Dear Everybody:
It’s the first day of October, which means there’s only a month to go till the midterms. Here in Colorado, the mail-in ballots are supposed to start going out (alphabetically) tomorrow, and everybody’s encouraged to fill out their ballot and get it back in as soon as you get it. We plan to do just that, and hope you do, too. We always take our ballots down to the elections office and turn them in ourselves, but there are also lots of drop boxes here in town which we trust. Not sure we trust the post office after their collusion with Trump lately. Whatever method you use, get your ballot in EARLY and then check online to see if it’s been counted.
The big news today is how determined Trump and his Secretary of “War’” are to destroy the military: –Yesterday Hegseth gave a “State of the Force” speech to the troops at a military base, and said a lot of things that should terrify everybody. Here’s just a sampling of all the stuff he said:
–Hegseth: “The ideological clowns are out. The patriotic cowboys are in, with testosterone testing on top.”
–Hegseth: “We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that–no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors.”
–Hegseth: “Project Meridian will be co-led by three of our nation’s best minds: Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich.”
–Jenny DeMilo: “SNL cold open?”
–Hegseth: “Today at my direction I’m establishing the Office of Religious Affairs. it will report straight to the top–a direct line to the secretary–as Psalm 33-12 extols us, blessed is the nation in which God is the Lord.”
–hegseth: “Send me to fight the Redcoats, send me to fight the communists, send me to fight the Islamists. Send me.”
–Hegseth: “Today, at my direction, we are announcing the creation of Autonomous Warfare Command, or Autowarcom.”
–Thor Benson: “The flashback at the beginning of a dystopian film.”
–Hegseth: “Enter a new corps of cadets. To meet this critical need we are partnering with a new crop of premier higher ed institutions, including LSU, Liberty University, Tuskegee University, Mississippi State University, and Hillsdale College.”
–Hegseth: “We need students of western civilization and the pillars of our republic. Leaders who understand the faith of Jerusalem, the philosophy of anthems–Athens. The power of Rome and the freedom of Philadelphia circa 1776.”
–Hegseth: “We need bolts of lightning. High-end kill chains capable of striking unexpectedly and decisively.”
–Hegseth: “Americans want to serve when they are led by strong patriots, not by weak weirdos.”
–Hegseth: “A free press is of course important, but partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops and the historic mission that they are undertaking is fundamentally un-American. It’s sick. It’s a national betrayal. It’s treason.”
–Hegseth criticizes generals who “clung to the ‘woke department” and says, “They no longer work here.”
–Aaron Rupar: “This Pete Hegseth speech is indistinguishable from parody,words fail to describe the absurdity. Here he’s talking about governors coming to the Pentagon to grovel to him and Trump so they can be rewarded with a new military base.”
–In his quest for testosterone-fueled troops, Pete Hegseth is now screening the troops for symptoms such as “reduced libido, loss of spontaneous morning erections, erectile dysfunction, and other symptoms.” (Are any of these really any of the Secretary of Defense’s business? you might ask.)
–Hegseth announced that he plans to get rid of another 20% of the top general and admiral positions. He has already gotten rid of most of the people who would dare to refuse to obey his illegal orders, and now it sounds like he’s planning to get rid of the rest.
–The Pentagon says they’re considering withdrawing 25,000 troops from Europe (one-third of the troops we have stationed there.)
–Former GOP Congressman Joe Walsh: “He’s a Russian asset. Plain and simple. Putin is smiling again today.”
–Robert van der Noordaa: “Trump is helping Putin attack Europe.”
–Vicki M: “Sometimes it feels like a bunch of crack-cocaine raccoons took over the White House and Washington, DC.”
Hegseth wasn’t the only one giving a nutso speech yesterday. Trump gave one, too:
–Trump: “The Democrats are a hoax.”
–Trump: “It’s a terrible world. It’s amazing it loved on (sic) so long, actually.”
–Q: “You described the Iranians you’re dealing with as ‘crazy.’ How do you get a deal done with the counterparts are crazy and irrational?” Trump: “Maybe you blow them up. Maybe you blow them up. We have to make that decision. We blow them up. The time is coming.”
–Trump: “If I weren’t president, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t be here right now. They’d be wiped off the face of the planet.”
–Trump: “If I ran Venezuela…if I ran any country…”
–Trump: “The greatest ballroom ever built–it’s also a tremendous military complex with a drone port on top. Be careful. Don’t fall over the edge. And only a Hispanic could survive that fall.”
–Just before the press conference started, there was an unexplained commotion outside the door where Trump and his people were??? And once the press conference started, Trump promptly fell asleep again.
