There’s something missing from the news right now—or rather, someone

  

Attribution: AFP via Getty Images

Raindrops keep falling on his orange, comb-overed head.  Remember when he stood at the door of Air Force One and couldn't figure out how to close his umbrella so he could board? Ah, privilege!

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff 

Thursday, July 25, 2024 at 4:15:04p MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

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Rim Country Gazette Blog 

If you scan the front pages of the nation’s newspapers on Thursday, you’ll find that President Joe Biden's historic and moving speech is at the top of papers across the nation.

Biden’s call to defend American democracy, personal sacrifice, and passing the torch to a new generation is not just front-page news at The Washington Post, it can be found from coast to coast to coast to coast to coast.

And Vice President Kamala Harris is there receiving that torch. She's there on the cover of the Los Angeles Times, and she's front and center in The New York Times. She's there in Georgia, and North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Stories about Harris’ campaign and the enthusiasm and energy it’s generating are everywhere.

But something else is missing. There's something different about the headlines. Something that makes all these papers less gloomy, less angry, less ... orange.

Wait, here’s that missing something. It’s hiding inside The New York Times, where Maggie Haberman writes that Donald Trump "has lost his grip on the news cycle."

It’s an unfamiliar experience for Mr. Trump, who has monopolized America’s televisions, newspapers and smartphones for more than 12 months through indictments, primary victories, 34 felony convictions, an assassination attempt and a Republican National Convention at which he was celebrated as a quasi-religious figure.

Twelve months is an understatement. This may be the first time since Trump came down that golden escalator to start a campaign based on racist fear and the promise of violence that he has not dominated national news on an almost daily basis. Even when the nation was going through a pandemic that took more than 1 million lives, Trump took over what was supposed to be a regular medical briefing and made it all about him.

There have been bursts of light in the darkness, and certainly, Biden’s victory in 2020 seemed like a return of the sun after a long, cold winter. But this week … this week feels different. 

It feels like a cloud has been lifted. All of the ardor, all the fervor, all the passion seems to be with the Democratic Party—and especially with the 100,000 volunteers who have signed up to support Harris’ campaign for the White House.

For once, Trump is finding that no matter how many ugly insults he spews, he’s doing it just for the red-hatted hate squad gathered around him. The media has found something more interesting to write about. 

As Maria Cardon said Wednesday on CNN, Trump is having something of a “mental meltdown … because he doesn’t know how to run against someone like Kamala Harris.” As an attractive, accomplished, powerful woman of color and daughter of immigrants, Harris, said Cardon, is “a cauldron of all of the things Trump has nightmares about every single night.”

Trump and his advisers are baffled by how to go after Harris and frustrated by how she is capturing the media’s attention. It makes this moment nothing less than joyful.

But we shouldn’t start thinking that Trump's extended reality show has finally been canceled. This election is close. Every moment from now until November will be a fight. And it’s only a matter of time before every screaming headline is once again accompanied by the sight of spray-on tan and a snarling face.

Trump will find something to say that is so outrageous that it demands attention. He will make claims about Harris that try to put her on the defensive. And there’s little doubt that the media that has spent the last eight years circling the black hole of Trump’s ego will be pulled into that gravity well again.

Even today, it’s possible to scan all those papers and find a handful that still feature Trump front and center. But thank goodness it’s only a handful.

Enjoy this week of good political weather while it lasts, and use this moment to prepare against the storms ahead. Because there will be a lot of rainy days between now and the election.

Dominating the spotlight.

How to Explain Project 2025 in 60 Seconds

Trump Loyalists think THIS Makes America Great.

By jamess

Community

Daily Kos

Tuesday, July 23, 2024 at 5:42:33p MDT

 

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IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS: You know what RBG would say about Project 2025. 
 

Nikki Haley PAC endorses Harris

Go get 'em, gurl!!!

By sepiasiren

Community

Daily Kos

Monday, July 22, 2024 at 5:03:03p MDT

 

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May this prescient Nikki Haley comment come true:

“The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election,” Haley said six months ago. —YAHOO NEWS

Fast forward to the present, and we find a Haley Super Pac has given Harris their full-throttled support.

A coalition of former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley voters pledged their support for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential bid on Sunday, hours after President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the race.

Biden announced on Sunday afternoon in a letter that he will not be seeking a second term in this year's presidential election and threw his support behind Harris. The president's decision follows weeks of mounting pressure from people within his own party and from key Democratic donors urging him to step aside for the sake of the party's future after a disastrous debate performance last month against former President Donald Trump.

The political action committee (PAC), previously known as Haley Voters for Biden, which now features Harris' name, seeks to amplify the voices of former Haley voters in support of Harris' White House bid. — NEWSWEEK

This, right here, is what karma looks like.

They got NUTHIN'

I got a sneak peek of what the Right will run with regarding Kamala Harris attacks, and let’s just say Kamala is going to be fine.

So far, we have a nothing burger of Jussie Smollett’s tweet in which she stood up for the guy before he was presumably found to have made up his attack. I am still not so sure about what went down—I never trusted the police department's explanation of events, but that is neither here nor there.

https://x.com/StJamesStJames/status/1815243801096569029

That’s what you got—? A woman calling for tolerance after a man was allegedly attacked?

Ahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

They also used the plastic mannequin wanna-be Laura Loomer to harp on the alleged fact she may have been a very sexual woman at one time.

Pffffft—using sex against a woman to bring her down is so 1990s.

That’s not even the half of it—read more if you can stomach it: these folks are horrid!

And really?

They are going to run with something sex-related when their candidate slept with a porn star while his wife was pregnant and brags about groping women? Not to mention, Trump is an adjudicated rapist, a felon, and likely a child molester to boot.

A can of worms, to be sure, but by all means, proceed MAGA. I won’t interrupt you.

Also, dare I say it: Trump is an old man who poops in a diaper. Not trying to play the ageism card, simply using their own arguments against them—you know—turnabout and all that.

Kamala ain’t skurred

In fact, Democrats have been able to raise $100 million in 24 hours.

Ahahahhahaha part 2.

We are not only gonna do this thing, folks.

We gotta!

This also needs to be said…

Prior to the Kamala Harris announcement, many in the liberal pundit sphere were either already handing the keys to the kingdom to the GOP after the attack on Trump and/or finger-wagging those of us who were frightened by the Right’s attempt to ride this attack into the White House [edited due to folks putting words in my mouth].

That was depressing as fuck.

Many independent podcasters don’t seem to care or appreciate that people were infuriated, enraged, and downright depressed by what was happening.

Seriously, an evil, mean-spirited adjudicated rapist and credibly accused child molester sailed to an easy endorsement within a major political party.

Were we supposed to shrug that off?

Still, some on our side of the aisle mocked us as crybabies, whiners, and negative nellies for our fears and concerns. Sorry, but it is hard to remain optimistic in such dark times, especially if you belong to a marginalized group that finds their human rights on the ballot every fucking election cycle.

The message always remains, “Heck, we might allow you a human right or two but get too uppity, and we will yank them away.”

These liberal-left elitists have a kind of “Let them eat cake” attitude about all this and have no clue how frightening it can be to recognize that the very people who once lynched entire black families for being in the wrong place at the wrong time want the ability to do that again—legally.

**My political message below —under 3 minutes

Dude, give us a moment to freak out and then provide us with something to hope for.

Yes!

What we needed was hope.

Not lectures.

Not chastisement.

Not eye rolls.

HOPE.

The audacity…;-)

Thanks, Joe and Kamala, for providing it.

NOTE: You know, I am finally able to write about something other than Trump's nastiness and his alarming MAGA cabal.

May they both become mere nasty footnotes in American history.

What we needed was hope.

Not lectures.

Not chastisement.

Not eye rolls.

