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.
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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.
The Dark Tower’s foundations are cracking A friend registered voters with HeadCount Thursday night at a Cake concert. He called yesterday to report he’d not seen this mood among volunteers and concertgoers since 2008. He had the names of a couple of eager, new volunteers to pass along. One woman, especially, could be a star. Anand Giridharadas comments this morning on the phenomenon. With the joy-filled Harris-Walz campaign taking off like a rocket and the Trump campaign sinking like the Titanic, there are elements of both hope and relief going unnoticed. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota embodies the dads and uncles who might have gone the way of loved ones lost to Fox News and right-wing propaganda but did not. In Walz, we see “an older white guy who is just happy and can’t wait for the future.” Mourning in America has turned into morning in America (emphasis mine): It’s going to make people feel rage at what was stolen from them. And it’s going to show them, not tell them but show, what might yet be possible. There are years that could still be reclaimed. Yes, the Trump tax cuts were bad. The immigration policy a catastrophe.
From LGBTQ nation: Jesse Watters, the unapologetically unfunny “funny guy” on Fox News, is at it again with weird commentary concerning Kamala Harris’ pick for vice president, Tim Walz. Watters trained his well-known obsession with masculinity onto the Minnesota governor following Tuesday’s rally in Philadelphia rolling out the Dems’ new Harris-Walz ticket. “The ‘Great Walz of China’ has a lot of red flags, but one is glaring. His body language,” Watters intoned. “Here’s twitchy Tim on stage, waving profusely in a very unsettling matter, very unsettling. Men should not move this way. It’s not the way we move,” Watters said of all self-loathing men like himself (who’ve had exactly one job since they graduated from college: working at Fox News). “And the handshake, probably the most telling. This is Walz and his wife shaking hands like business associates, followed by a weird hug,” Watters continued with more video “evidence” in search of an accusation.
Trump’s biggest fans are worried he’s going to lose: White supremacist, Hitler fan, and far-right political pundit Nick Fuentes shockingly revoked his support from Donald Trump’s campaign early Friday, announcing on social media that he and his allies believed that the presidential bid is headed for a “catastrophic loss.” “Tonight I declared a new Groyper War against the Trump campaign,” Fuentes wrote on X (formerly Twitter) shortly after midnight, referring to a group of far-right activists known as groypers. Fuentes explained that he and his far-right squad of online trolls “support Trump” but that they view his 2024 campaign as being “hijacked” by lobbyists, consultants, and donors that had aided Trump’s 2016 Republican opponents. All in all, Fuentes believed they were “blowing it.” “Without serious changes we are headed for a catastrophic loss,” Fuentes wrote. “This is NOT a purity spiral, this is about living up to the AMERICA FIRST credo put forth by Trump in 2016 which will ensure VICTORY in 2024,” Fuentes continued.