Should be are not helping Trump. (Sorry, not Enlish as first language)
birgerjohanssonsays
“Our enemy is the ivory tower” American Tech Billionare Says
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kibFAk8HwS4
Also, fuck social responsibility!
For once I think PZ and Sabine may be in agreement: this is crap.
In an interview with The 19th, Clinton shares the joy of seeing a ‘liberated’ Harris step out of the shadows and into her real history-making potential.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Errin Haines: It feels like there’s a real relationship there with you and Vice President Harris. I want to start by asking you about that: How has your relationship with her evolved since she’s been in office? Can you share anything about what lessons you’ve shared with her about leadership?
Hillary Clinton: I actually knew her way back when she was [district attorney] in San Francisco, and I kept in touch with her over the years. Her sister, Maya, worked for me in 2016. I’ve always had a really high opinion of her and her talents and her record of public service. When she became vice president, I was very excited. I tried to be as helpful as I could because I am 100% committed to her, both when she was vice president, now as a candidate for president.
That sounds like a relationship that has really grown and deepened. Tell me about the Kamala Harris you know and why you think she should be America’s next president.
First of all, she’s incredibly talented. She is really blessed with a good sense of values and steadiness, she has a good understanding of what the job of being a leader should be, and she doesn’t overpromise. She works really hard. She tries to ask for advice from a broad cross-section of people, she’s somebody whose instincts are good and whose preparation and outreach make them even better because she’s always willing to test her thinking and her ideas against other people’s.
Is there anything about her that people may not know, that you’ve had a chance to see, something that surprised you about her?
She’s just a very collegial, open, fun person. She is pretty much the person that was described by Doug [Emhoff, Harris’ husband], deeply about family, who has a strong sense of duty and obligation, who is very much her mother’s daughter, in the sense that she’s somebody who holds herself accountable, holds others accountable, but she’s just fun. She’s somebody who you have a good time talking to. […]
There was another prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia. This time it was 115 for 115.
Russia got back 115 of its young conscripts, the ones Russia cares about the most.
Ukraine got back 115 prisoners who have been held since the beginning of the war.
On the Ukrainian side, nine illegally convicted soldiers (meaning Russia charged the with terrorism or some other made up charges instead of following POW protocols of the Geneva Conventions), members of the Ukrainian Navy, six guardsmen captured at the beginning of the war defending the Chernobyl NPP, three border guards, and 82 defenders of Mariupol of which 50 surrender at the Avzostal plant.
[X post from Zelenskyy, along with images, available at the link]
There were many joyful reunions. [Video at the link. Also one video of Russians that were released.]
But there are many Russian POWs who Putin has no interest in getting back. [X post and video at the link]
In the images posted by Zelenskyy, many of the prisoners look shockingly thin.
Ukraine has used a new class of domestically-produced drone to attack Russia for the first time, Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on Saturday.
The Ukrainian president described the Palianytsia drone-missile as a “completely new class of weapon” that will pound targets inside Russia until Vladimir Putin withdraws his troops from Ukraine.
Palianytsia, which means a loaf of bread in Ukrainian and is hard for Russians to pronounce properly, is described as a highly manoeuvrable, fast drone that has been fitted with a jet engine and a powerful warhead…
Nice Time! AZ’s 41k Federal-Only Voters Not Getting Kicked Off Rolls
[…] Those 41,000 federal-only voters the Republican National Committee and Arizona Republicans begged the Supreme Court to EEEK EMERGENCY yoink off of the rolls in Arizona on Tuesday are staying on. Wompedy womp!
[…] Republicans there have been fighting the federal “motor voter” law there for the past 20 years. The law lets voters be registered if they swear they’re citizens, but without having to produce documentary proof, like a birth certificate or passport. So that must mean IMMIGRANTS BAMBOO-BALLOT HARVESTING or whatever.
It’s all a pile of hot burro turds, of course. According to the Heritage Foundation itself, out of billions of votes cast since 1979, there have only been 85 cases of suspected non-citizens illegally voting in the whole country. A bit less than the 3 to 5 million that Trump lied that had voted in 2016. And there have been ZERO illegal immigrants uncovered voting in Arizona, for as long as anyone has been keeping track. And boy have they been looking! Though not mentioned in Heritage’s report, Heritage-adjacent TPUSA director and state rep Austin Smith, who was kicked off the ballot for blatantly forging signatures, and somehow has still not stepped down or been charged with forgery, or faced an ethics investigation.
But still, the fraud measures work, and people dumb enough to try it get found out. Signatures and voter-registration rolls are regularly checked against information from other agencies, and the penalty for voting illegally as a non-citizen is deportation, fines and/or prison. Of the 32 cases of “voter fraud” of any kind ever found in Arizona, most were people who attempted to vote twice and got caught, and a handful of felons.
But to disenfranchise voters solve this problem, Arizona created two tiers of voters, who get two different ballots: those who had not shown their proof-of-citizenship papers, who are only allowed to vote in federal elections, and those that have, and get a full ballot. Most of these voters, 54%, are Independents, 27% are registered Democrats, and 15% are Republicans. But disenfranchising thousands of their own potential voters is a risk they’re willing to take!
With Harris currently polling just 1.3 percent ahead of Trump in Arizona, and Biden haven beaten Trump in Arizona by only 10,457 votes in 2020, those tiny little numbers could make a real difference. And that is why the Arizona GOP has been EMERGENCY FREAKING! Just a month ago Trump was winning there, but the tumbleweed has turned.
It’s not all good news, the Supremes still let Arizona’s doofy two-tier system stand, even though lower courts had repeatedly rejected it, and in 2018 the state entered into a consent decree promising to cut their making-voting-burdensome shenanigans out. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch said they would have loved to kick those voters off of the rolls. Voting rights, they’ve never much cared for them. But everybody else, even Amy Comey Barrett, told the Arizona GOP to pound more sand in terms of kicking current voters off the rolls. Though for future registrations, Arizona still can defy the consent decree and do that, which rather sucks. The Court’s order was brief, so we don’t know what Barrett’s reasoning was, but hey, glimmer of hope that her tolerance for voter suppression maybe has some kind of limit, and she’s the one conservative on the court with a sense of shame?
And in other happy news from the Diamondback state, robotic election-denier and Steve Bannon bestie Keri Lake has been consistently behind Reuben Gallego in the polls for a month, even the Republican-slanted one. Wasn’t he great at the DNC? [video at the link]
Arizona also has an abortion rights constitutional amendment on the ballot, which would guarantee the right all the way up to the point of fetal viability. And people are paying attention and fired up after that 1864-abortion-law crazy their court tried to pull. […] the forecast for November is a hot time for turnout! Yippee ky-yay!
The man was charged with three counts, each of which could carry up to five years in prison.
A 37-year-old Tennessee man was charged over alleged social media threats against President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama, according to a press release from the Department of Justice.
Kyl Alton Hall was indicted Tuesday on two counts of threatening a sitting president or vice president and one count of a threat to a former president. Each charge could carry a penalty of up to five years in prison, according to the DOJ.
Authorities say the threats originated on the social media platform X. The Memphis-area man allegedly threatened to “kill, assassinate, shoot, and crash the plane” of Biden. He also threatened to assassinate Harris and Obama.
The U.S. Secret Service investigated the case, which will be prosecuted by the national security and civil rights unit in the local U.S. attorney’s office. […]
JMsays
@12 Reginald Selkirk: Both sides have been building their own drones, adapting and updating designs on the fly. The Russians have recently begun issuing fiber optic cable guided drones for short ranged attack missions. The advantage being that this makes the drone entirely immune to jamming.
This is the first real drone war and everybody is going to do some major rethinking of designs afterwards. The west has some really great drones but they cost far too much, a lot of drones are essentially expendable munitions and need to be cheap, small and available. Ukraine is buying a lot of cheap commercial drones and taping grenades or small warheads to them for this reason. For the Russians it is more a matter of availability and reliability. This war has made it clear that the ability to manufacture drones on a decent scale is now a military requirement and that military supply lines need to be checked to make sure they don’t depend on foreign components.
birgerjohanssonsays
The irony of these songs would go way over the heads of any nationalists.
Seth Meyers: Corrections Episode 110: Week of Monday, August 19
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TreD61XfpjM
Trump is in it. And some scary shit about our time line being just in the imagination of one of the staff. JFK Jr. sings.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Trump’s pledge to be ‘great for women and their reproductive rights’ angers advocates
Recall how great his first term was … anyone really want to find out what a second will be like? /s
The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which stated that enslaved people weren’t citizens, to argue that Vice President Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for president according to the Constitution…
The group, which adopted the document during their last national convention held between October 13 and 15 last year, goes on to argue in the document that a natural-born citizen has to be born in the US to parents who are citizens when the child is born, pointing to the thinking of Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas…
JD Vance’s neighbors have slammed the vice presidential candidate after the Secret Service closed and barricades a park near his home in Alexandria, Virginia.
The city announced that it would be closing the Judy Lowe Neighborhood Park on Sunday and an adjacent block would be restricted to residents only after the Secret Service ramped up measures for Donald Trump’s running mate.
“Beginning Sunday, August 25, and in response to a request from the United States Secret Service (USSS), the Judy Lowe Neighborhood Park, located at 1 & 7 E. Del Ray Ave., will be temporarily closed until further notice,” a city notice read, reported the local news website ALXnow.
But the move sparked a backlash in comments posted on social media and on ALXnow.com…
[…] Harris’ flawless speech came in at 37 minutes, making it one of the shortest acceptance speeches in modern history. (Donald Trump meandered and digressed and lied for 93 miserable minutes while accepting the GOP nomination.)
While Harris was speaking, the Democrats had one of the strongest fundraising hours in political history: more than $6 million raised in one—yes, one—hour. And that figure doubled by the end of the night. [fundraising graph at the link]
[…] Harris has gained steadily through the week, now sitting 3.6 points ahead of Trump in 538’s poll aggregate.
[…] But hey, at least Trump is probably getting endorsed by that brain worm guy.
RALEIGH: North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. will not be recused from two high-profile cases involving his father, the Republican Senate leader. The court’s Republican justices denied Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s motion requesting Berger Jr.’s recusal on Friday, writing that the Senate leader was involved in the case in an official capacity only — not a personal one.
“We believe that Justice Berger can and will execute his responsibilities in this case fairly and impartially,” the majority wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, the court’s two Democrats noted that the Code of Judicial Conduct makes no distinction between family members acting in their official capacity and personal capacity in its rules around recusal. Justice Allison Riggs, who authored the dissent, noted that Justice Berger previously refused to recuse himself in another case involving his father that challenged the state’s voter ID law.
“To achieve the desired outcome in this case, members of this Court who typically ascribe to a strict textualist philosophy are eager to add words to the Code of Judicial Conduct,” Riggs wrote. “… I suspect the reason we have not changed these rules is simple — the optics of overhauling existing ethics standards to accommodate Justice Berger and Senator Berger are problematic, to put it mildly.”
In both cases, Cooper is challenging laws passed by the General Assembly that strip him of his appointments to various boards and commissions. One of those laws, which is currently blocked by a lower court’s order, would drastically restructure state and local election boards and give all appointments to legislative leaders — including Berger Jr.’s father, Senate leader Phil Berger, who is named as a defendant in both cases.
[…]
The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) has had an embarrassing month.
A couple of weeks ago people pointed their fingers and laughed after they accused the Liberals of being “lavish” for holding an Ontario caucus meeting at a “swanky” Holiday Inn like the three-star Sudbury hotel was some sort of nickel-plated Mar-a-Lago. And they’re still denying having anything to do with a sketchy bot campaign where hundreds of accounts based overseas relayed identical excitement after allegedly attending a recent CPC rally held in the middle of nowhere. [LOL]
But their clown car found a new gear after putting out a three-minute video last week with the chef’s kiss title “Canada: Our Home” imagining just how goshdarn great the Great White North could be under Conservative majority rule featuring footage shot mostly outside the country.
“It’s easy to forget what home and hope look like so let me paint the picture,” declared party leader Pierre Poilievre at the start of the campaign ad, which added a variety of clips and photos to a speech he gave earlier this summer at the Calgary Stampede, and it almost seems like a mea culpa given all the Canadiana cosplay that comes next. The video has since disappeared from the party’s YouTube channel but the Internet never forgets: [video at the link]
The schoolchildren seen attending class would presumably be learning how to read and write in their native Serbian rather than French or English, the “Canadian dad” who had just dropped them off was rolling through suburbs somewhere in North Dakota, the “newly built and affordable Canadian homes” were under construction at an undisclosed location in Slovenia, and the happy family enjoying “a wonderful venison that was shot with totally legal Canadian firearms” were instead dining al fresco somewhere in Tuscany. [LOL]
They even outsourced the mighty frickin Rockies to foothills in Utah! Canada literally has TONS of Rocky Mountains to choose from. Including the second highest peak on the continent after Denali, Mount Logan […] But this is the same crack campaign that used what appears to be Switzerland’s famous Matterhorn for the “Common Sense Conservatives” hockey jerseys they’re hawking online.
The closing shot of a purplish evening sky with “We’re Home” emblazoned across was filmed somewhere in Venezuela.
But at least the Petro-Canada gas station where his patriotic protagonist filled his pickup truck up with “affordable and lower-taxed Canadian-made energy” was filmed domestically since no other country has them.
People might not have noticed if he hadn’t also made his main character look up and proudly see fighter jets “doing a training mission in the sky, getting ready to defend our home and native land.” Which turned out to be Russian Su-17 and Su-27 military planes, which we only learned after it somehow made it across the Department of National Defence’s radar. [JFC]
“Shockingly, Mr. Poilievre’s dream for Canada includes Russian fighter jets flying over our glorious prairies on a ‘training mission’,” said DNC spokesperson Daniel Minden. “This comes as Russia continues its illegal, unprovoked war of choice against Ukraine and the international rules that keep us all safe.”
The discovery that Peewee was using a geopolitical adversary’s military apparatus for hypernationalist propaganda was what led a still-Twitter user in Calgary to track down some of other shit used, and the unexpected Red Dawn homage wasn’t even the worst part.
Poilievre continued:
The same plane is soon seen from the university campus, where kids are hustling off to class, maybe a bit late, having just procrastinated on that university essay, knowing that when they get to class they will have the chance to debate freely and fearlessly without worry about being censored.
And what specific post-secondary school was used as an example of where students might look up to see Russkie jets flying overhead, you ask? One where this is a very real and terrifying possibility: Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in Ukraine. [ROTFL]
They found “young Caucasian handsome man closing laptop, sighing, and looking away at sundown” on Adobe and then used Google Maps to pinpoint the location. Hopefully Russian special military operation forces won’t be pinpointing it themselves.
[…] “The video was removed — mistakes happen,” fishy comms director Sarah Fischer told the CBC while gamely baiting the bothsidesism hook claiming the Liberals did something similar back in 2011 with a commercial using stock footage of aspiring actors rather than actual card-carrying supporters.
Writing this post reminded me I took part in a Getty Images shoot a million years ago working as a whitewater guide in British Columbia and I’d never bothered to check what became of the photos. Turns out my more youthful and vigorous self has been used to help sell a range of products from rafting trips in Oregon and Northern California to Nicorette gum.
Which I’m taking as a sign I finally need to kick the nasty vape-huffing habit I picked up during the pandemic. I’d hate to mislead people like a common Common Sense Conservative.
More mistakes being made by fact-adverse doofuses:
[…] Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump came here on Thursday to heap praise on the structure standing to his right — “the Rolls-Royce of walls,” he called it — and lament the unused segments lying to his left. Joining him there, Border Patrol union leader Paul A. Perez called the standing fence “Trump wall” and the idle parts “Kamala wall,” after his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Those labels were inaccurate. This section of 20-foot steel slats was actually built during former president Barack Obama’s administration. Trump added the unfinished extension up the hillside, an engineering challenge that cost at least $35 million a mile. The unused panels of 30-foot beams were procured during the Trump administration and never erected.
“Where you were, that was kind of a joke today,” said John Ladd, a Trump supporter whose ranch extends along the border, explained while driving the dirt road along the barrier, the gapped panels making a flipbook out of the shrubby trees and grass on the other side. “Had to be in front of Trump’s wall, but you went to Montezuma, and that’s Obama’s wall.”
The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the barrier next to Thursday’s campaign stop was built during the Obama administration.
[…] the reality on the ground was not as straightforward as the “Build the Wall” chant that electrified his campaign eight years ago suggested. His vow to finish the wall, now formalized in the Republican Party platform, highlights the uncomfortable fact that he did not finish it in his first term, and Mexico did not pay for it, as he once promised it would.
[…] As president, Trump spent more than $11 billion to finish more than 450 miles of wall along the almost 2,000-mile southern border, one of the most expensive federal infrastructure projects in history.
[…] A short walk from the spot where Trump spoke on Thursday, the barrier crosses a dry stream bed, and the uniform bollards give way to storm gates. The gates were wide open, to accommodate the sudden floods of the summer monsoon season, spanned only by a few strands of barbed wire. The base of some of the nearby slats show the scars of erosion that have sometimes left the fence dangling above the ground.
Smugglers have breached the barrier thousands of times, including while Trump was in office. The wall has been tunneled under and climbed over. It has been walked around and sawed through. It has not stopped migration any more that it has stopped drug and human smuggling, most of which happens at ports of entry.
[…] policy experts say the barrier simply shifts where and how migrants cross the border. And many experts argue that U.S. immigration policy and conditions in migrants’ home countries are what drive migration, regardless of the obstacles placed in their path to reaching the United States.
[…] In his first term, Trump used executive power to bypass congressional opposition to the wall. In late 2018, his fight with Congress over funding led to the longest government shutdown in American history. When Congress refused to budge, Trump declared a national emergency in order to divert money from the military budget.
Former administration officials and the Trump campaign said he would be determined to use every available power to complete the wall in a second term. [And Republicans claim that Democrats waste federal funds. Sheesh.]
[…] Mexico has opposed the construction of the border wall and has pursued more aggressive enforcement along the border, helping the Biden administration reach its lowest level of illegal border crossings in almost four years.
But as long as construction takes place on the U.S. side of the border, Mexico can’t do much to stop it, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior adviser for immigration and border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. [graph of border crossings available at the link]
[…] Trump might also face environmental opposition to renewed wall construction. The incomplete border wall has already affected the migration patterns of many northern American wildlife species, said Myles Traphagen, borderlands program coordinator at the Wildlands Network, a nonprofit conservation organization focused on sustaining biodiversity. The current barrier will also require constant, expensive maintenance, Traphagen noted.
“There’s going to be this big albatross hanging around America’s neck to continually maintain this beast,” he said. […]
Israel characterized the strikes as pre-emptive, saying it had detected a Hezbollah plan for a “large-scale” attack. Hezbollah returned fire with rockets and drones.
Excerpts below are from NBC’s live coverage:
Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah told Lebanese civilians that the Iran-backed group delayed its response to an Israeli assassination in Beirut in order to allow the ongoing Gaza cease-fire negotiations to continue.
But ultimately Hezbollah chose to target Glilot base, which is near Tel Aviv, Nasrahllah said in a televised speech today. He that there was never any intention of targeting civilian infrastructure.
“We put a set of standards for the target of our response: it was not to be a civilian target, although the enemy targeted civilians and it is our right to target civilians if we wanted, nor infrastructure,” Nasrallah said. “It was to be a military target.”
Netanyahu said earlier today that the IDF intercepted the attack toward central Israel made by Hezbollah. That base was chosen for its housing of Unit 8200, a military intelligence unit, Nasrallah said.
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut reminded its citizens who have not left Lebanon to prepare “contingency plans” and be ready to have to shelter in place for a long period of time.
“Due to high tensions in the region, the security environment remains complex and can change quickly,” the embassy said in its security alert. “We remind U.S. citizens of the continued need for caution and encourage them to monitor the news for breaking developments.”
A handful of flights were canceled out of Beirut’s airport earlier today, but the airport remains fully operational. The U.S. Embassy said its citizens that it can provide repatriation loans for those who may need financial assistance to leave Lebanon.
Hamas congratulated Hezbollah for its “major response” in retaliation to “the crime of assassinating the great jihadist leader Sayyed Fuad Shukr.”
Israel’s military said it killed Shukr in an airstrike on the Beirut area of Lebanon in July. It had blamed Shukr for the deadly attack on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights that killed 12 young people a week before.
In its statement, Hamas said Hezbollah’s strike was a message “that crimes against the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples will not pass without a response.”
Sunday’s strikes represent a major increase in intensity on the Israel-Lebanon border that risks slipping beyond tit-for-tat retaliation, says Yossi Mekelberg, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, a London-based international affairs think tank.
“We are on the cusp of something that could be quite dangerous,” he told NBC News, noting that it was the most intense exchange of fire since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
“What happens if Israel’s defense system doesn’t work? Or one or two missiles hit a block of flats? By hitting this or that, they provoke each other to retaliate. These are fine margins keeping people awake at night.”
Hezbollah said Sunday morning that it had completed military operations for the day, but Mekelberg said the conflict could continue to escalate in the coming days.
Cease-fire negotiations that could bring an end to the fighting in Gaza are set to continue in Cairo this week, and there are concerns that the latest escalation between Israel and Hezbollah could stifle an elusive deal.
But H.A. Hellyer, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C., believes the cease-fire negotiations were “already in pieces.”
“I’m not convinced that this morning’s attacks will have much of an impact on the ceasefire negotiations,” he told NBC News. “I don’t think those negotiations were really going anywhere anyway.”
But Hellyer added that Israel’s strikes on Lebanon demonstrate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not interested in de-escalating the situation.
“The overall trend here is one of escalation unless you actively try to avoid it,” he added. “And I don’t think that Netanyahu’s actively trying to avoid it at all, it’s been stated many times over recent weeks and months that the Israelis want to reset relations on the border, and they’ve been beating the drum when it comes to Hezbollah.”
Gaza’s humanitarian zones shrink as IDF presses into areas once deemed safe.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are being squeezed into ever smaller patches of land as Israeli military-designated humanitarian areas shrink to just 11% of the enclave’s territory, according to the United Nations, following a flurry of evacuation notices as Israel continues its military campaign across Gaza.
In August alone, the Israel Defense Forces issued 12 evacuation orders, according to the U.N., with an additional order on Saturday afternoon, forcing as many as 250,000 people to move again in search of safety. At the beginning of the year, 33% of Gaza was an IDF-designated humanitarian zone.
Using satellite imagery analysis, the U.N. said these evacuation notices have resulted in population movements towards Muwasi, a former fishing village on Gaza’s Mediterranean coast that has since turned into a crowded tent camp, as well as towards Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.
The U.N. estimates that most of Gaza’ 2.2 million people are now confined to an area of roughly 15 square miles — about two-thirds the size of Manhattan — causing crowded conditions and a critical lack of basic services, like clean water. […]
Hamas’ government media office said the IDF was “deliberately suffocating” Palestinians in “narrow, inhumane areas” that are “not prepared for human life.”
Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian aid, said these orders are changing “almost by the hour,” and that people were leaving behind toothbrushes and shoelaces as they fled newly-declared conflict zones.
“Sometimes the military action that follows has been within 30 minutes of the order given,” she told NBC News. “There’s a lot of confusion and panic.”
[…] While negotiations continue, the fighting goes on, with thousands on the move as they try and avoid it.
On Saturday afternoon, the IDF issued another warning to all those present in the Al-Masdar and Al-Maghazi municipalities, as well as nine other neighborhoods, to “evacuate the areas immediately” as another part of Gaza became unlivable.
The windfall brings the total amount of money raised for Harris’ election efforts to $540 million since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month.
[…] A third of donations from last week were from first-time contributors, according to a campaign memo authored by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon. She also noted that just after Harris delivered her Thursday night speech, the campaign and its allies saw “our best fundraising hour since launch day.”
Fundraising numbers reflect an accumulation from the Harris campaign, the Democratic National Committee and joint fundraising committees […]
Volunteers supporting Harris’ election bid have signed up for “nearly 200,000 shifts since Monday,” which O’Malley Dillon [campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon] said marked their “biggest week of organizing since the start of the campaign.” […]
In the 18 months after Francine Milano was diagnosed with a recurrence of the ovarian cancer she thought she’d beaten 20 years ago, she traveled twice from her home in Pennsylvania to Vermont. She went not to ski, hike, or leaf-peep, but to arrange to die.
“I really wanted to take control over how I left this world,” said the 61-year-old who lives in Lancaster. “I decided that this was an option for me.”
Dying with medical assistance wasn’t an option when Milano learned in early 2023 that her disease was incurable. At that point, she would have had to travel to Switzerland — or live in the District of Columbia or one of the 10 states where medical aid in dying was legal.
But Vermont lifted its residency requirement in May 2023, followed by Oregon two months later. […]
Despite the limited options and the challenges — such as finding doctors in a new state, figuring out where to die, and traveling when too sick to walk to the next room, let alone climb into a car — dozens have made the trek to the two states that have opened their doors to terminally ill nonresidents seeking aid in dying.
[…] Oncologist Charles Blanke, whose clinic in Portland is devoted to end-of-life care, said he thinks that Oregon’s total is likely an undercount and he expects the numbers to grow. Over the past year, he said, he’s seen two to four out-of-state patients a week — about one-quarter of his practice — and fielded calls from across the U.S., including New York, the Carolinas, Florida, and “tons from Texas.” But just because patients are willing to travel doesn’t mean it’s easy or that they get their desired outcome.
“The law is pretty strict about what has to be done,” Blanke said.
As in other states that allow what some call physician-assisted death or assisted suicide, Oregon and Vermont require patients to be assessed by two doctors. Patients must have less than six months to live, be mentally and cognitively sound, and be physically able to ingest the drugs to end their lives. Charts and records must be reviewed in the state; neglecting to do so constitutes practicing medicine out of state, which violates medical licensing requirements. For the same reason, the patients must be in the state for the initial exam, when they request the drugs, and when they ingest them.
State legislatures impose those restrictions as safeguards — to balance the rights of patients seeking aid in dying with a legislative imperative not to pass laws that are harmful to anyone, said Peg Sandeen, CEO of the group Death With Dignity. Like many aid-in-dying advocates, however, she said such rules create undue burdens for people who are already suffering. […]
More at the link.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Goodbye Meat, Hello Crickets: The Future of Food”
The League of United Latin American Citizens is requesting a federal investigation after it said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted raids of its volunteers’ homes this week, looking for evidence of possible vote harvesting.
Paxton on Wednesday announced that his office executed multiple search warrants in Frio, Atascosa and Bexar Counties as part of an “ongoing election integrity investigation” into allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting that occurred during the 2022 elections. He said a two-year investigation “provided sufficient evidence to obtain the search warrants.”
Gabriel Rosales, Texas LULAC state director, said he received “alarming reports from terrified elderly citizens” in the South Texas town of Dilley whose homes were raided. Rosales said in one instance, the front door of a home was forcibly broken into by agents. Some of them had their computers and cellphones confiscated, he said.
“What little that they’re saying is that we, apparently, any one of our operatives that are out there in the community registering voters, that we have voter information that we shouldn’t,” Rosales said in an interview. “Our response is the only voter data that we have, you can purchase at the county courthouse. So I don’t know what they’re doing. It’s just pure voter intimidation.”
….Democratic state House District 80 candidate Cecilia Castellano was one of the people targeted in the raid….
Castellano, who is running against Republican and former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, said agents came to her home on Tuesday at 6 a.m. with a search warrant and confiscated her cellphone. She said they did not tell her the subject of the investigation but she believes the raid was politically motivated.
“I believe that I’m being targeted because two of the three counties fall in my House district,” Castellano said, referring to the counties Paxton had identified earlier in the week. Paxton endorsed McLaughlin in the March primary.
Hearst Newspapers requested copies of signed search warrants from Frio County for Aug. 20, the day that Paxton said they were executed, and the county said it had no responsive records. A similar information request to Bexar County is pending.
birgerjohanssonsays
Sudden insight: Nepo boys inheriting a lot of money are just as dangerous as art school rejects.
birgerjohanssonsays
In the middle of this episode Michael Marshall provides some background on Tommy Robinson, the instigator if the British race riots
Scathing Atheist 601 Tommy Knocker Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aKa6g9Szlys
Pierce R. Butlersays
birgerjohansson @ # 35: Nepo boys inheriting a lot of money are just as dangerous as art school rejects.
Aw c’mon: only one art school reject has ever caused real trouble. Spoiled rich brats, however …
Yep. And bad as that is, it is also another rightwing method for introducing chaos into the system so that it is difficult for people to tell what the heck is going on. Within chaos, the rightwing doofuses find room to perpetrate even worse voter intimidation schemes.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, under the guise of the Florida State Department of Environmental Protection (FL DEP) is right now attempting to push through major development within 9 Florida State Parks.
He is trying to do this as quickly, and with as little public notice or participation as he could get away with.
A short timeline of of very recent events:
– Aug 15, 2024 – An internal State Park memo regarding plans for development of 2 golf courses at Jonathan Dickenson State Park in South Florida leaks…it raises some hackles, but it’s only one park, and there have been failed attempts to develop golf courses in the park previously
– Aug 19, 2024 – A second internal State Park memo leaks, revealing that Office of Park Planning has development plans for 9 State Parks throughout the state […] The memo states that public meetings which will consist of “pre-recorded presentations…without answering questions”. […] approved for construction “by September”.
– Aug 19, 2024 – On that same day, the Fl DEP (reactively) issues a press release admitting their development plans and announcing a public meeting to be on Tuesday August 27 at 3:00 PM. This is only a 1 week notice. There will be 8 separate meetings, all at the same time in 8 different locations in the middle of a weekday afternoon, all being presented with the same pre-recorded presentation. No questions.
This seems like a process that is deliberately intended to avoid public participation.—Eric Draper, Former Director of Florida State Parks
They totally left all local interests in the dark, until the leaks forced them to admit their plans. There has been a rapidly growing pushback from locals throughout the state.
[…] My local park, Anastasia Island State Park is slated for a 350 room hotel, which would make it the largest hotel in the county.
[…] Let’s hope DeSantis can be forced out into the open for a fair fight. [video at the link]
[…] I am sick to death of Republicans berating, making fun of, name-calling, belittling, and attacking the children of prominent Democrats. Period. It’s happening again with 17-year-old Gus Walz. Keep in mind, however, the attacks on Gus are not an isolated incident. Ask Chelsea. Ask Malia. Ask Sasha. All were minors when they lived with their parents in the White House. All were mercilessly and publicly belittled by Republicans.
Most Republicans never apologize for how they treated these kids. But when they do apologize, they manage to make themselves look even worse than they did before.
Case in point: conservative radio talk show host Jay Weber. Milwaukee, 1130 WISN. Member of the iHeart [ironic] Radio network. Now deleted on his X site:
“If the Walzs [sic] represent today’s American man, this country is screwed: ‘Meet my son, Gus. He’s a blubbering b—-boy. His mother and I are very proud’.”
“Blubbering b—-boy.” And yes, he DID spell out the “b” word.
After the blowback, and a day off of work on Friday, he apologized, claiming he “didn’t know Gus had a learning disability.”
In other words, if Gus DIDN’T have a learning disability, it would have been perfectly okay to call him names? No “Gee, I shouldn’t have attacked a minor.” Nope, not that much decency, maturity, or self-awareness.
And yes, Jay, your apology made you look even worse than you did before, which was pretty awful.
This guy is supposed to be back on the air tomorrow morning, which means WISN and iHeart Radio apparently think he meets one of their employment requirements: mocks the minor children of political enemies.
[…] And then Ann Coulter called Gus “weird” because he actually said out loud that he loved his dad and was proud of him. I won’t get into Ann’s own personal details because they have nothing to do with why she is such an amazingly cruel and sad human being. She deleted her post, but never apologized. […]
[…] The party of family values? […]
Republicans, you are sad and cruel people for going along with this and not calling out people like Jay Weber and Ann Coulter. And you, as a party, have been doing this since the Clintons were in office: “Ha, ha, ha! Wouldn’t it be funny to make fun of their kids? Ha, ha, ha!” And WISN and iHeart Radio — you support this?
No, it wasn’t funny — or decent or moral. And it’s not funny or decent or moral now. Grow up. Act like adults who are supposed to watch out for kids instead of making fun of them. You are pathetic. […]
Recent polling from Vermont show a large number of over-65 year old voters think Trump’s health is “very poor”. This is potentially catastrophic for Republicans since this demographic has voted consistently Republican the last 28 years.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@birgerjohansson #33:
[Sabine Hossenfelder video with a plug for BetterHelp]
In October 2018, BetterHelp gained attention from media personalities after […] alleged use of unfair pricing, poor experiences, paid reviews from actors, and terms of service that allegedly did not correspond with ads
[From the cited article]: The terms of service explicitly state that the company can’t guarantee a professional or even licensed professionals.
[…]
Update: [CEO] Alon Matas issued [a statement] reiterating that counselors go through background checks, and adding that the company’s terms of service will change to reflect that
[…]
On March 2, 2023, the FTC [banned] BetterHelp from sharing consumers’ health data with third parties. […] allegations of revealing consumers’ sensitive data with Facebook, Snapchat, and others. […] BetterHelp collected health status and histories, IP addresses, and email addresses […] “From 2013 to December 2020 […] continually broke these privacy promises […] to target them and others with advertisements for the Service.”
birgerjohanssonsays
Sky Captain @ 42
Goddammit! Is everyone corrupt? No, don’t answer that…
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are being squeezed into ever smaller patches of land as Israeli military-designated humanitarian areas shrink to just 11% of the enclave’s territory
This amounts to concentration camps. Where’s the fucking UN with that arrest warrant?
YT Short of a WWII veteran:
“[We] used [megaphones] to try to tell them they wouldn’t be harmed […] They chose not to come out of those caves, and it was my job to seal it forever.”
(Battle of Okinawa, US 6th Marine Division)
A strange 35 second teaser to clip without context.
Underneath the short, was a link to the full interview (26 min).
(9:10): not every cave did we use a flame thrower [or demolition] on. There were a lot of caves that were on the side of a cliff that neither one of us could get to, and those caves I’d use a bazooka on.
(18:38): Once we took Sugar Loaf Hill, which was a series of 3 hills. Three hills could defend each other hill. We found the caves, and we were credited with breaking the line of defense. [OP clip here] One of the most difficult things I ever had to do in my life was to seal caves that people were still alive in.
From the other side: Terror in the Caves.
Horrific accounts of Okinawan highschool girls—hastily mobilized as student nurses—who’d stayed in the caves when Americans told them to come out and survived gas attacks that followed. (Still, I found it the most interesting of these links.)
Everything about the terrain on Okinawa favored the defending army. The topography of ridge lines and escarpments […] allowed the Japanese full observation of their enemy due to the lack of dense vegetation. Interlocking fields of fire from the caves and concrete Okinawan tombs all over the ridge lines provided for intense and heavy small arms fire
[…]
The Japanese were holed up in caves that were incredibly difficult to reach. The caves that could be approached, which were few, were often sealed shut with explosives after the attacking Marines suffered severe casualties. […] Grunts from the 1st Marines manhandled barrels of napalm to the top of the ridge line […] and rolled the open containers down the draw. The barrels inevitably found their way into or near a Japanese cave, and when they did, they were ignited
more people were killed during this battle than were lost in the atomic bombings […] American losses for the battle were more than 12,000 killed […] Japanese losses, too, were staggering. They suffered 107,539 killed and it is estimated that approximately 24,000 were lost after being sealed in caves.
[…]
Even more appalling […] were more than 140,000 Okinawans killed. This was more than the losses of the Americans and Japanese combined. A large portion of these were attributed to the introduction, by the Japanese military, of group suicide
[…]
Another unique aspect of this battle was the Japanese military’s use of children to augment their forces. […] girls were given scant medical training
Seeking to blunt the momentum that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, have been experiencing in the polls and hoping to extend after an enthusiastic Democratic National Convention, Republicans have been highlighting small inaccuracies in Mr. Walz’s past descriptions of his résumé.
The latest instance came on Friday and Saturday, when the right-leaning Minnesota outlet Alpha News and the conservative publication The Washington Free Beacon resurfaced reports from 2006 that, while Mr. Walz was running for Congress that year, his website inaccurately stated that he had been named “Outstanding Young Nebraskan by the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce.”
After the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce sent Mr. Walz a letter in late 2006 saying that it had not given him an award and noting that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had endorsed his Republican opponent, his campaign clarified that the award had come from the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce, and updated his website accordingly. His campaign manager at the time said the missing word had been an unintentional typo.
[…]
Durov […] was arrested as part of a preliminary police investigation into allegedly allowing a wide range of crimes due to a lack of moderators on Telegram and a lack of cooperation with police […] The encrypted application, with close to 1 billion users, is particularly influential in Russia, Ukraine and the republics of the former Soviet Union.
[…]
After Russia launched its invasion […] Telegram has become the main source of unfiltered—and sometimes graphic and misleading—content from both sides […] used heavily by Ukraine […] officials, as well as the Russian government.
I did a calculation yesterday that made me want to scream. If you look at the *current* density of satellites in 1km altitude bins in Low Earth Orbit […] Starlink satellites pass within <1km of each other EVERY 30 SECONDS. […] everything is travelling at 7 km/second, so <1 km close approaches are terrifyingly close. Every 30 seconds. WHY.
[…]
They are launching more into this same super dense orbit and we’re supposed to just trust that their “autonomous collision avoidance system” will be good enough to keep going at higher and higher densities? There’s [currently] an opportunity for error about every 30 seconds. One small mistake and we’re in Kessler Syndrome, no more LEO satellites for decades. “Oh don’t worry, SpaceX has amazing engineers! They know what they’re doing!”
Well yes, they’re amazing. But they definitely make giant mistakes. Like… you know… dropping hundreds of pounds of debris from a “fully demisable” spacecraft by my house. Whoopsie. SpaceX, please don’t whoopsie us into Kessler Syndrome.
birgerjohanssonsays
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 50
Every time you post something, I go AAARGHH, NOOO!
🙂
Sure. But the y need to be philosophers who don’t have their heads up their asses. There is a lot of stupid philosophy about consciousness, p-zombies, etc. Anyone who find John Searle’s “Chinese Room Argument” convincing need not apply.
A team of paleontologists has identified over 260 dinosaur footprints in South America and Africa that match up, neatly showing how the continents were once joined at the hip.
The footprints were of similar age, about 120 million years old, and were pressed into mud and silt of ancient riverbanks and lakeshores. Most of the prints—also known as trace fossils, since they are merely a trace of the animals that made them—were created by theropods, a group of bipedal, three-toed carnivorous dinosaurs. Some of the most famous dinosaurs included in the sets were theropods like Tyrannosaurus rex and Allosaurus. Other tracks included hundreds of prints belonging to sauropods (think big boys like Brontosaurus) and ornithischian dinosaurs, so-named for their bird-like hip bones.
The tracks were made on land that is now part of Brazil and Cameroon, two countries separated by over 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) of ocean. Back then, the land was part of the Gondwana supercontinent. The tracks in Brazil were found in the Sousa Basin, the region of eastern Brazil that fits neatly into the African coastline along the Gulf of Guinea, as many of us were thrilled to discover as kids. The tracks in Brazil are over 3,700 miles (6,000 km) from the Cameroonian tracks, but show that populations of dinosaurs were roaming across the two when they were still joined…
[…] some lawyers who lack famous names made a notable endorsement of their own. Fox News reported:
A dozen Republican White House lawyers who served in the administrations of then-Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush are endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in her race against GOP nominee former President Donald Trump.
“We endorse Kamala Harris and support her election as President because we believe that returning former President Trump to office would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country,” the lawyers wrote in a letter that the signatories shared first with Fox News Digital.
The signatories added that “we urge all patriotic Republicans, former Republicans, conservative and center-right citizens, and independent voters to place love of country above party and ideology and join us in supporting Kamala Harris.”
The same joint statement went on to remind the public, “Donald Trump’s own Vice President and multiple members of his Administration and White House Staff at the most senior levels — as well as former Republican nominees for President and Vice President — have already declined to endorse his reelection.”
“Trump’s attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing the election proved beyond any reasonable doubt his willingness to place his personal interests above the law and values of our constitutional democracy,” the Reagan and Bush administration lawyers added. “We cannot go along with other former Republican officials who have condemned Trump with these devastating judgments but are still not willing to vote for Harris. We believe this election presents a binary choice, and Trump is utterly disqualified.”
They concluded that the GOP nominee is “guilty of grave wrongdoing to our Constitution, democracy, and rule of law, and who remains unfit, dangerous, and detached from reality.”
The endorsement from Friday came on the heels of Harris also picking up a variety of other Republican endorsements and Democrats including some GOP speakers at the party’s convention in Chicago.
[…] Trump picked up support from a fringe anti-vaccine activist, while the Democratic nominee received support from lawyers from Republican administrations who want to put country over party.
For Democrats pushing the “normal vs. weird” message, the developments were entirely on-message.
Donald Trump agreed to a Sept. 10 presidential debate. Then he reversed course. Then he reversed course again. Now he’s apparently changing his mind again.
Keeping up with Donald Trump’s positions on presidential debates has been like watching a misshaped ball bounce in unpredictable directions. As the post-convention general election phase begins in earnest, the problem actually seems to be getting worse. The Washington Post reported:
[…] Trump suggested Sunday evening that he might skip a Sept. 10 ABC News debate with Vice President Kamala Harris (D), after agreeing to participate as the GOP presidential nominee earlier this month.
Before delving into the Republican’s latest online tantrum, let’s review how we arrived at this point.
In mid-May, Trump agreed to a debate schedule, including a Sept. 10 event on ABC News, when the former president assumed his opponent would be President Joe Biden. After the Democratic incumbent passed the torch to Harris, Trump abandoned his “anywhere, anyplace” chest-thumping and took a variety of clumsy steps to back out of his earlier debate commitments.
In fact, three weeks ago, Team Trump made what appeared to be a categorical announcement: The GOP candidate would not participate in ABC News’ Sept. 10 presidential debate.
And then things got even weirder.
Seven days after backing out of the debate, Trump reversed course and re-accepted the invitation. Around the same time, the former president held a Mar-a-Lago press conference in which he also announced the dates of other upcoming debates that hadn’t been negotiated and might not occur.
Two days later, on Aug. 11, Trump published a middle-of-the-night missive to his social media platform, further alerting the public to a made-up debate schedule, pointing to events that no one had agreed to.
By and large, much of the political world simply ignored Trump’s odd rambling and remained focused on the Sept. 10 debate that both campaigns had agreed to — that is, until Trump published a new rant that put the future of that event in doubt.
“I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” the former president wrote.
Trump went on to suggest Donna Brazile (whose name he misspelled) might secretly give Harris the debate questions; the vice president’s “best friend” leads ABC News (I don’t know whom Trump was referring to); before concluding, in reference to George Stephanopoulos, “Where is Liddle’ George Slopadopolus hanging out now?”
Obviously, making predictions based on Trump’s juvenile rhetoric is folly, but his screeds did not sound like a candidate eager to appear on a debate stage.
Complicating matters further, Politico reported that the Harris and Trump campaigns are still negotiating the terms of the scheduled Sept. 10 debate, and one of the sticking points is whether the candidates’ microphones “will be muted when it isn’t their turn to speak.”
According to the reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, members of Team Harris want the microphones to stay on — in keeping with modern practices — because they assume Trump won’t be able to keep his composure for 90 minutes.
“We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates’ mics should be live throughout the full broadcast,” Brian Fallon, a senior adviser on the Harris campaign, told Politico. “Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump’s team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don’t think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button.”
Where does this leave us? With a great deal of uncertainty about whether Trump and Harris will ever share a stage.
Trump is running scared. He doesn’t know which way to turn. He cannot come up with a credible excuse for skipping the debate with Kamala Harris. And, Trump’s campaign team is worried about the debate.
[…] Retired Army Gen. H.R. McMaster became the White House national security adviser in early 2017, shortly after Michael Flynn was fired after two weeks on the job. In the 14 months that followed, the retired general got a first-hand look at how Trump operated, and as he writes in his new book, “At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House,” McMaster wasn’t altogether impressed.
Based on the latest reporting, the “blistering” book describes Oval Office meetings as “exercises in competitive sycophancy,” [What a perfectly descriptive phrase!] complains of Trump’s “outlandish“ national security ideas, and alerts readers to the fact that the GOP nominee was a president who was “addicted to adulation” and easily manipulated by flattery.
But perhaps most notable of all is the book’s description of McMaster’s concerns about Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The Wall Street Journal published a striking excerpt, which began “From the beginning of my time as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, in February 2017, I found that discussions of Vladimir Putin and Russia were difficult to have with the president.”
[O]ur relationship reached a breaking point after I attended the Munich Security Conference in February 2018. … [W]hat made news was the response I gave to a question from a member of the Russian Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly, who suggested cooperation between Moscow and Washington in the area of cybersecurity. After joking that I doubted there would be any Russian cyber experts available because they were all engaged in subverting our democracies, I described evidence cited in the Mueller investigation’s indictments of Russians for election interference in 2016 as “incontrovertible.”
Trump, McMaster quickly learned, was “furious” that his national security adviser had told the truth in public, and his “aversion” to McMaster soon intensified — in part because the retired general “was the principal voice telling him that Putin was using him.”
The excerpt went on to note a nerve-agent attack in England that targeted former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, which was easily traced to Moscow.
Just a few days after the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter, a story appeared in the New York Post with the headline “Putin Heaps Praise on Trump, Pans U.S. Politics.” When I walked into the Oval Office that evening, on another matter, the president had a copy of the article and was writing a note to the Russian leader across the page with a fat black Sharpie. He asked me to get the clipping to Putin.
McMaster ignored the directive, and confided to his wife, “After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump.”
[…] retired Republican Sen. Dan Coats, who served for more than two years as Trump’s director of national intelligence, has said he believes Putin’s government had something on Trump, which left him compromised.
The former president was so acquiescent toward Russia that, in 2018, former CIA director John Brennan also suggested that the Kremlin “may have something on” Trump personally. Brennan added, “The Russians, I think, have had long experience with Mr. Trump, and may have things that they could expose.”
It’s not just Democrats, in other words, who’ve expressed concern about Trump, Putin and Russia. Members of the Republican’s own team felt the same way.
The weird, narcissistic, and pointless presidential campaign of RFK Jr. ended Friday the only way it really could, with an endorsement of Donald Trump. Despite (or maybe because of) all his baggage – anti-vax, pro-bear-roadkill, etc – RFK Jr. is now the flavor of the week in MAGA Land, with Trump going so far as to retweet a post referring to a Trump-Kennedy “ticket.” Poor JD Vance.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter Kick Kennedy […] shared an anecdote about her father and a dead whale that still checks out with what we know about the odd politician — especially when it comes to his love for dead animals.
When she was 6, her dad chopped off the head of a whale that washed up on Squaw Island in Hyannis Port. Due to RFK Jr.’s love of studying animal skulls and skeletons, they then strapped the dead whale’s head to the car and spent five hours driving it to their home.
“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” Kennedy said. “We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.” […]
Lunatic Trump cultist Laura Loomer claimed on X Sunday that Kamala Harris’ mother may have committed immigration fraud, which in turn could lead to Kamala’s disqualification.
“As per a document from the United States Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service form I-463, dated August 21, 1967, Shyamala Gopalan Harris claimed to have only one child even though both of her children were born by this time,” Loomer wrote. “Take note of the following birthdates: Kamala Devi Harris was supposedly born on October 20, 1964. Kamala’s younger sister, Maya Lakshmi Harris was born January 30, 1967.”
As always, birthers — in this case neo-birthers — are full of sh*t. The I-463 is the approval document issued by the INS of the Petition (I-140) filed by Kamala’s mother and stamped received by the INS on January 18, 1967. This was before her second child was born. The approval — which took almost 7 months by the INS — was after Kamala’s sister was born, so the error was a mistake by the INS and not a lie by her mother.
In other words, when Kamala’s mother filed her petition, she did only have one child. […]
Links to supporting evidence are provided at the main link.
The Birthers are either willfully ignorant or stupid. They reveal an inability to pay attention to detail. Bad faith pronouncements abound. Grasping at straws. I expect to see Trump repeating this disinformation ad nauseam, as will his QAnon cult followers.
Former president Donald Trump expressed indifference Monday when asked whether the candidates’ microphones should be muted when it is not their turn to speak during his upcoming debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.
That issue has emerged as a new sticking point ahead of the Sept. 10 debate on ABC News, with Trump’s campaign pushing to maintain prior debate rules where microphones were cut off after candidates were done delivering their responses.
“I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me,” Trump said. “I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted. I didn’t like it the last time, but it worked out fine.”
Trump made the comment to reporters while visiting a Vietnamese restaurant in Northern Virginia, hours after raising the possibility that he might skip the debate over disagreements with ABC’s journalism. Harris’s campaign said it wants the microphones to remain unmuted throughout the debate and suggested that Trump’s campaign is resisting the condition because they do not trust their candidate to be disciplined.
A Harris campaign spokesperson, Brian Fallon, quickly highlighted Trump’s comment Monday about the muting of mics.
“Always suspected it was something his staff wanted, not him personally,” Fallon said on X. “With this resolved, everything is now set for Sept 10th.” [A bit optimistic, I’d say.]
After seeing this I can’t help but wonder if the ‘alleged’ jebus was just an alien implant. – shermanj@66
What’s with this “jebus” stuff? I don’t mean to pick on you specifically, because a lot of people do it, but what’s it about? A fear that if you use the guy’s name* or use an initial upper-case “J”, he’ll manifest himself? A feeling that by misnaming him you somehow get one over on Christians, like Trump with his “Kamabla”? Sheer habit?
*Well, the Latinised version of it, but the name by which he’s usually known in our culture.
…
Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert and got dropped by every major newspaper in the country after he publicly advocated for racial segregation, shared the conspiracy theory, writing “AI or real?” Adams is a far-right kook who also believes he “hypnotized” himself recently with ChatGPT.
U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt from Missouri joined in. “Why would Tim Walz do this? It’s Creepy™ and Weird™,” Schmitt tweeted, apparently trying to play reverse Uno with the “weird” allegations Walz helped popularize against Republicans…
Is this some kind of strange attempt on Walz’s part to swap out his dogs while using the same name? No, obviously. As some commenters have pointed out by looking at Walz’s Instagram page, Walz was with Scout at the dog park that day in October and that was just another dog he was petting. The Minnesota governor was not claiming that the brown dog was his dog Scout…
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #70…
There was at least one book dust jacket with a picture of Poul Anderson hunkered down “petting” a cat. In reality, the Andersons didn’t have a cat. It was their neighbors cat and Poul wasn’t actually petting it. He was holding the cat so it would stay put for the picture.
A standoff has erupted in the Philippines as thousands of police officers descended on a sprawling religious compound in search of an influential pastor who has been accused of child sex trafficking amongst other crimes.
Police say they will not leave until they have found Apollo Quiboloy, who calls himself the “appointed Son of God”.
He is believed to be hiding inside his 30 hectare (75 acres) complex, which houses some 40 buildings, including a cathedral, a school and even a hangar.
Authorities have been on the hunt for Mr Quiboloy for months. He had earlier said he would “not be caught alive”.
Police raided the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) compound late on Saturday, with reports saying they later used tear gas against Mr Quiboloy’s followers who had become “unruly and violent”, Davao police spokesperson Major Catherina dela Rey told news outlet Rappler…
birgerjohanssonsays
“Ted Cruz Flops In Polls While Democratic Challenger Goes For The Jugular”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3A4a5vAeyBE
The challenger runs a good campaign, and Cruz’ lead is now within the margin of error. Maybe the Dems will keep the senate after all.
sometimes used to avoid blaspheming, other times to poke fun at believers, and most often just as a playful interjection. […] Jeebus owes its popularity to The Simpsons. […] Homer gets sent to be a Christian missionary. In his typically clueless way, Homer protests “I’m no missionary. I don’t even believe in Jeebus.” He immediately proceeds to plead for Jeebus to save him.
In a recent episode of his aptly named podcast, “Please Call Me Crazy,” GOP Senate candidate Royce White went on a chauvinistic rant demeaning women who live in the suburbs, and labeling Republican politicians who seek these women’s votes as “losers” who have a “cucked mentality.” …
birgerjohanssonsays
Skepticrat 232 DNC Myself Out Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=S-wmTaLMu20
In which Mike Marshall provides a summary of the closest thing Britain has to the Jan 6th riot and Mike Lindell gets owned by a 12-year-old.
KGsays
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@75,
Thanks for that, but the origin of the borked name (which I didn’t know and am glad to learn) doesn’t really explain its habitual use. There aren’t a lot of Christians around here either to avoid blaspheming, or to poke fun at (and it’s a pretty feeble poke if there were), and it’s not being used as an interjection, playful or otherwise.
Moscow launched more than 200 missiles and drones across a wide swath of Ukraine on Monday, damaging energy facilities and sending residents of Kyiv into basements and subways to seek shelter. President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the assault as ‘one of the largest strikes’ of the 30-month-old war.”
Special counsel Jack Smith filed his appeal Monday of U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s decision to dismiss Donald Trump’s classified documents indictment, a ruling the judge made after finding that Smith’s appointment exceeded his power as a government officer.
Cannon’s decision ‘conflicts with an otherwise unbroken course of decisions, including by the Supreme Court … and it is at odds with widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government,’ Smith wrote in the appeal.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a demonstration of new exploding drones designed to crash into targets and pledged to spur development of such weapons to boost his military’s war readiness, state media said Monday.
birgerjohanssonsays
OMG! The next issue of God Awful Movies will cover ‘Angels Fallen: Warriors of Peace’
“An Iraq war veteran gets a mission from a higher power to stop a fallen angel from raising an undead army”
This has to be a spoof film, right? Like ‘Tokyo Gore Police’ or ‘Polyester’.
So far in 2024, three state Republican Parties have ousted their chairs, one state party chair quit, and the RNC chair also resigned.
Former state Rep. Dave Williams’ tenure as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party was already a mess before the summer began, but things went from bad to worse a couple of months ago. Indeed, it was in early June when the state GOP chair issued a call to burn all Pride flags, at which point several local party officials decided it was time to show Williams the door.
Two months later, they appear to have done exactly that. Colorado Public Radio reported:
Members of the state Republican Party drove from across Colorado to a church in Brighton on Saturday morning, where they voted to remove state party chairman Dave Williams from his leadership position. They also voted to replace the party’s vice-chair and secretary. The vote was 161.66 votes to remove Williams, with 12 opposed. (Some of those voting only get fractional votes). Only members of the state party’s central committee and their proxies were allowed to cast votes.
The vote was not close, though it is apparently being contested.
In fact, after the vote to remove Williams as the state Republican Party chair, the Coloradan dismissed the meeting as “illegal“ and “illegitimate,” claimed that he was still the state GOP chair, and said the matter would actually be resolved by a separate vote at a different meeting.
His reaction suggests a legal dispute is inevitable, which probably isn’t what party officials want to see as the election season takes shape.
I won’t pretend to know how, when or whether this will be resolved, but the circumstances sure are familiar.
Earlier this year, for example, the Republican Party of Michigan removed Kristina Karamo as state party chair after months of infighting and weak fundraising. Karamo claimed the votes didn’t count, and as of the weekend, she’s still asking the courts to reinstate her.
Soon after, the Republican Party of Florida removed Christian Ziegler as its state party chair after he faced allegations of rape and video voyeurism.
Two weeks later, Republican Party of Arizona Chair Jeff DeWit resigned following the release of a dubious audio recording of a conversation he apparently had with failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
A month after that, Ronna McDaniel resigned as chair of the Republican National Committee after losing Donald Trump’s support.
Taken together, just this year, three state Republican Parties have ousted their chairs, one state Republican Party’s chair quit, and the Republican National Committee’s chair also quit. […]
Schadenfreude moment for the mess (messes) they have to contend with. It’s interesting that the Republican Party is having to kick some leaders out because they are too whacko even for Republicans.
birgerjohanssonsays
Brony @ 67
In one episode, pursuing jet fighters give up, the leader saying “we have ceiling”. A helicopter is supposed to have a higher maximum altitude than the fighters?
