Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

T R E 4 5 O N

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Not all heroes wear capes.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

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

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

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Solidarity!

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I love this ad so much.  That is all.

The right person at the right time.  We seem to have several of those, and we need every single one in this fight.

If anyone finds this on YouTube, let me know.  (Thanks, Another Scott!)  He gets to the part where the ad starts at around minute 16.

Open thread.

Totally open, I just wanted to share the awesome ad!

 

Solidarity!Post + Comments (107)

War for Ukraine Day 923: Russian Strategic Aviation Is Up, Russian Missiles Are Inbound!

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

A quick housekeeping note: Rosie did great at her chemo treatment today. She’s got three more to go with two weeks in between them. Thank you all for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

It is 8:00 PM EDT/3:00 AM local time in Ukraine and Russian Tu-95s are airborne, air raid alerts are up over all of northern Ukraine except for Volyn Oblast, and air raid alerts are starting to go up in the other oblasts. It is likely that another Russian missile attack is underway.

Air raid alert map of Ukraine. All of Ukraine's northern oblasts (regions), Crimea, and Khmelnytskyi Oblast are colored red to indicate the air raid alerts

The Russians had already run the butcher’s bill way up in Poltava this morning.

My deepest condolences to the families of those killed and injured in the russian missile attack on Poltava. This is a shocking tragedy for the whole Ukraine. The enemy hit an educational institution and a hospital. We already know about 47 dead and 206 wounded. Russia is taking away our most valuable thing – lives. We will never forget this. Eternal memory.

The Kyiv Independent has the details:

Editor’s note: The story is being updated.

Russian forces launched two ballistic missiles against the city of Poltava on Sept. 3, killing at least 51 and injuring over 271 people, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The Military Institute of Communications and a neighboring medical facility were hit in the attack. The building of the educational institution was partially destroyed, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The time interval between the alarm and the arrival of the deadly missiles was so short that it caught people during an evacuation to the bomb shelter,” the Defense Ministry said.

Many people remain trapped under the rubble, while rescuers and medics continue to work at the scene. As of around 2 p.m. local time, the emergency services had rescued 25 people, 11 of whom were retrieved from the rubble, according to the ministry’s statement.

“We express our sincere condolences to the families of the victims. This tragedy is yet another evidence of the enemy’s cunning, which stops at no crime to try to intimidate Ukrainians,” the ministry said.

“We urge everyone to remain calm and trust only official sources of information. Any speculation on this tragedy is unacceptable,” the ministry added.

There were no ceremonies or other events near the military institute at the time of the Russian attack, Dmytro Lazutkin, Defense Ministry spokesperson, said on national television, refuting such unofficial claims.

According to the Defense Ministry, students were studying, and then followed to the shelter after an air raid alert went off, Lazutkin added.

Zelensky said he had instructed an operational investigation into the circumstances of the attack on Poltava. Ukraine’s Ground Forces is conducting an investigation to determine “whether enough was done to protect the lives and health of the soldiers at the facility,” the military said.

Poltava is a city of around 300,000, located in Poltava Oblast in central Ukraine. The city is situated around 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border with Russia, and 230 kilometers (143 miles) from the eastern front.

The city and surrounding region are regular targets of Russian drone and missile attacks.

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

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Tuesday Night Open Thread

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Tuesday Night Open Thread 3

First things first- big day at the Ohio County Democratic HQ, as the grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony was at 5:30. I stopped by briefly and said hi to some of the peeps and met some of the newer candidates including a young fellow named Dave Cantrell, a good union guy and electrician with the local IBEW, who is running to replace the GOP rubber stamp that is Jimmy Willis, the 20 something kid that was elected a few years back for the sole reason he had a Trump sticker on his pickemup truck. So that was nice. Are you all getting involved in your local races because that is where much of the quality of life issues in your area can be improved. Very important.

***

In other news, I took a fall today at around 4 pm. Was walking out of a business in Wheeling I had only been in once before, and they have one of those doors where there is a step down to the street and I didn’t know it and walked out and fell. Managed to both get my arms to my side and rotate so I did not hit my head, but landed square on my reconstructed shoulder and it is sore as fuck. Don’t think there is any structural (bone) damage, but I know I messed up some ligaments and tendons. I’m rotating bags of frozen peas on it right now and if it feels like it needs to be looked at in a couple of days I will go.

God damnit. I was so fucking close to being able to do freestyle and was going to start lifting. Fingers crossed this is just bruising. One side benefit of breaking damned near every bone in your body is I knew immediately that I had not broken anything. I just “know” what a bone breaking feels and sounds like.

The least surprising thing about this is that not one person in the store I was in came out to check on me, or the people in businesses next door or across the street. But you know who did? The homeless couple sitting on a stoop about 30 yards away. Got up and immediately raced over to me, leaving their backpacks and possession alone to come to my aid. Asked if I was ok and needed help, asked if I hit my head, etc. Put that in your fucking NIMBY housing construction pipe and smoke it.

In other news, Rosie is still really pissy and not happy to be here, but enough time has passed that it is time for her to go to the vet. I didn’t want her to go through all that trauma and then immediately take her to the vet, so she is due. Plus, the all clear is critical to introducing her to the other cats. I get paid on Friday so I am taking her then.

***

In some exciting news, we about have the Balloon Juice store functional again, and we are planning to have some new election swag in the store in the next few days. This has been no easy feat and I want to thank the graphic designer (they can out themselves) and the person who has been doing the calendar for several years and knows the CafePress system, as well as Watergirl. A lot of work goes on behind the scenes here and you already know about the Wizard being a complete incompetent (I’m talking about me and making a Wizard of Oz reference, Baud).

At any rate, we have two different items that are going to be available as yard signs, car magnets, and stickers. They say, respectively:

“Woke not Weird: Harris/Walz 2024”

And a play on the cat ladies thing but inclusive for all cat lovers, “a picture of Tunch or Steve for Harris/Walz 2024”

Watergirl is sending me the most up to date images and I will post them when I get them.

I have been making all of them mental I am so excited to get these in the store and out there- I’ve been champing at the bit hard. I want to retake the term woke like they did with queer, and I want lots of stuff visible to help get out the vote. Plus, all proceeds go to our pet rescue partners!

One final thing- don’t forget to get your copy and read Steve Benen’s book, “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past”– we’re still on for a zoom book club sometime in mid October and I would love a good turnout!

Time for a new bag of frozen peas.

DRAFT IMAGES – but you get the idea!

Tunch bumper sticker (car magnets & yard signs soon, just no images to share yet)

Steve bumper stickers  (DarkBrandon and regular Steve are available)Car magnets available in Dark Brandon and regular.Steve yard signs in Dark Brandon and regular.

Woke not weird in peace sign, pride, and raised fist.  (raised fist not shown)

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Excellent Read: The kleptocrats aren’t just stealing money. They’re stealing democracy

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It’s hard to extract Anne Applebaum’s articles, because she doesn’t waste words. I didn’t hit a Financial Times paywall when I opened this; hope it works for the rest of you:

Donald Trump opened Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in 1983 and occupied the penthouse himself. The building was intended to advertise its owner’s wealth, and also to attract other rich tenants — including, ironically, the very secretive rich. Trump would sell 43 condos in Manhattan’s flashiest building to shell companies based in jurisdictions such as Panama, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands, which conceal corporate records. He sold another six condos, for cash, to corporations based in Delaware, which has historically had the least transparent company laws in the US.

Not that this was anything exceptional: in the four decades that followed, more than a fifth of the sales in Trump-owned and Trump-licensed buildings, more than 1,300 properties, were made to anonymously owned shell companies, for cash, without a mortgage, which meant the purchasers did not have to have any uncomfortable conversations with lenders.

Some of those companies sold those condos again, very quickly, at much higher prices or at much lower prices — usually a sign that money laundering might have been the actual purpose of the purchase. A Trump-licensed building in Florida sold a two-bedroom condo to a shell company on August 12 2010, for example, for $956,768. That shell company sold the condo to another shell company, at a heavy loss, for $525,000 that same day.

All of these transactions were legal and there’s no evidence to suggest that Trump or his companies knew of or were complicit in money laundering schemes. They have been reported and described many times. The examples cited above come from a BuzzFeed investigation published six years ago, in 2018, but it wasn’t the only one. A Financial Times investigation in that same year also found that Russian, Kazakh and other post-Soviet oligarchs had probably been laundering money through Trump-licensed properties…

In the years since Trump’s 2016 election, a lot has been written about his autocratic instincts, about his scorn for ethical norms and about his attempt to retain power after losing the 2020 election. But as illustrated by the story of his real estate company’s reliance on dubious shell companies, Trump was already operating in an alternate ethical universe long before he became president, a world where the rules that most ordinary people live by are easily broken.

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Blue Wave? How About a Silver Wave?

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It’s my opinion that the likely voters polling is off because the powers that be haven’t adjusted their model to reflect the last month or so.  I think they are missing the new “youngs”, the new “olds”, and the new “formerly engaged”.

So I wasn’t at all surprised to see this article from The Rolling Stone.

Will a Silver Wave Help Elect Kamala Harris?

Polls suggest Donald Trump can’t count on older voters this November. Here’s why.
by Bill McKibben

LET’S SAY YOU were going to your high school prom in the spring of 1969, and you turned on the (probably AM) radio in your Mustang on the way to the school cafeteria — the Number One song in America? Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In. Fast forward 55 years, and you’re 73, right about the median age for surviving baby boomers. Which means, as we start casting votes next month, you’re going to play a disproportionate role in the outcome of the coming election. That’s because candidates have to work hard to lure younger voters to the polls, but not so with the old, who have the habit of democracy most strongly ingrained. There’s no known way to stop old people from voting.

Donald Trump might be inclined to think that’s good news for him — that as the oldest man ever to win a presidential nomination and one whose campaign is rooted in nostalgic appeals to past greatness, he should harvest most of those votes from the boomers and the Silent Generation. After all, he won those categories in 2020, though by reduced margins from 2016. But not so fast this time — remember that tune from Hair on the radio. We’re turning out more older voters all the time — about 10,000 people a day pass the 65-year mark. And increasingly, they’re starting to make that caricature — older voters are more conservative — irrelevant. Older voters come from the past — but the past they come from is changing. Which means new polling indicates that something like a silver wave may be building as November approaches.

Consider, for instance, the Fairleigh Dickinson poll last week that found the biggest lead yet for Kamala Harris — a seven-point national edge that came largely from her 16-point lead among people over the age of 65. On Thursday, a Suffolk University poll for USA Today found Harris leading Trump 53-42 among voters over 60 — her largest vote share of any demographic. And it’s the same in many of the swing states: A New York Times/Siena College poll showed her with a modest lead among older voters in Arizona — and there are a lot of older voters in Arizona. In North Carolina, another swing state crowded with retirees, she’s up by 10 points among older voters. In Maine, statistically the oldest state in the union, Harris led by 20 points among older voters. In Vermont, the second-oldest state, 61 percent of older voters thought Trump’s mental and physical health were “very poor,” higher than any other group. (Which is worth thinking about — if anyone’s an expert on gauging decline, it’s those of us who see it around us regularly, and perhaps sense it in ourselves).

h/t Mousebumples

How about you guys?  Is anyone surprised by this?

Open thread.

 

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Yes They Would Do This

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Yes They Would Do This

Delete Facebook:

In a pitch deck to prospective customers, one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users’ smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly.

As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called “Active Listening” software uses artificial intelligence to “capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations.”

“Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers,” the deck continues.

In the same slideshow, CMG counted Facebook, Google, and Amazon as clients, though it didn’t specify whether they were involved in the “Active Listening” service. After 404 reached out to Google about its partnership, the tech giant removed the media group from the site for its “Partners Program.”

A Meta spokesperson also pushed back in a statement, saying that CMG was a general partner, not a partner in the program advertised in the deck.

“Meta does not use your phone’s microphone for ads and we’ve been public about this for years,” the statement read. “We are reaching out to CMG to get them to clarify that their program is not based on Meta data.”

I use Facebook with an fake identity, and I don’t have it on my phone.  My wife has it on her phone, and she swears that she gets ads pushed to her based on things she’s said.  Example:  last night we were chatting about a possible cruise outing and a couple of minutes later, she got a cruise ad relevant to what she was talking about and relevant to our location in her Facebook feed.

