politics

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…

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.

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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…

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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…)

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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…

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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…

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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…

Savvy Stuff…

by MyBaconPress

Okay, this is a bit confusing. The House Republicans have a stopgap spending measure proposal that includes a poison pill that makes it a non-starter in the Senate. They know it. They just don’t care, BUT…

The House Republicans are ALSO quite aware that if there’s a government shutdown right before the election because they want some stupid provision that has nothing to do with spending, they’ll lose the election. Quite the conundrum, yes? It’s almost like they should drop their poison pill and just pass the spending measure.

So, of course, they’re refusing to drop their poison pill and it will stay in for now. That is some savvy politics, cons. Real savvy…

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I guess we’re supposed to be fooled. I guess we’re supposed to be fools. Putin said he was supporting Harris for President. No, really. He said it out loud. It’s true, he had a bit of a wry smile on his evil face when he said it, but he said it.

I suspect that statement is intended to throw everyone off as to Putin’s election interference on behalf of Trump, not Harris. It’s yet another of those ‘actions speak louder than words’ things. If he says he supports Harris but works tirelessly to elect Trump, who does he really support?

Putin can’t control Harris the way he controls Trump. Putin doesn’t get the same access to American intelligence with Harris that he gets with Trump. Putin doesn’t dictate to a White House run by Harris the way he does to Trump. Putin can’t count on blind acceptance of his actions with Harris like he can with Trump. Why would Putin prefer Harris to Trump?

I’ll tell you this: you can call me a cynic, but I suspect Putin might be lying…

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US Steel wants to sell it’s holdings to Nippon Steel. One of the last American steel companies wants to disappear and become part of a Japanese steel company. This is a $14 Billion dollar merger. The Biden administration is concerned about the sale, fearing it creates a national security issue. What if we end up at war with Japan? Where do we get steel? The response? War with Japan? One of our closest allies? How is THAT going to happen?

I’m going to suggest that just because the route to such an event might be difficult to see doesn’t mean it can’t happen. I’m thinking about the time the US talked Ukraine into giving up all of it’s Soviet-era nukes, promising military support, assured that Russia would never invade Ukraine with the US backing Ukraine. Apparently, THAT was “difficult to see” as well.

But Japan IS a foreign country with their own concerns and goals. And remember, Trump named effing CANADA a foreign threat so he could slap a tariff on them. Might he antagonize Japan the same way, causing them to retaliate?

Oddly, perhaps, military security is one of MY primary complaints about off-shoring so many American jobs. One of the primary reasons we (the US) were in a position to respond in WWII is because we had so many factories that were able to be converted quickly into war production. Now most of those factories are gone – along with that ‘military readiness’ agility.

In an effort to scare people into supporting the sale, US Steel is saying if they sale doesn’t go through, they’ll have to close some mills. They might even move their headquarters out of Pittsburgh. But, but…if the sale DOES go through, the headquarters is definitely moving out of Pittsburgh, right? The Union is concerned Nippon Steel wants to close some types of steel mills anyway, so what, exactly, is the threat? If the sale doesn’t go through, we close some mills and move the headquarters, whereas if the sale DOES go through, we close some mills and move the headquarters? Oh, is THAT the differe- wait, what? Say, why can Nippon Steel invest in the mills and US Steel can’t? Could that be because the CEO of US Steel is currently making nearly $17 million/year in compensation?

Apparently US Steel ain’t what it used to be. It was founded in 1901 and became the first company to hit the Billion dollar valuation mark. Steel from US Steel built America. But there have been decades of mismanagement after, taking US Steel from the flagship steel company to one of the smaller players by comparison. Maybe the sale wouldn’t have much noticeable impact on the availability of steel in America. Perhaps it’s just the idea of US Steel being owned by a non-US company.

It will be interesting to see how the cons react to all of this. On the one hand, Trump is always screaming about bringing American jobs back, so sending some away seems like something the cons would dislike, BUT…

If the cons oppose the deal, they’re essentially agreeing with Joe Biden. Can’t have that. I suspect when someone asks Trump about it, he’ll give a response along the lines of, “Steel is steel, but have you SEEN how unfair life is to poor, wonderful me? EVERYTHING you love is about to suffer, burn, and DIE!, DIE!, DIE! and only I can save you because I’m so effing wonderful and the very best of the best and – Oh, Biden, I call him Sleepy Joe, isn’t that funny? I call him Sleepy Joe and I’m beating him by a mile. I’m winning in ways he never imagined. I’m just so wonderfully perfect, things are already getting better – in anticipation of my coming back. I don’t even see him on the campaign trail anymore, can you imagine that? He’s not even trying, I’m beating him so badly. Just like we beat Obama before because he can’t… he didn’t… but they’re laughing at you, the whole world is laughing at you. Joe Biden has made America a laughing stock and the entire UN did NOT laugh at me right in my face, they didn’t. That’s fake news. I like to say, ‘ake-Fay ews-Nay.’ (That’s a foreign language because I’m so smart. I had an uncle at MIT.) It’s SO unfair, SO unfair, what they’re doing, so I’m going to lock them all up. They’re using “lawfare” against me and that’s a terrible thing so I’m going to use lawfare against them because THAT will be perfectly okay. So unfair. I’ll save you. Only I can save you. Monsters and Boogie men and brown people, isn’t that scary? Aren’t you scared? I’ll throw everyone out and everyone else in jail. I’ll get them all. They’ll go to jail. They will. And then I…”
“Hey, will you shut that thing off, please?”
“He seems just a bit more unhinged every day, doesn’t he?”

HE Admitted It – Out Loud…

by MyBaconPress

OMG, you trusted the guy. When he said the 2020 election was “stolen,” you took his word for it. Sixty lawsuits were filed. ALL SIXTY were thrown out of court for lack of evidence, because what Rudy, et al, we trying to present doesn’t qualify as evidence. There was no evidence but still, you believed. You believed because he needed you to believe. You took him at his word. Hell, you fought for him. Some of your friends even went to jail for him – because he said the election was stolen. He insisted he had won and the outcome had been rigged.

People tried to tell you. They only wanted to help but they were met with disdain. DO NOT contradict my precious, you said. If he said the election was stolen, the election was stolen, you said. Trump said it, you believe it, that settles it, right? So…how do you feel now?

According to right-leaning ‘USA Today,’ Trump has quietly admitted that he did NOT win in 2020 and he has always known he didn’t win in 2020. He said it out loud. Specifically, during an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman on August 4, he said, “He beat us by a whisker. It was a terrible thing…” Not only that, he said it on August 8 at a Moms For Liberty meeting and August 23 at the southern border. Three times in August, he has confessed that he lost the 2020 election.

Three times is not a misstatement. It’s a confession. Remember, my source on this is the right-leaning ‘USA Today’ so MAGA can just fan the claim that it’s some kind of liberal smear. More, Nick Fuentes, a far right “white nationalist” – a current euphemism for bigot – had some questions and I think they’re questions every MAGA should be asking.

“So, why did we do Stop the Steal?” Fuentes wanted to know. “Why did anyone go to Jan. 6? Why did anyone go to jail? It would have been good to know that before 1,600 people got charged,” Fuentes said on his podcast, referring to the criminal charges for those who invaded and ransacked the Capitol. “It would’ve been good to know that before (I) had all my money frozen, put on a no-fly list, banned from everything, lost all my bank and payment processing.” He went on to call it a “tremendous betrayal” and “callus indifference to the sacrifices that his supporters made on his behalf.”

It very definitely was that, a tremendous betrayal and absolutely callus indifference. It shouldn’t be a surprise. He told you to your faces, he doesn’t care about you, he just needs your vote. You laughed, as though he was joking. He wasn’t joking. He really doesn’t care about anything but himself. He didn’t have the slightest concern about what his lies did to you. He only cared about what his lies might do FOR him.

Now Fuentes is promising sustained opposition to Trump. Funny that. If you let your friends go to jail, and then let them know you lied about WHY they went to jail, they tend to get pissed off at you. So…

Dear MAGA,
Trump, himself, said he lost the 2020 election. He admitted it at least three times in August alone. That’s not a “smear” from the left. It’s not a talking point. Trump said it, out loud, at least three times! The 2020 election was fair. It was NOT stolen. Trump lost it, fair and square. MAGA King Donald J. Trump said so. Right leaning USA Today reported it. Right wing, bigoted nutball Nick Fuentes is furious about it. All of them, right leaning sources.

I have no interest in gloating. I’ve said all along, MAGA is deceived. I would happily welcome you back to the realm of decent humanity. I would like to know the scales have fallen from your eyes but I don’t want, need, or wish to punish you for believing. It’s not your fault you put your faith in a conman who lied to you. That’s what con men do. But now HE has told you you were conned. HE has confessed the deception with his own mouth – at least three times.

I “get” that you won’t believe me. But will you believe one of your own in Nick Fuentes? Will you believe a right-leaning source in ‘USA Today?’ Will you believe Trump himself?

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In a completely unrelated…no, I mean totally related event, a one-time doctor from Massachusetts is on her way to jail – because she believed Trump when he lied about the election. She’s got to server nine months in prison and then nine more in home confinement. She says she’s very sorry she punched that cop during that oh-so-peaceful “unauthorized tour.”

She got sentenced AFTER Trump started confessing he had lied about losing the election. She participated in the assault because of the lie. Now she’s going to prison. How does SHE feel today? I don’t mean to be unkind, but if he is STILL her “Precious,” after she gets sent to prison because he lied to her, she kind of gets what she deserves…

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MAGA DID try to keep his media group at the top. They did. When TMTG (Trump Media & Technology Group) hit the stock market, people who have NO business dallying in the stock market started buying the stock. The price shot through the roof, despite the complete lack of anything to justify the price. It was just a buying spree that ran up the price based on the idea that they loved Trump. But those things don’t last. After a while, investors look at fundamentals and when the numbers aren’t right, the stock price adjusts, or, in Trump’s case, crashes.

At one point, TMTG was trading at $79.38/share. The same stock closed Wednesday slightly below $17/share. Think about being the sucker, um, guy who bought that stock at, say, $78/share, definitely thinking he was making a shrewd investment. He’s down around $68/share and he’ll never get that back.

Trump is DEFINITELY not a shrewd businessman. He’s not even competent. It’s almost as if he lied about his business skills. Oh yeah, did you hear that he lied about losing the 2020 election, too? Turns out, he knew it all along…he said so himself!

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Hey, Boeing managed to bring it’s Starliner “maybe spaceship” back to Earth safely! If only it could have brought back the astronauts it took to the ISS. I feel like Boeing has taken the cost cutting just a little too far…

Trying…

by MyBaconPress

Well, I’m glad to see some mainstream media finally shining a light on Trump’s intentions. The Guardian on Tuesday had a story called, ‘Trump and allies plant seeds for ‘chaos and discord’ if he loses, experts warn.’ It’s all about how the right is ALREADY whining about how unfair the election is going to be if Trump doesn’t win. In short, they’re already setting up their January coup. Note to MAGA: the fact that your guy loses doesn’t mean the election was rigged. Your guy sucks…

Do you think Trump knows he shouldn’t sit home on Labor Day and not campaign at some union hall or the like? Of course he knows. He’s just not bothering anymore. Now that the polls have swung in Kamala’s direction, he knows his last chance is the January coup, in which he’s simply installed by the House of Representatives after the election is fraudulently declared invalid due to unprovable errors and actions.

That’s why he’s not making efforts to pick up new voters any more. For one thing, he knows he can’t. For the other, he really needs to focus on keeping current MAGA confused and in a frenzy so when he says, “Lie!” they will. So HIS campaign stops are, increasingly, in areas he’s already expected to do well in.

At this point, virtually the ONLY way I can think of to stop them from doing this is if enough Republicans who still love America resign their seats in the House with immediate effect, but do so only when there’s not enough time to be replaced by other, more “loyal” MAGA. Such a move would give control of the House to Democrats and remove Mike Johnson as Speaker, eliminating the threat.

There may be some other route Americans can take to protect America but I don’t know what it might be and, try as I might, I haven’t heard a peep from officials about what they might do to stop it. You see, technically, the way their plan is drawn up, everything they do will be consistent with the Constitution and law. The only problem with it will be that it’s all based on a lie. The election will be fine. In fact, since they’ve been whining and crying about how unfair the election was in 2020, I suspect this will be the most scrutinized election in American history. But that won’t stop MAGA from lying. NOTHING stops MAGA from lying…

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I’m glad Unions are back in the conversation. They proved themselves to be important components of a healthy economy. Unions found themselves under serious attack back in the 1980’s. Reagan busting the Air Traffic Controllers Union set the stage for how to bust unions in general and companies have been attacking ever since, to the obvious detriment of the workers and society as a whole.

It will be tough, restoring Unions, to be sure. The One Percent don’t like unions because unions have bargaining power. FAR too many Americans have been convinced that unions are somehow bad for them and they should oppose them. It’s true, these are the same people who think Climate Change is fake and Trump is awesome, but there are a LOT of them and wrongheadedness in large numbers is difficult to overcome.

But at least the conversation is back. At last it seems like people are starting to know, again, things we knew before…

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Well, the NFL season is kicking off. Tonight, I mean. I’m looking forward to it. You’ll probably read about it here. For instance, the Kansas City Chiefs have won the last two Stupor Bowls. If they win it again this year, it’s called a “three-peat.” It’s a term I believe that was originally coined by Roger Craig of the San Francisco Forty-Niners when THAT team was playing to win a possible third straight. Spoiler alert: the Niners never got their chance. Ironically, Craig fumbled the football on the Niners last play and the NY Giants beat them with a field goal in the NFC Championship game.

I mention it because I’m not looking forward to a full season of “Ooh, can they do it?” It MUST be a through-line the networks will follow, though. Those guys have to talk for hours each week about football. Sure the game is complex but it still comes down to “get the most points.” So, they look for story lines they can carry through the season, and a Chiefs three-peat is definitely on that list. We’ll hear about it every time the Chiefs are on television – in between gratuitous shots of Taylor Swift – and we’ll hear about it during other games, too.

There’s a risk that every time I turn on a game this year, I’ll be reminded that the Chiefs beat the Forty-Niners in the last Stupid Bowel. Yeah, I remember. Thanks…

Reprehensible…

by MyBaconPress

The cons just keep scratching and clawing for something, anything, to attack Kamala with. Right now, they’re pretending that doing a joint interview with her VP pick is an unusual thing to do and that she needed him there because a woman always needs a big, strong man to protect her, right?

Okay, so…wrong. As it happens, EVERY presidential candidate has at least one interview with the VP pick sitting next to them. Trump did it with Pence, four years before challenging his acolytes to hang Pence. Hey, did Captain Bonespurs need Pence there to be the “big strong man” protecting him?

These guys keep trying to attack Kamala as doing things THEY do THEMSELVES! I guess they know what passes as reprehensible. They just pretend it’s not them, it’s their opponent.

But it’s them…

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By now, we all know Trump went into Arlington and disrespected the military members buried there and broke the law by filming a campaign ad in areas where one is not allowed to film. Now, you know Trump’s team didn’t know or care about right or wrong, legal or illegal. He was trying to look like he gives two figs about the military after denigrating Medal of Honor recipients. (He doesn’t.) His team decided a trip to Arlington would fit the bill perfectly. Reportedly, there was a bit of a scuffle as they pushed past a cemetery worker trying to stop them from breaking the law.

Now that they’ve GOT their illegally filmed commercial, they’re denying they filmed a commercial AND insisting the scuffle never happened, but “the employee started it.” Hmm, “the employee started it” sure sounds like the scuffle happened, doesn’t it? My favorite is when weird old JD Vance went to a rally and said, “You guys in the media, you’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite…” Well, yeah, but only because Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite. Do you know what makes those weasel words? “TV commercial.” So far, as far as I know, it has only been a social media commercial. They haven’t played it on TV. (Yet.)

By the way, yes, I know there are MAGA who will defend his actions. There are MAGA who will pretend it never happened, even though the video is out there. There are MAGA who will pretend it was all hunky-dory even though it was illegal. There are always MAGA happy to stand up and spew whatever story needs to be “confirmed.” But MAGA is NOT a good, dependable source on anything. Part of being in Cult 45 is being willing to lie about anything at any time.

But the basic facts of the disgrace remain: Trump illegally filmed a campaign ad in a restricted area of Arlington National Cemetery and his team pushed a cemetery employee out of the way to do it…

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The Donald J Trump, ‘Roberts Supremely Kangaroo Court’ is doing what they can for Trump but, apparently, it’s not enough. It turns out, Trump’s nearly perfect immunity doesn’t extend to acts NOT considered official business of the President – like interfering with elections. So, he has been re-indicted on those charges, cleaned up a bit for the illegal things he did with the DOJ the Kangaroos said was actually a-okay. Of course, he’s spinning out over it.

So, he goes on Fox Not-News and spews, “Whoever heard, you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it…” That sounds like a confession, to me. But not JUST to me. LOTS of people are hearing a confession in his statement. Every right to do it. So, I guess Trump and MAGA would be happy if, say, Biden interfered in the election? Biden is the current, sitting President. Why wouldn’t HE have the “right” to interfere in an election, too?

Trump just kind of says anything he needs to say in the moment, without ever thinking about how that might impact anything else. So, he “defends” himself to MAGA on Fox Not-News, without considering he is probably implicating himself in court. That’s not smart. It’s not even rational.

Trump and the Little Trumpsters are already setting up the “stolen election” lie. They’ve started pretending pretty much everything that can go wrong, WILL go wrong and it’s all because of Biden. Unless Trump wins, of course. Then they’ll have to stop the stories and insist there’s never been a more honest election. Why, it’s almost as if Trump and MAGA lie about everything, all the time.

But I’ll tell you this: I don’t think Trump is going to win. I think he’s going to lose, so I think we’ll hear the whining. When you DO hear that, remind MAGA that, according to them, the President has “every right” to interfere with elections. Then, carefully observe their “fair and balanced” reactions. If nothing else, it will be fun watching them defend Trump/decry Biden for the exact same thing. It’s no wonder they’re losing their minds…

Evolution (D) and Self-Pity (R)…

by MyBaconPress

We’ve all experienced the phenomenon of politicians saying things during campaigns that end up not happening. Sure, sometimes, they were just lying outright on the campaign trail, like Trump. But sometimes, I believe, they actually are describing things they would like to get done only to get into office and find out they can’t for some reason. Maybe there’s an existing, conflicting law. Maybe some group suffers if someone does that (hypothetical) thing. They didn’t lie, exactly. They were speaking “aspirationally.” It just doesn’t, perhaps can’t, happen.

Kamala is out there defending the fact that some of her positions have evolved over time. For clarity, I think that’s a sign of solid thinking and a strong mind. As it happens, I believe actually smart people are never afraid to admit mistakes or re-think a position. Actually smart people are actually NOT threatened by mistakes. (NOW is an excellent time to think about Trump. Have you ever, and I mean EVER, heard him admit an error? No, neither have I. That’s a sure sign of a small mind.)

So, Kamala once opposed fracking completely. Now she’s a less fierce opponent. Sure, that could be a campaign position. It could also be that, as VP, she learned more on the topic and updated her position.

Maybe it’s something as simple as this: She knows that we either get off of fossil fuels, ending the need for fracking and eliminating the process by attrition, or we keep dragging our feet in the name of the great god Profit – rendering the planet unfit to maintain human life, wipe ourselves out, and end fracking that way…

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On Thursday, Trump tried telling people that he would force insurance companies to pay the full cost of IVF and that a six-week abortion ban was too short. He thought there should be more time. On Friday, he told Fox Not-News that he was going to support Floriduh’s pending six week abortion ban.

Quick question: aren’t the cons the group that think the government shouldn’t help anybody but rich people at any time? Aren’t they the group always trying to eliminate programs that help people? Why would he suddenly support instituting a huge, very expensive program he would almost certainly have to tax rich people more to pay for? Answer? He wouldn’t. He’s just talking, pandering for votes he’s not going to get.

He was oh-so-proud to have installed the “Justices” necessary to eliminate the protection of Roe v Wade. He bragged about it as often as he could. THEN, the GOP started losing election after election because, as it happens, the VAST majority of Americans prefer to have the choice available – even conservatives. So THEN, he backs off, now insisting that, no, he wasn’t trying to eliminate abortions. (Where would you ever get THAT idea?!?) He just wanted it to be a state’s rights issue. He even tried to pretend everybody wanted it to be a state’s rights issue. (Most people were not, are not, that stupid.)

These are not solid efforts on his part. One cannot go on television one day and say one thing and then go on television the next day and say the exact opposite without people noticing. I suppose it’s as close as we’re going to get from him as far as moving toward the middle, though. The best he ever does is to occasionally mumble out some things that might please still-rational conservatives (if such an animal still exists), but then he immediately retreats to “keep MAGA happy” mode and refutes whatever he said to the moderates…

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And in the spirit of “keep MAGA happy,” the ‘Poor-Me ex-President’ keeps campaigning to people already in his camp. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything to pick up new voters. In fact, he’s blatantly disrespecting different groups he should be courting. He can’t help but explain, over and over, that he thinks military members are gullible fools for serving. He can’t hide the fact that he thinks women are good for nothing but sex and should probably be punished for engaging.

The thing is, MAGA loves this guy 100%. They’re so deranged in their faith in him (or should it be ‘Him?’) they would do anything, say anything, suffer anything, just to make him happy. Of all the people on the planet he does NOT need to court, MAGA is the group. Yet, that’s where he’s putting his efforts, shoring up his base.

