u/LKM_44122

Natalie, we know you saw it. You were in the motorcade.

Trump's whole team drove in from the airport hoping for a quiet arrival in Vandalia. Instead, right there on the route, the one sign that made the White House pool report was ours: NATALIE HARP HUMAN BINKY.

Reuters picked up the photo. Really American shared it with the whole country.

Natalie, we know you're good with a printer. Feel free to print this post out and hand it to him. He'll want to see how popular he is.

Thank you to everyone who held one of our poles, wore the pig head, and stood there until the motorcade rolled by the corner we moved to later. Small brigade, big reach.

Trump isn't on the ballot this November, but Trumpism sure is. Check your state's voter registration deadline, and get to the polls early, if at all possible.

This is not a meme.

Apparently Reuters picked up the photo, which means somewhere an editor had to approve a caption with "NATALIE HARP HUMAN BINKY" in it.

For the uninitiated: Natalie Harp is the aide who follows Trump around with a portable printer so he can read nice things about himself. She was in the motorcade. We're hoping she printed us out.

Shoutout to the woman in the pig head, who stood there in full costume for hours and never once broke character.

Also, unrelated but not really: voter registration closes tomorrow (Monday), and early voting starts Tuesday.

HEY, CREEPER, LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE! 🏫

Trump's lurching into Butler High School in Vandalia this Saturday to try to prop up Senator Jon Husted against Sherrod Brown Brown.

Trump's numbers are dropping like a grand piano out of a penthouse window. 🎹 Some Republicans are scrubbing him off their websites, but Husted is actually campaigning with him! 😂

We say bring it on. It only helps build a massive blue wave. 🌊

Our group showed up in Geneva, Ohio, for Trump's Patriot Games, and this is how we welcomed him. We most likely won't be there ourselves since it's the other end of the state, but we're helping local organizers with advice and promoting the protest.

Organizers should be showing up around 3 PM. Protesters can come at 3:30 or earlier to help set up. Bring water, stay on the sidewalk, and expect the Secret Service to make sure you keep your distance. There's street parking in the surrounding neighborhoods, but expect some closures near the school, and don't block anyone's driveway.

Peaceful protesters only. If you're coming to start trouble, stay home.

If you're tired of the sinking economy, tired of the lack of accountability for Epstein survivors, and tired of your rights being taken away while our men and women are being sent to a war nobody wanted, SHOW UP!

Trump isn't on the ballot in November, but Trumpism sure is. 🗳️ Did you make a plan to vote? Check your registration weekly. Help someone register before the October 5th deadline. Vote early and in person if you can, starting October 6th, and bring a friend or family member. The sooner the better, because anything can happen: illness, car trouble, a family emergency, or this administration pulling a fast one on DEMOCRACY.

Make a plan to vote in November.

Sometimes it's two bad choices, but one is almost always much worse than the other.

Vote accordingly.

UWM, the #1 wholesale mortgage lender in the country, has lost 80% of its value since January 16th, from $6.10 to $1.22. loanDepot, #6, is under a dollar and just got a delisting warning from the NYSE. Mortgage applications are at their lowest since 1995, when the country had about 80 million fewer people.

We've seen this before. In 2007, the mortgage lenders cracked first. New Century went bankrupt that April. Countrywide, the biggest lender in the country, lost most of its value and got sold to Bank of America in a fire sale in January 2008. Lehman didn't fall until that September. The lenders were the canaries in the coal mine.

Meanwhile, the Fed just raised rates. The average 30-year fixed is hovering above 7%, with daily indexes around 7.17% to 7.43%.

The typical household now needs about 38% of its income for a house payment. Lenders' rule of thumb says 28%. Over 30%, HUD calls you cost-burdened. The last time it was this bad was 2006.

The Midwest is holding up better. Pittsburgh is at around 28%. Nashville, Vegas, Florida and most of the coasts are stretched thin, and some of those markets are already falling.

Building costs keep climbing too. Tariffs raised material prices, and record diesel prices make every truckload of lumber, concrete and steel more expensive to haul to the job site.

Sources: Chris Norlund, Reventure Consulting, and Max from UNFTR on MeidasTouch

Edit: Fair points in the comments. A big chunk of UWM's drop came from a $603M hedge loss tied to their failed Two Harbors merger, not just the market. I'm not saying it's 2007 again, just that the warning lights keep stacking up again.

Hey MAGA.

This mural went up in Vilnius, Lithuania, in May 2016. Before the election. Two Lithuanian artists, Dominykas Čečkauskas and Mindaugas Bonanu, painted it on the wall of a restaurant called Keulė Rūkė. It's a direct riff on the Brezhnev and Honecker kiss from the Berlin Wall.

Lithuanians didn't need a briefing to see what was going on between those two. They lived under Soviet occupation for 50 years. They were the first republic to declare independence, on March 11th, 1990, and Moscow answered on January 13th, 1991 by sending tanks and KGB troops to the TV tower in Vilnius, where 13 unarmed civilians were killed and hundreds more were injured. One of them was a 23-year-old seamstress crushed under a tank. Those people know what a Russian strongman looks like, and they know what it looks like when someone wants to be one.

Ten years later, Americans are still arguing about whether Russia helped him win. The Senate Intelligence Committee settled it. Republican-led, bipartisan, five volumes. Russian intelligence ran a campaign to help Trump, including a hack-and-leak against his opponent and a troll farm in St. Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency, that reached over 100 million Americans on Facebook alone. Republicans chaired that committee.

When MAGA voters at rallies were asked whether everyone should read the Zelenskyy call transcripts and the Mueller report, they agreed, every time. Asked whether they'd read any of it themselves, the answer was always no. They believed what they had been told, and that was enough.

Now he's back in office, gas hit a record for the holiday weekend, and the war driving the price is his own catastrophe.

A restaurant wall in Vilnius called it a decade ago.

Trump isn't on the ballot in November. Trumpism sure is. Have you had enough yet? We have.

Mural by Dominykas Čečkauskas and Mindaugas Bonanu, on the wall of Keulė Rūkė, Vilnius, 2016.

Hey Vivek, invite Trump over to campaign with you. Should go great.

Jessica Tarlov read these out loud on The Five this week, on Fox News, going through the states Trump wants to campaign in before November.

Arizona, minus 14.

Florida, minus 10.

North Carolina, minus 16.

Ohio, minus 17.

Pennsylvania, minus 18.

Wisconsin, minus 18.

Georgia, minus 23.

Nevada, minus 23.

Reuters/Ipsos has him nationally at 33% approval against 64% disapproval. That poll closed August 31st and it's the third straight one at 33. Biden's floor was 35.

Same poll: 71% disapprove of how he's handling the cost of living, including four in ten Republicans.

On January 20th, 2025, his net approval here in Ohio was plus 8. It's minus 17 now. A 25 point drop in 19 months.

His poll numbers are falling faster than a grand piano out of a penthouse window.

Vivek Ramaswamy has spent this entire campaign standing as close to Trump as he can get. Trump endorsed him. Vivek built his whole pitch around him.

Down in Kentucky there's a Republican named Ralph Alvarado running in a district Trump won by double digits. He removed the photo of himself with Trump from his own website. He went from America First to independent leadership.

He can read a poll. So can everyone else in the party.

Watch how many Ohio Republicans want that Trump rally, and how many suddenly have a scheduling conflict.

Ohio Republican Party, what do you think? Please, invite him over!

wHy WoN't AmY aCtOn DeBaTe ViVeK rAmAsWaMy?

Ohio governors have refused to debate 4 times since the 1970s. Every one of them was a Republican.

Jim Rhodes let the City Club of Cleveland put an empty chair on stage in 1974 and refused again in 1978. John Kasich refused to debate Ed FitzGerald in 2014. Mike DeWine refused to debate Nan Whaley in 2022, and he skipped his own Republican primary debates that year as well. He'd debated Richard Cordray plenty in 2018, when he needed to.

Since 1982, every Ohio general election for governor has had a debate except those two.

DeWine also refused to debate David Pepper in the 2014 attorney general race. Pepper said at the time that DeWine was "showing contempt for voters and civic groups." Ramaswamy's campaign is now quoting that line back at Pepper, who is Acton's running mate. Pepper said it because a Republican wouldn't debate him.

The Ohio Republican Party co-sponsored the first debate of the 2016 cycle, August 6th 2015 at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. That's where Megyn Kelly asked Trump about calling women fat pigs, dogs and slobs. He boycotted the next Fox debate in Des Moines over it, then refused to debate his remaining Republican opponents at all. That May he told Jimmy Kimmel on live TV he'd debate Bernie Sanders, Sanders accepted the same night, two networks offered to host with proceeds to charity, and Trump backed out two days later once he'd clinched. He refused the second 2020 debate when it moved to virtual. He skipped every Republican primary debate in 2024. Harris asked for a second debate after September 2024 and never got one.

They co-sponsored the night that ended his debating career, and now they want to know why Amy Acton won't share a stage.

