October 21, 2024

Money

MSN - A new report projects that the Social Security Trust Fund might run out of money within six years under a Donald Trump presidency, while Vice President Kamala Harris’s proposed policies would not meaningfully change the current trajectory. Social Security faces a looming funding crisis in an aging country, with trustees most recently predicting that the retirement and disability program’s trust fund will become insolvent in 2035. Many of Trump’s campaign proposals would accelerate that timeline, potentially by years, said the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan group that opposes large federal deficits.

 

Polling update

TRUMP VS HARRIS
5 poll average: Harris  leads by 1%... Her best this year was 5%

PRESIDENTIAL STATE MARGINS
Total electoral votes: 538 --270 needed to win. Harris currently has 218.  Biden won in 2020 with 306.  There are now 94 electoral votes too close to call

ARIZONA
3 poll average: Trump leads by 2%
Electoral vote:  11 Virtual tie 

FLORIDA
Three poll average: 
Trump leads Harris by 8% - 5% better than 2020

GEORGIA
Three poll average: TIE
Electoral vote: 16  TIE

MICHIGAN
Harris leads by 4%
Electoral vote: 16 

NEVADA
Three poll average:  Tie
Electoral vote: 6 Tie

NORTH CAROLINA
3 poll average TIE
Electoral vote:  15  Tie

PENNSYLVANIA   
3 poll average TIE
Electoral count: 20 Tie

WISCONSIN
Harris/Trump 3 poll average: - Harris leads by 2%
Electoral count: 10
Virtual tie

Donald Trump

Independent UK - The 78-year-old Republican candidate told a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Sunday that his opponent Kamala Harris – who turned 60 yesterday – “may have a cognitive problem.”

“I have no cognitive,” Trump told moderator Sage Steele, who he incorrectly referred to as “Paige” earlier in the town hall.“She may have a cognitive problem,” he added, referring to Harris.

“But, there’s no cognitive problem. It was nice that they actually said that, they said you know, if anyone has any questions, we were grilling this guy for two hours or two and a half hours and he’s got no cognitive.” The former president, who will turn 80 in one year and eight months, added: “I’m not 80 and I’m not that close to 80."

24 reasons that Trump could win

Does Trump Have a 2024 Blueprint for Stealing the White House?

 NPR -  Former President Donald Trump has discussed using the military and the Department of Justice to pursue his enemies while on the campaign trail. This raises questions about how he would act if he were elected to the White House. NPR’s Carrie Johnson says this means that Trump’s political adversaries could face investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI. The Supreme Court decision this past summer granted Trump and future presidents broad immunity from prosecution for fundamental acts, including their interactions with the Justice Department. Trump has also suggested the possibility of pardoning many of the individuals convicted in the storming of the Capitol in 2021. Johnson explains that this kind of rhetoric from a former and possibly future president could motivate some police to break the rules and the federal civil rights laws.

Elon Musk

NY Times - Elon Musk’s influence over the federal government is extraordinary, and extraordinarily lucrative.Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.Two of Elon Musk’s companies account for at least $15.4 billion in government contracts over the past decade. His entanglements with federal regulators are also numerous and adversarial. His companies have been targeted in at least 20 recent investigations or reviews, including over the safety of his Tesla cars and the environmental damage caused by his rockets.

 

Housing

 Governments Sell Homes Over Unpaid Taxes, Then Pocket the Proceeds

Housing prices rise in swing states

Percentage of counties with house price increases since 2019 surpassing the national average. Source: Zillow. (Abha Bhattarai and Federica Cocco/The Washington Post)

Election

Guardian - Key rightwing legal groups with ties to Donald Trump and his allies have banked millions of dollars from conservative foundations and filed multiple lawsuits challenging voting rules in swing states that are already sowing distrust of election processes and pushing dangerous conspiracy theories, election watchdogs warn. They also warn that the groups appear to be laying the groundwork for a concerted challenge to the result of November’s presidential election if Trump is defeated by Kamala Harris.

 

Youth

Time - Student loan forgiveness is in legal limbo as facets of the Biden Administration’s broader student loan forgiveness has been stifled by numerous lawsuits. While the judiciary wields significant power over the future of student loan debt relief, voters will soon have influence at the ballot box: student loan forgiveness could be handled very differently depending on who the country elects as its next President.

There remains significant ambiguity about the path forward in either a Republican or a Democratic administration. Neither Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump have laid out clear policy plans regarding their stance on student loans. But experts say much can be gleaned by each candidate’s actions in the last eight years. More

Harris has touted the Biden Administration’s delivery on student loan forgiveness, promising to work on the “unreasonable burden of student loan debt” on her campaign website. Despite several student loan forgiveness roadblocks, the Biden Administration has been able to deliver more than $175 billion in student loan forgiveness for nearly 5 million Americans, according to a Thursday Department of Education press release. The Harris campaign declined to comment further on her plans.

Former President Trump has not included information about student loans on his campaign website, and the Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. His comments about Biden’s plans and some of his actions during his presidency indicate that student loan forgiveness could be rolled back if he wins a second term.

 

Birth control

Roll Call -  The Biden administration on Monday proposed making over-the-counter contraception available at no cost and with fewer administrative hurdles. “Today, my Administration is taking a major step to expand contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act. This new action would help ensure that millions of women with private health insurance can access the no-cost contraception they need,” President Joe Biden said in statement. The proposed rule — issued jointly by the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury — seeks to require insurance plans to cover OTC contraceptives at no cost and without a prescription for individuals with commercial insurance plans. Health plans would also be required to tell beneficiaries about the policy and would expand their required coverage of preventive services for prescribed contraceptives without cost sharing.

 

JD Vance

MSNBC -  Vance traveled to Minneapolis, but not to offer the Trump-Vance plan for urban America. Instead, Vance insulted and demeaned the city, falsely claiming that Walz let it “burn to the ground” in 2020 during protests against police violence and that the city “has now become overrun with crime.” Vance warned that “the story of Minneapolis is coming to every community across the United States of America if we promote Kamala Harris to president of the United States.” Never mind that Minneapolis was named the happiest city in America this year, just one of its absurdly long list of accolades.

Vance’s strategy of insulting the city he was in mirrored Trump’s approach last week in Detroit, where the former president told an audience that “our whole country will end up being like Detroit” if Harris wins. In fact, Detroit is in the midst of a remarkable revival, with new economic development, plummeting crime rates and a population that is increasing for the first time in decades.

 

October 20, 2024

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Polling update

TRUMP VS HARRIS
5 poll average: Harris  leads by 1%...
Her best this year was 5%

 PRESIDENTIAL STATE MARGINS
Total electoral votes: 538 --270 needed to win. Harris currently has 218.  Biden won in 2020 with 306.  There are now 83 electoral votes too close to call

ARIZONA
3 poll average: Trump leads by 3%
Electoral vote:  11

MICHIGAN
Harris leads by 4%
Electoral vote: 16 

NEVADA
Three poll average:  Trump leads by 1% - 3% worse than Biden win  in 2020
Electoral vote: 6 V
irtual tie

NORTH CAROLINA
3 poll average TIE
Electoral vote:  15  Tie

PENNSYLVANIA   
3 poll average Trump leads by 1%
Electoral count: 20 Virtual Tie

WISCONSIN
2020 1%

Harris/Trump 3 poll average: 1 2 1   - TIE
Electoral count: 10
TIE

 

Donald Trump

Is Trump being blackmailed by Putin?

Peter Baker, NY Times - When the history of the 2024 election is written, one of the iconic images illustrating it will surely be the mug shot taken of Donald J. Trump after one of his four indictments, staring into the camera with his signature glare. It is an image not of shame but of defiance, the image of a man who would be a convicted felon before Election Day and yet possibly president of the United States again afterward.

Sometimes lost amid all the shouting of a high-octane campaign heading into its final couple of weeks is that simple if mind-bending fact. America for the first time in its history may send a criminal to the Oval Office and entrust him with the nuclear codes. What would once have been automatically disqualifying barely seems to slow Mr. Trump down in his comeback march for a second term that he says will be devoted to “retribution.”

In all the different ways that Mr. Trump has upended the traditional rules of American politics, that may be one of the most striking. He has survived more scandals than any major party presidential candidate, much less president, in the life of the republic. Not only survived but thrived. He has turned them on their head, making allegations against him into an argument for him by casting himself as a serial victim rather than a serial violator.

Mr. Trump beat some of the investigations and lawsuits against him and some proved unfounded, but the sheer volume is remarkable. Any one of those scandals by itself would typically have been enough to derail another politician. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first bid for the presidency collapsed when he lifted some words from another politician’s speech. George W. Bush came close to losing after the last-minute revelation of a long-ago drunken-driving arrest. Hillary Rodham Clinton fell short at least in part because of an F.B.I. investigation into emails that led to no charges.

What's News - As Nov. 5 looms, the election headquarters in the most populous county in Arizona has become a fortress (read for free). The crucial battleground state is one epicenter for threats against election officials propelled by years of Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Poll workers there have gone through active-shooter drills and learned to barricade themselves or wield fire hoses to repel armed mobs.

Families

Study Finds - A new poll finds over seven in 10 parents (72%) are concerned about what the world will look like for their children in the years to come. The survey of 2,000 parents of kids under 18 saw a quarter paint a bleak picture of Earth’s future climate, saying that the failing environment will be more concerning than the future job market (11%), the quality of food available in the future (10%), or even the political landscape of 2025 and beyond (5%).

The survey found that good habits start in the home for 41% who say it’s a high priority for their household to practice sustainability and nearly all parents surveyed encourage their kids not to be wasteful (89%). According to the survey conducted by Talker Research for the Chinet brand, some of the common sustainability lessons parents pass down are to turn the lights off when not in the room (59%), don’t leave water running for long periods of time (55%), and to only use what they need (52%).

Others encourage their kids to avoid littering (50%) and to pass down old toys and clothes (46%). Many parents are also practicing what they preach — as one in four have actually stopped being friends with someone over their sustainability habits or lack thereof (27%).

Artificial intelligence

WhoWhatWhy -  Around the world, a new breed of digital eyes is keeping watch over citizens. Although mass surveillance isn’t new, AI-powered systems are providing governments more efficient ways of keeping tabs on the public. According to the 2019 AI Global Surveillance Index, 56 out of 176 countries now use artificial intelligence in some capacity to keep cities ‘safe.’ Among other things, frail non-democratic governments can use AI-enabled monitoring to detect and track individuals and deter civil disobedience before it begins, thereby bolstering their authority.

 

Hurricanes

Eco Watch - Hurricanes—the most powerful storms on Earth—are becoming more widespread and destructive as a warming planet increases their intensity. Hurricanes Helene and Milton are following the trend of these storms becoming supercharged and more likely to form, according to a pair of studies from the World Weather Attribution. 

The researchers found that Hurricane Helene’s wind speed on the coast of Florida was about 11 percent stronger due to climate change, and its total rainfall increased by 10 percent. The high water temperatures that fueled Helene were found to be between 200 and 500 times more likely, and hurricanes the size of Helene are now 2.5 times more likely each year due to climate change, according to the report.

As for Hurricane Milton, the researchers found storms of its intensity are now 40 percent more common, hurricanes with heavy one-day events similar to Milton are 20-30 percent more intense and twice as likely, and the maximum wind speeds of similar storms are about 10 percent stronger due to climate change. 

This increase in wind speed, as the analysis points out, means that without human influence, Milton would have been a category 2 storm rather than category 3 when it made landfall, if it had formed at all.

Trump's health

 MSNBC - On the trail, Vice President Kamala Harris is pushing a new attack against former President Donald Trump: that the 78-year-old candidate is “exhausted.” It comes after Trump has canceled multiple recent appearances, including an interview with CNBC and a speech to the NRA in South Carolina.

Immigration

 New Republic -Last week, Trump outlined a plan to use an eighteenth-century law allowing the detention of and removal of “alien enemies” to carry out these deportations, although this would require declaring criminal entities such as drug cartels as foreign governments. But the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the removal of migrants in the face of “any invasion or predatory incursion” by a foreign government, echoes Trump’s own language characterizing the arrival of undocumented immigrants as an “invasion.”

Trump has suggested that undocumented migrants would be the principal targets of such sweeps, but his recent discussion of “remigration,” as well as his support for revoking temporary protected status for Haitian migrants, indicates that even legal U.S. residents could be caught in the crosshairs. But even if a future Trump administration followed through solely on the promise to deport unauthorized residents, the long-term effects would be significant.

The cost of such an operation would be enormous, said Nan Wu, research director at the American Immigration Council. A recent report by AIC estimated that a one-time deportation operation to evict the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. in 2022—along with the additional 2.3 million that crossed the southern border without legal status and were released by the Department of Homeland Security between January 2023 and April 2024—would cost at least $315 billion.

Given the large scale of such an operation, the report concluded, a one-time effort would be logistically unfeasible. But a lengthier process would be even more costly: A decade-long operation to deport one million people annually would cost roughly $88 billion per year, with the majority of that cost dedicated to building detention centers, the report concluded. After the deportation, the long-term impacts would be significant, the AIC found, in part because local, state, and federal governments would be deprived of billions of dollars of tax revenue and contributions to Social Security and Medicare—programs that are already facing insolvency in the coming decade.

“Because of the critical role that undocumented immigrants really play in the U.S. economy—as workers, as entrepreneurs, taxpayers, and consumers—they are the folks who have really helped grow our economy,” said Wu.

Any large-scale deportation effort would likely affect numerous critical industries, particularly agriculture, construction, and hospitality; the American Immigration Council concludes that Trump’s proposal would result in the hospitality industry losing one in 14 workers and the agriculture and construction industries losing roughly one in eight workers. The Farm Bureau has warned that simply using E-Verify—the online system that determines whether a migrant is authorized to work in the U.S.—to crack down on undocumented workers “could have dire impacts on agriculture due to the lack of U.S. workers and the absence of a workable visa program.” In their policy page on E-Verify, the organization states: “Enforcement-only immigration reform would cripple agriculture production in America.”

 

Election


Meanwhile. . .

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October 19, 2024

Donald Trump's health

CNBC -Donald Trump on Friday dismissed more questions about whether he would release his current medical records, doubling down on refusing to provide a health update even as Kamala Harris works to sow doubts about his fitness for the presidency.The 78-year-old Republican nominee, when asked if he will release his health records, suggested that he has already shared enough information about his medical status.

Donald Trump

Political Wire - Donald Trump questioned why the Civil War wasn’t settled before it started, saying: “Lincoln was probably a great president although I’ve always said, why wasn’t that settled?”

Vanity Fair: “It’s not exactly clear what Trump thinks Lincoln should have done to ‘settle’ the dispute between the North and the South, the latter of which seceded from the Union largely because it wanted to keep enslaving people. Does Trump think Abe should have come to the negotiating table, Art of the Deal–style, and let the South keep some slaves? Because that’s what it sounds like.”

Image
Via Jon Cooper


Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris takes on interrupters of her speech

Youth

 144 0 - Teen tobacco use in the US falls 20% from 2023 to 2024, marking 25-year-low.

Schools

 Pew Research - A 68% majority of U.S. adults support banning middle and high school students from using cellphones in the classroom. But just 36% support an all-day ban on cellphone use at school. Views don’t vary much between K-12 parents and adults without school-age kids. Why Americans support or oppose cellphone bans....72% of U.S. high school teachers say cellphone distraction is a major problem in the classroom

 

Workers

Pew Research - About six-in-ten registered voters who belong to a union (59%) support or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 39% align with the GOP. Like voters overall, union voters are more likely to say Kamala Harris’ policies would make things better for union members than to say this of Donald Trump’s policies... Majorities of adults see decline of union membership as bad for the U.S. and working people.

CNN - A tentative deal has been reached to end the five-week-long strike at troubled aircraft maker Boeing, the union announced to its 33,000 striking members early Saturday. The deal still needs to be ratified by a majority of the rank-and-file membership of the International Association of Machinists before it can take effect and workers can return to work. Rank-and-file already nearly unanimously rejected a previous tentative agreement, precipitating the first strike at the company in 16 years. But the union statement said that the new offer is worthy of being put to the membership for a vote. 

CBS - Although hiring across the U.S. remains robust, some job sectors are positively red-hot. Demand for health care workers — specifically physicians and surgeons — is up 87% compared with February 2020, or just before the pandemic, according to new data from job site Indeed. Hiring for other health care roles, such as mental health therapists as well as and personal care and home health workers, are also up substantially, by 82% and 67%, respectively. 

"No matter how the economy is doing, people are always going to want or need health care," Indeed economist Cory Stahle told CBS MoneyWatch. "It's interesting that we've been seeing this trend for a couple years, and we haven't seen it turn around yet."

By contrast, companies in other sectors that went on hiring sprees during the pandemic have pulled back. Demand for software developers has fallen 31% compared to before the pandemic, while jobs in information design and documentation — roles that are conducive to remote work — have also slumped, Indeed's data shows. 

"They shot up so high during the pandemic when people were working from home, and now they are rebalancing," Stahle said. "It has come down after a hiring spree."

Of the 46 sectors Indeed analyzed, here are the five sectors with the biggest jump in job postings since February 2020:

  • Physicians and surgeons (87%)
  • Therapy (82%)
  • Personal care and home health (67%)
  • Civil engineering (65%)
  • Sports (48%) (includes coaches, personal trainers, physical therapists)

Here are five sectors where job postings on Indeed have fallen sharply compared with just before the pandemic:

  • Software development (-31%)
  • Information design and documentation (-31%)
  • Media and communications (-23%)
  • Mathematics (-23%)
  • Marketing (-22%)

Environment

Sponsored Content 

 CNN -  Every 24 hours, 27,000 trees are cut down to make toilet paper. This luxury bamboo three-ply is changing that. It feels just like regular high-end TP, but doesn’t harm trees. Redeem code H30 for 30% off until midnight.

