The Republican National Convention is a moment to reintroduce Trump and MAGA Republicans to voters who have not seen them up close since at least 2021.
''...for all the talk of unifying the country since last weekend’s shooting, Trump did not pick Vance to bring Republicans together. His selection of Vance reinforces that the MAGAs have taken over the Republican Party with an ideology that rejects democracy in favor of Christian nationalism.''
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag carrying a cross''
In every age it has been the tyrant, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both.
I've written about this previously. It's the Russians, stupid. Vance is Putin's choice for VP. "He is vehemently opposed to using more funds to help Ukraine and has blasted what he sees as Europe’s over-dependence on the United States when it comes to military investment. One senior EU official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly on the issue, said in an interview Monday that the appointment of Vance was a “disaster” for Ukraine — and by extension for the European Union, which has backed Kyiv as it defends itself against Russian aggression." https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-vice-president-nominee-jd-vance-republican-party-united-states-presidential-election-us-eu-relations-isolationism-foreign-policy/
According to the 2022 American Community Survey, about 8.2 million people in the United States, or roughly 2.5% of the population, reported Polish ancestry. This makes Polish Americans the largest Slavic ethnic group in the country, the second largest Central European group, and the eighth largest immigrant group overall. Add the Baltic states, Finland, etc.
Hopefully the word about Putin/Vance will affect the vote in WPa, MI, MI.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, the abortion issue is primary. We can flip this state.
Swamp Republicans. Millions of unregistered trend Democratic.
FT 6 has texted well over a million in the past several days. Thanks to a donor, texts to Arizona yesterday and today. https://www.fieldteam6.org/
As an Ohioan, I was thrilled when he chose Vance. Without Peter Thiel’s money, it’s doubtful Vance would have won that Senate seat. What a charlatan, if not worse. I’m an Appalachian Ohioan. I felt his book stupid, insulting and not what I experienced. It was oh, wow is me. And I started out presuming the best, then saw the real.
It would be just to see a VP debate in suburban Cleveland in Parma Heights. Let him answer to those hard working Ukrainian Americans AND OTHERS with family in NATO countries like Poland, Lithuania, etc., who provide extraordinary support to their family and friends fighting for freedom back in Ukraine.
LMAO. 39, virtually no experience except what others have laid at his feet. A “communications specialist” in the military (desk job?).
A gift to Blue Nation, now it’s time to unite and win! Biden is our candidate. As my dad used to say, the harder you work, the luckier you get. Let’s go, let’s win.
Good comment, Paula. No discussion of Vance is complete without mention of Peter Thiel, and also the support of Elon Musk which is likely what pushed him over the finish line. I suspect his very inexperience is what is attractive to them: it makes him easier to manipulate, as does his absolute lack of a moral core which might guide his actions.
We here in Ohio would be glad to be rid of Vance, but not like this!
A: They both think a small number of people are important, everyone else is like a cardboard box (potentially useful, or potentially in need of discarding, and otherwise irrelevant), and Vance agrees with them.
Q: What does Vance see in Thiel and Trump?
A: He mistakenly thinks they think he's one of the important people, and that makes him useful to them for the time being.
I can't bear to watch the RNC news coverage. It's so disturbing. Saying they're a bunch of 5-year-olds is an insult to 5-year-olds. I'll just read Heather's newsletters till it's over.
James, "disturbing" is the word. The 2024 Republican Party "Platform" includes the phrase (and it's a meaningless phrase), "We will be a Nation based on Truth, Justice, and Common Sense." That is so laughable, but frightening because so many people have been tricked into believing that. I thought that "seeing is believing." Evidently, that's not true for MAGAs who look at Trump through glazed and dazed eyes. What 's worse, to me, are the Republican Congress members who are just as glazed and dazed. Do they remember when they first sold their souls to Trump? They are blind to all the illegal things he's done, and want to punish the rest of us who DO believe in "Truth, Justice, and
Pam, like so many things the folks of Trumplandia do, using a line like, "truth, justice, and common sense," is a slap in the face of all of us who do believe in those things. Their idea of any of those is exactly opposite of what one would think it should be. They are getting quite good at "New Speak" as used by the government in "1984." The sad thing, even more, disturbing is that our media goes along with it all. If one is not sure of this, just listen to the commentary on the mainstream media as the Trumplandia convention proceeds. They rarely mention the lies. They will call out the Big Lie, but not the lies about immigrants or higher crime rates or that they stand with working people. The mainstream media and some other sources have nearly totally ignored "Project 2025" which has been out for two years, as though they don't want to deal with it, yet it is the stance of Trumplandia.
Pam, I shared what you wrote here with my friends on Facebook. I hope you don't mind. I should have ask you first...but your words here are perfect for what others that are not on HCR and not reading or hearing. Hopefully, this will make a difference if only one person reads and understands or even thinks about. Hugs.
I used to watch both conventions many years ago. I watched both conventions in 2016. There was no way I was watching the 2020 convention. You are not a party when you have NO platform.
When Nancy Pelosi tore up CFDT's SOTU address, I decided then and there, I wouldn't watch or listen to another Republican lie fest.
I haven't turned on the news since CFDT was shot.
I agree with many others that the assassination attempt was staged to make the Secret Service look bad and to get sympathy votes for CFDT. Of course, it failed miserably and the CFDT was arrogant enough to pick Vance.
I cringe to think of what a CFDT cabinet would look like if he wins reelection. Top to bottom, there wasn't a secretary that accomplished anything to make America great. That's quite a non-accomplishment.
I can't wait for Friday....and hope all this "hullabaloo" of the Repub Convention is over. So far this week I have had my television off more than on. I can't stand seeing any of the liars...and there are so many! Reading Heather's letter tells me the important points that are happening....and I know that I will not be voting for any Republican candidates come November. They are a bunch of lost souls that have been purchased by the devil!
James, I agree with your answers. I am waiting for seeing some of them going under the bus. Yes, useful for the time being. We have also stopped watching the national news, and watch only the local news. And yes, so disturbing. I had a long conversation with one of my ex-students yesterday, actually I usually mostly listen. So I got an earful of nothing but dire predictions. She and her husband have plenty of money, so they could leave if the worst happens although she does agree that no where is safe, particularly from climate change.
Is there a safe place? I would say yes. That place is in January after the grownups take over with Dems in charge of all three branches of government.
Every Republican should listen to The Axe Files interview of Bill Gates, an Arizona county supervisor and life long Republican. His first political act was telling his kindergarten classmates to vote Republican.
Then, as an elected official, because he chose to obey the law in lieu of obeying MAGA orders, protesters camping outside his house used megaphones to call him a pedophile and every other insult that came to mind. He ended up in therapy receiving treatment for PTSD.
I was talking to my wife earlier today about applying for dual citizenship in Norway. But I think we're too damn old to be accepted. And I can't say I blame them for rejecting us if we applied.
James, I now refer to the former Republican Party as the toddler-party even though it is an insult to 3-year-olds. These grown toddlers whine, complain, blame others, call names, bully those who are weaker, and lie incessantly as toddlers do when they are super tired, have really bad parenting, or have siblings whom they think have more than they do. So, it is The Toddler Party or Trumplandia whichever comes to my mind first.
That's a good name. It's worth noting that a 3-year-old is immature and open minded whereas a physically mature person has retained one of those two traits and left the other trait behind.
He is youth with no experience..... hopefully, all Democrats will wake up to the fact that we may have the oldest candidate in Joe Biden but damn we have the BEST! Go Joe!
Apparently, Don, Jr. and Eric were both very much in favor of Vance, too. Possibly they are as much under Russian influence as Trump himself and some of his other advisors.
TL, I suspect Don and Eric are not much of anything. It does not seem they believe in anything but money and their love of it. They are "blowin' in the wind" in that they will go with whichever wind blows them to the most money and potential power. They are not particularly bright, but they did get from their dad a disregard for everyone not like themselves and either a broken moral compass or one that is entirely missing.
Will the gov appoint Vance's successor? Or will there be a special election? Or does Vance not need to resign his Senate seat to run for VP? If there is a special election will Tim Ryan run, and will he have good prospects?
I don’t think he needs to resign to run; Tim Kaine (was that his name? Hillary’s VP anyway) didn’t. If they win, the governor will appoint someone to fill the remainder of his term.
What I have found most effective for convincing even Republican friends of the terror planned under Project 2025, is to post on facebook the one line memes going around about what specifically the document will do to the reader. For example: "Under Project 2025. Social Security age will be increased to age 70." "The Republicans under Project 2025 would end Headstart and Special Education" Get the (terrifying) words out.
I read about 75 pages of Project 2025. The chapters/sections I looked at all lead in with Democrat/Biden bashing for their position on the particular topic. And then they talk about how it needs to be fixed because blah blah blah. And then they talk about how they can replace the particular department with their "Christian" based solutions.
It's like listening to Rush Limbaugh. He usually laid out a topic in a reasonable way so most people would be nodding their heads, and then he takes a huge right turn into crazy land.
Ally, and the sad part is that those folks are likely to be the ones harmed most by an installation of Trumplandia. Trump tried to tell the people he didn't care about them and only wanted their votes, but unlike everything else he says, they didn't believe him. How pathetic!
Paula, I agree ! JD Vance is a gift. Makes our job easier.✍️🚶♀️💲📲👕🛒
“Trump went on to endorse Vance late in the GOP primary. That, and the outside $10M ad blitz, are clearly the only reasons that Vance went on to win.
BUT….even with all that help, and in a state where the GOP Governor (DeWine) defeated the Democratic candidate by more than 25 points, and the rest of the GOP ticket won by the high teens or low 20s, (judicial races by the low teens), Vance only won by just over 6 points. As dramatic an underperformance of candidates on the same ticket as you’ll see in Ohio.”
If you’re like me and can’t stomach the RNC, you can follow Liza Donnelly(some may recognize as New Yorker cartoonist) who is watching and drawing each day. I think she made Ted Cruz way too good looking.😜
Yes, and his corruption is so deep he should be holding a jail cell for trump when the time comes. If you want to know just HOW corrupt, read David Pepper's Substack, 'Pepperspectives'. He's all over these Ohio criminals!
Thank you. Some hopeful thoughts. It is the job of all leading Dems to constantly and consistently point out all the f'n lies and their undermining democracy. MAGAts base has more to lose under tRump and so much more to gain with Biden, but their fear and hatred and their anti (fill in the blank)______, may keep them in the fold, much to their loss. When do fear and hate not sell politically?
I would suggest that the lies are a symptom with an underlying cause, that focusing on the lies is not the most effective approach, and that focusing on what interest is being served is more effective.
There are two choices. Support for Biden-Harris is choosing to serve a nation in which the effect of everyone's small short-term sacrifices is an enormous long-term benefit, and everyone wins. MAGA has chosen to serve themselves in the short term at the nation's expense, and they don't care that everyone, including MAGA, will suffer in the long term. If lying serves that end, then MAGA lies. If telling the truth serves that end, then MAGA tells the truth.
“. . .and that focusing on what interest is being served is more effective.”
I agree.
One example is P25’s plan to eliminate NOAA, the atmospheric and oceanic researchers. The weather people. Why eliminate the weather and climate people? They are sooo gloomy about global warming, and they don’t respect the fossil fuel industry and how important it is to Republican donors.
Some people are convinced that all politicians lie, equally, so pointing out lies falls on their deaf ears. Other people are offended by being lied to. What proportion of voters in each category is hard to tell.
I’m working early voting. Voters have to tell us which ballot they want to vote. I overheard one yesterday say “I’m in _____[redacted]. Of course I’m a republican.”
Paula, I am a Hoosier, but have ancestry in Appalachia, West Virginia speciifiable. I once stayed on a trip at Berea College in KY and appreciate their focus and have bought some of their products. I also read Vance's book because I stupidly thought it would give me some insights into the area. All it did was make me angry with that whiner. This week, in the NYT I think, there was a list of books to read about Appalachia as an alternative to Hillbilly Elegy. The statements he has made show him to be a cold hearted prate.
I will look forward to finding that alternative list. I too, Michele, read it hoping to see a like view. Not. He’s an angry guy. There are so many wonderful people from my youth! And they cared and tried to help people in trouble.
I wish I could remember where I saw it.....I know it was within the last couple days. I did finish the book and wondered why people thought it was so great. I can actually remember getting angry a few times and wondering why I was wasting my time.
Worse than a mere prat, I think, as my Brit husband uses the term, meaning silly and foolish. Wasn’t JD a hedge fund pirate? No, just a venture capitalist, I just checked, but he worked for/ with/ was funded by Peter Thiel, who thinks it a pity that women were given the vote.
I confess to having purchased and read Hillbilly Elegy when it first came out. What has stood out to me as I recall the book was that he was quite unkind and condescending to his community, blaming them for their own misfortune, which I found odd as his mother was a drug addict. Admittedly amateur psychologist here (I know there are real ones on the forum, and perhaps they will comment?) but I wonder if anger against his mother manifested in distain of the compromised hill people?
He also writes about his feelings of insecurity when he enters the corporate/legal big league, he turns to his then fiancée (now wife) to give him guidance on how to behave and dress. Like Trump, who apparently could never crack the NY culture of the truly wealthy, powerful and successful, the attempt to gain status by elected office runs through them both. Perhaps that is why Vance--an outspoken critic of Trump--decided to flip his opinions. Correct me if I am wrong, but I've read that Trump donated to Hilary's campaign when she ran against Obama? And he was a registered Democrat? I think Vance is attempting to emulate Trump's "success" by latching onto his coattails. Sadly, Trump would drop Vance in a "NY minute" should it be advantageous. Also, the Trump "success"--at what point it is worth it if you sacrifice your soul?
I grew up in Elkhart. There are lots of Poles in South Bend. I would agree that Indiana is mostly like the red south. I often think that what I saw is what I call casual racism, instead of blatant segregation. Didn't know then about red lining then or that Marion Andersen had to stay overnight in Elkhart when she came to sing at Goshen College, for two examples. The county seat has always been so "Christian".
Paula, I am glad to find another person who felt the same about Vance's book as I did. It was pathetic and nothing like the people I have known from Appalachia. He got the goodies for himself, Yale, financial connections, etc., but has done nothing for the real people of Appalachia who were cheated, robbed, abused by the mining and timber industries, yet are blamed for the situation they are now in, the situation those corporations left them in when they fled leaving the destruction and poverty behind. Yes, Vance and Trump are quite a team, users, liars, deceivers, and worse.
Harris versus Vance..no contest VP…a newby vascillating verbunkism vs accomplished solid experience ? Stand up sister Appalachian ..will you cast a hillbilly blue VOTE ..hell yea🙌!
I’d have rewritten ‘..Russian, stupid ..’ in previous comment as ..Russian’s STUPIDITY…(MHO)
And therein lies total immunity for all to see in action what it really means ..THERE! IN LIES ( after lies after lies add even more lies upon lies) the CNN fact checker (a faux pas extrodinare absent at the debate!) where have they gone …to graveyards everywhere?
I applaud voters but 66% turnout being a tops? Is that how you want the history written ? Having climbed from 35-45 % normal participation?
The biggest issue is MAGA…the controlling cuddle up to Putin Party …not their present puppets..but the rich backers THEY are the oppositional oligarchs looking for ‘more’ status …
I headed back to W.&L. this w/e to a reunion of the fraternity in which I was a social member. At school in Western Virginia, I met several 'Appalachians', many of whom could run circles around me and very few of whom fit the stereotype. With Washington and Lee being a private college, positive selection was surely a factor. 🧑🎓
In any case, one of my best friends in that fraternity grew up in West Virginia and, like Beau in the vid. above, he voiced a distinct dislike for Senator Vance. My bud said about the 'Hillbilly Elegy': "Okay you grew up in a dysfunctional family, J.D. You are NOT Appalachia -- you are from a screwed up family; that's it, a**hole." 🖕
Deep down inside of me, I sense that Justice Thomas and Senator Vance are ashamed of their origins. Such feelings of inadequacy may impel each to rebel against the Ivy League schooling generously bestowed upon them; as if to gnash their teethe at 'those snobs' who say, "Oh yes, you can study with us, but you will never be one of us." 😠
And if not in Parma Hts., then perhaps in Eastlake, at the Croatian Center on the north end of S.O.M. Center Rd. Would LOVE to see the reception waiting for him at THAT venue! Yeah, I'm in Lake County!
Vance is my senator, and I’m not crazy about him. Vance is as authoritarian as Trump, and unlike Mike Pence, he would do anything Trump and Putin wanted.
And unlike Pence -- who I could not bear, in part for his sanctimonious way of speaking - Vance is a big, strong, articulate, extremist bully. Very scary.
Just keep repeating his quotes on tRump when tRump began is bid for the WH. What does it take for a person who can do such an extreme 180-degree turnaround?
Yess.., and the "articulate" loudmouths are given a pulpit to spew from by Big Media, and THAT is so annoying. Their crap gets on the front page, while the 'facts' are lost on page 45, if you can find them.
Given that I'm pretty sure that money and documents have changed hands with the former, that much is true. Not sure if the latter has had any specific remuneration; it would be an interesting tidbit of info to have on him.
He is my senator too and I am afraid of him for his anti-women positions.He will be right there to support a national abortion ban.We should all shun him.
Never sell "Putin" short! He can recognize a dull tool (vance, trump, jeweliani, hailee) when he sees one; he doesn't suffer fools. That's why he has remained on his horse this long. The FSB is his well-oiled machine where "the rule of law" doesn't apply.., 'they' are trying to accomplish something., re the re-installation of #45. The Clown Car which has arrived in Milwaukee probably has a couple 'copnductors' aboard who are members of the "Russian Intelligence community".., look for them.
Thank you, Daniel. I am registered with Field Team 6 for events being held on Tuesday, July 23, and Saturday, July 27. Please know that your efforts to amplify the work of FT6 are making an impact here in NWPA as well as across the nation. It takes a village to defend our democratic republic.
thank you -- I would love to join the text arcade and phonebanks -- but when I click the links it says 'error' -- is there another way to get to these that you know of?
Thank you for this, Daniel. Great info that will be put to use here in Florida, a state out of control under MAGA domination. My car insurance on a 2020 Toyota RAV4 LE Hybrid is now $2,064 a year and I drive about 3,000 miles a year. And that's the cheapest I can find, with State Farm. AAA is almost $3,000 per year.
Daniel, you’re making me feel better. Yesterday I rode to a dental appointment with a driver I had ridden with last year. He remembered me. We talked about the political situation. He sought to reassure me about Democrats by pointing out that the broad masses of Americans support Biden and that if Trump “wins” there will be “Revolution.” He says the military will not support Trump. Given Trump’s insults, the driver may be right. Generals do not have to obey orders to shoot their fellow citizens.
But Baghdad is a city--perhaps Miami? Just wondering which city. I know San Francisco was once called Baghdad on the Bay because it is so multicultural and exotic sometimes. But that is definitely not in a state that needs flipping.
SC, Herb Caen (1916-1997), columnist for the SF Chronicle, coined the phrase Baghdad by the Bay in a collection of essays published in 1949 (lol, year I was born)….used to read his column every week as an adult before he passed.
Trump is at a high point with the convention and the shooting. We don’t know how many Americans are impressed by his surviving the kind of violence that he extols. There are so many dangers that the GOP Convention puts right in front of the American people. They see domination and violence as strength. Real men are strong. Biden looks and sounds frail and weak.
The worse problem is how pervasive the corruption has already become in every level of government. The courts are gone. Billionaires rule Trump. Menendez was convicted. Trump continues to skate free, and has never been held accountable. The money manipulators need him to bring in the white supremacists. They can cheat the vote. To get the rest.
I shared this note, but wonder if it is too hopeful. Vance was elected to the Senate from Ohio in 2022 after the Ukrainian War with Russia was well underway. If he attracted Slavic Americans then, that means they weren't too worried about his alliance with Trump, who even then it was clear supported Putin and Russia.
Democracy takes work. The DNC did not support Tim Ryan and he didn't get the word out. Sharrod Brown has the capacity to overwhelm the media, outspend the Republicans.
Two of Republican leaders are now in jail for taking bribes, former Republican state chair and speaker of the Ohio house. .
Jim, or, Vance had so much money and an open seat so he could literally buy votes, enough to win in a state that is on and off in its caring about what is going on.
Pseudo-Christian Nationalism, a heresy originating with anti-abortion politics, a single-issue wrapped in false piety, prayer breakfasts, and American flags and crosses worn as signs of the righteous right.
Growing ever-violent, lurid, unscientific, and apocryphal, the anti-abortion movement provided the quintessential distraction from G. W. Bush’s willful expiration of the assault weapons ban. Anti-abortion zealots led to the rise of the anti-tax Tea Party - Let’s not pay taxes to support abortion and birth control, they cried - as well as the implications of Bush’s grotesquely large tax cuts for the wealthy during his impulsive, wildly expensive Iraq War. As a result, the deficit increased as the Tea Partiers and the Freedom Caucus blamed the National debt and deficit on Social Security.
Orban’s Hungary has an economy no larger than that of Kansas.
Anti-abortion politics is political malpractice. Political malpractice is a "divide and conquer" approach. Real political practice is a "united we stand and divided we fall" approach. Nobody thought about criminalizing healthcare until Paul Weyrich decided it would provide great leverage for his "divide and conquer" approach.
My point is that "divide and conquer" authoritarianism is bad for healthcare, the economy, the border, crime, and every other issue on people's minds in this and every other election cycle, and that "unite and stand" egalitarianism is demonstrably good for every single one of those issues.
To them, unilateral control seems like the easy solution. Abortion laws have nothing to do with protecting the unborn. It's a means to an end, and that end is unilateral control, which always fails in the long term.
The alternative, mutual respect, seems harder in the short term, but it's the only thing that ever works in the long term.
Political malpractice, in this instance, is moving abortion under the guise of a Christian moral crisis into an ever-accelerating political battle over the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause separating church and state. Witness Trump’s latest coupling of the Bible and Constitution. Self-styled anti-abortion zealots have no scriptural basis whatsoever for their crusade; moreover, Susan B. Antony’s opposition to abortion was couched principally upon on-going back-alley abortions performed by quacks on poor, desperate girls working in factories in Rochester,NY, who bled to death after seeking care for abnormal pregnancies or factory-floor rapes or incest. Antony wished to stop the quacks from practicing what she considered the murder of young women. She could not have imagined a legal, medically safe abortion.
After retiring as an executive writer for two Virginia governors (both Democrats later elected to the Senate), I took a part-time job in 2013 working in the GOP-dominated Virginia House of Delegates (the lower House). At the desk of one of the extreme conservatives, there sat an enormous goldfish bowl filled with tiny rubber fetuses, soft and translucent like red-cherry gummies, something to put in your pocket and squeeze, which he passed out freely to visiting constituents from his district just south of D.C., (the same district as Republican A.G. Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s Homeland Security appointee and devotee).
I frankly don't understand this obsession with Orban. Sure, he rules with an iron fist and all that, but how is it that Republicans equate what he's doing to what we might do in a country immensely more populated and complex than Hungary? Are they saying, "it's as easy as that?", "if he can do it, we can do it"? Anyone who thinks that definitely has a screw loose somewhere. It's like comparing apples to peas.
Agreed. Why would we restructure the most powerful country the world has ever seen on a tiny nation-state whose economy is as small as Kansas, or emulate Russia, which ranks 11th in the world, behind Germany, France, India, China and —wait for it - California, a state whose economy is 4th in the world.
I think the quote is from Charles Sykes in The Atlantic, who went on to write:
"Far from being a voice of political comity, Vance has called loudly on the right to “seize the institutions of the left.” Vance has said that if Trump returns to power, he should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. … And then when the courts stop you, stand before the country” and say, quoting Andrew Jackson, “The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”"
We invented this monster. Now we need to remove it. Why this statement? On a personal level, when I embark on some project and it doesn’t go as intended, I often ask myself what was it that I did wrong. It works for me. Yet I don’t always find my answer. I have repeated this but I firmly believe that we have gone off so far on issues that the MAGA response is in truth, our invention. We work in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. Don’t dismiss my words. MAGA would not be a force without our actions.
Not only do I agree, I would also say the current situation is because not enough people are making the one good choice.
Dilemmas inevitably emerge in a complex system. We are either resolving them one-by-one in the sequence in which they emerge, in which case things are getting better, or we are building a continuously increasing inventory of unresolved dilemmas, in which case things are getting worse.
The difference between a dilemma and a problem is that the latter has a one-step solution and the former has a multi-step resolution, which is to say that our relationships are being damaged when we treat them like problems, thus avoiding the difficult conversations we need to have with one another.
Here everybody - your neighbor in HCR's Substack subscribers, Mr. Robert Warner, has posted to us the link to a user-friendly PROJECT 2025 brochure in PDF format, that is only 48-pgs and easy to understand.
Michael, and you are right about tyrants and their wrappings of religion and/or patriotism. Those tyrants actually believe in neither of those things, only power and their desire to do harm to others, particularly groups they think are either in their way or in the way of their religious or patriotic "cause." Trump and Vance are not actual Christians. I call people like them "pseudo-christians. They use the Bible and the religious trappings as cues to their pathetic supporters who are looking for something to hang their hatred, anger, fear, and resentment on and Trump and Vance, and the rest of Trumplandia can supply it, at least visually and verbally. Neither is a patriot as they can't manage to live their oaths of office and actually want to destroy our Constitution in favor of a new Trumplandia one that sets rich, white, "straight," pseudo-christian men uber alles.
Thank you, Heather. I don't have the stomach to watch anything but clips on MSNBC, The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert. It's not so much what the speakers say as how the audience reacts. It's not too much of a exaggeration to say that they terrify me. The degree of delusional thinking and blindness makes me sick.
I can't watch it either -- there are young women in the audience - deligates I believe. What on earth are they thinking supporting this anti-women team.
Oh really??? Trump is a tool. He would be nothing without the support of those ignorant and pathetic creatures who blame their lack of success on “ those others “. And we now have a major political party which has finally found a “ leader “ who can rally the masses so they can get the power and influence these Republican “leaders “ can build a government that works only for the wealthy and powerful. Trump’s party has shined a black light on us magnifying and amplifying our meanness and pettiness. And just look at the people cheering this creature on. They are not just old white wealthy white men.
I can’t watch either, and concur with your gratitude for Heather’s summary. You have to be thick-skinned, very grounded, and hopeful to watch the MAGA convention without being shaken. As if Dobbs were SCOTUS-light, the “immunity decision” fell like the first, truly fatal domino in the collapse of the rule of law, the bedrock of our democracy. The subsequent reversals, delays, and dismissals of Trump’s federal indictments have landed, in my personal experience, like body-blows. I feel physically assaulted, messed with, violated.
MisTBlu, I just came across a cartoon on Threads which shows 2 people walking down a sidewalk and one says to the other "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane."
This is a classic. When someone reliable makes a surface error, you correct it and move on. It's the same with Biden's Bull's-eye remark. He's not gonna say it again. And he didn't mean it in a violent way, but as a metaphor to be really focused on the with to be done. I'm ready, both to vote and to do what's necessary.
I am beginning to cast a critical eye on these “ court jesters “ and pundits as well as political polls and “ mainstream “ news. I think we would do well to take a more solemn active approach. Get out the vote for President Biden and his team while we still have a vote that matters
I always read HCR before looking at the news rehash in the morning paper. Her clarity is much sharper than anyone else's. I do think she meant to say, of minority workers, the unemployment under Bidenhas been a very good number.
If you work for the Times or the WaPo or the WSJ, there's always an editor or two to make sure you're not out there on a limb or in conflict with their pov. HRC doesn't have to deal with that.
It's hard to know. Katelyn Jetelina has a bevy of people who help her write for Your Local Epidemiologist and I don't know if HCR is a loner or not. But it is as rare as hen's teeth that she makes an unclear statement. Maybe she has a reader? Do you know?
MSNBC won't leave the topic of Biden and the debate alone, not bothering to address tfg and his 40 lies and refusal to answer one question the moderators asked. The don't talk about Project 2025 and the attack on democracy. I don't watch tv, but do see their YouTube posts, but just like the NYT and WaPo, they care more about the retrumplican narrative.
JL, I've had the same thought about the billionaires for Trump, especially the entrepreneurial types - do they really think their businesses will be better served by a Putin/Orban clone? Maybe they should ask the Russian and Hungarian oligarchs how that worked out for THEM?
I think that people such as Thiel think they can buy anything, that they are really the power behind the throne. And they are; up to a point. If the monster they are so busy putting together gains even more absolute power they may find their purchase slipping.
Not necessarily from the Christian Nationalists, who abhor LGBTQ (because their Bible says so), and are prepared to enforce “God’s law.” Their own salvation depends on that.
Seth Abrahamson has a Proof substack listing 602 lies. Many of them are repeats (Trump tends to say the same lie several times like a bumpstock AR15) and Seth counts each one as a separate lie, which is fair. So I don’t know where Biden got that ridiculously low number from. He discredits himself and his advisers by looking uninformed.
Nit pick much? Or just when it's the President? He made his point. That's good enough. He is president, he has other things to do - like run the country - he didn't look "uninformed." If he did, it was only in the eyes of those who were looking for something to reduce his presence.
In other words, let's focus on the important stuff instead of perceived errors shall we? Lester Holt got it......that was the point. Jeez.
It can be splitting hairs. I'm more inclined to count unique, substantive lies, the "whoppers", but one could also tally how many separate instances of lying. Even so, parsing Trumps output, when he lies continuously for an extended period, might be open to some degree of subjective interpretation.
Biden used "28 lies" when he was interviewed by registered Republican Lester Holt. What if Biden was interviewed by John Fugelsang or Nicole Wallace who hate CFDT as much as I do. I wonder how that would go.
The same. It's an interview not a debate society. The point was lack of follow through, not numbers. Besides, with Nicolle Wallace or John Fugelsang, there would be no need to bring it up. They already understand. Actually, Holt is an Independent as of 2018.
Corporations, like Comcast, would silence and self-censor the news programing of divisions under their control like was done to Morning Joe. Think about it. The allegedly most progressive mainstream media network station couldn’t even allow Medhi Hasan 1 hour on a Saturday earlier this year. They lied to Scarborough, Mika and Willie about swapping all Comcast affiliated programming on Monday for one consistent news feed when the were really self-censoring a former Republican congressman and his wife who is the daughter of one of our country’s most conservative National Security Advisors. Why? Because Comcast is worrying about future blowback against its core business.
