Tuesday, September 10, 2024

In old age Trump becomes consumed with revenge

Paul Rudnick always has the best Tweets.



The debate starts in a bit.  Be sure to read Ava and C.I.'s "Media: A great sitcom, a lousy debate" before it starts.

Convicted Felon Donald Trump becomes more and more of a menace.  Marin Scotten (SALON) reports:


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump threatened to prosecute his political enemies “to the fullest extent of the law” should he win the 2024 presidential election and signaled once again that he would not accept defeat come November.

In a late-night Truth Social post on Saturday, the former president wrote that lawyers, donors, “illegal voters” and election officials involved in “unscrupulous behavior” in the upcoming election will be punished at levels “never seen before.” As he's done many times before, the 78-year-old candidate made unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen and warned that the United States was devolving “into a Third World Nation.”

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Trump wrote.

“Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” he added.


In C.I.'s snapshot (below in full after my post), she calls out actress Susan Sarandon.  I want to add my voice to that.  Susan Sarandon is an actress whose performances I have often enjoyed (especially in THELMA & LOUISE, WHITE PALACE, and ATLANTIC CITY).  However, her nonsense of attacking Kamala Harris with her passive/aggressive Tweets?  Not in the mood.  I do not care that she voted for Jill Stein in 2016.  I do care that eight years later, when we all know what a danger Donald Trump is to this country, she is using her time to attack Kamala Harris, not Donald Trump.


There is no excuse for it.

I believe that like C.I., I defended Ms. Sarandon both before and after the 2016 election.  And I would defend her for that vote right now.  I will not, however, defend or justify her nonsense that the problem in this election is Vice President Harris.

We are pulling together as a country to fight a very real threat to our democracy.  That Ms. Sarandon is too stupid to grasp that does not speak well for her.  Though it does remind me of a story Gore Vidal told me about Ms. Sarandon when I was visiting C.I. 



At his latest campaign rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, Donald Trump shared an odd anecdote about unnamed Democratic operatives trying to take advantage of senior citizens. “You had people that are in their 80s, ‘Uh would you sign here?’” the Republican said, referring to a controversy he didn’t identify. The former president went on to call the tactics “a disgrace.”

The comments were strange for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the implication of the rhetoric: Trump made it sound as if octogenarians were easily manipulated because of their advanced age — despite the fact that he’s currently running for president at the age 78. If returned to power, the GOP nominee would turn 80 before the 2026 midterm elections.

As a great many observers have noted, President Joe Biden was subjected to months of intense scrutiny about his age, health, and fitness for office. His predecessor and would-be successor has not faced nearly as many questions — despite his increasingly unhinged rambling and apparent difficulties separating fiction from reality.

As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes recently summarized, “It is a little weird that ‘age concerns’ have disappeared as a constant focus of campaign reporting and discussion even though the GOP nominee would be the oldest man ever sworn in to the office and is very obviously sharply declining before our eyes.”

But is the conversation changing? Politico published a report late last week with a headline that read, “Age-based attacks are boomeranging back on Trump.” It was against this backdrop that The New York Times published a new and related analysis in its latest edition.




The last time the nation held a debate with the presidency on the line, a candidate with about eight decades of life behind him faced the challenge of proving that he was still up to the job of running the country. He failed. Two and a half months later, the cast of characters has shifted and another candidate heading toward the octogenarian club confronts his own test to demonstrate that he has not diminished with age. Whether he passes that test may influence who will be the next occupant of the Oval Office.

This analysis, incidentally, ran on the Times’ A1 — making questions about Trump’s age and capacity literally front-page news ahead of a debate that might have a significant impact on the 2024 race.


This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:


Tuesday, September 10, 2024.  Kamala Harris debates Donald Trump tonight.  


We are 55 days away from the US presidential election.  Tonight, the only two people who stand a chance at becoming president will be on the stage in a debate: Kamala Harris (Democratic Party presidential nominee) and Donald Trump (Republican Party presidential nominee). 



A coin flip determined where Trump and Harris will stand on stage and the order of closing statements. Trump won the coin toss and chose to give the last closing statement. Harris selected the lectern on the left of the stage, meaning viewers will see her on the right side of their screens. 

Candidates will have two minutes each for their closing statements. There are no opening statements. They will have two minutes to answer moderators' questions, two minutes for rebuttals and an extra minute for follow-ups or clarifications. 

Harris and Trump will not be allowed to bring prewritten notes on stage, but will have a pen, notepad and bottle of water at their lecterns. 

Campaign staff cannot interact with candidates during the commercial breaks, and there will be no live audience. 


The debate will be carried on cable channels such as CNN, MSNBC and FOX "NEWS."  Broadcast channels will include ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS.  You can stream it live on PBS' website as well as on PBS' YOUTUBE channel, on CBS NEWS online, PARAMOUNT+, HULU, DISNEY+ etc.   In "Media: A great sitcom, a lousy debate," Ava and I addressed the problems with the debate and the pretense that journalism is taking place (in June, no journalism took place):

So what's the answer?  MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell has rightly noted that, the way TV works, a running fact check could be done onscreen during the actual debate.  We have no problem with that.  

 

In addition, however, we're aware that there will be two breaks in the debate.  Instead of wasting those on commercials, they should be used for fact checks.  Three or four journalists should immediately begin letting viewers know what just happened.  They should do that during both breaks and as well as right after the debate ends when a third fact check should take place -- no  lingering over the candidates on stage, go into the third fact check immediately.


Tomorrow night, ABC will most likely fail at any kind of accountability or fact check during the debate itself.  If that is what happens, we all need to grasp that journalism was not practiced.  Asking questions is not enough.  Your job also includes informing the audience when someone lies and holding them accountable.

There are a lot of question marks about tonight's debate but one thing is known:  Donald will lie.  Donald will lie a lot.  


Former President Donald Trump repeated his false claim that children are undergoing transition-related surgery during their school day, worsening fears among some conservatives that educators are pushing children to become transgender and aiding transitions without parental awareness.

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 


The deeply stupid MAGA and the con artists who represents them are the best example of the need for fact-based education.  When Donald lied in the June debate, the media spent over a week talking about . . . Joe Biden's energy levels.  Donald Trump said on that debate stage that women were giving birth to babies and then, right after birth, aborting them.  That is a lie.  That is such a lie that it should have been a SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE sketch (were SNL not on summer hiatus).  But the media largely let it pass.  It should have been hammered home what a liar this piece of crap is.  And it would have made clear that his fondlers like Glenneth Greenwald and Jonathan Turley and all the rest of the creeps are lie-based personalities.  They don't deal in truth, they just run a con on you.

There is too much at stake for a liar to get a pass.  

And apparently we'll have to count on corporate media since what bills itself as 'independent' media has too much to do and can't be bothered with calling out Donald Trump as a result.  We do see you, we do see what you're doing.  And we hope you understand that we won't be helping you in the future.  Our democracy is at stake and yet you won't write articles and do videos about everything except that.  We see it.  We get how useless you are.  How unneeded you are.  And how much money and time we've wasted building you up only to learn that when the call came to save the country, you'd have other things to do.  

That's fine.  We have other things to put our money into.

In Texas, Governor Greg Asshole is purging voter rolls -- claiming to still be purging despite laws forbidding this 90 days before an election.  In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton has been bullying Latino Americans to try to lower their turnout at the polls and now he's again requesting the medical records of Teas women.  In Wisconsin, the MAGA crowd is trying to bully and intimidate the challenged and disabled communities.  Alex Woodward (INDEPENDENT) notes:

A widely derided election crimes dragnet from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appears to be targeting voters who signed a petition to get an abortion rights amendment on state ballots this fall, a measure that the Republican governor and his anti-abortion allies strongly oppose.

DeSantis’s administration has previously deployed law enforcement officers to the homes of formerly incarcerated people who were accused of illegally voting. Most of those charges were eventually dropped.

Now, officers appear to be visiting the homes of citizens who signed a petition that successfully put Amendment 4 on November’s ballots, which would enshrine the right to abortion care in the state’s constitution — and overturn state law signed by DeSantis that bans abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant.


MAGA and Trump want to destroy democracy and they won't let anything stop them.

Meanwhile, the likes of COMMON DREAMS want everyone to pretend that they're not doing their part to get Donald Trump elected.

Your garbage bulls**t is not working.  It's burying you and its why you're getting less traffic.  It's why you're going to get less donations.

This is a time for people to come together and stop this threat to our democracy.  That's why Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and so many other Republicans have stepped forward to say they are voting for Kamala Harris.  

But the garbage online 'left' wants to insist that Jill Stein is the answer.  That would be same Jill Stein who keeps posting videos at her YOUTUBE channel and she's lucky to get 2,000 views.  But, hey, you insist she's the candidate.

Just like you lie that AOC attacked her.

AOC didn't attack that grifter.  Jill Stein has been attacking Kamala Harris for weeks.

Not Donald Trump, mind you, but Kamala Harris.  

Because that's how stupid these people are.

Jill is a con artist.  She's an anti-vax con artist.  I've noted that here and even reposted an editorial we did at THIRD on it.  And some of the Jill Freaks e-mailed the public account to whine this was a lie -- it wasn't -- that THE DAILY BEAST started in late 2016.  It wasn't a lie.  But check the THIRD editorial reposted here that had you so bent out of shape: The date's 2015.  

All THE DAILY BEAST (and others) did was compile her long, long list of anti-vax statements and positions.

In 2012, we realized what a liar and con artist Jill Stein was. From "Let the fun begin (Ava and C.I.):"


Jill Stein.

As feminists, we wondered six weeks ago, what do we do?

Roseanne had already imploded.  (Cindy Sheehan has a story to tell and then some.)  She couldn't and wouldn't campaign, she apparently wouldn't pay workers she hired for her campaign, she was an embarrassment.

And so was Jill Stein.

As feminists, do we call it as it is?

We debated that for three days.  Jill wasn't going to win the presidency.  In fact, it was obvious she was running off the limited votes she did have a shot at.

But did we tell the truth on that?  Did we call her out?

We crossed the line on gender with the decision -- a feminist one (not "the" feminist one) -- that she was running for public office and therefore had to be treated the same as anyone else would even if, in the closing weeks, we were going to tear her apart.

But . . .

Having dealt with the feminist issue, we still had the issue of third parties.

Was it really fair to beat up on a third party candidate?

Adding to the problems, one of us (Ava) is involved with a lifelong Green (Jess), has a child by him, has made a home with him.

And Jess was very clear that Jill Stein was "a f**king idiot but the Greens need to be on ballots."  And they were.  Texas, for example.  We heard from Billie who early voted for Jill Stein.  She was so excited because Jill Stein was on the ballot.  She didn't have to write her in.  Right there on the Texas ballot was the Green Party.

What do we do?

In the end, we decided, "We don't promote her.  We don't mention her.  That's true here, that's true at Third."

So we bit our tongues.

As she ran a stupid campaign.  As she made a fool of herself and the Green Party.  (Granted, it's a party that loves to make a fool of itself.)

She -- and others -- did a debate with Larry King.  A debate that did not include all.  A new hurdle was invented.

Green Party members, you know what a hurdle is, right?  It's what keeps your candidate out of the so-called presidential debates every four years.  Why the hell would you take part in a debate that did not invite everyone who made it onto a state's ballot as a presidential candidate?

Because hypocrisy is a charge you live to embrace?

Maybe so.

Supposedly the Green Party is opposed to war.

So when Tim Arango reported the White House was negotiating with Nouri to send more troops back into Iraq, Jill Stein should have led on that.

But she's a politician which is just a whore without the desire to please a customer.

So Jill ignored it.

She ignored a lot.

Six weeks ago, in fact, after Barack cratered in the first debate, she and her campaign began going after Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Huh?

You're a Green.  You're on the left.  The high profile left vote getter just imploded on national TV.  It's the perfect time for you to pick up some of his voters.

But you refuse to try.  You rush to go after Romney and Ryan instead.

Why is that?

Because you are not a real party.

Because you will forever be the little sister of the Democratic Party.

Because every four years, you start off with promise and end up revealing just how craven and disgusting you are.

If we are offering commentary four years from now, please note, being a Green will not save you.  Being third party will not save you.

We will call you out in real time.



And we've called her out ever since.  She is a fake ass, she is a liar.  And she will not win the 2024 election.  

But already the grifter and her tiny base are working daily to knock enthusiasm out of those supporting Kamala Harris.  They're trying to make people ashamed of supporting Kamala.  Black women especially are not supporting this crap but no one on the left should be. 

The ultimate Karen is running for president for a third time and that's outrageous.

That doesn't build a party.  It says instead that the party is dead and that for a third time they couldn't come up with a real candidate and that instead of reaching out to one of their younger members and using a presidential campaign to build his or her stature, they're going with the 74-year-old for a third time.

Democracy's on the line, but, hey, go grift with Jill.  See how that helps the country.

The Green Party -- the 'left' side where the anti-vax crowd goes, where the crowd that insists the two planes that brought down the Twin Towers were actually holograms, where every and any nutty conspiracy can fly.  And they wonder why they can't build a national party?

There are serious issues at stake in this election and Jill Stein and her cult can't focus on them.  

Everything about her is a lie.  Every promise she makes is a lie.

Now I've been kind and fair.  I defended Susan Sarandon, for example.  I'm not defending her now as she does her quiet attacks on Kamala on Twitter.  I don't care what happens to Susan now.  She's on her own.  I don't think she cost Hillary the election and I've long defended her on that.  However, she does live in the US and she should know how awful it was when Donald was president.  She should grasp how awful it will be -- even more so -- should he get back into the White House.  But instead of working to prevent that, she uses her Twitter feed to attack Kamala Harris.

The Supreme Court overturned ROE as a result of Donald -- his three Supreme Court appointees.  Women are suffering, do you not care?  Look at college admissions and see how diversity is suffering.  Do you not care?  They want to outlaw marriage equality.  Do you not care?  At what point do you start caring about the American people, Susan?

I'm not blaming you for 2016.  I am blaming you for doing your damnedest to destroy Kamala's campaign.  I am blaming you gambling with the rights of women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, etc.  Project 2025 is not an unknown at this point nor is Donald Trump.  


From the Harris-Walz campaign site:

 

Trump’s plan to take your power, your control, and your money.

What is the Project 2025 Agenda?

Donald Trump’s plans for total control over our daily lives have been exposed. Scroll down to see what’s in it for yourself — and tell your friends. 

His Project 2025 agenda would strip away our freedoms – by forcing states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and eliminating the Department of Education. 

It includes a plan hatched by people who used to work for Donald Trump that focuses on the first 180 days.

 

(Project 2025 Website)

The plan begins with a sweeping takeover of the federal government to consolidate power under Donald Trump. Inside pages of dense policy proposals, their intentions become clear.  

“Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.”

(New York Times, July 17, 2023)

Project 2025 is a plan to seize power within the federal government.

First: They’d make it easier to fire non-partisan government employees, like they attempted to do at the end of Trump’s administration.

Reissue Trump’s schedule F executive order to permit discharge of nonperforming employees. (Project 2025, a Mandate for Leadership, p. 535)

Then, they’d replace them with politically appointed Trump Loyalists.

“The modern conservative President’s task is to limit, control, and direct the executive branch….The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch.… Success in meeting that challenge will require a rare combination of boldness and self-denial: boldness to bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will”. (p. 43-44)

They’d end the independence of the Department of Justice and FBI

“Conservatives have long believed in either ending law enforcement activities of independent agencies or ending their independent status. (p. 873)

…and turn them into enforcement arms of the White House.

The next conservative Administration must make every effort to obtain the resources to support a vast expansion of the number of appointees in every office and component across the department—especially in the Civil Rights Division, the FBI, and the EOIR.” (p. 569)

“[This] would also place the FBI under a politically accountable leader.” (p. 549)

Some of Donald Trump’s allies are assembling proposals to curtail the Justice Department’s independence and turn the nation’s top law enforcement body into an attack dog for conservative causes, nine people involved in the effort told Reuters.

(Reuters, May 17, 2024)

All while Trump has immunity from crimes committed in office thanks to a ruling from his Supreme Court picks.

Project 2025 is a plan to give MAGA extremists control over your life.

Trump and his Project 2025 allies overturned Roe v. Wade and unleashed extreme abortion bans across the country. Now, they’ll go even further.

They’ll implement a 50-state “backdoor ban” on abortion — without Congress — and jail health care providers.

