DL Open Thread: Sunday, October 23, 2022
The Whack-Job PAC Behind Those Disgusting Ads. You know, the ones that are playing during the baseball playoffs:
Baseball fans in California and Pennsylvania watching the playoffs last Saturday had to sit through commercial breaks that included racist, xenophobic ads filled with misleading and false claims. “You worked hard for what you have,” one of the ads says. “Followed the rules, paid your taxes, saved and sacrificed for your piece of the American Dream, and now it is being stolen for you, stolen from your family, stolen from your children. Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have erased our southern border, and they have released a record number of illegal immigrants into the United States, all at your expense. This giant flood of illegal immigration is draining your paychecks, wrecking your schools, ruining your hospitals, and threatening your family.”
Behind the ads is a group called Citizens for Sanity, which vows on its website to “return common sense to America” and defeat “wokeism.” In the lead-up to the midterms, the organization has been paying for virulent televised messages and billboards targeting President Joe Biden and Democratic candidates running in contested senate races. Among the group’s officers are three former Trump aides who now work with America First Legal (AFL), an organization founded by anti-immigration hardliner Stephen Miller that brands itself as an “answer to the ACLU” and has sued the Biden administration over everything under the sun. A Federal Communications Commission document analyzed by OpenSecrets shows the ex-Trump staffers—Gene Hamilton, John Zadrozny, and Ian Prior—listed as “chief executive officers or members of the executive committee or board of directors” of Citizens for Sanity.
Those ads are all about depressing voter turnout, and I’m concerned they’re working.
Tim Ryan Has A Legit Shot In Ohio. And, right on cue, JD Vance pisses off–Ukrainian Americans:
“Definitely not this year, with J.D. Vance saying that Ukraine doesn’t matter,” saidStolar, during a break from her shift as host at Olesia’s Taverne, a busy Ukrainian restaurant.She recalled being upset earlier this year, when Vance said on a podcast interview just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “I gotta be honest with you. I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”
There are about 41,000 people with Ukrainian heritage in Ohio, according to the Census Bureau, and many have felt the effects of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine more acutely and personally than most Americans.
“We’ve got to stop the money spigot to Ukraine eventually,” Vancesaid in an interview with an ABC News affiliate in September. “We cannot fund a long-term military conflict that I think ultimately has diminishing returns for our own country.”
Vance’s campaign did not make him available for an interview for this report.
Why Don’t Democratic Leaders Listen To Robert Reich? Because he’s progressive? They should:
Corporate profits continue to climb even as consumers are taking it on the chin. It’s a giant redistribution from consumers to corporations.
This would seem to be a natural issue for Democrats to be sounding off about.
The Fed’s rate hikes aren’t working because they’re based on the anachronistic idea that slowing consumer demand automatically causes prices to fall or to climb more slowly.
But with global shortages of supplies, and monopolistic corporations raising prices to preserve or enlarge their profits, the Fed would have to raise interest rates far higher before having the desired effect. The Fed would very likely bring the economy to a crawl, by which time the human cost will be overwhelming.
Better to wait out the global supply shocks and deal with corporate power with a temporary windfall profits tax and more vigorous antitrust enforcement.
That conventional view is being proven wrong. Corporations have been more willing to exercise monopoly power over the past year because inflation has given them cover to do so. While telling retailers and consumers they have no choice but to raise prices because their own costs are rising, they’ve been raising prices higher than their rising costs in order to expand their profit margins.
Another reason the White House stopped blaming inflation on big corporations is that the corporate funders of Democrats have made it clear they don’t want the White House or Democratic candidates to blame this inflation on them.
Oh, yes. That. Better to jack up interest rates to the moon rather than ruffle the feathers of corporate criminals. Carper, Coons and LBR nod heads in agreement.
What do you want to talk about?
I saw a quick blurb on the tv ( not fox or cnn) this morning and it said trumps approval rating the same even in light of Jan 6 and mar a Lago probe. He could murder someone on live tv and it wouldn’t matter. We are fucked
That’s what happens with a cult leader. He won’t be stopped until someone from within takes him down.
Hard not to notice that the big money boys are pulling out all the stops for the Republicans, and thanks to the genius of the supreme court and the Citizens United Decision it’s all perfectly legal. The same for Medicare Advantage, endless commercials and lies. The whole world knows American politics are for sale, gee, wonder why?
The flogging of Medicare Advantage by washed up celebrities using lines like “2 free gifts” and “silver sneakers” is criminal. Too many of my contemporaries have forgotten the adage “If it sounds too good to be true it probably is”. Too many of these same folks will vote for the politicians supported by the snake oil salesmen. We are fucked!
PHILLIES! LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!