US politics: just for you

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, James Arryn said:

Being effete in no way prevents winning at golf.

I'll take your word for it.  Just as long as I don't have to play it.  They tried to make me play gold in h.s. and I went mad.

[Zorral]

Dead Bounce Ron?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dead-bounce-ron

Quote

 

If you’ll remember the last time we discussed Incel Chieftain Ron DeSantis the story was that even though his polling numbers had faltered and campaign discourse had settled into describing his deep personal weirdness he was still sitting on a mountain of money. Well, maybe not. Now DeSantis has been forced to fire staff amid a spending crunch. A campaign insider tells Politico the number was “fewer than 10 staffers.” NBC says it was a dozen. The first reports tried to suggest this was part of a strategy shift as opposed to spending woes. But in those terms the new strategy seems to be to not run out of money before the end of the summer.

In fairness, the idea that GOP oligarchs had hosed Ron down with an obscene amount of cash was largely based on the Ron-backing SuperPACs, which still do have quite a lot of money. But this reminds us of a key dynamic of campaign financing even in the Citizens United era. Your allied SuperPACs and dark money entities can be part of your campaign commercial air war. They can help with organizing voters and get out the vote efforts to a lesser but still real extent. But the campaign still has to run its actual campaign through the old regulated system. That’s your own staff, your own events, your own paid media. That’s where DeSantis’s operation is apparently buckling.

Meanwhile this report from NBCNews highlights an additional problem. More than 2/3rds of the money DeSantis raised between mid-May and the end of June came from donors who’ve maxed out their giving; even some of that money can only be spent in the general election (which, let’s be honest, won’t ever happen for Ron).

As we noted a few days ago, the “small donor” label can be misleading inasmuch as people imagine its a true mass base of support reaching down through the class spectrum. It’s really dominated by upper middle class and affluent givers tossing in tens or a hundred dollars at a time online. But the key is that a candidate can keep drawing money from those givers. That kind of giving, which really got underway about twenty years ago and now plays a dominant role in Democratic campaigns, opened up a whole new kind of political campaigning in which candidates could essentially live on the land. DeSantis seems to be focused on an older and somewhat more transactional style of funding focused on richer but still non-oligarch givers who can max out with a single check. Those contributions are great and all campaigns in both parties try to get them. But it’s one and done. You can’t go back to those people again.

What it all amounts to is a campaign which is dying but at the highest levels, with enough juice to keep any other candidate from climbing out of single digits yet mortally wounded all the same.

 

DeSantis Sheds Staff Amid Heavy Spending
The dismissals come as his campaign for the Republican nomination for president struggles to gain traction against former President Donald J. Trump, who is leading in polls.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/16/us/politics/desantis-staff-campaign-shakeup.html

DeSantis campaign sheds staff amid cash crunch

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/15/desantis-campaign-sheds-staff-amid-cash-crunch-00106485

Interesting discussion about his campaign and chances among people like us here:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/07/the-decline-and-decline-of-pudding-ron

 

Edited July 16, 2023 by Zorral

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

Now, many of us dislike Trump. But we're all too mature, I'm sure, to point and laugh at his golf game.

I might just watch that again to show how I'm too mature to laugh.

Anyway, my question was, what do you think he put that down as on his score card?

Maybe someone told him Republican voters wanted to see him go far to the right and he took them a bit too literally?

[Zorral]

So ... not only is desantis raising a private army, which we've known for a long time if we were paying attention -- I was because I'm surprised it's taken so long for him to do it -- Scott Johnson of Wisconsin, whether or not he's a governor is already there too, for one example -- this weekend the satanic one has also demanded all covid vaccines -- and all other related -- what does that even mean, but it seems to mean flu, measles etc.-- vaccines by prohibited in FL as bio weapons.

So here's FL with all those elderly voters -- who think they love him.  Yet, they are all gonna die, and they are gonna lose their homes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/14/business/farmers-homeowners-insurance-florida.html

Quote

 

Insurers are trapped in a riddle: In a world where the risk of costly disasters is rising but high premiums are squeezing policyholders and angering state regulators, how can they continue to make money?

That question was at the center of the decision by Farmers Insurance this week to stop renewing almost a third of the policies it has written in Florida, becoming the latest insurer to pull business from a state as the industry grapples with the rising costs of covering damage tied to floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other climate-related disasters. ....