That right there told me the TV series was junk and I did not switch it on again.
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign raised less than half as much as Kamala Harris’ campaign during the month of July—and Harris didn’t even enter the race until July 21. That’s an astounding comparison, but there’s something even stranger lurking behind those numbers.
Trump’s fundraising for July was actually up compared to previous months, driven mostly by a burst of donations that came in after a failed assassination attempt on July 13. Even so, the total of $138.7 million raised by the Trump campaign was dwarfed by the $310 million Harris collected in barely over a week.
An amazing 94% of the money Harris collected reportedly came in donations smaller than $200, with two-thirds of the money coming from first-time donors. In comparison, Trump’s July Federal Elections Commission filing showed less than $7.5 million coming in the form of small donations. This makes it seem as if, even during a month where Trump was screaming about “taking a bullet for the country,” his MAGA well was going dry.
Maybe that’s because some of his supporters have discovered that Trump campaign donations are going into a mysterious black hole—a scam so large that it makes Trump University and the Trump Foundation look like peanuts.
As The New York Times reports, during the 2020 election cycle, $516 million of the $780 million spent by the Trump campaign—an astounding 66%—went to one company: American Made Media Consultants. Of the 150 largest bills paid by the campaign, 132 were from AMMC. None of these bills was itemized to explain what the campaign received for these massive expenditures.
American Made Media Consultants is a Delaware-based private company that appears to be carefully constructed for no other purpose than to hide where the money goes once it comes across the threshold. Even Trump’s campaign staff officially doesn’t know what AMMC does with the money. However, ABC News reported in 2020 that AMMC is largely run by former Trump campaign director Brad Parscale.
In any case, what’s clear about AMMC is … nothing.
The Federal Election Commission requires candidates to disclose where funds are being spent, expressly so that donors know that their candidate is not just sticking the money in his pocket. In 2020, an FEC complaint was filed charging Trump’s campaign with using AMMC to hide expenses and not providing donors with information. FEC commissioners deadlocked in a 3-3 vote over whether Trump’s campaign had violated disclosure laws. Then the case was dropped. Attempts to revive it in court ran into a wall because some FEC decisions are considered “unreviewable.”
The Times reports that AMMC’s first president was Lara Trump. Now that Trump’s daughter-in-law has moved on to turning the Republican National Committee into a grifting engine, AMMC’s current leadership is unclear. However, offspring Eric Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been involved in setting up and operating AMMC.
Whatever AMMC does, it’s still doing it. Trump’s 2024 campaign is following the same pattern as in 2020, with a large percentage of funds simply handed off to AMMC, with no information on what is generated in return.
However, as the Times reports, it’s not the only such company that benefits from Trump’s campaign funds. A second private company, Red Curve Solutions, has received at least $18 million. According to the Campaign Legal Center, Red Curve is used to pay Trump’s legal bills, with the money that it spends then being reimbursed by Trump’s PACs. The head of Red Curve is also the head of two PACs, so it’s all handled very neatly. [Ha! “Neatly” means “corruptly,” I think.]
That’s not the last of Trump’s mystery companies. As NBC News reported in June, another Delaware-based LLC named Launchpad Strategies has taken in almost $15 million. Because of the way it’s set up, there is no public knowledge of who owns the company, who works for it, or how any of this money has been spent.
It’s long been clear that money coming into Trump’s campaign was going to pay his legal bills. Trump has even advertised to his followers, directly begging them to pay for his army of attorneys. He’s made those pleas and taken money from decidedly not-wealthy supporters even though his net worth has gone up by billions over the past few years.
The truth is, all the tacky shoes, Bibles, and NFTs that Trump sells are a drop in the bucket. So is the $7.5 million in small-dollar donations he got in July.
Trump’s big money comes in the form of big checks. The four biggest megadonors on The Washington Post’s list all cut checks to Trump. That includes $125 million from railroad heir Timothy Mellon (and that’s not counting the $25 million Mellon spent setting up a spoiler campaign for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.).
These billionaires cut Trump big checks, then the checks go into a big black hole. What comes out doesn’t appear to be any recognizable campaign activity. Even before Harris entered the race, President Joe Biden was outspending Trump three-to-one on television advertising.
The money going into these companies seems to disappear … which certainly makes it hard to discern whether Trump is running his campaign in a legitimate fashion or simply pocketing hundreds of millions in bribes.
birgerjohanssonsays
‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public | The Guardian
One of the saddest things we’ve seen this entire week […] has been watching Donald Trump and his loser campaign try to get America hard about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropping out to burp out an endorsement for Trump. (Yikes, his endorsement speech was fucking weird.)
The weekend after Trump’s convention, President Joe Biden stepped aside and Vice President Kamala Harris became the nominee, and the excitement and positive energy for her campaign haven’t let up for one second.
Meanwhile, the day after Harris’s convention, Trump tried to recapture the narrative by having the creepiest, most off-putting troll that ever fell out of the Kennedy family tree head-first suspend his campaign to endorse him. A Trump and a Kennedy together at last! (Sorry, JD, nobody needs you right now, go fuck a donut.)
Good try, guys.
Larry Sabato, the polls and numbers guy with the Crystal Ball says bless their hearts, but this ain’t gonna do shit for Trump.
The Hill excerpts Sabato’s appearance Friday on MSNBC, where he used logic to explain what a loser Kennedy is.
There’s this part about how everybody hates Kennedy ever since Kamala Harris jumped in:
“He has been dropping like a rock ever since Kamala Harris got in.”
As we said. Indeed, he’s falling faster than a baby bear carcass out of the back of Kennedy’s car.
“When he started, he was in the upper teens. In some polls, he was in the low 20s, and now at best, he’s at 5 or 6 percent in some of the states, and those polls are outdated,” he continued. “You know, we’ve had a Democratic Convention. One network poll just a few days ago had him at 2 percent.”
And now Trump is putting him out there and letting him talk! That’s that Donald Trump political whiz kid judgment we all know so well. Know what happens when people get to know Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
Sabato also noted the gaping logic hole in the idea that Kennedy’s voters would just pick up and follow him to the Trump campaign:
“For people who think that, because he’s endorsing Trump, he can just move that 2 percent into Trump’s column,” Sabato said. “They don’t know much about politics. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not going to work that way.”
And:
Sabato also suggested that RFK Jr. failed to “cash in” on the Kennedy name.
Yeah, it’s kind of hard to do that when literally all the rest of the Kennedys are like “No, that’s the one we hate […]”— paraphrase — it kind of makes it difficult to imagine RFK Jr. is the guy who’s going to resurrect Camelot at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump.
But hey, this is the best Trump has, because he’s desperate and sad and actually not as good at politics as the Beltway media likes to believe. […]
Here’s video of Sabato talking about all this with Katy Tur on MSNBC, he says a whole bunch more mean shit about RFK Jr. [video at the link]
Anti-Vaxxers Being Super Weird About Tetanus Shots Now
A new ‘that happened’ genre has emerged.
Now that the anti-vaccine crowd has exhausted every possible conspiracy theory about the COVID shot, it seems they’re moving on to a new target — tetanus shots! You know, the thing that prevents you from dying if you step on a rusty nail?
To be fair, anti-vaxxers and anti-vaccine groups have been spreading misinformation about the tetanus shot since the 1990s, but many of those who only recently converted during COVID are just finding out about it now. And boy, are they are into it!
[…] Earlier this month, George Mason University economics professor, anti-education activist and author of The Myth of the Rational Voter Bryan Caplan shared his own experience with a doctor telling him he needed to get a tetanus booster. [X post available at the link]
“My doctor talked to me like a child when I refused a tetanus booster,” he wrote. “This disease kills about 2 Americans per YEAR!”
That’s true, and it’s true because people are vaccinated against it. Not because it’s not deadly. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control estimates “that tetanus causes 213,000 [to] 293,000 deaths worldwide each year, and that it is responsible for [five to seven percent[ of all neonatal deaths and [five percent] of maternal deaths globally.” It’s also obviously not the kind of thing where one is protected by herd immunity, because you get it from dirty wounds, not from other people.
In another posting that went viral, a mom totally owned her doctor by knowing way more about the tetanus shot than her doctor did. Except not!
Allow me to post the story in its entirety:
This is a story from a mom who took her child to the emergency room with a cut.
Doctor: “We’re going to give her a tetanus vaccine.”
Mom: “Really? What brand and configuration did you have in mind?”
Doctor: “Just Tetanus.”
Mom: “You mean the DTaP?”
Doctor: “Well, yes.”
Mom: “So, you want to give my child a vaccine for 3 diseases when you’re only concerned about one?”
Doctor: “It’s the only way it comes.” (wrong)
Mom: “So…how long will it take for the vaccine to help her create antibodies against tetanus?”
Doctor: “About 3 weeks.”
Mom: “If this wound contains tetanus spores in the correct environment, how long before the spores start producing toxins causing lockjaw then death?”
Doctor: “Immediately.”
Mom: “So you want to give her a vaccine that she won’t mount an immune response with until about a week after she’s dead, then?”
We left without the shot or TiG… Scares me that I have more information than a physician. It should scare you, too.
That is not what scares me.
What people are supposed to be getting if they get a tetanus shot is actually a tetanus booster. We’re all supposed to get a series of TDaP shots and boosters as babies/kids — which vaccinate them against tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis/whooping cough — and boosters every 10 years once we are adults. We also get a booster if we get a cut that could cause tetanus and it’s been five or more years since we’ve gotten the shot to activate the antibodies that are already in our system.
Additionally, the booster is not a TDaP shot. It’s TD only, which makes sense because diphtheria is something you get from bacteria. The only reason anyone over the age of six would get a TDaP shot would be if they didn’t have it as a baby.
You would think this brilliant mom, who is so much smarter than a physician, would know all of this.
In one video that’s been making the rounds all year, “Dr.” Carrie Madej — who was forced to surrender her medical license last year — makes a variety of wildly untrue claims about tetanus and the TDaP shot. Madej shared that she had been curious since she was a teenager about why people needed to take the tetanus shot every 10 years. [video at the link]
“I ended up finding out, asking all of my attending physicians and infectious disease experts” she said. “We found out that the reason that they told us back then to take it was that when you are walking out in the yard, you have a rusty nail in your foot, the bacteria called tetanus gets in there and then within minutes to hours, not days or weeks, you could spasm so terribly that you would suffocate to death and fall on the floor and die, like within minutes or hours, which I have never heard of anyone dying that way.”
“So I have come to find out that is a lie, no one has died that way, nobody in the entire world.”
Well, of course not, because tetanus doesn’t actually kick in for a few days, up to a few weeks. People don’t die from it immediately, but, as mentioned above, they do die from it.
“The World Health Organisation and NIH have since 1972 been developing the tetanus vaccine as an abortion or sterilisation vaccine,” Madej claimed in another part of the video. “They have been putting the pregnancy hormone inside the tetanus vaccine, in that vial, and so every time you get it it is a cumulative response.”
She also claims that only families with private insurance, not Medicare, got the TDaP vaccine, and seems to suggest this was a plot to ensure poor people procreated more than rich people.
It will shock you to know that this is also not true. The Vaccines for Children program provides all vaccinations at no cost to infants who are on Medicaid.
Also, while researchers in India in the early 1990s did develop a combination contraceptive/tetanus vaccine, it was only tested on 148 volunteers and then abandoned because it was not very effective.
That’s it.
Like so much other nonsense, opposition to the tetanus vaccine is obviously not without its dangers. In 2019, an unvaccinated boy had to spend 57 days in the hospital after getting tetanus, racking up an $800,000 bill.
People can and do die from this all around the world, so as good as it may feel to totally “own” one’s doctor, it probably feels better to not have your kid die or spend months in a hospital over it.
In accordance with the anti-DEI panic that has gripped the Republican Party […] the Alabama state legislature recently passed state Senate Bill 129, which outlaws DEI offices and initiatives in public institutions. Finally! No longer will white heterosexuals in Alabama be forced to labor under the oppressive yoke of the knowledge that non-white non-heterosexuals are full human beings to be treated with dignity and respect.
SB 129 specifically prohibits “public institutions of higher education from sponsoring any diversity, equity, and inclusion program that would advocate for a divisive concept.” The famously progressive University of Alabama, being one of those public institutions of higher education with a mission to welcome any and all into its hallowed halls for the sort of open intellectual inquiry across the ideological spectrum that is the domain of universities everywhere, bravely announced that this restrictive new law was incompatible with said mission. Therefore, the U of A administration said, the school would continue offering support to members of marginalized communities on its campus as if nothing had changed.
Ha ha, just kidding, the school wasted no time in shuttering the offices of its Black Student Union and the UA Safe Zone, an LGBTQ+ support center.
A university spokeswoman told the ironically-named student newspaper The Crimson White that “in accordance with state and federal laws, no University program, space or benefit will contain impermissible restrictions, preferences or limitations related to race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity.” Also, the school will no longer use funds to “continue programs offered at Safe Zone.”
Of course neither of these organizations was off-limits to white people, or straight people. What were they going to do, call out the National Guard if a white kid walked into the BSU offices? Or as a former vice president of the BSU told the paper:
[Gabby] Kirk said that the BSU never stated that it was for Black students only but that there were not many non-Black students that went to the office, because they didn’t feel the need to.
Right! We also doubt there was an epidemic of white kids complaining to the university administration that they were being discriminated against by being made to feel uncomfortable if they went into the BSU office. […]
The university spokeswoman also said that the school “will continue to provide resources and support to every member of our campus community,” just apparently not if that support involves letting kids from this or that marginalized group have some officially sanctioned space where they can all gather to support each other. Which, as the BSU said in a statement posted to Instagram, was pretty much the entire point of the group’s existence to begin with:
Our office was more than just four walls; it was a haven for all of us, a place where we could be ourselves, support one another, and celebrate our culture and heritage.
Of course there is no way to know if the university administration made these moves because much of its hierarchy agrees with the law’s codification of bigotry under the guise of being anti-bigotry, or if the administrators are simply gutless cowards who don’t want to tangle with the state government. So we’ll just assume the answer is “both.”
Reporting in Inside Higher Ed shows that Alabama is far from the first university to respond to state anti-DEI laws by being cowards and weirdos. Just recently, the University of Missouri at Columbia told its campus chapter of the Legion of Black Collegians that it had to change the name of its annual event, the Welcome Black BBQ, to something more inclusive. After several months of fighting it, the Legion gave in and renamed the event the much more generic Welcome Black and Gold BBQ. (Black and gold are the school colors.)
A professor emerita at Missouri who worked in the school’s DEI office told Axios recently that while DEI critics like to portray such initiatives as bigotry, the truth is that “students’ feelings of social belonging are strongly connected to their ability to learn,” and that feelings of exclusion are “a significant barrier to student learning.” […]
All of this just serves to reinforce the fact that the anti-DEI panic is at its core a hollow and cynical exercise conservatives have engaged in as part of their long-standing desire to roll back the civil rights gains of the last 70 years or so. The University of Alabama has 38,000 students, of whom around 11 percent are black. Granting a Black student organization some office space in a university building is almost literally the least the administration can do. […] they now have an excuse to not do even that. […]
Poor Steve Bannon Being ‘Tortured’ In Prison, Can’t Even Watch His ‘Special Shows’ On TV
According to Rudy Giuliani, that is.
Americans often complain that our federal prison system is just too cushy, often referring to institutions like FCI Danbury as “Club Fed” and grumbling about the fact that conditions there are not as miserable there as they would prefer (though they are still quite miserable).
This is perhaps why, instead of perhaps giving a damn about the fact that most of our jails and prisons — including federal prisons — violate pretty much every international law regarding the humane treatment of prisoners, Rudy Giuliani is complaining that Steve Bannon is being “tortured” by not being allowed to watch television.
Last Tuesday, while hosting Bannon’s “The War Room” show in his stead, Giuliani complained that the former Breitbart chairman was being singled out for poor treatment at FCI Danbury. [video at the link]
Giuliani complained to an as-of-that-time mustachioed Mike Lindell that Bannon would not be allowed to watch the show while he was in prison.
“I ran the Bureau of Prisons in two capacities. First, I was absolutely in charge of it as the associate attorney general for two years under Ronald Reagan, and then I was the chief of staff of the guy who was in charge of it under Gerald Ford,” Giuliani said, suggesting that he is unhindered by the confines of our own space-time continuum. “I do not remember prisoners of his category not having access to television for occasional shows, special shows.”
I’m going to need to point out that this show is not on television, it is on the internet, which no one at Danbury has access to.
“Every once in a while, a prison would get nasty,” Giuliani continued. “I remember having to secure the rights for lifers to see the pope. Imagine not letting them see the pope. I mean, that’s ridiculous. Steve Bannon, let me tell you this. Steve Bannon is not being treated the way other prisoners are being treated. His case has been moved from the Bureau of Prisons to crooked Attorney General [Merrick] Garland’s office, and they are calling the shots because contacts that I have in the Bureau of Prisons have told me they’ve been taken out of the case.”
Imagine how lovely it would be if the worst thing that happened to incarcerated people in the United States was not getting to see the pope? Even the worst thing at Danbury?
“He’s being, let’s say, ‘tortured,’” Giuliani said, making air quotes. It is worth noting here that Giuliani was famously unsure if waterboarding was torture or not.
“This election is about a fascist regime,” he said confidently, “and Steve Bannon is prime number one victim.”
That actually seems like a ringing endorsement, if you ask me. Bannon is the “prime number one victim,” and the worst thing that has happened to him is that he can’t watch a show on the internet? That’s pretty impressive, given the worst things that could happen to people if Donald Trump is elected.
In fact, I hope everyone’s worst problem on earth is that they can’t watch the Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell Variety Hour. Truly, it would be a blessing unto us all.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@Lynna #89:
the booster is not a TDaP shot. It’s TD only […] The only reason anyone over the age of six would get a TDaP shot would be if they didn’t have it as a baby.
The limited supply of Td vaccine needs to be preserved for those with a contraindication to receiving pertussis-containing vaccines [an encephalopathy reaction which is very rare]. While Td vaccine supplies are constrained, CDC recommends vaccine providers transition to use of Tdap in lieu of Td whenever possible. Tdap vaccine is an acceptable alternative to Td vaccine.
The text message was brief and straight to the point.
“Strategic bombers in the air … go to the shelter when missiles come,” […]
Within minutes, the air raid sirens started blaring and people out in the streets rushed into shelters amid loud explosions, as Russian rockets and drones started to rain down.
At first the explosions were far apart and distant, but over five successive bursts they got closer and closer to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city in the country’s northeast. The final one was quite loud.
Similar scenes took place in the capital, Kyiv, the southern city of Odesa and other cities across the country […]
“More than 100 rockets of various types” were used along with about 100 Iranian-made Shahed drones, the statement read. “And like most previous Russian strikes, this one is just as vile, targeting critical civilian infrastructure,” it added.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force said Russia used 11 TU-95 strategic bombers, which can carry six cruise missiles depending on the type. [Awful]
A 69-year-old man in the Dnipropetrovsk region and a man in the Zaporizhzhia region were among the at least five people confirmed dead, local officials said. […] three fatalities were reported in the regions of Kharkiv, Zhytomyr and Volyn.
Inside a Kharkiv shelter, it gradually became clear from online chatter that it was a massive attack, with drones and missiles making their way from multiple directions — following routes programmed by Russian mission commanders in far-off bunkers, winding and weaving to try to fool Ukrainian air defenses.
Videos on social media showed real-time sightings of the missiles flying, falling and exploding. […]
Russia’s defense ministry, meanwhile, said its forces used high-precision weapons to strike important energy infrastructure that it said supported the military industrial complex. It listed power substations, gas compressor stations and storage sites for aircraft weapons.
[…] After more than two years of war, Ukrainians seem to have grown resilient to this type of attack, which came two days after citizens in Kharkiv and other cities took to the streets to celebrate Independence Day and mark the 33 years since the country gained its autonomy from the Soviet Union.
Many flooded social media with messages of gratitude, support and thanks for the Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines. Some praised their surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Since the incursion started on Aug. 6, Ukraine has seized a considerable amount of territory, including scores of small towns, and has captured hundreds of Russian soldiers.
As soon as the air raid alert was lifted after an hour or so, Kharkiv quickly returned to normal Monday.
The cafes were packed again, some serving food with a “gen” label on, meaning it can be prepared on a generator.
The Arizona Police Association, which on Friday endorsed former president Donald Trump in the presidential race, is throwing its support behind a Democrat: Rep. Ruben Gallego, who is running for the Senate seat there against Republican Kari Lake.
In a statement Monday, the APA said Gallego “has continually fought for robust, increased funding for America’s Law Enforcement, and specifically Arizona Law Enforcement.” It cites work he’s done to secure funding for Arizona police, as well as efforts to improve mental health resources for officers and improve de-escalation training.
The APA’s endorsement of Gallego is notable not only because the association endorsed Trump on Friday, but also because it supported Lake in her 2022 gubernatorial bid…..
On Friday, [APA President Justin] Harris endorsed Trump onstage at an event in Glendale, Ariz. As he spoke about drugs being intercepted at the border, Trump asked Harris to hurry up with his speech.
Please, please, please, yes. Let’s arrest the nazi techdouches and put some fear into them about the consquences of their own actions rather than have them effectively above the law.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@StevoR #95:
Eh, the far right loves pretending to feel threatened.
Your original article—with the same title—was from Daily Express.
“What next… the arrest of Elon Musk?” Mr Farage did not elaborate further.
Kalashnikovs, pistols, grenades and grenade-launchers. […] “It is inconceivable that they [the weapons dealers] are not operating on the Houthis’ behalf,” said the former British Ambassador to Yemen […] several of the Yemeni accounts bore the blue tick of verification.
Reuters at #49 rambles longer about Telegram. There’s not much to the arrest story at the moment.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
^ Well mostly the same title. Close enough to search.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@86: “AMMC”, huh. Could Trump have come up with a more obvious front for laundering campaign contributions if he’d tried?
I just wonder where most of it is going. Not, I don’t think, to his legal bills. It’s way more than enough for just that. Straight into Trump family coffers? To Putin to fund his awful war or otherwise circumvent sanctions? I don’t suppose there’s any way to (or probable cause to) subject this “AMMC” to some form of surveillance? (In a sane system, corporations would have few rights, mostly just property rights, and definitely not either free speech or privacy rights…)
“You put 20,000 people in an 18,000-person building, it’s bound to happen,” […] There were no health-related requirements for attendees, including testing or wearing of masks
A federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked on Monday a Biden administration program that could offer a path to citizenship for up to half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens, ruling in favor of 16 Republican-led states that sued the administration.
[Trump appointed] Judge J. Campbell Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas issued an administrative stay that stops the administration from approving applications, which it started accepting last week, while the court considers the merits of the case.
In suspending the initiative, Judge Barker said that the 67-page complaint filed on Friday by the coalition of states, led by Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, raised legitimate questions about the authority of the executive branch to bypass Congress and set immigration policy.
[…]
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal actions that Texas has spearheaded challenging federal immigration policies.
The Biden administration program, called Keeping Families Together, drew sharp criticism from Republicans…. In the lawsuit, the Republican-led states said that the program amounted to an “amnesty” for immigrants who are in the country unlawfully.
The program eases legalization for undocumented people who are married to Americans and have been living in the United States for more than 10 years. The potential beneficiaries have been in the country for 23 years, on average, according to the Homeland Security Department.
Even though marrying an American citizen generally provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship already, those who cross the southern border illegally are required to return to their home countries to complete the green card process. Often, families remain separated for years during the process, which discourages immigrant spouses from seeking to adjust their status.
The new program allows them to bypass that step and stay in the United States while their application is adjudicated. If approved, they are granted a form of “parole,” which shields them from deportation and allows them to receive work authorization. Once they have obtained legal permanent residency, beneficiaries become eligible, down the road, for U.S. citizenship.
The judge’s order on Monday was swiftly rebuked by immigrant advocates and others who supported the policy.
“It is bad for the economy and against human decency to prevent people who have been here working and paying taxes, often for more than 20 years, and married to U.S. citizens, from obtaining legal status more quickly,” said Rebecca Shi, the executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, representing 1,400 chief executives of U.S. companies…..
“An order like this is an extreme measure that — by law — should only be taken in the most urgent of situations,” said Karen Tumlin, the director of the Justice Action Center, one of the groups that filed a motion to intervene.
Texas and the other 15 states in the lawsuit argued that their finances would be adversely affected because the program would allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the country.
Ms. Tumlin said Texas “has not been able to provide an iota of evidence” that it would be harmed by the policy.
That is some heavy stuff to deal with. Just one close relative dying is like an asteroid impact.
birgerjohanssonsays
A bunch of pro-Ukraine milbloggers go on a road trip to Ukraine (LazerPig seems uncharasteristically sober)
“The NAFO Lads Ukraine road trip”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cDyq95F49BQ
A bit of background: Europe has no shortage of Putin apologists, these bloggers have done their part in opposing them on the internet.
“NAFO” is an in-joke, spoofing the name of a pro-Putin group.
Nasty clickbait at Youtube.
Almost every second item at Youtube has the word “Shocking” in the title.
OK, I can adjust to that.
Now, cynical ‘content creators’ have come up with a new way to manipulate people.
On lists of celebrities (usually actors) that have died, they include a picture of some living, famous actor up front to get the, “Oh, no I didn’t know he/she had passed away’ reaction, tricking the mark to click on the link.
Another gross thing is the ‘this is how they look today’ thing, where they find the most unappealing photo possible.
birgerjohanssonsays
Another poll analysis, at 8 minutes it is blissfully short.
‘The 2024 election map based on polling averages from all 50 states’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_3yclTuui-o
birgerjohanssonsays
“Only Murders in the Building season four (Disney + ) review – by far the funniest thing on TV” | The Guardian
70 days till E-day now. Other side of the World’s Biggest Ocean away and still really hoping Kamala Harris wins in a landslide & wuill do all the very little Ican to help that here. Countdown figure source :
Amna Nawaz: “There are just 70 days left until Election Day, and the campaigns are ramping into high gear. That means there’s a lot to break down this week in politics.”
@StevoR #95:
Eh, the far right loves pretending to feel threatened. Your original article—with the same title—was from Daily Express. “What next… the arrest of Elon Musk?” Mr Farage did not elaborate further.
So just wishful thinking and faint hope then? OTOH, if they’re guilty and sure looks that way to me, then maybe they do have some reason to fear?
But, according to Sam Parnia, associate professor of medicine at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, “what we believe about death is fundamentally wrong”. It is not the end, he says, but a “reversible state”.
Parnia’s 30 years of research into where life ends and death begins have made him a leading resurrectionist, with a fundamental desire to change how we view both. He outlines his discoveries in Lucid Dying, to be published on Thursday: a book that charts compelling evidence that reviving the dead isn’t as difficult as we might think, and his research into what happens when consciousness ebbs away…
A Republican-controlled county in Pennsylvania violated state law when election workers refused to tell voters that their mail-in ballot had been rejected and wouldn’t be counted in last April’s primary election, a judge ruled.
As a result, voters in Washington County were unable to exercise their legal right either to challenge the decision of the county elections board or to cast a provisional ballot in place of the rejected mail-in ballot, the judge said…
On Saturday, Musk reshared a screenshot of a Medium article on X — the social media website he also owns — by the noted shitposter who goes by the handle “Wall Street Silver.” The article’s headline reads “45% of Women Estimated to be Single and Childless by 2030,” with subtext declaring that “recent data” estimates “that 45% of women between ages 25 and 44 will be single and childless by the time 2030 rolls around,” and that “the number of single women in the U.S. is expected to rise 1.2% every year.” …
The article was published to Medium back in January of this year, under the byline of an alleged author named “Mark Higley.” Dozens of articles have appeared under that name for a Medium publication called The Savanna Post — but that’s it. He has no publishing history outside his Medium profile, and no social media footprint. A reverse image search for the headshot associated with his Medium profile returns a stock photo from Pexels.
When we looked into other alleged writers with bylines in the Savanna Post, there were similar signs of counterfeit: no broader writing history, no presence on social media, and many headshots traceable to stock image or clipart websites. And when we ran headlines from the Savannah Post’s archive through Google, we found that nearly all of the page’s articles are plagiarized word-for-word from other websites and publishers. (There’s at least one bylined Savanna Post who does appear to be real, and lists themself as the site’s “publisher” on LinkedIn. We reached out with questions but have yet to hear back.)…
Reginald Selkirksays
@115, 118
That article is about the views of Sam Parnia. He has been pushing questionable interpretations of “near-death experiences” for quite some time, so I suggest generous application of the salt shaker.
A Colorado man made an appearance in court on Monday after being arrested for making death threats online against election officials, judges, and federal agencies like the CIA, ATF, and FBI, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice. It is not wise to issue threats against agencies like the FBI, just in case it wasn’t clear.
Teak Brockbank, a 45-year-old man from Cortez, Colorado, made the threats on the right-wing social media platforms Gab and Rumble, two sites known for being safe spaces for Trump supporters, anti-semites, white supremacists, and other dipshit extremists. Brockbank made the threats between September 2021 and August 2022, according to the DOJ but was only arrested on Friday.
As one message allegedly written by Brockbank and directed at election workers in Colorado an Arizona read: “Once those people start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other. . . . This is the only way. So those of us that have the stomach for what has to be done should prepare our minds for what we all [a]re going to do!!!!!! It is time.”
Another message was directed at the CIA, FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, which the DOJ quotes as saying, “ATF CIA FBI show up to my house I am shooting them peace’s of s*** first No Warning!! Then I will call the sheriff!!! With everything that these piece of shit agencies have done I am completely justified to just start dropping them as soon as they step on my property! justified.”
Still another message was directed at a judge in Colorado, reading, “I could pick up my rifle and I could go put a bullet in this Mans head and send him to explain himself to our Creator right now. I would be Justified!!! Not only justified but obligated by those in my family who fought and died for the freedom in this country. . . . What can I do other than kill this man my self?”
…
Reginald Selkirk @ 125
This is like setting up a roadsign saying ” I consider murdering this guy” with your own name and adress at the bottom. What could possibly go wrong?
BTW did this guy possibly have Giuliani as legal advisor?
I have realised if you have some obscure speciality you never need to forget your password.
If you are into high-energy astronomy you will not forget 3C273, PSRB1257 or HDE226868. As for red dwarf systems Ross614 featured in the 1966 TV series “Raumpatrouille” (I am almost as old as PZ).
If you work with contagious diseases, just the many COVID variants provide an almost endless collection of digits and letters.
Naval history? ‘kissmehardy1805’
Several far-right Republicans are serving on a task force investigating the Trump assassination attempt. For some in the GOP, that’s not good enough.
On the surface, Republicans had reason to be pleased by the congressional response to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. In the House, for example, both parties’ leaders quickly came to an agreement to create a bipartisan investigatory task force — featuring seven Republican and six Democratic lawmakers — and it was approved unanimously.
What’s more, House Speaker Mike Johnson chose several far-right election deniers and conspiracy theorists to serve on the panel, which has wasted no time getting to work, despite the fact that Congress is on its summer break. Indeed, task force members have already traveled to the scene of the Pennsylvania shooting for a first-hand examination.
And yet, some GOP members still aren’t pleased. Politico reported:
[S]ome conservative lawmakers are determined to look into it themselves, a sign of the right flank’s frustration about who ultimately got seats on the panel and the pace of existing investigations, which span both Congress and the administration. Johnson had privately indicated that he wanted “serious” Republicans to take part in the task force, and he did appoint multiple conservatives to the panel. Still, he’s gotten flack from members further to the right who accused him of sidelining lawmakers who have previously rebelled against leadership.
“So myself and Cory Mills are leading a parallel investigation into what happened on J-13th and the assassination attempt,” Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona said on a podcast last week, referring to the July 13 shooting. “And we’re doing that because, like many of your listeners, we don’t trust the federal government to actually do the job necessary.”
Crane, incidentally, recently told a conservative media outlet, in reference to the shooting, “I don’t put it past some of the people in our government, their willingness to do anything to get rid of President Donald Trump.”
Just so we’re all clear, the idea that House GOP leaders chose “serious” Republicans to serve on the task force is a difficult idea to take seriously. The speaker tapped Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas, for example, and he’s an election denier who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential race. Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee is also on the panel, despite being an election denier who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential race, and despite the fact that his right-wing background was so controversial in 2017 that the Senate wouldn’t confirm him when Trump nominated him to serve as secretary of the Army.
The task force will be chaired by Republican Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who, in addition to being an election denier who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential race, is also up to his ears in the fake elector scandal; has accused Barack Obama of running a secret “shadow government”; and initially responded to the assassination attempt by describing it without evidence as an “attack from the left.”
Perhaps most notable of all is Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana — an election denier who’s also taken a leading role in concocting deeply weird conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack, including bizarre allegations related to the FBI and “ghost buses.” As a recent New York Times report summarized, “Even by a conspiracy theorist’s standards, the wild claims made by Representative Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana, stand out.”
Johnson, eyeing “serious” members, nevertheless tapped Higgins for the congressional investigation. [Oh, yeah. All of them seriously whacko.]
And yet, Crane and Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida have apparently concluded that the task force’s GOP members aren’t quite unhinged enough, necessitating a “parallel” examination.
As a result, the public should expect to eventually see two reports: one from a bipartisan task force led by far-right Republicans, and another from a partisan task force led by even-further-to-the-right Republicans. Watch this space.
Donald Trump wants to create a Space National Guard and a domestic “Iron Dome.” He hasn’t explained why he wants them or what they would actually do.
Donald Trump’s remarks at the National Guard Association’s conference were a bit of a mess. The Republican’s principal goal seemed to be blaming Vice President Kamala Harris for America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago, which was bizarre given that (a) it wasn’t Harris’ call; (b) Trump’s the one who negotiated the withdrawal agreement; and (c) Trump’s own White House national security advisor said Trump bears some responsibility for what transpired.
But this wasn’t the only problem.
In the same remarks, the GOP nominee lied about U.S. ammunition stockpiles. He falsely claimed that the Biden administration abandoned $85 billion worth of equipment in Afghanistan. He insisted that no American servicemembers were killed in Afghanistan in the 18 months that preceded the end of the war, which wasn’t even close to being true.
But of particular interest was Trump’s rhetoric about his related policy goals. The Hill reported:
Former President Trump said he would create a national guard for the Space Force and build an “Iron Dome” in the U.S. as he laid out his military plans during a Monday address. Trump, speaking Monday at a National Guard Association of the U.S. conference in Detroit, touted the creation of the Space Force, the sixth branch of the U.S. military. It was established in 2019 to protect U.S. assets in space from threats from Russia and China.
“One of my proudest achievements in my first term was to create Space Force, the first new branch of the armed forces in over 70 years; it’s a big deal,” he said. “Now that Space Force is up and running, I agree with your leadership — you want this very badly — but I agree that the time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the U.S. Space Force.” [Aaarrrggghh. It irks me when he tell audiences “you want this very badly.” It’s such a tell. Nobody wants it, so he is gaslighting his audience. Does he really think he can convince them that they want something nonsensical, impractical, and perhaps even impossible?]
Trump’s incessant focus on a domestic “Iron Dome” — a subject he talks about quite a bit — continues to be strange. The whole point of an “Iron Dome” is to protect against short-range missiles, and unless the Republican is worried about Canada or Mexico launching a surprise attack, the United States should probably focus on other national security priorities.
Indeed, the former president has never explained why, exactly, he’s so determined to build a domestic “Iron Dome,” though I have a hunch it’s because he likes the words “iron” and “dome.”
Similarly, while it’s true the GOP candidate likes to boast about the creation of the Space Force, Trump hasn’t gotten around to articulating any kind of vision for the branch, reinforcing concerns that he championed the move because he thought it sounded cool.
It’s against this backdrop that he now also wants a Space National Guard — again, for reasons he did not explain.
If this was Trump’s idea of a substantive speech, it was a failure.
Were audience members required to be in attendance?
Donald Trump may have made the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan worse for President Biden.
General H.R. McMaster told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Monday night that Trump, while president, sought to negotiate with the Taliban as U.S. troops began leaving Afghanistan, which undermined the Afghan government. As a result, the U.S. government forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 members of the Taliban…
State and national Republican Party leaders are suing the State Board of Elections again, days after the board criticized GOP leaders for filing a lawsuit based on what the board called “categorically false” allegations about the potential for voter fraud.
Monday’s complaint is the second lawsuit making election integrity-related claims that GOP leaders say call into question whether large numbers of immigrants are illegally voting in North Carolina — echoing false claims former President Donald Trump made in the 2016 and 2020 elections. State elections officials say the GOP’s claims are based on a skewed version of the facts, and that the lawsuit’s proposed solution is itself illegal.
Last week the the North Carolina Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, who are also behind Monday’s lawsuit, filed a separate lawsuit on the same theme of immigrants signing up to vote. The State Board of Elections, which is governed by a Democratic majority, said at the time that the claims in that lawsuit “undermine voter confidence on an entirely false premise.”
The new lawsuit, filed Monday, claims that nearly a quarter of a million people were allowed to register to vote in North Carolina without proving their identity. It asks for a federal judge to potentially order the state to revoke all those people’s voter registrations, making them ineligible to cast a ballot in the 2024 elections unless they re-register in the next few months.
It comes as public polling has increasingly shown Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris growing a lead on Trump. Earlier this year, some polls showed Trump leading incumbent President Joe Biden by a substantial margin in North Carolina. But since the switch from Biden to Harris polling has shown a tied race, or perhaps a slight Democratic edge, with Harris leading Trump by 1 to 3 percentage points in several recent North Carolina polls.
In 2020, Trump won North Carolina by less than 75,000 votes — about 1.5% of the vote that year. Monday’s lawsuit seeks a purge of more than 225,000 voters from the rolls in North Carolina.
[…]
A spokesman for the elections board told WRAL that the solution the lawsuit is seeking, to remove those voters from the rolls, is illegal because it’s now so close to the election. Mail-in ballots will start going out to voters in September, and early voting starts in October….
“The lawsuit is asking for a rapid-fire voter removal program that violates federal law,” Gannon said.
The Republican Party leaders claim in their lawsuit that some of the people in the database without matching information could be immigrants illegally registered to vote, although it offers no evidence of such cases…..
[…]
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a Durham-based civil rights group, criticized the recent lawsuits as a cynical ploy by Republicans to set the stage for Trump and other Republicans to try once against to overturn the results of the election if he loses….
“The RNC is not filing these lawsuits because they think they will win; they are filing these lawsuits despite knowing they will lose,” the groups wrote. “The RNC intends to use those losses to amplify baseless conspiracy theories about how the election is being stolen and the courts will not stop it. This lawsuit is part and parcel of that effort — designed to undermine confidence in North Carolina elections.”
Ukrainian forces launched a fresh attempt to break across the Russian border into the Belgorod region on Tuesday.
Russian military bloggers said that hundreds of Ukrainian troops supported by armoured fighting vehicles had mounted an attack on the Nekhoteyevka border checkpoint.
Other reports suggested a second thrust was made further east along the frontier at the Shebekino checkpoint.
The attempted cross-border raids came as Ukraine’s occupation of Russia’s Kursk region, which neighbours Belgorod, entered its fourth week…
birgerjohanssonsays
When observing Brown dwarf objects being born in star-forming nebulas, none with a mass below five Jupiter masses has been observed. This may reflect that fragmenting nebulas below this mass limit cannot contract and form objects. There is considerable overlap in mass between the smallest Brown dwarves and the largest Jupiter-type planets, the difference is the way they form.
With just 15 days left until the scheduled Sept. 10 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, negotiations between their two campaigns have hit an impasse over whether the candidates’ microphones will be muted when it is not their turn to speak, according to four people familiar with the issue.
The Harris campaign wants the mics to be active because they expect Trump to say something stupid and because they think Harris can handle attempts to interrupt or speak over Harris better. The Trump campaign wants the mic muted, likely because they don’t think Trump can go that long without saying something stupid either.
There is also an element of brinkmanship to this game. Trump doesn’t seem to want to do another debate but also doesn’t want to be seen as backing out. Harris needs the public coverage more but doesn’t want to give anything away to Trump, letting Trump roll over her the way he has managed to roll over other people in some previous debates would look terrible. As this is highly likely to be the only debate they do it’s critical for both sides to get it right.
Last month, the Northwest-based pollster DHM Research did a wide-ranging survey of 500 Washington voters about our state, the economy and other issues. In one section they asked people to rank their reactions to various groups on a “feeling thermometer.” A rating of 0 degrees means “you feel as cold and negative as possible,” while higher rankings up to 100 suggest warmth and positivity.
… and then, near the bottom, “atheists.”
Absolute last, though, are “Republicans.” It’s the only group that ranks below the midpoint. ..
At a campaign event in Arizona late last week, Donald Trump spent a predictable amount of time targeting Vice President Kamala Harris, specifically telling his supporters, “Nobody lies like her. She is a liar. She makes up crap.”
The Republican’s rhetoric was, to be sure, rather ironic. After all, the former president is not only the most prolific liar in recent memory, he makes stuff up on a daily basis. Indeed, minutes after insisting that the Democratic nominee “makes up crap,” Trump told the same audience that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “approved a bill to give tampons in every young man’s bathroom.”
In reality, Walz did no such thing. In a speech in which the GOP candidate complained about campaign dishonesty he peddled campaign dishonesty.
Two days later, Team Trump released a campaign ad that insisted the Biden/Harris administration has “literally unleashed the IRS to harass workers who receive tips.” As a Washington Post fact-check report explained, that didn’t happen.
To recap, the Trump campaign claims Harris can’t be trusted on her no-tax tip plan because the IRS proposed a plan to streamline three programs to help employers calculate tip income. But the proposal has been shelved. So, leaving aside the exaggerations about what the proposal would do, it’s simply false to claim Harris “literally unleashed the IRS to harass workers who receive tips.”
Note, this wasn’t an off-hand and unscripted comment at a rally; the Trump campaign carefully included this specific phrasing in a paid television ad. The Republican operation almost certainly knew the claim was baseless, but the former president and his 2024 team pushed it anyway.
A day later, Trump spoke at the National Guard Association’s conference and took care to blame Harris for America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan three years ago, despite the fact that (a) it wasn’t Harris’ call; (b) Trump’s the one who negotiated the withdrawal agreement; and (c) his own White House national security adviser said Trump bears some responsibility for what transpired.
All of which leaves the political world with an awkward question: If Harris and Walz are as awful as Republicans claim, shouldn’t Trump be able to make a compelling case against them without making stuff up? Shouldn’t it be easy for the GOP nominee and his allies to stick to reality-based critiques?
Doesn’t the fact that the former president has to rely so heavily on dishonesty reinforce the idea that maybe Harris and Walz aren’t so bad after all?
birgerjohanssonsays
A novel way to build tunnels without mortar or cement.
“Whoever Invented This Way Of Building Tunnels Is a Genius” #shorts
.https://youtube.com/shorts/rz-MiuM2Lw8
Late last week, the two major-party presidential nominees traded notable endorsements. On the one hand, Donald Trump picked up support from independent conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which didn’t seem to bother Democrats at all.
Around the same time, Kamala Harris and her team said they would see the RFK Jr. endorsement and raise Team Trump with a dozen Republican White House lawyers who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations, each of whom are now supporting the Democratic nominee.
This week, something similar happened. Trump picked up backing from former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, at which point members of Team Harris again said they’d see the former congresswoman’s endorsement and raise Trump a whole lot more of bipartisan support. USA Today reported:
More than 200 Republicans who previously worked for either former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in an open letter Monday obtained exclusively by USA TODAY. […] 238 signatures in all.
If this sounds at all familiar, President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign received similar backing from former Bush, McCain, and Romney staffers four years ago. The difference is, the number is even larger now.
“We reunite today, joined by new George H.W. Bush alumni, to reinforce our 2020 statements and, for the first time, jointly declare that we’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz this November,” the letter reads. “Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”
These new endorsements […] came on the heels of Harris also picking up a variety of other Republican endorsements and Democrats including some GOP speakers at the party’s convention in Chicago.
[…] don’t be too quick to overlook the broader context. Trump continues to insist, on a daily basis, that the vice president is a radical communist hellbent on destroying the American way of life.
It’s against that backdrop that hundreds of Republicans, who’ve held public office and/or served in GOP administrations, keep coming forward to effectively remind the electorate just how wrong Trump’s attacks are.
“Cornel West seems to see an opening in the field after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped his bid for the office this past week,” the Daily Beast reports.
“In what appeared to be a blatant play for RFK Jr.’s supporters—who Donald Trump is hoping will go to him after getting that candidate’s endorsement—West posted a video on social media Sunday that co-opted the anti-vaccine message that had been central to Kennedy’s campaign.”
Said West: “I want to speak to my brothers and sisters of all colors who are concerned, not just about the vaccine but the role of the pharmaceutical companies in shaping public policy.”
birgerjohanssonsays
The shuttle mission that launched the Chandra space telescope came within a wisker of engine explosion, and of getting too little oxygen to reach orbit.
By extreme luck, two unrelated equipment failures cancelled each other out and it was only after the shuttle returned it was discovered how near disaster it had come.
“The Space Shuttle’s Luckiest Escape”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qiJMdfj9NmI
Rachel Maddow gave a comprehensive breakdown of the chaos surrounding the Georgia State Election Board on her MSNBC show Monday night. The Republican-dominated board has passed a series of controversial changes that would empower election officials to question, delay, or otherwise sabotage election certification. These moves have led to praise from infamous election denier Donald Trump and lawsuits from Democrats seeking to stop them.
“They are passing these rules that are Rudy-Giuliani-hair-dye-dripping-down-the-face-crazy,” Maddow said, describing the slew of new rules that are clearly designed to protect and embolden MAGA-affiliated election operatives.
“I think part of understanding the importance of this tactic is that confusion and mistakes are probably the point,” Maddow explains. “It’s one thing to say we want the right to flip an election result. That’s going to be sort of a hard sell. It’s another thing to say we want the right, and we claim the right to essentially report that there’s no knowable result here, that there isn’t any discernible result, that there’s a big question about it, that it seems like there’s a cloud over the result.”
Maddow did see some hopeful signs in recent reports that Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has asked the state attorney general whether or not he has the right to remove problematic members of the board, and the Democratic Party’s new lawsuit against the rule changes. [video at the link]
Across three new ads, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris details highlights of her economic plan. That plan, announced at a speech earlier this month, targets Americans’ biggest fiscal issues by proposing aid for both homebuyers and renters, assistance for new parents, a tax cut for working and middle-class families, and a detailed program to address “greedflation.”
But getting Americans to concentrate on policy can be difficult, even when it affects something that regularly tops the list of our greatest concerns.
Thankfully, the ads make it all digestible to non-wonks. And unlike Donald Trump—whose campaign funds go down a mysterious black hole—Harris is already spending to get these ads on the air. So expect to see them soon, especially if you live in a battleground state.
The first ad, “Opportunity,” focuses on how Harris’ policies are intended to help people not just survive but improve their lives. Whether it’s to own a home, buy a new car, or start a business, Harris’ plan is aimed at providing Americans with the chance to live their dream. [video at the link]
The ad “Everyday” gives an overview of the plan and how it would address the issues affecting Americans in their daily lives. When people talk about “kitchen-table issues,” these are the kinds of issues they’re talking about. [video at the link]
The final ad, “Full House,” concentrates more on housing issues, kicking off with a personal story from Harris’ childhood. It acknowledges the problems with the current market, hits the way corporate landlords manipulate rents and prices, and moves to Harris’ plan to make home ownership easier and more affordable. [video at the link]
Two minutes and 30 seconds’ worth of airtime certainly won’t give anyone a detailed view of Harris’ economic policy, and there’s enough overlap between the ads that they fall well short of hitting every point. But those overlaps also have value. They reveal what Harris believes is worth repeating at every turn: cutting costs, making housing affordable, and providing a break to working families. The words “security,” “stability,” and “dignity” get a special focus, suggesting that, even in discussing economics, Harris is contrasting her policies with the chaos and hate on which Trump has based his campaign
These ads won’t inform anyone of the details of Harris’ plan, but they do show its direction and intent. If that’s enough to get people to look more seriously at what Harris is saying, then the ads will have done their job.
[…] Could Trump compile over 200 Democratic officials of a similar rank who support his candidacy? It’s not clear if he’d find that many supporters even among those who served in his administration. Either way, the support that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are getting from Republicans should be a big red flag to Trump and his supporters.
Joining the officials endorsing Harris is retired four-star General Larry Ellis, who served as the commander of the U.S. Army Forces Command under George W. Bush. This is the first time he has endorsed a candidate for president.
“Donald Trump has demonstrated that he is wholly and dangerously unfit for Commander-in-Chief,” Ellis wrote in his endorsement of Harris. “He praises and emboldens our enemies that seek to weaken our country. He has denigrated our brave men and women in uniform.”
The mass endorsement follows the appearance of former Republican officials during all four nights of last week’s Democratic National Convention. At least seven Republicans appeared on the DNC stage, including former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, former Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, and former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
[…] Despite the way some Republicans want to spin this, those endorsing Harris aren’t all junior clerks from some obscure agency. They are chiefs of staff, press secretaries, legislative directors, campaign chairs, and top advisors. They are high-ranking agency officials, U.S. attorneys, and a former director of the National Security Council.
These are people who worked closely with former Republican presidents and past candidates, all lining up to say that Trump isn’t worthy of the office.
[…] Trump supporters may smear these officials as RINOS, or Republicans in name only. They have also wielded that term against a Republican speaker of the House, past Republican candidates for president, and Republican presidents. It’s been thrown at Republicans as hard right as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—in other words, anyone seen as potentially disagreeing with Trump.
But if such an overwhelming number of Republicans are RINOs … then who is the real Republican in name only?
Biden-Harris Administration Sues Pants Off Price-Fixing App That Keeps The Rent Too Damn High
You want Harris policy? This is in her policy already!
The Biden-Harris administration, as part of its never-ending crusade to impose communism by requiring that players in the “free market” actually play by the rules, has launched an antitrust lawsuit against the real estate software company “RealPage,” arguing that its app helps landlords engage in illegal price-fixing, inflating rents nationwide and stifling competition.
One of the basic rules of capitalism is that the allegedly free market can’t work its magic if some players are cheating, which is why we have laws against price-fixing and cartels. […] RealPage pretty much enables price fixing through its algorithm, like so:
The company collects data like vacancy rates, current rent prices, and lease end dates from their clients, who are multifamily housing property managers and landlords. Then, RealPage feeds that aggregated information into its algorithm, which spits back out recommended prices, updated daily, for every available rental.
But it’s not merely a helpful gadget; RealPage effectively allows competing businesses to “share proprietary data to coordinate setting higher rental rates,” and the feds consider that price-fixing, whether the landlords are directly colluding with each other or all going with the rental prices spat out by RealPage.
In their lawsuit, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice argue that price fixing doesn’t stop being price fixing just because an algorithm is doing it for you. The software is designed and sold as a way to drive up rental prices, a point for which the DOJ has impeccable witnesses: the sales pitch from RealPage staffers, who woo landlords with promises like “our tool ensures that [landlords] are driving every possible opportunity to increase price even in the most downward trending or unexpected conditions.” [Does a twirl of the evil landlord’s mustache come with this?]
The case also cites a RealPage exec who kind of gives away the company’s anticompetitive game, explaining that avoiding the uncertainty of the free market is so much better than having to actually compete:
There is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down.
When we cheat together, we all win! How could anyone but renters and communists object to that?
[…] the RealPage price-fixing mess was first exposed in 2022 by the muckraking journalism nonprofit ProPublica. ProPublica unearthed a RealPage video featuring company VP Jay Parsons cheerfully noting that apartment rents had recently gone up by as much as 14.5 percent, prompting another exec, Andrew Bowen, to marvel at how great the software worked: “I think it’s driving it, quite honestly. […] As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually.” [!!!]
With such incriminating evidence that RealPage is driving what the FTC calls “algorithmic collusion,” the case might seem to be a slam dunk, but […] it’s a novel case, the first time the DOJ has pursued an antitrust lawsuit where the illegal price manipulation is driven by an algorithm.
[…] a pledge to rein in data firms that help landlords do price-fixing is part of Kamala Harris’s first set of policy proposals released just before last week’s Democratic National Convention, as is a promise to stop Wall Street investors from bulk purchases of homes that they then mark up by an outrageous amount — yet another price-fixing scheme that has made housing more expensive, which has in turn been a key driver of inflation in the last few years.
In addition to the administration’s lawsuit against RealPage, Harris is calling on Congress — with a Democratic congressional majority we also need to elect this fall — to pass the Preventing the Algorithmic Facilitation of Rental Housing Cartels Act, a bill that would create an industrywide ban on what RealPage is up to.
[…] we can already hear, months in advance, the whining and the lawsuits being filed in Texas.
birgerjohanssonsays
Terry Talks Movies:
“1970s Science Fiction Hidden Gems – Part Two”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gVdWtTCCqjQ
Crimes Of the Future is an early Cronenberg film with ‘body horror’ & Klsus Kinski, and The Terminal Man is based on a Michael Chricton novel.
Is Trump Buying Ads In South Florida Just So Baby Can See Himself On TV?
Or is it that AND ALSO something else?
From the Department Of It Should Be Illegal For A Man Like This To Run For President:
There might be concerns that donations to the Trump campaign are going into a confusing “black hole” under the purview of Trump, his family, and his close buddies, with donors having little understanding exactly what they’re getting for their investment. (No sympathy: If those morons don’t know by now not to give him money, they should spend the rest of their retirement funds on Truth Social stock.)
But at least $47,000 of it is accounted for!
They’re buying ads in the media market surrounding Mar-a-Lago — a safe Democratic district in a fairly safely red state — so the baby and the baby’s friends can see the baby on TV. Otherwise the baby gets mad, and you know what happens when the baby gets mad.
[…] Sam Stein reports at The Bulwark that it’s not just Baby Trump who wants to see Baby […] on TV at Mar-a-Lago, and gets mad if they’re not there. […] It’s also for the Palm Beach donors who, the boss feels, need to see Baby on the TV in Palm Beach County.
“This is more about keeping the donors happy than the principal. There’s a lot of donors in Palm Beach,” said a campaign insider, who noted that Trump himself would not be in Palm Beach much this week. “If spending $50k gets us $5 million, that’s good ROI. If it makes the boss happy, too, then good.”
[…] Stein says the $47,000 spend is for a 15-second ad, and reminds us that Trump has done this before, like back in 2020 when Trump’s campaign bought $400K worth of ads in the famous swing state of DC. They had a halfway reasonable-sounding excuse for that one, too:
“We want members of Congress and our DC-based surrogates to see the ads so they know our strong arguments for President Trump and against Joe Biden,” then-spokesman Tim Murtaugh said at the time.
[…] Of course, it’s entirely possible the Trump campaign is buying ads in south Florida because […] they’re suddenly shit-scared they could lose Florida. Stein points to a tweet from Democratic consultant Kevin Cate almost two weeks ago, responding to polls showing Florida might be getting closer than we imagine the Trump campaign is comfortable with: [X post at the link]
Cate responded to his tweet yesterday, with this news of this week’s Trump South Florida ad buy.
If he starts buying Florida ads in media markets that don’t include Mar-a-Lago, you’ll know they’re shitting their pants.
Terry Talks Movies
“More Science Fiction Hidden Gems Of The 1960s”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=z58XS6jJGqI
‘Planet Of the Vampires’ may have inspired aspects of ‘Alien’
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna, OM @ 150
Let the adjuciated rapist make the Florida voters even more sick of him.
Chinese government hackers penetrate U.S. internet providers to spy.
Beijing’s hacking effort has “dramatically stepped up from where it used to be,” says former top U.S cybersecurity official.
Chinese government-backed hackers have penetrated deep into U.S. internet service providers in recent months to spy on their users, according to people familiar with the ongoing American response and private security researchers.
