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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Elon’s Next Epic Fail?

This is the tech billionaire election and they’re almost all supporting Trump. One of them is Elon Musk. This is his latest contribution:

Elon Musk’s new super PAC is collecting scores of voters’ personal information under the guise of inviting them to register to vote, as part of his effort to boost Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

Earlier this month, Musk denied reports that he would be donating $45 million a month to Trump’s campaign during an interview with right-wing commentator Jordan Peterson. Instead, the technocrat clarified that he had created a new super PAC, called the America PAC.

Musk’s America PAC is a door-to-door canvassing operation, which allows it to work in direct coordination with the Trump campaign, according to an FEC advisory from earlier this year. This allows Musk, and his fellow Silicon Valley donors, to stick their hands—and their cash—right into the presidential race on Trump’s behalf.

How exactly they plan to do this is even more disturbing.

The America PAC has launched a series of digital ads using the image of Trump’s assassination, to invite people browsing Google to “register to vote,” CNBC reported Friday. In states where the outcome is certain, such as California, the ads actually do direct them to a voter registration site.

But in key battleground states, users are directed to a very different page, which prompts them to enter their phone number, address, and age. Once complete, users are then greeted by a “Thank You” page, with no actual link to voter registration in sight.

Musk’s America PAC has poured $800,000 into digital advertisements to target voters in the key battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to AdImpact. The information collected from user responses to this ad campaign will inform the PAC’s canvassing efforts in those states.

Musk’s America PAC has already attracted the financial support of a few Silicon Valley billionaires. Douglas Leone and Shaun Maguire, general partners at Sequoia Capital, donated a whopping $1 million and $500,000 respectively, according to The American Prospect. (Their V.C. firm is also an investor in Musk’s SpaceX.) Joe Lonsdale, one of the co-founders of the military contractor Palantir, donated $1 million in June. Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel, who helped to fund J.D. Vance’s start in politics.

Apparently, Musk’s plan for the America PAC is already off to a rough start. After spending at least $15 million with In Field Strategies, a field vendor that organizes canvassers, the PAC ended its relationship with the company, two people familiar told The New York Times. It’s unclear what happened to that money, and now, more than 100 canvassers who had been hired by In Field on America PAC’s behalf in mid-June have been left scattered across the country, looking for work.

The PAC will now have to scramble to mount its canvassing campaign before early voting can begin, according to the Times. Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita called the Times report “more fake news … the New Program 100% better than the old gang. Solidly support this effort,” in a post on X.

Yeah, right, If Musk’s operation is as savvy as most right wing voter operations LaCivita is lying.

Remember, Elon Musk never invented anything. He buys companies he doesn’t create them.

What’s The Matter With Arizona?

The state GOP just got even crazier

There are election deniers in important jobs in many swing states. But Arizona is ground zero for MAGA wackos. Bolts has the latest from the Arizona primaries this week:

Democrat Gabriella Cázares-Kelly, the elections head in Arizona’s Pima County, says she drove to work in silence on Wednesday morning, after her counterpart in Maricopa County, Republican Stephen Richer, lost his primary to a far-right challenger.

“Are you allowed to print expletives?” she told Bolts.

Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and 4.5 million residents, is the nation’s most populous swing county—and it’s lately seen a torrent of right-wing activism pushing false claims about recent elections. Richer, who came into office in 2021, relentlessly defended how elections are run in the county, taking it upon himself to constantly debunk unfounded claims—pushed by everyone from Arizona politicians to Elon Musk—that fraud is rampant and results are rigged. 

He faced persistent harassment and criticism from fellow Republicans for this stance, and even got death threats; one local Republican, who chaired Arizona’s delegation at last month’s Republican National Convention, said she wanted to “lynch” Richer

He was ousted on Tuesday in the GOP primary by state representative Justin Heap, who drew support from some of the country’s most vocal election deniers, and whose campaign was led by an indicted 2020 “fake elector” for Donald Trump. Heap beat Richer by about seven percentage points and moves on to face Democrat Timothy Stringham in the general election. 

“This November, we will end the laughingstock elections that have plagued our county, state and nation,” Heap posted on the social media platform X after his win.

Arizona’s elections infrastructure has largely held up since 2020 amid a barrage of Trumpian lawsuits and extensive organizing by conservatives who falsely say that state elections are stolen from them. But the Arizona primaries underscored the potency in Republican politics of the false narrative that elections can’t be trusted—and that something drastic has to be done about it.

[…]

Republicans Kari Lake, Abe Hamadeh, and Mark Finchem, all of whom lost statewide races in 2022 and then refused to concede, won congressional and legislative primaries. A rare Republican senator who had opposed new restrictions on voting in the state’s most recent session lost his reelection bid. Wendy Rogers, another senator who is a member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group, beat back a more moderate challenger. In Yuma County, just west of Maricopa County, the race between a recorder who resisted election conspiracies and a staunch election denier remains too close to call as of publication. And in Maricopa County, primary results left the local elections system several steps closer to falling in the hands of Republicans who have echoed Trumpian lies.

