#politico problems

[tomorrowusa]

Some polls show that Trump's 34 felony convictions have somewhat been a net negative for him. This one from POLITICO-ipsos continues the trend.

This poll was conducted from June 7-9 and had a sample of 1,027 adults, age 18 or older, who were interviewed online; it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points for all respondents. This is the fourth poll on the Trump prosecutions that POLITICO Magazine has conducted in partnership with Ipsos since last summer.

Twenty-two percent of respondents said that the conviction is important to how they will vote and that it makes them less likely to support Trump. Only 6 percent of respondents took the other side of that question — reporting that the conviction is important to how they will vote and that it makes them more likely to support Trump.

More than twice as many independents say they are now less likely to vote for Trump as opposed to those who are now more inclined to vote for Trump.

In states decided by small margins, a few thousand votes by independents can make a huge difference.

In conversation, don't just say Donald Trump – say convicted felon and adjudicated sex offender Donald Trump. A bit of a mouthful, but successful advertising campaigns are ones that use a lot of repetition. Liberals need to get over their obsessive and counterproductive reluctance to repeat things. If you want to win then repeat a lot.

The Biden-Harris campaign produced this ad to show the difference between what convicted felon and adjudicated sex offender Trump has been doing and what Biden is doing.

[queen-mabs-revenge]

i swear -- i genuinely hate electoral politics, but i'm having a lot of fun helping manage the campaign we're currently running bc we're not running to try and maximise votes, but primarily to hijack the media cycle and make all of these corporate goons have to answer to socialist solutions being forced into the narrative -- and we're just having a silly goofy time and doing whatever we want and honestly? it's been so fucking lightning bc everyone in the branch has like merged into this creative thinking hive mind and we're all buzzing with ideas and confidence and just taking the most off the wall ideas and running with them just to experiment and fuck around and find out and you know what? we can have a little electoral wrecking as a treat i think.

[sayruq]

Last week, Politico reported that President Joe Biden would “consider” conditioning military aid to Israel if the country launches a large-scale invasion of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering. “It’s something he’s definitely thought about,” said one of the four anonymous US officials cited as a source. This was about as weak of a position as could be imagined: The President had definitely thought about maybe doing something. Still, even this proved too much. One day later, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the article was based on “uninformed speculation” by anonymous officials and that he wouldn’t be entertaining hypotheticals about how the US would respond to a major invasion of Rafah, which US officials have signaled they would accept in a more limited form. The dismissal was the latest indication of the administration’s almost complete unwillingness to even discuss imposing serious consequences on Israel for waging a war that has killed more than 30,000 people, most of whom were women and children. Instead, the administration has adopted a newfound feeling of impotence. As State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller put it last month, “The United States does not dictate to Israel what it must do, just as we don’t dictate to any country what it must do.” The absurdity of this position was made clear when a reporter interjected, “Unless you invade them.” Miller couldn’t help but laugh. It has been obvious for months that there are many things the Biden administration can do to restrain Israel and distance itself from a war that has been condemned throughout the world. The problem has not been a lack of options but a lack of political will. Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who is now the president of the US/Middle East Project, told me, “I think many of us who had very low expectations of the US and of Biden have had a rude awakening as to how much lower the actual performance has been [compared] to even the lowest of low expectations.”

As evidence of how important US backing has been for Israel, Levy cited veteran Israeli journalist Yoav Limor, who wrote in Hebrew earlier this month that without “Biden’s support, Israel would long ago have been forced to stop the fighting in Gaza due to a shortage of weapons, while at the same time it would have been forced to deal with United Nations Security Council resolutions (and possibly sanctions) against it.” Still, Levy thought it might take weeks or months of sustained US pressure to compel Israel to change course. In any case, Biden is under no obligation to provide thousands of bombs to a country whose leader has consistently ignored him as Israel wages a brutal war that has leveled much of Gaza and caused children to die of starvation. “We need to stick to our own values,” Ford said. “If our values say, ‘Starving children is way beyond the pale,’ then we need to react to that and take stern action, whether or not it changes Israeli policy.”

[wilwheaton]

The corporate media, however, have decided that it is no longer the job of its journalists and pundits to report and analyze information; rather they believe they must translate Donald’s nonsensical ramblings into a version of the English language we can all understand. That’s a huge problem because, on the one hand, they’re not really translating his words—they’re imbuing them with a meaning that is not there; on the other hand, they’re doing this without telling us they’re doing it. So, according to Politico, Donald, “laid out a sweeping economic vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs, and light-touch regulation in a speech to top Wall Street execs.” AP chimed in by claiming that Donald “suggests tariffs can help solve rising child care costs in a major economic speech.” The New York Times, at the forefront when it comes to covering for Donald, ran the following headline and sub-head: “Trump Praises Tariffs, and William McKinley, to Power Brokers In an address about the kind of economy he hopes to build for the 21st century, the former president harked back to the end of another century: the 19th.”

