#and that it's an unfair talking point against trump

[trappedinafantasy37]

The worst part about working in a male dominated field is being surrounded by men, complaining that Trump might lose and that if it weren't for women voting, everything would be fine. Never have I ever filled up with fear so quickly. I have felt unsafe at previous jobs before, but it was always because of customers. And customers eventually leave. This is the first time I have felt unsafe because of my coworkers and they have made it quite clear that they think my rights should be taken away.

I'm sorry to get personal/political here. But I'm a little freaked out and on the verge of a panic attack. How the fuck am I supposed to go to work tomorrow without being terrified? How am I going to survive the entire week, waiting for the states to count? I live in a purple state and it can go either way. I have only been old enough to vote in two elections and both times I've had to vote for my life because I am a minority three times over. This isn't fair!

[lethea1969]

I honestly don't know what to say because if your entire argument hinges on the fact that you want less dead Palestinians then not voting/voting third party is Absolutely NOT the choice supported by your argument. Honestly what part of Trump Will Be WORSE! do you not understand? Like please look up harm reduction omg. Do you think that some sort of miracle is going to appear out of thin air and create a candidate that doesn't want to support Israel to some extent? Or are you just one of those people who want the world to get worse (like Hamas) to force a revolution ala the rapture.

Like fr I think the only reason people just aren't paying attention to Trump's plans and making such a fuss about Biden is because he Is the sitting president. No where near the amount of accusations towards other people in the US government or who have the potential to be in the US government (cough *Trump* cough).

Really giving "people pissed off at Martin Van Buren about the economy under his presidency even tho all the decisions that created the crappy economy happened under Andrew Jackson" energy.

Look.

I have made you a chart. A very simple chart.

People say "You have to draw the line somewhere, and Biden has crossed it-" and my response is "Trump has crossed way more lines than Biden".

These categories are based off of actual policy enacted by both of these men while they were in office.

If the ONLY LINE YOU CARE ABOUT is line 12, you have an incredible amount of privilege, AND YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT PALESTINIANS. You obviously have nothing to fear from a Trump presidency, and you do not give a fuck if a ceasefire actually occurs. You are obviously fine if your queer, disabled, and marginalized loved ones are hurt. You clearly don't care about the status of American democracy, which Trump has openly stated he plans to destroy on day 1 he is in office.

[sunnyxdani]

there’s a lack of understanding about the point of life is strange 2

i don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion but it just makes me chuckle a bit when people talk about how much they hate every ending and how there should be an ending where their charges are dropped. like, yes, we all wish sean and daniel could’ve gotten justice like they deserved. but, as a black person playing this game, not once did i ever legitimately expect that to be the outcome.

there isn’t a happily ever after to this story and that’s quite literally the entire point. the game is about how fucked up the system is against people of color, specifically how it affected mexicans in that point in time with trump being in the picture.

i don’t know, i just find it funny how it truly feels like a lot of white people played this game and were like “:000 what????? you mean sean either ends up in prison for 15 years, dead, or is left to defend himself in another country????? but that’s SO unfair!” yeah. exactly. glad you’re caught up on what institutional racism is? like idk what to tell you girl

like, please open a news app or something because this shouldn’t be surprising. and the cherry on top is that this rage is generally exclusive to these two fictional characters lmao, cases happen similar to this one irl (without the powers involved obviously) and the same people won’t blink an eye. go to a protest or call your representatives if you’re so damn mad about the wolf brothers

[unbotheredalwyn]

So obviously after the Joe breakup shit changed we had that ratty twatty and then suddenly travis. Like ratty twatty first of all made it seem like you know this person is like horrible yet you choose to be with him? Everyone called her (rightfully) out I feel like cause he is really a twat of a person and the whole ice spice collab to basically "save" Matty twattys image. I also felt like it was unfair of her fans to force her to break up with him I mean it's her life. And Joe during this time went through so much shit after the break up I remember he was papped and everyone made fun of how skinny he is and how horrible he looks (he had bags under his eyes on the photo) which is actually sad cause he lost his grandmother I think during that time and people were genuinely saying disgusting things and saying mother is looking so much better etc etc while Joe was having a downwards spiral. Again I understand no one knew his depression was that bad but fuck swifties can be more kind.

Exit ratty twatty enter travesty lord this man gives me the ick.

Swifties are blinded by their relationship but he is really not a good dude. I mean that video live of him pushing his coach and yelling? Videos online of him being openly racist, being a trump supporter (and also swifties are dumb they think bc he got vaccinated and bent the knee for black lives matter he is somehow Democrat?) honey trump is vaccinated as well. And just because he supported blm does not make him a good person. He was PAID to do all that performative shit.

I mean she has millions of fans, thousands of young girls thinking the blatant red flags of travesty is hot and shit. Tells me he can push her around too. (not to mention he supported his abusive friend that literally hit his wife.)

And it feels like she's forcing travesty tbh? Like girlie you wanted the art to be about you yet you let some man overshadow it. Because truly that's what's happening like swifties are more into him at this point and the relationship they made up in their head as Taylor.

This is where I got annoyed and took a step back. Each time they were seen Joe got thousands and thousands of hate just for what being introverted?

Then they attacked Emma (Joe's Co worker) for a cheating rumor THEY MADE UP and the shit they said were so genuinely disgusting she had to switch off her comments.

Then Ai audio dropped about Joe abusing Taylor and Ai videos circled making it seem like Joe is a cheater when he is NOT. fuck they even trended a sex scene with that Alison chick he worked with saying he said Alison (her real name) and not her character's name when he DID NOT. It was in the fucking series! This woman got slut shamed so bad she turned off comments too for literally WORKING with Joe. Swifties literally spread shit around that he cheated on Taylor with Emma and Alison when he didn't! And the fucking best of all Taylor was on the set while filming conversations with friends. She most likely saw it IN PERSON and they chose to say all this genuinely disgusting shit about Alison who I've learned is actually a pretty good person.

Here I got genuinely disgusted.

So okay again I understand that Taylor can't control all her fans but her silence while her cult mass harrases people?

Whats insane to me is Joe. Like the guy got so much hate because SHE CHOSE to lead fans on. When she announced ttpd everyone thought the title relates to Joe and Paul mescal

Joe got mass hate

Then the secret songs at eras being about cheating

Joe got death threats

ALL TO BE AN ALBUM ABOUT THE FUCKING SEWER RAT SHE CAN'T GET OVER?!

she literally took ALL the hate against Joe *knowing* she's releasing an album dissing her 6 weeks situationship is genuinely disgusting. I cannot fathom it.

And AND the only thing she could say about Joe is dude did not want to marry her bc he was severely depressed WHICH IS NOT HER PLACE TO TALK ABOUT HIS STRUGGLES?

like I am SORRY this man wants to d word next to her and she just didn't care and wanted to fuck Matty?

Her partner, that got her through her darkest times BTW, did not deserve this.

She let all this mass harrasment just happen to market ttpd. Like genuinely what the actual fuck. 2 innocent women Emma and Alison were attacked and called sluts for genuinely existing and breathing the same air as Joe. And the proof he did not cheat is in her OWN lyrics. (which swifties cannot seem to fucking read bc they'd rather attack Joe than admit this album is about a sewer nazi rat)

The hate Joe got made me cry. The disgusting things they said about him. Swifties literally threatening to bash his head in with a hammer or that he needs to hang himself and they'd enjoy seeing his body swinging from the roof.

Genuinely why would any person say this to anyone at any time?

And they made fun of depression like. What. The. Fuck. Just because Joe might not see it does not mean other people with crippling depression won't.

Oh and a side note she's still bringing up Kim on albums? Not just Kim Kim's CHILD?! leave the kid alone.

Genuinely feel like the most honest Taylor we got was during lover (a time which Joe helped her voice her political opinions and shit) and idk I just feel cheated on?

My whole life I've defended Taylor against everyone and I genuinely feel like she's showing her true colors now being with travesty and ratty and I cannot fathom how this is the same Taylor I'm seeing now as she was like a few years ago.

And it's not just Joe that got death threats BTW. When midnights came out and everyone gave honest reviews cause that evil Jack antonof little gay man ruined the production there were journalists literally getting so much death threats its insane.

Taylor gets (rightfully) called out and fans can't handle it.

She needs to address them ASAP. All these parasocial freaks. The people harrasing Joe. The people literally only seeing Taylor as a breeder for travestys children.

I can't genuinely I can't this is not how I want to feel about Taylor I mean I gave her my youth I looked up to her so much I feel so disappointed in the way she's acting yk?

Yes maybe she can't do jack shit about swifties but she can try.

And her staying quiet over Palestine? Her voice her one post about a ceasefire could change EVERYTHING.

idk at this point I can't stand to be around Taylor.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Lincoln Project :: @ProjectLincoln

Kamala Harris delivers her closer at the Elipse, as Park Police estimate a crowd of 75,000 has gathered.

* * * *

KAMALA CLOSES

TCinLA

Oct 29, 2024

To me, Kamala Harris closing speech was the kind of closing argument a prosecutor presents to a jury, lioning out why they should make the decision they will.

Anand Ghiriharadas posted an excellent analysis of her closing speech, which I am posting below.

That was a very strong closing argument from Kamala Harris. Framing the threat of fascism as not an abstraction but a distraction from a focus on your problems. Promising to move us away from the chaos and division of these years and heal families and communities.

She very deftly pitted who he is against who we are and dared people to show that their country is much better than he is.Share

She pulled off the bank shot: saying we have to save a democracy, yes, but save it for a reason, which is to make your life better. It is a complicated maneuver, and she did it well tonight.

She invited men to stand up for the women in their lives.

She talked about the border, but then quickly and rightly pivoted to the fact that we are nation of immigrants, a fact we should celebrate.

Her reclaiming of freedom and patriotism is a coup, the good kind of coup. The crowd’s embrace of patriotism and “U.S.A.!” chants tonight shows how much that message has been transmitted and left an imprint.

There was something raw and personal when she talked about how she just is irked by unfairness. It just doesn’t sit right with her. It felt like a statement of motivation that was much richer than the generic fact of being a middle-class kid. It got somewhere visceral.

We are all so exhausted by fascist threat mitigation that we forget all the awesome stuff we could be doing instead. So her section on building houses also served as a reminder that building in general, creating, dreaming, can again become our focus when he is finally gone from our lives.

She is, on a deeper level, attempting a rebranding of the Democratic Party away from big program creation, dating back to FDR, and reorienting it around quality of life improvement. Don’t talk about the programs you want to create. Talk about the pain points you want to solve.

Many of the best arguments of recent years are weaving together now. Trump’s narrow, hateful vision isn’t who we are. His project is all about him, not your problems. The soul of the nation is good and can be reclaimed. The divisions can end. Let’s build stuff instead of fight.

Most powerfully, she invoked American history from end to end, and vowed that a country founded in defiance of a petty tyrant must refuse to submit to another.

[formulaphoe]

the brutality and unfairness of formula 1

image source: f1

formula 1 is often hailed as the pinnacle of motorsport—a glamorous world filled with speed, technology, and the elites of racing. yet beneath the polished surface lies a brutal reality that often leaves drivers and teams at the mercy of ruthless decisions and the cold calculus of performance. with the controversies surrounding recent driver sackings and the ever-looming shadow of financial disparity, it's high time to examine why many argue that f1 is not a fair sport.

ruthless reality

image source: williams racing

just recently, valtteri bottas made headlines by bluntly stating that formula 1 is "not a fair sport." this sentiment resonates deeply with fans and insiders alike, especially in light of the way teams handle their drivers. for instance, williams' mid-season decision to replace logan sargeant has raised eyebrows and sparked heated debates. was it a ruthless move? or was it justified based on performance? the circumstances around logan's sacking were especially harsh, underlining the pressure to deliver results in a sport that doesn't tolerate anything below excellence.

these decisions are just business, but they reflect a culture where loyalty and patience often take a backseat to immediate results and instant gratification. a planetf1 analysis of f1 driver sackings reveals a history of brutal firings that underscore the cutthroat nature of the sport. one moment a driver is a team's new big thing, and the next they can find themselves out of a job—often with little explanation and even less sympathy.

money talks

image source: planetf1

one of the most damning realities of formula 1 is the pervasive influence of money. while talent is certainly a necessity for success, it's increasingly clear that without financial backing, even the most skilled drivers can find their careers stymied. talent alone isn't enough—financial resources play a critical role in a driver's future on track.

the narrative is all too familiar: drivers from wealthy backgrounds secure seats, while those without such financial support are often left scrambling for alternatives. the talent pool is vast, but the pathways to success are often barricaded by financial constraints, leaving many deserving drivers in the dust.

pressure cooker environment

image source: f1

the intense pressure in f1 extends beyond just performance; it creates a hostile environment where mental health often takes a back seat. with every race being a high-stakes affair, the neverending pressure to perform can lead to a decline in mental health, resulting in public scrutiny and harsh critiques from fans and pundits alike.

this culture can be devastating, particularly for young drivers like sargeant, who may not yet have developed the thick skin required to withstand the scrutiny that comes with the job. in a sport where every mistake is magnified, the fear of failure looms large, creating a vicious cycle of anxiety and poor performance.

a system rigged against fair play

image source: valtteri bottas

as bottas pointed out, the very structure of f1 seems rigged. with teams prioritising sponsorship over pure driving skill, the sport can sometimes feel more like a corporate machine than a celebration of racing talent. the narrative that emerges is one where drivers are mere cogs in a vast, profit-driven engine—evaluated not just on their ability to race, but on their marketability and financial backing too.

this is a trend that not only alienates talented drivers, but also undermines the essence of competition. when financial clout trumps sheer talent, fans are left wondering if they are witnessing trye sporting excellence or merely a financial showcase.

a call for change

image source: reddit

the brutality and unfairness of formula 1 cannot be ignored. as we witness the rise and fall of drivers like logan sargeant and daniel ricciardo and hear the stark words of valtteri bottas, it's clear that something needs to change. the sport should be a true meritocracy, where talent is the primary determinant of success, rather than the size of a driver's bank account and mental health is valued and supported.

in a world that often glorifies the fast and the furious, it's time to take a step back and consider the humans behind the helmets. the brutal realities of f1 deserve a spotlight, not just for the sake of drivers like logan and daniel, but for the integrity of the sport as a whole. it's high time formula 1 balanced its fierce competitiveness with a sense of fairness, allowing true talent to shine without the heavy hand of financial disparity and mental turmoil looming overhead.

sources

woodhouse, jamie. "valtteri bottas delivers brutal f1 'not a fair sport' verdict after '10 per cent driver' claim." planetf1, 16 aug. 2024, www.planetf1.com/news/valterri-bottas-formula-1-not-a-fair-sport

beevi, zuhrah. "williams replacing logan sargeant mid-season: brutal or deserved?" medium, 28 aug. 2024, www.medium.com/formula-one-forever/williams-replacing-logan-sargeant-mid-season-brutal-or-deserved-b0bd57de94b9

mitchell-malm, scott. "the most damning part of william's ruthless f1 sacking." the race, 28 aug. 2024, www.the-race.com/formula-1/most-damning-part-williams-ruthless-sacking-logan-sargeant/

maher, thomas. "f1 driver sackings: the most brutal firings and bitter disputes in f1 history." planetf1, 17 july 2024, www.planetf1.com/features/brutal-f1-driver-sackings

"the cruel side of formula 1: talent not enough, without money there is no future on the track." scuderia fans, 8 sept. 2024, www.scuderiafans.com/the-cruel-side-of-formula-1-talent-not-enough-without-money-there-is-no-future-on-the-track/

if any errors or typos are noticed, PLS PLS point them out via comment, ask, or dm. if there is a specific topic you would like me to cover, send in an ask and i'll look into it!

[mariacallous]

I did find it interesting how many times Trump tried to throw bones to Harris' left-wing critics, he went on a long thing about how terrible it was that Biden failed to get student debt done before mumbling a quick line of how unfair it'd be to do it at all, he kept saying shit about "start World War III!" the favorite Green Party line about the US having an Independent foreign policy not directed from Moscow, and trying to paint Harris as both bad for Israel but also "she hates the Arabs too!" that was the most messy of all, but interesting that she offered strong support for Israel, while he did not, he just said she'd be bad for Israel

any ways clearly Trump/his team pay close attention to the (Russian generated/pushed) talking points against Kamala and see those people are "their voters". we'll see how pet eating and saying he won the 2020 election goes over with that same crowd he was trying to talk to.

I think it's giving him more credit than is due, tbh.

[misfitwashere]

August 26, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 27, 2024

The point that is currently holding up plans for ABC’s September 10 presidential debate is whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is the other’s turn to speak. Vice President Kamala Harris’s team wants the mics “hot”; Trump’s team wants them turned off. Officials on the Harris campaign say they are quite willing for viewers to hear Trump’s outbursts and, in a statement, appeared to bait Trump by saying: “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own.”

Over the past few years, observers who have been paying attention to Trump have noted that he appeared to be sliding mentally and warned that when voters saw him again outside his Mar-a-Lago cocoon and his rallies they would be shocked. That prediction appears to have come true. Trump seems to have little interest in doing the actual work of campaigning, instead swinging between grievance-filled rants and flat recitations of his apocalyptic worldview, trying to stay in the center of public consciousness with outrageous lies and, as he did in his suggestion that he would not debate Harris, telling people to “stay tuned!”

But as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out today, “nobody cares.” Instead of making him look dominant, his old performance makes him look weak, especially as he appears unable to grapple with Harris’s rise and is still fixated on how “unfair” it was of the Democrats to choose Harris as their presidential candidate. In 2016 and 2020, Trump had the help of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News Channel to push his narrative, but Limbaugh died in 2021 and the Fox News Channel is somewhat chastened after a $787 million settlement over its lies about the 2020 election. Harris and Walz are now setting the terms of debate surrounding the 2024 presidential election, and their dominance illustrates his weakness.

A key element of Trump’s political power was always his insistence that he is by far the nation’s popular choice. In 2016 he insisted that he won the popular vote against Democratic candidate former secretary of state Hillary Clinton—in fact, he lost by almost 3 million votes—and even now, he keeps saying he has all the votes he needs and that he is doing well in the polls, when demonstrably he is not. His constant focus on crowd sizes and enthusiasm is designed to establish the illusion that a majority of people prefer his election to that of his opponents.

By insisting he is the popular choice, Trump has tried to make his election seem inevitable, convincing his loyalists that a loss must be an assault on our democracy and that good Americans will fight to defend both it and him. The Big Lie that he won the 2020 presidential election was intended to cement the idea that the Democrats could win only by cheating. In fact, President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by about 7 million votes and won the Electoral College by 306 to 232, the same split that in 2016, when it was in his favor, Trump called a landslide. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits challenging the results of the election. 

And yet, pushing the idea that Trump cannot lose in a fair election seems to have been a key part of his strategy for 2024. The lie that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020 led to a wave of new state laws to suppress the vote. MAGA lawmakers defended these laws on the grounds that they must respond to voter fraud. The nonprofit law and public policy Brennan Center for Justice recorded that in 2021 alone, from January 1 through December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws that restricted access to voting.

In May 2024 the Brennan Center reported that in at least 28 states, voters this year will face new restrictions that were not in place in the 2020 presidential election. Varying by state, these laws do things like shorten the time for requesting an absentee ballot, make it a crime to deliver another voter’s mail-in ballot, require proof of citizenship from voters who share the same name as noncitizens, and so on. 

As MAGA Republicans and their plans—especially their assault on reproductive healthcare and the policies outlined in Project 2025—become increasingly unpopular, Republican-dominated states are ramping up their effort to keep the people they assume will oppose them from voting. 

In Nebraska, Alex Burness reported in Bolts today, two Republican officials—Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen— last month stopped the implementation of a new state law, passed overwhelmingly by a Republican-dominated legislature earlier this year, that granted immediate voting rights to about 7,000 people with past felony convictions. In the process, Hilgers also declared unconstitutional a 2005 law that had allowed those convicted of a felony to vote two years after they completed their sentence. Evnen then told county-level elections offices that they could not register former felons.

The confusion has made people nervous about even trying to register. “People are scared they’re going to get charged with something if they try to vote and can’t vote, so a lot of people will just wash their hands of it,” Pamala Pettes told Burness. “They don’t want to go and vote unless they have a clear idea of what’s going on. They don’t have that.” More than 100,000 people are caught in this confusion. As Burness notes, the election could come down to the city of Omaha, where thousands of potential voters—overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and Native—have been blocked from registering.

Voter intimidation is underway in Texas, too. On August 18, Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo, who was a key figure in promoting the Big Lie, posted a rumor that migrants were illegally registering to vote at a government facility west of Fort Worth. The Republican chair and election administrator there said there was no evidence for her accusation and that it was false, but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton nonetheless launched an investigation.  

In addition to feeding the narrative that there is voter fraud at work in Texas, the investigation led Paxton’s team to raid the homes of at least seven Latino Democrats. No one has been charged in the aftermath of the raids. Latino rights advocates call them a “disgraceful and outrageous” attempt to intimidate Latino voters and have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Justice.

Today, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that since 2021, Texas has removed more than one million people from the state’s voter rolls, and said the process will be ongoing. Abbott’s office said those removed are ineligible to vote because they have moved, are dead, or are not citizens. But more than 463,000 of those on the list have been removed because their county of residence is unaware of their current address. 

Even when voters do make their wishes known, in Republican-dominated states, those wishes are not always honored. David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo today pointed out an article in which Adam Unikowsky, who clerked for the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, eviscerated a recent decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court that will prevent an abortion rights initiative from appearing on the ballot in November.  

Why is the state supreme court keeping an initiative supported by far more than the 10% of voters required by law off the ballot? Because, Unikowsky writes in Adam’s Legal Newsletter, “when the ballot initiative sponsor submitted its petition on the due date, it failed to staple a photocopy of a document it had already submitted a week earlier. The court reached this conclusion even though (a) nothing in Arkansas law requires this photocopy to be stapled; and (b) even if this requirement existed, Arkansas law is clear that the failure to staple this photocopy is [fixable], and the sponsor immediately [fixed] the asserted defect.”

Unikowsky accuses the court of guaranteeing that a measure the people wanted could not win by making sure it was not on the ballot. Further, although Unikowsky doesn’t mention it, keeping abortion off the ballot will generally help Republicans in the Arkansas elections by keeping those eager to protect reproductive rights feel less urgency to make it to the polls. 

Another way to suppress the vote is showing up these days in Georgia, where MAGA Republicans in the state legislature have handed control of the state election board to a three-member MAGA majority whose members Trump has personally praised. 

The three have been passing a series of last-minute rule changes that will sow confusion over how to conduct an election and then will give Republican-dominated election boards the power to refuse to certify election results. Such a scenario would put into effect the plan Trump and his allies hatched in 2020 to nullify the will of the voters. Tonight the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia sued to stop Trump’s allies from blocking the certification of the 2024 election. 

The momentum of the Harris-Walz campaign undermines the Big Lie that Trump is the popular choice, but the voter suppression the Big Lie justified remains. That voter suppression recalls the years of Reconstruction in the American South, when southern Democrats determined to keep Black men from voting found all sorts of ways to do so on grounds other than race, which the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited. Modern media allows us to see today’s machinations in real time, making it easier for civil rights lawyers—who were few and far between in the late nineteenth century—to fight back, and for voters to recognize that they are not alone in their struggle to claim their right to a say in their government. 

In her acceptance speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris called for the passage of two measures killed by Republicans after 2020: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. These measures would stop the flow of big money into politics, end partisan gerrymandering, and protect the right to vote.

—

[abigailspinach]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/magazine/pete-buttigieg-interview-election-democrats.html

Tear down obstacles — I mean, the obstacle many would say was President Biden himself. A new New York Times/Siena poll shows that over 80 percent of voters are happy that Biden dropped out. Clearly voters were hungering for something different. Why did the party ignore that desire for change for so long? I think this is something the party was wrestling with for a long time. And then the president wrestled with it personally. And then he did something that is world-historically rare, for not just the leader of a country, but the most powerful person in the world to lay power aside.

CNN reported that there haven’t been any full cabinet meetings since late last year, so I don’t know how often you were meeting with President Biden himself, but as a surrogate, did you not have any questions or doubts about his abilities? The last time I was working with President Biden really closely was during a disaster a few months ago. I’m reminding myself I’m not supposed to appear in my official capacity, so I won’t delve into that. But look, nobody’s denying that he’s 10 years older than he was 10 years ago. The point is that he’s really good at being president and in my view still is.You have framed this as, he sacrificed for his country, that this was a noble act. But the reality was that he was facing sliding polling numbers and a defection of donors and members of his party. He could have made that choice weeks ago, giving Vice President Harris or any eventual nominee a much longer runway and time to defeat Donald Trump. And he didn’t do it. Did he wait too long? One of the things you sign up for when you go into politics, and certainly when you’re in high office, is everybody else telling you what you should have done. And we can all say he should have done this, or he should have done the same thing but a different time, or should have done it in a different way. But the fact stands that he did an extraordinary thing.

But it wasn’t unfair. Well, certain dimensions I think were unfair. For example, the fact that in a given day, you might have almost identical flubbing of names by the two major candidates, but only one of them would have that plastered in certain people’s commentary.

They’re calling her a D.E.I. hire. And worse stuff that I don’t want to repeat. And I just wonder, as a surrogate, how you combat that? Well, I do think that those attacks have been a bad look for Republicans. And you can tell because, when you’ve got somebody like Mike Johnson, who is a very, very conservative figure, the speaker of the House, telling his own caucus, hey, cool it, he’s basically saying that they are embarrassing the party, and I think acknowledging that they are diminishing the party’s chances by indulging in that kind of rhetoric. The fact that they can’t think of what else to do besides go right to race and gender isn’t just revealing about some of the ugliest undercurrents in today’s Republican Party. It’s also just profoundly unimaginative, because it means that they can’t speak to how any of this is going to make people’s lives better. In other words, they can’t conceive of a politics that isn’t just about the personalities. And their inability to explain how your life as an American every day will be any different, certainly any better, is revealed in the fact that they immediately reach for one of two things, saying she’s too far left, which is what literally every Republican says about literally any Democrat who is running against the Republicans. If Joe Manchin were the nominee, they’d say the same thing about him. It’s just standard and therefore boring. Or these really ugly attacks, which maybe are meant to get attention, but they are very much telling on themselves when they go there.

 I am thinking about how you see your role right now, because while Biden rarely talked to the press, you not only engage with people like me, but you also go to Fox News. And I am wondering why you do that. Because I know that there are so many people who tune in in good faith. I don’t always feel that the corporation that runs Fox News is acting in good faith, but I know that the viewers might be tuning in in good faith and getting their information from this news source. So I, as a political figure, can hardly blame a voter for not being responsive to our message if they literally have never heard it. And we’re in a very fragmented environment. Honestly, we’re lucky if we can get to somebody through TV, versus just even more fragmented internet sources. And I know that if I’m on that network, I’m one of relatively few voices with our message, and so if I didn’t go there to give that message, somebody might never hear it. I also know that you cannot assume who somebody is or how they’re going to vote just based on what network they watch. Of course, there are a lot of strong patterns, but there are a lot of people who can be moved. And sometimes the person who picked the channel is not the same as the other person who’s also in the house, listening to what’s being said. Sometimes when you explain what you believe to somebody, even if they don’t completely agree with you, they respect you more, and are inclined to maybe trust you and give you the benefit of the doubt. So that’s why I’m there.

[cyarskj1899]

Kanye West Praises Hitler, Actually Says Out Loud: Nazis Aren't So Bad!

Look.

We really don’t want to give Kanye West a platform at this point.

The musician is a narcissistic, hate-filled anti-Semite who will hopefully go broke at some point due to the massive child support payments he now owes ex-wife Kim Kardashian.

West was a guest Thursday afternoon on a talk show hosted by far right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who tried to defend the rapper at first against all the criticism that has come his way of late.

But after Jones told West that it’s unfair people have been referring to him as a Nazi, Kanye jumped in with a response that appeared to even take Jones by surprise:

No worries, he basically replied.

��I see good things about Hitler, also,” West told Jones on Thursday. “Every human being has value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.”

Yes, especially Hitler, West felt a need to emphasize.

“I was thinking about Satan,” Ye continued. 

West, of course, wished death to Jewish people last month.

He quickly came under fire and lost a number of endorsement deals, including a partnership with Adidas that has allegedly cost him hundreds of millions of dollars.

The celebrity has never really apologized for these remarks.

Ye went the farthest he’s gone yet on this topic, telling Jones today: 

“The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world.

“Meanwhile, there’s all of these things that are happening.”

The guy just kept on going and going, too.

He went on to mention that Planned Parenthood was engaged in “new world order population eugenics that is happening to this date.”

The rapper also read anti-Semitic jokes that a comedian made about Ben Shapiro, the conservative commentator and podcast host.

Elsewhere, it’s worth mentioning that West appeared alongside Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist commentator who also uttered anti-Jewish conspiracies.

He brought Fuentas with him to hang out with Donald Trump last week, too.

Jones played along at some point in the interview — because he’s an awful human being — and accused Planned Parenthood of being an “abortion mill” that plays on “white guilt” in order to “help us kill black people” by soliciting donations from white people.

“What type of freakish crazy world is that?” Jones said, turning to Ye.

“Zionist,” West responded.

