The Trump campaign says that it was hacked by what they suspect were foreign agents agents. The hacked emails were sent to Politico and The Washington Post which decided not to publish them. You read that right. They received hacked documents from suspect origins which have been authenticated by the campaign itself and they are choosing not to publish. Can you see the problem here? Will Bunch said it so succinctly I have no need to go further: The hot mess that was the political media in 2016 continues to slime America 8 years later In 2016, there was no reasoned debate about the ethics of publishing Russian-hacked documents. Not that it’s not a tough call, morally — but the debate wasn’t even held. The documents were just published without any thought. Only after the election did anyone wonder so much regard was given to the (mostly inconsequential) leaks and so little to shockingly illegal methods to obtain them. So now.. I’d agree Politico and other news media are technically correct to consider the source and the motive before deciding whether or what to publish.
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The training videos The Heritage Foundation published their 900 page plan to create a fascist state some time ago. But one of the primary purpose of the project and the Heritage Foundation itself is to train operatives to carry out their plans. This time, in order to hit the ground running, they are already drawing up lists of people to fill all the jobs left open after their planned purge of the Executive Branch and have a full transition and first 100 days battle plan which they have assiduously avoided making public. And they have been “training” people for months, including some of the people at the center of Trump’s inner circle. Pro-Publica got a hold of some of the training videos: ProPublica and Documented obtained more than 14 hours of never-before-published videos from Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, which are intended to train the next conservative administration’s political appointees “to be ready on day one.” Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation and its allies for a future conservative presidential administration, has lost its director.
I’m not one to quote Maureen Dowd but when she’s right, she’s right: From the first time I went on an exploratory political trip with Trump in 1999, he has measured his worth in numbers. His is not an examined life but a quantified life. When I asked him why he thought he could run for president, he cited his ratings on “Larry King Live.” He was at his most animated reeling off his ratings, like Faye Dunaway in “Network,” orgasmically reciting how well her shows were doing. He pronounced himself better than other candidates because of numbers: the number of men who desired his then-girlfriend, Melania Knauss; the number of zoning changes he had maneuvered to get; the number of stories he stacked on his building near the U.N.; the number of times he was mentioned in a Palm Beach newspaper. By his mode of valuation, if his numbers aren’t better than his rivals’, he’s worthless. That’s why Trump is always obsessing on his crowd numbers and accusing the press of lowballing head counts. And that’s why he couldn’t admit he lost the election.
There’s stupid and then there felony stupid: Georgia Republicans are having a bad case of déjà vu. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has once again taken to attacking Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, leaving GOP leaders and strategists fearing that the public and ugly intraparty feud could hurt Trump’s chances in this battleground state. Trump’s loss here in 2020 left the state’s Republican Party deeply fractured, with Trump blaming Kemp and other statewide GOP officials for refusing to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory in the state. Republican officials have blamed the feuding for repeated losses in Senate races. “I thought any kind of bad blood had blown over, and I don’t know why President Trump would want to reopen that wound and attack a very popular governor,” said state Sen. Larry Walker III , a member of the Georgia Senate GOP’s leadership. Trump, at an Atlanta rally recently at Georgia State University, called Kemp “a bad guy.” “He’s a disloyal guy and he’s a very average governor.
Celebrities actually do help I have to admit that this surprised me. Not that I don’t think celebrities should be able to support whomever and whatever they choose.They’re citizens too. But I’ve never been sure that it makes any difference. Apparently, it does, which means the left has a huge advantage. The right has far less support among artists, athletes and celebrities in general. Former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump brought out Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock to the RNC last month, while Megan Thee Stallion, George Clooney and Jennifer Aniston are among the star-powered artists who have voiced support for Vice President Kamala Harris in her White House bid. But do election efforts by celebrities move the needle? Or is it all just hype? A new study by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, shared first by CNN, found that celebrities do play an influential role in promoting civic participation.
Like nobody’s ever seen Shitposting is a way of life for the former president. He has been doing it since long before the internet, PCs and cell phones. As Maureen Dowd noted (not in so many words), everything’s a dick-measuring contest for Donald Trump. He never loses. To hear him tell it, as Cole Porter might put it in lyrics: He’s the top | He’s the Colosseum | He’s the top | He’s the Louvre Museum Everything and everyone else is crap. Trump’s first speech as president trashed the country as American carnage, a wasteland of rusted out factories and a depleted military, a nation awash in drugs and gangs and crime. Long before Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota applied the term weird to MAGA Republicans, former president George W. Bush on the platform that day described Trump’s inauguration speech as “some weird shit.” Trump and Republicans still trash the country as awash in crime, victimized by Democratic permissiveness.
And melting down too William Irwin Thompson once critiqued the emptiness of a modern culture in which we’ve learned to crave (and pay for) the synthetic as a substitute for the real. Cheez Whiz and Cool Whip. Fake wrestling substituting for real wrestling, etc. “If Americans would rather tour a fake Europe at EPCOT Center in Disney World,” Thompson wrote, “they can go to ‘foreign’ restaurants, but still speak English.” Thompson described the Disneyfication of everything long before we elected Donald Trump, a ratings-obsessed, reality-TV president in place of a real one. “Harris’ large crowds are a pivotal part of her strategy to defeat Trump,” reads CNN’s landing page just now. Hers are bigger. Trump’s manhood as well as his freedom is threatened. Marcy Wheeler this morning speaks of how central spectacle is to Donald Trump’s sense of himself, and how threatened he is by the spectacle of a Harris-Walz rally: The rest is largely a critique of the news coverage’s misread (or ignore) of the timelines involved.
He was a corrupt monster. But at least he wasn’t an imbecile and had the good grace to see the writing on the wall. Of course, if he’d had Fox News and a Supreme Court like this one I have little doubt that he never would have resigned. He was smart enough to know after that Supreme Court ruling on the tapes and the collapse of GOP support he had no choice. That wouldn’t have happened today. It hasn’t happened today and Trump is a thousand times more corrupt than Nixon and ten times as monstrous. The only thing saving us is his ignorance and at this point that doesn’t even matter.
Snow Leopard Cubs Resident snow leopard cubs at Utah’s Hogle Zoo had their first 8-week veterinary checkup on July 31, 2024. Hogle Zoo’s animal care and veterinary teams were joined by an ophthalmologist from MedVet to conduct the wellness exam. This 8-week checkup is a routine practice that allows our teams to evaluate the two cubs’ overall health. Dr. Lauren Smith, DVM, Dipl. ACZM, one of the zoo’s veterinarians, conducted a comprehensive health examination on the cubs, which included assessing their body conditions and administering necessary vaccinations. Dr. Jaycie Riesberg, an ophthalmologist from MedVet, performed detailed eye exams, and both cubs’ eyes looked great. Eye exams are a unique practice to snow leopards, who are especially prone to ocular issues. The animal care staff also weighed the cubs, with one weighing 4.6 lbs and the other 4.2 lbs. Since their birth in early June, the two cubs have stayed close to their mom without keeper intervention. This time behind-the-scenes was especially helpful for Babs, a very protective first-time mom, as it provided ample bonding time for the new family.
Before and after FKA Twitter exploded on Friday after another of those inexplicable New York Times headlines for which the paper has become known of late. The digital din was such that editors have since altered it. Here’s the before: And now the after: James Fallows responded: Imagine Tocqueville-style visitor to US of 2024 who travels around the country and concludes, “This is a nation consumed by war.” —In comparison w times that *was* true: eg 1968 (and 1964-1975), 2001-2005 (and onward), Nov 1962, Feb 1991 (Gulf War), etc. Not to mention 1940s, early 1950s, etc. —In comparison to what dominates airwaves + news cycles + campaign speeches: Immigration, inflation, abortion, voting and justice systems, “culture wars” + DEI, future of both parties, climate, taxes, etc. This era’s wars are of profound importance. But “nation consumed”? (As so often the case, hed oversells the actual story. But headlines are all that most people ever see.) David Simon, producer of The Wire (2002–08): Ukraine is a nation consumed by war; Russia as well to a very real extent.