Finally some dang rain. It was drizzling in Downtown Seattle earlier today when I was walking to work. It’s been more than a month, so good. I hope we can stay cool and that some of the plants can get a drink. Ideally Seattle summer would have one good rainy day a week.
Anyway, please wash your hands right now and get vaccinated or boosted if you’re eligible.
Go woke go broke
How was YOUR weekend?
American would be better off with a strongly progressive income tax.
Florida state republican says the ungrateful Africans got an all expenses paid cruise with free housing and free farm training included when they arrived.
This has been said here before, more or less:
Every year, about 4 million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters.
Also every year, 2½ million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.
Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/19/gen-z-voters-2024/
The question is who will be more motivated to show up. We all know who is more motivated to suppress those net 52 million voters, any way possible. Broad numbers are encouraging but the devil is in the details.
@4
Almost on cue, lifetime GOP member, former AG of Idaho and Chief Justice of Idaho Supreme Court.
4,
A few things to keep in mind.
Yes percentage turnout will matter. But this generational transformation of the potential electorate has been understood and anticipated for a long time.
And since 2016 there has been a very real transformation in how Democrats are seeing this.
I won’t waste time bemoaning the disgraceful and incompetent past approach of the Clintons. They were and are very much belonging to an old guard generation devoted to the consultant industry, big campaign spending, and to operating and jealously guarding direct control over their campaigns. The results speak for themselves.
But for a useful comparison consider the Biden campaign and the Biden affiliated PACs and their present composition. In the second quarter Biden directly spent only $1.1 million and had only four people on the campaign payroll. Since the 2022 midterms state level managers, consultants, and high ranking officials from successful campaigns and staffs have been reaching out to the Biden team seeking their next “promotion” to be met with disappointment. This is not going to be a top-down, inside-out operation. It’s bottom-up and outside in.
That means that the talent, resources, and most of the money remains distributed and focused in the states where it contributes not only to the Biden campaign, but to the party, to local organizing, and especially to voter registration and GOTV. This is the strategy that the campaign was essentially forced to adopt because of the deadly Trump Virus in 2020. But it is also the strategy that enabled a 77-year-old retired guy to be an incumbent without ever leaving his basement.
After another record quarter, fundraising expenses accounted for less than 16%. And again, those expenses are all being focused and distributed out in the party and the states and districts, through cooperative and combined efforts. It’s those campaigns and the JFCs who are spending the money, forming local relationships with vendors and media partners, and gaining the experience and local expertise.
It’s a very unified strategy operationally, made possible in part by the tremendously unifying influence that Trump, MAGA, and Republican extremism have had on liberal and moderate voters. Democrats are coming together to defeat a very real threat. There is greater trust and accountability than ever previously.
These unified campaigns are using big data today in ways very similar to how Republicans used evangelical affiliation in the 1980s to organize demographically. And they are absolutely targeting younger voters. They know that in order to do so they can’t rely on broadcast messaging platforms like television or radio advertising. So they expect to be spending a whole lot more money on training and supporting local organizers during the coming school year.
5,
I don’t agree that we should expect Biden to win by a huge margin.
We don’t really know yet who the Republican nominee would be. And I think Biden’s prospects for a larger victory improve if someone other than Trump is the nominee. This is a remarkably talentless Republican field. And at the end of the day, in the battle over disengaged swing voters, real talent as a communicator will make a difference. Trump has that more than any of them.
But that leaves us facing another close election that will be decided in a handful of swing states. It certainly looks as if Democrats and Biden can take advantage of Republican extremism by leveraging it with younger voters, but also with many other groups. I think some of those suburbs will be decisive in some of those states.
But we should just never underestimate the sheer weight of all those old, white Boomers.
DJIA is up today, the last week, the last month, the last 3 months, the last 6 months, YTD, the last year, the last 2 years, the last 5 years, the last 10 years, and All. Not at it’s all time high yet, but if it ever does, the GOP fraudsters will have a good cry. It’s a less than 1000 points of all time high, so sad the Biden Economy. He’s completely responsible for all of it! From day 1 of trading to today!
Ohio may be red enough to not move top of ballot to the blue side. But if I’m an Ohio GOP volunteer I’m terrified of what a deeply unpopular criminally indicted nominee and and abortion does for GenZ and Millennial turnout.
I guess, then they are responsible for not teaching the bad apples the right way too! I mean look at Clearance Thomas…they created that in more ways than one.
