Month: September 2024

Reality Can Be Very Confusing…

by MyBaconPress

I guess he just jumped right to the heart of the matter, eh? Trump was at a rally in Wisconsin. He said this – out loud, “Kamala is mentally impaired. If a Republican did what she did, that Republican would be impeached and removed from office, and rightfully so, for high crimes and misdemeanors.” That’s a bit heavy on the assertion with NO detail. There is NEVER any detail from Trump. It’s always just the big charge. But he kept talking, “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Now, even Republicans are disavowing the comments. They (correctly) think he should stick to the issues. Then, they (insanely) pretend that “The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. That – those are the issues.” I’ve got to give them one out of two, there. Yes, they SHOULD stick to the issues but, no, Donald Trump never fixed anything, anywhere, at any time.

Dear MAGA, you’re asking us to believe one of your fever dreams. The fact is, Trump enjoyed the benefits of Obama’s economic policy before allowing the whole thing to crumble under his delusional mismanagement of Covid-19. That’s what happened. You can tell another story all you want. But that’s what happened…

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Yesterday, I wrote about JD Vance going to a restaurant and being denied entry because they didn’t want a “campaign event” or cameras in the place. Cons knew he was coming. They had filled the place up, made orders for food, and they were waiting for Vance. When Vance was denied entry, they cancelled their orders and went out and held their little mini rally in the parking lot. It’s still a little confusing, though. If the cons knew Vance was planning to be there, why didn’t Primanti Bros, the restaurant in question?

They didn’t want a campaign event? That doesn’t square with when Kamala stopped in. It was a little over a month ago. Nobody blocked her. She met with supporters inside the restaurant and cameras recorded the whole thing. She worked the crowd and glad-handed for a little while, then moved on. That seems like a campaign event, to me. Apparently, Primanti Bros. didn’t want a conservative campaign event.

Listen, given the toxic environment that IS the GOP, these days, I don’t blame them…

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Yet another of the people Trump worked closely with has commented on who and how Trump is. The fact is, the people who work with him and know him best, think he sucks. They can’t put up an image and desperately cling to it, like most of MAGA does on a day to day basis. They know, from direct experience, who Trump really is. And yet? They still don’t seem to get it.

Ty Cobb, a one-time lawyer in the Trump White House, has said he thinks Trump is “a deeply wounded narcissist.” Someone asked him about the GOP scheme to simply steal the election should Trump not win. Cobb said he didn’t think the GOP could come up with the goods, legally speaking, necessary to make the case of election fraud. He said, “the one thing they need in court is evidence. They didn’t have any last time and they’re unlikely to have any this time.”

In one sense, of course, Cobb is right. Trump never had any evidence of any impropriety in the 2020 election. He just made it up. His team tried to take their fever dreams into court and present them as evidence but court after court just threw the cases out. Over and over and over again. Over 60 times, in fact. They brought material they tried to produce as “evidence” that was SO lacking in support to SO many courts, SO many times, most of those lawyers are now being (or have been) disbarred.

Quick question: have you noticed a silly little thing like “no evidence whatsoever” to stop the wagging jaws of Trump or the faithful? No, me neither. As I reflect on it, the ONLY cases of voter fraud I remember hearing about were cons trying to stuff the ballot box with extra votes in one way or another. I suspect Cobb is right in his “diagnosis” of Trump’s mental condition but I think he might be just a bit optimistic about loyalty to reality in the case of elections.

Trump and MAGA don’t CARE that they’re lying. I mean, they KNOW it, they just don’t care. They honestly believe they’re doing it for the greater good. They honestly believe they can sin their way to purity. Hey, good luck with that.

I’ll tell you this: For some people, reality can be very confusing…

Stock Shifts…

by MyBaconPress

Largely, because most of what MAGA says is pure, unadulterated bunk, made up by some talking head to attract viewers, I dismiss pretty much everything MAGA says, pretty much all the time. They have absolutely NO credibility with me, whatsoever. But you know the saying, ‘Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.’ Every once in awhile, the cons bitch about something that we should all pay attention to because they’re right. I mean, even then, they don’t quite get to the meat of the matter because they always always, always excuse behavior on the right they condemn on the left. But at least they’re close.

They’ve got a good one going now and they’re right. There’s just no other way to put it, they’re right. The part they get right? Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, sold $500,000 worth of Visa stock – literally months before a DOJ investigation was launched against Visa on antitrust charges. Coincidence? Maybe. I can’t prove otherwise. But tell the truth, when you see that the one-time speaker of the House made up to a million dollars on a stock sale just before the stock dropped because of legal woes the one time Speaker very likely knew about in advance, you DO say, “hmm,” right?

It got worse. When people asked about it, we were treated to weasel words by one of her spokespeople, “Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks, and she has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.” Right. It’s all Paul. They never talk about what goes on in Congress. He has no insider information and she doesn’t own stocks. That doesn’t pass the smell test and it really stinks.

The part MAGA misses, of course, is that insider trading is legal for Congress critters – unlike the rest of us – and they ALL do it, party notwithstanding. This isn’t a Pelosi problem, it’s a Congress problem.

Their story? Oh, we have to make laws and regulations about these companies and we have to manage our portfolios so how could we NOT use insider information? But trust us, we won’t – because we said so. And who can you trust more than a politician?

The true story? In my lifetime, it was common practice for Congress critters to put their portfolios into blind trusts, managed by people outside of their sphere who had no idea about pending legislation. Pols could work without regard to their portfolio position because they didn’t KNOW their portfolio position and the investments could happen cleanly because the people managing the funds were not privy to the insider news. See? It CAN be done. It just won’t be because who is going to walk away from all that beautiful, easy-to-get money?

