NATIONAL CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE DAY UPDATES
An Excellent Way To Ask "Are You OK?" As It's Also Are You Okay Day
-The rapturous reviews of Kamala Harris' shellacking of Old Weird Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump (R-apist) continues, with two new polls (asterisk polling!) showing Harris opening up a 5% lead nationally, another $46M raised in the day and change since Tuesday's debate, and finger-pointing on the MAGAGOP side about how pretty pretty bad Trump was continues to reverberate and recriminate. Harris and Tim Walz have started a seven-state swing-state barnstorming tour to continue the momentum through to the states where the election will be decided, and Democrats who have longed for Trump to have it handed to him at a debate over nine years still reveling in how thoroughly Harris owned Trump, literally from the opening handshake through the rest of the debate.
-Of course, one person has been wailing and posting and wet farting about how nuh-UH Harris didn't win I won I won I WON!!! since he decided to appear in the post-debate Spin Room (as anyone who actually won a political debate does - NOT!) (and look for the photo of him standing as reporters circled around him without actually wanting to interact with him if not ignoring him), was (cue sad trombone) Trump. The losing loser who lost bigly leaned hard on Fox News drones like Sean Hannity and the Fox and Friends crew, desperately try to spin that actually, Americans care far more about being loved by Viktor Orban and entertaining concepts of plans and Presidential candidates personally performing sex change operations in prison (yes, these were all mentioned - review the debate tape as Harris has done by turning the entire debate into a digital ad) than inflation or abortion rights or whether a ranting old man in desperate need of eldercare should be allowed to run the country or not.
-Perish the thought!
-Rather than try to defend the indefensible stink bomb of the Trump debate - or to touch the acknowledged-by-people-like Frank Luntz Mitt Romney and Matt Walsh that Harris utterly destroyed Trump - Trump acolytes like the aforementioned Hannity and Fox drones and right-wing almost-a-man WAPless Ben Shapiro have instead begun to attack ABC and its surprisingly strong (for the most part) moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, for the aposty of fact-checking Trump in real time for what CNN's Daniel Dale called Trump's "staggeringly dishonest" debate performance (which resulted in a Trump humiliation). Echoing a later social media post from Dear Leader, the aforementioned broadcast MAGAts demanded ABC "lose their license!" over more or less not allowing Trump free rein to say anything without a hint of resistance (many MAGAts are calling the debate "Three on One - UNFAIR!") and not to fact check Harris at all.
-For the record, ABC does not have a license. It is a broadcaster with affiliates, and the affiliates are the ones that hold the broadcast licenses, so they would need to be the ones "punished," even though ABC could still upload content via their unregulated digital platforms, which include ESPN and Disney among other studios and broadcast houses. As for Harris, well, reporter Marc Jacobs responded to those charges rather snarkily: "ABC fact-checked Trump more often than Harris for the same reason the FBI arrested Al Capone more often than they arrested Amelia Earhart."
-Ouch!
-THIS JUST IN: After insanely claiming that when a UFC fighter loses they immediately demand a rematch that Trump would not do since Trump "WON!" the debate - and despite the Harris campaign lobbying for another debate minutes after the end of the Tuesday debate - Trump just announced in a social media post that "THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!"
-LLLLLLLLLL-OSER!
-And don't even get us started on the Taylor Swift endorsement! Received 27 minutes after the end of the debate (that Joe Biden stepped away from the Democratic nomination and endorsed Harris 27 minutes later is, we are sure, a complete and total coincidence!), Swift's post got over 2.8 million Instagram likes in the first few hours of it being posted - including one from WNBA Superstar Caitlin Clark - the site Vote.gov now reports well 400,000 people began the process of registering to vote. Swift herself continued the push while accepting an award at the MTV Video Awards (and in other news, apparently MTV plays enough music to have an awards show!), asking during an acceptance speech that her fans continue to enroll and cast each vote - and Trump bigly ranted and intoned that Swift "would pay a price" for rejecting Trump's AI-generated posts that falsely claimed Swift had endorsed Trump.
-Speaking of music, Swift's endorsement has generated a little run of endorsements from female queens of rock in the last day and change, including Melissa Etheridge ("I did my research!" Etheridge wrote in an echo of a part of Swift's post), Stevie Nicks (who proudly identified as a "Childless Dog Lady" in her endorsement), and Linda Ronstadt, who has a particular beef with Trump since Trump will be appearing in a rally tomorrow in Tucson in a building named after Ronstadt and made it very clear she Does Not Approve of the rally being staged anywhere near her.
