10/03/24
Good morning! It’s Thursday, October 3rd.
Mean Girls Day!
Obviously, we love.
And now, the news.
Update: Middle East
-via NPR
Starting with an update on things in the middle east, where videos posted online and verified by NPR appear to show that Iran’s warheads landed around two airbases, making them more effective than April’s attack.
However, Israel and the US are still downplaying the effectiveness of the attack.
On Wednesday, Israel reported its first close combat loses, as eight soldiers were killed in Lebanon and several more were injured. Israel says they are hoping to push Hezbollah away from the border between Lebanon and Israel, so that Israeli’s who have fled from the fighting can return home.
At least two people were killed, and at least 11 more were injured in Lebanon when Israeli airstrikes hit an apartment building and started a fire.
Here in the US, President Biden and friends are discussing sanctions against Iran for the attack, but President Biden also noted that he would not support an attack on Iran’s nuclear site, something Israeli’s Netanyahu has suggested they are looking into.
Trump Crime Update Time
-via AP News, Washington Post
To be honest, Wednesday was a fairly slow news day. With the exception of one big thing. One big…
Trump Crime Update Time
(Whoa Baby, edition)
On Wednesday Jack Smith, aka Ted Lasso’s Coach Beard (they look alike! Prove me wrong, but until you can, so never because you can’t… that is Coach Beard), had a court filing go public and we had the horrific honor of learning 165 pages worth of even more awful details about the time that he tried to overthrow our government because doing insurrection is easier than just going to therapy.
And listen, as court proceedings go, some are going to be boring. Court is boring. Procedure is boring. Procedurals? Great! Procedure. Sometimes boring.
And sometimes… sometimes not.
The 165 pages tell a tale we basically knew, but the details matter. Because somehow this person is running for president again instead of, you know… in jail.
So for example, it describes the moment when, as protesters were chanting “hang Mike Pence” Trump was told that the Vice President was being taken to safety and his only response was “so what?”
When an advisor said a lawyer wouldn’t be able to prove the big lie in court, Trump said, “The details don’t matter.”
When one of Trump’s co-conspirators was told that it looks like Biden won at a Michigan polling center, that person replied, “find a reason it isn’t” before asking for options to file litigation.
After the election, once the results were clear, one White House staffer overheard Trump telling Melanie, Ivanka, and Jared - “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”
“It doesn’t matter if you won or lost.”
Um… arguably it does.
Because we have always, until the buffoon appeared in our political lives, always had a peaceful transfer of power.
The filing is part of Coach Beard’s push to make sure this insurrectionist still has his day in court, since the Supreme Court recently said that anyone can do anything as long as they’re president when they do it. Instead, this filing is meant to show that, while he technically had the title of president, his actions were that of a candidate. A pathetic, losing, one at that.
“With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost.”
Coach Beard ends it which the nuts and bolts of this whole thing: “Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one. When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”
What Donald Trump imagined up, then, with the help of his cronies, put into action was an insurrection that caused the deaths of at least seven people.
For the first time in our country’s history, including during the civil war, Trump’s actions saw the confederate flag run through our capitol building.
He did this knowing, full well, that he had lost the 2020 election. It was a fact he knew and refused to publicly accept.
Instead, he egged on protestors and rioters. Told them to fight like hell. Said he’d be there with him. Told them he loved them. Told them Mike Pence wasn’t doing enough.
He also did it before then. In the weeks following the election, Donald Trump called people like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger and asked him to simply find enough votes to allow him to win the election. His cronies organized slates in fake electors, in states all over the country, that would have happily disenfranchised the votes of millions of voters who deserve to have their voices heard.
All for Trump.
All with Trump’s knowledge.
We can never, ever, let him near the White House again.
Let’s go win this election.
That’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of Coach Beard and everyone fighting for our democracy.
I’m also proud of Mean Girls. Not girls that are mean, obviously. But you know… the movie, the cast… all of it.
And because of that, because you are not a girl that is mean… I’m proud of you.