The unusually aggressive and sophisticated attacks include access to at least two major U.S. providers with millions of customers as well as to several smaller providers […]
“It is business as usual now for China, but that is dramatically stepped up from where it used to be. It is an order of magnitude worse,” said Brandon Wales, who until earlier this month was executive director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA.
The hacks raise concern because their targets are believed to include government and military personnel working undercover and groups of strategic interest to China.
[…] the groups considered the effort important enough to exploit previously undiscovered software flaws that could have been preserved for later use.
Though there is no evidence that the new inroads are aimed at anything other than gathering intelligence, some of the techniques and resources employed are associated with those used in the past year by a China-backed group known as Volt Typhoon, two of the people said. U.S. intelligence officials said that group sought access to equipment at Pacific ports and other infrastructure to enable China to sow panic and disrupt America’s ability to move troops, weaponry and supplies to Taiwan if armed conflict breaks out.
[…] The Chinese Embassy in Washington rejected the accusations.
“‘Volt Typhoon’ is actually a ransomware cybercriminal group who calls itself the ‘Dark Power’ and is not sponsored by any state or region,” said embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu.
“There are signs that in order to receive more congressional budgets and government contracts, the U.S. intelligence community and cybersecurity companies have been secretly collaborating to piece together false evidence and spread disinformation about so-called Chinese government’s support for cyberattacks against the U.S.,” he added. [Sounds like a conspiracy theory similar to Republican “deep state” nonsense.]
Lumen researchers said they had identified three U.S. internet service providers that had been hacked this summer, one of them large, along with another U.S. company and one in India.
In a blog made public Tuesday, Lumen said the hackers used a previously unknown vulnerability, known as a zero-day flaw, in a program made by Versa Networks for managing wide-area networks. Versa acknowledged the critical vulnerability late last week, warning only its direct customers.
On Monday, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company published a blog post about the problem, saying that it had issued a patch and that “impacted customers failed to implement system hardening and firewall guidelines.”
Lumen wrote that it located malware inside ISP routers serving certain groups or individual customers that could intercept passwords from those customers. Lumen said it believed the malicious software was being used by Volt Typhoon.
[…] a Chinese state hacking group distinct from Volt Typhoon was able to get far enough inside the service provider to alter the Domain Name System (DNS) web addresses that users were trying to reach and divert them elsewhere, allowing the hackers to insert back doors for spying.
[…] DNS manipulation is something of a specialty among Chinese government hacking groups. A mysterious campaign identified earlier this year by security experts at Infoblox and attributed to China involved using the so-called Great Firewall of China, which normally misdirects people on the mainland trying to reach restricted services or content. […]
Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, was rescued by troops with Shayetet 13, the 401st Brigade, in a “complex operation” in southern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet said Tuesday.
Israeli forces rescued a Bedouin man during an operation in Gaza, Israeli officials announced Tuesday, more than 10 months after he was taken captive during the Hamas terror attacks on Israel.
Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, was rescued from an underground tunnel in a “complex mission” by Israeli commandos acting on intelligence, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a news briefing Tuesday.
“He is alive and back home in Israel,” Hagari said.
Alkadi, a father of 11 from south of Rahat, an Arab Bedouin city in the Southern District of Israel, was taken hostage during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks while working in security at a packing factory in Kibbutz Magen in southern Israel, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement Tuesday.
[…] Alkadi was in stable medical condition and was being transferred for medical checks at a hospital. In a video shared by the IDF, Alkadi can be seen wearing a tank top and smiling as he shakes hands with the commanding officer of the Shayetet 13, Israel’s naval commando unit.
In a separate video shared on X by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, family members of Alkadi could be seen running to greet him at a medical facility. [video at the link]
[…] More than 100 hostages are believed to remain in Hamas’ captivity […]
Reports from other news sources say that Alkali was rescued from a tunnel system in southern Gaza. There are also reports of more than 100 Palestinians being killed during the rescue operation. I have not seen any combatant-versus-civilian figures. A lot of details seem to be missing.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced on Truth Social that he has “reached an agreement” to participate in a September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, noting that “the rules will be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone.”
Apparently they came to a stalemate and agreed to go with the same rules as the previous debate. Note that is Trump only saying this. He has been known to make public announcements that don’t align with reality.
[…] on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued Moscow’s latest round of nuclear saber-rattling.
Lavrov accused the West of complicity in Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, saying that Russia’s nuclear doctrine was being “clarified” accordingly.
He did not elaborate on what this meant, exactly, but Russia has often made these sorts of threats since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2024. As recently as June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the same thing, that he could modify his country’s nuclear doctrine, which currently permits the use of such weapons only in specific circumstances.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov alluded to Russia’s anger at American participation in Ukraine’s cross-border military activity, saying the U.S.’s involvement in Kursk incursion was a “fact.”
“The consequences [for the United States] could be much harsher than those they are already experiencing. They know where and in what areas we are reacting in practical terms,” Ryabkov said on Tuesday, according to TASS.
[…] Russia has repeatedly targeted civilian infrastructure, from schools and hospitals to apartment blocks and grocery stores. The Kremlin nevertheless claims it only strikes military targets.
When asked about the death of the Reuters employee, Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov told reporters: “I repeat once again: The strikes are carried out against military infrastructure facilities, or those somehow connected to military infrastructure.”
Russia likely isn’t able to sustain this intensity of attack for long, according to a note late Monday from the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War. They nevertheless have painful and lasting consequences, not just the loss of life but disruption to energy and water supply in Kyiv and elsewhere after critical infrastructure was damaged.
[..] “Why do western media keep asking if the attacks of the last 36 hours are a retaliation for #Kursk?” Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko posted on X. “Anyone following the news these last 2.5 years can clearly see that NOTHING changed in #russia war tactics: they just keep bombing whatever they can bomb in #Ukraine.”
Given Russia’s efforts to interfere in the United States’ 2016 presidential election, officials were on high alert during the 2020 race for similar tactics. With this in mind, when The New York Post published a notorious report on Hunter Biden’s laptop during the race four years ago, U.S. agencies suspected it was Russian misinformation. So did social media giants, which temporarily limited access to the story.
Facebook was among the tech companies that acted, and Mark Zuckerberg has long said he wished his company had handled the matter differently. The CEO reiterated that point in correspondence this week with Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.
Donald Trump apparently found all of this significant anew and published this missive to his own social media platform.
“Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!). IN OTHER WORDS, THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED. FoxNews, New York Post, Rep. Laurel Lee, House Judiciary Committee.
For readers interested in punctuation and grammatical rules, I’d note that the former president’s rant started with quotation marks, but there was no end-quote. I’ve long since stopped trying to understand his idiosyncratic approach to the language.
Nevertheless, as is often the case, Trump probably saw a headline or two, failed to grasp the relevant facts, and published some online hysterics that didn’t really make any sense. But of particular interest was a pertinent detail the GOP candidate overlooked: He was president in 2020, not Joe Biden.
Look at the rant again: To hear Trump tell it, “the White House” was responsible for trying to suppress a controversial report, which in his mind, necessarily meant that the 2020 election was “rigged.”
But in light of the fact that we’re talking about events that unfolded in 2020, he was referring to his own White House.
It’s striking how often this comes up. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia last year blamed the Biden administration’s policies for a Michigan woman whose sons died in 2020 — when, Biden was a private citizen and Trump was president.
Months later, Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, blamed Biden for “paying people to stay home” in 2020, referring to a law that Trump signed into law. The same week, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado blamed the Democratic president for Covid-related school closures in 2020 — which, again, was a year that Biden spent campaigning, not in the Oval Office.
It also wasn’t too long ago when former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany also pointed to crime data from 2020 to blame Biden for the U.S. murder rate, apparently unaware that it was her former boss who was president at the time.
More recently, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody took aim at the Biden administration’s approach to criminal justice protests in 2020 — when there was no Biden administration. […]
A few months ago, Donald Trump boasted that during his term, he “built 571 miles” of border wall. The former president added that he was poised to add another 200 miles within a few weeks, concluding, “I built much more wall than I said I was going to build.”
All of this was spectacularly untrue. In fact, every element of the Republican’s claims turned reality on its head, badly distorting the facts about an issue he appears to consider one of his top priorities.
It was emblematic of the GOP’s broader problem with the debate over border policy: Reality keeps getting in the way of their campaign rhetoric.
The Washington Post, for example, recently published an analysis of the party’s advertising, highlighting dozens of ads that criticize the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the border, “while showing chaotic scenes that were filmed in 2018 under the Trump administration.”
One commercial in particular showed footage of Central American migrants in Tijuana rushing the southern border. The voice-over and text blamed Democrats for the unrest, which actually unfolded during Trump’s presidency.
[Trump] traveled to Arizona last week for a border-wall photo-op, though Team Trump apparently forgot to care about the details. The Post reported:
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump came here on Thursday to heap praise on the structure standing to his right — “the Rolls-Royce of walls,” he called it — and lament the unused segments lying to his left. Joining him, Border Patrol union leader Paul A. Perez called the standing fence “Trump wall” and the idle parts “Kamala wall,” after Trump’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
There was a dramatic problem with the rhetoric: As the Post’s article explained, “This section of 20-foot steel slats was actually built during the administration of President Barack Obama.”
In case this isn’t obvious, Democrats have never said border barriers are entirely unnecessary between the Pacific Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. There are high-traffic areas, party officials have long said, in which it makes sense to have to have structures to prevent illegal crossings. Throughout Obama’s term, it was not uncommon to build and repair barriers along these parts of the border.
As of last week, Trump tried to take credit for some of the Obama administration’s work, either (a) hoping the public wouldn’t know the difference, or (b) cluelessly unaware of reality. […]
What do you do when you’re angry because your opponent keeps calling you “weird” and you’re also behind in a race you were expecting to easily win? For Donald Trump, the answer seemed obvious: Flatter independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. into dropping out and endorsing you, then collect his 4-5 percentage points in national polls. And Trump did that just last week.
Only there’s no guarantee that Kennedy’s exit will shift those supporters to Trump. We’ll have a better idea about that as new polls come out in the next few days.
In the meantime, what is certain is that, by putting Kennedy on his team, Trump gets … Kennedy and all his fun issues. So open up the door, Johnny! Let’s show him what he bought!
No, we’re not talking about the brain worm. Open the other door. No, not the dead baby bear. Next. Not the sexist emu. And not the time he chainsawed the head off a dead whale and took it home as a hideous souvenir—though there is someone who would like to talk to him about that.
No, it’s that other thing. The one that may be sillier than Kennedy’s other exploits combined.
Ahh, there it is. [Tweet at the link]
In this tweet, posted Monday, the “crime” Kenendy is promising to stop is something called “chemtrails.”
The chemtrails conspiracy theory emerged in the 1990s and evolved alongside the internet. Though by now it has accumulated so much lore that proponents can rant about it endlessly, at its core is nothing more than this: Someone saw the lines in the sky that followed a jet and thought it wasn’t just moisture stirred up into fog by a passing wing, but instead a chemical being sprayed on everyone by someone.
What kind of chemical? Secret. For what purpose? Mind control. Or making us all sterile. Or fighting climate change. Or causing climate change. Or something. Who is behind it? The government, or maybe aliens. Possibly, it’s a team-up.
What the proponents of this conspiracy theory call a chemtrail is known back in the real world as a contrail, short for “condensation trail.” And it’s possible that no other conspiracy theory has been so thoroughly debunked by so many sources on so many occasions. Of all the conspiracy theories Kennedy might believe in, this is the most profoundly foolish. And unlike what he once did to a bear or a whale (or that poor worm), this is a nuttiness with which Kennedy is still actively engaged.
More importantly, notice that Kennedy doesn’t just step in to express his support for the theory, he says, “We are going to stop this crime.”
We.
That sounds very much like Kennedy is speaking as a member of the potential 2025 Trump administration. He’s promising the government will get right on this problem of chasing literal clouds.
And that’s apparently the case. A couple of hours after that post, Kennedy was on with Tucker Carlson’s web show, claiming that Trump has made him a member of his transition team.
“I’ve been asked to go onto the transition team to help pick the people who will be running the government and I’m looking forward to that,” Kennedy said. (On Tuesday, a Trump campaign adviser corroborated this to The New York Times.)
Now we can only wait until he appoints a Secretary of Chemtrails and Chainsaw Dissection.
[…] That’s sure to stop people from calling Trump weird. […]
A type of genetically modified wheat developed by Argentina’s Bioceres Crop Solutions may be safely grown and bred in the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Tuesday.
Bioceres must still complete additional steps, including field trials, that will take years before it can commercialize HB4 wheat, modified to tolerate drought, industry group U.S. Wheat Associates said…
Oh, Just Jesse Watters Making Jokes About Generals ‘Having Their Way’ With Kamala Harris
Jesse Watters, the windowless ice cream truck who bragged about manipulating his current wife into getting into his car by letting the air out of her tires — he was married at the time and the woman in question worked for him — had some very Jesse Watters thoughts yesterday about Kamala Harris’s foreign policy: [video at the link]
“What is her foreign policy? This is where the president has his most impact. You have a lot of room to maneuver there as commander-in-chief. We don’t know who she is. We don’t know what she believes. She’s gonna get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.”
How very on-brand for Jesse Watters to be using that exact language. A psychologist might have thoughts.
[…] Greg Gutfeld can be heard in the background, giggling gutturally like a guy who gets a special thrill out of gang rape jokes.
Watters insisted after the fact that of course he didn’t mean it sexually, when he said the generals would have their way with President Kamala Harris in the Situation Room.
[…] A bit later, Watters made jokes suggesting that his mother (a Democrat) would probably go on MSNBC that night to condemn her son’s comments about generals having their way with Kamala Harris in the Situation Room.
[…] isn’t it weird to be making jokes like that about Kamala Harris in the Situation Room, not only because their candidate is an adjudicated rapist, but because he’s also a traitor who spent his presidency selling out America to its enemies?
Everything they say is projection, and every accusation is a confession.
Later on his own personal show last night, Watters tried to start a birther conspiracy theory about Kamala Harris, suggesting that she’s lying when she says she grew up in Oakland, since her longform birth certificate says Berkeley.
Ayup.
Also there is a right-wing conspiracy theory going around right now that Tim Walz is lying about who his dog Scout is because he was pictured petting another dog in a video where he wished his dog Scout a happy birthday and NO, YOU ARE THE WEIRD ONES, NOT MAGA. [Walz was at a dog park with his dog, Scout, and he stopped to pet another dog at the park.]
Seventy days.
Reginald Selkirksays
The news “mainstream” outlets are hiding from you:
The Voynich Manuscript – which has resisted all attempts to translate it for over a century – has reportedly yielded up its secrets.
Dr Gerard Cheshire, from the University of Bristol, has said in an article published in an academic journal that he used a combination of lateral thinking and ingenuity to unravel the Voynich Manuscript, which features in the Indiana Jones films.
The Voynich Manuscript is a medieval, handwritten and illustrated text, which has been carbon-dated to the mid-15th century. It shows images of strange, “alien plant species”.
It is named after Wilfrid M Voynich, a Polish book dealer and antiquarian, who purchased the manuscript in 1912…
This isn’t the first claim of a solution. Keep your eyes open for verification or denial.
The Voynich Manuscript has long baffled scholars—and attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists. Now a prominent medievalist is taking a new approach to unlocking its secrets…
Special counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday filed a superseding indictment in the election interference case against former President Donald Trump, slimming down the allegations against the 2024 presidential nominee in light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
The important thing is that this isn’t a big change. A few secondary charges that would be untenable under the latest ruling are dropped but the 4 main charges remain. Apparently a lot of it is rewording to make clear that what is included are not presidential duties and thus not effected by the latest Supreme Court ruling over presidential immunity. Expect to see a new round of appeals over that.
Chicago public school parents are calling on local radio personality Amy Jacobson to step down as head coach of Amundsen High School’s boys and girls varsity volleyball teams after she mocked Gus Walz, the son of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, last week…
Amanda Griffith-Atkins wrote a letter to Amundsen’s principal, Kristi Eilers, requesting an apology to the school community after listening to Jacobson and Proft’s Aug. 22 show. Her son, who’s in 10th grade and has Prader-Willi Syndrome, attends the high school as part of a cluster program designed for children with disabilities.
“(Amundsen is) definitely a place where there are lots of kids with disabilities in the building, and so I think when I heard about the podcast, I was just honestly shocked,” said Griffith-Atkins, who is a licensed therapist. “This isn’t about what her political views may or may not be. It’s about the fact that she mocked a child with a disability or that she sat there silently while somebody else did it, and she didn’t speak up about it.” …
Former President Donald Trump keeps lying that “everybody,” including Democrats, wanted the Supreme Court to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that had guaranteed abortion rights around the country since 1973.
“Every Democrat, every Republican, everybody wanted Roe v. Wade terminated and brought back to the states,” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said on Fox News on Thursday morning.
“Everybody, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Conservatives, wanted Roe v. Wade TERMINATED, and brought back to the States,” he wrote on social media on Thursday night.
Trump, facing criticism for appointing three of the justices who overturned Roe in 2022, has been delivering versions of this “everybody” claim for months. But the claim is an up-is-down reversal of reality, especially the part about the views of Democrats…
I don’t know, Trump’s ass is probably three times the size of Putin’s.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Lynna @145:
Maddow did see some hopeful signs […] Gov. Brian Kemp has asked […] whether or not he has the right to remove problematic [elected Trumpy] members of the [State Election Board]
Ugh, a silver lining on a very dark cloud.
Sure, Kemp’s currently in-fighting with Trump over not having gone along with 2020 election denial and for being incapable of pardoning him. This is still a Republican governor asking for more power over elections.
When he was Secretary of State, Maddow made Kemp famous for neglecting election cybersecurity and for meddling personally (including while he ran for governor).
By all accounts, Georgia administered the 2020 elections perfectly well. As the dust settled, state officials boasted about how effective the system was […] Democrats did surprisingly well […] Trump predictably responded with unfounded conspiracy theories
[…]
Republican policymakers in Georgia, fueled by the Big Lie, got to work on a voter-suppression package—Senate Bill 202—that the state clearly did not need, but which Kemp signed anyway. […] gave Georgia’s Republican-controlled General Assembly “effective control over the State Board of Elections and empowers the state board to take over local county boards—functionally allowing Republicans to handpick the people in charge of disqualifying ballots in Democratic-leaning places like Atlanta.”
[…]
Kemp wasn’t frustrated with the administration of the 2020 elections; he endorsed the administration of the 2020 elections. When the governor boasted […] about approving Senate Bill 202 because of his frustration with election results, he was making clear that Georgia Republicans made it harder to vote in 2021 because they didn’t like losing in 2020.
* A University of Georgia poll surveying the law’s impact on 2022 elections indicated that voting restrictions in that package weren’t as burdensome as feared.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
My mistake, Kemp asking’s not a power grab. I checked the full Maddow episode. Democrats are calling for Kemp to remove Trump-friendly board members. Rep McBath pointed out that Kemp’s Lt Governor Burt Jones was a fake elector. So Kemp’s angling for a ‘no’, I guess? And a ‘yes’ would wield an existing bureaucratically diffused executive power.
Also Election Board members are appointed, not elected. I misheard as ‘-ed’.
(11:58, Attorney Wayne Kendall): if they don’t resign their positions, then the governor has an absolute duty under the State Ethics Act to act to remove these particular individuals from office. [Democrats] have called on the Governor to remove these particular individuals for violations of state law.
[…]
The law requires him to hold a hearing. What has been the practice in the past is that he would refer those complaints over to the state Office of Administrative Hearings, for them to appoint an administrative law judge, and for that jaw judge to hold a hearing to inquire into the facts […] whether a recommendation should be made to the governor to remove these particular individuals
(19:22, Rep Saira Draper): You got us into this mess […] Republicans passed legislation to kick the Secretary of State off the State Election Board. The Governor signed that bill into law. The Speaker of the House folded under pressure not to reappoint his former appointee to the State Election Board (someone who respected the rule of law), and he replaced that member with the far-right’s pick, giving MAGA majority. And Republicans have largely remained silent as the SEB passes illegal rules
…
From there, Vance’s speech took on a strange, anachronistic framing, as he vaguely referred to some previous administration’s decision to send away manufacturing jobs, and falsely claimed that Harris had supported the reauthorization of NAFTA—and not for the first time.
The reauthorization of NAFTA took place in 1992, when Harris was a young prosecutor, and Vance was just eight years old…
There are nowhere near enough available therapists in insurance networks to serve all of the people seeking care. […] patients—whose disorders can be chronic and costly—are bad for business, industry insiders told ProPublica.
“The way to look at mental health care from an insurance perspective is: I don’t want to attract those people. I am never going to make money on them […] One way to get rid of those people or not get them is to not have a great network.”
[…]
To understand the forces that drive even the most well-intentioned therapists from insurance networks, ProPublica […] spoke to hundreds of providers
[…]
insurers urged them to reduce care when their patients were on the brink of harm, including suicide. All the while, providers struggled to stay in business as insurers withheld reimbursements that sometimes came months late.
[…]
“The idea is if you make it so frustrating for providers to follow up on claim denials, they’re just going to give up and the insurance company is not going to have to pay out,”
[…]
Therapists on average earn about $98 for a 45-minute session from commercial insurers, whereas their out-of-network colleagues can earn more than double that amount. […] Providers could join forces to fight for better pay, but antitrust laws and insurer contracts forbid them from collectively setting fees, which limits them talking to one another about how much they make.
StevoRsays
Greens leader Adam Bandt is speaking at the National press Club right now – ABC c2 in Oz :
What the proponents of this conspiracy theory call a chemtrail is known back in the real world as a contrail, short for “condensation trail.” And it’s possible that no other conspiracy theory has been so thoroughly debunked by so many sources on so many occasions. Of all the conspiracy theories Kennedy might believe in, this is the most profoundly foolish.
Old man yells at clouds. (Kennedy is a few months older than me – that makes him old!)
KGsays
Drat – #160 not #170!
KGsays
Lynna, OM@143 quoting Political Wire:
Said [Cornel] West: “I want to speak to my brothers and sisters of all colors who are concerned, not just about the vaccine but the role of the pharmaceutical companies in shaping public policy.”
I guess better the anti-vax vote goes to West than follows Kennedy to Trump! But “the role of the pharmaceutical companies in shaping public policy” is a real concern. They have made huge windfall profits out of Covid vaccines despite much of the research for them being publicly funded, and in part by blocking the production of generic versions that could have saved many lives in poor countries. Naomi Klein*, in Doppelganger identifies the Covid pandemic as one of the main areas in which the left failed to take up genuinely vital issues, which were then seized on and grossly distorted by the far right.
*I nearly wrote “Wolf” – the confusion from which the book starts!
birgerjohanssonsays
New FiveThirtyEight Projection 2024 Election Map Based on the Latest Polling in 50 States.
‘538’ has taken into account that Kennedy has quit his candidacy. It looks good for Harris.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SJSw_E42Nik
Californian Reacts | Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better (America compared)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=t26GEy9XFo4
What Americans call ‘benefits’ the Europeans call ‘standards’.
Well, it looks like it’s time to say a sad farewell to two blogs.
One of them is here at FTB: Abe Drayton’s “Oceanoxia”. It has not had an update in over a month, an outlier long time, and it looks increasingly like he isn’t coming back. The posting frequency had been dropping for a few months, from formerly near-daily to roughly once a week. Then this. Looks like he gave up, much like David Futrelle had at WHTM. (WHTM is, allegedly, “back” now, but seems to be on life support, with much lower levels of both post and comment activity than before.)
The other casualty is Cory Doctorow’s “Pluralistic”, which, though not here, has been linked to from here on many an occasion. The “daily” blog (though in actuality, outside of planned hiatuses, it has occasionally skipped a day here and there, averaging perhaps 6-6.5 articles a week rather than a full 7) has had no new articles in a week now, with no prior announcement of a hiatus (and not very long after the end of a previous, announced hiatus). Clearly something has gone terribly wrong there, with sufficiently little warning that Doctorow was unable to alert anyone to the situation.
BTW I just saw a photo of Trump standing behind a grave at Arlington, doing a thumbs-up. I am not familiar with US graveyard culture but it seems weird.
Needless horrible human tragedy. Australia’s cruel anti-Refugee policies have claimed another life :
WARNING : Suicide references
Refugee advocates have gathered to protest the death of a 23-year-old Tamil asylum seeker who died after setting himself on fire in Melbourne’s south-east.Friends of Mano Yogalingam told the ABC he had arrived in Australia from Sri Lanka in 2013 and had been on a bridging visa for roughly 11 years.
Donald Trump released a statement attributed to the relatives of fallen Marines Tuesday after his campaign staff were accused of pushing and verbally abusing an official at Arlington National Cemetery.
The former president attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the site on Monday, with a source telling NPR that his staffers got into an altercation with a cemetery official who tried to prevent them taking photos and video inside Section 60, where recent American casualties are buried. The cemetery says federal law prohibits photography for political purposes in the area…
On Tuesday, a statement was released on Trump’s personal Truth Social account and his campaign’s “War Room” X account from relatives of two Marines killed in the bombing…
“We had given our approval for President Trump’s official videographer and photographer to attend the event, ensuring these sacred moments of remembrance were respectfully captured and so we can cherish these memories forever,” the statement continued. “We are deeply grateful to the president for taking the time to honor our children and for standing alongside us in our grief, offering his unwavering support during such a difficult time. His compassion and respect meant more than words can express.”…
NPR’s source said Arlington officials had made it clear that only cemetery staff members would be allowed to shoot photos and video in Section 60. But Trump campaign spokesman has insisted his team were “granted access to have a photographer there” and denied the source’s version of events around the alleged scuffle.
“There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,” (Trump campaign spokesperson Steven) Cheung told The Daily Beast in a statement, without replying to requests for the footage.
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung added.
Arlington National Cemetery confirmed to NPR an “incident” had taken place and a “report was filed.”
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” it said. “Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.” …
Since when are individuals given the authority to override federal law? And Steven Cheung sounds like a complete asshole.
Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, attacked teachers who don’t have children in remarks in 2021 that resurfaced Tuesday.
In his public comments, he reserved specific criticism for Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers.
“You know, so many of the leaders of the left, and I hate to be so personal about this, but they’re people without kids, trying to brainwash the minds of our children,” Vance said at a Center for Christian Virtue leadership forum moderated by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt and the group’s president, Aaron Baer, in October 2021…
Developed by International Fruit Genetics in Bakersfield, Cardoza said the new grape variety, known as Rais-One, is specially bred to dry itself into a raisin, without cutting it off the vine and laying it in the sun…
A senior aide to Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, once worked for a far-right political consultancy that touts its capacity for “clandestine actions” and has links to a network of extremist groups and thinktanks, the Guardian can reveal.
Parker Magid was recently appointed as Vance’s press secretary and his employment history links Vance and his circle to elements of the extremist right far outside the mainstream of American politics.
Vance’s staffer links him to Beck & Stone (B&S) and its subsidiary political consultancy Knight Takes Rook (KTR). The brand consultancy with a business address in New York is close to Vance allies including the far-right Claremont Institute, the serial Arizona political candidate Blake Masters and the “counter-revolutionary” magazine IM–1776…
As Trump whines about being indicted within 60 days of early voting, remember: He pressed the DOJ to indict Biden 30 days before Election Day 2020
It was about a year ago when Donald Trump was initially indicted over his efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat. It’s a case that was delayed by a series of procedural appeals, culminating a scandalous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that, to a radical degree, helped elevate the American presidency above the law.
That ruling, of course, was issued by Republican-appointed justices last month. This month, as my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, special counsel Jack Smith and his team decided it was time for a new indictment related to the same underlying crimes.
Special counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment against Donald Trump in the federal Jan. 6-related prosecution on Tuesday. The superseding indictment presents the same four charges, albeit in a shorter indictment, against the former president.
In other words, the GOP nominee is still being charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, but the charges are now being presented in such a way as to accommodate the Republican-appointed [Supreme Court] justices’ opinion.
[…] For the most part, the criminal defendant responded as expected. Trump began, for example, by turning to his donors, seeking a reward for the grand jury’s findings. (The subject line in the appeal: “I was just indicted again!”) The Republican has long tested the “crime doesn’t pay” adage, and it was hardly surprising to see him do so again.
Around the same time, the former president turned to his social media platform to issue a furious tirade about the charges, Smith, and the efforts to hold him accountable. Trump then issued another such statement. Then another. And then another.
About an hour later, however, the accused felon rolled out a different kind of complaint. “It is DOJ policy that the Department of Justice should not take any action that will influence an election within 60 days of that election — but they just have taken such action,” Trump wrote. “Voting starts on September 6th, therefore the DOJ has violated its own policy — Election Interference.”
So, a couple of things.
First, Election Day 2024 is 69 days away. Yes, some states allow early voting that will begin much sooner, but Trump’s attempted “gotcha” probably won’t amount to much.
Second, it’s kind of hilarious to see the Republican take a sudden interest in a DOJ rule he was eager to ignore four years ago.
In October 2020 — 30 days before Election Day, with early voting already underway across much of the country —Trump publicly called on federal prosecutors to charge Joe Biden, accusing him of undefined crimes.
In fact, on Oct. 7, 2020 — 31 days before Election Day — Politico published an especially memorable headline: “‘Where are all of the arrests?’: Trump demands Barr lock up his foes.” The next day, the then-Republican incumbent spoke with Fox Business and called on the Justice Department to “indict” his perceived Democratic foes — including Biden.
In other words, when Smith’s office issues a superseding indictment 70 days before Election Day 2024, before early voting begins in any state, Trump sees it as proof of “election interference” and a violation of Justice Department policy. But when Trump was in office, he nevertheless expected the DOJ to charge his Democratic opponent with made-up crimes much closer to Election Day 2020.
How does the former president explain the contradiction? So far, by ignoring it.
[…] Smith took the case back to a new federal grand jury in DC but stripped out evidence that the Supreme Court ruled would be inadmissible and pared down other elements of the case that the high court squarely immunized. The new grand jury, untainted by the now-inadmissible evidence, returned a superseding indictment against Trump that otherwise largely mirrors the original indictment.
The abundance of caution exhibited by Smith and DOJ is another indicator, if we needed any, of the stakes in this case. The new indictment is different in three fundamental respects:
– It ditches the allegations related to Trump’s effort to enlist the Justice Department itself in his scheme to overturn the 2020 election. This includes the whole sordid Jeff Clark episode. The Supreme Court was clear that these were immunized official acts by Trump, a travesty of its own.
– It removes the extended narration of evidence of Trump’s knowledge and state of mind that was based on evidence the Supreme Court indicated would be inadmissible because it would weaken the president’s immunity protection, another screaming travesty that is now the law of the land.
– It leans more heavily into Vice President Mike Pence’s constitutional role as Senate president, which placed him at the center of the Jan. 6 certification of the Electoral College vote. Smith appears to be responding to the Supreme Court’s invitation in the immunity decision (pp. 23-24, citations removed):
Despite the Vice President’s expansive role of advising and assisting the President within the Executive Branch, the Vice President’s Article I responsibility of “presiding over the Senate” is “not an ‘executive branch’ function.” … So the Government may argue that consideration of the President’s communications with the Vice President concerning the certification proceeding does not pose “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”
Members of Donald Trump’s campaign engaged in an altercation at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday that, in any normal year, would be a wall-to-wall scandal. It was part of a political stunt staged to help Trump blunt Vice President Kamala Harris’ surging momentum, but not only did this disgraceful farce go wrong in a way that’s still unfolding, but also the very idea of it is sickening.
To create a photo op showing that Trump supports the military, his staff broke the rules of the military cemetery, verbally and physically quarreled with a cemetery official, and filmed in an area where photography is not permitted. They also seem to have violated federal law.
Compounding the incident, Trump’s campaign has refused to apologize. Instead, spokesperson Steven Cheung called the cemetery official “an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode,” and top advisor Chris LaCivita tried to reverse the blame, calling for the official to be fired.
[…] With Fox News cameras rolling, Trump laid wreaths at Arlington for the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate explosion at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, where 13 American service members were lost, as Americans and Afghans evacuated the country. Shortly thereafter, Trump’s team issued an email saying that Harris had “failed our soldiers and their families” by not being at Arlington to commemorate this tragedy.
However, Daily Kos could find no evidence that Trump similarly marked the first or second anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack. In 2023, Trump was apparently too busy raising money from his Georgia mugshot. And the year before that, he seems to have wasted his time railing about the removal of national security documents from his Mar-a-Lago club.
[…] On Monday, after leaving the wreath area, Trump’s team headed for Section 60 of the cemetery, where fallen veterans of recent conflicts are interred. However, Arlington doesn’t allow filming of political events on cemetery grounds, and they don’t allow commercial photography in Section 60 where families may still be grieving recent losses.
Defense Department officials made that policy clear in a statement on Tuesday, clarifying that this isn’t some arcane rule at Arlington but rather a matter of federal law. Here’s The Washington Post:
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” the cemetery’s statement said. “Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”
But Trump was determined to get a disturbing photograph of himself giving a thumbs-up beside the grave of a dead Marine. [X post and image at the link.]
Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, has denied there was a physical altercation with a cemetery official and has said the campaign would release video to prove it. As of Wednesday morning, no such video has been released. […]
Late on Tuesday, Trump’s team shared a statement from relatives of two of the Marines whose graves Trump visited, but that statement in no way represents permission to film in Section 60 or conduct political events on cemetery grounds.
Trump’s actions, as well as those of his team, were a disgrace. They treated a sacred place as a stage for a political stunt. They violated the rules about political events at Arlington and filming in Section 60. And their reaction to being caught was despicable.
At the very least, this incident demands an extensive apology. An apology from Trump, and an apology from his campaign staff for how they allegedly treated a cemetery official trying to maintain federal law—and for how they’ve spoken about that official since. […]
Donald Trump is basking in the supposed glow of recent endorsements from two of the weirdest people in politics—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
Chief among their reasons for endorsing Trump: their anti-Ukraine sentiments and support for Vladimir Putin and Russia. […] the American electorate has diametrically opposed views.
A fresh University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll by the firm SSRS shows that bipartisan public support for Ukraine remains strong. Asked about where respondent sympathies lie in the current Russia-Ukraine war, Ukraine was picked by 76% of Democrats, 58% of Republicans, and 57% of independents. Only 4% of Republicans sided with Russia, which is a shocking result given the prominence of pro-Russia right-wing personalities like Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Alex Jones,and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
At best, those right-wing efforts to whitewash the Kremlin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine have created some confusion among their adherents; support for Ukraine should be at 100% and utterly divorced from any partisan taint. Despite those efforts, a clear majority of Americans (62%) support Ukraine compared to Russia (2%).
[…] Republicans nominated a ticket with views well outside of the American mainstream when it comes to Ukraine. Trump has promised to cut off aid to Ukraine if elected, and his running mate JD Vance has long been part of the pro-Russia crowd in the Senate.
With Kennedy and Gabbard now on board, Trump has further surrounded himself with some of the fiercest Putin defenders in American politics. Kennedy loves to repeat Kremlin propaganda, and Hillary Clinton was right about Gabbard back in 2019 when she said, “She’s the favorite of the Russians.” [X post and Russian state TV clip: “[…] translated clip of Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard, introduced by state TV host Vladimir Soloviev as “Our girlfriend Tulsi.”
After the clip plays, one panelist asks: “Is she some sort of a Russian agent?” The host quickly replies: “Yes.”]
Most Americans don’t vote based on foreign policy, and the Russia-Ukraine War is no different. But the country’s generally pro-Ukraine sentiment does create an unflattering narrative for Trump as a candidate—one that ostensibly seeks to “make America great again” yet cozies up to some of the worst people on the planet.
One of the overarching Trump narratives is that he wants to be a dictator, modeled after his despotic heroes. Surrounding himself with Putin lovers isn’t a way to refute that as he places himself even further outside of the American mainstream.
A teenager was arrested over the weekend in Nassau County, New York, after he was seen wearing a mask in public — the first arrest related to the county’s face covering ban signed earlier this month.
Wesslin Omar Ramirez Castillo, 18, of Hicksville, was arrested Sunday in Levittown after officers responded to reports regarding a “suspicious male” walking down Spindle Road dressed in black and “wearing a mask to conceal his identity,” Nassau County Police said.
Ramirez Castillo allegedly “continued to display suspicious behavior while attempting to conceal a large bulge in his waistband” that ended up being a 14-inch knife, officials said.
Police said that officers stopped him and patted him down under the mask law and found the knife. Ramirez Castillo allegedly refused to comply with officer commands and was placed under arrest…
For the first time in more than a century, salmon will soon have free passage along the Klamath River and its tributaries — a major watershed near the California-Oregon border — as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history nears completion…
tomhsays
Religious Clause:
Arkansas Supreme Court Keeps Abortion Rights Measure Off November Ballot
August 28, 2024
In Cowles v. Thurston,(AR Sup. Ct., Aug. 22, 2024), the Arkansas Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision held that the Secretary of State properly refused to count signatures collected by paid canvassers on petitions to have an abortion rights amendment submitted to the voters in November. Proponents failed to submit paid canvasser training certifications along with the petitions, and there were insufficient signatures collected only by volunteer canvassers. Proponents claimed that an employee in the Secretary of State’s Office told them that filing the certifications was unnecessary.
Chief Justice Kemp dissented contending that the Secretary of State should complete counting the signatures and grant a provisional cure period. Justice Baker, Joined by Justice Hudson dissented contending that proponents later filing of certifications adequately complied with the filing requirements, saying that “nothing in the statute requires that the certification and the petition be filed simultaneously.” She said in part:
In my view, the majority has reconfigured the relevant statute in order to cater the initiative process to the preference of the respondent while this process is the first power reserved for the people. In fact, despite the majority’s acknowledgment that “[t]his court cannot rewrite the statute[,]” the majority has done just that multiple times to achieve a particular result.
I’m more than a little ashamed that it’s come to this, but it looks like I’m gong to have to reach out to the internet for help with my remaining medical bills while I’m unemployed. If you can contribute, or know someone how can, I would be ever so grateful.
Akira @ 212
Never feel ashamed of the consequences of a rotten system! Neither medical costs nor unemployment should lead to a chrisis in a rational society.
Whaddaya Mean Giving The Same Child Tax Credit To Poor Families As Rich Ones, What Crazy Commie Bullsh*t Is That?
Are there no workhouses?
A top economic adviser to Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign told C-SPAN Tuesday that he simply does not care for this expanded Child Tax Credit that’s a centerpiece of Kamala Harris’s plan to make life more affordable for American families, claiming that it would turn the poor into lazy takers and would hurt the millions of children whom it would lift out of poverty, because they too would be lazy and we can’t afford to just give money to people who are not big banks or oil companies.
Stephen Moore, the fretting supply-sider, is a Heritage Foundation economist, contributor to Project 2025, and rightwing jagoff Trump nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2019, but who eventually got quitfired after he criticized Trump in public […] he’s against the federal government helping kids escape poverty, because they probably belong there.
Here’s the relevant C-SPAN clip of Moore lying about the expanded Child Tax Credit via the Kamala HQ Twitter account: [video at the link]
Following a bit where Moore enthusiastically endorsed gutting public education by shifting taxpayer money to send rich people’s kids to private schools — for “freedom” — C-SPAN host John McArdle asked Moore if he thought the Child Tax Credit helps children, giving Moore the chance to explain it is very bad indeed! He prefaced his very grave doubts about the CTC by insisting he’s “not against it,” by way of rhetorical throat-clearing. Then it was time to put those kids in their place!
“What worries me about the child credit […] I have some doubts about it, John. Here’s the problem: We can’t just keep giving people money! For a lot of people who get the the so-called credit, it’d be a cash payment. And a lot of the people getting it don’t even pay taxes!”
Moore is, like so many Trumpers, so very close to getting the point: Yes indeed, as it worked in the 2021 American Rescue Plan, the version of the expanded CTC that Harris wants to revive, the $2600 credit was “fully refundable,” meaning that even families too poor to pay federal taxes received it, which is the whole point of an anti-poverty program. It gave families some breathing room so they could afford school clothes, maybe a summer activity or sport, or God help us, maybe even something nice and special like a computer or a bike, so Fox News could shame them over it. We think Harris should unapologetically say that yes, she wants to fight child poverty by helping parents be less poor.
Moore wasn’t finished, because simply missing the point wasn’t enough; he had to lie.
“I worry a little bit that if we keep just passing out free money to people you’re going to discourage people from working. […] There’s five million people in this country who are not disabled, who are working age, who could and should be working, and one of the major reasons they are not working is we’re paying out so much money to people in free money. Whether it’s food stamps, whether it’s free health care, whether it’s cash payments. All of these things.”
Obviously, giving away vast sums of money to the rich in the form of tax cuts and corporate subsidies has the opposite effect, because the rich are not lazy and work very hard for their millions or billions with a B.
But here’s the thing, Guy Who Works Hard at Bloviating On TV: As a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities assessment of the 2021 expanded CTC found, the program certainly lifted millions of children out of poverty “and appears not to have meaningfully discouraged work among parents, numerous studies of real-world evidence suggest.”
Employment among both parents and non-parents rose by 1.7 percentage points in 2021, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Researchers at the University of Michigan examined part- and full-time employment and labor force participation and found “no significant employment effects for any outcome” — with several other research teams reaching similar conclusions.
The assessment also noted that Canada has a far more generous “child allowance” than the US’s briefly-expanded CTC, and that it’s available to folks who have little or no earnings — while Canada actually has a “higher labor force participation rate overall and among women than the US,” so please take your “child benefits make people lazy takers who must be whipped so they pull the plow” claims and stuff ‘em right up your “Tim Hortons.”
But then, what would you expect from a Trump Guy who claimed in 2021 that the original expanded CTC was a “backdoor” to sneaking a universal basic income into America, which would be the Worst. Possible. Thing. We all remember how an extra $2600 in one year led the poors to stop working and just whoop it up forever, right? (Oh, wait. That’s what the jackass MAGA idiots thought was happening when restaurant workers went off and found better jobs, long after the pandemic benefits ran dry.)
Clearly, only one thing will really end poverty in America: Elect the guy who’s promising more big tax cuts for the rich, vastly higher inflation via tariffs, and mass deportations to deplete the workforce. Besides, once Trump gets a second term, you won’t ever hear bad economic news again, just like you’ll be free of having to vote.
Several Republicans apparently want voters to believe that Kamala Harris now supports investing in a border wall, but that’s not quite right.
Sen. JD Vance, the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee, mocked the idea this week that Vice President Kamala Harris “wants to build the border wall.” Hours later, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News and told viewers, “Graham: Do you really believe she’s going to build a wall? That’s just bulls—.”
As for what prompted the partisan pushback, it apparently stems from a report Axios published. The headline read, “Harris flip-flops on building the border wall,” and the article began:
If she’s elected president, Kamala Harris pledges to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border — a project she once opposed and called “un-American” during the Trump administration. It’s the latest example of Harris flip-flopping….
A typical person reading this might believe that the Democratic presidential hopeful recently endorsed investing in a border wall, but that’s not quite what happened.
Let’s take a brief stroll down memory lane.
[…] it was last fall when congressional Republicans said they were so desperate to deal with U.S./Mexico border policies that they took a radical step: GOP officials said that unless Democrats agreed to a series of conservative reforms, Republicans were prepared to cut off military aid to Ukraine and let Russia take part of Eastern Europe by force.
Democrats, left with little choice, agreed to pay the GOP’s ransom and endorsed a conservative, bipartisan compromise. At that point, Republicans killed the compromise plan they’d demanded — largely because Donald Trump told them to.
Making matters worse, the calculus was electoral, not substantive: The former president didn’t want Congress to hand President Joe Biden an election-year victory on one of the party’s top priorities. Republicans followed Trump’s lead and concluded that they’d rather have a campaign issue than a solution.
What does this have to do with allegations of Harris “flip-flopping”? The bipartisan compromise, which featured concessions from both parties, included some wall funding in the hopes of generating GOP support. It was a relatively modest sum — $650 million, roughly 3% of what the Trump administration sought in 2018 — and the funding wasn’t even new. (As Team Harris reminded Axios, the provision “just extended the timeline to spend funds that had been appropriated during Trump’s last year as president.”)
The vice president has never been a wall advocate — in fact, she’s been a fierce critic of Trump’s plan — but she endorsed the Senate agreement in the hopes of getting something done on the issue.
Six months after Republicans killed the deal they requested, using Harris’ convention speech as a news hook, Axios summarized this in bullet-point form, at which point the right effectively declared, “A ha!”
As lines of attack go, this is weak tea. If the Democratic nominee were to actually endorse the merits of a border wall, that would be a dramatic reversal worthy of attention. But her willingness to back a bipartisan compromise — which included provisions she and her party would not support on their own — does not a “flip-flop” make.
Is Donald Trump combining an NFT money-making scheme with a buy-part-of-his-suit money-making scheme? Yes. Yes, he is.
Shortly before Christmas 2022, Donald Trump raised a few eyebrows with an item published to his social media platform. “AMERICA NEEDS A SUPERHERO!” the former president wrote. “I will be making a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow. Thank you!”
Ample speculation soon followed, but few guessed what the Republican would unveil a day later: The “official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection.” For “only” $99 each, his customers could buy non-fungible tokens, which the candidate described as “very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting.”
This was, to be sure, high on the list of Trump’s cringeworthy money-making schemes, alongside an unrelated pitch that came a year later when the former president sold off pieces of the suit he said he wore while taking his mug shot after one of his criminal indictments.
This week, believe it or not, the GOP candidate managed to combine the two schemes. The Hill reported:
Former President Trump is offering parts of the suit he wore during a debate with President Biden to supporters who purchase a new series of digital trading cards. The Republican presidential nominee announced the new trading card collection Tuesday in a video posted on Truth Social. The new card batch, dubbed the “America First Collection,” includes 50 new images of Trump.
Describing his latest money-making scheme in an online video, Trump said: “It’s really something” — a sentiment that was easy to agree with, though not for the reasons he had in mind.
Part of what makes this striking is the degree to which Trump released a video of himself that made him look like a two-bit carnival huckster.
Just as notably, I’ve never seen a candidate for the nation’s highest office do something like this during a presidential campaign. In fact, it’s important to emphasize that the Republican nominee isn’t doing this to get contributions, because the money apparently won’t benefit his 2024 operation. This is about Trump looking for money to put in his pocket, not his coffers.
But let’s also not lose sight of the larger pattern. The gold sneakers. The Trump-endorsed Bible. The fake university. The board game. The steaks. We’re talking about a politician who appears to meander from one get-rich-quick opportunity to the next, without much regard for merit or dignity.
It’s not a secret that the Republican’s finances are a mess, and a recent Washington Post analysis added, “He is in a cash crunch — personally and politically — and has been unafraid throughout his career to put the Trump name on anything that might yield a stream of revenue.”
When it comes to someone seeking the White House, that’s … not ideal.
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the local mayoral race won’t be decided until the fall, but the two finalists for the office to emerge from this week’s primary are both Democrats, which means the party will flip the office from “red” to “blue.” [Source: Oklahoma.com]
* In Donald Trump’s latest interview with Phil McGraw (TV’s “Dr. Phil”), the former president said: “I guarantee you, if Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California.” The GOP candidate lost the Golden State four years ago by roughly 29 points, and Republicans have presented no evidence of election irregularities in the state. [Source: American Bridge on Twitter. Video at the link.]
* As debate negotiations continue, a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said in a statement: “Both candidates have publicly made clear their willingness to debate with unmuted mics for the duration of the debate to fully allow for substantive exchanges between the candidates — but it appears Donald Trump is letting his handlers overrule him. Sad!” [Source: MSNBC, Rachel Maddow show]
* In Ohio’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, Republican Bernie Moreno’s past as a car dealer has been mocked and scrutinized, but NBC News reports that he’s nevertheless returning to the industry. Despite claims that he’s sold off all of his companies, the GOP candidate is investing millions in two ventures that are developing a new car dealership.
* Several Democratic strategists are launching a new super PAC focused specifically on “election protection and battles that could come after Election Day.” The effort will be called Democracy Defenders, and it’ll be led by Jim Messina, who was Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager. [Source: NBC News]
[…]
* And a new $10 million ad campaign from Building America’s Future and Americans for Consumer Protection will apparently try to discourage Black voters from supporting Harris, who’d be the nation’s first Black woman to serve as president. The attack ads will reportedly focus on battleground states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin. [Source NBC News]
Conservatives have long derided the news media, claiming that outlets are biased against them. And their efforts to work the refs have largely succeeded, with the media regularly giving “both sides” of issues equal weight and thereby warping reality.
Bothsidesism has been a problem for a long time, but this election cycle has exposed the political media for the sham that it is. […]
Our democracy is on the edge, and a wannabe despot is within striking range of retaking power, but The New York Times is giving undue attention to things like how an old campaign website for Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said he’d won an award from the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce, when in fact the award was from the Nebraska Junior Chamber of Commerce. Who cares?
If there was a time when highlighting such inanities made sense, it was long ago and in an era when politicians were boring, doing boring things, so every silly mini-scandal seemed outrageous and important. But Donald Trump has changed the rules.
Infidelity used to be the biggest story ever, […] But Trump boasted about his affairs and won an election.
Politicians had to go to church and make a big show of it! Trump doesn’t even pretend.
Politicians had to treat the office of the presidency with gravitas and respect. Trump made it an extension of his grift.
Politicians had to speak intelligently. Trump tweets out “covfefe.”
Politicians couldn’t have private email servers, but that didn’t apply to the Trump administration.
Politicians had to behave with decorum. Trump engages in childish insults.
Leaked campaign emails were fair targets for media coverage, until it was Trump’s campaign emails that were leaked.
Politicians respected the peaceful transfer of power. Trump launched an insurrection.
Politicians shouldn’t be too old, as the media reminded us incessantly for the first half of this year. But Trump is now the oldest major-party presidential nominee in American history, older than former President Bill Clinton, who left office over 23 years ago, and the press doesn’t care.
Politicians couldn’t be cognitively declined, but Trump can degrade before our very eyes with minimal coverage and media regularly excerpting the least-crazy bits of his speeches for their stories. […]
The list goes on, and the worst part is that not a single Democrat would get a pass for any of that, much less all of it.
And then there’s the “fact-checking” this cycle.
The Washington Post on Aug. 20:
“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 has previously said the only way he loses is if the Democrats cheat.
A week later, I still can’t believe someone could write those words.
The New York Times on Aug. 20:
“He created the largest debt any president had in four years with his two trillion dollars tax cut for the wealthy.” — President Biden.
This is misleading. Looking at a single presidential term, Donald J. Trump’s administration did rack up more debt than any other in raw dollars — about $7.9 trillion. But the debt rose more under President Barack Obama’s eight years than under Mr. Trump’s four years.
No, it’s not misleading. Whatever happened with Obama over eight years has nothing to do with Biden, who even said “in four years.” Sheesh!
Politifact on Sept. 19, 2023:
A new ad from President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign takes aim at some of his Republican rivals’ positions on abortion, highlighting comments by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump.
But one of Trump’s remarks featured in the Aug. 25 ad — about him supporting punishments for women who have abortions — is misleading. It omits that this comment is from 2016, that Trump walked it back the same day and that he isn’t promoting this as he seeks the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination.
No, the ad isn’t misleading. Trump literally said at an MSNBC town hall that he supports punishing women who get abortions. His panicked campaign, knowing how awful the moment was, frantically issued a retraction after the event. But that was a calculated effort at damage control, not Trump’s own unvarnished words—and that’s what the ad shows: video of Trump saying those words.
So many of the media’s fact-checkers are desperate to provide “balance,” lest lying conservatives accuse them of bias. But a journalist’s job shouldn’t be to create the facade of balance; it should be to present the truth. And it is unambiguously true that conservatives lie a hell of a lot more than liberals. […]
And there are so many more examples of errant “fact checking.”
Republicans and independents have long soured on the media, but liberals have finally been shit on enough to give up defending it. According to Gallup data released in early 2024, the share of Democrats rate “the honesty and ethical standards of journalists” highly or very highly has plummeted from over 50% in 2018, to just 34% recently—and the trend is down, down, down.
Not that Beltway journalists are going down without kicking and screaming. Semafor’s Benjy Sarlin, whom I actually respect quite a bit, recently argued that Harris should do more media interviews.
“To use an example Dems will hate: [Sen. JD] Vance did a couple big interviews, got a lot of tough qs on the cat lady stuff, then was freed to do nonstop media promoting the campaign message with that out of the way,” he tweeted on Tuesday.
Can you imagine thinking that Vance has been “freed” from the “cat lady” scandal because he did some interviews? Instead of proving that media interviews can help a politician, Sarlin proved the opposite: that the national discourse often continues regardless of what the media focuses on. […] there is social media, which is nowhere near done with the “cat lady” comments […]
[…] now the media is trying to make “Harris is a flip-flopper” a thing. [X post at the link]
Semafor’s David Weigel, a fantastic journalist, is right about calling out this not-so-subtle threat from the media: “Talk to us, or we’ll attack you.” (In case it isn’t clear, he is not making the threat himself. Rather, he’s observing how the media operates.)
On Thursday, Harris and Walz will hold a sit-down interview with CNN. But that’s unlikely to stop the media’s demand for undue deference. […]
a non-profit […] launched a new database, policedata.org, on Wednesday cataloging […] stun guns, chemical sprays, K9 dog attacks, neck restraints, beanbags and baton strikes.
The data builds on past reports that found US police kill roughly 1,200 people each year […] it obtained data […] from more than 2,800 agencies, covering nearly 60% of the population […] an undercount as it only covers incidents disclosed by officers and agencies, and many states have laws restricting access
[…]
83% of people subjected to force across those jurisdictions were unarmed […] Black people were subject to overall police use of force at a rate 3.2 times greater than white people […] Black people were killed by police at 2.6 times the rate of white people […] Limited data also suggests that unhoused people are disproportionately impacted
[…]
973 neck restraint uses in 2019. By 2021, there were 112 of those cases, a nearly 90% drop. […] reductions in that specific tactic did not translate to broader declines in police force […] There is also evidence that interventions by the US justice department and state attorneys general could have an impact. Jurisdictions with DoJ reform agreements reported a 22% reduction in overall reported use of force […] Policies that reduce overall police encounters can be most effective […] such as alternative responder programs dispatching mental health professionals
The Royal Society is facing calls to expel Elon Musk from its fellowship over concerns about the tech billionaire’s conduct.
The Guardian understands Musk, who owns the social media site X, was elected as a fellow of the UK’s national academy of sciences in 2018 in recognition of his work and impact in the space and electric vehicle industries, with some considering him a “modern Brunel”.
Musk is a co-founder of SpaceX, which among other achievements has pioneered the development of reusable rockets. He is also a co-founder and chief executive of the electric carmaker Tesla, which has also championed the development of sustainable energy sources.
However, the Guardian has learned a number of Royal Society fellows have written to the institution to raise the possibility of removing Musk’s fellowship.
According to one fellow, the concerns have come as a result of Musk’s increasingly incendiary comments, including his response to the recent riots in the UK, with fears he could bring the institution into disrepute…
Under rules finalized Wednesday, investment advisers and real estate professionals will be required to report cash sales of residential real estate sold to legal entities, trusts and shell companies. The requirements won’t apply to sales to individuals or purchases involving mortgages or other financing.
The new rules come as part of a Biden administration effort to combat money laundering and the movement of dirty money through the American financial system. All-cash purchases of residential real estate are considered a high risk for money laundering.
This covers one of the obvious holes that has been widely abused. This is particularly important because buying expensive homes is one of the popular ways for people outside the US to launder money into American dollars.
The B.C. United Party is suspending its election campaign and joining forces with the surging Conservative Party of B.C. in a move intended to unite the right-of-centre vote.
A joint news release confirming the move said that B.C. United leader Kevin Falcon will step down, and the two parties will merge campaign efforts ahead of the October 19th provincial election…
Aeroplane passengers should be restricted to two drinks at airports, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary has said.
Mr O’Leary said introducing alcohol limits at airports would help tackle a rise in disorder on flights.