–Kevin M. Kruse: “He’s so far gone he can’t even maintain consciousness as his little toadies blow him.”
–Trump: “Did you see the story about my uncle? I have the highest of IQs. I have the highest. I’m fine, and I understand that stuff. You know, my uncle was at MIT for 41 years and you know–I’m a–I believe in genetics frankly and I understand. I understand it much more than any president would because I do have an ability on this. I have an ability on those things that were the new frontiers.”
–Trump said that last thing at his meeting about AI, a meeting during which he also said, “It’s the biggest thing there is, maybe the biggest thing there’s ever been,” though mostly he was only interested in talking about how he’d changed the name to Super Intelligence.
But mostly people were still talking about Schmitt’s spectacular face-plant:
–Janet Nance: “If you needed evidence (of) just how explosive Trump’s epic political blunder by Senator Eric Schmitt was, you needed only to scan political headlines to see that the MAGA self-own continued to dominate news more than 24 hours later. Schmitt’s Wile E. Coyote-style screw up was still reverberating both in Washington, DC, as well as far from the nation’s capital in ways consequential and philosophical.”
–One of the consequential ways is that more information is emerging to show that the “gotcha” was planned and that the DOJ and possibly Trump were involved. The texts were given to Schmitt by the DOJ, and Schmitt specifically asked GOP staffers for material tying Jack Smith’s investigation to Fani Willis.
–Schmitt’s staff warned him the texts hadn’t been verified, but he went ahead and used them anyway. (Thus violating Rule No. 1 of prosecutors: “Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.”)
–Doctor Strange: “It’s so them, though, isn’t it? Just like (Trump), they hear something that sounds good to them, they never bother to verify if it’s true and then publicly proclaim the thing they wish were true and then everyone laughs because it’s just another lunatic conspiracy theory. Rinse and repeat.”
–Schmitt had apparently alerted the media to what he was going to do and to “be ready for drama.”
–GOP Chair of the Committee Chuck Grassley knew what Schmitt was going to do but kept the information off the official memorandum of the hearing and didn’t tell the Democrats on the committee. (A breach in protocol.)
–Trump’s administration was all set to hire Schmitt’s general counsel Ethan Harper for a position in the White House Secretary’s office, and now because he was one of the people holding up that posterboard, it looks like he’s not going to get the job, thanks to the mess he and Schmitt made of things.
–Kevin M. Kruse: “Too much of a fuckup for the Trump White House. Jesus.”
–Journalist Julian Sanchez says even if Jack Smith HAD attended the Atlanta Hawks game and even if he HAD met with Fani Willis, it still wouldn’t have been a crime. “Prosecutors looking at the same defendant do, in fact, coordinate sometimes to avoid stepping on each others’ toes. There wouldn’t be a gotcha here even if Schmitt hadn’t comically bungled the facts.”
–With the new revelations, the mess-up is clearly becoming more serious, but the internet’s still having fun with it.
–Mike Bailey: “This may be Caitlin Clark’s greatest assist ever!”
–Jim Johnson: “I haven’t seen a look like Katie Britt’s since Deborah Birx reacted to Trump talking about injecting disinfectant.”
They were also talking about a horror story coming out of Cornell University:
–This is a story I was going to put in the “They’re All Perverts” section, but then I realized just how big a story and how terrible, and how it’s going to be news for days and maybe weeks. The DA is opening a new investigation into the gang rape of a female student by a number of fraternity members at Cornell University that happened in 2024.
–Why two years later? you may ask. Why didn’t she report it at the time? Well, actually, she did, and everybody, from the college to the campus doctor she went to, to the local DA, let her down. The Tompkins County DA, Matthew Van Houton, sad at the time that what had happened was voluntary, conscious, and consensual.
–What had happened was that at least seven men at a fraternity had drugged her with ketamine and alcohol and then assaulted her for hours.
–The victim says she was coerced into consuming drugs and participating in a threesome when she was too drunk to consent, then gang raped by at least seven members of the fraternity and possibly more.( How on earth the DA could think that sex with 7 men was anything BUT rape is beyond me, particularly the ketamine alone would have rendered her unable to consent.)
–One of the defendants sent a message to a group chat, saying “free pussy upstairs.” The message went to multiple other members, and there was a lively exchange of messages on Snapchat before the guys all piled into the room.
–One of the men involved texted the victim and apologized for how things went down. He said he and another fraternity member felt bad for “being too drunk to shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”
–The victim reported the rapes to the campus police and the police have the transcript of the report. In it, the victim says, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” She has filed suit against Cornell, saying she was coerced into consuming drugs.
