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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Weirdo Alert

Published by digby on August 23, 2024
Who wouldn’t want that guy’s endorsement?

Apparently RFK Jr is dropping out and is going to endorse Trump today. And Trump is welcoming him with open arms.

Though his odds of victory were quickly diminishing – a recent CBS News poll measured his support at just 2% – Kennedy’s decision to bow out 74 days before the election nevertheless presents another twist to a race already unlike any other. And amid a momentum shift that has catapulted the newly installed Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, into close contention with Trump, there is hope within the former president’s operation that Kennedy’s exit could prove decisive if certain battlegrounds are decided by thousands of ballots, just as they were in 2020.

It’s hardly certain what Kennedy’s backers will do. Whether many of them ever intended to vote for him or at all is difficult to gauge, and some may choose to sit the election out without an alternative on the ballot.

Still, the Trump campaign has long worried that Kennedy’s campaign, built on conspiracies and anti-vaccine rhetoric, pulled directly from their side, especially in a handful of key states. Trump’s advisers now see an opening to court some of Kennedy’s voters, particularly those Americans who sit at the overlap between supporters of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ past presidential campaigns and the GOP’s anti-establishment right wing. There is a presumption among Trump’s team and his allies that conservative-leaning mothers – a demographic the Republican nominee has struggled to win over – could also be swayed. Women were more likely to support Kennedy than men, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, though other polls haven’t shown a meaningful difference.

It’s another Don Jr. special like JD Vance:

As it became clear that Kennedy’s days in the race were numbered, several of Trump’s top allies, including his son, Donald Trump Jr., have maneuvered behind the scenes to arrange for an endorsement. Meanwhile, the former president has showered Kennedy in overtures, telling CNN he might find a place for his onetime rival in a future Cabinet.

“If he endorsed me, I would be honored by it,” Trump said Thursday on Fox News. “I would be very honored by it. He really has his heart in the right place.”

Good luck with that. It certainly provides lots of fun and fodder for the libs.

Sounds good.

Update:

A J6 Gala

Published by digby on August 22, 2024

From Meidas Touch:

Trump will be hosting a “J6 Awards Gala” at Trump Nation Golf Club Bedminster on September 5th. Attendees have a chance to win a plaque commemorating the fact that MAGA folks bought a bunch of copies of his J6 “song” called Justice for All earning him a fleeting spot on the Billboard music chart. 

A flyer for the “J6 Awards Gala” shows Trump has been invited to speak and also shows indicted co-defendant Rudy Giuliani will be there. Trump is not only hosting the event at his property, but there is a good chance he will be speaking at it too.

A promotional video for the event shows Trump calling J6 rioters, “peaceful,” and “J6 hostages,” promising pardons, and calling for them to be released. The video has audio of Trump claiming, “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly.”

It’s possible Trump won’t speak at this event. It’s a fundraiser and he may not have to be there. But it’s at Bedminster and it has his imprimatur.

Remember:

Weirdo Update

Published by digby on August 22, 2024

As one wag quipped:

We interrupt our coverage of the flawless Democratic National Convention to bring you the news that – shocker – JD Vance & his team remain *terrible* at this 1) he does not know how many donuts to order without help 2) his team picked and sent him into a place where the staff literally wants nothing to do with being on camera this is an awkward an off-the-record stop as you’ll ever see.

You can sense his anger at that clerk for not wanting to be filmed and not knowing who he was. He’s an ass.

Lol. Update:

I’m So Tired

Published by digby on August 22, 2024

I’m not sure how much longer I can take this fatuous nonsense. The Democrats have to put him away once and for all.

David Frum compiled some of Trump’s foreign policy “achievements”

He accepted the help of Russian spy agencies to win the presidency in 2016 …

directed tens of millions of taxpayer and foreign government $ to his own businesses … https://axios.com/2024/01/04/report-trump-received-at-least-78m-in-foreign-payments-during-presidency…

ordered a religious test on immigrants and visitors to the United States – rewrote it three times until a friendly Supreme Court disgraced the country by inscribing the rewritten ban into law … https://npr.org/2018/06/26/606481548/supreme-court-upholds-trump-travel-ban….

