#but whats more important is what trump is clearly campaigning on

[lets-steal-an-archive]

And yes, the Trump campaign is pretty clearly committed to stealing the election by crying foul about voter fraud, declaring victory on election night, pretending that the slow process of counting all the votes is somehow illegitimate, and working with his co-conspirators in the GOP House to steal it away in some sort of post-election coup that Trump couldn’t help but teasing as a “little secret” of theirs.

Luckily, the Democrats seem to realize these things will assuredly happen and have said they’re ready to respond and push back immediately when they do. 

But things would be even better off for the Harris campaign, obviously, not just if she pulls out a clear win, but if she pulls out an overwhelming win. The larger the margin of the popular vote nationwide, the harder it will be for Trump’s lackeys to pretend the election was “stolen” from them. And the broader the electoral map is for her, the harder it will be for Trump’s lawyers to subvert the results. (When it all hinged on Florida in 2000, it was relatively easy to flip. When they had to reverse several states in 2020, it became impossible.)

So that brings us back to what you can do this weekend. And that’s do whatever you can to help get out the vote, to make sure the Democratic ticket runs up the numbers and not just wins, but wins convincingly. 

In general, check out the Harris-Walz campaign GOTV page which has a number of links for checking registrations, volunteering, canvassing and phone banking. Even if you can just do a day or an afternoon or an hour, that’s better than nothing, and I mean that in terms of helping the campaign but also channeling your nervous energy into something useful. 

[…]

Anyway, check out state and local resources. For instance, here’s a ballot curing operation in Pennsylvania that starts up [today]. And here’s another for Michigan that targets absentee ballots after the election. And North Carolina. This is an incredibly important role and one you can do from home. Look for places to help out here.

I keep thinking about how I felt the first week after the 2016 election, a bit dazed but mostly angry with myself for feeling I hadn’t done as much as I could have to keep a psychopath out of the presidency. I’m sure you felt something similar. Let’s do what we can to make sure we don’t go through that again, and a whole lot more.

Run through the tape.

Stop worrying about what might happen. Make the future you want actually happen.

[axolotlclown]

I am a little concerned that people aren't actually going on the candidates websites and reading their issues pages. Trump has branded his as "Agenda 47" and effectively lays out 47 key issues he wants to address during his presidency. It looks quite awful for the Palestinians and muslims living in the United States currently. It also looks like he's going to crack down on protests and make it harder to organize in support of Palestine.

Here are some pieces I took from his plan that should concern anyone supporting Palestine right now:

Biden banning Tiktok was a direct attack on our freedom of speech and ability to share information about Palestine. However, Trump is promising to bring back his muslim travel ban (which would succeed under his conservative Supreme Court). He will make it just about impossible for any refugees to get into America. It's already difficult for refugees to gain entry, but this is just opening the door to dangerous rhetoric.

American imperialism cannot be fixed in one presidency. That $95 billion foreign aid package that included $26 billion to support Israel was passed by Congress, with support from democrats. Biden signed it, but that's not something he can do by himself. If we want real meaningful change, we're going to have to vote for a whole lot more than just the president. Campaigning for third parties is going to have to maintain its momentum outside of election years.

Still, both candidates are supporting this war currently. They are both piss poor choices for a ceasefire. However, they are NOT equal! A Trump win could be devastating, not just for the Palestinians still struggling in the Middle East, but for the Palestinians living at home now. With the courts behind him, Chevron overturned, and a clear plan for Schedule F in place, I cannot seriously humor anyone saying that a Harris would be "just as bad" for Palestine.

"You're so privileged for caring about genocide" is not a take actually.

[avelera]

I've been talking with a few people irl about the TikTok ban and I was wondering if I could get your take on it? (iirc you work in election security). Mainly I'd like to know why TikTok/China is *uniquely* bad wrt dating mining/potential election interference when we've seen other companies/governments do the same thing (thinking of the Russian psyops here on Tumblr in 2016). It feels like the scope is so narrow that it doesn't come close to targeting the root problem (user privacy and data mining as a whole), leading me to think it's only point is "ooh China Scary". Thoughts? (No worries if you'd rather not get into it, I just thought of you as someone who might have more insight/informed opinions on the matter).

So I'm not really familiar with all the details of the case and certainly not all the details of the bill. But I will give my perspective:

TikTok as a particular threat to users' data and privacy has been known for some time in the cybersecurity world. US government employees and contractors have been straight-up forbidden to have it on their phones for some time now. I, for example, have never had it on my phone because of these security concerns. (Worth noting, I'm not a government employee or contractor, it was just a known-to-be dangerous app in the cybersecurity world so I avoided it.)

This is because the parent company, as I understand, has known connections to the Chinese government that have been exploited in the past. For example, to target journalists.

Worth noting, another app that would potentially be on the chopping block is WeChat, which also has close ties to (or is outright owned by?) the Chinese government. This is just speculation on my part but it's based on the fact that all the concerns around TikTok are there for WeChat too and it has also been banned on government devices in some states, so I imagine it would be next if the bill passes.

I think this is important to note because I've seen some hot takes here on Tumblr have said that the entire case against TikTok is made up and there is no security threat. That is simply not true. The concerns have been there for a while.

However, the question of what to do about it is a thorny one.

The determination seems to be that so long as TikTok is still owned by its parent company with its direct ties to the Chinese government, there really is no way to guarantee that it's safe to use. From that angle, demanding that the company sever ties and set up some form of local ownership makes sense.

I am not a lawyer, but, that being said, forcing them to sell their local operations to a locally-based buyer is a pretty invasive and unusual step for legislators to take against a private company, even in a clear case of spying. I'm sure TikTok's widespread popularity is a big part of the threat it poses, which lends to the argument used to justify such an extreme step. (Because it is on so many phones, it really could be a danger to national security.)

That said, at one point young activists on TikTok embarrassed Trump (lots of good context in this article) while he was campaigning in 2020, and there was some talk then about shutting it down which seemed pretty clearly linked to how it was used as a platform to organize against him. I'm sure there's at least some right wing antipathy towards the app that has a political basis going back to this event. Trump signed an executive order banning it, the ban going into effect got bogged down in the courts, and then Biden rescinded that executive order when he got into office, pending an investigation into the threat it posed.

Those investigations seem to have further confirmed that the Chinese government is getting access to US user data through the app, and further confirmed it as a security threat.

Now, to muddy the waters further, there's several dodgy investment funds including one owned by former Secretary of the Treasury to Trump Steven Mnuchin that are circling with an interest to buy TikTok if it does sell. That's very concerning.

Funds like Mnuchin's interest in purchasing TikTok (even though they do invest in other technologies too, so it is in their portfolio) definitely makes the motivations behind the sale look pretty damning as momentum builds, that it could be some sort of money grab here in the US.

