Aw yeah, Donald Trump as the guy who “isn’t stodgy, who likes to have some fun, and likes to tell some jokes” about women and other inferiors.

It’s telling that Vance’s notion of a freewheeling, lighthearted campaign involves disparaging political opponents with baseless slander and sexist screeds.

For example, Vance took a typically cheap shot at Harris prior to her interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. He posted a 2007 clip of Miss South Carolina Teen USA Caitlin Upton bombing an answer to a question about why Americans couldn’t find their own country on a map. He wrote: “BREAKING: I have gotten ahold of the full Kamala Harris CNN interview.”

Vance’s “joke” was lousy politics that distracted from any actual gaffes Harris might’ve made. (You’ll note that the Harris social media team consistently hangs Vance with his own awful words.) When Berman later reminded Vance that Upton is a real person, who was so humiliated by the 2007 incident that she contemplated suicide, Vance expressed zero remorse and refused to apologize.

“Look, I’ve said a lot of things on camera; I’ve said a lot of stupid things on camera,” he said. “Sometimes when you’re in the public eye, you make mistakes. And again, I think the best way to deal with it is to laugh at ourselves, laugh at this stuff and try to have some fun in politics.”

Laugh at ourselves, sure, but he isn’t doing that, and Trump never does that. What Trump does, constantly and often and with sadistic enthusiasm, is laugh at other people, especially women and other weaklings. He’s not a good guy who laughs at himself and is trying to have some fun in politics, he’s a sadistic bully who has jeered at other people his entire life.

It’s in telling contrast to the collective MAGA freakout when Tim Walz joked in a video about his limited spice palate and affection for “white guy tacos.” Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Megyn Kelly and other right-wingers accused Walz of “self-loathing” anti-white bigotry. These are people who don’t appreciate or even comprehend self-deprecating humor, because for them, humor is solely another form of exerting dominance over people who are more vulnerable.

Exerting dominance plus casual sadism. Don’t ever forget about the casual sadism, because it matters.

Massive collective cringe.

Daily Kos sweetly transcribed the incoherent jabber, but for the full effect it’s necessary to watch him jabbering. It’s as if he’s been wound up like a clock and has to make a noise until he winds down. His only concern is to keep saying words, so he does keep saying words, without any meaning or connection to each other at all.

Question: If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable?

And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?

Trump’s Answer:

Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, you know, I was somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue, it’s a very important issue, but I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that because the child care is child care, it’s something you have to have it.

And so on. Daily Kos punctuated it as if it were a series of sentences but I de-corrected the excerpt back to the punctuation-free sustained babble it really was.

What no leprechauns?

The schoolbook publisher, The Educational Company of Ireland (Edco), has apologised for some content in one of its Junior Cycle curriculum books, adding that upon “closer inspection”, it will remove it.

In a section entitled “All Different, All Equal”, an Aran-jumper wearing Irish family is described as eating bacon, cabbage and potatoes every day and not liking change or difference, while a mixed-race family is depicted as eating more varied foods and travelling internationally.

In other words the Irish family are boring bigoted hicks while the “mixed-race” family are fascinating and cosmopolitan. No doubt there are plenty of families who fit both descriptions, but didactic tales about them can…shall we say, go wrong.

The publisher issued a statement to RTÉ News in response to queries around the book’s depictions, which had led to widespread calls for the book to be pulled.

In the statement, Edco said: “Firstly, we would like to say that we welcome the public’s interest in this issue and the whole area of SPHE.

“By means of background and context, the main function of this activity (‘Looking at Difference’) is designed to help students understand the importance of diversity in our lives, to introduce students to the Equal Status Acts and to highlight the types of discrimination they cover.

“Following the students’ introduction to the Equal Status Acts, the activity uses exaggeration and hyperbole to convey the nature and effects of inclusion and bias.” However, it said that “on closer inspection, we now appreciate that our approach should have been different”.

Well, yeah. Assigning kids in Irish schools a book that portrays Irish people as boring bigoted hicks is probably not the best way to go.

Reduxx tells us:

A Canadian man in his sixties who abandoned his wife and children to live as a six-year-old girl is currently promoting his memoir about his transition. Stefonknee Wolscht, formerly known as Paul Andrew Wolscht, is a father to seven children and was married to his wife for 23 years before claiming to be transgender in 2009.

