Clear and Present Danger

Let me make this crystal clear – Shady Vance is a lying bullshitter

That anyone was impressed with this soulless fascist with more baggage than an airport carousel is disturbing.

But then media love actors.

Forget about his “form” and examine his content.  He lies, distorts, and repeats robot-like MAGAt talking points.

An irate, bumbling former president Donald Trump posted an indignant broadside Sunday asserting that Vice President Kamala Harris should be impeached, prosecuted, or both over U.S. immigration policy.

But his withering attack made reference to data released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which, according to the Department of Homeland Security, is being “misinterpreted.

The oft-misleading, oft-misinformed Republican nominee for president, taking to his Truth Social site, also blamed the “Fake News Media” for supposedly not covering the issue, which isn’t true.

“What Comrade Kamala Harris has done to our Country at the Border by allowing 13,099 murderers to roam openly, and be free to kill, is The Crime of the Century,” he wrote in his post. “They have already killed many people, and this is just the beginning. She should be IMPEACHED, PROSECUTED, or BOTH.”

The all-caps fury contrasted against a seemingly much lower-energy Trump, who used essentially the same talking point—“She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions”—at a rally in Pennsylvania Sunday evening. He claimed, with no basis, that murderous migrants are killing people and then wake up the next morning with no memory of doing so.

“It’s just like a routine part of life,” Trump said of his imagined scenario of killers who forget their killings.

Meanwhile, the basis for Trump’s screed and rambling are misconstrued falsehoods.

Trump’s claim that Harris allowed “13,099 murderers to roam openly, and be free to kill” references data released by ICE in a letter to a GOP congressman last week that said there were over 400,000 convicted criminals on the non-detained docket in the U.S. as of July, including 13,099 with homicide convictions. That data, however, covers the last 40 years and includes the time when Reagan, Clinton, Bush I, Bush II, Obama and Trump were president.

“The data in this letter is being misinterpreted,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of ICE, told CNN. “The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.”

In other words, many of those in the data may have entered the U.S. decades ago, some may be in prison, and some may have entered while Trump was in charge.

Trump’s claim that the media isn’t covering the issue is also false—in addition to CNN, the Associated Press, NBC News, and The Washington Post were among the outlets that covered the data, each noting ICE’s clarification that it covers decades.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has blamed wildfires on a Jewish space laser, promoted a conspiracy alleging that some Democratic Party leaders were running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring, and agreed with commenters who suggested that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Florida, was a “massive false flag.” Another House Republican, Paul Gosar, has promoted fluoride conspiracy theories and posted an animated video depicting him slashing the throat of a Democratic congresswoman and attacking President Biden. Yet another Republican member of Congress, Lauren Boebert, was ejected from a family-friendly musical for vaping, being disruptive, and groping her date (and vice versa). She also falsely claimed that school authorities “are putting litter boxes in schools for people who identify as cats.”

Tucker Carlson, a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention and an unofficial Trump adviser, recently hosted a Holocaust revisionist on his podcast. He praised the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones as having been “vindicated on everything” and described Jones as “the most extraordinary person” he has ever met. (Two years ago, Sandy Hook families won nearly $1.5 billion in defamation and emotional-distress lawsuits against Jones for his repeatedly calling the 2012 school shooting, in which 20 first graders and six educators were killed, a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to get more gun-control legislation passed. As The New York Times reports, “The families suffered online abuse, personal confrontations and death threats from people who believed the conspiracy theory.”)

From Daily Beast

There is much more in the article, including stuff about RFK Jr. that will almost make you physically ill.

THESE PEOPLE MUST BE DEFEATED. THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE IF WE WANT OUR BELOVED NATION TO SURVIVE.

This has been building for a long time. David Corn makes a vital point:

In my book American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, I lay out this sordid history in great detail. But even a highlight reel makes it clear that the GOP has bowed to, depended on, and promoted far-right extremists and conspiracists for the past 70 years. Trumpism is the continuation, not a new version, of Republican politics. (My emphasis.)

