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Month: October 2024

Are You Man Enough?

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 9, 2024

Are you Dad enough?

Winston Carter @winstonious in Instagram ad by Jacob Reed @typographynerd.

To support a woman for president?

To choose your own daughter over a felon and adjudged rapist?

The Lincoln Project asks the latter question: Are you Dad enough to choose your own daughter’s safety over a felon and adjudged rapist? Especially if you did in 2016 and 2020? Will you once again vote with a political party that’s made obvious lying company policy?

Ugh. After that vid, perhaps a lighter chaser.

And finally, a philosophical tool custom-made for the disaster in North Carolina and the one coming to Florida (checks watch) about 2 p.m. CT today. By that, I mean the disinformation maelstrom.

Hanlon’s razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

What prompts this citation is an incident a couple of days ago in Burnsville, NC. A North Carolina National Guard (NCNG) Black Hawk helicopter looking to deliver generators could not spy a space large enough and safe enough to set down in the Sav-Mor Foods parking lot. They hovered over the parking lot for a bit trying to decide what to do and then flew off, scattering a pop-up tent and some supplies with their rotor wash. Dumb move.

Naturally, the Black Hawk was, you know, black. And you know what that means. Let the conspiracy fantasies begin. “So who were they? Why did they do this?”

Last night, the NCNG responded on X:

The North Carolina National Guard (NCNG) is aware of an incident involving a NCNG UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during a delivery of generators at the request of a local civilian organization to power their distribution outpost in western North Carolina.

While attempting to land, rotor wash caused items to blow away from the local distribution set up by a group of civilians in the area. The crew immediately identified the situation, aborted the landing for safety reasons, and departed the area.

This incident is currently under investigation and the crew has been grounded until the investigation is complete. The NCNG is working with the identified local civilian organization to assess the level of damage caused by the rotor wash.

Safety is the NCNG’s number one priority, especially with the high volume of air operations currently happening across the region. While the NCNG strives for precision in every mission, sometimes things don’t go as planned.

When that happens, the NCNG takes it very seriously and are committed to addressing and correcting any issues to prevent future occurrences.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

“It’s Not You”

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 9, 2024

It never was

Kamala Harris’s communications team is top notch. Tuesday’s headlines about Donald Trump secretly sending COVID-19 testing equipment to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use (amidst test shortages here) became an attack ad before Harris appeared last night with Stephen Colbert.

For those not glued to social media, Harris herself drove home the message on “The Late Show.” Trump thinks Putin is his friend.

“What about the American people? They should be your first friend.” Harris responded.

Trump has not had a good week. Little Lord Flauntleroy has gotten away his entire life with spouting bald-faced lies. A conman at heart, he trades in bullshit in place of facts he’s never possessed the bandwidth to master. Sychophants — people like Speaker Mike Johnson even — smile and nod and parrot what he says without blinking. But now there’s blood in the water. Even Laura Ingraham of Fox News is fact-checking Trump to his face. He cannot abide being called out for his lies. Unfair. UNFAIR!

Afraid to face fact-checking by CBS News, Trump chickened out of his scheduled and “60 Minutes” interview. Scott Pelley explained on air why Harris would get the national air time that Trump rejected.

Colbert last night told his viewers rather bluntly why Harris would appear on his show but not Trump.

Saving you some trouble, here are some clips.

One has to wonder how many prior MAGA voters are figuring out after all these years that, like Putin not being Donald’s friend, Donald is not theirs. We’ll have to wait until Nov. 5 to find out.

We can make it illegal-on social media-to knowingly post false information about a catastrophe

Published by Spocko on October 8, 2024

Did you know it’s illegal to knowingly broadcast false information about a catastrophe, especially if such communications may cause substantial “public harm?”

Public harm includes direct & actual damages to people or property & the diversion of law enforcement or public health & safety authorities from their duties.

Link to FCC rules on FALSE INFORMATION/BROADCAST HOAXES https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/guides/hoaxes

But Elon Musk & X are not regulated by the FCC. So, HOW DO WE STOP THIS?

Make it illegal, just like we did for broadcast TV and radio.

I know that the internet is not subject to the same laws as broadcast radio & TV. But we can create them.

We can use the same criteria that the FCC uses, which will protect people who spread the false information unintentionally. But to just ignore it is to abdicate the need to protect people during this vulnerable time.

Dash, on Mastodon pointed out some of the reasons why Musk is getting away with this. He also understood that this is a call for a change

@CatDragon @spocko because the internet isn’t subject to the same laws as broadcast tv (so he isn’t breaking the law). And republicans won’t agree to any additional regulations, particularly when they benefit from spreading disinformation themselves.

Also Dash wrote:
social media companies aren’t broadcasters though (according to the government). The law won’t apply to them.

I think this post is meant to encourage us to consider lobbying for a change in how internet companies are regulated. And I agree with that initiative.

@dashrb@awscommunity.social

Post by @spocko@mastodon.online
View on Mastodon

Make knowingly spreading false information on social media illegal, just like we did for broadcast TV and radio.

I know a lot about FCC law and what is and is not enforced. I also know that the broadcast radio & TV companies spent a lot of time and money to weaken the regulations, but also to protect themselves from fines and possibly losing licenses. For example they implementes 7 second delays, they file appeals for accidents they could not control. They fire people who are repeat offenders.

We might mock the obscenity restrictions on broadcast radio and TV now, but at the time enough people decided it was a problem, and took steps to limit it.

Public harm following people knowingly posting false information has already happened. In a catastrophe “the diversion of law enforcement or public health & safety authorities from their duties.” can lead to “direct & actual damages to people or property.”

We know the social media companies will do & say whatever they can to avoid being held responsible for what is said on their platforms.

Musk will go on about “free speech” but knowingly posting false information in this situation does not contribute to the “marketplace of ideas.” It’s a condemnable act, and it should be made criminal.

Trump & Musk

Cross posted on Spocko’s Brain

Now They Notice

Published by digby on October 8, 2024

Oh look. Here’s Ron DeSantis’s hardcore MAGA spokeswoman discovering that the disinformation culture she has cultivated for years now may not be such a great idea:

That stuff is clogging the Twitter sewer right now and the Republican leaders in these disaster area are starting to realize that it’s affecting their own voters. If they’d understood this during COVID, studies show that many lives could have been spared.

This is the result of the MAGA death cult exploiting conspiracy theories for their own ends and killing people in the process. For the sake of Florida citizens I hope this time they do not listen.

JD’s Buds Like To Kill Endangered Species

Published by digby on October 8, 2024

Meidas Touch reports:

After his VP debate, JD Vance went fishing with a pro-Trump trophy hunter group that publishes kills of endangered animals including pygmy hippos like Moo Deng, the adorable and feisty pygmy hippo baby that has gone viral across the internet.

The pro-trophy hunting group, Safari Club International (SCI), organized a fishing trip for Vance in Michigan before recording an interview for the MAGA Republican Ruthless podcast.

Phony weirdoJD had this to say about the group:

“I think something that people don’t fully appreciate, especially far lefties who pretend to care about the environment, is they assume that these guys just want to take, take, take from the environment. Like they want to kill every animal. They want to get every fish out of the lake and they want to take them home and they don’t think about conservation. When in reality the people who are hunting and fishing they care the most about conservation. They care about the balance I think more than people who never spend any real time in the environment.”

He is lying. These people may want to keep fish in the lake but they make big bucks taking people on safaris to kill endangered and threatened species:

Vance’s statement attempts to paint his political opponents as extreme and the trophy hunters he is cozying up to as as conservationists. Meanwhile, SCI maintains hunting records for endangered animals including the pygmy hippo. SCI’s record books rank these kills and provides a high score dashboard for trophy hunters.

This does not surprise me considering that JD Vance is super close to Don Jr and Eric, both of whom are big trophy hunters

Gross;

Various photos show the brothers flanking a crocodile hanging from a tree, smiling behind the horns of a killed waterbuck, and standing together as Eric held a dead leopard. Donald Trump Jr. was pictured sitting next to a dead buffalo while holding a gun and wearing an ammunition belt, and Eric Trump can be seen sitting on one of the dead animals with guns resting on its horns.

The Trump brothers were not pictured with any dead lions in 2012, but Donald Trump Jr. was pictured next to a dead elephant while holding its severed tail.

JD just wanted to say that environmentalists are all a bunch of citified wimps who don’t know how to be real men. It’s typical of him. But these people are monsters and they really do want to destroy the planet with policies that will pretty much kill it. And that includes the fish and game they say they want to preserve so they can kill them.

Trump And Vladdie, BFFs 4Evah

Published by digby on October 8, 2024

As Tom mentioned this morning, Bob Woodward has a new book out and its full of juicy revelations as usual. CNN reports that there’s some good stuff about Biden in it — he calls Netanyahu a “son of a bitch” and a “bad fucking guy” which is actually a relief. At least the “unwavering” support for Israel’s ongoing ultraviolence isn’t based upon Biden’s inexplicable regard for Bibi.

Biden has also reportedly said that he regrets naming Garland as AG because of the persecution of Hunter which I think is fair enough (although there are other reasons for wishing there had been a different AG during this period as well.)

But it’s the Trump stuff that really grabs:

The book also contains new details about Trump’s relationship with the Russian president. In 2020, Woodward writes, Trump had “secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use.”

During the height of the pandemic, Russia and the United States did exchange medical equipment such as ventilators. But Putin — who infamously isolated himself over fears of Covid — told Trump on a phone call to keep the delivery of the Abbott machines quiet, Woodward reports.

“Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.

“I don’t care,” Trump replied. “Fine.”

“No, no,” Putin said. “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me. They don’t care about me.”

Woodward writes that Trump has stayed in touch with Putin after leaving office.

In one scene, Woodward recounts a moment at Mar-a-Lago where Trump tells a senior aide to leave the room so “he could have what he said was a private phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

“According to Trump’s aide, there have been multiple phone calls between Trump and Putin, maybe as many as seven in the period since Trump left the White House in 2021,” Woodward writes.

Remember, Trump was sitting on boxes full of stolen classified information during this period.

Well ok then.

From The “You Can Believe Me Or Your Lyin’ Eyes” Files

Published by digby on October 8, 2024

He always lies and when caught just doubles down:

After Donald Trump was asked in a Monday interview about the future prospects of Gaza, the former president made a curious claim: “You know, I’ve been there, and it’s rough.”

There is no public evidence of Trump ever having been to Gaza, which has been governed by militant group Hamas since 2007. He certainly didn’t go to Gaza as president, and CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post have all found no proof he made a prior visit. Perhaps he merely meant he has been to Palestinian territory, since he did visit the West Bank in 2017? Or maybe he was just talking about having been to the broader region?

Nope.

Trump’s campaign said Monday night that he meant what he said about having been to Gaza in particular – and the campaign insisted the claim is true. “President Trump has been to Gaza previously and has always worked to ensure peace in the Middle East,” campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told CNN. Leavitt, though, did not provide a single detail about Trump’s supposed trip to Gaza. And she did not respond when we repeatedly asked for even the most basic information, like the year of the supposed visit.

So we were highly skeptical – because Trump has a long history of making things up, because of the lack of public evidence, because the Times of Israel has reported that Trump had never even visited Israel before his presidency, and because the Trump campaign had offered a substantively different comment to The New York Times earlier Monday. That earlier comment, which a campaign official provided only on condition of anonymity, did not say Trump had actually been to Gaza. Instead, the anonymous campaign official tried some spin, correctly saying that Trump has been to Israel but wrongly saying, “Gaza is in Israel.”

We asked three former Trump officials who worked on Middle East policy whether they know of any proof for the former president’s claim, and the campaign’s claim to CNN, that Trump has been to Gaza itself. The only one who has responded, Trump-appointed former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker, said in an email: “As far as I know, he’s never traveled there. He did not go in 2017 when he visited Israel. I think this story is probably already over.” […]

They could not find any former staffers who could verify Trump’s claim. And guess what? He’s doubling down:

Trump aides told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday that the former president privately said he did.

Of course he did.

Here are some more lies from that one interview with Hugh Hewitt:

Terrorist attacks: Trump repeated his false claim that “we didn’t have one terrorist attack” during his presidency. There were multiple terrorist attacks during his presidency, including some he has spoken about himself.

