Dear Everybody:
Two days left to Election Day!
–If you haven’t voted, VOTE.
–Remind your friends and family to vote. I’ve been asking people at the fast food place, at the grocery, people walking by.
–Don’t send your ballot through the mail. Put it in a drop box or hand it in at the county election office.
–Try to vote early if possible–even a single day early. Emergencies happen–bad weather, illness, accidents–and you don’t want anything to stop you from voting in this oh, so important election.
–Just in case you haven’t made up your mind about who to vote for yet, a reporter asked Trump, “What’s your final message?” Trump’s response: “Poverty numbers are the single bet. Meaning, they’re the best.”
–82 years ago they travelled all the way to France to defeat a fascist regime. On Tuesday we only have to go as far as our nearest voting place.
The big news today is that the New York Times has FINALLY done a front-page story on Trump’s dementia/madness:
–Their headline this morning was, “Trump’s Speech Becomes More Vulgar and Muddled.”
–They are still trying to give him every benefit of the doubt with lines like “(Trump’s) performances have produced many head-scratching moments that have revived questions about his age and stability,” and “He makes comments that leave people wondering what he is talking about or that sound like he is saying something he is not.” (Oh, yes he is saying it, and we all know it.)
–muellershewrote: “NOW a warning?”
–Stephanie, We are All Pretti and Good: “About time. No, way past time.”
–Dr Robin: “Finally! Where have they been?”
–JJ: “A decade too late.”
–the ghost of john dewey: “Seems like New York Times trying to cover their asses by not publishing this till 2 days before the election when so many people have already done early voting and sent in their mail ballots. I would say better late than never, but New York Times doesn’t get a fucking SHRED of benefit of the doubt from me.”
–Sandy Lylke: “I’ll be impressed when there’s one that reads, ‘Trumps a Rapist Thieving Grifter Russian Stooge!’”
–Trish Anderton: They can start by simply reporting the latest rape allegation against him.”
–K Jumbe: “They are hearing something about his health that will make coverage unavoidable soon…both. They just want to make sure they have something to point to when this regime starts falling apart and people ask why they didn’t have any sustained coverage.”
The New York Times isn’t the only one who’s finally telling it like it is when it comes to Trump (which means they’re not afraid of him any more):
–Call to Activism: “HUMILIATING. After Trump canceled his remaining rallies, Kasie Hunt says a top Republican told CNN, ‘Thank God. He hasn’t moved the needle anywhere.’”
–Abdul El-Sayed: “Trump’s a con man. He lies to people. That’s been his whole thing. He told people he was gonna drain the swamp. It turns out he’s the biggest alligator in the swamp.”
–Politico: “Granted anonymity to speak frankly before the election, many of the 15 GOP lawmakers interviewed about the future of Trump’s influence said they believe his days of dictating outcomes with Truth Social posts and late-night phone calls could be coming to an end.”
–Steve Schmidt: “There is a vast reservoir of contempt, and (Trump) has earned every drop of it. He has earned it through cruelty, corruption, treachery, and incompetence. He has earned it by treating public office as a personal possession and public service as an opportunity to take.”
–JoJo from Jerz: “He doesn’t give a fuck about you. He’s not even pretending anymore. He’s treating the country like a terminally ill relative whose jewelry he wants before the ambulance arrives. And yet you’re still out there insisting God sent him.”
–David Frum: “Trump was much more of a self-aware conman when he entered politics a decade ago than he is now. He now seems to be kind of lost: truly in a world of illusions, where he no longer himself knows what is true and what is a lie.”
–The fact that everybody’s openly discussing Trump’s madness and dementia is a really big deal. No matter what happens in the elections on Tuesday, it’s now out of the bag and fair game for reporters (especially now that they have permission from the New York Times) and they will all be reporting on it and asking Trump about it. Trump’s facade is cracking and coming apart, and (to steal a metaphor from a terrific book and movie about another time this happened) all the President’s horses and all the President’s men won’t be able to put it back together again.
In Cracks in the Dam news:
–Chriz Azan of Texas says he never considered himself an impassioned midterm voter, but “This year is different. This year it feels like every opportunity to vote is a referendum against the party in power.”
