The Ketchup is Flying ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️

Mar a Lago Freak Out: It’s too early to know whether Kamala Harris’ rise in the polls will continue and go the distance but one thing is certain, its freaking out Trump.  Yesterday, in an effort to wrest attention away from Harris who, together with her new running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, is joyfully barnstorming her way through the swing states, Trump held a hastily scheduled press event at Mar a Lago where he tried to prove that “only he can fix it” but didn’t. His podium performance was reminiscent of the worst of the ones he’d delivered from the White House during the height of the COVID crisis, no bleach cocktails but plenty of vitriol.  He called Kamala a person of low intelligence, insisted that all the polls still showed him in the lead, claimed that everyone except Black women were in his camp, called Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro who has an enviously high approval rating in his state very unpopular, and said Jews who plan to vote for Kamala needed to “get their heads checked.” Because crowd size is what keeps him up at night, he went on and on about how attendance at his rallies far exceeded Kamala’s and anyone else who’d ever held one including Martin Luther King whose March on Washinton “I’ve Got a Dream” rally was historically huge. Ignoring the day’s positive employment data and a 700 point uptick in the volatile Dow average because only bad news counts he attacked the economy and said that failing to return him to the White House would put the country in “mortal danger” while describing his 2020 departure from Washington which did put the country in danger as a peaceful transition because after all his supporters who beat the crap out of the Capitol Police were just nice tourists.  In an effort to distinguish himself from Harris who has been facing criticism for her failure to hold a formal press conference since replacing Biden at the head of the ticket, he took questions from the press but couldn’t resist calling a question from a reporter who asked him why his schedule had been pared down to just one rally per week stupid. During the Q & A he asserted that he wasn’t sure how he’d vote on Florida’s abortion amendment but that “he’s get back to everyone in two weeks with an announcement, possibly at the same time that he releases his health plan and tax filings. He either didn’t know that mifepristone is the “abortion drug” or pretended not to hear a question about whether or not he’d ban it if he made it back to the White House and also seemed to believe that the “millions” of asylum seeking migrants had all recently been released from asylums because obviously no word can have more than one meaning which could explain why one political cartoonist depicted him in a strait jacket.  And despite all the times that he called for Hillary Clinton to be locked up, he claims he didn’t, it was only his fans who did and anyway he could have done bad things to her if he’d wanted to and still might if he’s elected.  

Debate, Debate, Swift Boat: Kamala Harris may be a “childless cat woman” but she’s appears to have mastered the art of ignoring the whines and demands of a petulant toddler so despite Trump’s insistence that the debate schedule that his team agreed to when Biden was the candidate was no longer valid and that she should instead debate him on Fox, the station that has paid out three quarters of a billion dollars for its election lies, no Fox debate is scheduled but the September 10^th debate on ABC is back on.  Though both JD Vance and Tim Walz say that they’ll be happy to debate each other, to date no debate between the two vice presidential candidates has been scheduled but the progeny of Mike Pence’s fly are waiting in the wings. Debate or not, JD and his team have been doing their best to “swift boat” Governor Walz.  Swift boating for those who’ve forgotten or missed the 2004 election cycle is what the Republican’s did to then Senator John Kerry who ultimately lost his presidential run against George W Bush. The Bush campaign team which included Chris LaCivita, who is one of Trump’s campaign chairs, attacked Kerry’s Viet Nam war service, claiming that Kerry who’d fought in the war but later grew disillusioned and protested it, had not deserved his combat medals.  Their claims about Kerry were eventually debunked but the attack on his war record proved effective during the campaign.  With JD Vance as its instrument the Trump team has spent the past few days attacking Walz’ military service.  Walz served in the National Guard for 24 years, retiring before his unit was called up to go to Iraq because he’d decided to run for Congress. Walz had achieved the rank of Command Seargeant Major, one of the top ranks for an enlisted soldier but because he left the service before completing the rank’s required coursework, for pension benefit purposes he was reduced to a Master Sargent.  JD Vance brags about his four years in the Marines but he wasn’t in combat either, rather he was a combat correspondent in a non-combat position in the public affairs department in Iraq. The bottom line: both candidates deserve appreciation for their military service, neither was a war hero and attacking another soldier for his service, especially one who served for 24 years is very wrong but sadly effective. Even the Wall Street Journal gets that it’s wrong, this morning their editors wrote “The US military is a volunteer force and only about 1% of the population serves in uniform. Mr. Walz and Mr. Vance both served their country. “ They of course then went on to say “there are other and better reasons to oppose Mr. Walz’s candidacy” but that’s the point. Disagreeing on policy is fair, even if those disputed policies included such “awful” things as providing breakfast to hungry school kids but calling out Walz for imaginary “stolen valor” not at all.  By the way, Trump didn’t go to Viet Nam because of his imaginary heel spurs and current Congressman/former White House doctor Ronny Jackson who has been all in on the Walz smear campaign still calls himself an Admiral even though he was demoted for cause.   

Fog:  The Middle East is still boiling but so far at least, no major attacks, though plenty of “smaller ones,” perhaps because of a combination of enhanced US military presence in the region, threats and intense diplomatic efforts by the Biden administration and European and Middle Eastern leaders or maybe because Iran is biding its time. And just to be clear, despite some press reports that Kamala Harris told representatives of the Muslim and Palestinian community that she would be willing to discuss an Israel arms embargo her campaign issued a statement last night saying that she did not, instead her representative said that she told them that she would continue to engage with them about the war.  She’s clearly trying to walk a fine line, reeling in as many voters as possible.  Further evidence of that is how she responded to protesters who shouted “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide” at her Michigan rally.  Using some of the same stern “cat mother” skills she used with Trump, she said “Everyone’s voice matters. But I am speaking now,” adding “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that, Otherwise I am speaking.”  The rest of the crowd then drowned the protesters out..

#BringThemAllHomeNow