I call fake on his claim to be trans. If he were serious he wouldn’t name himself Stefonknee. He might as well have named himself Pederast.

Prior to “coming out” as transgender, Wolscht was a father to seven children and had been married to a woman for over two decades. In his memoire, he claims that after telling her his wife that wanted to begin living openly as a “woman” in 2009, she demanded he move out.

Though [he is] portraying himself as a victim of transphobia, Reduxx has located old posts Wolscht made to social media in which he admits to threatening his wife and children after announcing his gender transition.

It woz the gender anguish wot made him do it, guvnor.

Disturbingly, Wolscht has claimed that he is “welcomed into classrooms to educate children on gender and sexuality.”

In an exchange on X in which one user expressed criticism of Wolscht’s sexual proclivities, he replied: “We have a long way to go. Perhaps I’ll teach a TERFs kid soon.”

Yes but trans people are the most persecuted demographic ever of all time. Shut up.

God damn it Guardian.

Pregnant people and fetuses not being protected from wildfire risks – report

Wildfires pose serious risks to pregnant people and their developing fetuses, including low birth weight and preterm birth. But public health officials are not doing nearly enough to keep these vulnerable populations safe, according to a new report.

“While we know that wildfires are continuing to intensify in the US, and we’re increasingly clear on what damages wildfires represent to maternal and newborn health, we’re still not seeing the kind of response from policymakers and public health officials that we need,” said Skye Wheeler, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and one of the report’s authors.

Maternal health? How did that get in there? Surely xir meant parental health, not maternal.

Wheeler and researchers with the perinatal health non-profit Nurturely surveyed more than 50 doctors, midwives, doulas, lactation consultants and other community-based birth workers in Oregon, which this year has experienced its worst-ever fire season.

Midwives? Surely that should be midspouses.

They said public health officials were not doing enough to communicate warnings and safety information to vulnerable communities, particularly the unhoused and those who speak little English…

But deleting the word “women” from the language is a brilliant way to communicate warnings and safety information to vulnerable communities, right?

Health providers said that authorities had not provided them with guidance on the specific risks wildfires posed to pregnant people – and that they typically had to rely on their own research to answer patients’ questions.

Please inform what the research has turned up about the usefulness of never saying “women.”

In a statement, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) said it “recognizes and remains highly concerned about the negative health effects that wildfire smoke poses to people who are pregnant, those who are unhoused, and people with limited English proficiency. We have promoted and shared educational materials in multiple languages since 2017.”

Great. Brilliant. We are hugely relieved to know that the Oregon Health Authority carefully avoids using the word “women” when talking to pregnant women.

“Environmental risks like wildfire smoke and heat are increasing every day,” said Rebecca Schmidt, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis who was not involved with the report. “Right now, I don’t think clinicians have been trained very well on those potential exposures and what they might be doing to [patients’] health.”

Oh look – the Guardian actually altered what she said, changing “women’s” to “patients’.” That takes some fucking gall, I must say. It’s not enough for the Guardian to lie in order to erase women, it has to make its sources lie in order to erase women too.

But, suddenly, the rules change, I guess because Black women have walked to the front of the stage?

“The US is the only high-income country in the world where that’s true,” Wheeler said. “The US can’t afford more pressure on its maternal health systems, and public health officials need to do everything they can to try and reverse worsening maternal health, especially for Black and other women of color.”

Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, with risk spanning income and education levels. They are also disproportionately exposed to air pollution. Exposure to harmful pollutants, poor air quality, and high temperatures are associated with women of color delivering babies with lower birth weights.

Yikes. Four “women” in that short passage – it’s dizzying.

It’s at the very end though. It’s notorious that vanishingly few people read news articles all the way to the end.

Punishing women for refusing to compete against men:

Female darts players have been threatened with disciplinary action if they refuse to play transgender opponents.

Male opponents, they mean. I suppose there could also be an issue of playing women on testosterone, but that doesn’t seem to happen, maybe because women aren’t as shameless as men who pretend to be women.

Almost four months after a British female player forfeited a match against a trans woman at a World Darts Federation event, the governing body has begun a controversial crackdown on such protests.

Ahead of announcing the provisional fields for this year’s World Championship, the WDF said in a statement: “The WDF wishes to clarify its position on player withdrawals.

“Once the first dart has been thrown in a tournament, any player that subsequently withdraws from playing a match may be considered to be bringing the game into disrepute and could face disciplinary action.”

