DL Open Thread: Monday, August 4, 2025
Why You Should Never Respond To Those Democratic Fundraising E-Mails–The Mothership Vortex:
The digital deluge is a familiar annoyance for anyone on a Democratic fundraising list. It’s a relentless cacophony of bizarre texts and emails, each one more urgent than the last, promising that your immediate $15 donation is the only thing standing between democracy and the abyss.
The main rationale offered for this fundraising frenzy is that it’s a necessary evil—that the tactics, while unpleasant, are brutally effective at raising the money needed to win. But an analysis of the official FEC filings tells a very different story. The fundraising model is not a brutally effective tool for the party; it is a financial vortex that consumes the vast majority of every dollar it raises.
The illusion of a sprawling grassroots movement, with its dozens of different PAC names, quickly gave way to a much simpler and more alarming reality. It only required pulling on a single thread—tracing who a few of the most aggressive PACs were paying—to watch their entire manufactured world unravel. What emerged was not a diverse network of activists, but a concentrated ecosystem built to serve the firm at its center: Mothership Strategies.
To understand Mothership’s central role, one must understand its origins. The firm was founded in 2014 by senior alumni of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC): its former digital director, Greg Berlin, and deputy digital director, Charles Starnes. During their tenure at the DCCC, they helped pioneer the fundraising model that now dominates Democratic inboxes—a high-volume strategy that relies on emotionally charged, often hyperbolic appeals to compel immediate donations. This model, sometimes called “churn and burn,” prioritizes short-term revenue over long-term donor relationships.
After leaving the DCCC, Berlin and Starnes effectively privatized this playbook, building a business around the party’s most aggressive tactics and turning an internal strategy into a fundraising powerhouse for the Democratic Party—or so it might seem on the surface.
They became the operational heart of a sprawling nexus of interconnected political action committees, many of which they helped create and which now serve as their primary clients. These are not a diverse collection of grassroots groups; they are a tightly integrated network that functions primarily to funnel funds to Mothership. Their names are likely familiar from the very texts and emails that flood inboxes: Progressive Turnout Project, Stop Republicans, and End Citizens United to name a few.
Please read the whole thing. And know this–it’s a scam to line their pockets, so you’re wasting your money whenever you respond to one of these fevered ‘urgent’ requests. A huge shout-out to one of my Favorite Spies for cluing me in to this.
Fascism Marches On–DOJ Goes After Special Counsel:
The Hatch Act prohibits most federal employees from using their official authority to influence elections or engage in overt political activity on the job. If the office concludes a federal employee has violated the law, it refers the case to the president. Discipline can range from a reprimand to a removal from federal service.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) on Wednesday called for an investigation into Smith, asking acting special counsel Jamieson Greer — who is also serving as Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative and acting director of the Office of Government Ethics — in a letter to look into whether Smith “unlawfully took political actions to influence the 2024 election to harm then-candidate President Donald Trump.”
The only ‘crime’ here is that, thanks to Merrick Garland, the investigation started two years too late.
Shameless Publicity Whore And ‘Proud Transphobe’ Running For Governor Of South Carolina:
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, the self-described “proud transphobe” and one of the most infamous members of the House, announced Monday morning that she would enter the Republican primary for the open governorship.
According to a tally by Newsweek, Mace tweeted about bathrooms 326 times during a 72-hour period not long after (Rep. Sarah) McBride’s victory, and she’s repeatedly used anti-trans slurs in her official capacity. The late Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly called her out during a February committee hearing, but Mace reacted by repeating the slur three times, adding, “I don’t really care.”
Mace has also been the subject of many other unflattering stories. To take just one example, Wired ran a headline in May reading, “Nancy Mace’s Former Staff Claim She Had Them Create Burner Accounts to Promote Her.”
Mace is now seeking to replace Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who cannot run again because of term limits, as the leader of this conservative state. First, though, she’ll face off against several opponents in next year’s primary—including one she began attacking months before she even launched her campaign.
That rival is Attorney General Alan Wilson, whom Mace, according to a February story in the Charleston Post & Courier, said she would leave “in a body bag” in the primary.
MAGAt Scammer Rips Off MAGAts. Sad. Losers all around. Hey, the ‘victims’ were already pre-qualified for gullibility:
A prominent Georgia Republican was running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded 300 investors of at least $140 million, federal officials alleged in a complaint filed Thursday.
The civil lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said First Liberty Building and Loan, controlled by Brant Frost IV, lied to investors about its business of making high-interest loans to companies. Instead, investigators said, it raised more money to repay earlier investors.
Frost is alleged to have taken more than $19 million of investor funds for himself, his family and affiliated companies even as the business was going broke, spending $160,000 on jewelry and $335,000 with a rare coin dealer. Frost is also said to have spent $320,000 to rent a vacation home over multiple years in Kennebunkport, Maine, the town where the family of late president George H. W. Bush famously spent summers.
The collapse rocked the religious and political networks that the business drew investors from. It also could have ramifications in state Republican politics, cutting off funding to the far-right candidates that Frost and his family have favored. Investigators said Frost spent $570,000 from investor funds on political contributions.
The SEC said the business had only $2.67 million in cash as of May 30, although regulators are also seeking to claw back money from Frost and associated companies. With 300 investors out $140 million, that means the average investor put in nearly $500,000.
The above scenario that unfolded this winter — mental health professionals working from police headquarters and assisting cops — was unheard of just a few years ago in Delaware.
It’s a blossoming collaboration that illustrates the new face of policing in Delaware and beyond. Prodded in part by nationwide calls to defund the police and reallocate money to community-based programs after George Floyd’s murder by police officers in Minneapolis in 2020, Delaware has joined other states in pairing mental health workers with officers.
Johnson and Derryberry are members of Delaware’s Police Diversion Program, a partnership between state police, the state Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health and the Department of Justice. More alliances with smaller forces downstate, such as Ocean View and Bethany Beach, are in the works.
Joanne Champney, who heads the mental health division, lauded her agency’s union with law enforcement. She said troopers have referred nearly 10,000 people to the clinical teams. About one-third have accepted their assistance, and 2,200 people have agreed to undergo substance abuse or psychiatric treatment.
Special Election tomorrow. Just wanted to make sure that you know. Predictions welcome.
What do you want to talk about?
Forgot this one: Just how pathetic IS it?:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/biden-allies-threatening-reveal-embarrassing-193630400.html
A snippet:
“Allies of Joe Biden will leak unflattering, “Palinesque” stories about Kamala Harris’ tenure as vice president if she discusses his cognitive decline, according to a journalist.
Mark Halperin, a veteran political reporter who founded the digital news network 2WAY, broke the news during the Friday episode of his show The Morning Meeting.
“I will tell you, and this has never been reported, barely at all,” he began. “If the Biden people decide that Kamala is coming after Joe Biden, wait till you hear the Palinesque stories about how much they tried to help her be prepared to be vice president and be in a position to run. And how much they decided, ‘Not happening. She’s not up to this.’”
A plague on both their houses.
Reminds me of those old Family Circus cartoons. Mom: “Who did this?” Each kid in turn: “Not me.” “Not me.” “Not me.”
but in the cartoon there was a ghost running around labeled Not Me.
I don’t believe in ghosts, and neither did Bil Keane.
OK, can somebody clue me in? Over the past two weeks, we have had an inordinate (not that I’m complaining) amount of page views from the Netherlands. We already have 64 page views from Holland today.
Granted, perhaps some of it is b/c we tilt at windmills, but I’m otherwise at a loss to explain it.
Are some of you vacationing there? If so, and far be it from me to tell you what to do, perhaps you’d enjoy spending more time sightseeing and less time on DL.
Or, perhaps not.
Likely VPN usage
I looked up VPN. You could be right.
Could be a bot scraping the account.
Or could be some kind of attempted attack on / hack of the website. I have been getting notified via Wordfence (a WordPress plug in) of blocked Swedish IPs, looks like this:
June 27, 2025
9:18pm
16.171.9.210 (Sweden)
Blocked for WordPress New Install File Probing
or this
July 17, 2025
10:04am
185.213.154.226 (Sweden)
Blocked for Directory Traversal in query string: s = ../\think\Container/invokefunction
July 17, 2025
10:04am
185.213.154.226 (Sweden)
Blocked for Directory Traversal in query string: s = ../\think\app/invokefunction
Don’t ask me what it means! I get the alerts by email. Sometimes an IP (think of it like an internet address) gets blocked because it has accessed pages faster than a human can click a mouse. You might be able to look at the time the pages were accessed, and if they are all accessed within a few seconds of each other, it might be an AI bot scraping content or doing some other nefarious deeds. A bit of code might could be inserted to prevent that, but I am not the person to tell you what bit that is.
Here’s an example of a “too many page requests” alert:
Wordfence has blocked IP address 67.230.242.146.
The reason is: “Exceeded the maximum number of page requests per minute for humans.”.
The duration of the block is 5 minutes.
User IP: 67.230.242.146
User hostname: 67-230-242-146.farmerstel.stellarllc.net
User location: Morris, Minnesota, United States
I’m starting to get Harris emails again. Every time her name pops up I get depressed.
Going out on a limb here–she’s not gonna be our 2028 candidate.
It’s only 94 pounds of sulfur dioxide. Nothing to see here, folks:
https://www.wdel.com/news/dnrec-reports-sulfur-dioxide-release-from-del-city-refinery/article_c9c817e9-42db-41f0-8890-3a15251fb853.html
Non-scientist asking: How much sulfur dioxide is needed in the air to shut down a data center?