China has also pointed out that forcing the sale of a company because of spying concerns like this opens a whole can of worms. If China thinks that, say, Microsoft is spying on their citizens, could they force the US company to sell its operations in China to a Chinese investor? Could they force Google? Could they even further polarize the internet in general between "free" and "not free" (as in, behind the great Chinese or Russian firewall, as examples) if this precedent is set, so that no Western companies can operate in authoritarian states without selling their local operations there to a government-controlled organization, and thus be unable protect their users there? Or, if you don't have so rosy a view of Western companies, could it effectively deal a blow to international trade in general by saying you have to have to sell any overseas arms of a company to someone who is from there? Again, I'm not a lawyer, but this is a hell of a can of worms to open.

But again, this is muddy because China absolutely is spying on TikTok users. The security reason for all of this is real. What to do about it is the really muddled part that has a ton of consequences, and from that angle I agree with people who are against this bill. Tons of bad faith consequences could come out of it. But the concerns kicking off the bill are real.

[itsallpoliticsstupid]

The convenient timing of Taylor Swift's endorsement

I'm expecting to be lambasted for this one. But I can take it.

I have a hell of a lot of respect for @mishacollins. Anybody who stands by their convictions even when they are being criticized for them by their fanbase is basically a unicorn in my opinion. He's clearly very passionate about Politics, has his own views and won't bow to others if he's being shouted at, and I really respect him for that.

Which is what the original purpose of this blog was going to be. In essence, I was going to say how it's so important to have celebrities like him talking about their political views to change the narrative in this election, no matter how unpopular they are. And it's frustrating more celebrities can't use their platform like him to do good in this election.

But this morning I read his Facebook post gushing about Taylor Swift's endorsement and my initial thought was 'oh Misha. Why?' And it changed the direction of this blog.

Now whilst I appreciate it is a really important thing that Taylor Swift has thrown her endorsement behind Kamala Harris, can we just talk about the timing of her statement?

Taylor Swift is a woman with unimaginable wealth, and because of this she is able to hire a team of people around her that will be able to keep her appraised of anything in the media that is going to harm her image.

So I find it a little suspect that she claims to have only just found out about the AI images circulating of her endorsing Trump a couple of weeks ago. Yes, she has been on tour, and there have obviously been some horrific incidents associated with her name (the attack in the UK and the foiled terrorist attack), however I can't believe she only just found out.

Even if she mentioned in her statement she didn't want to speak out because of these incidents, that would have felt less disingenuous then saying 'I just found out.'

The second thing, is there has been some negative press surrounding her and the photos with Brittany Mahomes. Personally, I don't care who she's friends with. That's her business. But obviously it isn't a good look being friends with somebody who does seem to be in the Trump camp, especially when you are considered to be a firm friend of the LGBTQIA+ community and ultimately fans see you as a 'feminist icon.'

So to come out with her endorsement just a couple of days after people have been picking up on that, it's just incredibly convenient and feels like a way to get her fans, who were starting to question her back on side.

The third is, she could have endorsed Kamala right at the start. But let's be honest, she wasn't the most popular candidate when she first took over the campaign. It almost feels like she waited to see how popular she would be after the debate before going ahead and posting her endorsement.

One thing I will give her though, as a childfree cat lady, I did find her sign off quite good.

Anyway, those are my thoughts, and vote Kamala Harris in November.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Donald Trump’s Racist NYC Rally Was Vile. It Was Also Political Suicide

FINAL ACT

The Madison Square Garden rally, operatic in its repulsive bigotry, will almost certainly alienate more voters who might have voted for Trump.

David Rothkopf

Updated Oct. 27 2024 10:57PM EDT / Published Oct. 27 2024 10:49PM EDT 

Opinion

To all those Republicans who shed crocodile tears because their feelings were so hurt that people were calling Donald Trump a fascist: stop.

To all the MAGA defenders who said it was over-the-top to compare Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally to that held by the German-American Bund in an earlier incarnation of Madison Square Garden: shush.

To all those who were falling once again for the bought and paid for narrative that Trump somehow had the momentum going into the final week of campaign 2024: nope.

Even Republicans Angry at Trump Rally Joke About Puerto Rico

‘MAGA ON STEROIDS’

Amethyst Martinez, Matt Young

On Sunday at MSG, Donald Trump engineered what will be seen by political analysts and later by historians as the coup de grâce that killed forever his prospects of being president and may well have set him on a post-election course on which he finally may be held accountable for his actions.

The interminable rally concluded by an interminable, disjointed, incoherent and yet clearly vile speech by the former president, might have been touted by Trump’s son Don Jr., one of the former president’s warm-up acts, as the “king of New York returning to reclaim his crown.” But Trump was never the king of New York. (Sorry, Lara, your father-in-law did not “build” New York. Immigrants did. But we’ll get to that in a minute.)

Trump has always been loathed in New York City, especially in his former home borough of Manhattan where the vote against him was and will be dependably over 80 percent. But if he was hated before, rest assured, he will be more despised after tonight.

That was clear early on when Tony Hinchcliffe, a man invited by Trump to give one of the introductory speeches—who in true MAGA fashion alleged without providing a shred of evidence that he was a comedian—offered a KKK buffet of nauseating slurs. He called Puerto Rico “an island of floating garbage.”

“There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico” pic.twitter.com/IXbXqDijyU— Acyn (@Acyn) October 27, 2024

The “joke” was as stupid as it was repulsive because there are almost 600,000 Puerto Ricans in New York City and many more spread across regions of vtial importance in the upcoming election. It also happened to come on a day when Vice President Kamala Harris announced her detailed and thoughtful plan for Puerto Rico, an island Trump wanted to trade to Denmark in exchange for Greenland.

But this loser did not stop there. He offered unfunny commentary about his view that Latinos “love making babies” and a reference to how his Black friends liked carving watermelons.

You might think that a few super-racist comments from one speaker might not warrant comments that compared the Trump rally to the Nazi meeting 85 years ago. But his comments were hardly the worst. And the racism and the hate and incitement to violence and the promise of an increasingly authoritarian state continued from the very beginning of the event to the very end.

One speaker said that Harris was managed by “pimp handlers” and said of Democrats that “we need to slaughter these other people.” Disgraced and destitute former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, as did several others, that Democrats were behind attempts to kill Donald Trump. Another speaker called Harris “the devil” and “the antichrist.”

Former Trump aide Stephen Miller as is his habit went directly for the Nazi playbook saying, “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Tucker Carlson came out to offer more racist slurs about Harris. Hulk Hogan ripped his shirt off while declaring he saw no Nazis in the audience (thus proving that steroids abuse can not only shrivel up your junk but that it’s not really good for your eyesight either).

Elon Musk was there acting strangely and promising to slash the size of the government (except presumably the parts that are subsidizing his businesses).

Trump attacked the media, and egged the crowd on to boo journalists in the crowd. He said migrants had taken over Times Square (which Is 9 blocks uptown from where the rally was held). He called the US an occupied country which, while bad, may be better than his reference to it as a garbage can the other day. He called Harris a “low IQ individual.” He offered so many lies that cable networks tuned him out because it was impossible to keep up with fact-checking him. He returned to old themes like the bizarre notion that Harris would reinstate the draft and start World War III.

Most importantly from the perspective of confirming his fascism he reiterated at length his assertion that his opponents were “enemies of the people.” (You know the ones against whom he promised to unleash the US military.) He called them “the most sinister and corrupt forces on earth.”

In other words the entire event despite its marathon length and hodgepodge of z-list speakers, delivered over and over again a very focused message. The Trump campaign is about retribution and revenge. It is about the white supremacist desire to purge America of all their neighbors of different colors and beliefs. It is about Trump’s desire to seek out his enemies and punish them. And over the course of its Wagnerian length (and resonances) it single out group after group that would be deported or punished.

But worse still, unlike the Bund rally, Trump’s was not a fringe affair. It was led by a former president of the United States on behalf of very nearly half of the American people.

Its threats of authoritarianism were supported by efforts during the first Trump presidency to sidestep the rule of law and by crimes including a coup attempt we all saw with our own eyes. Its future plans for concentration camps in the US and for mass deportations and the use of the military against the American people have been carefully developed, and there is a plan to put them in place.

That is why Trump’s Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden was, as it turned out, far more ominous than its predecessor. It should chill Americans to the bone. But, I expect it will do more than that. I believe it will mobilize more voters to take action on Nov. 5 to stop the 21st-century fascism of Trump and MAGA.

Trump may be thinking the rally will help him mobilize thugs to violence when he contests his loss and we should be wary of that. But he has provided on the eve of the election the best case why he must be defeated that has ever been presented. In the end, because what unfolded was so foul and so offensive and threatening to so many of us, I believe that is why we will someday conclude that for all intents and purposes Trump’s final political act occurred on the biggest stage in America’s biggest city, a couple of blocks from Broadway.

David Rothkopf

djrothkopf

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here.

[misfitwashere]

September 9, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 10

Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launched a new section of its website detailing her policy positions. Titling her plans “A New Way Forward,” Harris vows to build the American middle class through an “opportunity economy.” Her vision for the future, she says, “protects our fundamental freedoms, strengthens our democracy, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.” 

Harris’s economic plan builds on that of the Biden-Harris administration. This makes sense, since their focus on investing in the middle class has created the strongest economy in the world. Harris is emphasizing the need to bring down household costs of food, medicine, housing, healthcare, and childcare, all issues important to Americans.  

The website provides concrete economic actions she plans to take with a willing Congress. They include expanding the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, investing in more housing, and supporting the PRO Act, which protects the rights of workers to unionize, while continuing the crackdown on business consolidation that kills competition and rolling back the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The biggest economic shift from the current administration is pegging a new capital gains tax for those earning more than a million dollars a year at 28%, significantly lower than the 39.6% President Joe Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. The plans also call for the first-ever national ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries (37 states already have such laws). 

Aside from strictly economic plans, the policy pages say Harris backs passing the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans killed on Trump’s orders, protecting reproductive healthcare and restoring Roe v. Wade, and protecting the right to vote and ending partisan gerrymandering through the John Lewis Voting Rights and the Freedom to Vote Acts.

Republicans have charged that Harris has not offered specifics for her policies, but much of what is now clearly laid out is already in the public record. By the standards of American history, it is a strikingly moderate agenda that reflects the belief that the best way for the government to protect opportunity and nurture the economy is to make sure that the system is fair and that ordinary people have access to opportunity.

The “New Way Forward” in Harris’s plan seems to be less a new set of policies than a rejection of the politics of the past several decades. She and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz appear to be attempting to reshape the political landscape to bring Americans of all parties together to stand against Trump’s MAGA Republicans. The campaign has actively reached out to Republicans, several of whom spoke at the Democratic National Convention. On Saturday, Harris said she was “honored” to have the endorsement of former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and former vice president Dick Cheney, both staunch Republicans. “People are exhausted about the division and the attempt to divide us as Americans,” she said. “We love our country and we have more in common than what separates us.” 

Trump’s website offers slogans rather than policies, so Harris’s website compares her policies to the comparable sections of Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term laid out by a number of right-wing institutions led by the Heritage Foundation. Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, but at his rallies, he has offered the policies in it—like firing nonpartisan civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, and abolishing the Department of Education—as his top priorities. 

While Harris focused on policy, as critics have demanded, MAGA Republicans today spread slurs about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they are eating other people’s pets and local wildlife. Right-wing media figure Benny Johnson, who was one of the six commenters whose paychecks at now-disbanded Tenet Media were paid by Russia, was one of those pushing the false stories. So was X owner Elon Musk. 

The story was debunked almost immediately by the Springfield police, but Republican politicians ran with it. The X account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee ran it; so did Texas senator Ted Cruz, who shared an image with two kittens saying: “PLEASE VOTE FOR TRUMP SO IMMIGRANTS DON’T EAT US.” And the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, posted: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” (The Haitians in Springfield are in the U.S. legally.)

Perhaps most significantly, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is challenging Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, pushed the story. That Senate seat is crucial to the Republican attempt to take control of the Senate, and Moreno has just launched a $25 million ad campaign against Brown, accusing him of giving undocumented immigrants taxpayer-funded benefits. Today’s disinformation was well timed for that ad campaign. 

The Justice Department today announced  charges against two leaders of the white supremacist Terrorgram Collective, an international terrorist group that operates on the platform Telegram. Dallas Humber of California and Matthew Allison of Idaho have been charged with “soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.” They “solicited murders and hate crimes based on the race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity of others,” U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said. They had a hit list of federal, state, and local officials, as well as corporate leaders, and they encouraged attacks on government infrastructure, including energy facilities. Their plan was to create a race war. 

“Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy, and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.

Congress is back in session today and must fund the government before October 1 or face a government shutdown. Although Congress negotiated spending levels for 2024 and 2025 back in June 2023, the House has been unable to pass appropriations bills because MAGA extremists either refuse to accept those levels or insist on inserting culture war poison pills into the bills. 

Now, Trump has demanded that a continuing resolution to fund the government must include a measure requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Since it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress and there is no evidence it is anything but vanishingly rare, the measure actually seems designed to suppress voting. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) went along and put the measure in the bill. He also designed for the measure to last until next March, making the budget so late a new president could write it, but also blowing through a January 1 deadline set in the June 2023 bill to require automatic cuts to spending.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to his colleagues: “House Democrats have made it clear that we will find bipartisan common ground on any issue with our Republican colleagues wherever possible, while pushing back against MAGA extremism.” Jeffries called the Republican bill “unserious and unacceptable.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told House and Senate leaders that the cuts required by law if Congress pushes the budget into March would drastically affect the military. “The repercussions of Congress failing to pass regular appropriations legislation for the first half of [fiscal] 2025 would be devastating to our readiness and ability to execute the National Defense Strategy,” Austin wrote.

Meanwhile, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is back to his old trick of blocking a military promotion, this time of Lieutenant General Ronald Clark, one of Austin’s top aides. Tuberville says he placed the hold because he has concerns that Clark did not alert Biden when Austin had surgery. Biden has nominated Clark to become the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Pacific, a position currently held by General Charles A. Flynn, younger brother of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor who resigned after news broke that he had hidden conversations with Russian operatives. 

Today, ten retired senior military officials endorsed Harris, saying she “is the best—and only—presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief…. Frankly stated, Donald Trump is a danger to our national security and our democracy. His own former National Security Advisors, Defense Secretaries, and Chiefs of Staff have said so.”

—

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Unfit :: billboard project

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 3, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 04, 2024

Last night the Boston Globe published a leaked email from a top volunteer with the Trump campaign, former Massachusetts Republican Party vice chair Tom Mountain, telling volunteers that the Trump campaign “no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable” and is “pulling back” from that important swing state. He urged volunteers to turn their attention instead to Pennsylvania. After the story dropped, the Trump campaign cut ties with Mountain. 

Stephen Collinson of CNN and Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Marianne LeVine of the Washington Post reported today that Trump’s team has given up on trying to get Trump to talk about the economy and other issues voters care about. The former president has decided to spend the rest of the campaign attacking Vice President Harris to destroy her popularity and drive voters away from her, rather than trying to attract them to himself. The Washington Post reporters noted that likely voters view Trump unfavorably and his team has concluded that while he can’t improve his own standing, he can damage hers. 

Collinson dubbed Trump’s plans a “feral political offensive.”

It is not clear that this will work. As Collinson notes, Harris has refused to get dragged into the gutter with Trump, and Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who studies focus groups, notes that voters appear to want to put the nastiness of the past several years behind them. Still, the media-tracking company AdImpact reported that between August 23 and August 29, 57% of the total television spending for political ads was on Republican attacks on Harris.

Trump also continues to demand that Republicans support his attempt to suppress voting. Having failed to pass any of the necessary appropriations bills before going on August recess, Congress will be in a rush when it comes back into session next week. It needs to fund the government before the end of the fiscal year on September 30 in order to prevent a partial shutdown. Last Thursday, Trump told right-wing podcast host Monica Crowley that he would “shut down the government in a heartbeat” unless the government funding package includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act—which would give credence to the idea that noncitizens are voting in national elections despite the fact it is already illegal—and a bill restricting legal immigration.

Zeeshan Aleem of MSNBC today took public notice of Trump’s “deteriorating ability to clearly communicate.” His speeches “seem to be growing more discursive and difficult to comprehend by the day,” Aleem wrote. “Those speeches are making it hard, if not impossible, for people listening to them to understand what he wants to do with his power in office, and they’re reportedly turning off voters.” A reporter for The Guardian pointed out that attendees at Trump’s rallies are leaving as he rambles for nearly two hours, and complaining that he is “babbling.”

For his part, Trump says his wandering speech is deliberate. He calls it “the weave.” I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.’”

Aleem notes that this less-focused, less-capable Trump would be exceptionally dangerous in office a second time. And yet, he was dangerous enough the first time. Today Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman of Just Security released a study showing at least twelve times that Trump used the power of the presidency to retaliate against his political enemies. They note that there is no evidence that President Joe Biden or anyone else at the Biden White House ever took similar actions.  

John McCain’s son Jimmy today announced that he has switched his voter registration from Republican to Democrat and will work to elect Vice President Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz in 2024. The younger McCain enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17 and is now an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment of the Arizona Army National Guard. He said he is speaking out because Trump’s conduct at Arlington National Cemetery was a “violation.” 

Last Friday, just before the long weekend, Trump announced that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would essentially enshrine in the Florida state constitution the abortion rights formerly protected by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. When Trump had bowed to popular support for abortion rights and expressed uneasiness at the state’s current six-week ban—a cutoff reached before most women know they’re pregnant—antiabortion activists launched fierce attacks on him. So, on Friday, Trump switched his position and announced he would vote against restoring access to abortion in Florida. 

That announcement has given wings to the Democrats’ messaging about Republicans’ determination to end abortion rights. It did not help the Republicans that more videos have been unearthed in which Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said that “a childless elite” is ruling the country. He went on to excoriate this elite for what he claimed was their pride that they didn’t have children and that they had abortions, and said “they look down on people who invest their time and their future in their children. And that is a dangerous place to live as a country.” Even a right-wing Newsmax interviewer suggested that he was “painting this group with perhaps a broad brush?”

On October 1, in Louisiana, a law will go into effect that reclassified the drug misoprostol as a controlled dangerous substance. Misoprostol can be used for abortion. It is also used for routine reproductive care and during medical emergencies to treat postpartum hemorrhage. It is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medications, a list containing those medications that are the most effective and safe to meet a health care system’s most important needs. After antiabortion activists targeted the drug, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry signed a law reclassifying it as a controlled dangerous substance. The reclassification means that the drug will no longer be easily available on obstetric hemorrhage carts. 

“Take it off the carts?” one doctor said to Lorena O’Neil of the Louisiana Illuminator. “That’s death. That’s a matter of life or death.”

The Harris campaign said: “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is the reason Louisiana women who are suffering from miscarriages or bleeding out after birth can no longer receive the critical care they would have received before Trump overturned Roe. Because of Trump, doctors are scrambling to find solutions to save their patients and are left at the whims of politicians who think they know better. Trump is proud of what he’s done. He brags about it. And if he wins, he will threaten to bring the crisis he created for Louisiana women to all 50 states.”

Vice President Harris’s campaign started its “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour today in Palm Beach, Florida, where it drove past the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago club. The bus will make at least 50 stops across the country. 

Pollster Tom Bonier today continued his examination of new registrants to vote. This time his focus was North Carolina. The pattern he has found across the country continues: “surges in registration are being driven by women.” In North Carolina, he writes, the number of registrants was almost 50% higher during the week of July 21 than in the same week in 2020, and the gender gap was +12 women, compared to +6 women in 2020. The new registrants were +6 Democratic, and 43% were younger than 30. 

The Harris-Walz campaign today joined the Democratic National Committee in announcing a transfer of nearly $25 million to support Democratic candidates in down-ballot state and federal races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will get $10 million each in hopes of supporting a Democratic majority in each chamber of Congress in the new administration. 

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the organization devoted to winning state legislatures, will receive $2.5 million. The Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will get $1 million each. 

Finally, today, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump campaign from playing the song he likes to dance to at his rallies: “Hold On, I’m Coming.” The estate of Isaac Hayes Jr., the artist who co-wrote the song, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump, his campaign, and a number of his allies, noting that they have never obtained a public performance license for the song although they have used it at least 133 times.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dan Pfeiffer at Message Box News:

In close races, nothing is more important than closing strong. And with four days to go, Donald Trump is most definitely not closing strong. Just look at the last week of his campaign:

On Sunday, Trump held a disastrous rally in Madison Square Garden filled with racist, misogynistic regret including the Puerto Rico joke heard around the world;

On Tuesday, Trump talked about the major role that anti-vaccine crank Robert F Kennedy Jr. would play in setting health care policy in a Trump Administration;

On Wednesday, Trump brought up both his history of sexual assault and his role overturning Roe v Wade when he said would protect women “whether they like or not;”

On Thursday, Trump sued 60 Minutes for $10 billion for a laughable series of reasons; and

Also on Thursday, Trump suggested that Liz Cheney should be shot for not supporting him.

I am writing this midday Friday, so it’s likely Trump will find another way to self-immolate politically between now and when you read this post. Trump’s surrogates like Speaker Mike Johnson, Elon Musk, and Trump Transition Chair Howard Lutnick make matters worse at every turn. Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has been closing very strongly. I have seen polling on her ellipse speech in front of 75,000 people, and she knocked it out of the park. Over the last week, her campaign played offensively, dictating the terms of the political conversation. Trump is reacting to her and is clearly off his game.

Why Closing Well Matters

While most voters made up their mind months if not years ago, there is a slice of voters who don’t decide until the final week. The news environment in the final week is very influential with these voters. They have either been going back and forth for months or, more likely, are just tuning into politics in the final days before the election. This is particularly true because our media ecosystem makes it challenging for all but the biggest junkies to follow political news. Campaigns track what voters are hearing about the candidates. In focus groups, the first question asked of respondents is often how much they have heard about a candidate and whether what they heard made them feel better or worse about that candidate. The poll often includes an open-ended question asking voters to volunteer what they have heard. Those responses are then put into a word cloud to see what’s breaking through. Here’s an example from a recent Navigator Research poll about Project 2025.

Want more proof that Kamala Harris (D) has the edge as we get closer to the finish line?

Donald Trump (R) has made gaffe after gaffe in recent weeks, and late-deciders are going towards Harris instead of him, unlike the last two elections.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Trump’s anti-Ukraine view dates to the 1930s. America rejected it then. Will we now?

(Illustration: Brian Stauffer for The Washington Post)

This opinion column by Robert Kagan reminds us that history appears to be repeating itself. Trump's America First movement is an echo of the 1930s/1940s isolationist, neo-fascist America First movement that tried to keep the U.S. out of WWII. This is a gift🎁link, so you can read the entire article, even if you don't subscribe to The Washington Post. Below are some excerpts:

Many Americans seem shocked that Republicans would oppose helping Ukraine at this critical juncture in history....Clearly, people have not been taking Donald Trump’s resurrection of America First seriously. It’s time they did. The original America First Committee was founded in September 1940. Consider the global circumstances at the time. Two years earlier, Hitler had annexed Austria and invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia. One year earlier, he had invaded and conquered Poland. In the first months of 1940, he invaded and occupied Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. In early June 1940, British troops evacuated from Dunkirk, and France was overrun by the Nazi blitzkrieg. In September, the very month of the committee’s formation, German troops were in Paris and Edward R. Murrow was reporting from London under bombardment by the Luftwaffe. That was the moment the America First movement launched itself into the battle to block aid to Britain. [...] This “realism” meshed well with anti-interventionism. Americans had to respect “the right of an able and virile nation [i.e. Nazi Germany] to expand,” aviator Charles Lindbergh argued. [...] Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called for the immediate reduction of U.S. force levels in Europe and the abrogation of America’s common-defense Article 5 commitments. He wants the United States to declare publicly that in the event of a “direct conflict” between Russia and a NATO ally, America will “withhold forces.” The Europeans need to know they can no longer “count on us like they used to.”  [...] Can Republicans really be returning to a 1930s worldview in our 21st-century world? The answer is yes. Trump’s Republican Party wants to take the United States back to the triad of interwar conservatism: high tariffs, anti-immigrant xenophobia, isolationism. According to Russ Vought, who is often touted as Trump’s likely chief of staff in a second term, it is precisely this “older definition of conservatism,” the conservatism of the interwar years, that they hope to impose on the nation when Trump regains power. [...] Like those of their 1930s forbears, today’s Republicans’ views of foreign policy are heavily shaped by what they consider the more important domestic battle against liberalism. Foreign policy issues are primarily weapons to be wielded against domestic enemies. [...] The GOP devotion to America First is merely the flip side of Trump’s “poison the blood” campaign. It is about the ascendancy of White Christian America and the various un-American ethnic and racial groups allegedly conspiring against it. [emphasis added]  

Use the gift link above to read the entire article. It is worth reading.

____________ Illustration: The above illustration by Brian Stauffer originally drew me to this article. It does a great job of succinctly illustrating the Trump GOP's rightward march towards isolationism (and Putin-style dictatorship). [edited]

[ghostboycharm]

"it's about the policies" well that's the problem. after watching the debate i still have no idea what the fuck any of biden's policies are because he utterly failed to communicate them.

that's understandable, it was a bad performance on his part. nobody is denying that. however, it is one night, and reading up on his policies, the things he has done for americans, and even listening again to the debate while trying to ignore the tapered off sentences and stuttering, can help to realise he actually has made quite a bit of positive impact. i personally did not have any trouble understanding him, for the most part. however, i am used to speaking with people who have speech impediments, and am also quite good at listening to and comprehending auditory information in general.

anyway, the very next day he was speaking at rallies and was much more forceful, much more vigorous, and much more clear. sometimes it's just a crapshoot --- people have bad days. i do public speaking and performing, and sometimes i am able to speak clearly and concisely, other days i feel like i can't even get a word in without stumbling. the thing to remember is that he is a human being, not a robot, and when dealing with so much pressure and scrutiny, it can be difficult to put on your best face.

it's important to remember that debates are not what being a president is all about. it's also the stuff that goes on in the background. but that's less entertaining than watching a public shitshow, and it doesn't get nearly as much media time. however, it happens to be the more important stuff.

and, for the record: i spend many hours every week in a retirement home, most of it on the second floor, which is reserved for clients with severe dementia. none of them would be even slightly capable of speaking the way biden did. many people are so out of touch with what dementia actually is that they sincerely believe biden exhibits it. no. what he is exhibiting are normal human reactions to pressure --- stupid mistakes, fumbling, and stuttering are all normal. and, remember, stutters are often worsened with stress. it was a shitty performance, yeah. but it was shitty for normal reasons.

people who jump on biden for misremembering the year of his son's death, for example, clearly don't understand loss. my father lost his brother many years ago, and i asked him what year he died, and he couldn't remember. just like biden, he remembered the day instantly. but the year disappeared. nobody would call this a sign of dementia in my father, but when biden does it, he's on death's door.

this is because people are constantly looking for another reason to accuse biden of being incompetent. there is little to no basis for this belief --- much of it is thanks to the pervasive campaign against him. yeah, he's old. we get it. the dude's ancient. but you need to remember that he's still the only thing standing against another trump presidency. and if you think that would be better, please remember:

there is a culture of listening not to the words people say, but how they say them. it's natural, it's instinctive --- often it's a defense mechanism. but you need to work against it. you need to force yourself to listen to the meaning, not how the tone is making you feel.

biden may not be a great guy. he may not even be a good guy. but right now he's the only chance to get america back on track, not even through his presidency, but through the people around him and the avoidance of trump. trump is the biggest threat against america right now. you cannot let him into office.

and here's your daily reminder: voting based on ONE issue (palestinian genocide) rather than looking at the bigger picture is a sign of extreme privilege. it proves that you don't care about palestinians at all. why? because letting trump into office is throwing women, queer people, trans people, AND palestinians under the bus. because trump hates all of those people. and he has enacted policies against all of them during his presidency, and he's confirmed that he will again if re-elected.

you gotta remember that the fight for bodily autonomy in america, for example, is a fight for bodily autonomy everywhere. whether we like it or not, the rest of the world does look to america, and last time i checked, palestinians are humans, and they have bodies, and those bodies are affected by the american struggle for bodily autonomy.

and as a final note, here's my favourite post on this issue. it explains it clearly, concisely, and probably better than i have.

i hope this helps. if you're an american voter, please vote for biden. it sucks, but there really is no better option right now. but hopefully, in the next four years, there will be.

and because i know people in the comments are gonna hit me with the "american dems" bullshit as usual: i'm literally not american. try again

[robertreich]

The Truth About Corporate Subsidies

Why won't big American corporations do what's right for America unless the government practically bribes them?

And why is the government so reluctant to regulate them?

Prior to the 1980’s, the U.S. government demanded that corporations act in the public interest.

For example, the Clean Air Act of 1970 stopped companies from polluting our air by regulating them.

Fast forward to 2022, when the biggest piece of legislation aimed at combating the climate crisis allocates billions of dollars in subsidies to clean energy producers.

Notice the difference?

Both are important steps to combating climate change.

But they illustrate the nation’s shift away from regulating businesses to subsidizing them.

It’s a trend that’s characterized every recent administration.

The CHIPS Act –– another major initiative of the Biden administration –– shelled out $52 billion in subsidies to semiconductor firms.

Donald Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” delivered over $10 billion in subsidies to COVID vaccine manufacturers.

Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act subsidized the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

George W. Bush and Obama bailed out Wall Street following the 2008 economic crash while providing about $80 billion in rescue funds for GM and Chrysler.

And the federal government has been subsidizing big oil and gas companies for decades, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Before the Reagan era, it was usually the case that America regulated rather than subsidized big business to ensure the wellbeing of the American public.

The Great Depression and FDR’s Administration created an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies — the SEC, FCC, FHA, and so on — that regulated businesses.

Corporations were required to produce public goods, or avoid public “bads” like a financial meltdown, as conditions for staying in business.

If this regulatory alternative seems far-fetched today, that’s because of how far we’ve come from a regulatory state to a subsidy state.

Today it’s politically difficult, if not impossible, for government to demand that corporations bear the costs of public goods. The government still regulates businesses, of course –– but one of the biggest things it does is subsidize them. Just look at the growth of government subsidies to business over the past half century.

The reason for this shift is corporations now have more political clout than ever before.

Industries that spend the most on lobbying and campaign contributions have often benefited greatly from this shift from regulation to subsidy.

Now, subsidies aren’t inherently bad. Important technological advances have been made because of government funding.

But subsidies are a problem when few, if any, conditions are attached — so there’s no guarantee that benefits reach the American people.

What good is subsidizing the healthcare industry when millions of Americans have medical debt and can’t afford insurance? What good are subsidies for oil companies when they price gouge at the pump and destroy the planet? What good are subsidies for profitable semiconductor manufacturers when they’re global companies with no allegiance to America?

We’re left with a system where costs are socialized, profits are privatized.  

Now, fixing this might seem daunting — but we’re not powerless. Here’s what we can do to make sure our government actually works for the people, not just the powerful.

First, make all subsidies conditional, so that any company getting money from the government must clearly specify what it will be spent on – so we can ensure the funds actually help the public.

Second, ban stock buybacks so companies can’t use the subsidies to pump up their profits and stock prices.

Third, empower regulatory agencies to do the jobs they once did — forcing companies to act in the public interest.

Finally, we need campaign finance reform to get big corporate money out of politics.

Large American corporations shouldn’t need government subsidies to do what’s right for America.

It’s time for our leaders in Washington to get this message, and reverse this disturbing trend.

[sethshead]

Although the Biden administration seems to have run extremely well for three and a half years, with a strong cabinet, few scandals and little turnover, a thriving economy and some major legislative accomplishments, the narrative the punditocracy has created suggest we should ignore this record and decide on the basis of the 90-minute debate and reference to newly surfaced swarms of anonymous sources that Biden is incompetent. Quite a lot of them have been running magical-realism fantasy-football scenarios in which it is fun and easy to swap in your favorite substitute candidate. The reality is that it is hard and quite likely to be a terrible mess. Nevertheless, this pretense is supposed to mean that telling a presidential candidate in mid-campaign to get lost is fine.

The main argument against Biden is not that he can’t govern – that would be hard to make given that he seems to have done so for the past years – but that he can’t win the election. But candidates do not win elections by themselves. Elections are won, to state the obvious, by how the electorate turns out and votes. The electorate votes based on how they understand the situation and evaluate the candidates. That is, of course, in large part shaped by the media, as Hannah-Jones points out, and the media is right now campaigning hard for a Democratic party loss. The other term for that is a Republican victory. Few things have terrified and horrified me the way this does.

This isn't about the polls saying Biden is too old to serve a second term. The people who nominated and elected Biden in 2020 also thought him too old to serve a first term. Opinion polling results in mind-blowingly contradictory responses. It cannot be trusted. What is more important are the journalists who have completely divorced themselves from the consequences of their words. They really are treating this election not only as a simple horse race, but as fantasy football, like a baseball trade simulator. They want to see a good entertaining show with all the most niche candidates only a hipster could love getting their days in the sun. The media are masturbating while Rome burns all around them. They want to draw readers in with sensationalism and appeals to liberal neurosis, however much this irresponsible obsession drives the news cycle and voters' attitudes.

I disagree with Hannah-Jones about the degree of influence the media has in a free society. Chomsky's conspiracist ramblings about manufacturing consent for top-down policies is wrong; our yellowest journalism is democratic and bottom-up. The news is a commodity here, not a set of instructions. Outlets supply the consumer with what they think we want to hear. Unfortunately, in this case, what the pundits think we want to hear is based on their own professional echo chambers, their own insider contacts (currently with their knives out in a cannibalistic feeding frenzy) and the fickle, skittish donor class. They are all freaking the country out with their rampant speculation and backbiting. The whole lot of them need to get serious about this race.

Somehow, Republicans are able to close ranks around a clearly unfit and treasonous scumbag because it offers them the best shot to attain power for decades at least. Why can't we protect a president and administration who have done so admirably for the country for nearly four years?

[darkmaga-returns]

It’s been truly remarkable to watch Kamala Harris’ closing unity message get royally derailed by President Joe Biden’s Freudian slip about “garbage” just one week before the 2024 election wraps up. It’s been even more amazing to watch the regime’s foot soldiers lie so vociferously about the statement anyone with working ears could hear clearly on video — amazing because the CYA mission won’t work.

After insult comic Tony Hinchcliffe joked about Puerto Rico being a floating pile of trash at a recent Trump rally — among a zillion other indiscriminate zings — Democrats tried unsuccessfully to gin up a controversy about Republican racism. But that plan epically backfired when Joe Biden talked about Puerto Rico on a Zoom call and ended up calling half of Americans garbage instead.

“The only garbage I see floating out there is [Trump’s] supporters.”

October surprise, baby! It seems like poetic justice that Biden, who was knifed in the back by his own party to undemocratically install Kamala Harris as the Democrat nominee, was the one to deliver what could be the fatal blow to Harris’ seemingly faltering campaign. 

The White House and accomplice media immediately launched into spin mode. Joe Biden’s X account said he was talking not about people, but about “hateful rhetoric.” His press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “clarified” that when Biden said Trump supporters are garbage, “He was not calling Trump supporters garbage.” Got it. Taxpayer-funded NPR thought the most important part of POTUS demonizing half the country was that “Republicans pounce[d],” and the network’s media correspondent tried really hard to hear whether Biden called Trumpers trash but concluded Robert Hur-style that the president is just “an octogenarian with a stutter.” CBS News (of election interference infamy) and The Washington Post couldn’t quite sus out the mysterious meaning of “supporters.”

[vintageseawitch]

HEY CHECK IT OUT

what the fuck.

if you're out of the loop, there's been a TON of activity in political tiktok, specifically in the leftist space. an obvious talkie has been attempting to spread the lie that they were paid $15,000 by the DNC (which turns out to be a lie; it was $10,000 from a third party group called Vocal so the content creator can make content about Project 2025) & then made the claim that any content creator speaking well about Democrats were all getting paid to do so, which was also a lie & even if it wasn't, who cares? people put in a ton of work & don't often get paid enough.

the next big issue: this tankie, who is a white woman that lives in California, made an outrageous claim that Angela Davis wasn't a true member of the Black Panthers & now the explosive & entirely valid conversations about racism & white supremacy exist even in leftist spaces are taking that area by storm.

black women have been talking about it quite a bit & by now they're annoyed because it sounds like they're defending Kamala Harris even though they may not like her or her policies even if they may be voting for her anyways or not.

the input & knowledge from black women is important & we all need to listen. the fact is that as white people exist, we're living in a system founded on & upheld by white supremacy & what's worse is in leftist spaces, because people believe they're the ultimate ally, they don't need to put in anymore work.

but then things get sticky. things get uncomfortable. they have to be white saviors & once again, black & indigenous folks living here will pay the price.

certain leftists can claim they're anti-genocide as much as they wish but they're only partially against a specific one going on. i don't blame them for caring because everyone should give a damn about people going through something so horrific. that said, whatever horrors have been going on to our fellow man here don't seem to bother them as much. there may be some compassion here & there but nowhere near the level of devotion to people across an ocean from us.

then you get the shit in the above screenshot. a chaos agent. a putin puppet, who is stanned by the likes of Kshama Sawant, an accelerstionist as far as i can tell as well as Hassan Abdel Salam, both of whom have admitted they know they can't win but they want Harris to lose ignoring the fact that trump wants to deport them & others like them no matter how long they may have lived here. you get jill stein, someone who can immediately call netanyahu & Biden war criminals but when pressed about her precious putin suddenly she has a problem with "name calling" (the KGB should have trained her better). she's received money from Republicans for her campaign. she's getting help from trump lawyers. trump personally thanked her by name in a speech earlier this year because even he knows she's another tool for him.

it's wild how green party voters call those voting for Harris "blue maga" but they themselves are behaving more like original maga than they will care to admit let alone see. i'm not saying that there aren't those who think Harris is perfect, but i hardly see such blind devotion the way i see people have for trump & stein. both are cult leaders. they say things their followers want to hear.

stein's response?

oh no you don't. this was from 2016:

she's full of it. a KKK leader felt safe enough to endorse her & i'm now seeing her cult followers defending her, such as believing that he was paid by Democrats to do this & that we're apparently celebrating Dick Cheney's endorsement (i saw one comment saying people think Cheney is "brat" lmao) even though there had been zero celebrating & mostly trepidation & astonishment. he's clearly not voting for Harris because he has a change of heart; even if it's for selfish reasons, he & a bunch of other old Republicans see the danger that trump possesses. they're not agreeing with policies from Harris because she's "far right" (a bullshit claim anyways); they're agreeing that any extremist takeover is NOT GOOD. leftists refuse to see this perspective.

so like i mentioned earlier, it's white supremacy. jill stein has taken a once noble party & bastardized it to the point that white supremacists & antisemites feel safe in her space (i'm not saying that being pro-Palestine means you're an antisemite. i'm pointing out that Duke is also an antisemite). it's disgusting & disturbing. she's a wealthy white woman who won't be harmed by Project 2025. she wants trump to win & she & her rabid followers are working to make that happen.

third party voters, you aren't safe. you are accelerstionists to me now regardless of reason. your voting this way or not voting at all isn't brave or impressive, it's selfish, a surrender, cowardly. you don't want to get your hands dirty but when things go to shit you will refuse to take any responsibility for your part in it. the revolution you want so badly is nothing more than your version of the Rapture & the only revolution that will be happening is a fascist one because Republicans know how to play a long game to get real results unlike you leftists. they love that your tunnel vision self-righteousness makes you stupid & willing to throw your fellow vulnerable Americans under the bus so you get to feel morally superior.

you're monstrous. i'm not bothering to try to beg or play nice with you lot since you're no better than trump's maga. a former KKK leader endorsed your precious savior & nothing you say will change that. to make excuses is to make your space safe for white supremacy. you're unsafe.

