@497 Lynna, OM: The significant part is that this is Trump killing his own business. Truth Social’s primary selling point was being the only interface online for Trump. Going back to X kills what little business and interest it had. Musk either offered Trump a lot of money or Trump didn’t realize what he was doing.
We already know Musk offered Trump money to flip flop on EVs, Trump admitted to that. How much money he got for that and how much he got for selling out Truth Social is unknown.
A judge ruled that a law passed by Indiana’s GOP supermajority that tried to retroactively prevent cities from suing gun manufacturers goes too far. The decision allows one city’s decadeslong suit against gunmakers to continue. […] an appeal is coming.
[…]
State Rep. Chris Jeter, author of the bill aimed at disrupting the lawsuit, disagreed with Sedia’s assertion that applying the law retroactively would violate the state constitution. “Municipalities are a creature of state law,” he said. “They aren’t people; they have no rights.”
Sanders warns Trump is ‘laying the groundwork’ to dispute election loss
Prominent progressive senator Bernie Sanders has warned that Donald Trump is preparing to once again dispute the results of the 2024 election, should he lose.
Trump has never publicly conceded his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, and engaged in a monthslong effort to prevent the Democrat from taking office that culminated in the violent January 6 insurrection.
In a just-released statement, Sanders cites the former president’s recent language to argue that he is preparing to do the same this year:
Donald Trump may be crazy, but he’s not stupid [he’s actually very stupid]. When he claims that “nobody” showed up at a 10,000 person Harris-Walz rally in Michigan that was live-streamed and widely covered by the media, that it was all AI, and that Democrats cheat all of the time, there is a method to his madness. Clearly, and dangerously, what Trump is doing is laying the groundwork for rejecting the election results if he loses. If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are “fake” and “fraudulent.”
This is what destroying faith in institutions is about. This is what undermining democracy is about. This is what fascism is about.
He’s also very likely projecting what his campaign is planning or doing: cheating; using fake images or videos. Maybe that’s even what’s contained in Roger Stone’s hacked emails. Lynna, I don’t know if you remember, but I’m pretty sure we had a conversation back in 2016 about Trump’s weird obsession with “bags of cash.” And now years later we’re learning about the regime in Egypt allegedly withdrawing cash from national reserves to bribe him during that campaign.
Donald Trump’s campaign is facing accusations of racism over this post made on X earlier today:…
Post at the link. It’s racist as hell.
In the further annals of Republicans who broke with Donald Trump returning to the fold, former North Carolina senator Richard Burr said he will vote for the ex-president in November.
Burr, who declined to seek re-election and left the Senate in 2022, was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House of Representatives in response to the January 6 insurrection.
The conviction ultimately failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate required to be approved, and North Carolina’s GOP censured Burr for his vote.
In an interview with Spectrum News, Burr said:
Maybe someone will have a hard time squaring with it. I don’t have a hard time squaring with it because I firmly understood why I voted for impeachment. And l like I said, that’s not a disqualifier as to whether you can serve. It’s a bad choice I thought a president made one time.
They’re totally useless – they retire and they still can’t muster any courage.
Abortion will be on ballot in at least eight states in November
Missouri voters will decide in November whether to guarantee a right to abortion with a constitutional amendment that would reverse the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.
Missouri has become the eighth state to have abortion on the ballot in November.
The secretary of state’s office certified Tuesday that an initiative petition received more than enough signatures from registered voters to qualify for the general election. It will need approval from a majority of voters to become enshrined in the state constitution.
Missouri will join at least seven states voting on abortion rights during the presidential election.
Arizona’s secretary of state certified an abortion-rights measure for the ballot on Monday. Measures also will go before voters in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and South Dakota.
While not explicitly addressing abortion rights, a New York ballot measure would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “reproductive healthcare,” among other things.
Ukraine’s offensive in Russia’s Kursk Oblast has created “a real dilemma” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters in New Orleans on Aug. 13.
Ukraine’s surprise cross-border incursion into neighboring Kursk Oblast began on Aug. 6, and by Aug. 13, Ukraine said it controlled 74 settlements in the region.
“It’s creating a real dilemma for Putin, and we’ve been in direct contact, constant contact, with the Ukrainians,” Biden said in his first public comments since Kyiv launched its offensive.
“That’s all I’m going to say about it while it’s active.”
U.S. officials acknowledged that Washington did not know about Ukraine’s incursion until after it happened, but said it was consistent with U.S. policy.
According to U.S. Defense Department Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh, Ukraine is taking action “to protect themselves from attacks” and operating “within the U.S. policy of where they can operate our weapons, our systems, our capabilities.”
U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R) and Richard Blumenthal (D) expressed even stronger support for Ukraine’s offensive, calling it “bold” and “brilliant” and urging Washington to lift all restrictions governing the Ukrainian military’s use of U.S.-supplied weapons.
Current U.S. policy grants Kyiv limited permission to use certain American arms to strike Russian targets near the country’s border.
The 1,000 square kilometers Ukraine says it controls in Russia’s Kursk Oblast amounts to a tiny share of Russia’s massive terrain. Yet, politically, the surprise Ukrainian move poses one of the biggest challenges to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.
The stunning operation, conducted by Ukraine’s Armed Forces, amounts to the first ground invasion by a foreign power of Russian territory since World War II.
It also appears to be the most severe blow for the Kremlin since warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s insurrection in June 2023.
“It has caused significant damage to Putin’s prestige,” Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin told the Kyiv Independent.
The Ukrainian operation in Kursk Oblast comes as Kyiv continues to relentlessly conduct long-range air strikes on Russian military airfields, oil refineries, and ammunition depots in Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s setback in Kursk Oblast resembles Moscow’s withdrawal from parts of Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts in 2022, when Putin had to mobilize conscripts to hold the line.
Since Russia lacked troops to repel the Ukrainian incursion in Kursk Oblast, the likelihood of a second mobilization is increasing, analysts say. Putin has postponed conscription due to risks of potential domestic instability caused by an apparent decrease in the number of people willing to fight in Ukraine.
At the same time, the Kremlin is facing a backlash from pro-war hawks, who believe Russia’s leadership has failed to protect the border and created a military system that’s unable to properly wage the war.
The Kursk operation may also weaken the West’s fears of escalating the war since the ground invasion of Russian territory did not lead to any dramatic consequences like a nuclear war or a conflict with NATO. The nuclear saber rattling, used occasionally by the Kremlin, disappeared altogether as Ukrainian troops, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, took control of 74 Russian settlements….
More at the link. Some of the Getty images they use are striking.
Sea level rise will help create “more oceanfront property”, carbon pollution is only a problem once it starts causing “headaches and nausea” and we should be more worried about “nuclear warming” than global warming.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s conversation on X, which Musk owns, last night featured several incoherent and baseless statements on the climate crisis, prompting both confusion and derision among environmental advocates.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate group 350[dot]org, labeled it the “dumbest climate conversation of all time.”
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee in this election, said that rising seas will help create “more oceanfront property” and complained that “people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming,” in reference to potential nuclear war.
During the often disjointed exchange, Trump also said it is a “disgrace” that Joe Biden’s administration hadn’t opened up the Arctic to oil drilling and baselessly claimed that “you have farmers that are not allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle” because of climate edicts.
Musk, meanwhile, said that he is “helping the environment” by making electric cars via Tesla but said that he didn’t want people to “vilify” the oil and gas industry that is driving the climate crisis and that the real dangers were, he felt, an increase in CO2 that will cause “headaches and nausea” and the world potentially running out of oil.
“We don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that,” Musk said about the urgency of climate change. “Like leave the farmers alone.”
Scientists are clear that the world needs to rapidly move away from fossil fuels to avoid worsening and disastrous climate impacts such as heatwaves, flooding and droughts.
The exchange did little to assuage concerns that a second Trump term will only help accelerate dangerous global heating.
birgerjohanssonsays
Have I Got a Bit More News for You S67 E10. Alex Horne. 7 June 24
“The Court will not stretch the facts to fit the theory advanced by the State. Here, there are no factual allegations […]” the judge wrote
[…]
Rokita filed a federal lawsuit in September against IU Health, claiming the state’s largest hospital system did not properly enforce state and federal privacy laws in connection to abortion care provided by Dr. Caitlin Bernard for a 10-year-old rape victim in 2022.
[…]
[Judge]: “the State’s allegations are limited in scope to one physician […] Even if the State’s allegations are proven true, a physician’s failure […] does not indicate that IUH has categorically failed to train its 36,000-member workforce.”
[…]
Democrat Destiny Wells, who is challenging Rokita in the Attorney General race, said […] “Rokita’s ruthless crusade against healthcare professionals is a weird obsession with the doctor-patient relationship and proves to do nothing for Hoosiers except open the door to government intrusion.”
/weird Republican
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@493:
Antifa to the rescue, along with … cops?
The cops didn’t side with the fascists?
How odd.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 6
And what about the billions of old beach-front property that’s going to be underwater?
And what about the billions of old beach-front property that’s going to be underwater?
Well, then it won’t be beachfront property any more, will it?
The property next to the water will become the new beach-front property.
(What’s the prob?)
KGsays
Bekenstein Bound@11,
The fascists have been attacking the police, injuring quite a number. Whatever their natural tendency to side with the fascists, they don’t like having bricks, bottles and fireworks thrown at them. The counter-demos have been almost entirely peaceful. Similarly, establishment politicans, including those in the new Labour government, have spent years stirring up anti-migrant and anti-Muslim prejudices, but still don’t want fascists burning down mosques, or hotels where asylum seekers are housed. It’s not a good look, and violates the state’s monopoly on violence.
birgerjohanssonsays
Stephen Colbert:
“Musk & Trump’s Livestream Fail | Trump Flies Around On Epstein’s Plane | Obama’s Brat Summer”
Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian Su-34 fighter jet over Russia’s Kursk Oblast overnight on Aug. 14 amid Kyiv’s incursion into the region, Ukraine’s General Staff reported.
Ukraine’s unprecedented operation, ongoing since last week, seems to have taken Russia by surprise, as Kyiv says its forces seized control of 74 settlements and over 1,000 square kilometers of land after they broke through the weakly defended border.
Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile forces destroyed another Russian Su-34 during a combat mission, according to the military. The Kyiv Independent could not verify this claim.
A first-person-view (FPV) drone operated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) hit a Russian military helicopter in mid-air in Kursk Oblast, a source in the agency told the Kyiv Independent on Aug. 9.
Another Russian helicopter, Mi-28, was reportedly hit by an FPV drone in Kursk Oblast on Aug. 6 in what some called the first such successful attack in history.
…
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, citing undisclosed U.S. officials, that Moscow is withdrawing at least some of its forces from Ukraine to counter Kyiv’s incursion in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
Ukrainian long-range drones hit four Russian airbases overnight on Aug. 14 in the largest attack on airfields in the war, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told the Kyiv Independent.
Earlier the same day, Russia claimed it had downed over 110 Ukrainian drones in a massive strike, with local Telegram channels reporting explosions at the Savasleyka, Borisoglebsk, and Baltimore airbases.
The SBU confirmed the attacks against the three aforementioned airbases and said an airbase in Kursk had also been targeted….
The large-scale drone attack was carried out by the SBU in cooperation with the Air Force, Special Operation Forces, Unmanned Systems Forces, and military intelligence agency (HUR), the source revealed to the Kyiv Independent.
The goal was to prevent Russia from using the airbases to strike Ukrainian military positions and settlements with KAB bombs. The consequences of the attacks are being determined, the source added.
“We are waiting for satellite photos of destroyed Russian fighters and warehouses,” the source said.
Russian Telegram channels reported 10 explosions at the Savasleyka airbase in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, which hosts Kinzhal missile carriers, MiG-31K.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty published NASA satellite imagery that seems to confirm fires near the Savasleyka and Baltimore airbases. Russian Telegram channels also shared multiple videos capturing flying drones and air defense fire in Voronezh and Nizhny Novgorod oblasts.
The village of Savasleyka is located some 650 kilometers (400 miles) from the border with Ukraine, while Baltimore and Borisoglebsk in Voronezh Oblast lie 180 and 260 kilometers (110 and 160 miles) from the Ukrainian border, respectively.
The Kursk airfield, also known as Khalino Airbase, hosts MiG-29 fighter jets and lies around 95 kilometers (60 miles) from Ukraine.
“The SBU continues to methodically weaken the Air Force component of the Russian military machine,” the source said.
Ukrainian forces operating in Kursk Oblast have captured more than 100 Russian troops since midnight on Aug. 14, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a report to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In a post on Telegram, Zelensky said he had received a morning report from Syrskyi and that “further progress” had been made in the incursion.
“(Ukrainian forces have advanced) from 1 to 2 kilometers in different areas from the beginning of the day,” Syrskyi said.
“And more than 100 Russian soldiers have been captured during the same period.”
Ukraine’s cross-border incursion into neighboring Kursk Oblast began on Aug. 6, and by Aug. 13, Ukraine said it controlled 74 settlements in the region.
Zelensky said on Aug. 13 that “hundreds” of Russian soldiers have so far surrendered during the operation.
In his post on Aug. 14, Zelensky said he was “grateful to all involved,” and the taking of Russian prisoners would allow Ukraine to return more of its own POWs being held by Russia.
“This will speed up the return home of our boys and girls,” he said….
And here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Meanwhile, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, has declared a state of emergency, Reuters reported….
Sabotage suspected at German base providing military support for Ukraine
A German military base that is an important hub for support for Ukraine was sealed off on Wednesday as authorities investigate suspected sabotage, the defence ministry said.
Agence France-Presse said media had reported the water supply may have been tampered with.
The Cologne-Wahn base “has been locked down because there is a suspicion of an attempted intrusion and a suspicion of sabotage,” defence ministry spokesman Colonel Arne Collatz told reporters in Berlin.
Der Spiegel magazine reported that police and the German military’s counter-intelligence service were investigating an apparent break-in, with its sources saying a hole in the fence had been discovered.
Soldiers and civilians on the Bundeswehr base have been advised not to drink the tap water, Spiegel added, over concerns that the water supply “may be contaminated”.
The Cologne-Wahn base, located near Cologne-Bonn airport, houses several military and civilian facilities of the German armed forces as well as aircraft used by Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his ministers for government travel.
Some 4,300 soldiers and 1,200 civilians work at the site, according to Spiegel.
The base is also an important hub for military support for Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers regularly fly home from there, via Poland, after receiving training in Germany.
birgerjohanssonsays
Late Night With Seth Meyers:
“Amber Says What: French Pole Vaulter, Olympic Break Dancing”
SC @3: Lynna, I don’t know if you remember, but I’m pretty sure we had a conversation back in 2016 about Trump’s weird obsession with “bags of cash.” And now years later we’re learning about the regime in Egypt allegedly withdrawing cash from national reserves to bribe him during that campaign.
I do remember that. The cash withdrawn from the account in Egypt was literally put in bags. Money is heavy. It would have taken some effort to move that ten million dollars to some other bank/country so that it could be transferred to Donald Trump.
Trump always reveals his own methods and expectations (and that of his co-conspirators) if you listen to him. Master of projection.
How a pair of unhinged GOP candidates could help Democrats flip the state in November’s presidential election.
This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 12 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won North Carolina was Barack Obama in 2008. But since Vice President Kamala Harris moved to the top of the Democratic ticket three weeks ago, Democrats are feeling like North Carolina may be in reach for them again.
A new poll released by YouGov on Sunday shows Donald Trump and Harris currently tied in North Carolina at 46% each. Some of that is absolutely the relative appeal of the two candidates and their campaigns, but part of what may be lifting Democrats in North Carolina is that the Republican candidate for governor there is — and I believe this is the technical term — cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Republican Mark Robinson calls gay people “filth.” He says schoolteachers are “wicked people.” He has mocked and attacked school shooting survivors. He has warned ominously that the music industry is run by the Illuminati. He said the film “Black Panther” was created by Jews and “satanic Marxists.” And he has — perhaps you won’t find this surprising — engaged in Holocaust denial.
This man is the Republican nominee for governor in a totally normal state, a real place called North Carolina.[LOL]
That same YouGov poll that found Trump and Harris tied in the presidential race in North Carolina found Robinson losing the governor’s race to Democrat Josh Stein by a whopping 10 points.
Now there’s new reporting highlighting another statewide Republican candidate in North Carolina who is right up there with Robinson on the crazy meter. In a since-deleted Facebook livestream unearthed by CNN, Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee to run North Carolina public schools, can reportedly be seen in a Washington, D.C.-area hotel the night of Jan. 6, 2021, advocating for a military coup to keep Trump in power. [Yikes!]
Previously Morrow called for the killing of Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats, including the public execution of former President Barack Obama. [Double Yikes!!]
Again, this is now the Republican nominee for superintendent of all public K-12 education in North Carolina. Notably, Morrow calls public schools “socialism centers” and “indoctrination centers.” She is endorsed by Robinson, who said at a recent event with her, “We’re gonna make sure we do everything to get you in office.”
With folks like that leading the statewide Republican ticket in North Carolina, Democrats think their presidential ticket has a real shot. The Democratic National Committee has now put up 15 new billboards across North Carolina as part of its first swing state paid advertising blitz since Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
So with the election rapidly approaching, keep an eye on North Carolina and watch this space.
At its heart, the story is about what happens when QAnon conspiracy theories infect the upper ranks of local law enforcement.
The case study Williams uncovers is in Millersville, Tennessee, just north of Nashville, where the police chief (who is also the interim city manager) and assistant police chief have taken to far right podcasts to advance some of the most outlandish QAnon ravings, including Pizzagate.
They claim the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has cut them off from accessing law enforcement search tools while TBI conducts an audit of the Millersville police department. Williams’ reporting suggests TBI does have some concerns about the department, but TBI wouldn’t comment.
[…] none of my summary fully captures the many layers of Williams’ extensive long-running investigation, like this gem of line: “Then, there’s the child sex predator sting run by Millersville with a group of MAGA activists — a sting also now being investigated by the TBI.” Oh, boy.
As Williams himself said: “I have never seen anything like this.” [video at the link]
[…] Meet Millersville’s conspiracy cop. He believes the completely bogus QAnon conspiracy theory that falsely claimed Democrats had kept child sex slaves locked up in the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C.
He imagines sinister plots involving some of the country’s most prominent political figures, including his theory — with no evidence whatsoever — that former Vice President Al Gore was involved in the disappearance and murder of 20-year-old Holly Bobo in 2011. […]
A federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C., has disqualified attorney Stefanie Lambert from continuing to represent former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne in Dominion Voting System’s massive civil lawsuit over being falsely implicated in the 2020 Big Lie.
Lambert, who is facing criminal charges in Michigan for illegally accessing voting machines after the 2020 election, repeatedly disclosed discovery information in the Dominion case to outside parties in violation of court rules and orders, the judge found.
“Lambert’s repeated misconduct raises the serious concern that she became involved in this litigation for the sheer purpose of gaining access to and publicly sharing Dominion’s protected discovery,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya wrote.
Link. Scroll down to view the text quoted above. It is part of a news roundup that includes a lot of different articles.
Donald Trump has lost his latest bid for a new judge in his New York hush money criminal case as it heads toward a key ruling and potential sentencing next month.
In a decision posted Wednesday, Judge Juan M. Merchan declined to step aside and said Trump’s demand was a rehash “rife with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated claims” about his ability to remain impartial. [Oh good! Good news with a dash of hit-them-with-the-facts.]
It is the third time that Merchan has rejected such a request from lawyers for the former president and current Republican nominee. They contend the judge has a conflict of interest because his daughter works as a political consultant for prominent Democrats, including Kamala Harris when she sought the Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination. Harris is now the party’s nominee against Trump.
The judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, met Harris occasionally in 2019 but never “developed an individual relationship” with her, consulting firm founder Mike Nellis told the chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, in a letter Tuesday. The firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc., has not worked for Harris’ campaign, President Joe Biden’s now-ended reelection bid or the Democratic National Committee in the 2024 election cycle, Nellis said.
A state court ethics panel said last year that Merchan could continue as the judge on Trump’s case. The panel wrote that a relative’s independent political activities are not “a reasonable basis to question the judge’s impartiality.”
Merchan, a state court judge in Manhattan, acknowledged last year that he made several small donations to Democratic causes during the 2020 campaign, including $15 to Biden. But Merchan has repeatedly said he is certain he can handle Trump’s case fairly and impartially. In his ruling, Merchan wrote he will continue to base decisions “on the evidence and the law, without fear or favor, casting aside undue influence.”
“With these fundamental principles in mind, this Court now reiterates for the third time, that which should already be clear — innuendo and mischaracterizations do not a conflict create,” Merchan wrote in his three-page decision. “Recusal is therefore not necessary, much less required.”
But with Harris now Trump’s opponent, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche argued in a letter to the judge last month that the defense’s concerns have become “even more concrete.”
Prosecutors called the claims “a vexatious and frivolous attempt to relitigate” the issue. […]
[…] Here’s what we know: MAGA is a world of grifters, and they celebrate each other’s grifting. Remember, for instance, that then-President Donald Trump pardoned former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was indicted for swindling Trump’s own fans out of millions of dollars that had been raised to supposedly build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
MAGA grifters include gun-rights extremist Kyle Rittenhouse, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk (who is now helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote program), consultant Roger Stone, Republican National Committeeman David Bossie, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, influencer Jordan Peterson, election-denying attorney Kurt Olsen, pillow salesman Mike Lindell, Senate candidate Kari Lake, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, former Trump body man John McEntee, self-proclaimed misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, Donald Trump Jr., former prosecutor Kimberly Guilfoyle, as well as everyone in this article about a recent right-wing effort to stoke panic and raise cash around a mythical “Disease X,” among other grifters. Add Donald Trump to that list […]
Here’s my prediction of what happens to the Republican Party if Trump loses this year: Everyone on that long list of MAGA diehards has seen Trump use the power of grift to amass cash and power, and they want in on the action. We know that already. Thing is, though, these are all horrible people, and horrible people don’t play nice with each other. Trump is a unique force, mostly able to keep that hornet’s nest from turning on itself. But take him out of the equation? It’ll be a free-for-all. Every one of those names above and more (can’t forget former Fox News host Tucker Carlson) think of themselves as movement leaders, especially when such leadership translates to dollars. And yet none of them—not even Don Jr.—have the heft to inherit Trump’s kingdom. It will splinter.
David French dreams of that collapse and of the resurgence of a conservatism “that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion, and defends our foundational constitutional principles.” Will he get that reborn Republican Party, one that readmits the disaffected conservatives at The Bulwark, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, and the growing list of Never Trumpers?
Perhaps.
But it’s just as likely that something even worse emerges. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the modern conservative movement, it’s that they always manage to find a new bottom to hit.
Sen. Mitch McConnell has done a lot for this country. Sorry. Make that “to.” He’s done a lot to
And what better present than what McConnell called his “worst nightmare” scenario.
That nightmare isn’t just a win by Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. It’s more than that. What really worries McConnell is a Democratic clean sweep. this country. Things like stealing two Supreme Court seats, creating the constant debt ceiling crisis, and surrendering his party to Donald Trump.
McConnell has promised to step down as Republican leader in the Senate in November. Considering his role in destroying the courts, warping the Senate, and elevating Trump above the law, it seems only right to send McConnell a going-away present, as he is the longest-serving Senate leader in history.
“Let’s assume our worst nightmare: the Democrats went to the White House, the House, the Senate,” McConnell said during his Aug. 7 keynote speech at the National Conference of State Legislatures Legislative Summit.
If that happened, McConnell warned Republicans, “The first thing they’ll do is get rid of the filibuster. Second, you’ll have two new states, D.C. [and] Puerto Rico. That’s four new Democratic senators in perpetuity.”
A Democratic White House, House, and Senate all working together to provide statehood to Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, (assuming that’s what Puerto Ricans want, which is complicated) helping to alleviate the lopsided representation of sparsely populated red states in the Senate and Electoral College. And Democratic Senate leadership finally abolishing the filibuster, meaning everything doesn’t have to fight for the approval of Republican leadership before it can pass.
And now, about that Supreme Court …
“If they get those two new states and pack the Supreme Court, they’ll get what they want,” McConnell said.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz made his first solo campaign appearance Tuesday since becoming the Democratic vice presidential nominee and made it very clear that he stands with workers.
His speech, in front of thousands of union members at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees convention in Los Angeles, was delivered as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump came under fire for anti-labor (and possibly illegal) rhetoric during his interview with Elon Musk on X Monday night.
Walz pointed out that Trump’s economic policies are most beneficial to billionaires like Trump and Musk.
“I don’t know, but I’m guessing billionaires aren’t waiting for their Social Security check to come in to get by,” Walz said. “But I know people who are, like my mom, who depends on her entire retirement, on Social Security benefits that she earned, by the way. We should have every expectation that we’re not cutting taxes for the wealthiest while we hurt the most vulnerable amongst us.”
Walz reminded the audience that these terrible policies are part of Project 2025, the very unpopular extremist blueprint for the next Republican-controlled government. Trump has tried to distance himself from the fascist scheme, even though 140 of his current and former advisers and staffers helped draft the plan.
“So be clear: Trump’s playing dumb. ‘Oh, I don’t know about 2025,’” Walz said. “I’m a football coach at heart, and I’ll tell you one thing I know for sure is if you’re going to take the time to draw up a playbook, you’re damn sure going to use it. So don’t think that they’re not going to use that playbook they drew up.” [video at the link]
Walz didn’t let Trump’s VP pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, off the hook for his abhorrent lack of labor credentials.
“I’ll tell you, his running mate, I don’t know if that was a value add to his campaign or not,” Walz said about Vance. “But he’s one of four senators, four, that has never cast a vote on a pro-worker bill in his life.”
And the Minnesota governor wasn’t done slamming the fake hillbilly venture capitalist.
“A stopped clock is right twice a day,” Walz said. “This guy can’t get it right once—not once for workers.” [video at the link]
[…] the two Republican-fueled referenda on the Wisconsin ballot yesterday went down!!! The immediate result is that the Republican-led legislature won’t be able to divert the power to spend federal funds from Gov. Evers to…themselves. Wow!!!!
[…] if Dems turned out enough votes to defeat these two referenda yesterday, Donald Trump is in big trouble. […]
Yeah, a few too many exclamation marks, but still good news.
An open letter signed by more than 1,000 veterans and military family members bashes former President Trump and his vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) for their “politically motivated attacks” on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s (D) military record.
“JD Vance’s recent comments attacking Governor Walz’s service record are disrespectful and deeply disappointing, especially given Vance’s own service — which we are also profoundly grateful for,” states the letter, first reported by USA Today and later obtained by The Hill. “But given Donald Trump’s long record of expressing disdain for service members, veterans, and their families, it’s unsurprising that his running mate has stooped to such lows.”
The letter comes amid intense GOP attacks, led largely by Vance, on Walz’s 24 years in the Army National Guard. Vance, himself a Marine Corps veteran, has targeted Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, over his retirement from the military ahead of his unit’s deployment to Iraq.
Walz signed up for the Guard at 17 and served until May 2005, when he decided to retire to run for Congress. He would go onto serve six terms and become the highest raking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
“When the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did. I did what they asked me to do, and I did it honorably, and I’m very proud of that service,” Vance said at a campaign stop last week. “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him.”
Vance also has accused Walz of “stolen valor.”
But the new letter, signed by 1,048 individuals — including former top National Guard Bureau official Maj. Gen. Randy Manner and former military officer and assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs Brenda Sue Fulton — lauds Walz’s military service. The group writes that “as individuals who have served and sacrificed for this nation, we are thrilled to see someone who served our country in uniform for decades on the ticket.”
They add that Walz “has demonstrated throughout his career a profound respect for those who serve, as well as their families.” […]
@SC #3, @Lynna #23:
I couldn’t find that conversation, but this turned up from 2019.
Men carrying bags—plastic bags, reusable bags, duffel bags—would transport millions of dollars in cash […] for a cashier’s check from the casino. The new, clean money […] used for all manner of investments—including big purchases in Vancouver’s real estate […] a favorite of foreign crooks and kleptocrats
Nikki Haley Wishes Trump Was Totally Different Person Who ISN’T Whining Racist Loser
Don’t worry, her endorsement isn’t going anywhere, she’s a coward.
Nikki Haley, the coward who ran against Donald Trump, actually siphoned a meaningful number of votes from him (even long after she dropped out), then crawled back to him […] as soon as she was beckoned — she even endorsed him at the RNC! — has some critiques of Trump’s run against Kamala Harris.
Could he, like, be an entirely different person? At least that’s how we’re interpreting her critiques. Surely she’s not such a moron that she thinks these are changes Trump is actually physically capable of making?
Haha, maybe she is.
She said it all on Fox News, because where else would she say it? Start a little after the four-minute mark. [video at the link]
“What Donald Trump needs to do is go out there and campaign every single day, telling the American people exactly what Kamala Harris has said.”
Nikki Haley wants Donald Trump to campaign every day, instead of staying at home and [babbling] on Truth Social.
“We are 80-plus days out. We need him to win, but you’ve got to go out and do the work,
Nikki Haley wants Trump to do the work.
and the one thing Republicans have to stop doing, quit whining about her.”
Nikki Haley wants Trump to stop whining. Also all other Republicans.
This is some hilariously delusional bullshit, tell us more.
“We knew it was gonna be her. She’s not gonna give an interview. They’re gonna hold out as long as they can. That’s their right, they can do it, that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about what she believes in and we should be getting out there and doing that.”
Now we’re back to doing the work, fuck.
She even said she wants Trump to campaign for votes from more than just his base, like votes from suburban women and other people […]
So that ain’t gonna happen.
“I want this campaign to win, but the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes.”
No talking [lying] about crowd sizes? BOOOOOOOOOO.
Here is Donald Trump today after voting in the Florida primary, whining about crowd sizes. How can he not whine about them? He is extremely insecure about them. [video at the link]
Back to Haley:
“It’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is.”</blockquote.
No racism? BOOOOOOO, insecurity and racism are the only things Republicans have!
“It’s not going to win talking about whether she’s dumb.”
No calling Kamala Harris stupid while also being racist? BOOOOOOOO BOOOOOO BOOOO BOOOOOOOOO!
“You can’t win on those things. The American people are smart. Treat them like they’re smart.”
And even there this is a no-go. The entire Republican strategy is not to treat voters like they’re intelligent. […]
The Republican strategy is to keep their voters stupid, racist, confused, and angry and to make sure they’re always sucking on the teat of perpetual victimhood. None of that can coexist with “The American people are smart. Treat them like they’re smart.”
But we understand why Nikki Haley is out there trying to pretend like she didn’t sell her entire soul and integrity when she caved like every other defeated Republican loser and went knocking on Trump’s doorstep again. It’s probably filling some kind of perverse psychological need for her.
Sadly for her, we all can see that she’s the same coward she’s always been.
WHO declares mpox a global health emergency as African outbreak grows.
This follows an earlier emergency declaration for a 2022-2023 global outbreak. The rapid spread of a new form of mpox across Africa has sounded new alarms.
The World Health Organization on Wednesday again declared mpox an international health emergency in response to a growing outbreak in Africa, renewing deep concerns about a virus that had seized global attention two years ago.
The declaration comes after suspected and confirmed cases in Africa exceeded 15,000 this year, exceeding the toll in all of 2023. Infections reached record highs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the virus has been endemic for decades and the vast majority of African cases are concentrated. A new form of the virus, known as clade 1b, has spilled into eastern parts of the African nation and has been reported in other countries for the first time, including Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.
“The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern DRC, its detection in neighboring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday. “In addition to other outbreaks of other clades of mpox in other parts of Africa, it’s clear that a coordinated international response is essential to stop these outbreaks and save lives.” […]
Mpox is a zoonotic virus that causes flu-like symptoms and a rash with painful lesions. It was formerly known as monkeypox, but officials changed the name because it is inaccurate (scientists now believe the virus originates in rodents) and stigmatizing by associating a disease disproportionately affecting Black people with a slur used against them.
The virus spreads through exposure to infected animals and skin-to-skin contact. Contact during sex emerged as the most effective way for the virus to spread quickly during the 2022 outbreak, and officials are concerned that the new version of the virus appearing in new countries is transmitting that way with the potential to seed larger outbreaks.
Clade 1b causes more severe illness than the clade 2 viruses that drove the last global outbreak, but it does not appear to be deadlier than the clade 1 form of mpox that has long been endemic in Congo. Congolese officials have recorded 13,800 suspected and confirmed cases and 450 deaths, with children younger than 15 accounting for 68 percent of cases and 85 percent of deaths, according to the Africa CDC. […]
More at the link, including maps of the disease spread.
The latest Consumer Price Index numbers add to the case for an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve as soon as next month.
Consumer price growth in July slowed to its lowest post-pandemic level, a sign that the surging inflation that has gripped the U.S. economy is finally ebbing.
On a 12-month basis, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) cooled to 2.9%, down from 3% in June — the first time the index dipped beneath 3% since March 2021. Month over month, it rose 0.2% after falling 0.1% in June.
The latest reading adds to growing signs that the swift price increases consumers have suffered since the pandemic are abating, and raises pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as soon as next month. [Graph at the link]
Annual price increases for many purchases have already slowed below the Fed’s overall 2% target, and some are outright declining as companies slash prices and dangle discounts to lure increasingly frugal shoppers.
Prices for food-at-home — essentially, groceries — posted a negligible 0.1% growth rate over June, and are up just 1.1% over the past 12 months. Meat, poultry and fish were up 1.9% since July 2023, while milk prices were 1.2% higher over that period. Categories that are getting cheaper include used cars (-10.9%), airfares (-2.8%) and gasoline (-2.2%).
On Monday, the New York Federal Reserve reported that consumers’ three-year inflation outlook hit a record low, and a measure of wholesale price increases came in lower than expected Tuesday. Indeed, most of the 22% gain in pandemic-era inflation occurred from 2020 to 2022; last year, the index increased by roughly 3.5%. […]
Trump did accuse of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation of being a “criminal enterprise.” He accused Hillary of “pay for play,” including receiving “$25 million dollars” from Saudi Arabia. Trump wanted Clinton to “give back the money.” Trump said, “What’s happened at the Clinton Foundation is a disgrace. You know it and they know it.”
Trump did suggest paying off Stormy Daniels with cash.
Bloomberg in January 2024:
[…] Greed and financial conflicts of interest will certainly haunt the White House if Trump returns for a second term. He’ll also undoubtedly feel empowered to freely line his pockets if he winds up an escapee from two impeachments, several criminal and civil cases and a previous election loss. The quickest path to Trump’s heart has always involved plopping a bag of cash on his desk, and battle-hardened realists overseas who are seeking geopolitical, military or economic advantages over the US are well aware of that.
On Aug. 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, forever changing the lives of Americans by ensuring economic security for seniors and a federal unemployment insurance program for the jobless. […]
as documented by Social Security Works, an organization that fights to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid:
– Over 66 million Americans depend on Social Security—around 1 out of every 5 Americans.
– Around half of all seniors rely on Social Security for most of their income.
– One-quarter of seniors rely on it for virtually all (90% or more) of their income.
– Social Security’s benefits are modest, but vital, averaging around $20,000 per year.
– Social Security lifts 22.5 million Americans, including over 1 million children, out of poverty and reduces the depth of poverty for millions more. Without it, the poverty rate of our seniors would be 38%; instead it is just under 9%.
– It is an extremely efficient program, with administrative costs of less than a penny on the dollar. Social Security’s protections are estimated to have a present value of more than $675,000 in life insurance and $700,000 in disability insurance for a married 30 year old worker who has average earnings and two young children.
Social Security has become a lifeline for millions. Nearly 70% of voters rank it as a very important or top issue in figuring out whom they’ll vote for this year, according to a recent poll from Hart Research/Public Opinion Strategies on behalf of CNBC.
And for those Americans, it should be an obvious choice this fall. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has a record of policy positions that wouldn’t just preserve Social Security but also make it work even better, including a cost-of-living-adjustment expansion and a $200-per-month benefit increase. [A lot of people I know would find that monthly increase an essential boost to their quality of life.] That should be good news to the 62% of likely voters who want to see the government increase Social Security benefits, according to a February poll from Data for Progress.
Congressional Democrats, as well, have regularly pushed for legislation to increase benefits and shore up the program’s trust fund to keep it strong. And a President Harris wouldn’t be able to achieve these goals if Democrats don’t take majorities in both the Senate and the House.
But what do Republicans want? When Donald Trump was in office, he regularly tried to undermine the program, proposing slashed spending. And House Republicans have countered Democrats’ efforts to expand it with cuts, including raising the retirement age to 70.
Trump recently claimed that he would not touch Social Security, and that he would not raise the retirement age, but that claim is in conflict with Trump’s past actions, with statements by other Republicans, and with Project 2025. Do not believe what Trump recently said.
birgerjohanssonsays
I am told the miracle of AI will bring back one of the actors of the first Alien films to the new sequel.
My guess is either Ian Holm or Lance Henriksen. BTW Henriksen is still alive and well, his character is what made ‘Millennium’ a decent series.
The Volyn biota (Ukraine) – indications of 1.5 Gyr old eukaryotes in 3D preservation, a spotlight on the “boring billion” https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/20/1901/2023/
Interesting membrane arrangements.
birgerjohanssonsays
Brony @ 43
Yet another example of how quickly the textbooks become out of date.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Why the Nazis spent so much time making a worse STG-44: The MP43/1” (going down the route of the early Garand “gas trap” prototype)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6i_FqUjs1eY&si=8ke39zHDJNbFAkMD
The Nazis fortunately spent much engineering time on stillborn projects. Had they concentrated the resources on more practical devices the war would have lasted longer.
The hierarchy belatedly realised that Germany was outnumbered, and desperately tried to make up for it with technology that turned out to be falling short.
I am not sure if I got the surname right, but fuck him!
whheydtsays
Re: biregerjohannson @ #46….
Very interesting article. The work was done about 80 miles from where I live. I’d love to know how much computational hardware it actually takes to run, once the ‘training’ is done.
Yes, I noticed this had moved into some reliable poll-watcher’s category of “marginal Republican” on Sunday, as Trump’s campaign continues to flag. Meanwhile I keep hearing whispers that contrary to the idea Veep-nominee JD Vance being the junior senator from Ohio is helping to shore up Trump’s vote there, that he’s actually acting as a negative, which is pushing the state closer to the marginal category. Ohio?!
As Belle of the Fifth Column would say, “anyway, it’s just a thought”.
In an interview from 2020, JD Vance agrees with a podcast host who says having grandmothers help raise children is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.”
He also agrees when the host says grandparents helping raise children is a “weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.”
Vance went on to explain that his mother-in-law, who worked as a biology professor, took a sabbatical for a year to move in and help take care of his newborn child. He says it’s just “what you do.”
If he’s gonna indulge in the naturalistic fallacy, then there’s similar ‘purpose’ to accepting trans people—or childless cat ladies.—as potential babysitters.
Wikipedia – Faʻafafine (Samoan third gender who help raise their siblings’ kids)
^ There’s an evopsych “helper in the nest” hypothesis of gay alloparenting based on this demographic. Though the Samoans aren’t gay, and they’re more attentive than contemporary western gay people, the authors presumed the Samoans were representative of a common ancestral state.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
* “Accepting potential babysitters” was too generous. Incorporating them into his uncompensated forced labor fantasy.
StevoRsays
So the iconic Major Mitchell / Pink Cockatoo is now onthe endangered species list .. (EXpletives.) :
(CN) — The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday found Montana’s law requiring parental consent for a minor’s abortion violates the right to privacy when making medical decisions.
The justices ruled the Parental Consent for Abortion Act of 2013 violates “the fundamental right of a minor to control her body and destiny” under the state constitution. They found the state failed to show how the act was tailored to promote parental rights, protect children from sexual victimization and ensure they make informed decisions.
“A minor’s right to control her reproductive decisions is among the most fundamental of the rights she possesses,” Justice Laurie McKinnon wrote for the unanimous court.
[…]
“The Consent Act infringes upon a minor’s fundamental right to privacy because it conditions a minor’s obtaining an abortion on parental consent or obtaining a judicial waiver, something a minor choosing to carry her pregnancy to term would not have to do,” McKinnon wrote.
McKinnon also noted the overwhelming evidence of the safety of abortions, including that complication rates from abortion are similar to or lower than other outpatient procedures. The American Medical Association and other medical organizations oppose parental consent laws, arguing that forced parental involvement is more likely to deter children from seeking care.
“Moreover, the evidence establishes that receiving an abortion does not increase the likelihood of developing mental or physical side effects such as post-traumatic stress, compared to those who continue a pregnancy,” McKinnon wrote.
[…]
The high court found the state failed to logically connect the Consent Act to preventing minors from being victimized even when teen pregnancy is the result of assault. In Montana, minors under the age of 18 but older than 16 may consent to sexual intercourse, and therefore many seeking abortions are older than the age of consent. Montana’s law requiring medical providers to promptly report any known or suspected sexual abuse is a better protection of minors, the justices said.
The justices also found it illogical for the state to argue that minors who carry pregnancies are making more mature decisions than those who choose abortion care. Minors who must carry a child to term will become fully responsible for an infant, and may face far more traumatic physical, financial and emotional consequences, McKinnon wrote for the court.
[…]
She closed by noting the panel declined to answer questions about the moral, medical and societal implications of reproductive health care. “At the end of the day, those questions are left to the woman who must decide for herself,” McKinnon wrote.
[…]
Montanans may have the opportunity to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution through Constitutional Initiative 128, which the state Supreme Court approved for signature gathering after rejecting the state attorney general’s determination the initiative was legally insufficient. The justices also rejected the AG’s ballot statement as legally flawed and ordered him to use theirs.
Reginald Selkirk @ 59: That’s a big story, and I hope it gets good traction*. But I was pretty disappointed that the lead in this CNN story was not about what the reporters found, but the ‘Elaborate Ruse’ (their heading for that part) played by the reporters. They even made a comparison between their tactics of deceptive, undercover reporters getting hidden footage to Project Veritas, as though the hidden cameras is the thing that makes Project Veritas bad, and not their manipulation of the footage they get.
*Lest I do the same thing here: the important story here is the Project 2025 people openly discuss their own deception, as well as their detailed work on instant transition to fascism in government if Trump wins again.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 54
This should be the money quote:
“That is the thing that the hyper-liberalized economics wants you to do,” Vance said. “The economic logic of always prioritizing paid wage labor over other ways of contributing to society…
when she died, her family found 19 loaded handguns stashed around the house. […] it was Vance’s grandmother who raised him as his mother struggled with addiction […] Vance has said that no one in his life had more of an influence on him than his grandmother.
[…]
his grandmother once grew so infuriated by her husband’s alcoholism, that she poured gasoline on him after he had passed out on the couch in a drunken stupor, and then dropped a lit match on him. He would survive the attack.
[…]
“She once told me, when she found out that I was spending too much time with a local kid who was known for dealing drugs, that if I ever hung out with that kid again, she would run him over with her car,” Vance told the RNC.
he did not explicitly state that women should stay in abusive marriages. He did, however, detail his grandparents’ violent relationship and commended them for staying together in spite of it. Vance also said ending marriages and encouraging divorce, even when domestic violence was involved, is not necessarily good for the children in those families.
[…]
lit a match, leaving their children to put out the fire.
The New York Times: Harris Is Set to Lay Out an Economic Message Light on Detail
The Hill: Harris is trying to run a no-substance campaign. Does she believe in anything?
The Washington Post: Opinion | Does Harris need a serious policy agenda? Only if she wants to win.
Poynter: Opinion | When will Kamala Harris meet the press?
Commentary from Josh Marshall:
[…] There is something uncanny and vaguely absurd hearing this mix of complaints, demands and warnings of electoral disaster leveled at a campaign which is finishing up what has to be at least among, and quite possibly the, best single month of any presidential campaign in at least half a century.
[…] The whole thing will take care of itself. Harris will do some interviews — not because reporters are demanding it but because it will make sense for her campaign. And they’ll flesh out some policies — again, ones that make sense for her campaign.
The deeper story is that most campaign reporters simply don’t know what to make of Harris’ campaign and can’t figure out how it has managed, at least for the moment, to be so successful. That’s not a criticism: I think many of Harris’ supporters are equally mystified. But they’re just happy with the results. They don’t need an explanation. But for reporters the inexplicableness requires a storyline. And this is that storyline: the substanceless campaign, the lack of interviews, yada yada yada. As Kate noted in today’s pod: Biden started doing a bunch of interviews when his campaign started to tank. Trump’s been doing a spree of them because he’s floundering and he’s trying to regain attention. Candidate do these when they need to, not when reporters demand it.
The final part of the story is rooted in official Washington’s view of Harris. To put it baldly, most elite DC journalists treated Harris with a kind of breezy disdain that could scarcely rise to the level of contempt. For the first year of her vice presidency there was an ongoing series of critical reports about issues in the Office of the Vice President, staff drama, mean bossism, general turmoil. I don’t know how much reality there was to those reports. But they set a dismal tone. You’ll remember that when Ezra Klein and others got together the calls for a Thunderdome convention, Klein referred delicately and painedly to “the Kamala Harris problem,” a problem so obvious that it scarcely required explanation: how to usher her out of the way for others from the vaunted Democratic bench. […]
Thanks to a provision of the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare is now allowed to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower drug costs. On Thursday, the administration announced the results of the first round of those negotiations, and they’re little short of spectacular.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris haven’t received nearly the credit they deserve for their relentless focus on cutting drug prices. But this major announcement is likely to remind people about this critical work—just in time to further boost Harris’ surging campaign.
In these first-ever negotiations, the Department of Health and Human Services focused on 10 drugs commonly prescribed to Medicare patients. These products treat heart disease, cancer, diabetes, blood clots, and kidney disease. Several are prescribed to over a million Americans, and they have names familiar to anyone who has sat through their commercials: Eliquis, Jardiance, Xarelto, and more.
HHS didn’t come back with minor discounts on these expensive products, either. Discounts range from 38% to 79%. Medicare is expected to save $6 billion in providing these drugs, and seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses could be cut by up to $1.5 billion.
[Spreadsheet page at the link shows ten drugs, what they treat, the list price, the negotiated price for 2026, and the % of savings.]
This is just the first round of negotiations too, with another set expected to soon be underway. The savings from these negotiations represent tremendous short-term savings to consumers and much greater long-term savings for taxpayers.
The new prices are set to go into effect in 2026, but that is likely to depend on Harris winning the election in November.
Republicans have repeatedly attacked the idea of negotiating for lower prices—though, as Rolling Stone notes, this strategy has been widely successful for other nations. Instead, as Daily Kos’ Joan McCarter wrote in 2023, Republicans have sided with big pharma, presenting the government as a bully trying to force companies to lower costs and insisting that Medicare should pay whatever drug companies demand.
[…] In fact, just last week, a group of 18 House Republicans, including many occupying districts that Biden won in 2020, penned a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson attacking the IRA as “a deeply flawed bill,” without acknowledging the money everyday Americans will save on prescriptions.
[…] Biden and Harris haven’t received the credit for these successful efforts to lower drug prices. Every single Republican voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, all while Biden pushed hard, Democrats came to their support, and Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the bill. And yet, only 48% of voters ages 65 and older aware of the price-negotiation plan […]
[In his most recent rally, Trump highlighted the fact that Harris cast the tie-breaking vote … and he claimed that was the start of Kamalaeconomics that would be a disaster. Trump is both ill-informed and stupid. Not to mention boring.]
[…] the widespread failure to report on these issues may help turn this big Medicare win into a big campaign boost for Harris. According to Harvard professor emeritus Robert Blendon, this is the perfect time for Harris to introduce herself to retirees. “It’s important that she gets credit for the future that’s distinct from Biden getting credit for the past,” Blendon told Stat.
That might not seem fair. Biden has worked hard on this issue. But it’s a good bet that, so long as it helps to defeat Trump, Joe doesn’t mind sharing the credit. […]
Statement from VP Harris on Lower Prescription Drug Prices is available at the link.
Donald Trump continues to weirdly obsess over the size of the crowds at Vice President Kamala Harris’ rallies and brag about his own, even as his fellow Republicans beg him to let it go and talk about literally anything else.
It all kicked off with a bizarre (and entirely false) claim that an image of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, arriving on the tarmac for a rally in Michigan included an artificially generated crowd.
“There’s all kinds of video evidence and people who were there, who have proven that false. Can you tell us why you made that claim?” a reporter asked Trump on Wednesday as he left an early voting site in Palm Beach, Florida. [Wow. That’s good pushback from a reporter.]
“Well, I can’t say what was there, who was there. I can only tell you about ours,” Trump said, sidestepping the question. “We have the biggest crowds ever in the history of politics. We have crowds that nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump insisted, “and we continue to have that. We have a level of enthusiasm that nobody’s seen before.” […]
Probably not drafting executive orders just for the hell of it.
While we’re all out here frolicking in the sunlight like happy woodland creatures because Kamala Harris is going gangbusters in her presidential campaign, CNN brings us a scary but necessary glimpse into the inky darkness of Trumpworld. Specifically, thanks to undercover videos by British muckraking journos with the Centre for Climate Reporting, we have a clearer idea of what Russell Vought, one of the chief architects of Project 2025 (and a top Trump administration guy), has been up to since Trump insisted he’d never met Project 2025 and accidentally mistook it for one of his ex-wives.
Big surprise: Vought and other shadowy men from shadowy Planet Trump are still tunneling away to undermine American Democracy through Project 2025, even though the mole-people claimed they were folding up their tents after the publication of the 900+ page wish list for far-Right Christian Nationalists. As CNN explains, the journos posed as wealthy donors who wanted to give Vought and his think tank, the “Center for Renewing America,” a hefty donation to make America a theocracy. They invited Vought to meet in their office, which was full of cameras and mics, and they even bowed their heads and prayed with him, which probably means they are going to hell for Stolen Piety.
For nearly two hours, he talked candidly about his behind-the-scenes work to prepare policy for former President Donald Trump, his expansive views on presidential power, his plans to restrict pornography and immigration, and his complaints that the GOP was too focused on “religious liberty” instead of “Christian nation-ism.”
Yes, as the CNN piece makes clear, “Christian nation-ism” is what Vought means.
“I want to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation. […] And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism. That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”
That does sound like something these weirdos might say, like how storefront preachers punctuate their prayers with “FatherGod” every 15 seconds.
So here’s the “spoiler,” not that anyone is surprised at all: Vought says that of course Trump distanced himself publicly from Project 2025, because that’s simply the “graduate-level politics” necessary for making an inconvenient story go away. Meanwhile, he’s been a busy little fascist beaver:
Vought said his group, the Center for Renewing America, was secretly drafting hundreds of executive orders, regulations, and memos that would lay the groundwork for rapid action on Trump’s plans if he wins, describing his work as creating “shadow” agencies. He claimed that Trump has “blessed” his organization and “he’s very supportive of what we do.”
“Eighty percent of my time is working on the plans of what’s necessary to take control of these bureaucracies,” Vought said. “And we are working doggedly on that, whether it’s destroying their agencies’ notion of independence, that they’re independent from the president.”
Here’s a teaser video the climate people posted to YouTube Thursday. The narration is a little … narrator-y, we guess, but it’s still freaky as hell. [video at the link]
CNN reports that Vought is perfectly open about why he thinks Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is important to white Christian Nationalists’ greater plans for America, too, although this bit isn’t in the above video:
Once deportations begin, “you’re really going to be winning a debate along the way about what that looks like,” Vought said. “And so that’s going to cause us to get us off of multiculturalism, just to be able to sustain and defend the deportation, right?”
What a cheerful endorsement of white supremacy! No more multiculturalism, because obviously we’re deporting Those People now, just starting with the ones without papers.
Oh, and this bit that’s in the video is fun, too: Vought aide and Project 2025 contributor Micah Meadowcroft explained to the “donors” that Vought is supervising a secretive second phase of Project 2025, complete with “policy packets and executive orders and agenda items” to be used in remaking Cabinet-level agencies.
But to maintain the illusion that Trump isn’t handing the transition off to Project 2025, Meadowcroft tells the reporter that those materials are being prepared outside any formal transition process, “because obviously you want as little of it to be FOIA-able … as possible.”
“Yeah, the goal is to familiarize all the transition team people with these plans. But you don’t actually, like, send them to their work emails, because then, you know …
“You could just give the handbooks to everyone and be like ‘this is the game plan for the admin,’ but if the press knows that’s what you’re doing, then they’re going to immediately just say ‘I request all of your emails from Heritage.’”
Gosh, can’t have any of that Freedom Of Information stuff; it would spoil the surprise!
In another part of his chat with the donors, Vought explained that all the policies Trump will need once he takes office are being prepped now so they can be rolled out effortlessly by a guy who never plans anything:
“President Trump will want to spend literally zero amount of time thinking or contemplating what a transition will look like,” Vought said. “It’s not how he thinks.” [True enough]
Remember how in 2016 he threw out Chris Christie’s thorough transition plans, literally in a dumpster, and then made things up as he went along for four years? That’s far too chancy for the Project 2025 crew, so they’ll give Trump all he needs, in a tidy box, to remake America.
Needless to say, the Trump campaign denied everything to CNN, because Trump is a thin-skinned petulant turd who may be lazy enough to let someone else plan his policies, but damned if anyone but Trump himself can take credit for them.
Tethyssays
@64
You’ll remember that when Ezra Klein and others got together the calls for a Thunderdome convention, Klein referred delicately and painedly to “the Kamala Harris problem,” a problem so obvious that it scarcely required explanation..
I expect that problem would be the fact that Kamala Harris is a black woman. Of course Ezra won’t say that out loud, but the dogwhistle is pretty damn obvious.
I’m not surprised that the white male DC pundits are still baffled about the immediate groundswell of support for Kamala Harris as POTUS. Adding Walz for VP has only increased the enthusiastic response of average Americans who don’t make a living by churning out biased opinion pieces for the NYT.
Republicans for Harris is the latest group to plan a zoom call, and it has 70,000 members. There is also a group called Evangelicals for Harris, which is another sign of how much the vast majority of Americans people are tired of the hateful rhetoric and division of the maga-infested GOP. We suddenly see a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s All Aboard-Full Steam Ahead.
In a post to Truth Social (reposted to Xitter), Donald Trump embedded a pair of videos that sum up his opinion of Democrats and Republicans.
One video, representing Democrats, shows a large group of folksy people gathered around porch steps, earnestly singing a pro-Harris song.
The other video, representing Republicans, shows Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) wearing a one-piece MAGA bathing suit, twirling around to show her ass to the camera to the opening riff of Heart’s “Barracuda.”
Ukraine’s stunning incursion into Russia’s Kursk border region was a bold gamble for the country’s military commanders, who committed their limited resources to a risky assault on a nuclear-armed enemy with no assurance of success.
Ukraine continues to take territory and move troops into Kursk. Some Ukrainian troops are reported to have reached into other regions of Russia. The border lines are very unclear because Ukraine is sending scouting and raiding forces well beyond the areas they control. Russia has finally pulled some forces from their front in Ukraine to deal with this. They obviously don’t want to because they want to continue to take land in Ukraine but their doesn’t seem to be any other reliable infantry they can use. Much of the Russian army inside Russia is made up of short term conscripts with little training or gear and they have been surrendering to Ukrainian forces. Guardian: Ukrainian team blew up Nord Stream pipeline, claims report
However, German police and prosecutors are reportedly pressing on with an investigation that is now homing in on senior Ukrainian military officials and could prove embarrassing for Berlin, given that it involves an ally launching an act of sabotage against key infrastructure.
Germany is now convinced enough to issue an arrest warrant. This has been a mystery because at the time Ukraine, Germany/EU, US and Russia all had reasons to disable it. The target of the arrest is in Ukraine and I expect he will just remain hidden until the war is resolved. Business Insider: Nearly all Chinese banks are refusing to process payments from Russia
Now, 98% of Chinese banks — even small regional ones — are refusing to accept direct Chinese payment transfers from Russia, Alexey Razumovsky, the commercial director of the payments company Impaya Rus, told the pro-Kremlin media outlet Izvestia.
Even Chinese banks don’t want to risk global sanctions. Russia is doing various things to work around it, such as barter and going through North Korea but the scale of such trade is small and the trading awkward to setup. China’s economy is in deep trouble itself and China can’t risk trade and banking issues so the US and EU have more leverage then they might normally. If their economy was doing better China might be willing to trade with Russia just to mess with the US but they can’t do it now.
(I do not know if the very slow rotation is an effect of solar tidal effects on the massive atmosphere that formed after the runaway greenhouse effect)
“New research has revealed that Venus, often considered Earth’s inhospitable twin, may share a surprising geological history with our own planet.
Scientists have discovered that Venus’ vast plateaus, known as tesserae, may have formed through processes similar to those that created the Earth’s earliest continents billions of years ago.
The international study, led by Associate Professor Fabio Capitanio from the Monash University School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, in collaboration with NASA, is published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.”
Anton: It Almost Became Earth
A reputable university: “may share a surprising geological history with our own planet” and “may have formed through processes similar”.
I can’t recall when he last had a non-clickbaity non-hyperbolic bullshit title to a video.
(Obs, it works for him)
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 73
Your criticism of the title is valid, but I generally think the content is interesting.
As for titles, I tone down the ALL CAPS part of titles I quote because I also dislike hyperbole.
Should I write brand new titles for everything? Maybe. But it is two in the morning and I wanted to see if sleep would finally arrive.
In regard to exoplanets, these tiny differences between Earth’s and Venus’ early development can have a huge effect on the proportion of worlds that may be regarded as Earth-like, I was personally more interested in that aspect of the findings.
birgerjohanssonsays
Regardless of how apt the title is, the content seens geologically significant
JD Vance agrees with a podcast host who says having grandmothers help raise children is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.”
Vance is, as usual, fractally wrong here.
First, there didn’t need to be an evolutionary reason for women to survive for a while post-menopause. As long as it wasn’t selected against it would likely happen through sheer inertia. And it’s unlikely to be selected against if these grandmothers pull their own weight and don’t divert too much of the sexual energy of younger males away from fertile-age females.
Second, it is likely that elderly humans (regardless of sex/gender) were in fact selected for, but primarily to function as “memory cells” providing continuity of the group’s know-how and stories back in the days before books and writing and all that; secondarily as added pairs of hands to provide useful labor, such as weaving hemp or chipping arrowheads out of stone. (And as long as dexterity isn’t too impaired yet, experience is very useful in doing such tasks with speed and skill.)
And last, but certainly not least, we do not and should not regard evolution’s “purpose” for us as the final word on what our purpose actually is. We can, and should, make our own choices in that regard. I don’t ask anyone to justify their existence — not in evolutionary terms, nor economic, nor “usefulness to society”. I give a huge amount of side-eye to anyone who does seem to expect (some) people to justify their existence. Because that’s usually thinly-if-at-all-disguised eugenics. Of course we could hardly expect better from a known neo-Nazi like Vance.
@63:
[Vance’s] grandmother once grew so infuriated by her husband’s alcoholism, that she poured gasoline on him after he had passed out on the couch in a drunken stupor, and then dropped a lit match on him. He would survive the attack.
What a piece of work! He needed help, not a murder attempt. Not to mention the likelihood of burning the whole fucking house down doing something stupid like that. We’re at “treat a hangnail with amputation at the shoulder” levels of overreaction and stupidity here. And this is before considering the added instances of homicidal ideation … Vance is creepy-weird in part due to being raised by a bona fide psycho. Wotta role model!
StevoR@56:
Those “n free articles” paywalls are trivially circumvented by using incognito windows any time you visit them. The down side is when you’re later scratching your head asking “I read something else about this recently, now where was it?” your browser history will be of no help. Stupid greedy fuckers making everything worse for everyone who’s not a billionaire like them …
gijoel@69:
The other video, representing Republicans, shows Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) wearing a one-piece MAGA bathing suit, twirling around to show her ass to the camera to the opening riff of Heart’s “Barracuda.”
Now to make popcorn and watch Heart file a lawsuit. Heck, maybe she and Celine Dion can make it a class action?
John Moralessays
Birger:
Your criticism of the title is valid, but I generally think the content is interesting.
Generally, maybe.
But, why not go to the source, or at least something scientific?
Why go by some YouTuber who specialises in hyperbolic/misleading clickbait stuff?
(Not that hard to keep up with science news; many feeds, many sources)
Should I write brand new titles for everything? Maybe. But it is two in the morning and I wanted to see if sleep would finally arrive.
I presume he provides citations for his videos. At least copy paste that; no harder than copying the title (it’s just a text string) and people who have an interest in that stuff can see the source material, instead of this dude’s YouTubing.
In fact, you could leave out the title and just post the actual news that interests you; clearly, what interests you is Anton’s presentation. Me, I gave up long ago.
But it is two in the morning and I wanted to see if sleep would finally arrive.
You won’t optimise your chances of getting to sleep if you’re browsing on your phone and posting naked links with clickbaity titles.
Again: better than the link, the source.
Then we can avoid the bullshit video and just see what the news is.
StevoRsays
n an exciting breakthrough for astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial life, a team of international scientists has announced the discovery of Gliese 12 b, a temperate, Earth-sized exoplanet just 40 light-years away — a relatively neighbourly 378 trillion kilometres from Earth. ….(snip).. What makes Gliese 12 b particularly intriguing is its size and location. It is roughly the same size as Earth, suggesting it may have similar makeup and surface environment. However, more observations and modelling are needed to confirm this.Gliese 12 b’s location near the inner edge of its star’s habitable zone makes it especially interesting.
new Title IX rules protecting students on the basis of gender identity go into effect today […] it does not include equal-access protections for trans student athletes
[…]
At least 26 states have now received preliminary injunctions blocking the Department of Education from enforcing the new rules within their borders. […] The scattershot nature of those rulings has stirred up chaos among educators […] unsure about how to maintain compliance
[…]
The injunction issued in Kansas […] not only blocks the new rules in that state, but in “any school attended by a member of Young America’s Foundation or Female Athletes United, as well as any school attended by a minor child of a member of Moms for Liberty,” even across state lines.
I bet if Trump were to lay his body over Harris’, he would crush more than Harris would crush Trump.
(Cooked reports, eh?)
John Moralessays
“Exclusively for CPR subscribers, the Editors Roundtable features Cook Political Report analysts discussing the most critical developments and trends driving political coverage.
Amy Walter, David Wasserman and Jessica Taylor discuss the most interesting findings from our August 2024 Swing State poll, a collaboration with BSG and GS Strategy Group.”
Paywalled.
So, let’s see what some motivated YouTuber claims about this report.
“Crush”
—
Crush, well… one imagines something more than “slightly advantaged within the margin for error”, no?
(Hyperbole, clickbait, no info. The usual fare)
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales
I did put the headline within quotation marks. And removed the ALL CAPS bs.
(I simply assume everyone with experience of Youtube have developed a degree of immunity to hyperbole, otherwise they would believe every MAGA claim)
(wait… there ARE people who believe every MAGA claim!)
.
Here is something more recent. And depressing.
.
Laurence O’Donnell remarks on the endless lies Trump spewed at his press conference without being fact-checked in real time by the networks
😵💫
.https://youtube.com/shorts/JPOwMi_h738
birgerjohanssonsays
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“Chicago Gets Ready To Party | Monday Is Joe’s Night At The DNC | Waymo’s Car Trouble ”
I do not know if the very slow rotation is an effect of solar tidal effects on the massive atmosphere that formed after the runaway greenhouse effect – birgerjohansson@72
Venus rotates in a retrograde direction (i.e. the opposite direction to that in which it orbits the sun). According to Wikipedia, that may have been caused by a whack from an asteroid, but its slow pace could be to do with tidal effects in the thick atmosphere. Details at the link.
KGsays
John Morales@82,
You’ve changed since then – the ratio of interesting comments to self-obsessed burbling has declined considerably. BTW, for the benefit of Bekenstein Bound, my nym at that point was Knockgoats: KG is an abbreviation (and Knockgoats is itself an Aberdonian pronunciation of my real name).
birgerjohanssonsays
I just realised, if all the convention visitors took turns digging a surprisingly shallow ditch south from Lake Michigan they could make the lake drain into the Missisippi basin instead of east to Canada.
(there is even a local canal that is out of use)
John Moralessays
KG:
You’ve changed since then – the ratio of interesting comments to self-obsessed burbling has declined considerably.
That’s one hypothesis.
Another might be that the milieu has changed, but I haven’t.
Or that both have changed.
Or that you (and your perception of me) has changed.
(Actually, I reckon I’ve changed.
This is the nicer, gentler, more circumspect me)
But hey, at least you picked up I was addressing you, though ostensibly I was addressing the BB.
(The BB, well. Not so far)
John Moralessays
Birger:
(I simply assume everyone with experience of Youtube have developed a degree of immunity to hyperbole, otherwise they would believe every MAGA claim)
You are correct in your assumption in my case; but that I am inured to it doesn’t mean I don’t recognise it for what it is, or that it does not irritate me, or that I shan’t mention the more egregious examples.
Thing is, providing a (feeble) rationale for you doing it is basically an admission that you are doing it.
birgerjohanssonsays
Crater formed from Earth’s extinction event produced by carbon-rich ‘C-type’ asteroid, scientists suggest | Asteroids | The Guardian
A question to naval nerds.
The battleships of WWI and WWII do not look much different, but the smaller ships – destroyers and cruisers – of WWI have a multitude of masts sprouting ropes and wires like odd spiderwebs, pointing back to the 19th century.
Whatever technological limitations they represent, they must have been overcome by the 1930s as the smaller vessels of that era are modern-looking.
What was this technological change?
F.B.I. Resumes Flagging Foreign Disinformation to Social Media Giants.
The Justice Department set new guidelines for agents to share tips with Facebook, X and other platforms after a legal challenge prompted a suspension of that communication.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies quietly resumed coordinating with the major social media companies earlier this year to fight what government officials warned was a coming onslaught of foreign disinformation and influence operations leading up to the presidential election in November. In at least two instances in recent weeks, the companies have taken action to remove malign content, according to the Biden administration and company officials.
Contacts between F.B.I. investigators and the companies — including Facebook, X and YouTube — ground to a halt last year as a legal challenge that accused the Biden administration of censorship wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In June, the court rejected the challenge, one of the first to wrestle with how far the government could go to combat misinformation and disinformation online. It left unanswered what limits, if any, the First Amendment could impose on the government’s ability to communicate with the technology companies.
The communication between government agencies and the platforms has resumed as Russia and Iran have stepped up efforts to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. Intelligence gathered and shared by the government has previously flagged covert influence campaigns before they could take off on social media.
The F.B.I.’s communications with the platforms resumed behind the scenes in February, according to the officials and a report by the Department of Justice in July, and they have already thwarted two campaigns spreading information from Russia’s propaganda apparatus.
Last month, X voluntarily closed 968 accounts that the Department of Justice linked to Russia’s Federal Security Service and RT, the state television network. On Thursday, Meta disclosed that a tip from the F.B.I. had led to the removal of a broad web of inauthentic pages and accounts on Facebook and Instagram disparaging Ukraine, Poland and the European Union. […]
The new procedures emphasize that the bureau’s agents cannot exert any pressure on the platforms, leaving it to the companies to decide what to do with information about malign foreign influence operations online. The goal was to deflect the core accusation of the legal challenge: that the government had effectively coerced the platforms to act with threats of retaliation. […]
The U.S. Secret Service is making arrangements for former President Donald Trump to resume outdoor campaign rallies by surrounding his podium with bulletproof glass, multiple sources told ABC News.
[…[ The Secret Service declined to comment on its use of ballistic glass.
[…] Typically, the ballistic glass is flown aboard a military cargo plane. In Trump’s case the Secret Service is ordering multiple sets to be stored around the country so it can be trucked wherever it’s needed, sources said.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has the vibes and the momentum—and now she has an economic plan to lift America to the next level.
According to a morning statement from her campaign, the plan includes a middle-class tax cut, a policy to further lower the price of prescription drugs, and another to relieve the medical debt burdening so many families. But the most exciting parts may be how the plan would tackle affordable housing, the financial distress faced by many new parents, and one of the engines of inflation—corporate greed.
Harris is expected to talk about her plan at a Friday afternoon campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina. But in advance of that speech, let’s dive into the campaign’s statement, which highlights her policies. Here are just a few that will make an amazing difference.
Helping first-time homebuyers
A major reason that home prices have risen so quickly is simple supply and demand: More people need homes than there are homes available. Harris’ plan calls for working with the construction industry and local government to remove barriers and provide incentives for building 3 million new homes for rent or purchase. This shouldn’t just cool the overheated market for homes, it should also drive down the cost of renting.
[…] Harris’ plan would provide an all-new incentive for building smaller homes that would be more affordable for first-time buyers.
On top of encouraging the construction of starter homes, the plan would also provide an average of $25,000 for first-time buyers as down-payment assistance, “while ensuring full participation by first-generation home buyers,” the statement says, aiming to address historic inequities in the real estate market.
Aiding renters
Tax incentives to build affordable rental housing already exist, but they’re not doing enough to keep the rental market competitive and to provide a place to live for working-class Americans. Harris would expand on these credits, easing the pressure on the rental market.
[…] A portion of the plan is also devoted to knocking out perverse incentives in the current system that exacerbate housing problems. Investment firms are snapping up both individual homes and rental units, creating local monopolies that distort the housing market. In other areas, rent-setting companies act like middlemen in a price-fixing scheme, dramatically raising the price of rental units and blocking competition. Harris’ plan would eliminate these real estate cartels.
Taking aim at greedflation
Lowering grocery costs is a central aim of the plan, and Harris goes directly at an area that President Joe Biden has discussed many times: pricing practices by businesses that have given them record profits while shoppers were stuck with soaring prices.
Around 2022, many companies took advantage of rising inflation to jack up prices far more than was required to cover increased costs […]
Harris has made going after those bad actors a top priority in her first 100 days. That includes:
– Proposing a federal ban on price-gouging on food and groceries.
– Implementing rules to stop corporations from exploiting consumers by running up excessive profits on food and groceries.
– Providing new authority to the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to investigate and strictly penalize companies that break those rules.
– Breaking up monopolies that drive up prices, while also promoting smaller businesses—such as grocery stores, meat processors, and farmers, among others—to improve competition.
Real help for parents—and for those who aren’t parents
Republicans may talk big about the importance of having children, but their party is notoriously against programs that help feed, clothe, educate, and protect children after they are born. Harris’ economic plan would expand the child tax credit, providing up to $3,600 per child for most families and up to $6,000 for children in the first year of life—when they and their families most need help.
A similar expansion of this tax credit was included in the Biden-Harris administration’s 2021 economic stimulus, the American Rescue Plan, and the credits helped cut the child poverty rate nearly in half, pushing it to a historic low. After Senate Republicans led the drive not to renew that expansion, the expanded credit lapsed and the child poverty rate more than doubled.
[…] Harris’ plan doesn’t cut out people who don’t have children. It includes an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit to cover individuals and couples in lower-income jobs without a dependent child in their household, as well as additional assistance in getting health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
This is a fraction of what’s covered in Harris’ economic plan. None of these things are pipe dreams. None of them are vague, pie-in-the-sky pronouncements. And absolutely none of them would give more wealth to the wealthy under the cover of somehow helping everyone else.
Harris has the vibes. She has the momentum. She has a plan. And it’s a good one.
A followup of sorts to comment 105. While Harris’ economic plans are looking good, Trump keeps trying to give a speech about his economic plans … he fails and flails.
Donald Trump held a press conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club on Thursday ,where he rambled on for more than an hour in front of two tables piled with groceries. The groceries were meant to illustrate the points about inflation and increased food costs Trump’s team promised he would make.
Thursday’s press conference was also an attempt to right the ship after Wednesday’s rally, originally billed as Trump’s first big speech about the economy. That plan went sideways.
And Wednesday’s rally speech was supposed to right the ship after Trump’s Mar-a-Lago press conference last week, which also went sideways, due to Trump’s obsessions with Vice President Kamala Harris’ and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s crowd sizes.
True to pattern, the ship was not righted on Thursday. Yet again, Trump delivered fact-check fodder and frequently meandered off-topic.
The Republican nominee offered a somewhat incoherent attack on Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“[Harris] destroyed California along with Gavin Newsom—and she, San Francisco, you know, was a great city 15 years ago. Now it’s considered almost unlivable.” Trump lamented. Others were quick to point out that not only was Newsom the mayor of San Francisco 15 years ago when, according to Trump, the City by the Bay was “great”—but Harris was district attorney. [video at the link]
Trump also rambled on about how crime was through the roof. Crime rates have been trending down for a very long time, and continue to do so under the Biden-Harris administration. But Trump insisted he read a “recent article” that says “you’re allowed to rob a store as long as it’s not more than $950.”
He wasn’t done. “You can rob a store and you have kids, thieves going into stores with calculators, calculating how much it is. Because if it’s less than $950, they can rob, but not get charged.” [What the fuck?]
The law Trump seems to be referring to is Proposition 47, voted on by Californians and enacted in 2014. It reduced penalties for some non-violent drug crimes and petty theft offenses, and raised the threshold for felony theft to $950. It didn’t make such crimes legal, and it didn’t erase punishment.
But what about those groceries behind him?
In a key display of his everyman bonafides, Trump took a moment to marvel at the food displayed behind him, and decided on the spot to take a box of Cheerios “back to my cottage.”
Otherwise, Trump was too busy tilting at literal windmills to get around to them. At one point, Trump launched a well-worn routine, wherein he pretends that people who use wind power are unable to watch television on a still evening. This strange preoccupation with windmills goes way back for Trump.
On Thursday, he also leaned into his longheld concerns for birds.
“[Y]ou got windmills all over the place and you have birds. You want to see a bird cemetery?” [video at the link]
Can’t wait to see how Trump tries to right the ship next time!
Here’s what Trump said … he’s talking about Miriam Adelson [wife of dead Vegas billionaire and long-time Trump sponsor, Sheldon Adelson]:
Trump: I have to say Miriam … I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom … that’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version — it’s actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy beautiful woman ….
And they’re rated equal…”
I’m sure the usual suspects will scramble to his defense tomorrow, but good God…
the smaller ships—destroyers and cruisers – of WWI have a multitude of masts sprouting ropes and wires like odd spiderwebs […] overcome by the 1930s as the smaller vessels of that era are modern-looking.
From the turn of the century onwards, warships didn’t [have] sails anymore, but often still masts and yards.
[…]
Later in the war some ships carried extra yardarms fitted fore & aft to carry the ever increasing numbers of radio aerials required, usually for communicating with aircraft. So for example various carriers, and [two specific examples with a photo—a cruiser and a landing ship refitted for fighter direction].
During the 1914-18 war […] The highest frequency in use at the time was 2632 kHz. Obviously sky wave propagation was not known at the time and the frequencies in use were ideally suited for ground wave communications, dependant upon height of aerials, frequency and power output. […] aerials became horizontal wires […] It was thought that the more wire in the air, the better!
[…]
This type of configuration was in use until the 1920’s when sky wave propagation was discovered and it was decided that the amount of horizontal wire need not be as great.
the propagation of radio waves reflected or refracted back toward Earth from the ionosphere […] Since it is not limited by the curvature of the Earth, skywave propagation can be used to communicate beyond the horizon, at intercontinental distances. It is mostly used in the shortwave frequency bands. […] At some frequencies, generally in the lower shortwave region, the high angle skywaves will be reflected directly back towards the ground […] spread out over a wide area, allowing communications within several hundred miles of the transmitting antenna.
[…]
Far more spectrum is available for long-distance communication in the shortwave bands than in the long wave bands; and shortwave transmitters, receivers and antennas were orders of magnitude less expensive than the multi-hundred kilowatt transmitters and monstrous antennas needed for long wave. Shortwave communications began to grow rapidly in the 1920s
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday gave his second news conference in as many weeks as he adjusts to a newly energized Democratic ticket ahead of next week’s Democratic National Convention.
At his New Jersey golf club, the Republican nominee blended falsehoods about the economy with misleading statements and deeply personal attacks about his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
INFLATION DID NOT TAKE THE TOLL TRUMP CLAIMED. GROWTH SURGED UNDER BIDEN
TRUMP: “As a result of Kamala’s inflation, price hikes have cost the typical household a total of $28,000 [Oh FFS!] … When I left office, I left Kamala and crooked Joe Biden a surging economy and no inflation. The mortgage rate was around 2%. Gasoline had reached $1.87 a gallon. … Harris and Biden blew it all up.”
THE FACTS: Trump made numerous economic claims that were either exaggerated or misleading. Prices did surge during the Biden-Harris administration, though $28,000 is far higher than independent estimates. Moody’s Analytics calculated last year that price increases over the previous two years were costing the typical U.S. household $709 a month. That would equal $8,500 a year.
Separately, the U.S. economy was growing quickly as it reopened from COVID in 2020, as Trump’s term ended, and it continued to do so after Biden took office. Growth reached 5.8% in 2021, Biden’s first year in the White House, as the rebound continued, faster than any year that Trump was in office. Mortgage rates were low when Trump left because of the pandemic, which caused the Federal Reserve to cut its key rate to nearly zero. Gas prices fell as the economy largely shut down and Americans cut back sharply on their driving.
‘FOREIGN BORN’ IS NOT THE SAME AS ‘MIGRANTS’
TRUMP: “Virtually 100% of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants.”
THE FACTS: This is a misinterpretation of government jobs data. The figures do show that the number of foreign-born people with jobs has increased in the past year, while the number of native-born Americans with jobs has declined. But foreign-born is not the same as “migrants” — it would include people who arrived in the U.S. years ago and are now naturalized citizens.
In addition, the data is based on Census research that many economists argue is undercounting both foreign- and native-born workers. According to a report by Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson at the Brookings Institution released this week, native-born employment rose by 740,000 in 2023, while foreign-born rose by 1.7 million. Much of the disparity reflects the fact that the native-born population is older than the foreign-born, and are more likely to be retired. In addition, the unemployment rate for native-born Americans is 4.5%, lower than the 4.7% for foreign-born.
A THIEF IS NOT ALLOWED TO STEAL UP TO $950
[See comment 106: “Proposition 47, voted on by Californians and enacted in 2014. It reduced penalties for some non-violent drug crimes and petty theft offenses, and raised the threshold for felony theft to $950. It didn’t make such crimes legal, and it didn’t erase punishment.”]
HARRIS HAS NOT SAID IN THIS CAMPAIGN SHE WANTS TO DEFUND POLICE
TRUMP, on Harris: “You know, she wants to defund the police.”
THE FACTS: Harris expressed praise for the “defund the police” movement after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, questioning whether money was being effectively spent on public safety. However, she has not said during her current campaign that she is in favor of defunding law enforcement.
The Biden administration tried to overhaul policing, but the legislation stalled on Capitol Hill, and Biden ultimately settled for issuing an executive order. It also pumped more money into local departments.
TRUMP DID NOT WIN PENNSYLVANIA IN 2020
TRUMP: “I won Pennsylvania and I did much better the second time. I won it in 2016, did much better the second time. I know Pennsylvania very well.”
THE FACTS: False. Trump did win the state in 2016, when he beat Democrat Hillary Clinton to win the presidency. But he lost the state in 2020 to President Joe Biden, a Pennsylvania native. According to the official certified results, Biden and Harris received 3.46 million votes, compared to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence with 3.38 million votes, a margin of about 80,000 votes.
OIL PRODUCTION IN U.S. HIT RECORD UNDER BIDEN
Trump says he will bring energy prices down by reversing President Joe Biden’s policy of encouraging renewable energy at the expense of fossil fuels.
TRUMP: “We’re going to drill baby drill, we’re going to get the energy prices down, almost immediately.”
THE FACTS: Oil production in the U.S. hit an all-time high under Biden’s administration.
The U.S. Department of Energy reported in October that U.S. oil production hit 13.2 million barrels per day, passing a previous record set in 2020 by 100,000 barrels. Department statistics also show that the U.S. has produced more crude oil per year than any other nation — for the past six years.
ECONOMY HAS SHOWN RECENT SIGNS OF STRENGTH, NOT EVIDENCE OF COLLAPSE
TRUMP: “We’re going to have a crash like the 1929 crash if she gets in.”
THE FACTS: The economy has shown recent signs of strength — not evidence that America is on the edge of economic collapse.
On Thursday the S&P 500 jumped 1.6%, its sixth gain in a row. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also increased Thursday, as did the Nasdaq composite.
Recent economic reports show that shoppers increased their retail spending last month and fewer workers sought unemployment benefits.
Fears the economy was slowing emerged last month following a sharp drop in hiring and higher unemployment rates. But those worries were assuaged earlier this month when better-than-expected jobless numbers led to Wall Street’s best rally since 2022.
HARRIS WAS NOT NAMED BORDER ‘CZAR’
TRUMP: “She was the border czar but she didn’t do anything. She’s the worst border czar in history. … She was the person responsible for the border and she never went there.”
THE FACTS: Biden tapped Harris in 2021 to work with Central American countries to address the root causes of migration and the challenges it creates. Illegal crossings are one aspect of those challenges, but Harris was never assigned to the border or put in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees law enforcement at the border.
BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT IS LOWER UNDER BIDEN
TRUMP: “The Black population had the best numbers they’ve ever had on jobs, on income, on everything. The Hispanic population had the best numbers.”
THE FACTS: It’s true that Black and Hispanic unemployment fell to then-record lows under Trump, but that was upended by COVID. When Trump left office, Black unemployment had soared to 9.3% and Hispanic unemployment to 8.5%. Under Biden, Black unemployment fell to a new record low of 4.8% in April 2023, while Hispanic unemployment in September 2022 matched the all-time low of 3.9% it had reached under Trump.
The World Health Organization and UNICEF called for seven-day pauses in the war in Gaza starting at the end of August to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children under age 10.
[…] The WHO said Friday that the vaccination campaign will have two rounds, with the second in September. In each, children under the age of 10 will be given two drops of the oral vaccine against type 2 of the polio virus, it said in a statement. […]
During each round of the campaign, WHO said at least 95% of children need to be vaccinated to prevent the spread of polio and reduce the risk of its re-emergence.
“The Gaza Strip has been polio-free for the last 25 years,” WHO said, but the humanitarian community has warned of the re-emergence of polio since Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7.
“A cease-fire is the only way to ensure public health security in the Gaza Strip and the region,” WHO said.
You had this massive wave of Italian, Irish and German immigration and that had its problems, its consequences. You had higher crime rates, you had these ethnic enclaves, you had inter-ethnic conflict in the country where you really hadn’t had that before.
“Has anybody seen the movie Gangs of New York?” […] a 2002 film depicting the city in 1863. “That’s what I’m talking about. You know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves in our country, it can lead to higher crime rates.”
Citing a fictional movie is probably not the best way to defend controversial comments, especially since the major villain of the movie is an anti-immigrant nativist crime boss based on a real person, which people on X were happy to point out.
“So, JD Vance ALSO hates the Irish and Italians? Nice, nice. This is a winning campaign.” […]
“‘Bill the Butcher was correct’ is a very interesting take on that film”
birgerjohanssonsays
Compulsory account 7746 Sky Captain @ 109
Thank you!
I had wondered like crazy about the change in how ships looked between WWI and WWII.
.
Lynna, OM @ 111
The problem is, if the lies are not debunked in real time – for instance by text scrolling across the screen – the debunking will be ineffective. Some of the TV channels had debunked some of the claims immediately after Trump was done, but most viewers had already switched channels by then.
The text scrolling thing is simple and doable, but the TV channels do not care enough. They do the minimum required to avoid litigation.
birgerjohanssonsays
Yesterday, Trump compared the Predidential medal of freedom to the Congressional medal of honor.
Details from a recent Justice Department case show how determined and unrepentant those making threats against federal and state officials have become.
NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell reported that former U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has become U.S. Secret Service protectee Kimberly Cheatle. That’s because Cheatle, who resigned from her post on July 23, has become the target of unspecified, but presumably credible and significant, threats in the wake of the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and the Secret Service’s failure to prevent it.
But as shocking as it is to see a former Secret Service director need the protection of her own former agency, it’s much less surprising when one considers the overall threat environment facing those whom Trump loyalists perceive as a danger to him — or them. After all, we learned earlier this week that the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw Trump’s New York hush money trial, and her business partner have each been subjected to death threats and harassment, and that law enforcement has advised the daughter and her family to leave their home for their own safety.
Further, in an interview with my NBC News colleague Ken Dilanian last month, Attorney General Merrick Garland noted that the Justice Department has brought 400 cases over the last two years alone dealing with threats against federal and state judges, federal and state prosecutors, federal and state legislators, and federal, state and local law enforcement officers. Of course, those are just the cases federal law enforcement has brought, not the totality of the threats. [video at the link]
And several of those cases concern targeted people who, simply for doing their jobs, have raised Trump supporters’ ire. They become part of the online stew of conspiracy theories, misogyny, white supremacy and MAGA devotion that can catalyze grievances into threats — or worse. Take Spencer Gear, a 32-year-old Nevada man indicted last month. The Justice Department alleges that from November 2023 through July 2024, Gear made threats to injure or kill 11 federal or state officials, including five federal judges in Washington, D.C., and Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over both of E. Jean Carroll’s defamation trials against Trump. According to that indictment, Gear also directed threats, via a June 3 voicemail, at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the 34-count felony hush money case against Trump, as well as against Merchan.
To be fair, neither the fact of Gear’s indictment nor the identities of his alleged targets is new. But the transcript of Gear’s bail hearing, which MSNBC has obtained, includes the government’s description of how resolute, methodical and unafraid those making the threats can be, even when warned by federal law enforcement, as officials say Gear was, that the types of messages he had been leaving for officials were not protected by the First Amendment.
[…] Gear was equally bold even when the FBI came to arrest him, authorities say, initially refusing to leave his house and cutting his hand while throwing back a drone the agency flew into the house. By the time FBI was able to conduct a search, agents found not only “multiple firearms throughout the house,” but also a “tactical vest that had a significant amount of ammunition on it” and “fresh blood — as if he had been handling that tactical vest.” And although he left his home without violence, he told the FBI, “You can smile today because I chose a different path. You’re not the enemy, but you work for them. This organization is not constitutional. I hope you guys understand that.”
We obviously don’t — and likely won’t — know the nature of the threats to Cheatle. But if even one of the people making those threats is as unrepentant and potentially prepared as authorities say Spencer Gear was, her rapid transformation from political appointee to guardee is perfectly understandable.
The 2024 Olympic games are now over, and plans are underway for the next Olympics in Los Angeles, California, in 2028. While over 28 million viewers watched here in the U.S. with billions watching worldwide, I’d like to pay tribute to medalists from the Caribbean, some who won gold for their nations for the very first time.
[…] we were elated to see athletes from St. Lucia, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Puerto Rico, and Grenada do their homes proud bringing home gold, silver, and bronze medals. I have left out Cuba and Jamaica from this group, since they have garnered fame, attention, and medals in the Olympics for decades. I was keeping an eye on social media comments on the games, and wasn’t surprised that many posters didn’t even know where St. Lucia, Grenada, and Dominica (which gets confused with the Dominican Republic) are on the map.
[…] One of the biggest upsets in the Track and Field division of the games came from the gold medal win in the women’s 100 meter final, by Saint Lucia’s Julien Alfred, who defeated America’s Sha’Carri Richardson, who won the silver. Alfred also won a silver medal in the women’s 200 meter final: [video at the link]
I got a big kick seeing the crowd in St. Lucia at a watch party chanting “Ju-Ju” and responding to her win: [video at the link] […]
Julien Alfred was born on June 10, 2001, in Ciceron, Castries, Saint Lucia. She faced significant challenges in her early life, particularly losing her father when she was just 12 years old. This event profoundly impacted her upbringing and motivated her to excel in athletics.
Alfred began her education at Leon Hess Comprehensive Secondary School in Saint Lucia, attending from 2013 to 2015. She then moved to Jamaica to further her education at St. Catherine High School from 2015 to 2018. During her time in Jamaica, she developed her sprinting skills by competing against boys in her primary school, which helped her build resilience and confidence in her athletic abilities.
In 2018, she transitioned to the United States to attend the University of Texas, where she pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Youth & Community Studies. At Texas, she stood out as an athlete, breaking records and winning numerous accolades in collegiate track and field.
Next up, tiny Dominica, with a current population of 66,169, also took home a gold. Thea LaFond was the proud, first-time gold medalist at the triple jump. [video at the link]
[…]
More videos, biographies of athletes, and details at the link.
Assuming this is true, why has ALL the ‘mainslimemedia’ ignored it???? This country is crumbling into chaos more and more each day. We are so fracked! I wish PZ would address this on his main blog.
On Thursday, Donald Trump released the financial disclosure forms required of candidates to comply with election campaign laws to the Office of Government Ethics. Those forms show that Trump drew his income from a number of sources—from peddling Bibles to putting his image on trading cards to the hefty fees charged by his golf facilities. They also show that Trump still owes a large amount from legal settlements that he has been in no hurry to pay.
These documents are not as detailed as the tax forms that Trump promised to release, then refused to release, and which were finally released in part by the House Ways and Means Committee. Still, at over 250 pages, there’s a lot of information and it may take days before analysts and accountants have put together everything revealed in this document.
What can be seen from even a casual glance is that, while Trump might not be as wealthy as he claims, he has more than enough income to pay his legal bills, donate to his campaign, and keep up even the most lavish lifestyle. In other words, all the begging he did to get other people to fund his legal expenses was a flat-out scam.
A few highlights from Trump’s disclosure include:
– Trump made $300,000 for his part in selling those Lee Greenwood Bibles. […]
– Trump got $12 million in licensing fees, $7 million of which came from putting a version of his face, and scraps of a suit, on those pricey (and ridiculous) NFT trading cards. He may be the only one to come out of this investment a winner.
– Melania was also paid $330,609 in license fees for NFTs, so she must have made some appearance on those cards.
– Trump owns between $1 million and $5 million worth of cryptocurrency, despite having frequently declared that it’s a scam.
– Showing that he’s a true watcher of late-night Fox broadcasts, Trump also owns somewhere over $100,000 in gold bars.
– A book called “Letters to Trump”—which is exactly that, a collection of notes that celebrities have written to Trump, mostly before his first run for office—brought in $4.5 million. That book also contains the story of Trump and Willie Brown being on a helicopter ride. But Brown’s actual letter to Trump makes no mention of a helicopter.
– Trump set the value of the company behind Truth Social at “over $50 million” even though the company just posted a $16 million loss in the second quarter.
– The big money came from Trump’s properties at a monster $513 million: that includes $56.9 million from Mar-a-Lago and a whopping $160.7 million from the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort.
In addition to the income, Trump has outstanding debts. In particular, there are three line items related to legal decisions over the last two years.
– Trump still owes writer E. Jean Carroll between $1 million and $5 million for his loss in the first case she filed against him. Since the settlement in that case was for $5 million, it seems like a good bet that Trump has paid her nothing.
– Trump also owes E. Jean Carroll another $83 million for his loss in the second trial after he repeatedly called her a liar even after a jury held him accountable for sexual assault and a judge claimed that what Trump did to Carroll was rape. The disclosure form only ranks this item as “greater than $50 million,” but again, it’s a good bet that Trump hasn’t begun to pay Carroll what he owes.
– Also in the over $50 million category is a debt where Trump lists New York Attorney General Letitia James as the creditor. This appears to be the $355 million Trump owes after losing his New York trial on real estate fraud. Clearly the people who made “over $50 million” the top category didn’t anticipate someone like Trump filling out these forms.
Trump has income and he could pay off what he owes to Carroll. He could put more of his own funds into his campaign. He could certainly afford to pay his own attorneys.
He just doesn’t want to pay. And why should he, so long as there is a stream of suckers and losers who will sign up to cover his bills?
The “Hope” poster that street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey created for Barack Obama’s upstart 2008 presidential campaign is the enduring image from that election. Nothing else seemed to capture the spirit of the moment and the feeling that swept across the nation like that iconic image in tones of overlapping red and blue.
Fairey’s signature style has been imitated many times since then—often poorly. There are even websites that will take an image and apply a faux version of the theme. Meanwhile, the original work has made its way to the National Portrait Gallery. For anyone who was swept up in that first Obama campaign, it’s impossible to glimpse that striking portrait without feeling an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and … hope.
Now Fairey is back with a new image of Kamala Harris, and it includes one word every bit as empowering as “Hope” was 16 years ago. For Harris, the word is “Forward.”
As Fairey made clear in his full statement on the artwork, “Forward” is a way to encapsulate the message that Harris has been spreading at every rally: We are not going back.
We are not going back. In fact, we have a very real opportunity to move forward. If we act we can move forward our desire for a healthy planet, for corporate accountability, toward equality and away from racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia, for equitable access to opportunity, for full access to the medical care we want or need, for fair and just immigration policies.
That original image was much imitated. But this … this is the real deal.
[…] There is now video of the strike on the bridge over the River Seym at Glushkovo. [video at the link]
[…] There are actually three bridges over the river and cutting them off would make supplying that whole area south of the river difficult. [Tweets, maps and more images at the link]
[…] In the Kursk region, locals started looting their neighbors and got caught by Ukrainian military men. [video at the link]
Workers placed a bronze statue of the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) on the grounds of the Dekalb County Courthouse Friday — the same site where a Confederate monument was removed in 2020.
Internationally acclaimed sculptor Basil Watson, who designed the 12-foot-tall statue, watched as the statue was placed ahead of its official unveiling planned for Aug. 24. […]
Lewis, who represented Georgia in Congress for over three decades, first rose to national prominence during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s when he urged others to get into “good trouble.” He also led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the protests and was a confidante of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
[…] Another statue of Lewis has also replaced Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in the U.S. Capitol on behalf of the state of Georgia. Stephens infamously made the Cornerstone Speech, calling slavery foundational to the Confederacy.
Each state sends statutes of two notable citizens of their state to honor in the Capitol.
Democrats have rallied around honoring Lewis’s legacy through statues and monuments and the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a bill that has been a top priority for Democrats since the 2020 election.
The bill would recodify parts of the original Voting Rights Act, passed in the wake of mass demonstrations led in part by Lewis during the Civil Rights Movement, that the Supreme Court has done away with in the last decade.
The court has weakened the nondiscrimination portion of the act, which allowed for the federal government to oversee state voting rules.
[…] It would be Kushner’s biggest project yet using part of his roughly $3 billion private equity fund — financed largely by investors in Saudi Arabia and other Mideast petrostates — bringing international tourism to an area that stagnated under years of communism and neglect.
But Kushner’s planned development is facing local and international blowback because of its potential environmental harm. Conservation groups warn that construction of the villas and hotel rooms could destroy a habitat for pelicans, flamingos and several endangered species and undermine international efforts to preserve one of the last wild, coastal ecosystems in the Mediterranean.
“I have huge concerns,” said Ryan Gellert, the CEO of the outdoors company Patagonia, which has worked with Albania to preserve a wild river system not far from Kushner’s prospective site. In an interview, Gellert said the river system hinges on a healthy delta. “It is a stunning area, unique across the Mediterranean. And the idea of them developing this, particularly in the absence of a master plan, is a really bad idea.”
The development is at least the second time Kushner has partnered with governments in the Balkans friendly to the former president, with the assistance of at least one former Trump administration official with deep ties to those nation’s leaders — a business practice that many Democrats and other critics say is a conflict of interest. […]
Kushner makes an estimated $40 million in management fees, regardless of what happens to the investment […]
Kushner has been helped by the fact that Albania is racing to tap into the travel boom that is enriching southern Europe, including neighbors in the Balkans. And Albania is led by a prime minister who had sought to work closely with Trump in his first term and would get a second chance if Trump returns to the White House. The prime minister, Edi Rama, had also met repeatedly with Trump’s then-special envoy to the Balkans, Richard Grenell — who now works for Kushner’s company helping to develop eastern European deals.
[…] Kushner is planning two developments in Albania, but the more disputed one is in the coastal area of Zvernec — a secluded paradise of beaches and cliffs with the Adriatic Sea on one side and a lagoon on the other. […]
the Albanian government recently amended a law to open the door for high-end tourism — in facilities of “5 stars or more” — in such protected areas. Officials here say it is unrealistic to wall off potentially lucrative parts of a country that is trying to catch up economically after decades of isolation.
[…] Kushner has focused on two countries in the Balkans, Serbia and Albania, as well as deals in the United States.
[…] The company’s Serbia plans have led to street protests. And after he shared “early design images” on social media, some of the people living nearby the potential Zvernec development were startled by the scale.
[…] The report said that Albania’s three main political parties, including Rama’s Socialist Party, hired U.S.-based lobbyists “with close ties to then-President Trump” to influence his administration.
Elton Skendaj, the Albanian-born director of the democracy and governance program at Georgetown University, said that Rama is “very transactional,” and in that way a natural partner for Trump.
[…] Environmentalists say the government has a history of playing loose with the nation’s conservation rules. The nearby airport, under construction and scheduled to open next year, had also been part of the protected area. Just before construction crews broke ground, the government redrew and shrank the boundaries.
“It is a protection on paper but not in reality,” said Ulrich Eichelmann, the founder of Riverwatch, an organization that helped campaign for the national park.
Then, in February, as NGOs protested outside the parliament, the government changed the law on protected areas — removing a potential obstacle for Kushner’s plans.
Several lawmakers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of legislation, said that the government had not changed the law specifically for Kushner. They said that some Albanian politicians own land in protected areas and stand to benefit from the changes. Rama said on social media that the move was part of Albania’s “ambitious path for sustainable development.”
[…] Kushner has structured his company in a way that avoids most disclosure, and he has long stymied efforts by Democrats who want to learn more about his financial dealings.
The one thing Kushner is willing to predict is the trajectory for Albania. He says the country is “primed for something special.” The prices are reasonable, he said. The people are friendly.
“My time in Albania definitely made me feel that it was a place on the ascent,” he said.
“They are taking advantage of the war and the current status quo,” said a Palestinian woman who says her son-in-law was killed by an Israeli settler.
Not long after Hamas launched the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel and sparked the now 10-month war in the Gaza Strip, another killing was reported in the occupied West Bank.
A 40-year-old Palestinian street vendor and farmer named Bilal Saleh was harvesting olives on his family’s small plot of land when, according to his family, he was fatally shot in the chest by an Israeli who lives in one of the Jewish settlements that ring Al-Sawiya.
And 10 months later, the family says, they’re not sure if Israeli officials are even investigating Saleh’s death. An Israeli soldier was briefly detained after the killing and later released.
“We can’t confirm if it is true or not that they apprehended” the man accused of killing Saleh, his mother-in-law, Mona Saleh, told NBC News in July when she ventured into Al-Sawiya, an ancient Palestinian village. “I don’t think they detained him, even if they arrested him. If they took him, it was for his safety.”
By they, Mona Saleh means the Israeli authorities.
The grieving mother-in-law said that it’s clear to her and other Palestinians in the West Bank that the Israelis are taking advantage of the fact that the world is focused on the Gaza war to redouble their efforts to “colonize” the Palestinian territory.
[…] Many Palestinians and groups monitoring settlement activity reject those claims. They say the IDF and police often stand by or even provide cover for settlers to assault Palestinian West Bank residents.
In April, Human Rights Watch issued a report alleging that armed settlers forcibly and violently drove out Palestinian residents from at least five West Bank settlements “with the active participation of army units.”
[…] “They now have a huge excuse to do what they’ve already planned,” Sayel Kanan, the Palestinian mayor of Burqa, a West Bank town almost completely surrounded by settlements, told NBC News.
During the past 10 months, according to the U.N., 553 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by the Israeli military and settlers. During the same time period, 15 Israelis have died. (Israeli officials have accused the U.N. of undercounting the number of Israelis killed in the West Bank.)
In all of 2023, the U.N. reported that at least 507 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, including 81 children, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians in the territory since 2008.
On Thursday, dozens of Israeli settlers, some wearing masks, attacked a Palestinian village in the West Bank, burning cars and killing at least one person, authorities said.
[…] Yehuda HaKohen, a New Yorker and rabbi who moved to the West Bank two decades ago and who posts videos on YouTube of himself discussing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, said he condemns violence against Palestinians.
But in his interview, HaKohen said that planting Jewish settlements in the West Bank is part of the settlers’ strategy to “retake possession” of what they consider their ancestral land, which they call Judea.
“The only method of resistance is to create as many Jewish communities as we can to make removing us logistically impossible,” said HaKohen, a father of eight who lives on a settlement called Beit-El.
“It is essentially a suburb of Jerusalem,” he said.
While the international community does not recognize the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and has condemned the seizure of Palestinians’ land, HaKohen said Jewish settlers see this land as theirs for the taking. And they will continue taking it. […]
Last month, the top court of the United Nations ruled that Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank was “illegal” and demanded that it end “as rapidly as possible.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the court ruling as “a decision of lies.” […]
[…] Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, falsely saying that he knew nothing about it and had “no idea who is behind it.” In fact, he flew on a private jet with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which leads Project 2025. And in a 2022 speech at a Heritage Foundation event, Trump said, “This is a great group and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”
A review of the training videos shows that 29 of the 36 speakers have worked for Trump in some capacity — on his 2016-17 transition team, in the administration or on his 2024 reelection campaign. The videos appear to have been recorded before the resignation two weeks ago of Paul Dans, the leader of the 2025 project, and they are referenced on the project’s website. The Heritage Foundation said in a statement at the time of Dans’ resignation that it would end Project 2025’s policy-related work, but that its “collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue.”
[…] Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign who features in one of the videos, said, “As our campaign leadership and President Trump have repeatedly stated, Agenda 47 is the only official policy agenda from our campaign.”
Project 2025’s 887-page “Mandate for Leadership” document lays out a vast array of policy and governance proposals, including eliminating the Department of Education, slashing Medicaid, reclassifying tens of thousands of career civil servants so they could be more easily fired and replaced, giving the president greater power to control the DOJ and further restricting abortion access.
[…] One video, titled “Hidden Meanings: The Monsters in the Attic,” is a 50-minute discussion of supposed left-wing code words and biased language that future appointees should be aware of and root out. In that video, Kozma says that U.S. intelligence agencies have named climate change as an increasingly dire threat to global stability, which, she says, illustrates how the issue “has infiltrated every part of the federal government.”
[…] In a different video, David Burton, an economic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the importance of an obscure yet influential agency called the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Trump administration used OIRA to help roll back regulations on economic, fiscal and environmental issues. Under Biden, OIRA took a more aggressive stance in helping review and shape new regulations, which included efforts to combat housing discrimination, ban the sale of so-called ghost guns and set new renewable fuel targets.
[…] Sullivan, the former DOJ acting assistant attorney general in charge of the department’s Office of Justice Programs, which oversees billions in grant funding, appears in three different videos. Leavitt, who is in a training video titled “The Art of Professionalism,” worked in the White House press office during Trump’s first presidency and is now the national press secretary for his reelection campaign.
A consistent theme in the advice and testimonials offered by these Trump alums is that Project 2025 trainees should expect a hostile reception if they go to work in the federal government. Kozma, the former USAID deputy chief of staff, says in one video that “many” of her fellow Trump appointees experienced “persecution” during their time in government.
[…] Sullivan urges viewers to “empower your political staff,” limit access to appointees’ calendars and leave out career staff from early meetings with more senior agency officials. “You are making it clear to career staff that your political appointees are in charge,” Sullivan says.
[…] Jones adds that it’s possible that agency lawyers could cite exemptions in the public-records law to prevent the release of certain documents. But appointees are best served, he argues, if they don’t put important communications in writing in the first place.
“You’re probably better off,” Jones says, “going down to the canteen, getting a cup of coffee, talking it through and making the decision, as opposed to sending him an email and creating a thread that Accountable.US or one of those other groups is going to come back and seek.”
The site accuses Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes of a “secret order” to arrest its legal representative if X doesn’t “comply with his censorship orders.” Despite the change, “X service remains available to the people of Brazil.”
Justice de Moraes opened an investigation of the platform in April over its reactivation of accounts it was ordered to block. (The site soon reversed course.) …
Interesting development. I feel no obligation to accept X’s account at face value. If the company is not going to operate in some countries, this could be the beginning of the end.
I flagged this on social media. But I wanted to make sure you knew. Trump just announced a “crime and safety” rally for next Tuesday in Howell, Michigan, a town that has been heavily associated with the KKK for decades. Indeed, just late last month White Supremacists marched in the town chanting “We love Hitler. We love Trump.”
Some but not all of the reputation comes from the fact that a long time Grand Drago of the Michigan Klan lived there and his farm was a sort of home base for the Klan. (I just found out this afternoon that a good bit of the 1991 documentary Blood in the Face – great doc, by the way – was shot there.)
This is the kind of move that will be lost on many reporters and especially most out-of-state reporters. But it won’t be lost for a moment on Blacks and Jews from Michigan. It’s a bullhorn not a dog whistle. I had to have the connection pointed out to me too […] the Blood in the Face documentary which I saw when it first came out placed it for me.
Does telling your advertisers to go fuck themselves have a negative effect on your business? This is a question that nobody had seriously thought to explore for decades, probably because the obvious answer is “Yes, you moron.”
Apparently Elon Musk thought about this question, though, without the obvious answer popping into his ketamine-addled mind. Elon Musk appears to not think about a lot of questions that would be a layup for anyone with a functioning brain stem.
So let us imagine we are Elon Musk. Then let us imagine we are ignoring all 127 or whatever of our children not only because we are always ignoring all 127 or whatever of our children, but also because we are busy asking ourselves, “What happens if I take the world’s most insanely popular social media platform, one that has become an essential tool of communication for businesses and government entities and activists, and turn it into a Nazi pool hall full of bigots and misogynists and fascists and weirdos who go apeshit whining about reverse racism if someone makes a dad joke about white people not liking really spicy food [a reference to Tim Walz’s joke about “white guy tacos,” and ““black pepper is the top of the spice level in Minnesota.”], in addition to telling all the advertisers who are already unhappy about my business turning into the online equivalent of the Luitpoldarena in 1936 to go fuck themselves? Might that cause any revenue problems for my company or companies, of which I own several that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars?”
Luckily for Musk Forbes looked into it so he can now put some numbers on his idiocy:
According to this report, X booked $114 million worth of revenue in the U.S., its largest market by far. This represented a 25% drop over the preceding three months and a 53% drop over the year-ago period.
That already sounds bad. But it gets worse. The last publicly available figures prior to Musk’s acquisition, from Q2 of 2022, had revenue at $661 million. After you account for inflation, revenue has actually collapsed by 84%, in today’s dollars.
No wonder Musk came up with the genius idea to sue advertisers for refusing to advertise on his site. That might be his only hope.
If the company formerly known as Twitter but now known as X was a publicly traded one, the stock would be cratering and shareholders would be demanding Musk himself fuck off into the sun. But that task is being left to the shareholders of Tesla, which is a publicly traded company with investors who were already nervous because Musk kept dumping his own shares to finance his purchase of Twitter, which tanked the stock once already.
On top of that, Musk being an insufferable schmuck was already hurting sales of Teslas. So one imagines that his selling more of his 12 percent stake in the company will not help.
It is hard to imagine that Musk’s leadership of ExTwitter could drag it to this sorry pass, unless one remembers literally every single decision Musk has made since he bought the company two years ago. Firing most of the employees, including many who had deep knowledge of the rickety programming scaffolding that keeps the app running, then having to scramble to bring some of those people back when the inevitable breakdowns started. Ending the verification system that helped distinguish real celebrity and company accounts from phony ones, which was about all that made the site usable for those entities. Charging people $8 a month to use a previously free service. […] Suing everyone in sight for pointing out his wrongness. Throwing his money and support behind Donald Trump, the rapidly decaying Republican presidential candidate who is about as popular at the moment as a dead raccoon rotting in a crawlspace under the house.
The sad part is that Musk will still be worth a couple hundred billion dollars even if he has to sell some Tesla shares […]
Right-wing media call Walz “financially illiterate” and a “complete ignoramus” for having modest finances.
Right-wing media attacked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, for not owning stocks, bonds, or real estate. While some have celebrated Walz’s portfolio, or lack thereof, some right-wing media figures have drawn absurd conclusions about Walz’s ability to understand the economy or his support of capitalism because of his economic standing.
Reporting shows Walz has financial assets that resemble the average American:
– According to recent financial disclosures, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz doesn’t own stocks or securities. He also does not currently own any real estate. Walz and his wife Gwen Walz sold their most recent home and moved into the governor’s mansion in 2019 when Walz became the governor of Minnesota. Per the disclosures, the only investments Walz holds are his retirement, pension, and life insurance accounts. […]
– It’s rare for elected officials not to hold financial assets, and some people are celebrating the modesty of Walz’s portfolio. Walz and his wife also reported no mutual funds, bonds, private equities, book deals, speaking fees, cryptocurrency, or racehorse interests. […]
– Most Americans don’t own stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency. A Federal Reserve report on Americans’ economic well-being shows that just 31% of non-retirees in America own “Stocks, bonds, ETFs, or mutual funds held outside a retirement account.” The number only goes up to 35% for all adult Americans. The report also shows that 64% of Americans in 2023 owned a home, and that just 7% of Americans held or used cryptocurrency in 2023. […]
– As a member of Congress in 2011, Walz co-sponsored the STOCK Act in an attempt to combat insider trading. Signed into law in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama, the STOCK Act aimed to prevent lawmakers and congressional staffers from trading on non-public information. While pushing for the legislation, Walz spoke about the importance of “restoring faith” among Americans that their lawmakers are not in office only to enrich themselves. […]
Right-wing media figures claimed Walz “never invested in America” and couldn’t relate to average Americans:
– Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz questioned how Walz could relate to the average American when he doesn’t own a home. Chaffetz insinuated that Walz wouldn’t know how to address the economy, erroneously claiming that he “has never even owned a home.” […]
– Fox hosts Jeanine Pirro and Jesse Watters claimed Walz “never invested in America” because he doesn’t own stocks. Watters said, “That’s crazy. So he’s never invested in America.” Pirro responded, “Never invested in America, that’s right.” […]
Right-wing media figures accused Walz of not understanding basic economics:
– The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro called Walz a “complete ignoramus” and insinuated Walz shouldn’t “run” the economy because he doesn’t own stocks, investments, or real estate. Shapiro mocked Walz saying, “It turns out Tim Walz, I kid you not, does not own any stock. He has no investments. He has no real estate. He’s completely disconnected from the economy of the United States.” […]
– Fox host Sean Hannity said Walz “doesn’t even understand basic economics 101 — not even on a personal level.” Hannity attacked Walz saying he “has no stocks, no bonds, no 401(k) … No real estate, he doesn’t have a mortgage, he doesn’t even own a house. He has never started a business or worked in the private sector. […]
– Fox Business guest and elections correspondent for The Federalist, Brianna Lyman, attacked Walz, saying, “What’s indicative of him not owning stocks is he’s financially illiterate.” Fox Business host Charles Payne questioned Walz’s ability to understand economics saying, “Do we trust someone who doesn’t seem to trust the notion of investing or ownership?” […]
Right-wing media figures claimed Walz is against capitalism
– Fox Business host Charles Payne shamed Walz for not owning any investments and said it means Walz hates capitalism. After attempting to link Walz to “Communist China” for having visited the country on his honeymoon, Payne said, “Did you know that he has zero investments? Zero, nothing, no investments at all. That tells you what he believes, he does not believe in capitalism.” […]
– Fox Business guest Rebecca Walser called Walz an “extremist” and said he “is not a capitalist, clearly, he doesn’t have any investments to speak of.” She concluded that Walz “wouldn’t understand an investor, someone who cares about what the economy is doing.” […]
– Fox Business guest Adam Johnson accused Walz of not being a capitalist: “Capitalists build and create, and, yes, accumulate. So if you are not building or accumulating, you would end up like Tim Walz, with nothing.” Johnson also attacked Walz’s intelligence, saying, “I think it’s odd. I think it speaks to someone who hasn’t hasn’t learned how to save or, more importantly, how to build.” He also called Walz a “professional politician” for having never worked in the private sector. Walz previously worked as a public school teacher and served in the National Guard. […]
Okay. Compare that to Trump’s cryptocurrency holdings etc. See comment 125.
“The proliferation of these images has exploited a shocking number of women and girls across the globe,” said David Chiu, the elected city attorney of San Francisco who brought the case against a group of widely visited websites.
Nearly a year after AI-generated nude images of high school girls upended a community in southern Spain, a juvenile court this summer sentenced 15 of their classmates to a year of probation.
But the artificial intelligence tool used to create the harmful deepfakes is still easily accessible on the internet, promising to “undress any photo” uploaded to the website within seconds.
Now a new effort to shut down the app and others like it is being pursued in California, where San Francisco this week filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit that experts say could set a precedent but will also face many hurdles.
“The proliferation of these images has exploited a shocking number of women and girls across the globe,” said David Chiu, the elected city attorney of San Francisco who brought the case against a group of widely visited websites tied to entities in California, New Mexico, Estonia, Serbia, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
“These images are used to bully, humiliate and threaten women and girls,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “And the impact on the victims has been devastating on their reputation, mental health, loss of autonomy, and in some instances, causing some to become suicidal.”
The lawsuit brought on behalf of the people of California alleges that the services broke numerous state laws against fraudulent business practices, nonconsensual pornography and the sexual abuse of children. But it can be hard to determine who runs the apps, which are unavailable in phone app stores but still easily found on the internet.
Contacted late last year by the AP, one service claimed by email that its “CEO is based and moves throughout the USA” but declined to provide any evidence or answer other questions. The AP is not naming the specific apps being sued in order to not promote them.
“There are a number of sites where we don’t know at this moment exactly who these operators are and where they’re operating from, but we have investigative tools and subpoena authority to dig into that,” Chiu said. “And we will certainly utilize our powers in the course of this litigation.”
Many of the tools are being used to create realistic fakes that “nudify” photos of clothed adult women, including celebrities, without their consent. But they have also popped up in schools around the world, from Australia to Beverly Hills in California, typically with boys creating the images of female classmates that then circulate through social media.
In one of the first widely publicized cases last September in Almendralejo, Spain, a physician who helped bring it to the public’s attention after her daughter was among the victims said she is satisfied by the severity of the sentence their classmates are facing after a court decision earlier this summer.
But it is “not only the responsibility of society, of education, of parents and schools, but also the responsibility of the digital giants that profit from all this garbage,” Dr. Miriam Al Adib Mendiri said in an interview Friday. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Here is a bit of entertainment for the weekend with Sandy Toksvig and various British media figures. Excerpts from “Quite Interesting” series Q
Membrane permeability and the chirality of molecules.
“Is This Why All Proteins Are Left-Handed?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UMJYVYX1VPg
(The original article has not yet been peer reviewed)
Reginald Selkirksays
@137: at the same time, they are trying to pass him off as an agent of the elite.
WARNING : Confronting disuturbing material, sexist language incl gendered slurs, sucide and self-harm references but powerful Four Corners episode on the abhorrent and sickening stuff regarding Aussie TV channel 7 here
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called on Kyiv and Moscow to exercise “maximum restraint” amid fears of a deteriorating safety situation around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in south-eastern Ukraine. The facility came under Russian military and operational control in 2022, and has since been a target of repeated shelling with each side blaming the other. …(Snip).. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called on Kyiv and Moscow to exercise “maximum restraint” amid fears of a deteriorating safety situation around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in south-eastern Ukraine. The facility came under Russian military and operational control in 2022, and has since been a target of repeated shelling with each side blaming the other.
,,,Now, surely that’s something the media would want to report on? That sensationalist reporting on politics, religion or immigration is dangerous, and that words do, indeed, matter? But no. Instead it was social media, not the mainstream media, who got all the blame in headlines, articles and editorials around the country….
A text version of StevoR’s #144:
Current and former Channel Seven staff describe a ‘degrading, soul crushing’ workplace that’s left some suicidal and unable to work.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@137:
Right-wing media attacked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, for not owning stocks, bonds, or real estate.
Translation: “Oh noes! He might govern in the interest of ordinary people rather than in the interest of the rentier class!” Add in assorted shaking, boot-quaking, sell-offs of stock, and other suitable indicia of fear.
What’s indicative of him not owning stocks is he’s financially illiterate.
Not only is the premise bogus, but that’s as gramatically incorrect as writing the numerator of a fraction on the bottom. Which right-wind idiot said this particular thing? Ah, of course, something this boneheaded could only have come from Fox.
Fox Business host Charles Payne shamed Walz for not owning any investments and said it means Walz hates capitalism.
Because he doesn’t have any sources of rentier income? By that “logic”, Adam Smith must also hate capitalism. Unwilling to be out-stupided by other far-reich pundits, Fox strikes again!
@138:
San Francisco files first-of-its-kind lawsuit to tackle AI deepfake nudes
One must wonder: if one commissioned an artist to sketch what they think some particular person would look like nude, would that be a) morally wrong or b) illegal under California law? Why should that change if the job is automated?
In the end, I think the real problem here is that being seen naked is stigmatized, especially if the person so seen is a woman. It is a patriarchal norm that is being exploited here, and ending that patriarchal norm would render such deepfakes powerless to harm. They have no intrinsic power; their power is borrowed, vested in them by a misogynistic society.
Reginald Selkirk@141:
@137: at the same time, they are trying to pass him off as an agent of the elite.
Elites think rural voters can be hoodwinked by a flannel shirt
Rather ironic, considering that rural voters were hoodwinked by an elite (oil sheik, no less!) posing as “a guy you could have a beer with” back in 2000 … yet something tells me the Washington Examiner was perfectly happy with it that time.
Willie Brown stood with his longtime lawyer, Joe Cotchett, on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco, outside John’s Grill, the Saturday spot on Mr. Brown’s lunchtime rotation, and told reporters that he would sue Mr. Trump for slander and defamation if he repeated his concocted helicopter story one more time….
Mr. Trump and Mr. Brown have been verbally sparring since Mr. Trump falsely claimed at a news conference on Aug. 8 at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida that he had once nearly died in a helicopter ride with Mr. Brown.
Mr. Trump also said that Mr. Brown, who dated Vice President Kamala Harris in 1994 and 1995, said “terrible things” about Ms. Harris just before they almost plummeted to their deaths….
Mr. Brown promptly called the tale a lie — saying he had never ridden in a helicopter with Mr. Trump and had never told him disparaging things about Ms. Harris. In fact, he repeatedly told reporters that he respected her and desperately hoped that she would beat the man with whom he had never ridden in a helicopter.
Mr. Trump repeated his claims on his social media site, Truth Social, and threatened to sue The New York Times for reporting that the helicopter story was made up. “Now Willie Brown doesn’t remember?” Trump wrote.
That’s when Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, said he had taken a rocky helicopter ride with Mr. Trump in 1990 and speculated that the former president might have confused him with Mr. Brown. Both California politicians are Black.
Mr. Trump has not spoken about the helicopter incident since Mr. Holden came forward….
Asked whether he wanted an apology from Mr. Trump, Mr. Brown said he would rather not hear from him at all.
“No, I don’t want his apology,” Mr. Brown said. “I don’t want him to mention my name.”
When asked to comment, a spokesman for Mr. Trump pointed to the former president’s threat to sue The Times but did not address what Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Holden on Saturday applauded Mr. Brown’s legal threat.
“If he’s propagating a lie, he should be held accountable,” Mr. Holden said of Mr. Trump in a telephone interview on Saturday from his home in Los Angeles. “I’m 95 years old, and Willie is 90, and he made the assumption we wouldn’t be here anymore, and nobody would challenge it. Well, we’re alive and well.”
KGsays
Bekenstein Bound@148,
Because he doesn’t have any sources of rentier income? By that “logic”, Adam Smith must also hate capitalism.
Well I don’t know offhand whether Smith had any rentier income, but I’m pretty sure he would have hated modern capitalism! He disliked joint-stock companies, and famously said:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Seldom was an honest social scientist so slandered by those claiming to be his followers!
birgerjohanssonsays
Alain Delon 1935-2024
Reginald Selkirksays
@149: Just to make sure everybody noticed:
Mr. Trump also said that Mr. Brown, who dated Vice President Kamala Harris in 1994 and 1995, said “terrible things” about Ms. Harris just before they almost plummeted to their deaths….
That’s when Nate Holden, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, said he had taken a rocky helicopter ride with Mr. Trump in 1990…
So even ignoring the mistaken identity, it does not add up.
@148 Bekenstein Bound: In regards to Walz there is usually a large dose of “What do mean the average American isn’t invested in the stock market?” in that sort of complaint also. Particularly in the upper middle class and the lower upper class there is a big tendency to think of themselves as average Americans even though they have far more money that isn’t going to survival.
Pop powerhouses, American classics, British artists, and the estates of deceased legends—many musicians have objected to Donald Trump using their songs at campaign events.
After a video of Celine Dion performing her hit “My Heart Will Go On” was broadcast at a Trump campaign rally in Bozeman, Montana, last weekend, the response from her team was swift.
“In no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use,” a statement posted on social media read. “…And really, THAT song?”
Dion joins a long list of performers who’ve objected to Trump using their songs. Ahead of the 2020 election, that included Bruce Springsteen, Rihanna, Phil Collins, Pharrell, John Fogerty, Neil Young, Eddy Grant, Panic! at the Disco, R.E.M., and Guns N’ Roses.
It also includes the estates of deceased performers, too, like Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty and Prince, as well as English acts from across the pond, like the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Adele.
However, Trump has obtained the cosign from a few celebrity musicians, including Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood, known for his patriotic anthem, “God Bless the USA.” […]
WHO HAS RECENTLY REBUKED THE USE OF THEIR SONGS BY THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN?
[snipped details]
CAN ARTISTS LEGALLY OBJECT TO THEIR SONGS BEING USED IN POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS?
Yes, however, artists rarely have full control over where, when, and how their music is played. Performing rights organizations that represent most recognizable recorded music—ASCAP and BMI—require political campaigns to obtain licenses that allow them to use large troves of songs from their vast catalogs.
That means a political campaign does not have to do individual negotiations over every song used.
If a political license is acquired, artists can object to its use, and the song is pulled from the license.
The issue, of course, is that not every campaign immediately honors those requests.
And it is important to note that these political licenses go beyond a public performance license, which allows venues to play copyrighted music. […]
HOW DO ARTISTS STOP POLITICIANS FROM USING THEIR SONGS?
They can send cease-and-desist letters, like Pharrell Williams did after his song “Happy” was played at a Trump rally in 2018. John Fogerty did the same in October 2020 over the Trump campaign’s use of “Fortunate Son” by his band Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Few escalate to the point of suing, but it is not unheard of: Neil Young filed a lawsuit in August 2020 over the Trump campaign’s use of his music including “Rockin’ in the Free World.” He later voluntarily dismissed the case “with prejudice,” which means it cannot be brought again.
Eddy Grant sued Trump in September over the use of his 1980s hit “Electric Avenue” in a Trump campaign animated video that mocked Joe Biden.
More than $247 million was spent in the first six months of this year on television, streaming platform and digital ads that mention immigration, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign advertising. That is $40 million more than ads that mention any other issue.
Over 90 percent of the ads supported Republican candidates and were paid for by their campaigns or political action committees backing them….
The Washington Post analyzed the transcripts, images and on-screen text featured in more than 700 campaign ads that mention immigration and that ran from January through June for the presidential and Senate races, as well as congressional primaries and major state campaigns.
Taken as a whole, the ads convey an unrealistic portrait of the border as being overrun and inaccurately characterize immigrants generally as a threat, of which there is little evidence. FBI data show U.S. border cities are among the nation’s safest. And a 2023 report from a group of economists found immigrants are at least 30 percent less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born individuals.
Democrats ran a little more than three dozen ads about immigration, compared with almost 700 for Republicans. Of those ads, the most widely aired connected the issue of migration with calls to secure the border or crack down on fentanyl and violent crime. In the ads for Democrats, few showed migrants near a border….
The majority of spending — over 80 percent — went to ads that never aired in states that border Mexico. The states that saw the most money spent on immigration ads were Ohio, Indiana and Montana, which have immigrant populations well below the national average but also have high-stakes races.
Over a third of the 745 ads included depictions of Border Patrol, soldiers or the military, sometimes paired with calls to “declare war” on drug cartels.
Around 20 percent of the ads referred to migrants as “illegals” or “aliens,” with around 7 percent choosing harsher words like “trafficker,” “rapist,” or “murderer.”
And around 10 percent of the 745 ads referenced migrants as invaders or the influx of migrants as an invasion.
…And almost all of the ads from Republicans and their aligned groups portrayed refugees or asylum seekers as dangerous threats to the country, attacking candidates for perceived support of them.
Dozens of ads criticize the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the border, while showing chaotic scenes that were filmed in 2018 under the Trump administration. This video shows Central American migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, rushing the southern border. U.S. Border Patrol agents fired tear gas to repel the crowd, which included young children. The footage was taken during the Trump administration, but in dozens of ads, it is paired with voice-over and text tying it to Democrats. The Post reached out to the political action committees and campaigns that ran the ads shown below. None responded with a comment.
Nearly 30 percent of the ads that mention cartels or drugs. … included visuals of cartels or anonymous gang members that are nearly a decade old; one shows a gang member interviewed by ABC News in El Salvador in 2016; another was from a 2015 book by photographer Adam Hinton that featured photographs he took in 2013 of gang members inside a prison in El Salvador.
In another Trump ad, paid for by the Trump campaign, a voice-over warns viewers that Biden’s immigration policy “raises the possibility of a Hamas attack,” over a clip of a building being blown up. But the building shown in the ad was in Gaza, and was destroyed last year by a rocket fired from the Israeli military, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
[Many more similar examples snipped]
These ads use outdated or stock images as evidence to present migrants as violent and posing a danger to Americans. Trump and the Republican Party’s depiction of the border as seen in their advertising is part of a broader trend, according to Michelle Mittelstadt, director of communications for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “We’ve really seen, and not just in the U.S., but over the last decade, far-right, nationalist and populist parties have latched on to immigration as a very effective issue to motivate their base and turnout support.”
“Some thinking that used to be reserved for the dark places of the internet — like the great replacement theory … now you see them on the airwaves across the United States,” she said.
“Terrorists and illegal immigrants are invading our country,” a voice-over says in one characteristic ad, from a group boosting John Curtis in Utah’s Republican Senate primary. “Young women sold into prostitution, terrorists and illegal immigrants invading our country.”
[,,,]
….after Trump rallied Republicans to defeat a bipartisan bill that would have expanded immigration enforcement, Biden tightened border restrictions. Illegal crossings have fallen in recent months to the lowest levels since 2020, according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
[…]
When asked about the misleading ads, a spokesperson from Trump’s campaign wrote in an email: “The Washington Post should spend less time analyzing President Trump’s ads and more time focusing on the subject matter at hand — Kamala Harris’ deadly border invasion that has allowed more than 11 million illegal people to enter our country.”
The Biden administration has not admitted that many immigrants at the border. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 11 million undocumented immigrants were living in the United States as of 2022, 79 percent arriving before 2010. Biden has released more than 3.4 million migrants at the southern border to face immigration proceedings since he took office….
Since Harris secured the Democratic presidential nomination, recent data from AdImpact shows Republicans are heavily focusing on immigration and crime and accusing Harris of mishandling the U.S.-Mexico border, while Democrats are emphasizing abortion and the economy.
[…]
[…] Among all adults – relevant since there’s plenty of time to register – Harris and Tim Walz lead Trump and JD Vance by 50-45 percent. Among those now registered to vote, it’s 49-45 percent, a slight Harris advantage given sampling tolerances. And Harris has a 6-point lead among likely voters, 51-45 percent. […]
Commentary:
A very quick diary to highlight how today’s print media will do absolutely anything to create a close race. […]
[The Langer Research text quoted above] is exactly the same language ABC News uses in their reporting. ABC also uses Harris’s all adults 50-45 lead as the headline.
The Washington Post only used the lowest possible lead (registered voters) throughout their story with no mention of any other results even though they paid for them.
So my question is why has the Post changed its approach for this result, allowing it to present the following as the primary takeaway, and I repeat,
Given the margin of error in this poll, which tests only national support, Harris’s lead among registered voters is not considered statistically significant
If the Washington Post never presented likely voter models, I would be less suspicious. Or, if they explained why they chose not to present the likely voter results due to a concern about methodology, I would be less suspicious.
But to simply pretend a 6 point likely voter lead doesn’t exist, raises all types of red flags and to me, and in my opinion, shows an inherent bias in the Post’s coverage of the race and highlights why any coverage should be viewed skeptically.
[…] The people presenting the results simply can not be trusted to exclude their inherent or corporate biases.
[Update] I definitely didn’t expect this to be on the top of the rec list when I returned. […]
Based on a few comments, there seems to be a question as to whether these results are from the same poll. They are. […]
Democrats ran a little more than three dozen ads about immigration, compared with almost 700 for Republicans.
That’s certainly a telling detail.
Also this:
included visuals of cartels or anonymous gang members that are nearly a decade old […] around 10 percent of the 745 ads referenced migrants as invaders or the influx of migrants as an invasion.
Republicans are spending a lot of time and money to build up their immigration-as-threat narrative.
The Democratic National Convention is set to kick off Monday as Vice President Harris seeks to keep the momentum going from her party nearly one month after she replaced President Biden atop of the ticket.
The convention, held in Chicago, will feature a host of speakers for the four-day event, ranging from current White House, Congressional and state leaders to past presidents.
Convention programming will air live from the United Center in Chicago from 7 to 11 p.m. ET Monday through Thursday, according to organizers. [MSNBC will have more extensive coverage.
Here’s who’s on deck to speak at the DNC:
President Joe Biden will kick off the convention Monday night. […]
First lady Dr. Jill Biden will also speak on Monday night […]
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) will address the convention Monday […]
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D), […] will speak at the convention Tuesday. […]
Former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will each deliver primetime addresses to the convention, per organizers.
Former President Obama will address the convention Tuesday.
Former first lady Michelle Obama will also take the convention stage […] She will speak on the importance of civic engagement and voting, per organizers. Axios reported her address will be Tuesday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) will each address the convention at some point this week, as will Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) will deliver his vice presidential speech on Wednesday […]
Vice President Harris will deliver her presidential nomination acceptance speech Thursday and close out the convention. […]
Former President Trump campaigned in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Saturday and went after Vice President Harris’s physical appearance as his Republican allies have pushed him to instead focus on the policy differences with his political opponent.
“I am much better looking than her,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. “I’m a better-looking person than Kamala.” […]
There’s more, but you really don’t need to read it.
Canada’s two largest railroads are starting to shut down their shipping networks as a labor dispute with the Teamsters union threatens to cause lockouts or strikes that would disrupt cross-border trade with the U.S.
Both the Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National railroads, which haul millions of tons of freight across the border, have stopped taking certain shipments of hazardous materials and refrigerated products.
[…] On Tuesday, CPKC will stop all shipments that start in Canada and all shipments originating in the U.S. that are headed for Canada, the railroad said Saturday.
The Canadian Press reported that on Friday, Canadian National barred container imports from U.S. partner railroads.
Jeff Windau, industrials analyst for Edward Jones & Co., said his firm expects work stoppages to last only a few days, but if they go longer, there could be significant supply chain disruptions.
“If something would carry on more of a longer term in nature, then I think there are some significant potential issues just given the amount of goods that are handled each day,” Windau said. “By and large the rails touch pretty much all of the economy.”
The two railroads handle about 40,000 carloads of freight each day, worth about $1 billion, Windau said. Shipments of fully built automobiles and auto parts, chemicals, forestry products and agricultural goods would be hit hard, he said, especially with harvest season looming.
Both railroads have extensive networks in the U.S., and CPKC also serves Mexico. Those operations will keep running even if there is a work stoppage. […]
A more diverse media landscape is curbing the influence of right-wing media
“Why Right Wing Propaganda Can’t Save Trump’s Failing Campaign”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=wiiNlg6gS_8
It’s something you might say to a lover as a whirlwind romance comes to an end. But could you ever imagine saying it to… software?
Well, somebody did. When OpenAI tested out GPT-4o, its latest generation chatbot that speaks aloud in its own voice, the company observed users forming an emotional relationship with the AI — one they seemed sad to relinquish.
In fact, OpenAI thinks there’s a risk of people developing what it called an “emotional reliance” on this AI model, as the company acknowledged in a recent report.
“The ability to complete tasks for the user, while also storing and ‘remembering’ key details and using those in the conversation,” OpenAI notes, “creates both a compelling product experience and the potential for over-reliance and dependence.”
That sounds uncomfortably like addiction. And OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati straight-up said that in designing chatbots equipped with a voice mode, there is “the possibility that we design them in the wrong way and they become extremely addictive and we sort of become enslaved to them.”
John Morales@169 quoting Vox – with amendments to express Murati’s real attitude:
OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati straight-up said that in designing chatbots equipped with a voice mode, there is “the possibility that we design them in the wrong way andso they become extremely addictive and weour target users sort of become enslaved to them.”
After all (from John’s link):
Nevertheless, the company has already released the model, complete with voice mode, to some paid users, and it’s expected to release it to everyone this fall.
KGsays
Bekenstein Bound@173,
What Trump means (and what his audience hears) is: “I’m white and she’s not”.
What experts say about who has the world’s best health-care system
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=wfsJXo1h1G0
There are so many variables it is not possible to give a succint answer.
StevoRsays
Yeah, just what the world needs now!
Chinese and Philippine coast guard ships collided at sea, damaging at least two boats, in an encounter early on Monday near a new flashpoint in their increasingly alarming confrontations in the disputed South China Sea.
Both blamed the other for the collision near Sabina Shoal, a disputed atoll in the Spratly Islands, where overlapping claims are also made by Vietnam and Taiwan.
What Happens when Countries Lose Religion?” | Phil Zuckerman
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7Dr9GKuMYsg
Also, see Phil Zuckerman:
“Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment”
Wow. I might just be able to realx a bit. Maybe this is the end of 44 years of conservative populism and trickle-down hegemony. Maybe.
StevoRsays
Aussie Foxtel this is here but still part of Murdoch’s malignant media empire :
Foxtel CEO Patrick Delany has begun a series of meetings with Jewish leaders to “unreservedly apologise” after an image of him performing a Nazi salute came to light. On Sunday media outlet Crikey published the photograph taken on a “closed set” a decade ago when he was Fox Sports CEO. It shows him with his right arm raised outstretched above his head in a salute and two fingers of the other hand placed above his top lip to imitate Adolf Hitler’s moustache. Mr Delany today said the photo of him making an “inappropriate salute” was done in a circumstance where he was likening it to the gesture some Western Sydney Wanderers fans were using 10 years ago.
* Late last week, Sen. Bob Menendez officially ended his independent re-election campaign. The move comes on the heels of a jury finding him guilty on 16 felony counts. The New Jersey Democrat is also poised to resign, and Gov. Phil Murphy will fill the vacancy with his former chief of staff, George Helmy, who’ll serve until early January.
* The latest national and battleground state polling offered a fresh round of good news for Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic National Convention gets underway in Chicago. There’s also fresh polling pointing to increased Democratic enthusiasm about the 2024 race.
[…] * Missouri’s U.S. Senate race isn’t expected to be competitive, but actor John Goodman narrates a new ad for Marine veteran Lucas Kunce in his race against Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, and the video has generated some conversation. [video at the link]
* The New York Times reported that the Harris campaign is reserving $370 million in advertising “to begin after Labor Day and run through the November election, including $200 million on digital ads.” At least for now, the focus is on seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
* On a related note, it was of interest to see Donald Trump’s campaign also book TV airtime in Georgia — a state the GOP saw as slipping away from Democrats — for the remainder of the campaign season.
* Cornel West is struggling to get onto the presidential ballot in Arizona, but in a sign of the times, the far-left professor is getting some help from a group of lawyers with deep ties to the Republican Party.
As House Republicans release a woeful anti-Biden impeachment report, it’s clear that the party has failed on multiple levels.
American history is filled with examples of ridiculous congressional investigations, but the House GOP’s crusade against President Joe Biden is certainly among the most cringeworthy. Even plenty of Republicans have admitted as much.
Following months of humiliating failures, Politico reported in the spring that behind the scenes, GOP officials were quietly admitting that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer’s impeachment crusade had been “hobbled by embarrassing setbacks.” Punchbowl News, meanwhile, quoted a House Republican leadership aide who said Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan were “becoming the chairmen who cried wolf.”
The more they tried to get their investigation back on track, the more embarrassing their investigation became.
It now appears the entire effort has run its course and come to an ignominious end. NBC News reported:
The Republican-led House committees investigating whether to impeach President Joe Biden released their long-awaited report about their findings Monday morning, arguing that Biden has committed impeachable conduct but deferring to the full House on whether to pursue a formal impeachment.
The full, 291-page document is available online, but by any fair measure, it lands with a thud: The House Republicans’ report breaks no new ground and presented no credible evidence of wrongdoing. What’s more, Comer, Jordan, et al. released the findings while members are still on vacation and Capitol Hill is quiet, probably in the hopes of embarrassing the incumbent president ahead of his appearance at the opening night of the Democratic National Convention.
Of course, in order to actually embarrass Biden, the report would have to include damaging information. This one does not.
[…] GOP lawmakers failed to make a compelling case against a candidate who’s retiring anyway.
So, what happens now? In theory, the impeachment report will be referred to House Republican leaders who will decide whether to hold an impeachment vote against the president. In practice, GOP leaders know they don’t have the votes to impeach the president without credible evidence of wrongdoing, so this entire misguided ordeal will likely fade into oblivion.
As for Comer’s reputation, it appears unlikely to recover. The Kentuckian’s fellow Republicans have used words like “clueless” and “embarrassing” to describe his anti-Biden investigation, and the scope and scale of his fiasco won’t soon be forgotten.
[…] Trump doesn’t know how to talk about policy. Even if Trump could be convinced to pretend to care about governing, he’d quickly run into a related problem, which is even more serious: He can’t fake it well. Indeed, one of his signature issues is trade tariffs, and whenever he tries to talk about them, the Republican reminds the public that he still doesn’t understand his own idea at the most basic level.
Trump almost certainly knows his ideas are unpopular. The former president has some goals he’s interested in pursuing, but they’re not exactly the sort of things that win over swing voters. Among Trump’s priorities are tax breaks for the wealthy, pardons for politically aligned criminals, abortion restrictions, and the creation of a temporary American “dictatorship.” Even if one were inclined to put aside the radioactive unpopularity of the Project 2025 agenda — written in large part by members of Trump’s own team — the GOP nominee’s own stated ideas are political losers, too.
As Dan Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts, summarized last week, “This explains why Republicans in general and Trump in particular have become so flummoxed. The larger Republican party is keenly aware that Trump’s personal attacks on Harris will not redound to the GOP’s benefit. But neither can they talk about their actual policy platform because most of it is hideously unpopular.” […]
The larger context is that many of Trump’s fellow Republicans have urged him to stop spewing personal insults and old whacko claims, and they have urged him to focus on policies like economics and immigration. Trump totally messes up any “policy” issues he does try to speak about (like tariffs), so I’m not sure why his collaborators want him to go there.
I’m really looking forward to watching the DNC convention every night this week. There is so much hope, optimism and momentum for the Harris/Walz ticket and we actually have a good chance of winning in November. At the risk of being a Debby Downer, a few words of caution came out today that I think are worth keeping in mind — so that we are all prepared for potential problems that we’ll all need to fight hard to overcome as we move forward to WIN this election.
First, today’s New York Times has published a guest essay by Rachel Maddow in which she warns of a possible nightmare scenario for this year’s elections. She repeats what she has already explained on her show about how at least 70 election deniers are installed in election offices in key swing states; how some of these election officials have already tried to mess with election results; and how Trump and his cronies are already working to set the stage for stealing the 2024 election should he lose. She goes on to describe an all-to-real possibility on election night.
Imagine an election night this November in which the two parties are trading swing-state victories. The Democrats capture Nevada, while the Republicans take Arizona. The Republicans win the big prize of Pennsylvania, while the Democrats top them in Wisconsin and Michigan. The nation is waiting on Georgia. If Georgia goes red, it’s President Trump; if Georgia goes blue, it’s President Harris.
Then, local news headlines start to circulate. There are reports of unspecified “problems” in the vote in Fulton County. And in Gwinnett County. And in DeKalb, Coffee and Spalding Counties. Republican officials are refusing to certify the results in their counties. They say they are making “reasonable inquiries.”
As legal challenges wend through the courts, a wave of disinformation, confusion and propaganda swells, fueled by unproven claims that something is amiss in these Georgia counties, and also by similar noise — and possibly also certification refusals — in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada…
Under recently revised federal law, each state has until Dec. 11 to send official, certified state results to Washington for the Electoral College count. But if a state doesn’t meet that deadline, then what?
The point of these certification refusals may not be to falsify or flip a result, but simply to prevent the emergence of one. If one or more states fail to produce official results, blocking any candidate from reaching 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment prescribes Gerald L.K. Smith’s dream scenario: a vote in the newly elected House of Representatives to determine the presidency. Each state delegation would get one vote; today, Republicans control 26 state delegations; Democrats control 22; and two are evenly divided.
Maddow does offer some ideas for working to prevent this scenario from taking place:
A cleareyed look at Republicans’ handling of the administration of elections since Mr. Trump’s effort to overthrow the last election should prepare us: Refusals to certify results should not necessarily be seen as indicating real electoral problems; they are more likely part of a bad-faith strategy to mess with the democratic process.
Now is the time to get to know your local election board, especially if you live in a place where election denialism has taken hold, and where certification refusals may be coming. Public awareness and vigilance can make a difference. No one should be surprised when certification refusals happen or when they are then exploited to try to maximize chaos and upset.
Another way for us to prevent the Republicans from trying to steal the election again is to win SO BIG that their nefarious efforts won’t make any difference. And let’s make sure to not just win the White House but also hold the Senate and take back the House — which in Maddow’s scenario could play a key role in thwarting the Republicans.
More immediately, Raw Story has a new article up explaining how Chicago is preparing for potential violence at this week’s DNC Convention — describing a “powder keg” situation right now.
Local and national law enforcement officials are ready for battle ahead of this week’s Democratic National Convention, and their presence is, seemingly, everywhere on the ground and water and in the air.
While national party leaders, local officials and the thousands of delegates descending on Chicago are hoping for peace, everyone is braced for violence.
Tens of thousands of protesters are expected in Chicago this week, from Gaza advocates to Trump supporters. Raw Story describes how the city is being flooded with extra bike cops, motorcycle cops, horse cops and boat cops on Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. Concrete and steel barriers have been erected at areas of key DNC activity; tow trucks, security cameras, drones, helicopters and air quality sensors will also be used. The city is even deploying a large fleet of snowplows to provide added security.
I pray that the protests remain peaceful this week. It sounds like the city is doing everything it can to make sure that happens. But even so, we should be prepared for the corporate media to be giving as much attention, if not more, to the protests than to the DNC Convention itself. And we should brace ourselves now for the Trump campaign and the corporate media to use these protests to present the Democratic Party as being in disarray — and to scare off potential Harris/Walz supporters. I hope that won’t happen, but I can easily see it happening.
Regardless, I for one am still looking forward to watching the convention. Let’s all work hard to use the momentum from the convention as a jumping off point for a BIG victory in November — pushing aside all the predictable obstacles that will be in our way. We can be clear-eyed about the challenges but hopeful for the possibilities.
Once described by comedian John Hodgeman as tasting of “pencil shavings and heartbreak,” Jeppson’s Malört is a polarizing wormwood and anise-flavored liqueur that’s kind of a secret handshake among Chicagoans. Originated and distilled in the city, its strong taste — with notes of rubber bands, licorice and grapefruit — makes it something of a rite passage among local drinkers…
JMsays
@190 Lynna, OM:
The larger context is that many of Trump’s fellow Republicans have urged him to stop spewing personal insults and old whacko claims, and they have urged him to focus on policies like economics and immigration. Trump totally messes up any “policy” issues he does try to speak about (like tariffs), so I’m not sure why his collaborators want him to go there.
There is a group of Republicans that live in such an echo chamber that they don’t understand that their policy isn’t popular at large. That it doesn’t solve any of the problems the US has. They don’t grasp that Trump sounds bad when he talks policy because they think hard right policy is popular and it won’t matter if he mangles some details.
There is also a group that know he will come across badly and want him to lose decisively. Badly enough that there can’t be any credible complaints or any return, that they can begin to bury Trump. For these people having him lose by a small margin is worst case. They can’t say that publicly but they can recommend things that will be bad for his campaign.
Retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig — a longtime conservative jurist — on Monday endorsed Vice President Harris’s bid for president, saying she’s the only major candidate who “can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law.”
“As a result, I will unhesitatingly vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidency of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris,” Luttig wrote in a statement obtained by CNN on Monday.
In breaking with his decades-long GOP voting pattern, Luttig said he is prioritizing the safeguarding of democracy over any other policy issue.
“In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election as to her policy views on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be,” he said.
Luttig — who was named to the bench by former President George H. W. Bush — has become one of the most prominent conservative voices vocally opposing Trump.
After testifying before the January 6 select committee about efforts to overturn the election, Luttig has repeatedly made the case that the former president is unfit for office and, according to Luttig’s reading of the Constitution, ineligible to serve as commander in chief under the 14th Amendment.
Luttig said members of his party “have chosen as their standard bearer the one man who is singularly unfit to embody and represent not only to the Nation, but to the world, America’s sacred Democracy, Constitution, and Rule of Law.”
In his statement Monday, Luttig criticized political pundits and “opportunists” who try to convince the American public that “the only thing that matters in this presidential election is the candidates’ different positions on the sundry policies of the day.”
“All, as if nothing had come before,” he continued. “We Americans know all too well what has come before. We understand what the political class does not want us to understand. That in the presidential election of 2024, the candidates’ policy differences are the least that matters to the United States of America.”
birgerjohanssonsays
During Trump’s Saturday rally in Pennsylvania he went on at least a dozen tangents during the speech.
He never was very coherent but now he is losing it.
Last week, JD Vance appeared on almost every Sunday show in what we can only describe as a douchebag blitz. Curiously missing, however, was “Fox News Sunday.” This week, though, Vance retreated to Fox’s cozy duvet cover embrace.
What Vance was not expecting was host Shannon Bream actually asking questions about the campaign he is causing to implode […] [video at the link]
After playing a video of former presidential candidate Nikki Haley and political strategist Karl Rove denouncing the insular strategy of the Trump/Vance campaign, Vance explained that he’s delusional about who their campaign is appealing to.
VANCE: I think Ambassador Haley is right that we have to reach a broader group of voters, but I think that we’re doing exactly that, Shannon. […] We’ve been making a very simple argument. That when Kamala Harris became president, or vice president I should say, she caused policies that led to a rapid increase in inflation and a rise in chaos around the world. When Donald Trump was president we had stable prices, we had prosperity, we had higher take-home pay for American workers, and we had peace across the world.
To refer to Vance as the Trump campaign’s “Baghdad Bob” would be an insult to that oft used comparison.
The argument of “Are you better now than you were four years ago?”, really loses its power when we were all suffering through a pandemic and scrambling for toiletries. While voters sometimes have short-term memories, we can all remember what that was like.
On a separate note, you could also tell the Trump/Vance team is still using its Biden oppo scripts with his name crossed out when Vance accidentally, prematurely called Harris the “president,” while suggesting she has a level of vice-presidential power/control not seen since Dick Cheney.
Vance was also clearly raw that Harris’s campaign has come across joyful and happy, instead of petty and vain like the Trump/Vance campaign, whining that “the media has been giving Kamala Harris a three-week ‘love-fest.’”
Bream then brought up the return of sex-pest Corey Lewandowski to the Trump campaign, and the numerous donors and supporters who keep pointing out that the biggest liability to Trump’s election is Trump himself. Vance kept insisting that there was nothing wrong with their campaign, which prompted Bream to confront Vance with the polling reality.
BREAM: Our Fox News polling does show the economy is the number one issue and that people do give you all the edge on that. And yet this is what we have out from some new polling out of the New York Times. They say Ms. Harris is now leading Mr. Trump among likely voters in Arizona 50 to 45 and is even edged ahead of Mr. Trump in North Carolina, a state Mr. Trump won four years ago, while narrowing his lead significantly in Georgia and Nevada. What is the administration doing, the campaign doing, with that data as it comes in? I mean these are critical states that you got to have to have a path to 270 [electoral votes]. Are there any pivots? Are there any, you know reconfiguring of what you’re doing in the strategy? Because you talk about your message, but is it not landing?
Vance tried to discount this polling, and then he just lied:
VANCE: If you talk to insiders in the Kamala Harris campaign, they’re very worried about where they are because the American people just don’t buy the idea that Kamala Harris — who has been vice president for three and a half years — is somehow going to tackle the inflation crisis in a way tomorrow that she hasn’t for the past 1,300 days.
And then he made this creepy, weird JD Vance analogy that didn’t actually make sense:
VANCE: Giving Kamala Harris control over inflation policy, Shannon, it’s like giving Jeffrey Epstein control over human trafficking policy.
[…] Kind of weird for Trump’s running mate to bring up the name of Jeffrey Epstein. Does he really want to do that? [Screen grab of Trump and Epstein together]
[…] Bream, after barely containing her shock at Vance bringing up Epstein, noted a new ABC/Washington Post poll that gave Harris a five-point national lead. Be it denial or eagerness to please Trump […] Vance continued to ignore facts.
VANCE: Let me just say one final point on this, Shannon, because I think it’s important: Consistently what you’ve seen […] is that the media uses fake polls to drive down Republican turnout […] create dissension and conflict with Republican voters. I’m telling you every single person who’s watching this: the Trump campaign is in a very, very good spot. We’re going to win this race.
Term limits for New York Times columnists, please.
Does anyone really take Maureen Dowd seriously anymore? Just asking because her latest New York Times column (gift link though we feel a little bad about wasting one on it) reads like complete fantasy, finding Deep Rifts in the seeming party unity as the Democratic National Convention gets underway in Chicago today. (And Wonkette is here!)
In her weird dystopian fan fiction, the party bigwigs conspired to do a coup on Joe Biden, installed Kamala Harris as the nominee, and are arriving in Chicago seething with resentment for each other over the palace intrigue.
Here’s an example:
It’s going to be a glorious coronation — except that everyone’s mad at one another.
Top Democrats are bristling with resentments even as they are about to try to put on a united front at the United Center in the Windy City.
As Jeff Tiedrich points out, Maureen Dowd followed up her column “Lord Almighty, Joe, Let It Go” (“It makes me sad that Biden doesn’t see what’s inescapable: If he doesn’t walk away gracefully right now, he will likely go down as a pariah and ruin his legacy”) with “The Dems Are Delighted. But A Coup Is Still A Coup.”
[…] Now that Biden has done exactly what she pined for and stepped away from the campaign — and the transition to a new candidate has gone so well that Democrats are consciously reminding each other not to get too giddy — Dowd insists throughout the column that behind all the excitement and joy, everyone at the top of the party is looking to shiv each other.
To be sure, Dowd at least presents the “coup” as a grim necessity, the “right thing to do,” while she insists that it was nonetheless “a jaw-dropping putsch.” The party leadership acted for the good of the country and “decided to put the welfare of the party — and the country — ahead of the president’s ego.” Did Joe Biden have any choice in the matter? Not in Dowd’s telling, and according to her version, Biden didn’t so much pass the torch as have it wrested from his brittle grasp, leaving him befuddled when Harris “deftly cemented her position as the nominee,” causing Dems to have a joygasm at the new sense of possibility.
Poor Joe Biden, in Dowd’s version, is somehow not even the guy who endorsed Harris 20 minutes after he announced he was getting out.
[…] Never mind the extensive reporting about how Biden actually spent the days before his announcement meeting with advisers and coming to the decision to drop out of the race. In Dowd’s hatefic, it’s a more exciting narrative to claim that suddenly he was run over by a truck.
The deed done, the party is now praising Biden while his corpse lies bleeding before them, or more accurately, while he’s having a fine old time at events for Harris, and joking with reporters and so on. It’s been a while since we’ve read the Shakespeare play, but we honestly don’t recall Julius Caesar being so happy after his ides of March party.
Not that Dowd is at all trying to force current events into a tragic narrative or anything, apart from how she portrays Nancy Pelosi as Brutus, so consumed with guilt that she has difficulty admitting she did a coup:
One of the most ruthless and successful tacticians in congressional history seemed sheepish about knifing her pal, and conflicted over whether to take credit. Et tu, Nancy? Biden must have thought.
Or maybe there wasn’t a coup so much as a process of persuasion and nobody has a dagger sticking out of his shoulder, but that sure would be boring on stage, even in iambic pentameter.
According to Dowd, the Obamas and Bidens don’t actually like each other and haven’t for years. Joe Biden, she says,
already resented Obama for shoving him aside for Hillary, and he resented Hillary for squandering that opportunity and losing to Trump. Even though Obama tried to do everything quietly to protect his saintly status, Joe was furious that Obama was sidelining him twice.
Does Dowd bother letting us know how she supposedly knows all this? She does at least occasionally admit she’s speculating about how Biden and other players “must” feel. But almost all of it is presented as if Dowd is deeply familiar with all the inside dope, despite not referring to any insiders at all — not so much as an off the record whisper from an unnamed insider. The longest reference to any source she provides is one of Donald Trump’s deranged fantasies about Joe Biden plotting to crash the convention — he’s already speaking tonight, so he may not have to sneak in — to undo the “coup.”
Does Dowd have such a vast network of inside sources that she simply takes an oracular view without actually saying she has them, or does she just make shit up so people will think so?
In any case, even while Democrats are having a ball in Chicago this week, don’t go feeling jealous of them. They’re all on the verge of strangling each other, mmm-hmm.
Brony @200, that is so pathetic. I’ve seen the Trump campaign post whacko AI shit, but this is really worse.
An excerpt from the article you referenced:
[…] The bats flapping around in Trump’s skull posted to his failing Truth Social web site 58 times in 24 hours on Sunday, and at one point, 22 posts an hour. […]
Trump workshopped some new names for Vice President Harris: Commie Kamala, Comrade Kamala, and seemed to settle on simply calling her a Communist […] But nothing can top the creepy, delusional self-wankery that was posting a fake endorsement from Taylor Swift, plus a bunch of AI generated “Swifties for Trump.”
[…] “SHOCK: After the cancellation of the Taylor Swift concert being targeted by ISIS, Swifties have determined that they want a strong leader in the White House. The Swifties for Trump movement is real!”
Not all Swifties are young girls, but Trump sure did go for them looking like a crowd of underage beauty contestants, didn’t he?
Also, we thought Trump eradicated ISIS? And um, in case you’ve been in a coma, in a cave, under a rock, with no internet connection, Taylor Swift fucking hates that guy. She Tweeted during the George Floyd protests:
“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.”
And then guess what? We did!
[…] Trump knows damn well she does not endorse him, once telling Variety editor Ramin Setoodeh, “I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!”
So is Taylor Swift going to sue the living shit out of Trump for creepily using her name and likeness without her consent in this way? The Tweet does say satire on it, so that’s like a free “get out of being sued” card, right? […]
Dunno, but now our skin is crawling and we need a shower!
[At Trump’s] rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, for example. The New York Times reported:
Trump said polls suggested he was at “93 percent” although it was not clear what that number was referring to. The former president said he responded by saying: “So why are we having an election? They didn’t have an election. Why are we having an election?”
The context for these off-the-cuff comments was a bit of a mess. The GOP candidate, holding a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, was speaking about inflation when he apparently had a thought.
“You know, they do polls on this stuff, and I’m at like 93%,” Trump said, referring to surveys that apparently exist in his imagination. “I said, ‘So why are we having an election? They didn’t have an election. Why are we having an election?’”
[…] Honestly, it’s not clear exactly what Trump was trying to say. Evidently, he’s still outraged that the Democratic Party didn’t go through a traditional nominating process before rallying behind Vice President Kamala Harris. The “they” in his quote, in other words, referred to his Democratic rivals.
It was less obvious who Trump was referring to with “we.”
To be sure, it was a rhetorical question, but “we” are having an election because that’s how we make decisions in the United States.
It’s tempting to think Trump was complaining about the asymmetry — he had to go through GOP primaries and caucuses, nearly all of which he won with relative ease — but he was speaking entirely in the present tense. “Why are we having an election?” couldn’t refer to Republican nominating contests that wrapped up months ago.
Charitable observers might be inclined to shrug this off, and as best as I can tell, the comments didn’t generate a lot of pickup over the weekend. But let’s not forget that Trump has spent recent weeks repeatedly saying that he and his political operation “don’t need” votes — a curious comment from a candidate for public office — which has dovetailed with his comments a few weeks ago that his Christian supporters “won’t have to vote anymore” if he wins a second term.
Soon after, given a chance to walk that back, the GOP nominee instead doubled-down on the rhetoric.
This is the same White House hopeful who’s raised the prospect of creating what he’s pitched as a temporary American “dictatorship,” refused to accept his electoral defeat four years ago, talked about “terminating” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions, and arguing that his rivals shouldn’t be “allowed” to run against him.
It’s against this backdrop that Trump asked his supporters, “Why are we having an election?” as if this were a legitimate question. It isn’t.
Am I the only one who is immediately reminded of the fact that that man has never cared about obtaining a woman’s consent before forcing himself — in this case, figuratively — on her?
[…] Kyiv struck a third bridge across the River Seym in Kursk, Kremlin-backed and independent Russian sources said on Monday, after Ukraine’s air force on Sunday said it had already destroyed two bridges.
The latest bridge to reportedly go down, around the village of Karyzh, west of Glushkovo and Zvannoye, may be the final straw that stops the supply of military personnel in the area.
Military experts quoted by the independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo said this could force Russian soldiers to leave this territory, resulting in the Ukrainian Armed Forces gaining control of almost 700 square kilometers.
According to BBC, there are already 2 pontoon bridges erected. As Ukraine troops advance to take over ~700 additional square kilometers, those bridges won’t last long….
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said over the weekend he was planning to attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago “incognito” after shaving his mustache…
Later in the video Lindell, 63, appears to take a phone call from someone who works at CNN and asks if they would be interested in a live segment of the mustache removal, only to apparently be answered with a no.
“No? Ok well this is serious, we’re going to shave it off nationally, you can be live on CNN, it will be epic, epic I tell you,” Lindell says in the video…
Mr Murray stated: “I did say to the police, ‘are you seriously telling me I could be arrested for playing the Bible quietly on a screen?’.
“I was told, ‘it’s offensive and homophobic material we are against’.” […] Romans chapter one, verses 26-27
[…]
A [Lancashire Police] statement added: “It appears that the officer has misinterpreted the Public Order Act and we have apologised to the cafe owner for any distress we may have caused.”
So the cafe owner wasn’t arrested, and the police even apologized.
Naturally Breitbart, DailyFail, and Christian outlets stoked an outraged mob.
Say, what WAS this quiet Bible passage they all danced around?
Romans 1:26-27, which lead up to verse 32:
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
[…]
the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death
On 14 Jan 2013, the Government agreed to reform Section 5 […] The Christian Institute spearheaded the Reform Section 5 campaign to get the word ‘insulting’ removed from Section 5 of the Public Order Act
The Christian Institute […] promoting a conservative evangelical Christian […] Biblical inerrancy. […] it is most notable for its campaigns against homosexuality and gay rights.
Rowan Atkinson has urged the House of Lords to vote against a Government attempt to delete a free speech protection from a ‘homophobic hatred’ offence.
That excuse clause was originally inserted by Tory Lord Waddington. CI lists a few ‘persecuted’ devout Christians they were so concerned about. PinkNews reported such hate speech laws had only been used 20 times in 30 years, and that Labour-party “Justice minister Maria Eagle described it as ‘undesirable and unnecessary; it does not add anything to the law as it would stand without its inclusion.'”
Back to Rowan’s video.
(0:44): because of the undoubetedly privileged position that is afforded to those of a high public profile
(5:49): For me, the best way to increase society’s resistence to insulting or offensive speech is to allow a lot more of it. As with childhood diseases, you can better resist those germs to which you have been exposed.
That was the UK’s Covid policy. We need lots more homophobia! We just haven’t been exposed enough yet.
(7:32): media-stoked outrage to which the police feel under terrible pressure to react.
Poor police, always forced to carry out left-wing crackdowns. /s
(8:04): they don’t seem to need a real victim. They need only to make the judgment that somebody could have been offended if they had heard or read what has been said.
This offence has the following statutory defences: (a) The defendant had no reason to believe that there was any person within hearing or sight who was likely to be alarmed or distressed by his action. […] (c) The conduct was reasonable.
Also: Huh, enacted in 1986. Outrage and reform in 2013. At last that long national nightmare was over.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
^ Forgot to the BBC title: “Christian cafe ‘warned over homophobic Bible verses'”
It was a warning, hence not arrested.
CompulsoryAccount7746 @ 211
“Rowan aligned with CI a few years earlier, too”
Aaaaargh! Have all elderly Brit comedians gone nuts? Will Stephen Fry join Opus Dei next?
birgerjohanssonsays
A Democratic party convention in Chicago? I don’t like the sound of that. At least mayor Haley is not around anymore, but Democrats are good at finding novel wsys to screw up.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Trump posts repugnant video altering an Alanis Morissette’s song to claim Kamala Harris used oral sex to become Democratic nominee for president
a parody of […] “Ironic,” […] altered lyrics include: “She spent her whole damn life down on her knees. To be commander in chief. That’s how you say please.[“] […] segments of the video show Harris smiling and wiping her mouth […] The video concludes with an image of Harris making a hand gesture that is crudely interpreted to imply a reference to penis size
The video itself. https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112985957072984765
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain
Trump is like a malign version of South Park – when you think you have adapted to the level of gross, you get hit by something worse.
whheydtsays
Re: birgerjohannson @ #216…
Mayor Richard Daley, perhaps?
If you’re thinking of 1968, that would be Richard J. Daley. If you’re thinking any time from 1989 to 2011, it would be Richard M. Daley.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@birgerjohansson #215:
Will Stephen Fry join Opus Dei next?
Alongside Rowan the other celebrity attached to the ‘insult’ campaign was… Stephen Fry, though annoyingly, outlets kept alluding Fry’s “support” without quoting or citing what he actually said. Apparently just tweeted.
Will PLATO Be The Mission To Finally Find Earth 2.0?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TofP5yeqNLg
It is due to launch in 2026 and is expected to find a dozen Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like stars during a four-year mission. Kudos to the European Space Agency.
StevoRsays
Biden speaking now at the Democartic electoin launch 0- live ABC new s coverage here :
Phil Donahue was a media personality and author, described as a talk show pioneer. His TV show Donahue was broadcast 1967-1996 but his career goes back to the 1950s.
birgerjohanssonsays
Rape and sexual assault | The Guardian
I just wanted peace’: my 35-year fight to my abusive father to justice |
British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch — freshly acquitted from a decade-long trial — had invited his work colleagues aboard a trip through the Mediterranean coast when a freak storm saw the yacht sink within moments. Fifteen people escaped from the sinking vessel. The search for the missing continues. Here’s what we know so far:
StevoRsays
Another good article on Gliese 12 a Venus- sized but possibly more massive exoplanet just forty light years fronmus orbitingan M4 red dwarf star & previously mentioned here @ #79. :
Astronomers are constantly adding to the ever-expanding catalog of more than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets. But Gliese 12 b, located 40 light-years away in the constellation Pisces, could be the most sensational find to date. Its discovery is outlined in a paper published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The planet, which is a bit smaller than Earth and similar in size to Venus, has an estimated surface temperature of 107 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius). That’s admittedly warmer than Earth’s mean temperature of 59 F (15 C), but cooler than many other observed exoplanets. And that temperature means it could, conceivably, have liquid water trickling over its surface.
However, while exciting, the discovery of such a potentially habitable world comes with a caveat: Gliese 12 b may not have an atmosphere. While it could very well have an Earth-like atmosphere, it could also have one more like that of Venus — a planet certainly not known for its habitability — or may have no atmosphere at all. Or perhaps it could even have an atmosphere unlike one we have ever seen before.
For me, the question of whether reddwarfs can actually sustain any earth-like habitable planets or not is one of the biggets in astronomy and one I would most love to find answered – hopefully in the positive.
StevoRsays
PS. This is the one where #83 John Morales asked :
As Anton would put it (I speculate, of course, but not without good warrant) “New Data Suggests Gliese 12 B Almost Became Earth”. (An almost perfect parallel)
A clumsily crafted bot network posting about the Linda Reynolds and Brittany Higgins defamation trial likely originated from foreign influencers wielding culturally divisive topics to sow discord, an ABC NEWS Verify analysis has found. Over the weekend, eagle-eyed users on X (formerly Twitter) noticed dozens of accounts posting similarly worded messages of support for Senator Reynolds, who is suing Ms Higgins over social media posts she claims damaged her reputation.
Thinking aout Trappist 1 findings, stellar flares and what was discussed in #235 :
If M dwarf (red dwarf) flares are really bad for the planets closer in could they also actually be good for the planets further out making them warmer and more habitable due to the extra heat and energy they provide? Any studies, work, modelling done on that?
How could an ecology and different lifeforms in it develop if they had to rely on occassional irregular but very high intensity spikes of energy, heat, light, radiation followed by prolonged periods of very low energy levels – very irregular extreme feast or famine conditions?
“I believe leaders must display dignity. I believe that leaders must tell the truth,” Kerr explained. “I believe that leaders must care for and love the people that they are leading.
“If you look for those qualities in your friends or a boss or an employee or your child’s teacher or your mayor, then shouldn’t you want those same qualities in your president?” he asked to applause. “And when you think about it that way, this is no contest. With Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, I see all those qualities.”
Stevo R @ 233, 234, 235, 237, 240,
The results from PLATO will become available at the end of this decade, and the Earth-like worlds discovered will be far more likely to be suitable.
Remember, red dwarf planets anywhere close to the ‘temperate zone’ around the star will be tidally locked (or pseudo-licked like Mercury) with a very slow axial rotation. This is very bad for the chances of a strong long-lived magnetic field (coriolis forces in the molten core are needed).
G- and even some K-type stars will be much better suited. PLATO is the first telescope with the capacity to detect them.
BTW the planets of Tau Ceti Epsilon Eridani and the two suns of Alpha Centauri might be possible to study by future Earth-based telescopes but I am not familiar with the capacities pf the next generation of instruments.
Alpha Centauri probably has Mercury analogs (considering the statistics from red dwarwes), wether cooler planets exist further out is another matter.
When Ron Johnson starts talking about Tim Walz’s wedding anniversary and Tiananmen Square, you know the Republican smear campaign has gone off the rails.
In March 2021, The New York Times described Sen. Ron Johnson as “the Republican Party’s foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation.” It’s been discouraging to see the Wisconsin senator spend the three years that followed proving the criticism true.
A month ago, for example, Johnson appeared on Fox News to talk about the assassination attempt that targeted Donald Trump. “I’ve seen some pretty interesting video on the internet by experts that certainly calls into question what the FBI is telling us about a single shooter,” the GOP lawmaker said, apparently indifferent to the fact that those discredited videos were spread by fringe conspiracy theorists.
A month later, Johnson again spoke to Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, and as The Independent noted, the Wisconsin Republican shared some similarly weird thoughts.
Republican Senator Ron Johnson attacked Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz over his ties to China, claiming it’s a red flag that the “radical leftist” got married “on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.”
No, seriously. Johnson — a man Senate Republicans put in charge of the Senate Homeland Security Committee for six years — told a national television audience with a straight face, “It’s very strange. [Walz] got married on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. He’s gone to China. He’s taught in China. He’s got deep connections to China.”
Hours later, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer appeared on Fox News and suggested that it’s “very possible” that China has been “grooming” Walz for decades. […]
[…] Republican efforts have become so utterly ridiculous that they’re literally unbelievable. The smear of Walz’ military service was ugly and wrong; the Somali flag story was idiotic; the tampons story was worse; and practically every other line of attack the GOP has come up with has proven to be false or exaggerated.
And that apparently led Johnson and Comer to start pushing weird rhetoric about the governor and China.
The question for voters is straightforward: If the Democratic vice presidential nominee is so awful, why are his Republican critics stuck peddling nonsense?
As part of Vance’s Herculean quest to come off as slightly less, err, weird, he’s bringing his dog Atlas on the campaign trail. But his approach to holding Atlas’ leash has opened an entirely new can of worms…
On Friday, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance hard-launched his German shepherd Atlas—named after the book by libertarian nerds’ patron saint, Ayn Rand—with a video, announcing he was hitting the campaign trail with him…
Given the pace and magnitude of these rule changes, can anyone stop the board from empowering election deniers ahead of November?
While much of the news media is focused this week on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, I’ve got Georgia on my mind. Why? Because the Georgia State Election Board, during its meeting Monday, considered even more rules and amendments to existing rules governing the state’s elections.
Over the last two weeks the board — composed of a Republican chair, three Donald Trump loyalists praised by the former president as “pit bulls,” and a lone Democrat — pushed ahead with two new concerning actions. First, it approved a new rule that allows county election boards to delay certifying their results while conducting “reasonable inquiries.” Then, it voted to direct Georgia’s attorney general to investigate an already-settled complaint about Fulton County’s 2020 ballot tabulation errors. (The state’s AG, Chris Carr, advised the board before its vote that reopening a complaint would be unlawful and released a formal written opinion Monday stating the board has no right to direct him to conduct any such investigation.)
[…] At Monday’s meeting, it approved an amendment to an existing rule proposed by Cobb County GOP Chair Salleigh Grubbs. As laid out in Grubbs’ petition, the amendment requires county boards to conduct a precinct-by-precinct “reconciliation” of votes in which they must “compare the total number of ballots cast to the total number of unique voter ID numbers.” It further requires that if there is any discrepancy between the two, no matter how small or non-outcome-determinative, an investigation must be launched. “No votes shall be counted from that precinct” until the results of that investigation are presented to a county board, the petition states.
But that’s not all. The so-called Grubbs Rule also empowers county-level election commissioners to “examine all election-related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results.” That lesser-known feature of the rule has been flagged to me by voting rights lawyers and activists as not just a way to delay or withhold certification, but more significantly, a potential means to collect “evidence” to perpetuate another “big lie” should Vice President Kamala Harris win the presidential election in Georgia. [video at the link]
[…] the ultraconservative “voter fraud conspiracy” group True the Vote, which has been focused lately on challenging voter registrations in multiple states, […] in a celebratory tweet, the group praised the Georgia election board for establishing “a common sense audit trail” in passing the Grubbs Rule. That there will be a need for an audit in any specific Georgia county, […] is simply assumed.
And so, Georgians barrel toward a November election where their election board has approved a series of arcane, but dangerous, procedures aimed at avoiding county-level certification and fueling tales of fraud and woe. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been stripped of his role on the board, and short of certifying the state’s results without wayward counties, may be unable to do much. It’s not clear Carr or Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp can stop the board either (although Kemp has received a complaint from the former Fulton County Election Board chair asking him to remove three board members for their unlawful conduct). […]
As the FBI confirms that Iran hacked the Trump campaign, the Republican operation’s assessment of the crime is badly at odds with its line from 2016.
It was 10 days ago when Donald Trump’s campaign said that it had been hacked by an Iranian group in June. As it turns out, the claims were apparently true. NBC News reported:
The U.S. government has formally endorsed former President Donald Trump’s claim that Iran hacked his campaign. In a joint statement Monday, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Iran was behind attempts this year to hack presidential campaigns of both political parties.
[…] The fact that the joint statement referenced the “campaigns” was notable in part because Team Trump apparently wasn’t the only target. NBC News’ report added, “The same hackers were alleged by Google to have targeted the Biden-Harris campaign before President Joe Biden ended his run for re-election, but it’s not clear whether they were breached. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ campaign previously said it had no indication it was hacked.”
Iran, meanwhile, has denied any wrongdoing.
To date, news organizations have not published any of the information obtained from Trump’s political operation, which is certainly in line with the Republican campaign’s appeals.
“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our democratic process,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement when the allegations first reached the public.
Team Trump added, “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.” [video at the link]
[…] There is, however, a disconnect between the message and the messenger. As Robert Schlesinger explained in a piece for The New Republic:
I know 2016 was an awfully long time ago — almost a decade, which in Trump years feels like several lifetimes — but one doesn’t have to dig too deeply in the memory hole to recall that Trump then took a more sanguine view of foreign interference. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing [from Hillary Clinton’s personal server], I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press,” he said in a news conference that July. He later tried to dismiss the comment as a joke, but you know who took it seriously? Russia. On or around that day, according to a subsequent indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller, Russia started trying to find those emails.
Quite right. In 2016, when it was Russia targeting the U.S. presidential election and exposing materials stolen from Democratic computers, Trump celebrated WikiLeaks, cheered on his benefactors in Moscow and publicly urged Americans to embrace the hack and its ill-gotten gains.
At the time, it was Democrats who issued statements such as, “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
And it was Trump who effectively said, “I don’t care.”
As far as the Republican is concerned, documents obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to sow chaos throughout our democratic process, must be rejected — unless they benefit his quest for power.
President Biden left Chicago early this morning and flew to California, where he and his family will spend the rest of Democratic convention week vacationing in Santa Ynez.
For those who don’t watch or will only see parts of the convention, I want to make it easy to catch up in Morning Memo. So here goes with a few video clips and links to TPM’s deeper coverage:
[video snippets available at the link]
[Excerpts: “Harris and Doug Emhoff join the Bidens on stage to close out night one of the DNC. Harris appears to tell Biden she loves him.”
Warnock: “I need my neighbor’s children to be okay so that my children will be okay. I need all of my neighbor’s children to be okay … the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza … those in Ukraine … I need American children on both side of the track to be ok”
Democrats are chanting “lock him up” during a Hillary Clinton speech. Need a moment to process this.]
[…] the first night of the DNC helped highlight the qualities Democrats are trying to zero in on: sane, policy-focused politics.
The DNC capped off the night with an emotional passing of the torch from President Biden to his VP, Harris.
Here are some highlights from the first night of the convention:
The COVID-19 Pandemic
Democrats started the night’s attacks on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with a segment focused on the former president’s botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic. […]
Speakers also highlighted the ways the Biden-Harris presidency rescued the nation and revived the economy after taking the White House in 2021.
Trump’s Presidency
The COVID segment transitioned easily into attacks on Trump’s presidency, including his record on the economy. […]
Unions
A handful of union leaders took the stage Monday night as well, highlighting a key accomplishment of the Biden-Harris administration. Biden has been dubbed the most pro-union president in history by many active in the labor community. […]
Project 2025
Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow came out on the stage with a giant book — a copy of The Project 2025 itself. [that was a really big book she was carrying, video at the link]
[…] this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.”
She read a sentence from the Project 2025 document, highlighting the Trump campaign’s plan to fire civil servants and federal employees.
Rep. Jim Clyburn also took a hit at Project 2025 later in the evening, calling it “Jim Crow 2.0.” […] [video at the link]
Breaking The Glass Ceiling
[…] In her speech, Hillary Clinton reminisced about her own presidential campaign while hyping Harris — who, if elected, would become the first woman U.S. president — as the future of the country. […] [video at the link]
Reproductive Freedom
[…] Listeners heard harrowing stories from several women about their experiences getting denied abortions and traumatic stories highlighting the importance of a woman’s right to choose.
“JD Vance says women should stay in violent mariages and that pregnancies resulting from rape are simply inconvenient. Their policies give rapists more rights than their victims. That’s not inconvenient. It’s just plain wrong,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said. “All women should have freedom to make their own decisions. Freedom over their own bodies. Freedom about whether to pursue IVF.” [video at the link]
Later, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) put the party’s approach in simple terms:
“We believe that a patient’s room is too small and cramped a space for a woman, her doctor, and the United States government,” Warnock said. “That’s too many people in the room.” [video at the link]
Passing The Torch
The last remarks of the night came from President Biden.
Biden stepped out to meet an exuberant crowd, who wouldn’t let him start his speech for several minutes as they cheered, “We Love Joe!” and “Thank you, Joe!” [video at the link]
In a lengthy speech, the president highlighted the Biden-Harris administration’s success over the past four years.
“Because of you, we’ve had one of the most extraordinary four years of progress ever, period. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean Kamala and me,” Biden said.
As he talked about his legacy, Biden also made it clear that Harris and Walz will continue the legacy of making this country a better place by preserving democracy and by continuing his administration’s progressive agenda.
“Democracy has prevailed. And now democracy must be preserved,” Biden said. [video at the link]
StevoRsays
Via good fb friend* who shares a LOT of Climate Global Overheating stuff :
Dear media ,whatever you do, do not tell people the full truth when covering the yacht tragedy in Italy. Do not tell your viewers that 2023 was the hottest year on record and extreme weather is increasing all over the world. Keep. It. Quiet.
(An newspaper article then follows with the headline : “Leathal waterspouts in the Med tied to climate change”
.* Not the same person – Matthew Todd – who wrote the above. Couldn’t find that article on google search.
StevoRsays
@242. birgerjohansson : Yes, that’s true although there’s still so much we don’t know and there’s always libration and its equivalent here along withtidal interactiosn bewteen planets and cores may roatate differnetly beneath surfaces as Venus has a contrats inatmosphere vs planetary surface circulation etc .. too. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration )
I would loev to learn more about these closer star system eg Tau Ceti, Epilon Eridani, Epsilon Indi, Alpha & Proxima cen etc .. so much.
The first night of the Democratic National Convention ended with a valedictory speech from President Joe Biden who expressed his rousing support for the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz.
At multiple points, the crowd broke into a chant of “Thank you, Joe!” But Biden was quick to correct them. “And thank you, Kamala,” he said, repeatedly emphasizing the role Harris played in the most important decisions of the administration. This is likely the second-to-last big speech that Biden will deliver to the American people, and it was good to see him strong and forceful in recounting events over his career, especially his term in the White House.
When Harris and Walz joined him onstage, America could practically feel the breeze of a page being turned. Biden had done what he could to save lives—and democracy—in an hour as dire as any the nation has known in modern history. Now it’s time for Harris to keep that trust safe, and to carry America forward.
Biden’s speech came at the end of an evening filled with addresses that were sometimes eloquent, but just as often raw with emotion. Some of those speeches looked at the heartbreaking consequences of how Donald Trump mishandled the pandemic. Or his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Or his rank hatred for ordinary women and men who do the work of the nation.
But none of those speeches ended with Trump. They all turned that page, relegating Trump to something negative that has afflicted the nation in the past. They all pointed to Harris as the opportunity the nation has, not just to defeat Trump in this election, but to move on from the whole Trump era.
The themes of past and future might have been best expressed in the speech delivered by Hillary Clinton, who touched on all the times when women sought to press beyond the limitations of a prejudiced society.
[…] The official theme for night one of the DNC was “for the people,” but really, it might have been the statement Harris has made so often in her speeches: “We are not going back.”
[…] For the remainder of the week, the DNC will be about building on the messages of the Harris/Walz campaign and creating momentum for the final two months before the election. That’s a luxury that’s only possible because Biden spoke on Monday night, not on Thursday when Harris will address the nation in what is certain to be a widely watched speech.
[…] If there’s any decision by Biden that saved the party—and quite possibly democracy—it wasn’t the moment when he stepped aside. It was when he threw his full and unwavering support behind Harris.
The support, trust, and love he has for Harris was there in his speech last night. The faith in her leadership was also present in the speeches of the others who took the stage on Monday night. From Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s fiery defense of labor to Sen. Raphael Warnock’s barnburner of a sermon, each of those speeches made clear that Harris was someone who they believed in to carry the nation into the future.
Clinton in particular was not speaking to some abstract and fuzzy vision of things to come, but clearly and directly to a woman she trusts and respects. Biden was the last to speak, but Harris was the heart of every speech. She arrived in Chicago at the head of a party more united, more determined, and more ready for the future than any candidate has enjoyed in recent memory.
The page is turned. The torch is passed. Now … forward.
Hillary Clinton was supposed to be president. After all, she won the most votes in 2016.
In her speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, she reminded the crowd and the country not just of what might have been but what will be if Kamala Harris finally shatters that glass ceiling and makes it all the way to the White House.
Clinton took the stage to thunderous applause that simply would not end. Even as she tried, again and again, to give her remarks, the crowd of joyous Democrats kept on clapping and cheering for her.
And then, after nearly two minutes, they finally allowed her to speak. [video at the link]
[…] Clinton thanked President Joe Biden for bringing “dignity, decency, and competence back to the White House.”
She told the story of Shirley Chisholm, the Black congresswoman who ran for president in 1972 and inspired the women who came after her.
She spoke at length about Harris’ experience as a lawyer.
“As a prosecutor, Kamala locked up murderers and drug traffickers. She will never rest in defense of our freedom and safety,” Clinton said. “Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial, and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”
That’s when the crowd broke into a righteous chant, years in the making: “Lock him up! Lock him up!”
Clinton, unlike her 2016 opponent, was far too gracious to join in the fun. But it didn’t stop the crowd from using the words of the convicted felon against him.
And then Clinton—whose critics used to accuse of her being too stiff and not being able to deliver the kind of soaring speech that would inspire others—gave one hell of a closing.
We are opening the promise of America wide enough for everyone. Together, we put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. And tonight, so close to breaking through, once and for all, I want to tell you what I see through all those cracks, and why it matters for each and every one of us.
What do I see? I see freedom. I see the freedom to make our own decisions about our health, our lives, our loves, our families. The freedom to work with dignity and prosper. To worship as we choose or not. To speak our minds freely and honestly. I see freedom from fear and intimidation, from violence and injustice, from chaos and corruption. I see the freedom to look our children in the eye and say, “In America you can go as far as your hard work and talent will take you,” and mean it.
And you know what? On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris, raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th president of the United States! Because, my friends, when a barrier falls for one of us, it falls and clears the way for all of us.
So for the next 78 days, we need to work harder than we ever have. We need to beat back the dangers that Trump and his allies pose to the rule of law and our way of life. Don’t get distracted or complacent. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Volunteer. Be proud champions for the truth and for the country we all love.
I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to know I was here at this moment, that we were here, and that we were with Kamala Harris every step of the way. This is our time, America. This is when we stand up. This is when we break through! The future is here! It is in our grasp! Let’s go win it!
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who led the second impeachment of Donald Trump for his Jan. 6, 2021, had a lot to say at the first night of the Democratic National Convention. He called Trump a “sore loser who does not know how did take no for an answer from American voters, American courts, or American women.”
[video at the link]
I’ll never forget the pounding on the doors of the House chamber on January 6, or the screams to follow. Hundreds of our police officers taunted and attacked. A hundred and forty of them were wounded by extremist wielding a baseball bats steel pipes even American flags. Five people died that day, and four more of our officers took their own lives in the days and weeks to come.
All of this after trump was defeated by more than 7 million votes by the great Joe Biden. It was after at 80 judges rejected every ridiculous claim raised by this sore loser who does not know how did take no for an answer from American voters American courts, or American women.
Today I was watching the DNC on PBS, which I figured would be pretty reliable. Then at one point a panel discussion came on, six or so professional pundits, old media types, who started talking about horse races or something that made them sound important to themselves. And this went on and on. Then they returned to the floor and it was Gov. Bashear of Kentucky. And talk about how brave Hadley Duvall was to tell her story. Huh? What was that?
Yep. Hadley Duvall, who was raped by her stepfather and pregnant at age 12, was on the speaker’s list. But PBS decided that third-rate punditry about the race was more important. What, talk about abortion? Not on PBS! They wimped out of carrying her. Was this a concession to right-wing congresscritters who threaten what little federal funding they get? A deal with a right-wing donor? Or just really really bad editorial judgment?
When I realized that I had missed one of the more important speeches of the night (before Joe’s barn burner), I switched to MSNBC. I still like to support our local PBS outlet WGBH, though I listen to their radio more than watch their TV, but I’m not so happy about the feed they get from what’s left of PBS.
Hadley Duvall’s speech was good. Short but well presented.
New York Times link, “One of the women, who was impregnated by her stepfather as a child, recalled Donald J. Trump’s praise for the bans as a “beautiful thing” and asked, “What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett told a beautiful story at the first night of the Democratic National Convention about meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris as a new member of Congress.
“I wasn’t sure I made the right decision,” Crockett said, recalling when she first met with Harris for her official photo op. Harris could tell something was wrong.
“Mind you, we’d never met, but she saw right through me,” Crockett said. “She saw the distress, and the most powerful woman in the world wiped my tears and listened.” Crockett fought back her own tears in the retelling of the story, and so did anyone watching. “She then said, among other things, you are exactly where God wants you. Your district chose you because they believe in you.”
This was enough, Crockett said, to help her find her voice in Congress, “hitting Republicans with a dose of their own medicine.”
Barack Obama was days shy of his 43rd birthday and months from being elected to the U.S. Senate when he stepped onto a Boston stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
A state lawmaker from Illinois, he had an unusual profile to be a headline speaker at a presidential convention. But the self-declared “skinny kid with a funny name” captivated Democrats that night, going beyond a requisite pitch for nominee John Kerry instead to introduce the nation to his “politics of hope” and vision of “one United States of America” not defined or defeated by its differences.
[…] Speaking in his political hometown of Chicago, the nation’s first Black president will honor President Joe Biden’s legacy after his exit from the campaign while making the case for another historic figure, Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s poised to be a significant moment as she takes on former President Donald Trump in a matchup that features the same cultural and ideological fissures Obama warned against two decades ago.
“President Obama is still a north star in the party,” said Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who credits the 44th president with helping her become her state’s first Black woman lieutenant governor.
Besides Harris herself on Thursday, Stratton said, no voice this week is more integral to stirring Democrats, reaching independents and cajoling moderate Republicans than Obama.
“He knows how to get across the finish line,” she said. […]
On Monday, the Republican National Committee asked the Supreme Court to step into an election dispute in Arizona by blocking up to 40,000 registered voters from casting ballots in November. That’s because the more likely that it becomes that Vice President Kamala Harris will win this election, the more focused Donald Trump and his supporters become on that other contest—the one to ensure he regains power no matter how Americans vote.
Since Harris began her candidacy and quickly gathered the support necessary to become the Democratic nominee, Trump has been pushing the idea that her ascendency was somehow illegal. As The Washington Post reports, the narrative meant to delegitimize Harris as a candidate has included Trump claiming that Harris should be “disqualified” for what Trump claimed was a fake image of a campaign rally crowd (it wasn’t). But the more consistent theme from Trump is that Harris took over as the Democratic candidate in a “coup” and that the presidency was “Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him.”
At the same time that Trump is prompting his followers to question the legitimacy of Harris as a candidate, Republicans are also preparing for Insurrection 2.0. They’re not waiting for Jan 6, 2025. Efforts to stop democracy are already underway from state governments to the Supreme Court.
As The Los Angeles Times reports, Arizona set state rules requiring that voters show proof of citizenship, like a birth certificate, when registering, which exceeds the requirements of federal law. Now Republicans want to disqualify all the voters who signed up without meeting those proof-of-citizenship requirements.
As Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes points out, there’s no evidence of fraud among any of these voters, most are Native Americans, students, or service members who didn’t have a birth certificate available at the time of registration.
But the possibility of eliminating a large group of voters who are mostly young, Native American, or both is enough to get Republicans salivating. Native American voters in Arizona played a critical role in the 2020 vote and Harris’ rapid improvement in recent polls has been largely driven by a combination of women and younger voters. Biden’s margin of victory in Arizona was 10,457 votes in 2020, so 40,000 voters taken off the rolls could definitely affect the outcome in that state.
But trying to keep voters from voting in the first place is just one way that Republicans are attempting to keep democracy down. Trump supporters have gained power over local election boards in multiple states. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has identified at least 35 “rogue election officials” who have already refused to certify election results and may do so again.
But no state may be doing more to help defeat democracy in advance of the election than Georgia. [See comment 247]
[…] As Rachel Maddow wrote on Monday in The New York Times, it’s not hard to imagine a situation in which swing states are split on Election Day, leaving Georgia as the determining factor in the race. [See comment 194]
Republicans are engaged in a multi-layered approach to destroying democracy. They want to block Democratic voters from voting in the first place. If that doesn’t work, they have election boards ready to block certifications. And if that isn’t enough, they have a plan to simply generate as much confusion as possible, and then take advantage of that confusion.
Republicans have put years into building these systems. Democrats aren’t going to remove them between now and November. But we need to be alert, aware, and informed if we hope to minimize the damage.
On Monday morning, the Republican chairs of three House committees released a nearly 300-page report detailing what they alleged were impeachable offenses committed by President Joe Biden. Hours later, one of them — House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) — joined Fox News host Jesse Watters’s prime-time program to discuss a critical question about Democratic leadership:
Was Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) maybe somehow groomed or compromised by the Chinese government when he taught there in the 1980s?
That Comer’s appearance didn’t address the impeachment probe that he’d had a central role in advancing wasn’t really surprising. The probe was a dud, centered on overheated or unsubstantiated claims that Comer and others had been peddling on Fox News for more than a year. It’s probably true that Fox News’s disinterest in the subject was related primarily to Biden’s decision not to seek reelection, clearing the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic Party’s nominee and to select Walz as her running mate. It’s probably true, too, that even Fox News knows when it’s got a nothingburger on its hands.
So, instead, Watters hosted Comer to discuss another new freewheeling, unconstrained effort to dig up dirt on a Democratic elected official: House Oversight’s probe, announced last week, aimed at Walz’s purported “longstanding connections to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) entities and officials.” Those connections, the Oversight announcement explains, center on Walz’s time teaching in China (for one year) and his creating an organization that brought American students on educational trips to the country.
Watters, being Watters, characterized all of this in the most exaggerated possible terms, picking out isolated quotes to present a picture of someone — “Tiananmen Tim,” he called him — in China’s thrall. That Walz was enlisted in the National Guard at the time was presented as particularly suspect.
Enter Comer.
“It’s very concerning that the FBI, to my knowledge, has never even investigated this,” Comer began. “Now, we’re still trying to determine what extent they have — as far as all the trips this high-level official from the United States government — even before that, in the military — made to China.”
Of course, when Walz traveled to China in 1989 as part of an international teaching program run by a non-profit organization, he was not a “high-level official” in the government or even in the military….
“This is a guy that really has embraced China’s view of the world, the Chinese ideology, which is communism,” Comer continued. His evidence for this? That Walz has government pensions instead of owning private-sector stocks. “This guy is very dependent on the government,” he said. “And I believe he thinks that China, the business model that China’s had, might be the ideal model for the United States.”
This is silly. Foreign Policy’s Paul Musgrave examined Walz’s approach to China both before and after being elected to Congress in 2006.
“Walz’s record is that of a measured critic of the Chinese Communist Party — prone neither to exaggeration nor accommodation,” Musgrave wrote. “Nor is this a pose cooked up by spin doctors in the past few weeks. Small-town Nebraska newspaper articles — published well before Walz had any political ambitions — demonstrate that his professed affection for the Chinese people and culture has been matched by a longstanding criticism of the country’s rulers.”
Introducing Comer, though, Watters suggested that perhaps Walz was “targeted or recruited for CCP influence operations.”
“It’s very possible that China would be grooming an up-and-coming rising star in the political process,” Comer said later in the discussion, “to try to have a foothold in our government.”
Of course, during the time when Walz was teaching in China (the late 1980s) and leading school trips to China (beginning in the mid-1990s), he was not an “up-and-coming rising star.” He was a teacher who also served in the National Guard….But if China’s goal was to have an ally in U.S. government and somehow foresaw that Walz would fit that bill, they were probably disappointed in his tenure in the House. While there, the Minnesota representative took public positions critical of China’s approach to human rights.
By elevating the Watters-Comer discussion, we certainly run the risk of treating something fundamentally unserious as worthy of serious consideration. But that the discussion was so unserious is useful to consider in its own right, reinforcing that a primetime Fox News host and the head of a congressional investigatory committee are happy to engage in electorally focused conspiracy theorizing without any evidence of wrongdoing.
Very similarly to the impeachment probe that Comer had, to almost no fanfare, wrapped up a few hours previously.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate Nicole Shanahan said in an interview out Tuesday that the campaign is considering dropping its bid and joining forces with former President Trump as it weighs its options for the future.
Why it matters: Her remarks come as Kennedy’s longshot independent bid is losing money and facing legal challenges to ballot access. He has also slowed his public schedule.
Driving the news: “There’s two options that we’re looking at and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump,” Shanahan said on the Impact Theory podcast. [JFC]
“Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump … and explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”
“Not an easy decision,” she added.
State of play: The Kennedy campaign has drawn concern from both major parties about its possibility of playing a spoiler role in November.
But recent polling since Vice President Harris entered the presidential race shows that Kennedy may pose a greater risk to Trump in November.
Shanahan said in the interview the question is whether “the risk of a Harris-Walz presidency” is “worth us staying.”
What he’s saying: Kennedy said in a post on X Tuesday that “as always, I am willing to talk with leaders of any political party to further the goals I have served for 40 years in my career and in this campaign.”
Between the lines: A leaked phone call during the Republican National Convention last month showed the former president saying he would “love” for Kennedy to “do something” with his campaign.
Kennedy apologized over the leaked video and reaffirmed his commitment to staying in the race.
Zoom in: The Kennedy campaign struggled to adjust to the upended race when Harris become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
The campaign’s FEC report for July shows that they are still burning through cash. The Kennedy campaign ended July with $3.9 million cash on hand, down from the $5.5 million in June.
The campaign raised $5.6 million in July, compared to $5.4 million in June, and spent $7.2 million, up from the $6.2 million they spent in June.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican vice presidential nominee, that GOP voters “tried to kill your predecessor,” during remarks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“Remember what the mob chanted as they stormed the Capitol and injured our officers? ‘Hang Mike Pence,’” Raskin said during his speech Monday night, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“Someone should have told Donald Trump that the president’s job under Article 2 of the Constitution is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not that the vice president is executed,” he added.
Raskin, who served on the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the Capitol attack, frequently draws on his background as a constitutional law professor in warning about the threat to democracy he says America faces if the former president wins back the White House.
The Maryland Democrat noted that former Vice President Pence — who was the target of many rioters during the insurrection as they looked to him as a last resort in preventing the transfer of power to President Biden — has joined other former Trump administration officials who have publicly said they would not support his return to office.
“Pence has now joined more than two dozen officials from Donald Trump’s own administration in denouncing him, an historical record, and Pence is the first vice president in more than two centuries not to support the president he served with in a general election,” Raskin said.
“And by the way, JD Vance, do you understand why there was a sudden job opening for running mate on the GOP ticket? They tried to kill your predecessor,” he continued. “They tried to kill him because he would not follow Trump’s plan to destroy and nullify the votes of millions of Americans.”
The Trump campaign fired back at Raskin’s remarks in a statement to The Hill.
“Jamie Raskin is a disgusting piece of trash who has such a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, he is willing to politicize talking about assassinations just one month after an attempt was made of President Trump’s life. These are the people Democrats are highlighting at their convention,” the spokesperson said.
People in the mainstream media are using words like “impassioned” to describe the speech Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave last night at the DNC. We’ve also seen more than one person compare it to that moment earlier this century when Barack Obama came onstage at a DNC and made the entire world pay attention to him. Just a few years later he was president.
Is that going to happen to AOC? We don’t know, but any Republican who reads those words will probably do a little accident in their pants at the terrifying thought, and that’s just fine with us.
It’s seven minutes long, take the time: [video at the link]
Trump’s Truth Social stock appears to be in serious jeopardy, according to a new report from Forbes published Saturday. Next month, Trump—who owns well over 50 percent of the company—and other shareholders will finally be able to sell their shares of the volatile stock, but that puts the stock at risk of collapse.
Earlier this month, Truth Social’s stock value plummeted following Trump’s apparent “return” to X, formerly Twitter. It was so bad that even a booming stock market couldn’t save it…
Truth Social stock has become particularly risky, because its volatility gives it a high chance of heavy selling as soon as it becomes unlocked in September, according to Forbes. This would only worsen if the board allowed Trump to sell his stocks early, capturing the current price instead of whatever they might drop to on the downward trajectory…
As for Elon Musk’s X, not even Trump returning could give it a much-needed boost. The platform’s billionaire technocrat owner has pulled the social media site into historically bad territory, according to The Wall Street Journal…
Reginald Selkirksays
True Facts ™
Peter Thiel is an anagram for “The Reptile”
Ayn Rand was a childless cat lady
The operation came as the United States pushed for a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of scores of hostages held by the militant group.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it had recovered the bodies of six hostages who were taken into the Gaza Strip following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terror attacks.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that troops recovered the bodies in an overnight operation in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
The operation came as the United States, Egypt and Qatar pushed for a cease-fire deal that would end Israel’s monthslong military offensive in Gaza and see the release of the hostages who remain held in the enclave.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed optimism Monday, saying he’d had a “very productive” meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that Netanyahu had accepted a bridging proposal for a cease-fire deal and that it was “now incumbent on Hamas to do the same.”
Hamas on Tuesday expressed “astonishment” at the suggestion that it was holding up a deal, calling the comments by Blinken and President Joe Biden “misleading claims” that “do not reflect the true position of the movement.”
The militant group said that what it was recently presented was a departure from a proposed framework deal outlined by Biden in late May. […]
The Israeli military said it had identified the remains of Haim Perry, 80; Yoram Metzger, 80; Avraham Munder, 79; Alexander Dancyg, 76; Nadav Popplewell, 51; and Yagev Buchshtav, 35.
Metzger, Munder, Popplewell and Buchshtav had family members who were also abducted but freed during a November cease-fire.
The Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry had in January warned of fears for Dancyg’s health after he was taken hostage Oct. 7, saying the then-75-year-old had previously suffered a “serious heart attack.” […]
More than 100 hostages remain held in Gaza, with around a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli officials. […]
The Cook Political Report survey
“Trump Is Cooked!!! Kamala Harris Now Leads in Critical Battleground Swing States”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/N9iFLPTRQuk
(Of the states in the excerpt, Nevada was the only one with a Trump lead)
Donald Trump’s stop in Howell, Mich., is a small policy-themed event planned for an audience of about 100 people, according to Trump officials.
At a crime-themed event at a county sheriff’s office in Howell, Mich., Donald Trump repeated his false claims that no one was killed in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.
He also again labeled Kamala Harris’s replacement of Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket as a “coup” and went further: “It was a vicious, violent overthrow of a president of the United States,” he said.
….Republicans have used the switch to lay further groundwork for trying to delegitimize a potential Harris win.
During PBS’ coverage of the DNC, veteran reporter Judy Woodruff said this: “The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the prime minister of Israel urging him not to cut a deal right now because it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign.”
Fact checkers are important and do painstaking work in a political climate more permeated by half truths and full-on lies than ever before. However.
Many fact checks of the first night of the DNC ranged from dumb to trollish.
The Washington Post claimed that Trump didn’t say women should be punished for abortions (apparently his recognition of the damage of his comment and quick walk back means Democrats can’t cite it anymore); that Biden was wrong to say that John Kelly said Trump called soldiers who died in the line of duty “suckers and losers” and refused to visit their graves in France (Kelly said in a statement that Trump called them “losers” and would not visit their graves in France); and that Trump didn’t tell people to inject bleach into their bodies to fight the COVID-19 virus (he mused over the idea at a press conference).
Even all of that was perhaps trumped by this from the Washington Post: “‘Donald Trump says he will refuse to accept the election result if he loses again,’ Biden said. But that’s not true. Trump just hasn’t said that he would accept. And he had previously said the only way he loses is if the Democrats cheat.”
I’m sorry…what? So if he loses, the Democrats have cheated — and he won’t promise to accept the results of the election, contextualized by our experience in 2020 where he declared his loss a result of unsubstantiated cheating and went on to try to steal the election. Like are you kidding me?
Bonus here, an older Snopes fact check that resurfaced last night. Apparently, Trump did not call white supremacists at Charlottesville “fine people” — he only called both the protesters and counter-protesters that. The fact that one of those sides was totally comprised of white supremacists for some reason doesn’t seem to factor in here?
[…] Trump isn’t going to debate Harris over housing policy, because he doesn’t have one—not unless you count building mass detention centers as an approach to housing. He’s not going to debate her on energy policy when the U.S. is already producing more energy than it ever did under Trump. He’s certainly not going to debate her on abortion policy. Instead, Trump is going to lie about crime, lie about immigration, lie about energy, and lie about the economy … all without giving any detail that would make people think too hard about his statements.
Then Trump will continue to attack Harris about her race, her laugh, and her intelligence. It may make Beltway insiders pretend to wince, but it’s what Trump’s base wants to hear (including his moneyman Elon Musk). Besides, the number of Republicans spreading around the idea that Harris is an unqualified “DEI candidate” more than gives the game away. It would not be surprising if Trump pulled out his tired claims that first-generation children of immigrants aren’t real Americans, and leveled them at Harris.
Trump is a shill for the worst instincts of the worst in America. There’s never going to be a day in which he suddenly becomes anything more, and Republicans know that. None of them actually believe he’s going to become an overnight policy wonk.
But in 2028, at least they can point back at Trump’s 2024 loss and say, “I told him to talk about something else.” And planning for 2028 is starting to look a lot more important for Republicans.
The state of Utah on Tuesday sued the federal government in an attempt to gain control of millions of acres of public lands.
The state is seeking a transfer of 18.5 million acres — about a third of the state’s total area — from the federal government. [Utah has tried this before.]
“Utah deserves priority when it comes to managing its land,” Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said during a press conference.
“It’s been a tragedy to see what this administration and past administrations have done to our land, closing down roads that have been open for generations. Places where people went to recreate, to spend time with their families, are no longer accessible,” he added.
The lawsuit, which goes directly to the Supreme Court, argues that the federal government’s control over the land is unconstitutional. [Uh-oh. Red flag: “Supreme Court.”]
About 70 percent of Utah’s total land area is under federal control. When Utah became a state, under the “Utah Enabling Act” it gave up land to the federal government. It’s not the only state to do so, and the federal government owns about 47 percent of land in the West.
Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities, which advocates for conservation, argued that the suit would not hold up in court.
“Congress decides how public lands are managed. Congress decides when public lands are disposed of,” he said. “The Enabling Act that brought Utah in as a state did not leave any wiggle room.”
The state’s suit argues that under this law, the federal government’s authority was “limited to the power to dispose of those lands.”
While Cox said that the goal of the suit was to bring lands under state management — not privatization — Weiss expressed concern that if the state were to succeed, land sell-offs would be the ultimate outcome. [I agree.]
“The costs of fighting one wildfire on this theoretically new state land that they want could wipe out a state budget,” Weiss said. […]
“What, what this would lead to … is trophy homes all up and down Moab, trophy homes on the edge of Bears Ears,” he added. [I agree.]
Wrestling legend Hulk Hogan has joked about body slamming Vice-President Kamala Harris in front of a fired up crowd, and questioned her racial identity…
[…] Trump says he has “no regrets” that his handpicked Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion.
“The federal government should have nothing to do with this issue. It’s being solved at the state level, and people are very happy about it,” Trump said in an interview with CBS News. “No regrets, no. I wouldn’t have regrets. I did something most people felt was undoable.”
The former president has repeatedly boasted about his role in ending Roe v. Wade, even as he and the Republican Party have broadly tried to stay away from engaging on such a divisive issue.
[…]
Trump has settled on the position that abortion policy is up to the states, taking credit for ending Roe and falsely claiming that “all legal scholars, all Democrats, all Republicans” have been trying to let the states decide their own abortion policies for 52 years.
In fact, poll after poll has shown that most Americans think Roe should have been preserved and support access to abortion.
[…] In the aftermath of the ruling, abortion regulation is an ever-changing patchwork. Nationwide, 14 states have banned abortion, and half a dozen others have implemented gestational restrictions from six weeks to 15 weeks.
[…] Anti-abortion activists, working with former Trump administration officials, have been laying the groundwork for the next Republican administration to apply the Comstock Act to prevent the mailing of any abortion drugs and materials, effectively banning all abortions without needing Congress to act.
Trump said medication abortion “is going to be available” because the Supreme Court said it should be.
The court, however, did not rule that the pills should remain available. The justices merely dismissed a challenge to their legality because the people bringing the lawsuit did not have standing.
The court left the door open to other legal challenges, including from a trio of red states in front of the same Trump-appointed federal judge who initially suspended mifepristone’s approval in 2023.
@Lynna #258:
From the comments
– “The same happened on NBC.”
– “MSNBC carried the speech and had an excellent discussion afterward.”
– “on MSNBC […] talking heads stayed out of the way for the most part and commercial free.”
– “ABC coverage sucked”
Hadley Duvall was at 4:25:16 of Day 1 (for two and a half minutes).
PBS NewsHour’s YouTube stream cut away at 4:29:51 after Jim Clyburn. (In the DNC’s stream, that was 3:59:05.) Skipping Raskin, Crockett, and abortion stories of Josh & Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua, and Hadley Duvall. They returned for Beshear at 4:59:08, 30 minutes later.
New York’s top court affirmed Tuesday that a measure expanding access to absentee voting in the state is constitutional, rejecting a lawsuit led by House GOP Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.).
The New York Court of Appeals ruled 6-1 that New York’s Early Mail Voter Act, which allows registered voters to submit ballots early by mail in any election where they are eligible to vote, can stand. The measure was signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) last year.
[…] Wilson acknowledged the “difficult” question raised by the Republican-led lawsuit, noting that though the New York Constitution does not contain language explicitly requiring in-person voting, the state’s legislative and executive branches “have often proceeded as if our Constitution requires as such.”
[…] The Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Conservative Party of New York State and New York Republican State Committee challenged the law alongside Stefanik.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), whose office defended the measure, called voting a “beautiful celebration of patriotism and civic responsibility” and suggested that the government should make it easier to vote, not harder. [smile]
Taunts and threats escalated as rumors about Jacob Reitan’s sexual orientation swirled around his southern Minnesota high school during his senior year in 1999.
Someone chalked a slur on his driveway in giant letters. His mother recalled being horrified by anonymous mail that arrived at their home, including one message that said her gay son would be better off dead.
After the teenager found his car window smashed in the school parking lot, he told officials at Mankato West High School that he intended to come out of the closet and sought their support to start a gay-straight alliance club.
The principal made an unconventional decision in the choice of a faculty adviser for the club, which the high school had never had before in this relatively conservative city: Tim Walz, a geography teacher who was also a football coach. Mr. Walz readily agreed, and the choice came as a relief to Mr. Reitan.
“It was important to have a person who was so well-liked on campus, a football coach who had served in the military,” said Mr. Reitan, now 42. “Having Tim Walz as the adviser of the gay-straight alliance made me feel safe coming to school.”
That early chapter from Mr. Walz’s teaching years helped shape his stances as a politician and reflects how much Mr. Walz’s partnership with his wife, Gwen, has shaped his work over many years. Heavily influenced by Ms. Walz, who was Mr. Reitan’s teacher and someone the student confided in, Mr. Walz went on to make gay rights a signature issue in his political career, supporting same-sex marriage while representing his mostly conservative, rural congressional district long before mainstream Democrats were.
As a member of Congress, Mr. Walz, who served in the National Guard for 24 years, was a leading proponent of repealing the ban on openly gay people serving in the military.
As governor of Minnesota, he signed a bill prohibiting bans on books in schools and public libraries, which came as conservatives in states around the country have challenged books, including some with gay characters. He signed a bill banning conversion therapy for gay and transgender people. And as many conservative states banned transition-related medical care for transgender youths, Mr. Walz signed a bill that protected transition treatment in Minnesota, and shielded those traveling to the state for such treatment from any legal consequences.
“They want to put bullies in charge of your health care,” Mr. Walz said during his State of the State address in 2023, celebrating the transgender medical care measure. “We want to put you in charge of your health care and put bullies in their place.”
[…]
Mr. Walz’s stances can be traced, in part, to the early chapter in Mr. Reitan’s life, in the late 1990s, when he was a high school student in Mankato.
Mr. Reitan, now a lawyer and gay rights activist, recalled being bullied over his sexual orientation as early as the seventh grade….“It caused me a significant amount of anxiety,” he said.
[…]
Mr. Reitan said he was astonished by what happened one day in his 10th grade English class. Out of the blue, his teacher, Ms. Walz, announced that her classroom was “a safe space for gay and lesbian students,” he recalled.
Mr. Reitan, then 15, said he froze, his heart pounding, wondering if the remark had been meant for him.
“I did not know any gay people, and there were no gay people on TV then,” he said. “It was very much a closet of one.”
[…]
During his junior year, he told his older sister. That led him to confide in Ms. Walz, the one adult at school he felt certain would support him. Her warm response, he said, gave him the confidence to confide in his parents, Randi and Phil Reitan.
“It wasn’t easy for us because immediately I felt like he was going to face a lifetime of discrimination,” Ms. Reitan, 73, said in an interview.
The Reitans sought guidance from a trusted pastor but said that his response was crushing: Their son was living in sin; turning to God could make him straight…..
The teenager was inclined to come out. His parents disagreed, in part because months earlier they had been horrified by news of the killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was kidnapped, pistol-whipped and tied to a fence in Wyoming in October 1998.
Mr. Shepard resembled her son, Ms. Reitan said, adding: “That weighed on my heart, hugely.”
Ultimately, Mr. Reitan was adamant that he would come out before receiving his high school diploma. It was important for his classmates to get to know an openly gay person, he reasoned.
He came out to classmates in the summer of 1999 and later that year invited peers to join the gay-straight alliance club by passing out leaflets at the front entrance of the school.
Mr. Walz has made clear that he understood why he had been picked as the adviser. “You have an older, white, straight, married football coach who is deeply concerned that these students are treated fairly and that there’s no bullying,” Mr. Walz said while he was running for governor, as he drew attention to his involvement in the club years before.
Club meetings drew a smattering of students. No one else came out of the closet during the period Mr. Reitan led it, he said. But the bullying largely ceased.
“The Walzes were both like, ‘There will be nothing but respect,’ and it was just like laying down the law,” recalled Nicole Griensewic, 41, a former classmate of Mr. Reitan’s. “It was really bold.”
Years later, when Randi Reitan learned that Mr. Walz was running for Congress, she raised money and campaigned for her son’s former protector. At the time, the battle to legalize same-sex marriage was being waged in courtrooms and statehouses — facing long odds.
Ms. Reitan recalled urging Mr. Walz not to take a position on the matter. His candidacy was a long shot in a rural district. “We just want you to get elected,” she recalled telling him.
But Ms. Reitan said that Mr. Walz pushed back. “This is who I am,” she recalled him saying. “I want to be authentic and I want to be able to look my gay students in the eye.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @279, thank you for that.
In other news:
The Harris campaign attacked former President Trump for campaigning Tuesday in Howell, Mich., a city with historic ties to the Ku Klux Klan and that was the setting of a white supremacist demonstration last month, where attendees expressed support for the former president.
The Harris campaign’s Michigan communications director, Alyssa Bradley, criticized the former president for “choosing to rally in a town that was historically known as ‘the KKK capital of Michigan.’”
“This [Tuesday] event on ‘crime and safety’ isn’t a dog whistle from Trump — it’s a bullhorn,” Bradley said in a statement Monday.
“His visit underscores the core choice in this election — between a prosecutor and a criminal, someone who has spent her life making communities safer and someone who encourages violence, and someone who will build a future where all Michiganders can get ahead and someone who wants to take us back to the days of the KKK,” Bradley later added.
The town has long been associated with the klan, in large part as a result of meetings that Robert Miles, a former Michigan Grand Dragon of the klan, held at his nearby farm many decades ago. The city has worked to distance itself from that reputation, but it occasionally faces obstacles.
In Howell last month, about a dozen protesters marched through the city’s downtown, waving flags with white supremacist slogans while chanting in support of the former president.
Just a few miles away on the same day, demonstrators displayed flags with antisemitic messaging and “KKK” written on them over the side of a highway overpass. In videos, protesters were captured chanting, “We love Hitler. We love Trump.”
Bradley, in her statement, criticized Trump for “still not condemn[ing] this hateful event that happened in his name.”
[…] Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt also noted that President Biden held an event in 2021 in Howell and was not met with the same level of criticism for the city’s racist past. […]
Bartiromo, who was deeply involved in promoting the Dominion election conspiracy theories that Fox News paid for, is at it again.
Maria Bartiromo repeatedly used her Fox Business show to peddle an election fraud conspiracy theory that she claimed originated with the wife of a friend of a friend in Texas and that she made no apparent effort to confirm. But when the Texas Department of Public Safety and the local Republican Party investigated her reckless allegation, they discovered that none of it was true.
On Sunday morning, Bartiromo posted an item to X alleging that “a massive line of immigrants” had been obtaining driver’s licenses and registering to vote at three Department of Motor Vehicles offices in Texas:
Friend of mine’s wife had to take her 16 yr old son to the DMV this week for a new license. Couldn’t get an online appointment (all full) so went in person and had to go to 3 DMV’s to get something done. First DMV was in Weatherford. Had a massive line of immigrants getting licenses and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote! Second one was in Fort Worth with same lines and same Dems out front. Third one was in North Fort Worth had no lines but had same voter registration drive.
Bartiromo brought the wildly flimsy allegation to Fox’s airwaves the following day, having apparently done no independent reporting to confirm claims that she said originated with the wife of a friend of her friend.
She brought up the story in at least three segments on the Monday and Tuesday editions of her Fox program — including in interviews with two Republican U.S. senators.
Indeed, the story became even more sinister for the Fox audience, with Bartiromo alleging that the people registering to vote were not just “immigrants,” as stated in her X post, but “illegals.” A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety noted that assuming that nonwhite Texans are undocumented is “kind of racist” and called her story “simply false.”
[…] Sgt. William Lockridge, spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the account Bartiromo promoted was “simply false” and “kind of racist.” […]
More at the link, including “Great Replacement Theory” propaganda, and other people, including Republican Senator Ron Johnson backing Bartiromo up on this nonsense. Video at the link.
Nicole Shanahan, the running mate of independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., declared on a podcast that their campaign may be coming to an end. But she says they’re not just thinking about closing up shop and saying farewell to supporters. They’re considering endorsing Donald Trump.
[…] Kennedy’s biggest contributor just so happens to be Trump’s biggest contributor, who no doubt thought Kennedy would draw votes from President Joe Biden. But since Biden stepped aside and the Democratic Party has rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris, Kennedy’s campaign has been shrinking toward irrelevance. Worse, as Shanahan acknowledges in her interview, recent polling shows Kennedy pulls more votes from Trump than from Harris.
So it’s time to end the charade that the Kennedy campaign was ever serious about anything other than helping Trump.
Shanahan’s full appearance is … something. It’s full of claims that the Democratic National Committee has “shadow-banned” Kennedy’s campaign (though what it’s been banned from is not clear), that it blocked him from participating in debates (which, in reality, he failed to qualify for), and that it “planted insiders” to corrupt the campaign.
This is the same campaign best known for explaining that the candidate recently had a brain worm, that he planted a dead bear cub in Central Park, and that he reportedly apologized for sexually assaulting a babysitter by sending a text. It’s fair to say that if Democratic insiders were attempting to disrupt the Kennedy campaign, their actions never rose close to the level of sabotage that Kennedy inflicted on himself.
The truth is that Kennedy never had real appeal as a candidate beyond those who knew absolutely nothing other than his name—or those who shared one or more of his odious conspiracy theories.
Shanahan is the ex-wife of Google founder Sergei Brin. She brought to the campaign an estimated net worth of over $1 billion and her own set of conspiracy theories, including one proposing that the key to increasing fertility is “two hours of morning sunlight.”
In the interview with “Impact Theory,” Shahanan expresses some desire to stay in the race, most of which seems to be focused on the $13 million in public funding that might be accessible if she and Kennedy could obtain over 5% of the vote. But 538’s polling average shows their campaign getting just under that share, at 4.8%—and it’s decreasing with time. Even someone deeply enmeshed in junk science as Shanahan and Kennedy should be capable of seeing that those funds aren’t a good bet.
[…] it was always a stretch to believe that Kennedy’s long list of irrational beliefs would put him in a position to take votes from the Democratic candidate. Not only do many of his conspiratorial fantasies align with the QAnon conspiracy movement, but the only place Kennedy was establishing a regular media presence was on right-wing platforms.
If it talks like a Trump and it’s on the same platforms as a Trump, then conspiracy believers might just start to think this is a Trump. And they did.
Should Kennedy and Shanahan show up at Mar-a-Lago ready to wed their psychosis to Trump’s, no one will be surprised. […]
The incident happened while the driver was delivering packages near Dallas, according to Teamsters Local 767.
[video at the link]
A heat-related illness during a hot day in north Texas last week led to a UPS worker passing out while driving on the highway and crashing the company vehicle into the woods, according to the union representing the worker.
Teamsters Local 767, which represents UPS drivers, posted a statement, that included video of the crash and photographs of the damaged vehicle, on social media.
[…] The union said the driver was lucky to be alive.
“The company continues to place packages over people. This is the third incident in the McKinney building alone. Do not trust the company to do the right thing for your health and safety. Reach out to your Stewards, Business Agents, and/or other drivers and let them know what is going on. Never hesitate to call 911,” the union said.
A short video accompanying the statement was filmed from inside a car traveling on a parallel road. […]
[…] UPS workers have been publicizing for years the need for heat-related safety protocols. UPS is the world’s largest package delivery company, and its ubiquitous brown vehicles and warehouses are largely without air conditioning, according to a 2022 NBC News article.
In a separate 2019 article, NBC News reported that on a long hot day of deliveries, the temperature in the cargo area of a truck can soar to 140 degrees or more.
An unassuming orb-weaving spider common across China, Japan, and Korea […] has been observed catching male fireflies and inducing them to flash signal patterns usually used by females. […] a gruesome honeypot. […] Rarely was a female firefly found caught in the web
[…]
Although it’s unclear whether venom or the bite itself is responsible for the behavior change, the researchers believe something about the attack causes a neurotransmitter to alter the signal style […] puppeteering a living, wriggling, doomed insect to lure its fellows to their own deaths
Every year, up to 1 million horseshoe crabs in the U.S. are harvested […] and bled for biomedical purposes. […] Valued around $15,000 per quart, the crustaceans’ bright blue blood responds to bacterial toxins by clotting, which helps determine the virility of vaccines and medical devices. Though the crabs are returned to the ocean, an estimated 15–30% die from the bloodletting.
[…]
the U.S. Pharmacopeia, an organization that sets standards for the biomedical industry, issued guidance on using synthetic chemicals instead of crab blood […] this action will go far towards making the case for synthetic alternatives being approved by the FDA
Trump alleged that Kamala Harris was “the ringleader for this pro-crime and anti-police crusade. It’s a real anti-police crusade. They just have it out for the police. Nobody knows why.”
That should go over great with the U.S. Capitol Police.
The Republican nominee promised that if elected to the White House, he would stop the “plunder, rape, slaughter, and destruction of our American suburbs,” before detouring into a rant about women voters.
So, he’s only going to rape women in urban settings?
Vance walked around the deli, talking with the owner, employees and customers, and also ordered some food, before asking the owner what Vance thought was an important question.
“You have any food here you really don’t like? We’ll take some and feed it to the journalists on the plane,” he asked, according to a social media post by journalist Reese Gorman…
This guy sure knows how to make friends and influence people.
In fairness to PBS, it’s not the only public/state subsidized broadcaster to do shit like that. Canada’s state-operated CBC butchered the Olympics’ closing ceremony, outright neglecting to air whole sections of it for some reason, a week or so ago.
And whoever keeps logging me out, sometimes literally two minutes after I logged in, STOP. FUCKING. DOING. THAT. It’s not funny or amusing in any way. Find some other way to entertain yourself.
[…] “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” Obama said.
“It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse,” he continued. “The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. Now, from a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous.” [video at the link]
Trump’s “a guy whose act has, let’s face it, gotten pretty stale,” Obama said. “We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.”
“America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”
Former first lady Michelle Obama knocked it out of the park at Tuesday’s Democratic National Convention.
“Hope is making a comeback!” she declared, bringing the crowd to its feet.
Obama offered plenty of inspiration in her speech, but she didn’t shy away from calling out Donald Trump.
“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” she said. “See, his his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people—who happened to be black.”
But Obama was not done. “I want to know. I want to know who’s going to tell him. Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”
But Obama also called on people to act, to fight, to “do something.” [video at the link]
At Tuesday’s Democratic National Convention, second gentleman Doug Emhoff gave a heartwarming introduction not to just himself, but to the “big, beautiful blended family” he and Kamala Harris have built.
But it started with the best blind date story ever. [Video at the link]
“In 2013, I walked into a contentious client meeting. We worked through the issue, and by the end of the meeting now happy client offered to set me up on a blind date which is how I ended up with Kamala Harris’ phone number,” he said.
“Now, for generations, people have debated when to call the person you are being set up with. And never in history has anyone suggested 8:30 AM and yet, that is when I dialed. I got Kamala’s voicemail, and I just started rambling. ‘Hey, it’s Doug. I’m on my way to an early meeting. Again, it’s Doug.’
“I was trying to grab the words out of the air and just put them back in my mouth,” he continued. “After what seemed like far too many minutes, I hung up. By the way, Kamala saved that voicemail and makes me listen to it on every anniversary.”
It just gets better from there, including his conclusion.
”Kamala Harris was exactly the right person for me at an important moment in my life. At this moment in our nation’s history, she is exactly the right president.”
Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth took Donald Trump to the cleaners during her speech at Tuesday night’s Democratic National Convention. Duckworth, a veteran who lost both legs in the Iraq War, went straight at Donald Trump for nearly five minutes straight.
“I went to war to protect America’s rights and freedoms,” Duckworth said, “so I take it personally when a five-time draft-dodging coward like Donald Trump tries to take away.”
Duckworth spoke about her two young daughters, both of whom she had “through the miracle of IVF”—something that’s been under attack from the GOP.
“So let me say to every would-be parent: I see you. I’m with you,” Duckworth said. “And together in November, we’ll send a message to old cadet bone spurs: Stay out of our doctors offices! And while you’re at it, out of the Oval Office too!”
The crowd loved that.
“My struggle with infertility was more painful than any wound I earned on the battlefield,” Duckworth continued. “So how dare a convicted felon like Donald Trump treat women! Seeking health care like they’re the ones breaking the law? How dare JD Vance criticize childless women on cable news, then vote against legislation that would have actually helped Americans to start families?
“How dare the GOP endanger the dreams of countless veterans whose combat wounds prevent them from having kids without IVF? Punishing our heroes for their willingness to serve. It’s simple, every American deserves the right to be called Mommy or Daddy without being treated like a criminal. Kamala Harris believes that. So let’s make some history.” [video at the link]
The first night of the ongoing Democratic National Convention in Chicago had significantly better ratings than the opening of the Republican National Convention last month, according to overnight data.
***
Some running the DNC surely were concerned that delays caused Joe Biden to give his highly anticipated convention speech at 11:25 pm on Monday, well past when some voters in East Coast battleground states like Pennsylvania were in bed.
That didn’t seem to make a huge difference.
[…] These ratings only cover television. There must of have been TENS OF MILLIONS watching on-line. There are so many options.
The first night of the DNC on Monday drew 15.32 million 55 and over, 3.51 million in the 35-54 demo and 851,000 aged 18-34, per Nielsen.
MSNBC topped the networks, drawing 4.6 million viewers, compared to 3.2 million for CNN, 2.8 million for ABC News, 2.4 million for Fox News, 2 million for CBS News and 1.8 million for NBC News. The figures are also Nielsen via MSNBC.
“Overall tonight, this convention had joy, excitement and a clear vision for the future. It’s been an amazing week…. whats that… its only day one!” ~ Stephen Colbert [video at the link]
Barack Obama Wins The Physical Comedy Moment Of The Night
While mocking Trump, he briefly did the classic Trump accordion hands movement before looking down, alarmed. It got a big laugh.
He’s also peppered his speech with some fan service, including “don’t boo, vote.” In a blast from the past, the crowd is currently chanting “yes we can.”
A Night For The Mothers And Grandmothers
Mothers and grandmothers, in person and in spirit, have been constantly invoked over the past couple days. Hillary Clinton said she wished that her and Harris’ mothers were alive to witness her candidacy. Harris’ mother has been a main character in the video interludes. Angela Alsobrooks opened her story with her mother teaching herself to type. Michelle Obama said that she’d decided to speak tonight to honor the memory of her mother, who recently died.
[…] Republicans immediately stamped Harris a “DEI candidate.”
This roundabout way to get at its import has been very poignant — the idea that Harris, and all of the women who support her, are standing on the shoulders of women who got less recognition, less pay, less respect, less safety. It’s the classic American dream story, that the sacrifice and endurance of the women who came before built a world where a President Harris is a possibility.
Michelle Obama Brings A Dark And Urgent Warning
Michelle Obama has an urgent message, but one that runs counter to the exuberance spilling from the Harris campaign and this convention: Things are going to get darker.
“If they lie about her and they will — we have to do something,” she said, leading a call and response with the crowd. She repeated the line with when we see a bad poll, start feeling tired, start feeling dread.
She even said that Harris and Walz are only human and will make mistakes.
“This election will be close — in some states just a handful of votes in every precinct could decide the winner,” she warned. “So we have to vote in numbers that erase any doubt. We need to overwhelm any effort to suppress us,” she added, a clear allusion to Trump’s inevitable attempts to steal the election.
Michelle Obama With The Perfect Response To ‘DEI Candidate’
She took a swipe at the “affirmative action of generational wealth,” leading into an excellent section about how people like her and Harris (and those not like Trump) don’t get the leeway to lead businesses that fail, to change the rules so they always win.
She unleashed a roar from the crowd with this quip: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”
Emhoff’s Speech Is Invaluable In Helping People Get To Know Harris
[…] Emhoff — who is clearly completely devoted to her — is invaluable. These little stories about the kind of wife and mother she is — listening to his dorky first voicemail on their anniversary, having a quiet and pensive moment over not pressing Vice Presidential duties, but a call from her stepdaughter — are precious currency. And they draw such a stark contrast with Trump.
Doug Emhoff
We’ve seen a lot of highly produced videos meant to stir your heartstrings — but damn. That one was really good. The little section on Emhoff being goofy and out of place on Capitol Hill was adorable.
Emhoff and Walz have similar vibes — they obviously really love, and are really loved by, their families. To put it mildly, it’s a stark contrast to the Trump family dynamic (see Trump referring to his son Barron as “Melania’s son” etc etc). […]
Voters in Montana will decide in November whether to enshrine a right to abortion in the state Constitution, joining eight other states with similar citizen-sponsored questions on their ballots.
Montana’s secretary of state sent an email late Tuesday to the coalition of abortion rights groups sponsoring the measure, certifying that they had collected enough valid signatures to place it on the ballot….
And in Arizona — which, like Montana, was facing a Thursday deadline to certify its ballots — the state’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal late Tuesday from anti-abortion groups trying to strike a similar measure that the secretary of state there had approved last week. The justices, all appointed by Republicans, said that their decision did not signal support for the measure, only that they did not agree with the technical objection raised by the anti-abortion groups about the language used on ballot petitions.
Abortion remains legal in Montana until viability — the point when a fetus can survive outside the uterus, generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy — because of a 1999 state Supreme Court decision that said the right to privacy in the state Constitution included a right to “procreative autonomy.”
Advocates say the measure is necessary to prevent future members of the court, who are elected, from reversing that decision. And the state’s Republican governor, Greg Gianforte, and the Republican-controlled Legislature have repeatedly tried to ban or restrict abortion.
In each state, the measure would amend the state Constitution to prohibit the state from banning abortion before viability and would allow limited restrictions after that.
Even Republicans in Montana say they expect the measure to pass, with polls showing that a majority of residents believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. The governor, the attorney general and the secretary of state have tried repeatedly to block the amendment from appearing on the ballot.
Most recently, the secretary of state changed election software to strike “inactive voters” — those who are registered but who had not voted in the most recent federal election — instructing county election clerks not to count them. The Supreme Court ordered her to count those signatures, saying she had improperly tried to change electoral law when she disqualified them.
[…]
JMsays
@272 Lynna, OM:
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with Trump on Thursday for what he described as a “peace mission” amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The meeting led to suggestions that the former president may have violated the Logan Act, legislation that makes it illegal for American citizens to negotiate with foreign governments in dispute with the United States without prior approval.
“The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the Prime Minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now, because it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign,” said PBS’s Judy Woodruff Monday night. “So, I don’t know where—who knows whether that will come about or not, but I have to think that the Harris campaign would like for President Biden to do what presidents do, and that’s to work on that one.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if Woodruff was referring to a new report, or an Axios story last week that cited two U.S. sources as claiming that Trump and Netanyahu had spoken on the phone about cease-fire and Gaza hostage talks. Netanyahu’s office and Trump both separately denied the report.
Logan act questions are being raised about two issues. The first, with Orban is not a big deal. Unless Trump clearly stepped over the line and was somehow recorded nothing will come of this. The second is serious, interfering with active US diplomacy is the sort of thing the Logan act is designed to block. if there is real backing evidence that Trump interfered with US diplomacy he should face another criminal case.
Cases are rarely brought because evidence tends to be scarce and the people watched for violations can’t be cut off from meeting foreign representatives entirely. It’s usually enough to threaten people to get the parties to shut up until after the election.
The Wieners Circle partnered with Planned Parenthood Great Rivers’s mobile clinic […] and they had a very fun sign
[Now serving Trump footlongs. It’s 3 inches.]
“All patients at the mobile health clinic will get a free hot dog coupon on us.”
Not bad.
[…]
at one point, a bunch of elderly men on bicycles rode by and the man who was seemingly leading the pack waved around his red Trump hat and yelled out, “Trump footlong!” I guess he didn’t read the entire sign.
KGsays
Duckworth, a veteran who lost both legs in the Iraq War, went straight at Donald Trump for nearly five minutes straight.
“I went to war to protect America’s rights and freedoms,” Duckworth said – Lynna, OM@298 quoting DailyKos
The Iraq war was not fought to protect America’s rights and freedoms. It was an illegal and immoral imperialist war. Duckworth can be seen as one of the small minority of its victims who were Americans.
KGsays
Peter Thiel is an anagram for “The Reptile” – Reginald Selkirk@267
However, a spokesreptile croaked that this does not mean reptiles have anything other than contempt and loathing for Thiel, and requested that his full name – Peter Andreas Thiel, or at least Peter A. Thiel (as per usual American style) – should always be used.
There’s two options that we’re looking at and one is staying in, forming that new party – Nicole Shanahan quoted by Axios quoted by Lynna, OM@263
They could take a leaf from the Monty Python “Election Night” sketch and call it the Very Silly Party. (In the sketch – a bit of nostalgia for the days when John Cleese was amusing – The Very Silly Party’s very silly intervention tipped a result from the Silly Party to the Sensible Party.)
Reginald Selkirksays
@305: There is no longer any “usual American style” with regard to names. Anything goes. Many celebrities are known by a single name (Madonna, Ahnold) and some even by a single syllable (Cher, Cam, Dak).
That said “Peter A. Thiel” also has plenty of options for anagrams. Everything from “Real Epithet” to “Later Pee Hit.”
I think that Trump is trying to get inside Harris’ head with his racism, his comments about her looks, and now stealing her theme song. He is probably going to get a C&D letter from Beyonce rather than a tantrum from Harris though.
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* NBC News reported that the first night of the Democratic National Convention drew an estimated 20 million viewers, which exceeds the 18 million viewers who watched the first night of last month’s Republican National Convention.
* The Washington Post reported that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic National Committee “raised three times as much as Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee in July, and ended the month with a cash advantage that positions the newly minted Democratic presidential nominee to air more ads and maintain a larger payroll than her Republican opponent in the final months of the race for the White House.”
* Though we haven’t heard much lately about former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his considerable wealth, Bloomberg appears to have cut a $10 million check for the House Democrats’ largest super PAC.
For Democrats, Kamala Harris’ Republican backers aren’t just names on a page; they’re also being invited onto the party’s national convention stage.
By any fair measure, the number of Republicans and conservative figures who’ve endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris is an incredible symbolic victory for the Democratic ticket. Harris and her allies are eager to reach voters beyond their party’s base, and the more support the vice president picks up from the other side of the partisan divide, the better it’ll be for her candidacy.
But as the Democratic National Convention is making clear, Democrats are doing more than just thinking about the symbolism, and Team Harris isn’t just relegating her Republican proponents to names on a page. On the contrary, as NBC News reported, some prominent GOP voices were invited onto the convention stage.
Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham disavowed her former boss Tuesday evening and voiced support for Kamala Harris for president in remarks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In her brief speech, Grisham said that she used to be not just a Trump supporter but also a “true believer” who became part of Trump’s family and spent major holidays with him.
“I saw him when the cameras were off, behind closed doors. Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers,” she said.
Grisham went on to share an anecdote about a Trump visit to a hospital during the Covid crisis.
“He was mad that the cameras were not watching him. He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth,” she said. “He used to tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie — say it enough and people will believe you.’ But it does matter — what you say matters, and what you don’t say matters.”
The comments were striking, but so too were the broader circumstances: Trump’s former White House press secretary addressed the Democratic National Convention, urging voters to elect Trump’s Democratic rival. To put this in perspective, imagine Karine Jean-Pierre getting a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in 2028.
What’s more, Grisham wasn’t alone. Four Republicans addressed the Democratic convention on its second night, including Mesa Mayor John Giles Ana Navarro, a Republican co-host of the “The View,” and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger is still scheduled to appear this week.
If there are some on-the-fence GOP voters who aren’t quite sold on their party’s scandal-plagued nominee — Nikki Haley voters, I’m looking in your direction — Harris and her party are clearly extending an outreached hand.
When Democrats make a case against Donald Trump, they tend to focus on many of the former president’s worst qualities. The party and its officials eagerly remind voters that the Republican is dangerous and radical, dishonest and corrupt, ignorant and hateful. The assessments, of course, are rooted in fact.
But one of the striking things about the respective Democratic National Convention speeches from Michelle and Barack Obama was their willingness to make a different kind of case against the GOP nominee: Trump, the Obamas effectively argued, is small and tiresome.
From the former first lady’s remarks:
“[Kamala Harris] has shown her allegiance to this nation — not by spewing anger and bitterness, but by living a life of service, and always pushing the doors of opportunity open to others.
She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business — if we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No.
We don’t get to change the rules so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No. We put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something.”
Subtle, it was not.
[…] some of the most memorable parts of their remarks were their takedowns of the Republican candidate.
“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” the former first lady added. “See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black. I want to know, who’s going to tell him that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?
“It’s his same old con. Doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better. [So true.]
“Look, because cutting our health care, taking away our freedom to control our bodies, the freedom to become a mother through I.V.F., like I did — those things are not going to improve the health outcomes of our wives, mothers and daughters. Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books — none of that will prepare our kids for the future. Demonizing our children for being who they are and loving who they love, look, that doesn’t make anybody’s life better. Instead, instead, it only makes us small. And let me tell you this: Going small is never the answer. Going small is the opposite of what we teach our kids. Going small is petty. It’s unhealthy. And quite frankly, it’s unpresidential.”
If there was a time when Michelle Obama pulled her punches, that time has passed.
Her husband’s assessment dovetailed nicely with hers.
“Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” the former president said. “It has been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he is afraid of losing to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes. It just goes on and on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.”
When Obama referenced Trump’s weird obsession with crowd sizes, pay particular attention to what he did with his hands: [video at the link]
“Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided: between us and them, between the real Americans who, of course, support him and the outsiders who don’t,” Obama added. “And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you will just give him the power to put those other people back in their place. It is one of the oldest tricks in politics, from a guy whose act has — let’s face it — gotten pretty stale. We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.”
As eviscerations go, the Obamas weren’t just pitch-perfect, they also delivered remarks that won’t soon be forgotten.
Atlanta rapper and producer Lil Jon makes a surprise appearance at the DNC performing “Turn Down for What” during the Georgia delegation’s roll call vote.
Meanwhile, In Milwaukee …
The Harris-Walz ticket filled the NBA arena in Milwaukee that hosted the Republican convention last month, a split-screen primetime feat with the Democratic convention going on 90 miles away in Chicago
The use of technology to join the two audiences, one in Milwaukee and one in Chicago, worked seamlessly. Both arenas were packed with people. Quite a contrast to the interview Elon Musk tried to conduct on X with Trump.
Donald Trump said Tuesday he would “certainly” be open to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. playing a role in his administration if the independent candidate drops out of the 2024 race and endorses the former president.
“I like him, and I respect him,” Trump told CNN’s Kristen Holmes in an interview after a campaign stop in Michigan.
“He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a very long time,” the Republican presidential nominee said. “I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.”
Trump’s comments came after Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said on a podcast posted Tuesday that the Kennedy campaign is considering dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump. She described the decision as intended to reduce “the risk” that Vice President Kamala Harris defeats Trump.
Trump said he would “love that endorsement, because I’ve always liked” Kennedy.
Asked if he would consider appointing Kennedy to a role in his administration if he wins in November, Trump said he “probably would.”
“I like him a lot. I respect him a lot,” Trump said. “I probably would, if something like that would happen. He’s a very different kind of a guy — a very smart guy. And, yeah, I would be honored by that endorsement, certainly.”
[…] I started Daily Kos in 2002, and I have never seen the party more unified than at this moment.
This is part of President Joe Biden’s legacy—inheriting a fractured Democratic Party and just four years later, seeing it marching ideologically together.
There is no Bernie vs. Hillary battle, nor anything beyond healthy and respectful disagreement inside our Big Tent. It was telling that mere weeks after Democratic Socialists of America disowned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she took the stage on Monday as a full-fledged representative of the American Democratic Party mainstream—without ever having compromised a single tenet of her ideals. The party has moved to where she was all along. The last two laggards in the Senate, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, will be gone next year.
At the convention, the media desperately wanted another 1968, when protests and division sundered that year’s Democratic convention in Chicago. Instead, planned protests fizzled, barely impacting the proceedings. It’s not just the party that is united, but so is the base.
And it’s not just because of Donald Trump. This is not a party unified by terror and fear of a second Trump presidency. This is one unified by common purpose, joy, and hope.
And how can you not be fired up given our party? We have the best veterans: Biden, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Michelle and Barack Obama, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Jim Clyburn, Jimmy Carter, and so many more of our incredible elders.
And our bench, oh, our bench!
Just two days into our convention, we’ve already seen several of them—AOC, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, and Sen. Raphael Warnock. We have so many more yet to speak and beyond, like Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gavin Newsom of California, and Wes Moore of Maryland. There’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who could be the state’s governor one day. (Seriously, keep an eye on her.)
Meanwhile, this is the Republican Party: [video at the link]
This is ours: [video at the link]
This is their energy: [video at the link]
This is ours: {video at the link]
[…] Trump is no longer the main character in this story; we’re working on something bigger, more meaningful and purposeful, and it’s fun.
“I’m Kate Cox, and I love being a mom. I have two beautiful children, and my husband and I have always wanted a third. But when I got pregnant, doctors told us our baby would never survive, and if I didn’t get an abortion, it would put a future pregnancy at risk,” she said. “Because of [former President Trump’s] abortion bans, I had to flee my home. There’s nothing pro-family about abortion bans. There’s nothing pro-life about letting women suffer and even die today without a way to access abortion care.” Cox then shared to uproarious applause that, today, she’s five months pregnant, and her third child could be born “just in time” to see Harris’ inauguration in January…
[…] As each state delegation was called on to officially nominate Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) to the Democratic presidential ticket, a song — many of them with state connections — was playing, prompting a boisterous dance party.
As each state delegation was called on to officially nominate Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) to the Democratic presidential ticket, a song — many of them with state connections — was playing, prompting a boisterous dance party.
Here’s what each state delegation used as their roll call song:
Alabama – “Sweet Home Alabama,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Alaska – “Feel It Still,” by Portugal. The Man, a band from Wasilla, Ala.
Arizona – “Edge of Seventeen,” by Stevie Nicks, born in Phoenix.
Arkansas – “Don’t Stop,” by Fleetwood Mac. This was the 1992 campaign song for former President Clinton, who also served as the governor of Arkansas.
California – “Next Episode” by California native Dr. Dre, followed by “California Love,” by Tupac, then “Alright” and “Not Like Us,” by Kendrick Lamar, also from the Golden State.
Colorado – “September,” by Earth, Wind & Fire. One of the band’s lead singers, Philip Bailey, is from Denver.
Connecticut – “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours,” by Stevie Nicks, a likely homage to Connecticut’s nickname as the Constitution State.
Democrats Abroad – “Love Train,” by the O’Jays, featuring the lyrics, “People around the world, join hands.”
District of Columbia – “Let Me Clear My Throat,” by DJ Kool, a rapper born in the nation’s capital.
Delaware – “Higher Love,” by Kygo and Whitney Houston. The New York Times noted President Biden, who moved to the Diamond State in 1953, has used this song at various events.
Florida – “I Won’t Back Down,” by Florida native Tom Petty.
Georgia – “Welcome to Atlanta” by Jermaine Dupri. Lil Jon appeared with the state’s delegation to perform a part of his songs, “Turn Down for What” — which also features DJ Snake — and “Get Low.”
Guam – “Espresso,” by Sabrina Carpenter, which blew up on the charts this summer.
Hawaii – “24K Magic,” by Bruno Mars, originally from Honolulu.
Idaho – “Private Idaho,” by the B-52’s.
Illinois – “Sirius,” by the Alan Parsons Project. The Times noted the hit played when the Chicago Bulls were introduced in the 1990s.
Indiana – “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough,” by Michael Jackson, an Indiana native.
Iowa – “Celebration,” by Kool & the Gang.
Kansas – “Carry on Wayward Son,” by Kansas.
Kentucky – “First Class” by Jack Harlow, who was born in Louisville and raised in Shelbyville, Ky.
Louisiana – “All I Do Is Win,” by New Orleans native DJ Khaled.
Maine – “Shut Up and Dance,” by Walk the Moon.
Maryland – “Respect,” by Aretha Franklin.
Massachusetts – “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” by Dropkick Murphys, an American Celtic band formed in Quincy, Mass., in the 1990s.
Michigan – “Lose Yourself,” by Eminem, who famously spent his childhood in Detroit.
Minnesota – “Kiss,” by Prince and the Revolution, formed in Minneapolis in 1979.
Mississippi – “Twistin’ the Night Away,” by Mississippi’s own Sam Cooke.
Missouri – “Good Luck, Babe,” by up-and-coming Missouri singer Chappel Roan.
Montana – “American Woman” by Lenny Kravitz, a possible nod to electing the first woman to the Oval Office.
Nebraska – “Firework,” by Katy Perry, another pop classic often associated with the Fourth of July.
Nevada – “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers, formed in Las Vegas.
New Hampshire – “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey.
New Jersey – “Born in the U.S.A.” by Long Branch’s Springsteen.
New Mexico – “Confident” by Demi Lovato, from Albuquerque, N.M.
New York – “Empire State of Mind,” a hit by famous New York natives Alicia Keys and Jay-Z. The song has become an unofficial anthem for the Empire State.
North Carolina – “Raise Up,” by Petey Pablo, from the Old North State.
North Dakota – “Girl on Fire,” by Alicia Keys.
Northern Mariana Islands – “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. While not related to the islands, the song is fitting for the election as Harris metaphorically “climbs” the mountain in hope of victory, as NPR notes.
Ohio – “Green Light,” by John Legend featuring André 3000. Legend was born in Springfield, Ohio.
Oklahoma – “Ain’t Goin’ Down (’til the Sun Comes Up) by Garth Brooks, from Tulsa.
Oregon – “Float On” by Modest Mouse, a band now based in Portland.
Pennsylvania – “Motownphilly,” by Philadelphia’s Boyz II Men, followed by “Black and Yellow,” by Wiz Khalifa, which is about the performer’s experience growing up in Pittsburgh.
Puerto Rico – “Despacito,” by Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee, who are both from San Juan.
Rhode Island – “Shake it Off,” by Taylor Swift, who famously owns the single most expensive home in the Ocean State.
South Carolina – “Get Up I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine,” by James Brown, born in Barnswell, S.C.
South Dakota – “What I Like About You,” the Romantics.
Tennesse – “9 to 5,” by Dolly Parton, from Tennesse.
Texas – “TEXAS HOLD EM,’” by Beyoncé.
Utah – “Animal,” by Neon Trees, formed in Utah in 2005.
Vermont – “Stick Season,” by Noah Kahan, who hails from Stafford, Vt.
Virgin Islands -“VI to the Bone” by Mic Love, originally from the Virgin Islands.
Virginia – “The Way I Are,” by Timbaland featuring Keri Hilson and D.O.E. Timbaland is from Norfolk, Va.
Washington – “Can’t Hold Us,” by Macklemore, from Kent, Wash. and Ryan Lewis, from Spokane.
West Virginia – “Jump Around,” by House of Pain, a hit famously played at University of Wisconsin’s home football games.
Wyoming – “I Gotta Feeling,” by Black Eyed Peas.
A Harris-Walz administration can help us move past some of the tired, old debates that keep stifling progress. Because at their core, Kamala and Tim understand that when everybody gets a fair shot, we are all better off. They understand that when every child gets a good education, the whole economy gets stronger. When women are paid the same as men for doing the same job, all families benefit. They understand that we can secure our borders without tearing kids away from their parents.
Donald Trump and his well-heeled donors, they don’t see the world that way. For them, one group’s gains is necessarily another group’s loss. For them, freedom means that the powerful can do pretty much what they please, whether it’s fire workers trying to organize a union or put poison in our rivers or avoid paying taxes like everybody else has to do.
Ultimately, Obama says, the way forward is through the basic respect and decency — and stubborn determination to make sure the system works for all — that Harris and Walz stand for, even if it does sound a little corny. Invoking his own maternal grandmother and Michelle’s mother, Marian Robinson, he said that even though they came from very different backgrounds.
They knew what mattered: things like honesty and integrity, kindness, and hard work. They weren’t impressed with braggarts or bullies. They didn’t think putting other people down lifted you up or made you strong. They didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing about what they didn’t have. Instead, they appreciated what they did. They found pleasure in simple things: a card game with friends, a good meal and laughter around the kitchen table, helping others, and, most of all, seeing their children do things and go places that they would’ve never imagined for themselves.
Well hell, if that’s corny, we’ll take it. It’s way better — for all of us — than cruelty, and a far better way to run a country. Obama closed by calling on us all to work in the next 77 days — 76 now, the pressure is on — to go and fight like hell and have fun doin’ it, beloveds:
We will elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we all believe in. And together, we too will build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal, and more free. So let’s get to work.
Courthouse News Service: Illinois bans corporal punishment in all schools In 1990, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child established an obligation to “prohibit all corporal punishment of children.” The U.S. was the convention’s lone holdout.
Associated Press / August 20, 2024
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — This school year, Illinois will become just the fifth state in the nation to prohibit corporal punishment in all schools.
Legislation that Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law this month bans physical punishment in private schools while reiterating a prohibition on the practice in public schools implemented 30 years ago.
When the ban takes effect in January, Illinois will join New Jersey, Iowa, Maryland and New York in prohibiting paddling, spanking or hitting in every school.
State Rep. Margaret Croke, a Chicago Democrat, was inspired to take up the issue after an updated call by the American Association of Pediatrics to end the practice, which it says can increase behavioral or mental health problems and impair cognitive development. The association found that it’s disproportionately administered to Black males and students with disabilities.
“It was an easy thing to do. I don’t want a child, whether they are in private school or public school, to have a situation in which corporal punishment is being used,” Croke said.
Croke was also disturbed by the Cassville School District in southwest Missouri. After dropping corporal punishment in 2001, it reinstated it two years ago as an opt-in for parents. Croke wanted to send a clear message that “it never was going to be OK to inflict harm or pain on a child.”…..
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, last year introduced legislation, co-sponsored by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, to ban corporal punishment in any school receiving federal funds. It was assigned to a Senate committee for a public hearing in May 2023 but has seen no further action….
Today, 17 states technically allow corporal punishment in all schools, although four prohibit its use on students with disabilities…..
Among states that have completely outlawed it, New Jersey took the unusual step of barring corporal punishment in all schools in 1867. Iowa eliminated it in private schools in 1989. Maryland and New York stopped private school use in 2023….
The law does not apply to home schools. Home-schooled students are subject to the same rules during school hours as those they face after school….
Croke, whose school-age child attends Catholic school, said her intent was not to open the door to state regulation of private education but rather to “keep kids out of harm’s way.”
“There’s a red line there, that hitting kids should never be allowed,” Croke said.
Voters got some shitcans for the party of Make America More Stupider Again.
The Democratic National Convention has been an explosion of joy, from an ecstatic roll call with L’il Jon hyping the crowd from the windows to the Walz, two jam-packed arenas, and Michelle and Barack Obama scorching Donald J. Trump’s whining, miserable, racist ass. (Was that a tiny peen joke we caught there? Didn’t know he had it in him!)
If you listen closely, you can hear GOP enthusiasm deflating like a punctured balloon in a whistle of air collapsing into some sputtering fart noises.
And look over there, here’s some more big fat honking L’s for shitass Republicans who want to control your body, mind, and what your kids read! Tuesday’s primary was a string of losses for Moms For Liberty across Florida school boards, with DeSantis-backed candidates losing 11 of the 23 races they ran in, and five of the races so close that they’re headed for a runoff. Could it be that in rosy-red Florida, voters are getting a little bit sick of hysterical, hypocritical buttinskis who want to lock up librarians and make America more stupid again?
Last year, stumpy-legged failed presidential candidate and awkward robot posing as a human Gov. Ron DeSantis sat down with Moms For Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice to come up with a list of 14 allegedly woke school board candidates to personally target, and poured $2 million into school board races.
He was extra grr mad at Laura Hine and Eileen Long in Pinellas County, and Nadia Combs and Jessica Vaughn in Hillsborough County. But voters were not having it, and they won! In Sarasota County, incumbent Karen Rose, who had been allied with Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, lost her job to normal person Liz Barker. Sad fart noise! In Flagler County, Derek Barrs, former highway patrol officer, lost to Janie Ruddy, an actual former teacher. Nate Spera, a former fire chief with no experience in education, lost to incumbent Jennifer Anne Richardson in St. Lucie County. In Pasco County, M4L-backed incumbent and culture-warrior Alison Crumbley lost to Jessica Wright, a teacher who fought book bans. So much womp womping!
This is not to say that Florida has become sane, all of the sudden. Try-hard perv Matt Gaetz and his giant forehead won their primary. […] DeSantis-backed New College for Hitler Studies has been dumping books. But there’s still millions of sane people in the state, and here’s your proof!
Michelle Obama’s appearance was just one piece of a DNC convention that so far has centered fashion.
When Michelle Obama took the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, she looked, frankly, cool. At the 2016 and 2020 conventions, she wore a subdued blue shift dress and a brown satin top, respectively, her hair both times in a straightened bob. This year, she came with a ponytail of braids, dressed in an appealingly complex top showing off her famously toned arms.
The top, part of a navy suit by the American label Monse, had a wrapped neckline made of the deconstructed lapels of a suit jacket. A little belt was cinched at her waist, its silver loops grabbing the light of her silver earrings. Her fingers were stacked with cascades of David Yurman jewelry. According to the Instagram Story of her longtime stylist, Meredith Koop, her shoes were by luxury stiletto king Jimmy Choo.
[…] Monse’s founders, Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, started their label nearly a decade ago after working at Oscar de la Renta, where they are now both co-creative directors. That label has been a mainstay for first ladies — both Republican and Democrat — across the decades, but Monse has always been more playful, with the appeal of sweet-and-sour candy: taking a slightly strange idea, like those wrapped lapels […]. In other words, Obama probably picked it just because it looked awesome — a choice as relatable to everyday Americans […]
Fashion has been a strange bedfellow for politics over the past eight years. During Melania Trump’s time in the White House, the first lady wore many fantastical luxury clothes — by Gucci, Michael Kors and Dior, as did then-President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump. But whereas Obama had made dressing a political figure a sort of ordination, promoting independent and even obscure labels, Melania Trump’s designer wardrobe made the left-leaning fashion industry reticent. (Much was made of the fact that Ivanka Trump wore Gabriela Hearst, who had spoken about her dashed dreams of dressing Hillary Clinton and hopes to “bring [Donald] Trump down.”)
And while first lady Jill Biden has worn many designer pieces, from Ralph Lauren and, yes, Oscar de la Renta, and even celebrated the addition of her inauguration wardrobe into the Smithsonian, she has downplayed conversations about her clothes, other than to tout American designers and to re-wear dresses as a show of her commitment to sustainability.
Now, it seems, Democrats are in a new era. Of course, Obama is not a part of the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. But her fashionista moment was one piece of a DNC convention that, so far, has centered fashion to a surprising degree, suggesting that the style Obama championed — playful, expressive and very label-heavy — will play a role in the campaign and, should Harris win, in the White House.
Harris herself, who has mostly been fashion-agnostic, has embraced the new vibe. On Monday, she made a surprise speech in a brown suit. While Harris has somewhat famously worn several suits in that shade, and the cut was mostly indistinguishable from her usual pantsuit silhouettes, this one was by the very hip French brand Chloé, which is undergoing a revival of 2000s hyper-femme boho mania under new creative director Chemena Kamali. Harris also wore Chloé to the state dinner for Kenya this year, suggesting a new allegiance to the high-fashion status quo.
These are not the sort of highfalutin details that speak to everyday Americans — a similar jacket, double-breasted and with gold buttons, is an eye-popping $3,390, and most people aren’t invested in unpacking the meaning behind the revival of Sienna Miller’s favorite wooden clogs — but it demonstrates Harris’s willingness to play the game of designer label gamesmanship. That she chose a French look rather than an American one underscores that point: I’ll wear what I wanna wear, not what you think I should. (The fact that Chloé calls that fabric color “coconut brown” is not another chronically online Easter egg from the Harris campaign but a complete coincidence, a representative said.)
[…] The industry already has an ally in Ella Emhoff ( the daughter of second gentleman Doug Emhoff) who has modeled for Balenciaga and Collina Strada, and went viral at the 2021 inauguration for her pairing of a prairie dress by American Batsheva Hay with a sparkly collared plaid coat by Miu Miu. On Monday, she wore a cream sleeveless top and baggy pants from Peter Do’s Helmut Lang with the viral Harris-Walz camo hat. That look sent conservative commentators into a tailspin — even though Ella Emhoff, at age 25, styles herself like many young Americans.
[…] Again, the nitty-gritty of these choices tells us little about the people wearing them aside from what makes them feel comfortable, confident. Of course, all of these figures run the risk of appearing out of touch for indulging in designer togs, but they might be betting that accusations of avarice may be worth the image they result in. Still, that in itself is a message: that this is a Democratic Party not hesitant but eager to use the tools of clothing to build an image that it is enjoying itself.
I don’t care that much about the fashion, but I will say that Michelle Obama’s fashion choices looked good on her. She looked spectacular and powerful. Barack Obama looked good too, will a well-tailored suit that was in sharp contrast to Trump’s schlumpy look.
The article is topped by a photo in which Michelle Obama look’s fantastic. It shows her entire outfit.
The 1992 hit is played at University of Wisconsin home football games as students and fans jump and cheer, becoming synonymous with the state’s flagship university.
More detail regarding California: California: The Next Episode – Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg, California Love – Tupac Shakur, featuring Dr. Dre, Alright – Kendrick Lamar, Not Like Us – Kendrick Lamar
Nearly all of the above artists are legendary California musicians, with Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar born in Compton, and Snoop Dog born in Long Beach. Only Tupac does not count himself among the native Californians, having been born in New York City.
On Aug. 22, 1964, Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer delivered an iconic speech at the Democratic National Convention, taking the party to task for its failure to support voting rights for Black Americans and its refusal to grant her integrated delegation seats at the convention.
Thursday is the 60th anniversary of those remarks. And on that day, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to make history, delivering a convention speech as the first Black woman and first Asian American person to accept a major party’s presidential nomination.
If elected, Harris will also be the first female president.
Hamer was a leader of the racially integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which was fighting to be seated at the 1964 convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in place of the all-white delegation from the state.
But then-President Lyndon Johnson, who needed those Southern Democratic votes, was against them.
The credentials committee offered the party two seats at the convention as a compromise. But Hubert Humphrey, who was trying to get the vice presidential nomination, said Johnson would not let Hamer get one of those spots.
“The president has said he will not let that illiterate woman speak on the floor of the Democratic convention,” Humphrey said.
Johnson even called a news conference to try to divert network coverage away from Hamer’s remarks. That plan backfired; TV networks later aired her testimony in full in the coveted prime-time hours.
Hamer’s vivid testimony about fighting for the right to vote included sharing the physical violence she and others had faced in that battle. She talked about being locked up by white law enforcement officers after she had attended a voter registration workshop, and how they ordered other Black prisoners to beat her.
“All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens,” Hamer said in her speech. “And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?”
The historic nature of Harris’ candidacy, and the civil rights leaders who helped pave the way for her to stand on the stage Thursday, is on the minds of attendees at the convention in Chicago this week — some of whom were also here eight years ago celebrating the history-making candidacy of Hillary Clinton.
Wendell Pierce, an actor well-known for his roles on “The Wire” and “Treme,” is at the convention this week and raises money for the campaign. He said Hamer, and the 60th anniversary of her speech, was at the front of his mind this week.
“Now we are going to nominate a Black woman to this party and change American politics forever. And I’m going to be a puddle of tears, because I’m going to think about all of those folks who made the ultimate sacrifice because they believed in democracy — who died, and in their last moments, said, ‘I hope I’m not dying in vain,’” Pierce told NBC News.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., paid tribute to Hamer in her remarks Monday on the first night of the Democratic convention, saying she was 22 in 1964.
“She didn’t get the outcome she was hoping for in Atlantic City, but you can bet that when the official Mississippi delegation was seated at the convention four years later, Fannie Lou Hamer was sitting there with them,” Waters said, adding, “Here we are, 60 years later, at another Democratic convention with … Kamala Harris as our party’s nominee.”
And in an interview with MSNBC on Monday night, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison invoked the contributions of Black Americans in getting to this moment, mentioning Hamer, Frederick Douglass, the slaves who built the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“This is more than just beating Donald Trump. … This is addressing Fannie Lou Hamer, who, 60 years ago, testified to the DNC Credentials Committee because she couldn’t be a part of the Mississippi delegation. It was an all-white delegation, and she said she’s sick and tired of being sick and tired. Well, we are sick and tired of being sick and tired of people coming after our freedom, coming after our rights.”
The Mississippi delegation is also radically different now. When it introduced itself during the roll call Tuesday night, its Democratic Party chair, state Rep. Cheikh Taylor, said, “We are proud of our heroes such as Fannie Lou Hamer.”
New Yorker cartoon: “Attention, passengers: there will be some moderate turbulence while we pass through the energy field pulsing up from the Democratic National Convention.”
Tsivileva’s responsibilities will include overseeing social and housing support for military personnel and managing interactions with the state foundation “Defenders of the Fatherland,” which supports participants in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine.
This appointment adds to the list of Putin’s family members and close associates who have ascended to powerful positions within the Russian government.
Putin is loading up the government with people selected for loyalty over competence. This is a bad sign long term but probably does serve to stabilize Putin’s position over the short term. People who’s only claim to positions of power is their connection to Putin will find it difficult to replace him. The other oligarchs that are independently rich and powerful are a bigger threat.
Russia has lashed out at the alleged presence of American journalists and soldiers in its territory, saying this contradicts the U.S.’s assertions of noninvolvement in Ukraine’s ongoing cross-border operation.
Several issues going on here. There likely are some journalists that have slipped into the war zone to try and score a major article. As long as they are independent there isn’t much the US can do if the Ukrainians don’t want to force them out.
Second, there are no official US soldiers in Ukraine in the war zone. Officially there are no mercenaries either but that is possible, the Ukrainians are certainly accepting help from anybody they trust. Likely though the Ukrainians would keep Americans away from the front, because Ukraine doesn’t want word of deaths getting back to the US and they are likely more useful for training Ukrainians anyways. Third, the Russians complaining about this considering the scale of mercenaries they are using is rather funny. Russia is hiring foreign soldiers in large numbers for use as cannon fodder and front line trench digging/defense.
Ukraine has launched the largest drone attack on Moscow since Vladimir Putin’s invasion – its latest attempt to bring the war to Russia as it continues an audacious cross-border incursion in Kursk.
“[Russians] don’t discuss the war, and they generally feel quite comfortable because there is a war going on somewhere, someone is killing. It’s interesting for them to watch on TV,” he said. “But when the war proceeds into the territory of Russia, they are certainly scared. They are shocked. This has a significant impact on the psychological state of Russia. It is also a tool of influence.”
The attacks on Moscow also have a lot of legitimate military targets. Russia is a hub state built around Moscow and there are lots of targets in the area. Making strikes that Russian news can’t cover up will have a lot of impact. The Russians often look at the war the same way Americans looked at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, distant events that mostly effect them because of the financial effects. An attitude the Russian government encourages.
Ukraine’s military incursion into Kursk aims to create a “buffer zone” to prevent cross-border attacks by Moscow’s forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed Sunday, as his troops blew up a second bridge in the Russian border region.
What Zelensky is saying can’t be trusted on this but forcing the Russians back so they can’t continuously bombard Ukrainian cities and towns near the border is plausible. This article is a couple of days old and the last bridge over the Seym has been blown up. This is a strategic problem for the Russians, cutting of a good chunk of soldiers from steady supplies.
Putin has a history of responding slowly to various crises in his tenure, and he has so far played down the attack. But 2 1/2 years after launching a war in Ukraine to remove what he called a threat to Russia, it is his own country that seems more turbulent.
Putin’s tendency towards careful planned response is likely one of the things hurting the Russian military in Kursk. The Russian army is a command from the top organization. The situation in Kursk is chaotic by design and officers calling back to Moscow to get commands are not going to get them fast enough. This has clearly been the problem in several situations already, where holes in the line didn’t get plugged fast enough or the Ukrainian forces just moved around Russian defenses.
This is further complicated by the Russians partially treating the Kursk incursion as a counter terrorism action and having the Army and FSB acting independently. In the sort of government by de facto feudal power base the Russians have these groups do not coordinate well.
Trump spouts lies and hatred again, but his flow is weak and low-energy.
In Howell, Trump focused on attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party’s presidential ticket, saying that she “will deliver crime, chaos, destruction, and death [if elected]. You’ll see levels of crime that you’ve never seen before. … I will deliver law, order, safety and peace.”
Trump also said this about suburban women: “Why wouldn’t they like me? I keep the suburbs safe. I stopped low-income towers from rising right along the side of their house. I keep the illegal aliens away from the suburbs.”
Trump’s gone from dog whistle to bullhorn to, now, fog horn.
When a reporter asked him about the white supremacist problem in Howell, he refused to answer, instead pointing out that President Joe Biden had been there in 2021. However, Biden visited to deliver a speech about infrastructure. If Biden had been there one month after a neo-Nazi march, you can bet he’d have delivered a different message.
The Harris-Walz campaign jumped on Trump’s refusal to condemn the pro-Trump white supremacists.
“Instead, the 34-time convicted felon lied about crime, which skyrocketed on his watch, about policing, which he tried to defund, and about the January 6 insurrectionists who attacked police officers defending our Capitol at his behest,” said campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika.
[…] Put simply, he has no answer to the message of unity, inclusion, and joy coming from the Democrats. All he has is racist—and false—attacks about the “Kamala crime wave” in a city grappling with racists and hate.
On Tuesday evening, Cole Emhoff, son of second gentleman Doug Emhoff, got a chance to step into the spotlight at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to pay tribute to his father and to his stepmom, Kamala Harris.
For that moment, Cole created a short video celebrating his father’s relationship with the future presidential candidate, starting with what he called “the blind date that would dramatically change all of our lives forever.” The video then notes how he and his sister, Ella, watched his father and the then attorney general of California fall in love while “acting like teenagers.”
“In 2014, Kamala became Momala,” he continues. “She took over Sunday night dinners and taught Doug how to actually cook.”
It’s a sweet, heartfelt tribute to both Emhoff and Harris from a son who cares deeply about them both. But what makes it even more special is that the video was produced by Kerstin Emhoff—Cole’s mother and Doug’s ex-wife.
This is a video that represents a family. A blended, beautiful, and absolutely American family. [video at the link]
“Our blended family wasn’t used to politics or the spotlight, but when Kamala became senator, we were all excited to step up,” Cole continues in the video. “Especially my dad. Then Kamala became vice president. It felt like Doug was a bit out of place on Capitol Hill. I thought, ‘What is my goofy dad doing here?’ But he embraced it. He left his practice after being a lawyer for thirty years. That was tough. I was so proud to watch him do it, to stand by her side, an example of true partnership.”
The video may speak mostly to Cole’s love and admiration for his father, and his delight in seeing his father in a happy relationship. But every aspect of this is an expression of how real families overcome by coming together.
“We may not look like other families in the White House, but we are ready to represent all families in America.”
Harris, Doug, and Kerstin have voiced their respect for one another and their ability to coparent the Emhoff kids. In his DNC speech Tuesday, Emhoff said daughter Ella refers to their style as that of a “three-headed parenting machine.”
Following JD Vance’s resurfaced comments about “childless cat ladies,” Kerstin came to Harris’ defense in a statement.
“These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I. She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”
Harris also mentioned her relationship with Kerstin in her memoir, “The Truths We Hold.”
“I could tell from the way Doug talked about his kids that she was a terrific mother—and in later months, as Kerstin and I got to know each other, we really hit it off ourselves and became friends. (We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.)”
And they certainly do support one another: [X post from Kerstin Emhoff at the link]
The cryptocurrency industry has spent more than $119 million on federal elections in 2024 to help boost crypto-friendly candidates and defeat crypto skeptics, according to a new report from Public Citizen.
This “unprecedented” spending represents nearly half — 48 percent — of all corporate money contributed to this year’s elections, the report from the progressive consumer rights watchdog group found.
“That cryptocurrency companies like Coinbase and Ripple are able to spend over a hundred million dollars to silence crypto’s critics and elevate its backers embodies everything that is wrong with the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision,” Rick Claypool, research director at Public Citizen and author of the report, said in a statement.
“Corporations can’t vote,” he continued. “But the sole reason crypto is a hot-button topic in this election cycle is that crypto businesses are spending eye-popping sums to make themselves impossible to ignore.”
In its controversial decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot limit campaign spending by corporations and outside groups.
[…] The only industry that has outspent crypto during the same period is the fossil fuel industry, which has spent $176 million over the past 14 years, Public Citizen found.
“All this spending is a concern not just because the crypto companies may be able to buy deregulation,” Claypool added. “This direct spending by crypto corporations is shattering a longstanding norm — and is likely to set a precedent for vastly more direct spending by corporations in upcoming elections.”
Most of the crypto industry’s spending this cycle has gone toward pro-crypto super PAC Fairshake and its affiliates, which have received nearly $114 million, according to the report.
Crypto firms Coinbase and Ripple are some of the biggest spenders in the digital asset space so far this year. Coinbase has contributed $50.5 million, with $45.5 million going to Fairshake. Ripple has given $49 million overall and $45 million to Fairshake.
A federal court in Texas has thrown out the government’s ban on noncompete agreements that was set to take effect September 4.
In her ruling, [Trump appointed] Judge Ada Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas wrote that the federal agency had overstepped its power when it approved the ban.
“The FTC lacks substantive rulemaking authority with respect to unfair methods of competition,” she wrote. “The role of an administrative agency is to do as told by Congress, not to do what the agency think[s] it should do.”
[…]
An estimated 30 million people, or one in five American workers, are bound by noncompetes. The employment agreements typically prevent workers – everyone from minimum wage earners to CEOs – from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own….
“We are seriously considering a potential appeal, and today’s decision does not prevent the FTC from addressing noncompetes through case-by-case enforcement actions,” wrote FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham in a statement.
[…]
The FTC has long argued that noncompetes hurt workers.
“The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan in a statement when the proposed rule was first introduced. “Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand.”
According to the FTC, the new rule could lead to wage increases totaling nearly $300 billion per year and the creation of 8,500 new businesses per year, once workers can freely pursue new opportunities without the fear of being taken to court by their employers.
The ban would carve out an exception for senior executives with existing noncompete agreements, on the grounds that these agreements are more likely to have been negotiated. The FTC estimates that less than 1% of workers would qualify as senior executives.
Existing noncompete agreements would not need to be formally rescinded under the rule, but employers would be required to inform their employees that they are no longer enforceable.
Federal authorities hope the settlement will deter the deceptive use of AI-generated impersonations of political figures and others.
A telecom company has agreed to pay a $1 million fine for its role in the deepfake robocall that impersonated President Joe Biden’s voice ahead of the New Hampshire Democratic primary […]
Lingo Telecom, a voice service provider that distributed the artificial intelligence-generated robocalls through “spoofed” phone numbers, will pay the seven-figure penalty and agreed to stricter oversight protocols, in what federal authorities call a first-of-its-kind enforcement action against malicious deepfakes, or AI-driven impersonations of others.
“Every one of us deserves to know that the voice on the line is exactly who they claim to be,” Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “If AI is being used, that should be made clear to any consumer, citizen, and voter who encounters it.”
The robocall employed an AI-generated impersonation of Biden’s voice, which told New Hampshire voters not to vote in January’s Democratic primary.
As first uncovered by NBC News, the call was orchestrated by longtime political consultant Steve Kramer, who at the time was working for a rival campaign, though Kramer says he did it as a stunt to raise awareness about the danger of deepfakes. […]
Kramer is separately facing a $6 million fine from the FCC, as well as 26 criminal counts of voter intimidation and impersonating officials in New Hampshire. He is currently out on bail.
He is also facing a civil lawsuit brought by the League of Women Voters. The U.S. Department of Justice threw its weight behind the suit last month.
“Voter intimidation, whether carried out in person or by way of deepfake robocalls, online disinformation campaigns, or other AI-fueled tactics, can stand as a real barrier for voters seeking to exercise their voice in our democracy,” said Kristen Clarke, the head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, in a statement. […]
Gwen Walz recently revealed that she underwent a fertility treatment called intrauterine insemination.
After he talked about his family’s fertility struggles on the campaign trail, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz is facing criticism from his opponent for not accurately having identified the treatment his wife, Gwen, received.
The Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance, of Ohio, accused Walz on Tuesday of lying about having conceived his children via in vitro fertilization. Vance seemed to be responding to an article in Glamour magazine, in which Gwen Walz said she had undergone a fertility treatment called intrauterine insemination.
“It’s just such a bizarre thing to lie about, right? There’s nothing wrong with having a baby through IVF or not having a baby through IVF. Like, why lie about it? I just don’t understand that,” Vance told reporters in Milwaukee.
Both IVF and IUI are forms of assisted reproductive technology. IVF involves retrieving eggs from the ovaries and fertilizing them with sperm in a laboratory, then transferring one or more embryos into the uterus. IUI involves putting sperm directly into the uterus. Either way, a doctor inserts a small, flexible tube into the vagina to place the sperm or an embryo into the uterus.
Some staunch abortion opponents are against the practice of discarding embryos, a common part of the IVF process. Like most Republicans, Vance has voted against Democratic legislation to protect IVF.
[…] In February, after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through IVF were considered children (meaning people theoretically could be sued for destroying them), Walz wrote on Facebook that he and his wife “have two beautiful children because of reproductive health care like IVF.”
And last month, he said on the “Pod Save America” podcast that, if it were up to Vance, “I wouldn’t have a family because of IVF and the things that we need to do reproductive. My kids were born through that direct — you know, that way.”
Mia Ehrenberg, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign, said in a statement Tuesday that Walz “was using commonly understood shorthand for fertility treatments” in his previous comments.
“The Trump campaign’s attacks on Mrs. Walz are just another example of how cruel and out of touch Donald Trump and JD Vance are when it comes to women’s healthcare,” Ehrenberg said.
Several fertility doctors said it’s common to conflate IUI and IVF. [So, not a “lie” like Vance claimed.]
“Whenever someone thinks they’re doing fertility treatments, they think automatically they’re doing IVF,” said Dr. Brian Levine, founding partner of CCRM Fertility New York.
In reality, he added, “there’s gradations of treatment, and IUI is one of the tools that’s in my toolbox.”
[…] There can be overlap between the two processes. For instance, Gwen Waltz said in a statement Tuesday that her treatment involved injections, which are typically the shots IVF patients use.
“The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next door neighbor. She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process,” she said. “I’d rush home from school and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track.”
In most cases, patients undergoing IUI take pills to stimulate the production of eggs, but a minority use injectable hormones. In that sense, medications most commonly associated with IVF have played a role in some couples’ success with IUI.
[…] IUI has a lower success rate per cycle than IVF, but it’s less expensive and invasive. People undergoing IVF must give themselves shots daily for one to two weeks and get frequent ultrasounds and blood draws. The egg retrieval procedure requires anesthesia and involves inserting a needle into the ovaries to remove the eggs.
Many fertility specialists suggest trying IUI first. Some patients also aren’t candidates for IVF.
“I tell my patients: ‘Let’s do three IUIs. If that’s not successful, let’s talk about the more involved and expensive cousin: in vitro,’” Reshef said.
Both IVF and IUI are often highly stressful and emotional for couples hoping to conceive.
“When my wife and I decided to have children, we spent years going through infertility treatments,” Walz said this month at a rally in Philadelphia. “And I remember praying every night for a call for good news, the pit in my stomach when the phone rang and the agony when we heard that the treatments hadn’t worked. So it wasn’t by chance that when we welcomed our daughter into the world, we named her Hope.”
Far-right activists allied with Donald Trump attempted to attend the Democratic National Convention in an attempt to troll liberals. But instead, they found themselves brutally rebuffed at every turn, broadcasting their own humiliation.
“Dude, you’re at a 10. I just walked in. I’m here to just learn,” Kirk said.
“You’re an anti-patriotic, anti-constitutional person crashing our party because you tried to stop our democracy,” Short replied. “Donald Trump called the secretary of state of Georgia and told him to ‘find him some votes.’”
I don’t know if the DNC had planned for this but the right wing influencers got recognized and hit up by people ready to deal with them. The Democrats didn’t try to kick them out, which would be recorded and played up by the Republicans. Instead they talked to them, pointed out that they are hard right and made them look foolish in the recordings. This is a risky strategy against somebody with good experience reporting but the right wing activists are not skilled. I don’t think any of the right wing activists that are active right now are any good when pressed, they don’t even rise to the level of fundamentalist preacher.
Vladimir Putin exploited Donald Trump’s “ego and insecurities” to exert an almost mesmeric hold over the former US president, who refused to entertain any negative evaluation of the autocratic Russian leader from his own staff, and ultimately fired his national security adviser, HR McMaster, over it.
The bold assessment of Trump’s fealty to Putin comes in McMaster’s book At War With Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House, published by HarperCollins and arriving on 27 August. The Guardian obtained a copy…
In Chicago, Vice Presidential Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are at the center of a raucous, joyful Democratic National Convention. Meanwhile, Sen. JD Vance is out there on the road, doing the hard, dirty work of being Donald Trump’s running mate.
On Tuesday, Vance was within 40 miles of the site of last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. But what Vance found in the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, was not exactly an energetic crowd ready to cheer him to the rafters. In fact, it’s hard to call it a “crowd” at all.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel set Vance’s audience at 100 attendees. But looking at videos of the event, that number seems … generous.
A little careful editing when Vance climbed onto the platform and it’s almost possible to believe there were a decent number of people present. [video at the link]
But pan that camera around, and the illusion disintegrates. [video at the link]
This turnout might be understandable if Vance were holding an event in, say, Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky. But Kenosha is not a small place. This is a city with a population of just under 100,000, and it’s less than an hour away from Milwaukee, a city of over half a million. It shouldn’t be difficult to turn out a crowd to a scheduled event. Considering the number of reporters trailing Vance on his tour, it seems likely that the media outnumbered the potential voters at this appearance.
This isn’t just a matter of numbers. Turnout like this likely reflects voters’ very low enthusiasm to get out and see Vance in person. Considering that Trump won Kenosha County in 2020, with 44,972 votes, this pitiful showing indicates that not even Trump voters appear interested in seeing Vance.
In any case, it’s a good thing that Vance’s boss famously isn’t worried about crowd size.
LOL. Most excellent schadenfreude moment.
coffeepottsays
@337: ‘Giant spiders the size of rats make comeback in UK after nearing extinction, RSPB says | ITV News’
are UK rats tiny or something??? i’ve seen a lot of Dolomedes and i’ve seen a lot of rats – this headline is garbage.
It should be shameful to publish an article about a single species of spider without naming it: Dolomedes planatarius.
[…] “My girl, Kamala Harris, is more than ready for this moment. She is one of the most qualified people ever to seek the office of the presidency. And she is one of the most dignified. A tribute to her mother, to my mother and to your mother, too. The embodiment of the stories we tell ourselves about this country. Her story is your story. It’s my story. It’s the story of the vast majority of Americans trying to build a better life.”
“We cannot be our own worst enemies. No. See, because the minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is ‘just right.’ And we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
[…] “History will remember Joe Biden as an outstanding president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger. And I am proud to call him my president, but I am even prouder to call him my friend.” […]
In what was certainly the most exciting part of this convention for some of us (Rebecca and me, specifically), your Wonkette team got to be in the very same room as United Auto Workers President (and Wonkette’s 2023 Sexiest Man Alive) Shawn Fain!
Speaking to Axios’s Niala Boodhoo, Fain dug into the differences between how Donald Trump pretends to care about workers, versus the way Harris and Walz have actually shown they care about workers. And, incredibly enough, there is something of a difference.
“If you look at 2015,” Fain said, “when Trump ran for president, he actually stated that we need to do a rotation of these good paying jobs in the Midwest somewhere else, when they pay less money, so that these workers will be begging for their jobs back at any rate. That’s basically driving a race to the bottom. You go to when he was president in 2019, you know, he’s claiming now that he’s this champion for the auto worker and that he cares about working class people but several plants were shutting down at that time and he did nothing to help the situation. He told workers in Lordstown, Ohio, literally told them, ‘don’t sell your houses,’ I want to bring the jobs back, and then the plant closed, workers got sent all over the country. […] workers were on strike at GM in 2019 when he was president, he did nothing, said nothing.”
But you know who was there on the picket line in 2019? Kamala Harris. And there’s video to prove it! [video at the link]
And that’s the thing — Trump loves the aesthetics of labor, he loves the idea of working class people celebrating him for saving their jobs, but he doesn’t want to actually bother to save their jobs.
Fain also talked about how Kamala Harris worked at McDonalds when she was younger, how Tim Walz worked as a teacher for decades, all of which obviously separates them from Donald Trump, who just happened to have a very rich daddy.
“I wish I was born into that kind of wealth and that just had been handed to me, I guess,” he said, “But actually I probably don’t, I guess, I’m glad that I had to struggle like that. Because it’s made me who I am so, you know, and I think that’s the difference.”
@344 Lynna, OM: Vance is going to go down in history as one of the worst VP candidates and I think it’s a bit unfair. The entire campaign is imploding, it’s just coincidence that the public part is happening right after Vance was selected.
It started in the less visible parts of the campaign, when Trump put his family and fawning yes men in power rather then professional campaign managers. This led to his campaign being badly managed from the start. And it’s always been short of money because Trump is moving campaign money to cover his legal bills. Legal problems that are not going away and have to be taking up his time. The whole Republican convention was poorly planned and run, which happened before Vance was involved at all.
Then the attempted shooting of Trump happened. Since then Trump has cut way back on personal appearances and his speeches are even more rambling and incoherent. The attempted assassination seems to have had an effect on him. This has put way more pressure on Vance then he was ready for.
I’m not saying that Vance is good, he is a bad candidate. It’s that if he could just stand in Trumps shadow and give the occasional carefully scripted speech he would not be coming across so badly. Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin were both bigger drags on their campaigns but Vance looks worse at first glance because the Trump campaign is doing everything badly and most of it isn’t Vance’s fault.
whheydtsays
Re: JM @ #350….
I’m not sure that’s the whole of it. Approval of Vance was underwater as soon as he was named, and that has to be a result of knowledge of him prior to his selection by Trump. Then all manner of idiotic and disrespectful statements he had made were dug up, so he came with a lot of baggage, none of it good.
Vance is the guy who asked a restaurant owner if he had any food people really didn’t like because Vance wanted to take some back to feed to the reporters on his plane. Vance has his own shovel, and just keeps digging.
Vance has in common with Trump an uncanny ability to shoot himself in the foot.
Mixed metaphors, but you get the idea. I don’t think that even a well-organized, more professional campaign team could have made Vance look like a good V.P. candidate. Maybe, maybe, they could have hidden more of his flaws.
A senior Iranian military official said on Tuesday that retaliation against Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran may be long in coming and take any number of forms, suggesting that an attack against Israel may have been placed on hold.
Wanting to halt defections to neighboring South Korea, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has ordered the construction of new border walls, rearmed guard posts and installed more land mines. But North Koreans keep finding creative ways to flee.
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve the new Covid vaccine as early as Thursday, according to two sources familiar with the agency’s planning. It’s the third time the vaccines have been updated to match circulating strains since the original series. The shots should be available within days.
Yes, Gov. Tim Walz is that guy: your favorite neighbor, teacher, coach—the guy you’d call when you needed help changing a tire, or facing a hard conversation with your parents, or just want to have a fun fishing companion.
That’s the man who showed up Wednesday night to accept the nomination of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to be vice president. The heart of his message: “Everybody belongs.”
“It’s the honor of my life to accept your nomination for vice president of the United States,” he said. “Thank you for bringing the joy to this fight.” [video at the link]
He told the story of how his students convinced him to enter politics for the first time, running for Congress.
“So there I was—a 40-something high school teacher with little kids, zero political experience, and no money running in a deep red district. But you know what? Never underestimate a high school teacher.”
And when he got there? “I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I got the trophies to prove it. But I’m also a dad. I believe in the 2nd Amendment, but I believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.”
He went on to talk about his tenure as governor of Minnesota.
“While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours,” he said. And when other states were banning abortion, his state became a haven for its citizens.
“We’ve got a golden rule,” he said. “Mind your own damn business.”
Then he turned to this campaign. Talking about Project 2025, he warned that his coaching experience taught him one thing.
“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, trust me, they’re gonna use it,” he said. “It’s an agenda nobody asked for. It’s an agenda that does nothing for our neighbors in need. Is it weird? Absolutely. But it’s also wrong. And it’s dangerous,” he added.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m really to turn the page on these guys,” he continued. “We’ve got something better to offer the American people.”
And in true coach mode, he added, “We’re gonna leave it on the field!”
John Legend and Shiela E. put together a high-energy tribute to the late musical genius Prince, ahead of vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz’s speech at Wednesday night’s Democratic National Convention.
Despite what some would have you think, we are not so different from our neighbors,” Winfrey told the crowd. “When a house is on fire, we don’t ask about the homeowner’s race or religion. We don’t wonder who their partner is or how they voted. No, we just try to do the best we can to save them. And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady, well, we try to get that cat out too.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@322:
West Virginia – “Jump Around,” by House of Pain, a hit famously played at University of Wisconsin’s home football games.
Looks like this got mangled, and should have been “West Virginia – [insert song]” followed on a new line by “Wisconsin – Jump Around…”.
So … what was West Virginia’s song?
Lynna@335:
Trump focused on attacking Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to lead a major party’s presidential ticket, saying that she “will deliver crime, chaos, destruction, and death [if elected]. You’ll see levels of crime that you’ve never seen before. … I will deliver law, order, safety and peace.”
Projecting much?
Crime — Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies and is under indictment for dozens more, plus under investigation for yet more. He is also an adjudicated rapist and credibly accused of at least 26 more.
Chaos — Trump’s “cabinet”, if I may use that term loosely, more resembled a game of musical chairs than a decisionmaking body. And see below.
Destruction and death — from the Charlottesville violence, which culminated in a death, to the most turbulent summer of street protests since the 60s and 70s, mismanagement of a pandemic leading to 200,000 estimated avoidable deaths of Americans, and culminating in a violent attempt to obstruct the orderly transition of power in early 2021, which occasioned more deaths, Trump’s term easily goes down in American history as having been the worst for death and destruction on American soil since the Civil War concluded.
tomh@339:
Federal judge throws out U.S. ban on noncompetes … Trump appointed
FUCKER! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck … how do we weed out all these damned Trump “judges” who are wrecking everything and holding back progress? Even if Harris wins these fucking grains of sand will be in the gears for decades to come, won’t they? Is there no way to just round them all up and impeach them en masse on the grounds that they’re basically Russian plants, since Trump was and he appointed them? Agggh!
Amanda Gorman, the nation’s first National Youth Poet Laureate and the youngest inaugural poet in history, riveted the Democratic National Convention Wednesday with a new poem, “This Sacred Scene.”
We gather at this hallowed place because we believe in the American dream.
We face a race that tests if this country we cherish shall perish from the earth and if our earth shall perish from this country.
It falls to us to ensure that we do not fall, for a people that cannot stand together, cannot stand at all.
We are one family, regardless of religion, class, or color.
For what defines a patriot is not just our love of liberty, but our love for one another.
This is loud in our country’s call because while we all love freedom, it is love that frees us all.
Empathy emancipates making us greater than hate or vanity. That is the American promise, powerful and pure.
Divided we cannot endure, but united we can endeavor to humanize our democracy and endear democracy to humanity.
And make no mistake, cohering is the hardest task history ever wrote.
But tomorrow is not written by our odds of hardship, but by the audacity of our hope, by the vitality of our vote.
Only now, approaching this rare air, are we aware that perhaps the American dream is no dream at all, but instead a dare—to dream together?
Like a million roots tethered branching up humbly making one tree, this is our country. From many one, from battles won our freedoms sung, our kingdom come has just begun.
We redeem this sacred scene ready for our journey from it together. We must birth this early republic and achieve an unearthly summit.
Let us not just believe in the American dream. Let us be worthy of it.
Former President Bill Clinton spoke at Wednesday night’s Democratic National Convention, and he reminded everyone why, at least until Barack Obama came along, he was considered the party’s greatest communicator. [video at the link]
Clinton joked about Donald Trump’s bizarre boasts of being respected by the world’s various dictators.
“Look, you gotta give it to him,” Clinton said. “He’s a good actor. With a straight face, he cited as evidence of the respect that existed for us when he was there, the presidents of North Korea and Russia.”
Clinton continued. “When you send a signal to the other countries, you want them to know, whether they agree with you or not, at least that you’re on the level. Here’s where you are, and what you believe. What are they supposed to make of these endless tributes to the late, great Hannibal Lecter?”
“President Obama once gave me the great honor of saying I was the explainer in chief,” Clinton continued. “Folks, I’ve thought and thought about it. And I don’t know what to say.”
[…] Walz said, “I represented my neighbors in Congress for 12 years and I learned an awful lot. I learned how to work across the aisle … and I learned how to compromise without compromising my values.”
The 60-year-old also made the case for the Harris-Walz campaign and the theme of the night: freedom.
“When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office, corporations free to pollute your air and water and banks free to take advantage of customers,” Walz said. “But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love, freedom to make your own healthcare decisions, and yea, your kids freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall.” […]
Over the last two nights, we have heard from several speakers that Donald Trump doesn’t actually care about the border or the issues that come with an uptick in border crossings that Republicans have manufactured into a crisis that’s taken on a life of its own in right-wing media circles.
Several speakers specifically brought up the bipartisan border bill that Trump was successful in convincing Senate Republicans to tank this summer.
Trump reportedly argued at the time that the passage of such a bill would be a “gift” to Democrats during an election year because it would actually solve an issue that he wanted to knock Biden for on the campaign trail. The bill never passed and on Wednesday Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) revealed some behind the scenes details about the Republicans who tanked their own legislation.
“Donald Trump’s allies weren’t just in the room. They helped us write the whole bill,” Murphy said. “It was a bipartisan bill. It was a tough bill. $20 billion in new border security that gave the president the emergency power to shut down the border. It made some compassionate but serious reforms to our asylum system. One Republican said they would’ve had almost unanimous support if it weren’t for Donald Trump.”
Multiple speakers who either live in a border state or work with migrants who have crossed the southern border shared stories about the dangers of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and how dire things might get if he’s allowed back into the Oval Office — a practical and non-hysterical counter to Republicans’ “border czar” attack on Harris.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore addressed immigration, from a personal perspective. He also wove it into a crucial theme of his speech — reminding the crowd that the workers who died when the Francis Scott Key Bridge in his state collapsed earlier this year were immigrants.
“Making America great doesn’t mean telling people you’re not wanted,” Moore said, taking a shot at the MAGA slogan. “And loving your country does not mean lying about its history. Making America great means saying the ambitions of this country would be incomplete without your help.”
“It’s the legacy of those six workers who fixed potholes on a bridge while we slept,” Moore added, referring to the six individuals who lost their lives earlier this year when the cargo ship crashed into the Baltimore bride. “Who were born in a different country but who knew that America was big enough for them too. It’s the journey of a man raised by a remarkable, immigrant, single mom, a man who felt handcuffs on his wrists at 11 years old, who now stands before you as the 63rd governor of Maryland and the first Black governor in the history of our state.”
Democrats invited Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson to do a mini stand up routine educating voters about how Project 2025 could impact them and their lives directly.
“You ever seen a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time? Here it is,” Thompson said, holding a giant printed book version of the document.
“You know how when you download an app and there are hundreds of pages there that you don’t read, it’s just the terms and conditions and you just click agree. Right?” Thompson asked. “Well these are the terms and conditions of a second Trump presidency. You vote for him, you vote for all of this.”
Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg on Thursday said former President Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance are selling “darkness” this election, while predicting the public would not buy it.
“Darkness is what they are selling. The thing is, I just don’t believe that America today is in the market for darkness,” Buttigieg said.
[…] “Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself say. I’m Pete Buttigieg and you might recognize me from Fox News,” he said. “I believe in going… anywhere in service of a good cause and friends, we gather in a very good cause— electing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz the next president and vice president of the United States.”
The former mayor of South Bend, Ind., also hit Vance over his previous comments about Americans with children having more stake in the future than Americans who don’t.
Buttigieg, a military veteran, said when he was deployed to Afghanistan he didn’t have kids but “our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical.”
Buttigieg also spoke about his experience as a father and said “the existence of my family,” is something that was impossible as recently as 25 years ago.
Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, have 3-year-old twins.
“All of it compels us to demand more of our politics than re-runs of some tv wrestling death march,” he said.
[…] Washington — “Can’t Hold Us,” by the Seattle based hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.
West Virginia — “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” by John Denver, a song so core to West Virginia that it is considered an official state anthem.
Wisconsin — “Jump Around.” Though written by California’s House of Pain, this song is played at University of Wisconsin football games.
Wyoming — “I Gotta Feeling,” by the Black Eyed Peas. […]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@Bekenstein Bound #359:
Is there no way to […] impeach them en masse […] basically Russian plants, since Trump was and he appointed them?
Federal judges were confirmed by the Senate. A better government would’ve stopped em there.
And no. If there were a known way to wipe the slate, Project 2025 would’ve leapt on it to terrible effect. On paper, they can be impeached individually for substantial questionable conduct by the House and tried by the Senate. Not gonna happen.
Expanding the courts—even just the lower courts—is the most bulletproof. Congress has periodically added seats to the federal judiciary from its inception to help judges keep up with ever-ballooning caseloads. […] The Judicial Conference, a nonpartisan government institution that develops administrative policies, has begged Congress to add seats to the lower courts.
[…]
Term limits for justices and lower court judges. Limits on courts’ jurisdiction to strike down democratically enacted laws.
KGsays
A senior Iranian military official said on Tuesday that retaliation against Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran may be long in coming and take any number of forms, suggesting that an attack against Israel may have been placed on hold.- Lynna, OM@353, quoting NYT
Netanyahu will be pissed – now he’s got to find somone else to assassinate in order to provoke retaliation.
Becoming Earth review: A dramatic twist to the Gaia hypothesis | New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26335051-600-a-dramatic-twist-to-the-gaia-hypothesis/
And whoever keeps logging me out, sometimes literally two minutes after I logged in, STOP. FUCKING. DOING. THAT.
FTB is just buggy like that. If you had a comment written when that happens, in order to not lose it, you need to go back using your browser’s back button (NOT via the link offered!), copy or cut the comment, refresh page, login and paste comment.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 366
Wisconsin — “Jump Around,” by House of Pain, a hit famously played at the University of Wisconsin’s home football games.
That wouldn’t have been my choice for my state. Like many of the others, I would have gone with a well known local band. The BoDeans, who got their start in Milwaukee, comes to mind:
Republicans are strangely bashing second gentleman Doug Emhoff for hugging his daughter Ella at the first night of the Democratic National Convention.
On Monday evening, Democrats gathered for the first night of the DNC in Chicago, where Harris’ husband was spotted hugging his daughter — a move that launched conservative pundits into a social media frenzy.
Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirkposted a photo of the father-daughter pair embracing along with the sarcastic caption: “Totally not weird.”
Kirk seems to be trying to turn the tables on Democrats, including Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, who have repeatedly labeled Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird.”
Conservative political commentator Benny Johnson also chimed in, writing on X: “‘Second Gentelman’ (sic) Doug Emhoff and his daughter.. Creepy.” …
Utah’s Republican-controlled Legislature will ask voters in November to relinquish some of their rights to lawmakers who want the ability to change state ballot measures after they’ve passed.
Frustrated by a recent state Supreme Court ruling, lawmakers called a special session Wednesday in which both chambers swiftly approved an amendment to Utah’s constitution that would grant them greater power over citizen initiatives. The Legislature used its broadly worded emergency powers to hold the session.
If a majority of Utah voters approves the amendment this fall, it would give lawmakers constitutional authority to significantly rewrite voter-approved ballot measures or repeal them entirely…
birgerjohanssonsays
45 years ago today since Gary Numan released “Cars”
(Also, a couple of months before Reagan won, and turned back the clock on politics).
re Reginald Selkirk @375: It is neither creepy nor weird that Doug Emhoff hugs his daughter. What is totally creepy AND weird is that Donald Trump wants to fuck his daughter.
birgerjohanssonsays
Stop using the term ‘centrist’. It doesn’t mean what you think it does | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
“Centrist” means “approving of status quo”. It means approving of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians provided Israel continues to promite American interests. Those who disapprove are automatically “far left”.
If a majority of Utah voters approves the amendment this fall, it would give lawmakers constitutional authority to significantly rewrite voter-approved ballot measures or repeal them entirely…
Republican lawmakers in Utah do not like democracy.
Reginald @374:
Trump campaign deletes Freedom video after Beyoncé blocks use of song
Good. A win for Beyoncé, a win for culture, and a win for truth in political ads.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @367, thanks for posting that additional information. The Supreme Court situation is a real sticky wicket.
birgerjohanssonsays
Inducing torpor with donepezil
Alzheimer’s drug may someday help save lives by inducing a state of ‘suspended animation’
I don’t know what to think about any larger issues here except it would be nice to eventually find a way to deal with the way “dog piling” works. Right now that is part of the way the Internet works and I’m not into affecting group shaming of bigotry while the same activity is how bigotry has worked. The natural human behavior gets addressed broadly.
I just see whining by people who were more privileged here previously.
It’s amazing how Rowling just gets the assumption that she was cancelled. I don’t think you can cancel someone like Rowling.
Oh noes! Sometimes she doesn’t get a good reception! Like she can be shut up with her billions and transphobic followers itching for some social dominance?
Not to mention how her very actions are cancelling attempts.
In Youth 71Five Ministries v. Williams, (9th Cir., Aug. 8, 2024), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — [three judge panel, all three Trump appointed] — issued an injunction pending appeal allowing a Christian organization that mentors at-risk youths to participate in Oregon’s Youth Community Investment Grant Program. The state had canceled $410,000 in grants to the organization when it discovered that it only hires those that share its faith in violation of the state’s “Certification Rule” that bars grantee from discriminating in its employment practices. The court said in part:
Although Oregon strictly enforced the Certification Rule against 71Five, it has looked the other way with secular groups that also receive state funding. The record indicates that the state continues to fund many groups that discriminate—by providing services to only subsets of the population—in violation of the Certification Rule. For example, a group named Ophelia’s Place continues to receive funds even though it provides services only to “girl-identifying youth.” And another group called the Black Parent Initiative receives funds, despite only serving African and African American families….
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* There have been some notable surprises at the Democratic National Convention this week, but Oprah Winfrey’s unexpected remarks about choosing “common sense over nonsense” stood out. [video at the link: Link ]
[…] * On a related note, the same poll found Republican Sen. Ted Cruz with a surprisingly narrow lead over Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, 46.6% to 44.5%
* In Alaska’s multi-candidate U.S. House primary this week, incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola finished first with just over 50% of the vote. As a New York Times reported explained, “The results put Ms. Peltola in a strong position for the general election in November, setting the stage for a possible replay of her successful run in 2022, when Republicans split their party’s support in the state’s unusual ranked-choice system and propelled her to victory.”
[…] * According to Nielsen data, the second night of the Democratic National Convention drew more than 20 million viewers — roughly the same as the first night — which is more than the 14.8 million viewers who tuned in to the second night of the Republican National Convention. […]
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s remarks at the Democratic National Convention were very well received, though Donald Trump was apparently unimpressed. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Former President Donald Trump ranted on his social-media platform, Truth Social, early on Thursday about Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, calling him “The highly overrated Jewish Governor of the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” The Republican presidential candidate also slammed Shapiro for refusing “to acknowledge that I am the best friend that Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had.” The post is the latest in a string of attacks Trump has made toward Jewish Democrats, whom he considers disloyal.
[Weird and bizarre.]
Even for Trump, who peddles antisemitic tropes as a matter of course, this was bizarre.
In a middle-of-the-night tirade, the GOP candidate began by arguing, “The highly overrated Jewish Governor of the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, made a really bad and poorly delivered speech.” Whether Trump understands this or not, the fact that he emphasized the governor’s faith was itself emblematic of his prejudice: When the former president lashes out at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, he doesn’t call him a “highly overrated Lutheran governor.” When Trump whines about House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, he doesn’t call her a “highly overrated Catholic congresswoman.”
But when targeting Shapiro, the Republican apparently finds it necessary to call out the governor’s religion — which says quite a bit about Trump, and none of it’s good.
In the same online missive, Trump added, “I have done more for Israel than any President, and frankly, I have done more for Israel than any person, and it’s not even close.” In other words, as far as the GOP candidate is concerned, in the history of Israel, no other human being — in the United States or abroad — has ever done more for the country than him, which is unintentionally hilarious.
In case that weren’t quite enough, the former president went on to say that Vice President Kamala Harris “hates Israel and will do nothing but make its journey through the complexities of survival as difficult as possible, hoping in the end that it will fail.”
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, there’s literally no evidence of the Democratic presidential hopeful “hating” Israel, but this sentence stood out for me for an entirely different reason: While Trump habitually publishes angry screeds to his social media platform in the middle of the night, it’s difficult to believe that it was his hands that wrote that Israel is making “its journey through the complexities of survival.”
In other words, Trump didn’t just peddle offensive nonsense, he also might’ve had some help putting this one together.
For a politician who’s a little too eager to falsely accuse his opponents of antisemitism, this was ridiculous.
Indeed, Trump’s rhetoric was so ugly that a White House spokesperson condemned his missive, saying, “It is Antisemitic, dangerous, and hurtful to attack a fellow American by calling out their Jewish faith in a derogatory way, or perpetuating the centuries-old smear of ‘dual loyalty.’”
Shapiro himself wasn’t impressed with Trump’s nonsense, either. [X post and video at the link]
“I mean, first off, I think it’s clear over the last few years, Donald Trump is obsessed with me and obsessed with continuing to spew hate and division in our politics,” the governor said. “He’s someone who has routinely peddled antisemitic tropes like this. Look, remember, he’s the guy who wanted Doug Mastriano to have his job. He’s the guy who has been repeatedly rejected by the voters of Pennsylvania. He himself lost in 2020, all of his handpicked candidates have lost, and I think he’s heading for another loss — this time to Kamala Harris.
“I think you all heard me talk last night at the DNC — the exact polar opposite of what Donald Trump is talking about. I’m talking about real freedom, bringing people together, accepting folks no matter what they look like, where they come from, who they love, who they pray to and saying, ‘This is a place for you.’ That’s diametrically opposed to everything Donald Trump believes, and it’s clear that he’s going to continue to be the hateful, divisive person that he’s always been in this campaign. And I think given his track record, it’s clear he’s setting himself up for another defeat.”
Almost immediately after Russia’s Vladimir Putin launched an invasion into Ukraine, Donald Trump has tried to blame the war on the Biden administration. The line has never made sense — even John Bolton, Trump’s former White House national security advisor, didn’t buy it — but the former president has peddled the line in recent years anyway.
In a speech in North Carolina devoted to national security, however, the Republican added a new chapter to his weird story. This was the anecdote the GOP candidate shared with supporters:
“Remember when Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine. She met with Putin, and then three days later, he attacked. How did she do? Do you think she did a good job? She met with Putin to tell him, ‘Don’t do it.’ And three days later, he attacked. That’s when the attack started.”
At that point, Trump turned to retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and asked, “Did you know that, general?”
Cameras didn’t capture Kellogg’s response, but I have a hunch he wasn’t familiar the story about the Harris-Putin meeting — because it only happened in Trump’s overactive imagination.
Let’s briefly review a handful of pertinent details.
First, Trump still can’t pronounce Vice President Kamala Harris’ name correctly.
Second, Harris didn’t meet with Putin ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump, whose relationship with reality is often fractured, appears to have simply made this up.
Third, the Democratic vice president, shortly before the war began, did attend the 2022 Munich Security Conference, representing the Biden administration. Trump would apparently have people believe that the vice president’s efforts were somehow a failure, but reality suggests otherwise: Harris met with officials from U.S. allies — not with Russia’s authoritarian leader — and helped solidify the Western alliance, which has been steadfast in its opposition to Moscow’s aggression.
And finally, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if anyone should avoid talking about private and undisclosed chats with Putin, it’s the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee. Remember this Politico report from June 2019?
President Donald Trump said Wednesday his lips are sealed about what he and Russian President Vladimir Putin say to each other behind closed doors. Ahead of his expected meeting with Putin on the sidelines of this weekend’s G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, the president told reporters that while he expected to have a positive conversation with Putin, he would not divulge whether he will press the adversarial leader about election interference. “I will have a very good conversation with him,” Trump said, adding, “What I say to him is none of your business.”
Months earlier, The Washington Post reported that Trump went to “extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations” with the Russian autocrat — at one point even “talking possession” of his own interpreter’s notes after a conversation with Putin.
It’s a dynamic, in other words, in which Trump has to make up an imaginary conversation between Harris and Putin, while Democrats can reference actual conversations between Trump and Putin.
The Big Lie Continues … With A Twist
On the same day that the Democratic convention was highlighting Trump’s Jan. 6 transgressions, Trump himself was still fomenting election denialism at a rally in North Carolina, telling the crowd: “Our primary focus is not to get out the vote — but to make sure they don’t cheat.”
Stop and consider that particular comment for a moment. It’s a more extreme variation of his go-to falsehood that the only way he can lose is if Democrats cheat. In this version, the votes are all there for him, no need to even count them, because no matter the outcome Democrats will have cheated him out of the votes he knows to be there for him. He also declares Democrats’ cheating to be guaranteed and without a doubt. So a one-two punch: I already have the votes, and Democrats are already cheating me out of them.
Why does this matter?
[…] his rampant election delegitimization is an authoritarian move, corrosive of democracy, and self-serving to detriment of civic life. But what may not be widely understood yet is how Trump is not pinning his hopes this time on winning more ballots or prevailing in court or muscling his way into office via a mob.
Trump’s bid this time is dependent on MAGA-friendly elections officials and boards simply refusing to certify the results (and maybe in a few extreme instances, certifying them in his favor despite him losing the ballot count). The intent is for delayed or rejected certifications to create enough chaos and uncertainty to deny Harris 270 electoral votes and send the matter to the House of Representatives to resolve.
Even if Democrats take the House, Trump could still prevail because the House vote for president is decided by a vote of each state’s delegation, and the GOP’s advantage in small rural states means they could still have the upper hand even if they lack a majority of members overall.
It’s such a far-fetched scheme that I feel some hesitation in warning about it. It feels like tinfoil hat territory. But Trump’s rhetoric lines up with it and makes a lot more sense in this context. What presidential candidate says publicly that they’re not worried about getting out the vote?
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday promoted a soon-to-launch, Trump Organization crypto platform, “The DeFiant Ones” to his 7.5 million followers on Truth Social
“For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites,” Trump wrote. “It’s time we take a stand — together.”
This doesn’t look like a typical cryptocurrency scam, rather Trump seems to be trying to found an online only bank. It isn’t active yet nor has an exact list of services available so it isn’t clear. It may be a sort of nonfungible token thing for real estate rather then art. Not clear what that would mean though, why would you want to own the digital version of a real location?
In any case this seems to be the Trump family trying to grab every last bit of money before the election. They realize they are in the last stretch of the good times and need to dig as hard as they can now. They have been pushing Trump branded items hard for the same reason.
Reginald Selkirksays
@394: “For too long, the average American has been squeezed by the big banks and financial elites,” Trump wrote.
I just assume they are laughing their asses off as they write that. Because the idea that Trump and his family would stand with the “average American” and not with the “financial elites” is a joke.
Just after midnight Thursday morning, Vance was interviewed by CNN’s Jake Tapper, who played a clip of Representative Jamie Raskin pointing out that Vance is only on the Republican ticket because Mike Pence faced death threats for certifying the election results on January 6, 2021.
Vance tried to brush off Raskin’s comments and accused the Maryland congressman of claiming victimhood.
“I just don’t understand a person in American politics in 2024 who’s whining about what happened to them instead of using their leadership and using their influence to make the lives of American citizens better,” Vance responded.
The remark, unchallenged by Tapper, quickly brought to mind the many times Trump has whined about his many grievances, from the criminal and civil charges against him to his baseless allegations of election fraud in 2020, among so many others…
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Wednesday, and spoke about freedoms secured by Democrats in her endorsement of the Harris-Walz ticket…
“Just as the same-sex marriage ban was overturned in California, so too was the abortion ban in Michigan. By the way, I’ve got a message for the Republicans and the justices of the United States Supreme Court, you can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay hand,” Nessel said. “I know that whether she’s attorney general or president of the United States, Kamala Harris will always be in our corner.”
tomhsays
The Atlantic: Republicans’ New, Dangerous Attempt to Break the Election
By Bob Bauer / August 21, 2024 Bob Bauer is a professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at New York University School of Law and a former White House counsel to Barack Obama.
Only months before November’s elections, the Republican National Committee has launched a new legal attack on the rules that govern federal elections. Supported by 24 states, the RNC is seeking, on an emergency basis, a Supreme Court ruling that the United States Congress lacks the constitutional authority to regulate presidential elections—congressional elections, yes, but not elections held to select presidents. The petitioners’ immediate goal is to allow the state of Arizona to impose a “proof of citizenship” requirement as a condition of a person’s right to vote for president.
If they are to succeed, the Court will have to suddenly, with mere weeks left before people start voting, abandon or explain away a decision it rendered in 2013—that Congress has the power to establish rules for voter registration in presidential elections. But even if the suit fails, it risks achieving some success in sowing doubt about the integrity of elections, highlighting claims of illegal voting by immigrants, and laying a foundation for post-election allegations of fraud and related legal challenges. (I have advised the national Democratic Party on this suit and have been further monitoring it as part of nonpartisan work to support election administrators in their preparation for the fall elections.)…
The earlier 2013 decision is one hurdle that the RNC and its allies confront, but not the only one. The Court has made clear in other cases, as in those involving presidential campaign finance, that Congress does indeed have the power to regulate presidential elections: “Congress has the power to regulate Presidential elections and primaries,” the Court said in Buckley v. Valeo, affirming its position in the earlier case of Burroughs v. United States, that Congress can use that power to safeguard those elections from corruption.
The Court has also upheld Congress’s authority to lower the voting age in presidential elections, to prohibit disqualification of voters in presidential and vice-presidential elections for failure to meet state residency requirements, and to provide uniform national rules in those elections for absentee voting. Additional federal laws on the books for years protect against the coercion of voters in presidential elections and ensure that members of the armed forces and other overseas voters have access to the ballot….
When it comes to the U.S. job market, there’s been some tension over the last year or so between the data and the expectations. On the one hand, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to deliberately cool the economy and lower inflation, which was expected to simultaneously reduce hiring. On the other hand, monthly job totals continued to look great.
It was against this backdrop that Labor Department delivered some discouraging-but-unsurprising news. NBC News reported:
U.S. job gains over the 12 months ending in March were revised downward Wednesday by 818,000 — a significant revision that adds to recent concerns that the economy has been slowing. The change means that roughly 2.1 million jobs were created in the U.S. in the past year, compared with about 2.9 million prior to the revision. The new figures do not represent job losses — merely new estimates of how many jobs were actually created during the period in question.
In a statement, White House Chief Economic Adviser Jared Bernstein said the preliminary estimate “doesn’t change the fact that the jobs recovery has been and remains historically strong, delivering solid job and wage gains, strong consumer spending, and record small business creation.”
This reaction has the benefit of being accurate. The downward revisions were obviously not good news, but (a) some economists projected an even harsher revision; and (b) by any fair measure, the post-pandemic job growth hasn’t just been impressive, it’s also exceeded even the most optimistic expectations from 2021.
Republicans, evidently, don’t quite see it that way.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, for example, who’s spent his tenure pretending not to notice American job growth, responded to the Labor Department’s report by saying that “Kamalanomics” — whatever the heck that means — is “crushing our economy.”
This is an impossible argument to take seriously, given that the economy remains healthy. Indeed, the idea that the vice president’s economic vision is “crushing” the economy is belied by reality — our economy remains the envy of the world — as the Louisiana congressman really ought to know.
[Video at the link: Steve Rattner: When it comes to jobs, Biden’s done far better than Trump 03:51]
But Johnson’s reaction was practically sensible compared to Donald Trump’s.
“There has been a report that the job numbers over the last period of time were fraudulent,” Trump said in a speech this week. The former president added a day later that the White House was caught “manipulating job statistics,” adding, “They wanted it to come out after the election, but somehow it got leaked.” [Oh FFS]
So, a few things.
First, the idea that the original job numbers have been proven “fraudulent” is bonkers. These revisions are a standard part of the process: Officials went with the best information available, and that information has now been updated to be more accurate, which is exactly what’s happened during every modern administration.
Second, no one has been caught “manipulating” anything. Indeed, in 2019 — the third year of the Trump presidency — the Labor Department had a similar report that revised job totals down by roughly 500,000. By Trump’s reasoning, that means his own administration was responsible promoting “fraudulent” job numbers that had been “manipulated” by the Republican White House.
Third, I don’t know who “they” are, but the idea that “they” wanted this information to come out after the election “but somehow it got leaked” is simply bananas. In fact, William Beach explained in an online statement, “For those who think the big revision to the BLS jobs numbers ‘leaked’ and was meant to come out after the election, remember that BLS always announces its draft revisions in August and announced this year’s date, August 21, many months ago. It is important to check your facts.”
And who’s William Beach? He’s the man Trump appointed to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. [LOL]
Voters concerned about the American job market should probably take note: Trump, even now, doesn’t understand the basics of job data.
Explosions were heard in the Russian town of Kalach-na-Donu in Volgograd Oblast overnight on Aug. 22, following what appears to be a drone attack, several Telegram monitoring channels reported.
The incident was reportedly followed by a fire at a nearby airfield. The Volgograd region is located some 900 kilometers (560 miles) southeast of Moscow.
The attack is believed to have targeted the Marinovka airbase in the village of Oktyabrsky, approximately 20 kilometers from Kalach-na-Donu.
A source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) confirmed that the agency carried out an attack against the Marinovka airbase together with special forces, hitting a fuel warehouse and a bomb storage.
“(Russia) actively uses the Marinovka airfield in the Volgograd region to bomb front lines in Ukraine,” the source told the Kyiv Independent…
From the moment she entered the race, polls began moving in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. However, according to far-right outlet Newsmax, reporting that Harris is ahead is “almost like election meddling.” [What? That doesn’t make any sense.]
As Media Matters for America reported on Tuesday, Newsmax host Rob Schmitt is concerned about letting Americans see Harris’ good numbers.
“I think that when you put a poll out there that makes it look like Kamala is doing well,” Schmitt said, “it creates the idea in a lot of people’s minds that aren’t intelligent enough to think for themselves that ‘Oh, she must be better than I think she is.’” [LOL]
“I mean, this kind of polling, in my opinion, is dangerous,” he continued, “and it’s almost like election meddling in a way to put a poll out there like that and have it this skewed.”
Except it’s not “a poll.” It’s pretty much every poll put out recently. [video at the link]
Since entering the race on July 21, Harris has made large gains with low-income Americans, with young women, with people of color, and especially with people who have a “somewhat unfavorable” view of Donald Trump, according to New York Times data from battleground states released on Thursday.
What groups has she lost support with in those states? Not many, as it turns out. Just “somewhat” and “very” conservative voters, Republicans, and those with a very favorable view of Trump. In other words, people who were almost certainly never going to vote for her in the first place.
So it makes complete sense that Harris now leads national polling averages compiled by The New York Times and 538. She leads even in the average put out by the conservative outlet Real Clear Politics.
Harris is simply ahead in national polling. She’s not ahead by a huge amount. She’s certainly not so far ahead that Democrats don’t know they’ll need to work like crazy to win this election. But … she’s ahead.
[…] clashes Trump has had with musical artists were detailed by Daily Kos’ Walter Einenkel, and included Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty’s estate, the Rolling Stones, and:
Adele, Aerosmith, The Beatles, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eddy Grant, Elton John, Everlast, Guns N’ Roses, the Isaac Hayes estate, Johnny Marr of The Smiths, Leonard Cohen, Linkin Park, the family of Pavarotti, Neil Young, Nickelback, Nico Vega, Ozzy Osbourne, Panic! at the Disco, Pharrell Williams, the Prince estate, R.E.M., Rhianna, the Sinéad O’Connor estate, the Village People, and The White Stripes have all told the MAGA world they have zero interest in supporting Trump.
And all Trump has got is Lee Greenwood, Kid Rock, and the musty rock of Sixwire, which churned out golden oldies in the interminable pauses in last month’s RNC proceedings.
It’s no wonder they’re trying to steal Democrats’ star power. There was the amazing dance-party roll call at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, and the John Legend and Stevie Wonder performances on Wednesday. Pop star Pink is on the schedule for Thursday, and rumors have been flying around for days about who else might just show up.
[…] Former President Bill Clinton gave partially ad-libbed, nearly 30-minute speech. “You’re going to have a hard time believing this, but so help me. I triple-checked it,” he said. “Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs. I swear, I checked this three times. Even I couldn’t believe it. What’s the score? Democrats 50, Republicans one.” […]
Dramatic video Thursday showed a Ukrainian drone attack on a military airfield in southern Russia, as Kyiv launches an expanding wave of strikes deep inside its neighbor’s territory. […]
The Right Is Trying A Bold New Strategy Called Mocking Gus Walz’s Outpouring Of Love For His Dad
Anne Coulter led the charge, but has since been shamed into deleting her tweet. Other right-wing influencers on Twitter have taken up the mantle to bully the 17-year-old.
To some degree, this is bog-standard — the MAGA movement is predicated on punching down. But it also underscores something I’ve been writing about during this convention: This election is a site of battle over gender norms.
Trump’s tough guy strongman playacting, his years of assaulting, harassing and demeaning women, have left his party in an even more retrograde place on these topics than usual. He and his followers, then, see organic outbursts of affection as bizarre and unmanly — worlds away from the emotional congestion they expect of and enforce on their men.
The Arkansas Supreme Court sided with state officials in a ruling on Thursday that will keep an abortion rights question off the ballot in November over what is, essentially, a paperwork issue.
The court upheld state officials’ decision to reject certain signatures that were collected by paid petitioners. The officials had found that the organizers behind the effort to get the amendment on the ballot — which would protect abortion access in the state — submitted the signatures in a way that did not comply with state law.
Per the Associated Press:
Election officials said Arkansans for Limited Government failed to comply with state law primarily because it submitted documentation regarding paid signature gatherers separately and not in a single bundle. The group argued that it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed.
“We find that the Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification” in the way the law requires, Justice Rhonda Wood wrote for the 4-3 majority.
A dissenting justice wrote that the decision strips Arkansans’ of their rights and effectively changes the state’s initiative law.
Nepo baby-turned-Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders — who is vehemently anti-abortion — celebrated the decision, and even took credit for the ruling in a tweet on Thursday.
Proud I helped build the first conservative Supreme Court majority in the history of Arkansas and today that court upheld the rule of law, and with it, the right to life.
The numbers are overwhelming — it’s a blowout. This is what people want, joy and excitement not low energy and hate. Day three of the Democratic convention once again humiliated twice impeached convicted felon Donald Trump as 81 million tuned in to watch the event online and on television. Statistics show the party who garners the most viewers goes on to win the election. […]
Jesse Watters Thinks China Has Sex Tape Of Tim Walz, Which Sounds Correct.
China has a well-known boner for Midwestern social studies teachers.
Jesse Watters is going around the bend again, y’all. Or is he?
Last night, before Tim Walz got up to give his speech, Jesse was talking on TV, and he said: [video at the link]
What if the Chinese have a Tim Walz sex tape?
Ope!
And their surveillance tape, and, you know, he was over there on the honeymoon,
You mean after Tim Walz got married on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, like all young communists do? And immediately China was like “Spies! Quick! There’s an American social studies teacher who might become vice president someday! ROLL TAPE!”
unless he didn’t get lucky on the honeymoon, who knows?
Jesse Watters “courted” his now-wife, whom he met while he was married to his previous wife, by letting the air out of her car tires in order to trick her into getting in his car.
Seemed like a good time to remind folks how Jesse Watters gets “lucky.”
Also, do these people really want to play “Who had sex most recently with their spouse?” with our candidates vs. their candidates?
But they could use that as leverage. They could say, “Harris, drop the tariffs or the sex tape of Walz leaks.”
It’s becoming a refrain, but these MAGA perverts and creeps aren’t shedding the “weird” label any time soon.
So last night was Sex Night at the DNC, speaking of sex tapes.
Here is a sex tape of Maryland Governor Wes Moore: [video at the link]
“Wes Moore can crash his container ship into my bridge, and I mean that as a sex innuendo,” we tweeted. It was a very good tweet, you’ll see when you watch the speech.
Also we meant it.
Speaking of people who make the trains run on time in America’s pants, Moore was followed by Secretary Mayor Pete, who was really good at this, as usual: [video at the link]
And then John Legend played Prince and that was the point where it was like OK, wow, this is literally Sex Night at the DNC, Jesus, what are you trying to do to us? [video at the link]
[…]
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@birgerjohansson #370:
[Review of Ferris Jabr’s Becoming Earth: How our planet came to life]
The Gaia hypothesis continues to be broadly skeptically received by the scientific community. […] A significant argument raised against it are the many examples where life has had a detrimental or destabilising effect on the environment rather than acting to regulate it.
[…]
“strong” and “moderate” forms of Gaia
– that the biota obeys a principle that works to make Earth optimal (strength 5)
– or favourable for life (strength 4)
– that it works as a homeostatic mechanism (strength 3)
The latter is the “weakest” form of Gaia that Lovelock has advocated. Tyrrell rejects it. However, he finds that the two weaker forms of Gaia […] which assert that there are close links between the evolution of life and the environment and that biology affects the physical and chemical environment—are both credible, but that it is not useful to use the term “Gaia” in this sense and that those two forms were already accepted and explained
proposes that multicellular life, understood as a superorganism, may be self-destructive or suicidal. […] In this view, microbial-triggered mass extinctions result in returns to the microbial-dominated state it has been for most of its history.
I was not used to thinking of life so profoundly transforming its environment and even changing the weather itself. And I wanted to know: What are the other examples of this phenomenon? […] What I previously saw as pure geology or pure meteorology, I now see as infused with life. […] all the more wondrous.
[…]
If you perturb it in the wrong way or to too great an extent, the whole thing starts to fall apart. But that’s happened so many times throughout Earth’s history, and every single time, Earth has not only recovered but has also arguably become more complex and diverse than it was before. Earth has this astonishing ability to endure these catastrophes, pull back to its fundamentals and then reflourish over time. I take a lot of solace in that.
Unfortunately, as a species and as a civilization, we cannot depend on these super long-term processes [to save us]. […] we have to intervene as rapidly as possible.
[…]
many nonhuman life-forms […] gradually co-evolved these rhythms that tend to stabilize the planet
Pierce R. Butlersays
Reginald Selkirk @ # 395: … the idea that Trump and his family would stand with the “average American” and not with the “financial elites” is a joke.
Trump™ has burned “the financial elites” (meaning: the major banks) so often they won’t touch him any more. He’ll side with whoever offers an immediate advantage in the situation (as he sees it, anyway); too bad for “average Americans” that they don’t have wheelers and/or dealers strutting around Mar-a-Lago peddling pecuniary profit proposals 24/365.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Arizona, at least for now, to toughen some voting requirements, saying that people registering to vote before the coming election must show proof of citizenship.
The decision, issued in a terse, unsigned order, handed a partial victory to Republicans who supported a 2022 Arizona law imposing new restrictions on voting. But the court declined to allow Arizona to put into effect another part of that law, which could have prohibited tens of thousands of voters who are already registered from participating in the presidential election or casting any ballots by mail, unless they provided proof of citizenship.
The decision did not include any legal reasoning, which is common in such emergency applications.
[…]
The mixed decision means Arizonans newly registering to vote for the coming election will have to provide copies of one of several documents, including a birth certificate or a passport, in order to prove their citizenship.
The Republican National Committee, along with state lawmakers, had asked the Supreme Court to weigh in after lower federal courts had blocked enforcement of the new legal limits….
The dispute turns on whether the requirement to show proof of citizenship violates the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and a 2018 consent decree between the state and the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organizations.
Under that agreement, applicants who cannot show proof of citizenship on their state forms would still be registered to vote if their citizenship could be proved through documents from Arizona’s Transportation Department.
A lower court had blocked both the restriction involving new registrations and the restriction barring already-registered voters from casting ballots by mail or for president if they did not show proof of citizenship. Republicans — the Republican National Committee and some state lawmakers — appealed, asking that the state be allowed to enforce the rules for now as litigation plays out.
Republicans have argued that blocking their tighter election rules interfered with the Arizona Legislature’s constitutional power to determine the manner of voting in federal elections and “to safeguard the purity of all elections in Arizona.”
[…]
A recent poll in Texas had Trump make a lot of nervous social media posts.
His lead in Texas is down to 4.9% which is within the margin of error.
Ted Cruz has a lead of only 2%
While I do not expect Texas to be flipped, it would be nice to be rid of Ted Cruz.
At this point, it would be excellent if Trump makes a lot of rallies and says a lot of insane things.
I did not previously believe in the dementia rumors, but something is wrong with him compared to previous rallies.
whheydtsays
Re: birgerjohansson @ #415…
Trump is under a lot of pressure. It’s probably making his obvious mental decline worse. Most likely he’s feeling trapped and can’t see a way out. I’m in favor of the screws getting tighter and tighter until he comes apart (in public) altogether.
Reginald Selkirksays
(Being Swedish, I would say Norway, Finland and Denmark are no slouches, either)
Hmmm. I thought the Nordic countries had a blood feudfriendly rivalry going back several centuries.
Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview near the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona on Thursday, claiming “we’re in danger” in light of how authorities in that state have been unable to find a man who threatened to kill him.
NewsNation reporter Ali Bradley, citing “the situation” in southern Arizona, couldn’t get her full question out before Trump cut things short.
“Can I tell you something,” he said. “We’re in danger standing here talking, so let’s not talk any longer. No, I know about it, but they don’t want me standing here. They don’t want you standing here either.”
Trump then got into his vehicle surrounded by Secret Service agents…
Just one day after lengthy footage of violent insurrectionists storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was shown to attendees and remote viewers of the Democratic National Convention, word has begun to circulate that former president Donald Trump will be hosting a gala event in their honor in September at his Bedminster, New Jersey country club.
A flyer for the “J6 Awards Gala” reported on by MTN lists Rudy Giuliani as a guest speaker for the event where “attendees will have a chance to win a plaque commemorating the MAGA community’s purchase of numerous copies of Trump’s ‘Justice for All’ song,” with the event description reading: “We gather to pay tribute…to all J6 defendants who have shown incredible courage and sacrifice.” …
Tickets for the event start at $1,500 and are intended to “help cover costs and support the defendants and their families, with exclusive benefits and recognition at the gala.”
To be known as “the treason ball”
StevoRsays
Kamala Harris giving he rspeech to teh DNC now. Watching live on c24 AVC News channel and on live blog here :
DNC observations by ACLU’s Kit Arvizu, collected from Mastodon.
“Did I just clock the first specific mention of trans people of the #dnc, or did someone raise it before Booker? […] They haven’t exactly been leaning into us.”
“Yes but *which* books are they banning from libraries and *which* LGBTQ people are they demonizing? #dnc #ScreamsInTrans”
“Censorship really is the stand-in issue to avoid mentioning trans people here isn’t it? […] I get the math, I know the reasoning. It just hurts.”
“they are barely even whispering the actual name of our community even though we’re easily one of the top two Republican targets.”
“The chief lesson of the Harris campaign is that muscular rebuttals to right-wing extremism that immediately pivot to cooperation and empathy fire up the Dem base, and that’s important. You don’t have to put out a presser telling everyone you wanna put hormones in public school vending machines or whatever in order to do that.”
“In 2016 we had freaking Sarah McBride speaking at the #dnc and now it’s hard not to feel like we’re purposefully being kept out of sight.”
“Say the word #trans you fucking cowards. #dnc”
“For all my anger at #dnc, I will say this. Kamala Harris will be somewhat better than her predecessors on a number of fronts, but will be held far more to account for her shortcomings than any of them were and that’s not fair.”
In front of a raucous and rapt Democratic National Convention Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the party’s nomination for president.
“We gotta get to some business,” she said while the crowd was still shouting and cheering. “Let’s get to business.” [video at the link]
The first business was honoring and thanking President Joe Biden.
“When I think about the path that we have traveled together, Joe, I am filled with gratitude,” Harris said. “Your record is extraordinary, as history will show, and your character is inspiring, and Doug and I love you and Jill and are forever thankful to you both,” she added.
“America, the path that led me here in recent weeks was no doubt unexpected. But I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys,” Harris said. That journey, she said, started with her mother Shyamala.
“My mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an unshakeable dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer,” Harris said. She explained that her mother raised her in “a beautiful working-class neighborhood of firefighters, nurses, and construction workers, all who tended their lawns with pride.”
“She taught us to never complain about injustice but do something about it,” she said about her mother. “And never do anything half-assed. And that is a direct quote!”
Harris’ introduction to public service, to helping people, came when she was in high school.
“I started to notice something about my best friend, Wanda. She was sad at school. And there were times she didn’t want to go home,” she said. Wanda didn’t want to go home, she explained, because she was being sexually abused by her step-father.
I immediately told her she had to come stay with us. And she did,” Harris continued.
“That is one of the reasons I became a prosecutor. To protect people like Wanda. Because I believe everyone has a right to safety, to dignity, and to justice.”
The rest is history. After gaining degrees from Howard University and the University of California College of the Law, she started her law career and rose up as a county and city prosecutor to being elected as San Francisco’s district attorney, then the state’s attorney general, and finally U.S. senator.
As a prosecutor, she said, she had one guiding principle. “In our system of justice, a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us,” she said. “No one should be made to fight alone. We are all in this together.”
In my entire career, I’ve only had one client: the people. So on behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender, or the language your grandmother speaks, on behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey, on behalf of Americans like the people I grew up with, people who work hard, chase their dreams, and look out for one another, on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.
With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past. A chance to chart a New Way Forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.
“I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know: I promise to be a president for all Americans,” Harris continued. “You can always trust me to put country above party and self.”
“I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations,” she said. “A president who leads—and listens. Who is realistic. Practical. And has common sense. And always fights for the American people. From the courthouse to the White House, that has been my life’s work.”
Harris related some of the biggest fights for the people of her career. “These fights were not easy, and neither were the elections that put me in those offices. We were underestimated at practically every turn. But we never gave up because the future is always worth fighting for.”
“And that’s the fight we are in right now—a fight for America’s future.”
Her opponent, Harris said, “is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious…. Consider not only the chaos and the calamity of when he was in office.”
When he was out of office, “Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol where they assaulted law enforcement officers.”
“And now for an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans and separately found liable for committing sexual abuse,” Harris said. “Consider what he intends to do if we give him power again.”
“Consider the power he will have, especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution. Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”
But “we are not going back,” she and the crowd changed. “We are charting a new way forward,” Harris said. “Forward to a future with a strong and growing middle class because we know a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success, and building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.”
“I believe American cannot truly be prosperous unless Americans are fully able to make their own decisions about their own lives, especially on matters of heart and home,” Harris continued. “But tonight in America, too many women are not able to make those decisions. And let’s be clear about how we got here.”
We got here because of Donald Trump and his Supreme Court appointees, Harris said.
“And now he brags about it. Simply put, they are out of their minds. And one must ask: Why exactly is it that they don’t trust women? Well, we trust women,” she said.
“One must ask, why exactly is it that they don’t trust women?” she continued. “Well, we trust women. We trust women.”
Democrats, she said, also trust voters and will restore those rights. “With this election, we finally have the opportunity to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.”
Speaking about national security, Harris gave full-throated support to Ukraine, and to the strength of the NATO alliance. “I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un who are rooting for Trump—who are rooting for Trump!—because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors.”
“Fellow Americans,” Harris went on, “I love our country with all my heart. Everywhere I go—in everyone I meet—I see a nation ready to move forward. Ready for the next step, in the incredible journey that is America.”
I see an America where we hold fast to the fearless belief that built our nation and inspired the world. That here, in this country, anything is possible. That nothing is out of reach. An America where we care for one another. Look out for one another. And recognize that we have so much more in common than what separates us. That none of us has to fail for all of us to succeed. And that in unity, there is strength.
Another lesson from her mother: “Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are. America, let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for: freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness, and endless possibilities.”
“We must be worthy of this moment. It is our turn … to fight for this country we love.” To fight for the “privilege and pride that comes with being an American.”
“And never do anything half-assed. And that is a direct quote!”
Posted by readers of the article, and viewers of the speech:
The beginning was fine; she was telling her story, so no judgment. The middle third was okay, but when she started talking policy domestic and foreign, it was straight fire, in exactly the presidential sense. The speech began as Kamala, Joyful Warrior, but it ended as Yes, Ma’am, President Harris.
——————
What an amazing speech. It will go down in history as one of the greatest. And Kamala has so much grace and dignity. What a fabulous president she will be.
——————–
“Simply put, they are out of their minds.”
One of the best lines in a great speech IMO. My word she nailed it!
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Magnificent, inspiring, joyful and completely badass ! Can’t wait for her call sign of POTUS!
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Speaking of “insane” Trump announced he is going to give a rebuttal to Kamala tonight. A call in to Fox News. Can’t imagine anything more pathetic after what we all just watched.
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Given how hard she has been campaigning it is remarkable that she could have delivered that speech the way she did. 10/10
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She (with backup from Panetta and Klizinger) utterly disqualified Trump as commander-in-chief.
———————–
The convention hall, plus the watch parties, plus home viewers. Huge number in Kamala’s audience tonight.
———————–
[Posted by Rick Wilson, member of the Lincoln Project]
A nomination speech that isn’t a 90 minute recitation of petty grievances.
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Harris steps up and meets the moment. There are pictures of her with her serious face on when she looks like she could be on the $20 bill. This speech was that: A President for the ages.
The mud is incoming. Trump is deflated but his armies of the night are not and they are smart, evil and have unlimited money.
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Kamala Harris just took the rule book and tore it to shreds. We are the patriots who love freedom. She just took that away from the other (dark) side. What a powerful and unyielding speech.
Democracy = Freedom = Patriotism.
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She knocked it out of the fucking park. Even threaded the needle in addressing the I/P conflict without ticking off the “free Palestine” and AIPAC.
—————————-
They’re rightfully infuriated by a horrific situation, but torpedoing Harris is not a strategy for success.
———————–
This speech was lawyerly: opening statement, making the case, closing argument. It covered everything with confidence and yet brevity. She took on TFG and Project 2025, offering grizzly detail. She outlined foreign policy as someone who’s already been doing the job. She showed us a way forward, together, and we’re all eager to follow. I watched, thinking “she’s already the President!”
How there can be any contest between her and TFG is beyond me. She’s a superstar.
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Lawrence O’Donnell just remarked that Karl Rove targeted her AG race, which she narrowly one, because the Republicans knew she would make it to the presidency way back then.
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I was thoroughly impressed by her speech. So confident and authentic in the delivery. Obama was always a strong speaker but he had the cockiness of knowing he was a strong speaker. I think I felt more connection with Harris’s speech because she just seems to have that raw authenticity of someone who wasn’t always sure of herself when she was young before finding her calling and her voice. Very proud to have her as the nominee
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The last part was very impressive. She was making the case that she is prepared to be commander in chief. Her strength came through.
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Trump was posting on his Truth Social platform as VP Kamala Harris was delivering her acceptance speech. His posts were ridiculous.
He posted in all caps: WHERE’S HUNTER (Hunter Biden attended the convention on the opening night when President Joe Biden spoke)
He said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH.” (That didn’t seem to bother members of Walz’s state championship team didn’t seem to have any problem when they showed up on stage with Walz on Wednesday night.)
He wrote shortly after the start of her speech: “A lot of talk about childhood, we’ve got to get to the Border, Inflation, and Crime!” (Harris did get to these topics. Given what Mary Trump has said about her uncle’s family, Trump probably doesn’t want to talk about his unhappy childhood).
I think Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy’s daughter, said it best when she called Trump “unwell, unhinged and unfit.”
————————–
That was a speech that gets better the more I think about it. Kamala Harris is potentially a transformative figure in our politics. She has risen to the occasion!!! AMAZING! I’m crying I’m so happy right now.
Trump also told NBC News that spending billions to execute mass deportations of undocumented immigrants is justified because allowing them to remain would cost more.
tomhsays
Harris, at 38 minutes, had one of the shorter acceptance speeches in modern history. Trump holds the record, with the three longest acceptance speeches.
the Texas Department of Public Safety announced in an internal email that it will no longer accept amended birth certificates or court orders to change gender markers on a person’s driver’s license. The email also states that name changes accompanying gender marker changes will not be accepted.
[…]
Perhaps most troublingly, a database will be made to track those who attempt to make these changes. […] will have the information sent to [email protected], noting that the email address is for “internal reporting only” and “should not be shared with customers.”
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office released a statement about the change, indicating his intention to continue to ignore court orders [by denying the courts’ authority]
[…]
I am also receiving reports from Montana that driver’s license gender marker changes are being denied, even to those with court-ordered name and gender marker changes.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Reginald Selkirk@375:
Conservative political commentator Benny Johnson also chimed in, writing on X: “‘Second Gentelman’ (sic) Doug Emhoff and his daughter.. Creepy.” …
… and father-daughter dances at “purity balls” aren’t? Not to mention whatever exactly the relationship is between Trump and Ivanka, which makes my skin crawl …
Sky Captain@430: Contempt of court sure seems to be popular these days with the “party of law and order”, eh? <smh>
KGsays
Lynna, OM@431,
I haven’t watched the speech, but BBC and Guardian reporting was less enthusiastic. Not actually negative, but with a sense that it hadn’t quite met expectations after her speeches at rallies since she became the candidate.
Personally, I was very disappointed in what she said about Gaza (and by the refusal to allow a Palestinian American to speak from the main stage). She regretted the “many innocent lives lost”; but they have not been “lost” – that’s the language suitable for a pandemic or an earthquake – they have been deliberately and cruelly taken away, by a corrupt far-right regime spouting explicitly genocidal language and armed with American weapons.
Seems to me the arane old “palrklaimentary language rules”advantage racists and enable them to censor those they are being racist against and hurting and urgently need reforming or scrapping.
StevoRsays
Science has enabled us to see the surface of Polaris the North Star and Cepheid variable which lies about 430 to 450 light years away :
..after checking out some of these Polaris images, put together with CHARA observations taken between 2016 and 2021, scientists found some previously unknown features of the star. Most notably, there are discernable spots on the star’s surface, kind of like the sunspots we see on the sun every now and then.
Discussion of the Jan. 6 attack did not dominate the Democratic National Convention this week, but the party certainly made an effort to remind the public about the assault on the U.S. Capitol and Donald Trump’s responsibility for the insurrectionist violence. In fact, on the third night of the DNC, attendees and viewers saw a four-minute video devoted specifically to Jan. 6.
A day later, as Vice President Kamala Harris accepted her party’s nomination, she declared, “[C]onsider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election. Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite — he fanned the flames.”
It was against this backdrop that The New York Times reported that a group supporting Jan. 6 criminals and defendants will soon hold a fundraising event for rioters at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey.
The event — billed as the J6 Awards Gala and hosted by the Stand in the Gap Foundation — is scheduled to take place at the golf club on Sept. 5, according to an online announcement, with tickets costing up to $50,000 for a table for 12. The money is being raised to pay for legal fees for those being prosecuted for their roles on Jan. 6, when a mob stormed the Capitol to protest Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.
[…] To be sure, the former president is listed on the announcement for the event as an “invited guest speaker,” though the Times’ report added that the GOP nominee does not plan to attend.
The article nevertheless added, “Regardless of whether Mr. Trump will be present, it is an unusual — and potentially risky — move to permit a soiree supporting those who stormed the Capitol to be held at one of his most recognizable properties just as his presidential campaign goes full speed for its final few months.”
That’s true, though it’s also worth emphasizing the familiarity of the circumstances.
NBC News reported in June 2023, for example, that Trump spoke at a fundraiser on behalf of Jan. 6 criminals and defendants, held at his private golf club in Bedminster. “I’m going to make a contribution,” the former president said at the time.
Two months later, NBC News ran a separate report, noting that Trump participated in a different fundraiser for Jan. 6 defendants, which was also held at his Bedminster golf club.
These latest developments, in other words, are part of a pattern.
[…] The Associated Press reported in March that the former president has positioned “the violent siege and its failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of his bid to return to the White House.” This coincided with a related Semafor report on the degree to which the Republican has put Jan. 6 rioters “at the heart of his campaign.”
That was true then, and it appears to still be true now.
When Fox News finds it necessary to cut off Donald Trump mid-rant, you know his reaction to Kamala Harris and the Democratic convention went off the rails.
If members of Donald Trump’s team had greater control of their boss, they probably should’ve tried to keep the former president distracted during the Democratic National Convention. The more the Republican’s attention could be diverted from television screens, the less likely he’d be to throw tantrums.
But if that was the plan, it didn’t work.
Before the final night of the DNC got underway, Trump announced that he’d offer online rebuttals to the convention by way of his social media platform. He certainly tried to do that, starting with a weird “WHERE’S HUNTER?” missive, as if Trump had briefly forgotten that there’s no longer any point in going after President Joe Biden’s son.
As a New York Times report noted, an online tirade, spanning roughly 50 items, ultimately proved insufficient, prompting the GOP candidate to make a phone call.
Former President Donald J. Trump was watching television on Thursday night and he did not like what he saw. His newly minted Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, had just accused him of groveling to dictators, imperiling democracy, betraying American values and, to top it off, deemed him “an unserious man.” So Mr. Trump picked up the telephone and called Fox News.
I can appreciate why the network worked quickly to get the Republican candidate on the air, albeit by telephone. Trump is, after all, the GOP nominee, and it stood to reason that he’d have something notable to say in response to his Democratic rival’s remarks.
What Fox might not have realized, however, is that Harris’ convention speech had apparently caused a meltdown.
Trump appeared on the air for about 10 minutes, during which time he not only raged incoherently, he also accidentally pushed random buttons on his phone. The interview — I’m using the word loosely — might’ve gone on longer, but Fox anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum effectively cut off the former president mid-rant so that the network could move on to other programming. [video at the link]
And while it was certainly amusing to see Fox effectively tell Trump they no longer wanted to hear him whine uncontrollably, it was even funnier when the Republican hung up with one conservative media network, only to call another.
In fact, almost immediately after Trump ranted on Fox, he called Newsmax to keep the meltdown going a while longer.
In a normal political party, such a meltdown would probably be seen as disqualifying. In the contemporary Republican Party, it was a tragically routine Thursday night.
On July 18, Donald Trump took the stage at the Republican National Convention, where the former president was expected to deliver one of the most important speeches of his political career. He failed spectacularly: The GOP candidate spoke for more than an hour and a half, reminding voters of all the things they don’t like about him and failing to take advantage of a unique opportunity.
Trump meandered aimlessly. He ad-libbed unnecessarily. He lied excessively. He was in equal measures divisive, bitter, juvenile, conspiratorial and alienating. The Republican nominee effectively presented a case study in how not to deliver an acceptance speech at a major party convention.
Exactly six weeks later, Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage at the Democratic National Convention. Her remarks were not just a triumph on their own terms, they also succeeded where her Republican rival failed. NBC News reported:
After three days of buildup about her work as a prosecutor and her promise as a leader, Harris emerged onstage to deafening roars from a packed arena, which cheered over her attempts to begin her speech before she told attendees they had to “get to some business.” … “We are charting a new way forward, forward to a future with a strong and growing middle class,” Harris said in her speech.
Why did her convention speech work?
Harris presented herself as the change candidate: That’s not an easy thing for an incumbent vice president to pull off, but the Democrat’s “new way forward” rhetoric resonated in part because she’s running against a failed GOP candidate who’s led his party’s ticket in every election for 12 years. Worse, Trump is explicitly running on a platform of taking the nation backwards, while Harris repeatedly used the word “forward” in her remarks.
Harris reached out to a broad electorate: Six weeks after Trump’s needlessly divisive remarks, the Democratic nominee declared, “I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self.”
[…] Harris was optimistic and patriotic: “[O]ur opponents in this race are out there every day denigrating America, talking about how terrible everything is,” the vice president said. “Well, my mother had another lesson she used to teach: Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are. America, let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for: Freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness and endless possibilities. We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world.”
Harris sounded like a normal human being: While Trump raged on his social media platform, the Democratic nominee assured voters, “I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations. A president who leads and listens; who is realistic, practical and has common sense.”
Harris was disciplined — and didn’t go on and on: Trump’s 90-minute rant in Milwaukee sent some of his loyalists heading for the exits before it was over. The vice president’s remarks, in contrast, were half as long. The former abandoned his script to share strange thoughts that popped into his mind; the latter recognized the importance of being a disciplined candidate for the nation’s highest office. […]
First, on the speech … rock solid. I doubt her advisors and press people thought it could have gone much better. At the beginning I thought it might be understated somehow. Not bad at all, but understated, a bit quieter than we expect from these speeches. But as it progressed I realized she was developing an emotional audience, in person and on television. This came through later in the speech when she ranged from intense to boisterous to categorical. It worked with a mixture of intensity and authenticity. There’s no point in my doing more interpreting of the speech. It hit every point and hit every one well. The most telling comments were those from Republican commentators who couldn’t find their way around saying that it was a strong speech before, of course, reassuring listeners that Harris is obviously terrible and they agree with her about nothing.
Some other points are less obvious.
Tonight’s speakers didn’t necessarily have the star power of earlier nights — MacBath, Kinzinger, Panetta, Cooper et al. But each hit a critical demographic-thematic point essential for this night when viewership will be at its highest.
On its face, to note just one example, why were we hearing from Leon Panetta, a storied but today little heard from former congressman and high-ranking national security official? Panetta was never known as a powerful or terribly compelling public speaker. He was a tough and able administrator across numerous positions in the executive branch after years in Congress. His tone and mode were more avuncular kibitzer. But he delivered a powerful endorsement of Harris’ national security credentials. He vouched for her in a way that connected more powerfully than I would have imagined.
What I took from this is a sense of focus and discipline from the people running Harris’ convention and campaign — not getting lost in glitz or stagecraft but defining a specific list of critical deliverables and then checking them off the list. This was going on in the midst of what was unquestionably a high-powered and high-energy event. There was a mix of discipline and ability there that could not fail to have an impact but was also, in the intensity of the final day of a convention, easy to miss.
The other nights had some of this too. But it came through to me most clearly tonight.
I continue to think there’s more going on in this campaign than much of the political and commenting class has yet understood or reckoned with.
The Democratic National Convention garnered better ratings than its Republican counterpart for the third night in a row, according to data from industry research firm Nielsen.
About 20.1 million people tuned in to watch the Democrats’ conference on Wednesday, Nielsen confirmed—the third night in a row the broadcast reached more than 20 million viewers.
Wednesday’s speakers included Treasury Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former President Bill Clinton, and an acceptance speech for the vice presidential nomination from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
[…] the RNC’s most successful night was Thursday, July 18—when an average of 25.3 million Americans tuned in to the broadcast.
[…] the first night of the 2016 DNC saw more than 2.4 million voters in the 18-34 demographic.
(CN) — A federal judge on Thursday handed down a scathing ruling against New York Attorney General Letitia James, temporarily barring her from going after a group of anti-abortion pregnancy centers touting “abortion pill reversal.”
James sued anti-abortion group Heartbeat International and 11 of those pregnancy centers in May, accusing them of fraud, deceptive business practices and false advertising by touting abortion pill reversal, a treatment that major medical groups say is unproven and potentially dangerous. In theory, after a pregnant person takes the first of two pills in medication abortion, the procedure will reverse its effects with the hormone progesterone to save the pregnancy.
Weeks after James’ suit hit the docket, anti-abortion group National Institute of Family and Life Advocates — along with two anti-abortion pregnancy centers — sued her back, claiming the attorney general was trampling on their First Amendment right to free speech by threatening punishment for touting the treatment.
U.S. District Judge John Sinatra, a Trump-appointed federal judge in New York’s Western District, agreed….
Sinatra granted a preliminary injunction against James that bars her from targeting the pregnancy centers for promoting the treatment, effectively nixing her original lawsuit if the ruling stands. The attorney general’s office hasn’t indicated whether it would appeal. If it does, the injunction will likely be stayed…..
Leaning on the fact the treatment requires a doctor’s prescription, Sinatra ruled that the groups’ touting of the practice couldn’t alone cause enough harm to warrant limiting speech….
James had sought to stop the centers from continuing to promote the “unproven” procedure through its “misleading” marketing materials, which she claimed overstated the treatment’s success and failed to address its potential risks.
“In reality, abortion cannot be ‘reversed,’ and there is a glaring lack of scientific evidence to support APR’s safety and effectiveness,” James said in a May statement. “The only clinical trial conducted to evaluate APR had to be halted due to concerns about patient safety.”
James and Sinatra have a history. Last month, the attorney general tried to get the judge thrown off another case against her — a suit challenging New York’s ban on body armor. Her effort was unsuccessful.
[…] Most of the week had been filled with random, likely scheduled messages posted to Trump’s Truth Social account, many of which had nothing to do with the DNC.
But Thursday evening saw Trump delivering near-real-time racism when Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke, a lovely addition after his antisemitic attack aimed at Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Tuesday night. After all that, Trump had an announcement.
I’m getting ready to be fair but critical of Comrade Kamala Harris. My Play by Play will be on TRUTH Social, starting SOON!
Trump’s “review” of Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech demands a new adjective. Because “weird,” simply isn’t strange enough.
If there’s any doubt about how excellent Harris’ acceptance speech was, here’s a note to banish it. [X post available at the link: “I wrote a book on campaign speeches and this speech was one of the best I’ve ever heard. An absolute tour de force.”]
But it’s not what everyone else thought that counts. What did Trump think?
It didn’t take him long to get going. After posting that he would also be calling in to Fox to share his extremely valuable opinion with all his friends, Trump was ready to begin.
Too many “thank you,” too rapidly said, what’s going on with her?
All right, all right. Harris was getting a lot of applause and cheers there at the beginning, and the crowd didn’t want to sit down, so she kept thanking them. Maybe Trump has never had that problem.
Now, Harris has begun talking, so let’s see what Trump thinks of the actual content.
WHERE’S HUNTER?
Wait. What? Does he mean Hunter Biden? What does Hunter have to do with anything? Did Trump forget who was speaking? Did he completely forget what he’s watching?
Walz was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH.
This is his play-by-play of the speech? Someone at Mar-a-Lago is really regretting letting that phone slip free.
A lot of talk about childhood, we’ve got to get to the Border, Inflation, and Crime!
Well, at least he’s talking about the speech now. I guess that’s something. But this speech is kind of the part where Harris introduces herself to the nation. Trump could do some childhood stories, as well. Maybe talk about how he learned to turn away Black renters from his New York properties.
PEACEFULLY AND PATRIOTICALLY!
I can only assume that this is in response to Harris mentioning something about Jan. 6. But then, maybe not. It’s not as if the other comments track to anything in particular.
IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?
I’m less and less sure that he’s actually watching the speech. Maybe someone tried to get the phone back and Trump scrambled into a closet, where he is now making comments while they pound on the door.
LYING AGAIN ABOUT PROJECT 2025, WHICH SHE KNOWS, AND SO DO ALL DEMOCRATS, THAT I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH!
Man. That is one red-hot wound. He responds to that term like it’s loaded with 10,000 volts and 900 pages. Project 2025! Project 2025! Project 2025!
Everybody, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Conservatives, wanted Roe v. Wade TERMINATED, and brought back to the States. Like Ronald Reagan and myself, most believe in EXCEPTIONS. Now the people are voting, which is the way it was supposed to be. I do not limit access to birth control or I.V.F. – THAT IS A LIE, there are all false stories that he’s making up, that I’ve never even heard of. It’s jut words coming out of her mouth. I TRUST WOMEN, ALSO, AND I WILL KEEP WOMEN SAFE! SHE WON’T, BECAUSE THE INVASION OF OUR COUNTRY AT HER OPEN BORDER IS DESTROYING THE LIVES OF WOMEN, AND THE FAMILIES AND JOBS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AND HISPANICS.
Does he even believe what he’s saying?
SHE HAS LED US INTO FAILING NATION STATUS!
Pretty astounding work for someone who hasn’t even been elected yet. But hey, I’m sure Trump would be willing to give all the credit to Mike Pence for everything he claims to have accomplished.
She didn’t mention China, she didn’t mention fracking, she didn’t mention Energy, she didn’t mention, meaningfully, Russia and Ukraine, she didn’t mention the big subject of the the day, that are destroying our Country. There are 60 million people in poverty in the U.S., under their watch, and she doesn’t even talk about them!
Except she did mention these things. China? Check. Energy? Yup. Russia and Ukraine? Definitely. Poverty? He must have missed that whole economic plan she already unveiled. Seriously, is he just listening through a crack in that closet?
…
“So, I hope that they remember when you tell the American people that this guy must be stopped at all costs, most people are going to respond to that reasonably, some people are going to take crazy actions and take matters into their own hands,” Vance said. “I encourage my Democratic friends to maybe pump the brakes a little bit on the apocalyptic rhetoric around Donald Trump.”
Vance noted that he believes Democrats “recognize that when you say that the guy is an existential threat to American democracy, sometimes that means crazy people are going to take actions into their own hands,” and that they “toned it down” following the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally last month…
“When you point your finger ‘cuz your plan fell through, you got three more fingers, pointing back at you.” – Dire Straits
Chicago Police and the FBI are investigating if saboteurs placed bugs in a breakfast buffet prepared for delegates at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday.
“Multiple unknown female offenders are alleged to have entered a building…and began placing unknown objects onto tables containing food,” the convention’s information center said in a statement. “The offenders are believed to have then left the area. One victim was treated and released on-scene. Along with CPD, FBI-Chicago is assisting in the investigation.”
One witness told USA TODAY the creatures appeared to be crickets while other reports suggested maggots.
The incident took place at Fairmont Hotel, where delegates from Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Missouri and South Dakota are staying.
“We were all coming down to breakfast, and there were these two women who had hidden themselves in the bathroom,” Indiana delegate Karen Tallian told USA TODAY. “And they ran out and threw maggots into the breakfast buffet.” Tallian, a retired state senator, said friends who reached the dining room ahead of her had witnessed the contamination…
The announcement comes ahead of the cooler months and as Covid rates have risen across most of the country over the summer, fueled by highly contagious new variants.
Free Covid-19 tests will be available once again come late September, the Biden administration announced Friday.
“These tests will help families and their loved ones stay safe this fall and winter season,” Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services, said Friday at a briefing on the upcoming respiratory virus season.
Under the program, four free Covid tests will be available by mail. When the time comes, those who would like the tests can sign up at at Covidtests.gov.
Since the home delivery program started in 2021, more than 900 million tests have been distributed to American households, and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response has further distributed 900 million at-home tests through community-based access points, O’Connell said.
“So as all of you prepare for travel and gatherings with family and the 2024 holiday season, don’t forget to go to Covidtests.gov to order your free tests,” she said.
It comes as Covid rates have risen across most of the country over the summer, fueled by highly contagious new variants. The number of people testing positive for Covid keeps rising and emergency room visits for Covid have risen since mid-May, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Thursday, the wastewater viral activity level for Covid is “very high,” CDC data shows.
Just Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration approved new Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, updated to better match the circulating strains of the virus.
Attorney General Merrick Garland put it more bluntly: “Everybody knows the rent is too damn high, and we allege this is one of the reasons why.”
The Department of Justice and eight states on Friday accused software company RealPage of unlawfully scheming to undermine competition among landlords and create a monopoly that harms millions of renters.
RealPage “allows landlords to manipulate, distort, and subvert market forces,” the Justice Department said in a civil complaint in U.S. District Court in North Carolina.
“At bottom, RealPage is an algorithmic intermediary that collects, combines, and exploits landlords’ competitively sensitive information,” the antitrust lawsuit said.
“And in so doing, it enriches itself and compliant landlords at the expense of renters who pay inflated prices and honest businesses that would otherwise compete,” the DOJ alleged.
Attorney General Merrick Garland in a press conference Friday morning put it more bluntly: “Everybody knows the rent is too damn high, and we allege this is one of the reasons why.”
The lawsuit marks the first time that the government has accused a company of working to systematically subvert the rules of free-market competition using mathematical algorithms.
“Antitrust law does not become obsolete simply because competitors find new ways to unlawfully act in concert,” Garland said.
“And Americans should not have to pay more in rent simply because a company has found a new way to scheme with landlords to break the law.”
The DOJ is joined in its lawsuit by the attorneys general of North Carolina, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington.
[…] The lawsuit, which Garland said followed a nearly two-year investigation, arrives in the middle of a U.S. presidential election cycle where high housing and rental prices have emerged as a key issue.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris last week unveiled an economic plan that aims to lower rental costs in part by cracking down on the companies behind price-setting tools that let landlords collude.
On the surface, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s withdrawal appears to benefit Donald Trump. Just below the surface, it’s not quite that simple.
For those wondering what to expect from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign, the writing has been on the wall for a while. The independent conspiracy theorist had already effectively stopped holding public events and raising money when his running mate signaled that the end of his candidacy was near.
Nicole Shanahan said this week that their campaign faced a choice between continuing with its ill-fated effort — which would “risk” helping Vice President Kamala Harris, she said — or dropping out to “join forces” with Trump. The candid comments, made on a podcast, left little doubt that the Kennedy candidacy was intended to undermine the Democratic ticket.
It also made clear that those expecting to see Kennedy’s 2024 candidacy persevere in the coming weeks and months needed to lower their expectations. Three days after Shanahan raised the prospect of pulling the plug on the doomed third-party campaign, the conspiracy theorist agreed to stand down. NBC News reported:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign told a Pennsylvania court that he will be endorsing former President Donald Trump, ahead of his own Friday afternoon announcement putting to rest a tumultuous independent presidential campaign. … “Many months ago I promised the American people I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler. … In my heart, I no longer believe I have a realistic path to electoral victory,” he said [at a press conference in Arizona].
Looking ahead, the obvious question is about the possible consequences. Kennedy obviously wasn’t going to win the presidential race or any electoral votes, but the anti-vaccine activist cultivated a modest following. As he exits the stage and throws his support behind Donald Trump, what happens now?
On the surface, the Republican nominee has reason to be pleased. Even if Kennedy’s support had dwindled to a few percentage points, in a highly competitive race, a few percentage points is likely to make the difference between winning and losing. If recent polling puts Harris’ lead at around two points, Kennedy’s supporters could turn Trump’s deficit into an advantage.
At least, that is, on the surface.
Just below the surface it’s a bit more complicated. For one thing, some of Kennedy’s supporters might yet support the Democratic ticket, his Trump endorsement notwithstanding. For another, Kennedy’s base doesn’t appear to be made up of traditional voters.
As a New York Times report, published before Kennedy’s announcement, explained, the independent’s backers “are less likely than others to have voted in 2020, and are also less likely to say they will vote come November.”
In other words, with Kennedy out, his base is likely to splinter, and some of his fans will simply stay home in the fall.
Complicating matters is that Democrats are going out of their way to tell the electorate that they’re the normal, responsible, and grown-up party in 2024, and voters should reject the fringe and the radical. It’s against that backdrop that Trump is picking up support from a fringe figure whose weird ideas made it impossible for his campaign to capitalize on months of voter dissatisfaction with Trump and President Joe Biden.
Given recent events, the GOP nominee will celebrate good news where he can find it, and Trump is not in the habit of turning down endorsements from anyone. But if the former president and his allies are counting on a major boost as a result of Kennedy’s exit, they’re likely to be disappointed.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has dropped out of the presidential race and will be taking his 4.7% of voters elsewhere. The independent candidate made the announcement at a press event in Phoenix, Arizona, Friday. Kennedy used his announcement to launch a prolonged attack on the Democratic Party, President Joe Biden, traditional journalism, and the legal process for appearing on state ballots.
“In an honest system,” he complained, “I believe I would have won the election.” [JFC, delusional much?]
[video at the link]
[…] The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Kennedy and Trump have been talking to one another and those conversations have “included possible jobs that Kennedy could be given in a second Trump administration, either at the Cabinet level or posts that do not require Senate confirmation.”
That’s because Kennedy would likely face stiff bipartisan opposition in the Senate, and rightly so. Republicans would have a problem voting for anyone named Kennedy, and Democrats will never accept a conspiracy theorist crank who has been known to hang out with neo-Nazis. […]
[…] Beyond Kennedy’s recent weirdness, which includes brain worms, a dead bear cub, and allegedly eating a dog, he has been an objectively awful person for a long time.
He has spent years “stoking fear and mistrust of vaccines” and has done very real and very deadly harm to people. His anti-vaccine group, Children’s Health Defense, is largely responsible for a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019 that killed 83 people, mostly children.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat down for “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” Thursday night to talk about what infuriates the other side and healing the divisions in politics. Colbert taped his show from Chicago this week to coincide with the Democratic National Convention, where Ocasio-Cortez spoke on Monday.
Asked why she thought Donald Trump, and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, are being driven so “crazy” by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s success and simple messaging, AOC told Colbert that it hits at the heart of their insecurities as men.
“I think that Trump and Vance, they think they have some kind of, like, monopoly over masculinity, and Walz is kind of showing up, he’s a football coach, he was the head of the Gay Straight Alliance as the football coach, and he’s like, actually, ‘this stuff is weird. Why are you acting like that?'” Ocasio-Cortez explained. “And I think it’s driving him nuts because he’s showing another way to be an upright man in America.” [video at the link]
She’s right. Walz’s introduction to America has been a success with voters because not only has he talked the talk, the people around him respond to him as such. The men who he has coached and taught seem to have real affection for the governor. His children not only seem to truly love and respect him, they also seem to authentically like their dad.
The Daily Kos staff chose their favorites and posted them on one page. Videos are all available at the link, including:
Kamala Harris accepting the nomination
Tim Walz
Joe Biden
Michelle Obama
Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
Doug Emhoff
Oprah Winfrey
Gabby Giffords
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Mayor Pete!
——————–
This entire convention was a great example of unity and people working together toward the important goals held in common. Each person’s speech contributed to this. I was astounded by the quality of this event and the people who participated…Apparently it was not lost on the opposition….They are so effing jealous that some can hardly contain themselves. The one thing that “he who should not be named” understands is marketing value and ratings. He’s shaking in his little, black lifted shoes right now, thinking about the low flow toilets at Rikers Island […]
——————————
Walz’s Mankato neighbor boy who was on a track team that Walz coached. What a way to break into public speaking!
————————–
For chills: Yusuf Salaam evoking MLK in his closing: “Free at last, free at last, thank god almighty, we are free at last”. [Yusuf Salaam is one of the Central Park Five brought onstage by Al Shapton. Trump still thinks Yusuf and his friends are guilty, even though they have been completely exonerated. “45 doesn’t want us alive.”]
—————————-
Senator Raphael Warnock.
—————————–
Adam Kinzinger was on point. His was among my favorites.
————————-
I also liked Rev. Al Sharpton’s address. All these years on the front lines and he still has the fire and the spirit he started with.
Leon Panetta’s speech was a pleasant surprise as well. It was a righteous defense of defense.
————————-
Elizabeth Warren
———————-
Gus Walz. [“That’s my dad!”]
Reginald Selkirksays
@457 Lil Jon performing the roll call for Georgia didn’t make the list?
KGsays
Lynna, OM@455,
Kennedy’s worm must have eaten most of his brain if he believes any promise from Trump to give him a job!
…but future polls that include the effect from Kennedy will be more interesting. With a bit of luck, the DNC bump will be equal to any Trump contribution from Kennedy.
Add that more Trump rally events where he appears to be deranged will help Harris.
Even Ted Cruz could get dragged down by Trump. And maybe even Rick Scott.
The globe-trotting insect is a native European species known as Lasius emarginatus, commonly observed in more natural settings in central Europe, according to new research.
Researchers first spotted the insect, dubbed the “ManhattAnt,” while doing a survey on ants in New York City in 2011. To their surprise, the ant — with its black head and abdomen and a red thorax — did not match any of the nearly 800 species found in North America and the researchers speculated that it might be a European species…
In what may be a surprise blow to Democrats’ chances of holding a key red state seat in the U.S. House, Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom announced Friday she is suspending her campaign for Congress.
Dahlstrom was in what was essentially a three-way race with incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich III, who comes from a prominent political family in The Last Frontier.
While Dahlstrom did not immediately endorse Begich, she suggested in comments announcing her withdrawal that her reason for running was to see Peltola defeated…
Due to the state enacting ranked choice voting by popular vote in 2020, elections in Alaska now differ from most other states in that the candidate to gain the majority of the votes is not necessarily declared the winner…
Huh? If they have ranked choice voting, her dropping out should not have much effect. She’s an idiot, and the “journalist” who wrote this up for FauxNews is also an idiot.
The day before the attempted assassination […] local police officers set aside radios for their Secret Service partners so the two agencies could communicate […] But those radios were never picked up.
The next day, three minutes before shots were fired toward Trump, local police radioed that a man was on a nearby roof. That warning never made it to the Secret Service […] In the 15 seconds it took for snipers to lock onto and kill the shooter, he was able to fire off eight shots.
KG @460, yes. Trump will probably use Kennedy and then dump him. Kennedy is setting himself up to be used and abused. He did say during leaving-the-race speech that he disagreed with the Democrats on almost everything. Okay, then. So much Trump previously calling Kennedy a “leftist radical.
I’m glad the Harris campaign did not engage with Kennedy when he went shopping for his next job is somebody’s, anybody’s administration.
Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell said Friday he expects the central bank will cut its key interest rate in the near future in response to slower economic growth and cooling inflation. At a speech during the Fed’s annual August summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell said ‘the time has come for policy to adjust.’ His remarks come as price growth has slowed and the jobs market, as well as demand for borrowing money, has begun to soften to a weaker level than before the onset of the pandemic.
As Ukrainian forces fight to isolate a large group of Russian soldiers caught between a river in Russia’s Kursk Province and the Ukrainian border, Kyiv has launched a series of strikes at airfields, ports and oil depots in other regions of Russia aimed at degrading the Kremlin’s war effort.
The White House said Friday that cease-fire talks in Cairo have been constructive and will continue over the weekend as the U.S. and Mideast allies continue to press Israel and Hamas to forge an agreement. CIA Director William Burns and Brett McGurk, a senior adviser on the Middle East to President Joe Biden, are leading the U.S. side of negotiations that began on Thursday amid major differences between Israel and Hamas over Israel’s insistence that it maintain forces in two strategic corridors in Gaza.
A live-streamer who was a frequent presence at the ‘Freedom Corner’ protests in support of Jan. 6 defendants has been arrested on Capitol attack charges, nearly two years after he was publicly identified by online ‘sedition hunters’ who have aided in hundreds of Jan. 6 arrests.
Washington Post:
A Maryland man who threw a smoke bomb at police officers defending the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and who later became a police officer himself in Montgomery County, was convicted Friday of civil disorder, assaulting police and other charges.
The entire statement is available at the link. Here is an excerpt:
[…] Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most her. It is a sad ending to a sad story.
The statement is signed by:
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Courtney Kennedy
Kerry Kennedy
Chris Kennedy
Rory Kennedy
[…] The most hilarious evidence of his panic has to be this GOP mailer that hit mailboxes in Michigan this week. [GOP mailer image at the link]
The denial is in bright blue and red letters: “Straight from Trump’s Platform,” it says. “NOT PROJECT 2025, WHICH TRUMP DIDN’T WRITE AND DOES NOT SUPPORT.”
Oh, Donald—still fighting these inconvenient truths about The Heritage Foundation’s scheme. Like the fact that the project’s chief architect admitted on hidden camera that Trump has given them his blessing. [video at the link]
Or the story this week from CBS News, headlined “Hundreds of proposals in Project 2025 match Trump’s policies.” CBS “identified at least 270 proposals in Project 2025’s published blueprint for the next Republican president that match Trump’s past policies and current campaign promises.” Those include: bringing back at least 80 of Trump’s executive orders from his tenure; 170 Project 2025 proposals that are on Trump’s website or that he talks about in speeches; and another 21 that “match both Trump’s past actions and his campaign promises and statements.”
That builds on this July story from CNN, titled “Trump claims not to know who is behind Project 2025. A CNN review found that at least 140 people who worked for him are involved.” For starters, CNN found that six former Cabinet secretaries, four Trump ambassador nominees, his first deputy chief of staff, and “several enforcers of his controversial immigration crackdown” had helped craft Project 2025.
This is a serious case of the gentleman protesting too much. And it’s hilariously ironic that the more he insists it has nothing to do with him, the deeper journalists dig—the Streisand Effect in action. Trump isn’t credible on just about anything, but on this one, he’s lost the battle. Fox News might indulge his repeated disavowals, but it won’t work: Trump and Project 2025 have become inextricably linked.
Trump’s campaign keeps yammering on about how Harris has no policies—as if they want this to be an election about policy. But now that Project 2025’s proposed policies are on everyone’s lips, they’re panicked by that. Trump’s cronies at The Heritage Foundation put it all out there on paper, and everybody hates it. Even worse for Republicans, people are now likely to cast their votes with Project 2025 in mind.
That makes the Democrats’ strategy of putting the focus on it very smart. This is Trump’s vision for another term in the White House, and the people who wrote it are the people who would enforce it if given the chance.
Like vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, Minnesota governor and former high school football coach, said: “When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, trust me, they’re gonna use it.”
Donald Trump’s worst nightmare has come true: He lost—in TV ratings.
The Democratic National Convention, which ended on Thursday, smashed the Republican National Convention in viewership, according to data released by Nielsen. The DNC averaged 21.8 million viewers across its four nights, compared with the RNC’s average of roughly 19.1 million per night. That’s an average of 2.7 million more viewers per night for the DNC.
[…] On Thursday, the DNC pulled in nearly a million more viewers, with an average of 26.2 million. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ speech even beat Trump’s in peak viewership, with 28.9 million watching her and 28.4 million watching him.
And digging into the data further only highlights the RNC’s weaker engagement. [Graph at the link: “Night by night, the DNC steadily outperformed the RNC.”]
[…] In the days leading up to the DNC, Rolling Stone reported that the former host of “The Apprentice” was worried about how the RNC’s ratings would compare. Reportedly, he also thought it was unlikely Harris’ speech would be able to top him in the ratings game.
It’s possible that Trump’s loss here will make the media-obsessed candidate spiral even further.
JMsays
@477 Lynna, OM: The funny thing is that there is a good chance that Trump didn’t know anything about Project 2025 until it made the news. He doesn’t care about policy except for a handful that he pushes or that he can use as campaign points against his opponents. He doesn’t worry about long term planning, he really doesn’t care about conservative vs liberal, he doesn’t have a lot of allies in Washington or anywhere. His international diplomacy is based on how well he gets along personally with the leaders of other countries.
It’s just that the allies he does have filled his staff with Heritage foundation people that are trying to implement Project 2025. Steven Bannon, Roger Stone and Stephen Miller all probably turned to the Heritage foundation to fill his staff and that filled Trump’s staff with Project 2025 people. His first campaign, his term in office and his current campaign are all loaded with these people and the list of people he intends to put into jobs is filled with them also. The only exceptions are likely ones that know Trump personally from his time in NY and can bypass vetting by the Heritage foundation.
He doesn’t care about Project 2025. His position on most issues is based on how well they poll and who has fed his ego over the issue last. But any administration he builds will be tied to Project 2025, it’s unavoidable because he doesn’t know any other people to put into the jobs.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@471:
I’m glad the Harris campaign did not engage with Kennedy when he went shopping for his next job is somebody’s, anybody’s administration.
She should have made a bare-bones promise of “a job”, gotten his endorsement, and then, on January 20, 2025, handed him a mop and a bucket and said “Here, go clean the White House bathroom floors.” :)
Nebraska voters will weigh two different abortion-related constitutional amendments this fall, with the secretary of state’s office certifying both measures Friday to appear on the ballot.
“Barring any legal challenges, this November general election ballot will host two ballot measures that appear in direct conflict with each other, which could be the first time this has happened in Nebraska’s history,” Secretary of State Bob Evnen said in a statement.
One proposed amendment, known as “Protect the Right to Abortion,” would amend the state’s constitution to say that “all persons shall have a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability, or when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient.”
The other proposed amendment, called the “Protect Women and Children,” bars abortions in the second and third trimesters, except in the case of a medical emergency or when the pregnancy is a result of sexual assault or incest.
[It would also let the Legislature pass stricter bans than current law]
Nebraska law currently bans abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest and saving the mother’s life.
For a ballot measure to pass in Nebraska, it needs to receive a majority of the vote and at least 35% of the total votes cast in the election in favor of it. If both amendments pass, the one with the most votes prevails.
Nebraska is the tenth state to certify a ballot measure designed to protect or expand abortion rights this year, as part of an ongoing effort from reproductive rights advocates in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@JM #479:
Trump didn’t know anything about Project 2025 […] It’s just that the allies he does have filled his staff with Heritage foundation people
He knew of the org. He knew Heritage was doing policy leg work for him. He knew that much even if he didn’t care about specifics.
In October 2017, Trump was the keynote speaker at a Heritage Foundation event […] He credited the organization with helping him […] Trump said that he needed “the help of the Heritage Foundation” to advance other priorities […] He concluded by expressing his “gratitude” to “the dedicated scholars and staff at the Heritage Foundation.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
About Chris Swanson, the police officer who spoke at the DNC.
[A decade ago] Genesee County had abolished in-person visitation in favor of “video visits,” in which families often have to pay for expensive […] video calls.
[…]
Among Genesee County’s leading proponents of using video visits to raise revenue was Chris Swanson, who at the time was undersheriff and is personally named in the lawsuit. […] In 2012, during a meeting […] Swanson said the system needed to be “a revenue generating machine.”
[…]
Swanson—who became the county’s sheriff in 2019—said he now thinks that his past stance was wrong. “The person I am today is not the same person I was in 2012, 2014,” […] He said George Floyd’s murder began to shift his outlook. […] running for re-election this fall—his perspective has focused more on helping people, instead of just jailing them. He said the lawsuit has reinforced his new point of view. He said he has come to view the revenue from the video visits as money that comes not from the detainees, but “from their families. And so you’re penalizing people. And I see that now.” […] he is reintroducing in-person visits starting this summer
Lynna had linked another article that covered the subject better a few months back. It didn’t focus much on Swanson.
KGsays
He did say during leaving-the-race speech that he disagreed with the Democrats on almost everything. Okay, then. So much Trump previously calling Kennedy a “leftist radical”. – Lynna, OM@479
I dunno. If Kennedy was a leftist radical, he’d certainly disagree with most of what the Democatic establishment stands for :-p.
Former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon must face trial in New York on criminal-fraud charges over a push to fund the former U.S. president’s signature wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a judge ruled on Friday…
Bannon, 70, was charged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office in September 2022 with money laundering and conspiracy for allegedly deceiving donors who contributed more than $15 million to the private fundraising drive, known as “We Build the Wall.”…
According to the indictment, Bannon promised donors that all their money would go toward building Trump’s wall, but he concealed his role in diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars to the drive’s chief executive Brian Kolfage, a decorated U.S. Air Force veteran who had promised to take no salary…
The 2022 indictment concerned some of the same conduct underlying a 2020 federal prosecution of Bannon, Kolfage and two other men.
Bannon pleaded not guilty in that case, which ended abruptly in January 2021 when Trump pardoned him in the final hours of his presidency.
Presidential pardons do not prohibit state prosecutions…
There was Donald Trump, teasing a U-turn on abortion and promising, “My administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” (Cue Center for Arizona Policy’s Cathi Herrod, in a dead faint.)
And there was Lake, suddenly concerned about “stolen valor.”
“We have Kamala Harris with her stolen nomination. Tim Walz with his Stolen Valor. And if we don’t do everything in our power to bring people into the America First Movement & get out the vote, we’re going to have a stolen country come November 5th,” she wrote…
Lake, who this summer campaigned with a Republican legislative candidate who ran around calling himself a Vietnam combat pilot, even though official military records say he was a helicopter repairman in Korea — one who enlisted three months after U.S. troops pulled out of Vietnam.
Steve Slaton produced his own version of his DD-214 discharge document, insisting that he had, indeed, co-piloted an Apache attack helicopter. The record he flashed around also showed he’d been awarded several medals not mentioned on his official military record. Among them, the Vietnam Service Medal, which was discontinued three months before he even enlisted.
Lake stood side-by-side with Slaton this summer, as the pair of them campaigned beneath the Confederate flag that hangs in the Trumped store he owns in Show Low…
That fetid gust of hot air you may have detected wafting from Republican and conservative social media postings over the last day or two was a fabricated claim that Kamala Harris is plotting to tax everyone’s unrealized capital gains if she becomes president.
That would be a departure from current law, which taxes capital gains only when the underlying assets are sold, or “realized.”
That it’s a mythical allegation hasn’t stopped right-wingers and GOP functionaries from hand-wringing over the economic implications of any such change, and over the purportedly horrible impact on average Americans…
[…] Aren’t you glad you’re not MAGA? Isn’t it wonderful to possess no desire whatsoever to mock a neurodivergent teenager [reference to Gus Walz] for (gasp) expressing affection for his father?
[…] Well, the once promising RFK Jr. op had devolved into a Wile E. Coyote-esque ratfuck boomerang, so the GOP called Bobby & his Brainworm home. In between bites of the raccoon he ran over on the way to the press conference, the weird sheep of America’s most famous political dynasty offered extended musings on the age at which girls reach puberty, in addition to his endorsement of the Dotard, which’ll look great on the mantel, between Kid Rock’s and Catturd’s.
[…] Now that his buddy Poots [Putin] sold him out on that whole hostage exchange thing, word is Off-Brand Orbán’s [Trump’s] been begging Bibi through back channels to reject any ceasefire deals, because I guess when you’ve got 34 felony convictions with 54 more queued up, what’s a violation of the Logan Act, more or less?
[…] Hulk Hogan dropped a leg on his public rehabilitation efforts with a drunken, racist rant in which he offered to “body slam” Vice President Harris […]
I am sure that many of us here have already seen this video: [video at the link]
The video shows that 6 out of 8 “undecided” voters broke for Harris after she gave her acceptance speech at the finale of the DNC Convention. One person remained undecided, persisting that she will not vote this election cycle.
The ninth guy, however, insisted he would not be voting for Harris. In fact, he said that after seeing Harris’ acceptance speech he would be voting for Trump. The “new” Trump voter said things like he did not want to vote for “the backup,” and Trump being “more aggressive” was more appealing to him.
This ticked a light in my head. To me, that sounded like someone who was prejudiced against Harris from the get-go —before Harris gave her acceptance speech.
CNN only said the man’s first name: Bryant.
If CNN had bothered to give Bryant’s last name, I would have done some digging to see if he passed the sniff test. Better investigators with more time and determination had the same idea.
If you are unfamiliar with Ben Meiselas of MeidasTouch, you should watch his YouTube channel. Meiselas has some of the best independent news reporting that is out there, and his work has been a shining beacon of light in a dark abyss of mainstream media disinformation.
Meiselas and MeidasTouch figured out who Bryant is — his full name is Bryant Rosado.
And guess what? Rosado is, and has been for years, a Trumper…
Anyone else surprised? I am not. [X post at the link: “[…] die-hard MAGA supporter who CNN did not vet […]]
[more posts showing Bryant’s support for Trump]
What I do not understand is how CNN could not be bothered to ask an intern to spend five minutes looking at this guy’s social media posts? This is why I have had it with mainstream media networks, like CNN. You cannot tell me that a failure to vet these “undecided” voters was unintentional. Does anyone really believe that, while knowing Rosado’s full name, CNN never bothered to look up his background?
In Lawrence O’Donnell’s words:
“So the special treatment that Donald Trump gets from the Supreme Court and elsewhere extends, tragically and harmfully, and always has, to much of the Press Corps.”
Kyiv has stepped up its campaign of aerial attacks against strategic targets, from bridges in the Kursk region to an air base and oil depot deeper inside Russian territory.
Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has been backed by an expanding campaign of aerial attacks on strategic targets — from bridges in the Kursk region, where its ground forces have pressed their surprise assault, to an air base and an oil depot set ablaze deep inside Russian territory.
Kyiv has touted these attacks and its use of U.S. weapons in videos proudly shared on social media. NBC News has geolocated some of those videos, and analyzed satellite images to track the campaign.
Last Friday and then on Sunday, Ukraine’s air force shared videos purporting to show at least two strategic bridges blown up over the Seim River in Russia’s southern Kursk border region […]
Ukraine initially practiced a strict informational silence about the surprise Kursk operation, which has overturned the status quo of the 2 1/2-year war. But that has since changed, and this week, Ukraine has been advertising its attacks inside Russia. [Images at the link]
Having targeted the permanent bridges, Ukraine’s military shared a video Wednesday saying its special forces were using the U.S.-manufactured high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) to destroy pontoon bridges and engineering equipment in the Kursk region as well — a first official acknowledgement that Kyiv was using Western weapons in the Kursk offensive.
[…] Another video shared Thursday by the country’s air force chief, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, claimed to show Ukraine’s use of guided aerial bombs to destroy two “bridge crossings” in Kursk this week. NBC News also geolocated part of that video to an area close to Glushkovo. [video at the link]
The abundance of videos shared by Kyiv in recent days could signal its intention to project confidence over its ability to strike targets and stoke unease inside Russia.
“We must all understand that to drive the occupier from our land, we must create as many problems for the Russian state as possible on its own territory,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday.
And those problems are surely accumulating for the Kremlin.
A diesel depot in the town of Proletarsk in Russia’s southern Rostov region, which borders Ukraine, has been ablaze for days after it was hit by Ukrainian drones on Sunday. More than 500 firefighters have been battling the fire, which at one point spread to over 100,000 square feet, according to Russian state media.
Ukraine claimed responsibility for hitting the depot, which its army’s general staff said stored oil products used to supply the Russian army. Regional Gov. Vasily Golubev blamed the fire — which he said was affecting “warehouses” in Proletarsk, without specifying that a strategic depot was involved — on falling drone debris. [images at the link]
[…] Another case of Ukraine reaching deeper into Russia this week involved an airfield in the southern Volgograd region.
A dramatic video geolocated by NBC News on Thursday showed huge plumes of smoke filling the sky above the air base as explosions are heard in the background.
The region’s governor, Andrei Bocharov, confirmed a fire broke out at a Defense Ministry facility after a drone attack, without specifying the nature of the facility. A Ukrainian security source told NBC News that its military attacked the region’s Marinovka air base, targeting warehouses storing antitank weapons and fuel. [images at the link]
[…] In the latest attack later Thursday, a railway ferry with fuel tanks on board was hit in a port in the southern region of Krasnodar, across from the occupied Crimean Peninsula.
Russian officials blamed Kyiv, but Ukraine has so far not claimed responsibility.
Krasnodar Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev said the ferry sank as a result of the hit and the resulting fire, adding that booms had been deployed in the water to prevent the spread of fuel. Local emergency officials said one crew member remained missing and 17 were rescued. [images at the link]
The attacks this week and the ongoing incursion appear to have surprised not only Moscow, but also Ukraine’s Western partners. Washington has maintained so far that it has no issue with Kyiv’s use of its weapons.
Responding to the statement from Ukraine’s military that the U.S.-supplied HIMARS were used in Kursk this week, Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Charlie Dietz told NBC News the weapons are being employed from within Ukraine, as far as Washington can tell, and it has not seen them being moved to Kursk or inside Russia.
“Back in May, we gave Ukraine permission to use U.S.-provided munitions, with the exception of ATACMS, to defend themselves against Russian troops north of the border, and that is what Ukraine has said they are doing,” Dietz said.
Fauci, 83, is recovering at home. He is expected to make a full recovery.
[…] West Nile virus is commonly spread through infected mosquitos, and there is no vaccine or treatment. As of Aug. 24, there were 216 human West Nile cases reported in 33 states. Of those cases, 142 were neuroinvasive, meaning people developed a severe form of the disease such as inflammation of the brain or the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. These cases typically require hospitalization.
Several hundred to several thousand cases are reported in the United States each year. Most cases are reported in August and September.
Disease experts said that more West Nile virus had been circulating this summer than was expected, with at least seven states having confirmed human cases by June 25. A record-breaking number of mosquitoes in and around Las Vegas were found to have been carrying the virus earlier this year.
RFK Suspends Campaign, Ending His Brainworm’s Dream Of A Cabinet Position
Bear with us while we shed a tear.
With a level of fanfare out of all proportion to his political and cultural importance, squinty-eyed measles enthusiast Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his ratfucking scam — excuse us, totally serious presidential campaign — and endorsed Donald Trump on Friday.
Let us all take a moment to process our grief. There, that’s good.
Kennedy went out in a blaze of strained wordage, a 48-minute press conference that we swear we tried to watch, only to be foiled about a minute and a half in when RFK burst into a self-pitying elegy for the Democratic Party of his father and his uncles but now loves corporate greed and authoritarianism and Big Pharma and Big Tech and some other crap, who knows, the dude is screwier than a power drill.
It was always clear that the wingnut billionaires funding the campaign had thought the Kennedy name would automatically cause havoc amongst Democrats who revere it, but that was a long shot even before Kennedy opened his mouth and started talking.
On Friday it became quickly apparent that RFK Jr.’s objections to the Democrats was less about their allegedly lapsed principles and more a case of needing to salve his wounded ego because the party didn’t fall all over itself welcoming his candidacy and his platform of crackpottery.
From New York Magazine (paywalled):
He repeatedly asserted he would have won a fair fight, in both the primaries and the general election. He seemed to equate DNC legal efforts to challenge his ballot petitions with authoritarianism in general and with supposed Democratic “lawfare” against Trump in particular.
The delusion, it brings mirth. RFK Jr. has been hovering around 5 percent in national polls and should be glad to have that much. Had there been a robust Democratic primary this year, he’d have been lucky to finish ahead of Other. Though we’ll be generous and say he could probably have beaten Marianne Williamson, at least.
[…] The authoritarianism bit led to this particularly hilarious rant:
“President Biden mocked Vladimir Putin’s 88 percent landslide in the Russian elections, observing that Putin and his party controlled the Russian press and that Putin prevented serious opponents from appearing on the ballot. But here in America the DNC also prevented opponents from appearing on the ballot. And our television networks expose themselves at Democratic party organs.”
[JFC, and multiple eyeballs]
Putin prevents his opponents from appearing on the ballot by packing them off to Siberian labor camps or outright shooting them. Also, Putin keeps candidates from other parties off the ballot. We wish the DNC had that kind of power, we’d have lobbied them to pack Trump off to the Marianas Trench years ago. RFK Jr. would have been in ADX Florence since 2023.
Another way you know that there were not exactly principles at play in this decision is that RFK Jr. has been coyly flirting with both Trump’s and Kamala Harris’s campaign. Last week brought reports that he had recently approached the Harris team to talk about dropping out in exchange for a job in her administration, perhaps Secretary of Health and Human Services or mumps czar or something.
Harris and her people ignored RFK Jr.’s request, with one advisor telling CBS that they had no interest in talking to a “MAGA-funded fringe candidate” who had also shown himself open to trading crazypants ideas about the effect of horse vaccines on babies with Trump.
Poor RFK Jr. He just wants to go to prom with someone. Luckily for him, Donald Trump is extremely needy. [video at the link]
Meanwhile, NBC News reported this past Wednesday that RFK Jr. had been encouraged to drop his bid in recent days by none other than Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr., who have perhaps seen some internal polling indicating that Kennedy is pulling more voters from Trump than Harris. So Kennedy said at his press conference that he is leaving his name on the ballot in most places and only trying to get his name off the ballot in about 10 battleground states where doing so could possibly tip the election to Trump. [Yep. He said that stuff out loud. That’s his plan.]
We’re pretty sure the father and uncles RFK Jr. invoked on Friday would be appalled by his behavior and the ramifications of helping put Trump back in office. The rest of the Kennedy family has publicly opposed the campaign since it kicked off last year. On Friday RFK Jr.’s siblings sounded pretty pissed off at him:
“We believe in Harris and Walz,” the statement continued. “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear. It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
Whew, Christmas is going to be awkward.
Imagine throwing in with Donald Trump at this point and claiming it is for principled reasons because you really think the two of you are closely aligned on policy preferences. How much of his brain did RFK Jr.’s brainworm eat, anyway?
Lake Charles, La. (CN) — The U.S. Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency can no longer address disparate impact harms in Louisiana where communities have been impacted by environmental pollution after a Trump-era federal judge determined that those actions conflict with the Civil Rights Act.
U.S. District Judge James Cain Jr. of the Western District of Louisiana, an appointee of Donald Trump — following up his January temporary injunction — permanently blocked the federal government from enforcing disparate impact regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “against any entity in the State of Louisiana, or requiring compliance with those requirements as a condition of past, existing, or future awards of financial assistance to any entity in the State of Louisiana,” he wrote in a brief two-page order.
Environmental organizations say the ruling could have potentially devastating impacts on environmental and civil rights justice in Louisiana.
“Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations, only to now have one court give it a permanent free pass to abandon its responsibilities,” Earthjustice Vice President for Healthy Communities Patrice Simms said in an emailed release Friday.
Enforcement of Title VI regulations would guard against, for instance, placing polluting industry primarily in lower income Black neighborhoods and would oversee federal regulation of basic services, such as drinking water.
The case stems from a dispute that gained momentum in the last few years and came to a decisive point a year ago after the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly pulled back from investigating claims of environmental discrimination in an area of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley” because of the high volume of refinery pollution and large number of cancer cases there.
The Thursday ruling leaves Louisiana as the only state without protections under Title VI of the Civil Rights act under which community members in every other state who feel they have been impacted by disparate environmental discrimination can make a claim.
In May 2023, then-attorney general Jeff Landry — who is now governor of Louisiana — sued the Environmental Protection Agency to stop it from investigating environmental discrimination claims that accuse the state of environmental harms imposed on minority communities, after which investigations from the EPA quickly stopped.
In Cain’s memorandum ruling granting the temporary injunction, he determined that Title VI works to prevent intentional discrimination and the disparate harms the EPA was finding in the state’s actions did not fall under the statute.
[…]
Earthjustice filed a lawsuit in January 2022 on behalf of Black residents in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish who said controversial industrial projects continue to be planned for their neighborhoods. They asked the EPA to investigate.
In October 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a letter saying it had concerns of potential race discrimination in the area. The agency thereafter opened an investigation into state regulators, scrutinizing the industrial permits issued by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and information about health risks that were issued by the Louisiana Department of Health.
Among its findings, the Environmental Protection Agency said state officials had turned a blind eye as the Denka polymer plant exposed nearby residents, including elementary school students, to chloroprene, a known carcinogen. Also, the agencies had issued a permit for the controversial Formosa Plastics plant in a small mostly Black community and also right next to an elementary school…..
Landry then sued, claiming the EPA overstepped its authority.
“EPA officials have lost sight of the agency’s actual environmental mission, and instead decided to moonlight as social justice warriors fixated on race,” he accused in the May 2023 complaint.
“To that end, EPA officials declare compliance with environmental law and actual environmental standards is not enough: to avoid loss of federal funds, states must also satisfy EPA’s increasingly warped vision of ‘environmental justice’ and ‘equity.'”
Representatives from Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill’s offices did not immediately reply to emails asking for comment.
@497 Lynna, OM: The significant part is that this is Trump killing his own business. Truth Social’s primary selling point was being the only interface online for Trump. Going back to X kills what little business and interest it had. Musk either offered Trump a lot of money or Trump didn’t realize what he was doing.
We already know Musk offered Trump money to flip flop on EVs, Trump admitted to that. How much money he got for that and how much he got for selling out Truth Social is unknown.
Follow-up to xxxi p1 #10:
Historic gun suit survives serious legal threat engineered by Indiana Republicans
/He said of the majority-Black Democratic city.
/Municipal Corporations are people, my friend. —Paraphrasing Mitt
Guardian liveblog:
He’s also very likely projecting what his campaign is planning or doing: cheating; using fake images or videos. Maybe that’s even what’s contained in Roger Stone’s hacked emails. Lynna, I don’t know if you remember, but I’m pretty sure we had a conversation back in 2016 about Trump’s weird obsession with “bags of cash.” And now years later we’re learning about the regime in Egypt allegedly withdrawing cash from national reserves to bribe him during that campaign.
Post at the link. It’s racist as hell.
They’re totally useless – they retire and they still can’t muster any courage.
Since the thread has rolled over, here’s the Guardian liveblog link again.
Kyiv Independent:
“Ukraine’s Kursk Oblast incursion creates ‘real dilemma for Putin,’ Biden says”:
“Kursk incursion deals blow to Putin’s prestige marking first ground invasion of Russia since World War II”:
More at the link. Some of the Getty images they use are striking.
Forgot this from the liveblog:
Have I Got a Bit More News for You S67 E10. Alex Horne. 7 June 24
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=EQ3WZuqkaqw
There is an odd American news item at the 28 minute mark.
Myself @ 7
I am referring to the Michigan incident , not the Trump steak. But the driver may be a Trump fan.
From SaveAfox
http://youtube.com/post/Ugkxulsi5f49Pc7Nn7QXaEN6jy4T1ZQ4lsZm
Follow-up to xxvii p4 #214 and xxix p2 #440:
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has dropped a case against IU Health
/weird Republican
Lynna@493:
Antifa to the rescue, along with … cops?
The cops didn’t side with the fascists?
How odd.
@ 6
And what about the billions of old beach-front property that’s going to be underwater?
Insert hbomerguy quote here:
https://youtu.be/0-w-pdqwiBw?si=kx8FOtqRySqBb1aO
Well, then it won’t be beachfront property any more, will it?
The property next to the water will become the new beach-front property.
(What’s the prob?)
Bekenstein Bound@11,
The fascists have been attacking the police, injuring quite a number. Whatever their natural tendency to side with the fascists, they don’t like having bricks, bottles and fireworks thrown at them. The counter-demos have been almost entirely peaceful. Similarly, establishment politicans, including those in the new Labour government, have spent years stirring up anti-migrant and anti-Muslim prejudices, but still don’t want fascists burning down mosques, or hotels where asylum seekers are housed. It’s not a good look, and violates the state’s monopoly on violence.
Stephen Colbert:
“Musk & Trump’s Livestream Fail | Trump Flies Around On Epstein’s Plane | Obama’s Brat Summer”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zG6kVBQcOhU
The cat of the cat lady
http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx8zVTPJeKP5p1ks5sE_hRly0Em1WiXqaT
Australia offers lessons for increasing American life expectancy
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-08-australia-lessons-american-life.html
Jesse Ventura Puts His Money Where His Mouth Is
(And endorses Tim Walz)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZLJbf953p5Y
40 days since the last Tory government
“Is This the Most Brutal Tory Polling Yet?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qsIcYQNxTf0
From the Kyiv Independent:
“Ukraine downs Russian Su-34 aircraft over Kursk Oblast, military says”:
“Ukraine hits 4 Russian airbases in largest such attack, source says”:
“Ukraine captures over 100 Russian troops in Kursk Oblast in less than a day, Syrskyi says”:
And here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Late Night With Seth Meyers:
“Amber Says What: French Pole Vaulter, Olympic Break Dancing”
Super Normal: Why RFK Jr. Staged A Bear Cub Murder In Central Park
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=o-SIHhcmy-w
SC @3: Lynna, I don’t know if you remember, but I’m pretty sure we had a conversation back in 2016 about Trump’s weird obsession with “bags of cash.” And now years later we’re learning about the regime in Egypt allegedly withdrawing cash from national reserves to bribe him during that campaign.
I do remember that. The cash withdrawn from the account in Egypt was literally put in bags. Money is heavy. It would have taken some effort to move that ten million dollars to some other bank/country so that it could be transferred to Donald Trump.
Trump always reveals his own methods and expectations (and that of his co-conspirators) if you listen to him. Master of projection.
North Carolina Republican candidates are breaking the ‘crazy meter’
How a pair of unhinged GOP candidates could help Democrats flip the state in November’s presidential election.
Link
Excerpt from NewsChannel 5:
QAnon brain worms.
Note the racism. Blatant.
Josh Marshall:
Image at the link.
https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1823420411289448485
The Trump campaign on X is going full bore with anti-immigrant and racist content.
Link. Scroll down to view the text quoted above. It is part of a news roundup that includes a lot of different articles.
Judge rejects Trump’s latest demand to step aside from hush money case
Link
Additional embedded links to reference material on various grifters are available at the main link.
Mitch McConnell’s ‘worst nightmare’ is the parting gift he deserves, by Mark Sumner.
Walz rips Trump and Vance for being anti-labor: ‘Can’t get it right’
Harris Campaign Unleashes BRUTAL Social Media Ad Calling Trump, “FEEBLE, SLURRING, AND CONFUSED.”
Video at the link.
Good news:
Yeah, a few too many exclamation marks, but still good news.
Link
Link
@SC #3, @Lynna #23:
I couldn’t find that conversation, but this turned up from 2019.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/nikki-haley-wishes-trump-was-totally
Nikki Haley Wishes Trump Was Totally Different Person Who ISN’T Whining Racist Loser
Don’t worry, her endorsement isn’t going anywhere, she’s a coward.
Washington Post link
WHO declares mpox a global health emergency as African outbreak grows.
This follows an earlier emergency declaration for a 2022-2023 global outbreak. The rapid spread of a new form of mpox across Africa has sounded new alarms.
More at the link, including maps of the disease spread.
Inflation rate falls to 2.9% in July, adding to signs that surging prices have abated
The latest Consumer Price Index numbers add to the case for an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve as soon as next month.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @35, thank you for that additional information.
YouTube link
Trump did accuse of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation of being a “criminal enterprise.” He accused Hillary of “pay for play,” including receiving “$25 million dollars” from Saudi Arabia. Trump wanted Clinton to “give back the money.” Trump said, “What’s happened at the Clinton Foundation is a disgrace. You know it and they know it.”
Trump did suggest paying off Stormy Daniels with cash.
Bloomberg in January 2024:
“GAM469 Dark Realm”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=edyKAPL2Z84
The gang has brought a new guest masochist to review a religion-themed film.
Happy 89th birthday, Social Security!
Trump recently claimed that he would not touch Social Security, and that he would not raise the retirement age, but that claim is in conflict with Trump’s past actions, with statements by other Republicans, and with Project 2025. Do not believe what Trump recently said.
I am told the miracle of AI will bring back one of the actors of the first Alien films to the new sequel.
My guess is either Ian Holm or Lance Henriksen. BTW Henriksen is still alive and well, his character is what made ‘Millennium’ a decent series.
The Volyn biota (Ukraine) – indications of 1.5 Gyr old eukaryotes in 3D preservation, a spotlight on the “boring billion”
https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/20/1901/2023/
Interesting membrane arrangements.
Brony @ 43
Yet another example of how quickly the textbooks become out of date.
“Why the Nazis spent so much time making a worse STG-44: The MP43/1” (going down the route of the early Garand “gas trap” prototype)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6i_FqUjs1eY&si=8ke39zHDJNbFAkMD
The Nazis fortunately spent much engineering time on stillborn projects. Had they concentrated the resources on more practical devices the war would have lasted longer.
The hierarchy belatedly realised that Germany was outnumbered, and desperately tried to make up for it with technology that turned out to be falling short.
New brain-computer interface allows man with ALS to ‘speak’ again
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-08-brain-interface-als.html
(This has nothing to do with Elon Musk)
@birgerjohansson
I found a bunch of interesting things searching by the names of eras 1-2 billion years ago.
Colossal X-class solar flare erupts from ‘rule-breaking’ sunspot and Earth is in the firing line (video)
| Space
.https://www.space.com/x-class-solar-flare-eruption-rule-breaking-sunspot-video
Good news from Mitch McConnell
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxlUOeOPpgtmlHATE2K6nMOxudN7xYYFNu
I am not sure if I got the surname right, but fuck him!
Re: biregerjohannson @ #46….
Very interesting article. The work was done about 80 miles from where I live. I’d love to know how much computational hardware it actually takes to run, once the ‘training’ is done.
Alas…too late for my wife.
Seriously? North Carolina is in play?
:O
Brony @#43
Fascinating paper, thank you.
Bekenstein Bound @ 51,
Yes, I noticed this had moved into some reliable poll-watcher’s category of “marginal Republican” on Sunday, as Trump’s campaign continues to flag. Meanwhile I keep hearing whispers that contrary to the idea Veep-nominee JD Vance being the junior senator from Ohio is helping to shore up Trump’s vote there, that he’s actually acting as a negative, which is pushing the state closer to the marginal category. Ohio?!
As Belle of the Fifth Column would say, “anyway, it’s just a thought”.
More JD Vance weirdness
Wikipedia – Grandmother Hypothesis
If he’s gonna indulge in the naturalistic fallacy, then there’s similar ‘purpose’ to accepting trans people—or childless cat ladies.—as potential babysitters.
Wikipedia – Faʻafafine (Samoan third gender who help raise their siblings’ kids)
^ There’s an evopsych “helper in the nest” hypothesis of gay alloparenting based on this demographic. Though the Samoans aren’t gay, and they’re more attentive than contemporary western gay people, the authors presumed the Samoans were representative of a common ancestral state.
* “Accepting potential babysitters” was too generous. Incorporating them into his uncompensated forced labor fantasy.
So the iconic Major Mitchell / Pink Cockatoo is now onthe endangered species list .. (EXpletives.) :
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/major-mitchell-pink-cockatoo-among-new-threatened-species-on-growing-national-list-20230403-p5cxnb.html
Semi-poaywalled depending on how many rticle syousee -only afirst few free which ..Grr.. Fuck off. Still.
(Thunderstorm locally here right now FYI folks. So.. hopefully won’t be knocked offline w blackout but might be..)
On the dude that gave this Cockatoo its common name – apperently becoz he screeched like it – Bill Peach the (Australian) Explorers -Australia Felix Episode 5 – 30 minutes long.
An old informative TV show that I absolutely loved back in the 1980’s.
Oh and also how “Dispersion” became a very handy euphemism for the mass murder of other people too.
Courthouse News Service:
Montana Supreme Court finds parental consent law unconstitutional
Natalie Hanson / August 14, 2024
Hidden-camera video shows Project 2025 co-author discussing his secret work preparing for a second Trump term
Reginald Selkirk @ 59: That’s a big story, and I hope it gets good traction*. But I was pretty disappointed that the lead in this CNN story was not about what the reporters found, but the ‘Elaborate Ruse’ (their heading for that part) played by the reporters. They even made a comparison between their tactics of deceptive, undercover reporters getting hidden footage to Project Veritas, as though the hidden cameras is the thing that makes Project Veritas bad, and not their manipulation of the footage they get.
*Lest I do the same thing here: the important story here is the Project 2025 people openly discuss their own deception, as well as their detailed work on instant transition to fascism in government if Trump wins again.
@ 54
This should be the money quote:
“[O]ther ways of contributing to society,” eh?
He means “slavery.”
Oh, the source of that quote:
https://www.rawstory.com/jd-vance-women-2668967395/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2xVlIuydGG957ZUkqom0BGMEzZQHYQ8XaSBNDr57GmsJ8NeIZEmSPkfzo_aem_8ywTD4VJ5oKT_2D3sVg82Q
More context to #54 about Vance and grandmas.
Stories about J.D. Vance’s grandmother
Snopes – JD Vance Said Women Should Stay in Violent Marriages?
! ! !
Real headlines:
The New York Times: Harris Is Set to Lay Out an Economic Message Light on Detail
The Hill: Harris is trying to run a no-substance campaign. Does she believe in anything?
The Washington Post: Opinion | Does Harris need a serious policy agenda? Only if she wants to win.
Poynter: Opinion | When will Kamala Harris meet the press?
Commentary from Josh Marshall:
Link
Seniors could save $1.5B on prescriptions, thanks to Biden and Harris
Statement from VP Harris on Lower Prescription Drug Prices is available at the link.
Link
How much pleasure does Trump derive from lying to himself?
Followup to comments 59 and 60, (Reginald and Paul).
Top Project 2025 Dude Still Planning Trump’s Second Term, Just Secret-Like
Probably not drafting executive orders just for the hell of it.
@64
I expect that problem would be the fact that Kamala Harris is a black woman. Of course Ezra won’t say that out loud, but the dogwhistle is pretty damn obvious.
I’m not surprised that the white male DC pundits are still baffled about the immediate groundswell of support for Kamala Harris as POTUS. Adding Walz for VP has only increased the enthusiastic response of average Americans who don’t make a living by churning out biased opinion pieces for the NYT.
Republicans for Harris is the latest group to plan a zoom call, and it has 70,000 members. There is also a group called Evangelicals for Harris, which is another sign of how much the vast majority of Americans people are tired of the hateful rhetoric and division of the maga-infested GOP. We suddenly see a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s All Aboard-Full Steam Ahead.
Can we start talking about Purple Waves?
Trump ups the ante on creepy weird.
Episode 600, baby!
“Scathing Atheist 600 Banned Wagon Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Pj7XJUa0RlQ
AP Ukraine gambled on an incursion deep into Russian territory.
Ukraine continues to take territory and move troops into Kursk. Some Ukrainian troops are reported to have reached into other regions of Russia. The border lines are very unclear because Ukraine is sending scouting and raiding forces well beyond the areas they control. Russia has finally pulled some forces from their front in Ukraine to deal with this. They obviously don’t want to because they want to continue to take land in Ukraine but their doesn’t seem to be any other reliable infantry they can use. Much of the Russian army inside Russia is made up of short term conscripts with little training or gear and they have been surrendering to Ukrainian forces.
Guardian: Ukrainian team blew up Nord Stream pipeline, claims report
Germany is now convinced enough to issue an arrest warrant. This has been a mystery because at the time Ukraine, Germany/EU, US and Russia all had reasons to disable it. The target of the arrest is in Ukraine and I expect he will just remain hidden until the war is resolved.
Business Insider: Nearly all Chinese banks are refusing to process payments from Russia
Even Chinese banks don’t want to risk global sanctions. Russia is doing various things to work around it, such as barter and going through North Korea but the scale of such trade is small and the trading awkward to setup. China’s economy is in deep trouble itself and China can’t risk trade and banking issues so the US and EU have more leverage then they might normally. If their economy was doing better China might be willing to trade with Russia just to mess with the US but they can’t do it now.
Anton Petrov:
“Geological Evidence from Venus Suggests It Almost Became Earth”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=H6nbYJixXRs
Ishtar terra is on top of a craton.
(I do not know if the very slow rotation is an effect of solar tidal effects on the massive atmosphere that formed after the runaway greenhouse effect)
Notice the difference, Birger?
https://www.monash.edu/science/news-events/news/current/venus-continents-suggest-surprising-link-to-early-earth
“New research has revealed that Venus, often considered Earth’s inhospitable twin, may share a surprising geological history with our own planet.
Scientists have discovered that Venus’ vast plateaus, known as tesserae, may have formed through processes similar to those that created the Earth’s earliest continents billions of years ago.
The international study, led by Associate Professor Fabio Capitanio from the Monash University School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment, in collaboration with NASA, is published today in the journal Nature Geoscience.”
Anton:
A reputable university: “may share a surprising geological history with our own planet” and “may have formed through processes similar”.
I can’t recall when he last had a non-clickbaity non-hyperbolic bullshit title to a video.
(Obs, it works for him)
John Morales @ 73
Your criticism of the title is valid, but I generally think the content is interesting.
As for titles, I tone down the ALL CAPS part of titles I quote because I also dislike hyperbole.
Should I write brand new titles for everything? Maybe. But it is two in the morning and I wanted to see if sleep would finally arrive.
In regard to exoplanets, these tiny differences between Earth’s and Venus’ early development can have a huge effect on the proportion of worlds that may be regarded as Earth-like, I was personally more interested in that aspect of the findings.
Regardless of how apt the title is, the content seens geologically significant
‘Golden spike’ showing the moment Earth turned into a giant snowball discovered in ancient Scottish rocks
| Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/geology/golden-spike-showing-the-moment-earth-turned-into-a-giant-snowball-discovered-in-ancient-scottish-rocks
By this time, eukaryotes and simple multi-cellular life was already around. So how the devil did the organisms survive?
The immigrants are grabbing more than 100% of new jobs!
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxRjJ5z-bDGSJ92_k1p_vexNQie7HiGqL9
Sky Captain@54:
Vance is, as usual, fractally wrong here.
First, there didn’t need to be an evolutionary reason for women to survive for a while post-menopause. As long as it wasn’t selected against it would likely happen through sheer inertia. And it’s unlikely to be selected against if these grandmothers pull their own weight and don’t divert too much of the sexual energy of younger males away from fertile-age females.
Second, it is likely that elderly humans (regardless of sex/gender) were in fact selected for, but primarily to function as “memory cells” providing continuity of the group’s know-how and stories back in the days before books and writing and all that; secondarily as added pairs of hands to provide useful labor, such as weaving hemp or chipping arrowheads out of stone. (And as long as dexterity isn’t too impaired yet, experience is very useful in doing such tasks with speed and skill.)
And last, but certainly not least, we do not and should not regard evolution’s “purpose” for us as the final word on what our purpose actually is. We can, and should, make our own choices in that regard. I don’t ask anyone to justify their existence — not in evolutionary terms, nor economic, nor “usefulness to society”. I give a huge amount of side-eye to anyone who does seem to expect (some) people to justify their existence. Because that’s usually thinly-if-at-all-disguised eugenics. Of course we could hardly expect better from a known neo-Nazi like Vance.
@63:
What a piece of work! He needed help, not a murder attempt. Not to mention the likelihood of burning the whole fucking house down doing something stupid like that. We’re at “treat a hangnail with amputation at the shoulder” levels of overreaction and stupidity here. And this is before considering the added instances of homicidal ideation … Vance is creepy-weird in part due to being raised by a bona fide psycho. Wotta role model!
StevoR@56:
Those “n free articles” paywalls are trivially circumvented by using incognito windows any time you visit them. The down side is when you’re later scratching your head asking “I read something else about this recently, now where was it?” your browser history will be of no help. Stupid greedy fuckers making everything worse for everyone who’s not a billionaire like them …
gijoel@69:
Now to make popcorn and watch Heart file a lawsuit. Heck, maybe she and Celine Dion can make it a class action?
Birger:
Generally, maybe.
But, why not go to the source, or at least something scientific?
Why go by some YouTuber who specialises in hyperbolic/misleading clickbait stuff?
(Not that hard to keep up with science news; many feeds, many sources)
I presume he provides citations for his videos. At least copy paste that; no harder than copying the title (it’s just a text string) and people who have an interest in that stuff can see the source material, instead of this dude’s YouTubing.
In fact, you could leave out the title and just post the actual news that interests you; clearly, what interests you is Anton’s presentation. Me, I gave up long ago.
You won’t optimise your chances of getting to sleep if you’re browsing on your phone and posting naked links with clickbaity titles.
Again: better than the link, the source.
Then we can avoid the bullshit video and just see what the news is.
To be fair, it’s better than doomscrolling. :)
Um, a baseball is roughly the same size as an orange.
—
https://xkcd.com/2456/
Hey, BB, for you, some context: http://web.archive.org/web/20120110223109/http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/i_neglected_molly_again.php
(KG liked me more back in the day)
Heh.
As Anton would put it (I speculate, of course, but not without good warrant) “New Data Suggests Gliese 12 B Almost Became Earth”.
(An almost perfect parallel)
Biden’s new trans-inclusive Title IX rules are already blocked in most states
Cook Political Report was relessed Wednesday morning.
“Harris Is Now Crushing Trump In Every Crucial Swing State”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=yLOw1rkCIiA
I bet if Trump were to lay his body over Harris’, he would crush more than Harris would crush Trump.
(Cooked reports, eh?)
“Exclusively for CPR subscribers, the Editors Roundtable features Cook Political Report analysts discussing the most critical developments and trends driving political coverage.
Amy Walter, David Wasserman and Jessica Taylor discuss the most interesting findings from our August 2024 Swing State poll, a collaboration with BSG and GS Strategy Group.”
Paywalled.
So, let’s see what some motivated YouTuber claims about this report.
“Crush”
—
Crush, well… one imagines something more than “slightly advantaged within the margin for error”, no?
(Hyperbole, clickbait, no info. The usual fare)
John Morales
I did put the headline within quotation marks. And removed the ALL CAPS bs.
(I simply assume everyone with experience of Youtube have developed a degree of immunity to hyperbole, otherwise they would believe every MAGA claim)
(wait… there ARE people who believe every MAGA claim!)
.
Here is something more recent. And depressing.
.
Laurence O’Donnell remarks on the endless lies Trump spewed at his press conference without being fact-checked in real time by the networks
😵💫
.https://youtube.com/shorts/JPOwMi_h738
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“Chicago Gets Ready To Party | Monday Is Joe’s Night At The DNC | Waymo’s Car Trouble ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kIf1KZyis6g&si=qfEm5D7piUFsAD1m
-Self-driving cars? That is always trouble.
And a whole convention with ‘dad energy’ must get exhausting.
Venus rotates in a retrograde direction (i.e. the opposite direction to that in which it orbits the sun). According to Wikipedia, that may have been caused by a whack from an asteroid, but its slow pace could be to do with tidal effects in the thick atmosphere. Details at the link.
John Morales@82,
You’ve changed since then – the ratio of interesting comments to self-obsessed burbling has declined considerably. BTW, for the benefit of Bekenstein Bound, my nym at that point was Knockgoats: KG is an abbreviation (and Knockgoats is itself an Aberdonian pronunciation of my real name).
I just realised, if all the convention visitors took turns digging a surprisingly shallow ditch south from Lake Michigan they could make the lake drain into the Missisippi basin instead of east to Canada.
(there is even a local canal that is out of use)
KG:
That’s one hypothesis.
Another might be that the milieu has changed, but I haven’t.
Or that both have changed.
Or that you (and your perception of me) has changed.
(Actually, I reckon I’ve changed.
This is the nicer, gentler, more circumspect me)
But hey, at least you picked up I was addressing you, though ostensibly I was addressing the BB.
(The BB, well. Not so far)
Birger:
You are correct in your assumption in my case; but that I am inured to it doesn’t mean I don’t recognise it for what it is, or that it does not irritate me, or that I shan’t mention the more egregious examples.
Thing is, providing a (feeble) rationale for you doing it is basically an admission that you are doing it.
Crater formed from Earth’s extinction event produced by carbon-rich ‘C-type’ asteroid, scientists suggest | Asteroids | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/aug/15/crater-formed-from-earths-extinction-produced-by-carbon-rich-c-type-asteroid-scientists-suggest
Nice, but it has a bit to go before it catches up with Cyberdyne Systems
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1XQS7aDAK1uu1SuZ/
Wildly divergent skinks provide a window into how evolution works
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-wildly-divergent-skinks-window-evolution.html
Robot planning tool accounts for human carelessness
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-08-robot-tool-accounts-human-carelessness.html
Trump Reacts To Harris & Walz
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Gg7h6tfyRxk
A question to naval nerds.
The battleships of WWI and WWII do not look much different, but the smaller ships – destroyers and cruisers – of WWI have a multitude of masts sprouting ropes and wires like odd spiderwebs, pointing back to the 19th century.
Whatever technological limitations they represent, they must have been overcome by the 1930s as the smaller vessels of that era are modern-looking.
What was this technological change?
Republican State Senator in West Virginia Arrested For Indecent Exposure Over Disgusting Public Actions
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVfZTzhp4kI
WTF? This must be the influence of the British “Gutter Press”.
‘From live sex broadcasts to naked dating: are the UK’s romance shows the wildest TV in the world?’ | Reality TV | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/aug/16/from-live-sex-broadcasts-to-naked-dating-are-the-uks-romance-shows-the-wildest-tv-in-the-world
New York Times link
F.B.I. Resumes Flagging Foreign Disinformation to Social Media Giants.
The Justice Department set new guidelines for agents to share tips with Facebook, X and other platforms after a legal challenge prompted a suspension of that communication.
Secret Service prepares use of bulletproof glass for outdoor Trump rallies
4 takeaways from Harris’ economic plan to uplift Americans, by Mark Sumner.
A followup of sorts to comment 105. While Harris’ economic plans are looking good, Trump keeps trying to give a speech about his economic plans … he fails and flails.
Cereal, birds, and calculators: Another Trump speech goes sideways
Cartoon: Failure to launch
Link
Video at the link.
@birgerjohansson #100:
I’ve no naval interests. I like finding things.
Rando
Royal New Zealand Navy Communicators Association – Comms History – History of Naval Ships Wireless Systems (pdf)
Wikipedia – Skywave
Digging up more stuff about Vance.
.http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx1JyIem9YsCFJn8qf5ef0VXNh1QyN3w-X
Link
First case of polio detected in Gaza, Palestinian health ministry says
The World Health Organization and UNICEF called for seven-day pauses in the war in Gaza starting at the end of August to vaccinate 640,000 Palestinian children under age 10.
JD Vance interview with rape-advocating anti-immigrant writer resurfaces.
The 2021 interview itself had Vance saying:
The podcast host was a DC Charter School Board Official until 2018 when his pseudonymous blog was discovered.
Now J.D. Vance is doubling down on his remarks on immigrants
Compulsory account 7746 Sky Captain @ 109
Thank you!
I had wondered like crazy about the change in how ships looked between WWI and WWII.
.
Lynna, OM @ 111
The problem is, if the lies are not debunked in real time – for instance by text scrolling across the screen – the debunking will be ineffective. Some of the TV channels had debunked some of the claims immediately after Trump was done, but most viewers had already switched channels by then.
The text scrolling thing is simple and doable, but the TV channels do not care enough. They do the minimum required to avoid litigation.
Yesterday, Trump compared the Predidential medal of freedom to the Congressional medal of honor.
Jesse Dollemore. US Marine reacts to Donald Trump’s belittling medal of honor recipients!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=AkejiiLo_ZM
Phys.org
Newly discovered protein (DdrC) stops DNA damage
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-newly-protein-dna.html
Phys.org
Researchers observe ‘locked’ electron pairs in a superconductor cuprate
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-electron-pairs-superconductor-cuprate.html
Those goddamn cuprates – they have been teasing us for three decades.
Harris calls for ‘opportunity economy’ during speech in N.C.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/08/16/2024-election-campaign-updates-harris-trump/
Live Science |
Earth’s days were once 2 hours longer — and that may have triggered one of the biggest evolutionary explosions in history, study suggests
https://www.livescience.com/space/the-moon/earth-s-days-were-once-2-hours-longer-and-that-may-have-triggered-one-of-the-biggest-evolutionary-explosions-in-history-study-suggests
The Guardian
‘I want the audience to be seduced’: Joe Wright on his Mussolini biopic | Benito Mussolini
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/17/atonement-director-joe-wright-on-his-new-mussolini-biopic-m-son-of-the-century
A lot of people thought Benito was a cool dude when he arrived on the political stage.
“The Kursk bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down,
The Kursk bridge is falling down
My fair lady”
Why Kimberly Cheatle’s journey from Secret Service director to protectee isn’t shocking
Details from a recent Justice Department case show how determined and unrepentant those making threats against federal and state officials have become.
Sheesh.
Caribbean Matters: These women athletes brought home the gold
More videos, biographies of athletes, and details at the link.
Assuming this is true, why has ALL the ‘mainslimemedia’ ignored it???? This country is crumbling into chaos more and more each day. We are so fracked! I wish PZ would address this on his main blog.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-08-16/massive-data-breach-may-be-even-worse-than-suspected
if above is paywalled see:
https://www.rsn.org/001/massive-data-breach-that-includes-social-security-numbers-may-be-even-worse-than-suspected.html
latimes.com
Jon Healey
20240817
data breach potentially exposed every American’s Social Security number to identity thieves finally has acknowledged the data theft . . . National Public Data, a Florida-based company that collects personal information for background checks . . . the information consists of about 2.7 billion records, each of which includes a person’s full name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and phone number, along with alternate names and birth dates, Felice the cracker rep. claimed.
From Bible bucks to legal debt, Trump’s financial disclosure is wild
A new ‘Hope’: Artist behind iconic Obama image looks ‘Forward’ to Harris
Images of artwork at the link.
It’s lewd, it’s crude, but, this image really hits the nail right on the nostril!
https://mockpaperscissors.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/screen-shot-2024-08-16-at-4.35.33-pm.png?w=640
Followup to birger @121.
Link
Georgia replaces confederate monument with bronze statue of late Rep. John Lewis
Jared Kushner wants to turn a wild stretch of Albania into a luxury resort
Much more, including maps and images at the link.
While the world’s eyes are on Gaza, Palestinians see a land grab underway in the West Bank
“They are taking advantage of the war and the current status quo,” said a Palestinian woman who says her son-in-law was killed by an Israeli settler.
Inside Project 2025’s secret training videos
Much more at the link.
X says it has closed its Brazilian operation
Interesting development. I feel no obligation to accept X’s account at face value. If the company is not going to operate in some countries, this could be the beginning of the end.
You Should Know, by Josh Marshall
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-should-know
Cartoon: The dealer
Oh No Twitter Revenues Keep Crashing, What Will Elon Musk Do
Right-wing media attack Tim Walz for having the financial portfolio of an average American
Right-wing media call Walz “financially illiterate” and a “complete ignoramus” for having modest finances.
Okay. Compare that to Trump’s cryptocurrency holdings etc. See comment 125.
San Francisco files first-of-its-kind lawsuit to tackle AI deepfake nudes
“The proliferation of these images has exploited a shocking number of women and girls across the globe,” said David Chiu, the elected city attorney of San Francisco who brought the case against a group of widely visited websites.
Here is a bit of entertainment for the weekend with Sandy Toksvig and various British media figures. Excerpts from “Quite Interesting” series Q
“Best Of QI Series Q! Funny And Interesting Rounds!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkETGXfGKSg
Membrane permeability and the chirality of molecules.
“Is This Why All Proteins Are Left-Handed?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UMJYVYX1VPg
(The original article has not yet been peer reviewed)
@137: at the same time, they are trying to pass him off as an agent of the elite.
Elites think rural voters can be hoodwinked by a flannel shirt
Chechen warlord invites Musk to Russia after he’s filmed driving machine-gun mounted Cybertruck
FBI raids US home of Russian-born analyst who advised Trump in 2016
WARNING : Confronting disuturbing material, sexist language incl gendered slurs, sucide and self-harm references but powerful Four Corners episode on the abhorrent and sickening stuff regarding Aussie TV channel 7 here
Exposing Channel 7’s secrets | Four Corners
50 mins long.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-18/ukraine-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant-hit-by-drone-srike/104238964
From this week’s MediaWatch program :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/asio/104215274
A text version of StevoR’s #144:
Current and former Channel Seven staff describe a ‘degrading, soul crushing’ workplace that’s left some suicidal and unable to work.
Lynna@137:
Translation: “Oh noes! He might govern in the interest of ordinary people rather than in the interest of the rentier class!” Add in assorted shaking, boot-quaking, sell-offs of stock, and other suitable indicia of fear.
Not only is the premise bogus, but that’s as gramatically incorrect as writing the numerator of a fraction on the bottom. Which right-wind idiot said this particular thing? Ah, of course, something this boneheaded could only have come from Fox.
Because he doesn’t have any sources of rentier income? By that “logic”, Adam Smith must also hate capitalism. Unwilling to be out-stupided by other far-reich pundits, Fox strikes again!
@138:
One must wonder: if one commissioned an artist to sketch what they think some particular person would look like nude, would that be a) morally wrong or b) illegal under California law? Why should that change if the job is automated?
In the end, I think the real problem here is that being seen naked is stigmatized, especially if the person so seen is a woman. It is a patriarchal norm that is being exploited here, and ending that patriarchal norm would render such deepfakes powerless to harm. They have no intrinsic power; their power is borrowed, vested in them by a misogynistic society.
Reginald Selkirk@141:
Rather ironic, considering that rural voters were hoodwinked by an elite (oil sheik, no less!) posing as “a guy you could have a beer with” back in 2000 … yet something tells me the Washington Examiner was perfectly happy with it that time.
NYT:
Willie Brown to Donald Trump: Mention My Name Again and Get Sued
By Heather Knight and Shawn Hubler / Aug. 17, 2024
Bekenstein Bound@148,
Well I don’t know offhand whether Smith had any rentier income, but I’m pretty sure he would have hated modern capitalism! He disliked joint-stock companies, and famously said:
Seldom was an honest social scientist so slandered by those claiming to be his followers!
Alain Delon 1935-2024
@149: Just to make sure everybody noticed:
So even ignoring the mistaken identity, it does not add up.
birgerjohansson@151,
Alain Delon was a racist, homophobic, misogynist arsehole.
@148 Bekenstein Bound: In regards to Walz there is usually a large dose of “What do mean the average American isn’t invested in the stock market?” in that sort of complaint also. Particularly in the upper middle class and the lower upper class there is a big tendency to think of themselves as average Americans even though they have far more money that isn’t going to survival.
Artists often object to Trump using their music—here’s how that works
Cartoon: Drag queens
WaPo:
Republicans flood TV with misleading ads about immigration, border
By Azi Paybarah, Clara Ence Morse, Jonathan Baran, James O’Toole and Irfan Uraizee / August 18, 2024
Langer Research:
Commentary:
Washington Post Polling “News” Article Buries Likely Voter Numbers to Avoid Highlighting Harris Lead
From text quoted by tomh in comment 157:
That’s certainly a telling detail.
Also this:
Republicans are spending a lot of time and money to build up their immigration-as-threat narrative.
Elon Musk’s financial woes at X have Tesla bulls fearing he will liquidate more stock
(sad violin music)
Watch: Moment brawl breaks out in Turkish parliament
Here’s who’s speaking at the Democratic National Convention
Really? Trump continues personal attacks against Harris: ‘I’m a better looking person’
There’s more, but you really don’t need to read it.
Link
The Fokker Dr.1 was Good, But It’s Not Why You Think.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zELul8q0HjM
A more diverse media landscape is curbing the influence of right-wing media
“Why Right Wing Propaganda Can’t Save Trump’s Failing Campaign”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=wiiNlg6gS_8
Novel electrolyte design shows promise for longer-lasting lithium-metal batteries
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-08-electrolyte-longer-lithium-metal-batteries.html
Finally preventing dendrite formation?
KG @ 153
Aaargh!
An interesting article: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/367188/love-addicted-ai-voice-human-gpt4-emotion
It begins thus:
Two Movies With Weird Reasons For Alien Invasions
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=T8xItBBRmXw
“Upstream Color” is a weird film where a biological parasite plays a major role in the plot.
UK to class misogyny as extremism. About bloody time.
Lynna@163:
So, his disconnection from reality is now complete.
The only time he is silent…
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxZgvfODRGcR0ZCS4OMHoYkwPP6YTkfiB7
John Morales@169 quoting Vox – with amendments to express Murati’s real attitude:
After all (from John’s link):
Bekenstein Bound@173,
What Trump means (and what his audience hears) is: “I’m white and she’s not”.
A summary of recent ABC / Washington Post poll
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vq9ayiEj4-E
Putting January 6th in a wider context.
“The Other Big Lie”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=tXbFWgds-E8
Must-watch video: “Mr.Bean (Rowan Atkinson) – Communist Britain?! Freedom of Speech?!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=xxWMhB4Cfm0
What experts say about who has the world’s best health-care system
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=wfsJXo1h1G0
There are so many variables it is not possible to give a succint answer.
Yeah, just what the world needs now!
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-19/china-philippines-boat-collision/104244402
What Happens when Countries Lose Religion?” | Phil Zuckerman
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7Dr9GKuMYsg
Also, see Phil Zuckerman:
“Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment”
Jesse Dollemore:
“New Poll: Donald Trump is Hemorrhaging Support in a Traditional Stronghold”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=XfO5atxNSs4
Wow. I might just be able to realx a bit. Maybe this is the end of 44 years of conservative populism and trickle-down hegemony. Maybe.
Aussie Foxtel this is here but still part of Murdoch’s malignant media empire :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-19/foxtel-ceo-patrick-delany-apologises-jewish-nazi-salute/104243670
Biden committed ‘impeachable conduct,’ ‘defrauded United States to enrich his family’: House GOP report
Clearly partisan, empty of substance, and timed to correspond to the start of the Democratic convention.
Excellent MediaWatch segment on Musk and his fascism and incitement here from tonight’s show :
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/musk/104244350
Could Musk face arrest for inciting racial violence in the UK? Hope so! Yes please.
@186 I would be satisfied with the UK blocking access to x.com. As the number of countries which cannot use X climbs, the end looms nearer.
Steve Benen summarized some campaign news:
Link
Embedded links to original sources are available at the main link.
Followup to Reginald @185.
Republicans’ anti-Biden impeachment report lands with a thud
As House Republicans release a woeful anti-Biden impeachment report, it’s clear that the party has failed on multiple levels.
Link
The larger context is that many of Trump’s fellow Republicans have urged him to stop spewing personal insults and old whacko claims, and they have urged him to focus on policies like economics and immigration. Trump totally messes up any “policy” issues he does try to speak about (like tariffs), so I’m not sure why his collaborators want him to go there.
Cartoon: Revised campaign slogans
Phil Donahue has died at 88.
From ‘open hearts’ to closed borders: behind Sweden’s negative net immigration figures | Sweden | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/19/sweden-negative-net-immigration-figure-record-low-asylum-application-global-displacement
I live in the middle of this dumpster fire of political debate. It is exhausting.
As we look forward to the DNC convention, some words of caution from Maddow, Chicago
Illinois governor declares Malört the “unofficial shot” of the DNC
@190 Lynna, OM:
There is a group of Republicans that live in such an echo chamber that they don’t understand that their policy isn’t popular at large. That it doesn’t solve any of the problems the US has. They don’t grasp that Trump sounds bad when he talks policy because they think hard right policy is popular and it won’t matter if he mangles some details.
There is also a group that know he will come across badly and want him to lose decisively. Badly enough that there can’t be any credible complaints or any return, that they can begin to bury Trump. For these people having him lose by a small margin is worst case. They can’t say that publicly but they can recommend things that will be bad for his campaign.
Conservative former Judge J. Michael Luttig endorses Harris
During Trump’s Saturday rally in Pennsylvania he went on at least a dozen tangents during the speech.
He never was very coherent but now he is losing it.
JM @196, interesting analysis.
In related news: Even ‘Fox News Sunday’ Is An Unsafe Space For JD Vance
Isn’t this how you piss off the Taylor Swift fans?
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-endorses-self-with-ai-taylor
ARE YOU OKAY MAUREEN DOWD? DO YOU NEED A POLICEMAN OR A GROWNUP?
Term limits for New York Times columnists, please.
Brony @200, that is so pathetic. I’ve seen the Trump campaign post whacko AI shit, but this is really worse.
An excerpt from the article you referenced:
@Lynna 202
Taking Taylor Swift’s very being from her to make her speak for him. Grotesque. Misogynistic. Malevolent.
Followup to birger @198.
Link
Cartoon: Doctor’s office crowds
Brony @203, I agree.
Link
Ukraine update: 3rd bridge down near Glushkovo Russia
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell plans to shave mustache, attend DNC ‘incognito’
Trump is a Gemini. Harris is a Libra. And in cosmic times, 2024 voters turn to astrology
Alzheimer’s May Not Actually Be a Brain Disease, Expert Reveals
@birgerjohansson #179:
Context ensues…
Rowan (1:11): “cafe owner arrested for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV”
Let’s see what happened there.
BBC
So the cafe owner wasn’t arrested, and the police even apologized.
Naturally Breitbart, DailyFail, and Christian outlets stoked an outraged mob.
Say, what WAS this quiet Bible passage they all danced around?
Romans 1:26-27, which lead up to verse 32:
About that campaign
Right, an ‘insult’.
Wikipedia – Christian Institute
Rowan aligned with CI a few years earlier, too.
Christian Institute – TV star says defend free speech in ‘gay hate’ law
That excuse clause was originally inserted by Tory Lord Waddington. CI lists a few ‘persecuted’ devout Christians they were so concerned about. PinkNews reported such hate speech laws had only been used 20 times in 30 years, and that Labour-party “Justice minister Maria Eagle described it as ‘undesirable and unnecessary; it does not add anything to the law as it would stand without its inclusion.'”
Back to Rowan’s video.
That was the UK’s Covid policy. We need lots more homophobia! We just haven’t been exposed enough yet.
Poor police, always forced to carry out left-wing crackdowns. /s
Wikipedia – Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986
Also: Huh, enacted in 1986. Outrage and reform in 2013. At last that long national nightmare was over.
^ Forgot to the BBC title: “Christian cafe ‘warned over homophobic Bible verses'”
It was a warning, hence not arrested.
“Discovery of the Largest Protein Ever, In the Most Unlikely of Organisms (PKZILLA, in a tiny flagellate algae)”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BZ1cwtNoPCo
NewsThump (s)
Israel insists it has the right to defend itself after destroying building that was source of damning TripAdvisor review
.https://newsthump.com/2024/08/19/israel-insists-it-has-the-right-to-defend-itself-after-destroying-building-that-was-source-of-damning-tripadvisor-review/
CompulsoryAccount7746 @ 211
“Rowan aligned with CI a few years earlier, too”
Aaaaargh! Have all elderly Brit comedians gone nuts? Will Stephen Fry join Opus Dei next?
A Democratic party convention in Chicago? I don’t like the sound of that. At least mayor Haley is not around anymore, but Democrats are good at finding novel wsys to screw up.
Trump posts repugnant video altering an Alanis Morissette’s song to claim Kamala Harris used oral sex to become Democratic nominee for president
The video itself.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112985957072984765“I am much better looking than her”
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/Js9mBJH8SGDK3FnL/
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain
Trump is like a malign version of South Park – when you think you have adapted to the level of gross, you get hit by something worse.
Re: birgerjohannson @ #216…
Mayor Richard Daley, perhaps?
If you’re thinking of 1968, that would be Richard J. Daley. If you’re thinking any time from 1989 to 2011, it would be Richard M. Daley.
@birgerjohansson #215:
Alongside Rowan the other celebrity attached to the ‘insult’ campaign was… Stephen Fry, though annoyingly, outlets kept alluding Fry’s “support” without quoting or citing what he actually said. Apparently just tweeted.
Stephen Fry on Twitter:
Being that he himself is gay, probably more useful idiot than fellow traveller.
Trump Gets State Wrong, Brags About Being Endorsed By Someone Who Is Dead
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxlneUxQwtoFhhlYSyIr52nHLnL33jt1TK
Preclinical study shows potential of Manuka honey as a nutraceutical for breast cancer
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-08-preclinical-potential-manuka-honey-nutraceutical.html
Will PLATO Be The Mission To Finally Find Earth 2.0?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TofP5yeqNLg
It is due to launch in 2026 and is expected to find a dozen Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like stars during a four-year mission. Kudos to the European Space Agency.
Biden speaking now at the Democartic electoin launch 0- live ABC new s coverage here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-20/democratic-national-convention-updates-joe-biden-kamala-harris/104241570
birgerjohansson@192:
Who?
Study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-laws-written-incomprehensible-style.html
Bekenstein Bound @ 226
Phil Donahue was a media personality and author, described as a talk show pioneer. His TV show Donahue was broadcast 1967-1996 but his career goes back to the 1950s.
Rape and sexual assault | The Guardian
I just wanted peace’: my 35-year fight to my abusive father to justice |
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/aug/20/carol-higgins-father-abuse-how-we-survive
President Joe Biden’s full DNC speech here – 53 minutes long – for folks to judge for themselves.
A waterspout sunk a yath with a tech millionaire on board.
@ ^ Yup! Joining with the Orcas?
See : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-20/what-we-know-about-mike-lynch-bayesian-sinking/104245450
Another good article on Gliese 12 a Venus- sized but possibly more massive exoplanet just forty light years fronmus orbitingan M4 red dwarf star & previously mentioned here @ #79. :
Source : https://www.astronomy.com/science/astronomers-discover-gliese-12-b-a-potentially-habitable-exoplanet/
Or, IOW, we just don’t know.
For me, the question of whether reddwarfs can actually sustain any earth-like habitable planets or not is one of the biggets in astronomy and one I would most love to find answered – hopefully in the positive.
PS. This is the one where #83 John Morales asked :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-5/#comment-2232388
Actually
Anton Petrov has this video on this under the title ‘Exceptional Earth Sized Planet in the Habitable Zone Found 40 Light Years Away’ here – just 11 minutes long.
NASA exoplanet catalogue with planet, star and system info here : https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/gliese-12-b/
Then there’s the questions whose answers we’ll hopefully soon have Fraser Cain on When Will the JWST Finally Reveal the TRAPPIST-1 Atmospheres Results? An hour long youtube discussion & interview with Dr Julien de Wit.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-20/linda-reynolds-brittany-higgins-x-ai-bot-network/104247616
Thinking aout Trappist 1 findings, stellar flares and what was discussed in #235 :
If M dwarf (red dwarf) flares are really bad for the planets closer in could they also actually be good for the planets further out making them warmer and more habitable due to the extra heat and energy they provide? Any studies, work, modelling done on that?
How could an ecology and different lifeforms in it develop if they had to rely on occassional irregular but very high intensity spikes of energy, heat, light, radiation followed by prolonged periods of very low energy levels – very irregular extreme feast or famine conditions?
Steve Kerr compares vibe of Harris campaign at the DNC to the ’90s Chicago Bulls champions
Trump Posts Crass Video Leveling Sexually Explicit Smears Against Harris
UAW President Shawn Fain wears ‘Trump is a scab’ shirt in DNC speech
Okay can’t resist sharing one more youtube clip whilst on this exoplanet speculations binge – Evelyn Macdonald interview w Fraser Cain ‘Is There Hope For TRAPPIST-1 Planets..’ being potentially habitable. Half hour long.
Trump’s Phone Calls With Putin Get Exposed Live On CNN with John Bolton
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3rHQooWc6_U
Stevo R @ 233, 234, 235, 237, 240,
The results from PLATO will become available at the end of this decade, and the Earth-like worlds discovered will be far more likely to be suitable.
Remember, red dwarf planets anywhere close to the ‘temperate zone’ around the star will be tidally locked (or pseudo-licked like Mercury) with a very slow axial rotation. This is very bad for the chances of a strong long-lived magnetic field (coriolis forces in the molten core are needed).
G- and even some K-type stars will be much better suited. PLATO is the first telescope with the capacity to detect them.
BTW the planets of Tau Ceti Epsilon Eridani and the two suns of Alpha Centauri might be possible to study by future Earth-based telescopes but I am not familiar with the capacities pf the next generation of instruments.
Alpha Centauri probably has Mercury analogs (considering the statistics from red dwarwes), wether cooler planets exist further out is another matter.
World’s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, dies aged 117 | Spain | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/20/worlds-oldest-person-maria-branyas-morera-dies-aged-117
Republicans Think If They Say ‘Abortion Isn’t a Real Issue’ Enough Times, Then It Won’t Be a Real Issue
The GOP’s offensive against Tim Walz takes a decidedly weird turn
When Ron Johnson starts talking about Tim Walz’s wedding anniversary and Tiananmen Square, you know the Republican smear campaign has gone off the rails.
Professional Dog Walkers Aren’t Sure JD Vance Has Ever Walked—or Even Met—His Dog Before
The Georgia election board is rewriting election law
Given the pace and magnitude of these rule changes, can anyone stop the board from empowering election deniers ahead of November?
First Accellerator-Driven Reactor Can Make Energy from Nuclear Waste
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=rLE0j1PQGPI
Officials confirm: Iranian hackers breached Trump’s 2024 campaign
As the FBI confirms that Iran hacked the Trump campaign, the Republican operation’s assessment of the crime is badly at odds with its line from 2016.
With An ‘I Love You,’ Harris Assumes Biden’s Mantle
Democrats Remind Voters What Normal Looks Like
Via good fb friend* who shares a LOT of Climate Global Overheating stuff :
Source : https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1206014237391865&set=a.714826829843944
.* Not the same person – Matthew Todd – who wrote the above. Couldn’t find that article on google search.
@242. birgerjohansson : Yes, that’s true although there’s still so much we don’t know and there’s always libration and its equivalent here along withtidal interactiosn bewteen planets and cores may roatate differnetly beneath surfaces as Venus has a contrats inatmosphere vs planetary surface circulation etc .. too. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration )
I would loev to learn more about these closer star system eg Tau Ceti, Epilon Eridani, Epsilon Indi, Alpha & Proxima cen etc .. so much.
Clinton, Biden, and more show Democrats’ unity on night 1 of the DNC, by Mark Sumner
Hillary Clinton’s DNC speech will give you all the feels
The video is 17 minutes long.
Cartoon: Trumping our safety
Watch Rep. Jamie Raskin drag ‘sore loser’ Trump for Jan. 6 chaos
More in the video.
PBS bloviators censor Hadley Duvall’s DNC story
Hadley Duvall’s speech was good. Short but well presented.
New York Times link, “One of the women, who was impregnated by her stepfather as a child, recalled Donald J. Trump’s praise for the bans as a “beautiful thing” and asked, “What is so beautiful about a child having to carry her parent’s child?”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett tells moving story of meeting Kamala Harris for the first time
video at the link
20 years after his DNC debut, Obama returns to make the case for Harris
Trump supporters focus on regaining power—no matter how Americans vote
WaPo:
The right’s serious minds have a Tim-Walz-Chinese-sleeper-agent theory
Fresh off of completing his failed impeachment investigation, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) appeared on Fox News to wonder if Tim Walz was maybe a Chinese agent.
Column by Philip Bump / August 20, 2024
Oh FFs.
Nicole Shanahan says RFK Jr. campaign considering joining forces with Trump
Raskin to Vance: ‘They tried to kill your predecessor’
Was Last Night AOC’s ‘2004 Obama Convention Speech’? Sure Why Not!
Idiot Trump Abandoned Truth Social for Elon Musk—and It Didn’t Pay Off
True Facts ™
Peter Thiel is an anagram for “The Reptile”
Ayn Rand was a childless cat lady
Israeli military says it recovered the bodies of 6 hostages from Gaza
The operation came as the United States pushed for a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of scores of hostages held by the militant group.
Gwen Walz sheds light on fertility journey, clarifies they did not use IVF
The Cook Political Report survey
“Trump Is Cooked!!! Kamala Harris Now Leads in Critical Battleground Swing States”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/N9iFLPTRQuk
(Of the states in the excerpt, Nevada was the only one with a Trump lead)
WaPo live campaign updates:
By Hannah Knowles
National politics reporter covering campaigns
Say what now?
Need more information.
Link
Taliban morality police dismiss over 280 men without beards from security forces
Excerpted from a longer article:
Link
Utah sues federal government for control of public lands
Hulk Hogan jokes about body slamming Kamala Harris
That’s right, Trump doubled down again.
Link
@Lynna #258:
From the comments
– “The same happened on NBC.”
– “MSNBC carried the speech and had an excellent discussion afterward.”
– “on MSNBC […] talking heads stayed out of the way for the most part and commercial free.”
– “ABC coverage sucked”
Here’s an uncut DNC YouTube playlist.
Hadley Duvall was at 4:25:16 of Day 1 (for two and a half minutes).
PBS NewsHour’s YouTube stream cut away at 4:29:51 after Jim Clyburn. (In the DNC’s stream, that was 3:59:05.) Skipping Raskin, Crockett, and abortion stories of Josh & Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua, and Hadley Duvall. They returned for Beshear at 4:59:08, 30 minutes later.
Link
NYT:
25 Years Ago, a Gay Student Sought Support. His School Turned to Tim Walz.
By Ernesto Londoño / Aug. 20, 2024
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @279, thank you for that.
In other news:
Link
Talk about grabbing a shovel and digging the hole deeper: Maria Bartiromo’s wild and “kind of racist” election conspiracy theory collapses immediately
Bartiromo, who was deeply involved in promoting the Dominion election conspiracy theories that Fox News paid for, is at it again.
More at the link, including “Great Replacement Theory” propaganda, and other people, including Republican Senator Ron Johnson backing Bartiromo up on this nonsense. Video at the link.
Wall Street Journal:
Followup to comment 263.
RFK Jr.’s running mate says they might end campaign and endorse Trump, by Mark Sumner.
UPS driver passed out and crashed vehicle in Texas due to heat-related symptoms, union says
The incident happened while the driver was delivering packages near Dallas, according to Teamsters Local 767.
[video at the link]
‘Sedated Trump Total Train Wreck, Fox News cuts away.’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=PWUoWxwXQV4
Spider species uses male fireflies as ghastly puppets to seduce its prey
Advocates cheer new standards that could save horseshoe crabs from bloodletting
God Awful Movies
GAM 470 The Firing Squad
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eFtX9CgDTxA
Trump Derails Weird Speech on Crime to Complain Women Hate Him
That should go over great with the U.S. Capitol Police.
So, he’s only going to rape women in urban settings?
JD Vance Gets Social Media Side-Eye For Weird Joke At A Wisconsin Deli
This guy sure knows how to make friends and influence people.
Who Started the Lizard People Conspiracy Theory?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=22MzCQJGkak
In fairness to PBS, it’s not the only public/state subsidized broadcaster to do shit like that. Canada’s state-operated CBC butchered the Olympics’ closing ceremony, outright neglecting to air whole sections of it for some reason, a week or so ago.
And whoever keeps logging me out, sometimes literally two minutes after I logged in, STOP. FUCKING. DOING. THAT. It’s not funny or amusing in any way. Find some other way to entertain yourself.
Barack Obama has a blast shredding Trump at the DNC
‘Hope is making a comeback’: Michelle Obama fires up the DNC
The story of how Doug Emhoff and Kamala Harris met will melt your heart
Veteran Tammy Duckworth drags ‘old cadet bone spurs’ for about 5 minutes
Surging Dems Post MONSTER Television Ratings – Blows Out Trump by a Whopping 21%!
Excerpts from Talking Point Memo’s live coverage:
Link
NYT:
Montana Certifies Signatures for November Abortion Question
By Kate Zernike / Aug. 20, 2024
@272 Lynna, OM:
New Republic: Trump’s Latest Scheme to Beat Harris May Have Crossed Legal Lines
Newsweek: Did Donald Trump Break ‘Logan Act?’ What We Know
Logan act questions are being raised about two issues. The first, with Orban is not a big deal. Unless Trump clearly stepped over the line and was somehow recorded nothing will come of this. The second is serious, interfering with active US diplomacy is the sort of thing the Logan act is designed to block. if there is real backing evidence that Trump interfered with US diplomacy he should face another criminal case.
Cases are rarely brought because evidence tends to be scarce and the people watched for violations can’t be cut off from meeting foreign representatives entirely. It’s usually enough to threaten people to get the parties to shut up until after the election.
Jezebel
The Iraq war was not fought to protect America’s rights and freedoms. It was an illegal and immoral imperialist war. Duckworth can be seen as one of the small minority of its victims who were Americans.
However, a spokesreptile croaked that this does not mean reptiles have anything other than contempt and loathing for Thiel, and requested that his full name – Peter Andreas Thiel, or at least Peter A. Thiel (as per usual American style) – should always be used.
Harry Potter and the prisoner of woke media #shorts
https://youtube.com/shorts/jni3U1QPEvc
They could take a leaf from the Monty Python “Election Night” sketch and call it the Very Silly Party. (In the sketch – a bit of nostalgia for the days when John Cleese was amusing – The Very Silly Party’s very silly intervention tipped a result from the Silly Party to the Sensible Party.)
@305: There is no longer any “usual American style” with regard to names. Anything goes. Many celebrities are known by a single name (Madonna, Ahnold) and some even by a single syllable (Cher, Cam, Dak).
That said “Peter A. Thiel” also has plenty of options for anagrams. Everything from “Real Epithet” to “Later Pee Hit.”
German Navy blasts out Darth Vader theme on Thames
I’m Not Copying, You’re Copying! Donald Trump Hijacks Kamala Harris’ Beyoncé Campaign Theme ‘Freedom’ In New Video
I think that Trump is trying to get inside Harris’ head with his racism, his comments about her looks, and now stealing her theme song. He is probably going to get a C&D letter from Beyonce rather than a tantrum from Harris though.
Reliable reporting from the Sun:
I was an atheist who set out to prove Shroud of Turin was fake – but probing it turned me CHRISTIAN & I know it’s REAL
Willy This Crazy Idea Make Mars Habitable?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=z87dtb5f7y0
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Republican voices make a splash at the Democratic convention
For Democrats, Kamala Harris’ Republican backers aren’t just names on a page; they’re also being invited onto the party’s national convention stage.
When making the case against Donald Trump, Michelle and Barack Obama didn’t just explain why he’s wrong, they also explained why he’s small and tiresome.
Video at the link.
https://x.com/MSNBC/status/1826049665860579557
That was some roll call.
The video is also available here: TPM link. Scroll down to “Georgia Representing'”.
The use of technology to join the two audiences, one in Milwaukee and one in Chicago, worked seamlessly. Both arenas were packed with people. Quite a contrast to the interview Elon Musk tried to conduct on X with Trump.
Here is Barack Obama’s whole glorious DNC speech
The video and a full transcript are included at the link.
CNN:
Trump says he’d consider appointing RFK Jr. to role in administration
By Eric Bradner, CNN / August 20, 2024
Link
Kate Cox Says She’s Happily Pregnant Today ‘Because I Accessed Abortion Care’
From ‘Espresso’ to ‘Respect,’ the roll call songs used for each state at the DNC
Followup to comment 318.
Excerpts from Obama’s speech, with commentary:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/barack-obama-still-seducing-us-and
Quit dating apps, Russia tells border region citizens over security fears
Courthouse News Service:
Illinois bans corporal punishment in all schools
In 1990, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child established an obligation to “prohibit all corporal punishment of children.” The U.S. was the convention’s lone holdout.
Associated Press / August 20, 2024
Moms For Liberty’s School Board Candidates Lose Bigly In Florida
Voters got some shitcans for the party of Make America More Stupider Again.
@ 322
Hey! Where’s Wisconsin?
Washington Post link
Fashion is back in politics.
Michelle Obama’s appearance was just one piece of a DNC convention that so far has centered fashion.
I don’t care that much about the fashion, but I will say that Michelle Obama’s fashion choices looked good on her. She looked spectacular and powerful. Barack Obama looked good too, will a well-tailored suit that was in sharp contrast to Trump’s schlumpy look.
The article is topped by a photo in which Michelle Obama look’s fantastic. It shows her entire outfit.
Akira @327,
Wisconsin: Jump Around – House of Pain
The 1992 hit is played at University of Wisconsin home football games as students and fans jump and cheer, becoming synonymous with the state’s flagship university.
Link
More detail regarding California: California: The Next Episode – Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg, California Love – Tupac Shakur, featuring Dr. Dre, Alright – Kendrick Lamar, Not Like Us – Kendrick Lamar
Nearly all of the above artists are legendary California musicians, with Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar born in Compton, and Snoop Dog born in Long Beach. Only Tupac does not count himself among the native Californians, having been born in New York City.
60 years after Democrats denied Fannie Lou Hamer a convention seat, Harris is set to make history
New Yorker cartoon: “Attention, passengers: there will be some moderate turbulence while we pass through the energy field pulsing up from the Democratic National Convention.”
Link
Putin appoints niece as deputy minister of defense
Putin is loading up the government with people selected for loyalty over competence. This is a bad sign long term but probably does serve to stabilize Putin’s position over the short term. People who’s only claim to positions of power is their connection to Putin will find it difficult to replace him. The other oligarchs that are independently rich and powerful are a bigger threat.
Newsweek: Russia Summons Top US Diplomat Over American Soldiers in Kursk
Several issues going on here. There likely are some journalists that have slipped into the war zone to try and score a major article. As long as they are independent there isn’t much the US can do if the Ukrainians don’t want to force them out.
Second, there are no official US soldiers in Ukraine in the war zone. Officially there are no mercenaries either but that is possible, the Ukrainians are certainly accepting help from anybody they trust. Likely though the Ukrainians would keep Americans away from the front, because Ukraine doesn’t want word of deaths getting back to the US and they are likely more useful for training Ukrainians anyways. Third, the Russians complaining about this considering the scale of mercenaries they are using is rather funny. Russia is hiring foreign soldiers in large numbers for use as cannon fodder and front line trench digging/defense.
Independent: Zelensky needles Putin with largest drone attack aimed at Moscow
The attacks on Moscow also have a lot of legitimate military targets. Russia is a hub state built around Moscow and there are lots of targets in the area. Making strikes that Russian news can’t cover up will have a lot of impact. The Russians often look at the war the same way Americans looked at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, distant events that mostly effect them because of the financial effects. An attitude the Russian government encourages.
JM @332, What, Ivanka wasn’t available?
CNN: Ukraine aims to create Kursk ‘buffer zone,’ Zelensky says, as Kyiv’s forces blow up second Russian bridge
What Zelensky is saying can’t be trusted on this but forcing the Russians back so they can’t continuously bombard Ukrainian cities and towns near the border is plausible. This article is a couple of days old and the last bridge over the Seym has been blown up. This is a strategic problem for the Russians, cutting of a good chunk of soldiers from steady supplies.
AP: Putin’s slow response to the Kursk attack could test the patience of some of his backers in Russia
Putin’s tendency towards careful planned response is likely one of the things hurting the Russian military in Kursk. The Russian army is a command from the top organization. The situation in Kursk is chaotic by design and officers calling back to Moscow to get commands are not going to get them fast enough. This has clearly been the problem in several situations already, where holes in the line didn’t get plugged fast enough or the Ukrainian forces just moved around Russian defenses.
This is further complicated by the Russians partially treating the Kursk incursion as a counter terrorism action and having the Army and FSB acting independently. In the sort of government by de facto feudal power base the Russians have these groups do not coordinate well.
Trump spouts lies and hatred again, but his flow is weak and low-energy.
Link
Everything about this Doug Emhoff video is amazing
Giant spiders the size of rats make comeback in UK after nearing extinction, RSPB says | ITV News
https://www.itv.com/news/2024-08-20/spiders-the-size-of-rats-make-comeback-in-uk-after-nearing-extinction
Link
NPR:
Federal judge throws out U.S. ban on noncompetes
Andrea Hsu / August 21, 2024
Telecom company agrees to $1M fine over Biden deepfake
Federal authorities hope the settlement will deter the deceptive use of AI-generated impersonations of political figures and others.
JD Vance accused Tim Walz of lying about his IVF experience. Fertility doctors say confusion is common.
Gwen Walz recently revealed that she underwent a fertility treatment called intrauterine insemination.
New Republic: Pro-Trump Activists’ Attempt to Infiltrate DNC Goes Hilariously Awry
I don’t know if the DNC had planned for this but the right wing influencers got recognized and hit up by people ready to deal with them. The Democrats didn’t try to kick them out, which would be recorded and played up by the Republicans. Instead they talked to them, pointed out that they are hard right and made them look foolish in the recordings. This is a risky strategy against somebody with good experience reporting but the right wing activists are not skilled. I don’t think any of the right wing activists that are active right now are any good when pressed, they don’t even rise to the level of fundamentalist preacher.
Vladimir Putin manipulated Donald Trump’s ‘ego and insecurities’, book says
JM @342, assholes getting called out. Always funny.
In sort of related news: Vance speaks to crowd of tens as Trump campaign deflates
LOL. Most excellent schadenfreude moment.
@337: ‘Giant spiders the size of rats make comeback in UK after nearing extinction, RSPB says | ITV News’
are UK rats tiny or something??? i’ve seen a lot of Dolomedes and i’ve seen a lot of rats – this headline is garbage.
It should be shameful to publish an article about a single species of spider without naming it: Dolomedes planatarius.
Relive the Obamas’ incredible DNC speeches with these 11 photos and quotes
Excerpts:
The Time Wonkette Met Wonkette’s Sexiest Man Alive, Shawn Fain!
“Wow!” Signal Mystery Solved After 37 Years, Sorry Not Aliens
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2R2NbXhk-VM
Chick-fil-A plans to launch streaming service with original shows
From the comments:
@344 Lynna, OM: Vance is going to go down in history as one of the worst VP candidates and I think it’s a bit unfair. The entire campaign is imploding, it’s just coincidence that the public part is happening right after Vance was selected.
It started in the less visible parts of the campaign, when Trump put his family and fawning yes men in power rather then professional campaign managers. This led to his campaign being badly managed from the start. And it’s always been short of money because Trump is moving campaign money to cover his legal bills. Legal problems that are not going away and have to be taking up his time. The whole Republican convention was poorly planned and run, which happened before Vance was involved at all.
Then the attempted shooting of Trump happened. Since then Trump has cut way back on personal appearances and his speeches are even more rambling and incoherent. The attempted assassination seems to have had an effect on him. This has put way more pressure on Vance then he was ready for.
I’m not saying that Vance is good, he is a bad candidate. It’s that if he could just stand in Trumps shadow and give the occasional carefully scripted speech he would not be coming across so badly. Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin were both bigger drags on their campaigns but Vance looks worse at first glance because the Trump campaign is doing everything badly and most of it isn’t Vance’s fault.
Re: JM @ #350….
I’m not sure that’s the whole of it. Approval of Vance was underwater as soon as he was named, and that has to be a result of knowledge of him prior to his selection by Trump. Then all manner of idiotic and disrespectful statements he had made were dug up, so he came with a lot of baggage, none of it good.
Vance is the guy who asked a restaurant owner if he had any food people really didn’t like because Vance wanted to take some back to feed to the reporters on his plane. Vance has his own shovel, and just keeps digging.
Vance has in common with Trump an uncanny ability to shoot himself in the foot.
Mixed metaphors, but you get the idea. I don’t think that even a well-organized, more professional campaign team could have made Vance look like a good V.P. candidate. Maybe, maybe, they could have hidden more of his flaws.
New York Times:
Wall Street Journal:
NBC News:
Tim Walz positively nails his big DNC moment
John Legend’s Prince cover is the perfect opening act for Tim Walz
Video at the link.
Oprah Winfrey, speaking at the DNC:
Lynna@322:
Looks like this got mangled, and should have been “West Virginia – [insert song]” followed on a new line by “Wisconsin – Jump Around…”.
So … what was West Virginia’s song?
Lynna@335:
Projecting much?
Crime — Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies and is under indictment for dozens more, plus under investigation for yet more. He is also an adjudicated rapist and credibly accused of at least 26 more.
Chaos — Trump’s “cabinet”, if I may use that term loosely, more resembled a game of musical chairs than a decisionmaking body. And see below.
Destruction and death — from the Charlottesville violence, which culminated in a death, to the most turbulent summer of street protests since the 60s and 70s, mismanagement of a pandemic leading to 200,000 estimated avoidable deaths of Americans, and culminating in a violent attempt to obstruct the orderly transition of power in early 2021, which occasioned more deaths, Trump’s term easily goes down in American history as having been the worst for death and destruction on American soil since the Civil War concluded.
tomh@339:
FUCKER! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck … how do we weed out all these damned Trump “judges” who are wrecking everything and holding back progress? Even if Harris wins these fucking grains of sand will be in the gears for decades to come, won’t they? Is there no way to just round them all up and impeach them en masse on the grounds that they’re basically Russian plants, since Trump was and he appointed them? Agggh!
Link
Video at the link.
Bill Clinton struck speechless for first time ever by Trump’s weirdness.
Followup to comment 356.
Talking Point’s Memo link.
Text quoted above is just one of many sections in the report.
Video at the link. Scroll down to view it.
Link
Buttigieg says Trump, Vance selling ‘darkness’
Follow up to comment 359.
From ‘Espresso’ to ‘Respect,’ the roll call songs used for each state at the DNC
Here Is the Kamala Harris Roll Call Playlist
New York Times link
@Bekenstein Bound #359:
Federal judges were confirmed by the Senate. A better government would’ve stopped em there.
And no. If there were a known way to wipe the slate, Project 2025 would’ve leapt on it to terrible effect. On paper, they can be impeached individually for substantial questionable conduct by the House and tried by the Senate. Not gonna happen.
Slate
Netanyahu will be pissed – now he’s got to find somone else to assassinate in order to provoke retaliation.
“Demented Trump Asks Why We’re Even Having An Election”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3ycyxM1k8y4
Becoming Earth review: A dramatic twist to the Gaia hypothesis | New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26335051-600-a-dramatic-twist-to-the-gaia-hypothesis/
.https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26335051-600-a-dramatic-twist-to-the-gaia-hypothesis/
Re 294:
FTB is just buggy like that. If you had a comment written when that happens, in order to not lose it, you need to go back using your browser’s back button (NOT via the link offered!), copy or cut the comment, refresh page, login and paste comment.
@ 366
Wisconsin — “Jump Around,” by House of Pain, a hit famously played at the University of Wisconsin’s home football games.
That wouldn’t have been my choice for my state. Like many of the others, I would have gone with a well known local band. The BoDeans, who got their start in Milwaukee, comes to mind:
https://youtu.be/zewm3oDJgg0?si=ARyGr5AgNUPpBxsQ
@310
Trump campaign deletes Freedom video after Beyoncé blocks use of song
Duh, who could have seen that coming?
Doug Emhoff slammed by Republicans for … hugging his daughter Ella at DNC
Utah lawmakers want voters to give them the power to change ballot measures once they’ve passed
45 years ago today since Gary Numan released “Cars”
(Also, a couple of months before Reagan won, and turned back the clock on politics).
The Walzes have been nearly perfect in talking about their neurodivergent son, Gus
Let’s Talk Elections:
“Democrats Shockingly Overperform in Alaska Election”
The TEC Show
“2024 Election Map Based on the Latest Poll in All 50 States!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=H9jf5PHVZkA
Summary: Pennsylvania is a crucial state to win.
re Reginald Selkirk @375: It is neither creepy nor weird that Doug Emhoff hugs his daughter. What is totally creepy AND weird is that Donald Trump wants to fuck his daughter.
Stop using the term ‘centrist’. It doesn’t mean what you think it does | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/22/centrism-language-israel-gaza
“Centrist” means “approving of status quo”. It means approving of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians provided Israel continues to promite American interests. Those who disapprove are automatically “far left”.
Reginald @376,
Republican lawmakers in Utah do not like democracy.
Reginald @374:
Good. A win for Beyoncé, a win for culture, and a win for truth in political ads.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @367, thanks for posting that additional information. The Supreme Court situation is a real sticky wicket.
Inducing torpor with donepezil
Alzheimer’s drug may someday help save lives by inducing a state of ‘suspended animation’
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-alzheimer-drug-state-animation.html
If you feel the need to watch annoying arguments I found this.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lukianoff-and-defining-cancel-culture
I don’t know what to think about any larger issues here except it would be nice to eventually find a way to deal with the way “dog piling” works. Right now that is part of the way the Internet works and I’m not into affecting group shaming of bigotry while the same activity is how bigotry has worked. The natural human behavior gets addressed broadly.
I just see whining by people who were more privileged here previously.
It’s amazing how Rowling just gets the assumption that she was cancelled. I don’t think you can cancel someone like Rowling.
Oh noes! Sometimes she doesn’t get a good reception! Like she can be shut up with her billions and transphobic followers itching for some social dominance?
Not to mention how her very actions are cancelling attempts.
There’s even a “donglegate” mention or 2.
I should specify most of it is in the comments. I’m not sure about the main post entirely.
Religion Clause:
9th Circuit: Religious-Based Hiring Does Not Bar Christian Group from Participating in Oregon Grant Program
Trump Says He’s Afraid of AI After Sharing AI-Generated Fake Taylor Swift Endorsement
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
For a politician who’s too eager to falsely accuse his opponents of antisemitism, Donald Trump targeted Gov. Josh Shapiro in an unusually ugly way.
Donald Trump insisted that Kamala Harris had a private chat with Vladimir Putin in 2022. That conversation never happened.
Link. Video at the link.
World’s second-largest diamond found in Botswana
Trump promotes family’s new crypto platform, ‘The Defiant Ones’
This doesn’t look like a typical cryptocurrency scam, rather Trump seems to be trying to found an online only bank. It isn’t active yet nor has an exact list of services available so it isn’t clear. It may be a sort of nonfungible token thing for real estate rather then art. Not clear what that would mean though, why would you want to own the digital version of a real location?
In any case this seems to be the Trump family trying to grab every last bit of money before the election. They realize they are in the last stretch of the good times and need to dig as hard as they can now. They have been pushing Trump branded items hard for the same reason.
I just assume they are laughing their asses off as they write that. Because the idea that Trump and his family would stand with the “average American” and not with the “financial elites” is a joke.
@355 It is done
FDA approves updated COVID-19 vaccines, shots should be available in days
J.D. Vance’s Latest Anti-Democrat Quip Blows Up in His Face
Michigan AG to Republicans: ‘You can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay hand.’
The Atlantic:
Republicans’ New, Dangerous Attempt to Break the Election
By Bob Bauer / August 21, 2024
Bob Bauer is a professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at New York University School of Law and a former White House counsel to Barack Obama.
Donald Trump has some new conspiracy theories about U.S. job numbers. They’re bananas, and they reflect deep ignorance about things he ought to understand.
Man sought in connection with alleged social media threat to kill Trump: Sources
Ukraine hits fuel and bomb warehouses in Russia’s Volgograd region airfield, source says
Oh, dear. Look who is doing some serious pearl-clutching about poll numbers now.
Newsmax host says polls showing Harris ahead are ‘dangerous’
Followup to comments 310, 374 and 383.
Link
Link.
Lots more, including inspiring photos, at the link.
Followup to Reginald’s comment 402.
From NBC News:
Link
Link
Link
81 Million Watch Walz Wow America
More at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/jesse-watters-thinks-china-has-sex
Jesse Watters Thinks China Has Sex Tape Of Tim Walz, Which Sounds Correct.
China has a well-known boner for Midwestern social studies teachers.
@birgerjohansson #370:
Unpaywalled link
Wikipedia – Gaia Criticism in the 21st century
Wikipedia – Medea hypothesis
Text interview with Jabr
Reginald Selkirk @ # 395: … the idea that Trump and his family would stand with the “average American” and not with the “financial elites” is a joke.
Trump™ has burned “the financial elites” (meaning: the major banks) so often they won’t touch him any more. He’ll side with whoever offers an immediate advantage in the situation (as he sees it, anyway); too bad for “average Americans” that they don’t have wheelers and/or dealers strutting around Mar-a-Lago peddling pecuniary profit proposals 24/365.
NYT:
Supreme Court Allows Arizona to Enforce, for Now, Law Tightening New Voter Registrations
But the justices kept blocking a provision that bars already-registered residents from voting by mail or for president until they prove their citizenship.
By Charlie Savage and Abbie VanSickle / Aug. 22, 2024
Just rated ‘best quality of life’
“The Best Country for Quality of Life”
https://www.travelandleisure.com/sweden-best-country-for-quality-of-life-in-world-8694670
(Being Swedish, I would say Norway, Finland and Denmark are no slouches, either)
(Canada is probably nice. Britain used to be nice, but tories happened)
A recent poll in Texas had Trump make a lot of nervous social media posts.
His lead in Texas is down to 4.9% which is within the margin of error.
Ted Cruz has a lead of only 2%
While I do not expect Texas to be flipped, it would be nice to be rid of Ted Cruz.
At this point, it would be excellent if Trump makes a lot of rallies and says a lot of insane things.
I did not previously believe in the dementia rumors, but something is wrong with him compared to previous rallies.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #415…
Trump is under a lot of pressure. It’s probably making his obvious mental decline worse. Most likely he’s feeling trapped and can’t see a way out. I’m in favor of the screws getting tighter and tighter until he comes apart (in public) altogether.
Hmmm. I thought the Nordic countries had a
blood feudfriendly rivalry going back several centuries.Bible Teaching in Every Classroom? In Oklahoma, Few Signs It’s Happening.
@401
‘In Danger’: Donald Trump Suddenly Cuts NewsNation Interview Short
Trump to host awards gala honoring “incredible courage and sacrifice” of Jan. 6 defendants
To be known as “the treason ball”
Kamala Harris giving he rspeech to teh DNC now. Watching live on c24 AVC News channel and on live blog here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-23/live-updates-kamala-harris-democratic-national-convention/104260236
DNC observations by ACLU’s Kit Arvizu, collected from Mastodon.
“Did I just clock the first specific mention of trans people of the #dnc, or did someone raise it before Booker? […] They haven’t exactly been leaning into us.”
“Yes but *which* books are they banning from libraries and *which* LGBTQ people are they demonizing? #dnc #ScreamsInTrans”
“Censorship really is the stand-in issue to avoid mentioning trans people here isn’t it? […] I get the math, I know the reasoning. It just hurts.”
“they are barely even whispering the actual name of our community even though we’re easily one of the top two Republican targets.”
“The chief lesson of the Harris campaign is that muscular rebuttals to right-wing extremism that immediately pivot to cooperation and empathy fire up the Dem base, and that’s important. You don’t have to put out a presser telling everyone you wanna put hormones in public school vending machines or whatever in order to do that.”
“In 2016 we had freaking Sarah McBride speaking at the #dnc and now it’s hard not to feel like we’re purposefully being kept out of sight.”
“Say the word #trans you fucking cowards. #dnc”
“For all my anger at #dnc, I will say this. Kamala Harris will be somewhat better than her predecessors on a number of fronts, but will be held far more to account for her shortcomings than any of them were and that’s not fair.”
Kamala Harris gets personal—and presidential—in powerful acceptance speech
“And never do anything half-assed. And that is a direct quote!”
Followup to comment 423.
Posted by readers of the article, and viewers of the speech:
Kamala’s adorable nieces teach America how to say their aunt’s name
video at the link
Trump says he will make ‘provisions’ for mixed-status families but doesn’t rule out separations with mass deportations
Trump also told NBC News that spending billions to execute mass deportations of undocumented immigrants is justified because allowing them to remain would cost more.
Harris, at 38 minutes, had one of the shorter acceptance speeches in modern history. Trump holds the record, with the three longest acceptance speeches.
So Shylock’s iconic speech from the Merchant of Venice can be shared on fb in this version by Pratiksha Raut and this version – recited by Al Pacino but, oddly, if you try to share this version with a young black actor – Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, Act 3 Scene 1, Shylock: “To bait fish withal” – BBC it goes against Facebook’s community standards!? What the actual fuck fb!?
Then when I tried to report it as a mistake and give feedback, the wretched autoform thingy wouldn’t work and wouldn’t let me send it. Grrr…
Feel free to try and see for yourself those here that are on fb & see whether if it’s just me but…
@StevoR #428: Can you post anything else from BBC’s YT channel? Maybe it’s something about them?
Another Republican snitch database. Those always work out well when the internet hears about them.
Anti-trans regulations blocking drivers license changes are spreading
Reginald Selkirk@375:
… and father-daughter dances at “purity balls” aren’t? Not to mention whatever exactly the relationship is between Trump and Ivanka, which makes my skin crawl …
Sky Captain@430: Contempt of court sure seems to be popular these days with the “party of law and order”, eh? <smh>
Lynna, OM@431,
I haven’t watched the speech, but BBC and Guardian reporting was less enthusiastic. Not actually negative, but with a sense that it hadn’t quite met expectations after her speeches at rallies since she became the candidate.
Personally, I was very disappointed in what she said about Gaza (and by the refusal to allow a Palestinian American to speak from the main stage). She regretted the “many innocent lives lost”; but they have not been “lost” – that’s the language suitable for a pandemic or an earthquake – they have been deliberately and cruelly taken away, by a corrupt far-right regime spouting explicitly genocidal language and armed with American weapons.
Sorry – #424 not #431.
‘This place has broken me’: Mehreen Faruqi speaks out on racism and hate in parliament – Guardian Australia NB . Greens Senator wikipage here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehreen_Faruqi
Oh & see also : Mehreen Faruqi repeatedly asked to withdraw comments targeting Dutton and Hanson on racism | SBSNews nearly 5 minutes long.
Seems to me the arane old “palrklaimentary language rules”advantage racists and enable them to censor those they are being racist against and hurting and urgently need reforming or scrapping.
Science has enabled us to see the surface of Polaris the North Star and Cepheid variable which lies about 430 to 450 light years away :
Source : https://www.space.com/north-star-polaris-surface-images
I find this staggering really when I think about it.
Fluoride At Twice the Recommended Limit Is Linked To Lower IQ In Kids
This will be controversial. Look for followup in the next few years.
A group of retired Teamsters took the stage at the Democratic National Convention Tuesday night, in a move that both signaled their support for Kamala Harris and a subtle snub to their leader, who had backed Donald Trump last month.
GOP Ex-Rep. Adam Kinzinger Excoriates His Party at DNC for Backing Trump
Sydney aquarium filled with song after sea birds mourn death of gay penguin Sphen
Donald Trump isn’t just promising pardons for Jan. 6 criminals and defendants, he and his properties keep holding fundraising events for them, too.
Trump suffers unintentionally funny meltdown on DNC’s final night
When Fox News finds it necessary to cut off Donald Trump mid-rant, you know his reaction to Kamala Harris and the Democratic convention went off the rails.
Kamala Harris’ Democratic convention speech wasn’t just a triumph, it was also a success in the same ways Donald Trump’s convention speech was a failure.
Thoughts on the Final Night, by Josh Marshall
DNC Ratings Blow RNC Out of the Water for Third Night in a Row
We will have more ratings information soon.
@401, 419
Arizona man accused of posting threats to Trump is arrested
Courthouse News Service:
Trump-appointed judge temporarily blocks New York from targeting abortion ‘reversal’ treatment
Erik Uebelacker / August 22, 2024
(CN) — A federal judge on Thursday handed down a scathing ruling against New York Attorney General Letitia James, temporarily barring her from going after a group of anti-abortion pregnancy centers touting “abortion pill reversal.”
James sued anti-abortion group Heartbeat International and 11 of those pregnancy centers in May, accusing them of fraud, deceptive business practices and false advertising by touting abortion pill reversal, a treatment that major medical groups say is unproven and potentially dangerous. In theory, after a pregnant person takes the first of two pills in medication abortion, the procedure will reverse its effects with the hormone progesterone to save the pregnancy.
Weeks after James’ suit hit the docket, anti-abortion group National Institute of Family and Life Advocates — along with two anti-abortion pregnancy centers — sued her back, claiming the attorney general was trampling on their First Amendment right to free speech by threatening punishment for touting the treatment.
U.S. District Judge John Sinatra, a Trump-appointed federal judge in New York’s Western District, agreed….
Sinatra granted a preliminary injunction against James that bars her from targeting the pregnancy centers for promoting the treatment, effectively nixing her original lawsuit if the ruling stands. The attorney general’s office hasn’t indicated whether it would appeal. If it does, the injunction will likely be stayed…..
Leaning on the fact the treatment requires a doctor’s prescription, Sinatra ruled that the groups’ touting of the practice couldn’t alone cause enough harm to warrant limiting speech….
James had sought to stop the centers from continuing to promote the “unproven” procedure through its “misleading” marketing materials, which she claimed overstated the treatment’s success and failed to address its potential risks.
“In reality, abortion cannot be ‘reversed,’ and there is a glaring lack of scientific evidence to support APR’s safety and effectiveness,” James said in a May statement. “The only clinical trial conducted to evaluate APR had to be halted due to concerns about patient safety.”
James and Sinatra have a history. Last month, the attorney general tried to get the judge thrown off another case against her — a suit challenging New York’s ban on body armor. Her effort was unsuccessful.
Via & just seen on DW News :
https://www.dw.com/en/unknown-patagonia-climate-research-in-the-icefields/a-68121410
On Patagonian glaciers. Good science and good scientists.
StevoR @ 435
Note that the angular diameter of Polaris is 600.000 times smaller than the full moon. Impressive.
Trump ‘reviews’ Harris’ speech
JD Vance makes the case for a gag order on Trump
Vance encourages Democrats to ‘pump the brakes’ on Trump rhetoric
“When you point your finger ‘cuz your plan fell through, you got three more fingers, pointing back at you.” – Dire Straits
FBI probes insect attack on Democratic breakfast in Chicago
More free Covid tests will be available in late September, Biden admin says
The announcement comes ahead of the cooler months and as Covid rates have risen across most of the country over the summer, fueled by highly contagious new variants.
DOJ sues software firm RealPage for allegedly helping landlords collude to keep rents high
Attorney General Merrick Garland put it more bluntly: “Everybody knows the rent is too damn high, and we allege this is one of the reasons why.”
As RFK Jr. ends his 2024 presidential campaign, what happens now?
On the surface, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s withdrawal appears to benefit Donald Trump. Just below the surface, it’s not quite that simple.
RFK Jr. quits presidential race in rambling speech in support of Trump
Link
What was your favorite speech at the DNC?
The Daily Kos staff chose their favorites and posted them on one page. Videos are all available at the link, including:
Kamala Harris accepting the nomination
Tim Walz
Joe Biden
Michelle Obama
Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
Doug Emhoff
Oprah Winfrey
Gabby Giffords
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Followup to comment 457.
Posted by readers:
@457 Lil Jon performing the roll call for Georgia didn’t make the list?
Lynna, OM@455,
Kennedy’s worm must have eaten most of his brain if he believes any promise from Trump to give him a job!
The recent Emerson poll has shaken up Trump
“Trump gets rude awakening in morning after DNC”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=vs4GmmolBHk
…but future polls that include the effect from Kennedy will be more interesting. With a bit of luck, the DNC bump will be equal to any Trump contribution from Kennedy.
Add that more Trump rally events where he appears to be deranged will help Harris.
Even Ted Cruz could get dragged down by Trump. And maybe even Rick Scott.
World-First Lung Cancer Vaccine Trials Launched Across Seven Countries
9-year-old flower girl wows with series of flips down wedding aisle
Scientists identified the ‘ManhattAnt’ — and they have theories on why it’s taking over NYC
Researchers identify effective materials for protecting astronauts from harmful cosmic radiation on Mars
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-effective-materials-astronauts-cosmic-mars.html
Something for you to enjoy (?) in the weekend. It was on Science Mystery Theatre 3000
Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews: ZAAT (aka Blood Waters Of Dr. Z)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BdT1JKJQuoc
I just realised… the MAGA era republicans formed their views of science by watching SMT3000.
Alaska Republican drops out of three-way House race, dealing surprise blow to Democrats nationally
Huh? If they have ranked choice voting, her dropping out should not have much effect. She’s an idiot, and the “journalist” who wrote this up for FauxNews is also an idiot.
Communication failures before Trump rally shooting
KG @460, yes. Trump will probably use Kennedy and then dump him. Kennedy is setting himself up to be used and abused. He did say during leaving-the-race speech that he disagreed with the Democrats on almost everything. Okay, then. So much Trump previously calling Kennedy a “leftist radical.
I’m glad the Harris campaign did not engage with Kennedy when he went shopping for his next job is somebody’s, anybody’s administration.
NBC News:
New York Times:
Associated Press:
NBC News:
Washington Post:
Posted by Kerry Kennedy:
https://x.com/KerryKennedyRFK/status/1827061350452887816
The entire statement is available at the link. Here is an excerpt:
The statement is signed by:
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Courtney Kennedy
Kerry Kennedy
Chris Kennedy
Rory Kennedy
Followup to comment 449.
Trump can’t shake ties to Project 2025—and it’s driving him nuts
Trump’s worst nightmare: DNC trounces RNC in TV ratings
@477 Lynna, OM: The funny thing is that there is a good chance that Trump didn’t know anything about Project 2025 until it made the news. He doesn’t care about policy except for a handful that he pushes or that he can use as campaign points against his opponents. He doesn’t worry about long term planning, he really doesn’t care about conservative vs liberal, he doesn’t have a lot of allies in Washington or anywhere. His international diplomacy is based on how well he gets along personally with the leaders of other countries.
It’s just that the allies he does have filled his staff with Heritage foundation people that are trying to implement Project 2025. Steven Bannon, Roger Stone and Stephen Miller all probably turned to the Heritage foundation to fill his staff and that filled Trump’s staff with Project 2025 people. His first campaign, his term in office and his current campaign are all loaded with these people and the list of people he intends to put into jobs is filled with them also. The only exceptions are likely ones that know Trump personally from his time in NY and can bypass vetting by the Heritage foundation.
He doesn’t care about Project 2025. His position on most issues is based on how well they poll and who has fed his ego over the issue last. But any administration he builds will be tied to Project 2025, it’s unavoidable because he doesn’t know any other people to put into the jobs.
Lynna@471:
She should have made a bare-bones promise of “a job”, gotten his endorsement, and then, on January 20, 2025, handed him a mop and a bucket and said “Here, go clean the White House bathroom floors.” :)
NBC News:
Dueling abortion amendments will appear on Nebraska’s ballot
By Lindsey Pipia and Bridget Bowman / Aug. 23, 2024
@JM #479:
He knew of the org. He knew Heritage was doing policy leg work for him. He knew that much even if he didn’t care about specifics.
From an earlier comment:
About Chris Swanson, the police officer who spoke at the DNC.
Denied the ‘right to hug’
Lynna had linked another article that covered the subject better a few months back. It didn’t focus much on Swanson.
I dunno. If Kennedy was a leftist radical, he’d certainly disagree with most of what the Democatic establishment stands for :-p.
Sorry, #471 not #479.
Jon Stewart fact-checks Fox News 😁
“The DNC felt like a funeral? Didn’t know funerals had DJs”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/78jbWrcGMiE
Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon must face NY criminal fraud trial, judge rules
D.L. Hugley’s DNC zingers: Harris has been Black longer than Trump’s been Republican
Foo Fighters Did Not Allow Donald Trump to Use ‘My Hero’ at Rally, Will Donate Any Royalties to Harris Campaign
Kamala Harris Supports Tax on Unrealized Capital Gains: What It Means for Wealthy Households
Kari Lake slams Tim Walz for ‘stolen valor?’ Now that’s just funny
@490
No, folks, Harris isn’t planning to tax your unrealized capital gains — but a wealth tax is still a good idea
RFK reactions are all over the map.
CNN anchor calls RFK Jr. endorsing Trump ‘huge’ based on swing state polls: ‘It is everything’
RFK Jr., environmental warrior, backs the ‘drill, baby, drill’ ticket
“Environmental warrior”? (roll-eyes)
‘Kind of gibberish’: CNN analyst reacts to RFK Jr.’s appearance with Trump
Anthony Fauci recovering from West Nile virus after hospitalization
Link
RFK Jr. talking about puberty for American girls: https://x.com/atrupar/status/1827064155011977341
Exposing CNN Misinformation: CNN “Undecided Voter” was a Trump Supporter all along
Satellite images show Ukraine’s expanding attacks inside Russia
Kyiv has stepped up its campaign of aerial attacks against strategic targets, from bridges in the Kursk region to an air base and oil depot deeper inside Russian territory.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was briefly hospitalized with West Nile virus
Fauci, 83, is recovering at home. He is expected to make a full recovery.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/rfk-suspends-campaign-ending-his
RFK Suspends Campaign, Ending His Brainworm’s Dream Of A Cabinet Position
Bear with us while we shed a tear.
Courthouse News Service:
EPA permanently blocked from reviewing disparate discrimination claims in Louisiana
Sabrina Canfield / August 23, 2024