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Welcome to “The Numbers Game #46.” Today’s number is 167. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find that include that number and post a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.
This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Above are my contributions to the album:
The fire sighs and flips the ravaged timbers to the floor, sends soaked ashes swirling in currents toward the door. Blue flames lick at skins of walls, then weave around the beams, trying to escape the fire fighter’s streams as they emerge in masks from the house’s inner places, assassins of those flames who’ve chosen not to show their faces. Thus is the conflagration robbed of its power and beauty by this crew that sees extermination as its duty.
For The Sunday Whirl
The prompt words are sighs fire flip ravaged blue floor emerge masks ashes soak skin weave
Yesterday I saw a report of a 14-year-old girl who had died of sepsis because the emergency room would not treat her until she had additional tests because she was pregnant. I can’t find that message, but saw this related post on ForgottenMan’s site. Please think before you vote on letting an outright ban on abortion control who you vote for. What if this was your daughter?
The famous orange politician/reality celebrity has come to the end of his campaign with a racist-filled speech highlighting his usual us versus them style. He has successfully divided the country by denouncing certain classes, ethnic backgrounds, women, and people of color. It seems to have worked as almost half the country is ready to vote for him. While he may lose the popular vote by millions, he may take the electoral vote in an antiquated system that has brought out the worst in political parties, particularly the red one.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” – Abraham Lincoln
After Trump’s recent 6-hour campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, comparisons to fascist campaigns, particularly that of the Nazis, have been pouring out. The length of the event and the attacks on minority groups would be worthy of any wannabe dictator.
“Maybe it’s just something you have; you have the winning gene. Frankly, it would be wonderful if you could develop it, but I’m not so sure you can. You know, I’m proud to have that German blood, there’s no question about it. Great stuff.” – Donald Trump, 2016
Trump’s repeated comments on the subject either imply or outright state that certain races are superior to others. This hateful approach is similar to that of Adolf Hitler at his rallies. The world has since condemned the words of Hitler. Trump is getting a pass in certain circles.
“You have to be born lucky in the sense that you have to have the right genes.” – Donald Trump to Oprah Winfrey, 1988
“I always said that winning is somewhat, maybe, innate. Maybe it’s just something you have; you have the winning gene.” – DJT, 2016
Hitler believed he was superior and tried to rid the nation and the world of those he deemed unacceptable. Trump wants to rid our nation of immigrants. He thinks of many of them as criminals:
“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they are now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” – Donald Trump describing immigrants, Octrober 7, 2024.
There is no proof that any of this statement is true. As we have learned, the orange one is not against making up “facts” in his interviews and speeches.
“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told a New Hampshire campaign rally last year when speaking about immigrants.
Hitler referred to “blood poisoning” in his attack on immigrants and the mixing of races in “Mein Kampf.” “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” Hitler said. Is this not close to what Trump believes?
“They’re destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing. They’re destroying our country,” Trump said of immigrants in a campaign speech in Iowa in December 2023.
Trump claimed not to have read Mein Kampf, but his ex-wife Ivana Trump claimed in a 1990 Vanity Fair article that Trump kept an anthology of Hitler speeches, “My New Order” by his bed. “”If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them,” Trump responded but was he telling the truth?
“The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals.’” DJT on immigrants, April 2024
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” DJT on immigrants, particularly from Haiti, El Salvador, and certain African countries, January 2018.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” DJT, June 16, 2015.
This was part of the infamous announcement of Trump’s first presidential run. Despite the criticism for entering the campaign with a hate-filled speech, Trump went on to capture the electoral vote in 2016.
On “the blacks:” “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks,” Trump said in April 2011.
That is probably not very true. According to John R O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump said, “Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that.
OnThe Japanese: “Who the f knows? I mean, really, who knows how much the Japs will pay for Manhattan property these days?” DJT, January 1989
DJT was asked if he could estimate his wealth. His response included an ethnic slur.
To Jewish businessmen: “I’m a negotiator like you folks” “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t negotiate deals?” DJT to Republican Jewish Coalition, December 3, 2015
Trump’s remarks included typical stereotypes often used against Jewish businessmen. “You’re not going to support me even though I’ll be the best guy for Israel,” he added.
On women “You have to treat ‘em like shit,” New York magazine profile November 1992.
On his opponent: “She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic. She’s so fu*king bad” DJT, July 3, 2024
There are mountains of insults Trump has hurled at women. They are so frequent you can not even count them all. This one, however, should have ended his chances for office, but his devoted followers did not even seem to care about it.: “I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the p**sy. You can do anything.”
Most Republicans are afraid to push back against the racist comments of the former and possibly the next president. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had this to say: “He’s disgusting, and what he’s doing is dog-whistle to Americans who feel absolutely under stress and strained from the economy and from the conflicts around the world, and he’s dog-whistling to blame it on people from areas who don’t look like us.”
Does the Orange One have the character to be president? Didn’t his first term teach us anything?
Trump’s comments to right-wing media figure Tucker Carlson last night at an event in Glendale, Arizona, about former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), coming as they have after the extraordinary racism and sexism of Trump’s Sunday event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, have highlighted the centrality of the campaign’s attack on women.
“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump told Carlson, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Today, Trump surrogates have tried to say that he was referring to Cheney’s positions on American warfare, but it seems pretty clear he is fantasizing about seeing her in front of a firing squad. Journalist Magdi Jacobs noted the parallels between this statement and his 2020 command to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” the precursor to the Proud Boys’ attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In both statements, Trump avoided explicitly calling for violence, but absolutely set the stage for it.
This morning, Cheney responded to Trump’s threat “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
While Trump began to attack Cheney openly when she accepted the role of vice-chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, where her presence clearly made Republicans—like Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows—willing to share what they knew, Trump’s recent bloody fantasies appear to have broader meaning.
Cheney has emerged as the key figure to urge Republican women to vote against Trump, and it is becoming increasingly clear that Trump’s reelection is in trouble in part because white women are abandoning him. The early hints that this is happening, like the huge gender gap showing up in early voting, have sparked a right-wing frenzy of attempts to restore the power of white men over the women in their lives. Right-wing men are insisting that wives should vote as their husbands do, or that women should lose the ability to vote altogether.
Trump’s suggestion that Cheney should face a firing squad seems to be a general expression of the anger of white men accustomed to dictating the terms of public life when faced with the reality that they can no longer count on being able to cow the people around them.
Trump’s attack on Cheney has galvanized his unpopularity with women, whilethe larger meaning of the MAGAs’ attacks on women got additional illustration with the news broken today by Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana of ProPublica that a pregnant 18-year-old in Texas suffering from sepsis was turned away from emergency rooms twice before doctors at a third visit required two ultrasounds to make sure her fetus no longer had a heartbeat before they would move her into intensive care. She died within hours.
Today’s news continued to be bad for Trump. Last week, on the Joe Rogan podcast, Trump talked about the CHIPS and Science Act that authorized about $280 billion to encourage domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the U.S. While the law has brought significant private investment into the construction of new manufacturing plants and has created manufacturing jobs, Trump complained to Rogan, “That chip deal is so bad.”
After listening to that conversation, journalist Luke Radel asked House speaker Mike Johnson in a report aired today whether, with Trump opposed to the bill and with Republicans having voted against it, the Republicans will try to repeal the law if they get majorities in Congress. Johnson responded “I expect we probably will, but we haven’t developed that part of the agenda yet.”
Republicans are determined to cut government spending to make way for more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But the CHIPS and Science Act has brought important supply chains home and has created more than 115,000 new high-paying jobs in the U.S.
And it has brought significant investment to battleground states: $19.5 billion to Arizona, $75 million to Georgia, $325 million to Michigan, $750 million to North Carolina, and $93 million to Pennsylvania. Johnson quickly realized that acknowledging the Republicans’ hopes of repealing it was a bad mistake days before an election and, claiming he had not heard the question accurately, said he had no intent to undermine the CHIPS and Science Act.
At a closed-door meeting earlier this week, Johnson said repealing the Affordable Care Act is a Republican priority. He tried to walk this comment back, as well, but Pennsylvania Republican senatorial candidate Dave McCormick kept the issue in front of voters when he was caught on a hot mic saying he wants to reform the ACA and that he opposes the provision in the ACA that allows children to stay on their parent’s health insurance until they’re 26.
Trump’s mental state continues to deteriorate, taking with it the former president’s inhibitions. After going on a rant about the people he blamed for troubles with his microphone at a sparsely attended rally in Warren, Michigan, the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America simulated oral sex on stage.
An official with the Harris campaign told reporters today that they “fully expect” Trump will replay the game plan of 2020 and claim victory on election night, before all the votes are fully counted. In an interview on Wednesday, Harris noted that they were ready if Trump prematurely declared victory: “We are sadly ready if he does and, if we know that he is actually manipulating the press and attempting to manipulate the consensus of the American people…we are prepared to respond,” she said.
Washington State governor Jay Inslee has activated the state’s National Guard so it will be “fully prepared to respond to any…civil unrest” before or after the election.
The Department of Justice today announced it would monitor the polls in 86 jurisdictions in 27 states to make sure they comply with federal voting rights laws. Although the federal government has monitored certain polls since 1965, officials in the states of Florida, Missouri, and Texas promptly announced they would not permit Department of Justice officials inside polling stations.
Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris made two stops in Wisconsin today before packing the Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center in West Allis near Milwaukee.
In Madison, Harris told a reporter: “What I am enjoying about this moment most is that in spite of how my opponent spends full time trying to divide the American people, what I am seeing is people coming together under one roof who seemingly have nothing in common and know they have everything in common, and I think that is in the best interest of the strength of our nation.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 