James.galbraith

When Republicans aim to rile up their base going into an election, racism has always been a main strategy. More specifically in recent years, the so-called migrant ‘caravans’ have been a recurring theme. Vox reported that the Fox News propaganda network mentioned the caravans nearly 40 times in the days leading into the 2018 midterms. “Yet on Wednesday’s edition of Fox & Friends, it was mentioned just once in passing.”

This could be a strategy for one Republican candidate in particular. TIME reports that Peter Thiel-funded Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters “is betting on an immigration outcry” to help him defeat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona, going so far as to claim that the former astronaut is “personally responsible for the worst border crisis our state and our nation have ever seen.” Personally responsible!

Blake Masters is full of shit, and he’s only going to get more offensive. Especially because he wants to talk about anything but the radical opposition to abortion that he’s now trying to hide as he heads into the general election.

RELATED STORY: Blake Masters is trying to disappear his extreme opposition to abortion

Like Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson reported last Friday, Masters has scrubbed his website of “his very well-documented positions” on abortion after securing his party’s nomination earlier this month.

“For example, Masters’ website no longer says, ‘I am 100% pro-life,’” Clawson wrote. NBC News had been first to catch wind of sneaky Blake. “It no longer describes his support for ‘a federal personhood law (ideally a Constitutional amendment) that recognizes that unborn babies are human beings that may not be killed’ or for ‘the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,’ which criminalizes abortion after 20 weeks, or ‘the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, the SAVE Moms and Babies Act, and other pro-life legislation.’”

CNN reported that a person close to Masters hilariously said the Thiel sock puppet looked at his policy page as sort of “living document.” Or maybe an Etch-A-Sketch, others might say.

Like Clawson noted, Masters has also made it clear what he thinks about abortion rights, and it’s that he thinks they’re “demonic.” Masters did not at all like Kelly repeating his words back to him in a recent ad, and falsely claimed in his own rebuttal that “Mark Kelly is lying about my views on abortion.” Once again, the ad was quoting Masters’ own words. It is Blake Masters who is a liar.

"If Blake Masters thinks that he can quietly delete passages from his website and disguise just how out of touch and dangerous his abortion stance is, he's in for a rude awakening," Kelly campaign spokesperson Sarah Guggenheimer told CNN. "No embarrassing pivot can hide the truth: Masters has called abortion 'demonic,' a 'religious sacrifice,' and backs a national abortion ban. Arizonans know the truth and won't fall for this." Masters also holds extreme views on immigration, supporting a border wall and proclaiming “no citizenship for people who come here illegally, ever.” But most Americans support a pathway to citizenship.

Kelly currently holds a lead in the polling, and Masters won’t close that gap based on his extremist record on abortion. So, expect the pace of his anti-immigrant rhetoric to get kicked up a few notches. When he’s already released racist ads pushing white supremacist conspiracy theories, he has nowhere to go but to get even more extreme. America’s Voice previously noted that Masters has in fact “put forth some of the most vile and overt” ads. He tweeted one with the caption “end the invasion,” using the exact same white supremacist rhetoric spewed by racist mass murderers.

“Masters is far from the only Republican feeling the impact that abortion politics are having on the midterms,” NBC News reported. “Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel fretted about the post-Roe Democratic small-dollar advantage in a call to donors that Politico reported Wednesday.”

RELATED STORIES:

Ad from Peter Thiel-funded Arizona Republican echos 'white replacement' and 'invasion' conspiracies

Senate candidate Blake Masters claims it’s ‘Black people' responsible for U.S. gun violence

GOP officials use white supremacist rhetoric in pushing Arizona governor to attack asylum-seekers

An anonymous reader shares a report: Partha Ranganathan came to realize about seven years ago that Moore's law was dead. No longer could the Google engineering VP expect chip performance to double roughly every 18 months without major cost increases, and that was a problem considering he helped Google construct its infrastructure spending budget each year. Faced with the prospect of getting a chip twice as fast every four years, Ranganathan knew they needed to mix things up. Ranganathan and other Google engineers looked at the overall picture and realized transcoding (for YouTube) was consuming a large fraction of compute cycles in its data centers. The off-the-shelf chips Google was using to run YouTube weren't all that good at specialized tasks like transcoding. YouTube's infrastructure uses transcoding to compress video down to the smallest possible size for your device, while presenting it at the best possible quality. What they needed was an application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC -- a chip designed to do a very specific task as effectively and efficiently as possible. Bitcoin miners, for example, use ASIC hardware and are designed for that sole purpose. "The thing that we really want to be able to do is take all of the videos that get uploaded to YouTube and transcode them into every format possible and get the best possible experience," said Scott Silver, VP of engineering at YouTube. It didn't take long to sell upper management on the idea of ASICs. After a 10-minute meeting with YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki, the company's first video chip project was approved. Google started deploying its Argos Video Coding Units (VCUs) in 2018, but didn't publicly announce the project until 2021. At the time, Google said the Argos VCUs delivered a performance boost of anywhere between 20 to 33 times compared to traditional server hardware running well-tuned transcoding software. Google has since flipped the switch on thousands of second-gen Argos chips in servers around the world, and at least two follow-ups are already in the pipeline.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"At the onset of the outbreak, scientists thought they knew when and how the monkeypox virus was spread, what the disease looked like and who was most vulnerable," remembers the New York Times. "The 47,000 cases identified worldwide have upended many of those expectations." Some had headaches or depression, confusion and seizures. Others had severe eye infections or inflammation of the heart muscle. At least three of the six deaths reported so far were linked to encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. "We really are seeing a very, very wide range of presentation," said Dr. Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease physician at a clinic in Atlanta that serves people living with H.I.V. Scientists now know that the monkeypox virus lurks in saliva, semen and other bodily fluids, sometimes for weeks after recovery. The virus has always been known to spread through close contact, but many researchers suspect the infection may also be transmitted through sex itself.... "It's no longer correct to say it can't be transmitted asymptomatically," said Dr. Chloe Orkin, an infectious disease physician at Queen Mary University of London. "I think that it means that our working model of how it's spread is incorrect." Early in the outbreak, [America's Centers for Disease Control] said that "people who do not have monkeypox symptoms cannot spread the virus to others." The agency changed that phrasing on July 29 to say that "scientists are still researching" the possibility of asymptomatic transmission. In a statement to The New York Times, an agency spokeswoman acknowledged recent evidence that asymptomatic cases were possible but said that it was still uncertain whether people without symptoms could spread the virus and that more research was needed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Across the country, GOP candidates are saying "Vote for me, because I don't believe what I said before about abortion."

Underlying the threat of political violence is a bigger and more pernicious Trump scam.

In the wake of last Tuesday’s stunning NY-19 special election results, in which Democrats held a swingy seat Republicans need for a majority, I wrote that the red wave had ebbed. Republicans seem to understand that too, as something akin to panic has descended upon their ranks. 

To recap, midterm elections fare poorly for the party in the White House because they are de facto referendums on the president, and our political system makes it impossible for any president to deliver on his promises. As a result, the opposition is fired up, and the president’s supporters are either tuned out or frustrated at the inevitable lack of progress. But this year is different. 

1) How can we have a referendum on President Joe Biden, if the last guy won’t get off the stage (as FBI agents swarm around him)? Rather than a referendum, we have a reprise of the 2020 election. And no one motivates the Democratic base more than Donald Trump. 

2) Are Democrats truly in the majority if an illegitimate and out-of-control reactionary Supreme Court is overturning decades of established rights, while gutting gun laws and shredding the ability of government to carry out its duties? Conservatives feel disenfranchised, but so do we. And our side doesn’t need manufactured outrages like critical race theory and Honduran caravans to motivate ourselves. Our outrage is real. 

After the NY-19 special election, an Axios headline read, “Democrats' stunning turnaround.” And indeed, the DC conventional wisdom has shifted accordingly. 

Democrats need two additional seats for a real majority, and their chances of that are looking shockingly good. Democrat John Fetterman is leading comfortably (48.2-39.2 in the 538 polling aggregate) against the comically bad Mehmet Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Republicans have already cut planned ad buys there, as well as Arizona, where their hopes to defeat Democrat Mark Kelly are circling the drain. Their candidate, Blake Masters, has raised just $4 million this campaign, compared to Kelly’s $54 million, and more importantly trails by eight—50.3-42.0 in the 538 polling aggregate. 

While Senate Republicans weirdly tried to make Colorado and Washington happen, their only other real pickup opportunity is in Georgia, where their incoherent candidate, Hershel Walker, is walking around babbling such absurdities as this: 

“They have regulations for everything … I found out that I was Black, so my company was a minority-owned business. Like wow, a minority-owned business, what does that mean? It means you’ve got to fill out all of these forms,” Walker said. “I was like, ‘I got to fill out forms to be Black?’”

Campaign Action

The race is tight, with Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock sporting a slim 2-point lead in the polling composite, but like everywhere else, he’s crushing it in the fundraising war, having raised $60 million to Walker’s $20 million. Conservative billionaire super PACs aren’t closing the gap. 

If Democrats hold their most vulnerable seats, and take Pennsylvania, they need a single additional seat for their filibuster-smashing majority. Democrats have several opportunities.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell claims that bad Trumpian candidates are costing his party a chance at the Senate, yet Wisconsin lays that argument to waste. No one will claim that incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson isn’t top tier. He's won twice in this closely divided state! Yet his brand of extremism has worn thin, and a post-Dobbs fired-up electorate has put him on the defensive against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. (Dobbs is the Supreme Court decision overturning abortion rights granted by Roe v. Wade.)

This is a rare race where the Republican has an advantage—Democrats had a contested primary until just a few weeks ago. Johnson has raised $17 million to Barnes’ $7 million. On top of that, outside groups have already spent $24 million to try and prop up Johnson and soften up the opposition. But despite that money avalanche, Barnes maintains a small but persistent lead in the polling. Marquette University, the gold standard for Wisconsin polling, gave Barnes a 51-44 last week. Johnson is in dire straits. 

North Carolina polling is dead even, with Democratic superstar Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, enjoying a $16 million to $6 million fundraising advantage over Trump acolyte Rep. Tedd Budd. Outside money hasn’t been able to close to the gap for the Republican. 

Mitch McConnell pulled money out of Arizona to flood Ohio with $28 million from his super PAC. Everyone expected the state’s red tint, Trump won it by eight, to carry Republican nominee J.D. Vance across the finish line. He certainly doesn’t think he has to work at it, raising a pitiful $3.5 million and remaining invisible on the campaign trail. Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan is running a picture-perfect campaign, crushing Vance’s fundraising with $21 million raised. The two are functionally tied in the mid-40s. 

And in Florida, Democrat Val Demmings narrowly trails incumbent Marco Rubio. My top election rule is, “Florida will never be there for us when we need it.” If we win Florida, we’ve won every other competitive Senate race. It would be the cherry on top. Demmings has amazingly outraised Rubio, $47 million to $36 million, so she’ll have the money to make it interesting to the very end. 

As a result of that, anything between a status-quo 50-50 and a Democratic 54-46 Senate are real possibilities. We could even end up with 55 in a reach scenario, but that is highly unlikely. Still, McConnell has to be rueing the day he didn’t vote to convict Trump, ridding his party of that scourge. Instead, Trump’s candidates are well on their way to handing Democrats a potential big victory, while his very own presence hyper-energizes Democratic voters. And oh, those Supreme Court seats McConnell stole? He sowed the seats of this unexpectedly competitive mid-term cycle. 

But what about the House? Let’s go back to NY-19. 

It’s important to note that NY-19 was the Republicans’ best-case scenario—an evenly divided district, with a top-tier A+ recruit, a former gubernatorial candidate who won this district during that race, and a massive spending advantage. Democrats didn’t bother spending money on a seat that will disappear in January. Republicans wanted it bad for “the narrative.” Well that blew up in their face. 

Democrats need 217 seats to retain the House majority. There are 222 seats bluer than this one, and Democrats have huge fundraising numbers across the board in all of those and more. And after sporting a narrow lead in the Generic Congressional Ballot most of the year, Democrats are surging and have now taken a narrow lead in 538’s polling aggregate. 

But who needs polls when we have actual election results to look to? Democrats are outperforming Biden’s 2020 numbers in almost every special election since the Dobbs decision leaked. As I wrote last week:

In 2021 elections, Republicans outperformed their 2020 numbers by an average of six points. Remember how we lost in Virginia, and almost lost in New Jersey. Things looked rough, for sure.

Things got even worse in early 2022, when Republicans were overperforming their 2020 margins by nine points [...]

After the Dobbs decision was initially leaked, there were 11 special elections leading up to last night, and Republican advantages evaporated practically overnight, with a three-point over performance by Democrats—a massive 12-point shift. 

Republicans sure aren’t looking too confident these days. Here is a Republican candidate for one of Michigan’s competitive (tossup!) House seats, Michigan’s 7th: 

Weird how abortion was “salient” for 50 years, a cornerstone of every single Republican campaign, but now that they won and the country is raving furious about it, the issue is no longer “salient.” Too bad it doesn’t work like that. Blake Masters over in Arizona tried to pull a similar stunt. 

One more Republican pulls their abortion language from their campaign literature, and we’ll have a full-on trend. Watch for it to happen this week. They are getting killed on the issue, and while they can’t outrun it, they’ll desperately try. 

Interestingly, Donald Trump is starting to get the same leper treatment.

This one is extra funny because Hamadeh previously called Trump’s endorsement “the most powerful in political history.” And while this guy might be the first to pretend the Trump endorsement never happened, the rest of the Republican Party seems to be slowly backing away from Trump. 

Republicans certainly seemed reluctant to defend Trump last week, as more and more details emerged of his theft of top secret information. Republicans want to talk about high gas prices and inflation (both dropping!), but they can’t break through the Trump cacophony. 

And in case anyone was wondering, Republicans are still terrible on policy, and continue to give Democrats fantastic material to work with heading into November: 

With all that noise, is it any wonder everyone has forgotten about Joe Biden? Though don’t look now—his numbers are rising. Low 40s sure looks better than those Trumpian high-30s. Ultimately I doubt it matters much. This election is about abortion and Trump. Little else matters, including Biden.

One last note: voter registration data is all roses for Democrats. In Pennsylvania, “Of the women who have registered since the decision, there are four Democrats for every Republican.” Even among male registrants, the ratio is 43% Democrat, 28% Republican. 

Young people are suddenly engaged: 

In Texas, new registrants were +5 Republican pre-Dobbs, and are now +10 Democratic post-Dobbs. In Ohio, new women registrants went from +5 Republican to +15 Democratic pre- and post-Dobbs, respectively. 

There are a lot of moving pieces this cycle, most of them benefiting Democrats as they seek to buck historical midterm trends. Given that our very democracy is on the line, we need to make sure everyone understands the stakes, and underscores that no one has the option to sit this election out. 

Remember—we hold the House and expand the Senate by two, we can codify abortion protections in law. Washington, D.C., gets statehood, and maybe Puerto Rico if they want it. Sen. Joe Manchin’s election bill ended House partisan gerrymandering, and we could establish national guidelines protecting the right to vote. And that’s just a start. 

We are on our way. Just a little over two months away. 

Abortion rights, climate change, and gun safety are all on the ballot this fall. Click to start writing Postcards to Democratic-leaning voters in targeted House districts today.

It should have been possible to see what was coming, when Donald Trump’s team of highly unqualified attorneys managed to submit Trump’s complaint incorrectly, and the judge gave them a do over.  Then the complaint came in missing everything necessary, and the judge sent instructions on exactly what she wanted to see. And now the Trump-appointed judge has broken with all legal precedent, and written wholly new law in the process, to give Donald Trump exactly what he wanted—a special master.

Judge Aileen Cannon didn’t stop with saying she intends to appoint a special master, she insists that the federal government provide a more detailed list of the documents taken, a list to be shared with Trump. Only she seems to have missed even more steps than Trump’s attorneys, like even sending the suit to the supposed “defendant,” or giving any reason why her could T can intervene in any way.

how any of this would work, and how anyone would appoint a special master to review documents classified at the highest possible level … seems not just impossible, but ridiculous. But then, this is entirely new legal ground … the kind that should only exist in the Twilight Zone.  

Actual legal experts have some opinions about this ruling.    

