Thanks, everyone for being polite and not pointing out my error in saying that Zelensky wanted to "wretch." I have corrected the online-version to "retch." Ugh. Now I feel like a wretch and want to retch.
Regarding immigration trump said he didn’t ask for the bipartisan border negotiations to be killed. Unfortunately, there is a tape of him. I think back when he had them build cages and separated the kids from their moms. He treated them like animals. And the little part of the wall that was built was not paid for by Mexico. I think Kamala came up with solid doable plans with regard to the border.
I cringed for President Zelensky having to stand next to trump as he said what good friends him and Putin were. And what was the malarkey about give and take. Putin invaded Ukraine.
As you said in your closing remarks the one thing we have control over is our actions. Watching tv and wringing our hands and worrying does no good. We need to win with great numbers. Donate, write postcards and letters, do text and phone banks or knock on doors. Sign up to work at your polling place. Vote BLUE up and down the ticket and VOTE early if you can.
Thanks Robert for all you do. It is much appreciated.
I felt badly for President Zelensky, but I think he had to do some damage control after recent comments about the GOP VP candidate. Had he not done something, and the Republicans win (ughhh!!!) in November, he'd be done in a New York minute. He may have bought himself a few hours.
Seeing the two of them together was disappointing but understandable. I have the utmost respect and admiration for one of them, and utter disgust for the other. I hope President Zelensky was able to shower soon after.
Seeing Zelenskyy having to endure a meeting with the Felon brings me to feeling great shame for our nation. It is such an embarrassment for the United States on the global stage.
Look to the future and observe their respective karmas. Trump will be in Federal prison, a despised narcissistic criminal, when Zelensky is still regarded by most of the world as a courageous Churchillian leader. As a nation we must do better by imprisoning Trump for the rest of his natural life.
At least to my ears, it sounded like TFG proclaimed Zelensky agreed with him about the phone call and everything - as though Zelensky was there to support his campaign. Appalling.
I wish we didn't have to keep hearing about the cringey insane comments that tffg keeps spewing and posting, and the description of his "meeting" with President Zelenskyy is just... ugh. I'm sure in addition to wanting to retch at tffg's comments, President Zelenskyy also felt quite wretched having to even be in the same room with him.
But I'm thankful to you, Robert, for bringing the news to us regularly and especially because it minimizes our own exposures to the lunacy that encompasses the Rethugs - most days I no longer turn on the TV and other than Substack for sanity and Discord for some of the best Harris-Walz memes, I'm pretty much like a hermit crab withdrawn cozily inside my shell.
I'm just keeping my head down, ignoring the polls, writing Votefwd.org letters daily; just hit 100 of the international ones today, and they now only have about 7K left to adopt, at 88% of their goal when this started in late August/early September.
Thank you so much for sharing your astronomy photos with us! I really enjoy the positivity of seeing such beauty in our universe, along with the joy of chickens, cats and doggo in Joyce Vance's sm posts, or HCR's Buddy pics, or TCinLA's kitties.
The fact that President Zelensky had to meet Trump makes my blood run cold: a hero of our age having to play nice with a man who supports and even worships, a leader who is intent on destroying Ukraine, is revolting.
I did watch Kamala Harris’ border speech last night, and thought it was perhaps her best speech on policy yet!!!! She was confident, knowledgeable, and very clear about her intentions to secure the border, while at the same time to treat immigrants with the dignity and compassion they deserve. She had tough language about turning back those who cross illegally, and refusing to let them come in for 5 years if they are caught. She railed on Trump and what he did NOT do at the border as president, and his irresponsible decision to kill the bipartisan border bill. She called it dereliction of duty that he had done nothing to improve the border system. She had great passion in talking about working with immigrants to give them a real path to citizenship, and what they mean to our country. If you didn’t know, you would have thought Harris was already president and laying out her next steps at the border. She was unapologetic discussing her proposals and forceful in delivery! I was jumping up off the sofa by the time she finished. One of the guests on the MSNBC show at that time followed up after she spoke with this: “That speech is why Kamala Harris will be our next president”. I am sure Trump did not sleep a wink last night………….Keep Harrris out in public and eating his lunch on every possible topic between now and the election. ( I do wish she had mentioned that right now, the policies of the Biden/Harris administration have already curtailed illegal crossings to a 4-year low. Don’t think she did, or I I missed it. That’s an important point to make to voters, as Trump just lies about how the border is overrun and crawling with illegals even now. Not true.).
