Blogging In The Years: 2015

Who's trying to control the weather?

Blue Panic

Democrats are worried about their candidate:

Nearly two dozen Democrats told Politico that they’re worried that Harris’s overly cautious, risk-averse strategy might hurt her campaign as it heads into the final 30 days. They believe her reluctance to hold more substantive interviews and her light campaigning schedule could prove to be a significant liability in the closing stretch of the race. “There’s a time at which you just have to barnstorm these battlegrounds,” former Obama advisor David Axelrod told the outlet. “These races are decathlons, and there are a lot of events, and you have to do all of them because people want to test you.” “It’s the most difficult oral exam on the planet for the most difficult job, and part of that is just that spontaneous — town halls, all kinds of interviews, and not just friendly interviews. OTRs where you interact in a substantive way with people, all of those things are valuable,” Axelrod continued. “And I would be doing them if I were her.”

Democrats acknowledged Harris is performing better than Biden and the excitement surrounding her candidacy has increased the party’s cash advantage. She’s also put the Sun Belt swing states back in play. But they’re also growing more distressed that a campaign insisting Harris is the “underdog” is running like she’s protecting a lead. While the plan is for Harris’ travel to ramp up in October, the vice president has spent more than a third of days since the Democratic National Convention receiving briefings from staff and conducting internal meetings, or without any scheduled public events, according to a POLITICO review of her travel. That excludes days with known official side business, like her late September meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates, at the White House, last week’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and briefings she received at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington earlier this week.

According to the report, Kamala has devoted just over half of the remaining days of the campaign to holding rallies, delivering policy-focused speeches, and participating in events with labor unions and other public-facing activities, including visits to small businesses in key swing states. Remarkably, she has also spent nearly half of her time since the DNC in Washington, pretending to be presidential and in charge.

Except that neither she nor anyone else seems to be...

Blue Tricks

The Democrats want to "save DFemocracy" by being undemocratic:

“In a phone interview with POLITCO Magazine, Stein bitterly criticized Democratic attempts to knock the Green Party line off ballots, calling them political dirty tricks. Though she’s accustomed to battling the major parties, her anger this year appears directed not at the ‘uniparty’ (what the Greens like to call Democrats and Republicans together) but at Democrats in particular.” [emphasis added] “[The DNC wanted] people to infiltrate and spy on our campaign,” Jill Stein told Politico. “It smells like a rat.” Now, the Green Party may (or may not) cost the Democrats votes in 2024, but third parties are still included in the democratic process. If the Green Party played by the rules and wants to offer voters a more liberal option, it’s un-American to systemically attack their campaign with dirty tricks, infiltration, lawfare, digital attacks, misinformation, and more. And it's undemocratic for the media to give them cover. We’ve entered a radical new stage in American politics: The Democrats truly believe that “Democracy is on the ballot.” And because the stakes are so high, they’re claiming moral authority to do whatever they want.

They want your vote to be their vote...

Loving to Hate

Reminding the kids of what country they're in:

Storm Warnings

Politico is hoping that hurricane Helene will keep people from voting for Trump:

Research has shown that major disasters can influence both voter turnout and voter preference. And Helene has pushed this contest into novel territory: It’s the first catastrophic event in U.S. history to hit two critical swing states within six weeks of a presidential election, based on a POLITICO’s E&E News analysis of data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The challenge for Trump: The parts of western North Carolina and eastern Georgia that were flooded by the monster storm are largely Republican. In 2020, he won 61 percent of the vote in the North Carolina counties that were declared a disaster after Helene. He won 54 percent of the vote in Georgia’s disaster counties. Both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris this week visited Georgia, a state that President Joe Biden won by just 11,779 votes in 2020. Georgia and North Carolina each have 16 electoral votes, and polls show that Trump is leading Harris by about 1 percentage point in each state, well within the margin of error. “There’s going to be a lot of [voting] alterations, and it probably is going to affect turnout,” said Andy Jackson, director of the John Locke Foundation’s Civitas Center for Public Integrity, a free-market think tank in North Carolina.

Hurricanes don't care who you vote for...

Losing Control

This is what leftists really believe:

Meatless Country

There might be less meat on the menu:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Price Outlook for September reported that beef and veal prices had increased for six straight months, and predicted they will rise 5.2 percent overall in 2024. Poultry prices also rose, although by a smaller percentage, and are expected to rise more before year’s end. The report traced the rise to factors including pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and the worst inflation since the 1980s. Next year could see still higher meat and poultry prices at the grocery store, analysts say. That’s because an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal is expected to put some meat processors out of business, resulting in potential job losses and supply chain disruptions. The EPA announced a proposed rule change governing effluent, or wastewater, limits for meat and poultry processors in January of this year, followed by public comment in the spring. The agency’s final rule will go into effect in August 2025.

It's for our own good...