Translating the Crazy - by Mary L Trump

Legacy corporate media is doing everything it can to shield voters from the reality of Trump’s rapid cognitive decline, to say nothing of his fascist agenda and promises to burn this country to the ground because he’s a big crybaby who can’t accept that he lost in 2020.

[contemplatingoutlander]

If he loses the 2024 presidential election, former President Donald Trump will likely lobby House Republicans to refuse to certify the results. This was not as much of a problem in 2020 when Democrats held the majority of seats, but with Republicans now holding a narrow majority, it could become a legitimate issue. However, Politico reports that a bipartisan group of House lawmakers have banded together to jointly pledge to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election, and the group so far includes six House Republicans. This means that, should these six Republicans keep their pledge to certify a win for Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump's allies would be unable to block the certification of the election given the current numbers in the House of Representatives. The bipartisan group, which was organized by centrist Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Don Bacon (R-NE), also includes Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), Nick LaLota (R-NY) and Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY). Bacon said that the group's pledge was a reflection of traditional American values. “In America we respect election results especially once the courts and appeals work through the process,” he said. “We fight hard to win during campaigns and then respect the results when the votes are counted.”

Thank goodness for a handful of Republicans in the House who actually take their oath to support the Constitution seriously.

[isagrimorie]

It’s always frustrating whenever the BAU tackles a case where either the victimology or UnSub has similarities to Prentiss’s background/upbringing but the writers rarely use it to give insights on Prentiss or have Prentiss’s background provide some insights into a case.

As an example, The Performer is an episode featuring Gavin Rossdale as a rockstar whose kayfabe was being a Vampire ala Lestat but fake.

The show could have dove a little into the goth community, a community Emily Prentiss used to be a part of. Did they do that? Unfortunately, no, they hung a lantern on it. The writers had Penelope tease Emily about how she used to dress Goth. Even though, Emily still dressed like one but corporate style.

In the episode, Pleasure is My Business. The UnSub grew up around wealth and privilege and then used sex work to lure her victims.

We discover in Lauren that Prentiss was in a similar enough situation re: Operation Valhalla.

Ala The Americans show, Prentiss used intimacy to get close to Ian Doyle.

Emily Prentiss became Lauren Reynolds because she matched Doyle’s type.

I know the writers had a vague idea of Prentiss’ past only that the writers had breadcrumbs pointing to a rich, mysterious past. They don’t have a crystal ball, but the privileged background could have been a jumping off point for a discussion, an insight to the UnSub’s thoughts.

In the season 16 episode, Orpheus Wrecks, the writers could have again used that case as a way to get more insight into Prentiss’ hidden personal life. As a Politician’s kid, and a somewhat savvy political operator herself, Prentiss would have been as familiar, if more, to the DC wonk space as Bailey was.

Prentiss would also be familiar with the Beltway Elite app even if she didn’t use it herself.

(As a former Spook, the idea of having an app like that in her phone would give Prentiss OpSec paranoia. She would not want her photo distributed everywhere. Being on Politico was enough of a headache for her tbh).

I know Prentiss’ whole thing is she wanted to distance herself from her mother’s political life but she would still have friends and would have known more people as she climbed up the ladder in the FBI.

Other shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Elementary, and Person of Interest almost always use a kernel of similarity/parallelism in their various cases of the week as a jumping-off point to tell a richer story about their characters.

Criminal Minds does but selectively.

This is what makes the show frustrating. You can always tell when the show could have threaded the Case/Monster of the Week and connected the case to one of the characters.

Morgan and JJ also needed more exploration. The only one the writers they consistently use this with is Reid.

To the writer’s credit they have vaguely gestured at Emily’s mysterious past— setting up Emily’s existential crisis about her morality in the face of what she’s done while she worked for CIA and JTF-12.

But then the show goes several episodes mentioning the problem, an arc villain, and it’s frustrating!

(I sometimes lowkey wish some Whedon trained writers joined Criminal Minds to establish a good character-to-case ratio. Like, Jane Espenson. Or someone from Person of Interest writers room joining the Evolution writers team. The idea of Denise Thé writing for the CM ladies makes me yearn because delicious character development + inventive messed up twists. Erica Messer does a good job showrunning— a different job altogether than just writing for the show. But also— I yearn! Think about a POI caliber writer in a CM writers room! It would be so good to have, IMO. Not that PoI was entirely perfect either, I have my frustrations too!)

——

Chris Mundy seemed interested in delving into the internal lives of the characters, especially Emily’s. Demonology was really important for our understanding of Emily Prentiss.

Her guilt, her low-key self-loathing— the way she runs from the people she loves because she thinks she’s not worth it. The way she can conform to be anyone to fit into a situation and not stand out.

Her casual regard for sex as a tool to help her get accepted. All things that were helpful for Prentiss when she became a spy.

As Michael Westen from Burn Notice said: “People with happy families don’t become spies. A bad childhood is the perfect background for covert ops.”

TLDR— It’s just frustrating because they’re always nearly at the cusp of a great character driven procedural but then almost always back off from giving us really good food.

[sgiandubh]

A tale of two brands

Sophie Mancini's Departures paper on S in NY started a flurry of comments even before the whole content was made available on blogs. That people - mostly in Mordor - jumped in to add their two booing cents on the matter, based on two or three Instagram Story screencaps only, is a testimony to Tumblr's community deep interest in S's slightest PR/sales move and the easiness with which people like *urv managed to push their own agenda, in the process, to her unsuspecting, bicep-loving crowd.

Many of these comments asked just one question, more or less kindly and more or less openly: who are you, Sam Roland Heughan? Some of them, more along my alley, took a different angle: who are you talking to, Sam Roland Heughan?

Let me count the US crowds: the Wall Street yuppie crowd? the old money, WASP Knickerbocker / Colony Club crowd? Tribeca's sophisticated, culture-ish snob crowd? the UN international crowd? the laid-back (-ish) brownstone Brooklyn crowd? the DC politico types? the Boston Brahmin crowd? the Silicon Valley Bitcoin crowd? the Florida Latino crowd? the Bible Belt crowd? the Deep South charmingly old-fashioned crowd? the yee-haw, witty and ambitious Texans? the gourmet, nature-loving Seattle crowd? I am sure I am missing some (it's been a while I haven't traveled to the States and I have to say I miss all 50 of them, plus and perhaps above all my beloved DC :), but you get the idea. And the problem, or rather its first layer.

The second question this very poorly written article prompted is: what are you talking about, Sam Roland Heughan? I mean, what destination are you trying to promote? Scotland, through your Scottish gin, which I truly believe is exceptional? The Big Apple, like a counterpart to Sting, you know - a Scotsman in New York? That's not very clear, since that superficial girl just whirled you to a couple Chinatown speakeasies, rat pitter-patter included (bye-bye, Knickerbocker crowd right there) and that's pretty much it. New Zealand, that you mention at length, Maori tattoo story re-hashed, just because the book comes out next Tuesday? Ha-wa-wee, perhaps in a belated attempt to mitigate Tunagate? California, even, because it takes you back to humble beginnings? Granted, the Frisco one, not LA: that would be a horrible faux-pas, in a NY centered paper, much like me whimsically and idiotically mentioning Istanbul (instead of Constantinople), in a conversation with my Greek friends.

My head spins. And then let's add to that a ladle of recycled talking points, yours and C's altogether, like this gem:

Aspirational. Mmmhm. She said that. You said that. Multiple times, in multiple contexts that probably didn't even call for it. This is *** PR right there. I am not JAMMF. I am not Claire. But we aspire to that. Stop thinking we are these characters. No sane fan ever did: the insistence is unnecessary and has a real backfire potential. Stop thinking, period. But let it be my shipper sin, then, not to believe an iota of it and stubbornly think you people are, by now, way past the aspirational stage.

So, I took a long walk down memory lane today, while driving, trying to understand what the hell your personal brand is. Once upon a time, things were clear: you and C were a single brand. S&C - the fresh-faced, candid, witty and funny and oh, so in love new kids on the block. The spark was real and it was strong (it still is, only dampened and muted by PR-prompted shenanigans) and OL's audience was under its spell. People loved you, both of you, and some of us still do. You showed us as much as you could and for a while, it seemed to be convenient for just about everybody. That created expectations, but at the same time, you could have sold us land concessions on the Moon and we would have bought them, no questions asked.

And then, things happened. We know what: IFH, EFH, Remarkable Week-end. The spell was broken for many, who left in droves. Fans turned into bashing other fans. The S&C brand was progressively compromised and along with it, your Barbour Ambassadorship (for different reasons). Let's stop a bit at this point, in fond remembrance: that was the perfect pitch, for the perfect kind of corporate brand, for the perfect niche, for the perfect guy. A guy who had a credible, authentic story to tell, with a really strong potential to attract people outside of OL's crowd. Image and message perfectly aligned. Best case scenario.

So, with ***'s and your own PR benediction, what once was your solid gold starting point was ridiculed, trampled, shot to shambles, in a (failed) attempt to be sent to complete oblivion. You then had to think of something and try to branch out of both the blessing and curse of it.