Hurricanes

Margaret Clayton A hurricane-resilient dome home in Mexico Beach, Florida (Credit: Margaret Clayton)

BBC -In 2018, Hurricane Michael made history, becoming the first category five hurricane on record to make landfall in the Florida Panhandle. It caused widespread destruction and damage, sweeping entire buildings off their foundations, and impacting almost 50,000 structures. But in a small gulf-front community in Mexico Beach, Florida, something unexpected could be seen amidst the chaos. One home, an unusual caterpillar-like dome-shaped structure, remained standing, barely touched by the 160mph (260km/h) windspeeds. The home, called "Golden Eye", belonged to Margaret Clayton, who had designed and built the house in 2015 with a construction company called Monolithic Domes. 

Clayton's neighbour's house "exploded", sending a transformer flying into her house and smashing into the wall. "All the homes around me were destroyed or uninhabitable," she says. Golden Eye, meanwhile, remained intact. More

Polling update

TRUMP VS HARRIS
5 poll average: Harris  leads by 1%...
Her best this year was 5% 

PRESIDENTIAL STATE MARGINS
Total electoral votes: 538 --270 needed to win. Harris currently has 218.  Biden won in 2020 with 306.  There are now 94 electoral votes too close to call

FLORIDA
Three poll average: 
Trump leads Harris by 6% - 3% better than 2020

GEORGIA
Electoral vote: 16  TIE

MICHIGAN
Electoral vote: 16 

PENNSYLVANIA   
Electoral count: 20 Tie

WISCONSIN
Harris/Trump 3 poll average:   - TIE
Electoral count: 10
TIE

October 18, 2024

Donald Trump's health

Keith Edwards -Trump has canceled:

- 60 Minutes
- CNBC
- 2nd Debate w Kamala
- NBC interview
- Hasn't confirmed CNN Town Hall and now canceled a NRA rally

Boston Globe - Trump and his campaign seem to be aware of his addled appearance. He canceled several interviews in recent days. At a rally last month in Johnstown, Pa., Trump tried to pass off his meandering verbal style as an intentional strategy called “the weave.”....I’m not a doctor, but in a report for STAT, several cognitive experts who have studied Trump’s speaking patterns over the course of several years say his disjointed way of jumping from one subject to another — called tangentiality — and his increasing reliance on superlatives and absolute terms are consistent with several causes of cognitive decline. 

Daily Beast - Donald Trump didn’t even have to leave his building for an interview that streamed live on his friend and loyal supporter Dan Bongino’s video podcast Friday morning. But he still had trouble making it to the end of what may have been intended to be a longer sit-down.

After vamping for more than 30 minutes in Trump Tower as he waited for the ex-president to show up, Bongino began by boasting to the president about the “super, extra MAGA” crowd that tunes into his show. “We’re like the darkest MAGA of all,” Bongino said in an attempt to out-do Elon Musk.

At one point in the low-energy interview, Trump offered up insights such as how “amazed” he was that “king of woke” Harvey Weinstein got “schlonged.” But it was his final moment with Bongino that caught the eye of Kamala Harris’ social media team.“Trump abruptly ends his live interview after it is reported that he is canceling interviews because he is ‘exhausted,’” @KamalaHQ tweeted, referring to a new report from Politico that the Republican candidate is “exhausted and refusing interviews” with less than 3 weeks to go until Election Day.

After about half an hour, as Bongino tried to ask another question, Trump said, “Hey, Dan, off the record, I gotta get going,” seeming not to realize the interview was airing live. Bongino apologized to both Trump and his viewers for the abrupt end to the interview and let his guest go, but not before making him sign a baseball that he said he planned to auction off for charity.

 

Students

CNN - The Biden administration on Thursday announced another round of student loan forgiveness, bringing the total amount of student loan cancellation to more than $175 billion for nearly 5 million people since Biden took office. More than 1 million of these student loan borrowers received debt relief through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which promises loan forgiveness to public-sector workers — like teachers and nurses — after they've made 10 years of qualifying payments. However, other student loan relief efforts, including a new repayment plan known as Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE), are tied up in litigation. The lawsuits were filed by groups of Republican-led states that argue that the Department of Education does not have the legal authority to implement the costly debt-relief programs.