#Maureen Richardson

[rbolick]

Books On Books Collection - Claire Bolton

Co-founder of The Alembic Press with David Bolton, Claire Bolton is an independent historian of printing and type as well as an aficionado of handmade paper. She recently donated works in shifu (a spun and woven paper textile) to the Bodleian. Although she disclaims classification as a book artist, her works in the Books On Books Collection — especially her collaboration with Molly Coy called…

[yen-sids-tournament]

The Parent Trap: Hayley Mills (1961) v Lindsay Lohan (1998)

You do not have to see both to vote, but it might have been helpful.

Feel free to share opinions or explanations with comments/tags/rbs

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alex Kaplan at MMFA:

A group of far-right media figures has announced the formation of a militia group that is dedicated to “mobiliz[ing] to DEFEND this Republic from any enemy.” The newly formed group includes Rumble streamers Pete Santilli and Stew Peters, who have both called for political opponents to be killed. The militia has established several social media accounts with the apparent aim of recruiting members, including an account on Instagram. On June 3, podcaster and alleged January 6 participant Jake Lang announced a “NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL MILITIA” called the “North American Patriot and Liberty Militia,” or “NAPALM” for short. Lang claimed that NAPALM was “organized and ready to mobilize to DEFEND this Republic from any enemy. Forgien or Domestic.” Lang — who wrote that he would serve as “national chairman” of the militia group — “faces multiple charges of assaulting law enforcement officers” and has been held in jail ahead of his September trial for his alleged crimes and what a judge called “a continued willingness to engage in violence.” The militia’s site, which was linked in the announcement post, claims that the militia already has “over 20,000+ members across all 50 states,” including “active Sheriffs, military, veterans, emergency responders, doctors, farmers, entrepreneurs, and blue collar Americans.” [...] To promote and recruit for the militia, the group established public, state-specific Telegram groups for people to join and then be vetted for more private chats. The militia urges people to “make your Telegram account anonymous before joining,” and a message in the public groups details next steps “to get you placed in your Vetted County Militia chat where you can message back and forth with other members & the Leadership.”

A group of far-right social media influencers such as Couy Griffin and Stew Peters are recruiting to form a new right-wing extremist militia called North American Patriot and Liberty Militia (NAPALM).

[dearclassictvandfilm]

Green in Irish Films

Evelyn (2002)

The Secret Scripture (2016)

Ondine (2009)

The Quiet Man (1952)

Widows' Peak (1994)

Leap Year (2010)

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[letterboxd-loggd]

The Holly and the Ivy (1952) George More O’Ferrall

December 17th 2022

[bargainsleuthbooks]

Book Reviews: Kennedy Edition #NetGalley #NewBooks Jackie: A Novel; Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Our Jackie: Public Claims on a Private Life; Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

It's time for another round-up of reviews of new or soon-to-be published books. This time, I'm reviewing four books about the #Kennedys. #NetGalley #ARCReview #BookReview #Asknot #LittleBrownandcompany #ourjackie #nyupress #jackieanovel

Anyone that has followed this blog for any length of time knows that much like the British Royal Family, I am down for most any book on the Kennedys. This year, I have already read four new books that shed more light on the family that some call American royalty, some more flattering than others. Here’s a round-up! Most books can be found at the affiliate links below or try your local library!…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Vote Blue

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 25, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 26, 2024

The Democratic National Convention buoyed the Democrats. Thirty-four million dollars worth of donations came into ActBlue on the night of Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech. That money added to the other donations pouring in to make a record-breaking total of $540 million since July 22, when Harris’s campaign launched. 

Analyzing voter registrations in Michigan, pollster Tom Bonier found an immediate increase in young women registering to vote in the week of July 21, and his models suggest a 20-point Democratic advantage among those new registrants. FiveThirtyEight shows Harris up 2.7 points over Trump in the national polling average, a six-point improvement from Biden’s last day as a candidate. Across the country, the campaign has 400,000 volunteers.

Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz will cross southern Georgia by bus next week to build on the momentum of the convention, working with the 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers, and 24 campaign offices across the state. 

Trump and the MAGA Republicans have not taken the Democrats’ momentum quietly. Trump has been frantically posting. 

On Thursday morning he assured readers on his social media channel that “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” although he has boasted about ending the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected women’s access to abortion and suggested that women who obtain abortions should be punished. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote that his posts “were too ridiculous even for Trump,” and she wondered if his account had been hacked by Iranians. 

Then Trump went to Montezuma Pass, Arizona, to praise a section of border wall constructed there. A Border Patrol union leader called it the “Trump Wall,” and Isaac Arnsdorf, Marianne LeVine and Erin Patrick O'Connor of the Washington Post wrote that Trump’s visit was designed to recapture the storyline of this presidential race from Harris. But it turned out that the section he visited was actually built under President Barack Obama. The nearby Trump portion was unfinished and cost at least $35 million per mile. As president, the reporters note, “Trump spent more than $11 billion to finish more than 450 miles of wall along the almost 2,000-mile southern border, one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in history.” 

Harris’s acceptance speech had Trump apparently beside himself. During her 38-minute speech he posted 59 times on his social media platform, saying, among other things, “WHERE’S HUNTER?”  referring to President Joe Biden’s son. After the speech ended, he called in to the Fox News Channel to rant, in what Dowd called a “scream-of-consciousness,” in which he insisted he is “doing very well in the polls,” until host Bret Baier cut him off. So he turned to right-wing media outlet Newsmax, where he continued his diatribe.  

That night, apparently increasingly concerned about his chances of election, Trump—or his team, because it didn’t really sound like him—reached out on social media to Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whom he has lambasted since 2021 for refusing to help him steal the 2020 election. As recently as August 3, Trump went after Kemp, but on Thursday he thanked the governor “for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country. I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “Nothing tells you Trump is in full panic more than seeing him crawl back to nemesis Brian Kemp begging for help in Georgia.” “Kemp wanted a public groveling,” Ron Filipkowski wrote, “and that’s what Trump did tonight.” 

It wasn’t just Trump who was concerned about the Democratic National Convention. A number of prominent Republicans who will be voting for Harris spoke there, providing a permission structure for other Republicans to shift their support to Harris and Walz. But that message did not make it through to viewers of the Fox News Channel. Media Matters, which monitors right-wing media, reported that the Fox News Channel did not air any of the Republicans’ DNC speeches. 

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan complained that Democrats “stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own”—as if somehow Democrats shouldn’t be able to claim either faith or patriotism—and worried that Trump “is famously off his game.” His “old insult shtick isn’t working,” and when he tries to read from a teleprompter, “he talks like a tranquilized robot.” Because he has insulted everything, when he now disparages something, she wrote, “it seems part of his act.”  

Recognizing the momentum of the Harris-Walz campaign, the Trump-Vance campaign on Saturday sent out a memo predicting a post-convention bump for Harris-Walz but promising the bump would be temporary. It also did not mention that Trump and Vance did not get the normal post-convention bounce after their 2024 convention in July. 

Friday brought more bad news for the Trump campaign when twelve Republican lawyers who served in the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush wrote an open letter endorsing Harris because they believe Trump is a threat to American democracy and the rule of law. They continued: "[W]e urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris."  

They join conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig, who endorsed Harris on Wednesday and wrote: “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”

Also on Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was running for president as an Independent, suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. He joined Trump onstage in Glendale, Arizona, to the music of the Foo Fighters, who made it clear the campaign did not ask permission to use the song, they would not have allowed it, and that they will donate all royalties from its use by Trump’s campaign to the Harris-Walz campaign.

It is not clear that Kennedy’s endorsement will help Trump much. He was polling at under 5%, and his numbers were dropping. Kennedy also is a poor candidate to help Trump combat the “weird” label the Democrats have attached to his campaign. His odd past includes recent stories that he claimed in court to suffer from a worm in his brain and that he dumped a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park and tried to make it look as if a bike had hit it. Josh Marshall added that the endorsement also “puts a spotlight on the fact that [Trump’s] desperate and trying basically anything now to shake up the race.”

Five of Kennedy’s siblings called the endorsement “a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.” Quoting President John F. Kennedy, his grandson Jack Schlossberg endorsed Harris on stage at the DNC. 

Trump seemed thrilled with the endorsement, though. On Saturday he shared a post calling himself and Kennedy “the Strongest anti-establishment ticket in American History.” But, of course, Kennedy is not on the ticket. J.D. Vance is. 

