The Conversation -- August 12, 2024
On the Cover of Time Magazine. Cover story by Charlotte Alter: Kamala "Harris has pulled off the swiftest vibe shift in modern political history.... Over the span of a few weeks in late July and early August, Harris became a political phenomenon.... Suddenly, she seems matched to the moment: a former prosecutor running against a convicted felon, a defender of abortion rights running against the man who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, a next-generation Democrat running against a 78-year-old Republican. Perhaps above all, she has given Americans the one thing they overwhelmingly told pollsters they wanted: a credible alternative to the two unpopular old men who have held the job for the past eight long years."
Marie's Sport's Report. In the Athletic (New York Times), fellow high school football coaches and players at remember defensive coach Tim Walz.
Lisa Rubin & Dareh Gregorian of NBC News: "An attorney for ... Donald Trump has filed a legal notice announcing that his client plans to sue the Justice Department and the FBI for $115 million for alleged 'malicious political prosecution' and 'abuse of process.' The notice, a copy of which NBC News obtained Monday, baselessly accuses DOJ leadership and special counsel Jack Smith of having perpetrated a 'malicious political prosecution aimed at affecting an electoral outcome to prevent President Trump from being re-elected'.... The filing says Trump is seeking "$15 million in actual harm due to his legal costs in defending the Special Counsel proceedings before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida." It's unclear how much of that money came from Trump personally. NBC News has reported previously that Trump appeared to be using money from a political action committee for his legal fees. He's also seeking $100 million in punitive damages." ~~~
~~~ One minor flaw in Trump's suit: Rubin said on MSNBC that federal law prohibits awards for punitive damages against the federal government.
Oh, Shame on Us. Alexandra Marquez of NBC News: "After years of condemning ... Donald Trump for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, Democrats are now poking fun at his running mate using a false, vulgar rumor. The rumor, first posted on X last month, involves a fake passage about a sex act and a couch supposedly in Sen. JD Vance's 2016 book, 'Hillbilly Elegy.' The lie spread like wildfire, spawning jokes and memes even as the original joke's author clarified that it wasn't real and later made his account private." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Yeah, well, you can't proveJayDee never fucked a sofa, either. Years ago, Akhilleus and I (and others) used to joke about Ross Douthat's having a relationship with a blow-up doll. I don't recall where we got that story, but I think it too came via something the subject of our derision had written, maybe about his technical celibacy. The point isn't that these stories are true but how easy it is to picture JayDee and Ross animating the inanimate for sexual gratification. And if you're an obnoxious jerk who aspires to celebrity, you just have to accept this kind of, well, gleeful flogging.
Marie: At first, I thought the video here was fake, but a cursory Internet search provides evidence it is not. It turns out that Donald Trump's bizarre claim (see below) that Kamala Harris was speaking before fake crowds has its roots, as is often the case, in Trump's penchant for projection. Trump, it seems, waves to fake crowds all the time. Thanks to RAS for the lead: ~~~
You can’t blame Trump for being sensitive about the huge crowd that showed up at the airport for Harris, given the fact that he has to always wave to imaginary people he wishes would show up. pic.twitter.com/ZbdUtYaTGJ
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 11, 2024
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Why would Trump and his allies spread a false claim about attendance at a rally that was covered on C-SPAN? In part because many elements of Trump's base have embraced rejections of basic reality ... for years.... But in part, it's because Trump and his allies are already eagerly raising questions about the reliability of measures of Harris's support -- and by extension, the reliability of the results in November.... Recall that his efforts to reject the 2020 results did not emerge out of the blue in November of that year.... [He began claiming mail-in ballots were insecure months before the election.] His base was more than prepared when he subsequently challenged the actual election results. That's the pattern that is again underway...."
Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: Rep. Jason Crow's (D-Colo.) "credentials -- including three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and a Bronze Star, as well as a law degree and a background in private-sector investigations -- have made Mr. Crow a go-to lawmaker for Democratic leaders on difficult national security issues.... [Then-Speaker] Pelosi tapped him in 2019 to manage the first impeachment of President Donald J. Trump. He was part of the whip operation to rally support for legislation to send tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. He was selected as the top Democrat on a subcommittee investigating the Biden administration's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. And last month, he was named the senior Democrat on a bipartisan task force to investigate the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania."
The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in the Israel/Hamas war are here.
~~~~~~~~~~
Presidential Race
Here's a handy bar graph on the front page of the New York Times that charts the careers of the Republican and Democratic candidates. Not sure why Trump's bar is so much longer than everybody else's; oh, he's so old:
~~~ Here's a link to a more detailed NYT chart of the candidates' careers.
Yamiche Alcindor & Summer Concepcion of NBC News: "Several prominent Democratic figures are set to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this month, two sources familiar with the plans told NBC News. President Joe Biden, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been confirmed as speakers at the convention. Obama and the Clintons delivered speeches during the 2020 DNC, which was largely held virtually to prevent the spread of Covid-19 amid the pandemic. A source familiar said that former President Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason Carter is also confirmed to be speaking as a representative for his grandfather." MB: Wonder why the RNC didn't feature speeches by any former presidents or their representatives?
Robert Costa of CBS News: "In his first interview since withdrawing from his re-election bid last month, President Biden told 'CBS Sunday Morning' that he made his decision, in part, so that the Democratic Party could fully concentrate on what he believes is an urgent task at hand: preventing ... Donald Trump from regaining the White House.... '... although it's a great honor being president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do what [is] the most important thing you can do, and that is, we must, we must, we must defeat Trump.'" The article includes video of the interview. Or you can watch it here on YouTube.
⭐Adam Kinzinger in a Fox "News" opinion piece: "In general, [members of the U.S. military] all respect each other and understand that whether you are kicking down doors, flying planes, gassing vehicles, or cooking food, you are willing to do what 98 percent of the country isn't: serve for a cause above all others. This makes the attacks on Tim Walz, particularly those from JD Vance, especially sickening. JD Vance was an enlisted Marine who served honorably. While he didn't see combat (he was in public affairs), he deployed and served his nation. He got out at the end of his service commitment after four years. For his service, he should be commended. Following in his father's footsteps, Tim Walz joined the Army Guard, enlisting just two days after his 17th birthday, when he first became eligible, and served honorably for 24 years, achieving the highest enlisted rank offered. Then, he went on to serve as a champion for veterans and military families in Congress, leading the effort to pass a bipartisan bill to provide mental health services to veterans, leading a bipartisan effort to expand the GI Bill, and repeatedly voting to increase military funding. The nation should be proud, and JD Vance should be respectful of his fellow brother-in-arms.... The attacks on Walz have proven to be not only false but also disgusting." Read on. (Also linked yesterday.)
⭐ Trump Gets Crazier. Ariana Cha of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump falsely claimed on social media Sunday that a crowd at a Michigan rally for Vice President Kamala Harris last week 'DIDN'T EXIST,' 'nobody was there' and that photos of the event were fabricated by artificial intelligence.... 'Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she "A.I."d it, and showed a massive "crowd" of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN'T EXIST!' the Republican nominee for president wrote on social media. Trump continued, 'She's a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the "crowd" looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake "crowds" at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING.' There were in fact thousands of people gathered when the plane arrived at the airport, and there is no evidence that news organizations altered photos using artificial intelligence. There is also no evidence that Harris, or Democrats more broadly, have cheated to win elections.... Trump ... for years has been focused on crowd size as a metric of success." ~~~
~~~ Eric Bradner of CNN: "Donald Trump falsely claimed in a series of social media posts Sunday that 'nobody' attended Vice President Kamala Harris" Michigan rally last week -- and said his Democratic rival should be 'disqualified' over a 'fake crowd picture.' The former president appeared to have fallen for a far-right conspiracy theory -- one easily disproved by photos and videos captured by attendees and media showing thousands of supporters at the event at an airport hangar near Detroit." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Of course some of Trump's crazy is fox-adjacent: many of his lies and misstatements are calculated to delegitimize Harris. Sunday, his charge was that a fake fake photo "disqualified" her from becoming president. Thursday, he claimed that her nomination to the presidency was "unconstitutional." So if Harris wins the election, not only will it be because she CHEATED, but also because of various Constitutional prohibitions (he's already floated birtherism) and disqualifying acts.
