Reframing Trump’s proposed tariffs as a Trump Tax is a great move and will hopefully help everyday people realize that they’ll be paying more if Trump wins.

It’s basically a tax on everyone, especially the middle class and the poor class.

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Alright, now that 538 is back online, do we have any takes as to how accurate we think it is?

Is it spot on or reasonable? Or, is it still ridiculously wrong the way it was prior to Biden dropping?

Some notable lines:

“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past. A chance to chart a new way forward,” Ms Harris told a cheering arena filled with American flags and signs bearing her name. “I promise to be a president for all Americans.”

[…]

[…] “We are not going back.” Mostly, she struck an optimistic tone, in keeping with the festive energy of the night. […]

[…]

The speech shed some light on how Ms Harris is approaching the final ten weeks of the campaign. She referred to Hamas as “a terrorist organisation” and said she “will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself”. Yet she also described conditions in Gaza as “devastating”. Her solution, aimed at satisfying competing members of her coalition, was unsurprising: “Now is the time to get a hostage deal and ceasefire done.” Ms Harris is aiming to unite her party—from coastal leftists to midwestern moderates—while remaining as acceptable as possible to Trump-sceptical independents and Republicans. The policy portions of the speech were clearly designed to maximise political effect rather than lay out a detailed agenda. She spoke in defence of abortion rights and government-run pension programmes, while vaguely promising to “end America’s housing shortage” without explaining how.

[…] “I know we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants—and reform our broken immigration system,” she said. “We can create an earned pathway to citizenship—and secure our border.”

[…] “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.” She warned of his “explicit intent” to imprison journalists and political opponents.

Democrats leaving the convention hall in Chicago were as enthusiastic as Republicans were at their own gathering in Milwaukee in July. Yet much can change in the coming weeks. The Trump campaign certainly hopes that the convention will be the peak of Ms Harris’s popularity, and may be betting that an imminent endorsement from Robert F. Kennedy junior […]

This article is mostly a critique of her speech (a great speech, in my opinion).

However, she has elaborated more on her policies elsewhere. For example, Harris wants to build 3 million new homes to help lower housing costs, was an early advocate for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, and has proposed making new pathways to improve and fix America’s immigration system.

Here is the archive link.

I am going to be so sad if we lose in November.

Seriously, Kamala hit it out of the park yesterday with her speech. Putting her next to Trump, I just don’t see how anyone could look at the two of them and then pick him.

Kamala isn’t just better symbolically, but she is also better on policy.

She was born to two immigrant parents who later divorced, and she was mostly raised by her single mother. Her family had to budget their money diligently to make ends meet. Contrast that with Trump, who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, always had the family chauffeur cater to his every need, and ultimately is the patriarch of a generationally wealthy family that views people like Harris as annoying upstarts inserting themselves where they don’t belong.

Their policies also reflect their upbringing; Trump’s policies empower people like himself; they make the rich richer, and make everyday Americans pay more by cutting government services. Harris’s policies empower everyday Americans, and make those who have far more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime pay their fair share.

I’m actually excited to vote for Kamala. Ending the Trump shitshow is an added bonus, but America will be genuinely better off and on a better path if she wins.

Edit: removed an extra word.

ಠ~ಠ

Yup. Polling at around 5%.

I would be shocked to see Virginia would flip; the DC metro area is heavily dependent on government jobs, and a lot of those jobs are threatened by Project 2025.

Sources say Kennedy is leaning toward endorsing former President Donald Trump, though the sources cautioned the decision is not yet finalized and could still change, with one source adding Kennedy’s hope is in part to finalize things quickly in order to try to blunt momentum from the DNC.

Just more evidence that RFK was a spoiler candidate propped up by the same people who want Trump.

Originally, I think the intention was to steal votes from the democrats. However, now that its clear RFK is stealing more votes from the republicans, they want to push him out to better Trump’s chances at taking the White House.

