Mark Robinson, who called himself a Black Nazi, has been campaigning with a cardboard cut-out of the Trumps. It's the closest Melania has stood to her husband in years pic.twitter.com/WAk9zprAyO
— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) September 30, 2024
That's Paul Rudnick Tweeting about Mark The Perv Robinson. D'Anne Witkowski (Philadelphia Gay News) picked him as "creep of the week:"
For the past few years, I’ve heard people say Republicans have a “candidate quality” problem. In other words, that Republicans are losing races or are having to fight much harder than they have in the past to protect safe Republican seats because they just happen to be choosing bad candidates. And by bad, I mean extremist candidates who are loud and proud about being extreme.
But the problem for Republicans isn’t that they’re picking bad candidates. It’s that the candidates rising to the top are much more open about the backwards policies and hateful intent of the party’s platform. This is due, in part, to Trump, who has normalized being on the lunatic fringe. But it’s also due to gerrymandering. For example, when a district with a safe Republican seat has a primary election, it’s the base that typically comes out to vote. And the Republican base is not tethered to this earthly plane. They are far out there when it comes to what most people in this country support.
Republicans are out there running on a platform to ban abortion nationwide, ban birth control, get rid of the Affordable Care Act without any plan to replace it, ban public schools (or at least divert funding from public schools to private Christian schools), overturn the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling, do away with any laws that protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination, gut Medicaid and Medicare, gut Social Security, make guns easier to get and harder to regulate in any way, ban porn, cut taxes for the richest people in the country and raise taxes on everyone else. And those are just the greatest hits. Plenty of proposed Republican cuts are just as bad if not worse.
And here’s the thing — this is not some kind of new Republican Party that all of a sudden is extreme on just about every issue Americans care about. This is who the Republican Party has been my entire lifetime. A major turning point for the GOP was President Ronald Regan’s embrace of the Christian right back in the ’80s. The party has been moving further and further right ever since.
So, yeah, it’s a feature, not a bug, that causes the Republican campaign machine to spit out candidates who are disconnected from the majority of the country. They were just able to hide their extremism better in the past.
Which leads me to North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, a self-described “perv.”
That's the opening, Keep reading by using the link even though you know no one worked harder to earn creep of the week.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Like Matt Taibbi's TWITTER FILES 'reports,' there's no reporting being done here. We called Matt's work "The Twitter Dumps" and that's what Ken has done.
Reporting is not releasing documents. Releasing documents is releasing documents.
We applaud the releasing of documents -- The Pentagon Papers, WIKILEAKS' work, etc.
But we don't confuse that with journalism.
That Ken does makes him appear more than a little out of touch.
271. That's the amount of pages -- that's how long the leaked report is. In what world do most Americans have time to wade through 271 pages. We did. It meant losing sleep time.
Reporting could have been done on the 271-pages.
We'd argue that what emerges is that JD Vance is an angry, little boy who's never grown up and feels he'll never become a man because of Daddy issues related to his father abandoning him. He goes around looking for a Daddy and he has no scope or prism by which to examine any issue beyond his own limited personal view. He can't relate to others or understand them unless they share his grievances and immaturity. He clearly needs help.
We say that as two who trudged through every page -- including the page where his September 1, 2006 speeding ticket is reproduced. The ticket, of course, wasn't issued to "JD Vance." It wasn't issued under his birth name James Donald Bowman. It was issued under his first legal name change name James D. Hall. He would have another name change in 2013 -- around the age of 29 -- when he became JD Vance.
Who changes their legal name twice? Once, okay, but going to court to get a third name? That really goes to his inability to be consistent. His name, like his political positions, are all over the map.
As debate prep for Tim Walz, publishing the 271 pages might have some value. They demonstrate how hollow Vance is and how he'll do or say anything America doesn't know JD Vance.
That is the take way from the 271 pages -- and JD Vance doesn't know JD Vance. He's forever changing and remaking himself, forever looking for a daddy figure to guide him.
He's forty-years-old and, if Donald's elected, he could be president because Donald's so old and so very fat that he could easily die in the next two years from a massive heart attack.
Tim might wonder in Tuesday's debate whether, for example, he was standing onstage with the JD that supported the Supreme Court's ruling legalizing same-se marriage or he was standing on stage with the 2020 JD that had a hissy fit over basic workplace protections that prevented someone from being fired for being gay?
Corporate media refused to release the report or cover it because, some claim, it might have been hacked and it might have been from Iran (the hack might have been done by an Iranian citizen acting alone or by the Iranian government).
While that may indeed be a reason given, we'd argue the larger issue is that they take the position that they've already covered it.
Vetting Vance, for any who don't know, is research that the campaign did on JD. They vetted others as well. Marco Rubio, for example, was vetted as well. (His file has not leaked at present.) But, at that Mother Tucker Carlson's urging, Donald went with JD. Whack job Tucker insisted that the 'deep state' would assassinate Trump if he picked Rubio because they'd want Marco to be president.
Remember, kids, when you need the polling on the deep-state go to Mother Tucker, he's the inside man.
We'll come back to Tucker.
How can the media claim that they've already reported on the 271 pages? Because it's largely their reporting. It's statements that Vance made to the media, it's statements from pieces that Vance wrote for the media. It's also his traffic record (public information), his basic school records (public information), etc
If Ken were to do journalism on the 271 pages, he could pick any issue and report on the changing positions that Vance has held in his 20 or so adult years. He could do that on any issue. He could do that on many issues. He hasn't done that though he has published that TWITTER deactivated his account and then he shared a communication informing him that this was permanent -- he was permanently banned from TWITTER. He's shared that FACEBOOK and GOOGLE have also banned links to the 271 page report but they have not banned Ken himself.
We
repeatedly castigated Matt Taibbi for claiming Tweets were reporting.
They are not. Nor is publishing a 271-page report. There's an argument
that can be made insisting it was journalism and we wouldn't quibble
with that. But publishing a 271-page report is, in and of itself, not
reporting.
Should the 271-page now published report be banned? No. There's no reason to ban it or to ban Ken. The bulk of it is a collection of quotes from publications like THE WASHINGTON POST.
THE WEATHER CHANNEL notes, "Millions of people across the Southeast remained without power Sunday in the aftermath of Helene. For many in the western Carolinas, rescues were still happening, as crews tried to reach communities isolated by flooding and landslides." At least sixty people lost their lives. At COMMON DREAMS, Jessica Corbett notes:
The youth-led Sunrise Movementsaid
Sunday that "any reporting about Hurricane Helene needs to be
clear—this is not normal. This is not just a tragedy. This is a crime.
Fossil fuel companies have known this would happen for the last 50
years. They lied to the public and bought out our government just to
make a profit. Make them pay."
Greenpeace USA similarly declared on social media Saturday that "#HURRICANEHELENE MUST BE A WAKE-UP CALL FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE!"
"We are heartbroken," the group said, noting the dozens of people killed. "Communities have been devastated. The corporations heating the climate must be held accountable."
Corbett goes on to misreport by next including a Tweet from the increasingly deranged Nina Turner who tries to paint a picture of this being a non-political issue.
Wrong. This is absolutely a political issue. Maybe Nina needs to find one topic -- at least one -- she can be an expert on. Maybe that would put an end to her non-stop tumbles and fumbles of recent years.
Her comments are pure stupidity. And its journalist malpractice for Jessica to even include them. It amounts to climate change denialism. That's what it is. Donald Trump does not give a damn about climate change. He didn't address it when he was previously in the White House and his plans for another four years include dismantling oversight. His supporters -- such as Elon Musk -- are fine with trashing the earth because they believe that they can colonize Mars. This is not minor.
Jessica and COMMON DREAMS are guilty of not just misreporting but of endangering the planet. There was no reason for Nina Turner's b.s. Tweet to be included. There was every reason to note that Donald is not going to protect the planet. There was every reason to note Joe Biden's efforts over the last four years which have not been enough but have been something. And there's every reason to note Kamala's plans and how a Kamala presidency would be more open to pressure.
It's interesting that Jessica includes Nina Turner's Tweet but not this Tweet from Antonia Juhasz:
Let me note some from Antonia. She reTweeted this:
And she Tweeted this:
And she Tweeted this:
Guess which one of the three above Tweets and one reTweet that Jessica notes in her article? That's right, the one that doesn't mention Kamala Harris.
It's amazing just how far COMMON DREAMS went to ignore Kamala. They are supposed to be a left outlet yet they repeatedly expose themselves as something other than that.
Our planet is at risk. Your choices are Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. For COMMON DREAMS, they're not really in the fight to save the earth. They make that clear with their selective coverage where even when they're quoting someone (their Tweet) about the topic, they ignore the support for Kamala.
Jessica ends her article with this:
Highlighting the connection between climate change and more intense hurricanes, Congressman Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said Thursday that "the climate crisis is here. We must act to save lives."
