Despicable

      You see the lead image above?

      That wasn't taken four, five or six years ago. That was taken just today when Trump was on his way to Detroit to lambaste the Biden-Harris administration for the Afghanistan withdrawal that he single-handedly fucked back to the Stone Age. Yes, that was taken at Arlington National Cemetery, today, hallowed ground reserved for real military heroes who understood the concept of sacrifice. The Afghanistan withdrawal was three years ago and Trump actually thought it would be a good idea to jump on the third anniversary of the bombing of Karzai airport in Kabul that killed 13 US service members. This is the paragraph that made me see red:

     "Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, laid wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery in honor of Sgt. Nicole Gee, Staff Sgt. Darin Hoover and Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, who were killed alongside more than 100 Afghans..."

     OK, question:

     Why are we, and the completely worthless mainstream media, still pretending as if Commander Bone Spurs, this fucking fraud, this despicable draft dodger, is still the Commander in Chief, which he never was in any accepted definition of the phrase?!

     This is the same guy who asked John Kelly as they stood over his son's grave at that very same cemetery, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?"

      This is the same piece of shit who wouldn't honor our fallen dead at a French cemetery on the 100th anniversary of the Armistice because he was afraid he'd get his hair wet.

      This is the same guy who, during that same trip, called our fallen heroes, "suckers and losers" then cravenly lied and said he didn't.

      This is the same piece of shit who used Daddy's connections to get him five draft deferments so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam.

      This is the same cold-blooded cocksucker who tried his levelheaded best to cut veteran's benefits in between Diet Cokes in the Oval Office.

      This is the same worthless sociopath who told a military widow that her husband, "knew what he signed up for" minutes after collecting her husband's mutilated remains at the airport. Then when word got out what he said, he then attacked Rep. Frederica Wilson, who'd heard the whole exchange.

      So why are we allowing this evolutionary dropout, this fraud in every conceivable way, to travel to Arlington and allow him to lay wreaths while he pretends to grieve over people he thinks are "suckers and losers"?

      Why do we and the media think it's perfectly acceptable when this wannabe martinet invites other tinpot martinets like Orban and Netanyahu to Bedminster and Mar a Lago and why are we letting him pretend he's writing foreign policy as he goes along?

     There's nothing even remotely normal about this "man", for want of a better word, so why are we strenuously insisting that he is, that this convicted criminal awaiting sentencing next month is a reasonable conservative alternative to Kamala Harris?

      And why do people flock to this asshole when he pretends to be the president he never was in any real way? 

He is Your Retribution

     Who else agrees that if it wasn't for all their ill-gotten wealth, the Trumps would be setting fire to the homeless in the Bowery?

      Seriously, how can anyone look at the raving, whining psychopaths in Donald Trump's nuclear family and not see a pack of upholstered jackals with such an industrial-grade pollution of their gene pool? Trump had to pay $25,000,000 to the victims of his fraudulent Trump University scam with which he had no involvement other than raking in the moolah from the licensing deal that used his name and likeness.

     This is the same guy who supposedly ran a children's cancer charity then, with his greaseball son Eric, siphoned $2.000.000 from it into his own bank account. As a result, Trump nor any of his kids are allowed to run a charity in New York state ever again.

     He stole $2,000,000 from kids dying of cancer.

     And that doesn't even include the $450,000,000+ judgment when he was found guilty in civil court of manipulating property appraisals to get favorable loan agreements and artificially lower his tax bills.

     This is a guy who was found guilty of raping a woman in a department store dressing room then ordered to pay her over $90,000,000 for defaming her. This is a guy who was credibly accused of raping a 13 year-old girl in Jeffrey Epstein's townhouse.

     And this is a guy who was given $413,000,000 by his father yet still had to declare bankruptcy six times. (Don't forget the $400,000,000 he got from NBC for playing the successful real estate tycoon he wasn't on The Apprentice.)

     Donald Trump is the Fuhrer of Failure, plain and simple. And this was the best the GOP could do not just in this election cycle but in the last three?!

      This is a guy who has privately expressed disdain for his own supporters, someone who thanked the pandemic for giving him an excuse for not shaking their hands because they were "disgusting". And not so long ago, he told a crowd, "I don't care about you. I just want your vote!"

      And yet the inbred, the willfully ignorant and the walking brain-dead still flock to Mar a Lago as if he's Jerry Garcia.

