SICKOFITRADLZ

Monday, October 14, 2024

Kamala polls and endorsements

That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Diaper Duty"

I am so eager to be done with hideous Donald Trump. Ivana Saric (Axios) reports:

Former President Trump has long stood out in the political field for his willingness to mock his political opponents — but as the 2024 presidential race enters its final weeks, he's increasingly getting a taste of his own medicine.

Why it matters: The Harris campaign has leveraged the power of memes and social media to reach a wider, younger audience and cast Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as funny, relatable, and capable to young voters.

The campaign now uses those same tools to mock Trump and paint him in the opposite light.

State of play: In a TikTok video posted Sunday, the Harris campaign created a carrousel of photos of Trump seemingly poking fun at his fake tan to the tune of Sabrina Carpenter's hit song "Please Please Please," in which she sings about doing her "makeup so nice."

Another video, also posted Sunday, features one of Trump's rambling answers at an event, and the campaign labeled the former president "delulu" — Gen Z speak for "delusional."
As the nation braced for Hurricane Milton this month, the campaign posted a TikTok making fun of an old Trump press appearance in which he called a hurricane "one of the wettest we've seen from the standpoint of water."
When Trump refused to agree to a second presidential debate, the campaign posted a video of Trump overlaid with the sound of squawking chickens.

Hit him where it hurts. Meanwhile, Flynn Nicholls (Newsweek) reports:

A new poll reveals Kamala Harris has similar support from Black voters as Joe Biden did in 2020, contradicting previous claims that she was losing their support to Donald Trump.

The poll was conducted by YouGov for CBS News between October 8 and October 11. It found that 87 percent of Black likely voters would vote for Harris and 12 percent would vote for Trump.

YouGov's exit poll from 2020 found exactly the same party breakdown, with 87 percent of Black voters having said they voted for Biden, and 12 percent said they voted for Trump.

Yea! Be great if we could do a bit better than 87%. If we're not going to vote for Black candidates, how do we expect others to do so? Seriously, as Black voters, we should be rallying around Kamala. Do you realize how overdue we are for Black presidents? Barack is the first and only one so far. There have been 45 presidents. 44 have been White. You'd think that alone would get people to rally for Kamala. Especially when you grasp what a racist Donald Trump is.

Meanwhile, John L. Dorman (Business Insider) notes:

Vice President Harris and former President Trump remain locked in a tight contest ahead of November.
Harris leads in two new national polls, while both candidates were tied in a third survey.
Both candidates continue to fight for supremacy on the economy, which is the top issue for voters.

Kamala got another endorsement today. This one from Geraldo Rivera:

"Former President Trump is a sore loser who cannot be trusted to honor the Constitution," wrote Rivera in a post on Elon Musk's X this morning. "That is why I am voting for Kamala Harris to be our 47th President."

Stating his own electoral preference, Rivera makes sure to put MAGAland in its own spotlight in the last weeks of what remains a very tight race between the ex-POTUS and the current VP.

"Maybe you are inclined to vote for the former president anyway, because he says he will cut your taxes or build the border wall or pull out of NATO or put tariffs on China, the Emmy winner notes as well. "However, you justify voting for Trump, adopting his big lie about the stolen election makes you a liar."

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Monday, October 14, 2024. Let's review some of the things at stake this election cycle.

Let's start with this press release from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's office:

New report details how the Trump White House restricted FBI investigators and lied to the American people about the investigation and tip line. Six-year-long Senate inquiry was hampered by repeated executive branch obstruction.

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Federal Courts, today released a report detailing disturbing shortcomings in the supplemental background investigation conducted after allegations of sexual misconduct emerged during the 2018 confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Whitehouse’s report is the culmination of a six-year-long investigation hindered by executive branch obstruction, particularly during the Trump Administration.

Whitehouse released the following statement on the report:

“In 2018, I pledged to Christine Blasey Ford that I’d keep digging, for however long it took, and not give up or move on from the Trump White House’s shameful confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh. A full, proper investigation is the bare minimum that victims who come forward – like Dr. Ford and Deborah Ramirez – deserve. This report shows that the supplemental background investigation was a sham, controlled by the Trump White House, to give political cover to Senate Republicans and put Justice Kavanaugh back on the political track to confirmation.

“The lack of FBI investigative standards helped the Trump White House thwart meaningful investigation of the allegations against Kavanaugh, denying Senators information needed to fulfill their constitutional duties. The FBI must create real protocols so Senators and the American people get real answers – not manufactured misdirection – the next time serious questions about a nominee emerge late in the confirmation process.”

President Donald Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court in July 2018. After the Senate Judiciary Committee’s regular hearings on his nomination in early September 2018, senators learned of accusations by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her while the two were in high school. After Dr. Ford came forward, further allegations of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh emerged. None of the accusations were uncovered during the FBI’s “full-field” background investigation in Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

The Judiciary Committee held an additional hearing on September 27, 2018, where Ford and Kavanaugh both testified. After this hearing, the Judiciary Committee asked for a supplemental background investigation to resolve the new allegations against Kavanaugh. The supplemental background investigation raised immediate concerns from Democratic senators that the FBI’s review had been curtailed by the Trump White House.