[kwyw]

I have never wished more in my life to be psychotic and delusional and to actually be told that they're not together and Karlie is actually with someone else. To be put out of this misery that Kaylor has become. After staying silent for so long on politics, not denouncing that AI, scrapping her Pride speech this year or post, this today with Brittany is a statement! You can't think Taylor controla every narrative but when she does something like this, is out of control cause we don't like it. She knows what she's doing and sadly, I can no longer support her. This isn't even staying neutral. This is a Trump endorsement in my eyes. She has enough power to not appear with this women if she doesn't want to. Brittany is not her beard.

Karlie will always have a special place in my heart for managing to always loudly advocate and suppor the Democratic causes she's passionate about, despite her situation. She went as far as to have her tweets used in court against Trump. Staying true to herself and keeping her head up after the hate campaign Taylor submitted her to, is truly admirable.

This has been fun but it's truly time to go for me! 👋

It’s a shame it’s gotten to this point with a lot of fans. Anyone that knows me will tell you Karlie and Kaylor is the main reason I’ve stayed in these parts for so long. I’m not quite there yet, but I definitely get having to step away.

Maybe it’s because I’m in the U.S. and the PTSD of me crying that night in 2016, then living through those 4 years of hell that still don’t go away because half of the country is so goddamn stupid, but it’s hard to tolerate this kind of stuff, especially when there’s precedent of Taylor speaking out. I still believe she’ll eventually endorse Kamala, but it’s hard to give a damn when her public persona has been so over the top and in your face to the point of many of her own fans pointing out that it’s like she flipped a switch and became someone else.

I just… she has her reasons. Robin, for example, is a very very important song. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend I enjoy seeing her shenanigans this time around. Even if I can clearly see she hates it just as much as we do.

All in all, I just think she needs to tread carefully because there’s no way someone at this height of popularity can make the eventual fall a graceful one, if you’re surrounding yourself with the wrong people.

[mariacallous]

There has been a long debate over the power of propaganda to influence public opinion. Are people susceptible to the latest wild rumor circulating on TikTok or are they, as writer Joseph Bernstein and others argue, able to hold independent beliefs and resist false narratives?

While public opinion optimists may be right in a number of cases, what they ignore in presidential elections is the manner in which the Electoral College increases disinformation risks. That is because in all but two states the Electoral College votes are awarded on a winner-take-all basis—hence very small vote margins can yield all the Electoral College votes. Have a look at the vote margins in some key states in 2016. In the five closest states, the winning candidate (Trump in four states and Clinton in one state) triumphed with a miniscule percentage of the vote.

False news purveyors don’t have to persuade 99% of American voters to be influential but simply a tiny amount in Michigan, New Hampshire, or Wisconsin. In each of those places, a shift of one percent of the vote or less based on false narratives would have altered the outcome.

The same pattern of a close election repeats itself in 2020. False news purveyors didn’t have to convince everyone voting in the closest states. They merely had to shift a miniscule number of people.

If the United States had direct popular voting for president, disinformation likely would pose little risk in 2024. We would not have to worry about a small number of swing areas as candidates would focus on voters from many states across the country. A vote in Arizona would be no more important than a vote in Florida, Texas, or Illinois. Without the Electoral College, it would be harder for those generating fake videos and audios to target specific geographic areas. Candidates would realize that any appeals in Phoenix, Detroit, or Milwaukee based on false information about voting, climate change, public health, or race relations could backfire and be offset by votes elsewhere for the other candidate.

Fear about a possible backlash is one of the major factors limiting propaganda effectiveness. People who don’t like blatant attempts to manipulate elections always can serve as a counterweight to those peddling falsehoods. If voters in California, Texas, or Florida object to false videos or narratives in Arizona that clearly run contrary to agreed-upon facts, they can in a direct popular election offset disinformation targeting voters in swing states. It is due to the existence of the Electoral College that the 2024 election could come down to a small group of voters in swing areas and enable disinformation disseminators to run highly targeted campaigns with questionable appeals in those places.

False targeted appeals are not the only election risk in 2024. Due to the Electoral College, under the radar manipulation could focus on a small number of voters without much visibility from anyone else. Candidates and their supporters can deploy fake robocalls, direct mail pitches, or launch social media campaigns that might be invisible to opposition candidates, the mainstream media, and independent fact-checkers. Disinformation could thrive without any public accountability from other political forces. Those efforts could lie so far below public visibility that disinformation could work without others even knowing about it or having a chance to rebut it.

The winner-take-all nature of state voting under the Electoral College further elevates the possible role of third party and independent candidates in deciding the outcome in particular areas. Disinformation disseminators don’t have to move voters from Biden to Trump or vice versa to be influential. Instead, disinformation could be effective by moving voters from Biden or Trump to Robert Kennedy, Jr, Jill Stein, or Cornel West. If any of those minor candidates draw votes disproportionately from Biden or Trump based on fake news, that effectively elects the other major party nominee through false material.

In all these respects, the United States faces disinformation risks that go way beyond the situation that exists in most other countries that are voting this year. There are major elections taking place in India, Indonesia, Europe, Mexico, and elsewhere. But in most of these nations, there is some form of direct popular voting for the chief executive or proportional voting for political parties that minimize the overall disinformation risks. It is harder to manipulate an entire country than a few cities in a couple of states as is the case currently in the United States due to the Electoral College.

The anachronistic Electoral College increases the importance of tiny groups of voters. There could be false information that is discounted by the vast swath of U.S. public opinion yet remains persuasive to the small number of people in Arizona, Michigan, or Wisconsin who will decide the presidential election.

At a time when America is plagued by extreme polarization and partisanship, and some Americans are eager to believe just about anything that reflects badly on the other side, the Electoral College elevates the power of questionable material to influence outcomes. False narratives could be completely ineffective with almost all U.S. voters but still decide the national election. It would be tragic if the 2024 election were decided by a small number of voters in a few states who cast their ballots on the basis of blatantly fake information.