62 Days🌴 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🌴

Crunch Time:  There are only 62 days left to what feels like the longest, most unpredictable election ever.  Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, spent their Labor Day weekend campaigning.  They focused on labor and on the swing states, including, with an assist from President Biden, the most important one, Pennsylvania.  Trump and his partner, JD Vance, spent part of their weekend campaigning, and the rest throwing mud, justifying what should be disqualifying indefensible actions, flip flopping, and questioning the integrity of the upcoming election.  And because Vance had a habit of appearing on what seems like countless podcasts before seeking public office, we also learned some more about his disdain for women, or at the very least for “professional” women who by refusing to adhere to his Handmaid vision have chosen a “path to misery.” He also claimed that men in America are “suppressed in their masculinity,” and to be fair, he does seem to be lacking on that front.  As to the flipflopping, Trump finally revealed how he plans to vote on Florida’s abortion referendum. He’ll be voting against the amendment to incorporate abortion rights into the state’s constitution, not because he really cares a hoot about who does and does not get an abortion but because he cares about maintaining the support of evangelicals and other right to lifers, who’ve grown frustrated with his attempts to straddle the abortion fence.  His abortion waffling, like his recent assertion that he’ll see to it that health insurance companies or the government cover the costs of IVF, is just campaign fodder intended to lure back those low information female voters who can be convinced by targeted clips of his utterances.  There’s no way that Trump who tried and insists he will still try to eliminate Obamacare will require insurance companies to cover IVF, neither is there any way that Republicans in the House and Senate will as every Republican Senator recently voted against Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth’s proposed legislation that would have established a nationwide right for patients to access IVF and other assisted reproductive services as well as a right for doctors to provide IVF treatment in accordance with medical standards and a right for insurance to cover those services.  As to the indefensible, having gotten caught and criticized for staging a campaign event at Arlington Cemetery, Trump and his team have come out swinging, gong so far as to slam Harris, Walz and Biden for not showing up at Arlington to “participate” in what they’re now mislabeling an official commemorative ceremony.

Polls? Sadly, doubling down and waffling works with too many voters.  How else to explain the tight polls?  Harris is up a bit but still mostly within the margin of error and given that only the Electoral College matters she needs to be up a lot to win.  Naturally, Trump is really mad about all those polls, especially angry with a daily tracking poll from reliably Republican friendly pollster Rasmussen which showed Harris up a smidge. Over the weekend, a Trump staffer was fired for revealing that Trump’s campaign is no longer focusing on New Hampshire, a state that with the support of popular Governor Chris Sununu, a future presidential wannabee who like Nikki Haley dissed Trump before then endorsing him, they no longer believe they can turn red. Also over the weekend, Trump said that he had “every right to interfere in the 2020 presidential election,” both an admission that he did and a warning that he plans to instruct his minions in the states that matter to do the same this time around.  

Horrific Fog:  Last week the good news was that one Hamas held hostage had been rescued from a Gaza terror tunnel, sadly this weekend’s news was devastating.  Six other hostages, including Ori Danino 25; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Almog Sarusi, 27; Alexander Lobnov, 33; Carmel Gat, 40; and Israeli American Hersh Goldberg Polin, 23 whose parents spoke at the Democratic convention were brutally murdered by their Hamas captors. The press reported that they were “found” by Israeli forces, but to be clear, they didn’t die mysteriously or accidentally, they were shot dead, likely in front of each other, by their Hamas captors whose revised marching orders are to kill hostages whenever Israeli Defense Forces close in. As evidenced by the huge number of Israelis demonstrating over the weekend, as well as the national labor strike that closed down most of the country, Israelis are mourning and are furious with Prime Minister Netanyahu.  They’re not simply angry about his failure to negotiate a hostage release deal, a majority believe that he’s prioritizing his political career and personal freedom over the hostages. According to the Times of Israel daily podcast, the issue for many isn’t that Bibi’s demand that Israel be allowed to maintain control of the strategic Philadelphi corridor between Egypt and Gaza isn’t strategically rational, it’s that they don’t trust him, neither does Biden though both he and Harris have forcefully condemned Hamas while expressing their horror over the murder of the six hostages. Trump issued a “sympathy” statement too, but his quickly descended into a rant about how unfairly he’s being treated by the “weaponized” Department of Justice.  The similarities between him and Bibi are hard to miss.

#BringThemAllHomeNOW