Reader ubu impersonator pitches for Cindy Axne in Iowa-03.
Axne is a totally viable candidate here in IA-3, and I think it could be a big year for Democrats in Iowa generally. The governor’s office is up for grabs this year, and I think there’s going to be a backlash against massive GOP overreach in the state legislature over the last two years—they’ve held the statehouse and the governor’s office, and have been working overtime bringing the religious fanaticism of Kansas and economic voodoo of Wisconsin to Iowa. It’s horrific.
How about some love for Cindy Axne, IA-3? She’s running against David Young, one of the weaseliest members of the GOP, in that he likes to cultivate a milquetoasty reasonability but votes with Trump even more often than Steve King (98% of the time to King’s 92%).
Axne cut her teeth in local politics by getting her school district to open all-day kindergarten to all students after discovering that the decision of whether a student got all-day or half-day was left up to a lottery. She’s worked in multiple capacities for the state of Iowa, runs a digital design firm, and is a tough, intelligent, and compassionate person—exactly what the district needs.
https://cindyaxneforcongress.com
Alain the site fixer
Sorry I bigfooted you temporarily. I pushed back my Open Thread and added a musical treat. Ciao
Amir Khalid
In The Rolling Stones’ songbook, that one rivals Under My Thumb and Yesterday’s Papers for misogyny.
rikyrah
Hope that they succeed in Iowa.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alain the site fixer:
I’m sorry you felt compelled to do that. Not sure I’m going to feel like rewriting my whole comment all over again later on :-(
Yutsano
“Give me a ping Vasily. One ping only please.”
Litlebritdifrnt
Just watched an interesting piece on MJ of all places where basically people just cannot afford to live in America. It was talking about the book Squeezed. That is why we left. We were statistically in the middle class income of over 75K per year and we couldn’t pay our bills every month. The mortgage kept going up, the groceries kept going up, the cable kept going up, the electricity kept going up. Everything kept increasing EXCEPT our wages and we just kept getting deeper and deeper into a hole that we could not dig ourselves out of. DH’s medical conditions meant that despite having good health insurance our unpaid deductibles and co-pays sat on our credit record like an anchor. He was misdiagnosed with a heart attack at the local hospital which resulted in a 34K helicopter flight to a heart specialist (who diagnosed no heart attack). He had health insurance and yet our unpaid medical bills were in the 100s of thousands. I didn’t have health insurance (my employer couldn’t afford the rising premiums) and my medical issues put us another 50K into debt.
So basically you work full time all your life until you die and end up with nothing. I couldn’t do that anymore and it was decided by the family that we needed to come home and stop digging ourselves into that hole.
efgoldman
Gabrieli (Canadian Brass and Friends) in the background. Cools the humours
Yutsano
@Litlebritdifrnt: On the one hand it’s good that you had a place you could go to. I’m glad you made the right move for yourselves.
But some of us are stuck with the U.S.. We’re gonna have to make this shit work somehow. Or else the wheels come off and a lot of us end up destitute or dead.
Mandalay
CNN just concluded an interview with a retired ICE agent with “Thank you for your service”.
If you made this stuff up it wouldn’t be believable.
James E Powell
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I don’t have anything like the medical bills you guys have, but I do understand the feeling that it is hard to afford life in America. The main reason I stay with the job I have is because I have health insurance, and HMO, with low co-pay. I’ve trained myself not to give a shit about money and things, but it’s still hard to make ends meet and almost impossible to accumulate an emergency fund for the ordinary and expected expenses that life produces. I call them flat tires.
Where do you live that it’s cheaper? I’d love to explore opportunities.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
Love Gabrieli. I may just do that myself.
rikyrah
When asked on Fox News about bringing the country together, Trump threatened to use his political base violently against Democrats. https://t.co/KehiDqYNTz pic.twitter.com/RTjL9s0rgf
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) July 1, 2018
Litlebritdifrnt
@Yutsano: Yes I know how incredibly lucky I am, I always had that bolt hole, but I stuck it out for 26 years until the US health “care” system was literally killing me. When we came home for Christmas 2015 my family said “that’s it, enough, you are going to die if you stay there” and my husband agreed. They hatched a plan that I was going to bolt in 2016, and I did, I literally got on a plane with one suitcase leaving behind 26 years of belongings and a home, a career, my pets, my gardens and everything I had ever cared about because I was going to die if I stayed there. It is by no means perfect in the UK, we are still dealing with immigration issues for DH but we are living a comfortable life with absolutely no issues about our health. DH’s prescriptions are free because he is over 60, we have no medical bills. We both see the doctor on a regular basis, we have all of the tests, and procedures required without any bills. We are living comfortably on DH’s megre retirement income. Again I know how incredibly lucky I am, I am sure HeleninEire would agree with me that we are the lucky ones.
Doug!
@Amir Khalid:
American girls want everything in the world that you can possibly imagine
Mandalay
The desperate are starting to get their knives out for Ocasio-Cortez…:
I think a countertop inspection is a vital next step. Did the commie spic bitch have granite countertops when she was a toddler? And why aren’t reporters asking her this?
zhena gogolia
@Alain the site fixer:
Reposting my comment from below (I also sent you an e-mail, I think): This is bad news. I’ve been patient because I thought you were aware of the problem and were working on it. My nym is only saved for about a half hour. (The autofill has my husband’s real name instead of my nym for some reason.) It’s discouraging me from even reading the blog. Also — the front page does not reflect the correct number of comments on a post. I have to go to the comments, scroll to the bottom, and refresh, and then I get the total comments. I am very disappointed to learn that these are not temporary problems that you’re working on.
zhena gogolia
@Alain the site fixer:
I hate to sound “whiny” because I know you’re not paid for this. But the blog was working perfectly for me before you started tinkering with it in response to complaints about slowness (I assume on people’s teeny-tiny phones). Now it’s extremely annoying.
Yutsano
@Litlebritdifrnt: The part that really kills me is that I could easily set up a business in just about any country with a sizable American expat population. There is always the need to either keep in compliance or catch up on American tax returns. And I can do that. Hell I’d learn the tax system of any country that would have me just to keep my work diverse. But it may have to wait until I get my MBA and a CPA with an International qualification.
Yutsano
@Mandalay: Aww how cute. An ex NYPD cop who writes for Newsmax now is scared of a small Puerto Rican lady who is all but a shoo-in to win. They’re adorable when they’re scared. Let’s keep them like that.
gwangung
@Yutsano: What’s REALLY funny (as I tweeted) is that in my profession, we constantly warn fundraisers not to rely on rich zip codes to go looking for potential donors. This is exactly the reason why: the house someone actually owns may be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars less than the other houses in the neighborhood. Not to mention that there is such a thing as being cash poor, with one big asset.
But the dude IS being dishonest.
Fair Economist
@Yutsano: Ocasio-Cortez is eloquent, gets along with both the center and the far left, and is very young (i.e., could easily be a player for 50 years – well past the point where the US becomes majority minority) . Of course they are afraid of her and they are gearing up the old Clinton smear machine against her.
Yutsano
@Fair Economist: @gwangung: Seriously. It’s like there can’t be this little thing called income diversity in neighbourhoods. The house that was showcased the other day as an attempt to smear her background was actually a rather humble looking abode, nothing like the McMansions the Italian jerk tweeted. They’re scared. I hope she scares them right into the Senate in a few years.
Jeffo
@rikyrah:
As things get worse for him, he’ll call for worse…with nothing else to rouse his base, he’s going to try and get them to be armed “poll watchers” this fall. Not a doubt in my mind.
Jeffo
@Mandalay: Some of the snarky comments on that tweet and similar are quite hysterical.
“I would have liked to support Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, but if she grew up in a house, forget it.”
“My understanding is that she has bought herself new clothes on a least one occasion: DONE”
LOL
Jeffo
mods, help plz – what’d I do to land in moderation?
Mandalay
@Fair Economist:
Well I’m not sure about the Clinton reference, but now the dirt diggers have discovered that she worked with someone in a restaurant last year who doesn’t like her. I’m sickened and heartbroken, and I should have realized that Ocasio-Cortez was too good to be true. She needs to stand down immediately. The person who doesn’t like her should run in her place.
And thank God that amazing investigative journalism like this is helping to keep our republic safe.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
Hoping you come back to see this.
Try a “hard” page refresh (Ctrl-F5 on Firefox and Chrome), which will also refresh the underlying caches. Alain tweaked something a couple of hours ago that seems to have fixed the nym thing.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
It worked automatically for me without me doing anything. I hope it lasts!
piratedan
@Mandalay: gotta love the countertop inspection brigade we have in the media, one young woman, wins an election by working the streets, showing up, and now they want to question just how “authentic” she is when we have entire MF party of hypocrites and treasonous sons of bitches, if anyone bothered to follow the money and actions…
there are times when I want to go the VGE route and gives these fuckers a shovel and tell them to go start digging the ditch from the Mississippi to the Colorado because at least that might end up being something useful.
WaterGirl
testing
WaterGirl
testing again.
stinger
I’m in Loebsack’s district, but I donated to Cindy Axne on Saturday. Also to Rod Blum’s opponent, the very young but very viable Abby Finkenauer. Plus a few other candidates from the Red to Blue website.
James E Powell
@piratedan:
And I’m sure you recall that the entire press/media considered Bush II – with his varying accents – to be authentic.