The fear of fascism has already taken hold. Bertram Gross’ warning 50 years ago in Friendly Fascism, self imposed from within, is being given the keys to America by a cross section of America, but mostly billionaires who are already doing stunningly well.
Well think about it. Aren't you already scared enough to censor your own words? I was realizing that there are certain things I would love to yell out in public and would not dare. This realization fell on me like a ton of bricks. Already their violence is affecting every single person who doesn't agree.
I keep writing whatever under my own name. At 90 I suspect they’ll kill me anyway. Glad to have the information about MSNBC. I’d been wondering why the screen would suddenly go blank when someone was in the midst of an excellent opinion.
I think we already know... Fortunes won and lost with 2am toddler toilet tweets. Last time around, I watched my retirement accounts plummet overnight, recover slowly, only to plummet again.
"Trump has appeared at the convention with a large bandage on the ear he says was pierced by a bullet on Saturday." It looks like HCR isn't buying that Trump was shot either even though virtually all of the so-called news organizations claim he was. This is from "Forward" an Independent Jewish Magazine.
Conspiracy theories run rampant in Trumpian political circles and this may be one as well, but it is very likely that it wasn't a bullet that hit his ear but rather it was self-inflicted like in pro-wrestling or it was glass shards. And yes, I am passing along a conspiracy theory which may be a lie, but what if the vermin Trump staged this whole thing?
Soon after former President Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, the term “Reichstag fire” began trending on social media. Here’s what the Nazi-era term means and why people are talking about it.
What does ‘Reichstag fire’ mean?
Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor of Germany on Jan. 30, 1933. About a month later, on Feb. 27, 1933, someone burned down the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament. Hitler blamed the fire on Communists, and claimed they were launching an uprising to take over the country. Hitler convinced Germany’s president to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree, which took away some civil liberties from people who opposed the Nazis and also provided legal cover to imprison those people. Historians point to the fire as key in the rise of Nazi Germany.
Why are people saying it’s a ‘Reichstag moment’ after Trump shooting?
Opponents of Trump have often criticized him for his history of invoking Hitler and the Nazis. Some of the former president’s critics think it’s not outside the realm of possibility for Trump to follow the playbook of the Reichstag fire and use the assassination attempt as the basis for whipping up fervor against his political enemies.
Bruce Bartlett, a former government official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, issued a warning about Trump on the social platform X this past week, prior to the shooting, saying, “I bet he’s planning the American equivalent of the Reichstag fire to justify violence against the left.” After the shooting, Bartlett posted, “Looks like we just had our Reichstag fire.”
Australian politician Rex Patrick posted just after the shooting, “We might have just witnessed America’s Reichstag Fire moment.”
Journalist Joe Leyden shared, “Not sure whether I should be thinking about the #ReichstagFire right now. Not sure I shouldn’t.”
Others invoked the Nazi-era moment as well. Many of them were implying that Trump staged or arranged the shooting, which there is no evidence to support. There were additional ‘BlueAnon’ conspiracy theories spreading as well.
‘Reichstag fire moment’ has been invoked for Donald Trump before
Gen. Mark Milley, then-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said just before the Jan. 6 uprising at the Capitol, that then-President Trump “had led the country to the brink of its own Reichstag moment.”
On Jan. 6, historian Michael Beschloss posted a photo to X of the Nazi-era fire, captioned, “Fire in the Reichstag, Berlin, 1933.” The tweet was shared more than 1,300 times.
Masha Gessen, a Russian-American writer, wrote an in-depth essay in 2017 for Harper’s about Trump’s rise, “The Reichstag Fire Next Time,” which begins:
When each day brings more news than we are used to seeing in a week, and the kind of news that only the most catastrophic imagination can accommodate, we find ourselves talking about the Reichstag fire. Time feels both accelerated and slowed down, and so we imagine that we have been talking about the fire for years. It is the new president’s new clothes: invisible, yet always present in our perception of him.
What’s next with the Trump shooting investigation?
The FBI has identified the shooter, who was killed at the scene, as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about an hour away from where the rally took place. The FBI has not released a motive for the shooting.
The Justice Department has said it will investigate. And Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives plan to hold a hearing with the U.S. Secret Service about the assassination attempt, which killed one rallygoer — Corey Comperatore, a firefighter and father of two — and critically injured two others.
The Trump campaign said this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee will continue as planned, with Trump set to become the party’s nominee on Thursday night.
And what did trump mean with his post before the rally that “ all hell” was going to break out at the rally? It didn’t seem that he was going to announce his VP pick as it was reported that that decision was made right before the convention started. And then how he insisted to the secret service that he fist-pump and show his face to the crowd….with no regard or concerns to anyone else’s safety
I think we need to get to the details of this investigation quickly. Some of the details just stink. I also noted that he seemed eager to stand up after (his head and arm high above the secret service) immediately after being shot at. The same man who went to the bunker inside the White House (heavily guarded at all times)when there were protests around the perimeter. It’s almost like he knew he was in no danger. And to say that his injury felt like the “world’s largest mosquito” in the face of another being killed and two others critically wounded seems crass at best. Something is fishy all around.
“World’s largest mosquito” does not seem like the level of Purple Heart that he seem to be making it. A disconcerting injury to be sure, but relatively minor physical damage from what I could tell.
So why the huge made for TV bandage? Mercurochrome and a bandaid would have sufficed. Could it be, like St Ronnie, he has to be prompted to stay on course? Worried about shoes when he was being shot at? Really? As for the true victims, in the dystopian tangerine turd's world? It's nothing. Taking one for the "team," as was exhibited by the widow refusing the President's sympathy call. Need anyone say more? The tangerine turd said anything?
For real conspiracy theory, I do indeed think that "bandage" is a prompter - because he already has been seen nodding off. Why doesn't the ever so duped 4th estate mention that? Maybe Dash of the NYTimes and Jeff of the Bezos Post need to do some reading about what happened to the press in Germany in the thirties. One of the few publications to survive with owners intact was Axel Springer. And they now own Politico - no longer to be trusted. At the same time, Jeffie and Dash may want to read up on the rôle their partner in crime in the race to who they are give the most negative press to Biden played in Nazi Germany.......
From the moment it happened it appeared staged to me. And how much blood can flow instantly from the top of the outer ear??? It looked as if he pulled his hand out of his pocket placed it against his ear and there was red liquid as if he had popped a bubble of blood and smeared it across his face like in the movies or a play.
I think it is quite dangerous to speculate and fuel conspiracy theories. A man died and two people were seriously injured. I do not think HRC’s writing supports a conspiracy but it does point out how Trump’s campaign is shaping the message by encouraging sympathy and the messaging that Trump was protected by God.
My old party has pulled a few tricks that succeeded long enough to make it very hard to sway opinion if the truth is too long delayed, but in this case, I believe Trump arriving an hour late may have left openings in the security (sweeps done earlier for example, but not redone closer to his arrival). I'm very slow to believe conspiracy theories.
I was missed by the sweeps before President Johnson's 1st flight in to Randolph AFB when I was stationed there (1965-67). I had climbed the radar tower atop Base Ops and was in the transmitter/receiver shack tuning the radar when I looked down and saw security snipers hidden from ground view on top of the hangars, and one in the weather observer's observation glassed in post below me on the center of the Base Ops roof. Since Johnson's plane was already parked and the snipers seemed to be pointing at potential targets every few seconds, I kept out of sight until everything was over and the security teams had dispersed.
I did go talk to the one that had been in the weather observer's post, he turned out to have normally been one of Robert Strange (his real middle name) McNamara. I asked him if anybody had checked the radar shack, without telling him I had been up there watching him the whole time. He said, “No, isn’t it locked?” When I told him it didn’t have a way to lock it yet, but we could arrange to have a hasp and padlock put on it.
An example of stupidity. I had a bad feeling when a fake Afghan news crew turned out to be suicide bombers that killed themselves and Ahmed Shah Massoud on 9/9/2001 (on that side of the dateline).
What seems to be lost to history now was that a suspicious news crew that showed up to try to interview President G W Bush where he stayed before he went to the Sarasota Elementary School on Sep 11, 2001. They were turned away but I never found out who they really were, so still suspect they were suicide bombers like those that killed Massoud. I couldn't believe they wouldn't have held the suspicious news crew so soon after the one that succeeded in Afghanistan.
So, the only questions I would ask are:
Did Trump showing up an hour late leave too much time after initial sweeps?
Did the bullet captured on film actually strike his ear (it seems slightly low), or did it miss slightly, but broken glass hit a tiny fraction of a second later?
It seems a slight difference but one which they want interpreted as the more dramatic (print the legend, as Houdini’s gut punch death may have been peritonitis that he would have died of anyways.)
It’s hard to even consider watching an event that is full of ignorance, hate, lies and subversion of any value associated with democracy. The toxicity levels are at an all time high. I do think it’s time for the Democrats to forget political politeness and double down on their message of the existential threat of the GOP. Thanks Heather!
Super glue their idiocy to them and stop trying to outdo their idiocy. They are united behind a horror show. How about uniting behind decency, competence, and grit.
Exactly, our citizenry are addicted to Kardashian-style tripe. Chump epitomizes the “reality” that should scare the hell out of any sane person. As somebody said about abusive husbands. They can make hell feel like home. I say, HELL NO
Well said. Leading by example is not enough for people with non-existent attention spans. It requires thought and a more complex analysis of complex things.
I liken watching events on TV to looking out the window of a moving train. There is plenty to see, but it all goes by so quickly that you can't get a good look at it or do much about it. Of, by and for are active words, but TV has producers, editors, (typically) a commercial orientation, and an audience. It cultivates a short and superficial attention span, along with fundamental passivity.
Yes, but I think that's were the super glue comes in. Make them own their least popular behavior and policies. Teddy had the "Square Deal", FDR the :New Deal", Trump Inc. the "Raw Deal" and and Democrats have a much "Better Deal". We need to identify some compelling examples. Sane, legal abortion vs letting women die in miscarriage seems to be one of them.
They haven't toned down the rhetoric at all. Carson, DeSantis, Lake, Trump's DIL, and a few other speakers have spoke about a nebulous "they" and Democrats who have persecuted Trump, tried to bankrupt him and now "they" tried to have him killed. The entire event doesn't seem focused on policy or fact. It's like a big pep rally. Then they are parading out people's families who were the victims of crimes by immigrants, or drug overdoses and blaming it all on Biden. The Senate candidate running for Manchins old seat literally said that MAGA will be super upset and unhinged if they lose in November. Yet this is their way of showing "Unity" for all Americans and toning down the rhetoric. It's insane to see this type of rhetoric from leaders.
Having someone like Vance who is such a neophyte in national and geopolitics is almost as scary as as second Trump presidency (and that's saying A LOT). The Democrats can use this to their advantage.
“We are effectively run in this country…by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
And exactly how do these CCLs exert such extortionary power? First it's arch villain George Soros and his fire-dealing lasers from outer space, then it's total control of of the nation's voting systems, as well as investigational and law-enforcement personnel by Joe Biden in his few lucid moments, and now it's the cat ladies pulling the strings? I'm confused.
An odd statement for a politician to make. He was serious too, watch the video.
I think Vance has a really fundamental issue with women. That's a guy with Mommy issues, I fear. In his book he admits his mother was vulnerable and a hopeless addict who did the best she could, but he still expresses resentment at her for failing to be a good parent, even when she cares for him when he was ill in college. And his grandmother was 'violent' by his own description. I was put off by his descriptions of his fights with his to-be wife Usha, too--something felt really off about it, like he was only willing to stay with her so long as she deferred to him, to the point of profound humiliation.
Something is very twisted up in Vance when it comes to his regard for women.
I know no more about it than I am seeing here but she seemed more damaged than aggressively damaging. That can create a deficit of parenting of course.
I have known some educated and knowledgeable parents who did more damage to offspring than ignorant ones. All it takes is an agenda coming from a deficit in them or an agenda against the other parent. Both are aiming at another adult but hitting an innocent kid. Of course, the kid is then the identified “problem.”
It seems to me that those ‘childless cat ladies’ are what we in the 60’s called ‘little old ladies in tennis shoes’. But we knew they were people who got things done. And they still do! Frequently the LOLIT put nasty little boys in their place, so they are feared! Thus the derisive name calling.
If you watch the video clip, he names the “childless, cat ladies”: Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC. So, it’s really an anti- DEI trope. His evil terrifies me.
As a childless, cat lady myself, I will be exercising my power in the voting booth.
It's hilarious because Kamala Harris has a daughter and from what we can tell was a great Mom, additionally Pete B is married and has kids as well. AOC is the only one without kids in the group he named.
PhillyT -- Parenthetically, AOC has been wildly busy since she became a US Representative 5 years ago! And a very effective one! She and her fiancée are not yet married.
JD I am with you, although now I have a very catlike standard poodle--we childless cat ladies would do a helluva better job at running nation states than these whiney tiny-membered white boyz.
I have fun watching the humor seep in as it tempers the outrage. It's a way of coping and within the humor might be some creative ideas wanting to be born. Sound bites that bring people to their senses and cut through all the manipulations.
I took it to mean women who love cats more than the thought of raisng children. Since I am a dog person and a mom, I feel I would pass muster! (Just kidding!)
Implies that any woman who chooses not have children is only worthy of contempt. Because a woman's whole reason to exist in this christofascist world is to breed and raise more christofascist children.
Or she is unattractive to these virile, manly men and relegated to being an undesirable "spinster" (there's a word we don't need to revive!) who only has pets for company.
Instead of watching, I caught up on Heather’s Facebook talks - Monday’s Red Wine and Blue zoom and yesterday’s Politics talk. Her dissection of Project 2025 is terrifying but necessary information. We need to spread the word.
Thank you Dr Richardson. When the msnbc pundits sit around criticizing President Biden for being aggressive with Lester Holt, you are there to give us the facts. It’s July and they are looking for some miracle man to save us. Biden and Harris believe in democracy and that’s what matters. I’m voting for Democracy. And feisty Joe.
Biden is justifiably angry at the trump lies and his treatment in the media. The trick will be to use humor and not come off as a bitter old man. In other words, model the “ Happy Warrior”…but with a “big stick” (to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt).
I would feel better if I knew there were preparations to counter cheating, and the likely violence like ‘20 and ‘21. I am concerned by the performance of the Secret Service. Also we see that courts can be bought. Also our experience with accountability is not very good.
Actually we need a bunch of “happy warriors with big sticks”….
Looks like the genuses at DNC could figure out what you said. The cheating in Texas is Goebbel’s class. Likely else too. The SS has been compromised before Jan 6. These things are not secrets.
Joe Biden has been masterful at getting our standing in the world back on track. Numbers do not lie. It would be so refreshing for these late to the game nay sayers to just look at the facts, the numbers
I would appreciate the truth about Trump’s injury from someone. It defies common knowledge about the ballistics of an AR15 round to say the “the bullet pierced my ear”. That statement is more of Trump’s hyperbolic bullshit and it downplays, in front of the American public, the incredible damage that is inflicted by an AR15 round. It elevates Trump’s legend in his own mind status to say he’s was shot but the truth more likely is that his ear was hit by fragments of something the bullet hit and not a direct “passing through” of an AR15 bullet. Am I continuing to miss the reporting or is the reporting just not there? Is this just another one of Trump’s statements that we’re going to blindly accept? Are there any physics and ballistic experts out there that have testified or are willing to testify and explain that an AR15 round does not just “pass through” anything and leave it in any form that is recognizable? From what we’ve seen, Trump would have been injured more severely with a Red Rider BB gun.
I've been saying the same thing. Why hasn't there been any information at all about Trump's wound, other than the speculation that he was grazed by a bullet from an AR 15?
Some reporters have said that Trump's teleprompter was hit by a bullet & that it was possible that what actually "hit" Trump was a shard of glass that flew off the teleprompter.
But if that is actually what happened, Republicans couldn't then claim that Trump was "shot." I agree that it's been highly suspicious & highly unusual that no medical statements about Trump's injury have been reported, as far as I have seen.
I totally agree that the lack of truth about his “injury” is another ploy to gain sympathy and voters. Note, the doctor who treated his him is his old
WhiteHouse Days friend…Jackson…or is it Johnson….or is it….you know….the same one who gave him all sorts of flying colors on his fitness and cognitive abilities!!!
Sadly, while I know a fair amount about both a Red Rider and an AR-15, I cannot answer your question. I've been hit (on the forehead) with a BB. My only close contact with an AR-15 was a hot casing from another shooter that hit my forearm (burn, no bruise).
My assumption (and we all know what "assume" means, right?) is that a 55 grain bullet whose muzzle velocity is 3200 feet per second at a distance of 444 feet from weapon to impact" would do more than sting. I have seen a wound channel from a "graze" from a larger bullet that caused substantial pain. My only experience with being struck is with Simunition rounds in a training environment (a low speed plastic round that is a marking cartridge fired from a duty weapon in a force on force training environment that travels at 400feet per second) at close range, and they hurt, leaving either a bruise (round on target) or a scrape (always on the back of my right hand, because inevitably, the trainee recognizes the gun as the threat and shoots a the gun.)
The press is very uncurious. Where are the investigative reporters? Or is this it now, we just are to accept the Ministry of Truth's version, no questions allowed?
I agree. I couldn't make myself watch any of the GOP Convention. Thanks HCR for summarizing for me and others like me who otherwise wouldn't have known what happened.
There are a consistent number of trolls who are showing up in Dr. Richardson's comments every day. The Biden theme is a favorite. And occasional racism and the defeatism all is lost theme. Whatever.
We're fine. We will prevail in November. Vote Blue.
Thank you for the reminder, Barbara. I have of late been scoping the profiles of unfamiliar posters; I find a stunning few that either subscribe to other Substacks or who write anything themselves. It does make me wonder what troll farm is at work.
There are some who, I think, really do believe that tripe (or in a third party candidate; also tripe, but a different flavor). Others? Not so much.
Good point on troll farms. From time to time, I check out profiles too. Kind of a weird dead end, aren't they? Yeah, lots of tripe stuff as well.
Dr. Richardson sure has some folks running scared doesn't she for them to fire up the troll farms on her writings. She has become a powerful voice for Democracy.
Anyway. All this is fluff compared to what we are really about. We will prevail in historic fashion come November.
I am feeling panic because of the positive lift Trump has gotten over the last three weeks and what appears to be the lack of unified direction in the Democratic Party. The media feeds I get (New York Times, Bulwark) really feed that panic by constantly focusing on these struggles. I feel at a loss on what I can do. I really need some action points so I don’t feel helpless.
I have stopped looking at NYT and can’t tolerate anything from the Bulwark either at this point. I’m confining myself to sites where I can get information without the horrendous anti-Biden bias I see elsewhere in order to remain sane. If we give in to panic and despair, we are surely lost already. Heather is an optimist, and she knows a lot more than I do, so I’ll go with her take on things.
Trump can be trusted to pick a potential successor who is sufficiently awful to ensure anyone considering his removal will have second thoughts. He exceeded expectations today.
Republican full-lemming-backing for Trump and Vance show Project 2025 not a laugh.
Gushers of U.S. corporate money, Aileen Cannon in Florida, the Clarence court in Washington, D.C., many major "news" outlets, and more billionaire-run social media sites all confirm, JD: it's nothing to laugh at.
That this crew of Repubs identify their daily onslaught of lies, their rejection of any justice, and their blatant affront to common sense is so in your face ridiculous that even our “free press” can’t help but notice. One would think. But this is not a sane world. Evil worship is popular these days. A relative says that the devil is at work. I say that humans are capable of mocking the devils worst actions. At least the popularity of Hitler was driven in large part by a population suffering from egregious deprivation (so I read), but the popularity of our wannabe dictator was a transaction. A purchase by the monied “power-behind-the-throne types who want their way without being the face of the evil. The face of evil was for sale, and so was the loyalty of disaffected believers in hate-filled rhetoric, so the deal was done. Shame on America and all those who are a party to the evil wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible. They bring shame on both
I have watched the insanity metastasize for decades. From Ted K assuming that W had a good idea with the no child left behind bs, which was nothing but test, test, test, to our current state of the inmates taking over the asylum. Now Dems are carrying the mantle of idiocy. NYT headline this am Biden v. His party. I want to scream and bash heads.
This is the worst kind of theater, a cheap charade of characters who make up their roles as they go along but not in any coherent, available, sensible, moral, reasonable way at all. The only common sense they claim is one that they are all commonly stupid.
As a long time mother and to the best of my memory these particular nincompoops are acting out ages from about three to about eight. Thank you all you brave ones who are watching and taking notes because I already know what a waste of time that is for me. I'm much more interested in giving the energy I have to my various ways of promoting real democracy.
But it seems to appeal to a group of American voters. The easy to understand sound bites. They appeal to immature impulses…bullying, I want my way, I’m being picked on. Easy…no thoughtful analysis required. No need to read or listen to serious commentary. No need to think. Maybe we need to develop some of those strategies to reach the low information, can’t be bothered voters.
That aspect of the MAGA voter is hardly commented upon - but trump has picked up on it. The media are saying that photo is "iconic" - though I doubt most of them have bothered to look up the actual meaning of the word:
"regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration."
Well, let's lay aside the thought that trump is "worthy of veneration" - but yes, he knows that pic. is representative of MAGA - bloody and aggressive.
Trump could have become tribe leader with Cro-Magnon man "Ug! Blood! Strong! Fight! "
And that's how he got his base and keeps it. Doesn't matter if he rambles and talks tosh - they just hear those little dog whistle words they want to hear.
Missed that grouping, and thank you. It's just that I don't remember my own daughters going through that at all and the earlier inclinations were quickly redirected :-)
Yes - but if the three to eights aren't caught and redirected - that's when the rot sets in. By fifteen you have created a monster. Some of them just make school mates lives a misery - and some of them go for daddy's gun.
- Pulled Quote -
''...for all the talk of unifying the country since last weekend’s shooting, Trump did not pick Vance to bring Republicans together. His selection of Vance reinforces that the MAGAs have taken over the Republican Party with an ideology that rejects democracy in favor of Christian nationalism.''
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag carrying a cross''
In every age it has been the tyrant, who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both.
I've written about this previously. It's the Russians, stupid. Vance is Putin's choice for VP. "He is vehemently opposed to using more funds to help Ukraine and has blasted what he sees as Europe’s over-dependence on the United States when it comes to military investment. One senior EU official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly on the issue, said in an interview Monday that the appointment of Vance was a “disaster” for Ukraine — and by extension for the European Union, which has backed Kyiv as it defends itself against Russian aggression." https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-vice-president-nominee-jd-vance-republican-party-united-states-presidential-election-us-eu-relations-isolationism-foreign-policy/
IMHO the ethnic core of the Republican Party in his home state is now vulnerable. Trump won Ohio by 8% in 2020. I don't know this as a fact but I bet many of his 2020 ardent supporters were Slavic Americans. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/04/23/jd-vances-dismissive-attitude-toward-ukraine-is-an-insult-to-70000-ukrainian-americans-in-ohio/ Add to that the veterans and military, their families and friends now opposed to him due to "not suckers or losers." As of today, Democrat Sherrod Brown leads Moreno by 5% according to the polls.
According to the 2022 American Community Survey, about 8.2 million people in the United States, or roughly 2.5% of the population, reported Polish ancestry. This makes Polish Americans the largest Slavic ethnic group in the country, the second largest Central European group, and the eighth largest immigrant group overall. Add the Baltic states, Finland, etc.
Hopefully the word about Putin/Vance will affect the vote in WPa, MI, MI.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea, the abortion issue is primary. We can flip this state.
Swamp Republicans. Millions of unregistered trend Democratic.
FT 6 has texted well over a million in the past several days. Thanks to a donor, texts to Arizona yesterday and today. https://www.fieldteam6.org/
Thursday is Florida day on FT 6 Textarcade. https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ft6arcade24bamk.
Also Florida day on FT 6 phonebank. https://www.fieldteam6.org/actions
As an Ohioan, I was thrilled when he chose Vance. Without Peter Thiel’s money, it’s doubtful Vance would have won that Senate seat. What a charlatan, if not worse. I’m an Appalachian Ohioan. I felt his book stupid, insulting and not what I experienced. It was oh, wow is me. And I started out presuming the best, then saw the real.
It would be just to see a VP debate in suburban Cleveland in Parma Heights. Let him answer to those hard working Ukrainian Americans AND OTHERS with family in NATO countries like Poland, Lithuania, etc., who provide extraordinary support to their family and friends fighting for freedom back in Ukraine.
LMAO. 39, virtually no experience except what others have laid at his feet. A “communications specialist” in the military (desk job?).
A gift to Blue Nation, now it’s time to unite and win! Biden is our candidate. As my dad used to say, the harder you work, the luckier you get. Let’s go, let’s win.
Good comment, Paula. No discussion of Vance is complete without mention of Peter Thiel, and also the support of Elon Musk which is likely what pushed him over the finish line. I suspect his very inexperience is what is attractive to them: it makes him easier to manipulate, as does his absolute lack of a moral core which might guide his actions.
We here in Ohio would be glad to be rid of Vance, but not like this!
Q: What do Thiel and Trump see in Vance?
A: They both think a small number of people are important, everyone else is like a cardboard box (potentially useful, or potentially in need of discarding, and otherwise irrelevant), and Vance agrees with them.
Q: What does Vance see in Thiel and Trump?
A: He mistakenly thinks they think he's one of the important people, and that makes him useful to them for the time being.
I can't bear to watch the RNC news coverage. It's so disturbing. Saying they're a bunch of 5-year-olds is an insult to 5-year-olds. I'll just read Heather's newsletters till it's over.
James, "disturbing" is the word. The 2024 Republican Party "Platform" includes the phrase (and it's a meaningless phrase), "We will be a Nation based on Truth, Justice, and Common Sense." That is so laughable, but frightening because so many people have been tricked into believing that. I thought that "seeing is believing." Evidently, that's not true for MAGAs who look at Trump through glazed and dazed eyes. What 's worse, to me, are the Republican Congress members who are just as glazed and dazed. Do they remember when they first sold their souls to Trump? They are blind to all the illegal things he's done, and want to punish the rest of us who DO believe in "Truth, Justice, and
Common Sense."
Pam, like so many things the folks of Trumplandia do, using a line like, "truth, justice, and common sense," is a slap in the face of all of us who do believe in those things. Their idea of any of those is exactly opposite of what one would think it should be. They are getting quite good at "New Speak" as used by the government in "1984." The sad thing, even more, disturbing is that our media goes along with it all. If one is not sure of this, just listen to the commentary on the mainstream media as the Trumplandia convention proceeds. They rarely mention the lies. They will call out the Big Lie, but not the lies about immigrants or higher crime rates or that they stand with working people. The mainstream media and some other sources have nearly totally ignored "Project 2025" which has been out for two years, as though they don't want to deal with it, yet it is the stance of Trumplandia.
Pam, I shared what you wrote here with my friends on Facebook. I hope you don't mind. I should have ask you first...but your words here are perfect for what others that are not on HCR and not reading or hearing. Hopefully, this will make a difference if only one person reads and understands or even thinks about. Hugs.
Exactly how I am feeling: "glazed and dazed" with terror....
"'We will be a Nation based on Truth, Justice, and Common Sense.' That is so laughable, but frightening . . . ."
Loved that phrase. Half expected to see Superman standing in front of a forty-eight star flag!
I used to watch both conventions many years ago. I watched both conventions in 2016. There was no way I was watching the 2020 convention. You are not a party when you have NO platform.
All the hatred, lies, and continuous bad-mouthing the U.S. is SO DAMN OFFENSIVE.
They have a so called platform ... if you want to call it that....it is pretty much Project 2025 said differently!
When Nancy Pelosi tore up CFDT's SOTU address, I decided then and there, I wouldn't watch or listen to another Republican lie fest.
I haven't turned on the news since CFDT was shot.
I agree with many others that the assassination attempt was staged to make the Secret Service look bad and to get sympathy votes for CFDT. Of course, it failed miserably and the CFDT was arrogant enough to pick Vance.
I cringe to think of what a CFDT cabinet would look like if he wins reelection. Top to bottom, there wasn't a secretary that accomplished anything to make America great. That's quite a non-accomplishment.
I can't wait for Friday....and hope all this "hullabaloo" of the Repub Convention is over. So far this week I have had my television off more than on. I can't stand seeing any of the liars...and there are so many! Reading Heather's letter tells me the important points that are happening....and I know that I will not be voting for any Republican candidates come November. They are a bunch of lost souls that have been purchased by the devil!
Some of them, maybe all of them, do not have souls to lose. They are just greedy arrangements of chemicals taking up space, air, food, and goods.
James, I agree with your answers. I am waiting for seeing some of them going under the bus. Yes, useful for the time being. We have also stopped watching the national news, and watch only the local news. And yes, so disturbing. I had a long conversation with one of my ex-students yesterday, actually I usually mostly listen. So I got an earful of nothing but dire predictions. She and her husband have plenty of money, so they could leave if the worst happens although she does agree that no where is safe, particularly from climate change.
Michele, thank you for mentioning climate change in this disaster. Remind everyone that the groupies of Putin do not “believe” in climate change.
Is there a safe place? I would say yes. That place is in January after the grownups take over with Dems in charge of all three branches of government.
Every Republican should listen to The Axe Files interview of Bill Gates, an Arizona county supervisor and life long Republican. His first political act was telling his kindergarten classmates to vote Republican.
Then, as an elected official, because he chose to obey the law in lieu of obeying MAGA orders, protesters camping outside his house used megaphones to call him a pedophile and every other insult that came to mind. He ended up in therapy receiving treatment for PTSD.
Not only climate change....
I was talking to my wife earlier today about applying for dual citizenship in Norway. But I think we're too damn old to be accepted. And I can't say I blame them for rejecting us if we applied.
James, I now refer to the former Republican Party as the toddler-party even though it is an insult to 3-year-olds. These grown toddlers whine, complain, blame others, call names, bully those who are weaker, and lie incessantly as toddlers do when they are super tired, have really bad parenting, or have siblings whom they think have more than they do. So, it is The Toddler Party or Trumplandia whichever comes to my mind first.
