Saturday, October 03, 2026

Chump continues his desperate dash across the country

The segment below aired on THE DAILY SHOW three weeks ago.  I turned it off in real time when the segment started and still haven't returned to watch it. 


It seemed like something beyond garbage because of the guest Jon Stewart was fawning over: Governor Charlie Cox.  Stephanie Mencimer (MOTHER JONES) noted Friday:

Utah Governor Spencer Cox has been making the rounds of national media recently promoting his new book, Off Ramp: How to be a peacemaker in an age of contempt. On Jon Stewart, CNBC, and CNN, Cox drilled down on a theme that brought him into the national spotlight last year after the assassination of conservative youth leader Charlie Kirk in Utah: political depolarization. This was nothing new for Cox, who launched a “disagree better” initiative as the head of the National Governor’s Association in 2023.

While the work has earned him national plaudits and calls to run for president, it hasn’t exactly endeared him to people at home. In Utah, the two-term governor is, in fact, rather polarizing. A new poll released on Tuesday shows that his net approval rating in Utah has fallen 23 points since April.

It’s not hard to see why. He has signed laws supporting extreme Republican gerrymandering and taking fluoride out of the drinking water. This year, he officially declared June as “Fidelity Month,” instead of its more familiar name, Pride Month. He has supported data center construction over the intense objections of Utah residents of all political stripes. And in 2024, the soon-to-be author signed one of the country’s most extreme book banning laws—a decision that’s now coming back to haunt him as he tries to get people to buy his own book.

He's smarmy and the media should have known better.  He got out one sentence to Stewart and I turned it off.  We need to be smarter and that especially goes for the media and it very much goes for Jon Stewart. 


Turning to Chump, Chump's dashing around the country trying to woo voters who no longer like him continues. Sean James (MEDIAITE) reports that in Vandalia, Ohio he urged voters to turn out and vote GOP, "And we're gonna shove it up their a**, okay?"  Okay,  He was back in Mobile, Alabama where, in better years for him, he once filled a 30,seat auditorium.  But this go round?  Shawn McCreesh (NEW YORK TIMES) explains, "These days, Mr. Trump is in political trouble, even with members of his famously loyal base. The indoor arena that he spoke at on Friday was a fraction of the size of the football stadium he once spoke in — security concerns are such that he rarely speaks in outdoor venues anymore — and still the place was not full. Some upper sections were almost completely empty."  Low turn out and crazy, sleazy statements.  If you're thinking things are going better for Vice President JD Vance, think again.  Alexander Willis (RAW STORY) reports:

Vice President JD Vance's rally ended with a Democratic candidate behind bars Friday, but the heckler quickly became a hero to countless onlookers after video of the confrontation went viral.

 “Thank you so much, Vice President Vance, for the gas prices!” shouted Ben Braver, a Democratic candidate for the Florida House, during a GOP rally in Lakeland, Florida on Friday.

“Thank you for helping us win in Iran! Thank you, President Trump! Thank you so much, JD, you are such a good vice president, you pedophile protector! I’m excited for the $5,000 check, I’m so excited!”


Reality intrudes on a White House event.  Reality has been intruding a lot, especially with regards to the economy.  Kevin Reed (WSWS) notes:


The US labor market added just 29,000 jobs in September, while payroll figures for the previous two months were revised down by 60,000. The numbers point to a prolonged stagnation in hiring even as the Trump White House is predictably portraying the report as evidence of economic strength.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday that “both nonfarm payroll employment (+29,000) and the unemployment rate (4.2 percent) changed little in September.” The headline job gain was well below the already low 45,000 average monthly increase over the previous 12 months and follows a downward revision that turned July’s previously reported gain of 21,000 into a loss of 10,000 jobs. August employment growth was also revised down, from 162,000 to 133,000.

The new report is significant because it confirms that the jobs market has remained stagnant for months. The unemployment rate has remained between 4.1 percent and 4.3 percent since March 2026, but this fact conceals a broader deterioration in the conditions facing workers. The number of unemployed workers stood at 7.1 million, while 1.9 million had been without a job for at least 27 weeks. Long-term unemployed workers made up 27.1 percent of all unemployed people.

Moreover, the official unemployment figure excludes millions of workers pushed outside the labor force or trapped in insecure employment. The BLS counted 4.5 million people working part-time for economic reasons, meaning they wanted full-time work but had their hours cut or could not find a full-time position. Another 5.8 million people outside the labor force said they currently wanted a job, including 1.5 million categorized as marginally attached to the labor force.

The BLS stated that employment “changed little” across all major industries. Healthcare added 17,000 jobs, less than half its 12-month monthly average of 33,000, while construction added 11,000 and manufacturing added 9,000. Even these modest increases were partly offset by a loss of 9,000 jobs in nursing and residential care facilities. Financial activities shed 7,000 jobs in September and have lost 129,000 jobs since May 2025, including 90,000 jobs in insurance carriers and related activities.


Chump has destroyed the US economy.  People are hurting.  Shawanda Jones (WTVA) reports:


Mississippi truck drivers say rising diesel prices are cutting deeply into their paychecks, as one state lawmaker pushes for temporary relief at the pump.

George Thompson, who has driven trucks for 38 years, said fuel costs are eating into what he takes home.

“I saw my paycheck yesterday. It was negative $1,823 on fuel,” Thompson said.

Another driver, Robert Jennings, said filling his truck Saturday cost him $741.04. It’s an amount he said is far from normal.


WITN notes:

High diesel prices are putting growing financial pressure on the truck drivers responsible for keeping store shelves stocked and goods moving across Eastern North Carolina.

At pumps in Bethel, drivers say daily fuel expenses have climbed sharply. Sean Hannes, an independent truck driver who pays for fuel out of pocket, says a single fill-up takes between 100 and 150 gallons.

“You watch it go up and down, it changes regularly so even a little bit adds up,” Hannes said. “Five to six hundred dollars usually. Doesn’t take much.”


Audra D. S. Burch (NEW YORK TIMES) reports: 

When Sean Howarth started his independent trucking business last year, he made sure to reserve one week a month for his family — a girlfriend and her two children — at home in Miami between three weeks on the road.

Then came the war in Iran, which sent the price of diesel fuel skyrocketing and turned a fill-up into an $1,000-a-tank ordeal. For now, the only way to make ends meet, Mr. Howarth said, is to get on the road and stay there. He has not been home since mid-August. He sleeps in his truck and has missed birthdays, volleyball games and date nights salsa dancing at a local club. He does not plan to return home until the holidays unless diesel prices fall sharply.

“I am just trying to hang on,” he said.

Diesel prices are averaging $6.39 a gallon nationally, up from $3.71 a year ago, according to AAA. The high cost of fuel is battering owner-operator truck drivers, who help deliver food, construction materials, medical supplies, electronics and other goods across the country.


Throughout the country, people are suffering at that pump and that's especially true for those who make their living delivering our goods. 


In other news, Simon Mugo (INVESTING.COM) notes:

The White House has named senior officials and outside advisers to a new AI task force led by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton, the Wall Street Journal reported exclusively.

The "Super Intelligence Force" will have 120 days to report on AI risks and opportunities and determine the federal government's responsibilities. Its work could be extended or transferred to a government agency. 


This development follows Chump's worthless meet and great earlier this week with such noted jerks as Alien Musk and Mark Zuckerman.  It ended with Chump's decision that AI forces could police themselves prompting this from Jimmy Kimmel: 

Some of them have actually asked the government, please, help regulate us, put up guardrails so we don't end up exterminating human life. But Trump doesn't want that. He wants the AI companies to self-police.  Like remember how in the Terminator movies, the Terminators stopped when they asked him politely to stop terminating? That's what he wants.  This is like asking your kids to self-police their Halloween candy. It doesn't work.  And nobody is better at managing their impulse control than these tech billionaires. You leave them alone for one weekend, they come back with the ugliest truck you've ever seen.


At The Council For Foreign Relations, Connor Martin notes:

The one-page agreement that came out of the White House meeting describes itself as a “Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities,” but it does not actually compel the companies to do anything. It is closer in spirit to the “voluntary AI commitments” that Joe Biden’s administration secured in 2023 (though less detailed than those). It does not have the force of law or executive order, and the language itself is conspicuously noncommittal—with a revealing exception.

The document states, “[W]e believe each company should implement… four layers of controls and audits[.]” “Believe” and “should”—two words that any government lawyer would immediately strike from a CFIUS agreement, because they are unfalsifiable. Better words are “will” or “shall”—but “will” only appears at the end of the document, when the companies commit that they “will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices” on safety.

