Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Fear and negativity are contagious, but so is courage!

The world has changed, and neither one recognizes it.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

How stupid are these people?

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

This blog will pay for itself.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Stand up, dammit!

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

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Wednesday Night Open Thread

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This is the time of year where I always spend a lot of time thinking about all the unfortunate people in the country who live in food deserts and have no access to fresh fruit. For dinner I had a bunch of cantaloupe that was so juicy and sweet I considered sticking my head in the shower to get the juice out of my beard, and almost did, but then realized I have two peaches in the fridge that are going to make me sticky again so just ride it out.

I honestly wonder how much lower obesity rates would be in the country if children were given GOOD fruit at an early age. And not canned bullshit or sad grocery store red delicious apples. Real fruit. I think were I an adult with children, when I introduced them to new fruits and vegetables I would only give them the absolute best iteration of said fruit/vegetable the first time they tried something. Like make sure they got the platonic ideal of a tomato, still warm from being in the sun, fresh off the vine. Seasoned well. Get it so that their first gut reaction to an item is “This is good.”

Such a wonderful time of year.

***

So Trump went to the National Association of Black Journalist and appeared on stage for what was supposed to be an hour long Q&A. Trump being Trump, and about three minutes in and his klan hood started to poke through his foundation and blush, and about 20 minutes later his handlers yanked him off the stage like the Unknown Comic at the Gong Show. And you have to watch the whole thing. It’s honestly worse than I am describing it here, with him raging at one of the panelists and then going on a tirade about Kamala not being black enough and only becoming black when it was politically expedient.

Wingnuts online are of course now looking at Kamala’s birth certificate and screaming it doesn’t say black anywhere (it doesn’t) and completely ignoring the fact that it does say Jamaican. At the forefront of this is none other than Lara Loomer, the lifesize colostomy bag who keeps looking for rock bottom and coming up empty.

At any rate, at first, before the event, I was with everyone else thinking it was a bad idea for them to give him the platform, but after the event, I realized the NABJ knew exactly what the fuck they were doing. They knew if you put a bunch of black women on stage with Donald Trump and subjected to him to any questions, he would lose his shit. And boy did he.

Those ladies set a trap and Trump barrel rolled into and wallered around in it like a pig in shit. Well done, NABJ!

***

I think I am gonna head downstairs and watch some idiot box before bed. Peace out.

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War for Ukraine Day 889: Tallyho!

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Quick housekeeping note: Rosie is doing excellently. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Let’s start with the good news:

The Associated Press has the details:

Ukraine has received the first F-16 fighter jets that it has sought for months to fight back against an onslaught of Russian missile strikes, a U.S. official confirmed to The Associated Press.

A Ukrainian lawmaker also confirmed Ukraine had received a small number of F-16 fighter jets. The two officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to speak on the subject publicly.

Ukraine has been pushing its Western allies for F-16s for Ukraine for months, saying they were critically needed to fight back against the onslaught of missiles Russia has fired against it. The F-16 is specialized in suppressing enemy air defenses. The West has hesitantly moved toward providing the jets, after previous concerns that arming Ukraine with advanced weaponry would further escalate the war with Russia.

The U.S. has also been training Ukrainian pilots on how to fly the jets and has already graduated the first group of pilots on its operation.

During his visit to Washington earlier this month for the NATO summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pressed NATO allies to remove all limitations on how Western-provided weapons are used, specifically allowing Ukraine to fire Western-provided weapons against an expanded set of Russian targets.

It’s not clear how many jets were provided in the first tranche or which nations provided them. The Ukrainian government has not confirmed receipt of the jets.

Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway — all NATO members — have committed to providing Ukraine with more than 60 planes. That number is dwarfed by the Russian jet fighter fleet, which is estimated to be around 10 times larger.

Ukraine needs at least 130 F-16 fighter jets to neutralize Russian air power, Ukrainian officials say. F-16s can fly up to twice the speed of sound and have a maximum range of more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers).

The bad news is that, as the AP reports, Ukraine needs at least 130 F-16 and only six were delivered today.

From The Times:

The first F-16 fighter jets have arrived in Ukraine, a year after they were pledged by four of the country’s Nato allies.

A source familiar with the matter told The Times that six jets had been supplied to Ukraine from the Netherlands, with more to follow shortly from Denmark. The Ukrainian air force declined to comment.

Kajsa Ollongren, the Dutch defence minister, had informed the Netherlands parliament that “delivery of the first aircraft will take place soon” in a letter dated July 1.

On June 16 President Zelensky had announced that Danish aircraft would start arriving “in the near future”.

A video posted on a Ukrainian Telegram channel on July 18 claimed to show an F-16 jet flying over the country, but could not be verified. However, on Wednesday Bloomberg reported the first delivery of a small number of warplanes, citing several anonymous sources.

Over the course of the next year, Kyiv is expected to receive about 20 of the aircraft, including further jets from Belgium and Norway, enough to form only a single squadron.

In the longer-term, the four countries have pledged some 80 of the ageing jets, but many are expected to be cannibalised for parts and may never fly. Ukraine has asked its allies for 300 warplanes as it battles an intense Russian bombing campaign that is crippling its critical infrastructure.

The airworthy planes will be equipped with updated radars from the manufacturer Lockheed Martin and modern US weaponry, including anti-radar missiles, laser-guided bombs and medium range air-to-air missiles.

For want of a nail.

As expected in last night’s update, Russia threw a large amount of drones and missiles at Ukraine.

100% russian drones destroyed!

Overnight, russia launched one of the most massive drone attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. 🇺🇦 defenders shot down 89/89 “Shahed” UAVs and 1 Kh-59 missile.

Thank you, air defenders, for your heroic work!
Thank you, partners, for strengthening Ukraine’s air defense!

More on all of this after the jump.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

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Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Positive News

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Vice President Kamala Harris reeled in a major endorsement Wednesday as the UAW International Executive Board voted to endorse her presidential bid.

“Our job in this election is to defeat Donald Trump and elect Kamala Harris to build on her proven track record of delivering for the working class,” stated UAW President Shawn Fain. “We stand at a crossroads in this country. We can put a billionaire back in office who stands against everything our union stands for, or we can elect Kamala Harris who will stand shoulder to shoulder with us in our war on corporate greed.”

The UAW had previously given a strong endorsement to President Joe Biden, but until Wednesday had not said whether that endorsement would extend to Harris, who has already secured the pledge of enough delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention to become the official nominee…

The union also announced that on Wednesday, Aug. 7, the day after Michigan’s primary election, Harris will campaign in Detroit to “rally with UAW members, Michigan voters, and thousands of working class people who are fighting for a better future.”…

In its release, the UAW noted Harris’ long record of supporting the labor movement including voting “against unfair trade deals that hurt the American worker like NAFTA and NAFTA 2.0, the USMCA.”

Harris had already lined up several key union endorsements prior to Wednesday’s UAW announcement, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the United Farm Workers (UFW).


 
Elsewhere… this is positively a(n unintentional) contribution to the Harris campaign…

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Hitlery, Shillary, etc.

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Hitlery, Shillary, etc.

Josh Marshall makes a good point:

But the key part that stands out to me is this: a huge amount of modern Republican campaigns are based on wearing down a Democratic politician over months and years in the right-wing echo chamber. We saw it with Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Kerry. It’s a well, well worn thing. But it takes time. There are seldom knock-out punches. It’s a slow osmotic process. And the critical part of it takes place at the nexus where what’s happening in the right wing echo chamber bleeds into and begins to shape mainstream media reporting.

Obviously we don’t know how this campaign is going to play out. Looks pretty good ten days in, but there’s ten times more days coming. But regardless of how it plays out, this blitz factor — something totally new and unexpected right as the true campaign starts — is clearly wreaking havoc not only with the Trump campaign but with the whole far-flung Republican political and media apparatus.

It’s a often-expressed view (by Democrats, including some who comment on this blog) that a black woman can’t win the presidency because look at what happened to Hillary Clinton.  I think this view doesn’t take Josh’s point into account, specifically, that by the time Hillary ran for President in 2016 the right wing noise machine had 26+ years to shit on her, to put her on bumper stickers, t-shirts, give her nicknames like the title of this post, etc.  Also, she had been splattered with some of the mud that was thrown at Bill.

Kamala doesn’t have this issue.  There may be attacks that hit home, but Republicans are starting with nothing in the tank to hit her with.  Since they have nothing, their natural instinct is to turn to unsubtle sexism, antisemitism and racism, which can backfire.  (e.g., she hates the Jewish people.  She’s married to one, assholes — even the AP got that right in the headline.)

I’m not saying it’s right, and I’m not trying to re-litigate the Clinton campaigns.  It’s just a key difference between 2024 and 2016.  Another key difference:  Trump was a new phenomenon in 2016.  In 2024 (at least the last 10 days), Democrats have learned how to fight back.  As noble as “when they go low, we go high” sounded, it isn’t an effective strategy.  Hillary’s campaign had nothing like the Kamala HQ social media account that is a firehose attacking Trump’s campaign, all while pushing positive, fun Kamala content.  That account goes low when it hits Trump, and it goes high when it posts about Kamala and her surrogates.  You can do both.  It’s a campaign, not an afternoon tea party.

Finally, and this is probably just short-term, I think the media took enough shit about their constant bitching about Biden’s age, while ignoring Trump, that they’re at least open to writing about the crazy shit he says and the insane policies he backs — as long as it’s served up to them on a platter by the Harris campaign.   Perhaps Biden’s age was the “butter emails” of this campaign, but there’s definitely some time left for them to fall back to old habits.

Edit:  This broke as I was writing the post.  No gas in the tank leads to racist slurs.

Former president Donald Trump said Wednesday that he had been aware of Vice President Harris’s Indian heritage but didn’t know she was Black “until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black.” “And now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump added, questioning Harris’s identity during a very combative question-and-answer session at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago. Harris was part of a historically Black sorority and has embraced her Black identity in many ways. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Trump’s comments “repulsive” and “insulting.”

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The value of blame

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Dr. Michael Shepherd has a really interesting dissertation chapter on the value of blame in US health politics and healthcare.  Presidentialism limits the ability of the American public to place blame on the right actors which means expecting policy wins with long and variable lags to be beneficial is a hope more than a plan while partisan opponents can cheaply inflict pain without getting blamed for their acts of agency.

The ACA was written to cover the vast majority of the <138% Federal Poverty Level population with Medicaid Expansion.  The federal government over the long run would pick up 90% of the costs and states would cover 10%.  The Supreme Court said that this was too coercive because of REASONS! 

So Medicaid Expansion became a voluntary program.  In 2014, 25 states expanded eligibility for Medicaid for January 1, 2014 enrollment. Since then 16 additional states have expanded Medicaid, including North Carolina in December 2023.  Concurrently, we have seen a tremendous number of rural hospitals closed.  The biggest predictive factor for rural hospital closure has been if the state had not yet expanded Medicaid.  States less likely to expand Medicaid are conservative dominated or have conservative in critical-path veto positions.  Institutions matter a lot here.

Dr. Shepherd asks a really simple question — who do voters blame when their local hospital closes?

More broadly, who do voters hold responsible for social and public policy failures that limit access to basic needs? These questions strike at the foundation of democratic government. How and which voters respond to government failure directly affects who holds power and how social problems are handled (Malhotra and Kuo, 2008). More theoretically, answers to these question have important implications for our understandings of political accountability and policy feedback in the US….

 I collect data on the location and timing of all rural hospital closings in the US from 2010 to 2018 and merge this information with data on county-level public health indicators, demographics, and economic outcomes. To hone in on whether voters hold local Republican politicians or the federal Democratic Party for local health conditions, I restrict my sample to only the rural hospital closures that occurred in states that did not expand Medicaid and with Republican state governments. With this sample, I create a matched set of the most similar rural communities affected and not affected by hospital closings during the period. After merging these matched county-level data with the geolocation of survey respondents from the 2010-2018 CCES waves, I analyze the impact of a hospital closing on the probability that individual respondents in affected areas vote for or against the incumbent president and for or against the Republican gubernatorial candidate in elections from 2012-2018.

Statistical analyses of county-level data reveal that hospital closings between 2012 and 2016 likely cost the Democratic Party 1% of the presidential vote in affected communities. Survey data imply that hospital closings led rural independents to vote against the incumbent Democratic party (or for Donald Trump) in the 2016 presidential election, suggesting that voters hold the president accountable for changes to health care environments. Consistent with classic retrospective and policy feedback accounts, rural independents responded to hospital closures in their communities by perceiving the economy to be worse off under President Obama, being less supportive of the Affordable Care Act, and ultimately voting for Donald Trump…

At the state level, I find no evidence that these rural hospital closings influence gubernatorial voting (or approval) for independent, Republican, or Democratic voters. Consistent with recent work on blame attribution errors in political accountability due to federalism (Malhotra and Kuo, 2008; Sances, 2017; Rogers, 2017), I show that independent voters respond to local hospital closings by blaming the president, but not by holding more proximate officials accountable.

State politicians making the active decision to not expand Medicaid eligibility is not connected in voters minds to hospital closures. Most politicians respond to pressure and incentives with a goal to minimize the number of pissed off at them likely voters. Since this connection is not made, Medicaid Expansion can be abstracted away.

Blame is critical to a healthy feedback loop to provide strong incentives of very pissed off voters to politicians to run from or actively seek to please.

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Wednesday Morning Open Thread: The Future’s *So* Bright…

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COVID-19 Coronavirus (& H5N1) Updates: July 31, 2024

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Flashback!

***********

 

I get the impression this is how polio was reported a hundred years ago: In the news whenever there was a spike, a constant low-level worry for the most vulnerable (back then, parents of young children), and a general assumption that it was no more to be influenced by human behavior than the weather or the tides…

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