After next year's farewell tour Fish is leaving music and the bright lights behind to live with his wife (and 13 sheep) on a Scottish island

The Trump campaign slammed reports that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign told Arab American leaders in Detroit that if she’s elected President on Nov. 5th, she would likely name radical, left-wing, Hamas-supporting Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison as the U.S.’ top cop. FOX News “Keith Ellison would be a natural fit in a Kamala Harris […]

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) signaled on Sunday that he would not allow the upper chamber to consider a short-term spending measure that is combined with an election integrity bill, setting up a clash with the GOP-led House that has pushed for reforms to shore up security of the voting process with regard to noncitizens. In a letter to colleagues, Schumer previewed what the Senate will be working on over the next few weeks now that lawmakers are returning to Washington, D.C., following the summer recess, and warned that a government shutdown could happen this fall without Congress reaching a deal for an extension to fund the various federal agencies by the end of September. “We all know what is at stake: crucial funding for health care, infrastructure, education, food safety, veterans, border security, U.S. competitiveness and more,” Schumer said, adding that Democrats “support” a continuing resolution to keep the government open as long as it does not include any partisan add-ons. “As I have said before, the only way to get things done is in a bipartisan way,” Schumer said. “Despite Republican bluster, that is how we’ve handled every funding bill in the past, and this time should be no exception. We will not let poison pills or Republican extremism put funding for critical programs at risk.” Last week, House GOP leaders revealed their version of a continuing resolution, which would provide funding for the federal government through March 28, combined with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill which aims to require individuals show proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in elections for federal office and pushes states to remove non-citizens from voter rolls. While at least a couple House Republicans indicated they oppose the latest GOP gambit, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) — who released a document earlier this year that warned of a National Voter Registration Act “loophole” and cited evidence of noncitizens on voter rolls in various states — said the combination of the continuing resolution and the SAVE Act “has a lot of merit,” a source told The Hill. Schumer released a joint statement with Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) in response to the proposal, declaring, “As we have said repeatedly, avoiding a government shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a bill drawn up by one party. … If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up.” The lower chamber already passed the SAVE Act as a standalone bill in July with some bipartisan support. However, the Democrat-controlled Senate has refused to take it up for consideration and the Biden administration signaled its opposition to the election integrity bill. Some critics have argued that the legislation is unnecessary and would create an undue burden on legitimate voters. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who is running to become leader of the Senate GOP, responded to Schumer’s letter on Sunday by saying the top Democrat “thinks that preventing illegal immigrants from voting is ‘Republican extremism.’ That means that every Democrat supports allowing illegal immigrants to vote. This is insane, a threat to democracy and must be fixed by passing the SAVE Act.” Axios reported on Sunday that Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing for a short-term spending measure through mid-December — three months shorter than the House version — to avoid giving Vice President Kamala Harris a “tight deadline” to get the government funded in the first couple months of her first term if she wins the presidential election. House conservatives, who failed to get border reforms linked to a short-term spending bill earlier this year, have insisted any new continuing resolution should extend into early next year to “ensure Democrats cannot undermine” a prospective second term for former President Donald Trump with a December omnibus. And they said they wanted the SAVE Act attached to it.

