Happy Halloween!

GOP is Playing With Healthcare Fire

Republicans have finally revealed their health care plan: repeal the Affordable Care Act. A new video has surfaced of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson saying that Donald Trump, if elected, will kill the Affordable Care Act in the first 100 days, potentially throwing 22 million Americans off their insurance. 

“Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,” Johnson said during a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Monday, while a life-sized Trump cardboard cutout loomed behind him. The video was first obtained by NBC News.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson continued. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”  Johnson waxed poetic about the virtues of the “free market” and “taking bureaucrats out of the health care equation.”  However, the ACA remains overwhelmingly popular, with an April survey from KFF finding that 62% of Americans have a favorable view of the law.  How fast do you think Harris can get this into a TV ad?

China Cracking Down on Halloween in Shanghai

A heavy police response has stifled Halloween celebrations in Shanghai, in what many have viewed as an attempt by authorities to crack down on freedom of expression.  Witnesses have said they saw police dispersing crowds of costumed revellers on the streets of Shanghai, while photos of apparent arrests have spread on social media.

While there has been no official notice prohibiting Halloween celebrations, rumors of a possible crackdown began circulating online earlier this month.  Earlier this month, some business owners who run coffeeshops, bookshops and bars in Shanghai received government notices discouraging Halloween events.  It comes a year after Halloween revellers in Shanghai went viral for donning costumes poking fun at the Chinese government and its policies. Pictures from last year's Halloween event showed people dressing up as a giant surveillance camera, Covid testers, and a censored Weibo post.

This year, footage posted to social media showed people dressed in seemingly uncontroversial costumes, including those of comic book characters such as Batman and Deadpool, being escorted into the back of police vans. Some party-goers said online they were forced to remove make-up.  But it remains unclear what types of costumes police were targeting, as many other revellers were left alone.

Over the weekend, police were seen dispersing revellers from the city's Zhongshan Park.  A Shanghai resident said the number of police officers taking down the details of people dressed in costumes appeared to exceed the number of revellers themselves.  "Shanghai is not supposed to be like this," the person said. "It has always been very tolerant."

 

Trump's GOP Thinks Racism and Hate Are Funny

Donald Trump wanted his Nazi-style rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, the media capital of the world. And then he let out his MAGA movement’s ugly all-out bigotry.  It wa his campaign’s biggest blunder, and it’s a big one. Even Republicans are freaking out.

One of the early speakers let loose with this racist gem: “There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico”

Right-wing “comedian” Tony Hinchcliffe literally called Puerto Ricans garbage. And … why? Because they think racism is funny.  What shouldn’t be funny for the Trump campaign is that 3.8% of Pennsylvania’s population—467,000 people—is Puerto Rican. President Joe Biden won the state by only 80,555 votes in 2020.  The stupidity of this “joke” cannot be understated, yet it serves as a stark reminder of just how much Trump republicans hate anyone that isn’t white men like them. 

But other Latinos shouldn’t feel left out. He was just getting started: "And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside. Just like they did to our country." Those evangelicals who sold their souls in service of Trump? Congrats, now they’re on the team making ejaculation jokes at big political rallies.

And heck, if you’re going to go all-out racist, why hold back?  Hinchcliffe also said, “That’s cool, a Black guy with a thing on his head. What the hell is that? A lampshade? …I’m just kidding. That’s one of my buddies. He had a Halloween party last night. We had fun. We carved watermelons together.” 

 

Get Out and Vote

Ron DeSantis Going Out of His Way to Discourage Voters

Florida is voting on a constitutional amendment that would restore a right to abortion in the state, overcoming more than a year of resistance and efforts—including from the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis—to stop voters from directly weighing in on the issue.  Across multiple Republican-controlled states, state officials have waged legal battles and other efforts to thwart abortion rights measures from getting on the ballot or to influence the language. But Florida stands out for how DeSantis is deploying multiple levers of power within his administration to discredit the amendment and even block political speech about it. These efforts amount to the most sweeping and brazen government-funded campaigns opposing an abortion ballot measure this election cycle. 

