on issues such as race, gender and abortion.
Writing in a forum discussing Black Republicans in October 2010, Robinson stated unprovoked: “I’m a black NAZI!”
That same month, Robinson wrote in another post that he supported the return of slavery.
“Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few,” he wrote.
In March 2012, Robinson wrote that he preferred the former leader of Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler over the leadership in Washington during the administration of Barack Obama.
“I’d take Hitler over any of the sh*t that’s in Washington right now!” he wrote.
Robinson’s comments on Nude Africa often frequently contained derogatory and racial slurs directed at Black, Jewish and Muslim people...
Robinson's sell-out over the fight for civil rights for African-Americans is already a public matter. He's made it clear he's a hater - and a sadistic control freak - in the worst way. That he displayed this much vitriol for a respected historic figure like Reverend King under his online handle shouldn't be a surprise. Painful, but not a surprise.
CNN’s reporting on Robinson’s comments comes a few weeks after The Assembly, a North Carolina digital publication, reported that Robinson frequented local video pornography shops in the 1990s and 2000s. The story cited six people who interacted and saw him frequent the stores in Greensboro, North Carolina. A spokesperson for Robinson called the story false and a “complete fiction...”
There's too much consistent bad behavior here to think these reports are in error. CNN is risking a lot posting this report if they didn't have receipts, and so they're backing up these allegations with what they've researched:
On the Nude Africa website in both comments and his profile, minisoldr offered numerous details that align precisely with Robinson’s personal history.
In his profile, minisoldr listed his full name as “mark robinson” and disclosed a private email address Robinson used elsewhere online. In 2012, a user responded to a comment by calling minisoldr “Mark.”
Minisoldr mentioned in 2008 being married for 18 years, which corresponds with Robinson’s marriage to Yolanda Hill in 1990. In 2011, minisoldr wrote he had been married 21 years. Minisoldr wrote in a 2011 post that he lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, the same town where Robinson lived at the time and currently lives.
In a post in 2012, minisoldr said he served in the Army in the 1980s, during the same time period as Robinson. In his sexually graphic comments detailing watching women in the showers in 2011, minisoldr wrote that his mother worked at an Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Robinson’s mother worked as a custodian at North Carolina A&T State University, an HBCU located in Greensboro.
Both minisoldr and Robinson often posted about the same topics online, including reviews for remote-controlled helicopters, their attraction to specific celebrities and their favorite “Twilight Zone” episode.
The email address associated with minisoldr on Nude Africa was also used by Robinson elsewhere online and social media. On the commenting platform Disqus, a user who joined in April 2011 features Mark Robinson’s photo under the username minisoldr.
Usernames and email addresses from Disqus were publicly leaked online in 2017, according to the company. CNN confirmed that Robinson’s username minisoldr on Disqus shared the same email address as the one used on Nude Africa...
If Robinson isn't minisoldr, there's a hell of a lot of coincidences involved.
Robinson has frequently used the username “minisoldr” elsewhere on the internet. On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Robinson once used the minisoldr username, according to a screenshot he shared on Facebook in 2018 and data in Robinson’s old tweets.
A YouTube playlist for a user named “minisoldr” features exclusively videos of Robinson. On Pinterest, a user “minisoldr” lists his name as “Mark Robinson.”
People online rarely mix up their Internet handles - in order to avoid confusing themselves - and "minisoldr" is unique enough that I doubt there's others fighting for that persona. The odds of this being the same Mark Robinson are pretty fcking solid.
Tonight there's been a wave of denials, dismissals, and evasions by Robinson's campaign and by the Republican Party at the state and national level. How they respond to this - either by pushing Robinson off the ballot before he drags the whole ticket down in a key battleground state, or doubling down on the racism and sexism and fascism to keep the wingnut base appeased - depends on how they gauge the loss of moderate independent voters who will recoil from these revelations.
But even if the state GOP succeeds in dismissing Robinson if they could, the next question ought to be "who the hell can they get next to replace him?" This unapologetic, hypocritical racist/sexist was the top choice of the party voters in the primary: They're not going to find a rational or less openly racist/sexist candidate to replace him.
We've been seeing it ever since the start of the modern Republican era of "attack politics" forged by Newt Gingrich, where the conservatives took over the party mechanics and the party choices to where there are no true moderates - the more congenial, the less racist/sexist - surviving among the ranks. It accelerated during the Tea Party movement against Obama - less because he was Center-Left and more because he was a Black Man who dared to win high office - to where open rudeness and public hostility by the GOP elected officials are now the norm.
