BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
It's down to the wire and Donald Trump is embracing a scenario in which Liz Cheney is positioned to have guns "trained on her face." The vicious remarks, which Cheney has since condemned as echoing the behavior of a dictator, came at an event with Tucker Carlson that also saw the former president calling Joe Biden a "stupid bastard" and Kamala Harris a "sleazebag."
But headlines are still laser-focused on Biden reportedly calling Trump supporters "garbage" after a comedian called Puerto Rico an "island of garbage" at a MAGA rally last weekend.
Now, I don't think Biden's words were exactly wise; no one wants to repeat the supposed outrage of "deplorables." But days out of an election that could open a horrific new chapter in US history, how is the media still covering this "garbage" moment? "Did Biden's 'garbage' gaffe upstage Harris's closing argument?" Politico asked this week.
Even this morning, alongside coverage of Trump's violent remarks, the New York Times ran an opinion piece headlined "Can we please mute the president for a few more days?" Maybe it's my anxious state, but all this has me livid today. Hear me out:
Trump’s menacing language—a constant for almost a decade—rarely draws the notice that Garbage-gate has received. To call this imbalance typical both-sidesism fails to adequately convey the failures of the media in 2024. We’re all a bit desensitized. But the use of such violent rhetoric by hideous men within reach of the White House should still shock us. Anything less, well, is garbage.
That strange yelp you hear in the background? Yeah, that's your newsletter writer shrieking in pure agony.
In the election's final stretch, the media is chasing the wrong stuff.
BY INAE OH
MOTHER JONES MEMBERSHIP UPDATE
DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY
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President Joe Biden said, “If you harm an American, we will respond.” After an Israeli soldier shot and killed a US citizen and activist in the West Bank, fellow peace protesters wonder whether that’s true.
BY SOPHIE HURWITZ
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I can not stand elon musk, I have found him to be a greedy, egotistical, narcissistic pig for years, well before he made his love for fascism and authoritarianism known. I also believe he is a racist. A South African by birth, he could have based his companies and established solar panel, battery and electric car manufacturing facilities in South Africa creating education and employment opportunities to his fellow citizens, boosting the economy of his home country as well as neighboring countries. Musk ran his mouth about rebuilding the shattered energy grid of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria years ago but nothing came of that either. He is only interested in making the rich richer and backing neo-nazi, fascist, authoritarian politicians who are working to destroy democracies and replace them with oligarchies. This from the Washington Post.....
Eugene Robinson writes a column on politics and culture and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Washington Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section.follow on X@Eugene_Robinson
October 22, 2024 at 3:13 p.m. EDT
Elon Musk is trying to buy this election for Donald Trump, and everyone who loves our country should be alarmed. I realize, of course, that rich people try to buy elections all the time. But never quite like this.
The difference goes far beyond Musk’s shady — and possibly unlawful — attempt to register and track new potential Trump voters through a daily lottery that pays each winner $1 million. And it goes beyond the estimated $75 million Musk has given to his Trump-supporting America PAC. More important, and unprecedented, are other factors: the immensity of Musk’s wealth, the scale of his power, the reach of his voice, the incoherence of his politics, the mercurial nature of his decision-making, the porcelain fragility of his ego. And if Trump wins, heaven forbid, Musk expects to play a major role in the next administration.
In the name of “free speech,” Musk paid $44 billion to buy Twitter and then squander three-quarters of its value turning it into X, a cesspool of far-right anger, grievance, misogyny, conspiracy theory, eighth-grade humor and Trump worship. In the name of “efficiency” — the task he wants to perform for Trump — Musk would be in a position to wreak similar havoc on our professional civil service, our best-in-the-world military, our majestic national parks and who knows what else.
Musk is an immigrant from South Africa who uses the megaphone of X to attack a daughter of immigrants — Vice President Kamala Harris — and to applaud Trump’s racism and xenophobia. Musk never hesitates to fuel the MAGA world’s raging transgender panic and has dismissed his own transgender daughter as “dead — killed by the woke mind virus.” He is the father of 12 children in all, and he proselytizes for procreation, saying on Saturday at a Trump rally that “I don’t think it’s cool to deliberately not have kids. It’s anti-human.”
Imagine how these views might be translated into policy if voters unwisely return Trump to the Oval Office.
Give Musk his due: He became the richest person in the world, worth more than $240 billion, by presiding over feats of engineering that can only be described as genius.
He revolutionized the auto industry, launching the electric-vehicle revolution and making Tesla the most valuable car company in the world, worth more than twice as much as second-place Toyota. SpaceX, the company he founded with the goal of sending humans to Mars, routinely does things that make you disbelieve your eyes, including, for example, a test flight earlier this month in which a booster rocket was guided back to its launchpad in a vertical position and then caught gently by giant mechanical arms.
And Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary, has launched more than 7,000 small satellites into low Earth orbit, where they circle in a choreographed space ballet, forming a global communications network. No nation-state has anything like it.
Governments, especially ours, are already dependent on Musk’s technology, which has been aided by federal subsidies. SpaceX vehicles are NASA’s only reliable way to get crews and supplies to and from the International Space Station. SpaceX also has contracts to launch Defense Department satellites and other classified payloads. And Starlink has been lifesaving at moments of crisis, allowing Ukrainian armed forces to coordinate their defense against Russia’s invasion and temporarily replacing cellphone networks in the southern Appalachians that had been destroyed by Hurricane Helene.
At the same time, Musk’s companies are regulated by the federal government and have been the subject of numerous investigations. In self-driving mode, his Teslas do not yet drive safely. Regulators want to make sure that water discharged at his SpaceX launch site in Texas is not polluted. Musk promises that the “Department of Government Efficiency,” which he hopes to lead in a new Trump administration, will slash regulation. The conflicts of interest could not be more glaring.
Musk has long been criticized for his bombastic and erratic management style, but only in recent years did he become such a political loudmouth. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Musk’s rage at the Democratic Party began in 2021 when President Joe Biden launched his effort to shift the nation toward electric vehicles — and snubbed Tesla, by far the nation’s biggest maker of electric cars. Before one big White House event, the Journal said, Biden aides called Tesla executives to tell them Musk was not invited.
Why? Because Tesla’s factories are nonunion, and Musk has resisted workers’ efforts to organize. Faced with a choice between offending Musk and angering the powerful United Auto Workers union, Biden sided with labor. Musk reportedly was not pleased.
He might be suffering from know-it-all syndrome, a disease that seems to target billionaire tech bros. (Peter Thiel is another sufferer.) They prove themselves brilliant at electronic payments or rocket design or whatever, and conclude they are brilliant at everything, including politics and government.
They are wrong. Achieving goals in a democracy requires forging public consensus, and Musk doesn’t even know what that means. He is dangerous because of this ignorance. Vote for Harris — and wish Musk a safe journey to Mars.
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The right-wing majority on the state election board passed a new rule this week that could embolden counties not to certify elections if Democrats win.
BY ARI BERMAN
SPONSORED CONTENT FROM SIMON AND SCHUSTER
The Inside Story on the Trump Family
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Automated surveillance and AI are here to stay—whether Trump builds his wall or not.
BY LAUREN MARKHAM
MOTHER JONES MEMBERSHIP UPDATE
DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY
You’re a Mother Jones Daily reader, so you know the stakes and you know reporting like ours matters so freaking much in these next few months (and beyond).
About that: We need the support of our newsletter readers like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our targets and urgently need all hands on deck. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field. Please help with a donation if you can—even just a few bucks helps. A monthly gift would be incredible.
