Trump “memorializes” 9/11 He is currently in business with Saudi Arabia’s LIV golf, happy to whitewash their past as he did when he proclaimed MBS innocent of ordering the death and dismemberment of Jamaal Kashoggi. His first trip as president was to genuflect to their king. And his son-in-law delivered so much to the Saudi government while he was in the White House that they gave him 2 billion dollars in thanks immediately upon leaving office. Also this, when he called in to a radio station on the morning of 9/11 and bragged about how he now had the tallest building in Manhattan, which was, naturally, a lie: “I mean, 40 Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And it was actually – before the World Trade Center – was the tallest. And then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest.” As multiple fact checks later pointed out, this was not true. The Wall Street building had not been the tallest building in lower Manhattan in the 1970s, when the Twin Towers were constructed, nor was it the tallest in the area after 2001.
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Of aliens and alienation The United States pulled itself together again somehow after the trauma of the Civil War. Or rather, slavery ended formally only to be replaced by a system that rendered the South’s once-enslaved persons free in name only for another 100 years. What persisted was one nation with two systems deeply divided by culture. Those war’s psychic wounds were thinly disguised behind monuments to the Lost Cause that the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) spent decades planting across indivisible nation. Meanwhile, the Invisible Nation enforced white supremacy for nearly a century. The North won the Civil War, but the South won the peace, at least regionally. The trauma of electing the country’s first black president in this century reopened the wounds to white pride that never fully healed after Appomattox. Donald Trump, his own psychic wounds worn on the outside, exploited that grievance to win the presidency immediately following Barack Obama’s White House tenure. Talk of a second civil war persists among Trump’s red-hatted brownshirts and did so even before Trump lost reelection in 2020. A New Lost cause was born.
Indicted former president gets a mixed welcome All the red was not for him. There were chants of U-S-A when TFG arrived Saturday at Jack Trice Stadium for the Iowa-Iowa State football game. But other football fans gave Donald Trump a less than warm welcome. The New York Times: The former president entered the game to a mix of applause and audible boos, as a plane with a banner reading “Where’s Melania?” flew overhead — a nod to the absence of his wife from the campaign trail. Some attendees gave him the middle finger from the stands while he looked on from the glass-paneled box from which he watched the game.
And it’s not Tuberville Wisconsin just re-elected this person.
This from Eric Loomis at LG&M struck me because I just love the fact that unions are finally getting some traction after all these years. It’s a wonderful development and I have high hopes that this new generation will be successful in reforming the workplace through collective action. However, they do need to keep their eyes on the prize: As a labor person who is not one of these lefty labor-intellectual types who think that the real goal of the labor movement or the left should be to “emancipate” ourselves from labor entirely, I am not of the utopian type frame of mind. I admit that my brain mostly works within the 20th century socialist framework much more so than the 21st century left-libertarian-individual freedom framework. So when I see odd collective bargaining demands from workers who are more of the individualistic mindset, it kind of breaks my brain. Workers can collectively bargain for whatever they want. But I am trying to imagine walking to negotiations and trying to work out the demands of these Philadelphia coffee shop workers. I am going to present here what the employers’ lawyer says, which you can dismiss if you would like.
So the wingnuts are having a field day because Biden responded to a question about what he was going to do next by saying that he planned to go to bed. Naturally this is being spun as a further sign of his decrepitude. It’s actually the opposite as even Fox News reports: Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy reported that President Joe Biden was “working through the night” despite constant attacks on his age. Doocy revealed the 80-year-old president’s work schedule during a trip to Vietnam on Sunday. During the live report, Doocy seemed annoyed by the presence of presidential envoy John Kerry in the moments before Biden was set to speak. “And so, we expect maybe some climate talk here in Hanoi,” Doocy said. “We expect a short statement off the top, just about how the G20 went in India and how his meetings went here with the Communist Party in Vietnam. And then, as many questions as he wants to take.” “He has been basically working all through the night, the equivalent of an all-nighter Eastern time,” he added. “So, he’s probably pretty tired, pretty jet-lagged.
So Trump has a government funded office that nobody knows about and it’s piled up with his “boxes.” And the people who have worked there, paid for by the government, are part of his campaign, which is a no-no. Of course: Several Trump aides on the payroll of his Save America political action committee, his 2024 presidential campaign or both have worked at the post-presidential office since it opened two years ago, according to campaign finance records and people familiar with the office. Cheung did not respond to a follow-up email seeking details about the office and its operations, including whether aides on Trump’s political payroll who have worked there are also paid by the government or a private noncampaign entity. It is possible for one person to split time between a campaign and government work, according to election finance experts. For example, most executive branch employees — including political appointees — can participate in certain partisan political activities outside of work, so long as they don’t use government resources.
The off year elections have been positive for the Dems: Looking ahead to 2024, Democrats concede some cause for concern — including President Joe Biden’s anemic approval rating and early polls forecasting a repeat race against former President Donald Trump in which Biden either ties or trails, due in part to a notable chunk of undecided voters and apprehension over Biden’s age and acuity, which he has repeatedly dismissed. But Democrats also say that based on 2023 so far, they see plenty of reason for optimism about their chances with voters. An analysis from FiveThirtyEight found that in 38 special elections held so far this year, Democrats have outperformed the partisan lean — or the relative liberal or conservative history — of the areas where the races were held by an average of 10%, both romping in parts of the country that typically support the party while cutting down on GOP margins in red cities and counties, too.
He aced it:
What is it Emily’s List says? Early Money Is Like Yeast? So, perhaps, are early branding ads. In preparing the ground ahead of the next election, Democrats’ efforts always seem too little and too late. But with Biden’s low approval numbers, Democrats and their allies are not waiting to give their candidate a boost (Politico): The cavalry is arriving extraordinarily early for President Joe Biden. With poll after brutal poll showing the president in danger of losing a likely rematch with former President Donald Trump, his campaign is getting an unusual boost from a super PAC spending millions of dollars to resuscitate public opinion of him in major battlegrounds. The ads are striking for both their timing and their content. The election is still 423 days away, and Biden and an affiliate of his chief super PAC are already running TV ads in nearly every major battleground state — far earlier than normal for a presidential election. And instead of going on the attack, as super PACs usually do, the ads are trying to boost Biden’s image.