Reggaeton music artist Nicky Jam has rescinded his endorsement of Donald Trump as a result of the racist and degrading comments delivered by a comedian who performed at a recent Trump campaign event, particularly those targeting Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.

Nicky Jam was one of the only Reggaeton artists to support Trump. He got a lot of heat from other musicians about it. He attended a Trump rally in Las Vegas in September, where Trump, having no idea who he was, introduced him as a female telling the audience "She's hot." Today, in rescinding his endorsement in this Instagram video in Spanish he said: (rough translation)

"The reason why I supported Donald Trump was because I thought it was the best thing for the economy in the United States, where many Latinos live ... I thought it was the best move. Never in my life did I think that a month later a comedian was going to come to criticize my country and talk bad about my country and therefore, I renounce any support to Donald Trump and That’s why I’m renouncing my support for Donald Trump and stepping away from any political conversation. Puerto Rico deserves respect.” he said.

Puerto Ricans can't vote in the U.S. Presidential election, but they have a lot of weight with relatives and friends who can vote. Nicky Jam has 43 million followers on Instagram. In 3 hours, the post had more than 85,000 likes.

Also today, Arnold Schwarzenegger broke with Republicans and said he's voting for Kamala Harris. [More...]

The Washington Post has killed a planned editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris for President. Why? Because Post owner Jeff Bezos(who founded Amazon to become one of the world's richest persons) opposed it.

An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two people who were briefed on the sequence of events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to the same two people.

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Please don't forget to vote. In addition to voting for President, there are votes for members of Congress, state officials, including legislators and judges, and local ordinances. All are important. Colorado's ballot was the longest I can remember. If I wasn't sure about a particular issue, I read the booklet the state sent with the pros and cons, and if I still wasn't sure, or I didn't care, I skipped that question. But on the big stuff, I voted.

Good luck Kamala, Good luck Diana DeGette, and good luck to Denver County Court Judge Kelly Cherry. You all deserve much more than votes. You have invested years of your lives to trying to make all of our lives better. You have given your hearts and souls to provide us with the best governance you can.

We get the government we elect. You snooze, you lose. As I say about Donald Trump every year: "It's time to scrape his sh*t right off our shoes". (Sweet Virginia, below) [more...]

This is suspect Ryan Routh, who was arrested yesterday after allegedly planning to kill Donald Trump at his International Golf Course in Palm Beach. The photo is taken from Routh's Linked In account.

Routh didn't shoot anything. He fled when police arrived. When the Secret Service opened fire on him and missed, he ran out of the bushes and into a Black Nissan, leaving his "AR 15 style" rifle in the bushes along with his Go-Pro camera. A bystander just happened to be in the area and took a photo of his car driving off that showed his license plate number. The cops called into their real-time crime center which used a license plate reader to capture his license plate as it on Interstate 95. Routh was stopped and taken into custody.

From the news conference at 5:10 pm (MT): The FBI in Miami is the lead investigating agency. The state prosecutor is preparing an arrest warrant and will ask he be detained without bond. Then the state will decide whether to charge him and with what crime. And it could be that they turn the whole thing over to the feds. [More...]

What you can expect from Donald Trump tonight: More of what we always get from him: Provocation, Prevarication, Pontification.

He will provoke Kamala Harris with insults and mischaracterizations about her character, her experience and her job performance to distract her and get her to move away from discussing her position on issues. Every minute she spends addressing Trump is a minute she didn't get to spend answering the question and explaining her policy positions and planned agenda as President.

In answering questions, Trump will assert his most outlandish lies to date, about his record, elections, Democrats, Harris, and anything else his diminutive, fizzled-out brain can think of. Even Pinocchio wouldn't be able to keep up with him. Even the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz will know Trump is lying out of desperation, lack of preparedness and egotistical belief he is a better gauge of what will sell to the American public than his advisors. [More...]

Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed a new Indictment against Donald Trump in the January 6 case in the District of Columbia. (available here).

The charges are the same. But to comply with the recent Supreme Court decision saying his presidential acts were immune, the government changed the roles of those involved, and the wording and facts are different. The Indictment doesn't refer to acts while he was in the oval office, and instead uses his acts while he was just a candidate.

While prosecutors did not drop the four initial charges from the new indictment, they added more language that describes Trump as a "candidate," and not president, while describing others as "acting in their private capacity" and not "government officials."

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Kamala Harris will accept the nomination tonight. She'll be her own best champion. I'm already on board.

Update: Kamala Harris nailed it. She took on unity, the border, the Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, respect for our military, Nato, Iran, individual freedom, the housing shortage and everything else in the kitchen sink. She called out Trump (no need to rehash that). Her delivery was impeccable: passionate, measured, joyous with a "but don't cross me" undertone.

A transcript of her speech is here.[More...]

I tuned in too late for Bill Clinton (and will watch later) but after several subsequent speeches I did hear and was not impressed by, on comes Oprah Winfrey. Okay, she is a professional entertainer. And only a few of these speakers write their own speeches. But wow, Oprah just knocked their socks off. Kamala should make her Secretary of State.

The only thing Oprah forgot was to credit Bon Jovi for her opening line, "Who Said You Can't Go Home"?

It was Oprah who impressed me the most towards the end of Hillary's campaign, when she came out and mocked people who didn't want to vote for her because they said they didn't like her. Her retort: "You don't have to like her. She's not coming to your house for dinner". (Video here)

Some of the unimpressive speakers: Kamala Harris' very handsome brother-in-law. Maybe it's his background in the Department of Justice. But he came out with an example of Kamala, as a prosecutor, working over a weekend to get a judge to let a woman who she believed to be innocent out on bail, because she wondered, who would feed her children if she spent the weekend in jail. He said, "That's Kamala, standing for justice" or something like that.

Look, Kamala is a career prosecutor. She didn't become one to change the system and reform it for people of color or lesser economic means.

Listening to the next speaker was a head-shaking contrast. It is hard for me to believe this speaker is an elected Democratic Senator. I never heard of her before. And I will mute her from now on should she appear on my screen again. [More...]

Newsflash, read all about it at the Orange County (California) Republican Party's website. Donald Trump is coming to Aspen for dinner this Saturday at an as-yet unpublished location to raise money for his campaign. The event is a joint project of 48 state Republican parties (Colorado is not even one of them).

I know it's hard to believe, but the cost of serving as a dinner "host" is $500,000 per couple, which can either be a direct donation of funds or raising that amount from others. So far, 8 individuals/couples have signed on as hosts. [More...]

It's official. Democratic nominee for President Kamala Harris has announced on Instagram that she has selected MN Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. (Instagram? seriously? Yes. I guess it's how you reach people in their 20's in hopes of getting them to support the addition of a 60 year old white male on ticket).

Why Walz over PA Governor Josh Shapiro? Is it because Shapiro, like Harris' husband, is Jewish and supports Israel? How did Walz even get on Harris' radar so quickly? [More...]

Here is a list of the 24 prisoners released from prison in a multi-country swap today with Russia. The swap occurred at Ankara, Turkey.

Three of the released prisoners are from the U.S, including Wall St. Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American editor for Radio Free Europe, and Paul Wheeler, a former marine who had traveled to Russia to attend a wedding.

Who did the U.S. swap in exchange? [More...]

Our last open thread is full. Here's a new one. All topics welcome.

I've mostly been following the arrests of El Mayo (Ismael Zambada-Garcia) and El Chapo's Son #3, Joaquin Guzman-Lopez. So far it seems the competing versions of how the pair came to end up in U.S. custody have some truthful details and some inconsistent or implausible details. Too many cooks spoil the broth. (Or, in this case, it's too many unidentified sous-chefs, most of whom are unnamed agents of non-identified government agencies and unnamed current or former cartel members, talking to their favorite journalists). The U.S. Government does not seem inclined at this point to deconstruct the mess for us.

Also of interest: The killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. [More...]