Sunday, October 06, 2024

MAGA: Overfed Bellies, Underfed Brains

 

Bart Jansen (USA TODAY) reports


Election officials and lawmakers are worried that U.S Postal Service delays could prevent thousands of ballots from being counted this year, in what could be an extremely close presidential contest.

State election officials raised alarms in a letter last month to the postmaster general about “exceptionally long delivery times,” ballots being held for billing issues and voter mail being returned as undeliverable.

Delivery delays ticked off members of Congress, who said the consolidation of processing centers led to steep drop-offs in on-time deliveries of first-class mail in Atlanta; Richmond, Virginia; and Green Bay, Wisconsin.

“Voters should never have to worry about if their ballot will be postmarked on time or if their ballot will reach their election center in time to be counted,” said Rep. David Joyce, R-Ohio.


One way for you to avoid problems with your own mail-in ballot is to fill it out now and put it in the mail.  It would be smart to get it in the mail now before November 5th creeps up on you.  Jansen notes, "Election officials, lawmakers and postal officials are urging voters to mail ballots at least seven days before Election Day to ensure they are delivered with enough time to be counted − despite more than a dozen states having rules that ballots can be mailed as late as Election Day and still be valid."

The election is less than a month away and the choices are Kamala Harris (Democrat) or Donald Trump (MAGA).  Kamala destroyed Donald Trump in the September debate and that's why he refuses to debate her again.  She's offered, she's willing.  Donald's chicken.  So there will only be one debate.  




Question: When did fact-checking become an outrageous abuse of debate moderators' power?

Answer: When MAGA Republicans decided they didn’t like anyone pointing out that they're lying.

In a perfect world, it might be enough for political opponents to correct each other’s prevarications and exaggerations. But Donald Trump’s entry into presidential politics, with his incessant flights of fancy and nonstop lying, have completely changed the dynamics. While other presidential candidates have stretched the truth, only one has kidnapped it, bound and gagged it, put it in a barrel and tossed it into the East River.

In the age of Trump, fact-checking has become a necessary service for moderators and other journalists to provide to voters.

Take the first and probably only presidential debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, on Sept. 10.

Some Trumpers went bonkers after ABC News' David Muir corrected one of the former president’s most egregious and dangerous falsehoods — that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting pets and eating them. Muir noted that Springfield’s city manager said there were no credible claims of pets being “harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”

“But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there,” Trump insisted in the course of a rant that launched a kajillion memes.

There is not a single television interview of any Springfield pet owner claiming their cat or dog was stolen and eaten by immigrants. There was a news story about a woman killing and appearing to eat a cat, but she was born in and lived in Canton, about 175 miles away from Springfield. (She was reportedly charged with "disorderly conduct by reason of intoxication," among other offenses.)


Facts are the enemy of MAGA.  Home schooled in questionable courses, they never really learned anything and they're proud of it -- watch them proudly and loudly proclaim at any pediatrician's office, "School note?  We don't need no school note!  I educates my kids all by mys self."  Yes, you do.  Thereby explaining how our country's population grows more uneducated with each year. 

Fact checks are never the friend to MAGA nor to MAGA candidates.  Tom Boggioni (RAW STORY) notes:


A rant by GOP vice presidential candidateJ.D. Vance at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania was dismissed by CNN's Alayna Treene Sunday morning after he accused Democrats of being behind assassination attempts aimed at Donald Trump.

Vance made a speaking appearance with the former president at the site of the first attempt on Trump's life weeks ago.

[. . .]

"Now, Victor [Blackwell] and Amara [Walker], we know that both Trump and J.D. Vance have tried to argue in the past that perhaps Democrats, Democrats' rhetoric about Donald Trump, particularly arguing that he may be a threat to democracy may have been what had led to that first assassination attempt, or even the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life."

"Of course, there's no evidence to support that, but that was the case that they were making," she added.


Evidence, proof, facts, certified vote counts?  MAGA trusts none of these.  It's not taught in their home schools.   Mauricio Alencar (DAILY BEAST) observes:


CNN’s Dana Bash and Lara Trump sparred over misinformation Donald Trump has spread about funding for disaster relief in North Carolina, with the anchor refusing to let the former president’s daughter-in-law get away with ducking her questions.

Bash laid into the Republican National Committee co-chair as she tried to change the direction from her father-in-law's dubious claims that FEMA is only offering a few hundred dollars to Americans who have had their homes destroyed in Hurricane Helene. 

“I wanna not let this get out there,” the host replied on Sunday's edition of State of the Union.

“You are right that FEMA is giving $750 [to each family],” Bash said. “But that is a first step for immediate needs. It’s called serious needs assistance.”

