A couple of resignations of note broke today. First, this seemed like a foregone conclusion:
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned Tuesday in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, telling staff that she took “full responsibility,” according to a copy of a letter sent to agency staff and obtained by The Washington Post.
Here’s my question: in all the noise over this, has anyone suggested that we need to increase the Secret Service’s budget, while noting that it’s another expense related to our out-of-control gun culture? I assume Republicans just want those agents to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
As an aside, boy, Trump’s assassination attempt sure changed everything. (That’s sarcasm!)
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) plans to resign effective Aug. 20, according to two people briefed on the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The longtime Democratic lawmaker was convicted on July 16 of taking bribes from three businessmen who showered him and his wife with cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz, an extravagant bounty for his help securing deals with foreign officials and trying to derail several criminal investigations in New Jersey.
Looking forward to Andy Kim taking that seat. He’s a major upgrade.
Bonus points to those who get the song reference in the post title. In the meantime, I’ll keep myself amused with the evening news.
rikyrah
I never thought the Senator would resign.
Thought he would fight until the end
rikyrah
Sons of Killmonger & Disciple of Dark Brandon (@2Strong2Silence) posted at 8:00 AM on Tue, Jul 23, 2024:
The media & GOP are shaken for two very important reasons:
1. There will be no Hillarying of Kamala Harris. We won’t allow it & neither will Joe Biden.
2. They are about to meet millions of us uppity ones that don’t need their opinions. https://t.co/uHhfjlGyiU
(https://x.com/2Strong2Silence/status/1815733789177401478?t=2VXiqYX8eYncZQxwDGeKlg&s=03)
Mike in NC
Rule should be that an impeached felon ex-president isn’t eligible for Secret Service protection. Let the cheap bastard pay for it himself.
dmsilev
New Jersey is a “governor appoints replacement, who serves until the next general election” state, so presumably we get Senator Kim a day after Menendez actually resigns.
Wapiti
Maybe there should be a fee on every gun sale (and resale) in the country to help cover the Secret Service budget.
HumboldtBlue
@rikyrah:
They also don’t have 25 years of run-up to smear her character. These 100 days are gonna be a whirlwind and Joe and Dems have completely wrong-footed the GOP, and they’re off balance, and they know it. The media is already focused on the accomplishments of Biden’s term and as Dems come out and endorse Harris and the choice for VP remains a topic, it keeps the news focused on her campaign, not on the slurs and hate the GOP deploys
p.a.
As noted at TPM: to anyone worrying that the US won’t elect a female president: we already did in 2016.
EC be damned!
ArchTeryx
@rikyrah: To this white dude, “Uppity” is a badge of honor you should be proud to wear. Give ’em hell.
KatKapCC
@dmsilev: Would he appoint someone currently running? When Newsom had to appoint DiFi’s replacement, he specifically did not choose any of the Dems running at the time so as to avoid appearing to influence the election at all. Although I guess that was in the primaries and this is the general, so maybe it’s different.
dmsilev
@rikyrah: Also helps that the GOP had something like 25 years to slime Hillary Clinton and …rather less time to slime Kamala Harris.
KatKapCC
@HumboldtBlue: Not 25 years, no, but she became DA in SF in 2004, and the smears started then, though admittedly they remained mostly locally grown probably until she became state AG in 2011.
trnc
Any idea why Aug 20? Would like to think that gives Murphy time to get Kim or whomever lined up, but Menendez doesn’t necessarily seem like the type to consider how his actions affect other people.
Jeffg166
If TFG didn’t stiff every venue he might not have to hold his rallies in corn fields. Pay your bills TFG! Pay your bills!
dmsilev
@KatKapCC: My guess is the latter, that since we’re post-primary the governor will pick Kim as he’s the Democratic nominee for the seat. Besides giving him a bit of an incumbency boost, it also has some long-term benefits for the state because the Senate runs on seniority and having a four or five month head start on the rest of the freshman class is a bit of a leg up.
dm
@Mike in NC: I’ve been assuming the Trump campaign requests for more Secret Service protection were because golf-cart rental fees at Mar-a-Lago were suffering, and Trump wanted to rent out more to the Secret Service
SW
There was a shooting at some gathering of the party of mass shootings. What a shocker.
$8 blue check mistermix
@p.a.: The thing that doesn’t seem to be mentioned much in the 2016 comparisons is that Trump was a new phenomenon in 2016 and Clinton’s team had no experience running against someone like him. We now have almost 8 years of experience and we’ll use different, hopefully more effective tactics.
schrodingers_cat
OT Kamala Harris is hosting an event in Wisconsin.
A link if you want to hear
Belafon
@KatKapCC: That was to keep from looking like he was choosing between Schiff, Porter, and any others. It was a rather contentious primary, which is why it cost Schiff so much. This one is different.
3Sice
@KatKapCC:
Would a bit more senority than the rest of the noobs go against the norms of the Senate?
HumboldtBlue
@KatKapCC:
What it’s not is that it’s not institutionalized. I recall asking coworkers why they disliked Clinton, they never had anything specific, it was just the effect of hearing how horrible she was in right wing spaces for decades.
Harris doesn’t have that problem, and they don’t have enough time to make it a problem.
wjca
There is the detail that, in addition to the various protection details, the Secret Service is also tasked with investigating financial crimes. Which might dampen enthusiasm, in some quarters, for increasing its budget.
3Sice
@$8 blue check mistermix:
Tapioca brain. In 2016 he would have already tweeted he put Kamala over, not Old Joe.
Mai Naem mobile
Cheatle better not be replaced ,even temporarily, by some Secret Service person who has even a whiff of loyalty towards TFG. Anybody saw the clip of Blackburn, Barrasso and Lankford chasing Cheatle during the RNC convention demanding answers? Just embarrassing.
JPL
@Mike in NC: Nope. Best just to ignore him. trump is playing the I’m the god chosen one, and someone should remind him that some thought hitler was chosen also.
eclare
Kamala is here. MSNBC.
theturtlemoves
Kudos on the Big Head Todd reference in the title. I’ve seen them live, I think, 9 times now.
SatanicPanic
@schrodingers_cat: thank you!
wjca
There’s a lifelong habit to be overcome here. Which ain’t easy for anyone.
But in addition, there this detail: using what for money? His lawyers are chewing thru it as fast as he (and the RNC) can raise it. And they have learned to insist on cash in advance.
wjca
Nope. It’s actually a longstanding tradition there.
KatKapCC
@Belafon: I’m well aware, as I said in my comment. I wasn’t sure if being a general made a strong enough difference, but I agree it does.
JWR
Boy, when I saw all those 400+ comment threads, I thought nope, not gonna do it, especially once I found out what was going on.
BTW, Sunday night, early Monday morning, I met a guy at 7/11 and we somehow started talking politics. Good guy, a Bernie delegate in 2016, and very active in Dem politics, but we’re both in the camp that this switcheroo was a good thing overall and that if any woman can do it, it’s Kamala. And then, just as I drove away, I realized that I didn’t ask if he’d ever heard of this place or if he’s a commenter, because talking with him was a lot like interacting with people here.
[So, dude! If you’re here, we met somewhere in Pasadena, CA, and I’m the guy in the 1995 Corolla!
CallComment me! ;) ]@schrodingers_cat: Thanks for that! She sounds fired up and ready to go.
Urza
Won’t Menendez resigning so late leave Dems in the minority for the Senate? That could mean quite a bit come ballot counting time.
Martin
@HumboldtBlue: And there’s a risk of making it a problem live. A lot of the attacks on Hillary ended up burning the no-name attacker for being a piece of shit, but the attack remained in the consciousness after the memory of the piece of shit faded.
The problem now is how do you execute that attack? Vance is already being called out for dog whistling. You can’t burn the VP candidate. There’s no time for the context of the attack to fade.
SatanicPanic
Harris is talking in full sentences and completing her thoughts. Makes for a nice contrast to meandering dumbass Trump.
danielx
Resignation Superman…..great tune.
Martin
@wjca: I think they’ve been relieved of that now that they’re out of the Treasury and in Homeland Security.
Bugboy
Here’s the thing: There was some noise going round the first days after the attempt, about SS denying Trump something or other. Trump has been grifting off SS charges since day one, I’m sure which is breaking their budget, so they are going “whoa nelly” to Trump’s never ending and always escalating demands. I guarantee you that story, about SS “denying” resources to the Trump campaign is going to zombie-fy and live again.
OzarkHillbilly
I know a lot of folks here don’t like the Lincoln Project or the folks involved, but this ad is gold. Short, sweet, and sure to have trump shitting his depends.
eta: turn up the sound
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@SatanicPanic:
To the RWNJ base, that’s a feature, not a bug…the meandering dumbass bit.
MisterForkbeard
Did anyone see this report from MSNBC earlier today, that the Harris campaign was vetting:
I remain surprised that Gretchen Whitmer is on the list. Good for her, though I can’t imagine that’s a top 3 choice. Two women on the ticket would askeered a good chunk of the country.
Suburban Mom
@dmsilev: The quirky thing about this situation is that Governor Murphy’s wife, Tammy, made a play for the seat. She ended her campaign back in March when it became clear that a messy primary was in no one’s best interest and Kim had more support.
Ken
“Hold my beer.” — the Trump campaign
(There’s been a lot of speculation in BJ today about Vance being dumped. Personally I don’t believe a word of it but am enjoying the thought.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@OzarkHillbilly:
My criticism of our Stalin-esque allies isn’t their brilliant messaging or ability to churn out this stuff like nobody’s bidness, rather do they actually pay to get it in front of people’s eyes?
My impression is that they don’t as that would cut into the grift element of their operation.
So it’s back to “who actually sees these ‘ads'”. If the answer is effectively nobody outside of the politically addicted class, then what’s the point?
Old School
@theturtlemoves:
Thank you! I knew I should know it, but it wasn’t coming to me.
SiubhanDuinne
MVP is knocking it out of the park in her Milwaukee rally speech! And the crowd loves her! If you’re not watching it now, try to catch it later — she’s really good.
Bupalos
@HumboldtBlue: They don’t have the time and they don’t have the mic right now either. There was a lot of lampooning of “we must do something and this is something” but at least one side effect is that Dems are very much the more interesting party right now, old man Trump is a fucking predictable bore, and one of the reasons Repubs aren’t going to get traction with their shit right now is that no one is listening. Let the coconuts rain down like the waters of righteousness!
Now Harris figuring out exactly what she’s going to say and having an engaging way to say it right quick…that will be a challenge. But for once we’ve got the ball in our court, even if we’re still down.
3Sice
Old Joe is back at the Resolute desk.
Bupalos
@SiubhanDuinne:
UNDER – RATED
UNDER – RATED
UNDER – RATED
BretH
Literally crying as Harris finishes her rally speech.
Jay
Apartheid Clyde is making sure that the Dead Bird site is useless for MVP Kamala Harris.
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2024/07/23/meanwhile-over-at-birdchan-2/
Bupalos
@SiubhanDuinne: How are you watching? Is a regular network carrying it?
Leto
@Bugboy: I remember the investigative reporting showing that the Trumpov Org wasn’t charging government rates for rooms, and other services. I don’t remember what became of that, but I’m sure they’re defrauding the government on basically everything.
SatanicPanic
@SiubhanDuinne: I can’t remember seeing her speeches back in 2019 so maybe she’s always been this good. But wow, she killed it.
OzarkHillbilly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: It’s not my money they are spending on hookers and blow, so I don’t really care. Besides. I have to watch my blood pressure..
HumboldtBlue
@Martin:
Sure, but the media doesn’t have the time to smear her the way they did Clinton. I mean, the GOP are gonna GOP and be horribly racist and sexist, but I sense this momentum swing has caught them completely off guard.
