For Cee’s FOTD
Heather Cox Richardson, Nov 1, 2024
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, while the 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.”
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Notes:
https://www.propublica.org/article/nevaeh-crain-death-texas-abortion-ban-emtala
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/01/justice-election-monitors/
X:
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Heather Cox Richardson, Nov 1, 2024
Chillin’
If I were the queen of time, in charge of all its flow,
I’d speed it at the dentist, while dessert would progress slow.
Each bite of pie, with me in charge, would take at least a minute.
An ice cream cone would last an hour while I enjoyed what’s in it.
If I controlled the seconds, the hours and days and weeks,
a hummingbird’s flight would slow way down to afford us peeks.
A fine ballet would then commence whenever they flew by—
each move so delicate and slow—detectable by the eye.
House work would vanish quickly as the clicking of a finger,
while foot rubs, hugs and kisses would be the things that linger.
The time between waking and sleep would flow as swift as water
If I were grandmother of hours—time passing’s favorite daughter.
If I could slice time thick or thin and serve it out in portions,
I’d speed up each painful death as well as birth’s contortions.
I’d slow down bullets leaving guns and thus destroy their power.
I’d slow how fast the ice cube melts, the lifetime of each flower.
Sunsets would last for hours and time with friends for days,
so we’d enjoy together each evening’s parting rays.
Plane rides with their narrow seats and no room for our knees
would pass as fast as possible, as quickly as you’d please.
Time before a party would go slow to afford time
for the cleaning of the house, the cutting of each lime.
And once each flower is put in place, the buffet table done,
time’s pace would be restored again and revelry begun.
When we need more or less of it, time would be there for us.
Our favorite songs would be strung out. Braggarts would never bore us.
There’d be more time for writing, for eating and the arts.
Headaches would pass in seconds. So would anger, fights and farts!
If I controlled the hours, the world would be run smoother.
Instead of causing us much angst, time would be our soother.
If I could dole out time so it was spread on thin or thickly,
perhaps I could have managed for this poem to end more quickly!
For SOCS: Chill
Photo thanks to Givenchy
The words we were given to concoct definitions for this Friday are:
1. Vemödalen: The note my German friends left me when they unexpectedly had to leave for a photo shoot for Givenchy.
2. Anecdoche: A poetic device in which the ending word of each line must rhyme with the word “neck.”
3. Ellipsism: An addiction to the excessive use of . . .’s in one’s writing.
4. Kuebiko: A Japanese baby much given to making adorable sounds bound to win over adoring adults
5. Lachesism: An addiction to making sure all doors and windows in a house are secure.
6. Exulansis: A scientific study which deals with the ananlysis of what creates happiness.
7. Adronitis: An addiction for sending cameras into the sky to spy on one’s neighbors.
8. Onism: An unnatural need to acquire possessions.
9. Altschmerz: A sudden pain brought on when flying at a high altitude.
10. Occhiolism: A neurotic need to follow one nightcap with seven more.
For Fibbing Friday
The Unexpected
“Taste,” if it could be dissected,
may involve the unexpected.
Convention calls for the reverse,
and so we might expect the worse,
but, instead, what might develop
is a charm that might envelop
all who enter as witness to it
and find there is a fitness to it.
I found this before shot of the wall where all of the plants except for one cut-off and flowerless bougainvillea vine had been killed by the break in a pipe that released scalding hot water over the area. The first photo is the before. You can actually see the pipe that burst up against the wall. The remaining photos were taken after 2 1/2 weeks of replanting. If you have any before and after photos, please post them and link in my comments below!!
Click on photos to increase size.
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This planet was so huge and bright that it made me grab my camera. The Virginia Creeper is hanging down from the terrace roof in front of the sliding glass doors that form the floor to within a few feet of the ceiling in front of my desk.
For Cee’s FOTD
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 