MOSCOW (Sputnik) - US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is in "excellent" health, her physician, Joshua Simmons, said in a medical summary published by the White House on Saturday, just weeks before the election.

"Vice President Harris remains in excellent health. She possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief," the summary read.

Harris, 59, maintains a healthy lifestyle, including daily sport and healthy diet, the report reads, adding that her most recent annual physical exam, taken in April, detected no problems.

Over the last three years, Harris has been on allergen immunotherapy which helped to "dramatically" improve her allergy symptoms so that she will not be needing medication anymore, apart from occasional nasal drops for rhinitis, Simmons said.

The release of Harris' medical history follows a long-standing practice by candidates of both parties, which included Donald Trump during his presidency and previous campaigns. Trump, her 78-year-old Republican rival, has avoided requests to publish his medical records since August.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20241012/allergies-defeated-presidency-next-kamala-harris-health-report-is-in-1120524788.html

WE ARE IMPRESSED... BUT ACCORDING TO THE DEMOCRATS, TRUMP IS MENTALLY DEFICIENT WHILE ACCORDING TO REPUBLICANS, KAMALA IS AS THICK AS A FALLING BRICK.... HER LAUGHTER SHOULD BE TREATED AS A DISEASE...

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

Standing in the tiny foyer of a small theatre that had seen better days on a residential street in inner-city Philadelphia, I asked a fellow theatre-goer standing next to me, “Are you looking forward to some comic relief?”

“You bet,” the man said.

He and his companion, both apparently of retirement age, had come all the way from the suburbs to see This Is the Week That Is: An Election Special, a sketch comedy written, produced and performed by the local Philadelphia theatre company 1812 Productions and comprising a series of partly improvised parodies revolving around the November 5 presidential election.

“Would there be many Trump voters in this crowd?” I asked, noticing that the foyer was rapidly filling up.

“No way,” the woman laughed. Then the man chimed in. “They won’t get any joy from this. Too much fact-checking. They don’t like fact-checking!”

He then added, “You know, when Walz was fact-checked about whether he was at Tiananmen, he just said he had made an error. When Vance was fact-checked, he just lied more.”

Philly is usually a blue city, but the woman I was talking to has noticed that about one out of ten yard-signs displayed in front of people’s houses on her street proclaimed their support for Trump.

Jennifer Childs is the founder of 1812 Productions, and co-creator and head writer of this production. She and the show’s director, Melanie Cotton, both acknowledge that election cycles can be “anxiety-producing,” and that audiences coming into the theatre would be worried about the election. Childs said she wanted her show to be therapeutic: having done plenty of comedies that are escapist—just come and don’t think about anything and laugh at something stupid for two hours.

It was obvious they achieved their goal. Everyone, including the couple who had talked to me earlier, walked out with smiles, their facial muscles visibly more open and relaxed than when they went in.

According to a poll from as early as May this year conducted by the American Psychiatric Association, 73 per cent of Americans said the election was already causing them anxiety. It is unsurprising, then, that anxiety levels only seem to be intensifying as the election draws closer.

One Philly resident said she believed that the anxiety recorded in May might have “evolved into a more complex combination of emotions including fear, hopelessness, uncertainty feeling frozen and worrying about what’s to come.” Kathryn, with a background in education, seemed hard pressed to decide which would be the more scary scenario: Trump winning, with his emboldened supporters possibly unleashing their violent energy on their opponents (not to mention what might happen to immigrants and women); or Trump losing, potentially leading to widespread violence from angry supporters believing, once again, that the election had been “stolen” from their candidate.

“There is this fear that whoever is elected, there is no winning,” Kathryn said.

Hotlines have been set up to help people in Philly suffering from election anxiety and depression. Psychologists are advising people to limit their media exposure to no more than half an hour a day, to practise deep breathing, and to become engaged in campaigning. Many people resort to making agreements with families, friends and colleagues not to talk about politics, and some workplaces are offering training on how to handle political disagreements among employees.

While voter anxiety is across the board for both Trump and Harris voters, one survey suggests that Democrat voters report a higher level of stress, albeit for different reasons.

Spending just one evening talking to people at This Is the Week That Is made me realise that if I want to meet a big crowd of politically motivated people in Philadelphia on a weekend, my surest – and perhaps safest – bet might be to find another comedy in town about the forthcoming election.

So, the next afternoon I went to see another political satire, in the hope of finding out why Democrat voters are anxious despite the fact that Philly is a relatively safe blue city.

As it turned out, the Arden Theatre in downtown Philadelphia has also been doing its bit to relieve voters from election anxiety, by staging a Broadway hit called POTUS: Or Behind Every Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. The show is described by the Washington Post as “located somewhere on the satirical dial between 9 to 5 and Veep.” With the election just under one month away, the timing of the show assumed increasingly urgent poignancy. Due to popular demand, it has been extended for another week in Philadelphia.

Director Jennifer Childs, also one of the stars and writers of the 1812 production discussed earlier, is acutely aware of the timing of the show:

POTUS will close before our presidential election in November. I have no idea what the outcome of that election will be. … My hope is that … [after the election] this beautiful and funny play will be irrelevant.

But will it? Will it indeed become irrelevant?

During the intermission, I asked Roxanne and Trish, the two women sitting next to me, if it was safe to assume that most of the audience were Democrat supporters. “Oh yes, I think so. With a cast of seven strong women, with a strong feminist undertone, Trump supporters just wouldn’t find it funny.”

But the laughing and camaraderie shared by the audience belied a pervasive, palpable anxiety. “You can feel the tension in the air. And that’s because Trump is so unpredictable.”

Another common refrain I’ve been hearing with increasingly frequency over the last few weeks here is, “You just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Roxanne is a regular theatre goer who decided to home-school her four children partly due to her concern about guns in the schools. After getting a teaching degree, she now teaches English to new migrants and refugees. For her, the uncertainty of not knowing what’s in the next news cycle is very anxiety-making.

Roxanne’s theatre-going buddy Trish is an African American woman who also home-schooled her children. Trish was disgusted with Trump’s – and his supporters’ – comments questioning Kamala Harris’ blackness.

She said she is now more worried after the Walz vs Vance debate:

Neither Trump nor Vance has ever admitted that the 2020 election was legitimately won. So, if Harris wins, Trump is not likely going to accept it peacefully. So, we may have riots or violence. If he wins, I don’t know what’s going to happen, especially with black women in this country. One way or another, it’s going to be difficult to predict.

Uncertainty aside, the other anxiety-inducing factor is the neck-and-neck closeness of many of the polls. Trish continued:

We’re told constantly that the margin between the two parties is now widening, and then it’s closing again. Or it’s getting closer in one state, or widening in another. It’s nerve-wracking.

Roxanne attributed her anxiety to the fact that anything can derail your preferred party’s chances.

First, it’s the disastrous performance from Biden. Then the Middle East. Then the assassination attempt. Then Harris stepped up. That was a relief, but we knew so little about her. Then the hurricane. And Trump never stops lying. You never know what’s around the corner. You’re always on edge.

In a way, Roxanne echoed what Kathryn said to me earlier about the broken trust, which seems to go to the heart of what is causing this widespread anxiety, at least on the part of Democrat voters:

Can you trust someone who likes to tell lies, distort history, tries to invalidate an electoral system that we rely on, and that other countries look to us as a symbol of democracy?

Kathryn’s question was meant to be rhetorical. But for many Americans the answer could still turn out to be a resounding – and alarming – “Yes.”

https://johnmenadue.com/anxious-democrat-voters-find-new-ways-to-self-medicate-as-election-looms/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

By Andrew P. Napolitano

The government knows how to evade an uncomfortable constitutional provision or High Court opinion, writes Andrew P. Napolitano regarding a case involving Donald Trump, Jack Smith and Elon Musk.

When Congress enacted the Stored Communications Act of 1986 (SCA), it claimed the statute would guarantee the privacy of digital data that service providers were retaining in storage. The act prohibited the providers from sharing the stored data, and it prohibited unauthorized access to the data, commonly called computer hacking — except, of course, if the recipients or the hackers were working for the federal government.

Just as it did with the Patriot Act of 2001 — which permits one federal agent to authorize another to conduct a search of stored data, without a judicially issued search warrant — the SCA permits judges to issue “orders” for searches without meeting the probable cause standard required by the Fourth Amendment.

Just like the Patriot Act — which in its original form prohibited the recipient of agent-issued search warrants, called National Security Letters (NSLs), from telling any persons of their existence — the SCA requires judges who issue orders for a search, upon the request of the government, to bar the custodian of the data who has received the order from informing the person whose data is sought.

What if the person whose data is sought has a claim of privacy on the data? What if the owner and creator of the data relied on the Fourth Amendment to keep the government’s hands off of it? What if that person was the president of the United States at the time he created the data? What if he has a claim of executive privilege on it? What if all persons have a privacy claim on all stored data and have a right to resist the government’s efforts to seek it?

Here is the backstory.

Is a judicial order for data under the SCA a search warrant under the Fourth Amendment? It is, after all, a judicial order directing and authorizing an official of the executive branch to surveil and seize private property, and it does specifically describe the place to be searched or the thing to be seized. But, because it is not based on probable cause of crime as the Fourth Amendment requires, the short answer is: No.

In United States v. Carpenter (2018), the Supreme Court ruled that orders for data based on governmental need, rather than probable cause of crime, are constitutionally defective and the data cannot be used at trial.

But the government, which knows how to evade an uncomfortable constitutional provision or Supreme Court opinion, has continued to use the SCA as a means around them. This became apparent this week in a case before the Supreme Court involving former President Donald Trump, Jack Smith and Elon Musk.

Two years ago, Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Trump for alleged Jan. 6 crimes, obtained an order from a federal judge in Washington, D.C., directing X — formerly known as Twitter — to surrender copies of communications sent and received by Trump in January 2021, and prohibiting X from informing Trump. 

This was not a search warrant, as it was not based on probable cause of crime. It was an SCA order based on governmental need.

The SCA is unconstitutional on its face. This is so because it directly defies the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees privacy by requiring a showing under oath of probable cause of crime as the absolute precondition of all government searches and seizures. Nevertheless, X complied with the order, but filed a secret application with the judge who issued it seeking to vacate the order for silence.

Government orders for silence have a long and troubled history. The same First Amendment that prohibits Congress from infringing upon the freedom of speech also prohibits the government from compelling speech. If Congress cannot infringe upon or compel speech, how can it compel silence? It cannot constitutionally do so.

In 2005, in Connecticut, librarians wound up ensnared by a National Security Letter (NSL). The Patriot Act prohibited the recipient of an NSL from telling anyone — even a lawyer — of the receipt of it.  When the librarians sued for the right to discuss the receipt of the NSL, the feds charged them with criminal violations of the Patriot Act by discussing the receipt of the NSL with their lawyers.

After a federal district court granted and a federal appellate court upheld the relief the librarians sought, and the criminal case against them was dismissed, Congress amended the Patriot Act to permit recipients of NSLs to discuss them with counsel. By then, five different federal judges had declared the silence provisions of the Patriot Act unconstitutional.

That should have been the end of commands for silence, but it wasn’t.

When lawyers for X argued that the SCA infringed upon Musk’s freedom of speech to tell Trump what the feds were up to, a federal district court rejected that argument and a federal appellate court upheld the rejection. X appealed to the Supreme Court, and the court — without an opinion or a dissent — declined to hear X’s appeal.

Here we go again. Doesn’t the Constitution mean what it says? Of what value are constitutional guarantees if those in whose hands we repose them for safekeeping secretly and repeatedly decline to do so? How does this end?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO 

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/10/10/the-government-compels-silence-again/

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A federal judge in Washington DC has canceled any remaining deadlines in the government’s election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump, paving the way for the case to be dropped in light of Trump’s election victory.

In a court filing on Friday, Special Counsel Jack Smith requested that “the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance” of Trump’s win, and to “determine the appropriate course going forward.”

District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted the request, and ordered Smith’s team to present their “proposed course for this case” by December 2.

Smith charged Trump last year with plotting to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, arguing that the outgoing president pressured election officials to invalidate the results of the election, and encouraged his supporters to riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a bid to block the certification of Biden’s victory.

However, Justice Department policy shields sitting presidents from prosecution, and Smith is expected to wind down his case – and a separate federal case against Trump – and be dismissed before the president-elect is inaugurated in January.

Trump has maintained from the outset that the case was a “pathetic attempt” by the Biden administration to “interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election.” Describing Smith as a “crooked person,” Trump said last week that he would fire the special counsel “within two seconds” of taking office.

Smith is also prosecuting Trump over the latter’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. However, that case, which centers on papers Trump brought to his Mar-a-Lago estate after his first term in office, has hung in legal limbo since it was tossed out by a federal judge in Florida in July. Smith appealed the dismissal in August.

In addition to Smith’s two federal cases, Trump was charged in New York with misreporting “hush money”payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, and in Georgia with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state. He was found guilty on all counts in New York in May, after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg successfully elevated one misdemeanor offense into 34 felonies, one for each installment paid to Daniels.

Trump is due to be sentenced in New York later this month. However, his lawyers have already argued that the charges should be overturned due to a Supreme Court ruling in July that stated that presidents are immune from prosecution over actions taken while they were in office, as some of the alleged crimes were in Trump’s case.

https://www.rt.com/news/607384-trump-us-prosecutor-charges/

An Iranian national and two Americans have been charged with involvement in a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, as well as an Iranian dissident, the US Department of Justice has announced.

Farhad Shakeri, Carlisle ‘Pop’ Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt were named in the criminal complaint unveiled on Friday by the Southern District of New York. Rivera was arrested in Brooklyn and Loadholt in Staten Island. Shakeri is “believed to reside” in Iran and remains at large.

“The charges announced today expose Iran’s continued brazen attempts to target US citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

Shakeri, 51, immigrated to the US as a child but was deported in 2008 after serving 14 years in prison on a robbery conviction. The DOJ alleges he is an asset of the Islamic  Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who used “a network of criminal associates he met in prison” to spy on targets and plot their deaths.

Rivera, 49 and Loadholt, 36, were allegedly promised $100,000 by Shakeri to stalk and kill an unidentified Iranian dissident (Victim-1). 

According to the DOJ, Shakeri had several “recorded interviews with law enforcement agents,” in which he said he was tasked by the IRGC on October 7 to provide a plan for killing Trump.

“During the interview, Shakeri claimed he did not intend to propose a plan to kill Trump within the timeframe set by the IRGC,” the DOJ noted. It was unclear why Shakeri has not been arrested.

The three men were all charged with murder-for-hire, conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, for facing a total of up to 40 years in prison if convicted. Shakeri has also been charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, conspiracy to do so, and violating US sanctions on Iran, and faces another 60 years in prison if ever caught and convicted.

While the DOJ noted that the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court, Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland  have held up the indictment as proof that Iran is “actively targeting nationals of the United States and its allies living in countries around the world for attacks” motivated by vengeance for the 2020 death of IRGC Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani.

Trump ordered Soleimani’s assassination in a drone strike carried out near the Baghdad airport in Iraq.

The 45th and soon to be 47th president of the US survived an assassination attempt on July 13, during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Secret Service killed the shooter, identified as a 20-year-old American Thomas Crooks. Another would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, was arrested in September after he set an ambush at a Florida golf course belonging to Trump. No Iranian connection was made in either case. Routh had previously tried to recruit Afghan veterans to fight for Ukraine against Russia.

https://www.rt.com/news/607383-iran-trump-kill-plot-accusation/

ACCORDING TO SOME AMERICANS, IRAN WOULD HAVE DONE THEM A FAVOUR — BUT WE CAN'T SAY THAT.....

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

“It’s hard to do cartoons without Smith…”

         Gus Leonisky