With trump's takeover of the party voting base in 2016 with his anti-immigrant, Mexico-bashing and China-bashing, anti-women antics, this is where the Republicans are today: A roster filled with religious hypocrites, grifters, and sexual predators. This is no longer a party of Ronald Reagan or the Bush dynasty or John McCain, with whatever fidelity to the nation and to public decency they would display. This is now the party of Roy Moore, of Jim Jordan, of Matt Gaetz. It's a Republican party of idiot hypocrites like Tommy Tuberville or Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene, exposing their fears and hatred on the rest of the nation.
It's a Party of Trumps - grotesqueries - all the way down.
For the love of GOD, stop voting for them.
Update 9/28/24: Just spotted this Peter Wehner article in The Atlantic, and he uses the same word - grotesque - that I used here (read the whole article to get an idea how deep and widespread the rot is):
The GOP is a moral freak show, and freak shows attract freaks. Which is why Mark Robinson fits in so well in today’s Republican Party...
The Republican Party today isn’t incidentally grotesque; like the man who leads it, Donald Trump, it is grotesque at its core. It is the Island of Misfit Toys, though in this case there’s a maliciousness to the misfits, starting with Trump, that makes them uniquely dangerous to the republic. Since 2016, they have been at war with reality, delighting in their dime-store nihilism, creating “alternative facts” and tortured explanations to justify the lawlessness and moral depravity and derangement of their leader.
None of this is hidden; it is on display in neon lights, almost every hour of every day. No one who supports the Republican Party, who casts a vote for Trump and for his MAGA acolytes, can say they don’t know.
They know.
We as voters need to hold them accountable. The whole Republican Party has got to go.
Update: Thank you again, Batocchio, for including my blog at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. To everyone out there, get the vote out for Harris/Walz to make sure trump and his ilk are driven out of office everywhere!
I blogged earlier about how trump's - and along with him the Republican Party's - constant lying about what's happening in the United States - highlighted by the continual fearmongering over immigrants - led to JD Vance and his buddies falsely accusing Haitian immigrants of "stealing and eating our pet cats." I posted that just before the big debate between donald trump and Kamala Harris - which I didn't watch because I don't wanna get more riled up than I am - and during that debate trump doubled down on the accusations towards Haitians being "pet-eating monsters".
These falsehoods - attacking an ethnic group in our own backyard of criminal acts, a blood libel for all intents - are meant to do one thing: Stir up trump's angry immigrant-hating voter base of MAGA faithful to believe the absolute worst to the point they will take action "to defend" whatever nationalist ideal is in their heads... by attacking those "inhuman Others" through threats and violence.
We're seeing that in the days after trump's agitating outbursts (pushed along by his follow-up media appearances repeating his big lies), as the city of Springfield Ohio - where the rumors began - began reporting a series of bomb threats aimed at the local government offices, and then at the local schools, and today at the local hospitals (via Edward Helmore at the Guardian US).
Two hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, were sent into lockdown after bomb threats, police said Saturday, marking the fourth such case in as many days that appears linked to false claims circulating among the far right that Haitian immigrants there are eating domestic pets and wildlife...
Kettering Health Springfield was one of the medical facilities targeted, with officials later saying they found nothing suspicious during a search. Another hospital, Mercy Health’s Springfield regional medical center, received a similar threat.
A spokesperson with Mercy Health said the hospital has continued to operate and thanked Springfield police as well as hospital staff “for their swift, efficient and caring response”.
The bomb threats Saturday came after others had been called in to government buildings Thursday, forcing their closure and causing local schools to be evacuated.
“We recognize that the past few days have been particularly challenging for everyone in our community,” Springfield police said in a statement. Police added “we remain fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of each and every person”...
You will notice the threats are aimed at public places, where the most vulnerable of the citizenry would be especially the schools and hospitals. These hate-filled cowards want those innocent civilians to cower in fear and avoid any incoming conflict (especially as Election Day nears).
Today is Saturday. Tomorrow is Sunday. For most Christians, that's Church Day. Supposed to be the day to pray to an Almighty, and seek salvation and forgiveness and peace of mind. I guarantee you these MAGA terrorists are going to threaten at least one church (arguably whichever church has the most Haitian immigrants in the congregation) just to satisfy their dark, rage-driven demons.
