Yeah, all vote tallies will not be released until after the polls close on Nov. 5.

Exercise your rights and register to vote if you haven’t done so already!

https://vote.gov/

Good catch. I’ve added it to the summary. Thanks.

Wow the ads. I assumed everyone was already using some sort of ad blocker.

I think you’re overthinking this. Your original comment asked about the consequences of him saying “no,” so I outlined the legal options the prosecutor of the case has already considered and discussed. Let’s see what happens soon.

From the article, he has to put up the money in order to appeal:

Though he has vowed to appeal both cases, he must immediately grapple with the enormous sums that are at stake: To keep both judgments from being enforced while he appeals, he must put up the entire amount in either cash or bonds, according to legal experts. Usually, defendants must put up such bonds within 30 days of a final judgment to keep the plaintiff from collecting, experts said.

If he doesn’t appeal and doesn’t pay his penalty, NY has already indicated they’ll seize his assets:

New York Attorney General Letitia James told ABC News on Tuesday that she will seek to seize some of the former president’s assets if he’s unable to cover the bill from Judge Arthur Engoron’s Feb. 16 ruling.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-letitia-james-fraud-lawsuit-judgment-verdict-63e643d0fe098cc1ac178c003f21a40d

Here’s the full combined list:

1. Lincoln
2. FD Roosevelt
3. Washington
4. T Roosevelt
5. Jefferson
6. Truman
7. Obama
8. Eisenhower
9. LB Johnson
10. Kennedy
11. Madison
12. Clinton
13. J Adams
14. Biden
15. Wilson
16. Reagan
17. Grant
18. Monroe
19. GHW Bush
20. JQ Adams
21. Jackson
22. Carter
23. Taft
24. McKinley
25. Polk
26. Cleveland
27. Ford
28. Van Buren
29. Hayes
30. Garfield
31. Harrison
32. GW Bush
33. Arthur
34. Coolidge
35. Nixon
36. Hoover
37. Tyler
38. Taylor
39. Fillmore
40. Harding
41. Harrison
42. Pierce
43. Johnson
44. Buchanan
45. Trump

Source: http://www.brandonrottinghaus.com/uploads/1/0/8/7/108798321/presidential_greatness_white_paper_2024.pdf

Interesting observation:

Rachel Swan, a breaking news and enterprise reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, says there are “two really visible crises” in the downtown area: homelessness and open-air drug use.

“And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety,” she said. “One thing I’m starting to learn in reporting on public safety is that you can put numbers in front of people all day, and numbers just don’t speak to people the way narrative does.”

There is an interesting trend that Gen Z men are leaning more conservative, while more Gen Z women are becoming liberal :

Something strange is happening between Gen Z men and women. Over the past decade, poll after poll has found that young people are growing more and more divided by gender on a host of political issues. Since 2014, women between the ages of 18 and 29 have steadily become more liberal each year, while young men have not. Today, female Gen Zers are more likely than their male counterparts to vote, care more about political issues, and participate in social movements and protests.

While the gender gap is an enduring feature of American politics, at no time in the past quarter century has there been such a rapid divergence between the views of young men and women. The startling speed of the change suggests something more significant is going on than just new demographic patterns, such as rising rates of education or declining adherence to a religion — the change points to some kind of cataclysmal event. After speaking with more than 20 Gen Zers, my colleagues at the Survey Center on American Life and I found that among women, no event was more influential to their political development than the #MeToo movement.

[…]

As women’s political priorities have solidified, young men’s priorities have melted into mush. Surveys consistently show that young men are far less likely than women to say any particular issue is personally important to them. A survey we conducted last year found that young women expressed statistically significant greater concern for 11 out of 15 different issues, including drug addiction, crime, climate change, and gun violence. There was not a single issue that young men cared about significantly more than young women.

https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-gender-gap-young-men-women-dont-agree-politics-2024-1

Some additional interesting points in the cited poll report:

• Gen Z adults trend slightly less Republican than older Americans. More than half of Gen Z teens do not identify with a major party, but most share their parents’ party affiliation.
• Gen Z adults are more liberal than older Americans. Gen Z teens are more moderate.
• Gen Z is more religiously diverse than older generations. Gen Z teens mirror their parents’ religious affiliation. Gen Z teens are more likely than Gen Z adults to attend church or find religion important.
• Most Gen Z Americans, particularly Gen Z Democrats, are more likely than older Americans to believe that generational change in political leadership is necessary to solve the country’s problems. Younger and older generations both express a lack of understanding across generational lines.

This comment is so disingenuous. Your link said guaranteed sick leave was the sticking point in December 2022:

The initial agreement brokered by the Biden administration was accepted by all but four rail unions, who were holding out for guaranteed paid sick leave days. The opposing unions, though, represent the majority of rail workers. The workers and companies had until Dec. 9 to reach an agreement before they vowed to strike, which the industry estimated would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion per day.

But five months later, it was resolved:

When Joe Biden and Congress enacted legislation in December that blocked a threatened freight rail strike, many workers angrily faulted Biden for not ensuring that the legislation also guaranteed paid sick days. But since then, union officials says, members of the Biden administration, including the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, and labor secretary, Marty Walsh, who stepped down on 11 March, lobbied the railroads, telling them it was wrong not to grant paid sick days.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/01/railroad-workers-union-win-sick-leave

Trump enablers are similar to what the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt describe in Tyranny of the Minority as “semi-loyal democrats.” Whereas “loyal democrats clearly and consistently reject antidemocratic behavior, semi-loyal democrats act in a more ambiguous manner. They try to have it both ways, claiming to support democracy while at the same time turning a blind eye to violence or antidemocratic extremism.” Levitsky and Ziblatt warn that “history teaches us that when mainstream politicians take the more expedient path of semi-loyalty, tolerating or condoning antidemocratic extremists, the extremists are often strengthened, and a seemingly solid democracy can collapse upon itself.”

Another round of student loan forgiveness announced today: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/student-debt-canceled-74k-borrowers-white-house-loan-forgiveness-rcna134635

Check out this video interview of his administration working behind the scenes to negotiate the public option with the Senate. The part you need to see starts at 1:25. In the end, it just didn’t have Senate support.

According to your link, he did try to follow through and got shut down in the Senate:

President Barack Obama envisioned a public option as a key part of his health insurance reform law, but gave up on it during negotiations with opponents in Congress. As a presidential candidate, Biden proposed adding the public option as a way to fix the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act.

But for all the attention the public option got during the campaign, it has faded from the Democratic agenda on Capitol Hill.

With Democrats barely controlling the Senate, and universal opposition to his agenda from GOP senators, Biden has had to rely on a special procedure known as “budget reconciliation” to bypass the filibuster and pass his agenda.

EDIT: Adding this video interview of his administration talking about working behind the scenes to negotiate the public option with the Senate. Relevant portion starts at 1:25.

Yeah, the site is suspect. The article uses the Russian spelling “Kiev” instead of the Ukranian “Kyiv,” which is a giveaway that the site might be spreading Russian propaganda. Also:

Argentina seems to show a particularly interesting trend. The country has the region’s highest number of RT online readers, and, in 2014, it was one of the first countries in the region to allow RT to broadcast on public television. Current Argentine President Alberto Fernandez has since added Telesur, the Venezuelan television network, to his country’s basic national television service. Telesur now streams Russian propaganda and disinformation to 83% of the Argentine population. Given the reach of these outlets, it is an unlikely coincidence that 67.4% of Argentinian residents said in 2020 that they view Russia favorably.

https://www.bfna.org/digital-world/growing-audiences-and-influence-russian-media-in-latin-america-7wlrwqpupm/

Because it’s not a gift to about 4 million federal workers who would go without pay in a shutdown:

“The politicians aren’t thinking about us down here on the ground floor doing the work,” said Booth, who is also a local liaison for the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers. “Some of us live paycheck to paycheck. You take away a paycheck, how am I going to live for the next two weeks? How can I take care of my kids? How am I going to take care of my wife? And that type of mindset ends up causing bad things to go through some people’s minds and some people can’t get through it.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/government-shutdown-federal-workers-lose-pay-military-rcna116891

Agreed, I fully expect chaos this coming year. Certainly have your work cut out for you!

Thank you!

Thanks for the recognition and appreciate your thoughts.

Let me clarify about the weekly highlighting suggestion. A post from the mods along the lines of “What was the top comment you read this week?” and people can link them in the comments. That’s just an example of something to acknowledge commenters who put time and effort into their responses. Politics is dirty and usually pretty negative, so if there’s somebody wading through the crap to provide some clarity and discussion, we should focus on that positivity. Maybe that’s a bit idealistic, but just a thought.

Modding is tough work, so thanks for doing it.