A “Black Libel,” against Haitians, has been added to the ancient arsenal of White Supremacists and Anti-Semites: The “Blood Libel” against, and scapegoating of, the Jews.

(Fascist publications like ‘Der Sturmer’ (above) were responsible for fanning the flames of the centuries old “Blood Libel” that Jews were killing Christian babies and using their blood for ritualistic purposes—lies that resulted in the scapegoating of, and the mass murder of millions of Jews. For more than 200 years, Haitians have been the target of a “Black Libel,” falsely accusing them of everything from voodoo and animal sacrifice, to the spread of AIDS. (below).

Donald Trump, JD Vance, and their blood-thirsty, bigoted white supremacist sic(sic)-o-phants expose their full-throated, fundamentalist hatreds each time they open their mouths:  Blacks & Jews, they howl, should be blamed for our evils.

The misogynistic MAGA monsters also can’t stand strong, independent women—who refuse to be humble handmaidens of their hate–have repeatedly demonstrated over decades of pushing policies aimed at keeping women subservient, pregnant & poor, particularly in the area of women’s health and reproductive rights why Kamala Harris’ candidacy drives them crazy: she refuses to be shackled by the white, male supremacists’ centuries long campaigns of shame & subjugation.

Yet, the real red flag of Harris’ candidacy to these bigoted bullies, is not just that she’s a woman, but that she’s multi-racial, with one of her parents being from the Caribbean—an exotic, erotic place of mystery and Black independence history– and is happily married to a successful & confident white Jewish man.     In one single sweep, a charismatic new American persona–Kamala Harris–represents all of the crazed, conspiracies these haters have harbored, and acted upon, going back centuries.  Despite—or perhaps because of– her obvious joy, likeability, and deep professionalism, Harris is the worst nightmare of White Supremacists, sexual oppressors, and anti-Semites.

Their virulent attacks by Trump, Laura Loomer, JD Vance, Mark Robinson, and other Far Right extremists, against American Jews who don’t support authoritarianism, and upon the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, are only the latest eruptions of their dangerous bile, hate speech and group libel.  In the past, such relentless campaigns of hate and dehumanization against Jews and non-Whites, have yielded deadly results.

Jews of every political persuasion have been subjected to “Blood Libels” against them going back to the 12^th Century, according to “A History of the Jewish People,” an 1100-page encyclopedic work edited by H.H. Ben Sasson, and published by Harvard University Press in 1976.  That “Blood Libel,” first surfaced in England, when the Jews of Norwich, were “accused of having murdered a Christian child.”   It’s get subtly resurrected each time a Christian Nationalist, or proponent of Project 2025, refers to the United States as a “Christian Nation.”

The anti-Semitic “Blood Libel & Ritual Murder” is defined by early Jew-haters, as, “once the Jews had crucified Christ (a lie), they thirsted for pure and innocent blood (another lie.) Since the formerly incarnate God was now in “heaven,” the grotesque lie continued that, “the Jews aspired to the blood of the most innocent believers, i.e., the children, the tender Christians.”  (Page 482, History of the Jewish People).

Dangerously, millions of Christians believed those early “blood libels” to be true, resulting in large numbers of Jews being burned at the stake.   A full century after the Jews had been expelled from England, Geoffrey Chaucer, the English poet, wrote The Canterbury Tales in 1387.   In the “Prioress’ Tale”, “an innocent Christian child was walking through the ‘Street of the Jews’ singing songs in praise of Mary, mother of Jesus.  The Jews seized and murdered him.  The crime was miraculously revealed, and the whole community of Jews was put to death.”  (Page 483, History of the Jewish People.)

Jewish history is replete with such repulsive smears and crusades against an entire people from the murderous lies and 15^th century treachery of John of Capistrano (latter canonized into Sainthood by the Catholic Church), and the Libel of Trent (1475) where Franciscan monks preached that Jews in that German town were responsible for the disappearance of a 2-year old boy.  Without any evidence at all, the entire Jewish community was arrested, tortured, and expelled from the region. 

Nearly 500 years—and the murders of millions of Jews–later (1965), the Catholic Church officially “acknowledged that a judicial error had been committed against the Jews of Trent…” (Page 580, History of the Jewish People).

Sadly, the Jew Haters were just beginning to hone their horrific lies.  During the Spanish Inquisition, witchcraft and crucifixion were added to the fictional charges of “blood libel” and “ritual murder,” against the Jews, along with the utterly insane charge that Jews used the heart and blood of a crucified boy to “spread rabies among all Christians.”   Despite there being no factual foundation for any of the charges, all Jews merely accused of the crime were burned at the stake, with Christians ready to believe any evil of anyone who was Jewish.

In the 16^th Century, the founder of Lutheranism, the German conservative Martin Luther, was savagely anti-Semitic, spelling out detailed methods of how to destroy the Jewish population, many of which were updated and perniciously put into practice by Adolf Hitler 400 years later, resulting in the torture and annihilation of six million Jews, one million of whom were children.

But, Hitler was not alone. At the same time Hitler and the embryonic Nazi movement were rising in Germany, the KKK was at the peak of its power in the United States, getting 30,000 of its robed followers to March on Washington in 1925—the same year “Mein Kampf” was published.   The year before, the KKK was instrumental in crafting the virulent anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant Immigration Act of 1924—the basis for the present day Trump/Stephen Miller immigration policy.

Such actions  “normalized” how the KKK operated.  Teaming up with other White Supremacists across the US, the KKK—while continuing to lynch thousands of Black Americans for the sole “crime” of being Black– passed Jim Crow laws in some 30 American states.  Those Jim Crow Laws, according to Princeton Professor and legal scholar James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model, served as the basis for Nazi lawyers in drafting the Nuremberg Laws against the Jews, forever linking legislated hatred and state-sponsored discrimination against Blacks, with legislated hatred, discrimination and state-sponsored murder against the Jews. (See https://open.substack.com/pub/villano/p/dictating-hate-jim-crow-white-supremacy?r=cveu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).

In fact, it was during the tumultuous, anti-immigrant 1920’s in the United States, when not only were Italian immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti executed (1927) for a murder that was not proven they committed, but, the following year, a well-documented case of “Blood Libel” against Jews occurred in Massena, New York, a small town in St. Lawrence County, just across from the Canadian border.

In his book, The Accusation:  Blood Libel in an American Town, NYU History professor Edward Berenson—a native of Massena, N.Y.—documents a “Blood Libel” against local Jews in an upstate N.Y. town at a time (1928) when anti-immigrant fervor was at a fever pitch in the United States, the KKK was at the peak of its political power, and the first Catholic candidate—New York’s Governor Al Smith, with Irish and Italian ancestors—was running for President of the United States.

 The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described this “modern blood libel” as:  

“When a four-year-old girl went missing from her home, and a rumor spread that local Jews had kidnapped and killed her. Crowds gathered outside Massena’s police station, where the town’s rabbi had been summoned. A state trooper questioned the rabbi, and asked him whether Jews offered human sacrifices or used blood in rituals. The girl was eventually found alive and unharmed.”

In the Massena case, the young girl, named Barbara, had gotten lost in the local woods—very dense around that North Country community—and returned home the next day, unharmed.  However, despite the direct evidence of Barbara’s safety, the accusations of “Jewish rituals” persisted in the local and national press for weeks.

The ADL, in its’ Global Anti-Semitism resource material from 2016, goes on to detail the wild stories and lies of blood libels against Jews throughout 1,000 years of history, resulting in the massacres of entire Jewish communities: 

“Some Christians believed that the four cups of wine that Jews drink at the Passover Seder celebrations were actually blood, or that Jews mixed blood into hamantaschen, sweet pastries eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim. Others claimed that Jews used Christian blood as a medicine or even as an aphrodisiac.”

Professor Berenson told the New York University News’ in September, 2019, that he believed the Massena “Blood Libel” occurred during the cultural backdrop of:

“…mass immigration, which by the 1920s was three and a half decades old. Before that… the United States was overwhelmingly a Protestant country; after the 1880s, you had a huge influx of Catholics and Jews, and it really changed the country…

So in the 1920s—and this will have echoes for the present—there were an awful lot of people who were not so happy about this new demographic situation, and one of the main organizations that opposed it was a revived Ku Klux Klan. There’s some evidence that there were several members of the volunteer fire company in Massena who were members of the Klan. And there were essentially no African Americans who lived up there, so most of the Klan’s hostility was directed against Catholics and Jews, and people who were seen to be connected to immigration in one way or the other.”

Professor Berenson went on to point out in his interview with NYU News:

“Religious venom surrounded this campaign (of 1928).  There was horrible hostility to Catholics because Al Smith was the first Catholic candidate ever for the presidency. And some of Al Smith’s top advisors were Jews, and everybody knew that they were Jewish. So this election kind of brought together all of these themes that were percolating in the 1920s.”

Fast forward to today, nearly 100 years later, to the Presidential Election of 2024, when the candidate of one major party, Donald Trump, has a well-documented record of racism toward Blacks, deep anti-immigrant animus upon which he has campaigned and enacted policy, and Jew-blaming, when it suits his purposes, as it did recently when a purported address on “Anti-Semitism” by Trump turned into an all out attack on Jews who don’t support him, whom he preemptively blamed for his defeat, should he lose the election to Kamala Harris.   Multiple news sources and commentators noted Trump’s new “Blame the Jews” strategy of scapegoating the very people who have been similarly scapegoated for centuries, with horrific consequences. To Trump and many of his supporters, the perverse and dangerous irony of scapegoating Jews at a conference on Anti-Semitism, meant nothing.

Vice President Harris, for her part, is the first US Presidential candidate in American history who is a female, mixed race daughter of immigrants—one of whom is a Caribbean Black—and who is married to a Jew.  In one highly qualified and enormously charismatic candidate, White Supremacists, Anti-Semites and Xenophobes have been blinded by their own rage— the same effect the Democratic, Catholic son of immigrants Al Smith had upon the KKK and other bigots in 1928.

With immigration as a similar lightening rod political issue today as it was in 1924 & 1928–it was inevitable that at least one particular group of immigrants would be targeted for discrimination and vilification during the 2024 election.  What was also not surprising was that the group targeted by Trump and his supporters—would not be Latino, as they were for Trump’s entire political career—but  Haitian legal immigrants, a persistent target of White Supremacists going back over 200 years, at precisely the same time when the Democrats nominated a Black woman with ancestors from the Caribbean.   Had the Haitians become Trump’s Willie Horton?

Even with local public officials and the Governors of each state pointing out how much Haitian immigrants have helped build the local economies of Springfield, Ohio and Charleroi, Pennsylvania, Trump has doubled down on the blatant blanket of lies and hate spread by himself and his running mate JD Vance– by telling 67 million Americans during a Presidential debate that the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs, the people that came in; they’re eating the cats; they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” 

Before the Democratic Presidential candidate was a women with Caribbean ancestry, Trump’s running mate Vance—A US Senator from Ohio for the past two years—never once identified any reports of pet eating by anyone in the Ohio city of approximately 60,000 people, despite an in-migration of some 20,000 Haitians to Springfield over the past 4 years.  Was this “Black Libel” created out of thin air specifically because a Black woman was now running against Trump?

The fact that this group of immigrants were Haitian was irresistible for vitriolic attacks from White Supremacist, anti-immigrant extremists.  After all, it was Haitians who were falsely accused of another “Black Libel” 40 years ago– of being the source of the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the early 1980’s, despite evidence that the disease was brought to Port-O-Prince, Haiti, by white American, non-Haitian tourists.  The brilliant infectious disease doctor and medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer—who spent years delivering health care services to Haiti–wrote a meticulously researched book entitled AIDS and Accusation:  Haiti and the Geography of Blame, smashing the negative stereotypes against Haitians.

Even in New York City, Haitians were targeted for HIV-related hate crimes in the 1980’s where Farmer writes, “ In Brooklyn, walls on the margins of a predominantly Caribbean neighborhood were spray-painted with the words “Haitians=N_____S with AIDS.”  This followed a classification by the CDC during the Reagan Administration of Haitians as a “high risk group.”  Subsequently, Haitian children in Brooklyn were beaten up and shot; Haitian store owners in Brooklyn went bankrupt and Haitian families in Brooklyn were evicted from their homes, regardless of whether they tested negative for HIV.  Let that sink in, in light of the newest “Black Libel” being pedaled today by Trump and JD Vance, of Haitians eating household pets.  Vance continued to spread the lie even after being presented with clear evidence that it was not true, simply to spread anti-immigrant fears and the newest Black Libel.

