49 thoughts on “Fear. Rage. Peril. War.”

  1. War

    Amazon’s blurb touting the October 15 release pre-order:

    Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward tells the revelatory, behind-the-scenes story of three wars—Ukraine, the Middle East and the struggle for the American Presidency.
    War is an intimate and sweeping account of one of the most tumultuous periods in presidential politics and American history.
    We see President Joe Biden and his top advisers in tense conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. We also see Donald Trump, conducting a shadow presidency and seeking to regain political power.
    With unrivaled, inside-the-room reporting, Woodward shows President Biden’s approach to managing the war in Ukraine, the most significant land war in Europe since World War II, and his tortured path to contain the bloody Middle East conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.
    Woodward reveals the extraordinary complexity and consequence of wartime back-channel diplomacy and decision-making to deter the use of nuclear weapons and a rapid slide into World War III.
    The raw cage-fight of politics accelerates as Americans prepare to vote in 2024, starting between President Biden and Trump, and ending with the unexpected elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.
    War provides an unvarnished examination of the vice president as she tries to embrace the Biden legacy and policies while beginning to chart a path of her own as a presidential candidate.
    Woodward’s reporting once again sets the standard for journalism at its most authoritative and illuminating.

  2. stephen’s monologue for a special late-night show

    The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is honored to be the only late night television show on Vice President Kamala Harris’s media blitz, while her Republican opponent is busy undercutting FEMA’s efforts to dig out from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, and his friend Elon Musk is once again the internet’s favorite laughing stock.

  3. and the lady herself

    The Democratic nominee for president of the United States returns for her seventh visit to The Late Show and sits down for a four-part interview with Stephen Colbert. Watch as she and Stephen discuss the devastation of Hurricane Helene and the crude cynicism of Donald Trump who is spreading misinformation about FEMA’s response as the potentially catastrophic Hurricane Milton approaches landfall in Florida. Stick around for three more segments with Vice President Kamala Harris!

  4. more of Kamala & Stephen

    VP Kamala Harris points out that her opponent seems to value his “friendships” with dictators more than connecting with the American people. Stick around for more with VP Kamala Harris!

    VP Kamala Harris acknowledges that voters are seeking change in this election, and she lists the ways she would be a different leader than President Joe Biden. Stick around for more with VP Kamala Harris!

    “The Champagne of Beers,” Miller High Life, was the brew of choice when VP Kamala Harris agreed to crack a beer with Stephen Colbert in the final segment of her four-part interview on The Late Show.

  6. Ok so, Olbermann is saying that Wapo is saying that Woodward is saying that trump didn’t give Putin those dinky home test kits, he gave him advanced proprietary testing Machines before such home kits were widely available 

  8. From WaPo 
     

    1. Trump sent American-made coronavirus tests to Putin
     

    When Trump was president in 2020, he sent coveted tests for the disease to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a crippling shortage in the United States and around the world.

    As the book explains, Putin was petrified of contracting the deadly illness. He accepted the supplies but cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had shared them, concerned for the political fallout that the U.S. president would suffer.

    “Please don’t tell anybody you sent these to me,” Putin said to Trump, according to Woodward.
     

    Woodward reports that Trump’s reply was: “I don’t care. Fine.”
     

    “War” also suggests that Trump and Putin may have spoken as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021. On one occasion, this year, Trump sent an unnamed aide away from his office at his Mar-a-Lago Club so he could conduct a private phone call with Putin, according to the book.

    Looks like a case of the old multi level telling of a simple story that ends up contorted and wrong after a few iterations of telling. There’s a reason hearsay is generally inadmissible in court. Guess I’ll have to read the book.

  12. An offshoot of this story is a look-back at his COVID handling overall.

    Vanity Fair:

    “As Trump was supplying Putin with tests his White House killed a plan for ramped-up domestic distribution after determining that the spread of the virus, which was mostly hitting blue states at that time, could be blamed on Democratic governors. More than a million Americans died amid the botched US response.”

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-putin-covid-tests?_sp=25521f7b-3a76-4c5f-b26d-90c43c1ec0d6.1728475733877

  13. Trump Bibles are made in Hangzhou, China. They shipped 120,000 of them this year to US. Cost to wholesaler is $3 each. Trump is selling them for $60. Are his new China tariffs going to be slapped on these since they cost American jobs, or will these get one of his famous waivers.

  15. Bink, have to admit, this is the first time I’ve looked at the Hindustani Times.  I don’t doubt for a moment the underlying premise that CS sent tests of some kind to Putin. I’m not sure what “devices” means, but I would like to know.  I don’t think it matters whether they were the home test kits we couldn’t get or more sophisticated tests. In either case he was putting his relationship with Putin over his responsibility to the public health apparatus of the US.
     
    Poobah, you should send that Logan Act quote from CS to JDouche’s campaign site.

  18. Likely the 2020 version of this ID NOW COVID-19 2.0 rig. Definitely a step (or three) above the home test kits (by about $250), but Abbott also manufactures the Binax tests, which we have lying around.  
     

  20. Sturg, back to my comment, now expanded – So who to trust, Bob Woodward or CS & the Kremlin?  Such a difficult choice….🤔🙄🤣

  21. Sooooo……,Mump stole and hid hundreds of boxes of state secrets and then called the Russian?   That seems traitorous.  

  22. Not trusting polls, particularly national ones, but isn’t the rule of thumb under our gerrymandered and slanted EC advantage for Repubs that a nationwide margin of 3% or more is needed to win the EC?  And MC claims a MOE of +/- 1%.  

  23. I don’t think it matters whether they were the home test kits we couldn’t get or more sophisticated tests.

    Oh, it matters.
     
    A lot.

    March-May 2020 was pre-vaccine, lockdown, medical-overload, height of covid pandemic, while trump was smuggling technology to adversaries through i’d like to know what channels

  24. True Pogo, assumption is she has to match Biden’s roughly 4.0 in 2020 but I think there is a post-Dobbs, hidden surge posters aren’t picking up. Or maybe I am watching too much TikTok

    Also pollsters are still compensating for hidden Trump vote in past elections, perhaps overcompensating.

  25. I’ve been predicting hidden post-Dobbs surge since Kansas.  I think the women are going to seriously kick some bigot butt cause they’re mad as hell and aren’t gonna take it anymore.
    That’s for the presidential election, as for House and senate, that surely would be nice.

  26. That smuggled med-tech could have been a HUGE bargaining chip for Putin-held hostages who didn’t get released until Biden/Harris negotiated it

  27. Also there is no contest for the ground game. Republicans are stunningly behind in paid staff, offices, volunteer organizing. They have enthusiasm but aren’t systematiclly channeling it for getting out vote, relying on rallies and unaccountable third parties like Elon and Charlie Kirk. 

    In politics, Tie Goes To the Ground

  29. Trump Bibles are made in Hangzhou, China.

    Interesting: person I know was arrested in China for distributing bibles. 

  30. I didn’t know Ethel Kennedy was still alive.  That means RFKjr  is doing all this in front of his mother.  

  31. I’m glad to see Madam Vice President doing leadership. No doubt some will cry foul. 

  32. Bink , now I’m getting curious about timing, etc. Will do some research when I can steal some time. 

  33. I miss the days when Ohio decided the victor in the election. I live so close to the Michigan border I still feel the heat.  The 2 repuggs running for Senate and House seats are so awful they just may unseat Brown and Kaptur here. Derrick Merrin and Bernie Moreno…what a pair. Moreno is from a Colombian ruling class family of unlimited wealth who owns multiple car dealerships and screwed them out of overtime pay until the courts made him pay.  Merrin is just a JD Vance coattail rider with 100% the same viewpoints and causes. 
    My ballot just arrived.  I’ll turn it in tomorrow. 

  34. Looks like Milton is calming down a bit, as predicted. Wind speed is down to 130mph. on the borderline between cat3 and cat4 At one point I read it  briefly had wind speeds up as high as 190.
    There is still going to be a large storm surge. 
    Jack

  39. My money is on CS having given Vlad Abbott’s Alinity system back in 2020. Screw the citizens of the US.

  41. Kamala’s media blitz with Stern and Cobert is a good thing, 3 days later and nobody even remembers she did 60 min. Yet she gets credit for dealing with a tough interview.  She has some smart people, and she gets out of their way.
    Jack

  42. …since i’m such an independent thinker, i’m registered ‘independent’ (obviously), so i get all the PAC attack mailers.
     
    The Repulsivelicans can’t find a bad picture of her 😆

  43. i’ll listen to the Stern interview but if he asks if she resents her father and is in love with the law i’m dipping 

  45. What else did he give him?
     

    GOP ticket = Unfit + Unqualified
     
    Vote Harris/Walz 2024 🇺🇸 Adults In Charge 🦅

  46. The etching on his tombstone…wasn’t nice, didn’t care.

    “I don’t want to be nice… I don’t care”

  48. I have it on certified authorized fact the the Democrats have planned for a 72F degree day on January 20 for the inauguration. If the unthinkable happens, fire will rain down on the inaugural swearing-in, biblical thunder bolts.  Yeah, we done-got this weather thing.  
    A close work-friend with whim I worked with for many years in the factory passed at 75, just 4 months my senior.  Even though I haven’t seen him in 22 years, the memories of how a good friend with a fatalistic hilarious sense of humor made drudgery factory work tolerable, are present in my thoughts, all day today. Tom. Good guy.

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