Lots of Heterosexual Neanderthal Virus news to report on but I’ll do that a little later!
You know for someone who claims to have handed over the reigns in order to stave off further SEC Scrutiny I sure am making a tone of ‘my way or the highway’ decisions and announcing them myself.
Longest winning streak in over 6 years, such a sad economy.
@3 In exchange for a lifetime of free labor, family separations, and frequent whippings. Some deal.
@4 An early test case is next month’s Ohio vote on a GOP effort to prevent an abortion rights initiative. Initial vote tallies point to massive turnout.
I think what we’re seeing, in the 2020 and 2022 elections, and continuing this year, is that Republicans are very good at mobilizing previously apathetic voters to turn out against them.
We can’t afford to be complacent, though.
@6 “Democrats are coming together to defeat a very real threat.”
True, as far as it goes, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that only about a third of the electorate identify as “Democrats” and the real ballgame is independent, swing, and non-voters coming together and making common cause with Democrats to defeat what is now very widely perceived to be an incredibly serious threat to our individual political freedom of choice.
@7 “This is a remarkably talentless Republican field.”
Who can argue with that, when the only non-Trump candidate in the field with a shred of appeal is Chris Christie?
@9 “if I’m an Ohio GOP volunteer” you’re probably too blinded by partisan loyalty to be terrified by the polling data.
“Bidenomics” is real, is here, and spells the end of an economic philosophy called Reaganomics that “favored the private sector over the public, the financial well-being of the rich over the poor, the support of monopolies over small and local business, and the empowerment of bosses over workers.”
And what it means is, “After two years of working to pass high-profile economic legislation and rolling out comparatively obscure new government rules, Biden is ready to take credit for what could prove to be a sea change in American politics and economic life. Say goodbye to Reaganomics and hello to Bidenomics.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bidenomics-2024_n_64bd314de4b093f07cb50f8e
Not bad for a senile vegetable.
16,
The labels thing is always a bit vague. And I suppose we should always define our terms. But as used here, I’m really referring to party organizations and affiliated organizations, including labor organizations, industry organizations, political organizations, educational organizations, issue organizations, and fundraising organizations. Historically there has been an almost crippling amount of diversity and frankly duplication of effort among like-minded organized groups of moderate and left leaning voters and activists, when compared to the right.
But often when I use the term “Democrats” to describe voters I’m really thinking of not only those voters who self-label in surveys, or who vote in closed primary systems, but also to the greater than half of “independent” voters who have voted for Democrats in the last three or four partisan elections.
Republicans are now attempting to legislature the torture of farm animals.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/24/23801785/cage-free-eggs-pork-eats-act-california-prop-12
@ 7
I don’t agree that we should expect Biden to win by a huge margin.
I don’t agree that we should even expect First Vegetable Joe Biden to be the DNC nominee.
Another 11 months of cognitive decline and he’ll have trouble even waking up as a turnip.
– NBC News
@21
Third verse…same as the first!
Remember when sleepy Joe was going to get clobbered by the master communicator Donald J. Trump and how afraid to debate team Blue was?
Remember THE PAIN!
If you keep typing it, it will become true.
We can’t all be as eloquent as
@23
Oh my gosh! The scandal! Was he wearing tan? How about something other than dress shoes.
The kids who are just starting to vote REALLY want to know if he’s got the fresh Jordans.
@ 25
The kids who are just starting to vote REALLY want to know if he’s got the fresh
JordansDepends.They’ll smell him before they see him, of course.
if he’s got the fresh JordansDepends.
They’ll smell him before they see him, of course.
Meaning Cocaine Mitch and Grassley who are both older than Joe, Grassley being way older (and off his rocker)..
They should drag the pond for Vera Baker’s body.
What is it with friends of Democrat politicians? Can none of them swim?
They should drag the pond for Vera Baker’s body.
They might find an underwater cavern where Larry Sinclair and Seth Rich’s evil twin are watching the Khalidi tape over and over.. on infinite repeat…
@ 29
Or they might find the successful 2016 DNC Fall presidential campaign strategy that #CrookedHillary and Robby Mook discarded in favor of the one they used instead.
22,
When it’s all you have left, you gotta keep them dreams alive.
Boo hoo. Cry more now.
I heard once that the US and UK defeated fascism while being led by a dude disabled by polio and a dude who had suffered a stroke.
Funny old world.