In AIDS and Accusations, Paul Farmer wrote:  “A social service organization in South Florida reported that, following the inclusion of Haitians on the CDC listing, it was unable to find job placements for a majority of its clients. That same organization also received hate mail which conveyed such slogans as, ‘ Hire a Haitian—Help Spread AIDS,” and, “There were (sic) no AIDS in the USA until the illegal Haitian Dogs came.”

Farmer noted that the effect of these wild speculations and lies about Haitians were disastrous:  “The burden of the new syndrome (HIV/AIDS) was not apparent before 1983—after all, 40 AIDS cases did not add up to much against a background of tuberculosis, typhoid, malaria, malnutrition and political repression.  But the effect of AIDS-related discrimination would be instantly palpable.”

Over the past 40 years of baseless accusations against them of spreading disease, or practicing voodoo, or witchcraft, or ritual sacrifices or divination—similar to what Jews have been historically accused of–White Supremacist, Haitian haters have moved from accusing legal Haitian immigrants of being “illegal Haitian Dogs,” to spreading lies that Haitians were actually eating dogs.

While not the same as the historic and genocidal “blood libel” against the Jews, dating back over 1,000 years, the “Black Libel” against Haitians almost always involved blood (HIV/AIDS in the bloodstream) or the eating of animal blood, and their skin color—all carefully chosen attacks designed to rhetorically and racially herd Haitians back centuries to a primitive status, before Haiti became the first country in the New World to eliminate  slavery, some 60 years before the United States did.

The wealthy, white slaveholders of the Confederacy were terrified that the success of the “free the slaves” movement in Haiti, while the US was in its infancy—and within the Constitution’s 10-year timetable for reconsidering Slavery which expired in 1808– would spread to the United States, only 700 miles away, and destroy their profitable “slave economy” of the US.

Now, the very same forces of White Supremacy and human oppression are terrified of an organic “Democracy movement” in the United States today, personified, not by a Haitian, but by an immigrant daughter of the Caribbean, married to a proud Jew.  These fanatic voices of viciousness and hate, have demonstrated they will resurrect any baseless “Blood Libel” or “Black Libel” from the past, along with any racist, or anti-Semitic slurs or conspiracy theories they can concoct, to preserve inequality and choke off any semblance of social or political change.

 And, if they fail to hold back the future, as they will, they’ve already lined up some familiar scapegoats to blame for their own failures.

That’s what’s at stake in the Election of 2024.

We’ve seen the danger of these dehumanizing Trump tropes of racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant lies before, with deadly results.

Ever wonder where Adolf Hitler got some of his inspiration for the Nuremberg Laws and his cult of racial hatred responsible for the mass murder of six million Jews?

Well, stop wondering: we’ve met one of the enemies of humanity, and it’s us — the good ole’ USA was one of his inspirations, specifically the 30 States which enacted and enforced Jim Crow laws against Black Americans after Reconstruction.

And, for added depravity, throw in the passage of the US Immigration Act of 1924 — Donald Trump & Stephen Miller’s favorite law — which classified entire ethnic groups of people — Italians, Jews, Asians — as expendable. That law was created by KKK-backed Members of Congress, and signed into law by a Republican President, at the peak of the Klan’s power in the US, when they marched 30,000 strong in the streets of Washington, DC.

Hitler couldn’t believe his good fortune when Nazi lawyers ( Hitler’s own Bill Barrs) presented him, after his election in 1933, with the documentary evidence that even a “great” democracy like the United States of America, believed in racial purity. We helped create the monster who dehumanized and then slaughtered six million Jews during a 12-year long racial jihad, and was responsible for the death of more than 400,000 American soldiers during World War II.

A meticulously documented book by Yale Law School Comparative Law professor James Q. Whitman, “Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law,” (Princeton University Press, 2017; Princeton, NJ.) spells all of this out in horrifying detail, including Hitler’s lavish words of praise for the way White Americans massacred Native Americans and institutionalized racism against Black Americans. Hitler used our example of White Supremacy as a rational for mass murder against Jews.

Whitman’s astonishing and terrifying book carefully documents — through never before published material and verbatim transcripts — how the Nazis, as early as the 1920s, were inspired by the U.S’s Jim Crow laws — racist laws in 30 American States, and America’s increasingly xenophobic anti-immigrant laws. The Nazis were so inspired by these American laws reflecting our “racial madness” that they based the Nuremberg Laws upon them — “laws” which resulted in systematic dehumanization and eventual annihilation of 6 million Jews. The Nazi’s model for “Systemic Racism”, was none other than State and federal laws of the United States, a nation founded upon racial inequality and segregation, which built hundreds of monuments to the defenders of that pernicious system.

