I thought I would share some good stuff I read this morning with gift links. This article in the NY Times is well worth reading in full. In fact, it’s delicious: Late in the summer of 2003, a team of television producers stepped off the elevator on the 26th floor of Trump Tower eager to survey the set of their next reality show. After years filming “Survivor” in jungles around the world, training cameras on exotic spiders and deadly snakes to evoke danger, they came looking for a different set of sensory clues, the tiny details that would convey wealth and power. Right away, they knew they had a problem. The first thing they noticed was the stench, a musty carpet odor that followed them like an invisible cloud. Then they spotted scores of chips in the finish of the wooden desks and credenzas. The décor felt long out of date, making the space seem like a time capsule from when Donald J. Trump opened the building early in his first rise to fame. The place did not exactly buzz with energy either. Fewer than 50 people worked at Trump Organization headquarters in midtown Manhattan. At the office’s spiritual center, Mr.
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Sadly, I can’t say that I was completely surprised by this: Bomb threats on Friday forced the evacuation and closure of public schools and municipal buildings [in Springfield, Ohio] for a second consecutive day, as the city continues to deal with sudden national attention due to false claims involving its Haitian population. Students at Perrin Woods and Snowhill Elementary Schools in Springfield “were evacuated from their buildings to an alternate district location,” school district spokesperson Jenna Leinasars said. […] In addition to those school evacuations, several city commissioners and a municipal employee were the target of an emailed bomb threat, city spokesperson Karen Graves said. […] Local police and FBI agents based in Dayton are working “to determine the origin of these email threats,” the city official said. The city just west of Columbus has been the focal point of a national political firestorm that has included false rumors that Haitian immigrants have been stealing and eating household pets. City officials and police have said there is no credible information to support those outlandish claims.
The leftist government of Honduras is on the defensive since its diplomatic dustup with Washington. Our investigation reveals a network of US government-backed regime change assets is driving the attacks, and using lawfare tactics to manufacture scandal ahead of next year’s elections in Tegucigalpa. The Honduran government has slammed the US for attempting to initiate a “coup d’etat” in the Central American country, after the media outlet Insight Crime released decade-old footage appearing to show the current president’s brother-in-law negotiating […]
The post US govt-backed media, activists behind attacks on Honduran government first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post US govt-backed media, activists behind attacks on Honduran government appeared first on The Grayzone.
So I thought he was evil but he wasn’t stupid. Now I’m not so sure. This is very dumb: The loathing for America among the leaders of the Republican Party continues to be stunning. As long as I can remember, they were the “love it or leave it” crowd, insisting that it was the greatest country in the history of the world and pretty much perfect in every way. Now that they’ve joined a dystopian cult led by a man who clearly hates everything America stands for they’ve all decided that we are little more than poor third world outpost because of all the immigrants. (Also, hippies, gays, feminazis and Black people …) James Fallows had this to say about Vance’s comments: Because immigration *is* the centuries-long US path to prosperity (and innovation, and rejuvenation, and “soft power” through connections around the world, and most powerful global culture), the US is by far the most productive and wealthy and innovative country. Inability to handle immigration a major limit for Japan, most of Europe, China as well. A major US strength. Just ask any American who, unlike Vance, has spent a lot of time outside the country.
That woman has been travelling around with Trump on his campaign plane. She was with him for the debate on Tuesday and accompanied him to NY for the 9/11 ceremonies (even though she has said that the attacks were an inside job.) Here are a few more of her comments on Harris, some of which she’s obviously been sharing with Trump who can’t help but use them on the campaign trail. From Media Matters: Loomer called Harris, Fani Willis, and District Attorney Letitia James “ghetto Black women” and “3 angry Black women who are clearly targeting successful white men.” Loomer’s guest, Peter Brimelow of the white nationalist group VDare, said, “There’s a lot of angry Black women out there in positions of authority.
Spinning madness into reason Just yesterday, I argued that “so much of what Donald Trump does and says is not strategy so much as pathology. And feral instinct. His fanboys handle strategy.” That’s still true this morning. Among the reasons the press and some of the left’s own have trouble coming to grips with his lunacy is, as children of the Enlightenment, we put so much stock in reason. Unreason does not compute.* We all want to make a steak out of hash. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is perhaps the quickest and sharpest Democrats have to carry its message. Yet, here he is attempting to paint Donald Trump’s unhinged cats-and-dogs rant during this week’s debate as a distraction strategy. It may be instinct. Distraction may be someone else’s strategy. But it’s not Trump’s. He doesn’t think with his atrophied frontal lobes. Piers Morgan’s guests did the same this week, offering what Trump needs to do differently and how he needs to reconfigure his campaign. He needs to fire his advisors and get new ones who will help him present himself as more presidential in coming days. Rep.
Laughter is good medicine The New York Times(?) provides readers needed comic relief: On Tuesday night, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris spent 90 minutes trading blows in a fierce debate. Out of duty to a weary electorate eager for change, we enlisted the musical talents of the Gregory Brothers and a special guest, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, to provide the debate recap you didn’t know you needed. Take it in, friends. We’ve got a long way yet to go and more work to do.
Despite the ongoing excessive whining in the press about Vice President Kamala Harris not doing interviews and MAGA’s laughable insistence that Trump won the debate (and also that it was rigged), the truth is that Harris is running an exceptional campaign. At every important juncture, she has met the moment and surpassed it. Personally, I never understood the widely (but not deeply) held belief that she was a mediocre politician. As a Californian I have followed her career pretty closely from the time she made a name for herself as the San Francisco district attorney and then Attorney General. I happily voted for her for the Senate. She always struck me as a talented politician who was very likely headed for higher office if the breaks came her way. She took a shot for president in 2019 and had a bad primary run, but she’s hardly the first presidential aspirant to flame out in their first run. Joe Biden ran twice before he finally got the nomination. Even the sainted John McCain and Ronald Reagan failed in their first attempts.
This one’s for the PBS watching older Indies and Republicans: As a traveler, I’m both a proud American and a citizen of the world — and I’ve got a few thoughts on this coming election. This election is deeper than partisanship. It’s far more than Republican versus Democrat. In the future, big challenges like pandemics, refugees, and climate change will be blind to borders. They’ll be everyone’s problem and only solved by working together as a family of nations. The world needs not American isolation, but American leadership. Not the chaos of Trump, but the stability of @KamalaHarris . Of course, how you vote is your choice. But if you believe, as I do, in the importance of nations working together constructively, the stakes are really high…and the best candidate is clear. Register to vote today at http://vote.gov — and encourage your travelin’ friends to do the same! I also like his argument very much. If you are a person who has spent any time outside the US you know this is true. This world is a lot smaller than people think and we are facing some huge challenges as a country and as a planet.
The man at the beginning is close Trump confidante Johnny McEntee, a really sick piece of work, demanding that someone produce for him an example of women bleeding out in parking lots because doctors can’t offer necessary medical care for women who are having miscarriages or other medical emergencies. As you can see from that woman’s horrific story, it happens all the time. And there are plenty more like her. I was glad to see that after decades of Democrats hemming and hawing and grasping at euphemisms to defend reproductive freedom Kamala Harris finally did it right at the debate: Well, as I said, you’re going to hear a bunch of lies. And that’s not actually a surprising fact. Let’s understand how we got here. Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade. And they did exactly as he intended. And now in over 20 states there are Trump abortion bans which make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care. In one state it provides prison for life. Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest.