October 29, 2024

Too Little Too Late

We are exactly one week from Election Day — which is perhaps more properly referred to as the End of Voting, since many people across the country have been voting early, either by mail or in person. If you are a person who’s been planning to vote by mail, the United States Postal Service is urging people to mail their ballots no later than today. And given that I’m writing this mid-afternoon on the 29th, it would be wise to take that ballot to the local post office itself, rather than trusting a home mailbox. This is doubly true for states in which a mailed-in ballot must have a postmark of no later than November 5, as items mailed from home may miss getting a postmark.

While the Postal Service has put into place “extraordinary measures” to ensure that mail-in ballots have been delivered in a timely fashion, if you’ve waited this long (and you’re in a state that has in-person voting), it’s probably wisest to just show up to do so next Tuesday. That way, you can be absolutely certain that your vote has been received in time and is counted.

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Get In Line

Fallout from former President Donald Trump’s overtly racist rally at Madison Square Garden continues to dog the campaign. Shortly after the rally, which featured jokes at the expense of Puerto Rico and immigrants by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, megastar singer (and Puerto Rican) Bad Bunny announced his support for Vice President Kamala Harris to his 45 million+ followers on Instagram, and the collected Catholic Bishops of Puerto Rico issued an open letter demanding a personal apology from the former president.

You would think that would be enough to get folks on the conservative side of the fence to thoughtfully consider their positions and statements to avoid further controversy. But a right wing panel member on CNN last night apparently missed the memo. During “CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip”, Muslim journalist and author Mehdi Hasan got into a contentious debate about antisemitism with conservative commentator Ryan Girdusky. Shortly after Hasan voiced his support for the Palestinian plight in Gaza, Girdusky responded, “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off,” referencing Israel’s attack on Hezbollah militants last month, that involved planting explosives in thousands of pagers across Lebanon. Gidursky pushed even farther by falsely accusing Hasan of being a member of Hamas just for voicing his support of Palestinians.

After a quick commercial break, host Phillip announced that Gidursky had been removed from the rest of the show, and CNN later expanded that in a statement, that he “will not be welcomed back at our network.” After the show, Gidursky posted on eX-Twitter, “Apparently you can’t go on CNN if you make a joke.” If that’s the sort of “joke” he wants to make, he should get a job with Hinchcliffe on the racist circuit.

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Call and Answer

Later today, Harris will make what is being called the “closing argument” for her presidential campaign from the grassy Ellipse near the White House. It just so happens to be the same site where her opponent spurred on his followers to storm the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. She will be hopeful that it provides a stark contrast of the two vastly different outcomes citizens (and non-citizens) will face depending on who takes over the Oval Office in January of next year.

Harris’s momentum after the DNC in August has significantly stalled out, with most polls showing her neck-and-neck with the former president. And campaign aides have offered a preview of tonight’s speech, stating that it will break a bit from current President Joe Biden’s style of opining about the preservation of democracy, and instead will aim to make a broader case for why voters should reject Trump and consider her instead. With the polarization of the electorate at an all-time high, her campaign is hopeful that the provocative setting will attract the notice of undecided voters — not to mention ones who might have been not planning on voting at all.

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It’s All Been Done

Odds Are, unless you were living in a Shoe Box or didn’t have a radio in The Old Apartment around the turn of the millennium, you may have noticed that I’ve again used a particular musical group as inspiration for my headlines today. It might be a bit too Easy for some to guess, but Pinch Me, I suppose that’s Life in a Nutshell. Feel free to leave a guess in the comments; but I should mention that there’s no prize, like $1000000. Sorry about that.