I read “Hitler’s American Model” while traveling through Maryland, a border state which once had statutory penalties of up to 10 years in prison, if a white person married a black person. That was Maryland, not Mississippi.

Legal documents uncovered by Professor Whitman of debates among Nazi lawyers drafting early versions of the Nuremberg Laws, reveal that even the most radical Nazis thought that America’s anti-miscegenation laws “went too far.” Let that sink in for a moment: the Nazis, believed that Maryland went too far in it’s “race madness,” by criminalizing interracial marriage. Until, of course, the Nazis went off the deep end.

I finished Whitman’s book while staying in a hotel in Fredericksburg, VA, off of Jefferson Davis Highway, a major interstate named for the President of the Confederacy, a violent militia of White Supremacists, who committed armed treason against the government of the United States, resulting in the deaths of more than 365,000 official U.S. Army troops, under the Confederate Flag of racial hatred.

That death toll almost equaled the 400,000 American troops killed by the Nazis in WWII. That’s a total of some 3/4 of a million patriotic, democracy-loving Americans slaughtered by the unhinged, hate-blinded crusaders for racism, at home and abroad.

Fredericksburg is, as many local residents are proud to tell you, the area of several key battles in the Civil War, including the Battle of Fredericksburg, where Confederate Troops — fighting to preserve slavery and keep institutionalized racism — slaughtered thousands of Union Troops who left their families and gave up their lives to set people free. The General who commanded the slaughter of American troops was Robert E. Lee, whose statue was finally removed from Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue — some 155 years after the formal end of the American shooting war for racial equality.

The continuing “racial madness” of the Confederacy — including the fighting of a civil war which killed more than 600,000 northerners and southerners — served as one of the inspirations to the Nazis when they crafted the Nuremberg Laws. Look closely at the Confederate Flag; it’s bold color scheme featuring a shocking blood red, heavily influenced the Nazi’s Swastika symbol of racial hatred. Notably, the black and red color of those two flags, are repeated in much of the branding of Donald Trump’s campaigns for President, and the MAGA movement.

But the U.S. Civil War, and America’s racist Jim Crow laws, weren’t the only inspirations for the Nazis that were made in the USA.

Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf — (100 years ago this year) how thrilled he was by the United States willingness to commit genocide against Native Americans in order to achieve America’s “Manifest Destiny” and acquire new territory. The Nazi’s would later use America’s “gunning down of redskins” (Hitler’s own words), the racist slaughter and aerial bombing of hundreds of Black Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood Neighborhood (“Black Wall Street) in 1921, and the blatantly racist Immigration Act of 1924 that discriminated against any but those from Nordic nations, as justification for murdering 6 million Jews and many others.

America prides itself on being a beacon of hope and democracy for people around the world. For Adolph Hitler and his Nazi followers, systemic racism in the United States, the institutional violence enshrined in Jim Crow laws, lynchings and the brutalization of Black Americans — proudly symbolized by a Confederate swastika — served as an inspiration for genocide.

It’s THAT heritage of hate all Americans must reject in 2024, especially when the choice is so clear.

The more extreme and delusional Trump gets, the loonier and more deranged are his shrinking little circle of advisors & supporters.

---

(Laura Loomer, Donald Trump’s latest looney advisor)

Laura Loomer, Racist Groomer,

Just as welcome as a tumor.

Anti-Muslim, Anti-Black,

Everything she says is whack.

Xenophobe & Homophobe,

Pimping for hate around the globe.

Laura Loomer, Racist Groomer,

Trump’s true spirit,

That’s the rumor.

Poor Melania took a flier,

For this ugly 9/11 denier.

Laura Loomer, Racist Groomer,

Screeching Trump’s defeat

Much, much sooner.

Grasping for the looniest base,

Vileness stitched into her face.

Laura Loomer, Racist Groomer,

Doesn’t bother wearing bloomers.

Every orefice open wide,

Auditioning to be Frankenstein’s bride.

Screaming at him night & morn,

Loomer is Trump’s Eva Braun.

Laura Loomer, Racist Groomer

Get the bunkers ready sooner.

Bursting with Alex Jones,

Roger Stone & Golden Bibles,

Resurrecting Old blood libels.

No more Jews eating babies,
LIES! It’s Haitians spreading rabies.

Laura Loomer, Racist groomer,

Just as welcome as a tumor.

Anti-Muslim, Anti-Black

Everything she says is whack.

Xenophobe & Homophobe,

Pimping for Hate around the Globe.

The Trump troglodytes have no concept of the power of the Tsunami about to hit.

Taylor Swift’s exquisitely timed endorsement of Kamala Harris & Tim Walz immediately after Harris led Trump to immolate himself in front of 67 million viewers during the ABC-TV debate on September 10, 2024, was only the beginning of watching the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans.

Sure, Swift’s Instagram account has 230 million followers, and as soon as she issued an excellently worded endorsement (reprinted below), the non-MAGA mega Rock Star’s announcement became almost as a big a story as how Harris hog-tied the mendacious, mean and felonious swine on the other side of the stage from her.

Swift-fictionados would have immediately recognized the striking similarities between the vicious music critic who called the performer “young and dumb,” in 2010, prompting the artist to write the song “Mean” on her Third Album, “Speak Now,” and Donald Trump, who called Kamala Harris “dumb as a rock,” before Harris brilliantly demolished him during the debate.

Like Harris, Swift masterfully dismantled the miserable misogynist who called her “dumb,” in the Song “Mean.”  Here are some of the lyrics:

“Someday, I’ll be big enough, so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?

And I can see you years from now in a bar
Talking over a football game
With that same big loud opinion, but nobody’s listening
Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things
Drunk and grumbling on about how I can’t sing
All you are is mean
All you are is mean
And a liar, and pathetic, and alone in life
And mean, and mean, and mean, and mean

But someday, I’ll be living in a big old city
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean, yeah
Someday, I’ll be big enough, so you can’t hit me
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?

And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
(Why you gotta be so mean?)
Someday, I’ll be big enough, so you can’t hit me (why you gotta be so mean?)
And all you’re ever gonna be is mean
Why you gotta be so mean?”

(Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Taylor Swift

Mean lyrics © Sony/atv Tree Publishing, Taylor Swift Music)

Not only did the mean, mendacious men underestimate Taylor Swift and Kamala Harris, but they woefully miscalculated the call to direct action and change that these two powerful women represent.  During Swift’s brief Instagram endorsement, she shared a link to Vote.gov, where her fans could find info on where to register to vote or update their voter registration.   Vote.gov is the official government website run by the US General Services Administration (GSA), an independent government agency.

As NPR reported:

“In the 24-hour window that Swift’s story was live on Instagram, a GSA spokesperson told NPR that there had been 405,999 visitors to the Vote.gov website via her unique link.  That’s more than 13 times more visitors than a typical day on the site…

“Vote.org, a separate voter group that provides registration information and guidance, told NPR that more than 52,000 people registered to vote from its’ platform, and more than 144,000 checked their registration status in the period shortly after Swift’s endorsement on Tuesday night through midday Thursday, September 12, 2004.”

CBS National News reported on September 12, that:

“Harris’ campaign quickly embraced the support of one of the world’s most influential pop stars.  The campaign soon began selling Harris/Walz friendship bracelets, the fashion accessory that millions of Swift fans have worn to her Eras Tour around the world.  The bracelets sold out by Wednesday.”

As anticipated, the avalanche of “SwiftVoting” already being heaped upon Harris & Walz is driving Trump & his troglodytes into tongue-tied tirades.  Trump bitterly barked out that “she will pay a price in the marketplace,” and that—in true Trump teenaged tantrum style—nyah, nyahed that he liked “Brittany Mahomes,” better. 

JD Vance, Trump’s mini-me, who owes his entire political career to weirdo billionaire Peter Thiel (who believes democracy and freedom are not compatible), whined that “I don’t think most Americans, whether they like her music or are fans of hers or not, are going to be influenced by a billionaire celebrity who I think is fundamentally disconnected from the interests and the problems of most Americans.”

Ha.  So much for what JD knows, who continues to demonstrate that his initials stand for “Just Dumb.”  Like Trump, JD is completely clueless to the power of “SwiftVoting.”

Reprinted below is the full endorsement of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz by Taylor Swift, as it appeared on Instagram, on the evening of September 10, 2024:

“Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.

Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.

I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them. I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades.

I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered! I also find it’s much easier to vote early. I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates and info in my story.

With love and hope,

Taylor Swift
Childless Cat Lady”

Liz Cheney, Darth Vader Dick Cheney, John McCain’s son, Republicans from Georgia, and even a decision to stay neutral in this election by George W. Bush, are all building the Pro-Democracy Movement.

---

I am a Liz Cheney Democrat.

I eat cowards for breakfast, 

And liars for lunch.

Traitors and terrorists, my brunch.

I am a Liz Cheney Democrat.

With a will of steel,

And a backbone to match.

To me, Trump & Vance are but a light snack

.

I am a Liz Cheney Democrat.

Democracy, integrity drive me.

Sedition, it’s my position,

Is a Capitol crime, you miserable slime.

On Putin, freedom & human rights,

Prosecuting justice & tax-fairness fights;

On working for the future & women’s choice,

I bite like Cheney, but Kamala’s my voice.

On defense of our nation, I am tenacious;

My appetite for battling bullies, voracious.

I am a Liz Cheney Democrat, with Kamala’s heart;

So, let THE FELON bring it—

We DARE him to start…

Journalists? Or Just Some Crass, Celebrity Comcast Salespeople, like Tom Selleck Selling Reverse Mortgages?

When I first spotted the advertisements—on MSNBC, of course—for NBC’s “all news” Cable network’s “Democracy 2024:  This Is Who We Are,” I passed it off as more election year self-promotion of a network news team, by a network.  Ho hum.

Then, I noted that MSNBC’s stable of “celebrity journalists,” were doing a live event in Brooklyn, N.Y., a short distance from where I was born.  How cool, I naively thought; fellow Brooklynites will be able to see and hear the MSNBC news team live on a Saturday in September of a Presidential election year. 

Having spent years working at the public Downstate Medical Center not far from the Brooklyn Academy of Music (scene of the MSNBC event) lamenting the Manhattan-centric news coverage of everything in New York except crime, I was delighted that MSNBC picked an “outer borough” and not Manhattan to show off their journalistic talent.    The “house” was in Brooklyn, and that was good.  The people would be heard.

When I saw them pushing tickets for the event, I figured it was being done as a public service by the liberal-leaning Cable news network—second only in viewership to Fox News– since MSNBC devotes so much air time to promoting democracy, ethics in government (particularly on the Supreme Court) and economic justice.  Mistakenly, I thought that since MSNBC was a progressive “news organization” the tickets would be free, to encourage public participation, regardless of income.  First come, first served. Equality.

I decided to go to the link for the “LIVE” event to see if there were any tickets still remaining.  For most of the MSNBC “LIVE” events there were…IF you had the personal resources of Rupert Murdoch, or at least of Rachel Maddow, who earns $30 million per year, or nearly three times as much as Gayle King at CBS and twice as much as ABC’s George Stephanopolous.

Turns out that the “THIS IS WHO WE ARE” tagline MSNBC used each night, multiple times per night, shamelessly hawking their own live event, had a one word definition:  RICH.   Much, much, much wealthier than the average Brooklyn resident.  I know.  I provided public heath services to that underserved population for five years, and all of our patients struggled to stretch their paychecks through the week.   In fact the cumulative cost for one person to buy one ticket to all of the MSNBC events in that ONE DAY, was approximately $1,100—enough to feed a Brooklyn family of four for a month. 

Prices to the MSNBC “Democracy 2024”, Saturday, September 7 event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, were not on a progressive, sliding income scale.  In fact, the only thing “progressive” about the MSNBC “live event” ticket prices were that they got progressively steeper as the day wore on.

To make matters worse, there were no discounted tickets for student groups from NYC public schools, nor public colleges.  No reasons were given why there were no free or discounted tickets for people on a fixed income, considering that nearly 20% of Brooklyn’s 2.6 million residents live below the poverty level.  MSNBC would rather leave those pesky facts for someone else to sort through; there was real money to be made here off the faces of their “celebrity journalists.”

Here are some examples of the levels of MSNBC’s Taylor Swift-priced tickets:

1.  The Afternoon Session, from 1-3 pm, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House) has tickets starting at $98.50 each; 

2. From 5-7 pm, in the BAM Rose Cinema, is the “World Premier” of Executive Producer Rachel Maddow’s movie, “From Russia with LEV.”  Tickets for viewing the 91-minute documentary start at $43.50 for ALL ages.  There are no reduced prices for Senior Citizens, college students, public school students, teachers, nurses, firefighters, or people on a fixed or low-wage income. 

3. The Evening session, also from 5-7 pm, held in the Gilman Opera House (a separate event from the Maddow movie) has tickets starting from $168.50 each;

4. The Dinner & Reception (with ALL the MSNBC stars, with whom you can schmooze and booze) held at the Peter Jay Sharp Building, starts at $808.50 per ticket, AND IS ALREADY SOLD OUT.  Yes, you read that correctly:  over $800 per ticket to ask a journalist questions about the news, and have a bite to eat. 

All together, if you are rich (“This Is Who We Are”), and decide to participate in ALL of MSNBC’s  “Windfall 2024”–cashing in on their “journalists” celebrity–it would cost you approximately $1,100 for the entire day and night. And, not even your Brooklyn Academy of Museum membership entitled you to any discount.  Did anyone say Mar-A-Lago-like chutzpah?

Did anyone at MSNBC (Steve Kornacki, where are you?) give a thought to scheduling such an expensive day long extravaganza a mere 60-days before the 2024 elections, when $1,100 per wealthy contributor might be better spent re-electing Sherrod Brown in Ohio, or John Tester in Montana, or even, just maybe, Kamala Harris as President of the United States?  How dare Lawrence O’Donnell be silent on this? 

Surely, in keeping with the egalitarian image cultivated by MSNBC and its well-compensated “celebrity journalists” (Ari Melber, $5 million; Lawrence O’Donnell, $4-7 million; Chris Hayes, $2 million; Joy Reid, $1.5 millon) the profits from “Democracy 2024” are being donated to some of the well-deserving charities right in Brooklyn, that provide housing or healthcare services to a community with a 20% poverty rate?  The proceeds from that “democratic,” progressive event couldn’t possibly be going to MSNBC’s parent company, Comcast which racked up Gross Profits of $45.362 Billion as of July 1, 2024?

Well, guess again.

The June 24 issue of Variety perfectly labeled the MSNBC event as “Bravo-Con”, kind of a gussied-up TV industry “upfront” (where networks show their talent ‘upfront’ for advertising support), aimed at milking the public’s thirst (not just advertisers) of being in the same room with “celebrities”—even if those celebrities are supposed to have a journalist’s responsibility to bring us the news, for nothing more than the price of a Cable TV subscription, already too damn high, which is why so many paying Comcast subscribers (478,000 this year, to be exact) are “cutting the cord.”

But wait, Variety’s description of “Democracy 2024” gets even better:

“The event has all the trappings of another gathering held under the auspices of the parent company, NBC Universal…BravoCon, a weekend confab that started in 2019 and features panels with the Network’s reality stars and opportunity to buy related merchandise.  The extravaganza became so noteworthy that NBCU began to tout it during its presentations to advertisers in the industry’s annual “upfront” selling season.”

But isn’t this supposed to be News?  Aren’t these supposed to be journalists?  Guess again, viewers.

Here’s what all this money-chasing cheerleading means to Rebecca Kutler, MSNBC’s Senior Vice President of Content Strategy (there’s such a title in journalism?)”

“Our colleagues at Bravo have created a really magical experience for their audience, and we have learned a lot and been inspired by what they have created.” 

Namely, a cash cow.

Of course, the President of MSNBC, Rashida Jones, perhaps recoiling just a touch from renting out Maddow and company to make more money for Comcast, tried to paste a few streaks of red, white and blue over all that gold:

“In the midst of a critical and unprecedented election year, there’s never been a better time to further deepen that connection with the MSNBC audience to help them understand more of what is happening here in the U.S. and across the globe.”

Yes, but for cash, Rashida?

She could have just as easily added, “to use our “celebrity journalists” to grab an easy $1,100 from our wealthiest and most fervent fans before they open their checkbooks to candidates for the House and Senate, or to the Harris/Walz campaign.  And that’s not even including all the MSNBC Merch they’ll purch!”

Journalism, anyone?  Or, MSNBC-Con?