Patterico's Pontifications

10/18/2024

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:43 am



[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Trump blames President Zelensky for letting the war with Russia start:

Donald Trump blamed Russia’s war on Ukraine on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — an escalation of a pattern of sympathetic rhetoric toward the war’s aggressor, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“He should never have let that war start. The war’s a loser,” Trump said, referring to Zelenskyy, on a podcast with conservative commentator Patrick Bet-David published Thursday. The former president added that President Joe Biden had “instigated that war,” which he has repeatedly maintained “would never have happened” if he had been president.

Additionally,

So, Trump will blame President Zelensky and even President Biden for what’s happening in Ukraine, but you know who he won’t blame? The very person who began this war: his good buddy, Vladimir Putin.

Second news item

On the heels of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death, President Biden spoke to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu:

Biden called Netanyahu from Air Force One on his way to Germany and congratulated the prime minister on the elimination of Sinwar by Israeli soldiers operating in southern Gaza.

“The leaders agreed that there is an opportunity now to push for the release of the hostages and stressed they will work together to that end,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said.

The White House said Biden and Netanyahu discussed “how to use this moment to bring the hostages home and to bring the war to a close with Israel’s security assured and Hamas never again able to control Gaza.”

Of course the $64 question is how to achieve those goals.

Third news item

President Zelensky and the bottom line:

“There are two choices. Or Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, or we should have some kind of alliance, and apart from NATO we do not know any functioning alliances today. We want to choose NATO, not nuclear weapons.”

He added that the Budapest Memorandum failed, and Ukraine is the only one affected by it.

“If Russia violated this document, although it is and was the guarantor of this memorandum, then how can we believe in this document? And how can we trust all the partners who guaranteed the preservation of our territorial integrity and sovereignty? These were not only agreements between Ukraine and Russia, but between Ukraine and all partners. Which of these great countries, of all the nuclear powers, are affected? All? No, just one. Ukraine. Who gave away the nuclear weapons? All? No, just one. Ukraine. And who is fighting right now? All? No, just one. Ukraine.”

This:

either Ukraine gets full NATO membership or it will have to pursue nuclear rearmament.

These are the only two scenarios that can guarantee Ukraine’s survival in the long run.

Fourth news item

Anne Applebaum on Trump speaking like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini:

In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer, “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”

His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.

Fifth news item

On the Christian vote in November:

The only way to justify voting for Trump as a Christian is to negate the importance of character in leadership, justify all sorts of immoral behavior, and believe that the ends you desire justify the means to get there.

Then you also have to pretend like he didn’t say all the racist and sexist things, display admiration for dictators around the world, alienate allies, accept that he is not pro-life, ignore all the lies, ignore all the tantrums, and ignore the fact that the only reason his first term wasn’t utterly catastrophic was because there were some principled conservatives serving in his administration at the time that restrained him from the chaos he could’ve unleashed.

And they also have to have a high tolerance for illegal and immoral behavior and scandal…

Sixth news item

Bad news for Trump:

The judge in Donald Trump’s election-fraud case has rejected all of the former president’s arguments for sealing evidence in the case.

Judge Tanya Chutkan will unseal the evidence appendix on Friday, despite Trump saying that it will be used against him by the Kamala Harris presidential campaign.

The Republican nominee is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights in connection with an alleged pressure campaign on state officials to reverse the 2020 election results.

Seventh news item

A few letters to the editor in the Washington Post make very clear that Kamala Harris shouldn’t expect Black men to vote for her because of race. As one writer said, “It is not the job of Black men to blindly vote for Ms. Harris; it is her job to earn our vote.”

A sample from one letter:

I came across former president Barack Obama’s recent statements admonishing Black men for not blindly supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in her quest for the presidency. I have to say: As a Black man, I was very insulted by his remarks, which were more condescending than anything former president Donald Trump has said about “Black jobs.”

Mr. Obama’s allegation omitted one obvious fact: Black men have already voted for a woman for president. In 2016, 81 percent of Black men voted for Hillary Clinton. She didn’t lose because of us; she lost because 47 percent of White women voted for Mr. Trump, slightly higher than the 45 percent of them who voted for Ms. Clinton. In 2020, an even higher percentage of White women, 53 percent, voted for Mr. Trump. I highly doubt that Mr. Obama would ever speak to White women in the same belittling tone that he spoke to Black men.

And from another letter:

Former president Barack Obama’s speculation that the reluctance of Black men to be enthusiastic about Kamala Harris’s candidacy is based on sexism misses the mark.

Black men have good reason to be skeptical of a Democratic presidential candidate who, as a prosecutor, participated in the acceleration of mass incarceration of Black people resulting from Democratic President Bill Clinton’s law-and-order legislation. They watched while Mr. Clinton also engaged in punitive “welfare reform” that bolstered the false stereotype of welfare recipients as Black people looking for a handout. Mr. Obama offered a message of hope, then bailed out Wall Street even as his inadequate response to the financial meltdown — another result of Clinton-era deregulation — caused untold millions in home equity in the Black community to evaporate. No major finance executive was held responsible for this devastation.

Have a good weekend.

—Dana

605 Responses to “Weekend Open Thread”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (063428)

  2. It is really terrible that Harris is running uncontested.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  3. Harris is running uncontested.

    … and she’s STILL losing!

    Item #3 seems like a pretty big deal that Zelensky is all but advocating for nuclear war. Seems like a big deal, but what do I know?

    SaveFarris (79ab12)

  4. In other news:

    A few days after Newsom signs bill requiring oil refineries to store gasoline to avoid supply disruptions, Phillips orders the shutdown of their Wilmington and Carson, CA refinery complex.

    California’s attempt to manage a smooth transition away from gasoline just got roughed up with this week’s decision by Phillips 66 to shutter its refinery in Wilmington next year, wiping out more than 8% of the state’s crude oil processing capacity.

    The closure is likely to increase California’s already high prices at the gas pump, given that much of the replacement gasoline will be shipped in by ocean vessel, analysts say.

    The price issue will be “most worrisome if we have some kind of disruption in the market” and the Phillips refinery’s not there to help with resupply, said Severin Borenstein, faculty director at UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute.

    The planned shutdown, announced by Phillips 66 on Wednesday, came just days after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that could force the state’s refineries to store extra gasoline, a move intended to minimize price spikes, such as those that occurred in late 2022 and 2023.

    Note that CA’s taxes on gasoline far exceed oil companies profits on the same gasoline.

    Environmentalists are gleeful. And this little bit of whistling past the graveyard:

    The closure coincides with California’s waning fuel demand due to electric vehicles and the state’s broader transition away from burning petroleum products.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  5. To be fair, it doesn’t seem like the Black men who wrote to the WaPo are going to vote for Trump. More like Jill Stein, or stay home watching basketball.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  6. Item #3 seems like a pretty big deal that Zelensky is all but advocating for nuclear war.

    So, you think that the US should give up its nuclear weapons?

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  7. I ask this because I am not allowed to call you a moron.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  8. The obvious implication of the world’s unwillingness (or inability) to protect Ukraine’s borders is that non-proliferation is dead and every state in the world *should* be trying to obtain nuclear weapons to ensure that there is *some* protection for their territorial integrity.

    I *hate* this fact and think that it will be a disaster for humanity, but there’s no way around it now — nothing will deter a nuclear power except for their potential adversary having nuclear weapons of their own.

    Great world we’ve built here.

    aphrael (07de23)

  9. The obvious implication of the world’s unwillingness (or inability) to protect Ukraine’s borders is that non-proliferation is dead

    It was dead when the world let the Norks get away with cheating on their NNPT commitment, and then get way with it AGAIN when given a second chance. Iran took note and did the same thing.

    Who will Ukraine get nukes from, though? France? Israel? North Korea (for enough money)?

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  10. Like his service to the Ayatollah as president, Jimmy Carter saved the Norks nuclear program in the 90’s. History will see him for what he was.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  11. Trump may not have read Mein Kampf, but he read Hitler’s speeches, per
    his ex-wife, which he never denied.

    His lies about Ukraine are borderline traitorous, the way he keeps giving Putin a pass, to a nation that is a hostile foreign power to American interests.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  12. Item #3 seems like a pretty big deal that Zelensky is all but advocating for nuclear war.

    Except he’s not.
    Since Putin welshed on the Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine agreed to give up all the nukes in their arsenal in exchange for Russia’s promise that they’d respect their sovereignty, Ukraine wants some of their nukes back.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  13. Zelensky is right about one thing: if this war ends in Ukraine surrendering substantial territory to Russia but not with Ukraine being accepted into NATO, then Putin has won. I doubt very much that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump will have the fortitude to demand this land-for-security type of arrangement, so it will be up to the other members of NATO to champion it.

    JVW (d17bc5)

  14. A Twitter user with the handle @Koshercockney catches Kamala Harris in her typical two-faced nonsense. The woman who as the number two person in the Biden Administration joined with her boss and her colleagues in warning Israel not to assault Rafah now celebrates the death of Yaha Sinwar who was — you guessed it! — killed in Rafah. Worst of all, she probably inflates the role that American intelligence agencies played in tracking him down, and she dares to use the first person plural when describing the death: “We will always bring you to justice.”

    No ma’am, your administration wanted Israel to call off their efforts to eradicate Hamas and enter into a truce which would have only allowed Hamas militants to rest and recoup, then take up their ugly intifada a few years down the road. And you would have keep Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in a strong position in Lebanon too if you would have had your druthers. This may very well be the last gasp for Hamas and the neutering of Hezbollah, God willing, and history will likely show that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were mostly obstacles in the path to the eradication of terrorism on Israel’s borders.

    JVW (d17bc5)

  15. You know, even if U.S. intelligence participated in the tracking down of Sinwar, it’s not a good idea to broadcast that to the public. Better for the world to wonder how many intelligence assets and spying stations the U.S. has in that part of the world then to drop huge clues about it. But of course with an election coming up and the Israel-Hamas issue vexing the Democrats to no end, the Biden team just had to hone in on the glory which really rightly belongs solely to Israel. They are so shameless.

    JVW (d17bc5)

  16. In rationalizing Ukraine’s surrender, Trump asked this stupid question…

    “Lincoln was probably a great president… why wasn’t that settled..”?
    Has anyone this grotesquely ignorant about the history of the country he’s running to lead EVER run for any kind of public office much less the presidency? And, er, the answer to his moronic question is sitting at the end of the couch.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  17. “Anne Applebaum on Trump speaking like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini”

    Wow, I guess we’re back to being okay with over the top eliminationist rhetoric. That didn’t take long. But when the next assassination attempt happens, we know whose rhetoric will get blamed. See softball shooting.

    “By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.”

    Enforcing the rule of law on our borders is contorted into dictatorship inspired mass violence. What a ridiculous stretch. Being Nevertrump means being utterly shameless.

    lloyd (e919bf)

  18. The fascist rhetoric is Trump’s, in plain English…

    “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in — and destroying our country and, by the way, totally destroying our country. The towns and villages, they’re being inundated. But I don’t think they have the problem in terms of Election Day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
    –Donald J. Trump, on Bartiromo, 10/13/2024

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  19. Could someone please tell me why demanding that immigration laws be enforced is “fascist”, even if it takes serious measures after 3 decades of ignoring them?

    If people feel that enforcing these laws is terrible maybe they ought to come to some agreement on new, better laws. Otherwise this stuff about “the Rule of Law” seems hypocritical.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  20. @18 Yet another “Don’t miss next time” dog whistle.

    You were the one giving a dissertation on over the top Kamala Communist comments.

    lloyd (151353)

  21. Could someone please tell me why demanding that immigration laws be enforced is “fascist”, even if it takes serious measures after 3 decades of ignoring them?

    The English is clear, Kevin, but you read it completely wrong.
    Trump was talking about Americans, and Trump wanting to use our military to “handle” them. He even named one of those “enemies from within”, Adam Schiff.

    “Well, I always say so. We have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within. And the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries. Because if you have a smart president, he can handle them pretty easily. I handled– I got along great with all of them. I handled them. But the thing that’s tougher to handle of these lunatics that we have inside. Like Adam Schiff, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, I think of this guy’s going to be a senator. He’s running against a guy that doesn’t understand politics at all. Garvey. But, he was a good baseball player, but he doesn’t understand politics at all. Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff who is a total sleazebag is going to become a senator. But I call him the enemy from within. When you look at the danger he put our country and potentially with Russia with a phony made-up deal that he made up with Hillary and some bad people, you know, that was that started off as an excuse for why she lost an election that a lot of people thought she should have won because the polls indicated she might win. And then she got beaten everywhere virtually.

    “When you look at that and then they said, ahhh, it was Russia, they use it as an excuse and then the fake news picked it up. And while you’re on this, let’s talk about the single greatest scandal, in my opinion, in broadcast history, 60 Minutes and CBS interviewed Kamala. And she’s incompetent.”

    These are the ravings of a fascist madman.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  22. Here’s a great story of the Jewish starting QB at intensely-Mormon BYU. It’s a surprisingly good fit, but I suspect it helps that they’re 6-0 and 13th ranked.
    Mr. Retzlaff is one of three Jews on campus, or seven short of a minyan.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  23. The obvious implication of the world’s unwillingness (or inability) to protect Ukraine’s borders

    We should re-name the Rio Grande Valley “The Donbas” so liberals will finally be willing to protect OUR borders.

    SaveFarris (79ab12)

  24. Paul, your focusing on the words he said, (looks it up…3 times last week). You should be like MAGA and focus on what he should have said. Va Gov did that, Trump went on TV and and doubled down on Bartiromo’s show. Still, as long as you ignore all the fascist stuff and lies, you have a perfect thing.

    if…uh…ugly…failed America…uh…uh…beautiful…uh…uh…

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  25. Meet the newest leader of Hamas, safely ensconced in Qatar.

    Why is Khaled Mashal, a man with the blood of 1,000s—including hundreds of Americans—on his hands, free to live a life on impunity and plan terror under an American security umbrella?

    It’s obscene.

    And he’s even indicted by the US.

    The U.S.’ indictment of top Hamas official Khaled Meshaal earlier this week is raising new questions about how and whether the administration will pursue Meshaal’s arrest, an issue with serious implications for the U.S.-Qatar relationship. Meshaal lives in Qatar, which is a U.S. ally, but does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.

    Multiple Republican lawmakers who’ve been critical of Qatar said they support efforts to ensure that Qatar turns Mershaal over for trial in the United States. Some also said the indictments were long overdue.

    “Although the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Qatar, we would expect a major non-NATO ally to comply with any request to extradite a terrorist leader responsible for the murder and kidnapping of U.S. citizens,” Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC), a lead sponsor of legislation seeking to reevaluate the U.S.’ relationship with Qatar, told JI.

    The Department of Justice, State Department and White House all declined to comment on the prospect of seeking Meshaal’s extradition.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  26. Trump always flatters the person he perceives as the most difficult in any negotiation.

    Putin holds a pretty strong hand in negotiation, and he does hold the ultimate war card.
    Look at how EU member have changed trading partners. For some weird reason some of the EU members trade with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan is up 1400%
    Trade sanctions are hurting Russia, but like Iran they have found work arounds.

    The most expeditious way to bring Russia to the table is to allow and equip Ukraine to destroy Russia’s electric rail system. There are several pipeline “junctions” that could be hit to seriously disrupt Russia’ ability to deliver oil and gas to China and India.
    Russian economy would be crippled, but at what cost? Back when Dick Cheney was a Republican, he “looked into Putin’s eyes and saw KGB”. If cornered, we can assume Putin will act out like KGB. that would be ugly here because Russia does have capabilities to hurt us.

    One approach would be to not want the bear to feel cornered going into negotiations. Another is to cripple the bear, and then negotiate.
    Both Trump and Biden seem to be opting for the first option. Ukraine has to win on its own. People say it cannot, but it can win a better negotiating position. Kursk invasion is one card to trade. I also think Ukraine is innovating, adapting very quickly and will probably spend the winter sending ever improved drones at Russian ammunition, airfields, staging training facilities, and infrastructure.

    Here is my best guess on how a President Trump would negotiate. He’d likely try to get Ukraine to give up Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, and the Kursk region in return for a Russian withdrawal from the remainder. Probably then offers to put Ukraine into NATO, or into some form of protective treaty (over Russian objections) Neither party is going to be happy with a Trump settlement, but Trump will perfectly happy to act the bully, be the bad guy.

    I think more interesting discussion would be of how Trump negotiates for peace in the middle east given the Iranians are the power behind Hamas, Hezbollah- and they evidently greenlit Trump.

    steveg (04876c)

  27. BTW, Zelenskyy isn’t going to get NATO membership or nukes while under invasion by Putin, IMO.
    The only way Ukraine gets into NATO is by ceding around one-fifth of the country to Russia, and then joining immediately after, but that joining won’t happen as long as Hungary is in the alliance, and there are likely others who won’t vote “yes”. I wouldn’t be in favor either, because there are criteria for entry, and Ukraine shouldn’t be exempt.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  28. @13

    Zelensky is right about one thing: if this war ends in Ukraine surrendering substantial territory to Russia but not with Ukraine being accepted into NATO, then Putin has won. I doubt very much that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump will have the fortitude to demand this land-for-security type of arrangement, so it will be up to the other members of NATO to champion it.

    JVW (d17bc5) — 10/18/2024 @ 9:29 am

    Based on Trump’s prior rhetoric, I’m not sure he’d advocate for it…

    But, it would take someone *like* Trump, who’s willing to take a stand that goes against the global status quo to advocate a “deal” that if Ukraine has to give up their lands, then only acceptance to NATO would be the “price” for giving up all those lands (ie, Dunba region and Crimea).

    I don’t see it.

    whembly (477db6)

  29. Donbas

    Trump’s “willing to take a stand that goes against the global status quo” would mean American replacing France in the French surrender monkey phraseology.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  30. @12

    Except he’s not.
    Since Putin welshed on the Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine agreed to give up all the nukes in their arsenal in exchange for Russia’s promise that they’d respect their sovereignty, Ukraine wants some of their nukes back.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/18/2024 @ 9:20 am

    You know who else welshed on the Budapest Memorandum?

    The Obama Administration. (and Britian/German/France)

    Why?

    Because Democrats at that time were USSR-curious, who wanted Russian goodwill as evidenced by HRC’s red button “reset” event and Obama’s open-mic “wait till after election, I’ll have flexibility” blurb.

    whembly (477db6)

  31. These are the ravings of a fascist madman.

    His removal from office will be more with sadness than anger.

    OK, maybe more anger. Do you actually argue that the majority of the GOP is fascist? Because if that is the case, there is no hope regardless of what happens to Trump.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  32. Trump’s “willing to take a stand that goes against the global status quo”

    If Trump wins, NATO will intervene in Ukraine before he takes office.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  33. In regard to Putin, Trump is the harem eunuch pining to be a concubine. Don’t even … just don’t!

    nk (6fbee9)

  34. You are probably as shocked as I am by this story.

    During Donald Trump’s presidency, his D.C. hotel charged the U.S. Secret Service 300 percent or more above standard government rates on multiple occasions, and at times charged the government agency more than it did other patrons — including a Chinese business and members of a foreign royal family, according to a new report released Friday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

    Is the story true? Probably.

    Will some Trumpistas be pleased by this story? Certainly.

    Jim Miller (caf39e)

  35. You know who else welshed on the Budapest Memorandum?
    The Obama Administration. (and Britian/German/France)

    Now that is some ridiculous and wrong blame-shifting.

    The signatories of the deal were Russia, Ukraine, the US and the UK, not Germany or France. In exchange for Ukraine giving over all their nukes to Russia, the signatories promised (1) security assurances, not guarantees, assurances, and (2) to respect Ukrainian sovereignty. Putin blew threw both points of the deal by their 2014 invasion, the US and UK did not.

    Obama US provided military aid, but not the lethal kind, which was insufficient but didn’t break the deal, Putin broke it all the way through.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  36. @35

    (1) security assurances, not guarantees, assurances

    Such a weaselly cop-out.

    whembly (477db6)

  37. Such a weaselly cop-out.

    Indeed. To absolve Obama here is risible. Still, that is no defense of what Trump intends.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  38. Obama US provided military aid, but not the lethal kind

    That’s like saying we provided humanitarian aid, but not the food or medical kind.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  39. It’s fraud from the top to all the way down to his fraud townhall. I’m sick of the fraud.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  40. Such a weaselly cop-out.

    BS. You’re just flat-out wrong. Assurances aren’t guarantees, whembly, and they’re non-binding. I don’t like it but that’s how the deal was written.

    The agreement is not an official treaty. It is neither legally binding nor does it carry an enforcement mechanism. And while it provides security assurances, they do not include specific promises with regard to a potential invasion.

    In addition to military and monetary aid, we and other NATO members have also sent military advisors to help shore up their defenses and help in their ongoing war against Russia in the Donbas region of Ukraine, which started in 2014 has been unabated ever since.

    Trump’s sending javelins to Ukraine did no good because we stipulated that they stay in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles from the front.

    Bottom line, we’ve been helping the country for the past three decades, practically since their inception, and it’s been a good investment, IMO. Before Putin invaded in 2014, we provided $5 billion in aid to strengthen their economy and democracy, and we’ve provided aid ever since but, in the last ten years, none of it has been enough. Does that mean we haven’t lived up to the deal? No, we’ve been their best ally this side of Poland.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  41. Regarding Obama, yes, but for kicking Putin out of the G8 to make it the G7, his response was milquetoast. He was way too late and too little on sanctions and aid. Does that mean he welshed on the Budapest Memorandum? No, that’s all on Putin.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  42. From Wartranslated x Dmitri
    https://x.com/wartranslated

    In response to a journalist’s question about the likelihood of Ukraine joining NATO in exchange for territories as part of a ceasefire agreement, the Kremlin Butcher [Putin] stated that “a ceasefire cannot last for 1-2 weeks or a year, just for NATO countries to rearm and replenish their ammunition stocks.”

    He claimed to “not understand the talks about trading territories, because the territories our guys are fighting for on the battlefield are our territories. These are the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions.”

    Putin left out Crimea, but that is Putins opening negotiating position. The West will ask for Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Luhansk and Donestk are hard asks for the west because the Ukrainians would want to expel the Russians that have colonized, militarized the areas
    To get Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk back the way Ukraine wants (Territory conceded back to Ukraine, Russian colonizers out) would take decisively defeating the neo Soviet Army. Actions speaking louder than words say Biden doesn’t want that, Germany and France don’t want that. UK doesn’t want that. So Trump says it out loud. A deal needs to be made, or the Western war effort needs to be significantly escalated

    By the way, Dmitri has a couple videos of NK troops getting gear and training. Says Russian wants NK troops in place in Kursk by November 1st. nk is right, they seem to have shoes AND socks- although if Russia runs true to form, the NK’s and their shoes, socks and coats will be delivered to front, pointed in general direction of west and sent in a wave. One newly mobilized Russian who was lucky enough to be POW’d complained he had been dragooned 3 weeks previously, shown how to work an AK and sent to the front. He said out of the first 20 men, it would be lucky if 5 made it to the objective. Then would send another group of 20 and maybe 5 more would get to the objective and so on. Every day is D-Day

    steveg (04876c)

  43. Rep. Mike Turner is right…why wasn’t the House informed of 12,000 North Korean military joining Putin’s War Against Ukraine?

    Also, why isn’t China sanctioned harder for sending weaponry and weaponry components to Russia?

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  44. If Trump wins, NATO will intervene in Ukraine before he takes office.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/18/2024 @ 12:50 pm

    LOL! Given that NATO decisions are based on consensus, that will never happen. Trump fave Victor Orban will certainly object, as would Slovakia as well as other countries. An action like that would unravel NATO completely, as the Trump administration would withdraw any support for NATO.

    Putin’s mission will be accomplished.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  45. https://x.com/Schizointel/status/1847328173874160070

    Notes that the NK’s are being issued Russian uniforms and equipment

    Wonders aloud “Also, if this was just a training exercise, why are the North Korean soldiers being issued Russian military kit and uniforms instead of using their own military kit and uniforms[?]”

    steveg (04876c)

  46. Given Trump’s well known antipathy towards Zelenskyy and Ukraine, a new Trump administration would probably intervene on the Russian side.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  47. Here’s a great story of the Jewish starting QB at intensely-Mormon BYU. It’s a surprisingly good fit, but I suspect it helps that they’re 6-0 and 13th ranked.
    Mr. Retzlaff is one of three Jews on campus, or seven short of a minyan.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/18/2024 @ 10:46 am

    Thank you for bringing up my alma mater, Paul. The Atlantic story is paywalled, so I could only read the first couple of paragraphs.

    BYU finally got into a big boy league (the Big 12) last year, after more than a decade of independence. It went independent after its archrival, the University of Utah, left the lowly Mountain West Conference for the PAC-12 in 2010.

    BYU would have loved to join the PAC-12, but there was no way the PAC-12 (particularly Cal and Stanford) were going to let a Mormon school into its club. It’s funny to me that the PAC-12 went on to collapse, and is now reconstituting as a lower-level league. BYU, with its large western fan base, could have shored up the PAC-12 if taken with Utah.

    The Jewish quarterback to whom you refer was thrown into the fire last season after the starter was injured. He went 0-4. This year he is 6-0, and playing quite well.

    I don’t know if the Atlantic story mentions the meme circulating in Provo, so pardon me if this is redundant. BYU’s only NCAA championship in football was in 1984. If they should happen to win it again this year, the golden headline will be: “After 40 years in the wilderness, a Jew leads BYU to the promised land.” 😁

    BYU plays Oklahoma State tonight at 7:15. It will be on ESPN.

    I’ve made it clear that I have issues with the Mormon church, but I still like BYU football, and I’m proud that BYU isn’t cranking out a bunch of leftist graduates like many institutions of higher learning.

    We would be so much better off if the government had more people like Mitt Romney, Kyrsten Synema, Jeff Flake, and Rusty Bowers (if you don’t know his story, look it up). They all attended BYU.

    (Senator Mike Lee also attended BYU. While not a lefty, he’s a full-on Trumper, and even compared Trump to Captain Moroni, a heroic figure in the Book of Mormon. That turned off many a Mormon. Lee’s father was Rex Lee, who was the Solicitor General under Reagan, and later on the president of BYU. Rex died in 1996. From what I know of him, he has to be spinning in his grave at his son’s support of Trump.)

    norcal (b78f63)

  48. Sorry for the format

    norcal (b78f63)

  49. I’ll try again.

    norcal (b78f63)

  50. Here’s a great story of the Jewish starting QB at intensely-Mormon BYU. It’s a surprisingly good fit, but I suspect it helps that they’re 6-0 and 13th ranked.
    Mr. Retzlaff is one of three Jews on campus, or seven short of a minyan.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/18/2024 @ 10:46 am

    2.0

    Thank you for bringing up my alma mater, Paul. The Atlantic story is paywalled, so I could only read the first couple of paragraphs.

    BYU finally got into a big boy league (the Big 12) last year, after more than a decade of independence. It went independent after its archrival, the University of Utah, left the lowly Mountain West Conference for the PAC-12 in 2010.

    BYU would have loved to join the PAC-12, but there was no way the PAC-12 (particularly Cal and Stanford) were going to let a Mormon school into its club. It’s funny to me that the PAC-12 went on to collapse, and is now reconstituting as a lower-level league. BYU, with its large western fan base, could have shored up the PAC-12 if taken with Utah.

    The Jewish quarterback to whom you refer was thrown into the fire last season after the starter was injured. He went 0-4. This year he is 6-0, and playing quite well.

    I don’t know if the Atlantic story mentions the meme circulating in Provo, so pardon me if this is redundant. BYU’s only NCAA championship in football was in 1984. If they should happen to win it again this year, the golden headline will be: “After 40 years in the wilderness, a Jew leads BYU to the promised land.” 😁

    BYU plays Oklahoma State tonight at 7:15. It will be on ESPN.

    I’ve made it clear that I have issues with the Mormon church, but I still like BYU football, and I’m proud that BYU isn’t cranking out a bunch of leftist graduates like many institutions of higher learning.

    We would be so much better off if the government had more people like Mitt Romney, Kyrsten Synema, Jeff Flake, and Rusty Bowers (if you don’t know his story, look it up). They all attended BYU.

    (Senator Mike Lee also attended BYU. While not a lefty, he’s a full-on Trumper, and even compared Trump to Captain Moroni, a heroic figure in the Book of Mormon. That turned off many a Mormon. Lee’s father was Rex Lee, who was the Solicitor General under Reagan, and later on the president of BYU. Rex died in 1996. From what I know of him, he has to be spinning in his grave at his son’s support of Trump.)

    norcal (b78f63)

  51. Here’s some of the article, norcal. McKay Coppins (Mitt’s biographer) is a skilled writer.

    It is one of those wonderfully strange college-sports stories that serves as a magnet for camera crews. In recent weeks, ESPN and CBS have both turned up on campus to profile Retzlaff, and Fox Sports dispatched a team of 140 to broadcast its game-day studio show from Provo. The stakes for Saturday’s game were high—a win against the University of Arizona Wildcats would not only make the Cougars bowl-eligible, but keep the team’s chances at a Big 12 championship and national-playoff berth alive.

    The stakes were also high for me personally. As a dad gradually surrendering to stereotype in my approach to middle age, I had recently embarked on a mission to indoctrinate my young kids in the college-sports fandom of my alma mater. I bought them overpriced royal-blue hats and sweatshirts, and showed them viral videos of the beloved Cougar mascot, Cosmo, doing TikTok dances and jumping through hoops of fire. After deciding I would bring them to Provo last week for their first BYU football game, I spent days teaching them the fight song. By the time we took our seats on Saturday afternoon, the propaganda had done its work—they couldn’t wait to belt out “Rise and shout, the Cougars are out” after each BYU touchdown.

    I assured them they’d have many opportunities to sing, but I secretly had my doubts. Arizona’s defense was good; BYU’s first five wins of the season had been weird and a bit fluky. Most important, like any BYU fan, I harbored a vaguely superstitious notion that this was the point of the season—with national hype peaking and people finally taking notice—that our team usually melts down. Chatting with fans before the game, I discovered I wasn’t alone in this anxiety. One fan even wondered aloud if Retzlaff’s decision to play on Yom Kippur, which many religious Jews spend in prayer and fasting, would curse his performance. He was joking, I thought. But then the Cougars’ opening drive ended with Retzlaff missing an open receiver in the end zone on fourth down, and the Wildcats marched down the field to score, and suddenly the specter of divine punishment didn’t seem quite so far-fetched. I found myself wondering if any other nervous BYU fans were Googling How bad is it to play football on the day of atonement?

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  52. And here’s some more (mea culpa for encroaching on fair use).

    When I met Retzlaff on campus a couple of days later, I told him about the earnest Mormon’s concern over his compliance with Jewish law, and he laughed. “That’s fandom,” he told me. Retzlaff, who wore sweats and a Star of David necklace, said he never seriously considered skipping the game. He knew some Jews would disagree—Sandy Koufax famously sat out the first game of the World Series in 1965 to observe Yom Kippur. But to Retzlaff, playing on Saturday was a chance to represent his faith on a stage that is not exactly teeming with people like him. Utah has one of the smallest Jewish populations in America, and at BYU, there are only two other Jewish students. That puts Retzlaff in a strange position: He represents one of the university’s smallest minorities and is also one of its most famous students.

    Retzlaff, a California native who spent two years as a top junior-college quarterback, told me that his first thought when BYU recruiters showed up was about football, not faith. The school has a comparatively high-profile program with a powerhouse pedigree—the Cougars won the national championship in 1984 and have churned out a string of famous quarterbacks over the years, including Steve Young and Jim McMahon. But he admits that contemplating what his non-football life would look like on a 99 percent Mormon campus gave him pause.

    BYU, which strictly prohibits drinking, premarital sex, and a host of other traditional college pastimes, is not an obvious draw for most non-Mormon students. But every year, the school attracts a combination of college athletes who want to play their sport without distraction and students from other orthodox-religious backgrounds who don’t mind spending time on America’s most “stone-cold sober” campus. (Last year, a Muslim basketball player for BYU named Aly Khalifa made headlines for fasting during a March Madness game that fell during Ramadan.)

    Retzlaff told me his arrival in Provo was a culture shock. Sundays were brutal: Local businesses closed, the campus shut down, and, with most of his teammates at church, Retzlaff found himself sitting alone in his room, struggling to ward off boredom. The mandatory religious classes, which frequently began with all the students singing a Mormon hymn, could also be disorienting. “Every single person around me has got this thing memorized,” he recalled, “and I have no idea what’s going on.”

    Another player in his position might have chosen to downplay his religious differences; Retzlaff decided to lean in. On Instagram, he started referring to himself as the “BYJew,” and encouraged skittish friends and teammates to use the term as well. (Eventually, the Utah County Chabad began selling “BYJew” T-shirts.) To celebrate Sukkot last year, he arranged for a kosher food truck from Salt Lake City to visit campus so he could treat his teammates to shawarma and falafel. He relished the opportunity to educate. “Members of the LDS faith do have a funny fascination with Judaism,” he told me. Some of the questions he got—“Do you guys believe in Jesus?” for example—were rudimentary. (“To me, that’s like, you’ve never met a Jew in your life,” he told me.) But others were more sophisticated, prompting conversations about the overlapping theologies and shared cultural experiences of two religious minorities, one very old, the other relatively new.

    The Latter-day Saint rituals weren’t his own, but Retzlaff learned to find comfort and even a kind of divine beauty in them. During the pregame team prayers, when all the other players bow their heads, he looks up and around the locker room at his friends and teammates—trying “to be present in the moment” as he reflects on his own gratitude.

    Retzlaff’s experience took on a new dimension after the October 7 attacks on Israel last year. As campuses across America erupted in protests over the war in Gaza, and as many of those protests curdled into virulent anti-Semitism, Retzlaff was struck by how different his classmates seemed from the people in viral video clips hurling epithets at Jewish students. He suspected that the secularism that dominated those other campuses played a part. “I’d love to ask them about their faith,” Retzlaff told me of the protesters. “What are the odds that they’re faithful at all? I’d bet you they’re not.” For all the inconvenience and occasional awkwardness that BYU’s deep religious culture might cause him, Retzlaff believes it’s allowed his fellow students to see his Judaism not as a marker of political identity but as a faith that warrants respect, even reverence.

    In fact, Retzlaff told me, as BYU’s quarterback he’s encountered more anti-Mormonism than anti-Semitism. The year before he joined the team, some fans at the University of Oregon greeted the Cougars with chants of “Fuck the Mormons.” The school eventually apologized, but Retzlaff told me he and his teammates have continued to face religious taunts in opposing stadiums. He’s less scandalized by the heckling than by the lack of outrage it seems to engender. “The blatant disrespect for their faith—it’s something to think about. What if there was a Jewish university that had a Jewish football team, and they were saying that in the stands?” Retzlaff asked me. “Like, imagine if that hit the papers. That would be a big deal.” The casual bigotry, and muted response to it, unnerves him. “There’s a lot of people who just don’t like Mormon people, for no reason,” he told me. “That’s what happened to the Jews all throughout history.”

    In the arena on Saturday, Retzlaff and his team found their rhythm in the second quarter. After a perfect 20-yard touchdown pass tied the game, the Cougars never looked back. They scored 24 unanswered points, and forced four turnovers. We sang the fight song until our voices went hoarse, and by the time the game ended in a 41–19 blowout, my kids were converted. I had a Jewish quarterback to thank for helping me pass my fandom down to the next generation.

    But BYU’s win wasn’t meaningful only to the Latter-day Saints who were watching that day. After the game ended, Retzlaff made his way to the locker room to shower and change, and then took questions at a press conference. Playing like that on Yom Kippur was, he would later tell me, a “spiritual experience.” He was exhausted and emotional. But before he could leave, he got word that someone was waiting for him in the stadium, now mostly empty. A Jewish fan had waited more than an hour to take a picture with the quarterback. After shaking Retzlaff’s hand and thanking him, the man said he was going home to break his fast.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  53. Thanks, Paul. I share the anxiety mentioned in the article. In fact, just by mentioning tonight’s game, I’m afraid this game will be where it begins to fall apart.

    Here is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on cougarboard.com, a BYU sports site. To understand it, you need to know that ROC stands for “Roar of Cougars”, the name given to the very loud and rambunctious student section of the stadium. (The school mascot is Cougars.)

    https://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=33962975&tab=laugh

    norcal (b78f63)

  54. cougarboard.com, a BYU sports site.

    I’m glad you clarified that………😏😉

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  55. A little more…

    When I met Retzlaff on campus a couple of days later, I told him about the earnest Mormon’s concern over his compliance with Jewish law, and he laughed. “That’s fandom,” he told me. Retzlaff, who wore sweats and a Star of David necklace, said he never seriously considered skipping the game. He knew some Jews would disagree—Sandy Koufax famously sat out the first game of the World Series in 1965 to observe Yom Kippur. But to Retzlaff, playing on Saturday was a chance to represent his faith on a stage that is not exactly teeming with people like him. Utah has one of the smallest Jewish populations in America, and at BYU, there are only two other Jewish students. That puts Retzlaff in a strange position: He represents one of the university’s smallest minorities and is also one of its most famous students.

    Retzlaff, a California native who spent two years as a top junior-college quarterback, told me that his first thought when BYU recruiters showed up was about football, not faith. The school has a comparatively high-profile program with a powerhouse pedigree—the Cougars won the national championship in 1984 and have churned out a string of famous quarterbacks over the years, including Steve Young and Jim McMahon. But he admits that contemplating what his non-football life would look like on a 99 percent Mormon campus gave him pause.

    BYU, which strictly prohibits drinking, premarital sex, and a host of other traditional college pastimes, is not an obvious draw for most non-Mormon students. But every year, the school attracts a combination of college athletes who want to play their sport without distraction and students from other orthodox-religious backgrounds who don’t mind spending time on America’s most “stone-cold sober” campus. (Last year, a Muslim basketball player for BYU named Aly Khalifa made headlines for fasting during a March Madness game that fell during Ramadan.)

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  56. Next installment…

    Retzlaff told me his arrival in Provo was a culture shock. Sundays were brutal: Local businesses closed, the campus shut down, and, with most of his teammates at church, Retzlaff found himself sitting alone in his room, struggling to ward off boredom. The mandatory religious classes, which frequently began with all the students singing a Mormon hymn, could also be disorienting. “Every single person around me has got this thing memorized,” he recalled, “and I have no idea what’s going on.”

    Another player in his position might have chosen to downplay his religious differences; Retzlaff decided to lean in. On Instagram, he started referring to himself as the “BYJew,” and encouraged skittish friends and teammates to use the term as well. (Eventually, the Utah County Chabad began selling “BYJew” T-shirts.) To celebrate Sukkot last year, he arranged for a kosher food truck from Salt Lake City to visit campus so he could treat his teammates to shawarma and falafel. He relished the opportunity to educate. “Members of the LDS faith do have a funny fascination with Judaism,” he told me. Some of the questions he got—“Do you guys believe in Jesus?” for example—were rudimentary. (“To me, that’s like, you’ve never met a Jew in your life,” he told me.) But others were more sophisticated, prompting conversations about the overlapping theologies and shared cultural experiences of two religious minorities, one very old, the other relatively new.

    The Latter-day Saint rituals weren’t his own, but Retzlaff learned to find comfort and even a kind of divine beauty in them. During the pregame team prayers, when all the other players bow their heads, he looks up and around the locker room at his friends and teammates—trying “to be present in the moment” as he reflects on his own gratitude.

    Retzlaff’s experience took on a new dimension after the October 7 attacks on Israel last year. As campuses across America erupted in protests over the war in Gaza, and as many of those protests curdled into virulent anti-Semitism, Retzlaff was struck by how different his classmates seemed from the people in viral video clips hurling epithets at Jewish students. He suspected that the secularism that dominated those other campuses played a part. “I’d love to ask them about their faith,” Retzlaff told me of the protesters. “What are the odds that they’re faithful at all? I’d bet you they’re not.” For all the inconvenience and occasional awkwardness that BYU’s deep religious culture might cause him, Retzlaff believes it’s allowed his fellow students to see his Judaism not as a marker of political identity but as a faith that warrants respect, even reverence.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  57. Fini…

    In fact, Retzlaff told me, as BYU’s quarterback he’s encountered more anti-Mormonism than anti-Semitism. The year before he joined the team, some fans at the University of Oregon greeted the Cougars with chants of “Fuck the Mormons.” The school eventually apologized, but Retzlaff told me he and his teammates have continued to face religious taunts in opposing stadiums. He’s less scandalized by the heckling than by the lack of outrage it seems to engender. “The blatant disrespect for their faith—it’s something to think about. What if there was a Jewish university that had a Jewish football team, and they were saying that in the stands?” Retzlaff asked me. “Like, imagine if that hit the papers. That would be a big deal.” The casual bigotry, and muted response to it, unnerves him. “There’s a lot of people who just don’t like Mormon people, for no reason,” he told me. “That’s what happened to the Jews all throughout history.”

    In the arena on Saturday, Retzlaff and his team found their rhythm in the second quarter. After a perfect 20-yard touchdown pass tied the game, the Cougars never looked back. They scored 24 unanswered points, and forced four turnovers. We sang the fight song until our voices went hoarse, and by the time the game ended in a 41–19 blowout, my kids were converted. I had a Jewish quarterback to thank for helping me pass my fandom down to the next generation.

    But BYU’s win wasn’t meaningful only to the Latter-day Saints who were watching that day. After the game ended, Retzlaff made his way to the locker room to shower and change, and then took questions at a press conference. Playing like that on Yom Kippur was, he would later tell me, a “spiritual experience.” He was exhausted and emotional. But before he could leave, he got word that someone was waiting for him in the stadium, now mostly empty. A Jewish fan had waited more than an hour to take a picture with the quarterback. After shaking Retzlaff’s hand and thanking him, the man said he was going home to break his fast.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  58. I’m glad you clarified that………😏😉

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d) — 10/18/2024 @ 4:41 pm

    Funny story:

    Years ago, my brother was talking to my mother (a BYU grad) about BYU football. Shortly thereafter, they went to a bank so my mom could make a deposit. My brother was driving, and they went to the drive-up teller. My mom passed the deposit slip to my brother, who then passed it on to the teller, who was very light-skinned guy (just a shade under an albino).

    Well, there was a phone number that my mother had inadvertently written on the slip. The teller asked, “What do you want me to do with this?”

    My wise guy brother then said, “It sucks having a mom who is a cougar.” The teller turned bright red. My mom didn’t get the joke, and said something like, “What’s wrong with being a Cougar?” After leaving the bank, my brother had to pull over, laugh his ass off, and then explain the alternate meaning of “cougar”.

    norcal (b78f63)

  59. If Trump wins, NATO will intervene in Ukraine before he takes office.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/18/2024 @ 12:50 pm

    Even if only certain NATO members intervened in Ukraine (I can only imagine one, France), it is highly likely that Russia would retaliate by sending a few missiles their way; if only to dissuade others. I don’t think a Trump administration would respond in kind, as Article 5 only applies to self-defense, not when NATO is the aggressor.

    As I said above, Trump’s antipathy towards Ukraine (and NATO) is well known, and the Russians will assume he will sit out any conflict between Europe and Russia.

    Given the fact that Trump wouldn’t be able to run for reelection, I also doubt will be any serious political backlash for Trump; there will be certainly not enough support to impeach and convict him for something most Americans don’t care about.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  60. I appreciate the installments, Paul. Only three Jews on campus? Wow. There are over 30,000 students. When I studied there, I met a Jew who had converted to Mormonism, so I guess she wouldn’t count.

    norcal (b78f63)

  61. The final paragraphs are in moderation, norcal, so I hope Dana can wave her magic wand. Love the story about your Cougar mom. We get some of that up here, with so many friends having gone to WSU.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  62. It’s amusing how things come in pairs. Just now, a Chinese friend, who doesn’t understand football at all, and hasn’t ever been to a game as far as I know, invited me to go with him to the Nevada / San Jose State game tonight.

    How could I say no? I can teach him about the best sport (college football) in the world.

    I’ll record the BYU game, and watch it afterwards.

    Later, folks!

    norcal (b78f63)

  63. BYU would have loved to join the PAC-12, but there was no way the PAC-12 (particularly Cal and Stanford) were going to let a Mormon school into its club. It’s funny to me that the PAC-12 went on to collapse, and is now reconstituting as a lower-level league. BYU, with its large western fan base, could have shored up the PAC-12 if taken with Utah.

    The way I understood it was that it wasn’t so much the affiliation with the LDS Church which kept Pac-10 from inviting BYU to join (though I can certainly see the chancellors from Berkeley, UCLA, Washington, et al. being very bigoted about bringing a Mormon school into the conference), it was more a combination of two key factors:

    1) BYU will not participate in athletic contests on Sundays, and the PAC-10 had a nice arrangement with one of the TV networks to broadcast Sunday basketball games in the conference.

    2) BYU by then already had their own television network, and the Pac-10 was concerned about how that would impact their ability to have their own conference network. They saw how the University of Texas’s network made it difficult for the Big 12 to get a conference network, and even though BYU would not be as prominent in the Pac-12 as Texas was in the Big 12, they just thought it would be too much of a hassle.

    JVW (d17bc5)

  64. Leftists of the Bernard Sanders stripe now want to define making fries at McDonalds and operating a cash register at a convenience store as “skilled labor.” I guess the end game here is to then argue that they need a college degree to learn these skills, so that we can just turn everyone over to the higher education cartel for a four to eight years.

    JVW (d17bc5)

  65. FCC Commissioner Seeking Investigation Into Allegation CBS Distorted Harris’ ’60 Minutes’ Interview

    “The FCC does not regulate, or really even respond to, allegations of politically unfavorable coverage or legitimate editorial discretion,” Simington wrote in a statement to the DCNF. “The recent complaint regarding WCBS-TV raises a fully different set of issues regarding whether or not coverage was intentionally distorted: reporting that something was said in response to a question that literally was not. I don’t know whether that’s true, but it’s a different issue.”

    CAR’s complaint alleges that because WCBS aired two distinct broadcasts of the Harris interview — one on “Face the Nation” and the other on “60 Minutes” — with different responses from the Democratic candidate, the conflicting answers “amount to deliberate news distortion.”

    “CBS crosses a line when its production reaches the point of so transforming an interviewee’s answer that it is a fundamentally different answer. This, CBS may not do,” the CAR complaint states. “Here, CBS has taken a single question and transformed Harris’ answer such the general public no longer has any confidence as to what the Vice President actually said in response to the query.”

    lloyd (52ed2e)

  66. https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4934760-jd-vance-trump-presidency-threat/

    With leftists, the old republican is transformed into a reasonable person, while the next republican is the devil incarnate.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  67. Vatnik Soup has an entry on Daryl Cooper, the Nazi-friendly historian who appeared on Tucker’s show.

    In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American podcaster, Darryl Cooper (@martyrmade). He’s best-known for “Martyr Made”, a history podcast that provides a strongly revisionist and biased analysis on historical events such as the Revolution of Dignity and World War II.

    Darryl became known to big audiences in 2021, when he published a Twitter thread in which he basically described a massive conspiracy against Trump during both 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The culprits were predictable: the corporate press, intelligence agencies, and of course the evil Democrats. To Darryl, Russia was not working together with the Trump campaign, even though there’s clear evidence that many of his officials – including Carter Page, Rex Tillerson, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort – interacted intimately with Russian officials and even GRU operatives. Trump later pardoned five people who were convicted as a result of investigations on the Russian interference in the 2016 US elections

    His thread gained support and was spread by people like Donald Trump Jr. and Glenn Greenwald, and was even brought up on live television by the former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson. Darryl’s Twitter account went from 7,000 to 70,000 followers in just four days.

    Today, Cooper is followed by many prominent figures from the right, including Trump’s VP candidate JD Vance. At some point, Martyr Made was the most popular podcast on Apple and Spotify, even more popular than Joe Rogan Experience, Tucker Carlson’s show and Talk Tuah.

    This popularity was mostly due to him being interviewed by Tucker Carlson on his show. During the interview Cooper claimed that, instead of Hitler, it was actually Winston Churchill who was the main culprit and warmonger of WWII.

    Darryl made false claims about the WWII, including that millions “ended up dead” merely because the Nazis did not have enough food for them (rather than as a result of intentional genocide). Many real historians have debunked these claims

    Even though sometimes claiming to be a libertarian, Darryl’s rhetoric reeks of pure fascism. When asked whether Europe under Nazi/Hitler leadership would’ve been a better outcome than today’s version, he said “I can’t imagine anything worse happening than what did happen”.

    Elon Musk naturally shared the interview and promoted the conversation as “very interesting”, although he later deleted the post.

    Alleged sex trafficker and pedophile Andrew Tate also praised Cooper’s fascist rhetoric.

    In another incident,Darryl posted two photos from Paris. In the 1st photo, Hitler had just conquered the city during WWII. The 2nd photo showed the opening ceremony to the Paris Olympics.He then claimed that the first photo was “infinitely preferable in virtually every way”.

    This is pretty rancid considering that the Nazis authorized deportation of Jews from France, and around 77,000 Jews living in France were sent to concentration camps and killing centers or died in detention.

    Cooper has suggested that the most desirable thing for society is a “charismatic autocrat”, so it’s not really a big surprise that he’s cheering for Team Trump or defended Putin’s actions in both Syria and Ukraine. In his own words, fascism is “nothing more than what …happens when normal people realize that the left will never stop until they’re forced to.” In another post, Darryl claimed that “Democracy is a disease. Tyranny is the cure.” He’s also called for the ”ending of democracy” and putting the military in charge instead.

    When it comes to Ukraine, Darryl has been collaborating closely with Scott Horton. He’s the editorial director of http://Antiwar.com, a sponsor of the 1st pro-war RATWM rally, and is connected to the MAGA takeover of the Libertarian Party

    Together, Darryl and Scott have even published a book titled “Provoked: America’s Role in the Russia-Ukraine War”. In it, the dynamic duo claims the old Kremlin narrative that the war was “provoked by NATO expansion”, and that it has nothing to do with Russian imperialism.

    His analysis on Ukraine is extremely one-sided, and he neatly forgets that from the get-go Putin played a big role in despoiling Russia after the fall of the USSR, using his KGB/FSB network and knowledge to put the oligarchs under his rule.

    To Darryl, all color revolutions – including the one in Ukraine – were orchestrated by the US. He calls leaders like Saakashvili CIA puppets and demonizes people like George Soros. He even criticizes election legimization processes like parallel vote tabulation (PVT/PRVT).

    In Nov 2021, Darryl was still adamant about Putin not conquering Ukraine, saying that he “has shown no signs at all of trying to take over Ukraine,” and that Russia is just “providing aid” to “ethnic Russian separatists” after a “Western-supported violent coup”.
    Yikes.

    He’s also called Russia the “unequivocal good guy” in the Syrian civil war, neatly forgetting the chemical and double-tap attacks conducted both by Russian and al-Assad forces against civilians and humanitarian workers.

    Cooper’s analysis contains cherry-picked analysts & biased pro-Kremlin individuals such as Scott Horton & never mentions any of the covert operations conducted by the Russian intelligence agencies in Ukraine. There’s no critique of Putin or Yanukovych, but only of the West.

    And this seems to be Cooper’s modus operandi – he cites very specific people, events, and occurrences and completely ignores the other perspective.

    This basically makes his podcast propaganda that has little to do with actual history.

    Talk Tuah? Anyway, the receipts are in the thread.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  68. FCC Commissioner Seeking Investigation Into Allegation CBS Distorted Harris’ ’60 Minutes’ Interview

    Unlikely to happen now or in the future. CBS, like all media companies, are protected from government interference by the First Amendment.

    Rip Murdock (8b05ae)

  69. FCC Commissioner Seeking Investigation Into Allegation CBS Distorted Harris’ ’60 Minutes’ Interview

    The only relief being sought by the complaint is release of the interview transcript, which CBS is fully within their editorial rights to control its distribution. A nothing burger.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  70. @70 Just as any news outlet was fully within their rights to pretend the Hunter laptop didn’t exist. This isn’t about editorial rights, but you knew that.

    lloyd (d006b9)

  71. 65. A politician fence-straddling only says that he is a politician.

    nk (82d58c)

  72. Any peckerwood can file a complaint with the DCC. It’s nail salons which need a business license to file nails.

    nk (82d58c)

  73. @70 Just as any news outlet was fully within their rights to pretend the Hunter laptop didn’t exist. This isn’t about editorial rights, but you knew that.

    lloyd (d006b9) — 10/18/2024 @ 6:54 pm

    Your post is about a complaint about the conduct of CBS News and the Kamala Harris interview, which has nothing to do with your obsession about Hunter’s laptop. In either case there is no way the government can compel a news organization to publish (or not) information in its possession. For the most part they are protected by the First Amendment.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  74. *FCC*

    nk (82d58c)

  75. Christian fundamental fascists have no problem voting for trump. This is why the southern baptist church broke away from the baptist church as they had no problem with slavery.

    asset (9a3b0c)

  76. Any peckerwood can file a complaint with the FCC. It’s nail salons which need a business license to file nails.

    nk (82d58c) — 10/18/2024 @ 7:04 pm

    The same goes with FEC complaints. They will get to this complaint in an about a decade.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  77. Rip loves him some corruption as long as it protects the left and their Pravda media.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  78. ……….I doubt very much that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump will have the fortitude to demand this land-for-security type of arrangement, so it will be up to the other members of NATO to champion it.

    JVW (d17bc5) — 10/18/2024 @ 9:29 am

    The only NATO countries that would support that arrangement would be Hungary and Slovakia, the two countries that are the most pro-Russian.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  79. In either case there is no way the government can compel a news organization to publish (or not) information in its possession. For the most part they are protected by the First Amendment.

    Sometimes lawsuits are filed for publicity reasons. Shocking, I know. According to some ex-CBS staffers, the network has a very strict editorial policy against substituting answers from one question into the answer of a different question, which seems to have happened here. While it may be true that CBS is under no obligation to publicly release the transcript of VP Harris’s original remarks, more publicity given to this potential embarrassment to the network might leave them with no other alternative.

    JVW (d17bc5)

  80. @73 Any peckerwood can make an irrelevant point on a blog.

    lloyd (fe6708)

  81. Content censorship invokes the strictest First Amendment scrutiny, NJRob.

    nk (82d58c)

  82. @73 Any peckerwood can make an irrelevant point on a blog.

    Back at you, liar. It’s not

    FCC Commissioner Seeking Investigation Into Allegation CBS Distorted Harris’ ’60 Minutes’ Interview

    It’s

    CBS Accused of News Distortion in Vice President Kamala Harris Interview — Center for American Rights Files Formal FCC Complaint

    in a press release from [can you guess?] Center for American Rights.

    nk (82d58c)

  83. @83 From the link, liar:

    A member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has asked the body’s chair to take up a complaint filed with the FCC to compel CBS to release the full transcript from its “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris

    lloyd (fe6708)

  84. The only NATO countries that would support that arrangement would be Hungary and Slovakia. . .

    I think you’re misunderstanding my point, probably because I wasn’t very clear in what I was trying to convey: the choice of scenarios to end this war that I would want to see Biden/Harris/Trump and NATO pursue is either Russia leaves Ukraine altogether and Ukraine remains neutral, or else if Russia emerges from this war retaining any Ukrainian territory then Ukraine will be admitted to NATO in order to prevent a recurrence of this. Hungary and Slovakia (and Turkey) would probably oppose this policy, but would Western Europe have the guts to insist upon it? Would the United States just cut Ukraine loose under a President Harris they way it probably would under a President Trump?

    JVW (d17bc5)

  85. I happen to be a First Amendment absolutist like Elon Musk is, myself. Everybody should have the right to say what I want to hear as long as they subscribe to Starlink and Twitter/X and also buy a Tesla from me.

    nk (82d58c)

  86. The Department of Justice, State Department and White House all declined to comment on the prospect of seeking Meshaal’s extradition.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/18/2024 @ 11:01 am

    Indicting international terrorists is more performance art than a serious attempt to arrest them and bring them to court. An indictment certainly constrains their travel, but obviously they will remain in countries where there are no extradition treaties.

    Qatar is too important to US foreign policy to arm twist them, so it is unlikely they will turn over anyone. The US asked Qatar to host the Hamas leadership in 2011, which has provided the terrorist group $30M a month (apparently with the support of the Israelis.) The US was negotiating with the Hamas leadership in Qatar for months seeking release of the hostages, so I doubt the US will press the issue.

    It would be a shame if they suddenly had bombs going off in their homes.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  87. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, Rip.

    nk (82d58c)

  88. Rip loves him some corruption as long as it protects the left and their Pravda media.

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 10/18/2024 @ 7:13 pm

    What “corruption?” What law was broken?

    Rip Murdock (8b05ae)

  89. Yeah, that pesky First Amendment protecting the press, whether it’s Tucker Carlson or CBS.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  90. It’s a nuisance case against CBS, because there’s a First Amendment.
    The “crime” is that CBS didn’t follow their own internal protocols, which aren’t subject to federal law. It just makes them hypocrites, which is no surprise since they still haven’t released the full transcript. It’s about as dumb as Baier’s “mistake” about using the wrong tape.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  91. I would want to see Biden/Harris/Trump and NATO pursue is either Russia leaves Ukraine altogether and Ukraine remains neutral, or else if Russia emerges from this war retaining any Ukrainian territory then Ukraine will be admitted to NATO in order to prevent a recurrence of this.

    I doubt either option will happen, but certainly not the second. Putin (and Orban and Slovakian PM Fico are adamant that Ukraine will never join NATO as long as they are in power.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  92. JVW (d17bc5) — 10/18/2024 @ 7:19 pm

    It’s not even a lawsuit (the Center for American Rights wouldn’t have standing to sue), it’s a FCC complaint that done for their own self aggrandizing purposes. This complaint will be buried (if published at all) on the back pages of NYT and WaPo.

    Nobody cares (except for a couple of people here).

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  93. The FCC will need to take a vote to accept the complaint(it’s not a given), so I think it’s pretty safe to say that it’s not going anywhere.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  94. So much for the Dodgers playoff scoreless innings streak: on Monday the Mets scored 7 runs to defeat the Dodgers 7-3 In game 2; two runs in game 4, losing 10-2; and 12 runs today in game 5 defeating the Dodgers 12-6.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  95. Trump is just mad because Zelensky pissed on Trump’s claims about quickly negotiating a settlement.
    I don’t think Trump say coming.

    Wait a minute- Trump must have had a phone call, or phone calls with Zelensky. I thought Axios saw that as a Logan Act violation when Trump took Putin’s calls.
    Next thing you know, Trump will have called the Pudgy Hermit king and told him that his expeditionary force was a very bad, not so good idea.

    I blame Biden for being a pitifully weak Executive. Others move in to fill the power vacuum. Xi is probably kicking himself for not pushing even harder in the South China Sea.

    steveg (04876c)

  96. it is highly likely that Russia would retaliate by sending a few missiles their way;

    There is no such thing as a small nuclear war.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  97. @88 Not me I am voting for Jill Stein. The sooner harris and the corporate democrats lose to trump, the sooner the real left takes over the democrat party. But their will be repercussions.

    asset (9a3b0c)

  98. The bottle deposit crook’s house was attacked with drone ;but he wasn’t there. I wonder if they let it thru so he could garner sympathy?

    asset (9a3b0c)

  99. Sleepy Donnie. https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/-exhausted-trump-appears-to-fall-asleep-at-campaign-event-222149701621

    Or Donye as he asked to be called after he saw a picture of Bianca Censori (NSFW).

    You can vote for anybody you want, asset, but ask yourself, do you really want to see Jill Stein dressed like that?

    nk (82d58c)

  100. AG on Sinwar and Bibi.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  101. The owner of Xitter is playing his own brand of dirty dishonest politics in PA. Trump and Elon have learned well about dirty tricks from their days as Democrats.

    An Elon Musk-funded group called Future Coalition PAC is targeting Muslim voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania with diametrically opposed political advertisements about Kamala Harris. In areas of Michigan with relatively large Muslim populations, the Super PAC is painting Harris as a close friend of Israel and is suggesting that she is beholden to the beliefs of her Jewish husband Doug Emhoff; in parts of Pennsylvania with relatively large Jewish populations, the advertisements call Harris antisemitic and say she “support[s] denying Israel the weapons needed to defeat the Hamas terrorists who massacred thousands.”

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  102. it is highly likely that Russia would retaliate by sending a few missiles their way;

    There is no such thing as a small nuclear war.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/18/2024 @ 11:23 pm

    I didn’t say they would be nuclear missiles. Russia has plenty of non-nuclear and dual use missiles that they have been using against Ukraine:

    The missiles used include modern, dual-capable systems such as the ground-launched short-range ballistic missile Iskander-M (RS-SS-26 Stone) and the air-launched ballistic missile Kinzhal (RS-AS-24 Killjoy). It has also used legacy systems such as the Tochka-U (RS-SS-21 Scarab); various modern land-attack cruise missiles including the air-launched Kh-101 (RS-AS-23A Kodiak); older land-attack cruise missiles such as modified and de-mated versions of the Kh-55 (RS-AS-15B Kent) and possibly the Kh-555 (RS-AS-22 Kluge); the ground-launched land attack cruise-missile Iskander (RS-SSC-7 Southpaw); and the sea-launched 3M14 Kalibr (RS-SS-N-30A Sagaris) and Oniks (RS-SS-N-26 Strobile). It is not known whether Russia has used the longer-range ground-launched cruise missile 9M729 (RS-SCC-8 Screwdriver), which it may be holding in reserve for striking US or NATO targets rather than targets in Ukraine.

    Rip Murdock (e9a37d)

  103. 104. Honesty is the only thing the rich leave for the poor.

    nk (82d58c)

  104. Here’s a thread on some of the evidence Chutkan released yesterday.

    1/11 So the first 3 volumes of Smith’s evidence against Trump are released. About 70% still sealed, but, pretty damning stuff, which is all either their own messages, or testimony from Republican staff under oath:
    .
    .
    .
    11/11 So Trump and his team *in their own words*:

    -Knew they lost
    -Knew it was not legal for Pence to over turn
    -Knew the states did not have fraud issues
    -Researched “alternative electors” a month in advanced of those claims
    -Knew the documents were unofficial
    -Took part in the transfer process
    -And attempted to pass off forged documents directly to the VP
    -Because of a pre-meditated plan to steal the election.

    The first volumes represent 1889 pages of evidence, 70% still under seal.

    This is just from the 30% unsealed, and there are more volumes to go.

    The case could not be more clear.

    And as a reminder, Trump’s team refused to dispute the authenticity of any of this evidence, they only ask for it to be delayed as it would “hurt their client” during the election.

    This criminality is yet one more reason why Trump must lose.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  105. There is no such thing as a small nuclear war.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/18/2024 @ 11:23 pm

    The West may think so, but the Russians don’t:

    This year has seen President Vladimir Putin repeatedly brandish the nuclear sword, reminding everyone that Russia has the world’s largest atomic arsenal to try to deter the West from ramping up support for Ukraine.

    He ordered his military to hold drills involving battlefield nuclear weapons with ally Belarus.

    He announced Russia will start producing ground-based intermediate range missiles that were outlawed by a now-defunct U.S.-Soviet treaty in 1987.
    ………….
    Putin is relying on those thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles as an enormous doomsday machine to offset NATO’s massive edge in conventional weapons to discourage what he sees as threats to Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
    …………..
    The U.S. estimates that Russia has between 1,000 and 2,000 non-strategic, or tactical, nuclear weapons intended for use on the battlefield that typically are far less powerful than the strategic warheads capable of destroying entire cities.

    Russia has high-precision ground-launched Iskander missiles with a range of up to 310 miles, which can be fitted with either a conventional or a nuclear warhead.

    The air force has a fleet of MiG-31 fighter jets that carry a hypersonic Kinzhal missile, which can be equipped with a nuclear or conventional warhead. Russia has widely used conventional versions of both Iskander and Kinzhal against Ukraine.
    ………….
    Last month, Putin warned the U.S. and NATO allies that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied longer-range weapons for strikes deep inside Russia would put NATO at war with his country.

    He reinforced the message by announcing a new version of the nuclear doctrine that considers a conventional attack on Russia by a nonnuclear nation that is supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack on his country — a clear warning to the U.S. and other allies of Kyiv.

    Putin also declared the revised document envisages possible nuclear weapons use in case of a massive air attack, holding the door open to a potential nuclear response to any aerial assault — an ambiguity intended to deter the West.
    ……………
    In July, Putin declared Russia will launch production of ground-based intermediate range missiles that were banned under the now-defunct U.S. Soviet INF Treaty. The 1987 pact banned missiles with a range of 310 to 3,410 miles. ………
    …………..

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  106. Being Nevertrump means being utterly shameless.

    And being pro-Trump means sniffing Trump’s farts and declaring that they smell wonderful.

    Roger (843795)

  107. @107 The evidence is being released now because Election Day is three weeks away — which, if this were an actual trial following the norms of criminal justice, wouldn’t be a consideration. Shorter version: the evidence is being released because Chuktan and Smith are partisan hacks. And, partisan hacks are cheering it on.

    “I’m not curious, because I thought from the beginning this was a political exercise. Now, that doesn’t mean there’s not a case in there someplace, but the timing of this strategically has always been a political exercise,” McCarthy said when asked by “The Story” guest hot Trace Gallagher if he found the timing “curious.” “I have to chuckle when Judge Chutkan says she would not want to let politics or anything like that enter into her decision-making. A judge in a normal case, Trace, would be concerned about the jury pool.”

    “Contrary to what Judge Chutkan says, her responsibility is not to the American people writ large to fill the campaign airwaves with new information. Her responsibility is to give Trump a fair trial and make sure the jury pool’s not prejudiced,” McCarthy continued. “And any judge who was making that her north star would be very concerned about releasing this information prior to the election. Jack Smith, if he was a normal prosecutor, if he was serious when he was running around saying that his defendant is a threat to democracy as we know it and could even be a threat to witnesses, the last thing you would do is release all your case if that was what you’re really concerned about.”

    As for making a case against the evidence and whether the evidence proves guilt, that’s what trials are for.

    lloyd (fe6708)

  108. Oh the irony, that a partisan hack who already prejudiced this proceeding as a “political exercise” is accusing a judge of being a partisan hack.
    The “jury pool” argument is irrelevant. If Trump wins, the indictment is canceled. If he loses, justice will be served.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  109. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/fbi-quietly-updates-crime-data-to-show-big-jump-in-violence-under-biden-harris-admin-shocking/ar-AA1sogtP

    Wow. I remember when people here claimed Trump was lying about the increase in crime when he accurately cited how the data was fudged.

    Funny how that works.

    NJRob (80922a)

  110. The “jury pool” argument is irrelevant. If Trump wins, the indictment is canceled. If he loses, justice will be served.
    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/19/2024 @ 9:30 am

    Thank you for conceding McCarthy’s point.

    The jury pool is the voters. It’s a political exercise, and you just confirmed it.

    lloyd (52ed2e)

  111. Judges and prosecutors are always doing things criminals don’t like.

    nk (82d58c)

  112. This complaint will be buried (if published at all) on the back pages of NYT and WaPo.

    Uh, Rip, the Trump campaign isn’t trying to appeal to the NYT and WaPo readership here. The political world is way bigger than just those two outlets, despite what those two want you to believe.

    JVW (d17bc5)

  113. No more cowbell:

    ……..
    During Mr. Trump’s appearance on “Fox and Friends,” a video clip was aired of the boy, who said he lived on a farm, asking Mr. Trump to name his favorite animal.

    “Well, I love cows. But if we go with Kamala, you won’t have any cows anymore because it won’t be allowed. I don’t want to ruin this kid’s day,” he said.

    “I love cows. I think they’re so cute and so beautiful and so good. But according to Kamala, who’s a radical left lunatic, you will not have any cows anymore, so we have to vote her out,” Mr. Trump said.
    ………….
    During an Aug. 3 campaign stop in Atlanta, he implored, “She wants to get rid of your cows. No more cows.”

    More recently, in Nevada, he told attendees, “They want to do things like no more cows and no windows in buildings.”
    ########

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  114. JVW (d17bc5) — 10/19/2024 @ 9:56 am

    My point is that, outside of political junkies, this is a non-story. I doubt any major media outlet will cover this story.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  115. Judges and prosecutors are always doing things criminals don’t like.
    nk (82d58c) — 10/19/2024 @ 9:48 am

    Let’s shed a tear for Mike Nifong.

    lloyd (52ed2e)

  116. Rip Murdock (706664) — 10/19/2024 @ 9:59 am

    Though I’m sure Jim Jordan and James Comer will try to subpoena the transcript.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  117. JVW (d17bc5) — 10/19/2024 @ 9:56 am

    The ultimate inside the Beltway story. Nobody cares.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  118. Rip Murdock (706664) — 10/19/2024 @ 9:57 am

    Non-story.

    lloyd (52ed2e)

  119. Rip fills this blog with non-stories daily.

    lloyd (52ed2e)

  120. My point is that, outside of political junkies, this is a non-story. I doubt any major media outlet will cover this story.

    In you best non-partisan voice, please tell me how much of a non-story it would be if it was Trump instead of Kamala and FOX instead of CBS.

    Spare me any misplaced lectures regarding whataboutisms. Just speak honestly.

    BuDuh (f216e5)

  121. https://www.foxnews.com/media/chris-rufo-refutes-new-york-times-coverage-kamala-harris-plagiarism-story-lied-omission

    Now we know why Biden picked her and the usual suspects run to her defense. Copy Pasta.

    NJRob (80922a)

  122. In CA they want to put fart collectors on cows- or ban cows entirely because they emit methane.

    The “no windows in buildings” again in CA is to make buildings more energy efficient. Most famous is Charlie Munger giving money to UCSB for a windowless dorm

    Harris was AG state of CA and then Senator State of CA and it is fair to tie her to the excesses of her party here in CA. She never said “no, this isn’t a good idea”

    Trumps message should be: You don’t want to turn the USA into CA. I live here and do not want to inflict our brand of madness on my country

    steveg (04876c)

  123. Thank you for conceding McCarthy’s point.
    The jury pool is the voters.

    Delude yourself all you like. The timing of a procedural release of information from a court of law, according to their own rules, is irrelevant. You’re just angry that it’s getting out before an election than after. This wouldn’t have happened in the first place had Trump not taken every single opportunity to delay every trial at every turn.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  124. Team Harris now openly saying they’re going to stoke racial hatred if Trump wins.

    https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1847675120929636497

    SaveFarris (c77296)

  125. This wouldn’t have happened in the first place had Trump not taken every single opportunity to delay every trial at every turn.
    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/19/2024 @ 10:33 am

    You’re still in agreement with McCarthy.

    And shame on Trump for defending himself. Listen to yourself dude, next time you rail against “fascists”.

    lloyd (52ed2e)

  126. I didn’t say they would be nuclear missiles.

    Firing missiles at France is an attack on NATO. So explain why Russia would turn a limited war for Ukraine into a war between NATO and Russia (which they must lose)?