That's a good name. It's worth noting that a 3-year-old is immature and open minded whereas a physically mature person has retained one of those two traits and left the other trait behind.
I read Heather, Scott Dworkin , Joyce Vance and Timothy Snyder - all superior —
In the words of an old philosopher, "We know what Vance is, what we're discussing is the price."
Agree, would be good riddance, but definitely not like this. We can win at the ballot box next Senate go round!
He is youth with no experience..... hopefully, all Democrats will wake up to the fact that we may have the oldest candidate in Joe Biden but damn we have the BEST! Go Joe!
Apparently, Don, Jr. and Eric were both very much in favor of Vance, too. Possibly they are as much under Russian influence as Trump himself and some of his other advisors.
TL, I suspect Don and Eric are not much of anything. It does not seem they believe in anything but money and their love of it. They are "blowin' in the wind" in that they will go with whichever wind blows them to the most money and potential power. They are not particularly bright, but they did get from their dad a disregard for everyone not like themselves and either a broken moral compass or one that is entirely missing.
Or they really like his beard...
Will the gov appoint Vance's successor? Or will there be a special election? Or does Vance not need to resign his Senate seat to run for VP? If there is a special election will Tim Ryan run, and will he have good prospects?
I don’t think he needs to resign to run; Tim Kaine (was that his name? Hillary’s VP anyway) didn’t. If they win, the governor will appoint someone to fill the remainder of his term.
The Heritage Foundation is also pleased with the Vance pick.
Yes, they are. And of course we all must let folks know just why he is so beloved by HF.
I've now had two Facebook folks in my feed say that "Project 2025 sounds fine to me" and another who calls P2025 "Q-Annon for lefties".
Sigh.
What I have found most effective for convincing even Republican friends of the terror planned under Project 2025, is to post on facebook the one line memes going around about what specifically the document will do to the reader. For example: "Under Project 2025. Social Security age will be increased to age 70." "The Republicans under Project 2025 would end Headstart and Special Education" Get the (terrifying) words out.
Sigh indeed. They will always be blind to the problems of death star and Project 25 because it fits with their own prejudices.
I read about 75 pages of Project 2025. The chapters/sections I looked at all lead in with Democrat/Biden bashing for their position on the particular topic. And then they talk about how it needs to be fixed because blah blah blah. And then they talk about how they can replace the particular department with their "Christian" based solutions.
It's like listening to Rush Limbaugh. He usually laid out a topic in a reasonable way so most people would be nodding their heads, and then he takes a huge right turn into crazy land.
Ally, and the sad part is that those folks are likely to be the ones harmed most by an installation of Trumplandia. Trump tried to tell the people he didn't care about them and only wanted their votes, but unlike everything else he says, they didn't believe him. How pathetic!
To learn more about how we can confront the threats presented in this guide head-on and begin to build a bold, vibrant democracy for all people, visit
https://democracyforward.org/action/join-2025/
I downloaded the brochure and joined 'Democracy Forward' to volunteer the next 4-months.
Trolls or bots perhaps?
Paula, I agree ! JD Vance is a gift. Makes our job easier.✍️🚶♀️💲📲👕🛒
“Trump went on to endorse Vance late in the GOP primary. That, and the outside $10M ad blitz, are clearly the only reasons that Vance went on to win.
BUT….even with all that help, and in a state where the GOP Governor (DeWine) defeated the Democratic candidate by more than 25 points, and the rest of the GOP ticket won by the high teens or low 20s, (judicial races by the low teens), Vance only won by just over 6 points. As dramatic an underperformance of candidates on the same ticket as you’ll see in Ohio.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/davidpepper/p/breaking-view-from-ohio-the-short?r=fqsxl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Let’s all help shout out what JD Vance is about!📣
Ultra short TikTIk (people do have short attention spans!) of Vance:
https://www.tiktok.com/@meidastouch/video/7391954521519426858
1 min video by the Seneca Project.Remember, JD Vance and the GOP support this:
https://x.com/senecaprojectus/status/1810372496878874790
If you’re like me and can’t stomach the RNC, you can follow Liza Donnelly(some may recognize as New Yorker cartoonist) who is watching and drawing each day. I think she made Ted Cruz way too good looking.😜
https://open.substack.com/pub/lizadonnelly/p/drawing-the-rnc-day-2?r=fqsxl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Also for anyone in Maine or nearby states, Liza will be live with our dear Dr. Heather July 25th at the Lincoln Ctr. Tickets available via link.
https://open.substack.com/pub/lizadonnelly/p/in-conversation-with-heather-cox?r=fqsxl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Calvin and Hobbes would have a field day. 😉
Blue Ohio is a force in OH. They funded Dem candidates initially with $280,000, and I think there is more to come. Www.everystateblue.org.
Donate monthly to them. Difficult to hear the silent blue majority when the state is so gerrymandered! 😡
DeWine defeated the Democratic candidate by more than 25 points! Yikes! This is crazy!
Yes, and his corruption is so deep he should be holding a jail cell for trump when the time comes. If you want to know just HOW corrupt, read David Pepper's Substack, 'Pepperspectives'. He's all over these Ohio criminals!
Thank you. Some hopeful thoughts. It is the job of all leading Dems to constantly and consistently point out all the f'n lies and their undermining democracy. MAGAts base has more to lose under tRump and so much more to gain with Biden, but their fear and hatred and their anti (fill in the blank)______, may keep them in the fold, much to their loss. When do fear and hate not sell politically?
I would suggest that the lies are a symptom with an underlying cause, that focusing on the lies is not the most effective approach, and that focusing on what interest is being served is more effective.
There are two choices. Support for Biden-Harris is choosing to serve a nation in which the effect of everyone's small short-term sacrifices is an enormous long-term benefit, and everyone wins. MAGA has chosen to serve themselves in the short term at the nation's expense, and they don't care that everyone, including MAGA, will suffer in the long term. If lying serves that end, then MAGA lies. If telling the truth serves that end, then MAGA tells the truth.
“. . .and that focusing on what interest is being served is more effective.”
I agree.
One example is P25’s plan to eliminate NOAA, the atmospheric and oceanic researchers. The weather people. Why eliminate the weather and climate people? They are sooo gloomy about global warming, and they don’t respect the fossil fuel industry and how important it is to Republican donors.
Some people are convinced that all politicians lie, equally, so pointing out lies falls on their deaf ears. Other people are offended by being lied to. What proportion of voters in each category is hard to tell.
Love your expression, Harvey -- "f''n lies."
I’m working early voting. Voters have to tell us which ballot they want to vote. I overheard one yesterday say “I’m in _____[redacted]. Of course I’m a republican.”
If I could stomach the idea of burning a book (I can't, not one, not ever), but IF I could, I know where I'd start right now.
think we should go to place where he is speaking, act you want an autograph, but demand a refund.....
Paula, I am a Hoosier, but have ancestry in Appalachia, West Virginia speciifiable. I once stayed on a trip at Berea College in KY and appreciate their focus and have bought some of their products. I also read Vance's book because I stupidly thought it would give me some insights into the area. All it did was make me angry with that whiner. This week, in the NYT I think, there was a list of books to read about Appalachia as an alternative to Hillbilly Elegy. The statements he has made show him to be a cold hearted prate.
I’m a Hoosier by birth. Now I live in the red south. No difference.
I will look forward to finding that alternative list. I too, Michele, read it hoping to see a like view. Not. He’s an angry guy. There are so many wonderful people from my youth! And they cared and tried to help people in trouble.
I wish I could remember where I saw it.....I know it was within the last couple days. I did finish the book and wondered why people thought it was so great. I can actually remember getting angry a few times and wondering why I was wasting my time.
Did you mean pirate?
Maybe I am spelling it wrong....prat. I confess to being a bad speller. I read that it is genetic and that's my excuse.
Worse than a mere prat, I think, as my Brit husband uses the term, meaning silly and foolish. Wasn’t JD a hedge fund pirate? No, just a venture capitalist, I just checked, but he worked for/ with/ was funded by Peter Thiel, who thinks it a pity that women were given the vote.
I confess to having purchased and read Hillbilly Elegy when it first came out. What has stood out to me as I recall the book was that he was quite unkind and condescending to his community, blaming them for their own misfortune, which I found odd as his mother was a drug addict. Admittedly amateur psychologist here (I know there are real ones on the forum, and perhaps they will comment?) but I wonder if anger against his mother manifested in distain of the compromised hill people?
He also writes about his feelings of insecurity when he enters the corporate/legal big league, he turns to his then fiancée (now wife) to give him guidance on how to behave and dress. Like Trump, who apparently could never crack the NY culture of the truly wealthy, powerful and successful, the attempt to gain status by elected office runs through them both. Perhaps that is why Vance--an outspoken critic of Trump--decided to flip his opinions. Correct me if I am wrong, but I've read that Trump donated to Hilary's campaign when she ran against Obama? And he was a registered Democrat? I think Vance is attempting to emulate Trump's "success" by latching onto his coattails. Sadly, Trump would drop Vance in a "NY minute" should it be advantageous. Also, the Trump "success"--at what point it is worth it if you sacrifice your soul?
I grew up in NW Indiana, home to LOTS of Eastern Europeans. I hope they know what an enemy they have in Vance.
I grew up in Elkhart. There are lots of Poles in South Bend. I would agree that Indiana is mostly like the red south. I often think that what I saw is what I call casual racism, instead of blatant segregation. Didn't know then about red lining then or that Marion Andersen had to stay overnight in Elkhart when she came to sing at Goshen College, for two examples. The county seat has always been so "Christian".
Paula, I am glad to find another person who felt the same about Vance's book as I did. It was pathetic and nothing like the people I have known from Appalachia. He got the goodies for himself, Yale, financial connections, etc., but has done nothing for the real people of Appalachia who were cheated, robbed, abused by the mining and timber industries, yet are blamed for the situation they are now in, the situation those corporations left them in when they fled leaving the destruction and poverty behind. Yes, Vance and Trump are quite a team, users, liars, deceivers, and worse.
Ruth, he painted with a terribly overboard brushstroke and clearly had an intention (now we know what) in writing it.
Thank you Paula 🫶
Harris versus Vance..no contest VP…a newby vascillating verbunkism vs accomplished solid experience ? Stand up sister Appalachian ..will you cast a hillbilly blue VOTE ..hell yea🙌!
…and remember :https://apnews.com/article/ohio-abortion-amendment-election-2023-fe3e06747b616507d8ca21ea26485270 and Vances stand ( well currently anyhow) he stands solidly on your 13-14 y.o. carrying her rapist’s child…OHIOIANS substantially voted that OUT! Profound thanks from all grandchildren especially…
I’d have rewritten ‘..Russian, stupid ..’ in previous comment as ..Russian’s STUPIDITY…(MHO)
And therein lies total immunity for all to see in action what it really means ..THERE! IN LIES ( after lies after lies add even more lies upon lies) the CNN fact checker (a faux pas extrodinare absent at the debate!) where have they gone …to graveyards everywhere?
I applaud voters but 66% turnout being a tops? Is that how you want the history written ? Having climbed from 35-45 % normal participation?
The biggest issue is MAGA…the controlling cuddle up to Putin Party …not their present puppets..but the rich backers THEY are the oppositional oligarchs looking for ‘more’ status …
We. Can. By. One.Vote.Better. That.
MAKE.IT.BLUE.STOP. THIS.COUP.
💙💙VOTE ALL THE COMPLICIT OUT💙💙
¡Bravò, PauleOH, bravò¡🤝
I headed back to W.&L. this w/e to a reunion of the fraternity in which I was a social member. At school in Western Virginia, I met several 'Appalachians', many of whom could run circles around me and very few of whom fit the stereotype. With Washington and Lee being a private college, positive selection was surely a factor. 🧑🎓
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14brKebjIPk 💡
In any case, one of my best friends in that fraternity grew up in West Virginia and, like Beau in the vid. above, he voiced a distinct dislike for Senator Vance. My bud said about the 'Hillbilly Elegy': "Okay you grew up in a dysfunctional family, J.D. You are NOT Appalachia -- you are from a screwed up family; that's it, a**hole." 🖕
https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/boilingfrogs/the-cynical-case-for-vice-president-vance/ (from a conservative source, ¡no less!) 🤢
Deep down inside of me, I sense that Justice Thomas and Senator Vance are ashamed of their origins. Such feelings of inadequacy may impel each to rebel against the Ivy League schooling generously bestowed upon them; as if to gnash their teethe at 'those snobs' who say, "Oh yes, you can study with us, but you will never be one of us." 😠
Perceptive, I'd say.
And if not in Parma Hts., then perhaps in Eastlake, at the Croatian Center on the north end of S.O.M. Center Rd. Would LOVE to see the reception waiting for him at THAT venue! Yeah, I'm in Lake County!
Precisely! Check out the Liberal Redneck's (Trae Crowder) take on Vance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eMMZksZSL8
"JD Vance ain't it." Amen. Also, love Trae's description of Vance as "Ohio's Ted Cruz." 🔥
Informed and encouaging. Thank you.
Excellent comment PaulaOH
Agreed. Time to unite, more truly, with the Blue team
You are right, Putin on the rise
The EU are unsurprisingly nervous about Orban in the rotating presidency - he's been taken to task for going to visit Putin without telling anyone.
Vance is my senator, and I’m not crazy about him. Vance is as authoritarian as Trump, and unlike Mike Pence, he would do anything Trump and Putin wanted.
And unlike Pence -- who I could not bear, in part for his sanctimonious way of speaking - Vance is a big, strong, articulate, extremist bully. Very scary.
All image, big empty soul to be filled with the hate and vitriol of both head bullies.
Just keep repeating his quotes on tRump when tRump began is bid for the WH. What does it take for a person who can do such an extreme 180-degree turnaround?
Yess.., and the "articulate" loudmouths are given a pulpit to spew from by Big Media, and THAT is so annoying. Their crap gets on the front page, while the 'facts' are lost on page 45, if you can find them.
Does that make him and tRump a foreign agent?
Given that I'm pretty sure that money and documents have changed hands with the former, that much is true. Not sure if the latter has had any specific remuneration; it would be an interesting tidbit of info to have on him.
If you haven't seen it yet, this pretty much sums up vance: https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/satan-declines-to-buy-jd-vances-soul
How soon can that disaster be undone. ALERT Trojan Horse inside the gate.
He is my senator too and I am afraid of him for his anti-women positions.He will be right there to support a national abortion ban.We should all shun him.
Women and the men who love them can save this election.
Shunning would be the perfect response to these two. Or maybe exile them to Russia. Putin would welcome them - for a while.
Never sell "Putin" short! He can recognize a dull tool (vance, trump, jeweliani, hailee) when he sees one; he doesn't suffer fools. That's why he has remained on his horse this long. The FSB is his well-oiled machine where "the rule of law" doesn't apply.., 'they' are trying to accomplish something., re the re-installation of #45. The Clown Car which has arrived in Milwaukee probably has a couple 'copnductors' aboard who are members of the "Russian Intelligence community".., look for them.
Putin watching to see his next move
The higher the rise, the harder the fall.
Thank you, Daniel. I am registered with Field Team 6 for events being held on Tuesday, July 23, and Saturday, July 27. Please know that your efforts to amplify the work of FT6 are making an impact here in NWPA as well as across the nation. It takes a village to defend our democratic republic.
thank you -- I would love to join the text arcade and phonebanks -- but when I click the links it says 'error' -- is there another way to get to these that you know of?
https://www.fieldteam6.org/
https://www.fieldteam6.org/all-volunteer-ops
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ft6arcade24
thank you so much.
To learn more about how we can confront the threats presented in this guide head-on and begin to build a bold, vibrant democracy for all people, visit
https://democracyforward.org/action/join-2025/
Thank you for this, Daniel. Great info that will be put to use here in Florida, a state out of control under MAGA domination. My car insurance on a 2020 Toyota RAV4 LE Hybrid is now $2,064 a year and I drive about 3,000 miles a year. And that's the cheapest I can find, with State Farm. AAA is almost $3,000 per year.
Daniel, you’re making me feel better. Yesterday I rode to a dental appointment with a driver I had ridden with last year. He remembered me. We talked about the political situation. He sought to reassure me about Democrats by pointing out that the broad masses of Americans support Biden and that if Trump “wins” there will be “Revolution.” He says the military will not support Trump. Given Trump’s insults, the driver may be right. Generals do not have to obey orders to shoot their fellow citizens.
I believe he is right.
@daniel solomon -- "Baghdad by the sea?" Intrigued here.
Florida?
But Baghdad is a city--perhaps Miami? Just wondering which city. I know San Francisco was once called Baghdad on the Bay because it is so multicultural and exotic sometimes. But that is definitely not in a state that needs flipping.
Anyhoo, just curious.
SC, Herb Caen (1916-1997), columnist for the SF Chronicle, coined the phrase Baghdad by the Bay in a collection of essays published in 1949 (lol, year I was born)….used to read his column every week as an adult before he passed.
It is Miami. See below!
Miami?
https://www.amazon.com/Miami-90-2Paths2-Murder-Novel/dp/1977222374
Trump is at a high point with the convention and the shooting. We don’t know how many Americans are impressed by his surviving the kind of violence that he extols. There are so many dangers that the GOP Convention puts right in front of the American people. They see domination and violence as strength. Real men are strong. Biden looks and sounds frail and weak.
The worse problem is how pervasive the corruption has already become in every level of government. The courts are gone. Billionaires rule Trump. Menendez was convicted. Trump continues to skate free, and has never been held accountable. The money manipulators need him to bring in the white supremacists. They can cheat the vote. To get the rest.
We have the capacity to beat them. Get off your ass, quit carping and start working.
Thanks, good points!
Widdle Jimmy Vance is a disgrace to the Marines.
I shared this note, but wonder if it is too hopeful. Vance was elected to the Senate from Ohio in 2022 after the Ukrainian War with Russia was well underway. If he attracted Slavic Americans then, that means they weren't too worried about his alliance with Trump, who even then it was clear supported Putin and Russia.
Democracy takes work. The DNC did not support Tim Ryan and he didn't get the word out. Sharrod Brown has the capacity to overwhelm the media, outspend the Republicans.
Two of Republican leaders are now in jail for taking bribes, former Republican state chair and speaker of the Ohio house. .
Jim, or, Vance had so much money and an open seat so he could literally buy votes, enough to win in a state that is on and off in its caring about what is going on.
Pseudo-Christian Nationalism, a heresy originating with anti-abortion politics, a single-issue wrapped in false piety, prayer breakfasts, and American flags and crosses worn as signs of the righteous right.
Growing ever-violent, lurid, unscientific, and apocryphal, the anti-abortion movement provided the quintessential distraction from G. W. Bush’s willful expiration of the assault weapons ban. Anti-abortion zealots led to the rise of the anti-tax Tea Party - Let’s not pay taxes to support abortion and birth control, they cried - as well as the implications of Bush’s grotesquely large tax cuts for the wealthy during his impulsive, wildly expensive Iraq War. As a result, the deficit increased as the Tea Partiers and the Freedom Caucus blamed the National debt and deficit on Social Security.
Orban’s Hungary has an economy no larger than that of Kansas.
Anti-abortion politics is political malpractice. Political malpractice is a "divide and conquer" approach. Real political practice is a "united we stand and divided we fall" approach. Nobody thought about criminalizing healthcare until Paul Weyrich decided it would provide great leverage for his "divide and conquer" approach.
My point is that "divide and conquer" authoritarianism is bad for healthcare, the economy, the border, crime, and every other issue on people's minds in this and every other election cycle, and that "unite and stand" egalitarianism is demonstrably good for every single one of those issues.
To them, unilateral control seems like the easy solution. Abortion laws have nothing to do with protecting the unborn. It's a means to an end, and that end is unilateral control, which always fails in the long term.
The alternative, mutual respect, seems harder in the short term, but it's the only thing that ever works in the long term.
My view is this:
Political malpractice, in this instance, is moving abortion under the guise of a Christian moral crisis into an ever-accelerating political battle over the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause separating church and state. Witness Trump’s latest coupling of the Bible and Constitution. Self-styled anti-abortion zealots have no scriptural basis whatsoever for their crusade; moreover, Susan B. Antony’s opposition to abortion was couched principally upon on-going back-alley abortions performed by quacks on poor, desperate girls working in factories in Rochester,NY, who bled to death after seeking care for abnormal pregnancies or factory-floor rapes or incest. Antony wished to stop the quacks from practicing what she considered the murder of young women. She could not have imagined a legal, medically safe abortion.
After retiring as an executive writer for two Virginia governors (both Democrats later elected to the Senate), I took a part-time job in 2013 working in the GOP-dominated Virginia House of Delegates (the lower House). At the desk of one of the extreme conservatives, there sat an enormous goldfish bowl filled with tiny rubber fetuses, soft and translucent like red-cherry gummies, something to put in your pocket and squeeze, which he passed out freely to visiting constituents from his district just south of D.C., (the same district as Republican A.G. Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s Homeland Security appointee and devotee).
The guy who thought so was Paul Weyrich.
I'd never heard that name before. I read his Wikipedia bio and revised my previous comment accordingly. Thanks.
Excellent , Carol 👏 Facts for us that read them…for the others just …WEEP!
I frankly don't understand this obsession with Orban. Sure, he rules with an iron fist and all that, but how is it that Republicans equate what he's doing to what we might do in a country immensely more populated and complex than Hungary? Are they saying, "it's as easy as that?", "if he can do it, we can do it"? Anyone who thinks that definitely has a screw loose somewhere. It's like comparing apples to peas.
Agreed. Why would we restructure the most powerful country the world has ever seen on a tiny nation-state whose economy is as small as Kansas, or emulate Russia, which ranks 11th in the world, behind Germany, France, India, China and —wait for it - California, a state whose economy is 4th in the world.
I think the quote is from Charles Sykes in The Atlantic, who went on to write:
"Far from being a voice of political comity, Vance has called loudly on the right to “seize the institutions of the left.” Vance has said that if Trump returns to power, he should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. … And then when the courts stop you, stand before the country” and say, quoting Andrew Jackson, “The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”"
Except the chief justice's ruling is that whatever Orange Jesus says or does, there's nothing to enforce.
We invented this monster. Now we need to remove it. Why this statement? On a personal level, when I embark on some project and it doesn’t go as intended, I often ask myself what was it that I did wrong. It works for me. Yet I don’t always find my answer. I have repeated this but I firmly believe that we have gone off so far on issues that the MAGA response is in truth, our invention. We work in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. Don’t dismiss my words. MAGA would not be a force without our actions.
My thoughts for the day.
Not only do I agree, I would also say the current situation is because not enough people are making the one good choice.
Dilemmas inevitably emerge in a complex system. We are either resolving them one-by-one in the sequence in which they emerge, in which case things are getting better, or we are building a continuously increasing inventory of unresolved dilemmas, in which case things are getting worse.
The difference between a dilemma and a problem is that the latter has a one-step solution and the former has a multi-step resolution, which is to say that our relationships are being damaged when we treat them like problems, thus avoiding the difficult conversations we need to have with one another.
Lessons Learned are good. Just don't give up.
Thank You.
Here everybody - your neighbor in HCR's Substack subscribers, Mr. Robert Warner, has posted to us the link to a user-friendly PROJECT 2025 brochure in PDF format, that is only 48-pgs and easy to understand.
https://democracyforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-05_Peoples-Guide-Pro-2025.pdf
"The People's Guide to Project 2025"
To learn more about how we can confront the threats presented in this guide head-on and begin to build a bold, vibrant democracy for all people, visit
https://democracyforward.org/action/join-2025/
I downloaded the brochure and joined 'Democracy Forward' to volunteer the next 4-months.
Michael, and you are right about tyrants and their wrappings of religion and/or patriotism. Those tyrants actually believe in neither of those things, only power and their desire to do harm to others, particularly groups they think are either in their way or in the way of their religious or patriotic "cause." Trump and Vance are not actual Christians. I call people like them "pseudo-christians. They use the Bible and the religious trappings as cues to their pathetic supporters who are looking for something to hang their hatred, anger, fear, and resentment on and Trump and Vance, and the rest of Trumplandia can supply it, at least visually and verbally. Neither is a patriot as they can't manage to live their oaths of office and actually want to destroy our Constitution in favor of a new Trumplandia one that sets rich, white, "straight," pseudo-christian men uber alles.
Go Nick Fuentes.
Thank you, Heather. I don't have the stomach to watch anything but clips on MSNBC, The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert. It's not so much what the speakers say as how the audience reacts. It's not too much of a exaggeration to say that they terrify me. The degree of delusional thinking and blindness makes me sick.
I can't watch it either -- there are young women in the audience - deligates I believe. What on earth are they thinking supporting this anti-women team.
The Fashion Police would have a field day in Milwaukee this week, for sure.
So true!!! What a clown show!
Is it any different from the usual political convention attire?
Oh really??? Trump is a tool. He would be nothing without the support of those ignorant and pathetic creatures who blame their lack of success on “ those others “. And we now have a major political party which has finally found a “ leader “ who can rally the masses so they can get the power and influence these Republican “leaders “ can build a government that works only for the wealthy and powerful. Trump’s party has shined a black light on us magnifying and amplifying our meanness and pettiness. And just look at the people cheering this creature on. They are not just old white wealthy white men.
I can’t watch either, and concur with your gratitude for Heather’s summary. You have to be thick-skinned, very grounded, and hopeful to watch the MAGA convention without being shaken. As if Dobbs were SCOTUS-light, the “immunity decision” fell like the first, truly fatal domino in the collapse of the rule of law, the bedrock of our democracy. The subsequent reversals, delays, and dismissals of Trump’s federal indictments have landed, in my personal experience, like body-blows. I feel physically assaulted, messed with, violated.
MisTBlu, I just came across a cartoon on Threads which shows 2 people walking down a sidewalk and one says to the other "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane."
And that says it all for me.
I believe she meant low UNemployment for people of color, just a minor correction.
This is a classic. When someone reliable makes a surface error, you correct it and move on. It's the same with Biden's Bull's-eye remark. He's not gonna say it again. And he didn't mean it in a violent way, but as a metaphor to be really focused on the with to be done. I'm ready, both to vote and to do what's necessary.
No disrespect intended! As a (hobby) writer myself, I consider it a sincere form of encouragement when others point out my typos.
This phone writing stuff is so treacherous. I very often don't even see when I've typed "with" instead of' work," because ...
Well, just because
Thank you! I reread that three times and it just didn’t make sense!
Colbert makes me laugh out loud when I watch him in the morning. Great way to start the day. I’ve been a fan since his beginning on The Daily Show.
I am beginning to cast a critical eye on these “ court jesters “ and pundits as well as political polls and “ mainstream “ news. I think we would do well to take a more solemn active approach. Get out the vote for President Biden and his team while we still have a vote that matters
It's not an either or situation. As a former ER nurse I know how important "gallows" humor is to keep one sane.
I always read HCR before looking at the news rehash in the morning paper. Her clarity is much sharper than anyone else's. I do think she meant to say, of minority workers, the unemployment under Bidenhas been a very good number.
If you work for the Times or the WaPo or the WSJ, there's always an editor or two to make sure you're not out there on a limb or in conflict with their pov. HRC doesn't have to deal with that.
It's hard to know. Katelyn Jetelina has a bevy of people who help her write for Your Local Epidemiologist and I don't know if HCR is a loner or not. But it is as rare as hen's teeth that she makes an unclear statement. Maybe she has a reader? Do you know?
She may have a copy editor or an assistant, but Ive spent some time around newspapers, and the process errs in favor of caution usually.
MSNBC won't leave the topic of Biden and the debate alone, not bothering to address tfg and his 40 lies and refusal to answer one question the moderators asked. The don't talk about Project 2025 and the attack on democracy. I don't watch tv, but do see their YouTube posts, but just like the NYT and WaPo, they care more about the retrumplican narrative.
I only watch Rachel Maddow with any regularity; these days she's focused almost exclusively on the threats to our democracy.
It’s ironic the MAGA speakers accuse the media of persecuting Trump when more and more people seem to be noticing the exact opposite-
I wonder what members of the press think life would be like under a full MAGA coup"
JL, I've had the same thought about the billionaires for Trump, especially the entrepreneurial types - do they really think their businesses will be better served by a Putin/Orban clone? Maybe they should ask the Russian and Hungarian oligarchs how that worked out for THEM?
Some are living high, some were on the same plane as Prigozhin
@ Sandra Campbell. The white supremacist/dominionist wing want to make make many of Trump's donors second class citizens.
Peter Thiel is openly gay but his money will protect him.
Correction: he thinks his money will protect him. Everyone in the Pentagon thought its defenses would protect them until 911.
The only real safety is to judge people by "the content of their character," and not by the content of their wallet.
IMHO that fact would be a revelation to the dominionists.
I think that people such as Thiel think they can buy anything, that they are really the power behind the throne. And they are; up to a point. If the monster they are so busy putting together gains even more absolute power they may find their purchase slipping.
Not necessarily from the Christian Nationalists, who abhor LGBTQ (because their Bible says so), and are prepared to enforce “God’s law.” Their own salvation depends on that.
Yep.
Also I particularly love your collection of words here, JD. They'd fit right in with Joni Mitchell's lyrics.
Didn’t know that, thanks
That’s exactly what they want. American Oligarchs. More money and more power.
Did you see Biden call out Lester Holt about Trump's lies during the debate?
Biden asked why the press hadn't called out Trump for his confirmed 28 lies.
Lester Holt was clearly flustered and replied, "Well, we have reported many of the issues that came of that--"
Biden: "No you haven't"
Lester: "-- the debate"
Lester: "We'll provide you with those."
Biden: "God love you."
Seth Abrahamson has a Proof substack listing 602 lies. Many of them are repeats (Trump tends to say the same lie several times like a bumpstock AR15) and Seth counts each one as a separate lie, which is fair. So I don’t know where Biden got that ridiculously low number from. He discredits himself and his advisers by looking uninformed.
Nit pick much? Or just when it's the President? He made his point. That's good enough. He is president, he has other things to do - like run the country - he didn't look "uninformed." If he did, it was only in the eyes of those who were looking for something to reduce his presence.
In other words, let's focus on the important stuff instead of perceived errors shall we? Lester Holt got it......that was the point. Jeez.
It can be splitting hairs. I'm more inclined to count unique, substantive lies, the "whoppers", but one could also tally how many separate instances of lying. Even so, parsing Trumps output, when he lies continuously for an extended period, might be open to some degree of subjective interpretation.
Biden used "28 lies" when he was interviewed by registered Republican Lester Holt. What if Biden was interviewed by John Fugelsang or Nicole Wallace who hate CFDT as much as I do. I wonder how that would go.
The same. It's an interview not a debate society. The point was lack of follow through, not numbers. Besides, with Nicolle Wallace or John Fugelsang, there would be no need to bring it up. They already understand. Actually, Holt is an Independent as of 2018.
Corporations, like Comcast, would silence and self-censor the news programing of divisions under their control like was done to Morning Joe. Think about it. The allegedly most progressive mainstream media network station couldn’t even allow Medhi Hasan 1 hour on a Saturday earlier this year. They lied to Scarborough, Mika and Willie about swapping all Comcast affiliated programming on Monday for one consistent news feed when the were really self-censoring a former Republican congressman and his wife who is the daughter of one of our country’s most conservative National Security Advisors. Why? Because Comcast is worrying about future blowback against its core business.
The fear of fascism has already taken hold. Bertram Gross’ warning 50 years ago in Friendly Fascism, self imposed from within, is being given the keys to America by a cross section of America, but mostly billionaires who are already doing stunningly well.
And the Biden administration represents a threat to their winning while common folks lose.
https://yadontknow.blogspot.com/2024/07/when-again.html
CORRECT … Scared already. The German media (press) behaved the same way in 1933.
Well think about it. Aren't you already scared enough to censor your own words? I was realizing that there are certain things I would love to yell out in public and would not dare. This realization fell on me like a ton of bricks. Already their violence is affecting every single person who doesn't agree.
I keep writing whatever under my own name. At 90 I suspect they’ll kill me anyway. Glad to have the information about MSNBC. I’d been wondering why the screen would suddenly go blank when someone was in the midst of an excellent opinion.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sca_esv=a835f771045fe61e&hl=en-us&q=Friendly+Fascism&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgFuLSz9U3MKowKjPOU-LVT9c3NEzPrcrJMbDM0hJwLC3JyC8KyXfKz8_2z8upXMQq4FaUmZqXklOp4JZYnJxZnAsA1znBtEIAAAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjM38Lqlq6HAxVQD1kFHflNAywQxA16BAg3EAY
Better not to post the entire URL like that, just condense it to “Google friendly fascism.”
Good point. And I wonder how the corporate world thinks things would be under MAGA rule
I think we already know... Fortunes won and lost with 2am toddler toilet tweets. Last time around, I watched my retirement accounts plummet overnight, recover slowly, only to plummet again.
Richer - the rest of the people they do not care about … until their own grandkids get cancer or asthma
The right's problem with the media seems to be the poor job they do in parroting MAGA talking points.
My problem with the media is their tendency to chase drama and simple story lines rather than present much needed analysis the day's events.
"Trump has appeared at the convention with a large bandage on the ear he says was pierced by a bullet on Saturday." It looks like HCR isn't buying that Trump was shot either even though virtually all of the so-called news organizations claim he was. This is from "Forward" an Independent Jewish Magazine.
Conspiracy theories run rampant in Trumpian political circles and this may be one as well, but it is very likely that it wasn't a bullet that hit his ear but rather it was self-inflicted like in pro-wrestling or it was glass shards. And yes, I am passing along a conspiracy theory which may be a lie, but what if the vermin Trump staged this whole thing?
Soon after former President Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, the term “Reichstag fire” began trending on social media. Here’s what the Nazi-era term means and why people are talking about it.
What does ‘Reichstag fire’ mean?
Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor of Germany on Jan. 30, 1933. About a month later, on Feb. 27, 1933, someone burned down the Reichstag building, home of the German parliament. Hitler blamed the fire on Communists, and claimed they were launching an uprising to take over the country. Hitler convinced Germany’s president to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree, which took away some civil liberties from people who opposed the Nazis and also provided legal cover to imprison those people. Historians point to the fire as key in the rise of Nazi Germany.
Why are people saying it’s a ‘Reichstag moment’ after Trump shooting?
Opponents of Trump have often criticized him for his history of invoking Hitler and the Nazis. Some of the former president’s critics think it’s not outside the realm of possibility for Trump to follow the playbook of the Reichstag fire and use the assassination attempt as the basis for whipping up fervor against his political enemies.
Bruce Bartlett, a former government official in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, issued a warning about Trump on the social platform X this past week, prior to the shooting, saying, “I bet he’s planning the American equivalent of the Reichstag fire to justify violence against the left.” After the shooting, Bartlett posted, “Looks like we just had our Reichstag fire.”
Australian politician Rex Patrick posted just after the shooting, “We might have just witnessed America’s Reichstag Fire moment.”
Journalist Joe Leyden shared, “Not sure whether I should be thinking about the #ReichstagFire right now. Not sure I shouldn’t.”
Others invoked the Nazi-era moment as well. Many of them were implying that Trump staged or arranged the shooting, which there is no evidence to support. There were additional ‘BlueAnon’ conspiracy theories spreading as well.
‘Reichstag fire moment’ has been invoked for Donald Trump before
Gen. Mark Milley, then-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said just before the Jan. 6 uprising at the Capitol, that then-President Trump “had led the country to the brink of its own Reichstag moment.”
On Jan. 6, historian Michael Beschloss posted a photo to X of the Nazi-era fire, captioned, “Fire in the Reichstag, Berlin, 1933.” The tweet was shared more than 1,300 times.
Masha Gessen, a Russian-American writer, wrote an in-depth essay in 2017 for Harper’s about Trump’s rise, “The Reichstag Fire Next Time,” which begins:
When each day brings more news than we are used to seeing in a week, and the kind of news that only the most catastrophic imagination can accommodate, we find ourselves talking about the Reichstag fire. Time feels both accelerated and slowed down, and so we imagine that we have been talking about the fire for years. It is the new president’s new clothes: invisible, yet always present in our perception of him.
What’s next with the Trump shooting investigation?
The FBI has identified the shooter, who was killed at the scene, as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about an hour away from where the rally took place. The FBI has not released a motive for the shooting.
The Justice Department has said it will investigate. And Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives plan to hold a hearing with the U.S. Secret Service about the assassination attempt, which killed one rallygoer — Corey Comperatore, a firefighter and father of two — and critically injured two others.
The Trump campaign said this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee will continue as planned, with Trump set to become the party’s nominee on Thursday night.
And what did trump mean with his post before the rally that “ all hell” was going to break out at the rally? It didn’t seem that he was going to announce his VP pick as it was reported that that decision was made right before the convention started. And then how he insisted to the secret service that he fist-pump and show his face to the crowd….with no regard or concerns to anyone else’s safety
If it was staged, then Trump should be tried for murder one, since someone was killed.
Funny how the Trump campaign won't release any medical records from the event.
Gary Loft -- Is it that they won't release or that there hasn't been one yet?
Either way, he won’t let them.
MLMinET -- I suspect you're right.
I think we need to get to the details of this investigation quickly. Some of the details just stink. I also noted that he seemed eager to stand up after (his head and arm high above the secret service) immediately after being shot at. The same man who went to the bunker inside the White House (heavily guarded at all times)when there were protests around the perimeter. It’s almost like he knew he was in no danger. And to say that his injury felt like the “world’s largest mosquito” in the face of another being killed and two others critically wounded seems crass at best. Something is fishy all around.
“World’s largest mosquito” does not seem like the level of Purple Heart that he seem to be making it. A disconcerting injury to be sure, but relatively minor physical damage from what I could tell.
So why the huge made for TV bandage? Mercurochrome and a bandaid would have sufficed. Could it be, like St Ronnie, he has to be prompted to stay on course? Worried about shoes when he was being shot at? Really? As for the true victims, in the dystopian tangerine turd's world? It's nothing. Taking one for the "team," as was exhibited by the widow refusing the President's sympathy call. Need anyone say more? The tangerine turd said anything?
For real conspiracy theory, I do indeed think that "bandage" is a prompter - because he already has been seen nodding off. Why doesn't the ever so duped 4th estate mention that? Maybe Dash of the NYTimes and Jeff of the Bezos Post need to do some reading about what happened to the press in Germany in the thirties. One of the few publications to survive with owners intact was Axel Springer. And they now own Politico - no longer to be trusted. At the same time, Jeffie and Dash may want to read up on the rôle their partner in crime in the race to who they are give the most negative press to Biden played in Nazi Germany.......
Gary Loft -- I support the glass shards theory. Still waiting for that official medical report.
From the moment it happened it appeared staged to me. And how much blood can flow instantly from the top of the outer ear??? It looked as if he pulled his hand out of his pocket placed it against his ear and there was red liquid as if he had popped a bubble of blood and smeared it across his face like in the movies or a play.
Ketchup
I think it is quite dangerous to speculate and fuel conspiracy theories. A man died and two people were seriously injured. I do not think HRC’s writing supports a conspiracy but it does point out how Trump’s campaign is shaping the message by encouraging sympathy and the messaging that Trump was protected by God.
But not the firefighter, I guess.
One source stated that trump's ear was cut by glass from the telepromter after it was hit by a bullet.
My old party has pulled a few tricks that succeeded long enough to make it very hard to sway opinion if the truth is too long delayed, but in this case, I believe Trump arriving an hour late may have left openings in the security (sweeps done earlier for example, but not redone closer to his arrival). I'm very slow to believe conspiracy theories.
I was missed by the sweeps before President Johnson's 1st flight in to Randolph AFB when I was stationed there (1965-67). I had climbed the radar tower atop Base Ops and was in the transmitter/receiver shack tuning the radar when I looked down and saw security snipers hidden from ground view on top of the hangars, and one in the weather observer's observation glassed in post below me on the center of the Base Ops roof. Since Johnson's plane was already parked and the snipers seemed to be pointing at potential targets every few seconds, I kept out of sight until everything was over and the security teams had dispersed.
I did go talk to the one that had been in the weather observer's post, he turned out to have normally been one of Robert Strange (his real middle name) McNamara. I asked him if anybody had checked the radar shack, without telling him I had been up there watching him the whole time. He said, “No, isn’t it locked?” When I told him it didn’t have a way to lock it yet, but we could arrange to have a hasp and padlock put on it.
An example of stupidity. I had a bad feeling when a fake Afghan news crew turned out to be suicide bombers that killed themselves and Ahmed Shah Massoud on 9/9/2001 (on that side of the dateline).
What seems to be lost to history now was that a suspicious news crew that showed up to try to interview President G W Bush where he stayed before he went to the Sarasota Elementary School on Sep 11, 2001. They were turned away but I never found out who they really were, so still suspect they were suicide bombers like those that killed Massoud. I couldn't believe they wouldn't have held the suspicious news crew so soon after the one that succeeded in Afghanistan.
So, the only questions I would ask are:
Did Trump showing up an hour late leave too much time after initial sweeps?
Did the bullet captured on film actually strike his ear (it seems slightly low), or did it miss slightly, but broken glass hit a tiny fraction of a second later?
It seems a slight difference but one which they want interpreted as the more dramatic (print the legend, as Houdini’s gut punch death may have been peritonitis that he would have died of anyways.)
It’s hard to even consider watching an event that is full of ignorance, hate, lies and subversion of any value associated with democracy. The toxicity levels are at an all time high. I do think it’s time for the Democrats to forget political politeness and double down on their message of the existential threat of the GOP. Thanks Heather!
Democrats need to identify a handful of the ugliest stuff about the MAGA-O-P, and "focus like a laser beam" on making it stick.
Super glue their idiocy to them and stop trying to outdo their idiocy. They are united behind a horror show. How about uniting behind decency, competence, and grit.
That's what the Dems are trying to do, lead by example, but it's not bright and shiny enough to attract the attention of reality TV fans.
Exactly, our citizenry are addicted to Kardashian-style tripe. Chump epitomizes the “reality” that should scare the hell out of any sane person. As somebody said about abusive husbands. They can make hell feel like home. I say, HELL NO
Well said. Leading by example is not enough for people with non-existent attention spans. It requires thought and a more complex analysis of complex things.
I liken watching events on TV to looking out the window of a moving train. There is plenty to see, but it all goes by so quickly that you can't get a good look at it or do much about it. Of, by and for are active words, but TV has producers, editors, (typically) a commercial orientation, and an audience. It cultivates a short and superficial attention span, along with fundamental passivity.
Yes, but I think that's were the super glue comes in. Make them own their least popular behavior and policies. Teddy had the "Square Deal", FDR the :New Deal", Trump Inc. the "Raw Deal" and and Democrats have a much "Better Deal". We need to identify some compelling examples. Sane, legal abortion vs letting women die in miscarriage seems to be one of them.
They haven't toned down the rhetoric at all. Carson, DeSantis, Lake, Trump's DIL, and a few other speakers have spoke about a nebulous "they" and Democrats who have persecuted Trump, tried to bankrupt him and now "they" tried to have him killed. The entire event doesn't seem focused on policy or fact. It's like a big pep rally. Then they are parading out people's families who were the victims of crimes by immigrants, or drug overdoses and blaming it all on Biden. The Senate candidate running for Manchins old seat literally said that MAGA will be super upset and unhinged if they lose in November. Yet this is their way of showing "Unity" for all Americans and toning down the rhetoric. It's insane to see this type of rhetoric from leaders.
Matt Gaetz reminds of a high school bully. Among Greene, Boebert, many Freedom Caucus members, and Gaetz, our Congress has become an ineffectual joke,
It's a whole fricking party of bullies. It's their raison d'etre.
Having someone like Vance who is such a neophyte in national and geopolitics is almost as scary as as second Trump presidency (and that's saying A LOT). The Democrats can use this to their advantage.
“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” Mark Twain
Deliberately
“We are effectively run in this country…by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made. And so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”
And exactly how do these CCLs exert such extortionary power? First it's arch villain George Soros and his fire-dealing lasers from outer space, then it's total control of of the nation's voting systems, as well as investigational and law-enforcement personnel by Joe Biden in his few lucid moments, and now it's the cat ladies pulling the strings? I'm confused.
An odd statement for a politician to make. He was serious too, watch the video.
I think Vance has a really fundamental issue with women. That's a guy with Mommy issues, I fear. In his book he admits his mother was vulnerable and a hopeless addict who did the best she could, but he still expresses resentment at her for failing to be a good parent, even when she cares for him when he was ill in college. And his grandmother was 'violent' by his own description. I was put off by his descriptions of his fights with his to-be wife Usha, too--something felt really off about it, like he was only willing to stay with her so long as she deferred to him, to the point of profound humiliation.
Something is very twisted up in Vance when it comes to his regard for women.
Sounds like the perfect VP for chump. Horrid excuses for mothers can do more damage than about anybody, even horrible dads, who can do plenty.
Thing is, the book is very cleverly written, lots of my best friends thought it wonderful, it was liberal fodder. I found this analysis of the book (https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-45/politics/j-d-vance-changes-the-subject-2/?highlight=j.d.%20vance%20changes%20the%20subject) rather long and academic, but it reminded me that I had a hard time with the book, just something about it really disturbed me at the time. I couldn't put my finger on it, though.
Didn’t read it, but he became a total Nazi type in a nanosecond. He was a paper doll just waiting for the right clothes…
I know no more about it than I am seeing here but she seemed more damaged than aggressively damaging. That can create a deficit of parenting of course.
I have known some educated and knowledgeable parents who did more damage to offspring than ignorant ones. All it takes is an agenda coming from a deficit in them or an agenda against the other parent. Both are aiming at another adult but hitting an innocent kid. Of course, the kid is then the identified “problem.”
It seems to me that those ‘childless cat ladies’ are what we in the 60’s called ‘little old ladies in tennis shoes’. But we knew they were people who got things done. And they still do! Frequently the LOLIT put nasty little boys in their place, so they are feared! Thus the derisive name calling.
To learn more about how we can confront the threats presented in this guide head-on and begin to build a bold, vibrant democracy for all people, visit
https://democracyforward.org/action/join-2025/
If you watch the video clip, he names the “childless, cat ladies”: Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC. So, it’s really an anti- DEI trope. His evil terrifies me.
As a childless, cat lady myself, I will be exercising my power in the voting booth.
Pete? He's a man and has children...
But likely emasculated in the eyes of some wannabe men who have illusions of power as macho dudes.
The cats are not amused.
My cats don’t like chaos unless they create it. I’m sorta the same way.
It's hilarious because Kamala Harris has a daughter and from what we can tell was a great Mom, additionally Pete B is married and has kids as well. AOC is the only one without kids in the group he named.
PhillyT -- Parenthetically, AOC has been wildly busy since she became a US Representative 5 years ago! And a very effective one! She and her fiancée are not yet married.
She is a fireball, and really smart.
My guess is that AOC is the one he most fears.
Thank You. I am sure you will vote wisely!
Hey, I’m One of those and wish I had a few strings to pull. I would kick a few Dem arses while I’m at it.
JD I am with you, although now I have a very catlike standard poodle--we childless cat ladies would do a helluva better job at running nation states than these whiney tiny-membered white boyz.
You go girl!
I do have a kid plus cats. Makes me even more willing to kick arses.
Mother rage.
That ought to be nationwide these days. Our children are more at risk than any of us.
I for one would choose MAGA misery and cat lady happiness.
We need Wonder Warthog - NOW! (loves Cat Ladies' cats)
I have fun watching the humor seep in as it tempers the outrage. It's a way of coping and within the humor might be some creative ideas wanting to be born. Sound bites that bring people to their senses and cut through all the manipulations.
Der Fuhrer ist nackt (bereft of clothing).
The only theatre piece I ever was in was at a summer camp and I was the child who spoke that one line!
Anything that is described as a porcine parody of Superman has piqued my interest. I noticed it was first published in 1962.
Now THAT goes back a ways.
I took it to mean women who love cats more than the thought of raisng children. Since I am a dog person and a mom, I feel I would pass muster! (Just kidding!)
What is a "childless cat lady"? And where did the image originate?
Just another way to denigrate something that others might appreciate. Although some old ladies with 50 cats should be suspect.
I'm gonna guess that it comes from witches, who often have cats as familiars. It could also be an alliterative reference to "crazy cat ladies":
"What is the meaning of crazy cat ladies?
a woman who has a lot of cats, especially a woman who lives alone and is considered to be slightly strange: I don't want people to think of me as some crazy cat lady. (Definition of cat lady from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)"
I think "slightly strange" would be be enough to cause suspicion of "witchcraft" in Vance's circles.
Implies that any woman who chooses not have children is only worthy of contempt. Because a woman's whole reason to exist in this christofascist world is to breed and raise more christofascist children.
Or she is unattractive to these virile, manly men and relegated to being an undesirable "spinster" (there's a word we don't need to revive!) who only has pets for company.
Dr. Richardson's subtext: "I watched the Republican National Convention so you didn't have to!" :-)
Instead of watching, I caught up on Heather’s Facebook talks - Monday’s Red Wine and Blue zoom and yesterday’s Politics talk. Her dissection of Project 2025 is terrifying but necessary information. We need to spread the word.
I'm gonna give those a watch today, I think. I need some of that.
They Help!!
I love that she's helping people understand what Project 2025 contains. It's a tough read.
If anyone is reading it for themselves, I made a list of 268 acronyms found in the plan
Glossary of Acronyms in Project 2025
https://ki6mnk.substack.com/p/project-2025-glossary-of-acronyms
Indeed!
I'm grateful she's doing that for us. I Don't have the time.
I consider it annoying aground noise. I won't let it distract me from my mission to raise the public's awareness to the contents of Project 2025.
My focus is on beating Trump at the ballot box.
Thank you Dr Richardson. When the msnbc pundits sit around criticizing President Biden for being aggressive with Lester Holt, you are there to give us the facts. It’s July and they are looking for some miracle man to save us. Biden and Harris believe in democracy and that’s what matters. I’m voting for Democracy. And feisty Joe.
Maybe Joe is being tired of being treated like a wimp.
Biden is justifiably angry at the trump lies and his treatment in the media. The trick will be to use humor and not come off as a bitter old man. In other words, model the “ Happy Warrior”…but with a “big stick” (to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt).
I would feel better if I knew there were preparations to counter cheating, and the likely violence like ‘20 and ‘21. I am concerned by the performance of the Secret Service. Also we see that courts can be bought. Also our experience with accountability is not very good.
Actually we need a bunch of “happy warriors with big sticks”….
I wonder if Biden could make Jack Smith AG?
Looks like the genuses at DNC could figure out what you said. The cheating in Texas is Goebbel’s class. Likely else too. The SS has been compromised before Jan 6. These things are not secrets.
The news reports that Biden is looking at things to fix the Supreme Court 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
I'm sure he is.
Amen.
Joe Biden has been masterful at getting our standing in the world back on track. Numbers do not lie. It would be so refreshing for these late to the game nay sayers to just look at the facts, the numbers
The best thing the MAGA party could do to make the U.S. a nation based on truth, justice, and common sense would be to dissolve itself.
Biggest lie ever, Goebbels best strategy. Say the exact opposite of what you mean.
The "GOP" has mastered the art.
Long ago. Rupert was the master
"Truth" as in "Ministry of".
I doubt that crossed his mind when he named "Truth Social". In fact, he probably hasn't read Orwell.
"He probably hasn't read Orwell"
LOL
- he probably hasn't read "The Cat in the Hat"!
😂👏
But Orwell could have written him.
hahahahaha He is too dangerous to be funny but I doubt he reads. seriously
To learn more about how we can confront the threats presented in this guide head-on and begin to build a bold, vibrant democracy for all people, visit
https://democracyforward.org/action/join-2025/
I would appreciate the truth about Trump’s injury from someone. It defies common knowledge about the ballistics of an AR15 round to say the “the bullet pierced my ear”. That statement is more of Trump’s hyperbolic bullshit and it downplays, in front of the American public, the incredible damage that is inflicted by an AR15 round. It elevates Trump’s legend in his own mind status to say he’s was shot but the truth more likely is that his ear was hit by fragments of something the bullet hit and not a direct “passing through” of an AR15 bullet. Am I continuing to miss the reporting or is the reporting just not there? Is this just another one of Trump’s statements that we’re going to blindly accept? Are there any physics and ballistic experts out there that have testified or are willing to testify and explain that an AR15 round does not just “pass through” anything and leave it in any form that is recognizable? From what we’ve seen, Trump would have been injured more severely with a Red Rider BB gun.
I've been saying the same thing. Why hasn't there been any information at all about Trump's wound, other than the speculation that he was grazed by a bullet from an AR 15?
Some reporters have said that Trump's teleprompter was hit by a bullet & that it was possible that what actually "hit" Trump was a shard of glass that flew off the teleprompter.
But if that is actually what happened, Republicans couldn't then claim that Trump was "shot." I agree that it's been highly suspicious & highly unusual that no medical statements about Trump's injury have been reported, as far as I have seen.
I totally agree that the lack of truth about his “injury” is another ploy to gain sympathy and voters. Note, the doctor who treated his him is his old
WhiteHouse Days friend…Jackson…or is it Johnson….or is it….you know….the same one who gave him all sorts of flying colors on his fitness and cognitive abilities!!!
Sadly, while I know a fair amount about both a Red Rider and an AR-15, I cannot answer your question. I've been hit (on the forehead) with a BB. My only close contact with an AR-15 was a hot casing from another shooter that hit my forearm (burn, no bruise).
My assumption (and we all know what "assume" means, right?) is that a 55 grain bullet whose muzzle velocity is 3200 feet per second at a distance of 444 feet from weapon to impact" would do more than sting. I have seen a wound channel from a "graze" from a larger bullet that caused substantial pain. My only experience with being struck is with Simunition rounds in a training environment (a low speed plastic round that is a marking cartridge fired from a duty weapon in a force on force training environment that travels at 400feet per second) at close range, and they hurt, leaving either a bruise (round on target) or a scrape (always on the back of my right hand, because inevitably, the trainee recognizes the gun as the threat and shoots a the gun.)
I'd love to see the medical report...
The press is very uncurious. Where are the investigative reporters? Or is this it now, we just are to accept the Ministry of Truth's version, no questions allowed?
I've since read thst a physician says trump was shot through the upper esr lobe. But haven't seen a report of thst either.
I heard one report that trump's ear was hit by a piece of shattered glass from the telepromter.
Thanks for the recap. That's as much of the nastiness as I wish to see.
I agree. I couldn't make myself watch any of the GOP Convention. Thanks HCR for summarizing for me and others like me who otherwise wouldn't have known what happened.
Please people, stop saying President Biden should step down.
It is what it is and we need to stop on the negative and start on the positive.
Look at President Bidens record
Not going to list them, google is your friend.
We need to focus on what the repubs want and make sure we stop it.
Sorry if your fee fees are hurt, but this is a battle for the soul of our country.
Do you really think getting someone else with about four months till the election is a winning move?
I riding with President Biden.
There are a consistent number of trolls who are showing up in Dr. Richardson's comments every day. The Biden theme is a favorite. And occasional racism and the defeatism all is lost theme. Whatever.
We're fine. We will prevail in November. Vote Blue.
Thank you for the reminder, Barbara. I have of late been scoping the profiles of unfamiliar posters; I find a stunning few that either subscribe to other Substacks or who write anything themselves. It does make me wonder what troll farm is at work.
There are some who, I think, really do believe that tripe (or in a third party candidate; also tripe, but a different flavor). Others? Not so much.
Good point on troll farms. From time to time, I check out profiles too. Kind of a weird dead end, aren't they? Yeah, lots of tripe stuff as well.
Dr. Richardson sure has some folks running scared doesn't she for them to fire up the troll farms on her writings. She has become a powerful voice for Democracy.
Anyway. All this is fluff compared to what we are really about. We will prevail in historic fashion come November.
Nice chatting with you Ally.
Likewise.
I am feeling panic because of the positive lift Trump has gotten over the last three weeks and what appears to be the lack of unified direction in the Democratic Party. The media feeds I get (New York Times, Bulwark) really feed that panic by constantly focusing on these struggles. I feel at a loss on what I can do. I really need some action points so I don’t feel helpless.
I have quit reading anything but authors I trust. Richardson, Hubbell, Reich, Legum, Pro Publica.
I have stopped looking at NYT and can’t tolerate anything from the Bulwark either at this point. I’m confining myself to sites where I can get information without the horrendous anti-Biden bias I see elsewhere in order to remain sane. If we give in to panic and despair, we are surely lost already. Heather is an optimist, and she knows a lot more than I do, so I’ll go with her take on things.
Trump can be trusted to pick a potential successor who is sufficiently awful to ensure anyone considering his removal will have second thoughts. He exceeded expectations today.
Heritage idiots picked him. Betcha. He is young and has no core. Just another empty suit that they can fill with Project 2025 bullschittery.
Republican full-lemming-backing for Trump and Vance show Project 2025 not a laugh.
Gushers of U.S. corporate money, Aileen Cannon in Florida, the Clarence court in Washington, D.C., many major "news" outlets, and more billionaire-run social media sites all confirm, JD: it's nothing to laugh at.
I stopped laughing with W/Dickie.
Trump's life insurance.
That this crew of Repubs identify their daily onslaught of lies, their rejection of any justice, and their blatant affront to common sense is so in your face ridiculous that even our “free press” can’t help but notice. One would think. But this is not a sane world. Evil worship is popular these days. A relative says that the devil is at work. I say that humans are capable of mocking the devils worst actions. At least the popularity of Hitler was driven in large part by a population suffering from egregious deprivation (so I read), but the popularity of our wannabe dictator was a transaction. A purchase by the monied “power-behind-the-throne types who want their way without being the face of the evil. The face of evil was for sale, and so was the loyalty of disaffected believers in hate-filled rhetoric, so the deal was done. Shame on America and all those who are a party to the evil wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible. They bring shame on both
"But this is not a sane world".
Bingo, JD.
I have watched the insanity metastasize for decades. From Ted K assuming that W had a good idea with the no child left behind bs, which was nothing but test, test, test, to our current state of the inmates taking over the asylum. Now Dems are carrying the mantle of idiocy. NYT headline this am Biden v. His party. I want to scream and bash heads.
Ah yes, Hate Week in Milwaukee...
or is it Beer Hall Putsch in Brew City underwritten by the Heritage Foundation presenting Project 2025 manifesto for all to bow to in obeisance.
Got it
Very succinct. And accurate. Thank You horai.
This is the worst kind of theater, a cheap charade of characters who make up their roles as they go along but not in any coherent, available, sensible, moral, reasonable way at all. The only common sense they claim is one that they are all commonly stupid.
As a long time mother and to the best of my memory these particular nincompoops are acting out ages from about three to about eight. Thank you all you brave ones who are watching and taking notes because I already know what a waste of time that is for me. I'm much more interested in giving the energy I have to my various ways of promoting real democracy.
But it seems to appeal to a group of American voters. The easy to understand sound bites. They appeal to immature impulses…bullying, I want my way, I’m being picked on. Easy…no thoughtful analysis required. No need to read or listen to serious commentary. No need to think. Maybe we need to develop some of those strategies to reach the low information, can’t be bothered voters.
Same "skills" for religious faith...
That aspect of the MAGA voter is hardly commented upon - but trump has picked up on it. The media are saying that photo is "iconic" - though I doubt most of them have bothered to look up the actual meaning of the word:
"regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration."
Well, let's lay aside the thought that trump is "worthy of veneration" - but yes, he knows that pic. is representative of MAGA - bloody and aggressive.
Trump could have become tribe leader with Cro-Magnon man "Ug! Blood! Strong! Fight! "
And that's how he got his base and keeps it. Doesn't matter if he rambles and talks tosh - they just hear those little dog whistle words they want to hear.
I'd go for more "eight to eleven." Temper tantrums an stupidity are more three to five.
Eight to eleven is when nasty kids get to really work on their nastiness.
Missed that grouping, and thank you. It's just that I don't remember my own daughters going through that at all and the earlier inclinations were quickly redirected :-)
Yes - but if the three to eights aren't caught and redirected - that's when the rot sets in. By fifteen you have created a monster. Some of them just make school mates lives a misery - and some of them go for daddy's gun.