Dear Everybody:
Several big stories today, starting with Trump backing down on live-streaming the execution of Nidal Hasan:
–Trump scrapped Hegseth’s plan to live-stream the execution of Nidal Hasan. Trump: “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”
–He’s obviously bowing to public pressure. 8 out of 10 Americans were against the live-streaming (and many were against the execution by firing squad. Or the execution, period.)
–lynn0908: “Proof that public pressure works right now. The ship is sinking, and they are trying to stay afloat.”
–Cindy Welsh: “Changing a decision to make public an execution of a man in a wheelchair now is TOO LATE. Trump and Hegseth have shown us who they are.”
–The Comely Lads: “Too late. The world sees the US leaders as barbaric villains, live-streamed execution or no.”
The second big story of the day is that the Washington Post (which has been doing a lot to restore my faith in them lately) obtained the secret list of donors funding Trump’s ballroom and has released it, and, as expected, most of the people on it are people who wanted something from Trump and/or got it:
–There were 67 donations totaling $333 million dollars, including big donations from Nvidia, Apple, the Adelsons, and Dish Network. Over half of the names on the list have federal contracts.
–Isabel Herrera donated and, presto change-o, her father got a pardon.
–The CEO of EchoStar donated and the FCC immediately dropped an investigation into them.
–The CEO of Salesforce, who got a government contract worth $5.6 million dollars right after he donated millions to the ballroom.
–Trump is furious at the leak and vowed to “relentlessly pursue those responsible for this cowardly leak.” Last night at his rally he said leakers should be shot, so…
The third big story is that Trump’s and Musk’s betrayal of Ukraine is backfiring:
–Night before last, Ukraine suddenly found itself without Starlink and the intelligence it needed for its drone attack guidance and had to call off its attacks and disrupt crucial missions. It also found itself without the intelligence the US provides to protect it from incoming Russian missiles and drones and effectively blind until they were within radar reach, which means they’re almost impossible to stop, and as a result, there were lots of civilian casualties.
–The next day the outcry against the actions by Musk and Trump was huge, and now they are blaming each other for the action. Musk says he didn’t do it–all the intel comes through the US government–and Trump says he didn’t do it either. (Which doesn’t tell you who did it, but does tell you just how toxic the action was.)
–((Tendar)): “Elon Musk is basically pointing at Trump. He is obviously trying to protect Starlink from the economic fallout this incident created. With several European nations starting to question services by Starlink, and India actively pushing back, this has become a serious problem for Musk and SpaceX.”
–Zelenskyy: “We have lost an ally in America. They have chosen their side. Not ours, not even the middle. Putin’s side. They have chosen the wrong side of history.”
–Ukraine is now relying more and more heavily on Europe for intelligence. Two-thirds of the intel Ukraine currently gets is coming from European countries, including France.
–Many Starlink terminals in Ukraine are financed by Poland. It’s foreign minister–Radoslaw Skiorski–put Elon Musk on notice regarding the evolving situation, tweeting, “Hey, Elon Musk, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you.”
–Meanwhile, Ukraine had held off attacking Russia’s energy sites for three days on the off-chance the ceasefire with Russia wasn’t entirely fabricated by Trump, but they have abandoned that thinking and are back to attacking Russia. Zelenskyy: “The block on attacking refineries is out. We’re done.” Zelenskyy said the reason for the restart is that Trump lied to him by deliberately blocking Starlink, but presenting it to Kyiv as a “technical glitch,” as well as telling Ukraine that the missed ballistic missile warnings earlier this week (which killed 6) was due to “bad weather,”
–Last night Ukraine hit an oil depot in Valuyki in Belgorod and struck another data center, the Sberbank data center, which had just been built.
–Ukraine also launched a devastating strike on Russia’s Borisoglebsk airfield near Belgorod, destroying six Su-34 fighters.
–General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s former special envoy to Ukraine: “I would burn down every one of the goddamn refineries that Russia has today. Take them all out. it’s a military target. It is the fastest way to deprive Russia of the means to wage war.”
And the other big story is that Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff and last link with reality, may be on the way out:
–Politico is reporting that four different sources told them that Trump has been asking friends and advisers who he should replace Susie Wiles with. He is said to be blaming her for his bad polling numbers.
–Playbook says Wiles’s rivals and people who feel “burned” by her have been encouraging Trump and sharing unfavorable coverage of her and her family with him. “She’s burned a lot of people.”
–The Daily Beast says Trump has been calling friends and allies, seeking their input on her replacement. floating a bunch of names to replace them, including Bill Pulte, Steve Witcoff, former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, and Randy Levine, the president of the New York Yankees (???) The one with the best chance, though, seems to be Stephen Miller. (The horror! The horror!)
–One recent point of friction between them–Susie wanted Fox’s Scott Jennings to be Trump’s new press secretary, and Trump made the decision to make it Katie Zacharia while Susie was gone and without telling her. (With predictably disastrous results, which almost certainly have had the effect of making Trump even madder at Susie because she was right and he was wrong–not that Scott Jennings is any better.)
–Trump denied the whole thing: “TOTAL FAKE NEWS. Politico doesn’t care about facts, integrity, or honest journalism–it’s why I kicked them out of the White House! Susie Wiles is my loyal and longest serving Chief of Staff–there is a reason for that. She has been with me since the beginning, is my trusted advisor, and has my COMPLETE confidence.”
–Homer: “That’s what Trump always says before he fires someone.”
–view from across the pond: ‘Generally when Trump says someone has his full confidence, they’re gone within a week.”
–alfredeneuman: “Yeah, she’s toast.”
–Voodoo Ranger: “The lifespan of existing in (Trump’s) orbit is getting shorter all the time for those in his tribe.”
–Machiavelli: “Wiles probably would welcome being pushed out the door with what looms on the horizon.”
In Trump’s dementia/madness news:
–Trump told the crowd 179-year-olds are getting Social Security checks and cashing them.
–He pardoned people onstage at his rally in Alaska.
–When he was asked how the war in Iran was going, he gave a truly amazing answer: “I’ve already won. IN A MASSIVE LANDSLIDE!”
–Trump: “There’s nothing that I could do–if they asked her, ‘If Trump murdered someone would that be okay?’ she would’ve said ‘yes.’”
–Trump: “It’s called a coganitive (sic) test. It’s a very standard test, but very tough. There are few people in this audience that can–once you get past the first question. They show you a lion, a bear, a giraffe, and a snake, and they say, ‘Which one is the lion?’ Biden was unable to answer that.” (But first, to pass it you have to be able to pronounce “cognitive.” And second, I thought you said all the other presidents refused to take it.)
–And, sure enough, moments later, Trump says: “I’m the only one that took the test…the aptitude test or whatever. Every time I do a physical, I do a mental test. And I aced it. Where’s my doctor? I travel with more doctors than any human being. If people get sick in the audience, they leave them alone. They call them collateral damage.” (How reassuring.)
–He once again said Canada was going to be our 51st state “because that’s the only way it works,” and then a moment later said Greenland would be the 51st state. “Greenland. It just adds to our beautiful plate. Our plate is getting larger all the time.”
–Heather Delaney Reese: “There was a time when hearing a President of the United States say even one of those things would have stopped us all in our tracks. But we have now become so accustomed to hearing things like this from Donald Trump that we have almost forgotten how shocking they really are and how there was once a time in our history when no president would have dared to say the outlandish things he says so often…Our past presidents would not recognize this country. They would be shocked and horrified at how far we have fallen and that we are now being led by a convicted felon as our president.”
–trish scott: “Hey, Americans, is this FINALLY ENOUGH to prove your president has hit dementia in full measure?”
In economic news:
–Wholesale prices are up 6.3% since last year.
–4 in 10 rural Americans are in survival mode, which is defined as “one surprise bill could sink them.” Nearly 7 in 10 voted for Trump.
–Diesel prices are also up again. Diesel prices since the start of the war are up 70%.
–Gulf Oil adviser Tom Klozer said, “Absolutely stunning price spikes in wholesale diesel today…Market clearly not believing that Russian oil is on its way.”
–Fuel oil shot up 15.3% in September. (That figure is made worse by the fact that in areas like New England, which use fuel oil for heating, you can’t buy it by the month. You have to buy a full tank at a time and refill that tank three or four times a winter. So people are having to pay an average of $1500 dollars to fill their tank each time.)
–The price of gas is up 9.1%.
–Hourly wages fell .5 % in September and .7% for the year, and September’s inflation came in “hot, hot, hot, wiping out any wage gains.”
–Trump: “Our country is making more money than it has ever made because of the fact that oil is so high!”
In How the GOP Candidates are Doing and other promising news:
–The GOP has cut off funding to GOP incumbents in New Jersey’s 7th district, Iowa-1, Ohio-1, and Michigan-8 because they have to defend deep red areas in Nebraska, South Carolina, Kansas, Iowa, Texas, and Ohio.
–Vivek Ramaswamy featured a registered sex offender, Vernon Edwards, in a campaign ad. Edwards pled guilty to sexual contact with minors, in his case his nieces and another 13-year-old.
–During her debate with Democrat Troy Jackson, Susan Collins tried to sound sympathetic to the poor guy who was shot and killed by the ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine by saying, “My heart goes out to the family of the man who was shot in Biddeford–Mr. Jarran Goyero.” Her opponent Troy Jackson immediately responded, “Well, the man’s name was John Sebastian Guerrero. That was his name.”
–GOP candidate Brandon Herrara described mothers as “cum trophies.” He called Nazi machine guns the original ghetto blasters. When Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was asked how he can support him, Johnson said, “That was his persona online. He has run a very effective campaign.”
–GOP candidate Senator Tim Scott said, “I want to make sure the next generation can grow up like I did–maybe in poverty.”
–GOP candidate Mike Rogers’ wife was caught on video handing out $10 gas gift cards while asking Michigan drivers to vote for him. (It’s a felony to officer gifts in exchange for votes.)
–Colorado’s GOP candidate for governor Victor Marx laughingly told a story while on a podcast about a violent argument with his wife. “I remember grabbing her, slamming her into our front door. She bent over and started crying.” The podcast host laughed uproariously.
–Warren: “Nothing funnier than domestic violence to Republican Christians.”
–Fran Dantuono-Morse: “He thinks this is funny? He just admitted to committing assault on his wife. That’s domestic battery.”
–Victor Marx, by the way, refuses to say how many people he has killed, claims his father forced him to commit his first murder at age 7, claims he can call in US airstrikes around the world, and says he is a 7th degree black belt in a martial art he invented.
–Texas State GOP Rep Dade Phelan: “People are freaking out. You see it in their faces. We’re still running transgender ads. It’s just not resonating. $100 million dollars in ads., $125 million dollars in ads, and nothing’s moving the needle.”
In Not Everybody’s a Jerk news:
–In Tennessee, the group Helping Animals Rescue Team works to adopt unadoptable cats in animal shelters who are feral, semi-feral, or completely antisocial to local farmers to work as barn cats, keeping the populations of rodents and other pests down.
In historical news, or Reason #10,798 why I love Abraham Lincoln:
–Today in 1860, an 11-year-old girl in Westfield, New York, named Grace Greenwood Bedell wrote to Abraham Lincoln, who was campaigning for president, and told him she thought he should grow a beard: “I have yet got four brothers and part of them will vote for you anyway, and if you let your whiskers grow, I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you. You would look a great deal better, for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be president.”
–Lincoln kindly wrote back to her, saying he would consider it, but, “having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a silly affectation if I were to begin it now?”
–In February, on his way to Washington, DC, for the inauguration, his train stopped in Westfield. As Grace later wrote: “He climbed down and sat down with me on the edge of the station platform. ‘Gracie,’ he said, ‘look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you. Then he kissed me. I never saw him again.”
In other news:
–There has been another death from measles in Pennsylvania, bringing the total up to 6 deaths.
–There’s been another mass shooting at an elementary school in Bend, Oregon, with three children dead.
–The Circuit Court of Appeals nixed a trailblazing California law permanently barring the state’s efforts to force federal immigration agents to display ID on duty.
In good news:
–CREW has filed a lawsuit against Jared Kushner, accusing him of unlawfully serving as a diplomat representing the United States.
–The Harris County, Texas DA has hired a special prosecutor to investigate the murder of Salgado-Aurujo by ICE agents in Houston.
–Kristi Noem, who was given an envoy job after Trump fired her from her position as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has been fired from that job, too.
And finally, today marks the debut of I LOVE LUCY, the forefather (or I guess I should say foremother) of all television sitcoms and one which broke all kinds of barriers, including several technical innovations like the three-camera setup and the use of film rather than being broadcast live and on-screen innovations like presenting a white woman married to a Latino and showing Lucy pregnant, neither of which had been done before.
–I LOVE LUCY had any number of great moments, including the episode where Lucy and Ethel were working on the candy factory assembly line and the one where Lucy tried to record an ad for Vitameatavegamin while drinking successive, obviously alcoholic spoonfuls of it.
–And it produced one of the great lines of all time, quoted by everybody from Robin W Williams on MORK AND MINDY to Matthew Perry in FOOLS RUSH In and Bruce Willis on MOONLIGHTING: “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.” (A line which Ricky Ricardo apparently never actually said, just like Rhett Butler never actually said, “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn,” even though everybody thinks they did.)
Best new way to say you’re lying, from Rhein Amacher, who cooked up the whole “Talarico was in a mental institution” hoax: “Never lied. I just doubled down on wrong information.”
Bet comment of the day, from Janice: “I used to be proud of our country and what it stood for. Trump and his worshipers have dragged us into the sewers. They need to be ousted. VOTE. I will be doing so today.”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
