NOAA/NESDIS/STAR GOES ABI BAND 13 OR_ABI-L1b-RadF-M6C13_G16_s20202581350186_e20202581359506_c20202581359586.nc
Susie Madrak of Crooks and Liars assembled a series of tweets chronicling climate impacts across the globe.
“I’m with The Guardian on this one,” tweets Geraint Preston. “Climate change sounds far too benign and ambivalent for what we are facing. It’s a climate crisis.”
For the 2nd time on record, the Atlantic has 5+ tropical cyclones (tropical depression (TD) or stronger) simultaneously: #Hurricane#Paulette, TD #Rene, Tropical Storm #Sally, Tropical Storm #Teddy and TD21. Other time was from September 11-14, 1971. pic.twitter.com/9ET1OoxE6f
This election isn’t just about politics. It’s about survival. The West Coast is burning, we’re hit with numerous massive storms and tornado outbreaks, pandemics incubated by global warming, animals becoming more aggressive. Climate change is already making our lives harder in so many ways.
And Trump has shredded what’s left of environmental protections. This is our last chance to mitigate the damage and no, you don’t get to sit this one out.
Donald Trump’s anti-maskers are not the only people in the world going about life pretending nothing is wrong.
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It is amazing that some people have the presence of mind to record things. Like clips from last night’s virtual “Princess Bride” reunion benefit for Wisconsin Democrats. I was too busy having a wonderful time in the middle of one of the worst years ever.
Inconceivable, I know.
After a delayed start for technical glitches Sunday night, the original cast members (those who were “not dead,” said director Rob Reiner) gave an online table read from the original William Goldman script. Over 100,000 donors watched. There were some muted mic mistakes and audio-video delays, but overall? Wonderful.
“Tonight’s once-in-a-lifetime Princess Bride reunion changes the odds on who wins Wisconsin,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “This is by a mile the biggest grassroots fundraiser that we have ever had.”
Wikler added that “chipping in to register for tonight, and post signing up to volunteer tonight, can make the difference between the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, and another four years of the Trump nightmare.”
Mandy Patinkin brought the sword. Billy Crystal wore the Miracle Max hat and dressed his house to look like Max’s and Valerie’s. Thirty-plus years later, Robin Wright seems to have aged on a different timeline, one fan tweeted, wondering if her skin-care regime includes unicorn tears.
And of course. “Listening to Mandy Patinkin deliver THE line (you know the one) is the happiest I’ve felt in all of 2020,” tweeted Kendall Brown, a disability and healthcare advocate.
Patton Oswalt hosted a question and answer session after the reading was over too soon.
Oswalt (to Crystal): “How did Miracle Max get fired from the castle by Humperdinck?” Crystal: “He wrote a book…he told about how Humperdinck lied about the plague”
Take some time to watch Patinkin reminisce for his sons how much fun he’d had sword fighting with Cary Elwes. In “Sword Memories 3,” he tears up. “And I just miss it … to this day.”
My son asked me some questions about The Princess Bride. Here are some memories. Hope you can join us this Sunday. Will be captioned and signed. They are trying to find a way to make it available to fans outside US. Sword memories 1 pic.twitter.com/PhXBOX9vhC
It is very easy to sit on the sidelines and criticize the Democratic Party for failing to live up to its potential. “There’s no heavier burden than a great potential,” Peanuts‘ Linus once said. Wisconsin Democrats are showing us what potential looks like.
Now, let me reminisce a moment.
Netroots Nation is the country’s largest annual progressive activist convention. (I met Digby at a different one in D.C. in 2009.) Yes, there are informative panels and trainings, but the real reason to go is to network with activists from around the country in the hallways and at parties in the evening.
At a noisy party in a Philadelphia hotel suite last year, I spoke with a woman whose name I recognized but could not place. Later I found out she had been involved in CORE, SNCC, and SDS back in the 1960s. All these decades later, she is still organizing for progressive causes.
In the main room everyone drank beer packed in shoulder to shoulder. But in a corner of the bedroom where we retreated to hear each other, one man sat in a chair in a corner, head down, his nose in his laptop, typing away. Working.
It was Ben Wikler.
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They don’t grow on trees. And Matt Cartwright has walked the walk and proved how a progressive can govern in a conservative district without giving up his principles.
From Howie Klein at DWT:
In 2012, Matt Cartwright waged a strong primary campaign against reactionary Blue Dog Tim Holden (one of the “Democrats” who joined with the GOP to vote against ObamaCare). Hoyer and Pelosi warned that a progressive like Cartwright could not win that red a seat in northeast Pennsylvania. Matt was one of Blue America’s top candidates that year and we were in the trenches with him, while Hoyer ran around the district with a pack of lobbyists begging “people” to vote for Holden, a pro-frack-maniac. Matt won– by a lot: 57.1% to 42.9% and then went on to beat the Republican Hoyer and Pelosi said he couldn’t do by even more: 161,393 (60.3%) to 106,208 (39.7%).
Matt then joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus and worked his way up to the caucus’ whip. He was immediately appointed vice chair of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Caucus. Even before the election, he endorsed marriage equality, a position that the DCCC recommended that swing district Democrats stay away from. since then, he’s had a 100% voting record from the Human Rights Campaign.
This week, Matt told me that when he first ran for Congress:
“I promised to be a Roosevelt Democrat– someone who stands up for the ordinary working people of the United States, for their safety, their economic security, their access to healthcare, their clean air and water, and their civil rights. I promised to be someone who isn’t afraid to take on what FDR called the ‘economic royalists,’ the powerful, the moneyed, and the connected. Drawing on the words of the late Paul Wellstone, I ran as a proud member of the ‘Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.’
It was my belief that, as Democrats, we do not ever need to forfeited these principles, even in so-called difficult districts.I have never abandoned these values, or hidden them, and I believe my voting record reflects that. My congressional story is a demonstration that when we have the courage of our convictions, and stand for them in a forthright manner, we can win districts like mine with a consistently progressive message. If it means working a little harder, we’re not afraid of that.”
He was reelected in 2014 and in 2016, while Trump won his district by 10 points, Matt won by 7.5 points. In 2018 the GOP threw a self-funding Wall Street crook up against him (who spent $1,687,182 of his own money on the race) and, even with the district gerrymandered against him, he beat the Republican by over 9 points.
This year, the GOP has a fringe nut, Jim Bognet, who won the crowded Republican primary on one message: claiming he is the Trump candidate. Lately, as Trump’s approval continues to sink in northeast Pennsylvania, Bognet is trying to back away from his Trump-adhesion.
This year, Matt’s district is rated a “toss up.” A few days ago Ted Lieu called me and asked if Blue America could help raise campaign funds for Matt, who he told me needs some help to overcome the Republican onslaught. Matt is their #1 target among House incumbents.
Ted told me that he and Matt are co-chairs of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, and that he had gotten to know him well. “He is an amazing Member of Congress who has advanced strong progressive values in a district that Trump won by 10 points,” said Lieu. “Matt has shown remarkable courage, determination and grit. He is in a tough race again and we must bring him back to Congress. I hope you can help Matt. And as a bonus, every Democratic voter that Matt turns out in his district is also very likely to vote for Biden over Trump in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.”
Another strong and activist Democrat who Matt serves with in the House, Jamie Raskin (D-MD), wants us to let DWT readers that, in his words, “Matt Cartwright is the lucid, passionate and unmistakable voice in Congress of every victim of asbestos poisoning, every community fighting toxic contamination of their water, and every citizen fighting for his or her rights against big money, big business and big government. If you give a damn about the survival of democracy in America, do something right now to keep Matt Cartwright in Congress.”
Please consider making a contribution to Matt Cartwright’s campaign. Along with Ted Lieu and Jamie Raskin, he’s one of only an even dozen incumbents we’ve endorsed this year. The other men and women we’ve endorsed are in blue districts. Matt’s PVI is rated R+1.
Trump commuted this man’s sentence because he threatened to tell everyone what he knows about Trump’s cheating in the 2016 election (with his help.) Here’s what he’s “advising” him to do this time:
Roger Stone wants us all to know he is positive President Trump will win the upcoming election—so much so he says federal agents should seize ballots in Nevada and “physically stand in the way” of voting on the pretext of Democrats plotting to steal the election. Asked by Infowars’ host Alex Jones in an interview earlier this week what the president should do in light of the fact that “it’s clear [the Dems] think they can steal” the election, Stone urged the president to form a nationwide election operation wherein federal agents could “file legal objections” or literally block voting. “The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark County board of elections, Mr. President!” the freshly pardoned Trump confidant said.