And how are we going to do that Jessica? One way would be voting Kamala and then holding her feet to the fire on the climate issue. But apparently, even a little over a month away from the election, COMMON DREAMS refuses to entertain that idea. Even though that's the easiest action that anyone can take for climate justice.
Days before Jessica's dangerous typing went up, Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling (THE NEW REPUBLIC) explained:
Hurricane Helene has derailed the Republican presidential ticket’s campaign across the South, forcing Trump’s vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, to cancel several stops in Georgia. But the 20-foot storm surge–inducing, tornado-spawning weather event hasn’t yet changed Trump’s stance on his plan to tear down the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, root and branch.
The climate agency, whose responsibilities include providing free weather forecasts as well as tracking and predicting hurricanes, would be completely gutted under Project 2025, the 920-page Christian nationalist manifesto that purports to be Trump’s second-term agenda. (Trump has haltingly and not particularly convincingly attempted to disavow Project 2025; a recently unearthed video features one of the project’s authors bragging that there will be “one-to-one mirroring” of the policies laid out in the document and Trump’s proposals.)
Are you getting it? Because it's sailing right over the heads of the people working for COMMON DREAMS.
You know what else is sailing over their heads? How Black women are especially noting their lack of support for Kamala Harris. Black women who turn out every election. The same Black women that learned in the '00s they'd be ripped apart at DAILY KOS and all the other Democratic Party sites. Because Black women weren't appreciated. And that's still true today as COMMON DREAMS makes clear. COMMON DREAMS went all in for John Kerry or have we forgotten? They went all in for Hillary. So forgive those of us who are noticing that the only different standard comes into play when it's a Black woman.
Then COMMON DREAMS wants to be reluctant about supporting the Democratic Party presidential candidate. And only then. Don't think we aren't noticing it.
JD Vance is completely unqualified to be president. In 2008, Sarah Palin was ripped apart by the press and that was done, we were told, because John McCain was so old he might die in office after being sworn in -- that would have been 2009. John McCain was 71-years-old. That's seven years younger than Donald Trump is now. For the record, McCain died ten years after the 2008 run at the age of 81. No one's a prophet (unless they're a crazy on stage with JD this past weekend). But contrast the way Sarah was examined with the way that JD is. Most people have no idea who he is. But the GOP put out the lie that people didn't know who Kamala was and the media ran with it.
No one knows that little weirdo JD Vance.
We -- Ava and I -- read the 271-page report. He has flipped on any issue and every issue. He has flipped on Trump. There is nothing there, no there there. He is hollow and has no core. In a better media environment, the corporate media would have run with that on their own.
Instead, they ran with the GOP line that Kamala was unknown. No, America knew their vice president before she became the presidential candidate. They do not know JD Vance. They do not know how he lies about everything. His personal life should back up the life that he is trying to now enforce on others but that's not the life he lives. He's a little henpecked male who never grew up and who has very serious issues that require therapy.
But we're less than forty days to the election and not only has the press failed to address the realities of JD Vance -- the mainstream press -- so has the so-called left media. Let's look at THE PROGRESSIVE. No one buys the print copy anymore -- they have more subscribers to the print copy than they sell at bookstores and on magazine racks. So all they've really got is online. They have a Ted Glick article about Harris is better for Palestinians -- they published that Friday. And Wednesday was a miracle day for THE PROGRESSIVE when they discovered JD Vance was lying about Haitian immigrants. You know, the topic most people were talking about by September 10th when Donald Trump repeated those lies in the debate with Kamala.
They certainly have a laid back attitude to the election, don't they?
I'm not Robert Redford so don't expect me to whore for that trash magazine the way he does.
What I will do is note their staff:
Not very progressive, is it? See men all the important positions. I don't consider "office manager" an important position. And having seen the images THE PROGRESSIVE runs with, I don't consider an art director at THE PROGRESSIVE to be an important position either.
If you missed it, THE PROGRESSIVE is so unimportant now that it's had to drop to a bi-monthly magazine published only six times a year. If you want to be even more depressed, pick up the August-September issue and notice the bylines -- how few women, how few people of color. Yet they call themselves THE PROGRESSIVE? And do they really think Ruth Conniff's piece explaining "Despite what Donald Trump and his cult following claim, the former President is not an almighty, irresistible man of the people" is the hardest that they can hit?
I see they can't promote Kamala at all.
Maybe there's some hidden diversity there, in those bylines? Bite your tongue, I tell myself, don't out someone no matter how pathetic their closet case living is.
The following sites updated:
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Fabiola Méndez: Tiny Desk Concert2 hours ago
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The Diary of an ‘Undesirable’1 day ago
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Maggie Smith1 day ago
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