I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!
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Not too large a crowd.
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I had a wonderful couple weeks with extended family and then my grandkids, the latter of which wore me out in the very best way! It was a terrific distraction from politics. I don’t really know what’s going to happen with Biden (or the U.S. …..) but I did read HCR’s newletter this morning. Some of it was discouraging, but part of it offered some hope, and here’s an excerpt of her more positive news:
July 11, 2024 (Thursday)……Trump has stayed home playing golf for the past two weeks, but on Tuesday he held a rally at his Doral golf club outside of Miami, where he kept the audience waiting outside in 90-degree heat before he showed up an hour late. His 75-minute speech was, as The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reported, “full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US ‘most of their prisoners’; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.” He also claimed that Biden had quadrupled the price of bacon and said, “We don’t eat bacon any more.”
Trump did not mention his vice presidential pick. For the first time since 1988, it appears the Republicans will go into their convention without knowing who that pick will be.
Luscombe reported that the crowd “appeared mostly subdued,” yawning and playing on their phones.
Today, the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Trump is “the only candidate in the race who is patently unfit for office—any office—and an imminent threat to democracy.” “If the [Republicans] had any decency left,” it wrote, they would dump him. Voters, the board said, must see the election as “a referendum on our 248-year democracy, and a choice between a trustworthy public servant who upholds American values and a serial liar who wants to push the country into authoritarianism.”
Almost two weeks after calling for Biden to step out of the 2024 race for the presidency, the editorial board of the New York Times also said that Trump is unfit to lead the United States of America, and urged voters “to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it.”
There was continued good news today about the American economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had collected more than $1 billion in overdue tax bills from millionaires. That crackdown was possible thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, which funded an initiative to pursue high-income, high-wealth individuals who have an income of more than $1 million and owe more than $250,000 to the IRS.
Republicans have repeatedly tried to cut the funding that made this enforcement possible.
Today’s inflation report for June showed that inflation continues to cool, falling in June for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It declined in June by –0.1%, as gas and electricity prices dropped and as rent had its smallest monthly increase since August 2021. Statistics also show that workers’ wages continue to grow more quickly than prices.
Yesterday, the AFL-CIO executive council voted unanimously to reaffirm its support for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, saying: “Unions have never wavered in our support of them because they’ve never wavered in their commitment to working people.” The Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers Union quoted that statement and added: “BAC is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters across the labor movement in supporting the Biden-Harris re-election campaign.”
In a press conference this evening, Biden championed the economic boom his policies created for the middle class and reminded attending journalists that “none of you thought that would happen.”
In that press conference, held after he presided over the three-day NATO summit and thus focused on foreign affairs, Biden answered press questions directly and fully, not only on his health but also on foreign affairs. He reiterated the importance of NATO and reminded reporters that he was key to reinforcing the alliance after Trump weakened it, then went on to talk about foreign affairs more broadly. He also noted that “I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping than any other president,” adding: “And by the way I handed in my notes.” This was a reference to the fact that in an unprecedented move, Trump infamously refused to disclose the notes from one of his conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
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Read from the bottom up
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As of July 6, my former employer was in violation of his second deadline to pay the penalties owed for our unpaid wages complaint. The CDLE (Colorado's dept of labor) found that he owed us the maximum amount of backpay allowable; and, since it was deemed willful, he was fined penalties equaling 3x the backpay owed (non-willful penalties are 2x backpay), plus additional penalties to the state. But the state is kind and merciful. If he paid it off early, they would halve the penalties owed us and waive the state penalties.
When we received our backpay checks we thought he had finally given up and would take the reduced penalties deal. Then, a few days before the penalties checks were due, he decided to appeal the "willful" part of the decision and sent checks for half of what the penalties would have been if the finding had been non-willful - 1x backpay instead of 1.5x backpay.
In doing so, he shot himself in the foot so hard. One of the requirements for the reduced penalties is that the defendant doesn't appeal the amount of monies owed to the complaint filers. (They can still appeal any procedural orders handed down, but not money.) So even if the appeals judge finds in his favor, he will owe us the 2x backpay penalty and will have to write us another check for another 1x our backpay. But now that he's violated his second deadline, the penalties go up half-again from 3x to 4.5x backpay owed. Either way, he will owe us more money for the sake of his ego.
If this goes the maximum in our favor, this whole saga will cost him just over $500,000. That will be some tasty karma.
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Nom, nom! 😊
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Besides being a horrible person & a criminal, your old boss is also an idiot, miriandra!