Joseph Patrick Lurker
Whichever candidate Democrats choose, the NY Times will never be satisfied:
https://www.mediaite.com/news/the-new-york-times-rates-10-democrats-chances-of-beating-trump-and-puts-kamala-harris-dead-last/
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne:
That was very good! She walked off stage to the Beyonce song, Freedom. Beyonce is very particular about who she gives permission to to use her songs. So we got the Bey Hive, now we gotta get the Swifties.
I have to think as a childless cat lady herself, Taylor will make an announcement at some point.
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly: I love their stuff. I don’t have to love them to love their videos!
JPL
@Bupalos: meidas touch youtube channel
You can watch the entire speech. Gotta say it’s sweet to see the one minute welcoming applause
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@SatanicPanic:
During the 2020 primaries, her, Warren and Sec Pete were easily the best ones during the debates.
zhena gogolia
@Joseph Patrick Lurker: Let’s just hope they don’t capture the hearts and minds of the Democrats this time.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@HumboldtBlue: I just walked past the cafe downstairs and Fox had a chyron reading “Concerns grow about Harris’s role as AG in CA” (paraphrasing). I wonder whose concerns they mean
Jay
@MisterForkbeard:
It appears that every MSM “outlet” had different “numbers” and some different names,
and of course, based on what a tiny number of unnamed inside “official’s” claim.
Old School
Trump and Bryson Dechambeau played a “best ball” round today. The Club Champion’s short game was a little off today.
Steve LaBonne
Democrats push their convicted felon Senator to resign. Republicans nominate their convicted felon ex-President to run again. Against a career prosecutor, no less.
rodwell
As a NJ voter, I hope Gov Murphy does not appoint Andy Kim as the interim senator. Andy Kim will win the election in November but appointing him now will sour independents (A big voting bloc in NJ). I think Murphy will appoint a senior African American women politician to the Senate as a capstone to their career. Remember both of his Lt. Govenor’s have been African American women. He has already recognized the importance of the base of the party.
pika
Good gravy: Harris was on fire; the crowd was WITH Harris. It’s a really good feedback loop
HumboldtBlue
@Bupalos:
Agreed.
Betty Cracker
@Jeffg166: If the sumbitch had been in JAIL where he belongs, he’d have been perfectly safe!
Frankensteinbeck
@HumboldtBlue:
This. It takes many months, even years, to beat a Narrative into the public consciousness. Repetition after repetition, like wearing away stone with raindrops. Taking down Biden was a campaign, and it was the national press’s campaign, not the Republicans’.
Harrison Wesley
@Jeffg166: Now if we could only send him to the corn field, a la Twilight Zone……
brendancalling
Apropos of nothing, my cat—who hasn’t touched her kibble from this morning—is putting on a performance worthy of Olivier, as she tries to convince me to feed her dinner two hours early. You’d think she hadn’t been fed in months the way she’s carrying on.
dc
@Joseph Patrick Lurker: I hate these people.
I donated $20 more to Harris, damn the NYT.
artem1s
The would-be assassin was outside the secure perimeter, in an open carry, hold-your-ground state. IIRC, the local LEO’s spotted him first (or were contacted by his relatives – not sure if this is accurate) and started to stalk him. There were several minutes where they completely lost track of him. But even if they hadn’t and they had found him, he had broken no laws. the most they could do was question and detain him for awhile. He had no history of violent or criminal behavior. And neither had many others outside the perimeter who were legally packing heat that day. How many? We don’t know.
No one has asked the pertinent question about defending against an assassin who can walk right up to the perimeter and SS and law enforcement can’t do anything about it. And if they do, whose to say the shooter wasn’t standing his ground against those who were stalking him? The local LEOs, SS Agents and FBIs and whoever else was following him certainly had more firepower on them than a pack of Skiddles. Why isn’t the NRA screaming about his 2nd amendment rights?
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Steve LaBonne: chutzpah.
SomeRandomGuy
Democrats tried to raise this, and it really is a fair point to make. I loved the tweet I saw to the effect of “You want Secret Service snipers to kill every man with an AR-15 who is acting strangely? Near a TRUMP rally? That would be a *MASSACRE*!”
Because of the popularity, and ease of use, and the extreme power, of the AR-15, we need more secret service agents, more drones or other surveillance, etc.. Nothing to do with banning anyone’s precious baby; it’s just not reasonable to expect Secret Service snipers, etc., to cover as many places, and as much distance, as they would if AR-15s were not so common.
That said, Trump getting shot at is *precisely* why people shouldn’t wear guns as a fashion statement. A man with an AR-15 didn’t stand out, so, only thoughts and prayers protected the President, which means he had to be extremely lucky to both get wounded, and in such a tiny manner. He steps on ants and calls himself Superman.
And imagine if 2-3 people at the rally did have firearms, and tried to be “good guys with guns” without knowing who the shooter is, or where he is, or… seriously, 99% of the time, if you’re in a mass shooting, the first thing to do is get to *shelter*. Then, with a clear head, evaluate your options. Your gun is always he last option. (Why, because human life is so *precious*? Yeah, AND because cops are coming, and they don’t know “good” versus “bad”, but they speak “gun” very loudly.
SatanicPanic
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Which means I don’t see Trump showing up for the September debate.
HumboldtBlue
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
She’s a brown person, DAW, and it’s perfect they’re gonna go after her record as AG, she actually used her post to bring some needed reforms to how we prosecute and who we prosecute, and hell, I’ll take the former prosecutor up against the convicted felon.
Fox is flailing, the GOP is flailing, and sure, they’ll be on message next week or so, but my sense is the momentum Harris has built is going to have lasting impact.
gene108
@dmsilev:
NO!
I’d lose my Congressman, who would have to be replaced by special appointment.
I’m sure Governor Murphy can find a caretaker to keep the seat warm, and confirm judges for 4.5 months.
brendancalling
@Joseph Patrick Lurker: the FTNYT can kiss my ass after I’ve eaten hefty amounts of beans and roasted garlic.
Jackie
Walk away for a bit, and now I’m behind by several hundreds of posts…🤷🏼♀️
Has this been posted yet?
Looking forward to the Harris bump “lasting for awhile!” 😂🥰
Kristine
@Joseph Patrick Lurker: Ignoring Dobbs again?
