An editorial cartoon, killed
Cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit The Washington Post after her editor killed a cartoon.
Telnaes left the The Washington Post after her editor killed the cartoon:
Jimmy Carter (1924–2024)
He lived a good life, a life of uncommon decency, and there’s probably some grace in its ending before our next national nightmare officially begins.
He lived a good life, a life of uncommon decency, and there’s probably some grace in its ending before our next national nightmare officially begins.
One more commentary on the election
It’s by Rebecca Solnit: “Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do.”
It’s by Rebecca Solnit: “Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do”
Final hours
Today would be a good day to read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American.
FORWARD
I don’t want to look like The Washington Post in not endorsing a candidate. So here’s an official endorsement: the Orange Crate Art editorial board — and owner — urge readers to vote for Kamala Harris for president.
No endorsements
Shameful. And shameful.
Donations by ZIP code
From The Washington Post (gift link), a ZIP-based guide to online donations to the Democratic and Republican candidates for president. In my little town: 312 donations to Harris ($60K), 125 ($20K) to the other.
Trump Bible in Oklahoma
Only the Trump Bible will do.
“Tell Me Why You Like Kamala”
At harvest.ink, a song lyric after “Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt”: “Tell Me Why You Like Kamala.”
The Last Republican
The story behind The Last Republican, a documentary about Adam Kinzinger: “‘Do you have contempt for my views?’ How a leftwing film-maker and a Republican came together” (The Guardian ).
About last night
In the lastest installment of Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson offers an astute analysis of last night’s debate:
Swift FTW
As just reported on MSNBC: Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
Cleanup on aisle 45
Kamala Harris: “What we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”
“Red flags for scholars of fascism”
Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump has always invented his stories from whole cloth, but there used to be some way to tie them to reality. Today that seemed to be gone. He was in a fantasy world, and his rhetoric was apocalyptic. It was also bloody in ways that raise huge red flags for scholars of fascism.”
Sanewashing
Margaret Sullivan, former public editor at The New York Times: “Why does the media sanewash Trump? It’s all a part of the false-equivalence I’ve been writing about here in which candidates are equalized as an ongoing gesture of performative fairness.”
Trump splatter, transcribed
Yesterday at the Economic Club on New York, Donald Trump gave a lengthy non-response to a question about the cost of childcare. The non-response is incoherent enough when you watch and listen. But I wanted to see it, and I think the incoherence deepens with print, or with pixels. So I typed it out.
Orange Crate Art: Georgia, 46th of 50
From The Washington Post: Gun-control advocates consistently report that Georgia’s gun laws are among the nation’s weakest. The nonprofit group Everytown for Gun Safety ranks Georgia 46th in the country for gun law strength, in a tier of states referred to as “national failures.” The Giffords Law Center, another organization that advocates for stricter gun measures, gives Georgia an F rating on its annual scorecard, faulting the state for lacking rules such as universal background checks and red-flag laws. During his term as governor, Kemp has expanded gun rights, including signing a 2022 bill that allows residents to carry a concealed handgun in public without a permit. When Giffords delivered Georgia its failing grade, Kemp replied: “I’ll wear this ‘F’ as a badge of honor.”
“We have created this hellscape for our children”
Dr. Annie Andrews, pediatrician and senior advisor to Everytown for Gun Safety, on MSNBC a few minutes ago: “My heart is broken for this community, for every child that was in that building today, for the children whose lives were stolen by this public health crisis of gun violence. And I have a pit in my stomach, as I do every time I see these headlines. “This is a public health crisis, and what is so infuriating about it is we have created this hellscape for our children. Every child in this country goes to school and sits in a classroom where they should be learning how to read and write, and they're also learning how to hide from a bad man with the gun. And for far too many children in this country, that reality grows even darker when an active shooter incident happens. “This is a public health crisis, and we know the solutions. The solutions include commonsense gun laws, like expanded background checks, secure-storage laws so that adult gun owners cannot allow access to children to their firearms, and red-flag laws. What we lack in this country is elected leaders with the moral courage to pass the laws that the majority of Americans know that we need and that the children in this country so desperately need and deserve. “We have robbed every child in this country of a sense of physical and psychological safety in their classrooms, and as a mother, it breaks my heart.”
Advertisements for myself
The Trump campaign is paying for TV ads to soothe Donald Trump.
Curb your introductions
An imaginary Wanda Sykes confronts Larry Dvaid: “Why’d you go and introduce that little girl to that anti-vax worm-eaten bear-pranking whale-beheading no-account plug-ugly drug-addict conspiracy-ass Trump-flunkie?”
“I accept”
“On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth, I accept your nomination for President of the United States”: Kamala Harris, a few minutes ago at the DNC.
Reappropriation
The reappropriation of “Born in the U.S.A.” at tonight’s DNC — a song first appropriated by Ronald Reagan so many years ago — makes my head hurt.
“Harris Walz”
Elaine Fine has written a one-minute waltz for piano.
Responses and non-answers
Lawrence O’Donnell’s commentary on yesterday’s Trump “General News Conference” is worth watching in full.
Uh-oh
Donald Trump is having what he calls “a General News Conference” at 2:00 p.m. (EDT). I cannot imagine that his advisers have advised that. But the mess his campaign is in? He alone can fix it!
Evisceration in Philadelphia
“Make no mistake: violent crime was up under Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the crimes he committed”: in Philadelphia, Governor Tim Walz is eviscerating Donald Trump.
It’s Tim Walz
An excellent choice, making a ticket very much like Obama–Biden in affect.
Irony alert
J.D. Vance: “I felt like the modern world was constantly in flux. The things that you believed 10 years ago were no longer even acceptable to believe 10 years later.”
What did I think about Kamala Harris?
From 2019: “The last thing Democrats need to do is to turn the 2020 presidential election into a battle between oldsters. Such a battle will do little to spark voter interest and much to spark parody..”
“President Venn Diagram”
The webcomic xkcd is on the case.