Currie denied the defendants’ request to bar the Justice Department from seeking to indict them again under a lawfully appointed prosecutor. In Comey’s case, however, she suggested their time to do so hasrun out.
“All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey’s indictment, constitute unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside,” she said in her written opinion. “There is simply ‘no alternative course to cure the unconstitutional problem.’”
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately return calls for comment. However, department officials are all but certain to appeal.
Currie, an appointee of President Bill Clinton normally based in South Carolina, was specially assigned to rule on the validity of Halligan’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Her decision delivered rebukes to the Justice Department on two fronts.
By declaring Halligan’s appointment invalid, Currie joined several other judges in rejecting legal arguments the Trump administration has used to install loyalists in top prosecutorial positions across the country.
The judge’s decision to go further and dismiss the cases against Comey and James complicates Trump’s efforts to deploy the Justice Department in furtherance of his desire for retribution.
Category Archives: National
Don’t Be A Sucker–Trump’s Not Folding On Epstein Files
Not by a long shot. Here’s his latest ‘out’:
But here’s the thing: Even if Trump is forced to sign it to keep up the appearance of having dodged a stinging defeat, there’s no reason to think the Justice Department will release anything damaging about Trump.
In the short term, no enforcing mechanism exists that would incentivize Justice Department officials or the Trump White House to abide by Congress’ demand. The Trump DOJ certainly won’t prosecute anyone for defying Congress. It’s not clear that the GOP-controlled Congress itself could enforce its demand, either legally or politically. Practically, there’s no real way for Congress to know if the Trump administration buries damaging documents or files.
Trump and the White House also seem to be leaving themselves a pretty big out. In his social media post suddenly declaring he didn’t care if the House Oversight Committee got the Epstein files, Trump caveated it by saying they “can have whatever they are legally entitled to.”
“Legally entitled to” is doing a lot of work there. The Trump White House and his DOJ will make that determination and can use it to throw a broad protective blanket over any evidence damaging to Trump.
That language was echoed to Politico by an unnamed White House official: “This idea that the federal government is in possession of documents that they can legally hand over with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, and we’re keeping them from the public is a fallacy, like, it’s not true.”
Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) is defending the White House using similar language: “the Department of Justice has turned over what they’re legally allowed to turn over.”
All of which suggests managing expectations in this lawless new world where accountability and enforcement mechanisms have been removed. No need to throw one’s hands up and surrender, but the Epstein files scandal isn’t likely to have the denouement we’ve become conditioned to expect, not so long as the Justice Department is sidelined and Republicans control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
The agency in charge of what they can ‘legally turn over’ is the rogue agency that used to be the Department Of Justice.
Need I say more?
2025 Election Night Open Thread
Virginia polls close at 7.
New Jersey polls close at 8.
NYC polls close at 9.
We’ll update info as it comes in. Feel free to share your thoughts.
Epstein Ballroom Update
As most of America’s feck-free elected Democrats furrow their brows in concern, its citizens are reacting with near-universal condemnation of Donald Trump’s latest display of his guiding ethos, best summed up as “Oh, yeah? Whaddaya gonna do about it?”
As I have pointed out frequently in the past few days, even people who don’t pay attention to politics think Trump’s destruction of the historic East Wing is horrendous, and polls are starting to show it. Fewer than 25% of respondents to a YouGov poll approved of the demolition; not even a majority of Republicans approve.
It didn’t take long for the nation’s meme industry to get involved. The image above has been making the social media rounds for a couple of days now. There’s also a spreading move on liberal sites to refer to Trump’s sloppily planned vanity project the Epstein Ballroom, and people with actual knowledge of building construction are crying foul about the bloated figures the White House has floated about the size and cost of the project.
Even total morons should be able to make a winning issue of this. Sadly, this doesn’t apply to quivering, cowardly total morons like most Democrats in elective office (Elizabeth Warren and Jamie Raskin are notable exceptions), so they’re pretending they’re not home while opportunity keeps on knocking.
Song of the Day 10/25: John Williams & the Vienna Philharmonic: “Imperial March (from ‘Star Wars’)”
I suppose the fact that fascists have an underdeveloped sense of humor isn’t news, but it still drew media attention when a protester in Washington DC proved it. Sam O’Hara, 35, was detained by police when a member of the Ohio National Guard got pissed off about his form of protest, and he’s filed a lawsuit in response.
Angered by the occupation of the capital by armed troops, O’Hara took to marching behind them. “Using his phone and sometimes a small speaker, he played ‘The Imperial March’ as he walked, keeping the music at a volume that was audible but not blaring,” the lawsuit by O’Hara’s attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union says. “Mr. O’Hara recorded the encounters and posted the videos on his TikTok account, where millions of people have viewed them.” When police arrived, O’Hara’s attorneys wrote, they handcuffed him, preventing him from continuing his protest.
The ACLU attorneys, unlike the fascists, had a little fun with the whole scenario.
“The law might have tolerated government conduct of this sort a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” the lawsuit says, referring to the opening text of the “Star Wars” franchise. “But in the here and now, the First Amendment bars government officials from shutting down peaceful protests, and the Fourth Amendment (along with the District’s prohibition on false arrest) bars groundless seizures.”
I don’t know about you, but I get an extra kick out of the fact that this performance in Vienna, conducted by composer John Williams, drew cheers from the crowd when the opening notes played. As I recall from history class, Austrians cheered the Anschluss, too.
DL Open Thread Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025
Is the AI revolution a boom or a bubble? A recent analysis found that 80% of the growth in the stock market is in tech stocks, with much of the capital flowing in from overseas. What worries some analysts is the circular nature of a handful of companies investing in each other. Others worry that AI is being touted as a panacea for many of the country’s Trump-generated economic ills, from tariffs to immigration-related labor shortages.
Another troubling sign: Boosters hand-wave away concerns about water use and energy demands, which threaten to drive costs higher. Not a problem, the pollyannas insist: We’ll just build more nuclear power plants. What could go wrong? It’s not as if rates are stable otherwise. Delmarva Power just asked to nearly double its rates for natural gas, and Chesapeake Utilities wants a 30% increase. The Public Utilities Commission says there’s not much they can do to stop it.
Whatever happens, don’t count on legacy media like CBS News to tell you about it. They just named right-wing contrarian Bari Weiss to boss it. If the name is unfamiliar, she’s a former New York Times op-ed columnist who quit in a huff because the place was too woke. Oh, and she’s a supporter of the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. I’d boycott it, but as with most things I would boycott, I already don’t use it.
To be fair, almost all legacy media has shown itself less than useless ever since Trump entered politics. Citizen journalists are doing what they can – for example, someone at Daily Kos analyzed how Republican defunding of Obamacare will further impoverish struggling households, with examples of real numbers. The upshot is that a lot of people will simply go without insurance because they can’t afford the rate increases and higher deductibles.
Though it’s hard to tell from the response in most corners, craven knuckling-under isn’t the only possible answer. I’ve never been a Gavin Newsom fan, but credit where it’s due: He knows how to fight back, and I don’t mean his Trump-trolling social media account. The administration is trying to blackmail universities into adopting its anti-Black agenda by threatening to withhold funds. Newsom countered by declaring that any university that does so will lose all state funding, which would cost them even more. Don’t expect that attitude to spread to Delaware.
The floor’s yours.
‘Your Countries Are Going To Hell’
President Trump questioned the United Nations’ mission and lectured its member nations on Tuesday in a meandering speech before the General Assembly. Boasting about his record and assailing the U.N. as ineffective in a nearly hourlong address, he sought to portray himself as the only leader who could solve the world’s problems.
As the General Assembly convened on its 80th anniversary with wars raging in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, Mr. Trump claimed that he had resolved conflicts around the world while the U.N. had done nothing. “Sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any on them,” Mr. Trump said.
While taking credit for ending conflicts between Israel and Iran, Cambodia and Thailand, and Armenia and Azerbaijan, Mr. Trump again blamed his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden, for Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine. He also said China and India were financing the war because they purchase oil from Russia, and he said he was ready impose more tariffs on Russia if it does not agree to a cease-fire, but only if Europe ends all purchases of Russian oil and gas.
Going well beyond his allotted 15 minutes, the president veered off script with dubious claims about immigration and green energy, warning that mass migration and a shift to renewable energy were a “double-tailed monster” destroying European nations. Besides taking shots at Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump targeted other political opponents and close NATO allies that have recognized a Palestinian state.
Mr. Trump repeated his demand that “we want all the hostages back” from Gaza without mentioning the issues of Israel’s efforts to take Gaza City or his past promises to get more food and aid to the enclave. Israel’s blockade of aid to the enclave amid a growing humanitarian crisis has drawn accusations of genocide.
He spent 10 minutes dismissing climate change as a hoax, despite a widespread scientific consensus that it is real. The global average temperature has already increased by over 1 degree Celsius since the start of the industrial era.
A bit more from the Washington Post:
The U.S. president took aim at global consensus on key issues including climate change, blasting the issue as a tool wielded to take advantage of the United States. He declared his opposition to immigration to both the United States and Europe from poorer nations in stark terms, claiming that without swift action on immigration, “your countries are going to hell.” And he called to protect Christianity, which he claimed is “the most persecuted religion on the planet today.”
“Proud nations must be allowed to protect their communities and prevent their societies from being overwhelmed by people they have never seen before, with different customs, religions, with different everything,” Trump said in thenearly hour-long speech, which touched on peace efforts in Gaza and Ukraine and returned repeatedly to his domestic political agenda.
“In a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars,” Trump claimed, recycling his fact-free assertion that he is a global peacemaker. “They said they were unendable. You’re never going to get them solved.”
Trump continued with an attack on global environmental initiatives, echoing his administration’s dangerous stance on climate change. “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I’m really good at predicting things. You know, they actually said during the campaign that I had the best-selling hat. ‘Trump was right about everything.’ And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything.”
Hey, at least it gives Jimmy Kimmel something to talk about tonight. Might I suggest, “What more proof do you need that our President is utterly insane?”
Charlie Kirk, In His Own Words
Before the canonization proceeds any further, let’s let Oliver Willis set the record straight:
In 2023, Kirk said, “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”
Kirk said in 2018 that gun violence in Chicago was the fault of “a lack-of-father problem in the Black community.”
In 2024, he launched a campaign attacking the legacy of revered civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kirk said King was “[a] myth has been created and it has grown totally out of control.” At a conference he held the previous year, Kirk said King was “awful” and “not a good person.”
Kirk claimed that the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 had become a “beast” and is an “anti-white weapon.”
In 2023, Kirk said, “I don’t believe Black History Month is worth the kind of full month that it is, at all.” He said the celebration “only deepens any sort of racial wounds and creates more bigotry.”
Kirk was a promoter of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which falsely claims Latino migrants are attempting to replace white people. As part of that crusade in August, he falsely accused Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who is Black, of engaging in an “attempt to eliminate the white population in this country.”
In Kirk’s eyes, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the court, was an “unqualified” nominee and the “recipient of affirmative action.”
Following flooding in Texas in July, Kirk said the “death toll likely would not have been as high if it wasn’t for DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion].”
During a discussion of gay rights in 2024, Kirk referenced the Bible and noted that passages indicating “lay with another man and be stoned to death” were “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”
Discussing Trump’s presidential campaign in 2024, Kirk urged his favored candidate to trigger “Nuremberg-style” trials for doctors performing gender-affirming care if he won. The Nuremberg trials were post-World War II court trials that sought to prosecute leaders of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity.
Kirk described transgender people as “groomers,” and said transgender children were “mutilat[ing]” their bodies. He also called for transgender athletes to be physically confronted for the purported sin of trying to play sports.
Kirk also used antisemitic stereotypes as part of his broadcasts. In one show, he said, “Jewish dollars” had funded “Cultural Marxist ideas.” In another, he invoked the longstanding antisemitic trope of Jewish control of colleges, Hollywood, and nonprofit groups.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kirk said vaccine requirements were “medical apartheid” and used his group to oppose vaccination. Kirk also peddled the baseless conspiracy that 1.2 million people died from vaccinations.
In other words, Kirk peddled hatred of the ‘other’ to college-age students all over the country, and made a great living doing it. No, he didn’t deserve to die by an assassin’s bullet, but he was a toxic piece of shit who contributed to the ongoing Fascist takeover of America.
UPDATE: Republican Activist Charlie Kirk Fatally Shot
He was shot in the neck at an event in Utah:
This is not good, to put it mildly. We’ve already seen other assassinations of public officials this year. We are in unprecedented times, with a government intent on cracking down on those who don’t agree with them. Political violence of any kind must not be sanctioned.
DL Open Thread: Monday, September 1, 2025
The Trump Gaza Riviera: Are all the Democrats OK with this?
The 38-page prospectus seen by The Washington Post envisions at least a temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population, either through what it calls “voluntary” departures to another country or into restricted, secured zones inside the enclave during reconstruction.
“I looked at a picture of Gaza, it’s like a massive demolition site,” Trump told reporters while signing a raft of executive orders in the Oval Office two days after his inauguration. “It’s got to be rebuilt in a different way.” Gaza, he said, was “a phenomenal location … on the sea, the best weather. Everything’s good. Some beautiful things can be done with it.”
Two weeks later, at a White House news conference with Netanyahu, Trump said “the United States will take over the Gaza Strip.” Describing a “long-term ownership position,” he added that everyone he had spoken to about it “loves the idea.”
“I’ve studied this very closely over a lot of months, and I’ve seen it from every different angle,” Trump said. “I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so magnificent.”
Trump’s February vow to own and redevelop Gaza offered both a green light and a road map for the group of Israeli businessman, led by entrepreneurs Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli American, and Liran Tancman, a former Israeli military intelligence officer. They had already handed off the GHF project to implementers and moved on to the postwar problemin consultation with international financial and humanitarian experts, and potential government and private investors, as well as some Palestinians, according to people familiar with the planning.
Just thought that you, and perhaps the few remaining sentient Democrats, would like to know.
How Trump Delivered India Into The Arms Of China.
President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs landed like a declaration of economic war on India, undercutting enormous investments made by American companies to hedge their dependency on China.
India’s hard work to present itself to the world as the best alternative to Chinese factories — what business executives and big money financiers have embraced as part of the China Plus One strategy — has been left in tatters.
Now, less than a week since the tariffs took full effect, officials and business leaders in New Delhi, and their American partners, are still trying to make sense of the suddenly altered landscape.
Just how much things have changed was evident from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China over the weekend to meet with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader. Trade and political relations between India and China have been strained, at times severely, and it was Mr. Modi’s first trip there in seven years.
Mr. Trump’s tariffs are already causing dislocation in supply chains. India has been rendered far less enticing to American importers. Companies can go to other places for lower tariffs, like Vietnam or Mexico. A U.S. court ruling, which on Friday invalidated the tariffs but left them in place while Mr. Trump appeals, did nothing to repair the rupture between the countries.
The “Trump shock will reduce manufacturing export growth and kill even the few green shoots of China Plus One-related private investment,” four Indian economists, including a former chief economic adviser to Mr. Modi, wrote in an Indian newspaper last week.
But just think of all those brand new factories that will soon open in America…
Bernie’s Right–As Always. Endorses an exciting candidate over a 77-year-old Governor who is playing rope-a-dope on run for Senate:
Bernie Sanders has broken with the Democratic establishment in the push to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in 2026. The Democrats are hoping that the state’s current Governor, Janet Mills, will enter the race to unseat the ‘Down East’ Hamlet. Sanders, on the other hand, has thrown his considerable progressive cachet behind Graham Platner. Who? Let’s have a look.
Platner is an ex-Marine who goes by the sobriquet “The Oysterman.” He is a political neophyte. And by the standards of the profession is a youthful 40 years old. He has vigor. He does not talk in the poll-tested, focus group-approved language of the professional politician. He knows his voters, and he speaks to them.
Platner speaks my language:
“But everywhere I’ve gone, it seems like the fabric of what holds us together is being ripped apart by billionaires and corrupt politicians, profiting off of destroying our environment, driving our families into poverty, and crushing the middle class.”
“And the enemy is the oligarchy. It’s the billionaires who pay for it, the politicians who sell us out. And yeah, that means politicians like Susan Collins. I’m not fooled by this fake charade of Collins deliberations and moderation.”
- “Why can’t we have universal healthcare like every other first-world country?”
- “Why can’t we take care of our veterans when they come home?”
- “Why are we funding endless wars and bombing children?
- “Why are CEOs more powerful than unions?”
- “We fought three different wars since the last time we raised the minimum wage.”
Can you imagine the contrast between this guy and Collins during a debate?
The Courts To The Rescue–Again:
With migrant children waiting on tarmacs to be sent to their native Guatemala, a federal judge Sunday temporarily blocked the flights, siding with attorneys for the children who said the government was breaking laws and sending their clients to potential peril.
The extraordinary drama played out overnight on a holiday weekend and vaulted from tarmacs in Texas to a courtroom in Washington. It was the latest showdown over the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration — and the latest clash between the administration’s enforcement efforts and legal safeguards that Congress created for vulnerable migrants.
“This idea that on a long weekend in the dead of night they would wake up these vulnerable children and put them on a plane irrespective of the constitutional protections that they had is something that should shock the conscience of all Americans,” said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, which represents the children, following Sunday’s hearing.
In Florida, The Enemy Is–Chalk:
As the nation reels from last week’s horrific school shooting in Minnesota, authorities in Florida seem to be doing everything in their power to re-traumatize a community victimized by a different mass attack. That now includes arresting one protester, apparently for leaving temporary chalk footprints in a crosswalk that has become a flashpoint in Republican efforts to expunge pro-LGBTQ messaging from the public square.
Earlier this month, the Florida Department of Transportation removed rainbow markings from a crosswalk in Orlando. There are rainbow-colored crosswalks across the country showing communities’ commitment to equality, but this one had special significance—it was painted as a memorial to the 2016 massacre at the nearby Pulse nightclub, an LGBTQ bar where 49 people were slaughtered by a gunman who expressed support for ISIS. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in US history.
A New Gig For Rudy Giuliani? He’s perfect for it. Just look at the lineage:
Bobby Heenan:
Andy Kaufman:
Vince McMahon (Who donned this for his steroid trial):
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was injured in a car accident in New Hampshire over the weekend but is recovering, his head of security and the New Hampshire State Police said Sunday.
Giuliani’s vehicle was struck from behind at “high speed” on Saturday evening, Michael Ragusa Giuliani’s head of security, announced in a statement on X. Giuliani, who is also President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, was transported to a nearby trauma center, Ragusa noted, “where he was diagnosed with a fractured thoracic vertebrae, multiple lacerations and contusions, as well as injuries to his left arm and lower leg.”
It’s never too late to reinvent yourself.
What do you want to talk about?
Babbling Like a Brook: When Will the Media Give Trump the Biden Treatment?
Looks like all those Republican accusations about Biden’s age and mental befuddlement were, as usual, confessions.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has been in a war of words with Donald Trump. After Trump threatened to deploy National Guard troops to Baltimore, calling it “crime-ridden,” Moore invited the president to “come walk the streets with us.” Trump responded with another threat, that he’d withhold funding to rebuild the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge.
A reporter asked him about that threat. This was Trump’s response:
No, we were very generous to him on a bridge. You know, a boat ran into a bridge, and the bridge came down, like, I’ve never seen anything – the boat was just, it just shows you the mass of that boat, the power of that boat. You know, people were up on that bridge, painters, they were painting the bridge and they were watching it happen, and they thought they were very safe – they all died. They were painting the bridge, can you imagine, and they watched the boat.
The engines were off and they watched the boat and the power of that boat, the mass of that boat went right through that steel, just like it was nothing. It’s amazing. It’s called mass, mass is a big deal. But the mass of that boat, those people all died, but they were, they thought they were totally safe.”
Two of them were eating their lunch, they were, you know, whatever, they were watching it, they could have gotten off. Somebody did a very good job, a police officer called in and said, “Close the bridge,” and he did it with power – “Get everybody off the bridge, close that.” That guy should get a medal because he stopped the bridge. A lot of people would have died, a lot more people would have died. The ones that died were the workers on the bridge, and they, they were just, they thought there was no danger because, you know, it’s a big steel bridge, and it came down like, like toothpicks. It was incredible to watch that. It was just, and they died, they all died.”
But that police officer, again, the police do a great job. The police officer did an amazing job and I heard the tapes. He would say, ‘Get everybody off.’ Most people wouldn’t have said that. You know, when you see a thing like that, you assume it’s going to, you know, tap the bridge and it’s going to be rebuffed. The thing just came down. I’ve never seen anything like it, so he did a good job.
In fact, I think we should get him in for a medal, the man that gave the warning. I listened to him – “everybody get off,” screaming, “everybody off.” He had the sense to realize that this could be a catastrophe as opposed to a ship, that because the engines weren’t working, it’s just floating. It’s an amazing thing that a thing floating like that with no power just knocked it right down like it was, like it was nothing. Let’s do that, let’s give him a medal. I’ve been thinking about it.”
Highlights mine.
It was 1 a.m. The workers weren’t painting anything, they were filling potholes. The closure of the bridge to traffic was the result of a chain of events, starting with the captain’s mayday call, not the decision of any one person.
DL Open Thread/Sunday Magazine, June 29, 2025
Ever notice that some issues – vaccine skepticism, for example – don’t follow our normal political left-right axis of orientation? Eric Oliver did, and after studying the issue he came to the conclusion that America’s political divide is not ideological but psychological.
If you believe in UFOs or ESP or even general sense that there is a God who will respond to your prayers, you’re far more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than not. Sort of across the board. And what we also found was that people who believed in conspiracy theories were also more likely to believe in a host of other kinds of things.
Like, for example, natural medicines. Homeopathy. They tended to be more nationalistic in their orientations. They were a lot more populist in their orientations, just generally mistrustful of elites and sort of established groups. They often tended to be wary of foreigners and more xenophobic.
And so we saw this kind of interesting constellation that seemed to defy normal ideology and it didn’t necessarily align with race or even partisanship yet. It was this factor that really explained a lot of how people are understanding the world. And so we’re in the process of doing all this research, this is 2014, 2015. We’re fielding survey after survey to kind of generate all these data and who appears on the political horizon, but Donald Trump and he is emblematic of a lot of the things that we’re studying. And what we came to realize was that … American politics weren’t simply divided by ideology or partisanship or race, but there was another dimension.
And we ended up labeling this dimension kind of intuitionism. And most people are in the middle [of the scale] on this, but you can imagine the intuitionism dimension is anchored on two poles. On one side are people we call rationalist, and those are people who are products of the enlightenment. They believe in science, reason, logical deduction, empirical fact. And on the other end of this spectrum are people we call intuitionists and they believe in gut feelings … they’re very susceptible to feeling as a guide to understanding the world as opposed to say, for example, maybe thinking.
Lots of people have ideas on how Democrats should connect with disinterested working-class voters, but few have the feet-on-the-ground experience of Josh Weil, the former public school teacher who ran in the special election in April to replace Florida Rep. Mike Waltz. He knocked on thousands of doors, hoping to run on an education-centered platform, but he recalculated quickly based on his novel strategy listening to what voters told him. He’s running for Senate now, and he’s got lessons he thinks can be applied across America.
1. When people are struggling, it’s not medicare for all, it’s medicare for YOU.
The vast, VAST majority of voters aren’t reading the news like you and me. They don’t see a meaningful difference between Democrats and Republicans, and they probably haven’t heard of most of them. They are constantly trying to make it through the day. Nearly 60% of Floridians are living dangerously close to the poverty line. They don’t have time to educate themselves on the hot button issue of the day, and are just trying to keep it together. Saying that you want their tax dollars to help other people just isn’t going to work. Empathy is a luxury when survival is daily. You have to tell them how you are going to help THEM. It’s not “improve education”, it’s pay your kids teachers more so your kids can get into better colleges. It’s not infrastructure and public transportation it’s less time in traffic FOR YOU.
That simple switch really makes all the difference, for both checked out Democrats and Independents/Republicans.They want to know: how are you going to make my life better. It’s not selfish, it’s survival. Trump did it, and he didn’t even know what the word groceries means. But there sure were billboards on the interstate that said “cheaper groceries”. Don’t talk policy, talk about their lives and how you are going to change it.
2. People think all politicians are evil, and we can’t try to out-purity the GOP.
My opponent was one of the most hated republican elected officials in Florida. In a 7-11 I got approached by members of local legislative staff who told me that they didn’t like him, and were voting for me. Anything bad you’ve seen come out of FL in the last 6 years, he’s probably been a part of it. We ran ads to tell them exactly what kind of person he was. They ran ads telling them about my past. They tuned out. Politics as usual. Voters assume that if there’s not something bad in a candidates past, it just hasn’t come out yet, and that all politicians are corrupt slimeballs. Which means we can’t sound like politicians, we need to sound like well, real people.