Read on. It’s going to be a real showdown.

Meanwhile:

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is planning to announce next week that one of the 18 defendants in the state’s fake elector case will become a witness for the prosecution. 

In April, the fake electors were indicted by a grand jury for signing bogus documents claiming that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, after Trump’s campaign allegedly urged them to do so. 

Trump is identified in the indictment as “unindicted co-conspirator 1.”

In the indictment, all of the fake electors are implicated in an attempt to deceive “the public with false claims of election fraud in order to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency.”

They are accused of attempting to keep “President Donald J. Trump in office against the will of Arizona voters, and depriving Arizona voters of their right to vote and have their votes counted.”

According to the indictment, the fake electors forged certificates of Electoral College votes for President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael Pence and filed those with the Arizona Secretary of State and the chief judge of the Federal District Court for the District of Arizona. 

The fake electors include two Arizona State Senators who were also delegates at this year’s Republican National Convention. 

Each of the 11 Trump electors was charged with nine felonies related to trying to subvert the election, including conspiracy, fraud and forgery. All of the defendants pleaded not guilty.

This could be big depending on what this person knows about the fake elector scheme.

The Big Lie and January 6th is also going to be back in the headlines starting in a week or so. The J6 case has finally been sent down to Judge Chutkan in DC and she has already scheduled a first hearing on August 16th.

Stay tuned.

They Know What He Is

Yet they support him anyway

Trump’s relationship with GOP Senators has always been a little bit fraught. It’s clear that there are some who are not true believers, they’re just cynical opportunists and cowards. It never fails to amaze me to see them demonstrate it in public, however. It’s as if they’re actually proud of their lack of backbone:

For weeks, Senate Republicans delighted in the misery of their Democratic counterparts. The political story of the summer — whether President Biden would back down from his run at a second term — left GOP senators smiling and away from the media’s glaring spotlight on their foibles.

But the tables quickly turned. Their party’s presidential nominee recently returned to his natural form and lashed out against Vice President Harris in divisive terms that had little basis in truth. Republicans went right back into the political PTSD of the Donald Trump era, mouthing the same platitudes that they grasped onto during his presidency.

“He needs to focus on the policies of the Biden-Harris administration,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told reporters Thursday morning.

Was she comfortable with Trump’s rhetoric? “He needs to focus on the Biden-Harris policies. That’s the successful pathway to November,” Capito said.

If that’s the path to success, why does Trump instead dive right into attacks on race instead of policy?

Capito let out a roaring laugh that lasted six whole seconds, incapable of answering the question — or unwilling to share her honest answer.

“I’m a really good mother and grandmother. I can’t answer that one,” she said.

How adorable. She laughed — at Trump’s verbal incontinence and flagrant racism. And she’ll stump for him and tell everyone to vote for him anyway. She is actually worse than the dim-witted true believers like Tommy Tuberville. She knows.

Sure, He’s A Financial Genius

Spoken like an imbecile.

Don’t Be So Gullible, McTimes!

Trump suckers the press again

“My god, imagine being a reporter and being this bad at it,” tweets TPM’s Josh Marshall on a CBS News reporter taking anything Donald Trump says at face value.

What did Trump say this time? Marcy Wheeler explains and makes clear, “This is a ploy.”

https://x.com/emptywheel/status/1819696091496906922

“Genuinely took my breath away. Wow,” replies Brian Beutler.

Journalism malpractice, charges media critic Jennifer Schulze.

Why is this so hard?

https://x.com/NewsJennifer/status/1819717098454622631

And you wonder why the news is dying?

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Yes, Of Course, They’re Unserious

Congressbusters, whaddya want?

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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

Friday Night Soother

Baby penguin!

 There are few certainties in life, but alongside death, taxes, and the arrival of hot weather in July, at least one other thing is inarguable: baby penguins are almost impossibly cute. 

Guests visiting the Tennessee Aquarium during the Fourth of July holiday can join Aquarium staffers in excitedly welcoming the newest addition to the Penguins’ Rock gallery — a fluffy (and shockingly fast-growing) Macaroni Penguin chick.

The chick hatched on June 2 from an egg laid in late April by parents Bacon and Merlin. This baby bird is the first offspring ever produced by Bacon, who hatched in 2015 to two other Aquarium penguins, Hercules and Little Debbie. Though Little Debbie now lives at another facility, the newest chick’s grandsire, Hercules, still calls Penguins’ Rock home. With this latest arrival, the Aquarium is home for the first time ever to three generations of Macaroni Penguins. 

The new chick is the Aquarium’s first hatchling since the 2021 arrival of Carla, a Gentoo Penguin. This latest baby is the first Macaroni Penguin chick since Pedro hatched in 2019. The Aquarium’s colony now has 23 birds: 9 Macaronis and 14 Gentoos.

The Aquarium’s keen-eyed penguin care team first noticed the egg pipping — that’s the cracking that occurs when a baby bird begins to chip away at its shell from the inside — on a Friday afternoon when they spotted a dime-sized hole with a tiny beak moving around inside. The new chick seemed to get cold feet on Saturday with little progress. However, by Sunday morning, the chick had fully emerged with an unusual level of precision that surprised even its veteran caregivers.