He went on to suggest journalists should be rounded up for any “seditious” activity surrounding Trump’s supposedly guaranteed election win. According to Stone, “seditious” doings may entail simply writing an article about progressive groups planning for worst-case scenarios if Trump loses the election but refuses to recognize the results. Commenting on such a report by The Daily Beast, Stone claimed, “It’s projection…If The Daily Beast is involved in provably seditious and illegal activities, their entire staff can be taken into custody and their office can be shut down. They wanna play war, this is war…I’m for a legal election. Everything I’m going to be involved with in terms of helping Donald Trump get elected will be perfectly transparent and legal.”
Stone was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering last November before Trump granted him clemency.
Normally, one would dismiss Roger Stone as the fringe crank, dirty trickster he is. And this is crazy Infowars stuff, to be sure. Nonetheless, it pays to remember that this guy remains close to Trump and you just don’t know how far Trump’s willing to go.
Trump on a purported antifa sympathizer who allegedly killed someone in Portland being killed by federal forces: "This guy was a violent criminal, and the US Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something — that's the way it has to be. There has to be retribution." pic.twitter.com/WfIP9b37sA
Likely voters believe that Democratic nominee Joe Biden is more mentally sound that President Donald Trump, according to a recently-released Fox News poll.
The survey of likely 1,191 likely voters found that 51% believe that Biden “has the mental soundness to serve as president.”
Only 47% of likely voters told Fox News that President Trump has the “mental soundness” to be commander-in-chief.
Only 47% ???!!! Good lord. I fear for our species if that many people look at this braindead lunatic in the White House and think he has the “mental soundness” to be a server at McDonalds, much less a commander-in-chief. And they are likely voters!
ABC’s Jonathan Karl was on Reliable Sources this morning and he made an interesting point about election night. We are all rightfully anxious about the vote count being slow and Trump claiming victory prematurely on election night, with all the chaos that Trump is making sure will follow. But Karl pointed out that it may not be a long a count as we expect. He pointed out that Florida, which Trump has personally endorsed as a state that counts the mail-in votes fairly, generally gets their count done by midnight. If Biden wins Florida decisively, that could be the ballgame.
It is monumentally stupid that we even have to think about such a thing. It should not matter in the least who is ahead in the count on election night. The votes should be counted when they’re counted, fairly and properly. But we have Donald Trump as president and it doesn’t work that way. It’s all about the reality show, which he is using to foment possible violence and chaos if he doesn’t win. So this is an example of the ridiculous concerns you have to factor in.
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg plans to spend at least $100 million in Florida to help elect Democrat Joe Biden, a massive late-stage infusion of cash that could reshape the presidential contest in a costly toss-up state central to President Trump’s reelection hopes.
Bloomberg made the decision to focus his final election spending on Florida last week, after news reports that Trump had considered spending as much as $100 million of his own money in the final weeks of the campaign, Bloomberg’s advisers said. Presented with several options on how to make good on an earlier promise to help elect Biden, Bloomberg decided that a narrow focus on Florida was the best use of his money.
The president’s campaignhas long treated the state, which Trump now calls home, as a top priority, and hisadvisers remain confidentin his chances given strong turnout in 2016 and 2018 that gave Republicans narrow winning margins in statewide contests.
“Voting starts on Sept. 24 in Florida so the need to inject real capital in that state quickly is an urgent need,” said Bloomberg adviser Kevin Sheekey. “Mike believes that by investing in Florida it will allow campaign resources and other Democratic resources to be used in other states, in particular the state of Pennsylvania.”
The last Republican to win the White House without Florida was Calvin Coolidge in 1924, and a loss of the state’s 29 electoral votes would radically shrink Trump’s paths to reelection. With Florida in his column, Biden would be able to take the presidency by holding every state that Hillary Clinton won in 2016 and winning any one of the following states: Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, all of which Biden leads in current public polling averages.
Obviously, The Democrats want to win Florida in any case. But it would be especially helpful to win this big state Trump has endorsed as having a fair election system on election night.
Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., received a phone call from Mr. Trump demanding fast action to resolve a holdup on approval for the expanded use of plasma to treat the coronavirus.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
It was the third week of August, the Republican National Convention was days away, and President Trump was impatient.
White House officials were anxious to showcase a step forward in the battle against the coronavirus: an expansion of the use of blood plasma from recovered patients to treat new ones. For nearly two weeks, however, the National Institutes of Health had held up emergency authorization for the treatment, citing lingering concerns over its effectiveness.
So on Wednesday, Aug. 19, Mr. Trump called Dr. Francis S. Collins, the director of the N.I.H., with a blunt message.
“Get it done by Friday,” he demanded.
It wasn’t done by Friday, and on Sunday, regulators at the Food and Drug Administration still had not finished a last-minute data review intended to ease N.I.H. doubts.