started trade wars not only with China, but against friends like the European Union, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. He encouraged close ally Britain to exit the EU – then refused Britain the US-UK trade treaty he’d promised … https://washingtonpost.com/world/us-uk-trade-deal-trump-boasted-would-be-fantastic-and-big-boosters-may-be-dissappointed/2020/03/02/0d8577c2-5c90-11ea-ac50-18701e14e06d_story.htmlas…

as his anti-China trade war rapidly proved a costly fiasco https://forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/06/01/trumps-trade-war-cost-us-company-stock-prices-17-trillion/…, then connived in the Chinese cover-up of the deadly COVID outbreak through the pandemic’s crucial early weeks … https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/07/when-trump-covered-chinas-alleged-coronavirus-coverup/…

made deals with Putin that he concealed from his own national security team … https://washingtonpost.com/world/2019/03/05/trump-met-putin-helsinki-more-than-days-later-will-we-ever-find-out-what-they-said/…

and blackmailed Ukraine, denying that democracy weapons unless it fabricated political dirt against his expected election opponent … and was only barely dissuaded from quitting NATO altogether according to his own highest aides … https://nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html…

mocked and defamed America’s most honest war dead https://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/…

and their grieving families … https://npr.org/2016/08/01/488213964/gop-criticism-mounts-as-trump-continues-attacks-on-khan-family…

. stole ultra-classified government documents on his way out the door, including nuclear secrets – which he later showed to paying customers at Mar a Lago, including foreign nationals. https://nytimes.com/2023/10/05/us/politics/trump-nuclear-submarine-classified-documents.html…

That’s just for starters. I would add that he appears to have taken a $10 million bribe from Egypt and his son in law took a $2 billion payoff from Saudi Arabia.

Look at what he’s saying about Israel today:

He says h’s done more for Israel “than any other person and it’s not even close.” Have you ever heard anything dumber than that?

Cutting Off Their Own Noses

Published by digby on August 22, 2024

For Trump and Vance

Steel Mill —Library of Congress

In “Hillbilly Elegy” JD Vance wrote about the steel Plant in MIddletown, Ohio that rescued his family from poverty and brought them into the middle class. It’s still there:

Its future looks bright too, thanks in part to a grant of up to $500 million from the Biden administration. The money is aimed at helping its owners replace a coal-fired blast furnace so that steel can be produced with clean hydrogen and natural gas — improvements that would cut climate and air pollution and help ensure the plant stays open for another generation.

But the political benefits for the Biden administration — and by extension Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee — are less clear. This is true not just in Middletown but in similar communities across the country that are on track to receive funding from either the Inflation Reduction Act or the bipartisan infrastructure law, arguably the two biggest domestic accomplishments of President Joe Biden’s time in the White House.

Both measures remain largely unknown to the public, polling has shown. Perhaps as worrisome for Harris is that the federal investments may not do much to break the country’s partisan divide, even in places that have benefited from the spending.

Interviews with more than three dozen people across Middletown over three days in late July revealed that few people knew about the grant. Of those who did, a handful applauded the Biden administration but several people said it didn’t matter or credited someone else.

The federal funding “doesn’t really change anything,” said Tyler Kirby, who sat outside the steel plant on a simmering July night, eating a hamburger and waiting for the start of his 12-hour overnight shift fixing cranes.Kirby said he planned to vote for former President Donald Trump, who chose Vance last month as his running mate atop the Republican presidential ticket.“I don’t really look for the government to do anything for you,” he said. “It’s more like just stay out of my way.”

Both Trump and Vance have attacked the Inflation Reduction Act as a “green new scam” and promised to repeal or weaken it. The Middletown plant could become collateral damage if they attack the legislation broadly and if funding for the project has not been distributed by early next year. care about the material“I will terminate Kamala Harris’s green new scam and rescind all of the unspent funds, give all of the unspent funds back to building roads, bridges and give it back to the government,” Trump said at a North Carolina rally last week.

It’s just weird to me that people don’t care about the material benefits they get from good government policies but they just don’t. It’s an attitude not a rational political ideology.

The article goes on to explain that the pollution caused by the plant is unhealthy and there are, at least, a few people who are concerned, like a young mother who confronts black soot on her lawn and all over her car every day. She knows it’s not good for her family and when told about the plant improvements indicates that she might vote for the Democrats. But that seems to be an exception to the rule.

According to the article, most people don’t know or care about it and those that do either assume that it’s Trump or Vance’s doing or think Trump won’t actually cancel the project as he is promising. They just like Trump even if it means the plant that is the lifeblood of the community loses the retrofitting that will keep it going.

The Democrats will keep doing the right thing even if they don’t get any credit for doing it because they remember that the most vulnerable among us — kids, the elderly and disabled — don’t deserve to live in poverty or become sick just because the people around them refuse to vote in their interest. It’s galling but it’s the only moral choice.

ICYMI: Tim Walz

Published by digby on August 22, 2024

One of the most important insights I heard from the commentary last night came from Chris Hayes on MSNBC. He pointed out that while the campaign is leaning heavily on Walz’s biography as a small town teacher, coach, soldier and family amn, all of which is true, it’s important to remember that Walz also spent 12 years in DC as a congressman and has been a very successful Governor of a big state.

Walz is a great politician — an astute, experienced public official who knows how to communicate effectively and enact an agenda. If something should happen he would make a great president.

This choice speaks very well of Harris’s political judgement but it’s also speaks well of her seriousness of purpose.

Yet Another Lie, And A Big One

Published by digby on August 22, 2024

He’s projecting again:

Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed Wednesday that his Democratic opponent in the presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin just days before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Trump said in a speech in North Carolina: “Remember when Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine. She met with Putin, and then three days later, he attacked. How did she do? Do you think she did a good job? She met with Putin to tell him, ‘Don’t do it.’ And three days later, he attacked; that’s when the attack started. Did you know that, General?” (Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg was at the North Carolina event.)

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Harris has never met with Putin. In reality, she met with US allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, at the Munich Security Conference in the days before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin was not at the conference.

“Frankly speaking, I cannot recall a single contact between President Putin and Mrs. Harris,” a Kremlin spokesperson said last month, according to a state-owned Russian news agency.

The Biden administration was still trying to deter an invasion of Ukraine at the time of Harris’ 2022 trip to the conference in Germany, but top administration officials, including President Joe Biden himself, made clear that they believed Putin was already moving toward invading. As Harris was on her way to Germany, Biden told reporters that he thought a Russian attack “will happen in the next several days.”

CNN reported on the day the Munich conference began that a senior administration official said Harris had three key objectives: “Focus on the ‘fast-changing’ situation on the ground, maintain full alignment with partners and send a clear message to Russia that the US prefers diplomacy but is ready in case of Russian aggression.”

This is a total fabrication. It’s unclear if he’s simply confused about the Munich conference or if he’s just made it up out of whole cloth but either way that alleged confrontation where she told Putin “don’t do that” and he ignored her and did it anyway is so absurd it makes your head hurt. But when you recall that Trump routinely says that he told Putin that same thing and Putin submissively cowered and agreed never to do such a thing.

That is also total BS, of course. Putin had Trump wrapped around his little finger:

Vladimir Putin exploited Donald Trump’s “ego and insecurities” to exert an almost mesmeric hold over the former US president, who refused to entertain any negative evaluation of the autocratic Russian leader from his own staff, and ultimately fired his national security adviser, HR McMaster, over it.

The bold assessment of Trump’s fealty to Putin comes in McMaster’s book At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, published by HarperCollins and arriving on 27 August. The Guardian obtained a copy.

“After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump,” McMaster recalls saying in the memoir covering the turbulent 457 days the now retired general served as national security adviser from February 2017 until he was effectively fired by tweet in April 2018.

The comment, to McMaster’s wife, Katie, came in the aftermath of the poisoning in the UK by Putin’s agents of Sergei Skripal, a Russian former intelligence officer, and his daughter, in March 2018.

While other western leaders were beginning to formulate a strong response to the assassination attempt, McMaster says, Trump sat in the White House fawning over a New York Post article with the headline: “Putin heaps praise on Trump, pans US politics”. Trump, according to the book, wrote an appreciative note on the article with a black Sharpie and asked McMaster “to get the clipping to Putin”.

All they had to do was offer some phony flattery and he was in the palm of their hands. Putin, Xi, MBS, Kim, Bolsonaro all of them.

He can’t be allowed back into power at a time when the fascist right is making a move all over the world. He is their puppet, and he would have the most powerful economy and military in the world.

