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…