But I’ll tell you this: it’s a practice that very definitely should be stopped, for Pelosi and everybody else…

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“Remember, there’s a hat that’s made that sells like crazy… Oh, there’s a fly, oh. I wonder where the fly came from? See, two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. But we can’t take it any longer…” – Donald J. Trump

No word on who or what was “changing rapidly.” Apparently, he never finished the hat story. The fly distracted him and he was lost. A fly.

And MAGA just sees a genius who can do anything…

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Weird little JD Vance goes into a super market in a campaign event. He wanted to decry the cost of groceries like Harris and Biden are sitting in the Oval Office setting prices and not the corporate C teams in their various suites. He picked up some eggs and bitched about a dozen eggs costing $4.00. Yeah, that would suck.

It’s just my opinion, mind you, but I think he should have had his advance team take down the sign right behind him that showed a dozen eggs selling for $2.99. They ALSO might have pointed out to him that he was holding a flat of eggs (30), not a dozen (12). If the guy can’t tell the difference between twelve and thirty, the accounting of this once-great nation is in deep trouble. Then again, maybe THAT’S why these guys think everything is bad. They take any issue and randomly more than double the size.

So, his advance team sets up a speaking engagement in a restaurant in Pennsylvania. The place has plenty of patrons who came to hear JD speak. When JD showed up, one of the workers told them no cameras were allowed and they didn’t want a campaign event in their restaurant. So JD had to schmooze that crowd outside, in the parking lot. It has shades of Rudy setting up a presser at a landscaping company. You know, the one right next door to the porn shop. JD’s advance team needs a bit of a revamp, I’d say…

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Okay, before I go, big props to Bob Van Dillen this morning. I know, “Who?” Bob. Van Dillen. He’s a weather guy on a local Fox affiliate and he was doing a report, as they do for some reason, outside in the rain. He heard a woman calling for help. His team called 9-1-1 and tried to get back to their broadcast but she was scared, in danger, and still screaming. So? He cut off his report – and went and saved her. It was the right thing to do and he did it…

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Well, the Niners are off to a start. It’s a bad start, but it’s a start. They’re losing players to injury at a precipitous rate. It’s a rough time to be a Niner fan. I know, I know. Three games in is a little early to be raising the white flag, and I’m not. It’s just that this team has been together for awhile and consists of players who have been in the league for awhile and it’s starting to look like age is becoming a factor we fans had hoped wouldn’t start until next season.

At 1-2, the Niners are in dead last in their division. It sounds a bit worse than it is, since most teams in the NFC West are 1-2 as of this morning, but they really need a victory today…

Meltdowns…

by MyBaconPress

I know MAGA doesn’t get it. They just LOVE his shtick and they don’t care that he’s pretending about anything/everything. They actually believe he’s authentic. (<shakes head> Cult members…) But these days, when I see Trump at one of his rallies, he doesn’t seem to have anything of value to say. It’s all just whining and complaining, threatening and terrorizing, and bitch, bitch, bitch about his crowds. OMG, what IS it with him and crowds?

Have you ever noticed the people standing behind Trump at any of his rallies? Recently, they’ve been catching my eye for a weird reason. They are often in costume. I don’t mean they’re dressed up as Count Dracula or even decked out head to toe in Trump apparel but they appear behind Trump wearing hard hats and construction safety vests or some such? Really?

Are we really NOT supposed to notice that underneath those safety vests the people are wearing clothes decidedly NOT appropriate to construction work? Are we really supposed to believe those people just walked off the construction job – in their good clothes – to wander in to a Trump rally? I’ve heard those people are paid, anyway, so I guess dressing them up is just part of the job, like waving the signs…

He’s STILL obsessing over Kamala’s comment about people leaving his rallies, too. He claims, simultaneously, that the people leaving won’t get to take pictures with him AND that people don’t leave his rallies. “The people that you see leaving… because nobody ever leaves. And when they do, I finish up quick, believe me.” I mean, that’s both sides. Nobody leaves and when they do? Sounds like people leave.

And of COURSE people leave. Hundreds or thousands of people at a rally and nobody leaves? Nobody misjudges the time spent or plans for delays? I’ll tell you what, people save for Disneyland and then one of the kids vomits on Mickey’s shoes and they…what? That’s right, they leave. Right? Things happen. Just because people are leaving doesn’t mean they’re tired of Trump. But all the left has to do is pretend it’s because they’re tired of Trump and he can’t think of anything else. THAT, my friends, is one deeply damaged and fragile ego…

I also get a kick out of listening to him brag about talking without using a teleprompter – while standing in front of a teleprompter. He has one. He uses it. And when he doesn’t, he rambles like an insane person. He starts in with “I don’t need a teleprompter and windmills cause cancer and people eat pets and the world is in such bad shape you’re all already dead and only I can save you and isn’t the world mean to poor little me?” and his team is in back, cringing, shaking their heads, and saying to each other, “This was supposed to be a speech on the economy…”

I know that when MAGA watches him at a rally, they see something different than what the rest of the world sees. To quote Paul Simon, “A man sees what he wants to see and he disregards the rest (hmmm)” I’m a musician. I can’t leave out the “hmmm.” These days, he reminds me of the crazy person at the end of the movie who can’t hide it anymore and everyone finally sees. He’s like the Captain Queeg of American politics and the whole world is watching him melt down. Except MAGA. They just think he’s pretty…

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Look, the stock market is NOT the economy, but the 32nd record close of the Dow this year? Somebody is making money somewhere, right? Trump seems to think the Fed dropping the interest rate by a half point means the economy is struggling. As is usually the case among MAGA, it means exactly the opposite.

The economy was humming along strongly. TOO strongly. Eventually, that can lead to some serious problems – like inflation, so the Fed steps in and raises interest rates. It gets most of us to lay off the credit cards for awhile, slowing inflation. When things slow down just a bit, the rates start coming down again. But make no mistake, rates are coming down these days because of the strong position our economy is in, not because it’s struggling. (And please don’t tell me it’s not perfect. No doubt, and I agree, it’s not perfect. But I’m not interested in letting the perfect be the enemy of the good and I’ll take ‘strong, if not perfect…’)

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Oh, sure. What could go wrong? I hear “they” want to open Three Mile Island again. If you’re my age (or thereabouts), you’re thinking, “WHAT?!?” Yeah, me, too. You’ll be happy to know they aren’t trying to re-open the reactor that melted down. I mean, it melted down. It ain’t starting again. But they had two reactors at Three Mile Island and the other one just kept humming along until 2019, when they finally shuttered the plant.

Now they want to open it again – for one customer. That ONE reactor that can still work at Three Mile Island? That can produce 800 Megawatts of energy! 800 Megawatts is enough to power something like 800,000 homes. And they want to fire it back up and sell the power to one company. One. And guess who it is? Microsoft, of course.

The story is, it’s power for the future of AI. Would we be surprised to find, eventually, it was also power to “mine” bitcoin? I don’t know if you know this, but mining bitcoin takes MASSIVE amounts of electricity. The practice is horrible for the environment as it causes power plants to have to spew carbon into the atmosphere. So, at least a nuclear power source eliminates that threat.

Now all we have to worry about is a nuclear power plant built 50 years ago by the lowest bidder with a history of only one partial meltdown so…

The partial meltdown happened in Unit 2. Unit 2 went online December 30, 1978 and melted down March 28, 1979. Hey, they got three months out of it before it became the worst nuclear disaster in US history so, I’m feeling pretty good about, um, the fact that Three Mile Island is in Pennsylvania and I live in California…

Ballot Box Busters…

by MyBaconPress

Yeah, lets’ send him…
“We want to reach Mars before the end of my term.” Trump said that at a rally in North Carolina. I presume he means people reaching Mars since we’ve already reached Mars with machines. Maybe not, though. He might start taking credit for every mission that has ever gone to Mars, regardless of when it happened or even which country sent which machines. He just loves taking credit for things other people do. I’ve always presumed that was because he has never actually accomplished anything in his life. Come to think of it, I’d be okay with the idea of Elon just sending Trump to Mars…

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FORE!
The guy who staked out Trump’s golf course thinking he might get a shot has written a letter. He stated, flatly, that he meant to shoot Trump and that he is sorry he didn’t get it done. That’s not the kind of crazy that keeps you out of jail, but it’s crazy. They couldn’t have prosecuted him for attempted assassination unless they could prove his intent. Well, HE just proved his intent.

He was facing some gun charges. By the first thing Tuesday morning, he was facing FAR worse charges. There’s no way to know what he was thinking. All he had to do was shut up. I guess he’s no better at that than Trump…

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Close, mister, but no cigar…
Oh, too bad. I wrote a few days ago about Nebraska considering changing their system of electoral vote distribution in an effort to help Trump. The idea was, apparently, a scheme of some of the MAGA cult members but you know MAGA. If it’s cheating, they’re all in. So they tried. I’m happy to report, the scheme has failed and Nebraska won’t be rigging it’s system to benefit one candidate over another…

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The voices in his head…
Trump keeps “reporting” things and I find myself wondering, “How the hell could he know that?” Then I realize, he doesn’t. He’s just making stuff up. I just watched a clip of Trump at one of his rallies and he’s claiming “Joe Biden HATES her!” in reference to Kamala. Do you suppose Joe Biden is confiding in Donald Trump? I’m going out on a limb, here, but, I kind of doubt it…

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Not theft, but not moral…
The mayor of Wausau, Wisconsin was photographed personally removing a ballot drop box from in front of City Hall. Oh, sorry. Did I write “A” ballot drop box? I meant “THE” ballot drop box. As in the ONLY ballot drop box in the city. This clown, Doug Diny, is out there posing for photos and bragging that he’s making it more difficult to vote.

If you know anything, and clearly, MAGA doesn’t, you know that mail-in ballots are very safe. There are all kinds of safeties built in. But MAGA doesn’t like them. During COVID-19, many states turned to mail in ballots to protect people’s lives. MAGA had already decided that people were expendable and protecting their lives was for snowflakes so they objected. I’d say, rather energetically.

In fact, Trump recommended that people don’t use the mail-in ballots and go to the polls, instead, and MAGA obeyed. By the time the election rolled around, MAGA had been convinced (without evidence, mind you) that mail-in ballots were dangerous to democracy. Because, of course they were. MAGA can ALWAYS identify a “danger to democracy” – unless it’s a REAL danger to democracy. Those they miss, for some reason.

Spoiler alert: Trump lost that election. You know, the 2020 election. Yeah, he lost. Fair and square. He just got out-voted. Sure, it launched a now four-year temper tantrum, but he still lost. So, MAGA being MAGA, they decided he lost because of the mail in ballots. It violates their dogma to accept that Trump lost in 2020 because of the terrible, terrible job he did as President and people were tired of his shtick.

Trump, himself, had spent a lot of time telling people NOT to use the mail-in ballots. He was (dare I say?) wrong – and he lost because of it. AFTER he lost because he sucked at “Presidenting,” HE started telling people to go ahead and use the mail-ins if they wanted to, but MAGA, from sea to shining sea, tried to eliminate mail-in ballots everywhere possible and MAGA-tainted officials started eliminating ballot drop boxes.

This Diny dork ran on eliminating ballot drop boxes and he won so…let’s get them, no, it, out. The ONE box they had in the city, and he pulls it. When asked about it, he just focused on whether moving the box was legal. (It was.) He just ignored the question of whether it was a good idea. (It wasn’t.) So, he can’t be prosecuted for stealing the box. Can he be prosecuted for election interference?

MAGA, to hear them tell it, HATES election interference. I’m sure they would support an effort to prosecute ANYBODY who engages in any kind of election interference because of MAGA honor and dedication to truth, justice, and the American way, right? Ha, ha, that was fun. Of COURSE MAGA thinks taking the box out was a good idea. Of COURSE MAGA supports election interference when the people interfering are doing so FOR Trump. If they can’t cheat, they can’t win. It really IS that simple and they prove they know it by their own actions every single day…

Losing Is Less Fun…

by MyBaconPress

A quick word about crowd size. Take a long shot. Photograph the group. We see them from Kamala’s campaign. Trump’s are mostly close in. They can crowd 50 people around a candidate and snap the picture and it looks like there’s a huge crowd. The only actual photo that matters is the long shot that captures most of the venue and the entire crowd. So, maybe that insisting (against all evidence, by the way) that he has the largest crowds, he could prove it with long shots.

It’s an obsession with him, isn’t it? One of the ways Kamala unmanned him during the debate was a simple mention of his crowd size – and how people leave his rallies early. The debate took place on Sep 10. Today is Sep 23 and he’s still trying to “correct the record” on the topic. It comes up everywhere he goes. He wants someone, anyone, to please believe him and not their lying eyes. Being behind in this race seems to have really confused him. He seemed to enjoy it more when he thought he was winning. Now he just seems…desperate.

Just send the photos, okay? SHOW us your large crowd sizes. It’s a simple solution. But the guy who pretends to have easy answers to any problem, hasn’t thought of THAT simple solution to prove he’s correct? Weird. Hey, maybe he knows that a long shot wouldn’t prove anything but he’s a liar…

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Trump says he won’t run for President again. I’ll bet. It’s got to be rough on his desperately narcissistic ego, losing election after election. Hell, even when he won the electoral vote, he lost the popular vote. People just don’t like him. Oh, AND, he’s a very old man. He seems to be in cognitive decline. HE describes his ramblings as “weaving” and calls it brilliant. It never seems brilliant, to me. It seems more…incoherent.

So, the next election will see him, already old and incapacitated, at 82 years old. America has already decided that seems too old, too out of touch. The thing is, I worry that the real reason nobody will have to vote for him in 2028 is because there won’t BE a vote in 2028. He has said as much. Vote for me this time and you’ll never have to vote again. But even if nobody voted for him this year, I expect him to fall back on his coup plan, and seize the Presidency with the help of the House of Representatives.

I’m not the only one aware of this plan of theirs, thank the gods. People know what’s in the wind. I’ve been watching for some action, some response from Dems on how they might go about stopping such an underhanded move. So far? Crickets. Nothing. Nada. Based on past Democratic actions, I’m concerned the Dems will win the election, then sit back with a deer-in-the-headlights look while the GOP just swoops in, throws the election to the house with fraudulent claims, and steals the thing.

The closest I’ve come to hearing anything that might resemble resistance is that a small group of House Republicans (I think seven of them) have vowed to vote in accordance with the actual election outcome. That would, theoretically, leave MAGA with too few votes to pull off their coup. IF they follow through. And even they have already hedged their comment by saying they’ll support the actual outcome AFTER all the trials and hearings have been completed.

I’m all for allowing challenges but these will be pretend challenges cons just make up. If the LAST election is any indicator, they’ll make up charges that won’t hold up in any court in the land, but press those charges over and over. That leaves MAGA with a lot of time to convince the loyalists someone is trying to steal the election. (It’s like these people never learn!)

It also leaves time for MAGA to pressure and threaten the seven into possible submission. I wish there was something more dependable on the horizon, but at this point, Republican “honor” is all we have available. Lord, have mercy…

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I watched ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ this week. One of his guests was Bret Stephens, a writer for the New York Times. He said he’s waiting to hear some policy positions from Kamala and since he hasn’t, he just doesn’t know who he’ll vote for. Full disclosure? Stephens is a conservative. Of COURSE he can’t figure out who he’s going to vote for. He gets to choose between a Democrat (Heaven forfend!) and a dangerous and incoherent criminal moron (the comforting choice?) – and he just can’t decide.

The other guest that night, Stephanie Ruhle, pointed out to him that even if we don’t have policy details from Kamala at this point, we know exactly what Donald Trump wants to do to the country. I agree with Ruhle. Trump has a 900+ page agenda of exactly how he plans to dismantle America and turn it into Trumpistan. I don’t WANT to live in Trumpistan. We have an idea of who Kamala is but we know exactly who Trump is and I would rather risk Kamala than take a chance on Trump…

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Ooh, gods, not like that. Did you watch the 49ers? Through careful calculation and performance issues, they blew a 14 point lead – twice. They’ve managed to move themselves into dead LAST place in their division. This team is supposed to be the defending NFC Champions. Yeah, they’re dealing with injuries on offense. But it wasn’t the offense that failed yesterday. It was the defense – and it KEEPS being the defense.

The Niners have had a tough run facing their defense for the last four years. They had a brilliant Defensive Coordinator (DC) in Robert Saleh. But he got hired to be the head coach of the NY Jets. So, they replaced him with a guy named DeMeco Ryans. HE proved to be even better than Saleh was. For those two years, the Niners had the best defense in the game. But then Ryans was ALSO offered a head-coaching job, which he took.

That left the Niners looking for a new DC. They picked up a guy named Steve Wilks. Wilks may be good at the job somewhere but he wasn’t right for the role on the Niners. Andy Reid dismantled him in the Super Bowl the way Kamala dismantled Trump in the debate. So, he’s out, too. Now we’ve got a new guy, Nick Sorensen. Four Defensive Coordinators in four years.

It’s too early to tell how Sorensen is going to be, long-term. But so far, there hasn’t been much. Niner fans everywhere know the Niners have a weak secondary. Other teams can just throw the ball over the defense and score, almost at will. That’s not Sorensen’s fault. He just got here and the Niners defensive secondary has been sub-par for several years. But if the Niners can’t find an answer for their defense, they are destined to forever be also-rans.

I hope they figure it out soon. I would MUCH rather write about the Forty-Niners winning than losing. It’s just more fun…

Miscellanea – 9/22/24…

by MyBaconPress

God needs more atheists like me in his tent. I give him more credit than most of his followers. If you’re a person who claims to believe, that should bother you. It certainly bothers me…

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Wow, young people are coming out in droves to register to vote. The next trick, of course, is to get them to come out and actually vote. I suspect many of them will, assuming the GOP allows them to. (My Gods those people are doing everything they can to prevent people (on the left) from voting.) This is a big election. Many people don’t follow this stuff too closely. They start to “tune in” the closer the election gets. As young people have tuned in, they’ve felt the need to get involved.

A website called ‘Vote.org’ reported that 150,000 people registered. On Tuesday. Last year, they registered a total of 279,400 voters – for the whole year. It looks like people want to raise their voice in this race…

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“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” – JD Vance

“If I have to create stories to scare people enough to vote for us, then that’s what I’m going to do.” – kinda JD Vance

“If I have to create stories to convince people the country is in terrible shape, then that’s what I’m going to do.” – also kinda JD Vance

“If I have to lie to you to get elected, then that’s what I’m going to do.” – I mean, isn’t that what JD Vance is really saying?

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Harris agreed to a second debate. Big, tough Donald can’t make it. Uh-huh, I’ll bet. As always, he claims he won the last one. If he really believes that (he doesn’t) he’s the ONLY one who believes that. But I doubt he actually believes it because his campaign also offered up a host of made up “explanations” for why she won.

The biggest “tell” that indicates he knows he lost that one is that he won’t risk coming back and doing it again. He says there’s not enough time. I guess that means he wouldn’t want to reschedule expected golf games. It’s too bad. I really enjoyed watching her lead him around by the nose in the last one.

I feel like I need to enjoy this right now, while I’ve got the chance. I kind of expect to be angry and confounded listening to MAGA rejoice at the success of their coup in January, so I’ve got to savor it now…

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Well, the Niners (1-1) are playing the Rams (0-2) today. Both teams enter the game depleted. The Rams are lacking two of their best weapons. The Niners are down at least two of their best weapons. The game is difficult to predict because of the adjustments both teams will have to make just to field a team. They both need the win and this is a divisional game, giving the winner an effective two game bump on their opponent.

Mostly, I want to see Seattle (2-0) lose. They currently lead our division. They’re playing the Dolphins and, guess what? The Dolphins don’t even have their starting Quarterback. Injury, you know. It’s kind of wild how deeply injuries have already affected so many teams this season…

No Disguise At All…

by MyBaconPress

Trump went on Fox (of course) and expressed – in terms he understands – his surprise that Kamala is doing so well. He said he’s surprised she’s doing better than Biden. Here is the quote: “And she somehow—a woman—somehow she’s doing better than he did.”

Trump seems shocked that a mere woman could do better than Joe Biden and, by extension, better than Trump is doing. How could he possibly be beaten by a woman? The fact that he can’t accept the notion that a woman could possibly compete, let alone do better than him, tells you pretty much all you need to know about Trump and his attitude toward women…

I wonder why he didn’t say “that person who happens to be a woman.” He seems to think that “those people who happen to be (fill in ethnicity/gender)” lets him off the hook for whatever bigotry or misogyny he spews after. Apparently, “who happen to be” is quite the disguise for bigotry. He uses it like it’s some kind of magical disclaimer.

Trump spoke at an event Thursday night that was meant to highlight antisemitism. It certainly did that. I’m not sure they meant to do it by putting Trump up in front of the crowd and pointing a spotlight directly AT an Anti-Semite (“Hey, here’s one now!”), but that seems to be the way they “highlighted” it.

He said, “I’ll put it to you very simply and as gently as I can: I wasn’t treated properly by the voters who happen to be Jewish…I don’t know. Do they know what the hell is happening if I don’t win this election? And the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens, because at 40% that means 60% of the people are voting for the enemy.”

Setting aside his reference to his political opposition as “the enemy,” (which, obviously, could never incite violence, of course) he seems to be blaming Jewish people if he loses. Apparently it’s just me, but I start to get nervous when a fascist starts blaming “Jewish people” for things. It starts with one moron saying, “Oh, the Jews did it,” followed by purges, putsches, punishments, and pogroms. Well, we officially have the moron “blaming” the Jews, now. Based on history, what do YOU think is next?

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So now the Trump abortion ban is killing women – exactly as the cons were warned about. In Georgia, the exceptions for medical emergencies are written so vaguely doctors aren’t sure what’s legal and what’s not legal – so they’re afraid to act.

One side of this discussion likes to (falsely) call themselves “pro life” but their policies are now killing the mother and the pregnancies are “terminated” anyway. Causing MORE deaths doesn’t seem very “pro life,” to me. Trump’s dedication to avoiding accurate information has killed a LOT of people in this country and now the killings just keep on coming…

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Yeah, yeah, the whole thing is rigged, right? We’ve been listening to that crap for years, now, and there’s no sign it’s going away any time soon. BUT…as it happens, in THIS election, there is MUCH “rigging” going on. It’s just that it’s the Republicans doing the rigging.

Georgia keeps trying to change their laws so the election board can just, basically, set aside all of those pesky “votes” and choose the person they prefer. Spoiler alert: that will be Trump. No, they don’t say it that way. That will just be the result of what they’re doing. The last one I heard about? They’ve voted to hand-count all paper ballots, slowing the process enough to inject uncertainty that otherwise would not exist. That gives them wiggle room to pretend irregularities.

Nebraska is only one of two states that don’t play the “winner take all” game when it comes to distributing electoral votes. I happen to be a person who prefers that and I believe it was the intent of the founders to award electoral votes in accordance with the majority vote of the given electoral district. I don’t think ANY state should issue electoral votes in a bloc. BUT…

IF Nebraska divides their electoral votes the way they’ve long-since done, they believe their current form of distribution will help Kamala too much. So they want to change it. They want to help Trump, not Kamala. Obviously, election boards shouldn’t be helping either candidate but cons have dropped all pretense of believing in fair and honest elections. Now they’re just outright trying to help the old man. (The old criminal? The old raper? The very old, very weird criminal, raper. There. That’s it…)

What all of this means is that when you hear a con whining, crying, moaning, and groaning about how the election was “rigged,” you can validate that claim and explain to them EXACTLY how it was the GOP that worked so hard to rig it!

Quick question: the GOP is doing all of this preparatory rigging right out in the open. We’re watching them do it. It’s all done with an eye toward creating an illusion of problems in the election and they’re not keep it a secret at all. So, when they start screaming about problems with the election based on all of this rigging we’re watching them do, are we going to believe it? More importantly, what are we going to DO about it?

More MAGA Gaslighting…

by MyBaconPress

No. Just…no. I mean, I know MAGA will anyway, having no sense of irony or hypocrisy, but Trump does not get to suggest that Kamala saying Trump is a threat to Democracy incites violence after years, literally years, of defending Trump saying things like “Knock the hell out of him,” “Fight, fight, fight,” and “you’re not going to take your country back with weakness” as NOT inciting violence. We all still remember January 6th. We know who, exactly, inflamed and incited those people. Oh, AND we reject your attempted rewrite. We still remember the actual January 6th.

Especially since both sides have been calling their opponent a threat to democracy. Kamala thinks Trump is a threat to democracy. (I agree with her.) Trump pretends Kamala is a Marxist and wants to turn America Communist – AND Fascist at the same time. In fact, he just seems to string together words that easily frighten MAGA. He says we’ll live under anarchy AND tyranny in a “full blown banana republic.” He’s always sparse on detail, so I’m not sure how he sees anarchy and tyranny operating at the same time, hand in hand…

The difference? Well, for one, I’m not sure Trump could accurately define ANY of those political movements he’s citing to scare his base. He just knows these are “bad” things so he insists that’s what the left wants to do. He is just making things up as he goes along. (Although he may have seen it on TV…) He has no actual basis for saying any of those things.

On the other hand, Trump has a 900+ page agenda for exactly how he plans to destroy our republic and replace it with an authoritarian dictatorship. To my mind, it’s MUCH harder to deny one’s intent to dismantle democracy when one has a 900+ page plan all written out for anyone to read. Trump, as always, is a liar and his lies might well incite violence. Kamala is simply telling the truth – Trump IS a threat to democracy.

And do I really need to point out that neither of the accused have been hardcore Democrats? If anything, their political leanings tend to be nebulous. The guy who actually shot seems to have been trying to get into the history books. The second guy – the one who never even glimpsed Trump? – that guy voted for Trump in 2016. He was angry at Trump over Trump’s inadequate response on helping Ukraine. We all know Trump will help Putin.

But that’s hardly a radical Democrat trying to kill their precious. If anything, these seem to be disillusioned MAGA, having recovered from MAGA. I suspect more MAGA will react in similar fashion over time as they discover they’ve been betrayed by Trump. But only time will tell…

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It’s a fair question. If the golf round was a last minute decision, how did the potential shooter know to be there? But that’s the word. Trump didn’t have anything scheduled for the day, already stupid in a race he’s losing. So, without warning, he decided to golf. And, somehow, there was a shooter there, waiting for him? Again, no.

The idea that one might find Trump, at any given moment, out on a golf course isn’t that crazy. But knowing which course and what time seems the trick. Are we supposed to believe this guy just set up randomly, waiting until Trump played a round?

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I don’t feel good about Israel’s latest violence, using pagers with explosives in them. Israel expected these pagers to be carried by Hezbollah, an opposition group to Israeli encroachment. Israel didn’t know, or care, that someone else – like the civilians killed – might end up with them as well.

It was a surreptitious attack that killed randomly. I continue to have very low regard for the way Israel is prosecuting this war.

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Trump went to a rally in New York and asked the crowd to vote for him because “what the hell do you have to lose?” People were ready with answers. So far, the list includes years of progress on climate, the return of high tech manufacturing, our standing around the globe, the Affordable Care Act, Medicare and Social Security, our democracy, bodily autonomy, voting rights, representative government, and pretty much anything rational Americans hold dear. That, right there, is some BAD campaigning…

Things Are Getting Crazy…

by MyBaconPress

“I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I’ll bet he does. He used a bunch of AI-generated lies to pretend Taylor Swift was endorsing his criminal, raper ass. She wasn’t. In fact, because of his pretense, she felt she had to correct the record. She made a post endorsing Kamala. She’s honorable. She said everyone should do their own research and vote their conscience. It was just that HER conscience told her to avoid Trump because of how dangerous he is to society. The result?

Immediately after Taylor’s endorsement, something like 330,000 people showed up at a voter registration site! Swifties in action. Trump immediately started selling Swift rip-off merchandise. She should have her attorney’s send a cease-and-desist letter. All I DO know is that Trump hates her. Cry me a river. Oh, yeah, she’s worth more than him. A LOT more. And she didn’t grift hers or get it from daddy, she earned it.

Watch for MAGA to come out screaming. Celebrities shouldn’t endorse! They don’t mean that. They mean bigger celebrities than they can muster shouldn’t endorse Trump’s opponent. In truth, I suspect she would have endorsed Kamala sooner or later, anyway, but Trump forced her hand with his lie. I kind of feel like he got what he deserved.

But she won’t. Trump declaring, in all caps that he “HATES TAYLOR SWIFT” could be all it takes for some new nutball to try to “remove” Trump’s source of irritation – “Protect the Precious!” That could put Taylor Swift in real danger. In America, one is NOT supposed to be put in danger because the prefer a political opponent. And, yes, that DOES go both ways, in my mind…

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I think I should start this part by acknowledging that I don’t believe Trump ever got shot or even grazed. I know he pretended to in an effort to create sympathy. All I DO know is that the “hit in the ear” story does NOT comport with other, known facts. I can’t speak to any of the rest of it. I don’t know about the “blood.” It never looked right, to me. It was WAY too bright red. I honestly believe somebody actually died and others were actually injured. Trump just wasn’t one of them.

The lie is, a round from an AR-15 took off a piece of his ear. Nope. All you have to do is look at Evander Holyfield’s ear. Holyfield was a professional boxer. He fought a fight against Mike Tyson. Tyson wasn’t at his best and at one point, bit off a piece of Holyfield’s ear. BIT! IT! OFF! (Spoiler alert: Tyson was disqualified and lost the fight.)

To this day, Holyfield is sporting a “gap” where that piece of his ear had been. I mean, it has healed. But the ear never took on it’s old shape. The piece that was removed is still removed. Had Trump been shot in the ear, the piece that got “removed” would STILL be removed. Yeah, yeah, he wore a feminine napkin on his ear for a few days, mostly to highlight the pretense that he had been “shot.” Then he lost the pad and the ear was perfect again. Trump’s ear is pristine. It’s in perfect shape. But that is simply NOT the way ears heal – even Trump’s “god-like” ear.

I had a hard time accepting that. I couldn’t believe Trump might pull a political stunt that would actually get people killed just to gin up some sympathy. Was it a random coincidence that he just happened to look in the direction of the shooter just as the shots rang out? Or, was he watching for some signal, fully aware of what was about to transpire? I don’t know. It seems outside the realm of possibility. But Trump is the very definition of “outside the realm of possibility” and at this point? I wouldn’t put anything, no matter how horrific, past him.

Would Trump allow one (or more) of his loyal followers to actually die for political points? Well, from his point of view, the victim was ONLY “Small-folk.” He genuinely doesn’t seem to care about them at all (except to get their money). I suspect that, yes, he would risk the possibility of Small-folk dying in an effort to gain a few political points. But I don’t know any of that. All I know, for sure, is that Trump was never shot in the ear or anyplace else.

And now there are reports that there was more gunfire in the vicinity of Mr. Trump during one of his golf trips. He was never in any danger. As it happens, the gunfire was from a Secret Service agent who was patrolling one hole ahead of Trump. He spotted a rifle barrel sticking through a fence and opened fire. The guy with the rifle, reportedly, never fired a shot. When the Secret Service opened up, he ran. Somebody got a picture of his getaway car and the cops found the guy pretty quickly.

Now we’ll get all the details. Was he left? Was he right? So far, he seems to have spent most of his life left but he’s been moving right of late. He even voted Trump in 2016, though he later regretted the choice. MOSTLY, he seems tied up in Ukraine’s war and that’s where his sympathies lay. The current working theory – and it could change by the time you read this – is that he was mad at Trump for refusing to say he wanted Ukraine to win during the debate. Trump only said he wanted the war to “stop.”

I presume the right will now pile on the Secret Service as a “security failure,” but was it? Some guy breached the perimeter, sure, but he never even glimpsed Trump. The Secret Service neutralized the threat before Trump was in any danger, just like they’re supposed to. To my mind, that was a security success.

I don’t much like that people might be shooting at Trump, or trying to. All of the violence this culture promotes along with Trump’s own tough-talk is encouraging the wrong kind of discourse in this country. Vote him out. Don’t shoot him out. But I DO have to confess, after his fake at that rally in Pennsylvania where someone shot in his direction, I’m not sure I trust any of these so-called “assassination attempts.” It has crossed my mind that this is a prelude, the warm-up to get MAGA mad enough to pick up their own guns.

He suspects he’s going to lose in November again, even with Russia’s help. THAT leaves him his January coup and in order to pull the coup off, he needs confusion. For that, a MAGA mob, ready to “fight, fight, fight!” would be useful. And an armed MAGA mob would be FAR more effective – especially if they’re just itching to “get even” for the attempts on Trump’s life. One needs to sow those seeds early so they “sprout” at the right time. The attempts could be real but they could also be trumped up, staged events to inflame his supporters to violent action.

I’ll tell you this: I know how it sounds. Get out your tin-foil hats. It’s important to remember that much of this is (possibly/probably wild-eyed) speculation. But things just keep getting crazier and crazier out there and we KEEP learning that no matter how low things might get, MAGA always seems to find a new, lower low. That makes anything possible…

Cat Trouble…

by MyBaconPress

There’s a woman, Erika Lee, who is credited with starting the ‘Haitians-eating-pets’ rumor that remains untrue, no matter how badly MAGA wishes it were otherwise. She says she feels badly about kicking off such a kerfuffle. It seems a neighbor told her about a missing cat. Lee posted the story to Facebook, adding that the neighbor had told Lee she thought the cat had been attacked by Haitians.

The neighbor, Kimberly Newton, says SHE heard about the attack from a third party and Lee’s Facebook post misstated Newton’s story. Newton says the cat belonged to an “acquaintance of a friend” and not her daughter. If one wishes to be gracious, at best, this was a miscommunication, a misunderstanding. It strikes me as more likely Newton intended a smear on the local Haitian population – just not one that ended up going viral.

SO…we know the City Manager of Springfield has insisted no such event occurred, nor is there any problem with Haitians eating people’s pets. No other authority can confirm the pet-eating story, either. We ALSO know exactly who started the rumor and how it got started. The person who made it public, Lee, has now disavowed her claim and removed her post and the person who told her about the incident, Newton, suddenly can’t be reached for comment.

In short, there was never any realistic basis for this story, outside of that one crazy woman who ate one cat, isn’t Haitian, is a US citizen, doesn’t live in Springfield, and has been arrested for the crime. EVERYBODY associated with the story in a position to know has denied any truth to the story whatsoever. So, of course, MAGA is all in.

Now, in fairness, Trump was flummoxed. He had been beaten all over the stage in the debate. Kamala had baited him and he took it. A couple of his scariest scare stories had been fact-checked, real time, and proven false. He was frustrated, confused, and angry. He needed something to try to take back control of the evening and in a moment of confused, angry, frustration blurted out the story he had “seen on TV.” (More likely, he saw it one the internet, from a racist, Neo-Nazi hate-group called ‘Blood Tribe.’)

So now we have a story that’s JUST a story but Trump said it out loud so MAGA has to make it “true” and insists it is and follows up just exactly the way one would expect these deep thinkers to react: bomb threats. Each time a bomb threat occurs, officials have to shut down the building, sweep it with bomb-sniffing dogs, clear it, and then open it up again. It clogs up city business and schools. It costs a LOT of money.

I’ll tell you this: the very least Springfield should do is send the bill for the lost revenue and the cop’s time to Lee. Stupid should hurt the stupid person more than it hurts everyone around them…

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The truth is, I get it. The cons don’t have anything real to run on. If they don’t make stuff up, they might have to expose their true agenda – and even MAGA wouldn’t like that. So, they lie, instead. After Trump sicced his loyalists on Congress and THAT whole thing blew up in his face, there has been a concerted effort on the right to re-write those events. Obviously, the re-writes always somehow exonerate Trump.

It wasn’t his fault he sent all those worshipers to the Capitol that day to interfere with a Congressional function and “Stop the Steal” he KNOWS wasn’t a “steal.” There was no violence despite the violence. Nobody died, despite the deaths. It was a peaceful day, despite the riot. It was Pelosi’s fault, despite the fact she had no responsibility to it at all. Who are you going to believe, Trump’s lying mouth or your lying eyes? The perps are “warriors,” “hostages,” and “political prisoners,” victims all. But it’s all bullshit.

Now, most Republicans would prefer to distance themselves from Trump’s January 6th violence. They’ve installed the re-write into MAGA land and MAGA has ingested the false story completely. There’s not much more they can do so it would be best to just try to let it fade into distant memory. But, of course, Trump can’t keep control over his mouth and he keeps it in the spotlight.

He seems to feel that it’s very unfair, being held responsible for that thing he did and since he can’t convince anybody who doesn’t prefer to be deceived, it keeps nagging at him. He keeps trying. Meanwhile, his campaign keeps trying to eliminate references to J6. There is still a sliver of rationality in the GOP. THAT group knows J6 should go away as much as possible. But Trump is still courting the far-right racist vote – which is stupid because he already has the far-right racist vote. They LOVE that guy. They recognize him as one of their own.

Every day, I grow more concerned that Trump has given up on the election and plans to attain power in his January 3rd coup. At this point, for Trump, the coup is the simplest answer. All of the rest of this is just stage-setting. They need to go through the election so they can claim it was “rigged.” THAT’S the key to the coup…

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Boy, the Miami Dolphins are going through it, aren’t they? Their star receiver, Tyreek Hill, gave a cop some lip, got “handled” over it, and tried to get the cop fired. He has since admitted he behaved badly – but STILL thinks the cop should be fired.

I had an uncle who was a judge. He once told me that more people go to jail for ‘contempt of cop’ than any other “offense.” I suspect Hill doesn’t realize how lucky he is to have BEEN superstar receiver Tyreek Hill and smart-mouthing a cop. Yeah, he got cuffed for not cooperating. But then, they just wrote him a ticket and let him go. I suspect that most other black men smart-mouthing the cop would have received an opportunity to see the jail – from the inside.

Now, of course, we’re going to hear about every disciplinary action taken against that cop, valid or not, in an attempt to “fix” Hill’s reputation, such as it is. Hill shouldn’t have smart mouthed the cop. Even HE knows it. His original story was that he knows to cooperate. He initially claimed he had cooperated. Body camera footage proved otherwise. It took him three days to confess the truth. I think the final score on that one is cops – 1, Hill – 0…

But that’s not the end of Miami’s problems. Their Quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa (I can’t pronounce it, either) took a hit to the head that gave him a concussion. This is his third major concussion since he came into the league. There was at least one other incident that ended up not being officially classified a concussion but the dude was stumbling badly after the hit. MANY of his contemporaries are suggesting he retire to protect his health.

The guy is 26 years old. He spent his entire life trying to get to where he is. Walking away at this point would be very hard. But he should. He has much more life AFTER football and it would be better, for him, to live without the neurological damage he’s taking with every concussion…

Speaking of injuries, the Niners have lost Christian McCaffrey (CMC) for at least four more games. He missed the first one already. He’s a workhorse running back for them. His legs aren’t holding up. He came to the Niners from the Panthers, where he was kind of known for injury. The guy really IS an amazing running back. He just gets hurt a lot. He’s been solid for the last two seasons. I guess it was asking too much.

It doesn’t help that his head coach won’t do anything to protect him, either. Ask anybody who knows the game about how Kyle Shanahan uses his players. It’s almost universal. People wonder why he runs certain players nearly to death when he doesn’t have to. CMC has a VERY good backup in Jordan Mason. Most other coaches use both backs to protect both backs. Shanahan just runs one and sits the other. It’s kind of dumb. Long-term, it costs his team. But Shanahan isn’t a dumb coach so I presume he does it because players have incentives in their contract and he doesn’t want to be seen as trying to prevent them from getting their paydays.

But that’s just me, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt…