Garbage In Garbage Out 🌴 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🌴

Somos Todos Puerto Rico:  A few days ago, at a rally in Arizona, Trump called the US “a garbage can for the world.”  Keeping with the 💩 theme, yesterday at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, on the anniversary of the Tree of Life Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, in an event reminiscent of the Nazi rally that was held at the Garden on 1939, Tony Hinchcliffe, an opening act for Trump went all in on hate.  He called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” mocked Hispanics for failing to use birth control, called Jews cheap, Palestinians rock throwers, and made a joke about a Black man and watermelons. That disgusting string of racial slurs as well as some additional slime including one speaker calling Harris an “anti-Christ” and another saying that she and her “pimp handlers will ruin the country” didn’t take place during tryout night at a third string comedy club but as part of the closing campaign message for the Republican candidate for president who once he took the stage, doubled down on his message of retribution and hate. While Trump was celebrating with a crowd of 20,000, many like-minded incels, the Democrat’s candidate, Kamala Harris, who nativist, misogynist Tucker Carlson bizarrely called a Samoan Malaysia of low IQ presumably because in his addled mind all women, particularly non-white ones are stupid and all Jamaicans and Indians are easily mistaken for Samoans (WTF), was in Philadelphia at a Puerto Rican restaurant talking about her plans to help the island recover from the storms that have ravaged its infrastructure. The contrast in candidates couldn’t be more obvious but not enough for Lindsey Graham who until he was challenged with proof to the contrary insisted that it’s the Democrats rather than the Republicans who use harsh language and anyway Kamala is a far left communist, unlike his man Trump who assisted by Elon Musk plans to fire 70% of government employees and trash the economy with tariffs, and not JD Vance who tried to lie through an interview with Jake Tapper who clearly couldn’t take that hateful drivel anymore, and also not RFK Jr who will do wonderful things for US healthcare while eliminating all lifesaving vaccines.

Vote Ahora!  Though it’s not clear if Trump knows it, Puerto Ricans are US citizens and while Puerto Rico does not have any electoral college votes, 5.8 million Puerto Ricans live on the mainland. There are just over 1 million Puerto Ricans in NYS where a number of Republican Congressman are facing challenging reelection races and slightly more in Florida where the Senate race between Republican Rick Scott and his Democratic challenger Debbie Murcarsel-Powell is close enough to be worth watching.  More importantly, 472,000 people of Puerto Rican descent live in swingy Pennsylvania, Philadelphia’s population is 14% Puerto Rican, putting the city second to only NYC in the number of people of Puerto Rican ancestry.  Another 90,000 people of Puerto Rican descent live in Georgia, 50,000 in Arizona, 100,000 in North Carolina, 65,000 in Wisconsin, 50,000 in Michigan and 27,000 in Nevada, states where the election is likely to be decided by the narrowest of margins. Sure, a lot of those people were already in Kamala’s camp but some of those are likely now more motivated to vote while some of those who were leaning Trump may have just changed their minds, or might change their minds, because the political ads write themselves.  Last night Trump’s team made a feeble effort to walk back the Puerto Rico dis but they were drowned out by superstar rapper and singer Bad Bunny who has 45 million Instagram followers and whose music is second in Spotify downloads only to Taylor Swift’s.  He posted a video endorsing Kamala Harris.  Ricky Martin with 19 million Instagram followers, Jennifer Lopez with 250 million, and Mark Antony with 14 million, who had all previously endorsed Harris reupped their support as did Ariana Grande, not of Puerto Rican ethnicity but an influencer nevertheless, who posted to her 500 million followers that she’d just cast her vote for Kamala. So maybe insulting Puerto Rico un muy estupido move to make eight days before election day when Puerto Rican and other Latino voters could swing the election?  We’ll know soon enough, or maybe not because Trump and his echo chamber are already claiming the election is rigged and we know what they plan to do if they don’t win.    

Estupido Tambien:  As had been leaked early on Friday, The Washington Post formally announced that it would no longer be issuing endorsements of presidential candidates even though the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris had already been written and was just awaiting what the editorial board thought was a routine final signoff.   New Publisher William Lewis, who earlier in his career was implicated in Britain’s infamous newspaper phone hacking scandal, insists that the decision to no longer issue endorsements was his but it’s widely believed that it was made by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos who fears that a Trump administration would cancel Amazon’s lucrative web service business if the paper he owns endorses a member of the “enemy from within” and who can blame him because yachts and private planes are so expensive, not to mention plastic surgery and all that other cool stuff.  Two prominent Washington Post journalists, Robert Kagan and Michele Norris, have resigned in protest, Alexandra Petri, the paper’s humor writer wrote a Kamala endorsement of her own, and a number of other Post writers are all over social media condemning the decision but begging subscribers to stay on board. Unfortunately for them, thousands, including me, have cancelled their subscriptions, not as hard a decision as it might have been just a few years ago given that the paper’s content and its readership have been going downhill for a while now partially because of management neglect but also because its business model hasn’t kept up with the times or even the NYTimes.  It may be time for the Post to change its motto to Democracy Died in Broad Daylight.  The LA Times, not as influential as the Washington Post, is also sticking by its decision to sit on its endorsement.  Over the weekend there were suggestions that billionaire donor Patrick Soon-Shiong had squelched the paper’s Kamala endorsement because his daughter was upset about endorsing Harris due to events in Gaza, because blaming the Jews is so au courant again but then issued a denial that their decision had anything to do with Gaza or the owner’s daughter.  Most likely he too kowtowed to Trump because nothing says autocracy like media companies giving up their independence and morals in obeyance to a dictator wannabe.  Not all papers have signed on to the cowardice.  The NY Times republished its Harris endorsement, and both the Philadelphi Inquirer and Houston Chronicle issued Harris endorsements two days ago.

Fog:  Over the weekend, Israel bombed Iranian missile sites as payback for Iran’s most recent massive missile attack on Israel.  Reports are that the Israel attack which was carried about by both female and male air force pilots was successful in that it took out some of Iran’s warning systems and has also set back its missile making capability about two years. The hope now is that some progress can be made on peace and hostage talks but we’ve heard that before.  Trump of course, egged Israel to do more because why not, he’s not president so escalation consequences won’t be his to suffer.  Biden and Harris who like many other world leaders were advised of the attack plans in advance, are now pushing for Netanyahu to use the opportunity to pivot to ceasefire talks and it appears that some of that might be happening, well maybe.

I voted! At the Metropolitan Museum of Art of all places. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow