politics

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…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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…

Oh, Kay…

by MyBaconPress

Let’s just be sure we have this straight, shall we? Trump insists he won the debate, BUT… MAGA is also offering a number of “explanations” about the debate, as though he lost the debate. Oh, it was 3 on 1? Microphone earrings? Sure, whatever.

For the record, the moderators were NOT “only fact-checking him.” They were fact-checking the whole thing. He was the only one who needed correcting because he’s the only one who regurgitated internet rumors as facts. (“I saw it on TV!”) And, no, she wasn’t receiving input through her earrings. Hell, she didn’t NEED input through her earrings. She just knows her stuff.

When you get down to it, it’s the genius of MAGA manipulation. Their media gives them all of the possible stories, so they can pick and choose the one they like best that meets their MAGA needs. If they think he won, he’s out there insisting he did. That group is happy. If they know he lost, they are now armed with plenty of excuses. MAGA media claims both sides so MAGA lemmings can comfortably follow. It has an evil genius. It’s lying, and it’s destructive to the country, but it’s successful.

Either way, Donald has opted out of another debate, at this point. He says it’s because he won. Everyone else knows it’s because of what happened and how he can’t let that happen again. After a clock-cleaning like that, even MAGA might catch a glimpse of reality.

Donald knows he lost AND he knows he can’t beat her, so he’ll just avoid her from here on out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remember the pet eating lie? MAGA, it seems, is VERY upset people haven’t played along with that story so they’re…checks notes… sending bomb threats to Springfield, Ohio. Two days in a row. Bomb threats! The threats target schools and municipal buildings. Bomb threats are happening because Trump said something so stupid, no reasonably intelligent human being would accept it without checking for themselves, and if they DID check for themselves, they would find out it’s a lie. So, obviously, MAGA is all in.

This is an excellent opportunity to highlight something I’ve mentioned before. The problem with believing everything you see on TV is that, sooner or later, you’re going to want to start governing based on things you see on TV and, apparently, you don’t realize that SOME of the things you see on TV – and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this but – SOME of the things you see on TV? They aren’t real. They didn’t really happen. It’s often made up, make-believe. Can you imagine the terror he must live in, constantly concerned that a Targaryen might show up on a dragon and burn down Mar-a-Lardo?

But there’s Donny, out there promising to deport all the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio because he believes they’re eating people’s pets. They’re not. But he saw it on TV. No, they’re just not. He’s been told they’re not on national Television. Hey, why didn’t he believe THAT? He can see THAT on television, too. The dude is just weird.

A spokesperson for weird little JD Vance’s campaign has denounced the bomb threats. No, he’s not going to stop spreading the lie causing the threats but at least he pretends to oppose them…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m glad Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala. I sort of wish she had done it a couple of days later, though. Kamala is enjoying a boost in the polls since the debate. I suspect that would have been the case no matter what, after the exceptional way she handled Trump. I would have liked to see the debate bump in her polls, then the Swift bump in her polls. The way it happened, both bumps will happen together and it will be difficult to know which did what, you know? (What a lovely “problem” to have, though; which event most helped Harris surge in the polls?)

When Swift made her endorsement, she encouraged her fans to do their own research. Normal people know that’s the right answer, but only if you do decent research. MAGA asks Sean Hannity if what Laura Ingram just said was true. That’s not “research.” That’s bias confirmation. So until sanity returns to this once-great nation, just take my word for it: vote Harris/Walz – for your own good. (Settle down, MAGA. That’s just for fun…)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It seems the thing MAGA does better than any other thing is promote the worst of the worst of humanity. Their beloved precious, Donald Trump, is the physical personification of the Seven Deadly Sins. One can not be a less developed, or more odious, human being. So, obviously, he sits at the pinnacle. ALL MAGA below him vie to move closer to him by revealing more and more horrifying character traits. The more you lie, the better you do. The more aggressive your lie, the better you’ll do. The meaner your spirit, the higher you soar in MAGA land.

Not afraid to show off your bigotry? Awesome, move up a notch. Happy to dismantle the Constitution? Here’s your reward. Ready to insist Trump is a demigod? Here, have a seat on Trump’s plane. The lower they go, the higher they soar in MAGA land.

Enter Laura Loomer. (Eww, perhaps I should rephrase that.) She’s a fast-rising star in Trump’s world because she readily displays all the very worst of humanity, which he really admires. She’s SO bad, she even has other MAGA irritated at how quickly she has grown close to Trump.

MTG was once the standard bearer of crazy for MAGA. Now Loomer carries the flag and MTG doesn’t like it. In MAGA land, they suspect that Loomer is the reason Trump told the pet eating story. It’s creating something of a civil war in MAGA land. I’ll be watching for wanna-be darlings MTG and Matt Gaetz to do or say something really outrageous soon in an effort to try to regain their advantage.

I’ll tell you this: the crazier HE gets, the crazier his entourage gets. To those of us who aren’t MAGA, it feels like we’ve reached “rubber room in a straight-jacket” level…

More On The Debate…

by MyBaconPress

Or, should that be ‘Moron In The Debate?’ Trump apparently thinks he won. Or not. He says so in public because he’s incapable of saying anything else. The question is, what is he measuring? If his goal was to firm up support among those who already worship his every breath, he probably did okay. If his goal was to convince non-MAGA that he has some leadership skills, OMG, did he fail! That is, did he gain even a single voter?

The thing is, he ALSO said the debate was “rigged.” If he loses, it’s always “rigged.” That…former President simply cannot conceive that he might have lost something fair and square. Pure narcissism. He was fact-checked in real time a couple of times. (Not enough.) Because since facts don’t match his delusions, he decided the FACTS were wrong, so the moderators must be on Team Kamala. He said the debate was “a three on one.”

After the debate, he posted a bunch of snap polls from far-right websites showing that MAGA thinks he won by a large margin. Sure, the polls from far-right websites are certainly going to be MAGA-heavy. Hell, the people who participated in the polls may not have even watched. They didn’t really need to. All they needed to do was vote in those polls for their guy.

Outside of MAGA land, though, I don’t think anybody calls him the winner and I seriously doubt he brought in one new vote. In fact, I’d say there’s a strong possibility that he turned some off. There must be some conservatives who don’t yet qualify as MAGA who thought they’d vote Republican because they’ve always voted Republican but after watching his performance, have decided they can’t vote for that. They may not swing all the way over to Kamala but they may just sit out this election.

I enjoyed watching Kamala play him like a Stradivarius. Did you see how easily she baited him into defending his effing crowd size? He simply can’t control himself. He just…responds. So what happens when Putin comes calling and praising Donald for his big crowds? I’m guessing Donald hands over the nuclear codes while basking in the “praise.” He’s a buffoon. Dictators around the world know it and they’re salivating at the prospect of being able to play the gullible fool in the future.

Obviously, MAGA is all in on Trump, no matter what. They’ve crafted an entire narrative about what an amazing human being he is and they simply dismiss all of the evidence against him. And there is SO MUCH evidence against him. It’s a mountain of evidence. The guy is a useless wasteland of a human being, but MAGA can make him anything they like. So they do.

It continues to boggle the mind, how loyal they remain. I find myself wondering what kind of damage such cognitive dissonance can do. I keep waiting for some moment when MAGA realizes they’ve been played for fools but they just keep hanging in there. Then I remember, in other cults, some of them NEVER realize how far wrong they were and are. Some of “Manson’s Children” STILL think he was something special. MAGA might never recover…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, the comment about “eating cats in Springfield, Ohio?” I was curious. Often, MAGA stories aren’t just made up out of whole cloth. Often, there’s some kernel of truth that gets built on and distorted. As it happens, this is one of those. There’s a woman in Canton, Ohio who killed and ate a cat. She was arrested and is in jail and has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Oh, yeah, she was born and raised in the US. She’s a US citizen.

MAGA just added all the other stuff to make it a little more frightening and a lot more racist. (Or vice-versa). They changed the town to make it just a little harder to trace the story, though, not much. They blamed Haitians. Suddenly it wasn’t just one cat, eaten by one struggling person. Now it’s “pets for lunch” all day, every day. My question? How far can one stretch an otherwise true story before it becomes a lie? I think we’ve seen at least one answer, here.

Still, it should concern every American that one of the debate participants repeated that silly story as true, and then continued to repeat the story even after being informed, live on TV, that the story was false. He just couldn’t accept the idea that he might have been mistaken so he preferred to look stubbornly stupid. Weird choice, but…okay.

How many policy decisions do you think he’ll make based on scary rumors from the internet? I’m guessing, all of them…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It looks like prices will be going up at the pump again. Much of this country is on fire, including areas in the south near refineries. So they had to shut down the refineries for safety. Count on a price spike. Count on cons blaming Biden. But the cons brought us this climate change, not Biden…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Dems are doing something I don’t much care for. They’re calling Trump’s tariffs a “tax” on the American people. The thing is, tariffs are not a direct tax on Americans. They’re a tax on companies sending goods into America. Splitting hairs? Maybe. But it allows Trump to claim, honestly, that Dems are lying about his tariffs.

To be clear, Trump’s tariffs WILL increase all Americans day to day cost of living. The taxes on the companies simply get built into the price, making everything more expensive. They have the effect of a national sales tax, but they are NOT, technically, a national sales tax and I wish the Dems would stop saying otherwise. Just tell people things are going to get more expensive under Trump’s plan. THAT part is true…

Round 2 to Dems…

by MyBaconPress

Well, I’d say Kamala won the Tuesday night debate. To me, it seemed the longer she remained composed, the worse he melted down. By the end he was ranting about entire cities being taken over by undocumented immigrant gangs (they’re not) and people eating other people’s pets. He got fact-checked a little bit, in real time, and was told the City Manager of the city in question has no reports of immigrants eating people’s pets. Donald knows it’s true, anyway. He doesn’t need no stinking confirmation from people who know. He has rumors.

At one point, he even kind of acknowledged he was simply repeating scary rumors from the internet. I mean, he didn’t say it in those words, and, sadly, I’ve forgotten the exact moment. I just remember the impression: he just confessed to using internet rumors as his “source.” (It’s things like this that keep me an opinion-writer and not a “journalist.”)

I can’t believe how long it has taken me to understand that when Donald says “some people are saying,” he means, “I read on the internet.” The guy is actually trying to craft world policy from information he’s picking up from some slaphead on the web? (DO I recognize the implications of that sentence to my own writing? Do me a favor, do NOT craft policy from my opinions alone, k?) He doesn’t believe the FBI or actual officials but is dedicated to the insane musings of the incel “Whiteisright69?”

He insisted that countries around the world are emptying their prisons and sending all of their prisoners to the US. (They’re not.) When he couldn’t even respond to something with a decent internet rumor, he just made stuff up. No, the economy was not flat-lined as he left office, according to him. It was thriving. Don’t you remember? (No.)

I heard talking heads wondering aloud why they didn’t hear more “policy” from Kamala. I did NOT hear the same questions about Trump. I assume that’s because we ALL expect Trump to just rant and rave and there won’t be one word of policy because that’s just who he is. So, what, they just don’t expect it from him anyway? By the way, I heard plenty of policy ideas from Kamala, just not in-the-weeds details. And how boring would THAT have been?

What I heard from Donald was the plot of the teen horror film ‘Invasion From The South.’ He tried to blame Biden/Harris but she STILL has his late night phone call killing the immigration bill in her back pocket. He did that. HE owns the border problem now until she gets inaugurated and can try the bill again. But facts don’t faze the Donald and he’s not going to start using them now so he just plodded on, trying to scare as many people as he possible could.

In fact, he didn’t answer a single question. He acknowledged the question, then returned to his fear-mongering about immigrants. “That question about the economy is important but… Aah! They’re coming! They’re getting closer! They’re EVERYWHERE! She’s letting it happen! They’re almost at your door! Be afraid! She wants this to happen! Be VERY afraid! If she wins, you’ll have to let foreigners eat your dog! You’ll have to. They’ll make it a law. AAH!”

That was his response, essentially, to every question. He was a one-trick pony and it was a boring trick. We’ve heard it all before. To hear MAGA tell it, we live in a dystopian wasteland and all you have to do is look outside and you’ll see that it’s…well, you can’t see it now but surely it’s just around the corner and threatening…threatening. Oh God, it’s so scary.

He DID go on a deranged rant about babies being “aborted” AFTER delivery and how much Dems just love, love, love that. He was fact-checked, real-time on that one, too. Nope. There’s not a single state in the union where such a practice is legal. Although every sane person knows it’s not happening, someone had to tell him it’s not happening. (He DID, after all, read it on the internet.) He’s impervious to truth, though, so he didn’t believe the fact-check. He has internet rumors that say otherwise.

He kept making that face. It reminds me of nothing so much as an Orangutan. It’s a pulled up “smile” he likes to throw out, a kind of a smirk. I think he feels like it throws shade. I think it made him look like he might be filling his diaper in the moment, the way infants sometimes smile when they’re filling their diapers.

She acknowledged, early on, that Trump was going to lie and fear-monger. It’s really all he has. It’s his whole shtick. Then, she was able to just point back to that prediction over and over as he lied and fear-mongered. I thought she handled him easily. She looked cool, calm, and collected. She looked smart and professional. She had control of her information and just breezed past his misinformation and never took any of his bait. He took hers, though. It left him looking confused and frankly, rather stupid. I mean, internet rumors? Really?!?

It left her looking very Presidential…