A Leopard Does Not Change Its Spots, Even If It Has A Bloody Ear
I can’t get all that worked up in the wake of the bungled assassination attempt that led to trump being seen as the second coming who will rescue us all from hell. Those who are behind trump believed this malarkey anyway and the rest of us know it is nowhere.
As far as trump changing his tune toward unifying the nation, that’s about as likely as Putin apologizing to Ukraine and returning all the territory he has seized. Already, trump’s premier attack dog, Steven Cheung, said the campaign will remain on the offensive. So much for kumbaya.
Trump may be calling for a more peaceful nation, but his actions remain as divisive and appalling as ever. In a recent conversation that was posted on-line between trump and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump suggested that vaccines given to children to protect them from disease are harmful. He exaggerated the number of vaccines given to children and he lied by saying that vaccines lead to sudden, visible changes.
“A vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby,” trump said, “then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. I’ve seen it too many times. And then you hear that it doesn’t have an impact, right?”
Vaccines prevent an estimated 3.5 million to 5 million deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization, nearly eliminating many once-common diseases in regions where vaccines are easily accessible. Common combination vaccines fight a few diseases in one jab — measles, mumps and rubella, the MMR shot, or diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis or whooping cough, called DTaP. Multiple vaccinations are given together only if that, too, has been proven safe, whether it’s separate shots in one visit or the three-in-one combo.
No vaccines include 38 shots. Babies or toddlers may get four or five vaccinations during a check-up to protect them against diseases. The American Academy of Pediatricians has said repeatedly that a handful of vaccines does not overwhelm a healthy tot’s immune system. Trump has made it a habit to pander to the anti-vaccination activists.
And then there is the vice president candidate, J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, who in trying to out-trump trump, genuflected at the coronation ceremony that trump is “America’s last best hope” and “a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man.” Trump is in every pocket he can find, pandering with anything that works.
Vance unequivocally opposes abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. He voted against a Democratic bill to ensure access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). He has said “the childless left” should not be making decisions about the country’s future and lamented the misery of “childless cat ladies.”
Vance has said he believes universal childcare is a “massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent over the preferences of the middle and working class” and called it “class war against normal people.” He has also suggested that couples should stay in unhappy marriages for their children’s benefit. He attacks diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, has railed against the Affordable Care Act, and called Social Security and Medicare “the biggest roadblocks to any kind of real fiscal sanity.” Vance embraces trump’s baseless election denial lies and said he was “skeptical” of the violence on January 6.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was hardly in a unifying, loving mood when he spoke at the Republican National Convention and said the Democrats are the “party of self-destruction.”
Johnson, a supporter of the Christian nationalist movement, also had strong and provocative words about the “many millions of illegal aliens they (Democrats) have allowed to cross our borders, to harm our citizens, raid our resources, or disrupt our elections. We will not allow it. My friends, we’re watching the principles of faith, family, and freedom that once defined our great nation now being trampled underfoot by the radical left.”
Johnson’s words fairly described the so-called great replacement theory, a white-nationalist, far-right conspiracy that purports that white, historically European populations are being “replaced” by people of color through mass migration with the sign-off of the elite ruling class.
So I cannot feel all that bad when I see the hatred that trump embraces, even if he was shot in the ear.
First, more on the trump sneakers. For a limited time, “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT” high top sneakers, displayed with a photo complete with blood dripping from the ear assassination attempt, are being sold for $299 on gettrumpsneakers.com, a trump-owned website. Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at the campaign event where he was slightly wounded at the Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pa.
The sneakers are limited-edition with only 5,000 to be sold including 10 pairs which will be randomly autographed, although it wasn’t clear if an autograph will boost the sneakers’ price. The sneakers are expected to ship in September or October.
“These limited-edition high-tops, featuring Trump’s iconic image with his fist raised, honor his unwavering determination and bravery,” the website reads. “Show your support and patriotic pride with these exclusive sneakers, capturing a defining moment.”
Vendors are capitalizing off the photo of the historic event with merchandise with the photo ranging from sweatshirts, mugs, car stickers and trading cards with slogans like “Trump 2024,” “That’s My President,” and “You Missed.”
Trump previously marketed tacky, gold-colored, autographed, “Never Surrender High Tops” for $399. The shiny faux gold high-tops are decorated with an American flag on the back of the shoe. Trump announced the high tops sale just two days after a New York judge ordered him to pay about $454 million in penalties for business fraud. A month earlier, a jury ordered trump to pay more than $83 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defamation.
Trump also is peddling cologne with a gold trump head as the cap and perfume bottles made to mimic former First Lady Melania Trump’s figure. Both are selling for $99 each.
Keeping with trump’s sanctimonious and profit-based spirit, a booth at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee is giving away a free AR-15 assault style weapon, the same kind that was used to shoot trump.
The weapon is part of a giveaway through the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, an advocacy organization that promotes gun ownership for safety purposes. At the booth was a flyer promoting the AR-15 giveaway from Daniel Defense, an arms manufacturer whose firearms were used in the 2022 Robb Elementary School mass shooting and found in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooter’s stockpile.
The U.S. Concealed Carry Association said in a statement after the shooting that they were “heartbroken” by the attempted assassination of trump and that “political violence is abhorrent and has no place in America.” The statement said the group opposes “any legislative efforts at the state and federal level that week to strip law-abiding Americans of their Second Amendment right without due process.”
And then there is the New Hampshire Republican candidate for the New Hampshire state house who was badgered into quitting the race after it was reported that he killed someone in 1989.
Republican Mark Edgington, 53, said he had hoped voters would look past his second-degree murder conviction, and elect him anyway. But Edgington said the stress was becoming too much for him and his family, so he bowed out.
Edgington was 18 when he pleaded “no contest” in Florida to a second-degree murder charge in connection with the beating and strangulation death of a motel manager. He claimed he was innocent and that he was hiding in the motel bathroom while his friend killed the manager. Edgington was sentenced to 25 years in prison and served eight years before he was paroled.
He called news coverage of his past unfair, inaccurate and “salacious.”
Edgington was running on a platform of fiscal responsibility, parental rights and gun freedoms. His past belies his claims. In 2004, Edgington declared bankruptcy, estimating his debts to be between $100,000 to $500,000, including nearly $60,000 in credit card debt. In 2021 he sued an FBI agent after his Keene, N.H. radio station was raided as part of a child pornography investigation. He was never charged.
Edgington moved to New Hampshire from Florida in 2006, as part of the “Free State Project.” The Free State Project (FSP) is a political migration movement founded in 2001 to recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to a single low-population state. New Hampshire was selected in 2003 to make the state a stronghold for libertarian ideas. In 2012, the Concord Police Department applied for $258,000 in federal government funding to buy a Lenco BearCat armored vehicle for protection against terrorist attacks, riots, or shooting incidents. The application mentioned “Free Staters” alongside Sovereign Citizens and Occupy New Hampshire as groups that “are active and present daily challenges.”
Edgington was sentenced to 25 years in a Florida prison in 1989 for the murder of 37-year-old Ballapuran Umakanthan, the manager of an Econo Lodge in Bradenton, Fla. His co-defendant, Carmen Tungate, got 30 years in prison. Edgington was first charged with being an accessory after the fact in the beating and strangulation death of Ballapuram Umakanthan.
Authorities said that Tungate had been fired or quit his job as a motel clerk after stealing money. He got into an argument with Umakanthan who he then strangled to death.
The charge was upgraded to first degree murder after authorities said Edgington had a larger role in the murder. A police affidavit said that “(Tungate) held (the victim) down while… (Edgington) strangled him until he was dead (defendant saw blood come out of Ballapuram ears) (Edgington) then drove (Tungate) to the airport.”
Edgington and Tungate negotiated their first-degree charges down by pleading no contest to second-degree and accepting their sentences without admitting guilt to the murder.
Tungate was charged in 2008 with exposing himself to nearly a dozen minors in Sarasota. He served around three years in the Polk Correctional Institute on lewd and lascivious conduct charges. In June 2008, he was released and six months later, Tungate was shot and killed while driving in St. Petersburg. His killer was never charged.
After his parole in 1998, Edgington sold radio ads and started a Florida radio show. On Labor Day 2006, he and a friend from the station, Ian Freeman, heard about the Free State Project and relocated to New Hampshire. Freeman was later sentenced to eight years in federal prison for a bitcoin money laundering scheme and was ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution to 29 victims.
“I would prefer that the whole world forget about it,” Edgington said. “That’s not going to happen. I don’t know why my biggest mistake at 17 is so very important when so rarely are someone’s mistakes at 17.”
In an interview after trump was shot, the ex-president said that he planned to tone down his address at the Republican National Convention.
“I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is and how corrupt and crooked, even if it’s true,” Trump said. “Had this not happened, we had a speech that was pretty much set that was extremely tough. Now, we have a speech that is more unifying.”
Continuing along the line of incompetent Republicans, in the wake of the shooting and after trump and others called for a reset on the violent rhetoric, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a forever trumper, slammed Democratic policies as a “clear and present danger” to America. Johnson spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday.
“They are the party of open borders, reckless spending, weaponized government, and weakness on the world stage,” Johnson said , adding that the Democratic party’s “fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children.”
Then there was the never mind moment. Johnson didn’t mean to say all those mean things about Democrats but accidentally gave the “wrong speech.”
“That speech was written last week,” Johnson said. “They literally loaded the wrong speech” into the teleprompter. Johnson said he had wanted to urge America to “heed President Trump’s call to unite , to be strong, to be determined — we must heal and unify this nation.”
“I didn’t know how to get that in without screwing up the teleprompter,” Johnson said, adding he was “not happy with that.”
Three days after the attempted assassination, with scant information still available on the alleged 20-year-old shooter, Johnson was on a panel for the far right, group, “Moms for Liberty.” Johnson, a longtime font of misinformation, said the shooter “was a loner, in probably a large school, being bullied all the time.” Some reports alluded to the alleged gunman as having been bullied but others said he was not singled out for abuse.
“I’m hoping that one result from Moms for Liberty is we start moving away from these massive, large schools, and we start moving more toward, you know, the old one-room school,” Johnson said.
Moms for Liberty is known for its far-right policies including denying protection to LGBTQ people and banning books it considers offensive. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the group as an “ extremist ” organization.
Johnson has spewed lies about COVID-19, the 2020 presidential election results and has claimed that wind turbines are “killing the whales.” A blatant gun law opponent, Johnson had a novel explanation for the cause of the 2022 mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead. Johnson argued school shootings were the result of indoctrinating students with “ wokeness.”
As if trump’s plans aren’t bad enough, if trump is back at the White House, Americans will likely find it hard to know if it’s going to rain, snow, hail, or worse because access will be curtailed to the National Weather Service meteorological reports on alerts, predictions, warnings and more about daily weather.
The attack on the weather service is included in Project 2025, a voluminous book of policy proposals published by the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. The apparent blue print for a second trump rule, says that an incoming administration should all but dissolve the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), under which the National Weather Service operate.
NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Project 2025 reads. It notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an administration’s aims” and that appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.
NOAA’s scientific-research arm studies atmospheric events such as Arctic-ice dynamics and how greenhouse gases behave. Project 2025 says that NOAA is “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism” and should be significantly cut.
“The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the document says.
NOAA includes the National Hurricane Center, which tracks storms, and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, whose pilots fly “ hurricane hunter ” planes to measure cyclone wind speed.
And then there are the reports of the cascading number of evangelical, trump-supporting pastors at megachurches in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, who have suddenly left their congregations for “moral failures” and other less than pious actions.
The latest to resign is Tony Cammarota, who had served as a pastor to more than 11,000 parishioners at the Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas, for 17 years. He stepped down on July 7 after he “confessed to church leadership of a moral failure,” a letter from the church to congregants read. “He is deeply remorseful but his sin disqualifies him from serving on our staff as a pastor.”
The letter did not provide details on Cammarota’s dismissal but it did invoke Lucifer while cautioning churchgoers against talking about it.
“While Tony will no longer be employed with us at Stonebriar, please pray with us as we continue demonstrating the grace of Christ to him and his family. They need our help,” the letter said. “And please guard against giving the Devil any foothold for more damage to our church through unnecessary speech and speculation.”
Cammarota is the latest pastor to step down from a megachurch in the Dallas-Forth Worth area in recent weeks.
In early June, pastor Tony Evans resigned after serving nearly 50 years at the pulpit of the 10,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. He gave a vague explanation when he said he had committed no crime but failed to use “righteous judgment in my actions.”
Evans, 74, author of numerous books and a well-known evangelical, confessed in a written statement that he fell short of the biblical standards espoused by his ministry “a number of years ago,” suggesting it was “due to sin.”
Then came the resignation of Robert Morris, a trump spiritual advisor and longtime pastor of the 100,000 strong Gateway Church. Morris stepped down following allegations that he’d sexually assaulted a girl over several years, beginning when she was just 12 years old.
A week later, pastor Mike Buster resigned after 35 years at the 45,000-member Prestonwood Baptist Church, and denied any wrongdoing
Jack Graham, the current senior Prestonwood pastor, has given blistering sermons about a “spiritual war” being waged for the soul of America. Graham, a spiritual adviser to trump, has labeled liberals as enemies of God and the Bible, and praised conservative Texas leaders for their role in keeping churches open during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Buster gained notoriety related to one of the church’s members, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. In March, Paxton cut a deal to avoid going to trial over federal securities fraud charges that alleged he had solicited investors for a Texas technology company without disclosing that he was paid by the company to promote the stock. Two investors allegedly duped by Paxton were then-Texas Rep. Byron Cook and Florida businessman Joel Hochberg. Buster later sued Cook and Hochberg claiming they swindled him for roughly $500,000.