October 29, 1940 The first national lottery for drafting young men (21-35) was held after passage of the first compulsory peacetime draft in United States. At the time the U.S. Army was smaller than that of Poland. What it was like Recommended: Washington Goes to War by David Brinkley
October 29, 1966 National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in Washington, D.C. The 30 attendees at that first meeting elected Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, as NOW’s first president. Read about NOW
October 29, 1969 anti ROTC demo One hundred demonstrators disrupted the University of Buffalo’s ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) with “nonviolent ridicule.” The urgency of opposition to the Vietnam War made many military-related activities targets of anti-war activity that had previously seemed otherwise legitimate.
October 29, 1969 U.S. Federal Judge Julius Hoffman ordered a defendant in the courtroom gagged and chained to a chair during his trial after he repeatedly asserted his right to an attorney of his own choosing or to defend himself. The defendant, Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale, and seven others had been charged with conspiring to cross state lines Bobby Seale “with the intent to incite, organize, promote, encourage, participate in, and carry out a riot” by organizing the anti-war demonstrations in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen, an animated film about the trial watch trailer The Chicago Eight included Seale, David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Thomas Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, and John Froines.
October 29, 1975 In “Alice Doesn’t Day,” tens of thousands of women in cities across the US took to the streets to demand equality. Defying mounted police, 50,000 marched down New York City’s 5th Avenue. Dutch women marched on the U.S. embassy in Amsterdam to show their support, while French feminists demonstrated at the Arc de Triomphe, carrying a banner that read: “More Unknown Than the Unknown Soldier: His Wife.” More about Alice Doesn’t Day
October 29, 1983 Because the U.S. planned to site 48 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles in their country, over 500,000 Dutch took part in a rally in the Netherlands’ capital city, The Hague. The numbers at the protest were swelled by anger over the U.S. invasion of Grenada, a small Caribbean island, earlier in the week.
(Honestly, the entire Don-Madison Square Garden “event” idea sickened me, but I didn’t think his campaign could afford to do it. Anyway, it happened, and the fact that there was any crowd at all nauseates me. One of my great grandfathers immigrated to the US before the 1st World War, earning his citizenship in part by fighting for the US and allies in that war. The other side of the family immigrated between the wars, as they could see what may have been coming, and did. I’m fairly certain all their spirits, including each and every US veteran in my family living or dead, are also nauseated and maybe angry about this “event.” I’m happy there are people like Heather Cox Richardson, who put sensible light onto historic events. So everybody do all you can to Get Out The Vote! The facts are all on our side. -A)
I stand corrected. I thought this year’s October surprise was the reality that Trump’s mental state had slipped so badly he could not campaign in any coherent way.
It turns out that the 2024 October surprise was the Trump campaign’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden, a rally so extreme that Republicans running for office have been denouncing it all over social media tonight.
There was never any question that this rally was going to be anything but an attempt to inflame Trump’s base. The plan for a rally at Madison Square Garden itself deliberately evoked its predecessor: a Nazi rally at the old Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939. About 18,000 people showed up for that “true Americanism” event, held on a stage that featured a huge portrait of George Washington in his Continental Army uniform flanked by swastikas.
Like that earlier event, Trump’s rally was supposed to demonstrate power and inspire his base to violence.
Apparently in anticipation of the rally, Trump on Friday night replaced his signature blue suit and red tie with the black and gold of the neofascist Proud Boys. That extremist group was central to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and has been rebuilding to support Trump again in 2024.
On Saturday the Trump campaign released a list of 29 people set to be on the stage at the rally. Notably, the list was all MAGA Republicans, including vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance, House speaker Mike Johnson (LA), Representative Elise Stefanik (NY), Representative Byron Donalds (FL), Trump backer Elon Musk, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right-wing host Tucker Carlson, Trump sons Don Jr. and Eric, and Eric’s wife, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump.
Libbey Dean of NewsNation noted that none of the seven Republicans running in New York’s competitive House races were on the list. When asked why not, according to Dean, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller said: “The demand, the request for people to speak, is quite extensive.” Asked if the campaign had turned down anyone who asked to speak, Miller said no.
Meanwhile, the decision of the owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post not to endorse Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have sparked a backlash. As Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, “in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.”
Early on October 26, the Washington Post itself went after Trump backer billionaire Elon Musk with a major story highlighting the information that Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, had worked illegally when he started his career in the U.S. Musk “did not have the legal right to work” in the U.S. when he started his first successful company. As part of the Trump campaign, Musk has emphasized his opposition to undocumented immigrants.
The New York Times has tended to downplay Trump’s outrageous statements, but on Saturday it ran a round-up of Trump’s threats in the center of the front page, above the fold. It noted that Trump has vowed to expand presidential power, prosecute his political opponents, and crack down on immigration with mass deportations and detention camps. It went on to list his determination to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), use the U.S. military against Mexican drug cartels “in potential violation of international law,” and use federal troops against U.S. citizens. It added that he plans to “upend trade” with sweeping new tariffs that will raise consumer prices, and to rein in regulatory agencies.
“To help achieve these and other goals,” the paper concluded, “his advisers are vetting lawyers seen as more likely to embrace aggressive legal theories about the scope of his power.”
On Sunday the front page of the New York Times opinion section read, in giant capital letters: “DONALD TRUMP/ SAYS HE WILL PROSECUTE HIS ENEMIES/ ORDER MASS DEPORTATIONS/ USE SOLDIERS AGAINST CITIZENS/ ABANDON ALLIES/ PLAY POLITICS WITH DISASTERS/ BELIEVE HIM.” And then, inside the section, the paper provided the receipts: Trump’s own words outlining his fascist plans. “BELIEVE HIM,” the paper said.
On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, host Jake Tapper refused to permit Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, to gaslight viewers. Vance angrily denied that Trump has repeatedly called for using the U.S. military against Americans, but Tapper came with receipts that proved the very things Vance denied.
Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden began in the early afternoon. The hateful performances of the early participants set the tone for the rally. Early on, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who goes by Kill Tony, delivered a steamingly racist set. He said, for example: “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” He went on: “And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country.” Hinchcliffe also talked about Black people carving watermelons instead of pumpkins.
The speakers who followed Hinchcliffe called Vice President Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” They called former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “a sick son of a b*tch,” and they railed against “f*cking illegals.” They insulted Latinos generally, Black Americans, Palestinians and Jews. Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s claim that “America is for Americans and Americans only” directly echoed the statement of Adolf Hitler that “Germany is for Germans and Germans only.”
Trump took the stage about two hours late, prompting people to stream toward the exits before he finished speaking. He hit his usual highlights, notably undermining Vance’s argument from earlier in the day by saying that, indeed, he believes fellow Americans are “the enemy within.”
But Trump perhaps gave away the game with his inflammatory language and with an aside, seemingly aimed at House speaker Johnson. “I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact, he and I have a secret, we will tell you what it is when the race is over,” Trump said.
It seems possible—probable, even—that Trump was alluding to putting in play the plan his people tried in 2020. That plan was to create enough chaos over the certification of electoral votes in the states to throw the election into the House of Representatives. There, each state delegation gets a single vote, so if the Republicans have control of more states than the Democrats, Trump could pull out a victory even if he had dramatically lost the popular vote.
Since he has made virtually no effort to win votes in 2024, this seems his likely plan.
But to do that, he needs at least a plausibly close election, or at least to convince his supporters that the election has been stolen from him. Tonight’s rally badly hurt that plan.
As Hinchcliffe was talking about Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris was at a Puerto Rican restaurant in Philadelphia talking about her plan to spread her opportunity economy to Puerto Rico. She has called for strengthening Puerto Rico’s energy grid and making it easier to get permits to build there.
After the “floating island of garbage” comment, Puerto Rican superstar musician Bad Bunny, who has more than 45 million followers on Instagram, posted Harris’s plan for Puerto Rico, and his spokesperson said he is endorsing Harris.
Puerto Rican singer and actor Ricky Martin shared a clip from Hinchcliffe’s set with his 16 million followers. His caption read: “This is what they think of us.” Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who has 250 million Instagram followers, posted Harris’s plan. Later, singer-songwriter and actress Ariana Grande posted that she had voted for Harris. Grande has 376 million followers on Instagram. Singer Luis Fonsi, who has 16 million followers, also called out the “constant hate.”
The headlines were brutal. “MAGA speakers unleash ugly rhetoric at Trump’s MSG rally,” read Axios. Politico wrote: “Trump’s New York homecoming sparks backlash over racist and vulgar remarks.” “Racist Remarks and Insults Mark Trump’s Madison Square Garden Rally,” the New York Times announced. “Speakers at Trump rally make racist comments, hurl insults,” read CNN.
But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters.
As the clips spread like wildfire, political writer Charlotte Clymer pointed out that almost 6 million Puerto Ricans live in the states—about a million in Florida, half a million in Pennsylvania, 100,000 in Georgia, 100,000 in Michigan, 100,000 in North Carolina, 45,000 in Arizona, and 40,000 in Nevada—and that over half of them voted in 2020.
In 1939, as about 18,000 American Nazis rallied inside Madison Square Garden, newspapers reported that a crowd of about 100,000 anti-Nazis gathered outside to protest. It took 1,700 police officers, the largest number of officers ever before detailed for a single event, to hold them back from storming the venue.
(Way to go-run for office! Especially in and as opposition to people like Steve Scalise-A)
A trans nonbinary Louisiana candidate for the U.S. House released a defiant campaign video this week, showing themself injecting testosterone to defend bodily autonomy.
Mel Manuel, who is running to unseat far-right House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, released the video on social media platforms on Tuesday. In the video, Manuel called on voters to “take a stand” while performing a routine testosterone injection.
“I believe that you, not the government, own your own body,” Manuel told viewers, wearing a “My Body My Choice” T-shirt. “LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
Manuel, who is running on a platform of abortion rights, universal healthcare, and gun control, highlighted a recent analysis that found Republicans had spent more than $65 million in anti-trans advertisements since the start of August. They also promoted Louisiana’s “Geaux Vote” app, which allows voters to find their polling location and get ballot information.
“To my LGBTQ+ family and our allies… No one is coming to save us,” Manuel wrote in the video description. “We have to show up at the polls for ourselves and for those we love. I’ve spent the last year and a half campaigning because we need to speak up and be represented before it’s too late. You can speak up now with your vote.”
Manuel is the cofounder of Queer Northshore, an LGBTQ+ activist organization based in St. Tammany Parish, and has previously organized against conservative book bans and anti-trans laws in the state. In contrast, Scalise has earned a reputation as a staunchly anti-LGBTQ+ Republican since first taking office in 2008, voting against the Byrd-Shepard Hate Crime Prevention Act, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the Respect for Marriage Act; he is also firmly anti-trans, condemning “the left’s radical gender ideology” in a 2022 statement calling for trans girls to be banned from school sports. Scalise even once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” referring to the infamous former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Given that Manuel is running in opposition to all that, injecting T on camera is a pretty big flex. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean they expect to win; as their campaign website notes, Manuel’s goal is simply to get 35% of the vote. “Even if your candidate doesn’t win, if we can move the needle to 35 percent or 40 percent of the vote, that means the next progressive candidate will get more funding,” they explained to The Nation last year. “There’s a very, very small chance at winning, and I understand that, but we can still use the role of candidacy as a platform in and of itself.”
The Fox News Channel’s recent segment about Donald Trump’s “surprise” visit to a barbershop in the Bronx resembled a campaign ad for the former president’s reelection.
Trump was seen taking questions and making small talk with Black and Hispanic barbershop customers and workers, some of whom were wearing “Make Barbers Great Again” shirts. The visit was part of “Fox & Friends” co-host Lawrence Jones’ ongoing barbershop interview series.
But the version of the visit shown on television was, to borrow a hairstyle metaphor, a crop cut. Fox edited out many of Trump’s rambling comments and false claims. Participants had to repeatedly follow up when Trump meandered away from the original point of their questions.
CNN reviewed a more complete video of the barbershop visit that was uploaded to Instagram on the day of Trump’s appearance in the Bronx and compared it to the segments that were shown on “Fox & Friends” on Monday.
Related articleCBS News rebuffs Trump’s legal threat over ‘60 Minutes’ interview
Fox’s edits omitted numerous Trump tangents and exaggerations – a striking decision given Trump’s recent attacks on CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” for editing an interview with his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, earlier this month.
Trump’s complaints about “60 Minutes” center on an edit of Harris’ comment about the relationship between Israel and the United States. He has charged that CBS manipulated the Harris interview to “make her look better” and demanded that CBS release the unedited transcript of the interview, which CBS has declined to do.
Ironically, however, Fox edited several of Trump’s recent appearances on the network, including his visit to the barbershop. And some of the edits certainly make him look better.
The televised broadcast omitted Trump’s comments about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. He told the barbershop customers that “they just dumped 50,000 people — 32,000 migrants from another country — in Springfield, Ohio. They don’t know what to do.” The actual number of migrants in Springfield is far lower, according to the city’s own data. The broadcast also left out Trump’s gross exaggerations about crime in Aurora, Colorado.
One of the most telling parts of the dialogue began when an audience member asked Trump about finding a way to eliminate federal taxes in the future. On Fox, Trump was shown immediately answering affirmatively: “There is a way.”
But that response from Trump actually came more than seven minutes later, after Trump (and Jones) brought up other topics, including inheritances, the Keystone Pipeline, Ronald Reagan, Russia, and transgender sports players. Trump had to be nudged back on track several times by the unnamed audience member, who kept circling back, apologetically, and said “I wasn’t able to finish my question.” After he repeated his tax inquiry yet again, Trump said “there is a way.”
Related article‘60 Minutes’ rejects Trump’s claims it edited clip for Harris as former president calls for investigation
But on Fox, it was stitched together as one seamless back-and-forth.
Fox also cut some of the former president’s insults, as when he mocked the Wall Street Journal, a sister property of Fox. “Don’t listen” to the “Wall Street jerks or Wall Street Journal, cause they don’t get it,” Trump told the barbershop audience.
In another unplayed portion of the visit, Trump praised Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban and called him a “very respected guy.” That exchange underscored Trump’s tendency to favor autocratic leaders, but Fox decided not to share it with viewers.
A Fox News spokeswoman said every one of Jones’ barbershop segments are pretaped and edited. The Bronx edition ran for nearly an hour and was cut for time and clarity, the network said.
Trump’s recent appearance on the Fox News program “MediaBuzz” was also pretaped and edited. One obvious edit occurred when Trump began to repeat his false claims about the 2020 election – a sensitive subject for Fox since the network is still dealing with defamation lawsuits relating to its coverage in 2020.
“They came down to protest a rigged election,” Trump said, referring to January 6. Then there was a sudden cut, suggesting that some of Trump’s distortions were removed.
In a terrifying moment for American Jews, the org is nowhere to be found.
(I followed Marisa Kabas’s Substack. She was organizational in working to get Substack to stop allowing Nazis to monetize their Substacks. When Substack decided they weren’t going to do that, she broke away and writes her work on her own Handbasket. I wish I had the money to support her, but I can share her work, and this piece is extra-important. -A)
Did you know that two separate stories dropped this week in which former Trump officials said he praised and admired Hitler while in office during his first term?
No, it’s possible you didn’t. It wasn’t on the front page of major newspapers. It didn’t warrant major cable news segments. The Anti-Defamation League didn’t even consider it worthy of a response. To put a finer point on it: The Republican candidate for the Presidential election taking place in less than two weeks openly praised Hitler and it was met with a yawn. How did we get here? How is this happening?
For background, The Atlantic published a story with details of a disturbing conversation:
As his presidency drew to a close, and in the years since, he has become more and more interested in the advantages of dictatorship, and the absolute control over the military that he believes it would deliver. “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had,” Trump said in a private conversation in the White House, according to two people who heard him say this.
Then an interview with former Chief of Staff John Kelly published by the Times on Tuesday evening included this bit:
Trump told him that “Hitler did some good things.”
Mr. Kelly confirmed previous reports that on more than one occasion Mr. Trump spoke positively of Hitler.
“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Mr. Kelly said Mr. Trump told him.
Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Trump had little appreciation for history — “I think he’s lacking in that,” he said — but said that he would still try to explain to Mr. Trump why those comments about Hitler were problematic.
It was bad enough that Vice President Harris addressed it in brief remarks from her DC residence Wednesday afternoon. “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler — the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews, and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” she said.
It’s difficult for me to be incredulous anymore after nearly 10 years of a Trump-clogged news cycle, but this one makes me want to yell at the Editor-in-Chief of the New York Times, “We’re talking about Hitler! The man who orchestrated the mass murder of Jews! Your own paper has evidence that Trump admires him! Sound the alarm!”
The interests of media bosses have always been at odds with reporters and readers, but now that conflict has been laid bare.
Though the story failed to be a media priority, I figured the ADL, the country’s most prominent Jewish nonprofit with a mission of combating antisemitism in all forms, would have something to say. Yet when I looked at their website, I saw nothing (aside from an announcement of a “Concert Against Hate” hosted by Ben Stiller and featuring Sia.) Their social media feeds were similarly void of any reference to Trump and Hitler.
So on Wednesday afternoon I reached out with a brief synopsis of Trump’s positive comments on Hitler and asked if the ADL had a comment. More than 24 hours later: silence. I followed up Thursday morning and reached out via multiple social platforms to the organization and its CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Still, nothing.
The ADL’s failure to address Trump praising Hitler isn’t shocking, given their selective outrage in the past year about which Jews are worthy of defense, and the fact that they honored Jared Kushner with an award earlier this year. Greenblatt issued a rare rebuke of Trump in September after the Republican candidate said “If I don’t win this election…. the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens.” But other than, Greenblatt has continually shown his willingness to kowtow to power, whether it be Trump or Elon Musk. And the current silence is galling.
Why fixate on the response of one nonprofit organization? Well, because the ADL—with Greenblatt as their public face—has positioned itself as the arbiter of what is and is not antisemitic. Whenever you’re reading an article and it cites a figure about the number of antisemitic incidents in the country, that’s likely a stat from the ADL’s annual audit. In the wake of the October 7th attacks in Israel, they’ve frequently conflated antizionism with antisemitism—so much so that Wikipedia’s editors voted in June to designate the organization as “generally unreliable” source on antisemitism. But still they’re considered an authority on the wants and needs of American Jews.
This dangerous conflation has led to the unfair persecution of Jews against Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians, including a Harvard student who was accused of antisemitism for posting protest posters ahead of Yom Kippur. There is no world in which this makes it safer to be Jewish.
Greenblatt found time in the past two days to tweet about his loathing for Jewish pro-Palestine student protesters, but didn’t have a moment to spare for the single-most terrifying thing an American Jew could read: that the potential next president thinks Adolf Hitler was good.
Just a reminder that when Georgia GOP district chair Kandiss Taylor told Stew Peters that she wanted "extreme accountability" for those who oppose Christian nationalism, she meant public execution. https://t.co/IReOcMx1Hbpic.twitter.com/FwE9xCfBrk
The moron wanted to combat hurricanes with nuclear weapons.
"Since #Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985, there have been 18 Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes. 4 of them made landfall in the US while he was President. Yet today he says he's never heard of there being Cat 5 hurricanes." https://t.co/9snWMO9hwo
For more than half a century, the major party candidates for president have sat down with 60 Minutes. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump accepted our invitation. Unfortunately, last week Trump canceled. https://t.co/7t5jr5nyFJpic.twitter.com/VDJDDNYFab
(More good news, after Scottie’s video, as to the early voting news! Blue language alert, so no reading until you’re not somewhere the f-word is not acceptable. Else scroll just a bit, because of course the first sentence is joyous and contains the f-word. Also, italicized script beneath the suns are by the author, Jeff Tiedrich.)
A majority of voters (80%) say they made up their minds about which candidate to support over a month ago, while 11% made up their minds in the last month, 6% made up their minds in the past week, and 3% still have not made up their mind.
“Voters who made their decision on who to support over a month ago break for Trump, 52% to 48%, while voters who made up their mind in the last month or week break for Harris, 60% to 36%,” Kimball said. “The three percent of voters who said they could still change their mind currently favor Harris, 48% to 43%.”
but there are huge swaths of votes who just don’t pay attention to politics until the very last minute — and now that they’re finally tuned in, it’s dawning on them that wait, one of the candidates is ass-spraying mayhem?oh, fuck that shit.
Kamala leads dong-obsessed fry chef Donny Convict in favorability by 11 percentage points, while 58% of registered voters fucking loathe Donny.
The nationwide poll, conducted last week, found Harris’s favorability to be significantly higher than Trump’s, with 51 percent of registered voters viewing Harris as a favorable candidate compared to just 40 percent who felt the same about Trump. Independent voters, notably, were equally split on their opinions of Harris, while the majority of independent voters—58 percent—felt negatively about Trump.
don’t forget that this is going to be the first post-Roe national election.
But perhaps no Democratic stance resonated more with voters than abortion, which saw Harris lead Trump by 23 percent.
reproductive rights continues to be a losing issue for Donny, and he’s still bragging about being the guy who shitcanned Roe.
Donny is being abandoned by his base.
white folks who never went to college have long been Donny’s most hardcore cultists — but this year they seem to be suffering from Dear Leader Fatigue.
“it’s been a key demographic for him — his base. and this is what’s so interesting … in fact, it’s moving away from him. this is Trump’s margin with non-college white voters. this group is not moving towards him. it’s moving slightly away. go back eight years ago, he won it by 33. you go back four years ago, he won it be 31. now we see he’s only up by 27.”
Donny’s losing the people who have been filing out of his hate-rallies early.
after a half hour of listening to him drone on about sharks and batteries and Hannibal Lecter wants to have you for dinner, they turn to their spouse and say Lurleen, let’s go home and see if NASCAR’s on TV.
plus-27 is still a fuck-ton of support from Donny’s base — but in a close election, he can’t afford to lose the additional 6% who voted for him in 2016. these people may never vote for Komrade Kamala, but enough of them may stay home on election day to make a difference.
we’re all worried about post-election fuckery, but let’s not forget that nearly all swing state governors are Democrats.
Constitutional expert Richard H. Pildes reminded us that scenarios involving mischief by governors are unlikely. “In nearly all the swing states, the governors are Democrats, who are hardly going to be receptive to any entreaties by Trump,” he wrote. Even in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, “have done as much under fire as any political officials to prove their commitment to certifying an accurate, lawful count.” And although a few local boards might refuse to certify, there are remedies in court. (A Georgia court recently rejected the notion that officials could refuse to certify results.)
An Arizona County elections official has agreed to plead guilty after she refused to certify the 2022 election in which Kari Lake lost to Katie Hobbs.
The Washington Post reported Monday that Peggy Judd, who helps lead Cochise County southeast of Phoenix, was indicted last year for allegedly “flouting the state’s deadlines” for the 2022 election certification.
actions, consequences. it’s nice when things work out in that order.
Jill Stein might be hurting Donny this year.
perpetual Kremlin dinner guest Jill Stein is like some fucked-up asteroid. every four years, her weird-ass orbit swings her too close to the Earth, and she ends up dicking with the tides and screwing with our electoral magnetic field.
A new poll suggests that Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is drawing more voters from former President Donald Trump than from Vice President Kamala Harris.
The poll shows Harris leading Trump 49 percent to 47 percent. However, with Stein in the race, Trump’s support dips to 46 percent, while Harris maintains her 49 percent backing, suggesting that Stein draws more support from Trump than from Harris. Though Stein’s voter base remains relatively small, at about 1 percent, it could prove crucial in an election that hinges on tight margins in swing states.
The five men who make up the Central Park Five and now call themselves the Exonerated Five have filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump over his remarks during the presidential debate last month.
During the debate he said: “They admitted — they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty — then they pled we’re not guilty.”
At the time of the trials, each had pleaded not guilty, and the victim of the attack survived.
ok, this one is not election-related news — but it still makes me laugh to see Donny get served another big, fat slice of Justice Pie.
Aphasia is a language disorder that affects how you communicate. It’s caused by damage in the area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension. Aphasia leaves a person unable to communicate effectively with others.
Alexa, can aphasia be a sign of dementia?
what the fuck do you think?
so, there’s lots of good news all around — but as a commenter under yesterday’s post said, “we still have to fight like we’re ten points down.” that person is exactly right. we don’t have the luxury of complacency. that’s how we fucked it up in 2016 — we all thought Hillary’s got this in the bag, and so we blew up the balloons and popped the champagne way too early, and too many of us decided it was totes okay stay home on election day. after all, Nate Silver promised us that Hillary had a 99% chance of victory, right? but polls don’t vote — people do.
this year, we all understand the assignment.
Kamala understands the assignment, too. unlike the email lady in 2016, Kamala and Uncle Tim are hitting all the swing states. meanwhile, Donny Convict is squandering his time doing vanity rallies in places like California and New York — states he hasn’t a snowball’s chance of winning.
October 21, 1837 Osceola painted by George Catlin, 1838 The U.S. Army, enforcing President Andrew Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act, captured Seminole Indian leader Osceola (meaning “Black Drink”) by inviting him to a peace conference and then seizing him and nineteen others, though they had come under a flag of truce. Under the law, they and the others of the “Five Tribes” (Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Cherokees) were to be moved, by force if necessary, west of the Mississippi to Indian Territory (Arkansas and Oklahoma).The Seminole had moved to Florida (then under the control of Spain) from South Carolina and Georgia as they were forced from their ancestral lands, then forced further south into the Everglades where they settled. Read more about Osceola
October 21, 1967 In Washington, D.C., more than 100,000 demonstrators from all over the country surrounded the reflecting pool between the Washington and Lincoln monuments in a largely peaceful protest to end the Vietnam War.It was organized by “the Mobe,” the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Some then marched on, encircled and attempted to storm the Pentagon in what some considered to be civil disobedience; 682 were arrested and dozens injured. This protest was paralleled by demonstrations in Japan and Western Europe, the most violent of which occurred outside the U.S. Embassy in London where 3,000 demonstrators attempted to storm the building. at the Pentagon Read two different accounts of the day with photographs:
October 21, 1983 In the first public action of the new Seattle Nonviolent Action Group (SNAG), 12 people blockaded the Boeing Cruise Missile plant in Kent, Washington; none were arrested.
October 21, 1994 In an “Agreed Framework” to “freeze” North Korea’s nuclear program, the United States and North Korea (Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea or DPRK) agreed over the next 10 years to construct two new proliferation-resistant light water-moderated nuclear power reactors (LWRs) in exchange for the shutdown of all their existing nuclear facilities. The DPRK also agreed to allow 8,000 spent nuclear reactor fuel elements to be removed to a third country; to remain a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); and to allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In the deal negotiated by Ambassador at Large Robert Gallucci, the U.S. agreed to normalize economic and diplomatic relations with Pyongyang and to provide formal assurances against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the United States. The details of the agreement and what has followed Interview with Robert Gallucci, Dean, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown U.
This was really difficult to get through. As angry as I get just speaking these words, they don’t express a fraction of my true feelings. I don’t know if there are words for that. I don’t know if this will help, but I feel helpless, so I’m using my platform, which is something most people don’t have. At first, I wondered if it conflicted with my previous video, but after some contemplation, I realized that it doesn’t. My previous video never advocated disregarding injustice and atrocity. It never advocated abdicating righteous indignation. It was an anti-hate video. On the contrary, my commitment against hatred is what compelled me to make this video.
I think I’m done trying to make moral arguments. They all feel like bad faith now, like a waste of time. I guess if I ever do bring them up again, I’ll really have to consider who exactly I’m trying to convince, because some people have proven to be so completely delusional or dishonest, that it would be useless to argue – like talking to a tree.
anti ROTC demo
Bobby Seale
Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen, an animated film about the trial
at the Pentagon
