Two Ballot boxes damaged overnight with incendiary devices in SE Portland at 11th and Belmont AND Fishers Landing Vancouver, WA. It’s not known at this time if any ballots were damaged.
Below is what the tRump campaign is all about, toxic masculinity. Gang thug 12 yr old boys on the playground standing around insulting other kids pretending to be tough guys. Is this what you want for president, for congress? People who feel that everyone different from them should be insulted and belittled? Hugs
NFL rules forbid political “messages or gestures” during games or on the field. Just ask Colin Kaepernick, who was attacked by Bosa for kneeling during the anthem. The cult is celebrating Bosa and attacking NBC for editing the incident out of their coverage.
8.2 billion people and he is desperate for more … white ones. Yes that is the truth of it. First he is so egotistical he thinks his genetics are superior to any others. Second the fear he has is that brown people will out number white ones and rule the world. As a member of South Africa’s apartheid system he hates the idea of whites not being firmly and securely ruling over everyone else. He is a sick man. Hugs
They are so sure the voter purges are hurting the democrats that they push deeper and deeper cuts to the voter rolls. Not realizing they are hitting their own people now also. Hugs
And she seethed at the idea that anyone would question the citizenship of a former federal employee with the “whitest name you could have.”
The elections office in Montgomery County, just north of Houston, had sent Howard-Elley a letter in late January saying that she had been flagged after she indicated that she was not a U.S. citizen in response to a jury summons. She had 30 days to provide the county proof of citizenship or she would be removed from the voter rolls, according to the letter.
More than 75,000 spectators gathered in Washington, D.C., to hear Vice President Kamala Harris‘ closing argument speech at the same site of former President Donald Trump‘s infamous “Save America” rally that preceded the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Harris’ event at the Ellipse arrived one week before Election Day and followed Trump’s closing arguments at Madison Square Garden on Sunday that received backlash for its inflammatory and racist rhetoric.
As the vice president took the stage Tuesday night, her campaign’s rapid response director, Ammar Moussa, posted to his account on X, formerly Twitter, that there were “OVER 75,000 people on the National Mall to watch Kamala Harris deliver her closing remarks.”
“Here. We. Go,” Moussa added.
CNN later reported that the Ellipse was at capacity and some guests were directed to an overflow area on the National Mall, per a Harris campaign official.
Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Ellipse just south of the White House in Washington, D.C., on October 29. The Harris campaign said that more than 75,000 people gathered to… More BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump held his January 6, 2021, rally at the Ellipse on the same day a mob of his supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol while Congress was certifying the 2020 election in which Trump lost to President Joe Biden. According to the House Select Committee tasked with investigating January 6, around 53,000 people attended Trump’s speech before the attack.
Harris’ previous crowd size record was set on Friday at her rally in Houston, which included an appearance from Beyoncé. The vice president’s campaign said around 30,000 people showed up to the Shell Energy Stadium event, which was focused on reproductive rights.
Trump frequently touts his own rally sizes, although as Newsweek has reported, the former president often exaggerates his crowd numbers. Trump’s campaign said that the former president’s event in New York City on Sunday filled Madison Square Garden to capacity. The venue can fit a maximum of 19,500 people.
Sunday’s event was marred by racist remarks hurled about Latinos, Black people, Jews and Palestinians. Sexist comments were also made about Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by several speakers.
Trump’s campaign has spoken out against one comment, made by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who said during his speech that Puerto Rico is a “floating island of garbage.” The former president’s team said that the “joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.” Trump told ABC News’ Rachel Scott when asked about the joke on Tuesday, “I don’t know him. Someone put him up there. I don’t know who he is.”
The former president also failed to condemn other statements made at Madison Square Garden during a speech at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, saying instead, “There’s never been an event so beautiful.”
“The love in that room was breathtaking,” he added. “It was like a lovefest, an absolute lovefest. And it was my honor to be involved.”
Harris said during her Ellipse speech that Trump “has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other.”
“That is who he is,” she added. “But America, I am here tonight to say that is not who we are.”
The vice president also criticized Trump’s comments about going after the “enemy from within” if elected to the White House. Despite receiving immense pushback for the comments in recent weeks, Trump repeated the phrase during his Madison Square Garden speech, telling supporters, “We’re running against a massive, crooked, malicious leftist machine that’s running the Democrat Party. They are smart and vicious, they are the enemy within, we must defeat them.”
On Tuesday, Harris told supporters, “Donald Trump intends to use the United States military against American citizens who simply disagree with him. People he calls …’the enemy from within.'”
Harris added, “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign via email Tuesday for comment.
and reblogging this one from Keith. I hate giving the Don any time at all, but the bottom line of this is that the young people are seeing this, some for the first time, as they were in middle and high school in 2016.
November 1, 1872 Susan B. Anthony and her three sisters entered a voter registration office set up in a barbershop. They were part of a group of fifty women Anthony had organized to register in her home town of Rochester. Anthony walked directly to the election inspectors and, as one of the inspectors would later testify, “demanded that we register them as voters.” The election inspectors refused, but she persisted, quoting the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship provision and the article from the New York Constitution pertaining to voting, which contained no sex qualification. She persisted: “If you refuse us our rights as citizens, I will bring charges against you in Criminal Court and I will sue each of you personally for large, exemplary damages!” The inspectors sought the advice of the Supervisor of elections: “Young men,” he said, “do you know the penalty of law if you refuse to register these names?” Registering the women, the registrars were advised, “would put the entire onus of the affair on them.” The inspectors voted to allow Anthony and her three sisters to register. In all, fourteen Rochester women successfully registered that day. But the Rochester Union and Advertiser editorialized: “Citizenship no more carries the right to vote that it carries the power to fly to the moon . . . if these women in the Eighth Ward offer to vote, they should be challenged, and if they take the oaths and the Inspectors receive and deposit their ballots, they should all be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
November 1, 1929 Australia abolished peace-time compulsory military training.
November 1, 1954 A war of independence to end French colonial rule over the north African nation of Algeria began when 60 bombs were set off on this day in Algiers, the capital. Over the next eight years 1.5 million Algerians would die, along with about 30,000 French. The French had dominated the country since 1830. French troops clash with Algerian civilians Read more
November 1, 1954 The U.S. produced the biggest ever man-made explosion in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands. The hydrogen bomb, equivalent of 20 million tons of TNT was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. It overwhelmed the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists had anticipated. One of the atolls was totally vaporized, disappearing into a gigantic mushroom cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide, dropping back to the sea in the form of radioactive fallout.
November 1, 1961 50,000-100,000 women joined protests against the resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The demonstrations, in at least 60 U.S. cities, led to the founding of Women Strike for Peace. Their slogan: “End the Arms Race – Not the Human Race.” See Photos from Swarthmore College Peace Collection “Women’s Strike for Peace” storming the Pentagon in a 1967 protest against the war in Vietnam. Bella Abzug demonstrating with WSP photo: Dorothy Marder
November 1, 1970 Detroit’s Common Council voted for immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Vietnam.
November 1, 1983 A senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz about intelligence reports that showed Iraqi troops resorting to “almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]” against the Iranians. Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran in 1980. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president’s recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
November 1, 1990 As part of the adoption of the International Law of the Sea, forty-three nations agreed to ban dumping industrial wastes at sea by 1995. Neither the U.S. nor Canada (along with Albania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and San Marino) have ever ratified the treaty which thus lacks the force of U.S. federal law. More on the Law of the Sea
November 1, 2003 The Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, was transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the military policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”Yitzhak was right, and his path just,” said Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and architect of the Oslo peace accords with Mr Rabin. “His views today are clear and enduring. There will be no retreat; we will continue.” Read more
October 30, 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr. and seven other clergymen were jailed for four days in Birmingham, Alabama. They were serving sentences on contempt-of-court charges stemming from Easter 1963 demonstrations they had led against discrimination. The U.S. Supreme Court had upheld their convictions for violating a court order enjoining them from marching [Walker v. Birmingham]. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor had twice denied them a parade permit. The law Connor used was declared unconstitutional two years later [Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham]. The constitutional issues
October 30, 1995 Over 80 people were arrested at Sugarloaf Mountain in southern Oregon during a massive direct action to prevent clear-cutting of old-growth forests on public land by private timber companies. Sugarloaf protest
October 30, 2000 George Mizo of the United States, Rosi Hohn-Mizo of Germany (his wife) and Georges Doussin of France were awarded Vietnam’s first-ever State Medal of Friendship by the President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for their work in building the Vietnam Friendship Village. The Vietnam Friendship Village after five years; the medical clinic is in the foreground, other buildings are residences.
Mizo and the Vietnam Veterans Association built a residential facility for orphan children and elderly or disabled adults. George Mizo was a veteran of both the Vietnam War and the struggle to end U.S. support of the contra insurgency in Nicaragua, and repressive regimes elsewhere in Central America [see September 15, 1986]. General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam’s senior military commander during both the French and American wars advised the Mizo’s 12-year-old son, Michael, “Never go to war.” About the Vietnam Friendship Village Project
I’m not on Facebook; never have been. I do order from Penzey’s, and because of that, I get their emails, which are awesome. Here is the body of today’s email with links, and another shout-out to any Facebook users who are called to help out with this. And, I think anyone in a position to share in some fashion is welcome to do so!
(Here should be a photo of a veteran who may be the subject of this. I’m sorry it won’t post.)
This really isn’t a standard email, it’s a Facebook post sent by email. But with one week to go and everything seemingly all tied up, sharing a glimpse of our past that’s at risk of becoming our future seems right. Please read and share.Thanks.
October 25, 2024 George Mullins voted. June 6, 1944 George came ashore in Normandy. He voted by mail. He insisted that the ballot needed to be taken to the post office and handed directly to the postal worker. “Can’t take any chances in these times.”
It was LST #311 that brought him 100 yards from the shore of Utah Beach on D-Day. The water was cold and up to his neck. He kept an eye on the shorter soldiers to make sure their heavy packs would not drag them under. Together they all made it ashore. So many of those George went ashore with never made it home.
George Mullins lived through the unfathomable violence it took to face down fascism. He made it home but left so much behind. Forever since he has had to carry a hurt and a loss that thankfully most of us have never known.
His experience has left him with thoughts on this election and about those who would once again intentionally unleash the unspeakable horrors he had hoped were forever in the past.
Two weeks ago George posted his thoughts on his Facebook page for the book he wrote of his WWII experience, Foxhole.
As is the nature of Facebook, and social media, and the times we live in, one of the most valuable pieces that will ever be written about this election now sits there with just 72 likes.
George’s daughter and longtime Penzeys customer, Sheila, wrote hinting that maybe I could bring more attention to his words. Yes. A very big Yes. Coincidentally enough (if there are coincidences) his were exactly the words I was then searching for.
Not eight hours before Sheila’s email arrived I had just finished rewatching Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. I’m convinced it is in the unspeakable sacrifice of so many Americans eighty years ago where the key to understanding just how much is at stake on 11.5.24 lives or dies.
But where to find the words? I looked to Saving Private Ryan because Spielberg has good words, and there are good words there but his, like mine, are of an outsider looking in. Where could I find the words I needed? And as fate would have it they arrived all tied neatly with a bow and accompanied by a breathtaking photo.
And I won’t give away all George Mullins’s words, please read all of them for yourself. But in short, today he is deeply troubled by the direction he sees our country heading.
“I didn’t fight in World War II, standing on the front lines of history, so that we could one day find our country on the brink of dictatorship or authoritarian rule. The freedoms I defended, and believe in, the sacrifices my comrades and I made, were for the preservation of democracy—of freedom, fairness, and the right to live without fear of tyranny.”
There’s so much we take for granted, but all that George and those he fought alongside achieved came at a terrible cost. And as much as we know words like fascism, and Nazi, and even freedom, how much do we really understand this is about the difference between living free and having to live in fear of your government?
By 1944 everyone understood, but today it’s something we’ve forgotten, something we take for granted. George Mullins went ashore shoulder to shoulder with men like him willing to give their lives so that others may live free. Let that sink in.
And now the leaders of the Republican party are not only throwing that sacrifice away, they are forcing our children to relive it. Why? Because they don’t have the strength to stand up to Donald Trump’s never-ending need for ever greater power. We must do better. We must share George Mullins’s warning. (snip; an offer I’m not sure is appropriate to include here, but I can put it in comments if someone’s interested. I’m trying to stay on topic, without appearing to advertise, though advertisement is not the author’s intent. -A)
And two outstanding Steven Spielberg words. I’ve seen Saving Private Ryan several times since its release. Each time I’ve seen something new in it. This time I was struck by Tom Hanks’s Captain Miller’s words to Matt Damon’s Ryan. “Earn this.”
This time against the backdrop of this election it hit home more than before that these two words weren’t between two people but between all those who gave so much and all of us who have lived our lives with the gifts their terrible sacrifice brought. Earn this. We truly do owe them that much.
And I did ask George’s daughter Sheila about what was going through his mind as he cast his vote in this election. She asked him over dinner. He told her this: “When I voted I felt happy to place my signature on a ballot against the Dictator. I was hoping more people wake up and check the right box.”
That one of those white men struggling ashore on the 6th of June so many years ago should live to vote for America’s first Black woman President is a testament to this country and to all who serve.
And I admit that at first I felt uncomfortable with George’s word Dictator. It felt over the top. But then it set in that he is the one who knows, not me.
He is the one with the knowledge, and the experience, and the words we all must learn if we are to go through what his generation went through and re-emerge once again as America on the other side.
So much to earn. So much at stake. Please help us help George Mullins’s message reach everyone while it can still make a difference.
And please visit George’s Facebook page and share a like, a hug, or even a heart. He has already earned it and so much more. What a life.
In the last few decades, we have been witness to systematic failures in American life. Time and time again the guardrails we believed existed turned out to be illusions, or at best, guardrails without any teeth. The courts, the financial institutions, the legislators, and especially the media – entrusted as the watchdogs of democracy – have absolutely failed.
There is only one group that, more often than not, has been up to the task: The people. The people keep showing up and at the very least, voting to put people in charge to clean up the messes. Of course, once those people are in office they too often respond with timidity and reluctance and don’t go as far as necessary to exercise the mandate they have been given, but the people did their jobs.
In every presidential election since 1988, with the exception of 2004, a plurality or majority of the public voted for the Democratic candidate. That is a data point you rarely see repeated and I am quite certain that if it was Republicans with such a popular vote winning streak both the party and the media would never shut up about it. That is a triumph of decency. It would be easy for voters to be snowed under by the right’s avalanche of lies and hate, ably amplified by their buck-chasing friends in the press, but the voters keep seeing through it.
To be certain, there are structural barriers. Neither Al Gore nor Hillary Clinton became president even though the will of the American people said they should have been. And the presidencies of Bill Clinton, Obama, and Biden have had too many missed opportunities to push the ball forward, even though all three of these men had mandates to go quite far.
But what matters is that enough voters saw through the haze of absolute bullshit to send a message to do the right thing.
Here we are again. The Republican Party has always glowed bright with a hateful intensity, but Trump has allowed them to move that hate from Mitt Romney’s “quiet rooms” to spotlights like Madison Square Garden. The press and the oligarchs that own it at institutions like The New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN and others, are quite happy to make billions of dollars from GOP fueled hate, as long as they can make a buck. They just don’t care about the consequences.
Voters still care. It may be naïve or cringe, or corny, but they believe. Voters have shown us that a majority of them are opposed to hate, opposed to racism, opposed to misogyny, opposed to treating people as second class based on their orientation. And a majority of them are pro-decency.
Yes, most of the pro-decency vote has a liberal ideology but it is more than that. There are people who just don’t like being crude bigots that spend all of their time shoving the faces of the vulnerable into the dirt. There are more of us than there are of them, and they have to effectively cheat or rig the rules to overcome our numbers.
Decency is on the march, but we are at a breaking point, again. Election day or week is not a “fever break” moment. No matter the outcome, but especially if decency is victorious again, we cannot go to sleep. The bad boss at the end of the game has not been defeated. 2004 showed us that. 2008 showed us that. 2012. 2016. 2020. The forces of darkness and depravity do not respect the will of the people and if you retreat, expecting that everyone will finally accept the supremacy of decency – the other side will see that as an opening.
The decent people need to stand up for what they believe in and then keep standing, keep pushing back, until the other people are broken – and then decency most continue to advance and remain forever vigilant.
I voted for decency, and I always will. I know I’m not alone.
If you like this newsletter, please consider becoming a paying subscriber by clicking here to join. I won’t be putting any of my regular columns behind a paywall and they will always be free. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed so far!
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.
anti ROTC demo
Bobby Seale
Chicago 10 by Brett Morgen, an animated film about the trial
Scottie's Playtime 