#Biden in Detroit

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

DON'T YOU QUIT!

TCINLA

JUL 13, 2024

If the Cretin News Network Baby-Kissing Competition two weeks ago was the bottom of the campaign to date, President Biden conclusively demonstrated with his speech last night in Detroit that the Baby-Kissing Competition was a one-off “bad night.” This speech was the top, the definition of a “barn burner.”

The speech was give at a rally at a high school gymnasium in Detroit. Biden walked on stage to audience chants of “Don’t you quit!”

In the speech, President Biden pitched his plan for the first 100 days of a second term with a Democratic Congress:

Restore Roe v. Wade.

Eliminate medical debt by having the government buy up such debt and cancel it.

Raise the minimum wage.

Protect workers’ right to organize.

Ban assault weapons.

Continue to “keep leading the world” on clean energy and addressing climate change.

Sign into law the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would end voter suppression, and the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect voter rights and election systems, as well as end partisan gerrymandering.

Biden reminded the audience that he was the first president to walk a picket line, because “when labor does well, everybody does well.”

“When Trump comes here to tell you how great he is for the auto industry, remember this: when Trump was president we lost 86,000 jobs in unions. I created 275,000 auto jobs in America. In fact, what’s been true in the auto industry is true all over America: since I became president, we created nearly 16 million new jobs nationwide, 390,000 of those jobs right here in Michigan. We’ve created 800,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide, including 24,000 in Michigan.”

Forcefully contrasting his own record with Trump, who he called “a loser,” Biden said, “Donald Trump is the only president in American history, other than Herbert Hoover, who lost more jobs than he had when he came in. That’s why I call him Donald ‘Herbert Hoover’ Trump.”

Biden also brought up Project 2025, the policy plan written by the Heritage Foundation on how to install a right wing dictatorship in the first 180 days Trump is in office.

Pointing out the calls in the document to criminalize the shipment of abortion medication, deny contraceptive coverage, make cuts to Medicare, and eliminate the Department of Education, he went on to say, “Project 2025 is the biggest attack on our system of government and our personal freedom that has ever been proposed to this country. We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s not a joke. It’s time for us to stop treating politics like entertainment and reality TV. Another four years of Donald Trump is deadly serious. Deadly serious.”

He ended with a joke about his age, saying “I know I look 40”, telling the crowd that “with age comes wisdom. I know how to tell the truth, I know right from wrong, and I know I have demonstrated how to do this job.”

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes called the speech “the best performance Biden’s given since the State of the Union”.

What was the response of the “Democratic elites” to the speech?

The New York Times reported that so long as Biden remains the nominee, major donors will put on hold “roughly $90 million in pledged donations”.

Let’s remember that among the Masters of the Universe, aka the “Major Donors” of the Democratic Party are the financial geniuses who keep funding the artistic antics written by, directed by, and starring George Clooney (“The Monuments Men” anyone? How about “Leatherheads”?), master of all those “Nespresso” ads.

Despite the Press Corpse, there was good news for Biden yesterday: polls show him improving since the Atlanta Baby Kissing Competition, and that there was no great loss in support after that - other than among the collection of clucks in Washington who remind us that Mark Twain’s 1873 observation: “Consider a congressman, then consider an idiot. Bah! I repeat myself!” is still true.

The NPR/PBS/Marist poll released Friday shows Biden leads Trump 50%-48% in a head-to-head matchup.

Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the dean of the Congressional Black caucus, told NBC that Biden “sometimes mangles words and phrases but all of that is almost natural for people who grew up stuttering. He has one of the best minds that I have ever been around … and so I would hope that we would focus on the substance of this man … and how he has run this country.

Asked by the reporter “Is this the same Joe Biden that we saw four years ago?”, Clyburn said: “No! I’m not the same Jim Clyburn that I was four years ago and in ten days I’ll be 84. But I’m a bit wiser than I was before … It’s biblical. When I became a man I put away childish things. Joe Biden has put away childish things because he has become a man. His opponent is still a child.”

Charlie Pierce said of Biden’s press conference on Thursday: “I was wavering. I admit it. But I’m not anymore. That was a president onstage on Thursday. But I’ve watched the dynamic of the past two weeks play out time and again. It chased Bill Clinton for eight years and it chased Al Gore for eight months. Clinton survived, barely, and Gore lost an election to trivia and some really horseshit reporting from the campaign press, which, in combination with the Florida Hijack, gave us the previous Republican Worst President Ever.”

According to The Clinton Rules, which the D.C. Press Corpse has followed ever since the Lewinsky “scandal,” once The Story is birthed, no matter which set of ratfuckers or bad reporters are its midwives, The Story must be kept alive. There will always be another document, another “issue,” another set of questions leading to Clouds and Shadows over the politician in question.