“It seems like it has a little type A personality,” says Assistant Curator of Forests Loribeth Lee. “It cracked the egg perfectly, straight down the middle. We’ve never really seen that.” 

When Lee discovered the emerged hatchling, it was sitting in the center of its stacked shell, which was broken neatly around the side in an almost perfect circle.

The chick’s precocious attitude didn’t end there. So far, it has displayed confidence and fearlessness both in its nest and around caregivers when briefly removed for tri-weekly weigh-ins to monitor its health and rate of growth.

“We’ve seen it pick up rocks multiple times in the nest, which is very impressive that it can do that at its size,” Lee says. “It’s been throwing them around, so it’s a strong, tough little bird.”

Speaking of size, the chick has been growing at an astronomical rate, thanks largely to its parents’ diligence. A day after hatching, it weighed just 145 grams (5.1 ounces, or a little less than an iPhone 15). Three weeks later, it had ballooned to a whopping 1,592 grams (3.5 pounds). To put that in perspective, that’s the same as a 7-pound human infant weighing 77 pounds before it was a month old.  

Lee credits those gains to the skillful parentage of Bacon and Merlin, who has fathered several previous chicks and kept the chick well fed. A penguin growing quickly isn’t all that unusual, though. Macaroni Penguin chicks must mature quickly to be ready for the harsh winters in their native Antarctic climates, where they reach adult size in just two and a half months.

No Weirdo, No Weirdo!

You’re the weirdo!

The man is basically appearing in blackface with a bird’s nest on his head. His running mate has declared war on women with cats. MAGA is a total freakshow.

But sure…

What Is This Fact Checking You Speak Of?

Trump has repeatedly praised CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash for their “fairness” in the debate last month. He uses them as the example of everything a journalist should be. Why? Because they never fact checked him even once during the debate.

Apparently Trump expects that from everyone:

Moments before former President Trump took the stage at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention in Chicago on Wednesday, the organization’s president was called back to address an issue. Trump did not want to be fact-checked live and was refusing to go on stage, NABJ president Ken Lemon told Axios. “[Trump’s team] said, ‘Well, can you not fact check? He’s not going to take the stage if you fact-check,'” Lemon said.

The Q&A with the GOP presidential nominee was delayed more than an hour before he eventually joined a panel of Black journalists, including ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner and Semafor reporter Kadia Goba.

At the time, President Trump blamed the delay on audio problems. Lemon told Axios, “There were audio problems, but they were resolved very quickly.” “The bigger problem was his threat not to take the stage when he had agreed to go on. He did not want to be fact-checked, but we could not let him on the stage without fact-checking,” Lemon said.

The stalemate was so prolonged that NABJ leaders were prepared to explain to the audience of nearly 2,000 people why Trump would not appear.

“I was prepared to go on stage to craft a statement, saying he decided not to go on stage because of fact-checking… we couldn’t compromise on that. As Lemon was preparing that statement, Trump walked onto the stage.

Yes, he went on stage and complained like some elderly dowager countess about being treated disrespectfully by the help when the reporter asked him tough questions about his record and previous comments. It was one of his most embarrassing encounters ever.

The campaign apparently asked them not to post the fact check or mention it on stage. But they did anyway, Good for them.

The Thoroughbred

Andy Beshear is super popular

I don’t have a dog in the VP fight and will be fine with whomever she decides to choose. The Democrats are blessed with a very strong bench. But I was on Majority Report this week and Sam Seder told me about this. I was shocked:

After widespread speculation that Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear was on the list of potential running mates for Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the Democratic National Convention, a new poll found Beshear is the most popular Democratic governor in the country.

The Morning Consult poll shows Beshear has a 67% approval rating, with 28% disapproving, placing him at second place among all governors. He falls behind Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott who has an astounding 81% approval rating.

The poll, which was conducted from April to June this year, also showed that Beshear had the highest approval rating among both Republican and Democratic voters of any Democratic governor. He came second place in popularity with independents compared to other Democratic governors, too.

According to the poll, Beshear was more popular in his home state than other contenders for the Democratic vice presidential nomination appeared in theirs. For example, approval ratings for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper were more than 10 percentage points lower than Beshear’s.

Beshear is also the second most popular Democratic governor with young voters, ages 18 to 34. Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland beat him with 66% popularity. Moore was just behind Beshear as one of the most popular governors in the country.

Beshear has previously shown up as a governor with a high approval rating in Morning Consult surveys, which has a 1.3 out of three stars pollster rating according to political analytics site FiveThirtyEight.

Think about that. He’s from Red Kentucky. Mitch McConnell’s home state. He’s not even in a swing state and he’s super popular. That must mean something. And he’s pretty progressive too although he has ways of speaking about progressive issues that appeals to more conservative voters.

We’ll find out soon enough who she’s going to pick but if she picks him I think it might be a good fit. He’s someone who can certainly challenge JD Vance’s dubious claims to Appalachian identity.