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aaa-insurance-florida-crisis-farmers/

MONEYWATCH 
AAA pulls back from offering insurance in Florida, following Farmers

https://www.tampabay.com/news/hillsborough/2023/06/17/hillsborough-gop-covid-vaccines-biological-weapon/

Hillsborough GOP: COVID vaccines a ‘biological weapon’

https://cbs12.com/news/local/brevard-county-gop-covid-19-vaccine-bioweapon-gov-ron-desantis-florida-attorney-general-ashley-moody-treasure-coast-july-13-2023

Would love DMC's take on these recent developments.  Where is he anyway???????  Guess he's no longer bored enough to show up in these neighborhoods.  

Edited July 16, 2023 by Zorral

[Jaxom 1974]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Except for his private military force. With that, it doesn't matter what he looks like on the national stage.  He just takes over.

Not that I have special knowledge or inside knowledge beyond what gets reported in the press.  But yes, he scares me to death -- all of them do.  There is no lesser evile.

I can't, won't, dismiss the nature of the little Gestapo force DeSantis seems to be putting together...but at the same time, what are they really going to be capable of doing? I mean, same as any other far right militia, what are they going to do if they try to rise against the regular Army? This little Gestapo not withstanding, DeSantis doesn't have the shops to get the Proud Boys and their ilk, to follow him...

Unless you think he will simply try to make Floroda his own country?

[LongRider]

11 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Unless you think he will simply try to make Floroda his own country?

Wonder if he would try that.  The Mouse would not be amused if he were to try. 

[karaddin]

47 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I can't, won't, dismiss the nature of the little Gestapo force DeSantis seems to be putting together...but at the same time, what are they really going to be capable of doing? I mean, same as any other far right militia, what are they going to do if they try to rise against the regular Army? This little Gestapo not withstanding, DeSantis doesn't have the shops to get the Proud Boys and their ilk, to follow him...

Unless you think he will simply try to make Floroda his own country?

As I saw people pointing out on Reddit it's more appropriate to compare them to the brownshirts, rather than one of the groups that were actually instruments of the state after Hitler was in power, as that is pretty much exactly what his private militia is. Least bad option is still going to involve them meddling very heavily in elections in Florida by only allowing the "right people" to vote. And I'm not going to assume this threat will remain restricted to Florida.

Yeah, they're not going to win an open conflict with the US military but that's not really what they're for anyway.

[Zorral]

57 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Unless you think he will simply try to make Floroda his own country?

I am suspicioning that this is indeed the fascist strategy, to create their own kingdoms, such as his FL, Abbott's TX, etc.  And then move on from there. It's not that different from what the slavers -- some of them, but powerful in the South -- were attempting to work out and do in the 1850's.

 

47 minutes ago, LongRider said:

The Mouse would not be amused if he were to try.

The Mouse is doing quite badly down there this summer. Attendence way down, though no one is entirely sure why -- it could be the weather, and it could be that a lot of people, particularly Black people, know better than to risk themselves in FL these days.  Or a combination of these and other factors we haven't thought of -- which shouldn't leave out that a lot of people have far less money to spend than they used to.

What we all have to accept is the world into which we were born is over. Climate change and the many deaths and the many incapacitated from covid, and lack of immigrants have all played a role too, though nobody even wants to think about these matters, much less discuss them, particularly in FL and such places.

[The Anti-Targ]

12 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Necause most, if not all, anti-Trump conservatives wanted everything he allowed for, except they never wanted to say any of it out loud. They prefer the appearance of wanting government to work. Of course, that facade has been crumbling since 08, and Trump simply accelerated the process allowing for people to see what was happening and resist it...

DeSantis, as he gets more and more National ink really does look petty and incompetent for the National stage, which is just as scary.

It's been a saying for much longer than since 2008 that conservatives spend their whole time in opposition saying that govt doesn't work and all of their time in power proving it.

[Week]

Who's hungwy?

ETA - sadly, this is from bad lip reading. However... I want to believe. /Mulder 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Week

[James Arryn]

12 hours ago, Zorral said:

I am suspicioning that this is indeed the fascist strategy, to create their own kingdoms, such as his FL, Abbott's TX, etc.  And then move on from there. It's not that different from what the slavers -- some of them, but powerful in the South -- were attempting to work out and do in the 1850's.

 

The Mouse is doing quite badly down there this summer. Attendence way down, though no one is entirely sure why -- it could be the weather, and it could be that a lot of people, particularly Black people, know better than to risk themselves in FL these days.  Or a combination of these and other factors we haven't thought of -- which shouldn't leave out that a lot of people have far less money to spend than they used to.

What we all have to accept is the world into which we were born is over. Climate change and the many deaths and the many incapacitated from covid, and lack of immigrants have all played a role too, though nobody even wants to think about these matters, much less discuss them, particularly in FL and such places.

Robber-baronial/warlorism/enclaves of power are and always have been the direction pure capitalism aims and the more we deregulate and weaken anti-trust reflexes and other corrections for that built-in impetus, the more societies will reflect that aim. Ironically Russia is probably the purest example of that kinetic, and the West /mostly US’s prioritization of winning over aftermath and the infamous Cold Bath approach t post - Cold War Russia has been a huge factor in why the country is what it is today. This in no way excuses Putin, to be clear. In the same way Versailles definitely helped create/shape the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany but in no way excuses their actions. 

[Zorral]

Back to warlordism!  That's the world made for and by the most manly of the manliest manly menz, the world for which they are made and why they iz so mizerable now coz the fems took it away from them.  Just ask Josh 'see how I run!'  Hawley's booky-book.

Edited July 17, 2023 by Zorral

[James Arryn]

53 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Back to warlordism!  That's the world made for and by the most manly of the manliest manly menz, the world for which they are made and why they iz so mizerable now coz the fems took it away from them.  Just ask Josh 'see how I run!'  Hawley's booky-book.

Good news: unionized workers actually increased in the US in 2022, up 200,000. Unions are one of the very few checks on concentration/disparity, and almost the only ones in the hands of the actual electorate, so that’s good. Bad news, first, the % actually went down to 11.4% from 11.8, as the bulk of new jobs were non-unionized. Still, the US has been single digits for much of the post-Reagan period, so overall not all bad. But…
 

…the worst news, according to the EPI, is that tens of millions more wanted to/tried to join a union but were unable to. And a lot of that is because corporations now often have built-in anti-labour mechanics that should be illegal, some are in many countries but international corporations have ways to game those systems to a degree too, so…I’ve seen economists propose that Covid lead to a surge in enthusiasm for collective bargaining, but as that crisis wears off so too will the pro-union moment. America is just so hard-wired about ‘socialism’ that the outlook is pretty grim. 

Edited July 17, 2023 by James Arryn

[LongRider]

This looks to be a gift link.  JFC, Trump and cronies working to make him a dictator.   The link is a gift link I think,  if not, let me know.

 

 

[JGP]

Nothing surprising in that read at all.

Drumpf is such a pathetic, grossly insecure mortherfucker. Makes my teeth grind. 

[Zorral]

These are just the evilest of evil people, they keep topping their own selves:

 From the NYT silly little piece on who will be on the stage for the first republican Fascist debate:   Doug Burgum, North Dakota’s wealthy governor, is offering $20 gift cards to anyone who gives at least $1 to his campaign — a strategy that could raise legal concerns.

[Larry of the Lawn]

US Attorney seeks to get Rikers Island placed into receivership:

 

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/statement-us-attorney-damian-williams-intention-file-contempt-and-seek-court-appointed

Edited July 18, 2023 by Larry of the Lake

[ThinkerX]

While the article focuses on Florida, the conditions described apply to coastal regions of other states along the Gulf Coast as well.

What I am starting to wonder is this:

Will banks approve purchase or construction loans for property that cannot be insured? Given the risks, it seems to me they have a fair shot of foreclosing on a decimated lot after the second or third hurricane or flood. To me, this in turn has dire consequences for the overall housing market - if the banks essentially 'pull out' of those regions, that trips off a catastrophic drop in housing prices, not just in those places, but other troubled corners of the country as well.

Housing Market 2023: Florida Boom May Crumble As Insurance Cuts Signal Crash (msn.com)

 

[Wilbur]

I have visited Louisiana and Florida, and at every occasion I have been surprised that any insurance company would ever provide coverage to the homes and businesses built in a lot of the areas near the coasts and rivers.

Even for an exorbitant policy fee, to me the very concept of constructing a building in these low-lying areas seems almost guaranteed to result in massive claims eventually.

I know nothing about insurance laws and regulations, so perhaps there is some regulatory requirement in place that forces companies to insure these homes in order to gain access to the market in those states?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Well, Charleston and NYC will face similar problems with insurers down the line.