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It’s come to this: the 2024 presidential election is a toss-up. Fifty-fifty. All the polls say this could go either way.
This isn’t how I saw this playing out in July. After Biden dropped out, my victory was all but assured. But you can’t count a historically unpopular moron like Donald Trump out. With his crackpot team of dimwitted transphobes, he has run a campaign with the enthusiasm of a man who would rather be golfing. And you simply have to tip your hat to that high level of strategy and expertise.
I don’t like it any more than you all, but we’re currently neck and neck with a guy whose fascist policies fall apart ten minutes into a friendly interview with Joe Rogan. That’s a testament not only to Trump’s lethargic spirit but also his undeniable lack of command of which lies he’s currently telling. Say what you will about his abrasive personality, poor track record (both in office and trying to overthrow it), and a VP pick with all the momentum of a 2009 Hyundai Elantra driving uphill with the emergency brake—the man is tough to beat.
Mark Cuban explains how Trump started the high inflation: In April 2020, in the early days of Covid, the gas prices were $1.87. Oil companies went to Trump and said: we're getting crushed. You have to talk to your friends MBS and Putin and ask them to reduce production. And he… pic.twitter.com/PoDrVqyDJn — Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) October 31, 2024 Yes, the pandemic supply chain problems threw the world economy into chaos and there was plenty of price gounging and external events like bird flu that raised the cost of eggs. But guess who put his foot on the gas? Mark Cuban explains how Trump started the high inflation: In April 2020, in the early days of Covid, the gas prices were $1.87. Oil companies went to Trump and said: we’re getting crushed. You have to talk to your friends MBS and Putin and ask them to reduce production. And he did. That was the day inflation started. Trump is saying that he’s going to “drill, baby, drill” like a madman to reduce inflation. Yeah. Not gonna happen.
Bodies strewn in streets in Beit Lahia while IDF shoots at anyone who tries to help. It is the intent to destroy that defines a genocide says Francesca Albanese as her report to the UN is discussed across (independent) media channels. Arundhati Roy asks what can possibly justify what Israel is doing and the Publisher Continue reading »
Elon Musk is the Warren Jeffs of Silicon Valley As I am obsessed with cults (for obvious reasons) I’ve read many books and watched a lot of documentaries about fundamentalist polygamists like Warren Jeffs and David Koresh. They inevitably take their cult to live in compounds where they can more easily control women and breed large numbers of children. Guess who’s following in their footsteps? Vanity Fair: Elon Musk is obsessed with procreation. We know this because (1) he frequently says things like, “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far” and (2) he’s fathered nearly a dozen children with three separate women, and presently appears to be trying to at least double or triple those numbers, with whoever will accept his offer of DNA.
Hyman Minsky, and the financial instability hypothesis Steven Hail A simple explanation of why our economy goes up, up, up, then down, down, down! Hyman…
We can’t have billionaires and stop climate change Jason Hickel Over the past few years, the world’s leading Earth system scientists and climatologists have published…
The fight over a sweepstakes by Musk and his America PAC will likely go to federal court after a judge paused a local lawsuit.
The post Elon Musk Can Keep Throwing Cash at Voters for Now appeared first on The Intercept.
How about a little poll analysis crack? Don’t worry this won’t make you want to throw your phone across the room. It’s actually very interesting. NBC News took a look at the extremely tight state polling right now and came away thinking maybe there’s a little “adjusting” going on that is giving us all the impression that it’s actually a tie: Analysis: Even in a close election, random chance means polls should be showing a broader range of results. That raises the question of whether we’re in for another polling surprise. Recent polls in the seven core swing states show an astonishingly tight presidential race: 124 out of the last 321 polls conducted in those states — almost 39% — show margins of 1 percentage point or less. In fact, the state polls are showing not just an astonishingly tight race, but also an improbably tight race.
A top financial executive and potential Treasury secretary declares war on federal consumer watchdogs to ensure consumers can’t easily switch banks for better options.
Why do I get the sense that the Democrats are having a lot more fun in this campaign than the Republicans, even as serious as the whole thing is? Here we have Democratic governors dressing up as Tim Walz for Halloween: You have to love Gretchen Whitmer’s “pig”. Lol. I’m probably not being fair to the Republicans. I’m sure they’re having tons of fun pulling the wings off flies or stealing kids’ Halloween candy. And Donald Trump is doing a garbage man minstrel show. Lots of fun:
Felines may be able to learn human words.
The post Your Cat Is Listening to You appeared first on Nautilus.
Last night I posted that the Dodgers winning the World Series wasa good omen because they won last in 2020 and Joe Biden was victorious as well. It’s silly. But just for fun here’s some more: While the stock market is not necessarily representative of the broader economy, the S&P 500’s performance in the run-up to Election Day has historically been a strong indicator of whether the incumbent party’s candidate will retain control of the White House — correctly forecasting all but four presidential races over the last 96 years. If the index is falling, the theory goes, investors are bracing for more uncertainty from a new administration. But a climb in the S&P 500 signals that the market is expecting the current president’s party to win. And the index’s recent rise is suggesting that Vice President Kamala Harris, who took over the Democratic ticket from President Joe Biden this summer, could be bound for victory. While the weirdo billionaires are betting on Orange Julius Caesar, the actual day-to-day money people are betting with their wallets on Harris. Good to know.
Look at that nonsense. David Kurtz at TPM writes: In the final week of the presidential campaign, the country’s two most prominent newspapers extended into a second day their credulous coverage of Republicans’ fake outrage over President Biden’s “garbage” comment. The NYT and WaPo each made it a front-page story in Thursday’s editions, with above-the-fold, prime-real-estate treatment. Considering that Trump routinely calls Harris voters scum, garbage vermin and worse this is journalistic malpractice. Have they ever put his comments above the fold like that in this campaign even once, much less in the final week? I don’t think so. Josh Marshall put it like this: It’s actually a long time GOP tactic, one of their most infuriating, not because they do it but because the mainstream media falls for it every time. And sometimes the Democrats do too. I wrote about this years ago: The Art Of The Hissy FitBy digby Tuesday, October 23, 2007 That was written years before Trump became a political figure. Maybe someday the media will stop falling for it.
This is an elevated comment, from Stewart M.
By StewartM
Trump has bee basically calling Kamala Harris a dumb whore ever since she became the nominee. Here he is today: Meanwhile: Women are insulted by that threat, and a threat it is. Especially from him: Guess what? There’s a new kind of gender gap in the 2024 election: Women are voting early in huge numbers, far outpacing men. It’s giving anxious Democrats — who see female voters as key to a Kamala Harris victory — newfound hope heading into the final week of the campaign. Across battlegrounds, there is a 10-point gender gap in early voting so far: Women account for roughly 55 percent of the early vote, while men are around 45 percent, according to a POLITICO analysis of early vote data in several key states. The implications for next week’s election results are unclear; among registered Republicans, women are voting early more than men, too. But the high female turnout is encouraging to Democratic strategists, who expected that a surge in Republican turnout would result in more gender parity among early voters.
Against the odds, three Iraqi men could bring CACI to justice for the government contractor’s alleged role in Abu Ghraib abuses.
The post Abu Ghraib Torture Trial Against Virginia-Based Defense Contractor Begins Again appeared first on The Intercept.
What strikes me is our loss of leadership competency, from the extremely competent people who managed us through the depression and through WWII to the clowns of today.