Sent from my iPhone

[josiebelladonna]

one of the reasons why i struggled during the trump era was that it felt like i was being forced to have an opinion rather than have it genuinely come from me. add to this, it felt like i was being yelled at and judged constantly simply because i felt like i had nothing to add—i still feel this way, too. not just in opinions about current events but opinions in general. my opinions, the ones that i have, do not matter, and most of them don’t belong to me anyway. when i was in a.p. english, and we had to participate in book reviews, i didn’t know what to add to the conversation that wasn’t already being said, and i just sat there, baffled and bored out of my wits (my teacher even noticed, too, i remember her pointing out this out to me and i basically said all of this. i want to talk but everyone is talking over me). plus, telling me to “speak up” doesn’t make me want to do it more: if anything, it doesn’t make me want to do it ever, period. for this reason, i hate being told to speak up. (it’s like when i call my dad and he complains that i don’t call him enough: it doesn’t make me want to do it more.)

it’s not because “i’m on the side of the oppressor”, no, that is extremely unfair and cruel. it was because all i wanted to say back then was already being said, i felt like i had nothing to add, and i was exhausted mere days into that godforsaken administration because everyone just wanted to scream and assume that we all know rather than educate. it’s like, what do you want me to say? what do you want me to do besides kiss your ass? what can i add to this? nothing? okay, well, what can i add to here? oh, also nothing. everyone gets a participation point but me. i’ve always been on the fence about politics, even with my dabbling in political cartoons in my early days of cartooning: i could never fully commit because i found it incredibly boring and there’s so much else that piques my interest anyway.

the opinions i do have are either weak, lame, will have me subject to ridicule, or will have some bullshit feud fired up against me in the form of forgettable fanfic. i really do feel like people just tell you to speak up under the pretense of “you being the oppressor” because they don’t want to be proven wrong, not because they actually stand for something or give a shit about what you have to say.

okay, you want a couple of political opinions from me? why do political or social posts and tweets have to be so elaborately worded? get to the point, i’m dumb, i don’t know what’s happening here or why i should care. why does pro-life feminism exist? like… who is this for? you think an abortion is “killing a baby” when the mother is a 12-year-old girl, and the only other option is for her to have it, i.e., the psychological, physical, mental, and emotional effects of having a child while she’s still a child, i.e., the real killing of a baby. it’s not feminism: it’s rape apology and control. it’s anti-science and antisemitic, too, as most of these holier-than-thou cunts tend to be “all about science” (when science has proven that life starts at birth numerous times) and it’s a part of jewish law for a woman to have an abortion if she chooses. we mustn’t base our laws off religion, absolutely, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that telling a jewish woman she can’t have one is a violation of her religion. we spend an ungodly amount of money on our military but once service is done, veterans are basically told to get lost. and all everyone can bitch about is the first thing. why is everyone vegan now? don’t get me wrong: vegan food is some of the most delicious i’ve ever eaten, but it’s like every time i turn around, someone talks about how they’re vegan. everyone famous is vegan. everyone goes on about how healthy they are ever since they went vegan and that’s all they can talk about. did i miss something here? this is another thing i feel is just another trend for people to seem important, not because they’re like linda mccartney and actually believe it’ll do any justice. some of you don’t look good, either: you look malnourished and tired, and you probably smell bad, too. where i draw the line is making your pets vegan (which is something some people really do): cats and dogs are carnivores, and depriving them of that is a form of cruelty. donald trump and that whole parade of republicans around him are such hot-button issues that they’re boring to talk and read about. they’re all sacks of shit who are trying to kill us, the end.

and that’s all i got. are you happy now? i sure as hell am not. if anything, i feel exposed, perhaps more so than i did when i wrote those sex journal prompts. take them or leave them, i don’t care and i’m not confident in these things anyway.

[bllsbailey]

Trump Lights It Up on 'Gutfeld' in Funny and Endearing Appearance

Former President Donald Trump seems to have boundless energy that can't be squelched, despite all the attacks against him and even in the face of two assassination attempts. 

He was in New York, on Long Island, for a rally and he took the time out to visit with a little boy with a brain disorder and give him a birthday present. He also, prior to the rally, went on Greg Gutfeld's show. It's hard to imagine, after all that has been happening, how he keeps it all together, but he looked in great shape, very relaxed and he had a lot of fun on the show. 

WATCH: Most Heartwarming Update Ever As Trump Hand Delivers Present to Little Liam

It's something that Kamala Harris could never do because it requires you to be spontaneous and yourself. Meanwhile, Trump is naturally open and funny. The audience loved it as Gutfeld introduced him, "Let's crank it up to 11 for President 45 and 47!"

Gutfeld brought up his golf game. The second assassination attempt earlier in the week had been at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. “Well, I haven’t been thinking about it too much lately,” Trump responded. “I always said golf is a very dangerous game,” he joked. 

Gutfeld asked  if he knew the suspect was there would he have tried to take him out with his 3 wood. Trump said he thought so. He then praised the Secret Service agent who spotted the barrel of the suspect's gun and fired at him. 

"We’ve been going through a lot of it,” he said of two attempts against him. “We’re getting very good at it. But I don’t want to say that too loudly.” He praised the woman who realized something was wrong and got the license plate of the suspect, saying she was very "smart" and a "heroine." 

'Women Are Smarter Than Men': Trump Tells Story of Witness Who Tracked Would-Be Assassin at MI Town Hall

Gutfeld pointed out how both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had called him to wish him well and that conflicted with their claims he was some kind of existential threat. 

When asked about how he processed the attempts, Trump joked he didn't have a choice. He spoke about how it was a "dangerous job." He said so far he'd been "very lucky" or "something is greater than all of us," as he looked up to heaven.  "Something is up there, someone is up there, watching over us," Trump thought. "I think he's voting for you," Tyrus joked. 

Trump said the Butler attempt made him think more about God because if he hadn't turned at just the right moment in response to talking about an immigration chart, he might not be here today. "Your ratings might be a little lower, perhaps," he joked with Gutfeld. 

Trump described the pinging of the bullet as it clipped his ear, then he explained how he showed the wound to Gutfled at the RNC. "Who am I going to show it to?" Trump quipped. "So if I'm going to show it, let's do it with Gutfled!" Tyrus asked how did you get him to see your ear, since Trump is over six feet and Gutfeld is short. "I sat in a low chair," Trump replied.

Gutfeld brought up how the media tries to blame Trump for the attacks on him, without seeing their own role [in constantly demonizing Trump]. Trump spoke about how unfair the media has been including during the debate. He joked that ABC's David Muir's hair "was better five years ago." Then he pointed out how bad the "fact-checks" from the moderators were including on things he was right on like crime versus not checking Kamala Harris on lies she tells over "bloodbath" and "fine people" hoaxes. 

Trump joked about how Joe Biden did so badly in the first debate they had to swap him out and wondering if Harris did badly were they going to swap her out too, "Let's have another one!" He said the only thing maybe he regretted was not going back at the moderators. 

Trump spoke about what he'd done to secure the border and the slogan, "Make America Great Again" and how Biden attacked MAGA people. Who could attack wanting to make America great? he asked. 

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 19, 2024

But that's Biden and now Harris. He spoke about the problem of Venezuelan gangs in Aurora, and joked they were becoming real estate developers but "their little card is a bullet." 

Trump spoke about Kamala trying to flip-flop on her positions to appear more moderate, suddenly she's flipping on her policies as to things like fracking and guns. 

That clip ends as he's talking about the brothers of Barack Obama and Tim Walz supporting him. That's when Tyrus brought down the house. 

"To be fair, a lot of brothers will be supporting you," Tyrus said. 

Trump also told a story about the only time he spoke to Tim Walz. He said that Walz was nervous about protesters who were carrying American flags [peacefully] around the governor's mansion in Minnesota. Funny, he's more disturbed about that than he seemed about BLM and Antifa folks who burned parts of Minneapolis. But Trump helped him anyway. 

Then there was this hilarious story about how Trump gave RFK Jr's family a ride to Florida — even though he was suing Trump. 

Hilarious: RFK Jr. Recalls How Trump Flew His Family on Private Jet— Even As He Was Suing Former President

Trump also explained the historic nature of the Teamsters refusing to support Kamala Harris when they've supported the Democratic candidate without fail for decades. He pointed out how he got 60 percent — 59.6 percent specifically — to Kamala's 34 percent in their electronic poll of the members. 

President Trump reacts to the Teamsters not endorsing Comrade Kamala: "They took a poll and we got 60% in the poll... that was sort of a big event. Nobody ever expected a thing like that to happen." pic.twitter.com/HLO0GbgxIr— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 19, 2024

Teamsters Members Overwhelmingly Voted to Endorse Trump, But Leadership Wimped Out

Prepare for Meltdowns: CBS Report, Post-Debate Poll Show Good News for Trump in Michigan

What makes that even more eye-opening is that may be a big window into how some of those same folks might be voting in the Rust Belt. If the Democrats lose the rank and file of the Teamsters, that's telling you a lot. 

But then Tyrus had a great gift for Trump, giving him a championship belt and thanking him, calling him the "People's champion." I think he was pretty touched by it. 

PRESIDENT TRUMP GETS A CHAMPIONSHIP BELT! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/7GEUFbsSg5— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 19, 2024

[profnic]

Harris posted her Policy Plans - let's have some unsolicited takes!

American Imperialism (my words, not hers)

(link to campaign website)

Grades are based on my vibes - just like Harris' campaign is mostly vibes!

Naturally, all plans have the caveat of "if they pass Congress," which will probably only happen if the Dems take the House and hold the Senate. Even then, we know the Dems will make compromises.

I have a running bet with a couple of friends that we are going to war with Iran by 2026 - taking "whatever action necessary" against Iran makes me think I'll win...unfortunately. We also get some China and DPRK fear-mongering...*rolls eyes*

The Israel stuff is not surprising. We knew this from the convention to the debate. She's pro-Israel and most likely won't stop weapon shipments - abhorrent. The talking points about the Palestinian people are at least a bit heartening when compared to Trump. She probably wants a two-state solution - something that started this to begin with (source), and Israel is staunchly against (source), but it is better than telling Bibi to "finish the job" (source)

My arbitrary grade: F even showing sympathy to Palestinians won't save this

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???? Is this just her economic policy again? The "unfair economic practices" being lobbied at China is hilarious though. How dare another country be really good at making things people want to buy and sell them on American markets? Tariffs! All the tariffs! How dare we have free market competition from another country?!

Ugh, and the "private investments across Africa" - yes, because US companies making money off the backs of Africans is definitely going to solve their problems when white countries making money off the backs of Africans (putting it nicely) is what got them into this position in the first place.

I feel like this was her avoiding putting the whole "Most lethal military in the world" thing into her official policy plans...

My arbitrary grade: F there isn't even any policy here, just bad vibes

All generally good things, mainstream, nothing new. Not even a 'fix the VA because it is overburdened with demand for services'.

My arbitrary grade: B nothing new, but generally good stuff I guess

My overall grade for this section: F no additional comments

Economic policy takes - avg C+ Civil rights policy takes - avg B Domestic Security takes - avg D+

Total grade for Harris' platforms: C She stands out for having pretty great domestic social policies. Her domestic economic policies are as expected but not overly negative, with a sprinkle of 'good' with her tax plans; she's a liberal capitalist, and it shows. Of course, where she fails the most is in domestic security and foreign policy. She proudly wears the authoritarianism and imperialism of US history—just like every other major US presidential candidate since our founding—but it is unfortunately unavoidable unless we have a massive shift in the population away from authoritarian and imperialist attitudes.

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

August 26, 2024 (Monday)

The point that is currently holding up plans for ABC’s September 10 presidential debate is whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is the other’s turn to speak. Vice President Kamala Harris’s team wants the mics “hot”; Trump’s team wants them turned off. Officials on the Harris campaign say they are quite willing for viewers to hear Trump’s outbursts and, in a statement, appeared to bait Trump by saying: “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own.”

(Leave the mic MUTED!!!! This was a victory finally gained, that should have been in place in 2016 and 2020, with instructions for him to sit his ass DOWN and not wander all over the stage like he did with Hillary. This is not the win you think it would be, Harris campaign. AND FURTHERMORE, if he does NOT answer the question put to him, and instead goes on one of his demented rants, the moderators should stop him, mute his mic, and instruct him to ANSWER THE QUESTION or else his time will be forfeited to Kamala!!!!)

Over the past few years, observers who have been paying attention to Trump have noted that he appeared to be sliding mentally and warned that when voters saw him again outside his Mar-a-Lago cocoon and his rallies they would be shocked. That prediction appears to have come true. Trump seems to have little interest in doing the actual work of campaigning, instead swinging between grievance-filled rants and flat recitations of his apocalyptic worldview, trying to stay in the center of public consciousness with outrageous lies and, as he did in his suggestion that he would not debate Harris, telling people to “stay tuned!”

But as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out today, “nobody cares.” Instead of making him look dominant, his old performance makes him look weak, especially as he appears unable to grapple with Harris’s rise and is still fixated on how “unfair” it was of the Democrats to choose Harris as their presidential candidate. In 2016 and 2020, Trump had the help of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News Channel to push his narrative, but Limbaugh died in 2021 and the Fox News Channel is somewhat chastened after a $787 million settlement over its lies about the 2020 election. Harris and Walz are now setting the terms of debate surrounding the 2024 presidential election, and their dominance illustrates his weakness.

A key element of Trump’s political power was always his insistence that he is by far the nation’s popular choice. In 2016 he insisted that he won the popular vote against Democratic candidate former secretary of state Hillary Clinton—in fact, he lost by almost 3 million votes—and even now, he keeps saying he has all the votes he needs and that he is doing well in the polls, when demonstrably he is not. His constant focus on crowd sizes and enthusiasm is designed to establish the illusion that a majority of people prefer his election to that of his opponents.

By insisting he is the popular choice, Trump has tried to make his election seem inevitable, convincing his loyalists that a loss must be an assault on our democracy and that good Americans will fight to defend both it and him. The Big Lie that he won the 2020 presidential election was intended to cement the idea that the Democrats could win only by cheating. In fact, President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by about 7 million votes and won the Electoral College by 306 to 232, the same split that in 2016, when it was in his favor, Trump called a landslide. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits challenging the results of the election.

And yet, pushing the idea that Trump cannot lose in a fair election seems to have been a key part of his strategy for 2024. The lie that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020 led to a wave of new state laws to suppress the vote. MAGA lawmakers defended these laws on the grounds that they must respond to voter fraud. The nonprofit law and public policy Brennan Center for Justice recorded that in 2021 alone, from January 1 through December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws that restricted access to voting.

In May 2024 the Brennan Center reported that in at least 28 states, voters this year will face new restrictions that were not in place in the 2020 presidential election. Varying by state, these laws do things like shorten the time for requesting an absentee ballot, make it a crime to deliver another voter’s mail-in ballot, require proof of citizenship from voters who share the same name as noncitizens, and so on.

As MAGA Republicans and their plans—especially their assault on reproductive healthcare and the policies outlined in Project 2025—become increasingly unpopular, Republican-dominated states are ramping up their effort to keep the people they assume will oppose them from voting.

In Nebraska, Alex Burness reported in Bolts today, two Republican officials—Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen— last month stopped the implementation of a new state law, passed overwhelmingly by a Republican-dominated legislature earlier this year, that granted immediate voting rights to about 7,000 people with past felony convictions. In the process, Hilgers also declared unconstitutional a 2005 law that had allowed those convicted of a felony to vote two years after they completed their sentence. Evnen then told county-level elections offices that they could not register former felons.

The confusion has made people nervous about even trying to register. “People are scared they’re going to get charged with something if they try to vote and can’t vote, so a lot of people will just wash their hands of it,” Pamala Pettes told Burness. “They don’t want to go and vote unless they have a clear idea of what’s going on. They don’t have that.” More than 100,000 people are caught in this confusion. As Burness notes, the election could come down to the city of Omaha, where thousands of potential voters—overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and Native—have been blocked from registering.

Voter intimidation is underway in Texas, too. On August 18, Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo, who was a key figure in promoting the Big Lie, posted a rumor that migrants were illegally registering to vote at a government facility west of Fort Worth. The Republican chair and election administrator there said there was no evidence for her accusation and that it was false, but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton nonetheless launched an investigation.

In addition to feeding the narrative that there is voter fraud at work in Texas, the investigation led Paxton’s team to raid the homes of at least seven Latino Democrats. No one has been charged in the aftermath of the raids. Latino rights advocates call them a “disgraceful and outrageous” attempt to intimidate Latino voters and have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Justice.

(THEY NEED TO COUNTERSUE PAXTON, WITH THE HELP OF THE ACLU!!!)

Today, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that since 2021, Texas has removed more than one million people from the state’s voter rolls, and said the process will be ongoing. Abbott’s office said those removed are ineligible to vote because they have moved, are dead, or are not citizens. But more than 463,000 of those on the list have been removed because their county of residence is unaware of their current address.

Even when voters do make their wishes known, in Republican-dominated states, those wishes are not always honored. David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo today pointed out an article in which Adam Unikowsky, who clerked for the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, eviscerated a recent decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court that will prevent an abortion rights initiative from appearing on the ballot in November.

Why is the state supreme court keeping an initiative supported by far more than the 10% of voters required by law off the ballot? Because, Unikowsky writes in Adam’s Legal Newsletter, “when the ballot initiative sponsor submitted its petition on the due date, it failed to staple a photocopy of a document it had already submitted a week earlier. The court reached this conclusion even though (a) nothing in Arkansas law requires this photocopy to be stapled; and (b) even if this requirement existed, Arkansas law is clear that the failure to staple this photocopy is [fixable], and the sponsor immediately [fixed] the asserted defect.”

Unikowsky accuses the court of guaranteeing that a measure the people wanted could not win by making sure it was not on the ballot. Further, although Unikowsky doesn’t mention it, keeping abortion off the ballot will generally help Republicans in the Arkansas elections by keeping those eager to protect reproductive rights feel less urgency to make it to the polls.

Another way to suppress the vote is showing up these days in Georgia, where MAGA Republicans in the state legislature have handed control of the state election board to a three-member MAGA majority whose members Trump has personally praised.

The three have been passing a series of last-minute rule changes that will sow confusion over how to conduct an election and then will give Republican-dominated election boards the power to refuse to certify election results. Such a scenario would put into effect the plan Trump and his allies hatched in 2020 to nullify the will of the voters. Tonight the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia sued to stop Trump’s allies from blocking the certification of the 2024 election.

The momentum of the Harris-Walz campaign undermines the Big Lie that Trump is the popular choice, but the voter suppression the Big Lie justified remains. That voter suppression recalls the years of Reconstruction in the American South, when southern Democrats determined to keep Black men from voting found all sorts of ways to do so on grounds other than race, which the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited. Modern media allows us to see today’s machinations in real time, making it easier for civil rights lawyers—who were few and far between in the late nineteenth century—to fight back, and for voters to recognize that they are not alone in their struggle to claim their right to a say in their government.

In her acceptance speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris called for the passage of two measures killed by Republicans after 2020: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. These measures would stop the flow of big money into politics, end partisan gerrymandering, and protect the right to vote.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

deAdder

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 26, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 27, 2024

The point that is currently holding up plans for ABC’s September 10 presidential debate is whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is the other’s turn to speak. Vice President Kamala Harris’s team wants the mics “hot”; Trump’s team wants them turned off. Officials on the Harris campaign say they are quite willing for viewers to hear Trump’s outbursts and, in a statement, appeared to bait Trump by saying: “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own.”

Over the past few years, observers who have been paying attention to Trump have noted that he appeared to be sliding mentally and warned that when voters saw him again outside his Mar-a-Lago cocoon and his rallies they would be shocked. That prediction appears to have come true. Trump seems to have little interest in doing the actual work of campaigning, instead swinging between grievance-filled rants and flat recitations of his apocalyptic worldview, trying to stay in the center of public consciousness with outrageous lies and, as he did in his suggestion that he would not debate Harris, telling people to “stay tuned!”

But as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out today, “nobody cares.” Instead of making him look dominant, his old performance makes him look weak, especially as he appears unable to grapple with Harris’s rise and is still fixated on how “unfair” it was of the Democrats to choose Harris as their presidential candidate. In 2016 and 2020, Trump had the help of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News Channel to push his narrative, but Limbaugh died in 2021 and the Fox News Channel is somewhat chastened after a $787 million settlement over its lies about the 2020 election. Harris and Walz are now setting the terms of debate surrounding the 2024 presidential election, and their dominance illustrates his weakness.

A key element of Trump’s political power was always his insistence that he is by far the nation’s popular choice. In 2016 he insisted that he won the popular vote against Democratic candidate former secretary of state Hillary Clinton—in fact, he lost by almost 3 million votes—and even now, he keeps saying he has all the votes he needs and that he is doing well in the polls, when demonstrably he is not. His constant focus on crowd sizes and enthusiasm is designed to establish the illusion that a majority of people prefer his election to that of his opponents.

By insisting he is the popular choice, Trump has tried to make his election seem inevitable, convincing his loyalists that a loss must be an assault on our democracy and that good Americans will fight to defend both it and him. The Big Lie that he won the 2020 presidential election was intended to cement the idea that the Democrats could win only by cheating. In fact, President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by about 7 million votes and won the Electoral College by 306 to 232, the same split that in 2016, when it was in his favor, Trump called a landslide. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits challenging the results of the election. 

And yet, pushing the idea that Trump cannot lose in a fair election seems to have been a key part of his strategy for 2024. The lie that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020 led to a wave of new state laws to suppress the vote. MAGA lawmakers defended these laws on the grounds that they must respond to voter fraud. The nonprofit law and public policy Brennan Center for Justice recorded that in 2021 alone, from January 1 through December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws that restricted access to voting.

In May 2024 the Brennan Center reported that in at least 28 states, voters this year will face new restrictions that were not in place in the 2020 presidential election. Varying by state, these laws do things like shorten the time for requesting an absentee ballot, make it a crime to deliver another voter’s mail-in ballot, require proof of citizenship from voters who share the same name as noncitizens, and so on. 

As MAGA Republicans and their plans—especially their assault on reproductive healthcare and the policies outlined in Project 2025—become increasingly unpopular, Republican-dominated states are ramping up their effort to keep the people they assume will oppose them from voting. 

In Nebraska, Alex Burness reported in Bolts today, two Republican officials—Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen— last month stopped the implementation of a new state law, passed overwhelmingly by a Republican-dominated legislature earlier this year, that granted immediate voting rights to about 7,000 people with past felony convictions. In the process, Hilgers also declared unconstitutional a 2005 law that had allowed those convicted of a felony to vote two years after they completed their sentence. Evnen then told county-level elections offices that they could not register former felons.

The confusion has made people nervous about even trying to register. “People are scared they’re going to get charged with something if they try to vote and can’t vote, so a lot of people will just wash their hands of it,” Pamala Pettes told Burness. “They don’t want to go and vote unless they have a clear idea of what’s going on. They don’t have that.” More than 100,000 people are caught in this confusion. As Burness notes, the election could come down to the city of Omaha, where thousands of potential voters—overwhelmingly Black, Latino, and Native—have been blocked from registering.

Voter intimidation is underway in Texas, too. On August 18, Fox News Channel personality Maria Bartiromo, who was a key figure in promoting the Big Lie, posted a rumor that migrants were illegally registering to vote at a government facility west of Fort Worth. The Republican chair and election administrator there said there was no evidence for her accusation and that it was false, but Texas attorney general Ken Paxton nonetheless launched an investigation.  

In addition to feeding the narrative that there is voter fraud at work in Texas, the investigation led Paxton’s team to raid the homes of at least seven Latino Democrats. No one has been charged in the aftermath of the raids. Latino rights advocates call them a “disgraceful and outrageous” attempt to intimidate Latino voters and have filed a formal complaint with the Department of Justice.

Today, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced that since 2021, Texas has removed more than one million people from the state’s voter rolls, and said the process will be ongoing. Abbott’s office said those removed are ineligible to vote because they have moved, are dead, or are not citizens. But more than 463,000 of those on the list have been removed because their county of residence is unaware of their current address. 

Even when voters do make their wishes known, in Republican-dominated states, those wishes are not always honored. David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo today pointed out an article in which Adam Unikowsky, who clerked for the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, eviscerated a recent decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court that will prevent an abortion rights initiative from appearing on the ballot in November.  

Why is the state supreme court keeping an initiative supported by far more than the 10% of voters required by law off the ballot? Because, Unikowsky writes in Adam’s Legal Newsletter, “when the ballot initiative sponsor submitted its petition on the due date, it failed to staple a photocopy of a document it had already submitted a week earlier. The court reached this conclusion even though (a) nothing in Arkansas law requires this photocopy to be stapled; and (b) even if this requirement existed, Arkansas law is clear that the failure to staple this photocopy is [fixable], and the sponsor immediately [fixed] the asserted defect.”

Unikowsky accuses the court of guaranteeing that a measure the people wanted could not win by making sure it was not on the ballot. Further, although Unikowsky doesn’t mention it, keeping abortion off the ballot will generally help Republicans in the Arkansas elections by keeping those eager to protect reproductive rights feel less urgency to make it to the polls. 

Another way to suppress the vote is showing up these days in Georgia, where MAGA Republicans in the state legislature have handed control of the state election board to a three-member MAGA majority whose members Trump has personally praised. 

The three have been passing a series of last-minute rule changes that will sow confusion over how to conduct an election and then will give Republican-dominated election boards the power to refuse to certify election results. Such a scenario would put into effect the plan Trump and his allies hatched in 2020 to nullify the will of the voters. Tonight the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia sued to stop Trump’s allies from blocking the certification of the 2024 election. 

The momentum of the Harris-Walz campaign undermines the Big Lie that Trump is the popular choice, but the voter suppression the Big Lie justified remains. That voter suppression recalls the years of Reconstruction in the American South, when southern Democrats determined to keep Black men from voting found all sorts of ways to do so on grounds other than race, which the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited. Modern media allows us to see today’s machinations in real time, making it easier for civil rights lawyers—who were few and far between in the late nineteenth century—to fight back, and for voters to recognize that they are not alone in their struggle to claim their right to a say in their government. 

In her acceptance speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention, Vice President Harris called for the passage of two measures killed by Republicans after 2020: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. These measures would stop the flow of big money into politics, end partisan gerrymandering, and protect the right to vote.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[alarajrogers]

Hmm. I had had no idea where the word "cabal" came from, but since you pointed it out as an antisemitic dogwhistle, I checked into it and was rather horrified to see it is a reference to the Kabbalah. Yeah, that's awful. "Group" is probably the better term here. I'd also avoid the term "elite" because, frankly, the term "elite" means "better than others", and these people are actively worse. I mean, if Donald Trump and Elon Musk are part of a "global elite", you've just made the meaning of the word elite nonsensical. "Ultra-wealthy" or "billionnaires" or "corporate moguls" would probably be better. ("Mogul" is a reference to the Mongols, but not a derogatory one; it refers originally to the Mongol emperor who conquered India in the 1500's. Any derogatory connotation it's taken on since comes from the fact that imperialism itself is starting to be seen in a derogatory light, which I think is a good thing.) (Edited to fix this, I originally said China. This was a brain fart. The Mongols did conquer China at one point, but this specific incidence was India.)

I'm aware that fascists don't differentiate the two, which is why I think that, if you're going to talk about it, you should say that it's a group of mostly white Christian conservative billionnaires, all of which is true. I dislike the idea of being unable to say a true thing because fascists and bigots have co-opted the concept to mean something else, which is untrue and disgusting. I mean... we want to be able to talk about child molesters being bad without people saying "you're playing into the hands of homophobes, who talk about child molesters being gay people!"

The fact is... there is a non-secret, known to everyone who follows politics at all, group of very wealthy men, who are mostly white, Christian, and English-speaking, who have either very conservative politics, or liberal social ideas but extremely conservative anti-worker views, who have inordinate influence on our democratic systems worldwide. And this is a bad thing. We need to be able to talk about this without ceding the concept to the antisemites. We cannot allow it to stand that if someone lies constantly about who is committing a real injustice, it makes it so people can no longer talk about that injustice without everyone thinking you're talking about the lie. At the same time, it's equally important to challenge the lie... and the best way to challenge a lie is not to reference it when debunking it (experiments have shown this can actually reinforce the lie), but simply to describe what is real. So instead of saying "it's a lie that a secret group of Jewish people rule the world" -- which is true, it is a lie, but it's referencing the lie and can reinforce it -- keep repeating that the group (which is not secret in any way, anymore) is a group of ultra-wealthy white Christian men.

Putting it this way also reinforces some leftist ideas -- the wealthy engage in class warfare against everyone else, religion can be used as a tool to make people support the wealthy against their own interests, white people have unfair dominance in world politics. All of these things are also pretty blatantly true. So no one on the left should just be talking, without qualifications, about "secret groups of global elites", because yeah, that does sound way too much like the antisemitic conspiracy theories. Get rid of the term "elite" to refer to the ultra-wealthy; it reinforces the idea that they're better than us, and they're not. Get rid of the term secret, this has been all out in the open for at least 20 years. And always reference the fact that they are mostly white and Christian, because white supremacy and Christian evangelism have had a huge impact on the makeup of this group and the things they are pushing for.

(Also... cabal? Holy shit, I had no idea and I've been using that word for 50ish years. We need to get the word out to people who aren't antisemitic that this originates as a slur against Jewish people. That's the problem with dogwhistles. The only people who understand them generally are the bigoted group that use them and the people on the front lines against that bigotry; the people who dislike the bigotry but are not its active target often don't know.)

had to unfollow yet another leftist on tik tok after i heard them say “oh those conspiracy theories that say there are a group of elites ruling the planet aren’t conspiracy theories they’re true there really is a group of elites running the planet” BESTIES YOU CAN BE ANTICAPITALIST WITHOUT USING ANTISEMITISM AS A TOOL. WHETHER OR NOT YOU PERSONALLY THINK JEWS ARE THE SECRET CABAL OF RICH PEOPLE RUNNING THE WORLD YOU ARE STILL PLAYING INTO ANTISEMITISM BY USING THAT RHETORIC. PLEASE USE UR BRAINS!!!!!!!!!!