HOPE.

Now there's only one really, really old guy in this election: Donald Trump

 

And this is the face of a very old man, despite being doused with orange makeup and a spiffy comb-over.

 

Trump is the oldest presidential nominee in American history

By Kos

Daily Kos Staff 

Monday, July 22, 2024 at 9:00:06a MDT

 

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Rim Country Gazette Blog 

It’s been the dominant narrative for the campaign cycle so far: Voters think both President Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old to run for president. It’s a narrative Republicans have avidly fueled, and in the end, it’s the narrative that forced Biden out of the race. 

But having firmly established that being old is bad, Republicans now have to confront that it is Trump who is the historically old candidate in clear cognitive decline. Democrats are giving voters what they asked for—a younger candidate—while Republicans are being led by an old, tired, and addled candidate. 

During his speech at the Republican National Convention last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, “America cannot afford four more years of a ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ presidency,” claiming that “[o]ur enemies do not confine their designs to between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. We need a commander-in-chief who can lead 24 hours a day and seven days a week.” (Notably, Trump had the lightest schedule of any president since 1933, according to a Roll Call Factba.se analysis.)

In an ad from her candidacy to become the Republican presidential nominee, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said, “I’ll just say it: Biden’s too old. And Congress is the most exclusive nursing home in America.”

The Republican-controlled House even held hearings on the subject of Biden being too old. 

But here’s the cold reality: Trump today, at 78, is older than Biden was when he ran four years ago, making him the oldest presidential nominee in American history. (Note: Biden dropped out on Sunday as the presumptive nominee.) And voters didn’t just have doubts about Biden’s age. 

A Monmouth University poll from October 2023 found that 48% of voters thought Trump was too old to serve another term. A Gallup poll from January found that 66% of Americans said they wouldn’t vote for a candidate over the age of 80, which was part of Biden’s challenge. But 35% said they wouldn’t vote for a candidate over the age of 70. (That poll also found that 70% wouldn’t vote for a candidate convicted of a felony by a jury, and plenty are voting for one, so it’s a nice reminder that poll respondents aren’t always taking everything into account when they answer a survey question like that.) An ABC News/Ipsos poll from February found that 59% of Americans thought both candidates were “too old for another term as president.” And a July poll published by the Wall Street Journal found that 56% of voters, including 36% of Republicans, thought Trump was “too old to run for president.” 

Trump has benefitted from Biden taking the brunt of attention on the age question, and that’s fair enough. Biden is older, and as we saw at the debate, he wasn’t the same Biden we’d been used to seeing. The fact that he had good days didn’t detract from the horror show of the debate. But Democrats have turned a new leaf and are offering up that younger candidate voters claim to want. And what are Republicans doing? They’re sticking with their grumpy, weird, old guy, and he hasn’t been looking so good lately. Maybe the media will finally ask why Trump thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real person, is “great,” and is “late” (i.e., dead), or maybe they’ll spend more time dissecting the plodding insanity of his speeches. 

And for the Republicans who built their presidential campaign around “Biden is old,” what happens when Democrats jiu jitsu the attack and pin it on the oldest presidential nominee in history? 

In response to Biden’s announcement, Trump is flailing. He spent Sunday afternoon whining on his Truth Social website about Democrats pulling off their stunning switcheroo: “So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again. Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?”

Don’t worry, Republicans will soon levy their sexist, racist attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris. That is absolutely ahead of us.

But for years now, they have built a narrative that being old is a bad thing. Heck, they just wasted a whole week at their convention railing against Biden’s age. 

Now, for the last three or so months of this campaign, they’ll get to wear that albatross around their neck.

"...having firmly established that being old is bad, Republicans now have to confront that it is Trump who is the historically old candidate in clear cognitive decline."

Republicans closer to seeing Trump as a literal god

 Attendees pray at the close of the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

By Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Friday, July 19, 2024 at 8:50:02a MDT 

 

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Blue Country Gazette Blog

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Last month, the Supreme Court effectively declared Donald Trump would be king if he were reelected. Now the GOP is taking the next step: In the wake of this past Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump, the party is all but claiming he has a divine right to the position. 

“I told [Trump] that last night. I said, ‘Sir, the hand of God is on you,’” Florida Rep. Byron Donalds said at a Milwaukee town hall on Tuesday.

“Trump came very close to having his brains spread over that platform but God, I believe, protected him,” Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of famous pastor Billy Graham, said during a speech at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night. “Maybe that’s one reason God saved his life,” Graham added. “I hope Trump understands that it’s not about him making America great again, it’s God making America great again.”

Trump himself is doing his best to stoke this rhetoric.

“[I]t was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post the day after the shooting. “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness.” (As if.)

“God was with me,” he told a group at the RNC. “In many ways, it changes your attitude, your viewpoint, toward life. I think you appreciate God even more.”

In the longest acceptance speech in history Thursday, Trump returned to the theme. “I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he said. “Many people say it was a providential moment.”

Trump’s elected minions are happy to amplify that message as well, declaring Trump as God’s chosen one. Here’s GOP Sen. Roger Marshall, from Kansas saying that everyone would now unify behind Trump because “Donald Trump is indeed the person. This assassination attempt—it was divine intervention."

It’s safe to assume that the God all of these Republicans are talking about is the white Christian nationalist one they have molded from the Old Testament, not the “love thy neighbor” incarnation in the son of God.

It’s the logical progression for a party—and a Supreme Court majority—rocketing back to the Middle Ages.

Meanwhile, those of us who believe in evolution, place Trump a little lower in the hierarchy.

Joe Biden ends his reelection campaign, endorses Kamala Harris for President

President Joe Biden

Daily Kos Staff

President Joe Biden is ending his campaign for reelection. 

         My Fellow Americans,

Over the past three and a half years, we have made great progress as a Nation.

Today, America has the strongest economy in the world. We’ve made historic investments in rebuilding our Nation, in lowering prescription drug costs for seniors, and in expanding affordable health care to a record number of Americans. We’ve provided critically needed care to a million veterans exposed to toxic substances. Passed the first gun safety law in 30 years. Appointed the first African American woman to the Supreme Court. And passed the most significant climate legislation in the history of the world. America has never been better positioned to lead than we are today.

I know none of this could have done without you, the American people. Together, we overcame a once in a century pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We've protected and preserved our Democracy. And we've revitalized and strengthened our alliances around the world.

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.

I will speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision.

For now, let me express my deepest gratitude to all those who have worked so hard to see me reelected.I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trust you have placed in me.

I believe today what I always have: that there is nothing America can't do - when we do it together. We just have to remember we are the United States of America. 

Joe Biden

Less than 30 minutes after announcing he would end his campaign, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him at the top of the ticket.

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.

This story is developing.

Trump’s RNC speech shows exactly who he is, despite promises to hide it

The Lord God Donnie is introduced at the GOP Convention to the adoration of the crowd of overwhelmingly white sycophants.  Lordy God!

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Friday, July 19, 2024 at 10:50:03a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Before Donald Trump’s speech on the final night of the Republican National Convention, pundits promised that everyone was about to see a whole new Trump. Trump was going to be a "more reflective, subdued version of himself." He would be “serene” and “spiritual.” At the same time, Trump would “blow the doors off and rise to the occasion.”

Except ... no. What GOP delegates got was largely Trump's normal stump speech, filled with the same rhetoric of hate for his political opponents, disdain for the United States, and a shout-out to his friend Hannibal Lecter. There had been suggestions that Trump wouldn’t mention Joe Biden. He did. Or that he wouldn’t return to talking about his fondness for authoritarian leaders. He did that, too. From “Crazy Nancy” to “a nation in decline,” much of the speech was exactly what visitors to any Trump rally in the last five years might have expected.

As MSNBC reported, there is never “a new Trump.” It’s just the same old guy. And he never looked older or less enthusiastic about his own material than he did on Thursday night.

For a hot minute there, at the very opening of a speech that would go on to last a geologic age, it seemed like Trump was trying to be something different. Speaking with the same dull, plodding tone as a kid reading a book report that had actually been written by ChatGPT, Trump recounted the attempt on his life that happened less than a week ago. He read haltingly from a list of banalities suggesting that he could be a bridge between political extremes. It’s hard to recall now, so many years after the speech began, but he may have used the word “hope.”

Of course, the hope came with a side order of gore. "There was blood pouring everywhere and yet, in a certain way I felt very safe because I had God on my side," Trump said. "I'm not supposed to be here tonight. I'm not. And I stand before you in this arena by the grace of almighty God."

It’s too bad for the others who were shot at Trump’s rally that he was hogging all the divine grace.

At one point during the speech, a macabre mannequin of the man who had died in the shooting appeared onstage complete with a fire department uniform on which Corey Comperatore's name was misspelled. Trump gave the empty coat a bizarre embrace, then went on to kiss the helmet. It was probably meant to be endearing, but like a lot of the speech, it was simply strange.

Retelling the story of his bloodied ear was about the end of Trump’s pretense at unity. It took only about 10 minutes for Trump to run out of new material and return to the same dark statements and divisive attacks he’s been using since he entered the race in 2015. 

Once unity time was over, out came the attack on Nancy Pelosi, Democrats, and Biden. Trump demanded that Biden end the three felony criminal cases pending against him. He spouted a list of statistics about the “greatest invasion in history” and repeated claims that other nations were emptying their prisons and mental institutions into the United States. He said that the next RNC should be held in Venezuela because it would be safer.

He said that 107% of the new jobs under Biden had been taken by illegal aliens.

He promised to end an “EV mandate” that doesn’t exist.

He pulled out his lies about the 2020 election being “stolen.” 

He promised “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” warned that unspecified “bad things are going to happen,” and declared that Biden had done “unthinkable” damage to the nation.

He even went for a deep cut by calling COVID-19 "the China virus."

The more positive end of Trump’s speech involved whining that he wasn’t getting enough credit for his disastrous term in office. And he went down the list of autocratic leaders who love him, from Hungary’s Victor Orbán to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “I think he misses me,” said Trump.

Somewhere in all this, Trump got in a “we will not have men playing in women’s sports,” which seems to be a required element in every Republican speech. 

Despite having a script and functioning teleprompter, an apparently exhausted Trump frequently wandered into rambling asides. There was a painfully long story about a letter he got from evangelist Franklin Graham that seemed utterly disconnected from what he had been talking about moments earlier. Then Trump seemed to find the script again and just plodded on. After reaching the point where he said “in conclusion,” Trump just kept speaking. And speaking.

If there was any change in Trump’s tone, it was only that he delivered his usual grab bag of half-finished thoughts and 100% lies at a slower pace and in a more disjointed, desultory manner than normal.

That glacial pace is part of how Trump delivered the longest speech in RNC history ... without offering a single new policy, idea, or even slogan. It just went on, and on, and on, and … is it over yet?

Finally, Melania put in her obligatory appearance, carefully dodging Trump’s attempts at a kiss, to stand beside him like the dead-eyed embodiment of the last hateful hour.

Somehow Trump managed to be nasty, weird, and astoundingly boring all at once. It was a performance that should have made Republicans feel their stomachs drop at least as much as Democrats watching Biden's poor debate performance.

It was that bad.

But don’t expect Republicans to admit any of this. Not only did this debacle come after they had already crowned him their nominee, but Republicans have surrendered their whole party to Trump. There’s nothing to it but Trump.

And Trump is an old, hateful, deeply strange man who can’t keep his thoughts straight long enough to just read a script.

When you float down from heaven Fat Donnie, be careful where that lard ass of yours lands.