Whale Heads 🌴 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🌴

The Kennedy Legacy? On Friday, RFK Jr who in addition to dumping a bear carcass in Central Park has also decapitated and brough home the head of a dead whale exited the presidential race and endorsed Trump. Not a surprise, he’s been telegraphing his plans for some time and his biggest donor by far, Timothy Mellon, is also one of Trump’s biggest donors.  He and Trump are made for each other, they’re both dangerously charismatic, delusional, power hungry nepo babies who’ve mastered the art of speaking somewhat populist gibberish. They’ve both eviscerated each other in the past but that was then, and this is now.   Nothing RFK said during his Friday announcement made any sense, so his utterances are not worth repeating, but it’s more than fair to assume that Trump has promised him a very senior position of some sort, likely one where he’ll be able to endanger the country with his dangerous anti-vaccine positions and to be clear his opposition to vaccinations extends way beyond the COVID vaccine. Although he’s tried to equivocate, he’s on record dissing all vaccines, including those for all the childhood diseases.  Count me as one who thinks it’s particularly weird that a former, well hopefully former, heroin addict who according to his college friends also sold cocaine is okay with pumping himself full of steroids but not okay with disease preventing vaccines.   

Does It Matter?  The question isn’t how many of members of RFK’s family are outraged by his decision, most of them with the exception of his complicit wife Chery Hines are and his sister Kerry called his action obscene, but whether or not his endorsement moves the needle enough towards Trump to impact the outcome of the election. We’ll have to wait for the full onslaught of this week’s polls to get a better picture as to whether his endorsement matters but at least one pollster/statistician has weighed in.  Yesterday Nate Silver explained why he thinks that RFK’s withdrawal from the race will have almost no impact. According to Silver’s model which reflects that it’s procedurally too late for RFK to take himself off the ballot in some swing states including Wisconsin and North Carolina where ballots have already been printed, RFK’s withdrawal improves Harris’ polling average by 0.8% from 48.0% to 48.8% while goosing Trump’s 1.1% from 43.7% to 44.8%.  In any case, this week’s set of polls will be revealing because in addition to reflecting RFK’s endorsement, they’ll also reflect Harris’ post-convention bounce.  Of note, third party candidates Cornell West and Jill Stein are still running.  In an attempt to grab some of RFK’s voters, West is now repositioning himself as a vaccine skeptic.  Stein also appears set on remaining in the race, but Trump is trying to court her, and they do share the same Russian friend so there’s that.

Reproductive Rights:  Abortion is on the ballot in ten states including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada New York,  and South Dakota.  Not all of them are swing states, but some of them are and all of them have down ballot races which will be affected by an influx of voters showing up to vote for the reinstatement of reproductive rights, so Trump is now trying to reposition himself as being “great for women’s reproductive rights.” That’s obviously bull sh-t but there are probably some low information and/or gullible voters who’ll buy it.  Similarly, JD Vance, another one who has repeatedly taken a hardline position against abortion insisted this weekend that Trump wouldn’t sign legislation that imposes a nationwide ban on abortion.  That’s probably not true but even if it is, Trump and his judicial appointees can affectively ban abortion by eliminating access to mifepristone by strictly enforcing the antiquated but still in place Comstock Act of 1873 which outlaws the conveyance of “obscene” materials through the mail.  On the subject of Trump judges, citing the 2022 Bruen Supreme Court ruling, the decision where Clarence Thomas said that only gun regulations that are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulations” is copacetic one of them ruled last week that the ban against machine guns is unconstitutional because apparently we need more machine guns in the hands of lunatics and since our forefathers didn’t explicitly ban them they can’t be banned now.   

Fog:  Before the October 7 massacre and the subsequent war in Gaza, Israel’s primary concern was an attack from the north by Iran’s heavier armed and more capable Hezbollah surrogates. That concern has never gone away. This weekend Hezbollah had planned to launch 3000 rockets and drones into Israel, but their plans were thwarted by Israel’s preemptive strike which took out most of their launch pads.  Hezbollah still managed to send off 300 of their rockets and drones but with the help of the Iron Dome they were not able to inflict much damage in Israel although they did take out a lot of chickens something that provided feed for some in the Arab press who mocked the attack’s failure. Despite its failure, Hezbollah and Iran are claiming that the attack was a success and that’s not a bad thing because painting it as a success to their population is face saving, a way to back off from additional attacks, at least for now.   The peace talks slog on. Hamas is still Hamas. The hostages are still hostages.  Civilians in Gaza are still suffering. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow