Space Lasers, Again 🌴 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🌴

Storm Clouds:  Neither Helene nor Milton was man made nor geoengineered to seize lithium, but thanks to the likes of Margie Q a number of Trumpatistas believe that the hurricanes were created by “those” people (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) with the space lasers to intentionally target Republican dominated enclaves. How is it that despite attending after school Hebrew School classes three times a week through high school I missed the space laser lessons?  Despite barely recognizing federal aid, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appears to be doing a reasonable job marshalling clean-up and relief resources but still refuses to acknowledge that climate change, a term he’s actually had deleted from state laws, is real. He insists that he’s got statistics to prove that there’s nothing unusual about the increasingly deadly storms or the unprecedented number of tornados that accompanied Milton.  Spoiler alert: there are no such statistics.  Naturally, master of deception Trump who once moved a hurricane with a Sharpie, is fully on board the disinformation train.  He and his echo chamber are sticking with and amplifying the theme that the “incompetent” Biden/Harris administration is diverting hurricane aid from Republican areas to illegal migrants and that the piddling amount of aid actually making it to the deserving victims is being limited to a measly $750, another lie as that is just the amount provided as a emergency bridge to help fund the most immediate needs like food and medicine, and is by no means the only amount that the affected are eligible to receive.  As noted in today’s NY Times, the “bizarre” falsehoods that President Biden called out during his press conference and that even a number of Republican politicians in affected areas have bemoaned, are making the dissemination of aid more difficult but then again, that’s the point.

Panic Time:  We’re being inundated with polls, some showing Kamala Harris with the narrowest of leads, others showing Trump winning in the all-important swing states. It’s hard to know which ones are from credible pollsters because the right and sometimes even the left frequently flood the zone with their preferred polls to influence polling averages, a strategy geared towards influencing voter turnout. What is clear is that despite his lies, threats, and increasingly incoherent speeches, Trump who is whipping up fears about the migrant “invasion” and working to convince parents that their precious kids are being forced to change their sex at schools while also promising a new tax cut, tailor made to whatever audience he is speaking to at the time, could win the election.  Sorry to have to say that but it’s true and judging by the concerns expressed by former Republican now a never Trumper Tim Miller and former Obama advisor now CNN pundit David Axelrod on last night’s Bulwark podcast, bedwetting is in order

Madison Square Garden? While Kamala Harris and her proxies, including former President Obama, are popping up all over the crucial swing states, Trump’s plans, besides badmouthing Detroit in Detroit, include large rallies in New York’s Madison Square Garden and California’s Coachella Valley.  NY and California are states he will not win but both states, which have always had red enclaves, have gotten redder. He lost New York by about 23 points in both 2016 and 2020.  He lost California both times by about 29 points.  Right now, polls indicate that he’s down 14 points in NY and down 23 in California.  For what it’s worth, my theory is that despite his assertions that he can pull off NY and California miracles, he knows he won’t come close in either state, but his objective is pick up votes to narrow what is likely to be a loss in the nationwide popular vote which he lost by 2.9 million votes in 2016 and 7 million votes in 2020.  Should he lose the Electoral College vote, the only one that matters, shrinking his popular vote loss will bolster his inevitable claim that “the fraudulent” election was “stolen” from him. He’s been laying the groundwork for that for some time.  Think January 6 on steroids.  Of course, if he wins, there will have been no fraud and no steal.

And:  The Kremlin has confirmed that despite his claims to the contrary, Trump did send his bestie Vlad COVID tests during the height of the pandemic though they haven’t confirmed any of the seven or more calls mentioned in Bob Woodward’s new book.  Those $60 Bibles that Trump’s been selling to his fans, they like his hats were made in China at a cost of $3 per Bible.   Remember those suspicions that the FBI investigation into Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults was incomplete at best, well Senator Sheldon Whitehouse now has the receipts, and it turns out that as suspected, the Trump White House and the FBI “misled the public and the Senate” about the scope of their investigation because mostly they didn’t follow-up on leads or talk to accusers. Harris received another endorsement yesterday, this one from The Atlantic. In endorsing Harris, they said she is a “devoted public servant who respects the law and the Constitution.  She believes in the freedom, equality, and dignity of all Americans.” They also noted that Trump “is even more vicious and erratic than in the past, and the ideas of his closest advisers are more extreme.”   Additionally, tech billionaire Ben Horowitz of the huge Andreesen Horowitz venture capital firm has shifted teams and is now endorsing and contributing to the Harris campaign.

Have an easy fast (if you are fasting)

#BringThemAllHomeNow