Nice Guy Eddie

Duh. If the Dems would just stop requiring the wealthy and corporations to pay taxes, the vast majority of those savings will find themselves in the pocket of the workers. Reagan called for this in 1980 but Dems just keep standing in the way of the working class from getting ahead. When are Dem voters going to learn to just trust CEOs and billionaires.

Ohio GOP senate candidate Moreno has earned an estimated $100m in selling off his car dealerships where he proudly states that he started with very little a couple of decades ago. Great story where a guy from Colombia made it big in America. Pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and now wants to lead by serving in the Senate. Maybe not. As a GOP guy, he has the standard platform. Here are 2 out of his 16 priorities on his website 12. Allow free markets to work 15. End Wokeness and Cancel Culture Why did I list these? He received special deals (lower financial requirements, special start up costs and financing) from the car manufacturers because..., well I will let Moreno's deposition speak for itself. Source here is some of the money that he received for being Hispanic. This is from a court case where other dealers (probably non-hispanic, white guys) were upset. Moreno is the epitome of a guy that was offered a ladder and then pulled it up after himself. I don't necessarily care that he received help from private industry. They can do what they want but he's the biggest hypocrite by running as a Trump Republican. As an aside, he earned the Trump endorsement by spending the most at Trump properties but that's another story. He also has a weird start in business with an older guy in the car business acting as a mentor. The two later had a falling out while vacationing together.

Fox News is hanging up on Trump while he’s still talking? Talk about an easy sign to interpret that they think his best chance to win is to not be heard.

Well he is an old man. I wonder if he calls Eric or Barron when he needs to be walked through rebooting the WiFi router.

Conroe ISD realized that they were banning books that were hurting their students chances in their future educational goals so they’re looking to reverse the course on at least some of the books. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/conroe/article/conroe-isd-policy-books-limited-19705448.php

Looking forward to what a non-story it will be tomorrow when RFK bends the knee to Trump. The right media will play it up as if RFK was previously polling 25% but even they will stop mentioning RFK by the end of the weekend.

Fake news tweet. Trump has already said that he doesn’t know anyone behind project 2025. It’s real to me!

I wonder if they have to handle entertainers who have volunteered to appear on the last night but have to kindly be told no.

If the surprise guest is an entertainer, I wouldn't understand any reason that you wouldn't want to publicize it in advance. The goal would be to get people to watch, not hear about it the next day.

No, they will still say that the people causing the problems were ANTIFA.

between this and his new crypto scam service, I'm guessing that he sees his only options as president or jail&bankrupt.

As a former Big Oil employee, today you might be hard pressed to find defined benefits plans for new employees. I last worked for one of the big players and only the older employees still had those plans. Those plans paid you X% of your final salaries for life, and usually kicked in healthcare at the same costs to current employees. The newer employees (post 2000?) had defined contribution plans where the company kicked in monthly amounts into a group investment account that guaranteed ~5% growth annually in addition to the monthly contributions. I've been gone from O&G for 15 years but left my account active. My balance will be approximately 150K when I retire. Which isn't bad for only working there a couple of years in my 30s. Both the defined benefits and contribution plans were in addition to 401ks and generous 401k matching. In my experience you also see the similar defined benefit plans in not-for-profit healthcare systems but the amounts are lower than big oil.

At times Dems have gone overly wonky with detailed policies while the GOP would focus on their values. Think Gore vs Bush. People vote on values and ideas at the 40,000 foot level. Talking about CPI formulas or acceptable part-per-million carbon levels doesn't win over undecided voters. The word went out to GOP influencers to hit the Dems about failing to talk about details because they know that Walz appeals to many GOP. If you put Walz and Vance in Odessa and only had them talk about their history and approach to life and family, Walz would take room 90-10. That scares the GOP.

Surprised he hasn’t run off to countries that would be more accepting of his “lifestyle” like Hungary or Russia.

9:45 and Walz hasn’t come on yet? I will catch the highlights tomorrow

Nancy can’t say that she’s younger than Trump.

Bill needs to work on pronouncing her name as well.

I’m unsure it’s a compliment but Clinton is the best, most natural politician that we’ve had in a very long time.

Clinton looks pretty good for 78.

I've always thought that true believers in a candidate will not blindly follow the endorsement from said candidate who's quitting. Some may jump to Trump but It's also conceivable that those supporters will feel betrayed. They didn't exactly expect RFK Jr. to win but rather they wanted the attention their candidate brought to a cause. Trump will attempt to walk a fine line of attracting RFK Jr's wacko supporters without alienating his (Trump's) own wacko supporters. I also suspect the timing of this was decided a couple of weeks ago. Just like how Biden-to-Harris shift occurred right out of the RNC, Trump looks to be attempting a similar misdirection with RFK Jr. immediately following the DNC. Today's announcement is also a tease to divert attention from the DNC.

Republicans in Congress, like Ted Cruz, will do their best to delay or cancel out the election result when Harris wins. If they are successful, the current President (Biden or Harris if Biden retired) would cease to be President on Inauguration Day. If Congress and the Courts somehow tied up the proceedings, it would seem logical that the Speaker would temporarily become President while the mess was sorted out. If the Courts ultimately agreed that Harris won, I would think that Johnson steps down and Harris would get sworn in. And if the West Wing storyline was correct, the Speaker would have to resign their seat in Congress to become President. John Goodman has to do so to take over from Martin Sheen when the first daughter was kidnapped.

This is what DeSantis wants as the amendment on the ballot: "The proposed amendment would result in significantly more abortions and fewer live births per year in Florida... There is also uncertainty about whether the amendment will require the state to subsidize abortions with public funds."

If you're asking if there is a difference between the 2 "increases" being applied when delaying benefits, I don't think there is. Example: Someone's annual benefit at 62 is $30K/yr but they want to wait until 63 to draw benefits. Let's say at age 63 the COLA is 2% and the 1-year delay creates a 8% bump. Regardless of how to apply the percent increases, you end up with $33,048. It's basically 30K * 1.02 * 1.08 = 33,048. FYI, using these assumptions identically, this becomes $40K and $49K (rounded) at ages 65 and 67. This is my rough understanding of how it works. Happy to be corrected and I understand that there are other factors that come into play like marriage status, work status, and I imagine the exact month you apply for benefits. As far as comparing all of these numbers by investing the take-home benefits until you die or hit 100, I don't see the point. Life is meant to be more than numbers on a spreadsheet. Yep. I doubt that Medicare premium increases are used in calculating CPI and eventually COLA.

I've heard that in plenty of locker rooms many players have nothing to do with others. They have their cliques and relationships with others may be non existent. I recall hearing Jeff Pearlman, sportswriter/author, talk about this on his Tiktok channel. He tells great stories from the sports world in the 1990s-2010s. He's worth a follow. He mentioned in one video that race, language and player position create barriers in MLB clubhouses. In some cases, you might have only have a handful of other players that you talk to on a regular basis especially about non-baseball matters.

Yep. Believe he’s already on the ballot in NC and MI. Unsure if he made the other battleground states. I suppose his endorsement might net Trump a handful of votes but unlikely it moves the needle much. Not that it counts but perhaps Trump gets a few 100 thousand more popular votes.