Business Math

From the hallowed halls of

The Harvard Business School,

we see the divine wisdom of clear-eyed,

pragmatic capitalism

applied to the business

of running a government.

The total payroll of civilian government employees:

$271 billion per year

The cost of Republicans' tax cuts:

$400 billion per year

So we need to fire most of the people,

and borrow another $4 trillion.

That's what makes perfect sense to the plutocrats.

TB Outbreak

Doc Holiday

Dead at 36

Glenwood Springs CO

Tuberculosis

Gee - good thing Trump ordered the CDC to stop issuing health bulletins. I feel so fucking safe.

I wonder if we can look forward to lots more people getting sick because so many Chiefs fans are headed to New orleans for the Super Bowl next weekend.

Colorado tuberculosis cases hold steady, as a major outbreak rocks Kansas

Most of Colorado’s reported cases of tuberculosis per year are sporadic and not part of local person-to-person transmission chains

Colorado is not seeing an unusual uptick in cases of tuberculosis, despite an ongoing outbreak next door in Kansas, the state Health Department says.

The Kansas outbreak, focused in the Kansas City area, started last year, and it has since grown to be among the largest in the country since at least the 1950s. (You may have read that it is the largest in U.S. history, but that is erroneous.)

Two people are reported to have died.

Here in Colorado, cases of tuberculosis are more or less in line with recent historical averages, even though the number of cases reported in Colorado last year exceeded the number of cases reported so far in the Kansas outbreak.

Confused? To an epidemiologist, the term “outbreak” has a specific meaning — it implies not just a new emergence of a lot of infections but also linked chains of transmission that bind those infections together.

So, when Kansas reports 67 people being treated for active cases of tuberculosis as part of the outbreak, the implication is that those cases are all connected to some common origin of infection and being spread locally.

Colorado, meanwhile, has not seen such sustained local transmission of tuberculosis. The state last year reported 78 cases of tuberculosis, in preliminary numbers. That’s down from 89 cases in 2023 but above the average of 70 cases per year the state reported pre-COVID pandemic.

Spread through the air

Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease that spreads person-to-person through the air. The disease most often attacks the lungs and causes a chronic cough, among other symptoms. It can take two forms: active tuberculosis, where a person is showing symptoms and capable of spreading the disease, and inactive or latent tuberculosis, where the disease is lying dormant and the person cannot spread it. A latent case can turn active at any time.

Though tuberculosis was common historically, the highest number of tuberculosis cases recorded in the United States was in the very first year the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started keeping track — in 1953, with more than 84,000 cases.

Annual case numbers remained above 20,000 well into the 1990s, but then dropped over the next two decades. The 9,633 cases reported in 2023 — the most recent year for which the CDC has finalized data — were an increase over the prior handful of years but still near historic lows.

Transmission in the U.S. is rare

Transmission patterns have changed, as well.

Sustained person-to-person transmission of the disease within the United States is now rare. From 2021 through 2023, the U.S. reported only 34 infection clusters that had 10 or more cases associated with them.

But tuberculosis circulates more widely in some countries outside the United States, and it is not uncommon for states to report cases in people who traveled to or immigrated from those areas.

In the early 1990s, roughly two-thirds of tuberculosis cases reported were in people born in the United States, according to the CDC. In recent years, that proportion has flipped, with about three-quarters of cases now occurring in people born outside the U.S.

This trend holds for Colorado, as well.

“In general, our cases each year tend to be sporadic or associated with limited local person-to-person transmission,” Kristina Iodice, a communications director with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, wrote in an email. “We are not seeing increases similar to those in Kansas.”

Three Is Not The Charm

Another long one.

I don't know what else to do. I try to make calls, and I do some politicking on social media - all I can think of is to keep putting the problem in front of people.

So here it is.

A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments.

Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages.

Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.

Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”

Hope dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal. “You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.

But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. Hope trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.

Three hours later, her heart stopped.

The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

It was clear Porsha needed an emergency D&C, the medical experts said. She was hemorrhaging and the doctors knew she had a blood-clotting disorder, which put her at greater danger of excessive and prolonged bleeding. “Misoprostol at 11 weeks is not going to work fast enough,” said Dr. Amber Truehart, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health. “The patient will continue to bleed and have a higher risk of going into hemorrhagic shock.” The medical examiner found the cause of death to be hemorrhage.

D&Cs — a staple of maternal health care — can be lifesaving. Doctors insert a straw-like tube into the uterus and gently suction out any remaining pregnancy tissue. Once the uterus is emptied, it can close, usually stopping the bleeding.

But because D&Cs are also used to end pregnancies, the procedure has become tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortions. In Texas, any doctor who violates the strict law risks up to 99 years in prison. Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.

ProPublica condensed 200 pages of medical records into a summary of the case in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists and then reviewed it with more than a dozen experts around the country, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in maternal health.

Texas doctors told ProPublica the law has changed the way their colleagues see the procedure; some no longer consider it a first-line treatment, fearing legal repercussions or dissuaded by the extra legwork required to document the miscarriage and get hospital approval to carry out a D&C. This has occurred, ProPublica found, even in cases like Porsha’s where there isn’t a fetal heartbeat or the circumstances should fall under an exception in the law. Some doctors are transferring those patients to other hospitals, which delays their care, or they’re defaulting to treatments that aren’t the medical standard.

Misoprostol, the medicine given to Porsha, is an effective method to complete low-risk miscarriages but is not recommended when a patient is unstable. The drug is also part of a two-pill regimen for abortions, yet administering it may draw less scrutiny than a D&C because it requires a smaller medical team and because the drug is commonly used to induce labor and treat postpartum hemorrhage. Since 2022, some Texas women who were bleeding heavily while miscarrying have gone public about only receiving medication when they asked for D&Cs. One later passed out in a pool of her own blood.

“Stigma and fear are there for D&Cs in a way that they are not for misoprostol,” said Dr. Alison Goulding, an OB-GYN in Houston. “Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended. People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal.”

Several physicians who reviewed the summary of her case pointed out that Davis’ post-mortem notes did not reflect nurses’ documented concerns about Porsha’s “heavy bleeding.” After Porsha died, Davis wrote instead that the nurses and other providers described the bleeding as “minimal,” though no nurses wrote this in the records. ProPublica tried to ask Davis about this discrepancy. He did not respond to emails, texts or calls.

Houston Methodist officials declined to answer a detailed list of questions about Porsha’s treatment. They did not comment when asked whether Davis’ approach was the hospital’s “routine.” A spokesperson said that “each patient’s care is unique to that individual.”

“All Houston Methodist hospitals follow all state laws,” the spokesperson added, “including the abortion law in place in Texas.”

“We Need to See the Doctor”

Hope and his two sons outside their home in Houston Credit:Danielle Villasana for ProPublica
Hope marveled at the energy Porsha had for their two sons, ages 5 and 3. Whenever she wasn’t working, she was chasing them through the house or dancing with them in the living room. As a finance manager at a charter school system, she was in charge of the household budget. As an engineer for an airline, Hope took them on flights around the world — to Chile, Bali, Guam, Singapore, Argentina.

The two had met at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. “When Porsha and I began dating,” Hope said, “I already knew I was going to love her.” She was magnetic and driven, going on to earn an MBA, but she was also gentle with him, always protecting his feelings. Both were raised in big families and they wanted to build one of their own.

When he learned Porsha was pregnant again in the spring of 2023, Hope wished for a girl. Porsha found a new OB-GYN who said she could see her after 11 weeks. Ten weeks in, though, Porsha noticed she was spotting. Over the phone, the obstetrician told her to go to the emergency room if it got worse.

To celebrate the end of the school year, Porsha and Hope took their boys to a water park in Austin, and as they headed back, on June 11, Porsha told Hope that the bleeding was heavier. They decided Hope would stay with the boys at home until a relative could take over; Porsha would drive to the emergency room at Houston Methodist Sugar Land, one of seven community hospitals that are part of the Houston Methodist system.

At 6:30 p.m, three hours after Porsha arrived at the hospital, she saw huge clots in the toilet. “Significant bleeding,” the emergency physician wrote. “I’m starting to feel a lot of pain,” Porsha texted Hope. Around 7:30 p.m., she wrote: “She said I might need surgery if I don’t stop bleeding,” referring to the nurse. At 7:50 p.m., after a nurse changed her second diaper in an hour: “Come now.”

Still, the doctor didn’t mention a D&C at this point, records show. Medical experts told ProPublica that this wait-and-see approach has become more common under abortion bans. Unless there is “overt information indicating that the patient is at significant risk,” hospital administrators have told physicians to simply monitor them, said Dr. Robert Carpenter, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who works in several hospital systems in Houston. Methodist declined to share its miscarriage protocols with ProPublica or explain how it is guiding doctors under the abortion ban.

As Porsha waited for Hope, a radiologist completed an ultrasound and noted that she had “a pregnancy of unknown location.” The scan detected a “sac-like structure” but no fetus or cardiac activity. This report, combined with her symptoms, indicated she was miscarrying.

But the ultrasound record alone was less definitive from a legal perspective, several doctors explained to ProPublica. Since Porsha had not had a prenatal visit, there was no documentation to prove she was 11 weeks along. On paper, this “pregnancy of unknown location” diagnosis could also suggest that she was only a few weeks into a normally developing pregnancy, when cardiac activity wouldn’t be detected. Texas outlaws abortion from the moment of fertilization; a record showing there is no cardiac activity isn’t enough to give physicians cover to intervene, experts said.

Dr. Gabrielle Taper, who recently worked as an OB-GYN resident in Austin, said that she regularly witnessed delays after ultrasound reports like these. “If it’s a pregnancy of unknown location, if we do something to manage it, is that considered an abortion or not?” she said, adding that this was one of the key problems she encountered. After the abortion ban went into effect, she said, “there was much more hesitation about: When can we intervene, do we have enough evidence to say this is a miscarriage, how long are we going to wait, what will we use to feel definitive?”

At Methodist, the emergency room doctor reached Davis, the on-call OB-GYN, to discuss the ultrasound, according to records. They agreed on a plan of “observation in the hospital to monitor bleeding.”

Around 8:30 p.m., just after Hope arrived, Porsha passed out. Terrified, he took her head in his hands and tried to bring her back to consciousness. “Babe, look at me,” he told her. “Focus.” Her blood pressure was dipping dangerously low. She had held off on accepting a blood transfusion until he got there. Now, as she came to, she agreed to receive one and then another.

By this point, it was clear that she needed a D&C, more than a dozen OB-GYNs who reviewed her case told ProPublica. She was hemorrhaging, and the standard of care is to vacuum out the residual tissue so the uterus can clamp down, physicians told ProPublica.

“Complete the miscarriage and the bleeding will stop,” said Dr. Lauren Thaxton, an OB-GYN who recently left Texas.

“At every point, it’s kind of shocking,” said Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco who reviewed Porsha’s case. “She is having significant blood loss and the physician didn’t move toward aspiration.”

All Porsha talked about was her devastation of losing the pregnancy. She was cold, crying and in extreme pain. She wanted to be at home with her boys. Unsure what to say, Hope leaned his chest over the cot, passing his body heat to her.

At 9:45 p.m., Esmeralda Acosta, a nurse, wrote that Porsha was “continuing to pass large clots the size of grapefruit.” Fifteen minutes later, when the nurse learned Davis planned to send Porsha to a floor with fewer nurses, she “voiced concern” that he wanted to take her out of the emergency room, given her condition, according to medical records.

At 10:20 p.m., seven hours after Porsha arrived, Davis came to see her. Hope remembered what his mother had told him on the phone earlier that night: “She needs a D&C.” The doctor seemed confident about a different approach: misoprostol. If that didn’t work, Hope remembers him saying, they would move on to the procedure.

A pill sounded good to Porsha because the idea of surgery scared her. Davis did not explain that a D&C involved no incisions, just suction, according to Hope, or tell them that it would stop the bleeding faster. The Ngumezis followed his recommendation without question. “I’m thinking, ‘He’s the OB, he’s probably seen this a thousand times, he probably knows what’s right,’” Hope said.

But more than a dozen doctors who reviewed Porsha’s case were concerned by this recommendation. Many said it was dangerous to give misoprostol to a woman who’s bleeding heavily, especially one with a blood clotting disorder. “That’s not what you do,” said Dr. Elliott Main, the former medical director for the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative and an expert in hemorrhage, after reviewing the case. “She needed to go to the operating room.” Main and others said doctors are obliged to counsel patients on the risks and benefits of all their options, including a D&C.

Performing a D&C, though, attracts more attention from colleagues, creating a higher barrier in a state where abortion is illegal, explained Goulding, the OB-GYN in Houston. Staff are familiar with misoprostol because it’s used for labor, and it only requires a doctor and a nurse to administer it. To do a procedure, on the other hand, a doctor would need to find an operating room, an anesthesiologist and a nursing team. “You have to convince everyone that it is legal and won’t put them at risk,” said Goulding. “Many people may be afraid and misinformed and refuse to participate — even if it’s for a miscarriage.”

Davis moved Porsha to a less-intensive unit, according to records. Hope wondered why they were leaving the emergency room if the nurse seemed so worried. But instead of pushing back, he rubbed Porsha’s arms, trying to comfort her. The hospital was reputable. “Since we were at Methodist, I felt I could trust the doctors.”

On their way to the other ward, Porsha complained of chest pain. She kept remarking on it when they got to the new room. From this point forward, there are no nurse’s notes recording how much she continued to bleed. “My wife says she doesn’t feel right, and last time she said that, she passed out,” Hope told a nurse. Furious, he tried to hold it together so as not to alarm Porsha. “We need to see the doctor,” he insisted.

Her vital signs looked fine. But many physicians told ProPublica that when healthy pregnant patients are hemorrhaging, their bodies can compensate for a long time, until they crash. Any sign of distress, such as chest pain, could be a red flag; the symptom warranted investigation with tests, like an electrocardiogram or X-ray, experts said. To them, Porsha’s case underscored how important it is that doctors be able to intervene before there are signs of a life-threatening emergency.

But Davis didn’t order any tests, according to records.

Around 1:30 a.m., Hope was sitting by Porsha’s bed, his hands on her chest, telling her, “We are going to figure this out.” They were talking about what she might like for breakfast when she began gasping for air.

“Help, I need help!” he shouted to the nurses through the intercom. “She can’t breathe.”

“All She Needed”

Hours later, Hope returned home in a daze. “Is mommy still at the hospital?” one of his sons asked. Hope nodded; he couldn’t find the words to tell the boys they’d lost their mother. He dressed them and drove them to school, like the previous day had been a bad dream. He reached for his phone to call Porsha, as he did every morning that he dropped the kids off. But then he remembered that he couldn’t.

Friends kept reaching out. Most of his family’s network worked in medicine, and after they said how sorry they were, one after another repeated the same message. All she needed was a D&C, said one. They shouldn’t have given her that medication, said another. It’s a simple procedure, the callers continued. We do this all the time in Nigeria.

Since Porsha died, several families in Texas have spoken publicly about similar circumstances. This May, when Ryan Hamilton’s wife was bleeding while miscarrying at 13 weeks, the first doctor they saw at Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville noted no fetal cardiac activity and ordered misoprostol, according to medical records. When they returned because the bleeding got worse, an emergency doctor on call, Kyle Demler, said he couldn’t do anything considering “the current stance” in Texas, according to Hamilton, who recorded his recollection of the conversation shortly after speaking with Demler. (Neither Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville nor Demler responded to several requests for comment.)

They drove an hour to another hospital asking for a D&C to stop the bleeding, but there, too, the physician would only prescribe misoprostol, medical records indicate. Back home, Hamilton’s wife continued bleeding until he found her passed out on the bathroom floor. “You don’t think it can really happen like that,” said Hamilton. “It feels like you’re living in some sort of movie, it’s so unbelievable.”

Across Texas, physicians say they blame the law for interfering with medical care. After ProPublica reported last month on two women who died after delays in miscarriage care, 111 OB-GYNs sent a letter to Texas policymakers, saying that “the law does not allow Texas women to get the lifesaving care they need.”

Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN in Dallas, told ProPublica that if one person on a medical team doubts the doctor’s choice to proceed with a D&C, the physician might back down. “You constantly feel like you have someone looking over your shoulder in a punitive, vigilante type of way.”

The criminal penalties are so chilling that even women with diagnoses included in the law’s exceptions are facing delays and denials. Last year, for example, legislators added an update to the ban for patients diagnosed with previable premature rupture of membranes, in which a patient’s water breaks before a fetus can survive. Doctors can still face prosecution for providing abortions in those cases, but they are offered the chance to justify themselves with what’s called an “affirmative defense,” not unlike a murder suspect arguing self defense. This modest change has not stopped some doctors from transferring those patients instead of treating them; Dr. Allison Gilbert, an OB-GYN in Dallas, said doctors send them to her from other hospitals. “They didn’t feel like other staff members would be comfortable proceeding with the abortion,” she said. “It’s frustrating that places still feel like they can’t act on some of these cases that are clearly emergencies.” Women denied treatment for ectopic pregnancies, another exception in the law, have filed federal complaints.

In response to ProPublica’s questions about Houston Methodist’s guidance on miscarriage management, a spokesperson, Gale Smith, said that the hospital has an ethics committee, which can usually respond within hours to help physicians and patients make “appropriate decisions” in compliance with state laws.

After Porsha died, Davis described in the medical record a patient who looked stable: He was tracking her vital signs, her bleeding was “mild” and she was “said not to be in distress.” He ordered bloodwork “to ensure patient wasn’t having concerning bleeding.” Medical experts who reviewed Porsha’s case couldn’t understand why Davis noted that a nurse and other providers reported “decreasing bleeding” in the emergency department when the record indicated otherwise. “He doesn’t document the heavy bleeding that the nurse clearly documented, including the significant bleeding that prompted the blood transfusion, which is surprising,” Grossman, the UCSF professor, said.

Patients who are miscarrying still don’t know what to expect from Houston Methodist.

This past May, Marlena Stell, a patient with symptoms nearly identical to Porsha’s, arrived at another hospital in the system, Houston Methodist The Woodlands. According to medical records, she, too, was 11 weeks along and bleeding heavily. An ultrasound confirmed there was no fetal heartbeat and indicated the miscarriage wasn’t complete. “I assumed they would do whatever to get the bleeding to stop,” Stell said.

Instead, she bled for hours at the hospital. She wanted a D&C to clear out the rest of the tissue, but the doctor gave her methergine, a medication that’s typically used after childbirth to stop bleeding but that isn’t standard care in the middle of a miscarriage, doctors told ProPublica. "She had heavy bleeding, and she had an ultrasound that's consistent with retained products of conception." said Dr. Jodi Abbott, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, who reviewed the records. "The standard of care would be a D&C."

Stell says that instead, she was sent home and told to “let the miscarriage take its course.” She completed her miscarriage later that night, but doctors who reviewed her case, so similar to Porsha’s, said it showed how much of a gamble physicians take when they don’t follow the standard of care. “She got lucky — she could have died,” Abbott said. (Houston Methodist did not respond to a request for comment on Stell’s care.)

It hadn’t occurred to Hope that the laws governing abortion could have any effect on his wife’s miscarriage. Now it’s the only explanation that makes sense to him. “We all know pregnancies can come out beautifully or horribly,” Hope told ProPublica. “Instead of putting laws in place to make pregnancies safer, we created laws that put them back in danger.”

For months, Hope’s youngest son didn’t understand that his mom was gone. Porsha’s long hair had been braided, and anytime the toddler saw a woman with braids from afar, he would take off after her, shouting, “That’s mommy!”

A couple weeks ago, Hope flew to Amsterdam to quiet his mind. It was his first trip without Porsha, but as he walked the city, he didn’t know how to experience it without her. He kept thinking about how she would love the Christmas lights and want to try all the pastries. How she would have teased him when he fell asleep on a boat tour of the canals. “I thought getting away would help,” he wrote in his journal. “But all I’ve done is imagine her beside me.”

Huh?

Sensible critters hibernate in the winter, they don't shit where they eat, and they don't let the crazy fuckers among them lead the pack.

BKjr is no dummy. Unfortunately, his mental health problems have led him to some really dumb places.

This one is a slight variation on:

"Legless dogs won't come when you whistle, but that don't mean they're deaf."

He's (maybe deliberately) mistaking 'racism' for 'prejudice'.

To varying degrees, everybody's prejudiced.

Prejudice has been built into our big ol' simian brains across 3 million years of evolution. Sometimes, your survival depended on being wary of somebody who didn't look like you, or smell like you, or sound like you. If we, as a species, can manage to survive another hundred generations or so, we might put that one behind us - as we evolve a skin color that's a nice neutral beige.

As usual MAGA is both missing the point, and acknowledging it at the same time. First, they deny racism even exists, but then they turn around and say it's not that big a deal if those whiny minorities would just toughen up a bit.

But that totally ignores the political, social, and economic power that takes a personal prejudice and turns it into full blown institutional racism.

It Was A Stunt

The guy is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Trying to put Kamala down, he took a dump on everybody who works at a fast food joint like McDonalds. He can't help himself. He just doesn't give one empty fuck about people.

He just wants what he wants in the moment, and he doesn't care who he fucks over trying to get it.

Oops - Again

His advance team has to be the worst ever. They had him drop in on a donut shop not too long ago and it was about the cringiest thing anybody's ever seen.

Now Vance has been blocked from bringing his gang into a place in western PA called Primanti Brothers because the franchise employees objected to having the whole mess disturbing their customers and staff, and disrupting their business.

Nobody checked with the restaurant's management beforehand to see if it was OK in the first fuckin' place.

NEW: JD Vance barred from entering Primanti Bros in North Versailles, PA as supporters waited for him inside, decided to pay for everyone's tabs anyway & signed with "No Taxes on Tips"

When Vance arrived, he was reportedly told he wasn't allowed to leave his car because the… pic.twitter.com/GCuAqDYCs1

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 28, 2024

 

Another advance issue w/ Team Vance:
After showing up to Primanti Bros. in North Versailles, PA, a restaurant worker told the press that cameras were not allowed and that they did not want a “campaign event.”
Vance ended up glad-handing in parking lot outside, per @AlecAHernandez pic.twitter.com/BgCbFWl52a

— Gary Grumbach (@GaryGrumbach) September 28, 2024

JD Vance Forced to Greet Supporters In A Parking Lot After Restaurant Denies Him Entry

JD Vance was forced to address supporters in a parking lot after a Pennsylvania restaurant denied him entry because they did not want to host a “campaign event.”

According to NBC News reporter Gary Grumbach, supporters of Vance came early to Primanti Bros. in North Versailles, Pennsylvania, to greet the Ohio lawmaker when he arrived. However, employees with the restaurant told reporters that cameras would not be allowed in and they did not want to host the event.

After barring Vance from the venue, customers canceled their food orders after learning he was not welcome. Video from outside the restaurant shows Vance welcoming his supporters and encouraging not to hold a grudge against the business and the employees.

“We paid for everybody’s food. We gave him a nice tip. And of course, when I gave him a nice tip, I said, ‘No taxes on tips,'” Vance told his supporters.

He added, “Don’t hold it against her. She just got a little nervous. But it’s a great local business. Let’s keep on supporting it.”

Today's Belle

In case you needed to know the whole story.

How Dumb Is he?

'Are You Seriously This Stupid?': Legal Minds Nail Trump After Fox News 'Confession'

The former president's latest defense backfires on social media.

Donald Trump on Sunday tried to defend himself from the criminal charges he’s facing in the election interference case ― but experts say it sounded more like a confession.

Trump on Fox News bragged that his poll numbers go up every time he’s indicted.

“Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it, you get indicted, and your poll numbers go up,” he said.

Trump is facing charges in multiple jurisdictions and cases, including election interference in a criminal case filed in federal court in Washington. Last week, he was reindicted to comply with directions from the Supreme Court, which in July ruled that Trump was immune from prosecution for “official acts.”

On Sunday, however, Trump flat out said he had “every right” to have been “interfering” with the election.

Lawmakers, former prosecutors, attorneys and other legal minds were ready with a fact-check ― and some said it sounded like Trump was admitting to a crime:

Dear @realDonaldTrump: Are you seriously this stupid? You think President Biden has the right to interfere in the upcoming election? Do you want VP Harris to do what you tried to get former VP Mike Pence to do? Are you really this dumb?

Also, interfering in elections is illegal. https://t.co/9ceSd99K1t

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) September 2, 2024

There's no right to "interfere" with a presidential election. This is the banality of evil right here—Trump asserting he can override the will of the voters to claim victory in an election he lost. And, he will do it again. We must vote against him in overwhelming numbers. https://t.co/S0ECtVdPOt

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) September 2, 2024

I love that Trump uses the word "interfere" thereby making the case against himself.

— Elizabeth de la Vega 🇺🇸🦅 (@Delavegalaw) September 2, 2024

Paging @ManhattanDA —

A transcript of this interview might be helpful for the sentencing memo your office is drafting https://t.co/OFB9tDLG4z

— Jennifer Taub (@jentaub) September 2, 2024

Criming and then confessing to the criming.

That’s a Trump specialty. https://t.co/mK3HiH76kc

— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) September 2, 2024

In his defense, Trump’s not wrong to suggest that indicting a President for interfering with an election is without precedent. Then again, so is a President interfering with an election. So that’s where we are. https://t.co/QuYL9AwB3k

— Marc Guggenheim (@mguggenheim) September 2, 2024

To be clear: NO ONE “has a right to interfere in a presidential election” nor indeed any other election. It is against the law to do so. It is a violation not only of law, but indeed of every oath that son of a bitch and his enablers swore. https://t.co/90ptLsccuT

— (((Denise A Rubin))) (@DeniseARubin) September 2, 2024

No one has the right to interfere with an election. Either 1) Trump believes his lies, or 2) Trump is old and delusional. Either way, he is unfit to be president.

— Taylor E. Darcy (@tayloredarcy) September 2, 2024

More On The Arlington Thing

Trump is defending his shitty behavior by blaming the family of the dead uniform - because of course he is, because he's a weak little shit-waffle - excusing his actions by saying first, he had no idea about any of it, but then saying the family invited him to do it.

I think the family probably got the idea because Trump's helpers suggested it to them.

And anyway, It doesn't matter if some random family invited you to steal their nephew's car - you stole a car and that means you're guilty of theft. Because you stole a fucking car.

It's too typical - and it's perfectly in line with the usual gaslighting bullshit - the guy says he's the smartest dude ever, but he keeps getting suckered into doing really stoopid shit.

So which is it? Both can't be true at the same time.

If you're all that smart, then you don't get suckered.

If you keep getting suckered, then you ain't all that smart.

Typical

Trump's team must be trying to clue him in to the criticism that he's not right in the head.

So, as is typical of his brand of narcissism, he does his usual double-down thing by pretending that it's all a brilliant application of 47 dimension linguistic chess.

And BTW - does anybody believe the guy has friends who're English professors?

BREAKING: Donald Trump says his rambling, incoherent vowel movements are actually a brilliant strategy called “The Weave”

I don’t know what to say anymore. Oh my god. pic.twitter.com/yxJwLRfxmY

— Jim Stewartson, Counterinsurgent 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙🎈 (@jimstewartson) August 30, 2024

More BKjr

I think I get it - the critters were all dead, so no harm no foul. Seriously though? The guy has to know how fucked up it makes him look.

But maybe he doesn't. The dog incident seems to have coincided with his brain worm thing.

The guy is fuckin' weird, and fits in with the Trump crowd just fine.

So - JD Vance has some rather peculiar aspects to him, and now BKjr comes off as nutty-like-a-squirrel-turd, all while the campaign team is moving mountains trying to rehab Trump's image.

I suppose it's possible that the Trump campaign gurus believe they can make him look like he's closer to normal by surrounding him with off-the-wall Looney Tunes characters (?)

This is, after all, the gang that put Hulk Hogan on stage not long before Trump's "acceptance speech" at the RNC.

So who the fuck knows what these idiots think they're up to?

(from July 24, 2024)

Unsettling photo appears to show RFK Jr. with barbequed carcass of dog

An unsettling, newly unearthed photo shows Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posing with a barbecued carcass of an animal — and while a veterinarian reportedly said it was a dog, the independent presidential candidate insists it’s not.

Kennedy, 70, texted the shocking photo of himself and an unidentified woman posing with the charred four-legged animal to a friend last year, according to a Vanity Fair report.

The Kennedy family scion is seen clutching the barbequed remains on a big metal spit and pretending to take a big bite out of the ribs.

The carcass has 13 pairs of ribs – including a tell-tale “floating rib” that suggests it is in fact a canine, a veterinarian told the magazine.

But Kennedy on Tuesday claimed the animal was a goat as he downplayed the report.

“It’s of me at a campfire in Patagonia on the Futaleufu River, eating a goat, which is what we eat down there,” he told Fox News.

Kennedy shared the snap with a friend who was traveling to Asia and suggested that the pal would enjoy a restaurant in Korea that had dogs on the menu — raising more speculation the 2024 candidate once ate a pooch, according to the report.

The recipient, however, thought the image was insensitive for how it made light of animal cruelty, the magazine added.

The friend also expressed concern that it appeared to mock Korean culture and put the reputations of Kennedy and his famous family on the line.

The photo’s metadata dates it to 2010 – the same year Kennedy was diagnosed with a dead tapeworm in his brain.

During his 2012 divorce proceedings, the 70-year-old claimed he may have contracted the parasite during a trip to South Asia.

Kennedy’s family, however, generally believed that his cognitive issues stemmed from his 14 years as a heroin user, Vanity Fair reported.

When RFK Jr was married to his second wife, Mary Richardson, he supposedly sent nude photos of women to his friends.

Kennedy’s heroin addiction reportedly started when he was 15 – one year after his father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated – and continued through his 20s when he started his legal career at the Manhattan DA’s office.

The bombshell report also alleged that during his marriage to the late Mary Richardson, Kennedy was known for sending his friends photos of naked women.

The friends reportedly assumed that Kennedy had taken the photos but did not know whether the subjects had consented to be photographed — or to have the images shared.

When one unnamed friend lost his phone, Kennedy allegedly panicked that someone would find the photos, the magazine reported.

Meanwhile, another woman alleged that the insurgent presidential candidate was “totally inappropriate” when she, then 23, worked as a babysitter for his family in 1998.

The woman, Eliza Cooney, claimed that she felt Kennedy’s hand moving up and down her leg during a meeting one evening.

A few weeks later, the then-45-year-old father and husband allegedly came into her room and asked her to rub lotion on his back.

Cooney also claimed that Kennedy came up behind her and groped her in the kitchen pantry, leaving her “frozen” and “shocked” as he supposedly grabbed her hips and slid his hands up to her breasts.

The alleged sexual assault was only interrupted when another worker came into the kitchen, Cooney told Vanity Fair.

When asked during a Breaking Points interview if he was denying the allegations leveled by the nanny, Kennedy replied, “I’m not gonna comment on it.”

Kennedy overall ripped the Vanity Fair story while he insisted that from the start of the campaign, he said he was not a church boy.

The Kennedy campaign did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment on the allegations.

Today's Tik Tok

JD Vance is an embarrassment to humankind - if he is, in fact, human - we're still waiting for confirmation on that one.

Dan Wilbur on Tik Tok

Interesting Take

Oy

Here's the guy who needs a protective enclosure of bulletproof glass when he addresses his supporters, but he'll just kinda wing it down at the big nasty border where all those scary brown people are.

What a phony this fuckin' loser is

Slippage

Opinion

Does Trump even want to win?

In a state Trump needs, he attacked the popular Republican governor and trotted out the usual grievances.

Donald Trump is three months away from a presidential election that is likely to determine whether he goes to jail for a considerable amount of time. And not even stakes that high are enough to get the Republican nominee to stop publicly raging and ranting about perceived betrayals by allegedly disloyal GOP officials, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Speaking at a rally in a Georgia State University arena in Atlanta on Saturday, Trump periodically sounded like he was running for governor against Kemp. Telling the audience that “your numbers in Georgia are very average, your crime numbers, your economic numbers, all of your numbers, you’re very average. You can do a lot better and you’ll do a lot better with a better governor,” Trump said of Kemp, whose approval rating is a robust 63 percent, “He’s a bad guy, he’s a disloyal guy, and he’s a very average governor.” Oh, and Trump referred to Kemp, who’s perhaps an inch shorter than the former president, as “Little Brian, Little Brian Kemp.”

Complaining about Kemp and Raffensperger — the state’s top election official, whom Trump told as he tried to overturn the 2020 election, “I just want to find 11,780 votes” — Trump alleged, “They don’t want the vote to be honest, in my opinion. They want us to lose, that’s actually my opinion.”

Trump is laying the groundwork for another election conspiracy theory and another set of excuses if he loses the state of Georgia in November. (Trump was beating President Biden in this state consistently; Vice President Harris is neck-and-neck with Trump in the Peach State.)

Maybe it’s a sign Trump is panicked because switching out Biden for Harris couldn’t have gone much better for the Democrats. (Notice you can find a lot of Republicans insisting that Harris’s becoming the nominee without winning a single primary or caucus is undemocratic, but you can’t find many Democrats making that objection. As former Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis once said, “Just win, baby.”)

But more likely, Saturday night was just the seemingly billionth example that at any given moment, Trump cannot prioritize anything, not even his own long-term interests, above his sense of grievance. Kemp and Raffensperger refused to help Trump game the 2020 election results, therefore they’re the enemy — regardless of how useful their support could be for 2024 in a state that could have a big influence on Trump’s fortunes.

The more intensely someone tells Trump not to stick a fork in an electric socket, the more Trump lunges to jab it in there, just to prove he can.

A minuscule portion of blame goes on the news media, as reporters are drawn to conflict, and “Trump vs. other Republicans” is always a storyline that excites them. Trump spoke about other issues during his 90-minute address in Atlanta — the border and crime, albeit in typical Trump hyperbole: “If Kamala wins, it will be crime, chaos and death all across our country.” But none of them could spark as much coverage or attention as the Republican presidential nominee denouncing the Republican governor of a key swing state.

But it is fair to wonder whether Trump’s heart is in his check-the-box statements about the policies he intends to enact. No, what gets Trump’s blood flowing is his endless sense of victimhood, his perpetual whining that all his problems are the result of shadowy forces conspiring against him, and his stubborn insistence on re-litigating the 2020 election, even when that is light-years away from the top priorities of the voters he needs to win.

Voters consistently list the economy as their top priority, the latest jobs numbers are disappointing, and the markets are sliding. Overseas, tensions between Israel and its enemies are at their worst in decades. (Trump never got around to mentioning Israel in his Atlanta remarks.) About the only silver lining in Trump’s Saturday appearance is that he didn’t take the opportunity to repeat, of Harris, “I didn’t know she was Black.”

We may well look back and conclude that the apex of the Trump campaign was about 20 minutes into his convention speech, before Trump decided to wing it and segue into thoughts about the Green Bay Packers and his now trademark reference to “the late, great, Hannibal Lecter.” The GOP convention feels like a decade ago, and Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt feels like a lifetime ago.

Trump had a fairly easy path to victory against Biden, and beating Harris is still very much within the realm of possibility. But he just doesn’t seem interested in staying focused and putting in the work. Great pick, Republicans.

The Stable Genius

Smart people can be dumb as fuck, but Trump is not smart - he's cunning, but not smart.

• The guy asked if nuclear weapons could be used to stop hurricanes.
• He said we should think about using disinfectants internally to beat COVID-19.
• He thought maybe shining a powerful light "inside the body" would kill the virus.
• He told his team to cut back on testing for COVID, because then there'd be fewer cases.
• He thinks you can be electrocuted by dropping a battery in the ocean.
• He said the noise from wind turbines causes cancer.

Randy Rainbow

Trump The Pander Bear

A few things:

1. You don't get to deport US citizens, and there aren't that many "foreign students" doing the protesting, so the bit about stomping on protesters has nothing to do with Gaza, and everything to do with looking for an excuse to fuck up some people who don't fit the description of Supremely White America
2. Speaking with "98% of my Jewish friends", he goes full-throated-support-for-Israel-no-matter-what - not because he loves Israel, but because he knows enough to love up on Israel in order to stroke the Evangelicals
3. He praised the cops for clearing the Columbia campus - which are the same cops he's been taking a giant dump on outside the courtroom during his trial.

Trump told donors he will crush pro-Palestinian protests, deport demonstrators

Trump has waffled on whether the Israel-Gaza war should end. But speaking to wealthy donors behind closed doors, he said that he supports Israel’s right to continue “its war on terror.”

Former president Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, according to participants in the roundtable event with him in New York.

“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said on May 14, according to donors at the event.

When one of the donors complained that many of the students and professors protesting on campuses could one day hold positions of power in the United States, Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. He praised the New York Police Department for clearing the campus at Columbia University and said other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now.”

“Well, if you get me elected, and you should really be doing this, if you get me reelected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he said, according to the donors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail a private event.

Trump has waffled publicly about whether Israel should continue its war in Gaza, saying “get it over with … get back to peace and stop killing people.” Major Republican donors have lobbied him in recent months to take a stronger stance backing Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The private New York meeting offers new insight into his current thinking. Speaking to wealthy donors behind closed doors, Trump said that he supports Israel’s right to continue “its war on terror” and boasted of his White House policies toward Israel.

The former president didn’t mention Netanyahu, whom he resents for acknowledging Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 and hasn’t spoken to in years.

Trump has offered few policy specifics about how he’d treat Israel in a second term. He cast doubt on the viability of an independent Palestinian state in a recent Time Magazine interview, saying he was “not sure a two-state solution anymore is gonna work,” adding: “there may not be another idea.” A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the end goal of U.S. policy under Democratic and Republican presidents for decades.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to detailed questions about The Washington Post’s reporting. “When President Trump is back in the Oval Office, Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end,” Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s national press secretary, wrote in an email.

Both Trump and Biden have struggled with the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the campaign trail. Biden’s base is deeply divided on the Israel-Gaza war, but Trump’s rhetoric on the subject has limited his ability to capitalize on his opponent’s problems.

Trump has repeatedly claimed in public statements and interviews that Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war, would have never happened if he were president.

But he has also criticized Israel’s approach to the war, albeit in somewhat confusing terms. In a March interview with the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, Trump said, “You have to finish up your war. To finish it up. You gotta get it done.” In April, he argued the war was bad for Israel’s image, telling conservative talk show radio host Hugh Hewitt that Israel is “absolutely losing the PR war.”

Trump took a different tone in the meeting with donors. Instead of saying it was time to wrap up the war, he said he supported Israel’s right to continue its attack on Gaza.

“But I’m one of the only people that says that now. And a lot of people don’t even know what October 7th is,” Trump said.

Trump repeatedly listed for the donors everything he believed he had done for Israel in the White House. He moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, bucking decades of U.S. policy. He recognized the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967, as an integral part of Israel after what he said was a five-minute conversation with David Friedman, his ambassador there.

He also polled the room if they liked Friedman.

“So I did Golan Heights. You know that’s worth $2 trillion, they said, that piece, if you put it in real estate terms. But it’s worth more than that. It is,” Trump said, according to donors present.

Israel, Trump argued, needs his help. Street demonstrations for Israel get smaller crowds than his rallies, he said. In Washington, and particularly in Congress, “Israel is losing its power,” he added. “It’s incredible.”

The former president repeatedly expressed frustration that Jewish Americans did not vote for him as much as he believes they should, the donors said.

“But how can a Jewish person vote for a Democrat, and Biden in particular — but forget Biden. They always let you down,” he said, referring to Democrats.

Trump has made similar comments in public, occasionally triggering backlash. Some Jewish Americans have said that his rhetoric evokes the antisemitic idea that American Jews are more loyal to their religion or to Israel than to the United States.

Several influential Republican donors, including Miriam Adelson, have pressed Trump to publicly express support not only for Israel but also for Netanyahu, its embattled leader.

Trump never mentioned Netanyahu at the roundtable. But he has frequently complained about Netanyahu in public — particularly after the Israeli prime minister acknowledged Biden’s victory in the 2020 election even as Trump was still fiercely challenging the results.

“Bibi Netanyahu rightfully has been criticized for what took place on October 7,” Trump told Time, referring to the Israeli government’s failure to prevent the surprise attack, in which Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis and took 253 hostage. He also recalled that he had “a bad experience with Bibi,” claiming that Israel had planned to participate in the 2020 U.S. strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani but backed out at the last minute.

Trump’s annoyance with Netanyahu dates back to his time in the White House, and his frustration that he felt he did not get enough credit for what he did for Israel and its leader when he was in office, John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, said in an interview.

“He doesn’t like Netanyahu … it’s because Bibi is one of the premier democratic politicians in the world in terms of getting publicity about himself and Trump resents that,” said Bolton, a frequent Trump critic. “Trump fundamentally sees Netanyahu as getting credit for things Trump thinks he ought to get credit for.”

Until the 2020 election, the two leaders had a close working relationship, according to one person familiar with their relationship, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the leaders’ private conversations. But Trump was “taken aback” by a video Netanyahu made congratulating Biden on his victory. Trump, this person said, thought the video was a “little too cordial.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally and sometimes critic, didn’t directly address Trump’s comments about Israel when asked about them in an interview. But he offered a broad assessment.

“We can have our opinions about our allies but I think they’re in the middle of a fight for their life, there’ll be plenty of time for the accountability to be had,” he said. “The best route to deliver that accountability will be the Israeli people.”

Trump and Netanyahu’s relationship will “continue to prosper and flourish” if they’re both in office at the same time again, Matthew Brooks, chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said in an interview.

“He’s giving the Israelis a blank check to go in and do what they need to do to destroy Hamas and eliminate the threat in Gaza from Hamas. And what he’s also saying, which is actually true, he said ‘but do it quickly’ because time is not Israel’s ally right now,” Brooks said.

“President Biden stands against antisemitism and is committed to the safety of the Jewish community, and security of Israel. Donald Trump does not,” James Singer, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said in a statement earlier this month.

Top Trump allies recently visited Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and other officials in a delegation headed by Robert O’Brien, another of Trump’s former White House national security advisers. The trip was organized by the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the group did not come bearing messages from Trump or speaking on behalf of the Trump administration, said Ed McMullen, who served as U.S. ambassador to Switzerland under the Trump administration.

The group watched gruesome footage of the Oct. 7 attack and toured parts of the country where Israelis had been killed or kidnapped, making for an “educational visit that was life-changing,” McMullen said. The group is likely to debrief Trump on the trip at some point, he added.

At the donor roundtable, Trump said he had studied Jewish history and had thoughts about this moment in U.S. history.

“And you know, you go back through history, this is like just before the Holocaust. I swear. If you look, it’s the same thing,” Trump said. “You had a weak president or head of the country. And it just built and built. And then, all of a sudden, you ended up with Hitler. You ended up with a problem like nobody knew.”

Nikki Haley Said What?

Some quotes from Nikki Haley:

• "As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who's going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account."
• (I want) "a president who supports capitalism and freedom - a president who understands we need less debt, not more debt."
• "President Trump has surrounded himself with the political elite, but they're the same political elite that have spent like drunken sailors. They've raided Social Security, and continue to waste taxpayer dollars. Everybody talks about the economy when Trump was president - he put us 8 trillion in debt in just 4 years.
• "If you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don't deserve a driver's license, let alone being President of the United States."
• "We can't have someone who sits there and mocks our men and women who're trying to protect America."
• "He was completely wrong because every time he was in the room with him (Putin), he got weak in the knees.We can't have a president who gets weak in the knees with Putin. We have to have a president who's going to be strong with Putin in every sense of the word."
• "He sided with a thug that arrests American journalists and holds them hostage. And he sided with a guy who wanted to make a point with the Russian people - don't challenge me in the next election, or this will happen to you too."
• "It is unconscionable to me to have a candidate who would spend 50 million in legal fees. It explains why he's not doing many rallies - he doesn't have the money to do it. It explains why he doesn't want to get on a debate stage - because he doesn't want to talk about why he's doing it."
• "I don't know if he waited too long, but I'll tell you, Donald Trump is everything we hear and teach our kids not to do in kindergarten."
• "That means Donald Trump is going to side with a thug, where half a million people have died or been wounded because of Russia invading Ukraine. That means Donald Trump is going to side with a mad man."

Also Nikki Haley:

"Meh - fuck all that - I'm gonna vote for Trump."

Must See

Sometimes all you need is to kill something just to watch it die.