Sign if you agree: No one is above the law

Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

In an effort to combat the devastating drought conditions hitting California, the Golden State will become the first in the nation to install solar panel canopies over canals. From a report: The $20 million pilot project funded by the state has been dubbed "Project Nexus." It will consist of an estimated 8,500 feet of solar panels installed over three sections of Turlock Irrigation District (TID) canals in Central California. It is expected to break ground in the fall, and be completed by 2023. The project was first announced back in February. According to TID, the project aims to use water and energy management hand-in-hand. The project is designed to increase renewable power generation, while reducing water evaporation and vegetative growth in canals. TID states that the project will also serve as a "proof of concept" to further study "solar over canal design." The agency cites a 2021 University of California, Merced study, which showed that covering all of the approximately 4,000 miles of public water delivery system infrastructure in the state with solar panels could save an estimated 63 billion gallons of water annually, as well as result in significant energy and cost savings.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The contents of this diagram is not in my scope, but it is a very big, detailed diagram of metabolic pathways. Many steps, many arrows.

Tags: biochemistry, metabolism

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Hovertext:
The key is first to realize this and then decide it's a belief system.

Today's News:

Donald Trump's defenses continue to crumble.

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday vowed that he won't back down in the fight against high inflation, saying the central bank will do what it takes to rein in prices.

In a closely watched speech at the Fed’s annual conference in Wyoming, Powell foreshadowed not only further interest rate increases but also warned that rates might need to stay high for some time to ensure that price spikes do not persist.

“We must keep at it until the job is done,” he said. “Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance.”

The Fed's campaign to curb the highest inflation in four decades runs the risk of triggering a recession in the world's largest economy. Growth has already slowed — initial readings of GDP showed the economy contracted in the first two quarters of the year — even as inflation has shown signs of cooling off.

The persistence of high inflation has sparked a blame game in Washington, with Republicans faulting both the Biden administration's big spending packages and the Fed's delay in raising interest rates.

Indeed, Powell's words were a stark about-face from his remarks at the same conference last year, when he said elevated inflation was likely to prove temporary. Now, his message is intended not only to warn the American people that economic pain is ahead but also to deter financial markets from expecting the Fed to reverse course next year.

Before his remarks, many investors expected the central bank to begin lowering borrowing costs later next year as a possible recession looms. That had led market rates to fall and stock prices to rise from their June depths — the exact opposite of what the central bank wants to see as it aims to slow spending and investment.

But the Fed chief said the battle against inflation would likely mean “a sustained period” of slow growth, with a level of interest rates that keeps the economy on a tight leash. He also said there would “very likely” be some pain in the job market, which could mean a jump in the unemployment rate — that is, millions of job losses.

“These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain,” he said, arguing that letting inflation fester would only cause additional hardship in the future because the Fed would have to act more aggressively.

“History shows that the employment costs of bringing down inflation are likely to increase with delay,” he said.

Many attendees of the conference, who were hoping for tough talk from Powell, were pleased. At six pages, his speech was considerably shorter and more direct than remarks at this venue generally are. That gave markets little room to read something unintended into his words. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 stock index plunged after the speech.

“It was extremely disciplined, extremely tight. Just saying, ‘we’re on this path, we’re staying on this path,’ and not overcommitting, not overpromising,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Powell’s former Fed colleague, Randal Quarles, called it “exactly what was called for in the moment.” He said the central bank likely needed to get its main borrowing rate up close to 4 percent — it currently sits between 2.25 percent and 2.5 percent — and “they're on the path to do that.”

The economy is already slowing, though it still shows “strong underlying momentum,” according to Powell.

As for inflation itself, there are some early signs it is easing. The Personal Consumption Expenditures index — the Fed’s preferred inflation measure — showed prices actually fell slightly from June to July, driven in part by lower gas prices, according to data released Friday. But they’re still up 6.3 percent from a year before.

“While the lower inflation readings for July are welcome, a single month’s improvement falls far short of what the committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down,” Powell said.

He put responsibility for fighting price spikes firmly in the court of the Fed, although inflation has also been fed by factors that it can’t control, such as supply chain disruptions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It is true that the current high inflation is a global phenomenon, and that many economies around the world face inflation as high or higher than seen here in the United States,” Powell said. “None of this diminishes the Federal Reserve’s responsibility to carry out our assigned task of achieving price stability. There is clearly a job to do in moderating demand to better align with supply. We are committed to doing that job.”

Just when you think people “representing” the Republican Party can’t get worse in comes Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, set out to replace Rob Portman. Vance has continuously made headlines for his misogynist and horrific views.

After calling rape “inconvenient,” the GOP candidate has now come under fire for his appearance on a podcast in September hosted by a right-winger who once said “Feminists need rape,” Mother Jones reported. According to Mother Jones, while speaking about the “American leadership class” Vance talked about “revolutionary conservatism” on a podcast hosted by right-wing activist Jack Murphy.

According to Mother Jones, Murphy is known to run a “secretive men’s organization” which claims all major American institutions including universities, the media, the government, unions, professional organizations, nonprofits, and corporations, have been “infiltrated, corrupted, demoralized” and aim to “control you forever.” Murphy has historically run several efforts against feminism, wokeness, and other conservative bête noires. He made headlines in 2015 for a now-deleted blog post in which he claimed “Feminists need rape. … It is our duty as men to save feminists from themselves. Therefore, I am offering rape to feminists as an olive branch.”

During his 90-minute interview with Murphy, the two bonded over their “masculinity” and fawned over one another’s views on culture wars and politics. In addition to discussing how America is failing, Vance called for Trump’s return to the White House in 2024 so that Trump could fire every top and mid-level federal government employee to “deconstruct the administrative state.”

Like other Republicans often have, he even seemed to support extremist actions implying the phrase “desperate times require desperate measures” calling for a “de-Nazification” plan to purge liberals from the government.

“If we’re going to push back against it, we’re have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with,” Vance said.

His appearance on such a podcast is not surprising given the recent comments he has made about rape and marriages himself. In an interview published by Vice News Monday, Vance claimed that divorce inflicts more harm on children than would be if people stayed unhappy together even in “violent" relationships. The interview refers to comments he also made in September regarding people staying in abusive or unhappy marriages.

Asked by Vice News why the candidate thought “it would be better for children if their parents stayed in violent marriages than if they divorced,” and also if he wanted “local or federal law changed to make it harder for couples to divorce,” Vance said:

“I reject the premise of your bogus question. As anyone who studies these issues knows: Domestic violence has skyrocketed in recent years, and is much higher among non-married couples. That’s the ‘trick’ I reference: that domestic violence would somehow go down if progressives got what they want, when in fact modern society’s war on families has made our domestic violence situation much worse. Any fair person would recognize I was criticizing the progressive frame on this issue, not embracing it. But I can see that you are not a fair person, so rather than answer your loaded and baseless question, let me offer the following: I’m an actual victim of domestic violence. In my life, I have seen siblings, wives, daughters, and myself abused by men. It’s disgusting for you to argue that I was defending those men.”

Again this isn't the first time Vance has made such comments. Vice News noted that Vance has repeatedly expressed that people should disregard their safety for the sake of raising children in a “loving home.”

In March, at a forum hosted by Toledo Right to Life, he said that “marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman.”

He added: “The entire idea that you can discard your husband or your wife like a piece of clothing is one of the most dangerous assaults that we’ve ever seen on the family in this country. If we want children to grow up with healthy, happy lives, we should be reminding them that the most important thing that we can do for our kids is make sure they grow up with a mom and dad at home. The assault on the institution of marriage has been a profound evil. It hasn’t just affected our adults, it’s affected our children in big ways.”

Of course, not every Republican supports Vance’s views, especially as he is quickly being deemed a controversial candidate. According to The Daily Beast, Republicans are concerned that he is “running the worst campaign you can possibly run.”

Government might help some people, but not other people? Oh dear!

By Brandon Gage Teachers in Florida are growing increasingly frustrated over how to manage their classrooms following Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s signing of House Bill 1557 – the Parental Rights in Education Act, otherwise known as the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation – into law this past March that took effect in July. “HB 1557 is at the epicenter of a raging debate over what should be taught to children in America’s public school systems. Debates over teaching the nation’s history of systemic racism have roiled school districts and elections, and a now growing number of states are consider…

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New submitter alfabravoteam writes: Password management company LastPass has published information about a security incident. "We have determined that an unauthorized party gained access to portions of the LastPass development environment through a single compromised developer account and took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information," reads the official message published. They also clarify that no user data was lost. "We never store or have knowledge of your Master Password," the firm said in an FAQ. "We utilize an industry standard Zero Knowledge architecture that ensures LastPass can never know or gain access to our customers' Master Password", they inform. Hence, no action is required to users to follow.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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I think they'll be happy to be of use.

Today's News:

Researchers Xiaofan Liang and Clio Andris estimated the percentage of restaurants that are chains and independent to identify “McCities”:

These high chainness McCities are prevalent in the Midwestern and the Southeastern United States. Independent restaurants were associated with dense pedestrian-friendly environments, highly educated populations, wealthy populations, racially diverse neighborhoods, and tourist areas. Low chainness was also associated with East and West Coast cities.

Check out the interactive map here.

My only criticism is that they used a rainbow color scale instead of using a single hue or a diverging color scale that breaks at half.

Tags: chains, Clio Andris, restaurant, Xioafan Liang

The newly released affidavit sheds light on the classified documents at the center of Trump’s growing legal problems.

The Department of Justice released an affidavit Friday that is central to the FBI’s search of President Donald J. Trump’s Florida home in Mar-a-Lago.

As expected, the document is heavily redacted. Or, rather, almost entirely redacted, after the DOJ asked the judge to conceal any parts of it that would hinder its investigation or compromise participants in it.

Still, the affidavit does shed new light on federal investigators’ fight to retrieve classified documents from Trump’s home in Florida, and includes several new bits of information:

• It notes that, among the 15 boxes that Trump returned to the National Archives earlier this year, there were “184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET.”
• The FBI believed there were additional documents at Mar-a-Lago, but that they’d also find evidence of obstruction of justice there as well: “Further, there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI [National Defense Information] or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the PREMISES [Mar-a-Lago]. There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES.”
• Politico’s Andrew Desiderio noted on Twitter that some of the documents allegedly contained human intelligence source information and foreign intelligence intercepts. That is, information that could reveal the actual identities of intelligence sources or closely guarded intel on US adversaries allies. This kind of intelligence is obviously extremely closely guarded and its exposure could put lives or sources at risk.
• Classified and sensitive documents were allegedly stored at multiple unsecure locations at Mar-a-Lago.

The affidavit itself is the result of months of back-and-forth between federal investigators and Trump and his legal team, which spurred the FBI to ask a judge for permission to conduct its August search of Mar-a-Lago. During that search, the bureau found a cache of classified and sensitive documents.