Violent outbursts are occurring weekly due to alcohol, he said, especially when it is mixed with other substances.
“We don’t want to begrudge people having a drink,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
“But we don’t allow people to drink-drive, yet we keep putting them up in aircraft at 33,000ft.”
More to the article.
As long as there are multiple bars in the airport, the plan would be completely unenforceable. The only enforceable limit would be NO drinks in the airport (i.e. bar liquor sales completely). That would be fine by me, but it’d be rough on those who fly on liquid courage.
Interesting how the Trump assassination attempt continues to demonstrate how much of a fuck-up the Secret Service’s assessment of the site was.
The FBI have published some evidentiary and other photos, showing (1,2) Thomas Crooks’ rifle as assembled and disassembled, as well as the backpack which was used to conceal and carry the semi-automatic weapon when broken down;
(3) the improvised explosive devices found in the boot of Crooks’ car; and
(4) the air conditioning unit Crooks used to access the roof of the AGR building at Butler, Pennsylvania.
Photos (2) and (4) have me just shaking my head.
Source: Butler Investigation Evidence Photos
On Wednesday — in the aftermath of a new election-interference indictment from Special Counsel Jack Smith — the former president seemingly spent the morning scrolling through his Truth Social comments and “re-truthing” all manner of conspiratorial, sexist, and fascist content.
Trump posted dozens of memes and comments from accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory, false claims about the 2020 election, sexist attacks against Kamala Harris, and the use of authoritarian tactics against his political enemies.
According to the progressive watchdog Media Matters, the former president promoted QAnon — an expansive conspiracy that claims Trump is waging battle against satanic forces that control the government — at least 15 times on Wednesday morning. These included images using the conspiracy slogan “Where We Go One, We Go All,” and references to the conspiracy’s belief that “the storm is coming.”
Trump also “re-truthed” a post featuring images of Vice President Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the words: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both of their careers differently.”
Trump boosted several posts and comments calling for prominent Democrats to be imprisoned. One such post featured the image of former President Barack Obama with the caption “All roads lead to Obama. Retruth if you want public military tribunals.”
Another post on the former president’s feed shows Harris, Hillary Clinton, President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, and Hunter Biden in orange prison jumpsuits. The image text reads “How to actually ‘fix the system.’” …
I guess very stable genius would rather have people talking about QAnon than Arlington National Cemetery. I guess he just projects that people cannot have two thoughts in their head at a time.
tomhsays
Re: The Trump Arlington cemetery debacle.
NYT Live:
…..A woman who works at the cemetery filed an incident report with the military authorities over the altercation. But the official, who has not been identified, later declined to press charges. Military officials said she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.
whheydtsays
Re: tomh @ #230…
That’s a reason for a prosecution to be pushed and pushed hard.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Paraphrasing to condense.
The House assassination investigation is being led Trump ally Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania). In an interview, he said he’d warned Trump campaign staff 10 days prior that the venue was too small, had one road narrowed to a single lane by construction, would be a “disaster” and “dangerous”. His spokesman couldn’t clarify what that last word meant beyond the aforementioned concerns. Trump’s staff repeatedly blew him off. He inferred they’d never even visited the site.
Throughout the interview, Kelly insisted the investigation will be nonpolitical. He also complained that the Jan 6 committee was a publicity stunt. He doubted Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the Kennedy assassination.
Unlike other members of the task force appointed by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Kelly has no background in investigative work, law enforcement or the military. [He’s a local millionaire owner of car dealerships representing one of the US’s poorest zip codes.]
[…]
Kelly spoke onstage at the Butler rally ahead of Trump. He was returning to his seat when he said three different security officials refused to let him through. After showing both his congressional card and his ID, he said all the officials still didn’t believe he was a member of Congress. […] in the process, he had been separated from his wife, son and three grandchildren in attendance. Then gunshots rang out.
[…]
Kelly hasn’t forgotten the shock of his 9-year-old grandson, Charles. “He goes, ‘Grandpa, why would somebody want to kill President Trump?'”
Sooo many legitimate reasons he’s hated worldwide. Grandpa might grow as a person from learning some of them. He’s burned business associates, consorts with mobsters and dictators. And yet, the shooter probably didn’t have any of those reasons in mind.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
You’d think Kelly would’ve revised his highschool opinion on Osward, being that this time, Kelly was involved in an event and investigation. Then again, this time the shooter WAS aided by a congressman distracting 3 security guards.
Harris leads Trump in ‘battleground’ states Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, according to Fox News’ own recent poll.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Lynna@216:
Besides, once Trump gets a second term, you won’t ever hear bad economic news again, just like you’ll be free of having to vote.
Nope, instead of getting stock ticker news via your phone widgets or BNN, you’ll be an avid follower of fallout forecasts on your hand-cranked shortwave radio. Or else part of a cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska …
Corey Lewandowski, a recently rehired campaign adviser for Donald Trump, deflected multiple times when asked by MSNBC anchor Ari Melber why he had deliberately been dishonest to him in a prior interview.
Instead, Lewandowski accused Melber of making certain critical comments about Trump, which Melber denied, to the point where the MSNBC anchor threatened legal action for defamation if Lewandowski continued to do so.
On Wednesday’s broadcast of The Beat, Melber brought Lewandowski’s attention to a September 2019 House hearing that referenced an MSNBC interview he gave that February. In that interview, Lewandowski claimed he didn’t remember Trump asking him to be a conduit to the Justice Department. Yet Lewandowksi admitted to lawmakers he was untruthful, saying he had “no obligation to be honest with the media because they’re just as dishonest as anybody else.” …
Lewandowski, Cheung, LaCivita – the Trump campaign is becoming the biggest collection of douchenozzles in recent history.
Ukraine Set to Deploy Swedish Pansarbandvagn 302 Armored Vehicles Following Official Approval
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jLhm759G4tg
They are an earlier generation of tech, but are still useful as “battlefield taxis”.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey launched a $1 million taxpayer-funded initiative in June designed to discourage people from seeking help from “crisis pregnancy centers” that are typically religiously affiliated and counsel clients against having abortions.
The campaign includes ads on social media, billboards, radio and buses warning people to avoid the centers — which the administration dubbed “anti-abortion” — saying they’re not to be trusted for comprehensive reproductive health care.
Center operators are pushing back, teaming with a national conservative law firm to challenge the campaign, saying it infringes on their constitutional rights…
The suit alleges the state initiative amounts to an unconstitutional violation of free speech and of equal protection rights for those who run the pregnancy crisis centers. The plaintiffs also argue that the state is subjecting them to religious discrimination.
“This campaign involves selective law enforcement prosecution, public threats, and even a state-sponsored advertising campaign with a singular goal – to deprive YOM, and groups like it, of their First Amendment rights to voice freely their religious and political viewpoints regarding the sanctity of human life in the context of the highly controversial issue of abortion,” the lawsuit says…
I expect the CPCs will lose this lawsuit. There is no right to not have people say true things about you.
A video was posted to Trump’s TikTok account featuring footage from the Section 60 visit and the gravestones from behind, with narration criticizing the handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021…
A day after prosecutors expressed concern in a Maricopa County courtroom that grand jury information in Arizona’s fake electors case might be made public, they confirmed their fears when they told the judge overseeing the case that an attorney representing defendant Christina Bobb had publicly filed a court document that included transcripts of grand jury proceedings and grand juror names…
Former President Donald Trump writes in a new book set to be published next week that Mark Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election and said the Meta chief executive would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he did it again.
It represents Trump’s most recent attack on Zuckerberg, who he has repeatedly accused of intervening in the last presidential election. And it comes as Meta has taken steps to assure conservatives it will not influence this year’s campaign.
“Save America,” a Trump-authored coffee table book being released Sept. 3, includes an undated photograph of Trump meeting with Zuckerberg in the White House. Under the photo, Trump writes that Zuckerberg “would come to the Oval Office to see me. He would bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT,” Trump added, referring to a $420 million contribution Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, made during the 2020 election to fund election infrastructure.
“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me,” Trump continues. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”
[…]
“Save America” is being released by Winning Team Publishing, which was co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. and Sergio Gor, a Trump ally.
Reginald Selkirksays
@247
“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me,”
“There’s nobody like Trump on Facebook – and we like it that way.”
Before throwing him in prison, they would have to come up with an actual crime he was guilty of.
whheydtsays
Re: tomh @ #247…
Saying that Trump “wrote” a book should be in scare-quotes.
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #248…
The crime would be lese majeste.
* The latest USA Today/Suffolk University poll found Vice President Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by five points nationally, 48% to 43%, among likely voters. As recently as late June, the same survey found the former president leading President Joe Biden by nearly four points. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodology and margins of error.)
* The latest statewide polls from Fox News found Harris narrowly leading Trump in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada, while the Republican nominee had a one-point lead over the Democratic nominee in North Carolina. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodology and margins of error.)
* In Arizona’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, Fox News’ poll found Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego with a double-digit lead over failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, 56% to 41%. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodology and margins of error.)
* In Nevada’s closely watched U.S. Senate race, Fox News’ poll found Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen with a double-digit lead over Republican Sam Brown, 55% to 41%. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodology and margins of error.)
* In North Carolina’s closely watched gubernatorial race, Fox News’ poll found Democratic state Attorney General Josh Stein with a double-digit lead over Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, 54% to 43%. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodology and margins of error.)
* The latest national Gallup poll found Democratic enthusiasm about the 2024 presidential race reaching a level unseen in Democratic politics since 2008.
* And in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, Republican Dave McCormick has already been dogged by his limited connections to the state he’s running in, and that problem was made worse this week when he apparently confused Philadelphia, Miss., with Philadelphia, Penn.
Additional links embedded in the text are available at the main link.
During his latest appearance on “Meet the Press,” Sen. JD Vance eagerly boasted to NBC News’ Kristen Welker that Donald Trump brought “manufacturing jobs back to our country” during his term. Moments later, the Republican vice presidential nominee went into more detail.
“Because if you go back to the Trump presidency, we had 12,000 factories that were built during Donald Trump’s presidency,” the Ohio senator declared.
For those keeping an eye on Vance’s rhetoric, the comments were familiar: He made the identical claim, nearly word for word, a week earlier on “Fox News Sunday.” What’s more, it’s not just the senator: Trump himself has repeatedly made the same boast, including in his final State of the Union address before losing his re-election bid.
So, is it true? The Washington Post published a very helpful fact-check report.
“Factories” conjures up images of smokestacks and production lines, but the dataset cited by Trump — and now Vance — is not really about factories. Trump is citing a Bureau of Labor Statistics database set known as the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which counts the number of “establishments in private manufacturing.” But more than 80 percent of these “manufacturing establishments” employ five or fewer people. If those sound like pretty small factories, that’s because many are not “factories.”
Quite right. For the purposes of data analysis, the Labor Department counts “factories” as businesses that “transform materials or substances into new products.”
In other words, if you opened a bakery, that’s a “factory.” If you knit cute little frogs and sell them on your porch, that’s a “factory,” too. It’s why Vance’s claim garnered the dreaded “Four Pinocchios” assessment in the Post’s report.
And while that assessment seemed more than fair given the circumstances, we can go a bit further and note that those looking for an administration that has more legitimate grounds to boast about American manufacturing shouldn’t look to Trump; they should look to his successor. CNBC reported last week:
The Inflation Reduction Act has sparked a manufacturing boom across the U.S., mobilizing tens of billions of dollars of investment, particularly in rural communities in need of economic development.
In fact, the aforementioned Post article noted that if Vance wants to brag about the creation of nearly 18,000 additional “manufacturing establishments” under Trump, that same number would be nearly 39,000 under Biden.
As The New York Times’ Paul Krugman summarized in a column in April, “President Biden appears to be presiding over the kind of manufacturing surge Trump had promised. … [T]he fact is that Biden is actually doing something Trump boasted about but never achieved: promoting a significant revival in U.S. manufacturing.”
Followup to comments 186, 196, 203, 214, 230, 231, and 244.
[…] Late this evening, the Daily Caller reported that Speaker Mike Johnson actually got involved to force cemetery officials to allow Trump to hold his campaign event on the grounds. The Caller, unsurprisingly, portrays this as the Gold Star families requesting help from Congress after Arlington officials tried to prevent Trump from accompanying them to the cemetery.
Spin aside, what I take as the relevant point is that Arlington cemetery officials could see this was a trainwreck-in-the-making from the start. And the Speaker of the House was brought in to overrule cemetery officials simply trying to enforce the prohibition against holding partisan political events on the cemetery grounds, especially in the area of recent burials. This whole thing went on, involving an assault on a cemetery employee […]
That report, filed by the Arlington employee, is a public record. It can be FOIA’d. […] The Pentagon clearly wants to de-escalate this story. They don’t want to get pulled into the presidential campaign. But I doubt we’ve heard the last of this.
[…] much more about what happened at Arlington has come to light:
Members of Trump’s team had a verbal and physical altercation with a member of the cemetery staff who has now been identified as a woman.
The woman was reportedly pushed aside by a large male member of Trump’s campaign staff when she tried to prevent the campaign from taking cameras into Arlington’s specially protected Section 60 area, where recently deceased veterans are buried.
In advance of the visit, Trump’s team was told personal aides could come but not campaign staff. They came anyway.
Trump’s team was expressly told that “photographers, content creators or any other persons” attending for a political campaign were not allowed, according to a statement from the cemetery. His team brought them anyway.
In statements after the event, Trump’s team insulted the cemetery official repeatedly, saying that she was “suffering from a mental health episode,” “despicable,” and “a disgrace.”
[…]
On Wednesday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, attempted to defend the altercation, dismissively saying that “apparently somebody at Arlington Cemetery, some staff member, had a little disagreement with somebody” and “the media has turned this into a national news story.”
[…] Vance claimed that there is “verifiable evidence” that the Trump campaign was allowed to have a photographer present, though the best evidence he provided was that Trump was invited by family members of some of those who died at Abbey Gate during the evacuation of forces from Afghanistan. (Vance initially referred to it as “Abbey Road”—i.e., the famous recording studio—before correcting himself.)
No matter how many times Trump’s team makes this claim, permission from a handful of families does not allow them to violate cemetery rules. It certainly doesn’t allow them to violate federal law. [correct]
One clear reason that camera use is restricted in military cemeteries—and why footage is not to be used in campaign ads—is that it doesn’t affect the sanctity of just one or two graves. It affects the families of many other fallen veterans who are buried in the area.
And on Wednesday, the family of Green Beret Master Sgt. Andrew Marckesano expressed concern at how his grave marker ended up being a part of Trump’s campaign stop. Marckesano earned Silver and Bronze Stars for his service, and he happens to be buried beside one of the veterans whose families invited Trump to visit. Marckesano’s family gave no such invitation, but now this solemn reminder of their loss is being splashed across Trump’s campaign videos and photographs.
[…] No one is upset that Trump went to Arlington. He’s welcome to do so. And no one is bothered by him going with family members to visit graves in Section 60. What’s upsetting—and illegal—is using Arlington, or any other military cemetery, for a campaign event. And that’s exactly what Trump’s team did.
[…] The pretense that what Trump did was somehow supporting veterans is a twisted, upside-down version of the truth. Trump’s actions show that he has no respect for the hundreds of thousands of veterans buried at Arlington, or for their families, or for the workers who care for this sacred space.
“You guys in the media, you’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite,” Vance said at a Pennsylvania campaign stop on Wednesday.
Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender people under 18 and its new restrictions for adults may be enforced while a lawsuit works its way through the courts, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
That means that doctors in Florida may no longer provide gender-affirming care for minors such as puberty blocking or hormone therapies, even if the parent or guardian gives permission, with some exceptions. Children undergoing or “threatened” with such procedures may be taken into custody by the state on behalf of guardians or parents who disagree. Transgender adults wanting gender-affirming care must now deal with more steps to get it.
Violations could mean fines, jail time and/or loss of license for the doctors involved, and could leave them liable to civil penalties for up to 20 years.
The ban was one of several measures from Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican state legislators last year that targeted the state’s LGBTQ+ population. U.S. District Judge Judge Robert Hinkle blocked parts of the law in June in response to a lawsuit claiming the law was discriminatory.
The bill sponsors stressed that the measure was intended to protect children, although mainstream medical associations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization all support gender-affirming care for minors as a treatment for gender dysphoria, the distress a person feels when their gender does not align with their sex assigned at birth.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to a similar ban in Tennessee for the next term, which begins in October.
[…]
Under SB 254, the state also may take custody of any child “present in this state” who “has been subjected to or is threatened with being subjected to sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures.”
[…]
A doctor providing gender-affirming care for minors is now committing a third-degree felony.
A doctor providing gender-affirming care to adults who does not comply with the new amount of tests and paperwork is committing a first-degree misdemeanor.
Any healthcare practitioner arrested for “committing or attempting, soliciting, or conspiring to commit” any aspect of the new law will have their license suspended.
[…]
The law passed in 2023 was blocked in June by Judge Hinkle in response to a class-action suit consisting of four transgender adults and seven parents of transgender minors, brought against Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, the Florida Board of Medicine, the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine and other state leaders.
In his ruling, Hinkle called out the state for the onerous restrictions placed solely on transgender patients with unnecessary restrictions and “untrue and misleading” consent forms that were seemingly designed to discourage care rather than for medically necessary reasons.
The lawsuit claims the new mandatory consent forms include false and misleading statements that address treatments the patient will not receive and are in some respects incomprehensible.
Hinkle also pointed out the “overwhelming weight of medical authority” regarding gender dysphoria, the benefits of gender-affirming care, and the lack of Florida residents expressing regret over treatment.
“With all the resources available to the State of Florida and the full range of discovery under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the defendants could find not a one,” Hinkle wrote.
Hinkle included several direct quotes from DeSantis, Ladapo and multiple legislators, including a quote from Rep. Webster Barnaby, R-Deltona calling transgender people “demons and imps,” and noted multiple instances of false statements about child mutilation, castration and sterilization made by legislators and in a “deeply flawed, bias-driven report generated by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration at the urging of the Executive Office of the Governor.”
Hinkle previously granted a preliminary injunction against the law in June 2023, and struck down a Florida law and rule that banned Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care a few weeks later.
On Monday, two of the three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit struck down Hinkle’s block, saying that the state will probably win the case and that they didn’t believe that “animus” — which has several meanings in legal terms, but here it suggests an intent to harm or discriminate against transgender people — was behind the legislation.
The third judge dissented, listing the multiple cases from the suit of Florida legislators insulting transgender people and pointing out the potential harm of enforcing the law.
“On balance,” Judge Charles R. Wilson said, “evidence in the record demonstrates that the plaintiffs and class-members would suffer if the stay were granted — withholding access to gender-affirming care would cause needless suffering.
The class-action lawsuit is still in litigation but now Florida’s ban and restrictions may be enforced while the courts decide.
Reach out for help:
“54% of trans and nonbinary youth in Florida seriously considered suicide in the past year,” said Kasey Suffredini, Vice President of Advocacy and Government Affairs at The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth.
“These young people are not inherently prone to suicide risk, but rather they are placed at a higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized in society,” he said.
To reach a Trevor Project mental health counselor:
[snipped]
tomhsays
Re: #255
It goes without saying (I’ll say it anyway) the two judges who struck down the stay were Trump appointed. The dissenter was a Clinton appointee.
[…] According to USA Today, Trump Media stock has lost 40% of its value over the past 30 days. Cue the rats! Truth Social CFO Phillip Juhan, CEO Devin Nunes, chief operating officer Andrew Northwall, and general counsel Scott Glabe have all been selling off chunks of company stock. Juhan, Nunes, and Trump must wait until September before they can sell off their common stock.
This new low for the company coincides with Trump resuming his posting on social media competitor X, formerly known as Twitter. Trump recently sold out his own company, granting an interview on the competing platform in order to get fellow insecure billionaire Elon Musk’s endorsement.
Trump’s chance at a big payday remains intact, but if he does decide to cash out large swaths of his shares, the chances that the company’s stock will continue to plummet increase exponentially. Will Trump bet on himself to win in November and hope that victory is a boon for his share prices?
His growing effort to blame Biden and Harris for the shooting isn’t supported by any evidence. But experts say it could stir violence.
Ever since the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump, the former president and his allies have promoted unfounded conspiracy theories and blamed Democrats directly for the violence. The effort appears highly coordinated: From JD Vance to Trump’s sons and MAGA Republicans in Congress, many have used the same rhetoric to declare that Trump’s political opponents sought to have him murdered at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. No one has furnished any evidence to support that claim. And while Trump himself was relatively quiet in this regard during the initial aftermath, he has since been pouring fuel on the fire, starting with a campaign speech on Aug. 5 in Atlanta, where Vance introduced him by emphasizing that Trump’s opponents had “even tried to kill him.”
Trump took the narrative to the next level in a softball interview with TV host Dr. Phil that aired this week. The first quarter of the hour-long conversation focused on Trump’s brush with death as a divine miracle, which was a major theme of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee just days after the attack. “It has to be God,” Trump said to Dr. Phil about surviving the shooting. He went on to claim that the assassination attempt could’ve ended up like the 2017 massacre on the Las Vegas Strip, where hundreds of people were gunned down.
Later in the interview, Trump returned to the shooting unprompted, focusing blame on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’ fault. And I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me, they brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety,” he claimed without evidence. He further suggested that they played a role in undermining his security: “They were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.”
“I’m not saying they wanted you to get shot,” Dr. Phil said, “but do you think it was OK with them if you did?”
“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “There’s a lot of hatred.” (Biden, Harris, and other Democratic leaders condemned the shooting in the aftermath and Biden phoned Trump to offer prayers and support—a call Trump said was “very nice” in a leaked conversation with RFK Jr.)
[…] The deceased 20-year-old gunman was a registered Republican voter, as noted throughout national media coverage—and as I reported in the days and weeks after the attack, there appears to be no solid evidence that he was driven by partisanship or ideology. A sweeping FBI investigation, including analysis of his digital devices and interviews with more than 450 people, has found no clear motive, according to congressional testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI officials reiterated those findings on Wednesday in a call with reporters. They suggested that the gunman, who also considered attacking a Biden event, was seeking infamy and selected the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.” […]
As one source put it, “they’re piling on the idea that the opposition is so out to get Trump that they even tried to kill him, and therefore retaliation is justified.” Another described how conspiracy theories about the Trump shooting give extremist groups “a really big plot point” for retaliatory violence.
[…] “They tried to silence him. They tried to imprison him. And now they’ve tried to kill him.”
“This economy is neither in recession nor is it at risk of an imminent end to the current business cycle,” one economist said.
The U.S. economy grew faster in the second quarter of 2024 than first reported, suggesting there was little sign of a slowdown through the first six months of the year.
The latest reading of the gross domestic product (GDP) published by the Commerce Department came in at 3%, up from an initial estimate of 2.8%. The change was driven by personal spending, which advanced 2.9% compared with the prior estimate of 2.3%.
GDP is the largest single measure of economic activity, capturing consumption, investment, government spending and trade.
The U.S. economy continues to demonstrate resiliency despite various headwinds. Inflation remains higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2% target but remains well below its pandemic-era peak of more than 9% — and earnings for the typical worker have been keeping pace. Meanwhile, layoffs remain subdued even as the unemployment rate is up from historic lows.
As the GDP report was being released Thursday, the Department of Labor published initial unemployment claims data showing a stable rate of filings for jobless benefits.
“Another blow to the doom & gloom crew while the current economic expansion keeps on keeping on,” Joe Brusuelas, principal and chief economist at RSM U.S. LLP financial group, posted on X Thursday. “This economy is neither in recession nor is it at risk of an imminent end to the current business cycle.”
To be sure, not all Americans are staying afloat, let alone thriving. About an equal share of respondents to the Conference Board’s monthly consumer confidence survey rate their family’s current financial situation as “good” as those who say “bad,” and the overall confidence level remains below pre-pandemic levels.
The mixed picture was further illustrated in earnings reports released Thursday. While Dollar General flagged “financially constrained” consumers as partly to blame for a disappointing report that sent its stock plummeting, Best Buy raised its fiscal year guidance. […]
in general, he said, “the economy is looking in fine shape overall.”
The US Army issued a stark rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign over the incident on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, saying in a statement on Thursday that participants in the ceremony “were made aware of federal laws” regarding political activity at the cemetery, and “abruptly pushed aside” an employee of the cemetery.
“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the Army spokesperson said in the statement on Thursday. Section 60 is an area in the cemetery largely reserved for the graves of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve,” the statement said.
The Army spokesperson said while the incident was reported to the police department at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, the employee in question “decided not to press charges” so the Army “considers this matter closed.”
The separation of military and politics has been pretty strictly adhered to during my lifetime. I can only recall a few incidents. In 1988 Michael Dukakis rode in a tank. He wore a military helmet but a civilian suit. He got a lot of pushback, mostly saying he looked very silly.
In 2003, George W. Bush had his “Mission Accomplished” episode, during which he appeared in a flight suit. There was also a lot of grumbling about that.
But a campaign appearance at a military cemetery? No one has done that in the last 60 years that I can recall. And if they had, they certainly would have apologized immediately and profusely, and withdrawn all photos and videos. What we see instead from the Trump campaign is another insistence that he is above the law. And we see the “double down” associated with right-wingers, in which they never admit they were wrong and never apologize. The insults directed at an ANC employee only make it worse.
According to Arlington National Cemetery, the law involved is the Hatch Act, which has been around since 1939. I don’t know the details of the Hatch Act with regards to military cemeteries.
And JD Vance, a veteran who has tried to fabricate a complaint about “stolen valor” against Tim Walz, can go straight to hell for his attempts to normalize Trump’s behavior.
Reginald Selkirksays
@Arlington: The Trump campaign seems to be leaning heavily into the claim that they were guests of particular families of veterans. But in this country, individuals do not get to choose which federal laws apply to them. A family might invite Trmp to join them at a grave site, but they simply do not have the authority to grant use of photos and videos for campaign or political use.
Reginald Selkirksays
I would like to congratulate all thread participants for not once misspelling “cemetery” as “cemetary.”
Jeansays
birgerjohansson,
Could you at least put the youtube channel name with you numerous youtube links? I don’t know for others but I will never click on a random youtube link with just a clickbaity title.
J.D. Vance was greeted by loud boos during an address to the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston on Thursday—and that was only the beginning of an incredibly rough speech for Donald Trump’s running mate…
As Minnesota Governor Tim Walz pointed out to the IAFF the day before, during a much friendlier reception, Trump had blocked overtime benefits, opposed efforts to raise the minimum wage, and proposed slashing federal fire service budgets. Walz warned that under Project 2025, Trump would continue to weaken unions…
Gone are significant allegations that Trump knew he lost. But what remains — conversations with state officials and campaign staff — is likely enough.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s stunning decision on presidential immunity, legal experts had a variety of predictions of what would happen next in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case.
But once Smith’s office advised Washington, D.C., federal judge Tanya Chutkan earlier this month that it needed more time to “assess the new precedent … including through consultation with other Department of Justice components,” I realized one reason Smith could need more time was to supersede, or replace, his own indictment to resolve the Supreme Court’s clearest concerns. And on Tuesday, Smith did exactly that.
[…] assuming the stripped-down indictment can survive both judicial review and November’s election (if Trump wins, we can assume his Department of Justice will put an end to his federal criminal cases), what really interests me is Smith’s removal from the indictment of multiple alleged conversations between Trump and executive branch officials and how those deletions have complicated his case at trial.
[…] The charges against Trump — all four of which remain — necessitate showing not only that Trump falsely claimed there was outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 presidential election and that he had won, but that he knew these claims were false at the time he made them and conspired to change the election outcome.
The original indictment alleged that the sources of Trump’s knowledge included senior Department of Justice leaders, including then-Attorney General Bill Barr and his successor, then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, as well as senior White House lawyers, namely then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Pat Philbin. That document quotes Philbin as having told Trump, “[T]here is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House [o]n January 20th.”
In the new indictment, however, Smith has eliminated any and all references to conversations in which DOJ leaders, White House staff, and agencies within the intelligence community allegedly informed Trump that one or more claims about voter fraud were unproven and/or false — or simply that he had lost the election period.
It’s no secret why Smith did this. Under the Supreme Court’s immunity decision last month, Trump’s communications with executive branch aides are either part of his core constitutional powers, as the court held with respect to his interactions with DOJ leaders, or at the very least, within the outer perimeter of his official duties so that they are presumably immune both from prosecution and as evidence even as to his unofficial conduct.
But now, the case won’t include some of what seemed to be the most damning proof that Trump knew he lost.
The conversations through which Barr, Rosen and Rosen’s then-acting deputy, Rich Donoghue, disabused Trump of his false claim that votes cast through voting machines had been “switched” from him to Biden in multiple, contested states? Gone.
The time Barr also told Trump there was no evidence of a “suspicious vote dump” in Detroit? Gone.
How about when Rosen and Donoghue separately told Trump that the claim there had been 200,000-plus more votes than voters in Pennsylvania was also untrue? Cut.
Or what of Trump telling then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley in early January 2021 that “it’s too late for us” to take action on an “overseas national security issue” and they should “give that to the next guy?” Nowhere to be found.
Then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s assuring Trump that there was no outcome-determinative foreign interference in the election? Like it never happened.
Can this new indictment survive?
The superseding indictment is a reflection of a weird, dual reality for Smith and his team: In order to save their case, they also had to jettison some of their best proof. The question now is whether what’s left is powerful enough to prevail.
My guess is yes, in part because some of the most important witnesses are still important in GOP politics and therefore, all the more credible if they tell the truth. Indeed, without testimony from official Trump World, those who directly communicated with Trump about his failure to win come from two camps: state officials who refused to do his bidding and his own campaign staff. (The Supreme Court’s opinion suggests Trump’s discussions with both state officials and his campaign staff constitute unofficial, personal acts that do not qualify for immunity.)
Consider, for example, two events that the new indictment alleges went down on Dec. 8, 2020.
First, the indictment notes that a “Senior Campaign Advisor — who spoke with the Defendant on a daily basis and had informed him on multiple occasions that various fraud claims were untrue,” dismissively described those fraud claims in an email as “just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership” that unsurprisingly had resulted in more than 30 court losses to date. Those details are hardly new, but they could carry even greater weight going forward given their source: once and current Trump adviser Jason Miller, who is perhaps even more prominent within the inner circle today than he was in 2020.
The new indictment also alleges that Trump called Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr and asked him to join the so-called “original jurisdiction” lawsuit that Texas had filed in the Supreme Court. But Carr declined, telling Trump, according to the indictment, “that officials had investigated various claims of election fraud in the state and were not seeing evidence to support them.” And Carr, who defeated a Trump-endorsed opponent to win re-election in 2022, remains unbowed, at least so far, refusing to reopen an investigation of the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County despite a directive from the Georgia Election Board.
I can’t imagine Miller or Carr would necessarily welcome testifying in a Trump trial. But I also can’t envision the Supreme Court ruling their testimony is ultimately off-limits under the contours of the immunity decision. The special counsel and those weighing in at the Justice Department understand this. And even as they recover from their Supreme Court loss, they are playing the long game.
The Israeli military and Palestinian militant group Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio, a senior WHO official said on Thursday. The vaccination campaign is due to start on Sunday, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization’s senior official for the region.
The Biden administration is restarting an immigration program that allows migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to come to the United States, and it is including ‘additional vetting’ of their U.S.-based financial sponsors following fraud concerns. The Department of Homeland Security had suspended the program earlier this month to investigate the concerns but indicated that an internal review found no widespread fraud among sponsors.
A Kentucky man involved with the Oath Keepers and other far-right extremist groups who helped devise plans to converge on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced on Wednesday to five years in prison for his role in the riot, federal prosecutors said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) backed off Wednesday of what he referred to as a ‘half-baked’ plan to place golf courses in state parks, according to multiple outlets. At a press conference, DeSantis referred to ‘stuff’ in the plan as being ‘half-baked’ and ‘not ready for prime time,’ according to the Miami Herald.
Project 2025 may be deeply connected to Donald Trump, but it’s not the only authoritarian agenda in town. There’s another that’s been written almost entirely by members of Trump’s former administration, and it’s just as bad as Project 2025 in its own special way.
It comes from the America First Policy Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that legally cannot support a candidate for office. However, Trump’s Save America PAC has donated to it, and he has hosted fundraisers for it at Mar-a-Lago. AFPI also champions 2020 election denialism and is representing a Georgia official who wants the power to refuse to certify election results. And Trump tapped AFPI’s board chair, Linda McMahon, to co-lead his transition team. So it’s nonpartisan in the same way that Trump filming a campaign video at Arlington National Cemetery was respectful.
The AFPI plan doesn’t supersede Project 2025. It’s more of a partnership. While the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 focuses a good deal on new policies and on purging the federal government and populating its ranks with Trump loyalists, this plan is dedicated to crushing regulations, and [to preparing] executive orders to swiftly erase just about everything that President Joe Biden has accomplished.
According to Politico, AFPI has not yet released its completed “America First Transition Project” for Trump’s next term. But what’s available seems to focus mostly on deregulation and support of industries, particularly oil and gas.
[…] there’s no doubt oil companies would like to have big chunks of the Arctic for future drilling and would like to export more gas to higher-paying markets overseas than the Biden-Harris administration has allowed. To big industries, the best regulation—whether it’s on the environment, safety, or labor—is no regulation at all.
[…] To make this regulatory strip-mining happen as quickly as possible, AFPI is reportedly preparing over 100 executive orders for Trump that would blow away much of the work done under Biden. And to make sure that there are no holdouts actually concerned with protecting the environment, safety, or labor, the plan overlaps Project 2025 in efforts aimed at replacing current officials and experts with industry lobbyists. Just think of when Trump named coal-industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to run the Environment Protection Agency. Times a thousand.
And there’s another aspect to the AFPI plan that may make it even worse than Project 2025.
As with many Republican efforts over the past two decades, this plan isn’t just focused on wrecking regulations at the federal level. AFPI staffers are reportedly working at the state and local levels to “reverse the damage caused by the radical left and put the interests of the American people first,” AFPI said in a statement to Politico.
“AFPI does not speak on behalf of any officeholder or campaign,” it added.
Trump will certainly get that part when he tells you he doesn’t know who they are.
Tonight on CNN, Vice President Kamala Harris will sit for an interview with Dana Bash. And it’s about time, too, since according to a lot of people in the media, up until now, no one on the planet actually knew anything about her or what she thinks. She is a mystery wrapped in a puzzle inside an enigma, especially to the New York Times, which simply can’t understand why she hasn’t rushed to do another interview with the puppy-training Paper of Record since this longread last fall [embedded link available at the main link].
The piece has the charming subhed “After nearly three years, the vice president is still struggling to make the case for herself — and feels she shouldn’t have to,” and the rest has pretty much the same tone. Reporter Astead W. Herndon explained, after extensive research and an interview with Harris, that the vice president was “a politician in search of a moment, rather than a leader defining this one,” and that with the 2024 election approaching, maybe Tucker Carlson got it right when he said that “the closer Harris gets to the presidency, the further she has become from convincing the country that she is presidential.”
Like, sure, no politician should demand the sort of fawning coverage Donald Trump gets at Newsmax, but wow, it’s a real head-scratcher that Harris hasn’t asked the Times to drop by Number One Observatory Circle for tea.
To mark the occasion of tonight’s interview, where Harris may finally get the Bashing she has coming, the Times revisited that October 2023 piece by having Jess Bidgood, who runs its “On Politics” newsletter, interview Herndon about the challenges of interviewing Harris. [embedded link available at the main link]
Herndon thought interviewing Harris was “arduous,” and she seems to have felt the same.
Bidgood 2024: In a word or two, how would you describe that 2023 interview?
Herndon: Arduous! When she sat down, I asked her if she liked her job, and she said she did — but that she didn’t like doing this. I was putting her in a position to self-reflect, and to articulate her own story of growth and change. I thought she would want to tell a story on that front, and was surprised that she did not.
It is indeed surprising that Harris might have been terse with a person asking her mostly why people thought she should be replaced on Joe Biden’s ticket, what did it feel like to be such an Affirmative Action hire in the first place, and why the portions were so small.
Then there was Herndon’s very … we’ll call it “bro-like” need to put her in a box, with the label glued on just right. Was she this or was she that? She claimed that some of the systems were bad but did not agree she would tear them down? And it’s all sort of DSA-meeting-style theory; even though she’s answering his questions thoroughly and deftly, she won’t answer his demand “are you a progressive or a moderate” and “but why do you say you don’t want to restructure society,” which would be a little bit more than a reasonable ask of a president even if we didn’t have a filibuster, and it’s tiring.
Bidgood 2024: She often pushed you to define words like “radical,” “progressive,” and even “economic inequality,” in a lawyerly way. What tone did that set for you?
Herndon: It was challenging. I wrote this in the piece, but it wasn’t just the words, but the body language. She didn’t break eye contact. It was intense. You feel on trial. Fifteen minutes in, I thought, I don’t know if I’m getting what I need to here, and this might be the last time we talk — and it was. I had to really believe that the questions I was asking were ones that more people have.
She just kind of flips it back on you. And I don’t think that’s all bad. Some of the tone of the interviews feels like the Senate hearing version of Harris — which is something lots of Democrats love. You, as an interviewer, just have to be prepared to play the role of Jeff Sessions or Brett Kavanaugh.
Here, if you can stand it, is the podcast so you can hear the actual interview’s tone. And here are some Axios-style bullets from the 2023 story, copy and pasted for your enjoyment. There’s ever so much more at the gift link, it does just hammer on and on and on, and almost all of it in the following vein.
– [A]fter a disappointing 2020 campaign, and the reputational sting that has lasted ever since, Harris has often been a politician in search of a moment, rather than a leader defining this one.
– But if Biden’s age is the Democrats’ explicit electoral challenge, Harris, 59 this month, is the unspoken one.
– [In] terms of her own political profile, Harris has remained a vacuum of negative space, a vessel for supporters and detractors to fill as they choose, not least because she refuses to do so herself.
– Trump recently gave an interview to the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which he mocked Harris’s speaking style and also said aloud what many people seem to be whispering: that the closer Harris gets to the presidency, the further she has become from convincing the country that she is presidential.
– Her response did little to quell the line of criticism, but it did expose a fundamental fact about Harris: In the last five years, as social movements have shifted the Democrats’ message on criminal justice and public safety leftward, the figure whose career seems to speak the most to that conversation has refused to lead it.
– Trump isn’t the only one floating a Harris-replacement scenario.
– Unlike Biden, who also faced questions about his tough-on-crime past during the 2020 presidential primary, Harris craved the approval of the party’s left wing, particularly the class of liberal, college-educated women who had grown more interested in Warren’s unabashed progressivism.
– One major donor said there’s an agreement among the party’s heavy hitters that having Harris as vice president to Biden “is not ideal, but there’s a hope she can rise to the occasion.”
– I called top Democratic pollsters to gauge whether a Harris-led party kept them up at night. I talked with members of Biden’s vice-presidential selection committee to ask the question I’ve always wanted to know the answer to: Was Kamala Harris really chosen as a running mate because she had the right identity at the right time, the highest-profile diversity hire in America?
– By this point, the vice president would not break eye contact, and suddenly I had more in common with Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh than I ever expected. Just as in those Senate confirmation hearings, Harris’s tone was perfectly pitched, firm but not menacing — confrontational but not abrasive, just enough for you to know she thought these questions were a waste of her time. [No fucking kidding.]
– I asked her where she would define herself politically on a spectrum of moderate to progressive.
“Why don’t you define each one for me, and then I can tell you where I fit,” she responded. “If you want to say, for example, that believing that working people should receive a fair wage and be treated with dignity and that there is dignity in all work, well then, I don’t know what label do you give that one. If you believe that parents should have affordable child care? I’m not sure what the label is for that.”
– When Harris speaks in an interview or to an audience, it can sound as if she’s editing in real time, searching for the right calibration of talking points rather than displaying confidence in her message. [unsubstantiated opinion]
– In Chicago, I directly placed in front of her the question others had only insinuated.
“When someone asks, ‘What does Vice President Kamala Harris bring to the ticket?’ what is that clear answer?” I asked. Her team made clear it would be my final question.
“Were you in this room of 2,000 people?” she asked. I nodded.
“Did you see them cheering and standing?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I say.”
She stood up and walked out of the room.
Vice President Harris argued that her “values have not changed” in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash in which she was asked about shifts on her policy positions when it comes to climate and border issues.
Harris’s remarks came in a clip of the interview, which is set to air in full Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT.
When it came to the issue of changing views on policy, Bash asked Harris how voters should look at where the vice president stands and whether what she’s portraying now is what Americans should expect if she serves in the White House.
“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed,” Harris said.
[…] “You mention the Green New Deal—I have always believed and I have worked on it—that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around times.
We did that with the Inflation Reduction Act,” she said. “That value has not changed.”
She also cited her work as California attorney general when discussing border issues, touting the prosecution of transnational criminal organizations during that tenure.
“My values have around what we need to do to secure our border, that value has not changed,” Harris said on Thursday.
Thursday marks the first interview Harris has done since becoming the Democrats’ nominee for president. She and Walz did the interview in Georgia, where they were campaigning in the battleground state.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ polling numbers and massive fundraising, coupled with Trump’s recent struggles and scandals, have driven the right into desperation. How desperate are they? On Thursday, Peter J. Hasson, editor of the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, posted about a new investigation into Harris’ background.
The article, which clocks in at 1,236 words and was penned by no less than three writers, offers an in-depth investigation into why Harris didn’t list a summer job at McDonald’s on her post-college resume.
It’s a scandal 40 years in the making!
[…] The Free Beacon’s “investigators” leveraged the Freedom of Information Act to obtain both Harris’ 1987 application for a law clerk job in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office and the resume she attached to it.
Harris applied for the job during her second year of law school at what was then known as the University of California Hastings College of the Law.
“Politicians who worked menial food service jobs as teens are often quick to mention it as proof of their working class bona fides,” the authors write, before lamenting former President Barack Obama’s famous turn at a Honolulu Baskin-Robbins. The implication is clear: Since Harris didn’t constantly bring up her brief stint at McDonald’s “until she ran for president in 2019 and began to make the job a centerpiece of her biography,” as they write, she must be making it up.
This shocking resume exposé triggered powerful responses.
Former White House economic adviser Brendan Duke wrote, “I wonder why Kamala Harris listed working at a law firm, Charles Schwab, and the FTC when applying for a legal job instead of McDonalds,” sarcastically adding, “Very suspicious!”
Princeton professor Nolan McCarty wrote, “In light of Kamala’s McDonalds-gate, I have updated my CV” by adding “Bingo caller, Elks Lodge” to his academic work history.
Writer and attorney Imani Gandy wrote, “Kamala Harris worked at McDonald’s but didn’t put it on her résumé. Impeach!”
But perhaps TV writer Ben Wexler contextualized the story best. [X post at the link: TRUMP: (desecrates the final resting place of fallen United States soldiers)
MEDIA: Kamala Harris Didn’t List Her High School Job at McDonald’s on Her Resume to Be a Law Clerk]
Clearly, Trump’s allies are scrambling.
Earlier this week, right-wingers failed to create a scandal around Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s dog, Scout, when an online braintrust spread the rumor that Walz, Harris’ running mate, had fabricated Scout’s existence. This attempt to besmirch the well-liked Walz was also instantly debunked,
Check out the scandalous moment in June 2019 when Harris spoke about working at McDonald’s: [X post and video at the link]
birgerjohanssonsays
In case you love to sit in a sofa with friends, drinking beer and watching “so bad they are good” films, The Bells Of Innocence -featured in one of the funniest episodes of “God Awful Movies” on Youtube- is, against all expectations available at Amazon.
.
Watch Chuck Norris’ son show he has no future in acting while visiting a town separate from normal time and space, aka in Texas.
(Eli, Heath and Noah checked the camera angles and worked out the bicycle accident that killed a kid must have been a deliberate murder by the protagonist)
Chuck Norris’ adult son is surprised to find that the population of the town have a problem with him touching kids that he does not know and has never met before. He uncovers the reason: demons!
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@Reginald Selkirk:
I don’t know the details of the Hatch Act with regards to military cemeteries.
Selective benefit—Army participation must not selectively benefit or appear to benefit any person, group, or […] political organization
[…]
Avoid endorsement—Activities will not support any event involving or appearing to involve the promotion, endorsement, or sponsorship of any individual, […] or political campaign unless it is clear that the support primarily benefits the community at large or the Army as opposed to benefiting the sponsoring organization.
the Hatch Act prevents federal employees from participating in certain political activities. […] the Hatch Act also applies to state and local municipality employees […] For a federal employee, they can be removed, reduced in grade, debarred from federal employment for up to five years, suspended, issued a letter of reprimand, or subject to a civil penalty that will not exceed $1,000, 5 U.S.C. § 7326(2). [Non-federal employees face removal and loss of federal funding—both personally and for any agency they work for in the near future.]
Reginald Selkirksays
@273 After nearly three years, the vice president is still struggling to make the case for herself — and feels she shouldn’t have to,…
She’s not Donald Trump, and that’s good enough for me.
Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita has decided to take the team on a death spiral against America’s military, calling the office of the Army secretary a bunch of “hacks.”
“Reposting this hoping to trigger the hacks at @SecArmy,” LaCivita wrote Thursday afternoon, resharing a campaign video of Donald Trump at Arlington National Cemetery earlier this week…
He seems nice.
I hope they take this as a cue to press charges.
Reginald Selkirksays
@Arlington
Here’s how a person should behave if they wind up in this situation
Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox came under criticism Wednesday for sending a campaign email that featured a photo of him and former President Donald Trump at Arlington National Cemetery during a wreath-laying ceremony…
Cox’s campaign apologized for using the photo and for politicizing the graveside ceremony, which honored Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover of Utah, one of 13 service members killed in an airport bombing during the Afghanistan War withdrawal three years ago. The email was soliciting donations for Cox’s reelection bid.
“This was not a campaign event and was never intended to be used by the campaign,” the governor wrote in a post on X. “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent.” …
Jack White says he’s filing a lawsuit against Donald Trump after a member of his campaign posted a video on social media featuring Trump departing for Michigan and Wisconsin, soundtracked to The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”
“Oh….Don’t even think about using my music you fascists,” White wrote in a post to Instagram alongside the video. “Law suit [sic] coming from my lawyers about this (to add to your 5 thousand others.)” …
… Walz is making his first trip to North Carolina since becoming his party’s nominee for vice president. He’s in town for a political event and campaign reception.
Cooper greeted him upon his arrival in Raleigh. And before doing anything else, they drove to the fast food restaurant that boasts 40 flavors of milkshakes.
Walz ordered a mint chocolate chip, while Cooper ordered M&M….
Trump jerseys won’t stop showing up at the home of a Denver-area man. “I did not order these,” says Rick, being interviewed by local NBC affiliate 9News on Wednesday, as a new package shows up stuffed with a Trump jersey.
In mid-July, Rick got a text notification from the U.S. Postal Service that his package from TikTok would soon be delivered. He was confused as he hadn’t ordered anything from TikTok and doesn’t use the site. He opened the package when it arrived and found a jersey inside printed with the cartoon face of Donald Trump floating lazily in a tube down the river.
“Chillin like a felon” the shirt said in garish pink cursive.
The shirts now come to Rick’s house every few days and they’re piling up…
Rick was befuddled until one package arrived with a piece of paper that gave him some answers. It was the return instructions for a purchase from TikTok. It looks like people are purchasing the jerseys from a seller on TikTok and then returning them. 9News called the list of people who’d sent packages and confirmed that they were, in fact, trying to return the shirts. The people who spoke to 9News had not gotten their money back. According to Rick, one of the shirts had a mustard stain…
birgerjohanssonsays
JWST has discovered a jovian planet orbiting the K star Epsilon Indi (12 light years distant) on an elliptic 45-year orbit.
The star also has a binary brown dwarf orbiting at a much greater distance, but radial velocity measurements had indicated the star was orbited by some closer massive object. The JVST telescope detected the planet but not quite in the expected position, indicating there is another jovian planet in the system.
This article, How Long Have Arches Been Around?, by Dr. Danny Faulkner, describes creationist “research” into geomorphology. It is laughably bad, even for creationists. Natural arches and bridges are aesthetically interesting, but are only a tiny part of some geomorphology studies.
In this piece, Dr. Faulkner* extrapolates backward to “show” that arches in Arches National Park, Utah, have formed since Noah’s Flood, about 4,500 years ago. He claims this timeframe because of…
There is now a 7th carbon fixation pathway. It’s glycine again!
“The reductive glycine pathway allows autotrophic growth of Desulfovibrio desulfuricans” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18906-7
the ambipolar electric field […] Since the late 1960s, spacecraft flying over Earth’s poles have detected a stream of particles flowing from our atmosphere into space. […] Theorists predicted this outflow, which they dubbed the “polar wind,” […] incredibly weak, with its effects felt only over hundreds of miles. […] “A half a volt is almost nothing […] But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”
[…]
Hydrogen ions, the most abundant type of particle in the polar wind, experience an outward force from this field 10.6 times stronger than gravity. “That’s more than enough to counter gravity—in fact, it’s enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds,” […] Heavier particles also get a boost. Oxygen ions at that same altitude, immersed in this half-a-volt field, weigh half as much. In general, […] the ionosphere remains denser to greater heights than it would be without it.
“It’s like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space,” […] Because it’s created by the internal dynamics of an atmosphere, similar electric fields are expected to exist on other planets
It starts with solar wind ionizing the upper atmosphere. A figure describes how it works. I found this StackEchange answer easier to read.
During the next few weeks, the team will test the maneuvering capabilities of the sail […] The […] spacecraft orbits Earth at approximately twice the altitude of the International Space Station.
The mission’s primary objective is to successfully demonstrate new boom deployment […] “This sail’s booms are tube-shaped and can be squashed flat and rolled like a tape measure into a small package while offering all the advantages of composite materials, like less bending and flexing during temperature changes.” […] the lightweight design and compact packing system could make them the perfect material for constructing habitats on the Moon and Mars, acting as framing structures for buildings or compact antenna poles
Animated video at the link. The CubeSat spacecraft started out the size of a microwave oven. Its deployed sail is a square half the size of a tennis court.
Bekenstein Boundsays
Reginald Selkirk@248:
Before throwing him in prison, they would have to come up with an actual crime he was guilty of.
No, they wouldn’t, and that’s really, really scary …
@287: Link doesn’t work. Browser doesn’t even try to go anywhere!
whheydtsays
Re: CompusoryAccount7746 @ #289….
An electric field strength is generally expressed as potential/distance, such as v/m (volts per meter). Just a voltage doesn’t really say anything.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@whheydt:
From the announcement:
Endurance launched and reached an altitude of 477.23 miles (768.03 kilometers) […] Across the 322-mile altitude range where it collected data, Endurance measured a change in electric potential of only 0.55 volts.
From the linked paper.
Apogee (768.03 km) was chosen to measure the electric potential across the exobase (around 500 km), above which ions stop being collisionally bound to the neutral atmosphere and are free to escape upwards. […] A mean potential drop of 0.55 ± 0.09 V was measured across the exobase of Earth (250–768 km).
“I’ve played at amazing golf courses […] and let me tell you, Arlington National Cemetery was the worst 18 holes I’ve ever played […] Immediately after I teed off, I had no idea where the holes were, my golf cart started sucking up wreaths, and my ball got caught in this huge trap called the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Plus, it was impossible to order a lemonade or a BLT. The waitress I called over just started sobbing.” At press time, Trump added that this was exactly why he preferred playing at Trump golf courses, where there was only one grave and it belonged to his late ex-wife.
Faroe Islands: The $190 Million Tunnel Built for Just 1200 People
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zyo7yJwTZlg
They have another tunnel with an underground/undersea roundabout!
On Thursday, X users and NPR editors noticed that a link to an NPR story about Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery mishap was being marked as spam on the platform.
When users clicked on the article link, they received an alert reading: “Warning: this link may be unsafe,” followed by the URL to the webpage. This type of warning is typically displayed when the URL leads the user to spam or another kind of malicious link, not a factual news report…
Researchers have pushed back the timeline of migration into Mallorca based on the age of a submerged rock bridge found in a cave on the island.
The 25-foot-long (7.62-meter-long) bridge is about 6,000 years old, the team posited in a recent paper, pushing back recent estimates of human settlement to roughly 4,400 years ago. The team’s research was published today in Communications Earth & Environment…
The bridge is made of limestone blocks and connects two elevated chambers in the cave. But the bridge is not the only human construction in the cave. There is also an ancient stone path at the cave’s mouth that leads down to the underwater lake…
Elon Musk threatened a top judge in Brazil after the country’s highest court said it could block his social media website, X, if it didn’t appoint a local legal representative by Thursday night.
Musk responded to the top court’s ultimatum with a seemingly AI-generated image of a supreme court justice who has been spearheading efforts in Brazil to crack down on hate speech and misinformation. The image, which showed the justice, Alexandre de Moraes, behind bars, was accompanied by a threatening message that tagged him.
“One day, @Alexandre, this picture of you in prison will be real. Mark my words,” Musk wrote in the post…
Ukraine brought the war to Russia’s Kirov Oblast for the first time on Wednesday with a drone strike on an oil depot there more than 700 miles from the border. It was one of at least two attacks on Russia’s fuel infrastructure overnight that included a drone strike in Rostov Oblast and conflicting claims about an attack on one in Ryazan Oblast. The attacks are part of Ukraine’s effort to severely degrade Russia’s oil industry, which supports the war and is a critical part of its economy.
The Zenit oil facility in Kotelnich, Kirov Oblast, was attacked by Ukrainian drones starting at 10 a.m. local time, Oblast Gov. Aleksandr Sokolov said on Telegram. “As a result of timely measures taken, two drones were shot down and three fell on the territory of the Zenit plant in Kotelnich and caught fire.” …
Russia is withdrawing 100 of its paramilitary officers from Burkina Faso to help in the war in Ukraine.
They are part of about 300 soldiers from the Bear Brigade – a Russian private military company – who arrived in the West African nation in May to support the country’s military junta…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed to “squeeze” the Ukrainians out, but his military’s recent successes have been much farther afield in Ukraine’s east. Now both armies seem focused on the fight in enemy territory where they are gaining ground, even if that means leaving the door open in their own backyard.
Russia has committed forces to stop Ukraine but it’s mostly conscript and 2nd rate units. They are setting up defensive lines some distance from Ukrainian forces to keep Ukraine from moving freely, not trying to attack Ukrainian forces in Kursk directly. Ukraine continues to take some valuable locations and is using the advance point to stage drone strikes deep in Russia but they are stretched very thin at this point. Ukraine is setting up to defend what it has occupied in Kursk, indicating they are not planning to leave immediately.
This war is really becoming a question of who will run out of manpower first. Russia has a lot but is also taking huge losses. Desperate shortages of supplies, lack of training and poor command structure hamper them heavily. Ukraine has enough gear as long as western countries continue to supply them but it’s population doesn’t compare to Russia’s.
Reginald @279, I think the NYT reporter got that all wrong. Kamala Harris is not “struggling” to define or to make a case for herself. She is doing quite well in both endeavors.
Also, she has repeatedly said that she needs to talk to voters and to introduce herself to some voters. The phrase “feels she shouldn’t have to” is complete nonsense. The NYT published a hit piece that revealed the biases of the reporters.
Like you, I am happy with her candidacy. I don’t need the NYT working to cut her down.
Trump blamed the Gold Star parents for posting photos on TikTok. A reporter told him that was his own campaign account. He suggested it was a set-up by the Biden administration. Video at the link.
[…] Trump published a one-sentence missive to his social media platform. “The Republican Party is charging forward on many fronts,” the former president wrote, “and I am very proud that we are a LEADER on I.V.F.”
And what, pray tell, would that mean in practice? Six days later, a possible answer came into sharper focus. NBC News reported:
[…]Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday that if he is elected, his administration would not only protect access to in-vitro fertilization but would also have either the government or insurance companies cover the cost of the expensive service for American women who need it.