      I cannot think of anyone else in human history who has so brilliantly shined a light exposing the stupidest people across an entire nation. Nothing this man does and nothing he says, not even when he says he doesn't care about them and only wants their votes (arguably the only honest thing he's ever said at a rally) can penetrate the thick wall of denial that his cult has built, the only one he's successfully built.

      His policy positions are thinner than gruel at a Siberian gulag. He promised to get rid of Obamacare then doesn't tell you with what he'll replace it. He says he'll make all of us prosperous without adding he'll start and stop at just the 1%.

      And he's too scared to debate his opponent, a former prosecutor who's used to putting away crooks and sexual deviants like Trump.

      The appeal is too elusive for the rest of us to see. Maybe the appeal of Donald Trump is not what they think he'll do for them but in whom he hurts. I recall years ago someone asking a Trump supporter what she thought of him. The momentarily aggrieved woman said, "He's not hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting."

      That's always stuck in my mind because that's all they see in him and want out of him. Because, as he said not too long ago, "I am your retribution."

Trump Is a Sand Dune

Because he took too much attention away from Trump.

     Yesterday, Trump decided to hold a rally in Glendale, AZ, where Vice President Harris and Governor Tim Walz had held the largest political event in Arizona's history (Notably, no one said that after Trump's rally, even though it featured Roadkill aficionado Robert F. Kennedy, Jr).

      Not only did it fall flatter than a tortilla, but when the Arizona Police Union head (whose name, ironically, is also Harris) went on a little longer than Trump expected, he publicly booted him off the stage when the natives got restless. Trump may be incipiently demented but he still knows how to read a room and he knew the guy was losing the crowd for him.

     But it wasn't just that. It was the fact that the union chief was taking too much time and attention from him. If you look at the longer clip, you'll see Trump shuffling from side to side like an impatient five year-old at a wedding  He wanted to be back behind that podium sucking all the oxygen out of that room.

      Mary Trump, his niece, has been saying of late that her uncle Donald is a bottomless black hole of need. And this is abundantly true. This is the same guy who pushed aside a head of state at a G20 summit so he could assume his "rightful" place in the front row. This is the same guy who, moments after getting Chris Christie's endorsement in 2016, pushed him off that stage and said, "You go down."

      And, like Mary Trump says, once that flattery and adulation gets sucked into that gaping hole where his soul should be, nothing remains of it, not even the light. And the minute he stops getting that adulation, he begins to wilt.

      I have an analogy of my own. Imagine standing on top of a sand dune. And you pour a pitcher of water into it. What would happen? It would disappear without a trace, leaving not even a wet spot. And you could pour any number of water pitchers into that dune and it would keep gobbling that water and giving nothing back in return.

      That's Trump in a nutshell. He gobbles attention and flattery like a school of piranhas. And that, obviously, is the last guy we need back in the White House. When someone talks too long, he quickly gets fidgety and impatient, like a little boy bored at a grownup event who'd rather be outside beating up the neighborhood 98 lb weakling.

     You need further proof of this? What you see below is a press picture taken from behind the stage in Glendale yesterday. That's senatorial candidate Kari Lake and look at the message someone sent her.

     This is the high tech version of the cane used in vaudeville.

Hope and Change for Real

    

    As some of you know, my laptop gave up the ghost for good last night. However, I wouldn't be much of a political blogger if I let even that stand in the way of my writing something, anything to commemorate the historic importance of tonight.

     And it's not just historic and important because Kamala Harris is a black woman, although the significance of that is unavoidable. 

      For a month now, it's been rightly said in this forum and others that Harris' presidential run carries with it and generates more excitement than any other since Obama first ran in 2008. People still talk, 16 years later, about how great his acceptance speech was that year (I still haven't seen it nor does it matter, any more).

      And I have to admit I was never once taken in by Obama's soaring rhetoric because I knew it was all style and little substance. After the nightmarish eight years of the illegitimate Bush administration, the nation was indeed ripe for hope and change but Obama turned it into a bumper sticker and nothing more. I was so disillusioned by Obama that I didn't even vote for him in 2012.

     I also didn't vote for Hillary in 2016 nor Biden in 2020. I don't reflexively vote for anyone with the capital D after their name because it's often a cynical appendage.

