When Elephants Fly 🌴 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🌴 🍯 🍎

Smith Speaks:   Towards the end of Tuesday’s VP debate, smarmy and slick VP candidate JD Vance refused to say that Trump loss the 2020 election.  That refusal took on adding meaning on Wednesday after Special Counsel Jack Smith released a 165-page filing that detailed the Department of Justice’s evidence that Trump knew very early on that he lost the election, consciously made the decision to keep fighting the election outcome by making and pushing assertions that he knew were false, that he put Rudy Guliani in charge of running his battle to have the results overturned because the White House legal team wouldn’t do so, and how VP Mike Pence’s efforts to gently push Trump to acknowledge their loss as well as his refusal to certify a false slate of electors so angered Trump that he was okay with Pence having to flee the MAGA mob that was trying to hang him.  Though lengthy, Smith’s filing was pared down to reflect the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. Following the “instructions” in their ruling, Smith limited his evidence to Trump’s actions as a candidate rather than to what he did in what they consider to be his expansive official presidential capacity. Trump is bigly mad about the filing and its timing but then again, it’s because of his stalling tactics that it took so long for the filing to see light of day. Trump’s legal team is expected to counter that Trump’s conversations with Pence shouldn’t have been referenced, Smith’s argument is that they those conversations related to the campaign and to the then VP’s distinct and separate role presiding over the Senate on January 6 rather than his normal VP duties.  Similarly, Smith’s position is that all the other evidence cited in the carefully edited down filing relate to Trump’s conversations with people who were either full time campaign employees or acting in the capacity of campaign staff.  Trump and his legal team fought hard to keep this filing under wraps, an indication of just how concerned they are about its contents.  The determination of whether or not Smith’s filing meets the limitations imposed by SCOTUS’ expanded definition of presidential powers will end up back in their hands after the election but only if Harris wins because if Trump wins, the case will end up flushed into one of Trump’s golden toilets but at the very least Smith’s evidence is now out in the open for all to see.   

October: One of the October surprises is no longer because the Dockworkers have solved the pay raise component of their strike while agreeing to return to work while negotiations continue over the stickier automation issue.  The second, the Middle East, is still boiling and erupting, and the third, hurricane relief, will remain in the headlines as efforts to help those impacted by Helene continue, with media outlets like the NY Post echoing Trump’s assertion that the Biden administration’s efforts are woefully inadequate, not because they are but because the Murdoch rag loves muckraking and because Trump is Trump. That’s not to say that helping out those affected will be easy and that those suffering won’t be disgruntled because their lives have been severely disrupted and it’s normal to be very, very upset when your world has been destroyed but the Biden and Harris administration appear to be throwing a lot of resources at what is going to be a long and expensive task, one that also includes making sure that residents of the affected areas will be able to vote in the upcoming election.  Notably that allocation of resources has nothing to do with whether or not the voters impacted by the storm are Republicans or Democrats, something that is in sharp contrast to Trump’s approach to disaster management as evidenced by Politico’s interviews with two Trump White House officials who documented how he was “flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters and on at least three occasions hesitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile or ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states.” Mark Harvey, one of those interviewed, reported that Trump only agreed to help California deal with its wildfires after he was provided with voting results that showed that heavily damaged Orange County, California had more Trump supporters than the entire state of Iowa.  To quote President Biden, “You can’t only help those in need if they voted for you….It’s the most basic part of being president, and this guy knows nothing about it.” 

Reproductive Health:  Melania, the former first lady who has been mostly absent from her husband’s campaign, except for those overpaid appearances she made for the Log Cabin Republican group, wants us all to know that she is pro-choice and pro legal immigration.  I really don’t care what the woman who asked CNN to pay her $250,000 for an interview and who came here on a questionably obtained “genius” visa has to say about anything, do you? Regardless of her utterances, it’s Melania’s husband whose actions continue to put reproductive care in jeopardy.   As of Tuesday, as the result of a newly adopted state law, Louisiana has recategorized mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled dangerous substances.” That means that the two drugs which are used for miscarriage management and to stop dangerous bleeding after childbirth, have to be stored in a locked box like other controlled substances, which doctors say will delay treatment in emergency situations. Louisiana currently ranks as the state with the fifth worse maternal mortality rate. This policy change could help Louisiana leapfrog over even worse Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas, but only if those chart toppers don’t follow suit, but yay, Melania is pro-choice. Trump wants us to believe that he’s the best advocate women could ever possibly want since abortion policy is now in the hands of the states, he wants us to believe that his promise not to sign a national abortion ban is genuine, and JD Vance, his partner in maternal death, wants us to believe that he doesn’t really want to ban all abortions everywhere, just almost all in most places.  WTF?   

Endorsements:  Born in the U.S.A guy, Bruce Springsteen has endorsed Harris and Walz, calling Trump “the most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime.”  Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Mike Meadows aide who testified before the January 6^th committee despite the threats to her safety continues to consider herself a conservative but is also Team Harris/Walz. She says that she doesn’t understand how “so many Republicans, specifically the men, are cloaking themselves in cowardice, especially in the face of Donald Trump and JD Vance. The Republican party is something that is completely unrecognizable to what it once was.” And in a pairing that would have been unimaginable before Trump took over the Republican party, Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris campaigned together in Wisconsin last night.  Forget pigs, the new metaphor should be when elephants fly. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow