He had Vladimir Putin on speed dial

My Sunday movie was Heartstopper, season 3, episodes 1-3. I’ll be viewing the rest of the eight episodes over the next couple weeks. I’ve seen seasons 1 and 2. So if you haven’t there will be spoilers here. The story is about a circle of high school friends in England. Before this season Charlie and Nick have become boyfriends, Tara and Darcy are girlfriends, and Tao and transgender Ellie are dating. Their friend circle includes a few other people, including Isaac, who has come to realize he is asexual and aromantic. As others in the group form pairs he feels left out. Also in the previous season two of the male teachers began to feel an attraction and start dating. One of them is the art teacher that provided a refuge for Charlie back at the start of season 1. They must be careful to not show affection while at school. And here are spoilers about this season. Tao is feeling insecure because Ellie is switching to an art school and he’s afraid she’ll leave him. Darcy has moved out of her mother’s home because Mom refuses to allow her to be a lesbian. Darcy discovers Grandma is quite accepting. The major theme of this season was introduced at the end of season 2. Charlie has an eating disorder and in general his mental health is poor. So a good part of these three episodes are getting Charlie to see he has a problem and to ask for help. This season starts with summer break. As part of it Nick spends three weeks with his aunt and uncle in Mallorca. It is during this time away from Charlie that Charlie’s sister begins to suspect the problem and texts Nick, a problem Nick has already noticed. Nick has an important discussion with his aunt, a psychiatrist. She tells Nick he can’t fix Charlie, as much as he might want to and think he is supposed to. Several people will be needed to help Charlie. The aunt has specific guidance for Nick on how to support his lover in a way that helps Charlie get the help he needs. I’ve been watching the weather map showing what Hurricane Milton is doing. For much of the day, well before Milton came ashore (meaning Milton’s eye came ashore) rain, some of it severe, has covered most of the state. Tallahassee and Miami have stayed dry and that’s about it. As I’m getting ready to post this Milton’s eye has come ashore between Tampa and Cape Coral and the most intense rain is between St. Pete and Orlando. Since Milton is just two weeks after Helene (and the names suggest that between them there were three storms strong enough to get names) there is still a lot of discussion of Helene and the great deal of disinformation from the nasty guy and other Republicans. Brynn Tannehill wrote in ThreadReader:

I suspect many of the blue-check comments dumping on the National Guard are either Russian disinformation, or getting their information from their outlets.

She then wrote about all the difficult and heroic things the North Carolina National Guard has been doing for Helene recovery while working with old equipment because they don’t have enough money. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos discusses what Federal Emergency Management Agency does, and doesn’t. FEMA has a disaster relief fund, replenished by Congress every year. This year the fund is getting low and Congress, due to budgetary theatrics, has not yet acted to fill it again. Most of the money goes to immediate relief. The rest goes for rebuilding from past disasters and helping communities protect from future calamities. When the fund gets low rebuilding and the protection work gets put on hold. But the nasty guy’s claim the fund is being used elsewhere is false. FEMA coordinates disaster response, though it is not the boss. It sends money to state and local governments to pay for their work to help people and to start cleanup. It also gives money to individuals for emergency needs, such as paying for a trailer when a home is lost. While FEMA will help an individual get through the crisis they will not make the person whole. For that, rely on insurance. If there is no insurance FEMA can give up to $42.5K, which is not enough to rebuild a house. I mentioned that the nasty guy is complaining about how bad Biden is handling the crises. Walter Einenkel of Kos reminds us how bad the nasty guy was at handling disasters, which means his criticism of Biden is projection. Here is Einenkel’s list: + He was slow in staffing FEMA and NOAA, the parent agency of the National Weather Service. + He initially refused to send wildfire aid to California because it is a blue state. + He obstructed aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. + He tried to use flooding in Michigan to stop absentee voting. + And COVID. On Monday Morgan Stephens of Kos posted:

It’s textbook hypocrisy: House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday that he won’t commit to reconvening his chamber to pass additional disaster-relief funding, yet he criticizes the federal government’s response as lacking.

Now that I’m on the topic of the nasty guy and Republicans... Stephens reported the Oklahoma State Board of Education has put out a request for bid to supply the Board and schools across the state with Bibles. The bid asks for 55,000 of them. But they can’t be just any Bible. It must be the King James Version, have both the Old and New Testaments, and must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Since those US documents normally don’t appear in a religious book one might be getting a bit suspicious. And with good reason. The only edition of the Bible that fits all those requirements is the one endorsed by the nasty guy and of which he gets a cut. The whole purchase is $3.3 million. I don’t know how much that cut is. The Attorney General says the bid might violate state law. Not because putting Bibles in public school classrooms is a violation of the separation of Church and State. But because the specs of the bid unnecessarily exclude most bidders. Besides, paperback versions of the KJV can be had for $2.99, not $60. Lisa Needham of Kos adds that this is part of a larger push by conservatives to cause the collapse of public education.

First, conservatives very much want that public education money to go to their favorite private interests, such as lining the pockets of Trump. Next, they also very much want to force a very narrow version of Christianity on everyone, a move that just so happens to require public school money to go to private religious schools.

Needham concluded with what’s going on in Arizona, an effort praised by the guy who was the author of the education section of Project 2025. Arizona gave tax credits to donors of School Tuition Organizations that give scholarships to private schools. That cost the state $700 million. That starved public schools of funding and blew a hole in the state budget. In a post at the end of September Needham discussed some of the nasty guy grifts. Truth Social going public and losing money and value. Trump Hotel in Washington DC to which Republicans flocked – until it was sold. And membership at Mar-a-Lago at $1 million. And now he’s getting into the crypto market. That’s perfect for him because it is unregulated. In contrast to some of his other scams – Trump steaks, for example – this one is geared to a particular group of people, the crypto bros who are looking for as little regulation as possible. It would also line his pockets with unregulated crypto cash while in the White House.

Ordinary people can see the obvious problems here. Trump shouldn’t have private business interests while in the White House, period, but all of that went out the window in his first administration. Trump certainly shouldn’t have a private business in a regulated industry like securities when he would have the power to weaken regulations over his own business. But Trump fans love giving Trump’s businesses money and increasing his personal bottom line. They understand very well that Trump looks favorably at their efforts to funnel him cash. If he wins in November and his nonsense crypto project stays afloat until he takes office in 2025, conservatives—and hucksters and grifters—will have a very easy way to buy off the president with no fear of oversight.

At the start of October Stephens wrote about the various trinkets the nasty guy family is selling to the faithful. There are several of them. Even Melania is getting in on it through selling necklaces and a new memoir. The details come from financial disclosures mandated by the Office of Government Ethics and filed in August. Most of his money (not as much as he says he has) comes from this golf clubs and resorts, including foreign business ventures.

As a businessman who has filed for bankruptcy six times, Trump found a way to use his political brand to make money off the backs of his MAGA faithful. And what good is a brand for if you don’t use it to make a sale?

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet from Jonathan Martin that quoted a tweet from Acyn with a video of the nasty guy at a rally claiming Biden and Harris stole FEMA money to give to illegal immigrants so they could vote.

One of two political parties fine w a nominee telling flat lies, demagoguing immigrants in the worst tradition of American politics and hustling every possible buck he can. Total acquiescence from most every elected Republican.

In the comments is a cartoon by Ann Telnaes with the nasty guy saying these things and a few more:

So what if I use the office of the presidency to enrich myself and my family? So what if I break my oath of office? So what if I incite my followers to attack the U.S. Capitol? So what if I undermine democracy?

A tweet by An Ignorant Troll asks “How did a nation of idiots get to be the world leader?” It shows a guy up to his thighs in water during a rainstorm with a tornado coming. He says, “I’ll believe in climate change when I see it.” That is followed by a tweet by the New York Times Pitchbot which goes for the sarcasm. This one is based on a recent claim by Marjorie Taylor Greene that Helene happened because Democrats can control the weather. The Pitchbot has:

There is no way that something like climate change can be caused by humans. But it's clear that the government can control the weather.

In a second pundit roundup Dworkin quoted David Rothkopf of the Daily Beast.

So, let me get this straight, according to Bob Woodward’s new book War, Donald Trump was sitting in Mar-a-Lago on a trove of stolen U.S. national secrets and while there, had Vladimir Putin on speed dial for regular private chats? After he tried to overthrow our government? And Putin is helping his campaign now by flooding our electorate with toxic disinformation? And there are people who would actually vote for this guy?

And Dworkin quoted JV Last of The Bulwark talking about the unchanging poll numbers.

But what I want you to focus on is the extent to which this race has been locked in place for a month and a half. Because as good a campaign as Harris has run—and I think she’s run an excellent campaign—she’s only gained 3 total points since she entered the race in late July. She went from 46 percent to 49 percent. Which leads us to the second story: During the same period, all of the other numbers for Harris specifically and Democrats generally have been fantastic. ... But what I want to hammer home is that something is going on in the numbers and it is hard to understand how both trends—Dems and Harris showing across the board gains with Harris-Trump stuck at near parity—can be right.

Down in the comments, and after a few cartoons about hurricanes and their cause, are a couple memes posted by exlrrp. The first says, “You know, removing the words ‘climate change’ from Florida textbooks doesn’t seem to be working.” The second one is by M. Padellan and says, “100% proof that Democrats do not control the weather: Mar-a-Lago is still standing!”