A medical statistic that you might have been subconsciously aware of without registering it as a fact: Fatal heart attacks have become increasingly rare. They’ve dropped 90 percent since 1970, but of course it’s not all good news.
In 1970, someone over the age of 65 hospitalized for a heart attack in the United States had about a 60% chance of leaving the hospital alive. Today, the survival rate is over 90%, with even better outcomes for younger patients.
Those numbers have contributed to a remarkable decrease in the likelihood of dying from any type of heart disease over the last 50 years, according to a new study of heart disease mortality led by Stanford Medicine researchers. In 1970, 41% of all deaths were attributed to ailments of the heart; in 2022, that statistic had dropped to 24% of all deaths.
Most strikingly, the proportion of deaths from acute myocardial infarctions — commonly known as heart attacks — fell nearly 90% during that period.
The decrease is a testament to the leaps and bounds made in our ability to manage and prevent heart attacks, from bystander CPR to artery-opening stents and cholesterol-lowering statins, as well as public health measures that have drastically cut tobacco smoking.
But the researchers also found that more Americans now die from other types of heart disease, including heart failure, hypertensive heart disease and arrhythmias. More deaths from chronic heart conditions are, in part, the trade-off from more patients living beyond events like heart attacks.
An asteroid discovered late last year briefly raised worries that it was on a collision course with Earth. More observations downplayed the possibility, but the Moon is a different story. The chances it will be hit aren’t great, but they’re not zero, either.
On the evening of December 22, 2032, a modest-sized asteroid called 2024 YR4 could potentially slam into the Moon, and the collision could produce a meteor shower unlike anything seen in living memory. The rocks lighting up our skies wouldn’t be space debris from a distant comet or asteroid, but fragments of the Moon itself — blasted free by a cosmic bullet traveling 13 kilometers per second. Vital space satellites and even astronauts onboard the International Space Station may be at risk.
The asteroid is about 60 meters across, roughly the size of a sports arena. It was first flagged by astronomers earlier this year when it briefly raised alarm for its 3% chance of striking Earth. That risk has since dropped to nearly zero. But the Moon, Earth’s closest celestial companion, is still in the crosshairs, with new data from the James Webb Space Telescope bumping the odds of a lunar strike to 4.3%.
Have a safe, well-hydrated Sunday.
DL Open Thread Saturday, June 28, 2025
If you’re a progressive Democratic Party voter, you’re constantly told to shut up and vote for whatever centrist wins the nomination. “Vote Blue No Matter Who” is what the party believes and practices no matter who … hold on, I’m getting an update. It turns out that if a social democrat wins the nomination for, say, mayor New York, corporate Democrats like Kirsten Gillibrand get to beat him like a rented, red-headed mule. I used to have a dog that was scared of his own farts. He was braver than most elected Democrats.
Sometimes left-leaning Democrats get elected anyway, at which point it becomes the job of corporate Democrats to undermine them in every way possible. The indispensable Karl Stomberg puts it quite eloquently in his essay for Delaware Call calling out Delaware’s no-change agents and listing – it’s a long list – all the ways they are working for secrecy for themselves and against the public interest.
If you’re a betting person, you’ll never go wrong banking on the cravenness of the people running U.S. institutions. The University of Virginia tried to sidestep its DEI programs by changing the name, but super-genius Stephen Miller – if he’s not a super-genius, why’s his head shaped like a light bulb? – wasn’t fooled. The administration demanded the resignation of the school’s president, who stepped down so the administration wouldn’t strip the school of federal funding.
Anyone who thinks Trump’s bombing of Iran was anything but kayfabe in service of showing what a “peacemaker” he is should check out what diarrhea-mouth said a couple of days ago: He claims he agreed to let Iran bomb the U.S. base in Qatar, and now he’s claiming he stopped Israel from targeting their Supreme Leader. As the reporter for TPM notes, our useless mainstream media hasn’t deigned to even take notice, let alone connect the dots.
Speaking of the world’s worst people, Jeffrey Bezos got married in Venice. Everyone else in Venice was not pleased. As protested pointed out with a sign that covered a big chunk of Piazza San Marco, if you can rent Venice for your wedding you can afford to pay more taxes.
The floor’s yours.