What continues to piss me off is that this time there are dozens of Democratic political geniuses (looking at you, Axelrod and Plouffe) and Masters of the Universe who continue to push their bullshit regardless of what President Biden does, none of whom seem to have any idea what they want beyond forcing the incumbent president off the ticket.

And this morning the 538.com forecast has Biden winning 51 to Trump’s 48.

President Biden's full speech in Detroit

[mysharona1987]

[detroitpedxing]

(Archived News, Sept. 17. 2024) Second Apparent Assassination Attempt on Trump Prompts Alarm Abroad

There is widespread concern that the November election will not end well and that American democracy has frayed to the breaking point.

In the nine years since Donald J. Trump entered American politics, the global perception of the United States has been shaken by the image of a fractured, unpredictable nation. First one, then a second apparent attempt on the former president’s life have accentuated international concerns, raising fears of violent turmoil spiraling toward civil war.

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, has said he is “very worried” and “deeply troubled” by what the F.B.I. said was an attempt to kill Mr. Trump at his Florida golf course, fewer than 50 days before the presidential election and two months after a bullet bloodied the ear of Mr. Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

“Violence has no part to play at all in any political process,” Mr. Starmer said.

Yet, violence has played a core part in this stormy, lurching American political campaign, and not only in the two apparent assassination attempts. There is now widespread concern across the globe that the November election will not end well and that American democracy, once a beacon to the world, has frayed to the breaking point.

In Mexico, where elections this year were the most violent in the country’s recent history, with 41 candidates and aspirants for public office assassinated, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “Even though what happened is still unclear, we regret the violence against former President Donald Trump. The path is democracy and peace.”

At a time of wars in Europe and the Middle East and widespread global insecurity as China and Russia assert the superiority of their autocratic models, American precariousness weighs heavily.

Corentin Sellin, a French history professor, said the “brutalization of American politics” had left France “wondering whether the presidential campaign will finish peacefully.”

France was stunned, he said, by the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, and “there is this notion that the story that started with that insurrection has not yet ended,” and that the Nov. 5 election will determine how it does.

The threat of violence — at times, even the need for it — has been a core part of Mr. Trump’s message.

He has already cast doubt on the credibility of the coming November election results. He has persistently laced his language with calls to “fight” and used incendiary terms to insult immigrants. Just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, he urged followers to “fight like hell” or they would not “have a country any more.” In general, he has shown an ironclad incapacity to accept many truths, including the result of the 2020 election.

Democrats have responded by depicting Mr. Trump as a direct menace to American democracy, a “weird” would-be autocrat of fascist tendencies and a “threat to our freedoms,” in the words of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. The left-leaning New Republic magazine portrayed Mr. Trump as Hitler on a recent cover, expressing the view that a second Trump term is likely to lead to some form of American tyranny.

Some Europeans see things in a very different light.

“They tried to do everything,” said Andrea Di Giuseppe, a lawmaker with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party. “They tried to bring Trump down with trials, they tried to bring him down with insinuations, they tried to bring him down by scaring people that ‘if Trump arrives democracy ends.’ Then, since all these attempts did not work, they tried to kill him.”

The authorities have identified a suspect in the Florida episode, Ryan W. Routh, a 58-year-old building contractor with a criminal history and a passionate embrace of the Ukrainian cause. He was charged in federal court with two firearms counts. More charges may follow.

Responding to the apparent assassination attempt, Carsten Luther, an online editor for international affairs, gave voice to deep concerns about the survival of American democracy in the respected German weekly Die Zeit. “The warnings of a civil war can be heard and no longer sound completely unrealistic,” he wrote. “It seems almost banal, as if it was bound to happen at some point.”

Of course, other Western societies, including France and Germany, are also viscerally divided and have seen the rise of xenophobic, far-right parties with many of the same messages as Mr. Trump. In May, an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia left him critically injured.

But a far more restrictive European gun culture has curbed the extent of political violence while leaving Europeans alarmed and incredulous at the ease with which Americans are able to obtain weapons.

Félix Maradiaga, a former Nicaraguan presidential candidate and political prisoner who is now a fellow at the University of Virginia, said that polarization, intolerance and the widespread availability of high-caliber weapons in the United States had led to a “perfect storm.”

“The world is watching, and the stakes could not be higher,” he added. “Russia and China are undoubtedly taking satisfaction in this deterioration of democracy.”

Lebohang Pheko, a senior research fellow at South Africa’s Trade Collective, an economics research institute, said that she perceived “a militarization of everyday life in the United States, and this essentially seems to be spilling into these elections.”

Mr. Trump has often appeared to seek this very militarization of which he has narrowly escaped being a victim. The multimillionaire son of a real-estate developer from Queens, he has positioned himself as the defender of the gun-toting, God-fearing American frontier against what he portrays as the Democrats’ politically correct socialist takeover.

Alluding to his Democratic opponents, he has blamed “the things that they say about me” for the first assassination attempt and the second episode, not the easy access to guns that he defends.

The question now is how violent will this political confrontation in America prove. For many around the world, it seems to contain the seeds of rampant conflict.

“There is a sort of reciprocal delegitimization, where the political opponent is no longer a normal political competitor, but also an existential enemy,” said Mario Del Pero, a professor of United States and International History at Sciences Po University in Paris. He called this process “a degradation of political and public discourse.”

In the United States, this has been a degradation compounded by guns, as much of the world sees it.

“Style over substance. Image over issues. Lies over facts. Distractions over policy. Repeated violence,” said Tomasz Płudowski, the deputy dean of the School of Social Science, AEH, in Warsaw. “That seems to be the contemporary American reality.”

The core confrontation in Western societies is no longer over internal issues. It is global vs. national, the connected living in the “somewhere” of the knowledge economy vs. the forgotten living “nowhere” in industrial wastelands and rural areas.

There lies the frustration, even fury, on which a Trump or a Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right French National Rally, or Ms. Meloni in Italy have been able to build.

The perceived vulnerability of American democracy has already provoked many reactions around the world, from Russian gloating and interference to European anxiety about its security. Few countries in the developing world want American lessons in how to run their societies these days.

Yet, a fascination with the United States endures, and the checks and balances of its institutions have proved resilient, including through the first Trump term.

Mr. Trump often cites the template of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary: neutralizing an independent judiciary, subjugating much of the media, demonizing migrants and creating loyal new elites through crony capitalism. But it would not be easy to impose in America.

Still, the world is anxious. The 48 days to the election feel like a long time.

“In the end, the only real final word is for the American people,” said Mr. Di Giuseppe, the Italian lawmaker. “And if you want to defeat a person whom you think is not fit to govern the United States of America, you have to defeat him in a democratic system with elections, not with justice or Kalashnikovs.”

[gurutrends]

In Michigan, Muslim community tempted to punish Kamala Harris

Iman Beydoun El-sayed has “always been a Democrat,” but “is not so sure anymore.” Like her, many Arab-American voters who are keeping an eye on the Middle East conflict are tempted to punish Kamala Harris for the Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel. In Michigan, one of the battleground states between the Democratic candidate and her Republican rival Donald Trump, Iman Beydoun…

[kosmic-apothecary]

It is a deliberate decision by the governments of the US, Canada and Uk to keep the people ignorant on what’s happening in West Asia/the Middle East. It’s up to us to inform and educate each other.

Once people know the truth, the Zionism project will crumble and PALESTINE WILL BE FREE 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

It's actually crazy talking to friends and relatives about what's going on because very few of them know that this is a retaliatory attack. I keep seeing people online call the attack unprovoked too.

So those who don't know, on April 1st Israeli warplanes bombed Iran's consulate in Damascus. The attack killed 7 of Iran’s military advisers including 3 senior commanders.

Reuters reporters at the site in the Mezzeh district of Damascus saw emergency workers clambering atop rubble of a destroyed building inside the diplomatic compound, adjacent to the main Iranian embassy building. Emergency vehicles were parked outside. An Iranian flag hung from a pole by the debris.

Iran's ambassador to Syria said the strike hit a consular building in the embassy compound and that his residence was on the top two floors. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement that seven Iranian military advisers died in the strike including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in its Quds Force, which is an elite foreign espionage and paramilitary arm.

This attack on the embassy is against international law. Embassies are protected sites. But instead of condemning the attack and putting pressure on Israel, the US has spent the past week and a half calling West Asian countries to put pressure on Iran, with Biden going as far as to warn Iran not to attack Israel and saying that his support for Israel is 'iron clad'.

The West, the UN, and UN Security Council have largely failed to condemn the attack which means Iran has no choice but to retaliate with force in order to prevent future attacks. Otherwise, the country will look vulnerable and weak, especially to the Israeli occupation government which has spent months bombing neighbouring countries like Syria and Lebanon

[ollareservoir]

DPSCD Students Awarded at NAACP "Fight for Freedom" Dinner

While everyone is discussing the presence of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, at the NAACP “Fight for Freedom” dinner that took place Sunday, May 19th, 2024 at the Huntington Place in downtown Detroit; I would like to discuss the children. I was privileged to be able to attend this dinner as my son, a student of Spain Elementary-Middle, was a Great Expectations honoree, along with…

[simseez]

DO NOT FALL FOR THE GAFF

[wilwheaton]

An Arizona man, citing the time Harris said, “you better thank a union member,” during a speech in Detroit, said “that was very disingenuous to me because I didn’t see an honest person that could be president.” “It seemed like a lot of what she came out and said wasn’t really off-the-cuff, wasn’t coming from her,” said another man who voted for Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024. “Seemed like every interview, every time she came out and talked about something, it was planned out and never her thoughts, didn’t seem genuine to her thoughts, whereas, Trump, even though you never really knew what he was going to say, when he was going to say it, it was always him and genuine to what he thought, so that’s what swayed me.”

New research shows the massive hole Dems are in

I mean ... I don’t know how anyone worth electing is going to reach someone like this guy who basically says he’d rather vote for someone who rambles incoherently, with a clear track record of violence and corruption, because he didn’t like the way the scary Black lady talked.

Why is this guy even in this article? This guy is a lost cause. This guy is not the Democrats’ fault. This guy is a stupid fucking idiot who shouldn’t be allowed to be alone in any room with a sharp object.

And this is the guy the Democrats are going to throw the trans community under the bus for, the guy who says he didn’t like how prepared and articulate Kamala Harris was when she expressed her positions, when what we all know is that he didn’t like that she was a Black woman.

THAT is the real disgrace and failure of the party: chasing this guy at the expense of ten people who want to vote for them, because they listen to dipshit consultants who have lost all but two consequential elections for the last twenty years.

[black-fist-order]

Holyshit. Well here's a conspiracy theory for ya.

I've been wondering why Trump has allowed Elon free reign to upstage him and do what he wants. I'm sure he has to know the public has been calling Trump Elon's lapdog. And then there's the Time cover with Elon sitting behind the presidential desk. Trump should be fuming, but during Elon's press meeting in the White House, Trump just sat there like a castrated sad clown while Elon's kid told him to shut up.

But why? Why would Trump let himself be upstaged and mocked - especially by a child? He already won the election. He doesn't need Elon's money anymore.

But then Jess told me something Elon's kid said during an interview with Tucker Carlson.

When asked if Trump would win the election, the kid says "yes" and then says "they’ll never know."

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-kid-keeps-saying-weird-stuff-about-trump-2000563118

During the election, I knew something was up when Trump began accusing Kamala for cheating in Pennsylvania. That's very specific. And historically, he only blames others for things he's doing.

As a programmer, I know anything is hackable. An 11 year old girl at the hacking convention DefCon in Vegas was able to hack into a voting booth in 10 minutes. And that was back in 2018!

And while the voting machines aren’t connected to the internet per-se, it only takes 10 minutes to pop in a USB and get out. And it just so happens there was a bomb threat in PA where they emptied the building. But it wasn’t just one building, it was 67!

Of the 67 locations, 56 were in 11 counties that voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election, including the eight most populated. Those high-population Democratic counties include voting locations for Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna179006

Hacker kids do this stuff for the fun of it. Imagine if they were getting paid millions of dollars?

And now, Musk has surrounded himself with these kids who have notoriously gained access to federal records, our records, with ease.

Four hours before election results were called, Elon announced that Trump was the winner and he had an "app" to prove it.

And then, there's this... Trump is a complete idiot and actually said this out loud after the election...

"He (Musk) knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers. Those vote-counting computers," Trump told the crowd. "And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide."

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-elon-musk-voting-machine-2017657

"They will never know."

Trump even said repeatedly before the election, "I don't need your vote." It's a weird brag that indicated he had already won.

I had been saying Trump was going to cheat long before the election. But the comment was instantly shot down by both sides. Conservatives thought we were being hypocrites, and progressives thought we should be above Trump-style conspiracies and gracefully accept the outcome.

Looking into this now, I'm not surprised I wasn't the only one. The internet is all over this stuff.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1i5uovx/donald_trumps_voting_computers_comment_sparks/

Will this info ever come out? Will it even matter? I have no doubt Elon's guys are at the top of their game, and the only way this will ever see the light of day is if one of these guys talks.

But for right now, it's obvious to me why Trump is letting Elon do whatever he wants.

Because all it would take is for Elon to turn to a camera and say a few words to the world, "I helped Trump steal the election."

Boom.

[afeelgoodblog]

Best News of Last Week - December 11

1. Biden administration to forgive $4.8 billion in student loan debt for 80,300 borrowers

The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it would forgive an additional $4.8 billion in student loan debt, for 80,300 borrowers.

The relief is a result of the U.S. Department of Education’s fixes to its income-driven repayment plans and Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

2. Detroit on pace to have lowest homicide rate in 60 years this year

A partnership to reduce Detroit crime is being praised with the City on pace for the fewest homicides in 60 years.

