Trump has a long history of endorsing police violence, having said that police reaction to the racial unrest in response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020 “was a beautiful thing to watch.”
The Purge is a revenge horror franchise.
The only thing Trump’s speech has in common with it is he’s talking about a temporary spasm of widespread violence.
That is NOT what this is. This is STATE-sponsored terrorism against a targeted group. This is 1938 in Nazi Germany. https://t.co/49S7Hkwe8A
— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) September 29, 2024
The former president, who risks jail time and more criminal trials if he loses, has expanded his range of baseless attacks on U.S. voting procedures in recent weeks and months. Trump falsely claimed Monday that Democrats are exploiting an overseas ballot program for expats and military members in order to circumvent “any citizenship check or verification of identity.”
Look at the projection in the next story. Look the only end might be the clawing back some of the taxes owned to the public treasury from the wealthy people who constantly want more and more public funds only for themselves. The only loss will be a white majority nation, and Elon Musk is a full out South African racist bigot. Full out racist bigot. He is not worried about voting, he is a white man. He is worried brown / black people will get to vote. He and tRump talk bad about Haitians and immigrants while hiring them on the cheap. Hugs. Scottie
Trump: Crooked Joe Biden became mentally impaired. But lying Kamala Harris, honestly, I believe she was born that way. There’s something wrong and I don’t know what it is but there is something missing pic.twitter.com/RP5TaHMVhQ
These maga gang thugs think they can get away with anything and that they don’t have to obey any laws or rules. Hate rules their lives. It may have been this guy who said he wrote the bill because he couldn’t stand that kids were coming out at school and being accepted by other students instead of targeted for abuse. He wants LGBTQ+ kids to be scared to be themselves and to stay in the closet hiding from them straight cis bullies. Hugs. Scottie
Fine was in court due to a lawsuit involving a Brevard County election official. As I’ve said here before, he is probably the most obnoxious of all Florida lawmakers, which is really saying something.
He last appeared here when DeSantis vetoed funding for a “woke zoo” because it wouldn’t host a fundraiser for Fine.
Fine also appeared on JMG in May 2022 when he tweeted what many interpreted as a threat to assassinate President Biden. That tweet remains online.
Before that, Fine appeared on JMG when he called for felony charges after Florida Democrats staged a sit-in over the racist US House map submitted by DeSantis.
And before that, he appeared here when he threatened to defund a Florida Special Olympics event and called a local school board member a “whore” because she’d been invited its fundraiser gala and he was not.
Fine was a sponsor of the bill that stripped Disney’s self-governing status. His family owns annual passes to the “woke” theme park giant.
In 2022, he arranged for a Florida town to honor a war criminal who was convicted of executing four Iraqi prisoners. In April 2023 he declared, “Damn right, we ought to erase” LGBTQs.
Fine is also a sponsor of Florida’s bill criminalizing drag shows in view of minors. Of note, his wife runs a self-described “sultry” burlesque show that would violate her husband’s law.
ALEC member and Israel proxy Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) was "caught on camera appearing to give the middle finger and making other gestures during an Aug. 19 virtual court hearing." Fine and his attorney will attend a contempt of court hearing today.https://t.co/6CSOoF56Fm
A Michigan man, 61, was arrested after assaulting a postal carrier who delivered a flyer featuring Kamala Harris. He told the postal carrier that he didn’t want that "Black b****" in his mailbox and then threatened her with violence. https://t.co/DIlREaWx3b
The Straight Pride Flag looks like it’s the cover of MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS if it was written by the Hamburglar. pic.twitter.com/k69ANfFc1y
Hit the link for other already known examples of Trump withholding federal relief from blue states. Earlier this week Trump posted that Biden was withholding relief from “Republican areas” in North Carolina.
You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you.
It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it. https://t.co/FuPHwtlZuu
Upon the advice of right-wing Christian Independence Law Center, South Western's far-right school board is cutting windows so passersby can look into the so-called “gender-identity” student bathrooms. "A new Level of Weird," writes @YorkDispatch. READ: https://t.co/KxuSQAaZojpic.twitter.com/usSfxhl451
I bet the next election will be well attended and these people will lose their seats and new progressive inclusive people will win. That is what has happened all over when the right bigots and haters snuck into school board seats, they go too far trying to erase the LGBTQ+ kids / people from existence, then they get kicked out. Sadly by then the damage is done. What they hell do they want people perving on kids in the bathrooms for? To make the kids scared to use them and to make sure the weird kids are not doing weird gay stuff in them, right? Hugs. Scottie.
By the way. We have a hurricane headed right at us. It will be here Wednesday at around noon, but we have three days of wind and rain beforehand. It will hit at a class three. It is projected to hit just above us but could hit us directly. We will be spending the next few days getting as much done as possible, stocking in cat food Ron forgot and getting more gas and propane for the generator. It is unlikely that pole of ours will survive another storm as it is already leaning hard. Repair crews are already stretched thin in other areas so won’t be able to come rescue us in our time of need. Going to be a very long few months. Hugs. Scottie
YORK DISPATCH EDITORIAL BOARD
York Dispatch
At the risk of stating the obvious, South Western’s elected school board is making some strange decisions.
For the last two years, they’ve fixated on which bathrooms LGBTQ+ kids use. In 2023, officials in this Hanover-area district played musical chairs with school bathrooms in a misguided attempt to appease the loudest bigots among them — ending up with five different types of bathrooms.
After a low-turnout school board election in which several far-right members joined their ranks, they hired a Christian law firm, decided to begin banning books and reopened the bathroom issue. Board President Matthew Gelazela, who was elevated to his post after previously serving as the board’s most vocal bomb-thrower, pointed to Red Lion’s discriminatory policiesas something to aspire to.
These adults want to make it easier for other people to watch your children while they’re in the bathroom. It’s absolutely mind-boggling.
Gelazela, who’s steadfastly refused to explain the logic here, said in a public meeting that the windows help “[add] privacy in the toilet facility” and that they “increase oversight of the wash area.”
There’s a reason public restrooms tend not to have windows — or, if they do, they have frosted glass.
No one wants to be spied on when they’re relieving themselves.
The parents who spoke to The York Dispatch about the latest bathroom renovations said their children no longer feel comfortable using these bathrooms. One of the parents went to the principal and asked for an exemption to allow her son to use a different bathroom further away from class.
Her 13-year-old doesn’t want to be spied on while he’s in the bathroom.
And we don’t blame him.
It’s creepy and weird.
And let’s not ignore the bigger picture: This is happening at a time when this and other York County school boards are pushing policies that would restrict what books students read, what sports teams they compete on and even which pronouns they use.
All of this is part of an attempt to erase LGBTQ+ people.
Cutting a window into these bathrooms is an intimidation tactic designed to make sure students who use the so-called “gender-identity” facilities — and, let’s be honest, any student who doesn’t fit neatly into the worldview of the school board’s far-right majority — know they’re being watched, controlled and judged.
In their quest to punish LGBTQ+ kids, however, the misguided “adults” on this South Western School Board are doing the things they accuse others of doing.
This is an invasion of privacy and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Tengrain’s Mock Paper Scissors has the pleading, which has been unsealed. Though there are redactions, they’re easily ID’d by people like us who pay attention, and there’s a nice index of them on MPS’s page. The link to the pleading, which is delicious (the pleading, I mean,) is also here.
The former president’s lawyers are trying to get ahead of what could be his campaign’s October surprise.
Donald Trump’s lawyers are scrambling to get ahead of what could be this election’s October surprise: the public release of special counsel Jack Smith’s report detailing evidence in the election fraud case against the former president.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Trump’s legal team accused the Department of Justice of putting together a “politically motivated manifesto” specifically timed to influence voters “in the final weeks of the 2024 Presidential election while early voting has already begun throughout the United States.”
They asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to highly redact the report or stop it from appearing in the court’s public docket altogether.
The report, which runs approximately 180 pages and was filed last Thursday under seal pending the judge’s approval for public release, would reveal grand jury testimony and what Trump lawyers called “sensitive witness statements” gathered by federal investigators over recent years.
Trump’s team says prosecutors must explain “why their proposed public disclosure … will not pose risks to potential witnesses and unfairly prejudice the adjudication of this case.” Ironically, their argument comes after Trump, for months, has been complaining that a judge-imposed gag order has prevented him from attacking former allies for assisting FBI agents and testifying against him.
Trump’s defense attorneys, John F. Lauro and Todd Blanche, turned that narrative upside down, claiming that the DOJ special counsel is hypocritically publicizing investigative materials after vehemently trying to keep them secret in Trump’s classified records case. (Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed those charges this past summer, and the case is on appeal.)
“Now that public disclosure serves their politically motivated mission, the special counsel’s office takes a different view. The office believes President Trump’s constitutional rights to
impartial jurors and fair proceedings — to say nothing of witness privacy and even safety — all take a back seat to the office’s political goals,” they wrote.
Unstated in today’s filing is that the potentially disastrous timing of this report — and its existence — is only due to the Trump team’s delay tactics in the case. Trump managed to push back the trial by fighting the indictment all the way up to the Supreme Court, which granted him an expansive new definition of presidential immunity. That opinion ultimately sent the trial judge on a fact-finding mission to figure out what alleged misconduct counts as personal versus official actions — hence Smith’s latest report.
Trump’s lawyers initially tried to file their counterargument under seal, but Chutkan ordered the D.C. federal court’s clerk to post it publicly by midday Tuesday.
The judge gave Trump’s team until noon today to file their proposed redactions to the report and until Oct. 10 to go over what they want to keep secret in what’s expected to be a large and detailed appendix to the report. Chutkan could order the report’s release at any time after that.
I am enjoying “Elizabeth and Essex” with Bette Davis because I’ve not seen it in full to just enjoy her talent. Tonight’s debate will be very like the first debate between the Don and Pres. Biden, with Sen. Vance playing the Don. I have no doubt Gov. Walz can handle it all, but there will be no fact checking or corrections, the two mods are women so I expect Vance to be abusive if one does try to control the program, and then there is this from the Daily Beast:
Look for candidate JD Vance to come out swinging at Tuesday’s vice presidential debate against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Odds are good that Vance will go for the Trumpian emotional trifecta: playing the victim, spewing anger, and attacking women and immigrants.
While not everyone is charmed by righteous rage, Donald Trump is the “audience of one” who needs to hear his chosen candidate mimic the boss. There’s precedent for this behavior from fellow Yale Law School graduate, Brett Kavanaugh. (snip)
Vance knows that his debate performance must please an “audience of one.” Job one is to make Daddy Donald proud. Reasonable and empathetic just won’t cut it. Here are ten predictions for how Vance will follow in Kavanaugh’s footsteps by using a sharp tone, being overly emotional and saying a few things he should not say. (snip-MORE)
Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other hate groups are now routinely visiting Springfield, marching through city streets or distributing recruitment flyers and raising fears of intimidation and violence.
Over the weekend, the Blood Tribe — a violent Neo-Nazi hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — stood outside Springfield Mayor Rob Rue’s home waiving swastika flags. In a previous march through the city, some carried guns.
Also this weekend, an unidentified group stood outside Springfield city hall with a banner that said “Haitians Have No Home Here” in English and Haitian Creole.
These groups are responding to the growth of Springfield’s Haitian community, an issue that made the national spotlight following unsubstantiated rumors circulated on social media and parroted by politicians that Haitian immigrants were eating Springfield residents’ pets.
Since then, Springfield NAACP president Denise Williams says residents have also reported to her agency flyers being distributed in local neighborhoods from a group associated with the Ku Klux Klan.
“They’re trying to intimidate us. But we’re not a city that’s easily intimidated,” Williams said. “We need to stand together.”
The group, the Trinity White Knights, has a P.O. Box based in Kentucky. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in September that similar flyers from the same group were distributed in Covington, Ky.
Springfield Police Chief Allison Elliott said the department is aware of the flyers.
Some residents have reported harassment from a group of people purporting to be members of the Proud Boys, which the SPLC designates as a hate group that believes in “Western chauvinism” and “an anti-white guilt agenda.”
Clark County Democratic Party chairman Austin Smith said a volunteer canvassing near the political party’s Springfield headquarters earlier this month was returning to the office to drop off campaign materials when a truck with large flags that appeared to say “Proud Boys” pulled up.
A group of men in the truck, the volunteer told Smith, made “vaguely threatening” statements.
“We’ve had threats and things pour into the office. No bomb threats, but ‘You better watch out.’ ‘We’re watching you.’ So that definitely created a lot of fear,” Smith said.
The party increased security measures for its recent meeting as a safety precaution, Smith said.
Members of the religious group Israel United in Christ (IUIC) were also in Springfield in September, gathering in multiple public places around the city.
The members, clad in purple shirts with the group’s name and logo, were seen marching and passing out literature to passersby.
At one point, group members gathered in the parking lot of Groceryland on South Limestone Street, near the corner of East John St. Members were preaching into a microphone about the organization’s teachings. Members also met with NAACP leaders from Dayton and Springfield.
According to its website, the IUIC is a Bible-based organization that believes people within the Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities represent “the true and historical descendants of the Biblical Israelites.”
SPLC categorizes IUIC as one of the handful of “Radical Hebrew Israelites” groups in the U.S. The SPLC designates these groups as hate groups. IUIC denies that it is a hate group, according to a post on the IUIC Classrooms Facebook page. The newspaper reached out to IUIC but did not hear back.
Williams said the Springfield NAACP chapter has plans to host a virtual community meeting to talk about recent activity in the city.
Springfield’s police chief asked residents to remain vigilant and “say something if you see something suspicious or out of the norm.”
“We know our city has looked a little different lately, and you also may notice an increased public safety presence. We assure you that our top priority has always been and will continue to be safety,” Elliott said. “Safety is a shared responsibility and our officers, along with our public safety partners, take all tips and information seriously.”
Serhiy Kraskov picked up a twig and poked at a small fish floating in the Desna River. “It’s a roach. It died recently. You can tell because its eyes are clear and not blurry,” he said. Hundreds of other fish had washed up nearby on the river’s green willow-fringed banks. A large pike lay in the mud. Nearby, in a patch of yellow lilies, was a motionless carp. “Everything is dead, starting from the tiniest minnow to the biggest catfish,” Kraskov added mournfully.
Kraskov is the mayor of the village of Slabyn, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. The rustic settlement – population 520 – escaped the worst of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. But the war arrived last week in a new and horrible form. Ukrainian officials say the Russians deliberately poisoned the Seym River, which flows into the Desna. The Desna connects with a reservoir in the Kyiv region and a water supply used by millions.
Serhiy Kraskov, the mayor of the village of Slabyn, near the banks of the Desna River in northern Ukraine. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
A toxic slick was detected on 17 August coming from the Russian border village of Tyotkino. According to Kyiv, chemical waste from a sugar factory had been dumped in vast quantities into the Seym. It included ammonia, magnesium and other poisonous nitrates. At the time, fierce fighting was going on in the surrounding area. Ukraine’s armed forces had launched a surprise incursion into Russia and had seized territory in Kursk oblast.
The pollution crossed the international border just over a mile away and made its way into Ukraine’s Sumy region. The Seym’s natural ecosystem crashed. Fish, molluscs and crayfish were asphyxiated as oxygen levels fell to near zero. Settlements along the river reported mass die-offs. Kraskov got a call from the authorities warning him a disaster was coming his way. He spotted the first dead fish on 11 September. “There were a few of them in the middle of the river,” he said.
He returned the following weekend to find the Desna’s banks clogged with rotting fish, stretching out from the shore for three metres into the water. Volunteers wearing rubber boots, masks and protective gloves shovelled the fish into sacks. They found a metre-long catfish. “The stench was terrible. You could scarcely breathe. The river was quiet. Nothing moved apart from a few frogs,” Kraskov said. A tractor took the sacks to an abattoir that used to belong to the village’s Soviet-era collective farm. They were buried in a pit.
Serhiy Zhuk, the head of Chernihiv’s ecology inspectorate, described what had happened as an act of Russian ecocide. “The Desna was one of our cleanest rivers. It’s a very big catastrophe,” he said. Zhuk traced the slick’s route on a map pinned to his office wall: a looping multi-week journey along the Seym and Desna. “More than 650km is polluted. Not a single organism survived. This is unprecedented. It’s Europe’s first completely dead river,” he said. (snip-MORE)
Several hours before this tweet, North Carolina was declared a federal major disaster, which means @FEMA will rush federal aid to 25+ affected counties and reimburse local governments + nonprofits for restoring facilities and infrastructure.
Well, uh, let’s hear it for a fact-check from Frank Luntz, because open-faced lying to struggling people is, my God, why do we have to explain this? Completely wrong and unnecessarily divisive and totally unhelpful.
And also, what Trump is stunting about right now. He did a little photo-op in Valdosta and lied behind a tiny brick wall someone had to stop everything and make for His Nibs. And he had an emotional support evangelical by his side to sanctify his lying. Who prayed for HIM and his election because of course.
People have died. Some of the survivors have lost everything they had. They have family photo albums and keepsake Bibles and all kinds of records of their life they can’t get back. They are going to be homeless for a while. And Trump shows up in his MAGA hat like this was a campaign event. Costing local security. Taking away resources from search and rescue or whatever else for his hot minute criticizing the Biden Administration for–what they already are doing.
And Trump, snowbird, Florida Man, tells us he didn’t know this was peak hurricane season, because he is just as dumb as drying paint. And a whole attention whore. And I don’t even think he brought pallets of Trump water like he did to East Palestine this time. (But correct me if I am wrong)
But he, the man banned from having a charity in New York, has set up a Gofundme. He, the billionaire who supposedly could do a lot more than take credit for things he did not provide, like Starlink, is raising a fraction of other people’s money vs, say, what he owes for his rape settlement. Or his white collar fraud settlement.
Trump’s actions are as funny as a rubber crutch. He better not be leaning too hard on this weak effort of his to be relevant himself.
But for the still dubious, of course Biden or Harris aren’t supposed to swan on down there for a photo op as if they drive truck loads of supplies or all that. I don’t even know why people are supposedly making that a thing–except I do and it is dumb. They make sure the assistance is sent and coordinate with local government.
“Nothing I have experienced prepared me for the very public and relentless implosion of my father’s life,” writes Caroline Giuliani, announcing her support for Kamala Harris.
I am constantly asking myself how America is back here, even considering the possibility of electing Donald Trump again, after all of the damage he has caused, both in office and since. While Kamala Harris has gained extraordinary momentum by infusing this election with vitality and hope, I worry that too many Americans remain disconnected from the visceral, psychologically draining memory of Trump’s deeply destabilizing presidency. If enough people truly remembered what that chaos felt like, another Trump term wouldn’t even be on the table. But for those open to seeing the bare and unvarnished truth, there are unmistakable reminders of Trump’s destructive trail all around us, and it has broken my heart to watch my dad become one of them.
As Rudy Giuliani’s daughter, I’m unfortunately well-suited to remind Americans of just how calamitous being associated with Trump can be, even for those who are convinced he’s on their side. Watching my dad’s life crumble since he joined forces with Trump has been extraordinarily painful, both on a personal level and because his demise feels linked to a dark force that threatens to once again consume America. Not to disregard individual accountability in the slightest, but it would be naive for us to ignore the fact that many of those closest to Trump have descended into catastrophic downward spirals. If we let Trump back into the driver’s seat this fall, our country will be no exception.
My dad and I have a cartoonishly complicated relationship. But he is still my father, and despite his faults, I love him. I’ve seen him experience surreal heights, and, now, unfathomable lows. The last thing I want to do is hurt him, especially when he’s already down. Plus we never know how much time we have left with our parents. The totality of that makes this the most difficult piece I’ve ever written. Yet this moment and this election are so much bigger than any of us.
From reproductive rights and the economy, to foreign and environmental policy, we need experienced, sane, and fundamentally decent leaders who will fight for us instead of against us—who will safeguard our democracy rather than dismantle it. And as a recently engaged-to-be-married, 35-year-old who hopes to feel more joyous than fearful about the potential of becoming a parent myself, I need to advocate for a future worth bringing children into, which is why I am voicing my adamant support for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. (snip-MORE) This is a worthy read, and it’s free.
Scottie's Playtime 