https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/19/trump-three-swing-states-election-win-00179648

«Yet none of those other four battlegrounds are relevant if Trump first blocks her in Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.

It’s the most obvious route for the former president and a reminder of the advantage the Electoral College can confer on a Republican. Should Trump defeat Harris in Pennsylvania, a state President Joe Biden spent much of his childhood in and still only carried by about 80,000 votes, her hopes then hinge on a pair of slightly right-of-center states Democrats have carried once each in this century: North Carolina (won by Barack Obama in 2008) and Georgia, which lined up with Biden in 2024.»

(Emphasis mine.)

«Harris officials have grown bullish on North Carolina, coming to see it nearly as winnable as Georgia, even though North Carolina has fewer Black voters. Longtime North Carolina Democrats, though, are more restrained, having seen so many promising presidential and Senate races go down to narrow defeat since 2008 there.

As one top Tar Heel Democrat put it to me: “I like her momentum, but he’s got the fundamentals.”»

NC has always been a heartbreaker.

And, before you go rabbiting on about the evils of the Electoral College and how we need to get rid of it: just don’t. It ain’t happening, unless you’re talking about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. (https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/home)

The truth has now laced up its boots.

«Springfield, Ohio said it wasn’t true. The Trump campaign spread it anyway. How a viral rumor about pet-eating migrants took over a town.»
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/springfield-ohio-pet-eating-claims-haitian-migrants-04598d48?st=Ss2HAd&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Looks like “flood the zone with bullshit” is still the plan.

«DONALD TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN IS NOT displeased that they’ve been widely condemned for spreading the urban legend of Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.

If the national media is talking about immigration, they reason, they’re winning.»

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-team-takes-hit-on-cat-eating-springfield-haitians-immigration

«Harris began to find her rhythm, launching a series of withering attacks, and Trump started to unravel.»

I read that line and thought, “hmm, that sounds like boxing.” And then, at the end of the paragraph:

«Trump never laid a glove on her.»

Yup.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-harris-debate-rocker/

«”And I got to say hunched over,” he added as the “Morning Joe” producers ran more clips without sound. “Look at him; his eyes squinting. The split-screen was extraordinary. So this morning, for people on any network, even those who get paid to lie about Donald Trump every day, there is no sane-washing this and there is no normalizing there and there is no pretending that that was any other candidate, this is any other election or that was any other debate.”»

Ooh, “sane-washing” has entered the lexicon!

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/09/11/harris-alpha-female-debate-00178598

«“[W]hen there is asymmetrical lying, there will be asymmetrical fact checking.”»

Love it.

Next debate should NOT include an audience. Especially if it’s at Fox.

Interesting opinion piece in The Hill:

«Programs not directly affected by the global gag rule still experience a chilling effect due to confusion about what it does and doesn’t permit, research finds. If it were expanded as Project 2025 proposes, marginalized people — families living in poverty, racial and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community — would suffer disproportionately.

Such unjust measures should have no place in U.S. policy. That’s why Congress should pass the Global HER Act, which would permanently repeal the global gag rule. In countries where abortion is legal, it would permit non-U.S. NGOs to use their own funds to provide safe and legal abortions, without losing U.S. funding for other programs.

Relying on temporary pauses of the global gag rule under Democratic administrations is not enough. The on-again, off-again nature of the current policy creates a convoluted environment for U.S. grantees that bedevils their programs even when the global gag rule is not in effect. Repealing the rule through legislative action is the only way to undo the far-reaching, long-lasting damage the rule has wrought over 40 years. 

Beyond that, passing the Global HER Act would be a positive affirmation that the U.S. truly supports full realization of sexual and reproductive health and rights for everyone around the world. With the threat of an expanded global gag rule looming on the horizon, the time to affirm that is now.»

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4866475-project-2025-global-gag-rule/

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/record-measles-outbreak-in-oregon-blamed-on-vaccine-exemptions/

«In a small percentage of cases, measles can lead to severe complications, including pneumonia, encephalitis, and a progressive neurological disorder (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis), which develops five to 10 years after an initial infection. Additionally, measles is known to cause “immune amnesia.” That is, being infected with measles virus wipes out existing antibodies and immune responses to other germs, leaving people more vulnerable to other diseases.»

Oh, sure, let’s roll the dice with our kids. The entire medical community is lying to us, anyway. They just want to make money, along with big pharma, selling us vaccines we don’t need.

🙄

https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/02/rust_for_linux_maintainer_steps_down/

Seems like Foreign Function Interfaces are always a challenge. I wonder if a purely-Rust kernel would be hospitable to C/C++ as a foreign language.

Found on Mastodon: