Click for full size. This is from Lars Leber Photography (find his works here), he’s one of my favorite Colorado photographers. This was out on the Eastern Plains of the state. But this one…from my backyard:
Saturday Morning Open Thread: The News Never Stops
It is a legitimately great thing that we got Shawn Fain and Scranton Joe at the same time, if we get a second Biden term and anything resembling a legislative majority I think we can get some durable progress on labor issues https://t.co/H2Ggjp5spr
— vituperativeerb (@vituperativeerb) May 10, 2024
Eric Robert Stolz w/Laborers 113 wanted to see Biden in Racine after hearing criticism over how the president struggled to walk & talk. In person, Stolz saw no issues.
Biden made “good eye contact … I started clapping. He looked right at me. I was like, ‘what up, Joe?’” pic.twitter.com/rQ9CmdAf8X
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) May 8, 2024
By sharing the letter with Fox first, the Biden campaign ensures that Fox will cover it, and gets a positive link to amplify from a pro-Trump media outlet: https://t.co/IPXeKZr11w
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) May 9, 2024
If you wonder why #Gilead and #HandmaidsTale have been trending…
BREAKING: Potential Trump VP nominee, Katie Britt, announces a plan to create a database of pregnant women. This is a clear plan to help Trump monitor and potentially prosecute women who have abortions. Retweet so all Americans know how dangerous Trump is. pic.twitter.com/txErtX1QxX
— Biden’s Wins (@BidensWins) May 11, 2024
Saturday Morning Open Thread: The News Never StopsPost + Comments (213)
Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: The Secret Service Is Not Impressed By the RNC
NEW: In a tense meeting Thursday, Secret Service officials told GOP leaders they were not moving protesters farther from convention arena — as GOP is urging— and were not granting GOP a meeting with the agency’s director. Now, a pressure campaign is on. https://t.co/fA6jnU0pEs
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) May 10, 2024
The RNC demanded to Speak to the Manager, and the manager told them to cry harder… Yes, I originally posted about this a few days ago, but the latest schadenfreude is too tasty not to share. Per the Washington Post, “GOP escalates fight with Secret Service over convention protesters”:
Top Republican Party officials are escalating their fight with the Secret Service over the party’s convention in Milwaukee in July, demanding that the agency expand the security perimeter of the event so that protesters can be moved farther away from the arena where the main events will be held.
A cadre of senior GOP officials had a lengthy argument with Secret Service officials in Milwaukee on Thursday afternoon, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting. The Republicans repeatedly pushed the agency to widen the perimeter so that a prominent city park about a quarter-mile from the arena could not be used by the city for a designated protest zone. The Republicans also again demanded a meeting with the head of the Secret Service to no avail, the people familiar with the meeting said.
The Secret Service officials — which included two senior officers — told the Republican National Committee that its director was not inclined to meet with them and that the agency was not planning to expand the perimeter to include the park, according to a person with direct knowledge of the meeting. That infuriated party officials.
Republican Party officials are now encouraging other top lawmakers to weigh in, with just two months before the convention…
The plan is being “overseen by an executive steering committee made up of Secret Service personnel on the ground, as well as representatives from other federal, state, and local agencies, who have the greatest understanding of the host city and the expected security environment for the event,” Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the Secret Service, said in a statement Friday afternoon. “The development of the security plan is based on security considerations, including risk and threat assessments, and is not a political matter.”…
Cold Grey Dawn Open Thread: The Secret Service Is Not Impressed By the RNCPost + Comments (69)
Another Friday Night Open Thread
There was a maddening story the other day in the WSJ (it’s paywalled) about how desperate businesses and many communities are for workers, but how they absolutely refuse to even consider migrant labor/immigrant labor. People dying while on wait lists for home health care, restaurants no longer serving breakfast or opening on weekends, etc.
There’s a whole lot of reasons for where we are now as a state, including years of mismanagement, emigration, focusing on keeping us a resource extraction based economy, lack of investment in education and people, refusing to raise the minimum wage, pushing the jeebus agenda on everyone, and on and on and on. As I have said before, no one in their right mind is going to come here to work a shit job cleaning grease traps for 8 bucks and hour so they can be tailgated by a jacked up pickup truck with Punisher and Trump stickers on it back to the apartment they can’t afford to pay for to sit and do nothing because there are no entertainment options. So don’t expect a youth revival.
I’ve spent the last few days trying to find a part time job for the summer because I have to fix the ac in my car, get a new roof on the house, fix the water line into my house, as well as pay the bills and eat, so I can’t afford to not find work, but let me tell you, the opportunities are GRIM. Especially if you have some sense of self-worth, because I find my time to be worth more than 9 bucks an hour. It’s quite dispiriting, especially if you contrast it with the job market in the Phoenix area.
It was Maxwell’s birthday this week, and he celebrated by absolutely massacring a bird in the foyer overnight. I heard him making weird sounds in the middle of the night, yelled at him, and he quieted down, so I did not investigate. This morning when I went downstairs there was a headless bird with a chewed on body and thousands of feathers all over the place. I have yet to find the head.
I don’t know what kind of bird it was or how he caught one at night, but I don’t have any feeders out back to attract them, so I guess there is not much I can do. He even has a bell on his collar, the murderous fucker.
Also yesterday, my stainless steel hose apparently burst, and my water outside the house was running for about 5 hours before I noticed, which was long enough for it to flood the basement. It’s mostly cleaned up and the dehumidifier is running, so I can add putting up a new coat of drylock on the walls to my summer agenda. It never fucking ends.
In other news, it is rainy and cold, I am unmotivated, there are no video games or tv shows or books catching my interest, and I am not getting enough sunshine. Blerg.
Fuck Donald Trump
War for Ukraine Day 807: Russia’s Invasion of Kharkiv Oblast Has Begun!
(Image by NEIVANMADE)
A quick housekeeping note: I just want to clarify that the reason we’ve put a temporary pause on starting the GoFundMe for Rosie has nothing to do with how Rosie is doing. It is not a sign that she’s not doing well. She is, in fact, doing very well. The systemic support the vet is doing along with the chemo is working well. She has a massive appetite, is active, is putting weight back on, wants attention. And the vet estimated that after just the first two treatments that Rosie is at 80% remission. Her lymph nodes have also shrunk back to normal size. She goes for the fourth treatment of the first cycle on Monday and then she has two weeks of recovery before she starts the second cycle. The stuff with the GoFundMe is just dotting the final “i”s and crossing the final “t”s to ensure I won’t have issues with my clearance. That’s it. We expect it’ll go back up by Monday or so.
Tatarigami and his team have a full battlespace assessment of the Russian invasion of Kharkiv Oblast, I’ll post the whole thing after the jump.
Russia began its invasion of Kharkiv Oblast early this morning. As I type this the only part of Ukraine with an air raid alert, other than Luhansk and Crimea as they always have air raid alerts, is Kharkiv.
This is Kharkiv last night. Russian forces targeted a residential area with a missile, setting three houses on fire and damaging 12 others. Two civilians, an 11-year-old girl and a 72-year-old woman suffered acute stress reactions due to the attack. pic.twitter.com/q17ArPdYat
— Iryna Voichuk (@IrynaVoichuk) May 10, 2024
Today's air alert in Kharkiv lasted over 13 hours, marking the longest in the region since the war began. Despite the threat, Kharkiv stays vigilant. pic.twitter.com/dRwjAt3279
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) May 10, 2024
The air raid alert in Kharkiv region has lasted continuously for 12.5 hours today.
It was announced at 9.03 am.
According to local blogs, this is the longest air raid alert in the region since the beginning of the full-scale war.
My native city. It's so hard to see what… pic.twitter.com/GyaMVnaKzx
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) May 10, 2024
The air raid alert in Kharkiv region has lasted continuously for 12.5 hours today.
It was announced at 9.03 am.
According to local blogs, this is the longest air raid alert in the region since the beginning of the full-scale war.
My native city. It’s so hard to see what Kharkiv is going through.
📹- kharkiv_city/TikTok
“Border communities in Kharkiv Oblast are under intensified massive enemy shelling – there are wounded and dead civilians,” Kharkiv Oblast Governor said.
— Iryna Voichuk (@IrynaVoichuk) May 10, 2024
While orcs are attacking and the air raid lasts for a record 11 hours, the Kharkiv Music Festival carries on just 30 km away.
📷 Volodymyr Chystylin pic.twitter.com/b5tJvK4svt
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) May 10, 2024
If you’re wondering, the below is what the Russians have in store for the Ukrainian citizens of Kharkiv Oblast, as well as every other part of Ukraine:
Russian TV presenter Artyom Sheinin traveled to the town of Popasnaya (Lugansk region), captured by Russia at May 2022.
He filmed that the town is completely destroyed. In 2 years Russia has not rebuilt anything there at all.
They just destroyed and abandoned this town. pic.twitter.com/NwMVlmYucr
— Денис Казанський (@den_kazansky) May 10, 2024
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
War for Ukraine Day 807: Russia’s Invasion of Kharkiv Oblast Has Begun!Post + Comments (15)
Friday Evening Open Thread: Damn You, P-Bump!
Posting things online is not actually more useful for winning elections than talking to voters. https://t.co/e2I1rmVJqh
— Philip Bump (@pbump) May 8, 2024
But seriously: Philip Bump, writing for the Washington Post, is always informative — “No, posting is not better political activism than talking to voters” [gift link]:
Matt Yglesias is one of the more popular voices on the pro-Biden internet. That’s his framing, not mine; his newsletter “Slow Boring” is targeted to centrist Democrats interested in the nuances of how policy can address the country’s problems or at least people who like to think that they are. To use another metric to establish his bona fides, Yglesias is at the level of a commentator who gets profiled in The Washington Post.
Because he has that influence, his offering Tuesday morning deserves a response. Not because it is too generous or insufficiently generous to President Biden as it attempts to explain to readers how they can best aid Biden’s reelection. Instead, it is because it offers a notably bad assessment of the relative values of posting stuff on the internet vs. talking to actual voters.
The post is titled “How to make a difference in the 2024 election” and offers advice to that effect.
“I think it’s actually true that two of the best things you can do to defeat the MAGA movement do, in fact, happen online: giving money intelligently and posting mindfully,” Yglesias wrote…
This is bad advice, regardless of who you want elected.
We should start by reviewing what political campaigns want to do. The short version is “get votes.” But peel off the top layer and you can see the complexity underneath. Campaigns don’t get votes by encouraging everyone to vote, just adults who are registered to do so. And they don’t want to spend time getting every registered voter to cast a ballot, only the ones they think — or know — will vote for their candidate.
That part alone is complicated. Campaigns conduct polls to get a sense of who generally supports their candidates. If they find, for example, that White women over 65 overwhelmingly do, then they are going to do their best to get those White women to vote. They will, at times, engage in efforts to ensure those women know where, when and how to cast a ballot.
If they learn that Hispanic men under 45 can be persuaded by a particular argument, on the other hand, they will try to make that argument to those men. That includes direct mail and television ads in places those voters will be watching, sure. But it also means reaching out directly — presenting the argument to specific Hispanic men in that age group and recording whether it was effective. By which I mean: Asking the voters if they’ll vote for their candidate and writing it down, so that those who are convinced can be reminded where, when and how to cast their ballots.
You can see the points where legwork is required. The more volunteers a campaign has, the more specific, registered White women it can ensure vote before or on Election Day by reminding them with phone calls or by knocking on their doors. The more volunteers, the better the campaign can talk to those Hispanic men in the relevant electoral district and then engage in that same get-out-the-vote messaging with the ones who have been persuaded…
And here I am… posting on the internet, yes. But whatever my personal efforts, Mr. Bump’s argument is worth reading in full. I don’t know if you can subscribe to his weekly How to Read This Chart newsletter if you’re not a WaPo subscriber, but I’d recommend it!
Friday Evening Open Thread: <em>Damn You, P-Bump!</em>Post + Comments (124)
Only took a decade
OSCAR Health plan, did something that I had long been skeptical it could do.
It turned a profit in the 1st quarter.
Net Income: $178 million, a $217 million improvement year over year.
It only took 10 years and lighting several billion dollars on fire trying to reinvent the wheel instead of being a fairly boring insurance company that gets decent provider contracts from hospitals and crushing its admin expenses to a level that is sort of kind of reasonable instead of obscene. It also benefitted massively from higher interest rates as it has a big cash pile accumulated for future risk adjustment payments that is collecting interest. The interest gains are most but not all of the profits. But hey, insurers are investment vehicles with weird cash policies — so not screwing this up is a good thing as they could have invested in Beanie Babies or DJT Media instead of Treasuries.
2016 Dave got this one wrong — OSCAR if it tries to be a modestly competently run insurer without the technobabble can be profitable — but it only took a decade and lighting several billion dollars on fire to focus on the competent part.