This is amazing. I know, no one cares about the race for Oakland mayor. But this woman Sheng Thao has gotten over $800k from the unions and then did all this to her people. And the union didn't help this woman because they didn't want to hurt their golden girl. And media isn't covering it at all. Public sector unions are a scourge.

https://eastbayinsiders.substack.com/p/former-council-aide-to-sheng-thao?utm_campaign=post

 

Quote

 

OCTOBER SURPRISE—An aide to Oakland Councilmember Sheng Thao said she was fired last June from her job at City Hall because she wasn’t spending enough time on Thao’s mayoral campaign.

The aide, LeAna Powell, who worked in Thao’s office for two months last spring, described the office as a toxic workplace environment, was promised wages and benefits that were later lowered, and alleged Thao directed Powell, who is Black, to attend campaign events, including last spring’s Juneteenth celebrations, while Thao tended to fundraising obligations.

The account, reported on Tuesday night by Oakland insider and vlogger Zennie Abraham, is a bombshell in a very tight mayoral race that is heading into the final stretch to Election Day.

The allegation of splitting time between her public-facing job at City Hall and Sheng’s mayoral campaign is an explosive charge. The commingling of duties is a major violation of state election law. Thao did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

—Powell said she was actively recruited by Thao’s office earlier this year, and was convinced that she was well-suited for the position. Once she agreed to join Thao’s office, the promised annual wage was lower and the job position was changed. Powell believed she was recruited to be the chief of staff, not council aide.

—When Powell questioned the employment terms with an Oakland employee in Human Resources, the women told her, “‘Let me tell you something. Sheng Thao is going to be the next mayor. When she becomes the next mayor you’re going to get $40,000 more. You’ll get $100,000-plus when you move over to the mayor’s office. So you better sign it and shut up and if you tell anybody I said that, I’ll tell them you’re lying.’ That was my first day. I felt like I was inducted into the mob.”

—Powell said she rarely interacted with Thao or other staff members, was untrained, and was often left alone at the office at City Hall. Powell said she "never did one thing that they told me I was going to do.”

—“They told me on Wednesday’s we work on the campaign. This is from Day 1,” Powell said. “[Thao] wanted everybody on her team to manage the folks who worked on the campaign.” Powell was instructed to download Signal, an encrypted messaging app, create a separate email address, and told not to use Microsoft Office.

—Working on the mayoral campaign was a chance for extra money, they told her. But later Thao notified the staff that she didn’t have money to pay them, Powell said. "I felt they lured me in and they were going to bully me. I didn’t know anything. I was brand new,” Powell said. By joining the mayoral campaign, Powell would be able to spend time with Thao. "She told me that if I didn’t work on her campaign, I wouldn’t get to know her,” Powell said.

—When Powell spent a weekend visiting her sick uncle in Reno, she was strongly reprimanded. Powell said the campaign, which was essentially also the city council staff, were aware about her plans. Due to on-the-job stress from working at city hall, family obligations, and helping out with the mayoral campaign, Powell began having her own medical issues.

—Two days after her third trip to the Emergency Room, Powell said she was fired from Thao’s council office. "She was abusing her power,” Powell said. Powell believes she was fired in mid-June because she was not able to work for the campaign, which she understood was voluntary. "I didn’t have the capacity to work for her 24 hours a day,” Powell added. "It was literally nonstop.”

—“I never had a performance evaluation and was told I was doing a good job. I still don’t know how it wasn’t working out when people weren’t with me,” she said.

—In another shocking allegation, Powell said Thao instructed staff members to attend Juneteenth event in her place and "show a presence” so she could attend an out-of-state campaign fundraiser. "I need you to look like I was at the Juneteenth event,” Powell said Thao told the campaign staff.

—“She was celebrating Black people and asking me to work for free,” Powell said. "I was tossed away like I was nothing.” Powell never attended the Juneteenth events because she was fired from Thao council staff just days prior.

 

 

23 minutes ago, vikas83 said:

Public sector unions are a scourge.

FDR gave fair warning

The troubled cur fades, eshewed
Prunus persica holds its breath, crimson becomes blue

But the central stone in the arch resists
The unbalanced giant topples, remiss

All eyes turn to the sands of the west
Where the fortunes and innocence of the desparate rest

Reality 

 

 

How not at all shocking.

Domestic Terrorism isn't really on the rise. Voters have nothing to worry about. 