But on Sunday night, the eve of the convention, the president announced, with the F.D.A.’s approval, that plasma therapy would be available for wider use, and he declared that it could reduce deaths by 35 percent, vastly overstating what the data had shown about the benefits.
Mr. Trump’s call to Dr. Collins was a flash point in a pressure campaign by the White House to bend the nation’s public health agencies to his desire to show progress in the fight against a pandemic that has killed more than 192,000 people in the United States. And it was just one in a series of moments that have left scientists and regulators across the public health bureaucracy increasingly worried that the White House could exert greater pressure to approve a vaccine before Election Day, even in the absence of agreement on its effectiveness and safety.
On the night of the plasma announcement, Dr. Collins was told to show up at the White House, where he was given a coronavirus test and then shunted to the Roosevelt Room as Mr. Trump and others spoke to journalists in the briefing room.
There, Dr. Collins and Dr. Peter Marks, one of the top regulators at the Food and Drug Administration and the person most directly responsible for maintaining the independence and scientific rigor of the vaccine approval process, watched helplessly as the president and other top administration officials oversold plasma’s effectiveness, creating a public relations debacle that reverberated for days.
Dr. Collins left the White House after the announcement. But Dr. Marks, who had pushed for the plasma approval, was escorted to the Oval Office to spend a few minutes with Mr. Trump and his top aides, who were celebrating with cupcakes with white icing. In an interview on Friday, Dr. Marks said he was “a little bit in a state of shock” to find himself there being thanked by the president for his work on the plasma approval.
Although he described it as “a brief interaction that really didn’t have any substance,” health officials who had heard about the encounter said they feared it could create the impression that the guardrails between politics and science were being further eroded at a time when the public is already concerned about political pressure in assessing the safety of vaccines and treatments.
Some of those present were taken aback when Mr. Trump, who a day earlier had tweeted about a “deep state” at the Food and Drug Administration blocking quick approvals of treatments and vaccines to hurt him politically, jokingly asked whether Dr. Stephen M. Hahn, the F.D.A. commissioner, was doing a good job.
With Election Day just over seven weeks away, Washington is witnessing the collision of two worlds: a community of largely anonymous government scientists and doctors who operate in a culture guided by research, data sets and peer review, and a president famously disdainful of science, politically wounded by his failures to contain the coronavirus and now determined to cast himself as moving as fast as possible to provide Americans with vaccines and treatments.
My God. He truly is a monster.
I guess I won’t be getting any vaccine as long as Donald Trump is in office. I would guess I’m not alone in that:
President Donald Trump’s campaign solicited donations Saturday with a fear-mongering text warning of impending violent attacks by anti-fascist activists under a Joe Biden presidency: “ANTIFA ALERT: They’ll attack your homes if Joe’s elected. Pres Trump needs you to become a Diamond Club Member. Your name is MISSING. Donate.” There is no existing evidence to support the claim that anti-fascists are planning violence should the former vice president win the election. “Antifa,” a loose term for Leftist activists whose best-known activity is physically disrupting right-wing rallies, have been a favorite target of the president during speeches despite the fact that American intelligence agencies consider right-wing white supremacists to be a far greater domestic terrorist threat.
[,,,]
President Donald Trump on Saturday told supporters in Nevada that Democrats are “trying to rig this election.” Speaking at a rally in Minden, the president insisted, without citing evidence, that a nefarious campaign is underway to send out 80 million “unsolicited” ballots to random people who are not eligible to vote. But moments later, Trump bizarrely appeared to tie his “rigged” claim to the criticism he faced following reports he disparaged America’s war dead as “losers” and “suckers.”
Noting that he’d seen an ad launched by former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign that featured his reported quotes mocking slain soldiers, Trump declared that he would now become “vicious.” “Now I can be really vicious … and we’ll start by saying … that the Democrats are trying to rig this election. The only way they’re going to win is to rig it,” he said, adding, “We can’t let that happen. I hope you’re all going to be poll watchers.” He made a similar claim a month ago about election rigging being the only way he could lose. “We’re gonna win four more years in the White House, and then we’ll negotiate, because based on the way we were treated, we’re probably entitled to another four years after that,” he said.
And tens of millions of Americans will enthusiastically vote for this loon.
Voter disenfranchisement is a persistent issue across the U.S., especially for nonwhite communities. One major party wants Americans to have their voices heard through their votes and works to lower barriers to voting. The other major party takes a more selective, more elite view of the franchise.
Counting beans in jars and literacy tests are too gauche these days for opponents of voting access. But not insisting that voters demonstrate their willingness to exert a defined amount of effort before voting and possess a GOP-approved, minimum level of civics knowledge. Those requirements would prohibit even many of their own party members from voting. Even reinstating a property-ownership requirement for voting is not beyond the pale for some Republicans. But that’s how a class more interested in ruling than governing thinks.
Here in North Carolina, we are working to ensure everyone eligible to vote is able to vote. This film trailer from 2018 came over the transom early this morning for a documentary looking at that fight in 2016.
The Rev. Barber quote jumped out at me: “Nobody would fight this hard to take something from us that wasn’t powerful.” Please remind people you encounter this fall just how powerful opponents think their vote is.
“We think that voting actually is not just a private vote for the person who gets the vote, but a public good, and that the more people who vote, the more legitimate the elected officials are, and that they represent the actual values of the electorate.” – Former Colorado Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon (D-Denver)
(h/t AV)
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Conspiracy theories percolating in the wingnut-o-sphere sometimes fail to catch my attention. When they do, they can produce a baroo response that demands a closer look.
Perhaps Roger Stone was simply pimping two Saturday Las Vegas events organized to raise money for his legal defense costs when he appeared on Alex Jones’ Infowars network on September 10. Nevada is not not likely a pivotal electoral prize. But Stone’s remarks on Nevada balloting raised a stir online after Media Matters published a show clip Friday afternoon in which the career ratf*cker suggested that Donald Trump have federal marshals seize ballots in Nevada on election night.
A jury convicted Stone in November on seven felony counts, including lying to Congress. The acting president commuted Stone’s 40-month prison sentence in July. A full pardon is still possible.
Stone argued that “the ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshalls and taken from the state” because “they are completely corrupted” and falsely said that “we can prove voter fraud in the absentees right now.” He specifically called for Trump to have absentee ballots seized in Clark County, Nevada, an area that leans Democratic. Stone went on to claim that “the votes from Nevada should not be counted; they are already flooded with illegals” and baselessly suggested that former Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) should be arrested and that Trump should consider nationalizing Nevada’s state police force.
Operation Eagle Eye revisited
“Send federal marshals to the Clark County Board of Elections, Mr. President!” Stone demanded. And if that was not enough to sell tickets for “Roger Stone Ungagged!” on Saturday, Stone had more:
Beyond Nevada, Stone recommended that Trump consider several actions to retain his power. Stone recommended that Trump appoint former Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) as a special counsel “with the specific task of forming an Election Day operation using the FBI, federal marshals, and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity.”
Operation Eagle Eye revisited, no doubt. And for the first time in decades, the RNC is allowed to launch organized “election protection” efforts without prior court consent. I have written about that 1982 consentdecreemultipletimes,
Stone still was not done:
Stone also urged Trump to consider declaring “martial law” or invoking the Insurrection Act and then using his powers to arrest Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, “the Clintons” and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity.”
“Proven” being in the eye of Trump’s U.S. Attorney General. Bill Barr has already shown his willingness to throw federal officers into cities. Stone would like to see that again.
“The votes from Nevada should not be counted!” Stones announced. “They are already flooded with illegals. If Harry Reid is involved, take Harry Reid into custody and charge him,” Stone said, prefaced by saying he was not jumping to conclusions.
Stone repeated his allegations about vote-by-mail to reporters ahead of the Las Vegas event. “It does not make sense to me to mail a ballot to every voter in Clark County who has not requested a ballot,” Stone said, “and in some cases, including in those outgoing mailings people who have not voted in six or eight years.”
Bernie Sanders voters will be a key factor in a Biden victory in Nevada, the Los Angeles Times reports. Interviews suggest they will vote for Joe Biden. Democrats have won three straight presidential votes in an “increasingly urban and suburban” Nevada:
Sanders has signaled to his backers the importance of staying in the Democratic column, more persistently than he did after losing to Clinton in 2016. He cited Biden’s support of 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave and universal childcare as the kind of policies that would come only with a Democrat in the White House.
“I am not going to sit here and tell you that Joe Biden is the most progressive guy in the world,” Sanders said on SiriusXM radio recently. “He is not, but his program is reasonably progressive.” Sanders pledged that he and other progressives would make “damn sure” Biden follows through on his promises.
The Democratic nominee also benefits from the support of the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union, which represents hotel and restaurant workers, mainly in the state’s casino industry.
One wonders how many tickets Stone sold?
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