Matt Bai of the Washington Post implies, but doesn't quite say, that the fact that Trump didn't appear to age much during his so-called presidency* is proof he didn't have the qualities to be president. "... clinical callousness may well be a fountain of youth -- from which Trump's been guzzling his entire life." MB: Personally, I think Trump has grown noticeably more addled than he was when he first took office, although holding the top job should not have affected his faculties because he spent little time at work.
Domenico Montanaro of NPR (August 11): "A team of NPR reporters and editors reviewed the transcript of [Donald Trump's] news conference and found at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes. That's more than two a minute. It"s a stunning number for anyone -- and even more problematic for a person running to lead the free world." Thanks to RAS for the link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: As a number of contributors pointed out in yesterday's Comments, that's all very nice, but what the public needs are contemporaneous fact-checks. This one -- which includes the 162 lies and misstatements -- was published three days after Trump's press availability. While it would be impossible to immediately check all of Trump's lies during his public speeches, many of his falsehoods are repetitions, so it's possible to have a cursory fact-check at the ready for those. My suggestions would be a side-crawl on the teevee, plus a somewhat more extensive fact-check, with links where possible, on the network's Website. Networks could try sharing factcheckers to save money.
⭐A Brit Describes Donald Trump. Nate White in the London Daily: "Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace -- all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed." Read on. You may like the British better and Trump even less than you already do. (Also linked yesterday.)
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "As long as I've covered Republican campaigns, there has been racial fearmongering.... Trump, who adopted his father's view that some bloodlines are 'superior' to others, has slipped into the usual Republican race-baiting.... He is clearly befuddled by someone with brown skin who has come not to hurt Americans, but to save them from Donald Trump; someone who is not scary, as he is, but joyful, not threatening but thrilling. And, in Trump's worst nightmare, this dark-skinned someone is attracting huge adoring, dancing, laughing crowds." (Also linked yesterday.)
David French, a right-wing, anti-abortion columnist for the New York Times, will vote for Kamala Harris to "save conservatism" from Donald Trump. "The only real hope for restoring a conservatism that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion and defends our foundational constitutional principles isn't to try to make the best of Trump, a man who values only himself. If he wins again, it will validate his cruelty and his ideological transformation of the Republican Party. If Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin, and conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life."
"Sofa Loren." Lily Lazarus of the Daily Beast, republished by Yahoo! News: "An image of JD Vance allegedly dressed as a woman and wearing a blonde wig was posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday. The unconfirmed image quickly picked up steam and began trending under the hashtag #SofaLoren, a reference to the iconic Italian actress ... and false claims that the Republican senator had sex with a couch. A spokesperson for the Republican vice presidential pick did not deny the photo's authenticity when approached by the Daily Beast, and did not offer any further comment. The source who surfaced the alleged photo, Travis Whitfill, says the picture was taken by a fellow Yale classmate in 2012, when Vance was attending law school at the university, and sent to him by another friend. Whitfill then sent it to podcast host Matt Bernstein, who posted it to X." MB: I wonder if JayDee thinks cross-dressers should get extra votes (the same way he said parents should) because they speak for more than one sex.
Fiduciary Duty? Ha Ha Ha. Tony Romm of the Washington Post: "To protect older Americans' life savings, President Joe Biden pledged in October to crack down on financial advisers who recommend investments just because they pay higher commissions. Then the insurance industry got to work. Lobbying groups representing New York Life, Lincoln Financial Group, Prudential Financial and other companies first pushed back against the newly proposed regulations before suing to topple them entirely. Now the government's latest attempt to protect retirees is in political and legal limbo, facing the possibility that it may never take effect. It is the latest example of a pervasive pattern: As the Biden administration tries to impose new restrictions on powerful industries, those businesses successfully turn to Congress and the courts for a reprieve.... In July, the industries scored a string of critical early victories: Congress took the first step toward invalidating the new rules, while judges in two federal courts blocked the government from implementing the proposal nationwide in September, as planned, potentially setting the stage for the regulations to be scrapped."
Lisa Neeham of Public Notice argues that Elon Musk is trying "to dismantle the foundations of democracy." Thanks to RAS for the link. MB: Not that we don't have plenty of our very own home-grown seditionists, but Elon does kind of validate the Founders' decision to prohibit foreign-born presidents.
~~~~~~~~~~
Hawaii Congressional Races. Praveena Somasundaram of the Washington Post: "Sen. Mazie Hirono (D) won the Democratic primary in Hawaii for her Senate seat, the Associated Press projects, defeating two challengers on her path to a third term. The Democratic Party dominates politics in Hawaii, and Democratic winners are likely to defeat their challengers in November, an advantage they will need as they try to hold the Senate amid tight contests in other states.... In November, Hirono will face Bob McDermott, who won the Republican nomination for the Senate race, AP projected.... In Hawaii's 1st Congressional District primary, Rep. Ed Case defeated Cecil Hale, the Associated Press projected. Case, who first served in Congress from 2002 to 2007, has held the seat since 2019. In November, he will face Republican Patrick Largey, who ran unopposed. In the 2nd District, Democratic Rep. Jill Tokuda, who is seeking her second term, and Republican Steven Bond ran unopposed and will advance to the general election in November."
Hawaii State House Election. AP: "Hawaii's longtime House speaker lost his Democratic Party primary election to a former state Board of Education member who campaigned on tackling corruption in government. Speaker Scott Saiki was ousted by Kim Coco Iwamoto. Iwamoto's website says she is fighting to expose government corruption and waste -- and to provide sufficient shelter and enough social workers to address homelessness. Saiki has been speaker since 2017 and a state representative for three decades. He served as president of the National Conference of State Legislators from 2021 to 2022."
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The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in the Israel/Hamas war are here. (Also linked yesterday.)
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Something else to worry about…
The list of stuff to worry about should the Fat Fascist be allowed to waddle back into the White House is now beginning to look like a multi-volume set. Some things will be coming (authoritarianism, concentration camps for migrants, total abortion ban) and others will be going (civil liberties).
Ian Millhiser, in Vox, warns that should Fatty slither back into power, he and his Nazi pals on the Supreme Court could delete something else: free speech, that is, for everyone but the traitors. In fact, the First Amendment could be the first to go.
“Thomas and Gorsuch, meanwhile, have a far less subtle plan to roll back press freedom — indeed, under their approach to the First Amendment, authoritarian state governments could quite easily shut down nearly any media outlet.”
The plan is to kill Sullivan, a law that protects news outlets from frivolous but financially devastating lawsuits.
“Sullivan stands for the proposition that state governments cannot use defamation law to maliciously target the press. If a reporter makes a serious error, that reporter may still be liable for defamation. But governments that want to shut down a newspaper cannot simply wait until a reporter misremembers which song was sung at a rally, and then pounce with a multimillion dollar lawsuit.
Trump, Thomas, and Gorsuch, however, have all called for Sullivan to be overruled. In a 2022 legal filing, for example, Trump made the ahistorical argument that Sullivan should be abandoned because ‘it seems unlikely’ that when the Court handed that decision down in 1964, it ‘envisioned a news outlet which seek [sic] to indoctrinate its audience rather than inform.’”
However, right-wingers get a special dispensation from “indoctrination”:
“The Florida and Texas laws at issue in those cases were an explicit attempt to use the government to elevate conservative voices. Indeed, the laws’ proponents were quite open about this fact. As Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said of his state’s law, it was enacted to quash a supposedly ‘dangerous movement by social media companies to silence conservative viewpoints and ideas.’”
I have to laugh (the sardonic kind) whenever I hear Fatty or Jesse Watters or Hannity or some other big mouth Nazi fuck screaming “They’re trying to SILENCE me!!” Really? They ain’t doing a very good job, if that’s the case. You guys drown out everyone else.
Nonetheless, rights are not sacrosanct with this bunch in power, and if the Orange Monster makes a comeback, plenty of rights will be relegated to the history books. Oh, but not in red states. The truth about PoT perfidy must never be spoken of in public. It might upset someone.
The Trump campaign poobahs have been trying keep a lid on the cranky, crotchety, kookamunga character they’re running for dictator. The fewer chances he has to waddle around town with his pants around his ankles, drooling, screaming bloody murder, and causing parents to pull the kids inside and close the blinds, the better.
But keeping Fatty under wraps won’t work for much longer.
That’s a good thing. Amanda Marcotte:
“This is the one small way Vance's lack of appeal serves the Trump campaign. If Vance were witty and charming and capable of drawing audiences larger than a bowling team, Trump would start feeling envious. Trump is already bent out of shape because Harris is drawing such enormous crowds. If his running mate was showing him up, the older man could not be contained. Trump would be booking more rallies, so he could be soothed by the MAGA mob. But with the Harris events as a comparison point, such rallies would start drawing the attention of a media that has mostly ignored them all year. The last thing Trump needs is for swing voters to catch a glimpse of him ranting about how he loves January 6 to a throng of bloodthirsty bigots.”
Ahh…yeah. That oughta help.
Heil Trump
Watched a show on PBS last night, “The Rise of the Nazis”. Surprisingly solid show even though it covers mostly familiar territory. It does go deeper into certain events than you typically don’t get into outside of history books, and the production is very well done. I have some qualms about the use of Beethoven, Mozart, and a little Schubert in the music bed, but the use of certain sections of Mozart’s Requiem don’t seem out of place.
There is an interesting segment on the work of Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen, a married couple, typically overlooked in standard History Channel overviews, who worked in the German underground to try to subvert Hitler and his MAGA, oops, I mean Nazi horde.
I was struck by one part of the script. Talking about both Hitler and Stalin, the voiceover describes certain salient elements of authoritarian dictators. Both were affected by a distrust, down to a hatred, of knowledgeable experts, a belief that only they could fix things, a sense that their gut instincts were more reliable than factual information, and a paranoid nature and constant suspicions that everyone was out to get them.
Sound familiar?
Yes, Virginia, there is cognitive decline.
“Former President Donald Trump’s speaking style may reveal signs of cognitive decline, according to psychological experts.
An analysis by STAT - a media organization focusing on health - found that Trump’s common pattern of speech called tangentiality – jumping from topic to topic with few if any connections in between – is just one of a number of incoherent speaking habits that appears to have worsened in the last few years.”
You don’t say.
The Stat article is mostly firewalled, but here’s how it starts:
“In a speech earlier this year, former President Trump was mocking President Biden’s ability to walk through sand when he suddenly switched to talking about the old Hollywood icon Cary Grant.
‘Somebody said he [Biden] looks great in a bathing suit, right? When he was in the sand and he was having a hard time lifting his feet through the sand, because you know, sand is heavy. They figure three solid ounces per foot. But sand is a little heavy. And he’s sitting in a bathing suit. Look, at 81, do you remember Cary Grant? How good was Cary Grant, right? I don’t think Cary Grant — he was good. I don’t know what happened to movie stars today,’ he said at a March rally in Georgia. Trump went on to talk about contemporary actors, Michael Jackson, and border policies before returning to the theme of how Biden looks on the beach.”
Geeeez…Cary Grant.
Nonetheless, the Fox traitors are all in on this demented sicko. After that ranting hour of ragtime the other day, Jesse Watters fell all over himself praising that scary performance as a “perfect press conference”. Yeah, kind Of like Trump’s perfect phone call.
Still, Fox thinks a clearly addled guy who says stuff like “I play golf. Do you like peanut butter? And how ‘bout that Cary Grant? And sand! Sand is hard to walk on.” is presidential material.
Fake Crowds
School Lunches
"For the past six years, Valerie Castile has helped raise more than $200,000 to pay off the cafeteria debt of kids who can’t afford school lunch. On Friday, Governor Tim Walz signed a bill providing a basic breakfast and lunch to every kid in Minnesota.
Valerie Castile did not know how much her son cared about feeding children, until he was killed.
“I found out through others he would pay for lunches out of his own pocket,” she said.
Philando Castile, Valerie Castile’s son, was 32 years old in 2016, when a St. Anthony police officer shot and killed him during a traffic stop.
That tragedy has changed Valerie Castile’s life every day since then. In the years since Philando was killed, she has poured her energy into activism, wiping out school lunch debt and pushing for free school meals. This week, her advocacy hit a high point: The state Legislature passed a bill to provide free breakfast and lunch to all schoolchildren. Minnesota kids will no longer have lunch debt.
After Philando’s death, colleagues, students, and school parents told media outlets that Philando was a beloved member of the school community who knew all the students’ names and food allergies. He made sure kids could eat even if they could not pay for their meals."
I’m kinda digging RAS’s idea of pre-fact checks for live, instant and total debunkery of Fatty’s fetid folderol, especially considering his habit of recycling the same whoopers.
But just because his lies are so old hat now, I was thinking of an easier way to do it that doesn’t require producers to actually explain the facts, some of which would require extensive background narratives.
Plus, given the fact that he’s such an infamous and ubiquitous prevaricatin’ sumbitch, maybe a quicker way to do it would be select short descriptors of each fabrication, delusion, dissemblement, and willful blackjacking of the truth as he spits them out. Just hit the right button as he yaps and they pop up on the screen.
Kinda like this:
Lie
Lie
Lie
Oooh BIG Lie
Whopper!
Haha! No way!
Too stupid to be an actual lie
That’s a thing?
WTF is he even taking about here?
That’s not even a word.
Maybe on Mars…
@$%#+*!
Yeah, yer mother…
You eat with that mouth?
Lie
Wicked big lie!
Who toldja that? Putin?
Christ! You just made that up!
Lie
Ooooh! Pants on fire!
Um…what?
See? Think that would work?
I heard on the Meidas Touch podcast that Trump waves to nonexistent crowds all the time for the camera, to make it look like he’s got hordes of drooling MAGAts cheering his every waddle. They weren’t kidding.
@Akhilleus: Okay, that's not only funny, but it looks like an accurate fact-check of any Trump speech, although I suppose you would have to shuffle the your fact-checks to meet the specific lies Trump told in any given public remarks.
However -- and more seriously -- the kind of short-form fact-check that the Harris campaign did of Trump's public meltdown last week would work in the format I suggested: an on-air crawl & an online fact-check with links to the evidence.
Raymond Zhong and Mira Rojanasakul, in the New York Times, describes, in text and graphics, the "sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse (with Earth's warming)".
How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?
For the trumpers and magas - as noted in ProPublica Inside Project 2025’s Secret Training Videos, linked by RAS in comments on Saturday, "climate change is merely a cover to engage in population control....This is part of their (Democrats) ultimate goal to control people.”
Ann Coulter says VP Harris is not a "foundational Black."
Apparently, Coulter thinks that real American Black people are those whose ancestors were slaves in the US. Others must be free riders on Affirmative Action programs, undeserving beneficiaries of programs belatedly designed to make up for slavery and Jim Crow.
Actually, all of those AA and such programs/laws are based on current discrimination against women, minorities, native Americans, gender-different, etc. people. Not on the kindness of legislators trying to make up for slavery.
Coulter wrote:
"... And that is the important point he should have made is that the entire purpose of Affirmative Action, set-asides, civil rights laws, laws that limit constitutional rights to freedom of contract, freedom of association, all of that was to make up for the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," Coulter opined. "So unless these benefits are going to roughly define foundational Black Americans, the descendants of American slaves, you've taken away the whole purpose of this."
Maybe we should have DAR-type organizations, like "Jemima's Daughters" or "Dred's Descendants" for "real" Black Americans, so people like Coulter can know who's who. There are SO many imposters these days, like those Jamaicans.
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/08/kamala-isnt-foundational-black-ann-coulter
Patrick,
Might agree with Coulter but for the two small caveats you neatly cover: IF the legislation she objects to were so designed and IF systemic and personal racism were only limited to the descendants of her so-called Foundational Blacks....
She must think it is.
Just plain dumb.
The Three AM Rage Poster, still on about Kamala Harris “stealing” “his” genius idea (which he stole from nut job Ron Paul), also describes her as a yuuuge flip-flopper.
Takes one to know one, I guess. And about that newly found largesse toward workers who rely on tips to help pay the bills, guess who flippy-flopped higher than any Olympic high jumper?
Long before he thought he needed to pretend to care about regular people, Trump tried to pass a law, back in 2017, that would allow owners to legally steal workers’ tips.
Yup. How’s that for a flip-flop?
“On December 5, the Trump administration took its first major step toward allowing employers to legally pocket the tips earned by the workers they employ. The Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposed rule that would allow restaurants to take the tips that servers earn and share them with untipped employees such as cooks and dishwashers.1 But, crucially, the rule doesn’t actually require that employers distribute ‘pooled’ tips to workers. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as tipped workers earn minimum wage, employers could legally pocket those tips.”
The Economic Policy Institute estimated that Trump planned to allow business owners to steal $5.8 billion a year from hard up workers.
And to try to make it all legal-like, Donald had his Department of Labor try some Trump-style cooking of the books:
“The requirements that agencies must follow as a part of the rulemaking process are very clear, and among them is the requirement that agencies must assess all quantifiable costs and benefits ‘to the fullest extent that these can be usefully estimated.’”
But guess what? They didn’t! Surprised?
“One plausible explanation for why DOL left out the required estimate is that any good-faith estimate would have shown this rule will result in a substantial shift of tips from workers to employers. It appears that the Trump Department of Labor is willing to ignore legally required steps in the rulemaking process in an effort to hide the fact that they are proposing a rule that will put workers’ hard-earned tips into the pockets of employers.”
Right. Good ol’ Man O’ the People.
And one more thing. The corporate media fails again. How hard would it have been to Google “Trump, workers’ tips” and get a little background for his latest stunt?
Nope. Much easier to write “Harris steals Trump’s Idea!!!”
@Akhilleus: I forgot all about that. One reason reports may not mention the Trump administration's proposed rule: it's hard to figure out what happened to it. It looks to me as if Congress passed spending bills that made part of it illegal and the Biden administration rescinded the part that did briefly make it into a rule in late 2020. But don't trust me on that. The history of Trump's plan to steal billions from low-paid workers' tips and transfer the money to employers is as murky (to a layperson like me) as the proposed rule was an outrageous transfer of wealth from workers to employers.
Still, your point is extremely well-taken. Apparently Trump's initial plan to spare workers from having to pay taxes on their tips was to simply steal the tips!
Spam again.
Marie,
I believe it was Washington senator Patty Murray (D-natch) who helped to kill it.
Fatty tried another of his weasel moves but she nailed him, another reason he hates smart, powerful women.
Following up on Laura Hunter’s post re: climate change, we find more red state mooching.
The enormous increase in the strength of hurricanes, stemming directly from climate change, has prompted the construction of a huge water barrier off the coast of Galveston, to protect Texans from storm surges caused by willful ignorance of their right-wing rulers. Construction begins any day now.
This project, named the Ike Dike (from damages caused by Hurricane Ike), will cost over $57 billion, a price tag likely to skyrocket. And guess who’s gonna pay for it?
We will!
Yup. PoT propagandists like Texas gubernator, moocher, misogynist, racist, liar, and MAGAt, Greg Abbott, are first to jump up and down about guv’mint overreach and federal spending. Unless they benefit.
The feds are paying for 65% of this project. That means blue state taxpayers, once again, have to bail out red state assholes. You feel a hand in your pocket? That’s Greg Abbott, going into your wallet.
Perfect, in’it?
The media really are the humor police. The JD-couch stuff are JOKES. And harmless ones at that. They poke fun at a weird loser who thinks he has the right and authority to tell others how they are allowed to live their lives. Vulgar is forcing women including preteens to give birth against their wills. Vulgar is denigrating people just because haven't procreated. Vulgar is rounding up millions of immigrants and putting them in camps to deport to violence and poverty. Vulgar is attacking and erasing LGBTQ people because they live lives different from yours. Vance is a terrible human being supporting another terrible human being who want to steal people's rights and punish people they deem their enemies. So a little light hearted fun at their expense is not too much to ask as they scheme to HURT people and try to steal ANOTHER election.
RAS,
All excellent points.
And leave us not forget Vance couching his supposed love for family (get it?) in a demand that women stay in abusive, violent, and life threatening relationships because it’d be “good for the kids”.
Huh? What? Is he FUCKING kidding???
“Good for the kids” to see some out of control, misogynistic asshole pound their mom into guava jelly because she dared to ask whether he’d been out with his teenage girlfriend all night?
You can bet he’d be all in on an instant divorce for manly men like himself who discovered their ignored and abused wives finding comfort somewhere else.
(Project 2025, by the way, seeks to kill no fault divorce. Uppity bitches complaining about being beaten can’t get out that easily, can’t slander some Manly PoT Man! They have to spend thousands on lawyers and accept whatever draconian decision Trumpy courts drop on them.)
Kids being forced to watch their poor mommas being regularly beaten and insulted do not have a guarantee of a happy life ahead of them.
It does, however, help to ensure that kids, exposed to regular beatings and spousal abuse, indulge in violence and hatred themselves.
And vote Republican.
So sure! Let’s damage and warp young lives so they’ll vote for Party of Traitor frauds and crooks. Good plan, Shady, you evil piece of shit.
re: t****'s new lawsuit. Enough already. He had real, current, defense-related documents. It is likely that he or his people had signed them out of SCIFs and not returned. That's how they knew he had some of this stuff.
These were not letters that make a tangential reference to a closed program that might embarrass someone so it's classified. Well, OK, he probably had some of that too, but I don't care about that.
Nail his ass to the wall. Throw the book at him in words that make it clear he had shit he really really really should not have had upon leaving the White House. For that matter, the NSC should have hidden everything from him from the start after he leaked to the Russian foreign minister early on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/12/us/immigration-us-citizenship-rates.html
More news that only a Pretender could hate.
“Good for the kids” to me meant "don't have any." I didn't, at least none that I'm aware of. I'm also proud to say that I've never once changed a diaper, much less given one the finger test. I have no regrets in that regard.
WTF
"Trump used the Lolita Express to fly to campaign rallies this weekend"
Akhilleus - now I'm disillusioned - here I have been thinking that Texas was the exception that paid more to the Federal givernment than received but I muat be living in the past. These charts from the Rockefeller Institute seem trustworthy.
Who Gives and Who Gets?
In that case, thank you, taxpayers, for the federal tax credits that encourged me to purchase solar panels.
Yesterday - a high of 98; solar kw produced 27.61; kw consumed 27.08 - what an awesome technology!