Trump Administration Rule Could Eliminate Food Stamps For 700,000 : NPR
Aggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Category: Domestic Affairs,
George Skelton: Kamala Harris should have never run for president
“The hard truth: Harris was a weak presidential candidate [emphasis: Peanut Gallery],” Duran wrote.
Harris excelled in California politics because she’s part of a home state Democratic cabal, an insiders’ machine. But that machine doesn’t work outside California. [emphasis: Peanut Gallery]
…She hadn’t yet established herself in the U.S. Senate. And she hadn’t exactly excelled in her previous job as California’s attorney general.
…After being elected to the Senate in a 2016 cakewalk [emphasis: Peanut Gallery]…
…Harris’ lack of money was just a symptom of her failed presidential bid, not the root cause of its demise. [emphasis: Peanut Gallery] Her downward slide in polls destroyed the confidence of potential campaign contributors in her ability to win, drying up the money flow. But the plunging poll numbers resulted from her inability to connect with voters.
And she couldn’t connect with voters because of the core weakness in her candidacy: a lack of cohesive strategy and clear [personalized message].
…The campaign was confident she would win the votes of African Americans in South Carolina and from fellow Californians. [Without much basis for that other than the color of her own skin, that incomplete thinking was an insult people of ALL backgrounds. Whoever thought she could have California liberals without actually being a liberal hasn’t seen too many campaigns.]
…Anyone who watched Harris as attorney general could have predicted this outcome. She refused to take positions on any state ballot proposition. Her excuse was that the attorney general writes the official ballot titles and summaries, and she didn’t want to appear biased. But that was nonsense. She was trying to avoid making political enemies, especially among law enforcement. [Which is understandable but not very courageous or principled. And it sure as shit doesn’t leave much room for paving a clear path forward.]
…“This is my third presidential campaign and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly.” [This indictment doesn’t actually mean that she personally is difficult to work with but it does mean her top brass were. Like a President and their administration, the buck for that ultimately rests with her.]
George Skelton: Kamala Harris should have never run for president – Los Angeles Times
sigh…
Oh, and her refusal to shake hands and do selfies was cast by her campaign as a security decision. The Peanut Gallery believes wholeheartedly that there were indeed threats to her safety, threats a candidate who was not a woman and a POC would never have had to endure. The Peanut Gallery has also seen a lot of campaigns and a lot of Secret Service people in action and firmly believes this was a cop out and excuse for lazy and/or California style campaigning. The Secret Service are damn good at their job and they weren’t going to let anything bad happen to her. Basically this is the job she was asking for and reality is the place she was running for it. It’s harsh but true but she need to woman up or get out of the way. If Barack could manage to do selfies, shake hands, and bend down to talk to children she could too.
If you are too good to speak to early state voters (and make no mistake, this is how the campaign presented her) then you do not deserve to be in the running for the job.
Colin Reed: Kamala Harris and I were both very wrong about her candidacy
It is true that campaigns require resources to remain competitive, but running out of money is a symptom – not a cause – of more serious political ailments.
Colin Reed: Kamala Harris and I were both very wrong about her candidacy – Here’s why | Fox News
No, Colin, making accurate political predictions isn’t that hard at all. You just need to step out of the echo chamber and look at the big picture.
Salient points about fundraising being a symptom rather than a cause and how little KH would bring to the ticket as a VP nom though!
Trump-China trade war: The industries hurt by US tariffs
Farmers in some US states are being forced into plowing their crops under — effectively burying them under soil in fields — as there is not enough room to store them in storage facilities, and they are unable to sell their products thanks to Chinese tariffs, Reuters reported last week.
All grain depots and silos are almost full, meaning farmers have to find their own storage solutions or allow their crops to rot. Neither option is particularly palatable.
…Manufacturing activity in the US slowed to a six-month low in October, with industry figures citing future protectionism and widespread uncertainty as major reasons for the slowdown.
“For the consumer, the tariffs are for the most part still an abstract idea, but for manufacturers they are real, and a big problem.”
Trump-China trade war: The industries hurt by US tariffs – Business Insider
hmmm
A Reminder That ‘Fake News’ Is An Information Literacy Problem – Not A Technology Problem
Children are taught to regurgitate what others tell them and to rely on digital assistants to curate the world rather than learn to navigate the informational landscape on their own. Schools no longer teach source triangulation, conflict arbitration, separating fact from opinion, citation chaining, conducting research or even the basic concept of verification and validation. In short, we’ve stopped teaching society how to think about information, leaving our citizenry adrift in the digital wilderness increasingly saturated with falsehoods without so much as a compass or map to help them find their way to safety.
…[Silicon] Valley has doubled down on technological solutions to combating digital falsehoods, focusing on harnessing legions of “fact checkers” and turning to Website and content blacklists, algorithmic tweaks and other quick fixes that have done little to turn the tide.
…How is it possible that the nation’s most prestigious scholars and scientists at preeminent research institutions and universities could all suspend their disbelief and blindly believe that an anonymous Twitter account claiming to be a secret society “resisting” their government was everything it claimed to be without the slightest bit of verification?
…Algorithms can help citizens sort through the deluge of information around them, identifying contested narratives and disputed facts, but technology alone is not a panacea. There is no magical algorithm that can eliminate all false and misleading information online.
To truly solve the issue of “fake news” we must blend technological assistance with teaching our citizens to be literate consumers of the world around them.
Societies must teach their children from a young age how to perform research, understand sourcing, triangulate information, triage contested narratives and recognize the importance of where information comes from, not just what it says.
…A more information literate society would likely bring with it considerable economic harm to today’s viral-obsessed social platforms that thrive on digital falsehoods, meaning there will be considerable resistance from Silicon Valley to a more information literate society.
A Reminder That ‘Fake News’ Is An Information Literacy Problem – Not A Technology Problem
hmm
Errrr… Senator?
It is the accepted truth of Silicon Valley that every problem has a technological solution.
Most importantly, in the eyes of the Valley, every problem can be solved exclusively through technology without requiring society to do anything on its own. A few algorithmic tweaks, a few extra lines of code and all the world’s problems can be simply coded out of existence.
Sadly for the Valley’s technological determinists, this is far from the truth.
A Reminder That ‘Fake News’ Is An Information Literacy Problem – Not A Technology Problem
I’m just going to park this here to refer to when the desire to give a certain Senator shit for simplistic solutions to complex problems (that require actual humans to solve!) comes up.
How To Tell When Someone Else Tweets From @realDonaldTrump
This proved particularly challenging during version one of the Trump administration, when press secretary Sean Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and alt-right interpreter Steve Bannon all had yet to be ousted. Along with advisor Kellyanne Conway, they all likely took a spin on Trump’s Twitter account at some point.
…Though he may be adept (enough) at Twitter, Trump isn’t known for being tech savvy. About two years ago, The New York Times noted that Trump “has no computer in his office (a staff member brings in a laptop to show him videos) and asks aides to print his emails for consumption the old-fashioned way.” This means that any time you see an image or video attached to one of Trump’s tweets, our good friend Dan was almost certainly the mastermind.
…Trump generally dictated tweets to his assistants during the work day, but would send out his own missives during down time. According to a different report from Trump’s first weeks in the White House, at around 6:30 pm he generally heads back to the residence to mainline cable news until sometime after midnight. So it’s relatively safe to assume that any text-only tweets coming out of @realDonaldTrump in the evening (assuming, of course, he’s not off at a rally) were typed by the man himself.
The morning, however, is when Donald Trump truly shines. Usually up by around 6 am ET or so, the president can often get a good three or four hours of Fox News under his belt before he has to go pretend to listen to the daily intelligence briefing at 10.
…If it’s text-only and sent between 6 pm and 10 am, Donald Trump probably did the tweet.
…If it looks like it was written by the Flowers for Algernon guy after the meds start wearing off, Donald Trump probably did the tweet.
Donald Trump does not know how to thread his tweets. He certainly seems to understand that it’s a thing people do, since at some point over the last year, he started using ellipses to indicate that he wasn’t quite done yet.
Trump does not, however, seem to know that replying to his own tweets would connect his thoughts in chronological order for him, which makes for some incredible disembodied half-thoughts.
Scavino has a knack for adopting Trump’s latest mannerisms, though, and the ellipses is no different. That’s why the real tell is the threading—Scavino can’t bring himself to not take advantage of the site’s features.
…If the tweetstorm consists of a series of disconnected nonsense, Donald Trump probably did the tweet.
How To Tell When Someone Else Tweets From @realDonaldTrump | WIRED
hmmm
Harris Policy Proposals That Got Lost in that Shitshow of a Campaign
Under Harris’ proposal, homebuyers who rent or live in historically redlined communities can apply for a federal grant of up to $25,000 to assist with down payments or closing costs. Harris’ campaign estimates that this will help up to 4 million families.
Redlining is the discriminatory practice of denying financial or other services for low-income and minority communities.
Harris’ policy proposal also aims to prevent discrimination in home sales, rentals and loans by promising to strengthen and strictly enforce anti-discrimination laws.
…In May, Harris reintroduced her 2018 bill to tackle racial disparities in maternal health and rolled out her proposal to fine companies that don’t achieve pay equity
Harris’ education proposal — her first major policy as a presidential candidate — would boost teacher pay, make additional investments in public schools and support programs dedicated to teacher recruitment, training and professional development, particularly at historically black colleges and universities.
Kamala Harris unveils $100 billion black homeownership plan – CNNPolitics
sigh…
Trump Target Lisa Page Speaks: ‘There’s No Fathomable Way I Have Committed Any Crime at All’
Page, of course, is the former FBI lawyer whose text-message exchanges with agent Peter Strzok that belittled Donald Trump and expressed fear at his possible victory became international news. They were hijacked by Trump to fuel his “deep state” conspiracy.
…”The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening.”
“But it’s also very intimidating because he’s still the president of the United States. And when the president accuses you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there’s no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason, he’s still somebody in a position to actually do something about that. To try to further destroy my life. It never goes away or stops, even when he’s not publicly attacking me.”
…At the end of July 2016, Page finds herself transitioning from one investigation, the Hillary Clinton email inquiry, to another, the Russian government disinformation probe. Trump is not under investigation, but the FBI is trying to determine if someone associated with his campaign is working with Russia.
“We were very deliberate and conservative about who we first opened on because we recognized how sensitive a situation it was,” Page says. “So the prospect that we were spying on the campaign or even investigating candidate Trump himself is just false. That’s not what we were doing.”
…In 2017, Flores said that the Justice Department inspector general approved the release of the texts to congressional committees, and that DOJ then provided those texts to reporters who cover the agency after they started to leak out. “As we understand now, some members of the media had already received copies of the texts before that—but those disclosures were not authorized by the department,” Flores said then.
DOJ declined to comment.
…“It’s very painful to see to places like the FBI and the Department of Justice that represent so much of what is excellent about this country, not fulfilling the critical obligation that they have to speak truth to power,” she tells me. “The thing about the FBI that is so extraordinary is that it is made up of a group of men and women whose every instinct is to run toward the fight. It’s in the fiber of everybody there. It’s the lifeblood. So it’s particularly devastating to be betrayed by an organization I still care about so deeply. And it’s crushing to see the noble Justice Department, my Justice Department, the place I grew up in, feel like it’s abandoned its principles of truth and independence.”
…The era of Trump populism always had an ugly edge, particularly toward women. Trump revels in bringing misery to his opponents and will always seek out and exploit any weakness. Page “wasn’t nice to him,” and so in his eyes she can be endlessly targeted and assaulted.
It’s tempting to describe this as just part of Trump’s deep, baked-in misogyny and sociopathy, but in Page’s case it’s worse; it’s a sign of how deeply he’s corrupted the government to serve his will and his whims. His apologists have become part of Trump’s own squad of witch-hunters, hunting fantasies like “Ukrainian interference” while attacking the people who tried to protect us from Russian attacks.
Trump Target Lisa Page Speaks: ‘There’s No Fathomable Way I Have Committed Any Crime at All’
sigh…
Rep. Duncan Hunter to plead guilty in case alleging misuse of campaign funds
Hunter’s forthcoming guilty plea comes months after his wife, Margaret, pleaded guilty in June to conspiring with her husband to “knowingly and willingly” convert campaign funds for personal use and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
Hunter had initially blamed his wife for the alleged campaign fund abuses, saying she was the one handling his finances. “She was also the campaign manager, so whatever she did that’ll be looked at too, I’m sure,” he said on Fox News in August 2018.
“But I didn’t do it,” Duncan Hunter said. “I didn’t spend any money illegally.”
But in response to the judge at the time, Margaret Hunter acknowledged that Duncan Hunter had attempted to set up a one-day tour of a naval base in Italy to justify their Italian vacation — one of the examples prosecutors have cited as evidence that the congressman used his position of power for personal gain.
Rep. Duncan Hunter to plead guilty in case alleging misuse of campaign funds – CNNPolitics
hmmm
Kamala Harris’s decline in the polls, explained
Kamala Harris’s decline in the polls, explained – Vox
Coalition building?! Don’t make the Peanut Gallery laugh. You can’t build a coalition relying on one firm for advice and only one demographic of voter.
We’re hearing a lot about concerns about her electability but that wasn’t a concern in Iowa or NH, both places that if she put the effort in and garnered a good finish could have really added that aura of electability to her candaciacy as he headed into places where that is more of a concern for voters, places like South Carolina.
Sigh… What a waste.
Kamala Harris Says She’s Still ‘in This Fight,’ but Out of the 2020 Race – The New York Times
Throughout her candidacy, Ms. Harris faced concerns about her political strategy and her campaign’s organizational structure. She relied on a stable of California political strategists, led by the longtime political operative Averell Smith, who did not heed warnings from grass-roots organizers to invest more heavily in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead, the campaign focused on later primaries in states with more nonwhite voters, including South Carolina and California.
Her campaign miscalculated.
…Mr. Biden, campaigning in Iowa, called Ms. Harris “a first-rate intellect, first-rate candidate, real competitor.” He walked away when a reporter asked whether he would consider Ms. Harris as a running mate.
Kamala Harris Says She’s Still ‘in This Fight,’ but Out of the 2020 Race – The New York Times
Did she or her campaign take all of the next/female Obama hype she had been generating since before she ran for Senate too seriously? Because there was a certain arrogance behind some of her bad decisions on the campaign trail….
A lot of talk about where she fell on the ideological spectrum but did she &/or anyone on the campaign ever sit down and plot it out?
If she did a review of the finances this late in the game and made her decision on this where was she in the past six months? Did she even check her spending or have a skeleton budget she adhered to? (Thinking about that private plane the Peanut Gallery saw taking off after one her events…)
What did unifying goals mean to her? This was the woman who spent most of 2019 not bothering to talk to voters in NH and Iowa because they were too white.
Can’t speak for Iowa but NH is full not only a white state state, it is a gray state, full of successful professional women in their sixties and seventies who were (by virtue of when they started their careers) barrier breakers themselves. …Women who naturally felt a kinship and empathy towards her as another barrier breaker. She blew those women off and their interest in her and they went from dying to hear from her to, “Oh, Well, I guess she doesn’t want my vote.” Not exactly the stuff of a unifier….
Did she not realize she was vulnerable to candidates too her in California? How could she possibly have put together a campaign plan without accounting for that? (Oh, that’s right. Her campaign had no plan!)
As for her breakout moment calling Biden not quite a racist… What kind of politician attacks someone for supporting a position they themselves also hold? (Hint: a total frigging idiot who doesn’t think things through. That’s who!)
Also, Democrats have a tendency to eat their own and attack those on their own side who came before them. Fair or not, attacking Biden was also attack the Obama administration. Candidates who do this might as well be pulling the rug out from under their own feet.
Oy…. what a waste!
Girlfriend of Philando Castile Diamond Reynolds Sues Minnesota Mayor for Defamation – Black Enterprise
Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of the late Philando Castile, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Elysian, Minnesota, Mayor Tom McBroom over a 2017 tweet where he wrote that a settlement she won from the city would be spent on “crack cocaine.”
hmmm
Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign is bad news for Democrats (even her critics)
Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign is bad news for Democrats (even her critics)
For fuck’s sake… Kirsten Gillibrand cut her own legs off before she entered the race by calling for WJC to retroactively resign. She pigeon-holed herself and didn’t expand her message when it didn’t catch on.
It stinks that Kamala didn’t run a better but she didn’t. She just didn’t. Maybe we should anointing people 2,4,6 years before the election? Maybe hiding in backroom with big donors isn’t the way to introduce yourself to voters…
Julian Castro went bitchy instead of finding a less abrasive way to get all of his great wonky points across. He was downright aggressive in trying to make Biden look old and it didn’t make seem forceful, he came across like the mean kids table in a junior high cafeteria. He also never developed a ground game.
The problem isn’t Bloomberg or Steyer, the problem is the three candidates did not enter the race in any way prepared. They needed mentoring and guidance and they either didn’t have or didn’t listen.
I wonder where all of these journalists and posters were while these candidates they loved so much were in the hunt. I wonder where they were in 2016. Did they volunteer or donate for the their preferred 2020 candidate or HRC? No? Then sit down and STFU. Whiny freaking children.
I do
Progressives cite racism, sexism in Harris exit: Women of color ‘get twice the scrutiny’
Progressives cite racism, sexism in Harris exit: Women of color ‘get twice the scrutiny’ | TheHill
Yes, all of this exists.
Kamala Harris also ran a shitty, shitty campaign. Bad hires, bad policy roll outs, piss poor strategy, and just a ridiculously ineffectual approach to just about everything.
The leadership skills show she showed were abysmal. In the face of racism and sexism, she needed to run a good campaign. She did not. If you cannot run a campaign, how do expect to run the country?
It’s sad the only African-American woman in the race has dropped out but sadder still is that her campaign didn’t have the organization or breath of experience, knowledge, and strategy that would have cast her in a better light.
Unfortunately Kamala’s dropping out is less of indictment of the our country’s lack of intersectionality and diversity and more of a statement on her own apparent lack of leadership and administration skills.
‘One of the hardest decisions of my life’: Kamala Harris ends once-promising campaign
Her candidacy got one of its first major breaks in the first Democratic debate in June, when Harris pulled off a blistering ambush of former Vice President Joe Biden over his previous stance on busing, which prompted another review of his record on race issues. Harris’ performance sent her soaring in the polls, and the campaign raised $2 million in the 24 hours following the debate.
But the attack blew back on Harris when her own stance on busing came under scrutiny in the days after.
‘One of the hardest decisions of my life’: Kamala Harris ends once-promising campaign – POLITICO
Campaign Lesson Number 3: Only a moron attacks a rival for holding views that they, themselves, hold as well.
Also, anyone who thought she wouldn’t be held to higher standard than a white male candidate is an idiot. It was coming. It was real. No, it’s not fair but it is real and she did not seem prepared for it.
The two challenges that doomed Kamala Harris
California, of course, is not the totality of America. Especially in the early primary states, successful Democratic candidates must show they are as comfortable in and with the heartland, as accessible to small-town Iowans as to San Franciscans. The media does not get why Biden holds onto his voters or why a “no malarkey” tour may work in Iowa; they too often bring the coastal elite mind-set to a race that in the early going is decided by people who do not naturally embrace urban progressives. Harris never quite made the leap from San Francisco to Des Moines.
The two challenges that doomed Kamala Harris – The Washington Post
Reason Number 1) No. It wasn’t electability. People were dying to hear from her. She just never showed up.
Reason Number Two) Ahem. The Peanut Gallery may have mentioned this a few hundred times or so in the past year…
Comments From The Peanut Gallery 