The defeat of ISIS: Trump repeated his false claim that although others said it would take years to “get rid of” the ISIS terror group, “I got rid of it in a month.” Leaving aside the fact that Trump certainly doesn’t deserve sole credit, the ISIS “caliphate” was declared fully liberated more than two years into Trump’s presidency.

Iran and funding for terror groups: Trump repeated his false claim that Iran did not fund terror groups during his presidency: “They weren’t giving any money, because they had no money.” Iran’s funding for entities designated by the US government as terror groups, like Hezbollah and Hamas, did decline in the second half of his presidency, in large part because his sanctions had a major negative impact on the Iranian economy, but the funding never stopped – as Trump’s own administration acknowledged in 2020.

China’s oil purchases from Iran: Trump repeated his false claim that he successfully pressured Chinese leader Xi Jinping into ending oil purchases from Iran; Trump claimed, “He said, ‘I’ll pass.’ He passed. Everybody passed. They did no business.” China’s oil purchases from Iran briefly plummeted in 2019, but they never stopped, and they quickly rebounded while Trump was still president – back up to hundreds of thousands of barrels per day.

Nuclear weapons: Repeating a false claim he made during his presidency, Trump said, “I rebuilt our entire nuclear force.” He simply did not do so, though he did undertake efforts to modernize the US arsenal. “Long story short: then, as now, Trump’s nuclear braggadocio is utter fantasy, wholly divorced from reality,” said Stephen Schwartz, an independent expert on US nuclear weapons policy. “And not only did he not rebuild ‘our entire nuclear force,’ on his watch the total operational nuclear stockpile of warheads and bombs actually decreased by about 100 weapons!”

Global warming and sea levels: Trump delivered another version of his usual false claim about global warming, minimizing the threat by saying it will cause the ocean to rise merely “1/8th of an inch in the next 500 years.” Sea levels are currently rising more than an eighth of an inch per year.

Harris, immigrants and crime: Trump repeated his false claim that Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in the presidential election, let in 13,000 murderers and 425,000 criminals over the border. The statistics he was referring to are not specifically about people who entered the country during the Biden-Harris administration; rather, they cover numerous presidential administrations, including his own, over the span of decades – “over the past 40 years or more,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a September statement to CNN. You can read more here.

Pelosi and a stock sale: Trump falsely claimed that the former speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, sold stock in Visa “the day before the lawsuit” that was filed against the company by the Justice Department in September. An official disclosure shows the stock was actually sold by Pelosi’s husband more than two and a half months before the Justice Department filed the lawsuit.

Biden and foreign income: Trump repeated his false claim that President Joe Biden “gets a lot of money from China, or he got a lot of money from China, tremendous amount of money.” After years of investigation by House Republicans, there is still no evidence Biden has received any payments from China.

Chris Wallace in 2020: Trump repeated his false claim that journalist Chris Wallace, now of CNN and formerly of Fox News, tried to stop him, during a presidential debate Wallace moderated in 2020, from asking Biden about a supposed payment from the mayor of Moscow’s wife (which actually went to a company connected to Biden’s son Hunter Biden, not to the president); Trump claimed, “And Chris Wallace wouldn’t let me ask. (Biden) couldn’t answer the question. Chris Wallace stepped in and said, ‘Well, we’re not going to be talking about that.’”

Wallace never said anything like that. As the transcript shows, Wallace interjected during this debate exchange to try to get Trump to allow Biden to answer Trump’s question about the money, not to stop Trump from talking about the subject.

Military equipment surrendered to the Taliban: Trump repeated his false claim that $85 billion in US military equipment was left to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden and Harris. Trump’s figure is a massive exaggeration; the Pentagon has estimated that this equipment was worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021.

He Pulled Himself Up By His Imported Italian Leather Bootstraps

Published by digby on October 8, 2024

This spoiled narcissist who had everything handed to him on silver platter by his rich father (after which he lost most of it because of his terrible business judgment) has always told people that he made it on his own. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I’ve mentioned it before but once again, if you want to read one more book about this miscreant make it “Lucky Loser” by the NY Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig. It shows the scope of Trump’s failures and how he was really rescued by reality TV which created the persona that brought him to the White House. He’s no more authentic than a Real Housewife of New York.

Here’s the publisher’s note:

Soon after announcing his first campaign for the US presidency, Donald J. Trump told a national television audience that life “has not been easy for me. It has not been easy for me.” Building on a narrative he had been telling for decades, he spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multi-billion-dollar business and real estate empire. This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country. Except: None of it was true. Born to a rich father who made him the beneficiary of his own highly lucrative investments, Trump received the equivalent of more than $500 million today via means that required no business expertise whatsoever.

Drawing on over twenty years’ worth of Trump’s confidential tax information, including the tax returns he tried to conceal, alongside business records and interviews with Trump insiders, New York Times investigative reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig track Trump’s financial rise and fall, and rise and fall again. For decades, he squanders his fortunes on money losing businesses, only to be saved yet again by financial serendipity. He tacks his name above the door of every building, while taking out huge loans he’ll never repay. He obsesses over appearances, while ignoring threats to the bottom line and mounting costly lawsuits against city officials. He tarnishes the value of his name by allowing anyone with a big enough check to use it, and cheats the television producer who not only rescues him from bankruptcy but casts him as a business savant – the public image that will carry him to the White House. 

It’s unthinkable that with all we know about him, this dishonest, vengeful loser could be back in the White House in less that 6 months.

Why? I hate to say it but …

Tens of millions of our fellow Americans are in a cult.

Cowardly Liar Part XXIV

Published by digby on October 8, 2024

Whew. That was brutal. But fair.

The Censorship Scam

Published by digby on October 8, 2024

Hey, remember when JD Vance weirdly went on about the Biden administration’s alleged censorship during the debate with Tim Walz in order to evade saying whether the 2020 election was stolen? Yeah. They’re all very, very shrill on the subject complaining about Democrats allegedly destroying the 1st Amendment. It’s one of their major memes. And yet …

Get a load of this from Josh Marshall:

Florida has become the state where elements of a future second Trump presidency America already comes into view. We’re seeing some of these things happening right now in Florida. The example I’m about to share with you legitimately shocked me. (That’s a high bar.) It’s about the pro-choice ballot amendment which would restore Roe protections in Florida if it reaches a 60% threshold. As in most other states, getting to 50% isn’t that difficult. 60% is much harder.

To head off even the chance that the ballot initiative might hit that challenging high bar the state of Florida is already spending a substantial amount of tax payer dollars campaigning against the initiative. Now we learn that the state is quite literally threatening jail time for the employees of stations that agree to run one of the ads for the pro-choice amendment. You heard that right – not sue under some claim of defamation but actual criminal charges.

DeSantis will do anything to stop the pro-choice amendment from winning, And that apparently includes jailing journalists who run ads advocating for it. First Amendment for dummies.

Here’s the ad, by the way:

DeSantis’ reasoning as to why the ad is untruthful and should be taken off the air is that the law states that an abortion an only be done to save the woman’s life and in this case, because she has brain cancer, it would only extend it.

MY GOD.

Josh is right that this is a precursor to what we’ll see in a Trump administration. He’s already repeatedly threatened to take away the licenses of CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN for reporting news he doesn’t like. His mantra is “fake news” and “enemey of the people.” In his first administration he tried to tank the merger deal between At&T and Time Warner because he hates CNN. (CNN was owned by Time Warner.) I’m guessing there won’t be any “guardrails” on that in a second one.

Just look at what Elon Musk is doing on Twitter. He screeches about censorship and free speech even saying that the 2nd Amendment protects the first at that embarrassing Trump rally on Sunday. This is the excuse he uses to allow Nazis and foreign bots run wild on the platform dispensing massive amounts of disinformation. But he also freely bans people for posting things he doesn’t like, such as the fellow who posted a link to the emails Iran hacked from the Trump campaign. And it’s clear that he’s using the algorithm to boost his own posts which are filled with disinformation as well.

Watch Jon Stewart take Musk apart in this clip from the Daily Show last night:

Trump, Vance, DeSantis, Musk — they aren’t trying to hide what they plan to do in the future if they gain political power. They want to jail people for exercising their first amendment rights in the name of fighting censorship. Seriously.