“Announcing a Campaign to Enforce the Criminal Prohibitions in 18 U.S. Code §§ 1461 and 1462.” (p. 562)

Project 2025 would resurrect a law from the 1800s called the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide and jail health care providers. (p. 459)

Don’t take our word for it. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation: A literal interpretation of the [Comstock] Act could potentially also apply to materials used to produce all abortions, not just medication abortions; would not have exceptions; and could affect other medical care, such as miscarriage management.

(Kaiser Family Foundation, 4/15/24)

And they’ll ban abortion medication, which is also used in a range of ways to protect women’s health.

“Abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post-Roe world…. The FDA should reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs.” (p. 457)

They’ll force states to report women’s miscarriages and abortions to Trump’s Federal Government.

Project 2025 would “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds” to force states to report miscarriages and “exactly how many abortions take place within its borders,” including the “reason” for every abortion. (p. 455)

They’ll put limits on contraception access.

The President should “[e]liminate the week-after-pill from the contraceptive mandate as a potential abortifacient.” (p. 485)

Allows employers to deny workers access to birth control coverage. (p. 483-85)

It also calls for defunding Planned Parenthood, which provides access to contraception for over 2 million women each year. (p. 471)

And then rip away President Biden’s protections for a woman’s right to life-saving medical care.

The President should “reverse distorted pro-abortion ‘interpretations’ added to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. (p. 473)

They’ll enable discrimination against LGBTQ+ Americans.

Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics. The President should direct agencies to rescind regulations interpreting sex discrimination provisions as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, sex characteristics, etc. (p. 584)

Project 2025 is a plan to make Trump and his rich friends even richer.

It will cut taxes for Trump and his rich friends and pad their profits.

“The corporate income tax should be reduced to 18 percent.” (p. 696)

And cut taxes for wealthy families — offset by tax hikes on middle class families. 

Project 2025 would restructure the tax code to benefit wealthy families. (p. 696)

Millions of low- and middle-class households would likely face significantly higher taxes under the Project 2025’s proposals. [Center for American Progress senior director for economic policy Brendan Duke] estimated that a middle-class family with two children and an annual income of $100,000 would pay $2,600 in additional federal income tax if they faced a 15% flat tax on their income due to the loss of the 10% and 12% tax brackets. If the Child Tax Credit were also eliminated, they would pay an additional $6,600 compared with today’s tax system, Duke said. By comparison, a married couple with two children and earnings of $5 million a year would enjoy a $325,000 tax cut, he estimated.

(CBS News, 7/12/24)

They’d line Big Pharma’s pockets by ending prescription drug price caps for seniors, and banning Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.

“Repeal harmful health policies enacted under the Obama and Biden Administrations such as… the Inflation Reduction Act.” (p. 465)

“This ‘negotiation’ program should be repealed.” (p. 465)

All while Trump’s administration guts Medicare and Social Security. 

When asked about cuts to entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, Trump said: “Oh we’ll be cutting,” and later doubled down, saying, “There’s a lot you can do…in terms of cutting.” 

Trump has also called Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme,” supported raising the age for eligibility, and has been open to privatizing it.

They’d let employers drastically cut overtime — or eliminate it outright. 

  • Return to Trump’s overtime rule, meaning 4 million middle class workers will lose overtime protections because of the salary they make.
  • Make remote employees work 10, instead of 8, hours in a day before they can earn overtime.
  • Prevent benefits from counting as part of workers’ overtime calculations
  • Allow employers to calculate overtime over four weeks instead of one. (pp. 587, 589, 592)

And they’d reinstate crippling student debt payments.  

“The new Administration must end abuses in the loan forgiveness programs. Borrowers should be expected to repay their loans” (p. 322). 

“The Secretary should phase out all existing [income-driven repayment] plans by making new loans (including consolidation loans) ineligible…. If new legislation is possible, there should be no loan forgiveness, but if not, existing law would require forgiving any remaining balance after 25 years.” (pp. 337-38). 




I have no use for Susan at this point.  

We need to save this country.  Anything you want to happen after that, I'll probably sign up for and get on board with.  But whatever is on your letter to Santa Claus?  It's not happening if Trump gets back into the White House.  And that includes ending the suffering in Gaza.  You want that to stop?  Jill Stein can't -- and won't be able to -- make that stop.  Donald Trump will make it worse.  Kamala's your only real hope.



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