A lot of people cite the economy more specifically inflation as a reason voting during this midterms. 

But what exactly can congress do to tackle this? They can’t control what companies are charging for basic necessities.

6 hours ago, Toastrel said:

 

How not at all shocking.

Seems to be working no?

30 minutes ago, pisceschica said:

A lot of people cite the economy more specifically inflation as a reason voting during this midterms. 

But what exactly can congress do to tackle this? They can’t control what companies are charging for basic necessities.

Republicans want more corporate tax cuts as if they aren't making enough money already.

They can investigate for price gauging. 

3 minutes ago, lynched1 said:

Seems to working no?

Yeah, Pelosi's husband would agree.

14 minutes ago, jsdarkstar said:

Yeah, Pelosi's husband would agree.

Would he? Let's ask his daughter.

On 10/24/2022 at 9:21 AM, Tweek said:

But of course

Beware of Idols. 

21 minutes ago, jsdarkstar said:

Republicans want more corporate tax cuts as if they aren't making enough money already.

They can investigate for price gauging. 

 

How do you investigate price gouging though? I’m sure for some manufacturers their costs are going resulting in retailers charging more. Their cost may have increased by 5% but they might be charging consumers 10-15% more than the price before their cost increase. 
 

But what are the chances that members of congress go and investigate the hands that feeds them? I highly doubt it. 

4 minutes ago, pisceschica said:

How do you investigate price gouging though? I’m sure for some manufacturers their costs are going resulting in retailers charging more. Their cost may have increased by 5% but they might be charging consumers 10-15% more than the price before their cost increase. 
 

But what are the chances that members of congress go and investigate the hands that feeds them? I highly doubt it. 

The DOJ is investigating.
Whistleblowers, reported complaints. Are couple of ways to get it started.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-announces-initiative-protect-americans-collusive-schemes-amid-supply-chain
Department of Justice Announces Initiative to Protect Americans from Collusive Schemes Amid Supply Chain Disruptions

 

In the wake of persistent price increases initially stemming from supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Antitrust Division and the FBI announced an initiative today to deter, detect and prosecute those who would exploit supply chain disruptions to engage in collusive conduct. 

"Temporary supply chain disruptions should not be allowed to conceal illegal conduct,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. "The Antitrust Division will not allow companies to collude in order to overcharge consumers under the guise of supply chain disruptions.”

"The lingering challenge of supply chain disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity for criminals to fix prices and overcharge customers,” said Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. "The FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to collaborate and investigate schemes that violate our antitrust laws and stifle our economic recovery.”

As part of the initiative, the Antitrust Division is prioritizing any existing investigations where competitors may be exploiting supply chain disruptions for illicit profit and is undertaking measures to proactively investigate collusion in industries particularly affected by supply disruptions. The Antitrust Division has also formed a working group focusing on global supply chain collusion with its global partners, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Canadian Competition Bureau, the New Zealand Commerce Commission and the United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority. The working group is developing and sharing intelligence, utilizing existing international cooperation tools, to detect and combat collusive schemes.   

Economies across the globe have faced significant challenges caused by supply chain disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 global pandemic. Transportation constraints, disruptions to routine business operations and difficulty in obtaining raw materials have all led to increased costs of production and shipment, which in turn have resulted in higher prices for consumers. Supply chain disruptions have been broad in scope, affecting a variety of industries ranging from agriculture to health care.

While many individuals and businesses across various sectors in the economy have responded and will continue to respond to supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic with laudable ingenuity — bringing goods to communities in need, expanding existing capacity and developing products and services to meet new needs — others may seek to use supply chain disruptions as a cover for collusive schemes. For those who seek to exploit supply chain disruptions for their own illicit gain, the Antitrust Division, along with the FBI, will investigate and prosecute criminal violations of the antitrust laws, including agreements between individuals and businesses to fix prices or wages, rig bids or allocate markets. Anyone with information on price fixing, bid rigging, market-allocation agreements or other anticompetitive conduct should call the Antitrust Division’s Citizen Complaint Center at 1-888-647-3258, or visit http://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations.  

The Department of Justice is committed to working closely with the public, the business community and other federal agencies to enforce the antitrust laws for the protection and welfare of the American people.  

New Jersey Democrat Senator Bob Menendez is out on another outreach program. The man is tireless.

 

13 hours ago, lynched1 said:

Seems to be working no?

Only on willfully ignorant morons like yourself. But who am I to judge?  

9 hours ago, lynched1 said:

New Jersey Democrat Senator Bob Menendez is out on another outreach program. The man is tireless.

 

Unlike Lyndsey Graham,. at least Menendez gets some trim.

On 10/24/2022 at 5:26 PM, JohnSnowsHair said:

I know he’s not a repository on English diction but I’m genuinely curious how a rigged election gets stolen. Is he saying that the election was initially rigged by one party and then subsequently stolen by another party? Is he admitting to crimes on Truth Social?

In about 16/25 of a fortnight I will be making fun of a large group of you - but I don't quite yet know who.

It's tight... tighter than an Orkney slag (get it?), but I need some advance notice to create my memes.

Remember...

I'm better than you all!

I can out-learn you.

I can out-read you.

I can out-think you.

And I can out-philosophize you.

Anyway... if anyone has access to non-fake nudes of the redhead from The Librarians, please post.

Fare thee well...

Baron von Chickenpants

On 10/28/2022 at 7:53 PM, pisceschica said:

A lot of people cite the economy more specifically inflation as a reason voting during this midterms. 

But what exactly can congress do to tackle this? They can’t control what companies are charging for basic necessities.

But they do influence supply.

Here’s an idea they could try: make it easier to build nuclear plants. Finance shale production and new refineries.

But one party, and we all know which one, fights every effort to increase energy supply.

Georgia pastor is spitting fire.

 

Quote

Where Are We a Week Before the Election?

It is hard to believe, but just 8 days before the election, a new Morning Consult poll shows 11% of voters nationwide still haven't decided which party to support for Congress. Have they missed a bazillion stories on every media outlet from The New York Times and Fox to the East Cupcake Middle School Reporter? Did the $10 billion or so worth of ads on television escape them? What revelations are they waiting for?

This news is not good for the Democrats. An overwhelming 83% of the undecided voters think the country is on the wrong track and 62% disapprove of the job Joe Biden is doing. That does not speak to a desire for "more of the same." Will they all vote Republican? Probably not. Many won't vote at all, but that is also a problem for the Democrats because Gen Z voters (18-25 year olds) are not at all enthusiastic about voting and Democrats desperately need their votes.

It is an old story, but Republican voters firmly believe that the worst Republican is better than the best Democrat. Young Democrats who are disappointed that Biden didn't carry out the program of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) often go off and sulk and don't vote. That the votes weren't there in the Senate doesn't impress them. As usual in midterms, it will probably come down to which party is better at getting its base to the polls, as well as not losing too many of the undecideds. But in politics, sometimes surprises happen. And keep in mind, the margin of error for the typical poll is 3-4 points, although an average of multiple polls reduces that somewhat.

Politico has a rundown of the key races as follows:

State	Democrat	Republican	Politico	RCP average	2020
Arizona	Mark Kelly	Blake Masters	Toss up	Kelly +1.5	Biden +0.3
Colorado	Michael Bennet	Joe O'Dea	Lean Democratic	Bennet +7.5	Biden +13.5
Florida	Val Demings	Marco Rubio	Lean Republican	Rubio +7.4	Trump +3.3
Georgia	Raphael Warnock	Herschel Walker	Toss up	Walker + 1.6	Biden +0.8
Nevada	Catherine Cortez Masto	Adam Laxalt	Toss up	Laxalt +1.2	Biden +2.7
New Hampshire	Maggie Hassan	Don Bolduc	Lean Democratic	Hassan +3.4	Biden +7.0
North Carolina	Cheri Beasley	Ted Budd	Lean Republican	Budd +4.5	Trump +1.3
Ohio	Tim Ryan	J.D. Vance	Lean Republican	Vance +2.2	Trump +8.2
Pennsylvania	John Fetterman	Mehmet Oz	Toss up	Fetterman +0.3	Biden +5.3
Wisconsin	Mandela Barnes	Ron Johnson	Toss up	Johnson +3.3	Biden +0.7

 

 

For the five toss-up states, here are the graphs for the whole year.

 

 

 

For a page with the graphs for all Senate races, click here.

If nothing else, these polls seem to indicate that tribalism rules. There are candidates who are out-and-out liars, world-class hypocrites, and despicable people who shouldn't be serious candidates for deputy assistant dogcatcher in any town in America and yet have a decent chance of being elected United States senator due to the little party ID after their name. Nothing else matters. As a consequence, the U.S. has drifted into a kind of semi-parliamentary system with the disadvantages of a parliamentary system (dumb people can be elected as a result of party ID) without the advantages of a parliamentary system (no checks and balances so the majority party can carry out its program unhindered).

Another way of looking at things is to compare the 2008 and 2020 presidential elections. In both years, the Democrat won, so they are somewhat comparable. Here are our maps:

 

 

What changed? For starters, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, and Florida were swing states back in 2008. Now they are all effectively red states. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were blue states, now they are swing states. All of them have moved noticeably to the right. The only swing state that became a blue state is Virginia, on account of a huge population influx in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties in Northern Virginia. Meanwhile, Arizona and Georgia, which were reddish, have become swing states.

Our conclusion is that the country has moved to the right. Why? Maybe it is just a coincidence, but Ohio, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are all heavily blue-collar, largely white states. Florida is the only real exception here and it has experienced heavy population growth due to retirees from these states moving to The Villages, northwest of Orlando.

In 20 years, demographers and political scientists will perhaps understand this shift better, but now all we can do is make some wild speculations. Here we go. First, in 2008, a Black man was elected president. He was a once-in-a-generation gifted politician, the best either party offered since Bill Clinton. He had a somewhat wishy-washy opponent who didn't run an inspiring campaign so he won. But a lot of people didn't like the idea of a Black man as president and this galvanized them. When Donald Trump came along in 2016 with a large dose of implicit racism (not to mention, xenophobia), it moved a fair number of voters who had been Democrats on economic grounds to become Republicans on race/culture/xenophobia grounds.

Second, the Democratic Party has been moving steadily to the left over the years. Talking about defunding the police was disastrous as it has given Republicans talking points for years. The recent letter from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), essentially saying (in a slightly coded way): "Let's give Vladimir Putin whatever he wants in order to get peace in Ukraine" was also a disaster. And the Democrats are way, way out in front of public opinion on transgender rights. An awful lot of people do not want biological boys competing in girls' sports. We'll leave the ethical and moral issues to the ethicists and moralists, but politically, defending this is a loser and gives many voters the feeling that the Democrats don't have a clue what "ordinary people" think.

In the 2016 primaries, Bernie Sanders got 13 million votes, which energized many young Democrats who thought the country wanted Bernie. In the 2016 general election, Hillary Clinton got 66 million votes, which means there were 53 million Democrats who could have voted for Sanders and for whatever reason, didn't. And if the 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump wanted to, they could have changed their party registration to Democratic to vote for Sanders. So Sanders got 9.5% of the people who actually voted in 2016 and 5.7% of the voting eligible population. That's not a winning formula. He was an authentic, inspiring, and well-funded candidate, but the country simply did not and does not want what he is selling.

In 2020, Joe Biden ran as a centrist and won. Our (very tentative) conclusion is that the Democrats have moved too far to the left for many voters and this is hurting them badly in at least half a dozen medium-sized states where many people now just vote for anyone whose name is followed by (R). Again, we are not taking a moral position on this. We are merely stating the obvious: a political party that wants to win elections had better figure out what the voters want and pay a lot of attention to it. It does not help that the Republican Party has pulled off the trick of rarely saying what it's for, instead spending most of its time getting people angry about the radical things Democrats allegedly stand for.

The map data are incontrovertible. The country has moved to the right since 2008, even in good Democratic years. If you think there are better explanations than ours, let us know and we will publish some of them on Sunday.

To their credit, the Democrats are beginning to catch on. Their Senate candidates in Arizona, Ohio, and Georgia are moderates who are good matches for their respective states. In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman is maybe a bit left of the average Pennsylvania voter, but he makes up for it with his working-class background and ambiance. In Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes may well be too far left for the state, especially for a Black candidate. As a result, the much-loathed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), may well get another term. If left-leaning young people want to show that lefties can win elections, they had better show up en masse there. (V)

Races for Governor Are Not Following the Playbook

The above observations about tribalism notwithstanding, the governor's races are different. There, tribalism is less important than for Congress. Blue Massachusetts and Maryland have Republican governors. Red Kentucky, Kansas and Louisiana have Democratic governors. Thus, for gubernatorial races, the usual partisan rules don't fully apply. That also appears to be true in this year's elections. For example, deep blue New York and Oregon have competitive races for governor, but so does deep red Oklahoma. What gives?

One explanation is that governors have a more direct influence on people's lives than senators or representatives. They have power over issues like abortion and crime, for example. Also, Joe Biden and Donald Trump don't play as big a role in state politics as they do in national politics. Be that as it may, last week Biden showed up to try to help Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who was not elected governor in the first place, but got the job when Andrew Cuomo was driven from office by his bad behavior. Hochul is facing serious competition from Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY). When he announced his run, everyone thought it was a joke. Not anymore. Polling puts Hochul ahead by about 7 points. That's nice, but nothing like Cuomo's 23-point margin over Marc Molinaro in 2018. Hochul is still a slight favorite, but in a red wave could bite the dust.

Oregon is a special case because two Democrats are running against one Republican and could split the vote. The official Democrat is former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek, a not-terribly inspiring candidate and an out lesbian. The Republican is Christine Drazan, the former Oregon House minority leader. If it were just these two, Kotek would win because Oregon is so blue and being a lesbian isn't an issue there (the current governor, Kate Brown, is also LGBTQ+). However, a third candidate, Betsy Johnson, is in the race as well. She was a Democrat in the state Senate until 2021 when she nominally became an independent. The only reason she is viable and could be a spoiler is that the richest man in the state, Nike co-founder Phil Knight, wants to defeat Kotek at all costs and decided that bankrolling a Democrat-turned-independent in order to split the Democratic vote would be cheaper and more effective than funding the Republican.

Oregon is a first-past-the-post state and polling shows Kotek and Drazan nearly tied. This is yet another example where ranked choice voting would really be a good idea. Any time more than two candidates are in a race, RCV is so much better than letting a candidate who has no chance of actually winning determine who wins. But Oregon doesn't have RCV and Knight's money may end up electing a Republican in a very blue state.

The Oklahoma gubernatorial race is quite surprising. Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) is being challenged by the state's superintendent of public instruction, Joy Hofmeister. She has campaigned on crime. More specifically, she has repeatedly pointed out that the crime rate in Oklahoma under Stitt is higher than in California and New York. It seems to be working. The respected Sooner Poll has Hofmeister ahead 47% to 43%. That could be a fluke, but the race appears to be a toss up. Strange world. (V)

Rules for Absentee Voting Are All over the Map

With Election Day nearly upon us, it is worth noting that many people don't want to vote on Election Day. They want to vote now and from the comfort of their own home. In most states other than in the South and part of the Midwest, this is possible without an excuse. Here is a cartogram showing the status of absentee voting around the country.

 

 

The eight states in light blue plus D.C. have all-mail-in elections. All registered voters get an absentee ballot in the mail to send (or bring) back. The 27 states in purple allow any registered voter to ask for an absentee ballot without giving a reason. You just fill out a form and a ballot arrives. Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas are the only states west of the Mississippi River where a voter has to have an excuse to get an absentee ballot. What is a valid excuse varies by state, but being physically unable to get to the polling place, being out of town on Election Day, or being a caretaker who can't leave home are typically accepted. Texas is particularly strict about excuses unless one is over 65.

New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Delaware are blue states and really ought to get with the program. Maybe Joe Biden could ask the speaker of the Delaware House to get on the stick here. Biden voted in person on Saturday along with his granddaughter, a first-time voter. If these four get with it, then the only holdouts will be members of the old Confederacy and a couple of Midwestern/border states.

Republicans generally oppose absentee voting due to (nonexistent) voter fraud. In reality, they believe that many Democrats who vote by mail wouldn't vote at all if they had to stand in the hours-long lines that Republican-controlled election offices create by not having enough polling places in blue counties. But the battle has largely been lost since, with the exception of the four blue states in the Northeast, none of the remaining holdouts are swing states. Alabama can make voting as tough as it wants to, but doing so isn't going to affect any elections. (V)

Early Voting Is Well Underway

Absentee voting isn't the only option for people who don't want to stand in line on Election Day. Quick Quiz: What do New Hampshire, Connecticut, Alabama, and Mississippi have in common? Quick Answer: None of them allow in-person early voting. All the other states have some form of it, averaging 23 days across the board. It is now well underway in the 46 states that allow it.

Almost 21 million Americans have already voted in the midterms. In three states (California, Florida, and Texas), over 2 million ballots have been cast. In Georgia and North Carolina, over 1 million people have voted already. Voter enthusiasm is high this year, with 64% saying they were planning to vote. That is more than the 58% who said that in 2018.

More Democrats than Republicans vote early in every election so it is hard to draw any conclusions from these data other than enthusiasm for voting appears to be high.

However, while early voting is beating 2018, it is less than at this point in 2020, when a record 33 million people had already voted. David Byler, The Washington Post's answer to all the Nates, warns that predictions based on early voting have a bad track record, so don't take them seriously. (V)

Poll: Economy and Inflation Are the Top Issues

A new Ipsos poll shows that the economy is the top issue for 26% of the voters, with inflation coming in second at 23% However, there is a huge partisan split here, with three-quarters of Republicans citing these issues vs. only 29% of Democrats. Independents are in between, with 49% citing them.

Democrats see abortion, gun violence and climate change as the top issues. About 60% of the voters want to see abortion stay legal, but it isn't a top priority for many Republicans. And 20% of voters don't care about it at all. For most issues, there are no differences by race and ethnicity. One exception is gun violence, which is the top issue for only 4% of whites but the top issue for 17% of Blacks and 15% of Latinos.

Probably the strangest finding is that half the country doesn't care whether one party has the trifecta or there is divided government. This is like saying: "It doesn't matter to me whether the federal government functions or not." (V)

Ossoff Will Help Warnock

In 2020, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) built upon the work of Stacey Abrams and put together a large get-out-the-vote operation. It was especially targeted at getting marginal young voters to the polls. He has now decided to make a six-figure donation from his own leadership PAC to the campaign of fellow Georgia senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in the form of activating his ground network to get out the vote for Warnock.

A complication, however, is that Ossoff may have to do it twice, once for the general election and once for the runoff. This year, if no candidate hits 50% + 1 on Nov. 8, the Senate runoff will be on Dec. 6 instead of in January because the Republican-controlled state legislature thought moving the date up would help the GOP. It is not clear if that is really true. However, it is true that the smaller window between the general election and the runoff will give the Democrats less time to register new voters, and they need new voters more than the Republicans, who rely on old voters.

LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, is worried that Ossoff's donation is too small to do the job and there aren't enough additional resources available. However, Ossoff said his organization is the most battle-tested one in the entire country, having fought in two very high-profile elections in Nov. 2020 and Jan. 2021, respectively. Ossoff first ran in a special House election in 2017, which he has described as the "biggest U.S. House race of all time" and then in 2020 in what he has described as the "biggest Senate race of all time." So although he is very young by Senate standards (35), he has more experience than many much older politicians.

An analysis of Ossoff's Senate campaign showed that he was able to increase turnout by 3.8% among targeted voters. He used an unusual approach, hiring almost 3,000 Georgians with little or no voting history to become community mobilizers. His belief was they would be better plugged into networks of nonvoters than the usual volunteer field workers. It appeared to have worked last time, so he wants to use it again to help Warnock this time. On the other hand, asking the same people to go back into the field again only 2 years after two bruising elections is asking a lot. When they get out there and start talking to voters, some of them are going to say: "Wait a minute. I have to vote again? I just did that for you." It may well be that this David Horsey cartoon is as relevant now as when he drew it in 2014:

 

 

Ossoff and Warnock are hoping it is not.

Another person who is hoping Horsey is wrong is Barack Obama. on Friday, he campaigned in Atlanta for Warnock. He urged everyone in the audience to be sure to vote. Early voting in Georgia has been very heavy, with 1.25 votes already cast (compared to 731,000 at this point in 2018). However, the partisan breakdown of the early voting has not been released.

Obama knows Republicans hate him so he is being very careful about where he campaigns. Basically, he is showing up only in cities with large Black populations in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. His focus is trying to hold the Senate. (V)

 

15 hours ago, TEW said:

But they do influence supply.

Here’s an idea they could try: make it easier to build nuclear plants. Finance shale production and new refineries.

But one party, and we all know which one, fights every effort to increase energy supply.

the Inflation Reduction Act bill provided significant support for nuclear energy going forward, in particular support around sourcing nuclear material domestically rather than from Russia as has been done historically for .. obvious reasons that complicate sourcing anything from that 3rd world country.

support for nuclear is fortunately growing. now just need to get over NIMBY hurdles.......

Now that we're doomed and "the democracy is over", is it ok to start dropping opponents from helicopters?

Asking for a friend.