I think Harris is smart to start fresh and not tie herself to Biden. Much as it appalls me, if you mention Biden (who I think is a genius), people start to focus on every imaginary thing they don't like about him. Let's have them focus instead on the fresh new ideas she has (even if they are extensions of Biden's). I'll bet Biden himself advised her to distance herself, he's that wise.
Robert writes: "Trump is telling us that he wants to be a dictator. We should believe him."
Yes. Trump said he wants to be a dictator on Day 1. But what he doesn't say is that every day ending in "y" will be Day 1. No dictator stops at Day 1, least of all Trump.
My thoughts and best wishes go out to all the people in the path of Hurricane Helen and its disastrous consequences. At the same time one shouldn't refrain from pointing out what caused this catastrophe or follow the tired script of the aftermath of every mass school shooting – this is the time for thoughts and prayers, but not for politics.
HCR in today's newsletter quoted a hurricane scientist who noted that Helene “gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or Cat 5 Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the past eight years (2017–2024), seven of them being continental U.S. landfalls. That’s as many Cat 4 and 5 landfalls as occurred in the prior 57 years.”
Calling out climate change as the cause of this disaster is not unduly politicizing a catastrophe for so many. It should rather be the duty of responsible politicians at a moment so many intend to cast their vote for their leader who, if elected, will pull the rug from efforts worldwide to fight climate change and continuously makes fun of climate change as just being the cause of creating more beach front properties.
I certainly hope that we get some real coverage of Project 2025’s climate change denial and plan to eliminate NOAA. I would also very much like for this to be a topic at the VP debate. It could t be more timely.
I've been steadily explaining (in simple terms) why TFG and Vance are up to their eyeballs in Project 2025. Will it make a difference? Who knows, but truth needs to be heard again and again.
I agree. While I use "45" because the other substitutes that spring to mind feel a bit juvenile (although I do write tRump when feeling juvenile), it's good to keep his name profile low in the algorithm counts and high in the challenge index as perceived by voters and coming aggressively and unabashedly from Kamala Harris. I love Biden, but he does tend to use the more demure "former president" etc which causes me to chafe and yearn for a good old fashioned call out.
The other day, I was marking calls for Kamala to Pennsylvania. One woman said she is a “fracktivist” and “pro-life,” but that Kamala is better than Trump. Is reality dawning? We can hope, and also work to help that happen.
I hope she also realizes the "pro-life" really means "forced birth," after which mother and baby are on their own if the GOP has its way, with even more maternal care and health care in general on the shopping block with Project 2025, along with all programs that serve us people, not just corporations and the oligarchs.
I am so glad that Harris went to the Southern border in Arizona to talk about actual policies as they relate to immigration. Immigration has given the GOP their strongest, if incoherent, talking points and, conversely, has been a Dem soft spot. We have to go after the issues with real policies - - as Harris has done. The GOP vacuity will become more and more apparent as she keeps the topic front and center. And she should. And I hope she does. And I hope Walz pounds Vance on this very issue next week. The GOP is an empty policy vessel - except of course for Project 2025's prescription to bring us back to the post-reconstruction un-involvement of the late 1870s.
Correct. Immigration is down this year, as are drug deaths (significantly down), because of Biden’s policies in the last 4 years. So the "soft spot" is another manufactured controversy.
Praying for the media to figure out they will NOT like what Trump will do to them if he's the president again, and actually start covering his lies, his insanity, his AGE, his crimes. For God's sake, there's only a month left!
“Manufactured controversies” is lovely phrasing for a real problem. I was born into a world where the news was reported and the weather was forecast. Not complaining, just saying—now and for some good time, the news is forecast and the weather reported.
Oh, they realize it. They just don’t admit their self-serving (and very callous) actions regarding it. Starting with characterizing the crisis as an “issue”.
I wish trumpers would realize the entire border/immigration issue is a manufactured controversy that republicans do not care one bit about until it benefits them and they need to beat the racism drum for supporters.
But why did Zelenskyy meet with T💩p in the first place? Who requested the meeting? It is obvious that meeting with Biden/Harris is logical with their official status as the elected leaders of the US, but the former president is fortunately not in power and has no real standing other than being a candidate for office. As the president of a sovereign nation himself, Zelenskyy has every right to deny a meeting with T💩t. I cannot find any official reason.
After reading various substacks this morning, Zelenskyy’s motivations are more obvious. T💩p, though, reiterated his support and admiration for Putin, though, so I’m not sure how successful Zelenskyy was.
Personally, I think it was a complete waste of Zelenskyy's time. Trump is both crude and immensely stupid....and clearly still bears a grudge that Zelenskyy wouldn't "work" with him in his attempt to frame Joe Biden with manufactured dirt. Trump holds all of his grudges, large and small, real and imagined, for a long, long, long time.
At least the meeting with Zelensky was another opportunity for tfg to show his real self publicly as a shill for Putin. Though I realize he’s exposed himself like this time and again and it just doesn’t seem to register with voters who will support him. I realize it’s pollyannaish to write this but I also see it as another bit of evidence for history books of tfg’s true colors. I’ll keep my negative epithets to myself as I can’t top what creative writers here and elsewhere in Substack have already posted over and iver again.
“During his 2024 campaign, according to a source with direct knowledge, Trump has raised this topic again, venting about the need to punish late-night comedians for giving 'illegal' campaign contributions to the Democratic Party — in the form of jokes and on-air satire," reads the report.”
At least Helene forced many Trumpers in my neighborhood to pull up (or perhaps they blew away never to return) yard signs. Our 4 are back in place.🪧🇺🇸. GOTV !!!!
When one considers the sacrifices Zelensky has made for his country, meeting with 45 was probably not among the worst and at least it was over quickly. I'm sure his people understand he had to do it.
As to your reference to the prohibition against meeting with foreign leaders as an unregistered agent, I expect the meeting was covered in some way under the provision that also demands candidates be briefed on national security matters so whichever wins will be prepared to take the reins. I certainly hope whoever is responsible for providing that information is wise enough to keep it pared down to the least sensitive information possible while still being technically within the requirements. We obviously need to rethink many of our security procedures such as that and apparently not marking down precisely which documents have been checked out from the archives and who is responsible for the return.
Art, Agree totally with you. Who set that up? And why did Zelenskyy have to go to Trump Tower, Especially after that fool has refused to take a stand on behalf of Ukraine victory.
Because, like it or not, Trump could end up as president. Zelensky had to be thinking that every second he spent with the Orange Snake. You don't deliberately poke the snake to get it angrier than it already is.
I couldn’t help it and peeked at The NY Times page to see if they were reporting that a presidential candidate was threatening criminal prosecution of Google for returning negative stories about him. Or that he told Zelenskyy that “It takes two to tango” about the Russian war against Ukraine. Answer: nothing. Crickets.
Thanks, everyone for being polite and not pointing out my error in saying that Zelensky wanted to "wretch." I have corrected the online-version to "retch." Ugh. Now I feel like a wretch and want to retch.
Whatever, he probably ALSO felt like a wretch wanting to retch. He certainly appeared that way to me.
Really great piece of word work.
I hope he took a silkwood shower after!
North American Nebula is red, white and blue.
Regarding immigration trump said he didn’t ask for the bipartisan border negotiations to be killed. Unfortunately, there is a tape of him. I think back when he had them build cages and separated the kids from their moms. He treated them like animals. And the little part of the wall that was built was not paid for by Mexico. I think Kamala came up with solid doable plans with regard to the border.
I cringed for President Zelensky having to stand next to trump as he said what good friends him and Putin were. And what was the malarkey about give and take. Putin invaded Ukraine.
As you said in your closing remarks the one thing we have control over is our actions. Watching tv and wringing our hands and worrying does no good. We need to win with great numbers. Donate, write postcards and letters, do text and phone banks or knock on doors. Sign up to work at your polling place. Vote BLUE up and down the ticket and VOTE early if you can.
Thanks Robert for all you do. It is much appreciated.
I felt badly for President Zelensky, but I think he had to do some damage control after recent comments about the GOP VP candidate. Had he not done something, and the Republicans win (ughhh!!!) in November, he'd be done in a New York minute. He may have bought himself a few hours.
Seeing the two of them together was disappointing but understandable. I have the utmost respect and admiration for one of them, and utter disgust for the other. I hope President Zelensky was able to shower soon after.
Standing next to Trump and looking uncomfortable means something to people who watched.
Unfortunately, it's a Rorschach test in that regard.
It made us understand exactly what a bully looks like.
Perhaps a shot of anti venom?
1, Trump is the poster boy for employer sanctions -- fined for hiring illegals on his job sites.
2. He uses temporary work visas to hire foreign workers to displace US citizens and residents at his resort properties.
3. He pardoned Bannon for scamming suckers who contributed to the Mexican wall project.
Seeing Zelenskyy having to endure a meeting with the Felon brings me to feeling great shame for our nation. It is such an embarrassment for the United States on the global stage.
Look to the future and observe their respective karmas. Trump will be in Federal prison, a despised narcissistic criminal, when Zelensky is still regarded by most of the world as a courageous Churchillian leader. As a nation we must do better by imprisoning Trump for the rest of his natural life.
At least to my ears, it sounded like TFG proclaimed Zelensky agreed with him about the phone call and everything - as though Zelensky was there to support his campaign. Appalling.
Disgusting.
I wish we didn't have to keep hearing about the cringey insane comments that tffg keeps spewing and posting, and the description of his "meeting" with President Zelenskyy is just... ugh. I'm sure in addition to wanting to retch at tffg's comments, President Zelenskyy also felt quite wretched having to even be in the same room with him.
But I'm thankful to you, Robert, for bringing the news to us regularly and especially because it minimizes our own exposures to the lunacy that encompasses the Rethugs - most days I no longer turn on the TV and other than Substack for sanity and Discord for some of the best Harris-Walz memes, I'm pretty much like a hermit crab withdrawn cozily inside my shell.
I'm just keeping my head down, ignoring the polls, writing Votefwd.org letters daily; just hit 100 of the international ones today, and they now only have about 7K left to adopt, at 88% of their goal when this started in late August/early September.
Thank you so much for sharing your astronomy photos with us! I really enjoy the positivity of seeing such beauty in our universe, along with the joy of chickens, cats and doggo in Joyce Vance's sm posts, or HCR's Buddy pics, or TCinLA's kitties.
Thank you.
Thanks for politely correcting my misuse of "wretch." I have corrected the online version.
Big day today. Registration push meets GOTV.
https://www.mobilize.us/ft6/
The fact that President Zelensky had to meet Trump makes my blood run cold: a hero of our age having to play nice with a man who supports and even worships, a leader who is intent on destroying Ukraine, is revolting.
I did watch Kamala Harris’ border speech last night, and thought it was perhaps her best speech on policy yet!!!! She was confident, knowledgeable, and very clear about her intentions to secure the border, while at the same time to treat immigrants with the dignity and compassion they deserve. She had tough language about turning back those who cross illegally, and refusing to let them come in for 5 years if they are caught. She railed on Trump and what he did NOT do at the border as president, and his irresponsible decision to kill the bipartisan border bill. She called it dereliction of duty that he had done nothing to improve the border system. She had great passion in talking about working with immigrants to give them a real path to citizenship, and what they mean to our country. If you didn’t know, you would have thought Harris was already president and laying out her next steps at the border. She was unapologetic discussing her proposals and forceful in delivery! I was jumping up off the sofa by the time she finished. One of the guests on the MSNBC show at that time followed up after she spoke with this: “That speech is why Kamala Harris will be our next president”. I am sure Trump did not sleep a wink last night………….Keep Harrris out in public and eating his lunch on every possible topic between now and the election. ( I do wish she had mentioned that right now, the policies of the Biden/Harris administration have already curtailed illegal crossings to a 4-year low. Don’t think she did, or I I missed it. That’s an important point to make to voters, as Trump just lies about how the border is overrun and crawling with illegals even now. Not true.).
I think Harris is smart to start fresh and not tie herself to Biden. Much as it appalls me, if you mention Biden (who I think is a genius), people start to focus on every imaginary thing they don't like about him. Let's have them focus instead on the fresh new ideas she has (even if they are extensions of Biden's). I'll bet Biden himself advised her to distance herself, he's that wise.
Robert writes: "Trump is telling us that he wants to be a dictator. We should believe him."
Yes. Trump said he wants to be a dictator on Day 1. But what he doesn't say is that every day ending in "y" will be Day 1. No dictator stops at Day 1, least of all Trump.
My thoughts and best wishes go out to all the people in the path of Hurricane Helen and its disastrous consequences. At the same time one shouldn't refrain from pointing out what caused this catastrophe or follow the tired script of the aftermath of every mass school shooting – this is the time for thoughts and prayers, but not for politics.
HCR in today's newsletter quoted a hurricane scientist who noted that Helene “gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or Cat 5 Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the past eight years (2017–2024), seven of them being continental U.S. landfalls. That’s as many Cat 4 and 5 landfalls as occurred in the prior 57 years.”
Calling out climate change as the cause of this disaster is not unduly politicizing a catastrophe for so many. It should rather be the duty of responsible politicians at a moment so many intend to cast their vote for their leader who, if elected, will pull the rug from efforts worldwide to fight climate change and continuously makes fun of climate change as just being the cause of creating more beach front properties.
I certainly hope that we get some real coverage of Project 2025’s climate change denial and plan to eliminate NOAA. I would also very much like for this to be a topic at the VP debate. It could t be more timely.
I wish every single time I mentioned project 2025 to trumpers, they didn’t tell me that Trump disavowed project 2025 and they believe him.
I've been steadily explaining (in simple terms) why TFG and Vance are up to their eyeballs in Project 2025. Will it make a difference? Who knows, but truth needs to be heard again and again.
Have the maga faithful look up Agenda47 - it's the cliff notes version and is on Trump's website.
Peter, perfect comeback. I'll use it tomorrow when I'm canvassing for Harris and Jonathan Nez, who is running against the Maganut Eli Crane
Good point!
One thing I notice about Kamala's speeches is her direct references to "Donald Trump" rather than "my predecessor."
Good to call out by name the man who's currently running for President rather than to refer to him in the abstract.
I agree. While I use "45" because the other substitutes that spring to mind feel a bit juvenile (although I do write tRump when feeling juvenile), it's good to keep his name profile low in the algorithm counts and high in the challenge index as perceived by voters and coming aggressively and unabashedly from Kamala Harris. I love Biden, but he does tend to use the more demure "former president" etc which causes me to chafe and yearn for a good old fashioned call out.
My current favorite name to call him is Convicted Felon.
The other day, I was marking calls for Kamala to Pennsylvania. One woman said she is a “fracktivist” and “pro-life,” but that Kamala is better than Trump. Is reality dawning? We can hope, and also work to help that happen.
I hope she also realizes the "pro-life" really means "forced birth," after which mother and baby are on their own if the GOP has its way, with even more maternal care and health care in general on the shopping block with Project 2025, along with all programs that serve us people, not just corporations and the oligarchs.
I am so glad that Harris went to the Southern border in Arizona to talk about actual policies as they relate to immigration. Immigration has given the GOP their strongest, if incoherent, talking points and, conversely, has been a Dem soft spot. We have to go after the issues with real policies - - as Harris has done. The GOP vacuity will become more and more apparent as she keeps the topic front and center. And she should. And I hope she does. And I hope Walz pounds Vance on this very issue next week. The GOP is an empty policy vessel - except of course for Project 2025's prescription to bring us back to the post-reconstruction un-involvement of the late 1870s.
Correct. Immigration is down this year, as are drug deaths (significantly down), because of Biden’s policies in the last 4 years. So the "soft spot" is another manufactured controversy.
Praying for the media to figure out they will NOT like what Trump will do to them if he's the president again, and actually start covering his lies, his insanity, his AGE, his crimes. For God's sake, there's only a month left!
The GOP should not be best known for its spraying of lies. But this is what they have become. A leader sets the tone.
“Manufactured controversies” is lovely phrasing for a real problem. I was born into a world where the news was reported and the weather was forecast. Not complaining, just saying—now and for some good time, the news is forecast and the weather reported.
Oh, they realize it. They just don’t admit their self-serving (and very callous) actions regarding it. Starting with characterizing the crisis as an “issue”.
I wish trumpers would realize the entire border/immigration issue is a manufactured controversy that republicans do not care one bit about until it benefits them and they need to beat the racism drum for supporters.
But why did Zelenskyy meet with T💩p in the first place? Who requested the meeting? It is obvious that meeting with Biden/Harris is logical with their official status as the elected leaders of the US, but the former president is fortunately not in power and has no real standing other than being a candidate for office. As the president of a sovereign nation himself, Zelenskyy has every right to deny a meeting with T💩t. I cannot find any official reason.
Hedging his bets.
After reading various substacks this morning, Zelenskyy’s motivations are more obvious. T💩p, though, reiterated his support and admiration for Putin, though, so I’m not sure how successful Zelenskyy was.
Personally, I think it was a complete waste of Zelenskyy's time. Trump is both crude and immensely stupid....and clearly still bears a grudge that Zelenskyy wouldn't "work" with him in his attempt to frame Joe Biden with manufactured dirt. Trump holds all of his grudges, large and small, real and imagined, for a long, long, long time.
Holds grudges and gets immense gratification from revenge.
At least the meeting with Zelensky was another opportunity for tfg to show his real self publicly as a shill for Putin. Though I realize he’s exposed himself like this time and again and it just doesn’t seem to register with voters who will support him. I realize it’s pollyannaish to write this but I also see it as another bit of evidence for history books of tfg’s true colors. I’ll keep my negative epithets to myself as I can’t top what creative writers here and elsewhere in Substack have already posted over and iver again.
Elon Musk? Maybe he set up this meeting…..
You couldn’t make this stuff up….
“During his 2024 campaign, according to a source with direct knowledge, Trump has raised this topic again, venting about the need to punish late-night comedians for giving 'illegal' campaign contributions to the Democratic Party — in the form of jokes and on-air satire," reads the report.”
https://mashable.com/article/colbert-kimmel-respond-trump-satire-illegal
At least Helene forced many Trumpers in my neighborhood to pull up (or perhaps they blew away never to return) yard signs. Our 4 are back in place.🪧🇺🇸. GOTV !!!!
I’m wondering why on earth Trump was allowed to ‘meet’ with Zelensky. Who set that up and why?
Have yet to read how it came about.
From MAD magazine, “We sell 11 foot poles for people you wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot one”
When one considers the sacrifices Zelensky has made for his country, meeting with 45 was probably not among the worst and at least it was over quickly. I'm sure his people understand he had to do it.
As to your reference to the prohibition against meeting with foreign leaders as an unregistered agent, I expect the meeting was covered in some way under the provision that also demands candidates be briefed on national security matters so whichever wins will be prepared to take the reins. I certainly hope whoever is responsible for providing that information is wise enough to keep it pared down to the least sensitive information possible while still being technically within the requirements. We obviously need to rethink many of our security procedures such as that and apparently not marking down precisely which documents have been checked out from the archives and who is responsible for the return.
Art, Agree totally with you. Who set that up? And why did Zelenskyy have to go to Trump Tower, Especially after that fool has refused to take a stand on behalf of Ukraine victory.
Because, like it or not, Trump could end up as president. Zelensky had to be thinking that every second he spent with the Orange Snake. You don't deliberately poke the snake to get it angrier than it already is.
Sad but true.
But snakes aren't angry until they are poked. They just want to be left alone to do their thing.
True, but it's Trump. He gets angry if he is left alone. If the media ignores him, he starts screaming and biting.
A bit OT, I think copperheads do strike without any warning.
Fantastic breakdown of the news today, Robert.
We loved VP Kamala's speech on the border.
Took my breath away Nepula in your daily dose.
Thank you, thank you, thank you
I couldn’t help it and peeked at The NY Times page to see if they were reporting that a presidential candidate was threatening criminal prosecution of Google for returning negative stories about him. Or that he told Zelenskyy that “It takes two to tango” about the Russian war against Ukraine. Answer: nothing. Crickets.
Bless you for looking. I didn't bother. I knew the NYTimes would ignore both.