In What We’re Up Against:
–Trump and his thugs are trying every dirty trick they can think up to rig and/or subvert the election. The ones getting the most news are Alaska and California, but they’re trying stuff other places. In Mississippi they’ve changed the location of dozens of polling places and haven’t told people, and in South Carolina a bunch of absentee ballots haven’t been received yet, even though now there is no time to mail them in.
–In Alaska, they are making it clear they won’t accept the results of the election. On Larry Kudlow’s show this morning, Jim Comer was asked, “Is it possible if Peltola wins, she won’t be seated?” Comer: “That’s a big possibility.”
–In good news, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling barring the Trump administration from taking control of California’s National Guard troops and deploying them to Los Angeles.
In promising news:
–Democrats lead the generic ballot by 8 to 9 points.
–Voters now see Democrats as the party of the working class over Republicans by 53% to 40%. They trust Democrats more on the issues of healthcare, corruption, AI, foreign wars, and immigration.
–Fox News has shifted the South Carolina Senate seat to Tossup.
–The head of Georgia’s GOP announced he’s stepping down.
–In Texas, there have been 763,307 early voters who didn’t vote in 2024. 367,329 of them are Hispanic.
–Ken Paxton just cancelled his last rally–at the Alamo.
–The Des Moines Register just endorsed the Democratic candidate Josh Turek for Senate.
–JB Pritzker’s wife, MK Pritzker, just donated $500,000 to Amy Acton’s campaign after she saw the disgusting Ramaswamy ad.
–Ann Coulter tweeted: “Kansas is dead to me.” (Translation: they’re losing.)
–More and more people are protesting at Republican rallies, disrupting not only Trump, but JD Vance and Republican candidates.
–Trump to protesters: “Shut up. Shut up. Dope. Shut up, loser. These guys are losers.” (Wow! What a snappy comeback!)
–aelurophile: “I dropped my ballot off at my local library (yay, libraries!) yesterday and am happy to report that I saw a steady stream of voters doing the same thing!”
–A Daily Kos commenter: “My husband and I voted yesterday on our first day of no-excuse early voting. In 54 years of casting a ballot, I have never seen such a crowd. The poll worker who helped me looked positively shell-shocked. She said the parking lot was packed when she arrived to unlock the door.”
–The Lincoln Project has a new ad up that’s a killer. It’s called “Time’s Up, MAGA,” and you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhGaq7a1WeM
And in REALLY promising news;
–A new poll just out from American Research Group has Trump with a 29% approval rating, which is really significant because it cracks the magical 30% threshold that nobody ever thought he could go below and puts him in “Nixon resigning” territory.
In Trump/Epstein news:
–A judge dismissed Trump’s defamation suit against the Wall Street Journal. This was the case where Trump had sued for defamation because of the Journal’s publishing the story about Trump’s “birthday greeting” to Epstein–the greeting that had the outline of a young girl’s torso and Trump’s signature as pubic hair.
–The case was dismissed WITH PREJUDICE, which means it can’t be filed again ever and Trump has lost big-time. It’s a staggering defeat for Trump and a major victory for press freedom.
–The judge: “In effect President Trump argues that since he declared the letter ‘a fake,’ the defense should have disregarded everything else they learned in their investigation and not published the story.” The judge said this would have empowered public figures to block all unfavorable reporting by just denying it.
–The judge also ruled that Trump had failed to establish actual malice on the part of the Journal. “As with his first attempt, he has failed to establish a viable defamation claim.”
–The ruling not only delivers another setback to Trump, but it brings back the whole story of Epstein and the birthday greeting right before the election.
In Ukraine vs. Russia news:
–As part of a temporary ceasefire agreement, Ukraine has been able to evacuate refugees from the Oleshky province, where they were starved and under bombardment for months. They refused to leave their pets behind, and a special team was there in Ukraine when they arrived to greet them and take care of them.
–Ukraine struck a Russian defense industry facility in Rostov Oblast and two refineries in the deep rear of Russia in Ufa.
–Ukraine struck Russia’s Marinovka Airfield.