MPC suddenly became more important than just any other charity project, of which there were a few (Cahonas Scotland comes to mind, the blood cancer one, as well). Cue in Sam the Athlete, Sam the Healthy Living Evangelist. The project was turned into a lucrative business, with a strong charity side. People bought subscriptions, people changed their eating and lifestyle habits, people lost weight - but really, I shouldn't write 'people', but 'women'. This was a women-oriented endeavor. A problem, again, on the long term.

Ha-wa-wee 1 happened, to more scandal and shrieks (that, I believe, was the reason you lost the Barbour project, another gold opportunity squandered because ten Internet bitches knew better). Then we were told another avatar was born: Sam the Entrepreneur. With a genuine, carefully curated, labor of love first alcohol product that clearly used the discarded S&C brand: The Sassenach and believe what you want, but just buy it. Mommies obliged. Antis obliged. Shippers obliged. All wallets are created equal, as I (often) use to say. And then COVID-19 came, putting a very real, very dangerous logistic strain on it.

Yet, you still had to somehow mitigate delays and losses. The Sassenach went exotic, with that limited edition tequila that probably won't be remembered by many outside OL's fandom, and that is a pity and a shame. The reason it won't be remembered is that you almost did not promote it, spare one or two Tick-Tock and Instagram clips. Does that justify the investment, the trips to Mexico, the very expensive retainers and commissions your tequila friends took for their trouble? I very much doubt it. That was, until being proved completely wrong, a flop. It brought absolutely nothing in terms of personal branding, spare perhaps a new faction in this paranoid cesspool of a fandom: the Gay Crowd, fueled by the image of a Lonely Bandana Cowboy, instead of the intended Sophisticated Traveler and Connoisseur. Yes, people are stupid, like that. Your PR and Sales team, too - and this comes from a place of deep understanding and appreciation.

We are now talking gin and boy, am I glad we do! This is perhaps an opportunity. Finally, a more democratically price-tagged, carefully tailored (again) drawing card product. But who is selling it to me? The California Boat Party Host? In that case, I won't buy it, but never mind me: maybe the fun-loving California Millennials would (we know the Smuggling Mommies would do it, anyways). The Sophisticated Traveler and Connoisseur you tried to show us again in Mancini's abysmal Departures paper and who is invited to important events, in recognition of his efforts?

You can't have the two of them, Sam, whatever those incompetents told you. You're either a 43-years old midlife crisis-stricken and shirtless clown or an Old World Industrious Thespian, with a stature and a status to match. A real Entrepreneur, not a cartoon scuba diver/beach boy Influencer. Eye Candy vs. Brain Power: after all, you are a '3x NYT best selling author', aren't you? Your pick, not mine. Stop the Sri Mataji-style Hugging and Booze tours: it's nonsense and that geriatric crowd is nowhere near what you need to make your dream come true. Do some real soul searching and stop listening to clueless 28-year old journalists, who tell you tacky rings are fun: they aren't. They make you look like an ageing Atlantic City Sinatra wannabe:

Sam Roland Heughan: currently at crossroads, trying to not choose between two opposite personal brands. Tricky position and an even trickier context, with the strike still lingering on and the pressing need to find an after OL strategy.

I promised you a tale of two brands and I think you wonder, by now, what happened to C, the other half of the primary SC brand?

The answer is, I honestly believe, not much. She has no personal brand, so to speak. Until now, she is just an Enthusiastic Dilettante. Book Club - started, unfinished and with that, farewell to any fan engagement. Cinema production rights - bought and then silence. Botanical Gin - first batch released (?) with no promo, no interviews (mentioning it in a podcast does not count), no reviews. Then teasing, then crickets again: a bit late, now, for the end of year celebrations. And I have to say I miss her or the part of her I never witnessed in real time (is such a thing possible?). I miss that starry-eyed, funny and witty girl. That girl was somehow completely swallowed by an Acrid Matron, who thought it was intelligent to yell at an Internet nobody, on Christmas Day, 'I am not married to Sam!' (ok, you aren't, but you're still lying). And I honestly don't know which one is best (or worst, for that matter): try to build something and make mistakes and try again until you hopefully find your way, or say nothing, do nothing and of course, never be controversial.

Now I am really interested to see how is she going to promote her gin. But you know what, I am not holding my breath, for some reason.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ryan Bort and Asawin Suebsaeng at Rolling Stone:

But as Trump sat in the White House, holding Bernard’s fate in the palm of his hand, he had a pressing question for his staff, according to a former Trump administration official and another source intimately familiar with the matter: Trump wanted to know if one of the murder victim’s parents, who were urging him to allow the scheduled execution to go forward, had voted for him. At the same time, he was refusing to hear pleas from Kardashian on Bernard’s behalf — all because he saw her social-media post celebrating Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. Bernard was executed on Dec. 10, at a federal facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. Bernard’s death came at a time when the nation was consumed with the chaos of Trump’s final few months in office following the election, making it especially easy for Bernard’s story to get buried under an avalanche of other news. It was also just one of many examples of how Trump allowed raw partisanship — and self-obsessed considerations about who did or didn’t vote for him — to influence his decision-making in life-or-death situations while in office.

