Governor Ron DeSantis was heckled and booed at a Sunday vigil held to honor victims of the racist mass shooting at a Jacksonville store the previous day. The boos began from the moment the Florida governor was introduced and continued as he tried to deliver his remarks. DeSantis acknowledged Ju’Coby Pittman, the city councilwoman who organized the prayer vigil, and promised assistance from the state government to go toward security for Edward Waters University, a historically Black university that the gunman initially visited prior to the shooting. “We’re not going to allow these institutions to be targeted by people,” he said, stopping as the noise from the crowd grew even louder. At that moment, Pittman got up and grabbed the microphone from the stand and addressed the hundreds of people gathered, telling them to let DeSantis continue. “It ain’t about parties today. A bullet don’t know a party,” she said. The BBC reports that DeSantis was ultimately able to finish his speech, reiterating comments he had made the day of the shooting.
Uncategorized
Trump couldn’t pass a job interview MSNBC’s Chris Hayes (IIRC) last week observed that Republicans are seriously considering nominating for president a man facing four federal and state indictments on 91 felony counts who, the last time he held office, tried to end the republic as we know it and sent a mob to sack the U.S. Capitol. Ben Rhodes, former Obama deputy national security advisor, commented Thursday night on “the steady radicalization of the Republican Party and the trivialization of politics.” Regarding Donald Trump’s interview last week with fired Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Rhodes wrote that “the GOP frontrunner talked at length on this platform about vicious mosquitos, conspiracy theories, and general nonsense. A man who said those things in a job interview for just about any other position in the world wouldn’t get hired.” Trump is also, you may have heard, 6′-3″ and 215 pounds of rippling muscle. BTW, Trump this week declared himself the winner of another golf tournament (at a club he owns) in which he totally did not cheat.
Is it too much to ask? Heather Cox Richardson posts, “Reading a paper today and it gave me a crazy idea: how about interviewing some Democratic voters for a change? Maybe that’s just too out there to be on the table, though….” Other than mocking lefties for eating avocado toast, the press doesn’t view them as newsworthy subjects of inquiry unless they occupy Nancy Pelosi’s office, that is, when they show up where political reporters normally do their jobs. There are few political reporting safaris to where Democrat-leaning voters hang out in cities large and small unless they are on college campuses or represent the lunatic fringe. But angry right-wingers at school board meetings? That bleeds. Even when it doesn’t. Are there no coffee shops? No book stores? Marianne Williamson visited one in little Aiken, SC recently (in a county that went 61-38 for Trump in 2020). Local papers reported the press release. Nothing on the rarities who showed up with opinions.
Here’s the latest from the man tens of millions of Americans worship like a god. I just thought you ought to know even if you don’t want to. In case you were wondering, Trump always cheats at golf. Here’s an excerpt of one of many, many stories about it: Jack O’Donnell worked with Donald Trump for four years as vice president of Trump Plaza Casino in Atlantic City. O’Donnell’s dad was one of the founders of Sawgrass, the iconic Pete Dye golf course near Jacksonville, Fla. “My dad always told us to respect the game,” O’Donnell says. “That’s the one part of the game that tells me what kind of person you are. You play the ball where it lies.” So when O’Donnell’s office colleague, the late Mark Eddis, came back after his first round with Trump, O’Donnell couldn’t resist asking. “So, does he improve his lie?” Eddis looked at him and threw his head back in laughter. “Every shot but the tee shot.” Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf. He cheats like a three-card Monte dealer. He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies.
Yesterday there was another horrific hate crime perpetrated down in Florida when a racist walked into a Dollar Store and gunned down 3 people because they were Black: “This shooting was racially motivated and he hated Black people,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said at a news conference early Saturday evening. Waters said the shooter, who he described as a White man in his 20s, shot and killed himself after the attack. The suspect left behind what the sheriff described as three manifestos outlining his “disgusting ideology of hate” and his motive in the attack. All three victims, two men and one woman, were Black. Waters said the shooter lived in Clay County, Florida, south of Jacksonville, with his parents. Jacksonville is located in northeast Florida, about 35 miles south of the Georgia border. Waters said the shooter told his father by text to “check his computer.” The father found documents described by Waters as manifestos and called authorities. But Waters said by the time authorities were alerted about the manifestos, the gunman had already started the attack in the Dollar General.
Alabama is on the hunt for the best killing ritual Horrifying: Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen. The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used. [Oklahoma and Mississippi have also authorized nitrogen hypoxia.] Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation. […] Alabama has been working for several years to develop the nitrogen hypoxia execution method, but has disclosed little about its plans. The attorney general’s court filing did not describe the details of the how the execution would be carried out.
You knew they would: The former president has raised $7.1 million since he was booked at an Atlanta jail Thursday evening, according to figures provided first to POLITICO by his campaign. On Friday alone, Trump raised $4.18 million, making it the single-highest 24-hour period of his campaign to date, according to a person familiar with the totals. The campaign’s fundraising has been powered by merchandise it has been selling through his online store. After Trump was taken into custody, the campaign began selling shirts, posters, bumper stickers and beverage coolers bearing Trump’s scowling mugshot. The items bear the tagline “NEVER SURRENDER!” and range in price from $12 to $34. The mug shot literally documents his surrender. Trumpers’ brains would rattle in a thimble.
Michael Tomasky asks the question. And it’s chilling: It’s not just unprecedented that we now have an ex-president with a mug shot. It’s insanely, amazingly, staggeringly, chillingly unprecedented. It makes me think about the past—about how we got to this insane, amazing, staggering, chilling point. And it makes me think about the future—about what grim precedent Trump will drag us into next. We got here because Donald Trump, now also known as Prisoner P01135809, has never had any regard for laws of any kind. We’ve known this for decades. When I was a young reporter in New York, and Trump was not yet a wannabe dictator, and the working-class men of the heartland registered him in their minds (if at all) as a swanky Manhattan rich guy who had nothing to do with their lives, Trump’s habits and attitudes were well known in New York. Sometimes, people went at him, but no one ever got him. And often, the people with the power to do so didn’t even go at him. Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney for most of the years Trump was operating in New York, left his office in 2009 with a sterling reputation.
What is going on down there? This is truly stunning. They rounded up all the Black kids in the school for an assembly. You won’t believe what it was for: A Florida elementary school has prompted outrage for singling out its Black students to attend a special assembly identifying them, as a group, as a “problem” because of standardized test performances. Black fourth- and fifth-grade students at Bunnell elementary school in Flagler county, central Florida, were pulled from class last Friday and mandated to attend the presentation on improving test scores, the Washington Post reported. Students were chosen to attend the presentation based on race, Jason Wheeler, the communications coordinator for Flagler school district, confirmed to the Guardian. The nine- and 10-year-old students were shown a powerpoint entitled “AA presentation”, referring to African American, according to a copy of the presentation shared with the Guardian. A slide labeled “The Problem” claimed that “AA”, referring to Black students, have underperformed on standardized tests for the past three years.
Alleged co-conspirators find out Alleged coup plotters, election subverters, and concealers of classified documents now find themselves under state and federal indictment. After doing the bidding of former president Donald Trump they risk not just jail for themselves and ruined reputations, but also financial ruin for their families. Axios: Trump co-defendants Jenna Ellis (former Trump lawyer), Cathy Latham (former Republican Party chair of Coffee County, Georgia), John Eastman (former Trump lawyer), and Jeffrey Clark (former Department of Justice official) have all launched crowd-funding appeals to pay for their defense. Their piles are less than yooge. Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is so short on cash for his defense that his son is organizing fundraiser dinners: Andrew Giuliani, a former New York Republican gubernatorial candidate, told CNBC in a statement: “It is helpful that President Trump has agreed to headline two events, one on September 7 at Bedminster and another this winter at Mar-a-Lago, where we are getting strong donor interest.” He declined to comment further.