Pinch hitting today for RIP so… Keeping it local – except this could have consequences for everyone in the US. To make a long story very short. The unelected GA State Election Board that Chump singled out by name in a campaign speech recently – has decided that they get to decide if the votes in one of Metro Atlanta’s bluest counties are legit or not. And, now they’ve set up a twitter account that won’t allow comments. This is what they refer to as “transparency.”
Kamala and Tim are on a bus tour of rural Georgia.
Supreme Court continues to disappoint.
US Supreme Court declines to revive Biden’s student debt relief plan
Do not f*** with the Florida State Parks: Ron DeSantis and friends want to turn Florida’s state parks into golf courses and Sandal’s style resorts. The people said nope.
Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway hits the $1 trillion mark. That’s right – trillion. Yes, but who will think of the shareholders?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/aug/28/berkshire-hathaway-valuation-warren-buffett
The Paralympics Opening Ceremonies start tonight.
Paralympics 2024: When, who and how to watch the Paris games
The salmon are free in Klamath Falls Dam removal.
Workers breach key Klamath dams, allowing salmon to swim freely for the first time in a century
Good thing for this dude, they weren’t orcas.
‘Absolutely incredible’: Man rowing solo across Atlantic is surrounded by whales
Oh, the huge manatee… and kid.
Manatee mummy and calf charm wildlife photo judges
Obligatory turtle content: smol friend from our yard. Sorry it’s so large.
Pretty slow news cycle today. Hope everyone has a great Thursday!
I have been to Arlington National Cemetery more than once but always without incident. Leave it to the Donald to turn a visit into a total media circus.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/28/politics/video/vance-harris-cemetery-incident-trump-ebof-digvid
Whether it’s one side assaulting someone to carry out an illegal campaign attack ad, or one side not doing it, both sides are staking out a divisive position on what had once been common ground in Arlington Cemetery. Yes, what Trump did stretched norms, but are Harris’s choices worsening the political divide?
You almost got me.
For an actual example, there’s this:
As he points out, the news isn’t that Trump “signal his willingness to continue to shatter longstanding political norms” (whatever the hell that means). The news is that he went on a completely nutjob episode. Just go with a headline that says that.
It’s exactly the mentality of their editors when they write headlines like this:
In contrast, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal got it right:
It’s telling, of course, that Times editors are capable of ditching what Scocca calls their “dissociated, blathering, abstract house style” when they feel like it. The headlines on that example from 2016 that James Fallows cited show it. But only when it means channelling the POV of the GOP.
Trump’s aggression will serve him well on the campaign, while Harris continues her refusal to address the three biggest concerns about her campaign: Her gender, her race and her lack of New York Times interviews.
Axios is WAY ahead of you, buddy.
10 burning questions for Kamala Harris
Number of “burning questions” for Trump? -0-
You can tell the desperation level is ratcheting up among Republicans. For example:
Inside the tension in Harris’ “Frankenstein” team
The actual article notes that there’s “nothing malicious” going on, quoting “one person involved in the campaign.” So let’s write a headline suggesting that the campaign has turned into a horror movie.
I know Axios sucks and is shit-stirring here, but I do have to say that this might be the most studied political campaign in poli-sci history. You have multiple foundational campaign ideas being challenged in a single race — Trump is simply jettisoning a Get Out The Vote effort because he doesn’t care, he doesn’t plan or he can’t afford it (spin the wheel, pick your favorite!). Is that gonna matter? We’ll see!
Meanwhile the other campaign has already jettisoned a candidate (itself wild!) and has spun up a campaign basically in what is typically halfway through the fourth quarter of a campaign cycle. But is that actually a huge bonus in 2024 when attention spans are milliseconds and not having a candidate in front of you for 16 months is actually way better than the alternative? Is that gonna matter? We’ll see!
It’s not just that someone on his campaign took a swing at a worker — as always, if someone on Harris’s team did this it would be a front-page “Harris has to step aside” editorial in the NYT — but did you see the picture he took? He’s doing his fucking big smile thumbs-up pose … at a soldier’s grave in Arlington. Like, FFS. But once again we can’t discuss his open distain for the troops because something something but he said something something horserace.
There’s been an interesting idea posed on BlueSky about the disconnect between Trump’s polling in swing states and the polling in Senate races. In AZ, NC and NV in particular, he’s within a point or two of Harris but the Democratic Senate candidates are all mauling the GOP Senate candidates. One idea is that he draws low-info voters who are there to vote for him and don’t really care downballot. Possible! Another similar idea is that he’s well-known and the GOP candidates aren’t and maybe they’ll grab some of his coat-tails down the stretch. Also possible! But a great suggestion was that voters don’t hear Trump unfiltered — they’re getting friendly soundbites or well-smoothed text from CNN/NYT etc so they think he’s saying basically palatable things but when they hear the same unfiltered shit from the Senate candidates they’re deeply turned off. It’s an interesting take!
This would be the perfect opportunity for the press to tie this to Trump’s long history of disrespecting veterans, wounded vets and war dead.
It’s not only truthful, it’s important, it would reinforce the media’s claims of backing common values, and it would get great ratings too! They have all the evidence they need that he called American soldiers who died for the country “suckers” and “losers” – wrap it all up in headlines and people will want to learn something.
But the normalizing impulse for Trump is seared into their brains in a way it’s not for GOP Senate candidates. It’s just a Pavlovian instinct now, and they’re getting furious that people are pointing it out.
Honestly, they could even write in their passive-six-degrees-disassociated-yet-omniscient voice and it would be a reasonably solid story. There’s certainly a lot there! He has openly said tons of shit about troops — particularly wounded veterans — and there’s a deep well of people who say he’s said more behind closed doors (and were in a position to know).
But of course, they would prefer it if he won, so.
Buried in the Times account is the revelation that the Arlington Cemetery employee decided against filing charges due to fear of retribution from Trump’s people.
It’s not just the Times, of course – the whole DC press corps doesn’t want to push any of the serious angles.
This whole episode could be the kind of multi-story, flood the zone approach they do when they want – one chasing Senators for response, another interviewing families of vets, another with historical examples of Democrats and Republicans honoring the troops, another bringing up GOP retaliation….
But editors by default treat Democrats as disrespectful of veterans, and every instinct is to see challenging Trump is somehow violating that default judgment. It has to be bothsidesism and normalization. It just has to.
That’s why Harris wants Trump on an open mic during their debate, so people hear him unfiltered in real-time. She also figures with a little prodding she can get him to lose his shit publicly. Trump’s people want him muted.
I’d say if they go open mic, there’s a 65% chance Trump uses the n-word, c-word, or b-word.
James Fallows on how the NY Times played an investigation in 2016 vs. an actual full on indictment this year:
https://nitter.poast.org/JamesFallows/status/1828798114704351348
Doing a bit of Kremlinology analysis, it’s interesting that the token real liberal Jamelle Bouie at the NY Times Opinion section retweeted this take:
Standing NY Times policy is that liberal employees are not allowed to offer a hint of criticism of the paper (the rules don’t apply to Bret Stephens). I don’t know if Bouie has decided things have gotten bad enough he just doesn’t care what the execs will do to him, or if this represents a larger discontent by the employees.
The Florida State Park development plan isn’t over. DeSantis’ cronies are laying low right now, but they’re coming back, as the “drawing board” comment indicates. DeSantis is termed out and can’t run for governor again. He’s going to lay low until after Nov. 6, and then he’s going to go nuts with the lame duck bullshit, because he’s not running again. He’s going to need some kind of income since he’s not going to take over MAGA and he’s got zero political prospects. Hefty “donations” from developers will keep him from having to shop at CostCo.
The only defense the parks have now is the Republican legislature, who, in a rare display of spine (though not really because they’re still answering to voters), told DeSantis to fuck off with this bullshit. So right now they’re all lining up at the trough to see just how much money they could get if they help destroy the park system, and if it’s worth losing their seat if they can get many millions of dollars in return. But it also demonstrates how fucked DeSantis is. A year ago every one of these legislators would have crawled to DeSantis begging to be allowed to screw over the public on his behalf.
It’s heartening to see “results actually do matter” return a little bit to politics. Dobbs is the big stick, of course, but DeSantis got steamed up nationally and he used his political capital to pick a losing fight with Disney and get son-ed by Trump. Nice work, man!
PAB* Boy
*Pussy Ass Bitch as some folks call him.
That manatee link had me freaked out at first because I saw “mummy” and thought some motherfucker killed a manatee and tried to embalm it.
It’s why I never take reading a headline at face value after waking up because that was my initial thought too.
I once went to a Hunting and Fishing Club (it was the town’s equivalent of the country club and was astonishingly upscale; must have been a lot more money in that area than I imagined.) So many taxidermied animals. There may have been a manatee. There were certainly a couple of swordfish. Along with God knows how many other animals. That was just in the dining rooms. I was told that for a small fee I could become a temporary member and stay in one of the rooms upstairs, which were also lavishly adorned with wildlife. I declined because I did not relish the thought of being observed by Bullwinkle the Moose while I was trying to sleep.
Rachel Maddow covered some of the bullshit going on with the Georgia Election Board earlier this week and the interesting part was that the Georgia governor was asking his attorney general if the governor can remove people from the election board over ethics violations.
Like this may be too much voter suppression, even for Georgia, you know?
With Kemp – it’s just smoke and mirrors. He’s an infinitely smarter version of DeSantis. He’s going to run for President in 2028 so he’s walking that fine line of MAGA/ non MAGA republican. He knows that Chump is finished after this election cycle – he’s on a redemption tour from the “phone call” but also knows that it’s better for him to appear to be a centrist. He signed the 6 week abortion ban and he’s been all in on voter suppression since he was the Georgia AG in charge of his own election. To me, he’s the most dangerous GOPer out there
I legitimately think Harris has to win GA by a relatively big margin to get the electoral votes. I really don’t anticipate a fair count. (The maybe better news is that GA is increasingly less likely to be a tipping point, but either way, it’s dire to even consider that we’re moving past suppression into outright fraud.)
The office just got more interesting.
Colorado man left behind during office retreat survives night on mountain
All the way back in kindergarten the ironclad rules were you never go anywhere without a buddy and buddies never leave their buddies alone.
But most kindergarten classes are far more functional places than most offices, and most kindergarten teachers are far better leaders than most execs.
There’s no version of reality where “go climb a mountain for hours” is a workplace activity I’m willing to do.
I thought it was bad enough I shot my boss several times in the head playing paintball.
That was awkward.
Although I was reminded of Former Housemate, world’s worst map reader. To be fair, it isn’t hard to get disorientated in the woods even if you have a good sense of direction and a map.
The actual conversations must have been pretty nasty.
“Anybody seen Chad?”
“Fuck that guy.”
“We’re leaving, should we grab the trail markers? Where’s Chad?”
“Fuck that guy.”
“Hey, Chad just texted and said he’s lost on top of the mountain. Anybody want to go back for him?”
“Fuck that guy.”
Nice DOT Lymond! Thanks for the salmon content too, that is a big thing in the PNW & it is great to see the fish starting to return. Let’s hope we see much more of it…
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2024/03/22/dam-removal-spurs-the-return-of-salmon-and-a-local-tribes-hopes-of-sustainable-fishing/
I don’t know why he thought it was a good idea to put this asshat on tv but I guess after he made a few other Trump staff confess to crimes on air, he thought this might work…
This is some scary shit…
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/08/scotus-project-2025-trump-plan-supreme-court.html
NY Times doubles down on treating the Arlington Cemetery attack as a political game:
At Arlington, Trump Returns to the Politics of the ‘Forever Wars’
They just ran an “analysis” piece by Jonathan Weisman, which is their codeword for opinion piece disguised as news Weisman attempts to argue on behalf of GOP sources this is a coherent political strategy for Trump on a par with normal strategy like Harris campaigning for votes in Georgia on a platform of health and education.
Weisman calls the well-documented stories of Trump’s disrespect for veterans all the way up to calling war dead suckers and losers as nothing more than “accusations.” His own paper corroborated them!
Weisman, by the way, is the clod who angrily insisted that John Lewis didn’t count as a true Southerner, because of course what right did someone whose family had ties in the South for centuries have to count?
oppo has its moments
lol