You forgot to mention the "secret" that he openly talked about with Mike Keebler Johson - one that is surely just a repeat of their 2020 plot to challenge the electoral college in the hopes that it can be turned over to the House of Representatives - aka the coup v2.
(the NSA and FBI better have those plans in their surveillance records already, so that the DOJ can add still more coup charges to DonOld's docket)
It is very likely (and even more so after last weekend's WTF moment) that the Democrats will retake the House. A number of frantic Republican reps are backpedaling faster than Wile E. Coyote to get away from the stench of that MSG rally, many of them from districts that Joe Biden won in 2020. The Senate is much iffier, but I'm not giving up yet - there are too many factors in this election that did not figure into previous contests to concede.
Absolutely. What the MAGAts forget is that the NEW Congress - with a new Speaker- will be seated at the beginning of January, before the electoral count takes place some days later. If Johnson gets his pipsqueak ass booted back to the backbenchers, he won't get any say in this at all!
Tony Michaels of The Tony Michaels Podcast said he thinks it’s blackmail. Like Trump has something on Moses Mike and wanted the Keebler White Christian Nationalist to know he has something on him.
I tend to wonder if it is nothing at all - just an attempt to bolster courage and expectations in those he will want to call to violent action at some (in)appropriate moment: Pretending to have a secret weapon like pretending you'll have back up "right behind you".
Further to this it may be worth investigating the news over on Robert Reich’s October 29 substack article that Elon Musk has recently registered a new corporation in Texas entitled United States of America Inc.. It would seem authoritarian oligarchs like Musk are piggy backing the fifty years in the making Heritage Foundation’s Grand Plan to turn the US into a Christo nationalist dictatorship, to become permanent CEO’s of a Corporate owned US.
Yep. Just read a review of a new book revealing another piece of this ugly MAGA jigsaw, the Opus Dei funding of Project 2025. See OPUS: Dark Money. A Secret Cult And Its Mission To Remake Our World by Gareth Gore. Apparently these individuals have been actively infiltrating the highest positions in D.C. since the 1950s. The head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, is a member.
Thank Tom, I didn't bother watching any of it, it was exactly what I expected it to be from the reports I've read.
At this moment I am more obsessed with reports of ballot boxes, postal pick boxes being set on fire in CA, OR, and WA, Also at least two post offices in California were burglarized with return ballots and other mail stolen. Where the hell is the Federal and State government?
I know. I want to know why there aren't cameras and alarms on them all. I want to know that the election locations in blue areas are thoroughly protected from the last hour of voting on through until the last vote has been counted at the very least, with metal detectors at the doors, fire suppressants and sprinkler systems... or all shipped to central secure areas to be witnessed and counted. We've been calling it, so I'm with you - is being casual and blind in regard to risk part of the job requirement?
Watching the rats try to crawl off the GOP ship is delicious, in a skin-crawly kind of way. But Cheato's coy reference to "the secret" he and Mike Johnson are cooking up is pretty damn scary.
But this is what confuses me: even if enough of them lose their seats, won't they still be in office until January -- giving them time to f with the election?
Obviously, Civics needs to make a comeback in American schools! When I had my interview to take my Citizenship, the interviewer was taken aback by how much I knew about American history and general civics stuff. I asked him, with all due respect, if he was asking everyone else the same questions he had asked me and he said no, but how did I know all this stuff? From reading and from what little American history we were taught in school in Australia, but mostly from reading. BTW, I got my citizenship and wear it proudly!
Cautiously optimistic is the best we can feel, Jan. Some of my worse fears are happening. Two post offices in California were burglarized and ballots and mail stolen. On postal pick up box was set on fire. Then while I was reading This post one of those flashing news releases from the hill popped up with news of ballot boxes being set on fire in Oregon and Washington. The State Governments and Washington DC have had plenty of warnings from trump and his cult, Why aren't they prepared? This could have been prevented;
One box actually had fire suppressant that would deploy inside it. Clearly that is something they all should have. At least it sounds like they have handled it well; identifying ballots' origins and permitting replacements etc., but what about when this happens immediately before the election when there isn't time for replacement, or at a polling place after all the ballots are in?
The new Congress will be seated and convened three days before the electoral votes are certified by Congress, so it will be the new House that starts the process. If the Repubs lose the House (which I expect), the "big secret" goes off the rails, and the US marshals can start picking up the usual suspects.....
