Thursday, October 03, 2024

The cratering of the hate merchants

Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS  "All About Miss Sassy," "Donald Trump Shown Up And Betrayed," "No Aftercare From Donald. and "Miss Sassy Can't Stop Lying"  

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I love Isaiah's take on the debate -- a whole backstory where Miss Sassy doesn't triumph in the end.  I also love Paul Rudnick's Tweet about the debate.






The battle for control of the U.S. Senate will likely boil down to just a few close contests. But despite Arizona's status as a swing state, one columnist believes its Senate race is now out of reach for Republicans given the poor performance of their nominee, Kari Lake.

In a recent op-ed for Bloomberg, columnist Erika D. Smith wrote that Lake — a former local TV news anchor who lost her gubernatorial campaign in 2022 — is a drag on Arizona's Republican Party. She cited several polls showing Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) comfortably ahead of Lake, including one Marist Institute survey that showed him ahead by 10 percentage points.

"It's a sign of just how far and how fast Lake has fallen from her once-coveted perch in Trumpworld — and, assuming the polls are correct, a sign that it’s time for Republicans to give up on the damaged MAGA brand if they want to start winning elections again in Arizona," Smith argued.


Most Americans have been exhausted by the drama and the nonsense.  Fear has been whipped up by these MAGA nuts forever and a day but people are starting to grasp that, for example, trans gender persons are not to be feared and are not different from any other Americans.  When people like MAGA start drawing lines, it works for a little while.  Then people realize that they aren't actually scared and then they realize that the other side has shown their hand and were never really about anything but hate.  


C.I. is very in tune with the zeitgeist and always has been.  That's why she could see the wave of hate starting to roll and get out in front of it to start fighting it early on.  What's going on in Arizona is the recoiling against MAGA.  It will take a little longer but their zenith was the summer of 2022 and they've been cratering since. 


"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):

Wednesday, October 2, 2024.  How many lies did JD Vance tell last night?  And why is the press always confused when it comes to women?  Questions to consider after last night's debate.


Last night, CBS' Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan asked questions of vice presidential debate between Democrat Tim Walz and MAGA boi JD Vance.   It was a mediocre debate.  Vance lied non-stop and got away with it repeatedly due to the format. 







The most illuminating moment of the debate was this:

MB: Thank you, Governor. And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status. Temporary protected status. Norah.

JDV: Well, Margaret, Margaret, I think it's important because… 

MB: Thank you, senator. We have so much to get to. 

NO: We're going to turn out of the economy. Thank you.


JDV: Margaret. The rules were that you guys were going to fact check, and since you're fact checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on.

All Miss Sassy JD Vance can offer is lies.  And wasn't it something to watch him whine when his lies about people -- lies that are targeting people -- got called out.




lying sassy


That's Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Miss Sassy Can't Stop Lying" -- one of four comics he did last night, the other three being "All About Miss Sassy," "Donald Trump Shown Up And Betrayed" and "No Aftercare From Donald."


Let's note some reactions to the debate.  At MOTHER JONES, Jackie Flynn Mogensen offers:

In a debate-night surprise, climate science got near-top billing during the vice presidential face-off between Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance in New York on Tuesday, as the sprawling impacts of Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 160 people, were still being felt across the Southeast.

Just after an opening that addressed the escalating crisis in the Middle East, CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell noted that climate change is only making storms like Helene worse and asked Vance if he agreed with Donald Trump’s assertion that climate change is a “hoax.” Vance, in a pattern that repeated across the night, couldn’t bring himself to contradict the former president.

Instead, he pointed a finger at his opponents. If Democrats “really believe that climate change is serious,” he argued, “what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America.” That’s because, he said, America is the “cleanest economy in the entire world” in terms of “carbon emissions” per “unit of economic output.” He also pushed for investing in nuclear and natural gas.

It’s unclear what Vance meant by “unit of economic output.” But by most metrics, the US is not a clean economy. The US has among the highest carbon emissions per capita, one of the highest total annual emissions, a mediocre record on carbon emissions per dollar of GDP, and was most recently ranked 34th in the world in its Environmental Performance Index, a measure of a country’s environmental stewardship, including climate change mitigation. 