It scares me. I suspect he knows he can’t pick up any more voters. MAGA is all in but everyone else, and I mean everyone, is not interested. He’s going to lose THIS election, too. (Do you realize that, even in 2016, he lost the popular vote? People just don’t like the guy. He’s too extreme, too weird.) But that leaves him only his January coup option. In order to make that work, he’s going to need mobs. MAGA needs to create (and pretend) confusion in order to make the coup work. In order to work, Trump needs MAGA loyalty more than he needs more votes. So that’s where he’s putting his energy…

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Meanwhile, RFK, Jr is trying to remove his name from ballots for which he qualified before stepping down from the race. He doesn’t want to be a spoiler for Trump like Haley was even after she stepped down. People voted for her anyway, because her name still appeared on ballots and they really, really did NOT want Trump.

North Carolina has refused to remove his name citing the fact that 1.7 million ballots have already been printed around the state. I think that’s a good reason. It’s expensive, printing ballots. Going back and reprinting 1.7 million ballots, just to help Trump? Why? I say, “just to help Trump” because Kennedy is only removing his name where the election is expected to be close. Removing his name is Kennedy’s way of helping Trump but that’s not the election board’s problem or mandate.

Still, the vote went 3 Democrats vote to leave the ballots as is, 2 Republicans voted to help Trump. The partisan split gives the cons something else to “poor me” the world with…

Controlled with a Cluck…

by MyBaconPress

Predictable and easily manipulated Trump was waffling about whether he was going to debate Harris on ABC, following the rules established earlier with Biden. He didn’t really want to. He felt good debating Joe but worries about Kamala. It’s hard to blame him, there. So he started dropping hints that maybe he wouldn’t do it or maybe they should change the rules.

The Harris campaign put out an ad showing Trump complaining about debating Harris – with chicken clucking sounds in the background throughout. That was all it took, calling him a chicken. Now he’s all in. He’s still attacking ABC, mind you. When the hell is he ever happy with anything? But he’s on for the debate. Easily manipulated. Predictable.

Just think of what an adversarial foreign leader could do to a spineless mini-mind like his…

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Despite the rhetoric (okay, lies) from the Trump campaign, it looks like business is worried about Trump taking over in January. I know MAGA pretends everything was hunky-dory when Trump was in charge. They just ignore the…you know, last two years of his maladministration. They’ll ask you, to your face, are you better off today than you were four years ago? Hell yes, I’m better off.

Reuters is reporting that US Miners and battery recyclers are “rushing to close government loans worth billions of dollars before January out of concern that former President Donald Trump would, if reelected, block funding needed to boost American output of critical minerals for the energy transition.”

The miners and recyclers need the loans to keep expanding operations to get the minerals and bits needed to help move America (and the world) off of fossil fuels and into the 21st century while keeping America at the economic forefront of the future. Those industries, anyway, are concerned that Trump will block the funding, since he doesn’t like the future or progress or human life on Earth, I guess.

Trump has promised to “end the electric vehicle mandate” and the vile Project 2025 document recommends shuttering the department that makes those loans, the US Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO). NOBODY believes Trump when he claims he has nothing to do with Project 2025. Nobody.

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Well, he’s sure working to get the women’s vote, isn’t he? His team got into a scuffle with a worker at Arlington National Cemetery, where he went to disrespect the law and some of our fallen soldiers. The worker happens to be a woman. So, they just pushed her out of the way. Literally. She filed a police report but she’s not going to press charges, as of this writing. Do you know why? MAGA attacked! She began receiving threats, so she’s standing down. MAGA can’t defend his actions. They can only bring a mob to stop you from mentioning them. J6, remember?

Oh, AND he “attacked” Kamala by attacking ALL women. I’m sure that helped. He posted a picture of Kamala and Hillary together with a caption that suggested Kamala had risen to power through sexual favors. How is that NOT an attack on all women? How does that NOT suggest that if any woman is successful, she could ONLY have achieved her success through sexual favors?

You don’t hear that one about men any too often, do you? Oh, he slept his way to the top. No, it’s not relevant to a man’s success. If he is successful, it’s because he was smart and worked hard. (In truth, it’s usually because he is exploitative and watched other people work hard.) Whatever sex he may or may not have had never enters into it. It shouldn’t with women, either. But if this guy will dismiss women’s success so easily when he’s trying to impress them, think of what he’ll do to them when he gets back into power permanently…

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Well, the cons tried to hit Kamala over her interview. They really, really wanted to. But she didn’t give them anything to work with. The most Donald could say about it was “Boring.” Why, no, she didn’t turn everything into hyperbolic over-statements of absolute destruction or absolute perfection or absolute failure or absolute success. No broad, over-the-top claims that only SHE can solve problems. No terrifying tales of impending doom should someone else end up in charge (except to the Constitution, of course). She just made rational comments on topics of concern.