Lemmy Português

Almost as good as Lichtman's keys!

Ok, so less a shower thought and more a "random observation while standing in line to vote" thought, but my mind is about equally checked out in both scenarios, so I'll count it.

Cross-posted from "Arnold Schwarzenegger endorses Kamala Harris: ‘I will always be an American before I am a Republican’" by @Powderhorn@beehaw.org in !politics@beehaw.org

“I will always be an American before I am a Republican,” he wrote. “That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I’m sharing it with all of you because I think there are a lot of you who feel like I do. You don’t recognise our country. And you are right to be furious.”

For years, America’s most iconic gun-makers turned over sensitive personal information on hundreds of thousands of customers to political operatives.

Those operatives, in turn, secretly employed the details to rally firearm owners to elect pro-gun politicians running for Congress and the White House, a ProPublica investigation has found.

The clandestine sharing of gun buyers’ identities — without their knowledge and consent — marked a significant departure for an industry that has long prided itself on thwarting efforts to track who owns firearms in America.

At least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Marlin and Mossberg, handed over names, addresses and other private data to the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF then entered the gun owners’ details into what would become a massive database.

https://www.propublica.org/article/gunmakers-owners-sensitive-personal-information-glock-remington-nssf

Summary

Elon Musk’s pro-Trump group, America PAC, selects $1 million giveaway winners based on their potential as spokespeople rather than randomly.

The Philadelphia district attorney Lawrence Krasner alleges this violates state consumer protection laws. "This was all political marketing masquerading as a lottery, albeit an illegal lottery," Krasner said.

The U.S. Department of Justice has warned America PAC the giveaway could violate federal law, according to media reports, but federal prosecutors have not taken any public action.

The outcome of the lawsuit could impact the group’s ability to continue the contest, which has already awarded $16 million to registered voters in battleground states.

A video of Donald Trump calling people close to Kamala Harris "garbage" has resurfaced after Trump criticized Joe Biden for using the same word against Trump supporters.

The clip was posted on X, formerly Twitter, by the anti-Trump conservative group The Lincoln Project. It shows a portion of Trump's rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, on September 7.

Trump discussed the possibility of Harris winning the presidency, and went on to say, "It's not her, it's the people that surround her. They're scum. They are scum, and they want to take down our country. They are absolute garbage."

Disposable vapes are indefensible. Many, or maybe most, of them contain rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but manufacturers prefer to sell new ones.

To make a point about how wasteful this practice is—and to also make a pretty rad project and video—Chris Doel took 130 disposable vape batteries (the bigger "3,500 puff" types with model 20400 cells) found littered at a music festival and converted them into a 48-volt, 1,500-watt e-bike battery, one that powered an e-bike with almost no pedaling more than 20 miles. You can see the whole build and watch Doel zoom along trails on his YouTube video.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz mocked Donald Trump Thursday for his clumsy garbage truck gimmick.

“This dude’s nearly 80-years-old,” Walz said at a campaign event in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. “He damn near killed himself getting into a garbage truck.”

The crowd laughed at the Democrat’s reference to a Wednesday incident involving the Trump campaign’s attempt at retribution over President Joe Biden’s garbage gaffe that inflamed MAGA supporters. The GOP nominee donned an orange safety vest and planned a ride in a Trump-branded garbage truck.

While millions will still vote for the Republican candidate, perhaps hating immigrants more than they love reproductive rights, the only certainty at this point is that many millions more will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. In the latest ABC News/Ipsos national poll, the Democrat enjoyed a 14% advantage with women over Trump; among women with a college degree, that number rose to 23%; among women voters under 40, it rocketed to 34%.

...

That, in turn, is causing some MAGA commentators to break from their usual posture of feigned confidence to outright panic.

“Early vote has been disproportionately female,” Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA and helping to lead the Trump campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort, posted on social media. “If men stay at home, Kamala is president. It’s that simple.”

America PAC door knockers were flown to Michigan, driven in the back of a U-Haul, and told they’d have to pay hotel bills unless they met unrealistic quotas. One was surprised they were working to elect Donald Trump.

Kamala is going to win comfortably. Mark it.

Just a matter of how much violence and SCOTUS fuckery we'll have to get through first.

Summary

The 2024 race for Montana’s Senate seat, once seen as a near-certain Republican gain, has tightened unexpectedly, with Democratic incumbent Jon Tester showing a late polling advantage over GOP challenger Tim Sheehy.

Sheehy’s lead has diminished amid scrutiny of his story about a bullet wound he claims to have suffered during a deployment in Afghanistan. Discrepancies in his account, including conflicting explanations about a 2015 incident in Glacier National Park, have cast doubt on his credibility.

This polling shift has unsettled Republicans, with former Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci describing their reaction as a “meltdown.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22154941

Jake Johnson
Nov 04, 2024

Elon Musk's pro-Trump group does not choose the winners of its $1 million-a-day giveaway to registered voters at random, but instead picks people who would be good spokespeople for its agenda, a lawyer for the billionaire said on Monday.

...

"There is no prize to be won, instead recipients must fulfill contractual obligations to serve as a spokesperson for the PAC," Gober said in the hearing before Judge Angelo Foglietta, referring to Musk's political action committee, known as America PAC.