She’d probably already been told off by the fierce old ladies who run the joint. They are very sweet. Until they aren’t and make someone feel like they are 4 years old and in deep trouble.
22 Likes
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/21/meet-the-worlds-double-haters-00184634
When I checked in on Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Kyiv in recent weeks, the mood ranged from anxious to fatalistic about Donald Trump’s possible return. For Western Europe’s establishment, Trump is the disruptive devil they know who threatens the status quo — a postwar liberal order built and sustained by American power. (The exception is Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Trump’s most vocal friend in Europe.) Further east, in Poland and Ukraine, leaders there will gladly embrace any president who stands up to Russia and hope that if Trump wins, the internationalists in his orbit win out over the party’s anti-Ukrainian isolationist wing. Kamala Harris is preferred, but barely gets a mention.
When you travel to Asia, however, the story changes. In conversations here in Singapore, as well as in Seoul and Tokyo, I was struck by how little difference senior government and business leaders see between Trump and Harris. Not in terms of their personalities, obviously, but how they will impact this part of the world.
“There is no enthusiasm for either one,” said Kishore Mahbubani, a veteran Singaporean diplomat, summing up a kind of consensus. “We don’t think either will lead to big changes for the region. The question is who will do more damage.”
13 Likes
Quite. No matter who’s Captain of USS Empire, they’re still leading an empire.
10 Likes
Harris gave a nice little “don’t worry, the empire is still bipartisan” speech at the DNC that really sank my heart. That said, if politicians weren’t all such myopic jackasses they might realize that something every country needs to care about is that our entire habitable ecosystem is starting to break down, and Trump has made it clear he is hoping to help destroy it as fast as possible. If you drink water and eat food, he’s something you should worry about.
17 Likes
Just because registered Republicans are voting early doesn’t mean they are voting for T****…
10 Likes
11 Likes
It’s a scary scenario, but would imply more foresight than the average MAGA stooge has yet demonstrated themselves capable of…
10 Likes
tl;dr white guy asks for manager (local news) and gets voting mix-up fixed. I wonder how often it doesn’t go that way for POC.
I’m glad this guy got his vote back, but wonder how often it doesn’t play out this well for others, especially in GOP-controlled states.
18 Likes
So it turns out bringing ID to vote doesn’t really matter after all.
12 Likes
19 Likes
Tulsi Gabbard officially declares she is joining the Republican party
23 Likes
She’s definitely crossing…
11 Likes
In my area there is another person with the same first and last name as me who also votes at the same polling place. Once when I voted he had voted before me and they had mixed us up. I showed my ID and provided a signature sample and they allowed me to vote. I don’t know what became of the earlier ballot. Now when I vote I explicitly state that I’m not the other guy. I suspect he does the same.
He also frequents the same liquor store as me and has been gifted my loyalty rewards more than once. Grrr.
(ETA: I am a pasty white guy)
21 Likes
WTF?
14 Likes
The CBS News Confirmed team fact-checked Musk’s posts on election security and found that 55% contain misleading or false statements, or amplify posts that do. Further analysis of these posts showed that 40 of the accounts Musk replied to or reposted were accounts researchers have identified as promoters of voter fraud claims.
15 Likes
Do they check addresses?
8 Likes
I find this hard to believe. Only 55%?
13 Likes
It is complicated. TLDR: developers of housing and asshole rich people continue to be mad we have taxes and are using deception and fuckery to try to remove or repurpose the taxes. The latest salvo involves removing a small sales tax from the emergency services department that provides a stellar fire department for the city and surrounding area. They want the city to create it’s own fire department. This is bad for all kinds of reasons. The tax is 30% of the FD funding. If it passes, we’d have an almost immediate major reduction in services, response times, and personnel. While the city desperately scrambles to create a new fire department out of too little funding. All but one council member and the mayor are very against this. The last council member is bought and paid for by the local housing developers.
Dolcefino is an asshole but a good investigative reporter and did a small piece on the issue. A longer explanation is below.Firefight in Pflugerville – Dolcefino Consulting
Long wall of text explaining
Our small city is served by emergency services districts. These are small governmental entities and really common in Texas. Only the biggest cities have their own fire and EMS.
A few years ago, these same assholes managed to kill the tax that went to the ESDs for ambulance service. It just wasn’t on ppls radars and they had a lot of shady funding. The anti-tax ppl didn’t like paying for ambulances they, personally, did not need. The ESD doing ambulances couldn’t provide ambulance service at the loweer tax rate and pulled out.
So the city had to contract for ambulances and ended up going with Allegiance, which was cheaper looking (but not in reality). Allegiance is really awful. Very much the profit motive. One of their crew killed a man and had his EMS license revoked. It is also much more expensive for people who need to use it and have pathetic response times. They also recently renewed the contract for an extra 1.3 million. Even though the FD was willing to contract for those services and bill patients less. We would be paying less for better services if the anti-tax PAC hadn’t gotten involved.
A different ESD does fire in the area. A while ago (a decade?) they managed to get a tax increase (it’s a very tiny fraction of a sales tax) that allowed them to buy a few ambulances and get over 30% of the fire fighters trained and certified as EMTs. That is a lot. Ever since the debacle with the ambulances, these fire fighter EMTs have been filling a lot of the gaps in care and making sure fewer people die.
This fire department also has the highest possible rating. Top-notch outfit. Really helps with homeowners insurance
Enter the stupid anti-tax people. Who have shady funding, a lot of which seems to come from the biggest home developers. The ones who make the cheapest houses and are upset the city won’t let them build whatever they want without adequate roads and water.
The anti-tax people want to remove this fraction of a percent of sales tax from the ESD and give it to the city instead, so the city can find their own fire department. Most of the city council doesn’t want this. It isn’t enough to fund a decent fire department on it’s own. And, critically there is no plan in place. If this tax change goes through, it will mean an immediate drop of funding for the FD, 30%. They will have to close a third of the fire stations and fire a bunch of those highly trained firefighters right away. It takes a lot of time to spin up a fire department from scratch. So the city would have much higher response times and fewer FD EMTs making up for the Allegiance ambulance fuckery. The higher response times and fewer stations will mean higher home insurance premiums.
It is a gods damned shit show. Cutting off our noses to spite our faces. The anti-tax people are idiots. They are upset the ESD has about 30 million in the bank. But ESDs are prohibited by law from obtaining loans for anything but new fire stations and big equipment. The 30 million is there for big maintenance and refurbishment needs and emergencies when the FD needs a lot of cash- like for overtime and extra equipment if there is a wildfire or mass shooting or something. They hate taxes and want to go back to 1950s small town levels. But the city is not small anymore and only growing.
Meanwhile, the developers are trying to get more people who are in their pocket on the city council. So far, the city has been fairly conservative and careful about the growth. Trying to make sure the population doesn’t outstrip the infrastructure. Increasing road capacity and parallel roadways, new water treatment plant, etc.
The HOA lady, (who is mad at the ESD about their savings but brags about how as HOA secretary she managed to get a 300k surplus/savings) was the spokesperson for the anti-tax PAC. She tried to erase this association when she began running for city council, probably because they feared that association is going to tank her bid. But the Internet remembers and ppl have figured it out.
The anti-tax PAC is using so much money. Hundreds of giant campaign signs everywhere. Deceptive campaign signs that match the lies they are using. They claim the ESD was supposed to use the old tax hike to provide ambulances. They were not, it was specifically to train, certify, and pay EMT fire fighters. But the anti-tax people are trying to tap into the anger over the ambulance shit they themselves caused.
19 Likes