Hey, you know who is really bringing the game into disrepute? Governing bodies that allow men to infiltrate and destroy women’s sports, that’s who. You. Look in the mirror.

The statement was issued barely a month after Deta Hedman, who pulled out of her Denmark Open quarter-final against Noa-Lynn van Leuven in May, withdrew from a second competition upon learning she would face another trans opponent.

…

Hedman, who has launched a petition against darts’ current gender participation policy, accused the WDF of putting the mental welfare of trans women ahead of those born female.

“They haven’t shown any regard for the mental health of anyone female-born at all,” she said. “It’s all about the mental health of transgender women.”

And so we are forced to conclude that they see women as garbage.

Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at human rights charity Sex Matters, said: “As if it’s not bad enough that women face unfairness, they’re being forced to play or lose their future chances as well. They lose twice over. It shouldn’t be left to women to take a stand, but if they do, they will be punished. Some people say, ‘Why don’t women refuse to play?’ This is why.”

Van Leuven, who has divided her sport since joining the women’s circuit after beginning transitioning in 2022, made headlines in March after winning two Professional Darts Corporation titles – the PDC Women’s Series in Wigan and a PDC Tour event in Hildesheim, Germany.

Journalists really should not follow the “call him ‘her'” rule in a story of this kind. They never should, but especially in a story of this kind.

Sigh. Gosh, yes, why shouldn’t men be allowed to dress up as parody prostitutes at work?

A minister has told civil servants that they are not allowed to come into work wearing ‘fetish clothing’, after a war erupted over dress code regulations.

Employees in the Department for Work and Pensions are said to have objected to the ‘highly inappropriate’ workwear of a fellow official which prompted a Tory peer to ask the Government about its ‘policy on civil servants wearing fetish clothing in the workplace’.

It is understood that Baroness Jenkin of Kennington tabled the unusual question to reflect her general concerns about the dress code and also in response to the specific issues raised by civil servants about one Whitehall diversity ambassador. 

Ah yes the diversity ambassador…meaning, not working class, not female, not from Jamaica, but a man who dresses up as a parody of women who sell themselves for sex. How diverse.

Saorsa-Amatheia Tweedale, a trans woman who works for the DWP, has previously come under fire for saying that trans children’s demands for puberty blockers should take precedence over their ‘parents’ will’. 

The name is a jokey insult too.

The civil servant, who co-chairs the Civil Service LGBT+ network, has also been criticised for linking women’s rights groups to the far-Right and suggesting they are calling for trans genocide 

And the Mail on Sunday last month revealed Tweedale, 58, is facing controversy in the workplace as fellow staff members say their colleague regularly wears fishnet tights, low-cut black corsets, high heels and a gothic choker with a pentagram to work…

As women don’t.

Last month Tweedale was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Bradford in recognition of a career which has ‘helped people through trade unionism’ and also ‘her diversity and equality work’.

Of course he was.

Speaking of incoherent incontinent babbling…

The words below were taken verbatim  from a campaign speech former President Donald Trump delivered in Potterville, Michigan, Thursday when he was attempting, at least initially, to criticize Kamala Harris’ record in San Francisco, presumably referring to her tenure as district attorney there:

She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s — and I own a big building there — it’s no — I shouldn’t talk about this but that’s OK I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world — sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?

Wut?

Trump’s deteriorating ability to clearly communicate is a consequential feature of his 2024 candidacy. That deterioration may not have been as salient when Trump, 78, had 81-year-old President Joe Biden as an opponent. But it’s all the more clear as he now faces off against 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Well, yes. This was always going to be the case. Once Harris replaced Biden, it was impossible to ignore the coherence gap between the two candidates.

The incoherence of the Potterville speech is just one of countless examples. During a recent event in Wisconsin, Trump’s response to a question from the audience about reducing inflation entailed darting from his belief that Americans don’t eat bacon anymore to his assertion that wind energy doesn’t work. During remarks this spring, he stumbled from an attack on Biden’s age into a nonsensical reverie about the actor Cary Grant, which then spun off into an anecdote about a conversation he had with Michael Jackson. Compared even to his first term in office, Trump’s inability to focus on one train of thought appears to be growing significantly worse.

…

Trump’s qualities as an entertainer, as an agent of disinformation and as a proud policy illiterate have made it easier for him to mask his apparent decline and to identify its precise significance. 

Yet I’m still obstinate enough to wonder why people want an entertainer and proud policy illiterate as president.

Jaw-dropping – for once not in a bad way.

This bird came back from extinction – now scientists in an aircraft are teaching it to migrate

I could stare at that photo all day.

The northern bald ibis was extinct in central Europe for 300 years. Now, it has returned – and scientist “foster parents” aboard a tiny plane are teaching the birds to fly their long-forgotten migration routes.

Thirty-six of these endangered birds are now following an ultralight aircraft 1,740 miles (2,800km ) from Austria to Spain, on a trip that could take up to 50 days to complete.

During the flight, human foster parents sit on the back of the microlight, waving and shouting encouragement to the birds as they fly. Biologist Johannes Fritz – who came up with the idea – pilots the small aircraft, which has a small fan-like motor on the back and yellow parachute keeping it aloft.

It is the first attempt to reintroduce a migratory species using this technique, said Fritz. “It’s an almost surreal experience, to be up there in the sky with these birds, experiencing them in the air, perfectly shaped for flying. It’s a touching and extraordinary experience.”

Fritz was inspired by the 1996 film Fly Away Home in which the main character flies an ultralight plane to show orphaned geese their migratory path. The film was based on the work of “Father Goose” Bill Lishman, a naturalist who taught Canada geese in the same way in 1988.

It would be better if humans hadn’t made this necessary, but read the Guardian piece and gape at the photos anyway.

Tucker Carlson and the Hitler Fanboy:

Tucker Carlson is just asking questions. Questions like: what if Andrew Tate’s camgirl harem is actually the height of masculinity? And: isn’t the Russian grocery equivalent of Aldi absolutely incredible, just as the Moscow train station is perhaps the most beautiful thing mankind has created? And this week: why don’t we fully appreciate the total bind Adolf Hitler was in when he had just so many prisoners of war thanks to German success on the battlefield?

…

Carlson’s interview with Darryl Cooper, an amateur revisionist historian and podcaster, attempted to rewrite the history of World War Two with Winston Churchill cast as a malevolent villain and Adolf Hitler as a misunderstood man of peace:

“You know, Germany, look, they put themselves into a position in Adolf Hitler’s chiefly responsible for this, but his whole regime is responsible for it, that when they went into the east in 1941, they launched a war where they were completely unprepared to deal with the millions and millions of prisoners of war, of local political prisoners, and so forth that they were going to have to handle. They went in with no plan for that and they just threw these people into camps. And millions of people ended up dead there. You know, you have, you have like letters as early as July, August 1941 from commandants of these makeshift camps that they’re setting up for these millions of people who were surrendering or people they’re rounding up and they’re… so it’s two months after, a month or two after Barbarossa was launched, and they’re writing back to the high command in Berlin saying, “We can’t feed these people, we don’t have the food to feed these people.” And one of them actually says, “Rather than wait for them all to slowly starve this winter, wouldn’t it be more humane to just finish them off quickly now?”

Got it? It wasn’t a matter of war crimes, and it wasn’t genocide, it was just a big accident. They forgot to get enough groceries to feed all those people so they thought it would be kinder just to kill them all. With ZyklonB.

If you’re going to put people in very tall buildings, you need to make sure those buildings are safe.

A damning report on a deadly London high-rise fire concluded Wednesday that decades of failures by government, regulators and industry turned Grenfell Tower into a “death trap” where 72 people lost their lives.

The public inquiry into the 2017 blaze found no “single cause” of the tragedy, but said a combination of dishonest companies, weak or incompetent regulators and complacent government led the building to be covered in combustible cladding that turned a small apartment fire into the deadliest blaze on British soil since World War II.

…

The search for answers focused on a refurbishment completed in 2016 that covered the 1970s building in aluminum and polyethylene cladding — a layer of foam insulation topped by two sheets of aluminum sandwiched around a layer of polyethylene, a combustible plastic polymer that melts and drips on exposure to heat.

The report was highly critical of companies that made the cladding. It said they engaged in “systematic dishonesty,” manipulating safety tests and misrepresenting the results to claim the material was safe.

It said insulation manufacturer Celotex was unscrupulous, and another insulation firm, Kingspan, “cynically exploited the industry’s lack of detailed knowledge.” Cladding panel maker Arconic “concealed from the market the true extent of the danger,” the report said.

…

The inquiry said the combustible cladding was used because it was cheap and because of “incompetence of the organizations and individuals involved in the refurbishment” -– including architects, engineers and contractors — who all thought safety was someone else’s responsibility.

It concluded the failures multiplied because bodies in charge of enforcing building standards were weak, the local authority was uninterested and the “complacent” U.K. government — led in the seven years before the fire by the Conservative Party — ignored safety warnings because of a commitment to deregulation.

Ah yes good old deregulation – let the market decide! So the market decides that profit on combustible cladding now is the way to go.

The Grenfell tragedy prompted soul-searching about inequality in Britain. Grenfell was a public housing building set in one of London’s richest neighborhoods, near the pricey boutiques and elegant houses of Notting Hill.

Well, between one of London’s richest neighborhoods and some more downmarket ones. Notting Hill itself used to be quite scruffy, and Ladbroke Grove is far from elegant. Notting Hill isn’t Kensington or Chelsea, let alone Belgravia or Mayfair.

The victims, largely people of color, came from 23 countries and included taxi drivers and architects, a poet, an acclaimed young artist, retirees and 18 children.

The acclaimed young artist had just won a prize for her work.

The ruined tower, which stood for months after the fire like a black tombstone on the west London skyline, still stands, covered in white sheeting. A green heart and the words “Grenfell forever in our hearts” are emblazoned at the top.

CNN on Musk’s lying and bullying:

On Monday, Musk posted an AI-generated image on his social media platform that depicted Harris as a communist, wearing a red uniform complete with hammer and sickle emblazoned hat.

Musk, who has endorsed former President Donald Trump for president and poured millions into a super PAC supporting the Republican, captioned the image with the false assertion, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?”

The image, which appeared to violate X’s policy on manipulated content, resembled an AI-generated image posted by Trump last month during the Democratic National Convention, envisioning Harris addressing a crowd under communist symbols.

Musk’s post came a day after he shared another post with a screenshot suggesting that only “high status males” should be able to participate in government because women (and men with “low testosterone”) are not capable of critical thought. Musk posted it to his 196 million followers with the comment, “interesting observation.”

The sexist screed appears to have originated on 4Chan, the notorious hate-filled website that has been linked to mass-shootings.

By choosing to amplify disinformation and misogynist views, Musk, a South African billionaire who is both the owner of X and the most-followed account on the platform, is promoting radical content to the masses that might otherwise languish in the darkest corners of the internet.

Not so much “radical” as “evil.”

Multiple tiers. Joan Smith writes:

A childminder is facing a prison sentence for threatening asylum seekers in a social media post. Lucy Connolly, 41, who pleaded guilty to stirring up racial hatred, has been remanded in custody and told to expect a “substantial custodial sentence” when she next appears in court.

“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care […] if that makes me racist, so be it,” she wrote.

A horrible thing to say, no question, but she deleted it and apologized – Joan says “quickly” but we don’t know if that means in seconds or minutes or hours.

On the other hand, violent assault is not ambiguous.

[A] man called Muhammad Hassan, who had previously abused three Asian women because he didn’t like how they were dressed, appeared in court last week. Hassan was charged with assaulting the women when they stopped for petrol at a service station in Bradford. He berated them as “prostitutes”, seizing the driver’s head and slamming it into the dashboard. Then he grabbed the second woman and punched her in the head, before hitting the third woman as well.

He couldn’t delete that, now could he. The women he punched could not delete it either. But he hasn’t been threatened with any substantial custodial sentence.

The attacks were described by the judge as “an extremely abusive, controlling and violent incident”. But Hassan didn’t end up in prison. He was sentenced to six months, suspended for two years…[H]e is merely required to do 180 hours of unpaid work and wear an electronic tag for four months, while his victims live in fear of running into him again.

Heads men win, tails women lose. Again.

Without brazen lies, where would this “movement” be?

“Tearful transgender athlete Valentina Petrillo unrepentant amid Paralympics scandal”

What would “she” have to be repentant for, asks “Zinnia.” Disingenuous question. For being a man cheating a woman by competing in a women’s race, as he knows perfectly well.

Nobody is expecting him to apologize for existing. Lying about what sex you are is not a synonym for “existing.” Lying about what sex you are is lying about what sex you are.

Nobody is expecting him to apologize for participating in society, either. Of course he can participate in society. What he can’t reasonably or fairly do is participate in society as a woman.

And in conclusion, calling him unapologetic is just an observation. We don’t want him to apologize, we want him to stop.

Same goes for Zinners of course. We want him to stop bullying women and telling stupid lies about what we’re saying.

Here we go again. We’re not allowed to have opinions because opinions interfere with communninny coheesion. The only way to have communninny coheesion is for everyone to agree on everything all the time.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has said the Government is “actively considering” its approach to islamophobia in devising a full definition following far-right riots.

Ms Rayner, also the Communities Secretary, criticised the previous government for “stoking division” as she pledged to address issues of community cohesion.

I hate to tell her but Rayner is stoking division by trying to tell people what they’re allowed to say and think and dislike.

In 2019, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on British Muslims devised a definition of islamophobia as “rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”

Hooboy, that’s seriously stupid. One, Muslim is not a race; two, religions have to be open to criticism and dispute and flat rejection, because they have massive ambitions to tell us what we’re allowed to do and say and think. It’s not racism to reject Islam.

Reform UK MP Lee Anderson (Ashfield) asked what the Government’s definition of islamophobia is.

Ms Rayner replied: “A new definition must be given careful consideration so that it comprehensively reflects multiple perspectives and considers potential implications for different communities. And we’re actively considering our approach to Islamophobia, including definitions, and we’ll provide further updates on this in due course.”

Erm, shouldn’t they have done that before rather than after calling for new rules against “Islamophobia”? If they don’t know what it is, what are they even talking about?

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on Backing the bullies.

@C… – tell me you’re a RWNJ without telling me you’re a RWNJ.

Is it red or blue states in the USA banning books? Interfering with elections? Purging voter rolls on spurious grounds?

Which nation has greater freedom of speech – UK or Turkey?

Which nation treats its citizens more equally – France or Iran?

Which nation is more likely to invade a neighbor – Russia or Germany?

Almost every advance in human rights has come about by the hard work and unrelenting focus on our shared humanity by those on the Left. The Right has fought us every step of the way, gassed us, bashed us, murdered us, simply for believing we can create a better world. And we did.

And I for one am not prepared to stand by while you cheer on Musk, Trump, et al who will grab everything for themselves and leave you with nothing but rags and a sense of shame that you could be so stupid as to fall for their grift. And then, when you are cold, tired, and hungry, it won’t be a Billionaire who bathes your wounds and brings you sustenance; it will be one of us, on the Left, that you so despise.

Trump and Musk v the working class:

Since the tech billionaire endorsed Trump on July 13, the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly attacked Musk for his anti-worker stances. The campaign has called Musk and Trump “self-obsessed rich guys” and reposted audio from an event on Musk’s social media app, X, in which the two laugh together about firing striking workers. 

Then there was the live one-on-one discussion on X, which Trump’s campaign billed as “the interview of the century.” Partway through the two-hour event, Trump brought up how much he admires Musk’s handling of labor unions. 

“I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, ‘You wanna quit?’” Trump said while laughing. 

“Yeah,” Musk broke in, also laughing. 

“They go on strike,” Trump continued. “I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone. You’re all gone, so every one of you is gone.’ And you are the greatest.” 

Hur hur hur. There is a law against that though.

The episode snowballed. The United Auto Workers union filed unfair labor practice charges against Musk and Trump, alleging they interfered with workers who may want to exercise their labor rights. The UAW’s Fain pressed the issue in media interviews. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said at an event at the Democratic National Convention: “You can’t be pro-Elon Musk and pro-worker.” 

Sean O’Brien, general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, slammed Trump and Musk’s comments as “economic terrorism.” 

American workers’ right to strike is guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. 

And you know what happened after that? The whole damn auto industry unionized (and the Reuther brothers invented the sitdown strike). It was unionized labor that made all those thousands of planes and tanks and ships that turned the tide against the Nazis.

Labor union leaders have been harshly critical of Trump’s time in office, citing his appointment of conservatives to the NLRB and the federal courts. At the same time, Trump has sought to maintain some ties to organized labor, inviting some union leaders to the White House while he was president and continuing to court the Teamsters. 

Yeah well inviting some union heads to the White House is hardly the same thing as being a friend to union labor. Not even close.

Gee yes why would I not think Elon Musk is an admirable guy despite our different political orientations?

The “outfit” is of course fake.

Cheered me up for the moment.