–The New York District Attorney says they never received the student’s 2024 police statement alleging rape and that they just found out about it. Letitia James’s office says it will review the case, and the whole thing is blowing up in New York State’s and Cornell’s face. Stay tuned…
The other big news involves the collapsing support for Trump and the Republicans. We’ve reached the point where the small cracks in the dam are getting MUCH bigger, and the water is starting to stream through:
–GOP Senator Jim Justice of Washington is urging Trump to pull back on immigration and admit it has made mistakes.
–GOP candidates Roger Marshall and Maria Elvira Salazar are both criticizing ICE. (Note: ICE had previously stated they were no longer arresting immigrants with no criminal record and then said that statement was a miscommunication and that they were reversing that policy and will continue to arrest immigrants with no criminal records. And immigrants with legal visas and green cards. And US citizens who happen to be brown.)
–In the latest poll, only 17% approve of how Trump is handling the cost of living, and 65% blame his policies for high prices.
–According to poll analyst Enten, Trump’s net approval rating in TEXAS is 13 points lower at this point in his term than any other president this century. Ken Paxton’s approval rating is at minus 16, the least popular GOP nominee ever.
–Penny Lee of Florida says she regrets voting for Trump and thinks a “lot of people feel the same way. I’m pissed off about the gas, the food prices, everything. It’s affording everything.” Asked about MAGA, she said, “They’ve run it into the ground, and that’s putting it mildly.”
–An Oklahoma farmer on Twitter reported his 85-year-old dad saying about Trump, “You know, I really don’t think he gives a damn about anyone who isn’t rich and sure not about ranchers. never wanted to believe that until today.”
–Trumper Pedro Sanchez: “I used to have a lot more disposable income. I don’t have that any more. I think he (Trump) has a lot to do with it.)
In promising news:
–Noah Berlatsky: “We can’t control everything. But–and it’s crucial to remember this–neither can Trump. The midterms at this point are one thing that looks very much out of his control.”
–Kevin Robillard: “Some Republicans are starting to worry their money edge won’t matter as much as they hoped, pointing to the governor races in Texas, Ohio, and Nevada, where GOP candidates have massively outspent their opponents to seemingly little effect so far.”
–As of yesterday, 537,311 people have voted.
In Bear news:
–This week was the voting for the fattest bear of the year in Katmai, Alaska. Backpack won, beating out Bear 910 for the championship. (No word on how much Backpack weighed since, I mean, who wants to be the one to try to weigh a bear?)
In other news:
–Trump barred CNN from accompanying him to his speeches in Texas and Oklahoma on Air Force One, intentionally flouting the judge’s order.
–Kash Patel and his FBI are accused of gaming the Most Wanted List by putting the names on of people who are about to be caught or who are already in custody. That means they can brag about catching more people on the Most Wanted List than other administrations.
–Pete Hegseth just announced that he is reducing the number of generals and admirals by 20%. During wartime. When he has already fired a bunch of them.
In good news:
–Renee Good’s family is suing the US government and top Trump officials over her fatal shooting by ICE.
–The VERY conservative 11th Circuit unanimously refused to block the lower court’s sanctions order against the DOJ in the Trump vs. IRS that resulted in the slush fund case. They ruled that Trump and his lawyers failed to rebut the judge’s finding that the entire IRS settlement was collusive.
–New Mexico banned uranium mining on 13 million acres of state land.
–The Elon Musk documentary exposing him as a complete fraud got a 4-minute standing ovation when it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival. It comes out this month.
Most ill-thought-out comment of the day, from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who warned of “a nightmare scenario if Republicans lose. Democrats would investigate Trump, his family, his Cabinet, and powerful business figures.”
–Robbi Jill Zimmerman: “Sounds good to me!”
–James Wyman: “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
Most ill-thought out comment of the day, from JD Vance on James Talarico: “You gotta wonder–what really motivates a man who spends so much time talking about 11-year-old drag queens?” (First of all, it’s not true, and second of all, should you really be talking about pedophiles when you work for one?)
–Barakah: “Funny–I follow a lot of what Talarico says and I’ve never once heard him talk about drag queens. JD and the Republicans, however…all the time.”
–Quaker…: “What is he even talking about? Is he ‘creating stories’ again like he did with the supposed cat eaters?”
Best comment of the day, from Daily Kos: “As I say (well, Doctor Strange, the character in the movies) in AVENGERS: ENDGAME to Tony Stark: “We’re in the endgame now.” Boy, are we ever. Let’s get to work!”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