Trying to stop the measure from getting on the ballot: Florida is one of the rare states where the state Supreme Court must review the language for a proposed constitutional amendment to make sure it’s clear, concise, and pertains to a single subject. Ashley Moody, the state attorney general and a DeSantis ally, argued in briefs and oral arguments before the court that the word “viability” in the ballot measure language was vague and ill-undefined. But Chief Justice Carlos G. Munoz wasn’t convinced, saying in oral arguments: “The people of Florida aren’t stupid. They can figure this out.” On April 1, the high court allowed the measure to appear on the ballot. DeSantis on Tuesday criticized the decision as a mistake.

The Cure - A Fragile Thing

Gotta Suck for Trump to Be Mocked by Drudge!

The Drudge Report mocked Donald Trump's fast-food photo op after he worked the drive-thru window at a local McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, frying up food and handing meals to supporters in five pre-selected cars.

The McDonald’s store, closed for the stunt, became the backdrop for Trump’s dig at Vice President Kamala Harris, who had previously shared that she worked at McDonald’s during a summer job. Trump, however, has repeatedly claimed Harris never worked there.

Where Trump’s supporters saw it as a lighthearted engagement, a reaction among liberals and non-MAGA Republicans — like Drudge — made sport of the moment. Harris’ campaign didn’t hesitate to weigh in on the viral moment, calling the event “desperate.”

“When Trump feels desperate, all he knows how to do is lie,” Harris campaign spokesperson Ian Sams told The New York Times. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it.”

The latest shot from Drudge, who is often credited as having “ushered in the age of Trump,” comes as the conservative more regularly takes aim at the former president as their relationship reaches new lows.

In April, Trump wrote that he, like “many others”, he “gave up on Drudge” only for Drudge to clap back that his outlet’s numbers were the highest ever in its 26-year history.  “Heartbreaking that it has been under such tragic circumstances,” he added.

How Can Anybody in the Military Vote for Someone as Vile and Ignorant as Trump?

The Atlantic has published an incredibly detailed (and fully sourced) expose on the shocking contempt, rage, parsimony, racism Donald Trump has exhibited to toward the military during his years in the public eye.  The story starts in April 2020, when Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old Army private, was bludgeoned to death by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, in Texas. The killer, aided by his girlfriend, burned Guillén’s body. Guillén’s remains were discovered two months later, buried in a riverbank near the base, after a massive search.

Guillén, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, grew up in Houston, and her murder sparked outrage across Texas and beyond. Fort Hood had become known as a particularly perilous assignment for female soldiers.  Shortly after her remains were discovered, Donald Trump invited the Guillén family to the White House. With Guillén’s mother seated beside him, Trump spent 25 minutes with the family as television cameras recorded the scene.

 

Trump maintained a dignified posture and expressed sympathy to Guillén’s mother. “If I can help you out with the funeral, I’ll help—I’ll help you with that,” he said. “I’ll help you out. Financially, I’ll help you.”  Natalie Khawam, the family’s attorney, responded, “I think the military will be paying—taking care of it.” Later, a reporter covering the meeting asked Trump, “Have you offered to do that for other families before?” Trump responded, “I have. I have. Personally. I have to do it personally. I can’t do it through government.” The reporter then asked: “So you’ve written checks to help for other families before this?” Trump turned to the family, still present, and said, “I have, I have, because some families need help … Maybe you don’t need help, from a financial standpoint. I have no idea what—I just think it’s a horrific thing that happened. And if you did need help, I’m going to—I’ll be there to help you.”

A public memorial service was held in Houston two weeks after the White House meeting. It was followed by a private funeral and burial in a local cemetery, attended by, among others, the mayor of Houston and the city’s police chief. Highways were shut down, and mourners lined the streets.

Five months later, the secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, announced the results of an investigation. McCarthy cited numerous “leadership failures” at Fort Hood and relieved or suspended several officers, including the base’s commanding general. In a press conference, McCarthy said that the murder “shocked our conscience” and “forced us to take a critical look at our systems, our policies, and ourselves.”  Trump reportedly was agitated by McCarthy’s comments and raised questions about the severity of the punishments dispensed to senior officers and non-commissioned officers.

In an Oval Office meeting on December 4, 2020, officials gathered to discuss a separate national-security issue. Toward the end of the discussion, Trump asked for an update on the McCarthy investigation. Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense was in attendance, along with Miller’s chief of staff, Kash Patel. At a certain point, according to two people present at the meeting, Trump asked, “Did they bill us for the funeral? What did it cost?”  According to attendees, and to contemporaneous notes of the meeting taken by a participant, an aide answered: Yes, we received a bill; the funeral cost $60,000.

