“[T]he Trump campaign seriously expects people to believe that Democrats are the “party of violence,” which is among the most ridiculous claims Team Trump has ever made.”

—-MSNBC columnist and producer/constributor to “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Steve Brenen.

I’m not going to dignify that “It isn’t what it is” piece of flagrant hyper- partisan gaslighting with a rebuttal or a debunking. If it isn’t obvious why that statement is deranged, there’s not much an ethics blog can do for you. (You might need a brain transplant.)

The statement, which just came to my attention, knocked a related post out of line by its sheer defiance of reality and the writer’s evident confidence that his addled readers would accept it. Wow. I would hope that you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who could both read and would be that incapable of critical thought. The real number is in the millions.

I was going to write about bitter, old, foiled but still raging ethics villain Hillary Clinton, who told fellow ethics villain Maddow yesterday that Donald Trump was a “danger to our country and the world” less than 24 hours after the second attempt on Trump’s life this year. Heck, it’s just self-defense to try to kill someone or something —you know, like Godzilla—that’s a danger to the country and the world. Everybody knows that!

“Americans need to understand that they have to take Trump both seriously and literally,” she told the ever-smirking Maddow. “He has said what he wants to do. He and his allies with Project 2025, his desire to be a dictator, at least on day one, all of that is in the public record. And I believe that more Americans have to be, you know, willing to endure what frankly is discomforting and to some extent kind of painful, to take him at his word and to be outraged by what he represents. We can’t go back and give this very dangerous man another chance to do harm to our country and the world,” she added.

I have considerable sympathy for Hillary, as I’ve written here before. I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose the Presidency after winning the popular vote, and to become a historical footnote like Samual Tilden because of one’s own stupid choices (like her super-secret server and the decision to stonewall about it rather than just to say, “Yeah, that was wrong. Sorry.”) It would have been nice if she had the character to take those metaphorical lemons and make yummy lemonade, but she has chosen to use them to make acid bombs (and book deals) instead. Too bad.

It also is too bad Hillary can’t elevate her conduct above even lower forms of Democrat Party life like Biden and Kamala by avoiding outright anti-Trump Big Lies, but she’s not up to that either. She actually resorted to that hoary claim that Trump promised to be a dictator because he told Sean Hannity that he would “only be a dictator on Day One”, when he would “dictate” that we close the border and “drill, drill, drill.” That one’s right there next to the “fine people” lie and the others.

I expect better lies from Hillary. Bill needs to coach her.

Other thoughts…

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If you read conservative websites and news sources, but probably not if you get your news from MSNBC and the rest, you probably know that an alleged whistleblower has emerged to claim that Disney’s political mouthpiece ABC News conspired with Harris Campaign officials to rig the Presidential debate that Harris “won.” From the Hindustan Times (yes, it’s come to that…):

An affidavit, purportedly from an anonymous “ABC News whistleblower,” has sparked controversy after being circulated online. The document alleges close collaboration between the network and Kamala Harris’ campaign leading up to the recent debate against Donald Trump…

The affidavit alleges several serious claims regarding the debate preparation and ABC News’ role. One of the primary allegations is that Kamala Harris was given access to sample or similar questions before the debate. If true, this would have given her an unfair advantage over Donald Trump by allowing her to prepare more thoroughly for specific topics.

Another claim is that the Harris campaign actively blocked ABC News from questioning Joe Biden’s health. This issue has been a point of discussion throughout the election cycle, with some critics suggesting that Biden’s fitness for office should be more rigorously examined. According to the whistleblower, Harris’ team ensured that this line of questioning was off-limits.

The affidavit also asserts that the Harris campaign influenced ABC to avoid probing into allegations against Harris’ brother-in-law, who has been accused of embezzling billions in taxpayer money.

Additionally, ABC staff members are said to have been fearful of retribution from Trump, possibly implying that they felt pressured to comply with the Harris campaign’s requests to avoid conflict.

The whistleblower claims to have secret recordings that prove the Harris campaign pressured moderators to fact-check Trump during the debate. These recordings, if they exist, could provide key evidence in backing the whistleblower’s assertions.

Moreover, it is alleged that ABC News was given instructions about which questions to steer clear of during the debate, implying that the Harris campaign had significant influence over the content and flow of the event. This control over the debate, according to the whistleblower, included a demand for live fact-checking of Trump while Harris faced no such scrutiny, even when she made statements that were factually questionable.