After reading this vivid description of the rally several times — I have streams of thought, like rivers after a storm, rushing and tumbling over each other...
The Grand Old Party, not so grand anymore, more like a faded photograph of itself. Sepia-toned memories of what it once stood for, now blurred beyond recognition. I sit here, fingers hovering over keys, trying to make sense of the senseless.
History rhymes, they say. But this? This is a cacophony, a discordant echo of darker times. Madison Square Garden, 1939 to 2024, a time traveler's nightmare come to life. The ghosts of Fritz Kuhn must be laughing, or weeping, or both.
MAGA hats where brown shirts once stood. The irony so thick you could spread it on toast. Self-awareness? A luxury they can't afford, or perhaps a burden too heavy to bear.
I think of my uncles, who fought fascists in Europe, and wonder what they'd make of this dystopia. Would they recognize the enemy they once faced, now wearing red caps instead of armbands? The enemy within, they used to warn us about. But who could have predicted this particular flavor of home-grown madness?
Dr. Phil, Giuliani, Miller - a rogues' gallery of the morally bankrupt. Each one a funhouse mirror reflection of American values, distorted beyond recognition. And yet, people cheer. People believe. Why? Is it fear? Ignorance? Or something darker, something we don't want to name for fear it might answer?
Trump, the ringmaster of this oppressive circus, late as always. Like he's trying to be fashionably late to his own political funeral. His words, once shocking to me, now just... tired. A broken record of grievances and fever dreams.
And the GOP? Bending, bowing, breaking under the weight of their own hypocrisy. They created this monster, fed it, nurtured it, and now act surprised when it turns on them. Lady Frankenstein, meet your creation.
I want to laugh, but the laughter catches in my throat. Because this isn't just a bad joke or a cautionary tale. It's real. It's here. It's now.
The future of the Republican Party? It's like watching a star collapse in on itself, forming a black hole that threatens to swallow everything around it. Light, truth, decency - all being pulled into its gravitational field.
And yet... and yet. There's a glimmer of hope in the absurdity. In the sheer, over-the-top ridiculousness of it all. Because sometimes, when things get this cartoonishly evil, people wake up. They see. They understand.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the fever breaking. The darkness before the dawn. The last, desperate gasp of a dying ideology.
Or maybe today —this one day— I'm just an optimist in pessimist's clothing, searching for silver linings in storm clouds.
Either way, history is watching. And it has a long memory.
These people are such perfect, grotesque comic book villains right out of Central Casting. All of them! Comic-Con should change their name. It’s taken.
Enjoyed your comment! I don’t usually read comments from those who have a substack ‘column’ to sell! Will sample a few of your missesmand possibly subscribe!
And yes, Tom, any of us would think that - but then remember all of the previous little incidents where his words & actions came back to, well not bite him, maybe pinch him a little, and the train of (pardon me, here) brown nosers continued to follow him closely still AND vote for him STILL.
So, maybe a few "undecided" voters might finally have an epiphany & see the light.
I bet it wont change any of the numnuts that stayed thru the whole blasphemy tour in MSG, or others who just refuse to accept that possibly they made an error in believing in him.
But then, those of us who have seen him for exactly what kind of a sleazy, lying, "reality" thing he is -
hope there are enough of us to correct his waddling towards the WH.
Some GOP tried to claim distance from the "comic" but his script was supposedly turned in and approved and either way it was on a prompter according to something or other I read. Sorry but at some point I stop being able to remember where things have piled on from!
You give me hope with such clarity and the appropriate verbiage. I was still young, working at Air Force base when it dawned on me that darn and shucks just didn’t express my inner beast. I hope I still have a vocabulary that can express more than that, but sometimes the beast has to roar.
So true, but every word hits home, no gratuitous blather. My substacks sustain me. Heather Cox Richardson has the wise voice of a scholar who can educate, TC has the simmering anger of one who has seen too much and suffers fools not at all, Greg Olear has the same disdain and a poets way of nailing the bastards, Robert Hubbel has the universal view (literally) of justice and common sense at the same time, and Dan Rather is just one who channels Walter Cronkite for me. Of course, he is his own man and a spot-on chronicler of our miasma, but he a reminder of a time when I could trust our media, a time before Rupert Murdoch. Words often fail me these days, but I am grateful to those who educate, inform and spur me to act.
Amen to all of this! We absolutely MUST defeat this bucketful of scum - not just the Presidency, but the House and the Senate as well, to ensure we have a government that governs for US! We don't need the MAGAts spouting their bullshit from the floor of either chamber, thank you. Let's send them to wander in the wasteland of their own making for the next 40 years or so, so we can get stuff done for the GOOD of the country. We don't need echos of Fritz Kuhn and his merry band of losers! Onward to November 6th, when we wake up to find that this act of "political hara-kiri" was successful - and in a BIG way!
You forgot to mention the "secret" that he openly talked about with Mike Keebler Johson - one that is surely just a repeat of their 2020 plot to challenge the electoral college in the hopes that it can be turned over to the House of Representatives - aka the coup v2.
(the NSA and FBI better have those plans in their surveillance records already, so that the DOJ can add still more coup charges to DonOld's docket)
The "secret" will only be possible if the Republicans keep control of the House.
It is very likely (and even more so after last weekend's WTF moment) that the Democrats will retake the House. A number of frantic Republican reps are backpedaling faster than Wile E. Coyote to get away from the stench of that MSG rally, many of them from districts that Joe Biden won in 2020. The Senate is much iffier, but I'm not giving up yet - there are too many factors in this election that did not figure into previous contests to concede.
Absolutely. What the MAGAts forget is that the NEW Congress - with a new Speaker- will be seated at the beginning of January, before the electoral count takes place some days later. If Johnson gets his pipsqueak ass booted back to the backbenchers, he won't get any say in this at all!
Tony Michaels of The Tony Michaels Podcast said he thinks it’s blackmail. Like Trump has something on Moses Mike and wanted the Keebler White Christian Nationalist to know he has something on him.
I guess we’ll know “when the race is over.” 🙄
I tend to wonder if it is nothing at all - just an attempt to bolster courage and expectations in those he will want to call to violent action at some (in)appropriate moment: Pretending to have a secret weapon like pretending you'll have back up "right behind you".
I think it's just a matter of Mikey being willing to do whatever is asked of him.
Mikey is a eunuch!
More donations coming up. Lordy.
Further to this it may be worth investigating the news over on Robert Reich’s October 29 substack article that Elon Musk has recently registered a new corporation in Texas entitled United States of America Inc.. It would seem authoritarian oligarchs like Musk are piggy backing the fifty years in the making Heritage Foundation’s Grand Plan to turn the US into a Christo nationalist dictatorship, to become permanent CEO’s of a Corporate owned US.
I know, that was weird too, wasn't it?
Yep. Just read a review of a new book revealing another piece of this ugly MAGA jigsaw, the Opus Dei funding of Project 2025. See OPUS: Dark Money. A Secret Cult And Its Mission To Remake Our World by Gareth Gore. Apparently these individuals have been actively infiltrating the highest positions in D.C. since the 1950s. The head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, is a member.
I do need to read a good book on Opus Dei. It's a gap in my gappy knowledge base.
This time Trump should be prosecuted immediately as he is no longer any kind of special case except perhaps to the corruption Court.
Thank Tom, I didn't bother watching any of it, it was exactly what I expected it to be from the reports I've read.
At this moment I am more obsessed with reports of ballot boxes, postal pick boxes being set on fire in CA, OR, and WA, Also at least two post offices in California were burglarized with return ballots and other mail stolen. Where the hell is the Federal and State government?
I know. I want to know why there aren't cameras and alarms on them all. I want to know that the election locations in blue areas are thoroughly protected from the last hour of voting on through until the last vote has been counted at the very least, with metal detectors at the doors, fire suppressants and sprinkler systems... or all shipped to central secure areas to be witnessed and counted. We've been calling it, so I'm with you - is being casual and blind in regard to risk part of the job requirement?
Watching the rats try to crawl off the GOP ship is delicious, in a skin-crawly kind of way. But Cheato's coy reference to "the secret" he and Mike Johnson are cooking up is pretty damn scary.
It will only be possible if they keep their majority in the House.
But this is what confuses me: even if enough of them lose their seats, won't they still be in office until January -- giving them time to f with the election?
Obviously, Civics needs to make a comeback in American schools! When I had my interview to take my Citizenship, the interviewer was taken aback by how much I knew about American history and general civics stuff. I asked him, with all due respect, if he was asking everyone else the same questions he had asked me and he said no, but how did I know all this stuff? From reading and from what little American history we were taught in school in Australia, but mostly from reading. BTW, I got my citizenship and wear it proudly!
You are SO right, Richard, and if more of our citizens were as cognizant as you about our laws and our constitution, we wouldn't be in this mess.
This time, Kamala is the Vice President, not Mike Pence (or JD Vance).
January 3, 2025 is when the new legislators are sworn in.
And January 6 is when the election is confirmed by Congress.
Correct, so my point is IF we're lucky we'll have a new REAL Congress ready to work for all Americans.
Aha! I feel (cautiously) better knowing that.
Cautiously optimistic is the best we can feel, Jan. Some of my worse fears are happening. Two post offices in California were burglarized and ballots and mail stolen. On postal pick up box was set on fire. Then while I was reading This post one of those flashing news releases from the hill popped up with news of ballot boxes being set on fire in Oregon and Washington. The State Governments and Washington DC have had plenty of warnings from trump and his cult, Why aren't they prepared? This could have been prevented;
Unf**kingbelievable. We all know that they are armed and dangerous
OMG -- that's terrifying! What will happen to those destroyed ballots???
One box actually had fire suppressant that would deploy inside it. Clearly that is something they all should have. At least it sounds like they have handled it well; identifying ballots' origins and permitting replacements etc., but what about when this happens immediately before the election when there isn't time for replacement, or at a polling place after all the ballots are in?
The new Congress will be seated and convened three days before the electoral votes are certified by Congress, so it will be the new House that starts the process. If the Repubs lose the House (which I expect), the "big secret" goes off the rails, and the US marshals can start picking up the usual suspects.....
I'm doing all I can with post carding, phone banking, writing, etc., to help the big non-secret go up in smoke! Thanks for the intel :-)
And not a secret.
I HOPE you're right. The old saying that Democrats fall in love and republicans fall in line haunts me.
And I still believe that Harris is not only going to win, but win big.
Fortunately some of the Republicans are falling in line -- behind the Democratic ticket. <g>
After reading this vivid description of the rally several times — I have streams of thought, like rivers after a storm, rushing and tumbling over each other...
The Grand Old Party, not so grand anymore, more like a faded photograph of itself. Sepia-toned memories of what it once stood for, now blurred beyond recognition. I sit here, fingers hovering over keys, trying to make sense of the senseless.
History rhymes, they say. But this? This is a cacophony, a discordant echo of darker times. Madison Square Garden, 1939 to 2024, a time traveler's nightmare come to life. The ghosts of Fritz Kuhn must be laughing, or weeping, or both.
MAGA hats where brown shirts once stood. The irony so thick you could spread it on toast. Self-awareness? A luxury they can't afford, or perhaps a burden too heavy to bear.
I think of my uncles, who fought fascists in Europe, and wonder what they'd make of this dystopia. Would they recognize the enemy they once faced, now wearing red caps instead of armbands? The enemy within, they used to warn us about. But who could have predicted this particular flavor of home-grown madness?
Dr. Phil, Giuliani, Miller - a rogues' gallery of the morally bankrupt. Each one a funhouse mirror reflection of American values, distorted beyond recognition. And yet, people cheer. People believe. Why? Is it fear? Ignorance? Or something darker, something we don't want to name for fear it might answer?
Trump, the ringmaster of this oppressive circus, late as always. Like he's trying to be fashionably late to his own political funeral. His words, once shocking to me, now just... tired. A broken record of grievances and fever dreams.
And the GOP? Bending, bowing, breaking under the weight of their own hypocrisy. They created this monster, fed it, nurtured it, and now act surprised when it turns on them. Lady Frankenstein, meet your creation.
I want to laugh, but the laughter catches in my throat. Because this isn't just a bad joke or a cautionary tale. It's real. It's here. It's now.
The future of the Republican Party? It's like watching a star collapse in on itself, forming a black hole that threatens to swallow everything around it. Light, truth, decency - all being pulled into its gravitational field.
And yet... and yet. There's a glimmer of hope in the absurdity. In the sheer, over-the-top ridiculousness of it all. Because sometimes, when things get this cartoonishly evil, people wake up. They see. They understand.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the fever breaking. The darkness before the dawn. The last, desperate gasp of a dying ideology.