-The Swift story also took a creepy turn when social media owner billionaire weirdo Elon Musk responded to Swift's endorsement that was signed "Childless Cat Lady" by ... uh ... promising or declaring? ... that he would "give you a child and guard your cats with my life." Musk claimed it was a joke which nobody laughed at, although a social media post that had been identified originally as being from Taylor's beau Travis Kelce in which Travis reportedly reminded the doughy Musk that Travis "could also twits you into a pretzel" was apparently a deep fake). The Musk Tweet, to clarify, is true.
-Out of all the wild incantations that took place during the debate, the most notorious were centered around Trump claiming Haitian refugees were marauding through the town of Springfield, OH, to round up, barbecue, and eat cats - apparently as part of a Haitian voodoo ritual of some sort. The claim was shot down once it bubbled up through the muck of hard right social media sites, but it did not stop Trump ally Christopher Rufo to put up a bounty to try to find an example that would confirm Dear Leader's claim. Unfortunately, this morning the story took another turn when Springfield City Hall had to be evacuated after receiving a bomb threat from someone apparently believing Trump's lie even after no such evidence about the story was found.
-Joe Biden is still President, by the way - and tomorrow will be meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy amid reports in DC and in Europe that NATO and the United States are likely to reverse their stance and allow Ukraine to use longer-range missiles to attach sites far deeper in Russia than previously given. This has been a change Zelenskyy has been begging for since some of the most devastating attacks against Ukrainian cities and infrastructures have been launched from sites that currently cannot be reached. Allied forces were previously worried such strikes could prompt Vladimir Putin to attack NATO countries and bring NATO more directly into the conflict, but erosions of Russian capabilities and the damage being done to Ukrainian infrastructure is apparently combining to soften the stance of The White House.
-SLAVA UKRAINI!
-In closing, we return to the world of music to give a heartfelt shout-out to Jon Bon Jovi. Yesterday, he was shooting a video at a bridge in Nashville when he spotted a woman preparing to jump off the bridge. As documented by security camera footage, Bon Jovi walked over to the woman who, along with another friend of the woman, proceeded to get her to step back to safety to not attempt to take her life, and to get a hug from her friend and Bon Jovi himself. Living on a prayer, indeed - and if you feel you need help, ask for it. Even if that person who helps may not be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
-On this date in 1940, some of the oldest prehistoric cave paintings ever found were first discovered in France. On this date in 1943, German troops helped Benito Mussolini escape to Munich. On this date in 1953, Jacqueline Bouvier married John F. Kennedy. On this date in 1958, the Supreme Court ordered Little Rock (AK) High School to be integrated. On this date in 1992, Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman to fly in space. On this date in 1995, the Washington Generals broke their 8,829-game losing streak by finally defeating the Harlem Globetrotters in a game. And on this date in 2009, a protest by the astroturf "Tea Party" drew thousands to Washington, DC.
-Debuts on this date: Nikita Khruschev as Soviet leader (1953), BONANZA (1959), THE MONKEES (1966), WISH YOU WERE HERE (1975), SCARY MONSTERS (AND SUPER CREEPS) (1980), THE SMURFS (1981), ENTOURAGE (2004).
-Happy Birthday to H.L. Mencken, Maurice Chevalier, Jesse Owens, Desmond Llewelyn, Frank McGee, Stanislaw Lem, Harvey Schmidt, George Jones, Sir Ian Holm, Richard Hunt, Henry Waxman, Linda Gray, Mickey Lolich, Maria Muldaur, Michael Ondaatje, Barry White, Leonard Peltier, Tony "Redbone" Bellamy, Joe Pantoliano, Gerry Beckley, Neil Peart, Jeff Jarvis, Ricky Rudd, Wilfred Benitez, Road Warrior Animal, Amy Yasbeck, Ben Folds, Paul F. Tompkins, Paul Walker, 2 Chainz, Ruben Studdard, Jennifer Hudson, Alfie Allen, Emily Rossum, Andrew Luck, Kim "RM" Nam-joon, and Sydney Sweeney.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Peter Mark Roget, Marjorie Merriweather Post, Steven Biko, Margaret McFarland, Anthony Perkins, Raymond Burr, Tom Ewell, Stanley Turrentine, Johnny Cash, David Foster Wallace, Jack Kramer, Claude Chabrol, Ray Dolby, Sir Ian Paisley, Joe Sample, and Ramsey Lewis.
-Feed the Worms: Gatling Gun inventor Richard Jordan Gatling and comic scuzzbag Louis C.K. entered Earth on this date.