Corn discusses the vicious Joseph McCarthy and other Right-wing con artists, and then recounts the origins of the Republican embrace of racism.

The Southern Strategy

In 1968, Nixon had a problem, actually two: George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. Having lost the 1960 presidential race, Nixon was again trying to capture the White House. Nixon worried that Wallace, the segregationist and former Democratic governor of Alabama running as a third-party candidate, would be a magnet for conservative voters and deny him the electoral votes Goldwater had won in the South. Even more immediately, Nixon feared that Reagan, the onetime B-movie star who had won the California governorship in 1966 by exploiting white backlash to the civil rights movement and social unrest, might swipe the nomination from him.

This led him into the arms of white supremacists. At a May gathering of Southern Republican officials, Nixon pandered, saying he opposed forcing the pace of integration, especially busing to redress school segregation, and favored conservative Supreme Court justices (who would be skeptical of initiatives to advance the rights of Black Americans). He asked the group how to deal with the Wallace threat. You need Strom Thurmond, the arch-segregationist senator from South Carolina, he was told.

The next day, Nixon met with Thurmond and repeated his song-and-dance routine. Thurmond signed on. He would help Nixon campaign against Wallace and keep Southern delegates from stampeding toward Reagan at the GOP convention.

And racism was the basis of the rise of the so-called “Religious Right”. In an important article from 2014, Randall Balmer makes this crucial point: ROE V. WADE WAS NOT THE PRECIPITATING EVENT. THE DEFENSE OF SEGREGATION WAS.

In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. The schools had been founded in the mid-1960s in response to the desegregation of public schools set in motion by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. In 1969, the first year of desegregation, the number of white students enrolled in public schools in Holmes County dropped from 771 to 28; the following year, that number fell to zero.

In Green v. Kennedy (David Kennedy was secretary of the treasury at the time), decided in January 1970, the plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction, which denied the “segregation academies” tax-exempt status until further review. In the meantime, the government was solidifying its position on such schools. Later that year, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States. Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions.

On June 30, 1971, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued its ruling in the case, now  Green v. Connally (John Connally had replaced David Kennedy as secretary of the Treasury). The decision upheld the new IRS policy: “Under the Internal Revenue Code, properly construed, racially discriminatory private schools are not entitled to the Federal tax exemption provided for charitable, educational institutions, and persons making gifts to such schools are not entitled to the deductions provided in case of gifts to charitable, educational institutions.”

The vile Paul Weyrich, who helped found The Heritage Foundation (Hello Project 2025!)  jumped on this. Capitalizing on the racial resentment arising from the Green ruling, and using unease among certain Christian groups about abortion, Weyrich and other Right-wing religious figures decided that opposing abortion was a potent way of attacking the Democratic Party. This has evolved and intensified until…

(Click on the box below to read the full comment — goes to another site.)

Trump repeated this hideous lie in the debate with VP Harris.

Folks, we are up against people who will…

TELL ANY LIE

LAUNCH ANY SMEAR

UTTER ANY SLANDER

REPEAT ANY CONSPIRACY THEORY

USE ANY TACTIC, NO MATTER HOW VICIOUS OR DESTRUCTIVE.

As we all know, J.D. Vance was a severe critic of Trump until the day Trump picked Vance as his VP candidate.

Why did Vance have such a 100% change of heart?

Simple.  Vance may have criticized Trump when it suited him, but the fact is that Trump and Vance have one thing in common that overrides everything else. They are both morally bankrupt people with no real principles who will say anything they think will get them more power. Both are completely unfit for public office.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump attempted to do crowd control at a Friday rally in Walker, Michigan. Well, he wasn’t trying to control the crowd as much as he was trying to control any messaging about people leaving the event early.

Rally size is something that is important to Trump — so important that he became agitated during a Sept. 10 presidential debate when Democratic rival Kamala Harris bluntly said that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

In Walker, Trump attempted to explain why rallygoers seemed to be leaving his event. “The people that you see leaving? Because nobody ever leaves,” the former president said. “And when they do, I finish up quick.”
Trump then suggested that his staffers were to blame for the apparent departures, and claimed that people were actually lining up in the back for photos since he couldn’t pose for pictures earlier.

“These stupid people that are with me sometimes, they say, ‘Come on back,’” Trump said. “Thirty people, they get up and they go back. And they’re all lined up in the back waiting for me to take a picture because I couldn’t do it before.”

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-people-leaving-rally_n_66f72053e4b027bd4385cf46

(They are leaving, @realdonaldtrump) https://t.co/h0dzVsIVOF pic.twitter.com/Gaoo2yankU

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 27, 2024

Here’s a little something that may have been missed.

James Russell DAVIS of King George’s County VA, founder and long-time chairman of the KG County Tea Party.  And now convicted for his part in the Jan 6 coup attempt.

Davis, James Russell

Guilty plea to violating:   1:21-CR-00595-TJK 18 U.S.C. § 111(a) 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(2)  18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(4) 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(F) 18 U.S.C. § 231(a)(3)

Sentence:  2 months’ incarceration; 24 months’ supervised release; 6 months’ home detention; $2,000 fine; $100 special assessment.

In 2004 a senior advisor to President George W. Bush famously told journalist Ron Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community.” They believed people could find solutions to problems through careful study of discernible reality. But, the aide continued, Suskind’s worldview was obsolete. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the aide said. “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality— judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

We appear to be in a moment when the reality-based community is challenging the ability of the MAGA Republicans to create their own reality.

Central to the worldview of MAGA Republicans is that Democrats are socialists who have destroyed the American economy. Trump calls Harris a “radical-left. Marxist, communist, fascist” and insists the economy is failing.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, today, Harris laid out her three-pillar plan for an “opportunity economy.” She explained that she would lower costs by cutting taxes for the middle class, cutting the red tape that stops housing construction, take on corporate landlords who are hiking rental prices, work with builders and developers to construct 3 million new homes and rentals, and help first-time homebuyers with $25,000 down payment assistance. She also promised to enact a federal ban on corporate price gouging on groceries and to cap prescription drug prices by negotiating with pharmaceutical companies.

Harris said she plans to invest in innovation by raising the deduction for startup businesses from its current $5,000 to $50,000 and providing low- or no-interest loans to small businesses that want to expand. Her goal is to open the way for 25 million new small businesses in her first four years, noting that small businesses create nearly 50% of private sector jobs in the U.S.

Harris plans to create manufacturing jobs of the future by investing in biomanufacturing and aerospace, remaining “dominant in AI, quantum computing, blockchain, and other emerging technologies, and expand[ing] our lead in clean energy innovation and manufacturing.” She vowed to see that the next generation of breakthroughs—“from advanced batteries to geothermal to advanced nuclear—are not just invented, but built here in America by American workers.” Investing in these industries means strengthening factory towns, retooling existing factories, hiring locally, and working with unions. She vowed to make jobs available for skilled workers without college degrees and to cut red tape to reform permitting for innovation.

“I am a capitalist,” she said. “I believe in free and fair markets. I believe in consistent and transparent rules of the road to create a stable business environment. And I know the power of American innovation.” She said she would be pragmatic in her approach to the economy, seeking practical solutions to problems and taking good ideas from wherever they come.

“Kamala Harris, Reagan Democrat!” conservative pundit Bill Kristol posted on social media after her speech.

For his part, Trump has promised an across-the-board tariff of 10% to 20% that billionaire Mark Cuban on the Fox News Channel called “insane” and Quin Hillyer of the Washington Examiner warned “would almost certainly cause immense price hikes domestically, goad other countries into retaliating, and perhaps set off an international trade war” that could “wreck the economy.” Cuban then told Jake Tapper of CNN that Trump’s promise to impose 10% price controls on credit card interest rates and price caps is “Socialism 101.”