Walz countered that the Biden-Harris administration has made “massive investments” in green technology—the “biggest in global history“—with the Inflation Reduction Act. The law, Walz said, has created 200,000 jobs across the country. (As CNN noted in its fact-check of the debate, some of those jobs may be promised, but not yet created; it’s difficult to come up with an exact figure of jobs sparked by the IRA.)



Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz used the climate portion of Tuesday night's vice presidential debate with Republican Sen. JD Vance to lambast GOP nominee Donald Trump's pledge to give the oil and gas industry free rein in exchange for a billion dollars in campaign donations—an offer that's the subject of an ongoing Senate investigation.

" Donald Trump called it a hoax and then joked that these things would make more beachfront property to be able to invest in," Walz, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' running mate, said of the climate emergency. "To call it a hoax and to take the oil company executives to Mar-a-Lago, say, 'Give me money for my campaign and I'll let you do whatever you want'—we can be smarter about that."

Walz's remarks came in response to a question from CBS moderator Norah O'Donnell, who asked what the youth-led Sunrise Movement called perhaps "the best climate questions ever in a presidential or vice presidential debate."

Connecting the climate crisis to Hurricane Helene, which left a trail of destruction across six states and killed more than 160 people, O'Donnell noted that "scientists say climate change makes these hurricanes larger, stronger, and more deadly because of the historic rainfall."

"Senator Vance, according to CBS News polling, seven in ten Americans and more than 60% of Republicans under the age of 45 favor the U.S. taking steps to try and reduce climate change," O'Donnell said. "Senator, what responsibility would the Trump administration have to try and reduce the impact of climate change?"

In response, Vance called Hurricane Helene an "unspeakable human tragedy" but went on to suggest he doubts "this idea that carbon emissions drives [sic] all the climate change."


Another moment in the debate that stood out was this:

NO: Governor.

TW: January 6th was not Facebook ads. And I think a revisionist history on this. Look, I don't understand how we got to this point, but the issue was that happened. Donald Trump can even do it. And all of us say there's no place for this. It has massive repercussions. This idea that there's censorship to stop people from doing, threatening to kill someone, threatening to do something, that's not censorship. Censorship is book banning. We've seen that. We've seen that brought up. I just think for everyone tonight, and I'm going to thank Senator Vance. I think this is the conversation they want to hear, and I think there's a lot of agreement. But this is one that we are miles apart on. This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say, he is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?

JDV: Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?

TW: That is a damning. That is a damning non answer.




Miss Sassy lied time and again.  For someone who spent last weekend on stage with a crazy who thinks Kamala Harris practices witch craft, it was interesting to note how much JD came off as a familiar on stage.  The greasy face, that pasted on smile, the spit flying out of his mouth.  And all the lies.



NO: Thank you. Now to the issue of reproductive rights. Governor Walz, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, you signed a bill into law that made Minnesota one of the least restrictive states in the nation when it comes to abortion. Former President Trump said in the last debate that. You believe abortion, quote, in the 9th month is absolutely fine. Yes or no? Is that what you support? I'll give you two minutes.

TW: That's not what the bill says. But look, this issue is what's on everyone's mind. Donald Trump put this all into motion. He brags about how great it was that he put the judges in and overturned Roe versus Wade, 52 years of personal autonomy. And then he tells us, oh, we send it to the states. It's a beautiful thing. Amanda Zaworski would disagree with you on it's a beautiful thing. A young bride in Texas waiting for their child at 18 weeks. She has a complication, a tear in the membrane. She needs to go in. The medical care at that point needs to be decided by the doctor. And that would have been an abortion. But in Texas, that would have put them in legal jeopardy. She went home, got sepsis, nearly dies, and now she may have difficulty having children. Or in Kentucky, Hadley Duvall, a twelve year old child raped and impregnated by her stepfather. Those are horrific. Now, when got asked about that, Senator Vance said, two wrongs don't make a right. There is no right in this. So in Minnesota, what we did was restore Roe v. Wade. We made sure that we put women in charge of their health care. But look, this is not what, if you don't know Amanda or a Hadley, you soon will. Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies. It's going to make it more difficult, if not impossible to get contraception and limit access, if not eliminate access to infertility treatments. For so many of you out there listening, me included, infertility treatments are why I have a child. That's nobody else's business. But those things are being proposed, and the catchall on this is, is, well, the states will decide what's right for Texas might not be right for Washington. That's not how this works. This is basic human right. We have seen maternal mortality skyrocket in Texas, outpacing many other countries in the world. This is about health care. In Minnesota, we are ranked first in health care for a reason. We trust women. We trust doctors.

NO: Senator, do you want to respond to the governor's claim? Will you create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency?

JDV: No, Norah, certainly we won't. And I want to talk about this issue because I know a lot of Americans care about it, and I know a lot of Americans don't agree with everything that I've ever said on this topic. And, you know, I grew up in a working class family in a neighborhood where I knew a lot of young women who had unplanned pregnancies and decided to terminate those pregnancies because they feel like they didn't have any other options. And, you know, one of them is actually very dear to me. And I know she's watching tonight, and I love you. And she told me something a couple years ago that she felt like if she hadn't had that abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship. And I think that what I take from that, as a Republican who proudly wants to protect innocent life in this country, who proudly wants to protect the vulnerable is that my party, we've got to do so much better of a job at earning the American People's trust back on this issue where they frankly just don't trust us. And I think that's one of the things that Donald Trump and I are endeavoring to do. I want us, as a Republican Party, to be pro-family in the fullest sense of the word. I want us to support fertility treatments. I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. I want it to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there's so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options. Now, of course, Donald Trump has been very clear that on the abortion policy specifically, that we have a big country and it's diverse. And California has a different viewpoint on this than Georgia. Georgia has a different viewpoint from Arizona. And the proper way to handle this, as messy as democracy sometimes is, is to let voters make these decisions, let the individual states make their abortion policy. And I think that's what makes the most sense in a very big, a very diverse, and let's be honest, sometimes a very, very messy and divided country.

NO: Governor, would you like to respond and also answer the question about restrictions?

TW: Yeah. Well, the question got asked, and Donald Trump made the accusation that wasn't true about Minnesota. Well, let me tell you about this idea that there's diverse states. There's a young woman named Amber Thurmond. She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state. Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth. The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body is determined on geography? There's a very real chance, had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today. That's why the restoration of Roe v. Wade. When you listen to Vice President Harris talk about this subject, and you hear me talk about it, you hear us talking exactly the same. Donald Trump is trying to figure out how to get the political right of this. I agree with a lot of what Senator Vance said about what's happening. His running mate, though, does not. And that's the problem.

NO: Governor, your time is up. Senator, let me ask you about that. He mentioned it was, I think, referring to a national ban. In the past, you have supported a Federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. In fact, you said if someone can't support legislation like that, quote, you are making the United States the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world. My question is, why have you changed your position?

JDV: Well, Norah, first of all, I never supported a national ban. I did during, when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial birth abortion ban in this, in place in this country at the federal level. I don't think anybody's trying to get rid of that, or at least I hope not, though I know that Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance. But, Norah, you know, one of the things that changed is in the state of Ohio, we had a referendum in 2023, and the people of Ohio voted overwhelmingly, by the way, against my position. And I think that what I learned from that, Norah, is that we've got to do a better job at winning back people's trust. So many young women would love to have families. So many young women also see an unplanned pregnancy as something that's going to destroy their livelihood, destroy their education, destroy their relationships. And we have got to earn people's trust back. And that's why Donald Trump and I are committed to pursuing pro-family policies. Making childcare more accessible, making fertility treatments more accessible, because we've got to do a better job at that. And that's what real leadership is.

NO: Governor, your response? 

TW: I'm going to respond on the pro-abortion piece of that. No, we're not. We're pro-women. We're pro-freedom to make your own choice. We know what the implications are to not be that women having miscarriages, women not getting the care, physicians feeling like they may be prosecuted for providing that care. And as far as making sure that we're educating our children and giving them options. Minnesota's a state with one of the lowest teen pregnancy rates. We understand that, too. We know that the options need to be available, and we make that true. We also make it, we're a top three state for the best place to raise children. But these two things to try and say that we're pro-children but we don't like this or, or you guys are pro-abortion, that's not the case at all. We are pro-freedoms for women to make their choices. And we're going, and Kamala Harris is making the case to make options for children more affordable. A $6,000 child tax credit. But we're not going to base out on the backs of making someone like Amber Thurmond drive 600 miles to try and get health care.

NO: Senator. 

JDV: May I respond to that? First of all, Governor, I agree with you. Amber Thurmond should still be alive. And there are a lot of people who should still be alive, and I certainly wish that she was. And maybe, you're free to disagree with me on this and explain this to me, but as I read the Minnesota law that you signed into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion, where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late term abortion. That is, I think, whether it's not pro-choice or pro-abortion, that is fundamentally barbaric. And that's why I use that word, Norah, is because some of what we've seen, do you want to force catholic hospitals to perform abortions against their will? Because Kamala Harris has supported suing catholic nuns to violate their freedom of conscience? We can be a big and diverse country where we respect people's freedom of conscience. And make the country more pro-baby and pro-family. But please.

NO: Yes, Governor, please respond. 

TW: Look, this is one where there's always something there. This is a very simple proposition. These are women's decisions to make about their healthcare decisions and the physicians who know best when they need to do this, trying to distort the way a law is written, to try and make a point. That's not it at all.

JDV: What was I wrong about? Governor, please tell me. What was I wrong about?

TW: That is not the way the law is written. Look, I've given.

JDV: But how.

TW: I've given this advice on a lot of things that getting involved, getting, that's been misread. And it was fact checked at the last debate. But the point on this is, is there's a continuation of these guys to try and tell women or to get involved. I use this line on this. Just mind your own business on this. Things worked best when Roe v. Wade was in place. When we do a restoration of Roe, that works best. That doesn't preclude us from increasing funding for children. It doesn't increase us from making sure that once that child's born, like in Minnesota, they get meals, they get early childhood education, they get healthcare. So the hiding behind we're going to do all these other things when you're not proposing them in your budget? Kamala Harris is proposing them. She's proposing all those things to make life easier for families.


             Sen. JD Vance said at Tuesday’s debate that he never supported a national abortion ban. “I never supported a national ban. I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial-birth abortion ban … in place in this country at the federal level. I don’t think anybody is trying to get rid of that, or at least, I hope not, though I know the Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance,” Vance said.

Facts First: This is false. Vance previously said he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” in 2022 while running for his Senate seat in Ohio. He did say that he supported a “minimum national standard” to ban abortion in 2023. During the current campaign, however, Vance has deferred to former President Donald Trump’s stated view that each state should set its own abortion policy.

In 2022, while running for his Senate seat in Ohio, Vance said, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and that he was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was necessary to stop women from traveling across states to obtain an abortion. He also said on his website during that Senate campaign that he was “100 percent pro-life” and that he favored “eliminating abortion”; these words remained on his website until Trump selected him as his running mate in July. And Vance said in an interview during the 2022 campaign that he wanted abortion to be “primarily a state issue,” but also said, “I think it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.”

In November 2023, Vance told CNN’s Manu Raju and Ted Barrett in the Capitol: “It seems to suggest there needs to be some more interest in this building among Republicans in setting some sort of minimum national standard, whether that it’s 15 weeks or 20 weeks or the different ranges that are thrown out there.” He said, “We keep giving in to the idea that the federal Congress has no role in this matter. Because if it doesn’t … then the pro-life movement is basically not gonna exist, I think, for the next couple of years.”

Vance, emphasizing his support for certain exceptions to abortion bans, said on CNN in December 2023, “We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans. They just don’t. And I say that as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for life of the mother, for rape, and so forth.”

During his vice presidential campaign this year, Vance has aligned himself with Trump’s professed desire for a state-by-state approach to abortion policy rather than federal legislation. Vance said on Fox News in July, “Alabama’s going to make a different decision from California. That is a reasonable thing. And that’s how I think we build some bridges and have some respect for one another.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck


And they're one of the few fact checking Miss Sassy's lies on abortion.  Overturning ROE V WADE was not popular.  Tim made some good points but he didn't go far enough.  Reproductive rights are health issue.  This nonsense of a doctor can do this in that state but not in another state -- No.  We need universal healthcare and that actually means universal.  That means you can get a flu shot in every state.  

JD tailored his argument to creepy women.

Sad and deluded idiotic women.  I have no idea what percentage of women in the US that would be.

But people -- including POD SAVE AMERICA -- appear to miss what he was doing -- asking why he was talking about how he would earn your trust.

Men, he was speaking to women -- or trying to.

'I'm not perfect, but I'll earn your trust' -- it's nonsense.  And most women know that.  But this is going to be a close election so he went for the stupid.  It was smarmy and it was insulting.

And all of his lies were.  He lied non-stop trying to dress up the fact that he wants abortion to be illegal in all the states.  He rewrites history and rewrites reality.  He was the worst character in a Margaret Atwood novel. 

I'm still outraged over this. 

Let's note POD SAVE AMERICA's analysis.





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THIS SECTION ADDED 23 minutes after this posted.

Immediate reaction in the e-mails per Shirley: You don't seem enthused by the debate.

I'm not.

I did not care for the format.  I did not like that JD lied repeatedly.  I did not like his patronizing attitude or his remarks -- judgmental about the women who died that Tim raised.  I do not like that the media seems to have completely missed that reality.

I did not like Tim on stage.  POD SAVE AMERICA thinks he is more likable based on the instapolls.

So what?

Likeability for a VP isn't that necessary.  More to the point, it was like Sean Hannity and Alan Colms (is that the jerk's name).  I didn't want to see someone make nice with JD Vance.  I wanted to see someone fight for our country.  And, as noted during the Bully Boy Bush administration, when they needed to sell the Iraq War and pressed Colin Powell into lying, take a little shine off your poll numbers.  Tim is already liked.  He should have fought.  

Donald and JD's positions are extreme and they are dangerous to the country.  I needed to see that fought against instead it was we agree, wee agree, we agree.  

I found it very off putting and very disappointing.  I think Tim won but I don't think it was a good debate or that 'winning' in it means a whole lot.

Abortion is healthcare and I'm getting tired of Dems who walk into GOP traps on that issue and don't push back and push back hard.  JD's sorry about the deaths -- b.s. he thinks the women got what they had coming.  That's his position and his smarmy words and his tone of voice made that clear.

So, no, wasn't impressed at all.
 
end of part added after this posted 
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Let's talk about Ted Cruz.  Mike covers Colin Allred who is running for the US Senate out of Texas and his rival is incumbent Cruz.  The media's been noticing that Ted is trying to move to the center of late in his advertising and statements and they've said it's due to the polls.  

No.

The decision was made pre-polling.  The polls are only reflecting what the senator's office has been hearing for four weeks now.  Ted's getting some of the worst constituent feedback of his career.  It coincides with his last minute trans youth attack commercial.  On that


 Imane Khelif  -- was the last straw for some of his previous admirers on the Republican side.  The feedback his office received was blistering.  Some felt the topic was beneath a US senator, some felt that you don't go after kids -- and he is going after trans kids and some just wondered with all the problems in the country why Cruz is making this the topic.

The response was blistering and it was huge.  The one that hurt Cruz the most was from a long term supporter who told him, quote, "You are too far from Texas and too close to Trump."  That one was said to his face and that's when Cruz and his campaign grasped that they needed to back pedal and try something different.

Oh!  I need to note this.  I had to brush up on some basics since I'm not from the state.  You can register up to October 7th.  You have to register in person by October 7th or, if you're sending in a registration form, it has to be postmarked October 7th.  Early voting in Texas starts October 21st and runs through November 1st.  November 5th is election day.  During early voting, you can vote at any polling station in the county you are registered to vote.  


The following sites updated: