Yes, I know people are still suffering, an unfortunately common circumstance in our unequal society. There is more work to do, always. But Biden did something very smart and the Republicans did everything they could to stop it. I will be beyond disgusted if Trump ekes out another win and takes credit for all this and the media and MAGA happily give it to him. Which they will.
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Naturally, the MAGAs had him removed. Their sense of humor is confined to making fun of disabled people and chanting “lock her up” and “send them back.”
McDonald’s is actually not on her resume which he used to use as proof that she never worked there. But nobody puts their summer job while they’re in school on their professional resume. (Trump wouldn’t know that because he never had a job other than working for daddy before he inherited his $400 million.) Now he’s saying is all over her resume I guess to push that she’s a liar? I don’t know why Trump thinks this is such a put away shot but he’s leaning very heavily on it. Usually I can see why he thinks something is going to resonate with the MAGA cult but I honestly can’t see it this time. Sure, he wants to portray her as lying about her normal middle class upbringing (I guess to say she’s a Marxist???) but the fact that she worked at McDonald’s doesn’t prove or disprove that. She’s not lying but I doubt there’s a record of her short term part time job from 40 years ago. So is he trying to make this into a new “birther ” scandal? (“Burger” scandal?) I just don’t get it.
So is courage and cowardice Donald Trump wants Americans to help in his lifelong struggle to work out his daddy issues. Mr. Insecurity has complained for decades that the world (pretty much everyone) has been laughing at us (him). If there is a greater malevolent bundle of psychological maldevelopment walking this earth, we’ve never heard of them because they were not born into $413 million and into the family of a prominent (and crooked) New York City land developer. Just ten days ago, Trump reprised his soul-cry: “THE WORLD IS LAUGHING AT US AS FOOLS, THEY ARE STEALING OUR JOBS AND OUR WEALTH. WE CANNOT LET THEM LAUGH ANY LONGER.” That is, give him the White House and he’ll make THEM all pay. He’ll show you. He’ll get even. He’ll deport anyone he doesn’t execute or jail. Just you wait! Take him at his word.
Donald Trump is running for president. And he may just win. It’s that close. And this is what he’s doing 6 weeks before the election. The watches sell for $499, which I’m sure is a bargain for the people who are suffering in this economy which Trump says is the worst in American history. But get a load of this: He is basically soliciting bribes at this point. He can raise a quick million and a half from rich buddies and it will go directly into his pocket before the election. As we’ve seen with his promises to everyone from the oil and gas industry to the vape industry in exchange for policy promises in the last few months, Trump is in a frenzy of corruption right now. I wonder why this hasn’t really penetrated the media? We’re hearing lots of details about Eric Adams’ alleged crimes, some of which are worth big money and others which are penny ante graft.
There’s a new poll out by the Barna group which surveys evangelical Christians and is considered to be very reliable. There’s lot’s of interesting information but this struck me as important: Historical data indicates that turnout among the voting age population was 53.6%in 2012 (Obama-Romney); 54.6% in 2016 (Trump-Clinton); and 61.3% in 2020(Trump-Biden). If the election were held now (about 7 weeks before November5th), the expected turnout would be 50% of voting age adults. Typically, thatturnout figure will rise several percentage points, likely concluding in the 53% to 55% range. That would put the 2024 election squarely in line with the turnout levels of 2012 and 2016, but below that of 2020. It’s big problem for Trump if any of his evangelical followers don’t vote. But one biggie there at the bottom is especially problematic this time. The voters who say the election is rigged are almost certainly his. He can’t afford to lose them. I must say, this surprised me (actually not…) Moral decline was identified by less than one-quarter of the churched Christians(23%) as a defining issue in this election.
Project 2025 wants you caught by surprise Streets in low-lying areas here are already flooded and Hurricane Helene isn’t even here yet. Public schools are closed preemtively. Emergency preparations are underway. But at least we had warnings as close as your TV or computer. A writer some time back recounted an airplane conversation in which his seatmate remarked that the great thing about computers was that you could always turn them off. Considering that they and thousands of others were sitting in aluminum tubes in the air traffic pattern high above a major city, and that the only thing keeping them from colliding and dying was FAA air traffic computers, the writer was pretty sure he didn’t want them turned off. * Project 2025 wants a lot of government turned off.
You may recall that he said this yesterday: Check out this piece by Jill Lawrence in the LA Times. She recently went to Los Alamos and suggests that people should stay away during this presidential election because you won’t be able to sleep at night: President Truman followed through with the plan to use the bombs that ended World War II. Truman could have stopped it. He didn’t, but right afterward he ordered that presidential permission was required for such action, and his administration made it official policy in a 1948 memo: U.S. presidents had the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. If a president gives the word, the military must obey. That’s even if America has not been attacked, and even if a president is demonstrably unfit. A president, for instance, such as Trump, whose reckless, divisive term ended with his loyalists — at his urging — staging a deadly attack on the Capitol to try to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election. “President Trump’s last terrifying weeks in office have been a wake-up call. Never again should we allow a dangerous president to have unilateral control over nuclear launch,” Sen.
I don’t know how much time you have to listen to podcasts but if you’re interested in the minutia of the electoral college vote and are worried about Pennsylvania, this one with Greg Sargent interviewing Gov. Josh Shapiro may be up your alley. An excerpt: If Kamala Harris can defeat Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, she almost certainly will win the presidency. It’s must-win for him. Yet the state remains a coin-flip—which is why both candidates campaigned in the state this week. So what is Harris’s path to victory? We talked to Governor Josh Shapiro, who explained why the race is so close—and why he thinks she’s “on her way” to winning there, in part due to concerted communications with non-college voters. Shapiro also responded at length to Trump’s lies about Haitian immigrants living in Pennsylvania, pronouncing them “utter bullshit.” Here is the whole thing: I know the polls show a very close race. But as I wrote in an earlier post,
To the Editors: In his otherwise excellent essay on the “tragic flaw” in Shakespeare’s tragedies [“No Comfort,” NYR, June 6], Fintan O’Toole falls into the all too common trap of attributing this critical idea to Aristotle. But the words Aristotle uses, hamartia and hamartēma, often mistranslated as “flaw,” do not refer to a character’s psychology […]
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