Vance’s dismal rollout has not gotten better. He appears to have taken on the task of actually campaigning for the ticket, but he is enormously inexperienced, and it’s not going terribly well. An awkward visit to a donut shop in Georgia where Vance ordered “whatever makes sense” has become a viral TikTok meme. An AP_NORC poll has Vance at –17 (27% favorable versus 44% unfavorable); Walz is +11 (36 to 25). 

Finally, in a post on his social media site tonight, Trump appears to be hinting that he will pull out of the planned debate between him and Vice President Harris scheduled for September 10. “I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning,” he wrote, “and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?... Stay tuned!!!” 

One other item came from Trump this week, but it got little oxygen with everything else that was going on. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been teasing a “big announcement” this month related to cryptocurrency and decentralized finance, or DeFi. On Thursday, Trump announced a new cryptocurrency project called “The DeFiant Ones” and linked to a Telegram channel set up on August 6, the same day Eric posted that such a project was in the works. 

Telegram is a social media app launched by Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov, and it is the main communications tool in Russia. Durov was arrested today in France on charges that Telegram has been used for money laundering and other crimes. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[panfritoo]

Exhibition Review: Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990

Anything feminist puts me instantly on guard. Feminism sells. Sure. But can't female artists be recognised for anything other than having a vagina? Female artists in Britain did not occupy the spaces of museums and galleries, their work has been safeguarded under individual mattresses and home archives. So I approached Tate Britain's exhibition with a certain scepticism, wondering if the show would be a tokenistic gesture of promoting ‘inclusivity’.

From the get-go, there is one thing obvious. There are no Guerrilla Girls. There are no Mona Lisas. Each piece, interdependent, brings dimension to all the contradictions and experiences of women at a time of significant sociopolitical change. As a result, the exhibition is messy and fatiguing; it almost tries too much at once. However, this is no sign of failure, there is a feminist, non-capitalist politics which informs the curation of the exhibition. Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990 showcases the works of over 100 female artists who used their work to campaign for women’s rights and whose contribution to British culture has been incredibly uncredited. 

Arranged chronologically, the exhibition begins with photographs taken by then-20-year-old Chandon Fraser of the First Women’s Liberation Conference that took place in Oxford. Unlike images of any male gathering, these images are intimate, women are smiling and some carrying their infants with them. These women are wives, mothers, activists and artists all carrying the burden of being a woman in each role. Maureen Scott's painting Mother and Child at Breaking Point supplies an honest reflection on being a devoted mother and at the same time, losing the sense of ‘I’. Or, Susan Hiller's "10 Months," where she documents her growing pregnant belly through photographs, along with text from her journal where she writes about being a woman artist. At the time, being a female artist and a mother were considered incompatible. These works demonstrate that while society accepts that there are good, bad, and they-went-to-buy-milk-they-said fathers, mothers are held to different standards. 

The works are witty and thought provoking, for instance, Monica SJOOS referencing phallic culture with a painting of a big penis overcasting a city or Rose Finn-Kelcey's 'The Divided Self' a self-portrait of her sitting on a bench at Hyde Park, bookended, appearing on opposite sides of the bench in conversation with her 'other' self. The photograph examines the dichotomy between the person we are in private and the person we are in public. 

The exhibition also recognises the influence of subcultures in their role of pushing the boundaries behind the theatrics of womanhood. In the 1980s, against London's depressive political backdrop, a bunch of working-class teenagers were determined to build their own swinging London and escape into an electric new counterculture. These kids would gather around cubs like Blitz's which made the ultimate test bed for new romantics, punks, fashion and lesbian squatters. The photographs by Jill Posner of lesbian couples inhabiting new places were a way to challenge traditional female beauty canons aimed at male arousal and defy sexual orientation attitudes. While others such as Jill Westwood’s photographs of her wearing a latex outfit or Liz Rideal’s self-portraits of her face in a photo booth as she reaches orgasm would use hyper-sexualisation as a means of declaring control over their bodies and acknowledging their sexual self. 

