14 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

1. Good weekend quote Pols. It is pertinent to this campaign. People can change their minds with new information. Trump's flip-flop on the Florida abortion ballot is more poltiical than personal.

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2. one who changed her mind …

   Woman whose post ignited false Springfield cat claim says it was based on rumor

   Erika Lee, a Springfield resident, recently authored a post on Facebook, saying that her neighbor’s cat was lost and she was told it was because the pet was attacked by a Haitian immigrant. …

   Now, Lee, has said she was sorry about the way the events unfolded, with the unfounded conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants amplified by both former President Trump and his vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance (R). 

   “It just exploded into something I didn’t mean to happen,” Lee said in an interview with NBC News on Friday.

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3. Reading this news coverage of Trump's rally in Las Vegas, it is clear that you can always tell when Trump is lying — his lips move.

   Trump spreads baseless claims about Harris’s debate performance

   Republican nominee Donald Trump spent his second rally since Tuesday’s debate promoting false online accusations trying to discredit Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance, alongside baseless allegations of chicanery in the reporting of crime statistics and jobs data.

   Each paragraph in this news (not opinion) item started off with a new baseless, or false claim.  Closing with this report.

   He also baselessly accused Democrats of wanting to raze Manhattan and build structures with no windows.

   Trump repeatedly ribbed, “We have a lot of time.” But hundreds of fans left within the first 30 minutes, many complaining that he had been late and that the sound quality was poor. Almost all of the standing crowd had left before the end.

    

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   1. Nice to read an account of Trump's rally that mentioned crowd member departures. 

      I went looking for reports on the Las Vegas rally's capacity, attendance, overflow, and departures, and found very little.

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4. I'm Rubber; Your'e glue. How to bypass Trump lies. Marcy at EmptyWheel.

   Interesting sidcussion about how to avoid the tit-for-tat, he-said, she-said trap.

   Some of these are admittedly closer to direct responses to Trump, but except where Trump makes claims about Harris, she does not directly dispute him.

   The effectiveness of this approach is clear: Rather than saying Trump’s manufactured version of truth was false — again, setting up a clear dispute and inviting Trump’s supporters to simply dismiss her as someone opposing him because she hates him — she instead demonstrated, over and over, Trump’s weakness.

   That recognizes an important fact about the cult-like following Trump has created: So long as his followers believe his strength, they will believe what he says as an article of faith. They believe in him, and so believe what he says.

   But they believe in him because they believe his pose of being strong.

   With some exceptions (such as a segment of the Jan6ers prosecuted because they believed him, and left with a lot of time to reconsider the actions they took in response), Trump’s people won’t start to rethink what he tells them to believe until they first doubt who he is, until they first begin to see through his con of being strong and successful.

   And you demonstrate that not by telling them facts that might directly contest the belief system they’ve adopted from Trump, but by pointing not just to evidence that he’s weak — he is laughed at, he is insecure about his crowd size, his daddy gave him millions that he squandered in six bankruptcies.

   It’s only after they step out of a belief system based on a false belief that Trump is strong will people listen to you.

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5. Breaking news: Somebody else tried to kill the son-of-a-bitch: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/fbi-says-it-is-investigating-attempted-assassination-of-trump-219401797614

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   1. No shots were fired and the guy ran when the Secret Service opened fire. Of course, far right wing media is already claiming "2nd assassination attempt." The guy with the gun, that he dropped, was caught in the next county over.

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      1. Clearly, and obviously, it’s time to finally wake up and face the fact; that there’s only one definitive solution to these assassination attempts — America desperately needs more people with more guns!?!?

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         1. Especially in Florida!

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      2. It's actually the third if you count the debate. 

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         1. 🤣Michael, you made me spit tea all over my screen.

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   2. So….what if Trump was assassinated?

      Would martyrdom raise his standing in the polls? Would celebrities mourn and take selfies by his casket? Perhaps with a big grin and a "thumbs up"?

      I'm sure these are the questions that keep the Former Guy up at night.

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6. In an interview on CNN's State of the Union with Dana Bash it was made evident that JD Vance by his own account fabricates things for attention.

   https://www.salon.com/2024/09/15/were-creating-a-story-vance-admits-hes-making-up-haitian-smears/

    

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7. 

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