Now this could just be a coincidence, but I’m sure not going to trust Zuck’s word on this shit.  I hope this is one of Lina Khan’s next priorities at the FTC — she’s already doing a great job there.

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What Does it Mean to Fight? Some Numbers

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I unintentionally started a series of posts on what it means to fight by asking questions about the Colin Allred campaign in Texas (post 1) and the Tim Ryan campaign in Ohio (post 2).  I was cleaning out my feed reader and found two posts about Texas that are deep dives into what it takes to win in that state and, more importantly, how we judge progress even if we lose there.

First, from the people that run the LBJ account on Twitter, who are a bunch of historians as far as I can tell,  a summary of how they would judge “success” for Allred:

THE STANDARD, AGAIN: Beto won Harris by 15.5. He won Ft. Bend by 12. He won Tarrant by less than one. He lost Collin by 6. He lost Denton by 8. He won Williamson by 2.5. Beto won Hays by 15.

THE TARGETS: And here, we’ll set the target margins based on the minimum for what a Democratic statewide victory would look like in Texas. In a cycle a Democrat won in Texas — Harris would be +30. Fort Bend +20. Tarrant, Collin and Denton in the +5-7 range. Williamson +10. Hays +20. Those are the numbers Allred should be reaching for. Those are numbers, for the most part, I don’t expect Allred to reach. Anything between the numbers Beto put up and the targets of where those numbers need to be is measurable progress.

WHY I HAVEN’T DISCUSSED THE RGV: Because, while it’s not unimportant, it isn’t and shouldn’t be the central focus of the Democratic strategy here. The field of battle is in the suburbs. It shouldn’t be the focus of Hispanic voting outreach either. Quickly — The entire RGV is 1.3 million people. Harris County has 2 million Hispanic people. The choice isn’t Hispanic outreach or the suburbs. The key is Hispanic outreach in the suburbs.

If the county names are confusing, read the whole thing, because they explain both the location of the counties and how they have evolved over the years.  “RGV” is the Rio Grande Valley, a heavily Latino area which everyone in Democratic politics was concerned about when it swung towards Republicans in 2020.  Over at Split Ticket, a couple of the data nerds have mined as much as they can from RGV voting statistics, and have an interesting theory tying the Sanders primary vote to the Trump general election vote:

While it’s true Democratic primary voters are not representative of all general election voters, the sheer correlational strength suggests there is at least some relationship between Trump’s success in Latino communities with economic populism. Additionally, because most Latinos identify as Democrats (44–25%), heavily-Latino areas have much more overlap between their Democratic primary and general electorates. Even if it was not pro-Sanders Latino Democrats who shifted towards Trump, it was their neighbors and family members. These voters live in the same communities and face the same economic realities, and were subsequently attracted to both economically populist candidates.

Looking ahead to 2024, a campaign which wishes to be successful among these voters must have a strong, populist economic plank. Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign appears to be starting to do just that. Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson notes that Harris could be climbing in the polls because she is regaining trust that President Joe Biden lost on handling the economy while simultaneously reviving Latino support that Biden had lost.

Beyond the 2024 election, the growing “nonwhite populism” could transform American partisan politics. If Democrats want to contest increasingly-Latino Texas, they should consider Sanders’ success in Latino areas when forming their economic legislative agenda and electoral platform. If someone seen as racially inflammatory as Trump can win record vote shares along the Mexican border, a Democratic Party seen as weak on working class economic issues could slow or even reverse Democrats’ ascent in Texas and flip the RGV’s 3 congressional districts — and swing Latino communities beyond Texas.

So, just to re-emphasize their point, it isn’t that a bunch of Democratic primary voters voted for Sanders and then decided to vote for Trump in the general, it’s that Sanders’ economic message resonated with them, and the same message delivered by Trump resonated with their lower-information friends and neighbors, who chose to vote for Trump, despite his racism.

Anyway, this is pretty Texas-specific, but Texas is a long-term Democratic project.  Allred might lose, but if he beats Beto’s numbers in the spots that the LBJ team identifies, his campaign did something right.  If the Trump gains in the RGV are reversed, Harris’ message is better for non-college-educated, non-white voters.   And, just like Republicans, we need to keep and nourish our long-term projects, and Texas is definitely a key one of those.

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