NATIONAL ICE CREAM CONE DAY UPDATES
A Counter-Intuitive Way to Celebrate The First Official Day of Autumn? Who Cares?! It Involves ICE CREAM!!!
-Public polling continues to indicate momentum for Kamala Harris is continuing. A new NBC national poll (with all the caveats about polling noted!) remains consistent with other polling, giving her a five-point lead (49%-44%) while also showing a majority of Americans now view her more favorably than unfavorably - the first time that has happened without benefit of a war or terrorist attack in decades. The same poll shows she has closed the gap among white voters to single digits (52%-43%) and, perhaps buoyed by the stories out of GA about healthy women who died because of being denied medical help connected to abortion bans and continued anti-woman weirdness from MAGAProject2025 Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, showing a dominant 58%-37% lead among women voters nationally.
-Perhaps not surprisingly, those numbers - particularly that last number - may be spurring the latest wave of insanity from Republican nominee Old Weird Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump (R-apist). That wave started an all-caps social media screed in which Trump insisted with absolutely no evidence whatsoever (naturally) that women "ARE POORER ... LESS HEALTHY ... LESS SAFE ON THE STREETS ... ARE MORE DEPRESSED AND UNHAPPY ... AND ARE LESS OPTIMISTIC AND CONFIDENT IN THE FUTURE THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO!" (Exclamation point his.)
-Going on, he "promised" (and repeated this promise at a rally where people were seen leaving 20 minutes into his rant like Kamala Harris pointed out) that "(WOMEN) WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION" under a second Trump regime - while again lying about Democrats supporting late-term abortion and "EXECUTION OF A BABY AFTER BIRTH" (uh ... no).
-And to put a rancid cherry on top of all of this, Trump then went on to attack MSNBC commentator Stephanie Ruhle, showing just how much he loves and respects women by calling Ruhle "a dumb as a rock bimbo" while appearing with Bill Maher, who inexplicably is still on the air himself.
-Kinda odd that women seem to be turning away from Trump and Vance with that kind of leadership and nurturing rhetoric, isn't it? Or is it that Trump also heard that an online event for Harris hosted by Oprah Winfrey and featuring A-list appearances by actors like Julia Roberts, Chris Rock, Ben Stiller and Meryl Streep, reportedly raised another $100 million for the Harris campaign - to add to her August haul of $189 million, compared to the paltry $44 million to Trump in August (not counting oligarch and SuperPAC support, of course), and putting the Harris campaign within reach of potentially becoming the first Presidential campaign to raise $1 billion dollars.
-Harris will need that money, because while the campaign continues to look good on the macro level, under the surface the last few days have seen what many observers believe and fear is the real strategy Team Trump is leaning on to get back to the White House: MAGA and legal voter manipulation and suppression. The biggest story is in GA, where three MAGA-loyal state election board members have decided that the November 5 vote is already going to necessitate the entire state to have hand counts for all ballots. Non-MAGA voting experts blow off the argument of "inaccurate" machine vote counts as asinine, and the fact that these officials are telegraphing their move this far ahead of Election Day may in fact be a combination of trying to get Harris voters discouraged enough not to register and vote and internal polling that shows the battleground state may be one Trump is having difficulty making inroads in (that is speculation on my part).
-There is also Nebraska, one of two states where electoral college votes are split among districts, which allows a district in which the city of Omaha is centered a reliable Democratic vote. Or it would be if current rules stay in place - Trump loyalists led by Trump lapdog extraordinaire Lindsay Graham (who continued to lobby for it on MEET THE PRESS) are making an 11th-hour push to change the rules of the state and make it a winner-take-all state for all three delegates - important because, IF Trump were to flip AZ and GA and hold NC (not guaranteed) and Harris were able to win the "blue wall" states of MI, PA and WI (with recent WI polling getting closer), that Omaha vote could, if it went red instead of blue, result in a 269-269 deadlock to be decided in what Trump prays would be a MAGA-controlled House. The twist is that the change may come down to a NE delegate who flipped from Democrat to Republican but who is planning to run for Mayor of Omaha - a campaign that could die on the vine if he decided to support Trump instead of his voters.
-Finally, there is Montana, a race important because of what could be a pivotal Senate race. There, the MAGAGOP Secretary of State "accidentally" mailed absentee ballots to MT residents overseas without Kamala Harris' name on the ballot. Naturally the office can't imagine how THAT oversight happened - heavens to murgatroy! - but in toto, it appears the MAGA machine looking to discredit the 2024 vote to their minions is well and truly underway, as well as the one strategy (aside from Trump attempting to win the Barstool Sports/Andrew Tate/UFC Dudebro vote) that has at least a little momentum in Trump's direction.
-Because now we can get to the wacky and salacious news of the campaign, again mostly on the GOP side! Cue up Whodini's "Freaks Come Out At Night" and hit PLAY, if you please ...
-First, charitably-described as "embattled" NC Gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson will stay on that ballot despite CNN and local news reporting on a slew of super-scandalous-for-MAGA stories regarding Robinson being involved in everything from happily calling himself a "NAZI!" to openly hoping slavery could be legalized so he could be a slave owner, and from being identified as a user of the affair-promoting Ashley Madison hookup site to being an active consumer of trans porn - along with other predilections that will not be spelled out here and will NOT be condemned (we won't yuck anyone's yum here) except for the fact that Robinson has actively attacked transsexuals, promoted total abortion bans, and (of course) are claiming that all the stories are lies (dusting off the "high-tech lynching" line Clarence Thomas used), and taking what was already a flailing campaign and throwing him an anvil connected to an anchor buoyed by concrete blocks on it. Trump, despite having called Robinson "Martin Luther King on steroids!" is now trying to distance himself from Robinson, and the belief is that if Robinson hasn't killed Trump's chances in NC, Trump may have a rope tied to Robinson and all that other weight.
-As if that story wasn't nutty enough, late Friday it was revealed that New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi had been having an affair with new Trump BFF Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. How physical it got between the 31-year-old Nuzzi and the 70-year-old RFK Jr. is a question I do not want answered, but what is known is that Nuzzi sent RFK nude photos of her (that he reportedly showed off), that it had been going on since around last December, that Nuzzi wrote a series of articles viciously attacking President Biden while her relationship with RFK was going on (and not acknowledged), and that Nuzzi is now on leave from New York Magazine after telling her editors about it. It is unclear what this story does to Kennedy's marriage to former CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM actress Cheryl Hines, nor whether Kennedy compares what he may have been doing with Nuzzi with Trump and whatever may or may not be happening with Trump and another 31-year-old, noted Muslim bigot and MAGAt extraordinaire Laura Loomer.
-And, again, you mean to tell me Trump and supporters like RFK and Robinson are having a somewhat difficult time winning over female voters? Pshaw!
-All of this somewhat leads to the other story of the weekend, Harris agreeing to a second debate against Trump on October 23 in Atlanta. Trump, who when not trying convince women how nurturing he is, has also been trying to say with a straight face that he actually won the debate against Harris, and who once famously said he would debate Harris "anywhere, anyplace, anytime!" is NOW saying oh, no no no no no - October 23 is far too late to debate, and besides only losers who lost like Kamala want to debate again, so why do it?
-Of course, given that the last debate in 2020 was October 22, and also given that such a date tends to be important for MAGA voters who have been conditioned by Trump that voting any other day than Election Day is inherently corrupt and should therefore not have those votes counted (see GA, NE, MT above), and further also given that, at best, polling indicates tight races in states Trump MUST win, one would think Trump would be gumming at the bit to show the world that September 10 was lucky for Harris and dust her once and for all. And, it may still come to be, but for now it must be asked ... what does Trump order at McDonald's this weekend, Fish Delight Sandwiches, or CHICKEN McNuggets?
-We close with music news, and again, Trump needs whatever momentum he can get, so while so many musical acts continue to endorse Kamala Harris (the most recent being Eminem), Trump did get ... if not an endorsement, at least a sympathizer ... in the somewhat surprising person of, of all people ... JANET JACKSON!?
-Sadly, Janet decided to post on social media stories amplifying one of the ugliest slurs out there against Jackson: the Loomer-promoted and Trump-trumpeted vomit that Harris was not "really Black." Echoing that question, Jackson posted that she "heard" Harris might not actually be Black (SHE IS), and further fretted about the "mayhem" that may ensue around Election Day. It may be better for Jackson to get better handlers and maybe actually listen to RHYTHM NATION 1816, especially the "break the color lines" part she sang and wrote about back in the day?
-Time to listen to some Eminem. What a campaign ...
-On this date in 1692, eight people were hung in what was considered to be the end of the Salem witch trials. On this date in 1969, Willie Mays became the second major league baseball player to hit 600 home runs. On this date in 1975, Gerald Ford escaped the second assassination attempt in 17 days thanks to the heroics of Oliver Sipple, a Vietnam veteran who grabbed Sara Jane Moore's arm as she aimed her gun to miss Ford. On this date in 1991, the Dead Sea Scrolls became available to the public for the first time. And on this date in 2015, U.S. courts ruled "Happy Birthday to You" was now in the public domain and no longer under copyright.
-Debuts on this date: "Das Rheingold" and the Ring Cycle (1869), National Geographic Magazine (1888), MAVERICK (1957), the Peace Corps (1961), FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (1964), THE BAND (1969), the Solidarity trade union (1980), Geffen Records (1980), the Iran-Iraq War (1980), Farm Aid (1985), THE WEST WING (1999).
-Happy Birthday to Erich von Stroheim, Paul Muni, John Houseman, Bob Lemon, Tommy Lasorda, Fay Weldon, Ingemar Johansson, Lute Olson, Art Metrano, David Stern, Ole Anderson, Toni Basil, Paul LeMat, King Sunny Ade, Mike Sexton, Norma McCovey, Harold Carmichael, David Coverdale, Shari Belafonte Harper, John Brennan, Debby Boone, Johnette Napolitano, Nick Cave, Andrea Bocelli, Joan Jett, Bonnie Hunt, Catherine Oxenberg, Vince Coleman, Matt Sharp, Mike Matheny, Mystikal, Billie Piper, and Carlos Correa.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Guru Nanak, Nathan Hale, Shaka, Marion Davies, Irving Berlin, Edward Shackleton, Dorothy Lamour, George C. Scott, Isaac Stern, Gordon Jump, Big Boss Man, Edward Albert, Marcel Marceau, Eddie Fisher, Yogi Berra, and Road Warrior Animal.
-Feed the Worms: Neil Cavuto and Scott Baio entered Earth on this date. FRIENDS made its way onto TV screens on this date in 1994
-Rev. Jeremiah Wright was born on this date. You decide if he gets a Happy Birthday or if he Feeds the Worms.
-The Number One Nonfiction Book in America on this date ... in 2024, CONFRONTING THE PRESIDENTS by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard (so this should be on the fiction list) ... in 2014, WHAT IF? by Randall Munroe ... in 2004, UNFIT FOR COMMAND by John O'Neill with Jerome Corsi (another misidentified-as-nonfiction book) ... in 1994, COUPLEHOOD by Paul Reiser ... in 1984, LOVING EACH OTHER by Leo Buscaglia ... and in 1974, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.