Former Sen. Kassebaum-Baker made one brief statement about the changing Republican and political climate when she retired; that’s pretty much what she said: that it was changing. She retired, as did Bob Dole, with the first wave of Tea Partiers (though a couple of years apart.) Since then, she’s been even more discreet, mostly concentrating on land and habitat conservation. This endorsement is a Big Deal. (I’ll copy it in here so you don’t have to take your computer to the carwash to get the stupid off.)
EXCLUSIVE:Three more Republicans are crossing the aisle to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House.
Former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., former Kansas state senator and Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger and Deanell Reece Tacha, a retired federal judge, condemned the current state of the GOP in a statement shared with Fox News Digital Thursday.
“This election presents a stark choice that is not easy for any of us. The Republican Party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bob Dole, Frank Carlson, Jan Meyers, and generations of Kansas leaders does not exist within the current Republican Party,” the former officials wrote.
“But, it requires Republicans speaking out and putting country over party when those values are at stake.”
They added that the race between Harris and former President Trump presented a “stark choice,” but not an easy one.
“No candidate is perfect, and we do not pretend that we subscribe to all the policy positions taken either by the national parties or any individual candidates,” they wrote.
“However, we fervently believe that we must do our part to try to build a brighter future, which is why we will be voting for Kamala Harris and [Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz] in this election. We believe they most closely align with the aspirations of Kansans and reflect our rich history of working together ‘to the stars through difficulty.’”
All three have backed Democrats in recent elections, however.
Kassebaum, who now goes by Nancy Kassebaum Baker, served in the U.S. Senate from December 1978 through January 1997.
She was the first woman elected to represent Kansas in the chamber, and her career included a stint as chair of the Senate Labor Committee.
Tacha was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit by former President Reagan in 1985 and served as chief judge from 2001 until 2008.
Praeger served as the Kansas Insurance commissioner from 2003 to 2015.
Harris’ campaign has made a point of courting Republicans in a bid to widen her appeal and cast Trump as an extreme and polarizing choice.
A majority of Republicans, particularly those still in elected office, do support Trump.
The vice president has scored support from several notable GOP figures, however. Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Trump administration aides Stephanie Grisham and Olivia Troye have all publicly stated support for Harris.
Troye is one of several people who headlined a Republicans for Harris event Thursday alongside former representatives Barbara Comstock, R-Va., and Denver Riggleman, R-Va.
A new Marist College poll found Harris and Trump neck and neck in three critical states.
(Snip-skipping blah-blah race tied crap to the final graf, which is satisfying:)
The Trump campaign said of the Harris endorsement, “Nobody knows who these people are, and nobody cares.”
ANN ARBOR, Mich. − Top election officials in major swing states say they are prepared to take local governments to court if they refuse to certify the 2024 presidential election, a move that could impede an effort to overturn the election if former President Donald Trump loses.
Officials from Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin made the comments in interviews with USA TODAY and at a public event at the University of Michigan on Thursday as they sought to assure the public that they would protect the legitimacy of the election.
“We would immediately take them to court to compel them to certify, and we’re confident − because of how clear the election law is in Pennsylvania − that the courts would expeditiously require the counties to certify their election results,” said Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt.
In battleground states and states where Vice President Kamala Harris is depending on victories to secure an Electoral College majority, county officials have voted against or delayed certifying the results of elections at least three dozen times since 2020 − from the presidential race down to school board recounts.
It’s an outgrowth of Trump and his allies’ strategy to overturn the 2020 election by stopping Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. Local officials who refuse to certify a county’s results in 2024 may intend to stop Harris’ electoral votes from their state from being sent to Congress in the first place. (snip-More)
More Asian-American voters are planning to support the Democrat at the top of the presidential ticket now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the nominee, according to the 2024 AAPI Voter Survey released Tuesday.
Harris, whose campaign has been specifically reaching out to Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters, has a 38-point lead over Republican former President Donald Trump among Asian Americans. It’s a significantly wider advantage than the 15-point lead President Joe Biden had with Asian-American voters in a spring survey, before Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris became the Democrats’ standard-bearer.
In May, Biden led Trump 46 percent to 31 percent, with 23 percent undecided or backing a third-party candidate. Now, 66 percent of Asian-American voters back Harris, compared with 28 percent for Trump and just 6 percent for a third party.
It’s a return to 2020 levels of support for the Democratic ticket, according to Karthick Ramakrishnan, the executive director and founder of AAPI Data, one of the groups that conducted the survey. “When it comes to voter enthusiasm and intention to vote, we’re seeing levels on par with 2020, which was a historic election in terms of having record high turnout for Asian Americans. All these ingredients point toward Asian Americans having a pretty powerful role in the Harris candidacy.”
Harris’ favorability has also risen 18 points; it is 62 percent now versus 44 percent in the spring.
For Asian-American voters, Harris’ gender is more important (38 percent) than her Asian-American identity (27 percent). It’s noteworthy given that Harris’ mother was an immigrant from India.
It’s all the more surprising given the role that race has come to play in the campaign, especially since Trump has sought to center Harris’ race by questioning whether she is Black or South Asian. (She is both.) “Gender is not explicitly talked about as much in this campaign by Trump — it’s [Harris’] racial identity that’s being talked about a lot more. So I think it’s one of those things that seems under the radar compared to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 candidacy, but is emerging as a pretty powerful force,” Ramakrishnan said.
Christine Chen, a co-founder and executive director of APIAVote, added that AAPI voters’ attitudes on Harris’ gender reflect much of the grassroots organizing happening on her behalf. “South Asians for Harris, Chinese Americans for Harris, Korean Americans for Harris — we saw such activation coming from the community and partially, I think it is because of her ethnicity, but it was also driven by the women in those communities.”
AAPI women are more likely to support Harris (70 percent) than AAPI men (57 percent). Chen said much of this work, and excitement, also has to do with how Asian-American women are working with Black women and Latinas across organizing spaces, bringing together a racially diverse coalition of voters.
And these women have been organizing for a decade already, Ramakrishnan said.
“So you combine that with having the historic nature of her candidacy as not only the first Asian American but as the first woman and Asian-American woman, and that combines, I think, into a pretty potent combination,” he said.
The AAPI Voter Survey is a joint effort between AAPI Data and APIAVote, and was administered Sept. 3-9 by NORC at the University of Chicago. The survey was offered in English, Chinese dialects of Mandarin and Cantonese, Vietnamese and Korean, and oversampled citizens and registered voters. The margin of error is 4.7 percentage points.
The Harris campaign has been working to reach AAPI communities, and it appears to be paying off: 62 percent say they have been contacted by the Democratic Party, compared with 46 percent who have had the Republican Party reach out.
Last week, the Harris campaign released its third ad specifically targeting Asian-American voters, titled “My Mother.” It repurposes part of Harris’ acceptance speech from last month’s Democratic National Convention when she described her mom — “a brilliant 5-foot-tall Brown woman with an accent” — and said her mother taught her family “to never complain about injustice but do something about it.”
Meanwhile, when APIAVote had a presidential town hall earlier this summer, Republicans didn’t even send a surrogate, Chen said.
For many AAPI voters, Ramakrishnan said, the top issue is “racism and discrimination.” Seventy-two percent of AAPI voters said they wouldn’t be willing to vote for a candidate who doesn’t share their views on racism or discrimination.
Since first entering presidential politics in 2015, Trump has demonized immigrants. He also repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus,” which was followed by a rise in discrimination and attacks against Asian Americans. Recently, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, has amplified racist conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, that he knows are false.
“Even if the Republican Party is investing in voter outreach, to the extent that party leaders continue to engage in talk that is perceived as xenophobic or racist, it’ll make it really difficult to win support among Asian-American voters,” Ramakrishnan said. “That’s just very real. Absolutely, the parties need to invest, but what party leaders say also matters.”
