(IMAGE: Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
UPDATE, Oct. 15: Georgia voters have toppled the previous record for number of early ballots cast on the first day. Election officials report that as of 2:30 PM, voters cast 204,793 ballots in person.
By Zamboni
Tomorrow marks three weeks until Election Day! Do you have a plan to vote? We do, which is why we have time to peruse what's making the news across the nation. Here are some of the stories that caught our eye.
Now that Vice President Harris has agreed to an interview on Fox "News," it's worth remembering that just over a year ago, Benedict Donald was furious at Fox anchor Bret Baier for conducting a "nasty" interview with him. "Everything was like unfriendly. No smiling, no let’s have fun, let’s Make America Great Again," Trump whined. We don't know what questions Baier will ask Harris on Wednesday, but you can be sure that every one of her answers will be designed to get under Donald's thin skin.
It's a great move by Team Harris, because she's been blanketing the airwaves with interviews while Trump chickened out of a second debate and the traditional appearance on 60 Minutes. It's clear that Donald's handlers have decided he's mentally incapable of doing the kinds of interviews Harris is — in fact, Trump's even confirmed it through his usual breathtaking projection, calling for her to take a cognitive test. He knows he's slipping. At some point, he probably will cease to know.
Which is why he needs to release his medical records as Harris has. A group of 238 healthcare providers agrees. They've signed a letter calling for more transparency (that is, beyond the idiotically, glowing reports from Ronny Jackson). "As we all age, we lose sharpness and revert to base instincts," the physicians said. "We are seeing that from Trump, as he uses his rallies and appearances to ramble, meander, and crudely lash out at his many perceived grievances."
(We're seeing rumors that Trump may have had a bit of a cognitive episode at a "town hall" event in Pennsylvania tonight. More details when we get them.)
On another subject, we're still waiting for Elise "Elsie" Stefanik to object to Trump's alleged plan to change military bases' names back to honor Confederate generals. Doesn't she know that her state, New York, lost 38,000 sons in the Civil War? Doesn't she care?
Finally, Halloween is just a few weeks off, which may be why Last Week Tonight was scaring us about the many ways Benedict Donald will try to sow doubt about the election. One of the most important actions you can take is to check — and re-check — your voter registration. You can do that here. And vote early, so that if you run into any problems, you can get them fixed before November 5. We cats PURR.
Well, everybody, we're three weeks out from Election Day. But early voting is already underway in several states. (In Georgia, it starts this Tuesday, which means that Jimmy Carter will at last be able to vote for Kamala Harris for President.)
According to TargetSmart's calculations, more than 1.2 million people have already early voted — 721,037 Democrats (58.3 percent), 361,051 Republicans (29.2 percent), and 155,177 Unaffiliated (12.5 percent). This is what we want to see. If we can bank our votes on Day One, our Democratic campaigns can focus on other, lower-propensity voters and get them to turn out.
Yes, we know — we've said this many times before. But we urge you to check the early voting calendar at the link above, and tell your friends and family to get to the polls as soon as they can.
Personally, we cats are looking forward to Election Day. We're tired of the endless fundraising texts and emails, and sick of the lazy media narratives that are fed by Republican-weighted and even downright sloppy polls. Cable news talking heads drool over those because a close horse race gets them more eyeballs, page views, clicks, and likes. Ugh.
The good news is that the GOP would not be flooding the zone with bogus polls if they thought they were winning. But still and all, we've pretty much had it. Every time someone tries to raise alarms about such-and-such a poll, we just turn off the TV and write a few more postcards to voters in key states. It's the only way to stay sane.
Just remember, though, that Election Day isn't going to be the end, or even close to the end. The forces behind Trumpism aren't going to go away with a defeat — in fact, they'll be even more riled up. We're probably going to have to work to save America for the rest of our nine lives. But that's okay — the country is worth it. We cats PURR.
This Mike Luckovich cartoon is terrific in and of itself, but also notable because he chose to draw his 2024 voter as a white woman. And a white woman of a certain age — like in her forties or fifties?
It got our attention because a recent Pew poll has shown Benedict Donald leading Vice President Kamala Harris among white women by five points. In the wake of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, it seemed inconceivable. As Black Twitter often asks, would white women rather be white than free? Will Black women really have to save America again? (In Black Twitter's opinion, the answers are overwhelmingly yes.)
This was wildly depressing, so we decided to look at some of Pew's Presidential preference detailed tables. The numbers might not be as simple as they appear on the surface.
Yes, cross-referencing race and gender puts Trump ahead with white women. But when you set aside race and look at the numbers for women overall, age becomes a significant factor. Harris leads Trump either hugely or comfortably in the overall female age brackets until you get to 50-64, where she starts losing by three. Then she swings back into a modest lead among female respondents age 65-plus.
With Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters overall, Harris leads Trump by double digits.
The obvious answer is that Harris-Walz needs to turn out young women and women of color, big-time. They know this. The campaign is covering a lot of bases — Tim Walz and Bill Clinton are courting the male and Southern vote, while Barack Obama is talking to Black men — but they are focused like a laser on turning out the massive influx of newly energized young and female voters who rushed to register after Harris became the nominee. (After all, reproductive freedom is the most important election issue for women under 30.) Happily, trends have shown that 80 percent of recent registrants tend to show up to vote.
Back in 2008, Obama got a solid 43 percent of the overall white vote, which contributed to his decisive victory over John McCain. According to Pew, Harris is nearly there, at 41 percent. Let's work to get that number higher. White women (and men), talk to your white friends and family. Tell them what's at stake. Make sure we all check the "Big House" for Benedict Donald in November. We cats PURR.
(IMAGE: Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
In February 1939, a crowd of 20,000 fascist sympathizers gathered in Madison Square Garden for a rally hosted by the German American Bund. It seems incredible now, because as we all know, less than three years later, the United States would be at war. The attack on Pearl Harbor effectively silenced the "America First" movement as the country joined the fight against Japan and Nazi Germany.
But that was 80-plus years ago, and maybe in 2024, the idea of the American Bund is not so incredible after all.
That's because since the rise of Donald Trump, home-grown Nazis, Proud Boys and other miscreants have gathered and marched again in America. Trump has emboldened them to come crawling out from under their rocks and broadcast their hate. On January 6, 2021, at his urging, they attacked the Capitol and tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Now, Trump has announced that he, too, will hold a rally in Madison Square Garden on October 27. (Prices in New York City can be pretty high, so we agree that it would be a good move to get the Trump campaign's rental payment in advance.)
At the American Bund event, 100,000 people protested outside. Since it seems foolhardy for Benedict Donald to spend the last few weeks of his campaign in a reliably blue state, you can only imagine that a big, violent counter-demonstration is what he's hoping for. Back in 1939, then-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dispatched nearly 2,000 uniformed and undercover police officers to keep things calm. What will Mayor Eric Adams do this year? We cats hate to even ask, and we HISS.
It's been a day of true stupidity, so much so that we cats have had to bundle all the examples we could find into one blog post. Here goes.
With a category 5 hurricane bearing down on his state, Ron DeSantis decided that he would not take a call today from the Vice President of the United States offering aid. Incredible. This pettiness all started back when defeated Republicans decided not to call their victorious Democratic opponents and graciously concede, and it's just gotten worse from there. In the meantime, whatever Democrat runs for Florida Governor in two years ought to make DeSantis's behavior a huge indictment on the Republican mindset — and lay it on the Republican nominee.
Some in the media continue to whine that Kamala Harris isn't giving interviews. Correction: She isn't giving them interviews. In the real world, Harris has sat down with 60 Minutes, The View, The Howard Stern Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, MSNBC with Stephanie Ruhle, Univision, and — most recently and very smartly — Call Her Daddy, a podcast with 5.5 million young women listeners. We're tired of over-the-hill legacy media figures carping about this, but we understand why: They know they're irrelevant.
On the subject of journalists and pundits, will any of them mention that Benedict Donald once predicted that he would carry Virginia in November? Just wondering, since a recent poll by Wason Center-Christopher Newport University puts Harris up by 11 points.
