Had to post this because it's so funny. This is not an Onion article.

Best part:

>I expect Vance will be the breakout star of this campaign. He’ll run rings around Vice President Kamala Harris in their debate, and average voters will see that he’s the real deal.

Hindsight is 20/20, but that was completely wrong.

Whole article:

>Donald Trump’s announcement that Ohio Sen. JD Vance is his vice-presidential pick was music to my ears. > >I’ve known Vance for more than a decade and can attest to his smarts, his seriousness and his undying devotion to America and its working class. > >He is an ideal pick for Trump and one that presages the transformation of the Republican Party into a true, multi-ethnic working-class coalition. > >I met JD at a political seminar in 2015. We quickly bonded over our shared interest in using public policy to help the country’s struggling working-class voters. In this pre-Trump age, that was not a popular position within the GOP. > >But that didn’t matter to him. JD was interested in helping people, not currying favor with an insider elite. > >His breakout bestselling book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was further proof of that sincere, deeply held desire. > >A clear message ran through the vivid personal story and shocking anecdotes: America’s elite class has betrayed the workers who make America great. > >Throughout the years we would periodically meet up at a political event and share notes and swap stories. > >JD was always the same guy, genuinely curious and passionate about changing the trajectory for the people America’s elites were leaving behind. > >And unlike many politically active people, he wasn’t locked into an ideology that provided the seductively simple answer to all things. He was thinking, searching, studying. He wanted the truth and solutions that could work, not bromides that make for good soundbites but could never be implemented in real life. > >He’s shown that in spades over the past few years as he first increased his public presence and then entered the political arena. > >His speeches are not garden-variety political pabulum. He doesn’t give you poll-tested lines that don’t connect to one another logically, much less to a common theme. > >JD’s speeches flow from a serious world view and make serious arguments. That’s a rare talent at any time but is in especially low supply today. > >This is another reason I think he can make a huge impact. Americans crave a serious political figure who genuinely cares about average people and those who are struggling. > >They want someone who pulls ideas from the old left and the old right to create something genuinely new and uniquely American. Vance can and will give them exactly what they have been seeking for 30 years. > >President Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and even Trump have struggled to do this for various reasons. > >Most Republicans don’t even try, relying instead on the same old economics and dressing it up with culture-war and anti-immigration dressing. The result: more voter frustration, rising rates of political anger and increasing identification as political independents. > >Vance can break this cycle. He won’t do it immediately, as Trump will remain the big dog in this partnership. > >But any vice president works to serve his or her boss while carving out a separate identity. Vance’s identity will be uniquely thoughtful and uniquely appealing. > >His intelligence and articulateness will help him chart this course. Watch a Vance interview on a TV talk show. > >Politicians today are trained to use any question to pivot to the topic they want to talk about. The result is the obviously phony and rehearsed politics Americans increasingly reject. > >Vance, on the other hand, actually engages with his questioner. He gives the answer he wants, but he doesn’t avoid the topic. > >Nor does he fawn before his interlocutor. He can push back when the interviewer misstates something or pushes for a gotcha moment. > >That sort of skill can be honed, but it can’t be taught. It’s the talent that only a genuinely thoughtful person who knows what they believe can pull off. > >Elites despise Vance because of these traits. They may have met and known him almost as long as I have, but almost to a person they never sympathized with his world view. They saw him as simply another version of one of them, a smart person with elite credentials who didn’t like Donald Trump. > >When he changed his mind about Trump — without changing his philosophy, mind you — they changed their minds about him. That says much more about today’s paragons of privilege than it does about JD > >I expect Vance will be the breakout star of this campaign. He’ll run rings around Vice President Kamala Harris in their debate, and average voters will see that he’s the real deal. > >Unburdened by the GOP’s past free-market fundamentalism, he’ll become what Americans long for. He’ll connect with real people in a way the Acela Corridor pundits can’t begin to imagine. > >If Trump is as smart as I think he is, he’ll carve out a huge role for JD in his administration. Who better to oversee the implantation of a new, worker-friendly domestic policy agenda than the man who’s spent the better part of his adult life thinking about one? > >And who better to sell it than a person who’s clearly, like Trump, a master communicator? > >Vance’s rise has been meteoric, and he’s now in the political big leagues. Like any newly promoted prospect, he’ll struggle sometimes as he adjusts to the new challenge > >I expect he’ll rise to the occasion as he has at every step of the way in his life. Trump and America will be the beneficiaries. > >Henry Olsen, a political analyst and commentator, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The actual answer is even dumber than you think. He's so old he confused two completely different people, and lied about discussing Kamala Harris.

Why doesn't he step down so a qualified person can run? His mind is clearly made of mush.

>“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles. > >“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.

>As of Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern, our average of national polls says Harris has the support of 45.0 percent of voters, while Trump garners 43.5 percent. > >That 1.5-percentage-point lead is within our average's uncertainty interval, which you can think of as a sort of margin of error for our polling averages.

It's a little weird that they say Harris is "tied" with trump, even though she's ahead by 1.5%. That seems like a big deal. Margin of error is important, but it's just factually true that Vice President Harris is up by an average of 1.5%.

I looked back at how 538 treated polls when trump was up by a similar amount:

https://abcnews.go.com/538/polls-after-presidential-debate/story?id=111610497

>In 538's national polling average, Trump now leads by 1.4 percentage points over Biden, while the two candidates were just about tied on June 27, the day of the debate.

So Harris up by 1.5% is actually "tied", but trump up on Biden by 1.4% is "leads" (and explicitly different from "tied"!). No mention of margin of error in that paragraph.

🤔🤔🤔

From back when Newsweek was a real publication.

>The boxing gloves were new, and smelled of leather. It was the mid-1960s, in Jakarta, Indonesia. Barack Obama had come home the day before with what he recalled as "an egg-sized lump" on the side of his head, the result of a fight with a boy who had stolen a friend's soccer ball and then hit Obama with a rock. Wounded but not bleeding, a humiliated Obama found his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, in their yard, tending to the chrome on a beloved motorcycle. The boy whined a bit—"It wasn't fair"—and Soetoro said little. Now, 24 hours later, the stepfather appeared with two sets of boxing gloves, one for himself and one for Obama. "The first thing to remember is how to protect yourself," Soetoro said as they began to spar. "Keep your hands up," he ordered, circling the boy. "You want to keep moving, but always stay low—don't give them a target." Obama bobbed and weaved, learning to throw punches; at one point in the half-hour lesson, he let his defenses down, and paid for it. "I felt a hard knock to the jaw, and looked up at Soetoro's sweating face," Obama recalled. "Pay attention," Soetoro instructed.

Also, the old "Fighting Joe Biden" makes an appearance:

>The selection of the pugnacious Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. for the second slot on the ticket brings a fighting spirit to the Democratic campaign, but the conventional wisdom of the moment still has it that Obama—or "Obambi," as he has been called—may be too cerebral, too elite, too soft to prevail.

Mostly posted this for the picture of trump looking "old and quite weird".

>The meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was requested by Netanyahu, sources familiar with the planning told CNN. It comes on the heels of the prime minister’s address to Congress and meetings with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House. Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, conveyed a forcefulness on civilian suffering and ending the war following her time with the prime minister.

Remember this shit? Fucking vote.

>The president also appeared to have trouble raising a glass of water to his mouth during a speech at West Point a day before he turned 74, the oldest a president has been in his first term.

>President Trump faced new questions about his health on Sunday, after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech there. > >Mr. Trump — who turned 74 on Sunday, the oldest a U.S. president has been in his first term — was recorded hesitantly descending the ramp one step at a time after he delivered an address to graduating cadets at the New York-based academy on Saturday. The academy’s superintendent, Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, walked alongside him. Mr. Trump sped up slightly for the final three steps, as he got to the bottom.

Remember this shit? Fucking vote.

> President Donald Trump stood in front of the White House press corps on Tuesday afternoon and vented. > >What was billed as a press conference rapidly turned into a quasi-campaign event, with the President of the United States free-associating about his general election opponent, the state of the country and the media. Even by Trump standards, it was a shocking performance – suggesting a level of volatility and unpredictability that has to terrify Republicans trying to run and win campaigns while sharing the same ballot with Trump in November.

>10) “Because you talk about a certain power of the telephone and the calls where they would call and say, no, we don’t want to do that.”

>33) “That basically means no windows, no nothing. It’s very hard to do. I tell people when they want to go into some of these buildings, how are your eyes because they won’t be good in five years.”

>39) “But you can’t make a left anymore and come into the United States loaded up with human traffic.”

Remember this shit? Fucking vote.

>White nationalist: Trump gives nothing but racist tweets

> President Donald Trump’s racist comments about Democratic congresswomen have won him renewed support from white supremacists who had been losing faith that he was the hero they wanted to create a prospering White America. > >Trump told the four women of color that they should “go back” to the “crime infested places” they came from, even though three of the four were born in the US and the fourth is a naturalized citizen. > >“Man, President Trump’s Twitter account has been pure fire lately. This might be the funniest thing he’s ever tweeted. This is the kind of WHITE NATIONALISM we elected him for,” wrote Andrew Anglin on his Daily Stormer site – one of the most highly trafficked neo-Nazi websites.

Remember this shit? Fucking vote.

> Trump: We are all to blame for Russia relations

> US President Donald Trump, in a stunning rebuke of the US intelligence community, declined on Monday to endorse the US government’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, saying he doesn’t “see any reason why” Russia would be responsible. > >Instead, Trump – standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin – touted Putin’s vigorous denial and pivoted to complaining about the Democratic National Committee’s server and missing emails from Hillary Clinton’s personal account. > >“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said during a joint news conference after he spent about two hours in a room alone with Putin, save for a pair of interpreters.

Background on the disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster

The black enlisted workers were specifically selected to be the dumbest and least competent:

>None of the new recruits had been instructed in ammunition loading.

>At NSGL, the enlisted African Americans who tested in the top 30% to 40% were selected for non-labor assignments. Port Chicago was manned by workers drawn from those remaining. The Navy determined that the quality of African American petty officers at Port Chicago suffered because of the absence of high-scoring black men

>The Navy's General Classification Test (GCT) results for the enlisted men at Port Chicago averaged 31, putting them in the lowest twelfth of the Navy.

The white officers in charge had no training with munitions, and refused to train the men:

>Prior to his being sent to command Port Chicago, Kinne had no training in the loading of munitions and little experience in handling them.[12] Loading officers serving underneath Kinne had not been trained in handling munitions until they had been posted to Mare Island Navy Yard, after which they were considered adequate to the task by the Navy.

>Later the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) responded to word of unsafe practices by offering to bring in experienced men to train the battalion; the Navy leadership declined the offer,[16] fearing higher costs, slower pace, and possible sabotage from civilian longshoremen.[17] No enlisted man stationed at Port Chicago had received formal training in the handling and loading of explosives into ships.

Finally, a civilian plumber working right before the explosion described the poor conditions:

>While at work he witnessed a man accidentally drop a naval artillery shell two feet onto the wooden pier, but there was no detonation. Carr waited until the African-American winch operator tested the repaired winch and then left the pier, thinking that the operation appeared unsafe.

The explosion:

>At 10:18 p.m., witnesses reported hearing a noise described as "a metallic sound and rending timbers, such as made by a falling boom."[26] Immediately afterward, an explosion occurred on the pier and a fire started. Five to seven seconds later[16][30][31] a more powerful explosion took place as the majority of the ordnance within and near the SS E. A. Bryan detonated in a fireball seen for miles. An Army Air Forces pilot flying in the area reported that the fireball was 3 mi (4.8 km) in diameter.

Just a reminder of how trump's presidency went, since many people have forgotten. This article is from exactly 7 years ago.

> Trump’s job approval rating at the 6-month mark is lower than eight of the past nine presidents’. He’s tied with Gerald Ford, who had taken over from Richard Nixon, who had fled Washington in the wake of the Watergate scandal and whom Ford, very controversially, pardoned. > > Despite his braggadocio, Trump has a pittance of legislative accomplishments to tout. Health care appears to be dead in the water – and even Trump can’t seem to decide what the right next step should be. There is currently zero new funding for Trump’s much-touted border wall. Tax reform still in its infant stage, with few details added to the first, basic proposal. Infrastructure proposals are in limbo. There is no announced strategy on the raising of the debt ceiling. And on and on and on. > > A special counsel was appointed and is investigating Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 election and the possibility that members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to aid his campaign. That investigation has triggered a major lawyering-up of all the major players – including several Trump family members – and a series of ever-changing stories about who said what and when.

>Just 36% of people approve of the job Trump is doing, via a Washington Post-ABC News poll released over the weekend, while 58% disapprove. More troubling for Trump (and his party) is the fact that the intensity is all on the anti-Trump side; 48% strongly disapprove of how Trump is doing the job while just 25% strongly approve.

Fucking vote.

>Thousands more firearms dealers across the United States will have to run background checks on buyers when selling at gun shows or other places outside brick-and-mortar stores, according to a Biden administration rule that will soon go into effect. > >The rule aims to close a loophole that has allowed tens of thousands of guns to be sold every year by unlicensed dealers who don’t perform background checks to ensure the potential buyer is not legally prohibited from having a firearm.

>“This is going to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and felons,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “And my administration is going to continue to do everything we possibly can to save lives. Congress needs to finish the job and pass universal background checks legislation now.”

From May 2024:

> As he seeks a second term, Trump has promised to remain an unflinching supporter of the NRA and its agenda to unravel four years of Biden’s actions on guns. Biden’s campaign has branded Trump “the greatest defender of the Second Amendment to ever occupy the White House.” > > Trump’s speech was short on specifics about what he would do to protect or expand gun rights in a second term, but he promised to “roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment.” He sought to remind the friendly crowd of his administration’s accomplishments while arguing that another four years of Biden’s leadership would result in more firearms and gun owners being targeted.

Old, but seems relevant today.

>President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law the first major federal gun safety legislation passed in decades, marking a significant bipartisan breakthrough on one of the most contentious policy issues in Washington. > >“God willing, it’s going to save a lot of lives,” Biden said at the White House as he finished signing the bill.

Another Republican turns away from donald trump. It's not clear what his response will be, as he has been generally absent from the public eye for weeks.

Who knows how long his campaign can last with Republican Senators speaking out against him? Maybe a heavily scrutinized press conference might be necessary, with his leadership skills (and mental capacity) in doubt.

> President Joe Biden on Wednesday awarded the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry to two Union soldiers who stole a locomotive deep in Confederate territory during the Civil War and drove it north for 87 miles (140 kilometers) as they destroyed railroad tracks and telegraph lines.

The Biden administration is moving Ukraine ahead of other countries that were slated to receive air defense missiles, the latest move in its effort to rush urgently needed weapons to Kyiv.

The U.S. will “reprioritize” deliveries of Patriots and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems missiles planned for a select group of other countries so that the munitions coming off the production line will instead go to Ukraine, John Kirby, spokesperson for the National Security Council, announced Thursday.

I had an idea that would allow people to buy their own homes that they are currently renting:

1. Every home gets appraised to determine what it would sell for. This is done by the county and is used for property taxes too.
2. Every renter is allowed to buy a percentage of their primary residence from the owner. The owner has no choice in this. It's a requirement for being able to rent a property. Edit: Since people are confused about this, the renter is not required to buy anything. They have an option to buy.
3. Renters can pay as little as $100 extra per month and the county puts their percentage ownership on the deed. If the home is sold, the renter can't be kicked out involuntarily. If they do leave, they get the percentage of home value they own.

Pros:

• This would avoid the issue of high interest rates hurting primary homeownership.
• This would blunt the impact of corporate landlords having a monopoly where they refuse to sell. They are forced to sell at a fair price.
• This would create a simple decision between owning their home and spending money on luxuries or eating out.

Cons:

• This would hurt small landlords who would have their property bought out from under them. This is actually a good thing because the benefits of rising property values are now shared.
• The implementation is hard. This is actually a good thing because bad landlords would sell property they didn't want to manage, lowering prices for renters who want to buy.
• It would cost the county money to hire appraisers. But this could be paid for by increased property taxes due to better appraisals.
• Property taxes would go up for landlords. But this would be good, as it encourages them to sell the property. This appraisal process and increased property taxes wouldn't affect people who just lived in their home without charging rent.

> “Something snapped in this guy—for real—when he lost in 2020,” Biden said. “He can’t accept the fact that he lost, it’s literally driving him crazy.”