Oklahoma, Where the Grift Comes Sweepin’ Down the Plain

By Michael Woyton

There are so many things right now that can raise one’s ire that it’s difficult to separate the chaff from the wheat and decide what to write about. 

What about the woman-owned bakery in Flower Mound, Texas — I had to Google Maps it, too — that sold out of its sugar cookies featuring the image of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz but received death threats because she dared to bake and sell the confection?

And then there’s Melania Trump, who is hawking a memoir soon to be out, who has published a video in which she is unequivocally in favor of abortion rights, unlike her husband and his VP running mate? One thinks there’s more to that story.

There are also recently FOIA’d internal emails from Springfield, Ohio, that show how Trump/Vance’s lies about Haitian immigrants have affected the city.

But since I led with a reference from the Bible — chaff v. wheat — let’s chat about Oklahoma.

I sure that Oklahoma grows wheat there, but the subject today is chaff or, more specifically, grift.

On Monday, the Oklahoma Department of Education and conservative Superintendent Ryan Walters opened bids to supply state schools with 55,000 Bibles, The Oklahoman reported.

The specifications vendors were required to meet were oddly, well, specific. The Bibles had to be the King James Version, containing both the Old and New Testaments. Additionally, to be acceptable, the Bibles had to include copies of the Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution and Bill of Rights and the Pledge of Allegiance. The books also had to be bound in leather or material like leather.

According to The Oklahoman, there are two such Bibles on the market that fits all specifications: Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A. Bible” that former president and convicted felon Donald Trump is hawking online for $60 and a $90 “We The People Bible” which is also endorsed by Trump.

Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice Executive Director Colleen McCarty is quoted by The Oklahoman as saying the request for proposal seems fair on its face, “but with additional scrutiny, we can see there are very few Bibles on the market that would meet these criteria, and all of them have been endorsed by President Donald Trump.”

A quick use of a calculator finds that if the Greenwood/Trump Bible is sold to the state of Oklahoma a not insignificant part of $3.3 million could be on its way to the presidential candidate.

Nice, huh?

Even nicer knowing that the King James Bible is available online for free — as long as the Oklahoma public schools can still afford an internet connection.

There already is a lawsuit over putting Bibles in OK schools, filed when the scheme was first announced back in July, according to reporting from KOCO News.

It not yet known if the latest information about the RFP will inspire other litigation over Oklahoma’s giving tax dollars to a presidential candidate.

And to wrap up, let’s turn to the online version of the King James Bible — it’s free, you know — and read Mark 13:22:

For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.

Lead art: Photo by Michael Woyton

Election Denying Clerk Sentenced To Prison

By Michael Woyton

The Colorado county clerk who gave voting system access to an expert affiliated with Mike Lindell in order to prove the false conspiracy theory that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election because of ballot fraud was sentenced Thursday to prison.

Mesa County clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for seven criminal counts, including attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and failing to comply with requirements of the secretary of state, CNBC reported.

She was convicted in August by a jury trial.

District Court Judge Matthew Barrett in his sentencing statement told Peters, who is in her late 60s, that she had remained defiant during the trial, her reputation in the community was poor and her lies were well documented.

The judge’s comments begin on the YouTube video below at approximately 2:40:00.

He said that, while Peters said she never wanted this attention, “you crave it” and that she lived in an echo chamber in she could never be wrong.

Judge Barrett said that Peters peddled a snake oil that has been proven wrong time and time again.

“You are no hero,” he said just before outlining her time in prison for each criminal count.

For her part, Peters asked the court for probation, saying she “did not do it to disrespect the court or the law.” Her complete address to the court can be viewed beginning approximately at 1:36:00 in the above YouTube video.

Peters was convicted by a jury of allowing a security breach of the Mesa County election system after buying into baseless claims of voter fraud.

She gave someone affiliated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell access to the software used by the county for the 2020 election, ABC News reported, with screenshots of the software appearing on right-wing websites.

Peters became a poster child for election fraud conspiracy theories about election fraud after the 2020 election and has held a number of election denial events with Lindell.

https://twitter.com/JohnWDean/status/1841921283195351174

Lead art: Screen grab from 9NEWS YouTube video

Lies, Fearmongering About Haitians Ramp Up

By Michael Woyton

The convicted felon and others continue lying and fearmongering about immigration in advance of the November general election.

A Pennsylvania woman said she received a letter from a non-existent Pennsylvania Congressional Office of Immigrant Affairs that told her she’d been selected to house migrant refugees.

The fake government-mandated housing program, outlined in a somewhat official-looking letter, was blamed on fake legislation from the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The woman who lives in Bala Cynwyd was told in the letter than she would have to take in five refugees who could be housed in a minimum of one bedroom outfitted with a minimum of five beds.

Semafor’s David Weigel printed a copy of the letter, which was designed to look official with a seal of the state of Pennsylvania — isn’t PA a commonwealth? — told the woman that she would be responsible for feeding the new family all meals for 21 days and at least one meal per day for the rest of their stay. Each family would be receiving an $80 weekly supply stipend.

In Weigel’s estimation, “it was somewhere between dirty trick, parody, and gibberish; it was also in harmony with the Trump campaign’s increased focus on refugees in small towns and cities, like Charleroi, a western Pennsylvania city where about 2,000 migrants and refugees have settled,” he wrote.

Charleroi’s borough manager Joe Manning rebuts Trump’s smears about the Haitians’ “invasion” of Pennsylvania by saying to the New Republic’s Greg Sargent that the Haitians were enticed to the town after a local employer couldn’t find workers.

And, of course, the smears are aimed at “them against us.”

Manning said that even now, with 700 to 800 Haitians in the town, the local employer is still looking for workers.

“They ain’t taking anybody’s jobs,” he told the New Republic.

Lead art: Screen grab from Google Maps.

Get ‘Em While They’re Hot; TFG Hawks Wristwatches

By Michael Woyton

Remember when Jimmy Carter was running for re-election and he packaged and sold bags of peanuts from his Georgia farm at premium prices to the public?

And when Mitt Romney got called out for strapping his family dog to the roof of his car and made up for the shame of it by selling Romney-branded dog kennels while he was vying for the presidency?

Of course not, because people who want to be in public service — up until the convicted felon, that is — had a sense of demeanor when it comes to hawking doodads and trinkets while asking for your votes.

Former president Donald Trump, who in the past has bankrupted a casino, defrauded students via a “university,” peddled steaks, vodka and wines, seems to have put out a yard sign and is having a garage sale.

Besides the sneakers and NFTs of a buffed up, imaginary version of himself, the Apprentice star is selling a silver coin for $100 that contains $30 worth of silver, a Bible (because no one can find one for free from a church or a motel) and a hardcover photo book.

Even Melania is selling a “Vote Freedom” $600 necklace and an assortment of Christmas ornaments, along with her new autobiography, as reported by BuzzFeed.

Reports are that Trump has brought in upwards of $12 million alone from NFTs and books, according to Business Insider.

Yes, there is a history of presidents cashing in after leaving office, BI reported, but “no modern one-term president has seriously sought to reclaim his old job.”

From Gerald Ford serving on corporate boards and Ronald Reagan accepting $2 million for appearances in Japan to Bill Clinton getting massive speaking fees and Barack and Michelle Obama cashing paychecks from Netflix, former commanders in chief have endeavored to keep the wolves from the door after turning in the keys to the White House.

However, Trump’s latest venture underlines the questionable propriety of selling anything one can while seeking to be the leader of the free world.

This past week the sultan of Mar-a-Lago unveiled the availability of pricey watches, ranging from around $500 to $100,000, the latter of which is limited to 147 watches.

Of course, his name is prominently on the dial of the so-called “Swiss-made” watches, The Hollywood Reporter said, and the more expensive ones have his signature on the back.

THR contacted the marketing director of a well-known Swiss brand of timepieces who said the watches “scream Chinese-made” and “none of them is worth the asking price.”

And is anyone surprised that, like the gold sneakers that were announced back in February, the watches are only available for pre-order with delivery dates sometime between October and December, The Hollywood Reporter said.

One can only think that, if he were to sell all 147 of the priciest watches at $100,000 per, that gives the former president a cool $14.7 million and buys the purchasers a lot of influence if he wins the White House again. I really doubt any of that money will make into his campaign coffers.

Seriously, though, it is hard to imagine anyone giving Trump any of their hard-earned cash for anything he is selling. But, to paraphrase something associated with American showman P.T. Barnum, there is a sucker of a cultist born every minute.

I do hope they hang on to their grocery money though, since they say that is such a concern.

Lead art: Screen grab from Trump’s watch video

Hurricane Helene Good Reason to Keep NOAA

By Michael Woyton

There’s a lot to be frightened about in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook.

From women’s lack of reproductive rights and cutting Social Security and Medicare to eliminating the Department of Education and firing all civil servants who will not be considered loyal enough to work in an administration led by Donald Trump.

Except for the extremely wealthy, it’s likely that not a single average American will remain unaffected if Project 2025 is implemented.

I am sure there are portions of the Project 2025 agenda that are more personal to some than others — I really would appreciate being able to stay married to my husband of more than 11 years — but I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say that there might be one portion of the manifesto that will literally affect everyone.

Under the Department of Commerce chapter, which begins on page 696 of the document posted online by NPR, there is a call for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to be “dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

Jumping ahead to page 706, Project 2025 said the agency, which oversees the National Weather Service, takes more than half of the department’s $12 billion annual budget and accounts for more than half of the department’s personnel.

What’s the beef with NOAA besides the perception that it costs too much? Well, according to Project 2025, it’s “become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”

The National Weather Service should be fully commercialized, Project 2025 said, because it already provides data that is used by private companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel.

In an effort to demonize NOAA and justify its dissolution, the authors of Project 2025 said the work of the National Hurricane Center, for example, should be scrutinized to make certain its data doesn’t overtly support any one side in the “climate debate.” Remember when President Donald Trump used a black marker to change a hurricane forecast map? What do those pesky scientists really know?

Fast forward to today’s weather forecast and the formation of Hurricane Helene in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA literally has lifesaving information available for residents of the Florida peninsula and northward to Georgia and Mississippi and beyond.

National Weather Service

The Miami Herald editorial board updated an opinion piece Wednesday entitled “Florida’s bracing for a major hurricane. This is why we need NOAA, not Project 2025.”

The Herald’s editorial board said the “controversial right-wing blueprint for a GOP-led national government” call for tearing apart NOAA would be “a grave disservice.”

“In Florida, we live and die — sometimes literally — by what the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service, which are parts of NOAA, tell us,” the board wrote.

Regarding the commercialization of the National Weather Service, the board said, “Wonder whose cronies would benefit from that?”

However, the Herald’s editorial board said the more important question is, “who would be harmed by this tearing down of the system we rely on for basic health and safety information. Answer: We would — the people of Florida and any other place that relies enormously on the sober, calm assessments of the government professionals at the hurricane center and the weather service.”

The newspaper’s editorial board said the people of Florida and the rest of the United States need “forecasts that are free of hype, a profit motive and the taint of politics.”

From experience covering more weather events than I care to remember in my part of New York — literally feet of snow and torrents of rain — there is a huge difference in the information provided by the National Weather Service and that of commercial weather businesses that rely on page views and seemingly write just to get eyeballs on smartphones.

For more on Project 2025, watch this two-minute summary by Mehdi Hassan of all 30 chapters:

SEE ALSO: ‘Just a Little Paper for the Ages’: Project 2025

Lead art: National Hurricane Center

FYI: Edited to swap out Hasan’s YouTube video because the tweet didn’t always appear.

‘Just a Little Paper for the Ages’: Project 2025

By Michael Woyton

For all his denying that he knows anything about Project 2025 or any of the people behind its production, the convicted felon is sure in favor of much of what is contained within its pages.

Former president and current Republican candidate for president Donald Trump has repeated disavowed the Project 2025 “conservative wish list” created by the Heritage Foundation, CBS News reported.

At least 270 proposals in Project 2025 match Trump’s past policies and current campaign promises, as outlined in a report by John Kelly from August.

“From shuttering the Department of Education to excising every mention of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from federal agencies’ projects and programs, the Project 2025 agenda often matches Trump’s recorded words and his Administration’s deeds,” CBS reported.

Moreover, a review by CBS of the work histories of the 38 named primary authors of Project 2025 discovered that at least 28 of them worked in Trump’s administration.

While you may not have read Project 2025 — it’s available online thanks to NPR — you’ve most likely heard Vice President Kamala Harris and many others talk about it and how it threatens to reshape the United States if the GOP wins the White House in November.

You, of course, are welcome and encouraged to read the document, but until you have the time, there is an informative and amusing video that paints a disturbing picture of what the Heritage Foundation is plotting to do.

Written, animated and performed by Jason Kravits and produced and mixed by Sean Dixon, “The Project 2025 Song!” shows how Project 2025, according to one commenter on its YouTube page, “removes the last 300 years of legislation and the checks and balances system.”

The video, in the style of Schoolhouse Rock, sings about “how to make American great … again,” giving absolute power to the president and turning “the melting pot into a Christian nation.”

Screen grab from “The Project 2025 Song!”

And the video also provides viewers a solution to it as well, but I’ll let you watch the video to see what that is.

The Harris/Walz campaign also has a website with more information about Project 2025 and how it could affect democracy. Find it here.

And here’s a little something from Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz:

Lead art: Screen grab from “The Project 2025 Song!”

Liar, Liar Pants on Fire

By Michael Woyton

By now we all know, if anyone’s even paying a little attention, that the convicted felon plays fast and lose with the truth.

In January 2021, The Washington Post tallied up former president Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims beginning with 492 “suspect claims” during his first 100 days of his administration.

“By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day,” The Post reported.

There was a ramp up of false claims each year of his time in office, The Post said, with Trump averaging about six a day in his first year, 16 per day in his second year, 22 claims a day in his third year and 39 claims a day in his final year.

He hasn’t stopped on the campaign trail — obviously — with the city of Springfield, Ohio, feeling the brunt of his baseless lies about the community’s Haitian immigrants.

According to The New York Times, children in the city were greeted by state troopers at their schools after Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, deployed law enforcement because of a wave of bomb scares. 

Art Candee, who watches Trump’s rallies so you don’t have to and summarizes them on the site formerly known as Twitter, said that the former president told the rally-goers in Uniondale, Long Island, Wednesday that the Teamsters endorsed him, he didn’t lose the 2020 election, all the infrastructure implemented during the Biden-Harris administration is fake, he “took out ISIS” in four weeks and other provable lies.

In case you need more documentation, CNN’s Daniel Dale, who does the heavy lifting of fact-checking the former president for news network, put together a list of 12 completely false stories Trump has been spouting over the past month.

They include the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris having notes to help her during her late August CNN interview, schools sending students to have gender-affirming surgeries and the overturning of abortion rights being something that “everybody” wanted.

Abortion rights, Dale said, was “not even remotely accurate,” adding that Roe v. Wade, the 50-year-old decision overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 2022, was consistently supported by a majority of the American public, including 80 percent or more of Democrats.

I will never understand how people can choose to ignore what we know about Trump — the racism, the disrespect of military personnel, the misogyny and the massive amount of lying — and still believe he deserves to sit in the Oval Office.

Lead art: Screen grab from FOX News.

Woman Behind Pet-Eating Post Says Claim Is False: Report

By Michael Woyton

An Ohio woman behind a post on Facebook that began the baseless and racist claim that Haiti immigrants were eating dogs and cats in Springfield — leading to fear in the community along with bomb threats and school closings — now said she is filled with regret and fear over the fallout.

Erica Lee of Springfield told NBC News Friday that she has no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and said that a neighbor told her she thought a missing cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.

Lee’s neighbor, Kimberly Newton, told Newsguard Reality Check that she had heard about the attack from a third party and that Lee’s Facebook post had misstated her story.

Read the entire NBC News article by Alicia Victoria Lozano for more of the story, including how she never thought her post “would set off a national news cycle.”

That former president Donald Trump, a convicted felon, continues to baselessly vilify the Haitian community himself and through his surrogates, like his running mate JD Vance, should be of no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to real estate developer and “entertainer” over the years.

A column in The New York Times Saturday by opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen is called “Trump Has Crossed a Truly Unacceptable Line.”

Polgreen wrote that there was a temptation to treat this latest vulgarity spouted by Trump as just another of his rants.

“[P]ets, in politics and in life, are the ultimate humanizer,” she said, citing Nixon and his cocker spaniel, FDR’s Fala, Bill Clinton’s chocolate lab and Mitt Romney lashed-to-the-roof-of-a-car Irish Setter.

“And so it cannot be an accident that these resonances have been fused in an allegation against Haitians, a people who have long stood in for a kind of universal other in America,” Polgreen wrote, adding that there is a “long and grim tradition of demonizing Haitians in the United States.”

This writer for one thinks it’s ironic for someone such as Trump to use the family pet card to try to humanize himself when he’s never had a dog or a cat.

Polgreen ends with saying that Trump’s “blood libel” against a group of legal immigrants who escaped a strife-torn nation “in search of a better life through hard work,” proves he is a “dangerous and malevolent figure whose menace must be confronted and defeated, fully and frontally, in this election.”

Read Polgreen’s complete opinion column here.

Lead art: Screen grab from Today on NBC.

False Claim from Trump Feeds Racist Fear of Immigrants

By Michael Woyton

It sickens me that the convicted felon and the hillbilly senator have targeted a group of immigrants in their quest to recapture the White House and possibly hold it forever.

Despite being debunked, the rumor that members of the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, were killing and eating dogs and cats in the community.

Never mind that the city manager of the community said there was no credible evidence, former president Donald Trump chanted “They’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Not surprisingly, Trump veered off of a response to crowd size at his rallies to the madness about pets on the dinner menu in Springfield.

Debate moderator David Muir of ABC News said that the network had contacted Springfield’s city manager who said there was no substance to the rumor, but that didn’t make a difference to the convicted felon.

He replied that he had seen someone on television talking about it.

NBC News called it “the airing of a claim worthy of a chain email” and said the unsubstantiated and racially charged rumor had been thriving on the internet in its right-wing corners and was fomented by Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate who lives in Ohio.

Blood Tribe, a national neo-Nazi group, according to reporting by NBC News, was among the early spreaders of the rumor in August, publishing the claim on social networks popular with extremists.

Can this country — or our fragile political psyches — take another four years of waking up wondering what some bizarre QAnon or extreme right-wing nut will say that will be amplified by Trump’s inner circle that will make it to his desk? 

Horse paste or injecting bleach to cure COVID, anyone? 

Also worrisome is having conspiracy theorist (she called the September 11 attacks an “inside job”) and racist Laura Loomer spending time with the former president — even being invited to a sacred 9/11 ceremony Tuesday at Ground Zero. What a slap in the face of all those who lost and continue to lose loved ones from that tragic day.

Don’t discount for a moment that a vote for Donald Trump is a vote for horrible people like Loomer.

But the final say for today will be from Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, who wrote an op-ed Thursday called “White People Have Never Forgiven Haitians for Claiming Their Freedom.”

Mystal, who is of Haitian descent, said that facts don’t matter to “vile and racist Republicans like JD Vance and Donald Trump, who spread lies and misinformation about immigrants.”

He said the people pushing the false claims long ago gave up any grasp on reality.

“The goal — their only goal — is to hurt people,” Mystal wrote. “It’s their kink” and makes them feel powerful and important.

The results of the lies — people afraid to send children to school, bomb threats being called in, damage to immigrants’ property — make them feel strong.

I believe the message in all this is that this kind of behavior cannot be rewarded with another term — or longer if Project 2025 gets implemented — as commander in chief.

Lead art: Screen grab from Today.

Won’t Somebody Think of the Pets?

By Michael Woyton

There is a ton of things to talk about regarding last night’s presidential debate between the vice president of the United States and the convicted felon.

How about when Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party nominee, briskly walked onto the debate stage in Philadelphia Tuesday reaching out her hand to a seemingly surprised and hesitant Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee, and set the tone for the entire 90-plus minutes?

How about when Harris talked about the 45th president inviting the Taliban to Camp David and used expert comedic timing — and, I believe, a lot of self editing — calling him “This … former president,” resulting in laughter as evidenced by a viral video from a bar.

How about the amount of desperate spinning coming from the right, both in the media and people on the talking head circuit, that Trump was ganged up on by the ABC moderators and Harris who had the nerve to fact check him a few times during the debate, including using “witchcraft” and threatening legal charges.

Trump said that Harris’s policies led to the burning down of Minneapolis and that she wants to people’s guns and perform transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.

And what about one of the debate’s participants — spoiler alert, it was Trump — showing up in the post-event spin room to say how well he did (“she got beaten tonight”) and telling the press that he had a lot of polls that said so?

For this listener, the exchange that gave me pause and made me really question the former president’s mental stability was about Springfield, Ohio.

After Harris made a comment about people leaving his rallies early, Trump accused the vice president of busing in and paying people to attend her campaign rallies — projection? — he dropped in the debunked rumor that dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio, were being stolen and then eaten by Haitian immigrants.

ABC moderator David Muir said Springfield’s city manager was contacted and said there were no “credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused” by people in the immigrant community.

Trump countered by saying that he had seen people on television saying that their dog was taken and used for food.

OMG. You judge whether the way he was talking about the dogs and cats and pets was anything other than bordering on crazy.

Trump has talked recently at his rallies about dying from sharks or electrocution and waxed poetically about a fictional cannibal.

Remember that during his administration he thought that drinking bleach or inserting light in a body to cure COVID was something worth discussing. In the past, he’s made fun of a reporter with a disability and mocked people who served in the military, even calling them “suckers and losers.”

There is no question that there was only one person on the debate stage last night who is worthy of holding the office of the president of the United States, and I cannot believe we have to have this conversation.

Why anyone takes Donald Trump seriously and wants him to be president again is beyond my imagination.

Lead art: Screen grab from PBS NewsHour