Trump’s decision wasn’t an isolated incident of personal grievance or cruel preference. The former president using whether Americans support him or not to make life-or-death decisions is an actual, serious prescription for federal policies that reaches far beyond just one inmate and one execution. In recent weeks, Trump has been explicitly campaigning on a platform of turbo-charging that attitude in regard to how a second Trump administration would help or not help his fellow Americans — including in dire emergency scenarios. The former president has on multiple occasions down the stretch of the 2024 campaign threatened to withhold federal disaster relief from California — putting the lives of its citizens at risk — unless the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, gives in to his demands. He made the threat as recently as last weekend during a rally in California’s Coachella Valley, telling supporters that if Newsom doesn’t get on board with Trump’s water policy, “we’re not giving any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have. It’s not hard to do.”

“We’ll force it down his throat,” Trump said. Trump made the same threat while speaking from his golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes in September. “If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires,” Trump said. “And if we don’t give him all the money to put out the fires, he’s got problems.”

Newsom warned on X that Trump would apply the same quid-pro-quo to the rest of the nation. Trump “just admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas,” the governor wrote. “Today it’s California’s wildfires. Tomorrow it could be hurricane funding for North Carolina or flooding assistance for homeowners in Pennsylvania. Donald Trump doesn’t care about America — he only cares about himself.” Hurricane Helene rocked the Southeast a few weeks later. Trump responded by pushing conspiracy theories about the federal response, including an absurd accusation that the Biden administration was deliberately withholding aid from Republican areas. There was no basis whatsoever for the claim, but it isn’t hard to understand why this is where Trump’s mind went.  Politico later reported that while president in 2018, Trump initially refused to approve federal aid for California to fight wildfires because he felt some of the affected regions didn’t support him. It was only after Trump was shown data about the regions voting for him that he approved the relief. “We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” Mark Harvey, then Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff, told Politico. A year earlier, Trump blocked congressionally approved aid to Puerto Rico, an American territory populated by American citizens, in the wake of Hurricane Maria — during which Trump was publicly attacking Carmen Yulín Cruz, then the mayor of San Juan, for not being more grateful to him — and then tried to obstruct an investigation into what happened to the money. Trump also notably tried to intimidate Democratic governors during the Covid-19 pandemic, when states were desperate for federal aid. “It’s a two-way street,” Trump said of offering New York and other states federal help as the crisis continued to claim American lives. “They have to treat us well, too.”

Donald Trump’s dangerous pitch to voters is “vote for me or you get no disaster relief.”

Vote Kamala Harris if you want sane and fair disaster relief.

[nodynasty4us]

Incumbent presidents who preside over growing economies with low unemployment and wages rising faster than inflation, and who have not sent American ground troops to fight and die in unpopular wars, consistently win reelection. Economic improvement fosters confidence that the existing administration can ably address any remaining problems. All evidence suggests that Joe Biden was on track to lose reelection largely because of concerns about cognitive decline. Now that Biden will not be the nominee, Democrats have a fantastic opportunity to return the race to traditional fundamentals.

Bill Scher, 15 Experts Predict What Biden’s Dropout Means for the 2024 Election - POLITICO

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution

+

Quote by Elizabeth Spurlock Lambert : Jake Tapper just lied about Democratic governors getting together to discuss getting rid of Biden. When called out on his lie by many of those governors who were named and were pissed that he lied about a meeting that they said didn’t even happen, he deleted some of his tweets, but he didn’t retract or apologize and they are now just feathers spreading in the wind.

Politico lied about Biden family members privately trashing Biden’s campaign advisers. That never happened, and Politico doesn’t have any sources who would even know if it did. And it gets worse- a Biden aide even refuted the story before it ran, and they ran it anyway.

The NYT (who never endorsed Biden, including not in 2020 either) is so bitter about him never giving them an interview that they openly call for him to step down as they get caught being on Trump’s payroll.

NBC lied that Nancy Pelosi called for Biden to step down and when she got pissed and corrected the lie, Jen Psaki, Biden’s own former press secretary, kept repeating it anyway.

Politico also lied that Governor Whitmer said that Biden would lose Michigan. She never said that. They never corrected.

Bloomberg lied (by twisting facts) about Dems doing a virtual roll call about Biden being the nominee. That’s a lie.

Carl Bernstein lied to CNN that Biden was having memory loss at a restaurant in June 2023. The restaurant he named has been closed since 2019. He also wasn’t even there. He cited “unnamed sources” who he says told him. It was reported uncritically and without a fact check by CNN even though it’s not even possible that it’s true.

David Folkenflik of NPR deliberately omitted half of Jim Clyburn’s quote. Bad faith Biden-hater Andrea Mitchell asked Clyburn if he would support VP Harris *if Biden dropped out*. Clyburn answered that direct question in the affirmative, but then spent a long time taking exception to the whole premise of the question and said he doesn’t think Biden should drop out. Folkenflik omitted the part where Clyburn took exception, and only reported that Clyburn would support Harris if Biden drops out. I would count the omission as enough of a distortion of Clyburn’s answer that it was a lie.

This attached data compiled by media matters shows that the political media was pushing these “Biden is old and has dementia” stories even *before* the debate where his stutter got triggered because they let Trump spew a lie tornado all over the the stage at him. They need their bias confirmation now. Which is what they’re doing.

The biggest problem our democracy faces in the 2024 election is voter suppression.

We never hear about that problem. Why?

Because a close second problem is that two institutions which are crucial to protecting our democracy- the press and the courts- only work if they practice disciplined ethics. Neither institution has any accountability in 2024 for not being ethical. Who enforces ethics on the Supreme Court? Who enforces ethics on cable news and political news media? All we can do is not fall for it.

The next time you hear a story where “sources” have told CNN or MSNBC or Politico or NBC or NPR or anybody anything about “insiders say”, just don’t even believe it. “Some people are saying”. That’s what they are getting away with. I’ve been amazed at how many people I’ve seen it work on!

[tomorrowusa]

« It doesn't make you a man to pick on trans or gay kids, it just makes you an asshole. »

— Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) quoted on CNN’s “State of the Union.”. Via POLITICO. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

The senator essentially described most of the MAGA Republican leadership these days including Weird Donald Trump and JD "Couchman" Vance.

Fetterman was Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor during the 2020 elections. He had something to to say about vote fraud.

(Dana) Bash also asked Fetterman, who was lieutenant governor of the state in 2020, if he had any concerns over Trump spreading claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania like he did then, given the problems he caused by refusing to accept the election results in 2020. Fetterman laughed at the question: “It's the same shit that he played in 20 and it didn't go anywhere." "I'm not worried about it. It's the same thing that he tried in 2020,” Fetterman said. “We had an absolutely secure election. There was voter fraud in Pennsylvania and it was a handful of Republicans and they had their dead moms voting for Trump.”

If you haven't voted early, don't worry! If you're legally registered, grab your ID and head to your precinct polling place on Tuesday during voting hours. The best time to vote in person on Election Day is late morning; crowds are usually small and there's plenty of time to post a selfie in front of the polling place so you can remind others to vote.

ARE YOU READY TO VOTE? | Vote Save America

Only you and your friends can keep Trump from turning America into a writhing homophobic sludge pit.

Electing Kamala Harris is the only way to prevent an anti-LGBTQ hell in the United States. Letting Trump win provides a massive empowerment to assholes.

[goodqueenaly]

If Tywin was to decide, a few years after Joanna's death, to remarry, who and what (in terms of marriage power) do you think he would go for?

The problem is, I can’t work in a scenario which by the author’s own admission would never happen. Tywin did not want to remarry, point blank, despite having plenty of opportunity (certainly in terms of time) to do so. Joanna was, I think, completely irreplaceable in Tywin’s mind as the ideal bride: the kinswoman whose main-line (male) Lannister pedigree identified her as elite among the levels of humanity (by Tywin’s calculus, anyway); the companion of his childhood at Casterly Rock, whom he had loved and had married at least in part for love; the trusted confidante who could not only make him smile and laugh but who had supposedly ruled Tywin personally as much as he had ruled as Hand politically; the mother of his golden twins, especially precious heir Jaime, the products of Tywin’s quest for politico-dynastic domination through Lannister perfection. Tywin, the man who never did anything by half measures - as small-scale as shaving his head when his hair began thinning or as large-scale as drowning every Reyne inside Castamere at the tail end of the Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion - could not simply remarry after a proper period of mourning: he would remain a widower, publicly advertising his permanent status as only husband to the late Jonna.

If this all sounds mighty hypocritical given Tywin’s ruthless insistence on unhappy but diplomatically advantageous marriages for his children, as well as his violent and cruel outrage toward Tyrion and Tysha’s marriage purely for love … well, you’re right! Tywin was not, as much as he might have wanted to appear, a gilded android guided only by (what he saw as) cold logic and political acumen, but a deeply emotional man, driven by (among other things) love, anger, grief, hatred, pride, and jealousy. Tywin, but not his children, could sacrifice any potential political benefits to be had via aristocratic marriage/remarriage because he had felt Joanna’s death so strongly, because he wanted to honor her memory by not remarrying, because he needed to show how much he had loved her. (Which did not, of course, prevent Tywin from using sex workers before and after Joanna died - a reflection, I think, both of the hypocrisy in Tywin’s public perception versus his private life as well as Tywin’s attitude toward sex work specifically and people he considered subhuman more generally.)

Also, and it me so of course I have to say it, Tywin’s refusal to remarry after a beloved wife’s death is a nod to Philip IV in The Accursed Kings. In yet another parallel between Philip IV and Tywin, Druon’s Iron King was married only to Jeanne of Navarre (note the almost identical names of their respective wives), with Druon describing Jeanne as “the only love of [Philip’s] life” and noting that following Jeanne’s death Philip had “never wanted any other woman” and “had looked at none other and would never do so” (nearly identical to what Cersei, incorrectly, thinks about Tywin in the wake of his death).

[serpentinesheldonserpentine]

Jesus wept

The party is struggling to identify the best way to move forward, with many moderates arguing that identity politics and culture war issues need to take a backseat to prioritizing the country’s economic concerns and worries from working class voters, according to interviews with a dozen House Democrats. - Politico.

One can make the argument that the Democratic Party created the American working class after the Great Depression. And, incrementally and deliberately, Democrats abandoned this constituency as our manufacturing went abroad- because they lacked a solution.

That didn't make the problems go away.

What’s either galling or hilarious about this sudden reality check is that both parties spend billions of dollars on strategists, media consultants, messaging gurus, and polling data wonks. These are the same dipshits who were caught flatfooted after the election - well, half of ‘em were.

I’ll say again; for hopefully the last time. When your vision for a good life in the United States excludes those without a college degree, you will lose.

Today there are many parents working for barely minimum wages at jobs they hate because they don't want to start a pattern of dependence on Government support in their family.

I know these people. I’m related to these people. But for a push of encouragement from a Junior High teacher, I would be another old dude scrambling for work in the wake of factory closures. Instead, I ended up in college, to the surprise of everyone who knew me. God bless you, Mr. XXXXX. You changed my life.

The Democrats have forgotten these folks.

Jesus wept.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive (DAILY UPDATES! THOUSANDS OF SOURCES! CHECK IT OUT!)

Instead of issuing reports on vaccine hesitancy, the CDC should focus on fixing vaccine distribution problems.

In March 2021, an Inquirer op-ed asked: “Why are Black people being treated like America’s vaccine hesitancy problem?” That op-ed is the first of 94 references in my research team’s new study in the journal Scientific Reports. We analyzed 385,930 COVID-19 vaccine doses shipped to Pennsylvania in the first phase of vaccine distribution (Dec. 14, 2020, to April 12, 2021) and found that white people had 81.4% more doses shipped to their neighborhoods than Black people did.

How did that happen, and why does it still matter?

Between December 2020 and July 2021, 92% of U.S. COVID-19 vaccines were shipped to addresses determined by large pharmacy chains — not state or local governments. Through this Federal Retail Pharmacy Program (FRPP), billions of taxpayer dollars were transferred to pharmacies. The federal government paid about $15 to $20 per dose, shipped those doses to pharmacies for free, and let pharmacies charge private insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid for every shot.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance promising to “ensure that jurisdictions have full visibility” into the FRPP, but that promise was empty.

According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress, state and local officials received “limited or no information about where vaccine doses were going,” making “it difficult for states to … distribute their own limited supply.”

The Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported that 44 of 56 government programs received inadequate data on FRPP shipments, while 14 programs received no data at all from at least one pharmacy chain.

The public was also kept in the dark.

A March 2021 Politico article praised the FRPP for administering 65% of its doses to “racial and ethnic minorities,” but a second GAO report puts the actual number at less than 40%. The first 100 Google News results reveal no other mainstream coverage of the FRPP between April 2021 and January 2023, when the Hill claimed the “strategy has worked wonders.” In a sense, it had.

Jurisdictions were left wondering how to diagnose, let alone cure, the racial disparities in FRPP vaccinations without decent data. According to a second Office of Inspector General report, “gaps in this data hindered their efforts to identify and address inequities in vaccine distribution and administration.” One state told the GAO that pharmacies sent excessive doses to “areas with a sufficient number,” but without authority to stop them, state officials could only “negotiate with pharmacy partners … to send vaccine doses to pharmacy sites in higher-need areas.”

Yet, in April, the CDC wrote that the FRPP should “serve as a model … to provide health services in other public health emergencies.”

In Philadelphia, where chart-topping segregation makes racial exclusion a breeze, white people didn’t have 81.4% more FRPP doses shipped to their neighborhoods — they had 570.1% more doses. And the FRPP short-changed Philadelphians of all races. Already facing a shortage due to a homegrown for-profit vaccine scandal, and home to more than 12% of Pennsylvania’s population, the city received just 2.18% of FRPP doses.

That’s not a “model,” it’s a bad influence.

Nationally, Black people were blamed for their own low vaccination rates even before vaccines were available. But data suggest that Black people in Pennsylvania and elsewhere wanted vaccines. In April 2021, Black Pennsylvanians were 65% less likely than white Pennsylvanians to be vaccinated. One year later, once vaccines were widely available, they were 20% more likely to be vaccinated, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis. Where were those headlines?

Instead of issuing endless reports on vaccine hesitancy, the CDC should focus on fixing vaccine distribution problems. As long as Black Americans are denied equal access to medical treatment, anyone who tells them to trust the medical system and make better health-care choices has offered little more than a one-two punch of gaslighting and victim-blaming.

Rather than fixating on racial differences in vaccine hesitancy, we should celebrate the persistence of underserved communities that beat the odds, overcame justifiable fears, and managed to get vaccinated.

Geoff Holtzman is a Philadelphia-based researcher, data scientist, and writer whose published work spans philosophy, psychology, bioethics, and public health.

[alittlefrenchtree]

Yes thank you! I mean think of the scene when Alex talks to Nora after the first kiss, or when he "argues" with his mother, or Alex coming out with Henry, the scene at the café where he perfectly shows how Alex is uncomfortable with Miguel's advances (and yes remember that dream that he is in that scene), or the first time, the whole speech after the email leak... He's soooo good I think sometimes we take it for granted that everything was easy for him because he looks a lot like Alex but definitely not that's how it is.

OMG yes!! You mentioned so many scenes I love as well! The funny tone of the post-kiss conversation with Nora is so spot on (even if I has one tiny minor problem with a second of editing -- as someone would say the pause is way too big between the "wh-- the politico reporter??" line and the "shut up" line. The cut between the two shots should have been a bit shorter). And by the way Rachel is also perfect in this scene.

Alex "coming out" to Henry and the whole conversation up until the end of the scene is just like a warm hug to my cold heart. They're both so sweet, vulnerable and soft and adorable.

I already talked at lengths about the scene at the café so obviously big fat yes.

And the speech scene and the miguel scene, omg i'll try to be quick, promise.

The speech. The writing alone is so good and important and the way Taylor delivered? Absolute chief kiss. You can hear the three parts so clearly -- the slight nervousness of the first lines when he talked about what happened to them then growing into confidence and assurance when he speaks his mind about queer's rights and struggles all of this turning into a soft and full of love declaration about his feelings for Henry. It's absolutely perfect.

And I think the miguel scene is even more layered in nuances and details. He's never been more ACD than in this scene, and I love the back and forth. How he starts unsure but quickly becomes excited to talk about politics and flirty without even being aware of it but the second Miguel flirts back he immediately retreats because he doesn't know what to do with it and all of the nuances you see in between. All of this beautiful acting + his insane beautiful looks makes me frustrated because it's a bit "wasted" in a scene with fucking ramos but i love it very much anyway.

So yeah, we should definitely see all the work Taylor did because even if he was exactly like Alex (which he isn't), the work to bring everything in front of the camera lens in the right way is equally difficult.

Thank you for your message, you made me very happy and excited to talk about these scenes 💜

[isagrimorie]

Also, what kind of access does AIDA have to have unearthed Emily’s CLASSIFIED files during JTF-12?

(Jade has photos of Emily undercover and Ian Doyle! Like that's something in a government file. In an Interpol classified file!).

The convoluted thing is how Voit could direct them to this bunker. Did Voit know of the bunker or did Church set this up? Or did Peter???

Cause I assume AIDA/Church gave all this intel. I don't care how good the Sicarious network was, the things the board had on were things only an organization like AIDA has the means and opportunity to uncover.

Also Church showed his hand that he already knew Emily, and it was beyond reading about her from Politico.

I 100% bet it was Church who set Brian off and pointed her to Emily.

If Church survives the season and AIDA is the new Big Bad, Emily finally has a worthy opponent to set her sights on.

Ian Doyle’s far away, and she doesn’t really have a personal arch enemy. She only has disdain for Voit and Scratch. There’s nothing personal for Emily to hold on to. Barnes was too broad and caricature to be a villain for Emily.

But Church? Church is exactly the kind of enemy that sets Emily’s teeth. He’s an enemy that could also do (political) damage to Emily’s mother, if he were so inclined.

He has connections everywhere and powerful enough to be a real problem for not just Emily, the BAU, but also the FBI.

Or Church dies in the finale, and non of these happens. LOL.