Fetterman's debate performance has Democrats on edge in crucial Pennsylvania Senate race

HARRISBURG, Pa. — After getting their first long look at John Fetterman in Tuesday night’s Pennsylvania Senate debate, fellow Democrats are second-guessing his decision to appear on stage five months after a stroke — and some question whether he should have remained on the ballot at all.

(Snowy's opinion: I wish Democrats would shut the f..k up. This is their candidate, back him! Questioning and 2nd guessing only feeds the other side)

But by Wednesday morning, many Democrats were in a panic over his performance. And there were fresh questions about how transparent Fetterman has been through a months-long recovery that continues to present communication challenges less than two weeks before Election Day.

(Snowy's opinion: Just what the Dems need in the home stretch, panic 😕)

He has little room for error: The FiveThirtyEight's review of recent polls suggests he holds a 2.3 percentage point lead over Republican Mehmet Oz, a margin that has narrowed appreciably since Labor Day.

(YES it has narrowed, but even despite a poor performance, Fetterman is still leading, time to put a MORE positive spin on this instead of hand wringing)

Fetterman 47.2%Oz 44.9%

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2022/pennsylvania/

Similarly, some Democrats maintained optimism. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/fetterman-debate-performance-democrats-edge-pa-senate-race-rcna54158

Snowy was listening to a call in show yesterday, day after the debate, and it featured a lot of Pennsylvania voters, and the vast majority who called in - and this was NOT on a partisan leftwing show either - had the same message:

"Fetterman is one of us, no way we are going to fall for a fake from out of state."

Whatchallthink? Time for the Democrat panic button pushers to stop eating their own??

After all, the Repubs are backing Hershel Walker ALL THE WAY. 

An opinion from across the pond about the UK and conservative politics

An opinion piece from the Guardian opines:

Oh, Britain: the chasm between myth and reality keeps on growing

So it’s tempting to see the fall of the hapless Liz Truss and the rise of the guileless Rishi Sunak as a contrasting tale of character and plot.

One was plainly incompetent and spontaneously combusted in an inferno of their own lies and trickledown economics. So is the other.

But British politics are not quite so simple – not since the country ripped off its reputation for common sense and streaked on to the global stage claiming it was too sexy for its own continent.

There has long been a yawning chasm between what British people admire in the mirror and what the rest of the world observes.

But over the last six years, that gap between myth and reality has become unbridgeable.

Sunak, for all his earnest schoolboy affect, is heading for the same fate as all four of his predecessors, because you can only fool all of the people some of the time.

Of course, some of the people can be fooled all of the time. We call those people Conservative party members who are – like their American Republican counterparts – no longer conservative at all.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the monster raving loony right has glugged down a radical cocktail of conspiracy theories, free-market fever dreams, and a corrosive taste for cultural victimhood.

Six years into Brexit, it’s obvious that the world is not in fact hankering after glorious new trade deals that will make Britain ludicrous amounts of loot. It’s also obvious that erecting trade barriers to the largest economy on your doorstep did not in fact punish the foreigners on the other side.

As the former governor of the Bank of England points out, before Brexit the British economy was 90% the size of Germany’s. Today it is less than 70%. Well done, chaps.

The new prime minister is faced with the same dire choices as his predecessor – and proudly proposes the same dire policies.

He cannot increase trade with Europe, without admitting that Brexit was batshit. He cannot raise taxes to spend more on public services, without admitting that his version of Thatcherism was reckless nonsense.

So all he can do is to cut public spending at a time when interest rates are rising sharply. The next two years, before the next general election, will be miserable for everyone.

To be fair, other countries will also need to hack back after years of cheap money as the world’s central banks crack down on inflation.

But Britain has indulged in something worse, and there are clear lessons for other countries that are tempted to go down the same mirage-filled road.

Today’s rightwingnuts idolize the notion of a long-lost greatness that somehow proves their own exceptionalism.

In Britain’s case, that is clearly rooted in memories of empire that have never been revisited with any seriousness. British children can pass through an entire schooling without an honest discussion about the white supremacist enterprise that built their own country.

In a country that likes to look down on racial politics in the United States, there is little to feel smug about. Around one third of Brits think the empire is something to be proud of. That’s not much different from the number of Americans who think the US government has no responsibility to address the historic effects of slavery today.

If we can’t be honest about our past, it’s easy to lie about our future.  

British prime ministers used to come and go like vintage wines. Every few years there might be a classic. Now they come and go like utility bills: painful and entirely forgettable.

Gosh, that sounds a lot like British right wing politics is about like radical right deceive and divide politics in the US. There's lots of illusions of grandeur, false beliefs, lies and crackpottery, with plenty of slanders to go all around. 

At least the toxic reality of Brexit is dawning on some of the Brits. One question is whether a significant awakening will make any difference. Probably not.

News bits

Russia demands desatanization of Ukraine

Russian propagandists are learning fast from American Christian nationalist propaganda techniques and creative QAnon style crackpottery. Ukrainska Pravda writes:

Russia's Security Council claims there are "hundreds of sects" in Ukraine

and demands "desatanisation"

Aleksey Pavlov, assistant secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, has said that Ukraine should be "desatanised".

Details: Pavlov claims that Ukraine has turned into a "totalitarian hypersect" where citizens have abandoned Orthodox values, and therefore "desatanisation" is becoming an urgent issue. Pavlov admits that the exact number of sects in Ukraine is unknown, but "the number is in the hundreds."

Quote: "Using internet-based manipulations and psychotechnology, the new government [formed after 2014 - ed.] has turned Ukraine from a state into a totalitarian hypersect. Moreover, the authorities in Kyiv were the first to turn into militant fanatics whose views are directly opposite to those of normal people.

Not disclosed, is what "internet-based manipulations" and "psychotechnology" are. One European observer of this Russian intelligence mused out loud in the comments section of a reposted version of this article, I wonder what desatanized means from a metrics viewpoint? One commenter hypothesized, from what I have seen from the Russians, it means you invade a country with a Jewish president and bomb the holocaust memorial. . . . . They appear to be going full Ghandi on this.

Dissident Politics will be keeping a close eye on how Russia's desatanization pogrom is going and make discreet inquiries into what internet-based manipulations, psychotechnology and a totalitarian hypersect might be.

Disclaimer: I think the quoted reporting is not sarcasm or humor. The site it comes from is credible and has a good fact accuracy rating.

From the well duh files: Pledged climate change efforts are failing

The NYT writes:

Countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change, pointing Earth toward a future marked by more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heat waves and species extinction, according to a report issued Wednesday by the United Nations.

Just 26 of 193 countries that agreed last year to step up their climate actions have followed through with more ambitious plans. The world’s top two polluters, China and the United States, have taken some action but have not pledged more this year, and climate negotiations between the two have been frozen for months.

Without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the report said, the planet is on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels, by 2100.

All indicators remain the same: Party hardy (formerly party hearty) while the lights are still on.

From the advances in dirty tricks files

The NYT writes:

Two right-wing political operatives have pleaded guilty in Ohio to a telecommunications fraud charge for arranging thousands of robocalls that falsely claimed that the information voters included with mail ballots could be used by law enforcement and debt collectors, prosecutors said.

The operatives, Jacob Wohl, 24, of Los Angeles, and Jack Burkman, 56, of Arlington, Va., entered their pleas on Monday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland, prosecutors said.

The men were indicted in 2020 after they were accused of using the robocalls to intimidate residents in minority neighborhoods to refrain from voting by mail at a time when many voters were reluctant to cast ballots in person because of the coronavirus pandemic. The calls also claimed that the government could use mail-in voting information to track people for mandatory vaccination programs, prosecutors said.  

They face up to a year in prison and a fine of $2,500 when they are sentenced on Nov. 29, he said.

Up to a year and up to a $2,500 fine? Pffft! They will probably get probation for a couple of months and a $50 fine for being just playful, but naughty boys. 

Accumulating evidence continues to point to voter fraud efforts being committed by Republicans, not Democrats. Republican claims of serious vote fraud are just projections of what they desperately want to do themselves, i.e., cheat and steal elections. Just more shameless hypocrisy.

Racketeering Catholic church style 

The NYT writes:

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has agreed to submit to sweeping government oversight of its operations in a legal settlement reached on Tuesday with the New York attorney general, Letitia James, resolving a lawsuit that accused the church and its officials of a yearslong cover-up of sexual abuse.

Those monitors will be overseen by Kathleen McChesney, a former high-ranking F.B.I. official who also led the child protection office at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. As part of the settlement, two former Buffalo bishops, Richard Malone and Edward Grosz, will also be banned for life from holding any fiduciary role in a charity registered in New York.

According to the suit, the two former bishops shielded more than two dozen accused priests from investigation by the Vatican, and allowed them to either retire or go on medical leave.  

Instead of following church policy and referring the accused priests to a Vatican investigation that might result in their expulsion from the priesthood, the bishops classified the men as “unassignable,” a category that allowed them to retire with benefits or go on medical leave.

That kept the priests on the diocesan balance sheet, which prosecutors said constituted a misuse of charitable funds and an abrogation of fiduciary duty.

Us dumb taxpayers. We are forced by law to support the criminal Catholic church organization with massive tax breaks. And this is how the arrogant, criminal Catholic church shows its gratitude for what it is generously given. As the ex-president might say, while praising Catholic racketeering operations and for its stand against, and abuse of, the rule of law, taxpayers are suckers and losers. He would be right about that.

The Red State crime problem

In this election, as usual, Republicans are demagoguing the crime issue by fear mongering it. All the propaganda is that Democrats are weak on crime, especially murder, and crime is raging out of control. Much (most?) of the public is, as usual, is buying this false narrative. For most people, the raging out of control is somewhere else. The Third Way writes:

Takeaways

• The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions.
• In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.
• 8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.

Every news outlet from FOX to CNN to The New York Times to local newspapers has a story with attention-grabbing headlines like “US cities hit all-time murder records.” Fox News and Republicans have jumped on this and framed it as a “Democrat” problem. They blame it on Democrat’s “soft-on-crime” approach and have even referred to a New York District Attorney’s approach as “hug-a-thug.” Many news stories outside of Fox have also purported that police reform is responsible for this rise in murder and have pointed to cities like New York and Los Angeles.

There is a measure of truth to these stories. The US saw an alarming 30% increase in murder in 2020. While 2021 data is not yet complete, murder was on the rise again this past year. Some “blue” cities, like Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, have seen real and persistent increases in homicides. These cities—along with others like Los Angeles, New York, and Minneapolis—are also in places with wall-to-wall media coverage and national media interest.

But there is a large piece of the homicide story that is missing and calls into question the veracity of the right-wing obsession over homicides in Democratic cities: murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states. And sometimes, murder rates are highest in cities with Republican mayors.

For example, Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat mayor, despite their comparable populations. In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Yet there is barely a whisper, let alone an outcry, over the stunning levels of murders in these and other places.

The Atlantic writes:

These [Republican] attacks assume that the changes in criminal-justice policies that some states and many cities have pursued over the past few years are undermining public safety and fueling higher crime rates.

But an exhaustive new study released today by the Center for American Progress refutes that allegation. Conducted by a team of seven academic researchers, the study compares cities that have elected so-called progressive prosecutors with places whose district attorneys continue to pursue more traditional approaches.

Countering conventional wisdom, the study found that homicides over recent years increased less rapidly in cities with progressive prosecutors than in those with more traditional district attorneys. It also found no meaningful differences between cities with progressive or traditional DAs in the trends for larceny and robbery. “I think it’s really important to emphasize the extent to which we looked for a relationship and found none” between a prosecutors’ commitment to reform and crime rates, Todd Foglesong, a fellow in residence at the University of Toronto and one of the co-authors, told me.

It is good to counter false narratives with inconvenient truth. Too bad that inconvenient truth is often (usually?) not as persuasive as comforting false narratives. Bummer.