3Sice
@Betty Cracker:
This is the way.
eclare
@brendancalling:
Sounds like a cat!
cmorenc
Just saw a report on CNBC that Trump has supposedly now challenged Harris to debate “multiple times” (true) – just a chyron, no details.
It would be unreasonable to not speculate that the “multiple” times are respectively in Fox, OAN, and NewsMax. With maybe a fourth sponsored by the Epoch Times.
Mai Naem mobile
@trnc: maybe it’s just logistics+optics between NJ law, NJ legislature and the US senate being in session. I think Kamala has to swear the newbie in.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Kamala Harris raised $153,322,765 million dollars in grassroots donations over the last 48 hours 👀👑
artem1s
@Dorothy A. Winsor: well, you know, she’s a cop. she’s a wall street shill. she’s corporate shill who is only supported by big donors. she ran a terrible campaign in 2020. she wasted her war chest in 2020. she sent Black people to prison for smoking pot. she’s got a terrible speaking voice. she has no presence. she did a terrible job on immigration. etc., etc., etc…
better be prepared cause all the old reruns are coming back again.
Chris Johnson
@Mai Naem mobile: AOC was also all over Cheatle, to the point that there were wingnuts going ‘oh no, I like AOC now?’
I think it’s a pretty simple no-win position. Presidents current and ex, apparently get to have loyalists working for them. On the whole that seems how it should be, right? Can’t have a Secret Service detail picked out by your bitter enemy. Obviously they should get to have their loyalists, THEIR guys.
And then, we get a shooting at which one person and the most obvious candidate for ‘shooter’ died, and at which the Secret Service let Trump get his shoes and rather than cover him with a meat blanket, posed him for the camera and got out of the way, all the while not acting nearly as intense as we normally see in such a situation.
And Cheatle may well have gone ‘Congrats for protecting President Trump, guys, now please turn over your records and the information around the event’ as one would normally do. And then…
“…nuh-UH…”
And then what the hell does she do?
That is completely a no-win situation. It’s a nightmare. It doesn’t mean they have turned against Trump and are scheming against him: that at least seems unlikely. But it suggests they’ve been roped into other schemes, and that way madness lies. And so, unable to control her ‘own’ people, she can only resign, and those agents are still rogue and still on the Trump beat. For what it’s worth I think each President has loyal Secret Service protecting them, and that’s nice.
It just means that to be loyal to Trump and protect him, you gotta be down with… other tactics.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Wapiti: Tax the ammunition.
Put an extra license fee on those ammunition vending machines. We can split the take between the USSS & treatment for underinsured (or uninsured) victims of gun violence.
Anonymous At Work
@trnc: Bumping this. What’s so important about August 20th? That’s during the DNC. I would think August 18th or August 23rd would make more sense.
SomeRandomGuy
@dm: I heard it said that they didn’t actually *refuse* resources, but, e.g., they arranged for local resources.
If that’s the case, I kinda wonder why it was even brought up. Unless the SS doesn’t have a legal reporting requirement, but other cops do.
eclare
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Stunning.
lurker
not aware of any real politicking on the secret service budget. they tend to get raked over the coals when a scandal erupts, whether it is an attack or something like a drugs/prostitutes scandal.
notably, Raskin called for the director to resign after her testimony before his committee (he is ranking member). Raskin is not exactly the type to shoot first and ask questions later so that was pretty much a death knell.
always up for a reference to Resignation Superman or Big Head Todd and the Monsters generally. in a sense, Biden is turning his cape in, or maybe just stepping aside for the next one in line, not necessarily leaving the stage so much as allowing another to take the lead
cain
@HumboldtBlue:
I hope Biden puts in a bunch of EOs – now that he won’t be running he can do some bold stuff.
I’m also interested in seeing if he could do something about the supreme court – now that he has ultimate power.
He DEFINITELY needs to pardon Hunter Biden. That will be his last fuck you.
Anonymous At Work
@Mai Naem mobile: …as I was typing up a reply and/or bleg for more. DNC is August 19th-22nd, so the date lines up weirdly. Like he wants to be recognized at the DNC Day 1 as “Senator Menendez (D-Maximum Security)” before giving it up.
Leto
@artem1s: the shitstains are already putting out t-shirts saying, “Liberals can’t aim” which is ofc disgusting. And they’re already trying to spin it away as not one of their own doing this. Their continued fetishization of Moloch is continuing to have damning consequences and we absolutely have to capture everything this November to try to fix things.
Suzanne
@HumboldtBlue:
HRC made the statement that she “reminds men of their ex-wives”. I thought that was especially incisive.
As much as I hate to say this, because it is bullshit….. Kamala is prettier (in a conventional heteronormative way) and that matters.
KatKapCC
@OzarkHillbilly: I love that they’re leaning into the “weird laugh” garbage. Everyone’s laugh is weird to some extent! Who cares. It means you’re having fun.
BR
Anyone know what’s up with the NJ governor? Apparently he’s having a meeting with TFG.
cain
@OzarkHillbilly:
As far as I am concerned, I think Rick has redeemed himself in the way he conducted himself during this crises.
Anonymous At Work
@SomeRandomGuy: TFG wanted lots of protection for extended clan and he wants to hold outdoor arenas where the Secret Service wants rallies indoors, for this reason. TFG wants them outside so it’s harder to show how relatively full/empty the arena is.
So, some sympathy there but her response plus the Jan 6th snafu means that she had to go and someone new come in. And there needs to be a cleaning of the house for agencies that were cooperative with TFG above and beyond.
cain
@MisterForkbeard:
It has to be a progressive and not an old white guy centrist. Fuck that shit.
You can bet those fucking donors are all out there pissed off that they couldn’t control the nomination. Not going to happen.
Bill K
@Mike in NC: So tempting to leave him with no protection, since he keeps overcharging them for everything. But basic dignity says that even a felon ex-president should be protected.
Some people here suggest the Secret Service needs more funds. But the failure here will not be solved by throwing more money at it. How do you fix it when they let the ‘shooter’ wander around, climb up a building where his rifle was apparently waiting, get comfortable, then shoot eight times?
cain
@Ken: That should be fun. But I don’t think it will matter much, nobody likes him. I don’t think anybody is going to like the next VP either.
Old School
@Anonymous At Work:
When I Google “August 20 Menendez”, it comes up that August 20th (1989) is when Lyle and Erik Menendez killed their parents.
I don’t think that’s the answer though.
cain
@SiubhanDuinne: My reddit GenZ channel has been lit up – it’s been one thing after another. I think the kids are excited. That’s good.
I will concede that the switch has been a good thing. Looking at the outcome. I’m not happy with what happened with Biden but ready to march forward with Kamala. Let’s goo!
cain
@Jay:
I hope she moves to Mastodon!
MisterForkbeard
@SiubhanDuinne: But I’ve been assured by Laura Ingraham that she’s secretly a terrible speaker! Why would they lie?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio):
I’ve seen the “tax the shit out of the ammo” idea for years and have always wondered why certain states with enough Dems didn’t at least try it.
That then sent me down a rabbit hole of ammo pricing:
https://southerndefense.com/ammo-prices/
Not sure how it would differ, state-by-state, but assuming the charts on that site have some semblance to reality, it’s interesting at how ammo prices haven’t gone thru the roof since the initial spike in late 2020. For example, a 9mm handgun round is currently a whopping 14 cents a round.
And that’s part of the problem.
I see that we’ve got potential ballot measures this year in 7 states to do exactly that:
https://www.thetrace.org/2024/03/maryland-tax-bill-guns-ammo/
Here in CO, it’ll be 6.5% (was originally proposed to be 11%).
It’s a start if it passes. Then it’ll simply be gundamentalists going to someplace like KS to buy TAX FREE!!!!!!!! ammo.
JoeyJoeJoe
@Suburban Mom: back in 1971, Louisiana Senator Allen Ellender died. The Governor at the time, Edwin Edwards, appointed his then-spouse to the seat as a placeholder.
For anyone who isn’t familiar, Edwards has had a long life in politics. His last successful election was for governor of Louisiana again in 1991. The incumbent governor was unpopular as he had raised taxes. Louisiana has a primary where everyone runs on the same ballot, and the top two vote getters move to a runoff, regardless of party. The incumbent came in third, and was bested among Republicans by the head of the KKK.
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
FWIW, odds are increasing that elderly convicted felon Trump will end up in jail. There are still cases left intact by the Supreme Court, like the classified documents case, so more convictions are possible if he loses this race to be POTUS.
Exclusive: Harris leads Trump 44% to 42% in US presidential race, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds (Jason Lange, July 23, 2024)
Leto
@Bill K: you fix that by having more agents so you can secure more points of attack. Yes, you have a ton of people there wearing their dick extensions, hoping to be John Wayne/John Wick. But you also need enough people there to cover super obvious shit like: here’s a perfect vantage point in which to take a few pot shots. To the point of you put the rookie agent at the bottom of the ladder and tell him to park it for the next few hours
Idk, this feels super similar to Benghazi in the point of The Stare Dept had their budget cut for security details, and then we had the ambassador die. The Secret Service likewise is constrained but I don’t know what the exact fix needs to be.
Also I’m at the point where I want the 2nd Amendment reigned the fuck in. It needs constraints. We’ve had a massive expansion of gun rights with predictable deadly consequences. It needs to move in the opposite direction.
Matt McIrvin
@HumboldtBlue:
She kind of does though, doesn’t she? Maybe only regionally. I know some people in California who seem to hate Kamala Harris for vague and inexpressible vibe-based reasons that remind me exactly of Hillary-hate; in fact I suspect it is the identical phenomenon.
And, yeah, she’ll carry California so maybe that is not an issue.
OId Man Shadow
@Suzanne: I was deep into white Evangelicalism in 1992.
To be honest, we hated her because she was the enemy. She was a Democrat. Democrats were evil, godless commies who killed babies.
Bill said that Hillary would be a partner to him instead of a traditional First Lady, so that caused a freakout of various pastors who insisted that the proper role of a First Lady was to look pretty (more or less).
They wanted to reform health care! The cads! The devils! Health care was great! It was perfect! The Free Market was appointed by Jesus himself when he handed The Wealth of Nations to Adam Smith!
Basically, Hillary was on the wrong team and she wouldn’t stay confined to the role that fundamentalist men demanded women conform to and that is what started their intense , irrational hatred for her.
You can already see that happening with weak men now with Ms. Harris. They’re already proclaiming she is the spirit of Jezebel, which is what they label any woman who won’t obey them or tolerate their stupid shit.
Princess
@cain: My 29 year old is fired up, ready to go and frankly, he has never been sold on Harris before at all. And he just told me his social media world is mostly super excited she’s in, and were not excited about Biden at all. He thinks Biden has been a great not good president but that he didn’t have four years left in him. So that’s my anecdata from the youths.
Bupalos
@dc: I think in strict electoral terms, they’re right. If you’re just gaming out the election in a vacuum, you probably don’t take Kamala. To me she’s like a really promising AA pitcher you called up last year who struggled and had to be sent down, and you’re just kind of praying she is coming into her development window now when you really need her.
That said, she’s got serious strengths, and I’m a Guardians fan…and I’m used to seeing this gambit succeed big time and on the regular.
My thought about what she needs to do is bring her immense personal magnetism that shows up more when the lights are lower and the cameras are fewer and translate that into the spotlight. When she’s feeling confident and letting her personality flow, I think she’s completely irresistible. As in she will pull in undecideds. But she doesn’t move easily between the informal “we’re just talking here” vibe and the formal bullet points. Just watched her speech today though and she’s better than 2020. She had a great “can you believe they put this thing down on paper?” delivery talking about project 2025.
pika
@SiubhanDuinne: I commented the same a little bit up the page–I was really impressed
sab
Trump utterly ignores Secret Service advise while milking their budget for 7 1/2 years. Because the gun nuts are his nuts and they won’t ever hurt him.
When one of the gun nuts tries to hurt him and instead kills another Trump nut, it is the Secret Service at fault. This would only work if irt was a woman in charge. And it was.
Everything Trump touches dies, even if you didn’t volunteer to be in his orbit.
Citizen Alan
@KatKapCC: I don’t think I’ve ever heard Shitgibbon laugh. I can’t remember many occasions when a GOP pol has laughed on camera. (Desantis’s grotesque parody of a laugh doesn’t count.) Most of the MAGAs only seem to laugh when someone else is suffering, but I can’t recall Trump ever laughing at all. He has to remind himself to show his teeth when he smiles because his default facial expression is a contemptuous smirk.
Anyway
@SiubhanDuinne:
She was awesome – the crowd was stoked. This is only going to get bigger and better. Plus as Kay said MVP can do 3-4 of these a day. No way lazy Dotard can keep up. I can see local teevee and radio putting up clips of these which all help with the buzz.
Martin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Here’s my proposal – for every bullet you buy, you have to donate a pint of blood. It’s a self-regulating policy, and it solves the inevitable downstream problem of buying that bullet.
MisterForkbeard
@Matt McIrvin: I have cousins and other politically left friends from California that insist she’s uniquely terrible as an AG and that she’s only ever “performative” whenever she does anything nice.
The stats I see are all pretty explainable garbage. “Did you know that 1800 people were prosecuted for Marijuana while she was AG” is a real hoot – 1800 in the entire state while it was still illegal? Wow.
cain
@Joseph Patrick Lurker:
That is definitely going to be unifying. We can always all focus on our hate for the NYT.
sab
@Princess: My 40 year old stepkids are excited. Before they were planning to trudge to the polls.
The adopted one (Arab ancestry, Syrian not Palestinian) is over the roof. She was not going to vote for Biden.
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
Must have been a temporary thing. I just successfully followed 3 of her accounts on the bird-poop site.
I expect that Mr. Musk will attempt to selectively deboost accounts based on whether some machine learning system classifies them as liberal (or not). Have not seen any evidence for this yet, though.
sab
@MisterForkbeard: My RWNJ never Trump brother doesn’t like her either. ” She wasn’t hard enough on the banks in 2008.”
Yes but..Y’all changed the rules so she and her people didn’t have a legal leg to stand on.
Suzanne
@Princess: Your anecdata about the kids matches mine and that of others’ kids I know. The energy they have for her right now is unreal.
SatanicPanic
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve heard them from people- she’s an empty suit being the big one. But I hear that same about Newsom and he doesn’t seem to have any trouble winning elections. I think people just don’t want to be heard saying they like a politician.
Matt McIrvin
@MisterForkbeard: It’s that kind of stuff, yeah.
Leto
@Bill Arnold:
Has that case been reversed since Cannon tossed it? Has the 11th removed her? That case is dead until it’s out of her hands. There are others though, so gotta keep that work up.
cain
@KatKapCC: We need pudding boots’s laugh to be projected everywhere.
sab
@sab: Oops: advice not advise.
brantl
@Bill K: So, they never even swept the rooftops for firearms? Jumping Jesus, that’s freaking lame. And the local cops spotted the guy, and the SS doesn’t have a way for the local cops to contact them ASAP? What shit.
Kay
@Anyway:
“Trump’s extreme abortion ban” is good. Complete, and she can say it over and over. Also- “reproductive freedom” – we needed a consistent way to talk about this and “freedom” was what carried the day in all those abortion referendums. It appeals to even Right leaning women.
lamh47
@OzarkHillbilly: For me, I don’t have a problem with Project Lincoln getting involved I welcome it.
I just also do not trust that if they are somehow able to scrub the Chump/MAGA stain from the GOP that they won’t be right back in their “own the Libs” “Democrat” party bullshit.
Also, I 100% don’t want to hear a bunch of not former GOP, but truly just “Never Trumpers” dare to advise the Dem party what to do when you know as soon as their is some semblance of order in their own party, they’ll be jumping ship and throwing out that playbook.
So hey, I thank them for using their resources to take out Chump from their side, but otherwise…bleh.
Captain C
@Joseph Patrick Lurker:
A collection of Juicers has met and decided that the FTFNYT is staffed by a bunch of losers, assholes, and brownie hounds.
Lochnessmom
@Bill Arnold: the one thing I would be interested in is if TCFG gets no convention bounce nor “attempted assassination” bounce. I would think that would be worrying to the other side.
Me, I think polls are relatively useless as being predictive at all until at least after both conventions. They are snapshots of now, not working crystal balls, after all.
Wapiti
Then it’ll simply be gundamentalists going to someplace like KS to buy TAX FREE!!!!!!!! ammo.
Treat it like a sales tax. If you buy something from out of state, then bring it home, you owe a use tax on it. (that is, you owe your state the same amount of tax). Or treat it like liquor; in Washington, you can bring a limit amount of liquor in from out of state.
Nelle
@Martin:May I share this?
Bill Arnold
@Leto:
I am assuming that that case isn’t dead and that the 11th will make chopped meat of Cannon’s arguments; the Supreme Court may hear it, but if Trump is out of power they might not care to obstruct justice just for an already-convicted-felon ex-President.
sabthem tonight. Thanks
Who cleared that nym?
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
Awesome! Kamala has a great laugh.
MagdaInBlack
(nice Bighead Todd reference in the post title, mistermix)
Lochnessmom
@Princess: I polled my kids (ranging from 35 to 19) and they are all more enthused for Harris than they were for Biden. I get the feeling the would have grudgingly voted for Biden anyway) Youngest has flirted with being one of the “Genocide Joe” types, but he is still a bit green and naive and susceptible to passionate far left sloganeering. He knows to vote Democratic tho.
Matt McIrvin
@Lochnessmom: Looks to me like Trump did get a bounce from all of those events but it was tiny, maybe 1%–he was ahead of Biden in most national polls regardless:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/
(I noticed 538 has suspended their prediction machine for the time being.)
SomeRandomGuy
And right then and there, during 2016, I did that very thing, and realized, I actually liked her.
“Why don’t you like Clinton?”
(mumble mumble mumble)
“Well… dayum, that is a *pitiful* reason to dislike someone, so learn about her.” Soon, I was enthusiastic for her.And the more enthusiastic I got, the more I despised the lies of Republicans. The worst part is, they’ll smear good people, and laugh when they succeed. It’s bad enough to defraud people, by pretending to be good – they actually want to harm people who do the right thing… the moment they get in the way.
Lochnessmom
@Matt McIrvin: I have pretty studiously avoided polling so far for my own mental health. I tend to get obsessive about gathering information, so it’s easy for me to get sucked in. I figure I’ll be brave enough next week.
lurker
@Bill Arnold: @Leto:
Special counsel filed a notice of appeal in that case (classified documents) last week. That is the first step in the appeal. This is a long road. If the special counsel requests the case be expedited and if the 11th circuit expedites it, (both big ifs) then it would be a medium-length road. There will be briefs to be filed, likely before the election, but not much else.
The case is essentially done for the election period, but should come back post-election in some form.
cain
@Princess: If the kids are gonna show up – then we’ve done good. But I’m still gonna smack Schiff.
Expletive Deleted
She was great! I suspect that written down you’d have a hard time telling the bulk of from a Biden speech – but that makes sense, and the energy and delivery is going to make people hear it the way they don’t anymore with him.
Second observation, somewhat related: she is managing to run as both an incumbent and an agent of change, which is pretty genius.
CaseyL
Another thing I’ve noticed about the Harris campaign so far: It’s joyous.
Energetic, yes.
But also happy.
Another huge contrast to the Trump Apocalypse Tour.
Something even Low Info Seldom Voters might notice.
Jackie
@pika: I just read that Faux cut Harris off as soon as she started attacking TCFG. CNN, MSNBC and Newsmax carried her full speech. I hope the majority of Faux’s viewers immediately switched to another network to continue watching MVP/Presumptive Presidential Candidate Harris’ speech!
Expletive Deleted
@CaseyL: Yes, very much this.
Captain C
@Leto: Officially appealed as of Monday. Any lawyer types here know if the 11th can boot her for obvious corruption and incompetence without Jack Smith requesting it?
eclare
@CaseyL:
Absolutely. No screaming of grievances. I asked in another thread after seeing a clip of Stephen Miller yelling on a show, do no RWNJ’s have inside voices?
Matt McIrvin
@Lochnessmom: The approval/favorability polls are interesting if you have a strong stomach. Neither Biden nor Harris nor Trump has been polling particularly well, and Harris’s “disapprove” is still a hair over 50%. But it’s been trending down while Biden’s trends up. All this is, of course, from prior to Biden dropping out. I also don’t see any significant sympathy boost for Trump there.
lurker
@Captain C: the court (11th circuit) could boot her without a request, but that is pretty unlikely. It is somewhat unlikely they would boot her even if Smith requests it. The courts tend to be very slow to boot a judge from a case, even when it seems obvious that the judge is a problem.
Jackie
@Matt McIrvin: Just heard a national HARRIS vs TCFG poll stating HARRIS up by 2 over TCFG. Didn’t catch the poll name, but apparently it’s the first poll released since Harris announced.😊
brantl
@MisterForkbeard: This is one of my pet beefs: when is the goddam medial going to start putting statistics in context? What’s the average for pot convictions in other states? What’s the average in arrests per thousand people in all states? This shit where they quote a raw statistic, with no context, is horseshit
The news media needs to start bird-dogging this crap, and actually do their jobs as verifiers, which should be half of what they do. 1/2 is to report the facts, the 2nd half is to verify whether anybody working as a spokesperson is telling the truth.
Betty
@Mai Naem mobile: August 20 is the Senate pay day. Just sayin’.
MisterForkbeard
@Jackie: Reuters/Ipsos had Harris up by 2 in a 2-way match, and up… 4 or 5 in a 3-way match.
NPR just ran a poll that had Harris a single point behind, if I remember right.
MisterForkbeard
@brantl: No kidding. I saw a “fact correction” on twitter when Kamala had posted that no one should be in jail for weed, with a “BUT LOOK, some people went to jail while she was AG! Hypocrite!”
Come on, you dumb fucks. Not to mention that it was a decade ago, and that the Biden/Harris admin has been pretty great on marijuana in general.
Matt McIrvin
@Jackie: I think there have been others with similar results.
Of course, national polls don’t mean that much, but it’s refreshing to see some positive-looking results for once. I’ve been basically avoiding polling up to now because I knew it was all dire, especially the swing-state stuff (though those polls are still sparse on the ground).
columbusqueen
My understanding is that Bob M. needs to keep the insurance as long as possible because of the wife’s breast cancer.
Also, rumor has it that Gov. Murphy is considering his wife Tammy as the placeholder. I sure as hell hope not; it needs to be Kim.
MisterForkbeard
@Matt McIrvin: People in Trump’s campaign were warning that media that Kamala would get in front of Trump in the polls and that it was a “temporary but potentially long-lasting bump” before Trump overtakes her
It’s been a weird day, what can I say
Mai Naem mobile
@Betty: guess the gold bar guy might care about the paycheck day.
Geminid
@Mai Naem mobile: Yes, Menendez had a substantial savings account until the FBI made a large withdrawal.
Skippy-san
LGM raised a great point:
”
However, a couple of mitigating factors:
(1) The kind of outdoor Off Brand Triumph of the Will rallies Trump favors are much, much harder to secure completely than indoor events, as this incident illustrates.
(2) If your political career consists of whipping people into a violent frenzy about the total corruption of the entire system, in a nation with 300 million guns, many of them high-powered rifles, floating around, there’s a certain ironic predictability in one of those unhinged consumers of the rhetoric you’ve done so much to nurture eventually trying to blow your own head off.”
Mai Naem mobile
@Chris Johnson: i did see the AOC clip. She actually made a good point instead of politicizing anything. I remember the 5,213,142th scandal in TFG’s term was the Secret Service training supervisor taking a LOA to work for the TFG campaign. I don’t remember the details but it was just like a WTF situation. Carol Loennig had a book out about the problems with the secret service. Things might have been broken before but TFG came in and shittified stuff further.
Mai Naem mobile
@Anonymous At Work: it might also be that the Dems, they’ are a learning. Menendez’newscycle will be 5 mins before it gets taken over by the convention but Menendez didn’t become a blue state senator by not being shrewd mofo.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@SomeRandomGuy: I’ve heard that the Secret Service has tried to get Trump to move away from open-air venues because they are harder to secure, but they’re up against both Trump’s tight-fistedness and the reluctance of many venues to rent to him, fearing they’ll be stiffed.
SomeRandomGuy
@CaseyL: Well, if you were just handed the dream of just about every politician, unexpectedly, I bet you’d be pretty happy (yes, mixed with “survivors guilt,” of some form, I’m sure), too, and if she can use that, it’s a good thing.
Um. Full disclosure: I’m a bit stoned. But I think I’ve seen a lot more joy from folks from India and Pakistan than from folks who grew up in America.
It’s like, they evoke joy, and we (guys like me, and maybe others who grew up in America) are more taught to expect joy.
It wouldn’t surprise me if that wouldn’t be an amazing shock to the spirit of – what’s that? Someone in the audience is saying, “he’s babbling about feelings again!?!” :-) Of course he is! – shock to the spirit of the electorate, from fear, and seemingly unending despair (which you call the end of the world, and I call “Tuesd… it’s tuesday? Yeah, I call that Tuesday”), to hope, and, yes, joy.
It would be like waking up to a tremendous orgasm (be it strong, long lived, joyful, affectionate, etc.) after a long, undesired, drought. It would be like “OMG I forgot what feeling good felt like!”
Heh. So did I, friend. So did I. And I’m glad and relieved you remembered, and got a chance to experience it.
SomeRandomGuy
@brantl: I can give you the brief, unsatisfying answers.
For some reason – hopefully not just revenue maximization – newsrooms try to balance reporting between Ds and Rs in ways that don’t skew the election horse race, like, e.g., handing the election to TFG, by covering him as a curiosity 24×7.
They feel they have to allow campaigns fact check their opponents, but this disadvantages any candidate with any shame whatsoever, because the Republican candidate will insist that Democratic candidate shares slops with the hog the Democrat has sex with. No word on the hog’s party affiliation, or actual *existence*, at this time…
People called Biden’s mask mandate – “get tested once a week” – was draconian. Well, words mean something; journalists are supposed to know that, so they should put those words in context, like “Senator Fartballoon called Joe Biden’s demand that all workers, who refuse to be vaccinated, be tested weekly a ‘draconian’ measure. When pressed on what was so draconian about a weekly test schedule, he puffed out some hot air about workers rights and an unrelated law regarding medical privacy.”
Also, journalists all know that Republicans are constantly saying it’s no crime to lie to a journalist, so, since it’s no crime, you have to burn the liars. They won’t be your source any longer? And lie to you again? You ain’t just here for the huntin’, are you lad?
Sorry. Any one of us could complain forever. At least if you understand it – they’re giving free advertising, and never burning the liars, you see how *much* of it happens.
Well, Democrats can’t just lie; we have shame, we care about the survival of this country and democracy, we actual care about the Constitution, not the one with THAT CONVICTED FELON FORMER GUY’S UGLY-ASS SHARPIE SIGNATURE on it. Can I get amen? No, no, no callback, just the loan of two guys, because that’s a… two guys=men…? I’ll just escape through the trap door.
brantl
@SomeRandomGuy: I don’t think that they’re abstaining from fact-checking to keep up the horserace aspects, I think they have decided that two things happen when they fact-check
It costs them money to fact-check, and if they don’t, it’s cheaper.
If they did fact-check, they would alienate some of their viewers and advertisers, and would loose advertising money. (With partisan self-selection of viewers, this doesn’t happen much anymore, except the advertisers.)
But this completely ruins what was once the media’s real usefulness, It turned out that if you weren’t hopelessly bigoted, eventually you became more liberal. (Facts have a notoriously liberal slant – hat tip, Steven Colbert.)
Remember when the right used to villianize Head Start? In short order, doing that makes you look like a monster, next to pictures of happy well-adjusted Head Start kids, as well as the fact that each dollar on Head Start saved five dollars on prisons. I only heard that figure touted a few times on the national news, but it was enough.
The Lodger
@dmsilev: Unless Phil Murphy gives in to Jersey Gov – Asshole tradition and names his wife to the Senate seat.
naijalola
Late to this post… We need him right now, but Andy Kim will get what’s coming to him in 2029.
SomeRandomGuy
@brantl: It’s the latter part, the loss of readership, that’s killing the country.
People say that Fox News does do some good journalism, but, because they do, we should hold them to a higher expectation. If they were the NY Post or the National Enquirer, we wouldn’t expect them to tell the truth.
And you can’t tell your readers and viewers the truth, if you won’t admit to bad news for Republicans. I mean, seriously, try to think of any 90s era Republican endorsing TFG, *AFTER* hearing that he had nuclear secrets stored carelessly at MAL.
Well, now, there is a literal elephant in the room, and no one is talking about it, because they know if they mention the elephant, they’ll lose readership.
Do you know where that metaphor comes from? Dysfunctional families. Legend has it, a child came up with the metaphor, “it’s like there’s an elephant in the living room, but no one talks about it.”
Well, that’s where we are as a society. And that means we are in an abusive relationship. But we can’t leave, so we have to defeat the abuser. Trouble is, the abuser is popular and so is the abuse.
Which is why I’ve been hoping that the Rs face the kind of blow-out loss they deserve, with Trump barely getting 43% of the vote, and Harris cracking 50%. It’s our only hope. If Trump wins and the Rs control the Senate, they’ll try to expand the SCROTUS by at least two, and likely four. (Huh? Oh, SCOTUS you know. R=Republicans.) That’ll likely be game over for America.