Coming from the man who has demeaned and insulted every judge in every one of his cases except for Aileen Cannon in Florida who was clearly biased in his favor, that was pretty rich. Just yesterday he did it again: Trump called the release of the documents “election interference” during his podcast appearance and said it was “a terrible thing, what’s happening. And the judges, this judge is the most evil person.” “They all said, ‘Well, make sure you don’t get Chutkan.’ And who did I get? I got Chutkan. So, you know, they supposedly pick, they pick balls, right?” Trump continued, referring in lottery-like terms to the random selection system used to assign federal judges to cases. “It’s not— I don’t think it works that way, but that’s what they say. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. You pick out of a hat, and that’s the judge.” I guess it’s not very useful to point this stuff out because almost half the country doesn’t think his addled hypocrisy even matters. But it’s important, I think, to at least put it on the record.
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And because she asked Don’t hold me to these back-of-the-napkin figures, but an out-of-state friend asked this morning if Hurricane Helene was impacting voter turnout here in Asheville. Here’s how I replied (edited to add post-coffee clarity): Current statewide registration: Ds: 31%, Rs: 30%, UNAffiliated (registered independents): 38% Despite the lines we saw on Th and Fr (my tweet has almost 10 million views), turnout is down about a third from 2020. The hurricane took out 4 of our planned 14 early voting sites and shortened daily voting hours to 9-5 in this county. We’ve got new voting machines adding to slowing the process. Can’t speak to other WNC counties. But despite that depressed vote and a strong first-day vote by Republicans here, we seem back to our normal pattern of Ds outvoting Rs in Buncombe County by over 2:1.
Have we ever had to think about genitalia in political discourse more than we have since Donald Trump came on the scene? Actually, did we ever have to think about it in politics before? We’ve heard about his own dick size constantly, starting when he talked about it in a presidential primary debate all the way back in 2015. We heard him say that he liked to grab women by the pussy and dozsens of women have testified to the fact that he did that routinely. He’s been found liable of doing even worse to e.jean carroll. Stormy Daniels also testified about the size and shape of his penis. Just this week, as his closing argument apparently, Trump can’t stop talking about genitals. He complained about Harvbey Weinsten being “schlonged” and then dropped this insane comments: He also said he could hit a golf ball farther than Palmer which I guess means his dick is actually bigger? This story seems to be getting a lot of traction in the media today which I guess is good? I just don’t know anymore. I’m feeling so cynical about the half of the American people who are going to vote for this cretin that I wonder if this will actually help him.
Trump thinks he would have settled the slavery question before the civil war. I suspect he thinks he could have “settled” it the way he “settled” the abortion quesiton: by giving the assholes everything they want and then saying it was what everyone wanted all along. Also: He looks tired. Does he have the “strength and the stamina” to be president for four more years? I don’t think so: Former President Donald Trump has pulled out of a string of campaign events and interviews over the last two months, often leaving his hosts frustrated after being promised a visit by the GOP presidential candidate. The staff of The Shade Room, an entertainment site with wide reach among young and Black audiences, shortly after wrapping an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris last week were left feeling that their “feet were being dragged in the Trump campaign,” according to two sources who spoke to Politico Playbook.
Federal judge slaps down Florida’s surgeon general In another smackdown for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his lackeys, a federal judge on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order against state threats to prosecute TV stations that run ads in support of Florida’s abortion-rights amendment: The temporary restraining order addresses a lawsuit filed against the state by Floridians Protecting Freedom, a group campaigning for Amendment 4, which will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot. This order expires Oct. 29, when a hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker’s sharply worded ruling prevents the department from “taking any further actions to coerce, threaten, or intimate repercussions” against broadcasters for airing the ads or “undertaking enforcement action” against them. In citing one case used in his ruling, he offered a brief summary: “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid.” “Political advertisement is political speech — speech at the core of the First Amendment.
Apparently, most Americans think so In September of 2020, 200,000 Americans had just died of COVID. There was no vaccine, unemployment was at 8%. The whole world had just been shut down and was only slowly coming back to life. Donald Trump was pushing snake oil cures and pretending the whole thing wasn’t much of a problem. And yet 55 percent of Americans believed they were better off than they’d been four years ago. And only 39 percent believe that now. WTF?
Or is it Dumptyism? Trumptyism? The former Republican Party (now the Party of Trump) sold itself for decades as opponents of the Soviet empire and insistent on upholding law and order. LAW! ORDER! As I’ve said of other professed “values” from that team, those boasts were always a mile wide and an inch deep. The people who for decades of accused the left of being squishy on morality have taken squishy to a new level. Helpfully, Jonathan Chait offers a kind of phrasebook for interpreting “law and order” as Donald Trump understands it (Intelligencer): One of the most important and consistent facets of Donald Trump’s thinking is that the law, as most people understand it, is conceptually meaningless. Legal activity, as he understands the term, means anything done by or on behalf of Donald Trump (this can include tax fraud, stealing and refusing to give back classified documents, assaulting police officers in an attempt to overturn an election, or other clear violations of federal criminal statutes).
We have officially entered the manic stage of the presidential election in which the candidates are suddenly everywhere. At least Kamala Harris is everywhere. She’s holding huge raucous rallies all over the swing states, appearing on podcasts and mainstream interviews even going on Fox and subjecting herself to a barrage of hostile Trump inspired accusations from anchor Brett Baier who didn’t seem to want her to actually answer them. (She showed she cannot be intimidated which was probably the point of the interview in the first place.) Nobody at this point should complain that she isn’t being available to the public. Just turn on your TV and you’ll see her there. Trump, on the other hand, is as present as always by holding looney rallies and post on crazy comments on Truth Social, but is refusing to debate Harris again and has cancelled numerous scheduled interviews this week. Yet he’s holding events in California and New York which aren’t even on the radar.
I think we all need a little bit of the chillest animal on th earth right now: I want one.
I have often mused about the belief that the American Constitution is the best of all possible worlds, as least as it was taught when I was in school many moons ago.The Bill of Rights (with one notable exception) is great, laying out the ideals the country was founded on even if we’ve rarely fully lived up to them. The structure of our system, however, isn’t all that great. I’m not sure federalism was such a fabulous idea although I certainly understand why it happened. But there’s a reason no democracy in the world has adopted our system and that most of them have instead a parliamentary system which, frankly, just works better. The Senate was a mistake and the electoral college has turned out to be the train wreck quite a few of the founders predicted it would be. Other countries that once used such a system have gotten rid of it. We should too: The United States is the only democracy in the world where a presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election. Thanks to the Electoral College, that has happened five times in the country’s history.