She said why, publicly, the same day, in writing. $50 million in attack ads. An AI-generated depiction of her with a substance abuse problem. A campaign that went after her over having been sexually abused as a child. The super PAC behind those ads raised $41.7 million through June, and 5 billionaires supplied 88 cents of every dollar of it. Not one of the five lists an Ohio address.

Compare that to Texas. Ken Paxton has been offered four debates. James Talarico accepted all four. Paxton has accepted none. Three had dates, times and venues locked in months ago and he blew past the first deadline without answering. CNN offered one this week and his campaign didn't respond by publication. His spokesman keeps saying they're close to terms and has been saying that for weeks. Texas Monthly put it plainly: Paxton's campaign has vowed to debate and failed to respond to any of the invitations. Talarico's new ad opens with a reporter asking Paxton whether he'll debate. Paxton says nothing and keeps walking.

He hasn't debated an opponent in more than a decade.

One candidate said no and told you why. The other sends a spokesman out to say he's willing while he himself walks away from the camera, year after year.

Ohio's Senate race is the same story. Sherrod Brown says he assumes there'll be a debate. Husted's campaign gave a noncommittal statement and said they'd be shocked if Brown debates at all. Four candidates across Ohio's two statewide races, zero debates on a calendar, 8 weeks out.

Republicans are also running from their own convention next week in Dallas. Zach Nunn says he'll be in his district. Nick LaLota is taking his daughter on college visits. Juan Ciscomani has a debate that night and can't move it. Politico surveyed more than 70 Republican candidates and members and found 45 either not attending or undecided.

I went to the first Lollapalooza at Blossom in 1991. A palooza is supposed to be cool. This one charges members of Congress a five-figure entry fee and half the party is ducking it.

Modern Republican debates aren't debates, they're content farming. Acton isn't obligated to be raw material for a campaign that generates fake footage of her.

Sources:

Ohio's debate refusal history, Ohio Capital Journal

https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/09/06/gov-mike-dewines-shifting-record-on-debating/

Acton declining, and the Pepper material, Ohio Capital Journal today

https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/09/04/ohio-democratic-candidate-for-governor-amy-acton-refuses-to-debate/

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, held a fundraiser last night at the home of Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam. $1,000 to get in. $100,000 to be an event chair.

The night before, Congressman Thomas Massie stood on the House floor and read 14 names into the Congressional Record, calling them Epstein co-conspirators who should be investigated and prosecuted. He's a Republican. He filed a second discharge petition the same night, because the Justice Department is still withholding over 3 million files a year after the law required their release.

It needs 218 signatures to force a vote.

The first time around, all 214 House Democrats signed and 4 Republicans did. Leadership pushed a closed-door investigation instead. Once the petition forced it to the floor anyway, the House voted 427 to 1 to release them. Seems they sometimes do the right thing, but they need the entire planet watching closely.

The people who can afford the room are not going to open the files about the room. That only happens if enough people make it politically impossible to keep them shut.

Ask your House rep whether they've signed.

https://tiffinohio.net/posts/haslams-host-ramaswamy-fundraiser-browns-stadium-deal/

ELBOWS UP IN NOVEMBER.

American flag on one end and a Canadian flag on the other, on the corner outside the Haslam house in Bratenahl tonight, while Vivek Ramaswamy and Rob McColley raised money inside. Tickets started at $1,000 a head. Event chairs were asked to bring $100,000.

Canada is Ohio's biggest foreign trade partner. Roughly 18 billion dollars of what this state makes goes north every year, and a couple hundred thousand Ohio jobs ride on it.

Not a word about it from inside that house. Their party spent this year picking a fight with the one neighbor Ohio can least afford to lose. Tariffs, taunts about the 51st state, and now an executive order renaming Lake Ontario. Canada's next round of retaliation lands September 8th, in the middle of this campaign.

Canadians noticed. They've been cancelling trips, pulling American products off their shelves, and asking why the country that stood with them for 200 years suddenly treats them like a mark.

Neither campaign for governor has said much of anything about it. Ohio has more at stake in this than almost any state in the country.

Elbows up is what Canadians say when somebody starts shoving. Seemed like the right thing to bring to the corner.

Elbows up in November.

Background on tonight's event, including the $600 million Browns stadium grant McColley's chamber pushed through out of Ohio's unclaimed funds, and the Haslam Sports Group executive who negotiated it and has since given the Ramaswamy ticket $43,231 with his wife:

https://tiffinohio.net/posts/haslams-host-ramaswamy-fundraiser-browns-stadium-deal/