Yes, Again

 

     Maybe.

     Apparently, someone else was tempted to take another pot shot at Donald Trump today. He was at the 5th hole when the Secret Service saw a rifle barrel poking out of some bushes and they fired some shots. When they got there, they found an AK47, a backpack and GoPro camera. Drone footage saw the suspect get into a car and drive away and he's now in custody.

     The non-shooter is a guy named Ryan Wesley Routh and he's no blushing liberal. In fact, this is just one of the things he put up on his social media:

    

     Through the thicket of misspellings, we can deduce that this clown voted for Trump eight years ago but came to the conclusion that he was too stupid to run for president. If that's what he thinks, then welcome to the party, pal. And, as proof of this, after the Secret Service unpeeled themselves off the sodden pile of his flesh, Trump said, "I wanted to finish the hole."

     Because, to Republicans, golf is life.

     The problem with this scenario is already manifold. As Steve Marmel pointed out on Twitter,

If being within 500 yards of a gun means you’re the target of an assassination attempt then everybody in Florida is the target of an assassination attempt by nearly everybody else in Florida.

— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) September 15, 2024

      So, all things being equal, it stands to reason if Trump and JD Vance can casually blow off bomb threats made in Springfield, Ohio, we should also be able to blow off these ersatz threats on Trump's life, right?

The Sanewashing of Trump

     I don't know who'd coined that term but it's one of the catchphrases that's come out this year that's bound to stick, at least as long as Donald Trump spitefully clings to life and his fever dream of getting back in the White House.

     And accusations of sanewashing is something that can be laid on the doorstep of the corporate mainstream media because they're the ones primarily engaging in it. We got a brief reprieve from it during Tuesday's debate, although David Muir's and Linsey Davis' intermittent fact checking was nullified by all the times they turned Trump's microphone back on every time he opened his big mouth even when it wasn't his turn to speak.

     So why is the corporate mainstream media deliberately trying to fool the American public into thinking Donald Trump is actually sane? Well, again, I give you Dr. Mary Trump:

     "This election is too important to for us to rely on outlets that continue, against all evidence to the contrary, to normalize a deeply unwell traitor just so they can preserve the horse race of it all."

     And that's what it's all about: Making money with a blizzard of ad buys, keeping viewers tuning in on election night by pretending this is a neck and neck horse race between two legitimate major party candidates who are comparable in every way, shape and form. It's all about keeping the top executives happy and that especially goes for the shareholders.

     But this isn't a game. Hell, it''s not even sweeps week. This is a presidential election, perhaps the most consequential and important one in US history. And the MSM are doing the American people a great and grave disservice, to put it mildly, by presenting Donald Trump as if he's not, in fact, a raving, deranged psychopath.

     Take Trump's answer about child care earlier this month at the New York Economic Club. When asked what type of legislation he would expect to lower child care costs, he blathered on about tariffs and suggested they'd solve the problem even though child care costs and tariffs have nothing to do with each other. Trump was caught flat-footed because this was a guy who was born with the entire silverware drawer in his mouth. He comes from a world of au pairs and nannies, someone who never had to change a dirty diaper in his life.

     He's somebody who plainly doesn't understand that sometimes one spouse or another has to put their entire fulltime job's paycheck into a daycare provider's pocket, which defeats the purpose of going out in the workforce. Often, day care costs can come to more than the rents or mortgages of middle class households.

     The print media automatically began spinning Trump's unraveled ball of mental yarn and desperately tried to knit it into something recognizable. Was it a sweater? A scarf? Who cares? As long as the American public doesn't conclude that Donald Trump is in fact, crazier than a sewer rat on fire.

     Take a look at what Trump said at the debate last Tuesday night:

     "We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. You see what's happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio. You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They're taking over buildings. They're going in violently. These are the people that (Vice President Kamala Harris) and (President Joe Biden) let into our country. And they're destroying our country. They're dangerous. They're at the highest level of criminality," said the 34 time convicted criminal.

     Now look at how this pack of lies is treated by USA Today. "Colorado mayor, police respond to Trump's claims that Venezuelan gang is 'taking over'."

    Nothing like what they should've, in fact, written, which was that Aurora officials and the Aurora PD have once again put the lie to a lying psychopath who literally couldn't tell the truth if his very life depended on it.

     Yes, Aurora police have arrested some Venezuelan gang members since February but not for the things Trump is accusing them of. But if you listen to USA Today, Trump merely made a slight miscalculation that had to be gently corrected by city officials. Oopsie.

     And then, there's the other racist conspiracy theory that has gotten even more play in the media: That Haitians are eating peoples' pets in Springfield, Ohio. This was a baseless conspiracy theory based on a careless Facebook post by a Springfield resident who now regrets saying anything. This was one of Trump's worst moments at the debate, if not THE worst, but it he still put it out there before 70,000,000 viewers.

     And it started getting traction thanks to JD Vance, arguably the worst VP running mate of all time.

     And if it was just the lie, it would be bad enough. But the conspiracy theory inspired bomb threats right after Tuesday's debate that evacuated two schools and at least one other building.

     But racist psychopaths like Trump and JD Vance don't care about putting the lives of minorities in danger. And they don't care that the 20,000 Haitians that had settled in Springfield were there to get jobs or are living there legally.

     Yet, in California, from one of his countless golf courses, Trump said he was going to deport the Haitians in Springfield and would send them to, get this, Venezuela.

     Hardly anyone in the media called him on that lunacy or when he said, "The water's dead."  Or anything else. It's just Trump being Trump. It's just President Trump expressing concerns.

     And yet the media can't bother being concerned that the GOP nominee for president is a raving fucking lunatic who's slipping further and further into dementia.

     And maybe that's the Republican Party's long game. Get Trump elected then just wait for him to go out on the South Lawn without his pants on. When they happens, they can then invoke the 25th amendment to push him out and make fascist-in-waiting JD Vance their pliable fuckstick who will rubber stamp their every agenda.

     Meaning it's not Project 2025 we should be worried about. It's Project 25.

     And the corporate media are doing everything they can to help them to that end.

He Lost. Period.

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Let's get one thing straight:

     Last night's spectacle wasn't a presidential debate.

     It wasn't, really.

    What it was, instead, was a relentless cross examination of a convicted felon by a skilled prosecutor. But that's exactly what Trump is and what Harris is. A skilled prosecutor will set traps and get a criminal defendant to incriminate themselves before their lawyers can advise them to plead the 5th. A skilled prosecutor will know what buttons to push to get the defendant to reveal their true motivations, their true natures.

     And last night was like a 100 minute-long Perry Mason episode come to life.

     And while Harris had the floor, she indeed knew exactly what buttons to push. She ridiculed Trump for his crowd sizes, mentioned the attendees would leave early out of boredom (something proved by tons of video evidence). And, of course, since crowd sizes mean so much to him, he rose to the occasion and, when asked a question about something else entirely, he felt the need to set the record straight by saying his rallies were "the biggest in political history" and that no one went to Harris' rallies.

    Generally, Trump trotted out his old emoji faces from 2016, smirking and shaking his head while Kamala Harris indicted him for one crime and transgression after another. Because that, and his insane conspiracy theories, were his only defense. And, while he spoke, Harris entertained us with an endless series of incredulous smiles and black woman side eyes.

     It didn't take Harris long to get Trump to reveal his true self, to give the national audience that long-awaited Perry Mason moment. Trump must've known this wouldn't be a reprise of June 27th, in which Biden walked out of Atlanta with Trump's footprints on his back. Just before the debate started, the vice president strode to Trump's podium, knowing he wouldn't greet her on his own. She grabbed his hand and introduced herself by name, forcefully pronouncing her first name just so there wouldn't be any mistake.

     The lead image above shows the only time Trump looked at Kamala Harris.

     So he smirked, he sniggered, he looked up from time to time and shook his head. Meanwhile, the former California prosecutor filleted him as with a scalpel. Well within the first hour, he started sounding loud, sour and unhinged, like the drunk uncle who gets all his news from Nextdoor or Fox. Even though Trump has lunatics working for him, one more than suspects they told him to keep his cool, stick to the issues, etc.

     He talked abut Haitians eating dogs and cats.

    

The Spin Room

Of course, Trump wanted, needed, to remain the center of attention so he broke his neck shambling into the spin room. For those who don't know it, the spin room is not for candidates but their surrogates who then give the press their impressions of the debate. But Trump couldn't wait to walk in and suck all the oxygen out of the room so he could cock wand about how great he did. Essentially, it was the same exact version of Trump on Election Night 2020 in which he took to the podium and declared himself the winner of the election.

     Except Trump had bad news waiting for him.

    Because, you see, minutes after the debate ended, Taylor Swift took to her Instagram account and publicly endorsed Kamala Harris and within minutes, it got well over a million and a half views (as of this moment, it's up to 9,550,155 likes). A reporter asked Trump what he thought about it and it was obvious he was blindsided. By today, when he called in to Fox and Frauds, he was threatening Taylor Swift, saying she'd pay for it. And. of course, Elmo had to get in on the act:

 

     But the damage was already done. As Ivan Vanko told Tony Stark in Iron Man 2, "If you make God bleed, people will stop believing in him." Kamala Harris put on her prosecutor hat last night and eviscerated him. If she'd spanked him any harder, he would've had to pay her hush money.

     As expected, the negative reviews for Trump began cascading in immediately. Fox was down in the mouth about Trump's performance. So, naturally, Trump attacked Fox this morning. It got worse.

     Even Germany got in on the act, pushing back aggressively against Trump's fact-free assertion that Germany tried and failed to be energy independent before going back to fossil fuels within a year. In fact, the German Foreign Ministry said,

     "Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables. And we are shutting down—not building—coal and nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest."

     They then twisted the knife a bit more by adding, "PS: We also don't eat cats and dogs."

     The consensus, even on some right wing media, was that Harris won and Trump lost. Now Trump is finding himself in exactly the same position as Joe Biden on June 27th. Was Harris' debate performance flawless? Not at all. She failed to fully articulate how she'd end the war in Gaza and bring about a two state solution. She didn't fully articulate her own economic plans. But she did the next best thing:

     She put and kept Donald Trump on his back foot the whole time.

Coda

Today is the 23rd anniversary of 9/11. And this brought about the bizarre reprise as only American politics can bring about. The annual commemoration of September 11 was held at Ground Zero. And it reunited Trump with Harris less than 24 hours after their debate. It brought out a political Who's Who. Even Rudy Giuliani managed to stay off the pavement long enough to solemnly bow his head as everyone remembered the victims. All, that is, except one.

Our Project 2025

 

     Let the orchestra's tuneup cacophony begin while we dramatically play clips from old presidential debates. Let the pundits breathlessly repeat the tale of the tape. And, in the backdrop, if one listens very carefully, one will hear the ghostly, barely audible strains of a calliope from far offstage.

     It's not exactly Frazier-Ali I from 1971 but it's what we have. The Harris-Trump debate in Philadelphia is in a few hours, likely the only one to which Trump will consent. The political Marquis de Queensbury rules are identical to CNN's last June 27th: No prepared notes, no teleprompters, no audience and microphones will be muted while the candidate's not speaking.

     They should've worked to Joe Biden's favor but unfortunately, Biden seemed to forget where he was and looked less like a president and more like a nursing home resident who just got a bolus of morphine. This time, however, it's a new ball game and, like an abusive, jilted lover who wants back the battered ex girlfriend who'd moved on, Trump pines for Biden to re-enter the race. He longs to put those brass knuckles back on, to get back in the saddle.

     But, as stated, it's a whole new ball game. In Biden's stead is his vice president, who's a successful prosecutor, former big state AG and has an impressive track record putting away sexual predators, crooks and mob bosses just like Trump.  She's 22 years younger than Biden, nearly two decades younger than Trump and is at the top of her game.

     Naturally, no matter how many lies Trump will tell tonight, and, as with the last debate and anywhere else, there will be plenty, ABC and the MSM in general will try to spin this as a mere debate between two perfectly normal candidates in a neck and neck presidential race. Of course, the one major difference that they'll strenuously ignore at the behest of the corporate cunts who sign their fat checks is that only one person on that stage will be sane.

     I'll leave it to, you, Dear Reader, to infer which one that will be.

     One wants to give households with children a $6000 child tax credit, which would go a long way toward paying for daycare costs.

     The other says, "child care is child care" and thinks sky-high tariffs will pay for them.

     On immigration, Harris' border policy can be summed up thusly, per the Washington Post: "Kamala Harris supports an earned pathway to citizenship and wants to revive the tough border compromise law that would close loopholes in the asylum process and give the president more authority to shut down the border." Very pragmatic and hardly what one could call "liberal".

     Trump is yelling about Hannibal Lecter and has been for months and months.

     While it's a disturbing flip flop, Harris has reversed her 2020 position on fracking and is now in favor of it.

     Trump is blathering about whether he'd rather get electrocuted by an electric battery or eaten by a shark.

     Harris proposes raising the capital gains tax from its present rate of 20% to 28% on those who make $1,000,000 a year or more.

     Trump tried to shake down oil executives for a billion dollars in exchange for friendly legislation and executive orders and promises more ruinous tax cuts like the one in 2018 that wreaked havoc on the middle class, in which 83% of the money will eventually skyrocket straight to the 1% by 2027.

     Harris is a strong proponent of women's reproductive heath care.

     Trump is spreading fact-free claims that doctors and mothers are murdering newborn infants post partum.

     Harris supports transgender youth.

     Trump is claiming school kids to go the school as one gender and come back home another gender.

     I could go on and on but I think you get the point.

     So, yes, one candidate is clearly suited for the presidency while the other is just as clearly completely insane.

     But the maddening thing is that the consensus is that Harris has a higher bar to hurdle than Trump and that this debate, which, again, may be the only one to which Trump will consent, is as much  a make-or-break night for her as June's debate proved to be for Biden.

     Because that's just how the mainstream media operates: sandbagging Democrats while giving Republican lunatics and idiots a free pass. CNN after all, didn't make the slightest effort to fact-check Trump in June's debate then doubled down and defended that policy, even though fact-checking a presidential candidate caught spewing a fire hose of lies in real time is exactly what the media are supposed to do. It's not supposed to ignore lies and give them the patina of honesty in a desperate attempt to appear as non-partisan. There's nothing partisan about simply telling the American people what's true and what's not.

     But I don't hold out any reasonable hope that ABC will be any more invested in being honest with the American people as CNN was last June.

Here We Go Yet Again

     I've just learned about the deadly school shooting in Winder, Georgia that claimed at least four lives. Considering this happened right after schools opened up, I fear this is a phenomenon that will repeat just as it does every year.

      Every year, roughly 45,000 Americans die of gun violence. And every time there's a school shooting or a mass shooting anywhere, Republicans trot out the hoary "thoughts and prayers" bromide. But if there's a god up there, their prayers are going ignored.

      They also resort to the equally dog-eared argument that what's needed are more "good guys with guns", the accent placed on guns. But the United States is the only nation on earth in which there's more than one gun for every person. We make up 4% of the world's population yet we own half the world's guns (450,000,000 for 330,000,000 men, women and children. That's 1.2 guns for every American).

      Plainly, more guns and ammo isn't the answer.

      We turn every mass shooting into an opportunity to attack the party to which they're opposed (although one side is much more responsible for this than the other) and gun executives lick their chops and rub their hands at the thought of a post-shooting "bump" in sales.

      As the Onion once famously observed years ago, we keep saying there are no answers or solutions even though we're the only country on earth where this happens. There's a sickness in our culture, or what passes for one, in which the desperate clinging to the 2nd Amendment is predicated on "others" coming to get you. Gun rights are based on nothing more than blind, rabid fear.

      We are such a sad, sick country. We are the sick man of North America. The answer is within our grasp. But just as gun owners are often ruled by blind fear, lawmakers are also ruled by fear of doing the right thing.

What Happened at Section 60

     This should be the tipping point, the scandal that should not fall into the Trump-friendly memory hole. This needs to be that proverbial red line, Julius Caesar's Rubicon, the point of no return.

      It should end right here and now.

      Details are still coming out about Trump's ill-fated whistle stop at Arlington National Cemetery, arguably the most sacred ground in the US. For once, the MSM aren't giving the sociopath a free pass. If they really wanted to twist the knife, they could helpfully remind those who may have forgotten that Trump had his equally sociopathic Daddy get him five draft deferments for bone spurs that were never really proven to exist or that he called our WWI dead "suckers and losers" while refusing to visit their graves at the one and only 100th anniversary of the Armistice. Or that, at that same Arlington, as he stood over the grave of Gen. John Kelly's son, he turned to him and asked, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?"

      Yes, one of the Gold Star families invited Trump to meet them at Arlington and, true to form, Trump couldn't resist the lure of a juicy photo op as long as he calculates it'll benefit him in some way.

      Here's where things went wrong.

      There's a section at Arlington called Section 60. That's where we inter the newest war dead, those fallen veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Because those fallen heroes are still very much in living human memory, campaigns events, photos and videos are strictly forbidden. This isn't just at Arlington but is a sweeping DoD rule that forbids any such activity at any Army cemetery. The dead should be nonpartisan 

      Undeterred, Trump and his thugs tried to enter section 60, which included a veteran who had committed suicide after serving nine combat tours overseas. When an Arlington official tried to stop them, they literally pushed right past her and basically assaulted her. She filed a complaint with the Army but declined to press charges on account of fear of reprisals from Trump's red-toothed mob.

     It was serious and vetted well enough so that the Army issued a very rare rebuke. Without mentioning Trump's name (although she should have), the Secretary of the Army tore his campaign a new one.

      The campaign responded as all right wing campaigns do and insulted the Secretary of the Army. Stephen Cheung, the Dollar General Odd Job, even went after the assaulted cemetery official and accused her of having Trump Derangement Syndrome. He claimed she wasn't shoved aside and that there's video proving it but that video, naturally, hasn't come to light.

       But it wasn't just Trump literally muscling his way into hallowed ground and did something that was plainly illegal (Not "possibly", MSM, just plain illegal.). As Trump stood there, he gave his trademark thumbs up gesture and acted as if he was posing for a picture at fucking Disneyland and not Arlington National Cemetery.

      He had no problem having his thugs push their way through because we all know Trump has no regard for the law and thinks he's above it. This is why he was convicted on 34 criminal counts and will be sentenced in 17 days. He has no regard for common decency. And his smiling thumbs up picture before the grave of a fallen hero has all sorts of things wrong with it. If it was just bad optics, it would be bad enough.

      But it wasn't just optics. That woman's grave became a crime scene.

      Trump's 2016 campaign should've been over when he said John McCain was only a war hero because he was captured. It should've been over when he mocked a disabled reporter. It should've been over when he openly invited Russia to hack Hillary's emails and especially when they showed up on WikiLeaks the next day. And it definitely should've crashed and burned for good when the Access Hollywood tape came out weeks before the election.

       But with Trump, there seems to never be an inflection point. There's no red line, no Rubicon. Because we have a mainstream media that is disturbingly comfortable with giving free passes to any politician with a big R after their name while holding Democrats to more stringent ethical and moral standards.

      Because if we don't start holding this palpably obvious sociopath to the same standards to which we hold Democrats, this is what we'll see next.