      Kamala Harris was guilty of a bit of that soaring rhetoric tonight. But long before the balloons fell, I'd gotten a suspicion, a glimmer, that perhaps Harris' recollections of her late mother, her childhood in Oakland and elsewhere and the life lessons imparted to her from her mother were... Genuine.

      Political speeches always have been highly cultured, curated, stage-managed, delivered by impeccably coiffed liars and other performers. It's in the blood of American politics. We all want a good show, something executed professionally and slickly, to be told that which we're quivering to hear.

     We feel it's our due.

     But tonight felt different.

     And by different, I don't merely mean it had within it the air of the inevitable, although it's screamingly obvious by now that Harris will get elected and by a landslide. 

     No, there was the unmistakable ring of the genuine in her acceptance speech and that she wasn't merely telling the huge crowd in Chicago tonight what they wanted and needed to hear (and they certainly needed to hear it).

     The urgency for hope and change is greater and more exigent than it was in 2008. At the time, we thought Bush was the worst we could possibly do.

     We were so, so wrong.

     But the urgency to elect the Harris-Walz ticket should, and does, consist of more than just, "Look at the alternative." Biden essentially got away with that in 2020. Harris doesn't have that luxury.

     But aside from a constant stream of jabs from Harris' rapid response team on Twitter (which is doing an excellent job), Harris and Walz are running a flawless or near flawless campaign and one predicated on actual hope and change.

     As professional politicians do, they turn circumstantial factoids into campaign selling points. But Walz' history as a teacher, football coach, Guardsman and Congressman is, if not uniquely, an All American story that resonates with everyday Americans. Harris' own middle class background and how she presents it is also catnip to a Democratic electorate sick and tired of sneering Republican crooks and liars who were educated at Ivy League universities and look down their noses at large segments of our society.

      Walz and Harris are middle class America and they really do care about you. That empathy and compassion is something you really can't fake, cultivate or manufacture. Either it's there or it isn't.

     Despite tonight's expected hysteria over the woman of the hour, when she gets elected and sworn in, she will inevitably disappoint us, whether that disappointment is legitimate or not. But listening to Harris tonight, and looking at the looks on the faces on the delegates, it was obvious she was resonating with the people in a way we haven't seen for far too long.

     Biden was elected by over 7,000,000 votes because of fear of a second Trump term. Harris doesn't need fear. She only needs the hunger for hope and change and she feeds that.

This Couldn't Have Happened at a Worse time

 So, after fighting all day with Google and Yahoo, I finally got access to my Yahoo email account. Now all I need is a laptop. That's something I can't fix.

     Here's the situation: I was just beginning a post last night when the part where the fan is began making a noise I'd never heard before. Then the entire device froze. So I rebooted and that's when the "fun" began.

     I kept getting led around in circles, getting sent back again and again to the startup menu in DOS and to this day it still refuses to load the Operating System. Sometimes it even crashes. I did get it to load the OS and even the desktop twice last night but both times it froze. Windows Startup repair is worthless because it's an outdated piece of software and is no longer supported.

     So if anyone reading this has a spare laptop they can donate, I'd deeply appreciate it. You can email me anytime and I'll gladly give you my street address. It's crawman2@yahoo.com.

      Obviously, I'm writing this on my Android and, while I just got my email back, a phone is not the same thing as an actual laptop and it's extremely difficult to write blog posts and conduct the interviews I need to conduct. This couldn't have happened at a worse time because I have four congressional candidates lined up and I've written and sent the questions to only one of them.

     So if you have a laptop, preferably one that uses Windows, to donate, I'd deeply appreciate it.

The Nightmare of Joy, Day Two

     What is with this unseemly display of public affection from the Obamas? They should be more like the Trumps, who scowl past each other looking for potential enemies and peering into the unrelieved hellscape of their personal abyss.

 

Agent Provocoteur Extraordinaire

 

 

     Oh, yeah, getting rid of the 70's porn star mustache and the German "tourist" disguise in 1945 Argentina will work wonders getting Mike Lindell into the #DNCConvention. #DNC2024 #DNC2024CHICAGO

Good Times at Pottersville

Good Times at Pottersville

Good Times at Pottersville

Lap Dogs of Democracy

"It was 2016 all over again today ... the same mistakes are being made" -- @lawrence 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/CxfddzLjuX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 9, 2024

     These days, I think more and more of the late Eric Boehlert's book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush. As with Norm Solomon, who'd written an even more scathing book called War Made Easy, Boehlert had the media pegged for its right wing bias and stenographic tendencies.