Let's get it on

On his eponymous Saturday morning show, anti-gun MSNBC host Ali Velshi gave a commentary against the gun rights portion of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 agenda. After taking the opportunity to spread the typical misinformation about guns in America, he brought on anti-gun activist Kris Brown of the Brady Campaign to further trash gun rights activists. Beginning his commentary, the MSNBC host warned against a Donald Trump presidency. A bit later, he fretted over Trump's proposal to allow teachers to be armed and cited a poll by Johns Hopkins claiming that only 23 percent of Americans support "civilians" having guns in schools: And, lastly, Trump's Agenda 47 calls for arming teachers with guns and, quote, "to support federal funding to hire trained gun owners as armed guards in our nation's schools," end quote. This despite a Johns Hopkins survey showing that less than a quarter -- only 23 percent of Americans -- support allowing civilians to carry guns on school grounds. But other polling specifically about training school staff to carry guns for security finds substantially more support for more use of guns for school security. A bit later, after bringing up conservative opposition to abortion, Velshi snidely suggested that Republicans only care about children until after they have been born: And with classrooms increasingly resembling maximum security prisons, consider this: Project 2025 refers to abortion acts as, quote, "the grotesque culture against the child in the womb," end quote, I'll respect -- I'll repeat that: "the grotesque culture against the child in the womb." It seems, though, once children are out of the womb, the GOP is practically content with having them fend for themselves in the face of unchecked gun violence. He concluded his commentary by incorrectly claiming that shootings are a "uniquely American" problem: "The extreme proposals outlined in Project 2025 and in Agenda 47 will take a sledgehammer to the already limited gun control measures we have, leaving us scrambling for ever more adequate defenses against the uniquely American public health crisis of gun violence." But in Mexico, for example, where it is difficult to purchase a gun legally, the homicide rate is three times what it is in the United States. After a commercial break, Velshi brought aboard Brown and called the NRA a "racket" as he cued up his liberal guest to trash the conservative group: The proposals in both Project 2025 and Agenda 47 are perfectly aligned with NRA goals, including efforts to overturn state bans on assault-style weapons. Talk to me about the role that the protection racket that is the NRA and the gun rights groups and the lobby are playing in shaping these blueprints. In her response, Brown accused the NRA of not caring about gun violence and of just being motivated by money: And the agenda there is very clear. It's to sell as many guns to as many people as possible and remove every public safety measure in place to allow that to happen. It's profit-seeking, and the NRA and these other gun rights extremist groups could care less that gun violence is the number one killer of our kids. She also took out of context a comment by Trump from January after a school shooting in Iowa occurred just days before the Iowa caucuses. Here's Brown: "And same with Donald Trump. Let's believe him when he says about school shootings, we should just 'get over it.' No one's getting over this -- no parent. All of us feel at risk, and the solutions before us are really simple." But Trump was talking about the need to focus on the upcoming election, not that nothing should be done about school shootings. Velshi then jumped in to misleadingly quote J.D. Vance calling school shootings a "fact of life" to make it sound like the GOP vice presidential candidate had recommended not doing anything about school shootings when, in fact, Vance advocated arming teachers because school shootings are a "fact of life." Velshi: "J.D. Vance said this week that it's 'a fact of life.'" Transcript follows: MSNBC's Velshi September 7, 2024 10:44 a.m. Eastern ALI VELSHI: And today our deep dive into Project 2025 is going to focus on the blueprint's proposals on gun policy. Now, if the gun rights lobby has its way, Wednesday's tragic shooting in Georgia will be reduced to yet another statistic dressed up in empty thoughts and prayers. And if Donald Trump returns to office, the GOP's unholy alliance with the corporate gun lobby could be cemented into federal law. (...) And, lastly, Trump's Agenda 47 calls for arming teachers with guns and, quote, "to support federal funding to hire trained gun owners as armed guards in our nation's schools," end quote. This despite a Johns Hopkins survey showing that less than a quarter -- only 23 percent of Americans -- support allowing civilians to carry guns on school grounds. The proposal respects the -- reflects the GOP's long-standing policy of shifting responsibility for public safety from the gun industry to school children and school administrators. In the absence of political will, school children are left scrambling for bullet-proof backpacks and classroom panic buttons along other band-aid solutions. And with classrooms increasingly resembling maximum security prisons, consider this: Project 2025 refers to abortion acts as, quote, "the grotesque culture against the child in the womb," end quote, I'll respect -- I'll repeat that: "the grotesque culture against the child in the womb." It seems, though, once children are out of the womb, the GOP is practically content with having them fend for themselves in the face of unchecked gun violence. The extreme proposals outlined in Project 2025 and in Agenda 47 will take a sledgehammer to the already limited gun control measures we have, leaving us scrambling for ever more adequate defenses against the uniquely American public health crisis of gun violence. (...) 10:55 a.m. VELSHI: The proposals in both Project 2025 and Agenda 47 are perfectly aligned with NRA goals, including efforts to overturn state bans on assault-style weapons. Talk to me about the role that the protection racket that is the NRA and the gun rights groups and the lobby are playing in shaping these blueprints. KRIS BROWN, BRADY CAMPAIGN: Thanks for having me. And, indeed, you're exactly right. Look, it's not just in these documents -- both Project 2025 and Agenda 47. As you noted in the segment before, it is a top priority of the National Rifle Association and extremist gun rights groups to pass what they label "concealed carry reciprocity." Basically what that would do is undo all of the permitting systems that exist in states across this country. That's what it would do. And the agenda there is very clear. It's to sell as many guns to as many people as possible and remove every public safety measure in place to allow that to happen. It's profit-seeking, and the NRA and these other gun rights extremist groups could care less that gun violence is the number one killer of our kids. And same with Donald Trump. Let's believe him when he says about school shootings, we should just "get over it." No one's getting over this -- no parent. All of us feel at risk, and the solutions before us are really simple. VELSHI: J.D. Vance said this week that it's "a fact of life."

Great Britain’s Conservative Party went down to a huge defeat this summer, with Labour’s Keir Starmer taking the reins as prime minister in July. The New York Times Sunday Magazine of August 29 celebrated with a 4,000-plus-word story by Mark Landler, “The Conservative Crack-Up.” The equally blunt online headline: “How the Tories Lost Britain.” A gleeful, vengeful tone permeated the piece, reflecting Landler’s five years of hostile reporting on the U.K. Conservative Party while serving as the paper’s London bureau chief. Over that time he managed to say virtually nothing positive about a party that nevertheless somehow managed to stay in office for 14 years. He opened with an interview with Conservative politician Liz Truss, who had a “calamitous, 49-day stint as prime minister,” in which Truss criticized mass migration and the aggressive push for transgender rights for the state of the country that day. Landler didn’t appreciate her criticism of the left: Never mind that Truss was ultimately undone by her own policies: an ill-judged foray into Ronald Reagan-style, trickle-down tax cuts that frightened the financial markets, sent the British pound into a tailspin and provoked the kinds of warnings about financial instability from the International Monetary Fund normally issued to rogue regimes in Latin America. After references to “Tory sleaze” and “the self-sabotaging referendum on Brexit,” Landler blamed Brexit, again, for It “pulling [Conservative] leaders to the right and forcing successive governments into ever-more-extreme policies.” That lingering disappointment acted as an accelerant for the anti-immigrant riots that convulsed Britain for several days this summer. Four weeks after voters threw out the government, gangs of far-right thugs stormed mosques and torched the hotels used to house asylum seekers. The spark was a brutal knife attack on a dance studio by a 17-year-old Welsh-born man whose parents immigrated from Rwanda; he was charged with killing three children and injuring 10 others. A nytimes.com search indicates no Times writer has ever used the phrase “far-left thugs.” By contrast, “far-right thugs” popped up 6 times. It's a partisan paper. Then Landler really hurt Conservative feelings by comparing the party to Trumpism. In their embrace of radicalism, the Conservatives bear an obvious resemblance to their American cousins in the Republican Party. Both have ridden the whirlwind of populism. Both have discarded decades of orthodoxy on core economic and social issues…. Landler quoted author Samuel Earle on “The strange dissonance between the Conservative Party’s ability to win elections and its destructive record in government stands as one of the defining riddles of British politics.” The reporter didn’t mention Earle wrote something called “Tory Nation -- The Dark Legacy of the World's Most Successful Political Party.” But surely he’s an objective source on the “Tory” party (aka the Conservative Party), right? Never has that riddle been more mystifying than in the eight years since the Brexit referendum. The party cycled through no fewer than five prime ministers, a spectacle of corruption, hubris, folly and misrule. One particularly galling sentence talked of “The media ecosystem that surrounds and props up the Conservatives -- from The Daily Telegraph and other pro-Tory papers to the noisy right-wing TV news channel, GB News -- keeps hammering the message that the party’s problem is that it is not sufficiently right-wing.” As if the left-wing (and tax-funded) BBC, the left-wing Guardian, and of course the New York Times didn’t help tear down the Tories. Landler and his UK team, including reporters Benjamin Mueller and Stephen Castle, have traditionally been particularly feverish in their attacks on Brexit and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who made “get Brexit done” a rallying cry. The paper blamed the Brexit push for, among other things, shorter life spans; racist and Islamophobic attacks, even “Talibanization.” NewsBusters recounted the Times’ long failure to fight Brexit and Johnson after he won re-election in lopsided fashion in 2019: “Three-Year New York Times Smear Against Boris, Brexit Flopped on Election Day.”