This is notable because one of the recommendations in Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s “pacing the frontier” essay—which accelerated the debate over AI safety in September—is for the U.S. government to waive antitrust restrictions so that the labs can work together on safety. It is unclear whether Trump’s signature on this one-pager amounts to an endorsement of that recommendation, but it could plausibly be read as a signal that federal antitrust enforcement would look the other way (and in any case, discussions are reportedly already ongoing between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind).

The nonbinding nature of the agreement also means it does nothing to change the commercial incentives for the companies to keep testing models whose capabilities are potentially dangerous.


The American people have safety concerns regarding our own lives and we have safety concerns regarding the pollution these data centers cause and we have concerns about elevated water usage and electric power bills as a result of these data centers.  Scott Neuman (NPR) reports on that last aspect:


Ahead of the midterm elections, Congress is scrambling to show that it understands voter concerns about AI data centers and their potential impact on electricity rates. But answering the question of how much of those costs will be shouldered by residential utility customers is surprisingly difficult to answer.

[. . .]


The question of how much of the energy and grid costs are being borne by ratepayers is a complicated one and has no universal answer, experts tell NPR. They say it varies by utility and state, but that in the end residential electricity customers will pay for a share of the AI buildout.

By one estimate, Maryland customers, for example, pay somewhere around $168 to $216 more per year on their electricity bills primarily due to the data center boom.

"We're talking tens to hundreds of millions of dollars [of infrastructure] that are being built by these local utilities," says Connor Waldoch, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Grid Status, which focuses on making electricity-market data easier to access and understand. "In many cases, it is just ultimately going to end up in customers' bills."


Let's wind down with this from Senator Alex Padilla's office:


WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate unanimously passed U.S. Senator Alex Padilla’s (D-Calif.) Pit River Land Transfer Act, a bicameral and bipartisan bill to promote Tribal management of over 500 acres of land in California by transferring federal land to the Pit River Tribe. Padilla introduced the legislation with Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) last year to protect Tribal communities and local environment in surrounding regions.

The Senate passed an amended version of the late Representative Doug LaMalfa’s (R-Calif.-01) companion bill, which now heads back to the House of Representatives for a final vote.

“Senseless conflict and bureaucratic barriers have kept California Tribes from managing their ancestral lands, and it’s past time we take action to help Tribes protect their communities and local environment,” said Senator Padilla. “I am grateful that the Senate unanimously passed this critical bill. We’re another step closer to ensuring the Pit River Tribe can steward the land they have inhabited for countless generations.”

“I am proud to see our legislation to help the Pit River Tribe restore their ancestral homelands and promote Tribal sovereignty pass the Senate,” said Senator Schiff. “This bill will help the Pit River Tribe manage the Four Corners site as their ancestors did.”

The Pit River Tribe consist of 11 autonomous bands traditionally inhabiting the area surrounding the Pit River and its tributaries. They are known for their deep spiritual connection to the land, with a rich cultural heritage centered around fishing, hunting, and seasonal gatherings.

This bill would transfer 557 acres of federal land administered by the United States Forest Service to the Secretary of the Interior to be held in trust for the Pit River Tribe. The Tribe has been actively trying to acquire this land through various governmental processes for over a decade. However, they have experienced a series of delays that have added years to the process.

The proposed land to be transferred is known as the Four Corners Property, located in Shasta County. The Tribe has strong cultural and historical connections to the Four Corners, and they view it as a central landmark of their ancestral lands. In October 1970, members of the Tribe erected a Quonset hut on the Four Corners, staking a peaceful, yet firm claim. That month, over 100 sheriff’s deputies, federal marshals, and forest rangers ordered the occupants to evacuate the property, which eventually resulted in violence and the hospitalization of several Tribal members.

Padilla is a strong advocate for restoring Tribal ownership of ancestral lands. In July, Padilla testified at a Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing to advocate for critical water investments for California Tribes. In 2024, the Senate passed Padilla’s Jamul Indian Village Land Transfer Act, which established over 170 acres as trust lands for the benefit of the Jamul Tribe. Under the Biden Administration, a series of Padilla’s bills to restore Tribal stewardship of sacred lands and ensure federal land management laws respected Tribal sovereignty were signed into law. The package included laws to take more than 2,500 acres of land in the San Jacinto Mountains into trust for the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and to place roughly 1,000 acres of federal land located in Humboldt and Siskiyou counties into trust for the Karuk Tribe.

Full text of the Pit River Land Transfer Act is available here.

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The following sites updated:




 

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