Yesterday, more than 400 economists and high-ranking U.S. policymakers endorsed Harris, and today, the members of former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s presidential leadership teams in Michigan, Iowa, and Vermont announced they would be supporting Harris, in part because of Trump’s economic policies.

While Trump insisted yet again today that “the economy is doing really, really badly,” the stock market closed at a record high today for the fourth day in a row.

In other economic news, for nine years, Trump has said he will find a cheaper and better way to provide healthcare to Americans than the Affordable Care Act, although on September 10 he admitted he has only the “concepts of a plan.” Today the Treasury Department released statistics showing that 4.2 million small business owners have coverage through the ACA. Losing that protection would impact 618,590 small business owners in Florida, 450,010 in California, 423,790 in Texas, and 168,070 in Georgia.

Trump has made a claim that crime has risen dramatically under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris central to his campaign rhetoric. The opposite is true. Two days ago, on September 23, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its official report on crime statistics from 2023 compared with 2022. Those statistics showed that murder and non-negligent manslaughter fell by 11.6%. Rape fell by 9.4%. Aggravated assault fell by 2.8%. Robbery fell by 0.3%. Hate crimes fell by 0.6%.

Central to the worldview of MAGA Republicans is that immigration weakens a nation and that immigrants increase crime and disease. First Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio senator J.D. Vance and then Trump himself repeatedly advanced the lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating their neighbors’ pets and bringing disease.

Clergy members from multiple faiths have asked politicians to stop their lies about Haitian immigrants, and today the leader of Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit organization that represents the Haitian community, filed a charges against Trump and Vance for disrupting public services, making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, and aggravated menacing and complicity.

Immediately, Representative Clay Higgins (R-LA), who in the past supported Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and filmed a selfie inside a gas chamber at Auschwitz, posted on social media: “Lol. These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters…but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP. All these thugs better get their mind right and their *ss out of our country before January 20th.”

After an outcry, Higgins took the post down. According to House speaker and fellow Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson, who called Higgins a “very principled man,” Higgins took it down after he “prayed about it.” Johnson seemed unconcerned about his colleague’s racism, saying, “we believe in redemption around here.”

But in a statement, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called Higgins’s statement “vile, racist and beneath the dignity of the United States House of Representatives. He must be held accountable for dishonorable conduct that is unbecoming of a Member of Congress. Clay Higgins is an election-denying, conspiracy-peddling racial arsonist who is a disgrace to the People’s House. This is who they have become. Republicans are the party of Donald Trump, Mark Robinson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Clay Higgins and Project 2025. The extreme MAGA Republicans in the House are unfit to govern.”

On Monday, Dan Gooding of Newsweek reported that although Trump said on September 18 he would go to Springfield, he will not. Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine had warned that the local community would not welcome a visit from the former president.

Republican politicians and candidates, including Trump, embraced North Carolina gubernatorial candidate and current lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who trumpeted the extremists’ MAGA narrative. The September 19 revelation by CNN reporters Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck that Robinson had boasted on a pornography website that he considers himself a “black NAZI!”, would like to reinstate slavery, and would like to own some people himself, and shared the sexual kinks in which he engaged with his wife’s sister prompted most of his campaign staff to resign.

Andrew Egger of The Bulwark reported today that on a different online forum, Robinson called for a political assassination as well as making racist attacks on entertainer Oprah Winfrey and former president Barack Obama. Robinson has called all the information released about him “false smears” and has said “[n]ow is not the time for intra-party squabbling and nonsense,” but declined help tracking down those he claims falsified his online comments. Today, multiple media outlets reported that top staff in Robinson’s government office are stepping down.

Reality hit hard this week in Texas, too, where U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez yesterday approved the auctioning off of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s media business, the aptly-named InfoWars. Jones insisted that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting  was a “hoax” designed to whip up support for gun restrictions, and that the grieving parents were played by “crisis actors.” Juries found Jones guilty of defaming the families of the murdered children and causing them emotional distress.

The auction of his property will enable the families to begin to collect on the more than $1 billion the jurors determined Jones owed them for his reprehensible and harmful behavior.