Your Saturday Morning Madness

Good morning from my office perched between the two stadiums in SODO. It is Saturday morning and I am here to entertain your silly butts. If you aren’t entertained, then I blame you, not me. It’s always you, and never me — I thought you knew…

Let’s get on with what caught my eye this morning…

What happens in Springfield stays in Springfield…

If Trump doesn’t win, blame the Jews?

TRUMP: Blame the Jews If I Lose

Republican nominee Donald Trump told an antisemitism summit that Jewish voters could be to blame if he ultimately lost the presidential election and complained that he had not “been treated right” after his support of Israel.

“In my opinion the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” Trump said at the event hosted by Republican donor Miriam Adelson. “It’s only because of the Democrat hold, or curse, on you.”

Trump went on to repeatedly suggest his backing for Israel should result in more political support among Jewish Americans, and at one point conflated Jewish Americans with the state of Israel itself.

“More than any people on Earth, Israel has to defeat her,” he said, adding that “there’s no way that I should be getting 40% of the vote — I’m the one who is protecting you.”

Trump says Jews would deserve much of the blame if he loses

The speech was supposed to be about antisemitism but instead trafficked in it, Trump’s critics said

In a speech Thursday billed as former President Donald Trump’s answer to rising antisemitism, he said Jews would bear much of the responsibility if he loses the presidential election.

And in a second speech later in the evening, to the Israeli American Council, Trump elaborated on his past assertions in recent weeks that Israel would not survive if he doesn’t win in November, by painting a doomsday scenario in which Iran launches nuclear weapons and invoking the Holocaust.

“The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss,” Trump said during the first speech of the evening, an hourlong address at an event called “Fighting Antisemitism in America,” organized with GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson, at the Hyatt Regency hotel on Capitol Hill.

“You can’t let this happen,” he told his largely Jewish audience.

Trump in recent weeks has offended many Jews by questioning their mental health for voting for Democrats — as most Jews do — and predicting Israel’s demise should Harris win. But Thursday night’s comments seem to represent an escalation in Trump’s rhetoric, in that he singled out Jewish Americans — who represent only about 2% of the electorate — as a significant reason he might lose the election, one whose results he has never pledged to accept.

I honestly believe that Trump doesn’t spend much time thinking before he speaks. I know that a lot of you like it when he ‘says it like it is’, but this is a bit much, don’t you think?

Fucking around and Finding out

Israel kills elite Hizbollah commanders in Beirut strike

Hizbollah’s special operations commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed along with at least 10 members of the “senior chain of command of the Radwan Force”, an elite unit within the group, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The group confirmed late on Friday that Aqil was killed in the Israeli attack, and described him as one of its “greatest leaders”.

Aqil’s death is arguably the most damaging blow Israel has struck against Hizbollah, Lebanon’s dominant political and military force, since the movement’s formation in the early 1980s.

Israel keeps killing them, and Hizbollah keeps making more.

“I wouldn’t answer that if I were you”

Did exploding pagers attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon violate international law?

Israel has not officially acknowledged playing a role in the explosions. But a U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told NPR that Israel notified Washington that it was responsible for Tuesday’s attacks.

Several international treaties and protocols to which Israel is a signatory could render these actions by a state such as Israel illegal under international humanitarian law, scholars say.

One particular focus is Article 7(2) of the Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which was added to an international law focused on the use of conventional weapons in 1996. Both Israel and Lebanon have agreed to it.

It prohibits the use of booby traps, which Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, defines as “objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use.”

This was my first question after I quit laughing my ass off.

Twenty year old database “Mistake”?

Court rules nearly 98,000 Arizonans whose citizenship hadn’t been confirmed can vote the full ballot

The court’s decision comes after officials uncovered a database error that for two decades mistakenly designated the voters as having access to the full ballot. The voters already were entitled to cast ballots in federal races, including for president and Congress, regardless of how the court ruled.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, and Stephen Richer, the Republican Maricopa County recorder, had disagreed on what status the voters should hold. Richer asked the high court to weigh in, saying Fontes ignored state law by advising county officials to let affected voters cast full ballots.

Fontes said not allowing the voters who believed they had satisfied voting requirements access to the full ballot would raise equal protection and due process concerns.

The high court, which leans Republican, agreed with Fontes. It said county officials lack the authority to change the voters’ statuses because those voters registered long ago and had attested under the penalty of law that they are citizens. The justices also said the voters were not at fault for the database error and also mentioned the little time that’s left before the Nov. 5 general election.

I’ve got a really stupid question: Why did it take twenty years to fix a ‘mistake’? If any of these 98,000 people are legally allowed to vote, then why has it taken all this time to figure this shit out? Either they can vote or they can’t. Jesus fucking Christ, make a fucking decision.

Were we expecting a different response from The Donald?

Trump’s Impulse After Robinson Bombshell Report: Ignore, and Power Through

Donald J. Trump’s advisers knew they had a problem in North Carolina. What they were frantically trying to learn was how big it would be.

Word had reached the former president’s high command on Thursday that a “bad” story was coming about Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican running for governor in the must-win state of North Carolina.

Mr. Trump’s inner circle was not in possession of the full details before the story was published on CNN’s website, but they knew the bar for what would qualify as a “bad” story for Mr. Robinson was high. The candidate had already quoted a statement attributed to Adolf Hitler and mocked the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting, and Mr. Trump’s advisers had recently started seeking distance from Mr. Robinson.

Donald Trump as a Roy Cohn acolyte. He learned early on to NEVER back down on anything, even if he’s 100 percent demonstrably wrong. Just double down on the wrongness.

I knew that this was only a matter of time:

No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans

In a closely watched New York Democratic primary in June, centrist George Latimer ousted incumbent Jamaal Bowman by a wide margin of 58.7% to 41.3%.

Ahead of the vote, two 19-year-old college dropouts in Manhattan conducted a poll that accurately predicted the results within 371 votes. Their secret? They didn’t survey a single person. Instead, they asked thousands of AI chatbots which candidate they preferred.

Welcome to the future of polling, according to Cam Fink and Ned Koh, co-founders of a seven-person company called Aaru. They say they’ve cracked the code for predicting accurate election results, which have come under increasing fire since most public polls failed to predict Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. The answer is ignoring the humans whose behavior they are trying to capture.

I spent the better part of yesterday playing around with “Poe”, the newest version of a Large Language Model AI. This version actually reasons. Throw a voice on it, and it will scare the fucking dogshit out of you. It is almost impossible to distinguish between a real human and this newest version.

Anyone can create an AI ‘agent’ without any coding knowledge. You can literally use the AI model to create “Agents” in your own image should you want to — and not know a damn thing about code or programming.

It’s a “Golden Oldie”

Apocalypse delayed: Trump keeps promising a doom that never comes

Trump predicted that if Biden won, the economy would crash, crime would soar and Christmas would be canceled. None of that happened, but he’s reusing those claims anyway.

If the election does not go his way, the economy will tank, Christmas will be canceled, and America as we know it will be “finished,” Donald Trump promised in the run-up to the 2020 election.

That race did not go his way, of course, and none of Trump’s prophesied cataclysms materialized under Joe Biden’s presidency. But that has not stopped Trump from recycling some of the same dark portents about a Kamala Harris presidency.

“If he’s elected, the stock market will crash,” Trump said in October 2020 during his only debate with Biden. “If he gets in, you will have a depression the likes of which you’ve never seen.”

The depression never happened. Stocks rose during Biden’s presidency. But Trump recently predicted that a Harris victory would lead to “a massive [stock] market downturn” and “a 1929-style depression.”

In 2020, he said in a tweet: “This election is a choice between a TRUMP RECOVERY or a BIDEN DEPRESSION.”

In 2024, he said on Truth Social: “VOTERS HAVE A CHOICE — TRUMP PROSPERITY, OR THE KAMALA CRASH & GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024.”

I’m not holding my breath…

For first time, poll shows Colin Allred beating Ted Cruz in November

For the first time in their hotly contested campaign, a poll shows U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, trailing challenger U.S. Rep. Colin Allred.

The Morning Consult poll, conducted between Sept. 9 and 18, places Allred — a moderate North Texas Democrat — a point ahead of Cruz with likely voters, 45% to 44%. Allred’s lead is within the poll’s margin of error, however.

Why is this “news”? Fidel Cruz has been behind in the polls off and on for the past decade or so, but it has always been within the margin of error. At the end of the day, he has always managed to win his elections.

$5.99 a night and we’ll keep the lights on.

Motel 6 Sold to Oyo, Indian Hotel Giant That Is Ramping Up in U.S

Motel 6, one of America’s most recognizable lodging brands, has a new owner after an India-based hotel giant has agreed to buy it for $525 million.

Oyo, the new owner, said on Friday it is making the acquisition as part of its plans for ramping up its U.S. expansion.

Motel 6 has provided beds to budget-conscious travelers of America’s highways for the past 62 years. The brand, with about 1,500 locations across the U.S. and Canada, takes its name from its original nightly rate of six dollars.

This sound pretty stereotypical.

It was an honest mistake

I am sure it was a honest mistake: Fentanyl and cocaine look pretty much the same…

This is not “new”.

This is actually fairly old news. We’ve known about Matt Gaetz appetite for children for at least four years now. The Mark Robinson nazi stuff has been out there for at least two years that I know of, and Corey DeAngelis being a gay porn star was news back in 2018.

Uh…

I actually dislike bagels.

Republican women get abortions also…

Sounds like most people with ‘phobias’

I find that the loudest people against homosexuality tend to be … homosexual themselves. The people who are the loudest against trans people tend to have some kind of fetish for trans people. Being “anti – gay” or “anti-trans” is usually a self-coping strategy.

Old Man Tweets in the Middle of the Night

“Unstable Vagina”