–Ukraine struck a Rosneft oil terminal near Moscow, and the airport had to be shut down, stranding passengers.
–The Russian commander of Leningrad’s naval base and the head of the Defense Ministry Engineering Service have both been arrested by Putin. (He’s not going to have anybody left.)
–Russia has had over 1.4 million to 2 million casualties and as many as 700,000 deaths since the war started. (He’s not going to have anybody left.)
–Not a single American company has agreed to buy the Russian diesel fuel scheduled to arrive in the US under the Putin-Trump deal. Businesses fear the deal is too toxic and will be the subject of future investigations.
–Russia murdered two civilians waving a white flag.
–Andrew Perpetua: “You genuinely cannot comprehend the unimaginable evil that is Russa. I have a hard time even evaluating the people who live there are normal humans anymore. There is no amount of propaganda that can turn normal people into this.”
In Not Everybody’s a Jerk news:
–When asked her opinion of trans athletes, WNBA star Gabby Williams said, “I would welcome a trans athlete on my team or against my team. Anytime. I don’t think it’s a problem in the world. It’s just another way to kind of attack trans people.”
In Halloween news:
–A bunch of people went trick-or-treating dressed as Mitch McConnell–in a wheelchair and totally frozen.
–Two little kids attended Trump’s Halloween Trick or Treating event dressed as a Russian officer and a Ukrainian little girl. (Trump did not seem to get that they were trolling him, but a bunch of other people did, and it’s all over the internet.)
–JD Vance decided to dress up as the Harry Potter wizard Dumbledore with his poor little baby stuck being Dobby the Elf. (Not a good idea given that Vance spends most of his life hinting that Talarico is gay–Vance: “I love you, too , sir, in a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice-president not James Talarico,” etc.–and JK Rowling has explicitly stated in multiple interviews that Dumbledore is gay.
–Michael Weiss: “Making crude cracks about Talarico’s sexuality, then opting to dress up as a gay wizard. That’s about right.”
–mickey friedman: “Liberal policies have destroyed San Francisco. Walked outside today and there were children on the streets begging for candy.”
–paulpro: “Check your kids’ candy this Halloween. Woke liberals putting 64GB of banned books onto fake candy USB drives.”
You definitely need to watch Saturday Night’s Live’s special Halloween Cold Open. It’s brilliant–and guaranteed to make Trump blow a fuse. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6VZaBM2Zr4
in other news:
–House Democrats Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia issued an order demanding Trump preserve his chats with Grok after a story emerged that Trump was making decisions about wars, etc., based on advice from Elon Musk’s AI chatbot.
–Trump is planning to deport Afghans (most of whom are here because they were promised asylum for helping the US during the Afghanistan war, serving as translators, etc. Even worse, he plans to pay a Cameroonian unit accused of torture and other war crimes, giving them $35 million dollars in military aid to take the Afghanis.
–Trump is floating the idea of making Nicki Minaj his new press secretary.
In good news:
–General Motors has been forced to pay $220 million dollars to car owners for putting sensors in its cars which collect personally identifying data on their cars and then selling the data to DATA ARBITRAGE, a company which provides data to insurers so they can up what you pay for car insurance.
–Brazil’s Supreme Court has ordered an investigation into whether Rockbridge, a donor network of JD Vance’s, helped to illegally finance Bolsonaro’s campaign.
–Finnish tech giants have announced a plan to help Ukraine build its own sovereign satellite system so it won’t have to depend on Elon Musk’s Starlight (which Musk shuts down every time he wants to help the Russians.)
Best meme of the day: “Republicans wanted complete power, and now that they have it, they’ve demonstrated they should never have any power again.”
Best reason to vote of the day: “You’d better vote because Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and Keith Porter Jr. and Kenneth Richard Sok can’t.”
Best voting advice of the day, from Daily Kos: “Do you like roller coasters? Me, not so much, but we seem to be on one. Anyway, hold fast as we get through these next few days.”
Best comment of the day, from indianobserver: “Headless chicken phase of the election cycle. No one knows where they are actually at and whether the sky is falling.”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