Bash’s correction got under Lara Trump’s skin.


Truth upsets MAGA -- causes their skin to blister -- like when sunlight hits a vampire's skin.  Joe DePaolo (MEDIATE) also notes Lara's attempts to get away with lying:


The CNN anchor then played comments from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) — who lauded the federal response to the hurricane during a press conference on Friday in Asheville.

“I’m actually impressed with how much attention was paid to a region that wasn’t likely to have experienced the impact that they did,” Tillis said. He added, “For anybody who thinks that any level of government, anybody here could have been prepared precisely for what we’re dealing with here clearly are clueless… But right now, I’m out here to say that we’re doing a good job.”

“He and others are saying ‘please’ to the former president and to others stop spreading misinformation because it’s hurting people in North Carolina,” Bash said.

Lara Trump went on to downplay the comments from a senator from her own party who is on the ground in the affected area. 


Like his supporters, Donald's gets dumber with every day.  And it's a cognitive decline.  Sean Craig (DAILY BEAST) notes:


An increasingly incoherent and profane former president Donald Trump, 78, is blathering on at his rallies at previously unheard-of lengths and showing signs of confusion that could indicate mental decline, according to a New York Times analysis.

An average rally speech by the elderly Republican nominee for president—who has promised to release his medical records and cognitive tests and then refused to do so—lasts 82 minutes this election cycle, nearly double the 45 minutes he averaged in 2016, a computer analysis by the newspaper found.

In addition to Trump’s well documented rambling, repetitive and winding addresses—punctuated with strange asides about things like his “beautiful” body—among the potential signs of cognitive change are that he curses 69 percent more in speeches than he did in 2016. That could be a sign of disinhibition, a kind of impulsivity that is sometimes attributed to mental decline in old age, the Times said.

The newspaper also said its analysis found Trump used negative words 32 percent more negative words than positive ones, up considerably from 21 percent in 2016, another potential indicator of cognitive change.

He also uses he uses 13 percent more “all-or-nothing” terms such as “always” or “never” compared to 2016, another potential sign of advanced age.

Meanwhile, Trump’s seeming obsession with the past—his ramblings have been dotted with stale cultural references to Silence of the Lambs, Johnny Carson, Michael Jackson, Cary Grant, and Charles Lindburgh—have not only dated him, but earned a raised eyebrow from one expert in August.



MAGA lies and MAGA feeds its face.  Like Donald, they're all so fat and huge.  Sarah Huckabee Sanders is what happens when you put a man's head on a fat woman's body.  Alexandra Marquez (NBC NEWS) notes:


Vice President Kamala Harris hit back at Arkansas GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' comments that Harris "doesn’t have anything keeping her humble" because she doesn't have children.

"I don't think she understands that there are a whole lot of women out here who, one, are not aspiring to be humble," Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, told "Call Her Daddy" podcast host Alex Cooper.

"Two," she added in the taped interview, which aired Sunday, there are "a whole lot of women out here who have a lot of love in their life, family in their life and children in their life, and I think it's really important for women to lift each other up."

“We have our family by blood and then we have our family by love. And I have both,” Harris, who is a stepmother to her husband Doug Emhoff’s two children, told Cooper, adding, “And I consider it to be a real blessing.”

Harris discussed her relationship with her stepchildren, Cole and Ella Emhoff, who are her husband’s biological children from his first marriage.


A lot of people slam Kamala.  In the snapshot will deal with the one from South Africa and talk about how these apartheid junkies should shut their damn mouths in the US because they're racists. But again, we'll save it for the snapshot.


Instead, we'll wind down with this, Alex Seitz-Wald (NBC NEWS) reports:


 A group of imams endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in an open letter shared first with NBC News on Sunday, a critical boost as she steps up her efforts to win back disaffected Muslim voters amid the Israel-Hamas war.

[. . .]


The 25 Islamic religious leaders who signed the letter, which comes a year after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack that sparked the war, argue that Muslim voters have a duty to think logically about their voting decisions and that backing Harris “far outweighs the harms of the other options."

“She is a committed ceasefire candidate too and is the best option for ending the bloodshed in Gaza and now Lebanon,” they wrote.

The imams argued that former President Donald Trump is a threat to their community.

“Knowingly enabling someone like Donald Trump to return to office, whether by voting directly for him or for a third-party candidate, is both a moral and a strategic failure. Particularly in swing states, a vote for a third party could enable Trump to win that state and therefore the elections,” they wrote. 

“Given [Trump’s] well-documented history of harming our communities and country, as well as what he has promised he will do to Muslims and Palestinians should he return, it is incumbent upon us not to allow our high emotions to dictate our actions to our detriment,” the letter reads. 


The following sites updated: