Exactly. Once I turned on for the early reports, I turned the TV off again and have kept it off except for a couple of 5 minute views to see if there was anything new. Seldom was so Click, off again. Actually, it's quite peaceful here to not hear the TV in the background as I do other things. Like read Substack posts like yours.
when I'm tempted (maybe twice a day, for a few minutes), I can manage about five minutes.
an old friend is particularly amused by this constant drone about "political violence having no place in American politics." I will agree wholeheartedly that violence should have no place in politics (isn't that what politics is for?...uh-oh, NOW who sounds naive?), but to say it's had no place in American politics is to read another country's history. and to hear these Repug politicains getting all preachy and self-righteous, clutching their beads and proclaiming "this not who we are?"
I’m with Biden, the best president since FDR. Democrats and political analysts need to stop shitting on him and go all out on democracy vs fascism, because that’s the stakes. No one is going to not shit on any other Democratic candidate so it needs to stop. Biden is doing a phenomenal job campaigning and running the administration.
The United States badly needs a trifecta in the presidency and both the Senate and the House in order to begin to repair the damage wrought by Republicans over the last 50 years.
Obviously people are having all sorts of feelings, but we can’t just surrender to fascism, we need to go all out, especially to the swing states, including Pennsylvania.
That link is helpful. I shared David Roberts' thread on Xitter. It pretty much says what I feel I've been seeing. As to Xitter, there's still a freshet of clean flow on there and in fact Mr. Roberts was on there and I was able to follow him as well so that will be interesting.
So sick of Dems punching themselves in the face. Do they not even have an iota of chump’s instinct to survive, no matter what. Admire that about him while being disgusted about every thing else. He and Repubs are great at using dirty tricks and other machinations to survive and rule.
I find it incomprehensible that those talking about replacing Biden don't see that the only effect they're having is to undercut Biden. There's no practical way to bring in another candidate. I think very highly of VP Harris but fear that fear of Project 2025 might not be sufficient to counter the sexist resistance to a woman president could affect the outcome of a very tight race.
Of course, I also like to think that the "very tight race" may be as evanescent as the "red wave" in 2022.
I agree although I know that, in Texas, the immigration bullschittery is the driver for the MAGAts. I can’t contemplate another four years as bad as, or worse than, the last chump go around.
And yet, they refused to do what they could about it when given the opportunity. I've asked Republicans about why they don't blame their own reps for turning down the $ for the border for judges and border officers etc and they say "Oh, there's enough money already, it's the rules about who can come in that are the problem". When I point out the border patrols themselves say there aren't enough to cover the miles of terrain, they're simply not open to hearing anything other than what their dear leaders tell them on FOX and elsewhere.
That should have been a clue yo even the most brain-washed. But alas, they have mush for brains at this point. I can’t look at the morons who were at that rally bloviating about “President Trump.” Also I think it was Savannah Guthrie who called him the same. Most say former, but too many rewrite history at every opportunity. As to immigration, our most infamous immigrant Rupert has been driving the narrative on, well, everything for 44 years and we are reaping the result of his “fair and balanced bullschitt.” Which is the song of division and privilege.
Thank you for these wise words Tom. Innocent bystanders were shot and one killed. This is the tragedy. Republicans will try to make this about Democrats “demonizing Trump.” They are already blaming us for making attacks against Trump’s candidacy too personal. It’s important we don’t allow such nonsense to silence us. Focus on the issues and keep up the fight.
I was also feeling bad about the "innocent bystanders," but felt considerably less bad when I realized where they were. admittedly, this is terrible. and when I heard people opining about "the children there being scarred for life," I felt that too, until I also realized that it was a rally for TFF, whose demented obscenities about shit like water pressure and boat batteries are definitely NOT for children.
you're right of course, Tom.
I stopped watching very quickly when the grandnephew told me it was rotting my brain to keep watching the same video. then the phone calls--from disappointed friends--came in.
I still maintain that something feels decidedly tref about this whole thing. TFF's "I didn't EVEN know" and his reaction, which was highly uncharacteristic, still bug me. if I turn out to be entirely wrong, I refer once again to an environment in which everyone seems to be have been trafficking in conspiracy theories for decades (and it's accelerated wildly in this era of TFF seizing or creating any weird shit he might have heard or made up himself). so if I'm wrong, I'll happily admit it, but I just don't (or can't) feel THAT wrong quite YET.
sorry. this whole campaign has made me something of an emotional (and, possibly, intellectual) basket case.
I just heard Nine News asking some Dem congressman if he could see how saying "we must not forget Jan 6, and we must not forget that Trump is a threat to our democracy" could be seen as leading to violence against Trump?
It is going to take a delicate balancing act, and it is going to take getting a lot less squeamish about embracing imperfections to meet this rule and logic free hoard head on. I'm also hoping there are some really great satirists out there because if there ever was a group ripe for satire, these are the ones.
I plan to highlight the automatic weapons issue. Trump was in a position to press for sane regulations but cavalierly believed he would never be on the receiving end of ammo that's now sold in vending machines so he gave us SC justices who clearly don't understand guns. I have no sympathy for him because he and his party aid and abet all the gun-toting malcontents that end up on the front pages. Better people than Trump, including children, have been killed while Trump smugly shrugs his indifference.
Judith, if you -- or anyone else out there -- could use another source of excellent gun safety info, with a focus on automatics and semiautomatics and why they're different from hunting rifles, check out the Falmouth (MA) Gun Safety Coalition's website: https://falmouthgunsafetycoalition.org/. I live in their region and have been able to see their presentation twice, once live and once virtual.
Susanna S, City by city, town by town if state by state’s not working to pass gun safety laws. It’s inch by inch and step by step as you pay for-write-send post cards perhaps thinking as I often ‘is this enough?’ That arm sticking out into The Atlantic Ocean is successfully working hard to switch the fashion of military rifles and guns.
I’d hoped up to now that nobody ever tried to assassinate Trump because of what it would do to engage MAGA-ites in second stage blower and water injection for conspiracy theories. I saw the stereotypical slack jawed redhats in yesterday’s videos screaming at reporters and cameramen, and that merely reinforced the political violence Trump and his scumbag daddy have incited over the years. He’s going to use this, the fist-thumping photos and decent folks’ better nature against us now, and we have to work even harder to remind folks just what he wants to do when he gets back in office - run a criminal enterprise with the goal of never being prosecuted and sued for every damned crime and civil misstep he’s ever committed.
Well, repeatedly emphasizing what Project 2025 and the Dobbs decision (forcing women into second class citizenship with no voice in their own healthcare decisions) will do to the United States and repeatedly pinning it to Trump and his gang of thugs and minions isn't violence inciting--so the more we do that the better off we shall be.
Do you read Jay Kuo's Substack? He already received in his email box this morning, a "Trump Trading Card, Collector's Edition", featuring that very scene. I almost gagged.
that fist pumping with those tiny hands was really something. it reminded me of that New Yorker cover with the tiny hands and the cuffs. it was within the last two months or so. check it out.
Alex Jones and some other guy whose name I forget were talking about how it would be awful but also the "best thing ever" for their cause if 45 got shot and killed because that would ignite such a reaction among their people that "then we would have a cleansing such as you've never seen". Seth Abramson brought the video up on his Xitter account to make a point. None of these are sane people.
Well, T.C., let it not be said that there are no better angels among us, since yours was obviously sitting on your shoulder when you penned that. I know parts of it weren't easy to say; I'm not sure I could have said a couple of the things you said as straightforwardly and actually meant them, my personal feelings about Donald Trump being what they are. So, you've got my respect for that, for what it's worth.
Thanks Tom for your reflection on yesterday's awful events. I too have been alive as the other murders or attempted murders have been done by assassins living in our midst. For me the deeper reality is gun violence day after day after day...and the politics that says with few exceptions that more guns in more hands means more safety. A lie worthy of Orwell lives on the tongues of all the candidates near and far taking the campaign contributions and gifts from the manufacturers, sellers, and various industry pacs. Keep writing postcards. I do that as well. It is one way to defend democracy. Support David Hogg and all the young people working their buns off urging and pushing for sanity where firearms are concerned. We cannot know the future. But the very future we yearn for begins with our own commitment to doing the work required to build it, knowing it may not be for us now living but for those who will follow.