“We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump said before adding, “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”
The wording led to some confusion about the relevant policy details. Does the Republican nominee, who didn’t pursue anything along these lines during his four years in the White House, envision a model in which the federal government would pick up the tab for IVF services — comparable to an existing policy on dialysis — or one in which private insurers would be forced to cover the costs?
When NBC News sought clarification, the former president said that one option would be to have insurance companies pay “under a mandate, yes.” When CNN asked vice presidential nominee JD Vance how this would work in states that ban IVF, he didn’t have much of an answer, either.
It seems, in other words, as if Team Trump has some homework to do when it comes to how all of this would work.
Still, this is an unusually progressive announcement from a radically far-right candidate, isn’t it? It would be, if the GOP candidate’s rhetoric were believable.
Indeed, the Harris campaign responded to the news with a press statement featuring several notable bullet points:
– Donald Trump’s own platform — linked on his campaign website — could effectively ban IVF by establishing so-called “fetal personhood.”
– Trump appointed an anti-IVF judge to a lifetime federal judicial appointment. He even added her to a list of potential Supreme Court picks.
– Trump’s White House and campaign hosted the Alabama Supreme Court chief justice whose ruling effectively banned IVF in the state earlier this year.
– Trump’s campaign has refused for more than six months to support protecting IVF.
– Donald Trump has deep ties to the anti-IVF movement.
– Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, voted against IVF protections.
[Embedded links to sources for the Harris campaign press statement are available at the main link.]
We could go further down this same path, noting just how many of Trump’s own allies are looking forward to his prospective second term precisely so that they can undermine IVF access.
For that matter, given that Trump tried to repeal, undermine, and sabotage the Affordable Care Act, it’s probably best to take all of his promises related to health care with a grain of salt.
But I’m also struck by the broader policy circumstances. For many years, Republicans have condemned the idea of socialized health care coverage and staunchly opposed private insurance benefit mandates. And yet, here’s Trump, looking for a winning campaign issue, insisting that Americans’ IVF treatments will be covered, either through socialized health care coverage or a private insurance benefit mandate. […]
Before Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ first sit-down interview aired on Thursday evening, Donald Trump was already attacking it.
“She was sitting behind that desk, this massive desk, and she didn’t look like a leader today,” Trump said at an event in La Crosse, Wisconsin, roughly half an hour before the interview aired. “I’ll be honest. I don’t see her negotiating with President Xi [Jinping] of China. I don’t see her with [North Korean dictator] Kim Jong-un, like we did with Kim Jong-un.”
There was no massive desk. Harris and running mate Tim Walz conducted the interview with CNN’s Dana Bash while seated at a small table at a cafe in Savannah, Georgia. But since Trump was providing this bit of unadorned misogyny before the interview ran, his imagination apparently placed Harris behind something more substantial—something like the Resolute desk. [LOL. Trump is so pathetic.]
Trump’s attack on Harris’ appearance during the interview was a good signal of where Republicans went in their responses Thursday evening: prepackaged, disconnected from the truth, and weak.
Throughout her interview, Harris did well. She did well even though the media had raised the interview to the level of a do-or-die test. She did well even though Bash seemed to mistake repeating Republican talking points for conducting journalism.
The highlight of the evening was when Harris refused to engage with Trump’s racist claim that she “turn[ed] Black” for political gain.
BASH: What I want to ask you about is what [Trump] said last month. He suggested that you happened to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity.
HARRIS: Yeah.
BASH: Any—
HARRIS: Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please. (LAUGH)
BASH: That’s it?
HARRIS: That’s it.
That Harris refused to roll in the mud Trump created seemed to throw Bash off stride, but that was the theme of the evening. Harris was there to give calm, substantive answers. Too bad Bash came so ill-equipped with substantive questions.
As the Associated Press reports, Harris’ first big interview since becoming the Democratic nominee “was notable mostly in how routine it seemed.” Harris’ responses were measured and careful. She didn’t fumble or make noteworthy mistakes. She did not talk about sharks, batteries, or fictional serial killers—Trump’s recent preoccupations.
The fact-checkers could take it easy. And for those who were looking at the interview more interested in heat than light, they will have it much harder.
When The New York Times’ “7 Takeaways From Harris’s First Major Interview” include that Harris “struggles to be punchy off the cuff,” Walz “is good at sitting and smiling,” and that Bash was hampered because the small table made it hard for her to be tough on Harris, you could feel the outlet’s disappointment. [LOL]
For The New York Times and many other traditional outlets, any interview with Trump is filtered to report the few statements that might be true or at least coherent. When talking about anyone else, those outlets filter for anything that might be seen as a lie or at least an error.
Harris gave them little to talk about.
The same was true of Republicans. Despite his eagerness to get in a cheap shot before airtime, Trump was generally silent during and after it aired. His biggest complaint on social media wasn’t anything Harris said; it was what she didn’t say. [team Trump post is available at the link]
That response lined up with another clearly prepackaged statement from Trump’s campaign, which contained a long list of “what Kamala Harris didn’t talk about with CNN.”
Criticizing Harris for failing to provide answers to questions that weren’t asked may not be the silliest response to an interview in history. But it’s up there.
The one line from the interview that Republicans repeated on Thursday evening and are still spewing across Fox News and other right-wing outlets on Friday was Harris simply saying “my values have not changed.” Republicans are slotting that statement into another prewritten narrative that Trump’s campaign has been selling: Harris as a “flip-flopper.” So they’re taking the “values” line and claiming Harris is saying she still holds every policy position she has ever held—or has ever been claimed to hold—all at once. She’s a radical who wants to stop all fracking! And also a flip-flopper who changed her position on fracking!
However, that’s the opposite of what Harris said. Her full sentence was “I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed.” She clearly used the “values” phrase to explain that while some of her positions on issues like fracking may have shifted as she gathered more information, her underlying beliefs have not. That’s not flip-flopping. It’s called learning.
Regardless of the truth, expect those two contradictory attack lines—Harris is a flip-flopper but also a radical who’s never changed her policy positions—to be the primary Republican talking points coming out of this interview. And of course, media outlets are eager to assist.
What Harris delivered on Thursday night was a solid, ordinary performance. Which is exactly the note she and her campaign wanted to hit. She wasn’t swinging for the moon. She wasn’t trying to reforge her image in half an hour.
She was doing what she did at the Democratic National Convention: showing that she represents normality in the face of over eight years of Trump’s assault on basic norms and human decency. […].
The Republican Party and its presidential nominee Donald Trump have a problem: They are sexist and their policies are misogynistic. This means that women voters are repelled by Trump and he has only a small number of female campaign surrogates who aren’t related to him.
One such surrogate is Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina. Mace broke with Trump back when he attempted to overthrow our country’s election results, but she has since returned to the MAGA fold. The congresswoman appeared on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show to attack Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and argue that a Trump presidency will be better for women.
“As a woman, I want to vote for someone who’s going to protect women like me, who are survivors of rape,” Mace told Cavuto.
That’s quite a statement considering that in May 2023, Trump was found liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and subsequently ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages for defaming Carroll by saying she lied about the abuse.
“[Trump] can go toe to toe with [Harris] on women’s issues,” Mace said with a straight face. “I feel very confident about that.” The MAGA world isn’t an echo chamber; it’s a hall of delusions. [video at the link]
Mace has displayed this distressing level of hypocrisy before. In March, she was grossly dismissive of Trump’s culpability in the sexual abuse case when pressed about her support by “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos.
“He was not found guilty in a civil—in a criminal court of law,” Mace stammered. “It was a civil—it was sexual abuse. It wasn’t actually rape, by the way.”
The Republican Party was trounced in the 2022 midterm elections thanks to the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and drastically limited abortion access. That electoral liability isn’t fixed by nominating the same guy that helped limit reproductive rights by hand-picking the conservative justices who ignored settled law.
And sending out a huge hypocrite (who just happens to be a woman) to vouch for Trump won’t help matters for the GOP, either.
Dear Lynna, maybe I missed something and I hope I’m not opening a can of worms, but, even though he was rather prickly at times, he did make valid contributions, Am I correct? I’ve not seen John Morales commenting recently.
Reginald Selkirksays
@313: “We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump said before adding, “We’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”
Archival records of Mike Rogers’ time in Congress reveal letters to constituents pledging support for an abortion ban and a candidate questionnaire where he backed a “human life amendment” to enact fetal personhood…
[…] the interview questions were either vapid (e.g. Trump’s racial insult), disingenuous (e.g. why Harris, as Vice President, hasn’t somehow already fulfilled all her policy priorities, without mentioning a hostile House of Representatives or right-wing SCOTUS), or simply needling in an attempt for a gotcha (e.g. harping on Harris’s change of mind about fracking). In fact, many of the questions were worded in such a way as to insinuate that both Harris and Walz are untrustworthy and unknowable. As such, the overall quality of the interview was poor in that it borrowed too heavily from dishonest right-wing framing (e.g. emphatically saying there is an “inflation crisis” despite surging retail sales), provided no information beyond what Harris and Walz have already been saying directly to voters, and did nothing to forward the foundational journalistic mission of safeguarding democracy.
From the point of view of the MSM, Bash failed in their mission as well. Their unspoken but clear intent was to blunt, if not altogether stop the runaway train of the Harris-Walz campaign. […] to maintain a tight horserace, they needed potentially-viral moments where Harris and/or Walz were flustered, embarrassed, angry, or weak-looking. Instead, Harris and Walz were almost bland in their responses and demeanor, ably pivoting to their talking points and sidestepping the gotcha moments. […] be pleasant but not effusive on the softballs, defend Biden and his policies, and make mild body-blow contrasts with Trump. In all this they succeeded […]
This effort by CNN merely confirmed the growing awareness that the legacy political press is now irrelevant if not outright harmful to the civic life of America. So long as they continue down this path, their influence will continue to wane. Last night was a serious blow to CNN and the legacy political press they represent. It isn’t clear how or even if they recover.
WaPo: Controversial Trump film ‘The Apprentice’ finally gets a release date After months of delays and threatened legal action by the former president, the movie starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong will open before the election.
By Jada Yuan and Samantha Chery / August 30, 2024
“The Apprentice,” the controversial film centered on Donald Trump’s origin story that was met with legal threats and a months-long distribution delay, now has a pre-election U.S. release date set for Oct. 11.
The release of Ali Abbasi’s film, which follows Trump (Sebastian Stan) as a young New York real estate magnate mentored by lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), was initially met with roadblocks.
Trump’s team has threatened legal action against filmmakers since the docudrama’s buzzy world premiere at Cannes Film Festival in May. A lawyer for the former president sent a cease-and-desist letter to the movie’s team accusing them of defamation and illegal election interference….
…the highly anticipated film has secured its U.S. distributor, Briarcliff Entertainment, and a U.S. theatrical release date, less than a month before Election Day and a week before its theatrical release in the U.K. and Ireland….
[…]
“The Apprentice” has received critical acclaim, earning a standing ovation during its Cannes premiere.
“There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with fascism,” Abbasi said at the time. “It’s time to make movies relevant. It’s time to make movies political again.”
In the film’s most appalling scene, Trump is shown raping his first wife, Ivana, played by Maria Bakalova, during a fight. According to the 1993 book “Lost Tycoon,” Ivana made the rape accusation in a 1990 sworn divorce deposition….
Stan and Strong have also been viewed as possible Oscar contenders for best leading actor and best supporting actor, respectively, based on their performances.
The BBC called Stan’s portrayal of Trump an “excellent, nuanced performance,” noting he plays “the character as an insecure and impressionable lost soul who has no idea how to have a conversation, and who keeps stopping besides parked cars to check how his wispy hair looks in their windows.”
Stan went “beyond impersonation to capture the essence of the man” the Hollywood Reporter said in its review.
Strong has been described as “interesting and effectively threatening as Cohn, with his strange physical stillness and lizardly stare” by the Guardian.
“He makes the character suitably icy, a fast talker with a withering stare and an almost inhuman intensity,” the Hollywood Reporter wrote of Strong. “The actor has fun with the hypocrisy of an unapologetic dirty trickster who claims unwavering fidelity to ‘truth, justice and the American way.’”
johnson catmansays
re tomh @323: Great timing!! And it is mostly The Orange Buffoon’s fault for the timing because he tried to stop the distribution altogether but failed. If he had let it go without his interference, it would have probably been long gone from the minds of most voters by the time the election rolled around. Instead, it will be right there before voting starts. A most satisfying moment of schadenfreude!
As August got underway, there was a sharp and unexpected downturn on Wall Street. As a recent New York Times report summarized, it was easy to explain: Investigators grew skittish due to a combination of a disappointing jobs report, trouble in Japanese markets, and concerns that the Federal Reserve had waited too long to lower interest rates.
For Donald Trump and his party, however, the truth was clearly inadequate, so they rewrote it. In the Republicans’ version of reality, the brief Wall Street slide was obviously Vice President Kamala Harris’ fault. From the Times’ article:
By lunchtime, it was official party messaging: The Republican National Committee hyped the “Great Kamala Crash of 2024,” and the Trump campaign had produced and circulated on social media a video tying the vice president to Monday’s dip in the markets. By the afternoon, the Trump forces had turned “KamalaCrash” into a “trending” subject on X.
[FFS]
The rhetorical push was, of course, utterly ridiculous. The idea that a sitting vice president is responsible for brief and entirely predictable stock-market losses was absurd, but the GOP candidate and his allies expected voters to believe it anyway.
At least, that is, that was the Republicans’ message four weeks ago. As August comes to end, Americans are no longer hearing much about the “Kamala Crash,” in large part because there’s been no crash. All of the losses from earlier in the month have been regained, and as NBC News reported, economic growth in the United States continues to look good.
The U.S. economy grew faster in the second quarter of 2024 than first reported, suggesting there was little sign of a slowdown through the first six months of the year. The latest reading of the gross domestic product (GDP) published by the Commerce Department came in at 3%, up from an initial estimate of 2.8%.
The latest data is roughly in line with the kind of quarterly GDP reports we saw across much of Trump’s pre-pandemic presidency — when Republicans said Americans saw the greatest economy in the history of humanity.
The results also pose a challenge for the former president and his allies, which they haven’t even tried to address: If voters are supposed to believe that Harris is directly responsible for the world’s largest economy, how much credit are Trump and the GOP prepared to give the incumbent vice president for 3% GDP growth? [smile]
As for the Republicans’ crystal ball, four years ago, Trump told supporters that Democratic policies would “unleash an economic disaster of epic proportions” and force the country “into depression.” He’s begun making similar predictions ahead of Election Day 2024.
Everything Trump said and predicted was wrong — and the former president hasn’t even tried to explain why his predictions were so hilariously misplaced, or why anyone should believe his new predictions in light of his awful track record.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called former President Donald Trump’s latest, vague campaign promise — that in vitro fertilization services will be paid for by the government or insurance companies under a second Trump presidency — “smoke and mirrors” on Friday, slamming him for the meaningless promise that she says distracts from the real threat: the possible criminalization of IVF treatments.
“Making vague promises about insurance coverage does not stop a single extremist judge or state legislature from banning IVF,” Warren said during a Friday morning press call hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. “Making vague promises about insurance coverage does not stop a single one of the 131 Republicans in Congress from advancing their fetal personhood bill that would ban IVF.”
[…] Warren’s criticism came in response to an interview the former president gave Thursday in the battleground state of Michigan.
[…] Asked to clarify whether the government or insurance companies would pay for IVF services, Trump reiterated that an option would be to have insurance companies pay for the fertility treatment “under a mandate, yes.”
Republicans have come under fire on IVF ever since the Alabama Supreme Court found that embryos can be afforded the same legal protections as children under the Wrongful Death of Minor Act of 1872, halting access to IVF treatments in the state for two weeks.
The decision was so crippling to those trying to start families that state legislators had to step in, passing a law that provided civil and criminal immunity to IVF providers — a solution that experts described as slapping a band-aid on the possible legal consequences of the ruling.
In June, in an effort to protect and expand nationwide access to IVF and quell concerns in red states about losing access to the fertility treatment, Senate Democrats forced a vote on the Right to IVF Act but Senate Republicans blocked it from moving forward to a vote.
“American women are not stupid, and we know the only guaranteed protection for IVF is a new national law, which Kamala Harris supports and Donald Trump opposes,” Warren said.
“Trump’s record on IVF is clear. Check out the facts,” she later added. “Trump’s own platform effectively bans IVF. The Republican Speaker of the House and a majority of House Republicans have signed on to a federal bill to ban IVF nationwide. When a law to protect IVF nationwide was put up for a vote in the Senate, JD Vance voted against it. And four weeks later, Trump picked Vance to be his running mate.”
I don’t see how Trump can wriggle wiggle out this one.
RE: @319 Lynna, OM
Thanks for that reply. I hope you didn’t think I was implying you had anything to do with his absence. I know you are very evenhanded. I was just curious.
With every crazy event we see I feel more anxious about all of us just emotionally burning out. Or, in the case of the orange menace maybe flaming out (we can only hope).
The Georgia election workers who successfully sued former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for defamation asked a federal court on Friday to enforce the $146 million judgment in their favor, listing a wide variety of personal items that could be used to pay off the money they’re owed.
Lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are seeking a court order requiring that Giuliani turn over within the next seven days his properties in New York and Florida, his Mercedes-Benz, more than two-dozen luxury watches, various sports memorabilia, including three New York Yankees World Series rings, and other personal items.
They also argue they’re entitled to payments that Giuliani has said that he is owed from the 2020 Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee for his work on the 2020 election.
Giuliani’s Manhattan condo is worth an estimated $6 million while the Palm Beach property – for which Freeman and Moss want to be appointed receivers – is worth $3.5 million.
It is believed that one of the World Series rings could be worth nearly $30,000, according to bankruptcy filings.
The move to enforce the defamation case judgment, filed in Manhattan federal court, comes after a judge dismissed bankruptcy proceedings against the former lawyer for Donald Trump, having found that Giuliani was not being adequately transparent about his financial situation.
Freeman, and her daughter Moss, sued Giuliani after they were the target of false claims that they had rigged the election in Georgia.
[…] Speaking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins from the Republican National Convention, Giuliani said he had “no regrets at all” about his false accusations, while comparing his legal plight to “the Japanese internment during the second war.”
Pierce R. Butlersays
shermanju @ # 316: I’ve not seen John Morales commenting recently.
If suffering from Morales comment withdrawal, you can get a small (but not unreasonable) fix at From the Ashes of Faith.
68 KG wrote: shermanj@66 What’s with this “jebus” stuff?
I reply: I apologize for missing your question. Actually, I try to respect the names of those for whom I have respect. However, there are some that I find so disgusting I am compelled to mangle the name: jebus is one, rtwingnuts is another, xtian terrorists is another, vancehole is another, etc. That’s all, it’s not seriously a intellectual matter and has nothing to do with historical distortions.
Republicans In Disarray! Anti-Abortion Zealots Like Lila Rose Are Turning On Trump
Ever since he embarked upon his third presidential campaign last year, Donald Trump — the man who killed Roe v. Wade — has been trying to present himself as a moderate on abortion. Why? Well, largely because it’s become abundantly clear, post-Roe, that anti-abortion laws are actually extremely unpopular with voters and are killing Republicans in elections.
He’s been ramping this up in recent weeks, even going so far as to post on Truth Social that his administration will be “great for women and their reproductive rights.” In an interview, even Trump’s rabidly anti-abortion-rights running mate JD Vance said that Trump would veto any abortion ban that came across his desk.
Does this mean Trump is not a threat to reproductive rights? Of course not. There are a bajillion things he can do besides just signing or not signing a nationwide abortion ban, and we all know because we lived through four years of it. He can appoint judges who oppose abortion and will strike down attempts to undo anti-abortion legislation — which we’ve seen so much of in the last year or so. He can reinstate the Mexico City Policy and the Title X gag rule that prevented Planned Parenthood from getting federal funding for things having nothing to do with abortion. He can in fact, as Jessica Valenti points out, sign a nationwide abortion ban, because they keep playing word games that say “a ban” isn’t a “ban” if it includes so much as an exception for the mother’s life. He can also — we know, it’s a stretch — be just entirely full of shit.
[…] Anti-abortion activist and longtime ridiculous person Lila Rose has been very upset lately over her feeling that Trump has abandoned her and the anti-abortion movement in general in order to get votes — and she’s starting to threaten him with the loss of votes if he doesn’t get back in line.
Earlier this week, she put out a video statement encouraging him to go back to promising to sign all pieces of “pro-life” legislation that pass his desk and also to accusing Democrats of supporting “post-birth” abortion and infanticide, which is of course not a thing. [video at the link]
“I urge all pro-lifers to come out right now and say ‘President Trump, stand for life. President Trump, if you want the pro-life vote, fight for life,’” she said. “That’s not called voter suppression, my friends. That’s called voter encouragement. That’s called encouraging voters to do what their job is to demand what they need and they want from their candidate from candidates.
“[…] The pro-life vote is earned and you don’t earn the pro-life vote by throwing it under the bus by listening to whatever pollsters are lying to you, whatever media narratives are lying and throwing the babies under the bus.”
[…] Now, under normal circumstances, I think the Right would just shrug off Rose’s criticisms and reassure her that Trump will still be a dystopian nightmare for reproductive rights, regardless of what he says right now. But they’re currently in full-on panic mode, so not only is that not happening, but Miss Lila Rose is getting her ass thrown right under the bus … with all of the babies.
Rose is being now being called a grifter by her former comrades and supporters, who also now suggest that she’s always been a secret liberal who just happens to oppose abortion rights — digging up tweets featuring mild support for some gun regulations, another tweet about George Floyd’s Christian faith, and even a post in which she said she disagreed with the idea that women should be denied the right to vote because Eve eating the apple is all the science proof you need about our judgment — that, according to one critic, makes her a full-on feminist.
It’s completely bananas.
“I think the only ‘foolish’ one is anybody dumb enough to continue donating to Lila Rose’s $14 million a year scam organization that uses donations for her quarter million dollar a year salary, self-serving galas and Lila’s own podcast appearances,” tweeted Ashley St. Clair, who was notably kicked out of Turning Point USA for being too cozy with Nick Fuentes and other white supremacists and has been on an anti-Lila Rose tear for the last week.
[…] “Two things can be true at the same time,” wrote someone calling themselves Classical Theist. “Trump sold out on abortion and the Lila Rose/Live Action pro-life movement is a feminist grifting operation that should be called out and discredited.”
[…] Republicans now having to deal with the fact that non-hypothetical anti-abortion policies are a real vote-killer […]
I’m also not mad at the rift this is causing in the Republican Party right now, at an incredibly opportune time for us, or the fact that Trump very likely will lose the votes of a lot of anti-abortion zealots. So let’s hope they all keep it up!
Schadenfreude moment. Big dumpster fires in the Republican camp.
@329 Pierce R. Butler wrote: If suffering from Morales comment withdrawal, . . .
I reply: thanks for the info Pierce. I’m not having any withdrawal symptoms, just curious since John was usually so ‘vibrantly’ active.
birgerjohanssonsays
Weird. A site at Youtube made a list of American celebrities who had died todsy and included Bob Dylan yet I do not find other information about this claim. Is this one of those AI genersted clickbaity thingies?
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna, OM @ 331
It is surprising that they are only now realising their policies are impopular considering how they have been using everything from gerrymandering, desinformation and outright insurrection to go against the will of the people.
If you have to cheat you have given up on the objective of getting people on your side and only want a cosmetic appearence of democracy. Sort of like Viktor Orban or Putin.
Novavax’s protein-based shot offers an alternative to the mRNA-based vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday granted emergency use authorization for an updated version of Novavax’s Covid shot.
The updated vaccine is authorized for use in individuals 12 years of age and older and will target the JN.1 strain of the virus.
Shares of the company were up 9% in late afternoon trading.
“Today’s authorization provides an additional Covid-19 vaccine option,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Doses are on track to be available as early as the end of next week, the company said in an emailed response.
Earlier this month, the health regulator approved updated Covid vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna targeting the KP.2 variant.
JN.1 was the dominant strain in the United States earlier this year. While it is no longer as prevalent, it is estimated to account for 0.2% of cases over a two-week period ended Aug. 31, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data showed. [I feel like I’m missing something here. How effective is the the Novavax vaccine targeting JN.1 against the KP.2 variant? Seems like we should know.]
The KP.2 variant, on the other hand, is estimated to account for 3.1%, with KP.3.1.1 now becoming dominant at 42.2%.
In June, the health regulator had changed its strain recommendation for 2024-25 Covid shots, as it asked manufacturers to update the new vaccines to target the KP.2 variant, if feasible, instead of the JN.1 lineage it sought to target earlier.
Novavax’s traditional protein-based shot offers an alternative vaccine technology to those that are based on messenger RNA — Moderna’s Spikevax and Comirnaty, which is jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Covid-related hospitalizations and deaths have increased over the past three months in the United States. Demand for the shots, however, has fallen sharply since the peak of the pandemic.
Novavax expects overall demand for Covid vaccines in the United States to remain similar to last year, but anticipates its own performance to be better, it said earlier this month.
The FTC said reported losses exceeded $110 million last year, up nearly tenfold since 2020, as fraudsters increasingly persuade victims to send them large sums through crypto kiosks.
Call it a diabolical new twist on an old scam: ATM fraudsters are turning to bitcoin.
Data the Federal Trade Commission provided to NBC News show the amount of money consumers have reported losing to scams involving Bitcoin ATMS rose nearly tenfold since 2020, topping $110 million in 2023.
And older people are getting roped in the most. The agency said consumers over age 60 were more than three times as likely as younger adults to say they were duped out of cash in these schemes.
Tune in to “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT tonight for more.
[…] Bitcoin ATMs look like traditional ATMs and operate similarly, in that they can be used for both deposits and withdrawals, but the transactions involve cryptocurrencies.
The machines are banned in some countries, including the U.K. and Singapore, but they’re legal in the U.S. According to one estimate, there are nearly 32,000 nationwide today, up from just over 4,000 at the start of 2020. The kiosks can now be found in high-traffic locations like convenience stores, gas stations and supermarkets — something that has helped fuel the fraud uptick, federal authorities say.
In many of the incidents the FTC identified, fraudsters contact a victim — or the victim inadvertently connects with them — claiming to be a customer service representative flagging an attempted identify theft or an account breach.
They eventually text their targets a square-shaped QR code — like the ones diners frequently use to pull up restaurant menus — connected to a digital wallet. The victim is typically directed to scan the code and deposit cash into the Bitcoin ATM, which converts it into bitcoin that immediately gets transferred to the scammer — all while the victim thinks they’re protecting their assets.
Scammers have a number of ways to concoct a successful ruse. There are sometimes multiple fraudsters in on a given heist pretending to be employees of a government agency or business, including major tech firms like Microsoft or Apple, according to the FTC.
A scam often begins when bad actors get their hands on a victim’s phone number […]
“They’re trying to create a situation that is really hard to ignore,” Fletcher said. “From there, people are convinced that the problem is actually extremely serious.”
Indiana resident Marilyn LoCascio, 76, says she lost $31,500 to a fraud group that included people posing as an Apple tech support specialist, a bank representative and two government officials. It began when she received what looked like a security alert on her iPad, which led her to a fraudster who informed her she’d been hacked, with a payment to an online porn website from her account made in her name.
“I just called the number without thinking. … It would be anything other than Apple,” LoCascio said. “A gentlemen answered the phone who was supposedly a tech, and he even gave me a case ID, and then it just sort of mushroomed from there.”
As her interactions with the scammers dragged on, LoCascio sensed something was wrong. But after being brought into a conference call with someone posing as a U.S. Treasury official, she was persuaded nothing was amiss. She added that she’d never even heard of Bitcoin, but the apparent urgency of the situation made it seem prudent to follow instructions to protect herself.
[…] “These Bitcoin ATMs seem to have opened up sort of a gateway for scammers who are after cryptocurrency to target older adults,” she said.
Bitcoin ATM operators say they have guardrails to fend off fraud and illicit activity.
[…] Bitcoin Depot has not been charged with any crime, though it is currently the subject of at least one lawsuit from a user who alleges she was victimized by a fraudster at one of its kiosks. The company has denied responsibility.
“Unfortunately, like all financial institutions, we cannot prevent every instance of fraud that occurs using our services,” Buchanan said.
Fletcher said some people have caught on to the scam fast enough to alert the ATM operator and eventually recover their money, but such instances are rare. The best move, she said, is to take a breath and think twice before sending money through a Bitcoin kiosk at anyone’s behest. […]
It’s been more than three weeks since foreign troops swept into Russia for the first time since World War II, yet there is little sign that Ukrainian forces are about to be driven back across the border. The Ukrainian advance may have stalled since the daring Aug. 6 assault, but Kyiv claims it controls nearly 500 square miles of Russian territory and has taken hundreds of prisoners of war.
New York Times:
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine dismissed the head of the country’s Air Force on Friday, days after the crash of an F-16 warplane in what may have been a friendly fire incident.
Switzerland isn’t keen on getting involved in wars but likes making money. The clash between those values — plus worries that Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a risk to the whole of Europe — is prompting the country to rethink its defense stance. In a bombshell report released on Thursday, a group of experts recommend to the government that the country, which has been neutral since 1515, work on a ‘common defense capability’ with the EU and NATO.
Putin shot himself in foot. He got the opposite of what he wanted.
[…] “So Donald Trump wants to give me $70,000 in tax cuts, per year, Gordon-Levitt says. “And by the way, he doesn’t want to give that to everybody, but I just read that’s the average tax break for the top 1%, if Donald Trump is elected president.”
The star goes on to point out that regular, middle-class people are not going to benefit from this because “nearly half of it is gonna go to just the top 5% of people.”
“It doesn’t feel right to me,” he continues.
You don’t have to take Gordon-Levitt’s word for it. The Penn Wharton Budget Model, a group within the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, analyzed both Vice President Kamala Harris’ and Trump’s tax proposals last week.
“It’s true that Trump looks like he’s a winner for everybody, but he’ll provide much bigger giveaways to the top 1% and top 0.1%, whereas Harris will be negative for these people,” Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Wharton program, told CBS News Friday. According to their analysis, people making $81,415 annually would get $1,740 in breaks, while people earning $19,595 would get just $320 in Trump’s plan.
“Do you want to talk about who’s going to really help most Americans? It’s Kamala,” Gordon-Levitt says in his video. And he’s right, according to Wharton. That bottom quintile of earners would see $2,355 in tax relief, and those in the middle, $2,165. The top 0.1% who would get a $376,910 gift from Trump, but would have to pay an additional $167,255 in Harris’ plan.
As the “Inception” actor says, “Trump’s going to help the same people he always tries to help—the wealthy, himself.”
X, formerly Twitter, has been banned in Brazil after failing to meet a deadline set by a Supreme Court judge to name a new legal representative in the country.
Alexandre de Moraes ordered the “immediate and complete suspension” of the social media platform until it complies with all court orders and pays existing fines.
The row began in April, with the judge ordering the suspension of dozens of X accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation.
Reacting to the decision, X owner Elon Musk said: “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.” …
Somehow Musk had no problem compromising his “principles” when it came to the Saudis.
Former President Donald Trump came out on Friday against a ballot measure in his home state of Florida that would expand access to abortion, after spending a day doing damage control on the issue.
His announcement came a day after telling NBC News that Florida’s six-week ban is “too short” and declining to take a clear stance on a state ballot measure that would expand access to the procedure…
Flippety floppety.
Meanwhile, Harris is being criticized for changing her position on some issues, and Republicans are calling her a “chameleon.”
A judge in Ohio has issued a temporary restraining order against a security researcher who presented evidence that a recent ransomware attack on the city of Columbus scooped up reams of sensitive personal information, contradicting claims made by city officials.
The order, issued by a judge in Ohio’s Franklin County, came after the city of Columbus fell victim to a ransomware attack on July 18 that siphoned 6.5 terabytes of the city’s data. A ransomware group known as Rhysida took credit for the attack and offered to auction off the data with a starting bid of about $1.7 million in bitcoin. On August 8, after the auction failed to find a bidder, Rhysida released what it said was about 45 percent of the stolen data on the group’s dark web site, which is accessible to anyone with a TOR browser.
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said on August 13 that a “breakthrough” in the city’s forensic investigation of the breach found that the sensitive files Rhysida obtained were either encrypted or corrupted, making them “unusable” to the thieves. Ginther went on to say the data’s lack of integrity was likely the reason the ransomware group had been unable to auction off the data.
Shortly after Ginther made his remarks, security researcher David Leroy Ross contacted local news outlets and presented evidence that showed the data Rhysida published was fully intact and contained highly sensitive information regarding city employees and residents. Ross, who uses the alias Connor Goodwolf, presented screenshots and other data that showed the files Rhysida had posted included names from domestic violence cases and Social Security numbers for police officers and crime victims. Some of the data spanned years.
On Thursday, the city of Columbus sued Ross for alleged damages for criminal acts, invasion of privacy, negligence, and civil conversion. The lawsuit claimed that downloading documents from a dark web site run by ransomware attackers amounted to him “interacting” with them and required special expertise and tools. The suit went on to challenge Ross alerting reporters to the information, which ii claimed would not be easily obtained by others…
It is with great sadness that I find myself penning the hardest news post I’ve ever needed to write here at AnandTech. After over 27 years of covering the wide – and wild – word of computing hardware, today is AnandTech’s final day of publication.
One of the better sites shutting down. The list of good hardware sites has been going down for a long time. There just isn’t a big enough market to support many any more. Doing a site for the really technology aware is hard to begin with because a lot block advertising and they often skim most of articles for the important bits. Now days the technology is so commoditized there isn’t as much to review and the differences so technical and load dependent that reviews are hard.
For years, scientists have fabricated small, high-quality lasers that generate red and blue light. However, the method they typically employ — injecting electric current into semiconductors — hasn’t worked as well in building tiny lasers that emit light at yellow and green wavelengths. Researchers refer to the dearth of stable, miniature lasers in this region of the visible-light spectrum as the “green gap.” Filling this gap opens new opportunities in underwater communications, medical treatments and more…
Now scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have closed the green gap by modifying a tiny optical component: a ring-shaped microresonator, small enough to fit on a chip.
A miniature source of green laser light could improve underwater communication because water is nearly transparent to blue-green wavelengths in most aquatic environments. Other potential applications are in full-color laser projection displays and laser treatment of medical conditions, including diabetic retinopathy, a proliferation of blood vessels in the eye…
Beware of the Youtube site ‘TV news MK’, it is a clickbait trap with false claims about celebrities that are supposed to have died today. I assume it is done by AI.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #350…
My late wife used to do a riff on Tolkien’s line about dying at the hand of no man by using Latin–and I’m going by memory of her comments here–which has Vir–Man as distinguished from Woman–and Homo–which distinguishes between human and non-human. So when Eowyn and Meriadoc kill the Witch King, they’ve got him both coming and going. Eowyn is not a male Man, and Meriadoc is not a Man (Human), but a Halfling.
There is a related trick in Shakespeare, when it is predicted that MacBeth will die by the hand no man born of woman. The guy who kills him was delivered by C-section, and thus not “born”.
In a new roundabout strategy to defeat Donald Trump in November, some Democrats are promoting an anti-abortion candidate to capitalize on the former president’s wishy-washy stance and potentially even siphone votes from the Republican ticket, according to a report.
Randall Terry launched a presidential bid as part of the Constitution Party, which touts itself as “the only national party who is 100% Pro-Life.”
Terry founded Operation Rescue, an organization known for blocking access to abortion clinics, and on his campaign website describes pro-abortion folks as “baby killers.”
As Kamala Harris and Tim Walz make reproductive rights a fixture of their campaign — and just announced a 50-stop “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour — it may seem odd that some Democrats are now aiding Terry to get on the ballot as a third-party candidate. But that is exactly what is happening, according to the New York Times…
A Democratic candidate for county commissioner in Texas is under investigation after being accused of using fake online accounts to hurl racist attacks against himself.
Taral Patel, 30, is running as the Democratic candidate for Fort Bend County Precinct 3 commissioner. He was initially detained on June 12 for online impersonation and misrepresentation of identity, a class A misdemeanor, according to KTRK.
Search warrants have since shown connections to other fake identities, such as impersonating a district judge and one using the photo of a realtor from Pennsylvania…
A prominent German leftist politician was sprayed with a red liquid, likely paint, during a campaign event Thursday in the eastern city of Erfurt, ahead of closely watched state elections on Sunday.
Sara Wagenknecht, founder of the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, was only lightly splattered by the liquid but briefly left the stage, according to German news agency dpa.
A man was immediately pushed to the ground by security forces, handcuffed and taken away. Wagenknecht returned to the stage and later wrote on the social media platform X that she was scared but fine…
A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area as the former president spoke Friday but was surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies and was eventually subdued with a Taser.
The altercation came moments after Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz…
Moments later police handcuffed another man in the crowd and led him out of the arena, though it wasn’t clear if that detention was related to the initial altercation…
It was not clear what motivated the man or whether he was a Trump supporter or critic. Fierce criticism of the media is a standard part of Trump’s rally speeches, prompting his supporters to turn toward the press section and boo, often while using a middle finger to demonstrate their distaste for journalists.
Six major book publishers have teamed up to sue the US state of Florida over an “unconstitutional” law that has seen hundreds of titles purged from school libraries following rightwing challenges.
The landmark action targets the “sweeping book removal provisions” of House Bill 1069, which required school districts to set up a mechanism for parents to object to anything they considered pornographic or inappropriate.
A central plank of Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s war on “woke” on Florida campuses, the law has been abused by rightwing activists who quickly realized that any book they challenged had to be immediately removed and replaced only after the exhaustion of a lengthy and cumbersome review process, if at all, the publishers say…
Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday that if he is elected, his administration would not only protect access to in-vitro fertilization but would also have either the government or insurance companies cover the cost of the expensive service for American women who need it.
So, in the battle between the “teh gay, teh trans, teh test tube baybees, it’s all so unnatural!!1!” crowd and the “we need mOAr white babies, stat!!1!” crowd within MAGA, the latter won?
Interesting.
@315:
“As a woman, I want to vote for someone who’s going to protect women like me, who are survivors of rape,” Mace told Cavuto.
And yet, given a binary choice for that between a) a fellow woman and b) a rapist, she picks the rapist??!? What the actual fuck.
@319; shermanj@316:
I’ve not seen John Morales commenting recently.
Mano Singham gave him the choice of behaving himself or leaving over on his blog; Morales appears to have chosen to leave, voluntarily, rather than either behave or get banned. For reasons unknown he seems to have left all of FTB and not only Singham’s blog.
tomh@323:
“The Apprentice,” the controversial film centered on Donald Trump’s origin story that was met with legal threats and a months-long distribution delay, now has a pre-election U.S. release date set for Oct. 11.
Buh but how can it be an October surprise if we know it’s coming? They’re doing it wrong. :)
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@birgerjohansson #44:
This link allegedly helps you confirm that you are registered to vote. I don’t know how US elections work
Any third party orgs offering that service are middlemen collecting your info to forward along to the state as above, and ALSO: contact you later, do analytics, share with /other/ service providers they rely on, or do shady data broker stuff. It’s unnecessary exposure, one more database to be potentially hacked.
That particular org relies on another org to do the talking to states, and its privacy policy says, “If we go out of business or enter bankruptcy, user information may be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party,” in which case all bets are off.
StevoRsays
A prehistoric dugong preyed upon by an ancient crocodile and a tiger shark has given researchers a “rare” glimpse into food chains millions of years ago. …(snip)..The “fragmentary skeleton” was found in north-western Venezuela, with the skull showing deep tooth impacts around the snout. Two more large impacts, according to the research, were also found on the skull, along with a tiger shark tooth in the neck. The peer-reviewed report, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, identified the marks as “shark and crocodilian” bites.
A new chemical process can essentially vaporize plastics that dominate the waste stream today and turn them into hydrocarbon building blocks for new plastics.
The catalytic process, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, works equally well with the two dominant types of post-consumer plastic waste: polyethylene, the component of most single-use plastic bags; and polypropylene, the stuff of hard plastics, from microwavable dishes to luggage. It also efficiently degrades a mix of these types of plastics…
If it seems like I’ve been writing about the intolerable situation in Puerto Rico with ongoing blackouts and loss of electricity for years, it’s because I have. Having no power even when there is no major weather event has become a way of life (and death) for people in the colony and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well.
The island-wide blackouts were back in the headlines yet again in the wake of Tropical Storm Ernesto. The NOAA Satellite & Information Service reported:
Last week, Ernesto caused damage in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as it passed north of the region as a tropical storm, managing to knock out power to hundreds of thousands of residents. At one point, 23 hospitals were operating on generators. Schools and numerous roads were also closed
[…] Puerto Rico’s continued outages due to storms, floods, high temperatures, or just piss-poor management by the companies and agencies tasked with running and maintaining the power grid are legion. And there are no simple solutions to the toxic combination of U.S. government control of the island’s affairs, corrupt government officials’ kow-towing to corporate interests, and a series of laws on the books which benefit outside interests.
Most mainland U.S. residents have no relationship to the colony, except as a place to perhaps spend a vacation. This means that Puerto Rico lacks political clout. There is no powerful lobby pushing Congress or any presidential administration to fix or change the status quo. That means blackouts and outages will continue to be a fact of daily life on the island.
Many of the social media responses from activists here on the mainland point to the imposition of LUMA Energy on the island, and appeals are being made to Puerto Rican members of Congress: [Examples available at the link]
Interviews posted to social media shed light on island residents’ inability to use life-saving devices due to the lack of power. Because they were in Spanish (without English subtitles) they went unnoticed by most English speakers.
Translation:
“And now with this problem with the light, I can’t get up and keep walking, because I can’t walk. My whole body hurts… forgive me for feeling this way, right? But I suffer a lot for my family, because my life doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
[…] When I was on the phone with my friend, she mentioned yet another aspect of the storm’s damage: the impact on the agriculture sector.
Farmers suffer losses of more than $23 million for Ernesto’s effects [details at the link]
[…] Knowing about the bureaucratic red tape on the island (there are outstanding claims that haven’t been fulfilled since Hurricanes Maria and Fiona), people are going to need help. […]
[…] many people do not have the technical or administrative resources to participate in these programs.
After Hurricane Maria, bureaucracy and the slow restoration of local infrastructure prevented a timely recovery on farms. But various grassroots groups and organizations, including government agencies themselves, have established initiatives that help people apply for these programs.
[…]
When asked about the dozens of mayors who claimed that their municipalities were 100% without electricity, Sorrentini said it was possible that this had happened, but he insisted that LUMA could not identify which municipalities were completely blacked out. Although he acknowledged that LUMA does have this data that comes from the feeders, he assured that they do not organize it by municipality. Prepa used to update this information when there were blackouts due to emergency situations.
[…] To make matters worse, the cost of electricity on the island is going up […]
Puerto Ricans were hit Monday with a 4.6% increase in electricity rates through September, in a blow to 3.2 million people who struggle with chronic power outages as the U.S. territory’s grid keeps deteriorating. […]
The increase will affect 1.5 million households connected to the grid, which continues to crumble amid a lack of maintenance following Hurricane Maria in 2017. […]
To add some perspective, look at this in the context of Puerto Rican’s poverty levels:
In 2021, the last year for which data are available, the percentage of the population of Puerto Rico living below the federal poverty level was 43%.2 Puerto Rico’s levels of poverty were three times as high as the 12.6% of the U.S. population overall that lived below the poverty level, and it was more than twice as high as those of states with the highest rates of poverty: Louisiana (18.8%), New Mexico (18.3%) and Mississippi (19.4%)
Clearly, the dysfunctional situation on the island has to go and most experts agree that the island’s system has to change […]
[…] Luma, a Canadian and American venture, promptly fired the majority of PREPA’s workforce—and with it, the institutional knowledge of how to run the antiquated grid. That same year, the island experienced seven times more blackouts than the total number in all 50 states. Then, in 2023, the government issued a new contract to another private company—Genera PR, a subsidiary of New Fortress Energy, a New York–based fossil fuel company—to take over energy-generation responsibilities from PREPA.
Critics of the privatization say power is nearly as unreliable now as it was during the aftermath of past hurricanes. One reason, according to Jordan Luebkemann, a senior associate attorney for Earthjustice, is that private companies aren’t beholden to voters; they’re beholden to profit. “A private utility isn’t really accountable to anybody except for whatever independent regulator is independently regulating it,” he said. The Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, he added, has regulated these entities weakly, if at all.
he NCAA has blocked Oklahoma State from placing NIL-linked QR codes on its players’ football helmets after the program announced the decision ahead of the Cowboys’ Week 1 game against South Dakota State.
On Aug. 20, Oklahoma State announced plans to put a 1.5-square-inch QR code linking to the program’s general NIL fund on the backs of helmets this fall. The Cowboys were believed to be the first college football program to use QR codes to promote NIL during a regular-season game.
However, the NCAA has barred Oklahoma State from sporting the QR codes in Week 1, and the matter, according to the Cowboys, is down to interpretation…
Background: NIL is “Name-Image-Likeness” and refers to letting collegiate athletes earn money for commercial promotions.
“If President Trump wins … people are going to see a very different President Trump than they did in the first term,” Kennedy told “All In” podcast host Jason Calacanis. “I think he’s changed as a person. And I’ve known him for, you know, 30 years.”
“But I think he is, he’s focused on his legacy,” he added later. “He’s said many interesting things to me about what he did wrong the last time.” …
Trump admitting that he did something wrong? I can’t believe that.
Signs of Donald Trump’s cognitive decline are accelerating. Speaking at a Mom’s for Liberty event Friday, he completely lost the plot.
[…] Trump claimed he tried to convince his daughter Ivanka Trump, who has not been involved in his current campaign and did not even speak at this year’s Republican National Convention, to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“I said, you would be a great ambassador to the United Nations, United Nations secretary—there’d be nobody to compete with her,” he said. “She may be my daughter but nobody could have competed with her, with her rat-rat-rat you know she’s got.”
Who could possibly compete with Ivanka, except quite literally anyone in the American diplomatic corps who has both the academic and practical experience in international diplomacy? Maybe he shouldn’t be put in charge of these decisions if having “rat-rat-rat” is his primary standard for the job.
“She said, daddy, I don’t want to do that, I just want to help people get jobs,” Trump continued. “She would go around—not a glamorous job—but would go around to see Wal-Mart, to see Exxon, to see all these big companies to hire people and she had hired, like, millions of people during the course of her stay.”
It’ll certainly be news to Wall-Mart, Exxon, and “all these big companies” that Ivanka showed up and did the hiring for them.
Millions of hires! Which is actually kinda weird, given that Wal-Mart’s entire U.S. workforce is 1.6 million, and Exxon’s is 61,500. Did she hire all their employees?
Let’s not forget that the American economy lost 2.7 million jobs during Trump’s tenure, so did Ivanka’s valiant yet somehow unglamorous work randomly hiring other company’s workforce offset those numbers?
Obviously, this is all utter gibberish. Trump has stumbled far more, over the past few weeks, than President Joe Biden ever did, to wildly different media standards. Biden was never this bad: [video at the link]
And as much as Republicans obsessed over Hunter Biden, the president never went around claiming his kids did such ridiculous things as hiring “millions of people.” Will the media press him on this? Of course not. […]
But it does mean that a time when Trump desperately needs to reverse Vice President Kamala Harris’ momentum, he’s instead trapped by his inability to either stay on message, or at least present a sane, coherent one.
[…] An analysis of Trump’s economic plan released earlier this month indicates that it would generate a revenue shortfall of $5.8 trillion over the next 10 years and add over $4 trillion to the nation’s debt. It would cost trillions more if Trump were to follow through on off-hand promises to eliminate taxes on Social Security payments. At the same time, Trump’s heavy tariff plan could trigger a trade war and “inflation shock” with prices heading sharply higher. […]
As a piece in The New Yorker explained earlier this month, the Harris-Walz economic platform could also be a Biden-Harris platform, a Whitmer-Shapiro platform, or a Newsom-Pritzker platform because all these leading Democrats share the same view of the government’s role in the economy.
This hasn’t come by shrinking the Democratic tent, forcing everyone into a personality cult, or driving out those who disagreed with that view. No one has been going through the halls of Congress screaming “DINO” at anyone who doesn’t adhere to a narrow set of beliefs. Democrats haven’t been picking a policy first, and then worrying about its effects later.
Democratic unity over economic policy developed naturally over a period of years. In particular, it’s been forged through the effort required to clean up the messes Republicans have left with with their chaotic, uncoordinated policies.
After doing cleanup for a term following George W. Bush’s market crash and another for Trump’s COVID-bungled collapse, Democrats have been convinced that a strong economy requires a strong level of government intervention. That intervention is required to keep businesses from going off the rails in pursuit of greed, as was the case in 2008, and to keep the economy growing and innovating even in the face of disaster, like in 2020.
Democrats have been confirmed in the belief that markets, left to run wild, will run off the tracks., and that good policy “involves robust policy interventions to correct glaring market failures and to rebalance economic power.”
[…] They don’t have to waste time arguing about basic principles or water down legislation to make it acceptable to rebellious factions.
That unity is reflected in the transformative legislation passed during President Joe Biden’s first two years: The American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. In their way, these bills are as consequential as any legislation since FDR’s “New Deal.” People will drive on roads and bridges enabled by the infrastructure bill for decades. Careers will be spent in factories created because of the CHIPS Act. The Inflation Reduction Act created a set of environmental incentives so successful that Republicans are afraid to touch it. And none of it would have been possible without the American Rescue Plan to relight the fire Trump nearly extinguished.
Fact-checking the fact-checkers who fact-check the fact-checkers who fact-check the fact-checkers who fact-check the
Hello from your friendly neighborhood debunker! It’s been a few (fact-check: 18) days since I last ranted, which is only because the absolute nitpicking nonsense that’s getting put out there as fact-checking has become so ludicrous that it’s gone beyond warp speed stupidity […]
I mean, just look at this shit! How am I supposed to do anything about this? Every time I sit down to write a spicy debunking of some “fact-check” that someone without any idea what they’re doing farted out, I see something else that’s even worse, then something that’s even worse than that, and by the time I’ve processed it all the news cycle has moved on to the next phase of whatever lunacy we’re going to have to contend with for the rest of this election cycle.
So instead, I’m going to write about another disinformation campaign, one that no amount of fact-checks will ever be able to touch: structural misogyny. Without it, we wouldn’t have most of the nonsense floating around that we have today.
Don’t worry. I can explain. And I’m gonna!
[…] I have carefully observed what’s been going down over the last decade or so, from GamerGate all the way to now, where actual elected officials cut their racist shitposting teeth on 4chan and it shows, and I have thought it all the way through to one irrefutable conclusion:
Misogyny makes you stupid.
Honestly. We’ve all seen perfectly normal-seeming people get forever changed for the far worse by some bullshit internet rabbit hole by now, right? And then you wonder to yourself, holy shit, could I have ever seen this coming? What was it in them that led them from normal inhabitants of reality to a pair of blank eyes with a little worm peeping out from behind them?
[…] Misogynists don’t like women simply because they are women. Structural misogyny — aka The Patriarchy — encourages that mindset because there’s a whole lot of money and power in fucking women over, and there’s nothing women can do to make ourselves more palatable to people who already hate us. They hate us for just being, like, womanly at them, and no amount of yelling, or logicking, or special pleading will make them think otherwise.
The dirty little secret is that it’s also quite easy to be misogynistic in the US of A, just as it’s easy to be racist (which coexists with misogyny more often than not). Much of American culture has been set up to reward hating women for my whole-ass lifetime! For example, if you complain about having your titties groped at work, you’re No-Fun Susie the complainer who ruins the vibe. If you go along with it, you get to feel special. You’re not like the others. You’re a fun girl. You’re one of the good ones! To fight that is to swim upstream, your entire life.
[…] And that’s how you end up saying extremely weird shit like this. Or this. Or (God help us all) this. Jesus fucking H. Christ on a carousel. [Embedded links to JD Vance’s “cat lady” comments, to Trump’s “blow job” comments, and more are available at the main link.]
Misogyny is how you end up with absolute freakshows like Donald Trump, who is basically Misogynist Prime, referring to women as breeding stock or whatever kick he’s on this week […] if you keep chasing misogyny, eventually you’re going to end up believing some really out-there shit.
[…] That anecdote [details at the link] is just one example of what structural misogyny looks like in practice. […] Why can’t you be more like Whiteboy McFailson over there? Everybody likes him!
That incident exposed a cultural issue at a major broadcast network. Now export that internal culture to […] what sorts of approaches a journalist doing quite well in that sort of culture might take to covering a woman of color who is the Democratic Party’s nominee for President of the United States.
And let me just say this: It’s absolutely fair game to criticize anyone in politics. In fact, all public figures, elected officials or not, should be held up to scrutiny. […]
But this kind of bullshit isn’t scrutiny. Anyone who has ever lived as a fairly competent professional woman, particularly a woman who isn’t white, sees exactly what it really is: fucking endless nitpicking and negging to go along with the theft of professional credit and the inevitable titty-groping that has over the years turned me, and many others just like me, straight into The Joker.
Now imagine that shit going on all over the place, in just about every news organization, because boy howdy, it sure is! Now what do you think that does to the stories that reporters swimming in those waters are writing? A cultural problem doesn’t need to be active censorship in order to be harmful.
And that’s why I say with total confidence that misogyny — along with racism and antisemitism — is the greatest security issue that the American people face today, because the people entrusted with maintaining our information ecosystem are presenting skewed versions of the world to the rest of us, because they are not examining their own biases and the cultures that produce them. Their failures affect how we see everything in the world, especially since we don’t really have a way to track down actual vetted information any more.
To put it another way, misogyny doesn’t just make you stupid. Structural misogyny makes us all stupid by tainting the way we look at the world. […] Before you know it, you’re living in a strongman authoritarian society and wondering exactly when your rights got taken away, because trust me, pal — it never ends with just one group of people.
You don’t want to be stupid, right? Question that shit.
Economists Not Enthused By Trump’s Affordable Housing Plan Of ‘Deport Everyone And Steal Their Homes’
If you looked at the website of The New York Times on Friday morning, you might have seen a summary of a story that caused you to stop reading, go back, read it again, read it again, read it one more time, say to yourself What in the actual fuck, and then read it a few more times.
The story was an examination of the dueling plans by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, or whichever debased wingnut gremlin last whispered in Donald Trump’s ear, to ease a pressing problem in the country:
Harris and Trump both have plans to address America’s affordable housing crisis: Hers include tax cuts and a benefit for first-time buyers, and his include deportations and lower interest rates.
See, the problem here is that one of those plans is a sort of normal and lightly detailed campaign promise, which it is good for the nation’s Paper of Record to examine and explain to the American people, as is the charge of journalism.
The other plan is a fantasy Stephen Miller keeps in his spank bank for those moments during the day when he is stressed out from all his evil plotting and needs a relaxing break.
But the article’s thesis is that both candidates’ plans have drawn skepticism from economists. And you can’t be honest and say that Harris might have a serious plan while Trump’s idea is simply downstream from his overriding bigotry to the point where you might as well say that mass deportation would also ease congestion on America’s overcrowded freeways for all the relationship it has to reality. You have to give each candidate equal weight, otherwise this isn’t the sort of normal presidential campaign that Times reporters wish it to be.
To its credit, the Times does manage to actually run Trump’s idea past a couple of economists to shoot down politely, instead of giving the question the answer it deserves, which is, Listen, I’m a very important economist, I have much better things to do with my time than give this the time of day.
Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, noted that the acceleration in home prices long preceded the recent increase in the unauthorized immigrant population, so mass deportations would not address its root cause.
Also, it hasn’t been that big a surge, as best we can tell from this report from the Department of Homeland Security. [Embedded link available at the main link.]
[…] Ms. Fairweather added that it was not clear that mass deportations would even significantly reduce the number of families in need of homes. Immigrants often live with relatives who might not be expelled. More than two-thirds of some 6.3 million households with an unauthorized immigrant are “mixed status,” meaning they contain American-born or lawful immigrant residents.
Simple problem for Trump and his bullet-headed Renfield: Deport everyone you can get your hands on regardless of immigration status. Then you don’t have to consider complexity.
In fact, the policy could prove counterproductive. Ms. Fairweather also noted that 25 percent of construction workers were foreign-born, so mass deportations may also reduce the labor pool available to build new homes and apartment buildings.
This is all before you get to the impossibility of carrying out the mass deportations as Trump and Miller envision them. In their fantasy, the American military runs dragnets through entire urban neighborhoods, sweeping up millions of people, and sticking them in desert concentration camps until they can hustle up enough airplanes and pilots to fly the migrants out of the country.
It’s a ridiculous idea, a Hollywood vision of deportations, and it is not happening. So using it as a leg in your three-legged stool of a plan to make housing more affordable is so insane that it almost isn’t worth repeating to readers of the august New York Times. But, again, the paper wants to pretend this is a normal election […]
Luckily the Times has Wonkette to do its dirty work.
The latest request by former President Trump’s legal team to have his hush money case taken over by a federal court was rejected Friday, according to a notice on the docket.
The court, in its notice, claimed the filing was “deficient,” according to the docket. It has been sent back to the attorneys because they failed to attach written permission from the court or prosecutors, per the note to his attorney Emil Bove.
“The filing is deficient for the following reason(s): the PDF attached to the docket entry for the pleading is not correct; the wrong event type was used to file the pleading; Court’s leave has not been granted; the order granting permission to file the pleading was not attached,” the notice reads…
Excerpts from a longer article by Sarah Larson in the New Yorker:
Ruben Bolling, who has drawn and written his intricate, incisive, shape-shifting weekly cartoon “Tom the Dancing Bug” for more than three decades, works best under the pressure of a deadline. “Years ago, I decided to lean into it,” he told me recently. Monday is deadline day. On the Saturday just before the R.N.C., where Donald Trump accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for President, Bolling was working on that week’s cartoon: a riff on the Busytown illustrations by the great children’s-book author Richard Scarry, titled “A Busy, Busy Day at the Republican National Convention.” There, instead of townsfolk like Huckle Cat and the gang doing jobs labelled “carpenter,” “street cleaner,” and such, their doppelgängers were in a convention space doing other kinds of work: a fox pushing a wheelbarrow full of cash (“Supreme Court Justice briber”); a reporter (“normalizing media member”) interviewing a cat in a polo shirt and red hat (“actual Nazi”). Later that day, Bolling learned that Trump had been shot at during a rally in Pennsylvania. He took stock of the national mood for a few hours, then revised, adding an N.R.A. booth (“ask me how to get guns”), staffed by a smartly dressed pig with a friendly smile. He’s labelled “political violence preventer.”
Bolling, who has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist twice in the past five years, makes these characters “as cute as possible while they’re doing horrible things,” he said. […] “It’s very typical of a lot of what I do, which is taking older, nostalgic, innocent pieces of art and defiling them by bringing them into the darkest parts of our world,” […]
“Tom the Dancing Bug,” which Bolling began publishing widely in 1990, has always been free-form and vaudevillian from week to week—original characters, recurring parodies and satires, one-offs, a terrific long-running meta-funny-pages gag. His illustration style tends toward a tidy clean-line aesthetic, à la “Tintin,” but it morphs to suit whatever he’s up to: hatched and shaded portrait-style depictions of celebrities and politicians; imitations of other artists; fake ads, posters, and informational broadsides. […] The strip has become more political over time […]
[Examples of cartoon strips are available at the link.]
[…] “An existentialist way of looking at it,” he said. “I didn’t think that deeply.” He’d seen himself as the bug: “trying my hardest and sweating, dancing for your amusement.”
We’ve all been living with Trump for eight years now. He’s done so much, and so much has been written about him, that it’s hard to be surprised. For a writer, it’s hard to find anything new to say: we all know who he is, his appeal and how he operates are, by now, extremely familiar.
But there are ways in which the cult of personality that he’s built around himself manifests that continue to at least provide a kick in the ribs. Take two closely related Trump topics: his plans to deploy the military domestically if he’s elected in November, and his staffer’s shoving of an Arlington National Cemetery staff member.
These may seem like different events, but I think that they shock people for the same reason: they evince a belief that the military directly belongs to Trump. If you’re against that, or in favor of rules that transcend his personality, as the cemetery staffer apparently was, you’re immediately an enemy.
Take the planning around invoking the Insurrection Act. That’s partly coming from an apparent belief that Trump should have invoked the act in summer 2020, but was fooled into not doing so. It sparked a sense of regret, not because Trump believed that using the military to quell the protests was the correct public policy decision, but because he regarded the protests themselves as an affront to his authority. It made him “look bad,” reporting at the time suggested.
It’s the same dynamic with the Arlington National Cemetery staffer. She didn’t have to have anything against Trump personally; she understood and tried to enforce the law barring political events at military cemeteries. But that, too, was an affront, causing the bizarre incident and the Trump campaign’s response: calling the woman mentally ill and a “disgrace.”
In some ways, it reminds me of a famous anecdote about Lyndon B. Johnson. As LBJ was preparing to leave on a trip, he walked by a long line of helicopters. A military escort informed the President on which one he was to leave: “Mr. President, your helicopter is this way.” To which LBJ replied: “They’re all my helicopters, son.”
That may be apocryphal, and the analogy is limited: LBJ was President, and the humor from the anecdote comes from the fact that everyone recognizes, on some level, that an individual President’s ego is eclipsed by the size of the U.S. government. With Trump, we don’t have that recognition. It’s his rules and his graveyard.
JMsays
@373 Reginald Selkirk: Attempts to move the case to federal court have been made twice in this case already. This petition added nothing new and had no real chance to succeed. This was a pure attempt at delaying the case, filing something the lawyers knew was not going to succeed but is a very legally complex issue with a case involving the president. It was not filed correctly and at this point the judge is not interested in giving Trump any leeway, it was dismissed out of hand.
Reginald Selkirksays
@375: we all know who he is, his appeal and how he operates are, by now, extremely familiar.
Two out of three? I have never understood his appeal.
Tim Walz’s brother railed against the Democratic vice presidential pick on Friday, claiming his younger sibling was “not the type of character you want making decisions about your future.”
“I’m 100% opposed to all his ideology,” Jeff Walz, 67, wrote of the Minnesota governor in a series of comments on Facebook published by the New York Post. The Florida resident and registered Republican, who donated to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, also mused about publicly endorsing the GOP ticket…
birgerjohanssonsays
A general question.
Brandon Sanderson was chosen to wrap up The Wheel Of Time after Robert Jordan died, and has published thick Fantasy novels of his own.
Normally, huge productivity does not coexist with quality, so I want to tap the experience of readers if Sanderson is worth reading (I usually get my copies in original English from abroad and the extra postage means reading becomes an expensive hobby).
I’m going to have to down grade JD Vance. Originally I gave Vance a lot of leeway, he was trapped in an imploding campaign that was coming apart for reasons that had little to do with him. At this point though it’s clear he is just helping to scuttle the ship.
I thought at first that part of what he was trying to do is set himself apart from Trump, aiming to salvage his reputation when Trump went down in flames. It’s clear that this isn’t the case. He is taking extremely unpopular positions even when he isn’t forced and he is going out of his way to defend Trump even when forced to take publicly untenable positions. His aggressive defending of Trump’s publicity op at Arlington is the sort of thing that military people will remember for the rest of his career.
As a candidate he is just terrible. He has trouble giving a campaign speech when reading off teleprompters. He can’t give an unscripted speech or handle interacting with people. He can’t answer questions from reporters well even when they are obvious questions that he should have been prepared for by the campaign staff.
He has one trait that he shares with Trump. When challenged he doubles down rather then apologize or even shut up. This is a serious problem when he doubles down on positions that are publicly unpopular and considered weird to begin with. After several public embarrassments you would think the campaign would have ordered him not to keep doubling down on his crazy cat lady positions but he keeps insulting women in ways so bad even Republican men are embarrassed by his statements.
At this point I have to put in the bottom tier of VPs that are dragging down the campaign. This is a seriously bad sign when the campaign was already sinking fast.
[Vance] tried to preemptively mock Kamala Harris’ hotly anticipated interview Thursday night by posting a 2007 video clip of Caitlin Upton, who represented South Carolina at that year’s Miss Teen USA pageant, badly fumbling a response to a question about Americans’ inability to locate their home country on a map, and CNN’s John Berman confronted him over the difficulty that contestant later faced.
“So when you posted this last night, were you aware that the woman you are posting a picture of had contemplated committing suicide for the attention that it received?” Berman said.
[…]
“Politics has gotten way too lame, John, way too boring […] I’m not going to apologize for posting a joke […] and the best way to deal with this stuff is to laugh at ourselves.”
On the subject of John Morales’ sabbatical: his absence is no one’s doing except for his own. I could not blame Mano Singham, for example, for taking heed of the pointed correspondence following on the heels of a number of threads where John had not acquitted himself well (for example, the following threads on Mano’s blog: 2024/08/07/sportsmanship-at-the-olympics/ ; 2024/08/10/creepy-trump-is-going-even-further-off-the-rails/ ; 2024/08/12/the-politics-of-insults ; 2024/08/14/the-dumbest-climate-conversation-of-all-time ; 2024/08/16/the-power-of-anger-when-channeled-through-joy/ ; all leading up to Mano’s announcement of the new commenting policy in the thread 2024/08/18/new-policy-on-comments/).
I hope for his part that he has taken some of the criticisms aimed in his direction as being kindly meant: the SNR of his comments had declined noticeably to someone who rarely comments such as myself. Calibrating the tenor and content of comments is no one else’s responsibility.
Lastly, a bug: the Pharyngula recent comments don’t seem to be recording new comments appearing in the Infinite Thread – I notice this earlier when I posted comment #228 above, and I wonder if it’s due to the total number of comments in this thread spiralling out so far beyond a single page of comments.
StevoRsays
Good news – comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has survived so far :
We provide the latest details on this comet, which might (or might not!) blossom into a bright naked-eye object in our October evening skies.
@Xanthë: Now that you mention it, I too notice the “Recent Comments” widget is incomplete. If you’re in need of a substitute, the RSS feed of 25 comments from all Pharyngula posts does include the Infinite Thread. https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/comments/feed/
^ If you click that in a browser and get XML code, you may need to install a browser extension to render the RSS feed.
Also <code> tags are handy when you have too many urls. That’ll make them plain unclickable text, which can be copy-pasted to visit.
Thanks SkyCaptain CA7746! I did intend the links to Mano’s blogs to be plain text as it happens. I believe there’s a limit on how many URLs a comment can contain before it gets dumped straight to PZ’s spam filter, possibly never to emerge, which I was likely to exceed if I had tried.
On a different subject: I gather with comment 273 obviously being satire, hopefully no one actually mistook it for serious commentary? It looks as though as it might be prone to misunderstanding, which then arguably would be counterproductive.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
An ad from the kamalahq TikTok account (original, mirror on Mastodon)
It starts with a clip of Trump at a rally in Potterville, MI.
“And who always has your best interests and has your back. I have your back, I have your heart, and I have every other part of your body.”
That bit is repeated, juxtaposed with headlines:
* CBS – Trump says states might monitor pregnancies to track abortions
* MotherJones – Trump says states could prosecute women for abortions under his watch
* The19thNews – RNC approves platform that would give rights to fetuses endangering abortion, IVF
* TheGuardian – Republicans push wave of bills that would bring homicide charges for abortion
* CNN – Nearly 65,000 pregnancies from rape have occurred in states with abortion bans, study estimates
* MSNBC – Mississippi abortion bans force 13-year-old rape survivor to give birth
Bekenstein Boundsays
birgerjohansson@379:
Normally, huge productivity does not coexist with quality
Counterexample: Isaac Asimov. Also Stephen King.
Sky Captain@391:
They should also juxtapose that “every other part of your body” bit with the Access Hollywood tape. And testimony from E. Jean Carroll on the witness stand.
Meanwhile, speak of the devil and look who appears. Morales is back, with a single, relatively tame, comment on Singham’s blog tonight.
Teehee. Stephen King.
A quote of Ana Mardoll—at the end of live-reading Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties (about a Genderpocalypse):
“Authors’ note: If a fantasy novel is to be believable, the details underpinning it must be realistic.”
I am dead from actual irony. Their “primary research assistant” in a novel about women is a man named Russ. […] This novel was horribly, horribly bad. […] I’m so sorry I inflicted this book on you. […] Go into [National Novel Writing Month] (if you do NaNo) knowing you will write something not as awful as this.
/The live-read was intended as an annotated example of how not to write such stories, not to slam the Kings in particular. But it was just too bad.
/To be fair, Ana liked The Mist.
A prominent German leftist politician was sprayed with a red liquid, likely paint, during a campaign event Thursday in the eastern city of Erfurt, ahead of closely watched state elections on Sunday.
Sara Wagenknecht, founder of the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reginald Selkirk@354 quoting apnews
While disapproving of her being assaulted in this way, I quarrel with the description of Wagenknecht as “leftist”. She recently left Die Linke (descendant of the old East German Socialist Unity (i.e.Communist) Party) to found her own party, not-at-all-egotistically named after herself. She is anti-immigrant, pro-Putin, pro-COVID (i.e. wanting to limit vaccination to the elderly and those in poor health) and downplays climate disruption. Her party does retain the policy of higher taxes on the rich, but fascist parties often pose as economically leftist for political advantage, and indeed even her economic policies are now mostly close to those of the CDU and FPD.
KGsays
Sorry, the first paragraph of #398 should have been within the quoted passage.
KGsays
shermanj@330,
Thanks for the response, but you’re being most unfair in blaming Jesus for Christianity! It’s pretty clear he was just a run-of-the-mill Jewish apocalyptic preacher, probably with the delusion that he was the Messiah, who largely by chance was promoted as a general saviour by the founder of Christianity, Paul of Tarsus – and would have been surprised to find the world still trundling on 2,000 years later, and horrified at the blasphemy of Christians claiming that he was divine!
Reginald Selkirksays
@385 His (Vance) aggressive defending of Trump’s publicity op at Arlington is the sort of thing that military people will remember for the rest of his career…
As for the “double-down”, this has been a conservative staple for a long time, and continues to impress me in a negative way. That someone cannot bring themself to apologize when they are obviously wrong makes them look weak, not strong.
About two dozen members of the hate group Patriot Front, a Texas-based white supremacist and neo-fascist hate group, were spotted in Florida’s capital city Saturday.
According to online reports, photos and video, the group was seen marching with masks over their faces along the Tallahassee Downtown Market, atop the Cascades Park bridge and later gathered outside the Old Florida Capitol.
They placed stickers that said “Nationalist Lifestyle” and “White N Radical” on light poles downtown, according to photos posted by the Leon County Democratic Party on Facebook…
In a recent interview at the Aspen Institute Festival, billionaire investor Peter Thiel opened up about his controversial comment where he labeled Warren Buffett as a “sociopathic grandpa from Omaha.” He made the comment in 2022, and it certainly raised some eyebrows at the time as Buffett is highly regarded in the investing community.
“It got a lot of laughs,” Thiel said during the interview. He explained that the “sociopathic grandpa from Omaha” comment came during a speech at the Bitcoin conference, where he pointed out who he thought were Bitcoin’s biggest opponents. Besides Buffett, he also called out JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and BlackRock’s Larry Fink. Thiel believes that older, traditional finance leaders like Buffett are a major roadblock to Bitcoin gaining wider acceptance…
The guy who wanted to live forever by injecting the blood of young people, and start a libertarian island, is calling someone a sociopath just because they don’t support crypto?
– Jim Kohlberg
These dire straits have driven me to commit $30 million to the Brennan Center for Justice to require term limits and an enforceable standard of ethics requiring recusal in conflicts of interest…
An Associated Press article, reposted by other sites.
The 2016 presidential campaign was entering its final months and seemingly all of Washington was abuzz with talk about how Russian hackers had penetrated the email accounts of Democrats, triggering the release of internal communications that seemed designed to boost Donald Trump’s campaign and hurt Hillary Clinton’s.
Yet there was a notable exception: The officials investigating the hacks were silent.
When they finally issued a statement, one month before the election, it was just three paragraphs and did little more than confirm what had been publicly suspected — that there had been a brazen Russian effort to interfere in the vote.
This year, there was another foreign hack, but the response was decidedly different. U.S. security officials acted more swiftly to name the culprit, detailing their findings and blaming a foreign adversary — this time, Iran — just over a week after Trump’s campaign revealed the attack.
They accused Iranian hackers of targeting the presidential campaigns of both major parties as part of a broader attempt to sow discord in the American political process.
The forthright response is part of a new effort to be more transparent about threats. It was a task made easier because the circumstances weren’t as politically volatile as in 2016, when a Democratic administration was investigating Russia’s attempts to help the Republican candidate.
But it also likely reflects lessons learned from past years when officials tasked with protecting elections from foreign adversaries were criticized by some for holding onto sensitive information — and lambasted by others for wading into politics.
Suzanne Spaulding, a former official with the Department of Homeland Security, said agencies realize that releasing information can help thwart the efforts of U.S. adversaries.
[…] The FBI, which made the Iran announcement along with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in a statement to The Associated Press that “transparency is one of the most powerful tools we have to counteract foreign malign influence operations intended to undermine our elections and democratic institutions.”
The FBI said the government had refined its policies to ensure that information is shared as it becomes available, “so the American people can better understand this threat, recognize the tactics, and protect their vote.
A WHOLESALE REORGANIZATION
A spokesperson for the ODNI also told AP that the government’s assessment arose from a new process for notifying the public about election threats.
Created following the 2020 elections, the framework sets out a process for investigating and responding to cyber threats against campaigns, election offices or the public. When a threat is deemed sufficiently serious, it is “nominated” for additional action, including a private warning to the attack’s target or a public announcement.
“The Intelligence Community has been focused on collecting and analyzing intelligence regarding foreign malign influence activities, to include those of Iran, targeting U.S. elections,” the agency said. “For this notification, the IC had relevant intelligence that prompted a nomination.”
The bureaucratic terminology obscures what for the intelligence community has been a wholesale reorganization of how the government tracks threats against elections since 2016, when Russian hacking underscored the foreign interference threat.
“In 2016 we were completely caught off guard,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “There were some indications, but nobody really understood the scale.” […]
A BUMPY ROAD
In 2018, Congress created CISA, the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber arm, to defend against digital attacks. Four years later the Foreign and Malign Influence Center was established within the ODNI to track foreign government efforts to sway U.S. elections.
Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based organization that analyzes foreign disinformation, said he’s pleased that in its first election, the center doesn’t seem to have been “hobbled by some of the partisanship that we’ve seen cripple other parts of the government that tried to do this work.”
Still, there have been obstacles and controversies. Shortly after Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Trump fired the head of CISA, Christopher Krebs, for refuting his unsubstantiated claim of electoral fraud. […]
In 2022, the work of a new office called the Disinformation Governance Board was quickly suspended after Republicans raised questions about its relationship with social media companies and concerns that it could be used to monitor or censor Americans’ online discourse.
Legal challenges over government restrictions on free speech have also complicated the government’s ability to exchange information with social media companies, though Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a recent address that the government has resumed sharing details with the private sector. […]
Israel’s military said it recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, including an Israel-American who became a well-known captive as his parents publicly urged for his release during the months-long war.
The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday the six hostages were killed by Hamas shortly before forces reached them in an underground tunnel in Rafah.
The bodies of those recovered included Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi and Alex Lobanov, IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a press briefing. Their bodies were brought back to Israeli territory for identification before their families were informed.
Goldberg-Polin, a native of Berkeley, Calif., was taken along with four of the other hostages during a music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault, the Associated Press reported.
He became one of the faces of the mass kidnappings on Oct. 7, which included about 250 others who were taken and brought back to Gaza.
The parents of Goldberg-Polin, 23, spoke at last month’s Democratic National Convention, where they pushed for a hostage-release deal.
“With broken hearts, the Goldberg-Polin family is devastated to announce the death of their beloved son and brother, Hersh. The family thanks you all for your love and support and asks for privacy at this time,” the family said in a statement Sunday. […]
Russia shot down 158 drones overnight, [take Russian claims with a grain of salt] including 11 over Moscow and the surrounding region, its Defense Ministry said Sunday, as officials across the country scrambled to respond to what appeared to be one of the largest Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia yet.
The assault targeted energy infrastructure, including power plants and oil refineries, and fires broke out at several facilities, including in Moscow. Officials said dozens of the drones were shot down over the Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a surprise incursion on Aug. 6. Russia still controls part of the region.
[video at the link.]
The mayor of Moscow, who updated Telegram regularly through the night, reported the presence of drones in various suburbs of the city. No deaths or injuries related to the drone attack were reported in Russia.
The attack came after an especially intense week of repeated Russian bombardments on Ukraine, including on energy infrastructure, worsening power blackouts throughout the country and killing civilians.
Ukraine’s allies have imposed restrictions that prevent it from using many weapons inside of Russia, especially for long-range strikes. A delegation of Ukrainian officials are in Washington this week requesting changes to that policy, which Kyiv says has left it fighting with one hand tied behind its back.
Instead, Ukraine has relied on domestically produced drones to strike targets deep inside of Russia.
“It is only fair that Ukrainians should be able to respond to Russian terror in exactly the way necessary to stop it,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram on Sunday. “Every day and every night, our cities and villages are under enemy attacks.”
Election Law Blog
“RFK Jr. can’t get off ballot in North Carolina, can’t get back on it in New York”
By Rick Hasen / August 31, 2024
AP‘s headline shows you how ludicrous our current system is—where RFK Jr. is not and never was a viable candidate, and all the jockeying is about whether it will help or hurt the major party candidates for him to be on the ballot in particular states.
We really need to use ranked choice voting or some other method to assure that third party candidates can run vigorous candidacies without risking these secondary effects.
Reginald Selkirksays
@409 We really need to use ranked choice voting or some other method to assure that third party candidates can run vigorous candidacies without risking these secondary effects.
His sympathies seem to be with RFK Jr. I would support ranked choice voting, but I care more about the voters than about opportunists like RFK Jr.
The hypocrisy of the men in the socialist movement about women’s issues was not limited to Japan BTW.
birgerjohanssonsays
Reginald Selkirk @ 403
Next step, he goes full Monty Burns and lobbies for abolishing helmet laws, making young, supple organs available for transplant.
Sam Brown, the Republican challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen in Nevada, first introduced himself to Silver State voters two years ago during his failed bid to unseat the state’s other Democratic senator, Catherine Cortez-Masto. He did it with an ad called “Duty.”
“I wasn’t born into power. I’m from small-town America,” he said in the 2022 ad.
What he didn’t say is that his extended family owns the Cincinnati Bengals, an NFL team worth $4 billion, and that his relatives have been supporting his political ambitions for a while now.
To hear Brown talk, he comes from the most humble of backgrounds. His was a “sort of working-class family,” he told radio host Ken Wall back in 2021 (at about the 22-minute mark). That same year, he told a local news host that he comes from “salt of the earth people,” not from a “dynasty” (at 23:48).
Speaking of dynasties, Brown’s great-grandfather, Paul Brown, founded the Bengals and his great-uncle, Michael Brown, is the current owner of the NFL team. So maybe a little bit of dynasty?
In a 2023 interview with a local CBS affiliate, Brown said that he couldn’t take his family on vacation because he couldn’t afford gas. Maybe that’s true; it could very well be that his relatives are stingy when it comes to sharing the wealth with extended family. But they sure haven’t been stingy with Brown when it comes to his political career.
Just last quarter, Brown netted $13,200 from great-uncle Michael and his son-in-law, Bengal executive Troy Blackburn. They each donated $6,600—the maximum allowed. The Nevada Globe reported that during his 2022 race, Brown received “$10,000 from current owners of the team and their spouses, including a double max contribution ($2900 x 2 = $5800) from team owner Michael Brown, $2900 from his wife Nancy, $1000 from his aunt, Bengals Executive VP Katie Blackburn (Paul Brown’s granddaughter) and another $2900 from his uncle Paul Brown Jr., who is a Vice President of the team.”
That’s nice. It might help to make up for that family vacation Brown had to cancel.
His relatives even booked him as a motivational speaker for the Bengals at one point. It’s not clear how much of an honorarium he netted through this gig with “Speakers of Substance,” but the maximum fee is $10,000.
It’s all sounding less and less working class and a lot more dynastic, isn’t it?
[…] NBC News’ Matt Bradley reports from the streets of Tel Aviv as thousands continue to protest after six hostages taken during Hamas’ attack on Israel were found dead in Gaza. [multiple videos available at the link]
[…] The Hostage Family Forum says that an estimated 300,000 people attended a demonstrations in Tel Aviv demanding the Israeli government negotiate a deal to bring the 101 remaining captives in Gaza home.
Family members of the hostages made statements criticizing the government and Prime Minister Netanyahu, including the brother of German-Israeli citizen Ohad Ben Ami. He said that he had hope for a deal until news broke of the six killed hostages and now he is “broken.”
[…] Palestinian militants killed three Israeli police officers on Sunday when they opened fire on a vehicle in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has carried out large-scale raids in recent days.
The attack took place along a road in the southern West Bank. The raids have mainly been focused on urban refugee camps in the northern part of the territory, where Israeli forces have traded fire with militants on a near-daily basis since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
The police confirmed that all three killed were officers and said the assailants slipped away.
One of the officers killed was Roni Shakuri, 61, from the southern town of Sderot near the Gaza border, police said. His daughter, Mor, who was also a police officer, was killed in a battle with Hamas militants when they tried to take over the Sderot police station during the Oct. 7 attack.
A little-known militant group calling itself the Khalil al-Rahman Brigade claimed responsibility for the shooting on Sunday. Hamas praised the attack as a “natural response” to the war in Gaza and called for more.
Over 650 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, mainly during Israeli military arrest raids. Most appear to have been militants involved in gun battles with Israeli forces, but civilian bystanders and rock-throwing protesters have also been killed. […]
Some 10,000 hotel workers represented by the UNITE HERE union walked off the job Sunday at 25 hotels in eight cities.
With up to 17 rooms to clean each shift, Fatima Amahmoud’s job at the Moxy hotel in downtown Boston sometimes feels impossible.
There was the time she found three days worth of blond dog fur clinging to the curtains, the bedspread and the carpet. She knew she wouldn’t finish in the 30 minutes she is supposed to spend on each room. The dog owner had declined daily room cleaning, an option that many hotels have encouraged as environmentally friendly but is a way for them to cut labor costs and cope with worker shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unionized housekeepers, however, have waged a fierce fight to restore automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, saying they have been saddled with unmanageable workloads, or in many cases, fewer hours and a decline in income. [Interesting. I had not realized that the reduction in daily room cleaning would have such a negative effect on housekeepers. Makes sense.]
The dispute has become emblematic of the frustration over working conditions among hotel workers, who were put out of their jobs for months during pandemic shutdowns and returned to an industry grappling with chronic staffing shortages and evolving travel trends.
Some 10,000 hotel workers represented by the UNITE HERE union walked off the job Sunday at 25 hotels in eight cities, including Honolulu, Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and Seattle. Hotel workers in other cities could strike in the coming days, as contract talks stall over demands for higher wages and a reversal of service and staffing cuts. At total of 15,000 workers have voted to authorize strikes.
[…] In a statement before the strikes began, Hilton said it was “committed to negotiating in good faith to reach fair and reasonable agreements.” Marriott and Omni did not return requests for comments.
The labor unrest serves as a reminder of the pandemic’s lingering toll on low-wage women […]
The U.S. hotel industry employs about 1.9 million people, some 196,000 fewer workers than in February 2019, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 90% of building housekeepers are women, according to federal statistics.
It’s a workforce that relies overwhelmingly on women of color, many of them immigrants, and which skews older […]
Union President Gwen Mills characterizes the contract negotiations as part of long-standing battle to secure family-sustaining compensation for service workers on par with more traditionally male-dominated industries.
“Hospitality work overall is undervalued, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s disproportionately women and people of color doing the work,” Mills said.
The union hopes to build on its recent success in southern California, where after repeated strikes it won significant wage hikes, increased employer contributions to pensions, and fair workload guarantees in a new contract with 34 hotels. Under the contract, housekeepers at most hotels will earn $35 an hour by July 2027.
The American Hotel And Lodging Association says 80% of its member hotels report staffing shortages, and 50% cite housekeeping as their most critical hiring need.
[…] Maria Mata, 61, a housekeeper at the W Hotel in San Francisco, said she earns $2,190 every two weeks if she gets to work full time. But some weeks, she only gets called in one or two days, causing her to max out her credit card to pay for household expenses
“It’s hard to look for a new job at my age. I just have to keep the faith that we will work this out,” Mata said.
Guests at the Hilton Hawaiian Village often tell Nely Reinante they don’t need their rooms cleaned because they don’t want her to work too hard. She said she seizes every opportunity to explain that refusing her services creates more work for housekeepers.
Since the pandemic, UNITE HERE has won back automatic daily room cleans at some hotels in Honolulu and other cities, either through contract negotiations, grievance filings or local government ordinances. […]
The U.S. hotel industry has rebounded from the pandemic despite average occupancy rates that remain shy of 2019 levels, largely due to higher room rates and record guest spending per room. […]
[…] hotels consider reducing services part of a long-term budget and staffing strategy.
[…] Workers bristle at what they see as moves to squeeze more out of them as they cope with erratic schedules and low pay. While unionized housekeepers tend to make higher wages, pay varies widely between cities. [Accurate]
charges of criminal complicity brought against […] Pavel Durov […] allegedly enabling child exploitation and drug trafficking […] raised alarm about crackdowns […] But how many tech companies and execs are really at risk?
[…]
While it’s true that the European Commission has been investigating whether […] Meta is inadequately protecting children, […] the penalty for breaking those rules comes in the form of a hefty fine. […] Meta makes significant efforts—successful or not—to ensure compliance with European law. Telegram, meanwhile, may have [underreported user counts] to evade regulation. […] Telegram, French prosecutors allege, ignored their demands for material related to purported crimes.
[…]
Signal is probably not susceptible […] “But Telegram is mostly not actually encrypted, or is encrypted poorly. And so it’s much easier for Telegram to get in a situation where they can be charged with knowingly continuing to distribute illegal content.”
[…]
EU said it was charging X with violations […] related to the app’s paid verification system, which it alleges malicious actors have exploited to deceive consumers, and a lack of transparency as to who is paying for promoted posts. […] None of [his] grandstanding suggests that Musk, too, might be arrested if he sets foot on the continent. [“]if there’s stuff that’s actually illegal in Europe and X is ignoring notices and leaving it up, they could get in the same kind of trouble Telegram is in.” But it seems […] X may only be declining to remove “offensive” content that is nonetheless legal in Europe, “so-called ‘lawful but awful’ speech.” It may also be falling short on some administrative obligations […] addressed with fines rather than criminal prosecution.
tomhsays
Re: #410 “His sympathies seem to be with RFK Jr.”
Hasen has no sympathy for RFK. His only interest is in establishing voting rights for all. His recent book, A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy is the gold standard on the subject.
birgerjohanssonsays
Florida district rejects school chaplains after Satanists pledge to participate
A painting depicting a laughing Kamala Harris tearing into the bloody guts of a dead bald eagle was front and center at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty in the basement of a Washington, D.C. hotel this weekend, eliciting delight from attendees—and bemused side-eyes from online observers…
A label underneath, per photos posted on social media, identified the work as titled “We Did It Joe” and its creator as Scott LoBaido…
“This painting, appropriately titled “We Did It Joe,” is going to be the next painting, for the next 500 years, that everybody’s going to know about,” he said. “They might not forget about the Mona Lisa, but she’s going to be in the back seat. It’s the way it is.”
In another video the next day, LoBaido pulled a blue cloth off of the painting in front of the U.S. Capitol, promising that it would “change the course of history.” …
He seems to be as deluded as his lord and saviour, Donald Trump.
KG @ 426
The extreme-right party and a far-left populist party together have exactly half the seats in one of the states, making it very hsrd to create a working coalition for centrist parties.
Why The Prometheus Engineer Creates Humans, Just To Kill Them…
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hzs-AytFAYI
This is such a trite non-inspired explanation. They could easily have come up with something original.
birgerjohanssonsays
Nerds will be nerds:
gun enthusiasts criticize the would-be Trump assassin for poor choices of hardware.
It is like, ‘Goering would have been fine if he had invested in jet aircraft from the start’.
From barbecues to getaways to shopping the sales, many people across the U.S. mark Labor Day — the federal holiday celebrating the American worker — by finding ways to relax.
This year is the 130th anniversary of the holiday, which is celebrated on the first Monday of September. While actions by unions in recent years to advocate for workers are a reminder of the holiday’s activist roots, the three-day weekend it creates has become a touchstone in the lives of Americans marking the unofficial end of summer.
Here’s what to know about Labor Day:
HOW DID LABOR DAY BECOME A FEDERAL HOLIDAY?
Its origins date back to the late 19th century, when activists first sought to establish a day to pay tribute to workers.
The first Labor Day celebration in the U.S. took place in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, when some 10,000 workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor.
Workers were seeing their quality of life decline as they transitioned from artisan to factory jobs, even as the quality of life of factory owners was “just skyrocketing,” said Todd Vachon, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.
In the years that followed, a handful of cities and states began to adopt laws recognizing Labor Day. President Grover Cleveland signed a congressional act in 1894 making it a federal holiday.
That was the same year that workers for the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike after the railcar-maker cut wages without reducing rent in the company-owned town where workers lived near Chicago, Vachon said. Over 12 workers were killed after Cleveland sent federal troops to crush the strike, he said.
Cleveland’s move to establish Labor Day as a federal holiday is seen by some historians as a way for him “to make peace” with the working class after that, Vachon said.
[…] HOW HAS THE LABOR MOVEMENT EVOLVED OVER THE DECADES?
When Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, unions in the U.S. were largely contested and courts would often rule strikes illegal, leading to violent disputes, Vachon said. It wasn’t until the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 that private sector employees were granted the right to join unions.
Later into the 20th century, states also began passing legislation to allow unionization in the public sector. But even today, not all states allow collective bargaining for public workers.
In recent years, Vachon said, there’s been a resurgence in labor organizing, activism, interest and support.
“A lot of the millennial and Gen Z folks are coming into the labor market in a period that’s not a lot different from that period in the 1880s where there was a lot of labor unrest,” Vachon said. “Jobs just don’t pay enough for people to achieve the American dream.” […]
[…] In a thread posted on X (formerly Twitter), TargetSmart Senior Advisor Tom Bonier shared the group’s stunning findings: In the more than a dozen states that have updated their voter files since late last month, Democrats have made record gains among every major voter group, blowing Republicans out of the water in the process.
Black women ages 18 to 29 led the way, with a 175.8% increase in voter registrations compared with the same time period in 2020. Hispanic voters have also rushed to register since Harris became the Democratic nominee, with young Hispanic women posting a stunning 149.7% increase in registrations, and Hispanic voter registrations overall jumping over 60%. [Graph at the link]
Women weren’t the only ones flocking to register. Registrations among Black voters leapt 85.8% over their 2020 numbers, while Asian Americans saw a 31.7% gain. Democrats as a whole saw a 51.2% increase in total registrations, compared with just 7% for Republicans. Those are game-changing numbers not just for Harris but also for Democrats up and down the ballot […]
Harris will have her biggest opportunity yet to sell those voters on her vision for America when she and Trump debate on Sept. 10. She’ll be speaking to a national audience of voters who are engaged and optimistic. Bringing those voters out to the polls in November could mean the difference between a vibrant democracy and a dark future of MAGA authoritarianism.
Trump hardliners want to revive War on Terror justifications for domestic military use.
As Trump allies seek to justify deploying the military at home — be it to round up undocumented immigrants, quell protests, or simply make an aggressive point — they’re looking again and again to the early 2000s. […]
These Trump allies are looking towards the work of an attorney who was stationed at the time in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. It’s John Yoo, the lawyer best known for authoring a series of 2002 memos that gave legal justification to the use of torture during the War on Terror.
The most striking example of Yoo’s current influence comes in a March 2024 policy brief that made an extensive argument for why the military could be deployed domestically in order to protect the southern border. The memo was written by Ken Cuccinelli, the Trump-era acting DHS deputy secretary, and was published by a think tank run by Project 2025 associate and former Trump OMB chief Russ Vought.
But Yoo’s influence in Trumpworld extends beyond his justification of domestic deployment of the military in an emergency situation. He’s also engaged with the MAGA concerns of the day: after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts, Yoo demanded tit-for-tat prosecutions of Democrats by Republicans. He’s popped up at various points in Trump’s defense against accountability: he testified for John Eastman in his disbarment proceedings; a longtime Yoo co-author also appeared as a witness for Trump in a Colorado proceeding over whether he should be disqualified from running for office due to his 2020 coup attempt. According to texts obtained by TPM, in December 2020 Trump legal aide Boris Epshteyn asked fake elector attorney Ken Chesebro if he had Yoo’s number; the next day, the messages show, Chesebro told Epshteyn that he hoped he would be able to “woo Yoo into being involved.”
Rolling Stone reported last month that, lately, Yoo has become a “guiding light” to some in Trumpworld, saying that his legal theories had been presented to the former President. Now, Trump allies are citing Yoo’s work justifying the use of the military on American soil as the GOP candidate himself muses about deploying the military domestically. (Most recently, Trump retruthed a post calling for “public military tribunals.”)
[…] The Cuccinelli paper cites an October 2001 memo that Yoo co-wrote for the Bush administration. The document, titled “Authority for Use of Military Force To Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States,” argues that the military can be deployed domestically in operations against terrorists.
It presents a breathtakingly broad view of presidential power, one that permits the President to, for example, use the military to detain U.S. citizens on American soil, provided that they’re determined to be enemy combatants.
[…] All of this is contingent on something that’s conspicuously absent from today’s United States: a national emergency.
[…] after 9/11, there was an actual crisis […] Al-Qaeda had launched surprise suicide attacks on New York and Washington, shocking the nation.
There is, of course, no equivalent crisis today. There’s nothing that even bears a passing resemblance. But many in Trumpworld are speaking and acting as if there is one. One Heritage Foundation official warned TPM about the “terrorist element” coming out in force if Trump wins the 2024 election.
[…] “I don’t think prosecution as properly used in our system is for going after your enemies or investigating your opponents,” Yoo said in the December 2023 conversation.
But after Trump was convicted in New York state court, Yoo reversed himself and began to demand that Republicans use “banana republic means” to prosecute Democrats wherever they have the power to do so.
“You have to retaliate,” Yoo said at a July conference. “You have to retaliate in the same way, until you restore some amount of deterrence.”
Legendary NFL quarterback turned FOX broadcaster Terry Bradshaw officially switched political parties a couple of years ago.
Bradshaw, a Hall of Fame quarterback with the Pittsburgh Steelers, hasn’t shied away from voicing his opinion on controversial topics over the years. The former Steelers great turned NFL broadcaster admitted to switching political parties back in 2020.
He was formerly a registered Republican. However, he’s since switched to being a registered independent…
Happy Labor Day! Let’s Talk About Some Awesome Ladies Of The Labor Movement
When we talk about the history of feminism, we tend to think about the causes and struggles of middle class white women. When we talk about labor history, we tend to think about the causes and struggles of white working class men.
And that is some absolute bullshit.
Working class women, very often women of color and immigrant women, were, are and always have been the backbone of the labor movement. They were working and organizing well before Second Wave Feminism “made it possible” for women to enter the workforce. They’re the ones who first fought for equal pay, and they’re the ones who were doing the bulk of feminist work and activism during the years in between getting the right to vote and The Feminine Mystique. They are still fighting today.
So, since it’s Labor Day, let’s celebrate the hell out of them, starting with the woman who started it all.
Lucy Parsons
“More dangerous than a thousand rioters,” anarchist Lucy Eldine Gonzalez Parsons was a writer, orator, one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World, and tireless campaigner for the rights of people of color, all women, and all workers. Her husband, Albert Parsons, was one of the Haymarket martyrs.
We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it … but we have our labor. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Wherever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to reduce them, and if there is anything that you men should do in the future, it is to organize the women.
Though Parsons and Emma Goldman were widely regarded as the most prominent female anarchists of the day, they very notably did not get along so well. Parsons believed that oppression based on gender and race was a function of capitalism and would be eliminated when capitalism was eliminated, whereas Goldman believed such oppression was inherent in all things. Parsons was all class struggle all the time, and felt that the “intellectual anarchists” like Goldman spent too much time bothering with appealing to the middle class.
One of her most important contributions to the labor movement was the concept of factory takeovers.
“My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in, and take possession of the necessary property of production.”
Parsons is best known for being the woman who really started the celebration of May Day as a day for workers’ rights — leading a parade to commemorate the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair. Soon, nearly every other country in the world followed suit and proclaimed this day International Worker’s Day. Alas, here in America, we go with the less radical and more picnic-y Labor Day that we are celebrating today, because Grover Cleveland thought a federal holiday commemorating the Haymarket Affair would encourage people to become anarchists and socialists, and no thank you, he did not want that.
Anna LoPizzo
Not much is known about Anna LoPizzo, other than that she was a 34-year-old mill worker who was murdered by police officer Oscar Benoit during the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike — also known as the Bread and Roses Strike. Initially, police tried to charge two IWW organizers who were miles away for her murder, even though literally everyone there had seen Benoit shoot her.
The reason for the strike in the first place was that the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, cut worker pay after the state cut the number of hours women could legally work from 56 down to 54. The Industrial Workers of the World, led by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (we’ll get to her in a minute), organized more than 20,000 workers of more than 40 different nationalities to demand they get their fair wages. One of the primary tactics used in the strike was sending the starving families of the mill workers on a tour to New York City so that people there could see for themselves what these low wages were doing to children. Between that and LoPizzo’s death, sympathy was on the side of the workers. Congressional hearings into the conditions of the mills were held, and the mills themselves ended up settling the strike by giving all workers across New England a 20 percent raise.
Lillian Wald
Susan B. Anthony isn’t the only important feminist buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery in my hometown of Rochester, New York. There is another. Her name was Lillian Wald, and she was a total fucking bad ass. She wasn’t just a suffragist — she was also an early advocate for healthcare for all people regardless of economic class or citizenship, a founding member of the NAACP, lobbied against child labor, advocated for the rights of immigrants, helped to found the Women’s Trade Union League, and was an anti-war activist. Wald also founded the Henry Street Settlement House in New York City, which provides — to this day — social services, education, and health care to the impoverished. And she was active in the ACLU.
WHY THE HELL IS SHE NOT MORE FAMOUS? I am legitimately bothered by this and bring it up often.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
[…] As previously mentioned, she was an organizer with Industrial Workers of the World who helped organize the Lawrence Textile Strike. She also organized a hell of a lot of other strikes across the country, helped found the ACLU, and was known for the creative tactics she used to elicit sympathy and support for the American worker.
Hattie Canty
When Hattie Canty’s husband died in 1972, she found herself supporting eight children on her own. She found work as a maid at a Las Vegas hotel where she joined the Las Vegas Hotel and Culinary Workers Union Local 226. By 1990, she was president of that union, leading one of the longest strikes in American history — a six year strike of hospitality workers which, happily, ended in victory.
The Women of The Atlanta Washerwomen’s Strike
Back in the 1880s, only two decades after the Civil War ended, the most common occupation for Black women was as laundresses — this was largely because if poor white families were going to hire anyone to do chores for them at all, they were going to hire someone to do their laundry. These women were independent workers, often working from their own homes and making their own soap, and they only made about $4 a month. (Average non-Black-woman laborers earned about $35 a month in 1880.)
One day in 1881, about 20 of them got together and decided that $4 a month was some bullshit for all the work they were doing and decided to go on strike and demand wages of $1 for every 12 pounds of washing. Three weeks later, 3,000 other women joined them. Unsurprisingly, the city freaked out. They fined any participants $25 — which was a lot of money when you only made $4 a month — and they offered tax breaks to any corporation that would come down there to start a commercial steam cleaning business. Still, the women did not back down.
Eventually, people got really sick of doing their own laundry, and the city decided to back down on the fines, and accede to their demands for fear that the unrest would spread to other industries.
Dolores Huerta […]
More at the link, including brief biographies of Lucy Randolph Mason, May Chen, Angela Bambace, Emma Goldman, and Rosina Tucker.
Alternative for Germany’s success in Thuringia is a huge win for a party that was launched in 2013.
Germany’s far right has won the most votes in a state election for the first time since the Nazi era, in a major rebuke of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling center-left coalition.
Projections from public broadcasters ARD and ZDF based on exit polls suggest that the anti-immigration, nationalist party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has finished first in the east German state of Thuringia, securing about 31% to 33% of the vote.
The Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s second-largest party, finished second with 24.5% of the votes in Thuringia. Scholz’s Social Democratic Party appears to have cleared the 5% threshold needed to make it into the state parliaments.
In Saxony, another east German state in the heart of what was once communist East Germany, the AfD has 30% to 31% of the vote, putting it neck-and-neck with the CDU, which has 31.5% to 32% of the vote, according to projection polls.
All other parties have vowed not to form coalitions with the AfD, so it remains to be seen whether it will be able to win any real governing power.
[…] “Our country cannot and must not get used to this. The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country’s reputation,” Scholz said.
Pollsters had predicted a strong showing from the far-right AfD, despite a string of controversies linked to its leadership. The party is under monitoring by the country’s domestic intelligence agency for suspected extremism, while party leader Björne Höcke has twice been found guilty by a German court of purposely employing Nazi rhetoric, while. He has appealed the rulings.
[…] the AfD shifted its focus to Islam and immigration and has grown in popularity at both the local and national levels ever since, particularly in the former East Germany, the former communist half of the country, which had strong ties to the then-Soviet Union; polling has shown there is more skepticism about NATO and Germany’s support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.
[…] The AfD has 12 months to continue expanding its influence across the country in search of real power, while its opponents will use Sunday’s results as a rallying cry for those who wish to stop the far right.
Biden’s and Harris’ teams pushed back against claims from GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard that that had been invited alongside Trump.
Gold Star families did not invite President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to Arlington National Cemetery by last week to commemorate the third anniversary of the attack at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, a White House official and a Harris aide told NBC News, rebutting separate claims made Sunday by GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. [Fact checking]
The two were speaking about former President Donald Trump’s visit last week to Arlington National Cemetery, where he has drawn criticism for posing for photos with Gold Star families in a section of the cemetery where photos are traditionally prohibited.
[…] Asked about the incident Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Cotton, R-Ark., told moderator Kristen Welker: “These families, Gold Star families, whose children died because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ incompetence invited [Trump] to the cemetery and they asked him to take those photos. … You know who the families also invited? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Where were they? Joe Biden was sitting at a beach. Kamala Harris was sitting at her mansion in Washington, D.C.” [Lies. Blatant lies.]
[…] Gabbard, a former Democratic House member from Hawaii, echoed Cotton, telling CNN on Sunday: “President Biden and Harris, I heard, were invited by some of these family members. They not only didn’t come; they didn’t even respond to that invitation.” [Gabbard was acknowledged on Russian TV to be an asset to Putin. She is also a liar and a gullible doofus.]
[…] Trump’s campaign posted a TikTok video of the ceremony, and Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita posted a video on X of Trump laying flowers at a grave. [Trump also claimed that the family members called him “Sir.” That’s one of his tells when he spouts a lie.] [video at the link]
On Friday, at a rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Trump said: “Joe Biden killed those young people because he was incompetent. And then they tell me that I use their graves for public relations services, and I didn’t.” Trump took to X on Saturday night, posting multiple videos of relatives of killed service members defending him and criticizing Harris and Biden.
In one video, Darin Hoover addresses Harris directly, saying Trump treated the family with the “utmost respect” and asking where she and Biden were on “Aug. 26, 2024.” He said they were “nowhere near Arlington Cemetery. You couldn’t be bothered to be with us or say our kids’ names.”
[…] The videos were posted in response Harris’ statement Saturday saying Trump “disrespected sacred ground” during his visit to Arlington National Cemetery, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington.
WASHINGTON (AP) —…..Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, lawyers and their allies is trying to shape November’s election in ways that favor former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to prop up third-party candidates such as Cornel West who offer liberal voters an alternative that could siphon away support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
It is not clear who is paying for the effort, but it could be impactful in states that were decided by miniscule margins in the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
This is money West’s campaign does not have, and he has encouraged the effort. Last month the academic told The Associated Press that “American politics is highly gangster-like activity” and he “just wanted to get on that ballot.”
Trump has offered praise for West, calling him “one of my favorite candidates.” Another is Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Trump favors both for the same reason. “I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them. He takes 100%.”
Democrats are exploring ways to lift Randall Terry, an anti-abortion presidential candidate for the Constitution Party, believing he could draw voters from Trump.
But the GOP effort appears to be more far-reaching. After years of Trump accusing Democrats of “rigging” elections, it is his allies who are now mounting a sprawling and at times deceptive campaign to tilt the vote in his favor.
“The fact that either of the two major parties would attempt financially and otherwise to support a third-party spoiler candidate as part of its effort to win is an unfortunate byproduct” of current election laws “that facilitate spoilers,” said Edward B. Foley, a law professor who leads Ohio State University’s election law program…..
Ranked choice voting would eliminate this ‘spoiler’ effect.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who faces federal and state charges for allegedly trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden, insists he had “every right” to interfere in the election.
“Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it?” Trump said in a Fox News interview that aired on Sunday…
The Big Bang may not have been the beginning of the universe, according to a theory of cosmology that suggests the universe can “bounce” between phases of contraction and expansion. If that theory is true, then it could have profound implications about the nature of the cosmos, including two of its most mysterious components: black holes and dark matter.
With this in mind, a recent study suggests that dark matter could be composed of black holes formed during a transition from the universe’s last contraction to the current expansion phase, which occurred before the Big Bang. If this hypothesis holds, the gravitational waves generated during the black hole formation process might be detectable by future gravitational wave observatories, providing a way to confirm this dark matter generation scenario…
KGsays
The extreme-right party and a far-left populist party together have exactly half the seats in one of the states, – Birgerjohansson@429
Yeah, as I’ve said @398, I dispute the characterisation of Wagenknecht’s outfit as “far-left”. It wouldn’t altogether surprise me to see her going into coalition with the AfD, or at least holding that threat over the other parties in negotiations.
The United States has seized Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro’s airplane after determining that its acquisition was in violation of US sanctions, among other criminal issues. The US flew the aircraft to Florida on Monday, according to two US officials…
In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said that “the Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies.”
The plane was purchased from a company in Florida, the Justice Department said, and was illegally exported in April 2023 from the United States to Venezuela through the Caribbean.
The plane, which is a Dassault Falcon 900EX, has since been used to fly “almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela,” the Justice Department said, and has been used for Maduro’s international travels…
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to appoint a relative to a top defense role tested “even Russian tolerance for corrupt practice,” the UK’s ministry of defence (MoD) said.
The Kremlin announced in August that Putin had appointed Anna Tsivileva, the daughter of Putin’s cousin, as the state secretary of the military.
According to the MoD, Tsivileva is often referred to as Putin’s niece in Russia…
[…] Former President Donald Trump claimed at a recent campaign rally that more than 300,000 Americans are dying each year from the synthetic opioid drug fentanyl, and that the number of fentanyl overdoses was the “lowest” during his administration and has skyrocketed since.
“We’re losing 300,000 people a year to fentanyl that comes through our border,” Trump told his supporters at a July 24 campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina. “We had it down to the lowest number and now it’s worse than it’s ever been,” he said.
Trump’s figures appear to have no basis in fact. Government statistics show the number of drug overdose deaths per year is hovering around 100,000 to 110,000, with opioid-related deaths at about 81,000. That’s enough that the government has labeled opioid-related overdoses an “epidemic,” but nowhere close to the number Trump cited.
Moreover, though the number of opioid deaths has risen since Trump left office, it’s incorrect to claim they were the “lowest” while he was president.
[…] Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt wouldn’t comment specifically on the source for Trump’s statistics. She instead sent KFF Health News an email with several bullet points about the opioid crisis under the heading: “DRUGS ARE POURING OVER HARRIS’ OPEN BORDER INTO OUR COMMUNITIES.”
One such bullet noted that there were “112,000 fatal drug overdoses” last year and linked to a story from NPR reporting that fact — directly rebutting Trump’s own claim of 300,000 fentanyl deaths. Additionally, the number NPR reported is an overall figure, not for fentanyl-related deaths only.
More recent government figures estimated that there were 107,543 total drug overdose deaths in 2023, with an estimated 74,702 of those involving fentanyl. Those figures were in line with what experts on the topic told KFF Health News.
[…] Given that Trump’s claims about fentanyl came when discussing the southern border “invasion,” it’s worth noting that, according to the U.S. government, the vast majority of fentanyl caught being smuggled into the country illegally comes via legal ports of entry. Moreover, nearly 90% of people convicted of fentanyl drug trafficking in 2022 were U.S. citizens, […] That year, U.S. citizens received 12 times as many fentanyl trafficking convictions as did immigrants who were in the U.S. without authorization, the analysis showed.
Additional links to reliable sources of information are provided at the main link.
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 447
Yes, as I cannot read German I am forced to experience their politics through an English-language filter in The Guardian.
.
Two US soldiers assaulted by nationalist youth group in Turkey, authorities say https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/02/us-soldiers-attacked-turkey
‘Nationalist youth group’, yeah, I have seen that film. Nationalism and patriotism are different things.
birgerjohanssonsays
While I do not have access to Trump’s Truth Social I am told the stream of consciousness from one of two people that will lead the largest economy of the world has become much worse since Biden was replaced by Harris.
And by ‘worse’ I mean in a manner that would interest mental health professionals. After 9 years of exposure to Trump “getting worse” must mean extraordinally bad.
birgerjohanssonsays
The Riot Story Not in the Headlines Today
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DoNENmn67eU
How media ignores positive news items and creates an impression society is more divided than it is.
It’s hard to overstate how broken the federal judiciary is. The hard-right Federalist Society types Trump stuffed the courts with are not there to be independent or to ensure justice. Rather, these jurists are there to ensure right-wing policy preferences get enacted while Democratic goals get thwarted. That’s leading to sweeping and sloppy rulings that take a sledgehammer to regulations issued by President Joe Biden’s administration. And Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 would make this landscape even worse.
Let’s start with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which has been unbalanced for decades. Democratic appointees haven’t outnumbered Republican ones since 1985, and Trump got to fill four vacancies. Now, the Eighth Circuit has only one Democratic appointee, Jane Kelly, who was put on the bench by President Barack Obama in 2013.
While it would be improbable that Kelly would step down during a second Trump administration, a 2024 Trump victory would likely give Trump the chance to shore up his stranglehold on the courts by swapping out some older jurists. James B. Loken was put on the bench by George H. W. Bush in 1990, and is 84 years old. Loken could choose to take senior status. Senior status lets a judge have a reduced caseload and opens a vacancy on the court. Judges Duane Benton and Bobby Shepherd, both George W. Bush appointees, are both over 70 and could choose to do the same.
Of course, the current composition of the Eighth Circuit is bad enough, and it just gave us an incomprehensible ruling on the Biden administration’s latest student debt relief plan. Red states have continued to race to friendly courts to attack the administration’s efforts to provide student loan forgiveness after getting the Supreme Court to block a plan to discharge $10,000 of federal student loan debt for millions of borrowers last year.
After that loss, the administration pivoted, issuing a rule that wasn’t across-the-board loan forgiveness, though some would receive loan forgiveness under the rule. For many people, though, all that changed was how payments would be calculated based on income, how accrued interest was dealt with, and how periods of loan deferments were considered when calculating loan forgiveness.
But even that was too much for Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma, which promptly sued to stop the plan. A lower court’s ruling blocked only the loan forgiveness portion of the rule, but earlier this month, the Eighth Circuit enjoined all of it. […] if you are a borrower in an income-contingent repayment plan, Friday’s order appears to block the government from doing virtually anything to forgive your loan while the injunction remains in place.
The problem here is that there are already long-approved, income-contingent repayment plans, ones where people have made payments for years, which are supposed to result in loan forgiveness after a certain point. Now, as Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona explained, the injunction as written could deny forgiveness guaranteed to people who have repaid their loans faithfully for 25 years. Because this is confusing, potentially devastating for borrowers, and seems well beyond the scope of the lawsuit, the government requested that the court clarify the scope of the injunction. And on Aug. 19, in a one-line, unsigned order, the Eighth Circuit denied the request.
In theory, a sloppy, dismissive ruling like this would be addressed by the Supreme Court. However, conservative jurists have very little to fear, given the highest court in the land is also engaged in the same practice.
Earlier this month, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court blocked the entirety—all 423 pages—of the administration’s Title IX sex discrimination rule from going into effect. Twenty-six red states had challenged the rule in a variety of lawsuits because it provides protections for transgender students and added discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation to the definition of “sex discrimination” in an education setting.
[…] The Biden administration asked the federal appeals courts to allow the remainder of the rule to go into effect while those challenges played out, but the appeals courts refused. The rule then met a similar fate at the Supreme Court.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent from the denial of a request for a stay highlights how absurd this is, pointing out that the unchallenged provisions in the rule have nothing to do with any of the things that make this a culture-war fixation for conservatives. The rule requires, for example, that schools provide pregnant students with things like breaks during class for breastfeeding. Another portion bans schools from retaliating against people who file complaints under Title IX.
The states that sued did not allege they would be harmed by the whole of the rule or by these provisions. Instead, their alleged harms flow only from the provisions they challenged, such as believing their free-speech rights would be violated if they can’t make bigoted statements about gender identity.
Regardless, just as with the Eighth Circuit’s treatment of student loan forgiveness, the Supreme Court doesn’t care. There’s no penalty for this behavior, no downside to the court or the justices. Unless we manage to keep Trump out of the Oval Office again while also getting Democrats to rally around court reform, the federal courts will continue to be helmed by outcome-driven ideologues who don’t care what chaos they create.
The white beluga whale, known as Hvaldimir, first appeared in 2019 with a harness that read “Equipment St. Petersburg,” prompting speculation that the animal had escaped from a Russian military facility.
For a supposed spy, Hvaldimir was anything but covert.
The white beluga whale had appeared regularly along the coast of Norway since first being spotted in the country’s north in April 2019, wearing a harness and what appeared to be a mount for a small camera. Together with a buckle that read “Equipment St. Petersburg,” that prompted speculation that the animal was an escaped “spy whale” that had been trained for military purposes in neighboring Russia.
The whale seemed to love being around people and quickly captivated local residents, who came up with the name Hvaldimir — a combination of the Norwegian word for whale, “hval,” and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The 14-foot, 2,700-pound whale was found dead on Saturday in the harbor of Stavanger, a city in southwestern Norway, after residing in the area since last year, the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries said in a statement Monday.
Marine biologist Sebastian Strand, who had tracked Hvaldimir’s adventures for the NGO Marine Mind, said he made the discovery while out scouting for the whale and was “heartbroken.” […] Strand said, adding that Hvaldimir was known to be alive as recently as Friday. [video at the link]
[…] Navies around the world, including those of the Soviet Union and the United States, famously sought to tame cetaceans for spy missions during the Cold War, training them to retrieve underwater objects, detect mines and even for defense operations.
But Hvaldimir could also have been a therapy whale, according to other theories, which could explain the interest in people and responses to hand signals.
“It appeared as if Hvaldimir arrived in Norway by crossing over from Russian waters, where it is presumed he was held in captivity,” Marine Mind says on its website.
The whale’s solitude and behavior was atypical of its species, which generally moves in groups and inhabits remote Arctic areas. Hvaldimir was known to be a fan of catamarans around Norway, regularly following them from one fish farm to another, and hunting for food underneath the fishing nets.
[…] “For now, we work towards a final dignity of making sure he is kept well and examined so his death will not be a mystery,” Strand said. “But no matter what now, a beloved friend of many is gone.”
The Philadelphia Eagles are responding to apparent counterfeit advertisements that make it appear as if the team is taking a political position on the upcoming presidential election.
“We are aware counterfeit political ads are being circulated and are working with our advertising partner to have them removed,” the team said in a social media post.
The ad in question appears to be a poster at a Philadelphia bus stop that states Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is the “official candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles.” …
Several people on social media have claimed that the posters were illustrated by “satirical street artist” Winston Tseng, reports CBS Philadelphia. Tseng has said in interviews that he likes to use familiar brands to bring attention to societal issues…
The second attempt to hold a gala celebrating January 6 rioters, at Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, has been postponed.
The event had been scheduled for Thursday but an update on the gala’s website now shows the date as postponed and location “to be announced,” suggesting the organizers may also have to change venue.
Trump and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani were among the invited speakers but it remains unclear whether the former president actually planned to show up. Giuliani had confirmed his attendance, according to the website.
The website had no explanation for the postponement on Monday, and did not provide a timeline for when updated information would become available…
Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink said it won’t comply with a court order banning Musk’s social platform X in Brazil unless Starlink’s accounts in the country are unfrozen, Reuters reported.
Brazil’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld the ban on X, backing their colleague’s decision last week to ask all telecom providers to shut down the platform after the company refused to appoint a legal representative in the country.
The X ban also led to Starlink’s bank accounts being frozen in the country…
That’s confusing, as Starlink is part of SpaceX, not X.
When Margaret Moore saw on Reddit that white nationalists were demonstrating in Tallahassee, she got in her car and headed downtown.
“Our city can’t be used as a backdrop for recruitment and propaganda of something that has the potential to literally kill,” Moore said.
Moore, a member of the Tallahassee Community Action Committee, used the videos the white supremacist hate group, called Patriot Front, posted on social media, including drone footage, to identify the route they walked.
“Knowing about what I know about hate groups, they leave their garbage everywhere. They leave their signage everywhere. So I thought to myself, we’ve got to retrace their steps,” Moore said.
Moore said she was maybe five minutes behind them and saw the stickers on College Avenue, in Cascades Park and on Duval Street. Light poles downtown were littered with racist propaganda that said slogans like”Nationalist Lifestyle” and “White N Radical.”
At first she tried to peel the stickers off with her fingernails. Later, Moore and a friend came up with a way to soak the stickers with water from a water bottle and use a library card to scrape them off.
Moore’s friend, Madeline Kopka, didn’t think twice about taking the stickers down…
The local Democratic party condemned the demonstration.
The USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida reached out to the governor’s office and Evan Power, the head of the Republican Party of Florida and the local party chapter, for comment. Power reposted a post on X on Saturday that alleged the Patriot Front members were fake.
“I see the Florida Democrats have resorted to fake and staged nazis again,” wrote Brandon Leslie, founder of conservative media outlet Florida’s Voice.
“That is the final nail in the ‘Florida is in play’ coffin,” Power wrote with the repost, apparently referring to recent polls that show a tighter race between former Republican President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sean Thomas, the chair of Leon County’s Students for Kamala, fired back on X. “Don’t you love party leadership that upholds conspiracy theories and does not speak out against such a hate movement but rather entertains it?”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@Reginald Selkirk #458:
The X ban also led to Starlink’s bank accounts being frozen
Moraes ordered that the assets of a “de facto economic group” under Musk’s control be frozen to guarantee X pays fines issued by Brazil’s courts
[…]
“This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied—unconstitutionally—against X,” Starlink wrote in a post on X. “We intend to address the matter legally,” the company added
[…]
Musk said that SpaceX and X are two different companies with different shareholders. He added that he owns 40% of SpaceX and that “this absolutely illegal action by the dictator @alexandre improperly punishes other shareholders and the people of Brazil,”
Moraes said he managed to block around R$2 million from X’s accounts in Brazil, an amount that would be much lower than the current fines that the social network received from the court for failing to comply with court orders. Therefore, Moraes also decided to seek the blocking of Starlink’s assets, with the justification that it would be a single economic group
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Musk has had a history of mixing assets, equipment, and personnel from his other companies with X.
Elon Musk has used his large platform on X to promote a theory that a free-thinking “Republic” could only exist under the decision-making of “high status males” – and women or “low T men” would not be welcome in it.
On Sunday, Musk re-posted a screenshot of the theory – which appears to have been conceived on 4chan in 2021– on the social media site.
The theory, written by an anonymous user, suggests that the only people able to think freely are “high [testostrone] alpha males” and “aneurotypical people”, and that these “high status males” should run a “Republic” that is “only for those who are free to think.” …
Reginald @457, I hope that all falls apart. As bad as it would look for Trump to host/hold a gala celebrating January 6 rioters, I don’t think the schadenfreude is worth it. Celebrating January 6 rioters should just not be possible. Let’s hope the “gala” plan fails.
In other news, from text quoted by Reginald in comment 459:
“I see the Florida Democrats have resorted to fake and staged nazis again,” wrote Brandon Leslie, founder of conservative media outlet Florida’s Voice.
Oh FFS. Those were real wannabe Nazis, White Supremacists, and racists.
Harris supporters in the area were correct to reply:
Sean Thomas, the chair of Leon County’s Students for Kamala, fired back on X. “Don’t you love party leadership that upholds conspiracy theories and does not speak out against such a hate movement but rather entertains it?”
Re:Reginald Selkirk 462
“Elon Musk engaged in one of his regular habits on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter, amplifying a controversial tweet by commenting that it was “interesting” — this time a right-wing account that called for democracy to be replaced with a government system run by “high status males” and “aneurotypical people.””
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
1) That wouldn’t last long with neurodiverse people like are here.
2) diversity cooties. Awwww… can’t use the D-word.
But the dense playbook, clocking in at 922 pages, is a slog to sift through, making it difficult for average voters to identify what the project’s “Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise” says about issues they care about…
Enter Rajat Paharia, a former Google product manager who believes everyone should see what Project 2025 could mean for them. Paharia created 25 and Me, an AI-powered website that allows viewers to sort by topic and read for themselves what the playbook has to say on issues like civil rights, drug prices, and veterans affairs…
The wealth of Russian billionaires continues to grow steadily despite the impact of Western sanctions. In the first half of 2024, the market value of their assets increased by $17.76 billion. This is evidenced by the updated data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index (BBI). It is noted that since January, Alexey Mordashov, the founder of Severstal, has earned $5.73 billion, bringing his total wealth to $26.6 billion during this period. The wealth of Vagit Alekperov, the founder of Lukoil, increased by $3.59 billion, reaching a total of $28.2 billion.
Reuters: “A deputy commander of Russia’s Leningrad military district has been detained on suspicion of accepting a 20 million rouble ($224,000) bribe, Russia’s investigative committee said on Monday, in the latest in a string of corruption probes.
General Major Valery Muminjanov, according to investigators, helped several companies win contracts to provide the military with clothes in exchange for the money, the committee said in a statement.”
In Russia, “heroes of the SMO” are being robbed en masse.
In Vladivostok, police officers leak the data of returned “SMO participants” to bandits, and they start extorting money from them, which they had looted in Ukraine.
The “veteran” in the video was driven to a suicide attempt. This is not the first case.
I do not think that this will stop those who want to make money from the war. But it shows well the level of degradation of Russians and what modern Russia is living by.
From the same Daily Kos page referenced in comment 470:
This long thread details the story of a Russian soldier from Siberia who was in prison back in 2022 but was sent to Ukraine. He survived and went home in July of this year only to be listed as a deserter and sent back to Ukraine where he was assigned to a new regiment where he was chained to a tree, a practice they refer to as “hugging a birch.”
He was beaten and threatened. Just another day in the second army in the world.
6/ Kulyayev found that his new regiment, which was stationed near Avdiivka, was terrorised by brutal and incompetent commanders. “I am horrified by the local customs – they drink non-stop, the whole regiment is a mix of conscripts, contract soldiers and recruited convicts.
7/ “The command walks around drunk and picks on the soldiers, and they treated us, the new arrivals, like shit.”Kulyayev was equally horrified by how the commanders extorted money from their soldiers and sent them virtually unprotected into assaults.
8/ “They send us to assault with 1-2 [clips] of ammunition, what kind of cover?! They send us without body armor. Without drones – there is simply not a single working drone here!
9/ “It’s not just extortions like “let’s chip in for fuel” – they demand tens of thousands to chip in (one company commander of another squad spent 600,000(!) rubles [$6,700] in one day – the soldiers allocated the money to buy uniforms, and he spent it on himself).
10/ “If it was tough near Kreminna, then here it’s just hell. The survival rate is zero. No one returns from assaults.”
11/ When Kulyayev asked his commander, Colonel Myasnikov, not to humiliate his men, the colonel “responded: “Oh, you are assholes, fuckers”, his deputy grabbed me by the throat and started to strangle me. And he [Colonel Myasnikov] immediately ordered me to be chained up.
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Monday in Mongolia, a member of the international court that has issued an arrest warrant against him.
It’s Putin’s first visit to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued an arrest warrant in March 2023.
Ukraine is calling on Mongolia to arrest Putin and hand him over to ICC. Last week, a spokesperson for the Russian President said the Kremlin was not worried about the visit.
While ICC member countries are bound to detain suspects if there is an arrest warrant out against them, there is no enforcement mechanism, The Associated Press reported.
ICC issued the arrest warrant more than a year ago over allegations of war crimes and the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
It was largely viewed as a way for the international community to hold Putin responsible for the Russia-Ukraine war, which began in Feb. 2022.
Putin is expected to meet with Mongolian leader Ukhnaa Khurelsukh Tuesday and attend a ceremony marking the 1939 victory of Soviet and Mongolian troops over the Japanese army.
Mongolia is heavily dependent on both Russia and China for resources, The AP reported.
[…] In June, Putin visited North Korea, where he thanked leader Kim Jong Un for his nation’s support in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and vowed to fight against U.S.-led sanctions through a new partnership.
He also visited Vietnam and China since the start of the European war. […]
[National Novel Writing Month] started in 1999 to get writers to spend their November writing a 50,000-word novel. The idea is that quality doesn’t matter—you get into the rhythm of writing words and you finish a thing.
The initiative is also a 501(c)3 charity to promote the concept. This has had a number of issues over the years […] With the forums shut down, the sponsors are free to run the show. This year’s new sponsor is ProWritingAid, which has […] “AI” functionality.
In an official position statement on AI, the organization declares: [“]categorical condemnation of Artificial Intelligence has classist and ableist undertones[“]
[…]
What’s most bizarre is that the whole point of NaNoWriMo is that it’s a self-imposed challenge. Your only reward is a finished first draft that you personally wrote!
As well as widespread outrage from amateur writers—including disabled writers angry at being used as an excuse by these frauds—the published writers who’ve spent decades supporting NaNoWriMo are withdrawing support and quitting NaNoWriMo boards.
there’s a whole other story about NaNoWriMo’s grooming scandal last year, where a paid mod was recruiting from the Christian teen forum to his adult diaper fetish site.
Their solution was to shut the forums, which also saved complaints about their past bad sponsors like the fake publisher in 2022. It turns out the only staff member, or one of very few, remaining at NaNoWriMo is the interim ED. Everyone else quit a couple of months ago
[…]
I was today years old when I learnt that NaNoWriMo even had a 501(c)3 and wasn’t just a collective hashtag
Oh fuck me they’re ACTUALLY saying that you need to be both rich and have no disabilities in order to be a good writer, otherwise, according to #NaNoWriMo, you simply must use AI in order to write anything good! Oh dear gods how unspeakably revolting. […]
Classism. Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help [] The financial ability to engage a human for feedback and review assumes a level of privilege
[…]
Ableism. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals. The notion that all writers “should” be able to perform certain functions independently or is a position that we disagree with wholeheartedly.
whheydtsays
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746 @ #474…
Well…. My late wife (two novels and 30+ short stories professionally published) certainly picked my brains on some topics and bounced ideas off me to see if I thought they’d work. Our standing joke was that she did the fiction and I did the science. In fact, all the words on the page were hers. She adopted a few of my suggestions, but the writing was 100% hers.
The only thing “all” writers need to be able to do is to find some way of getting words onto a page and there are certainly a variety of ways to accomplish that. (There was an SF writer whose day job was being a Linotype operator. He bought his own Linotype. He would write using it, pull a proof copy, and send that out to be typed because proof sheets from a Linotype tended to convince editors that the work was stolen from an existing print copy.)
JMsays
@469 Lynna, OM: The Russian military is the sort where corruption is the norm. The majority of officers either bribe their way into posts or get them through political connections. A senior officer held on corruption charges during a war has political problems, not corruption problems.
Putin does seem to be purging the ranks. He is getting rid of the most useless officers and the ones he doesn’t trust. This isn’t because he is worried about corruption but because with an actively dangerous war going on he can’t have the really useless clogging up the ranks. And since the Wagner Group rebellion the trust issue is a big one, Putin suddenly doesn’t trust some people he put in.
The word ‘broken’ implies that he at some point had a personality with the full spectrum of abilities you expect of an adult human.
If he had grown up in a normal family, or if he had had enough introspection to seek out counseling in his youth he might have achieved 100% function. This did not happen.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 474
Once you have published a book it probably gets easier, because through the publisher you might get a larger network of people to give input and ask questions.
Bekenstein Boundsays
JM@476: It seems likely to me that another part of the explanation is that Putin got the heebie-jeebies when those Ukrainian thermite drones started blowing things up pretty much in his own backyard, within the city of Moscow …
A New Hampshire man is fighting for his life because of a mosquito bite. Fifty-four-year-old Joe Casey of Kensington has tested positive for three mosquito-borne viruses, including eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) and West Nile Virus…
“He was positive for EEE, for West Nile, and St. Louis Encephalitis, but the CDC, the infectious disease doctors, they don’t know which one is making him this sick.” …
Tom Mountain, a former vice chair of Trump’s effort in Massachusetts, will reportedly “no longer have any involvement” in helping the Republican presidential nominee, according to The Boston Globe. At issue was an alarm-raising email that Waters sent out on Sunday, notifying fellow Trump volunteers that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state” and that staff should redirect campaign efforts in Pennsylvania.
According to Mountain, Trump was “sure to lose by an even higher margin” in New Hampshire than in the previous two election cycles, citing “campaign data/research.” …
35-year-old Ade Lilly is set to be sentenced Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to making more than 12,000 harassing and threatening calls to more than 50 congressional offices in recent years…
It might feel like the presidential election is still a long way off. It’s not.
Election Day on Nov. 5 is only about two months away, and major dates, events and political developments will make it fly by. The stretch between now and then will go as fast as summer break from school in most parts of the country.
The first mail ballots will be sent to voters this Friday. The first presidential debate is set for Sept. 10. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, is scheduled to be sentenced in his New York hush money case on Sept. 18. And early in-person voting will start as soon as Sept. 20 in some states.
[…] Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris have accepted an invitation from ABC News to debate Sept. 10 in Philadelphia.
Harris’ pick for vice president, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and Trump’s, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have agreed to an Oct. 1 debate hosted by CBS News in New York City.
Harris has forecast a possible second debate with Trump, but her proposal appeared to be contingent on the GOP nominee’s participation in the Sept. 10 debate. Trump has proposed three presidential debates with different television networks.
Vance has challenged Walz to another vice presidential debate on Sept. 18, although it’s not been set.
[…] The RNC has filed a blizzard of lawsuits challenging voting rules and promises that more are on the way.
Democrats also are mobilizing and assembling a robust legal team. Among other things, they are objecting to GOP efforts to remove some inactive voters or noncitizens from voter rolls, arguing that legal voters will get swept up in the purges.
Republicans have particularly escalated their rhetoric over the specter of noncitizens voting, even though repeated investigations have shown it almost never happens. Some also are pushing to give local election boards the ability to refuse to certify election results.
All indications are these efforts are laying the groundwork for Trump to again claim the election was stolen from him if he loses and to try to overturn the will of the voters.
Harris is on a roll … Trump is bumbling and stumbling:
The Harris-Walz team announced a multi-state “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour Friday, which kicks off Tuesday “in Donald Trump’s backyard in Palm Beach, Florida,” according to a campaign statement. The bus tour will make at least 50 stops around the country throughout the fall, “touching blue communities and red ones.”
Florida is a smart place to launch it: Abortion is on the ballot and Donald Trump is confused about what to do about it.
A constitutional amendment to guarantee abortion rights in Florida has Trump tied up in knots. He won’t say whether or not he’ll vote for it in November, but he did say Thursday that the state’s newly passed abortion restrictions are too harsh.
“I think the six weeks is too short, there has to be more time. I’ve told them I want more weeks,” the Republican presidential nominee told NBC News’ Dasha Burns.
While Trump’s flip-flopped on abortion the entirety of his political career, he has consistently bragged about how he is responsible for “solving” the issue with his Supreme Court appointees, who overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. “We brought it back to the states, and now lots of things are happening, and lots of good things are happening,” he said in April. Except now it seems he thinks his state didn’t do a good thing.
That doesn’t mean Trump will vote for Florida’s measure, his campaign insisted Thursday, in full damage control mode.
“He has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida. He simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said soon after Trump demanded “more weeks.”
The next day, Friday, Trump insisted he’ll vote against the amendment, after a day of backlash from anti-abortion zealots. […]
Elon Musk, owner of the social platform X, posted what appeared to be a manipulated image of Vice President Harris dressed in red military garb with the communist symbol of the hammer and sickle.
“Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” Musk, who has endorsed former President Trump’s 2024 White House bid, wrote in a post Sunday on X, along with the fake image.
His message was posted in response to an earlier X post from Harris.
“Donald Trump vows to be a dictator on day one,” a graphic posted by Harris reads in bold, capital letters, in the foreground. Behind the words is a black-and-white photo of former President Trump, depicting him from midface to midtorso.
“We won’t let him,” Harris wrote in the caption of her post.
Musk’s post prompted some initial criticism from X users, who noted the company’s own rules prohibit the sharing of “synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media that may deceive or confuse people and lead to harm.”
The rules allow for “memes or satire” as long as “these do not cause significant confusion about the authenticity of the media.” […]
Biden DOJ Thinks Firing Teacher For Reading A Book Is Bad Actually!
The only thing wrong with the book is it might have been too young for her fifth graders.
Two weeks ago […] the US Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in a federal lawsuit, Rinderle v Cobb County School District. Then, a week ago, a coalition of state attorneys general and the AG for the District of Columbia joined in with their own. This case has been receiving very little attention outside of Wonkette but seems to be heating up as a focal point in the war on trans students and topics in public schools. So gosh, let’s revisit!
How it started
Katie Rinderle, the plaintiff at the heart of the case, was a TAG teacher of fifth grade elementary students in a Cobb County school last year when she read My Shadow is Purple to her class. Not the best children’s book around and destined never to be as popular as Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, it’s still a perfectly age-appropriate book about having diverse interests, likes, and dislikes, and not wanting to stop liking or doing things just because of gender stereotypes … even if read to first graders. […]
While there is no word on how many parents complained that maybe TAG fifth graders should be reading something a little more advanced than My Shadow Is Purple, we do know that two parents of two of Rinderle’s students e-mailed the school to complain because having a shadow the color of a brown grizzly bear apparently runs afoul of Georgia’s law against teaching “divisive” topics in its school. Rinderle was quickly suspended and then fired a few months later, despite 10 years in the district, every single one of which ended in “exceeds expectations” evaluations.
How it’s going This year Rinderle’s appeal to the district itself failed in February. Immediately after, with the help of her labor union and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Rinderle became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging that Georgia’s “Don’t Say Gay”/“divisive concepts” law and the resulting “controversial issues” policy of the CCSD create a hostile environment that violates federal protections against sex discrimination. Many lawsuits are filed every year under Title IX, but because this is one of the clearest and cleanest dealing with topic bans, more and more parties are lining up to have a say. The National Education Association and the Southern Education Association are both already co-counsels, while current CCSD teacher Tonya Grimmke and the Georgia Association of Educators have signed on as co-plaintiffs.
[…] At the heart of their lawsuit, plaintiffs are alleging that
CCSD’s vague censorship policies enable arbitrary, discriminatory, and retaliatory enforcement against educators, like Plaintiffs, who support LGBTQ students. Rinderle has been terminated simply for reading an award-winning children’s book, written from the perspective of a student who does not conform to gender stereotypes, to her fifth-grade students.
[…] The As’G and DOJ want censorship policies like those here to be acknowledged as harmful, and for future lawsuits to examine the policy environment and not merely administrative actions when deciding whether or not a school has established a hostile environment on the basis of sex. This isn’t very different, legally speaking, from how “chilling effects” are considered in First Amendment law when a government hasn’t (yet) taken unlawful action against a person, but the existence of a threatening law causes self censorship and ultimately harm.
And make no mistake: These vague “divisive concepts” laws and Don’t Say Gay bills do cause harm. Last year a major study sampling responses from over 25,000 young students found quite a bit of evidence that having supportive teachers matters to the health and education of LGBTQ students. Just a few days ago, the American Medical Association journal JAMA Pediatrics published more evidence. It turns out that LGBTQ kids are actually more likely to seek help from a teacher than from a parent when life isn’t going well, perhaps as much as four times more likely. There are a number of possible explanations for this, but taking the top two, kids usually have more teachers to pick from than parents and there’s less at stake if you alienate a teacher than if you alienate someone you have to see every day who pays for your roof and food.
It is absolutely vital that all kids have supportive teachers to turn to. Republicans, unfortunately, are trying to make sure that they don’t. Rinderle will be a major test of whether governments can cull supportive teachers in the name of supporting kids. And it’s a good thing that many states are jumping in on the side of kids’ best teachers, since this case is almost certain to reach the Supreme Court, and SCOTUS isn’t likely to rule in the best interests of children unless they’re forced to.
General strike in Israel: Netanyahu letting hostages, including an American, be shot dead at point-blank rather than negotiate a cease-fire has Israelis fucking furious. (CNN) Aside from a couple of rescue missions over the past few decades, some of which were even successful, Israel has a long history of being willing to trade thousands of prisoners for a handful of hostages — or even just one. Getting captives back is literally a religious commandment. What the fuck is Netanyahu still doing in charge. (Global Affairs)
“Beautiful. No, that’s okay. He’s on our side.” What Trump said as one of his fans attacked the media riser at his rally. [video at the link]
The Guardian says Trump rally fans are getting bored of his stale shit. (Guardian)
[Embedded links to sources are available at the main link.]
Trump “clarified” his stance on abortion over the weekend (changed it completely, 100 percent, from what he’d said the day before). (NPR) Marcy at Emptywheel is brutal. Stop Marcy, don’t hurt ‘em! (Emptywheel) Another from Marcy on why the media (this time in particular the Washington Post) admits Trump hasn’t said jackshit about policy, gives him a pass, and then goes after Kamala Harris for … having said much more about policy than he has! (Emptywheel again)
“Progressive substance and political pragmatism” = Just Win, Baby. (Paul Waldman)
Shy made you a new Tim Walz shirt and coffee mug, do you like it? [image at the link]
Rick Perlstein talks to David Neiwert about the journalists, and the FBI, and the DOJ, and everybody else ignoring the threats from the militia folks who are absolutely riling themselves up again. With an aside of — hey, it me! — why isn’t anybody talking to liberals in rural areas and how threatened, physically, they feel by their neighbors? (The American Prospect)
Aurora cop — former — charged with raping his daughter but it’s the mom who’s in jail for “interfering” with the “reunification therapy” a judge mandated for his relationship with the younger minor sons, as provided by a “Christian counseling service” that does not sound good. Don’t worry, the details get worse! (Denver Gazette)
Here’s a good one to wash that away: Small-town Arizona fire chief lady sent her people to cut through the border wall, aiding an old man who’d hurt himself falling off it while Border Patrol sat on its asses. (Arizona Luminaria)
Beautiful: The Klamath River, as advocated by California tribes for at least the past 25 years, finally undammed. (Los Angeles Times)
This made me cry: The eternal friendship of the Choctaw and Ireland, whom the Choctaw — extremely hungry themselves — sent $170 in the 1800s to help with its famine. (RTE)
One Big Gay Beer, please, beer heroes! (Pink News)
Seems like maybe the Dennis Quaid Reagan movie is bad, maybe. (Just Atad)
This, you: watch. No, now. Jeff Goldblum is Zeus and the whole thing’s fucking amazing. Guardian’s right: Kaos is a masterpiece. (Guardian)
I enjoyed “Real Estate Shopping in the Apocalypse.” And the least crazy people were parents of 13 in Fuck-All, North Dakota! (New Yorker)
The greatest Dan Brown review ever wrote! (Old Telegraph, via Archive)
Mobile phones are not linked to brain and head cancers, a comprehensive reviewof the highest quality evidence available commissioned by the World Health Organization has found.
Led by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa), the systematic review examined more than 5,000 studies from which the most scientifically rigorous were identified and weak studies were excluded.
The final analysis included 63 observational studies in humans published between 1994 and 2022, making it “the most comprehensive review to date”, the review lead author, associate prof Ken Karipidis, said.
“We concluded the evidence does not show a link between mobile phones and brain cancer or other head and neck cancers.” …
https://www.wonkette.com/p/elon-musk-dazzled-by-sublime-wisdom
“Elon Musk Dazzled By Sublime Wisdom Of 4Chan Post About How Women Are Stupid”
Is Elon taking notes from me and thinking he should do what I suspect about him (wanting things to be like 4chan here)? Hey Elon! In your next public appearance run into the wall repeatedly!
One of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet is closer than you think—right inside your mouth. Your mouth is a thriving ecosystem of more than 500 different species of bacteria living in distinct, structured communities called biofilms. Nearly all of these bacteria grow by splitting [or dividing] into two, with one mother cell giving rise to two daughter cells.
New research from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and ADA Forsyth uncovered an extraordinary mechanism of cell division in Corynebacterium matruchotii, one of the most common bacteria living in dental plaque. The filamentous bacterium doesn’t just divide, it splits into multiple cells at once, a rare process called multiple fission. The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team observed C. matruchotii cells dividing into up to 14 different cells at once, depending on the length of the original mother cell. These cells also only grow at one pole of the mother filament—something called “tip extension.” …
Astronomers finally have an explanation behind why the James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding “impossible” monster galaxies in the early universe that appear to shake the foundations of cosmology.
Since the pioneering Webb telescope began its scientific operations in July 2022, it has spotted about half a dozen massive galaxies that appear to be far bigger and more mature than they should be given their position in the universe.
Some of these monster galaxies were found to be as massive as our Milky Way when the universe was only about 3 per cent of its current age, a finding that shook the cosmology world.
These findings hinted either that the cosmos was likely much older than thought, or that there is something unknown about how galaxies form, especially at the start of the universe.
Now, a new study, published on Monday in The Astrophysical Journal, shows that these early galaxies are much less massive than they first appeared.
“The bottom line is there is no crisis in terms of the standard model of cosmology,” study co-author Steven Finkelstein said…
The complexities of the electoral college is not helping Trump.
The Ring Of Fire:
“Trump Might Have NO Paths To Victory”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4INUscVXJiU
Should be are not helping Trump. (Sorry, not Enlish as first language)
“Our enemy is the ivory tower” American Tech Billionare Says
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=kibFAk8HwS4
Also, fuck social responsibility!
For once I think PZ and Sabine may be in agreement: this is crap.
Fact check: RFK Jr. claimed Biden was mentioned just twice at the RNC. It was nearly 400 times
Ha! It looks like jumping on the Trump bandwagon was not such a bright idea.
“Republicans Now Think Trump Will Cost Them The Senate As His Campaign Fails”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=mmJ_vXvY6yY
Reginald Selkirk @ 4
He was only wrong by a factor of 200 so… a perfect choice for a Trump administration!
Hillary Clinton sees a ‘totally empowered’ Harris in the fight she knows all too well
In an interview with The 19th, Clinton shares the joy of seeing a ‘liberated’ Harris step out of the shadows and into her real history-making potential.
It’s a good interview. Lots more at the link.
Holding oneself accountable, so unlike Trump.
Hello, Readers of The Infinite Thread,
The previous chapter reached its limit of 500 comments. The Infinite thread rolled over to begin again at comment #1.
For the convenience of readers, here are few links back to the previous group of 500 comments:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-5/#comment-2233608
RFK Suspends Campaign, Ending His Brainworm’s Dream Of A Cabinet Position
Domain Owner
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-5/#comment-2233612
EPA permanently blocked from reviewing disparate discrimination claims in Louisiana
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-5/#comment-2233602
Satellite images show Ukraine’s expanding attacks inside Russia
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/07/06/infinite-thread-xxxii/comment-page-5/#comment-2233598
Exposing CNN Misinformation: CNN “Undecided Voter” was a Trump Supporter all along
Ukraine brings home 115 long-held prisoners
In the images posted by Zelenskyy, many of the prisoners look shockingly thin.
A woman got tired of her mail getting stolen. She sent herself an Apple AirTag to help catch the thieves
See all the foxes at Save A Fox South get chicken!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0UuASDhTw04
New drone described by Ukraine as ‘a completely new class of weapon’ hits Russia for the first time
https://www.wonkette.com/p/nice-time-azs-41k-federal-only-voters
Nice Time! AZ’s 41k Federal-Only Voters Not Getting Kicked Off Rolls
Tennessee man charged with making threats against Biden, Harris and Obama
The man was charged with three counts, each of which could carry up to five years in prison.
@12 Reginald Selkirk: Both sides have been building their own drones, adapting and updating designs on the fly. The Russians have recently begun issuing fiber optic cable guided drones for short ranged attack missions. The advantage being that this makes the drone entirely immune to jamming.
This is the first real drone war and everybody is going to do some major rethinking of designs afterwards. The west has some really great drones but they cost far too much, a lot of drones are essentially expendable munitions and need to be cheap, small and available. Ukraine is buying a lot of cheap commercial drones and taping grenades or small warheads to them for this reason. For the Russians it is more a matter of availability and reliability. This war has made it clear that the ability to manufacture drones on a decent scale is now a military requirement and that military supply lines need to be checked to make sure they don’t depend on foreign components.
The irony of these songs would go way over the heads of any nationalists.
Music: “Laibach – Geburt Einer Nation / Queen – One Vision”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=iWAPXWNthDg
(what sounds like “a light beer” is “ein leitbild”!)
Trump’s pledge to be ‘great for women and their reproductive rights’ angers advocates
Seth Meyers: Corrections Episode 110: Week of Monday, August 19
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TreD61XfpjM
Trump is in it. And some scary shit about our time line being just in the imagination of one of the staff. JFK Jr. sings.
Recall how great his first term was … anyone really want to find out what a second will be like? /s
World Bank pulls paid ads from X over racist content on Musk’s platform
“The Toughest Job I Had To Do In WWII”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/cKDi-RYTWXo
Sealing caves with people in them.
Republican group cites notorious Dred Scott ruling as reason Kamala Harris can’t be president
A dissent by two justices is not established law.
JD Vance’s Neighbors Erupt After Secret Service Closes Park
Watch out JD Vance, these are the cities with the most childless cat ladies
Facts and figures:
Link
The News&Observer:
NC Justice Berger won’t be recused from major cases involving his father, court rules
By Kyle Ingram / August 23, 2024
New Conservative Party Ad Cheers On Russian Jets Heading for Ukraine
‘Mistakes happen’ sez Tory spox.
More mistakes being made by fact-adverse doofuses:
Washington Post link
Israel launches strikes on Lebanon as Hezbollah fires rockets
Israel characterized the strikes as pre-emptive, saying it had detected a Hezbollah plan for a “large-scale” attack. Hezbollah returned fire with rockets and drones.
Excerpts below are from NBC’s live coverage:
More at the link.
Gaza’s 2.2 million people are confined to a humanitarian area smaller than Manhattan
Gaza’s humanitarian zones shrink as IDF presses into areas once deemed safe.
Harris campaign announces $40 million raised since her convention speech
The windfall brings the total amount of money raised for Harris’ election efforts to $540 million since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race last month.
Traveling to die: The latest form of medical tourism
More at the link.
“Goodbye Meat, Hello Crickets: The Future of Food”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=uOkWaMmitFk
In the middle, there is also a plug for Better Health, the web site for getting into contact with therapists.
Houston Chronicle:
LULAC says its members were target of latest Ken Paxton voter fraud search, calls for federal probe
By Taylor Goldenstein, Austin Bureau / Aug 23, 2024
Sudden insight: Nepo boys inheriting a lot of money are just as dangerous as art school rejects.
In the middle of this episode Michael Marshall provides some background on Tommy Robinson, the instigator if the British race riots
Scathing Atheist 601 Tommy Knocker Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aKa6g9Szlys
birgerjohansson @ # 35: Nepo boys inheriting a lot of money are just as dangerous as art school rejects.
Aw c’mon: only one art school reject has ever caused real trouble. Spoiled rich brats, however …
Text quoted by tomh @34:
Yep. And bad as that is, it is also another rightwing method for introducing chaos into the system so that it is difficult for people to tell what the heck is going on. Within chaos, the rightwing doofuses find room to perpetrate even worse voter intimidation schemes.
DeSantis tries to slip one past Floridians
Link
Recent polling from Vermont show a large number of over-65 year old voters think Trump’s health is “very poor”. This is potentially catastrophic for Republicans since this demographic has voted consistently Republican the last 28 years.
@birgerjohansson #33:
Wikipedia – BetterHelp, Criticism
Sky Captain @ 42
Goddammit! Is everyone corrupt? No, don’t answer that…
This link allegedly helps you confirm that you are registered to vote.
I don’t know how US elections work, I am just passing on the information in the hope it is useful.
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxDc-3rrfwPDugeB24rt7SOMUU56lpEm2M
This amounts to concentration camps. Where’s the fucking UN with that arrest warrant?
“New Bizarre Organism Without Mitochondria Cannot Be Explained Right Now”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=0U67Je777Ok
Naah. It’s aliens.
@birgerjohansson #21:
A strange 35 second teaser to clip without context.
Underneath the short, was a link to the full interview (26 min).
From the other side: Terror in the Caves.
Horrific accounts of Okinawan highschool girls—hastily mobilized as student nurses—who’d stayed in the caves when Americans told them to come out and survived gas attacks that followed. (Still, I found it the most interesting of these links.)
The Invasion of Okinawa: One Damned Ridge After Another
The Costliest Battle in the Pacific War
Desperation:
NYT:
Republicans are combing Tim Walz’s record for misstatements.
By Maggie Astor / Aug. 25, 2024
Telegram messaging app CEO Durov arrested in France
Sam Lawler
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 50
Every time you post something, I go AAARGHH, NOOO!
🙂
The uppermost Venn diagram is how I will be feeling until November
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/picture/2024/aug/26/edith-pritchett-week-in-venn-diagrams-cartoon
Trump raises questions about participating in ABC debate: ‘Stay tuned’
I don’t see a point in debating a habitual liar.
“How Hitler Would Sound Speaking English”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ke0oSWA41XI
Disappointing. He sounds nothing like Baron Harkonnen or like Anthony Hopkin’s Hannibal Lecter. He is just an evil little art-school reject
Stephen Wolfram thinks we need philosophers working on big questions around AI
Sure. But the y need to be philosophers who don’t have their heads up their asses. There is a lot of stupid philosophy about consciousness, p-zombies, etc. Anyone who find John Searle’s “Chinese Room Argument” convincing need not apply.
Dinosaur Footprints on Either Side of the Atlantic Are Matching Sets
Lawyers from Reagan, Bush administrations endorse Harris in 2024 race
Followup to Reginald @53.
Despite commitment, Trump hedges on scheduled debate with Harris
Donald Trump agreed to a Sept. 10 presidential debate. Then he reversed course. Then he reversed course again. Now he’s apparently changing his mind again.
Trump is running scared. He doesn’t know which way to turn. He cannot come up with a credible excuse for skipping the debate with Kamala Harris. And, Trump’s campaign team is worried about the debate.
Link
JD Vance: ‘Childless Cat Lady’ Comment Proves I’m a ‘Normal Person’
And by “normal person” he means “asshole.”
This is what, his triple-down or quadruple-down on that quote? He just can’t bring himself to admit that he was wrong and apologize.
Link
What?!
Link
Cartoon: The fact checkers
The Birthers are back
Links to supporting evidence are provided at the main link.
The Birthers are either willfully ignorant or stupid. They reveal an inability to pay attention to detail. Bad faith pronouncements abound. Grasping at straws. I expect to see Trump repeating this disinformation ad nauseam, as will his QAnon cult followers.
Re: #58
WaPo Live:
Trump on mic muting at debate with Harris: ‘Doesn’t matter to me’
By Patrick Svitek
Things are getting so surreal in the ‘real world’. After seeing this I can’t help but wonder if the ‘alleged’ jebus was just an alien implant.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1724680712-20240826.png
“Would the Airwolf helicopter have worked in real life? We got expert analysis”
https://hushkit.net/2024/08/23/would-the-airwolf-helicopter-have-worked-in-real-life-we-got-expert-analysis/
Now the theme is stuck in my head.
What’s with this “jebus” stuff? I don’t mean to pick on you specifically, because a lot of people do it, but what’s it about? A fear that if you use the guy’s name* or use an initial upper-case “J”, he’ll manifest himself? A feeling that by misnaming him you somehow get one over on Christians, like Trump with his “Kamabla”? Sheer habit?
*Well, the Latinised version of it, but the name by which he’s usually known in our culture.
Tulsi Gabbard, who ran for 2020 Democratic nomination, endorses Trump against former foe Harris
No mention of whether she was offered a cabinet job beside RFK Jr,
Trump Weirdos Spread Conspiracy Theory That Tim Walz’s Dog Is Fake
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #70…
There was at least one book dust jacket with a picture of Poul Anderson hunkered down “petting” a cat. In reality, the Andersons didn’t have a cat. It was their neighbors cat and Poul wasn’t actually petting it. He was holding the cat so it would stay put for the picture.
Standoff as police close in on ‘Son of God’ pastor
“Ted Cruz Flops In Polls While Democratic Challenger Goes For The Jugular”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=3A4a5vAeyBE
The challenger runs a good campaign, and Cruz’ lead is now within the margin of error. Maybe the Dems will keep the senate after all.
Trump and Vance take aim at Biden’s climate legislation. Some Republicans would rather they didn’t
@KG #68:
Dictionary.com
Simpsons S11E15 “Missionary: Impossible” aired 2000-02-20.
There’s a forgettable line in Family Guy S2E02 “Holy Crap” aired 1999-09-30.
The article found earlier instances: a 1952 novel and a city in the Bible.
Senate candidate Royce White says suburban women voters are for suckers
Skepticrat 232 DNC Myself Out Edition
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=S-wmTaLMu20
In which Mike Marshall provides a summary of the closest thing Britain has to the Jan 6th riot and Mike Lindell gets owned by a 12-year-old.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@75,
Thanks for that, but the origin of the borked name (which I didn’t know and am glad to learn) doesn’t really explain its habitual use. There aren’t a lot of Christians around here either to avoid blaspheming, or to poke fun at (and it’s a pretty feeble poke if there were), and it’s not being used as an interjection, playful or otherwise.
New York Times:
Washington Post:
CNBC:
Politico:
OMG! The next issue of God Awful Movies will cover ‘Angels Fallen: Warriors of Peace’
“An Iraq war veteran gets a mission from a higher power to stop a fallen angel from raising an undead army”
This has to be a spoof film, right? Like ‘Tokyo Gore Police’ or ‘Polyester’.
Colorado’s Dave Williams becomes latest GOP chair to be ousted
So far in 2024, three state Republican Parties have ousted their chairs, one state party chair quit, and the RNC chair also resigned.
Schadenfreude moment for the mess (messes) they have to contend with. It’s interesting that the Republican Party is having to kick some leaders out because they are too whacko even for Republicans.
Brony @ 67
In one episode, pursuing jet fighters give up, the leader saying “we have ceiling”. A helicopter is supposed to have a higher maximum altitude than the fighters?
That right there told me the TV series was junk and I did not switch it on again.
Trump raises less money than Harris—and how he spends it is a mystery
‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/article/2024/aug/26/taliban-bar-on-afghan-women-speaking-in-public-un-afghanistan
Somebody bring Daenerys Stormborn.
.
Sven-Göran Eriksson, England’s first overseas football manager, dies aged 76 | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/aug/26/sven-goran-eriksson-englands-first-overseas-manager-dies-aged-76
Cancer sucks.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/numbers-nerd-says-rfk-jrs-brainworm
Numbers Nerd Says RFK Jr.’s Brainworm Probably Won’t Save Trump’s Loser Campaign
Sad.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/anti-vaxxers-being-super-weird-about
Anti-Vaxxers Being Super Weird About Tetanus Shots Now
A new ‘that happened’ genre has emerged.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/all-of-university-of-alabama-now
https://www.wonkette.com/p/poor-steve-bannon-being-tortured
Poor Steve Bannon Being ‘Tortured’ In Prison, Can’t Even Watch His ‘Special Shows’ On TV
According to Rudy Giuliani, that is.
@Lynna #89:
My last booster was 4 letters.
CDC – Guidance for vaccine providers
Link
Being resilient is good, but it doesn’t make up for other people being dead.
WaPo:
Arizona Police Association endorses Kari Lake’s Democratic opponent for Senate after backing Trump last week
By Mariana Alfaro
A pretty terrible AI voiced clip here by Thư Cao Tech but delightful prospect here – Nigel Farage fears Elon Musk will be ‘next’ as debate rages after Telegram CEO’s arrest. (2 mins 22 secs) Good to see the reichwing might finally start to be worried about spreading hate and violence initing lies..
Please, please, please, yes. Let’s arrest the nazi techdouches and put some fear into them about the consquences of their own actions rather than have them effectively above the law.
@StevoR #95:
Eh, the far right loves pretending to feel threatened.
Your original article—with the same title—was from Daily Express.
Yemen weapons dealers selling machine-guns on X
Reuters at #49 rambles longer about Telegram. There’s not much to the arrest story at the moment.
^ Well mostly the same title. Close enough to search.
Lynna@86: “AMMC”, huh. Could Trump have come up with a more obvious front for laundering campaign contributions if he’d tried?
I just wonder where most of it is going. Not, I don’t think, to his legal bills. It’s way more than enough for just that. Straight into Trump family coffers? To Putin to fund his awful war or otherwise circumvent sanctions? I don’t suppose there’s any way to (or probable cause to) subject this “AMMC” to some form of surveillance? (In a sane system, corporations would have few rights, mostly just property rights, and definitely not either free speech or privacy rights…)
Positive Covid results are rolling in—including among Kamala Harris’ staff—after last week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
NYT:
Judge Pauses Biden Administration Program That Aids Undocumented Spouses
By Miriam Jordan, Hamed Aleaziz, and Serge F. Kovaleski / Aug. 26, 2024
Mariah Carey announces death of mother and sister on same day | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/aug/27/mariah-carey-announces-death-of-mother-and-sister-on-same-day
That is some heavy stuff to deal with. Just one close relative dying is like an asteroid impact.
A bunch of pro-Ukraine milbloggers go on a road trip to Ukraine (LazerPig seems uncharasteristically sober)
“The NAFO Lads Ukraine road trip”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cDyq95F49BQ
A bit of background: Europe has no shortage of Putin apologists, these bloggers have done their part in opposing them on the internet.
“NAFO” is an in-joke, spoofing the name of a pro-Putin group.
Rachel Maddow:
‘Ferocious pushback’: Pro-Trump election board’s tricks draw legal backlash
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=izSRkgkUjl4
School shootings kill more people in Texas than undocumented migrants.
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxJEPMYZTjttU1l-cTqYwRaAG0VHveGr42
The Damage Report discusses a poll that came out Friday, and what conclusions that might be drawn. Trump’s old tricks are not working.
“Trump Hit With The Bad News In Crushing Voter Poll Surprise”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TYxBM0Iw7ME
Nasty clickbait at Youtube.
Almost every second item at Youtube has the word “Shocking” in the title.
OK, I can adjust to that.
Now, cynical ‘content creators’ have come up with a new way to manipulate people.
On lists of celebrities (usually actors) that have died, they include a picture of some living, famous actor up front to get the, “Oh, no I didn’t know he/she had passed away’ reaction, tricking the mark to click on the link.
Another gross thing is the ‘this is how they look today’ thing, where they find the most unappealing photo possible.
Another poll analysis, at 8 minutes it is blissfully short.
‘The 2024 election map based on polling averages from all 50 states’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=_3yclTuui-o
“Only Murders in the Building season four (Disney + ) review – by far the funniest thing on TV” | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/aug/27/only-murders-in-the-building-season-four-review-by-far-the-funniest-thing-on-tv
A Different Bias:
“Court Reveals Twitter Bought With Putin’s Money”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=WtOegVVj8JM
Oops, that was surprising!/sark
70 days till E-day now. Other side of the World’s Biggest Ocean away and still really hoping Kamala Harris wins in a landslide & wuill do all the very little Ican to help that here. Countdown figure source :
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/tamara-keith-and-amy-walter-on-harris-convention-bump-and-if-trump-will-debate
Humiliated Trump Deletes Social Media Post
.https://youtube.com/watch
@96. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain :
So just wishful thinking and faint hope then? OTOH, if they’re guilty and sure looks that way to me, then maybe they do have some reason to fear?
Why Russia Built a Skyscraper in the Middle of Nowhere (a vanity project by Gazprom)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=dsvlvgTUcH8
Trump Says We ‘Gotta’ Restrict the First Amendment
‘I have been researching death for 30 years. I am now convinced it is reversible’
You first.
Pennsylvania county broke law by refusing to tell voters if it rejected their ballot, judge says
Watch: Old Man Trump Slurs and Stumbles Through Weird Speech
@115
Mary Shelly and H.P. Lovecraft would have a thing or two to say about that.
Man With Assault Rifle Arrested at NYS Fair
Elon Musk Tweets Plagiarized Article Bylined by Fake Writer
@115, 118
That article is about the views of Sam Parnia. He has been pushing questionable interpretations of “near-death experiences” for quite some time, so I suggest generous application of the salt shaker.
Randy Rainbow Gives JD Vance A Barbra Streisand Bashing In Song Parody
“Whistleblower Report Reveals Fermilab’s Troubles”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=JxTCeyG3OvM
The results of the anti-woke imbecile’s work on education are staggering:
https://www.rsn.org/001/far-from-ideal-desantiss-war-on-woke-colleges-goes-painfully-awry.html
Deathsantis is proving that it should be spelled ‘floridumb’.
OTOH: I agree with Reginald Selkirk: Randy Rainbow and his crew are a geniuses.
Another Dumbass Arrested for Online Death Threats Against U.S. Election Officials
Why Do Ships Have Flat Bottoms?
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2VUYCs132x4
Reginald Selkirk @ 125
This is like setting up a roadsign saying ” I consider murdering this guy” with your own name and adress at the bottom. What could possibly go wrong?
BTW did this guy possibly have Giuliani as legal advisor?
The Elon strikes again
.http://youtube.com/post/UgkxHrxeGPfi829lmG2-t5jwpRslRrHqUEiK
I have realised if you have some obscure speciality you never need to forget your password.
If you are into high-energy astronomy you will not forget 3C273, PSRB1257 or HDE226868. As for red dwarf systems Ross614 featured in the 1966 TV series “Raumpatrouille” (I am almost as old as PZ).
If you work with contagious diseases, just the many COVID variants provide an almost endless collection of digits and letters.
Naval history? ‘kissmehardy1805’
Republicans eye ‘parallel’ probe of Trump assassination attempt
Several far-right Republicans are serving on a task force investigating the Trump assassination attempt. For some in the GOP, that’s not good enough.
Why does Trump want a Space National Guard and an ‘Iron Dome’?
Donald Trump wants to create a Space National Guard and a domestic “Iron Dome.” He hasn’t explained why he wants them or what they would actually do.
Were audience members required to be in attendance?
Even Conservative Polls Show Trump Getting Absolutely Crushed
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=VfsTYfg6IGE
Ex–Trump Adviser Drops Bombshell About Trump’s Taliban Deal
WRAL News:
Republican Party leaders seek to purge 225,000 NC voters ahead of 2024 elections, citing worries dismissed by state officials
Ukrainian forces descend on Belgorod in fresh attempt to break Russian border
When observing Brown dwarf objects being born in star-forming nebulas, none with a mass below five Jupiter masses has been observed. This may reflect that fragmenting nebulas below this mass limit cannot contract and form objects. There is considerable overlap in mass between the smallest Brown dwarves and the largest Jupiter-type planets, the difference is the way they form.
Politico: Is this thing on? Harris and Trump battle over hot mics at debate.
The Harris campaign wants the mics to be active because they expect Trump to say something stupid and because they think Harris can handle attempts to interrupt or speak over Harris better. The Trump campaign wants the mic muted, likely because they don’t think Trump can go that long without saying something stupid either.
There is also an element of brinkmanship to this game. Trump doesn’t seem to want to do another debate but also doesn’t want to be seen as backing out. Harris needs the public coverage more but doesn’t want to give anything away to Trump, letting Trump roll over her the way he has managed to roll over other people in some previous debates would look terrible. As this is highly likely to be the only debate they do it’s critical for both sides to get it right.
This may be ‘so bad it is good’.
God Awful Movies:
“GAM471 Angels Fallen Warriors of Peace”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=JzoJWWW5_Vc
Never thought I’d see it: There’s now a group less popular than atheists
Trump targets Harris, Walz with entirely made-up claims
A novel way to build tunnels without mortar or cement.
“Whoever Invented This Way Of Building Tunnels Is a Genius” #shorts
.https://youtube.com/shorts/rz-MiuM2Lw8
Hundreds of former Bush, McCain and Romney staffers back Harris
Oh, FFS. Really?
Cornel West Courts Anti-Vax Voters
The shuttle mission that launched the Chandra space telescope came within a wisker of engine explosion, and of getting too little oxygen to reach orbit.
By extreme luck, two unrelated equipment failures cancelled each other out and it was only after the shuttle returned it was discovered how near disaster it had come.
“The Space Shuttle’s Luckiest Escape”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=qiJMdfj9NmI
Followup to birger @103.
Trump, Kemp, Harris, and more: Maddow tackles Georgia’s election chaos
Harris’ economic plan is the star of 3 new ads
Followup to comment 142.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/biden-harris-administration-sues
Biden-Harris Administration Sues Pants Off Price-Fixing App That Keeps The Rent Too Damn High
You want Harris policy? This is in her policy already!
Terry Talks Movies:
“1970s Science Fiction Hidden Gems – Part Two”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gVdWtTCCqjQ
Crimes Of the Future is an early Cronenberg film with ‘body horror’ & Klsus Kinski, and The Terminal Man is based on a Michael Chricton novel.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/is-trump-buying-ads-in-south-florida
Is Trump Buying Ads In South Florida Just So Baby Can See Himself On TV?
Or is it that AND ALSO something else?
Newly Minted Trump Surrogate RFK Jr. Promises To Stop Chemtrail ‘Crime’
Terry Talks Movies
“More Science Fiction Hidden Gems Of The 1960s”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=z58XS6jJGqI
‘Planet Of the Vampires’ may have inspired aspects of ‘Alien’
Lynna, OM @ 150
Let the adjuciated rapist make the Florida voters even more sick of him.
Washington Post link
Chinese government hackers penetrate U.S. internet providers to spy.
Beijing’s hacking effort has “dramatically stepped up from where it used to be,” says former top U.S cybersecurity official.
Hostage held by Hamas in Gaza rescued by Israeli forces, IDF says
Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, was rescued by troops with Shayetet 13, the 401st Brigade, in a “complex operation” in southern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet said Tuesday.
Reports from other news sources say that Alkali was rescued from a tunnel system in southern Gaza. There are also reports of more than 100 Palestinians being killed during the rescue operation. I have not seen any combatant-versus-civilian figures. A lot of details seem to be missing.
CNN: Trump says he’s accepted rules for September 10 debate, which include muted mics
Apparently they came to a stalemate and agreed to go with the same rules as the previous debate. Note that is Trump only saying this. He has been known to make public announcements that don’t align with reality.
Followup to comments 93 and 135 (Reginald).
Link
To hear Donald Trump tell it, “the White House” was responsible for trying to suppress a controversial report in 2020. But wasn’t he president at the time?
Donald Trump keeps trying to make a border wall the centerpiece of his bid for a second term, and he keeps tripping over it.
Trump doesn’t like being called ‘weird.’ RFK Jr. isn’t going to help
US says genetically modified wheat safe to grow, pending trials
https://www.wonkette.com/p/oh-just-jesse-watters-making-jokes
Oh, Just Jesse Watters Making Jokes About Generals ‘Having Their Way’ With Kamala Harris
The news “mainstream” outlets are hiding from you:
How far would Bryson DeChambeau hit a persimmon? He found out on the range at Royal Troon
‘World’s most mysterious manuscript’ finally decoded after 500 years
This isn’t the first claim of a solution. Keep your eyes open for verification or denial.
@164
An Intoxicating 500-Year-Old Mystery
CNN: Special counsel files reworked indictment against Donald Trump in January 6 case
The important thing is that this isn’t a big change. A few secondary charges that would be untenable under the latest ruling are dropped but the 4 main charges remain. Apparently a lot of it is rewording to make clear that what is included are not presidential duties and thus not effected by the latest Supreme Court ruling over presidential immunity. Expect to see a new round of appeals over that.
Kamala Harris voted for this carrot beer when she was in Denver
Donald Trump just dropped yet another NFT collection.
Parents call for ouster of Chicago radio host as high school volleyball coach after mocking Gus Walz
Trump, reversing reality, keeps saying ‘everybody’ wanted Roe overturned
Nick Offerman Calls Trump a ‘Half-Assed Putin Wannabe’ in Pro-Kamala Song
I don’t know, Trump’s ass is probably three times the size of Putin’s.
Lynna @145:
Ugh, a silver lining on a very dark cloud.
Sure, Kemp’s currently in-fighting with Trump over not having gone along with 2020 election denial and for being incapable of pardoning him. This is still a Republican governor asking for more power over elections.
When he was Secretary of State, Maddow made Kemp famous for neglecting election cybersecurity and for meddling personally (including while he ran for governor).
Court rejects Brian Kemp’s attempt to block new citizen voters [and to block absentee ballots based on signatures] (11:21, 2018-11-02)
Brian Kemp responds to cyber security alert with partisan attack (4:02, 2018-11-05)
Kemp admin seems intent on keeping Georgia voting broken for 2020 (4:42, 2020-06-10)
^ Glitchy Dominion rollout for primaries.
Georgia’s Kemp accidentally tells the truth about anti-voting law (2022-05-03)
* A University of Georgia poll surveying the law’s impact on 2022 elections indicated that voting restrictions in that package weren’t as burdensome as feared.
My mistake, Kemp asking’s not a power grab. I checked the full Maddow episode. Democrats are calling for Kemp to remove Trump-friendly board members. Rep McBath pointed out that Kemp’s Lt Governor Burt Jones was a fake elector. So Kemp’s angling for a ‘no’, I guess? And a ‘yes’ would wield an existing bureaucratically diffused executive power.
Also Election Board members are appointed, not elected. I misheard as ‘-ed’.
A press conference video linked in Lynna’s article
J.D. Vance Fails Miserably Trying to Roast Harris
Trump and veterans: It gets worse
.http://youtube.com/post/Ugkxh5yTu4-P6cpHT-8F8qj1ws77ezQtPJvu
Why I left the network
Greens leader Adam Bandt is speaking at the National press Club right now – ABC c2 in Oz :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Bandt
Lynna, OM@170 quoting DailyKos:
Old man yells at clouds. (Kennedy is a few months older than me – that makes him old!)
Drat – #160 not #170!
Lynna, OM@143 quoting Political Wire:
I guess better the anti-vax vote goes to West than follows Kennedy to Trump! But “the role of the pharmaceutical companies in shaping public policy” is a real concern. They have made huge windfall profits out of Covid vaccines despite much of the research for them being publicly funded, and in part by blocking the production of generic versions that could have saved many lives in poor countries. Naomi Klein*, in Doppelganger identifies the Covid pandemic as one of the main areas in which the left failed to take up genuinely vital issues, which were then seized on and grossly distorted by the far right.
*I nearly wrote “Wolf” – the confusion from which the book starts!
New FiveThirtyEight Projection 2024 Election Map Based on the Latest Polling in 50 States.
‘538’ has taken into account that Kennedy has quit his candidacy. It looks good for Harris.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=SJSw_E42Nik
How Vodka Ruined the Russian Army (Documentary)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4vCDjoocq44
Californian Reacts | Why Other Countries Treat Their People So Much Better (America compared)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=t26GEy9XFo4
What Americans call ‘benefits’ the Europeans call ‘standards’.
26 Obsolete Objects That Quietly Disappeared. (Something for us old-timers)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=PZRInjcdyws
Well, it looks like it’s time to say a sad farewell to two blogs.
One of them is here at FTB: Abe Drayton’s “Oceanoxia”. It has not had an update in over a month, an outlier long time, and it looks increasingly like he isn’t coming back. The posting frequency had been dropping for a few months, from formerly near-daily to roughly once a week. Then this. Looks like he gave up, much like David Futrelle had at WHTM. (WHTM is, allegedly, “back” now, but seems to be on life support, with much lower levels of both post and comment activity than before.)
The other casualty is Cory Doctorow’s “Pluralistic”, which, though not here, has been linked to from here on many an occasion. The “daily” blog (though in actuality, outside of planned hiatuses, it has occasionally skipped a day here and there, averaging perhaps 6-6.5 articles a week rather than a full 7) has had no new articles in a week now, with no prior announcement of a hiatus (and not very long after the end of a previous, announced hiatus). Clearly something has gone terribly wrong there, with sufficiently little warning that Doctorow was unable to alert anyone to the situation.
CBS 17: “New election forecast shows NC shifting towards Democrats”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cH07q6EcllY
BTW I just saw a photo of Trump standing behind a grave at Arlington, doing a thumbs-up. I am not familiar with US graveyard culture but it seems weird.
CBS News:
“Voter registration surging compared to 2020 election, data firm finds”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jrMar7jbHjs
Horse behaviour: “I’m so glad I didn’t stop filming!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4JNp5UIm8K0
Film suggests Nazis’ lead propagandist had role in 1939 massacre | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/28/film-suggests-nazis-propagandist-leni-riefenstahl-had-role-in-1939-massacre
Needless horrible human tragedy. Australia’s cruel anti-Refugee policies have claimed another life :
WARNING : Suicide references
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-28/tamil-asylum-seeker-self-immolates-melbourne-protest/104281638
Die offizielle hymne des kapitalismus
“Laibach: Alle gegen alle ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HFEMhIMMPls
.
Jon Stewart’s Words of Wisdom to Audience Members – After the Cut
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Prxep2obqf8
Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Builders Were Poisoned by Copper, Study Suggests
Donald Trump Thinks Elon Musk Is ‘Weird’
Well, he’s right.
Trump insists he’s ‘not a threat to democracy’ in Dr Phil interview, suggests God wants him to save the world
That sounds perfectly normal.
@ 194
More like “Takes one to know one.”
@186
Trump Uses Marines’ Families to Shield Him From Arlington National Cemetery Blowback
Since when are individuals given the authority to override federal law? And Steven Cheung sounds like a complete asshole.
In resurfaced remarks, Vance bashes teachers union president for not having ‘some of her own’ children
Carole King, Elizabeth Warren and others join ‘Swifties for Kamala’ call: ‘As single cat ladies…we are part of this campaign’
Are these grapes game-changers? Why one Fresno farmer says, ‘They’re Frankensteins’
Revealed: top Vance aide worked for far-right consultancy with extremist links
Followup to JM @166.
The worst part of Trump’s reaction to new, superseding indictment
As Trump whines about being indicted within 60 days of early voting, remember: He pressed the DOJ to indict Biden 30 days before Election Day 2020
Well, at least Trump was indicted … again.
Followup to comments 166 and 201.
Link
Trump’s Arlington stunt should be a campaign-ending disgrace, by Mark Sumner.
Cartoon: Critics to ignore
“Frozen Bees on the Moon”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QTv5XGLc5zU
A depository of stem cells for the whole biosphere.
Lynna, OM @ 203
You are implying rules apply to Republicans ? That is commie talk. Why do you hate Merica?
Americans’ support for Ukraine remains strong
RFK Jr. won’t be able to remove himself from ballots in Michigan and Wisconsin
After suspending his campaign, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed to run for president in Kentucky
Teen arrested in first violation of New York county’s controversial mask ban
Salmon will soon swim freely in the Klamath River for first time in a century once dams are removed
Religious Clause:
Arkansas Supreme Court Keeps Abortion Rights Measure Off November Ballot
August 28, 2024
I’m more than a little ashamed that it’s come to this, but it looks like I’m gong to have to reach out to the internet for help with my remaining medical bills while I’m unemployed. If you can contribute, or know someone how can, I would be ever so grateful.
https://gofund.me/f56b23f9
Akira @ 212
Never feel ashamed of the consequences of a rotten system! Neither medical costs nor unemployment should lead to a chrisis in a rational society.
Trump Makes Panic Move After Arlington Officials Expose Him
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=5sWyAgwOhAQ
Re @ 213 Clarification.
The shame is on the architects of the status quo.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/whaddaya-mean-giving-the-same-child
Whaddaya Mean Giving The Same Child Tax Credit To Poor Families As Rich Ones, What Crazy Commie Bullsh*t Is That?
Are there no workhouses?
Oh dear. Republicans throw away all of the nuance and details … again.
As the GOP targets Harris’ border wall stance, the details matter
Several Republicans apparently want voters to believe that Kamala Harris now supports investing in a border wall, but that’s not quite right.
Looking for cash, Trump combines two of his money-making schemes
Is Donald Trump combining an NFT money-making scheme with a buy-part-of-his-suit money-making scheme? Yes. Yes, he is.
Bits and pieces of news, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Not again: ‘Fact-checks,’ both-sidesing, and worse in 2024 coverage
Police in the US use force on at least 300,000 people each year, injuring an estimated 100,000 of them
Royal Society facing calls to expel Elon Musk amid concerns about conduct
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to fundraise for Trump
“Kemp is working to reelect Trump despite their public feud.”
AP: New US rules try to make it harder for criminals to launder money by paying cash for homes
This covers one of the obvious holes that has been widely abused. This is particularly important because buying expensive homes is one of the popular ways for people outside the US to launder money into American dollars.
B.C. United suspends campaign, joins forces with Conservatives
Vance says Harris can ‘go to hell’ over handling of Afghanistan withdrawal
He seems nice.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgl28npy7e2o
More to the article.
As long as there are multiple bars in the airport, the plan would be completely unenforceable. The only enforceable limit would be NO drinks in the airport (i.e. bar liquor sales completely). That would be fine by me, but it’d be rough on those who fly on liquid courage.
Interesting how the Trump assassination attempt continues to demonstrate how much of a fuck-up the Secret Service’s assessment of the site was.
The FBI have published some evidentiary and other photos, showing (1,2) Thomas Crooks’ rifle as assembled and disassembled, as well as the backpack which was used to conceal and carry the semi-automatic weapon when broken down;
(3) the improvised explosive devices found in the boot of Crooks’ car; and
(4) the air conditioning unit Crooks used to access the roof of the AGR building at Butler, Pennsylvania.
Photos (2) and (4) have me just shaking my head.
Source: Butler Investigation Evidence Photos
Trump Goes Full Fascist in Truth Social Posting Spree
I guess very stable genius would rather have people talking about QAnon than Arlington National Cemetery. I guess he just projects that people cannot have two thoughts in their head at a time.
Re: The Trump Arlington cemetery debacle.
NYT Live:
Re: tomh @ #230…
That’s a reason for a prosecution to be pushed and pushed hard.
Paraphrasing to condense.
The House assassination investigation is being led Trump ally Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania). In an interview, he said he’d warned Trump campaign staff 10 days prior that the venue was too small, had one road narrowed to a single lane by construction, would be a “disaster” and “dangerous”. His spokesman couldn’t clarify what that last word meant beyond the aforementioned concerns. Trump’s staff repeatedly blew him off. He inferred they’d never even visited the site.
Throughout the interview, Kelly insisted the investigation will be nonpolitical. He also complained that the Jan 6 committee was a publicity stunt. He doubted Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the Kennedy assassination.
Sooo many legitimate reasons he’s hated worldwide. Grandpa might grow as a person from learning some of them. He’s burned business associates, consorts with mobsters and dictators. And yet, the shooter probably didn’t have any of those reasons in mind.
You’d think Kelly would’ve revised his highschool opinion on Osward, being that this time, Kelly was involved in an event and investigation. Then again, this time the shooter WAS aided by a congressman distracting 3 security guards.
Team using AI finds a cheaper way to make green hydrogen
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-team-ai-cheaper-green-hydrogen.html
Harris leads Trump in ‘battleground’ states Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, according to Fox News’ own recent poll.
Lynna@216:
Nope, instead of getting stock ticker news via your phone widgets or BNN, you’ll be an avid follower of fallout forecasts on your hand-cranked shortwave radio. Or else part of a cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska …
Tory PM Liz Truss Targeted Cancer Patients After Mini Budget 😡
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=BwgIsUj7iKA
Project 2025 Leader Accidentally Reveals What MAGA’s Goals Actually Are
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cpSbqFYtXmI
MSNBC Host to Trump Campaign Adviser: I May Sue You for Defamation
Lewandowski, Cheung, LaCivita – the Trump campaign is becoming the biggest collection of douchenozzles in recent history.
Cat Tries Surströmming – The Smelliest Food In the World!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=EcvXFlebCjk
Ukraine Set to Deploy Swedish Pansarbandvagn 302 Armored Vehicles Following Official Approval
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jLhm759G4tg
They are an earlier generation of tech, but are still useful as “battlefield taxis”.
Scaramucci reacts to Trump campaign staff’s incident with an Arlington Cemetery official.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=eQbyV7MUpDY
‘Crisis pregnancy centers’ sue Massachusetts for campaign targeting their anti-abortion practices
I expect the CPCs will lose this lawsuit. There is no right to not have people say true things about you.
@Arlington
Trump Videos at Arlington Stir More Fallout After Grave Site Visit
Grand jury information exposed by defense attorney in Arizona fake electors case
Russia relocated 90% of its aircraft so they won’t be in range of Ukraine’s ATACMS, report says
Which would also mean they will be less effective in attacking Ukraine.
Politico:
Trump claims Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election in soon-to-be released book
By Alex Isenstadt / 08/28/2024
@247
“There’s nobody like Trump on Facebook – and we like it that way.”
Before throwing him in prison, they would have to come up with an actual crime he was guilty of.
Re: tomh @ #247…
Saying that Trump “wrote” a book should be in scare-quotes.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #248…
The crime would be lese majeste.
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
Additional links embedded in the text are available at the main link.
JD Vance wants voters to think there was an American manufacturing boom during Donald Trump’s term, but Joe Biden’s numbers are actually far better.
Now that is good fact-checking.
Followup to comments 186, 196, 203, 214, 230, 231, and 244.
Link
Followup to comment 253.
Link
JD Vance issued an accurate statement: “You guys in the media, you’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite.”
Tallahassee Democrat:
Florida can enforce transgender gender-affirming care ban, restrictions. What that means
C. A. Bridges / August 27, 2024
Re: #255
It goes without saying (I’ll say it anyway) the two judges who struck down the stay were Trump appointed. The dissenter was a Clinton appointee.
Link
Sigh. We could see this coming.
Trump’s Baseless Claims About the Assassination Attempt Are Dangerous
His growing effort to blame Biden and Harris for the shooting isn’t supported by any evidence. But experts say it could stir violence.
The U.S. economy grew 3% in the second quarter — faster than initially thought
“This economy is neither in recession nor is it at risk of an imminent end to the current business cycle,” one economist said.
Climate Tipping Points are Real, Stop Denying It!
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HiO3M_cPeSo
@Arlington
@253: “The Pentagon clearly wants to de-escalate this story.”
US Army rebukes Trump campaign for incident at Arlington National Cemetery
The separation of military and politics has been pretty strictly adhered to during my lifetime. I can only recall a few incidents. In 1988 Michael Dukakis rode in a tank. He wore a military helmet but a civilian suit. He got a lot of pushback, mostly saying he looked very silly.
In 2003, George W. Bush had his “Mission Accomplished” episode, during which he appeared in a flight suit. There was also a lot of grumbling about that.
But a campaign appearance at a military cemetery? No one has done that in the last 60 years that I can recall. And if they had, they certainly would have apologized immediately and profusely, and withdrawn all photos and videos. What we see instead from the Trump campaign is another insistence that he is above the law. And we see the “double down” associated with right-wingers, in which they never admit they were wrong and never apologize. The insults directed at an ANC employee only make it worse.
According to Arlington National Cemetery, the law involved is the Hatch Act, which has been around since 1939. I don’t know the details of the Hatch Act with regards to military cemeteries.
And JD Vance, a veteran who has tried to fabricate a complaint about “stolen valor” against Tim Walz, can go straight to hell for his attempts to normalize Trump’s behavior.
@Arlington: The Trump campaign seems to be leaning heavily into the claim that they were guests of particular families of veterans. But in this country, individuals do not get to choose which federal laws apply to them. A family might invite Trmp to join them at a grave site, but they simply do not have the authority to grant use of photos and videos for campaign or political use.
I would like to congratulate all thread participants for not once misspelling “cemetery” as “cemetary.”
birgerjohansson,
Could you at least put the youtube channel name with you numerous youtube links? I don’t know for others but I will never click on a random youtube link with just a clickbaity title.
J.D. Vance Booed by Entire Crowd During Dumpster Fire Speech
Reginald @265, it was great to see the audience booing JD Vance. That’s so effective. More meaningful than some of the media coverage.
In other news: The Supreme Court made Jack Smith’s case much harder. His new indictment proves it.
Gone are significant allegations that Trump knew he lost. But what remains — conversations with state officials and campaign staff — is likely enough.
NBC News:
Associated Press:
New York Times:
Followup to comment 39.
The Hill:
Abba complain about Trump using songs in campaign
Add to the list.
Another plan for Trump’s second term could be worse than Project 2025, by Mark Sumner.
On Eve Of Non-NYT Kamala Harris Interview, NYT Interviews NYT About Interviewing Kamala Harris
Followup to comment 273.
Link
Link
Video at the link.
Harris’ summer job at McDonald’s sparks ludicrous media ‘investigation’
In case you love to sit in a sofa with friends, drinking beer and watching “so bad they are good” films, The Bells Of Innocence -featured in one of the funniest episodes of “God Awful Movies” on Youtube- is, against all expectations available at Amazon.
.
Watch Chuck Norris’ son show he has no future in acting while visiting a town separate from normal time and space, aka in Texas.
(Eli, Heath and Noah checked the camera angles and worked out the bicycle accident that killed a kid must have been a deliberate murder by the protagonist)
Chuck Norris’ adult son is surprised to find that the population of the town have a problem with him touching kids that he does not know and has never met before. He uncovers the reason: demons!
@Reginald Selkirk:
Arlington Media Policy
Hatch Act 553.32(c)
Army Regulation 360-1 (pdf), 3-1 Public affairs restrictions
Rando Attorney
@273 After nearly three years, the vice president is still struggling to make the case for herself — and feels she shouldn’t have to,…
She’s not Donald Trump, and that’s good enough for me.
@Arlington
Team Trump Makes Arlington Cemetery Fight Way Worse With Army Insult
He seems nice.
I hope they take this as a cue to press charges.
@Arlington
Here’s how a person should behave if they wind up in this situation
Utah Gov. Cox faces scrutiny for using military cemetery photo with Trump in campaign email
“Scathing Atheist 602 Hundredth Monkey Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QQceJwyiASE
The ‘hundreth monkey’ refers to a case of scientific misconduct.
Jack White Gives Donald Trump a Heads Up: “Lawsuit Coming From My Lawyers”
Cook Out is Gov. Tim Walz’s first stop on his first trip to NC. What did he order?
Man Keeps Getting Unwanted Trump ‘Chillin Like a Felon’ Jerseys in the Mail
JWST has discovered a jovian planet orbiting the K star Epsilon Indi (12 light years distant) on an elliptic 45-year orbit.
The star also has a binary brown dwarf orbiting at a much greater distance, but radial velocity measurements had indicated the star was orbited by some closer massive object. The JVST telescope detected the planet but not quite in the expected position, indicating there is another jovian planet in the system.
Creationist astronomer calculates age of the Flood from Utah arch collapse
There is now a 7th carbon fixation pathway. It’s glycine again!
“The reductive glycine pathway allows autotrophic growth of Desulfovibrio desulfuricans”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18906-7
NASA discovers a long-sought global electric field on Earth
It starts with solar wind ionizing the upper atmosphere. A figure describes how it works. I found this StackEchange answer easier to read.
NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is now fully deployed in space
About the solar sail
Animated video at the link. The CubeSat spacecraft started out the size of a microwave oven. Its deployed sail is a square half the size of a tennis court.
Reginald Selkirk@248:
No, they wouldn’t, and that’s really, really scary …
@287: Link doesn’t work. Browser doesn’t even try to go anywhere!
Re: CompusoryAccount7746 @ #289….
An electric field strength is generally expressed as potential/distance, such as v/m (volts per meter). Just a voltage doesn’t really say anything.
@whheydt:
From the announcement:
From the linked paper.
Exosphere, Lower Boundary (Exobase)
The Onion – Trump calls out Arlington National Cemetery for hazard-filled fairways
It is nice to see some good news once in a while.
“Bloomberg Polls: Kamala Harris Winning in 6 Out of 7 Swing States”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=aaB7UYdUM5M
“I Built a Bird Bathing Pond in the Forest!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OA4CawaODC0
“I Built a Wildlife Pond – here’s what happened”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4LvaX748pVI
“Creating A Wildlife Pond Without black plastic! Start to Finish.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6XbAcf35fZE
Faroe Islands: The $190 Million Tunnel Built for Just 1200 People
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=zyo7yJwTZlg
They have another tunnel with an underground/undersea roundabout!
The hounds return to the farm to bury the bones of the old man’s family….
.https://youtube.com/shorts/JiW_kLuQ0BM
Veterans: I am spotting a trend in voting preferences
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxnDPsKMeMYCpvBjTeDkkDzVC8rd8-dc4W
@287: Another try at the link
Creationist astronomer calculates age of the Flood from Utah arch collapse
@286. birgerjohansson : Thanks for that Epsilon Indi news – awesome and fascinating discovery there, cheers! See also :
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-webb-images-cold-exoplanet-12-light-years-away
Looked that up after reading.
Elon Musk’s X Caught Slapping Spam Warning on NPR Story About Trump
6,000-Year-Old Submerged Bridge Found in Spanish Cave Redefines Mediterranean History
Elon Musk threatens a top Brazil judge who moved to block X in the country
Russian Region 700 Miles From The Border Struck For First Time By Ukrainian Drones
Another option for Trump, after his loss
Honduras says will terminate extradition treaty with US
Russian fighters to leave Burkina Faso for Ukraine
Why Putin still hasn’t driven Ukraine’s invaders out of Russia
Russia has committed forces to stop Ukraine but it’s mostly conscript and 2nd rate units. They are setting up defensive lines some distance from Ukrainian forces to keep Ukraine from moving freely, not trying to attack Ukrainian forces in Kursk directly. Ukraine continues to take some valuable locations and is using the advance point to stage drone strikes deep in Russia but they are stretched very thin at this point. Ukraine is setting up to defend what it has occupied in Kursk, indicating they are not planning to leave immediately.
This war is really becoming a question of who will run out of manpower first. Russia has a lot but is also taking huge losses. Desperate shortages of supplies, lack of training and poor command structure hamper them heavily. Ukraine has enough gear as long as western countries continue to supply them but it’s population doesn’t compare to Russia’s.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to appear on Colbert’s ‘Late Show’
Will dunking on Trump help Democrats win? | If You’re Listening | ABC News In-depth – 17 mins 45 secs length.
Reginald @279, I think the NYT reporter got that all wrong. Kamala Harris is not “struggling” to define or to make a case for herself. She is doing quite well in both endeavors.
Also, she has repeatedly said that she needs to talk to voters and to introduce herself to some voters. The phrase “feels she shouldn’t have to” is complete nonsense. The NYT published a hit piece that revealed the biases of the reporters.
Like you, I am happy with her candidacy. I don’t need the NYT working to cut her down.
Trump tries to shift blame for campaigning at Arlington scandal
Trump blamed the Gold Star parents for posting photos on TikTok. A reporter told him that was his own campaign account. He suggested it was a set-up by the Biden administration. Video at the link.
Why Trump’s new line on IVF is so difficult to take seriously
Harris’ CNN interview frustrates GOP and media—she’s so damn normal
Link
Dear Lynna, maybe I missed something and I hope I’m not opening a can of worms, but, even though he was rather prickly at times, he did make valid contributions, Am I correct? I’ve not seen John Morales commenting recently.
Will that be before or after he kills Obamacare?
Michigan Republican in Tight Senate Race Says He’d Respect Abortion Rights. His Record Suggests Otherwise.
shermanj @316: “I’ve not seen John Morales commenting recently.”
I do not not have any information concerning his absence. His absence is not my doing.
Followup to comments 273, 274 and 314.
Link
@314 Lynna, OM
“HARRIS: Same old, tired playbook. Next question, please. (LAUGH)”
perfect response to a ridiculous question. it’s refreshing to have an adult in the room.
Core Meltdown Emergency Test At Chinese Nuclear Reactor
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=JupYDp0OeWE
I want to be a “core meltdown supervisor!”
WaPo:
Controversial Trump film ‘The Apprentice’ finally gets a release date
After months of delays and threatened legal action by the former president, the movie starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong will open before the election.
By Jada Yuan and Samantha Chery / August 30, 2024
re tomh @323: Great timing!! And it is mostly The Orange Buffoon’s fault for the timing because he tried to stop the distribution altogether but failed. If he had let it go without his interference, it would have probably been long gone from the minds of most voters by the time the election rolled around. Instead, it will be right there before voting starts. A most satisfying moment of schadenfreude!
As August began, Republicans were invested in a “Kamala Crash” talking point. As August ends, the economy is too good to sustain the nonsensical line.
Correct.
Followup to comment 313.
‘Smoke And Mirrors’: Warren Slams Trump’s Nonsensical IVF Campaign Promise
I don’t see how Trump can wriggle wiggle out this one.
RE: @319 Lynna, OM
Thanks for that reply. I hope you didn’t think I was implying you had anything to do with his absence. I know you are very evenhanded. I was just curious.
With every crazy event we see I feel more anxious about all of us just emotionally burning out. Or, in the case of the orange menace maybe flaming out (we can only hope).
Georgia election workers seek Giuliani’s condos, Mercedes and Yankees rings in bid to enforce defamation case judgment
shermanju @ # 316: I’ve not seen John Morales commenting recently.
If suffering from Morales comment withdrawal, you can get a small (but not unreasonable) fix at From the Ashes of Faith.
68 KG wrote: shermanj@66 What’s with this “jebus” stuff?
I reply: I apologize for missing your question. Actually, I try to respect the names of those for whom I have respect. However, there are some that I find so disgusting I am compelled to mangle the name: jebus is one, rtwingnuts is another, xtian terrorists is another, vancehole is another, etc. That’s all, it’s not seriously a intellectual matter and has nothing to do with historical distortions.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/republicans-in-disarray-anti-abortion
Republicans In Disarray! Anti-Abortion Zealots Like Lila Rose Are Turning On Trump
Schadenfreude moment. Big dumpster fires in the Republican camp.
@329 Pierce R. Butler wrote: If suffering from Morales comment withdrawal, . . .
I reply: thanks for the info Pierce. I’m not having any withdrawal symptoms, just curious since John was usually so ‘vibrantly’ active.
Weird. A site at Youtube made a list of American celebrities who had died todsy and included Bob Dylan yet I do not find other information about this claim. Is this one of those AI genersted clickbaity thingies?
Lynna, OM @ 331
It is surprising that they are only now realising their policies are impopular considering how they have been using everything from gerrymandering, desinformation and outright insurrection to go against the will of the people.
If you have to cheat you have given up on the objective of getting people on your side and only want a cosmetic appearence of democracy. Sort of like Viktor Orban or Putin.
birger @334: “Sort of like Viktor Orban or Putin.”
Quite similar.
In other news: FDA authorizes Novavax’s updated Covid vaccine targeting JN.1 strain
Novavax’s protein-based shot offers an alternative to the mRNA-based vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
Terry talks movies
“Who Doesn’t Love Rampaging Fungus and Alien Fishmen?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=bFuCg-nUAio
Bitcoin ATM scams are soaring — and older adults are increasingly the victims
The FTC said reported losses exceeded $110 million last year, up nearly tenfold since 2020, as fraudsters increasingly persuade victims to send them large sums through crypto kiosks.
NBC News:
New York Times:
Politico:
Putin shot himself in foot. He got the opposite of what he wanted.
Link
Video at the link.
Musk’s X banned in Brazil after disinformation row
Somehow Musk had no problem compromising his “principles” when it came to the Saudis.
Trump comes out against Florida’s abortion rights ballot measure after conservative backlash
Flippety floppety.
Meanwhile, Harris is being criticized for changing her position on some issues, and Republicans are calling her a “chameleon.”
City of Columbus sues man after he discloses severity of ransomware attack
Anandtech:
End of the Road: An AnandTech Farewell
One of the better sites shutting down. The list of good hardware sites has been going down for a long time. There just isn’t a big enough market to support many any more. Doing a site for the really technology aware is hard to begin with because a lot block advertising and they often skim most of articles for the important bits. Now days the technology is so commoditized there isn’t as much to review and the differences so technical and load dependent that reviews are hard.
6 Animals That Live A Lot Longer Than You Might Think
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=J8wy_FniuRA
Tiny New Lasers Fill a Long-Standing Gap in the Rainbow of Visible-Light Colors, Opening New Applications
EAGLS: US Army gets new anti-drone systems featuring laser-guided 70mm rockets
Beware of the Youtube site ‘TV news MK’, it is a clickbait trap with false claims about celebrities that are supposed to have died today. I assume it is done by AI.
The best and brightest show up with the confederate flag for a Trump rally at Jonestown.
.http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx2pQDyIUSAPrJS6IY_jJ8xJJo0FB9K7zs
The depressing thing is, I am only slightly less fat.
Tolkien and “Men”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/IQitho0mlSk
In Old English, “man” was neutral.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #350…
My late wife used to do a riff on Tolkien’s line about dying at the hand of no man by using Latin–and I’m going by memory of her comments here–which has Vir–Man as distinguished from Woman–and Homo–which distinguishes between human and non-human. So when Eowyn and Meriadoc kill the Witch King, they’ve got him both coming and going. Eowyn is not a male Man, and Meriadoc is not a Man (Human), but a Halfling.
There is a related trick in Shakespeare, when it is predicted that MacBeth will die by the hand no man born of woman. The guy who kills him was delivered by C-section, and thus not “born”.
Democrats are now hoping to siphon votes from Trump by pushing to get anti-abortion third-party candidate on ballot
Dem candidate claimed he was being targeted with hate speech on social media. Police say he was behind the posts
Prominent German leftist politician sprayed with a red liquid, likely paint, during campaign event
Police use Taser to subdue man who stormed media area of Trump rally in Pennsylvania
Major publishers sue Florida over ‘unconstitutional’ school book ban
Harris Bakery Visit Goes Viral Amid Comparisons to JD Vance’s Donut Shop Trip
Lynna@313:
So, in the battle between the “teh gay, teh trans, teh test tube baybees, it’s all so unnatural!!1!” crowd and the “we need mOAr white babies, stat!!1!” crowd within MAGA, the latter won?
Interesting.
@315:
And yet, given a binary choice for that between a) a fellow woman and b) a rapist, she picks the rapist??!? What the actual fuck.
@319; shermanj@316:
Mano Singham gave him the choice of behaving himself or leaving over on his blog; Morales appears to have chosen to leave, voluntarily, rather than either behave or get banned. For reasons unknown he seems to have left all of FTB and not only Singham’s blog.
tomh@323:
Buh but how can it be an October surprise if we know it’s coming? They’re doing it wrong. :)
@birgerjohansson #44:
There’s already a federal government site that leads to each state’s site for checking registrations. https://vote.gov/
https://vote.gov/about-us
Any third party orgs offering that service are middlemen collecting your info to forward along to the state as above, and ALSO: contact you later, do analytics, share with /other/ service providers they rely on, or do shady data broker stuff. It’s unnecessary exposure, one more database to be potentially hacked.
That particular org relies on another org to do the talking to states, and its privacy policy says, “If we go out of business or enter bankruptcy, user information may be one of the assets that is transferred or acquired by a third party,” in which case all bets are off.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-29/prehistoric-dugong-crocodile-bite/104280922
Patrick Mahomes says Taylor Swift is now drawing up football plays — and the Chiefs may just run one in a game
New process vaporizes plastic bags and bottles, yielding gases to make new, recycled plastics
Brazil’s X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky
The double standard:
This line from Kamala Harris in CNN interview shows why she shouldn’t be president -Mark Davis
Meanwhile, Trump says something nearly every single day to prove that he is unfit for the presidency.
Puerto Ricans face huge power bills amid blackouts
Oklahoma State barred from placing NIL-linked QR codes on helmets
Background: NIL is “Name-Image-Likeness” and refers to letting collegiate athletes earn money for commercial promotions.
RFK Jr. says Trump has ‘changed as a person’
Trump admitting that he did something wrong? I can’t believe that.
Incoherent Trump claims Ivanka created ‘millions’ of jobs
Link
More at the link.
Cartoon: Any time, any place
https://www.wonkette.com/p/misogyny-makes-you-stupid
Misogyny Makes You Stupid
Fact-checking the fact-checkers who fact-check the fact-checkers who fact-check the fact-checkers who fact-check the
https://www.wonkette.com/p/economists-not-enthused-by-trumps
Economists Not Enthused By Trump’s Affordable Housing Plan Of ‘Deport Everyone And Steal Their Homes’
Trump request to move hush money case to federal court rejected over ‘deficient’ filing
Excerpts from a longer article by Sarah Larson in the New Yorker:
They’re All My Graves, Son
@373 Reginald Selkirk: Attempts to move the case to federal court have been made twice in this case already. This petition added nothing new and had no real chance to succeed. This was a pure attempt at delaying the case, filing something the lawyers knew was not going to succeed but is a very legally complex issue with a case involving the president. It was not filed correctly and at this point the judge is not interested in giving Trump any leeway, it was dismissed out of hand.
Two out of three? I have never understood his appeal.
Tim Walz’s Brother Is ‘100% Opposed to All His Ideology’
A general question.
Brandon Sanderson was chosen to wrap up The Wheel Of Time after Robert Jordan died, and has published thick Fantasy novels of his own.
Normally, huge productivity does not coexist with quality, so I want to tap the experience of readers if Sanderson is worth reading (I usually get my copies in original English from abroad and the extra postage means reading becomes an expensive hobby).
A succinct comment on the Arlington incident
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxAx3ifa98k7EDd_EWJi1VD8jMCjaxPLE6
Trump backs marijuana legalization in Florida if ‘done correctly’
A new idea.
“Humans Didn’t Evolve Light Skin For The Reason You Think”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/ybTL_zo8Vrw
‘Like nothing I’ve ever seen’: Energy soars as Harris rallies supporters in Savannah
‘Not our tradition’: calls in Sweden to ban fathers walking brides down the aisle | Marriage | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/aug/31/swedish-church-leaders-seek-to-ban-father-giving-the-bride-away
I’m going to have to down grade JD Vance. Originally I gave Vance a lot of leeway, he was trapped in an imploding campaign that was coming apart for reasons that had little to do with him. At this point though it’s clear he is just helping to scuttle the ship.
I thought at first that part of what he was trying to do is set himself apart from Trump, aiming to salvage his reputation when Trump went down in flames. It’s clear that this isn’t the case. He is taking extremely unpopular positions even when he isn’t forced and he is going out of his way to defend Trump even when forced to take publicly untenable positions. His aggressive defending of Trump’s publicity op at Arlington is the sort of thing that military people will remember for the rest of his career.
As a candidate he is just terrible. He has trouble giving a campaign speech when reading off teleprompters. He can’t give an unscripted speech or handle interacting with people. He can’t answer questions from reporters well even when they are obvious questions that he should have been prepared for by the campaign staff.
He has one trait that he shares with Trump. When challenged he doubles down rather then apologize or even shut up. This is a serious problem when he doubles down on positions that are publicly unpopular and considered weird to begin with. After several public embarrassments you would think the campaign would have ordered him not to keep doubling down on his crazy cat lady positions but he keeps insulting women in ways so bad even Republican men are embarrassed by his statements.
At this point I have to put in the bottom tier of VPs that are dragging down the campaign. This is a seriously bad sign when the campaign was already sinking fast.
J.D. Vance refuses to apologize for mocking then-teen’s mortally embarrassing moment
Upton returned to her fallow Twitter account to say “online bullying needs to stop” then deleted the account. In the past, Upton had worked for Trump as a model. Looking back at her account, she was a fan of Trump in 2020 and had retweeted antivax stuff.
On the subject of John Morales’ sabbatical: his absence is no one’s doing except for his own. I could not blame Mano Singham, for example, for taking heed of the pointed correspondence following on the heels of a number of threads where John had not acquitted himself well (for example, the following threads on Mano’s blog: 2024/08/07/sportsmanship-at-the-olympics/ ; 2024/08/10/creepy-trump-is-going-even-further-off-the-rails/ ; 2024/08/12/the-politics-of-insults ; 2024/08/14/the-dumbest-climate-conversation-of-all-time ; 2024/08/16/the-power-of-anger-when-channeled-through-joy/ ; all leading up to Mano’s announcement of the new commenting policy in the thread 2024/08/18/new-policy-on-comments/).
I hope for his part that he has taken some of the criticisms aimed in his direction as being kindly meant: the SNR of his comments had declined noticeably to someone who rarely comments such as myself. Calibrating the tenor and content of comments is no one else’s responsibility.
Lastly, a bug: the Pharyngula recent comments don’t seem to be recording new comments appearing in the Infinite Thread – I notice this earlier when I posted comment #228 above, and I wonder if it’s due to the total number of comments in this thread spiralling out so far beyond a single page of comments.
Good news – comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS has survived so far :
Source : https://www.space.com/comet-tsuchinshan-atlas
@Xanthë: Now that you mention it, I too notice the “Recent Comments” widget is incomplete. If you’re in need of a substitute, the RSS feed of 25 comments from all Pharyngula posts does include the Infinite Thread.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/comments/feed/
^ If you click that in a browser and get XML code, you may need to install a browser extension to render the RSS feed.
Also <code> tags are handy when you have too many urls. That’ll make them plain unclickable text, which can be copy-pasted to visit.
Thanks SkyCaptain CA7746! I did intend the links to Mano’s blogs to be plain text as it happens. I believe there’s a limit on how many URLs a comment can contain before it gets dumped straight to PZ’s spam filter, possibly never to emerge, which I was likely to exceed if I had tried.
On a different subject: I gather with comment 273 obviously being satire, hopefully no one actually mistook it for serious commentary? It looks as though as it might be prone to misunderstanding, which then arguably would be counterproductive.
An ad from the kamalahq TikTok account (original, mirror on Mastodon)
It starts with a clip of Trump at a rally in Potterville, MI.
“And who always has your best interests and has your back. I have your back, I have your heart, and I have every other part of your body.”
That bit is repeated, juxtaposed with headlines:
* CBS – Trump says states might monitor pregnancies to track abortions
* MotherJones – Trump says states could prosecute women for abortions under his watch
* The19thNews – RNC approves platform that would give rights to fetuses endangering abortion, IVF
* TheGuardian – Republicans push wave of bills that would bring homicide charges for abortion
* CNN – Nearly 65,000 pregnancies from rape have occurred in states with abortion bans, study estimates
* MSNBC – Mississippi abortion bans force 13-year-old rape survivor to give birth
birgerjohansson@379:
Counterexample: Isaac Asimov. Also Stephen King.
Sky Captain@391:
They should also juxtapose that “every other part of your body” bit with the Access Hollywood tape. And testimony from E. Jean Carroll on the witness stand.
Meanwhile, speak of the devil and look who appears. Morales is back, with a single, relatively tame, comment on Singham’s blog tonight.
John Michael Godier
“The Deepening Mystery of the Last Universal Common Ancestor of Life”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=1v1_3iljUV0
Teehee. Stephen King.
A quote of Ana Mardoll—at the end of live-reading Stephen and Owen King’s Sleeping Beauties (about a Genderpocalypse):
/The live-read was intended as an annotated example of how not to write such stories, not to slam the Kings in particular. But it was just too bad.
/To be fair, Ana liked The Mist.
Amazing’ Viking-age treasure travelled half the world to Scotland, analysis finds | Archaeology | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/sep/01/amazing-viking-age-treasure-travelled-half-the-world-to-scotland-analysis-finds
Hidden in caves: Mineral overgrowths reveal unprecedented modern sea-level rise
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-hidden-caves-mineral-overgrowths-reveal.html
There was a period of sea level ride 3200 years ago but the big one is since 1900 AD.
A Different Bias:
“Harris Deals With Stupid Interview Question Superbly”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=1sBPyDBYx_o
A prominent German leftist politician was sprayed with a red liquid, likely paint, during a campaign event Thursday in the eastern city of Erfurt, ahead of closely watched state elections on Sunday.
While disapproving of her being assaulted in this way, I quarrel with the description of Wagenknecht as “leftist”. She recently left Die Linke (descendant of the old East German Socialist Unity (i.e.Communist) Party) to found her own party, not-at-all-egotistically named after herself. She is anti-immigrant, pro-Putin, pro-COVID (i.e. wanting to limit vaccination to the elderly and those in poor health) and downplays climate disruption. Her party does retain the policy of higher taxes on the rich, but fascist parties often pose as economically leftist for political advantage, and indeed even her economic policies are now mostly close to those of the CDU and FPD.
Sorry, the first paragraph of #398 should have been within the quoted passage.
shermanj@330,
Thanks for the response, but you’re being most unfair in blaming Jesus for Christianity! It’s pretty clear he was just a run-of-the-mill Jewish apocalyptic preacher, probably with the delusion that he was the Messiah, who largely by chance was promoted as a general saviour by the founder of Christianity, Paul of Tarsus – and would have been surprised to find the world still trundling on 2,000 years later, and horrified at the blasphemy of Christians claiming that he was divine!
Tom Cotton did the same.
Tom Cotton’s Staggering, Shameful Hypocrisy Over Trump’s Arlington Debacle
As for the “double-down”, this has been a conservative staple for a long time, and continues to impress me in a negative way. That someone cannot bring themself to apologize when they are obviously wrong makes them look weak, not strong.
Patriot Front white supremacists march in downtown Tallahassee, take photo at Old Capitol
Peter Thiel Defends Calling Warren Buffett A ‘Sociopathic Grandpa From Omaha’
The guy who wanted to live forever by injecting the blood of young people, and start a libertarian island, is calling someone a sociopath just because they don’t support crypto?
I’m committing $30 million to reforming the Supreme Court. It’s a small price to pay to protect our democracy
How lessons from 2016 led officials to be more open about Iran hack this year
An Associated Press article, reposted by other sites.
Cartoon: Desecration
Israel recovers bodies of six hostages, including Israeli American
Washington Post link
Election Law Blog
“RFK Jr. can’t get off ballot in North Carolina, can’t get back on it in New York”
By Rick Hasen / August 31, 2024
His sympathies seem to be with RFK Jr. I would support ranked choice voting, but I care more about the voters than about opportunists like RFK Jr.
Kanno Sugako and Her Daring Revolution – Unseen Japan
https://unseen-japan.com/kanno-sugako-writer-socialist-revolutionary/
The hypocrisy of the men in the socialist movement about women’s issues was not limited to Japan BTW.
Reginald Selkirk @ 403
Next step, he goes full Monty Burns and lobbies for abolishing helmet laws, making young, supple organs available for transplant.
GOP candidate is just a ‘small-town’ guy—whose family owns an NFL team
Protesters throng streets of Tel Aviv after IDF found 6 hostages shot to death
Britain:
“SNP Facing Up to Reality Better Than Tories”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=oQhE-zVD0CM
Strikes start at top hotel chains as housekeepers seek higher wages and daily room cleaning work
Some 10,000 hotel workers represented by the UNITE HERE union walked off the job Sunday at 25 hotels in eight cities.
“I Said Hybrids Were The Future. Was I Right?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=x_Q1cTCrLV8
Hossenfelder pissing off the Musk crowd.
Follow-up to #95, #96:
Telegram CEO’s prosecution won’t bring wider social media crackdown
Re: #410 “His sympathies seem to be with RFK Jr.”
Hasen has no sympathy for RFK. His only interest is in establishing voting rights for all. His recent book, A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy is the gold standard on the subject.
Florida district rejects school chaplains after Satanists pledge to participate
Goddammit! Sorry!
Donors Warned That Trump Is Dumping Their Money Into A ‘Black Hole’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p5XeOsUpWN4
MAGA Artist Debuts Deranged Apocalyptic Vision of Kamala Harris Devouring Bald Eagle
He seems to be as deluded as his lord and saviour, Donald Trump.
Brother of Christian “prophet” Jeremiah Johnson blows the whistle on his lies.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DJ8fzyoLp7Q
Sounds like a bog-standard grifter.
The Guardian interviews US voters
“Former Trump Supporter Admits She’s ‘Actually Afraid’ Of His Possible Mental Illness”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Oa8Nm0POyc8
The Nazis (let’s not pretend they are anything else) have done very well in German state elections – first in Thuringia, second in Saxony. The red-browns (Wagenknecht’s party) also did well. Putin will be delighted.
birgerjohansson@421:
For what? Posting a youtube embed that actually worked properly, for once? :)
NASA’s solar sail successfully spreads its wings in space
.https://www.space.com/nasa-solar-sail-deployment
KG @ 426
The extreme-right party and a far-left populist party together have exactly half the seats in one of the states, making it very hsrd to create a working coalition for centrist parties.
This May Have Given Kamala Harris Pennsylvania…
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=TPHxt-OwaBc
The court has overruled a petty sttempt at voter suppression.
Welcome to the Oppression Olympics
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6NtLWj5TDvI
Why The Prometheus Engineer Creates Humans, Just To Kill Them…
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hzs-AytFAYI
This is such a trite non-inspired explanation. They could easily have come up with something original.
Nerds will be nerds:
gun enthusiasts criticize the would-be Trump assassin for poor choices of hardware.
It is like, ‘Goering would have been fine if he had invested in jet aircraft from the start’.
Reginald @423, that is remarkably bad. Laughable in a way … also horrifying.
In other news: What to know about Labor Day and its history
Cartoon: The continuing adventures
Link
More at the link.
MAGA Looks to Notorious War On Terror Lawyer For Trump II Inspiration
Trump hardliners want to revive War on Terror justifications for domestic military use.
NFL Fans React To Terry Bradshaw Switching Political Parties
Most of the reactions are bone stupid.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/happy-labor-day-lets-talk-about-some
Happy Labor Day! Let’s Talk About Some Awesome Ladies Of The Labor Movement
More at the link, including brief biographies of Lucy Randolph Mason, May Chen, Angela Bambace, Emma Goldman, and Rosina Tucker.
German far-right party wins a state election for the first time since the Nazis
Alternative for Germany’s success in Thuringia is a huge win for a party that was launched in 2013.
White House says Biden and Harris weren’t invited to Arlington Cemetery by families of service members killed during Afghanistan withdrawal
Biden’s and Harris’ teams pushed back against claims from GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard that that had been invited alongside Trump.
Trump Roasted After His Most Head-Spinning Attack On Kamala Harris Yet
Mmmm welll – she never tried to lynch him.
AP:
GOP network props up liberal third-party candidates in key states, hoping to siphon off Harris votes
By Brian Slodysko and Dan Merica / September 2, 2024
Ranked choice voting would eliminate this ‘spoiler’ effect.
Trump says he had ‘every right’ to interfere in 2020 election
A confession! Prosecutors are going to love that.
Workers in Japan can’t quit their jobs. They hire resignation experts to help
The universe had a secret life before the Big Bang, new study hints
Yeah, as I’ve said @398, I dispute the characterisation of Wagenknecht’s outfit as “far-left”. It wouldn’t altogether surprise me to see her going into coalition with the AfD, or at least holding that threat over the other parties in negotiations.
US seizes Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro’s airplane in the Dominican Republic
Putin gave a niece with no military experience a key defense job: UK Intel
Lying Doofus, Hair Furor, opens his mouth again:
Link
Additional links to reliable sources of information are provided at the main link.
KG @ 447
Yes, as I cannot read German I am forced to experience their politics through an English-language filter in The Guardian.
.
Two US soldiers assaulted by nationalist youth group in Turkey, authorities say
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/02/us-soldiers-attacked-turkey
‘Nationalist youth group’, yeah, I have seen that film. Nationalism and patriotism are different things.
While I do not have access to Trump’s Truth Social I am told the stream of consciousness from one of two people that will lead the largest economy of the world has become much worse since Biden was replaced by Harris.
And by ‘worse’ I mean in a manner that would interest mental health professionals. After 9 years of exposure to Trump “getting worse” must mean extraordinally bad.
The Riot Story Not in the Headlines Today
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=DoNENmn67eU
How media ignores positive news items and creates an impression society is more divided than it is.
The federal courts are broken—and a Trump victory will make it worse
Beloved Russian celebrity ‘spy’ whale is found dead off Norway
The white beluga whale, known as Hvaldimir, first appeared in 2019 with a harness that read “Equipment St. Petersburg,” prompting speculation that the animal had escaped from a Russian military facility.
Eagles working to have counterfeit political ads endorsing candidate in Philadelphia taken down
Gala in honor of January 6 rioters at Trump’s Bedminster golf course postponed (again)
Musk-owned Starlink says it won’t comply with X ban in Brazil
That’s confusing, as Starlink is part of SpaceX, not X.
In 2023, Musk and Twitter/X had no problem giving the Saudis and King Bone Saw whatever it asked for.
Twitter accused of helping Saudi Arabia commit human rights abuses
Women remove racist ‘garbage’ after Patriot Front walks through downtown Tallahassee
@Reginald Selkirk #458:
Quartz
Brazil247 (translated)
Musk has had a history of mixing assets, equipment, and personnel from his other companies with X.
Elon Musk suggests support for replacing democracy with government of ‘high-status males’
Reginald @457, I hope that all falls apart. As bad as it would look for Trump to host/hold a gala celebrating January 6 rioters, I don’t think the schadenfreude is worth it. Celebrating January 6 rioters should just not be possible. Let’s hope the “gala” plan fails.
In other news, from text quoted by Reginald in comment 459:
Oh FFS. Those were real wannabe Nazis, White Supremacists, and racists.
Harris supporters in the area were correct to reply:
Re:Reginald Selkirk 462
“Elon Musk engaged in one of his regular habits on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter, amplifying a controversial tweet by commenting that it was “interesting” — this time a right-wing account that called for democracy to be replaced with a government system run by “high status males” and “aneurotypical people.””
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
1) That wouldn’t last long with neurodiverse people like are here.
2) diversity cooties. Awwww… can’t use the D-word.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @460 and 461. Thanks for that additional information.
Elon Musk owns it all.
Cartoon: Pokey man
A former Google product manager made an AI-powered website to sift through Project 2025 so you don’t have to
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1830578685277020363
https://x.com/UKikaski/status/1830598827847410047
The video has English captions.
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1830638986135499222
The video is also available on this Daily Kos page. Scroll down. There’s a lot of other Ukraine/Russian news on that page.
From the same Daily Kos page referenced in comment 470:
Putin visits Mongolia, in defiance of arrest order from international court
via Mastodon
https://masto.ai/@ezlin@gamepad.club/113071347141002907
From the org’s statement:
Re: CompulsoryAccount7746 @ #474…
Well…. My late wife (two novels and 30+ short stories professionally published) certainly picked my brains on some topics and bounced ideas off me to see if I thought they’d work. Our standing joke was that she did the fiction and I did the science. In fact, all the words on the page were hers. She adopted a few of my suggestions, but the writing was 100% hers.
The only thing “all” writers need to be able to do is to find some way of getting words onto a page and there are certainly a variety of ways to accomplish that. (There was an SF writer whose day job was being a Linotype operator. He bought his own Linotype. He would write using it, pull a proof copy, and send that out to be typed because proof sheets from a Linotype tended to convince editors that the work was stolen from an existing print copy.)
@469 Lynna, OM: The Russian military is the sort where corruption is the norm. The majority of officers either bribe their way into posts or get them through political connections. A senior officer held on corruption charges during a war has political problems, not corruption problems.
Putin does seem to be purging the ranks. He is getting rid of the most useless officers and the ones he doesn’t trust. This isn’t because he is worried about corruption but because with an actively dangerous war going on he can’t have the really useless clogging up the ranks. And since the Wagner Group rebellion the trust issue is a big one, Putin suddenly doesn’t trust some people he put in.
“Conservative Writer Admits There’s Something Broken Inside Trump”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=yjZ1z6n7_3c
The word ‘broken’ implies that he at some point had a personality with the full spectrum of abilities you expect of an adult human.
If he had grown up in a normal family, or if he had had enough introspection to seek out counseling in his youth he might have achieved 100% function. This did not happen.
The bible says WHAT!!?
“5 Bible Passages That Caused Me To Lose My Faith”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=gDCCzzwy_Nk
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain @ 474
Once you have published a book it probably gets easier, because through the publisher you might get a larger network of people to give input and ask questions.
JM@476: It seems likely to me that another part of the explanation is that Putin got the heebie-jeebies when those Ukrainian thermite drones started blowing things up pretty much in his own backyard, within the city of Moscow …
Why America’s Obsession With Race Feels Odd to Germans | Feli from Germany
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Iymz8WhK3lE
“Democrats Could (Maybe) Keep The Senate”
.https://youtube.com/live/l1zH8GNkbeM
“How America Keeps Its Citizens Uneducated”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QcYPll2sbD4
“Who really invented the graphic novel?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jlIKSeNJrC8
Hugo Pratt and Corto Maltese
‘Queen of trash’ among 11 on trial in Sweden’s largest environmental crime case
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/03/queen-of-trash-bella-nilsson-think-pink-11-sweden-biggest-environmental-trial
The Black divers excavating slave shipwrecks: ‘I’m telling my ancestors: I’m with you’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/03/diving-with-a-purpose-black-divers-excavating-slave-shipwrecks
Senate race:
“Deep-Red Nebraska is Competitive?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=IgCHdYp8dvU
NH man fights for life with 3 mosquito viruses, including EEE
Top Trump Volunteer Quits Over How Badly the Campaign Is Going
Sentencing for man who made 12,000 harassing phone calls to members of Congress
Link
Harris is on a roll … Trump is bumbling and stumbling:
Link
Cartoon: Eager beavers
Musk posts fake image of Harris in communist garb
https://www.wonkette.com/p/biden-doj-thinks-firing-teacher-for
Biden DOJ Thinks Firing Teacher For Reading A Book Is Bad Actually!
The only thing wrong with the book is it might have been too young for her fifth graders.
Morning News Roundup from Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/4-happy-nice-times-4-funny-ones-and
Mobile phones not linked to brain cancer, biggest study to date finds
https://www.wonkette.com/p/elon-musk-dazzled-by-sublime-wisdom
“Elon Musk Dazzled By Sublime Wisdom Of 4Chan Post About How Women Are Stupid”
Is Elon taking notes from me and thinking he should do what I suspect about him (wanting things to be like 4chan here)? Hey Elon! In your next public appearance run into the wall repeatedly!
I don’t know how long before this disappears with the new thread, but it is an important insight into the hateful, selfish absurdity that is the elongated muskrat
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/111435/six-ways-to-rein-in-musk
Human mouth bacteria reproduce through rare form of cell division, research reveals
Scientists finally have solution to cosmology’s ‘biggest crisis’