Good work, grampa. Just relax into that rapidly mounting twilight of your life and let those old memories just wash over you like a slow tide. Let go of all the pain, disappointment, fatigue, and confusion. And just wrap yourself in soft memories of the way things were or at least the way you remember them. You really can just make your very own reality now.
You don’t work. You don’t matter. Objective reality is irrelevant to you. Enjoy that.
@27 Lindsay Graham isn’t doing so well, either, and he’s only 68.
Watch out for Christian preachers. They’ll kidnap, rape, and murder your daughter.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/former-pastor-arrested-1975-murder-young-girl-walking-church-rcna96065
This pastor’s conscience bothered him for 48 years, but he never got around to confessing until the cops confronted him with irrefutable evidence. Probably was voting Republican that entire time, too.
Or they might find some wife of some Heterosexual Neanderthal that was a horse lover too.
Duped!? Who, that are so morallay evangelical, would dupe her.
She luck to be living. Call 1-666-YOU-DEAD bitch, before you really been duped and groomed. Dumb bitch! Bitch, in the dictionary, is female dog, so don’t blame me, I didn’t write the dictionary, I can hardly spell.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-fake-elector-duped-scheme-1814804?fbclid=IwAR1j3CFKKDtX3pqhQdOpuXTaK1suvDRjkx-ICH3msSjyx6irmzf9ybwzM3A#:~:text=Lundgren%2C%20from%20Detroit%2C%20told%20a,bigger%20than%20all%20of%20us.%22
Ok, we got a couple of Heterosexual Neanderthal Virus victims to report upon.
Bitches! Call 1-666-YOU-DEAD and nobody cares or is even bothered to look, aside from the neighbor who says he was such a nice quite guy.
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cherokee-county/70-year-old-man-shoot-kills-wife-cherokee-county-home-deputies-say/VL22DHZAINHPDNJ3VLE6NYPC2E/
And here is another……..boy this is happening way tooo tooo often…..or maybe not enough, depending on ones opinion and fellings. Speaking of feelings, do you think anyone cares? Move along, nothing to see here.
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2023/07/central-pa-man-fatally-shoots-wife-then-kills-himself-coroner.html
Don’t forget the Indian guy…they tend to be more passive Heterosexual Neanderthal than your average American. After they shoot their wife, they don’t usually kill themselves, they think they can roll their eyeballs and nobody is watching. Tjey really got them bitches fooled. They aint killing themselves.
https://www.latestly.com/agency-news/india-news-man-kills-wife-parents-in-law-in-assam-5290048.html
@32
Not to mention one of them was a drunken sot. So much brandy. So much champagne.
@30
Al Bundy scored 4 touchdowns in a single game while playing for the Polk High Panthers in the city championship game.
We love our LEO’s! So much we want to shove a flagpole up their ass!
https://ktar.com/story/5520187/man-who-beat-officer-with-flagpole-during-capitol-riot-is-sentenced-to-over-4-years-in-prison/
You don’t matter. Objective reality is irrelevant to you. Enjoy that.
Please take it easy on the other unserious twat. It dawned on him today that Ron DeSantis is the new Scott Walker.
Seriously, just look at him. No mojo. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he were to expire soon, never to return.
Ron DeSantis is the new Scott Walker.
Who?
The people of Missouri want to get signatures to get an abortion amendment on the ballot. The Missouri AG is doing everything he can to block it. He doesn’t want to risk them even getting signatures.
Republicans do not trust the strength of their ideas if it’s a free and fair election.
The dumpster fire that is Ex is amazing.
Same thing in Ohio
Abortion rights advocates submitted more than 710,000 signatures earlier this month to place their measure on the November ballot, well above the 413,000 required by law. Local election officials are currently reviewing those signatures, and Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose must announce whether the amendment has qualified on Tuesday.
LaRose has emerged as the most prominent opponent of the amendment, chiefly through his support of a separate amendment voters will weigh in on in just two weeks. That measure, known as Issue 1, would increase the threshold for passage for all future amendments from a simple majority to 60%, a move LaRose has openly stated is designed to thwart backers of abortion rights.
Republicans do not trust the strength of their ideas if it’s a free and fair election.
The Republicans have launched a plan to reorganize the United States Government into a basic Dictatorship, by largely dissolving all government agencies and placing it under the purview of the Presidency. They are calling it the 2025 Project: https://www.project2025.org/policy/?fbclid=IwAR3lSNTbW0aTqXNHb8ch52LkEN9Tlq-T6BaE1-1_7agB9NhxvQaVULsNsVM
Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House..
>> Also, Republicans want to fire any employee who doesn’t to support republican policy.
>> Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated. Get rid of public schools, charter schools for all children.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html
Shorter: Vote for the party of conservative dictatorship or vote for party of Democracy.
46,
Issue 1, would increase the threshold for passage for all future amendments from a simple majority to 60%,
Framing is always very important.
Issue 1 would bestow upon a 40% minority veto power over anything supported by 60% of the voters.
It is appallingly anti-democratic.
A grotesque repudiation of a basic foundational principle of democratic societies.
This morning I’m reading that western intelligence agencies now believe Putin spent three days last month hiding in a luxury subterranean bunker, paralyzed with fear of a hot dog vendor.
“Extreme heat waves across three continents this month were made significantly more likely by the human-caused climate crisis …. The ‘heat hell’ searing parts of the United States and southern Europe would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change ….”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/world/heat-wave-climate-change-us-china-europe-intl/index.html
We tried to warn the stupid fuckers, but they wouldn’t listen. I’m not a mean rabbit, and don’t wish ill on anyone, but there’s nothing I can do except watch them die.
Of course, global warming is a juggernaut that won’t stop on a dime, and it’ll take decades to reduce carbon emissions to zero, so this is just a warmup for what’s coming and it’s going to get much, much worse.
Nother:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617
And a nother. And a nother. And a nother.
(E)xcess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before. These differences were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates, and primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio.
…
After May 1, 2021, when vaccines were available to all adults, the excess death rate gap between Republican and Democratic voters widened from −0.9 percentage point (95% PI, −2.5 to 0.3 percentage points) to 7.7 percentage points (95% PI, 6.0-9.3 percentage points) in the adjusted analysis; the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters.
Probably the best thing for Israel and U.S. Mideast policy at this juncture is for Netanyahu’s pacemaker to malfunction.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/politics/us-israel-democracy-analysis/index.html
No word yet on whether DeSantis was driving, another vehicle was involved, or someone was hurt who doesn’t matter. The dictator is OK and that’s all the media cares about.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/politics/desantis-car-accident/index.html
@44, 46 Conservatives don’t believe in democracy. Never have. The last thing billionaires want is the working class voting on whether they should pay more taxes. The last thing Bible-thumping white men want is women, especially women of color, taking control over their own bodies. On virtually every issue important to them, they’re outvoted, so it makes absolutely no sense for them to go along with taking a vote on anything. To them, that’s like kids in first grade saying, “Let’s vote on taking early recess,” and the teacher going, “Like hell we will. This classroom isn’t a democracy.” They see themselves as the teacher, and their role as telling the rest of us what to do.
@46
It’s better than that. I’m Slow walking the approval of signatures in the hopes Issue 1 passes and then I can rule that the signatures gathered are insufficient. It’s not about what the law was when the act took place it’s about what the law is NOW. No I have never heard of the concept of Ex Post Facto.
Bronny, I see, is copying his father’s famous flop routine.
47,
Another big difference in 2024 compared to 2016 will be that voters in next year’s general election will have a much greater preparedness to expect Republicans to do exactly what they say they are going to do. That cuts both ways. But in the end, with the disengaged, unaffiliated swing voters, poll after poll shows them with declining trust in generic Republicans compared to generic Democrats. And that decline in trust appears to arise precisely because of all this partisan extremism and rising authoritarianism.
Everyone wants the trains to run on time*.
Nobody wants a stone cold religious zealot in the Principal’s office to take a wire coat hanger to their child’s bare ass.
Republicans are scary af.
*The trains never really ran on time under 1930s fascists. They simply ordered the clocks to be changed.
@56
Saving for the next time a prominent conservative kicks the bucket and a horse fucking hick from the islands urges us to show some respect.
@ 57
Republicans are scary af.
One of those scary af Republicans abducted poor Carlee Russell last week.
Praise the Lord she was released unharmed.
Donald Trump’s hair is orange-ish, in the right light.
@59
https://imgur.com/t/carrot_top/W99yip3
It looks increasingly as if Brave Kevin will be forced to cave to his base extremist wing and agree to impeach President Biden for no particular reason in order to obtain a basic agreement to fund the government for another year.
This will go even more poorly for them than the Clinton impeachment did in 1998. At least they had a colorable criminal charge to work with in 1998. And Clinton really did commit the charged offense.
But in the wake of it the political outcomes for the GOP were a mixed bag that bodes very ill for them in the setting of 2024. Following the Senate acquittal two-thirds of Americans agreed the impeachment was “bad for America” and seemed very much to blame both the President and the Congress. That resulted in the voters being very receptive to Bush’s messaging promising to restore “dignity and honor” to the Presidency and definitely hurt Gore by association. But it also resulted in voters taking seats away from Republicans in Congress.
In 2024 a GOP dominated by Trump and crazed shit-gibbons like MTG, all of the Trump baggage, and fierce infighting in the nomination campaign and in Congress, will be incapable of making any such promises to restore dignity, or honor. And without any real credible charge to pin on Biden, despite the GOP’s desperate theatrics, voters will be very likely to place all the blame for impeachment on Republicans.
But it will get them the attention they crave. That seems to be the only calculation Republicans are capable of any more. Impeachment will manage to elevate their bizarre theories about impossible conspiracy schemes to the level of attention that they have craved since they gained the House gavel at the beginning of this year. It will move the wild claims into the daily headlines and get the notice of the disengaged, unaffiliated apolitical general public.
But it won’t have any of the heft or legitimacy of the Clinton impeachment. And certainly none of the sex appeal or narrative appeal. It will be sordid and stupid and it will be entirely the creation of a Republican House majority.
History teaches us that voters tend to punish those they hold responsible.
59,
Thank goodness we can always count on our trolls to bring us the latest breakings from their world of celebrity rehab.
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone that they are about to renominate a failed reality television celeb for the third straight time.
Bronny, I see, is copying his father’s famous flop routine.
Praise the Lord she was released unharmed.
See what I mean? No mojo. I’m feeling sad for the other unserious twat.
The wealthiest 1% of American taxpayers evade more than $160 billion in taxes annually. That’s not income “shielded”. That’s tax revenues owed, but not paid. It’s more lost revenues than all the savings from cuts and limits agreed upon in the debt limit deal last month. Just from cheating by assholes that we don’t bother to enforce. And the GOP cuts the IRS to protect that cheating.
Yet more sad news for the other unserious twat.
Ron DeSantis cuts over a third of campaign staff amid talks of reset: report
Soon the other unserious twat will be saying, “Desantis who?
I’m so happy to see that Carl has returned to “not-blogging”.
65,
It’s not just the other unserious twat who has abandoned Fat Midget. It’s all of his billionaire backers. They’ve given up. And they are either putting their money somewhere else, Senate campaigns, etc. or they are sitting this one out.
And regular voters have never been excited enough about Fat Midget to give to his campaign the way they give to Trump. So he has to cut staff to protect what little he has left to continue to pay for more fundraising, which he now needs more than ever.
But that’s money well spent. Yep.
The tremendous success of “the Florida Experiment”.
@65
Like how the State of Florida tried to re-set Terri Schiavo?
3M did better than Tesla today. (So did GE, which I haven’t owned in years.) But hey, the market is fickle, and who knows what tomorrow will bring. I don’t; but Doctor Dumbfuck, with his remarkable ability to forecast future stock moves with perfection, is making millions. I’m more bemused than jealous, because I’m satisfied with how I’m doing and the couple million I’ve got.
@59 I’m shocked you’re not blaming Russell’s “abduction” on Biden’s dogs. Holding back isn’t like you. Maybe you’re conserving that ammunition for tomorrow?
@61 It doesn’t help them for Comer to admit it’s in retaliation for the Trump impeachments.
@64 “That’s not income “shielded”. That’s tax revenues owed, but criminally not paid.” ftfy
Republicans don’t like taxes or campaign finance laws, so they routinely and openly flout both. Then they take great umbrage if they’re charged with violating those laws; not because they’re innocent, but because they think they’re engaging in civil disobedience. To them, beating cops with flagpoles on Jan. 6 is “protest.” Their devotion to “law and order” is, how should I put it, highly selective.
@65 Fortunately, the four government vehicles in his campaign cavalcade that rear-ended each other like a slinky toy because they were tailgating the traffic in front of them and each other are covered by insurance.
@68 Seems like an apt comparison. Schiavo’s brain had liquefied; DeSantis’s campaign is turning into oatmeal.
Big cracks appearing in the “Greater Idaho” FREEDUMB grift:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/ammon-bundy-must-pay-more-than-dollar50-million-for-defaming-st-lukes-meridian-hospital-over-baby-cyrus