     Then Lawrence O'Donnell last night put a finer point on it and excoriated the entire MSM, including his own network, MSNBC, for its craven and supine posture toward Donald Trump and his "presser" at Mar a Lago yesterday. In the hour and five minutes that Trump spoke and answered questions, it could be more than plausibly said that nothing factual or honest fell out of his filthy maw.

     And at no time did the media even try to fact check him either on the spot (God forbid) or in the studio. Of course, it could be advanced as a defense that Trump always spews such a fire hose of lies, exaggerations and falsehoods that it's literally impossible to stay on top of them without talking over him from end to end, as Mary Trump said in yesterday's Substack. In fact, this was Dr. Trump's best paragraph of the entire article:

     "During the 2016 campaign, I was quite frankly horrified by the billions of dollars in free coverage the media gave Donald Trump. While Hillary Clinton was giving important and substantive policy speeches, network cameras were trained on empty podiums and planes idling on the tarmac waiting for Donald to show up."

      Ergo, since we all know (or should know) that Trump is genetically incapable of telling the truth about anything, perhaps the answer is to stop giving him oxygen. But Trump is the GOP candidate for president so if the MSM refuse to cover him and his litany of falsehoods, they would appear to be derelict in their responsibilities.

     The trouble is, they already do.

     Mar a Lago yesterday was a classic case in point. With little advance notice, Trump announced from his money pit Truth Social that he was doing a presser at Mar a Lago on Friday. And Trump's army of stenographers was out in full force and respectfully watched him do his air accordion bit. Meanwhile, that same day, yesterday, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz headlined in Glendale, Arizona what's been called the largest political event in the state's history. Think any of the major networks were there, like CNN?

     Guess again, bub.

     Despite the fact that 20,000 people came to hear Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz, you think CNN could be bothered to show up? Or how about the Nevada rally today that drew 12,000? Or the rallies at the other battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin? If it wasn't for social media and word of mouth, you'd hardly know Kamala Harris was running for president.

     When they did remember there's a Biden administration, the press did its best to hound Biden on his cognitive faculties. They passionately implored Biden to drop out of the race then...

    ...then...

    When those vicious corporate cunts finally got what they wanted, they became the dog that finally caught the car.

     So now that there's a new Democrat in the race, a woman who'd immediately become the Taylor Swift of politicians, one with the greatest sidekick any presidential nominee ever had, they apparently didn't get the memo that Kamala Harris threw her hat in the ring about three weeks ago and setting the country on fire and hauling in record crowds.

     It could be a legitimate failure on the part of network anchors and print journalists. But what's likelier is that the executive douchebags who run those networks and newspapers (Yes, Arthur Sulzberger, I'm looking right at you) are sending down The Word from on high that they're to put their greasy thumbs on the scales and give the crazy orange man with the maxi pad on his ear a free pass and to either hound Joe Biden out of existence or ignore Kamala Harris.

     And, despite the incredible numbers being put up by her campaign, the hundreds of millions in donations, the huge crowds, the enormous number of volunteers and first time voters being registered, the polls show that Harris is barely moving the needle, that she's losing in certain battleground states, or that she and Trump are still running neck and neck in this race.

     But there's a serious disconnect between the numbers the polls are giving us and the actual numbers put up by the Harris-Walz campaign. And one gets the impression that no matter how well Harris does drawing in crowds, gets volunteers, raises money, as far as the grand poobahs of the polling punditocracy goes, she's running in place.

     It's all bullshit, people. Look, I've been saying for years the old truism that the closer you get to an election, the more accurate the polls get got defenestrated after 2016. And, whether it's due to political bias (Like Rasmussen) or flawed methodology, the pollsters will tell you anything you want to hear. The numbers are always so all over the place that they're utterly worthless.

     Trust your eyes, trust your guts, trust your central nervous system. When Harris and Walz kick off their tour to a crowd of 12,000 in Philly and JD Vance draws 200 across town, it means something. When Harris attracts 18,000 in Detroit and Vance does a presser in an empty parking lot in front of a police station, it means something. And when Harris pulls in record crowds in battleground states like Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin while Trump seeks succor in a friendly crimson red state like Montana, it means something.

     And, as all auguries are of good fortune and if Harris and Walz don't seriously stumble between now and November 5th, they will win in a landslide and the pollsters will be humiliated yet again.

We Join You Live

Live look at the Trump campaign. pic.twitter.com/ql2tJXyoIp

— PaulleyTicks (@PaulleyTicks) August 7, 2024

...at Donald Trump's press conference at Mar a Lago.

Creepy Much?

JD Vance is too busy talking to the reporters who are there for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to show up on time to his little warehouse rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Someone should ask him why he’s being a creepy stalker.

pic.twitter.com/ctV0iQWkcf

— Art Candee 🍿🥤 (@ArtCandee) August 7, 2024

      Forget why Kamala Harris "won't answer questions." The press needs to ask faux hillbilly Senator Maybelline why he's following Harris' campaign to the point of even walking past Air Force Two.

Just a Few Thumbtack Observations About Tim Walz

      I'm laughing myself sick watching Trump and Vance and their handlers losing their shit over Tim Walz becoming Vice President Harris' running mate. To hear them talk, Walz going to the Naval Observatory would be Mordor on earth. Yes, children with full, happy stomachs. The horrors! But it only serves to show they fear Walz as much as they fear Harris, otherwise they wouldn't be acting like Curly Howard on Wild Hyacinth. Walz was the guy I'd hoped Harris would pick. So, I'm tickled pink.

     As I'd said, Walz will help Harris lock up the swing state of Wisconsin and, who knows, maybe even one or both of the Dakotas. Progressive voters and independents (and Never Trump Republicans) will look at Walz as one of their own and will resonate with his upper Midwestern folksiness. He's kind of the Prairie Home Companion on the campaign trail. He thinks and speaks quickly on his feet plus he's the guy that permanently attached to the Trump-Vance ticket the word "weird".

     But most importantly, Walz is an unabashed liberal counterweight that the Harris campaign desperately needs. 

     Now, one could say that Harris should tack right to center to get Republican voters who are sick of Trump and maybe she should. But Walz would keep in the progressive parishioners who may be alienated by Harris' inevitable rightward lurch. For years since getting elected in 2006 to Congress in what used to be a red district, Walz enjoyed a nice, safe. bland centrist record. He'd co-sponsored bipartisan legislation with Republican Tom Emmer and had even co-authored an op-ed with him.

     Then he got elected governor of Minnesota and, for his first term, we saw more of the same. But then, in 2022, everything changed. That was the year of the so-called "red wave" that saw Minnesota flip its state congress (the only one to do so that year). Then, with a new Democratic majority with  which to work, Walz let his liberal freak flag fly. Without having to worry about the usual Republican obstruction, Walz signed into law legislation that ought to be a model for every state.

     Using most of a $17.5 billion surplus (for which he can also claim credit), Walz got Minnesota's schoolchildren free breakfasts and lunches regardless of the family's income. He put sanitary products in the bathrooms of Minnesota's schools with an eye trained on curbing absenteeism..He allocated funding to improve the state's infrastructure. The hands-free driving law that saves lives. The list goes on and on.

     These were the very reasons why I hoped Harris would pick Walz. And I think, believe, that having Walz on the ticket will pay big dividends for Harris' campaign.

Shit Just Got Real

Three black suburbans just rolled out of Governor Tim Walz’s St. Paul residence. He is expected to attend a fundraiser for Kamala Harris in Minneapolis tonight. @WCCO pic.twitter.com/yn8ZbY3P9Z

— Kirsten Mitchell (@Kirsten_TV) August 5, 2024

     Maybe I'm seeing too much into this but JD Vance was also visited by three black SUVs right after Trump picked him to be his running mate. And, if Harris is bringing him to a fundraiser tonight, it's kind of the political equivalent of bringing your boyfriend to meet the parents, which is a huge step. And if Harris picked Walz, then I like her even more because Walz was always at the top of my list. And he would be perfect for the top of the ticket. He's a popular, successful governor, he's funny, thinks quickly on his feet and would make mincemeat of Vance during the VP debate. And even though Vice President Harris doesn't need him to win Minnesota (a state Trump lost handily in 2016 and 2020), he can help her shore up another upper Midwest battleground state: Wisconsin. He's the Midwestern Dad America needs right now.