The four key findings of Whitehouse’s years-long investigation into this episode are:

The supplemental background investigation was completely controlled by the Trump White House. The FBI was never given “free rein” to conduct a thorough, complete investigation. Statements to the contrary from former President Trump and White House and Department of Justice officials were false.

Trump White House and FBI assertions that the Kavanaugh supplemental background investigation was conducted “by the book” according to standard FBI procedures were false and misleading, failing to disclose that there are no standard procedures for supplemental background investigations. Instead, FBI practice, which the Trump Administration never disclosed, requires step-by-step instructions from the White House. This practice may be appropriate for handling many routine, minor questions that can arise after an initial background investigation, but it was uniquely inappropriate for investigating the serious, high-profile allegations against Kavanaugh.

The investigation was directed by the Trump White House to pursue only first-hand evidence and not corroborating evidence. Senate Republicans then cited the absence of corroborating evidence to justify confirming Kavanaugh.

The FBI’s public “tip line” investigation was a fake. No tip was ever investigated; Kavanaugh-related tips were delivered straight to the Trump White House without FBI investigation. Indeed, the Trump White House could have used tip line information to steer FBI investigators away from derogatory evidence.

These major failings in the FBI’s supplemental background investigation made it unworthy of reliance by the Senate for advice and consent. This must never reoccur, so the report recommends that better standards be established for FBI supplemental background investigations—particularly for situations where major misconduct allegations come to light after an initial background investigation is complete.

Senator Whitehouse and other Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats spent almost six years seeking information about these failures from the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the White House, via written correspondence, live and written questioning during committee hearings, and meetings with executive branch officials. The senators’ inquiries were blocked by obstinate executive noncompliance. During the Trump Administration, the executive branch provided no information to this investigation, while providing a fast lane for Crossfire Hurricane information to Senate Republicans. Even when cooperation improved during the Biden Administration, senators struggled to secure complete and timely answers to oversight requests.

The full report is available here.

Press Contact

Meaghan McCabe, (202) 224-2921

What does that mean? It means very little if Donald Trump gets back in the White House. It can mean a great deal if Kamala Harris is elected president.

They government works for us, not the other way around. We have a democracy which means they are supposed to tell us the truth. Trump and his administration lied to us and they lied to our Senate. They plotted and executed a conspiracy to get Kavanaugh on the bench. Now that that's known, it can be addressed. What they did was deceit -- planned deceit. The American people were targeted and lied to and, yes, that does qualify as grounds to impeach.

It's not the only grounds to impeach but all by itself it is grounds for impeachment.

If Donald gets back in the White House? It gets swept under the rug and he gets at least one more Supreme Court justice appointed to the Court.

There is so much at stake this election cycle.

Joe Arpaio did not just racially profile and abuse immigrants. What he did was target people he suspected were immigrants. That was bad enough. But in order to target Latino immigrants, he had to target all Latinos -- and did. Let's not pretend otherwise.

Let's not pretend that will not happen again if Donald Trump claws his way back into the White House.

The video below got a lot of attention this weekend.

Miss Sassy JD Vance sat down with Lulu Garcia-Navarro and apparently thought she'd break under pressure. We noted her back when she was covering Iraq -- as an unembeded reporter. You have to wonder about Vance and his tiny brain that he walked into that interview after also have been a reporter from Iraq and he didn't know a damn thing to expect.

Repeatedly, she asks him if he would have certified the 2020 election and repeatedly he refuses to answer.

He also looks a lot fatter doesn't he? Guess that's why they were using AI on his face -- to make it slimmer -- after his debate with Tim Walz.

He didn't do much better on Sunday when he faced off with Martha Raddatz on ABC's THIS WEEK. A warning before you stream, when JD Vance tries to smile, he looks like a small child sitting on the toilet and struggling to get a poop out. Again, you have been warned.

Corbin Bolies (THE DAILY BEAST) reports:

JD Vance couldn’t muster up a defense of Donald Trump’s repeated mischaracterizations of migrant issues in Aurora, Colorado, on Sunday, so he resorted to a familiar one for a successful author: semantics.

This Week host Martha Raddatz questioned Vance about Trump’s Springfield, Ohio-esque assailment of the town and the subsequent pushback by its Republican mayor Mike Coffman. Trump had claimed the city was “conquered” by Venezuelan gangs, while Coffman said Trump’s descriptions “have been grossly exaggerated and have unfairly hurt the city’s identity and sense of safety.”

Hannah Demissie (ABC NEWS) notes it and other moments as well.

Let me be clear, he's smarmy little liar, a tiny hen-pecked man trying to play big boy on the national stage and, no, it doesn't work for me.

So I can't get through that entire segment but what I can get through goes to the lies he keeps telling over and over that no one's calling him on.

He says immigrant problems are due to all the executive orders Kamala Harris issued.

Why does no one scream liar in his face when he does that?

The vice president of the United States does not issue executive orders. That right is reserved for the president. He does this all this lie all the time.

Only the president.

Do you get that?

Because I don't see anyone in the media who does grasp that.

Miss Sassy may be lying -- and should be confronted -- but then again maybe JD is just that damn stupid.

If that's the case, he especially does not need to be running for office because he doesn't understand how the government works.

Kamala Harris has issued zero executive orders. When he claims she's issued even one, he's lying.

One more thing, JD's losing his hair. Have you noticed how much his hairline has retreated in the last year?

Settle down into the clickety clack
With the clouds and the stars to read
Dreaming of the pleasure I'm going to have
Watching your hairline recede
My vain darling
Watching your hair and clouds and stars

-- "Just Like This Train," written by Joni Mitchell, first appears on her COURT & SPARK

And, for those waking up slowly this morning, that hairline? Joni's singing about the awful James Taylor. Her "vain darling." And if you're still not processing, that's the same vanity from the same man that inspired this song.

Yes, James did take a plane to Saratoga. And, yes, in her opera ROMULUS HUNT: A FAMILY OPERA, when the ex-husband shows up at their son's performance, Carly quotes "You're So Vain" to underscore what the ex-husband truly is.

And Donald spent the weekend showing us who he truly was. Friday, Donald menaced Aurora, Colorado. Before he took the stage, professional hate merchants and liars White Nationalist Stephen Miller and groping whore Lauren Boebert fed the crowd lies about Venezuelan gang members taking over the city. Then Donald took the stage and hit the lie even harder. Matthew Chapman (RAW STORY) reports that Aurora's mayor -- Republican Mike Coffman -- declared, "There were thousands of people who attended the rally today, some of whom might have visited Aurora for the first time, who were able to see firsthand the mischaracterizations of our great community."

Sebastian Murdoch (HUFFINGTON POST) reminds, "On Thursday, Trump gave a long, rambling speech in Detroit, where he trashed the city he was speaking in, attempted to define the word “grocery” and got defensive about the crowds at his events" while OK! notes, "The Republican recently raised concerns after he dubbed Election Day on November 5 will be 'Liberation Day' for the United States and that he would hunt down" and deport undocumented immigrants if he wins the 2024 election." Ashleigh Fields (THE HILL) notes:

Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) told viewers that former President Trump “does not have the ability to tell the truth” during a Saturday appearance on MSNBC.

“Even those people that are in need in North Carolina, or Georgia, or Tennessee, or whatever state, Florida, that they’re in need, they literally are harming themselves because he does not have the ability to tell the truth about what it takes to get help, and he thinks it’s going to help him in the campaign,” the Harris-Walz campaign co-chair said on air.

“At the end of the day, you cannot say that you’re a leader when you’re absolutely seeking to harm people, and that’s who he is,” she added.

And Igor Bobic and Arthur Delaney (HUFFINGTON POST) note:

Even by the usual Donald Trump standards, this week was bonkers.

The Republican presidential nominee went on unhinged, racist rants against women and immigrants, denigrated one of the largest majority-Black cities in the U.S., threatened news networks with retaliation and spread falsehoods about critical assistance to people devastated by back-to-back hurricanes that ravaged several states.

The former president flooded the zone with so many ridiculous and offensive things that individual comments struggled to break through the noise. Some Republicans pushed back against a few of the most outrageous lies, without calling Trump out, while the overwhelming volume of garbage forced the media to move on.

What's going on? Juliann Ventura (THE HILL) quotes Jared Polis, Governor of Colorado, stating, "I don't know if it's, you know, some say it's cognitive decline, whatever — whatever it is." Rachel Sharp (INDEPENDENT) notes Chris Christie declared, "I saw decline in his skills in '20 from '16, and you see significant declines still." Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) reports:

Panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" debated whether Donald Trump's mental fitness should be more of a campaign issue.

Co-host Mika Brzezinski started off Friday morning's episode with a profane takedown of the former president's rambling haranguing in Detroit, and she convened a panel later on to discuss whether Trump is showing signs of age-related mental illness.

"I want to point out, it never was a huge story that Donald Trump promised a day of violence to solve crime," Brzezinski said. "What is that? What are you talking about? A day of violence, are people going to run around shooting people in the country? I'm actually serious. Take a look at what has already happened in a Trump administration, even if it was on the end of it, where he had people being beaten in [Lafayette] Park. There was Jan. 6. This was when there were a modicum of restraints. He is going to hire who he wants to hire. You can bring up Project 25 and have people knock it down, saying Trump has nothing to do with it. He does. You can also listen to what he says. A day of violence? I'm scared."

The only thing worse than the Convicted Felon are the racists who support him and the disgusting people he wants to build an administration with.

Let's start with his racist followers first. Kathleen Culliton (RAW STORY) reports:

Former President Donald Trump has ramped up his campaign rhetoric by taking it back to a terrifying time in global history — 1930s Germany, experts told Politico Saturday.

Trump's claims that migrants have "bad genes" and will "cut your throat" mimic the lies and feed on the prejudices that scholars say Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler exploited ahead of the Holocaust.

“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements," said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute. "These are actual Nazi sentiments."

Jones comment came in response to Politico's analysis of 20 recent Trump rallies that found not only that his rhetoric is dark — but it's much darker than it used to be, and more specific.

"He is no longer just talking about keeping immigrants out of the country, building a wall and banning Muslims from entering the United States," Politico wrote. "Trump now warns that migrants have already invaded, destroying the country from inside its borders, which he uses as a means to justify a second-term policy agenda that includes building massive detention camps and conducting mass deportations."

[. . .]

Jones told the outlet Trump's increasingly threatening language has close similarities to Hitler's and, should Trump win the presidential election, he could take the nation to a similar place.

“Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews," Jones said. "These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”

And Will Carless (USA TODAY) reports:

At a campaign event last week for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, attendees waved placards emblazoned with a slogan that is also used by a notorious white supremacist group. Meanwhile, anti-drag and anti-LGBTQ hate sees a resurgence this week, and a new report shows extremists and conspiracy theorists spinning up lies in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

It’s the week in extremism, from USA TODAY.

At a Trump/Vance campaign rally in Saginaw, Michigan, late last week, attendees held up placards bearing the slogan “Reclaim America.” That’s the main slogan of the Texas-headquartered white supremacist hate group Patriot Front, which took to social media to question whether the signs were a tacit endorsement.

Video from the event shows Trump supporters waving placards with the “Reclaim America” slogan behind the speakers.
Patriot Front, which specializes in spreading white supremacist propaganda and holding events where chino-clad masked men march around chanting and waving flags, portrays itself as a protector of “European heritage.” Leaks and infiltration of the group have revealed it is a hardcore racist neo–Nazi organization.
Members of Patriot Front have been charged with conspiracy to riot and the organization is being sued in at least two high-profile cases.
This week, the official Patriot Front Telegram channel proudly announced the Trump campaign had “adopted” the reclaim America slogan, posting: “The phrase "Reclaim America" is a well-known slogan of Patriot Front. It remains unclear whether the Trump campaign is aware of this connection and PF's use of the phrase, especially since a simple Google search of the slogan will return a plethora of results featuring the organization.”
The Trump/Vance campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Now let's look at his would-be team. Sara Boboltz (HUFFINGTON POST) reports on Donald's MAGA wet dream Mike Davis:

Davis spoke to far-right pundit Benny Johnson one year ago about what he would do as acting attorney general — or as he referred to it, his “three-week reign of terror.”

“Before I get chased out of town with my Trump pardon, I will rain hell on Washington, D.C.,” he told Johnson, reminding him how they’d discussed the subject in the past.

Davis listed his main objectives: fire “a lot of people” in the executive branch; indict Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election; deport “10 million people and growing,” or about 3% of the country’s population; detain “a lot of people” in Guantanamo Bay and “the D.C. gulag”; and pardon those charged over the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“We’re going to put kids in cages. It’s going to be glorious,” Davis said of migrant children.

The former president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and far-right pundit Steve Bannon both sang Davis’ praises in a profile of the “Make America Great Again” loyalist published last month in Politico. In front of reporter Adam Wren, Trump Jr. told Davis he wanted him to be attorney general “all four years” of a second Trump term.

As outrageous as Mike Davis is, he does fit in with the psychos around Trump. Evan Williams (TAG24 NEWS) reports:

Roger Stone, a long-time ally of former-President Donald Trump, was caught on tape calling for "armed guards" to be deployed at polling stations in the upcoming election.

In audio published by Rolling Stone, Roger Stone tells an undercover reporter: "We have to fight it out on a state-by-state basis, but you have to be ready,"

"When they throw us out of Detroit, you go get a court order, you come in with your own armed guards, and you... and you dispute it. Instead, our guys just left," he says.

[. . .]

In 2019, Stone was indicted on charges of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress.

Since 2020, he has been a leading voice in a campaign to delegitimize the results of that year's election, and has regularly lent his voice to false conspiracy theories of Trump being "robbed" of a second term.

There's a lot at stake with this election.

The following sites updated:

Friday, October 11, 2024

Kamala Harris' Univision townhall

Starting off with Kamala on Univision.

I did not know Kamala Harris was doing a townhall on Univision. I would've watched live. When C.I. started posting clips at The Common Ills is when I learned of it. I've collected what I think is all the clips for the full town hall above.

Barack Obama was on fire Thursday when he hit the campaign trail for Kamala. Gregory Krieg and Edward-Isaac Dovere (CNN) report:

At the rally, Obama delivered his most personal, furious indictment yet of Trump and a Republican Party he said was in thrall to a man who he believes had, over the last week, violated the trust of Americans devastated by a pair of catastrophic hurricanes.

“The idea of intentionally trying to deceive people in their most desperate and vulnerable moments – my question is, when did that become OK?” Obama said, pointing to Trump’s lies about the federal government withholding assistance to hard-hit “Republican areas” or “siphoning off aid to give to undocumented immigrants.”

When a cheer rose up, he sharply quieted the room.

“I’m not looking for applause right now!” Obama said, his voice vibrating with emotion, before he asked Republicans and conservatives allied with Trump, “When did that become OK? Why would we go along with that?”

Obama, addressing a buzzing crowd, drew sharp contrasts on policy and character – ripping Trump and talking up Harris on both fronts – and cast his successor as the mascot for a dangerous and increasingly nasty version of the country. Obama in past campaigns has relished mocking and criticizing Trump, but his speech and delivery on Thursday were stinging and unusually visceral.

“If you had a family member who acted like (Trump), you might still love them, but you’d tell ‘em, ‘You got a problem,’ and you wouldn’t put him in charge of anything,” Obama said. “And yet, when Donald Trump lies or cheats, or shows utter disregard for our Constitution, when he calls POWs ‘losers’ or fellow citizens ‘vermin,’ people make excuses for it.”

Turning his attention to voters who have expressed concern about Trump’s potential return to the White House and others who might not be paying close attention to the campaign, Obama issued a blunt call to action.

“Whether this election is making you feel excited or scared, or hopeful or frustrated, or anything in between, do not just sit back and hope for the best. Get off your couch and vote. Put down your phone and vote. Grab your friends and family and vote,” Obama said. “Vote for Kamala Harris.”

That's what we have to do. We have to show up and we have to vote. It's important. Vote like your life depends upon it because, for many of us, it does. Certainly our country and democracy depend upon it.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Friday, October 11, 2024. Barack Obama returns to the public square to serve up the hard truths.

Voting is under way in many places in the United States -- there is early voting, voting by mail and voting in person. The final day to vote in the presidential election is November 5th and that is 24 days away.

Former US President Barack Obama: [T]here is absolutely no evidence that this man thinks about anything but himself. I said it before. Donald Trump is a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. You get the Tweets in all caps, the ramblings and the ravings about crazy conspiracy theories. You got the two hour speeches. Word salad. Just -- it's like Fidel Castro -- just on and on. Constant attempts to sell you stuff. Who does that? Selling you gold sneakers and $100,000 watch and, most recently, a Trump BIBLE. He wants you to buy the word of God Donald Trump edition -- got his name right there next to Matthew and Luke. I mean, you could not make this stuff up. If you saw it on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, you'd say, "Well nah, I mean that's going too far." No, he's doing that.

[Calls of "He's weird!"]

Barack Obama: It's crazy. And the reason he does it is because all he cares about is his ego and his money and his status. He's not thinking about you. Donald Trump sees power as nothing more than means to an end. He wants the middle class to pay the price for another huge tax cut that would mostly help him and his country club buddies. Doesn't care if costs more women their reproductive freedom because it won't make a difference in his life

[Boos]

Barack Obama: Do not boo. Vote. They can't hear your boos but they can hear your votes.

Last night, in Pittsburgh, Barack took the stage in a front of a huge crowd -- the kind of crowd Donald Trump couldn't get in his best days back in 2016 and so much bigger than the smatterings that he attracts today. Barack laid it on the line about what mattered.

And what mattered is you.

And me.

And all of us working for a better future and a better country.

He spoke truth to power.

ABC NEWS reports on a Pittsburgh meet up Barack has with Black males. Barack explained, "When you have a choice that's this clear, when you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences -- who's had to work harder and do more and overcome -- and achieves the second highest office in the land and is putting forward concrete proposals to correctly address the things are vital in our neighborhoods and in our communities from housing to making sure our mothers and our fathers and our grandparents are going to be able to afford medicine and making sure that we are dealing with prices that are too high and rents that are too high and is committed to making sure that we maintain The Affordable Care Act so that everybody's got health insurance, that cares about education and entrepreneurship in our neighborhoods -- and that's on one side. And on the other side, you have someone who has consistently shown disregard not just for the communities but for you as a person. And you're thinking about sitting out? "

Some polling indicates that some Black males are thinking of sitting out this election. I'd argue that the remarks Barack made should also be directed at THE PROGRESSIVE, THE NATION, DEMOCRACY NOW!, IN THESE TIMES and other outlets. In fact, let's note the both-sides nonsense THE NATION just did.

"Democrat or Republican, the next presidency will still mean death for others in faraway places"

That garbage is from Ahmed Moor. He's a Palestinian American and -- as his Tweet on the article makes even more clear, he's only referring to and concerned about Gaza.

I knew there was a reason I wasn't familiar with his name.

See, I've called out the destruction of Iraq, the decimation of its population which turned the country into a land of widows and orphans. I've spoken out, I've written, I've marched. And I'm generally familiar with at least the name of other Americans addressing it.

