In the final 20 days of a given federal election, the FEC requires House, Senate and quarterly-filing presidential committees file a 48-Hour Notice (Form 6) anytime they receive a contribution of $1,000 or more.

Are you curious about how TFG’s “real” campaign committee was doing just before the fascist display at Madison Square Garden? So am I.

So it was fortuitous that Alfredo at the Dairy Queen passed a note to inform us that the haul taken in the interval before his “MSG Fascist Fest” of people donating more than $1,000 was a grand total of $5,164.08 from five donors.

This must be some sort of record.

I mean, that’s it. That’s all of it. That’s pitiful by anyone’s calculation and conveys a message all by itself.

But here’s the thing. I am a little flummoxed about why 4 of the 5 payers donated exactly $1,041.02.

See? $1,041.02!

I get it about the secret numbers that people use to convey their juvenile messages, but, aside from an error code from the Zoom app, this one has me beat.

Does anyone have any idea what the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks this number could possibly mean? Please ask your fascist friends if you still have any.

Well it has been a while since we had an America First rally at Madison Square Garden. If you ask me it is long overdue for a repeat. So here we are again.

Here is the OG America First rally put on by the German-American Bund. See those guys in the aisles all dressed in brown shirts? Inspirational, don’t you think?

Here are the original America Firsters showing how illegal immigrants have all given them carpal tunnel syndrome.

Here are original America Firsters all dressed in white.

And here is the leader of the new America First Movement, again speaking at Madison Square Garden, riffing about how he has no teleprompter.

And at the risk of violating Godwin’s Law, do you know who else had no teleprompter?

The “official” enemies list for Bronzer Boy’s next term, brought to you by The American Accountability Foundation, a participant in Project 2025, has been released on their website.

Their website contains this informative banner that makes sure we all know they are deadly serious.

Actually, it’s just the “first tranche” of deep state “subversive leftist bureaucrats.” They promise more in the future.

What is disappointing with this first list is that the list of 10 names has no one that is recognizable from TFG’s many speeches on the subject: no “Shifty Schiff”, no “Crooked Hillary,” and no “Crazy Nancy.”

It’s all just a bunch of people that no one has ever heard of before.

Which makes it even more serious, you know. They diddle and twiddle away behind the scenes, away from the media lights where they do their evil, un-American deeds.

Richard Nixon’s Enemies List, the first of its kind known to Man, included such luminaries like congressmen (Allard Lowenstein, John Conyers, Ron Dellums), journalists (Daniel Schorr, Mary McGrory), and, curiously, actor Paul Newman.

Not these guys. TFG’s Enemies List includes just regular bureaucratic types along with their photos, job titles, salary, GS grade, and present work location.

They promise more to come in the future, including all of those lefties waging “lawfare” on Don the Con at the Dept. of Justice.

This is short because you still have a lot of reading to do. Heather Cox Richardson is a widely published historian with an interesting style that pulls the reader into an analysis of current events and parallels in history. She is a “juiced up” Doris Kerns Goodwin.

Here is her October 24th “Letters From An American” installment that she posted on Substack yesterday. It is particularly incisive and emphasizes, in this issue, Mark Twain’s observation that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

You’re welcome.

Elon Musk has inexplicably inserted himself into Presidential Politics, and not in a good way.

We can excuse his acrobatic exposure of his unhealthy bare 12-pack by acknowledging his social clumsiness, as many on “the spectrum” are afflicted with that. But as an intellectual, he must be aware that rewarding people with the opportunity to become millionaires if they sign his petition AND are registered to vote in a swing state is demonstrably illegal.

He must have known that. If not before, definitely by now.

The SuperPAC that is making these cash layouts is Musk’s America PAC. America PAC was registered with the FEC with Chris Gober designated as custodian and treasurer. Gober is a lawyer with Austin-based Gober Group.

But not anymore. Lawyers can spot lawsuits that they will be on the wrong side of from a parsec away. As of today, America PAC, has a new custodian and treasurer by the name of Chris Young.

Chris Young is a “GOP Adviser” (aka paid political hack) that, as a non-lawyer, has expertise in GOTV efforts as well as voter registration of the GOP kind. So he knows about laws that prohibit paying people to register to vote, too.

So now that the Department of Justice has warned Musk that his $1 m lottery scheme may be in violation of federal law, Gober bailed.

What might be worse than a lawyer being a co-defendant in a federal trial of Musk’s SuperPAC? How about being a defense witness at his voter bribery trial?

Yesterday it hit me like a ton of bricks. I have a friend from intermediate school and high school that decided to end our friendship. I suppose this didn’t happen yesterday. I just noticed that he had unfriended me yesterday and when I reached out he made it official. I wished him well and then we seemed to roll back into the same arguments. I hoped he was at peace. He said he was. He clearly is not. Then again, maybe I’m not either.

Anytime a relationship ends it is a good idea to inventory our own lives. Is there something I did that was wrong? Have I changed in the intervening years? Have I somehow become radicalized and not know it? Have my views become more extreme and driven people away? These are all legitimate questions and I should recount my history so people get a clearer picture.

I have always been keenly interested in politics because my family was always keenly interested in politics. We have always been left of center and I imagine always will be. So, if anyone really changed it wasn’t me. What we have seen since 1980 is that half of our country is moving further to the political extremes and it isn’t us on the left. I suppose some of that is a natural backlash when you have people that were quiet about their desires before now coming out and demanding it out loud. I do get how that seems sudden and it seems arbitrary and contrary to everything we have been. It’s really not. Women have been demanding more rights for decades. People of color have been demanding more rights for decades. People with alternative lifestyles have been demanding more rights for decades. I’m sorry if some people slept through that and missed it.

I think a large part of it is that our parents largely shielded us from the worst of their struggles. We saw an idealized view of life growing up. In some ways it may have been easier back then. I’m sure for some people it was. I can certainly look at my relatives that did not go to college and see how they succeeded when people today struggle under those same circumstances. I’m sure some of these same friends I grew up imagined they would be doing something different by now. I’m sure they imagined life being easier than it became.

In this kind of world it is easier to blame someone else than take personal responsibility. Blaming someone else is what demagogues do best. Today it might be the immigrants, but we have heard the current GOP nominee mention other groups as well. He has called people like me “the enemy within.” We cannot normalize that. We cannot simply brush that off. We cannot simply accept that as the musings of a mad man howling at the moon.

So, while it would be wrong to say that I have not changed at all, it is more fair to say that I haven’t changed all that much. I am speaking out more because the situation calls for it. I am sure some of you have had similar experiences. It’s obvious to me that my friend has changed and not for the better. I refuse to believe that he was always this way because that would mean that I was okay with it at some point. Others have described this current iteration of the conservative movement as a cult and I think that aptly describes what has happened to him. I pray that he wakes up one day and realizes it.