Season of the witch

He's not wrong about the Evangelicals.  Here is Texas pastor Lance Wallnau putting the blame squarely where it belongs:  "Occult empowered deception, manipulation and domination.  That's what ABC pulled off as moderators, and Kamala's script handlers set up the kill box.  One sided questions and fact checking sealed the box...something supernatural needs to disrupt this counterfeit momentum because the same public that voted in Obama is voting again and her deception is advancing."  Harris represents "the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary because she'll bring a racial component and she's younger."  He goes on to compare Trump with King Cyrus, which has probably never happened before.  

The dark arts are definitely at work, turning sister against sister.  Laura Loomer tweeted that the White House would "smell like curry" if Harris wins, while her speeches would be "facilitated by a call center," at which point she ran out of Indian slurs.  Loomer was slapped down by Margie Greene, of all people:  "This is appalling and extremely racist...this does not represent President Trump."  Only because he didn't think of it first, but OK, good.  They're now engaged in a twitter-fight, which could distract Greene from her efforts to shut down the government.  That's how insidious witchcraft is.  Loomer was part of the Trump entourage at the 9/11 commemorations, because who better to bring along than someone who thinks the attacks were an inside job arranged by Donald Rumsfeld?

As an admirer of absolute rulers, Trump can take pleasure in being compared to a Persian king and a French emperor on the same day.  Charles Blow in the New York Times compares the debate to Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign, noting "how easy it is to emotionally manipulate him and how hard it is for him to self-regulate," as Harris drew him in and then delivered a knockout like the Russian winter.  Having described her as "low IQ" and "incompetent," he found her "both shrewd and strategic."  

While Time summed it up with a photograph:

How close to the ball does he need to park?

Polls remain ambiguous, but the Department of Homeland Security has designated January 6, 2025, a National Special Security Event.  I assume they anticipate a Harris-Walz victory, because I can't imagine Democrats storming the Capitol for any reason.  This is probably not what the Founders had in mind when they set aside democracy in favor of the cumbersome Electoral College and delayed the new administration by four months.  Perhaps we can finally start to dismantle it on the grounds of being needlessly expensive.  Money talks louder than common sense.

Nobody believes Trump won the debate except the voices in his head, but the old ratings whore can take comfort from knowing it was watched by 67.1 million people, thirty-one percent more than the June debate with Joe Biden.  There could be several reasons, including the difference between CNN (cable only) and ABC plus six other platforms, but he'll want all the credit.  People slow down to stare at bloody car crashes, too.  In a statistic Trump will like less, the GSA says that more than 300,000 people visited vote.gov in the twelve hours following Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris (she linked to it, reminding fans that you need to register before you can vote).  In other Swift news, Dave Rubin of The Blaze and other MAGA outlets, whose day job is being a useful idiot for Russian propaganda, is worried about her safety.  "Taylor Swift, you are a young, pretty girl [she is a 34-year-old woman].  Do you know what the gang members from Venezuela do to young, pretty girls?  It ain't pretty."  Tell us, Dave, what does the Kremlin think they do?  Do you have any evidence for these gangs rampaging through the Heartland?  Do they eat cats?  No, that's Haitians.  Or is it Somalis terrorizing Minneapolis?  Is there a guide to xenophobic bullshit I can consult?

There are indeed parts of the world being terrorized by violent gangs, including our very own Hells Angels.  They work for the Iranian government killing dissident journalists and human rights activists living abroad.  Along with criminal gangs from eastern Europe they pursue those who have sought asylum from their own murderous governments in China and India, and they deal drugs as a sideline.  You won't hear about them from Russian stooges like Rubin, for obvious reasons.  I assume Swift is better protected than Pouria Zeraati, the Iranian journalist who was stabbed four times in London.  Or Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the Sikh separatist with US-Canadian citizenship who was murdered last year in British Columbia.  I hope so, with Elon Musk trying to recruit her for his Lebensborn.

"I think that Vice President Harris clearly won the debate in terms of her delivery, her organization and her preparation," Roadkill Bob Kennedy told Neil Cavuto.  He added, "I think on substance, President [sic] Trump wins in terms of his governance."  But Trump won't hear that part.  No cabinet job for you!  (If cats really are going missing, I'd check the Kennedy house first.)

Unless it's postmaster general.  Trump's mole Louis DeJoy is still in place and election officials in every state have complained about mail ballots being delayed and properly addressed mail being returned.  I didn't expect Joe Biden to fix every Trump disaster in four years but this should have been in the first ten.  The USPS is not responding to the secretaries of state -- probably lost or returned for postage.  

It's the turn of Springfield, Ohio, to feel the incoherent wrath of MAGA.  The city hall and many schools and public offices were closed because of bomb threats from citizens angry about the presence of documented Haitian immigrants.  At one point all of Clark County's government offices were closed.  If you were inconvenienced by this idiocy, please contact your junior senator J.D. Vance.  And your governor Mike DeWine (R), who names no names but chuckles, "This is something that came up on the internet, and the internet can be quite crazy sometimes."  In other words, thoughts and prayers.

Linda Ronstadt has a lot more guts.  She's livid that Trump is bringing "his toxic politics, his hatred of women, immigrants and people of color, his criminality, dishonesty and ignorance" to her hometown of Tucson today.  "I would prefer to ignore that sad fact.  But since the building has my name on it, I need to say something."  She doesn't like to see him "bringing his hate show to Tucson, a city with deep Mexican-American roots and a joyful, tolerant spirit."  There is more to her Instagram, including this delightful picture.  And she doesn't shrink from calling a rapist a rapist.

Yesterday the Washington Post reminded us that 9/11 first responders continue to suffer from dementia at higher rates than the general population, and the CDC's World Trade Center Health Program still has not included dementia among the conditions it covers.  The neurotoxins they inhaled, often for twelve hours a day without effective protection, came from jet fuel, burning computers, asbestos and pulverized construction materials.  Their physical problems are finally being addressed -- why not this?

First Dick Cheney, now Alberto Gonzales -- am I taking crazy pills?

There is a law awaiting a name which says that eventually all unhinged people be drawn to MAGA like iron filings to a magnet.  We might call it Williamson's Law for Marianne Williamson, the crystals lady who "suspended" her presidential campaign in July but is still out there somewhere.  Today she signed on to the cat libel because "Haitian voodoo is in fact real."  Anyone who dismisses it as racist crap is a "smug elite jerk" who won't listen to concerned citizens like Drake Berentz, the white supremacist who introduced the story at an August 27 city council meeting.  (He registered to speak under the clever pseudonym Nathaniel Higgers.  Nate Higgers, get it?)  Voodoo is real, and so is racism.  I guess we know where Williamson stands.

Sorry, blood sport fans, "THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!"  Trump Truthed on his way to Arizona, insisting that it was "Comrade Kamala" who wanted a rematch.  He prefers to spend the next fifty-odd days telling increasingly intimate audiences about chat au creole and how he "took a bullet" from the Democrats (fact check:  Thomas Crooks was a registered Republican) and ripping off Taylor Swift to sell wildly overpriced shirts and invoking tariffs as the solution to everything (four years ago it was WALL) and basically yelling at clouds.  You can read about it in the New York Times as if it were the discourse of a serious person.  Or not.