Trump became angry. “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!” He turned to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and issued an order: “Don’t pay it!” Later that day, he was still agitated. “Can you believe it?” he said, according to a witness. “Fucking people, trying to rip me off.”

Khawam, the family attorney, told the Atlantic that she sent the bill to the White House, but no money was ever received by the family from Trump. Some of the costs, Khawam said, were covered by the Army (which offered, she said, to allow Guillén to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery) and some were covered by donations. Ultimately, Guillén was buried in Houston.

Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Accused of Sex Trafficking

Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries and two others have been arrested on charges of sex trafficking more than a dozen men.  Jeffries, his partner Matt Smith and a third man, Jim Jacobson, are accused of operating an international sex trafficking and prostitution business that recruited young men for parties in the U.S. and abroad.

Former CEO Mike Jeffries and his former boyfriend relied on their vast financial resources, Jeffries' power as the CEO of Abercrombie, numerous people (including Jacobson) and a network of employees, contractors and security professionals, to run a business "that was dedicated to fulfilling their sexual desires and ensuring that their international sex trafficking and prostitution business was kept secret," the indictment alleges.

Federal prosecutors said the trio paid dozens of men to travel around the world to engage in sex acts over at least a seven-year period, starting in late 2008. The indictment, which cites15 victims, says that Jeffries recruited, hired and paid a slate of household staff to "facilitate and supervise sex events." Prosecutors and the FBI believe there are many more victims and asked them to come forward.

Jim Jacobson is believed to have traveled throughout the U.S. and internationally to recruit and interview men for the so-called sex events, according to prosecutors. During "tryouts" of potential candidates, Jacobson required that the candidates first engage in sex acts with him, prosecutors said.  It is also believed that many of the men were coerced, led to believe that attending the events would yield modeling opportunities with Abercrombie or otherwise benefit their careers, or, in the alternative, that not complying with requests for certain acts during the sex events could harm their careers.

One of the victims has filed his own civil lawsuit, which accused Jeffries, Smith, Jacobson and Abercrombie itself of luring attractive young men under the guise of making them an Abercrombie model and then forcing them to take drugs and perform sex acts.  The plaintiff's attorney told ABC News in a statement: "As we laid out in our lawsuit, this was an Abercrombie run, sex trafficking organization that permeated throughout the company and allowed the three individuals arrested today to victimize dozens and dozens of young, aspiring male models."

"Powerful individuals have for too long trafficked and abused for their own sexual pleasure young people with few resources and a dream – a dream of making a successful career in fashion or entertainment," U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said.

Right Wing Follies

Mommy's Getting Baked in the Kitchen

 42-year-old Rachel.has been married for nearly two decades to her college sweetheart, with whom she has three kids under the age of 13. She worked for 10 years in the healthcare industry, before becoming a full-time mom. She rides a Peloton every morning, attends PTA meetings in the afternoons, and in her spare time, knits sweaters.

But Rachel also has another hobby, one that makes her a bit different from the other moms in her Texas suburb. Once a month or so, after she and her husband put the kids to bed, Rachel texts her in-laws—who live just down the street—to make sure they’re home and available in the event of an emergency. And then, Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and spends the next several hours tripping balls.

“Everything feels incredible. Everything tastes incredible. All your sensory experiences are really intense. Sex is incredible as well,” she told me. “If you take MDMA with a partner, it feels almost like you can accomplish what you would in, like, five years of couples counseling, in a night.”

In American popular culture, psychedelic drugs are probably best known as recreational substances beloved by the sort of dreadlock-sporting, patchouli-marinated, camper van–dweller who takes sound baths instead of actual baths. But their use has sharply risen in the last decade or so-- one study published in July 2024 found that the percentage of adults aged 35 to 50 who had used hallucinogens within the past year was seven times what it was in 2014. And it’s not just hippies driving the trend.

Celebrities of all stripes—from Mike Tyson to Miley Cyrus—have gone public about their love of psychedelics; Prince Harry’s memoir describes how he used them to cope with his mother’s death. And in the tech community, where optimization-obsessed men are always trying to live better through chemistry, micro-dosing has become a ubiquitous practice; a 2023 WSJ article called psychedelics “The Drugs that Power Silicon Valley.”   But beyond tech bros and their Hollywood neighbors, there is a less-vocal cohort of psychedelic users: high-achieving women who use these drugs as a form of self-care. 

A 2022 NPR report about micro-dosing moms—also sometimes known by the moniker “mushroom mommies”—featured much hand-wringing from doctors about what could possibly be prompting women to do such a thing, including one psychiatrist who ominously pronounced that they were “basically experimenting on themselves.”

And of course, to dabble in drug use without fear of arrest or incarceration suggests a certain amount of privilege—which leads to the question of whether there’s something not just dangerous but cringe-worthy about the women who patronize a loose network of ketamine clinics, holistic therapists, and “spirit journey” resorts that have sprung up to serve a more bougie breed of drug user. The website for one such luxury retreat greets visitors with a millennial pink background and a boho aesthetic sizzle reel, asking, “Are you ready to stop medicating and start healing?”

The stigma surrounding these substances remains strong, especially among those who came of age at the height of the 1990s-era War on Drugs and the accompanying government program D.A.R.E., a valiant but ill-fated attempt to transform the country’s middle schoolers into an army of tiny narcs. Rachel fully realized how much of the “just say no” messaging was based on fear rather than facts when she began reading up on the science of psychedelics.  “I feel like we were just so lied to,” Rachel said. “Mushrooms or LSD or MDMA, the way that they were sold as gateway drugs. ‘You’re going to end up on the street and you’re going to get raped.’ But they have changed my life in really significant ways," she added.

 

Nationwide Blackout in Cuba Raises the Risk of Protests

Much of Cuba, including the capital Havana, is still without electricity - a day after the country's main energy plant failed, knocking out power to 10 million people. The authorities partially restored power to parts of the Caribbean island last night- but another full outage was reported in the early hours of Saturday.

For many people it has been a rough night with no air conditioning or fans. Food is now beginning to rot in fridges, and some families are having to cook with firewood. Many homes are without water as the supply depends on electric pumps. Patience is wearing thin, but there are no reliable reports of protests as yet. It is an increasingly critical situation, with schools and businesses closed and fears for the continued functioning of hospitals.  The outages come during the hurricane season, and there are fears that a significant storm would damage Cuba's creaking energy distribution infrastructure.

Friday's total blackout came after the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas - the largest on the island - went offline around 11 am local time.  President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez said the situation was his "absolute priority".  "There will be no rest until power is restored," he wrote onsocial media.

The communist president has blamed the decades-long U.S. embargo for preventing much needed supplies and replacement parts from reaching Cuba.  But more significantly,  Cuba has been suffering from increased shortages of crucial fuel shipments from Venezuela.  Prime Minister Manuel Marrero addressed the public in a televised message the day before the blackout, blaming deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand for the electricity failures.  "The fuel shortage is the biggest factor," he admitted.   The head of the National Electric Union (UNE) Alfredo López Valdés also acknowledged the island had been facing a challenging energy situation, with shortages chiefly to blame.

Earlier this week, Cuban officials announced that all schools and non-essential activities, including nightclubs, were to close until Monday.  Non-essential workers were urged to stay home to safeguard electricity supply, and non-vital government services were suspended.

Extended blackouts (particularly one this widespread) are always a tense time in Cuba.  This is primarily due to the fact that keeping lights on represents a potential public order issue for the Cuban government. In July 2021, thousands of protesters spilled into the streets in demonstrations sparked by days-long blackouts in much of the country.

The Cuban government has become increasingly aware that many on the island have lost a degree of fear over speaking out about the many daily problems they face. "This is crazy," Eloy Fon, an 80-year-old pensioner living in central Havana, told the AFP news agency.  "It shows the fragility of our electricity system.  We have no reserves, there is nothing to sustain the country, we are living day to day."  47-year-old Bárbara López, a digital content creator, said she had already "barely been able to work for two days".   "It's the worst I've seen in 47 years," she said. "They've really messed up now... We have no power or mobile data."

Many are prepared to take to the streets and chant anti-government slogans, if conditions merit it.  "I feel very disappointed, frustrated and hopeless," an unnamed 39-year-old housewife told Agence France-Presse. "It's not only the lack of electricity but also of gas and water."  She said her "generation wants to continue trusting" in the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, but her "resilience has limits".  Cuba is in the throes of its worst economic crisis in 30 years, marked by sky-high inflation and shortages of food, medicine, fuel and water.

In recent weeks, provinces outside the capital have endured up to 20 hours a day without electricity.  "What we want is electricity, not the explanation they give us," complained Pablo Reve, a 61-year-old teacher who took the blackout with less annoyance than others.  "To keep going forward is what we have left," he said with a sense of resignation.

Cuba has recently been experiencing a surge in violence, a surge in fuel prices, as well as a collapse in its sugar industry, which have only contributed to the instability across the country leading up to the recent problems with the electrical infrastructure.    In March, Hundreds of people in Cuba's second-largest city, Santiago, staged a rare public protest over chronic power blackouts and food shortages.

 

ROSÉ & Bruno Mars - APT.

Happy Indigenous People's Day

Georgia Judge: Just Certify the Votes, Bitch!

A Georgia judge has ruled county election officials must certify election results by the deadline set in law and cannot exclude any group of votes from certification even if they suspect error or fraud.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that “no election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance.” While they have the right to inspect the conduct of an election and to review related documents, he wrote, “any delay in receiving such information is not a basis for refusing to certify the election results or abstaining from doing so.”

Georgia law says county election superintendents, which are multi-member boards in most counties, “shall” certify election results by 5 p.m. on the Monday after an election — or the Tuesday if Monday is a holiday as it is this year.

Julie Adams, a Republican member of the Fulton County election board, had asked the judge to declare that her duties as an election board member were discretionary and that she is entitled to “full access” to “election materials.”  Adams argued that county election board members have the discretion to reject certification.  She also claimed that county election officials could certify results without including ballots that appear to have problems, allaying concerns of a board member who might otherwise vote not to certify.

Instead, Judge McBurney ruled that nothing in Georgia law gives county election officials the authority to determine that fraud has occurred or what should be done about it. Instead, he wrote, the law says a county election official's “concerns about fraud or systemic error are to be noted and shared with the appropriate authorities but they are not a basis for a superintendent to decline to certify.”

 

Trump is Going off the Deep End

Everybody is saying that the former president’s strange town hall event in Pennsylvania is raising new questions about his health and mental stamina.

The Q&A event was paused when someone in the crowd fainted, then paused again when someone else fainted in the room, which Trump complained was too hot. “Personally, I enjoy this. We lose weight, you know,” Trump joked. “No, you lose weight. We could do this ― lose 4 or 5 pounds.”

After the second person fainted, Trump decided to ditch the Q&A.  “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music,” he said. “Let’s make it into a music fest. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”  He called on his audio team to play “a couple of really beauties,” then stayed on stage for 40 or so minutes more, swaying to the songs, mouthing some of the lyrics and occasionally moving his hands to the music. He also offered comments about the music from time to time, such as “great song.”

Trump’s decision to cut off the questions at the town hall comes in the wake of him canceling a “60 Minutes” interview as well as refusing to take part in a second debate with his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

It also comes amid a new focus on his health and cognition due to speeches marked by slurred words, confusion over names and location, and lengthy, rambling digressions.

“I saw decline in his skills in ’20 from ’16,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, once a Trump insider before turning into a critic, told New York Times columnist Frank Bruni on Sunday. “And you see significant declines still.”

 

Happy Columbo Day!

These MAGA Whackos are Actually Hurting People

Government officials were forced to flee a North Carolina county amid reported threats of armed civilians out “hunting” for hurricane relief workers.

On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that a U.S. Forest Service official sent an email to several different federal agencies warning "National Guard troops had come across two trucks of armed militia saying [they] were out hunting FEMA," the government body responsible for overseeing emergency response management.  The message added that incident management teams “have been notified and are coordinating the evacuation of all assigned personnel” in Rutherford County.

After FEMA officials had been given the all-clear to return to the area, similar threats were reported in Ashe County-- the local Sheriff’s office warned FEMA had yet again been forced to “pause their process” while an assessment of the risk was carried out, Axios reported.

These incidents offer the starkest evidence yet of the havoc caused by the rampant spread of misinformation as to the origin of Hurricanes Helene and Milton and the nature efforts to contain the damage caused. Many of the conspiracy theories surrounding the storms and the government’s response have been spearheaded by GOP representative Marjorie Taylor Green, who in a series of social media reports blamed nefarious (albeit unidentified) electoral forces for “controlling the weather” by means of extra-terrestrial laser technology.  Other tinfoil-hatted pundits have suggested the weather was somehow engineered as part of a conspiracy to provide political cover to mega-corporations engaged in lithium mining, as well as spreading fake reports of citizens being deliberately abandoned in the rubble.

Donald Trump also fanned the flames, pushing unfounded allegations that the Democratic Party is deliberately withholding disaster relief from Republican voters, and that emergency funds have been diverted to undocumented migrants.

With FEMA already having been forced to set up a “rumor response” page on its website, the recent reports of militias roaming the hills in North Carolina is sadly not the only evidence of ways in which these disinformation narratives are adversely affecting the emergency relief efforts.

“It’s terrible because a lot of these folks who need assistance are refusing it because they believe the stuff people are saying about FEMA and the government,” Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service official based in Asheville, North Carolina, said. “And it’s sad because they are probably the ones who need the help the most.”

 

A Healthy Kamala Harris Draws a Sharp Contrast With a Lazy Orange Septuagenarian

Kamala Harris has released her medical records, which show that the Democratic presidential nominee is in “excellent health” and “possesses the physical and mental resiliency” necessary to serve as president, her doctor said in a letter, external.

Harris's most recent physical exam was in April.  Dr Simmons, a US Army colonel and physician to the vice-president, categorized the visit as "unremarkable", noting that her blood pressure and heart rate were within normal range.  Her cardiac exam, abdominal exam and skin exam were all "normal", Dr Simmons said. Harris has no personal history of diabetes, blood pressure, high cholesterol or cardiac disease.  She does have a family history "notable" for colon cancer on her mother's side of the family-- but Harris is up to date on all preventative care recommendations, including a colonoscopy. 

On the other hand, Donal Trump has NEVER released any comprehensive medical records.  If elected next month, Trump would be the OLDEST PRESIDENT EVER by the time he completed his term.  

Trump told CBS in August that in his most recent medical exam the doctor had given him a "perfect score".  No one know what that means, since there is no such thing as a "score" (much less a "perfect" one) in medical exams. In 2015, Trump published a letter from his doctor (Harold Bornstein) who said Trump would be "the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency".  A few years later, Bornstein was forced to admit said Trump had dictated the contents of the letter and that three of Trump's agents had seized his medical records in a February 2017 raid on the doctor's office. 

In 2018, White House physician Dr Ronny Jackson told reporters Trump was in "excellent health". Dr Jackson said at the time that Trump's heart exam, cardiac exam, and head, ears, nose and throat exam were all normal. At the time, Trump was taking a range of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, which included Crestor to lower cholesterol; aspirin for cardiac health; Propecia for prevention of hair loss; and Soolantra ointment for Rosacea, an inflammatory skin condition.

Trump has admitted he sleeps only about four or five hours a night. He has called golfing his "primary form of exercise" but usually talks a golf cart (instead of walking the course).  Trump considers exercise a waste of energy because he believes the body is "like a battery, with a finite amount of energy", which is depleted by exercise.  Of course, this assertion is ridiculous, as energy in the human body is replenished on a continual basis by the consumption of food and drink. 

Since a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed Trump in July, Trump's campaign has not granted reporters access to his hospital records or the emergency physicians who treated him.  A campaign spokesman said today that Trump has "an extremely busy and active campaign schedule unlike any other in political history".  He claimed that Kamala Harris is "unable to keep up with the demands of campaigning" and that "her schedule is much lighter because, it is said, she does not have the stamina of President Trump."

Of course, this is just more bullshit.  The fact is that Trump held 72 rallies between June and September of 2016. He's held 24 in that same period this year.  Trump held 69 rallies in October and early November of 2016, taking the stage as many as five times per day in the stretch run. Trump held 43 rallies over the five weeks leading up to Election Day in 2020.  This campaign cycle, Trump is primarily relying on cable TV  appearances and podcasts, often made from his home in Florida. 

 

The Smile - Bodies Laughing

The GOP's Weather Paranoia is Geting Out of Control

First, they tried to claim that FEMA was a deep-state ideological op, but that didn’t work. So then, the hard-core MAGA-wackos moved on to another sci-fi trope: weather control. Taking the lead of that reliable arbiter of rational discourse,Marjorie Taylor Greene, they began (as Florida prepared for the landfall of Hurricane Milton) to sound the alarm that the fierce succession of destructive hurricanes battering the Southeast was all orchestrated from from the sinister, power-grabbing left. As communities in the path of Hurricane Helene started to dig out from the damage last week, Greene  spouted new nonsense on her X account:: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Greene’s demented assertion at first seemed a sideshow to the crisis, calling to mind her infamous declaration that the 2018 wildfires in California were actually the handiwork of Jewish space lasers.  Yet as Hurricane Milton made landfall in west Florida, the weather-control hypothesis had moved into the white-hot center of MAGA conspiracy-mongering—so much so that President Joe Biden was forced to refute it in a TV interview.

The basic MAGA argument (if you can even call it that) is that the forces of liberal world domination have “geo-engineered” the suspiciously timed storms as yet another weapon in their vast, shape-shifting arsenal of election interference. The far-right conspiracy site Gateway Pundit boosted Greene’s claims with a grab-bag set of testimonials from other purveyors of paranoia. The piece highlights the findings of no less an authority than Robert Kennedy Jr., who declared that nefarious deep-state actors have seized control of the weather via the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum. “They aggravate the problem, and sell us the solution,” Kennedy breathlessly announced. “The solution they want is more social controls.”

But we're not done yet! Other MAGA-aligned hucksters supplied the obvious connection--

Enough With the Sick Crap About Race-Based Genetics

Donald Trump has once again invoked the debunked and bigoted notion of race science, this time in a interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.  While criticizing President Joe Biden’s administration over immigration, Trump claimed that some migrants who enter the United States via an “open border” (which doesn't exist, btw) have “bad genes.”

In the interview Trump claimed, "How about allowing people to come to an open border—13,000 of which were murderers—many of them murdered far more than one person. And they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now."

Race science is the long-debunked racist notion that certain negative human traits are inherent to one race over another. In the United States, this was one of the justifications used to keep Black people as slaves.

Trump’s most recent argument echoes the claim he made in December 2023 when he said that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States.

False arguments that Jewish people were “poisoning” blood were perhaps most infamously used by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime to justify the mass murder of millions of people in the Holocaust.

Trump has also promoted the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which argues that Latino immigrants are being allowed into the U.S. to vote and replace white people.

Trump’s race-science rhetoric has been widely criticized by Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris.  “It is language that I think people have rightly found similar to the language of Hitler,” Harris told MSNBC in December. “I think it’s just critically important that we remind each other, including our children, that the true measure of the strength of a leader is based not on who they beat down, but who they lift up.”

 

GOP Disinformation Disaster

Trump is a Disaster at Dealing with Disaster

Donald Trump and his allies have been misinforming the public about the federal response to Hurricane Helene, be it with ridiculous lies or crazy conspiracy theories. Trump’s first administration was a disaster for our environment—but he and his friends are far from done. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s agenda for a potential second Trump administration, includes dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Agency—the U.S. agency that forecasts weather—and greatly limiting the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ability to respond.  Do we need to remind everybody how badly Trump managed some of the country's most difficult times?

Trump didn’t staff the federal agencies tasked with disaster response.

Trump’s administration did not sufficiently staff FEMA or NOAA with administrators for months after he came into office. Worse, he imposed a government-wide hiring freeze that affected hundreds of unfilled positions at the National Weather Service, and that was called “a contributing factor” in a renewed decline in NOAA staff.

Trump initially refused to send aid to California during wildfires because it was a blue state.

When wildfires ravaged California in 2018, Trump attacked the state for its “mismanagement” of the fires. Meanwhile, a former senior director on Trump’s National Security Council staff told E&E News that when Trump resisted sending wildfire assistance to the Golden State, staffers “went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you.”

Trump delayed and obstructed getting federal aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. 

The Trump administration’s initial neglect in helping Puerto Rico was outshined only by his administration’s continued delays in congressionally allotted aid for years after. At every step, Trump looked to block further aid to the U.S. territory. Trump also reportedly joked about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland as he faced criticism for his response to Hurricane Maria.