"This is the day we’ve been waiting for, for a long time," said Mayor Mike Duggan. The coalition which includes city and county leaders that Detroit Police Chief James White formed in late 2021 to return the criminal justice system in Detroit and Wayne County to pre-Covid operations.

3. Dog that killed 8 coyotes to protect sheep running for Farm Dog of the Year

Over a year ago, Casper was stacked up against a pack of 11 coyotes, and he overcame them all to protect the livestock at his Decatur home. Now he needs your help.

Casper, the Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog, needs the public to vote for him to become the American Farm Bureau's "Farm Dog of the Year: People's Choice Pup" contest.

4. Shimmering golden mole thought extinct photographed and filmed over 80 years after last sighting

De Winton's golden mole, last sighted in 1937, has been found alive swimming through sand dunes in South Africa after an extensive search for the elusive species.

5. About 40% of the world's power generation is now renewable

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have released their first joint report to strengthen understanding of renewable energy resources and their intricate relationship with climate variability and change.

In 2022 alone, 83% of new capacity was renewable, with solar and wind accounting for most additions. Today, some 40% of power generation globally is renewable, due to rapid deployment in the past decade, according to the report.

6. Jonathan the Tortoise: World’s oldest living land animal celebrates 191st birthday

The world’s oldest living land animal - a Seychelles giant tortoise named Jonathan - has just celebrated his 191st birthday. Jonathan’s estimated 1832 birth year predates the invention of the postal stamp, the telephone, and the photograph.

The iconic creature lived through the US civil war, most of the reign of Queen Victoria, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and two world wars.

7. New enzyme allows CRISPR technologies to accurately target almost all human genes

A team of engineers at Duke University have developed a method to broaden the reach of CRISPR technologies. While the original CRISPR system could only target 12.5% of the human genome, the new method expands access to nearly every gene to potentially target and treat a broader range of diseases through genome engineering.

---

That's it for this week :)

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[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obediallah at The Dean's Report:

No one can deny that Donald Trump has shown a significant level of cognitive decline since he first ran for President in 2015 at the age of 69 years old to where he is today at 78. But what we’ve seen with Trump is far more than normal aging. Trump—as countless mental health experts have stated—is showing symptoms of dementia.  While people can debate if Trump is in the early or mid-stages of severe cognitive decline, what can’t be debated is that this poses a very serious national security issue for our nation. Consequently, this issue demands far more media coverage. On Monday night, I interviewed, psychologist Dr. John Gartner--the founder of “Duty to Warn” –who was first on my show back in April when he was waving red flags about Trump’s mental decline. In April, Gartner noted that Trump “can't get through a rally without committing one of these” tell-tale signs of dementia, such as saying the incorrect word or “combining or mixing up people and generations.”  

He also directed my attention to a petition signed by more than 500 licensed mental health professions—including best-selling authors and well-respected psychologists—warning that Trump was exhibiting signs of dementia. Gartner noted in April that “we're noticing deterioration almost every day” with Trump. Here we are six months later.  After discussing what Dr. Gartner has observed with Trump over the past few months, I asked this simple question: “Does Donald Trump have some form of dementia?” In response, Gartner answered succinctly, “There's absolutely no doubt.” Gartner explained that on his podcast, “Shrinking Trump,” he has welcomed mental health professionals who specialize in dementia—such as from “Duty to Inform”-- and they reached the same conclusion. “We've had neuropsychologists, neuropsychiatrists on the show who have gone through their analysis” and confirmed what they are observing is dementia, Gartner noted. He added, “When you really talk to the experts and the super experts, it's even more apparent,” that Trump’s exhibiting symptoms consistent with this condition.

Dementia is not a term that should be thrown around whimsically to score political points. Dementia—as Dr. Gartner explained—is “brain damage.” He continued that it’s “a deteriorating organic process in the brain where the cognitive processes start to break down.” He added alarmingly that with people like Trump, “they only go in one direction. They keep sliding downhill.” Adding to the credibility of this diagnosis is that dementia runs in the Trump family. As Donald’s own nephew, Fred Trump III, explained on my show recently, Donald’s father, Donald’s older sister, Maryanne and Donald’s cousin, John Walters all had dementia. And as the NY Times reported ten days ago in an article on Trump’s cognitive decline, “Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately.”  They added, “He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical.”

Just look at Trump’s conduct in the past week that provides more jarring examples. At an event at the Detroit Economic Club when he was supposed to address economic issues, he literally began to speak of Elon Musk’s missiles landing, “Biden circles” that were “beautiful” but Biden “couldn’t fill them up” to “we’ve been abused by other countries, we’ve been abused by our own politicians”–all in the same incoherent answer.  I played that clip for Dr. Gartner who commented that it makes “you realize how completely lost Trump is.” In addition, Trump while appearing on a podcast last week literally delivered a 12 minute (yes, 12 minute) meandering answer that was so incoherent it caused the hosts to joke that Trump was not rambling, he was “weaving.” One host added that they “don’t even want to know the answer anymore,” they just want more “weaving.” They were humoring Trump who was not making sense.

And at a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday, Trump told the crowd to vote on “January 5”—not November. That of course could simply be a minor mental flub, but what came next was truly bizarre. Trump told the audience that it was time to end the questions and just listen to music. I’m not kidding. The context was that two people had passed out from heat at the event, to which Trump asked, would “anybody else would like to faint?” Trump then declared, “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”  Then—as the Washington Post reported—"For 39 minutes, Trump swayed, bopped — sometimes stopping to speak — as he turned the event into almost a living-room listening session of his favorite songs from his self-curated rally playlist.”

Yes, Trump stood on stage for nearly 40 minutes at a packed Town Hall where instead of answering questions, he danced. I know it sounds like a Saturday Night Live sketch, but it was real life. If President Biden had done that when he was the nominee, we would’ve seen non-stop coverage exploring his mental state. All of this is why this is truly a national security issue. As Dr. Gartner explained, a person with dementia like Trump could be easily manipulated by “corrupt businessman or any hostile foreign power.” He cited the examples of how devious people have taken advantage of those with dementia to get them to sign a will that makes the person the sole beneficiary. But in the case with Trump, we are potentially talking about Trump agreeing to allow wealthy backers like Elon Musk to financially benefit at our expense. Or worse, allow our enemies to take advantage of him—more than they even did in the past.

Dean Obeidallah succinctly explains that Donald Trump’s dementia is not only a political issue but also a national security issue.

[mariacallous]

Glad people are finally finding out that these Pro Palestine protestors are ratfuckers-by-design at best (and Republicans at worst) and that's why they support Trump:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/dnc-palestinian-gaza-protests/679524/

One month ago, an NBC News headline reported:

Protesters made a tiny footprint at the RNC in Milwaukee. Other than a modest daytime march on Monday afternoon, the first day of the Republican National Convention, there were virtually no protests over the event’s four days and nights.

Obviously, the story from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago is already proving different.

This is part of a pattern. Gather any large number of Democrats together, in almost any city or state, whether at rallies, fundraisers, or presidential appearances, and pro-Palestinian protesters will try to wreck the event. These actions have been building to threats of outright violence. Pro-Trump and Republican events, meanwhile, are almost always left in peace.

Of the two big parties, the Democrats are more emotionally sympathetic to Palestinian suffering. The Biden administration is working to negotiate the cease-fire that the pro-Palestinian camp claims to want. The administration has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. President Joe Biden’s terms for ending the fighting in Gaza envision a rapid movement to full Palestinian statehood.

By contrast, former President Donald Trump uses Palestinian as an insult. His administration moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. In 2016, Trump campaigned on a complete shutdown of travel by Muslims into the United States; Trump now speaks of deporting campus anti-Israel protesters. He has pledged to block Gaza refugees from entering the United States.

Trump wants to tell the story that he and his party will enforce public order. He alleges that Democrats cannot or will not protect Americans against chaos spread by extremist elements. The pro-Palestinian movement works every day to create images that support Trump’s argument. As a visibly annoyed Vice President Kamala Harris asked protesters in Detroit earlier this month: Do they want to elect Donald Trump?

Not all pro-Palestinian demonstrators are thinking about the election. Many seem driven by moral outrage or ideological passion. But for those who are thinking strategically, the answer is obvious: Yes, they want to elect Trump. Of course they want to elect Trump. Electing Trump is their best—and maybe only—hope.

To understand why, cast your mind back a quarter century.

In the election of 2000, Vice President Al Gore faced Texas Governor George W. Bush. Gore probably would have won in a straight two-way contest. But that same year, the progressive advocate Ralph Nader entered the race as a third-party challenger—and he pulled just enough of the vote to tip the Electoral College and the presidency toward Bush.

Nader later professed regret for running as a third-party candidate. But at the time, Nader understood exactly what he was doing. Defeating Gore and electing Bush was the intended and declared purpose of Nader’s candidacy. Nader detailed his logic in many speeches, including this one to the summer-2000 convention of the NAACP:

If you ever wondered why the right wing and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has so much more power over that party than the progressive wing, it’s because the right wing and the corporate wing have somewhere to go: It’s called the Republican Party. And so they’re catered to and they’re regaled—like the Democratic Leadership Council, they’re catered to and they’re regaled. But if you look at the progressive wing … they have nowhere to go. And you know when you’re told that you have nowhere to go, you get taken for granted. And when you get taken for granted, you get taken.

To paraphrase his argument even more bluntly: If progressives caused the Democrats to lose the presidency in the election of 2000, then Democrats would take progressives more seriously in all the elections that followed.

Nader’s logic was not altogether wrong. In many ways, the post-2000 Democratic Party has shifted well to the left of where the party was in the 1980s and ’90s. But catering to the party’s left has cost Democrats winnable races, and with them, key priorities: The Iraq War and 20 years of inaction on climate change head the list of progressive disappointments since the 2000 election, and the list extends from there. Whether or not the shift was worth the price, Nader was neither ignorant nor deceived. He identified his goal and willingly accepted the risks for himself and his movement.

So it is now with the pro-Palestinian demonstrators of 2024.

They start with a fundamental political problem: Their cause is not popular. Solid majorities of Americans accept Israel’s war in Gaza as valid and fiercely condemn the Hamas terrorist attacks as unacceptable. The exact margin varies from poll to poll depending on how the question is asked, but when presented with a binary choice between Israel and the Palestinians, Americans prefer Israel by a factor of at least two to one.

The brute fact of those numbers makes it very difficult for pro-Palestinian activists to win elections. In this cycle, despite all the emotion stirred by the Gaza war, two of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress lost their primaries to pro-Israel challengers.

From the point of view of any practical politician: If a cause is so unpopular that it cannot help its friends, why listen to its advocates?

The only answer to that question, again from the practical point of view, is the message of the protesters in Chicago: Maybe we can’t help you if you do listen to us, but we can hurt you if you don’t!

Think of it another way. Since the bloody attack by Hamas on October 7 and the Israeli response, pro-Palestinian protesters have marched and agitated all over the United States. They have occupied college campuses. They have impeded access to Jewish schools, businesses, and places of worship. They have posted impassioned words and images on social media.

Yet all of their militant action has barely budged U.S. policy. Arms, intelligence, and economic assistance continue to flow from the United States to Israel. U.S. military forces cooperate with Israel against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen. Although the U.S. has imposed restraint on some Israeli operations, Israel has mostly been allowed to fight its own war in its own way.

These were President Biden’s decisions, not Vice President Harris’s. But she was the second-highest-ranking member of the administration. If Biden’s deputy inherits Biden’s office, the message is clear: His administration’s record of support for Israel carried no meaningful political price. All of those street demonstrations and campus occupations will have amounted to so much empty noise. All of those articles arguing that Gaza explained Biden’s troubles with young voters would be exposed as ideological wishcasting.

If Harris wins, the pro-Palestinian movement will have lost.

If Harris loses, however, pro-Palestinian protesters can claim that they were responsible for her defeat. That claim might not be true—in fact it probably would not be true—but try disproving it. The pro-Palestinian movement would have at least some basis to argue: You lost because you alienated us.

If Harris wins, she may want to do something about the pro-Palestinian cause—for humanitarian reasons, for reasons of diplomacy and geopolitics, for reasons of Democratic-constituency management in particular congressional districts. But she won’t have to do it. She’ll know that the protesters tried to beat her, and they failed.

If Harris loses, however, future Democratic candidates will tread more carefully on Israeli-Palestinian terrain. Even if they privately doubt that the party’s position on Gaza explains anything truly important, they will be worried by advisers and donors who will believe it or who will want to believe it.

But what about Trump? Why aren’t the pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Chicago more fearful of Trump’s possible return to the presidency?

Although the pro-Palestine cause attracts support from progressives, it is not exactly a progressive cause. Americans associate progressivism with secularism, feminism, and gay-rights advocacy, among other causes. The Palestinian national movement, especially now that Hamas has effectively replaced the Palestine Liberation Organization as leader of “the resistance,” has become markedly religious, patriarchal, and socially reactionary. But it is also a movement fiercely opposed to American global hegemony—and that is its “anti-imperialist” appeal to Western progressives.

If you oppose American global hegemony, Trump is your candidate (as a long list of anti-American dictators have already figured out). Trump fiercely opposes the alliances and trade agreements that magnify American power and make the U.S. the center of a huge network of democratic, market-oriented countries. Trump’s “America First” bluster is actually a pathway to American isolation and weakness that will further remove American power from the world.

If you wish America ill, of course you wish Trump well. The far left and far right of U.S. politics may disagree on much, but they agree on that.

The protesters in the streets of Chicago are not acting aimlessly or randomly. The people on the receiving end of their protests would benefit from equal clarity. The protesters want chaos and even violence in order to defeat Harris and elect Trump. They are not ill-informed or excessively idealistic or sadly misled. They are not overzealous allies. They are purposeful adversaries.

The Chicago-convention delegates should recognize that truth, and act accordingly.

[detroitpedxing]

'We do hope that America will become stronger', says Ukraine president

Back to Europe now, where Ukraine's president says relations between the US and the continent "must be valued and cannot be lost" after Donald Trump's US election victory.

Speaking at a European leaders' summit in Budapest, Volodymyr Zelensky says: "We do hope that America will become stronger."

"This is the kind of America that Europe needs," he says. "And a strong Europe is what America needs - this is the connection between allies that must be valued and cannot be lost."

Zelensky, according to AFP news agency, also tells the summit it would be "unacceptable for Ukraine" and "suicidal for all Europe" if Russian leader Vladimir Putin is offered any concessions.

Nearly a full day after Donald Trump's victory speech, reactions to his return to the White House are still trickling in.

Latvia's President Edgars Rinkēvičs says he's not nervous about a second Trump administration.

"Everyone is now trying to figure out" the incoming government's foreign policy, "particularly vis-à-vis Ukraine," he tells BBC Radio 4's World at One programme.

Asked about the suggestion Trump could enforce a settlement between Ukraine and Russia, he adds: "Whatever the political process there is, it must include Ukraine."

Western leaders have been calling on president-elect Trump to renew American support to Ukraine.

But France's Emmanuel Macron warns European leaders "we cannot delegate our security to the Americans forever", adding it is now time for Europe to "write its own history".

Donald Trump has repeatedly said he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine "within 24 hours" but has not clarified what either side would have to give up to secure a peace deal

[sinisterexaggerator]

Reasons to vote for Biden even though he sucks.

In his speech in Detroit last night, President Biden laid out an agenda for the first 100 days of his second term. Among other initiatives it included:

Restoring Roe v. Wade

Signing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act

Expanding Social Security and Medicare

Ending all medical debt

Raising the minimum wage to a living wage

Passing the PRO Act to enable workers to organize

Banning assault weapons

Leading the world on clean energy

Lowering childhood poverty by restoring the child tax credit

$35 insulin cap for all and lowering prescription drug costs

Building more affordable housing

Investing in child care and elder care

Don’t let Trump win. Fuck Project 2025.

[partisan-by-default]

During a Tuesday appearance in New York City, Ford CEO Jim Farley focused on two big threats to U.S. auto manufacturers and their suppliers: Trump’s vow to withdraw support for electric vehicles and his enthusiasm for big, broad tariffs, especially against Canada and Mexico.

“Jobs will be at risk” if Trump ends the EV support, Farley said, according to an account in the Detroit News.

As for those tariffs, Farley said, they could “blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we’ve never seen.”

CEOs aren’t always correct, and they’re certainly not always looking out for the best interests of their workers. But the admonition from Farley, who was speaking at the Wolfe Research Auto, Auto Tech and Semiconductor Conference, echoes what labor unions and many analysts have been saying about the industry and how it will fare if Trump makes the changes he has promised.

Recent federal support for EVs has helped spark an explosion in factory construction for the vehicles and their component parts, in a region stretching from the upper Midwest to a new “battery belt” in the South. It also has fueled rising EV sales, allowing the “legacy” U.S. automakers like Ford and General Motors to make up some of the ground they’ve lost to competitors in China, where the government has spent more than two decades nurturing its own EV industry.

But government subsidies in the U.S. have largely come through the Inflation Reduction Act, the sweeping 2022 Democratic climate legislation President Joe Biden signed into law. And Trump is not a fan — of clean energy policies generally (he has famously called climate change a “hoax”) or of federal EV policies (which he says are forcing the industry to make unappealing, unprofitable cars).

[vague-humanoid]

Apparently, “democracy” is when Black people must choose between maintaining our dwindling civil rights or shipping 250-pound bombs to explode Gazan schools full of Palestinians praying in peace. Otherwise, if we refuse this dead-end choice, we must want the other guy to win. This zero-sum exchange was on display during a Detroit, Michigan rally on August 7 when Harris smugly shouted down pro-Palestinian protesters, “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking!” 

Immediately, her mammy for empire impression emboldened her base. The crowd raved in cheers and chants, heralding her as a no-nonsense Black woman letting those snot nose protesters know who’s boss. This dismissive response has ruffled Palestinians and Palestinian supporters alike; some had hoped Harris may depart ways with President Biden’s steadfast support of Israel’s carnage in Gaza. The Harris campaign quickly shot down such hopes when they clarified their opposition to any arms embargo on Israel’s slaughter. Since then the U.S. has approved 20 billion dollars in weapons sales to the Zionist State. But it need not matter since Harris is the imperialist woman our Black grandmothers always dreamed of becoming, so we’re told.