I mean to be fair, the foreshadowing was there and GRRM would have done an infinitely better job at writing it than D&D did.

It’s also not clear which parts D&D added, and which parts they took out. It could also very well be that Cersei was supposed to fill the “Mad Queen” arc, and not necessarily Daenerys.

Ultimately though, the show was just so, so rushed towards the end. That is what ruined it. If GRRM ever finishes ASOIAF (a big if lol) it will be much better done, not rushed, and actually make sense.

This is how I feel.

So long as Trump is involved, I’m going to assume he has hidden support the polls can’t detect. We can’t get complacent and overconfident like in 2016.

A brief summary of the article:

• Kamala Harris does not have much experience with China, and neither does China with Kamala Harris. In contrast, Tim Walz has plenty of experience with China. A Harris-Walz Administration is more difficult for them to predict as a result. At best, it may be a continuation of Biden’s policies towards China, with (perhaps) a greater emphasis on human rights.

• The Harris-Walz ticket complicates some of China’s propaganda about the US as being an extremely racist and misogynistic nation. (While these accusations are not necessarily false, they are exaggerated and often used to distract from China’s own issues in these areas.)

• Chinese propaganda took advantage of Biden vs Trump by portraying America as being led to by two very weak, failing, old men. Biden willingly stepping aside for Harris compromised that narrative, and now the CCP is worried their own citizens might question Xi Jinping’s capabilities. This is especially notable because Xi has made himself President until death.

• Tim Walz was in China at the same time as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, taught English and American history there, and has organized school trips to visit China – often remarking about the “warm welcome” he received there. However, in Congress Walz has been very critical of the CCP’s human rights violations and supported bills aimed at punishing China for violating human rights. A scholar for a Shanghai news outlet wrote, “it is difficult to determine whether these actions reflect Walz’s personal views and positions, but at the least it points to the Democratic Party’s recent ideas and biases”.

• This then leads into China’s apparent preference for the Republican Party rather than the Democratic party. Even going back to Mao, the CCP believes the Republican Party will approach issues (such as Taiwan) as more of a business transaction. In contrast, they believe the Democrats will express more concerns regarding the CCP’s track record with Human Rights and will be more immovable when it comes to Taiwan for fear of appearing weak.

• Lastly, when Obama visited in 2009 he wanted to meet with Chinese university students in a sort of “town hall” which put Chinese officials on edge. With Xi Jinping at China’s helm, this would be even more difficult to accomplish.

Here is a link to the archived version of the article.

Apparently, Tim Waltz spent a year in China after he graduated College in 1989.

According the the Republican House Oversight Committee, this is very, very bad.

Nevermind Trump’s activities in foreign countries. Nope. Tim Walz visiting China in 1989 is very sus. /s

Is this the poll that had a democratic sponsor?

Not that it isn’t good news - Nate Silver also has North Carolina pretty close, too.

Personally though, I always add a few points to Trump. The fucker seems to consistently be able to beat the polls and have hidden support.

“The Democrats are talking about giving the vote to 16-year-olds, but let’s do this instead,” Vance said in the speech. “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power.”

The idea of “One person equals one vote” is really an alien concept to these people, isn’t it?

Continuing…

When asked how he and Trump would accomplish their stated goal of mass deporting as many as 20 million immigrants – a proposal experts previously told ABC News would be a “nightmare” – Vance said they would take a “sequential approach.”

“I mean do you go knock on doors and ask people for their papers? What do you do,” Karl asked.

“You start with what’s achievable,” Vance said. “I think that if you deport a lot of violent criminals and frankly if you make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers, I think you go a lot of the way to solving the illegal immigration problem.”

“I think it’s interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let’s start with 1 million. That’s where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there,” Vance said.

Emphasis is mine, and I think this highlights the overall republican strategy to focus on which parts of their agenda are achievable at a given time and how they see their goals as being “sequential.” Their strategy is to slowly boil America like a frog.