It becomes evident that women produced work on the fringes of the art industry, creating their magazines, putting shows at alternative venues and sustaining their work through collaboration. The postal art project supported by Monica Ross and Su Richardson is an example of the networks women built to disseminate their work. These works included in the exhibition are small-scale pieces of artwork using DIY techniques that women would produce on kitchen counters with random items found in the house. These collectibles were mailed between women creating documentation of their experiences. Forms of low-status art became a significant medium of feminist art, which is a direct reflection of women's precarious material conditions at the time. 

The exhibition does not focus on a universal experience of women, each room has the function to provide a new layer to the narrative of feminism activism in Britain. Marlene Smiths' “My mother opens the door at 7 am. She is not bulletproof” a portrait of Dorothy Cherry Grace who was shot at her home in Brixton documents the BLK Art Group's contribution to feminist activism and racism in Britain.  

Turning our view back to the present, what does it all mean? Perhaps this is the most important. One cannot stop themselves from making connections between women’s rights then and now. Abortion is being criminalised in my countries disowning women from their bodies, women are still inflicted between becoming a mother and pursuing their careers, walking alone at night is still dangerous, and social media algorithms have taken a role in exposing young minds to figures such as Andrew Tate and their “toxic masculinity” content. But at the same time, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in time but now.  

I’ve confessed to myself that I am not a feminist of my time, as a young woman I’ve become weary of the term. Women In Revolt has put into question why I refuse to recognise this history of my gender when it means everything I take for granted now. Despite my initial judgements, this exhibition is a revelation. 

[quoththemaven]

2023 Favoritest Book Reads

Vineland - Pynchon, Thomas

Prophet - Blaché, Sin & Helen Macdonald

And the Ass Saw the Angel - Cave, Nick

Lou Reed: The King of New York - Hermes, Will 

The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1; Rincewind, #1) - Pratchett, Terry

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative - Kleon, Austin 

Sonic Life: A Memoir - Moore, Thurston

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1) - Jemisin, N.K. 

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law - Roach, Mary

Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too - Sun, Jonny

The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3) - Okorafor, Nnedi 

Home (Binti, #2) - Okorafor, Nnedi 

Binti: Sacred Fire (Binti, #1.5) - Okorafor, Nnedi 

Binti (Binti, #1) - Okorafor, Nnedi 

Black Paradox - Ito, Junji

David Bowie's Low (33 1/3) - Wilcken, Hugo

Faith, Hope and Carnage - Cave, Nick

The Sirens of Titan - Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth - Aslan, Reza

Smashed - Ito, Junji

Time Shelter - Gospodinov, Georgi

Brian Eno's Another Green World (33 1/3) - Dayal, Geeta

Armageddon in Retrospect - Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

Neverwhere (London Below, #1) - Gaiman, Neil 

The Committed (The Sympathizer #2) - Nguyen, Viet Thanh 

Into the Great Wide Open - Canty, Kevin 

Mongrels - Jones, Stephen Graham 

DisneyWar - Stewart, James B.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex - Roach, Mary

The Left Hand of Darkness - Le Guin, Ursula K.

My Bloody Valentine's Loveless (33 1/3) - McGonigal, Mike 

Suttree - McCarthy, Cormac

Life's Work: A Memoir - Milch, David

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - Schwab, V.E.

Against the Day - Pynchon, Thomas

Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood - Ryan, Maureen 

Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA (33 1/3) - Himes, Geoffrey

La Moustache - Carrère, Emmanuel

Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid (33 1/3) - Favreau, Alyssa 

Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea - Pinsker, Sarah 

The Man Without a Shadow - Oates, Joyce Carol

The City & the City - Miéville, China 

Mem - Morrow, Bethany C. 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Harari, Yuval Noah

Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs (33 1/3) - Eidelstein, Eric

Gutshot - Gray, Amelia 

The Price of Time (Watch What You Wish For #1) - Tigner, Tim 

The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever - Sepinwall, Alan 

Just Kids - Smith, Patti 

Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir - Hindman, Jessica Chiccehitto 

Flicker - Roszak, Theodore

Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers - Miller, James Andrew 

Flashback - Simmons, Dan

Flaming Lips' Zaireeka (33 1/3) - Richardson, Mark 

The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1) - Nguyen, Viet Thanh 

Pavement's Wowee Zowee (33 1/3) - Charles, Bryan

Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1) - Gibson, William

Invisible Cities - Calvino, Italo

Don't Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2) - Jones, Stephen Graham 

The Wes Anderson Collection - Seitz, Matt Zoller

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said - Dick, Philip K.

Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly (33 1/3) - Maner, Sequoia

The Nineties - Klosterman, Chuck

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Zevin, Gabrielle 

Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age - Mitenbuler, Reid

A Heart That Works - Delaney, Rob 

Imago (Xenogenesis, #3) - Butler, Octavia E.

Cryptonomicon (Crypto, #1) - Stephenson, Neal 

Blacktop Wasteland - Cosby, S.A. 

Pearl Jam's Vs. (33 1/3) - Brownlee, Clint

Tracy Flick Can't Win - Perrotta, Tom

Devil House - Darnielle, John 

Adulthood Rites (Xenogenesis, #2) - Butler, Octavia E.

Heat 2 - Mann, Michael & Meg Gardiner

Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures (33 1/3) - Ott, Chris

Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1) - Butler, Octavia E.

The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer - Stephenson, Neal 

The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard, #3) - Lynch, Scott 

The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2) - Atwood, Margaret 

[kwebtv]

With Murder in Mind - CBS - May 12, 1992

AKA: With Savage Intent

Crime Drama (Based on a True Story)

Running Time: 100 minutes

Stars:

Elizabeth Montgomery as Gayle Wolfer

Robert Foxworth as Bob Sprague

Howard Rollins as Samuel Carver

Maureen O'Sullivan as Aunt Mildred

Lee Richardson as John Condon

Paul McCrane as Tim Francyzk

Danton Stone as Benny Lazarra

Tom Mardirosian as Captain Bob Browning

Jude Ciccolella as Conrad Marley

Ronny Cox as McLaughlin

Mary Ann Hagan as Susan Claridge

Adam LeFevre as Roger McBain

Kevin O'Rourke as Ted Sloan

Seret Scott as Sarah Bendix

[creativeenquiryemmamilligan]

Artist Research: Maureen Richardson

Author of multiple books on paper making, Richardson has been experimenting with this practice fr over 40 years. Combing her love for recycling and gardening, she has investigated affordable ways to make paper. As a young woman, she took materials, such as straw, and boiled them in an alkaline solution before liquidising it to make a paper pulp. Her frames were hand made as buying them was a costly endeavour so she crafted them out of wood off cuts and a fine netting. By avoiding traditional methods of paper making, Richardson got a wide variety of results, for example, using a palette knife to remove the sheet of paper from the netting rather than using a press and letting them air dry. She researched different cultural methods of creating paper to influence her own journey, such as a practice from Thailand, where artists would dry the paper on a slope outside and Egyptian papyrus. She is part of the international association of paper makers and paper artists. She also has works where she has captured images of the plant materials she uses in front of a light source which has a striking result.

Xxx

[flapperdame16]

legendary people I lived within their lifetime

Diana, Princsss of Wales 1961-1997

James Stewart

James Garner

Dame Julie Andrews 1935-

Queen Elizabeth II 1926-2022

Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh 1921-2021

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother 1900-2002

Robert Redford- actor director 1936-

Malcolm Young- ac/ dc

Carl Wilson - the beach boys 1946-1998

Natasha Richardson

Dame Maggie Smith

Dame Angela lansbury

Lauren Bacall

Paul newman

Frank Sinatra 1915-1998

Elizabeth taylor

Heddy Lamaar

Maureen O'Hara 1920-2015

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

August 25, 2024 (Sunday)

The Democratic National Convention buoyed the Democrats. Thirty-four million dollars worth of donations came into ActBlue on the night of Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech. That money added to the other donations pouring in to make a record-breaking total of $540 million since July 22, when Harris’s campaign launched.

Analyzing voter registrations in Michigan, pollster Tom Bonier found an immediate increase in young women registering to vote in the week of July 21, and his models suggest a 20-point Democratic advantage among those new registrants. FiveThirtyEight shows Harris up 2.7 points over Trump in the national polling average, a six-point improvement from Biden’s last day as a candidate. Across the country, the campaign has 400,000 volunteers.

Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz will cross southern Georgia by bus next week to build on the momentum of the convention, working with the 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers, and 24 campaign offices across the state.

Trump and the MAGA Republicans have not taken the Democrats’ momentum quietly. Trump has been frantically posting.