Glad you had a fun time with the family divine. Tuesday! I am thankfully going to be on a beach vacation with my sister & SIL during the Republican Convention. I have come to the conclusion that nobody over the age of 72 should run for president (this imaginary person would be done by 80 even if they won two terms). Of course, I will vote for the Democratic nominee no matter what; but I'd feel better with a new generation in charge.
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Ruth, enjoy the beach vacation, it sounds lovely!
Excerpt from HCR’s newsletter:
Union workers historically have supported a government that regulates business and provides a social safety net and infrastructure investment, but those workers turned to Reagan in 1980 and have tended to make their home in the Republican Party ever since. Now they appear to be shifting back.Today the president of the 600,000-member International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers urged Biden to stay in the race, writing: “For the first time in decades, we have an Administration that has leveled the playing field for workers trying to organize. The IAM is one of the fastest growing unions in the labor movement because we have a President who goes toe to toe with corporations on behalf of working people.”
Union president Brian Bryant noted that Biden “saved hundreds of thousands of our members’ jobs”
and thanked him for “strengthen[ing] the Buy American regulations that have helped to create millions of jobs, including nearly 800,000 in manufacturing.”
Bryant also credited Biden with helping to save 83 pension plans that covered more than a million workers and retirees.”United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain told Netroots Nation today that “humanity is at stake” in the 2024 election.
“This has everything to do with our shot at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our wages. Having health care. Our retirement security, and our time…. Those are the four core issues that unite the entire working-class people in a fight against the billionaire class as we saw in our contract campaign last fall when 75% of Americans supported us in that fight, for those reasons.”"The dream and the scheme of a man like Donald Trump is that the vast majority of working-class people, who literally make our country run, will remain divided. That's how they win. They want us to not unite in a common cause to take on the billionaire class…. They divide us by race. They divide us by gender, by who we love. They divide us by what language we speak or where we were born….”
Today, in Detroit, in a barnburner of a speech, Biden forcefully contrasted his own record with Trump’s. He reminded the audience that he was the first president to walk a picket line, because “when labor does well, everybody does well.” “When Trump comes here to tell you how great he is for the auto industry, remember this: when Trump was president we lost 86,000 jobs in unions. I created 275,000 auto jobs in America. In fact, what’s been true in the auto industry is true all over America: since I became president, we created nearly 16 million new jobs nationwide, 390,000 of those jobs right here in Michigan. We’ve created 800,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide, including 24,000 in Michigan.”1 -
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When we recognize that nothing has to go right for us to be happy, that people do not have to behave for us to love them, our walk home can be surprisingly simple. We have enormous power not to manipulate the world, but to be happy and to know peace.
Hugh Prather
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So good to see you back Divine and good for you Ruth on skipping the Rep. convention. I enjoyed reading the HRC excerpts and very much the recreational sex information. Loved what Kyle Keegan had to say about it. Who'da thought, huh !!
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I worry likely almost as much as anyone about this up-coming election, but I do think the hysteria is in so many cases un-founded and being gorged on by the media. It is (since the media has distorted facts and figures so much) given space to people who are mostly un-knowns in our party. The top-tier are not so eager to dump Pres. Biden at all.
So, the other part of me is less worried. I am hearing the other side talk about blow-outs and landslides coming from their side and I rather wonder how so. It is hard for me to fathom. It is not like they have a decent nominee, and even then I wonder if the Loon will even end up being 'the' one. He has mainly been kept out of sight and it is not for a good reason. I actually think the media is helping the Reps. sound like they have it going on when I'm thinking they are as chaotic as ever. Keeping the Pres. Biden should step down noise for as long as possible gives the Reps. a chance to sound 'better' — but are they. I just don't think so. With 2025 being seen and digested by a lot more people, I think they are worse.
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Yes, imagine that !!
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The whole crux of it — right here.
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Balance of Power:
If you had any doubt about the importance of uniting around and voting for Joe...Retribution is at the center of Donald Trump’s third presidential election campaign. They have a list of 350 people that includes numerous Democratic and Republican elected officials; FBI and intelligence officials; members of the House Select January 6 Committee; U.S. Capitol Police officers and civilian employees; witnesses in Trump’s two impeachment trials and the Jan. 6 committee hearings; and journalists from publications ranging from CNN and the Washington Post to Reuters and Raw Story — all considered political enemies of Trump.0 -
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Showing their stupidity and ignorance one billboard at a time. Way to go R's.
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