“I don’t want to ignore the role of racism and discrimination,” Ramakrishnan continued. “So the extent that you see both Trump and Vance not only dog whistling on race, but blowing their bullhorns on race, that’s something that will prevent the Republican Party from capitalizing on any frustration people have with not only Biden, but Harris.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on outreach to AAPI voters.
According to a separate survey released Tuesday by KFF, 45 percent of Asian immigrants say the way Trump talks about immigrants has negatively affected the way they’re treated. Just 7 percent said that about Harris. In fact, 30 percent of Asian immigrants said Harris’ rhetoric has had a positive effect on how they have been treated.
Chen pointed to Georgia as a state where AAPI voters — particularly newly registered voters — could make a difference. Biden won the state in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes in a year with about 39,000 first-time AAPI voters, she said.
Ramakrishnan said the second biggest issue for AAPI voters is abortion, which Harris has made a centerpiece of her candidacy.
“Asian Americans are some of the strongest supporters of abortion rights in this country,” Ramakrishnan said. “Support for abortion rights is high even among Asian Americans who are predominantly Catholic, like Filipinos. I think something very underappreciated is how much abortion plays a role in the public opinion of Asian American voters.”
Among AAPI voters in the survey, 63 percent said they would not vote for a candidate who does not share their view on abortion policy. There is a 20-point gender split — 72 percent of AAPI women and 52 percent of AAPI men — on the question.
Though there are six weeks until Election Day, Chen said the candidates would be wise to understand that for AAPI voters, the window to reach them is even shorter: in the 2022 midterms, 73 percent voted early or by mail.
To check your voter registration status or to get more information about registering to vote, text 19thnews to 26797.
what a guy, huh? by the way, there’s a word for handing cash to a voter. that word is bribery. but it’s all in a day’s work for America’s Con-Artist-in-Chief.
Within the above is a link to the below on Threads, but I’ve copied the text here:
It is illegal for a presidential candidate, or any candidate, to hand out cash to voters in the U.S.
Offering money or any form of valuable consideration in exchange for a vote is considered bribery and violates federal election laws.
The Federal Election Campaign Act and related laws prohibit this type of conduct to ensure elections are free and fair.
Both the person offering the bribe and the person receiving it could face legal consequences.
These companies are bankrolling a multi-million dollar effort to elect Mark Robinson governor of North Carolina by Judd Legum
Maybe we here don’t patronize any of these entities anyway, but it’sworth tossing the info out whenever a discussion comes up, if it’s peaceful enough to do so. The entire piece is not much longer than this, but I wanted to put the details here rather than stuff we’ve seen already, in case everyone else is as busy as I am. Not complaining. Anyway, here’s the tea:
None of this prevented the Republican Governors Association (RGA) from throwing its support behind Robinson. In a post on X on March 5, the day Robinson won the Republican nomination, RGA chairman Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) congratulated Robinson and said the organization “look[s] forward to supporting him in the general election.”
The RGA has followed through. Data from AdImpact, a company that monitors political ad spending, obtained by Popular Information, reveals that the RGA, an affiliated PAC, and an affiliated non-profit have spent more than $17.3 million since June 11, 2024 on ads in support of Robinson. The money has financed over 20,000 ads across North Carolina supporting Robinson’s candidacy. The actual expenditure by the RGA is far higher, as the $17.3 million does not include the cost of producing the ads, polling, or any other activities taken on behalf of Robinson. (snip)
During this election cycle, for example, DoorDash has donated $625,000 to the RGA. This money has been used to support Robinson and other Republican gubernatorial candidates. DoorDash’s support of Robinson, who has repeatedly maligned LGBTQ people with crude rhetoric, through the RGA, is not consistent with the company’s carefully crafted public image.
The company regularly features LGBTQ-owned restaurants that deliver using DoorDash. On June 1, 2024, the company posted a blog post celebrating Pride Month. DoorDash said that it would spend the month “celebrating the diversity and vibrancy within the LGBTQ+ community by emphasizing how race, gender, sexuality, ability, and other aspects intersect to form unique individual identities.” The blog post claimed that DoorDash, “will continue to prioritize investing in and advancing opportunities for historically underrepresented people.”
On June 4, 2024, the RGA received a $250,000 contribution from DoorDash. These funds, along with other large corporate contributions, helped finance the RGA’s ad blitz in support of Robinson that started later in June. (snip)
Top corporate contributors to the RGA this cycle include Google ($585,000), Walmart ($570,000), CVS ($550,000), Microsoft ($550,000), Travelers Insurance ($460,000), Amazon ($450,000), Deloitte ($400,000), Charter Communications ($385,000), Oracle ($325,000), Pfizer ($300,000), Coca-Cola ($250,000), The Motion Picture Association ($250,000), and Wells Fargo ($250,000).
Popular Information contacted each of these companies and asked if they had any concerns that their contributions to the RGA were being used to support a candidate like Robinson.
Wells Fargo declined to comment. The other companies did not respond. (snip)
“Well, obviously, it would take, you know, 10,000 inaccurate ballots or 20,000 ballots to turn things around,” he said. “No, we don’t have evidence of that. But who knows? If you find a little bit of cheating, who knows if you had the time and resources to look around for more. Who knows what you’d find.”
Grothman last appeared here in July when he lamented that society should return to living “like it was in the 1960s.”
He appeared here last year when he declared that low-income housing discourages people from getting married.
That same week he complained that Biden won’t nominate “straight white guys” to the federal judiciary.
He also appeared here in January 2023 when he posted a flag associated with the Christian nationalist movement outside his Capitol office.
Months earlier he gave a floor speech condemning the US Census for collecting data on LGBTQ Americans, which he found “horrifying.”
Before that he appeared here in June 2021 when he authored a bill that would ban teaching the history of racism in Washington DC public schools.
His first appearance here came in September 2011 when as a Wisconsin state senator he authored a successful bill that banned mentioning contraception in sex ed classes.
Grothman opposes recognizing Kwanzaa and Martin Luther King Jr. Day as state holidays. In 2015, he authored a bill to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the US Constitution.
This next one is because DeathSantis wants to be able to make a political hit job on this incident to score points and claim that Biden Harris refused to give tRump proper Secret Service protection. Hugs. Scottie
Read the full article. DeSantis has said that the feds can’t be trusted to properly investigate the shooting attempt since they are also prosecuting Trump for stealing classified documents.
This week, Montel Williams called out a now deleted post of an unaltered photo claiming that he was Diddy. Williams stated, “Here they go again with ‘all black people look alike.”
All four memes below were posted separately today by the multiple felon.
You need a manual to work on my 1979 International Harvester Scout.
Donald Trump and JD Vance have a manual, too. It’s called Project 2025, and it tells us exactly how they’re going to stick it to the middle class. pic.twitter.com/e5NjTY85tX
We truly have become numb to how completely crazed, unhinged and demented Trump is, but its possible this is his craziest midnight rant EVER because of the content, length and ALL CAPS lunacy.
I truly hope local news, network news, and newsy shows like GMA & Today show and read Trump’s post about American women from late last night. Stop the sanewashing. We WANT voters to see how demented, psychotic and misogynist he is. Stop hiding the crazy from your viewers!
This is a two part post. The first part is what they intended to do, the second is them doing it. The intent is well expressed in the comments. The goal is to have the red rural parts of the state that vote republican to be in and recorded with the urban blue lagging way behind so the cultist can claim tRump won and the Democrats cheated at the last minutes. Then if time runs out for the count to be done the state will only certify the tRump voting areas leaving the cities out of the count, throwing the state to tRump even if Kamala Harris wins. Again republicans know that their plans are unpopular and they don’t care. They don’t want to represent people, they want to rule over the people. Hugs. Scottie
The Georgia State Election Board is expected to vote on a measure to force counties to hand-count all ballots this year, a requirement that could delay reporting of results by weeks if not months and that critics say is designed to inject chaos and uncertainty into the presidential contest in a vitally important swing state. The board will take up the proposal, which would require the hand count in addition to the customary machine count, Friday morning at the state Capitol in Atlanta.