The whistleblower reportedly signed the affidavit in New York and has sent a copy to Speaker Mike Johnson, further raising the stakes as these claims are now in the hands of political leadership.

Bill Acker, the conservative billionaire who helped rid Harvard of Claudine Gay, sent a letter to Disney chair Bob Iger that has given the alleged whistleblower story a bit more visibility…

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Walz, speaking at a Harris rally in Wisconsin, told the faithful that the key to a Democratic victory was their “trying to have that hard conversation in the produce aisle, with the person you saw there at the grocery store, and ask, ‘have you voted yet?”

Observations:

1. If someone I didn’t know were to ask me that “in the produce aisle,” my first response would be, “Who the hell are you?” and my follow-up would be “Bite me!”

2. If someone I knew asked me that as anything but incidental chit-chat preceded by “How’s the family?” and “Are you too disappointed in the Red Sox?,” I’d answer, “No, because I believe everyone should vote on election day unless it’s physically impossible to do so.”

3. The political Left’s fondness for trying to bully or harass people into accepting or adopting their political views is a marker of the totalitarian turn the whole port side of the political spectrum has taken. Maxine Waters urged Democrats to confront Trump officials when they were with their families or walking down the street. Black Lives Matter activists intimidadted diners to profess support for their racist scam “or else.” Starbucks briefly tried to get its barristas to engage customers in debates over social issues. Democrats also have issued guides to haranguing one’s family at Thanksgiving dinner. Has anyone on the political Right advocated this obnoxious and offensive strategy? If so, I missed it.

4. Several wags have noted that the grocery store should be the last place Democrats try to recruit voters…

5. Wow, is Harris-Walz really using “A New Way” as a slogan? How generic and clichéd can you get? In Robert Redford’s “The Candidate,” about the packaging and disillusionment of a Kennedy-esque Senatorial candidate, he was saddled with the fatuous “There’s got to be a better way” as his empty mantra. That movie was made in 1972. Using an old slogan doesn’t exactly make “A New Way” seem very sincere or genuine.

[WordPress wants me to tag this post “Marcel Walz” and “Frightfest.” Huh?]

CNN commentator says having RFK Jr. removed from the ballot is “disenfranchising” voters by slightly delaying mailing out ballots

Giving people 55+ days to vote early, rather than 60 days, is now voter suppression

These people are insane pic.twitter.com/gjtn5dJDD6

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) September 7, 2024

There are so many frustrating aspects of this clip from CNN’s Newsnight, but let’s get to the main issue: what the Harris surrogate/Democratic Party mouthpiece/shameless gaslighter said:

I find it ironic where, in 2020, Republicans were screaming at the top of their lungs when people were changing rules because we were in a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic and we needed to do it to accommodate voters …I want to remove politics from this and talk about people being actually able to exercise the franchise. And it is disenfranchising North Carolina voters right now that they believe they can start voting today and they are not. That is how confusion is disseminated in communities. That is how mis and disinformation starts, that is how you start to see narratives that our system is not working, when you start to let politics play into the role of when people should be able to start voting. Follow the rules. He was on the ballot, he wanted to run, he decided he didn’t want to run, he should have made that decision 6 months ago, but disenfranchising voters is not right.

The issue being discussed is a Democratic Party that was once fighting to keep Robert Kennedy Jr. OFF the ballot in states where the party thought he would draw votes away from Biden is fighting to stop him from removing his name from the ballot because he has dropped out of the race and endorsed Donald Trump. NOW they want him on the ballot because they think he will take votes from Trump.

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“We should have named it what it was.”

 —President Joe Biden,  speaking Thursday at an event in Westby, Wisconsin this week, crowing about the “progress we’ve made together by our ‘Investing in America’ agenda.” Biden then said, “I’m proud to announce that my, uh, my investments, that through my investments, the most significant climate change law ever. And by the way, it is a $369 billion bill. It’s called the — uh, we, we should have named it what it was.”

Did you know Donald Trump lies all the time? Ah, but you can trust President Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrats to tell the truth—you know, like deceptively naming a bill that had literally nothing to do with inflation (except to potentially make it worse) “The Inflation Reduction Act” because the regime was under fire for exploding inflation since it took over from the Trump Administration. “See?” the bill’s title was supposed to convey to members of the public with IQs below 90, “We’re fixing the problem!” Admitting that what was stated to the public as fact was really false after the goal of the lies has already been achieved is an example of how telling the truth can be almost as unethical as the lie itself. It is rubbing salt into the wound, like shouting “Sucker!” at the victim of a scam.

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