Is there any chance this was a planned event? I know I sound crazy, but “ get my shoes” was what DJT said afterwards. And the fist raise? He cowered at a backfire once. And the Secret Service didn’t secure the tower? It’s such a coincidence.
Good questions, Grace. But whether planned or not, let's hope the sympathy vote won't be enough to get CFDT back into the White House. At least the shooter was a registered Republican, though he also contributed to a Democratic cause. I hope that fact will at least partially suffice to muffle the MAGAts' accusatory rhetoric.
There won't be a sympathy vote, because those who might are already supporters, and those who don't support him also don't have any sympathy for him. The rhetoric will be overheated regardless because the MAGA and media goal is to convince us that the election is over now and there's no reason to vote in November.
Can’t help but wonder. They are guilty of so much. Maybe a Roger Stone plan that got a little out of hand. Yep, check on Roger, he’s always slinging Schitt…
The moment I saw his fist go into the air, I thought "Brilliant." Then, "Dammit. This is bad." We have plenty of time, folks. We just meed to work a little harder.
And was it your birthday, TC? If so, I send you Birthday Greetings. :-) Tune out the noise, do what we can do, writing postcards is a great way to clear our minds.
A book was recently published about the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and the short version is that there have been all sorts of institutional fuck-ups that have compromised security. The fact that they completely missed the vantage point from where the shooter fired from actually fits with too much of their history. From some things, they learned, but not all.
USSS protocol is for the presidential detail to continue as a unit when there is a transfer of power. I seem to recall that Joe Biden refused this detail and they built a new one around the agents that once protected him when he was Vice President. Recall that this was around the time that USSS texts were "accidentally" deleted from January 6. While I think that the majority of agents take their jobs very seriously regardless of who they are protecting, enough have been compromised over the years to create concern.
As for Trump, he can wave his bloody shirt all he wants, but we already know he has less appeal to undecideds and independent voters. He may get a bump from this, but it shouldn't last. The election is still months away. Remember his sentencing in his trial is September. He will have plenty of bad news for him between now and then.
Me too. There have been way too many things with few to no consequences. I for one would have cleaned that place right up from the top down and ground up. I'd rather work with a skeleton crew than a compromised one. It wasn't just the texts; Joe didn't want the ones they assigned him, Pence didn't want to get in the car, warnings about weapons and maps related to Jan 6th got suppressed... that is one department with ground in dirt.
I wish you weren’t right but I know you are. And it’s not the only department. They have been putting their devoted cretins in critical places for a long time.
Whatever else you do today, DO NOT turn on cable news. Wall-to-wall blather.
Exactly. Once I turned on for the early reports, I turned the TV off again and have kept it off except for a couple of 5 minute views to see if there was anything new. Seldom was so Click, off again. Actually, it's quite peaceful here to not hear the TV in the background as I do other things. Like read Substack posts like yours.
when I'm tempted (maybe twice a day, for a few minutes), I can manage about five minutes.
an old friend is particularly amused by this constant drone about "political violence having no place in American politics." I will agree wholeheartedly that violence should have no place in politics (isn't that what politics is for?...uh-oh, NOW who sounds naive?), but to say it's had no place in American politics is to read another country's history. and to hear these Repug politicains getting all preachy and self-righteous, clutching their beads and proclaiming "this not who we are?"
oh REALLY?
This really snapped what’s been going on around Biden into focus for me: https://www.threads.net/@goldengateblond/post/C9D_mQHPHlE/?xmt=AQGznFEIQhZ6j53fjWIQHWz4rMN7q22Xe-EBPMgPfePUcQ
I’m with Biden, the best president since FDR. Democrats and political analysts need to stop shitting on him and go all out on democracy vs fascism, because that’s the stakes. No one is going to not shit on any other Democratic candidate so it needs to stop. Biden is doing a phenomenal job campaigning and running the administration.
The United States badly needs a trifecta in the presidency and both the Senate and the House in order to begin to repair the damage wrought by Republicans over the last 50 years.
Obviously people are having all sorts of feelings, but we can’t just surrender to fascism, we need to go all out, especially to the swing states, including Pennsylvania.
That's totally brilliant. I just managed to share it to Facebook using the Thread Reader App: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1809311013839466846.html
That link is helpful. I shared David Roberts' thread on Xitter. It pretty much says what I feel I've been seeing. As to Xitter, there's still a freshet of clean flow on there and in fact Mr. Roberts was on there and I was able to follow him as well so that will be interesting.
Thank you for the link to David Roberts. He’s right regarding the dump Biden brigade.
So sick of Dems punching themselves in the face. Do they not even have an iota of chump’s instinct to survive, no matter what. Admire that about him while being disgusted about every thing else. He and Repubs are great at using dirty tricks and other machinations to survive and rule.
I find it incomprehensible that those talking about replacing Biden don't see that the only effect they're having is to undercut Biden. There's no practical way to bring in another candidate. I think very highly of VP Harris but fear that fear of Project 2025 might not be sufficient to counter the sexist resistance to a woman president could affect the outcome of a very tight race.
Of course, I also like to think that the "very tight race" may be as evanescent as the "red wave" in 2022.
I agree although I know that, in Texas, the immigration bullschittery is the driver for the MAGAts. I can’t contemplate another four years as bad as, or worse than, the last chump go around.
And yet, they refused to do what they could about it when given the opportunity. I've asked Republicans about why they don't blame their own reps for turning down the $ for the border for judges and border officers etc and they say "Oh, there's enough money already, it's the rules about who can come in that are the problem". When I point out the border patrols themselves say there aren't enough to cover the miles of terrain, they're simply not open to hearing anything other than what their dear leaders tell them on FOX and elsewhere.
That should have been a clue yo even the most brain-washed. But alas, they have mush for brains at this point. I can’t look at the morons who were at that rally bloviating about “President Trump.” Also I think it was Savannah Guthrie who called him the same. Most say former, but too many rewrite history at every opportunity. As to immigration, our most infamous immigrant Rupert has been driving the narrative on, well, everything for 44 years and we are reaping the result of his “fair and balanced bullschitt.” Which is the song of division and privilege.
Thank you for these wise words Tom. Innocent bystanders were shot and one killed. This is the tragedy. Republicans will try to make this about Democrats “demonizing Trump.” They are already blaming us for making attacks against Trump’s candidacy too personal. It’s important we don’t allow such nonsense to silence us. Focus on the issues and keep up the fight.
I was also feeling bad about the "innocent bystanders," but felt considerably less bad when I realized where they were. admittedly, this is terrible. and when I heard people opining about "the children there being scarred for life," I felt that too, until I also realized that it was a rally for TFF, whose demented obscenities about shit like water pressure and boat batteries are definitely NOT for children.
you're right of course, Tom.
I stopped watching very quickly when the grandnephew told me it was rotting my brain to keep watching the same video. then the phone calls--from disappointed friends--came in.
I still maintain that something feels decidedly tref about this whole thing. TFF's "I didn't EVEN know" and his reaction, which was highly uncharacteristic, still bug me. if I turn out to be entirely wrong, I refer once again to an environment in which everyone seems to be have been trafficking in conspiracy theories for decades (and it's accelerated wildly in this era of TFF seizing or creating any weird shit he might have heard or made up himself). so if I'm wrong, I'll happily admit it, but I just don't (or can't) feel THAT wrong quite YET.
sorry. this whole campaign has made me something of an emotional (and, possibly, intellectual) basket case.
Join the club.
Been that way for decades
I just heard Nine News asking some Dem congressman if he could see how saying "we must not forget Jan 6, and we must not forget that Trump is a threat to our democracy" could be seen as leading to violence against Trump?
It is going to take a delicate balancing act, and it is going to take getting a lot less squeamish about embracing imperfections to meet this rule and logic free hoard head on. I'm also hoping there are some really great satirists out there because if there ever was a group ripe for satire, these are the ones.
I plan to highlight the automatic weapons issue. Trump was in a position to press for sane regulations but cavalierly believed he would never be on the receiving end of ammo that's now sold in vending machines so he gave us SC justices who clearly don't understand guns. I have no sympathy for him because he and his party aid and abet all the gun-toting malcontents that end up on the front pages. Better people than Trump, including children, have been killed while Trump smugly shrugs his indifference.
Better people than Trump is most people:)
The guilty accuse the opposition. Straight out of Mien Kampf
Judith, if you -- or anyone else out there -- could use another source of excellent gun safety info, with a focus on automatics and semiautomatics and why they're different from hunting rifles, check out the Falmouth (MA) Gun Safety Coalition's website: https://falmouthgunsafetycoalition.org/. I live in their region and have been able to see their presentation twice, once live and once virtual.
Susanna S, City by city, town by town if state by state’s not working to pass gun safety laws. It’s inch by inch and step by step as you pay for-write-send post cards perhaps thinking as I often ‘is this enough?’ That arm sticking out into The Atlantic Ocean is successfully working hard to switch the fashion of military rifles and guns.
Yep!
Thanks, Tom. The next 100+ days are going to be something to behold. everyone needs to hang onto their sanity and help get out the vote.
Exactly right.
I think my need to remain sane might outweigh my need to be informed.
"I’m going to write 14 postcards to send to voters in Arizona this fall"
I'm writing postcards today, too.
me too
I’d hoped up to now that nobody ever tried to assassinate Trump because of what it would do to engage MAGA-ites in second stage blower and water injection for conspiracy theories. I saw the stereotypical slack jawed redhats in yesterday’s videos screaming at reporters and cameramen, and that merely reinforced the political violence Trump and his scumbag daddy have incited over the years. He’s going to use this, the fist-thumping photos and decent folks’ better nature against us now, and we have to work even harder to remind folks just what he wants to do when he gets back in office - run a criminal enterprise with the goal of never being prosecuted and sued for every damned crime and civil misstep he’s ever committed.
Well, repeatedly emphasizing what Project 2025 and the Dobbs decision (forcing women into second class citizenship with no voice in their own healthcare decisions) will do to the United States and repeatedly pinning it to Trump and his gang of thugs and minions isn't violence inciting--so the more we do that the better off we shall be.
That picture looks like Trump is proudly, single handedly, placing the flag claiming Iwo Jima. I fear it will be on all the new Republican postcards.
Bet your last dime on it.
Do you read Jay Kuo's Substack? He already received in his email box this morning, a "Trump Trading Card, Collector's Edition", featuring that very scene. I almost gagged.
Along with a chance to buy a bloodstained fragment of his suit, I’m afraid.
All made in China, and available with a signed picture for a few dollars more.
Seriously? Oh c'mon, no. You had me there... Seriously?
Again, I think pre-planned.
so I'm not alone!
It is the gift that will keep on giving. Hope somebody puts a Russian flag on it.
that fist pumping with those tiny hands was really something. it reminded me of that New Yorker cover with the tiny hands and the cuffs. it was within the last two months or so. check it out.
Alex Jones and some other guy whose name I forget were talking about how it would be awful but also the "best thing ever" for their cause if 45 got shot and killed because that would ignite such a reaction among their people that "then we would have a cleansing such as you've never seen". Seth Abramson brought the video up on his Xitter account to make a point. None of these are sane people.
Well, T.C., let it not be said that there are no better angels among us, since yours was obviously sitting on your shoulder when you penned that. I know parts of it weren't easy to say; I'm not sure I could have said a couple of the things you said as straightforwardly and actually meant them, my personal feelings about Donald Trump being what they are. So, you've got my respect for that, for what it's worth.
And don't think for a minute we don't still share those feelings, my friend.
Thanks Tom for your reflection on yesterday's awful events. I too have been alive as the other murders or attempted murders have been done by assassins living in our midst. For me the deeper reality is gun violence day after day after day...and the politics that says with few exceptions that more guns in more hands means more safety. A lie worthy of Orwell lives on the tongues of all the candidates near and far taking the campaign contributions and gifts from the manufacturers, sellers, and various industry pacs. Keep writing postcards. I do that as well. It is one way to defend democracy. Support David Hogg and all the young people working their buns off urging and pushing for sanity where firearms are concerned. We cannot know the future. But the very future we yearn for begins with our own commitment to doing the work required to build it, knowing it may not be for us now living but for those who will follow.
A lie worthy of Orwell. Yep, he knew us well…
Hear, hear!!! Enduring words!
Thanks!
Is there any chance this was a planned event? I know I sound crazy, but “ get my shoes” was what DJT said afterwards. And the fist raise? He cowered at a backfire once. And the Secret Service didn’t secure the tower? It’s such a coincidence.
Good questions, Grace. But whether planned or not, let's hope the sympathy vote won't be enough to get CFDT back into the White House. At least the shooter was a registered Republican, though he also contributed to a Democratic cause. I hope that fact will at least partially suffice to muffle the MAGAts' accusatory rhetoric.
There won't be a sympathy vote, because those who might are already supporters, and those who don't support him also don't have any sympathy for him. The rhetoric will be overheated regardless because the MAGA and media goal is to convince us that the election is over now and there's no reason to vote in November.
Hah. The dastardly R's will NEVER convince me that my vote is unnecessary.
Nor me. If anything, it will have the opposite effect.
Agree. This will backfire too, like Dobbs, etc. And we know he’s scared of backfire:)
Well played Grace.
Right. Sorry you cut your ear? And why a GO FUND ME for the actual victims when Trump is a “billionaire? “
More media coverage.
Good Point.
It won't, but that's on them. And the damned media.
No it won’t. The accusations started while the blood was dripping.
Can’t help but wonder. They are guilty of so much. Maybe a Roger Stone plan that got a little out of hand. Yep, check on Roger, he’s always slinging Schitt…
The moment I saw his fist go into the air, I thought "Brilliant." Then, "Dammit. This is bad." We have plenty of time, folks. We just meed to work a little harder.
Thanks for being so circumspect in this difficult time. I’ll get working on postcards too.
And was it your birthday, TC? If so, I send you Birthday Greetings. :-) Tune out the noise, do what we can do, writing postcards is a great way to clear our minds.
Yes, yesterday was the 41st anniversary of my 39th birthday. :-)
Well, my goodness. Happy belated birthday! Yesterday's anniversary will certainly be one to be remembered for a looooong time!
A landmark birthday...I have one this year, too. Happy Birthday, Tom. Hope you had a pleasant day (at least, pleasant prior to the rally event).
Happy belated birthday, TC. Sorry it was marred by the events.
Happy Birthday! I was not sure if you meant 13 July or today the 14th.
13th
I had one of those…
What a great way to count those important dates! Sending best wishes for a better memory next year!
Thanks ,TC. Yes we are the ones who will have to do it.
Jay Kuo had an interesting and detailed account on today’s post.
https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/2024-isnt-nearly-done-with-us?r=fqsxl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
“ So, yes, we will stop Trump. But we will do it with ballots, not bullets.”
Now back to writing those Sunday postcards…✍️
That's an excellent column by Jay Kuo. I recommend it to everyone.
Excellent column by Kuo! Thanks for posting the link.
A book was recently published about the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and the short version is that there have been all sorts of institutional fuck-ups that have compromised security. The fact that they completely missed the vantage point from where the shooter fired from actually fits with too much of their history. From some things, they learned, but not all.
USSS protocol is for the presidential detail to continue as a unit when there is a transfer of power. I seem to recall that Joe Biden refused this detail and they built a new one around the agents that once protected him when he was Vice President. Recall that this was around the time that USSS texts were "accidentally" deleted from January 6. While I think that the majority of agents take their jobs very seriously regardless of who they are protecting, enough have been compromised over the years to create concern.
As for Trump, he can wave his bloody shirt all he wants, but we already know he has less appeal to undecideds and independent voters. He may get a bump from this, but it shouldn't last. The election is still months away. Remember his sentencing in his trial is September. He will have plenty of bad news for him between now and then.
Let the pundits bloviate. We have work to do.
Still pissed about the agents deleting their texts from Jan 6, deliberately and with no consequences.
Me too. There have been way too many things with few to no consequences. I for one would have cleaned that place right up from the top down and ground up. I'd rather work with a skeleton crew than a compromised one. It wasn't just the texts; Joe didn't want the ones they assigned him, Pence didn't want to get in the car, warnings about weapons and maps related to Jan 6th got suppressed... that is one department with ground in dirt.
I wish you weren’t right but I know you are. And it’s not the only department. They have been putting their devoted cretins in critical places for a long time.
Thank you Tom and no matter
the rest of the bushwa today,
Happy Birthday! 🎈💙