Not familiar with his name.

Is he so young that he wasn't old enough to protest? No. He was in college in 2002. Before the Iraq War began. I see he had time to work on Wall Street after college.

I don't see any writing about Iraq.

So when Iraqi people died, it didn't matter to him.

But when it's people in Gaza, suddenly, it's important.

He is all that is wrong with the left at present. Not all of the left, but a small sliver -- a sliver with far too much say about what 'independent' media covers and what it doesn't.

Palestinians matter, the people of Iraq matter, the people of Lebanon matter, the people of Syria matter, go down the list.

But when you can reduce the entire world's suffering to just one group of people? Your purity test has left you not just a virgin but an idiot virgin.

Are we in this together or not?

Because together we can win. But together means we work for all of us. And that's not happening currently. Again, Barack's remarks could be directed to 'independent' media. Last night, Marcia noted:

Well thank God we can rely on Mother Jones, The Nation, The Progressive, In These times, et al to build excitement, right?

Nope. As C.I. notes, they're actually depressing turnout if you go to Common Dreams and read the comments left on their articles. People saying they're not voting, that there's no point in voting.

Isn't it strange and funny how when it's a Black woman running for president, these same outlets that honestly whored for Al Gore and Joe Lieberman in 2000, can't even note Kamala's good qualities and good programs? And we're talking about the threat of Donald Trump getting back into the White House.

But that doesn't matter to them.

So I don't matter. Thanks for clearing that up. Thank you, Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, In These Times, ZNet, etc, ect. As a Black lesbian, I'm under threat three ways -- a woman, an LGBTQ+ member and an African-American.

But The Nation and Common Dreams and Democracy Now! and all of them don't care about me at all.

I am so sick of it. As a Black woman, I'm also damn tired of doing the Democratic Party's heavy lifting for them.

The refusal to stand by a Black woman after all the years that we have ensured the Democratic Party's election victories?

What a slap in the face.

8 days ago Democracy Now! did coverage -- not a headline -- on the vice presidential debate. That was their last segment on the presidential race. Before that? Four weeks ago, they did segments (with Kamala haters) on the presidential debate.

Grasp that. Grasp that there has been nothing on Kamala's housing plan. There has been nothing on what she's proposing regarding home healthcare.

Grasp that.

They're doing everything that they can to elect Donald Trump. Grasp that.

Black women do. You can see it online, you can see it in YouTube videos, I heard when I was registering voters and I hear it now as I'm going to nursing homes to talk about Kamala. And Mike is right, C.I. was not mistaken about the importance of doing this. I wouldn't have gotten how important this is. I asked C.I. how she knew. That was the first place she ever spoke to in high school about a presidential election. And she's right, it does make a difference.

Jill Stein is not going to be president. She is, however, doing her best to ensure that Donald Trump will become president. Radio host, podcaster, author and activist Thom Hartmann writes:

Jill Stein doesn’t give, as the old saying goes, a flying f*ck about democracy. Instead, she’s all about how famous she can become and how much money she can grift off her repeated presidential campaigns. It’s a damn dangerous game.

Fresh off her 2016 political quacksalvery, in which she handed that year’s election to Donald Trump, this professional grifter — who’s been doing real damage to the Green Party for over a decade — is trying to get Trump back into the White House.

As her Wisconsin campaign manager, Pete Karas, told Politico:

“We need to teach Democrats a lesson.”

Arguably, Democrats have already learned that lesson.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost Wisconsin to Trump by 22,748 votes; Stein carried 31,072 votes. In Michigan the story was similar: Clinton lost to Trump by 10,704 votes while Stein carried 51,463. Ditto for Pennsylvania, where Trump won by 44,292 votes and Stein pulled in 49,941 votes.

Had Clinton carried those three states she would have become president.

The Green Party — that I safely voted for in 2000 when I lived in non-swing-state Vermont — deserves a candidate who’ll work to produce real change rather than simply run repeated vanity campaigns that cripple our admittedly flawed electoral system.

Those slim margins may be a distant memory, however, given how hard Stein is pounding on Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania Democrats against President Biden’s unfortunate support of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign in Gaza. As Newsweek reported last week:

“In Michigan, a battleground state where the Greens are campaigning hard, and which has a large Arab American community, 40 percent of Muslim voters backed Stein versus just 12 percent for Harris and 18 percent for Trump, according to a late August poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

“Michigan has more than 200,000 Muslim voters and 300,000 with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry. Biden won there in 2020 by 154,000 votes, while Trump carried the state with a victory margin of just 10,700—or 0.23 percent—in 2016.

“In Wisconsin, the CAIR poll showed Stein on 44 percent and Harris on 29 percent, while she also leads the Democrat candidate among Muslims voters in Arizona.”

I moderated the 2012 presidential debate between Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson; she and Johnson both had the smell of cheap political hustlers to me then, a feeling that’s only been reinforced in the years since.

Stein certainly hasn’t done much to advance the stated goals of the Green Party. Back in the day, it was the Greens leading the charge against climate change and in favor of instant runoff voting, having considerable success with the latter.

David Cobb, a Texas environmental attorney, ran on the Green ticket in 2004 and was a regular on my radio program that year. He explicitly told people listening to my show in swing states to vote for John Kerry instead of him, calling it his “safe states” strategy.

He refused to campaign or even appear in battleground states, a statement of both high integrity and real patriotism.

Stein has neither. This is her third run for president (Howie Hawkins was the Green candidate in 2020 and was not on the ballot in most swing states.)

Instead, she’s bragging about how she’s going to hand the 2024 election to Donald Trump. Presumably she’ll be spared the imprisonment that Trump says he’s preparing for the rest of us in politics and the media. As Stein boasted to Newsweek:

“Third Way found that, based on polling averages in battleground states, the 2020 margin of victory for Democrats would be lost in four states — Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin — because of third party support.

“So they can’t win. There’s a fair amount of data now that suggests the Democrats have lost. Unless they give up their genocide.

“We’re doing outreach all the time to a lot of different groups, but it’s really been the Muslim Americans and Arab Americans who have really taken this campaign on like it’s theirs — like they have enormous ownership over this.”

Running for president and keeping an iron grip on the once-noble Green Party has become Stein’s singular mission. And she’s killing the Party — and its once-sterling reputation — in the process. As Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said:

“If you run for years in a row, and your party has not grown, has not added city council seats, down ballot seats and state electives, that’s bad leadership. And that to me is what’s upsetting.”

As Peter Rothpletz wrote for The New Republic in an article titled Jill Stein Is Killing the Green Party:

“As of July 2024, a mere 143 officeholders in the United States are affiliated with the Green Party. None of them are in statewide or federal offices. In fact, no Green Party candidate has ever won federal office. And Stein’s reign has been a period of indisputable decline, during which time the party’s membership—which peaked in 2004 at 319,000 registered members—has fallen to 234,000 today.”

Stein brought along a Fox “News” film crew when she crashed the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, cementing her reputation as a hustler who’ll hook up with anybody who’ll provide her with fame or fortune.

There are, apparently, no Democrats in America clean or pure or virginal enough for Stein; as Rothpletz reports, she even attacked Bernie Sanders for being a “DC insider” and “corrupted” by corporate money.

Meanwhile, her campaign, theoretically opposed to giant monopolies and defense contractors, has taken money from Google, Lockheed Martin, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and McKinsey.

Jill Stein has never delivered anything to the American people but empty words. She shows up every four years to deliver empty words and then vanishes. Spending that money she raised for recounts in 2016 apparently -- she never did, as she said she would, donate it to charity.

It's a good little grift. And she goes around attacking Kamala Harris. While defending and apologizing for Putin. At ZETEO, Mehdi has posted his full interview with Jill Stein. Previously, clips had gone viral but the full interview was only available to ZETEO subscribers.

In the past, some have argued that the point of voting for a Jill Stein is so that the Greens can hit a certain percent and have ballot access.

Why?

I've made the argument before for that. And I do understand the argument and I could endorse it before.

I cannot now.

Why?

The 2016 vote gave them access in 20 states. That's on the ballot, that's not needing petitions or write-ins or anything.

20 states.

And yet, per their own website, this year, they have four candidates for Congress. Four people running for the House and the Senate. The House has 435 members, the Senate has 100.

And with their automatic ballot access, they can only offer four candidates?

No, I don't buy the nonsense that a vote for Jill helps the Green Party.

Nor do I buy the argument that we burn the playhouse down and rebuild something better.

That's a theoretical in good times. We're not in good times. The notion of sinking this election and something better will emerge from the disgust?

Who believes that?

Oh, I know!

People who take pictures of their children's genitals and are stupid enough to then try to have them developed at a drug store and they are called -- because they're a big name that everyone reading this would know -- and told to come pick them up and told that, by law, the drug store is actually supposed to call the cops but since this person is a big, big, big star, they'll do a favor for them this time and just pretend they never saw the kiddie porn that the parent took of their own child.

I've teased this one before. Certain people better get their act together real damn quick because when I burn the playhouse down, I burn it down. And I have no problem naming this one person we've been teasing out for some time.

But while I'll burn the fake asses' playhouse down, I'm not stupid enough to think we destroy our way of life -- and the way of life for so many Americans -- by voting for Trump or sitting it out because wah-wah Kamala doesn't say everything on Gaza that we want. Wah! Wah! Wah!

Aurora DeStefano (2 PARAGRAPHS) reports:

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has a habit of referring to the grand dame of traditional news media (or mainstream or legacy media), The New York Times, as the “failing New York Times.”

It’s the same phrase he uses to describe the country he hopes to lead, frequently saying “we are a failing nation.”

But both entities — The New York Times and U.S. citizens — are helping Trump more than he deserves, according to critics. In the case of the Times and other so-called liberal media outlets, they say, Trump is extended the benefit of a pernicious both-sides-ism that consistently creates false equivalencies between Trump and his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.

Media critics have long criticized the Times for its Trump coverage, but two adjacent headlines this week serve to encapsulate the kind of coverage each candidate receives and, critics says, shows the media bending over backwards to make Trump’s latent racism palatable while questioning Harris’s veracity.

The journalistic malpractice is so stark that the headlines “should be studied in journalism classes for decades,” according to anti-Trump pundit and author Stuart Stevens, a Republican in exile during the MAGA insurgency.

Stevens writes, incredulous, that the “Trump headline could apply to an article about a Nobel prize winner in genetic studies.”

This alleged false equivalence in coverage is occurring against the backdrop of a Trump-launched storm of disinformation about FEMA and the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.

These Trump hurricane lies are so patently untrue that four Republican governors in Southern states refuted them, meaning even a cadre of Trump loyalists publicly rejected the former President’s fabrications.

On active X user called ScaryLawyerGuy, an unrelenting critic of the differing levels of accountability demanded from the two candidates, wrote:

“The New York Times thinks Trump is better for its business model, the (literal) fortunes of multiple people on their politics desk depend on him winning and they will sane wash his Hitlerian views on eugenics if it helps him win.”

Back in May, after Times editor Joe Kahn defended his paper’s coverage of what was then the Trump-Biden race, an article in The New Republic asked:

“When one of the candidates is running on an express vow to wreck the political and legal systems themselves, do typical conventions of political reporting-ones geared around presenting both sides as equivalently conventional political actors fighting on an even civic playing field-really get the job done in communicating what that means?”
Greg Sargent, TNR

TNR also credits the Times for producing “indispensable journalism about Donald Trump's authoritarian designs for a second term” exposing “Trump's schemes to unleash the Justice Department on political enemies, to gut the bureaucracy and stock it with loyalists, to functionally wreck our intelligence agencies.”

But it's not just THE NEW YORK TIMES -- it's 'independent' media as well. They are depressing and suppressing turnout and there's no excuse for that.

This is nonsense. People will be harmed and, look at the areas effected by climate change right now, people are being harmed. And they're harmed further by liars who tell them hurricanes are from cloud seeding and other b.s. No, the weather is the effect of climate change. And when the future looks so potentially stark, I don't know how you waste your vote or your voice or your platform by acting as though Donald and Kamala are the same. They are not.

One person can lead us forward over the next four years. It might mean work on our part, getting off our lazy asses and marching and making demands of our elected officials. But we already know Donald Trump won't respond to pressure. We already know he'll just come up with a new lie to tell the world and himself while most likely either trying to imprison us or sick the national guard on us. The choices are not vague or in doubt. Donald is not an unknown. We have seen the damage he can do and he tells us every day the damage that he wants to do.

Charlotte Alter (TIME) writes:

On a sunny Wednesday in late September, Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at Carnegie Mellon University for the first comprehensive economic-policy speech of her short presidential campaign.

Addressing a sedate audience in suits and ties, the Vice President outlined plans to strengthen small businesses, cut taxes on the middle class, and build more affordable housing. "I am a capitalist," she told the Pittsburgh crowd, detailing how she would invest in startups and increase public-private partnerships, and describing an approach to economic growth that stressed stability.

It was a business-friendly speech tailored to business-friendly voters. But in a neck-and-neck presidential race, wonky pitches like these could make the difference. In a September New York Times/Siena poll, nearly 30% of likely voters said they felt they needed to learn more about the Vice President before making their choice. The fight to define Kamala Harris—who she is, what she stands for, and what kind of President she would be—will be one of the central battles of the campaign’s final weeks.

To examine these questions, TIME spoke with 20 current and former Harris campaign advisers, former aides in her vice presidential and Senate offices, senior officials from each of the past five presidential administrations, and a range of policy experts. The portrait that emerged was of a politician who is more practical than ideological—a cautious candidate running in a change election, juggling the liabilities and benefits of her ties to her boss, President Joe Biden, as well as her own past positions, all while trying to keep the focus on her opponent. For Harris, policy specifics are in service to the larger goal of her campaign, which is to present a credible alternative to a second Donald Trump presidency.

At Carnegie Mellon, Harris offered the most detailed look at her economic plans since taking over as the Democratic nominee. She’s proposing a $50,000 tax deduction to help Americans start more small businesses, and a $6,000 Child Tax Credit for families in the first year of a baby’s life. She plans to extend $35 insulin to all Americans and eliminate degree requirements for 500,000 federal jobs. She wants to invest in research and development in new manufacturing industries, and trim red tape to further the Biden Administration’s overhaul of America’s infrastructure. Perhaps more than any other presidential candidate in recent memory, Harris has focused on solving America’s housing crisis. She plans to offer $25,000 in down-payment assistance to first-time home buyers, a tax credit to incentivize builders, and pledges to build 3 million affordable housing units in her first term.

The following sites updated: