Additional statistics about the IRA, which Trump and Vance have vowed to defund, from E2 two years into the IRA:

Nearly 60 percent of the announced projects representing 85 percent of the investments and 68 percent of the jobs - are in Republican congressional districts. This despite the fact that no Republican voted for the legislation.

https://e2.org/reports/clean-economy-works-two-year-review-2024/

Looks like they are still very good. I have the C1 which is still made in Germany. I wouldn’t buy a model made in China, regardless of manufacturer, but to each their own.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/1cban91/miele_vacuum_worth_the_cost/

https://www.rtings.com/vacuum/reviews/miele

The biggest knock Rtings has us the cost of operation (filter and bag replacements) but you can get reusable options for both. I have two very sheddy dogs and one reusable bag has worked fine as long as I’ve owned the vacuum.

Advice for any purchase really that I learned far to late, cheap is expensive. A $400 vacuum that is made well, repairable, and will run for 20+ years is better than a new $120 vacuum every 5 years.

I got a Miele a few years ago and love it it’s a little pricy, but they are well made and have good warranties. A vacuum repair person recommended the brand to me saying that when they do finally break, they are much easier repair.

You’re absolutely right, it’s absurd and that’s the point. For the GOP court to say the FTC can do that, they will expect Congress to pass a law saying “the FTC has the authority to ban non-compete agreements of every kind” but that’s dumb and defeats the purpose of executive agencies, we agree. But that’s the point. Congress will rarely if ever be that specific, so anyone can argue a law is not what they meant and the agencies have no deference.

The end goal is agencies are powerless and Congress is paralyzed, so the judiciary has all of the authority to decide what everything means.

Just the begining after striking down Chevron Deference. Sure, common sense says that is well within the purview of the FTC granted by Congress. But now, without chevron in place, the court is going to say anything that is not word for word directed by congress, is outside of an agency’s jurisdiction.

Minor note, he recently said the president should be able to tell the Fed what interest rates are. He won’t have to do much raging, he can just tell them money is free for Vance and his venture capitalist friends.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/08/trump-fed-powell-bank-2024-elections-00173299

Allegedly 77% in 2020 according to the FL government. I assume that’s among registered voters though, not all eligible.

https://dos.fl.gov/elections/data-statistics/elections-data/voter-turnout/

Along with the points already made, selling energy back to the grid further complicates things. Selling energy as a non-utility is not allowed or practically worthless in a lot of states. So it’s really only valuable to the commercial space that can use it. Couple that with retail space like stip malls that rent their locations and there’s little incentive for the property owner to provide solar energy to the renter.

I thought the same, but AZ law says that if a Senate seat is vacated, the Governor, currently Dem, will appoint a replacement to fullfil the rest of the term. So, good news, the seat will not be up for grabs.

Not so good news, the appointed will have incumbency advantage and more than likely never be seriously primaried.

This can also work against him and Democrats though. NYT had an article about it recently. They interviewed a Trump supporter in AZ who believed abortion was a right, but wanted to vote for Trump. She hoped this abortion measure would get on the ballot so she could vote for abortion, while voting for Trump. Despite the obvious and very public campaign pomise to severely limit abortion and Project 2025’s goal to ban it federally.

An abortion ballot initiative will drive voters to the polls, but if they feel they are safe from losing abortion access, they may not feel like they need to support Dem candidates.

His team claims that the evidence used was gathered during the presidency, when he was immune. It sounds absurd, since concealing private business records is clearly not an official function of the presidency, but its was apparently enough to sway the prosecution who admittedly may know more about the legal system than I do.

He seems to have at least partially succeeded: Manhattan Prosecutors Agree to Delay Trump’s Sentencing

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/nyregion/trump-sentencing-hush-money-trial.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4E0.EFjk.3LrZf6VhwwFF

SCOTUS can’t do shit for state charges. Doesn’t mean they won’t try.

However, His legal team will argue literally any punishment is too harsh and appeal the NY state charges, which will be granted because he was a president and has money. Then it will be delayed past the election and not matter anyway because this system is not made to resist willful destruction by those entrusted to protect it.

Edit: Turns out they can. The NY prosecution has agreed to postpone charges less than a day after the ruling. Trump’s team asserts that the criminal activities occurred before he was president, but since the evidence was gathered during, he can not be prosecuted. Apparently concealing evidence unrelated to the presidency is an official act…

I love to seeing nuclear power plants planned to replace a coal plant. The Gates one is planning to do the same thing. I imagine they will have to do some remediation to get the background radiation of a coal plant down so it doesn’t interfere with future nuclear monitoring, but replacing it with a nuclear plant is a great idea.The high power infrastructure is already in place and its not like anything else will be jumping at the opportunity to build on top of a retired coal plant.

I agree with you. My thinking is, as a politically active person who is around politically active people from all over the spectrum, that no one has really heard from Trump in the past 3 years, besides the ones that wanted too. I’ve heard his voice maybe 10 times? Heard about him, of course, but not from him.

While the debate was an absolute shitshow, Trump was Trump. He reminded everyone for 90 minutes what it was like to have him in every room, on every channel, at every dinner table, and in every conversation. Undecideds are who they are, but they didn’t like that in 2020 when they voted for Biden. People’s memories are short and I think they forgot how terrible he was.

Cabinet and federal appointments are the big thing. That’s why I’ll take Biden over Trump. I’m not just voting for him, I’m voting for the 4000 jobs in energy, health, labor, transportation, etc. to be run by Democrats, liberals, and qualified people.

Trump, and project 2025 plan to fill all those roles with right wing nutjobs who will do anything to please the right. On top of those 4000, they’d expand the presidential appointment power to fire up to 45% of the federal workforce. Meteorologist who said the hurricane won’t hit Alabama? GONE! Doctor who said injecting bleach was a bad idea? FIRED!

I’ll take anyone who won’t put Project 2025 in motion.

Here you go!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/climate/coal-plants-china.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jk0.-G27.tF7fPJuXT7om&ugrp=m

Some polls back up this analysis. A Quinnipiac survey shows Kennedy getting 13 percent of the vote; he has support from 9 percent of Democrats, 8 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of independents. The poll shows Biden leading Trump by three points in a head-to-head matchup but Trump ahead by one point when third-party candidates are included. Though both numbers are within the poll’s margin of error, they suggest that Trump could benefit if the election isn’t seen as a binary choice.

However, other polls show Kennedy pulling more voters from Trump, and the truth is no one knows how the election will ultimately shake out. “The public polling, if you dig into it, can be really head-swiveling,” said Smith. “It’s very hard to gauge the impact, but it does seem like he pulls from both, and right now — emphasis on ‘right now’ — slightly more from Biden.”

Kennedy certainly has no qualms about spoiling the election for Trump. On CNN on Monday, he argued that Biden poses a “much worse” threat to democracy than Trump because of the Biden administration’s attempts to get social media companies to remove vaccine misinformation, much of it spread by Kennedy

I really don’t see how a pro-Israel, against any ceasefire agreement, candidate that also believes the free market will fix climate change stands to gain more support from former Biden voters than former Trump voters.

Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They either get condemned for helping keep a GOP speaker in place or they get criticized for not helping and getting stuck another freedom caucus pick speaker, after they bicker for a month.

He’s still not actually paying her. He’s just securing a bond that lets him avoid paying while he seeks an appeal. Just keep kicking the can down the road.

“Donald J. Trump on Friday posted a $91.6 million bond in a defamation case he recently lost to the writer E. Jean Carroll, staving off a potential legal and financial disaster just days before a deadline to secure the deal. The bond, provided by an outside insurance company, will prevent Ms. Carroll from collecting the judgment while Mr. Trump appeals.”