I'll Be Radio Silent For a Little While

 

     Those of you who'd read my article yesterday may have noticed a brief mention of an interview of a Congressional candidate that I have been trying to line up since last month. Since I heard from her early this morning through her campaign's email address, I can state that I'm interviewing Barbie Harden Hall, who's running for Daniel Webster's seat (that used to belong to Alan Grayson) out of Florida 11.

     Barbie and I follow each other on Twitter and we've been playing DM tag since July once I got the idea to interview her for this blog. She was immediately receptive to the idea and the hectic pace of her campaign is the only reason why it's even taken this long to establish  the parameters of the interview.

     Those of you who've been reading me for years may remember the monthly interviews I did with authors until Barbara's illness got to the point where I could no longer set aside the time and energy for them. But this is hopefully the first of several interviews that I plan to do with Congressional candidates between now and November. I've reached out to others but Harden-Hall is the only one who's agreed to an email interview.

     Since I'm the most comfortable with it, I'm going to stick with the same format with which I'd conducted the Author of the Month interviews- 15 questions, all out of the box with very little little if any editing. And, as with the author interviews, I need to take the time to do the requisite research on my subject, learn about her policy positions, her platform, etc. I want to write her appropriate and probing questions that will familiarize her constituents and voters to her goals and ambitions. Yet, even though my research is just beginning, I will say this:

     Even though I'm in Arizona, about 3100 miles from her district, I believe in Harden Hall's candidacy. Just as Webster has long stood for his conservative beliefs, Harden Hall is at least as passionate about her progressive beliefs. She believes in sensible gun control, protecting Social Security and Medicare for seniors, etc. But it's her core issue in her candidacy that made me realize during my preliminary research that there's a real human interest story behind the campaign posters and flyers. Not only that, but a very deeply personal reason why she's running for office against a Republican barnacle in what's already been established as one of the most dysfunctional congresses of all time.

     I don't want to spill too many of the beans until the interview goes live, which, hopefully will be sometime this week. But, suffice to say it changed the entire structure and focus of the interview even though I've barely begun writing it.

     And I want to get each question right and maybe elevate awareness of her campaign within her own district. That's why I need to focus all my time, energy and concentration on this interview, the first one of its kind I've ever done.

It's a Zero Sum Game

 

    Anyone who's been reading this forum for an extended period of time knows I don't jump on bandwagons. I don't change my social media avatars to show the face of the flavor of the day, I don't (with one exception in 2020 when I made a small donation to Bernie's campaign) contribute to campaigns. I also take polls and surveys with a grain of salt, especially after 2016 when those polling savants assured us on Election Day that year that Hillary would win.

     However, there comes a time when even a hard-bitten cynic like me has to confront cold hard truths, reading the writing on the wall and the tea leaves. 

     Election day is in a little over three months, in fewer than 100 days, actually. The election got thrown into a blender last month and to find one more chaotic, you'd have to go back to 1968, which was the last time a sitting president had decided not to run for reelection.

     And, as with 1968, we have another vice president running for the big office. Hopefully, this time around, we'll have a better outcome.

     July taught us that everything can change on a dime, Everything about this race is still fluid, very much in a state of flux. 100 days or less is still an eon in political terms. However...

     Things are not looking good from the bunker.

     And literally from the day Biden dropped out of the race on July 21st, we saw a transformation.

     Three days after Kamala Harris entered the fray, this is what Dr. Mary Trump observed on her Substack:

     "We know that Harris has already raised an astronomical amount of money since Sunday, bringing in $126 million in only 48 hours. The really striking part, thought (sic), is that almost 900,000 of those donors were giving for the first time. 

     And the excitement goes well beyond the breathtaking, record-shattering fundraising numbers. According to USA Today, the campaign 'had 58,000 people sign up to volunteer, more than 100 times the average number of volunteers per day.'

     Vote.org has seen a 700 percent increase in daily voter registrations, according to MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin, who reported Wednesday that the increase of  'more than 38,500 new registrations' came in the 48 hours after Biden withdrew."

     That was a week and a half ago. Since then, Kamala Harris hasn't looked so much like a presidential candidate as an avalanche, a force of nature. Since Mary Trump wrote that Substack on the 24th, Kamala Harris has held three Zoom calls, breaking the domain virtually every time. The first one attracted 44,000 Black women, the next about 150,000 white women and the latest, White Dudes for Harris, raised four million more dollars for her (which got them a brief suspension from Elmo Musk for... something). 

     Even though Kamala Harris had jumped into the race on July 21st, by the end of the month, she's raised $310,000,000. Not in July. In the last week and a half of July. That's about $30,000,000 a day. Trump's so freaked out by the Harris haul that out of desperation, he filed a complaint with the FEC claiming her fundraising totals were illegitimate (he was pissing and moaning about Biden giving Harris $91,000,000 from his own campaign). I don't know what Trump's line of thinking is but that money went to the Biden-Harris campaign, meaning she certainly has a perfect right to spend it on her own presidential campaign. In fact, she's the only other person on earth who can.

     Since Harris threw her hat in the ring, she's suddenly grown coattails. I'm lining up an interview with a congressional candidate out of Florida who wasted zero time jumping on the Harris bandwagon when hundreds of golf carts filled with Harris supporters in the Villages suddenly appeared.

The X Factor

 

     Kamala Harris is, literally, the X Factor. Elon Musk doesn't have an answer for her on Twitter and has to content himself with throwing his pasty flab around and suspending pro-Harris accounts. Trump is the proverbial man about to fall off the edge of the cliff and grasping at straws hoping whatever he throws at Harris will stick to the wall.

      But right now, it seems as if Harris has no kryptonite weakness, no Achilles heel. Unlike Biden, she's quick, sharp and merciless with her retorts. And the hotter Harris gets, the colder Trump gets. It's classic textbook zero sum game. And it can't be said that Trump refusing to debate her on ABC on September 10 is making him look any manlier or more appealing.

     So Trump's dwindling supporters have to content themselves with dusting off the classics- Misogyny, racism, calling her a DEI hire, accusing her of racial appropriation (as if someone can't be half Indian and something else simultaneously? Maybe JD Vance has something to add to that since he has three kids who are half Indian). Border Czar! She's stupid! Her cackle! They're sputtering in their apoplexy.

     And it's not just Democrats and Independents who are getting behind Harris. The huge turnout for her in the Villages was just the first bellwether. Republicans are lining up to support Harris. The Lincoln Project. Former Tea Party Republican Joe Walsh. And, perhaps most notably, the Republican former Lt. Gov. of Georgia and CNN commentator, Geoff Duncan, who's no blushing liberal.

     Ladies and gentlemen, this is no mere sugar rush, no Snakes on a Plane hype that burns up like flash paper.

     This is a movement. And it's here to stay until Election Day. After that, after she wins, Harris is on her own.

     But for now, I think we can safely conclude that this is a movement, that this is her time. Perhaps it's her time only through the agencies of the Supreme Power of Serendipity, of being at the right place at the right time, being savvy enough to accept Joe Biden's invitation to be his running mate. But the fact remains, regardless of circumstances, she's generating the kind of excitement that the political arena hasn't seen since the 2008 Obama. Not even Biden generated this much excitement four years ago when he had at his back a growing horror at the prospect of a second Trump term. Biden got over 81,000,000 votes in 2020. It's very easy at this point to see Harris getting more.

Watergate Redux

 

     There was a small but very telling moment in Donald Trump's dumpster fire of an interview with three reporters at the national convention at the National Association of Black Journalists or NABJ yesterday. At one point during his interview with ABC's Rachel Scott, Trump waited until she turned her head from him and he reached over about three feet and took Scott's water bottle even though Trump plainly had his own just a few inches to the right of him.

     Yeah, it could be said that he made a mistake and took the wrong bottle.  But the timing couldn't be ignored. He waited until the moment she turned her head before grabbing the bottle then twisting the cap more tightly before putting it back.

     It's exactly the kind of dick move that's perfectly consistent with Trump's constant, puerile pettiness and obsession with power moves and OCD. It fits right in with the account of when Trump poured a cold glass of white wine down the back of the reporter who'd exposed the fact that he slept with Hitler's speeches next to his bed. It also fits in with the same Trump.who pretended to scratch his right temple but did so with his middle finger when he was corrected over the phone by a female astronaut during a space walk.

     I don't understand Trump's problem with and fixation on water bottles.

    

    

          Apparently, he doesn't fare much better with glasses of water, either.

 

     Here's the video,, if you don't believe me.

Trump just took the ABC reporters water bottle 🤣 pic.twitter.com/471GAexbVS

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 31, 2024

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