On Thursday morning he assured readers on his social media channel that “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” although he has boasted about ending the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected women’s access to abortion and suggested that women who obtain abortions should be punished. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote that his posts “were too ridiculous even for Trump,” and she wondered if his account had been hacked by Iranians.

Then Trump went to Montezuma Pass, Arizona, to praise a section of border wall constructed there. A Border Patrol union leader called it the “Trump Wall,” and Isaac Arnsdorf, Marianne LeVine and Erin Patrick O'Connor of the Washington Post wrote that Trump’s visit was designed to recapture the storyline of this presidential race from Harris.

But it turned out that the section he visited was actually built under President Barack Obama. The nearby Trump portion was unfinished and cost at least $35 million per mile. As president, the reporters note, “Trump spent more than $11 billion to finish more than 450 miles of wall along the almost 2,000-mile southern border, one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in history.”

Harris’s acceptance speech had Trump apparently beside himself. During her 38-minute speech he posted 59 times on his social media platform, saying, among other things, “WHERE’S HUNTER?” referring to President Joe Biden’s son. After the speech ended, he called in to the Fox News Channel to rant, in what Dowd called a “scream-of-consciousness,” in which he insisted he is “doing very well in the polls,” until host Bret Baier cut him off. So he turned to right-wing media outlet Newsmax, where he continued his diatribe.

That night, apparently increasingly concerned about his chances of election, Trump—or his team, because it didn’t really sound like him—reached out on social media to Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whom he has lambasted since 2021 for refusing to help him steal the 2020 election. As recently as August 3, Trump went after Kemp, but on Thursday he thanked the governor “for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country. I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “Nothing tells you Trump is in full panic more than seeing him crawl back to nemesis Brian Kemp begging for help in Georgia.” “Kemp wanted a public groveling,” Ron Filipkowski wrote, “and that’s what Trump did tonight.”

It wasn’t just Trump who was concerned about the Democratic National Convention. A number of prominent Republicans who will be voting for Harris spoke there, providing a permission structure for other Republicans to shift their support to Harris and Walz. But that message did not make it through to viewers of the Fox News Channel. Media Matters, which monitors right-wing media, reported that the Fox News Channel did not air any of the Republicans’ DNC speeches.

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan complained that Democrats “stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own”—as if somehow Democrats shouldn’t be able to claim either faith or patriotism—and worried that Trump “is famously off his game.” His “old insult shtick isn’t working,” and when he tries to read from a teleprompter, “he talks like a tranquilized robot.” Because he has insulted everything, when he now disparages something, she wrote, “it seems part of his act.”

Recognizing the momentum of the Harris-Walz campaign, the Trump-Vance campaign on Saturday sent out a memo predicting a post-convention bump for Harris-Walz but promising the bump would be temporary. It also did not mention that Trump and Vance did not get the normal post-convention bounce after their 2024 convention in July.

Friday brought more bad news for the Trump campaign when twelve Republican lawyers who served in the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush wrote an open letter endorsing Harris because they believe Trump is a threat to American democracy and the rule of law. They continued: "[W]e urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris."

They join conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig, who endorsed Harris on Wednesday and wrote: “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”

Also on Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was running for president as an Independent, suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. He joined Trump onstage in Glendale, Arizona, to the music of the Foo Fighters, who made it clear the campaign did not ask permission to use the song, they would not have allowed it, and that they will donate all royalties from its use by Trump’s campaign to the Harris-Walz campaign.

It is not clear that Kennedy’s endorsement will help Trump much. He was polling at under 5%, and his numbers were dropping. Kennedy also is a poor candidate to help Trump combat the “weird” label the Democrats have attached to his campaign. His odd past includes recent stories that he claimed in court to suffer from a worm in his brain and that he dumped a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park and tried to make it look as if a bike had hit it. Josh Marshall added that the endorsement also “puts a spotlight on the fact that [Trump’s] desperate and trying basically anything now to shake up the race.”

Five of Kennedy’s siblings called the endorsement “a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.” Quoting President John F. Kennedy, his grandson Jack Schlossberg endorsed Harris on stage at the DNC.

Trump seemed thrilled with the endorsement, though. On Saturday he shared a post calling himself and Kennedy “the Strongest anti-establishment ticket in American History.” But, of course, Kennedy is not on the ticket. J.D. Vance is.

Vance’s dismal rollout has not gotten better. He appears to have taken on the task of actually campaigning for the ticket, but he is enormously inexperienced, and it’s not going terribly well. An awkward visit to a donut shop in Georgia where Vance ordered “whatever makes sense” has become a viral TikTok meme. An AP_NORC poll has Vance at –17 (27% favorable versus 44% unfavorable); Walz is +11 (36 to 25).

Finally, in a post on his social media site tonight, Trump appears to be hinting that he will pull out of the planned debate between him and Vice President Harris scheduled for September 10. “I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning,” he wrote, “and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?... Stay tuned!!!”

One other item came from Trump this week, but it got little oxygen with everything else that was going on. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been teasing a “big announcement” this month related to cryptocurrency and decentralized finance, or DeFi. On Thursday, Trump announced a new cryptocurrency project called “The DeFiant Ones” and linked to a Telegram channel set up on August 6, the same day Eric posted that such a project was in the works.

Telegram is a social media app launched by Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov, and it is the main communications tool in Russia. Durov was arrested today in France on charges that Telegram has been used for money laundering and other crimes.

[misfitwashere]

August 25, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

AUG 26

The Democratic National Convention buoyed the Democrats. Thirty-four million dollars worth of donations came into ActBlue on the night of Vice President Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech. That money added to the other donations pouring in to make a record-breaking total of $540 million since July 22, when Harris’s campaign launched. 

Analyzing voter registrations in Michigan, pollster Tom Bonier found an immediate increase in young women registering to vote in the week of July 21, and his models suggest a 20-point Democratic advantage among those new registrants. FiveThirtyEight shows Harris up 2.7 points over Trump in the national polling average, a six-point improvement from Biden’s last day as a candidate. Across the country, the campaign has 400,000 volunteers.

Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz will cross southern Georgia by bus next week to build on the momentum of the convention, working with the 35,000 volunteers, 174 staffers, and 24 campaign offices across the state. 

Trump and the MAGA Republicans have not taken the Democrats’ momentum quietly. Trump has been frantically posting. 

On Thursday morning he assured readers on his social media channel that “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” although he has boasted about ending the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected women’s access to abortion and suggested that women who obtain abortions should be punished. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote that his posts “were too ridiculous even for Trump,” and she wondered if his account had been hacked by Iranians. 

Then Trump went to Montezuma Pass, Arizona, to praise a section of border wall constructed there. A Border Patrol union leader called it the “Trump Wall,” and Isaac Arnsdorf, Marianne LeVine and Erin Patrick O'Connor of the Washington Post wrote that Trump’s visit was designed to recapture the storyline of this presidential race from Harris. But it turned out that the section he visited was actually built under President Barack Obama. The nearby Trump portion was unfinished and cost at least $35 million per mile. As president, the reporters note, “Trump spent more than $11 billion to finish more than 450 miles of wall along the almost 2,000-mile southern border, one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in history.” 

Harris’s acceptance speech had Trump apparently beside himself. During her 38-minute speech he posted 59 times on his social media platform, saying, among other things, “WHERE’S HUNTER?”  referring to President Joe Biden’s son. After the speech ended, he called in to the Fox News Channel to rant, in what Dowd called a “scream-of-consciousness,” in which he insisted he is “doing very well in the polls,” until host Bret Baier cut him off. So he turned to right-wing media outlet Newsmax, where he continued his diatribe.  

That night, apparently increasingly concerned about his chances of election, Trump—or his team, because it didn’t really sound like him—reached out on social media to Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whom he has lambasted since 2021 for refusing to help him steal the 2020 election. As recently as August 3, Trump went after Kemp, but on Thursday he thanked the governor “for all of your help and support in Georgia, where a win is so important to the success of our Party and, most importantly, our Country. I look forward to working with you, your team, and all of my friends in Georgia to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “Nothing tells you Trump is in full panic more than seeing him crawl back to nemesis Brian Kemp begging for help in Georgia.” “Kemp wanted a public groveling,” Ron Filipkowski wrote, “and that’s what Trump did tonight.” 

It wasn’t just Trump who was concerned about the Democratic National Convention. A number of prominent Republicans who will be voting for Harris spoke there, providing a permission structure for other Republicans to shift their support to Harris and Walz. But that message did not make it through to viewers of the Fox News Channel. Media Matters, which monitors right-wing media, reported that the Fox News Channel did not air any of the Republicans’ DNC speeches. 

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan complained that Democrats “stole traditional Republican themes (faith, patriotism) and claimed them as their own”—as if somehow Democrats shouldn’t be able to claim either faith or patriotism—and worried that Trump “is famously off his game.” His “old insult shtick isn’t working,” and when he tries to read from a teleprompter, “he talks like a tranquilized robot.” Because he has insulted everything, when he now disparages something, she wrote, “it seems part of his act.”  

Recognizing the momentum of the Harris-Walz campaign, the Trump-Vance campaign on Saturday sent out a memo predicting a post-convention bump for Harris-Walz but promising the bump would be temporary. It also did not mention that Trump and Vance did not get the normal post-convention bounce after their 2024 convention in July. 

Friday brought more bad news for the Trump campaign when twelve Republican lawyers who served in the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush wrote an open letter endorsing Harris because they believe Trump is a threat to American democracy and the rule of law. They continued: "[W]e urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris."  

They join conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig, who endorsed Harris on Wednesday and wrote: “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”

Also on Friday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was running for president as an Independent, suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump. He joined Trump onstage in Glendale, Arizona, to the music of the Foo Fighters, who made it clear the campaign did not ask permission to use the song, they would not have allowed it, and that they will donate all royalties from its use by Trump’s campaign to the Harris-Walz campaign.

It is not clear that Kennedy’s endorsement will help Trump much. He was polling at under 5%, and his numbers were dropping. Kennedy also is a poor candidate to help Trump combat the “weird” label the Democrats have attached to his campaign. His odd past includes recent stories that he claimed in court to suffer from a worm in his brain and that he dumped a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park and tried to make it look as if a bike had hit it. Josh Marshall added that the endorsement also “puts a spotlight on the fact that [Trump’s] desperate and trying basically anything now to shake up the race.”

Five of Kennedy’s siblings called the endorsement “a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.” Quoting President John F. Kennedy, his grandson Jack Schlossberg endorsed Harris on stage at the DNC. 

Trump seemed thrilled with the endorsement, though. On Saturday he shared a post calling himself and Kennedy “the Strongest anti-establishment ticket in American History.” But, of course, Kennedy is not on the ticket. J.D. Vance is. 

Vance’s dismal rollout has not gotten better. He appears to have taken on the task of actually campaigning for the ticket, but he is enormously inexperienced, and it’s not going terribly well. An awkward visit to a donut shop in Georgia where Vance ordered “whatever makes sense” has become a viral TikTok meme. An AP_NORC poll has Vance at –17 (27% favorable versus 44% unfavorable); Walz is +11 (36 to 25). 

Finally, in a post on his social media site tonight, Trump appears to be hinting that he will pull out of the planned debate between him and Vice President Harris scheduled for September 10. “I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning,” he wrote, “and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?... Stay tuned!!!” 

One other item came from Trump this week, but it got little oxygen with everything else that was going on. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have been teasing a “big announcement” this month related to cryptocurrency and decentralized finance, or DeFi. On Thursday, Trump announced a new cryptocurrency project called “The DeFiant Ones” and linked to a Telegram channel set up on August 6, the same day Eric posted that such a project was in the works. 

Telegram is a social media app launched by Russian-born billionaire Pavel Durov, and it is the main communications tool in Russia. Durov was arrested today in France on charges that Telegram has been used for money laundering and other crimes. 

[lesbiancosimaniehaus]

I read some screenshots of an article someone posted about RFK Jr’s first wife, who killed herself because that man made her life miserable and tbh… astonishing that someone could make Joseph Kennedy Sr.—the man who had his developmentally delayed daughter undergo a lobotomy that was badly botched, and who them hid her from the family for about two decades—seem like not the worst guy in a family. This is about Bobby and Ethel Kennedy’s son, who have always struck me as the least sketchy ones (who were public facing, at any rate. Eunice is probably the best of the lot). The one trying to run for president! Like. Questionable politics and opinions aside, his treatment of the mother of his children has him looking more than trump than someone w the morals I’d want in the White House.

It’s the excerpt of a forthcoming book