Hurricane Dorian and the infamous black marker.

In 2019, during the lead up to Hurricane Dorian, Trump made an incorrect assessment that the state of Alabama was in the projected path of the approaching storm. His assessment was then corrected by the National Weather Service office in Birmingham, leading Trump to double down on being wrong. Eventually, he held a press conference where he showed a conspicuously doctored map of Dorian’s path to support his lie. The sloppy use of black marker on the map became emblematic of how unserious Trump’s approach to disaster was.

Trump uses flooding in Michigan to try and stop absentee voting.

When flooding hit Michigan in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump tweeted out a threat to withhold federal aid if absentee ballots were sent out to voters ahead of the 2020 primary and general elections. Of course, the only thing being sent out at the time were applications for absentee ballots.

Trump screwed up COVID.

Research has determined that Trump’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic led to hundreds of thousands of excess deaths. His incompetence began early on as he downplayed the severity and spread of the global pandemic. He then offered up a barrage of fake cures and other misinformation, from shilling for the ineffective hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to disinfecting the blood with something like Clorox.

Trump's history of mismanaging disasters is widely acknowledged, and his lies about the current administration’s management of this newest natural disaster are a new low, even for a moron like Trump.

Maniac Musk is Tipping The Scales

Trump Was Cultivated as a Russian Asset to the KGB

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian. Yuri Shvets, who was posted to Washington DC by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares Trump to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.

Shvets is a key source for "American Kompromat," a new book by journalist Craig Unger, which also explores Trumps’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Shvets had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.

Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.  Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.  According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.

Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said Trump was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.  Shvets recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.

Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Trump also took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”

The ad offered some highly unorthodox opinions in Ronald Reagan’s cold war America, accusing ally Japan of exploiting the US and expressing skepticism about US participation in NATO. It took the form of an open letter to the American people “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves”.

The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful “active measure” executed by a new KGB asset.

“It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80's . . . and I haven’t heard anything like that or anything similar – until Trump became the president of this country – because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.”

Craig Unger said of Trump: “He was an asset. It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.“Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.”

 

Jelly Roll - Liar

As If We Needed More Naked Trump Art

Trump recently said at a rally,“I had a hell of a life,” “I could’ve been sunbathing on the beach. You have never seen a body so beautiful. Much better than Sleepy Joe.”  Well, if you've been trying to get that hypothetical image out of your mind, read no further.

A new art installation is haunting the desertscape north of Las Vegas: a naked, 43-foot-tall marionette of Donald Trump. (You can find a full image of the statue below the fold.)

According to The Wrap, the statue is made of rebar and foam, weighs around 3 tons, and will travel the United States as part of a “Crooked and Obscene” art tour, though future dates and locations have yet to be announced.

This is far from the first time the wannabe dictator has inspired art.  In 2016, an anarchist art collective
called INDECLINE commissioned five life-sized statues of a naked Trump. Titled “The Emperor has No Balls,” the statues appeared in public spaces in Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.

One of the completed life-size naked statues of Trump was put up in Central Park in NYC in 2018.  It was removed by the New York City Parks Department, which issued the following statement: “We don’t allow private erections in our park, no matter how small.”

And who could ever forget the Donald Trump Baby Blimp, which now lives in the collection of The Museum of London. In 2018, the blimp was allowed to fly over Parliament Square in the United Kingdom during Trump’s visit.

 

 

Tales of Toxicity - Prairie du Chien Edition

Trump was speaking at a rally at Praire du Chien, Wisconsin when a fly began buzzing around his lectern.  The insect distracted him  talking about a hat to his crowd of supporters at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin on Saturday (September 28) when the insect distracted and seemingly irritated him.

“Oh there’s a fly,” Trump said. “I wonder where the fly came from?”

"See, two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. We can’t take it any longer."

The clip was quickly shared on social media, as viewers were confused as to what exactly he was talking about, and some even questioned if it was a sign of the 78-year-old's cognitive decline.  One person asked: "What the actual hell does that even mean?"

"As someone who watched their grandmother slip into dementia I can tell you those two sentences are the exact way she would have talked about that fly," another person wrote.  "He's losing a debate without any other candidates there," someone else added.  MSNBC host and legal analyst Katie Phang also commented on the clip, saying "this is not normal.”

 

Happy October!