Reading

Created
Sun, 08/09/2024 - 00:30
Is Trump Fever breaking? Politico on Friday announced that the Harris-Walz campaign has hired my friend Matt Hildreth of progressive Rural Organizing dot org as the campaign’s National Rural Outreach Director. Hildreth’s group announced it formally in a tweet shortly thereafter. Politico: Hiring Hildreth, whose grassroots organization is already knocking doors for Harris and Democratic candidates across the country this fall, signals the campaign is looking to seriously expand a resource-intensive ground game to reach rural voters who could swing the election. The Harris-Walz team doesn’t expect the ticket to flip many rural counties. But some of Harris’ top advisers have argued that simply losing by slightly fewer percentage points in these areas could help carry her and down-ballot Democrats to victory. In recent memos, the campaign has argued “the key to decreasing margins in rural areas is to show up and compete everywhere — which is exactly what we’re doing across the country.” Exactly right. That’s how Democrat Heath Shuler ousted eight-term, NC-11 Republican Rep. Charles Taylor in 2006.
Created
Sat, 07/09/2024 - 23:00
Taxpayers could pay for striking Kennedy’s name Elections staffs across North Carolina had prepared over 100,000 absentee ballots to go into the mail on Friday as the law requires. A lawsuit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put a halt to it: The State Board of Elections has appealed Friday’s order by the NC Court of Appeals, which required election officials to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name from 2024 general election ballots and print new ones. The appeal was filed with the NC Supreme Court Friday afternoon. As the Supreme Court considers the appeal, State Board staff will work through the weekend to begin the process of coding new ballots without Kennedy’s name and providing proofs of the new ballots to county boards of elections for review. There are 2,348 different ballot styles statewide for the 2024 general election. More than 2.9 million ballots had already been printed before the order by the Court of Appeals. The State Board instructed county Directors to hold and not destroy ballots already prepared until the matter is resolved.
Created
Sat, 07/09/2024 - 09:30
Baby Koala! Yay! A few fun facts: – Baby Koalas are known as ‘Joeys’. Scientists often refer to them using terms like ‘juveniles’, ‘pouch young’ and ‘back young’. – Younger breeding females usually give birth to one Joey each year, depending on a range of factors. However, not all females in a wild population will breed each year. Some, especially older females, will produce offspring only every two or three years.– – When the Joey is born, it’s only about 2 centimetres long, is blind and furless and its ears are not yet developed. On its amazing journey to the pouch, it relies on its well-developed senses of smell and touch, its strong forelimbs and claws, and an inborn sense of direction. Once in the pouch, it attaches itself to one of the two teats which swells in its mouth, preventing it from being dislodged from its source of food. – The Joey stays in its mother’s pouch for about 6 or 7 months, drinking only milk.
Created
Sat, 07/09/2024 - 08:00
Michelle Goldberg takes on the latest rad fad on the authoritarian right: Hitler apologia and holocaust denial. You knew it was coming, right? She is responding to (yet another) right wing “influencer” and alleged historian named Darryl Cooper and his embrace by none other than Tiucker Carlson. Some on the right found Carlson’s turn toward Holocaust skepticism surprising. “Didn’t expect Tucker Carlson to become an outlet for Nazi apologetics, but here we are,” Erick Erickson, the conservative radio host, wrote on X. But Carlson’s trajectory was entirely predictable. Nazi sympathy is the natural endpoint of a politics based on glib contrarianism, right-wing transgression and ethnic grievance. . . . For parts of the contemporary right, however, the social consensuses undergirding liberalism are artificial and even tyrannical. After all, the “Matrix”-derived metaphor of being “red-pilled” implies a realization that all you’ve been told about the nature of reality is a lie, and thus everything is up for grabs.
Created
Sat, 07/09/2024 - 06:30
The Trump spawn are in over their heads as usual It looks like the two oldest Trump boys are following the footsteps of their father the online media mogul whose stock will soon be worthless. They’re going to lose a lot of people a lot of money with this scam too: Plans by former president Donald Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, to launch a crypto startup have set off alarm bells among even his staunchest allies in the sector, according to a new report in Politico. The two brothers have spent recent weeks touting World Liberty Financial, their soon-to-be-launched, shrouded-in-secrecy cryptocurrency firm. But a string of mishaps, including Trump family members getting hacked by scammers and concerns about World Liberty’s deep connections to a blockchain firm that lost $2 million because of security shortfalls, has some arguing they should pack it up before they begin. “This is a huge mistake,” Nic Carter, a partner at crypto venture capital firm Castle Island Ventures and a Trump backer, told Politico.
Created
Sat, 07/09/2024 - 05:25
Pharma Charges 80K to cure Hepatitis C. The Manufacturing Cost is $78

Yeah.

Unlike many other drugs that treat viruses, Sovaldi does not suppress hepatitis C, a virus that kills roughly 250,000 people around the world each year. It cures it.

“Normally you have a virus, and your body fights it off or your body fights it to a standstill and you just have it forever, basically, and hope it remains dormant more or less,” Laufer said. “The holy grail for every virologist is to find a way to drain the viral reservoir, and Sovaldi does this. You take one pill of Sovaldi a day for 12 weeks and then you don’t have hepatitis C anymore.”

The problem is that those pills are under patent, and they cost $1,000 per pill.

Created
Sat, 07/09/2024 - 05:00
Everyone’s been waiting for this so naturally it’s a dud: The judge overseeing Donald J. Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan postponed his sentencing until after Election Day, a significant victory for the former president as he seeks to overturn his conviction and win back the White House. In a ruling on Friday, the judge, Juan M. Merchan, cited the “unique time frame this matter currently finds itself in” and rescheduled the sentencing for Nov. 26. He had previously planned to hand down Mr. Trump’s punishment on Sept. 18, just seven weeks before Election Day, when Mr. Trump will face off against Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency. “This is not a decision this court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this court’s view, best advances the interests of justice,” Justice Merchan wrote in the four-page ruling, which noted that “this matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this nation’s history.” Yes it does. But once again, Trump gets the benefit of being a criminal who is running for president in order to evade accountability for his crimes. What a sweet, sweet scam this is.
Created
Sat, 07/09/2024 - 04:59
As has been the case every month since around 2015-16, the number of asylum seekers in Australia continued to set records, reaching 116,389 at end July 2024. The total number refused at both the primary level and at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), but not departed, is now a record of 43,499. On current policy Continue reading »