US Politics, August 2024 -- "Unburdened By a Has-Been"

If you want the apparatus of government to be robust to a potential second Trump term you really want to have the right state legislators in place, is all I'm saying

re KOSA, sounds like a combination of tech companies and ACLU getting organized to fight and persuading some conservative groups that it could be used against them too (e.g. to censor anti-vax content as harmful to children).

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/technology/kosa-child-online-safety.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k0.UcC3.tmgXQWOdNLd0&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

thx

What was supposed to be a simple piece of legislation to protect children online has been dragged into a heated political war.

classic headass nytimes sentence

jus' a simple piece of legislation

I'm just a bill

they mention skepticism from trans activists but fail to mention that the sponsor of the bill is on record saying their skepticism is completely warranted

Supporters of the #KOSA have tried to bury this video of @MarshaBlackburn saying explicitly she wants to use it to censor transgender content online.

Would be a real shame if it went viral again while they're debating this on the Senate floor...https://t.co/e5JnEeReSS pic.twitter.com/yEMuz8CY7h

— Evan Greer is on Mastodon and Bluesky (@evan_greer) July 25, 2024

Meantime, a good read about complicated politics, to put it mildly:

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/evan-gershkovich-prisoner-exchange-ccb39ad3

people really shouldnt be giving money to presidential campaigns

in this era of ActBlue and crowdfunding of campaigns, a few small donations are OK. it lets the party understand how valuable it is to deliver policies that are broadly popular with voters, as opposed to concentrating all their efforts courting investment bankers and CEOs. but we give almost exclusively to local candidates and issues. nothing to Harris, yet, since she's raking it in so fast already.

What's really galling about the NYT on KOSA is I did a quick search of their editorials and can't find that they've even mentioned it, despite it obviously being a vehicle for censorship. The kind of thing the press is supposed to be against as a first principle. (Not that I expect great things from the NYT opinion department, but that oughta be a no-brainer.)

elites in their cant be bothered era

I'm starting to think this 9/11 plea deal is as much about protecting our Saudi "allies" if a trial were to happen, as it is about any closure for the families

it's a case where a plea deal works for both sides. the government tortured them for years, fatally tainting any legal case that could be brought, but the government clearly was never going to release them under any circumstances. the stalemate wore them down and by now their guilty plea is, politically speaking, almost meaningless.

I'd read somewhere that a lot of Guantanamo inmates were in no hurry to leave the island and be shipped to some supermax in Colorado - they were allowed to eat together, pray together, etc., something that might not happen in the U.S. (of course, this is after tortures ended and they were just stuck in legal limbo)

Trump's reaction to the US/Russia prisoner swap raises the question of whether he still gets the classified briefings that every other former president gets.

So when are they going to release the details of the prisoner swap with Russia?
How many people do we get versus them?
Are we also paying them cash? Are they giving us cash (Please withdraw that question, because I'm sure the answer is NO)? Are we releasing murderers, killers, or thugs? Just curious because we never make good deals, at anything, but especially hostage swaps. Our "negotiators" are always an embarrassment to us! I got back many hostages, and gave the opposing Country NOTHING - and never any cash. To do so is bad precedent for the future. That's the way it should be, or this situation will get worse and worse. They are extorting the United States of America. They're calling the trade "complex" - That's so nobody can figure out how bad it is!

I assume he's angry because he said only he could get it done

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-putin-free-wsj-reporter-evan-gershkovich-kremlin-news-them-2024-5

yeah this gives Laughin' Kamala a WIN - better to leave them in the Gulag

I'll take it:

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/08/01/congress/brown-leading-in-ohio-00172244

LOL @ Trump

we never make good deals, at anything

https://media.tenor.com/KAvm-TuOU90AAAAM/charlie-brown-walking.gif

SAD SACK

I don't think he's even read anything about it, a lot of it involves getting Russians out of Russia, Germans, Slovenia, etc... that's the 'complex' part that he can't comprehend

the WSJ story about it looks epic. i'm gonna read it when i get home. their front page headline is massive.

people really shouldnt be giving money to presidential campaigns

the fact that elections depend on how much money was poured into a specific campaign seems to be one of those ridiculous things that everybody just accepts with a shrug, so why not just make it explicit all the way and weigh votes based on how much money you paid for your vote

Wild that Trump and supporters are doubling down on the race stuff, trying to "prove" that Harris has claimed Indian heritage in the past, as though she is somehow now trying to cover it up. Weird stuff!

― jaymc, Thursday, August 1, 2024 10:04 AM (three hours ago) bookmark

Trump acting as the Identity Police is quite ironic, considering he used to call newspapers under the pseudonym "John Barron" to promote his own social and business activities. That's fucking weird!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdgP7GLEG_g

the WSJ story about it looks epic. i'm gonna read it when i get home. their front page headline is massive.

― scott seward, Thursday, August 1, 2024 2:17 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

seems like quite a lot of it went down minutes before Biden announced his withdrawal

From self-quarantine in his Delaware home, Biden, testing positive for COVID-19, was tuning out frenzied speculation about his future to push the deal over its finish line. Slovenia still needed to tick through the final legal arrangements to ship back the spies it held—and time was running out. One Slovenian official texted a Journal reporter to say he was “shitting bricks.” Biden called Prime Minister Robert Golob to nudge things along, adding wistfully: “I’ve really got to get to Slovenia.” About an hour later, he announced he was leaving the presidential race.

adding wistfully: “I’ve really got to get to Slovenia.”

let's go, Brandon!

that couple in Slovenia actually WERE spies, no doubt about it - pretending to be spaniards

Hmmm. Slovenia. Whom do we know from Slovenia? Melania, that's whom.

Perhaps Biden is going to go pick out a Slavic hotwife?

luka, tadej

Aug. 1, 2024, 1:21 p.m. ET1 hour ago
Peter Baker
Jake Sullivan is a stoic and measured person but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look as happy as he does at the lectern today.

well, if Peter Baker said it.

Trump acting as the Identity Police is quite ironic, considering he used to call newspapers under the pseudonym "John Barron" to promote his own social and business activities. That's fucking weird!

The weirdo cherry on top being he named his youngest son after this sock account.

fwiw I agree that donating to Harris is probably not a great use of your $ (the message that their is enthusiasm no appetite for an open convention has been sent and the marginal value of your money isn't huge given the hundreds of millions sloshing around).

but if you want to donate, I recommend this statehouse slate https://app.oath.vote/donate?p=tspgs-hi&ref=tsp-tlaunch

and/or https://www.voteriders.org (tax deductible)

booyah

A reporter asked Biden on Thursday about Trump’s suggestion that he would have brought the detainees home without giving anything in exchange.

“Why didn’t he do it when he was president?” Biden replied.

Was just coming to post that. The video of that moment was hilarious. He gave a thumbs-up and walked out right afterward.

depending on November's outcome, Biden could well end up with a pretty darn secure legacy - stepping down when he did, this prisoner exchange, the economy and job market, etc.

people are always going to genuflect before these great men regardless but one would hope they consider genocide in the debts column ahead of such generics as "the economy"

spoiler: they won't

gotta think the only thing biden will be remembered for is stepping down

and his dog biting like 20 secret service people

he was trying to warn us

at least he had a dog to bite the officers... Trump had no dog ;-(

commander biting the secret service over and over is def the highlight of the administration

thing is you can see how a dog might consider those guys a threat

Woke Doggo

Trump had no dog ;-(

He just likes talking about them being hunted down or being inferiors.

Gov. Shapiro cancels weekend fundraisers in the Hamptons

Shapiro’s “trip was planned several weeks ago and included several fundraisers for his own campaign committee,” spox Manuel Bonder said. “His schedule has changed and he is no longer traveling to the Hamptons this weekend”

— Allan Smith (@akarl_smith) August 1, 2024

hmm

Trump was never invited to the Hamptons

Not even a single Hampton

Sad

Even Sammy Hagar had a standing Hampton.

This is an interesting run through new Harris social media spots. No idea how effective those TikTok spots are, but I guess they're trying.

NEW: Last night, the Harris campaign launched 25 new digital ads all running on various platforms (Meta, Google + Snapchat). These latest ads are vertical videos.

This 🧵 will go through all of the new ads.

The first one uses Donald Trump's own words from a recent rally pic.twitter.com/qigQsPe7iT

— Andrew Arenge (@MrArenge) August 31, 2024

lol

Up visiting relatives and watching Georgia v Clemson college football game earlier via Youtube tv and this Trump ad came on with a California woman who was a crime victim caused by yes an undocumented immigrant. The ad calls Harris a San Francisco liberal and leaves out facts about the incident. Shocking I know

https://sfist.com/2024/08/23/new-trump-pac-ad-unloads-on-kamala-harris-over-2008-incident-when-she-was-sf-da/

Saw that ad in a hotel bar in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, last night during the Badgers game.

Not looking forward to the Ricky Pearsall shooting becoming a political narrative on San Francisco crime and safety in the coming days and weeks. *sigh*

Seriously

Scott Soriano has been one of my favorite folks to follow over the last few years of politics https://scottsoriano.substack.com/p/trumps-arlington-fiasco-a-reality?r=4ayb6p&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwY2xjawFBhNlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXiDbf9A5WPKyFSqWybb5OPJwMqO75fRyzTrLs396vikxUBqFg3Ij3qRrQ_aem_iWqX3fz2wmogV-3vqfLPKQ&triedRedirect=true

That Soriano piece is overall very otm, except it overlooks the fact that the armed services draw their ranks from the same society that gave Trump more than 74 million votes in the 2020 election, so that rage at & disgust with Trump is not quite as universal among them as he would like to think. There's a noteworthy segment of the military that would love an authoritarian strongman as president and see Trump as their best chance of getting one, even if he is something of an idiot.

it isn't august anymore. we made it.

US Politics, September 2024 -- “I’m Not Going to Apologize For Posting a Joke”

Farewell, August thread title. You were a champion.