It looks like Corey Lewandowski has been sent home to New Hampshire after losing a power struggle with Trump campaign pooh-bahs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. By the way, have LaCivita and Wiles ever produced the video evidence that the campaign promised would exonerate their team in the Arlington National Cemetery dust-up back in August? Have journalists stopped asking for it?
Finally, on the reproductive rights news front, brace yourselves for these: The Supreme Court refused to take up the Texas emergency abortion case (women will die). JD Vance says he's in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood (women won't get basic reproductive healthcare). The Georgia Supreme Court reinstated the state's six-week abortion ban (again, women will die). But all three stories will definitely drive women to the polls. Looking for silver linings, we cats PURR.
When we cats were kittens, The New York Times was the all-around epitome of great journalism. They defined excellence and set the standard for the entire profession. Now, however, as the Greatest Generation would say, they've gone completely to pot.
Yes, we know we've said this before: Their political coverage is terrible. The Times perpetuates lazy narratives, promotes its publishers' pet peeves, and diminishes stuff that should be in screaming headlines. And they always, always cut Benedict Donald a break. After putting Hillary's emails on page one above the fold day after day, they buried Trump's recent call for unbridled police violence deep in the A section. Clearly they think that they'll be okay in the event of a fascist takeover of the United States. (They won't be.)
And they do all of it with a sniffy air of entitlement, as is their wont.
Today, they're a source of fresh annoyance with a big story on Benedict Donald's cognitive decline. At last, we thought. And then we read this in the second paragraph: Trump seeming "confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality...happens so often these days that it no longer even generates much attention."
"No longer"? When did it ever? Because the Times and other political publications have never covered it! (Do remember, however, that they ran dozens and dozens of stories about President Biden's age for the three agonizing weeks between June 27 and July 21.)
Okay, 30 days out from Election Day, at least they're writing about it now. But they'll never make up for their treatment of Biden and the Democrats versus Trump and the GOP. They are the supreme example of how the Republican myth of the "liberal media" has had journalists cowering for 50 years. It drives us cats crazy, and we HISS.
The Mesa County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office released the booking photo for former County Clerk Tina Peters after she was sentenced to jail for nine years for tampering with voting machines. Looking at this, you have to think that the enormity of what's happened to her hadn't sunk in yet. Maybe now that she's had her first night of not-sleeping on her special "magnetic" mattress, she knows better. Nine years!
This woman was the epitome of MAGA entitlement and privilege, and the judge who sentenced her yesterday made that crystal clear. Check out — and savor — his withering 12-minute statement to her, after which she was unceremoniously handcuffed and hauled off to the hoosegow instead of staying free on appeal. Clearly, the judge considered her an unrepentant danger to the community. Which, with a national election just around the corner, she is.
P.S. In case you're wondering, no, Donald Trump can't pardon her if he's elected in November. (He won't be, of course, but that's not the point.) Tina Peters was charged and convicted by the state of Colorado. She's outta luck. We cats PURR.
Because they are horrible people who never shy away from exploiting others' suffering for political gain, MAGA Republicans are trying to spread the lie that the Biden-Harris Administration is falling down on the job when it comes to Hurricane Helene recovery. (Are they still feeling stung about criticisms of George W. Bush's screw-ups — and that infamous photo — after Hurricane Katrina in 2005? Nah. They're just frantically trying everything they can to stop Kamala Harris.)
All this lie-mongering has made humanitarians like Chef José Andrés, who is actually doing something to help victims of Helene, push back strongly on social media. And even a Republican with Presidential ambitions like Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has refused to toe the MAGA line. "I'm incredibly appreciative of the rapid response and cooperation by the federal team," he said.
If you have friends in Western North Carolina like we do, you may be wondering how you can help them while they dig themselves out of the muck and the mud. We cats have avoided giving to the Red Cross for years — they've turned very crooked. So we have two suggestions: Give Chef José and his team at World Central Kitchen some dollars and love by clicking here. And if you're worried about how Helene may affect the election in North Carolina, you can click here to support the organizing efforts of the state Democratic Party. We cats PURR.