Or maybe today —this one day— I'm just an optimist in pessimist's clothing, searching for silver linings in storm clouds.
Either way, history is watching. And it has a long memory.
These people are such perfect, grotesque comic book villains right out of Central Casting. All of them! Comic-Con should change their name. It’s taken.
Enjoyed your comment! I don’t usually read comments from those who have a substack ‘column’ to sell! Will sample a few of your missesmand possibly subscribe!
Hey, I had one to sell. :-)
Hard to go wrong with Gloria's Substack.
I’m not selling anything. LOL.
Well done, thank you
Today on The View, I laughed after Sara Haines quipped that Trump has "October-surprised himself."
Pop, pop, fizz fizz. Oh what a relief this is.
Another Barnburner, TC. You never fail to deliver
Even if we cream ‘em, we need to remember they are still out there! We forgot that, and look what slipped its nasty trunk under the circus tent.
This is the point in Pinocchio where the bad boys start turning into jackasses and can't do anything about it.
I love that❤️❤️❤️❤️👍
“Elmo” Musk? Please, Tom, you’ll scare the children.
I love Elmo Musk. A keeper that will live on
Elmo Muck
And yes, Tom, any of us would think that - but then remember all of the previous little incidents where his words & actions came back to, well not bite him, maybe pinch him a little, and the train of (pardon me, here) brown nosers continued to follow him closely still AND vote for him STILL.
So, maybe a few "undecided" voters might finally have an epiphany & see the light.
I bet it wont change any of the numnuts that stayed thru the whole blasphemy tour in MSG, or others who just refuse to accept that possibly they made an error in believing in him.
But then, those of us who have seen him for exactly what kind of a sleazy, lying, "reality" thing he is -
hope there are enough of us to correct his waddling towards the WH.
It is easier to fool somebody than to convince them they have been fooled. Mark Twain, or me.
Whoever said it - it is the truth!
Twain nailed so many things, I’ll give to him, but I didn’t remember.
He sure did - and way too many apply today to our politics - and other issues.
I quote him often, he knew idiots and could skewer them with panache
Good summation TCINLA. That saved me the need to watch that awful spectacle last night.
And that supposed 'comic' was set to call Harris the C-word.
Charming.
Some GOP tried to claim distance from the "comic" but his script was supposedly turned in and approved and either way it was on a prompter according to something or other I read. Sorry but at some point I stop being able to remember where things have piled on from!
You give me hope with such clarity and the appropriate verbiage. I was still young, working at Air Force base when it dawned on me that darn and shucks just didn’t express my inner beast. I hope I still have a vocabulary that can express more than that, but sometimes the beast has to roar.
JD, TC has taught me a whole new vocabulary! One of the many benefits of his Substack, especially this election, when normal words fail me!
So true, but every word hits home, no gratuitous blather. My substacks sustain me. Heather Cox Richardson has the wise voice of a scholar who can educate, TC has the simmering anger of one who has seen too much and suffers fools not at all, Greg Olear has the same disdain and a poets way of nailing the bastards, Robert Hubbel has the universal view (literally) of justice and common sense at the same time, and Dan Rather is just one who channels Walter Cronkite for me. Of course, he is his own man and a spot-on chronicler of our miasma, but he a reminder of a time when I could trust our media, a time before Rupert Murdoch. Words often fail me these days, but I am grateful to those who educate, inform and spur me to act.
I like being included in that company.
Top of the list
Flattery will get you *everywhere* Jeri. :-)
The truth is brutal, ha
Wonderfully written! So true!
So glad for astute and knowledgeable company on substacks. Thank you
You guys are definitely an "astute and knowledgeable company."
Glad i’m not restricted to Texas company or the likes of Fox. Saves what sanity I have left
Amen to all of this! We absolutely MUST defeat this bucketful of scum - not just the Presidency, but the House and the Senate as well, to ensure we have a government that governs for US! We don't need the MAGAts spouting their bullshit from the floor of either chamber, thank you. Let's send them to wander in the wasteland of their own making for the next 40 years or so, so we can get stuff done for the GOOD of the country. We don't need echos of Fritz Kuhn and his merry band of losers! Onward to November 6th, when we wake up to find that this act of "political hara-kiri" was successful - and in a BIG way!