All of this is happening to a small town, no different than the hundreds that dot the American landscape. Springfield is on the outskirts of Dayton, and a serious drive away from the major metros of Cincinnati and Columbus. It's one of those places where the downtown has at best one five-story building, and the rest small businesses selling antiques or housing local eateries. It's small enough that everybody kind of knows everybody else, their kids all go to the same schools, where the harvest festivals have the best pies, and they'll have their chairs lined up along Main Street a day in advance for the annual Christmas parade because nobody will vandalize or steal them. The idealized small town Eagleland of American mythos that the Beltway Media keeps looking for.
It's a place that was also dying through the steady drain of the younger generations moving on to college and then moving away to bigger jobs closer to the big cities like Cincy. The influx of Haitian refugees since 2017 to work the local factories had been an actual boon... and proof that trump and his fellow anti-immigrant haters in the Republican ranks are wrong about demonizing immigrants and denying their value as new incoming citizens. In that, you can see why trump jumped on this lie and ran with it: trump cannot abide the reality that his anti-immigrant world-view doesn't fit the facts.
There's another, darker reason trump is pushing his false narrative: he's hoping for violence to erupt in Springfield, triggering and tempting his MAGA base to cross the line with his blessing. This is part of trump's repertoire since he took over the national stage in 2015: Either insinuating - or outright stating - that those who oppose him and his MAGA base should be arrested, shot, and/or killed. There's evidence he talked to his aides about okaying law enforcement to shoot the George Floyd protestors in 2020. He cheered on the violence towards protesters in Portland Oregon and other cities.
The observation gained by trump's constant calls for his followers to "show up, be wild" is that he wants confrontation between the Far Right and the rest of the nation. He wants more Charlottesvilles, trump wants more moments where his extremists have free reign to attack the Left-leaning counter-protests, and induce terror in average Americans so that they dare not question him or his grabs for power and money. trump believes he can profit from the chaos spurred by street fights sparked by the Nazis and extremists that back him, and that when the blood starts flowing the rest of White America - who are not as to-the-bone racist as he is, but still driven by certain prejudices - will panic and side with him and the Republicans in the coming battle.
In short: trump wants his goddamned race war because he believes it will help him win cheat his way back into the White House.
Even though he had those conditions in 2020 and still lost to Joe Biden by 7 million votes and a strong Electoral College result even in states - like Oregon, Pennsylvania, Minnesota - that were rocked by such violence anyway.
trump's not going to get the results he likes, because it's already out there that the ones instigating the violence towards Springfield - not just the Haitians but everyone there - are trump and Vance and their fellow hate-filled Republicans. If anybody suffers or dies as the escalation worsens, the blame is going right towards him no matter how much blame-shifting and gaslighting he attempts.
The sad thing is the way things are going, violence is now a certainty. Someone's going to get hurt, and I feel bad for Springfield... and for all the other towns that trump's violent rhetoric will attack next as his desperation increases.
For the LOVE OF GOD and America and Mom and Apple Pie, stop voting for Republicans. Their cruelty and violence towards fellow Americans - towards our own families and neighbors - should not be ignored and should not be rewarded.
The wave of outright lying by the Far Right Noise Machine - and their Republican Party allies hacks - is overwhelming us now as the 2024 election day nears.
It's been well-documented that trump lies nearly every line he says in public; but he's been spewing offensive allegations the past few months that hospitals in Blue states are "performing post-abortions" (which is legally infanticide), and the past few weeks that there are schools forcibly performing transgender surgeries on children (the second part of that covered by Matt Lavietes at NBC News):
Former President Donald Trump repeated his false claim that children are undergoing transition-related surgery during their school day, worsening fears among some conservatives that educators are pushing children to become transgender and aiding transitions without parental awareness.
“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state.
Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years...
There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere...
According to trump and his Far Right acolytes, our public schools have the medical facilities and the means to perform surgeries at a whim: Considering how most of our schools are struggling to keep up with office supplies makes this deluded narrative a clear fantasy.
You'll notice trump doesn't mention where these things are happening: No mention of which school, which state. If any school has been transitioning kids without parental consent we'd have heard of it by now, even by the traditional media outlets expressing some level of outrage. If any hospital has been killing newborns as trump is claiming, the pro-fetus crowd in those states - even in deep Blue states like California or New York - would be massed outside that building protesting every minute of every day. Vague allegations without any eyewitnesses or documentation, not a thing that could stand up as factual evidence in an actual court of law.
So we know he's lying, we know he's fearmongering to his MAGA base... and yet the mainstream media isn't holding trump accountable - they are not challenging him to his face - for these blatant lies.
And now just over the past few days, JD Vance and several of his GOP buddies are sharing the outrageous and debunked claim that Haitian immigrants are out there eating our pet cats. Even Ian Millhiser over at Vox's Explainer can't fully explain it:
For the record, there is no evidence that any Haitian immigrant ate a cat in Springfield, Ohio, or anywhere else in the United States, for that matter. But the lack of factual evidence hasn’t stopped the GOP from pushing the nativist narrative, which seems designed to play off bigotry and suspicion against the mostly Black population of Haitian immigrants.
More than 300,000 previously unauthorized migrants from Haiti received temporary protected status in June, which means these Haitian immigrants are now — despite Vance’s suggestion otherwise — legally present in the United States. Still, Vance and other Republicans’ attacks on these immigrants come at a moment when more Americans have grown skeptical of immigration...
Springfield’s Police Division said on Monday that there have been no reports of any pets being stolen or eaten in that city. However, there apparently was an incident in Canton, Ohio — a nearly three-hour drive from Springfield — where a woman was charged with cruelty to animals for allegedly killing and eating a cat. But there’s no evidence that this woman is an immigrant or of Haitian descent.
Despite that lack of evidence, the woman appears to have been identified as of Haitian descent in far-right tweets...
The wingnuts are twisting the facts to make it fit their narrative that Haitian refugees - that immigrants in general - are inhuman. That's the only explanation here. And these wingnuts are desperate to turn the manufactured fear of immigrants into easily-promoted hate.
So it’s not surprising that many prominent members of the Republican Party, a party that frequently flags isolated crimes committed by immigrants to fuel nativist sentiment, latched onto an unfounded internet rumor about Haitians and cats as “proof” that immigrants present a problem (that Republicans can fix).
Still, none of this context changes the fact that Republicans at the pinnacle of the party, including sitting US senators and even one of the party’s two nationwide candidates, see no downside to spreading racist, completely unfounded rumors based on random social media posts spread by far-right trolls...
Millhiser spells it out at his conclusion even though he doesn't want to discuss the implications further: Vance and everyone else at the top of the GOP chain of command are happily spreading the fearmongering lies because there's no one willing to hold them accountable for being liars. The ones who could sue for defamation - right now, the entire Haitian community in the United States have every right to sue the GOP for their slander - are too poor or too constrained by their legal status to fight any courtroom battles. The media outlets that are supposed to maintain professional standards of journalism are too cowed by their rich owners - and too blinded by the need for "access" - to push back.
There's been a long and troubling history of the Far Right - especially as trump rose to power among their ranks - to exaggerate at best and outright lie at worst about so-called "criminal" acts committed by liberals and Democrats in order to excite their base into violent action. Think of every attack on Planned Parenthood facilities whenever the wingnuts claim that "baby killers" are farming for body parts. Remember how accusations about a child sex smuggling ring involving Hillary drove a man to attack a pizza parlor in Washington DC.
This is where we are at now in America, as the November general election draws nearer and trump - fearing he is going to lose the Popular vote again and likely the Electoral College - is desperate to stir up the passions of his MAGA base... but not to show up and vote, instead to show up with guns and commit acts of terror and chaos to do whatever it takes to disrupt any voting at all.
Gods help us. The lying is going to get worse until November and beyond, not until every wingnut liar is out of power... and in trump's case sitting in a jail cell.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND TRUTH, AMERICA, STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. Hold them accountable. That IS in your power to stop their lies.
Update: A historian from Northwestern University is raising the warning flag that violence aimed at immigrants is sure to follow:
So let's not get confused: the debunked claims that refugees are eating cats aren't just nonsense. They are the beginning of a wave of violence. The people spreading this rhetoric either know exactly what they're doing, or they should know. But violence follows. Every time. (3)
— Kathleen Belew (@kathleen_belew) September 10, 2024
trump wants the blood to flow: It's how he knows he has his mob doing his dirty work for him.
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Update 9/9/24: Thanks again to the Crooks & Liars crew especially Steve in Manhattan for promoting this article at Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please remember to GET THE VOTE OUT America and stop Republican/Russia sabotage of our elections! Also, please consider my book Notice a Trend as a stocking stuffer this coming Halloween uh Turkey Sacrifice Day hold on, Saturnalia!
I am an arms dealer fitting you with
Weapons in the form of words
And don't really care which side wins
As long as the room keeps singing
That's just the business I'm in
-- "This Ain't a Scene," Fall Out Boy
The Department of Justice this week dropped a bombshell in the form of indictments and sanctions towards Russian operatives who were paying off Far Right media outlets and "influencers" to undermine our nation's elections and policies (via Shannon Bond, Jude Joffe-Block, and Caitlin Thompson at NPR):
On Wednesday, the Justice Department charged two employees of RT, the Russian state media broadcaster, in a scheme to secretly fund and direct the production of social media videos that racked up millions of views.
The RT staffers, named in the indictment as Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They’re accused of funneling nearly $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee company that contracted with online influencers with big audiences...
“The company never disclosed to the influencers or to their millions of followers its ties to RT and the Russian government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Wednesday.
Still, didn't anybody on the RT payroll suspect they were all working from the same script, all so favorable to Putin and to Russia? Or are these Far Right "influencers" so twisted by their own world-view - that Ukraine is the enemy, that liberals are Commies, that there's a global conspiracy to destroy Alpha Males - that they didn't care how much like puppets they are?
The charges against Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva come as U.S. intelligence officials say foreign efforts aimed at swaying the outcome of the election are escalating. On Wednesday, the government seized 32 internet domains connected to a separate Russian influence operation, while Iran has recently been accused of trying to hack both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns.
What sets the RT operation apart from many other interference efforts is that it appeared to reach a real audience, thanks to the recognizable names attached.
“Buying authentic influencers is a far better use of funds than creating fake personas, because they bring their own trusting audiences and are actually, you know, real,” wrote Renée DiResta, the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, about how online influencers spread propaganda and rumors, in a post on Threads...
The thing every American - especially the ones getting hammered repeatedly by these propagandists - knew that what was coming from these influencers wasn't home-grown but a coordinated effort by a deep pocket source: They tended to repeat the same messages and stick to the same talking points. Now there's proof in a courtroom that the Far Right Noise Machine was getting paid to attack the rest of us. That the money was coming from Russia is what stings.
The money itself is obscene. One person getting $400,000 A MONTH to spew the pre-scripted content? About 90 percent of most Americans don't see that much income in a YEAR. The greed of these pro-Russian influencers barely equals the severity of their anti-American output.
A good number of social media commentators - most of them doing it for free by the by - pointed out how these Far Right influencers have been screaming for decades about "leftist bloggers and pundits getting paid by George Soros" so the irony is not lost. It may not be irony actually: It's certainly deflection and confession on their parts.
What the mainstream media - affected by the revelation that there is this kind of corruption in their own circles - need to realize, what a majority of Americans need to understand is how all of this is Putin's psychological (psyops) war on the United States.
This may not be a real-world warzone like Ukraine with tanks guns and bloodshed, but our airwaves and information sources are battlegrounds now. Putin can't afford a direct war on America - Gods help us, it would end in nuclear fire if that happens - but he's bitter and enraged at how our government has imposed economic sanctions not only on Russia but on himself ever since the Magnitsky Incident in 2009 led to congressional legislation that targeted Putin and his corrupt regime.
You can see the uptick in Far Right rhetoric around that time as the Tea Party stirred anti-Obama resentment into anti-government outrage. It helped Putin that many of the Far Right are synced to his own political and social world-views - nationalist, extremist, evangelical/orthodox Christianist, expressing open contempt and horror towards women, ethnics, gay/lesbian/trans people - to where these so-called "patriotic Americans" would happily - for a high fee - turn against their fellow Americans to side with a foreign despot.
There used to be anger and outrage from the Far Right Republicans back at the height of the Cold War if ANYone was caught working on the Soviet Russia payroll. Today, you have to think that everyone from Fox-Not News to Newsmax on down to InfoWars (what's left of it) have their hands out for the Russian oligarchs to tickle their palms for another $400k each (I would like to think National Review have higher personal standards than to sell out like that, but even now I have doubts).
If we were at actual war, what these Far Right media elites are doing would be considered treason.
Thing is, we are at war: Engaged by an enemy nation in Russia that is overwhelming our media with disinfo, conspiracy tripe, brazen lies - what we'd call "flooding the zone with shit" - to where almost half our fellow citizens can't tell what's real or fake news anymore. All thanks to Russia's front-line Fifth Columnists spewing all that shit at us from Facebook to Twitter to podcasts to facetime on the prime time talk shows.
Half the reason the United States is on the brink of civil war is because Putin is paying those wingnut bullshitters to confuse and defame Americans, to make us fear and hate each other at the expense of our own common cause to support and defend this nation.
Goddamn them. Every single one of these greedheads betrayed America for Putin's cash. Send them to prison first, and let Hell take them when they die.
As low as the Far Right Republican political agenda for 2024 can sink, it still keeps going in a downward spiral. Over the weekend, the media got wind of yet another interview VP candidate JD Vance gave where he exposed more misogyny towards women who did not fit his world-view (via Jason Wilson at the Guardian (US)):
Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.
The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”...
Ever since he was picked by Trump, Vance has been hit by scandals over his past comments, especially those concerning women and his perception of their role in society.
Last week his campaign was rocked by previous comments blasting a teachers union president for not having “some of her own” children. His previous characterizations of Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” have also troubled the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal to suburban women.
Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on topics including US evangelicals and populist politics, said: “Vance represents a new articulation of rightwing politics that is bridging the Christian right and a tech-influenced hypermasculine conservatism.
“He appeals to evangelicals with the message that we find happiness by fulfilling traditional gender roles, which is a cornerstone of white evangelical Christianity. He also speaks to a misogynist trend emerging out of the tech world among people who would prefer not to talk about any kind of diversity at all.”
“What they share is the view that women shouldn’t be in paid work: they should be in the home and rearing children. But the public line isn’t ‘we hate women’, it’s ‘women will be happier if they stay at home’,” she added.
The Guardian contacted the Vance campaign for comment but received no response...
As a man, JD Vance is trying hard to present himself as a patriarchal Alpha Male: dismissive of women's rights, projecting his own misery onto them, and refusing to express any basic decency at all.
We've seen these Alpha Male wannabes - and their Incel cousins - running around on social media, showing off their "conquests", expressing their toxic mindsets, and acting out their dominance towards everyone they view as their lessers.
Remember Andrew Tate, the preening jackass who advertises himself as a male role model and tried taunting a young woman about his prized gas guzzling sports cars... and ended up exposing himself to arrest by Romanian authorities pursuing him for abuse, fraud, and human sex trafficking? He resumed his public behavior as a misogynistic asshole even after that arrest, which all led to fresh arrests by Romanian officials now including sex trafficking of minors.
This is who these women-hating men are: They can't stop themselves from their attitudes that women - and the younger the better - are property, no different than the 16 cars Tate has to own to make himself feel superior to the rest of us. To these men, women are basically slaves to their whims and needs. They don't see women as half the human population, or as humans at all. Ask them if women have brains, these guys will laugh. Ask them if women have souls, these guys will shrug it off.
As human beings, Vance and his Alpha Male colleagues just keep proving themselves - and everything their world-view represents - vile and wrong.
It's not just Vance that's the problem. The guy who hired him as his vice presidential candidate - trump - is demonstrably worse. Above all, donald trump is officially a sex offender, found liable for sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll that the judge declared was by definition rape. There's the long history of trump abusing his "privileges" owning the Miss Teen USA pageants. There's the report he raped his first wife Ivana. There's trump himself proudly boasting he can grab women by the p-ssy in the most vulgar way possible.
And with all that, the so-called "family values" religious-type leadership of the Republican Party accepts trump - and Vance, and hundreds of other vulgar Alpha Male assholes - as their own. Because those "Christian" values aren't about family, or humility, or love.
This contempt, this rage, this violence towards women explains how deep into the rot the conservative ideology has fallen.
This is who conservatives are, in service to their ideology that only the true elites - rich, white, and male - must rule. Remember what Frank Wilhoit said: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Everyone else outside of their circle - the ethnic minorities like Blacks and Latinos (and even Asians), the youth, the poor, and now above all the women - must be shunned, defamed, disposed of.
Even those lessers who ARE in their circle - the conservative women (and Blacks and Latinos and Gays) in this case - who pander to this message of misogyny are just there to convince these men - if not those in the media looking for narrative cover - that they are ideologically in the right. The conservative women playing to the "tradwife" or anti-feminist stances are doing so because they personally profit - above all, the wealth and social influence - from living in the status quo that the conservative movement seeks to enforce. But the second these women are no longer valued for their contributions, they will find themselves in the same mess - poor, physically broken, emotionally drained - every other American woman suffers now.
Wonder why teacher's pay is so low across so many Republican-controlled states? It's because it's viewed as "women's work." Wonder why women's health care is declining across the nation? Because the bans on abortion - and the coming threat to birth control - are sending many OB/Gyns into retirement - and scaring potential new doctors out of the profession - before they can get criminally charged by ignorant wingnut politicians over basic women's health care.
If trump is trying to walk back the damage he'd done already over abortion - and health care in general - don't listen to him. Look at what he's doing. Look at who he's working with to promote even worse ills on the nation if he - and his cohort Vance - lie and steal their way back into the White House.
The Republican platform on women boils down to one word: SUFFER.
The cruelty remains the point.
For the Love of God and for the women in your lives, Stop Voting Republican.
So heading into September of this year of election, everything turns into a horse race and every poll gets parsed for omens and portents like the days of Rome (mmm, Rome).
I've gotten out of favor with the constant, obsessive polling that's been going on since at least 2012. While the polling then worked out and proved itself, afterwards the Republicans and the Far Right have figured out how to skew the numbers to where the last couple of election cycles weren't as easily predicted. We're at the point where the polling services are intentionally skewing their populations more rural - and conservative - to where you can't trust them.
Thing is, as the election itself draws nearer, the pollsters do shift their habits to better reflect the two demographics they pursue: Likely Voters and Registered Voters. So at this point, the polling gets to be a little more accurate, although we need to take all of it with a grain of salt (just like the Romans used salt for everyt... ow stop hitting me).
So while we can't take polls for granted this September, looking at results like this from Bloomberg/Morning Consult at least will give us Harris/Walz supporters a good reason to wake up every morning and campaign for voter turnout.
Or as Taniel tweets (STOP CALLING IT X, ELON) keeping track of the Electoral College:
New Bloomberg/Morning Consult polls (RVs here):
— Taniel (@Taniel) August 29, 2024
Wisconsin: Harris 52/44
Pennsylvania: Harris 51/47
Nevada: Harris 49/45
Michigan: Harris 49/46
[that's 270+]
Georgia: Harris 49/47
North Carolina: Harris 49/47
Arizona: 48/48
Considering what we consider a "battleground state" is something within 1-2 points, to have Wisconsin going for Harris well above "margin of error" should make that state a solid Blue.
Here's where it's good news: Wisconsin is one of the states trump was planning on sowing chaos to prevent an Electoral College count from even happening. If it's too big of a blowout, even trump's cries of "stollen votes" won't be believable.
The growing margins for Harris in places like Michigan and Nevada help solidify the likelihood trump and his lackeys can't deny the Electoral College results. Granted, trump will do everything to prevent Georgia or Arizona getting called - especially with the Georgia Elections Board setting up new rules that would allow for massive tampering by Republicans - but if all the other battleground states go Democratic, the mixed party leadership in those states make it harder to rig the results. As soon as Harris/Walz cross that 270 finish line, trump's whole stunt to throw the results to the House of Representatives becomes moot.
 |
| What the map looks like based on the Bloomberg poll. We can try and flip more states Blue, by the way... |
 |
| This is the map trump wants, unless Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada flip Red to him, in which case we're fucked. |
It'll then be an issue of both houses of Congress certifying the Electoral results, and unless Republicans control both next January there's every likelihood enough rational members of the GOP will certify Harris' win.
So that's one of the other things we need to consider this September: It's NOT JUST THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE ON THE LINE.
Democrats and Left-leaning Independent voters need to understand that voting for every Democratic candidate for the Senate and the House matter as well. To truly ensure trump can't steal his way back into the White House, there needs to be an Honest-to-God Blue Wave for 2024 covering all 50 states and covering every elected office on the ballot.
GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, EVERYBODY.
And for the Love of God and Country and Mom and Apple Pie and college football - I blame UF's loss on Ben Sasse's scandals by the by - vote Blue, America.
