Election 2024 Requiem for America
On the eve of the presidential election, America finds itself at a crossroads. It seems that the country has a clear binary choice. However, the media pundits tell us that the election is too close to call. They say the country is bitterly divided, and a huge percentage of people are conflicted.
By Aaron Humes | ‘Policy’ vs. ‘Personality’ 
‘Policy’ vs. ‘Personality’
By Aaron Humes
On the eve of the presidential election, America finds itself at a crossroads. It seems that the country has a clear binary choice. However, the media pundits tell us that the election is too close to call. They say the country is bitterly divided, and a huge percentage of people are conflicted.
When it comes to policy and personal integrity the contrast could not be clearer.
In my mind's eye, there are a myriad of reasons why voting for Donald J. Trump is tantamount to voting for more chaos and division. A second Trump presidency is a dire possibility.
In the past four years, we have all been able to breathe a collective sigh of relief that we no longer have to worry about 'what did he do or say now?'
Those who are ‘on the fence’ have forgotten the stress of COVID-19 deaths, economic downfall, and increased racial and economic division. We must reflect and never forget where this so-called leader of the free world has led us and where he will lead us.
The United States is or was considered one of the most powerful countries in the world, yet we are behind other countries in embracing a female leader. The challenges facing America involve the human spirit, not politics. We must commit to choosing better to become better.
The stain of J6 has tarnished our once-stellar reputation and champion of democracy, globally. Therefore, on November 5, we must commit to a path that will help us regain respect, both internationally and for ourselves. It is crucial to consider the impact our decisions will have on future generations.
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The ‘Red Mirage’ on election night. Listen!
“There’s No Putting Lipstick On This Pig"
Who would have thought that Karl Rove would ever speak the truth — and yet he did. Republican strategist Karl Rove has BLASTED Donald Trump's disastrous debate performance, saying: “There’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as ‘dumb as a rock.''’ Which raises the question: What does that make him?”
By Theo Edwards for YAME
Who would have thought that Karl Rove would ever speak the truth — and yet he did.
By Theo Edwards for YAME
READ Harris Triggers Trump: Kamala demolished Donald. And so it goes. The Prosecutor vs. The Felon: Trump falls into Harris’s traps as he lies about abortion and ‘eating pets.’ Donald Trump appeared to fall apart in his first head-to-head debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, providing rambling answers on illegal immigration, abortion, and the economy and taking the bait whenever his opponent goaded him.
Republican strategist Karl Rove has BLASTED Donald Trump's disastrous debate performance, saying: “There’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as ‘dumb as a rock.''’
Which raises the question: What does that make him?”
Well, we asked our readers and the responses were hilarious:
What does that make, Trump? Best answer wins.🏆
“The jokes kept on writing themselves.”
‘They’re eating the DOGS! They’re eating the PETS! ~ Donald J. Trump, during the Presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, September 10, 2024. Pretty catchy song 😂
Republicans Are Eating Each Other Alive: Things aren’t going so well in Trump’s party, as Sen. Lindsey Graham warned Trump to stop hanging out with Laura Loomer. Loomer responded by telling Graham to come out of the closet. “Please, Lindsey, come out in full drag as our, JD.” Make America Gay Again (MAGA): Laura Loomer questions Lindsey Grahams’s sexuality!
That Debate! We all heard without saying the word. We all heard it. What Kamala did during the debate was genius. I am happy to see that I wasn’t the only one that saw that.
Yup! We heard it all the way up in Canada. Exactly what she called him.
Been watching Presidential Debates since the 80s. She was Masterful!
He was smoked perfectly well! That was so presidential.
Ohio: Watch the moment that an entire debate watch party laughed at Donald Trump uncontrollably as his campaign came crashing and burning down. Credit Source: Courtesy
"And that's why he doesn't want another debate, even with FOX News."
There’s NO spinning what happened Tuesday night.
Deeply stupid! He easily transitioned from one stupid to another silly, which didn't faze him.
A complete Fruit Loop 🤣🤣😀
I couldn't help but laugh when I watched this one.
He got whooped so bad last time that he and his running mate had to cook up some crazy shit about migrants to try and distract.
It's too bad they don't make steel-spine journalists like Barbara Walters who could look Trump in the face and tell him how FULL OF SHIT (PooPoo) he is. Journalists like her are rare. And moments like that show the power of holding people accountable. She has exactly the receipts she needs for every question she asks. CLASSIC!
Stay tuned for more updates.
Please continue to post your comments as a guest /anonymous.
Analysis: 4 Key Moments From The Harris-Trump Debate
Trump falls into Harris’s traps as he lies about abortion and ‘eating pets.’ Donald Trump appeared to fall apart in his first head-to-head debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, providing rambling answers on illegal immigration, abortion, and the economy and taking the bait whenever his opponent goaded him.
Harris at the debate: "I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump"
Andrew Romano · Reporter | yahoo!news | Wed, September 11, 2024 at 12:40 AM EDT
Harris at debate: "I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump"
Philadelphia: September 10, 2024
Trump falls into Harris’s traps as he lies about abortion and ‘eating pets.’ Donald Trump appeared to fall apart in his first head-to-head debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on Tuesday evening, providing rambling answers on illegal immigration, abortion, and the economy and taking the bait whenever his opponent goaded him.
Andrew Romano · Reporter | yahoo!news | Wed, September 11, 2024 at 12:40 AM EDTThe stakes couldn’t have been higher when Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump met Tuesday night for their only scheduled debate of the 2024 contest.
In the previous clash, President Biden — then the presumptive Democratic nominee — delivered such a wobbly performance that his own party soon forced him to withdraw. Now, after an initial burst of momentum for Harris, the polls show the race is (once again) too close to call.
With less than two months to go until Election Day — and no other debates on the calendar — Tuesday could have been the last best chance for Harris and Trump to shake things up before voters start casting their ballots. So who had a better night? Here are four takeaways from the face-off in Philadelphia.
Harris triggers Trump
The vice president spent most of her career as a prosecutor before heading to Washington. It showed Tuesday night.
To be sure, Harris used her time on stage to “prosecute the case” against Trump, as expected, criticizing his positions on taxes, abortion, the border, Jan. 6, Ukraine, Obamacare and so on.
But more important than what Harris told viewers about Trump — all of which they’ve heard before, and largely learned to tune out — was what she managed to show them: How easily he can be baited into losing control.
Skillful prosecutors know how to provoke self-incriminating behavior — and that was very much Harris’s strategy during the debate. Again and again, she set traps for Trump; again and again, he walked right into them.
Harris “invited” viewers to attend Trump’s rallies, for instance, where he “talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter” and “people start leaving … early out of exhaustion and boredom.” Moments later, after defensively claiming that “we have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics,” Trump suddenly started ranting about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, “eating the pets of the people that live there” — a claim that has no basis in reality.
Harris’s goal was to puncture Trump’s sense of pride. She attacked his business acumen (“he got $400 million on a silver platter” from his father, she said, “then filed for bankruptcy six times”); his military leadership (“world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump”); and his political success (“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people … clearly he’s having a very difficult time processing that”) — and then stood aside as her opponent demonstrated, on live TV, that he can’t keep his cool in confrontational, high-pressure situations.
“These dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they're so clear they can manipulate you with flattery and favors,” Harris said at one point. “That is why we understand that we have to have a president who is not consistently weak and wrong on national security.”
No, “she's the one … that's weak,” Trump sputtered in response. But that’s not how Harris made it seem on stage.
Trump avoids ‘her’ while Harris addresses ‘you’
Presidential debates aren’t collegiate point-scoring affairs; they’re usually won or lost on vibes and moments rather than wonkery. And what was striking about Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Harris, aside from the words they said, was how differently they acted toward each other — and to the audience.
The tone was set in the opening seconds. Trump ambled slowly in from the wings, heading for his podium; Harris went directly to Trump and initiated a handshake that he seemed to want to avoid. “Let’s have a good debate,” Harris said.
That pattern — Trump avoidant, Harris direct — repeated itself throughout the evening. Trump only referred to his rival as the “vice president” once: to call her the “worst vice president in the history of our country.” Otherwise, he seemed only able to address Harris in the third person, as “she” or “her” — as if she wasn’t there. He rarely made eye contact.
In contrast, Harris called Trump the “former president” more than a dozen times — and when she wasn’t referring to Trump by his title, she was looking right at him and addressing him as “you.”
Harris did the same thing to the camera, and by extension, the people watching at home. “You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your needs and your desires,” she said. “And I'll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will.”
Harris and Trump’s respective behavior and body language reinforced that message — that only one candidate on stage was comfortable confronting the other, and that only one was interested in connecting with undecided voters.
One issue to rule them all … at least for Trump
Forced to play defense for much of the debate, Trump instinctively retreated to his comfort zone: immigration. No matter what the question was about, the former president found a way to accuse Harris — whom he inaccurately called Biden’s “border czar” — of “destroying the country” by allowing “millions of criminals” to pour into the country via Mexico.
Never mind that the best available data suggests the crime rate has fallen significantly over the past few years, down near the lowest levels ever recorded, and that numerous studies have found that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born citizens. Trump has been running on the border for years, and he’s not about to stop now.
But what about when the debate turned to other issues — like, say, abortion?
There, Trump claimed that overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to ban the procedure was “what everybody wanted — Democrats, Republicans, and everybody else” (despite polls showing otherwise).
Harris was ready to pounce.
“I have talked with women around our country,” she said. “This is what people wanted? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail, and she's bleeding out in a car in the parking lot — she didn't want that. Her husband didn't want that. A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don't want that. And I pledge to you when Congress passes a bill to put back in place the protections of Roe v. Wade — as president of the United States, I will proudly sign it into law.”
In the run-up to the debate, much was made about the need for Harris to provide voters with more specifics. But while Trump accused Harris Tuesday of simply copying Biden’s agenda — “She IS Biden,” he snapped — he actually ceded the “policy” card to her by returning to the border so many times and saying so little of substance elsewhere.
“Clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump,” Harris said. “What I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country — one who believes in what is possible, one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people.”
Harris then mentioned her “plan to give startup businesses a $50,000 tax deduction to pursue their ambitions, their innovation, their ideas, their hard work”; her plan to create a “$6,000 [tax credit] for young families, for the first year of your child's life;” her plan to offer “$25,000 [in] down payment assistance for first time home buyers.”
“That's the kind of conversation I believe... people really want tonight, as opposed to a conversation that is constantly about belittling and name-calling,” Harris concluded.
Trump has some plans too (or "concepts of a plan," as he put it when asked what he would replace Obamacare with). But the former president was too busy calling America “a failing nation” beset by foreign criminals to talk much about them.
The most consequential moment of this campaign?
That’s how ABC News billed the debate during its pre-show. But it remains to be seen whether Tuesday’s spectacle will move the needle.
Because Trump is such a familiar figure — and because views of him are so fixed — there’s little left for him to say or do to change how voters see him, one way or the other. Getting repeatedly fact-checked by ABC’s moderators won’t upend his campaign. So the former president is likely to hold onto the 45% or so of voters who tell pollsters they support him — the same 45% who voted for him in 2016 and 2020.
Yet 45% isn’t enough to win an election. What Trump really needed to do Tuesday night was change how voters see Harris — or let Harris do the job herself. Instead, Trump allowed his opponent to project precisely the kind of presidential, forward-looking positivity she wanted to project — without provoking any of the meandering, word-salad responses that have caused her problems in the past.
That probably means Harris won the debate. But two months can be an eternity in politics — and winning a debate isn’t the same thing as winning in November.
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“And then he said, ‘They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the pets!’ Video Excerpt from the Presidential debate on September 10, 2024.”
Apparently, their newfound relationship blossomed overnight. And by Wednesday, they shook hands for a second time, about 12 hours after their first handshake, at a ceremony in Manhattan to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. And the niceties didn’t end there.
“Trump’s Surprise Compliment to Harris About That Debate— ‘Good job.’”
“Good job,” Trump told Harris as they shook hands when they both arrived to sit in the front row for the commemoration, according to a source at the event.
Donald Trump has had really bad—even vile—things to say about Kamala Harris, who he’d never met until their epic Tuesday night debate when she forced him to shake hands before igniting his implosion on stage.
READ Trump’s Surprise Compliment to Harris About That Debate | DAILY BEAST
You Can Feel Something Historic Building in The Air
Kamala Harris delivers a show-stopping rally in front of a roaring crowd in Pennsylvania with her new running mate Tim Walz — and shares a moving anecdote.
Occupy Democrats | @OccupyDemocrats
Philadelphia: August 6, 2024
Kamala Harris delivers a show-stopping rally in front of a roaring crowd in Pennsylvania with her new running mate Tim Walz — and shares a moving anecdote.
"So America, for some folks, they're just getting to know Coach Walz's story," said Harris to the enthusiastic crowd. "And I'll tell you he is the proud product of a middle-class family in rural Nebraska. He is a veteran who served our nation in uniform for more than two decades as a member of the Army National Guard and he went to college on the G.I. Bill."
"He is someone who long before he entered politics worked as a teacher. When Coach Walz and his wife Gwen moved from his native Nebraska to Minnesota nearly thirty years ago they both took jobs at the local high school," Harris continued.
"Coach Walz taught social studies. Gwen taught English. After school, Tim was the linebackers' coach for the football team where I've heard the stories, he had a knack for using the game of football to teach life lessons," she went on. "He saw the potential in kids who sometimes didn't even see it in themselves."
"Under those Friday night lights, Coach Walz motivated his players to believe they could achieve anything, and together they defied the odds — hear this out — going from a winless record to the school's first-ever state championship," said Harris.
At that point, the crowd lost it, applauding and cheering at the top of their lungs.
"And I'll say and I'll add: Tim wasn't only a role model on the football field," continued Vice President Harris. "Around that time, Coach Walz was approached by a student in his social studies class. The young man was one of the first openly gay students at the school and was hoping to start a gay-straight alliance."
"At a time when acceptance was difficult to find for LGBTQ students, Tim knew the signal that it would send to have a football coach get involved," she continued. "So he signed up to be the group's faculty adviser. And as students have said, he made the school a safe place for everybody."
"In the high school yearbook, the students voted Coach Walz the most inspiring faculty member," said Harris. "And as I think everyone he can see, Tim Walz was the kind of teacher and mentor that every child in America dreams of having and that every kid deserves."
"The kind of coach — because he's the kind of person — who makes people feel like they belong and then inspires them to dream big and that's the kind of vice president he will be," said Harris, as the crowd once again roared.
"And that's the kind of vice president America deserves!" she added.
What a breath of fresh air!
The Harris-Walz campaign released its first video introducing Tim Walz to America. Please watch and share!
“Who is Tim Walz? Meet Kamala Harris VP pick.”
Comment from Barrack Obama on Twitter
Like Vice President Harris, Governor @Tim_Walz believes that government works to serve us. Not just some of us, but all of us. That’s what makes him an outstanding governor, and that’s what will make him an even better vice president. Michelle and I couldn’t be happier for Tim and Gwen, their family, and our country.