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  127. The West may think so, but the Russians don’t:

    Why shouldn’t THEY believe the US position: One nuclear weapon used against us, and we unload on you.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  128. Besides, if Harris loses, Biden will have no choice but to send US troops, along with France and probably Britain.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  129. Ron DeSantis’s penchant for using the power of the state to coerce private businesses has been on display this month, by having the state Department of Health threaten television stations that run commercials supporting Amendment 4:

    The agency earlier this month sent cease-and-desist letters to every television station in the state that aired the ad, warning them that the ads contain false information and violate the state’s “sanitary nuisance laws.”
    …………
    ……….. (The agency) said the ad is “dangerous” because it could convince pregnant women they won’t be able to have an abortion if their life or health is at risk.

    The letter, dated Oct. 3, said the stations may commit a second-degree misdemeanor by carrying the ads, subjecting their employees to a 60-day jail sentence.

    “While your company enjoys the right to broadcast political advertisements … that right does not include free rein to disseminate false advertisements which, if believed, would likely have a detrimental effect on the lives and health of pregnant women in Florida,” Health Department general counsel John Wilson wrote.
    ……….

    A US District Court has now imposed a temporary restraining order against the Department of Health, pointedly saying “it’s the First Amendment, stupid.”

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  130. Why shouldn’t THEY believe the US position: One nuclear weapon used against us, and we unload on you.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/19/2024 @ 11:07 am

    And against Europe-would Trump retaliate? I don’t know.

    Rip Murdock (a063f0)

  131. Firing missiles at France is an attack on NATO. So explain why Russia would turn a limited war for Ukraine into a war between NATO and Russia (which they must lose)?

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/19/2024 @ 11:06 am

    So what? Given Trump’s antipathy towards NATO, I think the Russians would assume (correctly) that a Trump administration wouldn’t invoke Article V-the US would probably sit it out.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  132. Why shouldn’t THEY believe the US position: One nuclear weapon used against us, and we unload on you.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/19/2024 @ 11:07 am

    I’m sure the Russians believe that, but whether we would do the same if the Russians attacked Europe (or China attacks Taiwan) is an open question. Just because we have a treaty saying we will doesn’t make it so.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  133. Besides, if Harris loses, Biden will have no choice but to send US troops, along with France and probably Britain.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/19/2024 @ 11:09 am

    Wishful thinking.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  134. Besides, if Harris loses, Biden will have no choice but to send US troops, along with France and probably Britain.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/19/2024 @ 11:09 am

    Trump would just order the troops out on day one.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  135. There is no doubt in my mind that Rip has a sex doll that is named Kevin. What an obsession.

    BuDuh (f216e5)

  136. Rip fills this blog with non-stories daily.

    lloyd (52ed2e) — 10/19/2024 @ 10:13 am

    Says the person who continually posts from The Babylon Bee.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  137. I remember when everyone was up in arms about Trump leaving the Kurds high and dry but noticed that in 2024, we are still in Irbil, Kurdistan Iraq and in Rojava, Kurdish region Syria (this one still gets regularly shelled by the Turks)

    We had to disengage from the PKK which was regularly attacking NATO ally Turkey. The Kurds needed to isolate and control the PKK element to stop antagonizing the Turks, but were not going to do so until we took serious measures.
    All that said, in the end we shuffled the deck around and kept a presence. The Kurds learned they have to control their own or we will have to leave. Sometime you have to be tough to change the status quo- and in military tough love, people frequently suffer and die- there is really no way around it. I feel for people caught up in it, but the Kurds leadership seems to have taken the lesson.
    For the record, I would not lose any sleep if Turkey left NATO (once we remove the US nukes we have pre-positioned at Incirlik under “nuclear sharing” agreements)

    steveg (04876c)

  138. Speaking of non-stories… as suspected, the “FEMA threatened by armed militia because Trump!!!1!” fizzled out, though you may not have heard.

    Arrest made after threat to FEMA in North Carolina as hurricane relief operations continue

    FEMA said later on Monday that it would resume normal operations because the threat turned out to be less serious than first feared.

    “The initial report stated there was a truck load of militia that was involved,” the sheriff’s office said. “However, after further investigation, it was determined Parsons acted alone and there were no truck loads of militia going to Lake Lure.”

    The North Carolina National Guard told CBS News in a statement on Monday that it had “no reports of our soldiers or airmen encountering any armed militia, any threats and any type of combatants. We are continuing to serve all those counties in need of our assistance.”

    Another example of the outrage appearing on page 1 above the fold, and the correction appearing on page C32 if at all.

    lloyd (f5d1ec)

  139. Another example of the outrage appearing on page 1 above the fold, and the correction appearing on page C32 if at all.

    Never forget this website reported this story as a FACT that was a direct result of others spreading disinformation when it turns out they themselves were actually guilty.

    SaveFarris (534f22)

  140. @127

    Delude yourself all you like. The timing of a procedural release of information from a court of law, according to their own rules, is irrelevant.

    And you’re delusional for ignoring the fact that this is not normal procedure.

    If fact, why don’t we ask our very own host if he has ever done something like this in his practice?

    You’re just angry that it’s getting out before an election than after. This wouldn’t have happened in the first place had Trump not taken every single opportunity to delay every trial at every turn.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/19/2024 @ 10:33 am

    So Trump doesn’t deserve a defense…is that your position?

    whembly (45bb01)

  141. @132

    Besides, if Harris loses, Biden will have no choice but to send US troops, along with France and probably Britain.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/19/2024 @ 11:09 am

    How you figure that?

    whembly (45bb01)

  142. You’re still in agreement with McCarthy.

    You’re still trying to put words in my mouth, which is bad faith. The Trump can mount every defense he wants, it don’t mean the courts won’t stop continuing the case.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  143. The mental sickness known as Nevertrump.

    Trump Headstone in Central Park: Mystery Solved

    lloyd (f5d1ec)

  144. So Trump doesn’t deserve a defense…is that your position?

    I didn’t say that, did I? The point is that the timing is a function of all of Trump’s attempted delays. You shouldn’t be complaining, because his legal obfuscations have been effective, given there’s only been one trial before election day.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  145. Trump would just order the troops out on day one.

    Perhaps. Of course, the French would call him a “surrender money.” The House might vote to impeach.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  146. the threat turned out to be less serious than first feared.

    A lesson in how propaganda is walked back after it gets the useful idiots marching.

    If only Trump would learn that trick.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  147. Not every judge can be Aileen from Medellin.

    nk (82d58c)

  148. Democrats Wondering If It’s Too Late To Go Back To Joe Biden.

    Republicans wondering if it’s too late to go back to Mitt Romney, or someone else younger than Trump.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  149. How you figure that?

    Because the survival of Ukraine is, in Biden’s opinion, critical to avoiding a major European war. Better to fight in Donbas than Flanders.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  150. Good news. The US skimmed the interest from frozen Russian assets and is sending it over to Ukraine.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  151. The House might vote to impeach.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/19/2024 @ 1:23 pm

    So what. We’ve seen what happens when the House impeaches without a chance in heaven of a conviction.

    Nothing.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  152. Biden is all in on survival of Ukraine although the preferred “survival mode” seems to be gelded, but alert.

    Its better than nothing, but never enough to stop the slow grinding momentum of the glacier

    steveg (04876c)

  153. Old News. In June the US had only skimmed 5 billion. Maybe by the time Paul’s good news went to press Biden had put the skimmed interest into a Pelosi investment to quadruple the haul in four months. This was while Biden was still sharp as a tack, so it is entirely plausible.

    I imagine the discrepancy is a non-story, so please carry on.

    BuDuh (f216e5)

  154. Because the survival of Ukraine is, in Biden’s opinion, critical to avoiding a major European war. Better to fight in Donbas than Flanders

    Biden’s multi-decade streak of being wrong about every single foreign policy issue continues unabated.

    The great, fearsome Russian army has been stuck in the mire for 2 years now. What makes you think the have the will or capability to march roughshod over Europe?

    SaveFarris (534f22)

  155. Lizzo campaigning with Kamala: “I’m so proud to be from this city, you know they say if Kamala wins then the whole country will be like Detroit.”

    I co-sign. You go, Lizzo!!

    lloyd (f5d1ec)

  156. Let’s help the Loser out. His playlist is dated, incoherent, and unsuited to an American politician. So, let’s help him out with some suggestions.

    Here are three to get us started: America the Beautiful, The opening of Beethoven’s 5th, and this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPd6hPyZa3M
    Which may surprise most of you. But I think it would have been good advice for him, long ago.

    Assume, for the sake of argument, that there are no legal obstacles to the choices.

    Jim Miller (259983)

  157. “I’m so proud to be from this city, you know they say if Kamala wins then the whole country will be like Detroit.”

    The campaign commercials absolutely write themselves, don’t they?

    JVW (d17bc5)

  158. Jim Miller (259983) — 10/19/2024 @ 2:45 pm

    Do you play that while ogling Kari Lake’s hair?

    BuDuh (f216e5)

  159. lloyd (f5d1ec) — 10/19/2024 @ 2:44 pm

    It was a campaign event that lasted less than 9 minutes.

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?539369-1/vice-president-harris-campaigns-detroit

    Jim, do you have any songs for this pathetic display?

    BuDuh (f216e5)

  160. For Jim’s updated list:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_6VcjgbLRs

    Oh…

    BuDuh (f216e5)

  161. @143 looks like AOC will still be the first woman president. All the corporate democrats have is abortion and it looks like just not enough as trump “says” he will veto national abortion ban. If he doesn’t democrat base will demand and vote for candidates who echo Malcolm X “By any means necessary!” The corporate establishment democrats and their donor class will not be able to hold the center of the democrat party from being taken over by the left. Appealing to moderate republicans loses votes to Jill Stein. Polls are not moving. Tied which favors trump. Over at DU they are now attacking pollsters.

    asset (4cdd3e)

  162. 161. Pearls before swine, Jim. “I’m My Own Grandpa” is their anthem.

    nk (82d58c)

  163. AP’s neutral reporting on Detroit Schlock City:

    Arms wide open as she took the stage, Harris let the crowd see she was wearing under her blazer a “Detroit vs. Everybody” T-shirt that the owner of the business that produces them gave her during a previous stop in the city earlier in the week. She also moved around the stage during her speech with a hand-held mic, not using a teleprompter.

    WOWZA!!!!

    I guess this is what a non-“non-story” looks like! Big news!

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  164. Better Detroit than Dachau.

    nk (82d58c)

  165. Israeli media have reported several important donations made in years past by both the late Fred Trump and his son, now President Elect Donald Trump.

    Some 50 years ago, real estate developer Fredrick Trump donated the land for the Talmud Torah of the Beach Haven Jewish Center at 723 Ave. Z in Flatbush, NY, as can be seen from a promotional image released by that institution. The center is open and active to this day, offering programs for youth and the elderly, as well as an active synagogue.

    And Fred’s son Donald, as reported by Yediot Ahronot, donated heavily on both occasions when Israelis who had been expelled from their homes by their own government needed assistance to resettle.

    Donald Trump donated in the 1980s, to help build new infrastructure for the Israelis removed from the northern Sinai by the Begin government, which returned the peninsula to Egypt as part of the peace agreement. Then, in 2005, Trump gave again, to help resettle the Jews of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, exiled by the Ariel Sharon government.

    Effie Stenzler, former chairman of the Jewish National Fund, told Yediot that JNF approached Trump, among other wealthy supporters of Israel, for funds to build an infrastructure in new communities established for the exiled, and the real estate magnate gave generously.

    Donald Trump’s name even appears on a plaque in Moshav Dekel, in the Eshkol region, where his money went to build greenhouses, homes and roads for the evacuees.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  166. Harris could have ignored the question, changed the subject to Trump like she does in interviews, but she chose to answer in the affirmative.

    steveg (04876c)

  167. A sure sign of dementia is when the filter disappears. For example, Donnie’s “golf” story about Arnold Palmer’s d-ck.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  168. Well, I have to say “Donnie” never has been shown to have a filter, so I don’t think its dementia

    steveg (04876c)

  169. As long as we are speculating-

    Did Harris leak this?
    https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-825249

    “Senior American officials voiced serious concern on Saturday following the leak of two US intelligence documents allegedly outlining Israel’s preparations for a potential strike on Iran. These documents were published by a Telegram account linked to Iran.
    While both the US Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the leaked documents, they did not deny their authenticity.”

    steveg (04876c)

  170. Yeah, she needs to be more alert to paid actors from Trump and Musk heckling her in order to elicit some brief response that the Murdoch organs can spin.

    In any case, I doubt that she will ever reach Trump’s “They’re not human. They’re animals”.

    nk (82d58c)

  171. US intelligence documents outlining Israel’s potential attack plan on Iran leaked – report

    This is the administration Paul said: “I could see myself crossing that Rubicon of voting for Biden” if he happened to live in his choice of swing states.

    Sad.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  172. Snopes:

    A rumor circulating online in September 2024 claimed that a seven-second video clip showed former U.S. President Donald Trump saying of immigrants in a blanket manner, “They’re not humans, they’re animals.” Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) originally broadcast the video from a campaign event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on April 2, 2024.

    Our examination of the full-speech video showed the literal context that Trump’s “animals” comment specifically referenced migrants entering the U.S. illegally and who also later faced murder charges.

    Derp.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  173. In any case, I doubt that she will ever reach Trump’s “They’re not human. They’re animals”.
    nk (82d58c) — 10/19/2024 @ 6:11 pm

    This is a lie, nk. You are repeating the lie. You are a liar.

    All you had to do is actually read your link a few paragraphs in.

    While speaking of Laken Riley – a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia allegedly murdered by a Venezuelan immigrant in the country illegally – Trump said some immigrants were sub-human.

    He was speaking specifically about the illegals who rape and murder. Listen to the audio in full. And guess what, nk, they are animals. Or, what would you call them?

    lloyd (710e43)

  174. @178 Yes, thanks BuDuh.

    Paul repeated this exact lie months ago, and he was called out on it. Now nk is in on the act.

    lloyd (710e43)

  175. It is all they have left in the tank.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  176. For people who do not think that they have enough reasons to vote for Harris:
    Elon Musk suggests he’ll be thrown in prison if Harris beats Trump :‘If he loses, I’m f—ed!’

    nk (8cf0a1)

  177. Ride that painted pony, let the spinning wheel turn. Yeah, sure, Bugsy made it clear that he was only talking about rapists and murderers. Not.

    nk (8cf0a1)

  178. Democrat party’s dilemma. Black and latinx men turning away because they want polluting industrial jobs and oppose being lectured to by liberal democrat women. Everyone else in coalition except unions want to get rid of polluting industrial jobs and if you can’t nag for the nanny state wants the point of being a liberal? (I am a radical with other goals.)

    asset (e8deb3)

  179. The irony, defending a serial habitual liar and confirmed fraud. Down is up.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  180. My plan for a Dodgers-Yankees series proceeds.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  181. US intelligence documents outlining Israel’s potential attack plan on Iran leaked – report

    Lst week:

    US attempts to leak Israeli attack plans, but is hampered in that Israel isn’t sharing them.

    https://patterico.com/2024/10/11/weekend-open-thread-247/#comment-2818491

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  182. Arrests imminent, right?

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  183. BTW, Drudge has edged over into Democrat Underground territory. It makes the WaPo look like Trump boosters.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  184. Vatnik Soup

    Paying voters, spreading AI-generated content, creating fake news sites and sending fake SMS, harnessing massive social media platform as a campaign tool and using it for large-scale data mining, spreading disinformation to his +200M followers…

    This is the Kremlin’s playbook.

    And just like Putin and his pet oligarchs, Trump got one, too.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  185. Democrat voters in Georgia getting text messages that early voting is over. DU/abc

    asset (e8deb3)

  186. I wonder. Will they even try to spin the Arnold Palmer homo-erotica? Or have they decided that nothing they do will either gain them or lose them a vote and what they should do is all they can to suppress potential Harris votes by hook and by crook?

    nk (8d2fcf)

  187. Can’t get Arnold Palmer off your mind, nk? To each their own.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  188. That all you got? Lame. dude!

    nk (8d2fcf)

  189. That is all you are worth.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  190. It does answer my question at 192. No spin, but 42nd Street meets Bubba’s Bar and Barbecue. Insults and taunts. Just like their orange special needs six-year old.

    nk (8d2fcf)

  191. The last thing that nk like are insults. None of his comments are ever chock full of insults.

    LOL.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  192. @196

    It does answer my question at 192. No spin, but 42nd Street meets Bubba’s Bar and Barbecue. Insults and taunts. Just like their orange special needs six-year old.

    nk (8d2fcf) — 10/20/2024 @ 5:58 am

    You upset that no one is giving you any cookies?

    whembly (003ea2)

  193. And that, folks, is what passes for erudition in the MAGA sty.

    Trump’s strength has always been that most people are too fastidious to address his dirt.

    Not me. I have walked dogs and cleaned up after them, and cleaned the poop of the neighbors’ dogs off my lawn and hosed it off my sidewalk.

    And among other things I noticed that if you don’t clean it up right away, the next day it will be crawling with maggots.

    nk (8d2fcf)

  194. But lemme ax you something else.

    How many votes will Elon X’s 1M a day giveaway cost Trump and gain Harris?

    Because I don’t see the hearts of those who signed his “petitions” because of the giveaway overflowing with goodwill if they are not the lucky one who won the drawing.

    nk (8d2fcf)

  195. @200

    But lemme ax you something else.

    How many votes will Elon X’s 1M a day giveaway cost Trump and gain Harris?

    Because I don’t see the hearts of those who signed his “petitions” because of the giveaway overflowing with goodwill if they are not the lucky one who won the drawing.

    nk (8d2fcf) — 10/20/2024 @ 6:58 am

    Yeah, about that… how isn’t that illegal?

    It’s gotta be… right?

    whembly (003ea2)

  196. @199

    And that, folks, is what passes for erudition in the MAGA sty.

    Trump’s strength has always been that most people are too fastidious to address his dirt.

    Not me. I have walked dogs and cleaned up after them, and cleaned the poop of the neighbors’ dogs off my lawn and hosed it off my sidewalk.

    And among other things I noticed that if you don’t clean it up right away, the next day it will be crawling with maggots.

    nk (8d2fcf) — 10/20/2024 @ 6:43 am

    Oh now you have something to say…

    k… nk…

    Politics isn’t akin to walking the dog and cleaning up after it.

    Politics is about hard choices and picking “a side”. Voting for A, or B, or C or abstaining are all choices.

    whembly (003ea2)

  197. Yeah, about that… how isn’t that illegal?

    It’s gotta be… right?

    According to Rick Hasen, it is. It’s not clear to me why paying petition signers, who the promoters require be registered voters, is legally the same as paying them to register, which by itself would be illegal. But Hasen knows this stuff a lot better than I do, so I’d be surprised if he hasn’t thought that through. If he has, I hope he’ll explain it, because I don’t see the explanation in his post.

    lurker (c23034)

  198. From lurker’s link:

    Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal. See 52 U.S.C. 10307(c): “Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both…” (Emphasis added.)

    From the link within lurker’s link[emphasis mine]:

    (c) False information in registering or voting; penalties

    Whoever knowingly or willfully gives false in- formation as to his name, address or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the pur- pose of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both:

    I read this section to be as the title of the section lays out. This is intended to penalize would be voters from using “false information.” I believe the payment language refers to something like a registrar accepting money to do something illegal.

    Hasen is smart enough to have not left the title of the section out of his quote unless he thought it did damage to his claim. I do give him credit for including the link. Way more than Klink would ever do.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  199. Me: This election cannot get any stranger.

    Trump: Hold my beer.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  200. Politics isn’t akin to walking the dog and cleaning up after it.

    Politics is about hard choices and picking “a side”. Voting for A, or B, or C or abstaining are all choices.

    whembly (003ea2) — 10/20/2024 @ 7:12 am

    Politics is about pretty much everything.

    nk’s rarely gone into detail about his professional history, but it’s clear to me he thinks even then most serious criminal defendant is entitled to a dignified, public, fair justice process. We do undermine that when we say they are less than human. We all fall short and think the worst of certain bad guys at times, but the process shouldn’t, and Trump’s comments are just another example of the decline he represents in the GOP.

    Choosing to say the choices we have are acceptable is itself a choice. None of the choices are acceptable. That’s by design. The more organized nevertrumpers got rich and wanted trump to be the nominee. They do not mind leaving me with a choice like we’ve had for the past three elections. They see the opportunity for compromise and for an effective GOP, and they invest millions, tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, forcing that option to fail.

    I have every right to reject the GOP. I have every right to see the trick, that by forcing the worst choices, both sides just whatabout away their faults, and I wind up paying more and having less. Wealth is concentrating, the world is falling apart (leading to opportunities and disruptions) and those who work hard and save their money and build a family pay. They paid so much, lost so much wealth and freedom, during Trump’s last presidency. They lose so much under Kamalas, intentionally displaced and their work devalued by illegal immigration and crime.

    The point is to learn the lesson. This election doesn’t matter. It’s the least important of my lifetime. Kamala donor vs Kamala. The politics, the real action, is in the GOP primary in 2028. If the nevertrumpers, not the organized, but the normals, recognize the need to build a bridge, the niche is there to make a better country.

    Dustin (4b502c)

  201. it’s clear to me he thinks even then most serious criminal defendant is entitled to a dignified, public, fair justice process.

    Unless the defendant’s name is Orange Man.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  202. Dustin may be right. Our political choices are certainly degrading, and maybe it’s because it’s less meaningful. More decisions are taken by a seemingly permanent bureaucracy, largely immune to political control. Congress can’t pass laws; they passed that responsibility to the bureaucrats long ago and the Supreme Court struck down their only check. The executive can issue orders, but the next executive just issues different orders. The corporations accrue power in the vacuum.

    In Europe, the EU has become a fully bureaucratic state, with national governments increasingly subservient to its interlocking institutions. Britain escaped, but has its own nomenklatura.

    Is our choice of the future Big Brother versus Rollerball?

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  203. Congress can’t pass laws………

    It can, but just lacks the will to do so.

    Rip Murdock (706664)

  204. This isn’t better than his admiration of Arnold Palmer’s penis, the doubling down of his debunked Springfield OH lies.

    Well, what about the goose? The geese? What about the geese? What happened there? They were all missing.

    This was also debunked, BTW. He’s categorically mentally unfit.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  205. So Paul’s key words in his aggregation feeds are Trump, penis, and goose?

    I guess that is what you do with your spare time when you hide behind the electoral skirt.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  206. Paul, I frequent Forbes YouTube channel. They seem pretty current on videos of both sides. I would not think that a balanced site would make it to your home built aggregator. But maybe this one video made it through your algorithm gauntlet:

    Jake Tapper’s State Of The Groin

    Quality stuff.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  207. Unless the defendant’s name is Orange Man.

    BuDuh (4214e4) — 10/20/2024 @ 9:56 am

    I didn’t need another reason to reject Biden, who was obviously not going to be the candidate this year, but his comments that physical violence against Trump were justified is along the lines of your complaint that Trump’s critics do not treat him consistently to their values. If nk used some hyperbole to that effect, I didn’t see it, but I wouldn’t say that’s quite the same thing. Trump facing criminal charges at all is such a severe change of pace, and it isn’t something anyone should be thrilled about in the largest sense (though that’s not to say justice shouldn’t be served).

    But I couldn’t see any moral difference between the loudest Trump critic and the worst Jan 6 participant. Both despised the election process and democracy.

    Dustin (4b502c)

  208. I like your thoughts earlier and here, Dustin.

    I reflexively agree with Trump calling the gang murderers “animals” for personal reasons I will not be sharing, so that probably bleeds into my defense of him and his hyperbole. I do not believe that nk has the moral compass you are suggesting. It isn’t hyperbole I see with nk as much as it is spite and anger.

    But the internet is a tough room to read a crowd, right?

    BuDuh (f216e5)

  209. > Elon Musk suggests he’ll be thrown in prison if Harris beats Trump :‘If he loses, I’m f—ed!’

    His clear violation of election law should result in fines at the very least, although it’s hard to imagine how fines could actually deter him.

    aphrael (ee876f)

  210. > Our examination of the full-speech video showed the literal context that Trump’s “animals” comment specifically referenced migrants entering the U.S. illegally and who also later faced murder charges.

    One issue I have here is that Trump is clearly using rhetoric in a way that implies that his criticism of specific illegal immigrants applies to all illegal immigrants.

    Using a different example:

    > They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people

    This language taken as a whole says that a small number of illegal immirgants *might* be good people but that the overwhelming majority are bad people with problems.

    What he’s saying now has to be understood in conjunction with what he’s said before, and doing so paints the picture that he’s clearly trying to use language that conveys the “illegal immigrants are animals” message in a way that has the barest minimum of a fig leaf on which he can hang the proposition that he’s only talking about some of them.

    Another issue I have is this: *any time* we refer to human beings as animals, we are dehumanizing them in a way that makes it easier to treat them inhumanely. It’s a rhetorical usage we should all be on guard against and work to avoid, even if it’s appealing not to.

    aphrael (ee876f)

  211. Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception:

    Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception

    … First and foremost, do everything in our power to hold Hamas accountable — every single thing in our power. They’re animals. They’re animals. They exceeded anything that any other terrorist group has done of late that I — in memory. …

    Do tell…

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  212. Nikki Haley, who once questioned Trump’s mental fitness to be President when he confused her with Nancy Pelosi, is now negotiating a joint appearance with him as if a one-off campaign appearance will close his polling gender gap with women. This is despite being called by Trump a “birdbrain” and insinuating she had multiple affairs while her husband was deployed overseas.

    Trump was right when he said in 2021 that Haley “criticizes me, (then) she uncriticizes me about 15 minutes later……”

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  213. Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception:

    So I guess it’s fair to say that Biden thinks Palestinians are animals?

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  214. His clear violation of election law should result in fines at the very least

    He’s bribing people to sign a petition, not to register to vote. If they do register to become eligible for the bribe, that’s on them. And no money changes hands anyway. All they get is a lottery ticket, of no real value.

    It’s like offering a chicken dinner while “suggesting” that people vote for you, or bussing homeless people to the polls where they same-day register.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  215. Sorry about the creeping italics.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  216. Musk’s support of Trump has already cost SpaceX launch approval in California (several Coastal Commissioners said so) and, no doubt coincidentally, Tesla is suddenly under investigation. Even though I have had long-standing issues with Tesla’s full self-driving crap, it wasn’t a problem with the feds until he endorsed Trump.

    It’s like the city street maintenance crew setting up their jackhammers outside the mayor’s challenger’s HQ. Just happened doesn’t wash.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  217. But I couldn’t see any moral difference between the loudest Trump critic and the worst Jan 6 participant.

    If Trump wins the election, #NeverTrump will try to inaugurate Harris anyway. To save democracy.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  218. I wonder, though, if Trump wins, can he be impeached and convicted before he takes office? His crazy is starting to be worrisome.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  219. @220

    His clear violation of election law should result in fines at the very least

    He’s bribing people to sign a petition, not to register to vote. If they do register to become eligible for the bribe, that’s on them. And no money changes hands anyway. All they get is a lottery ticket, of no real value.

    It’s like offering a chicken dinner while “suggesting” that people vote for you, or bussing homeless people to the polls where they same-day register.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/20/2024 @ 11:55 am

    It’s a technicality for sure, but still makes me uneasy.

    I feel the same way about Zuckerbucks too.

    whembly (003ea2)

  220. @224

    I wonder, though, if Trump wins, can he be impeached and convicted before he takes office? His crazy is starting to be worrisome.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/20/2024 @ 12:11 pm

    I don’t see why not.

    whembly (003ea2)

  221. I wonder, though, if Trump wins, can he be impeached and convicted before he takes office? His crazy is starting to be worrisome.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/20/2024 @ 12:11 pm

    Presumably not, since he would only be the President-Elect, not having taken the oath of office. Also, why would the Speaker Mike Johnson (who worked on Trump’s impeachment defense team the last time around) call the House back into session to do so? And there would be no chance for the Senate to hold a trial, since they are out of session also (and there isn’t 2/3 that would vote to convict anyway).

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  222. If Trump wins the election, #NeverTrump will try to inaugurate Harris anyway. To save democracy.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/20/2024 @ 12:03 pm

    LOL!😂🤣🤣🤣🤣 That’s about as likely as impeaching Trump before he is sworn in as President, which is to say not at all.

    You’re really letting your imagination run away.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  223. I wonder, though, if Trump wins, can he be impeached and convicted before he takes office? His crazy is starting to be worrisome.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/20/2024 @ 12:11 pm

    I don’t see why not.

    whembly (003ea2) — 10/20/2024 @ 12:22

    Talk about something that would resemble a coup and a justification for a civil war.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  224. aphrael (ee876f) — 10/20/2024 @ 11:34 am

    Exactly.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  225. BuDuh (4214e4) — 10/20/2024 @ 11:40 am

    Exactly.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  226. … First and foremost, do everything in our power to hold Hamas accountable — every single thing in our power. They’re animals. They’re animals. They exceeded anything that any other terrorist group has done of late that I — in memory. …

    He’s talking out of both sides of his mouth, as usual..

    I haven’t read anything about him trying to help negotiate a surrender.

    Instead, he’s focusing on postwar arrangements in Gaza, trying to get the UAE to take over.

    Maybe he’s leaving the how we get to that point bit up to Netanyahu.

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  227. @216

    What he’s saying now has to be understood in conjunction with what he’s said before, and doing so paints the picture that he’s clearly trying to use language that conveys the “illegal immigrants are animals” message in a way that has the barest minimum of a fig leaf on which he can hang the proposition that he’s only talking about some of them.

    Shorter aphrael: “Don’t believe your lying ears.”

    lloyd (943991)

  228. I wonder, though, if Trump wins, can he be impeached and convicted before he takes office? His crazy is starting to be worrisome.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/20/2024 @ 12:11 pm

    Yes, he can, Mitch McConnell’s objections notwithstanding, but if Republicans in Congress felt that way, they would have signed up for that at the beginning of 2023,

    Doing it now would make JD Vance president if Trump gets a majority of the Electoral vote,

    I don;t understand how people don’t see that there is likely to be more trouble if Trump loses than if he wins.

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  229. But I couldn’t see any moral difference between the loudest Trump critic and the worst Jan 6 participant.

    More bogus equivalency. The loudest Trump critic didn’t participate in an insurrection and isn’t behind bars for assaulting law enforcement, and wasn’t a gullible fool who fell for a Big Lie by a Big Fraud.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  230. participate in an insurrection and isn’t behind bars for assaulting law enforcement

    What percentage of people that voted for Trump in 2020 has the DOJ identified and prosecuted?

    I’ll help you out with one of the numbers: 74,223,975

    BuDuh (f216e5)

  231. aphrael (ee876f) — 10/20/2024 @ 11:34 am

    This language taken as a whole says that a small number of illegal immirgants *might* be good people but that the overwhelming majority are bad people with problems.

    Abd the exact opposite is the case.

    By the way, you won’t catch any Democrat criticizing him ior this, They’ll call him a fascist or a racist but their approach to illegal immigration is basically “Me too,” and “Trump is a hypocrite because he stopped a bill” to which the rebuttal is” The bill was no good, it legalized illegal immigration, and it didn’t give a president any more power, which is proven by Biden issuing an executive order that was stronger than the bill.”

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  232. Yes, he can, Mitch McConnell’s objections notwithstanding, but if Republicans in Congress felt that way, they would have signed up for that at the beginning of 2023,

    Under what section of the Constitution? The impeachment clause only refers to “the President”, not the “the President-Elect.”

    Whatever Mitch McConnell says is irrelevant. But again, Speaker Johnson would never allow it to come up for a vote.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  233. Curious, that Trump said “no” to 60 Minutes but “yes” to Bonesaw Salman.
    The question still remains…how much did the Saudi-owned LIV Tour pay Trump to host multiple professional golf events.

    Get this! After backing out of interviews with 60 Minutes, CNBC and other U.S. news programs, Donald Trump sat down for an interview with a Saudi government-owned news channel. The interview, which will air today, comes as his family’s business ties with the kingdom have grown.

    A little more here. There are around 3½ Arab Americans in the US, although I don’t know how many are Muslims. Most, I’d think, but I know several Lebanese Arab Christians. By comparison, there are 7½ million Jews in the US, and Trump has already insulted them enough, so maybe he decided to pander to the Arabs instead.

    Although Kamala is trying to straddle her appeal, but it isn’t going very well as Arab Americans don’t like how Biden-Harris stood by Israel and their war against Hamas.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  234. WSJ story headline:

    https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-says-migrants-who-kill-americans-should-get-death-penalty-would-deport-venezuelan-gang-4b490a50

    Trump Says Migrants Who Kill Americans Should Get Death Penalty,

    What about migrants who kill other migrants? Or American citizens who kill illegal aliens?

    Not even the Ku Klux Klan would dare to advocate singling out murderers for different treatment according to background.

    By the way.’David Duke has endorsed Jill Stein, (I think because of her position on the Middle East war)

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  235. The US isn’t the only place where Russia is meddling in an election. They’re pulling out the stops in Moldova.

    The sniffer dogs at Chisinau Airport have been working extra hard in recent months, searching for money that might be evidence of Russian meddling in Moldovan politics.

    Ami, a black retriever, gives every suitcase that rolls in on the baggage claim belts a good sniff on all sides. If she detects cash, she will freeze. Back in May she was doing that a lot.

    That is when customs officers began finding large amounts of money on passengers arriving via connecting flights from Moscow. People who had never left Moldova before were returning from a few days in Russia with wads of notes.

    “Almost everyone had money: 2,000, 3,000, 7,000 euros”, the head of customs at Chisinau Airport, Ruslan Alexandrov, remembers. The amounts themselves were not illegal but the patterns were suspicious.

    “There were certain flights: Moscow-Istanbul-Chisinau, Moscow-Yerevan-Chisinau,” the customs chief explains. “Normally people don’t come in with that much money. Not from Moscow.”

    So police and prosecutors began seizing the cash. In one day alone they say they scooped $1.5m (£1.2m). No-one ever asked for their money back.

    The authorities believe the cash mules were part of a major and ongoing operation to buy political influence run by a fugitive Moldovan oligarch named Ilan Shor. Convicted of major fraud in Chisinau, he is now resident in Russia which will not extradite him.

    Putin doesn’t want incumbent Sandu, who is pro-EU.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  236. Under what section of the Constitution? The impeachment clause only refers to “the President”, not the “the President-Elect.”

    It says nothing of the sort.

    The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

    Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

    Later it says:

    The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

    Given that the penalties include a disqualification for future office-holding, it seems reasonable that President-Elect could be tired.

    Scenario: A President-Elect says “The first thing I’ll do is launch all our missiles at China.” Are you saying that we must wait until he does so?

    Franklin observed that “impeachment” was better than assassination, which was the alternative.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  237. More creeping italics.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  238. Not even the Ku Klux Klan would dare to advocate singling out murderers for different treatment according to background.

    Hunh?!? They did exactly that in every case where a white man was charged with killing a black, or vice versa.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  239. I haven’t read anything about (Biden) trying to help negotiate a (Hamas) surrender.

    Countries surrender; terrorist groups don’t. Despite millions of dollars spent to “defeat” Al Qaeda and ISIS, they still exist and are fighting. Hamas will never surrender in the West’s meaning of the word, they will go underground and continue to oppose Israel, as well as whatever entity takes over Gaza.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  240. What about migrants who kill other migrants? Or American citizens who kill illegal aliens?