The flurry of rulemaking is the work of a new right-wing majority that took control of the board in May with an avowed mission of preventing fraud and other irregularities from tainting the presidential result this year. All three are supporters of former president Donald Trump, and the rules they are pushing have been promoted by the state’s leading proponents of the false claim that President Joe Biden stole the Georgia election in 2020.
The blue counties won’t be allowed to finish. The election commission will suddenly say, “Oops, deadline has passed, we’re certifying with just the counties that finished their recounts.”
Georgia Secretary of State Ben Raffensperger is concerned about delays and lack of security. Currently, the count audit that compares numbers of electronic tallies with paper slips is done in secure locations with a panel of auditors and party representatives. He’s concerned that decentralizing this reduces security and increases opportunity for fraud.
Heard a very good interview with him on NPR last Tuesday. I’d recommend giving it a listen. He’s still the same man of integrity we heard in the Trump tapes he released to the public.
The Georgia State Election Board approved a rule Friday requiring counties in the critical presidential battleground to hand-count all ballots this year, potentially upending the November election by delaying reporting of results by weeks if not months.
The change was spearheaded by a pro-Trump majority that has enacted a series of changes to the state’s election rules in recent weeks and approved the hand-count requirement despite a string of public commenters who begged them not to.
Critics included democracy advocates who accused the board of intentionally injecting chaos and uncertainty into the presidential contest as well as election supervisors and poll workers who said hand counts would take too long, cost money and almost certainly produce counting errors.
Rule to require ballot counting at precincts passes 3 to 2. Before allowing the votes – Chair Fervier says he wants to state for record: “I want to make it clear we will be going against our legal counsel by voting in the affirmative. pic.twitter.com/rmFuGgzpxI
A lifelong Republican, Roberts was Polk County co-chair for then Governor Robert Ray’s campaigns and served as state co-chair for Gerald Ford’s 1976 presidential campaign. She became the first woman to lead the Polk County Republicans and was the GOP nominee for Iowa secretary of state in 1986. (snip)
Roberts wrote in her endorsement letter that she was impressed by how Harris “showed a willingness to listen to a wider range of views to solve problems.” The vice president allowed people with different political perspectives, including some Republicans, to speak at the Democratic National Convention.
At a news conference, she said she would consider having a Republican in her cabinet. All of these statements lead me to believe that she truly has the skills needed to bring us together as a country and hopefully the world. I heard her articulate that she has always brought groups of diverse individuals and opinions together to solve problems. That is a healthier and wiser way to lead.
At the debate, she continued to impress looking at the audience and emphasizing bringing the country together rather than divide, to lift people up rather than tear people down.
(I clicked on a Springfield New-Sun article the other day; they let you read everything if you start an account or register or whatever; email address, user name, and a password. Anyway, it’s a very polite paper, and the work, so far as I’ve seen, is exemplary. If you click through to the page, take a look at their headlines to see how things are going in Springfield, thanks to the Republican ticket. Some of it is good news for residents; there is balance.)
Clark State is investigating after officials found a suspicious package this morning on the College’s Springfield campus.
The college’s security found the package around 8 a.m. on the Leffel Lane campus and immediately contacted police, according to a statement on the college’s website.
“Police responded quickly and determined that the package was not of concern and no threat exists,” the statement said.
Administrators and police searched the buildings and campus before the Springfield Police Division said the campus was safe at 11:12 a.m.
Clark State closed all of its campuses this week and moved to remote classes through Friday as a result of two email threats of a potential bombing and shooting from last weekend.
Scottie's Playtime 