Does Every American Have A Valid Passport or Birth Certificate Handy?

Published by digby on August 22, 2024

I don’t think so…

My passport expired not long ago and I didn’t have a birth certificate available to get a Real ID from the Dept of Motor Vehicles. Unless they had extended the law requiring some form of Real ID during the pandemic I wouldn’t have been able to travel until I obtained one of those things. During the pandemic the wait for a new passport was months as was getting a copy of my birth certificate which I finally got after waiting almost a year. The new passport came through in record time a few months ago.

I only bring this up to illustrate that obtaining those documents is a major hassle even if you have expired documents that already prove your citizenship. It’s no doubt eased a lot since the pandemic but even then you have to go through hoops, it costs money and unless you really need it you might just say the hell with it.

Republicans know this, which is why they’re doing this:

Only months before November’s elections, the Republican National Committee has launched a new legal attack on the rules that govern federal elections. Supported by 24 states, the RNC is seeking, on an emergency basis, a Supreme Court ruling that the United States Congress lacks the constitutional authority to regulate presidential elections—congressional elections, yes, but not elections held to select presidents. The petitioners’ immediate goal is to allow the state of Arizona to impose a “proof of citizenship” requirement as a condition of a person’s right to vote for president.

If they are to succeed, the Court will have to suddenly, with mere weeks left before people start voting, abandon or explain away a decision it rendered in 2013—that Congress has the power to establish rules for voter registration in presidential elections. But even if the suit fails, it risks achieving some success in sowing doubt about the integrity of elections, highlighting claims of illegal voting by immigrants, and laying a foundation for post-election allegations of fraud and related legal challenges. (I have advised the national Democratic Party on this suit and have been further monitoring it as part of nonpartisan work to support election administrators in their preparation for the fall elections.)

The RNC target in this suit is a federal statute, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), enacted in 1993 to establish uniform, simplified, and nondiscriminatory rules for the registration of voters in federal elections. NVRA requires states to provide registration opportunities at their motor-vehicle departments and public-assistance agencies, and directed the adoption of procedures to keep voter rolls accurate and current. The law also mandated a federal voter-registration form that states must “accept and use.” The form requires an attestation of citizenship under penalty of perjury and no further documentation.

But in 2022, Arizona passed a law requiring its voters to submit, along with the federal form, documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC), such as a passport or a birth certificate. Under that law, Arizonans who register to vote with this form but do not provide DPOC would be barred from voting at all for president, and from voting by mail in any other election in the state. The state has never enforced the law, for one reason: In 2013, the Supreme Court had held that the NVRA preempted an earlier version of this requirement—constitutional-law-speak for not permitting the state to add its own DPOC mandate to the attestation called for by the federal form. This meant that the state could impose its own requirement only for state elections. Ever since then, only those Arizona voters who do not use the federal form to register have had to supply DPOC.

There is no reason to believe that the right wing majority on the court will be averse to overturning the 2013 decision or the 1993 decision for that matter. They’ve shown that they have zero regard for precedent and are especially willing to overturn voting rights. So I wouldn’t hold out too much hope in their “integrity” on this one even if it doesn’t make it to the high court this cycle.

The right has been trying to suppress the vote forever. They simply do not believe that the franchise should be easy for Americans to exercise and particularly don’t want to allow people they believe will vote their own economic interest to have the vote. But here’s the thing — the coalition is changing. The people who are most likely to have the kind of documents Arizona requires are educated urbanites and suburbanites and they aren’t voting Republican anymore. I would expect that many working class and rural white people won’t have them any more than the Black and Latino voters they are targeting with these laws.

Are they really sure this is going to help them?

Donald Trump didn’t invent the bogus voter fraud theme he just exploited it more effectively than anyone before him. One of the reasons non-MAGA cultist Republicans are so willing to believe his Big Lie is because Republican politicians have been lying about this stuff for decades. Anti-democracy isn’t a Trump thing and it won’t go away when he does.

Pre-Bump Bump

Published by digby on August 22, 2024

That’s the latest polling average before the DNC on August 20. Will the convention bump it up? I’d guess so but we’ll have to see.

Now is the time when poll trends really start to be reflective of the state of the race. People are paying attention, ads are everywhere and early voting will begin very soon.

Buckle up.