    Not even the Ku Klux Klan would dare to advocate singling out murderers for different treatment according to background.

    By the way.’David Duke has endorsed Jill Stein, (I think because of her position on the Middle East war)

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e) — 10/20/2024 @ 1:55 pm

    Lots of whatabouts.

    How many angels on the head of a pin?

    Your trying to distract from what he said and complaining about what he didn’t say.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  241. Can you imagine a world where a president elect was impeached before taking the oath of office?
    Assuming this failed, would impeachment ever be seen as a serious thing ever again?

    Joe (584b3d)

  242. https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/hkdadam-schiffs-primary-residence-claims-mortgage-election

    We will now see if there are any Adam Schiff lovers in the crowd.

    I pray someone attacks the messenger. Hopefully the closet Zerohedge fans get over themselves and just read this for content.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  243. ………Given that the penalties include a disqualification for future office-holding, it seems reasonable that President-Elect could be tired.

    Scenario: A President-Elect says “The first thing I’ll do is launch all our missiles at China.” Are you saying that we must wait until he does so?

    Franklin observed that “impeachment” was better than assassination, which was the alternative.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/20/2024 @ 1:58 pm

    Thanks for proving my point about the fact that the (pseudo) position of “President-Elect” (a position without constitutional authority) doesn’t appear in your quote, nor the subsequent clause that lists those officers who are actually subject to impeachment.

    Assumptions don’t make constitutional law, if it were true that the President-Elect could be impeached, then the founders would have included it in Article II Sec. 4.

    Why do you think your scenario is a bad thing? Seriously, there would be nothing one could do at that time, but I also don’t think he would be impeached for it. The Constitution gives the President wide latitude to use the armed forces as he sees fit to protect national security and conduct foreign affairs.

    Isn’t it the left that finds rights and powers in the Constitution where none exist?

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  244. Classic astroturf, because the restaurant was closed, and the customers were all fake.
    It epitomizes the fraud that Trump truly is.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  245. #248
    Not a fan of Trump or Schiff being prosecuted for his mortgage statements, primarily because no one was hurt, its done all the time. But Schiff is a big fat hypocrite.
    I think Schiff should be investigated for tax fraud and if he committed tax fraud, should be made an example of.
    He will still be in the Senate in 2025 regardless.
    Schiff is a classic “lie in opening statement overview of the case” prosecutor. During the impeachment proceedings they called it “overpromising in the opening statement”. Schiff already had the votes before he started, so could lie to his hearts content- thats not true- if Schiff were to lie to his hearts content, he’d still be on the House floor talking.

    steveg (04876c)

  246. Paul-

    I think both candidates do quite a bit of this staged event type of thing these days.
    It epitomizes what frauds we are choosing to run. (Harris is a fraud- Her “I worked at a McDonalds was a lie”)
    My opinion is that in this century, it all went to hell with the Kerry/Edwards ticket. Two of the biggest phonies to ever draw breath in DC. Obama had a huge amount of Hollywood staging- I do see Obama as “a fraud” but he was a willing participant
    John McCain and Mitt Romney failed at the staging attempts by their staff. Those two could have been genuine, or else they were just bunglers- hard to tell.
    Trump comes from a TV “reality” show that was less than real, so I would assume he’s following Hollywood instincts.

    Its the modern game of politics. The Democrats even sent Hollywood people to Israel to use their branding to interfere in those elections.

    I hate it and wish it a quick end, but it is probably here to stay know.

    steveg (04876c)

  247. Trump has often called his political opponents “communist Marxist fascist thugs and maniacs,” as well as “vermin, scum, animals, garbage, evil, sick, demonic, the enemy of the people, the enemy within,” and I’m probably forgetting some of his epithets.

    Evidently, Trump defenders are not offended by that language, but instead regard it as an expression of deep, unrivaled patriotism.

    Then a historian notes that his dehumanizing terminology for Americans who disagree with him is unprecedented in U.S. politics, but it closely resembles the language used by brutal dictators, whether communist or fascist. IOW, he talks the way actual fascists talked. (He also explicitly demanded license to violate law without penalty, and he demands absolute personal fealty.)

    Then the delicate sensibilities of Trumpers are gravely offended: “You’re calling him a fascist! That’s eliminationist rhetoric! You’re trying to get him killed!”

    The grotesque double standard is obvious – even aside from the dishonesty about the actual facts of the assassination attempts, especially in the first case. The fact that someone was arrested for a plot against Harris apparently merits no mention – but she didn’t try to fundraise off it, nor have Democrats used it to demand that Republicans stop saying bad things about her.

    The initial decision to embrace Trump and exempt him for any ethical standards beyond “being Trump” has made hypocrisy and cynicism the core values of what used to be conservatism.

    Radegunda (ddd71b)

  248. It epitomizes what frauds we are choosing to run. (Harris is a fraud- Her “I worked at a McDonalds was a lie”)

    Well, that’s a moronic take. Your evidence is that…Trump claimed it. A person who has yet to state a true thing this year, and only twice in 80. Not having records of a summer job at a local franchise in 1983 is the default situation. Do you have records of your college job in 1983, do you remember how records were kept in 1983?

    Trump’s interaction with customers…commercial…fake

    DG Empire DG Torresdale LLC

    Dear Feasterville Community, We plan to be closed on Sunday, October 20 until 4 p.m., to accommodate a visit at the request of former President Trump and his campaign. While we are not a political organization, we proudly open our doors to everyone and as a locally owned and operated location, this visit provides a unique opportunity to shine a light on the positive impact of small businesses here in Feasterville.

    We’re equally honored to share the significance of what 1 in 8 Americans have experienced: that a job at McDonald’s is more than just a job. It’s a pathway to critical skills development and meaningful career opportunities. Having started my McDonald’s journey as a crew member in New York nearly 30 years ago. this path to economic opportunity is especially meaningful to me. I apologize for the inconvenience of closing our restaurant and sincerely look forward to serving you very soon.

    Derek Braconantonis
    Derek Giacomantonio
    and my team at Feasterville McDonald’s

    1-8 Americans, their reasoning for opening it up, proves the point that Harris probably did, and why Trump would use this “low class” job as a prop.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  249. Radegunda (ddd71b) — 10/20/2024 @ 3:51 pm

    Comparing the plot against Harris, which amounted to words posted, to two actual attempts on Trump’s life with actual guns where one person was killed, two seriously injured, and Trump hit with a bullet one inch away from being fatal, is the sort of ridiculous comparison typical of Nevertrump’s abusive relationship with reality.

    lloyd (e83504)

  250. Schiff’s “parody” of the Trump call showed the type of person he is.
    I found that to be offensive.

    “Just the facts ma’am- I mean sir”

    I also think- given Schiff’s body of work- that there is a greater than 50% chance he lied about the details on meeting/speaking to/coaching the whistleblower before sending the whistleblower to the IG. Why? Because Schiff first said he’d spoken to and heard from the whistleblower, then tried to walk it back and the media let him.

    The other thing I don’t like about Schiff is that he is known as a prodigious leaker- snitch, if I may use parody in the description of him

    steveg (04876c)

  251. Radegunda (ddd71b) — 10/20/2024 @ 3:51 pm

    Hmm.

    Well one candidate has almost been assassinated twice.

    Some things are not like the other.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  252. Can’t tell who jumps to the defense of Kamala’s lies faster: Klink or Paul.
    It’s only what a “true conservative” would do.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  253. Stunt or not, this is a lot of people lining the street in a swing state that has a lot of Electoral College votes

    steveg (04876c)

  254. I think both candidates do quite a bit of this staged event type of thing these days.

    I have no doubt, steve. It’s the heat of a political campaign where everything is staged. The “customers” in that restaurant were vetted-by-the-Secret-Service Trump supporters, so “Mr. President, please don’t let the United States become Brazil!” was photo-op choreography.

    I don’t know if Kamala worked at MickeyDs or not. Kamala hasn’t proved she did and Trumpists can’t prove she didn’t. Unlike with Trump, I’m not at the stage where I presume everything she says is false until proven true, so I’m neutral on it, but that could change. It almost feels like a replay of the Obama birth certificate.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  255. Can’t tell who jumps to the defense of Kamala’s lies faster: Klink or Paul.

    Rob, your problem is you can’t prove the lie. I guess that what happens when you’re afflicted with Partisan Brain.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  256. Stunt or not, this is a lot of people lining the street in a swing state that has a lot of Electoral College votes

    Trump bused them in through SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists).

    And there had better be a Trump-friendly city administration for the restaurant’s sake, because the stunt violated sanitation and food service codes.

    nk (1db569)

  257. Something Schiff should be asked about:

    Audio of Russian radio comedians prank-calling Rep. Adam Schiff shows the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee asking for details about naked photos of President Donald Trump they were offering.

    In the recording, Schiff can be heard repeatedly asking for specifics about the nature of the meetings.

    “I’ll be in touch with the FBI about this. And we’ll make arrangements with your staff. I think it probably would be best to provide these materials both to our committee and to the FBI,” Schiff says.

    I guess if it was Palmer’s pics, it would’ve been a bigger story.

    lloyd (c89439)

  258. They’re saying there’re a couple new menu items at the Feasterville McDonalds, The McGirdle and the Filet O’Fascist. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  259. The lawyer gave Donald Trump a note, written in Trump’s own handwriting. He asked Trump to read it aloud.

    Trump may not have realized it yet, but he had walked into a trap.

    “Peter, you’re a real loser,” Trump began reading.

    The mogul had sent the note to a reporter, objecting to a story that said Trump owned a “small minority stake” in a Manhattan real estate project. Trump insisted that the word “small” was incorrect. Trump continued reading: “I wrote, ‘Is 50 percent small?’ ”

    “This [note] was intended to indicate that you had a 50 percent stake in the project, correct?” said the lawyer.

    “That’s correct,” Trump said.

    For the first of many times that day, Trump was about to be caught saying something that wasn’t true.

    .LAWYER: Mr. Trump, do you own 30 percent or 50 percent of the limited partnership?TRUMP: I own 30 percent.

    It was a mid-December morning in 2007 — the start of an interrogation unlike anything else in the public record of Trump’s life.

    Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.

    For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.

    The lawyers confronted the mogul with his past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump, the bigger-than-life mogul, was vulnerable — cornered, out-prepared and under oath.

    Thirty times, they caught him.

    Trump had misstated sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.

    That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s falsehoods were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, in his mind, because he saw the situation more positively than others did.

    “Have you ever lied in public statements about your properties?” the lawyer asked.

    “I try and be truthful,” Trump said. “I’m no different from a politician running for office. You always want to put the best foot forward.”

    In his presidential campaign, Trump has sought to make his truth-telling a selling point. He nicknamed his main Republican opponent “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz. He called his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, “A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR!” in a recent Twitter message. “I will present the facts plainly and honestly,” he said in the opening of his speech at the Republican National Convention. “We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”

    Trump has had a habit of telling demonstrable untruths during his presidential campaign. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has awarded him four Pinocchios — the maximum a statement can receive — 39 times since he announced his bid last summer. In many cases, his statements echo those in the 2007 deposition: They are specific, checkable — and wrong.

    Trump said he opposed the Iraq War at the start. He didn’t. He said he’d never mocked a disabled New York Times reporter. He had. Trump also said the National Football League had sent him a letter, objecting to a presidential debate that was scheduled for the same time as a football game. It hadn’t.

    Last week, Trump claimed that he had seen footage — taken at a top-secret location and released by the Iranian government — showing a plane unloading a large amount of cash to Iran from the U.S. government. He hadn’t. Trump later conceded he’d been mistaken — he’d seen TV news video that showed a plane during a prisoner release.

    But, even under the spotlight of this campaign, Trump has never had an experience quite like this deposition on Dec. 19 and 20, 2007.

    He was trapped in a room — with his own prior statements and three high-powered lawyers.

    “A very clear and visible side effect of my lawyers’ questioning of Trump is that he [was revealed as] a routine and habitual fabulist,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, the author Trump had sued.

    The Washington Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about this deposition, listing all the times when Trump seemed to have been caught in a false or unsupported statement. The Post asked Trump whether he wanted to challenge any of those findings — and whether he had felt regret when confronted with them.

    He did not answer those questions.

    In 2005, O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, had published a book called “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.” In the book, O’Brien cited people who questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people who estimated that the figure was between $150 million and $250 million.

    Trump sued. He later told The Post that he intended to hurt O’Brien, whom he called a “lowlife sleazebag.”

    “I didn’t read [the book], to be honest with you. . . . I never read it. I saw some of the things they said,” Trump said later. “I said: ‘Go sue him. It will cost him a lot of money.’ ”

    By filing suit, Trump hadn’t just opened himself up to questioning — he had opened a door into the opaque and secretive company he ran.

    O’Brien’s attorneys included Mary Jo White, now the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Andrew Ceresney, now the SEC’s director of enforcement. The lawsuit had given them the power to request that Trump turn over internal company documents, and they used it. They arrived at the deposition having already identified where Trump’s public statements hadn’t matched the private truth.

    The questions began with that handwritten note and the 50 percent stake that wasn’t 50 percent.

    “The 30 percent equates to much more than 30 percent,” Trump explained. His reasoning was that he had not been required to put up money at the outset, so his 30 percent share seemed more valuable.

    “Are you saying that the real estate community would interpret your interest to be 50 percent, even though in limited partnership agreements it’s 30 percent?” Ceresney asked.

    “Smart people would,” Trump said.

    “Smart people?”

    “Smart people would say it’s much more than 30 percent.”

    Trump inflates the numbersTRUMP: I got more than a million dollars, because they have tremendous promotion expenses, to my advantage. In other words, they promote, which has great value, through billboards, through newspapers, through radio, I think through television – yeah, through television.And they spend – again, I’d have to ask them, but I bet they spend at least a million or two million or maybe even more than that on promoting Donald Trump.LAWYER: But how much of the payments were cash?TRUMP: Approximately $400,000.LAWYER: So when you say publicly that you got paid more than a million dollars, you’re including in that sum the promotional expenses that they pay?TRUMP: Oh, absolutely, yes. That has a great value. It has a great value to me.LAWYER: Do you actually say that when you say you got paid more than a million dollars publicly?TRUMP: I don’t break it down.
    On to the next one.

    “I was paid more than a million dollars,” Trump said when Ceresney asked how much he’d been paid for a speech in 2005 at New York City’s Learning Annex, a continuing-education center.

    Ceresney was ready.

    “But how much of the payments were cash?”

    “Approximately $400,000,” Trump said.

    Trump said his personal math included the intangible value of publicity: The Learning Annex had advertised his speech heavily, and Trump thought that helped his brand. Therefore, in his mind he’d been paid more than $1 million, even though his actual payment was $400,000.

    “Do you actually say that, when you say you got a million dollars publicly?” Ceresney asked.

    “I don’t break it down,” Trump said.

    As the deposition went on, the lawyers led Trump through case after case in which he’d overstated his success.

    The lawyer played a clip from Larry King’s talk show, in which King asked Trump how many people worked for him. “Twenty-two thousand or so,” Trump said.

    “Are all those people on your payroll?” Ceresney asked him.

    “No, not directly,” Trump said. He said he was counting employees of other companies that acted as suppliers and subcontractors to his businesses.

    Another one. In O’Brien’s book, Trump had been quoted saying: “I had zero borrowings from [my father’s] estate. . . . I give you my word.”

    Under oath:

    “Mr. Trump, have you ever borrowed money from your father’s estate?”

    “I think a small amount a long time ago,” Trump said. “I think it was like in the $9 million range.”

    Another one. In one of his own books, Trump had said about one of his golf courses: “Membership costs $300,000. I think it’s a bargain.”

    Under oath:

    “In fact, your memberships were not selling at $300,000 at that time, correct?”

    “We’ve sold many for two hundred” thousand, Trump said. Then, Trump pushed it upward: “We’ve sold many for, I think, two-fifty.”

    But this was not the place to push it.

    The lawyer had an internal Trump document that showed the true figure — “$200,000 per membership,” Ceresney said.

    “Correct,” Trump acknowledged. “Right.”

    Trump passes the blameLAWYER: You didn’t correct it when you read the book?TRUMP: Well, I did correct it, and she didn’t correct it.But you could have her in as a witness, and I’m sure we’ll bring her in as a witness because what she wrote was — I asked her to change it to “billions of dollars in debt,” and she probably forgot.LAWYER: And when you read it, you didn’t correct it?TRUMP: I didn’t see it.LAWYER: You didn’t see it.TRUMP: I read it very quickly. I didn’t see it. I would have corrected it, but I didn’t see it.
    In some cases, Trump acknowledged he was wrong — but not that he was at fault. Instead, he sought to turn the blame on others.

    “This is somebody that wrote it, probably Meredith McIver,” Trump said at one point when confronted with another false statement. “That is a mistake.”

    McIver, a staff writer with the Trump Organization, blazed into the public eye last month for having inserted plagiarized material — taken from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech — in the convention speech of Trump’s wife, Melania. McIver said it had been an innocent mistake.

    But in this deposition more than eight years earlier, Trump was blaming her for a mistake in one of his own books, “How to Get Rich.” In the 2004 book, co-written with McIver, Trump described his massive debt load during a low period in the early 1990s. “I owed billions upon billions of dollars — $9.2 billion to be exact,” the book said as it retold the story of his rise back to success.

    Trump signs copies of his new book “How to Get Rich” in New York in 2004. (Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images)
    Trump signs copies of his new book “How to Get Rich” in New York in 2004. (Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images)

    The depth of that financial hole made it seem even more impressive that Trump had climbed out again. But the figure was wrong. His actual debts had been much less.

    “I pointed it out to the person who wrote the book,” Trump said, meaning McIver.

    “Right after she wrote the book?”

    “That’s correct,” Trump said.

    Then the lawyer showed Trump another book he’d written with McIver, three years later.

    “In fact, I was $9 billion in debt,” Trump read aloud. A similar error, repeated. It was McIver’s fault again.

    “She probably forgot,” Trump said.

    “And when you read it, you didn’t correct it?”

    “I didn’t see it,” Trump said.

    “You didn’t see it.”

    “I read it very quickly,” Trump said about a book he was credited with writing.

    Trump makes unsupported claimsLAWYER: When you wrote, “O’Brien . . . threatened sources by telling them he can, quote, ‘Settle scores with enemies by writing negative articles about them,’ ” what was the basis for that statement?TRUMP: Just my perception of him.I don’t know that he indicated anything like that to me, but I think he probably did indirectly. Just my dealing with him.
    In other cases, the lawyers prodded Trump into admitting that he had made authoritative-sounding statements without any proof behind them. These statements were another kind of untruth.

    They were not necessarily false. They might have been true.

    But Trump said them without knowing one way or the other.

    “What basis do you have for that statement?” Ceresney asked in one case, about an assertion from Trump that O’Brien had been reported to the police for stalking.

    “I guess that was probably taken off the Internet,” Trump said.

    On to the next one.

    “You wrote, ‘O’Brien . . . threatened sources by telling them he can, quote, settle scores with enemies by writing negative articles about them,’ ” Ceresney asked, reading Trump’s words from a legal complaint. “What was the basis for that statement?”

    “Just my perception of him,” Trump said. “I don’t know that he indicated anything like that to me, but I think he probably did indirectly.”

    The most striking example was a question at the very heart of the legal case: What was Trump’s actual net worth?

    Trump had told O’Brien he was worth up to $6 billion. But the lawyers confronted him with other documents — from Trump’s accountants and from outside banks — that seemed to show the real figure was far lower.

    The lawyers asked: “Have you ever not been truthful” about your net worth?

    Trump’s answer here was that the truth about his wealth was — in essence — up to him to decide.

    Trump outside the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower underway in Chicago in 2007. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)
    Trump outside the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower underway in Chicago in 2007. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)

    “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,” Trump said. “But I try.”

    The interrogation finally ended after two days. Trump’s attorney made a final demand.

    “I want the record to be crystal clear that every single word, every question, every answer, every word, is confidential,” said the attorney, Mark Ressler.

    In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too.

    Along the way, this once-confidential deposition became part of the public record when O’Brien’s attorneys attached it to one of their motions.

    In a brief statement this week, Trump said he felt the lawsuit was a success, despite his loss.

    “O’Brien knows nothing about me,” Trump said. “His book was a total failure and ultimately I had great success doing what I wanted to do — costing this third rate reporter a lot of legal fees.”

    O’Brien, now executive editor of Bloomberg View, said Trump got that wrong. The publisher and insurance companies covered the cost.

    “Donald Trump lost his lawsuit and, unlike him, it didn’t cost me a penny to litigate it,” he said.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  260. Wait a minute, you’re telling me that Trump didn’t just take time off campaigning to work for a bit at McD’s? No, really? Say it isn’t so.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  261. More bogus equivalency. The loudest Trump critic didn’t participate in an insurrection and isn’t behind bars for assaulting law enforcement, and wasn’t a gullible fool who fell for a Big Lie by a Big Fraud.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/20/2024 @ 1:34 pm

    Lots of Trump critics are gullible and choose violence over the democratic process. Some literally tried to shoot Trump, and Biden, the leader of the movement, repeatedly advocated for violence. You just defended that.

    You are as bad as the worst Jan 6 loser, in my book.

    Dustin (4b502c)

  262. McDonald’s Corporation has told the franchisee that he has forfeited his franchise and it will be given to George Soros.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  263. I see why Klink is so pro-Harris and Biden. Plagiarism.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  264. Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 10/20/2024 @ 4:48 pm

    LOL look at that big wall of WAPO copypasta.

    Far far far left will be telling conservatives who they support in no time.

    Dustin (4b502c)

  265. Rob (fingers firmly planted in ears, panties covering his face (supposed to be stockings dude)) says DONALD TRUMP IS THE MOSTEST BESTEST HONESTYIES GODLY MAN EVER…repeating over and over while sitting in the closet rocking back and forth.

    Plagiarism-the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.

    Since the entire article talks about it being written by The Washington Post, I kind of missed where my name first name is The, last Post, with Washington in the middle.

    Wait, the entire thing shows that Trump has been a criminal, fraud, and liar, his life.

    Or maybe, its the New Jersey hand wave, “this is not the liar you are looking for.”

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  266. Far far far left will be telling conservatives who they support in no time

    Like RFK Jr? Or the big Harris donor Donald J Trump?

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  267. Some literally tried to shoot Trump, and Biden, the leader of the movement, repeatedly advocated for violence. You just defended that.

    You are as bad as the worst Jan 6 loser, in my book.

    You’re full of sh-t and wrong, Dustin, just like you’re full of sh-t and wrong about blaming NeverTrumpers for DeSantis’ embarrassingly pathetic campaign.
    I never advocated violence against political figures, and I never supported Biden, so you’re engaging in a smear.
    The mental cases who “literally tried to shoot Trump” were mental cases. It’s as stupid of a smear as when left-wingers like Krugman and others blamed Sarah Palin when a crazy guy shot Gabby Giffords and murdered six others.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  268. What the uck did you just ucking say about me, you little itch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seels, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al Keeda [sic], and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US army forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the uck out with precisision the likes of which has never been saw before on this Earth, mark my ucking words. You think you can get away with saying that hit to me over the Internet? Think again, ucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re ucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in tri-armed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable a$$ off the face of the region, you little hit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your ucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goldarmed idiot. I will hit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re ucking dead, kiddo.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  269. Now that, is copypasta, the actual first one.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  270. Fake Customer: “Mr. President, please don’t let the United States become Brazil!”
    Donnie the Fry Cook: “You want lies with that?”
    FC: “Super-size it!”

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  271. Klink, that’s way out of line.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  272. I think Schiff should be investigated for tax fraud and if he committed tax fraud, should be made an example of.

    I expect you will get your wish under the second Trump administration.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  273. The Mobys are losing it.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  274. They are.

    But they get the last laugh. They are getting exactly the division and ugliness they crave.

    Dustin (4b502c)

  275. The lawyer gave Donald Trump a note, written in Trump’s own handwriting. He asked Trump to read it aloud.

    Trump may not have realized it yet, but he had walked into a trap.

    “Peter, you’re a real loser,” Trump began reading.

    The mogul had sent the note to a reporter, objecting to a story that said Trump owned a “small minority stake” in a Manhattan real estate project. Trump insisted that the word “small” was incorrect. Trump continued reading: “I wrote, ‘Is 50 percent small?’ ”

    “This [note] was intended to indicate that you had a 50 percent stake in the project, correct?” said the lawyer.

    “That’s correct,” Trump said.

    For the first of many times that day, Trump was about to be caught saying something that wasn’t true.

    .LAWYER: Mr. Trump, do you own 30 percent or 50 percent of the limited partnership?TRUMP: I own 30 percent.

    It was a mid-December morning in 2007 — the start of an interrogation unlike anything else in the public record of Trump’s life.

    Trump had brought it on himself. He had sued a reporter, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest in a book that raised questions about Trump’s net worth. The reporter’s attorneys turned the tables and brought Trump in for a deposition.

    For two straight days, they asked Trump question after question that touched on the same theme: Trump’s honesty.

    The lawyers confronted the mogul with his past statements — and with his company’s internal documents, which often showed those statements had been incorrect or invented. The lawyers were relentless. Trump, the bigger-than-life mogul, was vulnerable — cornered, out-prepared and under oath.

    Thirty times, they caught him.

    Trump had misstated sales at his condo buildings. Inflated the price of membership at one of his golf clubs. Overstated the depth of his past debts and the number of his employees.

    That deposition — 170 transcribed pages — offers extraordinary insights into Trump’s relationship with the truth. Trump’s falsehoods were unstrategic — needless, highly specific, easy to disprove. When caught, Trump sometimes blamed others for the error or explained that the untrue thing really was true, in his mind, because he saw the situation more positively than others did.

    “Have you ever lied in public statements about your properties?” the lawyer asked.

    “I try and be truthful,” Trump said. “I’m no different from a politician running for office. You always want to put the best foot forward.”

    In his presidential campaign, Trump has sought to make his truth-telling a selling point. He nicknamed his main Republican opponent “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz. He called his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, “A PATHOLOGICAL LIAR!” in a recent Twitter message. “I will present the facts plainly and honestly,” he said in the opening of his speech at the Republican National Convention. “We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”

    Trump has had a habit of telling demonstrable untruths during his presidential campaign. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has awarded him four Pinocchios — the maximum a statement can receive — 39 times since he announced his bid last summer. In many cases, his statements echo those in the 2007 deposition: They are specific, checkable — and wrong.

    Trump said he opposed the Iraq War at the start. He didn’t. He said he’d never mocked a disabled New York Times reporter. He had. Trump also said the National Football League had sent him a letter, objecting to a presidential debate that was scheduled for the same time as a football game. It hadn’t.

    Last week, Trump claimed that he had seen footage — taken at a top-secret location and released by the Iranian government — showing a plane unloading a large amount of cash to Iran from the U.S. government. He hadn’t. Trump later conceded he’d been mistaken — he’d seen TV news video that showed a plane during a prisoner release.

    But, even under the spotlight of this campaign, Trump has never had an experience quite like this deposition on Dec. 19 and 20, 2007.

    He was trapped in a room — with his own prior statements and three high-powered lawyers.

    “A very clear and visible side effect of my lawyers’ questioning of Trump is that he [was revealed as] a routine and habitual fabulist,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, the author Trump had sued.

    The Washington Post sent the Trump campaign a detailed list of questions about this deposition, listing all the times when Trump seemed to have been caught in a false or unsupported statement. The Post asked Trump whether he wanted to challenge any of those findings — and whether he had felt regret when confronted with them.

    He did not answer those questions.

    In 2005, O’Brien, then a reporter for the New York Times, had published a book called “Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.” In the book, O’Brien cited people who questioned a claim at the bedrock of Trump’s identity — that his net worth was more than $5 billion. O’Brien said he had spoken to three people who estimated that the figure was between $150 million and $250 million.

    Trump sued. He later told The Post that he intended to hurt O’Brien, whom he called a “lowlife sleazebag.”

    “I didn’t read [the book], to be honest with you. . . . I never read it. I saw some of the things they said,” Trump said later. “I said: ‘Go sue him. It will cost him a lot of money.’ ”

    By filing suit, Trump hadn’t just opened himself up to questioning — he had opened a door into the opaque and secretive company he ran.

    O’Brien’s attorneys included Mary Jo White, now the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Andrew Ceresney, now the SEC’s director of enforcement. The lawsuit had given them the power to request that Trump turn over internal company documents, and they used it. They arrived at the deposition having already identified where Trump’s public statements hadn’t matched the private truth.

    The questions began with that handwritten note and the 50 percent stake that wasn’t 50 percent.

    “The 30 percent equates to much more than 30 percent,” Trump explained. His reasoning was that he had not been required to put up money at the outset, so his 30 percent share seemed more valuable.

    “Are you saying that the real estate community would interpret your interest to be 50 percent, even though in limited partnership agreements it’s 30 percent?” Ceresney asked.

    “Smart people would,” Trump said.

    “Smart people?”

    “Smart people would say it’s much more than 30 percent.”

    Trump inflates the numbersTRUMP: I got more than a million dollars, because they have tremendous promotion expenses, to my advantage. In other words, they promote, which has great value, through billboards, through newspapers, through radio, I think through television – yeah, through television.And they spend – again, I’d have to ask them, but I bet they spend at least a million or two million or maybe even more than that on promoting Donald Trump.LAWYER: But how much of the payments were cash?TRUMP: Approximately $400,000.LAWYER: So when you say publicly that you got paid more than a million dollars, you’re including in that sum the promotional expenses that they pay?TRUMP: Oh, absolutely, yes. That has a great value. It has a great value to me.LAWYER: Do you actually say that when you say you got paid more than a million dollars publicly?TRUMP: I don’t break it down.
    On to the next one.

    “I was paid more than a million dollars,” Trump said when Ceresney asked how much he’d been paid for a speech in 2005 at New York City’s Learning Annex, a continuing-education center.

    Ceresney was ready.

    “But how much of the payments were cash?”

    “Approximately $400,000,” Trump said.

    Trump said his personal math included the intangible value of publicity: The Learning Annex had advertised his speech heavily, and Trump thought that helped his brand. Therefore, in his mind he’d been paid more than $1 million, even though his actual payment was $400,000.

    “Do you actually say that, when you say you got a million dollars publicly?” Ceresney asked.

    “I don’t break it down,” Trump said.

    As the deposition went on, the lawyers led Trump through case after case in which he’d overstated his success.

    The lawyer played a clip from Larry King’s talk show, in which King asked Trump how many people worked for him. “Twenty-two thousand or so,” Trump said.

    “Are all those people on your payroll?” Ceresney asked him.

    “No, not directly,” Trump said. He said he was counting employees of other companies that acted as suppliers and subcontractors to his businesses.

    Another one. In O’Brien’s book, Trump had been quoted saying: “I had zero borrowings from [my father’s] estate. . . . I give you my word.”

    Under oath:

    “Mr. Trump, have you ever borrowed money from your father’s estate?”

    “I think a small amount a long time ago,” Trump said. “I think it was like in the $9 million range.”

    Another one. In one of his own books, Trump had said about one of his golf courses: “Membership costs $300,000. I think it’s a bargain.”

    Under oath:

    “In fact, your memberships were not selling at $300,000 at that time, correct?”

    “We’ve sold many for two hundred” thousand, Trump said. Then, Trump pushed it upward: “We’ve sold many for, I think, two-fifty.”

    But this was not the place to push it.

    The lawyer had an internal Trump document that showed the true figure — “$200,000 per membership,” Ceresney said.

    “Correct,” Trump acknowledged. “Right.”

    Trump passes the blameLAWYER: You didn’t correct it when you read the book?TRUMP: Well, I did correct it, and she didn’t correct it.But you could have her in as a witness, and I’m sure we’ll bring her in as a witness because what she wrote was — I asked her to change it to “billions of dollars in debt,” and she probably forgot.LAWYER: And when you read it, you didn’t correct it?TRUMP: I didn’t see it.LAWYER: You didn’t see it.TRUMP: I read it very quickly. I didn’t see it. I would have corrected it, but I didn’t see it.
    In some cases, Trump acknowledged he was wrong — but not that he was at fault. Instead, he sought to turn the blame on others.

    “This is somebody that wrote it, probably Meredith McIver,” Trump said at one point when confronted with another false statement. “That is a mistake.”

    McIver, a staff writer with the Trump Organization, blazed into the public eye last month for having inserted plagiarized material — taken from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech — in the convention speech of Trump’s wife, Melania. McIver said it had been an innocent mistake.

    But in this deposition more than eight years earlier, Trump was blaming her for a mistake in one of his own books, “How to Get Rich.” In the 2004 book, co-written with McIver, Trump described his massive debt load during a low period in the early 1990s. “I owed billions upon billions of dollars — $9.2 billion to be exact,” the book said as it retold the story of his rise back to success.

    Trump signs copies of his new book “How to Get Rich” in New York in 2004. (Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images)
    Trump signs copies of his new book “How to Get Rich” in New York in 2004. (Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images)

    The depth of that financial hole made it seem even more impressive that Trump had climbed out again. But the figure was wrong. His actual debts had been much less.

    “I pointed it out to the person who wrote the book,” Trump said, meaning McIver.

    “Right after she wrote the book?”

    “That’s correct,” Trump said.

    Then the lawyer showed Trump another book he’d written with McIver, three years later.

    “In fact, I was $9 billion in debt,” Trump read aloud. A similar error, repeated. It was McIver’s fault again.

    “She probably forgot,” Trump said.

    “And when you read it, you didn’t correct it?”

    “I didn’t see it,” Trump said.

    “You didn’t see it.”

    “I read it very quickly,” Trump said about a book he was credited with writing.

    Trump makes unsupported claimsLAWYER: When you wrote, “O’Brien . . . threatened sources by telling them he can, quote, ‘Settle scores with enemies by writing negative articles about them,’ ” what was the basis for that statement?TRUMP: Just my perception of him.I don’t know that he indicated anything like that to me, but I think he probably did indirectly. Just my dealing with him.
    In other cases, the lawyers prodded Trump into admitting that he had made authoritative-sounding statements without any proof behind them. These statements were another kind of untruth.

    They were not necessarily false. They might have been true.

    But Trump said them without knowing one way or the other.

    “What basis do you have for that statement?” Ceresney asked in one case, about an assertion from Trump that O’Brien had been reported to the police for stalking.

    “I guess that was probably taken off the Internet,” Trump said.

    On to the next one.

    “You wrote, ‘O’Brien . . . threatened sources by telling them he can, quote, settle scores with enemies by writing negative articles about them,’ ” Ceresney asked, reading Trump’s words from a legal complaint. “What was the basis for that statement?”

    “Just my perception of him,” Trump said. “I don’t know that he indicated anything like that to me, but I think he probably did indirectly.”

    The most striking example was a question at the very heart of the legal case: What was Trump’s actual net worth?

    Trump had told O’Brien he was worth up to $6 billion. But the lawyers confronted him with other documents — from Trump’s accountants and from outside banks — that seemed to show the real figure was far lower.

    The lawyers asked: “Have you ever not been truthful” about your net worth?

    Trump’s answer here was that the truth about his wealth was — in essence — up to him to decide.

    Trump outside the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower underway in Chicago in 2007. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)
    Trump outside the 92-story Trump International Hotel and Tower underway in Chicago in 2007. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP)

    “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings,” Trump said. “But I try.”

    The interrogation finally ended after two days. Trump’s attorney made a final demand.

    “I want the record to be crystal clear that every single word, every question, every answer, every word, is confidential,” said the attorney, Mark Ressler.

    In 2009, a judge dismissed Trump’s case against O’Brien. Trump appealed, but in 2011 that was denied, too.

    Along the way, this once-confidential deposition became part of the public record when O’Brien’s attorneys attached it to one of their motions.

    In a brief statement this week, Trump said he felt the lawsuit was a success, despite his loss.

    “O’Brien knows nothing about me,” Trump said. “His book was a total failure and ultimately I had great success doing what I wanted to do — costing this third rate reporter a lot of legal fees.”

    O’Brien, now executive editor of Bloomberg View, said Trump got that wrong. The publisher and insurance companies covered the cost.

    “Donald Trump lost his lawsuit and, unlike him, it didn’t cost me a penny to litigate it,” he said.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 10/20/2024 @ 4:48 pm

    Thanks for sharing.

    Dustin (4b502c)

  276. Klink wins the Most Likely Next Assassin award.

    lloyd (c89439)

  277. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/presidential/3196094/graham-reprimands-republicans-supporting-harris-what-the-hell-are-you-doing/

    “To every Republican supporting her — what the hell are you doing? You’re supporting the most radical nominee in the history of American politics,” Graham said Sunday in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker.

    “The Green New Deal, Medicare for All — she was the last person in the room before Biden decided to withdraw from Afghanistan. She was the border czar. She cast a tiebreaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act that gives you high prices,” Graham said.

    “You’re trying to convince me that Donald Trump’s rhetoric is the danger to this country? The danger to this country is the policies of [President Joe Biden] and Harris. Her fingerprints are all over this disaster, and I can’t take four more years of this crap,” said Graham.

    Truth

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  278. True Dustin.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  279. Personally I don’t mind that a transcript of Trump’s constant stream of lies is posted twice, but it’s weird that it’s “division and ugliness” to call out that stream of lies when the reality is that the ugly divider is the pathological liar, but this is the lengths the MAGAs will go. Down is up.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  280. Klink, that’s way out of line.

    Well, that’s literally the first copypasta created in internet world in 2006. He wanted a copypasta, that’s the copypasta

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  281. It’s a meme, see all the misspellings, Navy Seels, but also an Army sniper, and a Marine reference.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  282. It’s weird that MAGAts are both the most macho, but also so fragile they cry about everything.

    So much sniveling, what a bunch of pansies.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  283. Definitely talking about illegal immigrants with his “enemy within” quip.

    These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people, but when you look at ‘Shifty Schiff’ and some of the others, yeah, they are to me, the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  284. News to me, about the meme.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  285. Nobody wants Trump to be an assassination target than his supporters do. It is a part of their delusion that he is a person of worth. “Consequential.”

    Trump himself? Hard to say. For sure he has fostered and reinforces that delusion among his supporters for his con game. And I’m sure that he wishes more than anything in the world to be “consequential”.

    But for all his seeming megalomania, all his braggadocio and bluster, I think he is constantly and painfully aware that he is still only whiny little Donnie who does not know where his next cookie is coming from.

    nk (4879cb)

  286. News to me, about the meme.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/20/2024 @ 6:16 pm

    I’m not aware of every meme either. This one I happen to be familiar with. The point is, posting it in response to an accusation of copypasta is a comment about copypasta, not an assertion of what the copypasta contains.

    lurker (c23034)

  287. Nobody wants Trump to be an assassination target than his supporters do. It is a part of their delusion that he is a person of worth. “Consequential.”

    There’s a bit of drama seeking from the folks really living in Trump land.

    But there are a lot of people who want Trump shot, in earnest, because they believe that’s better than letting the election go his way. A lot of them.

    And they don’t get to lecture the rest of us.

    Dustin (4b502c)

  288. This one is worse. But does contain a kernel, vis a vis Trumpers, but it’s what it is and what you have to dig it out of that is the objectionable, not the similarity.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  289. Nobody wants Trump to be an assassination target than his supporters do. It is a part of their delusion that he is a person of worth. “Consequential.”

    nk likes to write nearly every comment week after week after week about someone inconsequential. Good to know.

    lloyd (5e189c)

  290. Dustin,

    Biden has said a couple of idiotic things for which he deserves criticism, but in the context of his otherwise consistent messaging against violence, they’re anomalies. Harris doesn’t even have those lapses on her record. Conversely, wishcasting, delighting in, and otherwise approving of violence is a cornerstone of Trump’s rhetoric. I don’t know how much you follow social media, but the same contrast carries over to Harris’ and Trump’s respective supporters. There are of course always exceptions to nutpick, but the notion that there’s any kind of equivalence of violent rhetoric between the candidates and their camps is silly.

    lurker (c23034)

  291. Nobody wants Trump to be an assassination target than his supporters do. It is a part of their delusion that he is a person of worth. “Consequential.”

    nk likes to write nearly every comment week after week after week about someone inconsequential. Good to know.

    lloyd (5e189c) — 10/20/2024 @ 7:18 pm

    When you’re right you’re right, lloyd. Being the subject and object of my penetrating wit and wordplay on the internet is a distinction few mortals have achieved.

    nk (4879cb)

  292. CBS News has released the full transcript of the Kamala Harris interview; which moots the FCC complaint by the Center for American Rights.

    Meanwhile, Trump has suggested that he will sue CBS News for editing their interview with the VP. Even Jonathan Turkey says it is doomed to fail:

    In an interview with podcast host Dan Bongino, former President Trump said he “thinks” he will sue CBS after it was found to have edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris……..
    ………….
    Trump ……….stating, “[s]o I think I’m going to sue them actually. I think so. No, you know what, they can’t defend it and if they do and even if they win it’s going to be very embarrassing.”

    Such a lawsuit would fail. The media is allowed to engage in such editing. Indeed, bias itself is not generally actionable. ……….
    ………….

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  293. @298

    I don’t know how much you follow social media, but the same contrast carries over to Harris’ and Trump’s respective supporters.

    Bullsh1t. The Democrats and Nevertrumpers who regretted the shooter’s aim are out there on social media. Not small in number. The tombstone in Central Park and the reactions to it. There is no comparison.

    And note the attempt to shift the metric to rhetoric instead of actions.

    lloyd (5e189c)

  294. Turkey=Turley. Darn autocorrect.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  295. The CAR FCC complaint can be found here.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  296. Nope, only MAGA posing, Crooks and other guy are 100% all MAGA. Created by the SVR to ensure their guy, who’s been increasingly drooling on camera daily, stays in the news.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  297. @225 now you don’t want rich people buying elections?

    asset (b0396f)

  298. @280 I’m a lefty democrat and I have no problem with shifty schiff being investigated and hopefully prosecuted.

    asset (b0396f)

  299. @300

    CBS News has released the full transcript of the Kamala Harris interview; which moots the FCC complaint by the Center for American Rights.

    False. CBS is simply responding to Trump’s flagging the fact that CBS has refused, and continues to refuse, to release the full transcript. And, rather than simply release the full transcript, they take a jab of Trump — showing that animus and partisan bias is what’s driving their intransigence.

    Former President Donald Trump is accusing 60 Minutes of deceitful editing of our Oct. 7 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. That is false.

    60 Minutes gave an excerpt of our interview to Face the Nation that used a longer section of her answer than that on 60 Minutes. Same question. Same answer. But a different portion of the response. When we edit any interview, whether a politician, an athlete, or movie star, we strive to be clear, accurate and on point. The portion of her answer on 60 Minutes was more succinct, which allows time for other subjects in a wide ranging 21-minute-long segment.

    Remember, Mr. Trump pulled out of his interview with 60 Minutes and the vice president participated.

    Our long-standing invitation to former President Trump remains open. If he would like to discuss the issues facing the nation and the Harris interview, we would be happy to have him on 60 Minutes.

    And, for the record, the Trump camp says they never agreed to an interview. Now we know, for good reason.

    lloyd (5e189c)

  300. *jab at Trump

    lloyd (5e189c)

  301. CBS News has released the full transcript of the Kamala Harris interview; which moots the FCC complaint by the Center for American Rights.

    You posted a transcript that was “Updated on: October 7, 2024 / 8:01 PM EDT”

    I don’t see this quote:

    Well, Bill…the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.

    Are you certain the FCC complaint is moot, Rip? Maybe there is another transcript you would like to post?

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  302. Rip thought this was a non-story.

    lloyd (5e189c)

  303. 16 days and the name calling is getting worse. Just be nice as you watch the meteor hit! You can’t stop it from hitting earth!

    asset (b0396f)

  304. Rip thought this was a non-story.

    lloyd (5e189c) — 10/20/2024 @ 8:08 pm

    As far as influencing the election, it still is.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  305. Dodgers-Yankees. Their 12th meeting.

    The classic Fall Classic.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  306. 16 days and the name calling is getting worse.

    He’s right. Too bad we can’t get Trump and Harris on this thing.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  307. He’s right. Too bad we can’t get Trump and Harris on this thing.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/20/2024 @ 8:25 pm

    How do you they aren’t posing as one of the existing posters? 😉

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  308. Indeed

    I was going to vote for Kamala Harris because Trump is an existential threat to the nation, but then he closed down a McDonalds and pretended to make French fries…and now I’m not sure.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  309. I don’t know what Trump did at McD’s but it must’ve been awesome since it’s driving Paul to distraction.

    lloyd (5e189c)

  310. How do you they aren’t posing as one of the existing posters?

    Trump would be in moderation.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  311. It’s weird that Trump keeps saying how he doesn’t have a cognitive problem (or a tiny pecker), that’s exactly the kind of thing people say when they absolutely do.

    Especially one that is the world’s greatest fabulist.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  312. BTW, the MoCA is supposed to be given by a doctor who specializes in cognitive disorders. Ronny Jackson? nope. Jackson said Trump scored a perfect 30/30. Typical high scores are 26.

    Trump also always talks about the “Person, woman, man, camera, TV” bit. The creator of test said that would be highly unlikely that the short-term memory recall portion would be 5 things, 2 being descriptions of a person, and two pieces of electronics. (not that Trump would make up what he said based on looking at a person, woman, man, camera, tv in front of him when he was talking about it.

    I’d guess he would really have scored 18 or so then, 11-12 now. Mildly impaired then, moderate now. He’d border into severe, which is debatable, as my gammie-in-law could score a 6 in the inpatient memory care ward. She was about like Trump now when we first started looking at options. Everything happened in flat time, there was no concept of yesterday and 5 years ago, and she always knew who X was, regardless of actually knowing them. Sound familiar.

    She didn’t talk about dead golfers wood for 11 minutes during a speech though.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  313. You can look at the test too.

    One of the key things to start the process is forgetting people’s names that you’ve recently been introduced too.

    Watch any campaign event, interview, like his interview with Paige Steele today.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  314. A vote for Trump means you want JD Vance to be president within the next 18 months.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  315. For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment

    No major party presidential candidate, much less president, in American history has been accused of wrongdoing so many times.

    It’s as comprehensive an effort as I’ve seen to capture and organize the fire hose of Trump’s crime and sleaze, and The Times still misses things. Trump’s immorality is just too enormous to contain.

    Here’s how it begins:

    When the history of the 2024 election is written, one of the iconic images illustrating it will surely be the mug shot taken of Donald J. Trump after one of his four indictments, staring into the camera with his signature glare. It is an image not of shame but of defiance, the image of a man who would be a convicted felon before Election Day and yet possibly president of the United States again afterward.

    Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is that simple if mind-bending fact. America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes. What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to “retribution.”

    In all the different ways that Mr. Trump has upended the traditional rules of American politics, that may be one of the most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.

    His persecution defense, the notion that he gets in so much trouble only because everyone is out to get him, resonates at his rallies where he says “they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you, and I’m just standing in the way.” But that of course belies a record of scandal stretching across his 78 years starting long before politics. Whether in his personal life or his public life, he has been accused of so many acts of wrongdoing, investigated by so many prosecutors and agencies, sued by so many plaintiffs and claimants that it requires a scorecard just to remember them all.

    Former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign quickly turned his booking photo from Georgia into a piece of promotional material, appearing on posters, T-shirts and buttons.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
    His businesses went bankrupt repeatedly and multiple others failed. He was taken to court for stiffing his vendors, stiffing his bankers and even stiffing his own family. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam War and avoided paying any income taxes for years. He was forced to shell out tens of millions of dollars to students who accused him of scamming them, found liable for wide-scale business fraud and had his real estate firm convicted in criminal court of tax crimes.

    He has boasted of grabbing women by their private parts, been reported to have cheated on all three of his wives and been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women, including one whose account was validated by a jury that found him liable for sexual abuse after a civil trial.

    He is the only president in American history impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, the only president ever indicted on criminal charges and the only president to be convicted of a felony (34, in fact). He used the authority of his office to punish his adversaries and tried to hold onto power on the basis of a brazen lie.

    Mr. Trump beat some of the investigations and lawsuits against him and some proved unfounded, but the sheer volume is remarkable. Any one of those scandals by itself would typically have been enough to derail another politician. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first bid for the presidency collapsed when he lifted some words from another politician’s speech. George W. Bush came close to losing after the last-minute revelation of a long-ago drunken-driving arrest. Hillary Rodham Clinton fell short at least in part because of an F.B.I. investigation into emails that led to no charges.

    Not Mr. Trump. He has moved from one furor to the next without any of them sinking into the body politic enough to end his career. The unrelenting pace of scandals may in its own way help him by keeping any single one of them from dominating the national conversation and eroding his standing with his base of supporters.

    He even turned that mug shot into a marketing tool, selling T-shirts, posters, bumper stickers, coffee mugs and even beverage coolers with the image and the slogan “NEVER SURRENDER.” And victory next month may yet help him escape the biggest threat of all — potentially prison.

    Nonetheless, the full record stands out.

    That’s just the 30,000 foot overview. The piece is almost 6,000 words, so if you aren’t blocked by the paywall, read the whole thing. TL;DR: it’s mind-boggling that we’re on the verge of re-electing this moral abomination.

    lurker (c23034)

  316. Sorry for the photo caption that snuck in there. I doubt anyone wants to see that whole wall of text repeated just to delete a few words, so I’ll trust you all to make sense of it.

    lurker (c23034)

  317. I forgot that I can gift link the whole article, so here you go. No whining about the paywall.

    lurker (c23034)

  318. What isn’t funny about a fraud trying to highlight his claim that Kamala didn’t work at McDonalds by pretending to work at a closed McDonalds, serving pretend orders to supporters pretending to be his customers. It’s quintessential Trump at his con man best, and it’s fitting that this chain’s mascot is a clown.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  319. I don’t know if Kamala worked at MickeyDs or not. Kamala hasn’t proved she did and Trumpists can’t prove she didn’t.

    You seem to have the burden of proof inverted, sir. Harris made the original claim. When asked for documentation, she has thus far refused. Trump has no burden to disprove.

    Until she provides it, it is more than fair to consider it a false claim.

    SaveFarris (79ab12)

  320. It’s an unproven claim. Another sad case of MAGA Partisan Brain.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  321. Putin loses. Moldova’s anti-Putin president is reelected, and they voted (just barely) to join the EU, despite Putin’s massive meddling.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  322. Ooops, crime was up… but shhh… don’t tell the fact checkers

    The FBI quietly revised its 2022 data to reflect an increase in crime after initially reporting it had decreased, and experts say that the flawed figures are just the tip of the iceberg.

    It was initially reported that violent crime decreased by 2.1% in 2022, but the Bureau suddenly revised that figure, revealing that violent crime increased by 4.5% instead. Experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the FBI’s metrics are plagued with problems, such as incomplete data collection, confusion about reporting standards, the omission of unreported crime as well as the inherent problems of measuring crime nationally.

    Democrats, corporate media outlets and political pundits have routinely cited the FBI’s data to claim that crime has gone down under President Joe Biden, most recently touting newly-released figures for 2023, which show a 3% drop in violent crime that year. However, the sudden reversal in the 2022 data raises more questions about whether a clear picture can be ascertained about crime across the nation.

    The FBI blamed the compromised 2021 data for throwing off the 2022 figures because the agency used a model based on 2021 figures to predict the 2022 numbers in a statement to the DCNF. They did not address why they did not correct the record more publicly.

    Democrats have been quick to tout the FBI’s data as evidence of crime declining across the country under the Biden-Harris administration. Recently, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took to the airwaves to laud the reported crime drop and claim that “crime was up” under Trump.

    Trump was also fact-checked by ABC anchor David Muir during the second presidential debate, citing the FBI crime data. Similarly, CNN’s Van Jones, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Joe Scarborough of NBC and a slew of other figures parroted the same claims on crime.

    lloyd (5e189c)

  323. @251

    Classic astroturf, because the restaurant was closed, and the customers were all fake.
    It epitomizes the fraud that Trump truly is.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/20/2024 @ 2:59 pm

    The horror!

    A politician doing retail-politics.

    What shall we ever do Paul?

    whembly (477db6)

  324. I wonder if Paul is part of the team of unprove-ists that stifle innovation?

    SpaceX had to do a study to see if Starship would hit a shark. I’m like “It’s a big ocean, there’s a lot of sharks. It’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely.” OK fine, we’ll do it, but we need the data, can you give us the Shark data?

    They said no.

    They said they could give the data to their Western division but they don’t trust them.

    We’re like, ‘Is this a comedy?’ Eventually we got the data, and the sharks were going to be fine.

    We thought we were done.

    But then they hit us with: ‘Well, what about whales?”

    When you look at the Pacific, how many whales do you see? Honestly, if we did hit a whale, the whale had it coming, because the odds are so low. It’s like Final Destination: whale edition.

    So then we had to do the WHALE analysis.

    It goes on and on.

    They said, what if the rocket goes underwater and explodes and the whales get hearing damage?

    Umm, If we could make a rocket go underwater and become a submarine, that would be a feat of physics that we could not accomplish.

    It’s just one crazy thing after another.

    https://x.com/AutismCapital/status/1847808836234797418

    Until Paul sufficiently proves otherwise, it is clear that he doesn’t like innovation.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  325. Crime was adjusted upward for 2022, and it’s down in 2023, with more than 85% reporting (compared to two-thirds in 2021).

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  326. @323

    A vote for Trump means you want JD Vance to be president within the next 18 months.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 10/20/2024 @ 11:29 pm

    I’m already voting for Trump… you don’t need to convince me even harder.

    whembly (477db6)

  327. @327

    What isn’t funny about a fraud trying to highlight his claim that Kamala didn’t work at McDonalds by pretending to work at a closed McDonalds, serving pretend orders to supporters pretending to be his customers. It’s quintessential Trump at his con man best, and it’s fitting that this chain’s mascot is a clown.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 4:58 am

    Wow, you are losing your mind on this one Paul.

    Go out and touch grass.

    There’s a very good reason why the establishment needed to be closed for this.

    whembly (477db6)

  328. @ 335
    Take my upvote sir.

    Joe (584b3d)

  329. Crime was adjusted upward for 2022, and it’s down in 2023, with more than 85% reporting (compared to two-thirds in 2021).

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 7:04 am

    It remains unproven that the 2023 data won’t be adjusted upwards at a later date. Nice try with going against your own rule, Paul.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  330. Wow, you are losing your mind on this one Paul.

    Right, because mocking a con man is “losing your mind”. Y’all are f-cking delusional.

    BTW, I dare any MAGA to read lurker’s link in full. Y’all are voting for human scaum.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  331. What has X achieved that Gemini had not 60 years ago?

    And why doesn’t Musk play with his taxpayer-subsidized copycats off of South Africa instead of off of California?

    nk (4879cb)

  332. Musk and all his works must be crushed. He should be made an un-person for his apostasy.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  333. Right, because mocking a con man is “losing your mind”.

    It is getting the point where I only have to read poster’s names to know what they wrote.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  334. BTW, I dare any MAGA to read lurker’s link in full.
    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 7:19 am

    I dared. Gee, I know how this game is played. The rules according folks like lurker and nk is to attack the source. New York Times— Democrat partisan hacks. Meh.

    lloyd (c6c0da)

  335. If Trump did not want his piddly horsesh!t “retail politics” TV special mocked, he should not have produced it.

    As it is, people should think twice about eating at that McDonald’s without a new certification from the city’s inspectional services that all opened food and containers have been thrown out, and all appliances, utensils, and surfaces have been decontaminated.

    nk (4879cb)

  336. It’s curious, really.
    Back when I was blogging at Tacitus and The Forvm, which ranged from half to three-quarters liberal, the commenters on the Left used that same “losing your mind” language when I kept calling out Obama’s proven lies, and he told a lot of them, but he got away with most of it because he looked and sounded statesmanlike while lying through his teeth.
    It’s not me who’s changed.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  337. Crime was adjusted upward for 2022, and it’s down in 2023, with more than 85% reporting (compared to two-thirds in 2021).

    “Juking the stats”

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  338. A vote for Trump means you want JD Vance to be president within the next 18 months.

    Are you telling me my choice is Vance or Harris? Because Vance is sane, which is a big improvement over Trump. If this is a pool, I’ll go for 4 months.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  339. It’s not me who’s changed.

    So voting for Biden’s continuation of Obama’s lying administration, if you lived in a particular swing state, is part of how you have always been?

    Makes sense now.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  340. Nobody knows another’s troubles. Who knows what life must be really like for Trump at Mar-a-Lago ever since Melania learned that Nicole Shanahan got one billion dollars ($1B) for only five years of marriage to Sergey Brin?

    nk (4879cb)

  341. So voting for Biden’s continuation of Obama’s lying administration…

    Except I never voted for Biden. You MAGA trolls are something else.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  342. @339

    Wow, you are losing your mind on this one Paul.

    Right, because mocking a con man is “losing your mind”.

    You can mock him. I’m just pointing out the stupidity of the argument you’re making.

    The fact that it was closed to the public is irrelevant. He’s not this unique politician who does this sort of “retail politics”

    Y’all are f-cking delusional.

    Again, you’re over reacting. Go touch some grass.

    BTW, I dare any MAGA to read lurker’s link in full. Y’all are voting for human scaum.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 7:19 am

    I consider Kamala Harris even worse than that.

    whembly (477db6)

  343. Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 8:55 am

    This is unproven.

    But what is proven at the link, if you believe your own words, is that you said you would vote for Biden in certain swing states.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  344. You can mock him. I’m just pointing out the stupidity of the argument you’re making.

    No, whembly, what’s stupid is all the pushback from Trump’s stupid phony baloney photo op. It’s quite amazing.

    Noted, BuDuh, that all you have is a hypothetical. What a pathetic MAGA troll you are.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  345. Probably another source Paul doesn’t like.

    I imagine he can prove that she is wrong.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  346. All of dis…
    https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-answers-enraged-democrats-sir-this-is-a-mcdonalds/


    It’s the overreaction that says everything about the state of the race right now. What Trump did is a pretty common publicity stunt, after all, not something to spend an entire day shrieking about online.

    The New York Times led their coverage by huffily focusing on how Trump was “smearing Harris” by making “unsubstantiated claims” that Harris never actually worked at a McDonalds. The truth of the matter is (1) nobody really cares why Trump did it, it just gave him an opportunity to mingle with the masses and show off his retail political skills to the national media; (2) nobody actually thinks Kamala Harris is telling the truth about having worked at McDonalds, it’s understood by all that this was a lie she told back in 2019 without expecting it to haunt her — so you really don’t want to pursue that angle too far.

    Yes, the “joy” is truly gone from the Harris campaign, and perceptibly seems to have found lodging in a defiantly upbeat Trump operation instead. Trump has a truly demotic touch — this will reach precisely the sorts of regular-person voters both sides desperately need — and the ease with which he does stunts like this is all the more enraging for Democrats saddled with a bubble-wrapped, awkward ignoramus as their avatar. And Donald Trump, so often on the defensive back-foot throughout this campaign, is now riding high and content to listen to tens of thousands of enraged Harris fans rant at him about his evil ways. Because he, like the old joke, got for once to honestly respond: “I’m sorry sir, this is a McDonald’s.”

    whembly (477db6)

  347. All I have is Paul’s own hypothetical to present to Paul.

    Now that is a source condemnation from him even I didn’t expect.

    Wow!!

    Hahahahaha!

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  348. @353

    No, whembly, what’s stupid is all the pushback from Trump’s stupid phony baloney photo op. It’s quite amazing.

    Noted, BuDuh, that all you have is a hypothetical. What a pathetic MAGA troll you are.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 9:01 am

    See my previous post.

    I’m not the only one noticing how ya’ll are wigging out on this.

    whembly (477db6)

  349. I dared.

    Good for you, lloyd. Was there anything in that long litany that was factually incorrect?

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  350. Being a MAGA means the truth doesn’t matter anymore.

    There are some places your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl. Okay. Without parental consent. What is that all about? That’s like. That’s– when they talk about a threat to democracy. They’re a threat. Could you imagine without parental consent? At first, what I was told that was actually happening, I said, you know, it’s an exaggeration. No. It happens!

    “They’re eating the geese!” Or something like that.

    Sure, Trump’s phony McDonalds photo-op is small beer, but it reflects what he’s about, which is a non-stop conveyor belt cons and fraud and bread-and-circus.
    The larger issue is, of course, that Trump attempted a coup, committed crimes in his efforts to overturn a legitimate election, and he said (without retraction) that he’s a fascist who supported “termination” of the Constitution and would use the National Guard or military to “handle” his political “enemies”, presumably for the “crime” of opposing him.
    Worse, this old guy is only getting more demented, more perverted (see Arnold Palmer) and more mentally ill. All the rest of it should kill what should’ve been an already-dead campaign, but alas.
    This once conservative political party is going in the worst direction, so I might as well criticize what I’m seeing.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  351. It’s an unproven claim.

    Thank you. Harris’s claim that she worked there is unproven.

    Glad we finally agree!

    SaveFarris (79ab12)

  352. Trump’s run at Mickey D’s was a photo op. Like millions before and millions since. As Trump said about Mike Pence when he was at risk of being killed, “so what?”

    Appalled (24b5b6)

  353. As Trump said about Mike Pence when he was at risk of being killed, “so what?”

    Paul will be all over you for not posting a proven statement.

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  354. BuDuh, at 217 —

    yes, and? This is a thing that Biden should not have done and should not be doing, and the fact that Biden *is* doing it doesn’t magically transmute it into a good thing. It’s terrible, dangerous rhetoric.

    And what Trump is doing is *worse*, because:

    (a) Biden is directing it at a specific discrete group of known bad actors that are fundamentally a terrorist gang, with an internal organizational structure that has control over members, while Trump is directing it at a large amorphous group of people who are not bound together organizationally in any way.

    (b) Biden is directing it at people who live halfway around the world, Trump is directing it at people who are our neighbors.

    The way Biden is using this rhetoric increases the risk that the angry US public will be induced to support a brutal war (with widespread casualties among the innocent) on the other side of the world, as has happened repeatedly in other places and times. The way Trump is using this rhetoric increases the risk that an angry public will be whipped into a murderous frenzy against their neighbors, as has happened in many other countries at many other times.

    It’s not a sure thing that this risk will come to fruition, and one of the mistakes the anti-Trump activists make is asserting that the risk constitutes a sure thing. But the risk *is* significantly increased, and the fact that Trump would choose to increase the risk in this way is something that we, as the voters, should view as disqualifying.

    aphrael (79d53f)

  355. Nice to see you calling out Biden now, aphrael. 👍

    BuDuh (4214e4)

  356. > But there are a lot of people who want Trump shot, in earnest, because they believe that’s better than letting the election go his way. A lot of them.

    As a moral matter, killing your political opposition is evil.

    As a practical matter, killing Trump might remove this particular threat to the system but it won’t do anything about the conditions which produced him, and will introduce political violence as a *norm* of behavior in the post-Trump era.

    It’s not clear to me why anyone with either a moral compass or an iota of political acument would support it.

    aphrael (79d53f)

  357. No one that is a directly in a campaign would never.

    Elon Musk is all in.(0:00) Elon Musk Is All in on Donald Trump(6:35) Providing Starlink to Victims of Hurricane Helene(9:22) If Trump Loses, This Is the Last Election(21:49) The Epstein and Diddy Client List(33:38) Vaccines(35:49) The Movement to Decriminalize Crime… pic.twitter.com/jNqB1ThqQz— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 7, 2024

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  358. 255.

    Not having records of a summer job at a local franchise in 1983 is the default situation. Do you have records of your college job in 1983, do you remember how records were kept in 1983?

    Actually, it is easy to prove, if she worked on the books.

    Social Security keeps records of Social Security taxes pai, and I think also who was the employer. (by employer ID number)

    https://blog.ssa.gov/access-your-earnings-history-with-my-social-security

    Your earnings history is a record of your progress toward your future Social Security benefits. We track your earnings so we can pay you the benefits you’ve earned over your lifetime. That is why it’s so important for you to review your earnings record.

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  359. Howard Kurtz, Fox News: “January 6, the other day you called it ‘a day of love,’ that sparked a lot of reaction given that many police officers were attacked and there were mobs shouting ‘hang Mike Pence.’ Can you understand why many Americans can view it as a dark and tragic day in our history?”

    Donald Trump: “The crowd I spoke before, which you rarely see. I have pictures of it, massive but nobody wants to put it in. It was the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken to and I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds. I’ve never seen that many people. A small group of them. And, you know, peacefully and patriotically, which nobody uses my words with peacefully and patriotically. A small group went down to the Capitol, but they came, they came because they thought it was a rigged election. This was a protest against a rigged election. And I can’t say exactly the number, but I’ve had massive crowds, and this was by far the biggest crowd — I’ve spoken to the crowd at the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial, on the Fourth of July, this crowd was bigger. And I’ll tell you, there was a beauty to it and there was a love to it that I’ve never seen before. A small group of people went down to the Capitol, and then a lot of strange things happened, I’m saying that when I saw that tremendous crowd, the largest group I’ve ever spoken to, in front of these beautiful monuments. I thought it was actually a beautiful thing.”

    Kurtz: “I want to drill down on this question of retribution against your political opponents, because you’ve had opportunities to walk that back. And my question is this: are you prepared to say now that you will not use law enforcement to punish or prosecute your political opponents?”

    Trump: “Excuse me, that’s what they’re using on me.”

    Kurtz: “You talk about the enemy within. There’s America’s enemies outside, ‘the enemy within’ is a pretty ominous phrase if you’re talking about other Americans.”

    Trump: “I think it’s accurate. I mean, I think it’s accurate.”

    Kurtz: “Who are you talking about because the enemy –”

    Trump: “But what they’ve done is so terrible. Who’s ever heard of anything like this? Adam shifty Schiff. He’s a crooked guy. He’s a crooked politician. 100% he’s going to be a senator now, can you believe it?”

    Kurtz: “But again, he’s a political opponent of yours, is he the enemy?”

    Trump: “No, he’s a well, he’s, of course, he’s an enemy. He’s an enemy […] These are bad people. We have a lot of bad people, but when you look at shifty Schiff and some of the others, yeah, they are, to me, the enemy from within. I think Nancy Pelosi is an enemy from within.”

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  360. Vance is not just an Election Denier, he and Trump intend to sh-t on the 14th Amendment. This is Trump’s fascist America if he wins.

    Q: Trump wants to take away birthright citizenship. Do you agree with him on that?

    JD Vance: I really do.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  361. Congress can pass laws to end birthright citizenships. They’d have to clarify what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means.

    What you can’t do, is rescind it once it was given. It’d be a line of the sand kind of thing.

    whembly (477db6)

  362. Social Security keeps records of Social Security taxes pai, and I think also who was the employer. (by employer ID number)

    I just looked up my history, and a job from the same time at a nursing home doesn’t show up.

    If the holding company for the franchisee has changed then the EID would be different, and there’s no way you’d remember the EID from them.

    From McDonald’s

    This message is intended for the McDonald’s USA System.

    McDonald’s USA: Earlier today, former President Trump visited a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania following a request made to our local franchisee.

    As we’ve seen, our brand has been a fixture of conversation this election cycle. While we’ve not sought this, it’s a testament to how much McDonald’s resonates with so many Americans.

    McDonald’s does not endorse candidates for elected office and that remains true in this race for the next President. We are not red or blue we are golden.

    Though we are not a political brand, we’ve been proud to hear former President Trump’s love for McDonald’s and Vice President Harris’s fond memories working under the Arches. While we and our franchisees don’t have records for all positions dating back to the early ’80s, what makes “1 in 8” so powerful is the shared experience so many Americans have had.

    When Owner/Operator Derek Giacomantonio was approached by local law enforcement regarding former President Trump’s desire to visit a Pennsylvania restaurant, he was proud to highlight how he and his team serve their local community and make delicious food, like our World- Famous French Fries.

    Upon learning of the former President’s request, we approached it through the lens of one of our core values: we open our doors to everyone. It’s with that same approach that franchisees have invited Vice President Harris and Governor Walz to their restaurants, in order to share how McDonald’s provides meaningful

    Don’t miss what’s happening People on X are the first to know.

    Since working at McDonald’s is completely common, McDonald’s says neither they or their franchisees don’t have records that far back, and that Trump is actively saying a thing. I’ll trust history and say it’s far more likely that they’re telling the truth and Trump is lying, it’s would be shocking if he were telling the truth, it literally never happens. If Trump is saying it, the default position should always be “he’s lying”.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  363. RIP actor, singer and dancer Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber (aka Mitzi Gaynor) (93).

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  364. They’d have to clarify what “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means.

    The courts have already decided. Ain’t gonna fly.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  365. Kamala’s 1983 stint at MickeyD’s in Oakland is still unproven, but there is a hearsay witness, for what it’s worth.

    A friend of Harris’, Wanda Kagan, told the New York Times that she recalled Harris having worked at McDonald’s around that time. That recollection was based on what Harris’ mother, who died in 2009, told her years ago, the Times reported.

    Perhaps her dad could settle this.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  366. Even if she didn’t work at McDonalds.

    She also didn’t try to overthrow an election, Trump did.

    She also didn’t rape a lady, Trump did.

    She also didn’t cheat on her wife, that just had a baby, with a porn star, Trump did.

    She also didn’t have audio of her telling folks that he can just grab’em by the pooty if your famous.

    She also didn’t tell folks to inject disinfectant.

    He lies, exclusively, exhaustively, daily, about everything, great and small. There is no lie he is above, and no subject too important for him to lie about. He’s never truthful, ever.

    But maybe she didn’t have a summer job at MickeyD’s in the 80’s. Trump has been a lying conman for nearly a century.

    He’s a walking talking national security breach, that has already happened, again and again.

    Oh and he’s a senile old fool too. JD Vance will be president if you vote for Trump, not in 2028, in 2025. 26 at the outside.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  367. So what happens to the anti-trump republicans if trump wins?
    Is he legit, but flawed?
    not-legit?
    Someone to be taken out vis the 25th amendment at earliest opportunity?
    Head for the hills in your bunker?
    Start the 28 primary right away?

    Joe (584b3d)

  368. @373

    The courts have already decided. Ain’t gonna fly.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 11:07 am

    If you’re talking about Wong Kim Ark… not necessarilyi:
    https://www.heritage.org/the-constitution/commentary/does-the-constitution-mandate-universal-birthright-citizenship-heres


    Wong Kim Ark was about the government’s attempt to circumvent the Fourteenth Amendment and keep Chinese immigrants and their children from ever becoming citizens, by any means, just because they were Chinese.

    At the time, federal law barred Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized citizens, and they were, according to treaty obligations with China, perpetual Chinese subjects.

    Much like the freed slaves, Chinese immigrants were prohibited from subjecting themselves to the complete jurisdiction of the United States because of their race, and were relegated to permanent alienage in a country where they would live and die.

    This type of race-based discrimination in citizenship was precisely what the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to prohibit, and the Supreme Court rightly recognized the system for the unconstitutional travesty it truly was.

    While the opinion can also be read as affirmatively adopting jus soli as the “law of the land,” it can just as easily be read as adopting only a flexible, “Americanized” jus soli limited to the factors of lawful presence and permanent domicile.

    This second interpretation renders the holding consistent with the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is also precisely what many legal commentators at the time thought the Supreme Court meant, too.

    In short, Wong Kim Ark only deviates from the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment if one chooses to read it acting under the assumption that the Supreme Court intended to upend decades of precedent and judicially supersede the clear intent of Congress. That assumption is unnecessary, illogical, and dangerous.

    whembly (477db6)

  369. @376

    So what happens to the anti-trump republicans if trump wins?
    Is he legit, but flawed?
    not-legit?
    Someone to be taken out vis the 25th amendment at earliest opportunity?
    Head for the hills in your bunker?
    Start the 28 primary right away?

    Joe (584b3d) — 10/21/2024 @ 11:34 am

    Now, now, now… let’s not be hasty here.

    Harris/Walz can still win this thing, despite what the polls says.

    whembly (477db6)

  370. Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 10/21/2024 @ 10:42 am

    I just looked up my history, and a job from the same time at a nursing home doesn’t show up.

    You mean 1983? If you were paid as an employee it should be there. Unless they pocketed the money, but they would have pocketed any income tax withholding too. Maybe it was too small to withhold, and also they treated you like an independent contractor, which might be a reasonable possibility for a nursing home. But a McDonald’s franchisee wouldn’t have done that.

    If the holding company for the franchisee has changed then the EID would be different, and there’s no way you’d remember the EID from them.

    Oh, most people wouldn’t know the number. You wouldn’t know the number, but there should be some record of it with some employer ID number, for that quarter.

    Unless maybe if less than X amount was paid it is not included. If split over two quarters and there was no other earned income credited, and the Social Security Administration ignores when too little is paid the amount omitted could be more than X number of dollars.

    Although the ssa.gov website says:

    Start a conversation. Ask a family member or friend what their first job was and let them know they can find out what they made that year.

    That doesn’t sound like there’s a minimum amount (but the web site could oversimplify) and it also doesn’t sound like anybody needs to know anything to get he information but the approximate dates paid.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  371. Who the F cares if she can’t prove she worked at McDonald’s? Who would lie about such a thing? And why would it matter? That this is a problem (and Trump’s various rapes are not) is just maddening.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  372. Since working at McDonald’s is completely common, McDonald’s says neither they or their franchisees don’t have records that far back,

    They wouldn’t, but Social Security does. (But I wouldn’t think that leaving it out of a 1987 resume means anything. It’s too menial a job, and not relevant, and not needed for purposes of fill a gap in employment.

    and that Trump is actively saying a thing.

    His campaign, or its friends, seems to be saying this

    I’ll trust history and say it’s far more likely that they’re telling the truth and Trump is lying

    He’d only be lying about his degree of certainty – he’s not saying he knows it is false – or if he was distorting what she says (like saying she said she only worked on the fries or saying she changed the details when perhaps she didn’t or it is excusable.

    it’s would be shocking if he were telling the truth, it literally never happens.

    Sometimes he comes close to it.

    If Trump is saying it, the default position should always be “he’s lying”.

    That he’s lying or distorting, or he has no basis for it.

    Here the thing is, that, after all, she is not Joe Biden. (but maybe she has his consultants)

    On the other hand Trump’s campaign has had almost two months to research this.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  373. > (But I wouldn’t think that leaving it out of a 1987 resume means anything. It’s too menial a job, and not relevant, and not needed for purposes of fill a gap in employment.

    I’ll note that I leave my early jobs off of my resume almost all of the time; they’re irrelevant to my career history, and nobody interviewing a middle aged software engineer cares about what non-tech jobs he had in high school and college.

    aphrael (966413)

  374. > So what happens to the anti-trump republicans if trump wins?

    Eventually they get declared to be part of the “enemy within” and Trump uses the force of the state to punish them. It’ll take a few years until we get there, but at some point it will happen.

    aphrael (966413)

  375. Who would lie about such a thing?

    Isn’t that the crux?

    BuDuh (baf789)

  376. @ 384
    I meant the people here who are “anybody but him”
    They have to know how they feel, genuinely curious

    Joe (584b3d)

  377. Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/21/2024 @ 11:44 am

    Who the F cares if she can’t prove she worked at McDonald’s? Who would lie about such a thing? And why would it matter?

    It doesn’t matter.

    The idea would be she’s lying to the voters in order that they should identify with her and also that she (or rather her mother) was rich enough for her not to need a summer job during college, but she wants to say she was middle class.

    That this is a problem (and Trump’s various rapes are not) is just maddening.

    Trump’s popularity is based on the idea that he is telling the truth and that others are lying about him (and often enough they are. If they have something, they can’t help themselves from “improving” or creating a story – and they know how find people to do it

    I don’t think he raped anyone. False accusations of rape have been made by Democratic Party partisans – about Brett Kavanaugh for example, and they were never traced back to the instigators.

    The ones about Trump are all unlikely, except by Ivana during their divorce.

    Now Trump said something once which was not at all a claim of rape. It was probably not true, but not because he grabbed them without their consent but because he never grabbed any woman like that at all. But it was used to win a civil lawsuit where the jury decided that what he said was more likely true than not but they couldn’t say so for anything further.

    Bill Clinton by the way was accused of rape by Juanita Broderick.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  378. Without Paul’s fixation for the truth, and his link at 11:33am, I would not have know when Kamala first said she worked at McDonald’s. This link was within Paul’s link:

    https://www.facebook.com/StandUpKc/videos/kamala-harris-fight-for-15/1294266764085465/?_rdr

    She announced her fry skill set at a union fast food worker strike in 2019. The woot-woot of the wee-weed up crowd helped her find her pandering rhythm.

    Why would she lie to a crowd that would never fact check her? I dunno..

    BuDuh (baf789)

  379. Who would lie about such a thing?

    Curtis Sliwa said that approximately one third of Americans have worked for a fast food restaurant at one time or another and (the greatest number) at Mickey D’s, so there’s nothing odd about this, except saying it if it is not true. It would be odd to lie about this.

    He seemed to think it is not true. He was night manager of a McDonald’s on Fordham Road in the Bronx in the late 1970s and he said they were cross trained but Kamala Harris said she only worked on the fries. But the New York Times said back in August that she ” fried the fries, worked the ice cream machine and staffed the cash register” so the Trump people may not be reporting accurately what she said, (unless this went through a few iterations when she first said that but she hasn’t been claiming she was limited to fries for a long time)

    Curtis Skiwa also said that anyone who worked on the fries would come out smelling like that (his wife, who was there last night on his WABC AM show and whom he married only a few years ago had said she worked at a McDonald’s when she was 15 and mentioned the smell) and Curtis Sliwa said that’s the sort of thing that was missing from her story – he said that he would go to shower at some club – the sort of club where drugs were sold – the only things open that late – and that (one time) somebody asked him what cologne he was using..

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  380. In 2019 Kamala Harris (making an appearance at a “Fight for 15” rally) said that while she was not supporting a family or needed the money to pay rent when she worked at McDonald’s a majority (!>) of those working at McDonalds are:

    In 2013 the Atlantic ran a story which said that 25% were parents:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-than-a-quarter-of-fast-food-workers-are-raising-a-child/278424

    or better:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20130812000803/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-than-a-quarter-of-fast-food-workers-are-raising-a-child/278424/

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  381. Sammy, like you were saying, if it’s under a certain amount, it’s not recorded. I’d bet a summer McD’s job would fall in the under. I worked giving olds food at the nursing home specifically because they paid $5/hr where fast food or retail paid, minimum wage, $2.75 in Ohio IIRC. California was $3.10, so 20 hours for a couple of months would only be a grand.

    And yeah, in the minor scheme of an election, or working at the DA’s office, it’s equivalent of fingernail length.

    I think rape, housing fraud, general fraud, tax evasion, sexual assault, 34 felonies might be a bit more important.

    Or even Haitians eating cats…no dogs…no geese…rabbits…uh…cows?

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  382. BuDuh (baf789) — 10/21/2024 @ 12:24 pm

    Why would she lie to a crowd that would never fact check her? I dunno..

    But then, if she made it all up, why not claim she needed the money?

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  383. @381

    Who the F cares if she can’t prove she worked at McDonald’s?
    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/21/2024 @ 11:44 am

    That’s not the story…

    The story is that Trump critics can’t handle this moment because their reflexive instinct is to denigrate Trump for any reason at all. Its the inability to say anything positive or neutral about him. It’s always code red levels of hysteria.

    Maybe because the country is finally getting tired of all the hysterical reactions to Trump…

    whembly (477db6)

  384. @ 393
    I am going to vote for Trump, but i will acknowledge that there are a lot of people (% wise) who despise him and would be happy to see him dead. [Worse than Hitler or Mussolini]

    Joe (584b3d)

  385. $2.75 in Ohio IIRC. California was $3.10, so 20 hours for a couple of months would only be a grand.

    We don’t even know that she couldn’t prove it that way. She may not realize she could. (and forging a Social Security employment record would be caught, so it is good proof)

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  386. Dick Morris said yesterday on his radio show on WABC that positive ads are better than negative ads for a candidate, but a rebuttal is the best of all.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  387. whembly (477db6) — 10/21/2024 @ 11:36 am

    Since Wong Kim Ark has served as precedent for nearly 160 years it’s going to be a real heavy lift for the Supreme Court to overturn it. And despite the hand waving by the Heritage Foundation, at best it is doubtful that either the Executive Branch or Congress can simply reinterpret the decision.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  388. Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 9:09 am

    Other than editorial embellishment, nothing factually incorrect. And?

    Convictions and lawsuits which only happened because Trump is R instead of D don’t sway me. Obviously, they sway you. What’s new?

    lloyd (760970)

  389. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/us/elections/trump-promises-extreme-rhetoric.html

    One of the more peculiar aspects of Donald J. Trump’s political appeal is this: A lot of people are happy to vote for him because they simply do not believe he will do many of the things he says he will.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  390. But then, if she made it all up, why not claim she needed the money?

    As far as making it “all” up, I don’t see that this was an elaborate scheme. There wasn’t much to make up.

    As far as claiming she needed the money, I do believe that she isn’t so dumb that suggesting that she didn’t have the privileged upbringing that was better than the people she was talking to would have opened a can of worms.

    It really is worth to listen to the link I found in Paul’s link. Her cadence changes as the crowd hoots and hollers. Suddenly she is street-wise Kamala-bonica as she preaches about having “did the fries and did the ice cream.”

    BuDuh (baf789)

  391. Desperate Kamala Plans Photo Op At Long John Silver’s

    lloyd (5bfb74)

  392. Sorry for the repost. Duh.

    lloyd (5bfb74)

  393. 330.
    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/21/2024 @ 6:00 am

    Moldova’s anti-Putin president is reelected, and they voted (just barely) to join the EU, despite Putin’s massive meddling.

    Including, probably, getting one of his agents to seduce a female opposition leader.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/world/europe/natalia-morari-moldova-corrupt-business.html

    Natalia Morari once reported on corrupt business in Moldova. Now she has upset many by having a son with a tycoon accused of corruption, and running against the pro-West president in elections.

    ….Feted by many fellow journalists and Western diplomats as a fearless scourge of corrupt oligarchs, Moldova’s most popular television host torched her soaring career and stellar image three years ago with a startling life choice.

    She fell in love and had a child with one of her country’s most notorious and, according to prosecutors, most corrupt oligarchs.

    Ostracized by many of her onetime friends and admirers, Natalia Morari, 40, has now caused yet more dismay by refashioning herself into a politician. She no longer works for the independent, award-winning television station she founded in 2006, and is running for president in an election on Sunday against the incumbent, Maia Sandu, the standard-bearer of a pro-European cause for which the journalist was for years a prominent champion.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  394. She also didn’t tell folks to inject disinfectant.

    Neither did Trump. It was a question!

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  395. whembly (477db6) — 10/21/2024 @ 11:36 am

    The bottom line is that the USSC decided that the child born in Frisco to Chinese immigrants was an American citizen, thus affirming birthright citizenship and overriding the Chinese Exclusion Act.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  396. Unintended Consequences:

    Former president Donald Trump’s campaign pledges would hasten the insolvency of the Social Security trust fund and lead to a 33% across-the-board cut to all benefits, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

    The group’s report, released Monday, is based on Trump’s vow to eliminate income taxes on Social Security benefits, overtime pay and tipped income, as well as his proposal to slap tariffs on all imports and deport millions of immigrants, many of whom currently pay Social Security taxes.

    The CRFB, which advocates in favor of lower federal deficits, said Vice President Kamala Harris’s plans “would not have large effects on Social Security trust fund solvency.” It added, however, that while Harris has pledged to protect Social Security, neither her campaign nor Trump’s have specified how they would fix the looming shortfall in funding.

    Under Trump’s plans, Social Security’s trust fund would become insolvent in 2031, which is three years earlier than currently projected by the Congressional Budget Office. At that point, the program would need to cut benefits by 33%, a steeper decrease than the 23% reduction forecast by the CBO in August.

    A cut of that size would mean that the typical monthly benefit check of $1,907 in 2024 would be reduced by $629 per month, leaving recipients with average payments of $1,278.
    ………..
    Eliminating income taxes on Social Security benefits would remove one of the program’s funding sources.

    While payroll taxes — the FICA taxes taken out of workers’ paychecks — fund the bulk of Social Security, about 4% of its financing stems from the income taxes that recipients pay on their benefits.

    That would likely deliver the biggest financial hit to Social Security, costing the program about $950 billion over the next decade, the CRFB estimated. Another $900 billion would be lost by eliminating taxes on overtime pay and tips, due to the reduction in FICA tax collection from that income, the group projected.

    On top of that, Trump’s plans to enact widespread tariffs as well as deport millions of undocumented immigrants could lower Social Security’s funding by another $400 million. That’s because new tariffs would likely drive up prices for U.S. consumers, which in turn would require the Social Security Administration to increase its annual cost-of-living adjustments, increasing costs and draining the trust fund more quickly, the analysis said.

    Many undocumented immigrants pay into the Social Security system but aren’t qualified to claim benefits, which means they add revenue to the program without requiring a payout later.

    Together, Trump’s plans would add about $2.3 trillion to Social Security’s cash deficit between fiscal year 2026 and 2035, the CRFB estimated.

    “As a result of these higher cash deficits, Social Security trust fund reserves would be depleted much faster than under current law,” the analysis noted.
    ………….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  397. I’m glad with all the issues facing the country today, one of the most vital things to find, according to the locals, is the records proving that Kamela Harris worked at MickyDs back in the day. What’s the basis for all the concern? Trump claimimg — without having a lick of proof — that she hadn’t worked there. Y’know, the burden of proof resides with the person making an outlandish charge, not the person charged.

    If that’s wrong guys — well, go out there and demonstrate that Donald Trump doesn’t smell like rotten meat and Fox News hosts don’t put Vicks in their noses so they don’t vomit on air…

    Appalled (f24838)

  398. Convictions and lawsuits which only happened because Trump is R instead of D don’t sway me.

    That’s the MAGA delusion for ya. Convictions and lawsuits happened because Trump is Trump, and Trump has left a decades-long trail of lawsuits, almost 4,100 of them. There’s a reason why Trump is the only president in American history facing this post-presidential legal trouble.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  399. @406

    whembly (477db6) — 10/21/2024 @ 11:36 am

    The bottom line is that the USSC decided that the child born in Frisco to Chinese immigrants was an American citizen, thus affirming birthright citizenship and overriding the Chinese Exclusion Act.

    That case was exactly that… the Chinese Exclusion Act as being unconstitutional.

    The parents in that case already had legal status/residence.

    So the case wasn’t even ABOUT “what if the parent were illegal”??

    It’s not as clear cut as you’d want it to be, nor has there been any case in the courts to fully test it out.

    whembly (477db6)

  400. There’s a reason why Trump is the only president in American history facing this post-presidential legal trouble.

    It’s funny, he’s pre-presidential legal troubles were well known. Now MAGA seems to have forgotten the first 70 years, he’d filed for bankruptcy half a dozen times, paid outlandish sums to people to “catch and kill” all the philandering, doing the actual philandering, was a draft dodger (he’s in perfect health now, do we know when his bone spur surgery happened?), was a reality TV celebrity and failed real estate guy (see bankruptcies).

    And that was before he was president. His term was a disaster, and he’s leaning heavy into fascism and incompetence this time

    His qualifications were he wasn’t Hillary Clinton and he was a celebrity.

    Harris qualifications are she’s not Trump and hasn’t aged into decrepitude. I’ve been saying it for 2 years, Nikki wins this election by 15 points and pulls the house and senate.

    Trump loses, he’s never had more votes, continues to push the congress left as whenever he’s around the dems do better than expected.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  401. Whichever party signs off on a 33% cut in SS benefits will be wiped out in the next election.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  402. Vice President Kamala Harris’s plans…

    …include a massive income tax increase. Which won’t pass, so whatever they are they are just magic beans and ought not be treated as if they were real.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  403. whembly (477db6) — 10/21/2024 @ 1:36 pm

    Tilting at windmills.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  404. There’s a reason why Trump is the only president in American history facing this post-presidential legal trouble.

    Nixon faced the same, until he was pardoned. And even then he had to testify.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  405. Trump’s idea about Social Security also won’t pass. The real response to him is to demand that 100% of the income tax on SS benefits go to the trust fund, not just 50%.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  406. Neither did Trump. It was a question!

    It was a moronic question.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  407. The parents in that case already had legal status/residence.

    For illegal alien parents, you’d have to implausibly claim that they’re outside of US law, like diplomats and certain Native tribes. That just won’t fly.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  408. The group’s report, released Monday, is based on Trump’s vow to eliminate income taxes on Social Security benefits, overtime pay and tipped income, as well as his proposal to slap tariffs on all imports

    There’s also his proposal to uncap SALT deductions and make interest on car loans deductible.

    Meanwhile Harris has only the elimination of taxes on tips, and a refundable child tax credit of $6,000 for newborns and $3,600 for toddlers and 3,000 for all other minor children (up to the year they turn age 17 maybe) and a big deduction of $50,000 for the first profits from opening a small business (apparently now $5,000 – I’d like to know more about this) and planning in advance to forgive loans of up to $20,000 to entrepreneurs, provided the loans were made by certain politically favored banks or nonprofits (intended for blacks but designed that way to get around anti-racial discrimination laws – amd besides they’ll also be discriminating on the basis of political party.)

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  409. RIP Navajo code talker John Kinsel Sr. (107):

    …………
    ………… After finishing high school and with World War II underway, he enlisted in the Marines in 1942. After finishing boot camp, he was given an envelope saying to report to Camp Elliott. He had no idea what was in store for him there.

    “All we know is we’re just going to go up there. I guess there was a training ground up there,” he said in an interview for the Library of Congress.

    He was approached by a white man who started questioning him in Navajo. The man turned out to be World War I veteran and former missionary Phillip Johnston, who came up with the idea of building a code on the Navajo language. The Navajo servicemembers were the ones who designed the code itself. The code talkers had been established in May 1942. Kinsel was part of the second batch of Marines to join the code talkers. After more training, he deployed with the 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division. His service would take him to Guadalcanal, Guam and Bougainville. In 1945, he landed on Iwo Jima. The Marines had already been on the island for a few days, but fighting was intense and Kinsel was soon thrust into some of the worst combat of World War II.

    During fighting on Iwo Jima he was wounded when Japanese forces blew up a cave network, sending rocks flying that hit him. He would not be awarded the Purple Heart until 1989. Iwo Jima would be his last battlefield. He continued with the Marines for the rest of 1945, making it back to the United States in the winter.
    ……….

    There now only two remaining Navajo code talkers.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  410. and [Trump’s proposal to] deport millions of immigrants, many of whom currently pay Social Security taxes.

    That last gets you into the question of if there is a near one to one correlation between the number of people looking for work and the number of jobs that exist. The answer is yes, but as the apocryphal Marxist professors say, that works in practice, but how does it work in theory?

    Now the thing is that Trump knows the jobs paradox is untrue.

    https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-the-bully-with-a-heart-of-gold-2024-presidential-election-dd922dd6

    … Editorial page editor Paul Gigot poses an obligatory one: “Apart from tariffs—which we know you disagree with us on, and fair enough—what else” is the Journal wrong about?

    Mr. Trump is expecting that. He brought a list, from which he reads. Then he cites a topic on which he thinks we’re wrong…The last item reads “endorsed bill legalizing illegal immigration.” By contrast, he says, “I want a lot of people to come in, but I want them to come in legally.”

    “That’s our position, too,” Mr. Gigot says.

    “So maybe we’re the same on that,” Mr. Trump allows. He says America needs immigrants “because we’re going to bring a lot of companies in through a combination of lower taxes where you build here and then we have to protect them with the tariffs. But illegal immigration, the way it’s happening now where people are coming in, their countries are pouring their worst prisoners and their worst criminals into our country, and it’s not sustainable.”

    At this year’s Republican National Convention, Mr. Trump vowed to undertake “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” Editorial board member Kyle Peterson asks how large—does Mr. Trump intend to deport aliens who are law-abiding except for their illegal presence in the country, even if they have American spouses and children? Maybe not, Mr. Trump says: “We have a lot of good people in this country, and we have to do something about it, and I’d like to see if we can do it.”

    Pressed for specifics, he demurs: “Well, I don’t want to go too much into clarification, because the nicer I become, the more people that come over illegally.” When he was president, “I said, ‘We’re going to separate your family.’ . . . It doesn’t sound nice, but when a family hears they’re going to be separated, you know what they do? They stay where they are, because we couldn’t handle it. . . . But the interest from the heart, yeah, something’s going to be done. . . . I mean, there’s some human questions that get in the way of being perfect, and we have to have the heart, too. OK?”

    The implication is that the optimal immigration policy is a happy medium between restriction and openness. That’s certainly true and perhaps a truism. Mr. Trump suggests that he, the bully with a heart of gold, is just the man to strike the balance. It reminds me of the way he tries to win over my colleagues and me by oscillating between harsh criticism and admiration.

    Such an approach is also evident when he discusses his conduct of foreign affairs, which tends to center on warm personal relationships with adversaries. Mr. Gigot asks how Mr. Trump would persuade Xi Jinping to stand down from a blockade of Taiwan…..

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  411. Trump said, about amnesty for illegal immigrants:

    “We have a lot of good people in this country, and we have to do something about it, and I’d like to see if we can do it.”

    Not the way he’s strengthened the feelings of the Republican Party about this.

    He can get them without amnesty by providing a different way to qualify.

    And the question is: Does he want to try to condition liberalization on enforcement – enforcement first or does he believe like W did that the only way to get enforcement is liberalization.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  412. 417. They say if you are afraid to ask a stupid question you’ll never learn anything

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  413. Now the thing is that Trump knows the jobs paradox is untrue.

    Except he doesn’t and doesn’t. He doesn’t know what a paradox is, he doesn’t know that tariffs are taxes, he doesn’t know anything about social security, about how the trust fund works, and doesn’t want legal immigration either. How could we know, if only he had a previous term that we could examine and a playbook for round 2.

    Trump’s record on immigration, as well as his playbook of proposals called Project 2025 — spearheaded by the conservative Heritage Foundation with input from former Trump administration officials — offer a good idea of what could be in store for noncitizens who have come into the U.S. or are trying to come through legal means.

    During his administration, Trump made it harder for foreign-born workers to enter the U.S. on visas or as refugees. Under his watch, visa denials and extensions shot up and refugee admissions were slashed.

    Without renewed visas, some U.S. businesses lost employees who had to leave when their work permits expired. Also, far fewer green cards were issued to people not already in the U.S., according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that advocates for expanding legal immigration.

    “What we saw last time, you would see again, but likely on steroids the next time around,” said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan think tank on trade and immigration.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  414. 412. Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/21/2024 @ 1:42 pm

    Whichever party signs off on a 33% cut in SS benefits will be wiped out in the next election.

    It’s scheduled to take place automatically whenever the trust fund runs out (but less than 33%)

    Congress won’t let it happen

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  415. The best guess is more of the dame until it runs into practical difficulties or he reverses himself which he won’t want to do. But it all depends on public opinion

    I think he knows he is wrong except maybe when it comes to tariffs.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  416. They say if you are afraid to ask a stupid question you’ll never learn anything

    They are stupid. There are stupid questions, mainly coming from stupid people. No one bothered to check if injecting disinfectant was possible…because, duh!!!

    No one thought of sending the infected to Antarctica and leaving them, no one thought about dissolving them in hydrochloric acid or shooting them into the sun.

    No one thought of using a Horse drug on people either, but some morons started touting it and other morons started taking it, and other morons started amplifying it. What is the common denominator?

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  417. Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/21/2024 @ 8:27 am

    If this is a pool, I’ll go for 4 months

    I thought before the 1992 election that if he was elected, Bill Clinton would probably be impeached, but it took 5 years – and then it was for something minor, and it failed to remove him from office.

    They were speculating/predicting that Kamala would take over in the middle of Biden’s term.

    You did too, except that you said it would be after January 20, 2023 so she could serve 10 years.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  418. Musk should lay off all the weed, mushrooms, and Ketamine.

    Elon Musk stepped up his campaigning for Donald Trump on Thursday, holding a rally for him in Pennsylvania as his America PAC doubled its cash offer for pro-Trump registered voters to sign his group’s petition. The town hall-style event in Folsom, a suburb of Philadelphia, included a sincere pitch for Trump as the candidate who could save the First Amendment and innovation, setting the conditions to “make Starfleet real.” [I think that would be cool too, but reality exists]

    It also included some Muskian conspiracy digressions. “It would be interesting to see the overlap between Epstein’s client list and Kamala’s puppeteers,” [or Weinstein, for some reason I think Trump might have a bit more exposure as there’s ample public photos of them both hangin’ with Mr. Trump] said Musk, campaigning for a candidate who had been photographed with Jeffrey Epstein and, responding to accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s indictment as president, said “I wish her well” while noting they had met “numerous times.” At another point, Musk suggested that electronic voting machines had the power to rig the election, a false claim that had cost Fox News a whole lot of money to entertain.

    “There’s some very strange things that happen that are statistically incredibly unlikely,” Musk said. “So, there’s always a question of, like, say, the Dominion voting machines. It is weird that, I think, they’re used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County, but not a lot of other places. Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?” Philadelphia County does not use Dominion voting machines, which process paper ballots.

    Earlier in the week, new FEC filings revealed how much money Musk was spending to elect Trump — at least $75 million, most of it to his America PAC, which is now offering $100 to registered Pennsylvania voters who sign a petition that will help the PAC identify them and turn them out. Musk also helped fund Building America’s Future, whose spinoff PAC has run divergent ads in Michigan: Some targeted to Arab-American voters that thank Kamala Harris for supporting Israel, some targeted to Jewish voters that accuse her of being too pro-Palestine.

    That last part is pretty iffy on the legality.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  419. I wonder if Musk exposed himself to the same kinds of penalties as Fox and Newsmax with Dominion. He’s got deeper pockets and malice can be shown, so maybe Dominion is a great investment vehicle, they don’t even have to sell stuff, just keep getting hundreds of millions from MAGA.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  420. Musk suggested that electronic voting machines had the power to rig the election

    This is actually true, in a narrow sense. Saying that they do, or did, is actionable, but saying they could be programmed that way is factual.

    Expressing suspicion at some results is not actionable either. The 2020 ballot-counting in PA was so poorly reported by the counters in real time (constantly asserting N ballots to go, then increasing that number several times) that it would be easy to have questions.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  421. Republican election protection team tells its members to challenge voters with hispanic sounding names. Question their citizenship. (cbs news) Maybe latinx planning to vote for trump will be scared away!

    asset (2b417a)

  422. One thing that I object to in nearly all reporting of Trump’s claims about the 2020 election is that they are baseless. They maybe be untrue, or fraudulent, or a willful lie, but there is some basis to them (e.g. the provenance of mailed ballots is less certain than that of in-person ballots, or pointing to confused reporting by election officials as evidence of malfeasance).

    Saying they are baseless allows Trump to point at some basis and claim he has disproved the narrative.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  423. Maybe latinx planning to vote for trump will be scared away!

    No one who refers to themselves as “Latinx” will be voting for Trump.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  424. …there is some basis to them…

    What is the evidence to support this “basis”? Barr said it was a clean election, Krebs said it was a clean election, two investigations paid for by Trump showed no evidence of serious fraud. Every court case that considered submitted evidence was tossed out for lack of “basis”. All of the post-inauguration lawsuits found no “basis” to support fraud. CyberNinjas was a months-long running joke.
    It’s been almost four years, Kevin, and you’re still swayed by a fraud and his army of election liars and deniers.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  425. What is the evidence to support this “basis”?

    There is a basis to Greek Mythology. There is a basis to Genesis. Does not mean they are true, or even undisputed. Saying something is baseless says that there is NO evidence, even if it is uncompelling.

    OJ’s assertion that he was innocent was not “baseless.”

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  426. It’s been almost four years, Kevin, and you’re still swayed by a fraud and his army of election liars and deniers.

    Oh, F you, Paul. I said no such thing. I said that the claims had a basis. Not that the claims were true or remotely convincing.

    Basis: “the underlying support or foundation for an idea, argument, or process.” Baseless then means there is utterly no single piece of evidence. Not even Mark Furman on OJ’s side of the argument.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  427. Saying something false (baseless) in reporting something true (Trump’s claims are lies) is an unforced error.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  428. On my part, this has not been a bad thread. I learned two things about Trump supporters.

    They’re happy that there will be a job for Donnie at McDonald’s, but they’re not sure how they feel that he has seen a grown man naked. He’s such a sensitive child.

    nk (7660c3)

  429. I said that the claims had a basis.

    I know you said that, which is why I asked you what evidence you had to support it. What swayed you to believe something otherwise?

    BTW, Oxford defines basis as “the underlying support or foundation for an idea, argument, or process”.
    In that regard, what is your underlying support or foundation for “Trump’s claims about the 2020 election”?
    Try to answer without an “F you” or some other kind of emotional outburst.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  430. https://tomklingenstein.com/tim-walz-says-he-wants-to-destroy-america/

    The first tenet of critical race theory is that the United States is irreversibly racist and must be overthrown. And so we, proponents of critical race theory, shouldn’t say critical race theory is just about telling stories of ethnic groups and diversity. No, it’s about overthrowing America. It’s insurgent. And we need to be more honest about our intentions. The critics of critical race theory don’t understand it, but they do understand that critical race theory is anti-American. You can’t be a critical race theorist and be pro US.

    Supporting the Harris-Walz regime is to want to destroy America. They make it clear.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  431. Also, I didn’t say “baseless”, so I don’t know why you’re ragging on me for something I didn’t say. Maybe take a nap or something.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  432. > Musk should lay off all the weed, mushrooms, and Ketamine.

    This does not appear to me to be the behavior or mindset that would be induced by weed or mushrooms. (ketamine i can’t comment on).

    aphrael (9c2ac5)

  433. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2024/10/21/nathan-wade-transcript-n2646512

    Wade confirmed that he had conducted multiple meetings with Biden-Harris White House officials but refused to disclose any pertinent details, claiming he couldn’t recollect basic facts about the events for which he billed the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office thousands of taxpayer dollars.
    Wade acknowledged billing the county for an eight-hour conference “with White House Counsel” at a $250-an-hour rate equaling $2,000 total on May 23, 2022.

    Although, according to the invoice’s entry, Wade supposedly spent an entire business day conferencing with the Biden-Harris White House, Wade claimed he could not recall which individuals were involved in the meeting, where exactly it occurred (whether he traveled to Athens or D.C.), or if the meeting took place in person or over the phone.

    Wade also confirmed that he billed the DA’s office another eight hours on November 18, 2022, for an “Interview with DC/White House.” Again, he maintained that he did not remember meeting specifics, including who was in attendance or its subject matter.

    Additionally, Wade confirmed that he billed the county 24 hours (this time totaling $6,000 total) between September 7, 2022, and September 9, 2022, for “Witness Interviews; conf call DC; team meeting.” Wade again denied remembering who was on the conference call or which witnesses were interviewed.

    During the deposition, Wade said the phrases, “I can’t recall,” “I don’t recall,” or “I don’t know,” nearly 60 times.

    Wade also confirmed that he met with “individuals associated with the January 6th Committee” several times in 2022 but refused to reveal relevant details about these meetings.

    Wade denied communicating directly with members or staff of the J6 committee, saying he instead communicated with individuals connected to the committee. When grilled on particulars, Wade said he spoke with “lawyers” but didn’t say whom these attorneys represented nor did he name the legal counsel.

    Wade confirmed that he billed the DA’s office 24 hours (another $6,000 receipt) between April 18, 2022, and April 21, 2022, for a “Team meeting; Conf w/Jan 6; Research legal issues to prep interv.” Wade denied expanding on what “Conf with Jan 6” meant, as well as whether he met with anyone associated with the J6 committee on those dates, and if these conferences occurred physically or via phone.

    Wade confirmed that he charged the county eight hours on November 16, 2022, for a “Jan 6 meeting and Atty conf.” However, he could not recall whom he met, the contents of the conference, and whether it was an in-person meeting or a phone call. Wade testified that the information would be found in the case files he had left with the DA’s office upon his resignation.

    Leftists project their own sins upon their political opponents. When they claim Trump will target them if elected, it’s because that’s what they are doing to Trump.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  434. These endless discussions of the Loser’s psychiatric problems have imposed considerable opportunity costs on us. We find it more and more difficult to find the time to have serious discussions.

    For example, the shape of the navy in the coming years. James Stavridis, who knows a little about the navy, has some thoughts on the subject, that we should be considering, now.

    Today’s surface warships, like the guided missile destroyer I commanded three decades ago, are very capable at shooting down incoming missiles with missiles of their own. But such weapons are costly and expended far more quickly in combat — the destroyers operating in the Red Sea typically have around 60 such antiaircraft missiles. And they can cost 10 times more than the drones they are shooting down.

    The immediate answer is likely going to be lasers. If a ship has sufficient electric generation, there is plenty of power to knock down incoming weapons with lasers. When those lasers are guided by advanced phased array radars, they will tip the balance away from the drones and back toward the defenders.

    (Links omitted.)
    Decades ago, both parties had leaders that could discuss defense problems, seriously. Now?

    Jim Miller (d55e2e)

  435. The weed is for the weird chuckles, the mushrooms for the weird visions, and the ketamine for lowing his inhibitions to go out and talk while under the influence of the first two.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  436. I will try to put this simply, in the hopes that you can understand it, paul.

    A basis for a statement is not proof of that statement. It is simply a factoid that argues in its favor, like “Mark Furman is a racist, so OJ is innocent.” It may not convince. It may not offer much support. It may even be silly beyond words. But it is a basis, just as “lightning” is a basis for believing in Thor.

    No where in that definition does it say it is proof. Just “support.”

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  437. Also, I didn’t say “baseless”, so I don’t know why you’re ragging on me for something I didn’t say. Maybe take a nap or something.

    I didn’t way you did. Why did you think I did. I was referring to the MSM refrain, using “baseless” when they mean “unconvincing.”

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  438. As for naps, you seem to be on everyone’s bad side today.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  439. I know you said that, which is why I asked you what evidence you had to support it. What swayed you to believe something otherwise?

    He provided the evidence in the original post. You may not find it compelling, irrefutable, or exculpatory, but it is evidence.

    Sorry.

    SaveFarris (8664e3)

  440. As for naps, you seem to be on everyone’s bad side today.

    No, just the MAGAs, and you know who they are. Interesting that “swayed” triggered you.

    I didn’t way you did. Why did you think I did.

    Because you brought up “baseless” in your reply, several times over, even though I never brought it up.

    This is the third time I’m asking…you said there “some basis” for “Trump’s claims about the 2020 election”. What is the underlying support or foundation for such claims? I really don’t know why you’re so defensive or evasive or trying throw this back on me. It’s just a question.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  441. Jim Miller (d55e2e) — 10/21/2024 @ 4:55 pm

    A couple of interesting articles about drone defense:

    Why Lasers Could Be Kryptonite for Drones

    Earlier this year the U.S. Army shot down a number of hostile drones in the Middle East using a weapon long dismissed as more science fiction than reality—the laser.
    ………..
    The role of lasers is likely to be narrow for the foreseeable future because of their large energy needs, limited range and problems with bad weather. But militaries say the new weapons could prove an effective way to shoot down drones, a key task as they look for cheaper ways to counter a proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in combat.
    …………
    The U.S. has successfully deployed lasers at various places in the Middle East to shoot down UAVs, according to (Doug Bush, the U.S. Army’s assistant secretary for acquisitions, logistics and technology). The U.S. Army declined to detail the operations.

    Military lasers have gained ground in recent years because of advances in the technology and a growing need to find more cost-effective weapons amid the increasing threat from drones.
    ………..
    For example, the U.K. government says the cost of operating its DragonFire laser is less than $13 a shot. Britain announced the weapon to much fanfare earlier this year, lauding its ability to hit a target the size of a coin from a kilometer away.
    ………..
    In the late 1990s, the U.S. Air Force and Boeing built a 12,000-pound laser that they shoehorned into a 747 aircraft. The so-called Airborne Laser was intended to shoot down planes and missiles that were hundreds of miles away, but it faced numerous problems.

    One challenge was generating the huge amount of energy needed to produce a powerful beam over long distances, said Subrata Ghoshroy, an expert on laser technology who in 1997 presented a critical report on the project to a congressional committee. Any blemish on lenses that the laser passed through would also distort the beam, he said.

    The Airborne Laser project was canceled after a decade, having cost about $6 billion.
    ………..
    One significant advancement has been the use of fiber lasers, first developed by the telecoms industry, said Paul Gray, a business-development executive at QinetiQ, a British company that helped develop the DragonFire weapon.

    Fiber lasers amplify and focus light from hundreds of strands into a single beam. Earlier systems often relied on hazardous chemicals or gases to generate lasers.
    …………
    Israel has long touted its Iron Beam laser weapon, but its developer, Rafael, says the system isn’t scheduled to be operational until the end of 2025. In the near term, laser weapons aren’t likely to defend against the sort of missile barrages that Israel has recently faced, experts say. That is because missiles travel at exceedingly high speeds and laser weapons have a relatively short range.
    ………….
    The U.S. Department of Defense still spends about $1 billion annually on developing lasers and other so-called directed-energy weapons, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
    ………….
    In the Middle East, the U.S. is trialing two that can be mounted on vehicles. One, capable of firing beams of 50 kW, has been placed onto a Stryker armored vehicle, while another 20 kW system is being trialed on lighter vehicles.

    Keeping large amounts of energy focused on a target has long been the problem. Laser systems typically give off a lot of heat, with some systems losing up to 75% of the energy they generate, according to GAO.
    ………….
    Britain’s DragonFire laser requires a generator so large it is housed in a 20ft container, which needs to be placed on a ship or truck.
    ………….
    Lasers’ biggest problem, though, may be the weather. Any rain, cloud, dust, wind or turbulence can absorb the beam and scatter it, experts say.

    When South Korea tested a laser against a group of drones in July, the system failed to immediately identify and track one of the targets when clouds appeared. An official told reporters at the time that the laser’s performance deteriorates in poor weather.
    ………..

    And

    How College Students Beat Boeing in a Battle to Take Down Drones

    In an antidrone technology competition earlier this year, Boeing showcased a futuristic laser weapon that can punch a hole straight through a hostile aerial threat.

    The multinational—and several other defense giants—lost to four college students who knocked drones out of the sky using sound waves. The rookies’ device was developed in the backyard of one of the student’s parents, using an old car speaker.
    …………
    The four University of Toronto engineering students spent around $17,000 of their own money to develop their antidrone technology. Their speakerlike device blasts ultrasound waves that destabilize a drone’s navigation systems, sending them off course or crashing to the ground.

    Now comes the hard part. The newbies want to turn their prototype into battlefield-ready equipment. They need to raise funds, refine their technology and turn initial interest into orders.
    ………..
    All materials have a so-called resonant frequency—the point at which they vibrate most when hit by sound waves—and (Anna Poletaeva, who is studying materials science), reasoned this could be used to destabilize drones midair. It is akin to the science class demonstration of shattering a wine glass with sound.

    (Poletaeva and Parth Mahendru), an aerospace-engineering student, enlisted Asad Ishaq, a robotics student, who unscrewed two “tweeter” speakers from his car. Tweeters produce higher-pitch sounds, which the team blasted at drone components in Mahendru’s living room. An electrical engineer, Michael Acquaviva, joined to build the device’s circuitry.
    ………..
    At the competition, held at a military base in southern Alberta in June, the mismatch was clear. Rival teams drove large SUVs and turned up to breakfast wearing company-branded clothing.

    Nevertheless, (the) system knocked one drone out of the sky and sent others veering off direction. The students placed second out of 15 entries alongside another four-person startup. The winner was a laser weapon from AIM Defence, a small Australian company.

    Mahendru had arrived in Alberta with almost $9,000 in credit-card debt from funding the project. His company left with the equivalent of more than $270,000 in prize money.
    …………
    …………Canadian Army officials have indicated that they could be interested, Acquaviva said, if the company can increase the range at which it stops drones to at least 100 meters, up from 50 meters.

    That might not be easy. Using sound waves to destabilize a drone at greater distances is harder because they dissipate on hitting the air, said Gregory Falco, a professor at Cornell University and an expert in aerospace security.

    “They will need a lot more sound,” or figure out how to better direct the waves to the target, Falco said.

    Poletaeva said the company is confident in getting past 100 meters but that surpassing 150 meters will be tricky. There are various ways to amplify sound waves, including using magnets and lenses, she added.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  442. He provided the evidence in the original post. You may not find it compelling, irrefutable, or exculpatory, but it is evidence.

    Except it isn’t evidence, it’s allegation, supported by…basically bupkes. This has been a problem with Cult Orange Jesus ever since he started his Big Lie, mistaking allegations as evidence.

    Evidence: “the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.
    Allegation: “a claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically one made without proof.”
    –Oxford Dictionary

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  443. Court rejects GOP bid to tighten overseas voting rules in Michigan
    …………
    Michigan Court of Claims Judge Sima Patel turned down arguments from the Republican National Committee, the Michigan Republican Party and a local elections clerk that the state’s policy allowing some Americans who’ve never lived in the state to register to vote there violated the state constitution.

    “The challenged language in the Secretary of State Election Officials Manual … is consistent with federal and state law, and the Michigan Constitution,” Patel wrote in a 20-page opinion Monday. “Because the Manual language comports with the Michigan Constitution and statutes, there is no ground to invalidate it.”

    The GOP suit focused on the state’s practice permitting American spouses and dependents of former Michigan residents living abroad to register at the family member’s former Michigan address as long as they aren’t registered elsewhere in the U.S. GOP lawyers said the provision, established in Michigan laws passed in 1956 and 1971, ran afoul of part of the state constitution requiring someone to reside in Michigan for six months before voting there.
    ………..
    “Consistent with federal law, the Michigan Legislature made a policy choice to allow a small pool of individuals who accompany family members abroad to qualify as Michigan residents for the purpose of voting in Michigan because they are connected to Michigan through their spouse, parent, or someone serving a parental role,” Patel wrote.

    Patel said another basis to dismiss the suit was that it was filed just 28 days before Election Day and that trying to alter the system now would result in “extreme prejudice” to would-be voters and election administrators.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  444. Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 10/21/2024 @ 5:54 pm

    Related:

    A GOP challenge to Pennsylvania’s procedures for overseas voters appeared to run aground here Friday as a federal judge called the lawsuit “creative,” but repeatedly raised questions about why it was filed less than six weeks before Election Day.

    “The delay here isn’t only a matter of weeks or months, it’s years,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner said during an hourlong hearing, where he also expressed doubts about whether the interests of the six Republican members of Congress backing the suit are concrete enough to move the case forward in federal court.

    The suit claims Republican Secretary of State Al Schmidt is violating state and federal law by failing to verify the identity of voters who register under federally mandated procedures for overseas voters.
    ………..
    A lawyer for the state, Thomas Howell, said the rules around voters registering from abroad have been in place for about 12 years and he warned against “abrupt relief” at a point where ballots have already been sent and, in some cases, returned by overseas voters. “All of this is in motion,” Howell said.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  445. Hi Paul
    COVID disruptions
    Obliteration of ID requirements
    Chain of custody broken- first Presidential Election to allow ballot harvesting

    There was ample evidence of chain of custody issues with ballots-opportunity to cheat- and the FBI/DOJ looked at it for 4 weeks and alleged no widespread illegality. The “proof” typically was found in assertions similar to “we looked and we didn’t find…” which seemed odd to attentive students of human behavior and begged the questions:
    We are talking about humans involved in a hyper-passionate enterprise in a hyper partisan environment where opportunities abound- correct?
    Follow up question please- how hard did you look?
    I dismiss the FBI/DOJ claims as unprovable either way because the DOJ/FBI evidence depends on me believing them- and I do not.

    My dismissal isn’t proof of anything, except of my thought that there is a slick ooze running in some of the halls at DOJ. I’m not trying to convince anyone there was proof of cheating or justify Jan6
    I think that the basis for belief there was no cheating is that the DOJ/FBI is a trustworthy institution, and a honest broker of information. Disbelief the converse. Others choose to be agnostic and situational.

    Intelligent well meaning people can trust, distrust, and be agnostic towards the FBI/DOJ.

    steveg (04876c)

  446. There was ample evidence of chain of custody issues with ballots…

    This is where we depart, steve, because there were ample allegations, not evidence.

    Follow up question please- how hard did you look?

    This is burden-shifting. The onus is on the parties who are alleging fraud. It’s on you to prove, not me to disprove. I accept the certified results from all 3,143 counties in America, where those elections offices concluded that the votes were fairly and accurately tabulated.

    Nevertheless, I have looked into scores–maybe hundreds–of allegations of fraud and other malfeasance for the last 47 months, and hardly any have panned out. To date, I have no reason, no factual evidence, to change my conclusion that there’s no evidence of serious fraud.

    What do I mean my serious fraud? That there were enough fraudulent or illegitimate ballots that could’ve altered the outcome in any single state. But to win the Electoral College, Trump needed at least three states.

    The fact is that there were fraudulent ballots, but they numbered in the hundreds, but Trump needed thousands or tens of thousands, and most or all of them had to go his way, which isn’t real. The reality is that the fraudulent ballots were fairly bipartisan. Just look at the ballot fraud at The Villages, for example.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  447. There has been proven systematic attempted fraud in the election or election aftermath.

    Guess by whom.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  448. I would like some MAGAs to tell me how great Trump has been in his campaign events the last few weeks.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  449. Be specific

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  450. “Arnold Palmer was all man, and I say that in all due respect to women — and I love women[eww]. But this guy, this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.'”

    12 minutes…

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  451. We’re now in a simulation. This is all an episode of Black Mirror.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  452. BTW, the two docs on the Israeli response was widely distributed. Not just the US, but all Five Eyes partners, so unless they used some standard anti-espionage selective word choices in the reports, then it will be hard to find out who leaked it. The largest users of Telegram are India, Russia, and Europe then America.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  453. I would like to note that ballots to members of the military overseas go through military mail and are distributed at the overseas secure military facility into the hands of the serving member of the military. They are returned to the US by someone who has access to the secure military facility who gives them to the secured military post office to return to the states through military mail. The identity of the person receiving the mail is very very very checked and the identity of their dependents are very very checked. They have to check your fingerprints when you work for the school system. At the time I had mine done it could take up to 2 weeks. Mine cleared same-day.

    Nic (120c94)

  454. Race car drivers Danica Patrick and Hailie Deegan are supporting trump just like hanna reitsch supported hitler landing on a street near hitler’s bunker in april 1945. I have the misfortune of being big fans of both. I sure hope Isabella Robusto and Chloe Chambers stay out of politics.

    asset (37a90e)

  455. MyrmecophAGA sustain themselves through volume. The hairless orange breed with innumerable piddly little lies and hogwash that are just too exhausting and tedious to be addressed individually.

    nk (7660c3)

  456. 464 I think they were publicly posted in order not to leave clues as to who was running the spy network.

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  457. in Michigan laws passed in 1956 and 1971, ran afoul of part of the state constitution requiring someone to reside in Michigan for six months before voting there.

    Overruled by the US> Supreme Court in 1972 I think, which reduced it to 30 days. But even with 30 days you can have the issue.

    I think the whole idea possibly behind the lawsuit is, if they were to win, to later ask for the whole election to be thrown out and have the Michigan state legislature pick the electors, but so far they are cautious about asking and it’s too early.

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  458. Jon Stewart, on the absurdity and menace of it all.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  459. Same *trump*, different year.

    nk (7660c3)

  460. It’s been Russia, Russia, Russia since 2015, and there is a basis for it, based on evidence, not allegation.

    A Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote wild and baseless claims that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sexually assaulted one of his former students, according to several specialists tracking the disinformation campaign.

    Experts believe that the campaign is tied to a network called Storm-1516, which has been linked to, among other things, a previous effort that falsely claimed vice president Kamala Harris perpetrated a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  461. Kamala has a scripted townhhall with “pre-determined questions. ” Nary a peep from the usual suspects.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  462. @460

    I would like some MAGAs to tell me how great Trump has been in his campaign events the last few weeks.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 10/21/2024 @ 8:34 pm

    Since I’m a bit of an Eeyore about both campaigns, the thing I think with Trump’s campaign that seems to be resonating, or at least creating enthusiasms is that Trump truly enjoys the “game” of politicking.

    Harris, on the other hand, is mirthless. She comes across as a communist political commissar off to ruin some poor schmuck’s life at a struggle session. I’d hazard that she’s worse at this than HRC, she’s just that entirely unappealing.

    At this stage of the game that, more than anything else, is looking like the kiss of death.

    whembly (477db6)

  463. @473

    Kamala has a scripted townhhall with “pre-determined questions. ” Nary a peep from the usual suspects.

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 10/22/2024 @ 5:42 am

    So what you’re saying is that the “fake townhall” was a “stunt”?

    Should we be clutching pearls or nah?

    whembly (477db6)

  464. Good story on the “analyst” who blew the whistle on Trump’s “perfect call” with Zelenskyy. There’s a slightly better than 50% chance that this chaos will return to the White House.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  465. How is the British Labour Party sending people to campaign for Kamala legal?

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  466. Why is cattle rustling illegal and dry leaves rustling is not?

    nk (b465bf)

  467. @477

    How is the British Labour Party sending people to campaign for Kamala legal?

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 10/22/2024 @ 7:04 am

    meh…

    Hadn’t care about what the redcoats thinks since 1776.

    whembly (477db6)

  468. They’ve got nothing whembly. They’re out of gas(lighting) and lies.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  469. Good Enough for Russia, why not England (or the EU) or Japan, India, China…..

    Joe (584b3d)

  470. Quote:

    Under federal election law, foreign citizens can campaign in the US, providing they are not paid and have no influence on decision-making by party operatives.

    However, an election lawyer has warned that it is likely they would breach a separate law on campaign donations.

    Under the federal law, the travel expenses of a volunteer are considered a donation to the party they work for if they exceed $1,000 (£770) in one election.

    So if they can scare up a sub-$1,000 fare across the pond, then it’s kosher, but it doesn’t sound worth it to me.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  471. https://x.com/IDF/status/1848436265143677104

    Brilliant move by the IDF to show where these terrorists are hiding their millions as well as the access locations to their terrorist “vault.”

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  472. Election Interference:

    An indictment was unsealed today charging a Pennsylvania man with threatening to kill a representative of a state political party who was recruiting official poll watchers.

    According to the indictment, on Sept. 6, John Pollard, 62, of Philadelphia, sent threatening text messages to Victim 1. Victim 1 had previously posted online, in Victim 1’s capacity as an employee of a state political party, that Victim 1 was recruiting volunteers to “help[] observe at the polls on Election Day” and included Victim 1’s phone number. Pollard allegedly texted Victim 1 that he was “interested in being a poll watcher” and included Victim 1’s first name. Pollard then allegedly texted three threats to Victim 1:

    “I will KILL YOU IF YOU DON’T ANSWER ME!”

    “Your days are numbered, B****!”

    “GONNA F***ING FIND YOU AND SKIN YOU ALIVE AND USE YOUR SKIN FOR F***ING TOILET PAPER, YOU F***ING KKK**T!”

    Pollard was arrested today and appeared in federal court in Philadelphia. He is charged with one count of transmitting interstate threats. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  473. Kamala has a scripted townhhall with “pre-determined questions. ” Nary a peep from the usual suspects.

    Did she spend 12 minutes talking about Willy’s willy?

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  474. So a selling point on Trump is likes to play the “game” of politics. OK, he does, but substance has to account for something, and what he says has to matter more than how good of a time he’s having saying nothing.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  475. https://x.com/Heminator/status/1848734660722823263

    More from the plagiarist Kamala.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  476. So a selling point on Trump is likes to play the “game” of politics. OK, he does, but substance has to account for something, and what he says has to matter more than how good of a time he’s having saying nothing.

    Really, REALLY hard to make this argument if Harris is on the other side of the ballot.

    Impossible, even.

    SaveFarris (79ab12)

  477. Cue the Jeffersons theme song, because Freeman-Moss are moving on up.

    A federal judge on Tuesday ordered former Donald Trump attorney and New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to turn over all his valuable possessions and his Manhattan penthouse apartment to the control of Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the Georgia election workers he defamed and to whom he now owes $150 million.

    Judge Lewis Liman of the federal court in Manhattan said Giuliani must turn over his interest in the property to the women in seven days, to a receivership they will control. The judge’s turnover order of the luxury items is swift and simple, but the penthouse apartment will have its control transferred so Freeman and Moss can sell it, potentially for millions of dollars.

    Never go Full Trump. It’ll cost.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  478. 476.

    In the weeks before Hill left government, she had become concerned that figures close to the president, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were trying to pressure Ukrainian officials for personal and political favors.

    Nothing that intelligent was going on.

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  479. I found from minute 50 on to be the most interesting

    https://cafe.com/stay-tuned/trump-mueller-report-interference-zebley-goldstein/

    They did say that when choosing their team they did not discriminate over politics but thought in retrospect that person(s) “overly interested” in a particular outcome could have not been picked. Someone in the background mumbles “andrew”

    Zebley had been Mueller’s Chief of Staff and was known for being meticulous and principled- and despised by Weismann because of that. I am not a fan of Weismann and think less of people who choose to use people like him

    On the podcast, they were talking about conspiracy in the context of Trump in a speech asking Putin to send him the Clinton emails, and how almost immediately Clinton’s servers were attacked, and how they did not find that to meet all the criteria of criminal conspiracy- but instead found it to be “call and response”. They must not have had enough evidence of background communication to back up criminal conspiracy.

    Both were unhappy with Bill Barr, and I can see their point

    They stopped talking to Giuliani right away and only engaged with the more principled people on Trumps team- again, I see their point. He went from America’s Mayor to abject buffoon in the span of two decades

    steveg (04876c)

  480. #487

    Do remember that, like any politician’s book, Kamela’s book was ghostwritten. (There is a co-writer credit on the front of the book) So the role Kamela had in any plagiarism is obscure. It may be Kamela told a story, and the ghostwrier took notes, and then used the plagiarised langage to format the story Kamela told.

    Most of writing I see on this issue (the New York Post being the exception) simply ignores that Kamela used a ghost.

    Appalled (86b803)

  481. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.”

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  482. Army ordered to release records on Trump’s Arlington cemetery visit

    A federal judge has ordered Army officials to release their records by the end of this week regarding President Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Arlington National Cemetery this summer.

    Senior Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday granted the release request as part of a lawsuit brought by American Oversight, a non-partisan, nonprofit group dedicated to getting the government to release records.
    ………….
    Trump campaign officials also initially promised to release video proving that they followed all appropriate cemetery rules, but have thus far declined to provide any such proof.

    The unreleased Army records could provide more insight into the level of confrontation between Trump staffers and cemetery staff on the day, and whether the former president helped calm or inflame the situation.

    Tuesday’s court order calls for Army officials to make public “responsive, non-exempt records,” which could allow service officials to continue shielding the identity of the employee who claimed to have been assaulted.
    ………….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  483. But didn’t Kamala have approval on the book? (just like someone who gives a speech has approval of the words. But then in that case, they at least read them.)

    I know Donald Trump has been accused or suspected of not having read some of the books that he “wrote.”

    There’s the implication that the whole anecdote she tells was made up as far as her role is concerned. The X-Twitter post doesn’t carry the story further past the extreme plagiarism so we don’t know how if Kamala Harris tried to connect herself in any way to the story of “Kelly” getting away from her pimp. Is it supposed to be motivation for something Kamala Harris did?

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  484. Judge tosses Mark Meadows’ bid to obtain White House records for use in Ga. criminal case

    A federal judge has thrown out former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ bid to obtain a large trove of records from the National Archives aimed at bolstering his defense against criminal charges in Georgia.

    U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly ruled on Tuesday that Meadows’ effort — which he initially brought in a local D.C. court but was transferred to federal court — was flawed from the start. Though a judge in Georgia had authorized Meadows to pursue the records, Kelly noted that state courts rarely have authority over action taken against a federal agency.

    “The Court cannot bypass this jurisdictional defect,” Kelly, a Donald Trump appointee, ruled.

    Meadows had hoped to access emails, text messages and other White House documents held by the National Archives to help prepare his defense against criminal charges brought against him in Georgia for his role in aiding Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 results in the state.
    ………..
    The former Republican congressman from North Carolina was a ubiquitous presence as Trump sought to subvert the 2020 election, coordinating messages with the campaign, state officials and the RNC. He was ultimately charged in Georgia by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for his involvement in Trump’s effort to flip the outcome in the state.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  485. Trump’s been sued by the Central Park Five because he said in his debate with Kamala Harris that they pled guilty – and also that her woman who was raped later died.

    In reality, they confessed but they never pled guilty and the woman did not die, though the fact she was expected to die had a lot to do with the boys confessing to something less serious (not realizing that admitting to helping a rape would make them guilty of rape) and also with Trump placing the advertisement in 1989 advocating the return of the death penalty (The ad never mentioned any specific crime.)

    What elicited the confessions was the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” plus the fact they had probably really done some things that were wrong. hey all believed that someone among them had really raped the jogger. They had been assaulting people.

    Some boys that were interrogated never confessed to knowing anything about it and they were never charged.

    I think Trump saying they pled guilty and that the woman died might be evidence of a bad memory although the situation has been brought up before somewhat recently and he should know there’s a difference between confessing and pleading guilty. I think their reputation was not harmed very much, if at all, by Trump’s words since they are in a position to can correct it and he never mentioned any names.

    It’s a public controversy – and it’s not liker anybody who knows them is likely to believe Trump is right. Trump should just be given a chance to correct himself ad he may genuinely not understand they have not a shred of guilt there.

    DNA proved that a man they did not know was the rapist. The problem was that the Central Park jogger had o memory of the assault so it could have been by a bunch of people.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  486. I think Trump saying they pled guilty and that the woman died might be evidence of a bad memory although the situation has been brought up before somewhat recently and he should know there’s a difference between confessing and pleading guilty. I think their reputation was not harmed very much, if at all, by Trump’s words since they are in a position to can correct it and he never mentioned any names.

    It’s a public controversy – and it’s not liker anybody who knows them is likely to believe Trump is right. Trump should just be given a chance to correct himself ad he may genuinely not understand they have not a shred of guilt there.

    That’s damning of his cognitive abilities.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  487. Reckless disregard of the truth is, for Trump, a distant and unattainable horizon. He’ll say anything that suits his purpose at the moment without any regard whatsoever for the truth. And I think that a New York jury will see it the same way too.

    nk (b465bf)

  488. steveg (04876c) — 10/22/2024 @ 1:06 pm

    On the podcast, they were talking about conspiracy in the context of Trump in a speech asking Putin to send him the Clinton emails,

    In a press conference on July 11, 2016, a few days after the Wikileaks leaks, , in answer to a question, and it was to make them public.. In this scenario, the Russians already had the emails that Hillary had deleted.

    https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-putin-no-relationship-226282

    Donald Trump invited Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails on Wednesday, asking one of America’s longstanding geopolitical adversaries to find “the 30,000 emails that are missing” from the personal server she used during her time as secretary of state.

    “I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” the Republican nominee said at a news conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

    Trump later said that was a joke.

    The emails were thought deleted, although it later turned out many were on Anthony Weiner’s laptop computer (The FBI later conducted a search without any human eyes seeing them so they couldn’t find anything new and surprising)

    and how almost immediately Clinton’s servers were attacked, and how they did not find that to meet all the criteria of criminal conspiracy-

    There wasn’t any. Trump clearly was not in communication with Russia if he had to make such a statement publicly. It is not clear if there was a special extra effort made by Russia. But again, they were supposedly all deleted, so Trump’s request for Russia to “find” it was impossible.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  489. I said there were pro-Hamas spies in Israel. There’s been an arrest but of spies for Hezbollah.

    From an email newsletter:

    Seven Jewish Israelis from the Haifa area, among them two minors and an IDF deserter, were also arrested for giving Iran information that allowed Tehran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah to target IDF bases in missile strikes.

    The alleged spies did not help Hamas with its Oct. 7 attack, Israeli Police told Israel Hayom,

    Those would have been other spies. I think they had inside information on the Nova music festival

    but “every missile shot at [Israel] from Gaza, Lebanon or Iran in the last two years reached places that they photographed and sent to the Iranians, especially in the last year.” A senior Shin Bet official said that the cell “inflicted security damage on the state.”

    The agents were caught red-handed photographing an Israeli official’s home; police would not confirm to Israeli media that it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Caesarea home was struck by a Hezbollah missile over the weekend.

    Probably caught after the fact, for Iran to to assess damage

    The alleged spies, immigrants from Azerbaijan, were recruited by a Turkish intermediary, but the ring’s leader eventually knew the information was going to Iran. They completed 600-700 missions, gathering intelligence for Iran over the past two years, an unusually long time for such a cell.

    They photographed IDF bases and Iron Dome batteries and were found to have maps of IDF bases. They also took pictures of the damage caused by Iran’s two missile attacks on Israel this year and assessed the missiles’ accuracy for Tehran.

    They were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency for their efforts, as well as in cash from Russian messengers. Police said the agents said they were “addicted to the money.”

    Last week, two other Israelis were arrested for working for Iranian intelligence, starting with spraying graffiti and distributing posters, and later setting cars on fire, targeting ATMs and starting forest fires, according to police and the Shin Bet. The lead contact for Iran was recruited via social media, paid $5,000 and attempted to recruit homeless people to join him. One of the duo agreed to throw a grenade meant to assassinate a prominent Israeli official and was found to have tried to purchase weapons.

    The crime of helping the enemy in wartime can carry a life sentence or even the death penalty, the latter of which was last meted out in 1962 when Adolf Eichmann was hanged after a trial.

    Iran is “going for quantity, not quality. They’ll take anyone who can help,” Ben Sabti, a researcher at the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said. “It’s like their missiles — they don’t care if they’re the most accurate or hitting the most important targets… It’s meant to terrorize.”

    “It’s very unusual that a Jew would spy for a Muslim enemy,” Sabti pointed out.

    Sabti posited that recent immigrants can be soft targets, and Iran may have an easier time getting to Azeris, as the countries border on each other and are in some ways culturally similar.

    And they probably didn’t really feel Jewish and some may even have not been by religious standards.

    “There are populations that aren’t absorbed well [into Israeli society]. People have a lot of complaints soon after making aliyah,” he said. “These are people who miss home and say it was better there and hard [in Israel], and then someone embraces them and slowly they deteriorate… Then, once you get the money, it’s over.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  490. Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/21/2024 @ 5:12 pm

    I was referring to the MSM refrain, using “baseless” when they mean “unconvincing.

    Too many in the MSM think they have to mention that something is false or unfounded. That does not help.

    I think by “baseless” they mean something stronger than “unconvincing.”

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  491. Paul Montagu @482. The whole thing is an independent expenditure. By the British Labour Party.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  492. 453. Both the lasers and the ultrasound sound interesting and low cost and worth having but they are both defenses of last resort.

    The laser is more versatile, but might nit work in cloudy situations where the attacker is using GPS. The ultrasound device would maybe work in more situations but has to be fine tuned to the particular missile and if the enemy gets a new or different missile it won’t work till they can create or modify a ultrasound. But there are only a limited number of missile possibilities.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  493. Maduro’s claim that he won the Venezuelan presidential election really was baseless.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  494. The Dominion machines can’t flip votes but the readers can be set to count Biden votes as Trump votes and Trump votes as Biden votes and the like.

    That would be obvious if it happened.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09)

  495. Here’s a Republican we can all support.

    “Decades of under management and neglect have turned too many of our public forests into crowded, diseased tinderboxes… I spent a dozen years in Congress fighting for more resources to responsibly manage our forests, remove the dead and diseased trees that serve as fuel for the fires that plague us every summer, and quickly fight the fires that do occur. I’ll do the same as Lands Commissioner.”

    Her personal story should touch everyone’s heart.

    In May 2013, Herrera Beutler announced that she and her husband were expecting their first child. In June 2013, she announced that her unborn child had been diagnosed with Potter’s Syndrome, an often fatal condition in which abnormally low amniotic fluid caused by impaired kidney function inhibits normal lung development. A stranger who read the news suggested that she try an experimental treatment: saline injections into her uterus that would enable the baby to develop without kidneys. She said she tried several hospitals, and told CNN that “most wouldn’t even return her calls”. Finally, a doctor at Johns Hopkins agreed to try this treatment. The results were instantaneous. For four weeks, she drove every morning from the District of Columbia to Baltimore for injections.[85]

    Herrera Beutler is the ninth woman in history to give birth while serving in Congress.[86][87] On July 29, 2013, it was announced that her baby had been born two weeks earlier, at 28 weeks’ gestation. The girl, Abigail, was born without kidneys, and became the first child in recorded medical history to breathe on her own without both kidneys. In a Facebook post, Herrera Beutler said, “She is every bit a miracle.”[88] On July 24, 2013, Herrera Beutler was absent for a roll call vote concerning the NSA, citing health reasons. When she revealed Abigail’s birth, it was understood that it was her reason for missing what was considered an important vote.

    We need many more like her.

    For the record: I am not rich, but will be sending her a small donation.

    Jim Miller (a70e1c)

  496. Democrat party trump is a threat to democracy! He might fix primaries like we have been doing to prevent Sanders and RFK jr. from getting the nomination or prevent political opponents like Jill Stein from getting on the ballot.

    asset (61ca9d)

  497. Latest usa today suffolk poll latinx voters harris 38% trump 49% and 29% blacks support trump.

    asset (61ca9d)

  498. Do remember that, like any politician’s book, Kamela’s book was ghostwritten. (There is a co-writer credit on the front of the book) So the role Kamela had in any plagiarism is obscure. It may be Kamela told a story, and the ghostwrier took notes, and then used the plagiarised langage to format the story Kamela told.

    Most of writing I see on this issue (the New York Post being the exception) simply ignores that Kamela used a ghost.

    Appalled (86b803) — 10/22/2024 @ 1:21 pm

    Do remember that her speeches as AG aren’t from her book. Click the link.

    Thanks.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  499. Did she plagiarize modern day Nazis?

    “I never knew that Hitler said it,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday, volunteering once again that he never read Hitler’s biographical manifesto, “Mein Kampf.”

    “I know nothing about Hitler,” he insisted. “I have no idea what Hitler said other than (what) I’ve seen on the news. And that’s a very, entirely different thing than what I’m saying.”

    It’s weird that he’s never heard of Hitler before.

    Or that he evolved his positions that now his words are so well aligned.

    Seems to be kind of a bad thing, regardless of how you get to the “poisoning the blood of our country” bit.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  500. Similar to the long NYT piece on all of Trump’s scandals, The Atlantic covers the long litany of Trump’s involvement with the military. This one is new…

    In April 2020, Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.

    Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers, and members of Congress took up the cause of reform. Shortly after her remains were discovered, President Donald Trump himself invited the Guillén family to the White House. With Guillén’s mother seated beside him, Trump spent 25 minutes with the family as television cameras recorded the scene.

    In the meeting, Trump maintained a dignified posture and expressed sympathy to Guillén’s mother. “I saw what happened to your daughter Vanessa, who was a spectacular person, and respected and loved by everybody, including in the military,” Trump said. Later in the conversation, he made a promise: “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”

    Natalie Khawam, the family’s attorney, responded, “I think the military will be paying—taking care of it.” Trump replied, “Good. They’ll do a military. That’s good. If you need help, I’ll help you out.” Later, a reporter covering the meeting asked Trump, “Have you offered to do that for other families before?” Trump responded, “I have. I have. Personally. I have to do it personally. I can’t do it through government.” The reporter then asked: “So you’ve written checks to help for other families before this?” Trump turned to the family, still present, and said, “I have, I have, because some families need help … Maybe you don’t need help, from a financial standpoint. I have no idea what—I just think it’s a horrific thing that happened. And if you did need help, I’m going to—I’ll be there to help you.”

    A public memorial service was held in Houston two weeks after the White House meeting. It was followed by a private funeral and burial in a local cemetery, attended by, among others, the mayor of Houston and the city’s police chief. Highways were shut down, and mourners lined the streets.

    Five months later, the secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, announced the results of an investigation. McCarthy cited numerous “leadership failures” at Fort Hood and relieved or suspended several officers, including the base’s commanding general. In a press conference, McCarthy said that the murder “shocked our conscience” and “forced us to take a critical look at our systems, our policies, and ourselves.”

    According to a person close to Trump at the time, the president was agitated by McCarthy’s comments and raised questions about the severity of the punishments dispensed to senior officers and noncommissioned officers.

    In an Oval Office meeting on December 4, 2020, officials gathered to discuss a separate national-security issue. Toward the end of the discussion, Trump asked for an update on the McCarthy investigation. Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense (Trump had fired his predecessor, Mark Esper, three weeks earlier, writing in a tweet, “Mark Esper has been terminated”), was in attendance, along with Miller’s chief of staff, Kash Patel. At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”

    According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.

    Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f–king Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “F–king people, trying to rip me off.”

    Khawam, the family attorney, told me she sent the bill to the White House, but no money was ever received by the family from Trump. Some of the costs, Khawam said, were covered by the Army (which offered, she said, to allow Guillén to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery) and some were covered by donations. Ultimately, Guillén was buried in Houston.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  501. Klink’s trolling is getting worse. But when you’re trying to excuse Kamala’s disastrous actions, I guess it’s to be expected.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  502. Nah, that’s not trolling. This is trolling:

    To compare Trump’s sensibilities with those of a gorilla whose head had been in violent contact with a variety of blunt instruments during its formative years would be risking the justifiable resentment of any gorilla whose head had been in violent contact with a variety of blunt instruments during its formative years.

    nk (b465bf)

  503. Georgia still on my mind:

    The Georgia Supreme Court won’t let the state election board enforce a slate of controversial new election rules that were passed by allies of Donald Trump, ruling Tuesday against Republicans who asked for them to be revived as early voting got underway in the critical battleground state.

    The order is a major victory for Democrats and others who have filed a slew of lawsuits against the rules, arguing the board exceeded its authority when it passed them.
    ……….
    Georgia, whose 16 electoral votes are crucial for both Trump and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, has been seeing high early voter turnout in the 2024 election. State election official Gabriel Sterling said on Tuesday that 25% of the state’s active voters have already cast a ballot.

    The unanimous decision from the conservative-majority court was technical; the justices did not rule on the legality of the seven rules but instead declined to pause a decision issued by a lower-court judge last week that struck them down.

    The order from Georgia’s highest court means the State Election Board cannot direct local election officials to follow the rules while a legal challenge to them plays out before the court. And it guarantees that the rules won’t affect this election cycle.

    The court on Tuesday also turned down a request from the Republicans for the justices to fast-track their review of the rules. The order said that the court would hear the case “in the ordinary course.”
    ………

    The rules that have been put on hold are:

    The Reasonable Inquiry Rule, which would require local election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into the completeness and accuracy of election results before certifying them;

    The Examination Rule, which would allow individual county election board members to examine all documents related to an election before certifying the results;

    The Drop Box Rule, which would require voters to provide a signature and photo ID when dropping off an absentee ballot at a drop box;

    The Surveillance Rule, which would require election officials to install video surveillance at all drop boxes and invalidate ballots from drop boxes without video surveillance;

    The Poll Watcher Rule that expands the areas where poll watchers can be positioned;

    The Daily Reporting Rule, which adds further requirements to what is already required in daily absentee ballot reports submitted by county boards of registrars; and

    The Hand Count Rule, which requires election officials to hand count ballots on Election Day.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  504. I notice that no MAGAts actually refute Trump’s saying all these things. It’s just bad that someone points out that Trump’s saying all of these things.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  505. Donald Trump files legal complaint against UK Labour Party over help for Kamala Harris

    Donald Trump has filed a legal complaint against Britain’s ruling Labour Party after its activists traveled to the U.S. to support his rival Kamala Harris.

    A U.K. Labour staffer revealed on LinkedIn last week that almost 100 party officials were heading across the Atlantic to campaign for the U.S. Democrats in key swing states, ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

    Labour insists it is not funding the travel or accommodation for the activists, meaning its efforts remain within strict U.S. federal election rules which stipulate foreign volunteers can’t spend more than $1,000 helping candidates.

    But the Trump campaign questioned those sums in its formal letter to the Federal Election Commission, arguing the LinkedIn post suggested Labour could be stumping up costs for the activists.

    “Those searching for foreign interference in our elections need to look no further than [the] LinkedIn post,” said the letter, from Trump campaign lawyer Gary Lawkowski. “The interference is occurring in plain sight.”

    Lawkowski demanded the FEC launch an immediate investigation into the matter.
    …………

    The FEC (if it accepts the complaint) will get around to this in about two years.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  506. This one is new…

    Her sister has already come out and denied the entire Atlantic article.

    https://x.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1848831417012392116

    Once again, Goldberg has been caught lying again. Paula gonna want to rethink his lecture about baseless allegations…

    SaveFarris (fee06a)

  507. I notice that no MAGAts actually refute Trump’s saying all these things.

    Everyone named in the strong denies it. The only three that don’t are Goldberg and his “anonymous sources”.

    SaveFarris (6139a3)

  508. FYI: I voted for every Republican on the ballot, save for the guy at the top. Voted LP for the third election in a row.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  509. Her sister has already come out and denied the entire Atlantic article.

    False. She objected that Goldberg brought up her sister. She didn’t object to the content.
    The criminally indicted Meadows denied the content, but he’s a lying sh-tbag who worked directly under a lying sh-tbag. Goldberg cited “two people present at the meeting”.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  510. She objected that Goldberg brought up her sister. She didn’t object to the content.

    “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa.” sounds like an objection to the content.

    In addition to Meadows, there is also the Guillen family lawyer and 2 other Trump staffers, all who deny it on the record.

    Goldberg has yet to provide a shred of evidence to back up his “baseless” charge.

    SaveFarris (bbbd8e)

  511. Farris, the family lawyer wasn’t in the room when Trump said he wouldn’t spend “$60,000 bucks to bury a f–king Mexican”. Nor was Guillen. Goldberg used standard journalistic practice, getting two sources for that story.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  512. Standard journalistic practice is to not use anonymous sources, and to name them when every other person in the room denies the story on the record.

    Standard journalistic practice is also not to completely change an in the record comment.

    https://x.com/_WilliamsonBen/status/1848848591961338197

    The story is still baseless.

    SaveFarris (fee06a)

  513. Everyone named in the strong denies it. The only three that don’t are Goldberg and his “anonymous sources”.

    The “anonymous” source is Donald Trump’s mouth.

    BTW, Kelly confirming the things Trump said in private aren’t new, these reports came out in 2015, 16, 17, 18…

    Trump speaking about Merkel. “She told me she was amazed at the size of the crowds that came to see me speak, she said she could never get crowds like that. In fact, she told me that there was only one other political leader who ever got crowds as big as mine.”

    Trump’s former wife on Trump’s collection of Hitler’s speeches

    Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, “My New Order,” which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of “My New Order” in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade.

    On Mein Kampf

    Vanity Fair reporter Marie Brenner asked Trump if his cousin had given up a copy of the book to him. She wrote this is how Trump responded:

    “Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of ‘Mein Kampf,’ and he’s a Jew,” Trump told Brenner.

    Brenner then asked Marty Davis whether he gave Trump a copy of the book.

    “I did give him a book about Hitler,’ Davis told her. “But it was ‘My New Order,’ Hitler’s speeches, not ‘Mein Kampf.’ I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”

    Brenner then wrote that Trump told her: “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”

    In other words, Trump’s denial in Iowa that he had read “Mein Kampf” was not the first time he has denied reading Hitler — or the first time there was reason for him to issue such a denial.

    Now, that was in 1990, so before Trump was so mentally incapacitated, like a typical dementia patient, he might not remember where he heard/read these things, but there’s no denying your eyes and ears, he’s saying it now, he’s been saying it for decades.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  514. @517

    POLITICO reported last week how U.K. Labour and the U.S. Democrats, including center-left think tanks in Washington and London, have been coordinating in a bid to boost their electoral chances.

    Alleging election interference is sort of burying the lede. Democrats are joining forces with Socialists from another country. They’re telling you where they want to take this country if you bother to notice.

    lloyd (6f5614)

  515. Standard journalistic practice is to not use anonymous sources, and to name them when every other person in the room denies the story on the record.

    False. There wouldn’t have been a Watergate story without them. And there was no “change in record”. The story came out, and Trump’s flying monkeys denied it.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  516. More from the Atlantic link…

    The personal qualities displayed by Trump in his reaction to the cost of the Guillén funeral—contempt, rage, parsimony, racism—hardly surprised his inner circle. Trump has frequently voiced his disdain for those who serve in the military and for their devotion to duty, honor, and sacrifice. Former generals who have worked for Trump say that the sole military virtue he prizes is obedience. As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this. “People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders.” (“This is absolutely false,” Pfeiffer wrote in an email. “President Trump never said this.”)

    It’s also standard journalistic practice to get the other’s side reaction, which is why you see Pfeiffer’s name come up so much, and it’s obvious to me that he’s been instructed to deny everything.

    A desire to force U.S. military leaders to be obedient to him and not the Constitution is one of the constant themes of Trump’s military-related discourse. Former officials have also cited other recurring themes: his denigration of military service, his ignorance of the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his admiration for brutality and anti-democratic norms of behavior, and his contempt for wounded veterans and for soldiers who fell in battle.

    Retired General Barry McCaffrey, a decorated Vietnam veteran, told me that Trump does not comprehend such traditional military virtues as honor and self-sacrifice. “The military is a foreign country to him. He doesn’t understand the customs or codes,” McCaffrey said. “It doesn’t penetrate. It starts with the fact that he thinks it’s foolish to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit himself.”

    I’ve been interested in Trump’s understanding of military affairs for nearly a decade. At first, it was cognitive dissonance that drew me to the subject—according to my previous understanding of American political physics, Trump’s disparagement of the military, and in particular his obsessive criticism of the war record of the late Senator John McCain, should have profoundly alienated Republican voters, if not Americans generally. And in part my interest grew from the absolute novelty of Trump’s thinking. This country had never seen, to the best of my knowledge, a national political figure who insulted veterans, wounded warriors, and the fallen with metronomic regularity.

    Today—two weeks before an election that could see Trump return to the White House—I’m most interested in his evident desire to wield military power, and power over the military, in the manner of Hitler and other dictators.

    Trump’s singularly corrosive approach to military tradition was in evidence as recently as August, when he described the Medal of Honor, the nation’s top award for heroism and selflessness in combat, as inferior to the Medal of Freedom, which is awarded to civilians for career achievement. During a campaign speech, he described Medal of Honor recipients as “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead,” prompting the Veterans of Foreign Wars to issue a condemnation: “These asinine comments not only diminish the significance of our nation’s highest award for valor, but also crassly characterizes the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.” Later in August, Trump caused controversy by violating federal regulations prohibiting the politicization of military cemeteries, after a campaign visit to Arlington in which he gave a smiling thumbs-up while standing behind gravestones of fallen American soldiers.

    His Medal of Honor comments are of a piece with his expressed desire to receive a Purple Heart without being wounded. He has also equated business success to battlefield heroism. In the summer of 2016, Khizr Khan, the father of a 27-year-old Army captain who had been killed in Iraq, told the Democratic National Convention that Trump has “sacrificed nothing.” In response, Trump disparaged the Khan family and said, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures.”

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  517. Well of course he did

    Former President Trump says the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who faces unrelenting criticism over his government’s human rights record, is a “great guy.”

    “I think it’s fine right now,” Trump said of the U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship in a recent interview with Al Arabiya. “When I was president, it was great with capital letters. G-R-E-A-T, great.” [Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi]

    “And so much respect for the king, so much respect for Mohammed, who is doing great. I mean, he’s really a visionary. He’s done things that nobody else would have even thought about,” he continued. [Sure]

    In the interview with Al Arabiya’s Washington Bureau Chief Nadia Bilbassy-Charters, Trump later added that the crown prince is a “great guy” who is “respected all over the world.”

    Earlier this year, the Trump Organization announced it would be building a Trump Tower building in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The building is the Trump Organization’s first development in the country and is in partnership with a Saudi-owned developer.

    The development may resurface concerns about Trump’s conflicts of interest if he is reelected in November.

    The Saudi government has also invested $2 billion with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The crown prince said last year that Kushner’s private equity fund would not be affected by a second Trump term.

    Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia was defeated in its bid for a seat on the United Nation’s premier human rights body after a group campaigned against the country’s abysmal record on the issue.

    In the recent interview, Trump was asked about his 2017 trip to Saudi Arabia and the relationship between the two countries as the war in the Middle East continues, threatening relations in the region. In response, he criticized President Biden’s 2022 trip to the Middle East, when a fist-bump with Prince Mohammed drew widespread criticism.

    Trump argued U.S.-Saudi relations could “never be great with a guy like Biden” and he also doesn’t think the relationship would be good if Vice President Harris wins the election.

    He also reiterated a claim that Hamas would not have attacked Israel last October and the ensuing war would not be happening if he were president.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  518. Trump will always side with America’s enemies. He’s at a minimum, he’s a useful idiot; at most, he’s a willing traitor.

    But hey, vote MAGA, it will really tick off all the libs, those silly patriotic types, the RINOs, NATO…for the lolz

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  519. Have any of our anti-antis said yet what transgression Trump would have to commit to disqualify him from getting their vote?

    lurker (c23034)

  520. Here’s why sources all-the-more prefer anonymity in the Trump sphere: All the bullying. There’s a list of 109 whom Trump has threatened since 2022, with receipts.

    With just two weeks remaining until the presidential election, former President Donald Trump has used his most recent appearances on podcast and cable interviews to escalate attacks on fellow Americans whom he calls “the enemy from within.”

    In one recent interview, Trump said that if “radical left lunatics” disrupt the election, “it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

    That statement, on Fox News, was not the first time Trump has expressed support for using government force against domestic political rivals. Since 2022, when he began preparing for the presidential campaign, Trump has issued more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, NPR has found.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  521. It’s not like America First was a thing before…around the beginning of a thing that was pretty important, allying with those German guys that did some bad things.

    It’s pure coincidence that the current head of America First keeps quoting Nazi’s, they’re intending completely different meanings.

    Complete random chance.

    Hey, a swastika is a symbol of Kali, and maybe some other stuff too. That’s why you so many South Asians using it on flags at their houses, it was never turned into something bad.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  522. Trump and Charles Lindbergh, two peas in an America First pod.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  523. Keep blowing on those “Don’t miss next time” dog whistles.

    lloyd (23bda3)

  524. So many parallels to today.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  525. More John Kelly on the old rapey fascist GOP nominee…

    “In many cases, I would agree with some of his policies,” he said, stressing that as a former military officer he was not endorsing any candidate. “But again, it’s a very dangerous thing to have the wrong person elected to high office.”

    He said that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.

    He discussed and confirmed previous reports that Mr. Trump had made admiring statements about Hitler, had expressed contempt for disabled veterans and had characterized those who died on the battlefield for the United States as “losers” and “suckers” — comments first reported in 2020 by The Atlantic.

    Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, assailed Mr. Kelly in a statement, calling Mr. Kelly’s accounts of his time in the White House “debunked stories” and saying Mr. Kelly had “beclowned” himself.

    In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online.

    “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.

    Mr. Kelly said that definition accurately described Mr. Trump.

    “So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Mr. Kelly said.

    He added: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
    […]
    When Mr. Kelly left the White House in 2019, he decided he would speak out on the record only if Mr. Trump said something that he found deeply troubling or involved him and was wildly inaccurate.

    Mr. Trump’s recent comments about using the military against what he called the “enemy within” were so dangerous, he said, that he felt he had to speak out.

    “And I think this issue of using the military on — to go after — American citizens is one of those things I think is a very, very bad thing — even to say it for political purposes to get elected — I think it’s a very, very bad thing, let alone actually doing it,” Mr. Kelly said.

    Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Trump was repeatedly told dating back to his first year in office why he should not use the U.S. military against Americans and the limits on his authority to do so. Mr. Trump nevertheless continued while in office to push the issue and claim that he did have the authority to take such actions, Mr. Kelly said.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  526. More John Kelly, an actual American hero. The guy enlisted despite being diagnosed with bone spurs…

    Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump lacked a fundamental understanding of basic American values and what being president is about.

    “He’s certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government — he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that,” Mr. Kelly said.

    “He just doesn’t understand the values — he pretends, he talks, he knows more about America than anybody, but he doesn’t.”

    Mr. Kelly said that in the first few days of working for Mr. Trump as his chief of staff in the summer of 2017, he had to explain to the president that top government officials like himself had taken an oath to the Constitution and would place that oath over personal loyalty.

    Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump pressed him about that pledge and seemed to have no appreciation that top aides were supposed to put their pledge to the Constitution — and, by extension, the rule of law — above all else.

    “He and I talked about it — it was a new concept for him, I guess is the best way to put it, and I don’t think it’s one he ever totally accepted.”

    Mr. Kelly said that personal loyalty “is virtually everything to him.”

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  527. To Trump, his ego is more important than the Constitution.

    “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote.

    Do any of the Trump supporters here care to defend this statement?

    norcal (3ea0a6)

  528. Continuing…

    As soon as someone in his orbit loses that loyalty, Mr. Kelly said, that person is then out of favor with Mr. Trump and “your time is short.”

    Mr. Trump, Mr. Kelly said, wrongly believed that the uniformed and retired senior generals he brought in to work for him would be loyal to him above all else.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  529. Why does all the MAGAts only hear sounds outside of human hearing, when Trump just says it out loud. You know, specifically saying it may require the military to deal with the “enemy within”, you know, congress…

    It’s kind of telling when their charges are coming from the voices in their head.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  530. Speaking of personal loyalty being everything to Trump, guess who’s on his list for Attorney General if he wins…

    A proposed personnel roster circulating within Donald Trump’s campaign and transition operation lists Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who threw out Trump’s classified documents case, as a possible candidate for attorney general, multiple sources familiar with the matter have told ABC News.

    Cannon’s name appears on a document reviewed by ABC News titled “Transition Planning: Legal Principals,” which lists potential staffing for the White House counsel’s office, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and U.S. attorneys’ offices, as well as proposed candidates for the top legal positions within multiple government agencies, should Trump be reelected.

    The document was drafted by Trump’s top advisers with input from Boris Epshteyn, who oversees Trump’s legal team and is one of Trump’s most trusted advisers, sources familiar with the matter said.

    Epshteyn is the Moscow-born lawyer in Trump’s inner circle. Undying loyalty to a cult leader has its rewards.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  531. FYI: I voted for every Republican on the ballot, save for the guy at the top. Voted LP for the third election in a row.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/22/2024 @ 5:16 pm

    This lifelong Republican voted for Kamala Harris, Jacky Rosen (D) for Senator, and Greg Kidd (I) for Congressman. The only Republican I could vote for was one that couldn’t assist Trump’s bid to be an authoritarian–a county commissioner.

    On the propositions, I voted for an open primary, and for requiring voter ID.

    norcal (3ea0a6)

  532. Fascist campaigning, 88 years ago. I wonder what the 1936 equivalent is for “Mr. President, please don’t let the United States become Brazil!”

    In 1938, Benito Mussolini closed off a wheat field & did a photo shoot showing him harvesting hay in order to portray himself as a common working man.

    He was surrounded by workers who had been vetted as loyal to the party.

    Nice shades.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  533. The Harris supporters here are losing their minds.

    lloyd (23bda3)

  534. RIP 1981 National League Cy Young Award and Rookie of the Year and legendary Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela (63).

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  535. This lifelong Republican voted for Kamala Harris, Jacky Rosen (D) for Senator and Greg Kidd (crypto-D) for Congressman

    So, when you say “Don’t worry, the House and Senate will stay Republican” I’ll be harsh.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  536. Meanwhile Bill Gates gives $50 million to a “non-profit” that backs Harris. I hope he doesn’t try to take a deduction for that, and didn’t use any Gates Foundation money.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  537. Two weeks and we’ll know which side says the election was invalid.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  538. Standard journalistic practice is to not use anonymous sources, and to name them when every other person in the room denies the story on the record.

    LOL! If it weren’t for anonymous sources, most of the major stories of past 50 years would never have been published. Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, NYPD police corruption (think Frank Serpico), government elites with hidden wealth (the Panama Papers), My Lai, etc. all would have been successfully hidden. Most government corruption stories start with anonymous sources.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  539. So, when you say “Don’t worry, the House and Senate will stay Republican” I’ll be harsh.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/22/2024 @ 9:27 pm

    I couldn’t risk Trump having a Republican Congress (so afraid of him they will abet his crazy impulses) if he should win.

    norcal (3ea0a6)

  540. Meanwhile Bill Gates gives $50 million to a “non-profit” that backs Harris. I hope he doesn’t try to take a deduction for that, and didn’t use any Gates Foundation money.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/22/2024 @ 9:29 pm

    Still far less than what Elon Musk has donated to his own Super PAC in the third quarter ($75M); and to Republican affiliated dark money groups since 2022 ($50M+).

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  541. MAGAts still can’t find anything about Trump that is actually positive. Other than “for the memes”.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (2ea4b0)

  542. Owner of LA times orders paper not to endorse for president out of fear of trump. (DU)

    asset (f4c659)

  543. Sanity

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a)

  544. @lloyd@545 You realize the rest of us do in fact read most/all of the other posters here, right? Which means we can see whether or not someone is losing their mind? For serious sometimes you post things that seem flame-warish except this isn’t a site that really does flame-wars, so what is the point?

    Nic (120c94)

  545. Sanity

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 10/22/2024 @ 11:41 pm

    The parts about Trump being a chaos agent are sane. The parts about him meaning well aren’t. He didn’t try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power out of some benevolent error of judgment. He did it because he’s a malign, demagogic, despot wannabe.

    lurker (c23034)

  546. This was more about Nikki sounding sane. I get that she hadn’t yet felt the full ‘bird brain’, so she was trying to rise above it and be an adult.

    To bad the MAGAGOP doesn’t like it’s folks with an EQ over a 12 year old. She was running for the nomination of a party that didn’t exist any longer.

    We’ll see how much she wants power for power’s sake if she agrees to an appearance with Trump in the last 10 days.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (36c56f)

  547. Trump says nikki haley, tulsi gabbard and kristi noem mud wrestle for my favor. Lauren boebert wants to join in.

    asset (f4c659)

  548. Does any Trump voter here doubt that Kelly’s factual account is accurate, and Trump’s denial is a lie?

    lurker (c23034)

  549. Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 10/22/2024 @ 11:41 pm

    And this was BuDuh-approved “balanced site“.

    Fair point

    Trump refused to release:
    –His health care plan
    –His medical records
    –His tax returns
    –His White House visitor logs
    –His infrastructure plan
    –A list of foreign visitors to his hotel
    –Classified docs stolen from the White House

    But MAGA demands Kamala produce:
    –Her 1980s McDonald’s W-2

    There’s a perspective that’s pretty out of whack.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  550. I couldn’t risk Trump having a Republican Congress (so afraid of him they will abet his crazy impulses) if he should win.

    Even if he does not win. The Cleansing cannot pause at Trump.

    nk (fc3559)

  551. Here’s why sources all-the-more prefer anonymity in the Trump sphere: All the bullying. There’s a list of 109 whom Trump has threatened since 2022, with receipts.

    You’re kidding right? If you put your name to it, you’re fetted as a hero, receive book deals and a lifetime contributor slot on CNN/MSNBC.

    Kelly
    Cheney
    Hutchinson
    Cohen
    Steele
    everyone in the Lincoln Project
    Miles Taylor (the “anonymous” guy)

    All people who owe their entire careers for opposing Trump on the record.

    SaveFarris (79ab12)

  552. @509

    Latest usa today suffolk poll latinx voters harris 38% trump 49% and 29% blacks support trump.

    asset (61ca9d) — 10/22/2024 @ 3:36 pm

    Yeah…no. that’s a junk poll.

    Because if that’s true, then Trump is looking at not only an EC win, but winning the popular vote.

    It’s going to be a squeaker either way all…

    whembly (477db6)

  553. @531

    Have any of our anti-antis said yet what transgression Trump would have to commit to disqualify him from getting their vote?

    lurker (c23034) — 10/22/2024 @ 7:18 pm

    That the opponent he’s running against isn’t even more disqualifying.

    whembly (477db6)

  554. @542

    Speaking of personal loyalty being everything to Trump, guess who’s on his list for Attorney General if he wins…

    A proposed personnel roster circulating within Donald Trump’s campaign and transition operation lists Aileen Cannon, the federal judge who threw out Trump’s classified documents case, as a possible candidate for attorney general, multiple sources familiar with the matter have told ABC News.

    Cannon’s name appears on a document reviewed by ABC News titled “Transition Planning: Legal Principals,” which lists potential staffing for the White House counsel’s office, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and U.S. attorneys’ offices, as well as proposed candidates for the top legal positions within multiple government agencies, should Trump be reelected.

    The document was drafted by Trump’s top advisers with input from Boris Epshteyn, who oversees Trump’s legal team and is one of Trump’s most trusted advisers, sources familiar with the matter said.

    Epshteyn is the Moscow-born lawyer in Trump’s inner circle. Undying loyalty to a cult leader has its rewards.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/22/2024 @ 8:23 pm

    Why would Judge Cannon want to give up a lifetime tenure for 4 years on the job? No, this is silly.

    If Trump were to win, and that’s a big *if*, I’d want Mike Davis as AG.

    whembly (477db6)

  555. @545

    The Harris supporters here are losing their minds.

    lloyd (23bda3) — 10/22/2024 @ 9:21 pm

    It’s only going to get worse till election day. And if the vote goes against their wishes… might not be a bad idea to invest in all the manufacturers that makes Xanax.

    whembly (477db6)

  556. @553

    MAGAts still can’t find anything about Trump that is actually positive. Other than “for the memes”.

    Colonel Klink (ret) (2ea4b0) — 10/22/2024 @ 10:25 pm

    The only positive I see is that he’s not a Democrat.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    I’m not seeing any positives, at all, for Harris either.

    whembly (477db6)

  557. @560

    Does any Trump voter here doubt that Kelly’s factual account is accurate
    lurker (c23034) — 10/23/2024 @ 4:17 am

    Yeah, I very much doubt it.

    whembly (477db6)

  558. @550

    Standard journalistic practice is to not use anonymous sources, and to name them when every other person in the room denies the story on the record.

    LOL! If it weren’t for anonymous sources, most of the major stories of past 50 years would never have been published. Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, NYPD police corruption (think Frank Serpico), government elites with hidden wealth (the Panama Papers), My Lai, etc. all would have been successfully hidden. Most government corruption stories start with anonymous sources.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3) — 10/22/2024 @ 9:31 pm

    The way you know Goldberg’s stories are completely made up is that if his sources actually existed, they wouldn’t stay anonymous.

    There’s ZERO risk for someone putting their name on such claims about Trump. They’d immediately be showered with glowing press and cash.

    whembly (477db6)

  559. The “Trump is disqualified because he’s threatening judicial retribution” crowd is eerily silent today.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/22/biden-trump-lock-him-up/

    SaveFarris (79ab12)

  560. Epshteyn is the Moscow-born lawyer in Trump’s inner circle. Undying loyalty to a cult leader has its rewards.

    He’s also been indicted for election subversion in the Arizona fake electors case.

    Rip Murdock (dc18a3)

  561. All people who owe their entire careers for opposing Trump on the record.

    Ridiculous and false. As I recall, Liz Cheney rose to #3 in House leadership, and then was fired from House leadership and then fired from her job for dissenting against the rapist fascist.
    Cheney was a rising star, too, given that she was elected to the House in 2016.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  562. Why would Judge Cannon want to give up a lifetime tenure for 4 years on the job? No, this is silly.

    I didn’t say Cannon would want the job (and you don’t know either way_, only that she was on Trump’s list for AG, which is true.
    Mike Davis is a right-wing hack who’s all-in for Trump, so he meets Donald’s criteria for the job.

    Paul Montagu (a28670)

  563. @574

    I didn’t say Cannon would want the job (and you don’t know either way_, only that she was on Trump’s list for AG, which is true.

    Fair enough. Again, I’d be very surprised if someone leaves a lifetime position for a job you’d have at most 4 years is all I’m saying.

    Mike Davis is a right-wing hack who’s all-in for Trump, so he meets Donald’s criteria for the job.

    Paul Montagu (a28670) — 10/23/2024 @ 7:31 am

    He’d be no different that AG Garland.

    whembly (477db6)

  564. https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-york-supreme-court-reinstates-all-employees-fired-being-unvaccinated-orders-backpay

    Some justice for those abused by the government during their climate of fear campaign.

    NJRob (017960)

  565. Why would Judge Cannon want to give up a lifetime tenure for 4 years on the job? No, this is silly.

    Her confirmation hearing would be brutal. I could see her as a Supreme Court nominee, though.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  566. JVW (d17bc5) — 10/18/2024 @ 9:48 am

    No ma’am, your administration wanted Israel to call off their efforts to eradicate Hamas and enter into a truce

    They still do. Or rather, they have several policies at once. The one thing that is consistent is they want to end the war right away.

    Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e)

  567. “Some justice for those abused by the government during their climate of fear campaign.”

    This article is 2 years old.

    Davethulhu (f2839c)

  568. @531

    Have any of our anti-antis said yet what transgression Trump would have to commit to disqualify him from getting their vote?

    lurker (c23034) — 10/22/2024 @ 7:18 pm

    That the opponent he’s running against isn’t even more disqualifying.

    whembly (477db6) — 10/23/2024 @ 6:15 am

    Non-responsive. The opponent is Kamala Harris. What would Trump have to do to lose your vote? We already know that 34 felony convictions isn’t enough. Trying to destroy the cornerstone of our constitutional republic (overturning a free and fair election) isn’t either. Expressing derision for our fallen heroes, and love for his “very special” supporters who attacked Capital police? Nope. Betraying our allies while declaring his admiration for the world’s most infamous tyrants, who, by the way, are America’s enemies? Still nope. Paying off his adulterous porn star consort? Peeping on undressed teen beauty contestants? Sexualizing his own daughter? Bragging about grabbing pu$$y? Adjudicated sexual assault? I guess not. More lies, frauds and scams than anyone can count? Don’t make me laugh.

    So what would it take? Murder? Pedophilia? In those cases, I assume he’d still get your vote until a final non-appealable verdict was rendered, a process that would probably take years beyond his term in office? Would even that final verdict suffice if the judge was appointed by a democrat or the jury sat in a blue jurisdiction?

    Does it need to be said that if a Democrat committed any of those or the dozens of Trump’s other prominent moral transgressions, you’d find it disqualifying? I know I would. I thought what Bill Clinton did was disqualifying. Didn’t you? And he was a paragon of virtue next to Trump. So seriously, what would it take for this piece of sh1t to lose your vote?

    lurker (c23034)

  569. lurker (c23034) — 10/23/2024 @ 4:31 pm

    Here is what any possible answer will amount to:

    I don’t care what Trump does. He talks about policies I like.

    norcal (c90797)

  570. What are the top ten policies that Kamala talks about that you really like, norcal?

    BuDuh (e63962)

  571. All policy disagreements are on hold until after we save the Constitution from Donald Trump.

    norcal (c90797)

  572. The only Kamala Harris policy I care about is this:

    “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

    Nothing more is necessary.

    nk (96f0e8)

  573. RIP Ron Ely (86), TV’s Tarzan.

    Rip Murdock (69aa54)

  574. Here is what any possible answer will amount to:

    I don’t care what Trump does. He talks about policies I like.

    norcal (c90797) — 10/23/2024 @ 4:49 pm

    As I just said in the other thread, I suspect it’s more about tribe than policy, at least for the hard-core anti-antis.

    lurker (c23034)

  575. In other non-surprising news, the Russian terrorist state is aiding the Houthi terrorists, using the Iranian terrorist regime as a conduit.

    Russia is passing on satellite data to the Houthis to help them with missile strikes against civilian vessels in the Red Sea

    Wall Street Journal claims the info was passed on through IRGC agents sent from Tehran to Yemen.

    The anti-Western coalition is growing.

    In a previous interview, Trump still could not or would not blame Putin for criminally invading a sovereign neighbor, instead blaming the victim (Zelenskyy) and America, so there’s no reason he would blame Putin for enabling Middle Eastern terrorists.

    Paul Montagu (7d8750)

  576. I could see her as a Supreme Court nominee, though.

    It would take two R’s to block.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  577. All policy disagreements are on hold until after we save the Constitution from Donald Trump.

    Not only has that argument failed, but the lack of Harris’s actual policies (amongst her many disavowals) is making that argument hard to maintain, even with people who don’t like Trump.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  578. I could see (Aileen Cannon) as a Supreme Court nominee, though.

    It would take two R’s to block.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/24/2024 @ 4:50 pm

    Why would they do so? I don’t see a Republican Senate opposing a Trump Supreme Court nominee.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  579. Trump loves him some Putin less than Biden Harris

    Russia gives Houthi’s targeting data on Western ships in Red Sea and Biden/Harris not only didn’t say anything, they didn’t do anything either

    https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/logistics/russia-houthis-attacks-red-sea-suez-canal-satellite-data-container-shipping-trade-freight-rates-maersk-hapag-lloyd-india-1234721657/

    steveg (e2b12d)

  580. As long as Mitch McConnell is in the Senate, Trump’s nominees have to get his approval.
    Cannon nomination would be shelved by the most powerful person in the Republican room.
    If Trump wins, he will take office with a list- I’m sure McConnell has his own list and she isn’t on it.

    steveg (e2b12d)

  581. No more sweepstakes:

    Elon Musk’s super PAC didn’t announce a winner for its “daily” $1 million giveaway to registered swing state voters on Wednesday, the same day news broke that the Justice Department warned Musk’s group that its sweepstakes might be illegal.

    The pro-Trump group, America PAC, had publicly named a winner every day since Saturday, when Musk announced that he would award $1 million every day to people who sign his petition. The petition is in support of the 1st and 2nd Amendments to the Constitution, but importantly, only registered voters in the battleground states can sign the petition and are therefore eligible for the money.
    …………
    A letter from the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which investigates potential election-related law violations, went to Musk’s political action committee, according to people briefed on the matter.

    CNN has reached out seeking comment from Musk, several email addresses listed on the super PAC’s website, the group’s treasurer, and Musk’s press team at the X platform.
    ……….
    On Sunday, the second day of the sweepstakes, the super PAC reframed its messaging around the giveaway, describing the money as payment for a job. In social media posts, the group said winners would be “selected to earn $1M as a spokesperson for America PAC” – and subsequently posted pro-Trump testimonial videos featuring the winners.

    However, several election law experts who spoke to CNN pointed out that the fine print on Musk’s super PAC website explaining the official terms of entry did not change. Only petition signers can win the $1 million prize, and signers “must be registered voters of Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.”
    ………

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  582. McConnell was an absolute beast working judges through the system and putting butts into seats during the Trump years

    steveg (e2b12d)

  583. As long as Mitch McConnell is in the Senate, Trump’s nominees have to get his approval.
    Cannon nomination would be shelved by the most powerful person in the Republican room.

    McConnell will be a has been backbencher in the next Congress-someone else will be the Republican leader (Thune, Cornyn, or ?).

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  584. Requiring non-candidate petition signers to be registered voters is likely unconstitutional — the first amendment gives all RESIDENTS of the United States to petition the government. They do not need a permit.

    The sole reason to demand someone be a registered voter is to allow the orderly conduct of elections, and signing a petition for redress of grievances has nothing to do with voting.

    Musk should damn them to file charges.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  585. McConnell will be a has been backbencher in the next Congress-someone else will be the Republican leader (Thune, Cornyn, or ?).

    So what? Even if he carries ONE additional Senator, it will be enough.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  586. Always ready with the non-sequitur?

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  587. Always ready with the non-sequitur?

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 10/24/2024 @ 5:51 pm

    The claim was that as long as McConnell was in the Senate, Trump’s nominees would need his approval. But McConnell will be Senator with the same power as any other Senator; he will lose his influence as party leader.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  588. Cannon nomination would be shelved by the most powerful person in the Republican room.

    That ain’t gonna be McConnell. And I don’t see McConnell voting against Aileen Cannon for the Supreme Court. Why would he? At his core he is a party loyalist.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  589. The claim was that as long as McConnell was in the Senate, Trump’s nominees would need his approval.

    And they would. He, along with Murkowski and Collins comprise the “swing” bloc and they can stop anyone they choose. Don’t need no flipping badges.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  590. Why would he? At his core he is a party loyalist.

    Perhaps, but he’s not a Trump loyalist. There’s a difference.

    Kevin M (a9545f)

  591. All policy disagreements are on hold until after we save the Constitution from Donald Trump.

    norcal (c90797) — 10/23/2024 @ 5:21 pm

    So vote for the commie, it’s important.

    Sounds like you’d vote for Mao or Stalin to stop Trump.

    NJRob (19ab23)

  592. Why would they do so? I don’t see a Republican Senate opposing a Trump Supreme Court nominee.

    Pick Cannon and find out. Harriet Miers had better credentials.

    Kevin M (a9545f)


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