In total, according to the New York Times, Trump “took more than 700 pages of classified documents, including some related to the nation’s most covert intelligence operations, to his private club and residence in Florida when he left the White House in January 2021.” The documents authorities searched for in Trump’s home included classified nuclear secrets and information that is “among the most sensitive secrets we hold,” the Washington Post reported.

Earlier this year, the National Archives recovered at least 15 boxes of presidential documents from Mar-a-Lago. But investigators began to believe that there was more, and that Trump’s team was not being totally forthcoming with them.

The potential legal exposure for Trump and his team is serious. A search warrant released earlier this month revealed that the FBI searched Trump’s home because of potential violations of three federal laws, including the Espionage Act, the willful destruction or concealment of federal records, and obstructing an investigation.

Read the affidavit here or below:

Presidential documents, no matter how small or obscure, are required by federal law to be turned over to the National Archives when a president leaves office. Trump and his aides have claimed that he had a “standing order” to declassify all documents in his possession. (Other former Trump officials have denied that there was any such order.)

But a president does not have unilateral authority to broadly declassify the nation’s most sensitive secrets — doing so involves several formal steps and consultation with other government agencies.

Classification may be irrelevant to Trump’s potential legal troubles. None of the federal laws cited by investigators require documents to be classified.

Update, August 26, 1:15 pm ET: This story has been updated with details from the affidavit.

SACRAMENTO — California moved Thursday to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035, a first-in-the-nation mandate the state’s leaders hope will jolt the automotive industry and truly make electric vehicles mainstream.

Other states led by Democrats, including New York and Oregon, are expected to swiftly follow California’s lead in a liberal-state push to fight climate change — moves not unlike past mandates on emissions and car safety.

California’s determination to force what would amount to a monumental economic and social change reflects both the state’s long history in shaping the country’s auto market with stringent vehicle standards and the dire threat posed by climate change.

“It’s ambitious, it’s innovative, it’s the action we must take if we’re serious about leaving this planet better off for future generations,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement after the California Air Resources Board adopted the requirement. “California will continue to lead the revolution towards our zero-emission transportation future.”

The rule, which was formalized nearly two years after Newsom first announced it, will pose a significant challenge. Sales of fully electric vehicles in California, the country’s largest auto market, have made up 16 percent of the total so far in 2022. Industry experts say reaching the new goal will require fixing supply chain issues and building charging stations — and for EV prices to come down.

“Whether or not these requirements are realistic or achievable is directly linked to external factors like inflation, charging and fuel infrastructure, supply chains, labor, critical mineral availability and pricing, and the ongoing semiconductor shortage,” said John Bozzella, the president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

Nationwide, fully electric vehicles make up only 6 percent of total new car sales. Still, other states are expected to adopt similar targets.

New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts are among the 17 states that have already made it a practice of adopting California’s tailpipe emission standards, adding up to a third of the country’s auto market. Most of those states are now expected to copy the new electric vehicle requirements over the next months, with some using the rules to add teeth to existing emissions targets. Among the first could be Oregon and Vermont, where regulators have already started drafting rules similar to those endorsed by Newsom.

Automakers have long conditioned support for stronger electric vehicle mandates on state governments investing more in charging stations and other necessary infrastructure, as California has done.

Some European countries have already set sales quotas for gas-powered vehicles and are further along in converting. Growth in the U.S. has been hampered by factors that include a lack of charging stations, the price of EVs and more recently by supply chain problems that have caused shortages of lithium for batteries and microchips.

Automakers just five years ago would have had big problems with California's ban, said Margo Oge, a former top career official in the Environmental Protection Agency’s transportation office. But a combination of continued pressure from European and Chinese authorities and industry investments have prompted a change.

"In the past, I think you would have had a lot of pushback from the car companies. I don't expect that to be the case because many of the car companies — like GM, Ford, Volvo, Daimler, Volkswagen — they're already there," said Oge said, a member of Volkswagen's International Sustainability Council.

Toyota sent a letter to California this week acknowledging the state’s ability to set the car rules, something California officials characterized as “old foes coming on board.”

Other states that have not traditionally followed California may also adopt more EV goals, Oge said, in part because of money available from the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.

"[The] IRA is going to provide a lot of incentives to the states, for infrastructure, for manufacturing, for tax incentives,” she said. “So my hope is that other states will follow California."

As more states adopt California’s rules, and the EV market expands, the federal government will come under increasing pressure to set similar national targets, said Elaine O’Grady, who works on auto policy for an alliance called the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management.

“The more states that adopt California standards, the more likely it is that federal government standards will be closer to California,” O’Grady said.

California's rule has some exceptions. Older gas-powered cars could still operate and be sold on the used-vehicle market. In addition, some hybrids that are powered by gas and electricity will also be allowed.

The state will require permission under the federal Clean Air Act to set the requirement of 100 percent non-gas vehicle sales, and it’s unclear how long that process will take. The Biden administration for months has been considering a separate waiver for strengthened tailpipe rules for heavy-duty trucks, with manufacturers complaining that the rule did not give them the required four-year lead time.

Such a waiver could also be vulnerable under a future Republican president opposed to the ban.

The Trump administration revoked an earlier waiver allowing California to set stronger emissions standards through 2025; litigation had only just begun when the newly arrived Biden administration hit reverse and restored the state’s authority.

Everyone’s heard it and plenty of us have said it: Democrats need stronger messaging. Team Blue doesn’t often talk the same talk as those across the aisle and under that burning dumpster next to the manure pile. And while that’s not a bad thing—Republican rhetoric has led to appalling acts of violence, terrorism, and a whole-ass insurrection, after all—a bit of a stronger tone is sometimes warranted.

This is one of those times. And Dems are delivering, from the the top on down, when it comes to combating the manufactured GOP outrage over student debt relief.

RELATED: Republicans screech about student debt cancellation, while borrowers cry in relief

Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson shined a light on the hypocrisy of right-wing rants against President Joe Biden’s comprehensive and long-awaited student loan plan on Thursday morning. Read the full plan here. Twitter users left and right quickly found examples to undermine the moral hazard claims from the GOP.

Daily Kos’ Aysha Qamar also found a fantastic thread sharing even more proof of right-wing hypocrisy, leaning on the popular “this you?” meme. Here’s a sample.

And Daily Kos’ Walter Einenkel also shared a clip from Biden’s Wednesday’s press conference, where he pushed back firmly against a reporter carrying water for Republicans.

“That’s the stuff,” Einenkel wrote.

And Thursday afternoon, Biden reiterated his commitment to his student loan relief and reforms.

Of course, it wasn’t just Twitter users, activists, and Biden pushing back. It was other elected officials. This one from Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, in hindsight, promises that fire is on the way.

But did we really expect the White House to wield a flaming Twitter Torch of Truth by Thursday evening?

Behold:

I don’t know about you, but I’m here for this new approach from the White House. And the replies—from folks who are so glad to see a firm response from this administration—are a meme motherlode.

Folks also had some theories on this new approach’s origin story.

A deep hat tip to this fine person for inspiring my headline:

Others were rightfully concerned about the potential fallout from such an aggressive, factual approach.

But generally, people were just glad to see Democrats push back.

Especially considering that Republicans always, always push.

Perhaps It was Kate who summed it up most perfectly.

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The Biden administration’s historic plan to alleviate student debt for millions of Americans is a life-changing announcement for Latinos in particular. President Joe Biden is cancelling $10,000 in debt for student borrowers with an income under $125,000, and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients under that same income level.

Under the plan, roughly a third of Latino students will see their school debt eliminated outright, Latino advocacy organization UnidosUS said. Early survey findings from the group just this month found that more than half of Latino respondents were first in their families to take out school loans. “This is a momentous development for those impacted by student debt, including millions of Latino and Latina borrowers,” said organization President Janet Murguía.

RELATED STORY: Biden exceeds expectations with student debt relief announcement

“Most Latinos in postsecondary education come from low-income households and are the first in their families to go to college,” UnidosUS said Wednesday. “Despite nearly half of Latinos receiving a Pell Grant, they rely on filling the college affordability gap with loans. While Latino borrowers tend to borrow less on average compared to White borrowers, they are still prevented from wealth-building opportunities like owning a home, saving for retirement, or starting a business.”

The preliminary survey findings from earlier this month said that 38% of Latino respondents owed an average of $17,000 in debt. The overwhelming majority of respondents said they’d been unable to save for their retirement, and have been affected in their decision to buy a home. Sixty-six percent said they’d had to borrow money from family or friends to cover an emergency. “For those with student debt, this number jumps to 80%.” One-third said “do not feel confident” they can pay their debt over the next 10 years. Another one-third said they were now owing more than they’d initially borrowed.

"$20K will be very helpful," Pay Our Interns Executive Director Carlos Vera told NBC News. He said two-thirds of the $60,000 he has in school debt are federal loans, and at times he has made payments as high as $900 a month. "That means long term, I'm paying less—and then the second thing is it makes me feel a little bit better about potentially like, you know, going to grad school, or doing other life decisions that I probably couldn't beforehand."

“Providing debt relief at this unique moment to those who need it most will result in more Latinos reaping the economic benefits of a college degree, including the ability to build wealth through homeownership,” Murguía said. It is, in fact, a RBFD.

“Biden’s moves could completely wipe clean student debt for 20 million out of the 43 million eligible people, according to administration figures cited by Biden and reported by The Washington Post, with 90% of relief going to people earning less than $75,000,” Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson reported Wednesday. “Thanks to the foresight of Senate Democrats in crafting the American Rescue Plan in 2021, student debt forgiveness will not count as taxable income.”

Clawson noted that a poll showed “55% support for canceling debt up to $10,000, with even stronger support among people aged 18 to 44 and Black and Hispanic people.”

“We applaud President Biden’s action which recognizes and addresses the widespread impact of excessive student debt on Americans’ financial well-being and on the economy,” Murguía said. “And this executive order will be a game changer for our community as Hispanics have disproportionately experienced financial harm from the burden of student debt.”

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Abraham “Abe” Hamadeh, the Republican candidate for attorney general in Arizona, has run his campaign on “prosecuting election fraud.” In fact, he’s been so convincing that he even got former President Donald Trump to endorse him. But, whoops, then the Phoenix New Times reported that the 31-year-old retired Army captain bragged online about voting illegally.

On his own website, Hamadeh writes: ​​”The day I take office in January 2023 we will prioritize the Election Integrity Unit and increase the number of prosecutors and investigators in order to be prepared and protect the 2024 election. Confidence in our elections is the cornerstone to our country – we must restore voters trust.”

And in June, Trump wrote: “Hamadeh knows what happened in the 2020 Election, and will enforce voting laws so that our Elections are Free and Fair again.”

RELATED STORY: Herschel Walker says he ‘found out’ he was Black when his company became a minority-owned business

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According to the New Times, in 2007, Hamadeh, who was 16 years old at the time, was “an active member” of an online message board for supporters of the Libertarian lawmaker Ron Paul. From 2007 to 2010, the former Maricopa County prosecutor posted over 4,000 times, the New Times found.

In a 2008 post, Hamadeh wrote: "based on Barack Obama's intelligence I casted my vote for him yesterday through absentee."

He later added, “No I cannot vote, I just submitted my mothers absentee ballot, she votes who I vote for, she voted for Ron Paul, and I’m saddened that I had to vote for Barack Obama but it was the right I had to do.”

The New Times notes that the personal information on the “Hamadeh” account, including the birthday, username, birth city, city of residence, and even an email address all correspond to the GOP candidate’s information.

“Abe Hamadeh is the youngest statewide candidate in the country, and one of the first to be scrutinized on his digital footprint dating back to a time when he was 16 years old, the same time he thought he would grow up to become a wrestler in the WWE,” Erica Knight, a spokesperson for Hamadeh’s campaign, told the New Times. She added, "Comments allegedly posted during his teenage years do not represent his current values and views."

Hamadeh is running against Democratic nominee Kris Mayes. In a tweet after the story broke, the Scottsdale Republican wrote: "The media should report on what Kris Mayes said 16 days ago not supposed comments from a 16-year-old. Kris has called for DEFUNDING the police and creating a climate change czar. The media is panicking because a first generation & veteran doesn't subscribe to their narrative."

According to AZ Central, Mayes has not called for defunding the police.

“It’s the height of hypocrisy,” Mayes told HuffPost. “For Abe Hamadeh to have spent the last year undermining trust in our election system when apparently he’s the guy who engaged in voter fraud.”

Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.

After President Joe Biden announced his student debt relief plan on Wednesday, thousands across the country felt like they could finally breathe. But of course, not everyone was happy with Biden exceeding expectations. Biden’s vow to cancel up to $10,000 in debt for all student borrowers with incomes under $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples) apparently was too much for some conservatives, who then decided it was best to complain on social media.

Of course, these salty individuals failed to realize that records of whether they got payment relief through Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans or other government assistance are public knowledge. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) But as always, Twitter came with the receipts.

Twitter users are calling out conservatives whining about “free money” with the phrase “this you?” Users are posting the phrase and tagging those who complain on the social media app alongside screenshots of the "free money" they received, many of which reflect amounts way beyond $10,000. 

A thread with a compilation of the call-outs has made it easier to keep up with identifying those who received thousands in aid from the government and are now complaining.

Check it out below:

The thread proves what we all know: Conservatives don’t complain when things benefit them, but of course they have to whine when it benefits anyone else. Know anyone else who needs to be called out? There are so many it seems like this trend will go on for days to come.

RELATED STORIES:

Republicans screech about student debt cancellation, while borrowers cry in relief

 If only there was another recent example of the federal government forgiving loans ...

With every month that passes after the now arch-right Supreme Court's decision erasing federal abortion rights in this country, new state restrictions are codified. Any pundit who speculated that the furious public backlash to new abortion bans would cause Republicans to cool their heels a bit, as midterms approach, is a silly person that you don't have to listen to. No, conservative states are very quickly codifying restrictions that ban abortion care in nearly all cases, and they're being helped along by all those once-aspirational "trigger" laws that state Republicans passed during the Roe days as sops to a loud but narrow anti-abortion base.

Three new trigger laws went into effect today, in Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas. Tennessee now bans abortion at any point in pregnancy and, because this is Tennessee, removes rape and incest exceptions. Idaho's ban also becomes near-universal, and because this is Idaho looks to put doctors who perform abortions in prison for up to a half-decade.

Texas, the state that now-infamously brought "bounty hunter" laws to the books that declared that states could violate whatever constitutional rights they wanted to violate so long as they privatized the violating, doesn't need to rely on such backhanded schemes now that Justice Samuel Alito has declared that American women are entitled to no more rights than they would have received from torch-wielding witch hunters of the 17th century. Texas can now straight-up criminalize abortion procedures, and will be throwing doctors who perform them in prison.

This feels like a very good place to insert, as not-random aside, that the political director of the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life just got himself arrested for soliciting sex from a child. Wow, another arch-conservative child predator? It's always the ones you most expect.

Still, that might explain the group's passion for making sure raped Texas children are denied abortion care. It's something they have more experience with than they've been letting on, maybe?

In Michigan, the situation is still absolute chaos. The state has a nasty anti-abortion trigger law from 1931 on the books, but state Attorney General Dana Nessel has refused to enforce that law. Republican county prosecutors, however, have vowed that they very much will be enforcing it, which means that whether abortion has been criminalized in Michigan depends, right now, on which county you live in and how politically ambitious the Republican officials are there. All of that is still making its way up the chain of appeals as we speak, and nobody has any idea whether there are any abortion rights left in the state or whether it's something that's just going to switch back and forth with each election cycle.

It's only going to get worse from here. North Dakota's trigger law is set to go into effect tomorrow, and Republicans are pushing for similar near-total bans across the country. Banning abortion remains wildly unpopular, and recent election results suggest that voters are indeed willing to turn out to protect abortion rights. State Republican lawmakers, however, clearly do not care.

Whether that's because they're confident they can withstand whatever the voters want to dish out in November or it's because they're so deep in the hoax-and-fascism bubble that they can't even conceive that the voters might try isn't clear. But it appears Republican states will be locking in new near-total abortion bans even as the midterms approach; reining in such extremism is no longer something that the party could manage if it wanted to.

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Expose young people to new ideas, and they may well reject their parents' thinking.